Where do the indigenous people from America and South America came from? Who were their ancestors?
In: Other
The current theory is that they came across the Bering straight when the sea level was lower (due to the ice age) about 13,000 years ago. So from Siberia.
There is still plenty of debate – as there have been discoveries which suggest an earlier origin, but have not been well investigated and confirmed to be correct.
The land-bridge theory has been popular for quite some time, but I doubt it. Native Americans were/are incredibly diverse, it would be strange for them to have a common ancestor group. There is evidence that native Americans were here before the land-bridge existed.
So how did they get here? Boats. The idea that they couldn’t make the boats capable of traversing the strait is rooted in old ideas of white supremacy, where every colored civilization is incredibly primitive. (Side note- this same line of thinking is why some white supremacists think aliens had to have made the pyramids).
To answer who the ancestors were, there is debate over whether they are from Siberia or west Europe. Maybe both.
Many Native American peoples in South America have been tested having South Pacific DNA.
Thus, more than likely there could have been much migration from the South Pacific to South America. These peoples could have already been living in South America before the peoples from Asia migrated into South America.
There has been some good information indicating the closest existing old world population to the new world population are the Ainu people. These are people who used to occupy the Japanese islands. They were pushed out of most of Japan by an East Asian migration a bit over 2000 years ago. Now they’re mostly just on the island of Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost main island. In other words, whatever old world population populated the new world, they also populated the Japanese islands in the past, so Native Americans and Ainu have a common ancestor from 13,000-17,000 years ago.
Latest Answers