Two ancient baby remains unearthed in Alaska may finally reveal the answer to the mystery of how North Americans migrated. The infant bones were buried 11,500 years ago and they were found to have different mothers, with a massive gap in their genomes.
The new findings was published Monday by University of Alaska researchers in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
According to the study's scientists, they may have found the connection between ancient people in Alaska and in Asia after deciphering the genetic material of the two babies' mothers. They were found to be the closest kin of two Native Americans lineages from further south, making them possibly related to migrants that used the Bering land bridge.
It remains unknown how the first humans travelled to North and South America, only that they came from Siberia after crossing a 600-mile wide land bridge that disappeared long ago following the Ice Age, also known as Beringia, according to The Washington Post.
In 2007, Ripan Malhi from the University of Illinois made a proposal for the Beringia migration model, also known as the Beringian Standstill. The theory posits that about 25,000 ago, Siberians went east into Beringia and that they remained there for around 10,000 years.
Beringia, though existing during the height of the last ice age, was not covered by glaciers but was composed mainly of tundra, shrub land and trees, helping the ancient humans survive, reported The New York Times.
According to researcher Dennis O'Rourke in a news release, the remains of the two infants are the earliest in the history of northern North America. Because of the diversity in the genome that they represent, it proves that there have been different genetics even before the ancient humans moved south.
"It supports the Beringian standstill theory in that if they represent a population that descended from the earlier Beringian population it helps confirm the extent of genetic diversity in that source population," said O'Rourke.
O'Rourke added that the distinct Native American lineages observed in the migrants are not visible in neither Siberia nor Asia, making it possible that there had been a period of isolation which led to the evolution of the Native Americans, coming from Asia.
With the two ancient baby remains unearthed, the mystery of ancient human migration is becoming clearer and the diversity of the genetics of the ancient Beringians are now more understood, according to Science World Report.