DNA reveals that Native Americans came from Central Russia!

[starroute]

30. There's a lot of evidence for different waves of migration

The earliest skulls -- like that of Kennewick Man -- are quite different from modern ones and are generally said to resemble those of Ainu, Polynesians, or Australians. And there is also linguistic, genetic, and even cultural evidence for a relatively late migration that may have come from Japan and moved down the Pacific coast of North America.

But the main migration -- which came in between those other two and made the largest contribution to the population -- does seem to have been Central Asian.

Since they also recently identified the 33,000 year old skull of an early domesticated dog from the Altai, I can't help wondering if that dog's descendents also made the hop to the Americas. The articles on it say that the line of those early dogs must have died out, because all present-day dogs are descended from a common ancestor that was domesticated in the Middle East about 14,000 years ago. But the only American dogs whose DNA they've tested are ones whose ancestors were brought over by the Europeans, so they don't really know about the ones who were already here.

There are still a lot of surprises coming.