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Primary teeth reveal unknown group of ancient people

The discovery of two primary teeth buried deep in a Siberian archaeological site has revealed much about migration and human history. (Image: Esteban De Armas/Shutterstock)

Fri. 14. June 2019

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CAMBRIDGE, UK: Scientists have recently found two primary teeth buried deep in a remote archaeological site in north-eastern Siberia. The discovery has revealed that a previously unknown group of people lived there during the last Ice Age and has been described as an exciting moment that delivers more insight into human history.

“These people were a significant part of human history, they diversified almost at the same time as the ancestors of modern-day Asians and Europeans and it’s likely that at one point they occupied large regions of the northern hemisphere,” said Prof. Eske Willerslev, from St John’s College of the University of Cambridge in the UK.

The two primary teeth were found in a large archaeological site in Russia near the Yana River. The site, known as the Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site, was discovered in 2001 and has revealed more than 2,500 artefacts made from animal bones and ivory, along with stone tools and other evidence of human habitation. The international team of scientists from the University of Cambridge and the Lundbeck Foundation Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, of which Willerslev is the director, have named the new people the Ancient North Siberians.

Dr Martin Sikora, from the centre and first author of the study, said “They adapted to extreme environments very quickly, and were highly mobile. These findings have changed a lot of what we thought we knew about the population history of north-eastern Siberia but also what we know about the history of human migration as a whole.”

It is widely accepted that humans first made their way to the Americas from Siberia into Alaska via a land-bridge spanning the Bering Strait which was submerged at the end of the last Ice Age. In the study, the researchers were able to pinpoint some of these ancestors as Asian groups who mixed with the Ancient North Siberians. “The remains are genetically very close to the ancestors of Paleo-Siberian speakers and close to the ancestors of Native Americans. It is an important piece in the puzzle of understanding the ancestry of Native Americans as you can see the Kolyma signature in the Native Americans and Paleo-Siberians. This individual is the missing link of Native American ancestry,” noted Willerslev.

The study, titled “The population history of northeastern Siberia since the Pleistocene”, was published on 5 June 2019 in Nature.

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