DNA From 11,500-Year-Old Infant In Alaska Reveals Lost Population (And Why They Vanished)

Video Description

DNA From 11,500-Year-Old Infant Found In Alaska Reveals Lost Population (Vanished Without A Trace) When archaeologists reached the bottom of a fire pit in central Alaska, they found two infants buried together 11,500 years ago. One had died shortly after birth. The other was stillborn. Ben Potter, an anthropologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, sent bone samples for DNA analysis in 2013, expecting to find genetic signatures matching northern Native Americans. What came back in 2018 shocked everyone: an entirely new population scientists didn't know existed. The DNA revealed a ghost lineage that had split from all other Native Americans 20,000 years ago, persisted in isolation for thousands of years in Alaska's interior, and then mysteriously vanished around 6,000 years ago. Scientists called them the Ancient Beringians. This isolation period, known as the "Beringian Standstill," lasted long enough for specific genetic mutations to accumulate that would distinguish Native Americans from their Asian ancestors forever. For the next 8,500 years, they remained in Alaska's interior as a distinct population. The two infants at Upward Sun River came from different mothers, one carried mitochondrial lineage C1b, the other B2, yet they were buried together with ceremony, covered in red ochre and surrounded by decorated antler rods and stone dart points. But here's the haunting question: Where did the Ancient Beringians go? DNA from a 9,000-year-old tooth at Trail Creek Cave, 750 kilometers away, matched the Ancient Beringian signature. So they persisted and spread across Alaska's interior, developing their own culture known as the Denali complex. But after 9,000 years ago, the genetic trail goes cold. In April 2024, a team led by Dorothy First Rider from the Blackfoot Confederacy published a groundbreaking study in Science Advances. They sequenced DNA from seven historical Blackfoot ancestors and six living members, revealing another previously unknown lineage, one that split from other Native Americans even earlier than the Ancient Beringians, around 18,000 years ago. Ripan Malhi, a geneticist at the University of Illinois who co-led the study, described the discovery as "very surprising." The Blackfoot genomes represented a population that split off during the Late Pleistocene and maintained genetic continuity for 18,000 years, surviving ice ages, climate shifts, European contact, and forced relocation. "This really confirms what we already knew," said Gheri Hall, archaeologist with the Blackfeet Tribal Historic Preservation Office. "Now we can use the new science to fight the old science." The timing was critical. In 2023, after four decades of legal battles, the Blackfoot Confederacy finally won protection for the Badger-Two Medicine area, 130,000 acres of sacred land in Montana's Rocky Mountain Front where Blackfoot oral tradition says their people were created. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration issued oil and gas leases in the area over fierce Blackfoot opposition. One company, Solenex LLC, refused to relinquish its lease even as every other leaseholder voluntarily withdrew. They sued. Courts went back and forth. The threat persisted for 40 years. In 2023, with DNA evidence demonstrating 18,000 years of continuous occupation, Solenex finally settled for $2.6 million and relinquished the lease. The last remaining threat to drill in Blackfoot sacred land disappeared. 📚 SOURCES: - Moreno-Mayar, J.V., Potter, B.A., Vinner, L., et al. (2018). "Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans." Nature, 553, 203-207. - Potter, B.A., Reuther, J.D., Bowers, P.M., et al. (2014). "New insights into Eastern Beringian mortuary behavior: A terminal Pleistocene double infant burial at Upward Sun River." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(48), 17060-17065. - First Rider, D., Longstaffe, F.J., Rowe, K., et al. (2024). "Ancient and modern DNA reveal dynamics of Aboriginal Ancestry and pathogen history among Blackfoot people." Science Advances, 10(16). - Tamm, E., Kivisild, T., Reidla, M., et al. (2007). "Beringian Standstill and Spread of Native American Founders." PLoS ONE, 2(9), e829. - Raghavan, M., Steinrücken, M., Harris, K., et al. (2015). "Genomic evidence for the Pleistocene and recent population history of Native Americans." Science, 349(6250), aab3884. - O'Rourke, D.H., Tackney, J., Raff, J.A., et al. (2015). "Ancient DNA analysis of the oldest known complete mitochondrial genome from North America." American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 158, 552-563. - Sikora, M., Pitulko, V.V., Sousa, V.C., et al. (2019). "The population history of northeastern Siberia since the Pleistocene." Nature, 570, 182-188. #FirstAmericans #AncientDNA #Beringia #NativeAmericanHistory #Archaeology