Abstract
Genetic studies have consistently indicated a single common origin of
Native American groups from Central and South America 1–4 .
However, some morphological studies have suggested a more com-
plex picture, whereby the northeast Asian affinities of present-day
Native Americans contrast with a distinctive morphology seen in
some of the earliest American skeletons, which share traits with pre-
sent-day Australasians (indigenous groups in Australia, Melanesia,
and island Southeast Asia) 5–8 . Here we analyse genome-wide data to
show that some Amazonian Native Americans descend partly from a
Native American founding population that carried ancestry more
closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans and
Andaman Islanders than to any present-day Eurasians or Native
Americans. This signature is not present to the same extent, or at
all, in present-day Northern and Central Americans or in a 12,600-
year-old Clovis-associated genome, suggesting a more diverse set of
founding populations of the Americas than previously accepted.
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