Ancient migrants into America Hg M

mtDNA extracted from the remains of two individuals found in a burial near China Lake in British Columbia, Canada, were analysed and, found to belong to haplogroup M (hg M), which has not yet been found among any extant Native American.

The bodies belonged to two related persons (they were buried in the same grave roughly 5,000 years ago, or, to be precise: the radiocarbon date was 4,950+/-170 years BP,

Haplogroup M (hg M) is very common in Asia, but unheard of among modern Amerindians. The descendants of those carrying it in prehistoric times must have all died out without any of them surviving till now.

This means that the "genetic diversity" of the Americas is much greater than previously thought (only five haplogroups: A, B, C, D and X have been found among extant natives).

They belonged to hg M but not to hg M7, M8, M9 or G.

Haplogroup M

Hg M is one of the oldest lineages, it arose from L3 (at least this is what the theory says), the ancestral group that left Africa and moved into Asia, splitting there into Hg M and Hg N, from which all non-African haplogroups later evolved.

Hg M and its is found at its highest frequencies in Asia, averaging (among all lineages about 70%).

The "pure M haplogroup accounts for roughl 60% of Indian mtDNA, nearly 50% of Southern Pakistani's and roughly 25% of Sabah (Borneo), Thailandese and Han Chinese. ForMongoliands, Uzbeks, Japanese, Papuans, Aboriginal Taiwanese it is about 12%. In Eastern Siberia it is neglibigle.

Being so prevalent in India, where it is deep and ancient (about 50 ky old) with many lineages, it is likely that it arose in the subcontinent.

Of course there are some sublineages in East Africa (M1, M23) probably due to back-migrations from Asia. This is supported by the recently discovered presence of Neanderthal DNA in East Africans (there were no Neanderthals in Africa to admix with humans there). So this indicates an Asia to Africa introgression of humans with Neanderthal genes in them, which admixed with the local Africans. M1 probably got into Africa with the same migration.

As can be seen in the map below it also spans Central, Southern and parts of Eastern Siberia. Its "offspring" include younger haplogroups (not depicted in the map): Z (Chinese and Hazara), G (North Eastern Siberia), E (Borneo and Taiwan), Q (New Guinea) and both C and D found in Asia and, also in America.

Haplogroup M global distribution.. Copyright © 20143 by Austin Whittall

Malhi and his team make a very interesting comment:

"Using genetic data from contemporary populations to infer early prehistoric demographic events is even less accurate when population history has been variable over time..." [1]

This is specially true for America, where millions of natives were exterminated by disease and war after the arrival of Europeans in the late 1400s. Whole lineages may have disappeared without a trace. We are looking at the remains of a decimated group of humans, who then filled in the void with the surviving haplogroups.

Since hg M is one of the two "first out of Africa" haplogroups, it would be interesting to identify to which lineage these China Lake remains belong to: an anciently rooted M lineage would probably mean that these people came to America long ago.

On the other hand, a lately diverged lineage may imply a more recent arrival to the New World. I am more inclined to believe the former.

Alternatively it could be that the whole mtDNA clock is completely wrong with its "timing" and that the people carrying hg M, left Africa long ago (well before 50 kya) and after moving to India, spread across Southern and Central Asia and part of them reached America (the China Lake people being descendants of those initial migrants).

Sources

[1] Malhi, Ripian et al. (2007), Mitochondrial haplogroup M discovered in prehistoric North Americans. Journal of Archaeological Science 34, 642-648. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2006.07.004

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

Neanderthals migration to America - Part I

 

A revised view of Neanderthal's distribution in Asia and possible entry route into America. Copyright © 2011 by Austin Whittall

The map above shows what I drew in a previous map but puts it in context. You can see the entry route of modern humans (H. sapiens) into Asia through Sinai and the southern tip of the Red Sea and the tip of the Persian Gulf (see the lower sea level and the coast line during Ice Ages).
Ice sheets covered the high mountains of Eurasia and blanketed the northern part of Europe and central Asia.

These ice fields cut off the drainage of Siberian rivers (which flow north) and acted as ice dams, forming the biggest lakes that the world has ever seen Lakes Komi and West Siberian Lake. The water backed up and found a southern outlet into the Aral Sea and from there to the Caspian Sea, which filled in its current depression (nowadays this "sea" is below sea level) and led it to flow west into the seas of Azov and from there into the Black sea, at that time a lake as were all the others (freshwater due to glacial ice melt and not salt water as they have now).

These rivers were mighty barriers to Neanderthal and would have been uncrossable, they were a barrier to further expansion, as was the northern glaciers.

We have seen that Neanderthal reached the mouth of the Indus River, on the border between Pakistan and India. Why did they stop there? Perhaps ancient H. erectus population in India impeded it, or the weather / vegetation was too balmy for the Neanderthals, used to living in the icy tundra.

They would have gone north, from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran towards Altai, where their most distant remains have been found (to date).

I see nothing that would have made them stop there. They could have gone southeast, into what is now China, but perhaps there was no game to hunt or, again, H. erectus blocked the way.

They would have followed the southern edge of the tundra, just north of the mountains that separate Mongolia from Russia, on and on, towards Beringia, and once across it, into America.

Lets go into details! in my next posts.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall © 

Neanderthal in India?

 

A revised map of Neanderthal distribution Range. Copyright © 2011 by Austin Whittall

After writing my last blog, I wondered if Neanderthals reached India or Pakistan (since their tell-tale B006 and O blood group is found there), and though the maps I have seen and most articles I have read place them in Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus (see the map that I posted in my first post on this series on "Neanderthals"), I decided to check out if there were any traces of them elsewhere.

Guess what? Yes, they have been found in the Indus river delta area!

A paper by Biagi and Starnini (2011) [1] clearly states this:

The Levalloisian assemblages discovered in Sindh, which display very characteristic features, among which are faceted and "chapeau de gendarme" butts, can be attributed to Middle Paleolithic human activity in the area, most probably related with the south-easternmost spread of Homo neanderthalensis. This species might haver reached the Indian Subcontinent either from the Anatolia-Caucasus-Mesopotamia corridor or across the southern regions of the Arabian Peninsula"[1]

They conjecture that the Indus delta was a geographic barrier.

These "Levalloisian" assemablages are a lithic technology (stone chipping) which is characteristic of Neanderthal stone working or Mousterian tool culture which dates to the Fourth or Würm Glacial Period some 40,000 years ago. Mousterian tools spanned the period between 300,000 and 30,000 BP, and disappeared with the demise of the Neanderthal.

Was the Indus a barrier?

Biagi and Starnini cite Stock, who wrote about "Potential geographic barriers [...] The Himalayas form a natural barrier between India and norterh Asia while the Indian subcontinent is bound on the West by both the Sulaiman Mountain Range and the Indus river delta which was likely comprised of salt flats and marshes during OIS4 [...]"[2]

The OIS4 mentioned in the article is a distinctive warm and cold period called "Oxygen Isotope Stages" (OIS), the OIS 4 - 73,000 to 63,000 years ago was a cold one.But it is likely that Neanderthal crossed the area before OIS4. Or, did not find it such a challenge after all (hadn't they walked out of Africa, crossed the Rhine, the Danube, the Volga and the Bosphorus?).

An expanded Neanderthal territory

Further north, identifiably Neanderthal bones have been found in Uzbekistan (Anghilak cave) [3]. Also in that same region bones were found in the 1930s at Teshik Tash cave in Uzbekistan and the Okladnikov cave in the Altai Mountains region of Siberia, they had not been clearly identified until now, because the fragmented remains were hard to classify. However modernt technology allowed them to be subjected to DNA testing which confirmed that they were Neanderthal remains3.5*350 [4].

By the way, there is a Mongolian "wild man" allegedly living in the Altai Mountains, the Almas... perhaps an extant Neanderthal. A place which is strikingly similar to the Bigfoot habitat in North America or the Southern Andean temperate forest.

Some 33,000 years ago, the Neanderthal also moved north into the Arctic regions of Russia, north of the Urals, and 1,000 km north of their "accepted" territory, is a site at Byzovaya, where their stone tools have been found [5].

So I have re-drawn the map based on these findings (it is shown above, at the beginning of this post).

Out of Asia?

So here we have a Neander who has gone well beyond its formerly accepted territorial boundaries. Who lived in the lower Indus river and in the Altai Mountains as well as northern Russia.

He seemed adapted to survive under harsh conditions. Could he have walked up the Indus, across the Himalayas or, across Siberia towards Beringia and entered America?

Man did. And Neanderthal was so similar to us. Maybe he did it too!

Sources

[1] Paolo biagi and Elisabetta Starnini, (2011). Neanderthals at the South-Easternmost edge: The spread of Levalloisisan Mousterian in the Indian Subcontinent. Published in "Papers in Honour of Viola T. Dobosi", ed. by K. T. Biro & A. Marko, Hungarian National Museum, Digital publication, Budapest, pp. 5-14.
[2] Jay T. Stock and Marta Mirazón Lahr (2007). Cranial diversity in South Asia relative to modern human dispersals and global patterns of human variation
In Petraglia, Allchin, eds. The Evolution and History of Human Populations in South Asia, Springer, Berlin, pp. 245-268
[3] Michelle Glantz, Rustam Suleymanov, Peter Hughes,Angela Schauber, (2003). Anghilak cave, Uzbekistan: documenting Neandertal occupation at the periphery
Antiquity Vol 77:295 March 2003.
[4] Johannes Krause, Ludovic Orlando, David Serre, Bence Viola, Kay Prüfer, Michael P. Richards, Jean-Jacques Hublin, Catherine Hänni, Anatoly P. Derevianko & Svante Pääbo (2007). Neanderthals in central Asia and Siberia Nature 449, 902-904 (18 October 2007) | doi:10.1038/nature06193; Published online 30 September 2007
[5] Bruce Bower Stone Age cold case baffles scientists Neandertals, or possibly ancient people, took polar express June 4th, 2011; Vol.179 #12 p. 8.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall © 

More on Neanderthal in America

 
Continuing with the "American Neanderthals"... I took another look at the map showing the B006 haplotype in the X chromosome which I had posted in my previous entry, and was surprised to notice that there is a high "density" of this mutation in the Indian Subcontinent.
So I focused on the regions with high concentration of this haplotype and marked them on the map, which you can see below:

Worldwide distribution of B006 haplotype based on a worldwide sample of 6092 X chromosomes. Areas with high percentage are highlighted . From [1]

As you can see, there are three areas within America that have a high density of B006 mutation:

1. Amazon: northern Bolivia, south western Peru and western Brazil. A relatively out of the way place, which due to its isolation could account for a high ratio of a rare mutation.
2. Meso America and northwestern South America, from Colombia to Yucatan.
3. Western Canada and the US (British Columbia, Oregon, Washington and California. (The "odd" Yuki live in California).
4. Europe excluding the Balkans and Southern Italy.
5. Indian Subcontinent.

The Indian Subcontinent's oddity

Why India and Pakistan? The map shows that the percentage of humans with B006 mutation drops off as you move out of Europe into Asia and across Asia (in China it drops to 0% of the population).

It picks up in Beringia and increases dramatically in America.
But, why so high in the Indian Subcontinent (yes, I also saw the Australian increase after dropping off to zero in Indonesia. What can that mean? Perhaps the "Kow Swamp" people took it there: they were robust hominids which survived until about 10,000 years ago in Australia, co-existing with modern humans).

Getting back to India and Pakistan. I recalled that I had posted about another mutation in the X chromosome known as RRM2P4.

It is rare in Africa and so it is probably of non-African origin or, belongs to some group that moved out of Africa with it (where it later disappeared) and passed it back into the modern human lineage (this is known as "introgression"),
So I decided to take a look at the data on RRM2P4, and came across a Table from [2] shown below:

Table 1. Shows RRM2P4 sequence in different populations. From [2]

I was expecting American sequences to resemble Western Asian ones (after all that is where the Amerindians are supposed to have come from), but no. No similarity whatsoever.

The only Asian sequence that is identical to American ones, is from Pakistan.

So here we have a link between: Pakistan and America with an X chromosome mutation RRM2P4 and the previous one, another mutation in the X chromosome (B006) linking America and the same region of the Indian Subcontinent.
Two links that completely by-pass the rest of Asia that lies between Pakistan/India and America.

Both in an X chromosome, one which we all inherit from our female ancestors (if you are a man, your X chromosome is your mother's and your Y is your father's. If you are a woman, you got an X from your mom and another X from your Dad, but his came from his mom - your paternal grandmother).

So this means that these mutations introgressed into the human (H. sapiens) lineage from Female H. erectus or Neanderthals.

But is there any other linkage between both regions?

O blood allele, as I mentioned in my previous post has been linked to Neanderthals and, has its highest frequencies in America. Most of Western Asia has relatively low ratios of O allele, and B is predominant (you would expect the opposite if Asia was the cradle of Amerindians).

But, surprisingly, a study indicates that O blood group is higher in Sindh and Baluchistan (Southern Pakistan), see table below from [3]:

And the data from [4] indicates that in eastern Pakistan, just above Sindh the percentage of O allele is even higher, as it ranges from 54& to 57.6% (Punjab, Gujrat and Wah Cant).

In India, the area just east of those mentioned in Pakistan, have a very strange blood group, the "O Bombay Blood Group", first discovered there, and found in about 1 every 17,600 persons in India.

It is found on the western coast of India and in Maharashtra, Gujrat (India) Karnataka, Goa and Andhra Pradesh.

So we have a higher percentage of O allele in this part of the world, and, a strange variety found only here!.

Sources:

[1] Yotova et al., (2011). An X-linked haplotype of Neandertal origin is present among all non-African populations 25.01.11.
[2] Michael F. Hammer, Daniel Garrigan, Elizabeth Wood, Jason A. Wilder, Zahra Mobasher, Abigail Bigham, James G. Krenz and Michael W. Nachman, (2004), Heterogeneous Patterns of Variation Among Multiple Human X-Linked Loci, The Possible Role of Diversity-Reducing Selection in Non-Africans.
doi: 10.1534/genetics.103.025361 Genetics August 1, 2004 vol. 167 no. 4 1841-1853
[3] Imranud Din Khattak, Taj Muhammad Khan, Purdil Khan, Syed Mukhtar Ali Shah, Sania Tanveer Khattak, Anwar Ali. (2008). J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad 2008;20(4). Frequency of ABO and Rhesus blood groups om district Swat, Pakistan
[4] Mohammad Anees and Mohammad Shabir Mirza, (2005). Distribution of ABO and RH Blood Group Alleles in Gujrat Region of Punjab, Pakistan Proc. Pakistan AcaMd.. SAcnie.e s4 2&(4 M):.2 3S3ha-2b3ir8 M.2i0rz0a5

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall ©