Native Americans Traveled to Siberia

The remains of three people who died on a riverbank in the Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Siberia some 500 years ago have yielded a surprising secret: Their DNA shows they had some North American ancestry, according to a study published in Science.org.

Considered alongside other ancient and modern genomes, the results suggest that although the ancestors of today’s Native Americans came from Asia, the passage was not one way. Instead, the Bering Sea region was a place of intercontinental connection, where people routinely boated back and forth for thousands of years.

Beginning about 20,000 years ago, people living in Siberia journeyed across the Bering Strait into Alaska and spread south through the Americas. Sea levels were much lower at the time, allowing hunter-gatherers to traverse a frozen land bridge into the new continent or boat along its coast.

When the last ice age ended about 11,500 years ago and glaciers melted, the Bering Sea rose and divided the two continents. But migrants continued to arrive, mixing with and replacing earlier groups to shape the modern genetic landscape of Indigenous Americans. By 5000 years ago, people had settled across Alaska and northern Canada.