2nd Ancient Migration to America Posited

Ancient peoples loosely related to modern Asians crossed the Arctic land bridge to settle America about 15,000 years ago, according to a study offering new evidence that the Western Hemisphere hosted two waves of migration involving two genetically distinct groups. The early immigrants most closely resembled the prehistoric Jomon people of Japan and their closest modern descendants, the Ainu, from the Japanese island of Hokkaido, the study said.

The immigrants settled throughout the hemisphere and were in place when a second migration, from mainland Asia, came across the Bering Strait beginning 5,000 years ago and swept southward as far as modern-day Arizona and New Mexico, researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The second migration is the genetic origin of today’s Eskimos, Aleuts and the Navajo of the U.S. southwest, according to the study.

*

C ompiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II