Russian archaeologists in 1976 excavating the Ust’-Kyakhta-3 site on the banks of the Selenga River By Michael PriceA new study has revealed the oldest link yet between Native Americans and their ancestors in East Asia: A 14,000-year-old tooth belonging to a close cousin of today’s Native Americans, found thousands of kilometers from the landmass that once connected Eurasia and the Americas.“It’s very cool,” says Jennifer Raff, a geneticist at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, who studies the peopling of the Americas.
The work suggests that the Siberian ancestors of North America’s Indigenous peoples were more widespread and mobile than previously believed, she says.