DNA Testing of Ancient Remains Prove Native Americans Were There First

Very few people know that there has been an ongoing debate for decades on whether or not Native Americans are the ancestors of the "first Americans." Now, DNA testing of ancient remains has verified that Native Americans are in-fact descendants of the first.

Back in 2011, the ancient remains of an adolescent girl were discovered in an underwater cave just off the Yucatán Peninsula. Using radiocarbon dating and an analysis of chemical signatures in the bones, researchers were able to determine that the girl had died 12,000 to 13,000 years ago, identifying her as one of the first people to cross a land bridge known as the Beringia into the Americas, according to a recent press release.

According to researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the theory that Native Americans may not have been the "first" Americans arose after researchers analyzing many recently discovered ancient remains concluded that the skulls of modern native Americans do not match up with the structural archetype of the skulls of the first Americans.

When these latest remains, which researchers are calling "Naia," were discovered, experts were finally presented with an opportunity to test this theory.

"The girl's skeleton is exceptionally complete because of the environment in which she died -- she ended up in the right water and in a quiet place without any soil," Cave-diving scientist Patricia A. Beddows of Northwestern University said in a press release. "Her pristine preservation enabled our team to extract enough DNA to determine her shared genetic code with modern Native Americans."

Two separate laboratory teams extracted mitochondrial DNA from one of the ancient girl's teeth. The resulting analysis from both labs discovered that Naia belonged to a genetic lineage only shared by Native Americans.

"We were able to identify her genetic lineage with high certainty," researcher Ripan Malhi said. "This shows that living Native Americans and these ancient remains of the girl we analyzed all came from the same source population during the initial peopling of the Americas."

A full study of the remains was published in Science on May 16.

A University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign press release was published on May 15.

A Northwestern University Press release was published on May 15.