New DNA Testing Reveals the Ancient History of Alaska's Iñupiat People

First Posted: Apr 30, 2015 10:14 AM EDT
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Where did the native people of Alaska first come from? That's a good question. Now, genetic testing of the Iñupiat people currently living in Alaska's North Slope is filling in the blanks on questions about migration patterns.

"This is the first evidence that genetically ties of all the Iñupiat and Inuit populations from Alaska, Canada and Greenland back to the Alaskan North Slope," said M. Geoffrey Hayes, senior author of the new study, in a news release.

In this latest effort, the researchers studied the mitochondrial DNA haplogroups that were previously found in the ancient remains of Neo- and Paleo-Eskimos. The researchers also studied the DNA from living Inuit peoples from across the North American Arctic.

"There has never been a clear biological link found in the DNA of the Paleo-Eskimos, the first people to spread from Alaska into the eastern North American arctic, and the DNA of Neo-Eskimos, a more technologically sophisticated group that later spread very quickly from Alaska and the Bering Strait region to Greenland and seemed to replace the Paleo-Eskimo," said Hayes. "Our study suggests that the Alaskan North Slope serves as the homeland for both of those groups, during two different migrations. We found DNA haplogroups of both ancient Paleo-Eskimos and Neo-Eskimos in Iñupiat people living in the North Slope today."

In fact, the researchers found that 98 percent of maternal lineages in the modern-day Iñupiat people were of Arctic descent. The scientists also believe that, due to the presence of two haplotypes, the Paleo-Eskimos and Neo-Eskimos were the ancestors of the contemporary Iñupiat people.

The researchers revealed a bit more about the history and prehistory of the Iñupiat people. The scientists hope to continue their work by analyzing genetic markers on the Y-chromosomes from men in the North Slope, taking a closer look at the population history of men.

The findings are published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

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