Origins of the first Americans: Before and after the Anzick genome

ABSTRACT Recent analyses of the preserved ancient genomes of the Mal’ta boy and Anzick infant have transformed our understanding of Native Americans’ origins. The Mal’ta genome shows that about one-third of Native American genetic ancestry is derived from admixture, about fifteen to twenty thousand years ago, of East Asians with a now-vanished population of interior southern Siberia. Living Native Americans are demonstrably the direct descendants of the people who made and used Clovis tools and buried the Anzick infant in Montana ca. 12,800 cal B.P. The profound implications of these data for the origins of the first Americans should be obvious. However, as evidenced by the books reviewed here, archaeologists appear largely unaware of these data and their now-standard but unsubstantiated narratives of pre-Clovis coastal migrations remain unaffected.