Very interesting find in Siberia. Particularly in regard to Haplogroup X.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/science/two-surprises-in-dna-of-boy-found-buried-in-siberia.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2

Impossible. Thus saith the Tommy, them indians are lamanites, them is Jews. Its pertee fuckin' simple, we don't like the red man and we don't like the jews, so there you go.

But... but... the planet is only 6,000 years old!

Under his blog entry, "The Great DNA Surprise":

http://simonsoutherton.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-great-dna-surprise.html

Mormons were jumping on the bandwagon, in part because the Siberian find--which was 24,000 years old--was "ancestral" to both Europeans and Native Americans. I'm wondering if the "hyper-diffusionist" crowd might be in that camp as well, since they're another with an inordinate fondness for junk science.

>Some Mormons have been claiming that a recently published human genomics research paper offers support for the belief that Native Americans have Jewish ancestors. The paper causing the excitement was published in the Jan 2013 issue of Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals. The article in question was written by Raghavan et al. and entitled “Upper Palaeolithic Siberian Genome Reveals Dual Ancestry of Native Americans.” The paper would have gone unnoticed by Mormons had a National Geographic journalist not sensationalised it with the following hyperbole.

>"Great Surprise"—Native Americans Have West Eurasian Origins.

>Oldest human genome reveals less of an East Asian ancestry than thought.

>Nearly one-third of Native American genes come from west Eurasian people linked to the Middle East and Europe, rather than entirely from East Asians as previously thought, according to a newly sequenced genome.

>There is nothing in the Raghavan research that supports the Book of Mormon or challenges the mainstream scientific views about the colonization of the New World. Native Americans are still all descended from ancient Asian ancestors.

The NY Times article grossly misrepresents the Raghavan findings with this statement:

>It now seems that they may be a mixture between the Western Europeans who had reached Siberia and an East Asian population.

That one, folks, is "European Ethno-centricity" at its worst. The populations in Siberia were ancestral to both Europeans and Native Americans, with closer ties to N/A's.

The NY Times author's name rang a bell with me, and whoops, Roadkill...

Writer Wade has been accused of other serious misrepresentations as well.

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/08/geneticists-decry-book-race-and-evolution

>A best-seller by former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade about recent human evolution and its potential effects on human cultures has drawn critical reviews since its spring publication. Now, nearly 140 senior human population geneticists around the world, many of whose work was cited in the book, have signed a letter to The New York Times Book Review stating that Wade has misinterpreted their work.

>The list of signatories reads like a who’s who of researchers in the field and includes such well-known geneticists as Evan Eichler of the University of Washington, Seattle; David Goldstein of Duke University; and Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona.

>The letter was spearheaded by five population geneticists who had informally discussed the book at conferences, says co-organizer Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley. “There was a feeling that our research had been hijacked by Wade to promote his ideological agenda,” Nielsen says. “The outrage … was palpable.” Molly Przeworski of Columbia University, another organizer, says the group “tried to contact population geneticists whose work had been cited by Wade.” They had no trouble getting signatures, racking up 100 within the first week, she says.

Finally, I'm puzzled by the OP's reference to Haplogroup X (since the Mal'ta boy was Haplogroup U). The two strains of Haplogroup X found in Native Americans, X2a and X2g, are not at all closely related to Old World Haplogroup X strains. X2a has been shown to have "split" off from early on from the Old World strains, and while X2g--apparently found in only a single Objibway individual--is particularly rare, there's no reason to think it didn't enter the Americas with the other four HG's, via the Siberian land bridge, and on the order of ~15,000 years ago.

Cabbie, I thought geneticists were converging on the notion that several migrations have occurred between Siberia and Alaska, not one single punctuated event. This theory is being sussed out from the latest findings associated with Native American genes (according to my link to the PBS special below).

Which shouldn't surprise I suppose. If the beringian land bridge was open for 5000 years, then that should equal approximately 5000 years of migration across the same, I'm thinking.

http://video.pbs.org/program/first-peoples/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia

And there's genetic evidence to that effect. That does include "back migrations" from Alaska to Siberia, doubtless via boats (which I generally "loathe" when I'm looking at possible hypothetical routes and available technologies. Watercraft existed, of course; it's "open ocean sailing" that gets the old road rage fired up).

The key, however, is that the two later migrations occurred only in the very northern latitudes, in Canada, possibly reaching as far as Greenland. Most of the western hemisphere was populated by a single migration, however, and the devil is in the details of the "timing."

I believe Simon addresses these issues; it's a been a month or so since I've corresponded with him, however.

And I've pointed out before that I'm "deeply troubled" by the implications of this picture, which was taken in Mongolia, and not Montana.

http://www.wunderground.com/wximage/viewsingleimage.html?mode=singleimage&orig_handle=habataku&orig_number=916&handle=habataku&number=916&album_id=291#slideanchor

My bad Cabbie, it just showed up in my links and I hadn't looked at the date of the publication. I thought that they had said that they thought that the "U" was from modern contamination?

Either way, I appreciate the correction.

Our own Cabbie (and, through his references, Simon)...my go-to when it comes to DNA and the BoM :)
Thanks for the info.