title: Ancient individuals from the North American Northwest Coast reveal 10,000 years of regional genetic continuity.
abstract: Recent genomic studies of both ancient and modern indigenous people of the Americas have shed light on the demographic processes involved during the first peopling. The Pacific Northwest Coast proves an intriguing focus for these studies because of its association with coastal migration models and genetic ancestral patterns that are difficult to reconcile with modern DNA alone. Here, we report the low-coverage genome sequence of an ancient individual known as "ShukáKáa" ("Man Ahead of Us") recovered from the On Your Knees Cave (OYKC) in southeastern Alaska (archaeological site 49-PET-408). The human remains date to ∼10,300 calendar (cal) y B.P. We also analyze low-coverage genomes of three more recent individuals from the nearby coast of British Columbia dating from ∼6,075 to 1,750 cal y B.P. From the resulting time series of genetic data, we show that the Pacific Northwest Coast exhibits genetic continuity for at least the past 10,300 cal y B.P. We also infer that population structure existed in the late Pleistocene of North America with ShukáKáa on a different ancestral line compared with other North American individuals from the late Pleistocene or early Holocene (i.e., Anzick-1 and Kennewick Man). Despite regional shifts in mtDNA haplogroups, we conclude from individuals sampled through time that people of the northern Northwest Coast belong to an early genetic lineage that may stem from a late Pleistocene coastal migration into the Americas.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Genetics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lindo
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology and Biotechnology "L. Spallanzani," University of Pavia, 27100 Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Achilli
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology and Biotechnology "L. Spallanzani," University of Pavia, 27100 Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Ugo A
authors.initials: UA
authors.lastname: Perego
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, Northwestern Community College, Prince Rupert, BC, Canada V8J 3P6.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Archer
authors.affiliation: Department of Archaeology and History, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC 3086, Australia.|Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, DK-1350 Copenhagen K, Denmark.
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Valdiosera
authors.affiliation: Metlakatla Treaty Office, Metlakatla First Nation, Prince Rupert, BC, Canada V8J 3P6.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Petzelt
authors.affiliation: Metlakatla Treaty Office, Metlakatla First Nation, Prince Rupert, BC, Canada V8J 3P6.
authors.forename: Joycelynn
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mitchell
authors.affiliation: Sealaska Heritage Institute, Juneau, AK 99801.
authors.forename: Rosita
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Worl
authors.affiliation: Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131.|Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131.
authors.forename: E James
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Dixon
authors.affiliation: Sociology and Anthropology Department, University of Alaska Southeast, Ketchikan, AK 99901.|Tongass National Forest, US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Ketchikan, AK 99901.
authors.forename: Terence E
authors.initials: TE
authors.lastname: Fifield
authors.affiliation: Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, DK-1350 Copenhagen K, Denmark.|Department of Genetics, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
authors.forename: Morten
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rasmussen
authors.affiliation: Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, DK-1350 Copenhagen K, Denmark.|Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, United Kingdom.|Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SA, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Eske
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Willerslev
authors.affiliation: Research, Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau, QC, Canada K1A 0M8.|Department of Anthropology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada N6A 3K7.|Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6.
authors.forename: Jerome S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Cybulski
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019; bmkemp@ou.edu mxd60@psu.edu malhi@illinois.edu.
authors.forename: Brian M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Kemp
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802; bmkemp@ou.edu mxd60@psu.edu malhi@illinois.edu.|Institute for CyberScience, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: DeGiorgio
authors.affiliation: Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61820; bmkemp@ou.edu mxd60@psu.edu malhi@illinois.edu.|Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801.
authors.forename: Ripan S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Malhi
mesh_terms: D001106:Archaeology; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics*; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005260:Female; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005828:Genetics, Population; D054629:Genome, Mitochondrial; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007198:Indians, North American / Q000235:genetics*; D008297:Male; D010802:Phylogeny
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial
keywords: Native American; ancient DNA; indigenous; paleogenomics; peopling