History and Heritage

After more than a century of speculation, an international group of geneticists has conclusively proven that the Aztecs, Incas, and Iroquois are closely related to the peoples of Altai, the Siberian region that borders China and Mongolia.

Scientists have suspected for a long time that Native Americans are closely related to the peoples of Altai. The theory of the Altai peoples migrating from Siberia across Chukotka and Alaska, down to the Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America, appeared almost a century ago

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(February 23, 2016, Aram Ter-Ghazaryan, special to RBTH)

The tiny mountainous Altai region of southern Siberia may have been the genetic source of the earliest Native Americans, according to anthropologists at the University of Pennsylvania.  Altai was the hub of migrating human traffic between Russia, Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan 20-25,000 years ago.  They carried their Asian genetic lineages up into the far reaches of Siberia and eventually across the Beringian land bridge into the Americas.

January 2012

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Researchers have discovered how Native Americans may have survived the last Ice Age after splitting from their Asian relatives 25,000 years ago. Read more →