Article
Author: Moltke, Ida ; Lynnerup, Niels ; Rasmussen, Morten ; Jakobsson, Mattias ; Raghavan, Vibha ; Khusnutdinova, Elza ; Korneliussen, Thorfinn S. ; Malaspinas, Anna-Sapfo ; Fahrni, Simon M. ; Nielsen, Rasmus ; O’Rourke, Dennis H. ; Metspalu, Mait ; Malmström, Helena ; Fitzhugh, William ; Gulløv, Hans Christian ; Grimes, Vaughan ; Knecht, Rick ; Rasmussen, Simon ; Hansen, Thomas V. O. ; Bustamante, Carlos ; Dissing, Jørgen ; Cybulski, Jerome ; Renouf, M. A. Priscilla ; Hayes, M. Geoffrey ; Dneprovsky, Kirill ; Gilbert, M. Thomas P. ; Pierre, Tracey ; Britton, Kate ; Spitsyn, Victor A. ; Crawford, Michael H. ; Lahr, Marta Mirazon ; DeGiorgio, Michael ; Olsen, Jesper ; Albrechtsen, Anders ; Andreasen, Claus ; Melchior, Linea ; Kivisild, Toomas ; Fuller, Benjamin T. ; Raghavan, Maanasa ; Orlando, Ludovic ; Stafford, Thomas ; Willerslev, Eske ; Lange, Hans ; Appelt, Martin ; Arneborg, Jette ; Götherström, Anders ; Nielsen, Finn C. ; Wang, Yong ; Heinemeier, Jan ; Skoglund, Pontus ; Meldgaard, Morten ; Cornejo, Omar E. ; Friesen, T. Max ; Grønnow, Bjarne ; Coltrain, Joan ; Villems, Richard
The New World Arctic, the last region of the Americas to be populated by humans, has a relatively well-researched archaeology, but an understanding of its genetic history is lacking. We present genome-wide sequence data from ancient and present-day humans from Greenland, Arctic Canada, Alaska, Aleutian Islands, and Siberia. We show that Paleo-Eskimos (~3000 BCE to 1300 CE) represent a migration pulse into the Americas independent of both Native American and Inuit expansions. Furthermore, the genetic continuity characterizing the Paleo-Eskimo period was interrupted by the arrival of a new population, representing the ancestors of present-day Inuit, with evidence of past gene flow between these lineages. Despite periodic abandonment of major Arctic regions, a single Paleo-Eskimo metapopulation likely survived in near-isolation for more than 4000 years, only to vanish around 700 years ago.