For millennia, people on the Mongolian steppes have HUMAN milked their animals despite being lactose intolerant. away the soil along with pot fragments and Ancient DNA tracks trash pits, archaeological evidence for diet is scarce. So Warinner’s Max Planck colleague Shevan Wilkin took dental calculus—the migrations around Americas hard plaque that builds up on teeth—from nine skeletons and tested it for key proteins. Trove of new samples reveals expansion of Clovis hunters The calculus yielded milk proteins from and mysterious 9000-year-old population turnover sheep, goats, and bovines such as yak or cow. Yet DNA from teeth and leg bones showed the herders were lactose intolerant. And they By Lizzie Wade Fairbanks. Prior to these studies, only six carried only a trace of DNA from the Yam- genomes older than 6000 years from the naya, the team reports this week in the Pro- or decades, scientists could describe Americas had been sequenced. As a result, ceedings of the National Academy of . the peopling of the Americas only in says Jennifer Raff, an anthropological ge- “They’re exploiting these animals for dairying broad strokes, leaving plenty of mys- neticist at the University of Kansas in Law- even though they’re not lactase persistent,” teries about when and how people rence, “The [genetic] models that we’ve Collins says. spread across the continents. Now, been using to explain the peopling of the That disconnect between dairy and DNA state of the art ancient DNA meth- Americas have always been oversimplified.” Downloaded from isn’t limited to Mongolia. Researchers re- Fods, applied to scores of new samples from Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary ge- cently found milk proteins on pots at Çat- around the Americas, are filling in the pic- neticist at the alhöyük in Turkey, which at 9000 years old ture. Two independent studies, published who led the team, worked closely dates to the beginnings of domestication, in Cell and online in Science, find that an- with the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe in 4 millennia before lactase persistence ap- cient populations expanded rapidly across Nevada to gain access to some of the new

pears. “There seem to be milk proteins pop- the Americas about 13,000 years ago. They samples. The tribe had been fighting to http://science.sciencemag.org/ ping up all over the place, and the wonderful also emphasize that the story continued in repatriate 10,700-year-old remains found evolution we expected to see isn’t happen- the thousands of years since, revealing pre- in Nevada’s Spirit Cave and had resisted ing,” Collins says. viously undocumented, large-scale move- destructive genetic testing. But when Modern Mongolians digest dairy by using ments between North and South America. Willerslev visited the tribe in person and bacteria to digest lactose for them, turning The data include 64 newly sequenced vowed to do the work only with their per- milk into yogurt and cheese, along with a ancient DNA samples from Alaska to Pata- mission, the tribe agreed, hoping the result rich suite of dairy products unknown in the gonia, spanning more than 10,000 years of would bolster their case for repatriation. Western diet. Ancient pastoralists may have genetic history. “The numbers [of samples] It did. Willerslev found that the remains adopted similar strategies. “Control and ma- are just extraordinary,” says Ben Potter, an from Spirit Cave are most closely related

nipulation of microbes is core to this whole archaeologist at the University of Alaska in to living Native Americans. That strength- on November 19, 2018 transformation … that enables them to have ened the Fallon Paiute- a dairying culture,” Warinner says. Shoshone Tribe’s claim Geneticists are going back to the drawing A trail of DNA to the bones, which were ,

. board to understand why lactase persistence returned to them in 2016 L Two new papers add DNA from 64 ancient individuals to the sparse ge-

T A is common—and apparently selected for—in and reburied. Willerslev’s E netic record of the Americas. They show that people related to the Anzick

A R some dairying populations but absent in oth- study validates that “this Y child, part of the , quickly spread across both North and ers. “Why is there a signal of natural selec- South America about 13,000 years ago. is our homeland, these tion if there was already a cultural solution?” are our ancestors,” says MOR E N O- MA

. asks Joachim Burger, a geneticist at Johannes Ancient Beringian Rochanne Downs, the

A ) J Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. tribe’s cultural coordinator. T A

( D How dairying reached Mongolia is also a Willerslev added the puzzle. The Yamnaya’s widespread genetic Spirit Cave data to 14 other Upward Sun River C IE NCE ;

S signature shows they replaced many Euro- new whole genomes from / 11,500 years ago

U Anzick O

Y pean and Asian Bronze Age populations. sites scattered from Alaska

. 12,700 years ago J Lovelock Cave Y But they seem to have stopped at the Altai to Chile and ranging from 2000–600 years ago Northern Mountains west of Mongolia. “Culturally, it’s 10,700 to 500 years old. His T E D B Native Americans

AP a really dynamic period, but the people them- Spirit Cave data join an even bigger AD 10,700 years ago Lapa do Santo selves don’t seem to be changing,” Warinner 9600 years ago trove published in Cell by 0 1 8 ) says. She thinks even though the Yamnaya a team led by population 5 (2 7 1 , didn’t contribute their genes to East Asia, Southern geneticist David Reich of Native Americans C EL L

, they did spread their culture, including dairy- Sample size Harvard Medical School in 6 2 1 . L V 2 Eight

T A ing. “It’s a local population that has adopted Boston. They analyzed DNA E

T H the steppe way of life.” One Lagoa Santa from 49 new samples from S

CI E N CE . AA 10,400–9600 years ago P O Given these surprising results, Warinner Central and South Amer- . S ) C 6 / Australasian ancestry has a new goal: To figure out just which Team leader ica dating from 10,900 to . 1 2

0 microbes helped Mongolians digest milk. j 700 years old, at more than 1 David Reich S : (M AP Eske Willerslev Monte Verde 1.2 million positions across C IE NCE

C R E D I T S Andrew Curry is a journalist in Berlin. Previously published 14,500+ years ago the genome. All told, the

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data decisively dispel suggestions, based from South America and Lovelock Cave in INFECTIOUS DISEASES on the distinctive skull shape of a few an- Nevada. But in Reich’s data it fades start- cient remains, that early populations had ing about 9000 years ago in much of South a different ancestry from today’s Native America, suggesting “a major population Indonesian Americans. “Native Americans truly did replacement,” he says. originate in the Americas, as a genetically After that population turnover in South and culturally distinctive group. They are America, both teams see striking genetic fatwa causes absolutely indigenous to this continent,” continuity in many regions. But that doesn’t Raff says. mean no one moved around. Reich’s group The two studies also provide an unprec- sees a new genetic signal entering the cen- immunization edented view of how ancient Americans tral Andes about 4200 years ago, carried by moved across the continent beginning about people who are most closely related to an- rates to drop 13,000 years ago. Previous genetic work had cient inhabitants of the Channel Islands, off suggested the ancestors of Native Ameri- Southern California. Meanwhile, Willerslev’s Clerics declare measles and cans split from Siberians and East Asians team detects ancestry related to the present- about 25,000 years ago, perhaps when they day Mixe, an Indigenous group from Oax- rubella vaccine made with entered the now mostly drowned landmass aca in Mexico, spreading to South America pork components impure of Beringia, which bridged the Russian Far about 6000 years ago and North America East and North America. Some populations about 1000 years ago. Neither of these mi- stayed isolated in Beringia, and Willerslev grations replaced local communities, but By Dyna Rochmyaningsih, Downloaded from sequenced one new example of such an “An- rather mixed with them. Both teams say in Sungai Karang, Indonesia cient Beringian,” 9000-year-old they could be seeing the same remains from Alaska’s Seward signal, but “without comparing s the bell rang on a recent morning at peninsula. Meanwhile, other the data, it’s really hard to tell,” an elementary school here and pupils groups headed south. At some “This is our says archaeogeneticist Cosimo filled the classrooms, anxious adults point, those that journeyed homeland, Posth of the Max Planck Insti- crowded the corridors outside. It was http://science.sciencemag.org/ south of the ice sheets split into tute for the Science of Human vaccination day, but many parents in two groups—“Southern Native these are our History in Jena, Germany, the this North Sumatra village did not Americans” and “Northern Na- first author of the Cell paper. Awant their children immunized with a new ancestors.” tive Americans” (also sometimes Just as mysterious is the trace measles-rubella (MR) vaccine. Some told the called Ancestral A and B lin- Rochanne Downs, of Australasian ancestry in some teacher their children were at home, not feel- eages), who went on to populate Fallon Paiute- ancient South Americans. Reich ing well. Others were there to make sure their the continents (see map, p. 627). Shoshone Tribe and others had previously seen kids didn’t get the jab. They whispered the By looking for genetic simi- hints of it in living people in reason with disgust: The vaccine “contains larities between far-flung samples, both the Brazilian Amazon. Now, Willerslev has elements of pork.” By the time the vaccina-

papers add detail—some of it puzzling—to provided more evidence: telltale DNA in tion team left, only six out of 38 students had on November 19, 2018 this pattern. The 12,700-year-old Anzick one person from Lagoa Santa in Brazil, who been immunized. child from Montana, who is associated lived 10,400 years ago. “How did it get there? Millions of parents around Indonesia have with the mammoth-hunting Clovis cul- We have no idea,” says geneticist José Víctor eschewed the vaccine in recent months, af- ture, known for their distinctive spear Moreno-Mayar of the University of Copenha- ter Islamic clerics declared the MR vaccine points, provided a key reference point. gen, first author of the Willerslev paper. “haram,” or forbidden under Islamic law be- Willerslev detected Anzick-related ances- The signal doesn’t appear in any other of cause pig components are used in its manu- try in both the Spirit Cave individual—who the team’s samples, “somehow leaping over facturing. Vaccine coverage has plummeted is associated with western stemmed tools, all of North America in a single bound,” as a result, alarming public health experts a tradition likely older than Clovis—and says co-author and archaeologist David who worry that the world’s largest Muslim- 10,000-year-old remains from Lagoa Santa Meltzer of Southern Methodist University majority country could see new waves of in Brazil. Reich’s team found an even closer in Dallas, Texas. He wonders whether that measles and more miscarriages and birth relationship between Anzick and 9300- to Australasian ancestry was confined to a defects resulting from rubella infections 10,900-year-old samples from Chile, Brazil, small population of Siberian migrants during pregnancy. and Belize. who remained isolated from other Native Indonesia has long used a locally produced Those close genetic affinities at similar American ancestors throughout the jour- measles vaccine as part of its childhood vacci- times but across vast distances suggest ney through Beringia and the Americas. nation scheme, but coverage has been patchy, people must have moved rapidly across the That suggests individual groups may have and until recently, the country had one of Americas, with little time to evolve into dis- moved into the continents without mixing. the highest measles burdens in the world, tinct genetic groups. Reich’s team argues Delighted as they are with the data in according to the World Health Organization that Clovis technology might have spurred the new studies, scientists want more. (WHO). Last year, as part of a WHO-led plan this rapid expansion. But anthropo- Meltzer points out that none of the new to eliminate measles and rubella globally by logical geneticist Deborah Bolnick of the samples can illuminate what’s happening 2020, Indonesia switched to a combined MR University of Connecticut in Storrs notes at pre-Clovis sites such as Chile’s Monte vaccine, produced by the Serum Institute of the Anzick-related ancestry group may Verde, which was occupied 14,500 years India in Mumbai. The Ministry of Health have been broader than the Clovis people, ago. And Potter notes that, “We have a launched an ambitious catchup campaign and doubts that the culture was a driver. huge, gaping hole in the central and east- targeting 67 million children aged 9 months Willerslev also finds traces of this ern North American [sampling] record. … to 15 years. The first phase, in 2017 on the is- Anzick-related ancestry in later samples These papers aren’t the final words.” j land of Java, was a success; all six provinces

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