https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2328-8003
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ABSTRACT
A widely accepted model for the peopling of the Americas postulates a source population in the Northeast Asian maritime region, which includes northern Japan. The model is based on similarities in stone artifacts (stemmed points) found in North American sites dating as early as 15,000 years ago and those of comparable age in Japan and neighboring regions of Northeast Asia. Here we show, on the basis of data and analyses in biological anthropology, that the people who made stemmed points in northern Japan (labeled “Incipient Jomon” in the archaeological literature) represent an unlikely source population for the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Mark A. Sicoli for comments on the draft of the paper and, more generally, for his contribution to discussions among the “Beringia Working Group.”
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Arlington Springs is best known for human skeletal remains that date as early as ∼13,000 cal yr BP; the stemmed points at Arlington Springs are somewhat younger (∼12,000 cal yr BP) (Erlandson et al. Citation2008).
2 Noting that stemmed points and related socket hafting were widespread in Northeast Asia during and after the Last Glacial Maximum (and bifacial reduction present by the end of the latter), Pratt et al. (Citation2020) suggest that possible technological and typological antecedents to the Western Stemmed Point Tradition may be found outside the Northeast Asian maritime area.
3 Alternatively, many archaeologists, including authors of this paper, conclude that Native Americans more likely followed an interior route between Northeast Asia and Beringia (e.g., Buvit et al. Citation2016; Graf Citation2015; Graf and Buvit Citation2017; Pitulko, Pavlova, and Nikolskiy Citation2017).
4 Follow-up research showed that East Asians exhibited shoveling to about the same degree as Native Americans while Pacific groups fell between the extremes. His initial impressions have been verified by subsequent researchers (cf. Scott et al. Citation2018a).
5 Standard root number for the lower molars is two roots, one mesial and one distal. A three-rooted lower first molar, or 3RM1, is characterized by the presence of a distolingual accessory root. From his dissertation research, Turner (Citation1967) knew 3RM1 was common in Eskimo and Aleut populations (e.g., 25–45%). When he shifted his attention to western U.S. Indian samples, he found the frequency of 3RM1 to be much lower (ca. 6%). At this point in time, he had not studied samples of Athapaskans and Northwest Coast Indians, but he did have access to radiographs from a small Navajo sample; their frequency of 3RM1 fell between those of Eskimo-Aleuts and American Indians (9/33 = 27.3%). This finding, limited to a single trait, was congruent with the model Joseph Greenberg was developing for Native American languages. That is, Greenberg proposed three major Native American language groups – Amerind, Na-Dene, and Eskimo-Aleut – served as the foundation for linguistic variation in the New World. These two converging lines of evidence led Turner to propose a tentative three-wave model for the peopling of the Americas.
6 Following Turner's death in 2013, the senior author visited his home in Tempe; with the permission of his daughter Korri Turner and wife Olga Pavlova, he initiated the “C.G. Turner II Legacy Project.” This involved several visits to Tempe and many hours of scanning computer printouts and data sheets. Although ASUDAS included 38 dental traits, Turner focused on ‘29 key traits.’ Hundreds of printouts had the class frequency distributions for these 29 traits in both individual samples and larger samples that combined two or more smaller samples. For example, he made observations on five Japanese samples, but these were combined to form one large sample given the internal consistency of trait frequencies. In his paper files, Turner had amassed observations on over 23,000 individuals from all over the world with an emphasis on the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific. During the 1980s and 1990s, he employed a technical assistant who entered all these data, initially on large tape reels and then on 5 ¼ inch floppy disks. Unfortunately, these electronic files were not kept up to date and when GRS discovered the floppy disks, they had suffered ‘disk rot’ and were no longer usable. Given that, all the individual data sheets were scanned as PDFs to provide a permanent, albeit imperfect, record of Turner's paper files. In this study, printouts of sample frequencies and individual data sheets both come into play in ancestry assessment, with a focus on Jomon and Ainu samples from Japan.
7 This method, referred to as rASUDAS (i.e., r programming in conjunction with the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System), was developed by David Navega and Joao Coelho at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. The developers wanted the application to be freeware so the link to the beta-version is http://osteomics.com/rASUDAS/. In this study, we have access to the most recent version developed in July 2020, http://osteomics.com/rASUDAS2/. Details for rASUDAS can be found in Scott et al. (Citation2018c).
8 Several investigators have found traces of Southeast Asian ancestry among Indigenous Americans, both in North and South America (e.g., Castro e Silva et al. Citation2021; Reich Citation2018, 176–181; Skoglund et al. Citation2015). The most parsimonious explanation of this pattern is the East Asian source population, which reflects a significant and early contribution from Southeast Asia (e.g., Yang et al. Citation2020).
9 Gakuhari et al. (Citation2020) highlight an apparent discrepancy between the genomic results reported thus far and the archaeological model(s) for the spread of microblades during the Upper Paleolithic in Siberia. The lack of genetic affinity between IK002 and the Mal'ta child, who is hypothesized to represent the Northern migration route of Upper-Paleolithic populations into East Asia, needs to be rectified with the arrival of microblade technology in Hokkaido and Honshu during the LGM.
10 While this paper was “in press,” Cooke et al. (Citation2021) published a paper in Scientific Advances (see References) that challenged the “dual structure” model for the peopling of Japan, concluding that the modern Japanese population reflects a “tripartite origin.” Their conclusion was based on analyses of 12 ancient genomes, including Jomon samples dating as early as ∼8800 cal yr BP (Cooke et al. Citation2021, table 1). Their results lend additional support to our conclusions regarding the biological relationship between the ancient Jomon and Indigenous Americans, i.e., that the former are an unlikely source for the latter. Their conclusion regarding a tripartite rather than a dual origin for the modern Japanese population does not pertain to the relationship between the ancient Jomon and Indigenous Americans.
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Notes on contributors
G. Richard Scott
G. Richard Scott is Foundation Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada at Reno. He received a PhD from Arizona State University in 1973 and his research focuses on how dental morphology can inform population history on a global scale.
Dennis H. O’Rourke
Dennis H. O’Rourke is a Foundation Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas (where he received his PhD). His research focuses on the use of molecular genetic methods to address long-standing questions in the prehistory and human paleoecology of the Western Hemisphere.
Jennifer A. Raff
Jennifer A. Raff is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas (where she received her PhD). Her research area is genomics, ancient DNA, human evolution, and human population history with a focus on North America and the Arctic.
Justin C. Tackney
Justin C. Tackney is an Associate Researcher in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. He received his PhD from the University of Utah and is a specialist in ancient DNA research with a primary geographic focus on the Arctic and the Western Hemisphere.
Leslea J. Hlusko
Leslea J. Hlusko is Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California-Berkeley and a research scientist at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana, CENIEH, in Burgos, Spain. Her area of research is the genetic and developmental basis of mammalian skeletal variation and evolution with a focus on African primates.
Scott A. Elias
Scott A. Elias is a Fellow Emeritus at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder (where he received his PhD). His research has focused primarily on the paleoenvironments and paleoecology of Beringia, through the study of fossil insects.
Lauriane Bourgeon
Lauriane Bourgeon is a post-doctoral researcher at the Kansas Geological Survey. She received a PhD from the University of Montreal in 2017. Her research interests are vertebrate taphonomy and the peopling of the Americas.
Olga Potapova
Olga Potapova is Collections Curator and Manager at The Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota. She received an MS in Zoology from St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia. Her research has focused primarily on the evolution, morphology and ecology of large mammals in the Pleistocene Arctic.
Elena Pavlova
Elena Pavlova is a research scientist at the Arctic & Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her research is focused primarily on the evolution of late Pleistocene environments in Western Arctic Beringia through pollen data in relation to the history of the human population of the region.
Vladimir Pitulko
Vladimir Pitulko is a senior research scientist at the Paleolithic Department of the Institute for the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia, where he received his PhD in 1995. His research has focused on the archaeology of the Arctic, with special reference to late Pleistocene arctic Beringia, the human population history of the area, and human ecology.
John F. Hoffecker
John F. Hoffecker is a Fellow Emeritus at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder. He received a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1986 and his research has focused on eastern Europe, Beringia, and the dispersal of modern humans.