Study Finds Early Asians Made Humanity's Longest Prehistoric Migration

Journey shaped genetic landscape in the Americas; first time migration tracked via DNA

- Judith Tan

What does a modern-day Mongolian or a Siberian have in common with a Quechua from Peru, living almost 20,000km away?

They share a lot in their DNA, in fact, according to scientists from the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE) at Nanyang Technological University.

Early Asians walked more than 20,000km from North Asia to South America, making the Asian and the South American closely related as the journey shaped the genetic landscape in the Americas from as far back as 14,000 years ago.

Known as humanity's longest prehistoric migration, the journey would have taken multiple generations of humans thousands of years.

It started from Asia to Beringia, a land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska during the Ice Age, and crossing into South America through the Isthmus of Panama and eventually settling in Patagonia in Chile.

This is the first time migration has been tracked via DNA. Understanding such migration patterns can help explain differences in immune systems, said Associate Professor Kim Hie Lim from NTU's Asian School of the Environment.

The findings were published on May 16 in Science, a peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and one of the world's top academic publications.

Prof Kim's team collaborated with a medical doctor from Japan, who had travelled to South America to collect blood samples from indigenous groups around 40 years ago, she said.