Anzick-1 Leads Scientists and Native Americans to the PastAnzick-1 leads scientists to many conclusions - conclusions that trace modern Native Americans back to Anzick-1's people, and further back to Asia. In the 2015 National History Day theme it is pointed out that "Sometimes a leader emerges because he or she happens to be
in the right place at the right time" (Harkness and O'Hara). This is much the case for Anzick-1 - even though he has been dead for thousands of years, he leads us to amazing discoveries. Leaders come first, and Anzick-1 is a leader in many ways. He is the first known member of the Clovis Culture because he is the first individual found buried with Clovis tools. Anzick-1's genome is the oldest, first, and only genome to be sequenced of the first Americans.
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People arrived in North America either from Europe (the dotted red line) or Asia (the solid red and blue lines). Anzick-1's genetic sequence refuted the Solutrean Hypothesis that Native Americans came from Europe and instead showed that they came across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia.
Read below to find out how genetic sequence data were used to determine the family tree of Anzick-1 and today's Native Americans. |
Who are Anzick-1's Closest Relatives?These graphics show how closely related Anzick-1 is to different populations around the world. Figure a) shows that Anzick-1 is most related to southern Native Americans (red in color) followed by northern Native Americans (orange/yellow in color) and less related to the peoples of Europe and Asia (blue in color). Figure b) lists the Native American populations sampled in the study (it is very interesting to note that scientists do not have genetic sequence from tribes living in the United States), and shows that Anzick-1's genetic sequence is most similar to today's South American tribes. From these data, ancient American migrations and family trees can be deduced. We know that the Clovis people gave rise to modern Native Americans instead of disappearing, to be replaced by other peoples.
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How Does Anzick-1 Help us Draw a Native American Family Tree?These figures represent potential family trees that were mathematically evaluated based on similarities and differences in gene sequences. In each family tree tested, the closest common ancestor used was Asian, the Han people. Family trees c) and d) are both possible lineages of Anzick-1 (captioned in green). Anzick-1 is most closely related to today's South American indigenous peoples. We now know that either the northern Native American lineage split off from the southern lineage at the time that Anzick-1 lived, or earlier.
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