The interesting thing about science, for me, is the way knowledge progresses. Rather than starting out with the right answer, the scientist makes a hypothesis, and often it’s left up to other researchers to prove or disprove subsequent propositions until we have a really sturdy foundation.
One of my interests is ancient American history — the pre-Columbian stuff. The fascinating thing is how scientists are piecing together the history like a jigsaw puzzle. Much as ancient Greek history is only preserved in spite of — not because of — the intervention of European civilization, pre-Columbian American history is obfuscated due to the destruction of vital books by the ruling dynasties who’s orthodoxy demanded that heretical writings be incinerated.
The interesting thing about science, for me, is the way knowledge progresses. Rather than starting out with the right answer, the scientist makes a hypothesis, and often it’s left up to other researchers to prove or disprove subsequent propositions until we have a really sturdy foundation.
One of my interests is ancient American history — the pre-Columbian stuff. The fascinating thing is how scientists are piecing together the history like a jigsaw puzzle. Much as ancient Greek history is only preserved in spite of — not because of — the intervention of European civilization, pre-Columbian American history is obfuscated due to the destruction of vital books by the ruling dynasties who’s orthodoxy demanded that heretical writings be incinerated.
Early America
Since I was a kid, scientists figured that most of the Native American population was descended from Mongolian stock. Common features, such as pronounced eye folds and similar skin coloration, led instinctively to that conclusion. The Bering strait offered the intuitive path, as North America and East Asia are connected by a barely-submerged land bridge which, in previous glacial times, would have been open savannah.
Unfortunately, fossil evidence was not enough to convince skeptics, who sometimes subscribed to the “island-hopping” theory for American colonization. Recent progress in the analysis of Mitochondrial DNA, however, has unlocked a treasure trove of genetic and genaeological data for scientists, simply by analyzing blood and tissue samples of living Native Americans, and the corpses of well-preserved ancient ones.
Mitochondrial DNA (mDNA)
In case you’re not familiar with mDNA, here’s the basic outline. The “mitochondria” of a human cell is basically its own little cell-within-a-cell. In 1960, mDNA was discovered, and by 1970 we’d established that mDNA were self-reproducing. That is, the mitochondria reproduce independently of the main cell, and when a cell divides, each half gets some of the mitochondria of the original host cell.
This is actually really important. mDNA are tiny, autonomous entities living within a cell. There is no code for their reproduction in stem cells. They are not subject to gene-pairing. They are not created from the famous “zygote” merging of a sperm and egg, but instead children get a few mitochondria directly from their mothers, and none from the father.
Each mitochondria’s DNA has only 16,569 “lines of code”, called “base pairs”. The practical ramification of such a small “program” (one of the smallest of all mammals) to manage these kinds of sub-cellular structures is enormous. We can map the entire thing, and we’re getting pretty far along on knowing what each pair actually does.
But what it does, or how it’s built, isn’t what’s so interesting to me in investigating pre-Columbian human migration patterns in ancient America. It’s how it reproduces.
mDNA Reproduction
A few years ago, Doug Wallace was doing some research on a debilitating hereditary disease which would often result in complete blindness. In the course of his research, he discovered that this disease was never passed down from father to child. This is a very unusual pattern, and appeared to violate basic genetics. It turned out this was the first-known disease which was purely a result of malfunctioning mDNA.
We’d known for years that fathers had no part in passing on mDNA to their offspring. All of a person’s mDNA — every last one — is a result of the egg acquiring a few mitochondria from the mother. This means that mDNA-based diseases will never pass from father to child. Only from mother to child.
Similarly, this means that “lines” of mDNA are “pure”. If only mothers pass on their mitochondrial DNA, it means my kids have their mom’s mDNA — not mine. And she has her mother’s mDNA. And her mother has her maternal grandmother’s. And so on. We can determine, exactly, the matrilineal heritage of any individual, and determine the ancestry of the mother back to common ancestors.
Mitochondria are remarkably resilient little creatures. They pass, largely unchanged, from generation to generation.
As a result of this behavior, given two people, we can find out if they have a maternal relationship to one another. And we’re assured of nearly 100% accuracy in that comparison. We can be positive that these two people, if their mDNA are similar, have a common great-great-great-something-grandmother.
Even if a small population is swallowed by a much larger one, that small population’s mDNA will remain pure. The only way it can entirely “die out” is if an entire generation of the matrilineal line (women children of women in the line) produce only boys, and no girls. The popular genetic concept of “Founder Effect” simply doesn’t apply. Their female descendants (and single-generation male descendants) may be rare, but will still exist, and in largely the same ratio as at the time at which they were founded into the community.
This is a staggeringly useful piece of knowledge. Europeans mostly have similar mDNA to one another. Asians mostly have similar mDNA to one another. Middle Easterners mostly have similar mDNA to one another.
You can take a blood sample from any human, analyze the mDNA, and figure out their matrilineal heritage with extreme accuracy. We have representative samples from just about every line on the planet, now. There aren’t really that many, and the lines are named for the regions in which that line is most prominent.
Effects of the Columbian Invasion
Before I talk about the Native American mDNA, though, I must caveat on what happened to their populations after Columbus arrived. The European conquerors were almost exclusively male. The children they produced with Native American slaves and wives were, obviously, of mixed genetic descent, with some Euro features and some Native American features.
But each child received a gift from his Native American mother. The gift was pure, unadulterated, remarkably homogenous Mongolian (Northeast Asian) mitochondria. The same as their ancestors before them for at least 10,000 years. Recent studies of “pure” Native American tribes demonstrate this to be overwhelmingly true even today. Those in the “pure” samples which did not have Mongolian mDNA had predominantly European mDNA.
Yep, the Native Americans uniformly came from Northeast Asia. The question is, when did they come over, and how did they get here? Although we have the Bering Strait theory to go by, which has explained the facts well for half a century, it’s not the entire story.
Recent Developments
The whole reason I went into that long background on mDNA was because I wanted to share a story with you, recently published on CBC News. First North Americans Few In Number. Without the contextual understanding of what mDNA is, and what it means for tracking populations, the story makes very little sense. So that’s why the long essay on what mDNA is, before talking about the recent article 🙂
Anyway, Jody Hey, a researcher on the project, mentioned that the “seed” population for the Americas was probably about 200 people, arriving somewhere between 8,000 and 14,000 BCE.
As I said when I started the article, the great thing about science is that we start with a general rule, and refine it as our understanding grows, until eventually we arrive at a sound model which explains all the known variables. It creates a firm foundation to support further efforts to discern the truth.
Even though there’s a discrepancy in dates between the mDNA-based model (8,000 BCE), and the “traditional” date of roughly 14,000 BCE, the really cool thing I see is that this is one of the early practical applications of mDNA for figuring out human migration patterns. We’ve been using this technique for years in accurately tracking animal populations. This discovery puts us a little closer to figuring out our common evolutionary heritage. It is an example of how new tools can validate old finding.
The truth rocks. The fun part is figuring out what it is.