PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Martin Sikora
AU  - Vladimir V. Pitulko
AU  - Vitor C. Sousa
AU  - Morten E. Allentoft
AU  - Lasse Vinner
AU  - Simon Rasmussen
AU  - Ashot Margaryan
AU  - Peter de Barros Damgaard
AU  - Constanza de la Fuente Castro
AU  - Gabriel Renaud
AU  - Melinda Yang
AU  - Qiaomei Fu
AU  - Isabelle Dupanloup
AU  - Konstantinos Giampoudakis
AU  - David Bravo Nogues
AU  - Carsten Rahbek
AU  - Guus Kroonen
AU  - Michäel Peyrot
AU  - Hugh McColl
AU  - Sergey V. Vasilyev
AU  - Elizaveta Veselovskaya
AU  - Margarita Gerasimova
AU  - Elena Y. Pavlova
AU  - Vyacheslav G. Chasnyk
AU  - Pavel A. Nikolskiy
AU  - Pavel S. Grebenyuk
AU  - Alexander Yu. Fedorchenko
AU  - Alexander I. Lebedintsev
AU  - Sergey B. Slobodin
AU  - Boris A. Malyarchuk
AU  - Rui Martiniano
AU  - Morten Meldgaard
AU  - Laura Arppe
AU  - Jukka U. Palo
AU  - Tarja Sundell
AU  - Kristiina Mannermaa
AU  - Mikko Putkonen
AU  - Verner Alexandersen
AU  - Charlotte Primeau
AU  - Ripan Mahli
AU  - Karl-Göran Sjögren
AU  - Kristian Kristiansen
AU  - Anna Wessman
AU  - Antti Sajantila
AU  - Marta Mirazon Lahr
AU  - Richard Durbin
AU  - Rasmus Nielsen
AU  - David J. Meltzer
AU  - Laurent Excoffier
AU  - Eske Willerslev
TI  - The population history of northeastern Siberia since the Pleistocene
AID  - 10.1101/448829
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 448829
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/10/22/448829.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/10/22/448829.full
AB  - Far northeastern Siberia has been occupied by humans for more than 40 thousand years. Yet, owing to a scarcity of early archaeological sites and human remains, its population history and relationship to ancient and modern populations across Eurasia and the Americas are poorly understood. Here, we analyze 34 ancient genome sequences, including two from fragmented milk teeth found at the ~31.6 thousand-year-old (kya) Yana RHS site, the earliest and northernmost Pleistocene human remains found. These genomes reveal complex patterns of past population admixture and replacement events throughout northeastern Siberia, with evidence for at least three large-scale human migrations into the region. The first inhabitants, a previously unknown population of “Ancient North Siberians” (ANS), represented by Yana RHS, diverged ~38 kya from Western Eurasians, soon after the latter split from East Asians. Between 20 and 11 kya, the ANS population was largely replaced by peoples with ancestry related to present-day East Asians, giving rise to ancestral Native Americans and “Ancient Paleosiberians” (AP), represented by a 9.8 kya skeleton from Kolyma River. AP are closely related to the Siberian ancestors of Native Americans, and ancestral to contemporary communities such as Koryaks and Itelmen. Paleoclimatic modelling shows evidence for a refuge during the last glacial maximum (LGM) in southeastern Beringia, suggesting Beringia as a possible location for the admixture forming both ancestral Native Americans and AP. Between 11 and 4 kya, AP were in turn largely replaced by another group of peoples with ancestry from East Asia, the “Neosiberians” from which many contemporary Siberians derive. We detect gene flow events in both directions across the Bering Strait during this time, influencing the genetic composition of Inuit, as well as Na Dene-speaking Northern Native Americans, whose Siberian-related ancestry components is closely related to AP. Our analyses reveal that the population history of northeastern Siberia was highly dynamic throughout the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. The pattern observed in northeastern Siberia, with earlier, once widespread populations being replaced by distinct peoples, seems to have taken place across northern Eurasia, as far west as Scandinavia.