DNA tracks ancient Alaskan's descendants as far as Chile
By George Bryson | Anchorage Daily News
An ancient mariner who lived and died 10,000 years ago on an island west of Ketchikan probably doesn't have any close relatives left in Alaska.
But some of them migrated south, and their descendants can be found today in coastal Native American populations in California, Mexico, Ecuador, Chile and Argentina.
That's some of what scientists learned this summer by examining the DNA of Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian Indians in Southeast Alaska.
Working with elders at a cultural festival in Juneau, they interviewed more than 200 Native Alaskans who allowed them to swab tiny amounts of saliva from their cheeks to capture their mitochondrial DNA, the genetic material that's passed from mothers to children.
Read the complete story at Adn.com
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