Hacker News Reader

Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that all native american populations are from a relatively small and homogenous population that walked into Alaska 16000 years ago.

Which means that they're much less genetically diverse than the rest of the world.

This is hard to reconcile with the claims in this article.

View on HN

I encourage you to read the wikipedia article on the settlement of the Americas, mostly because it's fun[0].

The landbridge theory has its supporters, but what's really interesting is the gaps in knowledge, and other theories about multiple waves of settlement, or settlement directly from seafaring peoples.

It's really just a fascinating mix of fields. You do yourself a disservice by reducing the settlement of the americas to 2 sentences like that.

I do believe the claim of less genetic diversity amongst indigenous Americans is correct. The excellent book "1491" even discusses how this could have contributed to the spread of disease: less genetic diversity meant less overall population protection.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_the_Americas

Homo Sapiens has done more gene specializing in the last 50,000 years than in the previous 2 million. So it makes good sense.

Latest information is that there were at least two, maybe three waves of immigration from Asia. There were probably also small numbers of people who made it from Polynesia to South America.

While founder effects do reduce genetic diversity within a given population, reproduction and adaptation do increase it.

Also, Mexican =/= Native American

The article is about the native populations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com