DNA samples gathered from living beings and ancient remains are astonishing anthropologists in the U.S., since they seem to be finding a connection between people existing thousands of miles and years apart.
John Johnson, head of anthropology at the Santa Barbara (Calif.) Museum of Natural History for the past 14 years gone on collecting DNA from members of the Chumash Indian tribe. Assisted by archeologists and geneticists, the research is linking peoples of coastal regions from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, The Los Angeles Times reported.
The study adds further evidence to a theory that the first inhabitants of the Americas were big-game hunters who crossed a 1,000-mile land bridge from Asia, traveling into the Great Plains through an inland corridor created by receding glaciers, the newspaper said.
Still others believe some may have traveled from Asia and traveled by boats that, over hundreds of generations, took them the length of the Pacific Coast.
Johnson discussed his research during a weekend scientific conference at the University of California-Santa Barbara.