Explain the Asian Migration Hypothesis - Essay Example

Asian Migration Hypothesis s of Learning For decades, the issue of human migration from Asia to the Americas has puzzled anthropologists. In particular, there has been a persistent dilemma as to whether the few people who walked into the New World through the Beringia land bridge could be the ancestors of modern-day Native Americans. Under the leadership of Ripan Mahli, a geneticist-anthropologist from University of Illinois, a group of 21 researchers has come up with a hypothesis that apparently maps the immigrating process during the founding of the New World and beyond.

Additionally, this hypothesis indicates that even in those days, the population still exhibited genetic diversity—a thought that was previously non-existent (Faragher et al, 2011).According to this Asian Migration Hypothesis, the ancestors of Native Americans who were headed to the new world for greener pastures spent a considerable amount of time on Beringia—a landmass that existed during the glacial maximum extending from Northeastern Serbia to Western Alaska. Spending approximately 15000 years in this place, these would-be founders of the New World underwent a natural biological process that would genetically differentiate them with their Asian sisters (Raffet, 2007).

Genetically speaking, these immigrants stayed long enough in Beringia for certain genetic mutations to accumulate. These newly accumulated mutations—referred to as clades in genetics, naturally differed with that of their Asian sisters and hence the dilemma on their origin. After stagnating at Beringia, this hypothesis indicates that entry to the New World was a rather swift than a gradual process (Raffet, 2007). Further analysis indicates that after this stagnation, the movement of these ancestors was bi-directional with some going back to Northeast Asia while others moved forward to the Americas from Beringia.

Thus,the of flow gene between Siberia and the North American Arctic was bi-directional (Faragher et al, 2011).ReferencesFaragher, M. J., Buhle, M., Czitrom, D., & Armitage, S. (2011). Out of many: a history of the american people. New Jersey: Pearson Education.Raffet, J. (2007, October 25). New ideas about human migration from asia to americas. Retrieved November 16, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025160653.htm