On July 21st 2015, it was announced that a study has revealed a genetic link between Australian Aborigines and Amazonians of Brazil. The study, co authored by David Reich, was done by a group of researchers from Harvard University. Reich says that, "About 2% of the ancestry of Amazonians today comes from this Australian lineage that's not present anywhere in the Americas."
It has always been the conclusion that native Americans from both continents originally migrated across an icy land bridge between Russia and Alaska in the Baring Straits. The new study proposes that a first migration that took place some 15,000 years ago, came from two groups, Eurasians and native people from the continents that form the Pacific Ring, and include, Australia, New Guinea, and the Andaman Islands. The Harvard study also suggests that the latter group may have actually been the first of the two to make the journey.
Reich and his research group collected and analyzed the DNA of nine Brazilian populations. They then compared that DNA with with the genomes of 200 non American Populations. What they found was that the Karitiana Tribe, Tupi speaking Surui people that first came in contact with the modern world in 1969, and the Ge-speaking Eastern Brazilians, all had a genetic link to indigenous Australians. However, the Harvard research team was not able to find any other traces in any other Native American groups in South, Central, or North America.
The Harvard research team believes that the genetic link may be as old as the first humans to colonize the continent, and that the Aborigine population might have even been living in the area before Native Americans. They say that their findings also suggests that skeletons of some Native Americans found in Brazil have skulls that have Australian features, and that this may mean that there was a greater diversity of the founding population than what was once believed.
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