It was long thought that the Uto-Aztecan languages were brought to what is now the U.S. by Indigenous Mexican maize farmers. But now, new genetics research suggests that these languages arrived far earlier. (Image credit: Ross Shatto / Alamy Stock Photo)
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Hunter-gatherers from Mexico migrated into California more than 5,000 years ago, potentially spreading distinctive languages from the south into the region nearly 1,000 years earlier than previously thought, a new genetic study details.
The finding challenges the idea that what are known as the Uto-Aztecan languages — which include the Aztec and Toltec language Nahuatl, as well as Hopi and Shoshoni — were spread northward by prehistoric migrants from Mexico along with maize farming technologies.
"The dating and the location of this genetic material coming into California is really important for understanding the Uto-Aztecan migration," study lead author Nathan Nakatsuka, a population geneticist and a postdoctoral fellow at the New York Genome Center, told Live Science.
The research, published on Wednesday (Nov. 22) in the journal Nature, was carried out when Nakatsuka was a student at Harvard Medical School.
The first people to reach the Americas arrived tens of thousands of years ago, according to the analysis of evidence found at several sites — including 14,500-year-old human poop from Paisley Caves in Oregon; 14,550-year-old artifacts from Monte Verde, Chile; and 23,000-year-old human footprints in White Sands National Park in New Mexico.
The researchers also found shared genetics between the ancient peoples of California's northern Channel Islands and the adjacent coast, and the Indigenous Chumash people, whose genetics were represented by the individuals in the study who lived about 200 years ago.
Nakatsuka said that an important part of the study was obtaining ancient DNA while trying to ensure that indigenous customs, including burial practices, were respected. "We involved Indigenous groups in the conversations from the get-go," he said. "We wanted them to guide a lot of this research and have the questions that they're interested in be answered."
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