NEW YORK (AP) - A new study of DNA suggests nearly all Native Americans can trace part of their ancestry to just six women whose descendants immigrated to the Americas some 20,000 years ago.
Researchers say the women left a DNA legacy that can be found in about 95 percent of native people throughout the Americas.
But one of the study's authors notes that the finding does not mean that those six women were the only ancestors of the migrants who populated the Americas from Asia. He says the women lived some time between 18,000 and 21,000 years ago, but may not have lived at the same time. And he says they do not appear to have lived in Asia, but rather on a now-submerged land bridge that once connected the continents.
The work confirms previous indications of six "founding mothers." It's published this week by the journal PLoS One.
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