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It's Amazing What Answers Hair May Hold!

By Melissa Markham on June 4, 2008 7:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A patch of prehistoric hair suggests that the first Eskimos in the New World did not descend from Native Americans as previously thought but came directly from Asia.

Previously, there were two main theories to explain the ancestry of the first Eskimos in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, Gilbert said.

The theories held that they either descended from Native Americans who colonized North America at least 14,350 years ago, or they came from the same source area in Siberia that gave rise to modern Eskimos, such as those who have lived in Greenland for the past 1,000 years.

"Then there is a third idea that they were independent to both—and that's what it turns out to be," Gilbert said.

The new research, which appears tomorrow in the journal Science, suggests that the original Paleo-Eskimos of the New World were replaced by later colonizers, who spread eastward from Siberia.

You just never know what question someone's hair may hold the answer to!