Genome Study Tracks Spread of Languages in North America

NEW YORK, NEW YORK—It had been previously suggested that Uto-Aztecan languages, such as Hopi, Shoshoni, and Nahuatl, spread from Mexico into California with early maize farmers some 4,300 years ago. But according to a Live Science report, a new genetic study of ancient remains from central and southern California and northwestern and central northern Mexico indicates that hunter-gatherers may have migrated northward some 1,000 years before the arrival of the farmers. Nathan Nakatsuka of the New York Genome Center and his colleagues, with guidance from Indigenous groups, compared these genomes and found evidence of increased migration from northern Mexico to southern and central California some 5,200 years ago. Maize farming may have even been brought to California by people related to the hunter-gatherer travelers, he explained. “But at the very least, we see that people are coming up here into California earlier than maize farming,” Nakatsuka concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Nature. To read about migrations of populations from Central and South America to the Yucatán that began more than 5,000 years ago, go to "The Great Maize Migration."