armas, germes e aço de jared diamond

A leitura do livro Armas, Germes e Aço por Jared Diamond foi uma das leituras mais divertidas, mais interessantes, mais desafiadores dos últimos tempos.

Conseguiu suplantar sem dificuldade muitos livros de ficção.

E não deixa de ser interessante que hoje surja a notícia na revista Nature em 21.07.2015 um artigo intitulado “Genetic evidence for two founding populations of the Americas” da responsabilidade de Pontus Skoglund, Swapan Mallick, Maria Cátira Bortolini, Niru Chennagiri, Tábita Hünemeier, Maria Luiza Petzl-Erler

Genetic studies have consistently indicated a single common origin of Native American groups from Central and South America. However, some morphological studies have suggested a more complex picture, whereby the northeast Asian affinities of present-day Native Americans contrast with a distinctive morphology seen in some of the earliest American skeletons, which share traits with present-day Australasians (indigenous groups in Australia, Melanesia, and island Southeast Asia). Here we analyse genome-wide data to show that some Amazonian Native Americans descend partly from a Native American founding population that carried ancestry more closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andaman Islanders than to any present-day Eurasians or Native Americans. This signature is not present to the same extent, or at all, in present-day Northern and Central Americans or in a ~12,600-year-old Clovis-associated genome, suggesting a more diverse set of founding populations of the Americas than previously accepted.

Nature