From the Altai to America: The Genetic Trail of an Ancient Migration

From the Altai to America: The Genetic Trail of an Ancient Migration

November 13, 2025 — New genetic data continue to rewrite human history. Ten years ago, in 2012, an international team of scientists published a study linking Indigenous Americans to a remote mountainous region in southern Siberia—the Altai. The findings, published in the prestigious journal American Journal of Human Genetics, confirmed that ancestors of Native Americans lived here about 25,000 years ago, long before their descendants crossed into the New World.

What did the study reveal?

The authors—anthropologists from the University of Pennsylvania (USA), the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Novosibirsk), and other research centers—analyzed mitochondrial DNA (passed down through the maternal line) and the Y-chromosome (paternal line) from over 500 Indigenous Altaians and compared them with genetic data from 1,500 Indigenous Americans across North and Central America.

Key findings:

Time of common ancestors: ~20–25 thousand years ago
Region of origin: Southern Altai (Russia, Mongolia, China, Kazakhstan)
Genetic markers: mtDNA haplogroups: C, D; Y-chromosome: Q (including Q-M3—typical for Native Americans)
Time of lineage divergence: ~13–14 thousand years ago
Migration to America: 15–20 thousand years ago via the Bering land bridge

Quote from the University of Pennsylvania press release (January 26, 2012):

"A small mountainous region in southern Siberia may be the genetic source of the earliest Indigenous Americans."

How did it happen?

25,000 years ago, during the peak of the last glacial maximum, a small population of hunter-gatherers lived in the foothills of the Altai. The climate was harsh, but the region served as a genetic refuge—where East Asian and West Eurasian lineages mixed.

Around 20,000 years ago, part of this group moved northeast toward present-day Yakutia and Chukotka. They carried a unique set of genes that would later become foundational for all Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

About 15,000 years ago, when global sea levels dropped by 120 meters, the Bering land bridge emerged—a land corridor between Asia and Alaska. This is where the first wave of migrants crossed.

Important: This was not a direct migration from the Altai to America, but a multi-stage dispersal through Siberia and Beringia. The Altai is merely the genetic homeland of one key lineage.

Confirmations from other studies

Since then, the 2012 findings have been repeatedly confirmed:

2013 — the genome of a boy from Mal'ta (Lake Baikal, ~24,000 years ago) showed he was genetically closer to Indigenous Americans than to modern Europeans or East Asians (Nature).
2018 — analysis of ancient DNA from Chagyrskaya Cave (Altai) revealed traces of Denisovans and early Homo sapiens whose genes partially reached the Americas.
2021 — a study in Cell clarified that the divergence between Siberian and American lineages occurred ~36–25 thousand years ago, peaking in the Altai.

What does this mean for us?

This story is more than just a scientific fact. It’s a reminder:

Borders are arbitrary. One people can inhabit two continents separated by 15,000 km and 20,000 years.
DNA is your ancestors’ passport. Today, anyone can take a test (23andMe, Ancestry, MyHeritage) and find traces of the Altai, Beringia, or ancient America in their genes.
Science unites. Russian, American, and Mongolian scientists work together to reconstruct humanity’s shared history.

Want to discover your roots?

Take an autosomal DNA test plus mtDNA and Y-chromosome testing.
Look for these haplogroups:
- mtDNA: A, B, C, D, X
- Y-DNA: Q-M242, Q-M3
Compare results with databases like GenBank, FamilyTreeDNA, and YFull.

Perhaps you, too, carry the blood of the ancient Altaians—the first Americans.

Sources:

Dulik et al. American Journal of Human Genetics, 2012 doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2011.12.014
University of Pennsylvania press release, 2012
Raghavan et al. Nature, 2014 (Mal'ta genome)