Bridging Eurasia and the Americas

Population history of Siberia and the American Arctic. My doctoral research.

My doctoral research at the University of Ostrava, Bridging the Americas and Eurasia: Population History of American Arctic Peoples, explored how Siberia and the Americas were connected through the movements of people over the last several thousand years.

The American Arctic was first settled around 5,000 years ago by groups known as Palaeo-Eskimos, who were later joined and largely replaced by the ancestors of present-day Inuit and Yup’ik. How Palaeo-Eskimos relate to present-day Arctic and Native American peoples had long remained uncertain. Analysing genomic data from 48 ancient individuals from Chukotka, East Siberia, the Aleutian Islands, Alaska and the Canadian Arctic, we found that Palaeo-Eskimo-related ancestry is present in all peoples speaking Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut languages, and developed a comprehensive model of the Holocene peopling of Chukotka and North America in which these groups share ancestry from a single Siberian source (Flegontov et al., 2019).

Earlier, a genomic study of the Kets of the Yenisei River basin, often described as the last nomadic hunter-gatherers of Siberia, showed that they belong to a cluster of Siberian populations most closely related to Palaeo-Eskimos and carry a high degree of ancestry related to the Upper Palaeolithic Mal’ta individual, with implications for the proposed linguistic link between Ket and the Na-Dene languages of North America (Flegontov et al., 2016).

Side project

Alongside my doctoral work, I contributed to a study of Indian genetic heritage in mainland Southeast Asia, which detected low levels of South Asian ancestry in Thai populations with historical connections to ancient Indian-influenced states, suggesting that migration played a role in the spread of Indian culture in the region (Changmai et al., 2022).

References

2022

Indian Genetic Heritage in Southeast Asian Populations

Piya Changmai, Kitipong Jaisamut, Jatupol Kampuansai, and 9 more authors

PLOS Genetics, Feb 2022

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The great ethnolinguistic diversity found today in mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) reflects multiple migration waves of people in the past. Maritime trading between MSEA and India was established at the latest 300 BCE, and the formation of early states in Southeast Asia during the first millennium CE was strongly influenced by Indian culture, a cultural influence that is still prominent today. Several ancient Indian-influenced states were located in present-day Thailand, and various populations in the country are likely to be descendants of people from those states. To systematically explore Indian genetic heritage in MSEA populations, we generated genome-wide SNP data (using the Affymetrix Human Origins array) for 119 present-day individuals belonging to 10 ethnic groups from Thailand and co-analyzed them with published data using PCA, ADMIXTURE, and methods relying on f-statistics and on autosomal haplotypes. We found low levels of South Asian admixture in various MSEA populations for whom there is evidence of historical connections with the ancient Indian-influenced states but failed to find this genetic component in present-day hunter-gatherer groups and relatively isolated groups from the highlands of Northern Thailand. The results suggest that migration of Indian populations to MSEA may have been responsible for the spread of Indian culture in the region. Our results also support close genetic affinity between Kra-Dai-speaking (also known as Tai-Kadai) and Austronesian-speaking populations, which fits a linguistic hypothesis suggesting cladality of the two language families.
@article{Changmai2022-bm, title = {Indian Genetic Heritage in {Southeast Asian} Populations}, author = {Changmai, Piya and Jaisamut, Kitipong and Kampuansai, Jatupol and Kutanan, Wibhu and Altınışık, N. Ezgi and Flegontova, Olga and Inta, Angkhana and Yüncü, Eren and Boonthai, Worrawit and Pamjav, Horolma and Reich, David and Flegontov, Pavel}, journal = {PLOS Genetics}, publisher = {Public Library of Science}, volume = {18}, number = {2}, pages = {e1010036}, month = feb, year = {2022}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pgen.1010036}, }

2019

Palaeo-Eskimo Genetic Ancestry and the Peopling of Chukotka and North America

Pavel Flegontov, N. Ezgi Altınışık, Piya Changmai, and 32 more authors

Nature, Jun 2019

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Much of the American Arctic was first settled 5,000 years ago, by groups of people known as Palaeo-Eskimos. They were subsequently joined and largely displaced around 1,000 years ago by ancestors of the present-day Inuit and Yup’ik. The genetic relationship between Palaeo-Eskimos and Native American, Inuit, Yup’ik and Aleut populations remains uncertain. Here we present genomic data for 48 ancient individuals from Chukotka, East Siberia, the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and the Canadian Arctic. We co-analyse these data with data from present-day Alaskan Iñupiat and West Siberian populations and published genomes. Using methods based on rare-allele and haplotype sharing, as well as established techniques, we show that Palaeo-Eskimo-related ancestry is ubiquitous among people who speak Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut languages. We develop a comprehensive model for the Holocene peopling events of Chukotka and North America, and show that Na-Dene-speaking peoples, people of the Aleutian Islands, and Yup’ik and Inuit across the Arctic region all share ancestry from a single Palaeo-Eskimo-related Siberian source.
@article{Flegontov2019-aj, title = {{Palaeo-Eskimo} Genetic Ancestry and the Peopling of {Chukotka} and {North America}}, author = {Flegontov, Pavel and Altınışık, N. Ezgi and Changmai, Piya and Rohland, Nadin and Mallick, Swapan and Adamski, Nicole and Bolnick, Deborah A. and Broomandkhoshbacht, Nasreen and Candilio, Francesca and Culleton, Brendan J. and Flegontova, Olga and Friesen, T. Max and Jeong, Choongwon and Harper, Thomas K. and Keating, Denise and Kennett, Douglas J. and Kim, Alexander M. and Lamnidis, Thiseas C. and Lawson, Ann Marie and Olalde, Iñigo and Oppenheimer, Jonas and Potter, Ben A. and Raff, Jennifer and Sattler, Robert A. and Skoglund, Pontus and Stewardson, Kristin and Vajda, Edward J. and Vasilyev, Sergey and Veselovskaya, Elizaveta and Hayes, M. Geoffrey and O'Rourke, Dennis H. and Krause, Johannes and Pinhasi, Ron and Reich, David and Schiffels, Stephan}, journal = {Nature}, publisher = {Springer Nature}, volume = {570}, number = {7760}, pages = {236--240}, month = jun, year = {2019}, doi = {10.1038/s41586-019-1251-y}, }

2016

Genomic Study of the Ket: A Paleo-Eskimo-Related Ethnic Group with Significant Ancient North Eurasian Ancestry

Pavel Flegontov, Piya Changmai, Anastassiya Zidkova, and 15 more authors

Scientific Reports, Feb 2016

Abs DOI Bib

The Kets, an ethnic group in the Yenisei River basin, Russia, are considered the last nomadic hunter-gatherers of Siberia, and Ket language has no transparent affiliation with any language family. We investigated connections between the Kets and Siberian and North American populations, with emphasis on the Mal’ta and Paleo-Eskimo ancient genomes, using original data from 46 unrelated samples of Kets and 42 samples of their neighboring ethnic groups (Uralic-speaking Nganasans, Enets, and Selkups). We genotyped over 130,000 autosomal SNPs, identified mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal haplogroups, and performed high-coverage genome sequencing of two Ket individuals. We established that Nganasans, Kets, Selkups, and Yukaghirs form a cluster of populations most closely related to Paleo-Eskimos in Siberia (not considering indigenous populations of Chukotka and Kamchatka). Kets are closely related to modern Selkups and to some Bronze and Iron Age populations of the Altai region, with all these groups sharing a high degree of Mal’ta ancestry. Implications of these findings for the linguistic hypothesis uniting Ket and Na-Dene languages into a language macrofamily are discussed.
@article{Flegontov2016-my, title = {Genomic Study of the {Ket}: A {Paleo-Eskimo}-Related Ethnic Group with Significant Ancient {North Eurasian} Ancestry}, author = {Flegontov, Pavel and Changmai, Piya and Zidkova, Anastassiya and Logacheva, Maria D. and Altınışık, N. Ezgi and Flegontova, Olga and Gelfand, Mikhail S. and Gerasimov, Evgeny S. and Khrameeva, Ekaterina E. and Konovalova, Olga P. and Neretina, Tatiana and Nikolsky, Yuri V. and Starostin, George and Stepanova, Vita V. and Travinsky, Igor V. and Tříska, Martin and Tříska, Petr and Tatarinova, Tatiana V.}, journal = {Scientific Reports}, publisher = {Springer Nature}, volume = {6}, number = {1}, pages = {20768}, month = feb, year = {2016}, doi = {10.1038/srep20768}, }