Graham Hancock on science: what the evidence says · JRE #1284
“clearly identifiable pattern of DNA, which is only found in one other place in the world, and that is in Australasia, in Papua New Guinea, and amongst Australian Aborigines”
What the evidence says
Genetic research has documented a real signal, informally called "Population Y," in which some present-day Amazonian groups (notably the Suruí and Karitiana of Brazil) show unusually high genetic affinity with Australasians (indigenous Australians, Papuans, and Andaman Islanders) compared with other Native American populations. The 2015 study that identified this signal explicitly framed it as a comparative excess of allele-sharing in some Amazonian groups that is "not present to the same extent, or at all" in other Native Americans, rather than a DNA pattern found only in two exclusive world regions. A 2018 follow-up study directly tested ancient South American genomes as old as roughly 9,600 to 10,900 years, including Amazonian remains, for this ancestry and found the statistical evidence for a distinct Population Y contribution was weak and sensitive to which comparison populations were used, in some analyses disappearing entirely. The claim that this is a "clearly identifiable" signal found in only one other place in the world, confidently attested in ~11,000-year-old Amazon skeletons, therefore overstates both the certainty and the geographic exclusivity established by the underlying research; the core observation of elevated Australasian-related ancestry in some modern Amazonian groups is genuine, but its ancient dating, causes, and full distribution remain actively debated among population geneticists.