October 27, 2002	Sunday	Sha’aban 20,1423

SAO PAOLO: A Brazilian biologist has discovered genetic links between the Amazon Indian Paracana and Xicrin tribes and Chinese, Indian and Indonesian people, the press reported on Friday.

According to a report in “O Estado de Sao Paulo” daily, biologist Daniela Ribeiro of the University of Campinas carried out a study involving 70 Paracana Indians and 95 Xicrin natives, who live in Para state in the Amazon.

She found in the genetic makeup of the Indians she studied that a particular genetic marker, a segment of DNA that defines genetic traits among different peoples, was the same as in Asians.

Ribeiro compared her results to those of other scientists who have done genetic analysis on Chinese, Indian and Indonesian people.

“My analysis allowed me to come to the conclusion that the Paracana are no different than any of the peoples of the Asian southeast and Indonesia already studied,” she said.

The Xicrin nation, she said, shows some significant genetic differences when compared to Chinese and Indians, but not to Indonesian people.

Ribeiro said her study, soon to be published by the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, did not put an end to the controversy about whether the original inhabitants of the Americas crossed the Bering Strait more than 15,000 years ago or came from Africa before that.

“My work does not put an end to the controversy,” she said. “It does not deal with the arrival of the first inhabitants to America, nor does it establish whether they were Africans or Asians,” she said.

“It does confirm the theories that Brazilian Indians descend from Asians,” she said.—dpa