From Bruce Denness
You say it is unclear how or when genetic similarities arose between Native Americans in the Amazon and indigenous populations in the western Pacific and beyond (25 July, p 5). Perhaps we need look no further than the end of the last ice age, when sea level rose by in excess of 100 metres in little more than 2000 years.
This rise would have turned low-lying islands into submarine mountains, leaving the islands’ inhabitants with no alternative but to cast their fate to the ocean currents, which may have delivered some of them to the west coast of South America.
Whitwell, Isle of Wight, UK
