Because mitochondrial dna is passed unchanged from mother to offspring. It doesn’t recombine like nuclear dna.
The only changes that occur in this dna are random mutations that occur over time. Since they can sequence it from old bones now, they can tell who is related today to a skeleton thousands of years old.
Some people like this man have a unique mitochondrial dna. Apparently his mitochondrial dna is of southwest Asian origin. But this doesn’t mean that native Americans have that origin. He is mostly native American but the article says he is also of European, African, and Asian ancestry. He could have picked up that Mitochondrial DNA from a non-native ancestor.
Last edited by Futura; 09/24/22.
