Native Americans 'can trace ancestry to just six women'

Nearly all of today's Native Americans in North, Central and South America can trace their ancestry to just six women whose descendants immigrated around 20,000 years ago, a DNA study suggests.

The result does not mean that only six women gave rise to the migrants who crossed into North America from Asia in the initial populating of the continent.

Rather, it suggests that only six left a particular DNA legacy that persists to today in about 95 percent of Native Americans, said study co-author Ugo Perego in Utah.