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Ancient mitochondrial DNA provides high-resolution time scale of the peopling of the Americas

Llamas, Bastien
[1]; 
Fehren-Schmitz, Lars
[2]; 
Valverde, Guido
[1]; 
Soubrier, Julien
[1]; 
Mallick, Swapan
[3]; 
Rohland, Nadin
[3]; 
Nordenfelt, Susanne
[3]; 
Valdiosera, Cristina
[4]; 
Richards, Stephen M.
[1]; 
Rohrlach, Adam
[1]; 
Barreto Romero, Maria Ines
[5]; 
Flores Espinoza, Isabel
[5]; 
Tomasto Cagigao, Elsa
[6]; 
Watson Jimenez, Lucia
[6]; 
Makowski, Krzysztof
[6]; 
Leboreiro Reyna, Ilan Santiago
[7]; 
Mansilla Lory, Josefina
[7]; 
Ballivian Torrez, Julio Alejandro
[8]; 
Rivera, Mario A.
[9]; 
Burger, Richard L.
[3]; 
Constanza Ceruti, Maria
[10]; 
Reinhard, Johan
[11]; 
Wells, R. Spencer
[11]; 
Politis, Gustavo
[12]; 
Santoro, Calogero M.
[13]; 
Standen, Vivien G.
[13]; 
Smith, Colin
[4]; 
Reich, David
[3]; 
Ho, Simon Y. W.
[14]; 
Cooper, Alan
[1]; 
Haak, Wolfgang
[1]
  • 1
    University of Adelaide
  • 2
    University of California System
  • 3
    Harvard University
  • 4
    La Trobe University
  • 5
    Museo Sitio Huaca Pucllana
  • 6
    Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru
  • 7
    Inst Nacl Antropol & Hist
  • 8
    Minist Culturas & Turismo Bolivia
  • 9
    Universidad de Magallanes  
  • 10
    Univ Catolica Salta
  • 11
    National Geographic Society
  • 12
    Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET)
  • 13
    Universidad de Tarapaca
  • 14
    University of Sydney
DOI
Date Issued
2016-04
Type
Artículo
Journal
Science Advances
ISSN
2375-2548
Open Access
gold
Volume
2
Links
The exact timing, route, and process of the initial peopling of the Americas remains uncertain despite much research. Archaeological evidence indicates the presence of humans as far as southern Chile by 14.6 thousand years ago (ka), shortly after the Pleistocene ice sheets blocking access from eastern Beringia began to retreat. Genetic estimates of the timing and route of entry have been constrained by the lack of suitable calibration points and low genetic diversity of Native Americans. We sequenced 92 whole mitochondrial genomes from pre-Columbian South American skeletons dating from 8.6 to 0.5 ka, allowing a detailed, temporally calibrated reconstruction of the peopling of the Americas in a Bayesian coalescent analysis. The data suggest that a small population entered the Americas via a coastal route around 16.0 ka, following previous isolation in eastern Beringia for similar to 2.4 to 9 thousand years after separation from eastern Siberian populations. Following a rapid movement throughout the Americas, limited gene flow in South America resulted in a marked phylogeographic structure of populations, which persisted through time. All of the ancient mitochondrial lineages detected in this study were absent from modern data sets, suggesting a high extinction rate. To investigate this further, we applied a novel principal components multiple logistic regression test to Bayesian serial coalescent simulations. The analysis supported a scenario in which European colonization caused a substantial loss of pre-Columbian lineages.
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