SignificanceAncient DNA has revolutionized the field of archaeology, but in the Caribbean and other tropical regions of the world, the work has been hampered by poor DNA preservation. We present an ancient human genome from the Caribbean and use it to shed light on the early peopling of the islands. We demonstrate that the ancestors of the so-called “Taino” who inhabited large parts of the Caribbean in pre-Columbian times originated in northern South America, and we find evidence that they had a comparatively large effective population size. We also show that the native components in some modern Caribbean genomes are closely related to the ancient Taino, suggesting that indigenous ancestry in the region has survived through the present day.

The Caribbean was one of the last regions of the Americas to be settled by humans, but how, when, and from where they reached the islands remains unclear. We generated genome-wide data for 93 ancient Caribbean islanders dating between 3200-400 cal. BP and find evidence of at least three separate dispersals into the region, including two early dispersals into the Western Caribbean, one of which seems connected to radiation events in North America. This was followed by a later expansion from South America. We also detect genetic differences between the early settlers and the newcomers from South America with almost no evidence of admixture. Our results add to our understanding of the initial peopling of the Caribbean and the movements of Archaic Age peoples in the Americas.

This study presents a method by which to estimate total body mass in modern young adult U.S. populations who self-identified as non-Hispanic U.S. White, non-Hispanic U.S. Black, and Mexican American with anthropometric measurements from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) 1988-1994 dataset (N = 2532). Correlations of stature and bi-iliac breadth with total body mass were stronger among males (r = 0.717-0.774) than among females (r = 0.549-0.661), yet these results were more accurate assessments of total body mass than existing techniques. This study also examined additional anthropometric measurements to estimate total body mass using an information-theoretic approach demonstrating that some error in the stature-bi-iliac breadth method is attributed to a nonsupported model with multimodel inference. The limitations of the current total body mass technique are discussed as well as the need for future studies to validate the method.