High genetic diversity on a sample of pre-Columbian bone remains from Guane territories in northwestern Colombia

Abstract

Ancient DNA was recovered from 17 individuals found in a rock shelter in the district of "La Purnia" (Santander, Colombia). This region is the homeland of pre-Columbian Guane, whom spread over the "Río Suarez" to the "Río de Oro", and were surrounded to the west by the Central Andes, south and east by foothills of Eastern Andes, and north by the "Chicamocha" river canyon. Guanes established in a region that straddles the Andes and the northern Amazon basin, possibly making it an unavoidable conduit for people moving to and from South America. We amplified mtDNA hypervariable region I (HVI) segments from ancient bone remains, and the resulting sequences were compared with both ancient and modern mitochondrial haplogroups from American and non-American populations. Samples showed a distribution of 35% for haplogroup A, 41% for haplogroup B and 24% for haplogroup D. Nine haplotypes were found in 17 samples, indicating an unusually high genetic diversity on a single site ancient population. Among them, three haplotypes have not been previously found in America, two are shared in Asia, and one is a private haplotype. Despite geographical barriers that eventually isolated them, an important influence of gene flow from neighboring pre-Columbian communities, mainly Muiscas, could explain the high genetic polymorphism of this community before the Spanish conquest, and argues against Guanes as being a genetic isolate.

Genetic Affiliation of Pre-Hispanic and Contemporary Mayas through Maternal Linage

“…These results support the notion that the Maya population spread to Central and South America. No haplogroup C was reported in the PreColumbian Guane group (Casas-Vargas et al 2011). The geographic distribution and shared haplotypes are shown in Figure 4 and Table 3, respectively.…”

“…A second analysis of haplogroup D sequences from nucleotides 16181-16399 was conducted including the pre-Hispanic Guane group from Colombia in the analysis to evaluate the presence of a maternal linage relationship between the preHispanic Guane from Colombia (Casas-Vargas et al 2011) and Mexican pre-Hispanic Maya individuals (results not shown). The two sequences from the pre-Hispanic Maya did not contained the same haplotype, indicating that these individuals did not share a common ancestor.…”

Genetic analysis of paleo-colombians from Nemocón, Cundinamarca provides insights on the early peopling of northwestern South America

“…(b) The contemporary northern South American cluster (Arsario, Ijka, Kogi, and Wayuú) is demarcated in a semi-circle. (c) In the middle of the ancient cluster and the modern cluster pointed out, there is a mixture of Meso / Central American (Maya, Emberá) and South American populations, such depiction have been observed before (Melton, et al 2007(Melton, et al , 2013 [Casas-Vargas, et al 2011], although this variation may be due to the distinct HVR-I coverage ranges used in each study, for Guane was np 16217-16362, with most polymorphisms in this region (A, B and D haplogroups). In contrast, the range for Checua is np 16011-16382, with improved chances of measuring the π T value; the same issue occurs for the Hd measure.…”

Mitochondrial DNA diversity in prehispanic bone remains on the eastern Colombian Andes

“…Con el fin de elucidar la relación biológica entre los individuos precolombinos muiscas y 43 comunidades nativas americanas contemporáneas, y comparar cuatro poblaciones precolombinas antiguas (3,(19)(20)(21)(22)27,(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44)(45)(46)(47) (cuadro 3), se calculó la frecuencia de los haplogrupos por conteo directo.…”

“…Los resultados de este estudio constituyen información adicional sobre los haplogrupos de ADNmt de estos individuos precolombinos que complementan los estudios previos (19)(20)(21)(22)40). El haplogrupo A presenta mayores frecuencias, entre 40 y 90 %, en Norteamérica y Centroamérica; asimismo, en Colombia se observa un gradiente en las frecuencias de este haplogrupo, con altas frecuencias en poblaciones del norte, como las de la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (70-90 %), en tanto que en el sur del país se presentan bajas frecuencias (7-10 %).…”