Red headed Amerindians and the G haplogroup in America (an e-mail)

This morning I read an e-mail one of the readers of this Blog, which was very interesting indeed (Thank you for writing, Craig). My reply (edited) is below, I just wanted to share it with you because it has some good links which expand on previously published posts.

Red Headed Xiaohe mummy, China

The mail asked about photographs of the red-headed Amerindians who carried D4h3 hg. (my posts were here).

My reply

... Regarding red-haired natives, they do not abound, perhaps they were much more frequent in the past as their mummified remains attest.

If you are interested in what they looke like when photography was discovered, please check out the following sites on Alakaluf or Kaweskar, Yamana or Yaghans, Chumash, Pericue or Pericu:

http://www.limbos.org/sur/alak.htm and Kaweskar, Yamana, Chumash.

No photos exist of the Chilean Chono, who became extinct in the 1700s.

When you google red-haired native Americans you come across al sorts of weird stuff: UFOs, Atlanteans, white race supremacists, but if you remove the junk there are some nice gems to be found like the definitively red-haired Xiahoe Beauty mummy from China, pictured above, ca. 4,000 years old found in the Tarim Basin in Northwest China.

Then there are the Chinchorro people of Chile, not mentioned in my post, also boat-people like the Chumash, Kaweskar, Yamana, Chono and Peircue. Their mummies seem to be red headed. Like I mentioned in my post, these Chinchorro also used red pigment to stain their mummies and wrapped them in rushes (just like the Lovelock cave natives did).

We discussed the possible Transatlantic peopling route into America, and I commented that:

The transatlantic crossing from Africa is indeed a very feasible option (I have posted about Phoenicians, Greek and Carthagininans crossing the Ocean) and may have also been an Atlantic entry route for H. erectus into South America, so it is also possible.

I believe that mtDNA and Y chromosome analysis will reveal interesting and complex peopling patterns once the native people are sampled in depth and ancient remains are also sequenced. It willl yield some surprises. I am currenty wondering if some of the G and R Y-chromosome haplogroups found among natives is due to admixture with Europeans post-1492 discovery or... is archaic and entered America long before its discovery...

G haplogroup in America

This ends my reply to Craig, and yes, I found some G NRY hg. mentioned in a paper on the Kolla natives in Northern Argentina. The authors attribute it to admixture with Italian migrants post 1900s.

G haplogroup is definitively an Old World lineage and is found at low frequencies across a large part of Eurasia. It is also found among Spaniards (who colonized South America) and Italians (50% of Argentines have Italian ancestry), so a recent European admixture cannot be discarded.

Nevertheless, these Kolla carry a duplicate at STR DYS19, which is uncommon and found at very low frequencies in certain haplotypes within C and G Y chromosome haplogroups. C is interesting since it is a founding lineage in America but very rare and G is the European one mentioned above.

This makes me wonder.... Why do both these hgs. have the duplication and the others don't?
Could the Kolla have been wrongly typed as G and actually be C?
What are the odds of an Italian with the rare G DYS19 STR duplication reaching Northern Argentina and spreading his genes so widely that they later appear in a small sampling of Amerindian genes?
How could a genuine Native American haplotype shared with Europeans (i.e. R or G) be identified as autochthonous instead of being classified as European admixtuer(as currently is)?

I will look into this and post on it later.

Below is a map with G hg. distribution:

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