Online there are many sites promoting the theory that the Native American Chachapoya people of Peru are blond, fair, white skinned people who came from the Old World, Celts or maybe voyagers from Carthage (depending on the site). This theory has no scientific backing. It is just another quack theory found on the Internet.
I posted eleven years ago about these people (see: The Peruvian Chachapoyas or "white indians" - Aug. 2014). Todays post will explore some additional research that was conducted since then about their genetic makeup. We will follow several papers that have investigated the mtDNA and Y-chromosomes of modern Chachapoyans and their conclusions (Spoiler: No, they are not Caucasian, they are Amerindian).
The first is a paper published in 2017 (Guevara, E. K., Palo, J. U., Sajantila, A., and Guillén, S. (2018). Explorando dinámicas poblacionales ancestrales en el noreste peruano: marcadores uniparentales de ADN en los Chachapoyas modernos. Boletín De Arqueología PUCP, (23), 127–158. https://doi.org/10.18800/boletindearqueologiapucp.201702.004)
The authors studied the mtDNA and Y-chromosomes in different populations of Peru's northern region, the Chachapoya, Jivaro, Huanca and Cajamarca people. The highlights of this study are the following:
- Europeans admixed with these groups in an asymmetrical manner witht he Chachapoyas having only 11% of maternal European lineages (mtDNA) but a high proportion of paternal influx (43%) from Europeans.
- When looking exclusively at the Native American component, "the Chachapoya population displayed relatively high levels of genetic diversity and large Tajima’s D and Fu’s Fs values. Tis suggests that no drastic reduction in the effective population size has taken place in the past."
Before someone starts imagining that the high ratio of European Y-chromosomes is due to some mysterious ancient immigration of "White" people into the area, we should consider more credible options. The authors clearly state that this is very frequent among South American people:
"As in many other populations in the Americas, a higher proportion of the foreign component (mostly European) has been observed in Y-chromosome lineages (40%). This phenomenon of asymmetric gene flow, e.g. Chachapoya: mitochondrial = 11%, Y = 40%, is a well-known phenomenon reported in other Native American populations, which reflects the history of European conquest during the second half of the 16th century. These proportions tend to vary depending on the degree of interbreeding of the populations studied."
Maternal inherited mtDNA
As expected, 89% of the Chachapoya sample contains Native American haplogroups (A, B, C, and D). The remaining 11% is non-Native. This is higher than among the other people in the area. When looking at the Amerindian component, it displays a high diversity: "All populations studied have high levels of haplotype diversity. The Chachapoya population shows one of the highest indices (H = 0.9671 ± 0.0051). The Jívaro (H = 0.9343 ± 0.0178) and Huancas (H = 0.9286 ± 0.0325) groups exhibit intermediate levels, and the Cajamarca group (H = 0.9715 ± 0.0137) has the highest index."
Paternal Y-chromosome
The situation is different when it comes to the Y-chromosome, although the Native American haplogroup Q is present in 60% of the samples, the other 40% is non-Amerindian. Among other populations non-Amerindian haplogrups range from 4% among the Jívaros to 52% in Cajamarca. Like the maternal lineages, it is also very diverse: "High haplotype diversity was observed in all populations studied (H > 0.92). The Chachapoya and Cajamarca populations exhibited the highest values, with H = 0.9974 ± 0.0032 and H = 1 ± 0.0388, respectively."
Why is the genetic diversity so high?
The authors suggest several reasons for a high diversity in a population should have lost it as it underwent epidemics, war, and death due to exploitation, first by the Inca rulers and later by the Spanish conquerors:
- The Incas between 1470 and 1532 AD applied the "mitmaq" policy to control the Cachapoyas, it was a forced resettlement that implanted people from other parts of the empire in a new territory to control it, and extirpation and resettlement in other parts of the empire of rebel populations (like the Cachapoyas). This paper says that up to 50% of the Cachapoyas were relocated elsewhere.
- Spanish Conquest. European diseases provoked epidemics that exterminated the natives, an event known as "The Great Dying". Then, the Spaniards recruited the surviors, mostly men, and forced them to work in mines, fields, and enlisted them as soldiers and porters in their search for El Dorado, provoking a high death toll among males. Many people ran and hid in the jungles, escaping from Spanish opression.
- Strife. War caused the collapse of the fortified Cachapoya citadel of Kuélap c.1570 where many young men and even children were massacred.
These events would have reduced Cachapoyan diversity and introduced new genetic variants in the area. But, are there other factors that could have increased the local diversity?
The paper offers several possibilities:
They were alreeady highly diversified on a genetic level before Incaic conquest. Their location in an area that forms corridors linking the Andean mountain ranges with the Pacific coast and the Amazon jungles could have promoted the movement of different ethnic groups through the area, enriching its genetic pool.
During the Colonial period, the Spaniards searched for El Dorado using the Cachapoya area as a base for their expeditions. They brought many indians from different areas to support these expeditions, many could have stayed here later. There is also a record of 300 Tupi natives from Brazil that reached Cachapoya territory in 1549, coming from the Atlantic seabord of Brazil along the Amazon and Marañon Rivers. They too could have added variety to the local genes.
The Spaniards imitated the Inca tactics and "reduced" the natives (reducciones) it was similar to the mitimaq; natives from a wide area were relocated and concentrated forcibly in villages to make it easier to tax, control, and christianize them.
So after the original collapse of the primitive inhabitants of this region between 1470 and 1550, the inflow of new stock altered the local genome, increasing its diversity.
Another paper published in 2020 (Guevara EK, Palo JU, Översti S, King JL, Seidel M, Stoljarova M, Wendt FR, Bus MM, Guengerich A, Church WB, Guillén S, Roewer L, Budowle B, Sajantila A. Genetic assessment reveals no population substructure and divergent regional and sex-specific histories in the Chachapoyas from northeast Peru. PLoS One. 2020 Dec 31;15(12):e0244497. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244497. PMID: 33382772; PMCID: PMC7774974.) also reported the efect of the Inca and Europeans on the Cachapoyas during the 1400s and 1500s, stressing the impact it had on the men: "This would suggest that the severe male-biased population contraction may be associated with post-European contact events."
See table in the paper, replicated in the image below:
The "Third Component"
The 2020 paper didn't only find the two expected components in the Cachapoyas: The European and the Native American component, which is what is found in mestizo, admixed populations in America. The study "showed a third unknown component present in much higher proportion in three study populations, Chachapoyas, Awajún and Wampís; but nearly absent in the reference Hispanic population (HIS). The 3rd unknown component was consistently observed with increasing number of K in plots including also other continental datasets."
The authors conclude that the "Chachapoyas harbour an autosomal variation component of undetermined origin" and that this "third autosomal component ... could not be readily associated to any modern source population. WRithin Chachapoyas, inter-subgroup differences in the commonness of this component was observed especially in odríguez de Mendoza, but nearly absent in e.g. Chillao, La Jalca and Uchucmarca. On the regional level... the synthetic '3rd component group' showed no obvious affinity to reference datasets of African, European or Asian origin, nor to the populations included from the Americas.... The exact origin of this variation component remains thus elusive; it could derive from a yet unsampled ancient or modern population, for example representing assemblages that have developed locally in semi-isolated populations with no distinctive cultural features. On this note, a recent study of South American populations has shown the existence of two autosomal components of alleged Amazonian origin: 1) The first one, distributed along the eastern slopes of the Northern Andes in Ecuador and Colombia, and 2) the second one, observed mostly in populations from the Peruvian rainforest. Due to geographic proximity and the commonness of the 3rd unknown component among the Amazonian Jívaro, we could suggest ties to the second component, although this cannot be tested with our current resolution."
Not European
Just in case someone thinks it is a Celtic, Carthaginian or Phoenician signal, the paper is clear: "although the origin of this component could not be clarified, we speculate it may be of Native American origin as it remains distant to African, European and Asian populations."
Guevara, co-author of the 2020 paper gave a dissertation in 2022 (Guevara, E. K. (2022). Genetic insights on old riddles: the Chachapoyas from the Northeastern Peruvian cloud forests. Helsingin yliopisto. https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/342172/guevara_evelyn_dissertation_2022.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y) ratifying these findings and suggesting that analysis of ancient pre-conquest and pre-Inca remains can help shed more light on this matter. Guevara states that her team was analyzing the remains of 82 ancient Chachapoyans and would publish the results. To date the otucome of this analysis is not available.
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