Patagonian mtDNA is quite unique!

A paper published in 2017 (Diferenciación regional de poblaciones nativas de América a partir del análisis de los linajes maternos, Intersecciones en Antropología 18: 271-282. 2017. ISSN 1666-2105. Josefina María Brenda Motti, Marisol Elisabeth Schwab, Julieta Beltramo, Laura Smeldy Jurado-Medina, Marina Muzzio, Virgina Ramallo, Graciela Bailliet, Claudio Marcelo Bravi), looks into the maternal genetic component of the Native American people of South America, analyzing their mtDNA.

Their data show that Patagonian natives have a unique set of haplotypes not found in the rest of South America. Table 1 in the paper is shown below, with the haplotypes found in Chilean and Argentine Patagonia (it has no data from the Province of Neuquén).

Haplogroup frequencies (%). Table 1 in Motti et al. (2017)

The authors point out the high frequency of certain variants in Argentina's Patagonia, namely, B2i2, D1g, D4h3a5 y C1b13. It suggests that the "notable unity" in Patagonia, both in Chile and Argentina with the preponderance of these haplotypes suggests that south of Latitude 40°S, as the Andes are lower in elevation, there could have been west-to-east mobility of migrating groups.

The authors also note that "these lineages are practically exclusive to Patagonia, as they are found at low frequencies in central Argentina, Uruguay, and northern Chile, and are absent from the rest of the continent. The homogeneity on both sides of the Andes Mountains is indicative of common ancestry."

They suggest that D4h3a5 reached the region along the Pacific, while the presence of B2i1 in the Amazon people like the Kayapó, a sister clade to Patagonia's B2i2 suggests the arrival of people along the Atlantic coast of South America.

mtDNA D1g is Ancient

Since D1g is around 18,000 year old, its age could hint that it was among the first to reach the area, followed by younger haplogroups B2i2 y C1b13, aged 10,800 BP and 12,000 BP, respectively. B2i2 is absent in the Island of Tierra del Fuego suggesting that it differentiated later.

Michelle de Saint Pierre (2017) suggested that D1g as well as D4h3a are ancient, and must have been present in the first wave of people to reach America, later overlaid by more recent arrivals. (de Saint Pierre, Antiquity of mtDNA lineage D1g from the southern cone of South America supports pre-Clovis migration. Quaternary International, Vol 444, Part B, 2017, p.19-25, ISSN 1040-6182, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.05.054.). de Saint Pierre wrote:

"The age calculated for D1g, between 25,000 and 19,000 cal yr BP is extremely old for a South American mitochondrial subhaplogroup. The anomalous age of this haplogroup does not fit the currently accepted framework for the other mtDNA haplogroups in the Americas...
Of the exclusively Amerindian haplogroups, D4h3a has an age of 17.6 kyr. This is a good candidate to date the early peopling, since considerable evidence has shown it to be an ancestral haplogroup. D4h3a has been recovered from the late Pleistocene (12,707e12,556 cal yr BP) Anzick child (Rasmussen et al., 2014) and from a skeleton of an early Holocene individual from Alaska (Kemp et al., 2007), which is empirical evidence of the presence of this lineage in Paleoamericans. Also, D4h3a has a wide geographic distribution, being found low frequencies in populations across the continent, including the most southern native populations, the Patagonians"

See my post on D1g here, and the post on D4h3a here.

The Amazonian origin of the Mapuches

Back in 2012 (de Saint Pierre M, Gandini F, Perego UA, Bodner M, Gómez-Carballa A, Corach D, et al. (2012) Arrival of Paleo-Indians to the Southern Cone of South America: New Clues from Mitogenomes. PLoS ONE 7(12): e51311. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051311) had found that the sub-haplogroups B2i2 and C1b13 were exclusive to the southern tip of South America and noticed that B2i2 was found at high frequencies among the Mapuche people and related groups like the Pehuenche and Huilliche (26 to 39% frequencies) while admixture led to lower levels among the Tehuelches (14%). It was absent in northern Chile and also among the canoe people of Tierra del Fuego and Southern Chile (who rarely admixed with the Mapuches). Saint Pierre not only found th B2i group among the Amazonian Kayapó, they "identified only two additional mtDNAs, one from Brazil and one from northern Uruguay (both bearing the B2 control-region haplotype plus the B2i diagnostic transitions at np 430 and 485), thus preliminarily suggesting a geographic distribution of B2i1 limited to the northern and eastern part of South America/i>." This is interesting, and it is in line with the notion that the Mapuche originated in the Amazonian region and moved on, later into Chile.

I have posted about a common origin for Mapuche and the Amazonian Guaraní people (and again here), and that the Mapuche were late arrivals in the Patagoian region, so I welcome additional evidence that supports this theory.

Variant C1b13, on the other hand, is found beyond Patagonia, among people like the Atacameño of NW Chile's Atacama desert region, and the Alakaluf and Yamana canoe people, and surely spread to these people from the Mapuche homeland in Central Chile, and is of recent origin there, from an older C1 root.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

The Cayapas and their D4h3a mtDNA

The Cayapa people in Ecuador carry the very rare D4h3a mtDNA haplogroup in high rates in comparison to other Native Americans. See my previous post (D4h3a revisited).

When it was discovered in 1999, this variante was reported as the "Cayapa lineage", later it was found in other native groups, but at extremely low frequencies. This is the paper published back in 1999 that reported this unique Amerindian mtDNA founding lineage for the first time.

Cayapa territory. From O. Rickards, C. Martínez-Labarga, J.K. Lum, G.F. De Stefano, and R.L. Cann (1999)

A 2013 study reported that "The “Cayapa” lineage, D4h3a, was confirmed in the expected high proportion (22.5%)." Meaning that over 1 in 5 Cayapas carry this variant. It didn't find any European, Asian or African mtDNA among the natives.

A 2020 paper, citing Bravi, reported that "the highest frequencies of this lineage are found in Cayapa and Tehuelche populations, with a percentage of 25% of the total samples". Interesting link to the Patagonian people!

I found the extremely interesting thesis, by Bravi, 2005, (see it here - Spanish). In it, Bravi analyzed this new founding lineage. The frequency is high in certain groups, between 13% and 25% in the Fuegian Yamaná, the Patagonian Tehuelche, the Paraguayan Lengua, and the Cayapas. It is much Lower among the Araucanian people (Mapuche and Huilliche) of Chile and the Peruvian and Bolivian Quechuas (Image below is from the paper). This discontinuity in the distribution (Chile, Peru and Bolivia lie between the Ecuadorian Cayapas and the Amazonian Lenguas, and the Patagonian-Fuegian people) suggests that the original D4h3a migration was later overlaid by more recent arrivals with other mtDNA halpogroups diluting its presence.

Araucanization

The author of this thesis notes that the Patagonians probably had a higher ratio of this rare haplogroup before the Mapuche people crossed the Andes (pushed by Spanish conquest in the late 1500s), a process known as "Araucanization" (disliked by the Mapuche people, who feign they are original inhabitants of Argentina's Patagonia - they aren't, they are original people in Chile, not Argentina).

The paper states: "Since the beginning of the "Araucanization of the Pampas and Patagonia" in the 17th century, the cis-Andean Pampas-Patagonian populations interbred with "Araucanian" immigrants of trans-Andean origin. Given that some of the "Araucanian" fractions lack "Cayapa" lineages ... or possess them in low frequency... it is reasonable to interpret that their presence at such high frequency among the Tehuelches would not be a consequence of recent Araucanian female introgression (in the last 350 years) but rather a reflection of their ancestral condition. Although very high, the actual frequency of 26% for the “Cayapa” haplotypes among the Tehuelches, it must have been higher in the past, towards the end of the 16th century, before the massive influx of “Araucanians” from this side of the Andes."

The table above shows (left to right), the population, the sample size "N" the number of D4h3a found "Cayapa", the frequency "frecuencia" and the source.

The Cayapa people

Rickards et al, (1999), had noted that the Cayapas were "of distinct interest to geneticists, for at least three reasons. First, their oral traditions recount a migration from the western Amazon basin into the Andes (Barriga-Lopez 1987; Carrasco 1988) and then a flight from Ibarra into the lowland jungles to escape first Inca and finally Spanish enslavement (Barrett 1925). These movements suggest that historical events and forced acculturation have not significantly distorted their genetic identity. Second, although they have been exposed to disease epidemics brought by foreign contact, their population appears to have been stable during the past 250 years of colonial rule and has been slowly increasing to its current size of ∼3,600 individuals, without significant admixture from either European- or African-derived settlements adjacent to tribal communities."

The fact they migrated from the Amazon basin, suggests that this ancient lineage was present there, well inland, (not on the Pacific coast) and dispersed across the continent from that node.

The 1999 paper pointed out that even though the Cayapas spoke a Chibchan language, "the Cayapa appear closer to non-Chibchan speakers of South America than to representatives of the same language family in Central America, a classic case of discordance between genetic and linguistic data."

The Chibchans reached Colombia and NW South America around 2000 years BP, and are, relatively speaking, "newcomers". This is mentioned in a recent paper: "original “Chibchan homeland” in Central America is supported not only by mtDNA studies on present-day populations who speak Chibchan languages but also from linguistic observations, indicating that the isthmus region exhibits the highest diversity within this language family."

The Amazonian Cayapas probably adopted a Chibcha family language the same way that the Northern Tehuelche, Puelche and Pampa groups in Argentina adopted the Mapuche Araucanian language: trade and war, simplicity of the language helped spread the Mapdungun Mapuche language replacing the Chon of the Tehuelche groups. I agree, language and genes don't necessarily go together or imply a common origin and heritage.

According to a book published in 1919, the Cayapas lived an isolated lifestyle (it may have helped preserve their unique genetic marker), in 1641 the Spanish "Visitador", an official recorded that the tribe at Piñán consisted of 334 people. They were "antisocial like all savage tribes, and didn't live in villages. Instead the families built separate huts along the river banks, and seldom did so further inland. They moved frequently, and when cocoa cultivation replaces the jungle in which they live, they move away. They bury their dead in the middle of the dead person's former home, and move away.

Another book from 1876, states that "about 2,000 Cayapas, who still keep to the forests on the banks of the Rio Cayapas, holding carefully aloof both from the whites and the negroes... their language, which has also remained unaffected by Quichua and Spanish influences."

They built dugout canoes, from balsa wood tree trunks (pictured below - source).

An account published in 1894 says that the Cayapas river was 100 to 120 m wide (roughly 300 to 360 ft) and that "we met Cayapa boats all the time. They are light canoes, of elegant construction. On the sides they had whimsical mosaic-like designs painted with tars. They are maneouvered by an Indian using an oar 3 m long (10 ft), and by an Indian woman, who navigates from the stern with an other oar, very wide and short"

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall © 

D4h3a mtDNA revisited

Yu-Chun, lI et al. published a paper in 2023, that looked into the link between Native Americans (NAs) mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineage D4h3a and the variant D4h3b which until now has been found only in East China and Thailand.

The authors noted that "D4h3 and its ancestor type D4h are relatively rare in contemporary populations (∼0.5%)" and estimated the age of the NA variant at 19,400 years (15.11 - 24.05 ky).

The interesting part is that they suggest that this haplogroup took a coastal route by sea from China to America, going through Japan's Islands. It didn't cross from Siberia and Beringia into America, walking.

"The coastal distributions of the NA (D4h3a) and Japanese lineages (D4h1a and D4h2), in combination with the Paleolithic archaeological similarities among Northern China, the Americas, and Japan, lend support to the coastal dispersal scenario of early NAs."

The authors highlight that this is a genetic source that is outside of Siberia, which provided mtDNA (a matrilineal lineage) to Native Americans. They stress that it is an "additional ancestral source for the ancestors of NAs beyond Siberia", and that "although only contributed to a small proportion of the mtDNA gene pool of NAs (D4h3a) [it] would be important in complementing the whole picture of origination histories of early NAs."

Below is an image from this paper:

Given the location of the original D4h variant, on the coast of Northern China, the authors suggest that it could have dispersed along the Pacific coastal rim: "we speculate that D4h would have documented LGM and post-LGM dispersals along the eastern Pacific coast. This echoes well with the dispersal D4h3a along the Pacific coastal path when the ice-free corridor was closed. Similarly, Y chromosome C-L1373, which probably radiated in parallel with mtDNA D4h, has also been reported in South Koreans (http://koreangenome.org/) and the Nivkh, thus lending support to a coastal population expansion scenario initiated from northern coastal China. This, together with the Paleolithic cultural affinities along the Pacific, e.g., stemmed points, and the palaeoecological feasibility of maritime dispersals (e.g., kelp highway hypothesis) lends further support to the coastal route hypothesis of early NAs."

It is also found along the coastal people in South America. Stuart J. Fiedel (source) in 2017 wrote that "D4h3a is a relatively rare clade of haplogroup D... it was reported mainly from coastal peoples, including the Fuegians of southernmost Chile, the Chumash of southern California, and the Cayapa of Ecuador The 10,300-year–old skeletal remains from On Your Knees Cave in coastal Alaska belonged to a derived clade of D4h3a."

However, Fiedel says that "the recent distribution of this clade is “deceptive” and has nothing to do with a hypothetical coastal migration".

He bases this argument on the fact that the Anzick baby had D4h3a mt DNA, and is roughly 12,900 years old, but it was found in south-central Montana, far from the Pacific coast, and that other remains are also from the interior of the continent like the Hopewell remains found in the Klunk Mounds in Illinois, and that this variant has been found in extant people of Native American origin in Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Mexico.

I had posted about D4h3a back in 2014 and pointed out the same idea:

"We see that the D4h3a tends to have a coastal distribution along the Pacific Ocean from Canada to Tierra del Fuego: Canada, California, Ecuador, Southern Chile and Argentina.
The Yaghan, Alakaluf, Chono, Cayapa, Chumash and the man from On Your Knees Cave, all had this haplogroup.
They all built sea-going craft: rafts, dugout canoes, bark canoes and "sewn plank" canoes.
Other groups also built canoes or rafts; the Changos in Northern Chile, the Pericú, and the Aleuts, though we cannot tell if they also carried this rare haplogroup.
But, as we will see in our next post, it is also found quite far from the Western Coast: as it was detected in ancient remains from the Klunk Mound (Illinois) and in Shandong, China.
Furthermore, the Ainu people of Japan also built "lashed-canoes" -like the Chono and the Chumash (as well as dugouts), and they may have a link with the Amerindians."

It pointed out the Chinese connection, the coastal route, and the original Japanese people, the Ainus. The second post in that 2014 series reported the Klunk Mound remains with this haplogroup variant and proposed that "This haplogroup was widespread across America (Pacific coast and well across the Rockies) and became extinct among all native groups being replaced by the other more common haplogroups now found in those groups (A, B, C, D). These surely migrated later into America." It also suggested a back-migration from America to Asia.

Let's see what future investigations find.

My nest post will be about the Cayapa people of Ecuador.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

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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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

mtDNA D4h3a (Continued)

In my previous posts we have seen that along the west coast of America a rare mtDNA haplogroup (D4h3a) which is found there at much higher frequencies than elsewhere. In today's post we will look into this haplogroup in detail, and ask some questions.

How rare is the D4h3a haplogroup?

Map showing distribution of D4h3a in the Americas. Adapted from (2), by Austin Whittall

The map shown above gives an idea regarding the frequency at which this rare haplogroup is found in the Americas. On the left side, the original map from Perego et al. (2). Which is a rather "tricky" depiction since it portrays a gradual diffusion or decrease of the haplogroup across wide territories (Western U.S., Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and Amazon in Brazil; Chilean and Argentine Patagonia), which, if you check the tables below, is not exactly true.

The samples are discrete, not a continuum, taken at locations that cover the whole continent. They are discrete points and as such cannot "fade" or dissolve.

That is why I added the right side map, which shows the (red) current populations carrying D4h3a and in orange the remains of Paleoindians found carrying it. These pinpoint discrete points on the map, not vast territories.

The data also shows that one (yes 1) individual in each group (in the case of Mexico and Peru, carries D4h3a), that implies that there cannot be a "shaded" area on the map. In the case of Chile, Ecuador and the U.S., the natives lived in specific areas of a limited surface, not in large territories as is the case of modern nation-states.

So let's take a look at frequencies based on cases with this haplogroup out of a given population. The supplemental tables of Perego et al. (2) show that it is only found in:

Mixed extant Populations

• 0.42% California
• 1.50% North Mexico
• 0.29% Central Mexico
• 0.14% South Mexico
• 1.88% Peru
• 2.93% Chile
• 0.48% Bolivia - Paraguay
• 0.15% Brazil

It is absent in all the rest of the countries of the continent and in the US outside of California.

InNative American Groups its frequency is high in some groups, low in others and absent in most:

• 21.67% Cayapa (Ecuador)
• 16.00% Chumash (Ca. US)
• 10.26% Fuegians (Chile)
• 2.70% Mapuche (Chile)
• 2.56% Klunk Mound
• 1.82% Tarahumara (Mexico)
• 1.28% Nahua (Mexico)
• 0.40% Mixtek - Mixe - Zapotec (Mexico)
• 0.95% Quechua (Peru)

It is absent in all other Native Americans sampled.

Clearly the canoe people (Cayapa, Chumash and Fuegians) have the highest frequencies. Mapuche very likely got it thorugh admixture with the now extinct Chono (who also carried it), under Spanish rule in northern Patagonia, at the Chiloé Island outpost.

The other groups in Mexico and Peru carry it at a frequency below 2%, all the North American native people except the Chumash and the Klunk Mound skeletal remains do not carry it.

Yes, as you can see there is one oddity: the Klunk Mound "hotspot", in Illiniois, U.S., it is far from the Pacific coast canoe people and was sampled from the bones of an ancient indian.

Klunk Mound Illinois

The image below shows where this non-coastal location is: Northern U.S.:

Table from (2) showing the Klunk Mound anomaly

The data indicates that out of 39 skeletal remains analyzed, only 1 carried the D4h3a haplogroup. (that is what the 2.56% frequency means). It is a low frequency, but it is real, and was found very far away from the coastal region.

The Pete Klunk Mound group is located in a north-south line on the bluffs of the Illinois River, this north of the town of Kampsville (39° 18' 14" N, 90° 36' 7") in Calhoun Cty., Illinois, U.S. See the map below:

 

The Pete Klunk group is made up of fourteen mounds which were excavated in 1960-61 by Gregory Perino. The remains, affiliated with the Illinois Hopewell cultural phenomenon date to 1,825 +⁄- 75 YBP. (Very young compared to the other remains descrbed in this post). (3)

The Klunk Mound remains can mean two things:

1. This haplogroup was widespread across America (Pacific coast and well across the Rockies) and became extinct among all native groups being replaced by the other more common haplogroups now found in those groups (A, B, C, D). These surely migrated later into America.
2. The Klunk mound person was from the West Coast and migrated across the U.S. to Illinois.

Option 1 is the most reasonable explanation, and is supported by Cui et al. (1):

They detected a sub-haplogroup (D4h3a7) in the remains of a Paleoindian from Lucy Island, Canada, about 200 km (125 mi) south of "On Your Knees" Cave. They dated it to 5.710 +⁄- 40 BP.

You will recall that the first sample of D4h3a was found at "On Your Knees " Cave in southern Alaska, and dated at 10.3 kya. The fact it was found in a paleoindian on an island points towards ancient "canoe" people.

It seems quite prevalent in this area among ancient -now defunct- Native Americans.

Cui's paper adds that "Sub-haplogroup D4h3a is not identified in any ancient or living individuals on the Northwest Coast after approximately 6000 years BP... This suggests that sub-haplogroup D4h3a is either in extremely low frequency or has gone extinct in living populations of the Northwest Coast...." (1)

They point out that in the past it was more prevalent, since "two of seven (29%) early-mid Holocene skeletal remains from different archaeological sites continent-wide exhibit mitochondrial sub-haplogroup D4h3a" (1).

Its current absence in the area is attributed to "the result of random genetic drift in situ and/or the result of population movements into the geographic region..." (1).

In other words they support the idea that it was widespread and was replaced by newcomers' mtDNA.

The First People in America

It is quite probable that the original first peopling wave of H. sapiens carried D4h3 with them (I deliberately left the "a" and went a step backwards, towards the root for reasons I will explain later on in this post), the entered America, occupied the whole continent from Bering to Tierra del Fuego.

The clade mutated into subclades hence D4h3 became D4h3a and this in turn mutated into the variants we find today (D4h3a1, a2.... a7).

Then came other wave/s of migrants from Asia, they overcame the first wave who mixed, fell prey to the diseases these new Asians brought, were killed in tribal warfare or being much inferior in number were diluted by the new mtDNAs into non-existence.

Only those living in specialized ecological niches: i.e. canoe people in a geographical setting with islands (Fuegia, Southern Chile, Santa Catalina islands in California) survived, the others perished (the remains of the Klunk Mound, Lucy Island and "On Your Knees" men prove it).

And now we look at the area occupied by D4h3a it seems that they came with a group of canoe people who paddled down the Pacific Ocean's coastline settling here and there.

We should not infer population patterns from the areas that they currently occupy.

The Chinese connection

An interesting point is that D4h3 is not exclusively American, the D4h3a subclade is found exclusively in the Americas, but the other subclade, D4h3b was identified in one Chinese individual Qingdao, Shandong province, Eastern China. (2) You can read the original paper by Yao et al. (4) if interested (individual is QD8153).

This is a very important piece of information. Its extreme rarity in Asia is estimated at 1 x 10^-4 (1 : 10.000) by Perego et al., but instead of exploring the reasons for this, they use it, as expected, to buttress the "Out of Africa" theory and currently accepted timelines.

Perego's paper states that this Chinese branch poses an: "... upper limit for the most recent common female Asian ancestor of D4h3." (2). So to fit in the Beringian migration c. 15 kya they calculate the following timelines: (Below is the tree with its branches and the dates that they calculated - From Figure S1 in (2) - see the image further down).

• D4 (40.4 - 34.1 kya)
• D4h (no date)
• D4h3 (40.9 - 36.6 kya) [*]
  
  • D4h3b (no date)<< The Chinese clade
  • D4h3a (18.0 - 14.3 kya)
    
    • D4h3a1 (18.4 - 11.8 kya) [*]
    • D4h3a2 (11.5 - 9.6 kya)
    • D4h3a3 (10.5 - 3.3 kya)
    • D4h3a4 (1.5 - 0.1 kya)
    • D4h3a5 (25.3 - 30.6 kya) [*]
    • there are more branches.

Comments:

The "American" haplogroup is dated at 18 - 14.3 kya, a nice fit for orthodoxy's 15 kya for entry into America. And though the Chinese clade is not dated it falls somewhere between 40 and 18 kya

I marked with [*] those branches that are older than the branch from which they arise. Seems wrong to me that a branch be older than a root....

The calculation is unclear, please take a look at the image below which displays the mutations:

Detail from Figure S1 in (2), D4 hg and its branches, mutations and estimated timeline

The authors originally state that "Time estimates shown for clades are averaged distance (?) of each haplotype to the respective root. The first value has been obtained by considering one coding-region substitution every 4,610 years, while the second one assuming 7,650 years per synonymous transition." (2).

But that is not what the image shows:

• D4h3a1 has one "synonymous transition" (which I will abbreviate as: st) so should be 4.61 ky younger but, instead, it is older than D4h3a.
• D4h3a2 also has one st but is 6.5 ky younger instead of 4.61 ky.
• D4h3a4 also has one st but is 16,5 ky younger instead of 4.61 ky.
• The root of all, haplogroup M is dated at 62.4 kya. After 2 st's it branches into D4 which the authors date at 40.4 kya (yes, 2 st's would be 9.22 ky but they calculate that as 22 kya).

I am an engineer and maths is straightforward for me, but this kind of maths baffles me. It feels as if they were forcing the data to make it fit with the required into-America-across-Beringia timeline.

This genetic mtDNA clock ticks at variable rates.

Haplogroup subclades

The D43Ha haplogroup is not the same among all Native Americans sampled, there are several subclades:

• The Chilean group carried D4h3a1 and D4h3a2. These have accumulated a lot of internal variation
• The Mexican and Californian (and one Chilean) carry D4h3a3.
• The Lucy island man had another sublcade: D4h3a7 (5.7 kya).
• What subclade did the Klunk Mound man carry? Below is a detail from (3):
  
  • KlunkMound 16223, 16241, 16301, 16318, 16342
  • Chumash 1d 16223, 16241, 16301, 16342
  • Chumash 2d 16223, 16241, 16301, 16342
  
  So it only differed in the HVR polymorphism 16318 from the some of the Chumash people's Haplogroup. (3)
• The ca. 10,3 ky old "On Your Knees" man also had D4h3a... (which subclade?)
  He had a HVR polymorphism 16092 (3), which is found among the Chumash, Fuegians and a Nahua in Mexico, meaning it is close to the root of the subclades. But I have not seen it classified.

There is a lot of variation here among the different subclades and to me that spells a long time (each mutation requires a tick in the clock, more mutations = more ticks), but for Perego (2) it spells something different:

The rapid dispersion of D4h3a southward along the Pacific coast is supported by two deep subclades (D4h3a1 and D4h3a2), found exclusively in Chile, and by its spatial distribution.... Overall, these mtDNA findings make plausible a scenario positing that within a rather short period of time during the pre-Bølling interstadial (15.8 to 14.9 kya) and during the warmer Bølling interstadial (14.5 to 13.9 kya), the ice-free corridor may have opened for successful southward migration, whereas the Pacific coastal path may have been feasible somewhat earlier, but not before 17 kya, allowing for successive small-scale migrations of Beringian groups." (2)

Why does two "deep subclades" in Chile, with a lot of variations suggest a "rapid dispersion", baffles me.

What does "speed" have to do with subclade variations?

Actually, when a population is expanding (more offspring survive), it is more likely that mutations passed on from mother to daughter survive in the following generations and, with a larger quantity of women having children, there is more chances of random mutations taking place, thus creating even more variety and Haplogroup subclades. When a bottleneck occurs and populations contract, many mutations are lost as they are not passed on to anyone (bearer dies or all its offspring die).

A group of canoe people cannot be taken as an example of booming populations, and even if they paddle quickly to Tierra del Fuego, they will still be a small band of people in canoes restricted in their population size by the natural maritime resources they can exploit. All canoe populations have been small due to this reason.

So, let's try to offer an alternative explanation:

Another Explanation

The Chinese sublcade is not Asian, it originated in America and back-migrated into Asia, that is why (above) I suggested that the D4h haplogroup entered America and diversified there. The population expanded, new subclades arose. The Dh4b people went back to Asia, the others carrying the Dh4a clade marched on to occupy America, and their expanding population generating new sublcades.

They did not paddle along the coast, they walked, occupied the continent, leaving their mtDNA all across it.

Then, as explained above, other wave/s of modern humans arrived and replaced the original people, reducing them to marginal coastal areas where the pre-existing canoe people survived with their D4h3a mtDNA.

More to be posted on this subject....

Sources

(2) Perego, Ugo, A. et al., (2009). Distinctive Paleo-Indian Migration Routes from Beringia Marked by Two Rare mtDNA Haplogroups. Current Biology 19, 1-8, 2009 p. 2 doi 10.1016/j.cub.2008.11.058
(1) Cui, Yinqui, et al., (2013) Ancient DNA Analysis of Mid-Holocene Individuals from the Northwest Coast of North America Reveals Different Evolutionary Paths for Mitogenomes. Published: July 03, 2013, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0066948
(3) Kemp, Brian, et al. (2007), Genetic Analysis of Early Holocene Skeletal Remains From Alaska and its Implications for the Settlement of the Americas. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 132:605–621
(4) Yao, et al. (2002), Phylogeographic differentiation of mitochondrial DNA in Han Chinese. Am J Hum Genet 70:635–651.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

mtDNA D4H3a haplogroup

This is the fourth post of a series. It continues my previous posts, in which I covered the Kentucky Red-haired Mummy (Eastern U.S., red haired Amerindian) and continued with the Cueva del Gualicho Mummy in Patagonia (which was also painted red and believed to be a Fuegian - more on Fuegians below: they were skilled canoe builders.), the third post was about the Pericué of Baja California, who were able seamen, used ochre on their dead and were related to the "red haired" Lovelock, Nevada, people who, like them and the Aleutians buried their dead in a similar maner.

In today's post we will look into a mtDNA that links several groups of Native Americans along the Pacific coast, who wer all canoe builders and seamen.

mtDNA D4h3a

The remains of a man found in 1996 at the On Your Knees Cave, on the Prince of Wales Island on the Alaska panhandle, US., were analysed, and dated to 10.3 kya. His mtDNA was sequenced and found to belong to a very singular haplogroup: D4h3a.

It is a very rare one since only 2% of Amerindians carry it. It is found at its highest frequencies among certain South American groups and less frequent in Mexico and California. (1) Let's take a look at its distribution:

Fuegian canoe people

Another group carrying D4h3A are the Yaghans (2) (also known as Yamana). They are Fuegians (yes, it seems Moreno was right). The Yaghans were canoe people, who became extinct due to European diseases by 1900. For millennia they had been the southernmost people in the whole world.

The Yaghan were canoe people, they used their canoes to navigate the sea from Cape Horn to Isla de los Estados Island in Tierra del Fuego. Their canoes were described by Captain Robert FitzRoy in the early 1800s as follows: (7)

"...its shape is nearly that which would be taken by the strong bark of the trunk of a tree (twelve to twenty feet in length, and a foot, or two feet, in diameter), separated from the solid wood, in one piece. If this piece of bark were drawn together at the ends, and kept open by sticks in the middle, it would look rather like a Fuegian canoe."

He was right, they were built from a single piece of bark, peeled off a Southern Beech tree. It was soaked in water and then shaped into a canoe, lashed to a frame made from saplings. (5)

Yaghan bark canoe. (5)

Alakaluf

Yet another group of Fuegians, the Alakaluf or Kawésqar people also carry this odd haplogroup (+10% frequency), they did not die out, and still live in the region. Coincidentally (or not), they are also canoe people, living to the west an northwestern shores of Tierra del Fuego Island.

An Alakaluf mummy (yes, they too buried their dead in caves, mummified, and wrapped in hides) (3)(6) was studied and its mtDNA sequenced. It was D4h3a too.

The Alakaluf canoes were dugouts, built by hollowing a large tree trunk and whittling it into a canoe. Later, after the arrival of the Europeans, they built them using axes and saws, with planks, imitating European boats.

Both Fuegian groups date back to at least 12 Kya in that region (4) and have myths relating to a universal deluge, perhaps recalling the period of deglaciation, when the Strait of Magellan flooded as did the low lying areas of southern Patagonia.

Chonos

Not much is known about them because they became extinct by the mid 1700s. European disease killed them all.

The Chono lived south of Chiloé island, in Chile, along the coast of the Guaitecas Islands, Taitao Peninsula and the Guayanecos Islands, up to the Gulf of Penas.

They lived in their canoes, the Dalcas. They fished, hunted sea lions and collected shellfish. Their boats were their livelihood.

Dalca: it was built with three to five wooden planks which were sewn together with vegetable fibers. They used the wood of the larch (alerce) tree which they split lengthwise with wedges. The wood was soaked and fired to bend it into shape.

One, kept at the Stockholm Folkens Museum Etnografiska in Sweden measures 4.26 x 1.00 x 0.51 m [13.9 x 3.3 x 1.6 ft.]. Though there are Spanish accounts of canoes carrying 15 oarsmen and measuring 10 meters [32.8 ft.] long. They had a rudder, ribs, benches and sometimes masts.

A "Dalca", made from sewn planks by the Chonos of Chile

The spaces between the planks were caulked with the leaves of a local plant.

The Dalcas have an "astonishing similarity with vessels built by Lapps" (5). We know that they too carried they D4h3a haplogroup (11), but the other Patagonian natives (Mapuche to the north, Tehuelche to the east and the Fuegians to the south, carried it, so it is likely that they did too).

Cayapa

The Cayapa people, of Ecuador, also carry the D4h3a haplogroup (21.67% frequency). They live along the Cayapas river on the Ecuadorian Pacific coast.

A Cayapa canoe. From (10).

They made their canoes using the "dugout" technique, hollowing a balsa-wood tree-trunk. They make them nowadays using the same technique. These canoes measure about 4.5 m (14.8 ft) long.

Chumash

The Chumash of southern California (U.S.) also carry Haplogroup D4h3a (up to 16% frequency). They lived on the mainland and the Channel Islands on the Santa Barbara Channel.

They, like the Chono built a "split-planked" canoe crafted with planks sewn together with cord and the seams were caulked with pitch. (is this a coincidence?). They called them Tomol.

The Gabrielino natives (close by) built identical ones, called te'aat.

The Tomol were light and measured between 12 and 24 feet long. (4 and 8 m). The Chumash also built rafts ("Balsas" in Spanish) from tule reed stalks tied into bundles 10 - 15 ft. long (3 - 5 m) and covered with tar to avoid rotting. They also built dugout canoes 20 - 30 ft. long (7 - 10 m). (9)(8)

Comments

We see that the D4h3a tends to have a coastal distribution along the Pacific Ocean from Canada to Tierra del Fuego: Canada, California, Ecuador, Southern Chile and Argentina.

The Yaghan, Alakaluf, Chono, Cayapa, Chumash and the man from On Your Knees Cave, all had this haplogroup.

They all built sea-going craft: rafts, dugout canoes, bark canoes and "sewn plank" canoes.

Other groups also built canoes or rafts; the Changos in Northern Chile, the Pericú, and the Aleuts, though we cannot tell if they also carried this rare haplogroup.

But, as we will see in our next post, it is also found quite far from the Western Coast: as it was detected in ancient remains from the Klunk Mound (Illinois) and in Shandong, China.

Furthermore, the Ainu people of Japan also built "lashed-canoes" -like the Chono and the Chumash (as well as dugouts), and they may have a link with the Amerindians.

Sources

(1) Perego, Ugo, A. et al., (2009). Distinctive Paleo-Indian Migration Routes from Beringia Marked by Two Rare mtDNA Haplogroups. Current Biology 19, 1-8, 2009 p. 2 doi 10.1016/j.cub.2008.11.058
(3) Bryson, George, (2008). DNA tracks ancient Alaskan's descendants. Anchorage Daily News, December 28, 2008.
(3) Francisco Torres, et al., (2009), Characterization of Genetic Markers of a Kawésqar Body and the Last Descendants of the Same Ethnic Group. www.promega.com, March. 2009
(4) Miotti, L. and M.C.Salemme, (2003). When Patagonia was colonized: people mobility at high latitudes during Pleistocene ⁄ Holocene transition. Quaternary International 109-10, 2003, 95-111, pages 97-98
(5) Vairo, Carlos P. Los Yamana. 1995, Zagier & Urruty
(6) Byron, J., (1996). Naufragio en las costas patagónicas. B. Aires: Ediciones del Sol
(7) FitzRoy, R., (1839). Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle between the years 1826 and 1836... London: Henry Colburn
(8) Jeanne E. Arnold. Credit Where Credit is Due: The History of the Chumash Oceangoing Plank Canoe. American Antiquity, 72(2), 2007, pp. 196-209
(9) Dee Travis Hudson, (1976). Chumash Canoes of Mission Santa Barbara: the Revolt of 1824. Journal of California Anthropology
(10) Alicia Alonso-Sagaseta de Ilúrdoz. Colecciones de arqueología y etnología de América de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Madrid Editorial Complutense, 2000
(11) See link. Estudio de ADN de pueblo chono revela que desciende de primeros pobladores de América. March 31, 2013

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall ©