The mysterious lack of Olmec DNA papers

The Olmec culture flourished on the Gulf of Mexico coast (Campeche Bay) in the Tehuantepec, Veracruz, Chiapas, Tabasco region of Mexico between 1,500 BC and 100 BC. They are the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilisation, predating the Mayas and the Aztecs. (Short article on the Olmec people or this book with a section dedicated to their culture, both of them in English).

My previous posts (Blacks in Pre-Columbian America and Africans reached America ca. 1310 C.E.?) explored the weird and pseudoscientific theory that assumes as true that Black African people sailed across the Atlantic from Western Africa, reached Mesoamerica, and settled there, creating the Olmec civilization. For some examples of this theory, see: "Olmec and Mayas have distinct genetic origins", "The surprising connection between Olmecs and Africans", "African Origins of Olmec Civilization", etc.

I don't believe in conspiracy theories. Instead, I opt for believing in human ignorance, incompetence, and deliberate manipulation of information to forward certain causes and obscure legitimate ones. Nevertheless, as I sought information on the genetics (mtDNA, Y-chromosome and autosomal DNA) I quickly realized that there is little to be found. This seems to be a blank in the research of Amerindian genetics. Which, is quite surprising! (just google the terms "genetics Olmecs" and you will undertand what I mean).

The paltry papers on Olmec genetics

It is true, papers on Olmec genetics are really scarce! There are very few; I have only found the following, none of which analyzed nuclear DNA or Y-chromosome DNA, they only seem to have looked at the mtDNA, and it is unclear if the specimens analyzed were Olmec or not. Of course, none of these papers hint at an African origin, they state that the Olmecs are Amerindians, like all the other Native Americans. Below are these papers, with a brief comment on their main conclusions):

• Arnaiz-Villena A, et al., (2000). HLA genes in Mexican Mazatecans, the peopling of the Americas and the uniqueness of Amerindians. . Tissue Antigens. 2000 Nov;56(5):405-16. doi: 10.1034/j.1399-0039.2000.560503.x. PMID: 11144288.
  Old paper! "The HLA allele frequency distribution of the Mexican Mazatecan Indians (Olmec culture) has been studied and compared with those of other First American Natives and worldwide populations (a total of 12,100 chromosomes; 6,050 individuals from 59 different populations). The main conclusions are: 1) An indirect evidence of Olmec and Mayan relatedness is suggested, further supporting the notion that Olmecs may have been the precursors of Mayans..."
• Navarro-Romero MT, et al, (2021). Mitochondrial DNA Haplotypes in Pre-Hispanic Human Remains from Puyil Cave, Tabasco, Mexico, in María de Lourdes Muñoz-Moreno, and Michael H. Crawford (eds), Human Migration: Biocultural Perspectives (New York, 2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 21 Oct. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190945961.003.0007.
  It tells that the archaic and pre-classic individuals had The mtDNA of haplogroups A, A2, C1, C1c, and D4, haplogroup B was absent. It does not specifically mention "Olmecs" only Maya and Zoque people. But the team's next paper mentions Olmecs, see it below.
• Navarro-Romero MT, et al, (2024). Bioanthropological analysis of human remains from the archaic and classic period discovered in Puyil cave, Mexico. Am J Biol Anthropol. 2024 Jun;184(2):e24903. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.24903. Epub 2024 Feb 2. PMID: 38308451.
  It investigated "ACD" and conducted mtDNA tests, finding: "artificial cranial deformation (ACD)... These pre-Hispanic remains exhibited five mtDNA lineages: A, A2, C1, C1c and D4. Network analysis revealed a close genetic affinity between pre-Hispanic Puyil Cave inhabitants and contemporary Maya subpopulations from Mexico and Guatemala, as well as individuals from Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and China. Conclusions: Our results elucidate the dispersal of pre-Hispanic Olmec and Maya ancestors and suggest that ACD practices are closely related to Olmec and Maya practices. Additionally, we conclude that ACD has likely been practiced in the region since the Middle-Archaic Period." More or less a re-hash of the 2021 paper, but, it does mention the Olmec culture.
• Enrique Villamar Becerril, (2018) Estudios de ADN y el origen de los olmecas, Arqueología Mexicana, núm. 150, pp. 40-41.
  "The pioneering mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) study conducted on Olmec individuals, one from San Lorenzo and the other from Loma del Zapote, resulted, in both cases, in the unequivocal presence of the distinctive mutations of the maternal lineage “A”. That is to say, the origin of the Olmecs is not in Africa but in the Americas, since they share the most abundant of the five mitochondrial haplogroups characteristic of the indigenous populations of our continent: A, B, C, D, and X." These individuals had haplogroup A.
• Cyphers, Ann, (2020) El ADNMT y la descendencia olmeca, Arqueología Mexicana, Edición especial, núm. 94, p. 23. Same conclusions. It is not based on new studies, only repetition of Villamar's paper (above), mtDNA is Amerindian and not African.

The Olmecs didn't vanish into thin air, their genes must be present in the current population of this region. According to Pye and Clarke (2005), the area where the Olmec and Mokaya lived, was peopled by the Proto-Mixe-Zoque people, who differed from their neighbors, the Maya and Zapotec. The Maya would have a large impact on them when their civilization bloomed and the Olmecs vanished.

The "Ghost" population

However, a study published in Science (Viridiana Villa-Islas et al., Demographic history and genetic structure in pre-Hispanic Central Mexico. Science 380, eadd6142 (2023). DOI:10.1126/science.add6142), though it does not mention the Olmecs and only goes back to the year 100 BC., does mention the Mixe people! and adds an intriguing fact, a "ghost population" admixed into the Mixe.

"Earlier studies report the contribution of “ghost” genetic ancestry from an unsampled group, designated as UpopA, among the present-day Mixe from Mexico. We tested the presence of this UpopA in the pre-Hispanic individuals using combinations of admixture graph models... we found that Sierra Tarahumara and Mixe share the same ghost genetic ancestry, UPopA ... Finally, we ... confirmed that ... Mixe share the contribution from UpopA1... A contribution from an unsampled population named UpopA was previously identified in present-day Mixe as well as in present-day northern and central Indigenous populations from Mexico. UpopA was estimated to have diverged ~24,700 years ago from Native Americans"

The "earlier studies" mentioned above by Villa-Islas et al. refer to a paper by J. I. Moreno-Mayar et al. (2018), Early human dispersals within the Americas (Science 362, eaav2621 (2018). DOI:10.1126/science.aav2621), which says "Modeling indicates that the Mixe most likely carry gene flow from an unsampled outgroup and form a clade with Lagoa Santa... Hereafter, we refer to that outgroup as unsampled population A (UPopA), which is neither AB, NNA, or SNA and which we infer split off from NAs ~24.7 ka ago, with an age range between 30 and 22 ka ago... Under a model with a pulselike gene flow, we inferred a probability of ~11% gene flow from UPopA into the Mixe ~8.7 ka ago (95% CI, 0.4 to 13.9 ka ago)... We infer that the Lagoa Santa population diverged from the Mixe shortly thereafter, ~13.9 ka ago (95% CI, 12.8 to 14.8 ka ago)"

A "Ghost" population is one that left genetic material (DNA, mtDNA, aDNA) in a current or ancient population, but has not been sampled or, it vanished, becoming extinct leaving no remains; a ghost.

Who were these people?

The fact that they appear among the Mixe (Olmec) and the peculiar Lagoa Santa people of Brazil, who carry rare haplogroups and also seem to be associated with Australasians, is surprising.

This is something that furhter genetic research could help clarify with deeper sampling, including ancient remains, if the ghost signal belongs to allelles found at very low frequencies, a larger sample will provide more data about them and help pinpoint the ghost population's origin.

Closing Comments

It is likely that the lack of publications on the Olmec DNA is due to a shortage of funds (Mexico may not provide funding for this kind of research), not enough academic interest in this culture, or, that the jungle habitat or the poorly preserved remains don't allow collection of adequate genetic material for DNA studies. I guess it is a combination of all factors. The Aztecs and the Mayas seem to be more popular as you can see in the following image which compares web searches for Olmecs (blue), Aztecs (yellow) and Mayas (red) between 2004 and now (Google Trends). Notice the Maya peak in 2012 (when many believed that the world was going to end according to a prophecy in the Maya calendar).

Link to this Google Trends result

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

On Homo Erectus and the Mayas

 

Some time ago, a reader posted a comment about my post:
Toluquilla Footprint. Is it erectus?, this anonymous comment was the following:

Anonymous said...
"It just comfirm the story from the Mayan creation history, Popul Wuh, where it is told that before now adays human came to america there was another kind of humans who where more clomsy build and that the gods did not like what they had created in the first place. So they wyped out the first primitive humans and created some new ones that where better. (something like that, out of free memory :-)) The Mayas where clever!
April 24, 2011 1:34 PM

Of course I thanked her/him and started looking for the Mayan text, which I found. So I posted a reply:

Austin Whittall said...
"I have actually found the text in Google Books at the following link: Chapter II pp. 32 and following. The text is in Spanish, but I will post it translated later. Very interesting.

Today I will post the translation (sorry for the delay!):

"And at that instant they made the dolls carved in wood. They resembled humans, they
spoke like humans and they peopled the surface of the earth.
They existed and they multiplied; the dolls had daughters, had sons, of wood; but they had no soul, no understanding, they did not remember their Creator their Shaper; they walked around aimlessly and crawling.

They no longer remembered the Heart in the Sky and so, fell in disgrace. It was only a trial, an attempt to make humans. At first they spoke, but their face was emaciated, their feet and hands lacked consistency, they had no blood, no substance, no humidity, no fat; their cheeks were dry, dry their feet and their hands and yellow their flesh.
[...]
They were soon annihilated, destroyed and the stick dolls were undone and received death.
A flood was produced by the Heart in Heaven; a great deluge was formed and it fell upon the heads of the stick dolls."

But, gods are stubborn, and don't give in easily, So a second attempt was carried out trying to improve on the primitive men:

"Out of tzité (a kind of plant) he made the flesh of man, but when the woman was made by the Creator and Shaper, the flesh of woman was made of rushes. [...] But they did not think, they did not speak to their maker [...]

So they too were exterminated, however they were not as primitive as the first guys, these tzité men had dogs, pots and hearths they had homes too. Fortunately not all were destroyed:

"People made to be destroyed and annihilated: all of them had their mouths destroyed and their faces.
And they say that the descent of those people are the monkeys that now live in the woods; these are a sample of them, because out of sticks was their flesh made by the Creator and Shaper."

So here we have some primitive mannikins which gave origin to monkeys!.

The story above, from Popol Vuh is also recorded in the Annals of Cauhtitlán, which also mentions a "Fourth Earth" during which "many persons drowned and others were cast upon the mountains and became monkeys".

The Mayan text clearly points towards pre-humans who, were not as primitive as may seem, they had pets, homes and lit fires: they could have been erectus.

By the way, these Annals of Cauhtitlán or "Chimalpopoca Codex" were written 50 years after the Spaniards razed the Mesoamerican Civilizations. They speak about four "eras" before our current "fifth" period:
During cycle 1, the gods made men from ash. The next generation of men became fish. They were followed by "giants" then fire rained down on earth and the fourth period began:

"all [men] became monkeys and into the woods they went, they went to live as ape-men".

This is indeed interesting, they did not turn into monkeys, but into "ape-men", which is exactly what the Spanish words: "hombres-mono" means. Or should we say "Homo erectus"? Wouldn't a Mayan or Aztec human believe an erectus was some kind of ape man?. Surely.

Once again my apologies for taking 4 months to post the translation. I will catch up with my posting in the next few weeks.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall ©