Ancient Marine Hunter-Gatherers From Patagonia and Tierra Del Fuego: Diversity and Differentiation Using Uniparentally Inherited Genetic Markers

Abstract

Objectives: The human population history from Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego has been of great interest in the context of the American peopling. Different sources of evidence have contributed to the characterization of the local populations, but some main questions about their history remain unsolved. Among the native populations, two marine hunter-gatherers groups inhabited the Patagonian channels below the 478S: Kaweskar and Yamana. Regardless of their geographical proximity and cultural resemblance, their languages were mutually unintelligible. In this study we aim to evaluate the genetic diversity of uniparental genetic markers in both groups and to test if there is a high genetic differentiation between them, mirroring their linguistic differences.

Material and Methods: Ancient DNA was extracted from 37 samples from both populations. We compared their genetic variability of their mitochondrial lineages and Y-STR as well as with other modern native populations from the area and further north.

Results and Discussion: We observed an important differentiation in their maternal lineages: while Kaweskar shows a high frequency of D (80%), Yamana shows a high frequency of C (90%). The analysis of paternal lineages reveals the presence of only Q1a2a1a1 and little variation was found between individuals. Both groups show very low levels of genetic diversity compared with modern populations. We also notice shared and unique mitochondrial DNA variants between modern and ancient samples of Kaweskar and Yamana.