Longstanding ideas about the face of one
of the most famous works of Aztec sculpture are being challenged by a
new theory from a University of Texas at Austin researcher.
Art history professor David Stuart argues
that the image on the Aztec Sun Stone is more than a calendar or a
simple representation of the sun god, but rather a named portrait of the
ruler Montezuma II as a “sun king,” dedicated
a few years before the arrival of Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. Scholars have debated about the identity
of the central face on the stone for more than 100 years, but this new
line of inquiry from Stuart shows there may be more to the story.
“This new theory historicizes the imagery
and the monument, going beyond seeing it as just a religious or
cosmological sculpture,” Stuart said. “Previous scholars had identified
the name glyph of Montezuma on the stone, but the
next step was identifying the name as a label and not just a note about
who made it.”
During a recent trip to Mexico City,
Stuart guided a UT delegation through the National Museum of
Anthropology and its iconic display of the Aztec Sun Stone. “I remember
noticing a new detail in the hieroglyphs on the stone that
gave me pause,” he said. “I continued with the tour, but I made a
mental note to return to the photos and drawings. That moment led me
toward a new line of inquiry.”
The famous stone, also known as the Aztec
Calendar Stone, was unearthed in Mexico City in 1790. It is almost 12
feet in diameter and covered in hieroglyphs, with a solar deity at its
center.
Stuart believes that the two glyphs
that appear above the central face refer to Montezuma II and the Méxica
patron god Huitzilopochtli. Based on what scholars know about
text-image relationships in Mesoamerican art, Stuart hypothesizes that
their placement has a direct bearing on the identity
of the face itself.
In Méxica art, name glyphs seldom function as
standalone entities and are instead almost always found in conjunction
with portraits and images as a means of image identification. Stuart
argues that they both label the central face of a
deified king — Montezuma II — embodying or assuming the supernatural
identity of Huitzilopochtli.
“The face on the Aztec Sun Stone is not
either the face of a sun god or a portrait of Montezuma, but both,”
Stuart said. “Montezuma looks out from the center of the stone as a
personalized representation of time and space. It’s
a metaphysical depiction of royal power.”
He also speculates that the stone might
have been originally displayed in front of the king's palace in ancient
Tenochtitlan, in front of what is now the Palacio Nacional in Mexico
City. In his tentative hypothesis, Stuart argues
that two other signs on the stone, which frame the face and create the
circular design of the stone, refer to “sun” and “market” and that they
are references to a substantial market and the palace of Montezuma II
that have been documented near the stone’s
found location.
Historical texts published by the 16th-century
Dominican friar Diego Durán refer to an “image of the sun” in the same
area, indicating that it may have been on display in or near what is now
the Plaza Mayor in Mexico City for decades after
the 1521 conquest of Tenochtitlan by the Spaniards.
The largest ever genomic study shows that the first Beaker expansion was one of cultural diffusion
Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
Prehistoric Iberians 'exported' their culture throughout Europe,
reaching Great Britain, Sicily, Poland and all over central Europe in
general. However, they did not export their genes. The Beaker culture,
which probably originated in Iberia, left remains in those parts of the
continent. However, that diffusion was not due to large migrations of
populations that took this culture with them.
These are the conclusions
of an international study in which the Spanish National Research Council
(CSIC) was involved. Its findings, published in the journal Nature,
indicate no evidence of any genetic outflow from Iberia to those areas
has been discovered. "Therefore, the diffusion of the Beaker culture
from Iberia is the first example of a culture being transmitted as an
idea, basically due to a question of social prestige (since it was
associated with the virtues of being virile and of being warriors),
which is why it is adopted by other populations", indicates researcher
Carles Lalueza-Fox, from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, a mixed
research centre run by CSIC and the Pompeu Fabra University, in
Barcelona, Spain.
Between 4,700 and 4,400 years ago, a new type of bell-shaped beaker
pottery was introduced throughout western and central Europe. For more
than a century, archaeologists have been trying to determine whether the
spread of this beaker pottery - and the (Beaker) culture associated
with it - represented a large-scale migration or whether it was due
simply to the exchange of new ideas.
Now, this new study, which includes
DNA data from 400 prehistoric skeletons collected from sites across
Europe, resolves the debate of whether the spread was due to migrations
or ideas, indicating that both arguments are correct. The findings show
that the culture which produced these bell-shaped beakers extended from
Iberia to central Europe without a significant movement of populations,
although the Beaker culture would spread to other places through
migrations at a later date.
The study, whose first author is the Spanish researcher Íñigo Olalde,
a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, shows that once the (Bell)
Beaker culture reaches the centre of Europe (around Germany and its
surrounding area), it expands backwards to other places, notably to the
British Isles. Yet, in this case, it does represent a migration,
replacing around 90% of the population with it.
"That is to say, the
Neolithic people who built Stonehenge (and who had a greater genetic
similarity with Neolithic Iberians than with those from Central Europe)
almost disappear and are replaced by the populations from the Beaker
culture from the Netherlands and Germany. This replacement is almost
absolute in terms of the Y chromosome, which is transmitted by the
paternal line, indicating an extreme reproductive bias, and therefore a
previously unheard of social dominance. The backward flow also reaches
other places such as Italy (at least in the north) and Iberia. I believe
it is possible that this is also associated with the expansion of the
Celtic or Proto-Celtic languages," Mr. Lalueza-Fox points out.
Coordinated by researcher David Reich from Harvard University, the
study was developed by an international team of 144 archaeologists and
geneticists from institutions in Europe and the United States.
IMAGE: DNA from people from the Bell Beaker
culture (illustration of one man shown) reveal that they descended from
nomadic herders who migrated from the steppes of Central Asia.
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Credit: Manuel Rojo-Guerra/ Luis Pascual-Repiso
Scientists once could reconstruct humanity's distant past only from
the mute testimony of ancient settlements, bones, and artifacts.
No longer. Now there's a powerful new approach for illuminating the
world before the dawn of written history - reading the actual genetic
code of our ancient ancestors. Two papers published in the journal Nature
on February 21, 2018, more than double the number of ancient humans
whose DNA has been analyzed and published to 1,336 individuals - up from
just 10 in 2014.
The new flood of genetic information represents a "coming of age"
for the nascent field of ancient DNA, says lead author David Reich, a
Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Harvard Medical School -
and it upends cherished archeological orthodoxy. "When we look at the
data, we see surprises again and again and again," says Reich.
Together with his lab's previous work and that of other pioneers of
ancient DNA, the Big Picture message is that our prehistoric ancestors
were not nearly as homebound as once thought. "There was a view that
migration is a very rare process in human evolution," Reich explains.
Not so, says the ancient DNA. Actually, Reich says, "the orthodoxy - the
assumption that present-day people are directly descended from the
people who always lived in that same area - is wrong almost everywhere."
Instead, "the view that's emerging - for which David is an eloquent
advocate - is that human populations are moving and mixing all the
time," says John Novembre, a computational biologist at the University
of Chicago.
Stonehenge's Builders Largely Vanish
In one of the new papers, Reich and a cast of dozens of
collaborators chart the spread of an ancient culture known by its
stylized bell-shaped pots, the so-called Bell Beaker phenomenon. This
culture first spread between Iberia and central Europe beginning about
4,700 years ago. By analyzing DNA from several hundred samples of human
bones, Reich's team shows that only the ideas - not the people who
originated them - made the move initially. That's because the genes of
the Iberian population remain distinct from those of the central
Europeans who adopted the characteristic pots and other artifacts.
But the story changes when the Bell Beaker culture expanded to
Britain after 4,500 years ago. Then, it was brought by migrants who
almost completely supplanted the island's existing inhabitants - the
mysterious people who had built Stonehenge - within a few hundred years.
"There was a sudden change in the population of Britain," says Reich.
"It was an almost complete replacement."
For archeologists, these and other findings from the study of
ancient DNA are "absolutely sort of mind-blowing," says archaeologist
Barry Cunliffe, a professor emeritus at the University of Oxford. "They
are going to upset people, but that is part of the excitement of it."
Vast Migration from the Steppe
Consider the unexpected movement of people who originally lived
on the steppes of Central Asia, north of the Black and Caspian seas.
About 5,300 years ago, the local hunter-gatherer cultures were replaced
in many places by nomadic herders, dubbed the Yamnaya, who were able to
expand rapidly by exploiting horses and the new invention of the cart,
and who left behind big, rich burial sites.
Archeologists have long known that some of the technologies used by
the Yamnaya later spread to Europe. But the startling revelation from
the ancient DNA was that the people moved, too - all the way to the
Atlantic coast of Europe in the west to Mongolia in the east and India
in the south. This vast migration helps explain the spread of
Indo-European languages. And it significantly replaced the local
hunter-gatherer genes across Europe with the indelible stamp of steppe
DNA, as happened in Britain with the migration of the Bell Beaker people
to the island.
"This whole phenomenon of the steppe expansion is an amazing example
of what ancient DNA can show," says Reich. And, adds Cunliffe, "no one,
not even archeologists in their wildest dreams, had expected such a
high steppe genetic content in the populations of northern Europe in the
third millennium B.C."
This ancient DNA finding also explains the "strange result" of a
genetic connection that had been hinted at in the genomes of modern-day
Europeans and Native Americans, adds Chicago's Novembre. The link is
evidence from people who lived in Siberia 24,000 years ago, whose
telltale DNA is found both in Native Americans, and in the Yamnaya
steppe populations and their European descendants.
New Insights from Southeastern Europe
Reich's second new Nature paper, on the genomic history
of southeastern Europe, reveals an additional migration as farming
spread across Europe, based on data from 255 individuals who lived
between 14,000 and 2,500 years ago. It also adds a fascinating new
nugget - the first compelling evidence that the genetic mixing of
populations in Europe was biased toward one sex.
Hunter-gatherer genes remaining in northern Europeans after the
influx of migrating farmers came more from males than females, Reich's
team found. "Archaeological evidence shows that when farmers first
spread into northern Europe, they stopped at a latitude where their
crops didn't grow well," he says. "As a result, there were persistent
boundaries between the farmers and the hunter-gatherers for a couple of
thousand years." This gave the hunter-gatherers and farmers a long time
to interact. According to Reich, one speculative scenario is that during
this long, drawn-out interaction, there was a social or power dynamic
in which farmer women tended to be integrated into hunter-gatherer
communities.
So far that's only a guess, but the fact that ancient DNA provides
clues about the different social roles and fates of men and women in
ancient society "is another way, I think, that these data are so
extraordinary," says Reich.
Advanced Machines
These scientific leaps forward have been fueled by three key
developments. One is the dramatic cost reduction (and speed increase) in
gene sequencing made possible by advanced machines from Illumina and
other companies.
The second is a discovery spearheaded by Ron Pinhasi,
an archaeologist at University College Dublin. His group showed that the
petrous bone, containing the tiny inner ear, harbors 100 times more DNA
than other ancient human remains, offering a huge increase in the
amount of genetic material available for analysis. The third is a method
implemented by Reich for reading the genetic codes of 1.2 million
carefully chosen variable parts of DNA (known as single nucleotide
polymorphisms) rather than having to sequence entire genomes. That
speeds the analysis and reduces its cost even further.
The new field made a splash when Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, working with Reich and many
other colleagues, used ancient DNA to prove that Neanderthals and humans
interbred. Since then, the number of ancient humans whose DNA Reich has
analyzed has risen exponentially. His lab has generated about
three-quarters of the world's published data and, included unpublished
data, has now reached 3,700 genomes.
"Every time we jump an order of
magnitude in the number of individuals, we can answer questions that we
couldn't even have asked before," says Reich.
Now, with hundreds of thousands of ancient skeletons (and their
petrous bones) still to be analyzed, the field of ancient DNA is poised
to both pin down current questions and tackle new ones. For example,
Reich's team is working with Cunliffe and others to study more than
1,000 samples from Britain to more accurately measure the replacement of
the island's existing gene pool by the steppe-related DNA from the Bell
Beaker people.
"The evidence we have for a 90 percent replacement is
very, very suggestive, but we need to test it a bit more to see how much
of the pre-Beaker population really survived," explains Cunliffe.
Beyond that, ancient DNA offers the promise of studying not only the
movements of our distant ancestors, but also the evolution of traits
and susceptibilities to diseases. "This is a new scientific instrument
that, like the microscope when it was invented in the seventeenth
century, makes it possible to study aspects of biology that simply were
not possible to examine before," explains Reich.
In one example,
scientists at the University of Copenhagen found DNA from plague in the
steppe populations. If the groups that migrated to Britain after 4,500
years ago brought the disease with them, that could help explain why the
existing population shrank so quickly.
With the possibility of many such discoveries still ahead, "it is a
very exciting time," says Cunliffe. "Ancient DNA is going to revitalize
archeology in a way that few of us could have guessed even ten years
ago."
In the last eight years, the field of ancient DNA research has
expanded from just one ancient human genome to more than 1,300. The
latest 625 of those genomes debut Feb. 21 in two papers published
simultaneously in Nature, including the largest study of ancient DNA to date.
The studies were conducted by international teams each containing
more than 100 archaeologists and geneticists and co-led by Harvard
Medical School professor David Reich. The results focus on European
prehistory in the Stone and Copper Ages.
Findings at a glance:
The Bell Beaker culture comprised at least two genetically distinct
populations and initially represented a spread of ideas more than of
people, unlike other notable prehistoric archaeological cultures in
Europe.
Ninety percent of the population of what is now Britain was
completely replaced by an influx of Beaker practitioners around 4,400
years ago, just after the major megaliths at Stonehenge were erected.
The genetic shift introduced variants for paler skin and
lighter-colored eyes; genes for digesting lactose became common sometime
later.
Multiple pulses of farmers moved from Asia into Europe during the
transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture; previously, data
was consistent with only a single group giving rise to all European
farmers.
Initially, the mixture of incoming Asian farmers and local European
hunter-gatherers tended to involve hunter-gatherer women being
integrated into farmer communities. Later, the trend reversed and new
hunter-gatherer ancestry came mostly from men.
The large sample sizes magnify the power of studies that delve into:
Genetic variation within a specific region and how it changes over time
The evolution of genes that affect complex traits
The distribution of families within and across grave sites
Matrilocality and patrilocality--areas where women stayed in the same place and men moved, and vice versa
IMAGE:UA archaeologist Takeshi Inomata during an excavation at Ceibal.
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Credit: Courtesy of Takeshi Inomata/University of Arizona
With the help of airborne laser mapping technology, a team of
archaeologists, led by University of Arizona professor Takeshi Inomata,
is exploring on a larger scale than ever before the history and spread
of settlement at the ancient Maya site of Ceibal in Guatemala.
In a new paper published in the journal PLOS ONE, Inomata
and his colleagues explain how they commissioned the use of LiDAR, or
light detection and ranging, technology to map a significantly larger
area of Ceibal than ever before recorded.
LiDAR provides highly accurate, detailed 3-D maps of ground surface
topography. Over the course of just a few days at Ceibal, a small
airplane, equipped with lasers powerful enough to peer through the dense
jungle canopy, soared above the site, mapping -- with a less than
10-centimeter margin of error -- the shape, size and location of ancient
Maya pyramids, platforms, ceremonial centers, roads, water reservoirs
and other structures previously undocumented by archaeologists.
The resulting map covers 470 square kilometers that would have been
extremely challenging for archaeologists to reach on foot, and includes
the locations of more than 15,000 ancient Maya architectural remains.
Previously, archaeologists had information on only about 8 square
kilometers and fewer than 1,000 structures in the area.
"This kind of understanding was really unthinkable some years ago,
and now suddenly we can have all these data," Inomata said. "The scale
is completely different."
Inomata and his colleagues used the LiDAR data to reconstruct a
timeline of growth and change at Ceibal, building upon what they already
knew from previous excavations about when different styles of
structures appeared between about 1,000 B.C. and A.D. 950.
They outline their methods in detail in the PLOS ONE paper.
"What we tried to do here was to set up a systematic method of
analyzing this LiDAR data over a wide area, and then translate it into
an interpretation of temporal sequences and social change," said
Inomata, a professor and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in Environment and
Social Justice in the UA School of Anthropology.
Combining LiDAR and excavation data then allowed the archaeologists
to reconstruct settlement patterns over a long period of time.
"Looking at the LiDAR image, you can see the specific types of
architecture -- pyramids, long structures -- and we know from our
excavations what time period they're from. So just looking at the shape
of the structures, we can see this network of communities and ceremonial
centers from specific periods," Inomata said.
Lasers Let Humans Explore Challenging Terrain
Mapping an archaeological site in a densely vegetated area such as
the Guatemalan jungle is a daunting task -- one traditionally done on
foot. Because of the challenging terrain, only about 1.9 square
kilometers of Ceibal had been completely mapped previously -- by Harvard
archaeologists in the 1960s -- while about 6 more kilometers were
surveyed with less detail.
It was in that small area that Inomata and his colleagues have been conducting archaeological excavations for the last 13 years.
Since joining the growing number of researchers who have used the
LiDAR surveying method to help with interpretation of archaeological
sites, Inomata and his team have gained access to data that would have
been nearly impossible to obtain through on-foot surveys. The LiDAR
survey, which was conducted by the University of Houston's National
Center for Airborne Laser Mapping, even found a few things that the
original on-the-ground mapping done in the 1960s missed.
"The maps that Harvard made were incredibly accurate, considering
they were all ground survey, but with LiDAR we found a lot more
buildings than were on the map previously, and their locations are very
accurate," said paper co-author Melissa Burham, a UA graduate student in
anthropology.
As a growing number of researchers turn to the LiDAR surveying
method to aid in the interpretation of archaeological sites, Inomata and
his team hope their colleagues in the field may follow a similar
process to what they used at Ceibal, which they plan to apply again in
their regional survey in the state of Tabasco in Mexico, where they will
begin work in February.
"In archaeology, excavation is always important, but you can't
excavate everything, so you look for patterns on a smaller scale that
you can extrapolate over a larger region," said Burham, who co-authored
the paper along with Inomata, UA anthropology professor Daniela Triadan
and researchers from Guatemala and Japan. "That's really what this paper
aims to do. This can help other people understand growth at other Maya
centers and help with dating methods."
This field excavation photo shows a double burial in Kargadur, located
in Istria County, Croatia. The skeletal remains are among 225 skeletal
remains sampled in a study of two major migrations across southeastern
Europe during prehistoric times. Results of the study are in a paper,
titled 'The Genomic History of Southeastern Europe,' that was published
in the Feb. 21 issue of Nature.
Credit: Darko Komšo
Two University of Wyoming researchers contributed to a new study in
which DNA of ancient skeletal remains of people from southeastern Europe
were used to determine migration patterns across Europe during
prehistoric times.
Ivor Jankovic, an associate adjunct professor, and Ivor
Karavanic, an adjunct professor, both in UW's Department of
Anthropology, contributed to the new study that is highlighted in a
paper, titled "The Genomic History of Southeastern Europe," published
today (Feb. 21) in Nature, an international weekly journal of science.
"The study confirmed that the region of southeastern Europe was a
major nexus and a genetic contact zone between the East and West during
prehistoric times," says Jankovic, whose full-time job is assistant
director of the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb,
Croatia. "Two major migrations passing through southeastern Europe were
confirmed by the means of archaeo-genetic studies."
The first migration was the early Neolithic Period -- 6,000
Before Common Era (BCE) -- when the first farmers, from Anatolia -- Asia
Minor -- spread through Europe. The second migration occurred during
the early Bronze Age (3,000-2,500 BCE) when the so-called "steppe
population," from the Eurasian steppe, replaced much of northern
Europe's previous population.
The first farmers of northern and western Europe passed through
southeastern Europe with limited hunter-gatherer genetic admixture,
which occurs when two or more previously isolated populations begin
interbreeding. However, some groups that remained mixed extensively --
without the male-biased, hunter-gatherer admixture that prevailed later
in the North and West, according to the paper.
Southeastern Europe
continued to be a nexus between East and West, with intermittent genetic
contact with the Steppe people up to 2,000 years before the migrations
that replaced much of northern Europe's population.
"In some places, hunter-gatherers and incoming farmers seem to
have mixed very quickly," says Iain Mathieson, a geneticist at the
University of Pennsylvania, who was first author of the paper. "But,
mostly, the two groups remained isolated, at least for the first few
hundred years. These hunter-gatherers had been living there for
thousands of years, and it must have been quite a shock to have these
new people show up -- with a completely different lifestyle and
appearance."
Karavanic, a professor in the University of Zagreb's Department
of Archaeology, was the leader of archaeological excavations of the
Paleolithic/Neolithic site of Zemunica cave, from which several human
remains were unearthed and used in the study. The discoveries gave
needed information on origin and background research.
Jankovic, along with Mario Novak, a research associate at the
Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb, were involved in the
bio-archaeological study of human remains from several of the study
samples.
The involvement of Jankovic and Karavanic in this study started
through Novak, who visited UW last year to present a talk. Jankovic and
James Ahern, former head of UW's Department of Anthropology and now a UW
associate provost, collaborated with Novak on several previous
publications.
Before the arrival of farming in southeastern Europe, the region
saw interactions between diverged groups of hunter-gatherers. This
interaction continued after farming arrived. After the first appearance
of agriculture in the mid-seventh millennium B.C., farming spread
westward via a Mediterranean route and northwestward via a Danubian
route. Farming was established in both Iberia (Portugal and Spain) and
central Europe by 5,600 B.C.
Ancient DNA studies have shown that the spread of farming across
Europe was accompanied by a massive movement of people closely related
to the farmers of northwestern Anatolia. But, nearly all of the ancient
DNA from Europe's first farmers is from central and Western Europe, with
only three farmers reported from southeastern Europe, the paper says.
To understand the dynamics of this migration process, Jankovic,
Karovanic, Novak and many other researchers contributed to the analysis
of genome-wide ancient DNA data from 225 skeletal remains of individuals
who lived in southeastern Europe and surrounding regions between 12,000
and 500 B.C. These areas included the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathian
Basin, the North Pontiac Steppe and surrounding regions.
"These results reveal the relationship between migrations,
admixture and subsistence in this key region and show that, even within
early European farmers, individuals differed in their ancestry,
reflecting a dynamic mosaic of hunter-farmer interbreeding," says Ron
Pinhasi, co-director of the study and an anthropologist at the
University of Vienna in Austria.
While the study has clarified the genomic history of southeastern
Europe from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age, the processes that
connected these populations to those living today remain largely
unknown, the paper states. An important direction for future research
will be to sample populations from the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman
and medieval periods, and compare them to present-day populations to
understand how these population transitions occurred, according to the
paper.
The study included participation of 117 archaeologists,
anthropologists and geneticists from 82 universities, academies,
institutes and museums across the U.S. and Europe
A thousand-year-old tooth has provided genetic evidence that the
so-called "Taíno", the first indigenous Americans to feel the full
impact of European colonisation after Columbus arrived in the New World,
still have living descendants in the Caribbean today.
Researchers were able to use the tooth of a woman found in a cave on
the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas to sequence the first complete
ancient human genome from the Caribbean. The woman lived at some point
between the 8th and 10th centuries, at least 500 years before Columbus
made landfall in the Bahamas.
The results provide unprecedented insights into the genetic makeup
of the Taíno - a label commonly used to describe the indigenous people
of that region. This includes the first clear evidence that there has
been some degree of continuity between the indigenous peoples of the
Caribbean and contemporary communities living in the region today.
Such a link had previously been suggested by other studies based on
modern DNA. None of these, however, was able to draw on an ancient
genome. The new research finally provides concrete proof that indigenous
ancestry in the region has survived to the present day.
Comparing the ancient Bahamian genome to those of contemporary
Puerto Ricans, the researchers found that they were more closely related
to the ancient Taíno than any other indigenous group in the Americas.
However, they argue that this characteristic is unlikely to be exclusive
to Puerto Ricans alone and are convinced that future studies will
reveal similar genetic legacies in other Caribbean communities.
The findings are likely to be especially significant for people in
the Caribbean and elsewhere who have long claimed indigenous Taíno
heritage, despite some historical narratives that inaccurately brand
them "extinct". Such misrepresentations have been heavily criticised by
historians and archaeologists, as well as by descendant communities
themselves, but until now they lacked clear genetic evidence to support
their case.
The study was carried out by an international team of researchers
led by Dr Hannes Schroeder and Professor Eske Willerslev within the
framework of the ERC Synergy project NEXUS1492. The findings are
published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Lead author Schroeder, from the University of Copenhagen who carried
out the research as part of the NEXUS1492 project, said: "It's a
fascinating finding. Many history books will tell you that the
indigenous population of the Caribbean was all but wiped out, but people
who self-identify as Taíno have always argued for continuity. Now we
know they were right all along: there has been some form of genetic
continuity in the Caribbean."
Willerslev, who has dual posts at St John's College, University of
Cambridge, and the University of Copenhagen, said: "It has always been
clear that people in the Caribbean have Native American ancestry, but
because the region has such a complex history of migration, it was
difficult to prove whether this was specifically indigenous to the
Caribbean, until now."
The researchers were also able to trace the genetic origins of the
indigenous Caribbean islanders, showing that they were most closely
related to Arawakan-speaking groups who live in parts of northern South
America today. This suggests that the origins of at least some the
people who migrated to the Caribbean can be traced back to the Amazon
and Orinoco Basins, where the Arawakan languages developed.
The Caribbean was one of the last parts of the Americas to be
populated by humans starting around 8,000 years ago. By the time of
European colonization, the islands were a complex patchwork of different
societies and cultures. The "Taíno" culture was dominant in the
Greater, and parts of the Lesser Antilles, as well as the Bahamas, where
the people were known as Lucayans.
To trace the genetic origins of the Lucayans the researchers
compared the ancient Bahamian genome with previously published
genome-wide datasets for over 40 present-day indigenous groups from the
Americas. In addition, they looked for traces of indigenous Caribbean
ancestry in present-day populations by comparing the ancient genome with
those of 104 contemporary Puerto Ricans included in the 1000 Genomes
Project. The 10-15% of Native American ancestry in this group was shown
to be closely related to the ancient Bahamian genome.
Jorge Estevez, a Taíno descendant who works at the National Museum
of the American Indian in New York and assisted the project team, said
that as a boy growing up in the United States, he was told stories about
his Taíno ancestors at home, but at school was taught that the same
ancestors had died out. "I wish my grandmother were alive today so that I
could confirm to her what she already knew," he added. "It shows that
the true story is one of assimilation, certainly, but not total
extinction. I am genuinely grateful to the researchers. Although this
may have been a matter of scientific inquiry for them, to us, the
descendants, it is truly liberating and uplifting."
Although indigenous Caribbean communities were island-based, the
researchers found very little genomic evidence of isolation or
inbreeding in the ancient genome. This reinforces earlier genetic
research led by Willerslev, which suggests that early human communities
developed surprisingly extensive social networks, long before the term
had digital connotations. It also echoes ongoing work by researchers at
the Faculty of Archaeology in Leiden and others indicating the
connectedness of indigenous Caribbean communities.
Professor Corinne Hofman from Leiden University and PI of the
NEXUS1492 project, said: "Archaeological evidence has always suggested
that large numbers of people who settled the Caribbean originated in
South America, and that they maintained social networks that extended
far beyond the local scale. Historically, it has been difficult to back
this up with ancient DNA because of poor preservation, but this study
demonstrates that it is possible to obtain ancient genomes from the
Caribbean and that opens up fascinating new possibilities for research."
