2017/10/26 by Ricardo Varela, Torsten Günther, Maja Krzewińska +9 · 4 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Forensic and Genetic Research #Genetic diversity and population structure #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Haplogroup #Biology #Ancient DNA #Genetic genealogy #Population #Evolutionary biology #Mitochondrial DNA #Radiocarbon dating #Genome #1000 Genomes Project #Human migration #Human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup #Archaeology #Genetics #Haplotype #Geography #Gene #Demography #Paleontology #Allele #Genotype
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.cub.2017.09.059
openalex publication_date 2017/10/26 · openalex created_date 2017/11/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The origins and genetic affinity of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Canary Islands, commonly known as Guanches, are poorly understood. Though radiocarbon dates on archaeological remains such as charcoal, seeds, and domestic animal bones suggest that people have inhabited the islands since the 5 th century BCE [1–3], it remains unclear how many times, and by whom, the islands were first settled [4, 5]. Previously published ancient DNA analyses of uniparental genetic markers have shown that the Guanches carried common North African Y chromosome markers (E-M81, E-M78, and J-M267) and mitochondrial lineages such as U6b, in addition to common Eurasian haplogroups [6–8]. These results are in agreement with some linguistic, archaeological, and anthropological data indicating an origin from a North African Berber-like population [1, 4, 9]. However, to date there are no published Guanche autosomal genomes to help elucidate and directly test this hypothesis. To resolve this, we generated the first genome-wide sequence data and mitochondrial genomes from eleven archaeological Guanche individuals originating from Gran Canaria and Tenerife. Five of the individuals (directly radiocarbon dated to a time transect spanning the 7 th –11 th centuries CE) yielded sufficient autosomal genome coverage (0.21× to 3.93×) for population genomic analysis. Our results show that the Guanches were genetically similar over time and that they display the greatest genetic affinity to extant Northwest Africans, strongly supporting the hypothesis of a Berber-like origin. We also estimate that the Guanches have contributed 16%–31% autosomal ancestry to modern Canary Islanders, here represented by two individuals from Gran Canaria.