Abstract
The Isthmus of Panama–the narrow neck of land connecting the northern and southern American landmasses–was an obligatory corridor for the Paleo-Indians as they moved into South America. Archaeological evidence suggests an unbroken link between modern natives and their Paleo-Indian ancestors in some areas of Panama, even if the surviving indigenous groups account for only 12.3% of the total population. To evaluate if modern Panamanians have retained a larger fraction of the native pre-Columbian gene pool in their maternally-inherited mitochondrial genome, DNA samples and historical records were collected from more than 1500 volunteer participants living in the nine provinces and four indigenous territories of the Republic. Due to recent gene-flow, we detected ∼14% African mitochondrial lineages, confirming the demographic impact of the Atlantic slave trade and subsequent African immigration into Panama from Caribbean islands, and a small European (∼2%) component, indicating only a minor influence of colonialism on the maternal side. The majority (∼83%) of Panamanian mtDNAs clustered into native pan-American lineages, mostly represented by haplogroup A2 (51%). These findings reveal an overwhelming native maternal legacy in today's Panama, which is in contrast with the overall concept of personal identity shared by many Panamanians. Moreover, the A2 sub-clades A2ad and A2af (with the previously named 6 bp Huetar deletion), when analyzed at the maximum level of resolution (26 entire mitochondrial genomes), confirm the major role of the Pacific coastal path in the peopling of North, Central and South America, and testify to the antiquity of native mitochondrial genomes in Panama.
Highlights
Most genetic studies that focus on the population dynamics of the first human groups that moved from North to South America across the Central American isthmus were based on data collected exclusively from surviving indigenous Native American groups
The analysis indicates that the study of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) contributes to the understanding of evolutionary dynamics of the Native American population of this geographically-unique region
Most of the Native American population live in the three comarcas (95%) where people of African descent are less than 1%; when looking at the provinces’ general population, indigenous percentage decreases to 7.1%, while Afro-descendants remain almost the same (9.7%)
Summary
Most genetic studies that focus on the population dynamics of the first human groups that moved from North to South America across the Central American isthmus were based on data collected exclusively from surviving indigenous Native American groups. Reconstructing the history of any people using modern-day populations is often challenging since current populations likely do not represent the full extent of variation that existed in earlier populations that may have changed vastly in composition in intervening years [20,21]. This is true for the uniquely-positioned, narrow geographic region of Panama, a pivotal cross-road corridor that connects America’s northern and southern landmasses [22]. In some areas (e.g. the central and western Caribbean and much of the Darien) they were rebuffed by the Native people, e.g. the Ngabe and Kuna who descend from populations, which have lived continuously in some areas of Panama for a very long time
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