Abstract
Geologically, Panama belongs to the Central American land-bridge between North and South America crossed by Homo sapiens >14 ka ago. Archaeologically, it belongs to a wider Isthmo-Colombian Area. Today, seven indigenous ethnic groups account for 12.3% of Panama’s population. Five speak Chibchan languages and are characterized by low genetic diversity and a high level of differentiation. In addition, no evidence of differential structuring between maternally and paternally inherited genes has been reported in isthmian Chibchan cultural groups. Recent data have shown that 83% of the Panamanian general population harbour mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs) of Native American ancestry. Considering differential male/female mortality at European contact and multiple degrees of geographical and genetic isolation over the subsequent five centuries, the Y-chromosome Native American component is expected to vary across different geographic regions and communities in Panama. To address this issue, we investigated Y-chromosome variation in 408 modern males from the nine provinces of Panama and one indigenous territory (the comarca of Kuna Yala). In contrast to mtDNA data, the Y-chromosome Native American component (haplogroup Q) exceeds 50% only in three populations facing the Caribbean Sea: the comarca of Kuna Yala and Bocas del Toro province where Chibchan languages are spoken by the majority, and the province of Colón where many Kuna and people of mixed indigenous-African-and-European descent live. Elsewhere the Old World component is dominant and mostly represented by western Eurasian haplogroups, which signal the strong male genetic impact of invaders. Sub-Saharan African input accounts for 5.9% of male haplotypes. This reflects the consequences of the colonial Atlantic slave trade and more recent influxes of West Indians of African heritage. Overall, our findings reveal a local evolution of the male Native American ancestral gene pool, and a strong but geographically differentiated unidirectional sex bias in the formation of local modern Panamanian populations.
Highlights
Panama is the southernmost country of Central America delimited by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the south-east, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south
In order to obtain a clearer picture of the complex genetic structure of the modern Panamanian population and to identify possible preferential mating patterns between local people and newcomers, we have investigated the Y-chromosome variation in 444 modern Panamanians, collected in eight of the nine provinces of the Republic and one indigenous territory
R-M343 shows its highest frequency in Chiriquí (39.1%); haplogroup Q represents the majority of the Kuna Yala (87.5%), Bocas del Toro (69.0%) and Colón (66.7%) samples; haplogroup E accounts for the majority (55.5%) of the small Darién sample, whereas haplogroup J shows a frequency higher than 15% only in Los Santos and Veraguas
Summary
Panama is the southernmost country of Central America delimited by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the south-east, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. Panama is part of a natural land-bridge between the two continental American landmasses. Archaeologists include it in a wider Isthmo-Colombian Area [1]. The earliest well documented cultural remains in Panama refer to the Clovis tradition dated to ~11,000 years BP (13,200 calibrated 14C years) [2]. MtDNA data [3] infer a sizeable human presence before the Clovis along the Pacific littoral of Panama and Costa Rica. Pre-Clovis archaeological sites are likely to lie submerged on the Pacific continental shelf of Panama and be similar in culture and customs to pre-Clovis sites in Colombia and Venezuela, e.g., Tibitó and Taima-Taima, where extinct megafauna was exploited [4]
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