Prehispanic Costa Rica: A preliminary analysis of inner population affinities and its relationships with Mesoamerica and northern South America

Abstract

Dental morphological traits are analyzed in three Prehispanic (AD 800–1350) collections from Costa Rica’s (CR), and compared to coeval samples from the Maya area, Panama and northern Colombia. Traits were scored following the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System on permanent teeth and analyzed by means of multivariate statistical techniques. At micro-regional level, the CR’s collections manifest morphological similarities between one another; however, Jicaro tends to slightly separate from the others despite its very close geographical proximity to La Cascabel. This is interpreted as due to the external influence of people who established at the site from Mesoamerica at the onset of the second millennium AD. On a macro-regional base, instead, the CR collections gather more closely to the samples from the Maya area rather than to the one from Panama and to the Muiscas from northern Colombia, despite they all belong to the Isthmo-Colombian, Chibchan-speaking area. This is interpreted as the result of strong ties with the Maya area, as highlighted by the archaeological record, and to the east–west genetic clinal distribution within the Isthmo-Colombian area that tends to set apart CR from Panama and Colombia, the latter being more likely related to the Andean area rather than to the Isthmo region. Larger samples are however necessary to have a clearer picture of the demic relationships in Prehispanic Central America.