Friday, November 1, 2024
Pacariqtambo and Mythohistory
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
South American Matches
Although it is probably useless, particularly when using Gedmatch's feature of autosomal 1 to 1 comparison, we nevertheless found several kits associated with South American indigenous people to compare ourselves with. As studies by actual experts have shown, the indigenous ancestry in the Spanish Caribbean is indeed linked to South America, particularly with Amazonian groups and, likely, the spread the Arawakan languages deep in antiquity. In our case, our closest match, however, was with someone labeled Colombian Male 1. We shared 7.9 cM. We assume this person, whose kit is associated with a Native American DNA account, is possibly from the Colombian Amazon. Our next closest match was with a Ticuna sample at 6.5 shared cM (at low SNP density, however). The Ticuna, an Amazonian group, so the distant shared DNA match makes some sense. However, we overlapped on the fifth chromosome, where most of our "Amerindian" ancestry was registed as Indigenous Peru & Bolivia. Next was the kit called First Lokono, at 6.4 cM shared. The Lokono, who speak an Arawakan language and live in northeastern South America, so the match is not too unsurprising. We assume they or other coastal northern South Americans were also in some degree of periodic contact with the indigenous people of the Caribbean, too.
Another match was with a kit associated with Colombian Female, also of indigenous descent. We only shared 4.5 cM. This was followed by the distant match with Wayuu A, at 4.1 cM, on our 2nd chromosome (where our indigenous ancestry is entirely Caribbean, according to Ancestry DNA. The Wayuu, who also live in northern South America, also speak an Arawakan language. Our penultimate match was with Second Lokono at 3.8 shared cM. Last, but certainly not least, we shared 3.5 cM with a Surui sample, on the 2nd chromosome (associated with our Indigenous Caribbean ancestry). The Surui, an Amazonian group, also appear in Illustrative DNA when trying to model our ancestry using modern populations. In this case, the Surui and sometimes Peruvian Ashaninka are used as proxies to model our South American indigenous ancestry. Of course, all of this Gedmatch matching with kits of various South American indigenous peoples is not the most sophisticated approach. Nonetheless, reading studies by specialists who do see commonalities with these aforementioned South American groups and the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean tells us that it isn't entirely noise or false.
Monday, October 21, 2024
Enslaved Indians in Jacmel (1719)
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Ancient Caribbean DNA Matches
Monday, October 14, 2024
The Ancient Kingdoms of Peru
Although it is a little outdated (published in the 1990s), Nigel Davies's The Ancient Kingdoms of Peru provides a nice overview on the history of ancient Peru. Covering the period from the preceramic and Chavin cultures to the Spanish conquest, Davies attempts to elucidate the development of civilizations in Peru (and neighboring areas, to a certain extent) as well as the shifting analysis of these past cultures by archaeologists and historians. Obviously, the lack of a system of writing and records prior to the Spanish period means that most of the book draws from studies by archaeologists who have examined various sites, developed ceramic typologies and chronologies, and have endeavored to understand the nature of political, social, and economic organization. As the author gets closer to the era of the Spanish conquest, written sources from the colonial period become useful, particularly for the Incas and, to a lesser extent, the Chimu state of the coast. Davies masterfully draws upon this vast written corpus when appropriate, although occasionally delving into problematic "language" of "savages" when discussing Indians in Ecuador who opposed Inca expansion. But this probably reflects the time in which the book was published. As a brief introduction to a very complex center of early human civilization, Davies wrote a useful work. He probably did not need to include his critiques of wacky theories of ancient aliens visiting the Nasca, but perhaps a book aimed for a non-specialist audience had to do so to dispel pseudoscientific ideas. Now, we have to find copies of Miguel de Cabello, Cieza de Leon, and other early Spanish sources on Peru for a deeper dive into the precolonial past.