Paleogenomic insights into the deep population history of present-day Argentina

MARAVALL-LOPEZ, JAVIER; PASTOR, NICOLÁS; NORES, RODRIGO; REICH, DAVID

Ferrara

Congreso; SMBE23; 2023

Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution

In the last decade, studies of ancient and modern genomic data have clarified the peopling of the Americas. While this has provided us with a better understanding of this process at the continental scale, analyses of regional dynamics have lagged behind. To contribute to a more refined picture of the deep population history of South America, we have generated new genomic data for close to 200 ancient samples collected from archaeological sites and museum collections throughout present-day Argentina, plus one additional sample from present-day Paraguay, which collectively span a time transect of 8000 years. We have co-analysed these new data with previously published ancient individuals from the southernmost region of Argentina and other ancient American populations. We find evidence for population differentiation matching the geographic distribution of the samples, asymmetric ancestry proportions, low overall population sizes and unevenness between them, admixture events, and differential population interaction by region. We present this work on behalf of a wider group of scholars who collected, generated, and analyzed material for this study.