A Reassessment of the Impact of European Contact on the Structure of Native American Genetic Diversity

Our current understanding of pre-Columbian history in the Americas rests in part on several trends identified in recent genetic studies. The goal of this study is to reexamine these trends in light of the impact of post-Columbian admixture and the methods used to study admixture. The previously-published data consist of 645 autosomal microsatellite genotypes from 1046 individuals in 63 populations. We used STRUCTURE to estimate ancestry proportions and tested the sensitivity of these estimates to the choice of the number of clusters, K. We used partial correlation analyses to examine the relationship between gene diversity and geographic distance from Beringia, controlling for non-Native American ancestry (from Africa, Europe and East Asia), and taking into account alternative paths of migration. Principal component analysis and multidimensional scaling were used to investigate the relationships between Andean and non-Andean populations and to explore gene-language correspondence. We found that 1) European and East Asian ancestry estimates decline as K increases, especially in Native Canadian populations, 2) a north-south decline in gene diversity is driven by low diversity in Amazonian and Paraguayan populations, not serial founder effects from Beringia, 3) controlling for non-Native American ancestry, populations in the Andes and Mesoamerica have higher gene diversity than populations in other regions, and 4) patterns of genetic and linguistic diversity are poorly correlated. We conclude that patterns of diversity previously attributed to pre-Columbian processes may in part reflect post-Columbian admixture and the choice of K in STRUCTURE analyses. Accounting for admixture, the pattern of diversity is inconsistent with a north-south founder effect process, though the genetic similarities between Mesoamerican and Andean populations are consistent with rapid dispersal along the western coast of the Americas. Further, even setting aside the disruptive effects of European contact, gene-language congruence is unlikely to have ever existed at the geographic scale analyzed here.