SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Aug. 24 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Researchers from the universities of La Laguna, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Copenhagen (Denmark) and Stanford (United States), together with the Canarian island museums, the Tibicena company and the Max Planck Institute (Germany), have developed a collaborative project international event in which paleogenomic methods have been applied to the analysis of the Canarian aborigines, including for the first time individuals from all the islands, with the aim of understanding how isolation and insularity affected their genetic composition.
The results of this work, published in the scientific journal ‘Nature Communications’, indicate that the aboriginal populations of the Canary Islands are genetically similar to Neolithic individuals from Morocco from 5,000 years ago.
This population is characterized by having a mixture of North African and European ancestry, the result of the migration of Neolithic populations from Europe to North Africa, collects a note from the ULL.
Within the archipelago, heterogeneity is observed in the island populations, both in their genetic composition and in their diversity.
Thus, the islands closest to the mainland (Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura) had a greater contribution of the component associated with the prehistoric populations of Europe, while the western islands (El Hierro, La Palma, La Gomera and Tenerife) presented a greater contribution of the prehistoric component of North Africa, which would point to a more complex colonization model than has been proposed up to now.
Given that the impact of the European Neolithic migrations in North Africa was not homogeneous, this result can be explained in two ways: the human migrations that affected the archipelago were asymmetrical, with some arrivals reaching only one region, or that the populations that colonized the eastern and western regions of the archipelago came from different regions of North Africa.
Javier G. Serrano, from the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology, Cell Biology and Genetics at the University of La Laguna and lead author of the study, explains that an important aspect of this work is the combined use of ancient DNA data and carbon 14 dating. for all individuals analyzed.
The combination of both technologies has allowed us to observe that the differences between the eastern and western islands seem to have existed since the beginning of the aboriginal colonization period, remaining unchanged over time.
This is important because it determines that, if there were asymmetric migrations between the two regions, they had to occur at the beginning of the period of aboriginal colonization, detailed from the ULL.
The islands also show differences in their genomic diversity, which informs the size of these human populations over time and their possible isolation.
In this way, the smaller islands or those with fewer resources (El Hierro, La Gomera, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura) show a low genetic diversity, which can be explained by a strong isolation, leading to a reduction in the effective size of their population, thus ruling out the possibility of frequent migration to these islands.
HIGH DEATH IN IRON DUE TO CLIMATE INSTABILITY
The combined use of ancient DNA and carbon 14 data has also made it possible to estimate that the population of El Hierro, the smallest in the archipelago, suffered a significant reduction in the size of its population around the 9th century, coinciding with a period of climatic instability. .
Taking into account that El Hierro is an island with limited resources, the changes in temperature and rainfall that occurred during that century could have greatly affected the availability of natural resources and crop production, which is likely to cause mortality. important.
This phenomenon is not observed in Tenerife and Gran Canaria, characterized by a greater availability of resources and a larger size, which probably allowed their populations to adapt and resist this period of instability.
Rosa Fregel, from the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology, Cellular Biology and Genetics at the University of La Laguna and principal investigator of the project, highlights that, in accordance with the recommendations of good practices for sustainable work with ancient DNA, this international collaborative study for the characterization of the aboriginal population of the Canary Islands, it has been led by institutions in the Canary Islands.
This has allowed that, in addition to expanding knowledge about this ancient population, the local scientific infrastructure has been improved and dissemination activities aimed at the general public have been carried out throughout the development period of the project.
The research has been financed by the PALEUCOL and EXPOBIM projects of the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the IsoCAN project of the European Research Council and the PALEOBIM agreement granted by the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage of the Government of the Canary Islands.
