Ancient mtDNA Analysis and the Origin of the Guanches

Ancient mtDNA Analysis and the Origin of the Guanches

Nicole Maca-Meyer et al.
European Journal of Human Genetics
(advance online publication 24 September 2003)
The prehistoric colonisation of the Canary Islands by the Guanches (native Canarians) woke up great expectation about their origin, since the Europeans conquest of the Archipelago. Here, we report mitochondrial DNA analysis (HVRI sequences and RFLPs) of aborigine remains around 1000 years old. The sequences retrieved show that the Guanches possessed U6b1 lineages that are in the present day Canarian population, but not in Africans. In turn, U6b, the phylogenetically closest ancestor found in Africa, is not present in the Canary Islands. Comparisons with other populations relate the Guanches with the actual inhabitants of the Archipelago and with Moroccan Berbers. This shows that, despite the continuous changes suffered by the population (Spanish colonisation, slave trade), aboriginal mtDNA lineages constitute a considerable proportion of the Canarian gene pool. Although the Berbers are the most probable ancestors of the Guanches, it is deduced that important human movements have reshaped Northwest Africa after the migratory wave to the Canary Islands.

Canary islands-north African population affinities

This seems to harmonize with the ancient DNA evidence.
Canary islands-north African population affinities: measures of divergence based on dental morphology

HOMO, December 2001, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 173-188(16)

Guatelli-Steinberg D. et al.

Abstract
This investigation addresses two related questions about the origins and biological affinities of the Canary Islands' aboriginal inhabitants. First: With which North African populations do the pre-conquest inhabitants of the Canary Islands have their greatest affinities? Second: Does inter-island biological variability among the Canary Islanders, as has been suggested by other researchers (Hooton 1925, Schwidetzky 1963), imply that potentially different founding populations remained distinct during the pre-conquest period? This study employs dental morphology data derived from pre-conquest skeletons to answer these questions. Non-metric dental traits appear to be controlled by polygenic systems with a low to moderate environmental contribution to the resulting phenotype (Berry 1978, Harris & Bailit 1980, Nichol 1990) and can thus be assumed to reflect genetic relationships. The dental morphology of a sample of Canary Islanders (n = 397) is compared to that of Northwest African samples of Algerian Shawia Berbers (n = 26), Kabyle Berbers (n = 32), Bedouin Arabs (n = 49) and Punic Carthaginians (n = 28) as well as to six samples from Northeast Africa (n = 307) included for the purpose of understanding Canary Islanders' affinities within a wider context. The analysis employs 28 dental traits, quantifying differences in their expression among the various samples through a summary statistic, CAB Smith's Mean Measure of Divergence (MMD). The MMD analysis indicates that the Canary Island sample is most similar to the four samples from Northwest Africa: the Shawia Berbers, Kabyle Berbers, Bedouin Arabs and Carthaginians, less similar to the three Egyptian samples and least like the three Nubian samples. An intra-island comparison among samples from La Gomera, Gran Canaria and Tenerife reveals low, insignificant MMD values in all cases, implying that inter-island dental morphology differences are not so great as to require hypotheses of separate founding populations.

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