Unraveling the DNA of the Archipelago: that cocktail of Amazigh, Portuguese, Galician and African that they call... canary
One of the first conclusions of the study by twelve researchers from the Tenerife Institute of Technology and Renewable Energies, the CSIC, the Universities of La Laguna and Fernando Pessoa and the Carlos III Institute is that the maternal genetic inheritance of current canaries is between 50 and 60% aboriginal; the remaining part is different on each island, with origins as diverse as North Africa, Portugal or Flanders
Guanche mummies located in the Museum of Nature and Archeology of Tenerife MUSEUMS OF TENERIFE
The ancient peoples of the Canary Islands may have disappeared as a recognizable human type, but their genetic inheritance is more present than previously believed in the inhabitants of the islands, in a mestizo DNA to which Portuguese, Galician and African ancestors contributed in a very notable way.
Twelve researchers from the Institute of Technology and Renewable Energies (ITER) of Tenerife, the CSIC, the Universities of La Laguna and Fernando Pessoa and the Carlos III Institute have published the largest genetic study ever carried out in the Cell group's Science magazine to date on the inhabitants of the Canary Islands, with novel conclusions, but they are directly connected with two of the vectors that moved the colonization of the islands after their annexation to Castile: the sugar industry and the slave trade.
The work investigates the genetics of 896 people residing on all the islands of the archipelago and belonging to families considered Canary Islands for several generations, with a technique that allows long sequences of maternally inherited lineages to be traced in the past: the study of mitochondrial DNA.
Its comparison with the genetic profiles obtained from various pre-Hispanic sites in the Canary Islands and also from DNA databases from Europe, Africa and America provides a first result: the maternal genetic inheritance of current Canaries is between 50 and 60% aboriginal; that is to say, from the Amazigh populations that settled on the islands around 2,000 years ago.
Víctor García, Luis Rubio, Adrián Muñoz and the rest of the authors of the article emphasize that these figures agree, even exceed, with those obtained by previous studies by other scientific teams, which pointed to an average of 40% of aboriginal trace in genetic inheritance. mother of the current canaries.
Those responsible for this work recall that all the studies carried out to date clarify that genetic inheritance through the father is much lower (some estimate it at 10%), as a result of the great mortality of aboriginal men that occurred during the years of the Conquest and a miscegenation that in its beginnings was characterized by the pairing of Canarian women with men who came from other places in the later colonization of the islands.
This is so to the point that the genetic profiles recovered in cemeteries in Gran Canaria and Tenerife from the 15th to the 18th centuries show that the replacement of the original population of the islands was "early", they underline. However, little was known about the origin of the main contributors to the miscegenation that followed the Conquest, beyond the fact that most came from the Peninsula.
Where does the other 40% of DNA come from?
At this point lies one of the main novelties of this work: unraveling the origin of the other non-aboriginal half in the maternal genetic inheritance of current canaries. The authors highlight that the coincidences with the Iberian Peninsula are close to 40%, but also that they have found values of up to 21.5% of North African genetic traits, up to 19% of Normans and Flemish, up to 12% of sub-Saharan Africans and up to 7% Italians.
Within the Iberian footprint in the DNA of current canaries, the most important weight is carried by the lineages identified as Portuguese and Galician, which represent more than half of that part of the non-aboriginal genetic heritage (28.4% and 21.4%).
In addition, there are other notable features: in El Hierro and La Palma, between 24 and 29% of the maternal heritage is Norman and Flemish; in Gran Canaria, 20% is sub-Saharan; and in Lanzarote, up to 42% is North African of origin other than aboriginal.
The sugar industry and its influence on the island's DNA
The authors recall that there are several milestones in the history of the Canary Islands that are clearly reflected in these genetic traits: the first, the important Portuguese presence in the archipelago, which on some islands preceded the Castilian or Norman; the second, the development of the sugar industry; and the third, the African slave trade to the new colonies in America.
Sugarcane crops, white gold for centuries, explains that on the islands where it was implanted due to the abundance of water and wood (Tenerife, Gran Canaria and La Palma) there is a greater genetic inheritance from those who promoted this industry (Portuguese ) and those who invested in it (flamingos); and it also gives the reason for the sub-Saharan heritage in the DNA of current canaries: it is the trace of the African slaves brought for that industry.
In the latter case, sugar is only part of the answer, because more than a third of the sub-Saharan genetic heritage of the Canary Islands is related to America, which the authors attribute to the African slave trade back and forth across the Atlantic.
Forced labor is also behind Lanzarote's large non-aboriginal North African genetic heritage, the authors add, in this case due to the displacement of Moorish slaves.
The results of this study also support another thesis generally accepted by archaeology: the ancient Canarians gave up sailing or forgot this knowledge upon their arrival on the islands.
In the DNA of pre-Conquest individuals, each island maintains different genetic lineages; from the 15th century, all of them have aboriginal features typical of the neighboring islands, a product of the mobility of populations that the conquerors fostered.
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