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Title: Genetics, Linguistics, and Prehistoric Migrations [DNA Analysis] Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection # of Pages: 32 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

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Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology . Vel. 26, No. 1 (2006) . pp. 31-62 Genetics, Linguistics, and Prehistoric Migrations: An Analysis of California Indian Mitochondrial DNA Lineages JOHN R. JOHNSON Department of Anthropology, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History 2559 Puesta del Sol, Santa Barbara, CA 93105 JOSEPH G. LORENZ Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Coriell Institute for Medical Research 403 Haddon Avenue, Camden, NJ 08103 The advent of mitochondrial DNA analysis makes possible the study of past migrations among California Indians through the study of genetic similarities and differences. Four scenarios of language change correlate with observable genetic patterns: (1) initial colonization followed by gradual changes due to isolation; (2) population replacement; (3) elite dominance; and (4) intermarriage between adjacent groups. A total of 126 mtDNA samples were provided by contemporary California Indian descendants whose maternal lineages were traced back to original eighteenth and nineteenth century sociolinguistic groups using mission records and other ethnohistoric sources. In particular, those groups belonging to three language families (Chumashan, Uto-Aztecan, and Yokutsan) encompassed enough samples to make meaningful comparisons. The four predominant mtDNA haplogroups found among American Indians (A, B, C, and D) were distributed differently among populations belonging to these language families in California. Examination of the distribution of particular haplotypes within each haplogroup further elucidated the separate population histories of these three language families. The expansions of Yokutsan and Uto-Aztecan groups into their respective homelands are evident in the structure of genetic relationships within haplogroup diagrams. The ancient presence of Chumashan peoples in the Santa Barbara Channel region can be inferred from the presence of a number of haplotypes arrayed along a chain-like branch derived from the founding haplotype within Haplogroup A. A distinctive Haplogroup D sequence, represented by four Chumash lineages, belongs to a rare subgroup, occurring primarily among groups scattered along the Pacific coast of North and South America. This distribution is consistent with the hypothesis that an early coastal expansion occurred during the initial peopling of the Americas. Te HIGH DEGREE OF LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY in speaking various Uto-Aztecan languages are wedged native California reflects significant migrationevents . between Yuman societies in the San Diego-Colorado in prehistory. Many of the larger, more widely-spread —_River-Baja California area and Chumash and Yokuts language families of North America are represented _ peoples in the Santa Barbara Channel and southern San by small groups distributed along the Pacific Coast, as Joaquin Valley regions. It has been presumed by nearly all well as by a relatively high number of compact language _researchers that this “Shoshonean Wedge” was the result families descended from more ancient migrations (Golla_ _ of a prehistoric expansion of Uto-Aztecan peoples from 2000a, 2000b, in press). Linguist Johanna Nichols (1992) —_ an inland region to the coast and then to the southern has described the Pacific coastal region as a “residual § Channel Islands (Bright and Bright 1976; Kroeber 1953), zone,” because the high ecological diversity of the region although there is considerable disagreement when this allowed for microdifferentiation and preservation of . migratory event may have occurred. The most often stable linguistic communities adapted to relatively cited date is about 2,000 years ago (Moratto 1984:559); circumscribed territories. In southern California, groups . however,some researchers have suggested a much earlier 31