{"doi":"10.1101/2020.06.01.126730","title":"A genetic history of the pre-contact Caribbean","abstract":"Humans settled the Caribbean ~6,000 years ago, with intensified agriculture and ceramic use marking a shift from the Archaic Age to the Ceramic Age ~2,500 years ago. To shed new light on the history of Caribbean people, we report genome-wide data from 184 individuals predating European contact from The Bahamas, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Curaçao, and northwestern Venezuela. A largely homogeneous ceramic-using population most likely originating in northeastern South America and related to present-day Arawak-speaking groups moved throughout the Caribbean at least 1,800 years ago, spreading ancestry that is still detected in parts of the region today. These people eventually almost entirely replaced Archaic-related lineages in Hispaniola but not in northwestern Cuba, where unadmixed Archaic-related ancestry persisted into the last millennium. We document high mobility and inter-island connectivity throughout the Ceramic Age as reflected in relatives buried ~75 kilometers apart in Hispaniola and low genetic differentiation across many Caribbean islands, albeit with subtle population structure distinguishing the Bahamian islands we studied from the rest of the Caribbean and from each other, and long-term population continuity in southeastern coastal Hispaniola differentiating this region from the rest of the island. Ceramic-associated people avoided close kin unions despite limited mate pools reflecting low effective population sizes (2N e =1000-2000) even at sites on the large Caribbean islands. While census population sizes can be an order of magnitude larger than effective population sizes, pan-Caribbean population size estimates of hundreds of thousands are likely too large. Transitions in pottery styles show no evidence of being driven by waves of migration of new people from mainland South America; instead, they more likely reflect the spread of ideas and people within an interconnected Caribbean world.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2020,"id":118730,"datarank":0.6011541524386642,"base_score":3.8066624897703196,"endowment":3.8066624897703196,"self_citation_contribution":0.5709993734655481,"citation_network_contribution":0.03015477897311617,"self_endowment_contribution":0.5709993734655481,"citer_contribution":0.03015477897311617,"corpus_percentile":67.15401872050747,"corpus_rank":4247,"citation_count":44,"citer_count":41,"citers_with_citation_signal":9,"citers_with_endowment":9,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":true,"is_dataset_confidence":0.5096,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":255456,"name":"Kendra Sirak","orcid":"0000-0003-2347-3479","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551930,"name":"Harald Ringbauer","orcid":"0000-0002-4884-9682","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551931,"name":"Jakob Sedig","orcid":"0000-0001-6642-7734","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":247942,"name":"Nadin Rohland","orcid":"0000-0002-8112-9601","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":37006,"name":"Olivia Cheronet","orcid":"0000-0001-6760-1204","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255453,"name":"Matthew Mah","orcid":"0000-0001-8987-6436","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":708,"name":"Swapan Mallick","orcid":"0000-0002-4531-4439","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255447,"name":"Íñigo Olalde","orcid":"0000-0002-2660-6807","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":247957,"name":"Brendan J. Culleton","orcid":"0000-0003-1200-9531","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":289870,"name":"Nicole Adamski","orcid":"0000-0002-2268-1359","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255448,"name":"Rebecca Bernardos","orcid":"0000-0003-4625-3727","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553086,"name":"Guillermo Bravo","orcid":null,"position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255449,"name":"Nasreen Broomandkhoshbacht","orcid":"0000-0001-5350-1608","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551932,"name":"Kimberly Callan","orcid":"0000-0003-3170-8514","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255461,"name":"Francesca Candilio","orcid":"0000-0002-4668-1361","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553087,"name":"Lea Demetz","orcid":null,"position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553088,"name":"Kellie Sara Duffett Carlson","orcid":null,"position":17,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553089,"name":"Laurie Eccles","orcid":null,"position":18,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551933,"name":"Suzanne Freilich","orcid":"0000-0003-0472-6311","position":19,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":289871,"name":"Ann Marie Lawson","orcid":"0000-0003-0990-2329","position":20,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255457,"name":"Kirsten Mandl","orcid":"0000-0002-2078-0775","position":21,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551934,"name":"Fabio Marzaioli","orcid":"0000-0002-2676-4055","position":22,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255455,"name":"Jonas Oppenheimer","orcid":"0000-0001-7973-6173","position":23,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255459,"name":"Kadir Toykan Özdoğan","orcid":"0000-0002-9508-8193","position":24,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255458,"name":"Constanze Schattke","orcid":"0000-0003-4658-8893","position":25,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551935,"name":"Ryan Schmidt","orcid":"0000-0002-4907-2270","position":26,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":248930,"name":"Kristin Stewardson","orcid":null,"position":27,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551936,"name":"F. Terrasi","orcid":"0000-0001-5641-8973","position":28,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551937,"name":"Fatma Zalzala","orcid":"0000-0002-8981-1277","position":29,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553090,"name":"Carlos Arredondo Antúnez","orcid":null,"position":30,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553091,"name":"Ercilio Vento Canosa","orcid":null,"position":31,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551938,"name":"Roger H. Colten","orcid":"0000-0001-7769-2269","position":32,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551939,"name":"Andrea Cucina","orcid":"0000-0002-7280-5591","position":33,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553092,"name":"Francesco Genchi","orcid":null,"position":34,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553093,"name":"Claudia Kraan","orcid":null,"position":35,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553094,"name":"Francesco La Pastina","orcid":null,"position":36,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255460,"name":"Michaela Lucci","orcid":"0000-0002-5932-9674","position":37,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553095,"name":"Marcio Veloz Maggiolo","orcid":null,"position":38,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551940,"name":"Beatríz Marcheco Teruel","orcid":"0000-0001-6009-0405","position":39,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553096,"name":"Clenis Tavarez Maria","orcid":null,"position":40,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551941,"name":"Cristian Martínez‐Salazar","orcid":"0000-0002-9216-1826","position":41,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553097,"name":"Ingeborg París","orcid":null,"position":42,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551942,"name":"Michael Pateman","orcid":"0000-0003-3562-7500","position":43,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551943,"name":"Tanya M. Simms","orcid":"0009-0006-6738-2711","position":44,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553098,"name":"Carlos García Sívoli","orcid":null,"position":45,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":307449,"name":"Miguel G. Vilar","orcid":"0000-0002-8164-4064","position":46,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":247969,"name":"Douglas J. Kennett","orcid":"0000-0001-6144-7365","position":47,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551944,"name":"William F. Keegan","orcid":"0000-0002-1182-5361","position":48,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255479,"name":"Alfredo Coppa","orcid":"0000-0002-7708-2484","position":49,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":69371,"name":"Mark Lipson","orcid":"0000-0001-5346-9329","position":50,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":37031,"name":"Ron Pinhasi","orcid":"0000-0003-1629-8131","position":51,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":724,"name":"David Reich","orcid":"0000-0002-7037-5292","position":52,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255445,"name":"Daniel Fernandes","orcid":"0000-0002-7434-6552","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":72,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:14:03.409507Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}