By: Miguel Vilar
Explore the intriguing survival of haplogroup C—one of the world’s oldest Y-chromosome lineages—its ancient dispersion across continents, and its continued presence in North and South America despite the dominance of haplogroup Q
The story behind the first people to reach the Americas is full of intrigue and mystery. Was it Clovis mammoth hunters that ventured across the icy tundras and through ice-free corridors 13,000 years ago to reach and settle the new world? Or was it seafarers moving east then southward along the shores of the northern Pacific coast some 20,000 years ago? Or, by some heavily disputed accounts, it was the Solutrean people who first voyaged to the Americas across the Atlantic Ocean. Archaeology offers bits of evidence, yet the mystery lives on.
The ubiquitous haplogroup Q and its pioneering journey
Every few years, new archaeological and geological data change the date and route of entry, adding more to the mystery behind the first Americans. Whoever these pioneers were, geneticists are confident these early settlers carried among them the Y chromosome haplogroup Q from deep Central Asia.
Today, haplogroup Q remains ubiquitous in the DNAs of both North and South American indigenous peoples; in many populations, it accounts for 100% of indigenous male lineages.
Over the last few years, three distinct branches of haplogroup Q have been identified, including haplogroup Q-M3, Q-Z780, and the recently discovered and quite rare Q-FTC17883. However, new evidence is slowly showing that another major haplogroup moved across these continents a long time ago.
One of the oldest haplogroups in Asia, haplogroup C, likely accompanied Q more than 10,000 years ago. And as haplogroup Q grew in large numbers and spread across thousands of indigenous groups, C managed to survive, even if statistically, nearly invisible.
Haplogroup C: an ancient lineage persisting through time
Haplogroup C is not only one of the oldest but arguably the most widely dispersed ancient male lineage in the world. It has been found among the oldest European Homo sapiens remains in Bulgaria’s Bacho Kiro cave, as well as among remains from the famous Çatalhöyük village in Turkey, one of the world’s first permanent settlements of the late Stone Age. We see haplogroup C in the Southeast Asian ceramic era in the North Moluccas islands of Indonesia, the Vanuatu islands of Melanesia, and even in a Paleolithic river bank in Zhaodong in northeast China. Yet now we have evidence of two distinct haplogroup C lineages spreading early, quickly, and far throughout the Americas.
Haplogroup C in the Americas and in FamilyTreeDNA
The best-known American haplogroup C lineage is C-P39. It is approximately 8,500 years old, but used to be just 4,500 years old until a recent discovery. C-P39 is found primarily in Canada among First Nations people, and to a lesser degree, but still present among Native Americans in the northern regions of the continental United States. Among the men who carried C-P39 was Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa people, who led his people against the British during the French and Indian War of the 1760s.
This rare lineage has also been associated with the Quinault Indian Nation, an Indigenous North American people from the Pacific Northwest. Some FamilyTreeDNA participants from the Capoeman family carry this indigenous lineage and can trace their ancestry to Joseph Capoeman, who lived in Washington state in the late 19th century as the Washington territory would join the union and become a state. It was the Capoeman lineage that created this new split in the C-P39 haplogroup, showing that it has been in the Americas 4,000 years longer than previously estimated.
In South America, a separate, older, and lesser-known haplogroup C lineage has also been discovered. Haplogroup C-BY63635, more recently identified in 10,000-year-old remains from Brazil’s Lapa do Santo site, has living relatives among the people of Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico today. This lineage, a completely different branch of haplogroup C than C-P39, seems to have split into its South American and North American counterparts more than 13,000 years ago. It then proceeded to survive independently in both continents for millennia while in the shadows of the dominant haplogroup Q. This evolutionary split likely occurred early in the prehistory of the Americas, an account supported by its occurrence among South America’s oldest remains.
Members of the Arrendondo family from Mexico, some of which are FamilyTreeDNA participants, carry this unique haplogroup C lineage and can trace their ancestry to the 1700s in the state of Nuevo Leon. Eighteenth-century records suggest that the Arredondo lineage was part of the Alazapa Indian group and lived and fought in northern Mexico as the country gained its independence from Spain and fought against the United States to maintain its sovereignty.
Stay tuned through FamilyTreeDNA Discover as new ancient and modern connections are made and age-old mysteries start to reveal themselves.
About the Author
Miguel Vilar, PhD.
Professor, Author, and Consultant for FamilyTreeDNA
Dr. Miguel Vilar was a Senior Program Officer for the National Geographic Society (NGS) and Lead Scientist for NGS’ Genographic Project, a multi-year anthropology study that aims to map human migration patterns by collecting and analyzing DNA samples from hundreds of thousands of people from around the world. By training, Vilar is a molecular anthropologist and science writer.
In addition, Vilar is a professor of Biology and Anthropology and publishes in both anthropology and genetics academic journals, as well as in popular print and online magazines. Vilar is also a public speaker, writer, and consultant with FamilyTreeDNA.