title: Mitochondrial DNA variability in the Titicaca basin: Matches and mismatches with linguistics and ethnohistory.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The Titicaca basin was the cradle of some of the major complex societies of pre-Columbian South America and is today home to three surviving native languages: Quechua, Aymara, and Uro. This study seeks to contribute to reconstructing the population prehistory of the region, by providing a first genetic profile of its inhabitants, set also into the wider context of South American genetic background.
  
  
  METHODS
  We report the first mitochondrial DNA first hypervariable segment sequences of native populations of the environs of Lake Titicaca: speakers of Aymara and Quechua, and the "Uros" of the Lake's floating islands. We sampled Aymara speakers from a locality where the Uro language was formerly documented, to check for possible language shift patterns. These data are compared with those for other Amerindian populations, collated from already published sources.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Our results uncover the genetic distinctiveness of our formerly Uro but now Aymara-speaking sample, in contrast with a relative homogeneity for all the other Central Andean samples.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The genetic affinities that characterize Central Andean populations are highly consistent with the succession of expansive polities in the region, culminating with the Incas. In the environs of Lake Titicaca, however, one subset of the present day Aymara-speaking population exhibits a peculiar position: perhaps a genetic correlate to their original Uro linguistic lineage (now extinct in the area), tallying with ethnohistorical claims for the distinctiveness of the Uro population. Our results emphasize the need for genetic descriptions to consider the widespread phenomenon of language shift.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Evolutionary Biology, University of Bologna, Italy. chiara_barbieri@eva.mpg.de
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Barbieri
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Heggarty
authors.forename: Loredana
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Castrì
authors.forename: Donata
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Luiselli
authors.forename: Davide
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pettener
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001483:Base Sequence; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000235:genetics*; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005828:Genetics, Population; D006239:Haplotypes; D006801:Humans; D007199:Indians, South American / Q000235:genetics*; D008037:Linguistics; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010568:Peru / Q000208:ethnology; D010802:Phylogeny; D012150:Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial