The Tupi-Guarani language family was spoken by a widespread Native American population known to have populated the Atlantic coast of Brazil around 2kya. Tupi-speaking groups spread out over much of the Brazilian coast and southeast Brazil. One lineage, the coastal Tupi, were thought to have been completely wiped out upon colonial contact. The loss of the Tupi people resulted in a gap in continuity of our understanding of the settlement of Brazil and especially of the coast. This has resulted in 2 competing hypotheses:
1. The coastal Tupi came from a Guarani group that had expanded southward from the Amazon basin before expanding to the coast and northward.
2. The coastal Tupi came from a group that radiated northeastward to the coast while the Guarani group moved southward from the Amazon basin.
Silva et al. analyzed genomic data from a Tupiquinim community (putative remaining descendants of the extinct coastal Tupi), a Guarani community, several native Mesoamerican and Brazilian communities of a separate language family, and 15 aDNA samples from Brazil. Their analyses showed that native groups became increasingly differentiated from each other as they migrated into South America and settled Brazil, potentially through genetic drift or reduced gene flow. Additionally, there appears to have been periods of admixture with Mesoamerican populations. Finally, their results suggested that the Tupiquinim were, in fact, Tupi descendants and the extinct coastal Tupi likely had radiated northeastward and were not as closely related to the Guarani.
Audrey Tjahjadi
PNAS 2/7/2020
Link to original article: https://www.pnas.org/content/117/5/2372
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