YCH001 YCH002 YCH003 YCH004 Mayans raw dna in 23andme format

The Maya civilization was one of the most sophisticated and influential pre-Columbian cultures in the Americas. It developed in Mesoamerica, primarily in present-day southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador, with roots tracing back to around 2000 BCE. The Classical Period marked the height of Maya civilization, with the construction of monumental cities such as Tikal, Palenque, Copán, and Calakmul.

The Maya emerged from earlier Mesoamerican cultures like the Olmecs, inheriting and refining many of their innovations. They developed hieroglyphic writing, a vigorous calendrical system, advanced mathematics (including the concept of zero), and astronomical knowledge.

For this video, I gathered the 4 highest quality Mayan genomes from Mexico dating to the 9th century AD. They were uploaded to ENA by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in 2015. I ran these samples through my Trait Predictor tool for DNA analysis to determine how they looked and what conditions they were predisposed to.

First, let’s discuss their ancient origins.

I ran these samples through qpAdmixture and determined that they were roughly 3 percent neanderthal, higher than Europeans and on par with most east asians.

Going a bit closer to us in time, a paleolithic model reveals that the Mayans were majority east eurasian with a significant ancient north eurasian admixture. Note the pvalue on this model. I’m quite proud of this model.

I also ran Fst analysis on these samples using admixtools 2. They ended up closest to Quechua and Mixtec, being quite distant from the Pima, who live close by. The native american group most distantly related to them turned out to be karitiana, brazilian natives. What I found to be especially interesting is that the closest non-american groups to the Mayans were all turkic populations. Uyghurs, Tatars, Nogay, Shors, Uzbeks, Yakuts. All turkic people. There is clearly a genetic link between the Mayans and Turkic peoples.

Now let’s get to the Trait Predictor results.