Digging into the admixture strata of current-day Canary Islanders based on mitogenomes

Abstract

The conquest of the Canary Islands by Europeans began at the beginning of the 15th century and culminated in 1496 with the surrender of the aborigines. The collapse of the aboriginal population during the conquest and the arrival of settlers caused a drastic change in the demographic composition of the archipelago. To shed light on this historical process, we analyzed 896 mitogenomes of current inhabitants from the seven main islands. Our findings confirm the continu-ity of aboriginal maternal contributions and the persistence of their genetic footprints in the current population, even at higher levels (>60% on average) than previously evidenced. Moreover, the age estimates for most autochthonous founder lineages support a first aboriginal arrival to the islands at the beginning of the first millennium. We also revealed for the first time that the main recogniz-able genetic influences from Europe are from Portuguese and Galicians.