Transmission of biology and culture among post-contact Native Americans on the western Great Plains.

ABSTRACT: The transmission of genes and culture between human populations has major implications for understanding potential correlations between history, biological, and cultural variation. Understanding such dynamics in 19th century, post-contact Native Americans on the western Great Plains is especially challenging given passage of time, complexity of known dynamics, and difficulties of determining genetic patterns in historical populations for whom, even today, genetic data for their descendants are rare. Here, biometric data collected under the direction of Franz Boas from communities penecontemporaneous with the classic bison-hunting societies, were used as a proxy for genetic variation and analyzed together with cultural data. We show that both gene flow and "culture flow" among populations o

SUBMITTER: Lycett SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4981875 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature