PC537 - A woman buried in Bahamas in the Pre-Columbian Caribbean era
Download PDF creates a visual, rasterized copy. Use Print for selectable text and better assistive-technology support.
Preparing your ancestry journey
Connecting to ancient matches...
Preparing your report
A woman buried in Bahamas during the Taino Culture, Bahamas
A fragment of the ancient world, preserved across millennia in strands of DNA.
The biological and cultural markers that define this ancient individual
PC537
892 CE - 1022 CE
Taino Culture, Bahamas
Female
B2
N/A (Female)
Gatherer (AI estimate, era-typical)
Where this individual was discovered
When this individual lived in the broader context of human history
The narrative of this ancient life
The Bahamas are low-lying islands in the Atlantic with warm, tropical climates and abundant marine resources. Limestone geology and shallow coastal zones shaped available building materials and the location of settlements near fresh water sources and productive fishing grounds. Environmental conditions encouraged a mixed economy combining cultivation with sea-based foraging.
From roughly 1200 to 1500 CE, Caribbean societies in the region developed within networks of craft and seafaring exchange. The label “Lucayan-Taino” is used to describe relationships among island populations across the northern Caribbean, though local histories varied by island and community. Archaeological evidence indicates flourishing ceramic-using lifeways prior to the major disruptions of the late 15th century.
Populations associated with this horizon were Indigenous, with lifeways centered on horticulture and fishing, supplemented by hunting and gathering. Community organization likely included villages with shared access to cultivated plots and coastal food sources. Household-level production—such as pottery making and food processing—would have been integral to daily routines.
The “Caribbean Ceramic” horizon is characterized by distinctive pottery traditions that can be recognized through vessel forms, decorative styles, and manufacturing techniques. Shell and bone artifacts, stone tools, and fishing-related items contribute additional evidence for subsistence strategies. Deposits such as midden accumulations help reconstruct food consumption and site use.
Cultural identity in this period is visible in the shared technological traditions of ceramic production and in recurrent patterns of domestic activity. Pottery styles can signal community connections and shared aesthetic choices, while variations may reflect local preferences. Religious or political structures cannot be securely detailed from ceramics alone, but material patterns support the presence of enduring social communities on the islands.
The 1200–1500 CE horizon documents Indigenous Caribbean life during the centuries immediately preceding European-led contact and its far-reaching impacts. Archaeological sequences in the Bahamas provide a foundation for understanding what changed after the late 15th century and how earlier traditions relate to later historical transformations. This era’s material record remains central for reconstructing pre-contact island society.
These comparisons show genetic similarity, not identity or origin. The populations listed are those whose genomes show statistical alignment to this ancient individual.
Similarity reflects shared history, not shared identity. These are analytical comparisons, not claims about who this person was.
This analysis compares the DNA profile with present-day reference populations, showing statistical similarity to modern reference populations from different regions. The excavation site records where this individual was found, not a fixed modern genetic identity.
These are the modern populations showing the closest statistical alignment to A woman buried in Bahamas in the Pre-Columbian Caribbean era, ranked by genetic distance. Lower distance values indicate closer statistical similarity. Cross-region similarity can reflect shared ancestry, population movement, continuity, or later admixture.
This individual exists within a broader network of ancient samples. No ancient genome stands alone.
Scientific publications and genetic data that inform this profile.
The Caribbean was one of the last parts of the Americas to be settled by humans, but how and when the islands were first occupied remains a matter of debate. Ancient DNA can help answering these questions, but the work has been hampered by poor DNA preservation. We report the genome sequence of a 1,000-year-old Lucayan Taino individual recovered from the site of Preacher's Cave in the Bahamas. We sequenced her genome to 12.4-fold coverage and show that she is genetically most closely related to present-day Arawakan speakers from northern South America, suggesting that the ancestors of the Lucayans originated there. Further, we find no evidence for recent inbreeding or isolation in the ancient genome, suggesting that the Lucayans had a relatively large effective population size. Finally, we show that the native American components in some present-day Caribbean genomes are closely related to the ancient Taino, demonstrating an element of continuity between precontact populations and present-day Latino populations in the Caribbean.
These coordinates represent a position in genetic space, a tool for comparison, not a conclusion. You can use these to perform custom admixture analysis in G25 Studio.
PC537,0.0564329,-0.31621012,0.11163654,0.10123862,-0.1149615,-0.01166034,-0.30463158,-0.35845388,-0.0150917,-0.01695474,0.00081466,-0.00065794,-0.00129092,0.0256594,-0.0056706,8.734E-05,0.00611376,0.00341166,0.00069566,-0.0019167,-0.00124156,0.00804416,-0.00292418,-0.00485254,-0.00551733