B type HLA = Native American

http://ldsmag.com/ldsmag/ancients/050712dna2.html

HLA Studies

Another method of tracing the origin of some of one’s ancestors is to examine the human lymphocyte antigens (HLAs) that make up the immune system. HLAs are proteins or white blood cells produced by specific genes passed from parent to child. In recent years, medical experts have had to pay more attention to these HLAs because they, like blood types (A, B, AB, O) and other blood characteristics (Rhesus, Kell, and Duffy), play a role in the rejection of transplanted organs.

The actual number of human alleles responsible for HLAs is relatively small. According to a recent study by James L. Guthrie,

some isolated South American tribes possess only a few types that are common throughout the Americas. But other groups, especially those near sites of former Mesoamerican and Andean urban societies, exhibit HLA alleles that are rare in America but common in certain Afro-Asiatic, southern Asian, and European populations. These unexpected genes account, on the average, for 6-7% of the [Native] American HLA total, but range as high as 24% [in some groups]. The atypical genes are postulated to have been acquired by assimilation of foreign populations in various times after initial colonization of the hemisphere but prior to the sixteenth-century influx of Europeans and Africans, because they suggest gene-flow from places that were, according to some scholars, in ancient contact with the Americas, such as North Africa and Southeast Asia. [28]

Guthrie notes that “This diversity gives population geneticists a powerful tool for tracing ancient migrations, and, at present, HLA distributions are more informative in this regard  than are any other genetic system except DNA.” [29] At the time the article was published in 2001, there were, worldwide, “29 HLA families for which there are enough data to construct useful distribution maps,” with “many more types that are less well mapped at the present time.” [30] “Only twelve type-A and 17 type-B HLAs were sufficiently well sampled for useful worldwide comparison,” and there were some geographical regions that were not well represented by the sampling. [31]

Native American populations “near the urban societies of Mesoamerica and the Andes have the most” HLA alleles (up to 26), while “some marginal tribes of South America have the fewest. The degree of HLA diversity in a population may be a measure of its former size and cosmopolitan nature.” [32] Four of the type-A HLAs account for 94% of the American HLA-A total, while six of the type-B HLAs account for 93% of the HLA-B total, and these are to be considered as markers for Native Americans. Significantly, “some [isolated] South American tribes apparently have only these alleles, whereas those near former urban centers tend to have significant percentages of HLAs that now are most common in the Near East, India, Africa, Northwest Europe, or Southeast Asia (including Pacific Oceania),” and hence are due to admixture with outside groups. [33]

While “some anomalies may be explainable as recent admixtures ... the apparently foreign HLA alleles are usually less characteristic of Spain, Portugal, or West Africa than of places alleged [by some archaeologists and linguists] to have had earlier contact, such as Pacific Oceania, North Africa, or Southwest Asia [i.e., the Near East].” [34] On the basis of HLA distribution, Guthrie postulates ties to various parts of the Old World. Here, we shall deal only with possible ties to the ancient Near East. Of the 18 “non-Indian” alleles, the 9 that seem to have originated among Afro-Asiatic peoples (i.e., the Near East and North Africa) account for 47% of the total found in Native American populations, with 28% from the 5 southern Asian alleles and 25% from the 4 European. [35]

Guthrie notes that the highest world frequencies of Afro-Asiatic HLAs are represented by alleles B*21, A*32, and A*30, attested in Middle Eastern populations of Saudi Arabia, Jordan/Palestine, [36] the Berber and Tuareg of North Africa, and the Tigre of Ethiopia (where Semitic languages distantly related to Arabic and Hebrew are still spoken). [37] Significantly, all three of these alleles are attested in Central America in the range of 6.5-7.5%. Alleles A*32 and A*30 appear in even higher percentages in Samoa than in the Near East. [38]

Guthrie notes that “Central Amerind composite sample is unique in that all of its ‘non-Indian’ HLAs are of the Afro-Asiatic set” and concludes that “significant Afro-Asiatic contact with western Mexico and/or the Caribbean region almost certainly occurred, probably from Arabia or North Africa.” [39] According to Guthrie, of the foreign alleles, “A*33 seems to trace movement of a Near-Eastern population to Southeast Asia and South America,” [40]and contributes “70-80% to the second principal component, with its strongest effect in eastern North America and Panama.” [41]

He warns that, “Because human distributions have changed with time, arguments based on the present situation are not convincing unless combined with other kinds of evidence,” [42] by which he, being a diffusionist, means archaeological and linguistic findings that suggest to some scholars that there were Old World/New World contacts in precolumbian times.