THE AWA-GUAJA INDIANS OF THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON - DEMOGRAPHIC-DATA, SERUM-PROTEIN MARKERS AND BLOOD-GROUPS

The South-American Indian group Awa/Guaja, currently living in the Sta te of Maranhao (Northeastern Brazil), is one of the most recently cont acted Indian groups of the Brazilian Amazon. This group is made up by three partially isolated villages named Awa, Guaja and Juriti, and is characterized by having a young population, in which 47.6% of the indi viduals range from 0 to 14 years old. The sex ratios (male/female) for people of reproductive age are 1.13 for Awa village, 2.00 for Guaja, 3.33 for Juriti and 1.61 for the tribe as a whole. Fst and heterogenei ty analysis show that, despite the small differences observed among vi llages for the eight genetic systems analyzed, the Awa-Guaja tribe is constituted of only one population. Furthermore, comparisons between A wa-Guaja and Urubu-Kaapor tribes indicate that they are still isolated genetically, in spite of the fact that they share territories.