Implications of the distribution of Albumin Naskapi and Albumin Mexico fornew world prehistory

The known distributions of two mutational variants of the albumin gene that are restricted to Mexico and/or North America, Albumin Mexico (AL*Mexico) and Albumin Naskapi (AL*Naskapi), were expanded by the electrophoretic anal ysis of sera collected from more than 3,500 Native Americans representing s everal dozen tribal groups. With a few exceptions that could be due to rece nt, isolated cases of admixture, AL*Naskapi is limited to groups that speak Athapaskan and Algonquian, two widely distributed language families not th ought to be related, and to several linguistically unrelated groups geograp hically proximate to its probable ancestral homeland. Similarly, AL*Mexico is limited to groups that speak Yuman or Uto-Aztecan, two language groups i n the American Southwest and Baja California not thought to be closely rela ted to each other, and to several linguistically unrelated groups throughou t Mexico. The simultaneous consideration of genetic, historical, linguistic , and archaeological evidence suggests that AL*Naskapi probably originated on the northwestern coast of North America, perhaps in some group ancestral to both Athapaskans and Algonquians, and then spread by migration and admi xture to contiguous unrelated, or distantly related, tribal groups. AL*Mexi co probably originated in Mexico before 3,000 years BP then spread northwar d along the Tepiman corridor together with cultural influences to several u nrelated groups that participated in the Hohokam culture. (C) 2000 Wiley-Li ss, Inc.