The Archaic Age Cubans

Canimar Abajo, on the Matanzas coast of Cuba, is one of the largest Archaic Age cemeteries anywhere in the Antilles, and its dead speak for the islands' earliest settlers. Their genomes showed that the Caribbean was peopled in at least three separate dispersals, and that the first of these left a lineage which held on in Cuba with remarkably little mixing for more than 2,500 years. At Canimar Abajo that continuity ran unbroken until around 950 CE, long after Ceramic Age newcomers had transformed the islands to the east. The twelve people gathered here, from Canimar Abajo and a second Cuban site, were fishers and foragers of that enduring tradition, buried across a span of well over two thousand years.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in Genomic insights into the early peopling of the Caribbean.

Every Ancestry Map includes the free Notable Matches lens: your coordinates are compared to every sequenced member of every catalog entry, and the distance to the closest member is reported, a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional space the Distance lens uses. Because these are a small group of real individuals, not a population average, distances naturally run larger than population distances. That is expected, not a poor result. And one thing is never claimed: a small distance means similar ancestry composition, not that the Archaic Age Cubans are your ancestor. See how it looks in the live demo or read about Ancestry Map, the full Global25 report.

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  Who were the Archaic Age Cubans?

  The Archaic Age Cubans (c. 1200 BCE-1250 CE, Canimar Abajo and other sites, Cuba) are one of the Iconic discoveries entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 12 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "Genomic insights into the early peopling of the Caribbean".

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  What does "matching" the Archaic Age Cubans mean?

  Your Global25 coordinates are compared to the entry's sequenced members and the distance to the closest one is reported, a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional reference space the Distance lens uses. A notable entry is one person or one small burial group, not a population average, so distances naturally run larger than population distances.

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  Are they my ancestor?

  No, and no DNA test can show that. A small distance means your genome sits near theirs in a shared reference space: similar ancestry composition, not descent. Ancestrify never claims a notable individual is your ancestor or relative.

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  How do I see my own distance to the Archaic Age Cubans?

  Notable Matches is a free lens on every Ancestry Map, never sold separately. Order Ancestry Map, our Global25 analysis (29.99 EUR), and your report ranks your coordinates against the full catalog, with a portrait, dossier and map for every entry. The public demo shows the lens with example data.

The catalog holds every published entry across three tiers. Browse the full Notable Matches directory. Nearby entries:

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