The Shell-Mound Builders of Jabuticabeira

Jabuticabeira II, on the coast of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil, is one of the largest sambaquis, the shell mounds that coastal peoples raised over thousands of years. It grew as a funerary monument, layer upon layer of shell built up around hundreds of burials. Genomes from seventeen of its dead revealed not one homogeneous community but three genetically distinct groups sharing the same mound. Sixteen of the seventeen carried mitochondrial lineage C1c and every male belonged to Y-haplogroup Q1b, and from about 2,200 years ago the burials show ancestry from inland southern Je groups related to the Kaingang, matching archaeological evidence of contact between coast and interior. The eleven here are fishers and mound-builders of that shoreline.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in Genomic history of coastal societies from eastern South America.

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 Shell-Mound Builders of Jabuticabeira 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 Shell-Mound Builders of Jabuticabeira?

  The Shell-Mound Builders of Jabuticabeira (c. 750-200 BCE, Jabuticabeira II, Jaguaruna, Santa Catarina, Brazil) are one of the Iconic discoveries entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 11 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "Genomic history of coastal societies from eastern South America".

• 02

  What does "matching" the Shell-Mound Builders of Jabuticabeira 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 Shell-Mound Builders of Jabuticabeira?

  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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