Brandini, StefaniaBergamaschi, PaolaCerna, Marco FernandoGandini, FrancescaBastaroli, FrancescaBertolini, EmilieCereda, CristinaFerretti, LucaGómez Carballa, AlbertoBattaglia, VicenzaSalas Ellacuriaga, AntonioSemino, OrnellaAchilli, AlessandroOlivieri, AnnaTorroni, Antonio2021-01-222021-01-222018Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 35, Issue 2, February 2018, Pages 299–311, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx2670737-4038http://hdl.handle.net/10347/24291Recent and compelling archaeological evidence attests to human presence ∼14.5 ka at multiple sites in South America and a very early exploitation of extreme high-altitude Andean environments. Considering that, according to genetic evidence, human entry into North America from Beringia most likely occurred ∼16 ka, these archeological findings would imply an extremely rapid spread along the double continent. To shed light on this issue from a genetic perspective, we first completely sequenced 217 novel modern mitogenomes of Native American ancestry from the northwestern area of South America (Ecuador and Peru); we then evaluated them phylogenetically together with other available mitogenomes (430 samples, both modern and ancient) from the same geographic area and, finally, with all closely related mitogenomes from the entire double continent. We detected a large number (N = 48) of novel subhaplogroups, often branching into further subclades, belonging to two classes: those that arose in South America early after its peopling and those that instead originated in North or Central America and reached South America with the first settlers. Coalescence age estimates for these subhaplogroups provide time boundaries indicating that early Paleo-Indians probably moved from North America to the area corresponding to modern Ecuador and Peru over the short time frame of ∼1.5 ka comprised between 16.0 and 14.6 kaeng© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.comAtribución-NoComercial 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/Native AmericansMitochondrial DNAMitochondrial genomesHaplogroupsFirst peopling of South AmericaEcuadorPerujournal article10.1093/molbev/msx2671537-1719open access