Diabetes, the ice free corridor, and the Paleoindian settlement of North America

Abstract

Since the 1940s, many Amerindian populations, including some with mixed Amerindian ancestry, have experienced an epidemic of obesity and adult-onset diabetes (NIDDM). Obesity and NIDDM were apparently rare among Amerindian populations prior to that time. Though the evidence is equivocal, obesity and NIDDM seem to be rare today among Athapaskan Amerindians of the North American Arctic, sub-Arctic, and Southwest. It is hypothesized that the Amerindian genotype(s) susceptible to obesity and NIDDM arose from selection favoring "thrifty" genes during the peopling of North America south of the continental glaciers. "Thrifty" genes (Neel: Am. J. Hum. Genet. 14:353-362, 1962) allowed a more efficient food metabolism as hunter-gatherers from an unusually harsh mid-latitude tundra environment (the "ice free" corridor) adapted to more typical mid-latitude environments to the south. The early Paleoindian settlement pattern from Wyoming to Arizona and Texas indicates a relatively brief period of reliance on unpredictable big game resources in lower elevations and smaller game and gathered resources in higher elevations. This unusual "specialist" settlement pattern may have resulted from the early Paleoindian's unfamiliarity with gathered foods and small game in lower elevations. Athapaskan populations evidently moved south from Beringia sometime after the Paleoindian migration when the "ice free" corridor had widened and contained environments and resources more typical of subarctic latitudes. Thus, Athapaskan hunter-gatherers could gradually adapt to the resources of lower latitudes such that "thrifty" genes would not have been as advantageous. The interaction of recently introduced "western" diets and "thrifty" genes have evidently led to today's epidemic of obesity and NIDDM among Amerindians of Paleoindian ancestry.