Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Argentine ghost population

Via Razib, Argentina genetics. It turns out here that the Argentines as of 1900 were mestizo. This has since been swamped by a near-century of Italian and NaziGermanic immigration.

I perked up when they said what sort of mestizo. There are four:

Three of them are also found in modern South American populations and are specifically represented in Central Andes, Central Chile/Patagonia, and Subtropical and Tropical Forests geographic areas. The fourth component might be specific to the Central Western region of Argentina, and it is not well represented in any genomic data from the literature.

Central eastern Argentina is actually Welsh, not Spanish; they were there to farm in the earliest days, not over those great later migrations mostly urban. This is the most Welsh-speaking land in the world after Wales herself.

That fourth, western component is the most interesting. If I am reading this right, here is an Andean foothill people whom nobody met. The Incas and Paraguay were far north of them; the Mapuche were across the freakin' ANDES. Those first "Spanish" settlers, I gather, didn't keep good records nor entertain an oral-tradition as do the Mapuche. These settlers were, I think, a fringe people in Argentine society already ethnically Miscellaneous. It all reminds me of the Melungeons in Appalachia.

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