An admixture estimate for Los Angeles hispanics

From an open-access paper:
overall estimates of 45.5% Native American (NA), 40.1% European (EU), 9.8% Asian (AS), and 4.5% African-American (AA) ancestry. Gradients of increasing NA background (37.3% to 51.7%) and of correspondingly decreasing EU ancestry (45.3% to 29.6%) were observed as a function of birth origin from North to South.
These estimates are based on only 176 SNPs, so I'm sure they contain at minimum a few percentage points of noise (which shouldn't make a big difference here). As one might expect, among L.A. Hispanics, those born in the US have the highest levels of European ancestry. Guatemalans/Salvadorians have the lowest. Mexicans are intermediate.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

10% Asian sure doesn't sound right. Could it really be another variety of Native American DNA arising from eastern Asia?

n/a said...

No doubt some of it is noise and misclassified Amerindian, but the "Asian" ancestry proportion is only around 3% in an Amerindian sample also tested for the paper. Mexican mestizos do have Asian ancestry, though I'm sure the real proportion is well under 10%.

patrick said...

I would believe the idea that US-born Hispanics have more European ancestry than immigrant Hispanics. Most Mexican immigration in the past (refugees during the Mexican Revolution, braceros) was from northern Mexico, where people are mostly of mixed European and Indian ancestry. Today's immigration is primarily from southern Mexico and central America, where people are predominantly Amerindian.

Anonymous said...

Patrick, very true. And just look how successful the the descendents of the earlier wave of Mexican immigration was.

Anonymous said...

If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.

History furnishes us with innumerable instances that prove this law. It shows, with a startling clarity, that whenever Aryans have mingled their blood with that of an inferior race the result has been the downfall of the people who were the standard-bearers of a higher culture. In North America, where the population is prevalently Teutonic, and where those elements intermingled with the inferior race only to a very small degree, we have a quality of mankind and a civilization which are different from those of Central and South America. In these latter countries the immigrants – who mainly belonged to the Latin races – mated with the aborigines, sometimes to a very large extent indeed. In this case we have a clear and decisive example of the effect produced by the mixture of races. But in North America the Teutonic element, which has kept its racial stock pure and did not mix it with any other racial stock, as come to dominate the American Continent and will remain master of it as long as that element does not fall a victim to the habit of adulterating its blood.

In short, the results of miscegenation are always the following:
(a) The level of the superior race becomes lowered;
(b) physical and mental degeneration sets in, thus leading slowly but steadily towards a progressive drying up of the vital sap.

The act which brings about such a development is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator. And as a sin this act will be avenged.

Anonymous said...

Oh noes, Hitler quotes!!

patrick said...

I'm not here to attack "miscegenation" and praise the purity of the "Teutonic race", nor to badmouth Mexicans. Just speculating on the reason for the study results.

Anonymous said...

Why is it that there never is any such done on white americans? They only like to analyze their minorities.

Anonymous said...

"They" did study "white" americans. Click on the link and read the paper.

Anonymous said...

The Asian ancestry from mexicans is siberian. Amerindians usually come up part siberian (yakut) on autosomal tests.

Unknown said...

There was a lot of Filipino slaves bought to Mexico pacific coast in the 1500's on the pacific coast then in the real late 1800's Chinese laborers were brought to build the railroads of northeastern Mexico but then we're kicked out by force many died trying to flee cross the desert of Sonora to what is Mexicali today and built their Chinatown older than San Francisco that could explain the asian mixture because full blooded Indian don't come up with any East Asian dna