'Irregardless!' Arrrgh......

Before this thread gets hijacked by the grammar police, I'd like to say that I appreciate these distinctions among Latinos. As a semi-Latina (my mom is Puerto Rican), I know first hand that it's silly to lump them (us) all together, genetically or even culturally. Latino/Hispanic is not a race or even an ethnicity. About the only single common trait you can bank on is linguistic commonality.

And, somewhat interestingly, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans don't much care for Cubans, who have long occupied a unique and favored niche in America del Norte.

Race is a social construct.
Ethnicity not so much.
~m.

Bullworth was right.

Now that I've got all my Christmas stuff packed off to Cali and I can breathe a minute, I'd like to amend my earlier post. Not all latino/hispanics share a common language. Spanish is a second language for many of the the indigenous people of Central America, who have their own languages and cultures.

There was a lot of variety in my mother's family – everything from fair skinned redheads and blonds to folks with distinctly African features. Puerto Rico really is a melting pot.

DNA is apparently more complicated than one person, one set of DNA. "it’s quite common for an individual to have multiple genomes." See: (link...).

-- OneTahiti

It’s an interesting article although statistically it is somewhat beyond my comprehension. I’m somewhat surprised to note the two states where the self-reported Latinos have the largest percentage of European ancestry are Tennessee and Kentucky.

Like CE, I have gotten deeper into genetic genealogy than I intended. For those who might be interested, my free advice for what it’s worth is to test with 23andMe first even though it might be slightly more expensive. You’ll get the biggest bang for your buck. Then, if you choose to delve more deeply into your direct parental lines you can test with Family Tree DNA.

I started with Family Tree DNA because I was mainly interested in my maternal grandfather’s ancestry. When I searched on his surname, it appeared several males had been tested. As it turned out, they, like me, had the surname listed as an ancestral surname but were not in the direct male line. I paid extra to have my mother’s ancestry tested which has generated almost 5,000 possible matches making it virtually useless.

Wonkish but... the evolutionary psychology question on race - whether the human mind has an architecture that disposes humans to notice race - is fascinating. For a comparatively long time humans and their precursors most likely didn't encounter people of divergently different colors. So why do we notice it along with sex and age?
Sciency paper

Given the breeding structure inherent in such a world, the typical individual would almost never have encountered people sampled from populations genetically distant enough to qualify as belonging to a different “race” (even assuming that such a term is applicable to a nonpolytypic species such as humans, in which the overwhelming preponderance of genetic variation is within population and not between population, and at most geographically graded rather than sharply bounded) (17, 18). If individuals typically would not have encountered members of other races, then there could have been no selection for cognitive adaptations designed to preferentially encode such a dimension, much less encode it in an automatic and mandatory fashion.
Accordingly, we propose that no part of the human cognitive architecture is designed specifically to encode race. We hypothesize that the (apparently) automatic and mandatory encoding of race is instead a byproduct of adaptations that evolved for an alternative function that was a regular part of the lives of our foraging ancestors: detecting coalitions and alliances.

We're all basically mongrels. I keep wanting to check that box on various form, but nobody ever gives me the option.

I don't pretend to be an authority; however, race in the context of this conversation refers to observable physical differences that can be traced to observable genetic mutations. How individuals relate to those differences in another matter.

I did find the statement interesting but, IMO, unrelated to the conversation.

We're all Homo Sapiens.

This conversation brings back memories of a class we were required to take in college. A general course combining biology, psychology and sociology intended to introduce us to fields outside our chosen major. Seldom did one professor get to finish his lecture before the other two began arguing with him.

I am mildly amused by the use of "African" to describe ancestry. It is even less specific than "Latino". From the Mediterranean Ocean to the Congo to the most Southern parts there are such variations in skin color and features as to be opposites if that concept had any application. From Pygmies to Masai, Moroccans to Rawandans to Afrikkkans it is a geographically huge and extremely biologically diverse continent. Language, religion, lifestyle, and Gawd only knows what all are as diverse there as can be.

But it sure is easy to pretend that describing something or someone as "African" actually told you something of import. (Just think, Charlize Theron is an "African-American.)

Or Homo sapiens of different earlobe attachments, tongue twirling capabilities, presence/absence of widow's peaks or ___________ phenotypes aren't different races either.
Beyond simple tolerance it'll take peoples' deeper understanding of evolutionary biology to begin ridding ourselves of racism. Nina Jablonski does a great job in her enthralling-for-the-genre book, Skin: A Natural History moving us in that direction. I had some high school students in a human evolution unit engaged by this brief segment below. Her paper the Evolution of Human Skin and Skin Color is here.

One of the reasons I found this article so interesting, is that I have been working with a distant cousin to find where we fit. One the testing sites, we are projected to be 5th to distant cousins, and at this point, our most recent common ancestor (MRCA) would be around my 5th or 6th great grandfather. Apparently, GGGGGG granddad help to add to that European mixture.

Without giving all our personal information, I show to be 97-99% European. This distant cousin is about 65% African (west African) 30% European and a smattering of American Indian. (Cafkia, the mtdna shows the exact areas in Africa this cousin descended from, but I choose to keep most of that information private in this discussion)

Because of the way this distant cousin appears, one would say we could not be related, and I'm sure when filling out forms they would check the little box for "African-American" and the dna for this cousin tells a far different story.

One of the things we find, is that when the US was settled by/invaded by Europeans, diluting the DNA of inhabitants is an aggressive act of dominance. (Now I'm late, will try to finish my thoughts later)

Given that we at one time shared common ancestors, I took issue with Micheal and Stick because they appear to ignore your referenced article and the advances made in DNA analysis during the past fifteen years. For $99.00 and a vial of saliva your race and/or racial mixture can be identified. For a few hundred, they can determine your ancestors migration routes.

I've only tested with FamilyTreeDNA and question the results. The percentages of Scandinavian and Southern European ancestry it reports is much higher than my paper trail would indicate. I plan to test with 23andMe next month. I'm not particularly interested in finding cousins;
but, I do respond if someone thinks there might be a connection.

Congratulations on the anticipated arrival on your holiday blessing.

I do expect 23andme to generate a different ancestral history since their autosomal database, I understand, is approximately 4X the size of the FTDNA database and it generates a more detailed report. That's why I suggested earlier that those with an interest test with 23andme first.

I'm testing out of curiosity rather than genealogy. Not particularly looking for new cousins. Glad to get rid of one who sent daily ultra-conservative emails, although I was not happy to hear of his failing health since he maintained a family webpage long out of date.

Don't particularly like to use KV for personal exchanges. Will connect after your life settles down. Would like to know more about your finding particularly if you have New York roots.

could be the great work done at PBS in their series "Becoming Human" and an excellent PBS piece on Neanderthals, note the discussion with John Hawks in the last 15 minutes; all links at youtube in HD. each right at ~52min.

Becoming Human Pt 1

Becoming Human Pt 2

Becoming Human Pt 3

Decoding Neanderthals

A few years ago I was found to be the best 'match' for a stem cell transplant for a man with leukemia. This was a pretty big deal (on many levels). He and I had to match on at least 7 (10 is best) of our HLA (human leukocyte antigens) to give him the best chance for survival. I don't know exactly how many we matched on but I understand that we are a better DNA genetic match than I am with either my mother or father or even my child. Maybe even a better match than my siblings. I was a better match than any of his immediate family too, apparently, since he was looking on the NMDP registry for a donor.

As an aside, after my stem cells were transplanted into him, if everything worked the way it was supposed to, my cells engrafted within about 30 days. This means they started growing new, healthy stem cells in his bone marrow. He had already had his immune system destroyed with chemo about the same time (3-5 days before the transplant) that I began taking medication to make my bones create copious amounts of stem cells, so my cells were literally a 're-boot' of his immune system. After the transplant his blood type changed to mine and he was now a chimera: one set of DNA for his blood (mine) and his own DNA.

This was/is still pretty mind-blowing for me, but what's even more interesting is that he was an "international" donation. Unfortunately, for my curiousity's sake I don't have any way of even knowing what country he's from, much less how he fared from the transplant. The international rules allow the recipient's treatment center to set the terms of whether any info or contact can ever be established and his allows no info ever. In the US recipient and donor can agree (must be mutual) to have info/contact info shared after one year. Other countries say three years, five years. His center said nothing exchanged, ever. I was disappointed to be sure, but I'm so incredibly grateful to have been allowed such an awesome life experience as this.

Anyway, I'm writing all this not to self-congratulate. I wanted to join the discussion to share my personal experience with the mystery of genetics and DNA. Incidently, I do have an insatiable curiousity and, after a little googling, I found just a very few treatment centers that allow no contact ever between donor and recipient. I believe that it must be in England (I have no reason to believe there was any ancestral connection to the other countries) and my maternal grandfather was from England. Maybe some distant cousin? It's all been so very cool to think about.

Was your dad stationed abroad during military service?

Ewen Callaway Nature News 13 May 2015
Early European may have had Neanderthal great-great-grandparent

The data from the jawbone imply that breeding did happen in Europe, and not just the Middle East, says María Ávila, an ancient-genomics researcher at Stanford University in California who attended Fu’s talk. “It also makes sense — why would it be limited to one specific region?” Ávila hopes that researchers may be able to determine how the Neanderthal portions of the Oase man's genome compare to the genomes of Neanderthals and to Neanderthal sequences found in humans today. But the extracted DNA was highly degraded, which might hinder such efforts. “I just don’t know how much data they have to do all these cool analyses. Hopefully a lot,” Avila adds.

Trinkaus points out that the jaw represents the ancestry of one man, not an entire population. It is not clear how often early humans and Neanderthals interbred in Europe. DNA from other human fossils that predate the extinction of Neanderthals some 35,000 years ago could build a fuller picture of the continent’s history.

2nd of 3 part series airs tonight at 9pm on PBS. First one was absolutely superb.
First Peoples

About the Program

200,000 years ago we took our first steps on the African savanna. Today there are 7 billion of us living across planet Earth.

How did our ancestors beat the odds and spread from continent to continent? What was the secret to their success?

This is a global detective story, featuring new fossil finds and the latest genetic research. It’s a story that revolves around a shocking revelation. In prehistoric times, we met and mated with other types of human – like Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo erectus. This mixing of genes helped us survive - and ultimately thrive.

Scientists are beginning to realize that ours is not a pedigree species, but a patchwork. We are all hybrids.

First Peoples will air on Wednesdays, 9/8c, beginning June 24 on PBS.