Latin Americans show wide-spread Converso ancestry and imprint of local Native ancestry on physical appearance

Citations Over TimeTop 1% of 2018 papers

Abstract

Historical records and genetic analyses indicate that Latin Americans trace their ancestry mainly to the intermixing (admixture) of Native Americans, Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans. Using novel haplotype-based methods, here we infer sub-continental ancestry in over 6,500 Latin Americans and evaluate the impact of regional ancestry variation on physical appearance. We find that Native American ancestry components in Latin Americans correspond geographically to the present-day genetic structure of Native groups, and that sources of non-Native ancestry, and admixture timings, match documented migratory flows. We also detect South/East Mediterranean ancestry across Latin America, probably stemming mostly from the clandestine colonial migration of Christian converts of non-European origin (Conversos). Furthermore, we find that ancestry related to highland (Central Andean) versus lowland (Mapuche) Natives is associated with variation in facial features, particularly nose morphology, and detect significant differences in allele frequencies between these groups at loci previously associated with nose morphology in this sample.

Related Papers

• → Characterizing the admixed African ancestry of African Americans(2009)194 cited
• → Genetic admixture, self‐reported ethnicity, self‐estimated admixture, and skin pigmentation among Hispanics and Native Americans(2008)78 cited
• → Analysis of genetic ancestry in the admixed Brazilian population from Rio de Janeiro using 46 autosomal ancestry-informative indel markers(2012)68 cited
• → The Impact of Modern Admixture on Archaic Human Ancestry in Human Populations(2023)25 cited
• → Genetic ancestry and radical prostatectomy findings in Hispanic/Latino patients(2024)3 cited