Steel, germs, guns, and mtDNA

[shkrobius]

I am in Puerto Rico this week, and this brings to mind Diamond's steel, germs, and guns. The story so far: all of the local (warm, wonderful, virtuous) Taino Indians perished in an apocalyptic genocide, being brutally persecuted by the (cold, greedy, murderous) Spaniards and further decimated by the combined forces of pox and measles

Comments

[shkrobius]

Not necessarily. Someone's genes are always leaving the pool. If the descendants of the Spanish have been systematically leaving more descendants than other groups, you will get this picture 25 generations later. This is more than likely given that they had better lands, more wealth, etc.

This is not an isolated story. I bet you've heard many times about Anglo-Saxons sacking Britain and the subsequent genocide of the Celts. Again, there is no archaeological evidence of the rivers of blood and the genetic studies indicate that 70% of the British are the direct descendants of the Paleolithic dwellers of the island. Less than 10% of the paternal lines in East England can be traced to the "Anglo-Saxons" and some features suggest that the migration of the Germans started to occur in the Mesolith and there were Germanic speaking people in England even in the pre-Roman period. There was an "invasion", but it was the usual overlordship. Like all warrios they liked to brag about their exploits and centuries later it molded into the stories of the rivers of blood. There was a terrific book by Oppenheimer on this subject
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Oppenheimer#Origins_of_the_British