CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The province of La Pampa is located in the center of the Argentine Republic and with 318,951 inhabitants registered in 2011, it is the third region least populated in the country. Along with the Gran Chaco and Patagonia the current provincial territory of La Pampa was outside the colonial and republican state control until its definitive military occupation and full incorporation to the rest of the country in the last quarter of the 19th century. The most recent history of its settlement is determined by the military campaigns and the migratory waves from overseas and neighboring provinces, which together have led to a significant loss of representation of native groups against the total population. With the objective of knowing the remote continental contributions of the maternal lineages to the current Pampean population, 319 biological samples and genealogical information of 2 to 3 generations were collected in the localities of Santa Rosa (N = 247) and General Pico (N = 72). PCR-APLP assays were performed to determine the membership of the Native American (A, B, C and D) and allochthonous (L (xM, N), M and N) clades of the human mitochondrial phylogeny and the results were compared with those available in the bibliography.The contribution of Native American maternal lineages was close to 70% for both localities, a value that is similar to that reported for the neighboring province of Mendoza and is lower than in other provinces of the Northwest and Northeast of the country where it exceeds 90%. In Santa Rosa 23% of the found lineages have a European origin and 6% African, in General. Pico these values correspond to 31% and 3%, respectively. The significant African contribution reported in this work maintains proximity with those found for the provinces of Mendoza and Córdoba; this makes La Pampa one of the provinces in Argentina with the largest component of African maternal lineages found.