How much European ancestry is there in the Argentine population? A genetic analysis of the regional variation in our country

PAROLIN ML, AVENA SA, DI FABIO ROCA F, POSTILLONE MB, DEJEAN CB AND CARNESE FR

Ankara

Congreso; The 18th Congress of the European Anthropological Association.; 2012

Universidad de Ankara y European Anthropological Association

The idea that Argentina is a population of predominantly European roots is expressed in many geographic atlases and history books. Since 1996, our team has been developing a project aimed at performing anthropogenetic studies of cosmopolitan populations from different localities. A total of 1093 samples were studied by analyzing uni and bi parental genetic markers of nine Argentine cities. The study of 99 AIMs resulted in 65% European, 31% Amerindian and 4% Subsaharian ancestral Argentinean composition. Significant differences among localities were detected for European ancestry, which decreases towards the northern and southern regions of the country. At the level of mtDNA, the maternal indigenous composition increases towards north and south. In Northwestern Argentina, Amerindian contribution is nearly 90%, in Patagonia up to 70% and decreasing until 44% as it approaches Buenos Aires. At the Y chromosome level, this number is less than 10%, indicating sex-bias admixture between mostly European men and mostly Native American women, as it has been widely observed in Latin America in general. While the European component is still the majority at autosomal level, important contributions of Native Americans and Africans were observed and most of the people studied had more than one European and indigenous ancestry.