The history and geography of genomes

A new paper in PloS Genetics sheds some light on issues which we were already familiar with through conventional history, Ancestral Components of Admixed Genomes in a Mexican Cohort. What we already know: Mexicans and people of Mexican descent predominantly derive from an admixture event(s) between Europeans and Amerindians, with a minor African component. The last is often a surprise to Mexicans themselves, but it is no surprise to those who are aware of the nature of Spanish colonialism in the New World. In some cases, such as in Cuba, the African slave economy which we're familiar with the United States was the norm, but in many instances African slaves accompanied Spaniards as secondaries in their conquest of the indigenous populations. New Spain was a caste society with a Spaniard and Creole elite, and a productive base of indios from whom they extracted rents. But Africans served as junior partners ...