Commenti alla fisionomia e all'appartenenza razziale di Filippani Ronconi

[Periandro]

Quello siciliano è l'esempio più eclatante, ma in realtà in molte altre zone d'Italia, e non solo al sud, sono presenti nuclei genetici negroidi, per fortuna minoritari.

La Sicilia ha una popolazione di 5 milioni di abitanti e contribuisce in gran parte ad alzare la media nazionale.

[Logomaco]

Incredibile che la Spagna abbia una percentuale inferiore all'Italia.

Mica tanto...bisogna considerare che buona parte dei geni negroidi presenti in Europa vi sono entrati in epoca romana, a causa dello schiavismo.

Ora, in Italia al concentrazione di schiavi, negri inclusi, era molto superiore alla Spagna o in generale a tutte le zone occidentali dell'impero...

[Squalo]

Quello siciliano è l'esempio più eclatante, ma in realtà in molte altre zone d'Italia, e non solo al sud, sono presenti nuclei genetici negroidi, per fortuna minoritari.

Spagnoli e portoghesi? I portoghesi sono gli europei più "mediterranei" che abba conosciuto in assoluto.

[Periandro]

Spagnoli e portoghesi? I portoghesi sono gli europei più "mediterranei" che abba conosciuto in assoluto.

Eppure, secondo quelle statistiche lo sono meno di italiani e francesi.

[Logomaco]

Spagnoli e portoghesi? I portoghesi sono gli europei più "mediterranei" che abba conosciuto in assoluto.

I portoghesi hanno tantissimo sangue negroide, a causa dello schiavismo coloniale.

Ma qui in Italia non ci sono mai venuti, dunque non c'entra nulla.

[Squalo]

Mica tanto...bisogna considerare che buona parte dei geni negroidi presenti in Europa vi sono entrati in epoca romana, a causa dello schiavismo.

Ora, in Italia al concentrazione di schiavi, negri inclusi, era molto superiore alla Spagna o in generale a tutte le zone occidentali dell'impero...

Sapevo che gli schiavi provenissero in maggioranza dall'attuale Francia... poi posso sbagliarmi naturalmente.

[Periandro]

Quindi, per riassumere la situazione italiana: 2 % e rotti di origine semita e 2 % e rotti di origine negroide?

[Logomaco]

Eppure, secondo quelle statistiche lo sono meno di italiani e francesi.

Il dato aggregato è ingannevole:

Are the Portuguese mulattos?
The Portuguese obviously are not mulattos in the 50-50 black-white sense of the word. However, the Portuguese are among the most racially mixed people in Europe. Scientists believe much of their Negroid ancestry was introduced through the slave trade within the past 600 years. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether or not the Portuguese qualify as mulattos under the second meaning of "mulatto", "a person of mixed white and black ancestry". But, certainly, if any European nationality deserve to be called "mulattos", it is the Portuguese.

Guenther remarked that Portugal "shows a particularly well-marked Negro strain." DNA testing confirms the longstanding belief -- captured here by Madison Grant (1933) -- that the Portuguese have more black ancestry than any other European nation.

During the great years of Portuguese exploration and colonization in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, it has been estimated that a million Portuguese, mainly young men, went to the tropics, and for the most part never came back. Negroes were imported to take their places and to do the work of the country. Intermarriage of these Negroes with the old population left Portugal with a larger amount of Negro blood than any other European country, and greatly impaired its ability to contribute to the progress of civilization. Thus Portugal, which, when dominated by the Nordics, had set an extraordinary example of progress in many ways, now contributes relatively little to such progress . . .

Negroid DNA in Portugal

Depending on region, the Portuguese have 5-10% sub-Saharan maternal lineages (L haplogroups). M1 is East African in origin, so the Central Portuguese have about 11% Negroid maternal ancestry. (Pereira et al. 2000)

In addition to Negroid maternal ancestry, Carvalho-Silva et al. (2001) found sub-Saharan Y-chromosome haplogroup 8 in Portugal at a frequency of 1.1% (n=93).

Other studies have failed to detect sub-Saharan Y-chromosomes in Portugal. However, I think it may be significant that the study cited above did detect HG8 in a sample of Portuguese. Apart from Rosser et al. (2000), which found HG8 in Sardinian and French samples, and another study which found sub-Saharan haplotypes in Corsica, I believe this is the only time I've seen a sub-Saharan Y-chromosome detected in a European population (Update: Greece is now on the list of European countries in which sub-Saharan male ancestry has been detected).

In any event, the Negroid paternal contribution in the Portuguese is much smaller than the Negroid maternal contribution, which is to be expected if the Negroid strain was introduced into Portugal as a result of the Atlantic slave trade.

The Negroid genetic contribution in Portugal could be something like 3-6% of total genes. Though an extraordinarily high level of sub-Saharan ancestry by European standards, this ancestry is minimal enough that it seems unlikely that it markedly affects the phenotypes of most Portuguese. But, through recombination, it's not inconceivable that some Portuguese exhibit Negroid traits due to slave admixture.

Also, the fact that levels of Negroid ancestry in Portugal apparently vary by region tells us that the distribution of Negroid genes is not uniform. If there is also genetic structure by sub-region and social class (as seems likely), there is a reasonable likelihood that some groups of Portuguese are greatly above the national average in their levels of black genes, and those groups might show external signs of their Negroid ancestry. Update: This prediction of mine seems to have been vindicated by a recent report that "sub-Saharan input" is "above 20%" in certain rural areas of Portugal, "where black African physical features occasionally mildly manifest themselves in the natives". I don't have a full citation for this report, which was apparently transcribed from a print journal and posted to the web by someone intent on minimizing the importance of the sub-Saharan component in the Portuguese, but no one disagrees that these native Portuguese with manifestly sub-Saharan features exist.

Update: According to the latest paper on the subject (Gonzalez et al. 2003), some of Portugal's Negroid admixture may date to the Neolithic. Guenther (see below) was probably correct to ascribe the Negroid element in Portugal to both ancient and recent sources.

[Logomaco]

In effetti, i Portoghesi sono la popolazione europea con più sangue negroide in assoluto.

[Squalo]

Eppure, secondo quelle statistiche lo sono meno di italiani e francesi.

La mia è una constatazione empirica, non conosco le statistiche, anche tra popoli dove vivono discrete comunità di portoghesi quest'ultimi vengono percepiti come "molto mediterranei" (più di italiani, greci e spagnoli).