When I started this blog, I was thinking of an article which would explain the concept of the Bagong Tao (New Man, loosely translated). Instead, I settled for this trivia-like fact about Filipinos. And it startled me, that's why. Because this information would turn the traditional belief on the ancestry of Filipinos upside down.
A
This is one entry from Wikipedia:
Filipino mestizoFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Filipino mestizos are Filipinos of part-Austronesian and part-foreign ancestry, though originally the term referred specifically to people of part-Austronesian and Spanish ancestry.
Modern genetic research[1] has shown that the racial stock of the majority of the Philippine population, the ethnic Filipinos who constitute the majority of the country, was established in prehistory by Austronesian-speaking Taiwanese aborigine migrants who arrived in successive waves to the Philippines around 3000 BCE, most of whom would later also mix with subsequent sporadic migrations from mainland Asia (modern-day southern China.)
Filipino mestizo, however, is taken to refer to specific minority communities of mixed ancestry whose origins stem from the mixture of ethnic Filipinos with foreign migrants, colonisers, or settlers in recent human history; such as recent Chinese merchants and settlers, Hispanics during the Spanish colonial period, Americans during the protectore period, Japanese during the Japanese occupation, but also independent migrants or refugees to the Philippines (Britons, Germans, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc.)
As a result of the above, most present-day Filipinos carry southern Chinese genetic markers, although the overwhelming majority would not be considered "Chinese mestizos", since those markers were contributed in pre-history during the formation of the general "ethnic Filipino" population.
About 3.6% of the Filipinos surveyed, possess Spanish or European ancestry, although the average amount of European admixture among them was not specified. (This may be claimed to grossly contradict data gathered in the 1818 census which suggests that 60% of all the inhabitants of Luzon possess foreign ancestry.[2]) These specific Filipinos would all be mestizo, since 1) the European contribution was made in the recent human history of the archipelago 2) it was not a generalised phenomenon in the overall population, and 3) the community resulting from the admixture became recognisably independent in ethnic identity, social standing, cultural practices, and linguistic heritage.
A quick search revealed that the Ami tribe of Taiwan have these characteristics:
Diversity of HLA among Taiwan's indigenous tribes and the Ivatans in the Philippines
Correspondence to:
Marie Lin, M.D.Immunohematology Reference Laboratory
Mackay Memorial Hospital
92, Sec 2
Chung-Shan N. Road
Taipei
Taiwan
Abstract
Abstract:
Taiwan's indigenous tribes, especially the east coast tribes are not only closely related to Oceania but also with the Australian aborigines. The Ivatans of the Batan Islands in the Philippines are closely related to the Yami tribe of Taiwan as cultural and anthropological studies have shown. Many DRB1 alleles (*15021, *16021, *0404, *04051, *11011, *12021, *1401, *08032) have high allele frequencies (>20%) in certain tribes, suggesting Taiwan's indigenous tribes are homogeneous populations. These high frequency DRB1 alleles and also some HLA-A-B-DR haplotypes found in Taiwan's indigenous tribes are also found in Oceania, Australian aborigines, south and north east Asians and American Indians, lending further support to our previous findings that Taiwan's indigenous tribes are more or less genetically related to both northern and southern Asians, possibly as well as Amerindians. HLA-A*2402 with a remarkably high frequency among Taiwan's indigenous tribes (52.1%
86.3%), especially the central mountain tribes, possibly represents not only founder effects and population bottlenecks, but also positive selection of the allele. Although the Ami tribe has the highest ever reported frequencies of the DRB1*0404 and DRB1*0405, these alleles have not been found to be associated with rheumatoid arthritis as previously described for Caucasians. In addition, DRB1*1401 has a high frequency in most tribes but is not associated with psoriasis as previously indicated in some studies, suggesting the involvement of some additional genetic and/or environmental factors mechanism in the development of these diseases.This article is cited by:
This article is cited by the following articles in Blackwell Synergy and CrossRef
- J.A. Trejaut, Z.-U. Tsai, H.-L. Lee, Z.-X. Chen, M. Lin
. (2004) Cytokine gene polymorphisms in Taiwan. Tissue Antigens 64:4, 492–499 - Z.X. Chen, S.G. Tsan, C.W. Dang, C.C. Chu, M. Lin, Y.J. Lee
. (2004) Identification of two new HLA-DRB1 alleles: HLA-DRB1*1350 and DRB1*140502. Tissue Antigens 64:3, 300–303 - C.C. Chu, H.L. Lee, N.K. Hsieh, J. Trejaut, M. Lin
. (2004) Two novel HLA-DRB1 alleles identified using a sequence-based typing: HLA-DRB1*1443 and HLA-DRB1*1351*. Tissue Antigens 64:3, 308–310 - Authors' affiliation:C.C.Chu, H.L.Lee, M.Lin
. (2004) Identification of a new HLA-DRB1 allele, HLA-DRB1*0436. Tissue Antigens 63:3, 279–281
