• Submitted by: manso
• Society
• 03 / 27 / 2011

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Approximately eight percent of the Cuban population has, in its DNA, genes belonging to the nearly extinct aboriginal people before the arrival of Christopher Columbus, said Spanish researcher  Antonio Arnainz-Villena.

At the recent Second Convention of Anthropology in the city of Havana, Arnainz-Villena said that researchers in his team, from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, analyzed the HLA (transplant genes ) of natives of Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico and other nations of Central and South America, reports  AIN.

They determined that in the case of the island remaining elements of the genetic profile of former Aboriginal people, because their women were rsujugated by the settlers and forced to mingle with them, so that its essence has remained to the present.

Another fact found in the studies is that the dominant genes in Cubans come from the Iberian Mediterranean and second sub-Saharan Africans.

They also stated that the population of Cuba began more than four thousand years ago, with the migration of Aboriginal people in the current regions of Florida and the Bahamas in the north and Guatemala to the south, who came through the arc of the Lesser Antilles.

Similarly, in their researches they analyzed DNA samples extracted from peripheral blood of 700 people from Turkey and other Spanish Mediterranean coasts, and found that they have the same profile as each other, with similarities to the North African individuals.

This is due to the  occupation of the southern Spanish territory for centuries, by the "Moors" or Muslims.

This led to a mixture that today's DNA ties these two populations, who came to America through colonization, and is now part of the genetic makeup of the Cubans.

Source: Granma