Yeah, oral history and folk practices are great when it comes to tracing things like this. Family histories are also very valuable.... If Taino ties are found then DNA evidence can substantiate the claims......BUT the biggest problem in Latin American anthropology is funding for such things.....remember, when such research takes place, the target population consists of marginalized people.....so its very hard to get funding for such endeavours, the Tainos are treated as an historic people.....their legacy is accepted only in that they are relegated to the world of myth and history....This attitude creates a lot of problems. This is pretty much the state of Latin American anthropology.....
Cultural evidence substantiated by genetic evidence would be the ideal situation....it would definitely substantiate data. But I don't believe this is realistic for now.....even if the study posted on here goes through, it will be heavilly disputed because it uses so few individuals as a target population. Thats the problem with MTDNA research these days, its debated because of the low number of people tested, and not many people are tested because of the cost of the research....
They actually even did some MTDNA tests on Neanderthals in Croatia, but the research was never taken seriously because of the low number of remains tested....the research was aimed at seeing whether anatomicaly modern humans are related genetically to Neanderthals, and whether there was displacement or genetic continuity in the region.......the results were shady, the small test sample wasn't really able to be taken seriously because there were very wide differences between them....so how do we know what the differences would be with a larger population.
so its a tricky thing when we deal with genetics and ethnic origins.....With Taino ancestry, the amount of Taino ancestry would taint the test results and since there would surely be wide variances in a small group......the end results wouldn't be any breakthrough.....
The out of Africa theory is being constantly changed, the number of years ago keeps being pushed back.......some new studies say about 200.000 years ago! There were tools found dating to about 3 million years ago......so the hominid record keeps getting pushed back further and further..... But with anatomically modern humans, the out of Africa theory is in heavy debate...... Its agreed that hominids most likely originated in Africa some 5 million years ago, and that by 4 million years ago they spread across Asia....and by 2 million into Europe.....the thing is that once the early hominids were out of Africa, it gets more complicated.......
Some believe in displacement theory, that modern humans came from Africa and displaced the earlier hominids, others that the early hominids evolved into regional varieties of modern humans, and others believe a combination of both occurred......
But all of the approaches are fascinating, I tend to go with the regional variation approach......simply because I don't think enough genetic variety over time would be probable with the displacement theory.....it doesn't seem realistic, a closely related genetic group with no outside genes would not make it more than 60 generations.....the population at the time was pretty low, and so I question displacement.......plus, there are some signs of regional continuity......especially in the chinese fossil record, homo erectus had shovel shaped incisors and square shaped eye sockets and so do present day east Asians......similar traits continue in other populations........
But yeah, back to the topic..... I think Taino ancestry is there.....its obvious in some faces, if its in the Haitian interior it has to be in the Dominican interior as well.....because the historical processes there were the same, when runaway slaves went into the interior many of them interbred with the Tainos, many times it wasn't a harmonious relationship......there were accounts of runaway slaves raping Taino women.......so we can't idealize how Taino ancestry came to be......but its definitely there.
I'm sure studies like those of Haitian interior dialects would also reveal Taino influence on the Dominican side of the border....... Its sad that not enough research exists, but on the other hand its also positive in that there is so much left to do!
Cultural evidence substantiated by genetic evidence would be the ideal situation....it would definitely substantiate data. But I don't believe this is realistic for now.....even if the study posted on here goes through, it will be heavilly disputed because it uses so few individuals as a target population. Thats the problem with MTDNA research these days, its debated because of the low number of people tested, and not many people are tested because of the cost of the research....
They actually even did some MTDNA tests on Neanderthals in Croatia, but the research was never taken seriously because of the low number of remains tested....the research was aimed at seeing whether anatomicaly modern humans are related genetically to Neanderthals, and whether there was displacement or genetic continuity in the region.......the results were shady, the small test sample wasn't really able to be taken seriously because there were very wide differences between them....so how do we know what the differences would be with a larger population.
so its a tricky thing when we deal with genetics and ethnic origins.....With Taino ancestry, the amount of Taino ancestry would taint the test results and since there would surely be wide variances in a small group......the end results wouldn't be any breakthrough.....
The out of Africa theory is being constantly changed, the number of years ago keeps being pushed back.......some new studies say about 200.000 years ago! There were tools found dating to about 3 million years ago......so the hominid record keeps getting pushed back further and further..... But with anatomically modern humans, the out of Africa theory is in heavy debate...... Its agreed that hominids most likely originated in Africa some 5 million years ago, and that by 4 million years ago they spread across Asia....and by 2 million into Europe.....the thing is that once the early hominids were out of Africa, it gets more complicated.......
Some believe in displacement theory, that modern humans came from Africa and displaced the earlier hominids, others that the early hominids evolved into regional varieties of modern humans, and others believe a combination of both occurred......
But all of the approaches are fascinating, I tend to go with the regional variation approach......simply because I don't think enough genetic variety over time would be probable with the displacement theory.....it doesn't seem realistic, a closely related genetic group with no outside genes would not make it more than 60 generations.....the population at the time was pretty low, and so I question displacement.......plus, there are some signs of regional continuity......especially in the chinese fossil record, homo erectus had shovel shaped incisors and square shaped eye sockets and so do present day east Asians......similar traits continue in other populations........
But yeah, back to the topic..... I think Taino ancestry is there.....its obvious in some faces, if its in the Haitian interior it has to be in the Dominican interior as well.....because the historical processes there were the same, when runaway slaves went into the interior many of them interbred with the Tainos, many times it wasn't a harmonious relationship......there were accounts of runaway slaves raping Taino women.......so we can't idealize how Taino ancestry came to be......but its definitely there.
I'm sure studies like those of Haitian interior dialects would also reveal Taino influence on the Dominican side of the border....... Its sad that not enough research exists, but on the other hand its also positive in that there is so much left to do!
What do you expect when a country that is predominantly black......I cound darker mulatos as black.....views Spanish culture as the ideal??? Plus, it was all political motivation more than dealing with race actually.......Duvalier established noirisme as the national ideology of Haiti.....if notions of "black is beautiful" and pride in African heritage reached the DR, the mulato and white castes would lose out, and perhaps a road would be paved to unite the island......who knows......but in order to differentiate the DR even more from Haiti, a different ideology had to develop.....the purpose of hispanidad was to counter the noirisme of Haiti...