Black Quetzalcoatl

Even though Quetzalcoatl has been depicted as a bearded white man who came from Europe to civilize the Mesoamericans, I came across an interesting article that says he was dark skinned.

The article, published online titled Quetzalcoatl Negro (Black Quetzalcoatl) by Rosario Nava Román "Although this Quetzalcoatl was a man, he was revered as a god... The adornments with which he was worshipped were as follows: a miter on his head, with a plume of feathers known as 'quetzalli'... his face was dyed black, as was his entire body."

Two depictions of Quetzalcoatl with black skin. From Quetzalcoatl Negro

Bernardino de Sahagún (c. 1499-1590) was a missionary in what is now Mexico, starting in 1529. He wrote a History of New Spain (Mexico) and the famous Florentine Codex is a manuscript version of this history. The illustrations it includes, done by native artists depict Quetzalcoatl in the traditional way, with dark, black, skin.

Other manuscripts, like the Borgia, Vindobonensis and Nutall codex depict him with a black body.

Nava Román points out that other gods such as Tezcatlipoca, Tláloc, Ixtlilton, etc. are also portrayed with black body paint in those codex. The high priests, sacrifice, penitents and man-gods are all black skinned.

The practice was noted by Jerónimo de Mendieta (1525-1604) who in his Historia Eclesiástica Indiana written in 1595-96, described (see p.108 in Chapter 37) how the Kings were enthroned in Mexico, in Tezcuco and Tlacuba: "The first thing the high priest did was to dye the lord's entire body black with very black ink; he had prepared a swab made of cedar and willow branches and reed leaves, and—with the lord kneeling—he would sprinkle him four times with water from a vessel of holy (or cursed) water, greeting him with brief words; then he would dress him in a mantle painted with the heads and bones of the dead, and upon his head..." The dark skin tone caused by the dye gave them a god-like appearance and strenghtened the link between mortal king and gods.

Nava Román mentions how this practice continued during the colonial period, and cites plate number 15 in the codex known as Tira de Tepechpan which depicts the conqueror of Mexico, Hernán Cortés in black (it can be seen below, with the Spaniard, with black skin, on the left).

The author argues that the white, bearded man from across the Atlantic was an invention of the Spaniards to justify their conquest, erasing the real black-skinned gods of the natives and replacing them with the superior white caucasians.

As I have posted in the past, (see here and here for some examples), I do not believe that there is evidence of African black people in America in pre-Columbian times, so the dark-skinned Mexican gods are not African people or Olmecs.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

A paper on skin pigmentation: San & Europeans share light skin alleles

I came across a recent paper published in Science in 2017 by Crawford et al., Loci associated with skin pigmentation identified in African populations, which holds some interesting facts about skin color genetics and when the dark and pale variants arose.

I have posted in the past about light skin pigmentation in Amerindians and Neanderthal skin color, but this post will look into light skin alleles shared by the San people of Africa and modern Europeans.

Skin color genes are ancient

When it comments on how skin pigmentation evolved in modern humans, the paper points out that there is a wide variability within Africa, from the most pale group (the San in southern Africa) to the East African people of the Nilo Saharian region, who aret the darkest. It correctly states that the genes causing both dark and light skin color evolved before our Homo sapiens species appeared around 300,000 years ago (300 ky).

Surprisingly, the paper finds that "the ancestral allele is associated with light pigmentation in about half of the predicted causal SNPs; Neandertal and Denisovan genome sequences, which diverged from modern human sequences 804 ka, contain the ancestral allele at all loci." So, our closest relatives in evolutionary terms carried this ancestral white-skinned allele with them. However, the paper tends to downplay this fact, and it says something which sounds the opposite: "These observations are consistent with the hypothesis that darker pigmentation is a derived trait that originated in the genus Homo within the past ~2 million years (My) after human ancestors lost most of their protective body hair" and then, like an afterthought mentions the paler tint of Neanderthals and Denisovans: "... although these ancestral hominins may have been moderately, rather than darkly, pigmented. Moreover, it appears that both light and dark pigmentation have continued to evolve over hominid history."

Shared genes between dark pigmented Africans and Australo-Melanesians

It mentions something I hadn't read before (I was always surprised by the similarity in the dark tint of pigmentation in Melanesians, Australian Aboriginal people, Andamenese islanders and Africans): they share a common genetic origin, and could be identical by descent (IBD). The paper says that "Individuals from South Asia and Australo-Melanesia share variants associated with dark pigmentation at MFSD12, DDB1/TMEM138, OCA2, and HERC2 that are identical by descent from Africans. This raises the possibility that other phenotypes shared between Africans and some South Asian and Australo-Melanesian populations may also be due to genetic variants identical by descent from African populations rather than convergent evolution."

It is indeed interesting to note that the bottleneck and founder effects and loss of diversity among the Out of Africa migration population managed to carry, intact, these alleles across Southern Asia, into Australia and Melanesia, while another group managed to carry the white, paler skin alleles.

A light pigmentation variant shared by San and Europeans

There is a variant at SNP rs1800404 within OCA2, that in its ancestral form (with a cytosine base or "C") is found in dark skinned East Asians, most Africans and Australians and Melanesians. The derived variant with a Thymine base or "T", is found in Europeans and the pruportedly most ancestral human beings, the San from southern Afirca! (found among these two groups in frequencies of over 70%). The split is ancient: " Coalescent analysis indicates that the TMRCA of all lineages is 1.7 Ma (95% CI, 1.5 to 2.0 Ma), and the TMRCA of lineages containing the derived (T) allele is 629 ka (95% CI, 426 to 848 ka)"

The tree shown above has two branches with the African one deeper (older) and shorter ones for most modern populations. Note the Oceanians and South Asians are on the African branch.

The allele shared by San and Europeans dates back approximately to the time Neanderthals and Denisovans split from the Modern human lineage.

Another region that acts upon skin color is HERC2, where SNP rs6497271 comes in an ancestral A variant (with an adenine base) providing dark pigmentation to Australo-Melanesians and Africans (identical in both groups, suggesting an identity by descent), and the derived base, (G) or guanine which is linked to lighter skin pigmentation and found in Europeans, and, yes, in the San people. This one is also old, dating back to "921 ka (95% CI, 703 ka to 1.2 Ma)".

If the dark "A" variant is IBD, the pale "G" one should also be IBD, and this one is possibly older than the Denisovan-Neanderthal / Human split as it is 921,000 years old.

The tree (above) show its distribution globally, with two branches the dark skin variant seems to have longer branches making it look more ancestral than the other, pale skin variants. I don't see the link between Africans and Australo-Melanesians in this tree, as mentioned by the authors.

How did Europeans and San people get to share this variant and the other OCA2 variant, while all the Africans living between both groups have the derived dark pigmentation variants? Note that there is 6,600 km (4,100 miles) between the southernmost tip of Europe in Greece and the San homeland in Botswana/Namibia.

We can imagine different alternatives to explain this: (1) A small population of modern humans split, one headed north into Europe, the other was displaced south into the southern tip of Africa. Between them, a mutation appeared, providing dark pigmentation for people living in the tropical regions of Africa, with benefits like UV protection, etc. (the paper hints that dark skin may have positive effects on other bodily functions: "...some of the pigmentation-associated variants identified here may be maintained because of pleiotropic effects on other aspects of human physiology."

Another option (2) is that pale pigmentation was prevalent among the archaic population that evolved into Neanderthal-Denisovan-Humans and moved with them across Eurasia but a later darker variant appeared in Africa and became predominant there, displacing the pale skin to the southern tip of Africa (San), and migrating out of Africa in a sub-population of modern humans that peopled South Asia and Australia-Melanesia (PNG, Aboriginals, Negrito, Andamanese people). Later overlaid by a wave of paler humans in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and North India. Did the Europeans get pale skin from admixing with Neanderthals, and Asians from Denisovans?

(3) Prehaps ancient archaics had the darker pigmentation alleles, and a separate archaic group was lighter colored, the former remained in Africa (H. habilis), the latter moved into Eurasia (H. erectus?). Modern humans evolved in Asia, starting with Neanderthals and Denisovans, and back-migrated into Africa where admixture with archaics in Africa led to a darkening currently observed there. The san, part of the wave of migrants were displaced and isolated, retaining the original alleles. However, the dark skinned south Asians and Melanesians can't be accounted for with this model. Perhaps there was an Out of Africa migration along coastal South Asia into Melanesia? Or an ancient migration of superarchaics into Asia that mingled there with later populations?

In any case, I find it interesting that contemporary Europeans, who are deemed to be very recent, and the San people, supposedly the oldest intact group of humans, that split from the rest of us over 150,000 years ago, share the same light-skin pigmentation alleles. This oddity indicates that there is something amiss with our current idea of human origins and dispersal.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 
 

Black "First People" in America - controversy

In yesterday's post I mentioned an exchange I had on X (Twitter) with a person who had posted a reply to someone who criticized a previous port of his, that went as follows:

"[expeletive deleted] we are indigenous to the USA. We built the country from scratch. We were here before this countries inception. Also there were Black Aboriginal tribes here In the Americas that were enslaved & mixed in with the small 3% of African slaves that came to the US. EthnoGenesis."

Rude comments and pseudoscientific nonsense bother me, so my reply was "The Native Americans arrived ~20 kya and are the First People. Black Africans were forcibly transported by the slave trade ~1492-1808. There was no "indigenous" (autochthonous) population and no native "Black Aboriginals" in the Americas. Homo sapiens arrived ~20,000 years ago." Factual and polite.

As an answer, the X post author, uploaded the following image and posted more nonsense: "Before the red skin mongolóid tribes came from Siberia there were BLACK ABORIGINAL tribes in America. It’s been proven over & over there were Black aboriginal tribes in America before the slave trade."

The "proof" added as bibliographic reference in the image, shows a Wikipedia entry on Constantine Samuel Rafinesque which, states that "Among his theories were that ancestors of Native Americans had migrated by the Bering Sea from Asia to North America, and that the Americas were populated by black indigenous peoples at the time of European contact." It also includes an image of a text snippet from Rafinesque's self-published magazine, the Atlantic Journal and Friend of Knowledge, which in its issue of Sept. 1833, on page 85 refers to the Primitive Black Nations of America. I found the article, and below is a transcription of part of its text:

"The Society of Geography having offered a reward for the best Memoir on the Origin of the Asiatic Negroes, I sent them last year two Memoirs; one on those Asiatic Negroes, wherein I demonstrated the affinities of their languages with the African and Polynesian Negroes, as well as with the Hindus and Chinese, and renders it probable that all the Negroes originated in the Southern Slopes of the Imalaya [sic] Mountains, as they did once exist all over India, South China, Japan, Persia, and Arabia. My second Memoir was on the Negroe or Black Nations, found in America before Columbus, wherein I proved their existence and connection by language with the Ngroes of Africa and Polynesia... To many) this fact of old Black Nations iki America will be new, yet it is an important feature of American History, as well as the existence of primitive White Nations there still more numerous. To furnish a kind of insight into this subject I will here merely enumerate the Black tribes of which I have found evident traces and remains, in North and South America:
1. The Ancient Caracols of Hayti represented as a Nation of Beasts by the historical songs, see Roman and Martyr.
2. The Califurnams of the Carib Islands, called Black Caribs or Guanini by others, are a black branch of Caribs. See Rochefort, Herrera, &e.
3. The Arguahos of Cutara mentioned by Garcia in the West Indies, quite black.
4. The black Aroras of Raleigh, or Yaruras of the Spaniards, ugly black or brown Negroes, yet existing near the Oronoco, and language known, called Monkeys by their neighbours.
5. Chaymas of Guyana brown Negroes like Hottentots, see Humboldt.
6. The Mangipas &nd Porcigis of Nienhof, the Motayas of Knivet, &e., all of Brazil, brown Negroes with curly hair. See also Vespucius and Pigafetta.
7. The Nigritas of Martir in Darien, yet existing in Choco under the name of Chuanas or Gaunas or Chinos. See Mollien. Ugly black or red Negroes.
8. Those of Popayan called Manabi blackish with negro features and hair. See Stevenson.
9. The Guabas and Jaras of Taguzgalpa near the Honduras. See Juaros, &c, now called Zambos.
10. The Enslen or Esteros from New California, ugly blackish Negroes. See Vanegas, Langsdorf, &c.
11. The Black Indians met by the Spaniards in Louisiana in 1543. See Soto's invasion.
12. The Moon-eyed Negroes, and Albinos, destroyed by the Cherokis and seen in Panama. Barton, &c.
Among these the Yarura language has 50 per cent of analog with the Gauna 40 per cent with the Ashanty or Fanty of Guinea, and 33 per cent with the Fulah, Borny and Congo languages of Africa. In Asia it has 39 per cent of affinity with the Samang Negroes, and 40 per cent with the Negroes of Andaman as well as those of Australia or New Holland."

Unlike most readers who repost this text without validating it (just try Googling it to see it paste-copied without any further questioning. See this search on Califurnams), I looked up these references cited by Rafinesque and found quite a few of them (refrence number is given in parenthesis) and added some comments:

(7) by Pedro Mártir de Angelería, page 130 mentions the Darien dark-skinned people: "There they found black slaves from a region only two days' journey from Cuarecua, where only black people are raised, and these are ferocious and exceedingly cruel. They believe that long ago black people came from Ethiopia to steal, and that, shipwrecked, they settled in those mountains. The people of Cuarecua harbor a deep hatred for these black people, and they either enslave one another or kill each other." This took place during Balboa's expedition across Panama, when he discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1513. However, I did not find references regaring the Caracols (1) in Angelería

Regarding (2) the Caribs, Rouchefort (see pp. 251-252) writes "the Caribbians are a handsome well-shap'd people... True it is their complexion is naturally of an Olive-colour... All the Caribbians are black-hair'd... The hair of the Caribbians is not curl'd or frizzled, as that of the Moors , but streight and long..." Not African at all! Regarding Walter Raleigh and the Aroras, Raleigh wrote: "my old pilot, a man of great travel, brother to the cacique Toparimaca, told me that... there inhabited four principal nations... The fourth are called Aroras, and are as black as negroes, but have smooth hair." Dark, but not negroes, smooth hair, not African.

Humboldt (5) did not describe the Chaymas as Hottentots: "Their colour is that of the whole American race, from the cold table lands of Quito and New Grenada to the burning plains of the Amazons... If the uniform tint of the skin be more coppery and redder toward the north, it is on the contrary among the Chaymas of a dull brown inclining towards tawny." In fact, he says they look like Asians: "If the Chaymas, and in general all the natives of South America and New Spain, resemble the Mongul race, by the form of the eye, their high cheek bones, their straight and flat hair, and the almost entire want of beard; they essentially differ from them in the form of the nose, which is pretty long, prominent throughout it's whole length, and thick toward the nostrils, the openings of which are directed downward, as with all the nations of the Caucasian race. " (See p. 223-224).

(6) the citation is incorrect, the author's name was Johannes Nieuhof a Dutch explorer does not mention Mangipas or Porcigis, only Brazilian Tupí natives "They are of a dark brown colour, black hair, which hangs all over their fhoulders..." (p. 133). The only people with curly hair are the Brazilian Portuguese! (p. 129)

Gaspard Mollien (7) mentions African Blacks and Indians, and no reference to Black Indians (See Chapter VIII). Miguel Venegas (10) describes the natives of California as "The color is somewhat more tan and darker than that of the other Indians of New Spain" (Mexico). I read the chronicles of De Soto's expedition (11) and found no reference to black people in Louisiana.

So, I confidently replied in Twitter: "Wrong. No Black natives. Whiteness was a Spanish mindset and the color of natives concerned them a lot. But sorry, not one single research paper has shown black natives in America."

The reply, again unfounded was "Just because you say that dont make it true. It’s been proven over & over there were BLACK ABORIGINAL people in America before the slave trade or even before the red skin mongolóid tribes. For example the “Luiza” women who is the oldest skeleton found in the American was Blk."

This person refloated as factual the unfounded story of an African-looking Luzia (the Lagoa Santa woman) who in fact was a Paleoindian with a small percentage of Austronesian alleles, and clearly an Amerindian who carried no African genes in her.

The author then added in a quick follow-up post [sic]: "Also the explorers them selves wrote about the Black Aboriginal people they encountered. Learn history"

I must admit that the "learn history" part irked me, I love history, and have read almost every single book about Patagonia, and history in General. History has always fascinated me, and I enjoy checking historic events by reading eyewitness accounts. The guy then included the following images about Verrazzano.

In fact, Verrazzano who was born in what is now Italy, and served the French Crown, exploring the Atlantic seabord of North America, wrote about Amerindians with tan skin, not black-skinned Africans. As proof, see The Voyage of Verrazano, by Henry Murphy, 1875. So I retorted: "Verrazzano original text p. 23 https://ia801308.us.archive.org/19/items/cu31924028728065/cu31924028728065.pdf: "They exceed us in size, and they are of a very fair complexion (?) ; some of them incline more to a white (bronze ?), and others to a tawny colour ; their faces are sharp, their hair long and black" - no curls or black skin."

That was the end of the exchange, which was pretty worthless, but had two positive outcomes.

The first, was that I identified and read several original sources that supposedly support the presence of dark, African-like Amerindians and in fact prove the opposite.

The second, is a lesson learnt: it isn't worth the effort to try to persuade stubborn or illogical people against their mindset, it is best to avoid conflict and preserve one's inner peace and follow the advice given in Proverbs 26:4.

Have a great week!

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Africans in Pre-Columbian America revisited (Clyde Winters)

Ihad a brief exchange in X (Twitter) with a person who vows that Africans reached America before Europeans, and can be counted as First People, in the New World. I hold an opposite point of view. Africans didn't reach America until the European slave trade brought them, starting in the early 1500s.

Even if they had arrived say, 3,000 years ago it would be very hard to identify the presence of their genetic imprint in modern Amerindians because of the later admixture with African slaves: how can we identify a different signal of an earlier migration from the same population?

Nevertheless, I came across a comment to an article by Neves, Hubbe and Harvati, which I quote below, it has some spelling issues, and was written by Clyde Winters, online here. Winters is a scholar who supports the idea of an early migration of African people to America, where they admixed with the Native Americans.
My comments are bold font, between brackets:

"Genetic Evidence of Early African Migration into America
Posted by ClydeWinters on 19 May 2011 at 16:27 GMT
by Clyde Winters
Although, Hubbe et al support a two migration theory for the settlement of the Americas, the researchers maintain that currently available genetic evidence suggests a “single migration model for the peopling of the Americas. This suggests that we need to look further into the molecular history of the Americans to determine if there is evidence of non-Amerindian molecular among Amerind populations.
The early presents of Negroes in South America [Where do Hubbe et al. mention Negroes in South America?] suggest a migration of Sub-Saharan Africans into the Americas 40-15 kya. We can assume that if Africans early colonized the Americas there must be genetic evidence supporting their ancient presence. Evidence should exist today in Amerindian populations pointing to Sub-Saharan haplogroups among the varied populations if Africans made an early migration.
A review of the literature suggests such a phenomena. Lisker et al, noted that “The variation of Indian ancestry among the studied Indians shows in general a higher proportion in the more isolated groups, except for the Cora, who are as isolated as the Huichol and have not only a lower frequency but also a certain degree of black admixture. The black admixture is difficult to explain because the Cora resides in a mountainous region away from the west coast” (1).
Green et al also found Indians with African genes in North Central Mexico, including the L1 and L2 clusters (2). Green et al observed that the discovery of a proportion of African haplotypes roughly equivalent to the proportion of European haplotypes [among North Central Mexican Indians] cannot be explained by recent admixture of African Americans for the United States [correct, they are not an admixture with recent African Americans from the USA, further down, Green et al. state: "Today, the number of Mexicans with African heritage is not known; however, some suggest that as much as 75% of the modern Mexican population has some African ancestry" Suggesting that they are the outcome of admixture with recent African slaves from Mexico. This is indeed selective quoting!]. This is especially the case for the Ojinaga area, which presently is, and historically has been largely isolated from U.S. African Americans. In the Ojinaga sample set, the frequency of African haplotypes was higher than that of European haplotypes” (2).
The genetic evidence for Africans among the Mexicans is quite interesting. This evidence supports the skeletal evidence that Africans have lived in Mexico for thousands of years. [note there is no citation to back this outlandish claim]
The foundational mtDNA lineages for Mexican Indians are lineages A, B, C and D.The frequencies of these lineages vary among population groups. For example, whereas lineages A,B and C were present among Maya at Quintana Roo, Maya at Copan lacked lineages A and B (3). This supports Carolina Bonilla et al view that heterogeneity is a major characteristic of Mexican population (4). The mtDA A haplogroup common to Mexicans is also found among the Mande speaking people and some East Africans (4-6). Haplogroup A found among Mixe and Mixtecs (4).The Mande speakers carry mtDNA haplogroup A, which is common among Mexicans (6). In addition to the Mande speaking people of West Africa, Southeast Africa Africans also carry mtDNA haplogroup A (5).
[I looked hard but was not able to find one single paper mentioning the presence of mtDNA haplogroup A among the Mandenka people of Africa. This is false and not backed by any of the papers mentioned by Winters]
Underhill, et al noted that:" One Mayan male, previously [has been] shown to have an African Y chromosome" (7). This is very interesting because the Maya language illustrates a Mande substratum, in addition to African genetic markers. The Mixe Mixe carry African Y-chromosome DYS287(YAP+) in Mixe individuals who harbored DYS199 C allele (8).
James l. Gutherie (2000) in a study of the HLAs in indigenous American populations, found that the Vantigen of the Rhesus system, considered to be an indication of African ancestry, among Indians in Belize and Mexico centers of Mayan civilization(9). Dr. Gutherie also noted that A*28 common among Africans has high frequencies among Eastern Maya. It is interesting to note that the Otomi, a Mexican group identified as being of African origin and six Mayan groups show the B Allele of the ABO system that is considered to be of African origin (9-10). [The Otomi are Amerindian, see Zillges, 2013 and his genetic study. Regarding HLA A*28 it is found in Europeans, Pacific Islanders, Africans and Amerindians! Hsu et al., 1999.]
We conclude that the genetic evidence points to distinct origins for the Paleoamerican populations. This molecular evidence supports a possible early colonization of the Americas, not only by Melanesians as suggested by Hubbe et al, but also Africans. The molecular evidence is consistent with Hubbe et al two wave human expansion across America, while supporting an introduction of some Americans directly from Africa.
Some researchers claim that as many as seventy-five percent of the Mexicans have an African heritage (2). Although this may be the case Cuevas says these Africans have been erased from history (11).[No, they were not, they were slaves brought from -Africa after 1492]
References:
1. R. Lisker et al.(1996). Genetic structure of autochthonous populations of Meso-america: Mexico. Am. J. Hum Biol 68:395-404.
2. Green, L.D., (2000), "Mitochondrial DNA affinities of the people of North-Central Mexico", Am J of Hum Genet, 66:989-998.
3. Angelica Gonzalez-Oliver et al. (2001). Founding Amerindian mitochondrial DNA lineages in ancient Maya from Xcaret, Quintana Roo. Am. Jour of Physical Anthropology, 116 (3):230-235. Retreived 2/9/2006 at: http://www3.interscience....
4. Bonilla C, Gutierrez G, Parra E J, Kline C, Shriver M D. (2005). Admixture of a rural population of the State of Guerrero,Mexico, Am J Phys Anthropol. Dec;128(4):861-9.
5. Salas A, Richards M, De la Fe T, Lareu M V, Sobrino B, Sanchez-Diz P, Macaulay V, Carracedo A. (2002). The making of the West African mtDNA Landscape, Am J. Hum. Genet, 71:1082-1111.
6. Jackson B A, Wilson J L, Kirbah S, Sidney S S, Bassie L, Alle J A D, McLean D C Garvey W T.(2005). Am J Phys Anthropol. 128:156-163.
7. Underhill,P.A.,Jin,L., Zemans,R., Oefner,J and Cavalli-Sforza,L.L.(1996, January). A pre-Columbian Y chromosome-specific transition and its implications for human evolutionary history, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA,93, 196-200.
8. Lell J T, Brown M D, Schurr T G, Sukernik R I, Starikovskaya Y B, Torroni A, Moore L G, Troup G M Wallace D C.1997. Y chromosome polymorphisms in Native American and Siberian populations: identification of Native American Y chromosome haplotypes, Hum Genet. , 100(5-6):536-43.
9. James L. Guthrie, Human lymphocyte antigens:Apparent Afro-Asiatic, southern Asian and European HLAs in indigenous American populations. Retrieved 3/3/2006 at: http://www.neara.org/Guth...
10. M.H. Crawford et al (1974).Human biology in Mexico II. A comparison of blood group, serum, and red cell enzyme frequencies and genetic distances of the Indian population of Mexico. Am. Phys. Anthropol, 41: 251-268.
11. Marco P. Hernadez Cuevas.(2004). African Mexicans and the discourse on Modern Mexico.Oxford: University Press. "

Blacks in America

It could be possible that Africans strayed across the Atlantic ocean in rafts or boats and reached South America or Central America, but, as I mentioned in some posts about Phoenicians in America, the genetic imprint of a few hundred men or women in a population of millions of Amerindians would be extremely small. Add to that the "Great Dying" event that wiped out 90% of Amerindians starting in 1492, and the chances of detecting any pre-Hispanic African genes would be minute. I have posted in the past about Blacks in pre-Columbian America, and although the idea is interesting and intriguing, there is no scientific proof to back it. There are reports by explorers, even Columbus about dark-skinned people, but that does not prove anything. There are the Olmecs, said to resemble Africans as depicted by their stone statues, but, as mentioned in another post, they also have statues of Asian-looking people and were-jaguars!

Finally we have the fringe notion that the Black Native Americans in the US are original people, and not the outcome of later admixture from freed or escaped slaves that went to live among the Indians. I will look into this quack idea in a future post.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The mysterious lack of Olmec DNA papers

The Olmec culture flourished on the Gulf of Mexico coast (Campeche Bay) in the Tehuantepec, Veracruz, Chiapas, Tabasco region of Mexico between 1,500 BC and 100 BC. They are the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilisation, predating the Mayas and the Aztecs. (Short article on the Olmec people or this book with a section dedicated to their culture, both of them in English).

My previous posts (Blacks in Pre-Columbian America and Africans reached America ca. 1310 C.E.?) explored the weird and pseudoscientific theory that assumes as true that Black African people sailed across the Atlantic from Western Africa, reached Mesoamerica, and settled there, creating the Olmec civilization. For some examples of this theory, see: "Olmec and Mayas have distinct genetic origins", "The surprising connection between Olmecs and Africans", "African Origins of Olmec Civilization", etc.

I don't believe in conspiracy theories. Instead, I opt for believing in human ignorance, incompetence, and deliberate manipulation of information to forward certain causes and obscure legitimate ones. Nevertheless, as I sought information on the genetics (mtDNA, Y-chromosome and autosomal DNA) I quickly realized that there is little to be found. This seems to be a blank in the research of Amerindian genetics. Which, is quite surprising! (just google the terms "genetics Olmecs" and you will undertand what I mean).

The paltry papers on Olmec genetics

It is true, papers on Olmec genetics are really scarce! There are very few; I have only found the following, none of which analyzed nuclear DNA or Y-chromosome DNA, they only seem to have looked at the mtDNA, and it is unclear if the specimens analyzed were Olmec or not. Of course, none of these papers hint at an African origin, they state that the Olmecs are Amerindians, like all the other Native Americans. Below are these papers, with a brief comment on their main conclusions):

• Arnaiz-Villena A, et al., (2000). HLA genes in Mexican Mazatecans, the peopling of the Americas and the uniqueness of Amerindians. . Tissue Antigens. 2000 Nov;56(5):405-16. doi: 10.1034/j.1399-0039.2000.560503.x. PMID: 11144288.
  Old paper! "The HLA allele frequency distribution of the Mexican Mazatecan Indians (Olmec culture) has been studied and compared with those of other First American Natives and worldwide populations (a total of 12,100 chromosomes; 6,050 individuals from 59 different populations). The main conclusions are: 1) An indirect evidence of Olmec and Mayan relatedness is suggested, further supporting the notion that Olmecs may have been the precursors of Mayans..."
• Navarro-Romero MT, et al, (2021). Mitochondrial DNA Haplotypes in Pre-Hispanic Human Remains from Puyil Cave, Tabasco, Mexico, in María de Lourdes Muñoz-Moreno, and Michael H. Crawford (eds), Human Migration: Biocultural Perspectives (New York, 2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 21 Oct. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190945961.003.0007.
  It tells that the archaic and pre-classic individuals had The mtDNA of haplogroups A, A2, C1, C1c, and D4, haplogroup B was absent. It does not specifically mention "Olmecs" only Maya and Zoque people. But the team's next paper mentions Olmecs, see it below.
• Navarro-Romero MT, et al, (2024). Bioanthropological analysis of human remains from the archaic and classic period discovered in Puyil cave, Mexico. Am J Biol Anthropol. 2024 Jun;184(2):e24903. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.24903. Epub 2024 Feb 2. PMID: 38308451.
  It investigated "ACD" and conducted mtDNA tests, finding: "artificial cranial deformation (ACD)... These pre-Hispanic remains exhibited five mtDNA lineages: A, A2, C1, C1c and D4. Network analysis revealed a close genetic affinity between pre-Hispanic Puyil Cave inhabitants and contemporary Maya subpopulations from Mexico and Guatemala, as well as individuals from Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and China. Conclusions: Our results elucidate the dispersal of pre-Hispanic Olmec and Maya ancestors and suggest that ACD practices are closely related to Olmec and Maya practices. Additionally, we conclude that ACD has likely been practiced in the region since the Middle-Archaic Period." More or less a re-hash of the 2021 paper, but, it does mention the Olmec culture.
• Enrique Villamar Becerril, (2018) Estudios de ADN y el origen de los olmecas, Arqueología Mexicana, núm. 150, pp. 40-41.
  "The pioneering mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) study conducted on Olmec individuals, one from San Lorenzo and the other from Loma del Zapote, resulted, in both cases, in the unequivocal presence of the distinctive mutations of the maternal lineage “A”. That is to say, the origin of the Olmecs is not in Africa but in the Americas, since they share the most abundant of the five mitochondrial haplogroups characteristic of the indigenous populations of our continent: A, B, C, D, and X." These individuals had haplogroup A.
• Cyphers, Ann, (2020) El ADNMT y la descendencia olmeca, Arqueología Mexicana, Edición especial, núm. 94, p. 23. Same conclusions. It is not based on new studies, only repetition of Villamar's paper (above), mtDNA is Amerindian and not African.

The Olmecs didn't vanish into thin air, their genes must be present in the current population of this region. According to Pye and Clarke (2005), the area where the Olmec and Mokaya lived, was peopled by the Proto-Mixe-Zoque people, who differed from their neighbors, the Maya and Zapotec. The Maya would have a large impact on them when their civilization bloomed and the Olmecs vanished.

The "Ghost" population

However, a study published in Science (Viridiana Villa-Islas et al., Demographic history and genetic structure in pre-Hispanic Central Mexico. Science 380, eadd6142 (2023). DOI:10.1126/science.add6142), though it does not mention the Olmecs and only goes back to the year 100 BC., does mention the Mixe people! and adds an intriguing fact, a "ghost population" admixed into the Mixe.

"Earlier studies report the contribution of “ghost” genetic ancestry from an unsampled group, designated as UpopA, among the present-day Mixe from Mexico. We tested the presence of this UpopA in the pre-Hispanic individuals using combinations of admixture graph models... we found that Sierra Tarahumara and Mixe share the same ghost genetic ancestry, UPopA ... Finally, we ... confirmed that ... Mixe share the contribution from UpopA1... A contribution from an unsampled population named UpopA was previously identified in present-day Mixe as well as in present-day northern and central Indigenous populations from Mexico. UpopA was estimated to have diverged ~24,700 years ago from Native Americans"

The "earlier studies" mentioned above by Villa-Islas et al. refer to a paper by J. I. Moreno-Mayar et al. (2018), Early human dispersals within the Americas (Science 362, eaav2621 (2018). DOI:10.1126/science.aav2621), which says "Modeling indicates that the Mixe most likely carry gene flow from an unsampled outgroup and form a clade with Lagoa Santa... Hereafter, we refer to that outgroup as unsampled population A (UPopA), which is neither AB, NNA, or SNA and which we infer split off from NAs ~24.7 ka ago, with an age range between 30 and 22 ka ago... Under a model with a pulselike gene flow, we inferred a probability of ~11% gene flow from UPopA into the Mixe ~8.7 ka ago (95% CI, 0.4 to 13.9 ka ago)... We infer that the Lagoa Santa population diverged from the Mixe shortly thereafter, ~13.9 ka ago (95% CI, 12.8 to 14.8 ka ago)"

A "Ghost" population is one that left genetic material (DNA, mtDNA, aDNA) in a current or ancient population, but has not been sampled or, it vanished, becoming extinct leaving no remains; a ghost.

Who were these people?

The fact that they appear among the Mixe (Olmec) and the peculiar Lagoa Santa people of Brazil, who carry rare haplogroups and also seem to be associated with Australasians, is surprising.

This is something that furhter genetic research could help clarify with deeper sampling, including ancient remains, if the ghost signal belongs to allelles found at very low frequencies, a larger sample will provide more data about them and help pinpoint the ghost population's origin.

Closing Comments

It is likely that the lack of publications on the Olmec DNA is due to a shortage of funds (Mexico may not provide funding for this kind of research), not enough academic interest in this culture, or, that the jungle habitat or the poorly preserved remains don't allow collection of adequate genetic material for DNA studies. I guess it is a combination of all factors. The Aztecs and the Mayas seem to be more popular as you can see in the following image which compares web searches for Olmecs (blue), Aztecs (yellow) and Mayas (red) between 2004 and now (Google Trends). Notice the Maya peak in 2012 (when many believed that the world was going to end according to a prophecy in the Maya calendar).

Link to this Google Trends result

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

From Guinea (Africa) to America before Columbus

Bartolomé de las Casas in his Historia de las Indias, wrote that Columbus wrote about John II (1455-1495), the King of Portugal, who believed that there was land south of the Cape Verde Islands, furthermore, "King John had a great inclination to send men to explore the Southwest, and canoes had been found leaving the coast of Guinea, sailing west with merchandise". (p. 225)

On p. 244 de las Casas mentions that during Columbus' third voyage in 1498, on August 7, they ment natives who "brought very finely crafted and woven cotton handkerchiefs, with colors and designs like those they bring from Guinea, from the rivers of Sierra Leone, without difference, and he says that they could not communicate with those, because there are more than 800 leagues from here where he is now, to there; below he says that they look like alymayzares." The Spanish word almaizar (also almayzar, almaizal) has a Moorish origin and is applied to fine fabric such as silk, flax, and cotton, or gauze, used to manufacture headdresses, veils, or turbans.

Clearly, the natives wove fine cotton cloth if Columbus compares it with Spanish almayzares.

Silk almaizar, c.IX-X century. Source

Columbus had visited the Gulf of Guinea and had stayed at the castle of San Jorge de la Mina in 1481, built by the Portuguese, so he must have seen the Sierra Leone cloth there (Source, p. 485).

The anonymous pilot

An interesting article by Juan José Guerra Pérez-Maffei, Cristóbal Colón y el piloto anónimo (Cristopher Columbus and the anonymous pilot) explores the story that says that "Columbus took in a dying sailor at his home in Porto Santo, in the Madeira archipelago. This sailor had made a long voyage under extreme conditions, and most of the crew had died from an epidemic. This anonymous pilot, before dying, as a gesture of gratitude, revealed his discovery to Christopher Columbus, indicating all the navigational terms he had collected on his long voyage: courses, distances, descriptions, and sketches for traveling to and from the New World. It is not known exactly whether this sailor gave him navigational charts explaining how to reach the Indies or gave him precise instructions on how to get there."

The article suggests that the pilot was a Spaniard, Pedro de Covides, who in 1478, escaping from a Portuguese attack on the coast of Africa, reached America. He met Columbus in 1482-83. It says that the white-skinned people Columbus found on Hispaniola in 1492 were the outcome of intercourse between the sailors of the 1478 ship and the locals (Columbus described the people he met on Hispaniola as follows (Source): "their skins are whiter than the others. They saw two girls whose skins were as white as any that could be seen in Spain" (p. 109) and "They are fairly white, and if they were clothed and protected from the sun and air, they would be almost as fair as people in Spain. " (p. 113).

The "Madeira" story was also reported, with a different date and nationality, back in 1899 by Ellen M. Taylor: "...Perestrello whose third daughter Filippa married the great Christopher Columbus who had settled at Porto Santo shortly after its discovery and earned a living there by drawing maritime charts. Christopher Columbus afterwards came over to Madeira and lived in Funchal. Even at that time vessels of different nationalities called at the island and Columbus's charts were in great demand. Old writers suppose that it was he who first introduced the Madeira group into existing maps. Fructuoso writes that in 1486 a Biscayan vessel arrived at Funchal much battered by storms and the crew utterly worn out and famished. Columbus gave shelter and food to these men but weakened by their sufferings they all died and their pilot as a token of gratitude bequeathed to Columbus all their papers and charts with valuable matter for thought and enterprise in the hoped for discoveries of the Western Ocean..." (Source - see p. 163).

But the tale is even older; de Oviedo in the first volume of his Historia General y Natural de las Indias Chap. II wrote the following version of the story, in 1535:

"Some say that a caravel that was passing from Spain to England loaded with merchandise and provisions, as well as wines and other things that are usually loaded for that island, which it lacks and is in need of, happened to encounter such forceful and adverse times, that it was necessary to sail west for so many days that it explored one or more of the islands of these parts and the Indies; and it came ashore, and saw naked people, in the way that there are here; and that when the winds, which against its will brought it here, had ceased, it took water and firewood to return to its original course. They say more: that the majority of the cargo this ship carried consisted of provisions, food, and wine; and that thus they had enough to sustain themselves on such a long and arduous voyage; and that afterward, the time came for its purpose, and it turned back, and such favorable navigation followed that it returned to Europe and went to Portugal. But since the voyage was so long and arduous, and especially for those who undertook it with such fear and danger, however swift its voyage, it would have taken them four or five months, or perhaps more, to come here and return to where I have said. And during this time almost all the people on the ship died, and only the pilot and three or four, or perhaps a few more, of the sailors left Portugal, and all of them were so ill that they died a few days after arriving.
It is said, along with this, that this pilot was a very close friend of Christopher Columbus, and that he understood something about the skies; and he marked the land he found in the manner described, and in great secrecy informed Columbus of this, and begged him to draw him a chart and mark on it the land he had seen. It is said that Columbus took him into his home, as a friend, and nursed him back to health, because he too was very ill; but that he too died like the others, and that thus Columbus was informed of the land and navigation of these parts, and this secret was kept secret only by him. Some say that this master or pilot was Andalusian; others say he was Portuguese; others Basque; others say that Columbus was then on the island of Madeira, and others say that he was on the Cape Verde Islands, and that the caravel I mentioned landed there, and that he thus learned of this land."

Francisco López de Gomara in his work Historia General de las Indias (p. 37), published in 1552, repeats the account:

"The First Discovery of the Indies.
A caravel sailing across our Ocean Sea encountered such a strong and constant easterly wind that it ran aground on a land unknown and unmarked on any map or nautical chart. It took many more days to return; and when it arrived here, it had only the pilot and three or four other sailors, who, being sick from hunger and exhaustion, died shortly afterward in the port. Here is how the Indies were discovered, to the misfortune of the one who first saw them, for he ended his life without enjoying them and without leaving, at least, any memory of his name, his place of origin, or the year he found them. Although it was not his fault, but the malice of others or the envy of what they call fortune. And I am not surprised by ancient histories that recount great deeds from small or obscure beginnings, for we do not know who recently discovered the Indies, which is such a remarkable and new thing. We will at least have the name of that pilot, for all things perish with death. Some say this pilot was Andalusian, trading in the Canary Islands and Madeira when that long and deadly voyage befell him; others say he was Basque, trading in England and France; and still others say he was Portuguese, traveling to or from the Middle East or India, which fits well with the name those new lands took and still bear. There are also those who say he brought the caravel to Portugal, and those who say to Madeira or one of the other Azores islands; however, no one is certain. They all agree, however, that this pilot died at Christopher Columbus's house, in whose possession remained the caravel's registration documents and the account of that entire long voyage, including the marks and latitudes of the newly sighted and discovered lands."

We will never know if these stories are true or not, or if they were made up later to later to deny Columbus priority in the discovery of the New World.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Black dwarves or pygmies in America

This is another post in our series on Armando Vivante's article* (Online here - Spanish) about pygmies in America. In it we will look into the section on "Little Black Men" (section 13, p.250 of his article).

* Vivante, A. (1963). Estado actual de la discución sobre los pigmeos americanos. 1. El primer contexto de este problema. Revista del Museo de La Plata. Nueva Serie. Sección Antropología, Artículos, Vol 5, No 28.

Little Black Men

Vivante cites Lehmann, who in turn cites Nordenskjöld who mentioned a book (Geografí de Colombia - See p. 878) that included a reference about these black pygmies in the Darien, in the border region between Panama and Colombia, which features a thick jungle.

This article was written at the time that Panama was still a province of Colombia (1901) shortly before the U.S. president Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt promoted the independence of Panama (1902) in order to build the transoceanic canal there and exert direct control over it. Below is the text on the Darien people:

"According to reports from one of their main chiefs, in those mountains there existed ten years ago remains of an aboriginal population, small in stature, with black skin, very scarce in my region (100 to 200) and entirely savage: he reported that the Cunacunas took from that people the land they occupy today, after a great massacre, and they fear finding any of those who remained, believing them to be sorcerers and even demons."

The Debunked Negrito-Tasmanian Theory

Vivante then mentions that Italian anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi who studied cranial forms and concluded that America had been populated in different waves, one came from Western Africa, and was comprised by Negrito people, "we can certainly affirm that, besides those of the Tasmanian type, another human branch entered America, this one of short stature, which is usually called pygmy with a short cunciform skull Sphenoidis brevis." (from Gl'indigeni Americane: ricerche antropologiche, Rome, 1928 p.164).

Despite living under Mussolini's fascist regime, Sergi was a pacifist, anti-German, and not at all racist. Unfortunately his theory on "Mediterraneanism" was co-opted by the fascists to back their racist ideology.

These racialist Tasmanian-Negrito-Pygmy migration theories were in vogue in the late 1800s and early 1900s (see, for instance, an article on Pygmies in the U.S. from 1896). Since the mid 1900s, they have been debunked. Closer to Patagonia, Argentine anthropologist José Imbelloni supported a similar notion where South America was populated by several waves of people, and the first were pygmies, ancestors of both the Tasmanians and the Fuegian Yamana people (see Imbelloni, J. The peopling of America. Acta Americana. vol. I, No 3, Jul.-Sept. 1943).

Vivante states that he mentions these theories as potential evidence of an "ancient pygmy layer or layers then fragmented and liquidated, leaving behind reduced nuclei and tiny islands" when the later Amerindians arrived and wiped them out.

Tasmanian. Source

Nowadays the ancient Lagoa Santa remains from Brazil, and the Australasian genetic imprint suggest that the original inhabitants of Southeastern Asia somehow played a role in the peopling of America.

Mythical Dwarfs

Vivante's paper also mentions the mythical dwarves across America, and he also mentions some Patagonian examples, such as a reference from 1863 by Cox about the "peuquenes" close to Puerto Blest in Neuquén, the "'pichuchu', tiny men" (citing Daniel Hammerly Dupuy, 1953. Nahuel Huapi. Panoramas, Leyendas, Historias, Soc. Geogr. Americana, B. Aires, pp. 72-74) and several authors about the "Anchimallén".

Below is an excerpt from my book, on Cox and the Peuquén (also posted here):

"“Peuquen” – the Patagonian gnome
Guillermo Cox is the only reference that I have found regarding the Peuquen. He wrote about them in 1862, calling them “mountain genies […] small men that are clothed in avellano [Gevuina avellana, a native Chilean tree] leaves […] they also have a hat made from its bark, and an axe made of its wood.” Like Trauco, it lives in the forests of Chiloé, chopping trees. Yet like Yosi, it does not use its wood to light fires. Those who come across him face a nasty fate: their heads are turned backward for the rest of their lives. Like Yosi and Trauco, he is a lewd creature and seeks sexual intercourse with women. The children conceived during these trysts are born with their skin like the bark of an avellano, that is, rough and light brown.

I cite his work: Cox, G., (2006). Expedición de la Patagonia Norte: un viajero en el Nahuel Huapi: 1862-1863. B. Aires: Continente-Pax. pp.67-69

I also mentioned Kossler-Ilg, Francisco Moreno, Gregorio Álvarez, Father Mascardi, and Parodi regarding the Anchimallén (also posted here). However, this is the first time I hear about "pichuchu" the name applied to a dwarf. The word is used as a friendly, affectionate diminutive for tiny, sounding tender or childlike. But I have never encountered it in the Patagonian dwarves context until now.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Blacks in Pre-Columbian America

Vivante (see my recent post on him) also wrote an article about Pre-Hispanic Blacks in America (Armando Vivante, El Problema de los Negros Prehispanos Americanos - Notas sobre los melanodermos precolombinos, Revista del Museo de La Plata, 1967, vol. 6, No. 36). In it, Vivante gathers the different bibliographic references and outlines the information that was available at the time of the Spanish discovery and conquest of America.

He concludes that the available information isn't enough to settle the issue, and that its quality is variable. Genetic studies (he wrote this in 1967) could help settle the issue. Of course, we now know that genetic studies believe that the African slave trade introduced Black genes into America and admixed with the local Native Americans, this would obscure or confound any attempts to define a Pre-Columbian Black genetic signal and isolate it from later ones.

After reviewing the concept of being Black, and how each chronicler could have interpreted it, he comments that it is difficult to visualize what skin color, curly hair, flat noses, full lips, etc. meant to each explorer who reported Blacks in America.

Friar Gregorio García first proposed the Atlantic route into America in 1607: "so it could have been possible that some people from Ancient Europe or Africa have been taken by the force of the wind and cast upon unknown shores beyond the Ocean."

The article mentions the statues and objects belonging to the Olmec culture, which are said to have "negroid features". Too well known to discuss in this post. Vivante notes that the evidence is scarce, of doubtful credibility, and cautiously supports the notion that these Aerican Blacks were probably Africans that made their way into America as slaves of the first Spanish and Portuguese expeditions, leaving the door open to other interpretations: "Pericot and García (1936, 81) suggest that the discovery of Black people in early America is a result of the error of mistaking immigrant [Black] populations after the Conquest, or simply mestizo populations, for Indigenous people; and what this author says regarding race can certainly be extended to culture. But must this always, invariably, be the case?"

Olmec giant heads with African features.

Further Reading

I have found additional bibliography for those interested in the subject:

● Van Sertima, Ivan (1976). They Came Before Columbus. Random House. ISBN 9781560007920.

● Clyde Winters, (2011). Comment. Genetic Evidence of Early African Migration into America.

● Spanish clergyman Bartolomé de las Casas who defended the human rights of the American natives and criticized the Spanish military conquest, wrote between 1527 and 1566 the Historia de las Indias in its Vol II, Ed.1875. the following quote was taken, speaking about Cristopher Columbus and black people in the islando of Hispaniola, what is now Santo Domingo and Haiti (p. 226):

"And that he [Columbus] intended to test what the Indians of this Hispaniola [Santo Domingo Island] said, that black people had come to it from the south and southeast, and that they bring the irons of the spears of a metal they call guanin, of which he had sent to the Kings the test, where it was found that of the thirty-two parts, eighteen were of gold, and six of silver, and eight of copper."

● Francisco Lopez de Gomara mentions Balboa's discovery of the Pacific Ocean (See Historia General de las Indias 1552-1554. Ch. LXII - Descubrimiento de la mar del Sur, p. 93), and that he found black people in Panama Isthmus:

"Balboa entered Cuareca; he found neither bread nor gold, for it had been taken before the fighting. However, he did find some black slaves belonging to the lord. He asked where they had come from, and they could tell him nothing more than that there were men of that color nearby, with whom they were constantly at war. These were the first black people seen in the Indies, and I even think that no more have been seen since."

It is possible that African slaves had been brought to the mainland during the 21-year period between the Discovery of america in 1492 and Balboa's expedition in 1513, and that these people formed the black population that Balboa saw.

The subject is intriguing and worth further investigation.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©