French Canadians offer an extraordinary example of recent evolution. One example of recent selection is the decline in Amerindian admixture. According to a genealogical study of parish registers, Amerindians made up 1.2% of all founders but now account for only 0.1 - 0.3% of current ancestry (Bherer et al., 2010). The explanation sounds reasonable to me:
Beginning in the 19th century, the inhabitants were split into two social groups. In one, the inhabitants were stable, hardworking, preoccupied with their heritage of land and family, and governed by an increasingly strict ethic. In the other group were the marginal folk, the métissés [mixed with Amerindians], the less rich, and those who mucked about. They would settle on the periphery of the parish, in “the concessions” …Tay Sachs in French Canadian population
Once thought to be a Jewish marker, Tay Sach’s disease is unusually common among French Canadians, particularly in eastern Quebec. In Rimouski, the heterozygote frequency is 7.6%, compared to 4.2% for Ashkenazi Jews and 0.3% for French Canadians in Montreal (De Braekeleer et al, 1992). French Canadian Tay Sach’s is produced by two different mutations: one that originated on the south shore of the lower St. Lawrence and another that originated on the north shore (Charlevoix County). Neither mutation has been reported from France. Thus, on two separate occasions and in a very small population, something has maintained a genetic mutation that has failed to maintain itself in a much larger population.Nor does a founder effect easily explain how 2 out of 8,500 founders (0.02%) could have produced the incidences we now see in eastern Quebec or even French Canada in general.
The simplest explanation is that the TS gene provides some kind of reproductive advantage. Evolution in action. Pic.: Maxime Lepine, a well known French Canadian metisse.
5 comments:
Normally the lower class population has a higher birth rate - they don't worry about matters like birth control or how they will provide for all those children. But the solid citizens of Quebec were strict Catholics so they reproduced even more - an unusual case. Now I think the French Canadians are liberated from the church and their birth rate is low, but in the mean time a few thousand original settlers (the immigration from France was never large and it ceased 250 years ago) have grown to a nation of millions.
K
BTW, did the French Canadians also "co-evolve with modernity" - they too were an significantly small group (fewer than 9,000) in 1700. And where are the famous French-Canadian scientists?
The French Canadians, BTW, especially when they were under the influence of the Church, were quite anti-Semitic and they succeed in chasing away most of the Jews of Montreal, who decamped for Toronto - all sorts of nationalistic laws were passed which discriminated against English speakers (as the Montreal Jews were). Luckily, Canada is a nation of laws so the Jews survived with their fortunes intact, but still they are bitter about having been chased out of the place of their birth.
K
I didnt know about Montreal. I have relatives there and they are happy. McGill university is nice. French girls are very nice.
The total # of Jews has not declined catastrophically (maybe from 120,000 in the '70s to 100,000 today, while Toronto's has doubled) but the composition has changed - the most dynamic groups - the young, the middle class professionals, the business tycoons, the intellectuals - have mostly left for Toronto and those who remain are mostly poorer, older, more religious. The current Jewish population consists in large part of Hasidim, the Russian immigrants, the Sephardim, all recently arrived. Probably more than 1/2 of the original Jewish population (the descendants of the Ashkenazim who arrived during the early to mid 20th century) left and if those other groups had not arrived to replace them the turnover would have been much greater.
The situation is not dire - there is no blood in the streets. Montreal is not Baghdad. But Montreal is seen as the fading community and Toronto as the new center.
There are also some French Jews that have left France for Quebec because of the creeping Islamization going on in France.
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