Selection in Humans

Related to this previous entry

American Journal of Human Biology
Volume 15, Issue 6 , Pages 814 - 823

Locus-specific genetic diversity between human populations: An analysis of the literature

Seymour Garte

Abstract

The debate over classification of the human species according to racial or continental lines has involved reports on genetic differences in allele frequencies of a number of loci with important biomedical functions. Such differences are in contrast with the fact that, for human beings, intrapopulation genetic diversity is larger than that seen between populations. In an attempt to address the hypothesis that certain genes show high interpopulation diversity due to selective pressure, the literature was surveyed to quantify such diversity using Wrights Fst statistic. The gene-specific Fst values were then compared to pairwise population values of Fst taken over a large number of genes, which presumably reflect mostly neutral mechanisms of genetic diversity such as drift. The results showed that the majority of pairwise population values of Fst for over 30 genes of biomedical significance were either below or within the expected limits of Fst based on published values. These results do not support the idea that positive or diversifying natural selection plays an important role in increasing genetic diversity, even in genes that might be expected to be subject to selection pressure. Balancing selection, whereby the degree of genetic diversity is actually lower than that expected, appears to occur more frequently for these genes. The fact that allele frequency differences between populations might be "statistically significant" does not therefore necessarily imply a degree of genetic diversity greater than would be expected due to nonselective mechanisms.

Link

The Thera Eruption Revisited

A very interesting piece on re-evaluating the impact of the Thera explosion, especially on Minoan Crete. It would be interesting to know what the impact of this was in mainland Greece. I have always thought that the Thera eruption and the seismic actimity that accompanied it must be somehow linked to the two main Flood stories of the Greeks:

Ogygus' Flood, dated to 1796BCE according to tradition

Euseb. Praep. Evang. 10.10.7

The things before these, are dated thus by the Athenian chronography, from the time of Ogygus, who was believed by them to be autochthonous, during whose time the first, and great deluge happened, when Phoroneus was king over the Argives, as Acusilaus relates, until the time of the first Olympiad, when the Hellenes started counting time with precision, there was a total of one thousand and twenty years.

and Deucalion's Flood, 1528 BCE according to the Parian Marble

Jacoby, F., FGrH n. 239., Fr.4 (trans. Gillian Newing)

From when there was a flood in the time of Deucalion, and Deucalion fled the waters from Lycoreia to Athens to [Cranaos] and [founded the temple of Olympian] Zeu[s, and] made offerings for his deliverance, 1265 years, when Cranaos was king of Athens.

---

Scientists revisit Aegean eruption far worse than Krakatoa

New research supports previously discredited evidence that the gigantic eruption of Thera sounded the death knell of Minoan culture
By William J. Broad
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Tuesday, Oct 28, 2003,Page 16

For decades, scholars have debated whether the eruption of the Thera volcano in the Aegean more than 3,000 years ago brought about the mysterious collapse of Minoan civilization at the peak of its glory. The volcanic isle (whose remnants are known as Santorini) lay just 110km from Minoan Crete, so it seemed quite reasonable that its fury could have accounted for the fall of that celebrated people.

This idea suffered a blow in 1987 when Danish scientists studying cores from the Greenland icecap reported evidence that Thera exploded in 1645 BC, some 150 years before the usual date. That put so much time between the natural disaster and the Minoan decline that the linkage came to be widely doubted, seeming far-fetched at best.

Now, scientists at Columbia University, the University of Hawaii and other institutions are renewing the proposed connection.

New findings, they say, show that Thera's upheaval was far more violent than previously calculated -- many times larger than the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, which killed more than 36,000 people. They say the Thera blast's cultural repercussions were equally large, rippling across the eastern Mediterranean for decades, even centuries.

"It had to have had a huge impact," said Floyd W. McCoy, a University of Hawaii geologist who has studied the eruption for decades and recently proposed that it was much more violent than previously thought.

The scientists say Thera's outburst produced deadly waves and dense clouds of volcanic ash over a vast region, crippling ancient cities and fleets, setting off climate changes, ruining crops and sowing wide political unrest.

For Minoan Crete, the scientists see direct and indirect consequences. McCoy discovered that towering waves from the eruption that hit Crete were up to 15m high, smashing ports and fleets and severely damaging the maritime economy.

Other scientists found indirect, long-term damage. Ash and global cooling from the volcanic pall caused wide crop failures in the eastern Mediterranean, they said, and the agricultural woes in turn set off political upheavals that undid Minoan friends and trade.

"Imagine island states without links to the outside world," William B. F. Ryan, a geologist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Compelling evidence

Scientists who link Thera to the Minoan decline say the evidence is still emerging and in some cases sketchy. Even so, they say it is already compelling enough to have convinced many archaeologists, geologists and historians that the repercussions probably amounted to a death blow for Minoan Crete.

Rich and sensual, sophisticated and artistic, Minoan culture flourished in the Bronze Age between roughly 3,000 and 1,400 BC, the first high civilization of Europe. It developed an early form of writing and used maritime skill to found colonies and a trade empire.

The British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans called the civilization Minoan, after Minos, the legendary king. His unearthed palace was huge and intricate, and had clearly been weakened by many upheavals, including fire and earthquakes.

Nearby on the volcanic island of Thera, or Santorini, archaeologists dug up Minoan buildings, artifacts and a whole city, Akrotiri, buried under volcanic ash like Pompeii. Some of its beautifully preserved frescoes depicted Egyptian motifs and animals, suggesting significant contact between the two peoples.

In 1939, Spyridon Marinatos, a Greek archaeologist, proposed that the eruption wrecked Minoan culture on Thera and Crete. He envisioned the damage as done by associated earthquakes and tsunamis. While geologists found tsunamis credible, they doubted the destructive power of Thera's earthquakes, saying volcanic ones tend to be relatively mild. The debate simmered for decades.

In the mid-1960s, scientists dredging up ooze from the bottom of the Mediterranean began to notice a thick layer of ash that they linked to Thera's eruption. They tracked it over thousands of square miles.

Such clues helped geologists estimate the amount of material Thera spewed into the sky and the height of its eruption cloud -- main factors in the Volcanic Explosivity Index. Its scale goes from zero to eight and is logarithmic, so each unit represents a tenfold increase in explosive power. Thera was given a VEI of 6.0, on a par with Krakatoa in 1883.

The similarity to Krakatoa, which lies between Sumatra and Java, helped experts better envision Thera's wrath. Krakatoa hurled rock and ash more than 35km high and its blasts could be heard 4,800km away. Its giant waves killed thousands of people.

Despite the power of Thera, the Danish scientists' evidence raised doubts about its links to the Minoan decline.

Another blow landed in 1989 when scholars on Crete found, above a Thera ash layer, a house that had been substantially rebuilt in the Minoan style. It suggested at least partial cultural survival.

By 1996, experts like Jeremy B. Rutter, head of classics at Dartmouth College, judged the chronological gap too extreme for any linkage. "No direct correlation can be established" between the volcano and the Minoan decline, he concluded.

As doubts rose about this linkage, scientists found more evidence suggesting that Thera's eruption had been unusually violent and disruptive over wide areas. Scientific maps drawn in the 1960s and 1970s showed its ash as falling mostly over nearby waters and Aegean islands.

By the 1990's, however, the affected areas had been found to include lands of the eastern Mediterranean from Anatolia to Egypt. Scientists found ash from Thera at the bottom of the Black Sea and Nile delta.

Massive anomaly

Peter I. Kuniholm, an expert at Cornell University on using tree rings to establish dates, found ancient trees in a burial mound in Anatolia, what now is in the Asian part of Turkey. For half a decade those trees had grown three times as fast as normal -- apparently because Thera's volcanic pall turned hot, dry summers into seasons that were unusually cool and wet.

"We've got an anomaly, the biggest in the past 9,000 years," Kuniholm said in an interview.

Two years ago McCoy stumbled on more evidence suggesting that Thera's ash fall had been unusually wide and heavy. During a field trip to Anafi, an island some 32km east of Thera, he found to his delight that the authorities had just cut fresh roads that exposed layers of Thera ash up to 3m thick -- a surprising amount that distance from the eruption.

And Greek colleagues showed him new seabed samples taken off the Greek mainland, suggesting that more ash blew westward than scientists had realized.

Factoring in such evidence, McCoy calculated that Thera had a VEI of 7.0 -- what geologists call colossal and exceedingly rare. In the past 10,000 years only one other volcano has exploded with that kind of gargantuan violence: Tambora, in Indonesia, in 1816, It produced an ash cloud in the upper atmosphere that reflected sunlight back into space and produced a year without a summer.

The cold led to ruinous harvests, hunger and even famine in the US, Europe and Russia.

"I presented this evidence last summer at a meeting," McCoy recalled, "and the comment from the other volcanologists was, `Hey, it was probably larger than Tambora.'"

Some prominent archaeologists have concluded that the volcano's long-term repercussions meant the end of Minoan Crete. For instance, they argue that the revolt of nature over the predictable certainties of Minoan religion probably crippled the authority of the priestly ruling class, weakening its hold on society.

In scholarly articles, Jan Driessen, an archaeologist at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, and Colin F. MacDonald, an archaeologist at the British School in Athens, have argued that changes to Cretan architecture, storage, food production, artistic output and the distribution of riches imply major social dislocations, and perhaps civil war.

By 1450 BC, Mycenaean invaders from mainland Greece seized control of Crete, ending the Minoan era.

Thera's destructiveness was probably the catalyst, Driessen and MacDonald wrote, "that culminated in Crete being absorbed to a greater or lesser extent into the Mycenaean, and therefore, the Greek world."

NY Times Link
BBC Link

More on the Pontic Race

Continuing the previous post.

Carleton S. Coon, The Races of Europe, 1939, p. 617

"In studying the racial composition of southern Russia, there was evidence of a moderately tall, long-headed, brunet Mediterranean form, which is concentrated along the northern shore of the Black Sea, but which also appears sporadically in the entire Russian population. To Western Europeans and Americans it is better known than its frequency would warrant, for it is exemplified by several world famous ballerinas and opera singers. This is the Mediterranean racial division which the Russian anthropologists call Pontic¹³⁹ and which the Poles recognize as a very minor element in their own population. It is with little doubt of Neolithic date in southern Russia, Rumania, Bulgaria, and the Hellespont region, and probably in Greece and the Aegean. In most of Thrace it seems more basic than the Danubian, or at least more common."

¹³⁹ Bunak, V., ZFMA, vol. 30, 1932, pp. 441-503

--

Renato Biasutti, Le razze ei popoli della terra, UTET, Turin, 1954, vol. 1, pp. 47-48

"Il B u n a k, per esempio, ha designato col nome di tipo Pontico i dolicoidi bruni della Russia meridionale, gia presenti, come hanno mostrato anche alcuni resti di capigliature, nei curgani medievali dell' alto Dniepr."

Translation:

B u n a k for example, has designated with the name of the Pontic type the brunet dolichoids of southern Russia, already present, as it has been demonstrated by remains of head hair in medieval kurgans of the upper Dniepr.

--

Renato Biasutti, Le razze ei popoli della terra, UTET, Turin, 1954, vol. 2, p. 207

"Tre grandi tipi e precisamente il Grande Russo centrale, quello della Polesia e quello di Rjasan sono fatti derivare dal B u n a k da una razza pigmentata "pontica settentrionale", che egli considera quale ramo nord-orientale della stirpe Mediterranea."

Translation:

"Tree major types, and precisely the central Great Russian, that of Polesia and that of Ryazan are derived by B u n a k from a pigmented "Northern Pontic" race, which he considers as the northeastern branch of the Mediterranean race."

--

M. G. Abdushelishvili, "Certain Problems of Ethnic Anthropology in Southwest Asia in the Light of the Latest Research." in Physiological and Morphological Adaptation and Evolution, Mouton, 1979.

"The Pontic type in the population of the northern Caucasus was first identified by Bunak (1932) who related it to the Mediterranean branch of the Europoid race in the absence of admixture with the northern branch of Europoids (Bunak 1956). Debets (1958) determined the place of the Pontic type among the European groups of anthropological types. In his chart the Pontic type is shown as a transitional form resulting from mixture between the main subdivisions of the Europoid race. Another point of view on the shaping of the Pontic type was expressed by Alexeev (1974), who made the following main points: "The Pontic type was formed in the framework of the Mediterranean branch of the Europoid race, without the participation or admixture of the northern branch. The basic process of forming that type is the gracilization of the massive, protomorphic type." One must agree with Bunak and Alexeev that the Pontic race belongs to the southern branch of Europoids, without admixture of northern elements. We contend that Alexeev is also right when he states that the peoples related to the Pontic type are descendants of the most ancient population of the northern Caucasus. As to the emergence of the Pontic type as a result of the gracilization of the ancient, massive type of Europoid race which, according to the writer, provided the basis for the emergence of the Caucasian type, we disagree (Abdushelishvili 1964). Therefore we shall here merely note our contention that the development of the local Caucasian paleoanthropological types whose roots can be clearly traced in the ancient craniological series in the territory of the Caucasus."

Excavating Y-chromosome haplotype strata in Anatolia

Human Genetics
DOI: 10.1007/s00439-003-1031-4

Abstract Analysis of 89 biallelic polymorphisms in 523 Turkish Y chromosomes revealed 52 distinct haplotypes with considerable haplogroup substructure, as exemplified by their respective levels of accumulated diversity at ten short tandem repeat (STR) loci. The major components (haplogroups E3b, G, J, I, L, N, K2, and R1; 94.1%) are shared with European and neighboring Near Eastern populations and contrast with only a minor share of haplogroups related to Central Asian (C, Q and O; 3.4%), Indian (H, R2; 1.5%) and African (A, E3*, E3a; 1%) affinity. The expansion times for 20 haplogroup assemblages was estimated from associated STR diversity. This comprehensive characterization of Y-chromosome heritage addresses many multifaceted aspects of Anatolian prehistory, including: (1) the most frequent haplogroup, J, splits into two sub-clades, one of which (J2) shows decreasing variances with increasing latitude, compatible with a northward expansion; (2) haplogroups G1 and L show affinities with south Caucasus populations in their geographic distribution as well as STR motifs; (3) frequency of haplogroup I, which originated in Europe, declines with increasing longitude, indicating gene flow arriving from Europe; (4) conversely, haplogroup G2 radiates towards Europe; (5) haplogroup E3b3 displays a latitudinal correlation with decreasing frequency northward; (6) haplogroup R1b3 emanates from Turkey towards Southeast Europe and Caucasia and; (7) high resolution SNP analysis provides evidence of a detectable yet weak signal (<9%) of recent paternal gene flow from Central Asia. The variety of Turkish haplotypes is witness to Turkey being both an important source and recipient of gene flow.

Link

The Northern Pontic Race

Three major types, the central Great Russian, the Polesian, and the Ryazan are considered by V. V. Bunak to be derived from a pigmented "Northern Pontic race," which he considers to be the northeastern branch of the Mediterranean race (cf. R. Biasutti, Le raze ei popoli della terra, UTET, Turin : vol. 2, p. 207):

Russians of Northern Pontic type:

Russian of Ryazan type:

Spread of Farming in Europe

Antiquity, March 2003 v77 i295 p45(18)

Neolithic transition in Europe: the radiocarbon record revisited

Marina Gkiasta et al.

A set of 508 Neolithic sites and 207 Mesolithic sites was used in these analyses. The classification of dates as Mesolithic or Neolithic was on the basis of conventional cultural assignment

...

This suggests that the overall rate of spread is ~1.3 km/year and that the mean notional departure time from Jericho was ~8240 [+ or -] 110 yrs BP (uncal.). In this case, linear regression of the two variables produces a correlation coefficient, r = 0.73. In other words, with the larger data set now available the mean rate of spread is similar to that observed by Ammerman & Cavalli-Sforza, although the dispersion around that rate is somewhat greater.

...

It is important to note that calibrating the radiocarbon values derived from in this major axis model would give us a mean origination time in Jericho of about 10 400 cal BP for European Neolithic populations. If we approximate a confidence range for this date by taking estimates from linear regression models for dates on distance and for distance on dates (cf. Draper 1992), we derive a range for the mean Near Eastern origination time of 9200-12 400 cal BP. Such estimates fit quite well with observed dates for the end of the Natufian (c. 10 200 BP, Belfer-Cohen 1991, which becomes c. 12 000 cal BP after calibration). This is interesting when we consider that current debate about European genetic origins contrasts a possible major dispersal at 11-14 000 cal BP (variously described as `Mesolithic' by Sykes, 1999 and as `Late Upper Palaeolithic' by Richards et al., 2000), with one at 8500 cal BP (described as `Neolithic' by Sykes, 1999). In other words, one effect of calibration is that the mtDNA signatures of these two events appear less well-resolved than some geneticists suggest. Some of the mtDNA variation currently attributed to the late glacial recolonization of Europe may in fact derive from Neolithic demic diffusion!

...

The pattern for Greece does not contradict the view that we are dealing with the expansion of new populations from Anatolia rather than an indigenous Neolithic development. However, the number of Mesolithic dates is still small and it remains unclear how much the current state of affairs reflects lack of work rather than lack of settlement.

In the former Yugoslavia the Mesolithic dates come from a very small number of sites, dominated by Lepenski Vir, indicating a need for caution. Nonetheless, what emerges is a Neolithic represented by the Starcevo culture which appears very suddenly at around 8000 cal. BP, most probably as a result of populations expanding from Greece, and a Mesolithic which carries on in such locations as the Iron Gates gorges or the mountains of Montenegro, overlapping and interacting with the newly arrived Neolithic colonists.

Italy has a rather firmer foundation and at first sight looks more ambivalent in terms of its possible implications for `neolithisation' processes since there is a later Mesolithic concentration of dates immediately prior to and overlapping with the earliest Neolithic ones. However, an examination of the geographical location of the sites concerned reveals that all the late Mesolithic sites are in northern Italy while virtually all the earliest Neolithic dates come from the south, suggesting that in this region at least the earliest Neolithic is likely to represent colonisation.

In Germany there is a marked decline Mesolithic occupation before 8000 cal. BP and the body of the Neolithic distribution begins very sharply at around 7400 cal. BP, associated with the appearance of the Linearbandkeramik (LBK). This would seem to suggest a decline in Mesolithic occupation after 8000 cal. BP and hardly fits in with the suggestion that the German LBK represents an indigenous adoption of Neolithic culture and economy. On the contrary, it seems to confirm the idea of the LBK as an expanding, colonising population moving into an area which was relatively thinly occupied. However, the probable presence of Mesolithic groups with distinctive La Hoguette pottery in the west of the area should be noted (see e.g. Jochim 2000, Figure 7.5). The recent work of Price et al. (2001; see also Bentley et al. 2002), involving strontium isotope analysis of LBK skeletons, suggests both population immigration and some degree of mixing with neighbouring groups, possibly foragers.

In the case of Belgium a continuous low level of Mesolithic occupation is suggested, continuing in parallel with the early Neolithic, but examination of the coordinates of these later Mesolithic sites indicates that they are located significantly further west than their early Neolithic contemporaries. The Neolithic begins quite abruptly at 5400 cal. BC with the earliest Bandkeramik settlements.

...

The pattern for France once again shows a series of Mesolithic fluctuations but its most striking feature is the very gradual increase in the number of Neolithic dates through time ... There would appear to be strong evidence here for the early indigenous adoption of Neolithic attributes by Mesolithic populations in France, at least in its southern half.

...

The picture for Britain is more ambivalent in that there is a decline in the summed Mesolithic probabilities prior to the rise of the Neolithic but in the light of the other patterns, it seems at present more convincing to see it as pointing towards indigenous adoption rather than than colonisation. This seems even more likely to be the case for Ireland, where the main Mesolithic peak is immediately prior to the beginning of the Neolithic, followed apparently by a very sudden transition. However, as Woodman (2000) makes clear, the picture remains very unclear.

Farmer Husbands and Hunter-Gatherer Wives

Antiquity, March 2003 v77 i295 p63(4)

The Neolithic transition in Europe: comparing broad scale genetic and local scale isotopic evidence

R. Alexander Bentley et al.

Recently, the geographic distribution of Y-chromosome haplotypes from modern Europeans has been presented in support of the Neolithic demic diffusion model (Chikhi et al. 2002), suggesting that colonising farmers from south-west Asia contributed 70-90% of the genes in the population of each Neolithic settlement with an average contribution of 50% across the continent. Since others have used mitochondrial (mt) DNA evidence to argue for only about 20% Neolithic genes (Richards et al. 2000), there appears to be serious disagreement. Although this apparent discrepancy is probably more a matter of different methods of data analysis than of actual differences in continent-wide prehistoric demography (Barbujani et al. 1998; Simoni et al. 2000), there are ways in which real differences could have developed on a local scale. For example, distributional differences in mtDNA, which is passed through the female line, and male-transmitted Y-chromosomes could have resulted if the colonising farmers were in small groups, with few unmarried, not-closely-related females with which to bear children. In such cases, groups that managed initially to intermarry with indigenous hunter-gatherer women would have reproduced most successfully.

...

Strontium isotope analyses in the skeletons of some of the first farmers in south-west Germany, ca. 5400-5000 BC, show a high incidence of non-local females in early Neolithic cemeteries (Bentley et al. 2002; Bentley et al. 2003, Price et al. 2001) ... Because many of these upland non-locals were buried differently from locals, particularly without the characteristic stone adze associated with the early farmers, the strontium isotope analysis may evidence intermarriage between forager and farming communities. However, even if these particular non-local females were from other Neolithic farming communities, this evidence for patrilocality suggests that upon first contact the brides may have been foragers, an occurrence that has often been observed ethnographically (Spielmann and Eder 1994)

Eastern Black Sea Littoral Anthropology

RACE GENETIC ROOTS AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL INTERRELATIONS OF ETHNIC GROUPS IN EASTERN BLACK SEA LITTORAL

(Problems of Ethnogenesis)

M.Abdushelishvili, Institute Of History, Georgian Academy of Sciences

According to the anthropological data at our disposal, all the aboriginal groups in the North-Western Caucasus (except the highland Karachais and Balkars who pertain to the Caucasian type of the West Asian or Caucasoid race and make a classical example of lack of coincidence between the glottogenetic-Turkic and local (obtained in the Caucasus) race-genetic data), viz. the Adyghe, the Circassians, the Abazins, to a lesser extent the Kabardins, partially belong to the Adyghe Caucasian variant of the Pontic type of the Indo-Mediterranean (South-Europaeoid) race; whereas the aboriginal population of the Transcaucasian (South Caucasian) Black Sea coastal area - the Georgians (i.e. the Megrelians, the Gurians, the Adjarians) pertain to the Black sea coastal area variety of the West Asian race. In this particular case we are dealing with a coincidence of linguistic and physical (anthropological) data. Found between them are Abkhazian groups whose physical type classes them with the West Asian racial type that is wide spread in Transcausacia and considerably further down South, while linguistically they pertain to the Abkhazian-Adyghe family of languages that are spread over the North Caucasus, more precisely - in the North-Western region of the Caucasus which, presumably, is the area where this family of languages had originated and taken shape. Transcaucasia, West Asia and Asia Minor and the adjoining lands down South are the area where West Asian anthropological types were formed. Hence a question arises as to how can such lack of coincidence between linguistic and anthropological and, incidentally, not only anthropological but also archaeological, historical and other data that characterize the Abkhazian ethnos be accounted for? How is such incongruity between the physical and the linguistic origin of all - without exception - present-day Abkhazian groups to be interpreted? We are not here to judge about the causes of these discrepancies between the glottogenetic and race-genetic trends in the ethnogenesis of the present-day Abkhazian groups. And we emphasize: present-day Abkhazian groups, because we have no sufficient data concerning the physical type of the Muhajirs who relocated from Abkhazia to Turkey in the last century (the only exception being a small group of Abkhazians who settled on the territory of Adjaria and who, incidentally, do not differ in any way from the other Abkhazian groups we have studied). Such kind of discords (as well as coincidences) are quite a regular phenomenon in the process of ethnogenesis of various nations; therefore, what is to be done is not to mechanically project the data obtained by researchers working in various scientific disciplines, but, rather, to dialectically comprehend various interrelations between these processes (otherwise comprehensive study of the whole set of ethnogenetic problems would be needless). But in this particular case such identity (or, more precisely, quasi identity) of all the Abkhazian groups without exception with Georgian groups of the Black Sea littoral type points to their physical (blood) relationship. In the study of the genesis of the groups which we today call Abkhazian and which the Abkhazians call Apsui, this factor needs to be necessarily taken into account. In ascertaining this race-genetic fact, historians should be more meticulous in researching into the ways, forms and rates of the mechanism of the sophisticated glottogenetic process of the formation of an aboriginal Abkhazian ethnos on the territory of Georgia. In this connection, one should bear in mind the regularity anthropologists have established that "languages and cultures can spread over large areas without the people who speak and evolve them, whereas anthropological types, i.e. people never spread out unaccompanied by their language and culture". In our view, we deal here with the former phenomenon, i.e. with proliferation of the language of the Adyghe family unaccompanied by that of the anthropological elements, i.e. by the people of the Pontic type. What most probably took place here was gradual linguistic assimilation which evolved over the centuries with varying intensity and in the course of which Adyghe elements gradually infiltrated as they assimilated local culture and fully fused with the local population, which triggered the formation of new ethnic features in the extreme north-western territories of Georgia. The obviously expressed West Asian type of the present-day Abkhazian groups attests the fact that the proliferation of the Adyghe (Pontic) elements into the aboriginal population of the above territories in the extreme north-western portion of Georgia where these Pontic elements could in any measure have contributed to a change of the basic West Asian (in this particular case - the Kartvelian) genetic fund of the population never attained considerable intensity.

The West Asian type to which the present-day Abkhazian groups obviously belong clearly indicates that they formed and developed together with the Georgians who inhabited the area they currently occupy, and that this formation and development proceeded in immediate anthropological contacts between them.

Link

Physical Anthropology from Huns to present-day Bulgars

Link

Black Man Discovers he isn't Black

Wayne Joseph is a 51-year-old high school principal in Chino whose family emigrated from the segregated parishes of Louisiana to central Los Angeles in the 1950s, as did mine. Like me, he is of Creole stock and is therefore on the lighter end of the black color spectrum, a common enough circumstance in the South that predates the multicultural movement by centuries. And like most other black folk, Joseph grew up with an unequivocal sense of his heritage and of himself; he tends toward black advocacy and has published thoughtful opinion pieces on racial issues in magazines like Newsweek. When Joseph decided on a whim to take a new ethnic DNA test he saw described on a 60 Minutes segment last year, it was only to indulge a casual curiosity about the exact percentage of black blood; virtually all black Americans are mixed with something, he knew, but he figured it would be interesting to make himself a guinea pig for this new testing process, which is offered by a Florida-based company called DNA Print Genomics Inc. The experience would at least be fodder for another essay for Newsweek. He got his kit in the mail, swabbed his mouth per the instructions and sent off the DNA samples for analysis.

...

Wayne Joseph can't, either. But when the results of his DNA test came back, he found himself staggered by the idea that though he still qualified as a person of color, it was not the color he was raised to think he was, one with a distinct culture and definitive place in the American struggle for social equality that he'd taken for granted. Here was the unexpected and rather unwelcome truth: Joseph was 57 percent Indo-European, 39 percent Native American, 4 percent East Asian – and zero percent African. After a lifetime of assuming blackness, he was now being told that he lacked even a single drop of black blood to qualify.

Full Story from LA Weekly (via Infoshop)

The Nature of Human Altruism

Nature 425, 785 - 791 (23 October 2003); doi:10.1038/nature02043

The nature of human altruism

ERNST FEHR AND URS FISCHBACHER

Some of the most fundamental questions concerning our evolutionary origins, our social relations, and the organization of society are centred around issues of altruism and selfishness. Experimental evidence indicates that human altruism is a powerful force and is unique in the animal world. However, there is much individual heterogeneity and the interaction between altruists and selfish individuals is vital to human cooperation. Depending on the environment, a minority of altruists can force a majority of selfish individuals to cooperate or, conversely, a few egoists can induce a large number of altruists to defect. Current gene-based evolutionary theories cannot explain important patterns of human altruism, pointing towards the importance of both theories of cultural evolution as well as gene–culture co-evolution.

Link

mtDNA Diversity of Egyptian Population

Annals of Human Genetics
OnlineEarly
doi:10.1046/j.1529-8817.2003.00057.x

>b>Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Diversity in a Sedentary Population from Egypt

A. Stevanovitch et al.

Summary

The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity of 58 individuals from Upper Egypt, more than half (34 individuals) from Gurna, whose population has an ancient cultural history, were studied by sequencing the control-region and screening diagnostic RFLP markers.

This sedentary population presented similarities to the Ethiopian population by the L1 and L2 macrohaplogroup frequency (20.6%), by the West Eurasian component (defined by haplogroups H to K and T to X) and particularly by a high frequency (17.6%) of haplogroup M1. We statistically and phylogenetically analysed and compared the Gurna population with other Egyptian, Near East and sub-Saharan Africa populations; AMOVA and Minimum Spanning Network analysis showed that the Gurna population was not isolated from neighbouring populations.

Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population.

...

Haplogroup Number of individuals Percentage
H 5 14.7
I 2 5.9
J 2 5.9
L1a 4 11.7
L1e 2 5.9
L2a 1 2.9
M1 6 17.6
N1b 3 8.8
T 2 5.9
U 3 8.8
U3 1 2.9
U4 2 5.9
L3*(a) 2 5.9
L3*(b) 1 2.9
Other 1 2.9
Total 34 100

Link

Rates of Homosexuality from Around the World

Source: 2003 Durex Global Sex Survey

"Have you ever had sex with someone of the same sex?"

(YES in %)

17 AU
17 US
14 CA
13 DK
13 NZ
13 ZA
13 TH
13 UK
12 NO
11 BE
11 FI
11 FR
11 NL
10 AT
10 CZ
10 DE
10 IS
10 RU
9 HU
8 HR
8 HK
8 SG
8 ES
7 SK
6 BG
6 IN
6 IT
6 MY
6 SE
5 PL
5 YU
4 CN
4 TW
3 VN

Country Codes

Impact of selection, mutation rate and genetic drift on human genetic variation

Human Molecular Genetics Advance Access published online ahead of print October 21, 2003
Human Molecular Genetics, 10.1093/hmg/ddg359

Shamil Sunyaev et al.

The accumulation of genome-wide information on single nucleotide polymorphisms in humans provides an unprecedented opportunity to detect the evolutionary forces responsible for heterogeneity of the level of genetic variability across loci. Previous studies have shown that history of recombination events has produced long haplotype blocks in the human genome, which contribute to this heterogeneity. Other factors, however, such as natural selection or the heterogeneity of mutation rates across loci may also lead to heterogeneity of genetic variability. We compared synonymous and nonsynonymous variability within human genes to their divergence from murine orthologues. We separately analysed the nonsynonymous variants predicted to damage protein structure or function and the variants predicted to be functionally benign. The predictions were based on comparative sequence analysis and, in some cases, on the analysis of protein structure. A strong correlation between nonsynonymous, benign variability and nonsynonymous human-mouse divergence suggests that selection played an important role in shaping the pattern of variability in coding regions of human genes. However, the lack of correlation between deleterious variability and evolutionary divergence shows that a substantial proportion of the observed nonsynonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms reduce fitness and never reach fixation. Evolutionary and medical implications of the impact of selection on human polymorphisms are discussed.

Link

Origin and Diffusion of mtDNA Haplogroup X

Am. J. Hum. Genet., 73:000, 2003

Maere Reidla et al.

A maximum parsimony tree of 21 complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences belonging to haplogroup X and the survey of the haplogroup-associated polymorphisms in 13,589 mtDNAs from Eurasia and Africa revealed that haplogroup X is subdivided into two major branches, here defined as "X1" and "X2." The first is restricted to the populations of North and East Africa and the Near East, whereas X2 encompasses all X mtDNAs from Europe, western and Central Asia, Siberia, and the great majority of the Near East, as well as some North African samples. Subhaplogroup X1 diversity indicates an early coalescence time, whereas X2 has apparently undergone a more recent population expansion in Eurasia, most likely around or after the last glacial maximum. It is notable that X2 includes the two complete Native American X sequences that constitute the distinctive X2a clade, a clade that lacks close relatives in the entire Old World, including Siberia. The position of X2a in the phylogenetic tree suggests an early split from the other X2 clades, likely at the very beginning of their expansion and spread from the Near East.

...

Virtually all (97.2%) haplogroup X mtDNAs from the Near East, the South Caucasus, and Europe were found to belong to subhaplogroup X2, as did all (100%) of those from Siberia and Central Asia and some (36.8%) of those from North Africa (table 2). Thus, subhaplogroup X2 is characterized by a very wide geographic range but also by an infrequent occurrence. Indeed, it generally comprises <5% of the mtDNAs in West Eurasian and North African populations (table 1). Three exceptions include the Druze, the Georgians, and the Orkney Islanders, among whom the frequency of X2 reaches 11%, 8%, and 7%, respectively. The high frequencies of X2 in the Druze and the Orkney Islanders are combined with a low haplotype diversity (0.400 and 0.473, respectively), and the relatively high frequency in these populations is most likely due to genetic drift and founder events. Overall, it appears that the populations of the Near East, the Caucasus, and Mediterranean Europe harbor subhaplogroup X2 at higher frequencies than those of northern and northeastern Europe (P < .05) and that X2 is rare in Eastern European as well as Central Asian, Siberian, and Indian populations and is virtually absent in the Finno-Ugric and Turkic-speaking people of the Volga-Ural region.

...

The results of this study point to the following conclusions. First, haplogroup X variation is completely captured by two ancient clades that display distinctive phylogeographic patternsX1 is largely restricted to North and East Africa, whereas X2 is spread widely throughout West Eurasia. Second, it is apparent that the Native American haplogroup X mtDNAs derive from X2 by a unique combination of five mutations. Third, the few Altaian (Derenko et al. 2001) and Siberian haplogroup X lineages are not related to the Native American cluster, and they are more likely explained by recent gene flow from Europe or from West Asia. Fourth, the split between "African" X1 and "Eurasian" X2 subhaplogroups of X is phylogenetically as deep as that within the branches of haplogroup U that also differ profoundly in their phylogeography. Thus, subhaplogroup U6 is largely restricted to North Africa (as X1), whereas subhaplogroup U5 is widespread in West Eurasia (as X2). The phylogeographic patterns and the coalescence times that we obtained here suggest that the basic phylogenetic structures of the mtDNA haplogroups in West Eurasia and North Africa are as ancient as the beginning of the spread of anatomically modern humans in this region. Finally, phylogeography of the subclades of haplogroup X suggests that the Near East is the likely geographical source for the spread of subhaplogroup X2, and the associated population dispersal occurred around, or after, the LGM when the climate ameliorated. The presence of a daughter clade in northern Native Americans testifies to the range of this population expansion.

Link

Finnish Admixture in Swedish speakers of Finland

Hum Hered. 1991;41(4):248-64. Related Articles, Links

A population genetic study in Finland: comparison of the Finnish- and Swedish-speaking populations.

Virtaranta-Knowles K, Sistonen P, Nevanlinna HR.

Finnish Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service, Helsinki, Finland.

In Finland there is a substantial but geographically limited Swedish-speaking minority (in 1980 6.3% of the total population) which originates mainly from Swedish immigrants during the years 1100-1300 AD. The admixture of this population with the neighbouring Finns was studied using more than 20 blood marker loci. The reference populations, Swedes and Finns, in spite of being part of the genetically rather uniform European populations, differ from each other genetically. These quantitative and also qualitative differences in gene frequencies are mostly due to the Finnish population possessing a number of genetic markers absent or rare in the rest of Europe. The results based on a sample of 620 individuals from the Swedish-speaking population in Finland showed a rather high degree of Finnish admixture, which was estimated to about 60%. This admixture most probably occurred at an early stage since it has reached such a high and geographically homogeneous degree.

Finnish and Saami Admixture in Sweden

Hum Hered. 1991;41(3):157-67. Related Articles, Links

Population studies in northern Sweden. XVII. Estimates of Finnish and Saamish influence.

Nylander PO, Beckman L.

Department of Medical Genetics, University of Umea, Sweden.

The North-Swedish population is a mixture of Finnish, Saamish and Central-Swedish ethnic groups. We have studied the Finnish and Saamish admixture by means of genetic markers in 23 North-Swedish subpopulations. The Finnish influence was estimated using the transferrin genes B0-1, DCHI and C3 and the enzyme gene SOD1*2, and markers for Saamish influence were the blood group gene ABO*A2, the serum group gene GC*1F and the enzyme gene 6PGD*C. In the subpopulations the Finnish influence (admixture) varied between 0 and 84% and the Saamish influence between 0 and 34%. The Saamish influence was strongest in the western and northern parts of the area. In the northern part of the area, between 1/4 and 1/3 of the gene pool of the present-day population may be Saamish in origin. The Finnish influence was strongest in the northern and northeastern parts of the area. In the subpopulations along the Finnish border, between 60 and 80% of the gene pool may be Finnish in origin. Significant correlations were found between the Saamish marker genes and between the Finnish marker genes. Due to geographical overlapping of Finnish and Saamish influence, significant correlations were also found between Finnish and Saamish marker genes. The geographical pictures of Saamish and Finnish influence in northern Sweden showed a fair agreement with the expectations derived from historical knowledge. Although a substantial part of the genetic heterogeneity of the North-Swedish population is ethnic in origin, it is obvious that founder effect and genetic drift also have played an important role.

Paleoanthropology of Siberia

M.G. Levin, "Ethnic Origins of the Peoples of Northeastern Asia," Arctic Institute of North America, Anthropology of the North: Translations from Russian Sources/No.3, 1963

p. 278:

"The Uralian race combines Europoid [Caucasoid] and Mongoloid traits and originated from the mixing of types of the Europoid and the Mongoloid major races. Its formation dates to an early period during which the forest belt of western Siberia and of adjacent eastern Europe was first peopled. During the long period that followed, different variants with transitory morphological characteristics formed."

M. G. Levin, "The Anthropological Types of Siberia," in The Peoples of Siberia, ed. M. G. Levin and L. P. Potapov, The University of Chicago Press, 1964

p. 99:

"In the preceding chapter we adduced data on the anthropological composition of the ancient population of Siberia, which can be summed up in the following way. Judging by the material available, which, admittedly, is still very sparse, during the Upper Paleolithic Siberia was populated by Mongoloid groups. We do not yet possess sufficient data to define the limits within which the Mongoloids spread during this period, or to trace how far west the settlement of the Mongoloid-type paleolithic population extended. Future researches will have to ascertain whethere or not this region covered southwest Siberia as well during that period, or whether the original settledment of that territory, just as in the vast spaces to the west of the Yenisey, was due to the advance of Europeoid groups from the southwest and west."

"In any case, the region west of the Yenisey had long been the scene of intermingling between Europeoid and Mongoloid types. The latter penetrated far into Eastern Europe. In the Neolithic and eneolithic periods, the demarcation between Mongoloids and Europeoids in Siberia can be traced fairly clearly. The population of the forest belt at this time, to judge by paleo-anthropological material, has clearly marked traits of the great Mongoloid race."

"During this period the Altay-Sayan Plateau was settled by Europeoids; the anthropological type of the population, which left behind relics of the Afanas'yevo and Andronovian cultures, need give rise to no doubt."

"The Europeoid groups occupied the steppes of the Altay and Minusinskiy Kray, while the forest belt both in eastern and western Siberia continued to be extensively occupied by Mongoloid types. The boundary between them was by no means permanent. From the Altay-Sayan steppes the Europeoid groups seem to have moved fairly far east; the neolithic population west of Lake Baykal, in particular, shows a Europeoid admixture. In their turn, the Mongoloid elements penetrated into the steppe regions."

"From then on the proportion of the various Mongoloid types among the population of southwest Siberia kept increasing. This was particularly the case during the Tashtyk period. At the end of the first and beginning of the second millennia A.D., in the Altay-Sayan Plateau, too, Mongoloid-type groups almost completely ousted the ancient Europeoid population."

Alu Insertions in Morocco

Russian Journal of Genetics
October 2003, Volume 39, Issue 10

Polymorphism of Six Alu Insertions in Morocco: Comparative Study between Arabs, Berbers, and Casablanca Residents

F. Chbel et al.

Alu elements are the largest family of short tandem interspersed elements (SINEs) in human who have arisen to a copy number with an excess of 500 000 copies per haploid human genome and mobilize through an RNAse polymerase III derived transcript in a process termed “retroposition.” Several features make Alu insertions a powerful tool used in population genetic studies: the polymorphic nature of many Alu insertions, the stability of an Alu insertion event and, furthermore, the ancestral state of an Alu insertion is known to be the absence (complete and exact) of the Alu element at a particular locus and the presence of an Alu insertion at the site that forward mutational change. Here we report on the distribution of six polymorphic Alu insertions in a general Moroccan population and in the Arab and Berber populations from Morocco and their relationships with other populations previously studied. Our results show that there is a small difference between Arabs and Berbers and that the Arab population was closer to African populations than Berber population which is closest to Europeans.

Genetic Differentiation of the Population of Central Asia

Russian Journal of Genetics
October 2003, Volume 39, Issue 10

Genetic Differentiation of the Population of Central Asia Inferred from Autosomal Markers

I. Yu. Khitrinskaya et al.

The gene pool of five ethnic groups of the Central Asian population was characterized using nine human-specific polymorphic insertion/deletion loci (ACE, PLAT, APOA1, PV92, F13B, A25, B65, CD4, Mt-Nuc). It has been shown for the first time that at the CD4 locus, the frequency of Alu(–) is inversely related to the Mongoloid component of the population. For the Central Asian populations, the lowest and highest frequencies of the Alu deletion at locus CD4 were recorded respectively in Dungans (0.04), immigrants from China, and Tajiks (0.15). The coefficient of gene differentiation in the Central Asian populations for all the genes was 2.8%, which indicates a relatively low level of population genetic subdivision in this region. The unity of the gene pool of the Central Asian Caucasoids was shown.

North Eurasian Populations with Autosomal Loci

Russian Journal of Genetics
October 2003, Volume 39, Issue 10

Analysis of Genetic Diversity of North Eurasian Populations Using Autosomal Microsatellite Loci

V. A. Stepanov et al.

The paper presents the results of analysis of the gene pools of several North Eurasian ethnic groups (Buryats, Evenks, Altaians, Russians, Kyrgyzes, Tuvinians, Tatars, and Ukrainians) examined using a panel of autosomal microsatellite markers (D4S397, D5S393, D7S640, D8S514, D9S161, D10S197, D11S1358, D12S364 and D13S173) mapped on different chromosomes and represented by the (CA)n dinucleotide repeats. In the group of populations examined the proportion of genetic variability at microsatellite loci explained by interpopulation differences was about 2.5%, while genetic differences between the individuals within a population accounted for 97.5% of this variability. Analysis of genetic relationships among the populations revealed substantial differences between the populations belonging to the Indo-European and Altaic linguistic families in gene diversity at microsatellite loci.

Did Darwin Evolve his Theory?

The originality of the idea behind one of the great scientific discoveries - Darwin's theory of evolution - has been questioned by a Cardiff academic.

A theory which predates Charles Darwin's 1859 book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, has been discovered.

An account of natural selection has been found in a document dated 1794.

Professor Paul Pearson from Cardiff University tracked down the earlier publication by geologist James Hutton in the National Library of Scotland.

In the middle of the second volume of the 2,000-page account is a chapter on the selection theory.

Darwin studied in Hutton's home town of Edinburgh, which at the time was famous for its scientific clubs and societies.

Professor Pearson said: "There is no question of Darwin knowingly stealing Hutton's idea.

"But it is possible that an old half-forgotten concept from his student days later resurfaced, as he struggled to explain his many observations on species and varieties made voyaging around the world in HMS Beagle.

"Darwin rightly gets the credit for applying the principle to the transformation of species and assembling the evidence that convinced the scientific world."

Mainstream science

Darwin was born in 1809 in Shrewsbury and went to Cambridge University to become a Church of England clergyman after quitting Edinburgh University.

His observation of different types of finches on the Galapagos Islands - also famed for its giant tortoises - also helped mould his ideas.

He became an unpaid naturalist in 1831 on the HMS Beagle for a five-year scientific expedition to South America.

When he returned to England in 1836, Darwin used his knowledge of the animal and plant life he had seen to try to solve the riddle of how species evolve.

He worked on his theory for twenty years, and was prompted to act by a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, who had come to almost identical conclusions.

They published a joint paper, and in 1859 Darwin published the book which wrote his name into history.

He later lived with his wife and children in the village of Downe, near London. Darwin died on 19 April, 1882, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

There was strong resistance to Darwinian thinking but nowadays the theory of evolution is at the centre of mainstream science.

Link

Greek Orthodoxy and Health-Related Behavior

Preventive Medicine
Volume 34, Issue 4 , April 2002, Pages 428-435

Greek Christian Orthodox Ecclesiastical Lifestyle: Could It Become a Pattern of Health-Related Behavior?

Joannes El. Chliaoutakis et al.

Abstract

Background. Although past research has globally supported the salutary impact of religion on health and health-related behaviors, it has not extensively examined the impact of the Christian Orthodox Church's way of living on people's health and health-related behavior.

Methods. Semistructured personal interviews were used to investigate a stratified sample of 20- to 65-year-old individuals in the greater Athens area. Constructs were compared to single items and indices, which varied across data sets.

Results. Multiple-regression analysis specify that persons adopting the Christian Orthodox Church's lifestyle were more likely to behave in ways that enhance their health (e.g., relaxation, life satisfaction, healthful nutrition, personal hygiene, and physical activity), after controlling for a set of socio-demographic factors and their current health status.

Conclusion. These results suggest that the Christian Orthodox Church's lifestyle constitutes a pattern of health-related behavior.

Link

Barbarians in Arab Eyes

Barbarians in Arab Eyes
Aziz Al-Azmeh
Past and Present, No. 134. (Feb., 1992), pp. 3-18.

some excerpts:

"Briefly stated, medieval Arabic culture followed the Greek conception of the inhabited world as consisting of seven latitudinal zones that began slightly north of the equator and ended in the realms of perpetual darkness in the north. Beond the zones (aqālīm, from the Greek klimata) human habitation was not possible, and within their boundaries the nature of the changing environment prescribed different temperaments to the inhabitants."

...

"Embryonic growth was the result of the "cooking" together of these four humours [blood, phlegm, bile and atrabile]. In temperate climes the combination of these was harmonious and balanced, due to cooking under optimal heat conditions; this was the situation in the central zones, especially the third and fourth, which comprised the central Arab lands, including North Africa, Iranian lands, parts of China and the northern Mediterranean coast. To the north and south, conditions of excessive heat in the south and cold in the north led to the generation of bodies in distemper, and the degree of such distemper was proportional to the distance from the central climes."

"So while the Frankish, Slavic (among whom the Germanic peoples were counted) and Turkic (which were thought to include the Russians and the Volga Bulgars) peoples and other inhabitants of the sixth zone were generally melancholic and splenetic folk, given to savagery and the cultivation of the arts of war and the chase to the exclusion of properly civilized pursuits, they were merely barbarous, and not consummately barbarian. They lived in a condition of distemper which did not prevent them from acquiring a number of features associated with civilized society, especially large-scale territorial states and organized religion, preferably monotheistic - according to medieval Arabic social and political thought, it was the state which imposed culture upon the natural condition of men. Thus social and political considerations mitigated ecological determinism in the case of some northern peoples, while physical factors mitigated it in other cases. Yes among these peoples there were decided manifestations of barbarousness, as measured through three indices. The first was filth, the inverse of refinement and urbanity, perhaps most vividly described in Ibn Fadlan's account of his visit to the Russ in c. 921. Equally indexical were profligate sexuality and the lack of jealousy ascribed to all Europeans. Finally, a particularly spectacular manifestation of barbarousness concerned funerary rites, replete with fire, violenece and dark eroticism, most lavishly described by Ibn Fadlan."

...

"The environment was the determinant factor, for the inhabitants of the first zone emerged from their mothers' wombs "either like uncooked pastry or like things so thoroughly cooked as to be burnt"; at birth they emerged black, pinguescent, malodorous, kinky of hair, inadequate of mind. The immoderate colour of the negroes was accompanied by another icon of disnature, namely ugliness: snub noses, wide nostrils, drooping lips of unnatural size more congruent with the lips of beasts of burden, eyes in exophthalmic protrusion."

...

"Peoples at the northernmost extremity of human habitation, such as some Slavic and Turkic peoples, were described as the negroes of the north who, like their opposite numbers in the south, were akin to dumb animals who wander across mountains and desolate lands. Just as the physical appearance of negroes was a distortion of human standards, so, with the action of opposites, was that of the northerners."

Human X-chromosomal lineages in Europe

European Journal of Human Genetics advance online publication 8 October 2003; doi:10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201097

Human X-chromosomal lineages in Europe reveal Middle Eastern and Asiatic contacts

Feng-Xia Xiao et al.

Abstract

Within Europe, classical genetic markers, nuclear autosomal and Y-chromosome DNA polymorphisms display an east-west frequency gradient. This has been taken as evidence for the westward migration of Neolithic farmers from the Middle East. In contrast, most studies of mtDNA variation in Europe and the Middle East have not revealed clinal distributions. Here we report an analysis of dys44 haplotypes, consisting of 35 polymorphisms on an 8 kb segment of the dystrophin gene on Xp21, in a sample of 1203 Eurasian chromosomes. Our results do not show a significant genetic structure in Europe, though when Middle Eastern samples are included a very low but significant genetic structure, rooted in Middle Eastern heterogeneity, is observed. This structure was not correlated to either geography or language, indicating that neither of these factors are a barrier to gene flow within Europe and/or the Middle East. Spatial autocorrelation analysis did not show clinal variation from the Middle East to Europe, though an underlying and ancient east-west cline across the Eurasian continent was detected. Clines provide a strong signal of ancient major population migration(s), and we suggest that the observed cline likely resulted from an ancient, bifurcating migration out of Africa that influenced the colonizing of Europe, Asia and the Americas. Our study reveals that, in addition to settlements from the Near East, Europe has been influenced by other major population movements, such as expansion(s) from Asia, as well as by recent gene flow from within Europe and the Middle East.

Link

Racial Differences in the Satyricon of Petronius

The Satyricon of Petronius, in addition to being a very vivid depiction of Roman society in the 1st c. AD, also preserves very useful information as to how Romans perceived racial differences. The Roman characters are plotting an escape:

We must find some better way of escape than this. Listen to what I have hit on. Eumolpus, as a man of letters, of course carries ink about him; let us black ourselves with it from head to foot. Then as Ethiopian slaves we shall be at your service, light-hearted and free from fear of consequences, besting our enemies by this change of complexion."

"Why certainly," cried Giton, "circumcise us too, that we may pass for Jews, and bore our ears to imitate Arabs, and chalk our faces that Gaul may claim us as her sons! As if a change of color could modify the whole appearance; why! a host of alterations must be united to make the illusion convincing. Grant our dyed faces would keep their black; suppose no touch of water to make the color run, no blot of ink to stick to our clothes, an accident that will often happen even when no mucilage is added; pray, can we give ourselves the hideous swollen lips of the African? can we transform our hair to wool with curling-tongs? can we scar our brows with rows of ugly wrinkles? render ourselves bow-legged and flat-footed? give our beards that outlandish look? A dye may disfigure the person, it cannot change it. Now hear a desperate man's remedy; let us wind our clothes around our heads, and plunge into the deep."

Petronius' passage does not specify how the Roman characters actually looked. But, their appearance is contrasted with that of other ethnic groups, giving us some important clues to perceptions of race in the classical world.

For one thing, Ethiopians are black, and hence the suggestion that the characters impersonate Ethiopians by painting themselves with black ink. But, this scheme would fail, because Ethiopians are not simply black, but have a number of features, which cannot be replicated that easily, e.g., "swollen lips", "bowed legs", "wooly hair". These features in addition to black skin mark Ethiopians as Negroids: it is difficult for Romans to imitate all these features.

The proposed method of imitating Jews and Arabs is different: circumcision and boring their ears. The choice is deliberate: Romans are not separated from these groups by such obvious phenotypical traits such as color, hair texture, or lip size; imitating them has more to do with "decorative" interventions, rather than imitating racial traits.

As for the last group, the Gauls, these are, like Ethiopians divergent from Romans racially, since approximating Gauls entails "chalking up their faces": by implication Gauls are paler than Romans.

We have in other words here a ranking of similarity. Ethiopians (Negroids) are marked as the most divergent, being the most difficult to emulate. Next come the Gauls who are also racially different, but closer to Romans. Finally, the methods proposed for imitating Jews and Arabs mark these latter groups as more racially similar to the Romans.

Human Evolutionary Tree based on 182 microsatellites

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 122:259–268 (2003)

Reconstruction of Human Evolutionary Tree Using
Polymorphic Autosomal Microsatellites

Qasim Ayub et al.

ABSTRACT Allelic frequencies of 182 tri- and tetra-autosomal
microsatellites were used to examine phylogenetic
relationships among 19 extant human populations.
In particular, because the languages of the Basques and
Hunza Burusho have been suggested to have an ancient
relationship, this study sought to explore the genetic relationship
between these two major language isolate populations
and to compare them with other human populations.
The work presented here shows that the
microsatellite allelic diversity and the number of unique
alleles were highest in sub-Saharan Africans. Neighbor-joining
trees based on genetic distances and principal
component analyses separated populations from different
continents, and are consistent with an African origin for
modern humans. For the first time, with biparentally
transmitted markers, the microsatellite tree also shows
that the San are the first branch of the human tree before
the branch leading to all other Africans. In contrast to an
earlier study, these results provided no evidence of a genetic
relationship among the two language isolate groups.
Genetic relationships, as ascertained by these microsatellites,
are dictated primarily by geographic proximity
rather than by remote linguistic origin, Mantel test, R0 =
0.484, g = 3.802 (critical g value = 1.645; P = 0.05).

Neighbor-Joining Tree

Link

The Beaver Dam Eye Study

Ophthalmology
Volume 110, Issue 8 , August 2003, Pages 1526-1533

The relationship between iris color, hair color, and skin sun sensitivity and the 10-year incidence of age-related maculopathy
The Beaver Dam Eye Study

Sandra C. Tomany et al.

Abstract

Purpose

To examine the association between iris color, hair color, and skin sun sensitivity and the 10-year incidence of age-related maculopathy (ARM).

Design

Population-based cohort study.

Participants

A population of 4926 adults (range, 43–86 years of age at baseline) living in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, was studied at baseline (1988–1990); of these, 3684 and 2764 subjects, respectively, participated in 5-year and 10-year follow-up examinations.
Methods

Data on hair color at age 15 years and skin responsiveness to sun exposure were obtained from a standardized questionnaire administered at the baseline examination. Iris color was determined with penlight illumination during the baseline examination by using photographic standards. Age-related maculopathy status was determined by grading stereoscopic color fundus photos with the Wisconsin Age-Related Maculopathy Grading System.

Main outcome measures

Incidence and progression of ARM.

Results

When controlling for age and gender, people with brown eyes were significantly more likely to develop soft indistinct drusen (risk ratio [RR], 1.53; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.19–1.97; P < 0.01) than were people with blue eyes. However, people with brown eyes were significantly less likely to develop retinal pigment epithelial depigmentation (RR, 0.58; 95% CI, 0.41–0.82; P < 0.01) than were people with blue eyes. When compared with persons with blond hair, persons with brown hair were at decreased risk of developing pigmentary abnormalities (RR, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.53–1.00; P = 0.05). Iris color, hair color, and skin sun sensitivity were not associated with the development of late ARM.
Conclusion

Iris color and hair color were found to be associated with the 10-year incidence of pigmentary abnormalities. Iris color seems to be inconsistently related to the 10-year incidence of early ARM lesions and the progression of ARM.

Link

No racial and ethnic differences in psychopathic personality

Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 35, Issue 6 , October 2003, Pages 1463-1469

Are there racial and ethnic differences in psychopathic personality? A critique of Lynn's (2002) racial and ethnic differences in psychopathic personality

Marvin Zuckerman

Abstract

Lynn's claim that certain races or ethnic groups have a higher incidence of psychopathic personality is not substantiated by large scale community studies in America that show no differences between these groups in the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. No consistent racial differences are found in traits closely associated with psychopathy, sensation seeking and psychoticism, and, Lynn to the contrary, the Psychopathic Deviate scale of the MMPI. Antisocial behavior in Blacks is less related to personality than in Whites. The results on criminality are not compatible with Rushton's r/K theory of evolutionary selection, as claimed by Lynn, because Native Americans and Hispanic groups are of Siberian Mongoloid origin in the case of the former and mixed Central-American Indian and Spanish Caucasoid in the case of the latter. The differences between African-American, Native-American, Hispanic, and European-American groups in antisocial behavior seems to be more a function of social class, historical circumstance, and their position in Western society rather than racial genetics. Following [Rushton, 1988 and Lynn, 2002] has presented a pastiche of population statistics on delinquency, criminal and sexual behavior, truancy, parenting, aggression, and disorders like Conduct Disorder (CD) and Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) to support the hypotheses that: (1) the races and ethnic groups differ in the incidence of "psychopathic personality"; (2) these population differences are based in strong part to genetic differences between the populations; (3) the differences have their distal origins in the different evolutionary histories of the races (Rushton's r–K theory of race differences). Lynn claims that Rushton's theory "...has now become widely accepted by scholars", citing only those who support the theory and ignoring those who have criticized it ( [Lynn, 1989, Weizmann et al., 1990, Zuckerman, 1990 and Zuckerman and Brody, 1988]). Consequently, some of those criticisms as well as those based on more recent data are addressed to the specific arguments in Lynn's article.

Link

PCA of Global Sex Survey Results

Here are the results of a Principal Components Analysis of worldwide sexual behavior based on the "Have you ever...?" table of the 2003 Global Sex Survey by durex. The first 2 principal components explain 89% of the variance. Country codes from here. Also, note that the countries next to HU (Hungary), not showing very clearly are AT (Austria) and Croatia (HR).

PCA for "Have you ever...?"

Here are also the first two principal components from the "Favorite Sexual Position" table. These explain 92% of the variance. Vietnam and France are extreme outliers probably because they have very low frequency of liking "partner on top".

PCA for "Favorite Sexual Position"

A closer look of the above, excluding France and Vietnam. The labels for CA and SK are overlapping and are not clearly visible:

Detail of previous

Y chromosome haplogroup J

Y chromosome haplogroup J is associated with the expansion of the Neolithic economy from the Fertile Crescent . One of its subclades, Eu9 was found to be the best predictor for the distribution of Linear Pottery which marks the Neolithic expansion into Europe [1].

It's important to note that while J is of Near Eastern origin, it has two distinctive subclades, which were named Eu9 and Eu10 by Ornella Semino [2]. Eu9 is much more common in Europe than Eu10. In contrast, in Arabia, Eu10 is much more common than Eu9. This discovery led Nebel [3] to the conclusion that much of haplogroup J in North Africa is not of Neolithic origin, but rather introduced by Eu10 carrying Arabs, by noting that many North Africans shared haplotypes with Eu10-carriers from the Near East.

In [4], Nebel also concluded that Eu9 originated in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent, while Eu10 originated in the southern part. This is also borne out by the distribution of the two in several populations reported in [2,5,6] (*)

Here is the total frequency of haplogroup J in several populations:

Bedouin 0.656
Iraqi 0.583
Palestinian Arab 0.552
Syrian 0.45
Turkish 0.433
Ashkenazi Jewish 0.43
Lebanese 0.419
Muslim Kurdish 0.4
Kurdish Jewish 0.374
Georgian 0.365
Sephardic Jewish 0.282
Greek 0.278
Albanian 0.275
Italian 0.252
Macedonian 0.2
French 0.173
Sardinian 0.104
Andalusian 0.103

As we can see, Haplogroup J is most frequent in the Near East and decreases in frequency from it, as would be expected since it originated there.

Here are the frequencies of Eu9 and Eu10 in the same populations

Bedouin 0.031 0.625
Iraqi 0.252 0.331
Palestinian Arab 0.168 0.384
Syrian 0.15 0.3
Turkish 0.4 0.033
Ashkenazi Jewish 0.24 0.19
Lebanese 0.29 0.129
Muslim Kurdish 0.284 0.116
Kurdish Jewish 0.152 0.222
Georgian 0.333 0.032
Sephardic Jewish 0.154 0.128
Greek 0.251 0.027
Albanian 0.235 0.04
Italian 0.206 0.046
Macedonian 0.15 0.05
French 0.13 0.043
Sardinian 0.052 0.052
Andalusian 0.069 0.034

The Bedouin, in the great majority belong to Eu10, while e.g., the Georgians, from the North of the Fertile crescent belong primarily to Eu9. To gauge the relative importance of the two subclades in the various populations, I report the following index (frequency of Eu9)/frequency of J. The higher this index, the more a population is descended from the northern part of the Fertile Crescent:

Turkish 0.92
Georgian 0.91
Greek 0.9
Albanian 0.85
Italian 0.82
Macedonian 0.75
French 0.75
Muslim Kurdish 0.71
Lebanese 0.69
Andalusian 0.67
Ashkenazi Jewish 0.56
Sephardic Jewish 0.55
Sardinian 0.5
Iraqi 0.43
Kurdish Jewish 0.41
Syrian 0.33
Palestinian Arab 0.3
Bedouin 0.05

These results are in full agreement with history. Anatolians (Turks), Caucasians (Georgians), Balkan people (Greeks, Albanians), Italians, Frenchmen, are overhwelmingly descended from the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Iraqis, Syrians are descended significantly from the southern part, reflecting their partly Arabian origins, although not as much as the Bedouin who are almost entirely of southern origin.

We must make two additional observations: Sardinians and Andalusians are somewhat divergent from other Europeans in terms of their distribution of Eu9 and Eu10 subclades. We shouldn't assume that this is necessarily true, since estimates of the lesser important subclades may not be accurate in the small samples. If, however, they turn out to be accurate, this may reflect a degree of Arab, Jewish, or Phoenician admixture in these populations. However, this is minimal, in the order of 5%., which is also the upper limit of Eu10 in all European populations (+)

It is striking that Muslim Kurds have more Eu9 than Eu10, while Kurdish Jews are the reverse. The former are Iranic, Indo-European speakers, while the latter are Semites. It will be very interesting to see what the frequencies of Eu9 and Eu10 are in the Indo-European Iranians, where haplogroup J reaches very high frequencies (~60% in the Zagros mountains [7]). Iranians were studied in [8], however only the marker defining Eu9 (M172) was typed. M172 had a frequency of about 25% in three groups from Iran. This together with the high frequency of M89 (31%-46%) may indicate that Iranians have intermediate ratio of Eu9/Eu10, although haplogroup G defined by M201 (which was also not typed) might also be included in the percentage of M89.

Indian J chromosomes also seem to belong largely to Eu9 according to [9] with a goodly frequency of ~14% in the Punjab.

J chromosomes are found as far as Mongolia [10]. Unfortunately, [10] didn't distinguish between Eu9 and Eu10. This would significantly elucidate whether these are to be associated with the spread of Islam, with Iranian tribes, or with early Neolithic farmers.

[1] King R. et al., 2002, Congruent distribution of Neolithic painted pottery and ceramic figurines with Y-chromosome lineages, Antiquity
[2] Semino et al. (2000) The genetic legacy of Paleolithic Homo sapiens sapiens in Extant Europeans: A Y Chromosome Perspective
[3] Nebel et al. (2002) Expansion of Arabian Tribes. Am J Hum Genet 70:1594-1596
[4] Nebel et al. (2001) Y Chromosomes of Jews and Middle Easterners. Am J Hum Genet 69:1095-1112
[5] Clinal patterns of human Y chromosomal diversity in continental Italy and Greece are dominated by drift and founder effects, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Volume 28, Issue 3, September 2003, Pages 387-395
F. Di Giacomo et al.
[6] Y-chromosome and mtDNA polymorphisms in Iraq, a crossroad of the early human dispersal and of post-Neolithic migrations, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Volume 28, Issue 3, September 2003, Pages 458-472
N. Al-Zahery et al.
[7] Quintana-Murci et al. (2001) Y Chromosomes in Southwestern Asia. Am J Hum Genet 68:537-542
[8] Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2001 August 28; 98 (18): 10244–10249. The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity
R. Spencer Wells et al.
[9] Kivisild et al. (2003) Origins of Indian Castes and Tribes. Am J Hum Genet 72:313-332
[10] Zerjal et al. (2002) Y-Chromosomal Insights into Central Asia. Am J Hum Genet 71:466-482

(*) Greek/Italian data are taken from the larger samples of [5] and not from those of [2], although the results are comparable
(+) Eu10 is not a Semitic marker, since it's quite possible that early agriculturalists that settled in Europe may have been a mix of Eu9 and Eu10 with the former being dominant.

Native American Founder mtDNAs

Annals of Human Genetics
OnlineEarly doi:10.1046/j.1469-1809.2003.00049.x

Identification of Native American Founder mtDNAs Through the Analysis of Complete mtDNA Sequences: Some Caveats

H.-J. Bandelt et al.

Summary

In this study, a detailed analysis of both previously published and new data was performed to determine whether complete, or almost complete, mtDNA sequences can resolve the long-debated issue of which Asian mtDNAs were founder sequences for the Native American mtDNA pool. Unfortunately, we now know that coding region data and their analysis are not without problems. To obtain and report reasonably correct sequences does not seem to be a trivial task, and to discriminate between Asian and Native American mtDNA ancestries may be more complex than previously believed. It is essential to take into account the effects of mutational hot spots in both the control and coding regions, so that the number of apparent Native American mtDNA founder sequences is not erroneously inflated. As we report here, a careful analysis of all available data indicates that there is very little evidence that more than five founder mtDNA sequences entered Beringia before the Last Glacial Maximum and left their traces in the current Native American mtDNA pool.

Link (requires access)

Isolation by Language and Distance in Belgium

Annals of Human Genetics
OnlineEarly doi:10.1046/j.1469-1809.2003.00044.x

I. Barrai et al.

Summary

The isonymy structure of trilingual Belgium was studied using the surname distributions for 1,118,004 private telephone users. The users were distributed in 77 Flemish, 76 French, and 3 German speaking towns, selected on a geographic basis to form an approximately regular grid over Belgium. Lasker's distance was found to be considerably higher between languages than within languages. For the whole of Belgium, irrespective of language, it was highly correlated with linear geographic distance, with r = 0.721±0.014, which is the highest correlation observed in European countries to date. Within Belgium and within languages, the correlation was highest among the Flemish (r = 0.878 ± 0.007), and lowest among the French (r = 0.631±0.020). Isolation by distance in Belgium is the highest we have found in Europe, and as high as in Switzerland where the different languages are separated by geographical barriers. This is not the case in Belgium, so that the considerable isolating power of languages emerges clearly from the present analysis. From the comparison of Lasker's distance between (9.48) and within (8.16) languages, and from its regression over geographic distance (b = 0.01206), it was possible to establish a quantitative relationship between the isolating power of languages and that of geographic distance as (9.48-8.16)/0.01206 = 109 kilometres. This transformation of language distance into an equivalent geographic distance, given here for Belgium, can be applied to any similar geo-linguistic situation.

Link (requires access)

The Making of the Slavs

A reader brought The Making of the Slavs by Florin Curta to my attention. The book apparently argues against a broad-encompassing "Slavic" ethnic group, and argues that "Slavic" ethnicity was a Byzantine invention. This reminds me strongly of the invention of Celtic ethnicity by the Greco-Romans in dealing with the various tribes of Western Europe. Description:

This book offers a new approach to the problem of Slavic ethnicity in south-eastern Europe between c. 500 and c. 700, from the perspective of current anthropological theories. The conceptual emphasis here is on the relation between material culture and ethnicity. The author demonstrates that the history of the Sclavenes and the Antes begins only at around 500 AD. He also points to the significance of the archaeological evidence, which suggests that specific artifacts may have been used as identity markers. This evidence also indicates the role of local leaders in building group boundaries and in leading successful raids across the Danube. Because of these military and political developments, Byzantine authors began employing names such as Sclavines and Antes in order to make sense of the process of group identification that was taking place north of the Danube frontier. Slavic ethnicity is therefore shown to be a Byzantine invention.

Apparently, there is also a PDF of the first chapter available.

IE Origins in SE Europe Update

I have updated the small page on Indo-European Origins in Southeast Europe.

RACIAL AND ETHNIC STRATIFICATION IN EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT AND ATTAINMENT

Annual Review of Sociology
Aug 2003, Vol. 29, pp. 417-442

Grace Kao and Jennifer S. Thompson

Abstract Understanding racial, ethnic, and immigrant variation in educational achievement and attainment is more important than ever as the U.S. population becomes increasingly diverse. The Census Bureau estimates that in 2000, 34% of all youth aged 15-19 were from minority groups; it estimates that by 2025, this will increase to 46% (U.S. Census Bureau 2000). In addition, approximately one in five school-age children reside in an immigrant family (Zhou 1997, Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco 2001). We provide an overview of recent empirical research on racial, ethnic, and immigrant differences in educational achievement and attainment, and we examine some current theories that attempt to explain these differences. We explore group differences in grades, test scores, course taking, and tracking, especially throughout secondary schooling, and then discuss variation in high school completion, transitions to college, and college completion. We also summarize key theoretical explanations used to explain persistent differences net of variation in socioeconomic status, which focus on family and cultural beliefs that stem from minority group and class experiences. Overall, there are many signs of optimism. Racial and ethnic gaps in educational achievement and attainment have narrowed over the past three decades by every measure available to social scientists. Educational aspirations are universally high for all racial and ethnic groups as most adolescents expect to go to college. However, substantial gaps remain, especially between less advantaged groups such as African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans and more advantaged groups such as whites and Asian Americans. The racial and ethnic hierarchy in educational achievement is apparent across varying measures of the academic experience.

Link

RACE, ANCESTRY, AND GENES: Implications for Defining Disease Risk

Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics
Sep 2003, Vol. 4, pp. 33-67

Rick A. Kittles and Kenneth M. Weiss

Abstract Geneticists are interested in finding genes associated with disease. Because of widespread health disparities, race is a variable that is often said to be relevant in this context. The idea is that members of a preconceived "race" share common ancestry that may include genetic risk factors. Human variation has been shaped by the long-term processes of population history, and population samples that reflect that history carry statistical information about shared genetic variation or "ancestry." But race is an elusive concept and a term difficult even to define rigorously. Unfortunately, these problems are neither new nor related to recent genetic knowledge. Race is also one of the most politically charged subjects in American life because its associated sociocultural component has notoriously led to categorical treatment that has been misleading and politically misused. There are ways in which the concept of race (whether or not the term is used) can be a legitimate tool in the search for disease-associated genes. But in that context race reflects deeply confounded cultural as well as biological factors, and a careful distinction must be made between race as a statistical risk factor and causal genetic variables.

Link

Genetics of Lactase Intolerance

Annual Review of Genetics
Posted online as a Review In Advance on 22 April 2003.

Genetics of Lactase Persistence and Lactose Intolerance

Dallas M. Swallow

Abstract The enzyme lactase that is located in the villus enterocytes of the small intestine is responsible for digestion of lactose in milk. Lactase activity is high and vital during infancy, but in most mammals, including most humans, lactase activity declines after the weaning phase. In other healthy humans, lactase activity persists at a high level throughout adult life, enabling them to digest lactose as adults. This dominantly inherited genetic trait is known as lactase persistence. The distribution of these different lactase phenotypes in human populations is highly variable and is controlled by a polymorphic element cis-acting to the lactase gene. A putative causal nucleotide change has been identified and occurs on the background of a very extended haplotype that is frequent in Northern Europeans, where lactase persistence is frequent . This single nucleotide polymorphism is located 14 kb upstream from the start of transcription of lactase in an intron of the adjacent gene MCM6. This change does not, however, explain all the variation in lactase expression.

Link

Genetics of Hair and Skin Color

Annual Review of Genetics
Posted online as a Review In Advance on 22 April 2003.

Genetics of Hair and Skin Color

Jonathan L. Rees

Abstract Differences in skin and hair color are principally genetically determined and are due to variation in the amount, type, and packaging of melanin polymers produced by melanocytes secreted into keratinocytes. Pigmentary phenotype is genetically complex and at a physiological level complicated. Genes determining a number of rare Mendelian disorders of pigmentation such as albinism have been identified, but only one gene, the melanocortin 1 receptor (MCR1), has so far been identified to explain variation in the normal population such as that leading to red hair, freckling, and sun-sensitivity. Genotype-phenotype relations of the MC1R are reviewed, as well as methods to improve the phenotypic assessment of human pigmentary status. It is argued that given advances in model systems, increases in technical facility, and the lower cost of genotype assessment, the lack of standardized phenotype assessment is now a major limit on advance.

Link

Mongolian admixture in Poland

Transfus Med. 2003 Jun;13(3):161-3.

The first example of anti-Diego(b) found in a Polish woman with the Di(a+b-) phenotype and haemolytic disease of the newborn not requiring treatment.

Lenkiewicz B, Zupanska B.

All pregnant women with anti-Diegob (anti-Dib) described so far were non-Caucasians. We present the case of a Polish Di(a+b-) woman with anti-Dib, which did not bind complement, was immunoglobulin G3 (IgG3) alone and had very low functional activity. She delivered a Di(a+b+) infant with a positive direct antiglobulin test and the antibody in his serum but very mild haemolytic disease. Both parents of the pregnant woman were Di(a+b+), so were all her three children. The whole family have been living in a small village in southeastern Poland for a long time. The rare Diego phenotypes, found now and previously in Poland, suggest gene admixture introduced as a result of Poland being invaded by Mongolian-background Tatars during the past centuries.

...

This is not the first time that a very rare phenotype of the Diego system was detected in Poland. Amongst 9661 Poles tested, 45 (0·47%) were found to have Di(a+) antigen (Kusnierz-Alejska & Bochenek, 1992). Thus, its incidence is much higher than that seen in any other White population tested (Issitt & Anstee, 1998). This observation was attributed to the very probable gene admixture resulting from several military invasions of Poland by Tatars of Mongolian background in the past (Kusnierz-Alejska & Bochenek, 1992); it is known that Di(a+) is mainly found in people from the East (Issitt & Anstee, 1998).

...

The possibility of the influence of people from the East on the frequency of certain antigens in the Polish population is also consistent with our previous observations on the incidence of human platelet antigen (HPA) genotypes. The frequency of HPA-2 and HPA-5 alleles in Poles was similar to that in Far East nations (Drzewek et al., 1998).

An Archaeological Evaluation of the Gimbutas Paradigm

A scathing criticism of the feminist archaeology of Marija Gimbutas here.

Indo-Iranian Origins

CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 43, Number 1, February 2002

Archaeology and Language
The Indo-Iranians

by C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky

Conclusions

Russian scholars working in the Eurasiatic steppes are nearly unanimous in their belief that the Andronovo culture and its variant expressions are Indo-Iranian. Similarly, Russian and Central Asian scholars working on the Bactrian Margiana complex share the conviction that it is Indo-Iranian. The two cultures are contemporary but very different. Passages from the Avesta and the Rigveda are quoted by various researchers to support the Indo-Iranian identity of both, but these passages are sufficiently general as to permit the Plains Indians an Indo-Iranian identity. Ethnicity is permeable and multidimensional, and the "ethnic indicators" employed by Kuzmina can be used to identify the Arab, the Turk, and the Iranian, three completely distinctive ethnic and linguistic groups. Ethnicity and language are not so easily linked with an archaeological signature.

Furthermore, archaeology offers virtually no evidence for Bactrian Margiana influence on the steppe and only scant evidence for an Andronovo presence in the Bactrian Margiana area. There is certainly no evidence to support the notion that the two had a common ancestor. There is simply no compelling archaeological evidence for (or, for that matter, against) the notion that either is Indo-Iranian.

Indo-Iranian is a linguistic construct with two branches, one of which went to Iran and the other to northern India. The time of their arrival in these new homelands is typically taken to be the 2d millennium B.C. Not a single artifact of Andronovo type has been identified in Iran or in northern India, but there is ample evidence for the presence of Bactrian Margiana materials on the Iranian Plateau and in Baluchistan (e.g., at Susa, Shahdad, Yahya, Khurab, Sibri, Miri Qalat, Deh Morasi Ghundai, Nousharo [for a review see Hiebert and Lamberg-Karlovky 1992]). It is impossible, however, to trace the continuity of these materials into the 1st millennium and relate them to the known cultures of Iranian-speakersthe Medes or the Achaemenids (or their presumed Iron Age ancestors [see Ghirshman 1977, Young 1967]). The only intrusive archaeological culture of the 2d millennium that directly influences Iran and northern India is the Bactrian Margiana archaeological complex, but it cannot be linked to the development of later 2d- and 1st-millennium archaeological cultures on the Iranian Plateau.

The identity of the Indo-Iranians remains elusive. When they are identified in the archaeological record it is by allegation rather than demonstration. It is interesting that the archaeological (and linguistic) literature has focused entirely upon the Indo-Iranians, overlooking the other major linguistic families believed to have been inhabiting the same regionsthe Altaic, the Ugric, and the Dravidian. Each of these has roots in the Eurasiatic steppes or Central Asia. The fact that these language families are of far less interest to the archaeologist may have a great deal to do with the fact that it is primarily speakers of Indo-European in search of their own roots who have addressed this problem.

In an interesting "Afterword" to Sarianidi's Margiana and Protozoroastrianism, J. P. Mallory asks, "How do we reconcile deriving the Indo-Iranians from two regions [the steppes and the Central Asian oases] so different with respect to environment, subsistence and cultural behavior?" (1998a:181). He offers three models, each of interest, none supported by archaeological evidence, one of which is that the Bactrian Margiana complex was Indo-Iranian and came to dominate the steppe lands, serving as the inspiration for the emergence of fortified settlements such as Sintashta in the southern Urals. Thus, an external source is provided for the development of the "country of towns" and with it a linguistic affiliation. Mallory admits that this model is unlikely. His conclusion is that the nucleus of Indo-Iranian linguistic developments formed in the steppes and, through some form of symbiosis in Bactria-Margiana, pushed southward to form the ancient languages of Iran and India (p. 184). It is, however, that "form of symbiosis" that is so utterly elusive!

Linguists too often assign languages to archaeological cultures, while archaeologists are often too quick to assign their sherds a language. Denis Sinor (1999:396), a distinguished linguist and historian of Central Asia, takes a position that more might consider: "I find it impossible to attribute with any degree of certainty any given language to any given prehistoric civilization." The works I have mentioned in this piece offer archaeological data of great interest and importance, and all their authors identify the archaeological cultures with which they are working as Indo-Iranian. Linguists cannot associate an archaeological culture with words, syntax, and grammar, and archaeologists cannot make their sherds utter words. We need a third arbiter, which may or may not offer some degree of resolution to the relationships between archaeological culture and language. Perhaps that arbiter will be in our genes. To date only a few mitochondrial and Y-chromosome studies of Eurasian populations have been undertaken (Voevoda et al. 2000). Eliza Khusnutdinova and her team at the Uta Research Center are conducting pioneering DNA studies in the Volga-Urals region of Russia. In the context of a renewed fashion of relating archaeology, culture, and language it is well to remember that neither sherds nor genes are destined to speak specific languages, nor does a given language require a specific ceramic type or genetic structure.

Link (requires access)

Review of Indo-European Origins: the Anthropological Evidence

Quarterly Review of Biology, Dec 2002 v77 i4 p487(2)

Indo-European Origins: the Anthropological Evidence. (Book Review) Robert R. Sokal.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2002 University of Chicago Press

By John V Day. Washington (DC): The Institute for the Study of Man. $68.00 (paper). xxiv + 546 p; ill.; no index. ISBN: 0-941694-75-5. 2001.

This is an ambitious and unusual book. The author has set himself the task of collecting and summarizing 200 years worth of research on the Indo-European (IE) problem by scholars from diverse disciplines. Comparative linguistics leaves us in little doubt that in prehistoric times there existed a population that spoke a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language ancestral to nearly 150 living languages dominating Europe, and widely distributed throughout West and South Asia. Who were these ancient PIE speakers, when and where did they live, and by what processes did their descendant languages arrive at their present locations?

In successive chapters the author lists and discusses evidence from linguistics, textual and artistic sources, and biological anthropology (dermatoglyphics, cranioskeletal studies, and genetics). Some of the biological findings are quite up to date, although the intensive current research in this area will rapidly outdate them.

One difficulty of studying IE origins is the complexity of the concept. The author points out the noncongruence of several aspects of ancient populations in Europe. These would include archeological, biological, cultural, and linguistic criteria. These criteria yield only partially overlapping classifications of their constituent populations. One statement or investigation about Indo-Europeans may refer to linguistic characters, yet incautious readers may transfer the inference to biological characteristics of the populations. Although the author is well aware of these complexities, it is not always easy to recognize which aspect of the IE puzzle he refers to in his accounts.

The discussion focuses on four population-dynamic processes, all of which can lead to language change: in situ divergence; demic diffusion; elite dominance and folk migration, the two being opposite ends of a continuous spectrum of population movements; and contact-induced language shift. The author postulates expectations for each type of evidence under each of the above models and draws conclusions from the results of numerous cognate studies.

The structure and scope of this book raise an important question for researchers who want to test hypotheses by summarizing numerous experiments and other results. In fields such as clinical trials, where the hypotheses are more narrowly defined, meta-analysis has become established as the procedure of choice. Some new type of meta-analysis has yet to be developed for data, such as the ones in this book, ranging from descriptions in ancient works of variable reliability to conclusions reached from sophisticated statistical analyses of carefully designed studies. Absent such procedures, it is difficult to interpret the often contradictory evidence from several disciplines.

An added problem arises from the possibility of misinterpreting the results of the reported findings. I am unable to evaluate this in disciplines in which I have no expertise, but as an example of the dangers inherent in such a multifarious study, I can cite the treatment of synthetic surfaces in Chapter 9. The author references my work on synthetic surfaces (on page 240) without reporting the gist of my findings that the interpolation of unbalanced data matrices invalidates the maps based on them, because even random patterns when treated in this manner yield trends that invite interpretation. He not only goes ahead and uses the synthetic maps of the first three principal component maps as evidence, but also discusses the evidence from the next four components that even their authors do not consider seriously. Since the author cites the impressive total of over 2,600 references, one wonders how many others might be misinterpreted.

Day's tentative conclusions are that the PIE speakers came from small, sparse populations that established themselves by migration and elite dominance in various regions of Eurasia. They were characterized by light pigmentation of skin and hair and originated on the Eurasian steppes. Because of the many references cited in the text, the book in places makes for wearisome reading. It suffers also from the lack of an index. Nevertheless, this volume is an invaluable compendium for anyone interested in or researching the IE problem and I, for one, will certainly consult it in the future.

ROBERT R SOKAL, Ecology & Evolution, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York

Were early Eurasian steppe cultures Altaic?

Excerpts from a very interesting debate, initializing the "IE Origins" category:

Current Anthropology, Feb 2003 v44 i1 p109(2)

More on archaeology and language. (Discussion). (response to C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, Current Anthropology, vol. 43, p. 63) Mario Alinei; Richard N. Frye.

A migration-free theory that assumes the continuity of all European and Asiatic populations from Paleo-/Mesolithic times is gaining consensus not only among prehistorians (cf., e.g., Marcel Otte's and Alexander Hausler's work) but also, and especially, among linguists (Alinei 1996-2000 n.d.; Ballester n.d; Cavazza 2001; Costa 1998; Poghirc 1992). In this framework not only Andronovo but also the whole cultural sequence that precedes it, from Srednyi Stog to the Pit Grave, Catacomb Grave, and Timber Grave cultures (cf. Makkay's comment), can only be seen as expressions of an already developed Turkic branch of the Altaic population, originating in Central Asia in Paleolithic times. Among other advantages, this conclusion produces (1) a straightforward explanation of the numerous Turkic loanwords for horse terminology in Samoyed and other Uralic languages, as well as in Slavic, and (2) a convergence between a hippocentric geo-cultural scenario, on the one hand, and the continuity of the archaeological record, on the other ("The steppe tribes of horse-breeders and mobile pastoralists had already begun, in the Copper Age, to play the role which they were to continue to play for the next 5,000 to 5,500 years of human history" [Chernykh 1992:42-3]), pace Anthony and other scholars who continue to cultivate the myth of the hippocentrism of the Indo-Europeans and the Indo-Iranians.

The origin of the Iranians, in turn, must be sought in Iran itself, and their role in the steppes should be seen as an aspect of a later expansion from the south (see Khlopin 1990:177). The Bactrian Margiana complex, in my opinion correctly interpreted by Lamberg-Karlovsky as opposed to Andronovo, may well be an important aspect of the Iranians' earliest northern expansion.

Posted by Dienekes at 02:57 AM | Comments (3) | PermaLink

The Roman Preference for Dark Eyes

T. Maccius Plautus, 3rd=2nd c. BC, Poenulus describing the appearance of a beautiful (venusta) woman:

Specie venusta, óre atque oculis pernigris.

Of agreable form, with a small mouth, and very dark eyes.

P. Terentius Afer, 2nd c. BC, Heautontimorumenos. A father proposes to give a red-haired light-eyed (caesiam) and convex-nosed girl to his son, who protests.

So. Gnate mi, ego pol tibi dabo illam lepidam quam tu facile ames;
Filiam Phanocratae nostri.

Cl. Rufamne illam virginem,
Caesiam, sparso ore, adunco naso? non possum, pater.

SOSTRATA My son, upon my honor I'll give you that charming girl, whom you may soon become attached to, the daughter of our neighbor Phanocrata.

CLITIPHO What! that red-haired girl, with cat's eyes, freckled face, and hooked nose? I can not, father.

C. Valerius Catullus, 1st c. BC, Carmina, 43 compares a girl that does not have various beautiful features, including not dark eyes, to his Lesbia:

Salve, nec minimo puella naso
nec bello pede nec nigris ocellis
nec longis digitis nec ore sicco
nec sane nimis elegante lingua
decoctoris amica Formiani.
ten provincia narrat esse bellam?
tecum Lesbia nostra comparatur?
o saeclum insapiens et infacetum!

Greetings, girl with a nose not the shortest,
feet not so lovely, eyes not of the darkest,
fingers not slender, mouth never healed,
and a not excessively charming tongue,
bankrupt Formianus’s ‘little friend’.
And the Province pronounces you beautiful?
To be compared to my Lesbia?
O witless and ignorant age!

Sextus Propertius, 1st c. BC, Elegiae, II, 12

quam si perdideris, quis erit qui talia cantet,
(haec mea Musa levis gloria magna tua est),
qui caput et digitos et lumina nigra puellae,
et canat ut soleant molliter ire pedes?

If you destroy me, who will there be to sing like this? (This slender Muse of mine, is your great glory.) Who will sing the face, the hands, or the dark eyes of my girl, or how sweetly her footsteps are accustomed to fall.

Sources for the texts is the Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum

Update: Finally the Latin physiognomist Loxus (cf. "Loxus, Physician and Physiognomist," Geneva Misener, Classical Philology, Vol. 18, No. 1. (Jan., 1923), pp. 1-22.) believed that the ideal woman ought to have a fair complexion, brown hair and dark eyes.

A bit of a visual.

PBS's Matters of Race

Link, has some online clips as well.