Talk:Genetic history of Europe

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Contents 1 Problems with the "North and Northeast African influences" section 1.1 North African and Near Eastern influences 2 Admixture from Neolithic expansion from Anatolia vs. North African admixture 3 Merge genetic history section of White people to "Genetic history of Europe" 4 Kurgan hypothesis 5 Norman/Germanic - Viking heritage - Language and Culture in Sicily. 6 Does this article have a point besides POV pushing? 7 Seldin 2006 paper 8 Why languages are mixed with gens. This is not ok! 9 Sub-saharan admixture 10 Uralic or Asian influence 11 Seldin study 12 Genetics-a proof for the Iranian origin of the Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and Macedonians? 13 3D bars of Genetic Distances in Europe deleted?? 14 New article: Genetics of the Ancient World - Invitation to add content about ancient people groups in Europe 15 Opening sentence load of rubbish 16 Where is the Asian influence section?

[edit] Problems with the "North and Northeast African influences" section

• E3b did not leave the Horn of Africa in the Neolithic. That was the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic. By the Neolithic it was in the Near East, from where it spread to Europe and North Africa (see the article for references).

• The Spanish study using the p49/TaqI marker A) deals with Y-chromosomes not mtDNA, and B) is outdated and unreliable [1], with anomalous results not duplicated by any other research [2]. ---- Small Victory

You are right. I propose the following version:

[edit] North African and Near Eastern influences

There are a number of genetic markers which are characteristic of North African and Near Eastern populations which are to be found in European populations signifying ancient and modern population movements. These markers are to be found throughout the continent. For these, Near Eastern and Proto-Basque (Native European) influences see: [3] [4] [5]

Veritas et Severitas 00:21, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Small Victory has made a point and I agree with him, so it is two of us here. The new version is much more reliable, rigorous and global, and covers all of Europe. If someone does not agree, please participate in the discussion. Of course, the source is important and detailed enough to elaborate more on it, and expand the present version of this section, and I propose it. Veritas et Severitas 14:14, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Admixture from Neolithic expansion from Anatolia vs. North African admixture

It seems necessary to make a distinction between these two elements. The Neolithic element in the European gene pool is huge and even dominant in much of Eastern and South Eastern Europe. North African admixture seems to be inexistant in most of Europe except for Iberia and Sicily, and in both these regions, at quite low levels.

This can be seen from an analysis of the various subclades of Y-chromosome Haplogroup E3b which distinguish between those of Balkan/Anatolian origin (such as E-M78) and those of recent North African origin (E-M81). See : http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1181965

Of all E3b subclades in North Africa (E3b is carried by an overwhelming majority of North African populations) E-M81 is by far the most common, E-M78 (the most common European subclade) being minor or absent in most population samples.

Taking Italy as an example, an analysis of E3b in different regions of the country shows that this haplogroup is of continental origin (reaching the peninsula either from the North or from Greece) except for in Sicily where about 5.5% of male lineages can be ascertained to be of North African origin (see table 1).

Similar conclusions can be extrapolated from Mtdna analysis.

Any comments?

--Ismael76 20:19, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Generally accurate, but you also have to keep in mind that all of these are simply vectors for a haplotype that originated in East Africa. I didn't know that only 5.5% were of recent origin in Sicily (of about 27.3%); I had thought it higher, but you're right. Furthermore, Andalusia has about 5.3-4% recent N. African admixture, Catalan 3%, and Spanish Basques 2.1% (all from the data for E-M81). It should definitely be distinguished as the presence of specific mutations represent separate and distinct population events. — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs •

Ethiopia 23:44, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Haplogroup e3b first evolved or mutated in northern egypt 20,000 years ago. e3b descends from E which first appeared in Chad or Sudan , E descends from Haplogroup YAP which first appeared in Uganda and YAP descend from M168 which first appeared in east africa and is the "adam" haplogroup, first human. So all e3b came from north egypt to europe just via different routes (i.e balkans or spain).[6] --Globe01 11:53, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge genetic history section of White people to "Genetic history of Europe"

So, I'm proposing a merge of the genetic information off this page. Why?

• It's lengthy, specialized and not central to most people's understanding of "white people" - Unlike even the appearance information, haplogroup membership is irrelevant in nearly all settings to the categorization of whether people are or are not white.
• At least 174 million white people do not have their genetic history adequately covered, and cannot have it adequately covered without including the entire genetic history of Africans in the Americas and Native Americans. The number comes from adding 74 million White Americans of some African descent to 100 million White Brazilians, nearly all with some nonwhite ancestry. Considering other whites in the Americas would clearly mean more.
• The haplogroup info perpetuates a category error - It imagines that "white people" forms a genetic category that is clearly inherited along with genes when it isn't (consider Colored people, African Americans etc. for noninheritance), and biological coherence attaches to the category (consider Mexican descendants of Spaniards whose status a white people changes when they enter the United States or Canada). In other words, haplogroup members aren't all white people.
• Putting it a little stronger, one main purpose of the term white people, in say the United States or England, is to differentiate people from non-white people who may even be their own children (with a nonwhite partner).
• Haplogroup info could theoretically be part of any social group page, but the reasons for including it are weak, especially if the category is much more recent or very different in scale than the relevant migrations (so Europe is a reasonable category, but Czechoslovakia or Naples almost certainly not). Since haplogroups are primarily used to study genetic and migratory history, it would be more relevant to reproduce the relevant historical information in the actual article and defer genetic details to an article about genetics.

I see two reasonable alternatives for the merger:

• The genetic section could be eliminated. - This would most clearly reflect the category error concern above, but would eliminate interesting information, and is unlikely to produce consensus among editors.
• The opening paragaphs could stay and change and a quick genetic/migratory history summary added with reference to Genetic history of Europe.

--Carwil 02:20, 15 January 2007 (UTC) Re-proposed and copied to Talk:Genetic history of Europe. Please continue discussion on Talk:White people#Merge genetic history to "Genetic history of Europe".--Carwil 15:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kurgan hypothesis

Why is only the Kurgan hypothesis mentioned? This is highly POV. The view that Indo-European languages were introduced in the neolithic by farmers from Asia Minor is well established, even if North Americans don't like it. Alun 06:34, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Norman/Germanic - Viking heritage - Language and Culture in Sicily.

My cousin through marriage David Neilson assumed my surname was biological ‘Raciti’. I am biological in fact a Caggegi. He told me that I needed to wait in line before I could consider my Norman/Germanic - Viking heritage.

He believes he is of Danish heritage (through his surname - Neilson). He has brown hair and brown eyes. I personally don't see it at all. My daughter Racheal has blonde hair and blue eyes - and is most likely to be of that area.

I have found the original form of my biological name to be of a 'North Sea Germanic language' of Norse Origin: 'Keggeg', specifically from the Ingaevones, Jastorf and Langobardic cultures that migrated into North Italy in the 6th and 7th centuries.

History tells us that there were significant Lombard (with their Gallo-Italic idiom) settlements in Randazzo, Sicily.

There was a Lombard Community (the last to come, with the Normans) around the church San Martino in Randazzo.

The Langobardi tribe could have been biologically very similar to The Cimbri (Danes) and The Frisii tribes.

The one thing I do know is that The Lombards through The Jastorf culture - were in locations in Sweden - were I find other 'Keggeg's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pre_Migration_Age_Germanic.png

[edit] Does this article have a point besides POV pushing?

Massive problems with this article.

1. This article suffers from the same problem that the article Population genetics of the British Isles did, in that it is impossible to discuss the so called "Genetic history of Europe" without discussing the real archaeology and history of Europe. I suggest that this article is either AfDd, or is re-named something like Prehistoric settlement of Europe. I do not understand what a "Genetic history" is supposed to mean, there is genetics, and there is the limited amount genetics can tell us about the past of our species (and it is very limited), and there is archaeology, which can tell us a great deal about the material culture of the past of the human species, and there is history, which according to the OED is A written narrative constituting a continuous methodical record, in order of time, of important or public events, esp. those connected with a particular country, people, individual, etc. So the article needs to be renamed at least.
2. There are two sections that are composed of a single point of view, with a single reference, making them blatantly POV. Indo-Europeans and Uralic_Influence. It's as if someone is systematically including only the point of view that supports their personal opinion, while refusing to include the alternative point of view. This is a clear breach of the neutrality policy. We are all supposed to include all points of view, irrespective of our own opinions.
3. There are sections that consist predominantly quotes, this is a clear breach of the what Wikipedia is not policy, "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" and "editors should try and work quotations into the body of the article, rather than in a stand alone quote section. 'Wikipedia is not a list or repository of loosely associated topics such as quotations.' A simple list of quotations would be better suited for our sister project, Wikiquote." see European_Population_Substructure, Haplogroups and Uralic_Influence.
4. This article seems to be a collection of people pushing alternative POVs, there is no narrative, and there is absolutelly no structure here. This is not an encyclopaedia article, it is a series of contradictory statements (usually quotations) by people trying to push their personal opinions.
5. The only sections with any merit are Paleolithic and North_and_Northeast_African_influences. Alun 07:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

As a layperson, it is not clear to be why this article is disputed. What are the "alternate POVs" that are supposedly being pushed?--Sylvain1972 19:33, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Seldin 2006 paper

Key:      Western European Americans      Southern European Americans      Central European Americans      Eastern European Americans     Spanish      Italian      Swedish      Finnish

Seldin identified three major geographically distributed genetic clusters or populations in Europe. Population 1 is associated with southern Europe, Population 2 is associated with northern Europe, although Finland does not have a high degree of membership. Population 3 is associated with Finland, making Finns genetically distinct from other Europeans. Seven other clusters are identified in the paper, but these do not have such a marked geographical spread and have not been shown. When two genetic clusters (populations) are assumed, then the data partition into a northern cluster and a southern cluster.

So the paper by Seldin in 2006 is covered very sketchily in this article, the graphic from the actual paper that appears in this article is confusing and is taken out of context. I have had a go at producing two maps of Europe that show the results given in the Seldin paper. Both of these maps show exactly the same data, but the data are presented in very different ways. I would like some feedback, which is the better map, should we include them, are they of any use, that sort of thing. I'd prefer constructive criticism. I'm also producing similar maps from the Bauchet data from their paper this year, these may actually be better due to the greater degree of resolution they produce, five clusters instead of three, let's see how they look. Cheers. Alun 17:47, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Why is the important influence of Asian origins in Central and Norhtern Eruope so much downplayed here. There is a lot of information about it. That section should be much bigger. Lots of information missing. Some people take care of it please. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.175.249.250 (talk) 10:19, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why languages are mixed with gens. This is not ok!

wors move like a wind, while genes are not a polens at least as we know now. Nasz 06:40, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

ok —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.175.249.250 (talk) 10:24, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sub-saharan admixture

The most recent admixture test from AncestryByDNA, using autosomal markers, mentions that the average South Europeans type with approximately 5% sub-Saharan genetic material (Iberia 6.6 % and Greece 4.8 % being the highest). By comparaison European American get 3% and Northern Euro < 1%. Even though in some cases, for an individual, a low reading such as this may be negated by the confidence interval, in South Europeans low levels of sub-Saharan admixture are consistenly found, making them signature results for these populations. This means they are not stastical "noise," but true results. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.36.29.208 (talk) 08:26, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, and then Iberia has the most ancient Eropean ancestry and according to one of the papers in the article (# ^ Measuring European Population Stratification using Microarray Genotype Data [2]) those modern Iberian populations are the furthest away from other continental groups, making them the purest Europeans. On top of that they also have among the highest values of the West European marker R1b and on top of that it seems that R1b originated in Iberia itself. So, what shall we make of all this? I think it is all pretty confusing--- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.175.249.250 (talk) 10:32, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Purest Europeans ? A long time ago, maybe... Today certainly not, with and average of 6.6% sub-Saharan admixture and an European % < 80 (almost the same as North-Africans according to AncestryByDNA's autosomal testing). But why do you want them to be the purest ? In my opinion Spanish people (with Italians and North-Africans) are the most beautiful people in the world...

I basically agree. I do not beleive in those stupid purity questions. I am only wondering about all these studies. Cheers.

Sorry but those studies are not reliable at all. Ancestry is not a serious scientific organization, it is just a business that uses autosomal studies (very unreliable due to recombination at every generation) and on top of that it has been accused of suspicious manipulation of data and absurd conclusions. Only university and recognizaed experts should be allowed here. Reliable sources that very much contradict the results made public by this American business. ___ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.175.249.250 (talk) 09:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The main problem lies in the samples and the methodology. This company is American and most of their customers are American. They have litle or no penetration outside the US or non-English speaking countries. They self identify by mail. In the end most samples are from US citizens who identify as Irish, Spanish, Portuguese (Iberian) etc. They poorly represent the people from the countries mentioned. Peter--- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.175.249.250 (talk) 07:12, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Good reason only to use European based studies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.84.83.60 (talk) 00:54, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Thats not true. People are carefully chosen and perfectly represent the people from the countries mentioned (at least 4 grand-parents born in the country they represent). DNAPrint which holds two patents and has seven patent applications pending related to genetic markers [7] is a serious scientific organization which has published its work in the scientific literature :

• Parra, E., Marcini, A., Akey, J., Martinson, J., Batzer, M., Cooper, R., Forrester, T., Allison, D., Deka, R., Ferrell, R. and M. Shriver. 1998. Estimating African American Admixture Proportions by Use of Population Specific Alleles. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 63:1839-1851.
• Pfaff, C., Parra, E., Bonilla, C., Hiester, K., McKeigue, P., Kamboh, M., Hutchinson, R., Ferrell, R., Boerwinkle, E., and M. Shriver.2001. Population Structure in Admixed Populations: Effect of Admixture Dynamics on the Pattern of Linkage Disequilibrium. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 68:198-207.
• Parra, E., Kittles, R., Argyropoulos, G., Pfaff, C., Hiester, K., Bonilla, C., Sylvester, N., Parrish-Gause, C., Garvey, W., Jin, L., McKeigue, P., Kamboh, M., Ferrell, R., Pollitzer, W., and M. Shriver.2001. Ancestral Proportions and Admixture Dynamics in Geographically Defined African Americans Living in South Carolina.American Journal of Physical Anthropology 114:18-29.
• Frudakis, T., V Kondragunta, M Thomas, Z Gaskin, S Ginjupalli, S Gunturi, V Ponnuswamy, S Natarajan, and P Nachimuthu. 2002. A Classifier for SNP-Based Racial Inference. In Review, Journal of Forensics Sciences.[8]
• Multilocus OCA2 Genotypes Specify Human Iris Colors, which describes the identification of numerous new OCA2 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) associations with iris color and how they can be used together to predict iris color from DNA, has been published recently in july 2007 in the journal Human Genetics, a respected peer-review journal which publishes the latest research in the field [9].

Truth is that Amrican studies about Europeans are all suspect. Intrestingly when the samples are taken from Europe and carried out by European experts and universities the results are very different from the American ones who think that they represent the populations of the entire world. It is typical of their ignorance. If you want a study about Europe, do ti in Europe, not in America. It does not matter how they identify. Americans have been mixing for generations to represent any other population properly. Anyone who knows the Americans knows too well how they tend to overemphazise their European origins, often just saying they are 100% European and tending to hide non-European background. It has to do with their problems with race. Once and for all, only studies that use samples from Europe should be use to speak about Europeans. And smaples from Africa for Africa, and not hyphenated Americans. Peter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.63.167.16 (talk) 16:03, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, according to that study, North Africans, Europeans and Middle Easterns all hae significant Native American ancestry. It is all ridiculous. It can be explained if the samples come from American citizens, though. ___ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.175.249.250 (talk) 07:55, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I am french , live in france and I did the test. They found 10 % of Native american in my dna. Of course I have no ancestor in America and the genetist told me that it could be explained because "It was these Central Asian populations that at one point migrated to the Bering Sea land bridge and into the Western Hemisphere where they became known as "Native Americans" even though they were not really "Native". (These migrations may have started around 30,000 years ago but continued in waves for thousands of years.) It is known that the Central Asians also went South and West into the Middle East and especially to Europe through Turkey, Greece and Italy and their genetics are very often found in those population groups..." [10]

Nope, the Asian influence is strongest in Easterna and Northern Europe. Just make some serious research.--- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.175.249.250 (talk) 10:09, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The claim that southern Europeans have around 5% subsaharan is difficult to square with the fact that they range through 3.6% to 6.6% north african influence - which was the principal means by which the subsaharan influence historically entered that part of Europe. Subsaharan African slavery was insignificant in Europe, except in the Algarve, a very small region in southern Portugal, and Lisbon. Elsewhere in Iberia, and mainly in the south, there was some use of Africans primarily as domestic servants of wealthy aristocracy or rich merchants - in other words, very few relative to the total population, and nothing like the slave plantation culture of the American south. The great aristocratic owned properties of southern Europe overwhelmingly used local day (wage paid) labour. For all intents and purposes there was nearly no indigenous or mestizo immigration back into Europe from the Americas during the colonial period - that is a phenomena of only the last 30 years. Finally the consistently different results between American based v European based studies makes one suspect that given the ethnic politics of America, whose subtlety and complexity I'm just beginning to appreciate, makes one wonder at the reliability of even official records of ancestry that American based researchers may be relying on. Paternity is always suspect, after all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.84.82.207 (talk) 10:24, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

The trouble with the genetic studies is that it's all done with probalbilities and people have difficulty in understanding that mutations, let's say f.e. those defining E3a, maybe be conserved in their anctestry for a very long time. As the molecular clock depends heavily on the mutation rate, questions like 'should the proximity of an uranium ore in the vicinity of some ancient people be taken into account?' are possible. The molecular clock ONLY TELLS YOU WHEN THE MUTATION (in your specific line of ancestry) IS ESTIMATED TO HAVE HAPPENED (and gives a time frame), it DOES NOT (certainly) TELL YOU ANYTHING OF YOUR RELATIONS (make a paternity test instead, or some such).

Since there is variation in haplogroups in every people today, it is ridiculous to even try to define some "pure races". That was tried during the WWII (guess by whom), and found out to be a bad idea. Those trying to clone themselves or define some "pure race" are comparable to narcisists mad scientists, imho. 91.153.60.171 (talk) 09:39, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

There's only one "race" - the human race. Anyway the above argument was clearly not about paternity but about possible other sources of subsaharan haplogroups in Americans of southern Europeans. It is a failure of imagination that leads to investigators not considering that in the upheaval - both physical and emotional, and the loneliness, the breaking of old ties, etc (especially in the old days) that European women might not have engaged in relations with say American mestizos and even blacks with whom they would have been cast with on the journey and in the poor districts, where most migrants usually started off - which was then disguised by claiming a different paternity on official papers. Thus American based studies of Iberians and Italians, or in fact any Europeans will have to be taken with scepticism in comparison with European studies such as the presence of typically subsaharan haplogroups in such populations. Relying on official documents, while useful, has limitations. 58.84.93.134 (talk) 05:12, 11 January 2008 (UTC) I should have added to the above that each generation will always produce a small percentage of children with falsely attributed paternity, thus over time making legal documents ever less useful. This is obvious but it seems that it has to be shouted out so people can understand why taking samples from the original populations and not proxies from a "melting pot" society like America, is so important. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.84.86.121 (talk) 02:41, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Uralic or Asian influence

This secton is too small. In fact almost nothing. I have read that the Asian influence goes from very important to significant in Norhtern, Central and Eastern Europe, but I am no expert. Therefore I think this part should be worked on. --- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.175.249.250 (talk) 09:22, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree. There is a section devoted to sub-Saharan African admixture in Europeans but none devoted to East Asian admixture (though the Uralic section touches on this subject). According to Luca Cavalli-Sforza, there may be twice as much East Asian DNA in Europeans as sub-Saharan, though this contention was articulated in a way that can be interpreted in different ways. -- Gerkinstock (talk) 03:09, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Seldin study

I would like to point out that the Seldin study is not considered very credible by many geneticists, both in its methods and in its conclusions, and that there are no other papers that corroborate his hypothesis. It seems strange to me that it is in such high profile in this article, mixed with results from other studies with different results, and which have been corroborated over and over again. One should not overlook the fact that much recent population genetic research contradicts many racialist theories, whereas the Seldin paper seems to support them. It appears to me that attempts to highlight the Seldin paper over the conclusions of hundreds of other papers (which paint a much more complex picture of European genetic diversity, with extensive mixing, and East-West as well as North-South and other dimensions) is the product of individuals determined to affirm their racialist prejudices in Wikipedia. 84.90.16.244 19:24, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree.The Seldin paper is a drop of water in a sea of contradicting evidence, but a group of people in Wiki, with a lot of POV pushing are usiing it all over Wiki as the star article, ignoring most of the rest. It is the Nordicist lobby,stillvery powerful. They hate the idea that most of this research points to Southern Europe as the place of origins of most Europeans and they especially hate all this research that points to the Iberians (Basques and other Spaniards) as the most ancient population of Europe or the significant Asian influence in Northern Europe, etc. It all just tears apart their Nordic fantasies after acouple of hundred of years of propaganda. Thse people hate with especial determination authors such as Bryan Sykes and Stephen Oppenheimer, and do all they can to erase their names and links in Genetic related articlers.Jan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.175.249.250 (talk) 11:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The Seldin study was OK, but it failed to identify much of the structure in Europe, probably because it didn't use enough markers. Bauchet from 2007 used microarrays to identify nearly 10,000 SNPs and got a much better result. Seldin makes some good points though, they claim that their data support a demic diffusion from the near east during the neolithic, something Y chromosome and mtDNA analyses seem to support. Bauchet et al. also seems to support hat. I can see no real evidence that the Seldin and Bauchet papers contradict each other, only that the Bauchet paper produced a finer resolution. Even so, there are many systemic problems with the science from the Bauchet paper, including possible sampling biases and the bizarre way they insisted on refering to their samples by the country of origin rather than the region. A much better analysis would be forthcoming if sampling were done by geography, for example taking a small number of samples from many geographically close regions, rather than artificially classifying samples by the country of origin. A good example of this is the excellent paper "A Y Chromosome Census of the British Isles". Generally the labelling of samples by country of origin gives the false impression that country boundaries for some sort of "genetic" barrier, which of course in reality they do not. People in the south of France are similar to people in the north of Spain, people in the east of France are similar to people in the west of Germany etc. In these sorts of genetic studies sample collection can give a very false sense of distinctness. This is also true for intermediate regions, more thorough sampling from many geographically close regions will certainly introduce a greater clianlity tot he data than the sort of discontinuous sampling of geographically distant groups such as we have seen in the HGDP and here. Actually this Bauchet work is more for "commercial" use than for proper science, they are now "marketing" their AIMs to gullible people who want to find out their "European" origins, so possibly the artificial barriers produced by the paper were deliberate? Anyway it will be some time before a sensible scientist comes at this with a more robust sampling strategy, then I expect to see far less pronounced "clustering" with most individuals belonging to multiple clusters, but with clinal variation. By the way I've changed the pic in the section to one based on the Bauchet paper, it is better than Seldin, but still not very good. Alun (talk) 12:28, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Genetics-a proof for the Iranian origin of the Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and Macedonians?

According to these article lines:'The modern Slavic peoples come from a wide variety of genetic backgrounds, attesting the complexity of the ethnogenetic processes in Eastern Europe . The frequency of Haplogroup R1a[1] ranges from 63.39% by the Sorbs, 56.4% in Poland and 54% in Ukraine, to 15.2% in Macedonia, 14.7% in Bulgaria and 12.1% in Herzegovina. [3] [4] '

and the conclusion given in afterwards, it's obvious that the genetic structure of the Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and Macedonians is different than the one of the other Slavs. This could be the most obvious part of the theory that these South Slavs have Iranian origin, or that they are originally Iranian tribes, who mixed with Slavs, resulting in today's 4 peoples. Also, another factor could be- the more intensive mixing of these Balkan Slavs with Illyrians and Thracs, resulting in building a distinctive genome than the all other Slavs..Cheers

Special:Contributions/24.86.110.10|24.86.110.10]] (talk) 08:00, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 3D bars of Genetic Distances in Europe deleted??

What happened to them? What made you delete them? They were way more illustrative and explanatory than these confusing R1a, R1b Haplogroups and clustering analysis chart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Europe#European_population_substructure . I don't think anyone can disagree with that. I think it should be brought back. I believe those charts derived from well-respected, valid researches like the Cavalli-Sforza's. Unless they were fake/made-up/propagandistic/false I see no reason deleting educational charts like these. DefendEurope (talk) 18:45, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

yo i found the charts pic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:European_population_substructure.png

seems it was deleted by some Spanish guy> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/62.136.31.118 diff> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Genetic_history_of_Europe&diff=prev&oldid=156909003 who was somehow offended by the results (i can't tell exactly in what way but i think by the not-so-intense bonding of Spanish genes in the rest of the South-European gene structure. which is not a big deal. Spanish people still belong to the south-European genes.)

anyway, i also found that the research was indeed valid. For more info here> http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0020143 The analysis was performed using 749 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) informative for European substructure (selected from a genome-wide panel of more than 5700 SNPs). 749 polymorphisms are more than the triple polymorphisms needed to make a valid human genes' research. Note that there have been political-racist propagandistic researches that have used 1 polymorphism. 1 as opposed to 749. Usually 200-300 Polymorphisms used. Conclusively I see no point in not including this> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:European_population_substructure.png pic in the European population substructure paragraph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Europe#European_population_substructure

is anybody against my thoughts? DefendEurope (talk) 19:09, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you read the section in the talk page immediately above entitled Seldin study and discuss it there? By the way the map that is currently in use is derived from Bauchet et al. (2007) Measuring European Population Stratification with Microarray Genotype Data a paper that used 10,000 SNPs to Seldin's 5,700 SNPs (not 749 as you state) and so it produced far better resolution. Whereas Seldin et al. detected only three robust clusters Image:Seldin geography.png, Bauchet detected five Image:Bauchet European clusters.png. The Bauchet et al. paper is more recent, uses more genetic markers and produces better substructure resolution, it also relies on exclusively European samples rather than samples from North America where there is more chance of samples being derived from people with ancestry from several different European regions, which would further decrease resolution. It's obvious why it is a better source for identifying European substructure. Personally I thought the image you want to put back was largely uninformative and somewhat messy. Alun (talk) 20:06, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

First of all I did mention there were 5700 SNPs in the Seldin 2006 research. the 749 were the actively used.
2. I did not question the quality of the Bauchet 2007 research.
3. I do not propose the current pic should be replaced with the 3D graphs. All i'm saying is since they are both valid researches they should both be presented.
4. the motive of the re-adding of the Seldin 3D graphs is purely for illustrative purposes to any reader of the article. It's a genetics article, not the Front Page News. Why should it be Laconic and so space economic? it's just a pic more =/ why not?

5. Compare the illustrative strength of the 3D graphs> Image:European_population_substructure.png with that of the cluster structures. this> Image:Bauchet European clusters.png and this> Image:Seldin geography.png both are poor illustrations by no-matter-how-good researches. Finding a better chart to show the Bauchet results would be the best thing. but do we have anything else? i don't have any political/racist motive. Wobble, you didn't even delete the pic. the Spanish guy did. Anyway, I just think the 3D charts are nice and easy for the reader to see how genetic samples scatter throughout the nations of Europe. like that> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cavallisforzageneclusters.jpg pic. All the other illustrations are confusing and not directly useful to draw conclusions from. just a thought. DefendEurope (talk) 23:43, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with including the Seldin diagram as well as the maps, though I think it's a very poor illustration of the data and I disagree it has greater illustrative "strength", that's simply a subjective judgment, the maps are better because they display the clinal nature of genetic clustering. As for your motivation, I didn't claim you had any political/racist motivation, though your user name does imply a bias no one is entirely politically neutral. Alun (talk) 09:14, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New article: Genetics of the Ancient World - Invitation to add content about ancient people groups in Europe

You are invited to add relevant journal articles and short summaries of these articles as per the ancient people groups in Europe to this page at your convenience: Genetics of the Ancient World. Please follow the existing format. This is a reference list with short summaries that refers back to main article pages on wikipedia. Hkp-avniel (talk) 18:34, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Opening sentence load of rubbish

"European populations have a complicated demographic and genetic history, including many layers of successive migrations between different time periods, from the first appearance of Homo sapiens in the Upper Paleolithic to contemporary immigration." Actually, what the genetic researches reveal about Europe's past is its simplicity. Europeans are made up of essentially two putative "parental" origins and then, depending upon history and geography there are a bunch of minor, one could almost say trace, influences. It cannot be stated more clearly - a village elsewhere in the world has nearly as much diversity as the whole of Europe! Provocateur (talk) 03:00, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, come to think of it, its a hilarious example of the lengths PC will go to; the impression given by the opening sentence is immediately contradicted by the body of the article, especially the next two sections that provide the overview. As for the "successive migrations between the different time periods" it should be pointed out that most that - apart from the Neolithic demic diffusion - were INTERNAL displacements of already closely related people, and of these internal movements, the ONE that really matters (the others being small bodies of conquerors - see Cheddar man for an example of the strength of local continuity) was the post glacial expansion from southern refugia into the north. Provocateur (talk) 03:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

• "a village elsewhere in the world has nearly as much diversity as the whole of Europe!"

Do you have a source for this statement? This is completely incorrect as far as I know. The region with the greatest diversity is Africa south of the Sahara, that's obvious because that's where our species has lived the longest. Outside of sub-Saharan Africa the amount of diversity is greatly reduced due to the bottleneck created during the RAO migration and our species relative recent settlement outside of Africa. Of the regions settled after the African migration those regions farthest from Africa have the least diversity, this makes sense as genetic diversity has been diluted as the founder effect and bottlenecks have lead to a serial dilution of genetic diversity. The regions with the least diversity are therefore the Americas and the Pacific Islands. If you take a look at Long and Kittles paper "Human genetic diversity and the non-existence of biological races" they make this point very well. In this paper the samples with the least diversity are from the Americas and the Pacific Islands as we would expect, with the European samples more diverse and an Asian sample (from India) the most diverse sample outside of Africa.

Region	Ethnic group	Diversity (FST(κ))
Africa	Sokoto	0.000
Asia	Kachari (NE India)	0.147
Europe	German	0.177
	CEPH	0.195
Pacific	Samoa	0.275
	Kalam (New Guinea)	0.302
Americas	Dogrib (Canada)	0.269
	Pehuenche (Chile/Argentina)	0.232

So the claim that Europe is less genetically diverse than any "village elswhere in the world" is not supported by this paper at least. Indeed I think it is well understood that genetic diversity is not especially low in Europe compared to many other parts of the world outside of Affrica. Europeans are slightly less diverse than the sample from north east India, but all samples are much less diverse than African samples and Europeans are more genetically diverse than people from the Americas and the Pacific Islands. It's a shame the paper does not contain samples from east Asia, but one might guess that parts of east Asia are about as diverse as Europe is. Basically Europe has intermediate diversity compared to the extremes, which one would expect given it's intermediate geographic position. Alun (talk) 06:36, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Where is the Asian influence section?

There was an Asian Influence section that has been erased¡. first most of the content was erased, then the section itself! What is this, a place for some kind of racialist propaganda?. Jan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.175.249.250 (talk) 11:26, 9 June 2008 (UTC)