BAMAD no.15
Brit-Am
DNA and
Anthropology Updates
Updates in DNA studies along with Anthropological Notes of general interest with a particular emphasis on points pertinent to the study of Ancient Israelite Ancestral Connections to Western Peoples as explained in Brit-Am studies.
Brit-Am
Research
Revelation
Reconciliation
BAMAD-15
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update
28 Tebet 5768, 6 January 2008
Contents:
1. How Turkish are the Turks of Turkey?
2. A New DNA Test Can ID a Suspect's Race, But Police Won't Touch It
3. R1b1c in Central Asia
1. How Turkish are the Turks of Turkey?
The present-day country of Turkey includes what is known as Anatolia
or Asia Minor which is in Asia and to the west a portion of ancient Thrace
in Europe.
The population of this region was conquered by Turkish peoples who imposed their
language, culture,
and ethnic consciousness.
It appears however that the majority of the population of present-day are
physically descendants of the
inhabitants prior to the Turkish conquest.
The articles below suggest that the proportion of "real" Turks" amongst the
"Turkish"
does not exceed ca. 15%.
How Turkish are the Anatolians?
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/
posted by Dienekes
Extracts:
In my 2005 blog post How Turkish are the Anatolians, I estimated, based on Y
chromosome frequencies the Central Asian Turkic contribution to the modern-day
Anatolians.
Using the figure of 38.5%, the paternal contribution of Turks to the Anatolian
population is estimated to about 11%. In lieu of the approximation, allowing for
33% relative error in either direction for both the true frequency of Mongoloid
lineages in Anatolia and in early Turks, we obtain a range of 6-22%. It would
thus appear that the Turkish element is a minority one in the composition of the
Anatolians, but it is by no means negligible.
In a subsequent post on Non-Caucasoid admixture in Turks I estimated that the
combined (bi-parental) contribution of Mongoloids in Turks:
Based on these numbers, the non-Caucasoid admixture in Turks can be quantified
as 1.87% Negroid, and 6.18% Mongoloid, total 8.05%.
Given that Central Asians, including the likely Turkic ancestors of modern-day
Turkish-speaking Anatolians are partly Mongoloid, this later estimate is
compatible with a genetic contribution similar to that quoted above.
So, I was pleased to see a new study based on a different set of autosomal Alu
insertion polymorphisms from a group of Turkish scientists that arrived at a
similar estimate of the Central Asian admixture in Anatolians. So, it appears
that about 1/8 of ancestry of Anatolians (equivalent to one great grandparent)
came from a Central Asian Turk.
It is very refreshing to see a paper by Turkish scientists who acknowledge what
exactly that other 7/8 of the Anatolians' ancestry actually consists of:
Before Seljuks, Anatolia was under the rule of Eastern Romans but was mainly
inhabited by people of Greek origin for nearly two millennia (Toynbee, 1970).
The process of change of language and religion by the Seljuks that is
assimilation of the residents but not the invaders in Anatolia, was one of the
puzzles of history (Toynbee, 1970). As the part of puzzle, estimation of the
relative size of arriving nomads was the concern of many studies.
American Journal of Physical Anthropology (online early) 10.1002/ajpa.20772
Alu insertion polymorphisms and an assessment of the genetic contribution of
Central Asia to Anatolia with respect to the Balkans
Ceren Caner Berkman et al.
In the evolutionary history of modern humans, Anatolia acted as a bridge between
the Caucasus, the Near East, and Europe. Because of its geographical location,
Anatolia was subject to migrations from multiple different regions throughout
time. The last, well-known migration was the movement of Turkic speaking,
nomadic groups from Central Asia. They invaded Anatolia and then the language of
the region was gradually replaced by the Turkic language. ...Together with the
data compiled from other databases, the similarity of the Anatolian population
to that of the Balkans and Central Asia has been visualized by multidimensional
scaling method. Analysis suggested that, genetically, Anatolia is more closely
related with the Balkan populations than to the Central Asian populations.
Central Asian contribution to Anatolia with respect to the Balkans was
quantified with an admixture analysis. Furthermore, the association between the
Central Asian contribution and the language replacement episode was examined by
comparative analysis of the Central Asian contribution to Anatolia, Azerbaijan
(another Turkic speaking country) and their neighbors. In the present study, the
Central Asian contribution to Anatolia was estimated as 13%. This was the lowest
value among the populations analyzed. This observation may be explained by
Anatolia having the lowest migrant/resident ratio at the time of migrations.
2. A New DNA Test Can ID a Suspect's
Race, But Police Won't Touch It
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/16-01/ps_dna
3. R1b1c in Central Asia
From: "R. Stevens" <rigastev@comcast.net>
Sender: genealogy-dna-bounces@rootsweb.com
List-Archive: <http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=genealogy-dna>
Subject: [DNA] The Yueh-chih or "White Huns" and R1b1c
A brief article on a recent Russian genetic study entitled, Genetic Landscape of
the Central Asia and Volga-Ural Region, by Khusnutdinova, et al, appears in the
book, Biosphere Origin and Evolution:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/hvk02w6165g0q740/
The study found high rates of R1b1c among some Central Asian and Volga-Ural
peoples, as follows:
the Bashkirs of the Volga-Ural >82%
the Kyrgyz >50%
the Tajiks >50%
the Altai >50%
It seems likely these folks belong to the ht35 "Eastern" variety of R1b1c, but
they are M269+, after all, and those high frequencies occur within a total
population of around 32+ million (over three times as large as the Basque
population).
Ancient Chinese documents like Shih-chi (c. 123 BC) mention that the Hsiung-nu
(believed to have been the Huns) defeated another nomadic group, the Yueh-chih,
in battle and forced them out of western China. The Yueh-chih settled in the
area of what are now Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and thereabouts. The Yueh-chih are
believed to have been the Tocharians, who spoke Tocharian, a centum
Indo-European language.
The Yueh-chih were sometimes called the "White Huns," presumably because they
were Europoid in appearance, or Epthalites (also spelled Ephthalites). Some
ancient Chinese documents mention a people living in NW China who had long,
blond hair and white skin. Some scholars believe these Yueh-chih were the
ancestors of many of the Avars (which could account for the apparent
distribution of ht35 R1b1c in the region of the old Avar Khaganate in SE
Europe).
Doesn't it seem significant that the apparent descendants of a centum
Indo-European-speaking people, the Yueh-chih or Tocharians, are mostly R1b1c?
The nearby Uyghurs of NW China also have a fairly high rate of R1b (I don't know
how much of it is R1b1c; some of it is R1b1b).
There in East Central Asia we have the 32+ million descendants of a distinctly
Europoid, IE-speaking population, and they are predominantly R1b1c, at
frequencies that exceed those of some W. European countries.
That seems like it should mean something, somehow.
Rich
See also:
BAMAD Archives
DNA
DNA Refuted. The "Cohen Gene"
mtDNA
Y DNA
R1b The Western Japhet?? or not?
haplogroup I
Brit-Am DNA
THE PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF
THE HEBREW PEOPLES
Queries about Race
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