Brit-Am 
Research
Revelation
Reconciliation

 Brit-Am 
 DNA and 
 Anthropology UPdates 

BAMAD Archives

BAMAD-1

Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update
Contents
1. DNA to track UK-Russia migration
2.Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain
3. DNA proof of Brit-Am DNA Reservations?
DNA: Are Y Haplogroups I (Scandinavians etc) and J (Semites) the same?
(a) The Congruence of Y haplogroups I and J.
(b) I and J haplogroups. Pertinent Extracts:
Haplogroup I.
Subdivisions of I
Haplogroup J.
Subdivisions of J
More on J2
(c) The Letter from Ken Nordtvedt:
(d) The Significance for Brit-Am Studies
Common Origin of Scandinavians and Jews?
4. "When Scotland Was Jewish"?
5. American Caucasian Ancestry from 3.5% African and Amerindian females

---

1. DNA to track UK-Russia migration
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6987222.stm
DNA survey has been launched to trace the descendants of Britons who settled in Russia hundreds of years ago.
Extracts:
Though largely unknown in the UK, this eastward history of British migration is well acknowledged in Russia.

Russians bearing the surname Lermontov, for example, claim descent from a Scottish soldier captured in the 17th Century.

The new survey will test whether this story, along with similar ones, are backed up by genetic data.

The Russian-British project is being led by Professor Bryan Sykes, founder of DNA analysis service Oxford Ancestors.

"An academic colleague made reference to Russian families who claimed a British progenitor, and, even though they could not speak a word of conversational English, were able to recite fragments of British nursery rhymes and Scottish songs," Professor Sykes explained.

These traditions were apparently transmitted orally from one generation to the next.

Apart from Lermontov, surnames to be analysed during the course of the project will include the Greig and Crichton families in Moscow, a family of Reads in St Petersburg (a Nikolai Read was commander of Russian forces in the Caucusus during the mid-19th Century), and Smytovs.

Britons may have settled in Russia for many reasons. British mercenaries fighting in European wars are well-attested.

And between the 13th and 17th Centuries, there were strong trading links between Britain and the Baltic via the Hanseatic League - an alliance of trading guilds.

The surname Lermontov supposedly derives from the Scottish surname Learmonth (or one of its variants such as Learmont, Learmond or Learmouth).

One notable bearer was Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (1814 - 1841), one of Russia's foremost poets.

Lermontov was born in Moscow to a respectable family who traced descent from Scottish Learmonths. One of these, recorded in Russian records as Peter Lermontoff, settled in the country in the early 17th Century after being captured by the Russian army.

However, despite exhaustive searches by Russian literary historians and members of the family, it has been impossible to locate records linking Peter Lermontoff back to Scotland.

Sharing a surname also significantly raises the likelihood of sharing the same type of Y chromosome, with the link getting stronger as the surname gets rarer.
Unusual find

If the Russian Lermontovs and the Scottish Learmounts are related, they should share signature mutations on their male chromosome that point to a common ancestry.

---

2.Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-politics10sep10,1,5376455.story?coll=la-news-science&ctrack=2&cset=true

---

3. Study DNA: Are Y Haplogroups I (Scandinavians etc) and J (Semites) the same?
(a) The Congruence of Y haplogroups I and J.
The letter below (taken from another list) from Ken Nordtvedt is written by a leading DNA researcher.
It confirms in effect that male haplogroups I and J are the same.
Haplogroup I is European and prominent in Scandinavia though also found (at a lower rate) in Germany, Croatia, and Southeast Europe.
It is very high in Sardinia.

Haplogroups J is prominent amongst Jews, Arabs, Greeks, and Italians.
It is considered typically "Semitic".

For an overall explanation concerning male Y haplogroups
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Y-chromosome_DNA_haplogroups

(b) I and J haplogroups. Pertinent Extracts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_IJ_%28Y-DNA%29
<<the fact that both Haplogroup I and Haplogroup J are found among modern populations of the Caucasus, Anatolia, and Southwest Asia tends to support the hypothesis that Haplogroup IJ derived from Haplogroup F in the vicinity of West Asia or the Middle East and subsequently spread throughout Western Eurasia.>>

Haplogroup I.
General
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_I_%28Y-DNA%29
Haplogroup I (the letter I, not the number 1) can be found in most present-day European populations, most commonly in Scandinavia, Sardinia, and the Slavic populations of the Western Balkans in southeastern Europe.

Subdivisions of I
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_I1a_%28Y-DNA%29
<<Haplogroup I1a ...is a Y-chromosome haplogroup occurring at greatest frequency in Scandinavia. It displays a very clear frequency gradient, with a peak frequency of approximately 35% among the populations of southern Norway, southwestern Sweden, and Denmark, and rapidly decreasing frequencies toward the edges of the historically Germanic-influenced world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_I1b_%28Y-DNA%29
<< Haplogroup I1b (S31) is a Y-chromosome haplogroup. Its subclade I1b1* is typical of South Slavs, especially Croats and Bosniaks. Another subclade, I1b1b (formerly I1b2), is strongly associated with indigenous Sardinians, but it is also found at low to moderate frequency among populations of the Basque Country, Iberia in general, France, mainland Italy, the British Isles, and Sweden. Contrasting with the tendentially southeastern distribution of I1b1* and southwestern distribution of I1b1b, the subclade I1b2 is most commonly found among populations of Northwest Europe, especially Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the British Isles.

Haplogroup J.
General
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J_%28Y-DNA%29
Haplogroup J (previously known as HG9 or Eu9/Eu10) is a Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup.
Haplogroup J is believed to have arisen ... in the Near East (Semino et al. 2004). It is most closely related to Haplogroup I, as both Haplogroup I and Haplogroup J are descendants of Haplogroup IJ (S2, S22). Haplogroup IJ is in turn derived from Haplogroup F.

Subdivisions of J
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J%2A_%28Y-DNA%29

J1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J%2A_%28Y-DNA%29
<<Haplogroup J1 appears at high frequencies among populations of the Middle East, North Africa, and Ethiopia (Thomas et al. 1999). J1 was spread by two temporally distinct migratory episodes, the most recent one probably associated with the diffusion of Muslims from Arabia since the 6th century CE.[1]

<<Haplogroup J1 is most frequent in Arabs of the southern Levant, i.e. Palestinian Arabs (38.4%) (Semino et al.) and Arab Bedouins (62% and 82% in Negev desert Bedouins). It is also very common among other Arabic-speaking populations, such as those of Algeria (35%), Syria (30%), Iraq (33%), the Sinai Peninsula, and the Arabian Peninsula. The frequency of Haplogroup J1 collapses suddenly at the borders of Arabic countries with mainly non-Arabic countries, such as Turkey and Iran, yet it is found at low frequency among the populations of those countries, as well as in Cyprus and Sicily. It entered Ethiopia ...where it is found mainly among Semitic speakers (e.g. Amhara 33.3%, but Oromo 3.8%). It spread later to North Africa in historic times (...Algerians 35.0%, Tunisians 30.1%), where it became something like a marker of the Arab expansion in the early medieval period (Semino et al. 2004). ...Haplogroup J1 is found almost exclusively among modern populations of Southwest Asia, North Africa, and East Africa, essentially delineating the region popularly known as the Middle East and associated with speakers of Semitic languages. The distribution of J1 outside of the Middle East may be associated with Arabs and Phoenicians who traded and conquered in Sicily, southern Italy, Spain, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Pakistan, or with Jews, who have historical origins in the Middle East and speak (or historically spoke) a Semitic language, though typically Haplogroup J2 is more than twice as common among Jews. In Jewish populations overall, J1 constitutes 19.0% of the Ashkenazim results and 11.9% of the Sephardic results

J2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J%2A_%28Y-DNA%29
Haplogroup J2 is present especially in ethnic groups resident in or originating from Anatolia, the Levant (Israel, Lebanon), northern Mesopotamia (Kurdistan), Southern Europe, the South Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan), Iran, Central Asia, and South Asia: for example, Muslim Kurds (28.4%), Central Turks (27.9%), Georgians (26.7%), Iraqis (25.2%), Lebanese (25%), Ashkenazi Jews (23.2%), Sephardi Jews (28.6%), Iranians (23.3%), Tajiks (18.4%), and Pakistanis (14.7%). J2 is not regularly found in Semitic-speaking populations of Africa, such as the Amhara and Tigrinya in Ethiopia...
However, J2 has been found to encompass several subhaplogroups ...that originated or expanded in different regions: Italy, the Balkans, the Aegean, Anatolia (Turkey and Kurds), the Caucasus (Georgia), and Somalia... Haplogroup J2 ... is also very frequent in the Balkans (Greeks 20.6%, Albanians 19.6%) and in southern Italy (16.7-29.1%). Its frequency rapidly drops in the Carpathian basin (Croatians 6.2%, Hungarians 2.0%, Ukrainians 7.3%) and in Southeastern Iranian-speaking areas (Pashtuns 5.2%, Pamiris 6.1%). A significant presence of J2 (J2b2+J2a) was detected in western and south-western India (the highest being 21% among Dravidian middle castes, followed by upper castes, 18.6%, and lower castes 14%; ...).

More on J2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J2_%28Y-DNA%29
In human genetics, Haplogroup J2 (M172) is a Y-chromosome haplogroup which is a subdivision of haplogroup J.

Haplogroup J2 is widely believed to be associated with the spread of agriculture from the northern Fertile Crescent, The Levant, and Anatolia [1],[2]. This connection is supported by its age (8,500 +/- 3,500 thousand years ago) [2], which is very close to the beginning of the Neolithic, its distribution, which is centered in West Asia and Southeastern Europe, as well as its association with the presence of Neolithic archaeological artifacts, such as figurines and painted pottery [3].

Haplogroup J2 is found mainly in the northern Fertile Crescent, the Mediterranean (including Southern Europe and North Africa), the Iranian plateau and Central Asia. ..in Greece and Italy and Balkan..., and more frequently in Kurdistan 28% of the population ..,Iraq 25% of the population, in Lebanon 25% of the population, in Jordan, in Syria , Palestine.., and in Turkey.., and in the southern Caucasus region... .the Frequency of haplogroup J2 generally declines as one moves away from the Northern fertile crescent. Haplogroup J2 is carried by 6% of Europeans and its frequency drops dramatically as one moves northward away from the Mediterranean. Sephardic Jews have roughly twice as much J2 as J1 and Ashkenazi Jews have a near equal proportion of J1 and J2 haplogroup markers. (Behar et al.) J2 (M-172) is divided into eight sub-Haplogroups...
In Italy, one of the European countries with the highest frequencies of J2, it has been found in the remains of ancient Etruscans,...who spoke a non-Indo-European language of unknown affinity. Another important fact about the distribution of Haplogroup J2 is that it appears to have dispersed from a Middle Eastern homeland to the west through a primarily maritime or littoral route, as it is found in high concentrations among the populations of the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea in both Eurasia and Africa, and particularly along the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean in Europe...

Turkey is one of the countries with major J2 population. About 25% of Turkish men are J2 according to a recent study... Combined with J1, one third of the total population of Turkish people belongs to Haplogroup J.

Typically, modern populations of the southern Middle East (especially Arabic-speaking ones) have a higher frequency of the related haplogroup J1, whereas the great majority of Haplogroup J representatives among the populations of the Northern Middle East, Lebanon, Europe, and India belong to the subclade J2. Haplogroup J2 has been shown to have a more northerly distribution in the Middle East when compared to its brother haplogroup, J1, which has a more southerly distribution.

(c) The Letter from Ken Nordtvedt:
Ken Nordtvedt <knordtvedt@bresnan.net>
Subject: [DNA] How Arbitrary is our Tree nameology
Sender: genealogy-dna-bounces@rootsweb.com

As many of you know, Ethnoancestry found a couple SNPs common to y haplogroups I and J, but excluding other offspring of F such as G, H, K

Falling asleep last night I imagined a different history in which the academics a decade or so ago had discovered one of these "IJ" SNPs early in the game and before they met on the Matterhorn to put one of the early versions of the y tree for mankind together.  If they had done so, they may well have called today's y haplogroup I and y haplogroup J a single thing.  Let's call it for this discussion y haplogroup Z for neutrality's sake.

Then what we call y-haplogroup J today would be Z1 (assuming a Jewish geneticist had found his sub-haplogroup of Z first) and then what we call y-haplogroup I today would be haplogroup Z2.  Of course if it had been a Norwegian geneticist who had tested himself first, the sub-haplogroups may have been given the opposite designations.   And then the haplogroup M284+ would be something like Z2b2a1, and one of those present J sub-haplogroups Z1c1b3a, etc.  I would probably have ended up having a Z research project instead of an I research project, and would consequently have been duplicating the wonderful work of Bonnie who had started her efforts in Z1.  But I'd still be wondering where is a Z* haplotype to be found.

Mankind's actual history would be the same.  But many of us would be viewing haplogroup relationships differently and coming up with different scenarios.  My point in relating this quasi-dream is that there are real, invariant features of the y-tree of mankind, but there are also things about how we present it which are quite arbitrary or accidental, and we should try not to let the latter color how we perceive real things.  Of course, the same goes for mtdna trees; in fact it was folks talking about how mt-haplogroup H is so pervasive that made me think of this.  In a parallel universe mt-H may have been broken into several  groups with different first letter names.

Haplogroup bragging rights for being the biggest, etc., may depend solely on accidental nomenclature decisions or order of discoveries.

Someday when we change to a system of using SNP states as names of haplogroups we will have a naming system closer to the real world.

Blame this message on a lack of new data flow from the testing companies --- both public data and that I paid for.  It's been a dry summer.

Ken

(d) The Significance for Brit-Am Studies
 Common Origin of Scandinavians and Jews?
The congruence of I and J does not prove very much since very many populations are involved.
The time-scale as to when I and J were one and the same (IJ) conventionally goes back tens of thousands of years but there is no proof that it should be so ancient.
We say that many Northern and Western Peoples came from Ancient Israel.
In regards to those in the West who have haplogroup I then this scenario is feasible.
[We have a problem at the moment explained other  Y haplogroups such R1a and R1b.]
Regarding women we have no conceptual problem since most mt[female transmitted]DNA haplogroups are common to Europe and the Middle East.
As we said the identity of  Y haplogroups I and J does not prove much but it does remove [concerning those who have such haplogroups] what would otherwise be an impediment to acceptance the physical probability of these groups moving from the Middle East to the West.

---

4. "When Scotland Was Jewish"?
From: Elizabeth524@aol.com
Subject: [DNA] "When Scotland Was Jewish" & R1b Jewish Ancestry

Hi DNA Listers,
    I believe this will count as a "one time promotional  announcement" for
the book I co-authored with Donald Yates, "When Scotland Was  Jewish",
published by McFarland Press (2007). Back around 2002-2003 I wrote in  to the List about research Don Yates and I were doing in Scotland regarding a  sizable group of Jewish communities established there from 1100 CE onward  and receiving substantial inflow from the England in 1290, from France in  1306 and from Spain in 1492 and onward due to religious persecutions.
   One of our hypotheses is that there was a substantial  conversion event in Southern France in the Langue d'Oc region during the time  period 750 - 1000 CE in conjunction with the Judaic Academy at Narbonne.  Cabalism in the Western Mediterranean had its genesis from this same set  of  Jewish scholars.
     In our book we discuss the migration of these Jews  (primarily R1b
converts) from France to England and Scotland.(We also  propose that Muslims and Jews from the Holy Land accompanied returning  knights to England and Scotland during the 1100 - 1300 period -- a  phenomenon documented by other historians).
I did field work in  Scotland for four summers and took photographs of several sites displaying  Judaic and Muslim architecture, carvings and cemeteries.
The earliest census  records also contain surnames of Hebrew and Arabic origin.
These are all  presented in the book.
    Perhaps our best 'smoking gun' however, was the  discovery that the
Aberdeen Psalter printed by Raban in 1626 had the  tetragrammaton engraved in the top center of the frontispiece -- without vowels  -- indicating not only the presence of Hebrew type in Scotland at that date, but  also knowledge in speaking/reading it.
   It is my belief that the at least some, perhaps the majority,  of the R1b1
Jews today are the result of these conversion events in southern  France.
   There is an error in the subtitle of the book (which was  written by the publisher, not by Don or myself); the subtitle states "early  Semitic roots"
and this is not correct. We believe most of the Jews were the  R1b1 converts
mentioned above.
Elizabeth Hirschman

---

5. American Caucasians from 3.5% African and Amerindian females
Genet Mol Res. 2007 May 9;6(2):156-61.

Sex-biased gene flow in African Americans but not in American Caucasians.
Gon alves VF, Prosdocimi F, Santos LS, Ortega JM, Pena SD.
Departamento de Bioquimica e Imunologia, Universidade Federal de Minas
Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil.

<<...we retrieved 1387 hypervariable I Caucasian mitochondrial DNA sequences from the FBI population database and established their haplogroups and continental geographical sources. In sharp contrast with
the situation of the Caucasian population of Latin American countries, only 3.1% of the American Caucasian sequences had African and/or Amerindian origin.
 

---

BAMAD-2 Contents
1. Racial Conflict (see Picture): Blue-Eyed, Light-Skinned  Foxes versus Dark Ones?
2. Afghanistan: US calls in the anthropologists to beat the Taliban
3. Palestinian Underdevelopment Due to Childhood Traumas?

1. Racial Conflict (see Picture): Blue-Eyed, Light-Skinned  Foxes versus Dark Ones?
(a) The Wonders of Science Will Never Cease
Is the extract below (b) an example of Intellectual Humor
or half-serious?
You decide.
Which One according to Evolution is Closer to Yourself?

(b) Man's Best Friend(s) Reveal the Possible Roots of Social Intelligence
http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/



<<I think there is a lot of potential here... it sounds like European scientists are leading the effort. One of my favorite examples is the foxes in Russia who were bred to be docile and at the same time developed a lighter coat. I'm not sure exactly what's going on there but it seems to be uncovering some kind of pleiotropy: the genetics of behavior somehow linked to the genetics of coat color.>>

---

2. Afghanistan: US calls in the anthropologists to beat the Taliban
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1601962007
The Scotsman: DAVID ROHDE IN SHABAK VALLEY

Extracts:

IN AN isolated Taliban stronghold in eastern Afghanistan, American paratroopers are deploying a crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations: a softly-spoken civilian anthropologist named Tracy.

Tracy, who asked that her surname not be used for security reasons, is a member of the first Human Terrain Team, an experimental Pentagon programme that assigns anthropologists and other social scientists to US combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her team's ability to understand subtle points of tribal relations - in one case spotting a land dispute that allowed the Taliban to bully parts of a major tribe - has won the praise of officers who say they are seeing concrete results. 

Today marks the sixth anniversary of the Allied invasion of 2001, and the beginning of a military commitment which has cost British and American forces dear in terms of both manpower and resources.

But Colonel Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division unit working with the anthropologists, said that the unit's combat operations had been reduced by 60% since the social scientists arrived in February, and that the soldiers were now able to focus more on improving security, health care and education for the population.

"We're looking at this from a human perspective, from a social scientist's perspective," he said. "We're not focused on the enemy. We're focused on bringing governance down to the people."

Last month, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates authorised a $40m expansion of the programme, which will assign teams of anthropologists and social scientists to each of the 26 US combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, military officials are scrambling to find more scholars willing to deploy to the frontlines. Last month, five new teams have been deployed in the Baghdad area alone.

Yet criticism is emerging in academia. Citing the past misuse of social sciences in counterinsurgency campaigns, including in Vietnam and Latin America, some denounce the programme as "mercenary anthropology" that exploits social science for political gain. Opponents fear that, whatever their intention, the scholars who work with the military could inadvertently cause all anthropologists to be viewed as intelligence gatherers for the US military.

In Afghanistan, the anthropologists arrived along with 6,000 troops, which doubled the US military's strength in the area it patrols, the country's east.

A smaller version of the Bush administration's troop increase in Iraq, the build-up in Afghanistan has allowed American units to carry out the counterinsurgency strategy, where US forces generally face less resistance and are better able to take risks.

Since General David Petraeus, the overall US commander in Iraq, oversaw the drafting of the Army's new counterinsurgency manual last year, the strategy has become the new mantra of the military. A recent US military operation in Afghanistan offered a window into how efforts to apply the new approach are playing out on the ground in counterintuitive ways.

US officers lavishly praised the anthropology programme, saying that the social scientists' advice has proved to be "brilliant", helping them see the situation from an Afghan perspective and allowing them to cut back on combat operations.

The eventual aim, they say, is to improve the performance of local government officials, persuade local tribesman to join the police, ease poverty and protect villagers from the Taliban and criminals.

Deploying small groups of US soldiers into remote areas, Schweitzer's paratroopers organised jirgas, or local councils, to resolve tribal disputes that have simmered for decades. Officers shrugged off questions about whether the military was comfortable with what David Kilcullen, an Australian anthropologist and an architect of the new strategy, calls "armed social work".

"Who else is going to do it?" asked Lieutenant Colonel David Woods, commander of the 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry. "You have to evolve. Otherwise you're useless."

The anthropology team in Afghanistan also played a major role in what the military called Operation Khyber. That was a 15-day drive late this summer in which 500 Afghan and 500 US soldiers tried to clear an estimated 200 to 250 Taliban insurgents out of much of Paktia Province, secure southeastern Afghanistan's most important road and halt a string of suicide attacks on US troops and local governors.

In one of the first districts the team entered, Tracy identified an unusually high concentration of widows in one village, Woods said. The widows' lack of income created financial pressure on their sons to provide for their families, she determined, a burden that could drive the young men to join well-paid insurgents. Citing Tracy's advice, US officers decided to develop a job training programme for the widows as a step toward easing their financial burdens.

In another district, the anthropologist interpreted the beheading of a local tribal elder as more than a random act of intimidation: the Taliban's goal, she said, was to divide and weaken the Zadran, one of southeastern Afghanistan's largest tribes. If Afghan and US officials could unite the Zadran, she said, the tribe could block the Taliban from operating in the area.

"Call it what you want, it works," said Woods. "It works in helping you define the problems, not just the symptoms."

In eastern Afghanistan, Tracy said her goal was to reduce the use of heavy-handed military operations focused solely on killing insurgents, which she said alienated the population and created more insurgents. "I can go back and enhance the military's understanding," Tracy said, "so that we don't make the same mistakes we did in Iraq."

Along with offering advice to military commanders, she said, the five-member team creates a detailed database of local leaders and tribes, as well as social problems, economic issues and political disputes.

During the recent operation, as soldiers watched for suicide bombers, Tracy and a team of Army medics held a free medical clinic.

US civil affairs soldiers then tried to mediate between divided factions of the Zadran tribe about where to build a new $100,000 school. The Americans said they hoped that the school, which would serve children from both groups, might end a 70-year dispute between the groups over control of a mountainside covered with lucrative timber.

After six years of US promises, Afghans appear to be waiting to see whether the Americans or the Taliban will win a protracted test of wills.

---

3. Palestinian Underdevelopment Due to Childhood Traumas?
Heretical thoughts
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000332.html
While perusing another of my favorite blogs, littlegreenfootballs, I came across a link to this article.

The author writes about the psychological trauma of growing up in the PLO-controlled areas of the West Bank/Gaza.

An excerpt:
"Survival in such a culture necessitates some numbing. But this psychological component might be insignificant relative to the neurobiological effects of being beaten and tortured in childhood. It was Harvard researchers who first revealed that stress hormones released when children experience physical and sexual abuse actually impede development of that part of the brain responsible for empathy and conscience. "

Brain scans of those who suffered through events common in the childhood of Palestinian children reveal an underdeveloped hippocampus and vermis. Among the behaviors associated with this sort of brain damage: impulsivity, sadism, and suicide."


 

BAMAD-3
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update
Contents:
1. More About Genes - The Irish really are a race apart
2. The Limitations of DNA Genealogical Research
(a) Newsweek Article
(b) Science Article
3. Different mt(female) and Y(male) DNA markers worldwide with an explanation
of the geographical distribution of each one

Very Important and Interesting Books - Read More -
and
Order Now!
http://britam.org/books.html

 Click Here 

>

	http://www.britam.org/Role.html  For all Brit-Am Publications   Click Here

---

1. More About Genes - The Irish really are a race apart
By Dr. Emmeline Hill
http://irish-nationalism.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1193
Men with Gaelic surnames coming from the west of Ireland are descendants of the oldest inhabitants of Europe. In a recent study, scientists at Trinity College, Dublin, created a new genetic map of the people of Ireland. By comparing this map to European genetic maps they have shown that the Irish are one of the last remnants of the pre-Neolithic hunters and gatherers who were living throughout Europe over 10,000 years ago, before the invention of agriculture. The Irish really ARE different.

What's in a name?

Surnames in Ireland have been passed from father to son for almost 1,000 years. The surname system in Ireland is thought to exist as one of the oldest applications of the hereditary surname system in the world. In Ireland this system was not introduced but rather it is thought that toponymics (names derived from place names) and nicknames were adopted. For example, the name O'Callaghan comes from the Irish O'Ceallachain, a diminutive of ceallach, which was taken to mean 'frequenter of churches.'

Traditionally, newly married women have taken up residence in the homeland of their husband, meaning that family names have remained in the area of the particular clans or septs for generations. Surnames, except in the infrequent case of non-paternity, are therefore an indication of family history, and on a larger scale, of population history.

In developing the new genetic map, the scientists studied the DNA of 221 men from all over the country. The DNA was separated into groups of people with names coming from the same area. For example, names that originated in Ulster, such as Gallagher and O'Reilly, were grouped together. Names from Munster (e.g. Hogan, Meagher, Ryan); Leinster (e.g. Conlan, Phelan, Rafter); and Connaught (e.g. Conway, Flynn, McHugh, Ruane) were all grouped accordingly and were considered to be Gaelic Irish. Also names of English (e.g. Harrison, Hill, Jacob, Moore) Scottish (e.g. Hamilton, Johnston, Knox), Norman (e.g. Barry, Bryan, MacNicholas) and Norse (e.g. Doyle) descent were grouped separately. These were considered to be non-Gaelic Irish. By separating the DNA as such, they could study the genes that were present in a particular region of Ireland over 1,000 years ago, when the surname system was adopted.

The science behind it

In Issue 88 of INSIDE IRELAND, the article "Who are we? - It's in the Genes" outlined the basic science behind genetic studies of populations. Each cell in our body contains a signature of our past. Modern technology allows us to look directly at the amount of variation in the genes in these cells. Variation accumulates over time through a random process of mutation. Mutations occur at a constant rate. Therefore, the more different two people are genetically, the longer they have been separated.

Using modern technologies to look at the differences between genes in the different peoples of Ireland, the scientists in Trinity College studied the genes on the Y chromosome. The Y chromosome is the male-specific sex chromosome that is passed from father to son in the same way that surnames are passed from father to son.

A distinct genetic pattern

By performing a number of genetic tests the scientists were able to identify a particular genetic pattern in the Y chromosome of the Irish. An ancient genetic marker, known as haplogroup 1[R1b1c?] , was found in most Irish men. Scientists think that most of the population of Western Europe carried this gene over 10,000 years ago. Over time however, through the movement and mixing of peoples, this gene was diluted. Now it is found in relatively fewer people throughout Europe.

The greatest movement and migration of peoples in Europe has been the movement of farmers from the south-east of the continent after the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. The farmers moved with their new technologies north-west into Europe, probably displacing the local hunter-gatherer populations that were living there at the time. In this way the haplogroup 1 [R1b1c?] genes in Europe were diluted, the farmers introducing new and different genes.

Men with Gaelic names are more ancient

This resulted in the formation of a gradient of haplogroup 1 genes throughout the continent, the lowest frequency of these ancient genes being found in Turkey, and the highest frequency in Ireland, with intermediate frequencies in continental populations. In Ireland 78.1% of all men have the haplogroup 1 gene.

In Ireland men with Gaelic names have higher frequencies of this ancient marker than men with non-Gaelic names. For example, men in Ireland with surnames of English origin have 62% haplogroup 1 genes; men with Scottish names have 52.9% and men with Norman and Norse names have 83%. In Leinster, 73.3% of men with Gaelic surnames have this gene, in Munster, 94.6% and in Ulster 81.1%.

Connaught men are the most Irish of the Irish

The most striking finding was that in Connaught, the westernmost point of Europe, almost all men (98.3%) carry this particular gene. This means that the people of Connaught have been relatively isolated, genetically, from the movements of people that shaped the genetic makeup of the rest of the continent. By comparison, in the east of the country there has been a lot more mixing of genes coming from foreign sources.

The prevalence of ancient genes in Ireland suggests that the Irish have largely maintained their pre-Neolithic genetic heritage. There has been little genetic influence from outside the country since the first people came to Ireland almost 9,000 years ago.

The Early Bronze Age

By looking at the amount of variation (the number of mutations that have accumulated over time) in the haplogroup 1 genes of these men it was possible for the scientists to estimate a date for the origin of the bulk of these genes in the country. They estimated that most of the genetic variation in Ireland has accumulated over the past 4,200 years following a rapid growth of the population at this time. This is the time of the Early Bronze Age in Ireland.

The Early Bronze Age in Ireland, among other things, saw the appearance of megalithic tombs. Newgrange in Co. Meath is the best known example. The scale and magnanimity of these structures suggest that the creators belonged to a large, highly socially evolved society.

The scientists have shown most of the genes present in Ireland today came from the people who were living at the time of Newgrange. These people were the descendants of the ancient hunter-gatherers of Europe.

Dr. Emmeline Hill works at the Department of Genetics, Trinity College, Dublin.

---

2. The Limitations of DNA Genealogical Research
(a) Newsweek Article
Shaking the Family Tree With Recreational Genetics
http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2007/10/15/shaking-the-family-tree-with-recreational-genetics.aspx

(b) Science Article
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2007/10/limitations-of-genetic-ancestry-testing.html
Limitations of genetic ancestry testing
From the EurekAlert release about an upcoming Science article:
Some of the tests? limitations identified by Bolnick and her co-authors include:
Most tests trace only a few of your ancestors and a small portion of your DNA,
Tests are unlikely to identify all of the groups or locations around the world where a test-taker?s relatives are found,
Tests may report false negatives or false positives,
Limited sample databases mean test results are subject to misinterpretation,
There is no clear connection between DNA and racial/ethnic identity,
Tests cannot determine exactly where ancestors lived or what ethnic identity they held.

---

3. Different mt(female) and Y(male) DNA markers worldwide with an explanation
of the geographical distribution of each one
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html
Each marker is given in its alphabetical order
accompanied by a map of its own.

 

BAMAD-4
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update

18 Cheshvan, 5768, 30 October 2007
Contents:
1. Neanderthals: Some were blond and red-haired!
2. Steve Collins: Epigenetics - confirmed by Scripture
3. The genetics of Jewish ancestry

---

1. Neanderthals: Some were blond and red-haired!
GENETICS:
Ancient DNA Reveals  Neandertals With Red Hair, Fair Complexions
Elizabeth  Culotta 
A pigmentation gene from the bones of two Neandertals, reported online this 
week in Science (_www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1147417_
(http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1147417) ),  indicates that at least some
Neandertals had pale skin and red hair, similar to  some of the Homo sapiens
who today inhabit their European homeland. 
Full story at _http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/318/5850/546?etoc_
(http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/318/5850/546?etoc)
The abstract says the  pigmentation arose
independently in Neanderthals and modern humans.

---

2. Steve Collins: Epigenetics - confirmed by Scripture
From: Steve Collins <scollins@sio.midco.net>
Subject: Fw: Epigenetics - confirmed by Scripture

Shalom Yair,
 
Received this item from a visitor to my website. Thought you might be interested in the biblical ramifications of this finding.
 
Steve
 
 "Epigenetics" confirmed by Scripture
 
Sins of the Farhers:  Parents pass on more than DNA to their offspring. 
 
"For decades, our view of heredity has been written in the language of DNA -- and genetic mutations and recombinations have driven most descriptions of how phenotypic traits are handed down from one generation to another. Yet, as is amply demonstrated...recent discoveries in the field of epigenetics -- the study of heritable changes in gene function that occur without a change in the DNA sequence -- have blurred that neat picture, and are changing the way researchers think about heredity."
 
                                                                 source: http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/plus/sfg/resources/res_epigenetics.dtl

The striking new paradigm is that accumulated influences can be heritable, i.e. passed on to subsequent generations by epigenetic mechanisms without changes in DNA sequence.  Our lifestyles and environment can change the way our genes are expressed, leading even identical twins to become distinct as they age.  Most of these multigenerational epigenetic traits are gradually lost over several generations.

Scripture warned: "He by no means clears the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation"  (Numbers 14:18).

"Biology stands on the brink of a shift in the understanding of inheritance. The discovery of epigenetics, hidden influences upon the genes, could affect every aspect of our lives."

"At the heart of this new field is a simple but contentious idea, that genes have a 'memory'. That the lives of your grandparents, the air they breathed, the food they ate, even the things they saw ? can directly affect you, decades later, despite your never experiencing these things yourself. And that what you do in your lifetime could in turn affect your grandchildren."
 
The Ghost in Your Genes
BBC
 
The scientists who believe your genes are shaped in part by your ancestors' life experiences.

Biology stands on the brink of a shift in the understanding of inheritance. The discovery of epigenetics  hidden influences upon the genes  could affect every aspect of our lives.

At the heart of this new field is a simple but contentious idea  that genes have a 'memory'. That the lives of your grandparents, the air they breathed, the food they ate, even the things they saw, can directly affect you, decades later, despite your never experiencing these things yourself. And that what you do in your lifetime could in turn affect your grandchildren.

The conventional view is that DNA carries all our heritable information and that nothing an individual does in their lifetime will be biologically passed to their children. To many scientists, epigenetics amounts to a heresy, calling into question the accepted view of the DNA sequence, a cornerstone on which modern biology sits.

Epigenetics adds a whole new layer to genes beyond the DNA. It proposes a control system of 'switches' that turn genes on or off, and suggests that things people experience, like nutrition and stress, can control these switches and cause heritable effects in humans.

In a remote town in northern Sweden there is evidence for this radical idea. Lying in erkalix's parish registries of births and deaths and its detailed harvest records is a secret that confounds traditional scientific thinking. Marcus Pembrey, a Professor of Clinical Genetics at the Institute of Child Health in London, in collaboration with Swedish researcher Lars Olov Bygren, has found evidence in these records of an environmental effect being passed down the generations.
 
They have shown that a famine at critical times in the lives of the grandparents can affect the life expectancy of the grandchildren. This is the first evidence that an environmental effect can be inherited in humans.

In other independent groups around the world, the first hints that there is more to inheritance than just the genes are coming to light. The mechanism by which this extraordinary discovery can be explained is starting to be revealed.

Professor Wolf Reik, at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, has spent years studying this hidden ghost world. He has found that merely manipulating mice embryos is enough to set off 'switches' that turn genes on or off.

For mothers like Stephanie Mullins, who had her first child by in vitro fertilisation, this has profound implications. It means it is possible that the IVF procedure caused her son Ciaran to be born with Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome  a rare disorder linked to abnormal gene expression. It has been shown that babies conceived by IVF have a three- to four-fold increased chance of developing this condition.

And Reik's work has gone further, showing that these switches themselves can be inherited. This means that a 'memory' of an event could be passed through generations. A simple environmental effect could switch genes on or off, and this change could be inherited.

His research has demonstrated that genes and the environment are not mutually exclusive but are inextricably intertwined, one affecting the other.

The idea that inheritance is not just about which genes you inherit but whether these are switched on or off is a whole new frontier in biology. It raises questions with huge implications, and means the search will be on to find what sort of environmental effects can affect these switches.

After the tragic events of September 11th 2001, Rachel Yehuda, a psychologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, studied the effects of stress on a group of women who were inside or near the World Trade Center and were pregnant at the time. Produced in conjunction with Jonathan Seckl, an Edinburgh doctor, her results suggest that stress effects can pass down generations. Meanwhile research at Washington State University points to toxic effects, like exposure to fungicides or pesticides, causing biological changes in rats that persist for at least four generations.

This work is at the forefront of a paradigm shift in scientific thinking. It will change the way the causes of disease are viewed, as well as the importance of lifestyles and family relationships. What people do no longer just affects themselves, but can determine the health of their children and grandchildren in decades to come. "We are," as Marcus Pembrey says, "all guardians of our genome."

                                                           source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/ghostgenes.shtml

Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression that occur without a change in DNA sequence. Epigenetic phenomena have major economic and medical relevance, and several, such as imprinting and paramutation, violate Mendelian principles.

What is epigenetics?
Epigenetics, literally "on" genes, refers to all modifications to genes other than changes in the DNA sequence itself. Epigenetic modifications include addition of molecules, like methyl groups, to the DNA backbone. Adding these groups changes the appearance and structure of DNA, altering how a gene can interact with important interpreting (transcribing) molecules in the cell's nucleus.

How do epigenetic modifications affect genes?
Genes carry the blueprints to make proteins in the cell. The DNA sequence of a gene is transcribed into RNA, which is then translated into the sequence of a protein. Every cell in the body has the same genetic information; what makes cells, tissues and organs different is that different sets of genes are turned on or expressed.

Because they change how genes can interact with the cell's transcribing machinery, epigenetic modifications, or "marks," generally turn genes on or off, allowing or preventing the gene from being used to make a protein.

What is "imprinting?"
"Imprinted genes" don't rely on traditional laws of Mendelian genetics, which describe the inheritance of traits as either dominant or recessive. In Mendelian genetics, both parental copies are equally likely to contribute to the outcome. The impact of an imprinted gene copy, however, depends only on which parent it was inherited from. For some imprinted genes, the cell only uses the copy from the mother to make proteins, and for others only that from the father.

Imprinting in genetics is not new, but it is gaining visibility as it is linked to more diseases and conditions that affect humans. Centuries ago, mule breeders in Iraq noted that crossing a male horse and a female donkey created a different animal than breeding a female horse and a male donkey. In the modern scientific era, however, the initial evidence for parent-of-origin effects in genetics didn't appear until the mid 1950s or so.

Then, in the mid 1980s, scientists studying mice discovered that inheritance of genetic material from both a male and a female parent was required for normal development. The experiments also revealed that the resulting abnormalities changed depending on whether the inherited genetic material was all male in origin or all female.

What role does imprinting play in disease?
Because of their growth-related aspects, imprinted genes likely play a major role in the development of cancer and other conditions in which cell and tissue growth are abnormal.

                                                      source: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press/2002/November/epigenetics.htm

Commonly defined as the study of heritable changes in gene function that occur without a change in the DNA sequence, epigenetics is reshaping the way scientists look at traditional genetics.
The modern usage of the word "epigenetic" is more narrow, referring to heritable traits (over rounds of cell division and sometimes transgenerationally) that do not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence.
 
There is already evidence that epigenetic transgenerational inheritance can also occur in humans in response to food supply and smoking.
 
Sources:
 
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3411/02.html

http://www.scienceinschool.org/2006/issue2/epigenetics/

http://www.ngpharma.com/pastissue/article.asp?art=270871&issue=212
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

---

3. The genetics of Jewish ancestry
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071028/BOOKS/110280020/-1/RSS_FP&template=printart
Review of work which may not say much but nevertheless probably makes some interesting and worthwhile points

 

---

BAMAD-5
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update

19 Cheshvan, 5768, 31 October 2007
Contents:
1. Blood Group O is More Resistant to Malaria
2. The Town of Albinos in Argentina
3. Interesting Note on Blue-and Grey Eyes Amongst Jews

---

1. Blood Group O is More Resistant to Malaria
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0705390104v1?etoc
Extract from Abstract:
Malaria has been a major selective force on the human population, and several erythrocyte polymorphisms have evolved that confer resistance to severe malaria...  In a matched case-control study of 567 Malian children, we found that group O was present in only 21% of severe malaria cases compared with 44?45% of uncomplicated malaria controls and healthy controls. Group O was associated with a 66% reduction in the odds of developing severe malaria compared with the non-O blood groups...This work provides insights into malaria pathogenesis and suggests that the selective pressure imposed by malaria may contribute to the variable global distribution of ABO blood groups in the human population.

---

2. The Town of Albinos in Argentina
http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2007/fall/daneri-aicuna-albino/
"Aicu? Is Not an Albino Town"
by
Tono Angulo Daneri

for pictures go to URL above

Extracts:

The truth is, to get to Aicuna you have to want to get there, fervently and with great effort. It's a hundred and fifty-five miles from the capital of La Rioja, and six miles from the closest road which is more of a pebble-strewn path than an actual road. Aicuna doesn't appear on most maps. Some of Aicuna's inhabitants say it's an almost forgotten town at the end of the world, farther from Buenos Aires, geographically and culturally, than the Andean hamlets in Bolivia and Chile.

A study by John Hopkins University estimates that there is one albino for every seventeen thousand people in the world. In Aicunaa, according to Julio Cesar Ormeno, the head of the Vital Records Office, there live about three hundred people. At its most populous, he says, there have been three hundred and fifty. The town is so small that every inhabitant including the newborns, the elderly, and the church minister could fit into a movie theater.

Of that total, the head of the Vital Records Office has taken census of four albinos, all men, three that currently live in Aicuna and one who moved to another town two hours away. But his archives also say something more: since the end of the nineteenth century, forty-six albino births have been registered in Aicuna alone.

According to the math, the rate of albinism in Aicuna isn't one in every seventeen thousand people but rather one in every ninety. Or as Dr. Eduardo Castilla, the author of "Aicuna: A Study of the Population's Genetic Structure," maintains: albinism is almost two hundred times more likely to occur in Aicuna than anywhere else on the planet.

Despite the proof if its prevalence, there is some kind of unanimous censorship exerted over the discussion of albinism in Aicuna. The world albino is rarely spoken aloud as if it were a taboo, one of those dark family secrets that can be ignored if no one speaks of it.

Ever since a Buenos Aires magazine called Dias published a feature story on Aicuna's albinos in the early eighties, the town's inhabitants have been wary of the press. The story's effect was immediate and, for them, unwelcome. People began to arrive hoping to meet albinos. They wanted to see them, photograph them, find out what they were like and how they looked, to discover what daily life was like in the town they imagined one filled almost entirely by people with white hair and translucent skin.

Aicuna was unaware of its peculiarity until the gaze of the outside world revealed it. As in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the world pointed its finger, and suddenly it was as if the whole town were monstrous and all its inhabitants both grotesque and yet somehow beguiling at the same time. Ever since then the town has been protective of the albinos who live there and evasive, even surly, toward outsiders.

If Aicuna hadn't spent three hundred and fifty years in near isolation, without mixing with people from other places, it would have been statistically impossible for forty-six albinos to have been born there in little over a century. For someone to be born albino, both their mother and their father have to be carriers of that gene; a coincidental union that only occurs one out of every seventeen thousand births. However, in a town where eight out of every ten people are Ormenos, it's more likely that both parents carry similar genes. They don?t have to be direct family members: it's enough that even if distantly they both descend from the same branch. And it seems clear that the widespread Ormeno family is the source of this particular gene.

For more than three centuries Aicunas protected their lands by closing the village off from the outside world and shunning all visitors from there. Those who could not stand the claustrophobic grip fled, never to return. Those who stayed, inevitably, continued the inbreeding. This significantly raised the probability that both parents could be carriers of the gene, and that an albino child would be born. Thus, the illegitimate son inadvertently safeguarded his inheritance far better than his legal siblings.

---

3. Interesting Note on Blue-and Grey Eyes Amongst Jews
The look of the goy
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/002092.html
Extract:
When I read "On Blondes" recently the author noted that in a 1930s survey of Jewish schoolchildren the Nazi regime found that:

10% were blond haired.
50% were mixed hared.
40% were black haired.

Last year David B. emailed me the following data on 19th century Anglo-Jewish eye color:
English Ashkenazim: Blue 11.1 Grey 30.1 Brown 58.8
English Sephardim: Blue 21.3 Grey 11.9 Brown 66.8

David noted "...But the striking thing is that in both cases the blue/grey proportion is over 30%. Since blue/grey is recessive to brown this implies a majority of blue/grey genes in the gene pool."
 

---

---

BAMAD-6
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update

6 kislev 5768, 16 november 2007 2007
Contents:
1. Jewish Encyclopedia: Hair Color Amongst European Jews
2. Kusunda: An Indo-Pacific [New Guinea area] language in Nepal
3. Polynesians and Maoris Originally From China via Taiwan?
4. DNA Tests for Vikings in West England
5. DNA: English and Irish the Same People?

---

1. Jewish Encyclopedia: Hair Color Amongst European Jews
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/table.jsp?table_id=160&volid=6&title=HAIR

---

2. Kusunda: An Indo-Pacific [New Guinea area] language in Nepal
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/101/15/5692
Extract:
The Kusunda people of central Nepal have long been regarded as a relic tribe of South Asia. They are, or were until recently, seminomadic hunter-gatherers, living in jungles and forests, with a language that shows no similarities to surrounding languages. They are often described as shorter and darker than neighboring tribes. Our research indicates that the Kusunda language is a member of the Indo-Pacific family. This is a surprising finding inasmuch as the Indo-Pacific family is located on New Guinea and surrounding islands. The possibility that Kusunda is a remnant of the migration that led to the initial peopling of New Guinea and Australia warrants additional investigation from both a linguistic and genetic perspective.

---

3. Polynesians and Maoris Originally From China via Taiwan?
Synopsis - Mitochondrial DNA Provides a Link between Polynesians and
Indigenous Taiwanese
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-
document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030281
http://tinyurl.com/2nf4hs

---

4. DNA Tests for Vikings in West England
Several DNA studies have investigated the Scandinavian genetic input
into areas such as Orkney, Shetland and the Western Islands, a new one
is due for publication which investigates the input into northwest
England. This area is thought to be heavily influenced by
Scandinavians leaving Ireland.

Recent migrations, such as the internal movements of people in the
industrial revolution have clouded the modern picture. Sampling in
such areas has always proven to be a problem. We have therefore some
areas such as the Wirral peninsular and west Lancashire which show
abundant evidence of Scandinavian settlement, place names archaeology,
dialect etc, but little opportunity to quantify the scale of
settlement by yDNA.

Two new methods however have recently been tested to see if they can
form a basis for improved sampling.

The link between surnames and the yDNA (male line) is potentially very
useful. Although the link can be broken by illegitimacy, it has been
shown to remain strong and an estimate for illegitimacy rates can be
quantified from parish records for a few centuries. For example, if
there are X unrelated males with Scandinavian surnames in an area with
a known illegitimacy rate of Y in the area, a percentage Z of
Scandinavian surnames with a strong link to an unbroken yDNA link can
be calculated. This improves the sampling in very mixed populations.

The second factor to be used in sampling which was tested are to chose
names which only appear in the area in medieval lists, subsidy rolls
and so on.

Using these new sampling techniques, it should be possible to create
something which approximates to the medieval population of an area,
one which has not been clouded by more recent migrations.

Testing has shown that these sampling methods are very promising and
use of these shows that the Wirral peninsular and west Lancashire do
indeed have a significant Scandinavian genetic input.

Wirral 38% - 51%
West Lancashire 38% - 53%

If these figures are correct, these areas will have had a Scandinavian
input every bit as significant as Orkney and Shetland.

A 'plain english' explanation of the study can be seen at:

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/-sczsteve/survey.htm

The actual peer reviewed science is here (pre press):

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/-sczsteve/MolBiolEvol2007.pdf

best
authun

---

5. DNA: English and Irish the Same People?
United Kingdom? Maybe

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: March 6, 2007

Excerpts ONLY
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/science/06brits.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin

Britain and Ireland are so thoroughly divided in their histories that there is no single word to refer to the inhabitants of both islands. Historians teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from the Celts and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from northern Europe and drove the Celts to the country?s western and northern fringes.

But geneticists who have tested DNA throughout the British Isles are edging toward a different conclusion. Many are struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of years by a single people that have remained in the majority, with only minor additions from later invaders like Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans. The implication that the Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh have a great deal in common with each other, at least from the geneticist?s point of view, seems likely to please no one. The genetic evidence is still under development, however, and because only very rough dates can be derived from it, it is hard to weave evidence from DNA, archaeology, history and linguistics into a coherent picture of British and Irish origins.

That has not stopped the attempt. Stephen Oppenheimer, a medical geneticist at the University of Oxford, says the historians? account is wrong in almost every detail. In Dr. Oppenheimer?s reconstruction of events, the principal ancestors of today?s British and Irish populations arrived from Spain about 16,000 years ago, speaking a language related to Basque.

Ireland received the fewest of the subsequent invaders; their DNA makes up about 12 percent of the Irish gene pool, Dr. Oppenheimer estimates. DNA from invaders accounts for 20 percent of the gene pool in Wales, 30 percent in Scotland, and about a third in eastern and southern England.

But no single group of invaders is responsible for more than 5 percent of the current gene pool, Dr. Oppenheimer says on the basis of genetic data. He cites figures from the archaeologist Heinrich Haerke that the Anglo-Saxon invasions that began in the fourth century A.D. added about 250,000 people to a British population of one to two million, an estimate that Dr. Oppenheimer notes is larger than his but considerably less than the substantial replacement of the English population assumed by others. The Norman invasion of 1066 brought not many more than 10,000 people, according to Dr. Haerke.

Other geneticists say Dr. Oppenheimer?s reconstruction is plausible, though some disagree with details. Several said genetic methods did not give precise enough dates to be confident of certain aspects, like when the first settlers arrived.

Bryan Sykes, another Oxford geneticist, said he agreed with Dr. Oppenheimer that the ancestors of ?by far the majority of people? were present in the British Isles before the Roman conquest of A.D. 43. ?The Saxons, Vikings and Normans had a minor effect, and much less than some of the medieval historical texts would indicate,? he said. His conclusions, based on his own genetic survey and information in his genealogical testing service, Oxford Ancestors, are reported in his new book, ?Saxons, Vikings and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland.?

A different view of the Anglo-Saxon invasions has been developed by Mark Thomas of University College, London. Dr. Thomas and colleagues say the invaders wiped out substantial numbers of the indigenous population, replacing 50 percent to 100 percent of those in central England. Their argument is that the Y chromosomes of English men seem identical to those of people in Norway and the Friesland area of the Netherlands, two regions from which the invaders may have originated.

Dr. Oppenheimer has relied on work by Peter Forster, a geneticist at Anglia Ruskin University, to argue that Celtic is a much more ancient language than supposed, and that Celtic speakers could have brought knowledge of agriculture to Ireland, where it first appeared. He also adopts Dr. Forster?s argument, based on a statistical analysis of vocabulary, that English is an ancient, fourth branch of the Germanic language tree, and was spoken in England before the Roman invasion.

English is usually assumed to have developed in England, from the language of the Angles and Saxons, about 1,500 years ago. But Dr. Forster argues that the Angles and the Saxons were both really Viking peoples who began raiding Britain ahead of the accepted historical schedule. They did not bring their language to England because English, in his view, was already spoken there, probably introduced before the arrival of the Romans by tribes such as the Belgae, whom Caesar describes as being present on both sides of the Channel.

The Belgae perhaps introduced some socially transforming technique, such as iron-working, which led to their language replacing that of the indigenous inhabitants, but Dr. Forster said he had not yet identified any specific innovation from the archaeological record.

Germanic is usually assumed to have split into three branches: West Germanic, which includes German and Dutch; East Germanic, the language of the Goths and Vandals; and North Germanic, consisting of the Scandinavian languages. Dr. Forster?s analysis shows English is not an offshoot of West Germanic, as usually assumed, but is a branch independent of the other three, which also implies a greater antiquity. Germanic split into its four branches some 2,000 to 6,000 years ago, Dr. Forster estimates.

Historians have usually assumed that Celtic was spoken throughout Britain when the Romans arrived. But Dr. Oppenheimer argues that the absence of Celtic place names in England ? words for places are particularly durable ? makes this unlikely.

If the people of the British Isles hold most of their genetic heritage in common, with their differences consisting only of a regional flavoring of Celtic in the west and of northern European in the east, might that perception draw them together? Geneticists see little prospect that their findings will reduce cultural and political differences. The Celtic cultural myth ?is very entrenched and has a lot to do with the Scottish, Welsh and Irish identity; their main identifying feature is that they are not English,? said Dr. Sykes, an Englishman who has traced his Y chromosome and surname to an ancestor who lived in the village of Flockton in Yorkshire in 1286.

Dr. Oppenheimer said genes ?have no bearing on cultural history.? There is no significant genetic difference between the people of Northern Ireland, yet they have been fighting with each other for 400 years, he said.

As for his thesis that the British and Irish are genetically much alike, ?It would be wonderful if it improved relations, but I somehow think it won?t.?

 

BAMAD-7
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update

9 Kislev 5768, 19 November 2007
Contents:
1. mtDNA: Question on Ancestress from "Turkey" and Israelite Origins
2. Geographic Patterns of DNA in the British Isles
3. Patrick Mead Page


1. mtDNA: Question on Ancestress from "Turkey" and Israelite Origins

From: M
I had a mtDNA test done and the results says my female line originated in Turkey, the arrow on the dna map points to Georgia. And I read on national geographic about the people there of my origins. Says they migrated to Europe. I knew my people come from there any way, Europe, I mean. But I have always felt connected some how to the middle east but not Turkey but to Ancient Egypt and Israel. Weird hu? So since my origins are from Turkey recon this means I'm not of the tribes of Israel? They said that these people originated there 10,000 years ago. But this place is close to Ararat. Thats just something to me. And plus I live in NC and there is a place here called Ararat.
Jodie

Reply:

The mtDNA tells you who your remote ancestress was presumably tens of thousands of years ago according to the "experts".
Brit-Am would say:
The time scale is exaggerated.
If the mtDNA really does trace an ancestress of yours then it was less than three thousand years ago.
If it traces her to Turkey, Armenia, or Georgia that does not mean you are not Israelite since:
a. She (whoever "she" was) represents an infinitesimally small portion of your actual ancestry. Most of your ancestors could still be Israelites.
b. Israelites from the Ten Tribes after their Exile were taken to the areas of Turkey, Armenia, or Georgia and from there moved onwards.
Around the time of the Exile there were changes in the astronomical alignments etc and may be that at that state influences were exerted that determined the DNA. Whoever was in a certain area at the time in question had their DNA affected in the same way regardless as to whether or not they were related to each other.

---

2. Geographic Patterns of DNA in the British Isles
http://www.jogg.info/31/campbell.htm

---

3. Patrick Mead Page
http://www.patrickmead.net/?m=200703
Series of articles on Black Irish, Black Germans, etc.
Claims that Hitler was of African origin.
Some interesting points and anecdotes but reliability on some points could be questionable.
 

BAMAD-8
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update

17 Kislev 5768, 27 November 2007
Contents:
1. Waist-hip-ratio of mothers and children's intelligence
2. The Pussy Cat and Ancient Egyptians
3. Ancient DNA: Central Asia
(a) A Misleading Impression
(b)  Mummies in Mongolia tested for DNA: Amerindians, Turks"
(c) European Types"
(d) Brit-Am Remarks:
4. Archaeology unearths gout in early Pacific people
5.Genetic structure of European Americans
6.Genetic Variation and Population Structure in Native Americans
7.DNA: Did the First man ("Adam" or at least "Noah" the ancestor of all present-day humanity) belong to the  "R" haplogroup"
Brit-Am Suggests a Reversal of Conventional DNA Explanations

1. Waist-hip-ratio of mothers and children's intelligence
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/

---

2. The Pussy Cat and Ancient Egyptians
The following article may be of interest. It refers to a newly published paper in The Journal of Archaeological Science, but only the abstract is online of the journal article.

-kat newkirk

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/15387/1075/

Evidence shows cats living with Egyptians since 3700 B.C.

Belgium researcher Veerle Linseele, of the Center for Archaeological Sciences at Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and fellow-
colleagues found a cat skeleton in a cemetery in Hierakonpolis. The ancient gravesite in southern Egypt contained the remains of the cat species thought to be Felis silvestris, also called the Wild Cat, the ancestor of the domestic cat. It is a member of the family of cats called Felidae, a hunter of small mammals, birds, and other such
creatures.

---

3. Ancient DNA: Central Asia
(a) A Misleading Impression In "Brit-Am Now"-1013
http://britam.org/now/1013Now.html
#4. Question on the Khazars, Ancient Israelites,  and DNA We gave the impression that results for Ancient DNA are hard to come by.
This was somewhat misleading.
Ancient Mummies have been found throughout Central Asia, DNA analyzes made, and the results published.

(b)  Mummies in Mongolia tested for DNA: Amerindians, Turks"
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v73n2/35013/35013.web.pdf
Results:
Paper is complicated and technical in tone and difficult reading for the layman.
DNA extracted from remains of 62 indiviuals from Eygin Gol Valley in Northern Mongolia.
Time Period: ca. 300 BCE to 100 CE.
Necropolis used only by select people over long period, perhaps preserved for an elite group.
Associated with Xiongnu (also known as Hiung-nu and maybe a part of the Huns")
described as "nomadic Turkomongolian tribes".
Results: many of the samples were unusable due to contamination or other factors.
One family father, mother, and child identified. Also probable mother of one of the children identified,possible father of three other individuals, etc.
mtDNA [female-determined] in most cases uncertain but some results showed similarities with Siberian and North Amerindian samples.
mtDNA haplogroups M (Ethiopia, India, central Asia), D also D and F (sub-groups of M), and J and U (found in Middle East and Europe).
No H (major European cluster, ca.40% were found).
 89% mtDNA finds considered to be typically Asian and 11% European (U & J). Diversity level similar to that of present Mongolian population.
YDNA  and mtDNA samples similar to those found in present-day samples obtained from Turkey.

(c) European Types"
Interpreting results published (but not elaborated upon) in the above paper on Eygin Gol Valley mummies 
Eric Olson reports that at least one mummy shows R1a1 which is typical of East Europe and India.
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2007-11/1195695121
Is great x grandfather a mummy"

A 2000 year old body in Grave #70, recently found in Northern Mongolia, was analyzed for Y-STR alleles as follows:

DYS 19 = 16,
DYS 390 = 25,
DYS 391 = 11,
DYS 392 = 11,
DYS 393 = 13,
DYS YCAII = 19/23,
DYS 385 = 11/14,
DYS 389ii = 31.
Thus Y Haplogroup R1a.

Our Carroll, Karol, Carel etc. haplotype is at DY8VJ, 37 markers, and has been SNP tested as R1a1.  It is an exact match with this mummy.

To date across all Y-DNA databases I have found only 5 low level 12/12 matches at FTDNA, one of whom is a cousin, and another (Slovak) gone upon testing at the 25 marker level, and 5 more at yhrd.org in Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Belarus and an Dravidian Indian.  Nothing west of 20 degrees east longitude, and no surname remotely matching Carroll.

Now comes this mummified body in grave #70 in Egyin Gol, Northern Mongolia, which is an exact match on the 8 markers tested (above), with our Carroll Y-DNA.  It is thought the next grave, #72, is his son, who shares his DYS marker values.  The article does not say if these remains indicated blue-eyed blonds/redheads or not, but strongly hints that they were.  Not sure how one tells the eye color of a skeleton..

http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2007-11/1195695121

http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2007-11/1195580962
Grave #70 exactly matches some Polish and Ukrainian R1a1 men in my
project.
>
> > [mailto: genealogy-dna-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Jennifer
> > My blonde, blue eyed grandfather was N3a, the line
> > theoretically originating in Mongolia.

http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2007-11/1195568895
From: "Ken Nordtvedt" < knordtvedt@bresnan.net>
Subject: Re: [DNA] National Geographic Dec 2: Blue-eyed blonde Chinese mummies
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:28:15 -0700
References: <BAY111-DAV102A9186363F2371C935BEB17F0@phx.gbl>

N3a is probably the biggest haplogroup in Finland and Estonia. Lots of
blond, blue eyed folks there.

(d) Brit-Am Remarks:
Check the http://archiver.rootsweb.com for more on this and related
subjects.
Apparent conclusions to be drawn:
Mongolians Mummies: Women mtDNA largely Asian and Amerindian
in DNA type though not apparently in appearance(").
Male mummies were often blond, light-browned, or reddish haired, with blue eyes etc and in some cases with Celtic-like tartans and appurtenances.
YDNA showed similarities (R1a1) to east Europeans or (N3a) to Fins and Estonians.

So far no R1b (Western Europe) I (Germany, Scandinavia, West Balkans, Sardinia) or J (Semitic but close to I) specimens in these mummies have turned up.
Nevertheless a strand of R1b1 in Central Asia does exist in Central Asia
and is being analyzed by David Faux who claims it may have reached the British Isles with the
Vikings.

---

4. Archaeology unearths gout in early Pacific people
http://www.mvariety.com/"module=displaystory&story_id=2861&format=html
OTAGO (Pacnews) " High rates of gout among Maori and Pacific Island men may have a genetic basis going back thousands of years to the time when Polynesia and Melanesia were being colonized from South East Asia.

University of Otago Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology biological anthropologist Dr. Hallie Buckley has been working with colleagues from the Australian National University and CNRS in Paris to analyze skeletons from a 3,000-year-old cemetery in Vanuatu.

Her paper on possible gouty arthritis amongst the Lapita people " so-called because of their distinctive decorated pottery known as the Lapita style " has been published in the October edition of Current Anthropology.

"We examined the bones of 20 skeletons from the first two field seasons using radiography and other techniques and found erosive lesions or damage to the joints of seven of them. The pattern of these lesions suggests they were most likely the result of gouty arthritis," said  Buckley.

Gout is caused by a build-up in the affected joints of urate crystals, the result of hyperuricaemia or high levels of urate acid in the blood.

"This surprising finding suggests a very early antiquity of gout in the Pacific Islands and may help to explain the unusually high incidence of hyperuricaemia and gout in many modern Pacific Island populations, including New Zealand M"ri," she said.

Other researchers have already suggested that the higher prevalence of gout in Polynesian populations may be due to a genetic predisposition. A genetic marker for gout susceptibility in Taiwanese Aborigines has been identified, suggesting that a founder effect could be responsible for this.

Buckley also said  the Lapita people"s diet tended to consist of local plants and seafood. That purine rich seafood can set off attacks of gout in people who are already susceptible to the condition.

"The predominance of this sort of diet may have favored the continued selection of high frequencies of hyperuricaemia and gout in these ancient explorers."

---

5.Genetic structure of European Americans
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/

Warning: The above article has come under heavy criticism on a DNA-discussion list.
the classifications adopted by the article are contested.

---

6. Genetic Variation and Population Structure in Native Americans
http://tinyurl.com/2ejbtq

Wang et al
PLOS Genetics November 23, 2007

We examined genetic diversity and population structure in the American landmass using 678 autosomal microsatellite markers genotyped in 422 individuals representing 24 Native American populations sampled from North, Central, and South America. These
data were analyzed jointly with similar data available in 54 other indigenous populations worldwide, including an additional five Native American groups. The Native American populations have lower genetic diversity and greater differentiation than populations from
other continental regions. We observe gradients both of decreasing genetic diversity as a function of geographic distance from the Bering Strait and of decreasing genetic similarity to Siberians"
signals of the southward dispersal of human populations from the northwestern tip of the Americas. We also observe evidence of:
(1) a higher level of diversity and lower level of population structure in western South America compared to eastern South America,
(2) a relative lack of differentiation between Mesoamerican and Andean populations,
(3) a scenario in which coastal routes were easier for migrating peoples to traverse in comparison with inland routes, and
(4) a partial agreement on a local scale between genetic similarity
and the linguistic classification of populations. These findings offer new insights into the process of population dispersal and differentiation during the peopling of the Americas.

---

7.DNA: Did the First man ("Adam" or at least "Noah" the ancestor of all present-day humanity) belong to the  "R" haplogroup"
Brit-Am Suggests a Reversal of Conventional DNA Explanations
If you go to the Brit-Am article on Y(Male)DNA
http://www.britam.org/Questions/YDNA.html
You will find a very brief summary of all the major YDNA haplotypes with a diagram echoing the conventional explanation of how the different types progress or evolve from one another.
The diagram begins with A (characterized by the Bushmen of Africa) and progresses downwards up unto R (mainly East and West Europeans). It is implied that this reflects a degree of evolvement from the simple to the complex, i.e. man began in Africa and then migrated to Europe, Asia, the Americas, etc. The explanations allows for a presentation of how the different haplogroups may be related to each other.
This is one way of looking at things and it is what  has been adopted in all conventional explanations.
It is however doubtful and unnecessary.
It may well be as easy to say that the more complex R was the first "prototype" and all others evolved from it by a process of simplification.
The advantages of this alternate presentation are that,
(a) It allows for a reversal of the "tree". It may now be stood on its head.
(b) It explains several anomalies that the previous conception could not.
(c) It allows for an alternate explanation. It may now be possible to view the progression not in "evolutionary" terms.
Under conventional methods every haplogroup is seen as being the nearest related to the haplogroup most like itself.
This possibility can remain BUT another possibility in some cases may now also be considered.
It is now possible to suggest for instance that "A " was merely a simplified version that "mutated" or emerged directly from R WITHOUT PASSING THROUGH any intermediate stage. The same could apply for all or many of the different haplogroups in question.
A very short article will be posted out by Brit-Am with this suggestion.
It is hoped that somewhere a serious scholar will pick up on the idea  and if there is anything to it present it in a format that professional researchers may relate to.
This idea is more in line with what Creationists may accept but that is not why we advocate it or expect it to be accepted.
It simply may well be closer to the truth and allow a renewed appraisal of how the different Y chromosome haplogroups may relate to each to other.


BAMAD-9
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update

20 Kislev 5768, 30 November 2007
Contents:
1. Important New Brit-Am DNA Article
2. Reactions to Brit-Am DNA Revolutionary Proposition
(a) "give those R folks an inch"
(b) "quackary and snakeoil" (not to mention spelling mistakes?)
(c) not impressed
(d) Brit-Am Reply
3. DNA Y Haplogroups of Germany: Interesting Claims

---

1. Important New Brit-Am DNA Article
YDNA Reversed
Were R1 and N The Forefathers?
http://www.britam.org/DNA/YDNAreverse.html
Was Adam  "R1b1c"?  or "N"?  Was Noah?

---

2. Reactions to Brit-Am DNA Revolutionary Proposition
re:
YDNA Reversed
Were R1 and N The Forefathers?
http://www.britam.org/DNA/YDNAreverse.html
Was Adam  "R1b1c"?
 or "N"?  Was Noah? 

Sources of Reactions below:
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/GENEALOGY-DNA/2007-11

(a) "give those R folks an inch"
From: Ken Nordtvedt
Subject: Re: [DNA] Were R1 and N The Forefathers?


You give those R folks an inch, and they try to take a mile.  Next thing the
R folks will do is demand reparations from non-R trespassing on "their"
lands.    Actually, I think a good case can be made that "I" folks came to
Europe before the R, but that's an argument for another day.

(b) "quackary and snakeoil" (not to mention spelling mistakes?)
From: Jennifer <objection_sustained@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Were R1 and N The Forefathers?
Unbelievable--the "creationist" theories live on in dubious science.
  Read the rest of the site...quackary and snakeoil.
  Jennifer Ripley

(c) not impressed
From: Jim Huston
Subject: Re: [DNA] Were R1 and N The Forefathers?
The guy knows squat about genetics.

(d) Brit-Am Reply
The Proposition did not provoke the reaction we expected.
On the other hand it is very logical
and probably correct or at least more correct than the present conventional
explanation.

---

3. DNA Y Haplogroups of Germany: Interesting Claims
From: Dirk Schweitzer
Source:
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/GENEALOGY-DNA/2007-11
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2007-11/1196394457
Subject: [DNA] The DNA of Germany

Honestly, I am not reading this 'newspaper'!! I just came across it while just searching Google.

The German version of the British "The Sun" had an article about DNA & Haplogroups a few days, on 20071125, ago!!!!!

http://www.bild.t-online.de/BTO/news/2007/11/25/gen-analytiker/deutsche-frauen.html#]http://www.bild.t-online.de/BTO/news/2007/11/25/gen-analytiker/deutsche-frauen.html#

This is the first time, to my knowledge, that there is an article in a German newspaper mentioning the word Haplogroup.  :)

Here is a summary:

iGENEA, FT-DNA's European Branch, is about to publish a scientific paper called "Die Zusammensetzung der Bev lkerung Deutschlands hinsichtlich der genetischen Abstammung" ("The Composition of the Population of Germany based on its genetic Descent").

Based on the Y-DNA and mt-DNA of 19457 'Germans', I am guessing the sample comes from everyone within FT-DNA who said his patrilinear ancestor is from Germany or his/her matrilinear ancestor is from Germany, the following conclusions are drawn:

Y-DNA:

45 % R1b, who are called "Celts"
25 % I, who are called "Scythians & Vikings"
15 % R1a, who are called "Slavic People & Vikings"
10 % J, who are said to be all of Jewish Descent
5 % E3b, who are said to be all of Phoenician Descent

http://www.bild.t-online.de/BTO/news/2007/11/25/gen-analytiker/mfb-grafik-quer,templateId=renderScaled,property=Bild,width=263.jpg

The article also talks about mitochondrial haplogroups, however, no exact info is given.

Let's hope this article will encourage many of its readers to test their DNA.  :)

Dirk

Brit-Am Comment: Disregarding the question of R1b ("Celtic") for the moment,
we have:
25% I and 10% J.
I and J are basically the same and both are Middle Eastern in origin.
We also have 5% E3b which is also either North African or Middle Eastern.
Most of the present-day inhabitants of Germany are definitely not of Hebrew ancestry
but some are.
If the above figures are correct and DNA is reliable then this means that a significant percentage of
the Germans may have non-Israelite Middle Eastern origins.

 

BAMAD-10
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update
23 Kislev 5768, 3 December 2007
1. Duke scientists map 'silenced genes'
2. Season of Birth Influence on Character?
3. Verbal IQ ability of the Irish?
4. Y Haplogroup R in Africa and Australia
5. Black Africans in Ancient Britain

Site Contents by Subject	Home Research Revelation Reconciliation	Publications	Site Map Contents in Alphabetical Order	This Site	Contribute

1. Duke scientists map 'silenced genes'
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071130/ap_on_sc/silenced_genes

---

2. Season of Birth Influence on Character?
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001216
Season of Birth and Dopamine Receptor Gene Associations with Impulsivity, Sensation Seeking and Reproductive Behaviors
"Winter-born males were more sensation seeking than non-winter born males. "

---

3. Verbal IQ ability of the Irish?
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/DNA-R1B1C7/2007-11/1196441680
From: Paul Conroy <pconroy63@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [DNA-R1B1C7] On Behalf of Something like ethnic specifics
Extract:
Having said that, most R1b1c7's are from Ireland or their descendants, with
a lesser number from Scotland (in areas known to have some prior Irish
emigration or colonization) or descendants, and almost none elsewhere. So in
estimating any peculiar or unique aspects of R1b1c7 males in regard to IQ,
one could somewhat plausibly use Irish IQ as a proxy. To my knowledge the
only interesting thing that one could say about Irish IQ (versus that of
other White Northern European populations) is that it is more skewed towards
Verbal IQ ability and lesser towards Quantitative IQ ability. So for
instance if you had a Swede with IQ 100 and an Irish person with IQ 100, the
Irish person might score half a Standard Distribution (SD) higher on Verbal,
and half a SD lower on Quantitative. In a practical sense this gives the
Irish the famous, "Gift of the Gab", and has resulted in Ireland punching
way above its weight in terms of quality literary output - not just
recently, but as far back as the Early Middle Ages. I have read that in the
8th century Ireland had an estimated 40,000 literate people out of a total
estimated population of 250,000 - at the time the highest literacy rate in
the world.

Think of it this way, in all the Viking lands of Northern Europe, where is
the only place that there is a huge corpus of literature and why?
The answer is of course all the sagas of Iceland. Is there anything different about Iceland versus other Viking lands? Yes, about 60% of the
population - based on mtDNA - are of Irish descent.

It is also the reason that Ireland, with a population of 4 million has won 5
Nobel prizes - 4 in literate and 1 in Physics - which is very high number
for such a small population. Compare this to Japan with 125 million people
and a measly 7 Nobel prizes?! Incidentally, what is the country with the
greatest number of Nobel Prize per capita? Why Iceland, with 1 Nobel Prize
in Literature!

---

4. Y Haplogroup R in Africa and Australia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R_(Y-DNA)
most of the rare forms of Haplogroup R chromosomes, as well as most cases of the closely related Haplogroup Q, are found among populations of Central Asia, South Asia, Australia, Siberia, Native Americans, and Cameroon.

Some Y-chromosomes that appear to be closely related to the northern Cameroonian R1b1* are found at a substantial frequency among the modern population of Egypt. Many modern populations of northern Cameroon speak Chadic languages, which are classified as an ancient branch of the Afro-Asiatic superfamily of languages; the now extinct language of the Ancient Egyptians also belonged to the same superfamily.

Some instances of Haplogroup R* have been reported from samples of Australian aboriginal populations.

---

5. Black Africans in Ancient Britain
From the BBC: Blacks in Roman Britannia
http://pmsol3.wordpress.com/2006/07/02/from-the-bbc-blacks-in-roman-britannia/
"Skeletons unearthed in a Romano British Cemetery outside York revealed the
limb proportions of some of the men suggested that they were Black Africans.

"The haplotype below is the closest match for a haplotype
shared by two ?Border Reiver? entries. It does not appear in
any strictly African population, but may date from the time when
the Jews were slaves in Egypt.
Such a haplotype could have entered Britain with
Roman colonists or troops, or with French or Flemish Sephardim
in the wake of the Norman conquest."

See also:
Recent Black Settlers in Yorkshire (1700s)
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~ncscotts/Y-DNA/Papers/Africans_in_Yorkshire.pdf
And
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2007-12/1196614051
"The British slave trade of the 17th and 18th century resulted in substantial african presence in some British colonies and a much more modest presence in the British Isles themselves.  Earlier african presence in the British Isles seems to be underdocumented.  The famous British printer William Caxton, born in County Kent, England about 1422, had an Ethiopian mother. "
 

BAMAD-11
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update
2 Tebet 5768, 11 December 2007
1. Yet Another "anomaly" in Ancient DNA arbitrarily dismissed.
2. The Bashkir YDNA Puzzle
3. Jews from Middle East [Warning: Findings recently Disputed]
4. Abstract: Inference of the peopling of the world under
sequential bottlenecks
5. Brit-Am Article Revolutionizes DNA Concepts

Site Contents by Subject	Home Research Revelation Reconciliation	Publications	Site Map Contents in Alphabetical Order	This Site	Contribute

---

1. Yet Another "anomaly" in Ancient DNA arbitrarily dismissed.
Research Article
Rare mtDNA haplogroups and genetic differences in rich and poor Danish Iron-Age villages
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/117353478/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
L. Melchior 1, M.T.P. Gilbert 2, T. Kivisild 3, N. Lynnerup 4, J. Dissing 1 *

Abstract
The Roman Iron-Age (0-400 AD) in Southern Scandinavia was a formative period, where the society changed from archaic chiefdoms to a true state formation, and the population composition has likely changed in this period due to immigrants from Middle Scandinavia. We have analyzed mtDNA from 22 individuals from two different types of settlements, B?ebjergg?d and Skovgaarde, in Southern Denmark. B?ebjergg?d (ca. 0 AD) represents the lowest level of free, but poor farmers, whereas Skovgaarde 8 km to the east (ca. 200-270 AD) represents the highest level of the society. Reproducible results were obtained for 18 subjects harboring 17 different haplotypes all compatible (in their character states) with the phylogenetic tree drawn from present day populations of Europe. This indicates that the South Scandinavian Roman Iron-Age population was as diverse as Europeans are today. Several of the haplogroups (R0a, U2, I) observed in B?ebjergg?d are rare in present day Scandinavians. Most significantly, R0a, harbored by a male, is a haplogroup frequent in East Africa and Arabia but virtually absent among modern Northern Europeans. We suggest that this subject was a soldier or a slave, or a descendant of a female slave, from Roman Legions stationed a few hundred kilometers to the south. In contrast, the haplotype distribution in the rich Skovgaarde shows similarity to that observed for modern Scandinavians, and the B?ebjergg?d and Skovgaarde population samples differ significantly (P 0.01). Skovgaarde may represent a new upper-class formed by migrants from Middle Scandinavia bringing with them Scandinavian haplogroups. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2007. ? 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

---

2. The Bashkir YDNA Puzzle
The Bashkirs live in Central Asia. Their DNA on the male side is West European (R1b1c and R1a ) and on the females side Eurasian-East African (M 65%)   to European (U 25%).
Their physical appearance tends to be Mongoloid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashkirs
The study found a high level of y-haplogroup R1b1c (R1b3) among the Bashkirs of Perm and Baimakskiy in the Ural-Volga region, 75% and 77% respectively. Other y-haplogroups found among the Bashkirs were R1a (49% in Samara and Saratov and 37% in Sterlibashevskiy) and N3 (54% in Sterlibashevskiy, 34% in Orenburg, and 47% in Abzelilovskiy).

Number ca. 1,500,000

http://www.rbrides.com/info/russian-bashkirs.htm
Ethnographically, they have large heads, black hair, narrow and flat eyes, small foreheads, ears always sticking out, and a swarthy skin. In general, they appear strong and muscular, and can endure all kinds of labour and privation.

http://kcm.co.kr/bethany_eng/clusters/8003.html
In the past, the Bashkirs were nomadic shepherds. They lived in clans and had never really considered themselves much more than a tribe. In fact, before the Russian Revolution, a Bashkirian culture did not even exist. They simply thought of themselves as Tatars, a nearby Turkic people who had influenced them greatly.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9724/Tatar_FAQ-shs005.html
Bashkirs: 1,371,000 in 1979. The ancestors of the northern and western Bashkirs were Ugrian or Finnic tribes, turkified and islamized during the period of the Golden Ordu and the Kazan Khanate. The southern and eastern Bashkirs are descendants of the Turkic tribes closely related to Kazahs and Nogais.

mtDNA Bashkirs -
http://hgm2002.hgu.mrc.ac.uk/Abstracts/Publish/WorkshopPosters/WorkshopPoster11/hgm0548.htm

Mitochondrial DNA variety in Turkic and Uralic-speaking people

1E. Khusnutdinova, 1M. Bermisheva, 3K. Tambets, 1A. Salimova, 1T. Korshunova, 2G. Svyatova, 4R. Mukhamedov, 3R. Villems
1Institute of Biochemistry and Genetics of the Ufa Sci. Center of RAS, Ufa, 450054, Pr. Oktyabrya, 69., 2Republican Center of Health Protection of Mother and Child., Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan., 3Dept. Evolutionary Biology, Tartu University, Tartu, Estonia., 4Institute of Genetics and Experimental Biology., Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

We have analysed phylogeography of the maternal lineages of Turkic and Uralic-speaking people in the eastern Europe and the Central Asia. MtDNA of about 1500 Bashkirs, Tatars, Chuvashis, Maris, Mordvins, Udmurts and Komis, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, as well as Turkic-speaking Nogays of the North Caucasus area was studied by RFLP typing and HVR sequencing. Except Udmurts, the Volga basin populations (Tatars, Chuvashis, Maris, Mordvin and Syryan Komis) encompass only a limited share of mtDNA haplogroups typical for eastern Asians and native Siberians (variants of hgs M, A, B, F, N9, Y), their frequency being somewhat higher (10%-11%) among Turkic speakers than among FU speaking populations. In contrast, among Uralic-speaking Udmurts their share is 27%. Surprisingly, the majority of mtDNAs of Nogays, who are supposed to descend from Mongoloid Golden Horde inhabitants, belong also to western Eurasian variants of maternal lineages (~63%), testifying about an extensive admixture within about the last 750 years. The same value for Bashkirs is quite close - ~60% and the two populations are also more similar at the level of individual mtDNA lineages. Further eastwards (Kazakhs and Uzbeks), the frequency of eastern Asian mtDNA haplotypes start to exceed those typical for western Eurasia, reaching more than 60% among Kazakhs. From literature it is known that the same value for Turkic-speaking Yakuts is 90% or higher and among Turkish Turks as low as about 5% - 6%. Furthermore, the same for the Baltic Uralic-speaking Estonians is below 1%. Thus, with only a little variation, there is a clear east-west gradient of the 'Mongoloid' mtDNA lineages alongside the Steppe Belt and linguistic affinities of populations play a lesser role.

mtDNA Bashkirs -
http://www.ebc.ee/EVOLUTSIOON/publications/Villems2002.pdf


% H 2.5  I 2.5. J 2.5  U 25 T 2.5  M (and other EA) 65
From the above figures we see that M and U between them account for 90%

Pictures of Bashkirs show mainly Mongoloid types with some Central Asian
(cf. Bukharian?) ones.

M
http://www.britam.org/Questions/mtDNA.html#1

Haplogroup M does not correspond well to present-day racial groups, as it spans Mongoloid, South Asian Caucasoid and Paleoindian, as well as Ethiopid and various Caucasoid groups in lesser frequency.

Haplogroup U is almost specific to Europeans, and it is found only at a low frequency in the Japanese, the North African Berber population, the Ethiopians and the Senegalese.

---

3. Jews from Middle East [Warning: Findings recently Disputed]
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/12/6769
Abstract
Haplotypes constructed from Y-chromosome markers were used to trace the paternal origins of the Jewish Diaspora. A set of 18 biallelic polymorphisms was genotyped in 1,371 males from 29 populations, including 7 Jewish (Ashkenazi, Roman, North African, Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite, and Ethiopian) and 16 non-Jewish groups from similar geographic locations. The Jewish populations were characterized by a diverse set of 13 haplotypes that were also present in non-Jewish populations from Africa, Asia, and Europe. A series of analyses was performed to address whether modern Jewish Y-chromosome diversity derives mainly from a common Middle Eastern source population or from admixture with neighboring non-Jewish populations during and after the Diaspora. Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level. Admixture estimates suggested low levels of European Y-chromosome gene flow into Ashkenazi and Roman Jewish communities. A multidimensional scaling plot placed six of the seven Jewish populations in a relatively tight cluster that was interspersed with Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, including Palestinians and Syrians. Pairwise differentiation tests further indicated that these Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were not statistically different. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.

---

4. Abstract: Inference of the peopling of the world under sequential bottlenecks

 THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF HUMAN GENETICS
57th Annual Meeting
October 23?27, 2007 ? San Diego, California
http://www.ashg.org/genetics/ashg/annmeet/2007/call/abstractbook.pdf

Inference of the peopling of the world under sequential bottlenecks
with admixture.

G. Hellenthal, D. Falush. Department of Statistics, University of
Oxford, Oxford, UK.

Extracting information about migrations from autosomal data
represents a formidable statistical challenge. We here present a
statistical approach, based on the copying model introduced by Li
and Stephens (2003), that uses the detailed information on
ancestry provided by the structure of variation in haplotypes to
infer patterns of colonization.

In inferring a human history, our approach has two principal
advantages overmost previous models. Firstly, it makes no
geographical assumptions but instead infers a pattern of
colonization using genetic data alone. Secondly, our model allows
each population to have multiple sources, allowing us to detect both
geographically near and distant sources of admixture and hence to
provide a richer approximation to the complex historical processes
of human migration. We demonstrate the accuracy of our approach
using data simulated under a coalescent with recombination model with
various migration scenarios.

We apply our model to the SNP data for the 52 populations of the
Human Genome Diversity Project described in Conrad et al. (2006).
Our results are broadly consistent with existing serial dilution out-
of-Africa models but add several interesting details. For
example:

 (1) while European populations have received multiple
independent contributions from both the Near East and Central Asia,
Far Eastern populations derive most of their ancestry from two
central Asian populations;
(2) there is evidence for gene flow between populations on opposite
sides of the Arctic Circle;
(3) the Melanesians have an important source of ancestry from African
hunter-gatherer populations independent of the main out-of-Africa
bottleneck;
(4) North and South Americans have important ancestral contributions
from distinct Asian sources, implying  multiple waves of migration into
the Americas.

A detailed depiction of the peopling of the world is available in animated
form.

---

5. Brit-Am Article Revolutionizes DNA Concepts
re
"YDNA Reversed. Were R1 and N The Forefathers?
Was Adam  "R1b1c"?  or "N"? Was Noah?"
http://www.britam.org/DNA/YDNAreverse.html
This article is very simply put but apparently holds up to the facts in hand.

---

BAMAD-12
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update
3 Tebet 5768, 12 December 2007
Contents:
1. Question on Hebrew DNA
2. British Ancestry:
Some Controversial Opinions of Stephen Oppenheimer Not Generally accepted but Worth Considering
3. A Criticism of DNA Testing

---

1. Question on Hebrew DNA
Justin Pirrone wrote:  

Mr. Davidiy,
I have read much of your website and think alot of your work. I am wondering, how can one know for sure that they are of hebrew origins? I have my family history on some lines back to 500B.C.. I am decended from groups such as the Scythians, Cimmerians, Franks, Merovingians, Charlemange, Norman, Welsh, and English nobility, and al the documented kings of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. According to your research as well as others that would mean I am connected to several tribes. But I want to know for sure. Has DNA testing been done one some of these European Kings or others that identify them as Hebrew? I am thinking of having DNA testing done to confirm or debunk this. They should be able to tell by hapologroups or whatever if there is Hebrew ancestry. but will they be able to tell from what tribes or is that impossible? I appreciate your imput. Thanks.
 
Justin

Reply:
Shalom,
Your descent from such Ancient Lines is apparently based on Geneaological Research.
Assuming that you have some kind of "Paper Trail" you are at an advantage over most of us.
Statistically however most people in the west could make similar claims.
It may be counter-claimed that despite the "statistics" families tend to stick together
and marriages do not exactly take place by chance etc.
This is true to a degree.  We may therefore qualify our statement
and say that at the least a good many people almost certainly have similar lineages.
It follows as you have noted that according to our research you are connected to several tribes.
Tribal Lineage in principle is decided through the Male Line.
Even though you may be related to several tribes you can only belong to one which is decided
by the line of your male ancestor.
DNA testing checks mtDNA and YDNA.
MtDNA traces the female line all the way back through mother after mother.
It is more stable that YDNA and the mtDNA of several famous people has been publicised.
The findings however have been contested so for the meantime the results cannot be accepted with absolute confidence.
See however:
"Famous DNA"
http://www.isogg.org/famousdna.htm
Here it gives the mtDNA of:
The former ruling family (Romanov) of Russia including that of Prince Philip of Britain.
Marie Antonette - Austrian-born Queen of France before the French Revolution.
Jesse James - an American outlaw.
and other.

YDNA is less stable but tentatively it is claimed that the YDNA lineages of the following may be discerned:
Thomas Jefferson
Genghis Khan
Colla Uais - "Father" of the Clans; founder of lineages in Ireland, Ulster, and Scotland
Niall of the Nine Hostages; Early Kings of Ireland and Scotland.
Somerled of Argyll -Scottish hero
and so on.

If you search around the Web you could probably find others.
It is not really very much and even what there is, is a matter of controversy.

None of the people in question have been proven to necessarily have been any more of Hebrew ancestry
than anyone else.
DNA testing has helped some people.
It helps fill in gaps in the "Paper trail"
e.g. The following post appeared on a DNA discussion list:

<<In my own family, genealogy testing has solved several mysteries. And at relatively little cost compared to the expense of travel, meals and lodging.
<<For one example, our two main CXXXX DNA groups are not related. One is R1b and one is R1a. Yet the ancestors of both groups were in the same counties concurrently five times at least. In NC, IN, MO, OK, and TX. And they all named the eldest son William. Only DNA could have straightened out that mess.

DNA testing can tell you what major haplogroup you belong to.
In many cases you can then use DNA online services (especially FTDNA) to try and find other people
who have similar DNA to yourself.

There is no such thing as Hebrew DNA.
DNA also cannot tell you to what tribe you belong.

God bless you
Yair Davidiy

---

2. British Ancestry:
Some Controversial Opinions of Stephen Oppenheimer Not Generally accepted but Worth Considering
Prospect Magazine
Issue 127 , October 2006
Myths of British ancestry
by Stephen Oppenheimer
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id=7817
Extracts:

Stephen Oppenheimer's books "The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story" and "Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World" are published by Constable & Robinson

Many myths about the Celts

Celtic languages and the people who brought them probably first arrived during the Neolithic period. The regions we now regard as Celtic heartlands actually had less immigration from the continent during this time than England. Ireland, being to the west, has changed least since the hunter-gatherer period and received fewer subsequent migrants (about 12 per cent of the population) than anywhere else. Wales and Cornwall have received about 20 per cent, Scotland and its associated islands 30 per cent, while eastern and southern England, being nearer the continent, has received one third of its population from outside over the past 6,500 years.

The orthodox view of the origins of the Celts turns out to be an archaeological myth left over from the 19th century. Over the past 200 years, a myth has grown up of the Celts as a vast, culturally sophisticated but warlike people from central Europe, north of the Alps and the Danube, who invaded most of Europe, including the British Isles, during the iron age, around 300 BC.

Central Europe during the last millennium BC certainly was the time and place of the exotic and fierce Hallstatt culture and, later, the La T?e culture, with their prestigious, iron-age metal jewellery wrought with intricately woven swirls. Hoards of such jewellery and weapons, some fashioned in gold, have been dug up in Ireland, seeming to confirm central Europe as the source of migration. The swirling style of decoration is immortalised in such cultural icons as the Book of Kells, the illuminated Irish manuscript (Trinity College, Dublin), and the bronze Battersea shield (British Museum), evoking the western British Isles as a surviving remnant of past Celtic glory. But unfortunately for this orthodoxy, these artistic styles spread generally in Europe as cultural fashions, often made locally. There is no evidence they came to Britain and Ireland as part of an invasion.

The late 19th-century French historian Marie Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville decided that Herodotus had meant to place the Celtic homeland in southern Germany. His idea has remained in the books ever since, despite a mountain of other evidence that Celts derived from southwestern Europe. For the idea of the south German "Empire of the Celts" to survive as the orthodoxy for so long has required determined misreading of texts by Caesar, Strabo, Livy and others. And the well-recorded Celtic invasions of Italy across the French Alps from the west in the 1st millennium BC have been systematically reinterpreted as coming from Germany, across the Austrian Alps.

 The connection between modern Celtic languages and those spoken in southwest Europe during Roman times is clear and valid. Caesar wrote that the Gauls living south of the Seine called themselves Celts. That region, in particular Normandy, has the highest density of ancient Celtic place-names and Celtic inscriptions in Europe. They are common in the rest of southern France (excluding the formerly Basque region of Gascony), Spain, Portugal and the British Isles. Conversely, Celtic place-names are hard to find east of the Rhine in central Europe.

Given the distribution of Celtic languages in southwest Europe, it is most likely that they were spread by a wave of agriculturalists who dispersed 7,000 years ago from Anatolia, travelling along the north coast of the Mediterranean to Italy, France, Spain and then up the Atlantic coast to the British Isles. There is a dated archaeological trail for this. My genetic analysis shows exact counterparts for this trail both in the male Y chromosome and the maternally transmitted mitochondrial DNA right up to Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and the English south coast.

The other myth I was taught at school, one which persists to this day, is that the English are almost all descended from 5th-century invaders, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, from the Danish peninsula, who wiped out the indigenous Celtic population of England.

The story originates with the clerical historians of the early dark ages. Gildas (6th century AD) and Bede (7th century) tell of Saxons and Angles invading over the 5th and 6th centuries. Gildas, in particular, sprinkles his tale with "rivers of blood" descriptions of Saxon massacres. And then there is the well-documented history of Anglian and Saxon kingdoms covering England for 500 years before the Norman invasion.

Some geneticists still cling to the genocide story. Research by several genetics teams associated with University College London has concentrated in recent years on proving the wipeout view on the basis of similarities of male Y chromosome gene group frequency between Frisia/north Germany and England. One of the London groups attracted press attention in July by claiming that the close similarities were the result of genocide followed by a social-sexual apartheid that enhanced Anglo-Saxon reproductive success over Celtic.

The problem is that the English resemble in this way all the other countries of northwest Europe as well as the Frisians and Germans. Using the same method ...I have found greater similarities of this kind between the southern English and Belgians than the supposedly Anglo-Saxon homelands at the base of the Danish peninsula. These different regions could not all have been waiting their turn to commit genocide on the former Celtic population of England. The most likely reason for the genetic similarities between these neighbouring countries and England is that they all had similar prehistoric settlement histories.

When I looked at exact gene type matches between the British Isles and the continent, there were indeed specific matches between the continental Anglo-Saxon homelands and England, but these amounted to only 5 per cent of modern English male lines, rising to 15 per cent in parts of Norfolk where the Angles first settled. There were no such matches with Frisia, which tends to confirm a specific Anglo-Saxon event since Frisia is closer to England, so would be expected to have more matches.

When I examined dates of intrusive male gene lines to look for those coming in from northwest Europe during the past 3,000 years, there was a similarly low rate of immigration, by far the majority arriving in the Neolithic period. The English maternal genetic record (mtDNA) is consistent with this and contradicts the Anglo-Saxon wipeout story. English females almost completely lack the characteristic Saxon mtDNA marker type still found in the homeland of the Angles and Saxons. The conclusion is that there was an Anglo-Saxon invasion, but of a minority elite type, with no evidence of subsequent "sexual apartheid."

Who was here when the Romans came?

So who were the Britons inhabiting England at the time of the Roman invasion? The history of pre-Roman coins in southern Britain reveals an influence from Belgic Gaul. The tribes of England south of the Thames and along the south coast during Caesar's time all had Belgic names or affiliations. Caesar tells us that these large intrusive settlements had replaced an earlier British population, which had retreated to the hinterland of southeast England. The latter may have been the large Celtic tribe, the Catuvellauni, situated in the home counties north of the Thames. Tacitus reported that between Britain and Gaul "the language differs but little."

The common language referred to by Tacitus was probably not Celtic, but was similar to that spoken by the Belgae, who may have been a Germanic people, as implied by Caesar. In other words, a Germanic-type language could already have been indigenous to England at the time of the Roman invasion. In support of this inference, there is some recent lexical (vocabulary) evidence analysed by Cambridge geneticist Peter Forster and continental colleagues. They found that the date of the split between old English and continental Germanic languages goes much further back than the dark ages, and that English may have been a separate, fourth branch of the Germanic language before the Roman invasion.

Apart from the Belgian connection in the south, my analysis of the genetic evidence also shows that there were major Scandinavian incursions into northern and eastern Britain, from Shetland to Anglia, during the Neolithic period and before the Romans. These are consistent with the intense cultural interchanges across the North sea during the Neolithic and bronze age. Early Anglian dialects, such as found in the old English saga Beowulf, owe much of their vocabulary to Scandinavian languages. This is consistent with the fact that Beowulf was set in Denmark and Sweden and that the cultural affiliations of the early Anglian kingdoms, such as found in the Sutton Hoo boat burial, derive from Scandinavia.

A picture thus emerges of the dark-ages invasions of England and northeastern Britain as less like replacements than minority elite additions, akin to earlier and larger Neolithic intrusions from the same places. There were battles for dominance between chieftains, all of Germanic origin, each invader sharing much culturally with their newly conquered indigenous subjects.

So, based on the overall genetic perspective of the British, it seems that Celts, Belgians, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings and Normans were all immigrant minorities compared with the Basque pioneers, who first ventured into the empty, chilly lands so recently vacated by the great ice sheets.

---

3. A Criticism of DNA Testing
Jon Entine: The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/23notme_b_76298.html
Extract:
<<I mention the case of Lisa Black, a systems administrator in Oakland who is African American. She was shocked to find that the DNA lineage that current technology can track, her female ancestors, were Native Americans, Chinese, and Sardinians. It came as a major blow to a veteran of the Black Power movement of the 1960s. "For me to have a whole half of my identity to come back and say, 'Sorry, no African here.' It just negates it all. ... What does this mean? Who am I then?"
 

 

---

BAMAD-13
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update
12 Tebet 5768, 21 December 2007
Contents:
1. More 'Functional' DNA in Genome Than Previously Thought
2. The Asian Flush- Asians have less resistance and therefore drink less?
3. MtDNA Ancient Europeans Different from Modern Ones?
4. Ireland DNA: Guinness story moves from riches to rags
5. Jewish Intelligence and Certain Diseases?

---

1. More 'Functional' DNA in Genome Than Previously Thought
 http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20071211.122435&time=13%2011%20PST&year=2007&public=0

---

2. The Asian Flush- Asians have less resistance and therefore drink less?
http://www.blogsoop.com/blog/is-asian-flush-evolutionarily-adaptive/

---

3.MtDNA Ancient Europeans Different from Modern Ones
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/310/5750/1016
Extract:
We successfully extracted and sequenced intact stretches of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 24 out of 57 Neolithic skeletons from various locations in Germany, Austria, and Hungary. We found that 25% of the Neolithic farmers had one characteristic mtDNA type and that this type formerly was widespread among Neolithic farmers in Central Europe. Europeans today have a 150-times lower frequency (0.2%) of this mtDNA type, revealing that these first Neolithic farmers did not have a strong genetic influence on modern European female lineages.

---

4. Ireland DNA: Guinness story moves from riches to rags
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article3054149.ece

---

5. Jewish Intelligence and Certain Diseases?
http://www.abrahamschildren.net/
John Entine, "Abraham's Children. Race, identity, and DNA of the Chosen"
has written a valuable book that is stirring some controversy.
We have read this work but feel we will have to re-read it and perhaps review it later.
On the one hand, it does not seem to say much that is new but it does give a good overview
of DNA research in general and Jewish DNA in particular.
One point for discussion it raises is the possible association of a high intelligence
and certain hereditary diseases, a kind of "trade-off" in nature.
This is not an iron-cast rule since Intelligence is an aspect of health
and intelligent people, all other things being equal, actually have more chance statistically to be healthy.
Nevertheless there are exceptions that are genetically linked and these are worth
considering.

	Contents by Subject	Home Research Revelation Reconciliation	Publications	Site Map Contents in Alphabetical Order	This Site

See also:
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

Join the Brit-Am Ephraimite Discussion Group
Just Send an
e-mail
with "Subscribe"
in the Subject Line

Main Page

Offerings and Publications

Return to
Question and Answer
Table of Contents