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DNA confirms the genetic link between northern Spain and
Ireland, indicative of the westward migration of Israelites prior to the Assyrian
dispersion:
Another early finding from the Viking study is that modern Celtic populations in
Angelsey and Ireland have almost identical Y-chromosomes to the Basques of
northern Spain. It is thought that both populations represent the pre-farming stock of
Europe.
DNA confirms the genetic link between jews and Negroids:
There has been one interesting Y-project looking at a specific caste, that of Jewish
priests and their lay counterparts. Conducted by Michael F. Hammer of the
University of Arizona et al and published in Nature in 1997 as Y Chromosomes of Jewish Priests,
it investigated the accuracy of biblical accounts of the Jewish priesthood which was
established about 3,300 years ago. Designation of Jewish males to the priesthood continues
to this day and is determined by strict patrilineal decent. The study found clear
differences in the frequency of Y-chromosomes haplotypes between Jewish priests and their
lay counterparts, a difference is observable in both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic
populations despite the geographical separation of the two communities. A second
project on the the Lemba,
a Bantu tribe in South Africa, confirmed their oral history of migration by finding that
they possess the same Y-chromosome haplotype characteristic of the Jewish priesthood and
in a frequency similar to that seen in major Jewish populations. In the Lemba's case the
results were mainly associated with a particular clan, the Buba, which, in the tribe's
oral tradition, had a leadership role in bringing the Lemba out of Israel.
5. History since the last Ice Age: National and International DNA Projects
There are several non-surname projects DNA studies underway of a global or national scale
that might be of interest to family historians.
The largest is the Brigham Young
University (BYU) global Y-chromosome database project that aims to
sample 100,000 people in at least 500 different populations around the world. By July 2001
it had tested c.25,000 men and women. It appears that men are being sampled for both mtDNA
as well as their Y-chromosome results.
In the Old World, the Oxford
Genetic Atlas of the UK project run by Professor Bryan Sykes at Oxford University is
building up a British haplotype databank by cross-sectioning the British Isles. To date
most samples have been built up from Scottish testees in a bid to use clans' genealogical
histories to corroborate the work. It is testing both the Y-chromosome and mtDNA.
A mapping of regional haplotype frequencies in Devon, Cornwall, Suffolk &
Norfolk was begun in 1999 under Dr Mark Thomas at University College London
(UCL), aimed at building up a more detailed pattern of medieval population movements in
England. Y-chromosome testees had to be able to show two independent lines of descent from
a common male ancestor living before 1700. Cornish families thought to have been invited
include Andrewartha, Argall, Alabaster, Berryman, Clopton, Curnow, Emsden, Finbow, Holton,
Kelland, Kernick, Luckcraft, Luxton, Pomeroy, Tregilgas, Trehewey, Treloar, Pethers and
Yelland. The project also intended to sample one male representative of every distinctive
Cornish surname. I have seen no published results of this project or its progress to date.
The Vikings project, run by Professor David Goldstein at UCL, is sampling
2,500 British men in a Y-chromosome project across 25 locations in a bid to pinpoint how
many modern Britons have Viking blood and to map the spread of the Vikings across the
country during the Dark Ages. The project will tie in with a BBC series Blood of the
Vikings airing in the autumn of 2001. More details of the project can be found in this
BBC report.
A wonderful map of Viking migration routes
other migration materials is sourced at this Leiden University
page. An early conclusion is that there is not much Norwegian Y-chromosome material in
modern Celtic populations.
Another early finding from the Viking study is that modern Celtic populations in Angelsey
and Ireland have almost identical Y-chromosomes to the Basques of
northern Spain. It is thought that both populations represent the pre-farming stock of
Europe.
A study into the diversity of Y-Chromosome haplogroups in Ireland by Mark
Jobling of Leicester University and others started with the assumption that its position
on the western edge of Europe meant that the genetics of its population should have been
relatively undisturbed by the demographic movements that have shaped variation on the
mainland. The results show clear patterns of distribution between eastern- and
western-Irish populations once English-, Scottish-, Norman- and Norse-origin surnames are
excluded. 98.5% of testees in Connaught in the north-west belonged to a single haplogroup.
(The original article was published in Nature 404, p351-352.)
Work on the genetic diversity of the Irish population and its origins is being advanced by
Dan Bradley of the Department
of Molecular Population Genetics at Trinity College, Dublin in a combined Y-chromosome
and mtDNA study. One goal is to see whether people of the same surname can be traced to a
common paternal ancestor.
Dr Jobling is currently working on a study focusing on Leicestershire and Rutland,
specifically surnames that correspond to Leicestershire village names and thus have a
local geographical association.
Elsewhere in Europe, a recent Y-chromosome
study in Spain analysed the male-mediated flow of genes across the linguistic barrier
between the Basques and the rest of the Spanish population. It concluded that the genetic
evidence in some ways contradicted the linguistic evidence that emphasises their
separation.
Y-chromosome tests are also clarifying older inter-continental migrations. Haplotypes
found in 533 individuals representing the native populations of the Americas and
Siberia support theories about migration patterns in Siberia, the
Americas & Central Asia. The evidence suggests that there were at least two major
population expansion/migration events originated in the area of Lake Baikal in the central
Asia landmass, with the second event occurring after entry into the New World was blocked
by glacial ice sheets. This in turn suggests that the New World was initially peopled from
Beringia by way of
Central Siberia with a later event via a migration involving populations related to the
modern inhabitants of Kamchatka and the lower Amur river. There are more details on
Siberian migrations at Mike
Hammer & Tatiana Karafet's Artic studies site.
In the African continent a study of the Ethiopian gene pool by Giuseppe
Passarino et al reported in the journal of The American Society of Human Genetics in
1998 showed through tests of both the Y-chromosome and mtDNA from 77 men that the
Ethiopian population had experienced Caucasoid gene flow mainly through males. It also
contains African components ascribable to Bantu migrations as well as exhibiting some
Y-chromosome affinities with a very ancient African group called the Tsumkwe San.
There has been one interesting Y-project looking at a specific caste, that of Jewish
priests and their lay counterparts. Conducted by Michael F. Hammer of the
University of Arizona et al and published in Nature in 1997 as Y Chromosomes of Jewish Priests,
it investigated the accuracy of biblical accounts of the Jewish priesthood which was
established about 3,300 years ago. Designation of Jewish males to the priesthood continues
to this day and is determined by strict patrilineal decent. The study found clear
differences in the frequency of Y-chromosomes haplotypes between Jewish priests and their
lay counterparts, a difference is observable in both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic
populations despite the geographical separation of the two communities.
A second project on the the Lemba,
a Bantu tribe in South Africa, confirmed their oral history of migration by finding that
they possess the same Y-chromosome haplotype characteristic of the Jewish priesthood and
in a frequency similar to that seen in major Jewish populations. In the Lemba's case the
results were mainly associated with a particular clan, the Buba, which, in the tribe's
oral tradition, had a leadership role in bringing the Lemba out of Israel.
Y-chromosome DNA evidence has also been used to shed new light on historical questions or
provided new forensic evidence to identify individuals.
The most high profile case confirmed that president Thomas Jefferson
probably fathered a son by his slave Sally Hemmings, the only doubt being whether it was
he who transferred his haplotype directly to Hemmings's child or one of his male forebears
to one of her paternal ancestors. (Alan Savin's pamphlet has full details of this case.)
A rare DNA signature based on a mutation three centuries ago found in one French-Canadian
man has helped identify members of his modern family, described on page 354 of Mark
Jobling's excellent background paper 'In the name of the father:
surnames and genetics' published in the June 2001 edition of Trends in Genetics.
The unknown soldier from the Vietnam War at Arlington Cemetery has been
identified using the Y-test as First Lieutenant Michael Blassie. Through a clerical error
Blassie's remains were separated from the physical evidence associated with the site of
his death in Vietnam in 1972 and then classified as unknown. However, advances in DNA
identification techniques now prove his identity
with 99% certainty. Over 2,000 America servicemen listed as "Missing In
Action" from Vietnam may eventually be identified by this technique. To prevent such
problems ever recurring the U.S. Department of Defense now DNA samples all recruits, adds
around 4,000 records per day to its database, and has even DNA-matched some Civil War remains.
Among the cases DNA analysis has not solved are the origins of Kennewick Man,
an 8,500 year-old almost complete but fragmented skeleton found in Washington state in the
north-west USA in 1996 and which aroused controversy when it was suggested that he was a
aborginal caucasian and not of native Indian origin. Notes on the controversy can be found
in the report on the DNA test
attempt.
The most famous forensic mtDNA test is probably that which positively identified the
bodies of the last Russian czar, Nicholas II, four of his family, three
servants and their doctor. The test also confirmed that Anna Anderson Manahan wasn't as
she'd claimed a surviving daughter of the czar, the Duchess Anastasia, but plain Franziska
Schanzkowska. (Alan Savin's pamphlet has full details of this case.)
Outside of Europe, a ground-breaking private initiative in the USA is analysing
descendents of the
Melungeons, the lost tribe of Tennessee and North Carolina around whom there are many
theories of their origins.
In Britain, a well-known case is the identification of a 42-year teacher, Adrian Targett,
as sharing a maternal
ancestor with a 9,000 year-old Stone Age hunter-gatherer whose
remains were found buried in limestone during drainage work in the caves of the Cheddar
Gorge in south-west England in 1903. Mitochondrial DNA extracted from one of Cheddar Man's
molars showed he and the local teacher "shared a common ancestor about 10,000 years
ago", according to Professor Bryan Sykes of Oxford University who conducted the
tests. The test also indicated that Britons are descended from European hunter-gatherers
rather than Middle Eastern farmers, an argument that has divided archaeologists for years.
A study into mitochondrial genetic variation in the Western Isles, Orkney and Skye
(north of Scotland) has been undertaken by Agnar Helgason, Bryan Sykes et al to estimate
the proportions of Norse and Gaelic ancestry in the population. Similar analyses of both
mainland Scotland and Shetland are now being undertaken. This project was the precursor to
the wider UK Genetic Atlas project. It was reported in the American Journal of Human
Genetics, vol 68, pages 723-737.
A study of 92
unrelated individuals from Galicia, a relatively isolated European population at the
westernmost continental edge in Spain, conducted by the University of Santiago de
Compostela, found that the Galician population has a striking similarity to the Basque
population. The results are compatible with the theory that humans spread across Europe
during the Upper Paleolithic age from the Middle East.
Another study, in the Basque
region of Spain conducted by the Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea in Bilbao, found
evidence for a small population size in the post-Ice Age period. mtDNA sequences from four
Basque prehistoric sites did not belong to haplogroup V, the haplogroup most closely
associated with the area in modern times. The findings thus contradict one theory that
explains the modern-day concentration in the Basque region as a result of migration from
southwestern Europe, occurring approximately 10,000-15,000 years BP (before the present).
A mtDNA analysis of Nile
River Valley populations concludes that these migrations probably occurred within the
past few hundred to few thousand years and that the migration from north to south was
either earlier or lesser in the extent of gene flow than the migration from south to
north.
Central Asia is a vast region at the crossroads of different habitats, cultures, and trade
routes. A Barcelona-based mtDNA analysis of Kazakh, Uighur, lowland Kirghiz and highland
Kirghiz peoples, found features that indicate that Central
Asian mtDNA sequences have features intermediate between European and eastern Asian
sequences, possibly as a result of the mixing between Europeans and eastern Asians in
central Asia enhanced during the Silk Road trade.
Three frozen
mummies found in a burial platform in the Andes at 22,000 feet (6,706 meters) on the
peak of Argentina's Mount Llullaillaco, the world's highest archaeological site and one of
the world's highest volcanoes, have revealed some DNA secrets. The bodies may have
remained frozen since they were placed there and sacrificed about 500 years ago. They were
discovered by archaeologist Johan Reinhard (who also discovered a frozen Inca mummy on
Peru's Mount Ampato in 1995 that came to be known as the Ice Maiden). ABC has
more information on the Mount Llullaillaco children and reveals that
DNA from one of the three matches that of a Peruvian woman living in Washington DC. (Other
cases of frozen or preserved bodies exist in Canada and Europe including the famous five
millenia-old Oetzi mummy
found in the Tyrol on the Austrian-Italian border in 1991 and now in a museum in Bolzano. Results of DNA
tests on the Oetzi mummy published in 1994 show that he was most closely
mitochondrially related to contemporary central and northern European populations, or, as
Prof. Sykes might put it, to the clan of Katrine whose progenitor lived 10,000 years
earlier on the Southern slopes that run gently down to the sea near Venice. As the
glaciers retreated and the snows fell only in the winter in the Alps, Katrine's
descendents ventured farther North into the valleys to hunt marmot and the ibex. When it
became warmer still they crossed the great range and moved up the valley of the Rhine to
meet the North Sea. Katrine's clan is still found in the Alps as well as over much of
Northern Europe.
mtDNA variations among Greenland Eskimos found by Juliette
Saillard et al were reported in The American Society of Human Genetics in 2000. After
testing 82 Eskimos from Greenland the analysis showed that the Siberian and Greenland
ancestral mtDNA pools separated at a time when a Neo-Eskimo culture emerged and backed up
the theory that present-day Greenland Eskimos essentially descend from Alaskan
Neo-Eskimos.
A large-scale mtDNA forensic project is underway in the USA to identify Korean War
servicemens' remains. Half a century after the conflict, approximately 8,100
allied servicemen remain unaccounted for of which 6,318 served in the U.S. Army. The project has still
to find representatives from more than 4,000 soldiers so that one can be tested. For
contact information go here.
Canadian authorities recently announced that three of 43 unknown victims of the Titanic
disaster whose remains lie in a graveyard in Halifax, Nova Scotia are being partially
exhumed to see if they can be identified.
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