Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update (12 February, 2013, ADAR 2, 5773)
Contents:
1. YDNA and Environment? Is G in Mountainous Areas an example?
2. Oldest mtDNA found in Wales. Originated from West Asia i.e. the region of Israel.
3. Weird Facts About Redheads by Lisa Collier Cool
4. The Pros and Cons of Older Parenting BY JUDITH SHULEVITZ
5. Yair Davidiy Blackballed by DNA Discussion Groups!
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1. YDNA and Environment? Is G in Mountainous Areas an example?
We once began a series of artilces showing the correspondence between physical environment and the environment.
See:
Y DNA haplogroup E Changed According to Surroundings!
YDNA Haplogroups Determined by Climate!
YDNA Types Changed According to Surroundings!
http://www.britam.org/ContentsSubject.html#DNA
It is already generally accepted in the scientific world that female mtDNA markers are ultimately determined by the physical surroundings.
See:
BAMAD no.56
# 4. Human mtDNA subject to selection by climate?
The letter below discusses yDNA Haplogroup G. It suggests that this is found in mountainous areas widely separated from each other due to an ancient people who liked mountains and had metallurgical talents moving around. We would suggest instead that the mountain environment was somehow conducive to the independent appearance of G in different peoples.
From: "John B. Robb"
Subject: Re: [DNA] Rb1 as a metallurgy "smoking gun"
I am not well enough versed in the pre-historic cultures to be able to participate in the nitty-gritty of this discussion, but I would like to point out that there may be a smoking gun for the spread of certain mining and related matallurgy techniques in the form of yDNA Haplogroup G. G is rather rare, but is found just about everywhere from the Middle East to Britain at about a 1% rate. However, it's handful of geographic concentration areas are highly suggestive. In the first place, 50-80% of all those tested in the mountainous region of Ossetia, located in the Caucasus midway between the Black and the Caspian Seas, where certain mining and/or metallurgical techniques were first perfected. Second, most of the handful of other places where G is found in significant concentrations (from 5-10%) are also mountainous regions, and they are highly scattered: Sardinia, northern Portugal, and the central Alps. The obvious thesis would be that mining and metallurgical specialists of the Caucasus were exported to these regions to exploit the minerals to be found there.
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Brit-Am Comment:
Instead of G being found at an above-average rate in the mountainous areas of Sardinia, northern Portugal, the central Alps, and the Caucasus, due to one people migrating to those areas it may be that the mountain environment lead to its independent appearance?
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2. Oldest mtDNA found in Wales. Originated from West Asia i.e. the region of Israel.
List-Id: <genealogy-dna.rootsweb.com>
The best mtDNA haplogroup estimates we have are from Behar 2012:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929712001462
He lists the age of H as 12846 +- 773 years. The amazingly small confidence
interval is presumably due to the very large number of full mtDNA H
sequences available.
> From: genealogy-dna-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:genealogy-dna-
> bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of lkramsey
>
> A complete anatomically modern male skeleton (Red Lady of Paviland) from a
cave > burial in Gower, South Wales is the first human fossil to have been found
anywhere > in the world, and at 33,000 years old is still the oldest ceremonial
burial of a modern > human ever discovered anywhere in Western Europe. Genetic analysis of
> Mitochondrial DNA yielded the Haplogroup H, the most common group in
Europe.
> (see Wikipedia) Haplogroup H is also the most  common mtDNA in Europe, and acknowledged to be of west Asian origins.
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3. Weird Facts About Redheads by Lisa Collier Cool
Feb 01, 2013
http://health.yahoo.net/experts/dayinhealth/weird-facts-about-redheads
Extracts:
Compared to blondes or brunettes, redheads are more than twice as likely to avoid going to the dentist, and they may have good reason. The same genetic variant that explains their fiery locks also makes redheads resistant to local anesthesia, such as Novocaine, explaining their dread of dental procedures, University of Louisville researchers reported in Journal of the American Dental Association.
In fact, redheads may need 20 percent more anesthesia, researchers from the same center reported in an earlier study, in which women with bright red hair were compared to those with dark tresses. And those with ruby locks are also more sensitive to heat and cold than the rest of us, researchers report. Here's a look at other surprising findings about redheads.
Higher risk for skin cancer, even if they shun the sun
Fair skin that provides less natural protection from the sun isn't the only reason redheads are three times more susceptible to skin cancer than people with other hair colors. A new animal study published in Nature shows that the pigment responsible for their distinctive coloring also plays a role in their risk for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
The study suggests that redheads should be extra diligent about checking their skin for suspicious spots and being screened for skin cancer, which is highly treatable if caught early.
Other disorders that disproportionately affect redheads include:
Parkinson's disease. A Harvard study reports that redheads have a nearly 90 percent-increased risk for the progressive neurological disorder that affects balance and coordination. However, another recent study suggests that taking folic acid may be protective.
Tourette's syndrome. An Australian study reported that not only is there a nearly seven-fold higher rate of neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by motor and verbal tics in redheads, but 55 percent of the Tourette's patients studied had also relatives with ruby hair. The researchers theorize that a gene for the tic disorder may be located near the ginger gene.
Stronger Bones, Immune System
Some biologists believe that the reason there are more redheads in cold, cloudy climes, such as Scotland, is that the pale skin that typically accompanies a fiery mane allows the body to soak more vitamin D. Not only does D help protect against many diseases, but it's essential for healthy bones, and helps ward off osteoporosis, the brittle-bone disease that leads to fractures.
Unlike blondes and brunettes, redheads never develop gray hair as they age. A little-known fact about natural red hair is that it retains its original color longer than any other hair hue. Eventually, the ginger tends to turn blond, and ultimately white. On average, redheads have thicker hair, but fewer strands (about 90,000), compared to blondes (110,000) or brunettes (140,000).
The world's highest rate of redheads is found in Scotland, where an estimated 13 percent of Scots, about 650,000 people, have flame-colored tresses, compared to 4 percent of Europeans and less than 2 percent of the global population, according to STV News. In the US, there are an estimated 6 million redheads.
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4. The Pros and Cons of Older Parenting.
How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society The scary consequences of the grayest generation.
BY JUDITH SHULEVITZ
Extracts:
Soon, I learned that medical researchers, sociologists, and demographers were more worried about the proliferation of older parents than my friends and I were. They talked to me at length about a vicious cycle of declining fertility, especially in the industrialized world, and also about the damage caused by assisted-reproductive technologies (ART) that are commonly used on people past their peak childbearing years. This past May, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 8.3 percent of children born with the help of ART had defects, whereas, of those born without it, only 5.8 percent had defects.
Age diminishes a woman's fertility; every woman knows that, although several surveys have shown that women, and men, consistently underestimate how sharp the drop-off can be for women after age 35. The effects of maternal age on children aren't as well-understood. As that age creeps upward, so do the chances that children will carry a chromosomal abnormality, such as a trisomy. In a trisomy, a third chromosome inserts itself into one of the 23 pairs that most of us carry, so that a child's cells carry 47 instead of 46 chromosomes. The most notorious trisomy is Down syndrome. There are two other common ones: Patau syndrome, which gives children cleft palates, mental retardation, and an 80 percent likelihood of dying in their first year; and Edwards syndrome, which features oddly shaped heads, clenched hands, and slow growth. Half of all Edwards syndrome babies die in the first week of life.
The risk that a pregnancy will yield a trisomy rises from 2-3 percent when a woman is in her twenties to 30 percent when a woman is in her forties. A fetus faces other obstacles on the way to health and well-being when born to an older mother: spontaneous abortion, premature birth, being a twin or triplet, cerebral palsy, and low birth weight. (This last leads to chronic health problems later in children's lives.)
We have been conditioned to think of reproductive age as a female-only concern, but it isn't. For decades, neonatologists have known about birth defects linked to older fathers: dwarfism, Apert syndrome (a bone disorder that may result in an elongated head), Marfan syndrome (a disorder of the connective tissue that results in weirdly tall, skinny bodies), and cleft palates. But the associations between parental age and birth defects were largely speculative until this year, when researchers in Iceland, using radically more powerful ways of looking at genomes, established that men pass on more de novo, that is, non-inherited and spontaneously occurring  genetic mutations to their children as they get older. In the scientists' study, published in Nature, they concluded that the number of genetic mutations that can be acquired from a father increases by two every year of his life, and doubles every 16, so that a 36-year-old man is twice as likely as a 20-year-old to bequeath de novo mutations to his children.
The Nature study ended by saying that the greater number of older dads could help to explain the 78 percent rise in autism cases over the past decade. Researchers have suspected links between autism and parental age for years. One much-cited study from 2006 argued that the risk of bearing an autistic child jumps from six in 10,000 before a man reaches 30 to 32 in 10,000 when he�s 40�a more than fivefold increase. When he reaches 50, it goes up to 52 in 10,000. It should be noted that there are many skeptics when it comes to explaining the increase of autism; one school of thought holds that it�s the result of more doctors making diagnoses, better equipment and information for the doctors to make them with, and a vocal parent lobby that encourages them. But it increasingly looks as if autism cases have risen more than overdiagnosis can account for and that parental age, particularly paternal age, has something to do with that fact.
Why do older men make such unreliable sperm? Well, for one thing, unlike women, who are born with all their eggs, men start making sperm at puberty and keep doing so all their lives. Each time a gonad cell divides to make spermatozoa, that's another chance for its DNA to make a copy error. The gonads of a man who is 40 will have divided 610 times; at 50, that number goes up to 840. For another thing, as a man ages, his DNA's self-repair mechanisms work less well.
To the danger of age-related genetic mutations, geneticists are starting to add the danger of age-related epigenetic mutations, that is, changes in the way genes in sperm express themselves. Epigenetics, a newish branch of genetics, studies how molecules latch onto genes or unhitch from them, directing many of the body�s crucial activities. The single most important process orchestrated by epigenetic notations is the stupendously complex unfurling of the fetus. This extra-genetic music is written, in part, by life itself. Epigenetically influenced traits, such as mental functioning and body size, are affected by the food we eat, the cigarettes we smoke, the toxins we ingest�and, of course, our age. Sociologists have devoted many man-hours to demonstrating that older parents are richer, smarter, and more loving, on the whole, than younger ones. And yet the tragic irony of epigenetics is that the same wised-up, more mature parents have had longer to absorb air-borne pollution, endocrine disruptors, pesticides, and herbicides. They may have endured more stress, be it from poverty or overwork or lack of social status. All those assaults on the cells that make sperm DNA can add epimutations to regular mutations.
At the center of research on older fathers, genetics, and neurological dysfunctions is Avi Reichenberg, a tall, wiry psychiatrist from King's College in London. He jumps up a lot as he talks, and he has an ironic awareness of how nervous his work makes people, especially men. He can identify: He had his children relatively late mid-thirties and fretted throughout his wife's pregnancies. Besides, he tells me, the fungibility of sperm is just plain disturbing. Reichenberg likes to tell people about all the different ways that environmental influences alter epigenetic patterns on sperm DNA. That old wives' tale about hot baths or tight underwear leading to male infertility? It's true. 'Usually when you give that talk, men sitting like that', he crossed his legs, 'go like this,' he said, opening them back up.
Dolores Malaspina, a short, elegantly coiffed psychiatrist who speaks in long, urgent paragraphs, has also spent her life worrying people about aging men's effects on their children's mental state, in fact, she could be said to be the dean of older-father alarmism. In 2001, Malaspina co-authored a ground-breaking study that concluded that men over 50 were three times more likely than men under 25 to father a schizophrenic child. Malaspina and her team derived that figure from a satisfyingly large population sample: 87,907 children born in Jerusalem between 1964 and 1976. (Luckily, the Israeli Ministry of Health recorded the ages of their fathers.) Malaspina argued that the odds of bearing a schizophrenic child moved up in a straight line as a man got older. Other researchers dismissed her findings, arguing that men who waited so long to have children were much more likely to be somewhat schizophrenic themselves. But Malaspina's conclusions have held up. A 2003 Danish study of 7,704 schizophrenics came up with results similar to Malaspina's, although it concluded that a man's chances of having a schizophrenic child jumped sharply at 55, rather than trending steadily upward after 35.
'I often hear from teachers that the children of much older fathers seem more likely to have learning or social issues,' she told me. Now, she said, she'd proved that they can be. Showing that aging men have as much to worry about as aging women, she told me, is a blow for equality between the sexes. 'It's a paradigm shift,' she said.
Study after study has shown that the children of older parents grow up in wealthier households, lead more stable lives, and do better in school.
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5. Yair Davidiy Blackballed by DNA Discussion Groups!
Blackball: Definition
1. A negative vote, especially one that blocks the admission of an applicant to an organization.
2. A small black ball used as a negative ballot.
tr.v. black-balled, black-ballbaing, black-balls
1. To vote against, especially to veto the admission of.
2. To shut out from social or commercial participation; ostracize or boycott.
blackball (v.)Â
also black-ball, "to exclude from a club by adverse votes," 1770, from black (adj.) + ball (n.1). Black balls of wood or ivory dropped into an urn during secret ballots.
Google gaggled references to Brit-Am Articles on its search engine for anything other than direct searches. We suspect political motives.
Ephraimite Leaders (as distinct from the rang and file who still like us)Â deleted us from their most favorite speakers list because we do not fit their agendas.
Members of An Academic group (Germanic-L) berated us and accused us of Racialist motives in our historical queries and observations even though we can show that they were actually projecting their own bigotry on our innocent selves.
DNA discussion lists to which we subscribe at present or did so in the past also in a few cases stopped posting our notes and suggestions. We are considered too maverick in our opinions to be tolerated.
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