Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update (12 January, 2014, 11 Shevet 5774)
Contents:
1. Different Subclades of R1b According to Region
2. Towards an End to DNA Racial Dogma? by Yair Davidiy
3. Near Eastern origin of R1a in Ashkenazi Levites
4. Environmental Influence on Genes Proven at Mount Carmel, Israel.
5. Genetic make-up of Europe
6. Australian Aborigines and Black Africans in South America in Ancient Times
7. DNA for Laymen and Beginners. A Good Source
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1. Different Subclades of R1b According to Region
http://www.city-data.com/forum/europe/1761134-why-do-so-many-people-british-102.html#ixzz2nXxmazc4
There are different R1b subclades, they're not all exactly the same as you imply. Remember R1b subclades are spread out all over Europe. So for you to say that the R1b subclade which is commonest in Spain to be exactly the same as the one in Britain or in Friesland is wrong. There is a specific reason why they were divided into subclades. For most of western Britain and Ireland, it is the R1b-L21 which is more common. In Spain, it's the R1b-S116 I believe which is much more common, in the Netherlands, parts of Germany, southern England it's the R1b-U106. That's not zonification, but facts!
Below is a map of R L21. R-L21 reaches its peak in Ireland but it didn't originate from there. It is thought to have originated in Northern France where it shows the highest diversity.
Read more: http://www.city-data.com/forum/europe/1761134-why-do-so-many-people-british-102.html#ixzz2nXyECXem
http://www.city-data.com/forum/europe/1761134-why-do-so-many-people-british-102.html
The R-Z18 and Subgroups Haplogroup Project- Background
http://www.familytreedna.com/public/r-z18/
Progress on discovering the public R1b-L21 phylogenetic tree has been
incremental but steady over the last couple of years.
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2. Towards an End to DNA Racial Dogma? by Yair Davidiy
"Where there are no men strive to be one" (Hilell, Wisdom of the Fathers)
I know very little about DNA, Mathematics, statistics, or science in general. I try to read the popular reports put out for people like myself and even then I often do not understand them.
Even so, there are concepts such Reading Comprehension, and Reading between the Lines, and the Gut Feeling of a Researcher in other fields.
I have been waiting for some maverick scientists to come out in the open and say what I am about to say.
Maybe they have but Yours Truly has not yet merited to see it.
In short R1b and other major DNA haplogroups and their subclades have undergone changes from each other. This is what differentiates them. The time span for these modifications is often given in thousands of years.
It could be that there are DNA researchers who feel that the Science in many cases should reduce the time span to much much, less, to hundreds of years instead of thousands. The problem with this is that it does not really leave enough time for the DNA markers to be passed on only through reproduction.
It would requite multiple identical mutations in the same areas to have occurred at one and the same time.
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3. Near Eastern origin of R1a in Ashkenazi Levites
http://dienekes.blogspot.co.il/2013/12/near-eastern-origin-of-r1a-in-ashkenazi.html
This paper is a nice cautionary tale. R1a is very common in eastern Europe and less so in the Near East. Ashkenazi Jews lived in Eastern Europe, and one group of them (Levites) had high frequency of R1a than the rest. It seemed that an eastern European patrilineage had inserted itself into the Ashkenazi Levite gene pool.
It turns out that this is not the case. The specific clade R-M582 to which Ashkenazi Levites (and other non-Levites) belong to is absent in eastern Europeans and present in non-Jewish Near Easterners, making it more likely that Jews did not pick it up from eastern Europeans, but rather from some Near Eastern population. A look at the table of frequencies suggests to me an Iranic source, but I doubt that modern populations will ever allow a full resolution of such questions.
Nature Communications 4, Article number: 2928 doi:10.1038/ncomms3928
Phylogenetic applications of whole Y-chromosome sequences and the Near Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Levites
Siiri Rootsi et al.
Previous Y-chromosome studies have demonstrated that Ashkenazi Levites, members of a paternally inherited Jewish priestly caste, display a distinctive founder event within R1a, the most prevalent Y-chromosome haplogroup in Eastern Europe. Here we report the analysis of 16 whole R1 sequences and show that a set of 19 unique nucleotide substitutions defines the Ashkenazi R1a lineage. While our survey of one of these, M582, in 2,834 R1a samples reveals its absence in 922 Eastern Europeans, we show it is present in all sampled R1a Ashkenazi Levites, as well as in 33.8% of other R1a Ashkenazi Jewish males and 5.9% of 303 R1a Near Eastern males, where it shows considerably higher diversity. Moreover, the M582 lineage also occurs at low frequencies in non-Ashkenazi Jewish populations. In contrast to the previously suggested Eastern European origin for Ashkenazi Levites, the current data are indicative of a geographic source of the Levite founder lineage in the Near East and its likely presence among pre-Diaspora Hebrews.
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4. Environmental Influence on Genes Proven at Mount Carmel, Israel.
Climate variations drive gene changes in 'Evolution Canyon'
http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/climate-variations-drive-gene-changes-in-evolution-canyon/
The two slopes of Evolution Canyon, which is positioned at Mount Carmel, Israel, are approximately 200 yards apart at their bases.
Science Recorder | James Fluere | Thursday, December 12, 2013
According to a news release from Virginia Tech, climate variations drive gene alterations. Researchers with the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech examining fruit flies that reside on opposite slopes of an unusual natural environment called "Evolution Canyon" reveal that even with migration, cross-breeding, and occasionally the annihilation of the populations, the driving force in the gene pool is to a great extent the environment...
Read more: http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/climate-variations-drive-gene-changes-in-evolution-canyon/#ixzz2oaTsiXKf
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17907527/R1b-L21_Descendency_Tree.jpg
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5. Genetic make-up of Europe
Based on the Distribution of Y-chromosome DNA in Europe, here is a list of countries based on their ethnic percentages.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/25106-Genetic-make-up-of-Europe
Celts
 There isn't a homogeneous Celtic ethnicity. Pre-Roman Europe had a strong Celtic culture ranging from Central Europe to the British Isles and Iberia. Celtic people can be divided in these rough categories, each associated with a subclade of R1b-S116+ (subclade markers are in brackets) :
 - Rhine-Alpine-Italic Celts (S28)
 - Scottish Celts (M222)
 - Irish Celts (M37)
 - Atlantic Celts* (M167)
 - Basques (M65, M153)
 * Northern Iberia, Western France, Cornwall, Wales.
Germans
 What people call "Germanic ethnicity" is in fact a mixture of northern continental R1b (S116-, S21+) and I haplogroups (I1 + I2b). In Scandinavia and East Germany, the inclusion of a strong Slavic component (R1a) make them a slightly different ethnicity from the English, Dutch, Belgian or West Germans.
Slavs
 The original Slavic (or Aryan or Kurgan) people belonged to haplogroup R1a. This haplogroup is also common in Central Asia, Iran and India, thanks to the great Indo-Aryan migrations.
Greco-Romans
 The Ancient Greeks were an admixture of European and Near-Eastern people. The paternal side shows a strong Near-Eastern component, making modern Greek Y-DNA closer to Turkish, Syrian, Lebanese and even Iraqi one than to that of Western or Northern Europe. According to Y-DNA frequencies observed in Europe, Southern Italy and the Balkans were heavily settled by the Ancient Greeks, or their Neolithic ancestors that did not yet call themselves "Greeks".
 We are still unsure about the original Y-DNA types of the Romans, but due to the proximity of the Greek colonies, and the fact that Etruscans were also of Near Eastern origins, it is likely that the Romans were an admixture of Near-Eastern J2, G2 and E3b with the native Italo-Celtic R1b. As the Romans played a major role in spreading Near-Eastern haplogroups in and north of the Alps, I will refer to the J2-G2-E3b admixture as Greco-Roman, and the Italic R1b just as "Celtic". Haplogroup G2 correlates strongly with the spread of J2 with a ratio of 1 G2 for 3 J2 in average, suggesting that these haplogroups spread together from Anatolia, while the European E3b had a different origin (probably in the Balkans).
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6. Australian Aborigines and Black Africans in South America in Ancient Times
Recently there has been press about Polynesian/Australia Aboriginal DNA in south americaÂ
http://firstlook.pnas.org/polynesian-dna-found-in-ancient-native-american-bones/
Essentially it suggest that the first Americans were not the American Indians. Rather two groups. One Black Africans who crossed by accident from Africa to Brazil. The other Australian Aborigines who crossed by boat from Australia. Together they merged and produced a race that dominated South America until the present day American Indians arrived between 7,000 and 9,000 years ago and wiped them out.
Polynesian DNA found in old Native American bones
http://firstlook.pnas.org/polynesian-dna-found-in-ancient-native-american-bones/
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7. DNA for Laymen and Beginners. AÂ Good Source
Leaning Center
Category - Paternal Ancestry (Y-DNA)
http://www.genebase.com/learning/category/1
