Even if we excuse the rough sampling (I
happen to know that all the Polish material used in the research came from a
single town in SE Poland) and the confidence the authors show in the
molecular clock (and which many experts don't share), it's all about the descent
of (95%) European Y chromosome lineages, not of the *Europeans* (BTW, it
doesn't concern European *women* at all). I'd be reluctant to draw *any*
historical conclusions from the study.
The identification of the "ten fathers"
with actual mass migrations is crazy. Here's an authentic example to illustrate
what I mean. My Y chromosome DNA comes from just one of my four
great-grandfathers; he came from what is now the Czech Republic. The other
three, whose overall contribution to my genetic constitution is three times as
great, were Polish; so were all my greatgrandmothers. This means that my Y
chromosome tells just a tiny fragment of the entire story of my genome, and not
even a particularly important one.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, November 11, 2000 12:09 AM
Subject: [tied] Mesolithic European Genes
So what do we make of this article?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1015000/1015670.stm
And
how does that counter those odd articles from late last year that
claimed
that Ireland carried more Mesolithic genes than other Europeans?
-C.
Gwinn