Even the genes themselves may yield a
highly inconsistent mix of evidence of ancient demographic events. The histories
of male and female migration patterns as reflected in the cladograms of
paternally and maternally inherited haplotypes need not be the same and,
indeed, often prove to be different.
Also the assumption that mtDNA and
Y-chromosome polymorphisms are on the whole neutral with respect to natural
selection is at least partly false. This means that any selective sweeps
removing the original variation may seriously affect our palaeodemographic
reconstructions.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 6:30
AM
Subject: [tied] Re: Genetic Tree for
Language Matching
I personally don't think the Underhill study is much help
with historical linguistics, because I think genes and language are a bit of a
false mix and one that has been misused time and time again, based on what is
always the "latest" genetic science.