[tied] Re: Finding agriculture's 'genetic signature'

--- In cybalist@..., Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer@...> wrote:

> Dear Richard and List,
>
> Why is that unlikely? To me, it is what I would have expected. The

men

> were quite probably those who moved in cases of real invasion, so

genetic

> traces originating from males ought to stand out more clearly that

traces

> watered down by the interference of local females.
>
> Jens

My point (below) is that one would not expect an area with a very
high proportion of Neolithic Y chromosomes compared to other areas to
have a very low proportion of Neolithic mitochondria compared to
other areas. As you imply, rankings would not be very highly
correlated because the mitochondrial differences may have been
filtered out by the movement of women, with the result that SE
Europe, North-Central, NW and NE Europe have pretty much the same
proportion of Neolithic mitochondria. However, low and high levels
of Neolithic mitochondria can still be clearly seen through the
statistical uncertainties and, presumably, the filtering.

An implication of Richards' paper is that the early Neolithic spread,
genetically, largely bypassed Greece.

A hypothesis that might fit the publicised facts is that the
populations of the European Eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor were
closely related. (Mitochondrial haplotype H is a very common type in
both the Neolithic and pre-Neolithic groups.) Perhaps they were
already characterised by the same Y chromsome types, and the study
has failed to distinguish longer-established European variants from
those that came in with farming. (A worse thought is that the Y
chromosome picture has been corrupted by movements from Europe to
Asia Minor.) As I am not sure how much access I would get for my $5
(+charges?) I haven't read Chikhi's paper. (2 days to download, or
only 2 days to look at anything better than screen dumps?)

>
> On Fri, 9 Aug 2002, richardwordingham wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@..., "matt6219" <matt62@...> wrote:
> > >
> > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2174437.stm
> >
> > > Contributions ranged from 15-30% in France and Germany, to 85-

100%

> > > in southeastern European countries such as Albania, Macedonia,

and

> > > Greece.
> >
> > This is strikingly different to (Richards 2000,
> > http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~macaulay/papers/richards_2000.pdf )

where

> > Table 5 shows a relatively _low_ Neolithic contribution (11% ±5%)
> > to
> > the Eastern Mediterranean part of Europe, but also records a

_high_

> > (20%) proportion of recent arrivals there, which he attributes
> > to  'the heavy historical gene flow between Greece and other
> > populations of the Eastern Mediterranean'.  While greater female
> > mobility may blur out some gradients in proportions, I don't see

how

> > it converts an area with a relatively high Neolithic proportion

(as

> > evidenced by stay-at-home men) to one with a relatively low

Neolithic

> > proportion (as evidenced by mobile women).
> >
> > Regards,
> > Richard.