From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 127
Date: 1999-10-29
----- Original Message -----From: markodegard@...Sent: Friday, October 29, 1999 3:47 PMSubject: [cybalist] IE & genesIn response to Marc Verhaegen:Genetic 'evidence' is always interesting. In the case of Y-chromosomes, they are charting paternal DNA, father-to-son-to-son (and never to daughter), vs. mitochondrial DNA which is inherited by men and women both from their mother exclusively.
This kind of DNA study can indeed prove ancestry, but all it proves is paternity, and not what language the father spoke.
I do not quite understand what the authors mean by 'correcting for the possible effects of continuous local gene flow', if the loci are in the Y chromosome. Horizontal gene transfer between males, or what? I also wonder if the study was sufficiently controlled, e.g. by including non-IE-speaking Europeans (Finns, Hungarians, Basques, etc.). The interpretation of genetic evidence may involve some circular argumentation or wishful thinking. If the 'separation time' one gets, e.g., for Turks and Germans turns out to be of the order of 5000 years, any investigator's first thought will be: 'Oops, there's something wrong either with my methods or with my assumptions.' When he gets the same time for Iranians and Irishmen, he'll think, 'Heureka, so it all happened in the Bronze Age, didn't it?' and feel very confident about his results because they confirm his expectations. And who are 'the most distant IE-speaking populations'? Don't Black Americans count as IE-speakers?Piotr