From: João Simões Lopes Filho
Message: 4621
Date: 2000-11-11
----- Original Message -----From: Piotr GasiorowskiSent: Friday, November 10, 2000 10:32 PMSubject: Re: [tied] Mesolithic European GenesEven 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 -----From: Christopher GwinnSent: Saturday, November 11, 2000 12:09 AMSubject: [tied] Mesolithic European GenesSo 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