From: lsroute66@...
Message: 10529
Date: 2001-10-22
--- In cybalist@..., jdcroft@... wrote:
<<Against Renfrew's "Demic Expansionism" there is also the evidence
of modern genetic studies as a part of the Human Genome Diversity
Project, which shows only 10-20% of the modern European Genome passed
from SW Asia with farming. The other 80% comes from the Mesolitic
and Upper Paleolithic!>>
First, in 1987, Renfrew was using Ammerman & Cavalli-Sforza (1984)
"The Neolithic Transition and the Genetics of Populations in Europe."
In that work, Cavalli-Sforza proposed that the European genetic
population structure was determined mainly by population dispersal in
the Neolithic, by a process called in that book "Neolithic demic
diffusion." This was the most authoritative work at the time. And
it was based on inheritable traits rather than DNA. But it never
yielded more than a 30% Near East ancestry, on a downward gradient
towards NW Europe.
Since that time, Renfrew has said that the spread of IE languages
through assimilation could work as well. This would jive with current
archaeology, which shows a gradual assimilation of mesolithic
cultures into the neolithic fold in many instances across Europe.
A recent 10-20% average for "Near East" genes is e.g. given in "The
Genetic Legacy of Paleolithic Homo sapiens sapiens in Extant
Europeans: A Y Chromosome Perspective", Semino, Passarino, Oefner,
Lin, Arbuzova, Beckman, Benedictis, Francalacci, Kouvatsi, Limborska,
Marciki, Mika, Primorac, Santachiara-Benerecetti, Cavalli-Sforza,
Underhill, published in SCIENCE (November 10, 2000).
It should be noted that that gene occurs throughout Europe. This is
in marked contrast to the so-called "Kurgan gene" (Haplotype Eu19)
identified in the study. It almost completely disappears just west of
Poland and Hungary. Though the study hypothesizes the gene
originated in eastern Europe, it actually has "substantial frequency
in India and Pakistan as well as in Central Asia."
Because this "Kurgan gene" is so recent and because its range matches
"satem" so well, I'd suspect that it represents instead Indo-Iranian
speaking peoples migrating westward. The geneticists appear to be
unaware of the satem divison and the evidence of the depopulation of
east central Europe that occurred about 600BC (mandating no in locis
genetics) and demarks just about where the gene ends.
Regards, Steve Long