--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alexandru_mg3" <alexandru_mg3@...>
wrote:
> What kind of 'global' migration of your ancestors could be indicated
> by this I ignore :) (-> maybe if 1 mil. people in the same region
> has the same Y-Chromozone this for sure can indicate something...but
> to applicate this to a single persons means nothing...)
This seems correct. But more generally: the more data you work with the
more useful the conclusions, and one type of data is the level of
detail checked in the DNA. No two people have exactly the same DNA of
course, and therefore it is possible to form a family tree of
mutations, so to speak.
For example it is not very interesting to say (as some people do now
that these tests are widely available) "I am R1a like many people in
central Eurasia" because R1a must have been founded many thousands of
years before any culture we know about in any detail and is also quite
common in many parts of Europe including the Balkans and Norway. But
what is more interesting is to look at the more recent splits within
R1a. If you do this, then the Norwegian R1a tends to show far less
diversity, seemingly because it represents a branching from the more
diverse inner Eurasian population, while the R1a in Britain tends to
look like a sub-branch of the Norwegian branch. Two migrations which
might explain this would be the original settlement of Scandinavia by
people from southern Russia, and the colonisation of parts of England
by Germanic peoples in the Dark Ages.
If the Scandiavian DNA (including not only R1a, but also other more
Eastern looking types like I1a) really represents that of the first
Indo European speakers, it is interesting that it is quite different
from typical Western European DNA, which is for example quite similar
to that of non Indo European speaking Basques.
I hope this manages to keep us reasonably close to the accepted subject
matter for this list.
Best Regards
Andrew