DNA Study Traces Ancient Ancestry Of Europeans

CNN.com ^ | 11-10-2000

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Yes but, (you knew that there was a "yes but" coming didn't you) Considering that the second migration supposedly took over culturally and linguistically I would have expected the number trend in the other direction.

Generally speaking when a more advanced society moves in and takes over the guys that are already there are reduced in number and the females become the property of the migrating males.

It is possible that this was one of those occasions where that didn't happen. Or that there weren't enough people in the second migration to genetically overwhelm the natives.

Still if the Indo-Europeans took over so completely that Basque was no longer used except in a small region I would think that this could not have been the case.

Otherwise the languages would have combined and (IIRC) they did not.

Of course if Basque was not the commonly used language then my speculation falls flat and bloodies its nose.

[Styria]

I would go with 80% being sons of Japheth and the rest being from Semites or Hamites.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[thedugal]

The "migrants" from the middle east were the Celts.

[ValerieUSA]

The twins Jacob and Esau were two different races of people, according to their descriptions.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

~grin. I try to keep it "G Rated"

[ASA Vet]

Only 3 supernaturalist highjacking attempts on this science thread (so far)
and none of them were successful.

Thanks blam for the continued education.

[squarebarb]

They don't communicate by clicking. There are click noises in the language. And it seems to me this is not primitive but advanced.

[cyborg]

At the genetic level race takes on a different meaning than 'appearance' ID.

[Mike Darancette]

Basque has no known relatives. Surely some remnant group would have been found by now speaking a related language.

As with the Basque language, the Basques are generally considered to be an isolated ethnic group.

[A. Pole]

What's the current consensus academic thinking on Anatolian agriculturalists versus steppe horsemen as the origins of the Indo-Europeans?

I am not sure, but could it be that steppe horsemen were later, as Indo-Europeans moved to north-east from Anatolia?

[elli1]

Really interesting article, esp. this little goodie:

One probable scenario is that click speaking came about because it helped people to communicate while hunting – animals are known to be scared by human language but take little notice of click speaking.

[marktwain]

The guy's name was "Noah", and it was more like 4000 years ago, or so I've heard.

Well, I guess we could make it fit if you assume that Noah's wife was a little indiscrete, and either Shem, Ham or Japeth were from a different father. Then 75% of the genes would likely have been from Noah and 25% from the unknown redhead.

It's close enough that I am sure that a little "Creative" work can make it fit ;-)

[squarebarb]

I realize this. They are all round-headed. But could they not have been conquered by some other ethnic group and lost an aboriginal Indo-European language? They are otherwise very Indo-European looking.

[satchmodog9]

read later

[A. Pole]

Well the other Middle Easterners - Semites came from the area of Yemen and south of Saudi Arabia. There were various peoples in the Middle East - Egyptian, Sumerians and Indo-Europeans in Asia Minor/Anatolia and Persia.

[A. Pole]

Generally speaking when a more advanced society moves in and takes over the guys that are already there are reduced in number and the females become the property of the migrating males.

No, it is rather a fluke caused by the one sex inheritance of Y chromosome (or mitochondria in case of women). To transmit Y chr. you need to have uninterrupted succession of male descendents - you get only daughters and your Y is gone (even if your other genes pass through). To transmit mitochondrial genetic material you need to have uninterrupted succession of women.

So after number of generations you have one prevailing mitochondrial female ancestor and one prevailing Y male ancestor (in two different places and generations).

[A. Pole]

The "migrants" from the middle east were the Celts.

Celts indeed lived in Galatia (like Gaulia) in Asia Minor.

[ValerieUSA]

At the genetic level, I think early man contained a lot more info in his DNA than we do, allowing interbreeding within families to go on without much risk, but sprouting new tribes of people with similarities that they didn't share with their cousins - and then migrated in different directions. There's no spat like a family spat, nor split.
What we call races are refinements from the vast pool of traits contained within our earliest common father.
Esau's people went their separate way from Jacob's settlement.