China Unearths Ancient Caucasian Tombs

The Australian/AFP ^ | 10-25-2004

[blam]

Here's an interesting book for you.

The Zuni Enigma

[blam]

"Fascinating! Nova ran a special more than a year ago on Caucasian mummies found in China...maybe Mongolia. I wonder if this latest find is connected?

Yes! The whole region was covered with Caucasian types.

[SunkenCiv]

I'm not holding my breath for a red-haired Emperor, but it is clear that the steppe superhighway was not a one-way street.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[ValerieUSA]

So what kind of redhead are you holding your breath for?

[blam]

"The Phoenicians (same general time frame as Hallstadt) who dominated much of the eastern med were also tall and red headed, and not that far away from where Abraham began, and ended up. They could be all the same people if some of Abrahams kin decided to go NE from southern Iraq about the same time he went NW."

Dr Steven Oppenheimer, Eden In The East, believes the original Sumerians were from Sundaland too!

[Flashman_at_the_charge]

Well I can't speak from SunkenCiv but I'd be quite happy with Angelica Bridges.

[Fedora]

Cool.

[SunkenCiv]

P': Mmmmm... let me thiiiiiiink...

George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent

[jslade]

Racists!

[Cold Heart]

There you go. Now I'll have to refer to my (Mongol-Turk-Finnish-Hungarian)-(Altai)-(Korean-American) friends.

And that kind of hate for rabbits can only come from discovering you have rabbit blood in your veins 3 generations past.

[Servant of the 9]

The lost Tribe of Israel?

More likely proto Kelts.
They were redheaded and wove European type woolen plaids.

They are also pretty close to the later Tocharian peoples, and tocharian was definitely a member of the European branch of the Indo-Hittite Family of languages.

SO9

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

For those of us who are not familiar with your posts, what's your theory?

[Servant of the 9]

Any connection to the Scots (or early Irish) with their woolen plaid Kilts?

The Scots and Irish were Kelts, but thousands of years later.

SO9

[SunkenCiv]

I'd give qualified agreement to that. For one thing, the Sumerians referred to themselves as "the black-headed people" (black-haired), which would be mighty odd if they were redheads.

We do need to keep in mind that ethnicity comes from lucky paths through the genealogical charts, and that ethnic groups with which we're familiar today weren't necessarily even around 12,000 years ago on the then-exposed continental shelves.

The gene for red hair is not now very widespread. Whether that means it is a recent mutation from a regional population which has in recent centuries been making its way through the world, or whether it means it was previously quite widespread and commonplace and through luck of the draw has vanished is difficult to prove.

Blood type is a good example of an analogous issue.

Type O is often thought to be the oldest, possibly because it is very very common among Native Americans (something like 99 per cent) which is presumed to have been an isolated population for over 10,000 years. I don't think it was an isolated population, at all, but trying to use that commonplace as an argument against contact is pretty weak for other reasons exceeding the scope, blah blah blah...

But anyway, the genes for blood type reside on chromosome 9 (this was in Matt Ridley's "Genome") and the genetic sequence that produces type A are nearly the same as type O (which produces no distinctive protein) -- type O is the same sequence as type A, with the first base pair (or maybe it was the first "word" of three base pairs; I'm too lazy to look) missing. Type A and type B are very similar, but produce different proteins. Type B is about 15 per cent of the population; type A is 40 per cent, as is type O; type AB is the result of having the A and B coding on the same chromosome and is about 5 per cent of the population.

And there's more:

More Biochemistry and "Bombay phenotype"
by Robert J. Huskey

An interesting situation arises when an individual is not able to make the "H" antigen. Such a person cannot produce the "H" antigen and even if the "A" or "B" enzymes are present, cannot make "A" or "B" antigen since there is no precursor for the antigens to act upon. An individual who cannot produce the "H" antigen will appear to have blood type "O" since this blood type is a negative category (not-A, not-B, not-A and not-B). This was first documented in Bombay and has become known as the Bombay phenotype and has been exploited on the popular soap opera General Hospital.

Type A seems to be the original bloodtype, producing the others through mutation. The exceptions may be the MN bloodtype system, which comes from the Indian subcontinent, and are analogous (but not the same thing as) to A & B (codominant), AFAIK (it's often difficult to find anything about the MN system, which is in a very small number of people worldwide). Strange, isn't it, that a completely unrelated bloodtype system exists (still exists? recently sprang into existence?) after centuries, even millennia, of contact, intermarriage, and commerce, all over the world?

---

mmm, redheads...

George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent

[daguberment]

....where an estimated 1000 tombs await excavation..

I'm sure the DNC has already got these folks registered in Ohio.

[ValerieUSA]

I have the optimistic blood type.