I would like to share with a very interesting map that I found on one of Polish history forums. It depicts the percentages of Y-chromosome haplotypes among European indigenous (non-immigrant) male population. It is clearly visible how mixed Europeans are and that racial and national classifications are artificial.

I would love to see a similar map for other continents, including Asia. I bet that the results would be similar and many myths would be destroyed also here.

Enjoy!



The haplogoups (or haplotypes) are fundamental mutations that endured inside the Y-chromosome. They are useful in determining what ethnic groups contributed to modern European genetic stock.

Here are some conclusions that we came to:
R1 haplotype is identified with pre-Indo-European indigenous population. It split relatively recently onto two subgroups - northeastern R1a and northwestern R1b.
J haplotype is identified with indigenous pre-Indo-European population of Southern Europe and Middle East.
N haplotype is identified with Ugro-finnic stock.
I haplotype is identified with Indo-Europeans (Kurgan cultures) who at one point invaded Europe from the Pontic steppe where they originated and assimilated culturally its population.
ExE3b is most likely a Turkic/Central Asian haplotype.
E3b is thought to have originated in North Africa.

There's one (several, in fact, I think) in this thread.
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=14491

Francois

Thought I like to point out, the red and yellow both belonging to R1 group have the same origin, and only split recently.

And in northern part of this map, it does seem like most European do come from the same place.

I am just amazed that the I haplotype takes almost 1/5 in most regions. amazing. they sure spread beyond the recorded invaded areas.

I is indentified with the aggresive, militarized Kurgan culture, i.e. Indoeuropeans. I see three fascinating facts. First - the North African E3b haplotype is extremely rare in Spain. This indicates that the Gibraltar strait was a blockade for the gene flow even despite the Berber conquet of Spain. The second one is Turkey. We see how tiny is the contribution of the Central Asian haplotype. This smashes Turkish nationalist claims that they are original descendants of Sedjucks and underlines the historical truth - the majority of modern Turks are turkified Greeks and other indigenous inhabitantts of Asia Minor. See how the haplotypes of modern Turks are similar to those of Greeks and Syrians.
Lat, but not the least is that Europeans are mostly descendants of paleolitic populations, bearers of R1 type haplotypes.

though it is clear that Turkish due to their position as the cross road is way more diverse than any other regions as well.

Not to nationalists unfortunately.

Honestly, I thought that Poles would be much more diversed due to position just in the middle of Europe and the fact that Poland is a flat country, which makes it perfect for invasions.

Yarovit,

Props for trying to introduce genetics here. DNA can be a very useful investigative tool when it comes to history. However, you seem to have made a bit of a mess of the facts. If I may...





Yes, native Europeans are mixed, but they're usually mixed with other Europeans. Haplogroups such as R1, I, J, etc. are of West Eurasian origin. West Eurasian is a new term for Caucasian, White, etc.

Also, there are many problems when using Y-DNA haplogroups to sort so called "races". It can be done to a point, but only in the right context, because here we're talking about ONE gene carried by males only. And as we all know, humans carry many genes that make us what we are, and females also contribute.

Thousands of genetic markers carried by both males and females are needed to sort humans into "races", or rather, more correctly, continental genetic clusters.





Not really. Many gross generalizations have been made in recent years about these Y-DNA haplogroups, even by qualified scientists. These should be ignored.




Actually, R1a is the haplogroup tied to the Kurgan culture. But that might not be correct anyway, so it desn't matter.

Latest data tells us the following...

R1a, R1b and I1 have been in Europe since the Paleolithic, and were carried by very robust looking proto-West Eurasians (Early Modern Humans, in scientifc terms). J, E, G and F came to Europe later during the Neolithic. These people were also West Eurasians, but later "models" from the Near East, and introduced agriculture to southern Europe.

So basically, modern native Europeans are largely of Paleolithic European origin, with some Neolithic Near Eastern admixture, mainly in the south.

There is also some Uralic admixture in the north, linked to haplogroup N dispersals. But due to heavy mixing for thousands of years, many of the people carrying N in Europe now look very Scandinavian, like in Finland and Sweden. That's because they carry haplogroup N, but the rest of their genes are of European not Uralic origin.





A good example of how historical facts can be corrected with science. But obviously this has to be done very carefully...

Poles are actually one of the most homogenous nations in Europe. The initial ethnogenesis of the nation, which saw the largely Paleolithic derived (R1 and I) locals form into Slavs and then Poles, has not changed much in over 3000 years.

New lineages were introduced over that time, like N from the Baltics, but their impact has been minimal. Most of the admixture has been rather insignificant, or very similar to the original Poles anyway. In fact, there has been a whole report written on this topic, titled "Homogeneity and distinctiveness of Polish paternal lineages revealed by Y chromosome microsatellite haplotype analysis".

http://www.springerlink.com/content/wnm26nuct3w4eug9

Unfortunetly, many people will try to use this sort of data to fit various agendas. Nationalists and racists will point out how different human populations are, even at nation state level. At the same time, anti-Nationalists will try and show how mixed they are. In the end, none of this helps in our understanding of human genetics, biological diversity and history.

But luckily, DNA tests are now becoming very detailed and thus their results less prone to wild misrepresentations. The picture we're getting is that humans can be divided into different groups, depending on the markers used, and some of these groups do approximate our old notion of "races". However, we have to also understand that all humans are extremely closely related. In fact, many large regions, like Europe, are practically inbred when compared to other animal populations.

Relying on haplogroups to make broad generalizations is problematic, especially in border regions.

I can give an example in America.

Most of us know Barack Obama is running for President in America. His mother was Irish-America and his father from Kenya.

Lets say his father is A Y Haplogroup.

Barack could be have an H Mtdna Haplogroup (common in Western Europe) and a A Y Haplogroup.

Imagine he had one son and one daughter. They both marry people of Western European decent.


The daughter could have a grandchild that has a H MtDNA like her, who is 1/4 black and might may or may not appear "white".

The son could have a grandson with a common European Mtdna haplogroup like J and would have an A Y Haplogroup.


So after three generations if you did genetic testing...it could be all or most of the Grandchildren could appear "white" as white as an Italian, Spaniard, or Greek.

However, if you took a genetic test you would say some were European, even Western European and some are East African.


LOL...from the same family.

I'm sure this happens in Central Asia all the time and even in Southern Europe, Russia, and Middle East.


The best thing to do is Admixture tests of many SNPs so you can get some type of statistical average of continental ancestry.

About 20% of African American men have a European Y Haplogroup and many of them may not look European at all, because they only had that one pure white ancestor and most of their other ancestors were predominately African in decent. So you can't tell by looking most of the time.

If you tested them and did not look at them you would say...20% of these people are white, likely from Western Europe.

Then you see the test subject and reality is, for most of them the majority of their ancestry is West African, could be they are not even 10% European.

All the report shows is Poles are quite inbred and started from a small source population and likely many of them were Slavinized Germanic people.

It does not mean they are so genetically "different" or unique.

It means the initial poll of people who are Poles was small. Eastern Europe, for most of its history had a very small population compared to the West, for whatever reason (not speaking about the Southeast, but the Northeast near the Baltic).

Europeans are quite inbred because they were the last continent settled after the Ice Age...the older the human population on a continent the more genetically diverse.

Asians are more diverse than Europeans, Africans more than Asians...this makes perfect sense as only a subset of the population left to found another.

I don't see anyone here saying that Poles are unique. What I said was that Poles were a homogenous population, and relatively distinctive on the Y-chromosome.

This homogenity largely remains when we look at genome wide data from both sexes, although the disinctivness disappears somewhat, ie...



Price et al. (2007) Discerning the ancestry of European Americans in genetic association studies

It seems that Poles group closely with other Northern Europeans from Swedan to Britian (Germanic and Celts).

I also saw a plot once that showed some distance between Poles and Russian. I was somewhat surprised, I will try to find it, but maybe that is due to intermarriage of Slavic males Russians with Finnic and Asiatic females and Polish males with Germanic females...not sure...but I remember there is some divergence between Slavs that one would not expect due to the fact they separated so late...whereas Germanic peoples groups pretty closely (although they separated considerably earlier). This was not based on Y Haplgroups but various SNPs admixture tests.

Poles are probably closest to these populations out of all the Slavs, but all Northern Europeans cluster together. Here's a diagram from another study that includes Ukranians, and even Hungarians, in the Northern zone.



Seldin et al. (2006) European Population Substructure: Clustering of Northern and Southern Populations



In terms of Y-DNA Russians are a bit closer to Germanic populations, but that's probably because of the early spread of I1a via Scandinavia into northern Russian Finnic areas. Some say it's because of later "Viking" admixture but that's not true IMO.

On the other hand, Poles are closer to Germanic groups in terms of mtDNA. But again, this is due to events before the formation of the Germanic group, and not due to Slavic/Germanic intermixture.

Generally speaking Poles and Russians are very similar, but the big difference is that Russians have much more Finnic admixture. And Finns, although largely Northern European too, are one of the genetic outliers from that group in terms of both Y-DNA and genome wide markers. This is most probably because of Uralic influence.

So they always end up somewhere near the Northerners, but not quite among them. Same goes for many Russians (not included in the following plot).



Bauchet et al. (2007) Measuring European Population Stratification with Microarray Genotype Data

Huh...not due to slavic/german intermixture...so the fact Vikings lived in Russia, and lived all along the Baltic from modern Germany all the way to Estonia for hundreds of years (including a good chunk of the Northern part of modern day Poland) led to no intermixture? I find that very very difficult to believe. I'm not talking about the elite levels, there was obviously intermixture in the Polish-Lithiuanian crown with Germans and Russians...

I'm talking about the peasants. It is not unusual for men of means (in this case Germans) to move to an area and marry a local woman and raise the kids in the father's culture. I woudl assume most of these types were relocated back to Germany after WWII or to a Russian Siberian Gulag, but I'm certain they existed. So I'm saying that modern day Poland was ethnically cleansed...still I wonder how many Poles of means married local women and raised the children as Poles?

As far as the Kieven-Rus Vikings leading to some Germanic ancestry in Russia, yes that is likely. Although they were supposed to be a small elite group it does not take many. As I described above. The elite at that time had large families, but more importantly they had the resources to make sure more of their children survivied...it does seem though that the Vikings eventually adopted the Slavic culture and did not make that Slavs adopt their culture...so I'm guessing this was not an issue of conquest, but it is as the history books suggest...they were invited and the rule was relatively amicable.

I agree with you about the Finnic populations in Russia...they were mostly absorbed into the Slavic population..but for where they were in very large concentration (as in Estonia).

Well, all the data I've seen on Y-DNA haplotypes and mtDNA points to ancient links between the Slavs and Germans, as opposed to more recent admixture.

Some recent admixture did take place, but it appears this is not the prime reason for the close relationship in terms of the genome between the two groups.




Most of the Polonisation of Germans in Poland took place in the cities, which alwas had a relatively small population compared to the rural areas. In the country, many Germans who came to Poland 200 years ago still spoke German in 1939.




Well, I could be somewhat wrong about Russia, but in any case I think the impact of the Vikings on the Slavs there in terms of admixture is often overestimated. First of all, many of the "Vikings" going deep into Russia were Fenno-Balto-Slavs anyway. Secondly, the so called Germanic Y-DNA marker I1a seems to have been around in northern Russia before the Vikings existed.

Which brings me to the presence of Vikings in northern Poland. Not sure if you're aware but the Poles and Pomeranians had very capable fleets themselves, and often raided Scandinavia. The northern Polish town of Wolin was a great "Viking" center, except that most of the "Vikings" there were Slavs. Poles also even took part in the Viking invasion of Britain, because they had strong links with the Danish crown.

So I'm really not sure I can agree with a strong Scandinavian presence in Northern Poland. I'm sure Swedes and Danes regularly visited Wolin, and many were probably stationed there for a while. But I have doubts they had a free hand in the region.

And it seems that recent genetic studies back up my argument, because they show male lineages spreading from what is modern Poland into Scandinavia about 5000 years ago, and not the other way around...






Yes, Russians in the north are often just Slavinized Finns, and quite different from their western/central countrymen, who closely resemble Poles genetically.

Were the Poles "Vikings" or where they slaves of Germanic groups like the Celts were in Iceland and the northern part of the UK? I have never heard of large amounts of "Slavic" Vikings...do you know where I can read more about this?

I guess the theory of ancient admixture was that during the last Ice Age, most people living in Europe (they may not have even been European speakers at the time) moved South...as the ice receded people moved from their Refugium back North. I would think the Finns moved into the area first...I'm guessing the Slavo-Baltics moved from near Southern Russia and Ukrainian step region...likely bringing a lot of R1a with them.

In Western Europe it is thought the Celts came from Iberia and Southern France into the British Isles and Ireland after the Ice Age. I would expect something similar happened in Eastern Europe.

At this time I guess there was some type of Balo-Slavic super group, could have even been a Germanic-Balto-Slavic super group...no one knows for sure...and likely never will, as people were not literate at the time.


It is interesting that despite the cline East to West in Europe, as you pointed out the biggest one is North to South....you can see this in morphology too, there is much less variation in appearance from West to East than there is from North to South in Europe...you will likely confuse Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, or even English people much more often then you would confuse swedes or Irish with Spaniards, Italians, or Greeks.

I would imagine at some point scattered along Northern Europe were semi-related groups of peopel who had lived there for a very long time, INdo-European speaking or not (likely but not definate)...

Well, Poles weren't Vikings per se, but there was an alliance between Poland and Denmark at the time and so many Poles fought for Vikings. Not as slaves, but as hired soldiers. Like I said, the Scandinavians never ruled any part of Poland, which had a very strong military at the time.

Here's an interesting link...

http://www.jomsborg.pl/korzenie_en.html




Simply, the vast majority of Northern Europeans derive from the same source. Even the Finns do to a large degree.

The Celts didn't come from the Iberian Ice Age refuge, as has recently been established. There was always something fishy in the fact that R1b showed the greatest diversity in Eastern Europe, and since it's been proven to be a very young lineage, we now know why. So even R1b came from Eastern Europe rather recently, as did I1 and R1a.

R1b was the first lineage to shoot off across the continent once the ice melted, and that's why the Irish are relative outliers from the Central, Northern and Eastern Europeans when something like 300,000 markers are sampled. Of course, the Finns are outliers because of either a genetic bottleneck or Uralic admixture, or both.

And it's no accident that the Basques and Iberians often pull towards the Irish in genome wide studies, like the ones shown above, because they have a lot of that early Northern R1b admixture too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_people#Genetics


This could be true. It might be that the Basque are just the last language speakers of Basque, not that they are generally unique or a special population, it could be that their relatives just were forced to or voluntarily adopted Romance, Celtic, and Germanic languages...where as the Basque did not due to their isolation and protection in the Pyrenees mountains.

People often claim Basque are the last pre-IndoEuropean European population to survive in Europe, but I think they are just the last to maintain a pre-IndoEuropean language. (Not speaking about Urilic speakers as they came later).