<< News >> Genetics Reveal Europe Is One Big Family
Submitted by coldrum on Tuesday, 26 November 2013 Page Views: 1958
Other ArchaeologyFrom Ireland to Turkey, Europeans are all related, sharing a link with ancestors who were alive just 1,000 years ago, according to a new genetic study.Research by scientists in California is further evidence that neat distinctions between various European peoples are largely artificial and that they are all one big family — although not necessarily a happy one.
In recent years, the science of genetics has been combined with archaeology and linguistic studies to help answer the eternal question of where we come from. The study, co-authored by Graham Coop, a professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, and Peter Ralph, professor at the University of Southern California, tested the relatedness among Europeans going back to about 3,000 years ago. To do this, they compared genetic sequences from more than 2,000 individuals by using data from the Population Reference Sample (POPRES) database, a resource used by scientists for researching population and genetics.
Using large samples, Coop and Ralph could see that distant sharing of blocks of DNA, or "long genomic segments", could be detected. By analyzing these shared blocks of DNA in individuals spread across Europe, they were also able to trace them back and calculate how long ago they shared an ancestor.
A separate study, based on DNA recovered from ancient skeletons, revealed last month that the genetic makeup of modern Europe was established by a wave of newcomers to the continent 6,500 years ago, more recently than previously thought.
Report the study authors:
"We find that a pair of modern Europeans living in neighboring populations share around 2–12 genetic common ancestors from the last 1,500 years, and upwards of 100 genetic ancestors from the previous 1,000 years. These numbers drop off exponentially with geographic distance, but since these genetic ancestors are a tiny fraction of common genealogical ancestors, individuals from opposite ends of Europe are still expected to share millions of common genealogical ancestors over the last 1,000 years".
Coop cautions, however, that genetic study can only afford a partial understanding of human history. He states that genetic research must work in tandem with archaeological and linguistic research to develop a more complete picture of the dynamics of culture and human society in the past.
Recent research has focused on the shared legacy of Europeans in contrast to earlier theories that focused on differences. But persistent ideas about racial differences continue to be a source of prejudice and violent crime.
Neither should the latest research provide any comfort to racially motivated ultra-nationalists who would seek to oppose non-European immigration to a mythically homogenous Europe. It is tempting to think that further proof of shared ancestry might contribute to a new era of brotherly — or at least cousinly — love among the peoples of Europe in the face of the challenges that confront them.
“There have been many studies that we’ve been involved in showing that groups which are fighting each other furiously all the time are actually extremely closely genetically related,” Mark A. Jobling, a geneticist at England’s Leicester University, told The Associated Press.
“So for example Jewish and non-Jewish populations in the Middle East are extremely similar genetically, but to tell them they are genetic close relatives isn’t going to change their ways.”
Thanks to coldrum for these links. For more about this finding, see -
http://popular-archaeology.com
and
http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com.
Note: "What's remarkable about this is how closely everyone is related to each other. On a genealogical level, everyone in Europe traces back to nearly the same set of ancestors only a thousand years ago,"
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