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  • From: Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] OT for Don, or anyone, really
  • Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2006 14:30:02 -0700

SISU! wrote:

I don't even remember learning about the Thracians or the
Scythians....but I do recall the Huns, the Aryans, the Mongols, etc.


These peoples are at the edge of history, and we need to rely on other tools like archaeology. Now there's a new tool in genetics. From studies of the y-chromosome, geneticists have found only two patrilineages in Northern Europe. One mutation is specifically associated with Indo-Europeans, perhaps the so-called "Satem" languages especially (like Slavic), and the other group (lacking the mutation) is more generally northern and western. But even though the Irish traditionally speak an Indo-European language, 70% of men are from the more general non-IE patrilineage.

To learn more specifically about how Celts and Scandivanians differ from Finns and Hungarians, two other predominantly non-IE groups (genetically), it might shed light to examine the evidence from mitochondial DNA. We all inherit mtDNA from our mothers. Mutation are rarer in mtDNA, but as luck would have it, lots of mutations just happened to have occurred during the period of interest, but I don't remember from the map I saw whether they involve Northern Europe.

You can have both types of DNA tested, unless you have no surviving paternal male relatives of your father (or dad himself, better yet). It makes a great gift idea. Men of Finnish origin with typical IE yDNA are more likely, IMO, to have inherited it during the (more recent) periods of Viking domination in Finland, or from fairly modern Russians.

What fascinates me is to go back even further, as genetics allows us to do. It seems that there really was an Ice People, trapped in Central Asia 30,000 years ago when the last Ice Age began. All Northern Europeans, Turks, Siberians, and the non-Athabaskan peoples of North America are descended from them. The entire population of Northern Europe is descended from a single man from this lineage who was born in the north of Russia/Lappland, west of the Urals. I guess once these people became cold-adapted, crossing the Urals and living in solid ice was no trouble.

Incidentally, blond hair may just be a result of cultural practices. Since blond hair is only found west of the Urals, it's possible that the men were in the habit of using their own hair and beard for their head covering, rather than animal skins. One clue is the fact that Asians have much thinner hair, and we know that Inuits do indeed cover their own thin hair. The latter groups also covered much more distance than the former, who basically parked themselves at the base of the Urals until they found a way through. When I go too long without a haircut, and I ask myself, "what would the temperature have to be for me to be able stand this thick mane?", I think: about 40 below!

In a way, Finland is perhaps one of the least mysterious places to have ancestors from, since we know for a fact that the Northern Europeans all came from the east via Lappland or Russia. Originally all Finns lived as Lapps do, of course, since the traditional agricultural lifestyle of Finland only became possible with the end of the Ice Age. The Finns have probably also lived in that land for longer than any people on earth outside Africa or the Middle East, maybe 20,000 years, but since these other areas have seen so many different peoples come and go, their original inhabitants are unknown by name.

Bill




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