Greeks & unreliability of HLA in pop. phylogeny

[Ponto Hardbottle]

This is my opinion and does not have any real evidence, but I consider all those papers on mtDNA and Y chromosome haplogroups to be suspect. The results are jake for the small sample sizes used but the hypotheses that started the studies are suspect. The idea that the Neolithic farming revolution had a strong genetic effect in Europe or other places is very strong. Cultural evolution has little to do with genetics. And why does the Y chromosome haplogroups or mtDNA found in Europe or among Maoris say anything at all about their progenitors tens of thousand of years back. I think that these genetic studies are more out to prove old prejudiced ideas of the origins of Italians, Greeks, Berbers and the like rather than elucidate about their origins thousands of years ago. Europe, Africa and Asia are not America or Australia where genetic studies can pin point immigration and geographic origins as most of the populations of those countries derive from immigrants in the last 1000 years. Europe, Asia and Africa are antiques compared to those Colonial countries and theories about the movement of peoples to those or out of those landmasses cannot be worked out as it involves movements of proto humans of probably no known race many thousands of years BP. Examples are Mungo Man and Kenniwick Man neither of whom have affinities with modern Australian Aborigines or Amerindians.

[Mike the Jedi]

Many FYROMites will go to any length to make the Greeks look like they aren't real Greeks.

[Educate Me]

whats a fyromite?

[Artemidoros]

ienjoylurking said:

whats a fyromite?

A FYROMite is what human2 calls "Macedonian". Member of a Slavic nation to the north of ancient Macedonia, who speaks a Bulgarian dialect and in whose village hatred for Greeks is endemic. ;D

[Ponto Hardbottle]

The Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia. FYROM.

I don't discount that mtDNA and Y chromosome DNA is usefull in finding out some lineages but humans have more than one female or male line of descent. I am R1b and mtDNA H, but I have like most people four grandparents, eight grandparents and so on, the further you go back the more ancestors are cast aside. What if my mother's father was E3b* and my father's father's mtDNA was V, how would I know without finding living relatives to test.

[Dodona Underground]

holyjesus said:

I don't discount that mtDNA and Y chromosome DNA is usefull in finding out some lineages but humans have more than one female or male line of descent. I am R1b and mtDNA H, but I have like most people four grandparents, eight grandparents and so on, the further you go back the more ancestors are cast aside. What if my mother's father was E3b* and my father's father's mtDNA was V, how would I know without finding living relatives to test.

I asked that same question a couple of months ago. I don't remember the answer precisely but the gist was that although this kind of scepticism was important, populations don't exist in some sort of theoretical omnium gatherum, at least not through most of history. Unless you're descended from a known population of non-insular wandering people or people who lived in cosmopolitan settings (written history, etc. as evidence?), it's reasonable to extrapolate a large percentage of your ancestry from your paternal lineage and maternal lineage.

On the other hand, human2 said this.

human2 said:

over the past 200,000 years of Homo Sapiens, it's been all about people from distant places f*cking other people from far away places.

I remain sceptical.