Blood type and ethnicity?

[Artemisia]

Hi,

Dienekes (or any other),

I'm currently reading Jonathan Hall's book on Ethnicity in ancient Greece (an intersting book with several mistakes and unecessary speculations about ancient Greek ethnoi) and in the intro chapter he states the following:

1.Basques, Sardinians, and some people from the Black Sea have mostly blood type "O"
2. Western Europeans have mostly blood type "A"
3. Slavs and Eastern Europeans have mostly blood type "B".

Is any this true or are they just bogus assumptions? Under what blood-type category would Greeks fall?

[Artemidoros]

I remember seeing a map in an old book with the distribution of group B in Europe. There were clear gradients and it was obvious that eastern Europe is B country. The possibility of a person being B decreased as one moved westwards. Greece was definitely part of eastern Europe.
Using blood groups to determine genetic links is an extremely unreliable method.
Based on the similar distribution of blood groups in Iceland and Ireland some geneticists in the past speculated the Islanders originated in Ireland. As we know they are actually Scandinavian. The similarity is explained by the effects of smallpox and the fact that both countries were sparsely populated. Apparently people belonging to some groups are more resistant to certain diseases than others.
Basques have very high Rh-negative blood type.
The Amerindians overwhelmingly belong to O.
I am B btw.

[AWAR]

I understand that the B bloodtype is a nomad type.

I think I'm A.

[Dienekes]

Artemisia said:

ancient Greek ethnoi

that ought to be ethnê<br>
Blood group frequencies:

www2.justnet.ne.jp/~shozo_owada/world-e.htm

Country O A B AB
Greece 43 39 13 5

[rusalka]

Great! I have been trying to find some summarized info on this and you have done just that Artemisia.

I am a B+. I've got my B from my mother's side who are predominantly from Yugoslavia (that is Eastern Europe of course). She's a type negative though, I've got my type positive from my dad, who is a 0+ himself. His side of the family are from the Caucasus and Bulgaria, both areas with coasts to the Black Sea.

[Artemisia]

Dienekes said:

that ought to be ethnê

Yeah, you're right, but Jonathan Hall who wrote the book wants his readers to think that the Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians, Achaians, Dryopes, etc., were separate ETHNOI.

A little out of topic here: As I said before, his book is good if you're only interested in the cultural aspect of Greek ethnicity. For one thing, he says (quoting Badian) that the Macedonian kings were Greek but the people over which they ruled were not! Hmmmmm, sounds strange to me.......how could the subjects not be Greek when it is now clear that they spoke Greek, had Greek gods, and were supposed to be descended from Dorus and Aeolus? That's why I love what Greek archaeologists are doing these days......discovering Macedonian inscriptions that are the oldest ever found and proving all these anti-Greek scholars wrong! (I must add that more and more archaeologists have now begun to agree with the Greek evidence)

Dienekes said:

Blood group frequencies:

www2.justnet.ne.jp/~shozo_owada/world-e.htm

Country O A B AB
Greece 43 39 13 5

Does that mean that most Greeks have "O" followed by "A" type? I know very little about genetics (I'm an archaeologist) so you'll have to be patient with me.

[alex221166]

B+

I got it from my Greek side.

[skord]

Artemisia said:

1.Basques, Sardinians, and some people from the Black Sea have mostly blood type "O"
2. Western Europeans have mostly blood type "A"
3. Slavs and Eastern Europeans have mostly blood type "B".

Is any this true or are they just bogus assumptions?

Assumptions.

anthro.palomar.edu/vary/vary_3.htm

[skord]

skord said:

Assumptions.Anyway, I'm O.

anthro.palomar.edu/vary/vary_3.htm

[Dienekes]

I meant that the plural of ethnos should have been ethnê not ethnoi. This is a mistake commonly made even by professionals. It's one of the consequences of the demise of classical education.

I've read both of Hall's books and my main impression is that (i) there's too much preoccupation with trendy theories about the "construction of ethnicity", and (ii) there is some interesting discussion of certain particular problems, e.g., I liked the discussion on Argos and on Dorian Halicarnassus where Ionian seems to have been spoken . The imperfect correspondence between ethnic-genetic-linguistic group is certainly interesting. Definitely interesting materials, which however overemphasize modern theory.

As for the blood group frequencies, yes it'd appear that Greeks have more O. I will this up on an authoritative source next time I get a chance.

[Artemisia]

Dienekes said:

I meant that the plural of ethnos should have been ethnê not ethnoi. This is a mistake commonly made even by professionals. It's one of the consequences of the demise of classical education.

I've read both of Hall's books and my main impression is that (i) there's too much preoccupation with trendy theories about the "construction of ethnicity", and (ii) there is some interesting discussion of certain particular problems, e.g., I liked the discussion on Argos and on Dorian Halicarnassus where Ionian seems to have been spoken . The imperfect correspondence between ethnic-genetic-linguistic group is certainly interesting. Definitely interesting materials, which however overemphasize modern theory.

As for the blood group frequencies, yes it'd appear that Greeks have more O. I will this up on an authoritative source next time I get a chance.

The only reason I picked up Hall's book from the bookstore was because I found the title interesting. His wife, Ilaria Romeo, often writes about the Second Sophistic (my topic) and I was curious to see what her husband writes about. What bugs me is this: how do these scholars KNOW what the Greeks thought of ethnicity? They sometimes seem to speak as if the whole thing is settled. A quote here and there does not solve the problem of say, the origin of the Dorians.
Halicarnassus was a Doric speaking city but used Ionic for its public documents, presumably because its neighbors (among them the city of Iasos) used the Ionic dialect.

[Razmig]

Sorry to disappoint all, blood types are by geographical location (lateral positioning) on the earths surface. It can also be used to trace recent roots, perhaps.

[Satyros]

Greek blood type was found to be O>A>B with a smal difference between O and A. This was concluded by an extensive survey on thousands of individuals. It was proved that there are large differences between Greek blood type and blood types of all Greek neighboring countries populations. The conclusion was that these was evidence of nonadmixture with neighboring populations through the centuries such as the supposedly destructive admixtures some western scholars had proposed.

According to that study:

(...) = number of individuals tested

Greeks O>A>B with small differences between A & O (18325 people)

Turks A>O>B with great difference between A & O (14747 people)

Serbs A>O>B (3898 people)

Bulgarians A>O>B with a great difference between A & O (8199 people)

[Caipira]

We can find diferent frequencies between ABO blood genes around the world, but the variation is too slight to determinate "race". But there are some interesting fact about it... Almost all Amerindians are O+. According one of my professor's theory, this happened becase sifilis started at America. Being O makes your survivel chances much bigger, so that's why almost all Amerindians (that're some exception in Canada) are O+.

Other interesting fact... We can find a good number of Rh- types just in Europe. This gene is very comon between Basques...

Caipira!!

[urbanra5cal]

AB+ and my ancestry is Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese), Anglo Saxon, and Malayo-Polynesian