Latest ( from 2004 text ) on TAT-C

[Melnorme]

evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Villems2004.pdf

...among the Yakut the above-mentioned paternal line is more numerous than among even the Estonians or Finns. It now appears, however, that this circum-arctic paternal line more likely migrated from Eastern Europe to Siberia than vice versa. In determining the original home of gene lines, internal divergence is of greater importance than frequency of occurrence.This parameter is, however, considerably higher among the Finno-Ugrians of Europe. This leads to a very important generalisation: the extensive overlapping of the paternal lines of Siberian Ugrians and Finno-Ugrians, to which there is no parallel among maternal lines, is proof of an extensive eastward flow of genes caused predominantly by men, presumably in the late Upper Palaeolithic period.

[Graeme]

Sorry, I am not convinced except in the attempt to whitewash the fact that Tat C is Siberian in origin. The writer obviously wants us to believe that Tat C is European in origin and was passed along to Siberia by caucasian men strewing their way eastwards from Europe. Well the problem with that is that the movement of people to Europe in ancient times has always been from the east to the west until changed in modern times by Russian imperialists.

This is just an attempt to make European speakers of Finno-Ugrian languages as caucasian as the IE speakers and to distance themselves from their mongolian "brothers". It may be true that Tat C is European and transferred to Asia by the European male ancestors of native mongolian tribes, but it is more likely the other way round or that the original bearers of Tat C were mongolians who interbreed with Europeans to produce the various apparent caucasians who carry Tat C as a distant reminder of their mongolian ancestry.

[Melnorme]

Graeme said:

Sorry, I am not convinced except in the attempt to whitewash the fact that Tat C is Siberian in origin. The writer obviously wants us to believe that Tat C is European in origin and was passed along to Siberia by caucasian men strewing their way eastwards from Europe. Well the problem with that is that the movement of people to Europe in ancient times has always been from the east to the west until changed in modern times by Russian imperialists.

This is just an attempt to make European speakers of Finno-Ugrian languages as caucasian as the IE speakers and to distance themselves from their mongolian "brothers". It may be true that Tat C is European and transferred to Asia by the European male ancestors of native mongolian tribes, but it is more likely the other way round or that the original bearers of Tat C were mongolians who interbreed with Europeans to produce the various apparent caucasians who carry Tat C as a distant reminder of their mongolian ancestry.

Nope. As the recent study on the Saami shows, the Yakuts are the ONLY Siberian tribe that has the same distribution of haplogroup variants as European Finno-Ugrians. The various nations that live in between Northeast Europe and the Yakuts don't. TAT-C also has more diversity in Europe than in Siberia. TAT-C may be 'proto-Mongoloid' ( whatever that means ), but it's almost certainly not indicative of 'recent' fully evolved Mongoloid admixture.

[Melnorme]

evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Tambets2004.pdf

Nevertheless, one does not need to postulate a recent Siberian flow of Y chromosomes into the Saami gene pool to explain their high N3 frequency. First, such a flow from Samoyedic-speaking aboriginal Siberians to the Saami Y-chromosomal pool would predict the presence there of haplogroup N2 and/or haplogroup Q, widely spread in Samoyeds (Karafet et al. 2002). Second, the much higher diversity of N3 in eastern Europe than in Siberia (Villems et al. 1998; Rootsi et al. 2000) suggests that eastern Europe, ratherthan Siberia, is a possible origin of the earliest expansion of this haplogroup in northern Eurasia. Third, the lack of Y-chromosomal haplogroup C in Saami contrasts with its high frequency among Tungusic-speaking native Siberians (such as the Evenks and the Evens) as well as among Mongolic-speaking Mongols, the Buryats, the Kalmyks, and the Turkic-speaking Kazakhs and Uzbeks (Wells et al. 2001; Karafet et al. 2002; authors’ unpublished data). Therefore, without introducing specific additional ad hoc scenarios, these observations make it unlikely that there was recent Y-chromosomal flow from these Siberian populations into the gene pool of the Saami.

This explanation applies just as well to Finns, Estonians, Northern Russians, etc.

If you'll examine the tables in this PDF, you'll see that only the Yakuts don't conform to this explanation, since they don't have much Q, N2 and C. But they're extremely far off from Northeast Europe.

[Graeme]

That does mean anything of itself. There are biological bottlenecks, extinctions, displacement and immigration. It may be that Tat C has found a home in Europe where it can flourish. Natural selection is not logical. The first white settlements in North America were dismal failures but they persisted mainly by luck. The Yakuts may be the remnants of a much larger group of which they are its only heirs. Like the Ainu in Japan have been swamped by Yamato. Asia is rather large and people move and colonise new areas, if the Tat C people suffered a severe near extinction bottle neck then those newcomers would take over and outbreed them. Look at Siberia today, it is full of Russians. The Russians have moved people around to suit themselves, Germans here, Koreans there, Russians displacing natives or breeding them out.

I will need better evidence than that as there are explanations for the current situation in Europe and among the Yakuts.

[nordicyouth]

The Uralians are a Caucasoid group partially absorbed into Mongoloid and Iranian groups and surviving largely in Finland, Estonia, parts of Latvia, and Hungary (darker Sarmatian-mixed Uralics). Contrary to popular belief they are not mongoloid, simply natural selection favoured 'mongoloid' traits among them.

[Graeme]

That is what Finno-Ugrians WANT us to believe. There no evidence for what you said, about them being purely caucasian. Blondism may be a mongolian trait that took root in Europe. As to their "mongoloid" features being the result of adaptation to that part of the world, that is an hypothesis without any proof.

I can appreciate that the Saami, Finns and other F-Us want to disprove the mongoloid admixture belief derived from their appearance, but more genetic proof is needed. That stuff about adaptation to the cold can never be proved, natural selection is not logical and is arbitrary, and it is unlikely that features similar to those in mongoloids would appear twice even under the same environmental conditions. That latest Tat C stuff quoted by Melnorme was a good try, but the present levels in Europe and Siberia can be accounted for by other events.