Sickle-Cell Anaemia-Mesogeiaki Anaimia

[Cleomenes]

Agapite Diineki,

Sygnomi pou se enoxlisa me to na sou steilo e-mail, den ixera oti ypirxe auto to forum.

Tha ithela na se rotiso ti mporo na apantiso stous anoitous pou feroun os paradeigma tin sickle cell anaemia (mesogeiaki anaimia?) prokeimenou na apodeiksoun oti oi Ellines einai dithen negroeidis i Afrikanoi epeidi leei i mesogeiaki anaimia parousiazetai stin Afriki, Mesi Anatoli, Karaibiki, Tourkia ktlp. Genika diladi, opou ypirxe Elliniki parousia kata tin arxaiotita kai stin ypo tin Saxara Afriki.

Eixane dosei kai ena website, alla to mynima toy ilithiou pou to egrapse sbistike kai etsi de to prolaba gia na sou to doso.

Euxaristo ek ton proteron.

Cleomenes

Y.G.:Se parakalo poly, kane kati na mporoume na grafoume sti Glossa mas, me aidiazei na grafo me to Latiniko Alfabito.

[AWAR]

I'm sorry, the proboards rules are: Only English!

[Cleomenes]

Awar,

This is a query to Dienekes who can read and understand Greek, never fear.

[AWAR]

Cleomenes said:

Awar,

This is a query to Dienekes who can read and understand Greek, never fear.

Sure, I understand, but the proboards terms of service require the forums on their server to be in English.
They could delete this forum if people started talking in their own languages.

If it was up to me, I'd make independent sections for each language... but it's not.

[Artemidoros]

Mediterranean anaemia is not SicKle-Cell and has nothing to do with Sub-Saharan Africa. They represent different mutations. Sickle-Cell (Benin type) is present in Greece though and is centred around Thessaloniki. It is not present in central and southern Greece. It is an African mutation but it is also a positively selected marker in areas of historically endemic malaria and can not be used to determine admixture percentages. The source in my opinion was African slaves in Hellenistic times. There is a well known fresco, depicting a Macedonian cavalryman training with the help of an African slave. Since other non positively selected markers show Sub-Saharan admixture in Greeks to be negligible, the presence of Sickle-Cell in Macedonia is of no importance. Not that it would be important if we were Negroid or Sub-Saharan. We are who we are and we are great Tell them na pa na gamithoune

[Sandwich]

I'm sure this has been covered here before but ...

Malaria once exercised strong selection pressure in Greece. But I think the assumption about the distribution of the gene for Herrick's aneamia, as laid out in these two quotes from the web, is out of date.
www.whonamedit.com/synd.cfm/2157.html

Mediterranean anaemia (Cooley's)

Anaemia resulting from inheritance of a recessive trait ... It is the homozygous form of beta-thalassaemia, occurring in infancy... Death often occurs before puberty. Countries like Italy, Greece and Cyprus have the highest frequency of thalassaemia cases in the world, ca 10 percent of the Mediterranean population are carriers of this gene. There exists a thalassaemic "belt" that includes the Mediterranean passing through West and Central Asian countries like Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan onto Pakistan & India and passes on to the South East Asian countries like Indonesia, Burma & Thailand.

African anaemia (sickle cell, Herrick's)

A haemolytic anaemia occurring almost exclusively in persons of Negro ancestry, chiefly characterised by the presence of sickle-shaped erythrocytes and a severe degree of anaemia. Women more often affected than men.

The true situation may be more like this, as outlined in the British Journal of Haematology.

www.bloodmed.com/home/hannpdf/bjh2557.pdf

Distribution of sickle cell disease
The occurrence of the sickle cell mutation and the survival advantage conferred by malaria together determine the primary distribution of the sickle cell gene. Equatorial Africa is highly malarial and the sickle cell mutation appears to have arisen independently on at least three and probably four separate occasions in the African continent, and the mutations were subsequently named after the areas where they were first described and designated the Senegal, Benin,
Bantu and Cameroon haplotypes of the disease (Kulozik et al, 1986; Chebloune et al, 1988; Lapoumeroulie et al, 1992).

The disease seen in North and South America, the
Caribbean and the UK is predominantly of African origin
and mostly of the Benin haplotype, although the Bantu is proportionately more frequent in Brazil (Zago et al, 1992). 1992). It is therefore easy to understand the common misconception held in these areas that the disease is of African origin. However, the sickle cell gene is widespread around the Mediterranean, occurring in Sicily, southern Italy, northern Greece and the south coast of Turkey, although these are all of the Benin haplotype and so, ultimately, of African origin.

In the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia and in central India, there is a separate independent occurrence of the HbS gene, the Asian haplotype. The Shiite population of the Eastern Province traditionally marry first cousins, tending to increase the prevalence of SS disease above that expected from the gene frequency (Al-Awamy et al, 1984).

Furthermore, extensive surveys performed by the Anthropological Survey of India estimate an average sickle cell trait frequency of 15% across the states of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Masharastra which, with the estimated population of 300 million people, implies that there may be more cases of sickle cell disease born in India than in Africa.

The Asian haplotype of sickle cell disease is generally
associated with very high frequencies of alpha thalassaemia and high levels of fetal haemoglobin, both factors believed to ameliorate the severity of the disease.

The mutation provides great selective advantage. I'm not sure what admixture means in this context, but I would have thought the data indicate lineages, possibly from a handful of chronologically distant but genetically succesful individuals? I'm not sure how this works. The area, however, does correspond very strongly to a zone of Greek settlement.

[Cleomenes]

Artemidoros said:

Mediterranean anaemia is not SicKle-Cell and has nothing to do with Sub-Saharan Africa. They represent different mutations.

Okay, I got that; thanks for the clarification.

Sickle-Cell (Benin type) is present in Greece though and is centred around Thessaloniki. It is not present in central and southern Greece. It is an African mutation but it is also a positively selected marker in areas of historically endemic malaria and can not be used to determine admixture percentages.

So that means that, any human population in an area where malaria is endemic, would inevitably develop this mutation as a force of fortification against the disease, and while the mutation is thought to have originated in Africa, it could also have appeared in Greek populations spontaneously without any intermarriage between Greeks and sub-saharan africans having taken place?

The source in my opinion was African slaves in Hellenistic times. There is a well known fresco, depicting a Macedonian cavalryman training with the help of an African slave. Since other non positively selected markers show Sub-Saharan admixture in Greeks to be negligible, the presence of Sickle-Cell in Macedonia is of no importance.

Artemidore, do you realise what you have just said? Following along the lines of your argument, one could assume that what Arthur Kemp has written about the presence of African slaves in Greece during Hellenistic times is correct, and furthermore that their presence was centered in or around the European Macedonian state!

I wonder if the EU4 haplotype fm. Stanford's "The Genetic Legacy of Paleolithic Homo Sapiens Sapiens..etc." as found in Greece, denotes exactly that presence? I think not.
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Sandwich
The disease seen in North and South America, the
Caribbean and the UK is predominantly of African origin
and mostly of the Benin haplotype, although the Bantu is proportionately more frequent in Brazil (Zago et al, 1992). 1992). It is therefore easy to understand the common misconception held in these areas that the disease is of African origin. However, the sickle cell gene is widespread around the Mediterranean, occurring in Sicily, southern Italy, northern Greece and the south coast of Turkey, although these are all of the Benin haplotype and so, ultimately, of African origin.

So Sandwich, the origin is the Benin haplotype which means that Benin Blacks have settled and subsequently passed their genes to the locals in all the above mentioned European areas?

[Sandwich]

Certainly Graham Serjeant’s work suggests that it is the Benin haplotype rather than one of the other 3 separate, spontaneously evolved haplotypes, which is found in an area that corresponds pretty exactly with certain Greek areas of settlement. He suggests that it may have passed through trade. It may be, of course, that this particular mutation is misnamed – that it evolved spontaneously in Greece and passed to Benin. How are we to tell, given the variability of selection pressure over time?

[Artemidoros]

Cleomenes said:

Artemidore, do you realise what you have just said? Following along the lines of your argument, one could assume that what Arthur Kemp has written about the presence of African slaves in Greece during Hellenistic times is correct, and furthermore that their presence was centered in or around the European Macedonian state!

I wonder if the EU4 haplotype fm. Stanford's "The Genetic Legacy of Paleolithic Homo Sapiens Sapiens..etc." as found in Greece, denotes exactly that presence? I think not.

No, I do not agree with that lamentable clown Kemp. His intention is to denigrate the Greeks and all south Europeans by presentinting them as racially tainted. I do not believe that any admixture can be denigrating. Furthermore Kemp believes that Black and generally non European admixture is reason for civilization decline. History of course has many examples of glorious non Nordic civilizations that lasted for a very long time. Egypt for example was not only non Nordic but with considerable Black admixture among its population. Furthermore the Greeks have no more Black admixture than most Europeans (including the White Nationalists favourite north west Europeans) and far less than Kemp's compatriots, the "White" South Africans.
On the other hand, it is wrong to claim that Greeks have no African genes whatsoever. We are descendants not only of the free ancient Greeks but also their slaves. Though the majority of slaves were Greeks themselves and most of the others were from neighbouring areas and similar to the Greeks racially, some were from far away lands. A few were indeed Sub Saharan Africans.
It is time we realised that Partenon was not built by free men alone and accept and honour all parts of the societies of ancient Greece.
Though it is possible that the gene of sickle cell was brought to Greece by people with very little Sub-Saharan blood, the ultimate origin of the Benin type is believed to be African (it is mentioned in Sandwich's source). It only takes a few carriers of the gene in a malarial area and over a period of many generations the gene spreads, since it is positively selected. It is an indication of ancestry but can not be used as a tool for quantifying it.

[Graeme]

Isn't sickle cell anaemia caused by a single mutation of one nitrogenous base? Thus it is conceivable that it could occur rapidly to selective pressure of a malarial environment and has nothing to do with Africa or negro Africans. Other anti malaria mutations like G6PD and Thalassemia are more complex.

[Sandwich]

It does appear that the disease in the Mediterranean is linked to a particular haplotype, the one named after the place it was discovered and is most prevalent, Benin.

It is assumed to have evolved some 70,000 years ago at least (3000 generations). Malaria is a devastating disease that picks off pre-pubertal children: selection pressure for this gene would be very high.

I would suggest that it represents a very successful lineage but does not indicate the degree of gene flow at all. So OK, 70,000 years ago I had maybe just one out of (I can’t do the maths but the number is large, even allowing for some inbreeding) grannies who was black. Hmm yes, and so?

However I do not understand the concluding quote from Lehman in the Racial Reality article on this subject, unless the assumption is of another spontaneously evolved but as yet unidentified haplotype (just about possible, but…), or that the original gene flow was north-south (possible), in which case it's all those West Africans who have one distant Greek Pappou.