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Europeans in Western China, 1200 B.C.
beijing_coder writes: "Caucasian-looking mummies have been discovered in the deserts in Western China since late 1800s. Now DNA tests showed they "belonged to the same genetic lineage as most modern-day Swedes, Finns, Tuscans...". I'd like to add that although the mummies were found in what's Western China today, in recorded history (after the mummies' time) that region were inhabited mostly by nomadic people, not Chinese."
The rest of the post is quite accurate, but regarding Linus Torvalds, I have to comment. I'm a swedish speaking finn, just like Linus Torvalds and we have absolutely nothing to do with Sweden except that we speak swedish as our mother tounge. That's all. Think about french speaking Canadians. They aren't really French but just as Canadian as english speaking Canadians.
Maybe Linus (or mine) great great great grandfather was a Swede, but then you could also argue that [insert favorite American here] isn't really American but really [irish|german|french|whatever].
BTW, if you've read Rebel Code by Glyn Moody, it talks about "the duck pond". Well, that is a very real concept among swedish speaking finns in Finland. It really almost is as if every swedish speaking finn knows every other swedish speaking finn, at least indirectly. A friend of mine studied with Linus Torvalds. An army buddy of mine claimed to be a close friend of Linus Torvalds (this was in 1994 before he was even all that famous) etc. Personally I've never met or even seen him even tho I live quite close to where he lived before he went to work in the USA.
I guess the DNA study is a recent development. P revious researchers think they may have been related to the Celts. The Weegas (God knows how many English spelling variations ther are) probably have some ancestry from these peoples. Some of them have blue eyes, which can be seen in other shows about Western China. They do share some cultural characteristics with the mummies. Over time the caucasoid gene pool was replaced by the mongoloid gene pool.
Check out PBS 1998 Nova's Mysterious Mummies of China and for 1999 the Discovery Channel's Riddle of the Desert Mummies
Why oh why is it that all the cool stuff about the history of mankind... er ah humanity is in countries that aren't friendly to America? China, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, etc.
If you think the international politics are bad. Just check out our very own domestic Graves Act. It allowed aboriginal Americans to claim the 9,000 year old bones of the Kennewick Man as their direct ancestor. Nova also covered this issue with Mystery of the First Americans. His genes show that he's most closely related to the Ainu.
The peopling of the Earth is a contentious issue and probably will be until all our genes are thoroughly mixed and we become a uniform gray with no outward sexual differentiation.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Check out: this link
It took some searching. Apparently, their search engine sucks.
Óli
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