Ancestry Surprises From New Genetics Analysis Method

An anonymous reader commends a recently published study involving a new way to analyze genetic variation in human populations (full article published in PLOS Genetics): "[S]cientists from Ireland, the UK and the US analysed 2,540 genetic markers in the DNA of almost 1,000 people from around the world whose genetic material had been collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project. The results include a number of surprises... the Yakut people of northern Siberia were found to have received a significant genetic contribution from the population of the Orkney Islands, which lie off the coast of Scotland... there must have been a period of gene flow from northern Europe to east Asia. The study also shed light on the peopling of the Americas, as the results suggest that the native populations of north and south America have different origins."

Comments

Re:It's a smaller world up there...

[Max Littlemore]

There's also the Celts in Western China - well they aren't exactly Celts, they just happen to be a minority with indigenous art that resembles Celtic design, they frequently have blond hair, curly hair, green/blue eyes, etc, etc. Makes me wonder whether the Orkney Islanders contributed to the Yakuts or the other way around.

Which brings me to another point. How does this get passed off as science? It's pseudo-science at best, rating somewhere close to astrology. They find some patterns that frequently occur and use them to pass their fictional stories about unknowable history as fact. Not saying it has no place, just saying it deserves as much funding as astrology.

Could the Book of Mormon be on to something?

[Sir Network]

According to the account of the Book of Mormon, 2 groups of people, one around 550 BC, sailed to the western portion of what is now central and South America and ran into indigenous people already living there.

Add this with the discovery of Haplogroup X, a genetic marker that appears among Native Americans of European rather than Eastern Asian (read:Siberian Land Bridge) ancestry.