Biologists Create Genetic Map of Europe

Death Metal Maniac brings us a story from the New York Times about a team of scientists who were able to relate genetic differences to geographical origins. Countries such as Germany, Austria, and France occupy the central area of the genetic map, with Italy, Finland, and the UK being relative outliers. Quoting: "All the populations are quite similar, but the differences are sufficient that it should be possible to devise a forensic test to tell which country in Europe an individual probably comes from, said Manfred Kayser, a geneticist at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands. ... Genomic sites that carry the strongest signal of variation among populations may be those influenced by evolutionary change, Dr. Kayser said. Of the 100 strongest sites, 17 are found in the region of the genome that confers lactose tolerance, an adaptation that arose among a cattle herding culture in northern Europe some 5,000 years ago." Update: 08/16 15:11 GMT: Reader iminplaya points out the source article, which contains the technical details behind the study.

Comments

The Clash of Civilizations

[burnitdown]

I recommend two books here:

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, by Samuel Huntington
The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution, by Luigi Cavalli-Sforza et al

Once humans evolved from apes, they went through several stages to create modern humans.

After that, modern humans underwent more aggressive development. This differentiated population groups.

Much like different programming languages are optimized for different tasks, but you can create just about anything in just about any language, human populations are different based on the optimizations that came about through their branch divergence.

This creates ethnicities, nationalities, and clines as mapped by Cavalli-Sforza.

Huntington points out that most of our modern wars have been caused by the nation-state, or an "imperial" grouping by politics that crosses these optimization lines, and suggests that as the superpower age winds down, people will identify with their optimization more than abstract and often illusory political concepts.

This is especially useful in understanding the difference between Georgia, Ossetia and Russia. For those who live in nation-states of an imperial nature, like the United States, Canada, Russia or UK, it's hard to grasp this, but not every country views itself as composed of generic people.

They view themselves as an organic nation, a notion which we may quaintly call "tribalism" yet seems to unite people with values more solidly than financial or political motivations.

The future will be determined by the struggle for these organic nations to define themselves.

All IMHO.

Turanian/Scandi/Baltic mix

[burnitdown]

Finland is an interesting convergence of east and west. Their language is most closely related to Japanese and Hungarian; their population seems to be halfway between Swedes, Baltics and an Asian precursor.

Max Muller classified the Turanian language family into different sub-branches. The Northern or Ural-Altaic division branch compromised Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Samoyedic, and Finnic. The Southern branch consisted of Dravidian languages like Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, and other Dravidian languages. The languages of the Caucasus were classified as the scattered languages of the Turanian family. Muller also began to muse whether Chinese belonged to the Northern branch or Southern branch.[31]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turan

The language record does not mirror the genetic record, necessarily, but it provides a useful clue.

I'm not sure how this is related to their ability to create quality death metal bands like Amorphis, Demigod, Abhorrence, Demilich, Belial and Sentenced. However, all of Scandinavia is a death metal powerhouse, so it may be "cultural."

Interesting

[LizardKing]

Surprising how far "out there" the Finnish genetic makeup is, considering the long period of integration with Sweden. It's also interesting that this kind of research may give us the final pieces to jigsaw of migration that took place from the Urals to Central and Northern Europe. This great migration of the tribes is what lead to Finno-Ugrian people ending up around the Baltic and in Hungary, but it's still unclear where the tribes "split up", one lot heading north and the other west. The closeness of the Hungarian genetic makeup to other Central Europeans must reflect the massive amount of migration and conquest that occurred across that region (by various Slavic and Turkic peoples in particular), along with a fair bit of Germanic immigration through trading.

Re:Interesting

[CRCulver]

The history of Hungarian migration is pretty clear, actually. The Hungarians were living with their closest Uralic brethren, the Khanty and Mansi tribes, in the south Russian steppes around the beginning of the Common Era. The expansion of the Turkic peoples brought a tribe, evidentally speaking a Chuvash-type language, into contact with some Hungarians, who then learnt horsemanship and began to move west. A number of Hungarians remained behind, and when the Friar Julianus visited the area eight hundred years ago, he was able to communicate with them.

The Hungarian migration to the Carpathian Basin happened fairly recently compared to the spread of Uralic languages to northwestern Russia, Finland and Scandinavia, which must have been complete a thousand years before the beginning of the Common Era.

Lack of overlap

[Guppy06]

I'm now kind of curious about how such a map of North America would look in comparison, because to me there are some pretty big areas here where there is no overlap (Great Britain, southern Italy, Poland, Sweden...). They've been on the same continent for how many centuries, and they're still so distinct?

Re:Lack of overlap

[Guppy06]

"Great Britain might be part of Europe politically and in geological terms but there is the barrier of the English Channel which has kept us safe from French, Spanish and German invasion attempts for 900 years."

And yet Ireland shows more overlap with with continent than Great Britain.

Burnitdown made it up

[guanxi]

I never thought the race-war bozos would make it onto /. It's the usual propoganda: Name check someone prominent (who didn't say anything in support of your argument), add some bogus theory with no support (but imply that it comes from the famous names), through in a little kernel of plausibility (hey, there's racism right? Maybe we are all genetically pre-disposed to hate each other), and stir.

Much like different programming languages are optimized for different tasks, but you can create just about anything in just about any language, human populations are different based on the optimizations that came about through their branch divergence.

See? Hmmm ... seems plausible. But think: Maybe I'm different based on the country I was born in, the way my parents fed me, raised me (the fact that I had loving parents), their wealth and social connections, the forces and choices that formed my personality. My education, the books I read, what I chose to study, my teachers and role models, how hard I worked at it, how well I networked, the career and jobs I chose, the person I married, the city I live in ... Where does this genetic optimization come in?

I recommend the same books as burnitdown, only you should read them and not just name-check them. I read Huntington's Clash of Civilizations when it was first published in Foreign Affairs. It says nothing at all about genetics or "optimization", only super-national cultural groups called 'civilizations', which are genetically diverse (see list here ). You can read more here.

I haven't read Cavalli-Sforza, but The Economist seems to think that his work challenges the assumption that there are significant genetic differences between human races, and indeed, the idea that 'race' has any useful biological meaning at all. Hmmm ... that seems opposite the ideas that burnitdown cited.

So Burnitdown is just talking out of his backside, start to finish. There is no outside support for it at all. I can't even imagine how it applies to Georgia, Russia, and North & South Ossetia. Does anyone know closely their populations correlate genetically? And why, on that basis, would South Ossetians want Russian more than Georgian citizenship? What the heck is 'Russian' genetically, anyway -- the country stretches from Europe to the Pacific; are they really genetically homogeneous?

Whenever I read something like this, I always try to remember: Think of the people who promolgate this theory of inevitable race-war hatred: From Milosovic to Bin Laden (who rails against Jewish people) to the Rwandan Hutu extremists to the KKK to, yes, Adolf Hitler. What have they accomplished? Then think of those who say that humans can integrate and live together regardless of supposed 'race', from Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King Jr., to Mahatma Gandhi and almost any current leader of prominence. Who has been more successful? Whose side would you rather be on?

Did you know that by the 3rd generation, most immigrants to the US marry across 'cultural' lines? Did you know that the rate of interracial marriage has increased ~700% in the US since 1970 [1]?

Re:Burnitdown made it up

[amilo100]

I do not agree with the above poster - but your counter argument is even more wrong.

Name check someone prominent (who didn't say anything in support of your argument), add some bogus theory with no support (but imply that it comes from the famous names),

You did the same thing below (only using Gandhi's name).

Maybe I'm different based on the country I was born in, the way my parents fed me, raised me (the fact that I had loving parents), their wealth and social connections, the forces and choices that formed my personality. My education, the books I read, what I chose to study, my teachers and role models, how hard I worked at it, how well I networked, the career and jobs I chose, the person I married, the city I live in ... Where does this genetic optimization come in?

Your argument is basically: genetics play no part since my upbringing(environment) plays a part. Don't you believe that genetics can also play a part? You are probably one of those persons who believe that any other argument is heresy and that genetic differences should not be researched.

With this I differ - of course the social environment plays a part - but there are genetic differences between population groups. Research into this should be encouraged and not suppressed (people doing research today are in the same position as Galileo - just look at how E.O. Wilson was treated).

Where does this genetic optimization come in?

Some researchers suggested that evolutionary pressures such as the environment (e.g. long cold winters, etc...) could cause differences in human genetics. The optimization would therefore be on the best evolutionary strategy for this environment. Whether this happened or not is debatable - but you have to admit that it is a plausible scenario.

Think of the people who promolgate this theory of inevitable race-war hatred: From Milosovic

The shit in the former Yugoslavia was because of Balkanization. Among some groups there was little genetic difference. The biggest difference between the groups were cultural issues (such as religion). I think you are confusing nationalism with racism.

to Bin Laden (who rails against Jewish people)

He is a religious fundamentalist. I doubt that you can call him racist because there were Americans, Africans, people from Indonesia, etc... in al-Qaeda. He perceives Israel as a threat to Islam and Islamic populations in Palestine - that is why he hates Jewish people (not because he feels that he is from a superior race).

Then think of those who say that humans can integrate and live together regardless of supposed 'race', from Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King Jr., to Mahatma Gandhi

I do not know the history of the USA well - but here are a few interesting things WP says about Thomas Jefferson (main article):
âIn this same work, Jefferson advanced his suspicion that black people were inferior to white people "in the endowments both of body and mind."

Mahatma Gandhi was extremely racist against black people (people sometimes ignore this because he did many great things in is life). Here are some quotes from him (most of these appeared in the SA opinion - for an online reference see wikiquote):

About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population, and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen.

You say that the magistrate's decision is unsatisfactory because it would enable a person, however unclean, to travel by a tram, and that even the Kaffirs would be able to do so.

Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a cer