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Research Suggests One To Three Men Fathered Most Western Europeans

Taco Cowboy writes "'While the distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroups in Africa took 12 thousand years to spread, those in Europe started from around 3rd millennium.' The speed of spread of the European haplogroups was totally astounding, to say the least. 'There was no R1b found in Europe before a Bell Beaker site from the 3rd millennium BC and today many Europeans (most in western Europe) belong to this haplogroup. 'We used coalescent simulations to investigate the range of demographic models most likely to produce the phylogenetic structures observed in Africa and Europe, assessing the starting and ending genetic effective population sizes, duration of the expansion, and time when expansion ended. The best-fitting models in Africa and Europe are very different. In Africa, the expansion took about 12 thousand years, ending very recently; it started from approximately 40 men and numbers expanded approximately 50-fold. In Europe, the expansion was much more rapid, taking only a few generations and occurring as soon as the major R1b lineage entered Europe; it started from just one to three men, whose numbers expanded more than a thousandfold.'"

8 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. Proof! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This proves it! Noah and his sons have been found through genetics.

    What now atheists? You better hope it doesn't flood again.

    1. Re:Proof! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

      So did most Europeans. It's one of the reasons that European history is such an unmitigated meatgrinder from about the moment the Roman Empire started to lose it, right up until the US and USSR got serious about stocking up on nukes. (or, um, I mean, the humanitarian ideals of the UN and EU ushered in a new era of peaceful cooperation. I, um, must have made typo there. Or maybe my keyboard firmware is misanthropic.)

    2. Re:Proof! by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

      So up to two sons of Noah's wife weren't actually his?

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    3. Re:Proof! by Chas · · Score: 1, Funny

      Luckily I'm not an atheist.

      I'm a lapsed Catholic (all of the guilt and none of the Sunday social commitments!) and a militant agnostic (I don't know AND NEITHER DO YOU DAMMIT!)

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
  2. On The Female Side It Was Just One by JohnPerkins · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...your mother.

  3. This would explain a lot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    In regards to the constant bickering and wars, it all makes sense! Three families? That is a shit ton of brothers fighting over stupid shit

  4. 2, maybe 1 or 3? by jovius · · Score: 4, Funny

    Must have been quite a night!

  5. SO.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    The truth comes out. Most of you are a bunch of inbred bastards.