Ötzi's Y-DNA haplogroup: G2a4

A few days ago a commenter at Dienekes' posted that this information had been revealed by "Dr. Eduard Egarter-Vigl, Head of Conservation and Assistant to research projects of the Archaeological Museum in Bozen [. . .] in a documentary [Ötzi, ein Archäologie-Krimi] broadcast by 3sat on 10th august 2011." Now someone has uploaded the relevant clip:
Subtitles: "Since six months, the full decoding of the genome of the Iceman is done. [. . .] Certain genes that are relevant to the origin, Y-chromosome, for example, can be examined well. [. . .] And the haplogroup to which the Iceman belonged is the haplogroup G2a4. [. . .] And this group is known, that it is now very rare in Europe. Interestingly, it is still in Sardinia. Sardinia is as an island a so-called micro-isolate where the poulation has hardly changed and so has developed genetically fairly constant. But there is this haplogroup in Eurasian regions, ie those from which we know that Europe was actually populated."

Sample size equals one, but the presence of G2a and absence of R1b is consistent with previous ancient DNA findings for Neolithic western and central Europe.

2 comments:

Eusebius said...

I knew it! I knew Ötzi was Mediterranean!

Anonymous said...

Na, how cone you haven't posted the caucasian study?