"Huge" Genographic Project ancient DNA study underway?
Report from the mixer -- Spencer Wells was there and spoke enticingly of a huge ancient DNA research project that's been underway for some time, in which, instead of a simple replacement by incoming Neolithic populations, they are seeing wave after wave of peoples coming over thousands of years, each wave adding a stratum superimposed on those before it. The set of haplogroups seen in the earlier strata were not like the ones we see today. In particular he says mtDNA H was not there until a fairly recent, post-Neolithic date.It's clear from already-published ancient DNA results that at least some sublineages of H were present in Neolithic Europe -- but H does seem to have become much more common since then.
He is still apparently clinging to a rather old date for R1b, though. He seems to think it had a major expansion about 10,000 years ago. Haven't genetic genealogists mostly been arguing for a considerably more recent time frame? I hope to see some R1b experts engage him in dialog on that point.That's a 20,000 year step in the right direction. I won't begrudge him the other 5,000 years for now. I just hope the "huge" ancient DNA effort underway includes Y chromosomes. Another comment from the FTDNA conference:
Katherine, Emily, Joan and Bonnie are already tweeting from the FTDNA conference. Their Twitter accounts are: @khborges, @Genealem, @Luxegen and @GreenleafyYou can also follow the hashtag #FTDNA2011 though not all the tweets are going out with the hashtag. [. . .]
FTDNA has tested over 600,000 people.
The Genographic Project has 450,000 public participation samples and 75,000 indigenous samples.
The Genographic Project has two Basque papers going into journals this week and another paper which includes mtDNA haplogroup U5 is due out next year.
And a few more twitter comments:
khborges Katherine H. Borges SW-Phase 1 of Geno is wrapping up. Phase 2 to begin #FTDNA2011
khborges Katherine H. Borges #FTDNA2011 #Genographic SW- 1 in 17 men in Med are descended from Phoenician traders
khborges Katherine H. Borges #FTDNA2011 #Genographic SW-East Asian human migration patterns follow the rivers
khborges Katherine H. Borges #FTDNA2011 #Genographic SW-10 papers are going off to the journals next week and about a dozen more in the pipeline
Luxegen Joan Miller SW - teaser - big announcement coming in Genographic project next year. #FTDNA2011
Jewish Liberalism: the Allinsmith Study
The degree of commitment of American Jews to liberalism is different from the degree of that commitment among other religious groups. The difference is that the Jewish devotion to liberalism is not correlated with economic or educational status. This was demonstrated almost 20 years ago by Wesley and Beverly Allinsmith.2Source: Nathaniel Weyl's The Jew in American Politics, pp. 6-8Toward the close of World War II, the Allinsmiths asked 8,820 members of eight religious denominations whether they believed that the most important postwar task of the U.S. Government was to provide opportunity for people to get ahead on their own or "to guarantee every person a decent and steady job and standard of living."
Nationally, 47% of the people questioned preferred security to opportunity. As the percentage of manual workers in each denomination increased, the proportion favoring security rose. Status, education and income were inversely related to the choice of security. As one proceeded from Congregationalists to Presbyterians to Episcopalians to Methodists to Lutherans to Baptists and finally to Catholics, the preference for security steadily increased from 26% to 58%.
The Jews were the only exception to this rule. Although they were a very high status group ranking first in occupational level, third in educational level and fourth in economic level, 56% of them preferred security to opportunity. This was almost as high as the Catholic preference for security.
Moreover, within each of the eight religious denominations, the preference for opportunity was greatest among those with most education, highest status and best occupational level. Again, the Jews were the only exception.
The 1944 presidential vote also revealed this marked difference between Jewish and Gentile political behavior. The upper-class and upper-middle-class Christian denominations voted heavily against Roosevelt and in favor of Republican standard-bearer Thomas Dewey. Only 31.4% of the Congregationalists, 39.9% of the Presbyterians and 44.6% of the Episcopalians backed Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The more working-class denominations, however, voted heavily for him, particularly the Catholics who were 72.8% in his favor. In terms of their combined educational, occupational and status rank in the Allinsmith survey-that of second place-the Jews might well have been expected to vote Republican. Actually, they were 92.1% for Roosevelt. This overwhelming support was greater than that of any of the Christian denominations. [. . .]
However, in the 1952 elections, despite the fact that the Republican presidential candidate, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had led the Western coalition to victory over the Nazis, 75% of the Jewish voters supported Adlai E. Stevenson, a man who had played no role of any importance in World War II. There was no difference in the attitude of the candidates toward Jewry or the state of Israel. The issue was clearly one of moderation vs. liberalism. In a situation where American voters as a whole gave decisive support to Eisenhower, three-fourths of the Jews backed his Democratic opponent. Moreover, interviews in depth of Boston voters showed that only 30% of the Gentiles with high socioeconomic status, as against 60% of those with low socioeconomic status, backed Stevenson. Among Boston Jews, 72% of those with high status voted for Stevenson.
Penny starting to drop for academics
The high frequency of G2a haplogroup in Neolithic specimens, whereas this haplogroup is very rare in current populations, also suggests that men could have played a particularly important role in the Neolithic dissemination that is no longer visible today. This would imply that intra-European migrations related to the metal ages may have strongly affected the modern gene pool.
I was intending to comment more, but for now I'll just mention:
(1) I agree with Jean M.: "MtDNA haplogroups were K1a (3), T2b (2), and one each of H3 and U5. Since it seems very likely that all of these except the U5 arrived in the Neolithic, I cannot agree with the conclusions of the authors that the spread of farming was male-led."
(2) The confirmed presence of E-V13 in Neolithic western Europe reinforces for me that those wanting to attribute the reported elevated levels of E-V13 in NE Wales to "Roman soldiers" or the like are probably mistaken.