mtDNA of Europeans, Turks, and Turkic Central Asians

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There was a 2004 study that looked at the mtDNA of various groups: British, French, German, Greek, Bulgarian, Finnish, Turkish, and Turkic Central Asian (Kazakh, Kirgiz, and Uighur), with a focus on the Turks. mtDNA refers to the DNA of your mitochondria, which you inherit only from your mother (and not at all from your father). This allows scientists to study one's matrilineal line, the genetic line going from one's mother to her mother to her mother and so on. Each person has only one matrilineal line, as you have only one (biological) mother, she only one mother, and she only one mother, etc.

To get a sense of how populations are related, scientists may study the distribution of mtDNA across populations, looking for differences. The closer the mtDNA of 2 people, the more recent their most recent common maternal ancestor is.

This study looked at Turks, and then gauged how similar their mtDNA was to other European and Asian populations:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/do ... 1&type=pdf (PDF)

What they found was surprising, as represented in this chart representing the genetic distance (of the mtDNA) of these populations:



As expected, the Turks are closest to the Turkic Central Asians, but the European group they are closest to are the British, which is surprising. One would think that the Bulgarians and Greeks, at least, would be closer, but they're not. It's not even close, as the genetic distance between the British, Turks, and the Turkic Central Asians is very tiny, showing that they share a very recent common maternal ancestor that they do not share with any of the other European groups. The next closest are the Finns, who are still pretty distant; the French and Germans, along with the Greeks, are the most distant from the British (and by extension also the Turks and Turkic Central Asians).

In science you need to verify findings in replicate studies before it can be confirmed

Human population phylogeny is notoriously inaccurate as for at least a century the entire discipline was written around skull structure.

Further, a number of these genetic studies have been used to further nationalist causes. Case in point. The Chinese have never accepted the genetic evidence that Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa (for obvious reasons). They continue to scour the archaeological evidence relying largely on bones to peddle their theories that Chinese people evolved in China and everyone else evolved elsewhere

Back to the topic. Mitchondrial DNA is related to the female line of inheritance. Britain is an island cut off from the mainland europe from the ice age. The DNA of people in British people is remarkably complex and needs a lot more investigation before we can trace population movements that gave rise to the current population.

Agree with Cyberdad's main point: that one should not make too much of this until it has been replicated a few times.

I am not sure if Britain was so much "isolated" as the opposite during the Ice Age. Parts of it were buried under ice but most of Britain was not even an island, but was connected to the Mainland because the North Sea and the Channel were dry land because the sea level was lower because water was tied up inh the glaciers.



Folks have posted articles on WP about how the English are similar genetically to the Germans,and the Dutch. Which makes sense since Germany and the Netherlands is were the Anglo Saxons are supposed to have come from.

But if this crazy thing connecting Britain to Central Asia via maternal mitochondrial DNA is indeed replicated then it might not be as crazy as it looks.

It might mean that both the Brits and the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and Turkey are remnants of some ancient racial paint on the map of Eurasia. And that the folks in the vast region in between (basically all of mainland Europe) got genetically painted over by subsequent human migrations from some other region of the world.

Thanks for the comments, all. If I see anything more recent on this, I'll post it here in this thread.

Well originally we are all initially from the African continent if you really want to go back to the beginning. But read "Blood of the Isles" by Professor Bryan Sykes.

In a nutshell, all our invaders -- and we've been invaded by pretty much everyone over the millenia, actually did quite a bit of settling and intermarriage, not just raping and pilfering, thus we are not just Celtic and Saxon but also Viking, Roman and Norman and everything else that arrived on our shores, there is even speculation about the Armada. There's no need to reach for "Turks" to find that British genetics is quite exotic.

Not sure why that is even part of anything though. We ALL know we are ALL related. So isn't this kind of redundant?

Yeah. You cant test EVERY body.

And I was talking off the top of my head, about the general concept, and not about the specifics. The point is that you would expect Brits to be related to their neighbors on the near shores of Europe, and not to folks in the middle of the central Asian Steppes. And the Uzbeks are the "largest Turkic speaking group in former Soviet Central Asia" according to Wiki. And the Brits were invaded by both the Angles (from the Denmark-German border), and later were almost swallowed by the Viking invaders from Denmark proper( a big chunk of England became "the Danelaw") before the Danish invaders of England got their asses whipped by Alfred the Great. So the English would be expected to have Danish DNA.