mtDNA of Europeans, Turks, and Turkic Central Asians

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The lack of kinship between Turks and their southeast European neighbors is not as strange as it may seem.

You need to be aware that the region of Central Asia inhabited by the Kazahks, and Uzbeks, etc is called "Turkestan". All of those ethnic groups are subsets of "the Turks". And that the Turks of the country of Turkey originated in that region, and only migrated to what is now called "Turkey" from that region relatively recently, and still speak a "Turkic" language (a non Indoeuropean group with in the Altaic language family) related to the languages of the Turkic groups in Turkestan (former Soviet Central Asia, and the Uighurs in Northwest China).

The Seljuk Turks, and later the Ottoman Turks, came storming out of central Asia about 1000 years ago and into Anatolia and gradually they toppled the Byzantine Empire. And Anatolia became Turkish speaking and became called "Turkey".

So the fact that Turks in Turkey have genetic markers in common with the other Turks in Turkestan that they dont have in common with their closer Indoeuropean speaking neighbors in Greece and Bulgaria is NOT completely surprising. Turkey has ethnic and linguistic roots in central asia. So some genetic vestige of that origin is to be expected.

In contrast- The English way over in Britain have no linguistic, nor any obvious historic link to Turkestan. Or no link that wouldnt also be shared by other Europeans. So with the English its a much bigger conundrum.

A simpler explanation is that the population of the Anatolian peninsula has not actually changed much despite influx of Turkish invaders as the majority of the troops/settlers who came with the Ottomans after the overthrow of the Byzantine emperor were Janissarys who were christian converts from the region. This group simply were given rule over the indigenous Byzantine Anatolian population so the resulting population was largely Anatolian European with a smattering of Turkic genes. Many of the Ottoman Pashas were infact European origin not Turkish. So the paleolithic settlers of Britain and the paleolithic settlers in the Anatolian peninsula were genetically of more recent similar stock than those further South/west in Italy/Bulgaria. Infact Colin Renfrew (Oxford specialist in Indo-European) states the cultivators in the fertile crescent (Anatolia and northern Iraq) moved northwest bringing with them agriculture in Britain around 9000 yrs ago

cyberdad,

I think naturalplastic suggested the same, with it being some of the older populations, their remnants are in Central Asia, Turkey, and the British Isles.

I know there were the Huns in the Late Antiquity, who are believed to have been Turkic Central Asians in origin (related to the Xiongnu that waged war against China), and one English author, the monk Bede, wrote in the 8th century that the Anglo-Saxons partly derived their origins from Huns (though the interpretation of this statement is controversial). Maybe there was mixing like what happened in Anatolia.

Still, this isn't a good explanation either, because the Huns probably did not exert power over Britain, only getting as far west as modern-day Germany and thereabouts, though some authors have them not entering modern-day Germany at all. How would the British, via the Anglo-Saxons, be closer to Turkic Central Asians than the Germans, who may actually have been under Hunnic rule?

To answer this question, I think we need to know the time period of the divergence. That should be the next step.

Here are some of the Nei's genetic distances from the Turkic Central Asians given in the study:

Turks 0.0011
British 0.0012
Germans 0.0515

The Germans are shown having 50 times the genetic distance as the Turks and Brits do, and for the Turks and Brits the distance is nearly identical. If these results are true, then the divergence of the British from the Turkic Central Asians couldn't have happened a whole lot earlier than the divergence of the Turks.

Something a little odd here?

Are you asking if there was something odd about my post, or are you referring to the study's results themselves?

To be fair Anglo-Saxon is a language of the overlords in post-Roman Britain but not necessarily the people. The outgoing Romans let two brothers Horst and Hengist who were leaders of alliance of northern Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians basically invade virtually the entire western ad southern half of Britain. They imposed their language over the Pre-Roman population who retained their basic genetic characteristics while acquiring Anglo-Saxon language and culture.

No the results

The results are unexpected, but I don't know enough about genetics to critique if the study wasn't done right.

I looked at the citations of this article in PubMed, and there were 4. None of the citing articles were critical, and in fact there was virtually no commentary, the OP study often being cited with several other articles in the same place.

The Anglo-Saxons left their mark. Present-day English DNA is 1/3 Anglo-Saxon:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35344663

Turkic sample size = 75...

What was the sample size of the "British" contingent?


I'm still not believing this idea of British DNA...
Genetic map of Britain

It's on the chart in the OP, n=30.

It's looking like the result being spurious because of the small sample size is the most likely explanation. Nevertheless, it would be good if we could get another study comparing the mtDNA of these populations, but with much larger sample sizes this time. This is a result that needs follow-up.

I wonder if there is some way to get genetic data online, like what they used in this study?

Irishmen are descended from Turkish farmers:

http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/new-s ... 88351.html

Here is Wiki page on the subject, which reproduces the chart in the OP study:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic ... ish_people

This needs to be worded carefully. The people in Ireland are actually descended from the paleolithic population that occupied Anatolian peninsula around 9000BC. They were not actually Turkish at that time.

Yes.That.

And the neolithic farmers in question supposedly slowly migrated west into europe, and populated the entire length of Europe before they even got to Ireland, and Britain. So that in and of itself doesnt explain this "finding" that Brits are somehow related to Central Asian Turks, but the rest of Europeans are not related to them.