mtDNA of Europeans, Turks, and Turkic Central Asians

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Always take population phylogeny with a grain of salt. The simple reason why Europeans cluster closer to each other is because in the old days it was highly unlikely for population groups to move outside of their regional area so inbreeding is higher in local populations and regional populations and less likely with groups further away.

Hate to say it,but this post does not make any sense the way that you're stating it.

you're saying that the phylogentic tree gets distorted because..it does NOT get distorted!

Totally contradicting yourself.





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I think that what you meant to say was something like "neighboring ethnic groups can share DNA because they have a common ancestry, OR they can share DNA because they are neighbors and have more genetic drift between each other than either would have with groups on distant continents.

So its hard to decifer which is which: which similarity is due to common ancestry, and which is due to genetic drift.

A similar problem exists with historical linguistics: which pairs of similar words in two languages are due to inheritance from a common ancestor language, and which pair of similar words are due to recent borrowing of words by one language from the other (both of which could be likely for languages of neighboring peoples).

When one gets foreign articles, how good is Google Translate in translating them?

I was making two separate statements. Firstly studies involving population genetics appear to sometimes overestimate the relationship of some genetic markers. For instance blonde hair is prevalent only in Scandanavia. Yet it also appears in native Australoid peoples in Australia and the pacific islands. Profuse hair growth in ears is very common in communities in southern Italy. It's only found in one other population in native people in Northern Sri Lanka. In both the above examples the shared genes don't constitute a common "recent" ancestry (not to mention the massive geographic separation).

The best predictor of genetic similarity is always geographic distance. Turkish people may share a genetic ancestry culture and language with Mongolians but they cluster genetically with neighboring European populations rather than with distant Mongolian populations. Same with the Finns and Lapps who also share a common language with Turks but cluster with Scandanavians. If a Turkish person walked around London people wouldn't give a second thought that person wasn't English. On the hand a Mongolian would stand out as distinct.

I wonder. With the way the Turkic and other steppe empires usually expanded, it actually shouldn't be all that surprising that the genetics of the people of Anatolia are similar to what they were before. Generally, they would go to war against other tribes and then get those tribes to submit to them, and those tribes would be incorporated into their empires. And like this they would often keep expanding over time. The Seljuk Turks first moved into Anatolia, leaving a large culturally "Turkicized" group there, as I understand it, then having become the Ottoman Turks they later took over the Byzantine Empire, and the population in Anatolia was Turkicized. The Ottoman Turks expanded beyond that, but it appears in those cases the population was not really Turkicized.

In his book, The Huns, Rome, and the Birth of Europe, Hyun Jin Kim mentions that the Huns, whom he asserts to be a mixed group with a probably Turkic elite, would subjugate some of the tribes they encountered as they moved west whilst other tribes would fly before them. The subjugated tribes would be incorporated into their sophisticated government structure and the Hunnic leaders would often send them to reconnoiter areas even further west. This they continued until they reached Germania, at least*. The Germanic peoples by and large weren't exactly "Turkicized" in this case it seems, though a lot of populations further east were. Kim did argue that the Germanic peoples did adopt many cultural elements of the Huns, however, and that the Germanic tribes the Gepids and the Ostrogoths at least were to a large extent Turkicized.

Back to the genetic aspects, with this kind of gradual expansion, incorporating more and more people into their empires, and largely not having a problem with intermarriage, it seems like there would be some gene flow wherever these steppe empires go, but it would not radically change the genotypic characteristics of the local populations.

The fact that, for example, the number of African and East Asian haplogroups found in the native populations of Europe was greater than 0 (each one being about a percent+), and vice versa, suggests there was some back and forth of movement, but it still shows that a lot of the transmission was cultural rather than just genetic.

*Though see this thread, for how tribes that were at least nominally subject to the Huns might have been among the Anglo-Saxons who moved to Britain:

viewtopic.php?t=324383

+Here is an mtDNA haplogroup table by region:

http://www.mitomap.org/foswiki/bin/view ... oupMarkers

I think much of Europe's population is descended from either Genghis Khan's Mongols or Turkic tribes. That of course doesn't mean the predominant phenotypes have genetic contributions predominantly from Mongols. It just means that populations are not homogeneous. The Huns are descended from turkic speaking settlers whom after the fall of Rome settled near the River Danube and mixed in the predominantly germanic speaking tribes. The Roman used mercanaries in Britain. Among the horse cavalry they employed in Britain subjects from the borderlands of their empire who were most likely of Turkic origin

Well, I know in 175 AD Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius deployed 5500 Sarmatian troops to Britain, but the Sarmatians were Iranian, not Turkic, and most of them left in the 3rd century. Nevertheless, I know these soldiers have been tied to King Arthur, if he ever existed, and that there is evidence of interaction between the British and the peoples of the steppe.

Other than that, I don't know of any specific example of a group on the Eurasian steppe moving to Britain, in or before the 5th century AD.

Do you have any other examples?

That's an interesting one. The Sarmatians became extinct as a group following the Mongol invasions. Prior to the invasion the Sarmatians were Iranian speaking but as with many central Asians they were genetically mixed.

I had a friend from Cornwall who told me the Cornish people had long traded with the middle east prior to the coming of the Romans and Anglo-Saxons. the Cornish not only traded but had settlers/colonists of many different nationalities who eventually adopted the local language. I'd be interested in genetic studies on the Cornish if you have them.

Here's an interesting article on the impact of one African man on the genetic make up of entire regions of England
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... ite-brits/

The Sarmatians weren't a Central Asian people; they existed around modern-day Ukraine. Now, in the 4th and 5th centuries, there definitely would have been some mixing between the Sarmatians and Huns, but that's way after Marcus Aurelius sent Sarmatians to Britain (in 175 AD). I don't think they would have been a source of Turkic influence in Britain, but probably a source of Iranian influence.

I do not.

Nevertheless, you may be interested in Caitlin R. Green's website, an historian with an interest in early Anglo-Saxon England. Here it is:

http://www.caitlingreen.org/

Referring to your following post, she discusses possible African immigrants to Britain from the Bronze Age through the Middle Ages:

http://www.caitlingreen.org/2016/05/a-n ... rants.html

That is a very interesting site. Thanks for posting those links!

Yes they had mines in cornwall (either tin, or copper, forget which). Either way its a prime ingredient of Bronze so there was a lot of sea born trade between Cornwall and the Bronze Age East Mediterranean. The Phonecians were major players in that trade, as were the Carthegenians (who were themselves descended from Phonecian colonists.

Aren't the British supposed to have some Roman dna as well?

Dont know if anyone has ever tested for that specifically.

The Romans conquered Britain and ruled more or less the area that is now England, and Wales , but not Scotland. Ruled it for four centuries and assimilated the Celtic Britons . How much actual Roman DNA found its way to the Roman Province of Britain is anyone's guess. Probably not as much as in the modern Romance speaking countries of Europe like France, Spain, Portugal, and even Romania (all of which were also Roman provinces, and all which have a greater linguistic legacy of Roman rule than does Britain, so they may have more of a genetic legacy as well). But doubtless some.

When Romans legions withdrew from Britain and the Germanic Anglo Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians, invaded the south eastern part of the island from what is now Germany, and the Netherlands they pretty much kicked the original in habitants(the Romanized Celtic Britons) out. So there maybe more Roman DNA in Wales, Cornwall, and in western England than in the London area and in Wessex (West Saxon), Essex (east Saxon), Sussex (south Saxon),East Anglia, and Kent (settled by the Germanic Jute tribe from Jutland). But thats just a guess on my part.