mtDNA of Europeans, Turks, and Turkic Central Asians

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Writing c.540 Gildas mentions that, sometime in the 5th century, a council of Celtic/Roman leaders in Britain agreed that some land in the east of southern Britain would be given to the Saxons on the basis of a treaty, a foedus, by which the Saxons would defend the Britons against attacks from the Picts and Scoti in exchange for food supplies. The Picts are a the last non-Celtic indigenous tribe left in Britain and obviously hated everyone - Celts and Romans. The Romanised Celts thought they could use the Saxons to get rid of the indigenous Brits.

The most contemporaneous textual evidence is the Chronica Gallica of 452 which records for the year 441: "The British provinces, which to this time had suffered various defeats and misfortunes due to the Scoti and Picts, are reduced to Saxon rule. The Anglo-Saxons clearly took the opportunity to settle in the lands vacated following the Romans leaving.

Thinking back on this Columbus question, I don't think Columbus should get all the credit for "messing up" our gene pools in terms of geography. I'd say instead white supremacy and hypodescent were the proximate cause. Think about it, with previous migrations, there's some genetic effect, but the population's genetics still stay the same. This is because as populations migrate, they tend to mix with surrounding populations in the new region.

But with white supremacy, whole institutions were built up privileging people with one background over others, and under hypodescent mixed-race children were often considered to be in the non-dominant caste. This discouraged mixing, creating the artifice we see today, where whole populations in different regions of the world were basically replaced by populations from other parts of the world.

It didn't have to be like this.

Utter nonsense.

you're both contradicting yourself, and missing the point.

Columbus's name is used as shorthand to mean "the late Fifteenth Century start of the Age of Discovery".

Lets take it from the top:

Before 1500 AD humans lived in isolation in their own regional civilizations: the old world was isolated from the new world, and even within Eurasia there little contact between India, and China, and europe (not to mention subsaharan Africa).

After 1500 The division between old and new world disappeared. It was then one world, but one world gradually falling under European domination.

"White supremecy" was made possible because of this European domination of the planet. And this in turn was made possible because of the launching of the Age of Discovery by the rival powers Spain and Portugal in the late 1400's (the Age has been labeled with the name of Columbus) which sparked events which lead all major european powers (including Russia) expanding out ward to dominate the world outside of Europe.

So in effect you're saying "its not columbus's fault..its columbus's fault".

Uh, no, that's not what I'm saying. Columbus's "discovery" didn't mean 100% for sure the Amerindians were going to get wiped out. Not even European domination of the world would necessitate it. It was a conscious choice by European societies that caused it.

And the different parts of the Old World weren't that isolated, and there was plenty of gene flow. You have people coming up from Subsaharan Africa, the genes filtering up through North Africa and the Middle East, eventually reaching Europe and places like China. You had the movements of the Crusades and the invasions by the Islamic Caliphate. You had successive waves of Eurasian steppe empires moving into Europe, not just the Mongols but also the Scythians, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, and others. And finally you had the Great Seljuq Empire followed by the Ottoman Empire.

The Eurasian steppe empires were very dominant in the regions they controlled: Why didn't they consistently do their vassals like we did the Amerindians? Why not the Islamic Caliphate or the Ottoman Empire? White supremacy and hypodescent, the desire to dominate and a love of racial purity, are why.

None of this changes my point.

My point is simply to state the obvious: that the world "got messed up" around 1500 AD because of the European ascent to world domination that followed the Age of Discovery. Therefore it makes a difference which kind of map you use to map Anthropological data: a pre 1500 historical atlas type map, or a map of the present day.

Makes a BIG HUGE difference.

The year 1500 AD is therefore a major boundary line in time. You can call it "1500 AD", or you can call it "Columbus"(who lived and explored at around that time) as short hand. Either label is acceptable.

Thats all I am saying.

The minutea of how and why and What Europeans did to native americans is a seperate issue. The fact remains that WHATEVER they did- it was set into motion by the early explorers of the Renaissance Europe (among whom was Columbus who was in fact pivotal).

+++++++++++++++++

And BTW Columbus himself became a brutal slaver, and mass murderer of Native Americans in the caribean. So the "decision" was made VERY early on, in the time of Columbus himself, and in part by Columbus himself.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 12 Sep 2016, 5:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Interesting.

The "Scoti" (skoh-shee) were what the Romans called the folks in Ireland. In the Dark Ages the Scoti migrated nto the north part of Britain and absorbed the native Picts and became "the Scots" (and that region of Britain above Hadrian's Wall became "Scotland".

Yes I think that's a fair assessment the Scotti/Picts were derived from the original inhabitants from Ireland and north of Hadrian's wall. Another major difference between them and the southern celtic tribes was they were neither romanised or christian. Hence the "foedus" to recruit Saxon mercenaries was to protect Londonium from pagans. One interesting point here is whether the incoming Saxons were already christian or converted in Britian? there is some debate as they came with many of their own pre-christian folk tales such as beauwulf but more than likely they were catholics which explains why so many were allowed to settle in Celtic lands

Dr. Green has just posted an article about not only the presence of people of African descent, but also of East Asian descent in Roman-era London:

http://www.caitlingreen.org/2016/09/eas ... ondon.html

Also, there have apparently been finds of Roman artifacts in China and even Japan dating to the 5th century! In Vagnari, Italy, a burial find of a woman dated to the 1st century or 2nd century AD shows her mtDNA haplotype is linked to Japan; and in fact, today that haplotype is found only in Japan!

I just got done reading "Hawks, Horses, and Huns" by John D. Niles and it goes into detail regarding the impacts the Huns had on Anglo-Saxon culture and asserts that what we know as Anglo-Saxon and Germanic culture is as much Asian as it is European. The concept of a separate European continent grows weaker by the day, at least in my view.

From BBC Radio 4 on this topic:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p048t3c5

Here's a skeptical piece on the subject:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakil ... 014d93ef9b

Via Twitter, Caitlin Green has objected to the Forbes article's implication that skulls were assigned to the East Asian group based on only 2 traits, when it was more like 7 to 15 traits:

https://twitter.com/caitlinrgreen/statu ... 7897980928