R1b1*

In my discussion with Eliezer I referred to "recreational genetics." Basically, "for entertainment purposes only" genetics. For example, someone with blue eyes confirming that they have the alleles on OCA2 & HERC2 associated with blue eyes. Or a man with the surname O'Neill discovers that he has the Uà Néill Y chromosomal marker. Yes, people will pay money to find out these facts which are already highly probable. I think the news that Charles Darwin was likely of the R1b Y chromosomal haplogroup falls into the recreational category, though due to Darwin's fame the media has really been…

For the past few decades there has been a long standing debate as to the origins of modern Europeans. The two alternative hypotheses are: * Europeans are descended from Middle Eastern farmers, who brought their Neolithic cultural toolkit less than 10,000 years ago. * Europeans are descended from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, who acculturated to the farming way of life through diffusion of ideas. The two extreme positions are not really accepted in such stark forms by anyone. Rather, the debate is over the effect size of #1 vs. #2. Bryan Sykes, a geneticist at Oxford, has been arguing for the…

In light of the relatively recent interaction of Bantu farmers and Pygmies in Central Africa, this paper is of note, Genetic and demographic implications of the Bantu expansion: insights from human paternal lineages: The expansion of Bantu languages, which started around 5,000 years before present (YBP) in west/central Africa and spread all throughout sub-Saharan Africa, may represent one of the major and most rapid demographic movements in the history of the human species. Although the genetic footprints of this expansion have been unmasked through the analyses of the maternally-inherited…