Any Polish on the board? Here is your history.

[djoser-xyyman]

This is a good(or at least better) example of how genetic research should be carried out. There are flaws in the paper but this is a step in the right direction…regardless.

The researchers are trying to determine the relationship between Modern Poles to Medieval Poles and Iron Age Poles. And their (ancient and Modern) relation with other Europeans.

In earnest they have set aside the “gimmick and trickery” in trying to get to the bottom of this.

They essential performed genetic analysis on ancient remains from two past period in Polish history.

Why this got my attention? It is because of the methodology used. Poles? Ehh? No big deal.

To get an idea of the migration pattern, they did the most sensible comparison , which is haplotype relationships. I wish more researchers, would do this instead of playing the “frequency game”. That is one of the very few ways to test population relationships. That “Gates of Tears” and Pillars of Hercules” papers are other good examples.

With some of the many other papers you have to dig deep to align the relationships, which is really tedious. I don’t have the time.

The one flaw is, and I believe it was deliberate, was to NOT expand the modern populations OUTSIDE of Europe. After all HV0/HV/N1a/W are old lineage is found in high frequency in Africa and the “Near East”. They stopped at the shores of “Europe”. Hmmmm.


To those who are into genetics. This is what Kefi did in her new paper. I will link the chart later on.
Here are the relevant excerpts. Any Poles on the Forum board? ..hit me up with any questions.

[djoser-xyyman]

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Ancient DNA Reveals Matrilineal Continuity in Present- Day Poland over the Last Two Millennia - Anna Juras Oct2014


Results

MtDNA haplotypes shared between ancient and modern populations

A set of 3595 modern mitochondrial haplotypes, including majority of Slavic populations from regions geographically adjacent to Poland, was used for comparative analysis. Haplotypes shared between ancient and modern populations are presented in Table S4. Among haplotypes identified in the RoIA populations, seven were found to be frequent in most of the modern-day populations in our database and thus classified as non-informative. These widespread haplotypes belong to common West Eurasian hgs H, T and W. The 16223-16292 (hg W) haplotype represents a basal haplotype within the phylogeny of hg W. Eight RoIA haplotypes were infrequent in contemporary populations and were classified as INFORMATIVE (Table S4). The relative frequencies of the shared informative and non-informative RoIA haplotypes were calculated in each of twelve present-day populations. Three modern populations or groups of populations (Lithuanians and Latvians, Poles, and Czechs and Slovaks) were found to contain significantly higher percentages (p,0.05) of shared informative haplotypes with the RoIA samples compared to other present-day populations (Figure 2, Table S4). Notably, modern Poles shared the highest number (nine) of informative mtDNA haplotypes with the RoIA individuals. The remaining three haplotypes had no match in the screened modern populations and were classified as unique (Table S3). These unique haplotypes belonged to mtDNA hgs N1a (16147A-16223-16248-16320-16355), with (likely) back mutation (C.T) at the position 16172, U5a (16256-16263-16270) and W (16192-16223-16292-16399). Among distinct mtDNA haplotypes in the ME samples, eight belonging to hgs H, T, K, and J were present in high frequencies in modern-day populations and were hence classified as noninformative (Table S4). The informative group consisted of nine haplotypes occurring in low frequencies in six modern populations

(Table S4); however, only three out of the 12 tested modern populations (Bulgarians, Poles and Belarusians) were found to share significantly higher percentage (p,0.05) of informative haplotypes with the ME samples (Figure 3). Three haplotypes, characteristic of hg X4 (16183-16189-16223-16258-16266-16274- 16278), hg HV0 (16129-16145-16298) and hg HV (16189-16271) did not have matches to the studied modern populations and were thus considered as unique to the ME samples.



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(xyyman comment)In summary: The old mtDNA lineage disappeared during the Middle Ages(ME). Most modern Polish people are descended and have close relationship to migrants from the ME period onwards.

[djoser-xyyman]

To expand on this further and break it down for the newbies.

I like what they researchers did. It is the logical thing to do if they are really interested in determining population relationships. They broke the haplotypes down into 3 categories . Non-informative, Informative and unique. Non-informative meanings it is wide-spread(in Europe) and frequent and does NOT tell(edit) you anything. Informative means that it is shared ONLY between certain populations. And Unique means it is ONLY found in that population.

In the Kefi (2014)paper her dataset, she took the same approach. For mtDNA hg-H, her dataset showed that Tunisians had and extra-ordinary amount unique haplotypes (not found anywhere in Europe). Infact “unique” haoplotypes are found ONLY in exit points from Africa. ie Tunisia, Siwa/Bedoiuns/Levant and Morocco. In the “Pillars of Hercules paper” the upstream clade of mtDNA hg-H ie HV/V Saharawis carry the most unique haplotypes compared to Europeans.

What does this all mean? As far a hg-H is concerned the data consistently shows Europeans haplotypes are a sub-set of Saharans. And these researchers know it. That is why so many refuse to include Saharans in their dataset. They stop at the modern political border of “Europe” ie Sardinia. LOL! That is a joke. “modern Europeans APPEARED in Sardinia” LOL!’