Unmasking AIT

[Husky]

Post 3/



2. Oooh, different - and larger - dataset (2000 "white Europeans") from a 2010 study also led by Mark Jobling

concludes 4/5 of Europeans are descended from neolithic farmers out of Iraq/Syrian 10,000 years ago:



dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1244654/Study-finds-Britons-descended-farmers-left-Iraq-Syria-10-000-years-ago.html

Most Britons descended from male farmers who left Iraq and Syria 10,000 years ago (and were seduced by the local hunter-gatherer women)



By David Derbyshire for MailOnline

Updated: 13:37 GMT, 20 January 2010





Most Britons are direct descendants of farmers who left modern day Iraq and Syria 10,000 years ago, a new study has shown.



After studying the DNA of more than 2,000 men, researchers say they have compelling evidence that four out of five white Europeans can trace their roots to the Near East.



The discovery is shedding light on one of the most important periods of human history - the time when our ancient ancestors abandoned hunting and began to domesticate animals.



Hunters: Chewing harder food meant hunter-gatherers has longer and narrow mandibles



The invention of farming led to the first towns and paved the way for the dawn of civilisation.

(BTW, 10,000 years ago still < age of Gobekli Tepe in what's now Turkey.)



The Leicester University study looked at a common genetic mutation on the Y chromosome, the DNA that is passed down from fathers to sons.



They found that 80 per cent of European men shared the same Y chromosone mutation and after analysing how the mutation was distributed across Europe, were able to retrace how Europe was colonised around 8,000BC.

Middle East farmers



Roots: Britons are descended from farmers who migrated from the Persian Gulf 10,000 years ago according to a new study (file picture)



Prof Mark Jobling, who led the study: 'This was at the time of the Neolithic revolution when they developed a new style of tools, symmetrical, beautiful tools.



'At this stage about 10,000 years ago there was evidence of the first settlements, people stopped being nomadic hunter-gatherers and started building communities.



'This also allowed people to specialise in certain areas of trade and make better tools because there was a surplus of food.'



European farming began around 9,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent - a region extending from the eastern Mediterranean coast to the Persian Gulf and which includes modern day Iraq, Syria, Israel and southeast Turkey.



The region was the cradle of civilisation and home to the Babylonia, Sumer and Assyrian empires.



Professor Mark Jobling

Skills: Professor Mark Jobling says the settlers were more attractive to women because they could grow more food

(Who's betting that there'll be another lecture on how this is but further proof of females' hypergamy?)



The development of farming allowed people to settle down for the first time - and to produce more food than they needed, leading to trade and the freedom to develop new skills such as metal working, building and writing.



Some archaeologists have argued that some of these early farmers travelled around the world - settling new lands and bringing farming skills with them.



But others have insisted that the skills were passed on by word of mouth, and not by mass migration.



The new study suggests the farmers routinely upped sticks and moved west when their villages became too crowded, eventually reaching Britain and Ireland.



The waves of migrants brought their new skills with them. Some settled down with local tribes and taught them how to farm, the researchers believe.



'When the expansion happened these men had a reproductive advantage because they were able to grow more food so they were more attractive to women and had more offspring,' said Prof Jobling.



'In total more than 80 per cent of European men have Y chromosomes which descend from incoming farmers.



'It seems odd to think that the majority of men in Ireland have fore fathers from the near East and that British people have forefathers from the near East.'

(10,000 years ago. Depending on whether that feels long enough or not for those in the British Isles.)



The findings are published in the science journal PLoS Biology.



Dr Patricia Balaresque, a co-author of the study, said: 'This means that more than 80 per cent of European Y chromosomes descend from incoming farmers.'



In contrast, other studies have shown that DNA passed down from mothers to daughters can be traced by to hunter-gatherers in Europe, she said.



'To us, this suggests a reproductive advantage for farming males over indigenous hunter-gatherer males during the switch from hunting and gathering, to farming - maybe, back then, it was just sexier to be a farmer,' she said.

(Maybe they had more food to share. No food certainty vs more food certainty. More certain access to primary resources. Hence attracts women.)



Europe was first settled by modern humans around 40,000 years ago. But other types of humans - including Neanderthals - were living in Europe hundreds of thousands of years earlier.

Both studies (2010 and 2015) looked at the Y-chromosome. And:



- 2015 article: "2/3rds of modern European men descend from 3 Bronze Age male settlers" from irgendwo

- 2010 article: "four out of five white Europeans can trace their roots to the Near East." -> 4/5th of modern European men have male ME* neolithic farmer ancestry (*Iraq, Syria = ISIS territory),

- 2010 article: "Most Britons descended from male farmers who left Iraq and Syria 10,000 years ago"

- And 2015 article again:

dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3088004/The-three-forefathers-Europe-Two-thirds-modern-European-men-descended-just-trio-Bronze-Age-leaders.html

Stonehenge (above) is thought to have been built by Neolithic inhabitants of Britain but the new research suggests they were largely replaced by the descendants of Bronze Age leaders who spread through Europe

I think they lost me.



Oh no. I see. Mark Jobling and co. have specifically gone back on their 2010 conclusions -which had pinpointed neolithic Middle-Eastern farmer origins accounting for 80% of Europeans males - to declaring total replacement by 3 Bronze Age male lineages now in 2015. See footnotes 11 and 12 in the main body of the current "3 ancestors" study (2015):



nature.com/ncomms/2015/150519/ncomms8152/full/ncomms8152.html#ref11



Footnote 11 is exactly the paper on how 80% of European males are descended from neolithic ME males, from which Jobling & co have backpeddled. (NB: Their 2015 study's data set is 1/6 smaller in size.)

Most debate on European prehistory has been stimulated by analyses of uniparentally-inherited markers. Spatial patterns in maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are non-clinal, with age estimates of haplogroups (hg) taken to suggest a major Palaeolithic contribution6. Analyses of diversity in the male-specific region of the Y chromosome (MSY) show significant frequency clines in major lineages7, and geographical distributions and dates based on short-tandem repeats (STRs) have led to interpretations of both Palaeolithic8 and Neolithic9 major components. The most frequent western European lineage, hg R1b-M269, was originally believed to have originated in the Palaeolithic10, but in more recent analysis was assigned a Neolithic origin11, a claim challenged in turn12 on the basis of STR choice and sample ascertainment. In general, dates based on STRs are problematic because of uncertainty about appropriate mutation rates, and possible long-term mutation saturation due to their stepwise mutation processes13. Palaeolithic dates for the major lineages are challenged by scanty ancient MSY DNA data, which suggest a marked discontinuity between 5–7 KYA and the present14.



A major cause of the controversy about MSY evidence is that unbiased estimates of diversity and time depth have until recently been impossible to obtain in large samples. [...]



(Relevant footnotes

11. Balaresque, P. et al. A predominantly Neolithic origin for European paternal lineages. PLoS Biol. 8, e1000285 (2010).



Which refers to this paper (it's what the 2010 dailymail article referred to by the way):



journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1000285

A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for European Paternal Lineages



Patricia Balaresque,

Georgina R. Bowden,

Susan M. Adams,

Ho-Yee Leung,

Turi E. King,

Zoë H. Rosser,

Jane Goodwin,

Jean-Paul Moisan,

Christelle Richard,

Ann Millward,

Andrew G. Demaine,

Guido Barbujani,

Carlo Previderè,

[ ... ],

Mark A. Jobling





PLOS



Published: January 19, 2010

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000285

12. Busby, G. B. et al. The peopling of Europe and the cautionary tale of Y chromosome lineage R-M269. Proc. Biol. Sci. 279, 884–892 (2012).

rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/279/1730/884

[size="5"]So, based on the bit in red in footnote 12 just above, are all MSY (male specific region of Y-chromosome) DNA studies before the 2012 study in footnote 12 deprecated?[/size] Are they all/any number/which ones tainted by the same errors?

That is: is it Back to the drawing board on earlier Y-specific genetic studies? Do the data from pre-2012 studies need to be re-sampled or the tests re-done/re-run, or the results re-analysed? I mean, it's pretty serious right?

Are there more such blunders anyone wants to own up to? Are there more such blunders that just passed under the radar since peer review doesn't seem to result in double-checking others' methods and results very often: most people just keep rolling with others' results.





Relevant sections explaining MSY below (why it matters, why is it "male-specific", as in: where did the gene shuffling that's supposed to happen during meiosis as per your high school biology go, etc):



nature.com/nature/journal/v423/n6942/full/nature01722.html

The hallmark of the third and present era has been the application of recombinant DNA and genomic technologies to the Y chromosome, culminating in molecularly based conclusions about its genes. In recent decades, an understanding of the Y chromosome's biological functions has begun to emerge from DNA studies of individuals with partial Y chromosomes, coupled with molecular characterization of Y-linked genes implicated in gonadal sex reversal, Turner syndrome, graft rejection and spermatogenic failure6. Genomic studies revealed that the Y chromosome contains a region, comprising 95% of its length, where there is no X–Y crossing over. This region came to be known as the non-recombining region, or NRY, although our discovery of abundant recombination, as reported here and in the accompanying manuscript, compels us to rename it the male-specific region, or MSY7. The MSY is flanked on both sides by pseudoautosomal regions, where X–Y crossing over is a normal and frequent event in male meiosis (see Supplementary Note 1).



[...]

Genetic mapping studies have shown that, typically, one X–Y crossover occurs per generation in the pseudoautosomal regions (Supplementary Note 7). As described in the accompanying report7, steady-state calculations suggest that, on average, multiple Y–Y gene conversion events take place per generation in the MSY. Thus, most homologous recombination events in the Y chromosome probably occur in the MSY.



In recent years, we and other investigators have referred to the MSY as the NRY, or ‘non-recombining region of the Y chromosome’. This usage reflected both awareness that productive X–Y crossing over did not occur in the MSY, and ignorance of the Y–Y gene conversion that is apparently commonplace there. We now refer to the NRY as the MSY, or ‘male-specific region of the Y chromosome’, because it is recombinogenic and unique to males.

Useful.