A different look at the Olympic Medal Count

A different look at the Olympic Medal Count

The Athens Olympics are now over and Greece won 16 medals. The best-performing nations, according to the official medal count are the United States, China, Russia, Australia and Japan. A different look at the medal count of the Olympics comes from the Australian Bureau of Statistics which has compiled a world ranking based on population per gold medal. The Bahamas, Norway, Australia, Hungary and Cuba lead this ranking, with Greece placing 8th. At the bottom of the table, Syria, Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria and India.

Dutch Hair Color Preferences

Dutch Hair Color Preferences

Gentlemen prefer blondes, women go for black

5 August 2004

AMSTERDAM — Dutch men prefer blondes and over half of Dutch women want to be blond or blonder than their present shade, particularly in the summer, according to research published Thursday.

The study carried out by research bureau Blauw Research for shampoo manufacturer Andrelon also found that women find men with dark hair more attractive.

Some 71 percent of the 535 people, aged 18 to 55, polled said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their own hair colour. Men were more satisfied with their hair colour than women.

Two out of five women were natural blondes and a slightly higher number were brunettes. The same applies to the men, though more men than women were black haired. Red hair was the rarest colour, Novum Nieuws reported.

Several women polled no longer to know what their original hair colour was.

About half of the women said they coloured their hair regularly, with 35 percent admitting to using dye. Half of the women polled have used highlights to make their hair appear blonder.

Some 10 percent put their faith in nature, relying on the sun to make their hair blonder.

The survey found that men — more so than women — believe blond hair makes a person look younger.

Women, on the other hand, were more in favour of men with dark hair, with just 17 percent of females questioned saying blond men were very attractive.

[Copyright Expatica News 2004]

Link

EURO-DNA test

EURO-DNA test

AncestryByDNA has released a EURO-DNA test which reports percentages of "Northern European," "Southeastern European," "Middle-Eastern," and "South Asian" admixture based on a 320 ancestry-informative markers (AIMs).

The ad-hoc choice of the four ancestral groups and the rather confusing commentary and/or anomalous results (Iberians on average ~16% "South Asian"?) may discourage many from taking the test, especially at a price tag of $399. Still, EURO-DNA is a step towards personalized genetic archaeology, even though the theoretical assumptions and methodology leave much to be desired at this stage.

Update:

If you start with the a priori breakdown into 4 groups, then each individual will have 4 numbers that add up to 100%. One could just as easily have used a "Southwestern European", "Northeastern European", "Middle Eastern" and "South Asian" breakdown, and again each individual would have 4 numbers adding up to 100%.

The trick is to start with a collection of individuals, remove identifying tags and cluster them, thus identifying the real genetic components in the population, if any such components can be detected. This was the procedure followed by Rosenberg et al. [1]. In that analysis, wholly different clusterings emerged, with e.g., the specificity of Iberian Basques, who were allocated their own cluster, was discovered.



By contrast, an Iberian Basque taking the EURO-DNA test would perhaps get a score high in NOR/MED which however obfuscates the real genetic structure of the Basque population which is highly specific, as the Basques are an ancient ethnolinguistic isolate of the Iberian peninsula rather than the product of "admixture".

AncestryByDNA must show why its chosen four-group breakdown is used in lieu of other potential choices.

[1] Rosenberg et al (2002)

Update #2: Check out the comments for some additional information by Dr. Tony Frudakis of DNAPrint who is involved in the creation of EURO-DNA 1.0 and the AncestryByDNA tests.

The German Hyperbrachycephals

The German Hyperbrachycephals

According to the Nordicist school, European achievement is primarily due to the tall, blond, dolichocephalic race. The only problem with this theory, which achieved such popularity in the 19th and early 20th centuries, is that when the skulls of prominent Europeans and Germans were measured there was no evidence of an overrepresentation of dolichocephals among them: indeed, most of them were brachycephalic, many of them tending to the extreme hyperbrachycephalic form, as the following passage illustrates.

Friedrich Hertz, Rasse und Kultur: eine kritische Untersuchung der Rassentheorien, 3. ed., Alfred Kröner, Leipzig, 1925, p.163

Sehen aber die Genies wirklich in der Regel so aus [DP: Germanisch Typus]? Genaue Feststellungen liegen leider nur selten vor. Immerhin können wir sagen, dass die Genies sehr häufig - vielleicht selbst in der Mehrzahl der Fälle - diesen Anforderungen nicht entsprechen. Vor allem ihr Schädel nähert sich meist ganz bedenklich der "Kreislinie tierischen Wohlbehagens", wie Chamberlain so schön sagt. Bismarck, Luther, Laplace, Napoleon, Pascal, Raphael, Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert sind einige Beispiele von Rundköpfen, ja, es scheint gerade die extreme Form der Rundköpfigkeit, die Hyperbrachycephalität, die man mit dem Index 85 beginnen lasst, unter ihnen sehr häufig zu sein). Schillers Schadel mit seinem Index von 84 steht knapp an inhrer Grenze, Kant mit seiner Indexnummer von 88.5 war ein ganz ausgesprochener Hyperbrachycephale. Hamerling hatte den Index 85.3, Schopenhauer den von 86, Leibniz gar einen von 90.3.

UPDATE (2 March 2008)

Franz Weidenreich, "The Brachycephalization of Recent Mankind", Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Spring, 1945), p. 9.

One can imagine the shock an intelligent German reader suffered when he remembered that many of the great German heroes from Bismarck down to Hindenburg and Hitler were brachycephalics and even hyperbrachycephalics, and that the three greatest philosophers Germany has produced-Leibniz, Kant, and Schopenhauer-had round heads in the most extreme form (Fig. 2, No. 4, Leibniz, skull index 90.3[!]; NO. 5, Kant, skull index 88.5; No. 6, Schopenhauer, head index 90.0 [!).

Higher female effective population size in recent human evolution

Higher female effective population size in recent human evolution

The common maternal ancestor of all living humans appears to be much older than the common paternal ancestor of all living men. It has been suggested that selection on the Y-chromosome is responsible for this discrepancy, that is, that a recent male line has wiped out older lines because of some unspecified advantage. This new study indicates that this is not the case, and rather that the female effective population size was higher than the male one, which is likely due to the practice of successful males to have many children with different wives (polygyny).

Mol Biol Evol. 2004 Aug 18 [Epub ahead of print]

Genetic Evidence for Unequal Effective Population Sizes of Human Females and Males.

Wilder JA et al.

The time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of the human mitochondria (mtDNA) is estimated to be older than that of the non-recombining portion of the Y chromosome (NRY). Surveys of variation in globally distributed humans typically result in mtDNA TMRCA values just under 200 thousand years (kya) while those for the NRY range between 46 and 110 kya. A favored hypothesis for this finding is that natural selection has acted on the NRY leading to a recent selective sweep. An alternate hypothesis is that sexbiased demographic processes are responsible. Here we re-examine the disparity between NRY and mtDNA TMRCAs using data collected from individual human populations--a sampling strategy that minimizes the confounding influence of population subdivision in global datasets. We survey variation at 782 bp of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 3 gene as well as at 26.5 kb of non-coding DNA from the NRY in a sample of 25 Khoisan, 24 Mongolians, and 24 Papua New Guineans. Data from both loci in all populations are best described by a model of constant population size, with the exception of Mongolian mtDNA which appears to be experiencing rapid population growth. Taking these demographic models into account, we estimate the TMRCAs for each locus in each population. A pattern that is remarkably consistent across all three populations is an approximately two-fold deeper coalescence for mtDNA than for the NRY. The oldest TMRCAs are observed for the Khoisan (73.6 kya for the NRY and 176.5 kya for mtDNA) while those in the non-African populations are consistently lower (averaging 47.7 kya for the NRY and 92.8 kya for mtDNA). Our data do not suggest that differential natural selection is the cause of this difference in TMRCAs. Rather, these results are most consistent with a higher female effective population size.
Link (pdf)

mtDNA from Xinjiang

mtDNA from Xinjiang

A new study quantifies the level of Caucasoid admixture in various populations of the Xinjiang province of China, which ranges from 0% in the Han Chinese to 43% in the Uygur.

Mol Biol Evol. 2004 Aug 18 [Epub ahead of print]

Different Matrilineal Contributions to Genetic Structure of Ethnic Groups in the Silk Road Region in China.

Yao YG

Previous studies have shown that there were extensive genetic admixtures in the Silk Road region. In the present study, we analyzed 252 mtDNAs of five ethnic groups (Uygur, Uzbek, Kazak, Mongolian, and Hui) from Xinjiang Province, China (where once was the via route of the Silk Road), together with some reported data from the adjacent regions in Central Asia. In a simple way, we classified the mtDNAs into different haplogroups (monophyletic clades in the rooted mtDNA tree) according to the available phylogenetic information and compared their frequencies to show the differences among the matrilineal genetic structures of these populations with different demographic histories. With the exception of 8 unassigned M(*), N(*) and R(*) mtDNAs, all the mtDNA types identified here belonged to defined subhaplogroups of haplogroups M and N (including R) and consisted of subsets of both the eastern and western Eurasian pools, thus providing direct evidence in supporting the suggestion that Central Asia be the place of the genetic admixture of the East and the West. Although our samples were from the same geographic location, a decreasing tendency of the western Eurasian-specific haplogroup frequency was observed, with the highest frequency present in Uygur (42.6%) and Uzbek (41.4%), followed by Kazak (30.2%), Mongolian (14.3%), and Hui (6.7%). No western Eurasian type was found in Han Chinese samples from the same place. The frequencies of the eastern Eurasian-specific haplogroups also varied in these samples. Combined with the historical records, ethno-origin, migratory history, and marriage custom might play different roles in shaping the matrilineal genetic structure of different ethnic populations resided in this region.

Link (pdf)

Y chromosomal haplogroup J as a signature of the post-neolithic colonization of Europe

Y chromosomal haplogroup J as a signature of the post-neolithic colonization of Europe

A very important new paper about Y chromosome haplogroup J. I will have more to say once I have finished reading it carefully.

Update:
The main finding of the authors is that haplogroup J was not carried by a single advance from the Middle East into Europe. Rather, at least two expansions can be detected, a "Neolithic" one and a "Greek" one:

In summary, our data are in agreement with a major discontinuity for the peopling of southern Europe. Here, haplogroup J constitutes not only the signature of a single wave-of-advance from the Levant but, to a greater extent, also of the expansion of the Greek world, with an accompanying novel quota of genetic variation produced during its demographic growth. In the analysis by Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994), the two peopling contributions can be distinguished, as they are caught in the first and the fourth principal component, respectively, but the relevance of the latter may have been underestimated. The two processes, widely spaced in time, are associated with dramatically different travel technologies. This implies that, in the central and west Mediterranean, the entry of J chromosomes may have occurred mainly by sea, i.e., in the south–east of both Spain and Italy.

Human Genetics (online first)

Y chromosomal haplogroup J as a signature of the post-neolithic colonization of Europe
F. Di Giacomo et al.

Abstract In order to attain a finer reconstruction of the peopling of southern and central-eastern Europe from the Levant, we determined the frequencies of eight lineages internal to the Y chromosomal haplogroup J, defined by biallelic markers, in 22 population samples obtained with a fine-grained sampling scheme. Our results partially resolve a major multifurcation of lineages within the haplogroup. Analyses of molecular variance show that the area covered by haplogroup J dispersal is characterized by a significant degree of molecular radiation for unique event polymorphisms within the haplogroup, with a higher incidence of the most derived sub-haplogroups on the northern Mediterranean coast, from Turkey westward; here, J diversity is not simply a subset of that present in the area in which this haplogroup first originated. Dating estimates, based on simple tandem repeat loci (STR) diversity within each lineage, confirmed the presence of a major population structuring at the time of spread of haplogroup J in Europe and a punctuation in the peopling of this continent in the post-Neolithic, compatible with the expansion of the Greek world. We also present here, for the first time, a novel method for comparative dating of lineages, free of assumptions of STR mutation rates.

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