Genetically Italians (and Finns) are unique

[guy]

I found this hard to believe, but genetic studies suggest that Italians are more genetically homogeneous than previously thought and they are genetically distinct from the rest of Europe.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/science/13visual.html?_r=0

 

 

The map also identifies the existence of two genetic barriers within Europe. One is between the Finns (light blue, upper right) and other Europeans. It arose because the Finnish population was at one time very small and then expanded, bearing the atypical genetics of its few founders.

 

The other is between Italians (yellow, bottom center) and the rest. This may reflect the role of the Alps in impeding free flow of people between Italy and the rest of Europe.

 

I really find this hard to believe. Not meaning to be divisive, but my relatives from the Po valley even look different from

other Italians. (Needless to say, they are also very distinct in culture and, until recently, language.)

 

I would think that the multiple invasions over the centuries by various ethnic groups as well as genetic footprints left by indigenous groups would have made Italy a more heterogeneous people.

 

I got this article from a youtube video insisting that Sicilians are at least genetically similar to the rest of Italians:

 

 

 

guy also known as gaius

[caesar novus]

Wow, the swedes and poles look insular on that venn diagram too. Swedes only mixed with north german and poles mixed a bit with czechs, in spite of the surrounding activity. We have to be careful because most of these flags come from mutations tens of thousands of years ago when they lived elsewhere i think.

 

The italians only mixed with iberians... not with french, and the north italians only with portugal?! That might account for a slight arab look of south italians? I guess dna transfer is driven by choice of mates rather than a meeting of groups. But environment and epigenetics can cause subdifferentiation. Epigenetics is nondna, quick adapting inheritance written up quite well in wikipedia.

 

The po valley coment brought to mind the book italian neighbors by tim parks, where he speculated their eternal winter fogs changed the nature and look of residents compared to nearby mountain italians. I know that decades of sun exposure can make someone look like a different type, and even occupation can do this. Many pilots carry that hawklike vigilant look from peering at distant features hour after hour. Maybe po residents carry the reverse effects after centuries of living in a white room.

[Viggen]

...I would like to point out that this study is from 2008, so not recent...

 

...anyone that has been in the northeast of Italy (i live 15 km from the border) and compare them with sicilians, will notice that they do not look even close to their friends in the south...

 

Further i find it very hard to believe that austria and Italy share nothing, even more unbelievable is that former Yugoslavia and Italy share nothing. Considering that the Venetian Republic strechted far into todays Slovenia and Croatia, and that they have till today italian as second language...

[Kosmo]

Wow, the swedes and poles look insular on that venn diagram too.

 

I think that the best explanation for Poles and Finns is the absence of analysis for Eastern Europe. Finnish is linguistically related with other Uralic languages like Estonian and they may have a genetic relation as well. Polish people should be more related with Lithuanians, Belorussians and Rhutenians from deep historical connections.

Anyway, I find this type of studies troubling because they try to overlap a biological community to a cultural one.

[docoflove1974]

I think that the best explanation for Poles and Finns is the absence of analysis for Eastern Europe. Finnish is linguistically related with other Uralic languages like Estonian and they may have a genetic relation as well. Polish people should be more related with Lithuanians, Belorussians and Rhutenians from deep historical connections.

Anyway, I find this type of studies troubling because they try to overlap a biological community to a cultural one.

 

Agreed, and with Viggen. When I show people a picture of my mother and her family, no one believes that she, my grandmother, and my great-aunt are Italian. I know they are, not just because of the genealogy, but because most northern Italians don't look like the swarthy Mediterraneans that everyone thinks of. The fact that they have light skin and blue eyes throws people off...until you look at others from parts north of Tuscany.

 

Also, as others mentioned, just thinking of the Germanic invasions and intermixing, the substratum of Celtic tribes, let alone the Slavic combinations in the northeast, and there's no question that 'Italian' isn't one sub-group, but a mixture.

[caesar novus]

These writers surely have a much better understanding of the science than me. But i wonder if they are overlooking a key cultural effect that probably makes the male y chromosome flag wildly understate the diversity of a subjects background.

 

According to my cartoon understanding of it all, the male y is only copied from his father. Females dont carry this chromosome, so the vast majority of his family tree, 99% or so, is totally unknowable in respect to y flags because some great great grandmother was in the chain.

 

So only the fathers fathers fathers... y thingie can be tracked. But wasnt it common that the wife was brought in from outside areas to live with the male family? Thus only a chain of sons keep replicating y chromosomes from the same village, meanwhile those sons other genes suck up diversity via females from the other regions.

 

I know some places have the reverse customs, or some dont have such customs, but i thought the bringing the female to males family was common or even the law that she had to be kidnapped from an enemy tribe for instance... often explained as a method to prevent inbreeding.

 

The other approach with mitochrondrial dna is almost similar in tracing only one extreme branch of the female tree... all of which tracks only a tiny proportion if your ancestors. They hope it is an unbiased statistical sample, but it appears to me not. Just recently i was trying to calm down the hoopla about people trying to cash in on racial benefit programs by claiming their dna test proved 50% heritage in spite of appearing otherwise. The current technology cant approach that, can it?

[Auris Arrectibus]

This is more what you expected: Dna Tribes (study completed in 2010).

 

 

Jeroen de Lange, Amsterdam

(brown-hair, brown eyes, dark-skin, with an documented family-genealogies dating back to 1566 in the North of Holland,

could there be a gypsy or southern europe, e.g. during spanish occupation, offspring in our family that was silently

accepted as their own?..... could not explain otherwise why I look "mediterranean" )