Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

Slavic Y vs. mtDNA

Dienekes points to this interesting article about the settlement of Russia by Slavs:

Genetic analysis results agree with the anthropological data, according to which Russian populations can be divided into three zones. In the western part of the ethnic territory, Russians descend from the Slavs who had come from Central Europe. Russian population of the central part appeared as a result of mixture of the Slavs with the Finno-Ugric nations, Eastern European mothers dominating in these populations, and the population of the North evidently has in its genealogy Finno-Ugric ancestors of both sexes.

This is unpublished data, though it generally confirms other studies I have seen here and there. One issue though is of the idea promoted here that the settlement of the north and east of European Russia was mostly male mediated as Slavic women remained in the territories ot the south and west. There seems to be an implication here that Slavic males engaged in a mass migration, similar perhaps what we saw in Latin America with Iberian males. But, I am not clear if the granularity of the study here could distinguish this from a more prosaic wave of advance in the context of operational matrilocality. For example, if the geographic distance of the samples collected showed a discontinuity than the mtDNA would likely track that even the allele frequencies graded into each other at a constant rate. The dilution of the original genetic profile in a wave of advance scenario could also explain the “Finno-Ugric” character of extreme northern Russian profiles.

Posted in Uncategorized

Comments are closed.