Any population genetics results that have surprised you?

[Friends of Oliver Society]

I was surprised to learn many Caribbean Hispanics had Amerindian ancestry (the amount is dependent on the region; eastern Cuba has more than western Cuba, for example). Before I had assumed they were wiped out and what little Amerindian was absorbed into the population was bred out (for lack of better words) over generations.

[Dick]

I was surprised to learn many Caribbean Hispanics had Amerindian ancestry (the amount is dependent on the region; eastern Cuba has more than western Cuba, for example). Before I had assumed they were wiped out and what little Amerindian was absorbed into the population was bred out (for lack of better words) over generations.

Galician results, especially yours. you seem to have a good chunk of Suebic blood

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiiZG-WXsAEexrX.jpg

[Friends of Oliver Society]

Galician results, especially yours. you seem to have a good chunk of Suebic blood

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiiZG-WXsAEexrX.jpg

Based Suebic warrior.

[Roy]

I remember being surprised long time ago when finding out that Croats & Slovenians are very distant genetically to Italian just next to them.

[Mont]

Got surprised when I first discovered genetical link between native americans and europeans.

I usually thought of native americans as isolated aliens that didn't have much connection with the old world, I was very wrong.

[J.Haddadd]

Many things discovered by population genetics were shocking for the general public but guessed correctly by more committed historians and anthropologists. Like the predominantly Neolithic European ancestry of North Africans in opposition to Middle Easterners, the Northern European profile of much of the Central Asian steppe, the limited Indo-European ancestry of early Greeks, the majority non-Turkic ancestry of Anatolian Turkish people, Eurasian influences over Sub-Saharan Africa (not only Ethiopia and Somalia), the complex admixture that created Indians and Pakistanis and so on.

Personally the most surprising thing that I discovered was the genetic closeness of Ainu people with South Eurasians and of East Asians in general with Hoabinhian-like types that possibly resembled modern Andamanese phenotypically. Also surprising is the speculation that most Sub-Saharan ethnic groups have around 30% non-Homo Sapiens DNA and that this admixture was still going on around 12.000 years ago.

[Petalpusher]

Id say Russians and Italians mainly.

[Roy]

Many things discovered by population genetics were shocking for the general public but guessed correctly by more committed historians and anthropologists. Like the predominantly Neolithic European ancestry of North Africans in opposition to Middle Easterners, the Northern European profile of much of the Central Asian steppe, the limited Indo-European ancestry of early Greeks, the majority non-Turkic ancestry of Anatolian Turkish people, Eurasian influences over Sub-Saharan Africa (not only Ethiopia and Somalia), the complex admixture that created Indians and Pakistanis and so on.

Personally the most surprising thing that I discovered was the genetic closeness of Ainu people with South Eurasians and of East Asians in general with Hoabinhian-like types that possibly resembled modern Andamanese phenotypically. Also surprising is the speculation that most Sub-Saharan ethnic groups have around 30% non-Homo Sapiens DNA and that this admixture was still going on around 12.000 years ago.

30% of non-Homo Sapiens DNA? Where did you get these numbers from?! They do have quite a lot of archaic admixture, but I've never seen estimates anywhere that high.

[Petalpusher]

30% of non-Homo Sapiens DNA? Where did you get these numbers from?! They do have quite a lot of archaic admixture, but I've never seen estimates anywhere that high.

I think he refers to this, it's max 19% though:


While introgression from Neanderthals and Denisovans has been documented in modern humans outside Africa, the contribution of archaic hominins to the genetic variation of present-day Africans remains poorly understood. Our analyses of site frequency spectra indicate that these populations derive 2 to 19% of their genetic ancestry from an archaic population that diverged before the split of Neanderthals and modern humans.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aax5097

[Karol Klačansky]

Im always most suprised to see legit university professors and geneticists claiming blatantly wrong things in contradiction to their findings for the sake of political correctness or some strange ideology.

[Ajeje Brazorf]

The fact that ethnically Papuans are more "isolated" than Australians, although phenotypically I would have said the opposite.

[Friends of Oliver Society]

Im always most suprised to see legit university professors and geneticists claiming blatantly wrong things in contradiction to their findings for the sake of political correctness or some strange ideology.

Davidski, is that you?

[rothaer]

Im always most suprised to see legit university professors and geneticists claiming blatantly wrong things in contradiction to their findings for the sake of political correctness or some strange ideology.

Once thought about that what makes someone out of all knowledgeable academics an university professor (ultimately employed and financed by the state administration) may be public relations skills, which do comprise political correctness?

[rothaer]

The fact that Latinos regulary do have a notable SSA proportion.

[J.Haddadd]

I think he refers to this, it's max 19% though:



https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aax5097

If I remember well, the Shum Laka paper estimated around 29-30% of early hominin for West Africans, but I may be wrong. The most surprising though is how recent such admixture is, it is possible that some types of hominins were still active in Africa 10 thousand years ago, Iwo Eleru man and similar types.

[Leto]

The fact that my mother is so "Finno-Ugric" (don't like this term because it's mostly linguistic and often used in controversial statements). But my parents don't take DNA testing seriously anyway.

[Russki]

The fact that my mother is so "Finno-Ugric" (don't like this term because it's mostly linguistic and often used in controversial statements). But my parents don't take DNA testing seriously anyway.


Well here you go anyway


https://i.imgur.com/gzqJmkt.png

[Petalpusher]

If I remember well, the Shum Laka paper estimated around 29-30% of early hominin for West Africans, but I may be wrong. The most surprising though is how recent such admixture is, it is possible that some types of hominins were still active in Africa 10 thousand years ago, Iwo Eleru man and similar types.

In this one:
https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/sites/reich.hms.harvard.edu/files/inline-files/2020_Lipson_Nature_ShumLaka.pdf

https://i.postimg.cc/5fXTFPb2/gm1.jpg

29% of "ghost modern" in Mota is not the "archaic ghost". However they indeed found some archaic specimen in Nigeria 12k BP. Not sequencable unfortunately, they need to keep digging to find something exploitable for dna testing. It's more complicated to find some good bone silicone in Africa with the climate.


as well as an individual with archaic features buried about 12,000 bp in southwestern Nigeria

[Ajeje Brazorf]

Another thing that amazed me is seeing that within a population, having lighter eye, hair, or skin color does not necessarily correspond to a different ethnic profile than the rest of the darker population.

[Defcon2]

Another thing that amazed me is seeing that within a population, having lighter eye, hair, or skin color does not necessarily correspond to a different ethnic profile than the rest of the darker population.

I thought before that within my country one person could be 70% Germanic or Goth and another 70% North African just judging by phenotype.

[Ajeje Brazorf]

I thought before that within my country one person could be 70% Germanic or Goth and another 70% North African just judging by phenotype.

We joke, but some normies really believe this kind of things.

[Defcon2]

We joke, but some normies really believe this kind of things.

This forum is a perfect example.

[Petalpusher]

I thought before that within my country one person could be 70% Germanic or Goth and another 70% North African just judging by phenotype.

It's easy to think that, but it also wouldn't make sense when you see even siblings that can have relatively different pigmentation, and features (some don't look related at all), while they obviously have the exact same ancestors since the dawn of time. Nature seems to favor enough variation based on a particular set of a genepool and what's possible with it up to a point, like a Chinese is never gonna have blue eyes, maybe also because it's evolutionnary positive to keep trying to visually offer more "choices" within a set.

Pigmentation is just a incredibly tiny fraction of somebody's dna, a few dozens genotypes out of hundreds of millions that are variables (much more genes in total), yet we have 98.3% of our genes in common with chimps and still 50% with a banana and some plants, we still look human all the time. Our liver involves probably like a thousand times more genes than the color of our eyes and still less than the eye itself, let alone such a complex organ like the brain. It's really like thinking of a car as only a bodywork and a paint, that's not where the real complexity of an automobile is concentrated for it to work, or let's say if it's fast or slow ultimately. We just believe low and red cars are faster.

[Annie999]

I was very surprised to score 6% Ashkenazi, 7% Scandinavian and 1% South Asian, but eventually all proved to be mistakes and were substituted for the real populations, which were results expected by me.

[rothaer]

Another thing that amazed me is seeing that within a population, having lighter eye, hair, or skin color does not necessarily correspond to a different ethnic profile than the rest of the darker population.

Fully agreed and this is actually even a kind of key finding to me.

Earlier I dealt quite a lot with the typological race topic. But it has turned out to be useless on an individual level regarding European subraces. They do show up side by side, partly within the same family, since thousands of years already. So of course the autosomal DNA of these individuals is fully "mixed" and detached from DNA connected to other traits.

A nordid looking North African will also have the DNA that causes his look (of course), but the DNA responsible for that particular look is ridiculously small compared to all other DNA that is deviating among humans. If you have individuals from Nigeria and from China, their looks will still be very telling as for their DNA that deviates much from Europeans. But this is just possible because they are still unmixed (with us and with each others). Their DNA, responsible for their look, is also ridiculously small, but because of 40,000 or 100,000 years of separation from other humans this look is still (de facto) connected to a huge amount of other DNA, that deviates as well and that does concern mentality, immune system etc. etc.

I can report that the (sub)racial science in the 1930s already had left what was defined as a race in zoology: A race in zoology was always connected to an actual existing population that was considered to represent this race. In contrast to this the racial science regarding Europeans already stated that there is just an expressed minority of individuals that at all fully belong to any of the European subraces. Most people were then described as a particular mixture of assumed subraces.

Funnily this is essentially the same that we do with components in a calculator. So today's components and yesterday's subraces are basically the same with the difference that genetic components can be much clearer defined, which is scientifically superior. We also see that we do have some freedom in defining the components but within every system of components, i. e. calculator, the results will be determined by reality. So being able to define components doesn't mean that the results are arbitrary. Getting different results in different calculators is also no contradiction. It's like making pictures of New York: You can do one from the space, another in a street and an third in a pub. All pictures look very different, but all are true as they show different aspects of New York.

[Damião de Góis]

Several things like basques and sardinians being genetic isolates when they don't look very different from their neighbours. It creates nonsensical things like me being closer to swiss than to basques.

https://i.imgur.com/wmA5uNQ.png

[mitalit]

How northern are andalusians genetically. I was surprised by the enormous impact that the reconquista had in those areas

[reboun]

Not a result but selectiveness when creating population averages does still not sound okay to me.

[Defcon2]

How northern are andalusians genetically. I was surprised by the enormous impact that the reconquista had in those areas

I believe that the reconquista had less impact on the Iberian West than in the rest of the areas, but even so, all the Iberians are more genetically northern than expected.

[Jased]

The fact the Northern eastern Mexico has a lot Jewish contribution within the mestizo gene pool sometimes up 20% probably one of the most Jewish place not only In the America's but whole new world.

But ofc no one gives a fuck about It probably because it's in Mexico.

[Nurzat]

I was surprised to find that Bretons are to this day genetically similar to Irish, Welsh etc, and not to French. so even if they were assimilated by the French, they didn't mix much and they are still Insular Celtic. the difference to French is notable, they are not midway between French and British Celts, but are British Celts genetically, wow

[Roy]

Another thing that amazed me is seeing that within a population, having lighter eye, hair, or skin color does not necessarily correspond to a different ethnic profile than the rest of the darker population.

Really? I don't think it is that surprising once you use you apply cold logic.

[Roy]

The fact the Northern eastern Mexico has a lot Jewish contribution within the mestizo gene pool sometimes up 20% probably one of the most Jewish place not only In the America's but whole new world.

But ofc no one gives a fuck about It probably because it's in Mexico.

How did this Jewish ancestry make it there and spread?

[Nurzat]

Really? I don't think it is that surprising once you use you apply cold logic.

actually common belief before genetic testing was that you would be more related to someone who looks similar in skin/hair/eyes colour. and to the general public it still is

[Grace O'Malley]

I was surprised to find that Bretons are to this day genetically similar to Irish, Welsh etc, and not to French. so even if they were assimilated by the French, they didn't mix much and they are still Insular Celtic. the difference to French is notable, they are not midway between French and British Celts, but are British Celts genetically, wow

I think Bretons are between the French and Isles. I don't think they are the same as Insular Celts exactly. They are a bit more southern shifted. The problem is what they are using for the French panel. I think Bretons will come out a mixture of Isles, Iberian and French (likely some Germanic/Scandinavian in the mix as well) because there isn't any company that just has a Breton panel.

Looking at Ancestry their Irish and Scottish is also found in Brittany. Welsh however doesn't incorporate Brittany. You will notice that Brittany is part of an Irish cluster and also part of a Scottish cluster however both Scotland and Ireland don't overlap with clusters when it is obvious that there is a lot more Irish genetics in Scotland and vice versa. It is all down to the populations that they have for comparison purposes and if small areas have their own population panels.

https://i.imgur.com/KmInhbF.png

https://i.imgur.com/PLMgoK0.png

https://i.imgur.com/o5xSLVs.png

They definitely have some strong connection to Ireland/Britain which has been shown in some recent dna studies. This one below states:


To confirm the proportions of ancestry in relation with these external groups, we performed supervised clustering considering Ireland, Germany and Spain as putative sources of ancestry for the French samples. We found that the Irish component accounts for more than 75% of the ancestry in 50% of the individuals from Brittany (Fig 3b), while it contributes to a much lesser extent to the genetic composition of the other regions (8-33%). On the other side of the spectrum, a Spanish-like component accounts for the largest proportion (~70%) in Nouvelle-Aquitaine (NOU), while German-like ancestry is predominant among individuals from Northern and Eastern France (Normandie, NOR; Hauts-de-France, HAU; Grand Est, GRA), with its proportion increasing with the geographical proximity to the German border.

When considering the three clusters inferred by fineSTRUCTURE in Northwestern France, we observe the same ancestry pattern for WBR as for Brittany, with a major Irish component. Consistently with this result, the smallest FST values between the WBR group and other non-French populations were retrieved with the Irish and Northern Irish populations (0.00057 and 0.00062, respectively, Fig. S3.2). The only population in France showing lower differentiation with WBR is the neighbouring EBP (FST=0.00028, Fig. S1.5). Finally, among the three clusters, SLO carries the largest Spanish-related ancestry while EBP carries similar proportions of the Irish- and Spanish-related components, reflecting its intermediary position between WBR and SLO. In summary, our results indicate that people from Brittany show strong genetic affinities with populations from Western Britain and Ireland, although separated by the Celtic sea.



https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.03.478491v1.full

[gixajo]

How northern are andalusians genetically. I was surprised by the enormous impact that the reconquista had in those areas

This, and the high NA in Galicians.

(Nosotros siempre mirándonos el ombligo, como no...)

[Grace O'Malley]

This is also interesting about a Welsh connection with Bretons.


To measure the relationship between the genetic clusters found in Northwestern France and other European populations, we used the outgroup f3-statistics to assess the genetic drift shared by pairs of populations relative to the Mbuti population (outgroup) (45,46). Given that this statistic reflects the length of the branch from the internal node to the outgroup (connecting the pair of populations being tested), it is not affected by lineage-specific genetic drift, contrarily to FST. We found that most French clusters located north of the river Loire share the largest drift with Southwestern Welsh populations (i.e., from Dyfed), whereas those located south to the river Loire share the largest drift with the Basques (Fig 3c, Table S3.1). The f4-statistics of the form f4(Mbuti, French subgroup; Dyfed, X), which should produce significantly positive values when the tested population shares more alleles with X than Dyfed, show that the French subgroups from areas south to the river Loire consistently share more alleles with the Basques than with the Southwestern Welsh. Conversely, those located north to the river Loire share the largest amount of alleles with Southwestern Welsh and other populations from Great Britain and Scandinavia (Fig. 3d, Fig. S3.3).

There is an obvious difference with clustering and when populations share things like drift and IBD/IBS.

[Richard Alvarez]

In the past I (ignorantly) assumed that Ashkenazi Jews were mostly just European converts to Judaism and genetically identical to the locals.

[Leto]

I didn't know Central Asia, in particular Tajiks, and the North Caucasus, in particular Dagestanis, had so much Steppe ancestry. Some of the mentioned ethnic groups score over 40 percent (!) Yamnaya or Andronovo, depending on the model. Even Uzbeks can easily reach ca. 30 percent Steppe. I had to change my opinion about those groups in some way after learning that.

[Damião de Góis]

This, and the high NA in Galicians.

(Nosotros siempre mirándonos el ombligo, como no...)

The whole west-east NA gradient was surprising to me. I still don't know where it comes from or how it came to be that way historically.

[Roy]

actually common belief before genetic testing was that you would be more related to someone who looks similar in skin/hair/eyes colour. and to the general public it still is

But objectively speaking it should not surprise anyone that dark brown haired Poles are more similar to blonde blue eyed Poles than to typical darkish or dark Italians.