December 06, 2009

Kinship, marriage, and the genetics of past human dispersals (Bentley et al. 2009)

Hum Biol. 2009 Apr;81(2-3):159-79

Kinship, marriage, and the genetics of past human dispersals.

Bentley RA, Layton RH, Tehrani J

Abstract The extent to which colonizing farmer populations have overwhelmed or "replaced" indigenous forager populations, as opposed to having intermarried with them, has been widely debated. Indigenous-colonist "admixture" is often represented in genetic models as a single parameter that, although parsimonious and simple, is incongruous with the sex-specific nature of mtDNA and Y-chromosome data. To help interpret genetic patterns, we can construct useful null hypotheses about the generalized migration history of females (mtDNA) as opposed to males (Y chromosome), which differ significantly in almost every ethnographically known society. We seek to integrate ethnographic knowledge into models that incorporate new social parameters for predicting geographic patterns in mtDNA and Y-chromosome distributions. We provide an example of a model simulation for the spread of agriculture in which this individual-scale evidence is used to refine the parameters.

Link

1 comment:

terryt said...

The comment that sruck me on first reading (nothing to do with the actual point of the article) is this:

"the generalized migration history of females (mtDNA) as opposed to males (Y chromosome), which differ significantly in almost every ethnographically known society".

Yet there are those who insist we should automatically assume that the ancestors of both the modern male and modern female haplogroups necessarily left Africa together.