Research Suggests One To Three Men Fathered Most Western Europeans 253
Taco Cowboy writes "'While the distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroups in Africa took 12 thousand years to spread, those in Europe started from around 3rd millennium.' The speed of spread of the European haplogroups was totally astounding, to say the least. 'There was no R1b found in Europe before a Bell Beaker site from the 3rd millennium BC and today many Europeans (most in western Europe) belong to this haplogroup. 'We used coalescent simulations to investigate the range of demographic models most likely to produce the phylogenetic structures observed in Africa and Europe, assessing the starting and ending genetic effective population sizes, duration of the expansion, and time when expansion ended. The best-fitting models in Africa and Europe are very different. In Africa, the expansion took about 12 thousand years, ending very recently; it started from approximately 40 men and numbers expanded approximately 50-fold. In Europe, the expansion was much more rapid, taking only a few generations and occurring as soon as the major R1b lineage entered Europe; it started from just one to three men, whose numbers expanded more than a thousandfold.'"
Re:Proof! (Score:3, Informative)
You jest, but you're actually closer than you think. Japheth was the son of Noah that moved north into Europe. Shem moved east. Ham moved south. All of them left roots in areas at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
Also, if you had read the Bible's account of the flood, you'd know that there won't be another flood. God concluded a "rainbow covenant" with Noah and his family, promising that he would never bring that kind of destruction on the earth again. All future destruction the Bible speaks of will be of people only. The flora and fauna will be left intact.
Re:Proof! (Score:5, Informative)
So did most Europeans.
So did most humans. Throughout history, nearly all tribes and nations have felt themselves superior to their neighbors. There was nothing particularly "European" about tribalism and war. In fact, tribalism isn't even a specifically human trait. You can see the same behavior in a pride of lions, a troop of chimpanzees, or even between anthills. It is a predictable emergent behavior of social Darwinism.
Re:Doubt it. (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, that's exactly why Y-DNA is useful. It's not a problem that a lot of Y gets lost along the way, as long as this happens uniformly you still wind up with a good sample. The prehistoric group that bore these genes was obviously larger than 1-3 men, but it may well have been a few dozen closely related men, so the ones that left no YDNA are still effectively represented by a cousin who did.
(The same thing happens with MDNA as well - a woman who has only sons disappears from that readout and wont be part of either the male or female sample here - but more than likely a close relative of hers will.)