http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/08/13/science/figure1a_600.jpg (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/science/13visual.html?ref=science)

Biologists have constructed a genetic map of Europe showing the degree of relatedness between its various populations.

All the populations are quite similar, but the differences are sufficient that it should be possible to devise a forensic test to tell which country in Europe an individual probably comes from, said Manfred Kayser, a geneticist at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands.

The map shows, at right, the location in Europe where each of the sampled populations live and, at left, the genetic relationship between these 23 populations. The map was constructed by Dr. Kayser, Dr. Oscar Lao and others, and appears in an article in Current Biology published on line on August 7.

The genetic map of Europe bears a clear structural similarity to the geographic map. The major genetic differences are between populations of the north and south (the vertical axis of the map shows north-south differences, the horizontal axis those of east-west). The area assigned to each population reflects the amount of genetic variation in it.

Europe has been colonized three times in the distant past, always from the south. Some 45,000 years ago the first modern humans entered Europe from the south. The glaciers returned around 20,000 years ago and the second colonization occurred about 17,000 years ago by people returning from southern refuges. The third invasion was that of farmers bringing the new agricultural technology from the Near East around 10,000 years ago.

The pattern of genetic differences among present day Europeans probably reflects the impact of these three ancient migrations, Dr. Kayser said.

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.

Data for the map were generated by gene chips programmed to test and analyze 500,000 sites of common variation on the human genome, although only the 300,000 most reliable sites were used for the map. Dr. Kayser's team tested almost 2,500 people and analyzed the data by correlating the genetic variations in all the subjects. The genetic map is based on the two strongest of these sets of correlations.

The gene chips require large amounts of DNA, more than is available in most forensic samples. Dr. Kayser hopes to identify the sites on the human genome which are most diagnostic for European origin. These sites, if reasonably few in number, could be tested for in hair and blood samples, Dr. Kayser said.

Genomic sites that carry the strongest signal of variation among populations may be those influenced by evolutionary change, Dr. Kayser said. Of the 100 strongest sites, 17 are found in the region of the genome that confers lactose tolerance, an adaptation that arose among a cattle herding culture in northern Europe some 5,000 years ago. Most people switch off the lactose digesting gene after weaning, but the cattle herders evidently gained a great survival advantage by keeping the gene switched on through adulthood.

Cool story, i always knew we Finns were special ones but had no idea it would be this much. :smug: :hammer2:
Click picture for the original source.

Very interesting!

I find it curious that Spain and Portugal are closely related to Italy2 :hmm:

It could be related to history of them being early parts of Roman empire.

I'm not at all surprised that Mediterranean countries have similar genetics! They're all "olive skinned" :)

But they don't - that's the interesting thing. There is a shard divide (no overlap) between 'eastern', and 'western' mediterranean, with the western shores of the Adriatic providing the line. Yet somehow there is mixing between the northeast italians and the southwestern iberians.

Source (http://www.current-biology.com/content/article/fulltext?uid=PIIS0960982208009561) material for the OP story.

Those Romanians have been around a bit. Look at the vast area they cover.

Why the Romans?

The were around for a mere blink of the eye for Europe's genetic history.

One thing that surprises me is how mixed up with everyone else Hungary is. I thought they'd stand out on their own more..

Those Romanians have been around a bit. Look at the vast area they cover.
The odd thing is the bigger connection to greece than with the romans. :crazyeye: And the conection with the czech, wtf?
One thing that surprises me is how mixed up with everyone else Hungary is. I thought they'd stand out on their own more..
I guess they pillaged & raped enough then.

It would've been more intresting to see the other slavic countries there too.

The <self-censorship> pop-up ad redirected the page and erased my long post.... aaargh!! [pissed]

Anyway, so, a shorter version of what I wrote:

I'm not very surprised by the results. It's surprising for me how much the Romanians are related to the Hungarians, because for some reason I've always expected Hungary to be more related to the Slavs around it than to the Romanians.

But apart from that, the map seems to confirm what I thought it would say - the Romanians are closest related to YU, Greeks and Italians 1 (as I expected, Italy 1 is more related than Italy 2, which does indeed suggest early massive colonization from Rome rather than from other parts of the Roman Empire).

I'm not very surprised by the connection between RO and YU either, although I definitely expected it to be smaller. :)

The odd thing is the bigger connection to greece than with the romans. :crazyeye: And the conection with the czech, wtf?


The Romanian historian Neagu Djuvara (whom I had the honor to meet and to have him give me one of his books with his signature and wishes of good luck :D), and definitely not only him, insisted a long time on a significant migration of Romanian shepherds along the Carpathians into the Czech Republic around the 14th century, when the Romanians also migrated from the Carpathians to western Croatia, where they gave birth to the Istro-Romanians (forming the almost extinct today Istro-Romanian language that's the closest language to Romanian in the world). There used to be a significant Romanian (Wallachian) minority in Moravia too. Read here about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravian_Wallachia The article mentions strong cultural links to Wallachia.

[...]



A remarkable aspect of Vlachs found everywhere along the western Carpathian Mountains is that the traditional Romanian culture remained the same despite the evolution in language, especially the traditions regarding sheepherding and rural architecture, essentially identical along the entire belt of the Carpathian Mountains from Moravia to Romania and then along the adjacent mountains into Serbia and Bulgaria. As with those aspects of language associated with animal husbandry, this cultural aspect of the Vlachs likely did not change because there was no competing culture. Although animal husbandry was long associated with agriculture practiced in the lowlands adjacent to the Western Carpathians, the Vlach methods and associated rituals of sheep and goat tending were unique and newly introduced by them, as were the introduction of grazing in the highlands and the emphasis upon the production of milk and cheese (bryndza). Variants of the traditional Romanian costume are still important elements of the ethnography of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. The music of the area was also influenced by the Vlachs (e.g. see Lachian Dances).

A clear example of the influence of the Vlachs on Slovak culture is the 1755 didactic poem Valašská škola (Wallachian School) of the Franciscan monk Hugolín Gavlovič. It offered a Christian-Catholic moral perspective on the lives and the interaction with God and society. Three themes dominate the poem: Slovak national consciousness, eighteenth century religious and secular culture, and pastoral life as a life model. It is in the third theme that the Wallachian legacy appears, giving the poem particular significance.


History

Since they appeared, in the Late Middle Ages, the Vlachs continued to have a separated political life than that of the rest of the population. An example of this is the use of the so called Lex Antiqua Valachorum (the "Ancient/Old Wallachian Law"). The first widespread reference to Vlachs occurred during the Thirty Years' War, when these privileges were in danger of being abolished. The subsequent events profoundly changed the Vlach culture, and would set the stage for the next wave of Vlach immigration, following the ones of the 14th and 15th century. Jan Amos Comenius wrote in 1620: "Moravians of the mountains around Vsetín, called Wallachians, are a warlike people… they refused to accept the Habsburg yoke and for three whole years defended their freedom with the sword". Later, in 1624, he wrote: "the inhabitants of the lordship of Vsetín and the mountains thereabout (who are called Wallachians) continued to resist with arms and could not be brought to deny their faith or offer submission". Some continued to practice Orthodox Christianity, most converted to Protestantism, while on the whole, resisting any attempts of the Jesuit missionaries to convert them to Catholicism. Due to this politics, in 1632 the Catholic Church and the Habsburg Empire took coercive measures: "the inhabitants of Vlašsko were Valachs and hence utterly infractory". Zlín town records from 1621 refer to "the Wallachians, who are the local rabble". Albrecht von Wallenstein, Habsburg Military lord of Vsetín, wrote in 1621 about the expected uprising and referred to them as Wallachians against whom he did not have sufficient support to mount a campaign. A Habsburg commissioner in 1622, writing about the local Moravians, stated that: "the people are inclined more to the enemy and the Wallachians". Vlach warfare against the Habsburgs consisted of raids, including those against Malenovice, Zlín, and Valašské Meziříčí. Wallenstein stated that the Vlachs fought as a “horde” and Vlach forces were victorious against the Habsburgs during the initial years of the war. During portions of these initial years as well, Vlachs were joined by Protestant Hungarians, and by 1621 all of Moravia east of the Morava River was controlled by Vlachs. Hungarian forces, however, were defeated by the Habsburgs at Olomouc in late 1621 and withdrew from Moravia in 1622. Vlach forces were subsequently subdued in 1623, accompanied by a series of public executions.

Renewed Vlach attacks on Vsetín occurred in late 1623. The Hungarians, now aided by the Ottomans, reentered the War, and fighting occurred as far west as Brno. However, the Vlachs did not join their former allies, the Hungarians because the Turks were an older enemy of the Vlachs, from as early as the 14th and 15th century, when the first Ottoman attacks took place against Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania, their original homes. A second peace between Hungary and the Habsburgs was signed in 1624. The Habsburgs seized this opportunity to attack the Vlachs in March 1624 in the mountains west of Vsetín, but the Vlachs prevailed in what was described as a "slaughter" of Habsburg forces. Vlachs captured Lukov in 1626, and joined by Danes, who had entered the war against the Habsburgs, also captured Hranice in 1626.

[...]

I'm sorry to use this map to prove my points, but the undeniable connection with Greece, Italy and ex-Yugoslavia, along with the undeniable linguistic connection with other Italic languages around Europe, together with the geographical position of most of Romania further proves that the country deserves to be considered Southern European rather than Eastern European.


IMHO, the connection between FR, ES2, ES1, PT, IT2, IT1, RO, and even GR after that, each of them overlapping at least the "neighbor" placed before and after them in this list, is an obvious remnant of the Roman Empire and proof that unlike what many people would like to believe, there is a Romance (Latin) Europe that's connected more than just linguistically. It also seems to confirm that countries like France were influenced by their Germanic neighbors while Romania was more influenced by their Slavic and Greek neighbors, showing no signs of Germanic influence even after more than a hundred years of existence of a Goth state in the territory of modern Transylvania.

One thing that surprises me is how mixed up with everyone else Hungary is. I thought they'd stand out on their own more..

Could be from Roma? :dunno:

Could be from Roma? :dunno:

I really, really doubt that. In no European country do they form a minority larger than 5%.