JAPANESE ONLY HAVE 5% JAPANESE DNA he found about 25% Korean, 25% Chinese, 16% Okinawan, 5% Ainu, 5% "Japanese", and 16% others i:\doc\web\99\07\japndna.txt Date sent: Thu, 06 May 1999 14:46:23 -0400 To: h-bd@egroups.com From: Peter Frost Subject: [h-bd] Re: Groups At 11:02 06/05/99 +0900, Steven D. Tripp wrote: >Yesterday, on Japanese TV there was a program about Japanese "roots" (a subject >the Japanese never tire of) and part of it compared Ainu (an aboriginal group in >northern Japan) mitochondria with Peruvian (Inca) mitochiondria and found it >differed in only two locations, thus Ainus and Inca are (most) closely related, it >was thought. Surprising to me, since Ainus have heavy beards and Incas are nearly >beardless. I think we tend to assume that the differences between any two populations are a function of their separation time, i.e., the longer they've been apart, the more different they'll be. In reality, morphological change is a function of changes in selection pressures. If a population moves into a very different environment, it will probably change a lot as it adapts to differences in climate, food supply, etc. Conversely, two separate populations inhabiting similar environments will remain quite similar (e.g., subSaharan Africans and Melanesians). If and when we finally analyze the DNA in Kennewick Man, we'll probably find him to be pretty similar to modern Amerindians. And there will be a chorus of "We told you so" from many people. In fact, what Kennewick Man demonstrates (as do the Ainu) is that the immediate ancestors of modern Mongoloid populations looked more or less Caucasoid and that the transition from one to the other took place over a short lapse of time. >The same show reported work by another Japanese researcher who had tried to >classify a representative sample of main-island Japanese by their DNA >(mitochondria, I guess). The numbers were surprising. Working from my imperfect >memory, he found about 25% Korean, 25% Chinese, 16% Okinawan, 5% Ainu, 5% >"Japanese", and 16% others. I know it doesn't add up to 100% but that is the best >I can do. Also I don't know how he classified 5% as "Japanese", but it certainly >is interesting that only 5% of Japanese are Japanese. > >I am not a biologist so I cannot judge the worth of this research. The figures may be correct but the margins of error in these estimates are probably so large as to make them useless. All of these populations are so close to each other genetically that it would be very difficult to make a detailed breakdown. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Peter Frost GETIC (Groupe d'études inuit et circumpolaire) Université Laval Sainte-Foy (Québec) CANADA G1K 7P4 Tel. (418) 683-1740 Website: http://www.globetrotter.net/gt/usagers/pfrost Lorsque l'homme veut faire l'ange, il finit par faire la bête.