Egypt

More re Tutankhamun DNA - Haplogroups

http://wysinger.homestead.com/haplotypes_in_egypt.pdf

Thanks to Adrienne Giacon, via Kate Phizackerley's News from the Valley of the Kings blog for the above link (and thanks to Kate for bringing it to my attention).

And here's a link to Kate's take on the whole thing.

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 121:63–66 (2003)
Brief Communication: Y-Chromosome Haplotypes in Egypt
G. Lucotte* and G. Mercier
International Institute of Anthropology, Paris, France

KEY WORDS Egypt; Y-chromosome haplotypes; Nile River Valley

ABSTRACT
We analyzed Y-chromosome haplotypes in the Nile River Valley in Egypt in 274 unrelated males, using the p49a,f TaqI polymorphism. These individuals were born in three regions along the river: in Alexandria (the Delta and Lower Egypt), in Upper Egypt, and in Lower Nubia. Fifteen different p49a,f TaqI haplotypes are present in Egypt, the three most common being haplotype V (39.4%), haplotype XI (18.9%), and haplotype IV (13.9%). Haplotype V is a characteristic Arab haplotype, with a northern geographic distribution in Egypt in the Nile River Valley. Haplotype IV, characteristic of sub-Saharan populations, shows a southern geographic distribution in Egypt. Am J Phys Anthropol 121:63–66, 2003.

The European Union Times

Thanks to Mark Lawton for pointing me at this. It has already attrated a high number of comments on the above page.

Haplogroups are assigned letters of the alphabet, and refinements consist of additional number and letter combinations, for example R1b or R1b1. Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups have different haplogroup designations. In essence, haplogroups give an inisight into ancestral origins dating back thousands of years.

By entering all the STR data inadvertently shown on the Discovery video, a 99.6 percent fit with the R1b haplogroup is revealed.

The significance is, of course, that R1b is the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup in Europe reaching its highest concentrations in Ireland, Scotland, western England and the European Atlantic seaboard — in other words, European through and through.

Heritage Key (Ann Wuyts)

When the latest Tutankhamun study was published in Jama, there were quite a few outcries that although the study looked into the direct ancestry of King Tut, it fully ignored the pointers to the pharoah's racial ancestry, possibly hidden in the pharaoh's DNA. As usual, Dr Zahi was accused of many things, most notable charges of 'hiding that King Tut was black/white/purple.' Now a retired physicist took the time to write down some of the DNA test results exposed in the Discovery Channel programme that featured the study's results and concluded the data shown in the docu reveals Tut's haplogroup as R1b, one of the most common Y-chromosome haplogroups in Europe, especially the United Kingdom. So, err... was Tutankhamun Scottish, rather than black or white?

From the data exposed in the documentary 'King Tut Unwrapped' (start watching at about 1:50 in this video), Whit Athey concluded from the DNA data shown on the documentary that Tutankhamun must have the haplogroup R1b, associated with the male Y chromosome, and common in Ireland, Scotland, western England, France, Iberia and Scandinavia, according to Athey, “European through and through”. Really?

- Swiss Men Share 'pharaoh Gene'
The Local, Switzerland Every second Swiss male is related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, according to researchers in Zurich. Scientists working on mapping the genetic profile of Tutankhamun, who ruled Egypt around 3,000 years ago, were able to reconstruct...

- Tutankhamun & Larger Foetus Dna
News from the Valley of the Kings (Kate Phizackerley) I promised to post the DNA from the TV Documentary and compare it with the DNA in the JAMA paper. This is the comparison of two mummies from tomb KV62 in the Valley of the Kings: King Tutankhamun himself...

- Dna Shows That Kv55 Mummy Probably Not Akhenaten
News from the Valley of the Kings (Kate Phizackerley) Kate has reviewed the JAMA article and has come to a different view of the KV55 mummy than that proposed by the authors. Here's the abstract, but the complete article is available at the above...

- Molecular Biologist's Response To The Jama Paper Re Tutankhamun
Pling (Margaret Patterson) Sincere thanks to John Patterson for sending this link. John's wife, who's an (ex-)molecular biologist, read the JAMA paper (and the supplemental data) and wrote a long blog post about her thoughts on the genetics parts...

- Neolithic Origin For Y-chromosomal Variation In North Africa
The American Journal of Human Genetics A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for Y-Chromosomal DNA Variation in North Africa. Barbara Arredi, Estella S. Poloni, Silvia Paracchini, Tatiana Zerjal, Dahmani M. Fathallah, Mohamed Makrelouf, Vincenzo L. Pascali,...

Egypt