Racial Outline

The Races and Peoples of Europe, 1977

Let us now superimpose the different maps which have been compiled to illustrate the distribution of anthropological traits in Europe. The extreme regions of the various anthropological traits would only on rare occasions be identical. Hence, only a few, completely satisfactory, comprehensive geographic correlations would be produced. We consider, therefore, not the individual combination types (which also do not appear directly on the maps), but only the mean types of the actual regions. Thus a great quantity of different local combinations of these values is already indicated.

The Races and Peoples of Europe, 1977

Citation: Florence, European University Institute, 2007 Series/Report no.: EUI PhD theses; Department of History and Civilization

2007

This thesis would have been impossible without the always relevant and incisive advice of my supervisor, Professor Peter Becker. When he initially suggested this topic, which was very new to me, I was unsure whether it would be to my taste, but I have found it endlessly facinating and rewarding. Several other academics also generously offered me useful advice or agreed to read sections of my work.

Europa y los Estados Unidos : análisis contrastivo de la « etnicidad ». Donald L. HOROWITZ Las Estados y sus políticas migratorias varían según consideren a las minorías étnicas como parte integrante o no de la sociedad. En algunos países, los grupos autóctonos exigen la prioridad, en tanto que en otros, los inmigrados del pasado se han convertido en los actuales autóctonos. En los Estados Unidos, a pesar de las inmigraciones masivas, la categoría « inmigrado » es muy limitada, ya que se puede obtener la nacionalización por adopción o por « jus solis ». En cambio, en Alemania, país donde la ciudadanía se basa en el « jus sanguinis », las nacionalizaciones son escasas (la tercera generación de Turcos sigue siendo considerada como immigrada). En tanto que ser norteamericano tiene muy poco que ver con la herencia, para ser alemán se requiere tener la ciudadanía alemana y pertenecer al pueblo alemán. Francia y Gran Bretaña representan los casos intermedios. En la defmición del Frances o del Inglés existe una componente genética, pero los extranjeros pueden convertirse en Franceses o Ingleses. Por otra parte, los dos países tienen dificultades para asimilar a los inmigrantes de origen asiatico o africano.

The hypothesis that the Basque language is genetically related to languages in the Cauca-sus region was developed in the 20th century by respected scholars including C. C. Uhlen-beck, Georges Dumézil, and René Lafon, but has recently fallen into disfavour. The author defends the Euskaro-Caucasian hypothesis in a refined model in which Basque (Euskara) is most closely related to the North Caucasian language family (but not " South Caucasian " = Kartvelian). It is maintained that this hypothesis is not only linguistically convincing, supported by hundreds of basic etymologies, sound correspondences, and shared morphology , but is also consistent with recent results in archaeology and human genetics. Among the Euskaro-Caucasian etymologies is a significant number involving small and large cattle, swine, dairying, grain and pulse crops, and tools and methods of processing crops. These lexical fields are consistent with the spread of agriculture and animal hus-bandry to Western Europe by means of colonisation by bearers of the Cardial (Impressed Ware) Culture who came from the Anatolian (or possibly Balkan) region, and spoke a language related to Proto-North Caucasian. The well-known genetic distinctiveness of the Basques is a result of centuries of low population size, genetic drift and endogamy, rather than purely Paleolithic ancestry. The present-day Basque people represent a genetic amal-gam of the Cardial colonists with indigenous hunter-gatherers, but their Euskaro-Cauca-sian language is colonial, not indigenous, in origin. Basque is the sole remaining descendant of the Euskaro-Caucasian family in Western Europe, but there is evidence (in the form of substratum words) that this colonial language was formerly more widely spread in other nearby regions (Sardinia, parts of Iberia, France, the Alps, Italy, the Balkans, and perhaps beyond).

Science, 1993

In order to understand better the formation and the structure of modern European paternal and maternal genetic landscape we discuss the ancestral hunter-gatherers' and farmer's populational dynamics in late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Particular attention is paid to the origins and diffusions of 'Palaeolithic' and 'Neolithic' Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups in relation to 'demic diffusion' and to process of transition to farming in Eurasia. Our basic interpretative premises are: -That the genesis of European neolithic civilisation was not linked to 'demic diffusion' of Levantine and Anatolian farmers; -That the phylogeography of Y chromosome haplogroups I1b*, J and E do not support the model of neolithic colonisation and replacement of indigenous populations in Europe; -That the southeast European populational trajectories and the rewriting of genetic palimpsest were set by networks of social relationships and associated small-scale mobility and local and/or regional migration; -That people, through contact provided the agency of transmission of information and incorporation of innovations such as cultigens, domesticates and ceramic technology. And these have lead to structural changes of the pre-existing social, economic and cultural phenomena with rather insignificant gene flow.

Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2013

New York: Pergamon. p. 923-993.) initiated the representation of genetic relationships among human populations with principal component (PC) analysis (PCA). Their study revealed the presence of a southeast-northwest (SE-NW) gradient of genetic variation in current European populations, which was interpreted as the result of the demic diffusion of early neolithic farmers during their expansion from the near east. However, this interpretation has been questioned, as PCA gradients can occur even when there is no expansion and because the first PC axis is often orthogonal to the expansion axis. Here, we revisit PCA patterns obtained under realistic scenarios of the settlement of Europe, focusing on the effects of various levels of admixture between paleolithic and neolithic populations, and of range contractions during the last glacial maximum (LGM). Using extensive simulations, we find that the first PC (PC1) gradients are orthogonal to the expansion axis, but only when the expansion is recent (neolithic). More ancient (paleolithic) expansions alter the orientation of the PC1 gradient due to a spatial homogenization of genetic diversity over time, and to the exact location of LGM refugia from which re-expansions proceeded. Overall we find that PC1 gradients consistently follow an SE-NW orientation if there is a large paleolithic contribution to the current European gene pool, and if the main refuge area during the last ice age was in the Iberian Peninsula. Our study suggests that an SE-NW PC1 gradient is compatible with little genetic impact of neolithic populations on the current European gene pool, and that range contractions have affected observed genetic patterns.

Res Historica, 2020

The author of the article aims at revealing the serious difference that has emerged between the traditional interpretations of the history of Central and Eastern Europe, present in the works of historians and archaeologists, and the new data brought by the DNA research of the past populations of this area. The former, based on the results of archaeological research pointing to cultural changes, assume a thorough population exchange that supposedly took place in the early Middle Ages, while the latter indicate the continuity of the same biological population peopling the region for over a thousand years BC. The author tries to explain these discrepancies by pointing to the cases of cultural and even ethnic changes within the large population taking place under the influence of small groups of strangers.

PLOS ONE, 2015

It has previously been demonstrated that the advance of the Neolithic Revolution from the Near East through Europe was decelerated in the northernmost confines of the continent, possibly as a result of space and resource competition with lingering Mesolithic populations. Finland was among the last domains to adopt a farming lifestyle, and is characterized by substructuring in the form of a distinct genetic border dividing the northeastern and southwestern regions of the country. To explore the origins of this divergence, the geographical patterns of mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal haplogroups of Neolithic and Mesolithic ancestry were assessed in Finnish populations. The distribution of these uniparental markers revealed a northeastern bias for hunter-gatherer haplogroups, while haplogroups associated with the farming lifestyle clustered in the southwest. In addition, a correlation could be observed between more ancient mitochondrial haplogroup age and eastern concentration. These results coupled with prior archeological evidence suggest the genetic northeast/ southwest division observed in contemporary Finland represents an ancient vestigial border between Mesolithic and Neolithic populations undetectable in most other regions of Europe.