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Subject: [DNA] The Y of Alexander the Great
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 14:36:44 -0700
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=2002
-07-06&id=2024
FEATURES
The lost tribe
Are the blond, blue-eyed Afghans descended from Alexander the Great's
soldiers? Matthew Leeming is determined to find out
...is it possible that the blond Afghans are descended from Alexanders
settlers?
...
Because of the dangers and difficulties of travelling in Afghanistan, no one
has yet used modern DNA-testing technology to prove this conjecture. This
August, with the help of The Spectator, I am mounting an expedition to
Afghanistan to do just that. Mouth swabs from a large number of Afghan males
will be taken near the site of ancient Alexandria. These will be analysed at
University College, London.
If Macedonian traces do remain, they will be quite obvious. European DNA is
very different from Asian DNA. But an extraordinary new control-sample has
emerged. Manchester Museum possesses a vertebra of Alexander's father,
Philip of Macedon, whose body was excavated from the royal tomb at Pella
about ten years ago, and has offered to let us extract Y chromosome DNA from
it. We will thus be comparing modern Afghan DNA with the Y chromosome that
is 99.98 per cent identical to that of Alexander the Great.
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