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From: Charles <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Y haplogroups E2 & E3a -- Hannibal, Enemy of Rome
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 21:47:05 -0400
References: <3F1F33B4.2000902@comcast.net>


All:

And don't forget the Carthaginian Empire circa 200-300 B.C. which
colonized parts of the Mediterranean coast of Spain and of course
Hannibal landed in Spain with his African army and elephants and marched
along the coast until he reached the Rhone River and turned north up the
Rhone River valley towards its headwaters and then at some point looped
around over the Alps to attack the Romans in the Po Valley in northern
Italy. It is not exactly certain how far north Hannibal went up the
Rhone River Valley and exactly what path he took through the Alps. So
African genes could have been left in southern Germany, Switzerland,
and/or Northern Italy from Hannibal's African army. And then we also
have the Roman legions some of whom had men from Africa serving in
various units at various times. So small amounts of African Y
chromosomes could be in the gene pool of southern Germany, Switzerland,
and Northern Italy from ancient times.

Charles


Bonnie Schrack wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I've noticed some questions from people who are gettting E2 and E3a
> haplogroup matches or estimates, that is, Mary and Padre Oquendo. I
> just wanted to try to help clarify some things about these haplogroups.
> It's fair to say they're basically African, all right, but they aren't
> anything that's all that strange to find in Europeans, either, because
> they are found in people around Africa's fringes. E3a was found in 3
> out of a sample of 29 Palestinians. It's typical of North Africa, found
> at its peak in 30% of a population sample in Mali, as well as in about
> 7% of Moroccan Berbers. To find it in a Spaniard would not seem at all
> odd to me, even though the small sample tested in Bosch's 2001 article
> (long title -- email me if you want details) didn't find any among 44
> Basques, 16 Catalans, or 37 Andalusians. When you look at how much
> variation we have among the customers of FTDNA, you can see how tiny
> those samples are. It would seem to me to indicate probable ancestry
> from the Moorish people who for quite a while occupied Spain. [The
> data in this paragraph comes from the Scozzari paper cited below, or the
> Bosch paper.]
>
> And as for E2: it seems to be found in the Middle East, and in Sardinia
> (among other places), which in case anyone forgets, is a large island in
> the Mediterranean west of Italy, which has a genetically unusual
> population due to long isolation.
>
> (A recent paper by Barbujani, which I'm surprised not to have seen
> anyone discussing, advocates taking Sardinia as just as good a
> representative of the Paleolithic inhabitants of Europe as the Basques
> are. Not that I'm leaning toward his interpretation, but the argument
> of his paper, "Y genetic data support the Neolithic demic diffusion
> model," is that the Neolithic settlers *did* make up a large proportion
> of the ancestors of modern Europeans, after all. He's thus going
> against the conclusions of a large body of prominent geneticists.)
>
> Anyway, the data on Sardinia aren't from that paper, but from "Human
> Y-chromosome Variation in the Western Mediterranean Area," by Scozzari
> et al, 2001, which uses the old "HG" names for the haplogroups. They
> refer to HG21, which includes E*, E1, and E2, so we don't know which
> exactly it was, but I would guess that all of these parts of E which are
> closer to the root would be considered the more 'African.' 8.1% of the
> Sardinians of Bitti, 5.6% of those from Monte Ferru, 2.3% of the
> Sassarese, and 2.1% of those of Trexenta, belong to HG21.
>
> In the very well-known paper, "The Genetic Legacy of Paleolithic Homo
> sapens sapiens in Extant Europeans," by Semino et al, 2000, they found
> haplogroup Eu3 -- again equivalent to E*, E1, and E2, or HG21 -- in 10%
> of Syrians, 3.3% of Turks, 2.7 of Calabrian Italians, 2% of Albanians,
> and 1.3% of Greeks.
>
> For a Northern European like Mary to have an E2 ancestor is certainly
> unusual, but this need not necessarily imply a slave, or anyone directly
> from Sub-Saharan Africa, within the last couple of millenia. You can
> see that there are a number of other possibilities closer to home, and
> therefore, it seems to me, more likely than that.
>
> Bonnie Schrack
> http://www.ancientrootsresearch.com
>
> ==============================
> To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to:
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