Population expansion in the North African Late Pleistocene signalled by mitochondrial DNA haplogroup U6full author list:
Luisa Pereira, Nuno Silva, Ricardo Franco-Duarte, Veronica Fernandes, Joana Pereira, Marta Costa, Haide Martins, Pedro Soares, Doron Behar, Martin Richards, Vincent Macaulay
What does that mean in English?
I'll admit it's a sort of an enigma that anybody could earn his living turning up monkey bones and human footprints in the same place and claiming that to be evidence of a monkey with human-like feet (Lucy) rather than evidence of a human with a pet monkey having lived near the spot...
Haplogroup U5
Among the oldest mtDNA haplogroups found in European remains of Homo sapiens is U5. The age of U5 is estimated at 50,000 but could be as old as 60,500 years. Approximately 11% of total Europeans and 10% of European-Americans are in haplogroup U5.
The presence of haplogroup U5 in Europe pre-dates the expansion of agriculture in Europe. Bryan Sykes' popular book The Seven Daughters of Eve calculated that it arose 45,000-50,000 years ago in Delphi, Greece and named the originator of haplogroup U5 Ursula. However the details related to location and age are speculative. Barbujani and Bertorelle estimate the age of haplogroup U5 as about 52,000 years ago, being the oldest subclade of haplogroup U.
My dad's mother (Mrs. Smith) has mtDNA U5a as does 9,000 year old. Cheddar Man
About 50% of the Sa'ami of Finland have haplogroup U5b, the other (about ) 50% have haplogroup 'V', same as me.
Whew. I had been wondering about this for a long time.
“we applied both a mutation rate accounting for purifying selection”
Another of those artificial yard-sticks used to rationalize any conclusion you’d like.
Oh, man, are they gonna start that argument again?