Pwoof it.
Posted on 05/09/2013 3:00:00 PM PDT by billorites
A genetic survey concludes that all Europeans living today are related to the same set of ancestors who lived 1,000 years ago. And you wouldn't have to go back much further to find that everyone in the world is related to each other.
"We find it remarkable because it's counterintuitive to us," Graham Coop, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Davis, told NBC News. "But it's not totally unexpected, based on genetic analysis."
Family researchers have long known that if you go back far enough, everyone with a European connection ends up being related to Charlemagne. The concept was laid out scientifically more than a decade ago. Now Coop and University of Southern California geneticist Peter Ralph have come up with the evidence. Their findings were published on Tuesday in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. Advertise | AdChoices
"Anyone alive 1,000 years ago who left any descendants will be an ancestor of every European," the researchers say in an FAQ file about their study. "While the world population is larger than the European population, the rate of growth of number of ancestors quickly dwarfs this difference, and so every human is likely related genealogically to every other human over only a slightly longer time period."
Those conclusions are based on a survey of genetic sequences from more than 2,000 individuals spread from Ireland to Turkey. Ralph and Coop used computer software to search for telltale strings of DNA coding that are common to wide segments of the European population. The length of such strings can be used as a statistical yardstick to determine relatedness: Longer strings suggest that a common ancestor lived more recently.
The researchers were surprised to find that even individuals living as far apart as Britain and Turkey shared a chunk of genetic material 20 percent of the time. To explain that degree of genetic commonality, the researchers say those pairs of individuals would have to have a huge number of common genealogical ancestors 1,000 years ago — a number that takes in everyone who was alive in Europe back then.
Coop stressed that common genealogical ancestors are distinct from common genetic ancestors. "If you go more than eight generations back, you've got so many ancestors back there, it's unlikely that all of them have contributed genetic material to you," he explained.
People who live closer together tend to be more closely related, as you'd expect. The survey also found that the degree of relatedness varied among present-day European populations: Italians tended to have lower levels of relatedness, to each other and to other Europeans. That may be because there was a long history of distinct cultures in that region, the researchers suggest. Eastern Europeans, in contrast, showed more relatedness than the average, perhaps due to the Slavic expansion into that region more than 1,000 years ago.
Teasing out all those relationships will be the focus of future research, made possible by the proliferation of genetic data and analytical tools. "In the next couple of years, we'll have these kinds of studies applied globally," University of Arizona geneticist Michael Hammer, who was not involved in the PLOS Biology study, told NBC News.
The cold, hard genetic evidence points to a warm and fuzzy fact. "It underlines the commonality of all of our histories," Coop said. "You don't have to go back many generations to find that we're all related to each other."
Pwoof it.
well at least the secret is safe in the family...(/s)
appologies to Dave Allen at Large.
They are simply wrong. All Europeans are not related.
I think I’m related to Attila the Hun. Not genetically, politically. BTT.
And your evidence for this assertion is?
I think I heard that there is more genetic variation among people in Africa than in all of the rest of the world, because it was a relatively small number, representing a small gene pool,that migrated out of Africa, and populated the rest of the world.
Rome had legions from turkey from there they invaded Germany Spain, then England with legions made up with men from all the countries they invaded ...
So Turkmen or Serbs or Hunic are releated to Picts?
I have my doubts.
Obviously false headline.
My family goes back that far in recorded history and I find this to be unlikely.
Aren’t all humans related? Isn’t all life? Wait, where can one get the funding to propose this theory?
"Waiter, could you get me some ice? Waiter? Oh hell, I'll get it myself."
Faulty conclusion stemming from faulty assumptions. Poor excuse for “science”.
The non-politically correct way to convey the same idea is to replace Charlemagne with Charles Martel. Can't write anything scare the muzzies you know.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.