From: Alpheta 1/16/2005 4:11 pm
To: ALL (1 of 11)
150.1

Here is an interesting article about a genetic connection between the people who live in present-day Scotland and ancient Iraq (as the article dates this migration back to approximately 4000 BCE, I will call these people Sumerians/Babylonians)"...traced the movement of early farmers in the centuries around 4000BC. It showed them coming from Iraq and ultimately to prehistoric Scotland":

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/05_0115/17/fac6n.html
Saturday January 15, 03:00 AM

One in five Scots has blood tie to ancient Iraq
ABOUT 20 per cent of all Scots have Iraqi blood, according to a new book and television series examining the pre-history of what is now Scotland.

The remaining four in five Scots are descended from bands of hunter-gatherers who came from England and northern Europe after the Ice Age - dispelling the myth of the Scots as a mongrel race made up of Romans, Angles, Vikings, Normans and other arrivals.

These revelations come from a documentary series Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History, to be screened later this year on STV and Grampian.

The programmes - accompanied by a book - also claim the mythical land of Atlantis existed in what we now know as the North Sea, and that many Scots spoke Old Welsh before Gaelic.

And they dispel the myth that the population in 4000BC was made up of grunting cavemen running around in animal skins, saying the people were actually very similar to Scots today.

Alistair Moffat, the writer and producer of the series, said many people would be surprised by the findings: "We find it very difficult to believe that 10,000 years ago people who looked like us lived on this island, hunted and gathered food, had families that they cared for, talked about ideas, gossiped, told funny stories, lied and were often worried about the future.

"Yet all the evidence shows that they were indeed like us, and, further, they were in fact our direct ancestors. They deserve a history and nothing less," added Mr Moffat.

Telling the country's story from the end of the last Ice Age - about 8000BC - to the fall of the Pictish kingdom, the series ends in 900AD when the name Alba, Gaelic for Scotland, came into common use.

The original name Scotland, said Mr Moffat, meant the Land of the Pirates.

Using new research into Scottish DNA by Professor Bryan Sykes of the Oxford Ancestors Project, the revelation that some Scots have an exotic set of Iraqi ancestors is also backed by his research, which traced the movement of early farmers in the centuries around 4000BC. It showed them coming from Iraq and ultimately to prehistoric Scotland.

Fi Harris, marketing and communications consultant for the Scottish genealogy website ScotlandsPeople, said: "It certainly promises to offer a fascinating and innovative insight into Scottish ancestry and the role it has played in shaping modern-day Scotland.

"Since we launched ScotlandsPeople in 2002, interest in genealogy has soared and we now have over 245,000 registered users.

"Although this new documentary concentrates on 8000BC to 900AD, it will help to demonstrate how fascinating it can be to trace the lives of our ancestors."

• Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History, by Alistair Moffat, is published by Thames and Hudson on 31 January

By: SHARON WARD -- 15-Jan-05

Now this is very interesting, because the genetic evidence gives irrefutable proof of the migration of ancient peoples over incredibly long distances in the time before writing (what the "experts" call "prehistoric").

I see this information having an impact on many areas of research, not the least of which are the oral histories of the Scottish bards which are, I believe, historically ascribed to a MUCH later period than 4000 BCE. But what if these ancient oral legends, before they were corrupted with interpretation through relatively recent "gloss", reflect a more or less accurate history of an extermely ancient people migrating and settling in Scotland? What if those legends of board games recorded in ancient Scots myths are real records of games that originated in Sumeria, such as 20 squares, that were carried with the migrants to Scotland?

And what path or paths might these ancient migrants have taken to get from Sumeria (or northern Babylon)to get to Scotland? Did they use a land route across Europe and then cross the English Channel at Normandy, then migrating north across England to get to Scotland? Did they follow a coastal route along the Mediterranean Sea, eventually arriving in modern-day Spain, and thence travel all along the Atlantic coastline to Normandy, and then cross the English Channel? Or, did these intrepid people use a sea route from a mid-eastern seaport (Byblos, for instance) across the Mediterranean through the Gibraltar Strait and thence travel to Ireland, where they may have stayed awhile depositing some genetic material, before they cross the sea channel east toward Scotland?

And might this genetic evidence of a connection getween Iraq and Scotland not lend more credence to the "legend" of the Egyptian Princess Scotia who, it was said, married a warrior king in Scotland? Not genetic evidence, I'm not arguing for a genetic link between the Sumerians and the ancient Egyptians! All I'm saying is that contacts between ancient peoples from the Middle East and Ireland, England and Scotland were common to an extent we do not presently appreciate.

From: Alpheta 5/1/2005 2:07 pm
To: ALL (2 of 11)
150.2 in reply to 150.1

Genetics and etymology combine to demonstrate a plausible theory of migration of the indigenous people of Taiwan throughout all of Malaysia, Polynesia, and New Zealand, among other countries:

http://www.etaiwannews.com/Taiwan/Society/2005/04/26/1114479174.htm
Austronesians migrated from Taiwan, says archaeologist

2005-04-26 / Central News Agency /

Austronesian-speaking people across the Asia-Pacific region originated from Taiwan, an Australian academic said yesterday.

Professor Peter Bellwood, director of the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at Australian National University, said archaeological evidence proved that ancestors of today's Austronesian-speaking people, numbering about 300 million, migrated from Taiwan to Pacific Rim areas.

Bellwood became convinced of his conclusion after completing fieldwork recently in the northern Philippine's Batan Island and the Yer Bac prehistoric site in northern Vietnam, where he found pieces of penannular jade rings and earthenware that can be linked to prehistoric Taiwan.

In a speech delivered at the National Museum of Prehistory in Taitung, Bellwood said that jade was not produced in most of the Austronesian-speaking areas except for Taiwan and the pieces of penannular jade rings found in both Batan and Yer Bac were similar to those found in Hualien, eastern Taiwan.

In addition, the earthenware unearthed in the Philippines is similar in pattern to pieces unearthed in Hualien or Taitung dating back 3,500 to 4,700 years.

According to Bellwood, the Austronesian-speaking people began to emigrate south from Taiwan to the Philippines about 4,000 years ago. Taiwan and Austronesian countries might have interacted for as many as 3,000 years through the up to 2,000 kilometer migratory journeys.

Some local scholars, however, believed the Australian academic's reliance on only jade rings and pottery to prove his case was "too weak." They suggested that the relics found by Bellwood may not have been items used by Austronesian-speaking peoples in the past but brought to those areas by traders in later years.

Yet, another theory developed in Australia and New Zealand in recent years has used genetics and linguistics to support Taiwan as the cradle of Austronesian-language people.

Professor Geoffrey Chambers of Victoria University in Wellington believes that Maori people and other Polynesian peoples of the Pacific "island-hopped" from Taiwan through the Philippines and Indonesia to West Polynesia. From there, he said, they traveled to the islands of East Polynesia and then southwest, eventually settling in New Zealand.

Taiwan's indigenous people as a whole are believed to belong to the Austronesian-language group, which probably underwent the widest physical dispersion of any single language family prior to the European colonial expansion following Columbus.

Austronesian migrations ranged from the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa all the way to the tiny, isolated Easter Island (Rapa Nui) and extending to Taiwan, Vietnam, Northern Australia, New Zealand and most of the Melanesian and Polynesian islands.

It's been said before here but I'll reiterate: those ancient peoples sure managed to get around damn well for being what we consider technologically "backward"!

From: Alpheta 7/3/2006 9:37 am
To: ALL (3 of 11)

I've known this for a long time - we ARE all related to each other; here's mathematical proof based upon laws of probability (statistics, the stuff that used to put me to sleep in my college days):

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1501AP_Brotherhood_of_Man.html

Saturday, July 1, 2006 · Last updated 2:17 p.m. PT

Roots of human family tree are shallow

By MATT CRENSON
AP NATIONAL WRITER

Whoever it was probably lived a few thousand years ago, somewhere in East Asia - Taiwan, Malaysia and Siberia all are likely locations. He - or she - did nothing more remarkable than be born, live, have children and die.

Yet this was the ancestor of every person now living on Earth - the last person in history whose family tree branches out to touch all 6.5 billion people on the planet today.

That means everybody on Earth descends from somebody who was around as recently as the reign of Tutankhamen, maybe even during the Golden Age of ancient Greece. There's even a chance that our last shared ancestor lived at the time of Christ.

"It's a mathematical certainty that that person existed," said Steve Olson, whose 2002 book "Mapping Human History" traces the history of the species since its origins in Africa more than 100,000 years ago.

It is human nature to wonder about our ancestors - who they were, where they lived, what they were like. People trace their genealogy, collect antiques and visit historical sites hoping to capture just a glimpse of those who came before, to locate themselves in the sweep of history and position themselves in the web of human existence.

But few people realize just how intricately that web connects them not just to people living on the planet today, but to everyone who ever lived.

With the help of a statistician, a computer scientist and a supercomputer, Olson has calculated just how interconnected the human family tree is. You would have to go back in time only 2,000 to 5,000 years - and probably on the low side of that range - to find somebody who could count every person alive today as a descendant.

Furthermore, Olson and his colleagues have found that if you go back a little farther - about 5,000 to 7,000 years ago - everybody living today has exactly the same set of ancestors. In other words, every person who was alive at that time is either an ancestor to all 6 billion people living today, or their line died out and they have no remaining descendants.That revelation is "especially startling," statistician Jotun Hein of England's Oxford University wrote in a commentary on the research published by the journal Nature.

"Had you entered any village on Earth in around 3,000 B.C., the first person you would have met would probably be your ancestor," Hein marveled.

It also means that all of us have ancestors of every color and creed. Every Palestinian suicide bomber has Jews in his past. Every Sunni Muslim in Iraq is descended from at least one Shiite. And every Klansman's family has African roots.

How can this be?

It's simple math. Every person has two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents. Keep doubling back through the generations - 16, 32, 64, 128 - and within a few hundred years you have thousands of ancestors.

It's nothing more than exponential growth combined with the facts of life. By the 15th century you've got a million ancestors. By the 13th you've got a billion. Sometime around the 9th century - just 40 generations ago - the number tops a trillion.

But wait. How could anybody - much less everybody - alive today have had a trillion ancestors living during the 9th century?

The answer is, they didn't. Imagine there was a man living 1,200 years ago whose daughter was your mother's 36th great-grandmother, and whose son was your father's 36th great-grandfather. That would put him on two branches on your family tree, one on your mother's side and one on your father's.

In fact, most of the people who lived 1,200 years ago appear not twice, but thousands of times on our family trees, because there were only 200 million people on Earth back then. Simple division - a trillion divided by 200 million - shows that on average each person back then would appear 5,000 times on the family tree of every single individual living today.

But things are never average. Many of the people who were alive in the year 800 never had children; they don't appear on anybody's family tree. Meanwhile, more prolific members of society would show up many more than 5,000 times on a lot of people's trees.

Keep going back in time, and there are fewer and fewer people available to put on more and more branches of the 6.5 billion family trees of people living today. It is mathematically inevitable that at some point, there will be a person who appears at least once on everybody's tree.

But don't stop there; keep going back. As the number of potential ancestors dwindles and the number of branches explodes there comes a time when every single person on Earth is an ancestor to all of us, except the ones who never had children or whose lines eventually died out.

And it wasn't all that long ago. When you walk through an exhibit of Ancient Egyptian art from the time of the pyramids, everything there was very likely created by one of your ancestors - every statue, every hieroglyph, every gold necklace. If there is a mummy lying in the center of the room, that person was almost certainly your ancestor, too.

It means when Muslims, Jews or Christians claim to be children of Abraham, they are all bound to be right.

"No matter the languages we speak or the color of our skin, we share ancestors who planted rice on the banks of the Yangtze, who first domesticated horses on the steppes of the Ukraine, who hunted giant sloths in the forests of North and South America, and who labored to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu," Olson and his colleagues wrote in the journal Nature.

How can they be so sure?

Seven years ago one of Olson's colleagues, a Yale University statistician named Joseph Chang, started thinking about how to estimate when the last common ancestor of everybody on Earth today lived. In a paper published by the journal "Advances in Applied Probability," Chang showed that there is a mathematical relationship between the size of a population and the number of generations back to a common ancestor. Plugging the planet's current population into his equation, he came up with just over 32 generations, or about 900 years.

Chang knew that answer was wrong because it relied on some common, but inaccurate, assumptions that population geneticists often use to simplify difficult mathematical problems.

For example, his analysis pretended that Earth's population has always been what it is today. It also assumed that individuals choose their mates randomly. And each generation had to reproduce all at once.

Chang's calculations essentially treated the world like one big meet market where any given guy was equally likely to pair up with any woman, whether she lived in the next village or halfway around the world. Chang was fully aware of the inaccuracy - people have to select their partners from the pool of individuals they have actually met, unless they are entering into an arranged marriage. But even then, they are much more likely to mate with partners who live nearby. And that means that geography can't be ignored if you are going to determine the relatedness of the world's population.

A few years later Chang was contacted by Olson, who had started thinking about the world's interrelatedness while writing his book. They started corresponding by e-mail, and soon included in their deliberations Douglas Rohde, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist and computer expert who now works for Google.

The researchers knew they would have to account for geography to get a better picture of how the family tree converges as it reaches deeper into the past. They decided to build a massive computer simulation that would essentially re-enact the history of humanity as people were born, moved from one place to another, reproduced and died.

Rohde created a program that put an initial population on a map of the world at some date in the past, ranging from 7,000 to 20,000 years ago. Then the program allowed those initial inhabitants to go about their business. He allowed them to expand in number according to accepted estimates of past population growth, but had to cap the expansion at 55 million people due to computing limitations. Although unrealistic in some respects - 55 million is a lot less than the 6.5 billion people who actually live on Earth today - he found through trial and error that the limitation did not significantly change the outcome with regard to common ancestry.

The model also had to allow for migration based on what historians, anthropologists and archaeologists know about how frequently past populations moved both within and between continents. Rohde, Chang and Olson chose a range of migration rates, from a low level where almost nobody left their native home to a much higher one where up to 20 percent of the population reproduced in a town other than the one where they were born, and one person in 400 moved to a foreign country.

Allowing very little migration, Rohde's simulation produced a date of about 5,000 B.C. for humanity's most recent common ancestor. Assuming a higher, but still realistic, migration rate produced a shockingly recent date of around 1 A.D.

Some people even suspect that the most recent common ancestor could have lived later than that.

"A number of people have written to me making the argument that the simulations were too conservative," Rohde said.

Migration is the key. When a people have offspring far from their birthplaces, they essentially introduce their entire family lines into their adopted populations, giving their immediate offspring and all who come after them a set of ancestors from far away.

People tend to think of preindustrial societies as places where this sort of thing rarely happened, where virtually everyone lived and died within a few miles of the place where they were born. But history is full of examples that belie that notion.

Take Alexander the Great, who conquered every country between Greece and northern India, siring two sons along the way by Persian mothers. Consider Prince Abd Al-Rahman, son of a Syrian father and a Berber mother, who escaped Damascus after the overthrow of his family's dynasty and started a new one in Spain. The Vikings, the Mongols, and the Huns all traveled thousands of miles to burn, pillage and - most pertinent to genealogical considerations - rape more settled populations.

More peaceful people moved around as well. During the Middle Ages, the Gypsies traveled in stages from northern India to Europe. In the New World, the Navaho moved from western Canada to their current home in the American Southwest. People from East Asia fanned out into the South Pacific Islands, and Eskimos frequently traveled back and forth across the Bering Sea from Siberia to Alaska.

"These genealogical networks, as they start spreading out they really have the ability to get virtually everywhere," Olson said.

Though people like to think of culture, language and religion as barriers between groups, history is full of religious conversions, intermarriages, illegitimate births and adoptions across those lines. Some historical times and places were especially active melting pots - medieval Spain, ancient Rome and the Egypt of the pharaohs, for example.

"And the thing is, you only need one," said Mark Humphrys, an amateur anthropologist and professor of computer science at Dublin City University.

One ancestral link to another cultural group among your millions of forbears, and you share ancestors with everyone in that group. So everyone who reproduced with somebody who was born far from their own natal home - every sailor blown off course, every young man who set off to seek his fortune, every woman who left home with a trader from a foreign land - as long as they had children, they helped weave the tight web of brotherhood we all share.

From: Alpheta 11/5/2006 12:45 pm
To: ALL (4 of 11)

Well, finally! A story that discusses evidence showing that yes, so-called "modern man" and so-called "Neanderthal" interbred with each other. Duh! I can't tell you how SICK I was of reading that blah blah blah there was no evidence for such a thing EVER happening, blah blah blah. Well, hellooooo! Guess what! Jean Auel (wrote the "Clan of the Cavebear" series books, must have been in the 1980's) was right all along! Good for her!

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-11/wuis-mhm110206.php

Public release date: 2-Nov-2006
[ Print Article | E-mail Article | Close Window ]

Contact: Neil Schoenherr
nschoenherr@wustl.edu
314-935-5235
Washington University in St. Louis

More human-Neandertal mixing evidence uncovered

'Dem bones

A reexamination of ancient human bones from Romania reveals more evidence that humans and Neandertals interbred.

Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., Washington University Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor in Arts & Sciences, and colleagues radiocarbon-dated and analyzed the shapes of human bones from Romania's Pe¨tera Muierii (Cave of the Old Woman). The fossils, discovered in 1952, add to the small number of early modern human remains from Europe known to be more than 28,000 years old.

Results were published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The team found that the fossils were 30,000 years old and principally have the diagnostic skeletal features of modern humans. They also found that the remains had other features known, among potential ancestors, primarily among the preceding Neandertals, providing more evidence there was mixing of humans and Neandertals as modern humans dispersed across Europe about 35,000 years ago. Their analysis of one skeleton's shoulder blade also shows that these humans did not have the full set of anatomical adaptations for throwing projectiles, like spears, during hunting.

The team says that the mixture of human and Neandertal features indicates that there was a complicated reproductive scenario as humans and Neandertals mixed, and that the hypothesis that the Neandertals were simply replaced should be abandoned.

###
Article #08443: "Early Modern Humans from the Pe²tera Muierii, Baia de Fier, Romania" by Andrei Soficaru, Adrian Dobo¨, and Erik Trinkaus.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

What I find fascinating about this is that I recall reading a few years ago that, at least according to one study/analysis of Neanderthal DNA, no trace of it could be found in modern-day human populations. I always thought that was bullshit; first of all, science has long-since abandoned the concept that Neanderthals were hairy, grunting, stooped over "ape men". In fact, under some reconstructions of "Neanderthal" bones I recall, if we passed a Neanderthal on the street he (or she) would not attract notice out of the ordinary. Secondly, I suspect that as we continue to perfect the DNA analysis technology, we will see that there was NO DIFFERENCE between "Neanderthal" and "modern human" genetically, in fact, both are fully human (or whatever we consider ourselves, these days; sometimes, I wonder). Thirdly, we must continue to periodically go back and re-examine archaeological evidence (including bones) that we have uncovered during the past 200 plus years of archaeological research (such as it existed back then) in light of new theories of analysis and with the most current technology. I continue to believe that ape is ape, and man is man, and never the twain shall meet. THERE ARE NO MISSING LINKS. Man is not descended from Leakey's "Lucy" and her ilk. Those were apes, not men, not ape-men. I am confident that, eventually, science will "catch up" and come to the same conclusion.

Okay, enough barking from the pulpit! Here is another story on the "Neanderthal" "Human" cross-breeding:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20061030/sc_space/humansandneanderthalsmighthaveinterbred

Humans and Neanderthals Might Have Interbred
Andrea Thompson
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com Mon Oct 30, 5:30 PM ET
As modern humans spread across Europe tens of thousands of years ago, they may have interbred with Neanderthals, creating hybrids, according to a new study of ancient human bones from Romania.

Anthropologists have long wondered what happened when the two species met as modern humans spread from Africa into Neanderthal territory in Eurasia: did the populations interbreed or did modern humans simply replace their cousins?

The specimens examined and dated for the first time in this study show that “at least in Europe, the populations blended,” said study author Erik Trinkaus of Washington University.

The study compared the fragments, including a skull [image] and jaw [image], to bones of Neanderthals, early modern humans in Africa before they spread, and in Europe afterward. Trinkaus said that he and his colleagues found certain features that could have only come from Neanderthals, because early modern humans lost them before they spread from Africa.

They found a swelling at the back of skull, called an occipital bun, which is the result of differential brain growth and is commonly found in Neanderthal skulls. Also, the arrangement of muscle attachment at the back of the jaw was a trait of Neanderthals.

This evidence of interbreeding shows that “[the two groups] saw each other as socially appropriate mates,” Trinkaus said.

Early modern humans and Neanderthals were two branches of the human family tree that differed primarily in the anatomical pattern, with humans eventually becoming the dominate pattern. Though humans and Neanderthals were different species, Trinkaus points out that most closely related species that haven not been separated for long amounts of time can still breed and produce fertile offspring.

It is possible that people with European ancestry could also have Neanderthal ancestry, according to Trinkaus, though how much is uncertain.

Prior to this study, the remains were largely forgotten because “there was serious doubt as to their age,” Trinkaus said. When the remains were discovered in a Romanian cave in the early 1950s, prior to carbon dating, they were not embedded in a rock layer that might indicate their age. Because the bones essentially looked like those of an early modern human, they received little attention inside Romania and were unknown outside the country.

Some scientists dispute that there was any overlap between the two species, but Trinkaus dismisses these claims. “There was an overlap,” Trinkaus said, though anthropologists are unsure as to how long the two species co-existed.

According to Trinkaus, anthropologists have “securely dated” modern humans in Romania at 35,000 years ago and Neanderthals in Spain at 30,000 years ago.

“We don’t have a site where we have a human and a Neanderthal buried next to each other,” Trinkaus said. “I’m still waiting for that.”

From: Alpheta 2/4/2007 12:16 pm
To: ALL (5 of 11)
150.5 in reply to 150.4

Wow, this is fascinating. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/02/wroman02.xml
Roman descendants found in China?

By Richard Spencer in Liqian, north-west China
Last Updated: 12:36am GMT 04/02/2007

Residents of a remote Chinese village are hoping that DNA tests will prove one of history's most unlikely legends — that they are descended from Roman legionaries lost in antiquity.

Scientists have taken blood samples from 93 people living in and around Liqian, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi desert, more than 200 miles from the nearest city.

They are seeking an explanation for the unusual number of local people with western characteristics — green eyes, big noses, and even blonde hair — mixed with traditional Chinese features.

"I really think we are descended from the Romans," said Song Guorong, 48, who with his wavy hair, six-foot frame and strikingly long, hooked nose stands out from his short, round-faced office colleagues.

"There are the residents with these special features, and then there are also historical records about the existence of these people long ago," he said.

Studies claiming that Liqian has Roman ancestry have greatly excited the impoverished county in which it is situated. The village is now overlooked by a pillared portico, in the hope of attracting tourists. A statue at the entrance of the nearby county town, Yongchang, shows a Roman legionary standing next to a Confucian scholar and a Muslim woman, as a symbol of racial harmony.

Even entrepreneurs have caught on: in "Imperial City Entertainment Street" there is a Caesar Karaoke bar.
The town's link with Rome was first suggested by a professor of Chinese history at Oxford in the 1950s. Homer Dubs pulled together stories from the official histories, which said that Liqian was founded by soldiers captured in a war between the Chinese and the Huns in 36BC, and the legend of the missing army of Marcus Crassus, a Roman general.

In 53BC Crassus was defeated disastrously and beheaded by the Parthians, a tribe occupying what is now Iran, putting an end to Rome's eastward expansion.

But stories persisted that 145 Romans were taken captive and wandered the region for years. Prof Dubs theorised that they made their way as a mercenary troop eastwards, which was how a troop "with a fish-scale formation" came to be captured by the Chinese 17 years later.

He said the "fish-scale formation" was a reference to the Roman "tortoise", a phalanx protected by shields on all sides and from above. Gu Jianming, who lives near Liqian, said it had come as a surprise to be told he might be descended from a European imperial army. But then the birth of his daughter was also a surprise. Gu Meina, now six, was born with a shock of blonde hair. "We shaved it off a month after she was born but it just grew back the same colour," he said. "At school they call her 'yellow hair'. Before we were told about the Romans, we had no idea about this. We are poor and have no family temple, so we don't know about our ancestors."

Another resident, Cai Junnian, 38, said his ruddy skin and green eyes meant he was now nicknamed Cai Luoma, or Cai the Roman, by friends. He has become a local celebrity, and was recently flown to the Italian consulate in Shanghai to meet his supposed relatives. The professor's hypothesis took almost 40 years to reach China. During Chairman Mao's rule, ideas of foreign ancestry were not ideologically welcome and the story was suppressed.

Mr Cai said his great-grandfather told him that there were Roman tombs in the Qilian mountains a day and a half's walk away, but he had never connected them to the unusual appearance he inherited from his father. "People thought I had a skin problem," he said.

The blood tests are part of a project undertaken by scientists and historians after local authorities loosened control over genetic research. The results will be published in a scientific journal. But Prof Xie Xiaodong, a geneticist from Lanzhou University, cautioned against over enthusiasm.

"Even if they are descendants of the Roman empire, it doesn't mean they are necessarily from the Roman army," he said. "The empire covered a large area. Many soldiers were recruited locally, so anything is possible."

The issue has split the university's history department, with some scholars supporting the claim, some rejecting it. Prof Wang Shaokuan poured scorn on Prof Dubs's thesis, saying the Huns themselves included Caucasians, Asians and Mongols.

From: Alpheta 2/25/2007 5:59 pm
To: ALL (6 of 11)
150.6 in reply to 150.5

This kind of story just pisses me off so much - it's the same bullshit the N.A.'s have been pulling in the USA to prevent scientific research going forward that might, eventually, settle the question of who was here first and when the fuck did they get here. Of course, in the end, it's ALL about money, darlings. Gag me.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070219/ap_on_sc/aboriginal_remains_1
Aboriginals sue U.K. museum over bones
By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer
Mon Feb 19, 3:15 PM ET

LONDON - A Tasmanian aboriginal group is suing Britain's Museum of Natural History to keep it from conducting tests on bones, teeth and skulls taken from the island, saying Monday that the experiments would desecrate the corpses.The museum agreed last year to return the bones — mostly obtained during the 1940s — to Australia, but indicated it wanted first to run tests on them, as they represented some of the few remaining pieces of objective data about the region's original inhabitants.

Tasmanians were almost completely exterminated after the 19th-century arrival of white settlers to their island. Out of a population of 4,000, only 200 remained in the 1830s, and the last full-blooded Tasmanian died in 1876. Those who remain today are of mixed descent.

The Tasmanian Aboriginal Center, which has been awarded custody of the remains, said any tests on the bones would defile the remains of victims of genocide.
"They would never dare to do these experiments to the human remains of Jews or Roma or Scots or Manx Islanders," the center's lawyer, Michael Mansell, said in a statement. "They intend to mutilate our ancestors without our consent."

The museum said would meet with the aboriginal group, but that it would continue to fight the suit, which goes to court on Thursday.

The museum wants to measure, photograph, X-ray and make casts of the bones, along with drilling and shaving off microscopic bits of material from the teeth and skulls to extract genetic material.

The group from Tasmania, a southern island state of Australia, questioned whether the experiments would yield any useful information.

"The Natural History Museum's tests were 'genetic prospecting' which would desecrate the spiritual beliefs of the community from whom the skulls and bones were taken by grave robbery," Mansell said.

Aboriginals believe a soul is in torment unless the body rests in its native land.

The museum has acknowledged that the remains, drawn from 17 individuals, were either looted or taken coercively, but said the aboriginal demands should be weighed against the scientific value of the bones.

"We see the strength of both the (aboriginal) view and the scientific view, and the decision (to conduct tests) is aimed to meet the primary interests of both groups," museum spokesman Claudine Fontana said. "We will be returning these remains permanently, and it is only the information about them that we will keep."

The Natural History Museum has a collection of almost 20,000 human remains, taken from all over the world and dating back 500,000 years. Most were taken from Britain.

Australia's government has backed the aboriginals' argument. In a letter addressed to the museum and to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Australian High Commissioner Richard Alston said Friday that the issue was "already causing considerable distress in the community of origin of the remains," and urged a negotiated settlement.

The return of indigenous bones has proven contentious in the United States, where the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act required all federally funded museums and institutions to return any Native American remains and spiritual objects that could be traced back to Indian nations.

Disputes over the Kennewick Man and the Spirit Cave Man, 9,000 and 10,600 years old respectively, have pitted U.S. archeologists against American Indian tribes in legal battles.

From: Alpheta 4/1/2007 6:57 pm
To: ALL (7 of 11)
150.7 in reply to 150.6

On a more upbeat note (those N.A.s and their endless law suits over "ancestors" - yeah, right - as if they know they're ancestors) - here's a VERY interesting story about at least one ancestor of Thomas Jefferson - from the Middle East!!!!!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070328111115.htm
Source: University of Leicester
Date: March 29, 2007
CouCould Thomas Jefferson's DNA Trail Reveal Middle-Eastern Origins?

Science Daily — DNA testing carried out by University of Leicester geneticists and funded by The Wellcome Trust has thrown new light on the ancestry of one of the USA's most revered figures, the third President, Thomas Jefferson.
Almost 10 years ago, the University of Leicester team, led by Professor Mark Jobling, together with international collaborators, showed that Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one of the sons of Sally Hemings, a slave of Jefferson's.

The work was done using the Y chromosome, a male-specific part of our DNA that passes down from father to son. Jefferson carried a very unusual Y chromosome type, which helped to strengthen the evidence in the historical paternity case.

Now, new techniques have been brought to bear on Jefferson's Y chromosome, in a study reported in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The presidential chromosome turns out to belong to a rare class called 'K2', which is found at its highest frequency in the Middle East and Eastern Africa, including Oman, Somalia and Iraq. Its closest match was in a man from Egypt. Could this mean that the President had recent ancestry in the Middle East? A careful survey revealed a few K2 chromosomes in France, Spain and England. Together, the K2s form a diverse group that may, in fact, have been in western Europe for many thousands of years.

Further evidence for Jefferson's British origins come from the finding that two out of 85 randomly recruited men named Jefferson share exactly the same Y chromosome as the President. Prof Jobling said: 'The two men have ancestry in Yorkshire and the West Midlands, and knew of no historical connection to the USA. They were amazed and fascinated by the link, which connects them into Thomas Jefferson's family tree, probably about 11 generations ago.'

The ultimate origins of K2 chromosomes remain a mystery, however, and need further investigation: while they may have been present in Europe since the Stone Age, another possibility is that K2s came to Europe with the Phoenicians, an ancient maritime trading culture that spread out across the Mediterranean from their home in what is now Lebanon. The US media has taken up a different theory, leading to the New York Times headline, 'Jefferson -- the first Jewish president?': European K2 chromosomes may originate in Sephardic (Spanish) Jewish populations, who have their ultimate origins in the Middle East.

Prof Jobling said: 'When we look closely at large collections of British Y chromosomes we find surprises, like this rare K2 lineage, and the African chromosome that we recently found in a Yorkshireman. These exotic chromosomes remind us of the complexity of British history and prehistory.'

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Leicester.
-------------------------------------------------------------

Now, I'm just wondering if this might be indirect evidentiary support for the legend of the Egyptian Princess "Scota" who ended up in Scotland and then Ireland. There's a new book out that posits that Scota was one of the daughters of the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten who fled Egypt after his death c. 1350 BCE(?) - see story in next post

From: Alpheta 4/1/2007 7:03 pm
To: ALL (8 of 11)

Continuing the thread from the previous post, there is some "voodoo-hoodoo" in this story but overall the archaeological finds are fascinating:

http://www.book-of-thoth.com/article1693.html
The Story of Princess Scota

By Heather Elizabeth Adams

In 1955, archaeologist Dr. Sean O’Riordan of Trinity College, Dublin, made an interesting discovery during an excavation of the Mound of Hostages at Tara, site of ancient kingship of Ireland. Bronze Age skeletal remains were found of what has been argued to be a young prince, still wearing a rare necklace of faience beads, made from a paste of minerals and plant extracts that had been fired.

The skeleton was carbon dated to around 1350 BC. In 1956, J. F. Stone and L. C. Thomas reported that the faience beads were Egyptian: “In fact, when they were compared with Egyptian faience beads, they were found to be not only of identical manufacture but also of matching design.

The famous boy-king Tutankhamun was entombed around the same time as the Tara skeleton and the priceless golden collar around his mummy’s neck was inlayed with matching conical, blue-green faience beads”. An almost identical necklace was found in a Bronze Age burial mound at north Molton, Devon.

Lorraine Evans in her compelling book, Kingdom of the Ark, reveals archaeological connections between Egypt and Ireland. Evans argues that the connections between the two distant lands were plausible and there is archaeological evidence to support the theory. In 1937 in North Ferriby, Yorkshire, the remains of an ancient boat were discovered. While thought to be a Viking longship at first, continued excavation produced additional ships, wrecked in a storm. Further investigation showed that the boats were much older than Viking ships and were of a type found in the Mediterranean. It was concluded that these boats originated from 2000 years before the Viking age and were radiocarbon dated to around 1400 to 1350 BC. Evans then makes connections to argue that these boats could originate from Egypt, as the timeframe fits the dating of the faience beads. While investigating the origins of the people of Scotland in the Bower manuscript, the Scotichronicon, she discovers the story of Scota, the Egyptian princess and daughter of a pharaoh who fled from Egypt with her husband Gaythelos with a large following of people who arrive in a fleet of ships. They settled in Scotland for a while amongst the natives, until they were forced to leave and landed in Ireland, where they formed the Scotti, and their kings became the high kings of Ireland. In later centuries, they returned to Scotland, defeating the Picts, and giving Scotland its name.

Evans then posits the questions: Was the Tara necklace a gift from the Egyptians to a local chieftain after their arrival? Or was the Tara prince actually Egyptian himself? According to Bower’s manuscript, Scota’s descendants were the high kings of Ireland. In her quest to discover the true identity of ‘Scota,’ as it was not an Egyptian name, she finds within Bower’s manuscript that Scota’s father is actually named as being Achencres, a Greek version of an Egyptian name. In the work of Manetho, an Egyptian priest, Evans discovers the translation of the name—the pharaoh Achencres was none other than Akhenaten, who reigned in the correct timeframe of 1350 BC. Evans believes that Scota was Meritaten, eldest daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. The third eldest daughter, Ankhesenpaaten, married her half-brother, King Tutankhamun, son of Akhenaten and his secondary wife, Kiya. The controversial religious shift to the god Aten caused conflict with the Amun priesthood, who reasserted their authority after Akhenaten’s reign ended and he disappeared from history. This conflict and the rumored deaths by plague would have been sufficient motivation for the pharaoh’s eldest daughter to accept a foreign prince in marriage, rather than being Tut’s wife as would have been normal protocol, and to flee from the conflicted country.

What happens to Scota and her people? For this, we must return again to the myths of the people inhabiting Ireland at the time, the Tuatha de Danaan, the magical children of the Goddess Danu: “It was they who originally established the site of Tara, in the Boyne river valley, as the ritual inauguration and burial place of the ancient kings of Ireland. They were generally regarded as the gods and goddesses of the Celtic tribes, but it is believed that their true origins date far back into prehistory”. Could the de Danaan even perhaps have been the descendants of the lost land of Atlantis, migrants to Ireland after its final destruction, estimated by Edgar Cayce to have been around 10,000 BC? Cayce states in various psychic readings that the Atlanteans migrated to parts of the Yucatan and later into North America to merge with the existing native Mound Builders in the Ohio region. As Tara is also a sacred mound site, could there be a connection? It is an interesting speculation, and if the ‘Sons of Mil’ were indeed Egyptians, there is another connection to mound-building cultures, as sacred burial mounds were the origins for the pyramid structures that followed in the evolution of pyramid building in Egypt. Could there have been a common tie to these two cultures, united once more upon the Hill of Tara? Perhaps that, too, could explain part of the ancient symbolic meaning of the site, a place of sacred union of two cultures with a thread of common identity.

In the Annals of the Four Masters, dating to 1632-36, Scota’s husband is named Eremon, and it is Eremon and Eber who divide the land of Ireland between them, with Eremon in the north and Eber in the south. What is interesting to me about this version is the similarity between the division of Ireland and the division of Egypt itself. Egypt was divided into Upper and Lower Egypt, unified by a central connecting city, Memphis. If we consider the existing myths of Ireland’s legends, it, too, was divided to have a central site of unity, known as Mide, the omphalos of Ireland. Within Mide is where the Hill of Tara is situated, as a site of the High Kingship, representing the unity of the land and all of its people.

Sadly, it is in the battle for Ireland at Slieve Mish, as recorded in the Lebor Gabala, that Scota meets a tragic end and is killed. After her death in this battle, the war continued on at Tailtinn against the three kings of the Tuatha de Danaan, the husbands of the Goddesses Banba, Fodla, and Eriu: MacCuill, MacCeacht, and MacGreine. The sons of Mil, after prolonged battle, conquered the de Danaans and took the seat of Tara. According to the Bower manuscript, Scota was buried “between Sliab Mis and the sea,” and her grave, Fert Scota, is found in a glen located in Glenscota.

The exact location of Scota’s resting place remains a mystery, much like the particulars of her past, which are slowing being unveiled. As with many myths, a real person lent her persona and identity to the landscape of the land she became a part of, giving Scotland her name, giving the Celts an additional layer to their unique heritage that is unsung and still somewhat new in theory, as the truths of history do their slow unraveling of their yarns.

I know from my own intuitive experiences that more of the story of Scota and the Egyptian connection to the Celts will indeed by revealed. On the Summer Solstice of 2006, I had this dream about Tara and its importance as a sacred site to the healing of our world, of finding unity amongst our current state of chaos:

“While excavating Tara, we are looking for evidence of kingship, an Egyptian connection. I am shown that there are two connections—a tree, as in the Tree of Life. Something else spirals with the tree to connect and to make a third way, a way between the worlds. I am told that as they dig that they will find things that may be in England, but that Ireland and the Hill of Tara will be riddled with pearls. Pearls of the sea show kingship, sovereignty, the true center of kingship, a center that rules over all. I am shown two snake-like DNA strands, winding together like vines, and these two twisted strands are connected to Tara. Pearls are the birthstone of the month of June, and the rose is also the flower of that month. The Rose of Tralee comes to mind and its connections to their beauty queen pageant—queenship, the rose. Tara as the site of Queenship, the beautiful center of the rose. I am told more about the beautiful pearls all over Tara, the pearls of the crown, of finding this lost race of kingship once more, which is NOT located in England, I am told. The Goddess stands on Tara, in the center, looking out over Ireland, Scotland, and England, showing me a trinity. She stands on Tara and under it, showing the way between of the above and below, the way between the trinity, with Her in the center, and that She, plus the Land, plus the People, equal the Sacred Three. She tells me that She is the Mother of the boy in my visions, the sacred son who will also be my son one day, and where to find him to bring him home. The Irish were a race of persecution, persecuted by the English, so I am told that history’s conquerors cannot be our future history’s leaders. Because of the past, no people will follow them. But this is not true of the Irish, for the true leaders of the People unite the three, She says, the People, Her, the Land. She leaves me with the suggestion that the Irish are a mix of three races, not just one of European descent, and this is also important to lead our way into our future to understand our Oneness and our equality, our harmony with the Land, with Her.”

After the dream ended, I thought about the meaning of the Celts, of the ideal of striving for unity, of Brehon laws, of equality. I realized that my own name is significant in this symbolism—my last name was originally Adam before my great-grandfather changed it, which means the red earth, the first people, all five races in one. And then I realized as well the connection of Tara. Backwards, Ta-ra becomes Ra-Ta, the priest from an Egyptian past-life of Edgar Cayce who assisted in building the pyramids. Then I took it a step further to remember that the names of the Egyptian creator god Ptah and of course the sun god Ra combined become Ptah-Ra. Was the name of Tara Herself, derived somehow from these Egyptian origins? The making of the sun king or Ra was derived from the power of Tea, the Goddess, in Her union with him. Of course, within Egyptian culture, it was Isis who held the sacred name of Ra, so it was she who held the secret power to create over all of the gods and goddesses of Egypt. And what of the sacred boy from my own visions, a boy of dark skin and dark hair? In one vision, he was walking upon a sacred mound, as if it were Brigid’s Mound in Glastonbury, but it was definitely Celtic. Was he the lost prince in the Mound of Hostages whom Evans identifies as Egyptian, capturing my attention many years ago to lead me upon this journey, of connecting the cultures of two very variant lands? Is he indeed the soul of my son yet to be born, a connection tied together in totality at last for myself in my own personal journey as well? The questions about Tara and her secrets continue, as my own quest to uncover more answers begins.

About the author

Heather Elizabeth Adams is a writer, researcher, and college educator. While residing in London, England, she specialized in Goddess Mythology for her PhD research and completed four years of spiritual training in Glastonbury as a Priestess of Avalon with noted writer Kathy Jones. Heather is the founder of The Sacred Sept of the Swan, an organization dedicated to honoring indigenous cultures, ancient mysteries, and the Divine Feminine through online courses, events, and pilgrimages to sacred landscapes around the world. She can be contacted at: castleeire@gmail.com.
Posted on Monday, March 26 @ 04:56:15 CDT by Angel

From: Alpheta 4/1/2007 7:07 pm
To: ALL (9 of 11)
150.9 in reply to 150.8

This Viking woman has ancestry from the Black Sea - another fascinating story. I'm thinking about doing that DNA stuff myself - I understand you can participate in the National Geographic ongoing project by buying a kit for $99:

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1709020.ece
Viking woman had roots near the Black Sea
The bones of one of the women found in one of Norway's most famous Viking graves suggest her ancestors came from the area around the Black Sea.

The woman herself was "Norwegian," claims Professor Per Holck at the University of Oslo, who has conducted analyses of DNA material taken from her bones.

But Holck says that while she came from the area that today is Norway, her forefathers may have lived n the Black Sea region.

Holck, attached to the anthropological division of the university's anatomy institute (Anatomisk institutt), isn't willing to reveal more details pending publication of an article in the British magazine "European Archaeology" later this year.

He told newspaper Aftenposten, though, that he's recommending the woman's bones be retrieved for further study. They were first found in 1904, when the Oseberg Viking ship was excavated, and analysed by the university.

The analysis data was withheld, however, and the woman's remains were returned to the Oseberg burial mound in 1947. Holck has only worked with the DNA extracted at the time, and he thinks they should be reexamined.

He worries, however, that her bones may have been damaged during the past 60 years. If the remains are intact, he said, it would probably be possible to take more DNA tests that could reveal more about the woman and another female's bones also extracted from the Oseberg site.

Aftenposten's reporter
Cato Guhnfeldt

From: Alpheta 4/15/2007 9:19 pm
To: ALL (10 of 11)
150.10 in reply to 150.9

Sacrificial victims at Teotihuacan were from hundreds miles away, according to DNA studies. Hmmm, how, exactly, do they know this? Not explained in this article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-pyramid14apr14,1,733884.story?track=crosspromo&coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=1&cset=true

SCIENCE FILE
Ancient sacrifice victims were brought far to city
From Reuters
April 14, 2007

For centuries, human captives were brought hundreds of miles to be sacrificed at a pyramid in the oldest city in North America, just north of modern Mexico City, an archeologist says.

DNA tests on more than 50 skeletons from the Pyramid of the Moon at the Teotihuacan ruins reveal they were from faraway Mayan, Pacific or Atlantic coastal cultures.

The victims, many of them beheaded, were killed at different times from AD 50 to AD 500, to dedicate new stages of pyramid construction. They were probably captured in war or obtained through some kind of diplomacy, archeologist Ruben Cabrera said Wednesday. He led the excavation of the smaller of two main pyramids at Teotihuacan, which housed some 200,000 people at its height of power, around AD 500.

"Teotihuacan may have had a tradition of capturing prisoners for sacrifice," Cabrera said.

Researchers are not sure how the Teotihuacan victims were sacrificed, nor do they know much about Teotihuacan's inhabitants or their language.

Aztecs and other ancient civilizations in what is now Mexico cut out the hearts of sacrifice victims.

Other articles did not discuss what, exactly, was used to provide the comparative DNA:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070411/sc_nm/mexico_pyramid_dc_2
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18063260/

From: Alpheta 10/21/2007 4:25 pm
To: ALL (11 of 11)
150.11 in reply to 150.10

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/09/10/europe/EU-GEN-Norway-Viking-Grave.php

Archaeologists open Viking grave to seek secrets of women buried there
The Associated Press
Published: September 10, 2007

OSLO, Norway: Archeologists opened a Viking burial mound on Monday, seeking to learn more about two women — possibly a queen and a princess — laid to rest there 1,173 years ago.

In 1904, the mound in southeastern Norway's Vestfold County surrendered one of the country's greatest archaeological treasures, the Oseberg Viking longboat, which is now on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.

The ship, which measures more than 20 meters, or 65 feet, was buried in 834 in the enormous mound at the Slagen farm as the grave ship for a rich and powerful Viking woman, according to the Viking Ship Museum.

The remains of the two women, one believed to have been in her 60s and the other in her 30s, were first exhumed during the ship excavation. They were reburied in the mound in 1948 — in a modern aluminum casket placed inside a five-ton stone sarcophagus — in hopes that future scientific methods might reveal their secrets.

When experts opened the sarcophagus on Monday, it was filled with water, although the casket itself may not have been flooded.

"We were surprised when we removed the lid of the sarcophagus that it was filled with water," project leader Vivian Wangen of the Museum of Cultural History told the Norwegian news agency NTB at the site. "We hope the casket and the remains are intact. We won't find out until tomorrow."

The casket was transported back to the Viking Ship Museum — which is part of the Cultural History Museum — and will be opened under controlled conditions on Tuesday. The remains will be kept at the museum for study.

As many as 300 people, including school classes, attended the grave opening.

Wangen said scientists hope the remains are intact enough to give more information about who the women were, how they lived and about their origins.

An earlier study of a few fragments of the remains that were not reburied, led by Per Holck at the University of Oslo, suggested that the older woman was the powerful Viking Queen Aasa, while the second could have been her daughter. Another theory is that the second woman was a slave, killed to accompany her master into the afterlife.

Later in the week, the archaeologists plan to reopen a second burial site, called the Gokstad Mound, on the opposite side of the Oslo fjord. Viking-era bone fragments were reburied there in 1928, nearly 50 years after the grave was opened to excavate another Viking Ship in 1880. That 24-meter, or 79-foot, ship, probably buried about the year 900, is also on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.