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First two principal components of Europeans’ genetic diversity can be used to map their ancestors’ origins
A bizarre but popular bit of Science Denialist conventional wisdom that emerged out of a 2000 ceremony that Bill Clinton hosted in the Rose Garden for the Human Genome Project was the myth that modern genetic analysis had some proven that traditional racial designations were mass psychoses that didn’t reflect underlying genetic differences.
In reality, the opposite was true. By 2008 the above graph/map had been published for Europe. Here’s an interview with a geneticist who worked on this. From Quanta:
A Map of Human History, Hidden in DNA
The computational biologist John Novembre uses our genetic code to rewrite the history of humanity.By Ariel Bleicher
April 20, 2017QUANTA MAGAZINE: What got you thinking about genetic diversity as a computational problem?
JOHN NOVEMBRE: For me, the path starts pretty far back. In high school, I was a bit of a computer programming nerd. But in my classes, I was learning about the genetic code, which was completely mesmerizing. Then in college, I got a chance to do a summer research internship at Stanford, where I heard a talk by a student who had interned in Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s lab. What they do — what they’ve become famous for — is to look at variations in human genes, how they’re distributed across the globe, and what they can tell us about human history. That was fascinating to me. …
I was hoping to get access to genetic data from a region of the world where there’s dense sampling, so that I could see what variation looks like at a continuous scale, where populations kind of blend into one another. And it turned out I was very lucky in that I got invited to join a collaboration with Carlos Bustamante, [then] at Cornell, to analyze one of the largest collections of [genomic data] being applied to human populations. The full data set was 3,192 European individuals. A large fraction of the sample had answered an ancestry questionnaire to say where their grandparents came from, and based on that, we saw we had samples from roughly 37 different origins across Europe.
Q. So what did you learn?
When we applied PCA, right away we saw this major pattern: There was a striking resemblance between where individuals are located in genetic space and their geography — where their grandparents came from.
In other words, when you plot the first two principal components of Europeans, the scatterplot is basically a map of Europe, with the Irish in the upper left corner and Greeks in the lower right corner.
That’s really remarkable given how closely related human individuals are. Most geneticists wouldn’t have thought you could tease apart very fine-scale structure within continental scales.
Q. How fine-scale are we talking about?
Let’s say I took an individual and hid their geographic location and then tried to put them back on a map. How well could I do? When we did this, we could often get within a few hundred kilometers. Even when we looked at German-speaking Swiss versus French-speaking Swiss versus Italian-speaking Swiss, we could see shifts in the genetic distribution.
Q. I’m surprised that my grandparents’ geographic coordinates could have such a notable effect on my genetics, given how often humans migrate. How do you explain this influence?
This is something I want to stress: The effect on your genetics is actually incredibly small. It’s just that we’re looking at so many locations in the genome that we can pick up very small effects. This is the magic of big data: Very subtle patterns become detectable. So it’s not that where your grandparents live has a huge impact on your genetics. It’s actually a very, very minor effect. But when you have hundreds of thousands of measurements, you can start to pick out that an individual seems to come from one location versus another. …
One of the tools we’ve developed is a method that tells us where in a landscape there is more or less gene flow — in other words, how individuals are moving between populations. … So we’re able to produce a geographic map that is colored in brown and blue to represent areas of low and high migration.
… When we run it on the human data from Europe, for instance, we see it infers a brown area of reduced migration between the U.K. and France, representing essentially the English Channel. We see a lot of blue — high migration — in the North Sea because of historical connections there, such as Viking contacts between Scandinavia and the U.K. Then we see brown diffusely around Switzerland and Austria, which we think represents the Alps.
Q. Did you get any puzzling results, such as areas of low or high migration that don’t seem to jibe with the landscape?
A. I’m more surprised by how often the genetics do align with the geological features. You take a bunch of living individuals and extract a molecule from their bodies and start comparing them to one another, and you can see that the Alps are a feature of our planet. It’s kind of wild.
Most of the continental-scale racial differentiation in the world is due to geographic barriers even more stringent than the Alps: the Himalayas, the Sahara, and the great oceans. For example, the Alps have pretty fairly low altitude passes, such as Brenner between Austria and Italy at 1,370 meter or 4,500 feet.
In contrast, the lowest passes over the Himalayas and Karakorams are at least 14,000 feet. Kora La pass at 15,290 feet is described as the lowest pass over the Himalayas. Interestingly, high-altitude adapted Tibetans live on both sides of the range, but they don’t live much below 5,000 feet because they are less well-adapted to tropical warm-weather diseases.
The biggest barriers to gene flow typically were oceans, but for whatever reason it’s hard for 21st Century Americans to look at a map of the world and notice how oceans create the biggest racial divisions. Here’s a map I made in 2005 showing routes largely not taken before c. 1492:
For example, before Columbus, there had been virtually no gene flow back and forth between South America and sub-Saharan Africa, even though they are only 1,600 miles apart. Before 1492, the main connection between Africa and South America was the incredibly remote Siberia-Alaska route.
Not surprisingly, pre-1492 natives of South America and of Africa look different both to the naked eye and to genomic analysis.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
I like how Italy has a mustache, Spain has a cape, and France… is that a beret, or a palette?
Isn’t a fundamental of Darwinism that physical separation is a necessary condition for differentiation to occur between formerly connected gene pools.
The answer should be of course the Alps would map onto genetic differentiation between europeans. It would only be kind of wild if it didn’t.
Kind of the same way that the Atlantic/Pacific Ocean, other geography maps onto the differentiation between native americans and everyone else, for example. No one finds that surprising, why should the Alps surprise.
I’m just surprised this guy could say anything this stupid.
Wouldn't sympatric speciation be a counter example of that?
This “dangerous idea” is slowly becoming mainstream through those ancestry genetics commercials. Strangely, I always feel sad when that guy finds out that he has been living a lie, and trades his lederhosen for a kilt.
I was saddened to have to tell my two sons that they were not part Cherokee ... something we had hoped would boost their university admission profiles. But the genetic update came too late. We had already marked "Amerindian" on the forms. The mailbox almost collapsed under the weight of the letters and packages from universities begging them to attend.
“principle components”: aaaargh! It’s ‘principal components’. Or at least it was when I knew about these things.
Hmmm not really related to this, but reading about his data samples, I was struck by what might have been learned from the DNA of criminals.
Not sure about the status of this legally, but do they take DNA as a sample during booking, or upon conviction or something? And how does it differ across the world, even if the US doesn’t do it?
That’s an interesting group of people to do full DNA analysis on.
Another interesting group would be national militaries. Or politicians.
Heck let’s sequence everyone. Absolutely everyone.
BS. As the very ancient giant negroid Olmec head statues from the mother civilization of the americas prove. Google it folks…
If anyone is interested in seeing this rubbish debunked, here's a pretty good article:
http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/mystery-solved-olmecs-and-transoceanic-contact/
That’s not really true. Migration is kind of a new thing, Prior to motorized transport, most people lived where they were born, and so did their kids and parents. The exceptions were so exceptional, they became historical events whose names we still remember: e.g., the Völkerwanderung, the Vikings, the Crusades.
Wow, that music is really terrible.
Oh.
I hate nitpickers as much as the next guy, but … it’s “principal.”
John Novembre was a MacArthur Foundation Genius a grant winner in 2015, along with Tah and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
They can even tell you what shares of your ancestors entered Europe in the Paleolithic, Neolithic, or Bronze Age.
Kinda OT, but there’s a pretty nice study that just came out that demonstrates that in some populations of mice monogamy and parenting styles is built into the DNA:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/science/parenting-genes-study.html
Of special interest, I think, is this finding:
Is there really any plausible story that gender differences among human beings are exclusively, or even predominantly, “socially constructed”?
May I, a tad lightheaded, put it this way: We can't even be really sure about this, when looking at mice, if I understand correctly, what you say about the paper you cite from...
I find this absolutely mind boggling. I wonder if they had to play games with the axis scales or swap x and y to make it work? Even if they did, still mind boggling.
The idea that PC1 and PC2 of the genome for Europeans correspond to latitude and longitude in the map of Europe. I never would have guessed. From the original article we see that they had to tilt the PCA plot to make it work: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/01/european-genes-mirror-european-geography/
Still mind boggling. Also cool that National Geographic showed enough detail so we could see that subtlety.
P.S. Not sure if you already know this and just typoed, but it’s principal in this usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_component_analysis
Since the transformation of (PC1,PC2) --->(lat,long) is combination of stretch, shift and rotate it is still very mind boggling. It implies that migrations followed the same pattern. Some migration would be precluded.
I bought one of those ancestry tests for my Dad recently. He’s from Oklahoma, and he’s always believed that he was part-Amerind. The test results say that he’s 100% European: 67% Great Britain, 26% Ireland, 7 % Europe West.
RE: Ancestry,
Audacious Epigone speaks truth to power:
http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2017/04/euronation.html
Who are we and what are we fighting for?
The United States is a European Christian nation-state and we will soon be fighting to determine who will rule the United States. The enemy of the European Christian ancestral core of the United States is the current ruling class of the American Empire.
Mass immigration is being used as a demographic weapon to attack White Core Americans. Mass immigration is pushing the United States towards Civil War II. The White Core Americans will win Civil War II.
I can’t recall ever meeting a person from the Southeast or oil belt States who doesn’t proudly insist that they are part Amerindian, no matter how Nordic they might look. Elizabeth Warren syndrome is nothing new, it is a grand tradition stretching back many generations.
It helps to play it at 2x speed.
But does he have high cheekbones?
http://www.scotsman.com/news/blondie-star-debbie-harry-reveals-she-s-totally-scottish-1-4363726
I always thought she had to be Slavic maybe with a little oriental in there.
Shouldn’t the “living document” that is the US constitution evolve its immigration and citizenship criteria to take into account modern travel technology? Air travel negates birthright citizenship, right?
True, and it is often the opposite view in Latin America….my wife and all her family still deny they have any indigenous blood, despite the DNA results which indicate they are 16% Amerindian….
The article from Quanta was good. One thing that caught my eye is that the PC spin on genetics is getting more sophisticated (perhaps even literally true?):
One thing he left out is the HLA loci: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_leukocyte_antigen#Variability
Those are notorious for their variability. So much so they are hard to extract. For example: “Extensive hyperpolymorphism and sequence similarity between the HLA genes, however, pose problems for accurate read mapping and make HLA type inference from whole-genome sequencing data a challenging problem.” from http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005151
Is anyone familiar enough with the literature to give a reference discussing his point? Ideally with a complete ordered list. I was unable to find one with a quick search which leads me to suspect it is at best a partial truth. It would be shouted from the rooftops if that was completely true.
As you note, infectious disease is another example of large-effect genes, as is lactose tolerance and adaption to extreme altitude. There is a gene called EDAR that is very different in East Asians and Amerindians relative to other global populations, that is responsible for differences in sweat glands, hair thickness, ear wax, and breast size. No one has yet figured out exactly why this matters.Replies: @gcochran, @Expletive Deleted
I’ve had the same experience. It was particularly striking as I had previously spent time in the oil regions of Canada, where the population actually is up to 10% Amerindian, but nobody — not even hipsters with identity problems — who was not part Indian claimed they were. (This might be different today what with financial incentives to say you are Metis or whatever. Even then, such claimants would have a problem if they didn’t look the part.)
Oh, the principle/principal thing bothered me too. Homonyms look like a lost cause.
It was (and is) surrounded by six Indian reservations.
Not long after we arrived my mother warned me never to make any insulting comments about Indians to anyone!
She had discovered that it was not uncommon for people to have an Indian parent or grandparent. You could not tell from looking at them, especially in the case of a grandparent.
She must have been thinking of how on my walk to school, I passed a hotel with drunk Indians passed out on the front.
Regardless, I was not inclined to make such remarks, even before this, but I still remember it.
We didn't stay long. Returned to Vancouver the next year.
Don't let it effect you.
Yeah, when the scientists sounds amazed about the Alps, the Himalayas immediately came to mind. There’s that scene toward the end of Scorsese’s Dalai Lama movie when the young Dalai Lama and his Tibetan entourage are hoofing it out of Tibet and then eventually come upon Indian border guards. Much bigger phenotypical difference between Tibetans and typical Indians than between Swiss and Germans.
Those are notorious for their variability. So much so they are hard to extract. For example: "Extensive hyperpolymorphism and sequence similarity between the HLA genes, however, pose problems for accurate read mapping and make HLA type inference from whole-genome sequencing data a challenging problem." from http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005151
Is anyone familiar enough with the literature to give a reference discussing his point? Ideally with a complete ordered list. I was unable to find one with a quick search which leads me to suspect it is at best a partial truth. It would be shouted from the rooftops if that was completely true.Replies: @O'Really
It is largely true that those traits have a simpler genetic architecture than most human traits, such as height and cognitive ability. What this means is that just one or a few genes have a large effect on the observed traits. Most observable human traits (speaking very broadly) are a function of many genes operating with very tiny effects.
As you note, infectious disease is another example of large-effect genes, as is lactose tolerance and adaption to extreme altitude. There is a gene called EDAR that is very different in East Asians and Amerindians relative to other global populations, that is responsible for differences in sweat glands, hair thickness, ear wax, and breast size. No one has yet figured out exactly why this matters.
Ear, sweat and hair stuff for the mindbending, tooth-enamel-cracking dry, dry cold, and the other endocrine stuff (cor, titties!) for the babbies, in the depths of a truly cool Yule. Are there any not-pre-existing-in-South-Siberians eye differences, hand and foot ratios, lips, noses (and the bloodvessels to go with that) and of course that old favorite ... willy length and distal end protection along with gonadal retraction among New Worlders?.
No hunter, no matter how mighty, is going to get a date come April if Jack Frost has come a-nipping in the last crotch-deep winter snow hunt.
Been there, luckily never seen it nor done it, but have come foolishly close. Not even hunting.
Different norms. In Latin America, having only 16% Amerind ancestry makes you White.
So it was the Olmec conquest? Similar to Compton?
The idea that PC1 and PC2 of the genome for Europeans correspond to latitude and longitude in the map of Europe. I never would have guessed. From the original article we see that they had to tilt the PCA plot to make it work: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/01/european-genes-mirror-european-geography/
Still mind boggling. Also cool that National Geographic showed enough detail so we could see that subtlety.
P.S. Not sure if you already know this and just typoed, but it's principal in this usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_component_analysisReplies: @HA, @utu
“>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_component_analysis”
I recommend simply sticking with “PCA”.
At least he didn’t call it “igonvalue analysis”, which evidently warrants a far more brutal smackdown.
people from SE Asia boated to Madagascar before 1492
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/science/parenting-genes-study.html
Of special interest, I think, is this finding:Is there really any plausible story that gender differences among human beings are exclusively, or even predominantly, "socially constructed"?Replies: @Bill, @Dieter Kief
It’s kind of ironic to use the word “gender” in that particular sentence.
I remember well when our family moved to the town of Merritt, BC in the early 1960s.
It was (and is) surrounded by six Indian reservations.
Not long after we arrived my mother warned me never to make any insulting comments about Indians to anyone!
She had discovered that it was not uncommon for people to have an Indian parent or grandparent. You could not tell from looking at them, especially in the case of a grandparent.
She must have been thinking of how on my walk to school, I passed a hotel with drunk Indians passed out on the front.
Regardless, I was not inclined to make such remarks, even before this, but I still remember it.
We didn’t stay long. Returned to Vancouver the next year.
How accurate are these DNA tests?
The idea that PC1 and PC2 of the genome for Europeans correspond to latitude and longitude in the map of Europe. I never would have guessed. From the original article we see that they had to tilt the PCA plot to make it work: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/01/european-genes-mirror-european-geography/
Still mind boggling. Also cool that National Geographic showed enough detail so we could see that subtlety.
P.S. Not sure if you already know this and just typoed, but it's principal in this usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_component_analysisReplies: @HA, @utu
“I find this absolutely mind boggling. I wonder if they had to play games with the axis scales or swap x and y to make it work? Even if they did, still mind boggling.”
Since the transformation of (PC1,PC2) —>(lat,long) is combination of stretch, shift and rotate it is still very mind boggling. It implies that migrations followed the same pattern. Some migration would be precluded.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/science/parenting-genes-study.html
Of special interest, I think, is this finding:Is there really any plausible story that gender differences among human beings are exclusively, or even predominantly, "socially constructed"?Replies: @Bill, @Dieter Kief
”
May I, a tad lightheaded, put it this way: We can’t even be really sure about this, when looking at mice, if I understand correctly, what you say about the paper you cite from…
Your Dalai-Lama part is plausible, the Swiss/German difference is more complex, though, because there are German-Swiss and – there are Rhine-French (Alsace) and there are South-east-Germans, Liechtensteinians and North-west-Austians- and they all speak what’s called upper-German (= Alemannisch) and are one group, called Alemannen: They came into this region from 214 on from the north and helped the Franks to make the Romans leave the Region north of the Alps – not least by attacking them in northern Italy.
“Isn’t a fundamental of Darwinism that physical separation is a necessary condition for differentiation to occur between formerly connected gene pools”
Wouldn’t sympatric speciation be a counter example of that?
Everyone with black hair whose ancestors migrated through the southern Appalachians in the 19th Century is part Cherokee for affirmative action purposes … or, until “23andme” tells them differently.
I was saddened to have to tell my two sons that they were not part Cherokee … something we had hoped would boost their university admission profiles. But the genetic update came too late. We had already marked “Amerindian” on the forms. The mailbox almost collapsed under the weight of the letters and packages from universities begging them to attend.
So it would seem that current Euro whites have a 4% genetic match with Neanderthals while the other races like Negroids and Asians have around 2%. Who’s the savage brute now?
Oh, cue to start proving that Neanderthals were not so dull and brutish after all, that they had language, and art, and etc etc.
In fact, a whole body of knowledge waiting to be created here whitey, get to work.
There is a blood condition that mimics Rh negative but is not, that does occur among Africans. Rh negative is extremely rare among Asians (almost non-existent) and Africans. Don't know about the ME.
Then it was game over for the lot of them. Strange diseases and sheer savagery, possibly. Africans always have been an unmitigated disaster for anyone north of Cairo.
Negroids don't have Neandertal admixture, by the way, just Europeans + Asians.
Oh, God, not this Africentric nonsense again…..
If anyone is interested in seeing this rubbish debunked, here’s a pretty good article:
http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/mystery-solved-olmecs-and-transoceanic-contact/
Which is quite interesting, as Africa is one hell of a lot closer……
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar#Early_period
As you note, infectious disease is another example of large-effect genes, as is lactose tolerance and adaption to extreme altitude. There is a gene called EDAR that is very different in East Asians and Amerindians relative to other global populations, that is responsible for differences in sweat glands, hair thickness, ear wax, and breast size. No one has yet figured out exactly why this matters.Replies: @gcochran, @Expletive Deleted
Edar also affects teeth and earlobe shape, but ABCC11 affects earwax, body odor, and colostrum production.
Dr. Cochran - I wonder what you make of the fact that so many traits are highly polygenic and lack clearly enhancing point mutations of strong effect?
This discussion, to my mind, gives too little emphasis to the two barriers to intermarriage that traditionally been thought responsible for racial types: language and religion. Many traditional racial classifications (Semitic, Hamitic, etc.) are, after all, linguistic categories. The example of the three different language areas of Switzerland demonstrating micro-geographic resolution is borderline foolish, inasmuch as it demonstrations the height of the language barrier even in the face of geographic proximity, rather than geographic resolution per se. Likewise, Catholic-Protestant intermarriage was nearly unheard of until recently, even where the populations are physically intermingled. Is the Roman Catholic religion distinguishable in the genome, and if not, why not? Likewise, Ashkenazi or Sephardic Judaism? 23andme allows self-assignment to the Ashkenazi category, but wouldn’t it be a slam-dunk for them to do the categorization themselves? Why does 23andme refrain from doing the analysis – is it too politically fraught an issue?
“Which is quite interesting, as Africa is one hell of a lot closer……”
“…archaeologists have estimated that the earliest settlers arrived in successive waves throughout the period between 350 BC and 550 AD…”
“…these dates make Madagascar one of the last major landmasses on Earth to be settled by humans…”
Borobudur ship:
Interesting map:
Map of expansion of Austronesian languages. Based on the Atlas historique des migrations by Michel Jan et al. 1999 and “The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database” 2008.
yes, of course. I conflated EDAR and ABCC11 on the earwax. Point is, EDAR is pleiotropic and a but of a mystery. In general, traits with genes of large effect reflect fitness-enhancing point mutations undergoing strong positive selection.
Dr. Cochran – I wonder what you make of the fact that so many traits are highly polygenic and lack clearly enhancing point mutations of strong effect?
Oh, cue to start proving that Neanderthals were not so dull and brutish after all, that they had language, and art, and etc etc.
In fact, a whole body of knowledge waiting to be created here whitey, get to work.Replies: @dcite, @Expletive Deleted, @Jaakko Raipala
I always get a kick out of Rh negative discussions. As soon as it becomes known that Europeans have it and others don’t very often, a chorus of “I’m African and I have it” or “My Chinese aunt has it” is raised. Nobody cares until they are told they don’t have it genetically and the whites do.
There is a blood condition that mimics Rh negative but is not, that does occur among Africans. Rh negative is extremely rare among Asians (almost non-existent) and Africans. Don’t know about the ME.
As you note, infectious disease is another example of large-effect genes, as is lactose tolerance and adaption to extreme altitude. There is a gene called EDAR that is very different in East Asians and Amerindians relative to other global populations, that is responsible for differences in sweat glands, hair thickness, ear wax, and breast size. No one has yet figured out exactly why this matters.Replies: @gcochran, @Expletive Deleted
Pulling a “Just-so” hypothesis out of the usual region, I’d speculate it may have a bit to do with environmental pressures at higher latitudes, necessary to enable the lucky Initial Americans to hoof it all the way up, and then all the way down, while surviving a brutal Ice Age milieu.
Ear, sweat and hair stuff for the mindbending, tooth-enamel-cracking dry, dry cold, and the other endocrine stuff (cor, titties!) for the babbies, in the depths of a truly cool Yule. Are there any not-pre-existing-in-South-Siberians eye differences, hand and foot ratios, lips, noses (and the bloodvessels to go with that) and of course that old favorite … willy length and distal end protection along with gonadal retraction among New Worlders?.
No hunter, no matter how mighty, is going to get a date come April if Jack Frost has come a-nipping in the last crotch-deep winter snow hunt.
Been there, luckily never seen it nor done it, but have come foolishly close. Not even hunting.
Oh, cue to start proving that Neanderthals were not so dull and brutish after all, that they had language, and art, and etc etc.
In fact, a whole body of knowledge waiting to be created here whitey, get to work.Replies: @dcite, @Expletive Deleted, @Jaakko Raipala
The other exAfrican peoples have their very own, special, not-quite-neandertal pre-existing hominid (or is it hominim?) substrates, so far identified as Denisovan and [A. N. Other, possibly more] forming a sort of cline of hunky unwhite caveman minimal ancestors far to the East and South across Eurasia. And they’d been hanging around up there with the ‘Thals, waiting for everybody who’d missed the bus out of Africa (“us”) for a very, very long time. Quite successfully.
Then it was game over for the lot of them. Strange diseases and sheer savagery, possibly. Africans always have been an unmitigated disaster for anyone north of Cairo.
Oh, the principle/principal thing bothered me too. Homonyms look like a lost cause.
Don’t let it effect you.
“Fake Indians” are a huge industry in Canada.
great you’ve ruined a handy little shibboleth for moron identification
Oh, cue to start proving that Neanderthals were not so dull and brutish after all, that they had language, and art, and etc etc.
In fact, a whole body of knowledge waiting to be created here whitey, get to work.Replies: @dcite, @Expletive Deleted, @Jaakko Raipala
There was never any reason to think that Neandertals were more “brutish” than Homo Sapiens of the time, that’s just Hollywood ideas. In fact, Neandertals had larger brains than modern humans and it’s perfectly plausible that they were more intelligent than modern humans.
Negroids don’t have Neandertal admixture, by the way, just Europeans + Asians.
Interestingly, that avatar of cheekboniness, Deborah Harry, now claims “she is 100 percent Scottish….”
http://www.scotsman.com/news/blondie-star-debbie-harry-reveals-she-s-totally-scottish-1-4363726
I always thought she had to be Slavic maybe with a little oriental in there.
Speaking of DNA, here’s a recent article from the NY Times. The wannabe black guy’s response is hilarious!
https://mobile.nytimes.com/comments/2017/04/23/us/dna-ancestry-race-identity.html