Normandie, France.Professor Emeritus at the University of Oslo, Per Holck, (T. H.) and Andaine Seguin Orlando by DNA lab Centre for Geogenetics at the University of Copenhagen was Monday in Normandy and opened the graves of two of the Viking leader Rollo of Normandy their descendants..Photo. Vegard Strømsodd/Explico / NTB scanpix
POSTED BY: TOR INGAR OESTERUD 2. MARCH 2016
Norwegian researchers have finally got to open the tomb of the Viking leader Rollo’s descendants. They will find out whether Rollo was the same Rollo as Rollo from Møre. In that case the British royal family originated from Norway.
A Norwegian-led delegation was in Normandy on Monday and opened the sarcophagus of two of Rollo’s descendants. The aim is to put an end to a centuries-long debate: Was Rollo Danish or Norwegian?
– We have been working to get this investigated in about seven years, so to finally get collected material to test DNA was huge historian and project initiator Sturla Ellingvåg of the foundation Explico said.
Rollo was the founder of Normandy, Count of Rouen and great great great grandfather of William the Conqueror, who is the ancestor of the English royal house. While Norwegian-Icelandic historical documents and historians have argued since the Snorre Sagas that Rollo and Rollo are one and the same person, the Danish historians believed that he came from Denmark. Rollo, the son of Rognvald was exiled from Norway and was said to have settled in France.
Plucked out teeth
In January the French authorities and the French church granted the Norwegian application to open the tomb of Rollo’s grandson and great-grandson, Duke Richard the fearless and son Duke Richard the good. The tomb is a sarcophagus in the floor of a monastery in Fécamp. When they opened the grave Monday, researchers found, among other things, a lower jaw with eight teeth in the tomb of Richard the good:
– The key is to find teeth, for the DNA of the teeth may, even all these years, be sufficent for a DNA analysis. Two forensic experts from Norway and Denmark snatched five of his teeth and those teeth are now being sent to the Institutes of Forensic Medicine in both of the countries for analysis, Chairman of Samlerhuset and The Norwegian Mint, Ole Bjørn Fausa says.
A result of the analysis will probably be available in the autumn and will be presented in cooperation with the French authorities. So it remains to be seen whether the results indicates Denmark or Norway.
The small sarcophagi at first glance looks like they only accommodate toddlers, but Fausa explains:
– When they were buried in a floor, it was a matter of space. The most important thing was to preserve the skeleton. We do not know how this was done here, but it was common to either cut the bodies into pieces or boil them so the meat loosened from the bones. This meant that the the sarcophagus didn’t have to be longer than a femur, which is the longest bone in the body, Fausa says.
Rare event
Fausa describes the atmosphere at the tomb as an amazing experience:
– As far as we know this is only the second time since the war that a king’s tomb has been opened in France. Just being a part of it, and find the skeletons in there, it was exciting, solemn and unreal at the same time.
In the work process, he also found that he is a 35th generation descendant of Rollo.
– Of course it enhances this experience, to know that this was my ancestors, Fausa says.
If Rollo and Rollo proves to be the same person, it will be of historical significance:
– If the British royal family originates from the northwest coast it will, among other things, change the notion that the Norwegian royal family is young, with origins from the British and Danish, says Fausa.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
http://norwaytoday.info/culture/dna-hunters-unopened-viking-grave-in-normandie/
Ötzi the Iceman: Researchers validate the stability of genetic markers
Researchers found short ribonucleic acid molecules (microRNA) even in mummies like Oetzi.
Credit: Andreas Keller, Saarland University
They have found the molecules in the well-known glacier mummy "Ötzi." A number of facts have been scientifically proven about the glacier mummy, known as "the Iceman" or "Ötzi," found in the Ötztal Alps (South Tyrol) in 1991. Through imaging techniques, we know about degeneration in his lumbar spine and a fatal arrow wound in his left shoulder. DNA analyses showed that Ötzi was lactose intolerant, and had brown eyes and blood type 0. Now a study of Ötzi's microRNAs has also been completed. MicroRNAs are very small pieces of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and play a central role in the regulation of genes.
Although these molecules are very stable in tissues, prior to this study it was unclear whether they could still be found in human tissues after thousands of years. Therefore, Professors Andreas Keller and Eckart Meese of Saarland University, Stephanie Kreis of the University of Luxembourg, and Professor Albert Zink and Frank Maixner of Eurac Research in Bozen took on the challenge. They analyzed not only tissue samples from the Iceman, but also those from a mummy of a soldier fallen in World War I. "Our investigation provides evidence that we can analyze microRNA even after thousands of years," explains Andreas Keller, Professor of Clinical Bioinformatics at Saarland University, who coordinated the study.
The scientists took samples from Ötzi's skin, stomach, and stomach contents. "It was a challenge to extract this genetic material in significant quantities and sufficient quality from the mummified tissue samples, and to measure and quantify it with the newest, very precise methods," reports Stephanie Kreis, who isolated the microRNAs at the University of Luxembourg. Some molecules were found that were present predominantly in the ancient tissues. Conversely, some of the biomarkers that are well-known today were not found in Ötzi. According to Professor Zink from Eurac Research, the microRNAs are the next important class of molecules from Ötzi to receive intensive examination.
Professor Meese, head of the Institute of Human Genetics at Saarland University, claims that the stability of these biomarkers is also important for people today. "It is vital for clinical applications," explains Meese. "It's evident that the potential of microRNA is much greater than we previously thought. We still don't know enough about how these molecules influence specific genes, entire gene families, or biochemical reaction pathways. When we investigate this further, it's possible microRNAs will become new stars in therapy. Until then, however, there is a lot more work to do," concludes Professor Keller.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Saarland University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
- Andreas Keller, Stephanie Kreis, Petra Leidinger, Frank Maixner, Nicole Ludwig, Christina Backes, Valentina Galata, Gea Guerriero, Tobias Fehlmann, Andre Franke, Benjamin Meder, Albert Zink, Eckart Meese. miRNAs in ancient tissue specimens of the Tyrolean Iceman. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2016; msw291 DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msw291
Irish DNA originated in Middle East and eastern Europe
Genome analysis shows mass migration of Stone Age farmers from Fertile Crescent and Bronze Age settlers from eastern Europe was foundation of Celtic population
Scientists from Dublin and Belfast have looked deep into Ireland’s early history to discover a still-familiar pattern of migration: of stone age settlers with origins in the Fertile Crescent, and bronze age economic migrants who began a journey somewhere in eastern Europe.
The evidence has lain for more than 5,000 years in the bones of a woman farmer unearthed from a tomb in Ballynahatty, near Belfast, and in the remains of three men who lived between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago and were buried on Rathlin Island in County Antrim.
Scientists at Trinity College Dublin used a technique called whole-genome analysis to “read” not the unique characteristics of each individual, but a wider history of ancestral migration and settlement in the DNA from all four bodies.
They confirm a picture that has been emerging for decades from archaeological studies. Migrant communities did not compete with the original Irish. They became the Irish.
The ancestors of the Stone Age farmers began their journey in the Bible lands, where agriculture first began, and arrived in Ireland perhaps via the southern Mediterranean. They brought with them cattle, cereals, ceramics and a tendency to black hair and brown eyes.
These settlers were followed by people, initially from the Pontic steppe of southern Russia, who knew how to mine for copper and work with gold, and who carried the genetic variant for a blood disorder called haemochromatosis, a hereditary genetic condition so common in Ireland that it is sometimes called Celtic disease.
These people also brought with them the inherited variation that permits the digestion of milk in maturity – much of the world becomes intolerant to the milk sugar lactose after infancy – and they may even have brought the language that became what is now Irish. Some of them, too, had blue eyes.
“There was a great wave of genome change that swept into Europe from above the Black Sea into Bronze Age Europe and we now know it washed all the way to the shores of its most westerly island,” said Dan Bradley, professor of population genetics at Trinity College Dublin.
“And this degree of genetic change invites the possibility of other associated changes, perhaps even the introduction of language ancestral to western Celtic tongues.”
The Dublin team and colleagues from Queens University Belfast report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the two great changes in European prehistory – the emergence of agriculture and the advance of metallurgy – were not just culture shifts: they came with new blood. An earlier population of hunter gatherers was successively overwhelmed by new arrivals. And in Ireland, these new settlers began to define a nation.
“These findings,” the authors say, “suggest the establishment of central attributes of the Irish genome 4,000 years ago.”
Working from the principle that any human DNA tells a story not just of individual identity but of ten thousand years of ancestry, researchers have begun to piece together the entire story of Homo sapiens. The story is incomplete, and under constant revision, but the outline of the settlement of Europe and Asia told by DNA confirms and illuminates the archaeological evidence.
Modern humans arrived in the British Isles relatively late after the end of the Ice Age. Evidence of early settlement in Ireland is sketchy and indirect: in 2013, researchers looked at the DNA of the Irish banded wood snail and identified it as closely related to the species found in the French Pyrenees. The best explanation so far is that these snails may have arrived 8,000 years ago as the leftovers from the packed lunch, so to speak, of a much earlier community of European traders or migrants. Nobody can say who these people may have been, or why they arrived with a taste for escargots.
But the latest study throws more light on the birth of a nation. All three dead men from Rathlin Island carried what is now the most common type of Irish Y chromosome, inherited only from male forebears.
“It is clear that this project has demonstrated what a powerful tool ancient DNA analysis can provide in answering questions which have long perplexed academics regarding the origins of the Irish,” said Eileen Murphy, who lectures in osteoarchaeology at Queen’s in Belfast.
And Lara Cassidy, a researcher in genetics at Trinity College Dublin and another co-author, said “Genetic affinity is strongest between Bronze Age genomes and modern Irish, Scottish and Welsh, suggesting establishment of central attributes of the insular Celtic genome 4,000 years ago.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/dec/28/origins-of-the-irish-down-to-mass-migration-ancient-dna-confirms
Celtic
Genetics is not linked to the Celtic languages, and the haplogroup r1b is also found in abundance in places where there is no record that they speak Celtic languages
" an investigation into the origins of the British issued today by scientists from the university of Oxford reveals that the celts belonged to more than a single gene pool.
The Research, published today in the journal "nature", it has been based on dna data of almost 2.000 adults who live near his four grandparents in a rural area of various parts of the UK.
The Professor at the university of Oxford Mark Robinson stressed to the BBC that he's "very surprised" with the genetic differences that groups are presenting celts in Cornwall, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
"at the beginning of the investigation I assumed there would be a genetic thread uniform among the celts from Cornwall to Wales or Scotland and, as evidenced by the survey, it has not been the case final", added Robinson.
Peter Donnelly, also a professor of the university, pointed out that, although the people of Cornwall have a Celtic descent, "genetically are much more similar to the people of any part of England, for example, the welsh". (... ) ":
The Celts belonged to more than a genetic group, according to a study, the vanguard, 18/03/2015: http://www.lavanguardia.com/…/los-celtas-pertenecian-a-mas-…
The Celts belonged to more than a genetic group, according to a study, the vanguard, 18/03/2015: http://www.lavanguardia.com/…/los-celtas-pertenecian-a-mas-…
Map: the distribution of Haplogroup R1b The Y chromosome: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogrupo_R1b_del_cromosoma_Y
Khazars were the ancestors of the Ashkenazi...
King Tut was a Hebrew.
King Tur was likely descended from Anatolians, like his father who started the most famous monotheistic movement ever.
In the sense that the khazars were the ancestors of the ashkenazi?
Raciti Designs - User Experience Screen Design
Raciti Designs - User Experience Screen Design:
https://racitidesigns.wordpress.com/design-portfolio/
Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II of Russia has been predicted as having an R1b haplotype.
DYS 393 390 19 391 385a 385b 439 389i 392 389ii 458 456 635 Y-GATA-H4 437 438 448
Alleles 13 24 14 10 11 14 11 13 13 29 17 16 24 12 15 12 19
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