WHEN GENETICS AND HISTORY COLLIDE Essays on genetic anthropology
Levon Yepiskoposyan – anthropologist and geneticist, PHD, major science of Molecular Biology Institute of NAS RA.
The history of the origin of man, his colonization of the planet, the appearance of different ethnic groups and their migrations are indelibly embedded in our genome. This decay-resistant and indestructible data contains not only encoded information of the biological past of Homo sapiens, but also the results of the impact of various cultural practices and ancient contacts of our ancestors on the genetic pattern of modern populations.
It is the task of genetic anthropologists to decipher theses 'records'. They have been singularly successful in this mission having already established the genesis of the founding mother and father of mankind ('the genetic Adam and Eve'), estimated the contribution of Neanderthals to the genetic legacy of modern humans, reconstructed the demographic history of various peoples, confirmed the existence of the Old Testament priests, understood the reasons of unusually high frequencies of specific patrilineal genealogies in some populations, and determined the selective advantage of widely spread deleterious mutations.
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