Genetic plot twists

It's pretty common knowledge that early humans radiated out of Africa through Europe and Asia and gradually over to the Americas. Nat Geo is currently conducting the Genographic Project, in which participants submit DNA samples to examine not only their own ancient heritage but also the overall patterns of ancestry and subsequently human migration. While this particular project utilizes markers on mitochondrial DNA, which doesn't change as quickly (and was the subject of a no-longer-online blog post I wrote for the school paper), a few other studies are analyzing the entire genomes of early humans.

The combination of studies - one looked at individuals from Luxembourg, Sweden, and Germany, and the other looked at an individual from Spain - suggested that ancient Europe was the precursory melting pot, with a mix of Middle Eastern agricultural societies, local hunter-gatherer societies, and northern Eurasians. Furthermore, each country has a slightly different percentage of ancestry from the three groups: as a person with Scottish descent, I would have more DNA similarity with an ancient northern Eurasian than, say, someone with Spanish descent (which I also have, but that's aside the point).

What I found interesting is that the blue-eyed gene may have actually come from the African hunter-gatherers that migrated to the continent 40,000 years ago. Previously, I had read that the blue eye gene was a mutation in the Baltics 15,000 years ago or so. Of course, that was in an article I had to read for the state standardized testing back in high school, but CAPTs aside, it's neat to think that the gene was a more distant and not distinctly European mutation.

Then again, there's also the lack of a lactose digestion gene in the Luxembourg and Germany individuals. It makes sense, considering they were adapted to a grain-rich diet as hunter-gatherers and hadn't gotten to the cow domestication thing, but considering how much of a staple dairy is in Europe now, it's interesting to think that we didn't start out that way. As such, I am eternally grateful for the Middle Eastern agriculturalists for allowing me to enjoy ice cream.