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Further reading...

  • Bryan Sykes: Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland

    Bryan Sykes: Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland
    I read this book under the UK title Blood of the Isles. A must read for those with families from Ireland and Britain. (****)

  • Philip Freeman: The Philosopher and the Druids: A Journey Among the Ancient Celts

    Philip Freeman: The Philosopher and the Druids: A Journey Among the Ancient Celts
    See the Nov 2, 2006 post regarding this delightful book.

  • Bryan Sykes: The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry

    Bryan Sykes: The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry
    This book by Bryan Sykes came out in 2001. He was an early promoter of genetic genealogy. He is associated with Oxford Ancestors DNA laboratory and is a professor at Oxford University, England. This book is about the world-wide migration history of women. Sykes traces mtDNA, which we inherit from our mothers. The book is well written and intended for the educated lay-person. Although mtDNA is not all that useful yet for genealogy, it does provide a peek into the deep history of our material ancestors, with an emphasis on Europeans and their descendants. Although new information since this book increases the number of "Daughters of Eve" in Europe, it's still the best general readership book on the topic. (*****)

  • Spencer Wells: The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey

    Spencer Wells: The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey
    This book came out in 2002. It is well written, and should give the educated lay-person a good grasp of the big picture with respect to the demographic migrations of human males by tracing their Y-chromosomes world-wide. If you only want to read one book about Y-chromosomes to get the big picture, this is probably the one for you. And if you can't spare the time, there is a DVD of the same title. Visit The Genographic Project for more recent news on this topic. (*****)

  • Alistair Moffat: Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History

    Alistair Moffat: Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History
    This book was on my summer 2006 reading list. It is well written, full of interesting things, and is up to date on the emerging picture of the early genetic origins of the people of the isles: England, Scotland, Ireland, Orkney and Shetland. The section on DNA is very short. By the end of this 352-page book (including references and index), you should be more familiar with prehistorical Scotland. I know I am. This book is not a celebration of the present-day popular notions about Celts and Celtic culture, and in my book, that's a good thing. (***)

05 October 2008

Evidence for widespread polygyny in humans

Hammer2008 In a recent paper, Michael Hammer and others explore the diversity of alleles on human X chromosomes and compare that diversity to the diversity of alleles found on the autosomes.  The graphic at left shows Fig. 1 A from that paper with the locations where diversity was assessed.

After rejecting several alternative explanations for why they found higher levels of diversity on the X chromosome than would be expected, they settle on polygyny as the most likely reason for the observations.  Polygyny is the practice of males having children with more than one woman.

The paper is open access on the PLoS web site.

Ref: Hammer MF, Mendez FL, Cox MP, Woerner AE, Wall JD (2008) Sex-Biased Evolutionary Forces Shape Genomic Patterns of Human Diversity. PLoS Genet 4(9):  e1000202. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000202

Related to this paper: The New Scientist, Dienekes Anthropology Blog, The Spitoon blog of 23andMe.

Posted at 11:15 in Anthropology, Autosomes, sci-journal, X-chromosome | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)