It's finally done! First stage completed collaboration Research Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute and Museum of Anthropology named after. D.N. Anuchin of Moscow State University for the study of the gene pool of the Russian people. The need for such research arose a long time ago. But it was only at the end of 1999 that scientists around the world completed more than half a century of work to decipher the human genome. It has become possible not only to treat hereditary diseases of individual people, but also to study the genetic characteristics of entire peoples by sequencing mitochondrial DNA and human chromosome DNA.
Anthropologists and historians did not fail to take advantage of this. The results turned out to be stunning, upending the previous ideas of scientists about the ways of settlement of people on our planet, about the history and time of origin of individual nations. All this became possible after deciphering the structure of human sex chromosomes. It is well known that, for various reasons, genes included in the chromosome structure are susceptible to point mutations. Some mutations are harmful and cause hereditary diseases, while others are absolutely harmless. Each mutation is unique, has no repeats, and can initially only occur in one person. A gene that has undergone a point mutation becomes a kind of mark that a person passes on to his children. Thus, having arisen at some point, the mutation is replicated from generation to generation and there are more and more people carrying it. Their accumulation, like the flow of grains of sand in an hourglass, can serve as a measure of time. Thus, it is possible to study the history of the descendants of one chromosome - the one in which a rare point mutation once occurred. Point mutations are most easily traced in the chain of generations in the sex chromosomes, due to their unique structure and conservatism. Every schoolchild knows that the human genome consists of only 23 pairs of chromosomes. 22 pairs contain genes that form the characteristics of humans as a biological species. The twenty-third pair determines the gender of a person. The X chromosome carries the feminine principle, the male chromosome is called the Y chromosome.
Having studied point mutations in the X-chromosomes of the peoples of Western Europe, European scientists came to the conclusion that all the peoples of this region descended from only seven female ancestors at the dawn of civilization, back in the era of the Old Stone Age - Paleolithic, who lived locally in this territory. Thus, the significance of the so-called Great Migration for the formation of the modern population of Western Europe is greatly exaggerated. Sequencing the X-chromosomes of Russians made it possible to determine the ancestral home of the Russian Eve - this is the Eastern Baltic region 7–6.5 thousand years ago. e. How did the family of the Russian Eva end up between the Oka and Upper Volga rivers? Archeology helps to understand this issue. Archaeologists know that 4 thousand years B.C. “Volosovo residents” appeared here. This was the name given to the Chalcolletic culture, discovered by archaeologists for the first time in the vicinity of the city of Navashino, near the village. Volosovo, at the confluence of the Veletma River and the Oka.
In Y chromosomes, the frequency of point mutations is extremely low compared to X chromosomes; they are passed on from generation to generation almost unchanged. male line and therefore can serve as a qualitative and quantitative indicator of the genetic characteristics of a particular people, the degree of their relationship with other peoples
Research on the X- and Y-chromosomes of Russian people over a vast area from the White Sea to Kuban ( North Caucasus), from the Novgorod region - to the rivers Northern Dvina, Vyatka, and the Left Bank of the Middle Volga showed the absolute genetic identity of Russian people. Even Kuban, with its proximity to the Caucasus and constant interaction with it, turned out to be more “Russian” than it was previously imagined. In fact, it was in this vast space that the genotype of the Russian people was formed. All this refutes the now fashionable theory in the West that the Russians are a young historical community consisting of Slavicized Finns who intermarried with the Tatars in the 13th-15th centuries, and do not have a clearly visible ethnic homeland.
A study of the structure of the Y-chromosome in Russian and Finnish men showed a difference of thirty conventional units. And the genetic difference between Russian people and the so-called Finno-Ugric peoples (Mordovians, Mari, Vepsians, Komi-Zyrians, etc.) living on the territory of Russia turned out to be equal to only 2-3 units. With such minimal differences, we can talk about the genetic unity of these peoples with the Russian people. About their common origin! Simply put, they can be considered Finno-Ugrians only conditionally, based on the historically established commonality of cultures. Genetically they have nothing to do with Finns. Moreover, many structural features of the chromosomes of these peoples turned out to be identical to Indian ones. This indicates their Indo-European, as well as Slavic, origin, unlike the Finns.
But the Finns were found to have a typically Asian feature - a high frequency of Y chromosomes containing a large mutation in the DNA structure - the replacement of thymidine (T-allele) with cytosine (C-allele) in a certain place on the chromosome, and this replacement was not found in other countries Western Europe, neither North America nor Australia.
However, the Finns were not the only people, having chromosomes with the C allele, they were found in some other Asian ethnic groups, for example, among the Buryats (50%) and Yakuts (80%). The common Y chromosome, occurring with noticeable frequency in these peoples, indicates an obvious genetic relationship. Is this possible? Yes, it’s possible, if you imagine that two and a half thousand years ago, two sons came out of the house of a father who had a C-allelic mutation in his chromosome and lived somewhere in the depths of Central Asia. One went to the East and married a woman of the Mongoloid race - the ancestor of the Yakuts and Buryats, while the second went to the far West and reached the Urals, from where his descendants reached the Scandinavian Peninsula through the expanses of the Russian Plain. Walking across the Russian Plain, they married or raped the local female population, thereby endowing 17% of ethnic Russian men in the northern regions with the C-allelic mutation. And in this case, genetics refutes the main thesis of the supporters of the Finnish theory of the origin of the Russian people, that the Slavs seized the lands of the Finno-Ugrians and assimilated them, depriving them of the right to self-determination. Everything was exactly the opposite.
A comparison of the yk-chromosomes of Russians and Tatars also showed a distance of 30 conventional units. So the thesis that, if you dig around in almost every Russian, you can find a fair amount of Tatar, from the point of view of genetics, is also not true. The gene pool of the Tatar people turned out to be more complex than previously thought, while the Mongolian trace in it is insignificant.
In any scientific research, the research method cannot be elevated to an absolute, for fear of a fatal mistake. It is important to achieve comparable results using different methods. This was also provided for in studies of the gene pool of the Russian people. The Department of Anthropology at Moscow State University, in parallel with genetic studies, used the famous method of a generalized portrait, invented in the last century by the Englishman Galton. Over forty years of intense research, anthropologists have been able to identify the appearance of a typical Russian person. To do this, they had to convert to a single scale all the photographs from the photo library of the Museum of Anthropology with full-face images of typical representatives of the population of the Russian regions of the country and, combining them by the pupils of the eyes, superimpose them on each other and process them using a special computer program. Thousands of typical Russian faces were brought together into one. And when the faces of a young man and woman appeared on the computer screen, everyone present gasped. From the photograph, slightly blurred at the edges, painfully familiar faces looked at them. Everyone recognized their close relatives in them: grandmother, grandfather, mother, father in their youth... Doctor of Biological Sciences Ilya Vasilievich Perevozchikov - presenter research fellow Department of Anthropology at Moscow State University said that anyone who was shown a generalized portrait admitted that it was difficult to tear himself away from it. Nice photo, as the masters of photo reporting say, differs from a bad one by one hypnotic quality - you want to look at it endlessly...
These portraits concentrated everything that is characteristic of the appearance of the Russian nation, and, on the contrary, everything that distinguishes one Russian from another disappeared. The result was the most typical Russian faces possible.
But whose faces can be original for an entire people? There is only one logical answer to this: the man and woman you see, according to one of Ilya Vasilyevich’s colleagues, should be very similar to the real ancestors of the Russian people who lived many thousands of years ago. The fact that the portraits look at us not as gray, faceless ovals of faces, as happened when drawing up a generalized portrait of the French, but rather attractive young people, indicates that the Russian nation is more united than some politicians who predict the imminent collapse of Russia believe. And first of all, the separation of Finnish Russia from it - according to the Kosovo scheme: the Northern and Northwestern regions of Russia together with the Novgorod region, the empty lands in which are being intensively bought up by Estonians.
There are far fewer anthropological differences between Russians living in Kaliningrad and Kamchatka than between Germans living in neighboring German regions. Anthropologists from expeditions, over almost 100 years of research, brought verbal portraits of the people they photographed. The computer made a general verbal portrait of them. They are of average build and average height, light brown-haired with light eyes - gray or blue. A snub nose turned out to be absolutely uncharacteristic of the external appearance of Russians and is found in only 7% of Russian people. This symptom turned out to be more typical for Germans and Finns - 25%. Research into the gene pool of the Russian people will continue. New discoveries are ahead!
Reconstruction of the genetic and linguistic history of Balto-Slavic populations
This most complete work on the gene pool of the Slavic and Baltic peoples sums up the results of many years of research. An interdisciplinary approach was used to reconstruct the long history of peoples speaking related languages. Geneticists and linguists have traced the formation of the gene pool of all groups of Slavs and Balts simultaneously according to three genetic systems: the Y chromosome (paternal lines of inheritance), mitochondrial DNA (maternal lines of inheritance) and broad genomic data on autosomal markers (where paternal and maternal lines are represented equally). It was traced which local populations absorbed the gene pool of the Slavs during their settlement across Europe: it was this deep substrate that formed the main differences in the gene pools of different branches of the Slavs. The correlation between genetic diversity and linguistic diversity turned out to be high, but even greater with the geographic proximity of populations. The result of the study was the clarification of the tree of the Balto-Slavic languages.
Responses to the study in the media and on popular science sites - at the end of the text
The formation of the gene pool of Balto-Slavic populations was studied by a large international group of geneticists and linguists. An article with the results of their work was published in the journal PLoS ONE. The study was conducted under the guidance of Dr. Biol. Sciences O.P. Balanovsky (Institute of General Genetics and Medical Genetics science center) and academician Richard Willems (Estonian Biocenter and University of Tartu). It involved researchers from many countries in which Slavic and Baltic peoples make up the majority of the population - Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as scientists from Estonia, Great Britain and the consortium of the international Genographic project. This is the most complete work on the gene pool of the Slavic and Baltic peoples, sums up many years of research by numerous authors of the article and takes into account data from other scientific teams.
Balto-Slavic languages are spoken by approximately a third of the modern population of Europe, and in terms of area, the Baltic and Slavic peoples occupy about half of Europe. Linguists agree that the Baltic and Slavic languages are not only related, but also have a common root in the family of Indo-European languages. They estimate that Proto-Balto-Slavic separated from other Indo-European languages between 7,000 and 4,500 years ago, most likely in Central Europe. The divergence of the Baltic and Slavic language branches dates back to 3500-2500 years ago. The further division of the Slavic languages occurred relatively recently - 1700-1300 years ago. The so-called “Slavicization of Europe” is associated with the early Middle Ages (approximately 1400-1000 years ago) - a period of rapid spread of Slavic languages over vast territories. In Eastern Europe, the Slavs spread to the territories where Baltic, Finno-Ugric and Turkic populations lived, in Western Europe - to the territories of speakers of Germanic languages, in the Balkans - to the territories of local multilingual populations.
But how did these changes in the culture of Europe, recorded by the spread of Slavic languages, affect the gene pool of Europe? This was precisely the main question of the study. After all, the genetic history of the Balto-Slavic populations and their interaction with the gene pools of populations that spoke other languages - Finno-Ugric, Germanic, Turkic - have remained insufficiently studied until now.
What did you study?
To study the Balto-Slavic populations as completely as possible, scientists used all three genetic systems, which are currently the most informative for studying the gene pool.
1) Y chromosome, which is inherited paternally: 6078 samples from 62 populations were studied;
2) Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is inherited through the maternal line: 6876 mtDNA samples from 48 populations were studied;
3) Genome-wide (genome-wide) markers: 1,297 samples from 16 populations. These are points of genetic diversity (single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs) that are scattered throughout the genome and are located on autosomes - non-sex chromosomes.
For the ADMIXTURE analysis, 200 thousand SNP markers were used, which are common to the three Illumina panels used (610K, 650K and 660K) and are not linked to each other; for the analysis of common fragments, all 500 thousand markers that are common to the three Illumina panels used (including markers linked to each other) were used; for principal component analysis and calculation genetic distances 57 thousand markers were used, which are common to the Illumina and Affimetrix panels, and are not linked to each other.
A significant part of these impressive data sets were obtained by the authors for the first time - 1254 samples for the Y chromosome, 917 samples for mtDNA, 70 samples for genome-wide markers. The rest of the data is taken from previously published works. For comparison, all data accumulated to date on other gene pools in Europe were used.
Using all three genetic systems, almost all modern peoples speaking languages of the Balto-Slavic group were studied - sixteen peoples using a single extensive panel of markers:
Baltic peoples - Latvians and Lithuanians;
Eastern Slavs - Belarusians, Russians, Ukrainians;
Western Slavs - Kashubians, Poles, Slovaks, Sorbs, Czechs;
Southern Slavs - Bulgarians, Bosnians, Macedonians, Serbs, Slovenes, Croats.
Such detailed and versatile data on any group of peoples (covering all ethnic groups, and even all major genetic systems) are very rare in population studies. Therefore, they make it possible to solve not only a specific, but also a more general methodological problem. The specific task is to describe the gene pool of the Slavs and Balts themselves, and the general task is to study, using their example, how different characteristics by which populations are usually characterized are related to each other: Y-chromosomal diversity, mitochondrial diversity, genome-wide diversity, linguistic relatedness, geographic location of populations .
The genetic landscape of the Slavs through three prisms
The genetic relationships of all studied populations with each other, established as a result of the study, are shown in the figures.
Rice. A presents results for genome-wide (autosomal) SNP markers. These markers are called autosomal because they are found on non-sex chromosomes (autosomes). And they are called genome-wide because they are evenly scattered throughout the genome.
Rice. B presents results for the Y chromosome based on its haplogroup frequencies.
Rice. C reflects results obtained from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup frequencies.
To show the relative proximity and distance of different populations on a two-dimensional graph, population genetics uses two methods borrowed from multivariate statistics: principal component analysis and multivariate scaling. In essence, they are close, but their advantages and disadvantages are opposite. The principal component method shows the position of populations mathematically accurately, but sometimes loses a significant part of the genetic information contained in the original data. The multidimensional scaling method, on the contrary, uses all genetic information, but the geometric distances between point populations on the graph may be somewhat distorted relative to the calculated genetic distances between them. IN in this case For autosomal data, the principal component method was used, and for Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial data, the genetic distance method was used.
As can be seen, both according to genome-wide markers and the Y chromosome (A and B), the majority of Balto-Slavic populations are aligned along the north-south axis.
Eastern Slavs- Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians - are clearly grouped. They form their own cluster, although within it the Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians do not completely overlap with each other. The exception is the Northern Russians, who are genetically distant from the rest of the Eastern Slavs and gravitate towards the neighboring Finno-Ugric populations.
From the Western Slavs Czechs and to a lesser extent Slovaks are distinct from the Eastern Slavs and are biased towards Germans and other Western European populations. But the Poles are closest to the Eastern Slavs. In fact, in the graphs, Poles, Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians form a common cluster, while Slovaks and especially Czechs are somewhat distant from it.
Southern Slavs form a dispersed group on the graph, which is internally divided into western (Slovenians, Croats and Bosnians) and eastern (Macedonians and Bulgarians) regions with the Serbs in the middle. At the same time, the Slovenes are genetically close to the Hungarians (a geographically close, but not Slavic people), and the eastern branch of the southern Slavs is also grouped with the non-Slavic, but geographically close Romanians and to some extent with the Greeks.
Baltic peoples- Latvians and Lithuanians - show genetic closeness to Estonians, who speak the language of the Finno-Ugric group, and to some Eastern Slavs (Belarusians). It also turned out that the Baltic populations are close to the Volga group of Finno-Ugric peoples (especially the Mordovians). The authors clarify that this may reflect historical events - in ancient times, the area of Baltic-speaking populations extended far to the east and almost reached the current area of the Mordovians.
It is important that all of the listed patterns were identified in independent and seemingly completely different genetic systems - the Y chromosome and genome-wide autosomal markers.
For mtDNA (Figure C), as usual, the degree of structure in the gene pool is much less pronounced, which is associated with lower phylogenetic resolution in the available mtDNA data. But, although not as clearly expressed, the same patterns are visible in the mtDNA results. For example, in the mtDNA graph, most East Slavic populations overlap with each other, Northern Russians are separated from them, and Southern Slavs are genetically similar to their non-Slavic-speaking neighbors in the Balkans.
Comparing the degree of expression of the same patterns in the results for different genetic systems, the authors emphasize that the Y chromosome often reveals patterns in more detail than not only mtDNA, but also more fashionable genome-wide markers.
Search for deep ancestors
To compare populations based on the composition of their ancestral components, the program ADMIXTURE (“mixture” or “composition”) is often used. It contains genome-wide data on a large number populations and set the number of hypothetical ancestral populations from which all these modern populations were formed. The program calculates what the genetic composition of these ancestral populations (ancestral components) should be, and draws for each modern population a colored spectrum indicating the proportions of these ancestors in its gene pool. It is clear that such a model is rather arbitrary - in reality, it is unlikely that modern gene pools were formed as a result of the mixing of a fixed given number of ancestral populations. But such a simplifying model is often useful, and the ancestral components identified usually make real sense. For example, when analyzing data on a global scale, the African component is always the first to be identified, which makes up almost 100% in sub-Saharan African populations, and its share in other populations of the world corresponds well to the degree of their direct or indirect admixture with African populations.
In this work, the ADMIXTURE method was also used - the authors set different numbers of ancestral populations and published all the corresponding graphs, but a special test showed that the statistically most valid results were obtained in the case when the number of ancestral components was set to six (K = 6). In this case, the authors got this picture.
In Balto-Slavic populations, almost the entire spectrum is represented by two colors: blue (ancestral component k3) and light blue (ancestral component k2), although in different proportions. Looking at Europe as a whole, k3 (blue) is a large contributor to all European populations and decreases from the northeast to the south. This ancestral component is maximum in Baltic populations, prevails in the Eastern Slavs (80-95%) and decreases in the Southern Slavs (55-70%). In contrast, k2 (blue) is more common in populations of the Mediterranean and Caucasian regions and decreases towards northern Europe. Among the Southern Slavs it accounts for approximately 30%, among the Western Slavs it decreases to 20%, and among the northern Russian and Baltic populations to 5%.
It can be seen that the Slavs also have a lemon-yellow color in the ancestral spectrum; this is the k5 component, which is represented to any significant extent only among the Eastern Slavs, and of these, it is more pronounced among the Northern Russians. This component is Siberian in origin, since, as can be seen in the graph, it makes up the main part of the spectrum for Siberian populations. But the k6 component (dark yellow), which dominates in China, Mongolia and Altai, is almost zero among Russians. This means that the eastern trace in the gene pool of northern Russians is associated more with ancient migrations from the forests and tundras of Siberia than from the steppes of Central Asia (a new refutation of the popular idea that the Russian gene pool was greatly influenced by the Tatar-Mongol yoke). The dark green k4 component characterizes the populations of South Asia and is also common in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Therefore, it is not surprising that it, albeit with a small frequency, is found among the southern Slavs and other peoples of the Balkan Peninsula, but almost disappears among the Western and Eastern Slavs.
From an examination of the composition of ancestral components, the conclusion follows that there is significant genetic similarity between the majority of Western and Eastern Slavs over a large territory - from Poland in the west to the European part of Russia in the east. And the southern Slavs, geographically limited to a small Balkan Peninsula, differ significantly from Western and Eastern ones.
But how did these differences arise?
Common fragments of the genomes of the Slavs and their neighbors
To answer this question, the authors conducted a subtle analysis of the gene pool for two groups of Slavs: the first included the Western and Eastern Slavs (after all, they turned out to be very similar genetically), and the second included the Southern Slavs. Comparisons were made based on the presence of identical chromosome fragments in people originating from these population groups. This method is called IBD analysis - its name comes from the classical concept of population genetics “identical by descent”, that is, the search for genetic fragments that are identical in origin. These fragments were inherited by different people, representatives of different populations, from the same common ancestor. It is clear that in almost any population in the world there can be at least one descendant of a representative of the Western and Eastern Slavs, and, conversely, among the Eastern Slavs there can be at least one descendant of almost any people in the world. But these are isolated coincidences - that’s why population genetics studies populations, and not its individual representatives. Those populations in which many such matches are found are indeed significantly related to each other, or rather, they have a significant number of common ancestors. These common fragments, in fact, are haplotypes, similar to the haplotypes of mtDNA and the Y chromosome in that they also have one ancestor, but different in that over time they are broken up by recombination - the exchange of sections between chromosomes that came from the father and from the mother, with cell division. And haplotypes make it possible to date using autosomal markers - knowing the rate of recombination, one can estimate from the length of the surviving common haplotypes how much time has passed from common ancestors, that is, how long has the common gene pool existed.
The number of common haplotypes between the “West-Eastern” Slavs (the authors had to use this awkward term for lack of a better one) and eight other groups of European peoples was calculated:
1) South Slavs (Bulgarians, Bosnians, Macedonians, Slovenes, Croats);
2) populations of Western Europe (Italians, Germans, French);
3) Baltic populations (Latvians, Lithuanians);
4) populations of northeastern Europe (Western Finnish peoples - Vepsians, Karelians, Finns, Estonians);
5) populations of central Europe, whose range is located between the West-Eastern and South Slavs - their authors conventionally call them “inter-Slavic populations”; these are surprisingly multilingual populations: the Gagauz speak the language of the Turkic group of the Altai language family, the Hungarians speak the language of the Ugric group of the Uralic language family, and the Romanians speak the language of the Romance group);
6) Greeks;
7) populations of the Volga region and the Urals (Bashkirs, Komi, Mordovians, Tatars, Udmurts, Chuvash);
8) North Caucasian populations (Adygs, Balkars, Nogais).
If we take the number of common haplotypes between the West-Eastern and Southern Slavs as a standard, then some of the surrounding non-Slavic populations will (in terms of the number of common haplotypes) be higher than this standard, some lower, and some equal to it. Below the standard (that is, they have less kinship with the West-Eastern Slavs than the South Slavs) were the peoples of the Volga region, Western Europe, the Caucasus, as well as the Greeks.
It would seem that we can talk about a greater relationship of Slavic gene pools with each other than with the surrounding non-Slavic peoples. This is partly true, but everything is not so simple - the relationship between the gene pools of the Balts and the populations of northeastern Europe (Vepsians, Karelians, Finns, Latvians, Lithuanians, Northern Russians, Estonians) turned out to be twice as high as the standard. One can go to the opposite extreme and consider that the “West-Eastern” Slavs are not genetically related to the Southern Slavs, but only to their geographical neighbors, probably due to the assimilation of related peoples. But the picture is further complicated by the fact that with the peoples now living in the territories in the middle between the “West-Eastern” and Southern Slavs - that is, with the Hungarians, Romanians and Gagauzians - the West-Eastern Slavs have the same number of genome fragments as with the southern Slavs (these “inter-Slavic” populations are at the standard level).
Therefore, the authors conducted another similar analysis, but now placing the southern Slavs at the center of consideration. The number of common genetic fragments between them and surrounding population groups was compared. It turned out that the number of common fragments among the Southern Slavs with the “West-Eastern” Slavs is approximately the same as the number of their common fragments with the “inter-Slavic” populations (Gagauz, Hungarians, Romanians). But the number of common fragments with geographically neighboring Greeks is much smaller. Let us take into account that the West-Eastern Slavs are geographically further from the South Slavs than the “inter-Slavic” ones, therefore, from a geographical point of view, the number of common fragments with the “West-Eastern” Slavs should be smaller. And since this is not the case, it means that the linguistic kinship of the “West-Eastern” and Southern Slavs is partly manifested in this analysis of common genome fragments. Moreover, although the common genome fragments found between the two groups of Slavs vary in length, there are slightly more fragments about 2-3 centimeters long than others, and it is precisely this length that fragments should have been preserved since the Slavic expansion of the second half of the 1st millennium AD
These results for the Slavs, from which no firm conclusions can be drawn, should be compared with a recent similar study on Turkic-speaking populations (Yunusbaev et al., 2015). It would seem that in both cases there is a rapid spread of native speakers of languages (Turkic or Slavic, respectively) across vast territories, which cannot but be accompanied by the assimilation of the local (pre-Turkic or pre-Slavic) population. But in the case of the Turks, the method of analyzing common fragments revealed - albeit a very small - component of the genome that the Turks brought from their probable Altai ancestral home. But in the case of the Slavs, the picture turned out to be much more complex. This may be due to the fact that the Turks, during their settlement, often assimilated populations that were genetically very different from them and from each other, and the Slavs spread across the territory of Europe with its relatively homogeneous gene pool, and part of the populations they assimilated were related to at least the Baltic groups.
Overall, two conclusions can be drawn from this analysis of common fragments. First of all, the results of mixing the gene pool of the West-Eastern Slavs with other populations of the northern part of Eastern Europe are clearly visible. Secondly - albeit not so expressively - a somewhat greater degree of kinship between the West-Eastern and South Slavs with each other is also visible than could be expected based simply on the geographical distance between them.
Scheme and results of analysis of common genome fragments (IBD)
Reconstruction of the language tree.
The team of authors included not only geneticists, but also leading Russian linguists. This made it possible to use in this work a refined kinship tree of the Balto-Slavic languages due to updating and rechecking the array of lexicostatistical data. Lexicostatistics deals with identifying the rate of linguistic change and determining the time of separation of related languages and the degree of relatedness between them. The source material was the lexical lists (Swadesh lists) of 20 modern Balto-Slavic languages and dialects.
After the separation of the Baltic and Slavic branches, the very first fork in the Slavic branch turned out to be threefold - the division of the Slavs into western, eastern and southern branches - and dated about 1900 years ago. Further division of the Slavic languages began in the 5th-6th centuries (about 1300-1500 years ago): the eastern branch was divided into Russian and Ukrainian/Belarusian, the western branch into Czech/Slovak, Proto-Sorbian and Polish/Kashubian, the southern branch into Serbo-Croatian , Bulgarian, Macedonian. The emergence of modern languages occurred 1000-500 years ago. This dating of the tree corresponds to historical and archaeological data, which indicate the rapid spread of the Slavs across Europe in the second half of the 1st millennium AD.
Genetic diversity on different levels linguistic tree
Since the linguistic tree of the Slavic languages is so accurately constructed, it became possible to analyze how the genetic diversity of Slavic populations, estimated from the frequencies of Y-chromosome haplogroups, is distributed along this tree. This analysis was performed using the standard AMOVA test procedure.
It turned out that genetic differences between populations speaking the same language, although varying from almost zero values (for speakers of Czech or Macedonian) to a value of 0.05 (for speakers of northern dialects of Russian), averaged only 0.01.
Next, the frequencies in all these populations of one people were averaged and the average ethnic frequencies of haplogroups were obtained. And then the genetic differences between these average ethnic characteristics of peoples within each branch of the Slavic languages were calculated. These differences turned out to be not exactly the same for different branches: for example, for the Western Slavs the differences are greater than for the Eastern Slavs, but this could be expected by looking at the graphs of their genetic relationships. However, on average, the differences between ethnic groups turned out to be greater – 0.03.
Finally, the average frequencies of haplogroups were calculated for the three branches of Slavic languages - Western, Eastern and Southern - and the differences between them doubled - about 0.06.
According to the principle of equidistance developed domestic school genogeography, if a population system develops on its own, without major external influences, then the gradual separation of populations leads to the linear accumulation of both linguistic and genetic diversity. As a result, genetic diversity is approximately the same at all levels - between populations of the same people, between ethnic groups of the same branch, and between different branches (their average characteristics). Indeed, the ancestors different groups The Slavs were once only populations of one people close to each other, and their languages differed no more than dialects of the same language differ now. And by averaging frequencies over all modern populations of a branch, we find its center of gravity, its point of origin, and reconstruct the gene pool of this ancestral population.
But all this, as stated above, only works when populations are left to their own devices and have little interaction with their neighbors. However, for the Slavs, the values of genetic diversity at different hierarchical levels are not the same: with equidistance they should be 0.01, 0.01, 0.01, but they differ sharply - 0.06, 0.03, 0.01. This suggests that the Slavic populations were actively mixing with surrounding peoples. And the fact that the greatest variability occurs at the most ancient level (differences between the three branches of Slavic languages) indicates that these interactions were especially strong in the early stages of the history of Slavic populations.
Kinship or neighborhood?
The roles played by geography and languages in shaping the genetic diversity of Balto-Slavic populations can be compared using the Mantel test. Geography plays a dual role. Of course, this is a factor of geographical proximity, which brings gene pools closer together through mixed marriages between neighbors. But on the other hand, geography can also reflect origins, when related peoples do not move far from each other, but settle into neighboring territories. Languages are a factor in the original kinship of gene pools or parts of gene pools inherited from common ancestors along with common language(or not inherited, if the language was changed, but the gene pool remained almost the same).
The test was independently performed for three genetic systems: Y chromosome, mtDNA and autosomal markers. All three versions of the test showed an extremely high correlation between genetics and geographic location of populations (0.80-0.95). But a very high correlation was also found between genetics and linguistics (0.74-0.78). Because linguistic measures themselves are highly correlated with geography, the authors examined partial correlations to distinguish between the direct and indirect effects of geography on the other two systems. When excluding the geographical factor, the partial correlation with linguistics became much lower (0.3 for mtDNA and 0.2 for the other two systems), while for all three genetic systems the correlation with geography when excluding the linguistic factor remained large (0. 5 for mtDNA and 0.8 for the other two systems). This indicates that the connection with the geographical factor is the main one, and a high connection with linguistics is often determined by the fact that peoples speaking related languages are also geographical neighbors.
Two substrates in Slavic gene pools
Geneticists believe that, spreading across Europe, the Slavs assimilated local populations that lived in these territories in pre-Slavic times. This is the genetic substrate that they have absorbed, and this substrate differs in different territories. The results of the work made it possible to identify two main substrates. The “Central-Eastern European substrate” was adopted by the Western and Eastern Slavs (on the spectrum of ancestral components it is expressed in blue, and in the Y-chromosome data these populations carry high frequencies of haplogroup R1a). The other, “South-Eastern European substrate”, was absorbed by the Southern Slavs (this is the blue color in the spectrum of ancestral components, and a feature of the Y-chromosomal gene pool is the high frequencies of haplogroup I2a).
Three arguments support this conclusion about the importance of the substrate in the formation of the Slavic gene pool.
First, the fact that the combined group of Western and Eastern Slavs shares fewer genome fragments with the Southern Slavs than with the populations of northeastern Europe, including the Baltic and Finno-Ugric peoples. The special genetic closeness of the Finno-Ugric peoples to the Balts is visible both in the principal component plots and in the multidimensional scaling graphs. And it was precisely the peoples of the Baltic and Finno-Ugric language groups that were settled in that part of the East European Plain, which later became part of the area of the Slavs.
Secondly, the AMOVA test also indicates the important role of substrate, since the genetic diversity between different Slavic branches far exceeds the diversity within branches; such a picture should have formed if the eastern and southern branches of the Slavs assimilated genetically different populations.
Thirdly, the predominant role of geography in the formation of the Slavic gene pool speaks to the same thing. After all, if there had been no inclusion of the substrate, then the common origin fixed in the language could not but affect the similarity of the gene pools, even when some groups of Slavs migrated long distances from their relatives. But no such role for linguistic relatedness has been identified. And on the contrary: the genetic similarity between the pre-Slavic populations living on the territory of half of Europe should have been approximately proportional to the geographical distances between them, but in no way related to the linguistic kinship between the Slavic groups that later came to these lands. Then, if the substrate predominates in modern Slavic gene pools, then the similarity of these gene pools should follow geographical distances. Which is what was revealed.
Synthesis of data on different genetic and non-genetic systems.
In genetic work, the word “analysis” appears at every step, and very rarely “synthesis”. Here, “synthesis” is even included in the title of the work. What does it mean?
It has already been said that this study is unique in that it is almost the first time for large group of related peoples, each people has been studied, and studied according to all three modern genetic systems, and in addition, the linguistic relationship between them has been quantitatively assessed. And this makes it possible, using the example of the Slavs, to see how three different genetic systems, linguistics and geography are interconnected - and to synthesize these heterogeneous data into general conclusions. This is all the more important because comparing genetic and linguistic reconstructions with geography has a long tradition in population genetics.
The correlations of all five systems (three genetic, linguistic and geographical) with each other are shown in the figure. The very high similarity of all five systems is striking: none of the correlation coefficients falls below 0.68 - that is, in fact, 0.7, which is considered a very high correlation in population genetics. And the highest coefficients reach the maximum possible ceiling (correlation 0.95). Particular correspondence is noted for Y-chromosomal and autosomal markers and geographic location. We can say that these three characteristics of the Balto-Slavic populations form an interconnected triad (correlation coefficients above 0.9, dark red color in the figure).
The consistency of the results for different feature systems confirms the reliability of such results. It also points to the promise of the so-called multisystem approach. This approach consists, firstly, of parallel analysis different systems signs; secondly, in unconditional trust only in those patterns that are revealed not by any one system, but by the majority of systems; thirdly, in a careful consideration of cases when some system stands out from the general pattern. In this article, the authors made extensive use of a multisystem approach. When formulating statements about the genetic similarity or difference of certain peoples, the authors each time checked whether they were confirmed by the majority of systems used. And the fact that linguistics stands out from the general pattern served as one of the arguments in favor of the hypothesis of the predominance of the substrate.
This pattern of almost complete coincidence of the three genetic systems with each other, their coincidence with geography, but only partial similarity with linguistics can serve as a beacon for future studies of the gene pools of other regions of the world. At the same time, this pattern is not universal for the whole world: for populations with contrasting origins of the male and female parts of the population, data on the Y chromosome and mtDNA can vary greatly (as shown, for example, in the article by Quintano-Murci et al., 2008), and for populations in which the processes of gradual growth and fragmentation prevailed over crossbreeding, genetics may be more correlated with linguistics than with geography (as shown, for example, in the article by Balanovsky et al., 2011).
History of Slavic gene pools: research results
First of all, this is the predominance in Slavic populations of the pre-Slavic substrate - two genetic components assimilated by them - Eastern European for the Western and Eastern Slavs and South European for the Southern Slavs. (The names “Central-Eastern European” and “South-Eastern European” are too long; for the sake of brevity, it is more convenient to call Eastern European and Southern European, remembering that they do not extend to Western Europe, but are located in its eastern half with the dichotomous division of Europe).
But, despite the fact that in the gene pool of the Western and Eastern Slavs there is a large assimilated component of their neighbors on the East European Plain, these Slavic populations form a genetically quite integral group, differing both from their western neighbors (German-speaking populations) and from their eastern and northern (Finno-Ugric peoples). Of course, a couple of exceptions can be found to this rule, but they are concentrated on the periphery of the range of the Western and Eastern Slavs. For example, the distinctive gene pool of the Czechs has some genetic similarities with their German neighbors to the west, but other West Slavic populations (Poles and Sorbs) are genetically clearly separated from their German neighbors. Likewise, at the other end of the Slavic range, the Northern Russians have clear similarities with the Finno-Ugric and Baltic populations, but no such clear similarities are observed for the Central or Southern Russians, let alone other Slavic peoples.
Therefore, it can be assumed that after the main stage of the spread of Slavic languages and the assimilation of the pre-Slavic substrate passed, the formation of local characteristics of the gene pool began. It proceeded differently for different parts vast area of the Western and Eastern Slavs, but the original kinship (common substrate plus a common Slavic superstrate) and, probably, the intense subsequent exchange of genes within the Slavic area, cemented the Western and Eastern Slavs into a single genetic community.
The work makes a cautious assumption that the assimilated substrate could be represented predominantly by Baltic-speaking populations. Indeed, archaeological evidence indicates a very wide distribution of Baltic groups before the start of Slavic settlement. The Baltic substratum among the Slavs (albeit, along with the Finno-Ugric one) was also identified by anthropologists. The genetic data obtained in this work - both in graphs of genetic relationships and in the proportion of common genome fragments - indicate that the modern Baltic peoples are the closest genetic neighbors of the Eastern Slavs. At the same time, the Balts are also linguistically the closest relatives of the Slavs. And we can assume that by the time of assimilation, their gene pool was not so different from the gene pool of the Slavs who began their widespread settlement. Therefore, if we assume that the Slavs settling to the east assimilated mainly the Balts, this can explain both the similarity of modern Slavic and Baltic peoples with each other, and their differences from the surrounding non-Balto-Slavic groups of Europe.
As for the southern Slavs, the history of their gene pool could have proceeded in a similar way, although independently from the Western and Eastern Slavs. The South Slavs assimilated a significant part of the pre-Slavic population of the Balkans, which had a different gene pool than that assimilated by the Eastern and Western Slavs population of the East European Plain. Therefore, the South Slavic populations show greater similarity with the non-Slavic populations of the Balkans (Romanians and Hungarians) than with other Slavic peoples.
Source:
Genetic heritage of the Balto-Slavic speaking populations: a synthesis of autosomal, mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal data
Alena Kushniarevich, Olga Utevska, Marina Chuhryaeva, Anastasia Agdzhoyan, Khadizhat Dibirova, Ingrida Uktverite, Märt Möls, Lejla Kovačević, Andrey Pshenichnov, Svetlana Frolova, Andrey Shanko, Ene Metspalu, Maere Reidla, Kristiina Tambets, Erika Tamm, y Koshel, Valery Zaporozhchenko , Lubov Atramentova, Vaidutis Kučinskas, Oleg Davydenko, Lidya Tegako, Irina Evseeva, Michail Churnosov, Elvira Pocheshchova, Bayazit Yunusbaev, Elza Khusnutdinova, Damir Marjanović, Pavao Rudan, Siiri Rootsi, Nick Yankovsky, Phillip Endicott, Alexei Kassian, Anna Dy bo, The Genographic Consortium, Chris Tyler-Smith, Elena Balanovska, Mait Metspalu, Toomas Kivisild, Richard Villems and Oleg Balanovsky
http://lenta.ru/articles/2015/09/15/balto/
Radio broadcasts:
Oleg Balanovsky in the program “Homeland of Elephants” (radio station “Moscow Speaks”)
http://xn--c1acc6aafa1c.xn--p1ai/wp-content/uploads/2015_09_15_Rodina_slonov.mp3Oleg Balanovsky in the program “Science in Focus” (radio station “Echo of Moscow”)
http://1.cdn.echo.msk.ru/snd/2015-09-18-naukafokus-1605.mp3Oleg Balanovsky at the Sputnik radio station (formerly Voice of Russia), Rossiya Segodnya agency
http://xn--c1acc6aafa1c.xn--p1ai/wp-content/uploads/151008_interview_balanovsky_genofond_researches.mp3TV programs:
Oleg Balanovsky in the program “Hamburg Account”, Public Television of Russia (OTR)
Double exploration of a double continentTwo articles, published almost simultaneously in Nature and Science, are devoted to the genetic reconstruction of the peopling of America using the analysis of complete genomes. Their conclusions are similar. In an article by David Reich's team (Nature), in addition to the main migration from Siberia, which gave rise to all indigenous populations of America, a still mysterious “Australo-Melanesian trace” was discovered in some populations of South American Indians. An article by Eske Willerslev's team (Science) found the same trace, although its source could include, in addition to Austro-Melanesia, also East Asia. | Origin of the Slavs, biochemical versionWe are publishing a review by archaeologist and philologist, Doctor of Historical Sciences L.S. Klein on the book by A.A. Klyosov “The Origin of the Slavs”, published in the journal “Russian Archaeological Yearbook”. |
How to build trees? Checking in Lezgin languagesFor the first time, a full-fledged test of modern phylogenetic methods was carried out on the lexical material of Lezgin language group. | UK genetic map opens window to pastResearchers have created a detailed map of the genetic structure of UK populations for the first time. In the gene pool of the modern population we were able to see a reflection of the most important events in the history of the settlement of the British Isles. |
Genetic studies have shown that Russians are one of the most purebred peoples in Eurasia. Recent joint research by Russian, British and Estonian genetic scientists has put a big, bold end to the common Russophobic myth that has been infiltrated into people’s consciousness for decades - they say, “scratch a Russian and you will definitely find a Tatar.”
The results of a large-scale experiment published in scientific journal“The American Journal of Human Genetics” clearly states that “despite popular opinions about the strong Tatar and Mongol admixture in the blood of Russians, which their ancestors inherited during the Tatar-Mongol invasion, the haplogroups of the Turkic peoples and other Asian ethnic groups left virtually no trace on the population of the modern northwestern, central and southern regions."Like this. We can safely put an end to this long-standing dispute and consider further discussions on this issue simply inappropriate.
We are not Tatars. We are not Tatars. No influence on Russian so-called genes. The “Mongol-Tatar yoke” had no effect.
We Russians did not have and do not have any admixture of Turkic “Horde blood”.Moreover, genetic scientists, summing up their research, declare the almost complete identity of the genotypes of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, thereby proving that we were and remain one people: “genetic variations of the Y chromosome of residents of the central and southern regions Ancient Rus' turned out to be almost identical to those of Ukrainians and Belarusians.”
One of the project leaders Russian geneticist Oleg Balanovsky admitted in an interview with Gazeta.ru that Russians are an almost monolithic people from a genetic point of view, destroying another myth: “everyone has mixed up, there are no longer pure Russians.” Quite the opposite - there were Russians and there are Russians. One people, one nation, a monolithic nationality with a clearly defined special genotype.
Further, examining the materials of remains from ancient burials, scientists found that “Slavic tribes developed these lands (Central and Southern Russia) long before the mass resettlement of the main part of the ancient Russians to them in the 7th–9th centuries.” That is, the lands of Central and Southern Russia were inhabited by Russians (Rusichs) already, at least in the first centuries AD. If not before.
This allows us to debunk another Russophobic myth - that Moscow and the surrounding areas were supposedly inhabited by Finno-Ugric tribes from ancient times and that Russians there are “aliens.” We, as geneticists have proven, are not aliens, but completely autochthonous inhabitants of Central Russia, where Russians have lived since time immemorial. “Despite the fact that these lands were inhabited even before the last glaciation of our planet about 20 thousand years ago, there is no evidence directly indicating the presence of any “original” peoples living in this territory,” the report states. That is, there is no evidence that any other tribes lived on our lands before us, whom we supposedly displaced or assimilated. If I can put it this way, we have been living here since the creation of the world.
Scientists also determined the far boundaries of the habitat of our ancestors: “analysis of bone remains indicates that the main zone of contact between Caucasians and people of the Mongoloid type was in Western Siberia.” And if you consider that archaeologists who excavated the most ancient burials of the 1st millennium BC. on the territory of Altai, they found the remains of distinctly Caucasoid people there (not to mention the world-famous Arkaim) - the conclusion is obvious. Our ancestors (ancient Russians, proto-Slavs) - originally lived throughout the territory modern Russia, including Siberia, and quite possibly the Far East. So the campaign of Ermak Timofeevich and his comrades beyond the Urals, from this point of view, was a completely legitimate return of previously lost territories.
That's it, friends. Modern science destroys Russophobic stereotypes and myths, cutting the ground from under the feet of our liberal “friends”.
Gene geographer Oleg Balanovsky: “It is sometimes impossible to distinguish Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians at the level of the gene pool”
Five years have passed since KP, in the article “Sensational discovery of scientists: The secret of the Russian gene pool has been revealed,” spoke about the work of gene geographer Oleg Pavlovich Balanovsky and his colleagues and their research into the gene pool of the Russian people.“I would like to find out how the Russian gene pool works and try to reconstruct its history using modern features,” the scientist said then. Today, in light of new scientific data, we will return to this conversation.
DON'T SCRATCH THE RUSSIANS
— Oleg Pavlovich, where did the Russian people come from? Not the ancient Slavs, but the Russians?
— Regarding the Russians, one can only say for sure that Mongol conquest The 13th century, contrary to popular belief, did not have an impact on the gene pool - Central Asian gene variants are practically not found in Russian populations.
— That is, the well-known expression of the historian Karamzin “scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar” is not confirmed by science?
- No.
— Before geneticists, the Russian people had been studied by anthropologists for a long time. To what extent do the results of your research and theirs agree or disagree?
— Genetic studies of peoples are often perceived as the final word of science. But that's not true! The people who worked before us were mainly anthropologists. By studying the appearance of a population (as we study genes), they described the similarities and differences between the populations of different regions and from this reconstructed their paths of origin. Our entire field of science grew out of ethnic, racial anthropology. Moreover, the level of work of the classics remains largely unsurpassed.
- By what parameters?
— For example, on the details of studying the population. Anthropologists examined more than 170 populations within the historical territory of settlement of the Russian people. And in our research we are 10 times less so far. Perhaps this is why Viktor Valeryanovich Bunak (an outstanding Russian anthropologist, one of the founders of the Soviet anthropological school. - Ed.) was able to identify as many as 12 types of the Russian population, and we only identified three (northern, southern and transitional).Anthropologists, linguists and ethnographers have collected information about almost all the peoples of the world. Huge amounts of information have been accumulated about the physical appearance of the Russian population (the science of somatology deals with this) and about skin patterns on the fingers and palms (dermatoglyphics, which reveals differences among different nations). Linguistics has long been studying data on the geography of Russian dialects and the distribution of thousands of Russian surnames (anthroponymy). One can list many examples of coincidences between the results of modern genetic research and classical research by anthropologists. But I can’t name a single insurmountable contradiction.
That is, the answer of scientists is unequivocal - Russians exist as a nation.
— This question is not for scientists, but for those people who identify themselves with the Russian people. As long as there are such people, scientists will record the existence of the people. If these people from generation to generation also speak their own language, then attempts to declare such a people non-existent are ridiculous. So, for example, there is no need to worry about Russians and Ukrainians.SLAVS - NOT A GENETIC CONCEPT, BUT A LINGUISTIC CONCEPT
— And yet, how homogeneous is the Russian genotype?
— The differences between populations of different regions WITHIN one nation (in this case Russian) are almost always smaller than the differences BETWEEN different nations. The variability of Russian populations turned out to be higher than, for example, the populations of Germans, but less than the variability of many other European peoples, for example Italians.
— That is, Russians differ from each other more than Germans, but less than Italians?
- Exactly. At the same time, genetic variability within our European subcontinent is much less than variability, for example, within the Indian subcontinent. Simply put, Europeans, including Russians, are much more similar to each other than peoples neighboring each other in many regions of the planet; it is much easier to detect genetic similarities between European peoples and more difficult to detect differences.
- Now many people question the existence of “brotherly Slavic peoples” - Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian... They say that these are completely different peoples, completely dissimilar.- “Slavs” (as well as “Turks” and “Finno-Ugrians”) are not genetic concepts at all, but linguistic ones! There are Slavic, Turkic and Finno-Ugric groups of languages. And within these groups, peoples genetically distant from each other get along quite well. For example, it is difficult to find genetic similarities between Turks and Yakuts, who speak Turkic languages. Finns and Khanty speak Finno-Ugric languages, but are genetically distant from each other. So far, not a single linguist has doubted the close relationship of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages and their belonging to the Slavic group.
As for the similarity of the gene pools of the three East Slavic peoples, initial studies have shown that they are so similar that sometimes it is not possible to distinguish. True, we have not stood still these years and have now learned to see the subtle differences in the Ukrainian gene pool. Belarusians from the northern and central regions are so far indistinguishable from Russians across the entire set of genes studied; only the Belarusians of Polesie have been shown to be unique.
WHERE DOES THE RUSSIAN NATION HAVE TWO FOREFatherS?
—Are Russians Slavs? What is the actual share of the “Finnish heritage” in the Russian gene pool?
— Russians are, of course, Slavs. The similarity of the northern Russian populations with the Finns is very low, but with the Estonians it is quite high. The problem is that exactly the same genetic variants are found among the Baltic peoples (Latvians and Lithuanians). Our study of the gene pool of northern Russians showed that interpreting its characteristics as inherited from the Finno-Ugric peoples assimilated by the Russians would be an unfounded simplification. There are some peculiarities, but they connect the northern Russians not only with the Finno-Ugric peoples, but also with the Balts and with the German-speaking population of Scandinavia. That is, these genes - I would venture to suggest - could have been inherited by the ancestors of the northern Russians from such ancient times, when neither the Slavs, nor the Finno-Ugric peoples, nor the Germans, nor the Tatars simply existed in the world.You write that for the first time the two-component nature of the Russian gene pool has been shown based on Y-chromosome markers (that is, along the male line). What are these two forefathers of the Russian gene pool?
— One genetic “father” of the Russian people is northern, the other is southern. Their age is lost in the centuries, and their origin is in the fog. But in any case, a whole millennium has passed since the inheritance of both “fathers” became the common property of the entire Russian gene pool. And their current settlement is clearly visible on the map. At the same time, the northern Russian gene pool has similarities with the neighboring Baltic peoples, and the southern one has similarities with the neighboring Eastern Slavs, but also with the Western Slavs (Poles, Czechs and Slovaks).Are there political passions surrounding the research? Is there pressure? Who is distorting your data and how? And for what purposes?
— Fortunately, we have never encountered politics and especially pressure. But there are a lot of distortions. Everyone wants to fit scientific data to their usual views. And our data, with an honest approach, is not adjusted to them. That is why our conclusions in their entirety are not liked by both sides - those who say that the Russian gene pool is “the best” in the world, and those who say that it does not exist.The January issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics published an article about a study of the Russian gene pool conducted by Russian and Estonian geneticists. The results were unexpected: in fact, the Russian ethnos genetically consists of two parts - the indigenous population of Southern and Central Russia is related to other peoples who speak Slavic languages, and the inhabitants of the North of the country are related to the Finno-Ugric peoples. And the second rather surprising and, one might even say, sensational point is that the set of genes typical for Asians (including the notorious Mongol-Tatars) was not found in sufficient quantities in any of the Russian populations (neither northern nor southern). It turns out that the saying “scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar” is not true.
Secret secret or the “Russianness” gene
The scientific data below is a terrible secret. Classified secrets.Formally, this data is not classified, since it was obtained by American scientists outside the sphere of defense research, and was even published in some places, but the conspiracy of silence organized around it is unprecedented. What is this terrible secret, the mention of which is a worldwide taboo?
This is the secret of the origin and historical path of the Russian people. Paternal kinship Why information is hidden - more on that later. First, briefly about the essence of the discovery of American geneticists. There are 46 chromosomes in human DNA, half of which are inherited from the father and half from the mother. Of the 23 chromosomes received from the father, only one - the male Y chromosome - contains a set of nucleotides that is passed on from generation to generation without any changes for thousands of years. Geneticists call this set a haplogroup. Every man living now has in his DNA exactly the same haplogroup as his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, etc. for many generations.Thus, American scientists found that one such mutation occurred 4,500 years ago on the Central Russian Plain. A boy was born with a slightly different haplogroup than his father, to which they assigned the genetic classification R1a1. The paternal R1a mutated and a new R1a1 emerged. The mutation turned out to be very viable. The R1a1 genus, which was started by this same boy, survived, unlike millions of other genera that disappeared when their genealogical lines were cut off, and multiplied over a vast area. Currently, holders of haplogroup R1a1 make up 70% of the total male population of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, and in ancient Russian cities and villages - up to 80%. R1a1 is a biological marker of the Russian ethnic group. This set of nucleotides is “Russianness” from a genetic point of view.
Thus, the Russian people are genetically modern form was born in the European part of present-day Russia about 4,500 years ago. A boy with the R1a1 mutation became the direct ancestor of all men now living on earth whose DNA contains this haplogroup. All of them are his biological or, as they said before, blood descendants and among themselves blood relatives, together making up united people- Russian. Realizing this, American geneticists, with the enthusiasm inherent in all emigrants in questions of origin, began to wander around the world, take tests from people and look for biological “roots”, their own and others. What they accomplished is of great interest to us, since it sheds true light on the historical paths of our Russian people and destroys many established myths.
Now men of the Russian genus R1a1 make up 16% of the total male population of India, and in upper castes almost half of them - 47% Our ancestors migrated from the ethnic focus not only to the east (to the Urals) and to the south (to India and Iran), but also to the west - to where European countries are now located. On westward geneticists have complete statistics: in Poland, holders of the Russian (Aryan) haplogroup R1a1 make up 57% of the male population, in Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia - 40%, in Germany, Norway and Sweden - 18%, in Bulgaria - 12%, and in England - the least (3%).
The settlement of Russian-Aryans to the east, south and west (there was simply nowhere to go further to the north; and so, according to the Indian Vedas, before coming to India they lived near the Arctic Circle) became a biological prerequisite for the formation of a special language group - Indo-European. These are almost all European languages, some languages of modern Iran and India and, of course, the Russian language and ancient Sanskrit, which are closest to each other for the obvious reason: in time (Sanskrit) and in space (Russian language) they stand next to the original source - Aryan the proto-language from which all others grew Indo-European languages. “It’s impossible to dispute. You need to shut up"
The above are irrefutable natural scientific facts, moreover, obtained by independent American scientists. Disputing them is the same as disagreeing with the results of a blood test in a clinic. They are not disputed. They are simply kept silent. They are hushed up unanimously and stubbornly, they are hushed up, one might say, completely. And there are reasons for this. For example, we will have to rethink everything that is known about the Tatar-Mongol invasion of Rus'.
The armed conquest of peoples and lands was always and everywhere accompanied at that time by the mass rape of local women. Traces in the form of Mongolian and Turkic haplogroups should have remained in the blood of the male part of the Russian population. But they are not there! Solid R1a1 – and nothing more, the purity of the blood is amazing. This means that the Horde that came to Rus' was not at all what is commonly thought of it: if the Mongols were present there, then in statistically insignificant numbers, and it is generally unclear who was called “Tatars”. Well, which scientist will refute scientific foundations, supported by mountains of literature and great authorities?!
The second reason, incomparably more significant, relates to the sphere of geopolitics. The history of human civilization appears in a new and completely unexpected light, and this cannot but have serious political consequences. Throughout modern history, the pillars of European scientific and political thought proceeded from the idea of Russians as barbarians who had recently climbed down from the trees, naturally backward and incapable of creative work. And suddenly it turns out that the Russians are the same Aryans who had a decisive influence on the formation of great civilizations in India, Iran and Europe itself!
That Europeans owe a lot to Russians for their prosperous lives, starting with the languages they speak. What is no coincidence in modern history a third of the most important discoveries and inventions belong to ethnic Russians in Russia itself and abroad. It is no coincidence that the Russian people were able to repel the invasions of the united forces of continental Europe led by Napoleon and then Hitler. Etc.
Great historical tradition It is no coincidence, because behind all this there is a great historical tradition, thoroughly forgotten over many centuries, but remaining in the collective subconscious of the Russian people and manifesting itself whenever the nation faces new challenges. Manifesting itself with iron inevitability due to the fact that it grew on a material, biological basis in the form of Russian blood, which remains unchanged for four and a half millennia. Western politicians and ideologists have a lot to think about in order to make their policy towards Russia more adequate in the light of discovered by geneticists historical circumstances. But they don’t want to think or change anything, hence the conspiracy of silence around the Russian-Aryan topic. The collapse of the myth about the Russian people The collapse of the myth about the Russian people as an ethnic mixture automatically destroys another myth - the myth about the multinationality of Russia.
Until now, they have tried to present the ethno-demographic structure of our country as a vinaigrette from the Russian “you won’t understand what the mixture is” and many indigenous peoples and newcomer diasporas. With such a structure, all its components are approximately equal in size, so Russia is supposedly “multinational.” But genetic studies provide a completely different picture. If you believe the Americans (and there is no reason not to believe them: they are authoritative scientists, they value their reputation, and they have no reason to lie in such a pro-Russian way), then it turns out that 70% of the entire male population of Russia are purebred Russians.
According to the data of the penultimate census (the results of the latter are still unknown), 80% of respondents consider themselves Russian, i.e. 10% more are Russified representatives of other nations (it is in these 10%, if you “scratch”, that you will find non-Russian roots). And 20% falls on the remaining 170-odd peoples, nationalities and tribes living on the territory of the Russian Federation. Total: Russia is a mono-ethnic country, albeit multi-ethnic, with an overwhelming demographic majority of natural Russians. This is where Jan Hus' logic comes into play.
About backwardness Next - about backwardness. The clergy thoroughly contributed to this myth: they say that before the baptism of Rus', people lived in complete savagery. Wow, “wildness”! They mastered half the world, built great civilizations, taught the aborigines their language, and all this long before the birth of Christ... Real history does not fit in, it does not fit in with its church version. There is something primordial, natural in the Russian people that cannot be reduced to religious life. In the north-east of Europe, in addition to the Russians, many peoples lived and still live, but none of them created anything even remotely similar to the great Russian civilization. The same applies to other places of civilizational activity of the Russian-Aryans in ancient times. Natural conditions are different everywhere, and the ethnic environment is different, therefore the civilizations built by our ancestors are not the same, but there is something common to all of them: they are great on the historical scale of values and far exceed the achievements of their neighbors.
Author Doctor of Biological Sciences S. B. Pashutin
Ethnic polymorphism
It is believed that races arose from the accumulation of many small genetic differences among inhabitants of different geographical regions. While people lived together, the mutations that appeared in them spread throughout the group. After the groups separated, new mutations arose and accumulated in them independently. The number of accumulated differences between groups is proportional to the time that has passed since their separation. This allows us to date events in population history: migration, unification of ethnic groups in one territory, and others. Thanks to the “molecular clock” method, paleogeneticists were able to establish that Homo sapiens as a biological species formed 130-150 thousand years ago in Southeast Africa. At that time, the ancestral population of modern humans did not exceed two thousand simultaneously living individuals. About 60-70 thousand years ago, the migration of Homo sapiens from the African ancestral home and the formation of branches leading to modern races and ethnic groups began.
After humans emerged from Africa and spread across the globe, they lived for many generations in relative isolation from each other and accumulated genetic differences. These differences are sufficiently pronounced that they can be used to determine the ethnicity of a person, but they did not occur very long ago (compared to the time of formation of the species) and are therefore shallow. It is believed that racial characteristics account for about 10% of all genetic differences between people on Earth (the remaining 90% are due to individual differences). And yet, over tens of thousands of years, man has managed to adapt to different habitats. In a certain geographical territory, the individuals most adapted to it survived and established themselves; all the rest either could not stand it and left in search of a more comfortable place of residence, or degraded and disappeared from the historical arena. Of course, such a centuries-old adaptation could not but leave an original imprint on the genetic apparatus of representatives of each race and ethnic group.
Some examples of genetic differences between races are well known. Hypolactasia is a digestive disorder in which the intestines do not produce the enzyme lactase to break down milk sugar. About a third of adult Ukrainians and Russians suffer from this disease. The fact is that initially, in all people, the production of this enzyme stopped after breastfeeding, and the ability to drink milk appeared in adults as a result of a mutation. In Holland, Denmark or Sweden, where dairy cows have been bred for a long time, 90% of the population drinks milk without any harm to health, but in China, where dairy farming is not developed, only 2–5% of adults do.
The situation with alcohol is no less known. Its biotransformation occurs in two stages. At first, alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver converts alcohol into acetaldehyde, which causes discomfort. In the second step, another enzyme, acetaldehyde dehydrogenase, oxidizes the aldehyde. The speed of enzyme work is determined genetically. Among Asians, a combination of “slow” enzymes of the first stage with “slow” enzymes of the second stage is common. Because of this, alcohol circulates in the blood for a long time, and at the same time a high concentration of acetaldehyde is maintained. Europeans have the opposite combination of enzymes: in both the first and second stages they are very active, that is, alcohol is broken down quickly and the level of acetaldehyde is lower.
Russians, as usual, have their own way. Half of Russians are carriers of European “alcoholic” genes. But in the other half, the rapid processing of ethanol is combined with the slow oxidation of acetaldehyde. This allows them to become drunk more slowly, but at the same time accumulate more toxic aldehyde in the blood. This combination of enzymes leads to higher alcohol consumption - with all the consequences of severe intoxication.
According to scientists, Asian nomads, who knew alcohol only in the form of fermented mare’s milk, developed a different enzyme in the process of evolution than settled Europeans, who had a long tradition of producing stronger drinks from grapes and grains.
It should be noted that the so-called diseases of civilization - obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders - appeared in some sense due to unintentional neglect of one’s own ethnic characteristics, that is, they became the price to pay for survival in a foreign environment. For example, peoples living primarily in tropical zones consumed foods low in cholesterol and almost no salt. At the same time, with a frequency of up to 40%, they had beneficial gene variants that contribute to the accumulation of cholesterol or deficient salt in the body. However, with a modern lifestyle, this feature becomes a risk factor for atherosclerosis, hypertension, or threatens overweight. In the European population, such genes occur with a frequency of 5–15%. And among the peoples of the Far North, whose food was rich in fats, the transition to a European high-carbohydrate diet leads to the development of diabetes and related diseases.
A very significant and instructive example is shown to the whole world by the country of immigrants. The full bouquet of all the above pathological conditions, also called metabolic syndrome, is the most common disease in the United States. Every fifth American suffers from it, and in certain ethnic groups, patients are even more common. We can only hope that the effect of the “melting pot of nations” will spread to the ethnic gene pool, which will be able to adapt to the natural features of this region and lifestyle depending on socio-economic conditions.
Pigmentation of the skin may also be related to “diseases of civilization.” Light skin appeared as a result of the accumulation of mutations in people who changed their southern habitat to more remote, northern territories. This helped them compensate for the lack of vitamin D, which is produced in the body under the influence of sunlight. Dark skin blocks radiation, so those who live in northern regions are potentially more susceptible to rickets and possibly other disorders due to a lack of vitamin D.
Thus, hereditary polymorphism is a natural result of natural selection, when in the struggle for existence a person, thanks to random mutations, adapted to external environment habitat and developed various defense mechanisms. Since most peoples, except the largest and most scattered ones, lived within the same geographical area, traits acquired from generation to generation over thousands of years were fixed genetically. Including those signs that at first glance seem undesirable or may contribute to serious illnesses. Such a genetic compromise may be merciless for individual individuals, but it contributes to better survival of the population in a specific external environment and the preservation of the species as a whole. If a mutation provides a decisive reproductive advantage, then its frequency in the population will tend to increase, even if it leads to disease. In particular, carriers of the defective sickle cell anemia gene living in Mediterranean countries with widespread malaria are protected from these two diseases at once. Those who inherited both mutant genes from both parents will not survive due to anemia, and those who received two copies of the “normal” gene from their father and mother are likely to die from malaria.
Original post and comments at
28.05.2016 - 11:32
Probably, no other people on Earth has as many myths about its history as the Russians. Some say that “there are no Russians”, others - that Russians are Finno-Ugric, not Slavs, others - that we are all Tatars in the depths, if you scratch us, others repeat the mantra that Rus' was founded by the Varangians...
Professor of Moscow State University and Harvard Anatoly Klyosov refuted most of these myths. The new science of DNA genealogy and its research based on the analysis of genetic data helped him in this, writes KP.ru.
No matter how much you scratch, you won’t find a Tatar
- Anatoly Alekseevich, I would like to get an answer: “So where did the Russians come from?” So that historians, geneticists, ethnographers can gather and tell us the truth. Is science able to do this?
Where did the Russians come from? - there cannot be an exact answer to this question, since Russians are big family, with a common history, but separate roots. But the question of the common Slavic origin of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians is closed by DNA genealogy. The answer has been received. Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians have the same roots - Slavic.
- What kind of roots are these?
The Slavs have three main genera, or haplogroups (a scientific synonym for the concept of “genus”). Judging by DNA genealogy data: the dominant clan of Slavs are carriers of haplogroup R1a - they are about half of all Slavs in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Poland.
The second largest genus is the carriers of haplogroup I2a - the southern Slavs of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, up to 15–20% of them in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus.
And the third Russian genus - haplogroup N1c1 - descendants of the southern Balts, of which in modern Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia there are about half, and in Russia on average 14%, in Belarus 10%, in Ukraine 7%, since it is farther from the Baltic.
The latter are often called Finno-Ugric people, but this is incorrect. The Finnish component there is minimal.
- What about the saying: “Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar”?
DNA genealogy does not confirm it either. The share of “Tatar” haplogroups among Russians is very small. Quite the opposite - the Tatars have many more Slavic haplogroups.
There is practically no Mongol trace, a maximum of four people per thousand. Neither the Mongols nor the Tatars had any influence on the Russian and Slavic gene pool.
Eastern Slavs, that is, members of the R1 genus - a on the Russian Plain, including Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians - are descendants of the Aryans, that is, ancient tribes who spoke the languages of the Aryan group, lived from the Balkans to the Trans-Urals, and partly moved to India, Iran , Syria and Asia Minor. In the European part of Russia, the ancestors of the Slavs and ethnic Russians separated from them approximately 4,500 years ago.
- Where did Russians come to Russia from?
Presumably the Eastern Slavs came to the Russian Plain from the Balkans. Although no one knows exactly their paths. And successively Tripoli and other archaeological cultures were founded here. All these cultures are, in fact, Rus cultures, because their inhabitants are the direct ancestors of modern ethnic Russians.
Nationalities are different, but the people are one
- What genetic data do you have for Ukraine?
If you compare Russians and Ukrainians based on the “male” Y chromosome, they are almost identical. Yes, and by female mitochondrial DNA too. The data for Eastern Ukraine is simply identical, without any “practically”.
There are slight differences in Lviv, there are fewer carriers of the “Baltic” genus N1c1, but they exist there too. There is no difference in the origin of modern Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians; these are historically the same peoples.
- What do Ukrainian scientists think about this?
Unfortunately, the “scientific” historical materials that are sent to me from Ukraine can be described in one word: horror. Either Adam is from Ukraine, or Noah’s Ark landed there, apparently at Mount Goverla in the Carpathians, or some other “scientific news”. And everywhere they try to emphasize the difference between Ukrainians and Russians.
- Sometimes the genus R1a, still dominant in Russia and Ukraine, is called “Ukrainian”. Is that so?
Rather, they called it a few years ago. Now, under pressure from DNA genealogy data, they have already realized the mistake, and those who made the name have slowly “swept it under the rug.” We have shown that the genus R1a appeared approximately 20 thousand years ago, in southern Siberia. And then the parent haplogroup was found on Lake Baikal, dating back 24 thousand years ago.
So the R1a genus is neither Ukrainian nor Russian. It is common to many peoples, but numerically it is most pronounced among the Slavs. After their appearance in Southern Siberia, R1a carriers traveled a long migration route to Europe. But some of them remained in Altai, and now there are many tribes there that continue to belong to the R1a genus, but speak Turkic languages.
- So, are Russians a separate nation from the rest of the Slavs? And are Ukrainians an “invented” nationality or a real one?
Slavs and ethnic Russians are easy different concepts. Ethnic Russians are those for whom Russian is their native language, who consider themselves Russian, and whose ancestors lived in Russia for at least three or four generations. And the Slavs are those who speak languages of the Slavic group, these are Poles, and Ukrainians, and Belarusians, and Serbs, and Croats, and Czechs with Slovaks, and Bulgarians. They are not Russians.
And Ukrainians in this sense are a separate nation. They have their own country, their own language, citizenship. There are differences in culture.
But as far as the people, the ethnic group, their genome is concerned, you will not find any differences from the Russians. Political boundaries often separate related peoples. And sometimes, in fact, one people.
The Varangians left no traces on us
- There is a generally accepted “Norman” theory, which we all studied in school. She claims that Rus' was founded by the Scandinavian Varangians. Is there a trace of their DNA in the blood of Russians?
One can name the names of many scientists, starting with Mikhail Lomonosov, who rejected this “Norman” theory. And DNA genealogy completely refuted it. I examined thousands of DNA samples from all over Russia and from Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and nowhere did I find any noticeable presence of Scandinavians. Out of thousands of samples, only four people were found whose ancestors included a Scandinavian by DNA.
Where did these Scandinavians go then? After all, some scientists write that their number in Rus' was tens, or even hundreds of thousands. When you report this data to supporters of the “Norman” theory, they, speaking in Russian, “pretend to be rags.” Or they simply state that “DNA genealogy data cannot be trusted.” The “Norman” theory is a concept more of ideology than of science.
- Where did this version about the Varangians - the founders of Rus' - come from?
The Russian Academy of Sciences was originally created by German scientists. And in their historical theories there was practically no place for the Slavs. Lomonosov fought with them, wrote to Empress Catherine II, pointing out that the German Miller wrote a Russian history where there was not a single good words about Rus', and all the exploits are attributed to the Scandinavians. But in the end, this theory of “Normanism” still became part of the flesh and blood of Russian historical science.
The reason is simple - the “Westernism” of many historians, and the fear that they will be considered “nationalists” if they honestly study the history of the Slavs. And then - goodbye Western grants.
Also, some scientists talk about a certain Finno-Ugric substrate in the Russian people. But DNA genealogy does not find this substrate! However, this is repeated and repeated.
There is no "white race"
- There seems to be no doubt that Russian culture is part of European culture. But genetically Russians are a European, “white race”? Or, as Blok wrote, “yes, we are Scythians, yes, we are Asians”? Is there a border between Russians and Europe?
First of all, there is no “white race”. There are Caucasians. Using the term “white race” in science is bad manners.
The Scythians possessed haplogroup R1a, but most are believed to have had a Mongoloid appearance. So Blok was partly right, only in relation to the Scythians, but his “we” is a poetic fantasy. It is difficult to determine the boundaries of races, especially in modern world, where there is an active mixing of peoples. But it’s easier to separate the Slavs from the rest of the Europeans. Note, not only Russians, but Slavs in general.
There is a fairly clear boundary between the predominance of haplogroups R1a and R1b - from the former Yugoslavia to the Baltic. To the West, R1b predominates, and to the East, R1a. This border is not symbolic, but quite real. Thus, Ancient Rome, which reached Iran in the south, could not overcome it in the north.
For example, recently north of Berlin, in the territory of the early Slavic Lusatian archaeological culture, where almost all settlements still have Slavic names, have found evidence of a huge battle that took place 3,200 years ago. According to various sources, thousands of people took part in it.
The world press has already dubbed it the “First World War of Civilization,” but no one knows who those warriors were. And DNA genealogy along migration routes shows that this was apparently a battle between the early Slavs of haplogroup R1a against carriers of haplogroup R1b, which is now carried by 60% of men in Central and Western Europe. That is, the ancient Slavs defended their territories 3200 years ago.
- Can genetics look not only back, but also forward? What awaits the gene pool of Europe, the gene pool of Russians in the next 100 years, your forecast?
As for Europe, we can conclude that its gene pool will change under the pressure of migrants. But no one will publish an article about this there; it will be considered politically incorrect. For example, the press in the United States did not say a single word about the New Year's events in Cologne, because according to their concepts, such news incites hatred towards migrants.
In Russia there is much more freedom in science; in Russia many issues are freely discussed and the authorities are criticized. In the USA this is almost impossible. I worked both at Harvard as a professor of biochemistry and at large American biomedical companies, and I know how things are. If some scientific conclusions turn out to go against US policy, such things will not be published in the West. Even scientific journals.
As for Russia, don’t expect anything dramatic. The Russian gene pool will remain, and everything will be fine with it. And if we remember that our history is not black or white, but all of it, without exception, is ours, then everything will be fine with the country.
Interviewed by Yulia Alyokhina