Comments on: Uyghurs are hybrids

By: Rähmätjan

Rähmätjan — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:40:49 +0000

I think I have to read this post carefully.
but it’s true that we (Uyghurs) are never similar with chinese..

By: pconroy

pconroy — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:07:37 +0000

Luis,
There are not as many classification problems as you seem to suggest.
Celtic and Latin are clearly related – I’m fluent in Irish Gaelic and took 5 years Latin, and can attest to this.
Yes, Greek and Armenian are fairly closely related, but only marginally more than they are to Indo-Aryan. The Armenians language originated with the Phrygians, a Balkan people after all.
Tocharian branches from Proto-Celto-Italo-Tocharian.

By: Luis

Luis — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 06:44:50 +0000

Not Western Indoeuropean for most linguists, Pconroy but a branch of its own that apparently kept the archaic “centum” feature also present in some Western IE languages (but not Slavic nor Baltic) and other non-affiliated IE languages such as Greek. Centum/Satem is not anymore accepted (in most cases) as a fundamental devision within IE tongues, but just a phonological change that took place in the steppes after the earliest expansion of his prolific ethno-linguistic group.
In brief: there is Western IE (most European IEs), there is Eastern IE (Indo-Iranian) and there are other IEs, among them Tocharian (but also Hittite, Armenian, Greek, Albanian). Classification trees vary somewhat depending on who you read (is Latin closer to Celtic or Germanic? Are Armenian and Greek related in spite of one being satem and the other centum?) but this basic branching is generally not affected. And Tocharian always ends up branching out near the root.

By: Reader

Reader — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:39:43 +0000

pconroy, Thanks. I didn’t know that.

By: razib

razib — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:21:54 +0000

from another gene, then why should we expect SLC24A5 to sweep through East Asia? The job it does would aready be "taken"...? well, you obviously didn't read my links. the key is that if an allele has a 10% selection coefficient its sweep should be powerful enough that the gene flow has to be really (shockingly) low to prevent it from spreading before a new mutant arises which reduces its local s. get it?

By: toto

toto — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 16:02:47 +0000

SLC24A5′s derived variant has swept as far as Sri Lanka. The fact that it isn’t extant at appreciable frequencies in East Asia suggests to me that Uyghurs did not serve as a mediator population between the east and west.
Uh… If we follow the conventional wisdom that SLC24A5 is primarily a “pale skin gene”, and selected for this reason, and if we accept that Northern Chinese get their pale skin from another gene, then why should we expect SLC24A5 to sweep through East Asia? The job it does would aready be “taken”…?

By: razib

razib — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 04:13:55 +0000

But it’s a wrong choice of words in any case.
why?

By: pconroy

pconroy — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:40:07 +0000

Reader,
Don’t forget that the European Uyghur ancestors (60%) are likely the Tocharians, and there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that they spoke a language akin to Western Indo-European languages, especially Celtic. Their dress – tartan/plaid – and material culture, sheep, draft oxen, wheeled carts for transport, is most like that of Central Europe. Their appearance is like that of Northern Europe. They carry mtDNA found in Western Europe and some like T1 which is found mostly in Northern Europe. I am Irish and mtDNA T1 as a fact.

By: Reader

Reader — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:40:08 +0000

One thing I never liked was how the word ‘European’ is used instead of white or Caucasian when Tocharians/Uyghurs are discussed. It implies a certain level of ethnocentrism and some fantasy that one’s (read Western Euro’s/American’s) ancestors spread as far east as China. Whereas it is more like the ancestors of Europeans/Uyghurs/Iranians etc spread to many different areas.

By: Luis

Luis — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:06:28 +0000

Everyone is “hybrid” then. You know perfectly that no one belongs to any pure stock, right?
But it’s a wrong choice of words in any case.

By: razib

razib — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:58:40 +0000

luis, i don’t give a shit about species concepts. ergo, you can infer what i think of a rock-hard definition for “hybrid.”

By: Luis

Luis — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:54:36 +0000

“Hybrid”??? A mule is a hybrid, a horse is not. A liger is a hybrid, a lion is not. X Cupressocyparis leylandii (a very common gradening tree) is a hybryd, a cypress like its ancestor the Cupressus macrocarpa is not.
Coming to humans, maybe some ancient remains, like the Lagar Velho kid, were hybrids of different human species but Uyghurs are 100% Homo sapiens, not “hybrid”. They may be heavily admixed but never “hybrid”: their components are all of the same species.
Note: it seems the term is also used in artificial breeding of same-species breeds or cultivars. But again this is not the case of Uyghurs, whose admixture wasn’t directed by some mad scientist.
…
Otherwise it’s somewhat interesting, specially the estimate date for the main admixture event that seems to coincide with Turkic expansion through Central Asia, some centuries BCE.

By: razib

razib — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:47:36 +0000

ian, i don’t think the current over the counter kits have the level of granularity you are looking for, but Y lineage tests might be able to confirm pathan ancestry since they’re iranian.

By: IanR

IanR — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:41:49 +0000

I love these studies of genetic admixture. I’d love to be able to do one on my own family – my fathers grandfathers were supposed to be Pathans (at least one was Bihari, perhaps both), but my father has an obvious “East Asian” look. But he also a “very light skinned” Hindu great-grandfather, and a very dark skinned Hindu great-grandmother. Then there’s the family who lived across the road who may have been my grandfather’s cousins, or may have been “jahaji” family (kinship bonds developed by spending three months together on a boat from India).

By: razib

razib — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:10:16 +0000

LOL.

By: Martin R

Martin R — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:03:41 +0000

Cool stuff! One suggestion though: if talking to humanities scholars about these things, avoid the word Urheimat. It’s a four-letter word.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:37:24 +0000

My above post was written before reading Razib’s “more”. More alter.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:08:37 +0000

A point I don’t remember seeing systematically in these discussions is the fact that there are different types of “population”. Some populations are stable (with little admixture from outside) for centuries — Icelanders are a major example, but peasant populations in general are very stable, with very little migration and only the occasional disruptions caused by wars, epidemics, and other factors which lead to resettlement by outsiders.
Trading people, sailing peoples, and nomads, by contrast, are continually churned. In the case of nomads, besides actual migration you also have admixtures resulting from kidnapping, slaving, adoption, intermarriage with allies, reaffiliation of renegade subtribal groups, etc. And for nomads travel was relatively unrestricted. (In 1700 the range of the Kalmyks included Xinjiang, Tibet, Moscow, and the Crimea; in 1815 their troops even rached Paris, though that was under Russian auspices.)
The Uighurs are a sedentary people, but trade has always been important to them. Their ancestors were nomads (before 900 AD) and they’re surrounded by nomadic peoples with whom they intermarry. They’ve also intermarried with people passing through on the Silk Road, and with their trading partners from Beijing to Baghdad.
An additional point specific to the Uighurs is that if the Tokharians have any descendants, they’re probably among the Uighurs. Tokharian languages were in use in Xinjiang at least as late as 800 A.D., and possibly a few centuries later. They were a Caucasian people, and possibly European. (The Uighurs also have Scythian, Persian, and other Iranian ancestors.)
Besides just pointing out that the Uighurs have a very mixed past, it also can be said that the Icelanders and the Uighurs are two examples of historically recorded nation-formation. The Icelanders are a generic SCandinavian-Irish mix, but because of inbreeding and a number of decimations by plague and famine, they have a very distinct genetic footprint — one of only four European genetic outliers, according to Cavalli-Sforza (the others being the Lapps, the Basques, and the Sardinians.)
Whereas the Uighurs are a genetic hodgepodge, but this does not prevent language, religion, kinship relations, and geographical factors from giving them a distinct national character.
In short: 1250 years ago there was no such thing as a Uighur (in our sense) or an Icelander. The Icelandic ancestors were scattered through Norway, Ireland, and probably Scotland and Denmark, and completely mixed in with their neighbors.
As for the Uighurs, their diverse ancestors were scattered all over Eurasia: Xinjiang (Tokharians), China, the steppe (Iranians and Turks), and West Asia (Persian peoples). And in fact, there was a nomadic pagan or Manichaean Turkish people called “Uighurs” in Mongolia which came to Xinjiang and took over around 900 A.D., but any way you look at it (genetic, cultural, geographical) they’re only one of a number of threads coming together to comprise the present Uighurs.