Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Mating structure in the genes

Regarding the previous post on matrilocality, this paper examined differences in mtDNA and Y-chromosome diversity between Central Asian farmers (who are organized into nuclear families and practice endogamy, although the picture below shows exogamy) and pastoral populations (who are organized into lineages and practice exogamy). They don't find much difference in mtDNA diversity, but find less Y-chromosome diversity among the pastoral than the farming populations. They also find that the Uzbek groups who converted to a farming way of life about 20 generations ago show similar patterns of Y-chromosome diversity to the other farmers, indicating that "a molecular signature in Y-chromosome diversity is short-lived and can disappear within a few centuries after the disintegration of descent groups."

Here is the link to the commentary paper where Jobling and Balaresque assert that 70% of modern human populations practice patrilocality, a figure that I've seen disputed at least once.

1 comment:

Egbert said...

It won't succeed as a matter of fact, that's exactly what I think.
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