torzio
Regular Member
- Messages
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- Location
- Eastern Australia
- Ethnic group
- North East Italian
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- T1a2 - SK1480
- mtDNA haplogroup
- H95a
Most people don't really care about pigmentation and other stuff such being less or more "European", thankfully. Many have just a more "technical" interest on pigmentation, or intellectual curiosity. But I agree that there're few Southern Europeans obsessed with this subject, and so are few Northern Europeans, yes; generally some immature young men, but there must be exceptions.
Well, that said, here we go. There're certainly variations within North Italy itself in phenotype. When it comes to genotype, admixture is one perspective. There is also the actual genetic distance/Fst between populations. So, perhaps the table below helps to dissolve the "dichotomy"? It comes from the paper The Italian genome reflects the history of Europe and the Mediterranean basin. See: n.it, c.it, ibe, fra, ceu, gbr etc.
Perhaps an explanation would be possible even under the perspective of admixture, if we consider selective process and timing. I mean, we've to keep in mind that these "light" traits were uncommon in all ancient populations, and that they become more frequent through selection (more in some areas, less in others). We associate them to certain modern populations, and that may be misleading in this case. So, I wonder if it's possible that what you observed could be explained also by the fact that the relevant "conditions" that shifted North Italians towards North (in a modern perspective) were more recent than those that shifted Iberia (beginning from Neolithic, if Bicicleur is right in saying that Iberian farmers had more WHG than Central European/North Italian farmers). It would mean that, when Steppe-rich folks arrived in Iberia to add up with farmers and WHGs, the selective process was in an earlier stage, at the same time that "later" migrations from Central Europe haven't had the same impact over Iberians than they had over North Italians, and also at the same time that selective process in Iberia itself was not that strong (as it was in Central Europe), due to geographical reasons. On the other hand, when these pops Angela just listed reached Italy, some selection has already been done. Perhaps it helps to explain it too?
Finally, still regarding this perspective, Iberians must get extra-WHG compared to Bergamo, and fewer extra-CHG/Iran. The former component is weak in "West Asians", so it's naturally more strongly related to the North in some of these tools, even if indirectly, while the latter is shared with "West Asians", being Southern or Northern depending on the other components associated. The CHG/Iran in Steppe must be associated to North, but the extra-CHG/Iran must be Southern. That's possibly why other people such Romanians may plot South as well (if the North reference is not East Europe), compared to Iberians. Some Westerners (such S. English and N. Spanish) may even plot closer to each other than to Easterners, depending on the PCA.
Possibly there're other components involved, of course, and not just these two.
that paper was not treated well because nearly all the adriatic side italians where excluded ...................IIRC , the author wanted to point out an iberian connection with Italy, be it a non-adriatic side