WHEN GENETICS AND HISTORY COLLIDE

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17 November 2008

Essays on genetic anthropology

Levon Yepiskoposyan – anthropologist and geneticist, PHD, major
science of Molecular Biology Institute of NAS RA.

The history of the origin of man, his colonization of the planet,
the appearance of different ethnic groups and their migrations
are indelibly embedded in our genome. This decay-resistant and
indestructible data contains not only encoded information of the
biological past of Homo sapiens, but also the results of the impact
of various cultural practices and ancient contacts of our ancestors
on the genetic pattern of modern populations.

It is the task of genetic anthropologists to decipher theses
‘re¬cords’.

They have been singularly successful in this mission having already
established the genesis of the founding mother and father of
mankind (‘the genetic Adam and Eve’), estimated the contribution of
Neanderthals to the genetic legacy of mo¬dern humans, reconstructed
the demographic history of various peoples, confirmed the existence of
the Old Testament priests, understood the reasons of unusually high
frequencies of specific patrilineal genealogies in some populations,
and determined the selective advantage of widely spread deleterious
mutations.

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