European Ethnicity #
August 18th, 2008 | In Worth Knowing
Strange Maps highlights a study of the genetic commonality of Europeans. Finland’s a striking outlier. Other observations:
- The extent of genetic variation is greater north to south than east to west. This may be a result of the way Europe was colonized by modern humans, i.e. from the south, in three successive waves of migration (45,000 years ago, where before there had only been Neanderthals; 17,000 years ago, after the last Ice Age; and 10,000 years ago, with the advent of farming techniques from the Middle East).
- Yugoslav genetic variation is quite large (hence the big pink blob), and overlaps with the Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, Czech and even the Italian ones.
- There is surprisingly little overlap between the northern and southern German populations, each of which has more in common with their other neighbours (Danish/Dutch/Swedish in the northern case, Austrian/Swiss/French in the other one).
- The Swiss population is entirely subsumed by the French one, similarly, the Irish population almost doesn’t show any characteristics that would distinguish it from the British one.