Friday, July 03, 2009

I get comments....

On this post about Thomas Jefferson not being a Christian:
"Thomas jefferson was a a secret muslim and practised polygamy. They just found out that his ancestors were arabs."
Hmm.. This is either someone incredibly stupid or hilariously prankish. So... a quick google. This company: The Wellcome Trust funded this college: University of Leicester to have their geneticists do a DNA check on the DNA of Thomas Jefferson. One of the projects is:

Sequencing of the human genome at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Ok, so far so good. So, what is this about Jefferson?: (my bold)
Almost 10 years ago, the University of Leicester team, led by Professor Mark Jobling, together with international collaborators, showed that Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one of the sons of Sally Hemings, a slave of Jefferson’s.

The work was done using the Y chromosome, a male-specific part of our DNA that passes down from father to son. Jefferson carried a very unusual Y chromosome type, which helped to strengthen the evidence in the historical paternity case.

Now, new techniques have been brought to bear on Jefferson’s Y chromosome, in a study reported in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The presidential chromosome turns out to belong to a rare class called ‘K2’, which is found at its highest frequency in the Middle East and Eastern Africa, including Oman, Somalia and Iraq. Its closest match was in a man from Egypt. Could this mean that the President had recent ancestry in the Middle East? A careful survey revealed a few K2 chromosomes in France, Spain and England. Together, the K2s form a diverse group that may, in fact, have been in western Europe for many thousands of years.

Further evidence for Jefferson’s British origins come from the finding that two out of 85 randomly recruited men named Jefferson share exactly the same Y chromosome as the President. Prof Jobling said: ‘The two men have ancestry in Yorkshire and the West Midlands, and knew of no historical connection to the USA. They were amazed and fascinated by the link, which connects them into Thomas Jefferson’s family tree, probably about 11 generations ago.’

The ultimate origins of K2 chromosomes remain a mystery, however, and need further investigation: while they may have been present in Europe since the Stone Age, another possibility is that K2s came to Europe with the Phoenicians, an ancient maritime trading culture that spread out across the Mediterranean from their home in what is now Lebanon. The US media has taken up a different theory, leading to the New York Times headline, ‘Jefferson – the first Jewish president?’: European K2 chromosomes may originate in Sephardic (Spanish) Jewish populations, who have their ultimate origins in the Middle East.

Prof Jobling said: ‘When we look closely at large collections of British Y chromosomes we find surprises, like this rare K2 lineage, and the African chromosome that we recently found in a Yorkshireman. These exotic chromosomes remind us of the complexity of British history and prehistory.’
So the poor benighted fool who frothed at the thought that Jefferson had 'impure' blood most decidedly has 'exotic DNA' in his lineage as well. In fact we ALL have African blood.

Welcome to the gene pool, pal!

6 comments:

Mike Goldman said...

How do we know that Thomas Jefferson was really born? Have you seen his birth certificate?

ellroon said...

*gasp!* OMG! Was he born in Kenya? It would be irresponsible not to speculate!

Mike Goldman said...

I'm pretty sure it means he was actually a space alien.

An undocumented space alien!

He should have been deported to Mars.

Bryan said...

The Normans were using a short form of Norseman and were Vikings who wandered all over the Atlantic coast.

The Moorish kingdom of Grenada was not finally defeated on the Iberian peninsula until the end of the 15th century.

The British sailed around the world and returned with people as well as trade goods.

The Jefferson family owned slaves for a very long time before TJ was born, and it is highly unlikely that Sally Hemmings' descendants were the first with Jefferson genes.

The Celts wandered everywhere before settling in the islands off the coast, just do a search on Galicia and it's variant spellings and you will find current and former cities all over the map that were Celtic strong holds.

This silliness about "purity" should be dumped into the trash where it belongs.

ellroon said...

/Wingnut: But I've been white all my life, dammit! I must be PURE!

Blenderized version, of course...

ellroon said...

And I love the idea, Bryan, that the ebb and flow of populations happened even 'pre-history' ... there is no Master Race.