Re: SCIENCE TRIVIA

["RAUBER, JOEL" <JOEL_RAUBER@SDSTATE.EDU>]

> -------------------------------------------------------
> Founding fathers
>
> Less than 50 people founded the entire population of
> Europe, according to a new way of reading history
> from the genome.
>
>  Less than 50 people founded the entire population of Europe,
> according
> to a new and accurate way to read demographic history from the genome.
>
>  Scientists previously believed that the 500 million people
> that live in
> Europe today are ancestors of about 10,000 people who left Africa
> around 100,000 years ago.
>
>  But scientists from the Whitehead Institute at MIT in Cambridge,
> Massachusetts have found so much genetic evidence of inbreeding, they
> believe all Europeans probably descended from fewer than about 50
> people who interbred together over about 30 generations. This select
> group may have left Africa about 60,000 years ago....

I'm immediatly wondering if this means that the Mongol horde had no effect
on the European gene pool.  Not to mention previous Steppe migrations into
Europe.  My skepticism meter is heading towards being pinned.  (Doesn't mean
the meter is correct though!)