Do autosomal studies show there has been little gene flow between North Africa and Southern Europe?
RM states: An autosomal analysis of 10 ancestry-informative markers in Southern Europeans (including Italians, Sicilians and Sardinians) and various Middle Eastern/North African populations revealed a “line of sharp genetic change [that] runs from Gibraltar to Lebanon,” which has divided the Mediterranean into distinct northern and southern clusters since at least the Neolithic period. The authors conclude that “gene flow [across the sea] was more the exception than the rule,” attributing this result to “a joint product of initial geographic isolation and successive cultural divergence, leading to the origin of cultural barriers to population admixture.” (Simoni et al., Hum Biol, 1999) Amusingly, in an attempt to give himself credibility RM has picked up a “scientific”-sounding catch-phrase from the AncestryByDNA people and misapplied it. “Ancestry Informative Markers”, in ABD-terminology, are SNPs specially chosen because they appear at markedly different frequencies in different raci
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