The Genetic Map of Europe | Hacker News Reader

The Genetic Map of Europe

brilliantmaps.com

70 pointsvinnyglennon43 comments

These are already very old data. Another comment here links to a research paper, so allow me to link to a newer review article.

Pickrell, J. K., & Reich, D. (2014). Toward a new history and geography of human genes informed by ancient DNA. Trends in Genetics, 30(9), 377-389.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952514...

http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2014/03/21/003517.f...

To sum up what the current findings are, "Implicit in this research is the assumption that the geographic locations of people today are informative about the geographic locations of their ancestors in the distant past. However, it is now clear that long-range migration, admixture, and population replacement subsequent to the initial out-of-Africa expansion have altered the genetic structure of most of the world's human populations. In light of this we argue that it is time to critically reevaluate current models of the peopling of the globe, as well as the importance of natural selection in determining the geographic distribution of phenotypes."

Here's a great related paper:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735096/?_escape...

The authors took SNP data from 3,000 Europeans and overlay a PCA plot of it on a map of Europe. The result is that clusters in the PCA plot roughly align with national boundaries. They are also demonstrate that:

> an individual’s DNA can be used to infer their geographic origin with surprising accuracy—often to within a few hundred kilometres.

This immediately reminded me of this other map[0], where a plot of the two main components of a PCA of the human genome ends up looking like a map of Europe.

———

0. http://blog.23andme.com/news/a-different-kind-of-gene-mappin...

I wish someone could come up with a good way to encode information like this so that colourweak persons could use less time decoding it.

I'm not generally colourweak and I have trouble decoding it too, J1 and J2 in particular look pretty much the same to me.

J1 and J2 are the same colour. The key used for the slices is on the left of the image. The labels on top show more detail, but several haplogroups are grouped into the same colour.

For distinguishing between red and green hues for some people, http://colortest.it/enhance-r:http://brilliantmaps.com/the-g... might be useful (or the "Enhance green" setting, or switching between the two).

colour coding is generally really bad, and especially when there are more than 4 or 5 things to be labelled..

would it be so hard to put the short one/two/three letter haplogroup names from the keys inside of the largest slices? or to show the pies consistently with the same groups in the same order?

Pretty bold to call the site "brilliant maps" if they rely on crappy colour coding like this. Even with helper tools I can't make head or tails of the map.

Wow. You guys really dislike colour coding maps. Colour coding is really okay for most of us, even if its not easy to distinguish between all colours. What alternative do you prefer?

About one in twelve men has some kind of colour weakness. If you're relying on the ability to distinguish between colours on hue or saturation alone, you're making it difficult or impossible for one in twelve men to use your product.

It's not that hard: if you need to distinguish a small number of colours, make them sufficiently different in luminosity: if you wouldn't be able to tell the colours apart on a greyscale photo copy, someone will be unable to use it. If you need to distinguish between a large number of colours, use additional clues (e.g. labels, patterns, etc) other than the colour itself.

It's not "not easy to distinguish between all colours". It's impossible to distinguish between some colours, making the map itself meaningless. This is akin to having a heatmap where the "hottest" and "coldest" areas are indicated with the same colour: the result is useless unless you're specifically interested in "average" vs "extremes" (with no regard for direction).

I just expressed my wish that someone would try to come up with a better way: different colours combined with hatching maybe?

I'm not even colourblind, just colorweak and I am fairly sure there must be some set of colours that are both differentiable and looks ok at the same time.

Alternatively here's a feature idea for someone who creates charts / chart toolkits: make several palettes, including one with safe colours and/or hatching.

Where is Bosnia and Herzegovina?

I can understand removing some of the smallest countries, but Bosnia has a larger population than Albania or any of the three Baltic countries. I guess this would have been much more legible if it wasn't presented as a map.

If they put Bosnia and Herzegovina in the map then all these wars will make sense. And you do not want to promote wars. Do you?

The big difference between Austria and Germany is striking. It would be interesting to see Germany's pie chart by region.

The article "The" is really misplaced here. It's a map about Y-DNA Haplogroups. A mtDNA Haplogroup map would already look quite different which shows how bad they are at showing off genetic relations in Europe.

My god, its full of pie charts! And for some reasons they've been dumped on top of a map...

As substantiated by another thread, this is a very very poor data visualisation that is being inflicted upon us. Pie charts should never be used with this many segments, and just putting them on top of a map is both ugly and confusing.

This would be better displayed as bar charts spatially clustered by similarity and with a country label.

> Moreover, it should obviously not be used to imply that any country is better than any other. While we there may be differences between some of us, we are all equal.

If you need to tell this to your audience you might want to find a different audience.

"While we there may be differences between some of us, we are all equal."

Well, which is it?

Equal as in égalité[1], not similarity.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberté,_égalité,_fraternité

I suspect that phrase could be interpreted as "While there may be quantifiable genetic differences between some of us, we are all equal in our humanity."

> The Balkans is probably the most genetically diverse region in Europe.

Following the theory of the selfish gene, maybe it isn't surprising that hey hate each other.

"maybe it isn't surprising that hey hate each other"

Where did you get that from? Romanians don't hate anyone south of Danube (i.e. the rest of the Balkan Peninsula).

I don't think Romania is actually part of the Balkan, at least not by that definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkans#/media/File:Balkan_topo...

Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, Albania - they are certainly not good neighbors. Nice people and great scenery though.

I like this because at a glance you really can't tell anything about these arbitrary racial groupings in these arbitrarily arranged territories.

i look forward to a time when there is free discussion of genetics without having to apologise or make allowances for racists at the same time.

Can anyone recommend a good book covering these topics and the history/migration of these groups at an entry/casual level?

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Aryan in the context of this article refers to the populations in the Indo-Aryan language group[1] which shares the R1a haplogroup[2] with multiple other groups.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_languages

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R-M17

Quoting from your Knapp link:

Other Aryans could have easily gone down the Sarasvati and Sarayu into north India. Others went from the Indus into Kashmir and Afghanistan, and into Central Asia. Others went into the areas of Gujarat and Sind, and over through Persia and the Gulf region. This is how the Sumerian civilization was founded, along with Babylonia. From there they went farther into Turkey and Europe.

This seems to indicate that not only did Aryans exist, but that someone descended from them could have made it onto the map in TFA. Which isn't surprising: people move around all the time, and over millennia they and their descendants certainly could move from India to Europe.

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You know dragging Rajiv Malhotra, Koenraad Elst, and for all I know Subramanian Swamy into this thread is not going to lead to a constructive debate. This is not the JNU tea room here where you're upsetting the applecart or something.

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I'm not calling you a fascist. Elst may have genuine points about the aggressiveness of Abrahamic religions, this doesn't make it OK to make this point over the bodies of Muslims today who had nothing to do with Somnath, etc. But that's what people use him for.

Just because someone lives within the boundaries of India doesn't give you the right to dictate anything to them outside the bounds of the Indian Constitution, something Malhotra (tell me, does he have _any_ formal training in historiography?) would do well to remember.

So maybe there was an Aryan migration or the IVC merged with them somehow. Do you really think that everyone who might hold the Aryan invasion hypothesis automatically thinks Indians are bovine Hindu Dravidian stock who never stand up for themselves? Try telling that to the Jaipuris or the Marathas for starters (very Dravidian, those two). This is all the worst kind of caricaturing you are engaged in.

It seems you're interested in having an argument that is totally unrelated to TFA.

It's certainly possible. I believe the Eastern European/Central Asian origin and dispersal of the Indo/European peoples has more evidence and is much more likely though.... nationalistic feelings and propaganda aside.

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There is ample genetic evidence of the Eastern European origin of the Indo-European peoples (as well as archeological, historical and linguistic evidence).

This is why it is still by far the most accepted theory in academia and it makes the most sense (wishes of Indian nationalists not-withstanding).

Also, just curiously... how do you get an Indian origin of the Indo-European people out of the link you posted? From the summary, it states nothing of the sort and merely confirms that there are genes in common between Europeans and some populations of India... a fact most everyone agrees on. More endogamy doesn't imply origin by any stretch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Aryans

"Politicized theory". Not accepted by mainstream academics. Most likely not how it happened. Please don't confuse nationalistic pride with reality.

There is ample genetic evidence of the Eastern European origin - I am interested in this as well. Any sources?

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http://www.icr.org/article/evidence-for-young-world/

Don't ignore the evidence!

So what's your point? My family origins are from UP and Punjab, with Pashtun and Central Asian forebears as well as some European and African admixture once they got to USA. I had my DNA sequenced, both ANI and ASI popped up as well as Central Asian. Does that mean I'm a living contradiction?

I do know what an abugida is, what are you driving at?

That red R1b is a strong motherfucker (no pun intented)

That red is "Celtic, Basque, Italic, Frisian, and Saxon", a rather too large and too diverse of a group I must say.

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