Vol 1, №1, 2010 ISSN: 1920-2989 Russian Journal of Genetic Genealogy Publisher Lulu inc., 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, altered in any form or by any means: mechanical, electronic, with photocopying, etc., without the prior written permission of the publisher of the journal, or authors of articles. When citing a reference to this publication is required. Editor Michael Temosh Art editor Roman Sychev Nataliya Zyryanova Technical editor Denis Grigoriev Reviewer Alexander Kireev Contact address [email protected] © RJGG, 2010 Contents European prehistory in mirror of genetics: a contemporary view Oleg Balanovsky ....................................................................................... 5 Geographic distribution and molecular evolution of ancestral Y chromosome haplotypes in the Low Countries Gerhard Mertens, Hugo Goossens ............................................................. 17 Whit Athey, developer of Y-haplogroup predictor Denis Grigoriev ...................................................................................... 29 Comment on “Geographic distribution and molecular evolution of ancestral Y chromosome haplotypes in the Low Countries” by Gerhard Mertens and Hugo Goossens Guido Deboeck ....................................................................................... 35 Y-haplogroups of carriers of the Aryan language A.A. Aliev, A.S. Smirnov .......................................................................... 38 Origin of “Jewish” clusters of E1b1b1 (M35) haplogroup A.A. Aliev .............................................................................................. 47 Modern carriers of haplogroup E1b1b1c1 (M34) are the descendants of the ancient Levantines A.A. Aliev, Bob Del Turco ......................................................................... 50   RJGG The Russian Journal of Genetic Genealogy: Vol 1, ȹ1, 2009 ISSN: 1920-2997 http://rjgg.org © All rights reserved European prehistory in mirror of genetics: a contemporary view* Introduction Oleg Balanovsky 1 ed concepts in population genetics at that time; nonetheless it was almost entirely rejected in the subsequent decade. The European genetic landscape, as restored based on the analysis of classical markers, shows three principle features: 1) a general homogeneity (the Europeans are genetically very similar to each other, compared to populations of other continents); 2) the presence of only a few outliers (isolated peripheral populations such as Icelanders, Saami, or Sardinians); their peculiarities are the secondary, having arose after these populations were demographically split off and underwent the genetic drift from the main European corpus; 3) Clear geographic patterns of gradual genetic changes. To identify these geographic patterns Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues (Menozzi et al., 1978, Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994) and independently Russian geneticists (Rychkov & Balanovskaya, 1992) developed the method of "synthetic maps". These maps are created by a complex mathematical algorithm but in a simpler way they consist of displaying the geographic distribution of an "ideal" genetic marker, which correlates with geographical patterns of the majority of real markers presenting the data (Menozzi et al., 1978; Rychkov & Balanovskaya, 1992; Balanovskaya & Nurbaev, 1997a). This synthetic map visually demonstrated gradual changes with a remarkable geographical pattern: from Anatolia via the Balkans over the rest of Europe i.e. from the Southeast to the Northwest (Fig 1). This picture was interpreted as