Subject: Re: Frontier and Space in Russian History
From:    Elizabeth Morrow Clark 
Date:    Fri, 6 Sep 2002 14:49:04 -0500
To:      H-RUSSIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU
From:    Marshall Poe [mailto:mpoe@fas.harvard.edu]
Sent:    Tuesday, August 27, 2002 6:38 PM

Dear Colleagues:

I'd like to add just a footnote to the thread on Frontier and Space in
Russian history.  Marcus Sherwood-Jenkins wrote:


> Some interesting comments are coming out of this stream and some strange
> ones at that - as far as I am aware there is no racial difference between
> "Europeans" and "Rus", the original Rus being of scandinavian (Viking)
> descent a fact bourne out by the archaeology of recent years but

convenently

> overlooked by both Russian and Ukranian nationalists.


Last semester I did some research on the origins of the Rus' and Slavs using
advances in modern genetics.  Molecular biologists (Cavalli-Szforza is the
best known) have developed techniques which allow us to compare the "genetic
fingerprints" of different populations around the globe. By comparing
different genomes (more specifically, the presence or absence of
polymophisms called "alleles"), population biologists can determine how
related groups are and thereby infer facts about their history and identity.
The basic story is this:

1. We all came from Africa (which, logically, currently has the greatest
genetic diversity)

2. About 100000 years ago, some of us migrated into Eurasia and dispersed to
its various parts, and eventually the Americas.

3. About 15000 years ago farming was discovered in the Near East. Neolithic
farmers made their way from the Near East to Europe, where they seem to have
wiped out the entire population of hunter gatherers (no genetic trace
survives).

4. Approximately 5000 years ago, animals were domesticated in central
Eurasia (probably modern Ukraine).  A group of Neolithic farmers we call
Indo-Europeans then wandered into Europe, wiping out the native population.
Genetic evidence demonstrates that the Neolithic populations survived only
in Basque country and Finland--also the only two places in Europe that do
not speak indo-European languages.  The Slavs and Rus', then, are the
descendents of these indo-European migrants (like all Europeans, save the
Basques and Finns).

5. The European groups then segmented into large endogamous communities,
usually united by a language ("nations").  Over many generations, they
underwent "genetic drift" and became distinct (superficially, of course).

6.  One of the major genetic divisions in Europe occurs roughly on the Elbe:
Slavic and Scandinavian populations, together with certain populations in
Central Asia, have the "M17" haplotype (a distinctive polymorphism); folks
on the other side of the Elbe do not.  This to say that the Eastern and
Western European populations split, probably 1500 hundred years
ago--conveniently, that is exactly when the Slavs first appear in the
historical record.

7. As the Slavs expanded, they spread the M17 feature. This may account for
the fact that M17 is found in Scandinavia in relatively high frequencies‹the
Rus' took Slavic wives home.

8. Or perhaps the diffusion went in the other direction.  We don't really
know how many Rus' came to the Slavic territories.  If they were
sufficiently numerous, they could have spread the M17 haplotype to the
entire Slavic population.  We know something like this happened in the
islands north of Great Britain.  So perhaps there was a major population
flow from Scandinavia, instead of the few Vikings bands we've been taught
about in all the textbooks.

All the Best,

Marshall Poe

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