Prehistoric Populations, Genetic Data, and Cultural Affiliation wit...
The use of genetic data in forensic science, demographic and population history, archaeology, and a variety of other disciplines has been one of the most rewarding advances in recent times. Allowing for a level of detail and traceability not found in the other methods used by these disciplines, genetic data has provided a wealth of information on population movements, cultural histories, genealogy, and on and on. In fact, the use of genetics to study population history has recently reached a milestone with the study of large genome-wide data sets that provide a wealth of information concerning contemporary and historic population relationships. However, it is not without its faults and limitations, especially when used to understand cultural affiliation among indigenous groups, such as Native American Indians. In studies of cultural affiliation between contemporary and prehistoric populations, for example, there is a dependence on much smaller-scaled data, typically from either the mitochondrial genome of the female or the Y chromosome of the male. Similarly, the datasets from these prehistoric populations is often small and spans a wide chronological or geographic range.
As such, prehistoric genetic data can provide one line of evidence to assess migration, population replacements, and cultural affiliation, but this evidence requires two levels of inference. First, the pattern of genetic variation within and between populations must be inferred from the population samples. How well these samples represent the real pattern of genetic variation within the population is a concern. Second, the underlying evolutionary process leading to the pattern of genetic variation within the population must be inferred. Among these evolutionary processes, the genetic exchange between populations is often thought to be the primary actor. However, this sort of genetic exchange is not the hypothesis most commonly used to explain structured genetic variation among prehistoric populations. Rather, the pattern of genetic variation is attributed most often to nothing more than fluctuating frequencies of variants that result from each local population reproducing and spawning the next generation. These two basic levels of inference are a major problem in using genetic data to study prehistoric population movements, demographic history, and cultural affiliation, such as those of Native American Indians.
Read more about
Prehistoric Populations, Genetic Data, and Cultural Affiliation wit... here.
You need to be a member of Open Anthropology Cooperative to add comments!