What is the genetics of modern Russians? Questions about this do not leave the minds of scientists around the world. It is customary to consider Russian Slavs, therefore, first of all, we will consider the genetic characteristics of the Slavs. However, even such a limitation of the topic leaves a lot of room for research - there are several branches of the Slavs, and the very approach to determining who exactly is understood as the Slavs varies.
Who are you talking about?
Usually, research into the genetics of Russians, primarily Slavs, begins with an attempt to determine what kind of group of people it is. If you check with a scientist specializing in languages, he will answer without hesitation that there are several language groups, and one of them is Slavic. Consequently, all peoples who have been using the languages of this group for communication for a long time can be called Slavs. For them, such a language is their native language.
Some difficulty in identifying the Slavs, and therefore, for modern studies of Russian genetics, is created by the similarity of peoples using the same language for communication. We are talking not only about anthropological features, but also about the characteristics of culture. This allows us to expand the linguistic term and classify a slightly larger variety of communities as Slavs.
Split and join
Some people think Russians have bad genetics. This position is explained by a variety of reasons - from historical background to bad habits that have long taken root in society. Scientists do not support such a stereotype. Slavic-speaking peoples and all communities living nearby with them have a close genetic connection. In particular, it is precisely for this reason that the B alto-Slavic populations can be safely considered as a whole. Although the B alts and Slavs seem far apart to the layman, genetic studies confirm the closeness of the peoples.
Based on linguistic research, Slavs and B alts are also the closest to each other, which allows us to single out the corresponding B alto-Slavic group. The geographical feature allows us to say that the genetics of a Russian person has much in common with the B alts. At the same time, it is noted that the eastern and western Slavic branches, although close to each other, have a number of significant differences that do not allow them to be equated with each other. A special case is the southern Slavic branches, whose gene pool is fundamentally different, but quite close to the nationalities with which the Slavic branch is geographically adjacent.
How did it form?
Clarification of the origin of Russians in the genetics of the present time is one of the main and most urgent tasks. Scientists involved in this kind of scientific work seek to determine what the ancestral home of the Russian people was, what were the migration routes of the Slavs, how didsociety. In practice, everything is much more complicated than it might seem in the diagram. Even if a complete genome is sequenced, genetic research cannot give a complete and exhaustive answer to archaeological and linguistic questions. Despite regular research in this direction, it has not yet been possible to determine what the Slavic ancestral home is.
The genetics of Russians and Tatars, as well as other nationalities, has a lot in common. In general, the Slavic gene pool is quite rich in elements obtained from the pre-Slavic population. This is due to historical upheavals. From the side of Novgorod, people gradually moved north and carried their language, culture and religion with them, gradually assimilating the community through which they passed. If the local population was larger in number than the migrating Slavs, the gene pool reflected precisely their features to a greater extent, while the Slavic share had significantly fewer features.
History and practice
Checking out the genetics of Russians, scientists found that the Slavic languages spread rapidly, soon covered almost half of the European territory. At the same time, the population was not large enough to inhabit these spaces. Consequently, the scientists suggested, the Slavic gene pool as a whole has pronounced features of some pre-Slavic component, which differs for the south, north and east, west. A similar situation developed with the Indo-European peoples, who spread across India and partly- in Europe. Genetically, they have few common features, and the explanation was found as follows: the Indo-Europeans assimilated into the European population that originally lived on these lands. From the first came the language, from the second - the gene pool.
Assimilation, revealed in the study of the genetics of Russian scientists, as experts concluded, is a rule by which many gene pools that exist today are compiled. At the same time, language remains the main ethnic marker. This well illustrates the difference between the Slavs living in the south and north - their genetics differ quite a lot, but the language is the same. Therefore, the people is also one, although it has two different sources that have merged in the process of the development of society. At the same time, they pay attention to the fact that human self-knowledge plays a key role in the formation of an ethnos, and language influences it.
Relatives or neighbors?
Many are interested in what is common and different in the genetics of Russians and Tatars. It has long been believed that the period of the Tatar-Mongol yoke had a strong influence on the Russian gene pool, but relatively recently specific studies have shown that the prevailing stereotype is erroneous. There is no unequivocal influence of the Mongol gene pool. But the Tatars turned out to be quite close to the Russians.
In fact, the Tatars are a European people, having a minimum of similarities with the people inhabiting the Central Asian regions. This complicates the search for differences between them and Europeans. At the same time, it was established that the Tatar gene pool is close to the Belarusian, Polish, with which historically the people did not have such close contacts aswith the Russians. This allows us to talk about the similarity between Russians and Tatars, without explaining it by dominance.
DNA and history
Why are northern Russians genetically so different from southern peoples? Why are west and east so different from each other? Scientists have established that the diversity of ethnic groups is associated with ongoing subtle processes - genetic, noticeable only when analyzing long time intervals. In order to evaluate genetic changes, it is necessary to study the mitochondrial DNA transmitted from mothers and the Y chromosomes that offspring receive through the paternal line. At the moment, impressive information bases have already been formed, reflecting the sequence in which nucleotides are located in the molecular structure. This allows you to create phylogenetic trees. About two decades ago, a new science was formed, called "molecular anthropology". It examines mtDNA and male specific chromosomes and reveals what the genetic ethnic history is. Research in this area from year to year is becoming more extensive, their number is growing.
In order to reveal all the features of Russians, geneticists are trying to restore the processes under the influence of which the gene pools were formed. It is necessary to evaluate the distribution in space and time of the ethnic group - on the basis of this, more data can be collected on changes in the structure of DNA. The study of phylogeographic variability and DNA has already made it possible to analyze data collected from many thousands of people from differentareas of the world. The data are large enough for statistical analyzes to be reliable. Monophyletic groups have been discovered, on the basis of which the evolutionary steps of Russians are gradually being restored.
Step by step
Studying the genetics of Russians, scientists were able to identify mitochondrial lines characteristic of peoples living in the eastern and western Eurasian regions. Similar studies were carried out with respect to American, Australian and African ethnic groups. The Eurasian subgroups are believed to have descended from three major macrogroups that formed about 65,000 years ago from a single mtDNA group that originated in Africa.
Analyzing the division of mtDNA in the Eurasian gene pool, we found that ethno-racial specificity is quite significant, so east and west have cardinal differences. But in the north, monomitochondrial lines are predominantly found. This is especially pronounced in the regional populations. Genetic studies make it possible to determine that only Caucasoid mtDNA or those obtained from the Mongolian race are characteristic of local peoples. The main part of our country, in turn, is the territory of contact, where the mixing of races has become a source of racial genesis for a long time.
One of the major scientific works devoted to the genetics of the Russian people, started about two decades ago and is based on the study of the difference in DNA lines transmitted through the father and mother. To determine how large the variability is within a single population, it wasit was decided to resort to a combined study, simultaneously analyzing polymorphism and individual sections responsible for encrypting information. At the same time, scientists took into account the variability of nucleotide sequences and hypervariable elements that are not responsible for encoding data. It has been established that the mitochondrial genetic fund of the original population of our country is diverse, although certain common groups were still found - they coincided with others common among Europeans. The admixture of the Mongoloid gene pool is estimated at an average of 1.5%, and these are mainly East Eurasian mtDNA.
So similar yet so different
Revealing the peculiarities of the genetics of the Russian people, scientists have attempted to explain why mtDNA shows such diversity, to what extent the phenomenon is associated with the formation of an ethnic group. For this, mtDNA haplotypes of different populations of the European population were analyzed. Phylogeographic studies have shown that there are some common features, but markers are usually combined with rare subgroups and haplotypes. This allows us to assume the existence of some common substrate, which became the basis for the formation of the genetic fund of the Slavs from the eastern, western regions, as well as nationalities living nearby. But the populations of the southern Slavs differ significantly from the Italians and Greeks living nearby.
As part of the evaluation of the evolution of Russians in genetics, attempts were made to explain the division of the Slavs into several branches, as well as to track the processes of changing genetic material against this background. Researchconfirmed that there are differences between different groups of Slavs both in the gene pool and anthropological. The variability of the phenomenon is determined by the tightness of contacts with the pre-Slavic population in a particular area, as well as the intensity of mutual influence on neighboring peoples.
How did it all start?
Research on the genetics of Russians, conducted by modern specialists, as well as the study of the gene pool of other ethnic groups, became possible due to the contribution of great scientists involved in biology, anthropology and human evolution. The contribution to this field of two scientists born in Imperial Russia, Mechnikov and Pavlov, is considered exceptionally significant. For their merits, they were awarded the Nobel Prize, and in addition, they were able to draw the attention of the general public to biology. Before the First World War, a genetics course began to be taught at a university in St. Petersburg for the first time. In 1917, the Institute of Experimental Biology was opened in Moscow. Three years later, they formed a eugenic society.
It is impossible to overestimate the contribution of Russian scientists to the development of genetics. Koltsov and Bunak, for example, actively studied the frequency of occurrence of different blood types, and their work interested prominent specialists of that time. Soon IEB became an object of attraction for the most prominent Russian scientists. When enumerating the list of Russian geneticists, it is reasonable to start with Mechnikov and Pavlov, but do not forget about the following prominent figures:
- Serebrovsky;
- Dubinin;
- Timofeev-Resovsky.
It is worth noting that it was Serebrovsky who became the author of the term "genogeography", which is used fordesignation of a science whose area of interest is the gene pools of human populations.
Science: keep moving forward
It was at this time, when the most famous Russian geneticists were active, that the word "gene pool" began to be widely used in specific circles. It was introduced to refer to the gene population inherent in a certain population. Genogeography is gradually turning into a significant tool. The one that is necessary to assess the ethnogenesis of the peoples that exist on our planet. Serebrovsky, by the way, was of the opinion that his offspring is only a part of history, allowing through the gene pool to restore migrations in the past, the processes of mixing ethnic groups and races.
Unfortunately, the study of genetics (Jews, Russians, Tatars, Germans and other ethnic groups) slowed down significantly during the period of "Lysenkoism". At that time, Fisher's work on genetic diversity and natural selection was published in the UK. It was he who became the basis for science, relevant for modern scientists. For population genetics. But in the Stalinist Soviet Union, genetics turns out to be the object of persecution at the initiative of Lysenko. It was his ideas that led Vavilov to die in prison in 1943.
History and Science
Shortly after Khrushchev left power, genetics in the USSR began to develop again. In 1966, the Vavilov Institute was opened, where Rychkov's laboratory is actively functioning. In the next decade, significant works were organized with the participation of Cavalli - Sforza, Lewontin. In 1953, it was possible to decipher the structure of DNA - this was a real breakthrough. To the authors of the worksawarded the Nobel Prize. Geneticists around the world have new tools at their disposal - markers and haplogroups.
As mentioned above, offspring receive DNA from both parents. Genes are not completely transmitted, but in the process of recombination, individual fragments are observed in different generations. There is a substitution, mixing, formation of new sequences. Exceptional entities are the above mentioned paternal and maternal specific chromosomes.
Geneticians began to study uniparental markers, and soon it turned out that this is how you can extract a huge amount of information about the processes that took place in the past. Through mtDNA, passed unchanged between generations from the mother, it is possible to trace ancestors that existed tens of millennia ago. Small mutations occur in mtDNA (this is inevitable), and they are also inherited, thanks to which it is possible to track how and why, when the genetic differences characteristic of different ethnic groups formed. 1963 - the year of the discovery of mtDNA; 1987 is the year the mtDNA work came out, explaining what the common female ancestry of all humans was.
Who and when?
Initially, scientists assumed that a common group of female progenitors existed in eastern African regions. The period of their existence, according to rough estimates, is 150-250 thousand years ago. Clarification of the past through the mechanisms of genetics made it possible to find out that the period is much closer - about 100-150 millennia have passed since that moment.
In thoseAt times, the total number of representatives of the population was relatively small - only a few tens of thousands of individuals, divided into separate groups. Each of them went their own way. About 70-100 thousand years ago, modern man crossed the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, leaving Africa behind, and began to explore new territories. An alternative migration option considered by scientists is through the Sinai Peninsula.
Through mtDNA, scientists got an idea of how the female half of humanity spread around the planet. At the same time, new information about mutations of the male chromosome has appeared. Based on the information collected over several years, at the end of the last century they compiled haplogroups and formed a single tree from them.
Genetics: reality and science
The main task of geneticists was to identify the historical ways of moving people, to determine the links between ethnic groups, as well as the features of evolution. From this point of view, the inhabitants of the Eastern European region are of particular interest. For the first time for such an object of study, uniparental markers began to be studied in the last decade of the last century. The degree of kinship with the Mongoloid race and genetic affinity with the Eastern European peoples were ascertained.
In recent decades, the contribution made to science by Balanovskaya and Balanovsky is considered to be the most significant. Research is being carried out under the leadership of Malyarchuk - they are devoted to the features of the genetic fund of the population of Siberia and the Far Eastern regions. As practice has shown, the maximumbenefits can be derived by examining the population of small points - villages and towns. For study, such people are chosen whose closest ancestors (second generation) of the same ethnicity are included in the same regional population. However, in some cases, the population of large cities is studied, if this is allowed by the terms and conditions of the project.
It was possible to reveal that certain groups of Russians have quite strong differences in the gene pool. Several dozen varieties of genetic sets have already been studied. We managed to collect the maximum information about people living in the territory of the former kingdom ruled by Ivan the Terrible.
The task of modern genetics is to study the characteristics of a particular population, not the people as a whole. Genes have no ethnic identity, they cannot speak. Scientists determine whether the boundaries of the distribution of the genotype coincide with ethnic and linguistic ones, and also determine the specific typical set of genes characteristic of a certain nationality.
