Another observation in the study covers the eastern influence in Uppland and in more northern areas. The study speaks about Uralic influence, which is somewhat troublesome, because genetic information doesn't include information about spoken languages. On the other hand it mentions Finnish influence, so we can make a conclusion that the study actually means Finnish (but not Estonian) influence, as a special case of Uralic speakers, without proving straight connection to the Ural region (where Uralic language speakers are only a minority). On the other hand the study speaks about Eastern Baltic influence, which also leaves me uncertain of the actual meaning. Also, the study tells that the north-south cline in Scandinavia proves about the migration route of Uralic speakers, but is it similarly possible that this cline proves about SOUTHERN migration DILUTING the original population in Scandinavia - whatever language they spoke? From history books we know that in Scandinavia, and also in Finland and Russia, the migration direction was from south to north rather than conversely. Isn't this even more credible, not only based on known history, but also based on earlier conclusions of this study?
The biggest shortage is that the study focuses mainly on middle and late Iron Age samples and the data doesn't include early Iron Age (Pre Roman Iron Age) and late Bronze Age samples. This shortage leaves us without view of how the Scandinavian genetic profile looked before the Anglo-Saxon impact and it doesn't take into account possibility of earlier eastern and western influences. In my opinion people in Sweden were before the Migration Period significally more eastern than later, but then is it right to call that time Uralic or Eastern Baltic? What would be Western Baltic then? And why the study doesn't check the Western Baltic influence if it exists? It was interesting to read the study, despite many unclear definitions.
Rodrigues-Varela says "Although still evident in modern Scandinavians, levels of non-local ancestry in some regions are lower than those observed in ancient individuals from the Viking to Medieval periods,” said Ricardo Rodríguez-Varela of Stockholm University. “This suggests that ancient individuals with non-Scandinavian ancestry contributed proportionately less to the current gene pool in Scandinavia than expected based on the patterns observed in the archaeological record.”
ReplyDeleteThis is a typical dilemma almost in all Swedish studies, specifically the claim that modern Swedes are "a pure population". How many times I have read this story? The first time I read about this around 10 years ago in a study in which authors simply removed all samples indicating foreign ancestry, and it wasn't little. Of course it is under the eyes of the scientific world somewhat troublesome to remove "outliers" from ancient samples.