Genetic variations in Europe?

Question

Okay, first read this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/science/13visual.html

It's pretty awesome that the Finns are totally off and that there is more difference between north and south than east and west. :)

And that Sweden, Poland, Italy is "off" is a bit weird I think. I can understand that UK are but... yeah.

What are your thoughts about this?

Answer 1

Perhaps you're underestimating how difficult was till relatively recent times to cross mountains: some years ago I personally did a search  about travelling across the Alps, on documents from 18th century, and that was VERY difficult and dangerous.

Today is easy, but you have to remember before 18th century people where able to travel by foot or with horses (to mention the fastest way) only, apart from ships. But even with what was considered "heavy sea traffic" at the time, we're actually talking about some *thousands* people travelling across different regions, even less reaching far (for the time) regions.

And even so, the vast majority of this traffic was for trading, not for emigration. So actually I'm not really surprised if somebody says genetic variations are "limited" as explained in that article.

Even inside Italy, for instance, there currently are long-term search about genetics in two area, one in Piedmont the other in Sardinia, where people live longer, and current results shows genetics does have a lot to do with such longevity...