Arthur Kemp’s Blog

When I first published March of the Titans, there were no genetic studies available from Portugal to back up the claims that the population had been influenced by the Moorish invasion of Iberia and the massive importation of black slaves from sub-Saharan Africa.

However, genetic studies since then have proven the accuracy of the historical record as laid out in March of the Titans.

Below is a report, first published in the Annal of Human Genetics, which confirm the admixture of Moorish and sub-Saharan African genes into Portugal.

The report, prepared by Portuguese scientists, specifically names the slave trade as the source of this genetic input.

Needless to say, I am not happy about the fact that this happened, but at least readers will be able to see that the internet cranks who snipe at me are just liars and that March of the Titans has been proven correct once again.

Diversity of mtDNA lineages in Portugal: not a genetic edge of European variation (Full paper here as a PDF)

Annals of Human Genetics, 2000, vol. 64 (6), pp. 491-506

Pereira L ( Instituto de Patologia e Imunologia Molecular da Universidade do Porto (IPATIMUP), R. Dr. Roberto Frias s/no, 4200 Porto, PORTUGAL); Prata M.J; Amorim A ( Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, Pr. tomes Teixeira, 4050 Porto, PORTUGAL)

The analysis of the hypervariable regions I and II of mitochondrial DNA in Portugal showed that this Iberian population presents a higher level of diversity than some neighbouring populations.

The classification of the different sequences into haplogroups revealed the presence of all the most important European haplogroups, including those that expanded through Europe in the Palaeolithic, and those whose expansion has occurred during the Neolithic.

Additionally a rather distinct African influence was detected in this Portuguese survey, as signalled by the distributions of haplogroups U6 and L, present at higher frequencies than those usually reported in Iberian populations.

The geographical distributions of both haplogroups were quite different, with U6 being restricted to North Portugal whereas L was widespread all over the country.

This seems to point to different population movements as the main contributors for the two haplogroup introductions.

We hypothesise that the recent Black African slave trade could have been the mediator of most of the L sequence inputs, while the population movement associated with the Muslim rule of Iberia has predominantly introduced U6 lineages.

In this work we have analysed HVRI and HVRII diversity in Portugal, the westernmost country of the Iberian Peninsula, with the aim of obtaining a better characterisation of European mtDNA variability.

We have considered three main regions in Portugal: North, Central and South. This was done in parallel with a study of Y chromosome biallelic markers that has revealed statistical differences between the south compared to the north and central regions (Pereira et al. 2000).

In the Portuguese sample analysed two haplo groups, U6 and L, that have been reported as occurring sporadically in other European populations, were detected with comparatively high frequency.

Both haplogroups were characterised by high levels of diversity and displayed very irregular mismatch distributions (Figure 2E and F).

Moreover, haplogroup U6 was found to be  restricted to the North region of the country, whereas the L sequences were spread all over the country.

These haplogroups have been reported to be characteristic of African populations, where their frequency is inversely correlated with the North-South axis: the frequency of U6 is high in North Africa and decreases in a southerly direction, being almost absent south of the equator; the L cluster has an opposite distribution (Rando et al. 1998, 1999; Watson et al. 1996; Mateu et al. 1996).

In Portugal, as well as generally in Iberia, many migration waves from both North and sub-Saharan African populations are well documented.

The geographical proximity of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula certainly afforded many opportunities for mutual population contacts.

Among them, we stress the movement of Berbers and Arabs that took place during the very recent Muslim rule of Iberia (from the 8th century to the end of the 15th, in some regions).

In addition, many sub-Saharan individuals entered the region during the slave trade period, from its very beginning (middle 15th century) until its total ban in the late 19 th century.

As it would be interesting to find out the origin of the L and U6 sequences detected in Portugal, we have tried to compare the motifs of the sequences observed in Portugal with those described in the literature for several populations (Figures 3 and 4).

However most of the matches found for the Portuguese sequences were with sequences widely distributed in Africa, and no clear pattern of geographic clustering was detected.

Admitting that U6 sequences could have been at least partially introduced by Berber people during the Muslim rule of Iberia, it is strange to find them restricted to North Portugal.

As a matter of fact, most historical sources document a deeper influence of Berber (as well as Arab) people in Central and particularly South Iberia (as judged from toponyms and general cultural affinities), compared to North Iberia where the Muslim presence is recorded to have been more ephemeral and consequently to have made less cultural and demographic impact.

The data does not exclude the possibility that U6 introductions could have been additionally reinforced by later sub-Saharan inputs mediated by the African slave trade.

Even if this mixed scenario is plausible, the presence of U6 sequences exclusively in North Portugal is a question that deserves further analysis.

The hypothesis of an earlier introduction in the region does not seem to be favoured, neither by its presence in a restricted geographical area, nor by the high level of heterogeneity that characterises the set of sequences that were found among this haplogroup.

With respect to the L sequences, it is widely accepted that they have a sub-Saharan origin, excepting some L3* lineages that, as analysis of Figure 4 suggests, might indeed have a non-African origin.

The presence of L sequences in North African regions does not allow us to exclude the possibility that population influxes from this region, namely the above referred Berber/Arab movement, have introduced a significant fraction of L sequences into Iberia.

However, it seems more likely that most of the L lineages found nowadays in Portugal have been carried by African slaves, since the country was actively involved in the Transatlantic slave trade.

Nine out of 17 L sequences found in this study showed matches with widespread African sequences, and with regard to the 8 remaining sequences the absence of matches can be due to the present bias in the description of sub-Saharan mtDNA variability.

Broad areas corresponding to Ivory Coast, Angola and Mozambique, which represented very important sources of African slaves, remain uncharacterised.

There were more African slaves in Portugal than in any other European country: in 1550, Lisbon boasted 10000 resident slaves in a population of 100000, and Portugal as a whole probably had over 40000 (Thomas, 1998).

In the mid-sixteenth century the birth of slaves’ children was stimulated in Portugal for internal traffic purposes.

Inter-breeding between autochthonous individuals and African slaves certainly occurred and the predominant mating must have been between slave African females and autochthonous males, due to social pressures and also for legal reasons: offspring of slave females would be slaves, whereas offspring of slave males would not.

Therefore, breeding between slave African males and white females, besides being socially repressed, would not bring any economic profit.

If the pattern of genetic admixture was markedly sex influenced, the signature of this recent

African influence would be expected to be very different in the maternally inherited gene pool and in the paternally inherited one.

In a recent study based on Y chromosome biallelic markers (Pereira et al. 2000) we have reported the absence of typical sub-Saharan haplogroups in the Y chromosome Portuguese pool.

This finding, and the detection of L sequences at 7.1% in the mitochondrial pool, both seem to support the above-mentioned pattern of admixture with African slaves.

Conclusions

This finding, as well as the high level of haplogroup diversity, suggests the influence of specific demographic factors acting in the Portuguese population, and led us to hypothesise that an important modulator of the present Portuguese mtDNA variability could have been the influx of distinct mtDNA lineages at historically quite different times.

Sharing the features of mtDNA diversity generally registered in Europeans (all European haplogroups were detected), Portugal has in addition received significant North and sub-Saharan African influences.

Frequencies of haplogroups specific to these regions were higher than those reported for other European populations: 7% of North African sequences were detected (restricted to North Portugal and representing almost 3%of the total sample), and sub-Saharan African sequences were found to be spread throughout the country, with frequencies between 5% and 9.8%.

Although statistically significant differences were not detected between the three sub-samples considered, the geographic distribution pattern observed for U6 and L sequences strongly suggest that different population movements were responsible for their introduction into the country, although none of them had enough demographic impact to induce regional differentiation.

The introduction of L sequences in Portugal was tentatively imputed mainly to the modern slave trade that occurred between the 15th and 19th centuries.

Both the great number of slaves that entered Portugal and their very diverse African geographic origin are consistent with the data set now reported.

However, we cannot exclude some North-African contribution to present-day Portuguese L lineages.

While the population movement associated with the slave trade may be responsible by some U6 inputs, we suggest that U6 sequences were predominantly introduced into Portugal during the Berber/Arab invasion of the Peninsula.

However, the observation that haplogroup U6 is restricted to North Portugal is puzzling, considering the more pronounced impact of the Muslin rule in south Iberia and the widespread presence of African slaves throughout the country, and deserves further investigation.

I wrote March of the Titans before the science of DNA and genetic testing had even properly emerged, but, I am happy to say, the results of DNA tests have confirmed the accuracy of the historical record as I wrote it way back then.

One of the more interesting examples of this came in 2007 with a study done in Tuscany, Italy.

Now the people of Tuscany had long claimed that they were the descendants of the Etruscan people, the pre-Indo-European civilization which, once absorbed by the invading Indo-European Latini tribe, laid the basis of the Roman civilization (as detailed in the early chapters of March of the Titans).

However, the historical record was at odds with the Tuscan peoples’ claim to be the descendants of the Etruscans. The historical record showed very clearly that the Etruscans and the Latini people were assimilated out of existence by the Roman Empire.

In the south, they were absorbed into the genetically and culturally dissimilar mixed races of northern Africa (aggravated by the integration of the huge slave population in Rome) and in the north, they were absorbed into the genetically similar but culturally dissimilar European populations.

It was, therefore, impossible for the Etruscans to have survived.

Nonetheless, the rumor persisted that the people of modern Tuscany were somehow the descendants of the Etruscans.

Against that backdrop, I wrote in March of the Titans that the most likely scenario was that the Etruscans were a pre-Indo-European people (I even included them in my chapter dealing with the pre-Indo-European civilizations) who were absorbed into the Indo-European Latini tribe.

Together, this great joining of Mediterranean (Old European) people and Indo-Europeans laid the basis for the classical Roman civilization, I continued.

These two peoples were then assimilated out of existence, as described above.

March of the Titans then detailed the Germanic Lombard invasion of Northern Italy in 568 which largely displaced the mixed-race remnants of the collapsed Roman Empire.

Tuscany, lying to the north of Rome, was one of the regions heavily influenced by the Lombards, who, March of the Titans said, were originally Indo-European.

Now, if March of the Titans was right, DNA tests should reveal the following:

1. Etruscan DNA should be Old European in nature;

2. Modern Tuscan DNA would have no link to the Old European people; and

3. Modern Tuscan DNA would have its ultimate origin in the Indo-European heartland of the region around the Black Sea.

So, what has DNA testing from Tuscany revealed?

Glad to say, precisely, exactly, 100 percent, what March of the Titans said.

DNA testing on Etruscan bones recovered from graves showed that they were completely unrelated to modern Tuscan people.

DNA testing on the modern Tuscan people showed that their genetic origin was in Anatolia, which is located in modern Turkey, bounded by the Black Sea to the north and the Caucasus to the northeast — smack bang where it should be.

Isn’t that cool? I always knew what the historical record said, but it is much, much better to have it confirmed by unanswerable genetic evidence.

Here are the original studies:

1. No Link between Etruscans and Tuscans:

“For the first time, Stanford researchers have used novel statistical computer modeling to simulate demographic processes affecting the population of Tuscany over a 2,500-year time span.

“Rigorous tests used by the researchers have ruled out a genetic link between ancient Etruscans, the early inhabitants of central Italy, and the region’s modern day residents.

“The findings suggest that something either suddenly wiped out the Etruscans or the group represented a social elite that had little in common with the people who became the true ancestors of Tuscans, said Joanna Mountain, assistant professor of anthropological sciences.

“The findings are documented in ‘Serial Coalescent Simulations Suggest a Weak Genealogical Relationship Between Etruscans and Modern Tuscans,’ published May 15 in the online version of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Two years ago, Italian geneticists extracted maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA from the bones of 27 people called Etruscans found in six different necropolises (burial sites) in Tuscany.

“The female lineage was investigated because, unlike the male Y chromosome, many copies of mitochondrialDNA are found in each cell and thus are easier to extract, Mountain explained.

“The data represent one of the best collections of ancient human DNA in existence.

“‘If you get DNA out of one bone, you can try to say something about the past,’ Mountain said. ‘But they managed to get DNA out of quite a few bones.’

“The DNA of 49 people living in the region today was also sampled.

“Although data from the two groups revealed several differences, Mountain said, the researchers could not interpret if these were meaningful or significant.

“‘What we did was address the question: Do the present-day people look like they could be descendents of the Etruscan population?’

“The answer surprised Mountain. ‘We did the simulation study and there was nothing we could do-we couldn’t tweak it enough to get the modern people to look like they descended from the people in the Etruscan burial [sites],’ she said. ‘We couldn’t make it fit with the simple inheritance direct lineage model.’

“The Stanford researchers used recently developed software called ‘Serial SimCoal’ to simulate genetic data based on different population scenarios, such as small (25,000 females) or large (300,000 females) populations of constant size, an expanding population, and scenarios involving migration and selection.

“Despite the range of scenarios created, the scientists could not find a match between the observed archaeological data and the simulations.”

- Ancient Etruscans are unlikely the ancestors of modern Tuscans, study finds (Stanford Report, May 17, 2006).

2: Modern Tuscans Show Link to Black Sea:

“Professor Alberto Piazza, from the University of Turin, Italy . . . and his colleagues set out to study genetic samples from three present-day Italian populations living in Murlo, Volterra, and Casentino in Tuscany, central Italy.

“The scientists compared DNA samples taken from healthy males living in Tuscany, Northern Italy, the Southern Balkans, the island of Lemnos in Greece, and the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia.

“The Tuscan samples were taken from individuals who had lived in the area for at least three generations, and were selected on the basis of their surnames, which were required to have a geographical distribution not extending beyond the linguistic area of sampling.

“The samples were compared with data from modern Turkish, South Italian, European and Middle-Eastern populations.

“‘We found that the DNA samples from individuals from Murlo and Volterra were more closely related those from near Eastern people than those of the other Italian samples’, says Professor Piazza.

“In Murlo particularly, one genetic variant is shared only by people from Turkey, and, of the samples we obtained, the Tuscan ones also show the closest affinity with those from Lemnos.’”

- Ancient Etruscans were immigrants from Anatolia, or what is now Turkey (European Society of Human Genetics, 16 Jun 2007)

* Note: This second report made by Processor Piazza went on to say “We think that our research provides convincing proof that Herodotus was right,” says Professor Piazza, “and that the Etruscans did indeed arrive from ancient Lydia. However, to be 100% certain we intend to sample other villages in Tuscany, and also to test whether there is a genetic continuity between the ancient Etruscans and modern-day Tuscans.”

The test between the ancient Etruscans and modern-day Tuscans had in fact been done the year before (as the first report above showed) and the conclusion was that there was no link.

After many months of hard slog – part of the reason I have not had much time to blog of late – I am happy to announce that the second volume in the new expanded March of the Titans quadrilogy is now finished.

The first volume, Awakening: The Rise of Western Civilization, was published earlier this year. That volume was an update and expansion of the first 19 chapters of March of the Titans. Volume II contains chapters 20 to 40.

The idea of breaking the book up into four smaller parts was motivated by the staggering shipping costs involved in moving the big one volume book around. Shipping across the Atlantic by airmail, for example, is more than the cost of the book itself.

The smaller sized volumes are also much easier to read, handle and store.

The basic text has remained the same in that nothing has been taken away. The primary changes have been the final expulsion of the last of the typos and grammatical errors.

Volume I also saw chapter 9 made into a prologue. I decided it was probably best to explain the racial reasons behind the rise and fall of civilizations as an introduction rather than leaving it till after the Egypt chapter, as it was in the original version.

Additions to Volume I focused on the classical Greek and Roman sections, and in particular the racial changes which led to the fall of those civilizations.

It also included a substantial appendix section listing DNA tests, classical writings and other material which supports the book’s basic thesis of the rise and fall of civilizations according to their racial homogeneity. The book has 285 pages, 6″x9″ format. It is available in soft cover here, and hard cover here.

Volume II focuses on the creation of the states which make up modern Europe. It has 398 pages, 6″x9″ format.

This period runs from the end of the Roman Empire to modern times.

It also deals with the Viking era and five Great Race Wars: the Crusades, the Bulgar and Avar invasions, Genghis Khan, and the Ottoman holocaust.

Once again, the basic text has remained intact. However, substantial additions have been made to most of the individual nations’ chapters, particularly in areas which I deliberately skimmed over in the original manuscript.

Breaking the book down into smaller volumes reduced the space pressure caused by the one volume. This allowed me to expand on a number of topics which I always wanted to add, but till now, never have. They include:

- A small section on the Spanish-American War of 1898;
- A small section on Cardinal Richelieu of France;
- A small section on Charles De Gaulle and his opposition to Third World immigration into France;
- The Great Fire of London;
- An expansion of the Welsh wars against the English;
- A small section on the 1917 Balfour Declaration and its implications;
- An expansion of the course of the Anglo-Dutch Wars;
- The development of the European Union with its unofficial headquarters in Brussels;
- A discussion of the “Khazar-Jewish” link and a genetic study which shows that only a small number of Ashkenazi Jews have that heritage. The “Jews are Khazars” theory is in essence incorrect;
- A small section dealing with Russian leader Svyatoslav’s destruction of the Khazar Empire;
- A small section dealing with the Lidice massacre in 1942, committed by the Nazis in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague;
- An expanded section on the Ottoman Turkish sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683. This includes a fuller description of the great battle which saw Europe saved from Islamification by a Polish army under Jan Sobieski;
- A small section on the Skull Tower massacre committed by the Ottoman Turks against Serbian nationalists who attempted to drive the Muslims out of their country in 1809;
- An expanded section on the Armenian Holocaust committed by the Ottoman Turks from 1915-1923;
- An expansion of post-World War II Greek history;
- An expansion of the events and implications of the Germanic Lombardic invasion of Italy and its racial effects upon that country following the fall of the Roman Empire;
- An expanded section on the unification of Italy;
- An expanded section on Italy’s participation in World War I and World War II, including a new section on Mussolini and the Salo Republic (1943-1945);
- A new section on the history of post-World War II Italy;
- An expanded section on the German classical music composers;
- New sections dealing with post-World War II German history, including the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Wall, the Cold War, the creation of the Federal Republic of West Germany and the German Democratic Republic, and the Red Army Faction-led Communist insurrection in West Germany;
- A new section dealing with the events in Hungary from 1038 to 1100 which saw pagan rebellions against the first Christian kings in that country;
- A new section on post-World War II Austrian history;
- An expanded section on early Russian history including the establishment and eventual destruction of the Khanate of the Golden Horde in the south of that country.

As the reader can well imagine, I am quite excited about the new book. It is available in softcover here and hardcover here.

* I hope to have the remaining volumes ready within the next few months:

* Volume Three: Manifest Destiny-European Expansion across the Globe

Starting with the impact of the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, and the Reformation, this volume deals with the colonization of the world by Europe. Includes the founding of America, and the two Great Race Wars fought there.

* Volume Four: Twilight-The Impending Death of the West

Starting with the western origin of the Industrial Revolution, this volume deals with the fratricidal World Wars I and II, the rise and fall of Communism, and the mass Third World immigration wave which now threatens to engulf and finally wipe out Western Civilization.