Iceland
had pre-Columbian contacts with North America. Did they lead to intermarriage?
(Wikicommons)
Did
the Norse have sustained contacts with the indigenous peoples of the Americas,
including intermarriage? Or was Vinland a fleeting encounter?
Steve
Sailer touched on this question in a recent column, citing an Icelandic study.
Although Iceland’s gene pool is overwhelmingly from Scandinavia and the British
Isles, there are also traces of a lineage normally found among the indigenous peoples
of northeast Asia and the Americas. Preliminary genealogical analyses have
shown that this lineage was present in Iceland at least 300 years ago.
This
raised the intriguing possibility that the Icelandic C1 lineage could be traced
to Viking voyages to the Americas that commenced in the 10th century. In an
attempt to shed further light on the entry date of the C1 lineage into the
Icelandic mtDNA pool and its geographical origin, we used the deCODE Genetics
genealogical database to identify additional matrilineal ancestors that carry
the C1 lineage and then sequenced the complete mtDNA genome of 11 contemporary
C1 carriers from four different matrilines. Our results indicate a latest
possible arrival date in Iceland of just prior to 1700 and a likely arrival
date centuries earlier. Most surprisingly, we demonstrate that the Icelandic C1
lineage does not belong to any of the four known Native American (C1b, C1c, and
C1d) or Asian (C1a) subclades of haplogroup C1. Rather, it is presently the
only known member of a new subclade, C1e. (Ebenesersdóttir et al. 2011)
I
doubt the hypothesis of Amerindian admixture. As the authors note, the C1e
subclade has not been found in any indigenous population of the Americas.
Perhaps this is because those populations have not been studied as thoroughly
as the Icelandic one. Perhaps it is present among Amerindians, but at a
frequency too low to be detected by studies done to date.
But
why, then, do we see no other Amerindian subclades in Icelanders? That
population has been studied so exhaustively that even low frequencies of other
subclades should have been detected by now. This point is made by Der
Sarkissian et al. (2014):
Among
other hypotheses including that of a European origin, an American origin was
favoured on the basis that most of the hg C1 diversity is found on the American
continent, despite the fact that no sequence belonging to hg C1e could be
detected in the Americas (or anywhere else). This lack of match was explained
by under-sampling of the American mtDNA genome diversity [10]. In any case, if
admixture between Native Americans and Vikings did occur, it must have been
limited, as no other American-specific lineage (e.g. hg A2, B2, D1, C1b, C1c,
C1d) was detected in Iceland.
The
authors of the same study point out that a sister subclade, C1f, has been found
in human remains from Mesolithic northeast Europe. Moreover, it is not excluded
that these two sister subclades, C1e and C1f, still exist in northeast Europe.
The Icelandic population has been studied much more than almost any other
population, so C1e might still exist somewhere in northeast Europe but hasn't
been found because of its low frequency. The authors conclude:
...
we suggest that the Icelandic-specific C1e sub-clade could have had a recent
origin in northern Europe rather than an American origin. This hypothesis is
relevant with regard to the origins of the Icelandic population, as Iceland was
discovered and first settled by Scandinavian Vikings around 1,130 years ago.
Vikings raids extended as far from their homeland in Scandinavia as France,
Spain and Sicily, but their main expansion range comprised western Russia, the
Baltic region, Scandinavia, and the British Isles.
In
fact, we know that some of Iceland's settlers had trading contacts with Russia
and may have had slaves of Slavic origin:
No
name given in Landnámabók resembles any Slavic form. But the settlers who came
from Sweden and Gotland (e.g. S. 209) must have had various contacts with the
Slavs. This would be the case also with some Norwegians who like Skinna-Bjöm
'used to go trading to Novgorod' before he went to Iceland. His son
Miðjarðar-Skeggi 'went to plunder in the Baltic' (S. 174 and H. 140). Such
people were very likely to have aboard their ships Slavic slaves and/or
companions recruited from among southern Baltic pirates or inhabitants of the
multiethnic emporia like Wolin/Jómsborg or Truso. (Urbanczyk 2002, p. 160)
A
Slavic presence in Iceland is further suggested by the existence of
"sunken huts"—rectangular-like depressions in the ground with
vertical walls, stone ovens placed in one of the corners, and roof
constructions supported by corner posts. To date, the remains of eighteen such
huts have been discovered in Iceland, and they seem to date to the settlement
period. They are also typically Slavic:
Considering
the houses they built there is little alternative to the conclusion that they
were Slavs or, at least, people who grew up among the Slavs which made them
'Slavs' culturally. Such houses, distinctively different from the Germanic
sunken huts are known in thousands from all the lands settled by early Slavs in
Eastern, Southern and Central Europe. (Urbanczyk 2002, p. 163)
It
should be pointed out that the Norse were major players in the early medieval
slave trade, particularly in supplying North African and Middle Eastern clients
with fair-skinned women. One of the largest slave markets was at Hederby, on
what is now the Danish-German border. It was largely to cash in on the demand
for slaves that the Norse began launching their infamous raids across Europe
(Holm 1986; Raffield 2019; Skirda 2010, 143-146). Regular visits by Muslim
merchants likely explain the influx of Middle Eastern silver coins into
Scandinavia during the ninth and tenth centuries (Raffield 2019). Such visits
may also explain the presence of low levels of North African ancestry in the
Icelandic gene pool.Ásmundsdóttir
(2017) argues that this North African ancestry entered the Icelandic gene
pool by way of the initial Scandinavian settlers. It may thus have its origins in
merchants from Muslim Spain and North Africa who regularly came to trading
centers like Hederby.
References
Ásmundsdóttir
R.D. (2017). The African L3e5a haplogroup in the Icelandic population. Skemman repository
of dissertations https://skemman.is/handle/1946/27644
Der
Sarkissian, C., P. Brotherton, O. Balanovsky, J.E. Templeton, B. Llamas, J.
Soubrier, V. Moiseyev, V. Khartanovich, A. Cooper, W. Haak, and Genographic
Consortium (2014). Mitochondrial genome sequencing in Mesolithic North East
Europe Unearths a new sub-clade within the broadly distributed human haplogroup
C1. PloS one 9(2), e87612. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3913659/
Ebenesersdóttir,
S.S., Á. Sigurðsson, F. Sánchez-Quinto, C. Lalueza-Fox, K. Stefánsson, and A.
Helgason, (2011). A new subclade of mtDNA haplogroup C1 found in icelanders:
Evidence of pre-columbian contact? American
Journal of Physical Anthropology 144: 92-99. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.21419
Holm,
P. (1986). The Slave trade of Dublin, Ninth to Twelfth Centuries. Peritia 5: 317-45.
Raffield,
B. (2019). The Slave Markets of the Viking World: Comparative Perspectives on
an 'Invisible Archaeology'. Slavery &
Abolition 40(4)
Chinese lung tissue seems to
be receptive to coronaviruses, perhaps because frequent mild infections stimulate the immune system to protect against more serious pulmonary infections, like pneumonia and tuberculosis. This may be why China escaped the ravages of
the Spanish flu in 1918. Have modern measures for public health opened a Pandora's box in China? (Wikipedia – CDC)
Are Chinese people more
vulnerable than others to the Wuhan coronavirus? The question is raised by Zhao
et al. (2020), who examined lung tissues from several donors and studied a
receptor that acts as the point of entry for some coronaviruses, including the
ones responsible for the SARS outbreak of 2002-2003 and the ongoing outbreak in
Wuhan, China. They found that the receptor was concentrated in
cells that promote viral reproduction and transmission. They also found that
the number of these cells in lung tissue varied with ethnic origin:
A comparison between eight
individual samples demonstrated that the Asian male one has an extremely large
number of ACE2-expressing cells in the lung. We also noticed that the only
Asian donor (male) has a much higher ACE2-expressing cell ratio than white and
African American donors (2.50% vs. 0.47% of all cells). This might explain the
observation that the new Coronavirus pandemic and previous SARS-Cov pandemic
are concentrated in the Asian area.
This study is a preprint and
has not yet been peer-reviewed, a fact highlighted in a notice placed above the online
paper:
bioRxiv is receiving many new
papers on coronavirus 2019-nCoV. A reminder: these are preliminary reports that
have not been peer-reviewed. They should not be regarded as conclusive, guide
clinical practice/health-related behavior, or be reported in news media as
established information.
I often consult bioRxiv, and this is the first time I've
seen such a notice. It's not as if this study has been widely publicized in the
mainstream media.
A peer reviewer
would make the same criticism that the authors themselves make: the sample size
is small. In fact, there was only one Asian in the entire sample. Nevertheless,
sampling error cannot easily explain the five-fold difference between the Asian
donor and the non-Asian ones. Moreover, this finding is consistent with those of
previous studies. Cheng et al. (2007) looked at other receptors for viral
infections and found differences between Chinese and other human populations.
In the specific case of pulmonary diseases, Seitz et al. (2012) studied the
prevalence of bronchiectasis in the United States and found that Asian
Americans had a prevalence 2.5 to 3.9 times higher than those of Euro Americans
and African Americans. Kwak et al. (2010) similarly found a high prevalence of
bronchiectasis in Korean adults.
These ethnic differences
should be no surprise. Many pathogens can infect some populations more easily
than others. This was shown by a study of the TLR2 polymorphism, which
influences resistance to such infections as leprosy, tuberculosis,
staphylococcal infections, and sepsis:
Interestingly, recent data
have pointed out that TLR2 polymorphisms are associated with disseminated
tuberculosis or exert specific effects on susceptibility to certain
mycobacterial strains, such as the Beijing strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The Beijing strains have a clear
geographical distribution, raising the possibility that human TLR2 has
coevolved in various populations depending on the type of infectious pressure
in a particular region, similarly to what has been reported for polymorphisms
in other innate immune genes such as TLR4 or Mal/TIRAP. (Iona et al. 2012)
The argument here is that an
infectious disease will favor the survival and reproduction of those people who
are more resistant to it. So, over succeeding generations, the average person
will become naturally more resistant. The degree of resistance will vary from
one population to another because the incidence of infectious pathogens typically varies from one
population to another.
In this case, the average
Chinese person seems to be naturally less resistant to coronaviruses. That is a
bit surprising. The Chinese have cohabited with various forms of livestock for
a long time, longer than most humans, and should have become more resistant to
viral infections that jump the species barrier, like the current coronavirus in
Wuhan. Yet, here, the reverse is true.
Perhaps we're looking at this
coevolution the wrong way. Perhaps coronaviruses usually do more good
than harm. Perhaps, over time, there has been selection to make the average
Chinese person less resistant to them. This possibility has been
explored in a recent paper by Shekhar et al. (2017). Certain viral infections
of the respiratory tract seem to help their hosts by boosting resistance to
bacterial infections:
Little is known about the
interaction of the host with commensal viruses and fungi that inhabit the
respiratory system. Latent infection with herpesviruses can lead to
opportunistic infections in immunocompromised individuals. Recent findings,
however, highlight a new role for these viruses in increasing host resistance
to bacterial infections. Infection with herpesviruses in mice results in
chronic production of large quantities of IFN-γ and activation of macrophages that confer protection
from subsequent infection with Listeria
monocytogenes and Yersinia pestis.
(Shekhar et al. 2017)
So you periodically come down
with a mild flu, and you can better resist more serious pulmonary infections,
like pneumonia and tuberculosis. Of course, now and again, the flu might be
deadly, like the one in 1918. Interestingly, China was largely unaffected by the
Spanish flu pandemic: "in 1918, China was spared from the worst ravages of
the pandemic, due to the apparent greater resistance to the virus among the
Chinese population compared to other regions of the world" (Wikipedia
2020).
Since then, public hygiene
measures have steadily reduced chronic exposure to mild pulmonary infections in
the Chinese population. If the Spanish flu struck China today, would the
Chinese people be just as unaffected? Is this why the Wuhan outbreak has been
so severe?
Conclusion
The Chinese population has
developed a commensal relationship with coronaviruses, which are usually mild
and seem to prepare the immune system for serious pulmonary infections. Through
a process of coevolution, the Chinese have become five times more susceptible
to coronaviruses than other human populations.
Far from being an enemy, these viruses may
actually be a friend that plays a valuable immunological role. By creating a
cleaner social environment, the Chinese authorities may have unwittingly opened
a Pandora's box.
As for non-Chinese people, it
doesn't follow that they will be immune to the new coronavirus, only that they will be less
vulnerable.
On a final note, the
economic disruption due to the Wuhan outbreak will lead to a contraction in
Chinese production, and this contraction will exacerbate the ongoing problem of
China's shrinking workforce. There are going to be fewer and more expensive
consumer goods on the global market. Ironically, all of this is happening as we
enter the 2020s—a decade already predicted to be a time of crisis.
Ioana, M., B. Ferwerda, T. S.
Plantinga, M. Stappers, M. Oosting, M. McCall, A. Cimpoeru, F. Burada, N.
Panduru, R. Sauerwein, O. Doumbo, J. W. M. van der Meer, R. van Crevel, L. A.
B. Joosten, and M. G. Netea. (2012). Different Patterns of Toll-Like Receptor 2
Polymorphisms in Populations of Various Ethnic and Geographic Origins. Infection and Immunity 80(5): 1917-1922 https://iai.asm.org/content/80/5/1917
Kwak, H.J., J.Y. Moon, Y.W.
Choi, T.H. Kim, J.W. Sohn, H.J. Yoon, D.H. Shin, S.S. Park, and S.H. Kim.
(2010). High prevalence of bronchiectasis in adults: analysis of CT findings in
a health screening program. Tohoku
Journal of Experimental Medicine 222: 237-242. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dd5d/c5d64f82c84277b74024af0671c8ec070fa6.pdf
Seitz, A.E., K.N. Olivier, J.
Adjemian, S.M. Holland, and D.R. Prevots. (2012). Trends in bronchiectasis
among medicare beneficiaries in the United States, 2000 to 2007. Chest 142(2):432-439. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3425339/
