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DNA Verdict: Jefferson Not an Egyptian



By Randy Dotinga February 7, 2007 | 12:01 am

You probably knew that Thomas Jefferson had a fling with one of this female slaves, at least judging by DNA findings.

But you may not have known something else: geneticists thought Jefferson might have had some recent heritage from Egypt, of all places, or somewhere else in the Middle East.

So much for that: New DNA tests suggest that Jefferson’s heritage lies in Wales, as had earlier been assumed.

This news is certainly obscure even for history buffs. But I’m posting this mainly because I love what a professor told the BBC:

"Finding that Jefferson’s Y chromosome was one mutational step away from an Egyptian type makes you think, ‘Crikey, could he have a relatively recent origin in the Middle East?’

"Our point is that we find, at lower frequencies, French, British and Iberian K2s and they are jolly diverse. His fits into that picture of a west European sub-population of K2."

Why aren’t the scientists I interview so bloody quotable?

DNA clue to presidential puzzle [BBC] [ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6332545.stm ]

Wired.com © 2007 Condé Nast Digital

http://www.wired.com/bodyhack/2007/02/dna_verdict_jef/ [with comment]

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http://anglo-saxonisrael.com/site/search/node/jefferson