Wednesday, June 04, 2008

A Little Asian in All of Us

Well not quite, but you get the picture.

Taking a cue from the A Little Black in All of Us post, I am going to write a post about Asian genes in non-Asians. Mostly or fully-Asian groups obviously occupy most of Asia. Even if we subtract Australoids from Asians, many Melanesians have some Asian in them, especially those in the east end of Indonesia and along the coast of New Guinea. In this case, the Asian is Austronesian from Taiwan.

Papuans and Aborigines have little to no Asian mix. Polynesians are a highly controversial people who have usually been thought of as being 50% Melanesian and 50% Austronesian from Taiwan. However, there is a new paper out suggesting that they are a mostly-Austronesian people.

Micronesians are said to be the same. Previously, they were thought to be Polynesians mixed with Melanesians. Polynesia is thought to have been populated from Eastern Indonesia. Micronesia is thought to have been populated from around Fiji. Fijians are Melanesians with considerable Polynesian genes.

Obviously, mainland Asia is all Asian. Siberians are mostly Asian. The Yakut, for instance, are mostly Asian, but they do have 6% Caucasian in them.


A beautiful Yakut woman from the Sakha Republic competing for the Miss Russia 2007 contest. That's basically the Yakut Republic. She should have only 6% Caucasian genes, but it seems like she has more than that.


The Caucasian comes from a group called the Sakas who conquered Siberia 1,500 years ago. The Mongolians are 86% Asian and 14% Caucasian.


A beautiful Buryat woman competing in the Miss Russia 2007 contest. Buryats are said to be quite close to Mongolians genetically, so she probably has about 14% Caucasian genes. Note the classic high Mongolian cheekbones. Korean women have this same feature, and they are recent immigrants from Mongolia in the past 4-5,000 years.


The Hui are in interesting group inside China, south of Mongolia, who are 93% Asian and 7% Caucasian. The Han have no Caucasian in them, though NE Chinese are quite close to Caucasians genetically.

Going west of Burma, we run into trouble. In NE India, the people are mostly Asian. Going north to Nepal, you get an odd mix of all sorts of people, some mostly Asian but others more of an East Indian type.


A very interesting, yet unclassifiable, type in Nepal. Clearly there is an Asian component to this phenotype. There are some phenotypes that look something like this in SE Asia, especially hill tribes in Burma and Thailand. Come to think of it, doesn't she look a bit like the Naga below?


Nagas of Northeast India. They cluster genetically with Tibetans. Some think that they are the leftovers of the original people of the region.


The mother of this Nepalese family looks pretty Caucasian, but I have a hard time classifying that phenotype. Something resembling that phenotype can be seen in some of the Kalash. There is also some of a North Indian-Punjabi component. The two daughters clearly have a strong Asian element, thought it does not much resemble other Asian types. The girl on the right looks a bit like a Filipina.


A very Asian type in, believe it or not, Nepal. Yes. This phenotype looks very Chinese and could be related to Tibetans. Nepalese are very difficult to classify genetically due to the divergence of types. Further, the peopling of Nepal is very poorly understood.


All East Indians are considered to be on the border between Caucasians and Asians (though they are Caucasians), yet most East Indians do not have Asian genes. An exception is in the northwest around Punjab.


North Indians, possibly Punjabis. Many Punjabis look something like this. They have 10% Asian genes and it is often apparent, especially in the eyes.


Punjabis have about 10% Asian genes. You can sometimes see it in their eyes.


These beautiful young women are from Ladakh, on the border of China and India. As you can see, the Indians here are heavily Asian. The girl on the right looks very Korean. The other two are very difficult to classify, but the girl on the right left could almost be Mediterranean - Italian or Iberian, other than the eyes. Genetically probably close to Tibetans.


Heading into Pakistan, some Pakistanis appear somewhat Asian. The Kalash, whom we discussed in a previous post, often appear somewhat Asian.

A very interesting Kalash woman. The Kalash are so divergent that they form one of two splits in the Caucasian Race - Kalash and non-Kalash. No one quite knows much about them, but they seem to have come from the Caucasus. Their genes are radically divergent. Either they have experienced tremendous genetic drift or they are some of the most ancient Caucasians of all.

The very early proto-Caucasians may have looked something like this - they had heavy Asian admixture. This mixing of Black and Asian was taking place in the Caucasus region.


More Kalash. There are some very interesting types in this fascinating group. Both the woman and her daughter look Asian, the daughter more so. The woman seems to have an East Indian component.


Some Pashtuns look a little Asian, but many others just look pure Caucasian.

When we head north from this area, we start running into some heavy Asian-Caucasian mixes. This is the zone where these two great major races have seriously mixed. Heading East to Western China, we find the Uighurs, a group that is 61% Asian and 39% White. This Muslim group is heavily repressed by China and some have taken up arms against the state. I do support this secessionist movement.


Uighurs. A most interesting group of people from West China. This area has clearly seen a tremendous amount of Caucasian-Asian mixing for a long time now. It is in this region that burial tombs have been unearthed that revealed Caucasian mummies, some with red hair.

Of course, this drove White nationalist insane people even more insane. China was an ancient White homeland! Except the "Whites" were probably some Iranian or Caucasus types that these idiots have excised from their precious White race. At any rate, a few Caucasian bodies here and there does not a homeland make. There were and are plenty of Asians running around this region too. Truth is that Iranian types from the steppes have been invading this region for ages.

Tocharian, perhaps one of the earliest forms of Indo-European, may have been spoken on these windy steppes 8,000 years ago. The Uighurs are 61% Asian and 39% Caucasian. Their movement for liberation has been heavily repressed by the Chinese. Some have been radicalized and have moved down into Afghanistan and the Pakistan tribal areas to work with the local Taliban, but in general, Islam in this region is quite moderate and reasonable.

It's questionable whether or not China even has much of a claim to this land. The girl on the right has a very interesting phenotype. She looks quite Caucasian, but that Caucasian look is actually specific to the Caucasus. I look at her and think "Dagestani". White-Chinese hapas in the US often look something like this also.


Heading West, Uzbeks in Uzbekistan are clearly a very mixed race people - they are 59% Asian and 41% Caucasian.

An Uzbek man with a turban. A syncretic form of Islam was popular here, but due to religious repression, some Uzbeks have turned to radical Islam. The group is called the IMU. They were defeated in Uzbekistan and the remnants moved to Afghanistan to link up with the Taliban. After the Taliban were defeated, many moved into the tribal areas where many IMU fighters married local women. They form a significant component of the Pakistani Taliban who are fighting in the tribal areas right now.


A young Uzbek man. This man looks very Caucasian, other than the slight Asian eyes. The outfit would not be out of place in Afghanistan.


An Uzbek woman. As you can see, at 41%, the Caucasian element is very high in Uzbeks. The phenotype is difficult to place, but the Caucasian element could resemble a Greek, a Georgian or possibly an Iranian.


Heading further West, the Kazakhs are strangely even more Asian: they are 70% Asian and 30% Caucasian.

Heading back towards China, we come to the Altai, a region where Mongolia, China and Russia all come together. This is thought to be the region from which the Amerindians came from. These people are best categorized as Northern Turkics and they all speak a Turkic language.

Some people here are very mixed (figures here): The Shor are 51% Caucasian and 49% Asian, the Altai themselves are 53% Asian and 47% Caucasian, the Khakass are 72% Asian and 28% Caucasian, the Sojots are 81% Asian and 19% Caucasian and the famous throat-singers, the Tuvans, are 89% Asian and 11% Caucasian.

These people are best thought of as members of a subrace known as the Uralic Race, even though they speak Turkic tongues. The Uralics generally speak languages related to Finnish.

Anthropologically, the Uralics are mysterious. We do not really know much about them or where they came from, but they are the subject of endless speculation, especially by Finnish researchers, who are fascinated by the question. For instance, the proto-Uralics were said to be neither Asians nor Caucasians. Ok, fine, so what were they?

Moving into Europe, we continue to encounter Asian genes. The Turks have a very large component of Asian genes, such that it is difficult to characterize them as Asian or Caucasian. I put them into Caucasian more on appearance than on anything else.


A Turkish Cypriot woman who seems to have a bit of an Asian phenotype. She also looks somewhat Slavic. Slavic phenotypes are very common in Turkey but most Turks do not wish to admit it due to age-old hostility between the Muslim Ottomans and the Christian Slavic regions around it.


Heading north into Russia, it has long been known that Russians are part Asian. One can often note an Asiatic component in Russians. I had a Russian girlfriend once named Natasha who lived in the Bay Area. She had some slight Asiatic phenotypical traits.


A beautiful Russian woman. Unless I am hallucinating, I think I see some Asian eyes on her. She may also have the sparse and straighter body hair that some Russian women have. This is a classic Russian Slavic phenotype.


In the part of Russia called Novgorod Oblast, the Russians are 3% Asian and 7% Finn. The Oblast is in the western part of Russia near Latvia, Estonia, St Petersburg and Leningrad. Heading into Europe now, we are surprised to find that Czechs are 3% Asian.


Although Yugoslavians are Slavs just like Czechs, I am not aware of the amount of Asian genes in them, if any. Some say that Yugoslavs, especially Serbs, look very Mediterranean, but I am not so sure. I am not sure which part of Yugoslavia these young women are from, but they are wearing traditional costumes.

What amazed me was how similar these women looked in phenotype. Granted, they've all curled up their hair the same way and they are wearing the same costumes, but if you look closely at the first five women from the left, tell me I'm hallucinating when I see a common phenotype in their facial appearance. Anyone else see it?


That the Hungarians are part-Asian has long been noted. I am not sure about the exact numbers though.


Hungarians dressed in traditional costumes. Their Asian component is not large, but may be on the order of 7% or so. The Asian element comes from the Magyars, a Mongol group that raided into Europe long ago and settled in the region of Hungary.


Both the Finns and Estonians are thought to have Asian genes and the Lapps surely do, but I believe they only have 7% Asian genes.

It often doesn't take much Asian genes to affect the phenotype. One of the first things you notice is a sparseness of body hair and tendency of body hair to be more straight than kinky. Also, even at low gene levels, you often start seeing a bit of an epicathal fold in the eyes.

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