King Tut’s DNA is a 99.6 percent match with Western European Y Chromosomes?

Despite the refusal of the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, to release any DNA results which might indicate the racial ancestry of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, the leaked results reveal that King Tut’s DNA is a 99.6 percent match with Western European Y chromosomes.

The DNA test results were inadvertently revealed on a Discovery Channel TV documentary filmed with Hawass’s permission — but it seems as if the Egyptian failed to spot the giveaway part of the documentary which revealed the test results.

Hawass previously announced that he would not release the racial DNA results of Egyptian mummies — obviously because he feared the consequences of such a revelation.

On the Discovery Channel broadcast, which can be seen on the Discovery Channel website here, or if they pull it, on YouTube here, at approximately 1:53 into the video, the camera pans over a printout of DNA test results from King Tut.

Firstly, here is a brief explanation of the results visible in the video. It is a list of what is called Short Tandem Repeats (STRs).

STRs are repeated DNA sequences which are “short repeat units” whose characteristics make them especially suitable for human identification.

These STR values for 17 markers visible in the video are as follows:
DYS 19 – 14 (? not clear)
DYS 385a – 11
DYS 385b – 14
DYS 389i – 13
DYS 389ii – 30
DYS 390 – 24
DYS 391 – 11
DYS 392 – 13
DYS 393 – 13
DYS 437 – 14 (? not clear)
DYS 438 – 12
DYS 439 – 10
DYS 448 – 19
DYS 456 – 15
DYS 458 – 16
DYS 635 – 23
YGATAH4 – 11

What does this mean? Fortunately, a genius by the name of Whit Athey provides the key to this list. Mr Athey is a retired physicist whose working career was primarily at the Food and Drug Administration where he was chief of one of the medical device labs.

Mr Athey received his doctorate in physics and biochemistry at Tufts University, and undergraduate (engineering) and masters (math) degrees at Auburn University. For several years during the 1980s, he also taught one course each semester in the electrical engineering department of the University of Maryland. Besides his interest in genetic genealogy, he is an amateur astronomer and has his own small observatory near his home in Brookeville, MD.

He also runs a very valuable website called the “Haplogroup Predictor” which allows users to input STR data and generate the haplogroup which marks those STR data.

For those who want to know what a haplogroup is, here is a “simple” definition: a haplogroup is a group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor with a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) mutation.

Still none the wiser? Damn these scientists.

Ok, let’s try it this way: a haplotype is a combination of multiple specific locations of a gene or DNA sequence on a chromosome.

Haplogroups are assigned letters of the alphabet, and refinements consist of additional number and letter combinations, for example R1b or R1b1. Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups have different haplogroup designations. In essence, haplogroups give an inisight into ancestral origins dating back thousands of years.

By entering all the STR data inadvertently shown on the Discovery video, a 99.6 percent fit with the R1b haplogroup is revealed.

The significance is, of course, that R1b is the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup in Europe reaching its highest concentrations in Ireland, Scotland, western England and the European Atlantic seaboard — in other words, European through and through.

 

Wow...I might be related to King Tut...if thats so, maybe I can claim myself King of Egypt!

 

Since there is no link, I can only assume that you are claiming to be the author of the article. As such, I have a couple of questions for you:

Did you discuss this matter with Dr. Athey? What would you say if I suggested that Dr. Athey does not agree with the conclusions of your article?

You are of course aware that R1b is also found in Africa and Asia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b_(Y-DNA)

By the way, STR markers are fast changing and cannot let you confirm the haplogroup (R1b is being claimed) so the whole point of the article is moot and renders it little more than your typical Internet chain e-mail joke/sensationalism/hoax/conspiracy theory.

Throw in a little pseudo-science and people will believe anything.

 

I saw on either Nat Geo or The Science Channel recently that 90% of DNA is "junk" DNA that's not even used.

With that in mind, I heard/read that humans share well over 90% of our DNA with many primates. Do those figures include the 90% junk DNA that's not used? If so it seems to make such statements about how closely we are related to chimps misleading at best.

No bias here, just asking.

 

We share 96% of our DNA with chimpanzees.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0831_050831_chimp_genes.html

Therefore all chimps are from Europe (Probably Ireland. Those guys are real party animals).

 

The “we are 99% alike” mantra is politically driven, most often by the progressive-liberal camp when discussing black/white differences. Scientifically, it is the difference, not the likeness, which is important when analyzing DNA.

To put it into perspective, the only difference between diamonds and coal is the carbon bonding. Making the claim they are more alike than different when evaluating their characteristics and intrinsic value would be disingenuous if the goal was to sell an agenda.

Being correct rather than right is the world we live in today, and as you point out, quite misleading.

 

Haven't there been more than one human species in the past? If so, why would more than one now be so unthinkable?

Don't all species have their strengths and weaknesses?
Why can't can't different human races have various strengths/weaknesses and differences without necesarily having to be "superior"? Serious question.

 

No, I'm not the author. The R1b found in King tut was not African R1b. The Hittites at one point nearly overtook Egypt. My guess is that King Tut's R1b represents vestiges of Hittite conquest. King Tut was found to be of R1b1b2, and you don't find that in Africa.




STR markers in yDNA are not "fast changing". In fact yDNA is one of the few things which can be reliably sampled thousands and thousands of years later. Mitochondrial DNA disappears rather quickly, yDNA is preserved for a very long time.

Anyhow, it's not my idea. Don't attack the messenger. I'm just relaying what others have reported. The SNPs were shown while the testing was being done live on the Discovery Channel. After that, the Egyptians refused to publish the results. Wonder why?

 

In human genetics, Haplogroup R1b is the most frequently occurring Y-chromosome haplogroup in Western Europe, parts of central Eurasia (for example Bashkortostan[3]), and in parts of sub-Saharan Central Africa (for example around Chad and Cameroon). R1b is also present at lower frequencies throughout Eastern Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, and parts of North Africa. Due to European emigration it also reaches high frequencies in the Americas and Australia. While Western Europe is dominated by the R1b1b2 (R-M269) branch of R1b, the Chadic-speaking area in Africa is dominated by the branch known as R1b1a (R-V88). These represent two very successful "twigs" on a much bigger "family tree".

R1b is a sub-clade within the much larger Eurasian MNOPS "macro-haplogroup", which is one of the predominant groupings of all human male lines outside of Africa, and this whole group, along indeed with all of macro-haplogroup F, is believed to have originated in Asia.

The point of origin of R1b is thought to lie in Eurasia, most likely in Western Asia.[7] T. Karafet et al. estimated the age of R1, the parent of R1b, as 18,500 years before present.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b