15 October 2002 -- Genetics and Mongol Traits
As to the statement in the Finnish article that they have 1% Mongol genes, you can put that in the same category as all the other distortions or lies that you hear about human genetics. It states plainly that this is from mitochondrial DNA .  Mitochondrial DNA is passed only from mother to child and has no effect, absolutely none on the phenome (the physical expression of the genome). To start with, since M-dna is passed only from the mother, it only represents one line of ancestors, so the further back in one's family tree you go, the less significance it has. If you go back ten generations in your family you will have 1024 ancestors (2 to the power of 10) assuming no inbreeding, with inbreeding it would be less. Your mitochondrial DNA is passed through one line, from your mother, from her mother and so on back through time. So your m-dna represents 1 out of your 1024 ancestors from ten generations ago. But of course it's even less important because because M-dna has no influence on the phenome. m-dna is not part of the 23 human chromosomes, it is a separate string of DNA found in all cells which converts energy for the cell and probably does other housekeeping jobs within the cell, but has no physical expression outside of the cell.

What other misrepresentation our commonly spouted? How about this one; "There is more genetic diversity in one tribe of chimpanzee than in the entire human race". I've heard this one over and over and after hearing it recently on a discovery channel program, I decided to locate the original quote on the internet. (the internet is actually quite good for this type of research if you know how to manipulate google) Well I found it, and sure enough it was referencing M-dna .  Without even sourcing the original quotes I can also say that the other common statements also reference m-dna . "humans share 99% of their genes with chimpanzees" "all human races share 99.9% of the same genes " How can I know that these refer to m-dna not chromosomal dna without the source of the original quotes? Well it wasn't until the year 2000 that anyone even claimed to have sequenced the human genome, and these quotes have been around longer than that. To top it off, the two groups who claim to have completely sequenced the human genome do not agree with each other. Before these  groups announced  some of the results of their work it was general consensus that the human genome had around 100,000 genes. These two groups announced numbers between 30 and 40 thousand. The big problem though is that both groups have identified genes which the other has not, so the real number has to be higher than the highest number. So in short, they have no idea what the real sequence of the human genome really is, and because of the large size and the techniques used in sequencing it may be many years before anyone really has a good handle on the sequence of the human genome. The real truth is that there is not a single genome sequence that all people are very close to, there are probably several which vary quite a lot. But don't expect politically correct scientists to say so. If you look up genome sequences for viruses on the internet, you will find more than one sequence for various strains of the same virus. And virus genomes are minuscule in comparison to the human genome.

Looking at the photo of the Finnish girl I would say that I have more of a Mongol slant to my eyes than she does.  I also have disproportionately short legs for my torso length, another trait which Eric has mentioned before. I'm actually as tall or taller than most guys I know when seated, but standing I'm only 5'8". I also have disproportionately short middle segments in my pinkie fingers, a trait of some indian tribes and north asians from what i've read elsewhere. I would definitely qualify as one of those blond, blue-eyed, light skinned mestizos of whom Eric talks about. Both my mother and fathers families claim american indian ancestry, although no one really knows which ancestors are the full-blooded indians. my sisters have found no mention of other than white on census forms which they have tracked down so far. of course that is no gaurantee the records are accurate.

I can't really complain about being called a mestizo or eurasian because according to oral history I certainly have asian genes. But, I'm just wondering particulary about the eyes, as to whether that is really a good marker for mongol genes or if it might be an alternative white phenome. The reason why I ask is,  a couple of weeks ago while going through the FAEM archives , I discovered all the references to Anglo-mestizos. I then decided  to do some internet research for pictures of models and actresses who I find most attractive. (see, the internet is good for some forms of research, you can even find the complete sequenced genome for most viruses, I bet you can't find that in most big city libraries) Probably 95% of the women I looked up had some mongolian slant in their eyes, more than half of those were european but not finnish. Since my choice of women to look up was certainly biased by my personal preferences, that undoubtedly skewed my results, however it does show that mongolian slant eyes are widespread in northern europe. Aside from the color, my eyes look exactly like those of Kate Moss.
 http://132.235.90.143/twon/Kate_Moss_7twon.jpg

I saw your posting of the jew from the post office. I was thinking perhaps you or Eric could put together a permanent sort of faq with pictures off of the internet of famous people to illustrate the various traits attributable to various races. I think it could be useful for many people who may not be as experienced as you guys are in identifying whom they are dealing with.