Traces of medieval migrations in a socially stratified population from Northern Italy. Evidence from uniparental markers and deep-rooted pedigrees

The Italian genome reflects the history of Europe and the Mediterranean basin

“…After that the 'Barbarian invasions' took place, with migratory waves from Northern-Central Europe to Northern-Central Italy. It may be speculated that the estimated Northern-Central European ancestry in contemporary Italians is also the effect of subsequent Italian population growth, as previously reported by studies on mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA from a genetic isolate in Northern Italy, 42 suggesting that Germanics (Lombards in particular) settled in Northern Italy during the 'Migration Period' and may have contributed to the foundation of some communities in Northern Italy. Finally, admixture events involving the Southern Italian population were inferred to have occurred about 1000 y.a., coinciding with The Norman conquest of Southern Italy that spanned most of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and involved many battles and independent conquerors.…”

Three hundred years of low non-paternity in a human population

“…Finally, the nonpaternity rate of R1b families was higher, rather than lower, than nonR1b families, suggesting that we did not miss non-paternities in the more frequent R1b families. As more studies are reporting very low non-paternity rates (Anderson, 2006;Voracek et al, 2008;Strassmann et al, 2012;Wolf et al, 2012;Larmuseau et al 2013;Boattini et al, 2015) in disparate human populations we may need to conclude that the historical cuckoldry rate of, at least Western, human populations may well be very low-o3% and frequently o1%. In support of such low rates of non-paternity several studies comparing surnames to Y-chromosome haplotypes of substantially older populations also gave very low rates of non-paternity: 1.3% for Sykes in England (Sykes and Irven, 2000); 1.6% for O'Sullivan in Ireland (McEvoy and Bradley, 2006); 1.49% in Iceland (Helgason et al, 2003); 0.74% for the five most common surnames in Oriente Columbia (Bedoya et al, 2006); 1.28-3.26% for five British surnames (King and Jobling, 2009a); 0.91% in the Belgian population (Larmuseau et al, 2013); 1.21% in the Partecipanza of Italy (Boattini et al, 2015).…”

“…Furthermore, 93% of our studied conceptions predate the invention of the pill and contraception could not have concealed extramarital affairs. This combination of genealogies with genetic data give us a novel understanding of human historic behaviour (Foster et al, 1998;Sykes and Irven, 2000;Jobling, 2001;Soodyall et al, 2003;Kayser et al, 2007;Larmuseau et al, 2013;Boattini et al, 2015).…”

“…Five subsequent studies on dissimilar populations also gave very low estimates of 0.94% in Germany (Wolf et al, 2012), 0.73% for Afrikaners (Greeff et al, 2012), 1.3-2.9% for different Dogon religions (Strassmann et al, 2012), 0.9% in Belgium (Larmuseau et al, 2013) and 1.2% in Italy (Boattini et al 2015). Although this important parameter for human populations may not be pinned down to a single value, it is necessary to quantify the rate of cuckoldry in a variety of human populations and sample sizes need to be large, as small samples can overestimate the non-paternity rate (Voracek et al, 2008).…”

“…A number of studies have combined deep-rooting genealogies with Y-chromosome typing to estimate cuckoldry rates (Heyer et al, 1997;Foster et al, 1998;Sykes and Irven, 2000;Soodyall et al, 2003;Kayser et al, 2007;Pollin et al, 2008;King and Jobling, 2009a;Greeff et al, 2012;Strassman et al, 2012;Larmuseau et al, 2013;Boattini et al, 2015). The advantage of these studies is that most of the conceptions occurred before the invention of contraception and apart from the sampled individuals, all the conceptions of earlier generations should be random with respect to paternity certainty as most men already passed away.…”