Monday, August 01, 2011

Swiss men share 'pharaoh gene'

The Local, Switzerland

Every second Swiss male is related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, according to researchers in Zurich.

Scientists working on mapping the genetic profile of Tutankhamun, who ruled Egypt around 3,000 years ago, were able to reconstruct his Y-DNA profile.

They found that he belonged to the haplogroup R1b1a2 that is today strongly represented in Switzerland and other parts of Western Europe.

“Around 50 percent of Swiss men also belong to this group and, therefore, have a common ancestor with the pharaoh,” Roman Scholz, director of the Igenea centre, told the 20 Minuten news channel.

6 comments:

অনিরুদ্ধ ফাল্গুনি সেন said...

Are the Swiss so bank-savvy because of their pharaonic ancestors?

Anonymous said...

Just where and when was Tut`s y-DNA profile published?

Andie said...

The most recent investigation into the DNA of Tutankhamun and his family was in the Journal of the American Medical Association (vol 303, p 638), but is the subject of some disagreement amongst experts.

Anonymous said...

In this report only the nuclear DNA profiles are published, the Y-DNA is only briefly mentioned insofar that two matching markers were found. No further details are given.

The "information" the determination of the haplo-group is based upon comes AFAIK from unreliable screen-shots. This is a very shaky ground IMO and the data has not been confirmed to be correct.

Andie said...

Anonymous, as I said there have been many discussions on the subject, several of which probably agree with you. See for example:

http://egyptology.blogspot.com/2010/07/more-re-tutankhamun-dna-haplogroups.html

http://egyptology.blogspot.com/2010/02/molecular-biologists-response-to-jama.html

http://egyptology.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-tutankhamun-died-latest-questions.html

Andie said...

Kate Phizackerley has commented on the Swiss story here:

http://www.kv64.info/2011/08/dubious-claims-of-tutankhamuns.html