[conspire] NYLXS Press Release on the OLPC Project

[Rick Moen]

I wrote:

> Ah, here's the intro:  http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature2/
> Unfortunately, the full text is available only to subscribers.

However, many of the details are here:
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/lebanon.html

And the full study results are here (the only moderately surprising
results being no real traces of the four centuries of Ottoman rule):
http://www.ajhg.org/images/latestarticles/zalloua.pdf 

Abstract:  Lebanon is an eastern Mediterranean country inhabited by
approximately four million people with a wide variety of ethnicities and
religions, including Muslim, Christian, and Druze. In the present study,
926 Lebanese men were typed with Y-chromosomal SNP and STR markers, and
unusually, male genetic variation within Lebanon was found to be more
strongly structured by religious affiliation than by geography. We
therefore tested the hypothesis that migrations within historical times
could have contributed to this situation.  Y-haplogroup J*(xJ2) was more
frequent in the putative Muslim source region (the Arabian Peninsula)
than in Lebanon, and it was also more frequent in Lebanese Muslims than
in Lebanese non-Muslims.  Conversely, haplogroup R1b was more frequent
in the putative Christian source region (western Europe) than in Lebanon
and was also more frequent in Lebanese Christians than in Lebanese non-
Christians. The most common R1b STR-haplotype in Lebanese Christians was
otherwise highly specific for western Europe and was unlikely to have
reached its current frequency in Lebanese Christians without admixture.
We therefore suggest that the Islamic expansion from the Arabian
Peninsula beginning in the seventh century CE introduced lineages
typical of this area into those who subsequently became Lebanese
Muslims, whereas the Crusader activity in the 11th-13th centuries CE
introduced western European lineages into Lebanese Christians.