| Popis: |
The mitochondrial DNA has several properties useful for the reconstruction of human population history. The origin of the Saami people is still not known, even if much have been done to unravel the secrets of the past. One hypothesis is that Saami are the ancient Nordic people, another that they have a strong Mongolian component among their ancestors, and a third that they are mainly of European descent (for a comprehensive review, see Eriksson 1988). In a recent report, Sajantila et al. (in press 1995) show that Saami are distinct from other Europeans by characteristic patterns in mtDNA D-loop sequence, and they conclude that the Saami seem to have a long history distinct from other European populations. |
