Viesturs Baumanis
Studies from archaeology (bones and cultural artefacts) and more recently immunology, genetics, and molecular biology, try to determine who first occupied the present Latvian territory after the last ice age, where they came from, who came after them and how they changed until a population that we call Latvians emerged.
Cultural artefacts, 5000 to 9000 years old, are widely found in Latvia and those found in Kurzeme differ from those found in the rest of Latvia. The study of bones from 315 Stone Age burials, 4000 to 7000 years old, from a site in Vidzeme show that some have characteristics of Europeans and others resemble of people living to the E and NE of Latvia. Later, around 4000 years ago, different Iron Age people, considered precursors of Balts, arrived.
Studies using methods from immunology, biochemistry and molecular biology have shown a difference in the frequency of some blood groups between Latvians and other Baltic populations, in frequency of genetically inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis and in lack of alpha anti-trypsin activity between Latvians and other Europeans.
An exanimation of DNA fragments of Y chromosomes inherited along paternal lines and of mitochondrial DNA inherited along maternal lines for characteristic mutations has been used to classify populations into haplogroups. The results obtained show that most Latvian ancestors arrived from south east and north east. However, because they have one Y chromosome haplogroup common in Western Europe, some migration also occurred from the West. The most common mitochondrial haplogroups in Latvians are also found in Estonians, Lithuanians, Poles, Scandinavians, Germans and Russians.
Of the paternal markers of haplogroups in Latvians one is shared with all Europeans, and three others with Estonians and Lithuanians, indicating that languages can be different when genes are similar. Scandinavians, Poles, Finns and Russians have two haplogroups which are rare or absent in Latvian populations. Ethnographic research using principal component analysis also shows that other Europeans are genetically more distant from Latvians than Estonians and Lithuanians. Studies of DNA from the 4000–7000 year old bones from Vidzeme may allow us to compare past and present Latvian genomes. Determining haplogroups of individuals living in Latvia today would be of limited value, since we choose friends and partners not on the basis of genetics, but on the basis of completely different criteria.
CONFERENCE