Germanic Y-chromosomes? Racial theories still alive?

(via Livejournal Anthropologist Community) What? Germanic Y-chromosomes? What’s that? And “Germanic genes”? Are racial theories alive and kicking?

The BBC writes about an “abundance of Germanic genes in England today”:

There are a very high number of Germanic male-line ancestors in England’s current population. Genetic research has revealed the country’s gene pool contains between 50 and 100% Germanic Y-chromosomes.

Or what are “native British genes”?

“We believe that they [Anglo Saxons] also prevented the native British genes getting into the Anglo-Saxon population by restricting intermarriage in a system of apartheid that left the country culturally and genetically Germanised.”

We don’t get any explanations on how these genes are defined. Race – as we know – “doesn’t exist biologically, but it does exist socially,” as anthropologist Alan Goodman once said. “Human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups” (AAA-Statement on Race). But reading the articles in the BBC and New Scientist, it seems that race has become a biological reality.

UPDATE (20.7.06): Comment by Alex Golub at Savage Minds:

There are things that I find curious about the article—the assumption that ‘marriage’ and ‘reproduction’ are the same thing and that ethnic identity is always corelated with a genetic marker for instance—but there doesn’t seem to be very much to be ‘racial’ to me.

>> read the whole comment

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