Orkney Islanders have Siberian relatives

From The Telegraph: Orkney Islanders have Siberian relatives.

Orkney Islanders are more closely related to people in Siberia and in Pakistan than those in Africa and the near East, according to a novel method to chart human migrations.

The surprising findings come from a new way to infer ancient human movements from the variation of DNA in people today, conducted by a team from the University of Oxford and University College Cork, which has pioneered a technique that analyses the entire human genetic makeup, or genome.

Although it provides relative genetic contributions of one group to another, rather than timings, it confirms how the first modern humans came out of Africa 50,000 years ago, mostly from a group in southern Africa called the San.

But the subsequent movements around the world, via the near east, central Asia and then Europe, turned up some surprises including a strong similarity between the Sindih, a people who once lived in Pakistan, and Orkney Islanders, or Orcadians.

In turn, the Orcadians are closely related to the people who first colonised Siberia. [continue]