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| 07:51 AM | ||
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| 07:51 AM | ||
Want to know more about blood types? | |
| Anima User ID: 134460  United States08/22/2006 05:12 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
| Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 134460 United States08/22/2006 05:14 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | The effects of ABO blood group on survival against most forms of epidemic illness is so distinct that a modern day map of the ABO blood group distribution in Europe closely parallels the locations of major epidemics, with higher densities of blood group A and lower frequencies of blood group O in areas historically known to have had long histories of repeated pandemics. On the other hand, in pre-urbanization days the survival advantage would have laid with blood group O as they are known to be more resistant to the flukes and worms that routinely parasitized these early humans, probably because they are the only blood group with antibodies against two other antigens, A and B. These changes are reflected in the local success or failure of each of the blood groups, which appear to have each had a moment of pre-eminence at a critical juncture in our history. The ascent of humans to the top of the food chain (the early advantage of blood group O), the change from hunter-gathering to a highly concentrated, urban environment and agriculturally-based diet (the ascent of blood group A), and the mingling and migration of the races from the African homeland to Europe and Asia ( the opportunity for blood groups B and AB). The Ancestral Foundation From a purely scientific point of view, chemical analysis of the group O antigen reveals that from a structural perspective, it is the simplest blood group and it serves as the backbone for the synthesis of increasingly complex A, B and AB. These later blood groups evolved by adding other sugars onto the basic O sugar, much like a modern city might be built upon the foundations of an ancient one. Thus if the mutations that produced the A and B antigens are ancient, the gene for blood group O is infinitely older. Another dimension testifying to the great antiquity of group O comes from the science of physical anthropology and suggests that a greater part of humanity’s existence has been lived exclusively as group O. [link to www.dadamo.com] |
| Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 134460 United States08/22/2006 05:15 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | The extraordinarily high percentage of blood group O in "ancient" or otherwise isolated populations also testifies to its great age. (6) Even though the early migrations dispersed the gene for group O blood throughout the world, there are some extraordinary examples of "old" populations existing in our world today. Because of their geographic locations, these societies have remained isolated from interaction with other populations. If A, B and O had developed simultaneously, the isolated population groups would have had all of them. But these "old societies" are group O because genes for the later blood groups never had the opportunity to enter into their populations. They have remained unchanged. The Basques are an ancient people whose origins are still a mystery. The Basque language, the only western European language not connected by Indo-European roots, appears to be related to several dialects found in small isolated populations in the valleys of the Caucasus Mountains. Although they look much like their French and Spanish neighbors, Basques possess the lowest frequency of blood group B---originally having no group B at all---and the highest frequencies of blood group O in Europe. Cattle, abundant on the European plains, and fresh water fish seem to have been the staples of their early existence, as evidenced by the extraordinary renderings of the famous cave paintings found in the Basque country. More than fifty percent of the Basque population is Rh negative, as opposed to sixteen percent for the rest of Europe. Like the gene for group O, the genetic mechanism for the Rh negative blood type is simpler, hence undoubtedly older, than the gene for Rh positive. Native Americans are another example of the "old peoples" existing in our world today. It has often been asserted that all full-blooded American Indians are group O, and recent studies on largely intermingled Amerindian populations show a very high (sixty-seven to eighty percent) predominance of O, indicating that their migration from Asia to Alaska was probably much earlier than previously believed.(7,8) Their high rate of blood group O suggests that the Amerindians and Eskimos are directly descended from Cro-Magnon ancestors, probably Mongolians, who migrated around 15,000 B.C. to the Americas. In contrast to the Basques, however, the Asian Amerindians must have mingled extensively with other Asian populations, picking up along the way the gene for Rh positive blood. |
| Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 134460 United States08/22/2006 05:19 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | The Agricultural Dawning The Neolithic Period, or "New Stone Age" followed the "Old Stone Age" or Paleolithic period of the Cro-Magnon hunters, beginning around 30,000 B.C. Agriculture and animal domestication are generally recognized as the hallmarks of its culture. The ability to cultivate grains and livestock allowed these early people to forgo the hand-to-mouth existence of their nomadic ancestors, and settle down in cities, allowing for substantial population concentrations. The British prehistorian V. Gordon Childe coined the term "Neolithic Revolution" to describe the change from a hunting and gathering society to one based on food production, and he considered it the greatest advance in human history after the marshaling of fire. The Neolithic Period was also an important watershed in the distribution of the ABO blood groups. This new, relatively sedentary, agrarian lifestyle and the major change in diet resulted in a new mutation in the digestive tracts and immune systems of these early people. Many of them became carriers of group A blood. The blood group A variant allowed humans to tolerate and better assimilate grains and other agricultural products. Blood group A initially appeared in any significant numbers in the early Caucasian peoples, sometime between 25,000 and 15,000 B.C., somewhere in western Asia or the Middle East. The gene for group A was carried into western Europe and Asia during the movement of these Neolithic societies, especially a branch termed the Indo-Europeans, where it penetrated extensively into the pre-Neolithic Type O populations. The Indo-Europeans appeared originally in South Central Russia, and between 3500 and 2000 B.C. spread southward into Southwestern Asia, especially to Iran and Afghanistan. At some point after this, they began to spread again, this time further westward, into Europe. Not only did their migration serve to transport the gene for group A to pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers, but it also served as a major catalyst in stimulating the adoption of Neolithic developments, such as agriculture. Almost all modern Europeans share a common ancestry with the Indo-European peoples. |
| Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 134460 United States08/22/2006 05:21 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | <snip snip> There is good evidence to support the link between the ascendancy of blood group A and the development of the urban society. As discussed, many areas of the world that have long histories of urbanization and frequent outbreaks of plague, cholera, and smallpox show a predominance of group A over group O. This statistic clearly proved that group A was more resistant to and able to survive the infections common to densely populated areas. One might well wonder how blood group O survived at all-much less how it has remained to this day the most ubiquitous blood group on the planet. One reason might be the sheer amount of group O in the gene pool; it is recessive in A and B and thus remains self-replicating. Blood group A is found in the highest concentrations among western Europeans. Unlike blood groups B and O, there are many varieties of group A. The major grouping, A1, accounts for about ninety-five percent of all A blood. The largest subgroup, A2, is found principally in Northern Caucasians. A2 is found in very high concentration in Iceland and Scandinavia, particularly among the Lapps, ancient settlers of the area. They are almost unique in their high frequency of A, and have the highest frequency of A2, registering forty-two percent in one group. The A2 gene is almost entirely confined to Caucasian populations. The European frequency of group A decreases as we head eastwards. Over much of Europe the frequency of the A gene is greater than twenty-five percent. It is also found in considerable numbers around the entire Mediterranean Sea, particularly in Corsica, Sardinia, Spain, Turkey, and the Balkans. It is clear that humankind most often laid down permanent settlements in those areas where conditions offered them the best chance of survival. |
| Anonymous Coward User ID: 76936 United States08/22/2006 05:22 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
| Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 134460 United States08/22/2006 05:23 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | The gene for blood group B first appeared in significant numbers somewhere around 10 to 15,000 B.C., the tail end of the Neolithic period, in the area of the Himalayan highlands now part of present day Pakistan and India. Like the environmental conditions which spawned the advent of group A, the development of blood group B was in large part a response to changes in the environment. But unlike A, which began to supplant group O as a response to new types of infections, then thrived as a result of the new dietary changes, group B appears to have been more of a response to climatic changes, followed by a different set of dietary adaptations. Life in the tropical flat savannahs of eastern Africa gave way to a harsher existence as the Cro-Magnon hunters migrated to the colder, drier, mountainous areas of the subcontinent and the barren endless plains of the central Asian steppes. It is possible that blood group B may have been the only blood group with the capabilities to survive in such a harsh environment. There is some science behind this theory: For example, variability in the levels of the hormones testosterone, estradiol, and somatotropic hormones in mountaineers of the Pamirs and Kirghizes was examined in relation to their place of residence in terms of elevation above sea level. At high altitudes blood O group had had lower concentrations of estradiol and testosterone, blood group B the highest. (13) Under times of famine, two biologic functions diminish: First is the ability to fend off infection. And the second is the ability to reproduce. Essentially omnivores, group B may have been the only blood group whose immune systems were capable of functioning with a diet described by one Roman historian as "soured milk and mare's blood." In addition to having the ability to survive pestilence, blood group B women may be more fertile than the A and O counterparts (14) and may begin to menstruate earlier. (15) Higher concentrations of the group B gene exists in direct relationship with the demographics of the pre-existing caste system. Since the caste system was the direct result of consecutive layers of foreign conquest, it appears that the B gene may have been introduced into the Indian subcontinent via conquest. (16) In a study among fourteen Hindu caste groups, besides Christian and Muslim populations of West Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh, India All the Hindu castes except Brahmin, Kshatriya and Reddy exhibited relatively higher frequency of group B over group A (24) In a study of ABO distribution along the Silk Route of Northwestern China a distinct increase of blood group B was seen, especially when those subjects of Mongolian extraction were compared to Caucasian. (25) |
| Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 134460 United States08/22/2006 05:26 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | <snipsnipsnip> To modern day anthropologists, blood group B continues to this day to be an "Eastern" blood group. It is found in high numbers among Asians such as the Chinese, Indians, and Siberians. In Europe, blood group B is more frequently found in Hungarians, Russians, Poles, and other eastern Europeans. It is not found in large numbers among western Europeans. Among pre-Neolithic people, such as the Basques and Amerindians, group B is practically nonexistent. Of all the ABO blood groups, B shows the most clearly defined geographic distribution. Stretching as a great belt across the Eurasian plains and down to the Indian subcontinent, blood group B is found in increased numbers from Japan, Mongolia, China and India, up to the Ural Mountains. From there westward, the percentages fall until a low is reached at the extreme western end of Europe. Blood group B is a distinctly non-Indo-European blood type. In Europe, only two areas with a high rate of blood group B appear: one among the group of non-Indo-European peoples known as the Finno-Ugrics (such as the Hungarians and the Finns), the other among the central Slavic peoples (Czechs, Southern Poles, and Northern Serbs). The Viking invaders may have also had a relatively high percentage of B gene, since many of the towns of Britain and western Europe that are linked to the coast by internal lines of communication such as large rivers, have a disproportional amount of blood group B when compared to the surrounding territory. The small numbers of blood group B in old and Western Europeans represents western migration by Asian nomadic peoples. This is most clearly seen in the easternmost Western Europeans, the Germans and Austrians, who have an unexpectedly high incidence of blood group B blood compared to their western neighbors. The highest frequency of blood group B in Germans occurs in the area around the upper and middle Elbe River, an important natural boundary between "civilization" and "barbarism" in ancient and medieval times. Modern subcontinental Indians, a Caucasian people, have some of the highest frequencies of blood group B in the world. Interestingly, among the Asiatics, they and the Japanese are the only areas that show high frequencies of blood group A as well. The northern Chinese and Koreans have high rates of blood group B, and lower rates of blood group A. Nowadays, blood group B accounts for about ten percent of the world’s population. |
| Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 134460 United States08/22/2006 05:27 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | The Intermingling Blood group AB is found in less than five percent of the population. It is certainly the most recent blood group. Unlike the other Abo blood groups, group AB resulted from the intermingling of group A Caucasian people and group B Mongolian people. Some of this may have been peaceful, some must have been part of the violent turmoil that marked the great "Migration of Peoples" at the end of the Ancient Period (300AD-800AD) This time period was characterized by the collapse of the ancient civilizations, brought on by the influx of various wandering hordes of predominantly Eastern origin. The incidence of blood group B was probably very high in these Steppe dwellers, so the appearance of group AB in Europe is probably the result of the intermingling of these Eastern invaders with their European hosts. In Europe, the distribution of this blood group parallels group B, with a low incidence in Western Europeans. There is a very high incidence of AB blood in subcontinental Indians, again probably the result of migration, conquest, caste distinctions and intermingling . Little evidence for the occurrence of group AB extends beyond 900 to 1,000 years ago, when a large western migration of Eastern peoples took place. Blood group AB is rarely found in European graves prior to 900 A.D. Studies of prehistoric grave exhumations in Hungary indicate a distinct lack of this blood group into the Langobard age (fifth to seventh century A.D.). This would seem to indicate that, up until that point in time, European populations of blood groups A and B did not come into common contact. If they did, they neither mingled nor intermarried. Blood group AB may be a purely human invention. This blood group takes the concept of tolerance to the extreme, as it sees all things A-like or B-like as self, and manufactures no opposing blood group antibodies. As early as the 1940s it was noticed that blood group AB had a higher incidence of cancer than the other blood groups. On the plus side, group AB’s tolerance perhaps minimizes the chances of allergies and other autoimmune diseases, such as arthritis and inflammation. There may be a similar survival benefit with regard to possession of a B antigen that is shared between groups B and AB. For example, it has been noted that group B individuals are on average a bit taller than their A and O counterparts, (20) and that women who are AB are in general a bit heavier than the other ABO groups.(21) Something about AB "works" in a modern sense, because these people inherit the tolerance of both A and B. Perhaps this serves to enhance the AB immune system's abilities to manufacture more specific antibodies to microbial invaders, as it possess neither anti-A or anti-B antibodies. |
| Anonymous Coward User ID: 124516 United States08/22/2006 05:36 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
| Vertigo User ID: 134484 United States08/22/2006 06:28 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | You did not mention A negative blood. I am A negative which means I did not descend from the rhesus monkey. Anybody with positve blood types connect to the rhesus monkeys. Why don't you talk about that aspect of your study. The rare types are followed by the government for their entire lives. |
| Anonymous Coward User ID: 134159  Japan08/22/2006 06:47 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | You did not mention A negative blood. Quoting: Vertigo 134484I am A negative which means I did not descend from the rhesus monkey. Anybody with positve blood types connect to the rhesus monkeys. Why don't you talk about that aspect of your study. The rare types are followed by the government for their entire lives. and don't quite 'buy' the lines they try to sell, either |
Man 2.0  User ID: 123010 United States08/22/2006 06:47 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
| Anonymous Coward User ID: 86930 United States08/22/2006 06:50 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
