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Abstract Haplotype 15 at 1 Y-chromosome-specific DNA polymorphism (p49/TaqI) was reported in a meta-analysis concerning 2418 males originating from 28 different geographic locations in Western Europe. The highest frequency of haplotype 15 (72.2%) was observed in French Basques, and it was previously deduced that this haplotype is the ancestral haplotype in Europe (Lucotte and Hazout 1996). Percentages of haplotype 15 geographic distribution show another high frequency in northwestern Europeans and a gradient of decreasing frequencies toward southeastern and peripheral countries. These results suggest that frequencies of haplotype 15 of the Y chromosome are useful to study the contribution of pre-Neolithic males to the present-day populations of Europe.
Variation in DNA sequences specific to the nonrecombinant part of the human Y chromosome are particularly interesting from an evolutionary point of view because it relates to paternal ancestry. The most informative probe for this objective is p49 (locus DYS]), which is able to identify some TaqI malespecific fragments, with the A, B, C, D, F, and I fragments being polymorphic between individuals (Lucotte and Ngo 1985). Sixteen main haplotypes at the DYS1 locus (numbered 1-16) were identified in the first population study using the p49 probe (Ngo et al. 1986) on DNA samples of unrelated males living in Paris. Haplotype 15 (A3, CI,D2,Fl,ll ) was the most widespread haplotype (23%) in this initial study, and elevated frequencies of haplotype 15 were confirmed in other populations from Western Europe in later studies (Torroni et al. 1990; Spurdle and Jenkins 1992; Persichetti et al. 1992; Jobling 1994; Semino et al. 1996). This is the main reason that we study in the present paper the European distribution of haplotype 15, the main haplotype at the DYSI locus.
Moreover, a particularly high frequency (72.2%) of haplotype 15 was observed in French Basques (Lucotte and Hazout 1996) compared with values obtained in other Western European populations. Basques are also characterized by the virtual absence of the southern haplotype 12 (Persichetti et al. 1992) and of the Near Eastern haplotypes 7 and 8 (Lucotte et al. 1993). These results, showing that the most frequent genetic marker is the oldest (Watterson and Guess 1977), confirm that Basques are an ancient European population (Cavalli-Sforza 1988) that has had little previous contact with Neolithic populations....