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GEOGRAPHY OF HUMAN BLOOD GROUPS (A, B, O SYSTEM)
Author(s) -
Lundman Bertil
Publication year - 1948
Publication title -
evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.84
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1558-5646
pISSN - 0014-3820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1558-5646.1948.tb02743.x
Subject(s) - citation , biology , library science , world wide web , computer science
The distribution of the alleles of the AB blood group is of great importance in physical anthropology since it is the only human racial character whose genetics is fully clear,' and which has been studied intensively and with exact methods. As far as is known, the gene is not linked with any other gene, nor do the blood group genes control any other physiological characters. This means that so far as is known they have no selective significance. The mutation frequencies are evidently very low. This is shown, in the huge body of genetical material collected all over the world, by the great similarity in the frequencies of the alleles between related ethnic groups which have been separated from each other for centuries and have not mingled with other groups for centuries. Thus, unmixed gypsies have nearly the same ratios as the present natives of their ancestral home in India; German colonists in south Hungary have the same frequencies as do the present population on the middle Rhine area, although the colonists left the Rhineland hundreds of years ago (Hirszfeld, 1928). The frequencies of blood alleles, "the serological pattern," are thus a first-rate indication of origin. However, the rule of the variability of the allele ratios within a human group is subjected to the law of chance. Hence the above-mentioned fact of the invariability of the pattern is true only of large-sized populations. Within areas of .limited population, e.g., a rural parish, new relations between the alIeles may develop, especially after wars,