1434 by Gavin Menzies Page B

Dalmatian base for Far East trade. (These old Dalmatian names were used on German maps of the Pacific until Germany was defeated in World War II, after which they were expunged and replaced by Spanish, French, and Portuguese names). I hope that young scholars will translate the whole of Professor Yoshamya’s manuscript into English, since only excerpts have yet been translated.
    As will be seen when we reach Venice, tens of thousands of Asian slave girls and women were brought to Venice. Doubtless many of these would have escaped as the fleets berthed at the islands en route to Venice, and this will be shown up in the mitochondrial DNA.
    The first step in setting up a DNA research program for Venetianand Dalmatian people was to see what existing DNA research had already been carried out. Dr. Lovric, who works in the Department of Molecular Genetics, kindly provided me with the information. There were a dozen local DNA reports of people on Adriatic islands, which were all summarized in Lovorka Bara, Marijana Perii et al., “Y Chromosomal Heritage of Croatian Population and its Island Isolates.” 7 As may be seen in the abstract, Professor Bara et al. state: “In one of the Southern Island (Hvar) populations, we found a relatively high frequency (14%) of lineages belonging to P* (xM 173) cluster, which is unusual for European populations. Interestingly, the same population also harboured mitochondrial haplogroup F that is virtually absent in European populations—indicating a connection with central Asian populations, possibly the Avars.”
    Then at paragraph 3 on of their report:
    Worthy of note is the finding of considerable frequency haplogroup P* (xM 173) in the population of the island of Hvar. According to Wells et al (44—see footnotes) this lineage displays a maximum in central Asia while being rare in Europe, Middle East and East Asia. Its presence in Hvar recapitulates our finding of MtDNA haplogroup F on the island of Hvar and in mainland Croatian population that is virtually absent in Europe but, again, common in populations from central and Eastern Asia (51—see footnotes). There are several possibilities for the occurrence of the ancestral lineage of M 173. One is the well documented alliance of Avars (a Mongol people) and Slavs (Croatians) that followed Avar arrival to the Eastern Adriatic in 6th Century AD. The other is the expansion of the Ottoman Empire from the 16th to 18th Century AD when refugees from the Western Balkans frequently immigrated to the islands. Lastly, the ancient Silk Road linking China with Western Asia and Europe could be a possible path of P(xM 173) lineage too. Any of these migratory patterns could have introduced the mutation to the investigated population.
    As may be seen, the distinguished professors do not include a fourth possibility: that the inheritance of Chinese and Asian (Mongol) genes came by sea from sailors on ships sailing from Alexandria to Venice.Looking at a map reveals this is by far the most likely method. The Avars settled near the Drava River on the Hungarian border—why should they then decide to migrate westward across some of the most rugged mountains on the planet to reach Hvar? Why choose the most extreme island, the farthest out in the ocean, on which to settle?
    Second, if they had followed this bizarre route, their genes would be seen in the populations between where they settled on the Drava and Hvar; they are not. The same could be said for the Ottoman invasions down the Danube. Why should they choose a remote place out at sea to settle when they had the fertile Danube plain? The amount of Asian DNA, 14 percent, is remarkable; well-documented Danish invasions of Britain reveal a comparable 7 percent. Also, in my view, the fact that both Asian men (Y chromosome) and women (mitochondrial) settled on Hvar means men and women from Asia arrived together. Mongol armies invading from the East would have taken women where they found