Remember the old claim that 40 percent of the Imazighen or the Ait Haddidu Berbers in the Atlas mountains of Morocco were supposedly rh negative?
I have yet to see any proof to this claim.
There have however been studies showing fairly low percentages of rh negatives amongst Berber groups and the latest one is no different:
Variation of Rhesus Haplotype Frequencies in North Africans and in Worldwide Population Analyses indicates in Table 2 that the cde gene frequency amongst Moroccan Berbers is somewhere around 0.283, which according to the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium makes the percentage of rh negatives around 8%.
There is however something interesting in this study giving validation to Kara Rogers’ claim that the Bedouins of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt have around 18 to 30 percent rh negatives amongst them.
Looking at the same table in the same study, the cde frequency in West Egypt appears to be 0.337 which means roughly 11 percent rh negatives.
The study of Sinai however shows an rh negative gene frequency of 0.455 which makes the percentage around 20.
There is no indication if in fact it was Bedouins examined but the difference in numbers is striking and with that strongly indicating that the claim that Bedouins are high in rh negative blood has legs.
The claim that Berber groups are high in rh negatives however appears to once again not only fall short but show numbers so low, that it is tough to imagine a study validating the initial claim, even though it could be possible for certain groups to stand out that way. So once again, we do need the research or need to ignore the initial claim.
One other thing this study has however revealed is that the cde gene frequencies in Polynesia, New Guinea and Melanesia are all 0 making the percentages of rh negative 0 as well.
Greece and Bulgaria show up at around 9.55%.
When it comes to the Mediterranean isles, Corsica, Sicily and Crete are all a little bit below 10 percent and the surprisingly low number is Sardinia with only 3.5% rh negatives.
When it comes to African countries, Somalia is the “low surprise” with only 1.3% rh negatives and Senegal the high one with 7.2%.
Palestinians also surprise with a low number of 3.5% and so do parts of India with the same low numbers.
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