Why is Lower Silesia so high for rh negative frequencies?

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I have recently posted that Poland has 19.67% rh negatives. Looking at national frequencies is important, but since nations can be quite genetically diverse, looking at regional data has proven to be even more informative. Due to my own ancestry, Silesia has been of great interest to me in terms of where the rh negative blood in my own family might come from.

The following study from 2017 will reveal that Lower Silesia has the highest frequency of rh negative people in all of Poland and also the highest frequency of blood type O. 21.1% rh negatives among women and 19.2% rh negatives among men. This is a huge difference between male and female data which needs to be further examined. Both, rh negative and blood type O frequencies have been decreasing drastically.

It needs to also be noted that men in Lower Silesia have lower type O frequencies with 34.1% compared to women with 34.5%.

In order to properly explain all of the reasons, a lot more information is required such as data on migrations. In an ideal situation, the data would contain information on sexes, ages and blood type frequencies among those leaving the region.

The highest rhesus negative frequencies have been observed in Środa Śląska where 24.6% of the women were rhesus negatives. The sample size was 380 while the town’s population is 8,000.

The civilization of Old Europe included Silesia. In the late Bronze Age, the Lusatian culture (in the past, variously speculated to be either ‘pre-Germanic’, Proto-Slavic, Thracian, Karpo-Dacian or Illyrian) covered Silesia. Later, the Scythians and Celts (the tribes of Boii, Gotini and Osi) played a role within the Silesian territory. Still later Germanic tribes migrated to Silesia, possibly from Northern Germany or Scandinavia.
The legendary Amazon women were Scythian and with that high in rh negative blood.

Iron Age Scythians can best be described as a mixture of Yamnaya people, from the Russian Steppe, and East Asian populations, similar to the Han and the Nganasan (a Samoyedic people from northern Siberia).

We have covered the Yamnaya people and their high rh negative frequencies as well as migrations all over Europe here.

Variability in the frequency of ABO and Rh blood groups in Lower Silesia (Poland): the role of natural selection and genetic drift is a large and highly informative study. Data on 158,134 adults (including 113,714 men and 44,420 women) were obtained from two electronic databases containing information about voluntary blood donors.

The study is interesting for several reason:

1) It shows a much higher frequency of rh negatives among women than men.
2) High frequency ranges for ABO and rh factor frequencies. 17.7-24.6% rh- women. 17.4-21.6% rh- men.
3) A regional decline of rh- and blood type O frequencies has been steady.

It will be our task to explain the reasons for this. And hopefully the explanations will shine a light on Silesian ancestry helping determine blood type frequencies in ancient Europe and Western Asia.

Here are some highlights from the study:

Rh negative frequencies have decreased steadily in both, men and women…

… and so have been blood type O frequencies…

… while blood type A has been on the increase.

ABO and rh factor frequencies differ greatly between the regions of Silesia.

Here is a quick video:

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2 Comments

  1. Jessy July 11, 2022 Reply
  2. Jessy July 11, 2022 Reply

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