Maybe I've been listening to Tool too much, but I read that Australian aborigines have only 42 + 2 chromosomes, while everybody else have 44 + 2. Is there any truth to this? I can't seem to find much else about it that doesn't refer to Tool song forty six and 2, and some references to Drunvalo Melchizedek's theory's.
This appears to be complete nonsense. As if often the case with complete nonsense it is difficult to find any outright rejection of the concept. For example, try to find a research paper or text book that states thunder is not the roar of the Gods. For what its worth - and to try to inject something of value into this thread - here is an interesting paper from PNAS on Australian/PNG genetics. I think if there was a chromosome count difference it would have been mentioned here, don't you? Hudjashova, G. et al Revealing the prehistoric settlement of Australia by Y chromosome and mtDNA analysis Abstract Published and new samples of Aboriginal Australians and Melanesians were analyzed for mtDNA (n = 172) and Y variation (n = 522), and the resulting profiles were compared with the branches known so far within the global mtDNA and the Y chromosome tree. (i) All Australian lineages are confirmed to fall within the mitochondrial founder branches M and N and the Y chromosomal founders C and F, which are associated with the exodus of modern humans from Africa ≈50–70,000 years ago. The analysis reveals no evidence for any archaic maternal or paternal lineages in Australians, despite some suggestively robust features in the Australian fossil record, thus weakening the argument for continuity with any earlier Homo erectus populations in Southeast Asia. (ii) The tree of complete mtDNA sequences shows that Aboriginal Australians are most closely related to the autochthonous populations of New Guinea/Melanesia, indicating that prehistoric Australia and New Guinea were occupied initially by one and the same Palaeolithic colonization event ≈50,000 years ago, in agreement with current archaeological evidence. (iii) The deep mtDNA and Y chromosomal branching patterns between Australia and most other populations around the Indian Ocean point to a considerable isolation after the initial arrival. (iv) We detect only minor secondary gene flow into Australia, and this could have taken place before the land bridge between Australia and New Guinea was submerged ≈8,000 years ago, thus calling into question that certain significant developments in later Australian prehistory (the emergence of a backed-blade lithic industry, and the linguistic dichotomy) were externally motivated. The full article is available here: http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8726.full.pdf html
