Here are the first two dimensions of a multidimensional scaling plot of the following samples:

Dodecad Ancestry Project: 6 Poles, 12 Russians ( Russian_D ), 11 Germans, 19 Scandinavians, 6 Mixed Slavs (various West and East Slav combinations), 17 Britons, 17 Irish

), 11 Germans, 19 Scandinavians, 6 Mixed Slavs (various West and East Slav combinations), 17 Britons, 17 Irish HGDP: 25 Russians from Vologda

Behar et al. (2010): 10 Lithuanians, 9 Belorussians

Applying MCLUST over these first two dimensions and with K=2, the following breakup of individuals ensues:





It's fascinating that Cluster #1 (which corresponds to the assortment of individuals on the left of the MDS plot) includes only Balto-Slavic individuals (65 in total), while Cluster #2 (on the right, includes all 64 Celto-Germanic individuals plus 2 Poles and a mixed Slav.





This surprising concordance is even more striking once we consider that one of the "mixed Slavs" in my sample may be of Prussian origin within present-day Poland. I will be happy to tell the Poles in my sample which cluster they belong to if they write to me at the Dodecad Project e-mail address.





A lot has transpired since the ancient ethnographers divided the little-known peoples of the far north into Keltoi and Skythai, or since the Franco-Russian anthropologist Deniker divided the light-pigmented Northern Europeans into a race nordique and a race orientale. So, it is a bit surprising to see that a basic division of northern Europeans into East and West has stood the test of time. (*)



