Isérables: a Bedouin village in Switzerland?

Isérables is an alpine village--about 1000 inhabitants--which remained isolated till these recent years because of its particular geographical situation. The Isérables inhabitants call themselves "Bedjuis" (Bedouin in local dialect) and regard themselves as descendants of the Sarrazins who invaded the Alps during the VIII-X centuries. Our goal, in studying several DNA-VNTR polymorphims, in addition to some blood groups, within the Isérables community, was to see if there was any evidence supporting this popular belief. As a preliminary phase of this project, the allelic frequencies for six VNTR loci analysed for 102 individuals of the village (all descendants of nine original families) are presented. The results are compared with those reported for Swiss and white populations.