Category: Culture

Ancient DNA upends the horse family tree

New paper, behind paywall, Ancient genomes revisit the ancestry of domestic and Przewalski’s horses, by Gaunitz et al., Science (2018)

Abstract:

The Eneolithic Botai culture of the Central Asian steppes provides the earliest archaeological evidence for horse husbandry, ~5,500 ya, but the exact nature of early horse domestication remains controversial. We generated 42 ancient horse genomes, including 20 from Botai. Compared to 46 published ancient and modern horse genomes, our data indicate that Przewalski’s horses are the feral descendants of horses herded at Botai and not truly wild horses. All domestic horses dated from ~4,000 ya to present only

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Reactionary views on new Yamna and Bell Beaker data, and the newest IECWT model

You might expect some rambling about bad journalism here, but I don’t have time to read so much garbage to analyze them all. We have seen already what they did with the “blackness” or “whiteness” of the Cheddar Man: no paper published, just some informal data, but too much sensationalism already.

Some people who supported far-fetched theories on Indo-European migrations or common European haplogroups are today sharing some weeping and gnashing of teeth around forums and blogs – although, to be fair, neither Olalde et al. (2018) nor Mathieson et al. (2018) actually gave any surprising new data … Read the rest “Reactionary views on new Yamna and Bell Beaker data, and the newest IECWT model”

Ancestral heterogeneity of ancient Eurasians

Josif Lazaridis tweets about an interesting preprint at BioRxiv (eclipsed by today’s Nature papers), Ancestral heterogeneity of ancient Eurasians, by Daniel Shriner.

Abstract:

Supervised clustering or projection analysis is a staple technique in population genetic analysis. The utility of this technique depends critically on the reference panel. The most commonly used reference panel in the analysis of ancient DNA to date is based on the Human Origins array. We previously described a larger reference panel that captures more ancestries on the global level. Here, I reanalyzed DNA data from 279 ancient Eurasians using our reference panel, finding substantially

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Olalde et al. and Mathieson et al. (Nature 2018): R1b-L23 dominates Bell Beaker and Yamna, R1a-M417 resurges in East-Central Europe during the Bronze Age

The official papers Olalde et al. (Nature 2018) and Mathieson et al. (Nature 2018) have appeared. They are based on the 2017 preprints at BioRxiv The Beaker Phenomenon And The Genomic Transformation Of Northwest Europe and The Genomic History Of Southeastern Europe respectively, but with a sizeable number of new samples.

Papers are behind a paywall, but here are the authors’ shareable links to read the papers and supplementary materials: Olalde et al. (2018), Mathieson et al. (2018).

NOTE: The corresponding datasets have been added to the Reich Lab website. Remember you can use my drafts on … Read the rest “Olalde et al. and Mathieson et al. (Nature 2018): R1b-L23 dominates Bell Beaker and Yamna, R1a-M417 resurges in East-Central Europe during the Bronze Age”

Germanic tribes during the Barbarian migrations show mainly R1b, also I lineages

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New preprint at BioRxiv, Understanding 6th-Century Barbarian Social Organization and Migration through Paleogenomics, by Amorim, Vai, Posth, et al. (2018)

Abstract (emphasis mine):

Despite centuries of research, much about the barbarian migrations that took place between the fourth and sixth centuries in Europe remains hotly debated. To better understand this key era that marks the dawn of modern European societies, we obtained ancient genomic DNA from 63 samples from two cemeteries (from Hungary and Northern Italy) that have been previously associated with the Longobards, a barbarian people that ruled large parts of Italy for over 200 years after invading

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Population turnover in remote Oceania shortly after initial settlement

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Interesting preprint at BioRxiv by the team of the Reich lab, Population Turnover in Remote Oceania Shortly After Initial Settlement, by Mark Lipson, Pontus Skoglund, Matthew Spriggs, et al. (2018).

Abstract (emphasis mine):

Ancient DNA analysis of three individuals dated to ~3000 years before present (BP) from Vanuatu and one ~2600 BP individual from Tonga has revealed that the first inhabitants of Remote Oceania (“First Remote Oceanians”) were almost entirely of East Asian ancestry, and thus their ancestors passed New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands with minimal admixture with the Papuan groups they encountered. However, all

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Y chromosome C2*-star cluster traces back to ordinary Mongols, rather than Genghis Khan

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Article behind paywall, Whole-sequence analysis indicates that the Y chromosome C2*-Star Cluster traces back to ordinary Mongols, rather than Genghis Khan, by Wei, Yan, Lu, et al. Eur J Hum Genet (2018); 26:230–237

Abstract:

The Y-chromosome haplogroup C3*-Star Cluster (revised to C2*-ST in this study) was proposed to be the Y-profile of Genghis Khan. Here, we re-examined the origin of C2*-ST and its associations with Genghis Khan and Mongol populations. We analyzed 34 Y-chromosome sequences of haplogroup C2*-ST and its most closely related lineage. We redefined this paternal lineage as C2b1a3a1-F3796 and generated a highly revised phylogenetic tree of

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Population replacement in Early Neolithic Britain, and new Bell Beaker SNPs

copper-age-late-bell-beaker

New (copyrighted) preprint at BioRxiv, Population Replacement in Early Neolithic Britain, by Brace et al. (2018).

Abstract (emphasis mine):

The roles of migration, admixture and acculturation in the European transition to farming have been debated for over 100 years. Genome-wide ancient DNA studies indicate predominantly Anatolian ancestry for continental Neolithic farmers, but also variable admixture with local Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Neolithic cultures first appear in Britain c. 6000 years ago (kBP), a millennium after they appear in adjacent areas of northwestern continental Europe. However, the pattern and process of the British Neolithic transition remains unclear. We assembled genome-wide

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Spatio-temporal deixis and cognitive models in early Indo-European

helios-rising

Interesting article, Spatio-temporal deixis and cognitive models in early Indo-European, by Annamaria Bartolotta, Cognitive Linguistics (2018); 29(1):1-44.

Abstract (emphasis mine):

This paper is a comparative study based on the linguistic evidence in Vedic Sanskrit and Homeric Greek, aimed at reconstructing the space-time cognitive models used in the Proto-Indo-European language in a diachronic perspective. While it has been widely recognized that ancient Indo-European languages construed earlier (and past) events as in front of later ones, as predicted in the Time-Reference-Point mapping, it is less clear how in the same languages the passage took place from this ‘archaic’ Time-RP model

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