Expansion of peoples associated with spread of haplogroups: Mongols and C3*-F3918, Arabs and E-M183 (M81)

The expansion of peoples is known to be associated with the spread of a certain admixture component, joint with the expansion and reduction in variability of a haplogroup. In other words, few male lineages are usually more successful during the expansion.

Known examples include:

Neolithic farmers from the Middle East expanding with haplogroup G2a;
Natufian component (Levant hunter-gatherers or later, Neolithic farmers) and haplogroup E southward into Africa;
CHG component expansion with haplogroup J;
WHG expansion into east Europe in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic with haplogroup R1b;
The expansion of “steppe component” with the Corded Ware culture and

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The concept of “Outlier” in Human Ancestry (II): Early Khvalynsk, Sredni Stog, West Yamna, Iron Age Bulgaria, Potapovka, Andronovo…

I already wrote about the concept of outlier in Human Ancestry, so I am not going to repeat myself. This is just an update of “outliers” in recent studies, and their potential origins (here I will repeat some of the examples):

Early Khvalynsk: the three samples from the Samara region have quite different positions in PCA, from nearest to EHG (of Y-DNA haplogroup R1a) to nearest to ANE ancestry (of Y-DNA haplogroup Q). This could represent the initial consequences of the second wave of ANE ancestry – as found later in Yamna samples from a neighbouring region -, … Read the rest “The concept of “Outlier” in Human Ancestry (II): Early Khvalynsk, Sredni Stog, West Yamna, Iron Age Bulgaria, Potapovka, Andronovo…”

Globular Amphora not linked to Pontic steppe migrants – more data against Kristiansen’s Kurgan model of Indo-European expansion

New open access article, Genome diversity in the Neolithic Globular Amphorae culture and the spread of Indo-European languages, by Tassi et al. (2017).

Abstract:

It is unclear whether Indo-European languages in Europe spread from the Pontic steppes in the late Neolithic, or from Anatolia in the Early Neolithic. Under the former hypothesis, people of the Globular Amphorae culture (GAC) would be descended from Eastern ancestors, likely representing the Yamnaya culture. However, nuclear (six individuals typed for 597 573 SNPs) and mitochondrial (11 complete sequences) DNA from the GAC appear closer to those of earlier Neolithic groups than to

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Evolutionary forces in language change depend on selective pressure, but also on random chance

A new interesting paper from Nature: Detecting evolutionary forces in language change, by Newberry, Ahern, Clark, and Plotkin (2017). Discovered via Science Daily.

The following are excerpts of materials related to the publication (written by Katherine Unger Baillie), from The University of Pennsylvania:

Examining substantial collections of annotated texts dating from the 12th to the 21st centuries, the researchers found that certain linguistic changes were guided by pressures analogous to natural selection — social, cognitive and other factors — while others seem to have occurred purely by happenstance.

“Linguists usually assume that when a change occurs in

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Correlation does not mean causation: the damage of the ‘Yamnaya ancestral component’, and the ‘Future American’ hypothesis

Human ancestry can only help solve anthropological questions by using all anthropological disciplines involved. I have said that many times in this blog.

Correlation does not mean causation

Really, it does not.

You might think the tenet ‘correlation does not mean causation‘ must be evident at this point in Statistics, and it must also be for all those using statistical methods in their research. But it is sadly not so. A lot of researchers just look for correlation, and derive conclusions – without even an initial sound hypothesis to be contrasted… You can judge for yourself, e.g. … Read the rest “Correlation does not mean causation: the damage of the ‘Yamnaya ancestral component’, and the ‘Future American’ hypothesis”

Our monograph on North-West Indo-European (first draft) is out

I wrote yesterday about the recently updated Indo-European demic diffusion model.

Fernando López-Menchero and I have published our first draft on the North-West Indo-European proto-language. Our contribution concerns mainly phonetics, and namely two of its most controversial aspects: a common process of laryngeal loss and two series of velars for PIE.

There is also an updated linguistic model for the Corded Ware substrate hypothesis, which seeks to explain certain similarities between Germanic and Balto-Slavic, and between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian, and potential isoglosses between the three.

Available links:

The official Wiki collaborative website oldeuropean.org
Download PDF v.

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The Tollense Valley battlefield: the North European ‘Trojan war’ that hints to western Balto-Slavic origins

It was reported long ago that genetic studies were being made on remains of a surprisingly big battle that happened in the Tollense valley in north-eastern Germany, at the confluence between Nordic, Tumulus/Urnfield, and Proto-Lusatian/Lusatian territories, ca. 1200 BC.

At least 130 bodies and 5 horses have been identified from the bones found. Taking into account that this is a small percentage of the potential battlefield, around 750 bodies are expected to be buried in the riverbank, so an estimated 4,000-strong army fought there, accounting for one in five participants killed and left on the battlefield.

Body armour, … Read the rest “The Tollense Valley battlefield: the North European ‘Trojan war’ that hints to western Balto-Slavic origins”

Forces driving grammatical change are different to those driving lexical change

A new paper at PNAS, Evolutionary dynamics of language systems, by Greenhill et al. (2017).

Significance

Do different aspects of language evolve in different ways? Here, we infer the rates of change in lexical and grammatical data from 81 languages of the Pacific. We show that, in general, grammatical features tend to change faster and have higher amounts of conflicting signal than basic vocabulary. We suggest that subsystems of language show differing patterns of dynamics and propose that modeling this rate variation may allow us to extract more signal, and thus trace language history deeper than has been previously

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C.C. Uhlenbeck on the Proto-Indo-European homeland in the 19th century

Michiel de Vaan, from the University of Lausanne, has recently uploaded three of his papers published in recent years in the JIES on the works of Dutch linguist C.C. Uhlenbeck:

1. The Early C. C. Uhlenbeck on Indo-European, JIES 44/1-2, 2016, p. 73-80

Christianus Cornelius Uhlenbeck (1866–1951) was one of the leading Dutch linguists between the 1880s and the 1940s. He made his mark on a number of disciplines in descriptive and comparative linguistics, such as Basque, the indigenous languages of North America, Old Germanic and Sanskrit. In 2008, a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Netherlandic

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