Admixture of Srubna and Huns in Hungarian conquerors

New preprint at BioRxiv, Mitogenomic data indicate admixture components of Asian Hun and Srubnaya origin in the Hungarian Conquerors, by Neparáczki et al. (2018), at BioRxiv.

Abstract (emphasis mine):

It has been widely accepted that the Finno-Ugric Hungarian language, originated from proto Uralic people, was brought into the Carpathian Basin by the Hungarian Conquerors. From the middle of the 19th century this view prevailed against the deep-rooted Hungarian Hun tradition, maintained in folk memory as well as in Hungarian and foreign written medieval sources, which claimed that Hungarians were kinsfolk of the Huns. In order to shed light on

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The Russian school and the Yamna cultural-historical community, with emphasis on the north-west Pontic region

I have already talked about the Russian school of thought and their position regarding a Mesolithic origin of Proto-Indo-European in Northern Europe (see below related posts).

Since their archaeologists (Ukrainian, Russian, and Kazakh) are the nearest to potential Indo-Uralic origins, I have also recommended to follow some renown researchers closely.

Recently Leo S. Klejn referred to the position of Svetlana Ivanova. I found a recent summary of her model for genetic finds in an article appeared in Генофонд.рф: Степное население в Центральной Европе эпохи ранней бронзы, или путешествие туда и обратно

Aspects I agree with

– There is a … Read the rest “The Russian school and the Yamna cultural-historical community, with emphasis on the north-west Pontic region”

Mitogenomes show ancient human migrations to and through North-East India not of males exclusively

New open article Ancient Human Migrations to and through Jammu Kashmir- India were not of Males Exclusively, by Sharma et al., Scientific Reports 8, N. 851 (2018)

Abstract:

Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), the Northern most State of India, has been under-represented or altogether absent in most of the phylogenetic studies carried out in literature, despite its strategic location in the Himalayan region. Nonetheless, this region may have acted as a corridor to various migrations to and from mainland India, Eurasia or northeast Asia. The belief goes that most of the migrations post-late-Pleistocene were mainly male dominated, primarily associated with

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Something is very wrong with models based on the so-called ‘Yamnaya admixture’ – and archaeologists are catching up (II)

A new article by Leo S. Klejn tries to improve the Northern Mesolithic Proto-Indo-European homeland model of the Russian school of thought: The Steppe hypothesis of Indo-European origins remains to be proven, Acta Archaeologica, 88:1, 193–204.

Abstract:

Recent genetic studies have claimed to reveal a massive migration of the bearers of the Yamnaya culture (Pit-grave culture) to the Central and Northern Europe. This migration has supposedly lead to the formation of the Corded Ware cultures and thereby to the dispersal of Indo-European languages in Europe. The article is a summary presentation of available archaeological, linguistic, genetic and cultural data

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Modern Hungarian mtDNA more similar to ancient Europeans than to Hungarian conquerors

New preprint at BioRxiv, MITOMIX, an Algorithm to Reconstruct Population Admixture Histories Indicates Ancient European Ancestry of Modern Hungarians, by Maroti et al. (2018).

Abstract (emphasis mine)

By making use of the increasing number of available mitogenomes we propose a novel population genetic distance metric, named Shared Haplogroup Distance (SHD). Unlike FST, SHD is a true mathematical distance that complies with all metric axioms, which enables our new algorithm (MITOMIX) to detect population-level admixture based on SHD minimum optimization. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of our methodology we analyzed the relation of 62 modern and 25 ancient Eurasian

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Ancient Phoenician mtDNA from Sardinia, Lebanon reflects settlement, genetic diversity, and female mobility

New article at PLOS One, Ancient mitogenomes of Phoenicians from Sardinia and Lebanon: A story of settlement, integration, and female mobility, by Matisoo-Smith et al. (2018).

Abstract:

The Phoenicians emerged in the Northern Levant around 1800 BCE and by the 9th century BCE had spread their culture across the Mediterranean Basin, establishing trading posts, and settlements in various European Mediterranean and North African locations. Despite their widespread influence, what is known of the Phoenicians comes from what was written about them by the Greeks and Egyptians. In this study, we investigate the extent of Phoenician integration with the Sardinian

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Science and Archaeology (Humanities): collaboration or confrontation?

Another discussion on the role of Science for Archaeology, in The Two Cultures and a World Apart: Archaeology and Science at a New Crossroads, by Tim Flohr Sørensen, Norwegian Archaeological Review, vol. 50, 2 (2017):

Within the past decade or so, archaeology has increasingly utilised and contributed to major advances in scientific methods when exploring the past. This progress is frequently celebrated as a quantum leap in the possibilities for understanding the archaeological record, opening up hitherto inaccessible dimensions of the past. This article represents a critique of the current consumption of science in archaeology, arguing that the discipline’s

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We are all special, which also means that none of us is

Adam Rutherford writes You’re Descended from Royalty and So Is Everybody Else – Anybody you can name from ancient history is in your family tree, which I discovered via John Hawks’ new post The surprising connectedness of human genealogies over centuries.

Excerpt:

One way to think of it is to accept that everyone of European descent should have billions of ancestors at a time in the 10th century, but there weren’t billions of people around then, so try to cram them into the number of people that actually were. The math that falls out of that apparent impasse

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Long-term genetic structure in ancestral Native Americans, consistent with the Beringian ‘standstill model’

New article, Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans, by Moreno-Mayar et al.

Abstract:

Despite broad agreement that the Americas were initially populated via Beringia, the land bridge that connected far northeast Asia with northwestern North America during the Pleistocene epoch, when and how the peopling of the Americas occurred remains unresolved. Analyses of human remains from Late Pleistocene Alaska are important to resolving the timing and dispersal of these populations. The remains of two infants were recovered at Upward Sun River (USR), and have been dated to around 11.5 thousand years ago (ka). Here,

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