Massive Migrations? The Impact of Recent aDNA Studies on our View of Third Millennium Europe

Thanks to Joshua Jonathan, I have discovered the paper Massive Migrations? The Impact of Recent aDNA Studies on our View of Third Millennium Europe, by Martin Furholt, European Journal of Archaeology (28 SEP 2017).

Abstract:

New human aDNA studies have once again brought to the forefront the role of mobility and migration in shaping social phenomena in European prehistory, processes that recent theoretical frameworks in archaeology have downplayed as an outdated explanatory notion linked to traditional culture history. While these new genetic data have provided new insights into the population history of prehistoric Europe, they are frequently

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More evidence on the recent arrival of haplogroup N and gradual replacement of R1a lineages in North-Eastern Europe

A new article (in Russian), Kinship Analysis of Human Remains from the Sargat Mounds, Baraba forest-steppe, Western Siberia, by Pilipenko et al. Археология, этнография и антропология Евразии Том 45 № 4 2017, downloadable at ResearchGate.

Abstract:

We present the results of a paleogenetic analysis of nine individuals from two Early Iron Age mounds in the Baraba forest -teppe, associated with the Sargat culture (ﬁ ve from Pogorelka-2 mound 8, and four from Vengerovo-6 mound 1). Four systems of genetic markers were analyzed: mitochondrial DNA, the polymorphic part of the amelogenin gene, autosomal STR-loci, and those of the Y-chromosome.

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Ancient mtDNA from Central America and Mexico

New article, Successful reconstruction of whole mitochondrial genomes from ancient Central America and Mexico, by Morales-Arce et al., Scientific Reports (2017).

Abstract:

The northern and southern peripheries of ancient Mesoamerica are poorly understood. There has been speculation over whether borderland cultures such as Greater Nicoya and Casas Grandes represent Mesoamerican outposts in the Isthmo-Colombian area and the Greater Southwest, respectively. Poor ancient DNA preservation in these regions challenged previous attempts to resolve these questions using conventional genetic techniques. We apply advanced in-solution mitogenome capture and high-throughput sequencing to fourteen dental samples obtained from the Greater Nicoya sites of Jícaro

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Genetic vs. genealogical ancestors and actual geographical constraints

Interesting post from Graham Coop, Where did your genetic ancestors come from?

An excerpt:

A thousand years back I’m descended from nearly everyone everywhere in Europe. I’m related to these individuals via millions of lines of descent back through my vast family tree. Yet the majority of the lines back through my pedigree trace to people living in the UK and Western Europe. Many lines trace back to more distant locations, but these are relatively few in number compared to those tracing back to closer to home. Ancestors along each of these lines are (roughly) equally likely to contribute to

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The new “Indo-European Corded Ware Theory” of David Anthony

I recently wrote about the Indo-European Corded Ware Theory of Kristian Kristiansen and his workgroup, a sort of “Danish school”, whose aim is to prove a direct, long-lasting interaction between the North Pontic steppe and east European cultures during the Late Neolithic, which supposedly gave rise to a Late Indo-European-speaking Corded Ware culture. That is, a sort of renewed Kurgan model; or, more exactly, Kurgan models, since there is no single one preferred right now.

David Anthony had remained more or less in the background after the controversial assessment of the so-called Yamnaya ancestral component by recent … Read the rest “The new “Indo-European Corded Ware Theory” of David Anthony”

On the origin of language and human evolution

A rather risky preprint at BioRxiv, Language evolution to revolution: the jump from finite communication system with many words to infinite recursive language was associated with acquisition of mental synthesis, by Andrey Vyshedskiy (2017).

Abstract:

There is overwhelming archeological and genetic evidence that modern speech apparatus was acquired by hominins by 600,000 years ago. There is also widespread agreement that behavioral modernity arose around 100,000 years ago. We attempted to answer three crucial questions: (1) what triggered the acquisition of behavioral modernity 100,000 years ago, (2) why there was a long gap between acquisition of modern speech apparatus and

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Genetic landscapes showing human genetic diversity aligning with geography

New preprint at BioRxiv, Genetic landscapes reveal how human genetic diversity aligns with geography, by Peter, Petkova, and Novembre (2017).

Abstract:

Summarizing spatial patterns in human genetic diversity to understand population history has been a persistent goal for human geneticists. Here, we use a recently developed spatially explicit method to estimate “effective migration” surfaces to visualize how human genetic diversity is geographically structured (the EEMS method). The resulting surfaces are “rugged”, which indicates the relationship between genetic and geographic distance is heterogenous and distorted as a rule. Most prominently, topographic and marine features regularly align with increased genetic

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Asian ancestry of the Roma people in Europe

New article, Tau haplotypes support the Asian ancestry of the Roma population settled in the Basque Country, by Alfonso-Sánchez et al., Nature (2017).

Abstract:

We examined tau haplotype frequencies in two different ethnical groups from the Basque Country (BC): Roma people and residents of European ancestry (general population). In addition, we analyzed the spatial distribution of tau haplotypes in Eurasian populations to explore the genetic affinities of the Romani groups living in Europe in a broader scope. The 17q21.31 genomic region was characterized through the genotyping of two diagnostic single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs (rs10514879 and rs199451), which allow the

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Stone Age plague accompanying migrants from the steppe, probably Yamna, Balkan EBA, and Bell Beaker, not Corded Ware

In the latest revisions of the Indo-European demic diffusion model, using the results from the article Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago, by Rasmussen et al., Cell (2015), I stated (more or less indirectly) that the high east-west mobility of the Corded Ware migrants across related cultures might have been responsible for the spread of this disease, which seems to have been originally expanded from Central Eurasia.

New results appeared recently in the article The Stone Age Plague and Its Persistence in Eurasia, by Valtueña et al., Current Biology (2017), which … Read the rest “Stone Age plague accompanying migrants from the steppe, probably Yamna, Balkan EBA, and Bell Beaker, not Corded Ware”