Wiik’s theory about the spread of Uralic into east and central Europe, and the Uralic substrate in Germanic and Balto-Slavic

I recently wrote about how Wiik’s model was wrong in supporting a Mesolithic European Vasconic-Uralic harmony – genetically based on the modern distribution of R1b vs. N1c haplogroups -, and thus also the disruption of this harmony by Indo-Europeans (supposedly a population of R1a-lineages invading central Europe from a Balkan homeland).

Romanticism does this quite frequently: it makes us believe in some esoteric fantasy, like the ethnic continuity of our ancestors in the region we live (and a far, far greater original territory that has been unfairly diminished by invaders), providing us with strong links to support our artificial … Read the rest “Wiik’s theory about the spread of Uralic into east and central Europe, and the Uralic substrate in Germanic and Balto-Slavic”

Heyd, Mallory, and Prescott were right about Bell Beakers

Sometimes it is fun to read certain “old” papers. I have recently re-read some important papers that predicted what we are seeing now in aDNA analysis with surprising accuracy:

– Harrison & Heyd (2007): “We predict that future stable isotope and ancientDNA analyses of Beaker skeletal material will support our view that immigration played an important role in the Europe-wide Bell Beaker phenomenon”. – Duh, obvious, right? Wrong. Read the whole paper. It was already becoming a classic in the study of the Bell Beaker culture before the latest research on Bell Beaker aDNA, and it will be … Read the rest “Heyd, Mallory, and Prescott were right about Bell Beakers”

Indo-European pastoralists healthier than modern populations? Genomic health improving over time

A new paper has appeared at BioRxiv, The Genomic Health Of Ancient Hominins (2017) by Berence, Cooper and Lachance.

Important results are available at: http://popgen.gatech.edu/ancient-health/.

While the study’s many limitations are obvious to the authors, they still suggest certain interesting possibilities as the most important conclusions:

In general, Genetic risk scores (GRS) are similar to present-day individuals
Genomic health seems to be improving over time
Pastoralists could have been healthier than older and modern populations

Some details and shortcomings of the study (most stated by them, bold is from me) include:

Allele selection: only some of the known

… Read the rest

Indo-European Demic Diffusion – The expansion of Proto-Indo-Europeans potentially explained as the expansion of R1b subclades

I published an essay (or “dissertation”) some weeks ago, about what seems to me one of the most likely models of expansion of Indo-European-speaking peoples, based on Y-DNA haplogroups. Recently J.P. Mallory had proposed* (although he was not the first) that North-West Indo-European (the ancestor of Italo-Celtic and Germanic, and Balto-Slavic**) expanded with the Bell Beaker culture, a hypothesis that is supported by the most recent radiocarbon data (and subsequent proposal of an eastern origin of the pre-Bell Beaker culture, linked to the Yamna expansion, by Volker and Heyd). As I outline in the paper, ancient DNA samples and … Read the rest “Indo-European Demic Diffusion – The expansion of Proto-Indo-Europeans potentially explained as the expansion of R1b subclades”