Two sources of archaic Denisovan ancestry in East Asia, one possibly after the isolation of Native Americans

east-asian-ancestry

Open access paper Analysis of Human Sequence Data Reveals Two Pulses of Archaic Denisovan Admixture, by Sharon L. Browning, Brian L. Browning, Zhou, Tucci, & Akey, Cell (2018).

Summary:

Anatomically modern humans interbred with Neanderthals and with a related archaic population known as Denisovans. Genomes of several Neanderthals and one Denisovan have been sequenced, and these reference genomes have been used to detect introgressed genetic material in present-day human genomes. Segments of introgression also can be detected without use of reference genomes, and doing so can be advantageous for finding introgressed segments that are less closely related to the

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Uralic as a Corded Ware substrate of Indo-Iranian, and loanwords in Finno-Ugric

bronze_age_early-sejma-turbino

Asko Parpola has recently published a new paper, Finnish vatsa ~ Sanskrit vatsá and the formation of Indo-Iranian and Uralic languages.

Abstract:

Finnish vatsa ‘stomach’ < PFU *vaćća < Proto-Indo-Aryan *vatsá- ‘calf’ < PIE *vet-(e)s-ó- ‘yearling’ contrasts with Finnish vasa- ‘calf’ < Proto-Iranian *vasa- ‘calf’. Indo-Aryan -ts- versus Iranian -s- refl ects the divergent development of PIE *-tst- in the Iranian branch (> *-st-, with Greek and Balto-Slavic) and in the Indo-Aryan branch ( > *-tt-, probably due to Uralic substratum). The split of Indo-Iranian can be traced in the archaeological record to the differentiation of the Yamnaya culture

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Genetic ancestry of Hadza and Sandawe peoples reveals ancient population structure in Africa

Open access paper Genetic Ancestry of Hadza and Sandawe Peoples Reveals Ancient Population Structure in Africa, by Shriner, Tekola-Ayele, Adeyemo, & Rotimi, GBE (2018).

Abstract (emphasis mine):

The Hadza and Sandawe populations in present-day Tanzania speak languages containing click sounds and therefore thought to be distantly related to southern African Khoisan languages. We analyzed genome-wide genotype data for individuals sampled from the Hadza and Sandawe populations in the context of a global data set of 3,528 individuals from 163 ethno-linguistic groups. We found that Hadza and Sandawe individuals share ancestry distinct from and most closely related to Omotic ancestry

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First Iberian R1b-DF27 sample, probably from incoming East Bell Beakers

bronze_age_iberia

I had some more time to read the paper by Valdiosera et al. (2018) and its supplementary material.

One of the main issues since the publication of Olalde et al. (2018) (and its hundreds of Bell Beaker samples) was the lack of a clear Y-DNA R1b-DF27 subclades among East Bell Beaker migrants, which left us wondering when the subclade entered the Iberian Peninsula, since it could have (theoretically) happened from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age.

My prediction was that this lineage found today widespread among the Iberian population crossed the Pyrenees quite early, during the Chalcolithic, with … Read the rest “First Iberian R1b-DF27 sample, probably from incoming East Bell Beakers”

Iberian prehistoric migrations in Genomics from Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age

iberia-neolithic-bronze-age

New open access paper Four millennia of Iberian biomolecular prehistory illustrate the impact of prehistoric migrations at the far end of Eurasia, by Valdiosera, Günther, Vera-Rodríguez, et al. PNAS (2018) published ahead of print.

Abstract (emphasis mine)

Population genomic studies of ancient human remains have shown how modern-day European population structure has been shaped by a number of prehistoric migrations. The Neolithization of Europe has been associated with large-scale migrations from Anatolia, which was followed by migrations of herders from the Pontic steppe at the onset of the Bronze Age. Southwestern Europe was one of the last parts of

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The origin and expansion of Pama–Nyungan languages across Australia

Yet another questionable paper by Nature, The origin and expansion of Pama–Nyungan languages across Australia, by Bouckaert, Bowern & Atkinson, Nat Ecol Evol (2018).

Abstract:

It remains a mystery how Pama–Nyungan, the world’s largest hunter-gatherer language family, came to dominate the Australian continent. Some argue that social or technological advantages allowed rapid language replacement from the Gulf Plains region during the mid-Holocene. Others have proposed expansions from refugia linked to climatic changes after the last ice age or, more controversially, during the initial colonization of Australia. Here, we combine basic vocabulary data from 306 Pama–Nyungan languages with Bayesian phylogeographic

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On the potential origin of Caucasus hunter-gatherer ancestry in Eneolithic steppe cultures

An interesting open genomic question is the origin and spread of Caucasus hunter-gatherer (CHG) ancestry in steppe populations during the Eneolithic.

My broad theory regarding the appearance of this ancestral component is based on:

Two recently published papers ivestigating the Don Region may shed some light on this issue:

Plant food subsistence in … Read the rest “On the potential origin of Caucasus hunter-gatherer ancestry in Eneolithic steppe cultures”

Genomic analysis of Germanic tribes from Bavaria show North-Central European ancestry

antiquity-europe

New open access paper Population genomic analysis of elongated skulls reveals extensive female-biased immigration in Early Medieval Bavaria, by Veeramah, Rott, Groß, et al. PNAS (2018), published ahead of print.

First, a bit of context on the Bavarii:

Europe experienced a profound cultural transformation between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages that laid the foundations of the modern political, social, and religious landscape. During this period, colloquially known as the “Migration Period,” the Roman Empire gradually dissolved, with 5th and 6th century historiographers and contemporary witnesses describing the formation and migration of numerous Germanic peoples, such as the Goths,

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The demographic history and mutational load of African hunter-gatherers and farmers

african-admixture-rainforest

Interesting new article (behind paywall), The demographic history and mutational load of African hunter-gatherers and farmers, Nat Ecol Evol (2018)

Abstract (emphasis mine):

Understanding how deleterious genetic variation is distributed across human populations is of key importance in evolutionary biology and medical genetics. However, the impact of population size changes and gene flow on the corresponding mutational load remains a controversial topic. Here, we report high-coverage exomes from 300 rainforest hunter-gatherers and farmers of central Africa, whose distinct subsistence strategies are expected to have impacted their demographic pasts. Detailed demographic inference indicates that hunter-gatherers and farmers recently experienced population

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