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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Human ancestry: how to work your own PCA, ADMIXTURE analyses for human evolutionary and genealogical studies

I wrote two days ago in the post anouncing the revised version (October 2017) of the Indo-European demic diffusion model, about dumping the information I had on doing PCA and ADMIXTURE analyses as ‘drafts’, without reviewing them, in the new section of this website called Human Ancestry.

I had some time today to review them, and to correct gross mistakes in the texts, so that they might be more usable now…

I began to work with free datasets to see if I could learn something more about results of recent Genetic research by working with the available … Read the rest “Human ancestry: how to work your own PCA, ADMIXTURE analyses for human evolutionary and genealogical studies”

Holocene rise in mobility in at least three stages: Strong link between technological change and human mobility in Western Eurasia

New interesting article at PNAS: Estimating mobility using sparse data: Application to human genetic variation, by Loog et al (2017).

Download links and supplemental information.

Significance

Migratory activity is a critical factor in shaping processes of biological and cultural change through time. We introduce a method to estimate changes in underlying migratory activity that can be applied to genetic, morphological, or cultural data and is well-suited to samples that are sparsely distributed in space and through time. By applying this method to ancient genome data, we infer a number of changes in human mobility in Western Eurasia, including

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The concept of “outlier” in studies of Human Ancestry, and the Corded Ware outlier from Esperstedt

While writing the third version of the Indo-European demic diffusion model, I noticed that one Corded Ware sample (labelled I0104) clusters quite closely with steppe samples (i.e. Yamna, Afanasevo, and Potapovka). The other Corded Ware samples cluster, as expected, closely with east-central European samples, which include related cultures such as the Swedish Battle Axe, and later Sintashta, or Potapovka (cultures that are from the steppe proper, but are derived from Corded Ware).

I also noticed after publishing the draft that I had used the wording “Corded Ware outlier” at least once. I certainly had that term … Read the rest “The concept of “outlier” in studies of Human Ancestry, and the Corded Ware outlier from Esperstedt”

Indo-European demic diffusion model, 3rd edition

I have just uploaded the working draft of the third version of the Indo-European demic diffusion model. Unlike the previous two versions, which were published as essays (fully developed papers), this new version adds more information on human admixture, and probably needs important corrections before a definitive edition can be published.

The third version is available right now on ResearchGate and Academia.edu. I will post the PDF at Academia Prisca, as soon as possible:

Read or download at Academia.edu
Read or download at ResearchGate
[EDIT 21 September 2017:] Download in PDF from indo-european.info

Feel free to … Read the rest “Indo-European demic diffusion model, 3rd edition”

Human ancestry solves language questions? New admixture citebait

A paper at Scientific Reports, Human ancestry correlates with language and reveals that race is not an objective genomic classifier, by Baker, Rotimi, and Shriner (2017).

Abstract (emphasis mine):

Genetic and archaeological studies have established a sub-Saharan African origin for anatomically modern humans with subsequent migrations out of Africa. Using the largest multi-locus data set known to date, we investigated genetic differentiation of early modern humans, human admixture and migration events, and relationships among ancestries and language groups. We compiled publicly available genome-wide genotype data on 5,966 individuals from 282 global samples, representing 30 primary language families. The best

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Analysis of R1b-DF27 haplogroups in modern populations adds new information that contrasts with ‘steppe admixture’ results

New open access article published in Scientific Reports, Analysis of the R1b-DF27 haplogroup shows that a large fraction of Iberian Y-chromosome lineages originated recently in situ, by Solé-Morata et al. (2017).

Abstract

Haplogroup R1b-M269 comprises most Western European Y chromosomes; of its main branches, R1b-DF27 is by far the least known, and it appears to be highly prevalent only in Iberia. We have genotyped 1072 R1b-DF27 chromosomes for six additional SNPs and 17 Y-STRs in population samples from Spain, Portugal and France in order to further characterize this lineage and, in particular, to ascertain the time and place where

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

Russian archaeologist Leo Klejn has published an article Discussion: Are the Origins of Indo-European Languages Explained by the Migration of the Yamnaya Culture to the West?, which includes the criticism received from Wolfgang Haak, Iosif Lazaridis, Nick Patterson, and David Reich (mainly on the genetic aspect), and from Kristian Kristiansen, Karl-Göran Sjögren, Morten Allentoft, Martin Sikora, and Eske Willerslev (mainly on the archaeological aspect).

I will not post details of Klejn’s model of North-South Proto-Indo-European expansion – which is explained in the article, and relies on the north-south cline of ‘steppe admixture’ in the modern European population -, since … Read the rest “Something is very wrong with models based on the so-called ‘steppe admixture’ – and archaeologists are catching up”

Neolithic and Bronze Age Basque-speaking Iberians resisted invaders from the steppe

Good clickbait, right? I have received reports about this new paper in Google Now the whole weekend, and their descriptions are getting worse each day.

The original title of the article published in PLOS Genetics (already known by its preprint in BioRxiv) was The population genomics of archaeological transition in west Iberia: Investigation of ancient substructure using imputation and haplotype-based methods, by Martiniano et al. (2017).

Maybe the title was not attractive enough, so they sent the following summary, entitled “Bronze Age Iberia received fewer Steppe invaders than the rest of Europe” (also in Phys.org. … Read the rest “Neolithic and Bronze Age Basque-speaking Iberians resisted invaders from the steppe”