Fully Steppe-like Proto-Corded Ware Late Trypillians

The genotypes from Human auditory ossicles as an alternative optimal source of ancient DNA, by Sirak et al. Genome Res. (2020), have been finally published by the Reich Lab, so we can get a sneak peek into what’s coming in future papers about the origins of R1a-rich Proto-Corded Ware and R1b-rich Italo-Venetic peoples.

NOTE. To avoid adding potential errors, I have merged the Reich Lab’s Curated Dataset (v. 42.4, March 1 2020) with these new samples before performing the qpAdm analyses. If you find something different with your files, you should probably check out this simple setting first. … Read the rest “Fully Steppe-like Proto-Corded Ware Late Trypillians”

Italo-Venetic peoples related patrilineally to Terramare elites

Another interesting finding from Human auditory ossicles as an alternative optimal source of ancient DNA, by Sirak et al. (2020):

A sample classified as Italy Middle Bronze Age from Olmo di Nogara (ca. 1400-1200 BC), who is R1b-L51 (xP311, xL52, xL151), CTS6889+ (T->C, 1 read). See YFull’s corresponding R-S1161.

SNP inference for I18130(9309_Oss) / I18131(9309_Co)

This sample probably belongs to individual 309 (35-45 yo), and the female sampled to 323 (30-40 yo), both referenced as from the following study:

Canci A, Contursi D, Fornaciari G. 2005. La necropoli dell’età del bronzo di Olmo di Nogara (Verona): primi risultati

… Read the rest

Visualizing phylogenetic trees of ancient DNA in a map

Yesterday the Eaton Lab at Columbia University announced on Twitter a nifty little tool by Carlos Alonso Maya-Lastra called TreeToM, which accepts Newick trees and CSV latitude/longitude data to explore phylogeny and geography interactively, with no coding required.

I thought it could complement nicely my All Ancient DNA Dataset, particularly for those newly described SNPs (FTDNA private variants, etc.) that have not been incorporated yet into SNP Tracker.

Here are two examples with snippets to copy&paste to the appropriate boxes in TreeToM. Feel free to add others in the comments:… Read the rest “Visualizing phylogenetic trees of ancient DNA in a map”

R1b-L23-rich Bell Beaker-derived Italic peoples from the West vs. Etruscans from the East

New paper (behind paywall) Ancient Rome: A genetic crossroads of Europe and the Mediterranean, by Antonio et al. Science (2019).

The paper offers a lot of interesting data concerning the Roman Empire and more recent periods, but I will focus on Italic and Etruscan origins.

NOTE. I have updated prehistoric maps with Y-DNA and mtDNA data, and also the PCA of ancient Eurasian samples by period including the recently published samples, now with added sample names to find them easily by searching the PDFs.

Apennine homeland problem

The traditional question of Italic vs. Etruscan origins from a cultural-historical … Read the rest “R1b-L23-rich Bell Beaker-derived Italic peoples from the West vs. Etruscans from the East”

European hydrotoponymy (V): Etruscans and Rhaetians after Italic peoples

There is overwhelming evidence that the oldest hydrotoponymic layer in Italy (and especially Etruria) is of Old European nature, which means that non-Indo-European-speaking (or, at least, non-Old-European-speaking) Etruscans came later to the Apennine Peninsula.

Furthermore, there is direct and indirect linguistic, archaeological, and palaeogenomic data supporting that the intrusive Tursānoi came from the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age, possibly through the Adriatic, and that their languages spread to Etruria and probably also to the eastern Alps.

Hydrotoponymic layer

The following are translated excerpts (emphasis mine) from Lenguas, genes y culturas en la Prehistoria de Europa y … Read the rest “European hydrotoponymy (V): Etruscans and Rhaetians after Italic peoples”

Arrival of steppe ancestry with R1b-P312 in the Mediterranean: Balearic Islands, Sicily, and Iron Age Sardinia

New preprint The Arrival of Steppe and Iranian Related Ancestry in the Islands of the Western Mediterranean by Fernandes, Mittnik, Olalde et al. bioRxiv (2019)

Interesting excerpts (emphasis in bold; modified for clarity):

Balearic Islands: The expansion of Iberian speakers

Mallorca_EBA dates to the earliest period of permanent occupation of the islands at around 2400 BCE. We parsimoniously modeled Mallorca_EBA as deriving 36.9 ± 4.2% of her ancestry from a source related to Yamnaya_Samara; (…). We next used qpAdm to identify “proximal” sources for Mallorca_EBA’s ancestry that are more closely related to this individual in space and time, and found

… Read the rest

Paleoglot by Glen Gordon, about his Proto-Indo-European and “Proto-Aegean” (or “Proto-Tyrrhenian”) linguistic concepts: The conspiracy of “dogmatic relativism” in Language Hat too

It is well known that Google is used by many when they are too lazy to type in “.com”. That’s the only reason I made a search this morning for “dnghu”, because I am usually more interested in knowing if Google searches with keywords like “Indo-European“, “Indogermanisch”, etc. or “European language”, “languages European Union”, etc. are giving results including dnghu.org. I don’t think a lot of people would look for “dnghu” in Google without knowing there is a dnghu.org site…

And have you noticed that, using Google that way, you may sometimes end up in funny websites that … Read the rest “Paleoglot by Glen Gordon, about his Proto-Indo-European and “Proto-Aegean” (or “Proto-Tyrrhenian”) linguistic concepts: The conspiracy of “dogmatic relativism” in Language Hat too”