Proto-Uralic Homeland (I): Foraging & Animals

This post is part of a draft on palaeolinguistics and the Proto-Uralic homeland. See below for the color code of protoforms.

1. Foraging

1.1. Hunting

PFU (Fi., Ma., Md., Ms., Hu.) *lewi- ‘to shoot’ (UEW Nº 482; Aikio 2019: 47).

PU (Saa., Fi., Md., Ma., Kh., Ms., Hu., Smy.) *je̮ŋsi/*joŋsi ‘bow’ (UEW Nº 190; Aikio 2020: 71 with references).

PU (Saa.? Fi., Ma., Kh., Ms., Hu., Smy.) *jänti(ni) ‘sinew; (bow)string’ (UEW Nº 169; Aikio 2019: 47 with references).

PU (Saa., Fi., Md.., Ma., P, Kh., Ms., Hu., Smy.) *ńe̮li (*ńōle) ‘arrow’ (UEW Nº 622).… Read the rest “Proto-Uralic Homeland (I): Foraging & Animals”

Expansion of haplogroup G2a in Anatolia possibly associated with the Mature Aceramic period

Preprint Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first farmers of central Anatolia, by Feldman et al. bioRxiv (2018).

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

Anatolian hunter-gatherers experienced climatic changes during the last glaciation and inhabited a region that connects Europe to the Near East. However, interactions between Anatolia and Southeastern Europe in the later Upper Palaeolithic/Epipalaeolithic are so far not well documented archaeologically. Interestingly, a previous genomic study showed that present-day Near-Easterners share more alleles with European hunter-gatherers younger than 14,000 BP (‘Later European HG’) than with earlier ones (‘Earlier European HG’). With ancient genomic data available,

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Polygyny as a potential reason for Y-DNA bottlenecks among agropastoralists

Open access Greater wealth inequality, less polygyny: rethinking the polygyny threshold model by Ross et al. Journal of the Royal Society Interface (2018).

Interesting excerpts, from the discussion (emphasis mine):

We use cross-cultural data and a new mutual mate choice model to propose a resolution to the polygyny paradox. Following Oh et al. [17], we extend the standard polygyny threshold model to a mutual mate choice model that accounts for both female supply to, and male demand for, polygynous matchings, in the light of the importance of, and inequality in, rival and non-rival forms of wealth. The empirical results presented

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Migration vs. Acculturation models for Aegean Neolithic in Genetics — still depending strongly on Archaeology

Recent paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Archaeogenomic analysis of the first steps of Neolithization in Anatolia and the Aegean, by Kılınç et al. (2017).

Abstract:

The Neolithic transition in west Eurasia occurred in two main steps: the gradual development of sedentism and plant cultivation in the Near East and the subsequent spread of Neolithic cultures into the Aegean and across Europe after 7000 cal BCE. Here, we use published ancient genomes to investigate gene flow events in west Eurasia during the Neolithic transition. We confirm that the Early Neolithic central Anatolians in the ninth millennium BCE

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Ancient DNA samples from Mesolithic Scandinavia show east-west genetic gradient

New pre-print article at BioRxiv, Genomics of Mesolithic Scandinavia reveal colonization routes and high-latitude adaptation, by Günther et al. (2017), from the Uppsala University (group led by Mattias Jakobsson).

Abstract (emphasis mine):

Scandinavia was one of the last geographic areas in Europe to become habitable for humans after the last glaciation. However, the origin(s) of the first colonizers and their migration routes remain unclear. We sequenced the genomes, up to 57x coverage, of seven hunter-gatherers excavated across Scandinavia and dated to 9,500-6,000 years before present. Surprisingly, among the Scandinavian Mesolithic individuals, the genetic data display an east-west genetic gradient

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My European Family: The First 54,000 years, by Karin Bojs

I have recently read the book My European Family: The First 54,000 years (2015), by Karin Bojs, a known Swedish scientific journalist, former science editor of the Dagens Nyheter.

It is written in a fresh, dynamic style, and contains general introductory knowledge to Genetics, Archaeology, and their relation to language, and is written in a time of great change (2015) for the disciplines involved.

The book is informed, it shows a balanced exercise between responsible science journalism and entertaining content, and it is at times nuanced, going beyond the limits of popular science books. It is not written for … Read the rest “My European Family: The First 54,000 years, by Karin Bojs”

Collapse of the European ice sheet caused chaos in northern and eastern Europe until about 8000 BC

A new paper with open access has appeared in Quaternary Science Reviews, authored by Patton et al.: Deglaciation of the Eurasian ice sheet complex, which offers a new model investigating the retreat of this ice sheet and its many impacts.

According to the comments of professor Alun Hubbard, the paper’s second author and a leading glaciologist:

To place it in context, this is almost 10 times the current rates of ice lost from Greenland and Antarctica today. What’s fascinating is that not all Eurasian ice retreat was from surface melting alone. Its northern and western sectors across the

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