Yamnaya replaced Europeans, but admixed heavily as they spread to Asia

Recent papers The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia, by Narasimhan, Patterson et al. Science (2019) and An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers, by Shinde et al. Cell (2019).

NOTE. For direct access to Narasimhan, Patterson et al. (2019), visit this link courtesy of the first author and the Reich Lab.

I am currently not on holidays anymore, and the information in the paper is huge, with many complex issues raised by the new samples and analyses rather than solved, so I will stick to the Indo-European question, … Read the rest “Yamnaya replaced Europeans, but admixed heavily as they spread to Asia”

The genetic makings of South Asia – IVC as Proto-Dravidian

Review (behind paywall) The genetic makings of South Asia, by Metspalu, Monda, and Chaubey, Current Opinion in Genetics & Development (2018) 53:128-133.

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

(…) the spread of agriculture in Europe was a result of the demic diffusion of early Anatolian farmers, it was discovered that the spread of agriculture to South Asia was mediated by a genetically completely different farmer population in the Zagros mountains in contemporary Iran (IF). The ANI-ASI cline itself was interpreted as a mixture of three components genetically related to Iranian agriculturalists, Onge and Early and Middle Bronze Age Steppe populations (Steppe_EMBA).

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Munda admixture happened probably during the ANI-ASI mixture

Preprint The genetic legacy of continental scale admixture in Indian Austroasiatic speakers, by Tätte et al. bioRxiv (2018).

Interesting excerpts:

Studies analysing mtDNA and Y chromosome markers have revealed a sex-specific admixture pattern of admixture of Southeast and South Asian ancestry components for Munda speakers. While close to 100% of mtDNA lineages present in Mundas match those in other Indian populations, around 65% of their paternal genetic heritage is more closely related to Southeast Asian than South Asian variation. Such a contrasting distribution of maternal and paternal lineages among the Munda speakers is a classic example of ‘father tongue

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Modelling of prehistoric dispersal of rice varieties in India point to a north-western origin

New paper (behind paywall), A tale of two rice varieties: Modelling the prehistoric dispersals of japonica and proto-indica rices, by Silva et al., The Holocene (2018).

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

Materials

Our empirical evidence comes from the Rice Archaeological Database (RAD). The first version of this database was used for a synthesis of rice dispersal by Fuller et al. (2010), a slightly expanded dataset (version 1.1) was used to model the dispersal of rice, land area under wet rice cultivation and associated methane emissions from 5000–1000 BP (Fuller et al., 2011). The present dataset (version 2) was used in

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Mitogenomes show continuity of Neolithic populations in Southern India

New paper (behind paywall) Neolithic phylogenetic continuity inferred from complete mitochondrial DNA sequences in a tribal population of Southern India, by Sylvester et al. Genetica (2018).

This paper used a complete mtDNA genome study of 113 unrelated individuals from the Melakudiya tribal population, a Dravidian speaking tribe from the Kodagu district of Karnataka, Southern India.

Some interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

Autosomal genetic evidence indicates that most of the ethnolinguistic groups in India have descended from a mixture of two divergent ancestral populations: Ancestral North Indians (ANI) related to People of West Eurasia, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle

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Shared ancestry of ancient Eurasian hepatitis B virus diversity linked to Bronze Age steppe

Ancient hepatitis B viruses from the Bronze Age to the Medieval period, by Mühlemann et al., Science (2018) 557:418–423.

NOTE. You can read the PDF at Dalia Pokutta’s Academia.edu account.

Abstract (emphasis):

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major cause of human hepatitis. There is considerable uncertainty about the timescale of its evolution and its association with humans. Here we present 12 full or partial ancient HBV genomes that are between approximately 0.8 and 4.5 thousand years old. The ancient sequences group either within or in a sister relationship with extant human or other ape HBV clades. Generally,

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Demographic history and genetic adaptation in the Himalayan region

Open access Demographic history and genetic adaptation in the Himalayan region inferred from genome-wide SNP genotypes of 49 populations, by Arciero et al. Mol. Biol. Evol (2018), accepted manuscript (msy094).

Abstract (emphasis mine):

We genotyped 738 individuals belonging to 49 populations from Nepal, Bhutan, North India or Tibet at over 500,000 SNPs, and analysed the genotypes in the context of available worldwide population data in order to investigate the demographic history of the region and the genetic adaptations to the harsh environment. The Himalayan populations resembled other South and East Asians, but in addition displayed their own specific

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Yet another Bayesian phylogenetic tree – now for Dravidian

Open access A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family, by Kolipakam et al. (including Bouckaert and Gray), Royal Society Open Science (2018).

Abstract (emphasis mine):

The Dravidian language family consists of about 80 varieties (Hammarström H. 2016 Glottolog 2.7) spoken by 220 million people across southern and central India and surrounding countries (Steever SB. 1998 In The Dravidian languages (ed. SB Steever), pp. 1–39: 1). Neither the geographical origin of the Dravidian language homeland nor its exact dispersal through time are known. The history of these languages is crucial for understanding prehistory in Eurasia, because despite their

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Archaeological and anthropological studies on the Harappan cemetery of Rakhigarhi, India

New open access paper Archaeological and anthropological studies on the Harappan cemetery of Rakhigarhi, India, by Shinde, Kim, Wo, et al. PLOS One (2018) 13(2): e0192299.

Abstract:

An insufficient number of archaeological surveys has been carried out to date on Harappan Civilization cemeteries. One case in point is the necropolis at Rakhigarhi site (Haryana, India), one of the largest cities of the Harappan Civilization, where most burials within the cemetery remained uninvestigated. Over the course of the past three seasons (2013 to 2016), we therefore conducted excavations in an attempt to remedy this data shortfall. In brief, we found

… Read the rest