The concept of “Outlier” in Human Ancestry (II): Early Khvalynsk, Sredni Stog, West Yamna, Iron Age Bulgaria, Potapovka, Andronovo…

I already wrote about the concept of outlier in Human Ancestry, so I am not going to repeat myself. This is just an update of “outliers” in recent studies, and their potential origins (here I will repeat some of the examples):

Early Khvalynsk: the three samples from the Samara region have quite different positions in PCA, from nearest to EHG (of Y-DNA haplogroup R1a) to nearest to ANE ancestry (of Y-DNA haplogroup Q). This could represent the initial consequences of the second wave of ANE ancestry – as found later in Yamna samples from a neighbouring region -, … Read the rest “The concept of “Outlier” in Human Ancestry (II): Early Khvalynsk, Sredni Stog, West Yamna, Iron Age Bulgaria, Potapovka, Andronovo…”

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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Review article about Ancient Genomics, by Pontus Skoglund and Iain Mathieson

A preprint article by two of the most prolific researchers in Human Ancestry is out, and they request feedback: Ancient genomics: a new view into human prehistory and evolution, by Skoglund and Mathieson (2017). Right now, it is downloadable on Dropbox.

.@pontus_skoglund and I wrote a review article about ancient genomics. Comments on the preprint very welcome! https://t.co/YrZS45Q0xt

— Iain Mathieson (@mathiesoniain) November 27, 2017

Abstract:

The first decade of ancient genomics has revolutionized the study of human prehistory and evolution. We review new insights based on ancient genomic data, including greatly increased resolution of the timing and

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Before steppe ancestry: Europe’s genetic diversity shaped mainly by local processes, with varied sources and proportions of hunter-gatherer ancestry

The definitive publication of a BioRxiv preprint article, in Nature: Parallel palaeogenomic transects reveal complex genetic history of early European farmers, by Lipson et al. (2017).

The dataset with all new samples is available at the Reich Lab’s website. You can try my drafts on how to do your own PCA and ADMIXTURE analysis with some of their new datasets.

Abstract:

Ancient DNA studies have established that Neolithic European populations were descended from Anatolian migrants who received a limited amount of admixture from resident hunter-gatherers. Many open questions remain, however, about the spatial and temporal dynamics of

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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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New Ukraine Eneolithic sample from late Sredni Stog, near homeland of the Corded Ware culture

Just one day after publishing the draft of the Indo-European demic diffusion model, 3rd version, Mathieson et al. (2017) have updated some information in a new version of their article, including a new interesting sample from late Sredni Stog. It gives support to what I predicted, regarding the potential origin of the third Corded Ware horizon.

After my first version, findings in Olalde et al. (2017) and Mathieson et al. (2017) supported some of my predictions. Now after my third, their new data also supports another prediction. Because the model is based on solid linguistic … Read the rest “New Ukraine Eneolithic sample from late Sredni Stog, near homeland of the Corded Ware culture”

Iberian Peninsula: Discontinuity in mtDNA between hunter-gatherers and farmers, not so much during the Chalcolithic and EBA

A new preprint paper at BioRxiv, The maternal genetic make-up of the Iberian Peninsula between the Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age, by Szécsényi-Nagy et al. (2017).

Abstract:

Agriculture first reached the Iberian Peninsula around 5700 BCE. However, little is known about the genetic structure and changes of prehistoric populations in different geographic areas of Iberia. In our study, we focused on the maternal genetic makeup of the Neolithic (~ 5500-3000 BCE), Chalcolithic (~ 3000-2200 BCE) and Early Bronze Age (~ 2200-1500 BCE). We report ancient mitochondrial DNA results of 213 individuals (151 HVS-I sequences) from the northeast, central,

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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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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”