Most Bangladeshis are 10% to 20% East Asian
I wish consumer genetic tests did a better job of communicating the madness to the methods. The vlogger above is a bit confused because one of her grandmothers looks rather East Asian, but her DNA results clearly indicate her Bengali ancestry. What the Ancestry DNA test does not make clear is that Bengali ancestry includes …
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Indus Valley, Sintashta, and Andamanese ancestry in select grioups
I ran some qpAdmin on some populations. In the table below if it’s empty, that means that the model isn’t very good with that population. In other cases, the model doesn’t work without a population. So, if you put East Asians into the model for most South Asians it kind of goes crazy…but without East …
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3,000 years in the Levant
The Insight Show Notes — Season 3, Episode 3: 3,000 years in the LevantThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts) Razib talks to Marc Haber of the University of Birmingham about the genetics and history of the Lev…
3,000 years in the Levant
The Insight Show Notes — Season 3, Episode 3: 3,000 years in the LevantThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts) Razib talks to Marc Haber of the University of Birmingham about the genetics and history of the Lev…
Bong-outlier!
Using my own data to test some stuff, and I notice 1) My parents are both “outliers” from the Bangladeshis collected in Dhaka. Not too surprising, as my family is from low country Comilla, and more “East Asian” than usual. 2) My father is more “steppe shifted.” This always shows up in various analyses. And, …
Top 10 human genetics & evolution predictions for the 2020s
The Insight Show Notes — Season 3, Episode 2This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts) Razib and Spencer make ten predictions about what genetics might discover and do in the 2020s (though they do express some dis…
Please read Who We Are and How We Got Here
Many questions on this weblog would be answered if the individuals just read Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past. Not all questions would be answered. The book is dated in some ways, and there are certain lacunae. There are also things we still …
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Genetic odds & ends
At my other weblog I report on evidence that a sample from Cambodia dated to 100 to 300 AD seems to have considerable Indian ancestry. This is not a result in isolation. Lots of evidence points to non-trivial Indian gene flow. The devil is now in the details of when/who. Second, there is lots of …
Genetic odds & ends
At my other weblog I report on evidence that a sample from Cambodia dated to 100 to 300 AD seems to have considerable Indian ancestry. This is not a result in isolation. Lots of evidence points to non-trivial Indian gene flow. The devil is now in the details of when/who. Second, there is lots of …
Top 10 human genetics & evolution developments of the 2010s
The Insight Show Notes — Season 3, Episode 1: the decade in review in human evolution and geneticsThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts) Razib and Spencer kick-off season 3 with a mega-episode reflecting on te…
Some admixture coefficients for South Asian Genotype Project members
I decided to run qpAdmin on a large number of the South Asian Genotype Project members. The codes should be self-evident for the individuals. The Indus Periphery samples are from the Reich dataset. The steppe is all Sintashta samples from the recent publication (I removed outliers). The Andamanese hunter-gatherers are from the Andamans. Some of …
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A model runs through it
Recently I made a comment that I appreciate what 23andMe and Ancestry have done with their South Asian ancestry updates. My own results came into sharper focus. The algorithms did what they were supposed to do. Both of the companies found that I’m probably Bengali. 23andMe, with its massive database, and SVM framework, even narrowed …
O2a and Munda
Counting the paternal founders of Austroasiatic speakers associated with the language dispersal in South Asia: The phylogenetic analysis of Y chromosomal haplogroup O2a-M95 was crucial to determine the nested structure of South Asian branches within the larger tree, predominantly present in East and Southeast Asia. However, it had previously been unclear how many founders brought …
West Bengal Kayasthas are heterogeneous paternally and unconventional Bengalis overall
A few years ago there was a short paper that analyzed genotypes from some Kulin Kayasthas from West Bengal. The plot above illustrates what you really need to know. The Kayasthas are positioned on the PCA right between East Bengalis and people from the main India cline, with a slight shift toward more ANI. I’ve …
South Asian human geography as a post-Aryan synthesis
One of the things that is evident in the most recent work on Indian genetics is that some groups, often Brahmin, are enriched for “steppe” ancestry when looking at overall contributions of proximal ancestral components. But, there are other groups that are enriched for “Indus Periphery” ancestry. The plot above takes Indus Periphery on the …
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23andMe says Bangladeshis are more Bengali than West Bengalis!
As some of you may know 23andMe updated its South Asian ancestry panel. On the whole, I’ll give it a thumbs up, but, you need to be aware of the way they’re framing things. For example, pretty much every Bangladeshi has more “Bengali” ancestry than people from West Bengal. The profile above on the left …
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“OBC” in West Bengal a social construct?
Recent population history inferred from more than 5,000 high-coverage South Asian genomes: Next, we developed a novel method for estimating the genome-wide average divergence time between a single individual and a focal group. This method focuses on extremely rare variants, which should be the most informative about very recent demographic events, and is robust to …
The maritime origins of the Munda
A reader pointing me to a paper whose hypothesis is novel to me. But, I have to say that reading the paper, I am now convinced this is highly likely. The paper is The Munda Maritime Hypothesis: On the basis of historical linguistic and language geographic evidence, the authors advance the novel hypothesis that the …
The Sintashta were swarthy
One of the things that I’ve always been curious about is why some Indian populations are not fairer in complexion if they had so much steppe. The logic here is that the “most steppe population” are peoples such as the Lithuanians, and these are very fair-skinned groups. If, for example, North Indian Brahmins were ~30% …
Kushal Mehra interviews Niraj Rai
Definitely watchable, and Kushal actually lets Niraj talk at length! Though the Hindi sections are Greek to me. On the whole Rai and I agree on the genetic data. But there are disagreements that I have on interpretations of the words like “invasion.” I had long imagined the genetic and cultural impact of Aryans to …