The Pith: You’re Asian. Yes, you!
A conclusion to an important paper, Nick Patterson, Priya Moorjani, Yontao Luo, Swapan Mallick, Nadin Rohland, Yiping Zhan, Teri Genschoreck, Teresa Webster, and David Reich:
In particular, we have presented evidence suggesting that the genetic history of Europe from around 5000 B.C. includes:
1. The arrival of Neolithic farmers probably from the Middle East.
2. Nearly complete replacement of the indigenous Mesolithic southern European populations by Neolithic migrants, and admixture between the Neolithic farmers and the indigenous Europeans in the north.
3. Substantial population movement into Spain occurring around the same time as the archaeologically attested Bell-Beaker phenomenon (HARRISON, 1980).
4. Subsequent mating between peoples of neighboring regions, resulting in isolation-by-distance (LAO et al., 2008; NOVEMBRE et al., 2008). This tended to smooth out population structure that existed 4,000 years ago.
Further, the populations of Sardinia and the Basque country today have been substantially less influenced by these events.
It’s in Genetics, Ancient Admixture in Human History. Reading through it I can see why it wasn’t published in Nature or Science: methods are of the essence. The authors review five population genetic statistics of phylogenetic and evolutionary genetic import, before moving onto the novel results. …