There are more things in prehistory than are dreamt of in our urheimat
A new paper in Science claims to have ascertained the locus of origin of the Indo-Europeans, Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family. These are bold claims, and naturally have triggered a firestorm. No surprise, the same …
The Sardinian meter
I cropped the image above from the paper Inference of Population Structure using Dense Haplotype Data. The main reason was emphasize the distinctiveness of the Sardinian cluster, on the bottom right. As you can see this population exhibits a lot of co…
The origins of modern humanity: 2012
Matt Ridley has a column up, Did Your Ancestor Date a Neanderthal? In it he juxtaposes the two recent papers which got some attention on the relationship of modern humans to Neandertals. To be frank I think it took too much of the “two sides/oppo…
Cultures & genes: Paleolithic to the Neolithic
Spatial linguistic variation
Spatial genetic variation
Temporal linguistic variation
Temporal genetic variation
Paleolithic
Very high
High
Moderate-to-high
Moderate-to-low
Neolithic
Moderate
Moderate-to-low
Moderate
High
Bronze Age
Mod…
Rise of the planet of the Indo-Europeans
In response to my post below a friend emailed me the above sentence. As I suggest below it sounds crazy, and I don’t know if I believe it. But here’s an abstract from the Reich lab from June:
Estimating a date of mixture of ancestral South…
Ötzi – more Neandertal than the average bear
Neandertal ancestry “Iced”:
Evaluating recent evolution, migration and Neandertal ancestry in the Tyrolean Iceman
Paleogenetic evidence from Neandertals, the Neolithic and other eras has the potential to transform our knowledge of human po…
Neanderthal admixture & the ecology of academe
Yesterday I pointed out that David Reich had a moderately dismissive attitude toward the new paper in PNAS, Effect of ancient population structure on the degree of polymorphism shared between modern human populations and ancient hominins. Here’s …
Against the Übermensch
On some occasions I have disagreed with friends who were influenced by the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche as to the contingent role of Christianity in the introduction of a highly egalitarian moral ethos in the West. The same tendency toward valorization…
Historical Dynamics & contingent conditions of religion
Below is a long essay I wrote four years ago which I’m reposting. It may be a useful guide for readers who are not aware of my various non-genetic interests….
Peter Turchin’s Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall showed up…
Ashkenazi Jews are probably not descended from the Khazars
A few people have asked me about a new paper on arXiv, The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses. Since it is on arXiv you can read the preprint yourself. And, since it is a preprint it is not …
An ethnography: N = 1
This is an “inside baseball” post for regular readers, but looking through site referrals I’ve noticed that German Dziebel has started to blog regularly again. For those who don’t know Dziebel is the author of The Genius of Kin…
Humanity 2.0
Dienekes points to a David Reich video where he shows his hand as to future possible results to come out of his lab. The short of it is that it seems likely that most agricultural populations exhibit the same dynamic outlined in Reconstructing Indian H…
Azores to Atlantis: Africa through the shadows
In many ways the image of Africa in the minds of Westerners has become a trope. The “Dark Continent,” eternal, and primal. Like many tropes the realized existence of this Africa is only within the imagination. The real Africa is far differ…
The New York Times is ginning up fake controversy
Update: That charlatan David Klinghoffer seems to be enjoying this. As a rule I don’t follow dishonest propagandists, but it’s interesting how appealing this sort of “two sides” story is to Creationists. End Update
Reading this …
No vindication of Joseph Greenberg?
A reader pointed me to this critique of Nick Wades’ telling in The New York Times Reports that the recent Reich et al. paper on Native Americans is a vindication of Joseph Greenberg’s ideas on the languages of the Americas. 90-Year-Old Cons…
Rousseau vs. Descartes & incest
Greta Scacchi, cousin-lover
There has been some discussion in the comments why the posts on inbreeding are getting so much attention. I think this is a milder form of the same sort of curiosity about why young males have a fascination with pornograph…
Is inbreeding like asexuality?
The standard argument for why there is aversion to incest among humans as matter of innate disposition is the Westermarck effect, which is a model where aversion to mating emerges if you are raised with an individual of the opposite sex. Some basic ill…
British class differences persisting down centuries?
People with Norman names wealthier than other Britons:
Research shows that the descendants of people who in 1858 had “rich” surnames such as Percy and Glanville, indicating they were descended from the French nobility, are still substantial…
Are Jews white?
A little over two years ago I put up some posts on Jewish genetics due to the publication of some really exciting research. Looking at the referrals I noticed two trends which together were relatively bizarre. People would look at the same PCA plot and…
Native Americans are not special snowflakes
Dienekes, in response to Living Anthropologically, Petty identity politics indeed, or, holding a grudge is no excuse for anti-science:
I won’t argue about the veracity or details of this version of history, but surely native Americans from the U…