How to reconstruct the Indo-Europeans
As must be obvious, I think now that the spread of Indo-European languages had some demographic impact. It wasn’t analogous to the spread of English to Jamaica, or the existence of French as an official language in Congo-Brazzaville. Because of this, I now believe it is possible in the near future that scientists will reconstruct […]
No studies necessary: do your own replication!
In response to the post below I received the above response on twitter. This is an interesting case. The link goes to a paper in the year 2000, Alu insertion polymorphisms in NW Africa and the Iberian Peninsula: evidence for a strong genetic boundary through the Gibraltar Straits: An analysis of 11 Alu insertion polymorphisms […]
The history and geography of genomes
A new paper in PloS Genetics sheds some light on issues which we were already familiar with through conventional history, Ancestral Components of Admixed Genomes in a Mexican Cohort. What we already know: Mexicans and people of Mexican descent predominantly derive from an admixture event(s) between Europeans and Amerindians, with a minor African component. The […]
Are you a caveman?
23andMe finally unveiled a Neanderthal Ancestry estimation feature. I’m at ~2.4 percent. What I’m curious about is the fact that out of the 45 “friends and family” who are surveyed, only two are at 3 percent. One of my them is my sibling who I found seems to have the Neandertal copy of a dystrophin […]
Out of the agricultural hearths
Dienekes has an important post up, The womb of nations: how West Eurasians came to be. He outlines a scenario where a rapid expansion of a farming population has overlain much of Western Eurasia, atop aboriginal substrata. A few years ago you’d have laughed at such a model, mostly due to the authority of archaeologists […]
Peeling the population genetic Indian onion
There’s a new paper in The American Journal of Human Genetics, Shared and Unique Components of Human Population Structure and Genome-Wide Signals of Positive Selection in South Asia. It’s free, so go read it. I don’t have time to comment in detail, but I did read the paper, and I want to mention a few […]
On structure, variation, and race
I noticed yesterday that Andrew Sullivan, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and a cast of others were having a roiling debate on race and I.Q. My name came up in several comment threads on various issues. I’m aware of this because I have Google Alerts set for my name. I don’t have the time or energy to get immersed […]
Roman DNA Project funded
Nice. We’re funded!: Thanks to an amazing piece at the CNN blog Light Years by Ed Yong, the outpouring of support for the Roman DNA Project today has been astounding! In financial news, we have actually exceeded our $6,000 goal, after just 10 days. That goal was to fund analysis of at least 20 individuals (the immigrants […]
Some sneak previews of The Genographic Project
The Genographic Project has been going on for 6 years now, and it seems like some interesting results are going to come out soon. CeCe Moore was at the FTDNA conference, and relayed the following interesting (to me) reports from Spencer Wells: – Using a sample of more than 2,000 Hungarians they found 2-3% Asian […]
Are most people “behaviorally modern”?
Paintings at Lascaux, Prof saxx Behavioral modernity: Behavioral modernity is a term used in anthropology, archeology and sociology to refer to a set of traits that distinguish present day humans and their recent ancestors from both living primates and other extinct hominid lineages. It is the point at which Homo sapiens began to demonstrate a […]
How Archimedes’ lever explains human evolution
Last August I had a post up, The point mutation which made humanity, which suggested that it may be wrong to conceive of the difference between Neanderthals and the African humans which absorbed and replaced them ~35,000 years ago as a matter of extreme differences at specific genes. I was prompted to this line of […]
The unbearable thinness of Denisovan
A new paper in PNAS, Archaic human ancestry in East Asia: “These results suggest admixture between Denisovans or a Denisova-related population and the ancestors of East Asians, and that the history of anatomically modern and archaic humans might be more complex than previously proposed.” It’s open access, so do go read it. John Hawks has […]
Unfrying the egg
Dienekes has a long post, the pith of which is expressed in the following: If I had to guess, I would propose that most extant Europeans will be discovered to be a 2-way West Asian/Ancestral European mix, just as most South Asians are a simple West Asian/Ancestral South Indian mix. In both cases, the indigenous component is […]
Ötzi tidbits
The genome of Ötzi the Iceman is floating around somewhere, but for now we only have to go on what leaks out via the media. From National Geographic, Iceman Autopsy: The genetic results add both information and intrigue. From his genes, we now know that the Iceman had brown hair and brown eyes and that […]
Relative angels and absolute demons
My post below defending Steve Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature elicited some responses on twitter. Robert Lee Hotz finds it odd that I defend a book I haven’t read. My logic here is simple: the outline of the argument in The Better Angels of Our Nature has been presented in shorter form. John […]
But peace does reign!
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined is finally out. I can’t read it in the near future because of time constraint, but I’m heartened that a public intellectual of Steven Pinker’s stature is finally making people more aware of the fact that in some ways the world is better than it […]
Mixed-race people are mildly complicated
I was pointed today to a piece in the BBC titled What makes a mixed race twin white or black?. The British media seems to revisit this topic repeatedly. There are perhaps three reasons I can offer for this. First, it tends toward sensationalism. Even though the BBC is relatively staid, when it comes to […]
Mixed-race people are mildly complicated
I was pointed today to a piece in the BBC titled What makes a mixed race twin white or black?. The British media seems to revisit this topic repeatedly. There are perhaps three reasons I can offer for this. First, it tends toward sensationalism. Even though the BBC is relatively staid, when it comes to […]
The last 100,000 years in human history
In light of the recent results in human evolutionary history some readers have appealed to me to create some sort of clearer infographic. There’s a lot to juggle in your head when it comes to the new models and the errors and uncertainties in estimates derived from statistical inference. Words are not always optimal, and […]
The Australian Aborigines may not be just descendants of first settlers
Just realized. The Science paper has some interesting dates which allows us to make the above inference. – Separation between Europeans and East Asians 25-38 thousand years before present. – Gene flow between proto-East Asians and proto-Australians before the Native Americans diverged from the former 15 thousand years before the present. – A conservative first […]