To understand Neanderthals we need to understand ourselves
In 2010 researchers sequenced the whole genome of a single Neanderthal. From comparing this genome to that of humans alive today they concluded, to their surprise, that many modern human populations had Neanderthal ancestry! More specifically, all popu…
On the edge of Africa and Eurasia
Rub’ al KhaliThe sands of Arabia harbor romantic allure for many, despite their desolation. At the nexus between Eurasia and Africa, the Arabian peninsula serves as both a conduit and barrier for trade and migration. On its northern fringe arose the fi…
Variation in general intelligence and our evolutionary history
In a bit of “TMI”, I’m far more intellectually promiscuous than I am in my personal life. My primary focus on this blog, if I have one, is probably historical population genetics of the sort highlighted in David Reich’s Who We Are and How We Got Here. But I have plenty of other interests, from […]
On the anniversary of the publication of the On The Origin of Species
Today on this date Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of Species was published. If you haven’t, you should read it. I’m not sure if it’s the most influential book of the last few centuries, but it’s definitely up there. That being said, sometimes people want to read something different that’s more recent. I would highly […]
Why PCA and genetics are a match made in heaven
Insitome customers and selected populationsThe image above is not the work of a small child trying to sketch out a B-2 Stealth Bomber. Rather, it is a PCA plot, which shows the distribution of a subset of Insitome’s customers who have purchased the Reg…
Season 2, Episode 1: The Legacy of L. L. Cavalli-Sforza
L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, 1922–2018This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play) we discussed the life and legacy of L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, who died on August 31st, 2018. See the Stanford obit. From John Hawks, The man who tried to cat…
Arise the coalescent!
Citation: Modeling Human Population Separation History Using Physically Phased GenomesEvolution is sometimes difficult to comprehend in terms of how it plays out in your mind’s eye. This is different from believing that evolution occurred. Evolutionary…
But evolution converges!
Stephen Jay Gould became famous in part for his book Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. By examining the strange creatures in the Burgess Shale formation Gould makes the case that evolution is a highly contingent process, and that if you reran the experiment of life what we’d see might be […]
What determines the rate of evolution
New research contradicts contemporary theories and shows that promiscuity slows down evolution https://t.co/aP9VErn2uo — Wiley Evolution (@Darwin2009) May 30, 2017 The tweet above from Wiley relates to a paper, Polygamy slows down population divergence in shorebirds. It’s a cool paper. I tweeted it. But does it relate to the “rate of evolution”? There’s no definitive […]
The Bronze age demographic transformation of Britiain
In Norman Davies’ the excellent The Isles: A History, he mentions offhand that unlike the Irish the British to a great extent have forgotten their own mythology. This is one reason that J. R. R. Tolkien created Middle Earth, they gave the Anglo-Saxons the same sort of mythos that the Irish and Norse had. But […]
Synergistic epistasis as a solution for human existence
Epistasis is one of those terms in biology which has multiple meanings, to the point that even biologists can get turned around (see this 2008 review, Epistasis — the essential role of gene interactions in the structure and evolution of genetic systems, for a little background). Most generically epistasis is the interaction of genes in […]
Beyond “Out of Africa” and multiregionalism: a new synthesis?
For several decades before the present era there have been debates between proponents of the recent African origin of modern humans, and the multiregionalist model. Though molecular methods in a genetic framework have come of the fore of late these were originally paleontological theories, with Chris Stringer and Milford Wolpoff being the two most prominent public exponents of […]
The logic of human destiny was inevitable 1 million years ago
Robert Wright’s best book, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, was published near 20 years ago. At the time I was moderately skeptical of his thesis. It was too teleological for my tastes. And, it does pander to a bias in human psychology whereby we look to find meaning in the universe. But this is […]
What if you call for a revolution and no one revolts?
When I was in 8th grade my earth science teacher explained he did not believe in Darwinism. He seemed a reasonable fellow so my first reaction was shock. My best friend at the time, who sat next to me, laughed, “Yeah, some people believe we’re descended from monkeys! Crazy, huh?” I didn’t really know what […]
The origin of organismic gangs
When W. D. Hamilton was a student he expressed an interest in exploring the problem of altruism in an evolutionary context. His struggles in getting anyone interested in the issue and supporting his study of the topic is extensively detailed in Narrow Roads of Gene Land. But he persevered and for his efforts he came […]
Sexual selection decreasing difference
Sexual selection is often considered a driver of diversification of a lineage. I was introduced to the concept in Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee, where he suggested that racial differences in appearance might be due to sexual preference, following a suggestion originally made by Charles Darwin. Though sexual selection emerges now and then as a […]
The human extended phenotype
I think there is something to the hypothesis that we as a species are self-domesticated, but a new preprint really doesn’t change my probability up or down, Comparative Genomic Evidence for Self-Domestication in Homo sapiens. Notwithstanding my own participation in some comparative genomic work, a lot of the conclusions from this field are as clear and obvious to […]
Why humans have so many pulse admixtures
The Blank Slate is one of my favorite books (though I’d say The Language Instinct is unjustly overshadowed by it). There is obviously a substantial biological basis in human behavior which is mediated by genetics. When The Blank Slate came out in the early 2000s one could envisage a situation in 2017 when empirically informed […]
How Tibetans can function at high altitudes
About seven years ago I wrote two posts about how Tibetans manage to function at very high altitudes. And it’s not just physiological functioning, that is, fitness straightforwardly understood. High altitudes can cause a sharp reduction in reproductive fitness because women can not carry pregnancies to term. In other words, high altitude is a very strong selection […]
Jeepers creepers…those eyes
I take some interest in the old debate about contingency and some aspect of determinism in evolutionary processes. Basically the debate is whether the basic morphology and mechanism of life on earth would exhibit the same patterns we see around us today if we rewound the clock. Stephen Jay Gould, most extensively in The Structure […]