What did red-haired Neanderthals look like?
So asks a commenter below in relation to the question above. First, why would one even presume that they were red-haired, see my 2007 post, or the paper in Science: A Melanocortin 1 Receptor Allele Suggests Varying Pigmentation Among Neanderthals. In …
Neanderthal-human mating, months later….
Image credit:ICHTO
Recently something popped up into my Google news feed in regards to “Neanderthal-human mating.” If you are a regular reader you know that I’m wild for this particular combination of the “wild thing.” Bu…
To the antipode of Asia
Markers show populations sampled by HUGO Pan-Asian SNP Consortium
The Pith: Southeast Asia was settled by a series of distinct peoples. The pattern of settlement can be discerned in part by examination of patterns of genetic variation. It seems like…
What one (or more) genomes can tell us
The Pith: We are now moving from the human genome project, to the human genomes project. As more and more full genomes of various populations come online new methods will arise to take advantage of the surfeit of data. In this paper the authors crunch …
How did modern humans settle the world?
In lieu of lots of text, above is a stylized representation of the routes which Neo-Africans took ~50 thousand years ago from their point of departure to parts unknown. The two colors represent two models. The red lines show two major streams issuing …
On the genetic structure of Afro-Indians
The Pith: Afro-Indians are mostly African, with a substantial Indian minority ancestry. The latter is disproportionately female mediated. It also seems that that ancestry is more northwest Indian, and that natural selection has been operating upon them…
Marry far and breed tall strong sons
The Pith: When it comes to the final outcome of a largely biologically specified trait like human height it looks as if it isn’t just the genes your parents give you that matters. Rather, the relationship of their genes also counts. The more diss…
Tightening the interval of the expected
The Pith: The rarer the genetic variant, the more likely that variant is to be specific to a distinct population. Including information about the distribution of these genetic variants missed in current techniques can increase greatly the precision of …
Heritability and genomics of facial characteristics
On several occasions I’ve gotten into discussions with geneticists about the possibility of reconstructing someone’s facial structure by genes alone. Combined with advances in pigmentation prediction by genetics, this could put the sketch a…
Convergent evolution happens!
In the image to the left you see three human males. You can generate three pairings of these individuals. When comparing these pairs which would you presume are more closely related than the other pairs? Now let me give you some more information. The r…
Massive Neandertal & Denisovan introgression
Update: John Hawks’ lab is working in the same area, and he disagrees with the specific results presented here. Always reminds you to be careful about sexy results presented at conference! (someone should do a study!)
So claimed Peter Parham at a…
Present genetic variation is a weak guide to past genetic variation
As I’ve been harping on and on for the past few years that the patterns of contemporary genetic variation are probably only weakly tied to past patterns of genetic variation (though Henry Harpending warned me about this as far back as 2004). A …
The Cape Coloureds are a mix of everything
A Cape Coloured family
I’ve mentioned the Cape Coloureds of South Africa on this weblog before. Culturally they’re Afrikaans in language and Dutch Reformed in religion (the possibly related Cape Malay group is Muslim, though also Afrikaan…
Language, genes, & peoples of Southeast Asia
As I am currently reading Victor Lieberman’s magisterial Strange Parallels: Volume 2. So I was very interested in a new paper from BMC Genetics, Genetic structure of the Mon-Khmer speaking groups and their affinity to the neighbouring Tai populat…
You are a mutant!
The Pith: You are expected to have 30 new mutations which differentiate you from your parents. But, there is wiggle room around this number, and you may have more or less. This number may vary across siblings, and explain differences across siblings. …
A genomic sketch of the Horn of Africa
Iman, a Somali model
Since I started up the African Ancestry Project one of the primary sources of interest has been from individuals whose family hail for Northeast Africa. More specifically, the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. The pr…
The mess that is mouse
Recently an evolutionary geneticist told me that his colleagues who worked with mice really didn’t have their stuff together. Actually, his language was a touch more colorful than that. But the gist of the argument seemed plausible enough to me. …
Incredible human journeys (and more)
A reader pointed out that the BBC series The Incredible Human Journey is online on YouTube thanks to the WhyEvolutionIsTrue channel. You can find all the episodes here. I’ve embedded episode 1 below. For what it’s worth I am no longer am co…
Adam was African, but perhaps barely
The figure to the left comes from a short paper in The American Journal of Human Genetics, A Revised Root for the Human Y Chromosomal Phylogenetic Tree: The Origin of Patrilineal Diversity in Africa. The paper is interesting because of two factors: 1) …
How the “fierce people” came to be
The pith: there are differences between populations on genes which result in “novelty seeking.” These differences can be traced to migration out of Africa, and can’t be explained as an artifact of random genetic drift.
I’m not …