Yuzhnyi Olenii Ostrov: Ancient mtDNA Evidence for Amerindian Admixture in Europe
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Adelaide, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Australian Centre for Ancient DNA Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 2011 Mitochondrial DNA in Ancient Human Populations of Europe Clio Der Sarkissian Abstract. The distribution of human genetic variability is…
Out-of-Africa as Ghost Science
PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1212380109 The Great Human Expansion Brenna M. Henn, Luca L. Cavalli-Sforza, and Marcus W. Feldman Genetic and paleoanthropological evidence is in accord that today’s human population is the result of a great demic (demographic and geographic) expansion that…
The Uto-Aztecan Premolar and a Back-Migration of American Indians to the Old World
American Journal of Physical Anthropology 143 (4): 570-578, 2010 DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.21351 The Uto-Aztecan Premolar Among North and South Amerindians: Geographic Variation and Genetics Miguel E. Delgado-Burbano, G. Richard Scott, and Christy G. Turner II The Uto-Aztecan premolar (UAP) is a dental…
A Major Division in Worldwide Dental Patterns and the Progressive Decline of Shoveling
Quaternary International, 2011 Reconstructions in Human History by Mapping Dental Markers in Living Eurasian Populations Vera F. Kashibadze, Olga G. Nasonova, and Dmitry. S. Nasonov On the base of advantages in gene geography and anthropophenetics the phenogeographical method for anthropological…
On the Homeland of the Uralic Language Family
Per Urales ad Orientem. Iter polyphonicum multilingue. Festskrift tillägnad Juha Janhunen på hans sextioårsdag den 12 februari 2012. Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia = Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 264. Pp. 91-101. Helsinki, 2012. Early Contacts between Uralic and Yukaghir Jaakko Hakkinen…
The Diversity of Tasmanian Languages
Proceedings of the Royal Society, B Biological Sciences, 2012 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2012.1842 The Riddle of Tasmanian Languages Claire Bowern Recent work which combines methods from linguistics and evolutionary biology has been fruitful in dis- covering the history of major language families…
Stability vs. Diversity: A Novel Method for Analyzing Worldwide Linguistic Structures
PLoS ONE 7(9), 2012: e45198. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0045198 Abstract Profiles of Structural Stability Point to Universal Tendencies, Family-Specific Factors, and Ancient Connections between Languages Dan Dediu, and Stephen C. Levinson Language is the best example of a cultural evolutionary system, able to…
Intense Admixture: Khoisan Clicks and Khoisan Genes in Southeastern Bantu
European Journal of Human Genetics 2012, 1-7 DOI:10.1038/ejhg.2012.192 Genetic Perspectives on the Origin of Clicks in Bantu Languages from Southwestern Zambia Chiara Barbieri, Anne Butthof, Koen Bostoen, and Brigitte Pakendorf Some Bantu languages spoken in southwestern Zambia and neighboring regions…
Clicks and Genes: Linguistic and Genetic Perspectives on Khoisan Prehistory
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1227721 Genomic Variation in Seven Khoe-San Groups Reveals Adaptation and Complex African History Carina M. Schlebusch, Pontus Skoglund, Per Sjödin, Lucie M. Gattepaille, Dena Hernandez, Flora Jay, Sen Li, Michael De Jongh, Andrew Singleton, Michael G. B. Blum,…
Typological Linguistics and Population Genetics: A Synthesis or a Controversy
Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol 16, Issue 3, March 2012, Pages 167–173 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2012.01.007 Tools from Evolutionary Biology Shed New Light on the Diversification of Languages Stephen C. Levinson, and Russell D. Gray Computational methods have revolutionized evolutionary biology. In this paper…
mtDNA CR HVS1 16189
In the new paper on mtDNA lineages in the populations of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, de Saint Pierre et al. (2012) published several new D1 sequences from this region of South America. Among them D1g2 and D1g1 are interesting…
mtDNA from the South Cone of South America
PLoS ONE 7(9): e43486. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0043486 An Alternative Model for the Early Peopling of Southern South America Revealed by Analyses of Three Mitochondrial DNA Haplogroups Michelle de Saint Pierre, Claudio M. Bravi, Josefina M. B. Motti, Noriyuki Fuku, Masashi Tanaka, Elena…
Rare Haplotypes in Koreans: Evidence for a Back Migration into Africa?
CAMDA 2012 Conference, July 13, 2012 Rare Haplotypes in the Korean Population Sepp Hochreiter, Gunter Klambauer, Gundula Povysil, and Djork‐Arné Clevert Link (Full Text PDF) These days you never know where research related to modern human origins will be reported…
How Europeans Got to Be ~10% American Indian
Genetics doi: 10.1534/genetics.112.145037 Ancient Admixture in Human History Nick Patterson, Priya Moorjani, Yontao Luo, Swapan Mallick, Nadin Rohland, Yiping Zhan, Teri Genschoreck, Teresa Webster, and David Reich Population mixture is an important process in biology. We present a suite of methods…
Novel mtDNA and Y-DNA Haplogroups and Polymorphisms in South American Indians
DNA in Forensics 2012, Sep 06-08 2012 Below are some of the more interesting findings related to New World genetics reported at the recent “DNA in Forensics 2012” conference held at the University of Innsbruck, Austria (via Dienekes). The detection…
A High Coverage of the Denisovan Hominin
Science 30 August 2012 DOI: 10.1126/science.1224344 A High-Coverage Genome Sequence from an Archaic Denisovan Individual Matthias Meyer, Martin Kircher, Marie-Theres Gansauge, Heng Li, Fernando Racimo, Swapan Mallick, Joshua G. Schraiber, Flora Jay, Kay Prüfer, Cesare de Filippo, Peter H. Sudmant,…
Nivkh and Chukotko-Kamchatkan Linguistic Relationship and Its Genetic Correlates
Lingua Vol. 8, Issue 121, June 2011, 1359-1376 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2011.03.001 The Relationship of Nivkh to Chukotko-Kamchatkan Revisited Michael Fortescue With the availability today of reliable materials for comparing the languages that in the past have been lumped together under the rubric…
The Caucasus is the Americas of Western Eurasia: Intragroup-Genetic and Linguistic Diversity Are Inversely Correlated
Dienekes continues to refute himself and adopt my ideas. In his latest ADMIXTURE experiment he announces “The most salient point about this analysis is the central position of the Caucasus component vis-a-vis the others, consistent with my womb of nations…
An Abuse of Interdisciplinarity: Modeling the Indo-European Homeland Again
Science 2012, Vol. 337 no. 6097 pp. 957-960 doi: 10.1126/science.1219669 Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family Remco Bouckaert, Philippe Lemey, Michael Dunn, Simon J. Greenhill, Alexander V. Alekseyenko, Alexei J. Drummond, Russell D. Gray, Marc A….
Dene-Yeniseian Language Family: Evidence for a Back-Migration to the Old World?
The 2012 Dene-Yeniseian Workshop took place on March 24 at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Since the seminal presentation by the West Washington University linguist, Edward Vajda, of morphological and lexical evidence relating the small Yeniseian language family from Western…
Comparative Mythology and the Study of Modern Human Origins
One of the main thrusts of this weblog is the need to test models of human origins and dispersals derived from paleobiology, archaeology and genetics using independent datasets pertaining to human language and culture, the defining characteristics of behavioral modernity….
On Sciences and Humanities: Reflections on Coyne and Konnikova
This post is seemingly off-topic on this blog. In reality, it goes to the core of the problems I’m trying to address. It just takes a philosophical and methodological road to get there. On Scientific American’s Literally Psyched blog, Maria…
mtDNA and Y-DNA Markers in South American Indians
Genetics and Molecular Biology 2012 Apr-Jun; 35 (2): 365-387. doi: 10.1590/S1415-47572012005000027. Uniparental Genetic Markers in South Amerindians Rafael Bisso-Machado, Maria C. Bortolini, and Francisco M. Salzano. A comprehensive review of uniparental systems in South Amerindians was undertaken. Variability in the…
Archaic Introgression and the Derived Nature of African Lineages at STAT2 Gene
American Journal of Human Genetics 91, 2012, 265-274. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.06.015. A Haplotype at STAT2 Introgressed from Neanderthals and Serves as a Candidate of Positive Selection in Papua New Guinea Fernando L. Mendez, Joseph C. Watkins, and Michael F. Hammer. Signals of…
Out-of-America Antecedents. I. William James Sidis
Out-of-America is a largely unique theory. But even the most unusual theory of all has antecedents. Steve Sailer asks “Didn’t William James Sidis have some kind of Out-of-America theory 90 years ago?” I hereby announce a new theme on this…
Ancient Molecular and Morphometric Variation from Chile: The Death of the Dual-Entry Model?
Chungara, Revista de Antropología Chilena Vol. 43, No 2, 2011, pp. 283-292 Morphometric and mtDNA Analyses of Archaic Skeletal Remains from Southwestern South America Germán Manríquez, Mauricio Moraga, Calogero Santoro, Eugenio Aspillaga, Bernardo T. Arriaza, and Francisco Rothhammer. For decades…
The Xavante Indians and Genetic Divergence Between American Indians and Africans
PLoS ONE 7 (8): e42702. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0042702 Genome-Wide Analysis in Brazilian Xavante Indians Reveals Low Degree of Admixture Patricia C. Kuhn, Andréa R. V. Russo. Horimoto, José Maurício Sanches, João Paulo B. Vieira Filho, Luciana Franco, Amaury Dal Fabbro, Laercio Joel…
Morgan in the Mind: Anthropology’s Amnesia and Biology’s Patriotism
PLoS Biol 9 (7) 2011: e1001109. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001109. Darwin in the Mind: New Opportunities for Evolutionary Psychology Bolhuis, Johan J., Gillian R. Brown, Robert C. Richardson, Kevin N. Laland. Evolutionary Psychology (EP) views the human mind as organized into many modules,…
The World Without the West: Out-of-America Theory and Eurocentric Cosmologies
A revolution of the magnitude promised by the out-of-America theory of human origins requires a historiographic analysis. We need to understand how come science erred to the degree it did by focusing so exclusively and parochially on Old World centers…
The Evolution of Language and Music
Cognition 100 (2006): 173-215 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2005.11.009 The Biology and Evolution of Music: A Comparative Perspective Fitch, W. Tecumseh. Studies of the biology of music (as of language) are highly interdisciplinary and demand the integration of diverse strands of evidence. In this…
The Timing of the “Symbolic Revolution” in Modern Humans
Dienekes did everyone a favor by posting videos of talks by two famous Bay Area professors, one from Henry Gilbert on Homo erectus, the other one from Richard Klein on the “symbolic revolution” in modern humans. Both talks were delivered…
Web Gems: August 3, 2012
This is a new post genre on this weblog. “Web Gems” will feature smart thinking from the Comments sections of various other blogs followed by my no less bright commentary. This week I have three good ones: Andrew Oh-Willeke surprised…
Genetics and Linguistics of the Bantu Expansion
Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B 279: 3256-3263. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.0318 Bringing Together Linguistic and Genetic Evidence to Test the Bantu Expansion De Filippo, Cesare, Koen Bostoen, Mark Stoneking, and Brigitte Pakendorf. The expansion of Bantu languages represents one of the most momentous…
On Dziebel, Out-of-America, and Anthropology: Response to Razib Khan
Razib Khan has reacted to my frequent bludgeoning of him. Here are a few quick rejoinders to set the record straight. But there will be no more follow ups. This blog is not about bickering. 1. On Dziebel‘s style Razib…
Social Anthropology and the Bantu Expansion
Razib is now officially a fantasy science blogger. When he recently called his readers “stupid, ignorant or lazy” and put up a stringent comments policy (I bet inspired by my own) rallying them to show their “A-game,” I knew it…
A Seismic Shift in Human Origins Research, or a Downward Slide?
A new research paper is out which has created a lot of media buzz. “Evolutionary History and Adaptation from High-Coverage Whole-Genome Sequences of Diverse African Hunter-Gatherers, “ by Joseph Lachance et al. reports “archaic admixture” in three African hunter-gathering populations…
Bruce Mannheim on Linguistic and Genetic Groupings: A Rebuttal
Influential linguist Bruce Mannheim commented on the likelihood of overlap between genetic and linguistic patterns of variation in conjunction with the recent resuscitation (all outside of the circle of professional linguists) of Joseph Greenberg’s classification of America Indian languages. “Let…
Khoisans Are Genetically Admixed and Not Basal to Other Humans, Hadza Are Recently Admixed
In my last post I discussed the ways in which phylogenetic trees constructed on the basis of genetic data confound population relationships derived from common descent and from admixture. Unless admixture is taken into account, the sampled populations may end…
How to Interpret Patterns of Genetic Variation? Admixture, Divergence, Inbreeding, Cousin Marriage
Two different but important population genetics papers have come out. One is Steven Bray et al. (2010) “Signatures of Founder Effects, Admixture, and Selection in the Ashkenazi Jewish Population.” The other one is Isabel Alves et al. (2012) “Genomic Data…
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