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…
The Role of Cooperative Breeding in Modern Human Evolution
Journal of Human Evolution 63 (2012): 52-63 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2012.03.009, Allomaternal care, life history and brain size evolution in mammals Isler, Karin, and Carel P. van Schaik. Humans stand out among the apes by having both an extremely large brain and a…
Identity Politics in the Name of Science: The Battle over American Indian Blood and Bones Continues
As we learned in my previous post, Reich et al. (2012, 4) claim to have conducted the “most comprehensive survey of genetic diversity in Native Americans so far.” I noticed that their study admitted a few ironies and misapprehensions, but…
A Three-Wave Model for the Peopling of the Americas, or a Three-Wave Back-Migration from the Americas to the Old World
Nature (2012) doi:10.1038/nature11258 Reconstructing Native American population history Reich, David, et al. The peopling of the Americas has been the subject of extensive genetic, archaeological and linguistic research; however, central questions remain unresolved. One contentious issue is whether the settlement occurred…
The Western Stemmed Tradition, Clovis and mtDNA 9-bp Deletion
Science 13 July 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6091 pp. 223-228 DOI: 10.1126/science.1218443 Clovis Age Western Stemmed Projectile Points and Human Coprolites at the Paisley Caves Jenkins, Dennis L. et al. The Paisley Caves in Oregon record the oldest directly dated human…
Out-of-Africa in the Mid-Pleistocene: A New Interdisciplinary Paradigm or a New Myth?
In the comments section on this blog, Dienekes raises the issue of interdisciplinary support for the out-of-America theory. Since I’m a big proponent of interdisciplinarity, the seeming convergence of genetics, archeology and paleobiology on the origin of modern humans in…
The Pontic Steppe vs. the Bactrian Homeland of the Indo-Europeans
Dienekes, the confused blogger from my previous post, continues to be confused and confusing. In the comments section of Razib’s Discover Blog, he concedes: “As of late, I am rather more willing to give even Johanna Nichols’ 1997 model of…
A Near Eastern Origin of the Indo-Europeans – An Internet Hoax? Observations on the Writings of a Confused Genome Blogger
Dienekes has been campaigning for a while for the Indo-European homeland in “West Asia” or the “Near East.” I usually don’t actively discuss the origin of Indo-Europeans and technically this question falls outside of the theme for this blog. But…
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