Web Gems, October 30, 2013
In my category “Web Gems” there are two items this week. Dienekes writes, “I don’t know of any anthropologically plausible African cousin of the Neandertals, but, of course, the lack of anthropological evidence does not mean non-existence (cf. Denisovans as…
Neandertal Admixture in Africans: A Back-Migration to Sub-Saharan Africa Confirmed
Genome Biology and Evolution 2013 Oct 25. Apparent Variation in Neanderthal Admixture among African Populations is Consistent with Gene Flow from non-African Populations. Shuoguo Wang, Joseph Lachance, Sarah Tishkoff, Jody Hey, and Jinchuan Xing Abstract Recent studies have found evidence of…
Kunstkamera: A Sample of Mental DNA Found among the Consumers of Online Science Content
The reports of ancient DNA from Mal’ta have taken the Web by the storm. Surprisingly, the usually hot-headed commentators, Razib Khan and Dienekes, have remained largely silent on the findings and haven’t delighted anybody with their insights. The most sensible…
Ancient Mal’ta and Afontova Gora DNA Again
Now that Michael Balter’s news piece is out, I can retrieve my original post written in the wake of Eske Willerslev’s presentation at the Paleoamerican Odyssey conference in Santa Fe. Eske Willerslev‘s paper was on ancient DNA from the Mal’ta and Afontova…
Snippets: Mongolia and the New World
I’m announcing a new category of blog posts on this website. Snippets will contain bite-size information on topics related to the New World-Old World contacts and connections. As I’m traveling back from Santa Fe, I have a little bit of…
Paleoamerican Odyssey Conference: Ancient Mal’ta DNA, Ice-Free Corridor, Back Migrations to the Old World, Craniofacial Diversity in the New World and Pre-Clovis
My complete paper delivered yesterday at the Paleoamerican Odyssey Conference in Santa Fe is now available here. I will keep updating this post as more information comes in. I’m keeping the news of Eske Willerslev’s ancient DNA analysis of Mal’ta…
Out-of-America at the Paleoamerican Odyssey Conference (October 17-19, 2013)
An email from Michael Waters, Director at the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University, confirms that I’m going to be presenting at the upcoming Paleoamerican Odyssey Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico. These days, I rarely…
Reader Questions 1: In Search of Archaic Hominin Survivals in Eurasia. Tutkaul Culture
This is a new category of posts on this weblog. Every now and then a reader sends me a question and sometimes I get interested and try to answer. There seems to be a steady interest on the part of…
Comparative Mythology and the Origin of Na-Dene
От бытия к инобытию: фольклор и погребальный ритуал в традиционных культурах Сибири и Америки: сборник статей. Санкт-Петербург: МАЭ РАН: Кунсткамера, 2010. C. 7-49. Yuri Berezkin The Mythological Explanations of Human Mortality and the Problem of the Origin of Na-Dene/Мифологические объяснения…
Y-DNA hg C3* in South America and Putative Ancient Transpacific Contacts
PLoS Genet 9(4): e1003460. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1003460 Continent-Wide Decoupling of Y-Chromosomal Genetic Variation from Language and Geography in Native South Americans Lutz Roewer, Michael Nothnagel, Leonor Gusmão, Veronica Gomes, Miguel González, Daniel Corach, Andrea Sala, Evguenia Alechine, Teresinha Palha, Ney Santos, Andrea…
The Toca da Tira Peia Site and the End of an Ice Age in American Archaeology
Journal of Archaeological Science 40 (2013), 2840-2847 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2013.02.019 Human Occupation in South America by 20,000 BC: The Toca da Tira Peia Site, Piauí, Brazil Christelle Lahaye, Marion Hernandez, Eric Boëda, Gisele D. Felice, Niède Guidon, Sirlei Hoeltz, Antoine Lourdeau, Marina…
An Out-of-America Signal as Seen Through Human Regulatory Genes
PLoS Genet 9(4): e1003404. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1003404 Balancing Selection on a Regulatory Region Exhibiting Ancient Variation That Predates Human–Neandertal Divergence Omer Gokcumen, Qihui Zhu, Lubbertus C. F. Mulder, Rebecca C. Iskow, Christian Austermann, Christopher D. Scharer, Towfique Raj, Jeremy M. Boss, Shamil…
Congenital Anomalies, Kinship Systems and Pleistocene Demography
PLoS ONE 8(3): e59587. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059587 An Enlarged Parietal Foramen in the Late Archaic Xujiayao 11 Neurocranium from Northern China, and Rare Anomalies among Pleistocene Homo Xiu-Jie Wu,Song Xing, and Erik Trinkaus. We report here a neurocranial abnormality previously undescribed in…
Out-of-America Theory and the Race Debate
The topic outlined in the title of this post is huge and I can’t give justice to it at this moment. But considering how dramatic of a revision of modern human evolutionary history the out-of-America theory is offering, it is…
Is Taiwan to Austronesians what America is to Modern Humans?
American Journal of Physical Anthropology 150 (4): 551–564, April 2013 Ascertaining the Role of Taiwan as a Source for the Austronesian Expansion Sheyla Mirabal, Alicia M. Cadenas, Ralph Garcia-Bertrand, and Rene J. Herrera. Taiwanese aborigines have been deemed the ancestors…
Archaic Admixture in Africa, a Final Solution for Cultural Anthropology and the New World Roots of the Oldest Dog: News from Around the Web
I haven’t been blogging for a while because of a new demanding leadership job. It will keep me busy, so I’m shifting to more of a bite-size blog post format. In the meantime, I’ve been active on Gisele Horvat’s Human…
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…
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