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,…
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…
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….
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…
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…
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…
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…
Neandertal Admixture in microRNA Genes
Molecular Biology and Evolution (27 January 2012), doi:10.1093/molbev. An Ancestral miR-1304 Allele Present in Neanderthals Regulates Genes Involved in Enamel Formation and Could Explain Dental Differences with Modern Humans Lopez-Valenzuela, Maria, Oscar Ramirez, Antonio Rosas, Samuel Garcıa-Vargas, Marco de la…
Howler Monkeys, Neandertals, Pygmies, Khoisans and More: Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution 2012
As I write, Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) is conducting its annual meetings in Dublin, Ireland. Dienekes has many useful pullouts from the available abstracts. I will make short comments on a few of them, plus bring in…
Molecular Variability of the 16p13.3 Region in American Indians
Annals of Human Genetics (2007) 71, 64–76 DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-1809.2006.00296.x Molecular Variability of the 16p13.3 Region in Amerindians and Its Anthropological Significance Battilana, J., L. Cardoso-Silva, R. Barrantes, K. Hill, A. M. Hurtado, F. M. Salzano and S. L. Bonatto A…
The Stereotype of a Beringian Refugium
The new paper “Mitochondrial DNA Signals of Late Glacial Recolonization of Europe from Near Eastern Refugia” by Maria Pala et al. (2012) seemingly has nothing to do with the “peopling of the Americas.” It argues, on the basis of a…
More on Amerindian mtDNA haplogroups X2, B2 and C4: Evidence from Siberian Tubalars, Tuvans, Evens and Ulchi
American Journal of Physical Anthropology Vol 148, No. 1, pages 123-138, May 2012 DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.22050 Mitochondrial Genome Diversity in the Tubalar, Even and Ulchi: Contribution to Prehistory of Native Siberians and Their Affinities to Native Americans Sukernik, Rem I., Natalia V….
Between Behar et al. 2012 and Johnson et al. 1983: The Mitochondrial DNA Tree Comes of Age but Remains a Blunt Tool for Human Evolutionary History
American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 90, Issue 4, 675-684, 6 April 2012 doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.03.002 A “Copernican” Reassessment of the Human Mitochondrial DNA Tree from its Root Behar, Doron M., Mannis van Oven, Saharon Rosset, Mait Metspalu, Eva-Liis Loogvali, Nuno M….
The Effect of Long-Term Endogamy on Identity-By-Descent
PLoS ONE 7(4): e34267. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034267 Cryptic Distant Relatives Are Common in Both Isolated and Cosmopolitan Genetic Samples Henn, Brenna M., Lawrence Hon, J. Michael Macpherson, Nick Eriksson, Serge Saxonov, Itsik Pe’er, Joanna L. Mountain. Although a few hundred single nucleotide…
Piraha Indians, Recursion, Phonemic Inventory Size and the Evolutionary Significance of Simplicity
Daniel Everett has a new book out that will surely stir more controversy around Piraha Indians, Chomskyan recursion and the evolution of human language. I haven’t read this book yet, but The Chronicle of Higher Education has an extensive coverage…
American Indian Uniqueness: Linguistics and Genetics
Journal of Linguistic Relationship 5 (2011): 130-134. Similarities among Languages of the Americas: An Exploration of the WALS Evidence Wichmann, Søren, Eric W. Holman, Dietrich Stauffer, and Cecil H. Brown. Abstract. An exploration of WALS (i.e. the World Atlas of…
The Origin of mtDNA haplogroup B: 9-bp deletion in America, Asia and Africa
PLoS ONE 7(2) 2012: e32179. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0032179 Complete Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of Eastern Eurasian Haplogroups Rarely Found in Populations of Northern Asia and Eastern Europe Derenko M., Malyarchuk B., Denisova G., Perkova M., Rogalla U., et al. Abstract. With the aim…
American Indians, Neanderthals and Denisovans: PCA and ADMIXTURE
Dienekes continued his search for “archaic admixture” in world populations. This time he blended ADMIXTURE and PCA approaches to plot 5 composite populations detected by ADMIXTURE in the Harvard HGDP set. American Indians are back in. The ADMIXTURE plot replicates…
American Indians, Neanderthals and Denisovans: Insights from PCA Views
Dienekes posted a SNP PCA showing the relative position of a sample of modern human populations from the Harvard HGDP along the axes formed by Chimpanzees, Denisovans and Neanderthals. On the broad-view PCA, the red dot indicates Chimpanzees, the green…
American Indian HLA Genes on Easter Island
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 19 March 2012 vol. 367 no. 1590 812-819 doi: 10.1098/rstb.2011.0319 The Polynesian Gene Pool: An Early Contribution by Amerindians to Easter Island Erik Thorsby Abstract. It is now generally accepted that Polynesia was first settled by…
Archaic Morphology and American Indian Biological Variability
On the heels of my last post about the possibly systematic trend to ignore American Indian samples in the studies of worldwide variation, there’s a new paper dealing with the discovery of human remains with archaic morphology as late as…
Are American Indian Populations Subject to Sampling Bias in Human Origins Research?
The latest post by Dienekes re-kindled an observation that I wanted to make for a long time. Dienekes applied TreeMix software to ADMIXTURE components derived from HapMap-3 populations and created a tree with Sub-Saharan, East African, Northwest African, Gedrosia, Southwest…
Admixture: An Amerindian Component in Eurasian Populations
About a year ago, one of genome bloggers, Diogenes, discovered, using ADMIXTURE, an intriguing “Amerindian” component in a wide range of East and West Eurasian populations. Here are the results of his ADMIXTURE runs. Grey represents the component that’s modal…
Solutrean and Clovis
John Hawks complains about the hype around the book by Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley’s long-awaited book Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America’s Clovis Culture. Posing as an honest academic only interested in facts and not hype, Hawks writes…
Neanderthals and Amerindians: Intragroup Genetic Diversity and Population Size
John Hawks writes: “Neandertals have strikingly limited genetic variation. They once lived across a range from Spain to Siberia. Yet when we compare sequences across their whole genomes, we find them to be much less different across this geographic range…
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