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Ancient Kostenki 14 (Markina Gora) DNA: A Glimpse into a Population on Its Way from America to Africa
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa0114 Genomic Structure in Europeans Dating Back at Least 36,200 Years Andaine Seguin-Orlando, Thorfinn S. Korneliussen, Martin Sikora, Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, Andrea Manica, Ida Moltke, Anders Albrechtsen, Amy Ko, Ashot Margaryan, Vyacheslav Moiseyev, Ted Goebel, Michael Westaway, David Lambert,…
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Ancient Ust’-Ishim DNA as Seen From the Americas
Nature 514, 445–449 (23 October 2014) doi:10.1038/nature13810 Genome sequence of a 45,000-year-old modern human from western Siberia Qiaomei Fu, Heng Li, Priya Moorjani, Flora Jay, Sergey M. Slepchenko, Aleksei A. Bondarev, Philip L. F. Johnson, Ayinuer Aximu-Petri, Kay Prufer, Cesare de Filippo,…
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Genes and Myths: Ancient Mal’ta DNA and the Earth-Diver Mythological Motif
Earth-Diver is one of the most widely-distributed and well-studied cosmological myths. Found in mostly Uralic-speaking Eastern Europe, in Siberia, in Munda-speaking Northeast India and North America, its action is set in post-diluvial times when a demiurge sends various creatures to…
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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…
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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…
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…
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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…
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