The End of Out-of-Africa: A Copernican Reassessment of the Patterns of Genetic Variation in the Old World
Over at Anthrogenica, I’ve been having some heated (as always) but this time also productive discussions regarding the interpretation of currently available genetic evidence. In the following I will sketch out a hypothesis that increasingly makes sense to me. 1….
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The Pygmy Enigma: Biology, Population Genetics and Linguistics
PLoS Genetics 8 (4): e1002641. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1002641 Patterns of Ancestry, Signatures of Natural Selection, and Genetic Association with Stature in Western African Pygmies Jarvis, Joseph P., Laura B. Scheinfeldt, Sameer Soi, Charla Lambert, Larsson Omberg, Bart Ferwerda, Alain Froment, Jean-Marie Bodo,…
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