Is it my imagination, or is Charles Murray’s new book, Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America getting more traction than his previous book? Probably due to the engagement with the “heterodox academy” types.
I wrote about the crime spike for my Substack in late April, and a lot of people told me that I was pretty bold for having done so. Of course, by mid-May our propaganda media did a heel-turn and decided to start talking about the issue in unison. I can’t express how disgusted I am with American media in 2021. They’re no better than they were during the Iraq War II period. Just new masters.
Unless you’ve been asleep, you know there are new hominins discovered galore. I posted a long (free) Substack on it and my perspective. Please share and retweet, etc.
I’ve also been posting on Finnish genetics and culture recently. See Go west, young Siberian, and Weirdness as a national pastime.
This is apropos of nothing… but I have a lot of friends in academia who think they are “based” and dissent from the regnant orthodoxy. For almost 20 years I’ve been taking fire and absorbing hits because I’ll say what I think (to the point of being physically attacked at scientific conferences). A lot of you appreciate it. But in general, you’re cowards and keep your head down.
Sit down and wonder what you’ll tell your kids in the future about the courage you showed, and how you measured up to the values you claim to hold dear. And ask yourself if perhaps the collapse of the world you valued will have had something to do with your craven behavior. You know the answer. Don’t pretend you’re something you aren’t. My kids are starting to be old enough to know who I am. I’m not ashamed. Would you be? If not, perhaps you should be.
My friend Patrick Wyman has a new book out, The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World. I’ll be having him on my podcast too. Speaking of which, please add some positive ratings.
Speaking of Patrick, David Anthony on his podcast. Don’t miss it.
Evidence of the interplay of genetics and culture in Ethiopia.
The rise and importance of Secret Congress.
Quest for Fire. Is this a documentary now?
All known archaic groups with ancient DNA evidence interbred. Repeatedly. Seemingly every time they came into contact. Three distinct groups of Denisovans, all known from their ancient interbreeding with modern people. So. Much. Interbreeding. pic.twitter.com/AkZkSjacUF
— John Hawks (@johnhawks) June 25, 2021
SIA: Selection Inference Using the Ancestral Recombination Graph.
‘In the Heights’ and Colorism: What Is Lost When Afro-Latinos Are Erased.
I’m sort of semi-seriously wondering if part of the reason for the success of the population of homo sapiens that spread out after 60,000 years and contributed most of the ancestry of non-African people was because they had archery (which emerged not too long before they left). It’s an extremely effective technology, but challenging to make and time-consuming to train properly for.
I’m looking forward to that Pat Wyman book, and sad that he never got to publish the “Fall of Rome” book I think he mentioned trying to shop around ages ago.
@DaThang / Forgetful / or anyone else, if you have any thoughts on the recent yesterday about new ancient Chinese dna, would quite like to hear. As it’s paywalled and busy I haven’t had time to check it out but would like to know either of your thoughts (or any other interested party) – https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/caos-nfu062421.php / https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00635-8
It seems like
They find a early star-like diverge between Tianyuan (and presumbly AR33K and the ENA ancestry of Salkhit) and Hoabinhian *and* a new 11kya hunter-gatherer from Guangxi, called for site Longlin…
That seems to fit to me with a model where the early ENA group enters East Eurasia and then explodes in all directions immediately. Splits almost as deep as between ENA and K14.
They make a qpGraph where ancient Early Neolithic Northeast Chinese (Boshan) and Early Neolithic Southeast Chinese (Qihe) are descended from a majority Tianyuan and minority Longlin https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/268931.php?from=507698 . Note that this model finds equal proportions in Qihe and Boshan, and that Qihe is early neolithic date, but I think not from farming context, a HG. That’s consistent with East Asian being possibly a product of admixture, but the differences of Qihe and Boshan not deriving or at least not deriving much, from differences in deeper proportions, more drift.
Also note though that these clades that are related but ancestral to East Asians themselves split fairly deeply, so again this may actually be more like a star-like split in practice.
Then later groups in Guangxi just 10kya but still largely in the early Neolithic are mixes between a large influx of Southern Chinese Neolithic Qihe like and some Longlin and also *some Hoabinhian like geneflow from SEA…
However in the paper they also apparently show some increase of affinity to Longlin over time in later South Chinese samples through the historical period it seems? So some Longlin like ancestry may be leaking in.
One inconsistent thing is that it’s not really sorted out what the relationship of Longlin is; it seems that in the paper they find Longlin has a similar relationship to East Asians as Jomon do, but it doesn’t seem clear how that would fit with the tree model.
One respect in which the graph must be wrong is that it would place an admixture even ancestral to East Asians at around 14.5 kya, however we know that AR19K in Amur was already an basally East Asian person (https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-05/caos-ssl052721.php) with weak differentiation in affinities to the subsequent Southern Chinese and Northern Chinese samples (e.g. truly quite basal). It seems like “East Asian” must have formed more like at least 20kya than 14.5kya. Possibly earlier if Jomon really is like a more basal than ARK19k.
Some other misc interesting East Asian dna things:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.23.449553v1 – “Genomic history and forensic characteristics of Sherpa highlanders on the Tibetan Plateau inferred from high-resolution genome-wide InDels and SNPs” – More Tibeto-Burman structural stuff.
(On a related note I’ve been looking at f2 statistics lately, and got the impression that the divergences between Tibeto-Burman groups and other East Asians seem to me *slightly* more significant after the latitudinal component of genetics is taken into account maybe that they might have appeared on some projected PCAs. Will come back if I have anything more substantive on this).
The next probably not of interest to anyone but me, but I also noticed that ancient Myanmar sample I7238 from approx 1000 BCE has been listed in the Human Origins anno file as “Myanmar_LN_BA_published_lc“. That seems to indicate that a higher coverage sample is going to be published at some point, that they got more out of her petrous bone. The Myanmar Oakaie samples seemed to evidence in Lipson’s paper that Tibeto-Burman migration into Southeast Asia is happening at a similar time or less than a thousand years after the movement of the first Neolithic into the region. It confirms in a way the traditional model of Burmese history, where the Bamar migration is long preceded by a migration of Tibeto-Burman people into Myanmar (leading to for’ex the Pyu city states that long preceded the Burmese in 800AD). Bamar into Myanmar more like Anglo-Saxons into England than Yamnaya into Western Europe. Less of a single “First Farmers” model than like multiple almost simultaneous migrations reaching out towards SEA. So cool to see if they can get more high quality dna from that sample. Unusually I’m not sure why Human Origins hasn’t included the higher coverage Oakaie sample S28 in their library at all! Slightly concerning.
(1/2) RK: “…A lot of you appreciate it. But in general, you’re cowards and keep your head down. Sit down and wonder what you’ll tell your kids in the future about the courage you showed, and how you measured up to the values you claim to hold dear. And ask yourself if perhaps the collapse of the world you valued had something to do with your craven behavior.”
I wonder where I would be classified based on my comments. I tried in my comments to present something what is not (or against) the mainstream, what is hidden, what is falsified or at least to bring some new perspective. Generally, the reception was in a range of between lukewarm indifferent and mild to hot negative. So, let it be. I am not here to make friends although I could rather skip some disappointments. Speaking about this there is one related to my comment about white-slavery.
Irish people are some of the most favorites among Serbian people. Not only because they have some similar personal traits – stubbornness, bravery, simplicity, ‘what you see that is what you get’. This could be seen in the last OT from the live concert where Orthodox Celts sing Irish songs and from the reaction of audience. The additional plus is a similar folklore and their similar historical suffering from English who are known by numerous genocides conducted around the globe, leaving only 20 countries in the world which were not subjected to their aggression so far. Another important moment is that Celts also started their voyage from Vinca, through Italy, France, Portugal before reaching British Isles. It seems that Celts have forgotten where they came from, they’ve forgotten that they had identical names with Serbs before Edward Longshanks prohibited their language, names and sports. At about the same time, Prussians were Germanized, but they spoke Serbian until 200 years ago when it was prohibited by law, too. It seems that they also lost memory about their origins.
This mentioning of white slavery is interesting because it seems, paradoxically, that Irish people are ashamed of this. No one is discussing this, and it is unbelievable that this period was pushed under the carpet. Now, it may become actual after current race based bizarre happenings in US after their unreal and bizarre elections. So, Irish people lost their memory what was highly disappointing during recent happenings when not only the U2 frontman or Creepy Joe-likes, then Irish press too, sided together with English (and American Jews) press on the Bosnia ISIL side against Christian Serbs. The Serbian affection towards Celts remains unidirectional and unanswered but this is just one of many in a chain of disappointments.
(2/2) For those who research Celtic history there is a list of Celtic names before they were prohibited. The Director of the Linguistics Department of Harvard University published this in his book:
Joshua Whitemouth: The Dialects of Ancient Gaul, Harvard Uni Press, Cambridge, 1970.
Many names, however, survived this prohibition. For example Brus i.e. Bruce (Springsteen and Willis). These two Die hard guys probably would be surprised by its meaning in Serbian – ‘whetstone, hone’ – a stone used for sharpening of axes or swords. There is also a smaller version used by a mower, held on his belt in an ox’s horn with water and used for sharpening the scythe.
It is interesting that this name is identical with, according to the mainstream – Totila, the king of Ostrogoths, allegedly a Germanic tribe. We have unfinished business with Goths, i.e. Dacians, just to say here that his name is actually Tocilo (=Brus) and his brother was Ostroilo, what means – a ‘sharpener’ i.e. sharpening tool.
So, there are few names with their meaning in Serbian: Beli (white), Budak (pick-ax, grub-ax), Vratar (doorman, portman), Vrbica (willow, osier), Danko (day), Vrsina (underbrush), Kamen (stone), bara (plash) Satara (meat chopper), Tatin (father’s) Seleuc, so as Bako, Borisha, Borust, Branko, Buda, Vasonie, Velidor, Vita, Vlatuna, Vrbica, Davilo, Danomir, Dedisha, Derkoyed, Dravko, Jarila, Jeka Jovina, Jovinka, Kojo, ladan, Mato, Matulo, Meda, Miro, Nizo, Rasia, Ranilo, Rodanik, Ruso, Ruma, Savo, Samo, Sarmo, Spartie, Sveto, Suria, Togimir, Ubila, Dana.
Joshua Whatmough
@Matt
“On a related note I’ve been looking at f2 statistics lately, and got the impression that the divergences between Tibeto-Burman groups and other East Asians seem to me *slightly* more significant after the latitudinal component of genetics is taken into account maybe that they might have appeared on some projected PCAs. Will come back if I have anything more substantive on this”
Out of curiosity, do you think f2 stats are better at measuring distances between two populations than FST? I know the big caveat with FST is that super small population size/highly drifted pops can cause inflated distances, are f2 susceptibles to this as well?
These “don’t be a coward” calls would be more effective if they came with links to strategy for how to do this well. Charging headfirst into the artillery is probably not best, but I’m sure there are better strategies (and I can think of some). What is the overall strategic guidance for academics who want to push back but don’t know how to do optimally (with some personal risk, of course, but fighting the battle from the inside is probably more effective than from the outside). Where is this being discussed? Where is the current field manual?
@Mick from what I could tell from the f2 output from ADMIXTOOLS2, the f2 distance seem to be affected by drifted similarly to fst (e.g. Kalash get a long branch in trees based on f2 distance and things like that) and they don’t really control for drift or anything like that, unless specifically using the f3 and f4 to control via an outgroup. Similarly the ancients still get elevated f2 due to differences which are artefacts and need f3 and f4 to control. But because they’re additive unlike fst they are more useful for building trees and methods like qpAdm? ADMIXTOOLS2 has a fst output so I might crossplot against f2 and see what happens.
On whether f2 or fst reflects real population structure better that’s above my population genetics grade. I can kind of say “This is what the structure looks like under this method” and whether it’s intuitive or not, but whether it’s more real… That’s one for real population geneticists to think about the theory, not “tinkerers” like me 😉
I too am a big Patrick Wyman fan. He does a great job of understanding history as a Ph.D. historian would, and explaining it to intelligent laymen.
The easiest place for me from which to download Tides podcasts is:
https://rss.art19.com/tides-of-history
Tides can also be found at: https://wondery.com/shows/tides-of-history/
Before Tides, Patrick did a podcast series: The Fall of Rome Podcast: https://wondery.com/shows/the-fall-of-rome-podcast/ wh9ich I also highly recommend.
Quest for Fire? The only thing I remember about it was that there was lot of sex. Mostly Rae Dawn Chong (Tommy’s child) being entered posteriorly. The thing she was looking for was not fire, it was a man who would embrace her anteriorly.
“‘In the Heights’ and Colorism: What Is Lost When Afro-Latinos Are Erased.”
The NYTimes and their melanin bean counting can go impale themselves on their sundry protrusions.
My wife and I saw the movie. it was the first time we had been at the movies in a year and a half. When we first were married we lived way uptown, not Washington heights, but there were lots of Dominicans in our neighborhood.
We came to know them and love them. They were great, salt of the earth people. Devoted to their families and a delight to know. My wife was also in graduate school with Lin-Manuel’s parents, although she did not find that out until later.
We are not Hispanic in any way, but we knew about their culture and life in New York.
We loved the movie and highly recommend it to all.
The movie has a lot of explicit references to liberal politics, but its values are family, community, hard work, and respect. They are very conservative.
Lin-Manuel may think he is a liberal, but he is a good enough artist to be really conservative at heart.
@Razib Khan
Do you think Harbin cranium is the long awaited Denisovan skull we’ve all been looking for?
“The rise and importance of Secret Congress.”
Was good. It shows that Congressional politics is like entering water. if you fall from a great height and it splayed out, it is like hitting concrete. I four body is under control and your toes are pointed down you can slip in with little splash and let the friction slow you down.
@Mick, here are some graphics for fst vs f2 like I mentioned above.
First, comparison of all Fst and all f2 pairs between a set of 122 populations from the Human Origins latest release (ancient 17, modern 105). Here https://imgur.com/a/KC6I5M9
In general f2 is pretty linear with fst, though with some differences. There are a lot more apparent outlying problems with the f2 calculation as a measure of population differentiation when it comes to the ancient sequences (e.g. quite a few ancient+modern or ancient+ancient are displaced “up” on the y axis compared to the fst measure). Really only some of the ancients seem to be driving the problem (three populations; a Caucasus Maikop one, Sarazm Eneo and a South China LN one) which just have abberant f2 for no real reason.
Remove those three and its even more linear. Here https://imgur.com/a/fXgno24. In general, as ADMIXTOOLS2 works it out, f2 is simply 0.27*fst, with a r^2 of 0.98.
Using only moderns you get up to r^2 of 0.99. Here https://imgur.com/a/TgQ8bQK. Though the residuals seem to indicate that AfricanVEurasian/OoA differences are higher in f2 than fst (and that this is most pronounced for most drifted OoA populations), while Eurasian/OoAVEurasian/OoA differences, particularly between most highly drifted populations are less pronounced in f2.
They’re mostly linear, but with this slight difference, it seems to me, where fst is reduced in Africans by intragroup heterozygosity and increased in Eurasians/OoA by intragroup homozygosity. (I think that makes sense given that f2 is the raw allele frequency difference between populations while fst takes into account frequency difference within population?).
I would say as well though, note that Pontus Skoglund / his lab worked out that African:Eurasian Fst is elevated under the Human Origins panel as its ascertained in Africans. See here https://arborbiosci.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Skoglund_Ancestral_850K_Panel_Design.pdf. So I don’t know if that bleeds over even worse to f2 stats.
As a final thing, a few NJ trees based on these https://imgur.com/a/vkHD8kg . You can see the effect of using fst or f2 is minimal for modern populations, and with f2 it looks like some populations get very long branches. I did also do a tree with ancients and moderns with fst, but seemed to be a few problems with how the fst estimates caused ancients to be placed…
Basically overall I’d say, on high quality data like moderns, f2 and fst seem to “tell the same story” so I wouldn’t overly take much time thinking about about the difference too much (like “This is fst so its questionable and what are the f2 distances?” because they’d probably just be linear, with the above mentioned variation).
@Jawad: Razib writes about the skull at his substack:
https://razib.substack.com/p/here-be-humans
@ Brett – Think projectile weapons more generally, including use of spear throwers (atlatl, woomera, whatever – all the same principle) which greatly increase power, range and accuracy over just throwing the spear without one. Learning to use one takes practice, but no more than archery, they are a lot easier to make than archery gear, and a spear thrown with a spear thrower has much more knockdown power than an arrow, although less range and accuracy assuming a powerful enough bow and good matching arrows.
This is well depicted in Quest for Fire (but Walter missed it because he was too busy with the sex scenes – in fairness, 20 year old Rae Dawn Chong wearing nothing but body paint was something to see). You can also see woomeras used in the great 2006 Australian film Ten Canoes.
The “secret congress” post is rather remarkable. An attempt to put a positive spin on the fact that lobbyists and other DC insiders can still get their pork bills passed as long as the public doesn’t notice.
Also note that neither the authors nor most of the commentators on that post seem to have any notion that there exists a real world with real people outside DC and that the bills they talk about have real (frequently bad) effects on those people.
Razib has posted on something similar to this previously:
“This paper studies how the presence of adult entertainment establishments affects the incidence of sex crimes, including sexual abuse and rape. We build a high frequency daily and weekly panel that combines the exact location of not-self-reported sex crimes with the day of opening and exact location of adult entertainment establishments in New York City. We find that these businesses decrease sex crime by 13% per police precinct one week after the opening, and have no effect on other types of crimes. The results imply that the reduction is mostly driven by potential sex offenders frequenting these establishments rather than committing crimes. We also rule out the possibility that other mechanisms are driving our results, such as an increase in the number of police officers, a reduction in the number of street prostitutes and a possible reduction in the number of potential victims in areas where these businesses opened. The effects are robust to using alternative measures of sex crimes.”
From Ciacci and Sviatschi http://www.micaelasviatschi.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sex_cr_5_27_20.pdf
@Milan Todorovic
The Old European Culture blog discusses Serbian-Irish connections in depth on a regular basis. http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/
“We can’t fight climate change using forced labor in China” by Josh Rogin | June 24, 2021
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/24/china-solar-panels-biden-ban-uyghurs-human-rights/
President Biden says climate change is the “number one issue facing humanity,” but that we must fight it while still upholding our values, such as human rights. China is testing our ability to honor both goals, by running its solar industry using forced labor linked to an ongoing genocide. …
Most Americans likely don’t know that approximately 40 percent of the world’s polysilicon, a key component of solar panels, is manufactured in China’s northwest Xinjiang region, where the United States has determined the Chinese government is perpetrating a genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities. …
Inside the administration, there was a fierce debate over the new sanctions, with some arguing that Biden’s ambitious climate change goals could suffer due to a disruption in the solar panel industry. … U.S. manufacturing of solar technology has dropped off a cliff over the past decade.
Of course, that’s largely because the Chinese firms have benefited from unfair advantages, such as cheap, forced labor, government subsidies and cheap energy from dirty coal plants in Xinjiang. Environmental degradation is just one more way Beijing is making the people of Xinjiang suffer to fuel Xi Jinping’s economic ambitions. …
@John Massey: I have no reason to defend myself. That movie was 40 years ago. You remember spear throwers. I remember beautiful women.
BTW. That also means she is now 60. Too old to play the ingenue anymore.
“I have no reason to defend myself.” Nor any sense of humour, apparently.
I’m a fan of that film – I have watched it multiple times, and remember everything. It has been censored since it was first screened.
@Matt,
Thanks for looking into that. I’ve always appreciated your G25/PCA analysis, it’s nice to see you’ve finally dived into Admixtools as well. We need more highly competent amateurs playing around with things like qpAdm, qpGraph, f4/Dstats, aside from the usual suspects of Davidski, Chad, and a handful of folks on Anthrogenica.
Especially looking forward to anything you might cook up regarding deeper population phylogenies. Out of curiosity, I was wondering if you have any strong opinions on the nature Basal Eurasian ancestry, or is that something you haven’t looked into yet? Some users on Anthrogenica seem to have gravitated to a theory that it’s simply an artificat of some previously unaccounted for differential Ust-Ishm like (or some sort of “Crown” Eurasian) admixture into UP Euros but not ancient Middle Easterners.
Not only do bows generally have greater ranges and better accuracy than javelins (whether thrown or launched from some helping device), they also have shorter reload time and much greater ammunition capacity. Try carrying 20 javelins!
The one major downside for bows is reliability. Glues can weaken and strings can snap. Bows are finickier in wet weather. And arrows are more difficult to make well (if you want them to stabilize and fly true). Any idiot with a knife can make a decent javelin, provided there is proper size and quality wood.
This trenchant and perhaps even truculent critique reminded me of Bishop Barron’s (ever so gentle) denunciation of cultural elites and their stooges/sellouts and in particular the “private, hidden, harmless” Christianity of the latter in his commentary on the Scorsese film “Silence” based on Endo Shusaku’s novel of the same name. I attach his video commentary below:
https://youtu.be/5Th7Tiz1cEk
Txs, oh. I knew for this site but did not check for a while. Maybe I was too harsh, there are some isolated islands of preserved memories. I read some comments under the Rocky Road to Dublin in last OT and found few positive and humorous observations apart from other 6 million who were maybe laughing. Actually, there are similarities btw two folklores what confirms the prolonged period of common living in the last apart from common names, stubbornness and robust genetics. Below is one brief amateurish village dancing (there are also many professional groups) maybe 1000 years old, which can resemble on Riverdance but there is neither any appropriation nor plagiarism in any direction. While many nations have one or two national dances, Serbs, thanks to their long history, have the richest folklore in the world and more than 50-60 different national dances and costumes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HunnSqFAIQI (4 min)
Still thinking about Razib’s critique re: us keeping our heads down. I can imagine that he had many disagreements in the past. But, I think that he is also limited by established relationships with some people (e.g. Anthony or Malory) what prevents him to ask them difficult questions or to clearly state history falsifications if he found any. It is unsustainable that for e.g. Yamnaya were sc. ‘Indo-Europeans’ which (poor, nomadic) language was enforced on almost the whole known world but they were not Aryans, did not create (IE) Rg Veda and did not have Proto-language period. This must be explained, A&M did not.
@Mick, no problem at all, honestly frankly glad to be sharing this stuff I tinker around with someone else 🙂 .
Btw to go deeper with my nerdery, slight modification, disregard where I mentioned above “I did also do a tree with ancients and moderns with fst, but seemed to be a few problems with how the fst estimates caused ancients to be placed…”, that was due to an accidental error. Here are some trees for fst and f2 including both ancients and moderns: https://imgur.com/a/hlYctz5
Again the trees are very similar, although not exactly the same as was the case with the trees using only modern people. Only change is that the European population move branch a bit; in the trees with ancients, under f2 NW and SW Europeans (Basque, Spanish, French) sit on the same branch and East Europeans on a branch together, while fst places NW, SW and East Europeans on different branches. But it’s a very minor difference in tree structure. Another difference is where the Caucasus is placed relative to South Asia…
For comparison, here’s a Global25 tree – https://imgur.com/a/NCfbpwO . This is quite similar in local structure of closely related populations (e.g. basically agrees on who everyone’s closest neighbours are). But the overall tree has quite a different structure, notably for the placement of Karitiana and Papuan, who are embedded in the tree near North Central and South Asians respectively in the f2 and fst trees, with a very long self-branch, but placed at a distance from everyone else under Global 25. The G25 tree also seems to want the Near Eastern populations far from Africa on a branch, rather than intermediate, which seems less than obviously what we’d expect from geography. There are also some more obvious differences in how deep the local structure is compared to the overall tree…
I’ve also included some crossplots between Global25 euclidean distance and the f2 scores – Global25 euclidean distance has a power relationship with f2, which means that the Global25 euclidean distance rises a lot faster than f2 statistic for geographically close populations. And so populations in G25 who are close to one another are probably a bit closer under the f2 statistic than they appear in G25. (There’s also some shifted isoclines, even after I remove populations with problem f2 scores – this probably reflects that there is some extra differentiation of Karitiana, Sunghir etc which is deemphasized in G25, probably because David tried to avoid it or its lost in modern references). This probably explains the tree differences.
Looking at G25 distances as proxy for f2 (assuming direct f2 is more “real” maybe) would probably make us overestimate the local f2 distances within continent (but maybe also underestimate drift within some isolated populations a bit, which are lost in large scale components; isolated groups like Orcadians and Argyll Scots from the Western Isles seem to show slightly boosted f2 distances where these don’t show up in the general G25 PCA).
Another thing that seems possible as a possible “advantage” of the f2 over fst, though, is that while they’re mostly linear and similar, f2 is individual (can be computed between two samples) while fst requires at least 2 individuals per population to estimate (computed between two groups). So the advantage would be that dimension reduction or tree models based on distance could be used for individuals without having to make any judgements ahead of time about proper group clustering.
Anyway… (that long tangent over)… No original thoughts on BEu. I haven’t really been following what the anthrogenica guys are doing – it seems like there are lots of degrees of freedom in possible qpGraph now, so exploring all the possibilities could be hard work! Hope they are using the automated features and some sensible constraints. I guess the BK and PM genomes give more material to test the ideas of BEu, and that should eliminate the idea that Ust Ishim specific flow is linked to apparent “Crown Eurasian”. But yeah no original ideas from me. I’ll see if I can think of anything with the deeper phylogenies to test or discover – so far I haven’t touched anything like that, partly because I’ve just been using the Reich lab’s geno files (trying to find any underexamined patterns there) without trying to integrate any samples from recent papers into it, and that’s where the more interesting things are being done on the deeper phylogenies.
Just saw that the Audacious Epigone is closing up shop. Kinda makes me sad since it was one of the first blogs I got into in my mid-20’s but in all honesty I hadn’t been following it much lately. Haven’t you met him irl?
@Jokah, I did sometimes read AE from time to time, well over 4 or 5 years ago now. That was when it seemed like a new thing, mainly on GNXP, was right leaning bloggers checking media assertions and/or the elite’s conceptions and prejudices against data sources like the General Social Survey and then blogging on that, and AE did some similar stuff. I think when Razib stopped doing that and it generally got a bit old (or perhaps people doing just stopped believing that any of our elites could be convinced by data), I probably tuned out of checking anything AE had done since.
Guess my impression of him is as a generally well-rounded “Midwestern nice” type of guy who seemed to increasing have a bit of a tension between his personality, and personal values, and liking things like Japanese role-playing games, with drawing in a commenting audience that increasing had some “darker” and angrier bits of the reactionary end of politics / anti-feminist “Manosphere”, and which seemed to see anything not produced by White American males, preferably before 1960, preferably rural, as irreperably suspect, banjaxxed and decadent, and generally to look down on anything foreign or female or nice.
I hope stopping blogging is good for him personally and emotionally at least.
On the “Here Be Humans” article, nice overview, of course I guess not much new for many people but great overview and well-integrated parts of recent findings.
One point I did find sparked a thought in me was the framing of the population history of Eurasia and Africa as “Instead of thinking of three major human species 60,000 years ago, perhaps we need to think of two families of related but heterogeneous populations (“modern humans” and Denisovan humans) and one homogeneous one (Neanderthals)”. One point on that is I guess that Africa *may* have had more than one family in it, but the more pressing point it made me wonder about is why Neanderthals survived so long and seemed to never really be at risk of replacement *by Denisovans*? Neanderthals have this smaller population size, which should lead to lots of drift and problems over time, and indeed their mtdna got replaced by an early AMH mtdna, while Denisovans are a larger family, who do seem to have these cold-adapted branches moving into either Northeast Asia or the Tibetan Plateau. And I think it’s notable that the cold and hypoxia adaptations in humans in Asia seem to come more from Denisovan groups than Neanderthal.
But Neanderthals remain the dominant group in West Eurasia despite these disadvantages, and there’s never a Denisovan expansion too far to the west, while we likewise don’t have Neanderthal farther east than Denisova cave (I think?).
Why this Eurasian impasse between a population with a larger size and more potential for adaptation, and the smaller Neanderthal group?
Perhaps this links in some way to the claim in the recent paper on PM – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221005923 – that claims that disease-risk scores seemed to be insensitive to quite drastic changes in modern human population size through the Upper Paleolithic in Europe?
In one of his recent texts Razib described some people:
“…Most are as rich as Croesus…”
Recently, we also had few award questions (so far unanswered) with a virtual promise by the (true blue) sandgroper that he would bring a case of Croesus (merlot) from his homeland cellars for the correct answers.
So, who was Croesus? One smart reader with a high dose of self-confidence said: if Croesus is a Serb so, Montezuma and Atahualpa are, too.
Croesus – the king of Lydia. Even wiki does not state that he was a Greek:
‘…Croesus continued his sires’ wars against the Asian Greeks, bringing all the Aeolian and Ionian Settlements on the coasts of Asia-Minor under Lydian rule, from whom he exacted tribute;[9] However, he was willing to be friendly to European and Aegean Greeks, concluding various treaties with them, with Sparta, in particular,…’.
Spartans were also Serbs while Athens 50 years after Croesus burnt the capital city of Sard. The meaning of Sard is – Serb, and this is also a root for the name of Sardinia. Croesus was known as the first ruler who minted gold and silver coins.
In the town of Sirbin (Sard), as Strabon calls it (later changed by Greeks to Xanthos), in the province of Lydia, Asia Minor, a Serbian law code from the 8th c.BC found on a large stone. The Code is engraved in Serbian, so it can be read without much effort.
Svetislav Bilbija published his findings in the Catena Mundi Proceedings under the title “Obelisk of Xanthos – The Stone Book of the Laws and Customs of the Ancient Serbs” [8], where statements were presented in the form of provisions of the Code, grouped according to topics covered by the side of the monument and the row number for each provision.
Btw. Bilbija also deciphered Etruscan texts and published the book about this 35 years ago but the mainstream still hides this fact and every day someone comes with ‘new’ information about this ‘mysterious’ language. He proved that Lycian and Etruscan languages are the same. Wiki says that Lydian, Lycian, Carian and Milyan languages are extinct Indo-European Anatolian languages sometimes called Luwian. Wiki falsifies that Xhantos obelisk originates in 400BC, i.e. four centuries later than it really was erected. Why?
Because at the time of Xhantos obelisk Greeks still did not enter the history from the darkness nor had this name. They received alphabet not earlier than the 6 cBC. It means that the (future) Greek alphabet could not influence the Luwian alphabets. Also, some still assert that Greek alphabet influenced Etruscan alphabet although the later one is much older. In addition, Plato (what does it mean this nickname and what is his real name?) in his book Cratylus discusses some Phrygian words where it can be seen that they are actually Serbian words.
Well, the complete text of this monument of Serbian literacy and ancient law of Asian Lydia, which contains 232 provisions, was formulated and supplemented by the comments of Prof. Radomir Djordjevic. [13] The provisions are grouped into 16 groups according to their content, each of which bears the mark of a side of the world and order on the obelisk. These groups (Chapters of the Code), roughly translated are:
(1) On Governance – the task of the state; (2) Humanitarian duties of the State; (3) Freedom of Occupation and Work; (4) Customs and Laws; (5) Leader selection and traits; (6) Duties of combatants; (7) About the enemy and his act; (8) Wise sayings and counsel; (9) Ancestral councils to farmers; (10) Tips for gold ore diggers; (11) Medical advice; (12) Offences, proceedings and penalties; (13) Educating children; (14) On food and its preparation; (15) About food and how to feed; (16) The engraved should be read, memorised, executed.
Photos: Obelisk from Xanthos – A Stone Book of the Laws and Customs of the Ancient Serbs (200 years before Croesus)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/andreamichael/812268434/sizes/l/in/photostream/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/profilacktisch/1744875911/sizes/l/in/photostream/
So, Montezuma or Atahualpa, that is the question. Hopefully, some GExpressionist will soon answer one award question to give us an opportunity to celebrate with a glass of Croesus.
@Matt
Is it possible that their intelligence was a barrier? I remember seeing discussion about the endocranial casts for neanderthals, where specialists identified that it all their “extra” brain matter was in the occipital lobe, potentially making them handy, or crack shots with a spear, but not necessarily so bright. Perhaps denisovans had a similar imbalance in ability. Maybe having the appropriate biology can only take you so far. This may be naive, but it was always my impression that the reason we expanded North so quickly had more to do with our dynamism, flexibility, ingenuity (e.g. clothes) than our physiological adaptations. In spite of their own acclimation in biology, iirc the neanderthals didn’t range that far North. It took them hundreds of thousands of years to squeeze a bit further than homo erectus, while it only took us 10-20. And competition must count for something, too, otherwise Qafzeh and Skhul-likes would’ve been all over the place in Eurasia in huge numbers long before we made it out of Africa.
We still haven’t finished our sc. Indo-European discussion. The key thing is related to the language which influenced almost all European and many Asian languages. The current mainstream says that Yamnaya nomads brought this language (with non-existent ‘proto-phase’) to Europe from Russian steppes and somehow (not explained how) spread this language in every corner of Europe. The other theory is that this language originated in the cradle of European civilisation, Vinca, remained in a continuity there up to today and spread in Asia in a form of its localized Sanskrit version.
There are enormous number of proofs which can confirm the later version, not so many, if any, which can confirm the first theory. Before, we asked few random linguistic questions which could contribute to the above discussion. Let’s have a look randomly at two: (1) English word LAND and (2) the real name of Plato (and his nickname). Well…
(1) This actually explains the ‘mysterious’ link between Sanskrit and 3000+ years younger English language.
In Serbian language, the modern word LED is Ice (eng). A derivative of LED is LEDINA (=big ice) which now means ‘meadow’ or ‘wasteland’ or empty land which was not for years used for agriculture. The origin of the word ICE comes from people who remember Ice Age at least 9500 years ago when the southern border of the Ice region was around Czechoslovakia. LED originally meant – glacial border. This word, with nasal pronunciation, is LE(N)D, i.e. LAND. Some nations who much later also took the Serbian word ‘Ledina’ with nasal pronunciation (e.g. Albanians) have in their language ‘Lendina’.
In brief, Proto-Germanic originated from Serbian language. This also explains similarities between English and Sanskrit. English word LAND (phonetic – ‘lend’) comes from Serbian word LED.
(2) Plato’s real name actually means – a son of ARISTO – ARISTOCLE. His name was coined from the name of his father ARISTO and a Serbian word CLE (knee – with a meaning: descendant i.e. son). It is similar with names – Pericle(s) and Sophocle(s). There are also HeraCLE(s) and much later, a Serbian Roman Emperor – DioCLEtian (descendant of divine giant – DIV). Also, in Rashan i.e. Rascian i.e. Etrurian language, the words KLE, KLEVA, KLEN mean KNEE, CRADLE, OFFSPRING, the event of birth. Btw, Aristocle’s nickname – Plato – is also coming from Serbian language with the meaning – ‘square-shouldered’ or ‘wide-shouldered’.
Burning questions: 1. Is Nic Naitanui a Serb? 2. Is his Denisovan ancestry the reason he is the best ruckman in the Australian Football League?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-01/is-west-coasts-biggest-strength-masking-bigger-weaknesses/100255464
Regarding Nean+Denisovan replacement by OoA-Eurasians and it’s cause, I really do wonder if it could just all be down to a greater increase in fertility in OoA people linked to mutations in either y-DNA CT or mtDNA L3, or both? All Eurasians and most Africans descend from the population which gave rise to these specific haplogroups. Why did they replace all other humans in Eurasia, but not quite in Africa?
“Mutations originated in mothers are less frequent than mutations originated in fathers and have a distinct genomic distribution.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-021-00376-2
Not too long ago there was a paper which linked azoospermia to certain mutations on the y-chromosome in R1a carriers, and I think similar studies have been done on certain y-DNA D subclade carriers in Japan. Presumably if there are mutations which negatively effect fertility specific to the Y there should be postive mutations as well. I would be highly interested in seeing any analysis on the highest order Y-DNA (at the CT level and also broken down specifically to the C/F/D/E levels, along with A and B for comparative purposes) to see if any signs of positive selection linked specifically to fertility of the OoA-population can be found.
There is a very intensive literature related to the term ‘ghost’, but I could not see where the origin of this word was, except one attempt to explain with Proto-Germanic or so. This concept was explained by ethnologists/anthropologists long time ago and confirmed later with archaeological and genetic findings. It originated about 10 K years ago in Lepenski Vir where indigenous people in their reverence often buried their ancestors under the fireplace or under the doorstep to preserve the presence of their spirits. They believed that the souls od their ancestors will appear in any newcomer and that is the root of their hospitability which endured for thousands of years up to modern times.
There are lready proved the genetic, linguistic and anthropological continuities since the Ice Age up to today. Even now, during family celebrations one chair is reserved for coincidental passer-by or some uninvited visitor. Well, the Serbian name for the guest is GOST. This word is much later accepted in English as ‘ghost’, with a meaning – the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear to the living, but rarely anyone knows its origin.
There are probably thousands of examples like this, I know hundreds. It is another contribution to illustrate the origins of the so-called ‘Indo-European’ language. I may present another couple words, depending on the extent how much is this irritating to the readers. For example, Serbian words PYRE (in phonetic – PIR) which is also a part of the word ‘vampire’ and many other (this word is also discussed by Socrates in the Plato’s book – Cratylus).
It is a shame that no one came to explain or ask questions about the word MED (honey) which is present in 50-60 worldwide languages and which is a root for medicine, medication, etc. Unfortunately, even Croesus (merlot) could not help in this case. However, I hope that many are aware that their horizons are expanding, the envelope is pushed and, like in minesweeper, clicking the right field creates an avalanche of other discoveries in conjunction with genetics, mythology, archaeology, anthropology. I congratulate them and wish them to enjoy their journey.
@Mick and @Otanes, thanks for your thoughts, the ideas about the cognitive ability and fertility of Denisovans and Neanderthals are interesting (though I would’ve expected if it were *just* the Y-chromosome then you’d probably just have seen introgression and replacement of the N+D Y, like seen with Neanderthal mtdna, unless it was strongly coadapted to the rest of the genome).
I guess I’m not sure if I was clear about what I was wondering though – explaining another way John Hawks had a theory that I remembered (not sure if he still holds it) that the difference between Neanderthal and AMH was that AMH could live in larger populations in Africa, so accumulated more beneficial mutations and fewer deleterious mutations due to drift, and eventually that allowed them to replace Neanderthal and this explains OoA by AMH.
So guess I’m wondering here about how Denisovans fit into this – if they also had a large population size and these advantages, then why didn’t they ever move into the Neanderthal range, and why were they also displaced by AMH? It could be luck, or that the Denisovan populations were somehow more subdivided, so although large as a whole, they didn’t experience the same trends as AMH…?
…
Other things
1) Computed some Fst data with a focus on East Asian populations to try and see if applying Principal Coordinates Analysis found anything new. Tried to use a high proportion of East Asian populations and low numbers of West Eurasians to see if that helped to find dimensions that identified anything. If anyone wants to look at some of those things, then links to PDF of some graphics on this are here – https://pastebin.com/tft1LS9Q
(Does seem that East Asia, particularly excluding Jomon and other admixing populations, likes to split primarily into a dimension that splits Coastal SE China at one end, from Nganasan at the other, and then another dimension that has Sherpa/Tibetan at one end and Nganasan+Coastal SE China at the other. Nothing new in saying that though).
I included a set of better SNP covered Shahr-I-Sukhta 2 Indus Periphery labelled “published” samples in some of these, and I was surprised at how far south they seemed to cluster. Seemed to look more AASI heavy than I would have thought. But this might be an artefact of the method in some way and I didn’t check the samples very much.
2) Paper by Ceballos on RoH in ancient dna got published: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00822-8 .
Beat Ringbauer’s preprint to getting published – https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.31.126912v2, though surely that one can’t be long behind unless they’ve kept it back to incorporate into it the findings of relationships between ancient dna that Reich and Patterson and Anthony have been talking about.
Will see if anything changed, but anyway it’s nice to have something in print to reference this, rather than having to point ppl to preprints.
RE: (One of) Bato from the previous comment:
Wiki: Bato the Daesitiate (also known as Bato of the Daesitiates[1]) was a chieftain of the Daesitiates, an Illyrian tribe which fought against the Roman Empire between 6 and 9 AD in a conflict known as Bellum Batonianum (“Bato’s War”).[2]. Bato’s statue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bato_the_Daesitiate#/media/File:Bato-12525.jpg
Wiki lies: “After fierce battles in September 9 AD, only a few days before the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, Bato and the Daesitiates surrendered to Tiberius.”
I am not sure if Patrick Wyman writes about this but, actually, after Romans fighting Serbian tribes in Dalmatia for two hundreds of years, Tiberius and Bato made an agreement. Dalmatians, first outside of the city of Rome, would get the Roman citizenship but they should send conscripts to the Roman Army. In this Army they will become an elite and the iron fist of Roman Empire which was established after this agreement and will give dozens of Serbian Emperors. Tiberius got the title of Emperor. He and Bato were jointly driven in a cart during the triumph to celebrate the end of the war. Btw, the word ‘triumph’ is also a Serbian word, while the first triumph in the history was dedicated to the first Aryan leader after his return from India. Much later, Alexander replicated the triumph of his predecessor in Persepolis.
RE: (this comment should go before the previous one) Lost in translation – Greetings and Salutations! Another day and another contribution to the sc. Indo-European discussion which complements the ongoing genetic discussions with a humorous ending.
We will present one exclusive and amazing discovery brough to you by gnxp. In the Old Greek Dictionary from Konstantin Economou (1828) there is Our Father in Old Greek language. We can see that Old Greeks used a word ATAS from Serbian language for ‘father’. This word ATAS was not preserved in modern Greek. The ‘father’ is denoted by the form ‘patera’ or later as ‘father’ in English.
This is an example of how young languages like Greek and Latin got lost in translation.
KE shows us the genesis of the word ‘patera’ which later got softened as ‘father’ in English. It originates from the word BATA.
All Illyrian and Dalmatian leaders were called BATA. Somewhat later, the word BAYA develops from there. Both of these words come from the word BROTHER.
BATA (patas) lat. Pater, Padre, pere, Vater, father, fader, pader, peer, peter, piter… (in various languages)
Why were the leaders of the old Serbs, who were called Illyrians, called BATA?
Because he was the leader of the army, the one who defends us and takes care of us. And that is the meaning of the word brother. BATA means – one who leads the army, rules and governs.
Let’s go back to the Greek-Latin form ‘pater’. They got lost in translation and they call their father – a brother!!! How and why did this happen?
Because there was a sea of natives, who had no state but lived a free tribal life. A small number of newcomers appear, their number was small, they accepted the language, words and names of the natives, adapting them to their vocal apparatus.
Thus, they find the word BATA as a designation for the man who governs the tribe.
The form of ‘pata’ found in Sanskrit has separated from the Serbian name BATA by sound nuance before moving to India. In Sanskrit, the word ‘pata’ means ‘rule’, ‘management’. Since BATA – ‘patas’ is the one who governs, the Latins call this word father. The reason is because in old times, the father should be the manager who ruled the family.
The Greeks mechanically took words from the natives, while the Serbs developed many new words from this word.
BRAT brani brine (defends, care)
BATA – BATINE – BATTLE (eng)
BAYA beats BOY i.e. BAYA is the one who is the major in a BOY.
Serbian language is the guardian of the proto-language of Europe. In English there is a word BOY which is a derivative of the word BAYA. The main figure in the fight had to be a young man, a guy, who is in the English – BOY (=battle, in Serbian).
There is a wide array of words derived from BATA and BAYA in the Serbian language.
BATA is now used in modern Serbian as the name for ‘little brother’ as a pair for SEKA (‘little sister’) and sometimes as a personal name. BAYA is also a modern name for a ‘top, #1 street smart’ guy.
In conclusion, the meaning of the English word FATHER (and pater, padre, etc) is actually – BROTHER!!!! And, the BOY is actually BATTLE.
It is so funny when I imagine one little girl asking her father:
“Daddy, daddy, are you my little brother????”
I think I’m losing the will to live.
RE: Happy July the 4th
https://www.unz.com/proberts/enjoy-july-4-this-sunday-it-might-be-the-last-one/
@Matt
I think you’re probably right about the subdivision, which ties into my original contention: I have a feeling that when you’re dealing with creatures as intelligent as hominins, overcoming an entrenched population probably requires a much greater critical mass of beneficial mutations, including those for intelligence. Inbred and sickly or not, it is undeniable that other closely related hominins had an agency that significantly surpasses that of your average animal. Going toe-to-toe with another clever hairless ape might take a bit more than being slightly better-adapted to the cold. This is why, at the end of my comment, I mentioned Skhul and Qafzeh. It seems like there were some pretty early AMH stranded in Southwest Asia that never managed to proliferate in the way the later OoA migrants did.
My belief is that they weren’t quite clever enough to challenge the dominance of the incumbent hominins, and that a mix of population decline and much greater intelligence is what gave us the edge against them around 50k years ago. For all our genetic health and possibly still greater intelligence at the time, what we were wasn’t enough 100k years ago. Tech could’ve made a big difference too, however that ties into intelligence a bit. As I understand it, the Mousterian toolkit was relatively unchanged in Eurasia from inception to the end of Neanderthals, excepting where it was implicitly altered by Sapiens influence.
“The rise and importance of Secret Congress.”
I was sure this was going to be about the evolutionary importance of hooking up without friends and family knowing about it.
Turns out it was about the House and Senate. Still interesting, but I was hoping for something more salacious.
Still waiting for a review of Facing Reality in the New York Times.
The Washington Post did review it, but they gave it to some random black social justice drone who could barely bring himself to acknowledge the book’s argument before coming up with a vague hand waving argument involving blacks in the military that allowed him to dismiss it and blame everything on systemic racism.
Aside from that, the only review I could find in a general media outlet whose name I even recognize was in the Washington Examiner. Not encouraging. It looks to me as though the book is being widely and deliberately ignored.
@Otanes, ah, I see what you’re saying more now.
…
Btw, re mentioning my last comment, and speaking of Ceballos adna RoH paper and Ringbauer’s RoH paper, SMBE abstracts are out (https://www.smbe.org/smbe/Portals/0/SMBEv2021%20Abstracts.pdf ) and one symposium is
“Detecting ROH and IBD in low coverage ancient DNA – New insights into human demography from haplotype sharing Harald Ringbauer, David Reich, John Novembre, Matthias Steinrücken –
Abstract
Here we present newly developed methods to infer long shared haplotypes in human ancient DNA data. To identify shared haplotypes in ancient individuals with low coverage, we leverage haplotype structure from a contemporary reference panel using a modified haplotype copying model. Simulations and downsampling data of high quality show that our methods can reliably infer ROH and IBD in the low coverage regime (0.5-1x average depth) and tolerate high error rates (up to 5%) typical of human ancient DNA data.
We screened thousands of ancient humans with these new methods for both ROH and IBD. First, by calling ROH, we inferred surprisingly low rates (lower than 5%) of first cousin or closer unions across most ancient populations Moreover, our ROH results evidence a very substantial impact of the adoption of agricultural lifestyles on background relatedness. Second, the genomic signposts of recent relatedness (IBD) allowed us to robustly identify relatives up to 6th degree and to estimate the fraction of more distant genetic cousins beyond that. Our results establish fine-scale links between ancient cultures and generate new insights into past mobility and population sizes. “.
So it does look like all the methods used by Ringbauer and collaborators to both infer RoH and relatedness will come in one paper. This symposium will include the Yamnaya-CWC stuff I expect (and hopefully more, maybe like whether megalithism in Western Europe was ever associated with a population dispersal, etc).
It looks like they might have used a very large set of unpublished samples that are out there with Reich Lab, though if they stuck to published ones they might still get to “thousands”.
Note that if most ancient populations had lower than 5% first cousin marriage, then the average for ancient populations will be a fair bit lower than that 5%, and possibly more like 2-3%. (Again, I have to note once again that Joe Henrich’s trend line estimated that, with zero centuries under the Western Church, it would be around 15%! So possibly something like a factor of five difference from actual ancient dna vs this regression!). That is in agreement with Ceballos, using different methods finding that among 411 ancient individuals, evidence for frequent first-cousin marriage/reproduction was low.
What would be really interesting as well will be chucking this method at the huge transects of adna becoming available for the pre-Roman to early Modern Period (the big British transect that Patterson and Reich will have, etc.) And then we could see if there was a Western Church effect directly, that breaks the trend in any obvious way (albeit intepreting the “Western Church banned cousin marriage” stuff literally, it seems to state that dropping from 1% to 0.1% has or is associated with huge psychological effects, and that is difficult to test without vast sample sets).
Other interesting stuff relevant to human history at SMBE includes:
“Bioarchaeological evidence of one of the earliest Islamic burials in the Levant”
“Genomic diversity and post-admixture adaptation in the Uyghurs” (if we are OK with Chinese state university papers on Uyghurs that is)
“Revisiting the out of Africa event with a novel deep learning approach – We estimated that there are two successive splits between Afric aand out of African populations happening around 60-90 thousand years ago and separated by 13-15 thousand years. One of the populations resulting from the more recent split has to a large extent replaced the older West African population while the other one has founded the out of Africa populations.”
“Imputation of ancient genomes”
“Signatures of selection on individual loci and pathways spanning 10,000 years in central Europe”
“Social processes shaping variation in admixed Cabo Verdeans”
“Reconstructing ancient traits and recovering variants under positiveselection at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition using 1,490 ancient imputed genomes”
“Genetic connections and shared evolution of dark-skinned indigenous peoples in Asia” (Odd abstract in some ways, but SEA groups are understudied in trait related genetic variants).
“Population admixture in the Neolithization of East Asia inferred from ancient genomes – … Sampled and sequenced 20 individuals dating to 6000-4000 BP from Gansu and Shandong provinces in the Upper and Lower Yellow River Basin … Through the population genomic analysis, we observed a genetic structure change in the farming populations of the late Neolithic period compared with the earlier hunter-gatherers. The cultural innovation in the late Neolithic period had been associated with massive population migration and genetic admixture from the Neolithic farmers from the middle reaches of the Yellow River” (Cool if they found something showing a population replacement because I would expect these populations, HG and agriculturalists along the Yellow River, to have been closely related making it hard to identify things like this.)
“Human back migration from Sundaland to South Asia was driven by sea-level rises during the Last Glacial Maximum”
“Genetic origins and sex-biased admixture of the Huis”
” “Genomic diversity and post-admixture adaptation in the Uyghurs” (if we are OK with Chinese state university papers on Uyghurs that is)”
Going by the names of the authors, at least one is a Uyghur, and probably more than one.
“…whether megalithism in Western Europe was ever associated with a population dispersal”
Megalithes were built by I2 people (on British Isles much before Yamnaya came from Russian steppes).
By the way, if anyone wishes to view the SMBE presentations they are uploaded by SMBE (very cool to be so open) – https://www.smbe.org/smbe/MEETINGS/SMBE2021.aspx – “If you were not able to attend, we have loaded all presentations to the SMEBv2021 Vimeo channel: (link) (password: smbev2021).” (I will be having a listen to Symposium 26 now.)
Mission accomplished. Taliban detachments have entered the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and are fighting government troops. In Kabul, it was announced that a special unit of the government army carried out an operation against the Taliban in several parts of the city last night.
Kandahar is the largest city in southern Afghanistan, one of dozens of cities founded by Serbian-Macedonian tsar Alexander the Great. It is inhabited by Pashtuns, a people who have always played a central role in the country’s history. The Taliban is primarily a Pashtun Islamist movement. The Taliban are attacking several major cities. They already control several border crossings with Tajikistan, Iran and Turkmenistan.