Genetic investigations of Upper Palaeolithic Europe have revealed a complex and transformative history of human population movements and ancestries, with evidence of several instances of genetic change across the European continent in the period following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Concurrent with these genetic shifts, the post-LGM period is characterized by a series of significant climatic changes, population expansions and cultural diversification. Britain lies at the extreme northwest corner of post-LGM expansion and its earliest Late Glacial human occupation remains unclear. Here we present genetic data from Palaeolithic human individuals in the United Kingdom and the oldest human DNA thus far obtained from Britain or Ireland. We determine that a Late Upper Palaeolithic individual from Gough’s Cave probably traced all its ancestry to Magdalenian-associated individuals closely related to those from sites such as El Mirón Cave, Spain, and Troisième Caverne in Goyet, Belgium. However, an individual from Kendrick’s Cave shows no evidence of having ancestry related to the Gough’s Cave individual. Instead, the Kendrick’s Cave individual traces its ancestry to groups who expanded across Europe during the Late Glacial and are represented at sites such as Villabruna, Italy. Furthermore, the individuals differ not only in their genetic ancestry profiles but also in their mortuary practices and their diets and ecologies, as evidenced through stable isotope analyses. This finding mirrors patterns of dual genetic ancestry and admixture previously detected in Iberia but may suggest a more drastic genetic turnover in northwestern Europe than in the southwest.
Cool paper that shows that the British can still get some things done. Basically, they found that genetically and culturally there were really two different populations in late Pleistocene Europe, and that the earlier post-Magdelenaian populations left some impact on the mostly Villabruna-descended populations like Cheddar Man.
They found DNA in the skeletons of 198 Danes who lived between 850 and 1800. Mutations in immune genes also rapidly spread in Denmark after the Black Death, they found. When the scientists lined up the mutations from the London and Denmark samples, they found four that had spread in both populations. These four mutations spread so quickly in London and Denmark that they must have provided an impressive protection against the plague.
The researchers found that carrying two protective versions of a gene called ERAP2, for example, made people 40 percent likelier to survive the Black Death — the largest evolutionary advantage ever found in humans, Dr. Barreiro said.
Most genetic variants have multiple effects. This is pleiotropy. And with many polygenic traits that means that there are correlations across traits impacted by how the genes underpinning them vary. I believe that many disease risks are probably just the outcome of evolutionary pressures in other directions; adapt fast to disease 1 and you become more susceptible for less serious disease 2. Over time in a stable environment, you expect evolution to “smooth out” the rough edges of the evolutionary process through modifier genes, but that can take a while. I think it’s possible the environment (pathogens) just evolve too fast for us ever to really be “in equilibrium” and get ride of the deleterious side effects, as we stay one step ahead of disease.
Rings of Power cost $60 million dollars per episode while House of the Dragon cost $20 million dollars per episode. These are astronomical figures, but RoP is arguably the most expensive television show in history. They are now approaching the ends of their season 1 runs, and we can make some evaluations and observations.
First, though I am aware of the fan hate on RoP before the first episode dropped, I thought it was a little overdone. I wanted the hold off judgment. And, some Tolkien fans were screened ahead of time and raved about what they saw, and I also listened to mainstream media people give props to what the showrunners did. I have no idea what these people were thinking. As someone who doesn’t follow media and how publicity is generated I now accept the validity of all the conspiracies about pay-for-play. There is no way that a genuine Tolkien fan would enthuse about RoP, and I assume the media coverage was due to identitarian factors. The show spends money on special effects, as there are some pretty intense scenes and unlike HoD it doesn’t make as much recourse to dark lighting to mask the CGI because it’s presumably of higher quality. But the writing is horrible, the world-building is a disaster, and the demographics of the Southlands and Numenor resemble a Midwestern American city in 1990. Mostly white. A large black minority, and a scattering of Asians and Latinx. Also, even though Numenor was populated mostly by the House of Hador, there are very few blondes among the Numenoreans (I am aware that the Lords of Andúnië ruled over a region that a lot of Beorians settled in).
But that brings up the issue of the “lore.” RoP is basically a fork, a Tolkien-themed show, but it does a bad job of creating something new. The character development is lacking, the plotting is weak, and the writing is often mediocre or even cringe-inducing. What did they spend all this money on? This is like the Fire Phone all over again. Bezos demands, and Amazon hops to, but there’s no execution.
HoD is not perfect. Because Fire and Blood outlines the whole plot in broad brush those of us who have read George R R Martin’s attempt to do the Silmarillion know what will happen. But there are many details to be worked out, and Fire and Blood couldn’t make the characters vivid in the way that narrative television can. Episode-by-episode HoD pales in comparison to RoP when it comes to special effects. The massive budget differential is on display in the darkness of HoD scenes and the relatively small number of shooting locations. HoD is to a great extent up until this point mostly people talking. But the plotting is serviceable, moving from torpid early on to acceleration in the last few episodes, the character development is good, and the lines delivered are usually not cringe-worthy. HoD is no masterpiece, but it illustrates that you can do this sort of show well, and with a far smaller budget than RoP and arguably less rich source material.
In fact, HoD is subject to even more crass representational changes, as the Velaryans are now black Valyrians of “pure blood” (as they declare over and over) as opposed to the Targaryens who are white Valyrians of “pure blood.” What pray tell is Valyrian blood then? The show positively seems to demand that we not notice this by alluding to blood constantly without clarifying if the Valyrians were a biracial civilization. No matter. Because on the whole HoD is a good show, people have ignored these incongruences.
RoP will be a case study in the fact that money can’t buy quality.
The history of the British Isles and Ireland is characterized by multiple periods of major cultural change, including the influential transformation after the end of Roman rule, which precipitated shifts in language, settlement patterns and material culture…The extent to which migration from continental Europe mediated these transitions is a matter of long-standing debate…Here we study genome-wide ancient DNA from 460 medieval northwestern Europeans—including 278 individuals from England—alongside archaeological data, to infer contemporary population dynamics. We identify a substantial increase of continental northern European ancestry in early medieval England, which is closely related to the early medieval and present-day inhabitants of Germany and Denmark, implying large-scale substantial migration across the North Sea into Britain during the Early Middle Ages. As a result, the individuals who we analysed from eastern England derived up to 76% of their ancestry from the continental North Sea zone, albeit with substantial regional variation and heterogeneity within sites. We show that women with immigrant ancestry were more often furnished with grave goods than women with local ancestry, whereas men with weapons were as likely not to be of immigrant ancestry. A comparison with present-day Britain indicates that subsequent demographic events reduced the fraction of continental northern European ancestry while introducing further ancestry components into the English gene pool, including substantial southwestern European ancestry most closely related to that seen in Iron Age France
1) More migration than earlier papers. Looks like increasing ancient DNA coverage helped
2) 75% Y chromosomal turnover in eastern England
3) A third component, detected in the PoBI paper, is confirmed, and seems related to continuous later gene flow from northern France. This is ubiquitous across England, and I do wonder now what the Norman Conquest and the unification of large regions of northern France with England did in the early medieval period
Septimius Severus is important because he brought the Roman Empire back from the chaos ushered in by the assassination of Commodus. He was born in 145 AD and so grew into adulthood during the later Antonine period. He remembered the tail end of the time of peace and prosperity that characterized the reigns of the rulers up until Marcus Aurelius, who had to deal with German invasions and plague.
Though Severus and his heirs did not usher in the despotic “Dominate” phase of the Roman Empire, I think it is correct that his military regime ended some of the illusions of the late Principate. During Severus’ reign, the rubber-stamp role of the Senate faded more as he nakedly asserted that his will and word were the law.
But Severus is important for another reason. He was the first “African” Emperor. More precisely, he was born in the Libyan city of Leptis Magna, near modern Tripoli. His father was of Punic background, as Leptis Magna was once a Phoenician colony. His mother was of colonial Italian stock.
There is a gap here between the likely racial make-up of the Roman population and how that has been understood. This gap, I suggest, derives from a systematic erasure of Black Romans from Roman history. This erasure is similar to the “whitening” of histories and cultures, in which the presence and contribution of Black people is ignored.
Greeks and Romans didn’t think in these ways. They were aware of differences. But for Romans, White or Black were not meaningful social categories. As a result, our sources hardly ever mention skin pigmentation, since it wasn’t important to them. It is normally impossible for us to associate particular ancients with those modern racial categories. But this absence of evidence has allowed the assumption that most prominent Romans were, in our terms, White.
However, there is every reason to think that many leading Romans were, in our terms, Black.
Septimius Severus was a Roman general who became emperor in 193 CE. He was born in Leptis Magna in modern Libya. Almost all depictions of Severus are statues or on coins. They show him as having curly short hair and a beard, which is sometimes forked. Such depictions do not represent his skin pigmentation.
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After centuries of interaction, it is almost impossible to imagine that there were visible differences between the citizens of Leptis and the surrounding African inhabitants. We cannot prove Severus’ skin colour, but it is wrong to assume that he was light-skinned.
Roman Africa was an economic and cultural powerhouse in the later Roman Empire. Goods from Africa circulated throughout the Roman world. One of the first Roman dramatists, Terence, came from Carthage in Tunisia and his appearance is described by the historian Suetonius as fuscus, “dark”.
The second-century CE rhetorician, philosopher and novelist Apuleius was from Madouros, modern M’Daourouch, Algeria. Saint Augustine of Hippo studied in the same town. He and Cyprian of Carthage were major figures in Christian theology. Egypt was a major centre of literary and theological innovation in the late imperial period. Why would we imagine any of these individuals as White?
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The classical world is a part of our cultural traditions. Colonialism has whitened classics. Such Whitening marginalises Black people. Making Black Romans visible resists colonial mentalities. It embeds Black people in that cultural tradition.
We have a fair amount of ancient DNA from Rome. Combined with analysis of ancestry tracts in modern populations it is pretty clear that most of the Sub-Saharan African ancestry, that is, black ancestry, on the southern shores of the Mediterranean date to the Islamic period or later. Not imperial Rome.
This plot below shows consistent but usually low levels of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in southern shore Mediterranean populations today:
From the paper that that plot comes from, “We estimate that a migration of western African origin into Morocco began about 40 generations ago (approximately 1,200 ya); a migration of individuals with Nilotic ancestry into Egypt occurred about 25 generations ago (approximately 750 ya).” They look at ancestry segment lengths and fit it to a model of decay over time due to recombination. It’s not rocket science.
The upshot is that only a very small minority of the population of the Roman Empire were of black African appearance. Though as noted by the scholar above, these people were salient and notable and crop up in the literature as objects of curiosity. Septimius Severus may have had dark skin, but that does not mean he was of black African background or identity (I have dark skin, and people routinely accuse me of being a white-adjacent Asian, so it’s not like they can’t reason when given proper incentives).
I do believe it was likely Septimius Severus was culturally Punic but of mixed heritage, as colonial settlements often exhibited a level of intermarriage with the local populations (I suspect his “Italian” mother also had indigenous ancestry due to the generations elapsed). In the case of Leptis Magna, that would be the indigenous Berber Libyans. We know what these people looked like from the Greeks and the Egyptians. Below is some reconstructed wall art:
Four Libyan kings on the left
I would caution against taking the skin colors too literally, but the Egyptians describe and depict the Libyans as light-skinned like their West Asian neighbors, while the Nubians are shown to be darker in complexion. The Nubians are Sub-Saharan African, or black, while the Libyans are not.
What’s the point of this? Most of you know this? Well, a Ph.D. geneticist who isn’t even particularly woke pointed me to the article about Septimius Severus being black as if it wasn’t a farce. The lie has become true, even if you laugh it off.
What’s going on? Since 2020 and the “racial reckoning” white scholars have been engaging in political activism. The classicist above understands the “need” for racial representation, so is making the best case in a lawyerly manner.
Though the Greco-Romans didn’t have our racial classifications and understandings, they were not ignorant and even distinguished between the physical appearance of North and South Indians, correctly observing that South Indians resemble “Aethiopians” in color but differ in having straighter hair. The ancients were also aware that Mediterranean people differed in complexion, with Egyptians being darker in complexion than Thracians, and individuals had color terms in their names such as Albinus and Niger.
The Roman-era Egyptian portraits probably correctly depict the range in complexion in northern Africa, from relatively fair to medium-brown, with most people being brunette white or light brown. Without a deeper investigation, it is reasonable that Septimius Severus had darker skin than the average Italian, but it is also reasonable that his subjects did not perceive him to be black, or more accurately for the time “Ethiopian.” Instead, he was a provincial from Libya. Part of the problem with classicists trying to concoct a black identity and appearance for Septimius of Severus, Augustine of Hippo and Terence is that they are engaging in what is now fashionably called “erasure.” The history, achievements, and identity of the Afro-Asiatic people of North Africa, from the Maghreb to Egypt, are co-opted to make the case for black representation in antiquity because during this period the Sahara was far less penetrable than it became under Islamic states deploying camel caravans. It is one thing when Afrocentrist ideologues engage in this, but when intellectuals and scholars do so, it is very alarming.
The job of scholars in the modern West is, to tell the truth and represent facts as they are. They may miss the mark often, but they should aim as best as they can. The problem with classicists over the last few years is they temporize, equivocate, and intentionally mislead their audiences when they very well know that the North African people that suggest “may have been black” were likely no more black than the typical West Asian. This is not to say they were “white” (though many people from the MENA do identify as such today and did in the past), but scholars should have the courage to admit that the past was not black and white, and it does not always easily fit in our narratives, whether we are 19th-century Victorian white supremacists or 21st-century anti-racists.
I write this in 2022 with the clear understanding that the lie will likely become the truth. But some of you will remember the truth, and the more I write and talk about this, the more the truth shall not die. The will come when the darkness will end, and we or our descendants should be prepared to remember the world as it was rather than only have the understanding of priests who preach how it should have been.
– they spent much of the massive budget on decent special effects. The scenery and setting were often great
– the Hobbits are weird, but the main Hobbit character I kind of like, probably because everyone else was often so ponderous and self-important. The Hobbit was the only human central character
– wasn’t soaked in contemporary wokeness. The race stuff was just tokenism
Bad
– lots of little comments that deviate from well-known stuff in Tolkien. For example, an elf says that the two known elf-human couples died. Beren and Luthien experienced a lot of tragedy, but Tuor and Idril ended up in Valinor. They don’t have access to the Silmarillion so they just change things? I could go on and on about how they changed the “history” of Middle Earth
– they transformed Galadriel in a lot of ways. Her husband and daughter don’t exist in this timeline and they turned her into an elven Joan of Arc
– lots of wooden lines for the elves. Rings of Power is convincing me that elves should be seen but not heard. Especially Galadriel, who is probably the biggest character in the show
– the “star man” is super annoying and out of place tonally compared to the rest of the show (is it Gandalf?)
– the people seem racially diverse like a mid-sized Midwestern American city. Mostly white people, but a fair number of black people, and someone you might think is perhaps South or part East Asian here and there. It doesn’t make much sense and doesn’t even play a role in the story at all, which is probably better than the alternative, but it’s still weird
– Many people sound like they grew up in Manchester or something
Overall, my contention that this is what Taco Bell is to Mexican Food was too harsh. More like Chipotle. Fast casual.
Ancient DNA has revolutionized our understanding of human population history. However, its potential to examine how rapid cultural evolution to new lifestyles may have driven biological adaptation has not been met, largely due to limited sample sizes. We assembled genome-wide data from 1,291 individuals from Europe over 10,000 years, providing a dataset that is large enough to resolve the timing of selection into the Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Historical periods. We identified 25 genetic loci with rapid changes in frequency during these periods, a majority of which were previously undetected. Signals specific to the Neolithic transition are associated with body weight, diet, and lipid metabolism-related phenotypes. They also include immune phenotypes, most notably a locus that confers immunity to Salmonella infection at a time when ancient Salmonella genomes have been shown to adapt to human hosts, thus providing a possible example of human-pathogen co-evolution. In the Bronze Age, selection signals are enriched near genes involved in pigmentation and immune-related traits, including at a key human protein interactor of SARS-CoV-2. Only in the Historical period do the selection candidates we detect largely mirror previously-reported signals, highlighting how the statistical power of previous studies was limited to the last few millennia. The Historical period also has multiple signals associated with vitamin D binding, providing evidence that lactase persistence may have been part of an oligogenic adaptation for efficient calcium uptake and challenging the theory that its adaptive value lies only in facilitating caloric supplementation during times of scarcity. Finally, we detect selection on complex traits in all three periods, including selection favoring variants that reduce body weight in the Neolithic. In the Historical period, we detect selection favoring variants that increase risk for cardiovascular disease plausibly reflecting selection for a more active inflammatory response that would have been adaptive in the face of increased infectious disease exposure. Our results provide an evolutionary rationale for the high prevalence of these deadly diseases in modern societies today and highlight the unique power of ancient DNA in elucidating biological change that accompanied the profound cultural transformations of recent human history.
Sometimes statistics confirm what you can already intuitively discern. I’m an avid reader of the ancient DNA and pigmentation literature. It was immediately obvious to me that the Bronze Age Northern European samples were darker than modern populations in that region. There are massive sample sizes for modern Europeans, and it jumped out at me that the derived SNP at SLC45A2 was at a lower frequency two to four thousand years ago than it is today. This paper confirms that selection not only occurred during the Bronze Age, but has been happening in the historical period…
Note: The backstory on why I had my suspicions about this goes back to 2009. When the first Reich lab India paper came out I was pretty skeptical that the “Ancestral North Indians” were so similar to Northern Europeans. My rationale was straightforward: we should see way more blonde and blue-eyed people in Northern India and Pakistan. Nick Patterson pointed out the relevance of natural selection. Perhaps the Northern Indians got darker? There is a bit of evidence of this for some loci, but the Narasimhan et al. paper had a bunch of Sintashta, who are probably the best ancestral population proxy for the early Indo-Aryans, and they were clearly just not as lightly pigmented as related people on the Baltic today. The Sintashta were very similar to their relatives in Poland genetically, but they diverged from their Northern European relatives 4,500 years ago as the Fatyanovo population migrated eastward, and were probably in India when selection was changing the allele frequencies around SLC45A2.
