As a brief fill-in, I will look at what the recent data adds to our understanding of the 4000 – 3000 BC period in northwestern Eurasia, which corresponds to the critical ‘’transition’’ period between the collapse of ‘’Old Europe’’ and arrival of steppe migrants. In reality, events are of course more complex, if one understands… Continue Reading
Introduction of pottery signifies massive cultural change. Beyond the introduction of a new technology, pottery provides additional possibilities for food storage and preparation (e.g. fish / vegetable soups, extracting animal lipids, brewing, pickling). Appearance of larger, heavy vessels implies conversion to a more sedentary lifestyle. Such major cultural shift may have autochtonous origins, but more likely is external… Continue Reading
My latest post erraneously received a comment that was meant for a much earlier post: Horses and wheeled vehicles. In principle it should be possible to move it to the correct destination, but I somehow failed to achieve that. The comment made, and a comment received on it, are readworthy, but of course far OT… Continue Reading
Well, obviously not via Maykop, because it was already present in the pre-Maykop Khvalynsk culture. And also not from Iran_Hotu or Zagros_N -both were shown to be a rather poor fit in Lazarides e.a. 2016. This, in turn, probably has to do with Zagros_N containing some Onge admix that Colchian CHG is lacking (c.f. Lazarides… Continue Reading
There was a new paper published earlier this month that is really interesting for understanding the human dispersals in the Americas. Of course, with the help of some newly sequenced aDNA. From the abstract emphasis mine): “We sequenced 15 ancient human genomes spanning Alaska to Patagonia; six are ≥10,000 years old (up to ~18× coverage)…. Continue Reading
The definition of what, or when, constitutes the Bronze Age differs from region to region, and scholar to scholar. For example, the period after the collapse of the Varna civilization (4000 BC ->) is often seen as a proto-Bronze Age or ‘’Transitional’’ period, with the Bronze Age beginning c. 3000 BC (coincident with the Yamnaya… Continue Reading
There’s a new amazing preprint at bioRxiv about the population history of Siberia, which also deals with the origin of Native Americans. The new study brings a good amount of new samples spanning from the UP (~32 kya) to ca. 1250 AD that clarify the genetic history of the region. While it does not show… Continue Reading
A rethorical question, obviously, with an equally obvious, trivial answer: Well, it depends… Depends on what, however, is less trivial, and deserves a closer look at the evidence available. Let me start with distinguishing Colonisation from male-driven genetic replacement. The former entails a joint migration of males and females into new territories, e.g. the European settlement of… Continue Reading
The ancient DNA (aDNA) era has been a revolution (still in progress) in our understanding of prehistory, and one of the implications of it has been the search for the origin of languages (mostly the origin of IE languages, which has been a central subject in many aDNA publications). However, I have the feeling that… Continue Reading
A great day for West Eurasian deep prehistory thanks to ancient DNA! First with “Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first farmers of central Anatolia” (Feldman et al. 2018, preprint) and now with this unexpected and very surprising “Paleolithic DNA from the Caucasus reveals core of West Eurasian ancestry” (Lazaridis et… Continue Reading