The story of R1a: the academics flounder as they edge closer to the truth
There's been a lot of horseshit published over the years about Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a, which just happens to be my haplogroup. That includes academic papers in journals like PLoS ONE and Nature....
View ArticleMale height in Europe
This open access paper at Science Direct is probably the most detailed work on European stature I've ever seen. The conclusion is that male height in Europe is mostly determined by nutrition and...
View ArticleAncient DNA from Iron Age and Medieval Poland
A new paper at PLoS ONE featuring ancient mitochondrial (mtDNA) data from Wielbark, Przeworsk and early Slavic remains argues for matrilineal continuity in present-day Poland since the Iron Age. It's...
View ArticleR1a1a from an Early Bronze Age warrior grave in Poland
Ancient DNA tests on a skeleton from an Early Bronze Age "warrior" grave near Hrubieszow, southeastern Poland, have revealed that the remains belong to Y-haplogroup R1a1a [source]. Mitochondrial...
View ArticleBadasses of the Bronze Age: Analysis of Andronovo, Battle-Axe, Corded Ware...
From the Eneolithic to the Middle Bronze Age vast areas of Eurasia were inhabited by a series of highly mobile and innovative groups that mostly relied on pastoralism for subsistence and, judging by...
View ArticleAround 65% LN/EBA European ancestry in the Hindu Kush (?)
One of the toughest nuts to crack in population genetics has proved to be the story of the people of the Hindu Kush. However, using Treemix and ancient genomes from the recent Allentoft et al. and Haak...
View ArticlePoles in the new Human Origins dataset
Harvard's Human Origins dataset is being updated with 238 new samples, including 23 from Poland (15 from Poznan in western Poland and 8 from Lublin in eastern Poland). It should be available for...
View ArticleLipka Tatars vs Balto-Slavs
Huge difference in this ADMIXTURE bar graph from the recent Pankratov et al. paper between Lipka Tatars from Belarus and nearby Balts and Slavs. The Lipka Tatars are almost identical to Volga Tatars...
View ArticleHints of deep genetic substructure in Iron Age Poland
A paper at Infection, Genetics and Evolution looks at the susceptibility to infectious diseases in two late Iron Age groups from Central Poland. I can't wait to see genome-wide and Y-chromosome data...
View ArticleGlobular Amphora people starkly different from Yamnaya people
The figure below is from the recent Mathieson et al. 2017 preprint; slightly edited to highlight the results of nine Globular Amphora Culture (GAC) samples from two burial sites in what are now Poland...
View ArticleShared maternal ancestry between Slavs and Germanics probably dates to the...
Over at the Russian Journal of Genetics behind a paywall at this LINK. Emphasis is mine: Abstract: The structure and diversity of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) macrohaplogroup U lineages in Russians from...
View ArticlePolish aDNA PCA
Below is a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) that I put together for an upcoming presentation on Polish ancient DNA (aDNA). The five RISE samples are from Allentoft et al. 2015, including RISE569, the...
View ArticleOn the genomic history of North Eurasia (Triska et al. 2017)
Over at BMC Genetics at this LINK. The accompanying dataset is freely available here, although it includes less than 300K SNPs, so the overlap with the Human Origins and EGDP datasets isn't great....
View ArticleModern-day Poles vs Bronze Age peoples of the East Baltic
Below are three of my staple Principal Component Analyses (PCA) featuring Baltic Bronze Age (Baltic_BA) samples from the recent Mittnik et al. 2018 paper (open access here). On each of the plots I've...
View ArticleBest of 2008: Corded Ware DNA from Germany
One of the biggest hits of the year for this blogger was the discovery of Y-DNA haplogroup R1a among three Corded Ware skeletons from a burial site in Eulau, eastern Germany. It's an important result,...
View ArticleEurogenes' North Euro clusters - phase 1, exploring the data
I have some preliminary results from a new intra-North Euro cluster analysis, using a cutting edge tool called ChromoPainter. More than 400 samples and 270K SNPs were tested, in linkage mode, and then...
View ArticleEurogenes' North Euro clusters - phase 2, final results
This is a continuation of my ChromoPainter analysis of Europeans from north of the Pyrenees, Alps and Balkans (see here). To obtain the most accurate results possible on my laptop, I increased the...
View ArticleFirst direct evidence of genetic continuity in West and Central Poland from...
I've just been sent a fascinating thesis on the mtDNA of Iron Age and Medieval samples from Poland. It suggests direct genetic continuity between Iron Age samples belonging to the Przeworsk and...
View ArticleNo Mongolian admixture in Poland
One of the most enduring myths or cliches concerning European genetic structure is that Poles carry Mongolian admixture. This claim has been repeated so often that it's now regarded by many as fact,...
View ArticleNear Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Levite R1a
Over at Nature Communications, Rootsi et al. report on a newly discovered Ashkenazi-specific subclade of R1a, defined by the M582 mutation. They argue that it's a marker of Near Eastern origin, and...
View ArticleViking invasion at bioRxiv
A new preprint featuring hundreds of Viking Age genomes has appeared at bioRxiv [LINK]. Titled Population genomics of the Viking world, it looks like a solid effort overall, although I'm skeptical...
View ArticleDon't believe everything you read in peer reviewed papers
Case in point, here's a quote from a recent paper at the Journal of Human Genetics (emphasis is mine): The Mordovian and Csango samples have a moderate to slight orientation toward the Central-Asian...
View ArticlePopulation genetics is a state of mind
Years of blogging about population genetics has seriously eroded my faith in the peer review process. During the past decade I've witnessed an inordinate amount of crap published in basically all of...
View ArticleWielbark Goths were overwhelmingly of Scandinavian origin
When used properly, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is an extraordinarily powerful tool and one of the best ways to study fine-scale genetic substructures within Europe. The PCA plot below is based...
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