Computational linguistic phylogenetics and Indo-Europeans
A new paper, Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages, has made a splash by inferring a far older date of diversification […]
Dan Davis prehistory YouTuber par excellence
I’ve been on the record of being skeptical of a lot of content being generated on YouTube, but I think the author Dan Davis does a really great job. The […]
Indo-Europeans!
For some pieces on my Substack I’ve been re-reading a lot of the stuff on the ancient genetics and archaeology of Eurasia as they relate to Indo-Europeans. This means I […]
Chariots and Aryans
If Dr. Alexander Semenenko’s analysis is right and damn seems so, this might be another foundation ripped from Aryan Migration or Invasion Theory. @themerumedia @brownpundits @omarali50 @TheEmissaryCo @razibkhan @kushal_mehra @thapli64 https://t.co/TCctzkcWNe — Mukunda Raghavan (@raghman36) June 30, 2020 Readers know I do not like to watch YouTubes, but Mukunda is a member in-good-standing of the …
The brotherhoods of the plains
One of my favorite concepts is “evoked culture.” This is basically pointing to the fact that some human cultural forms and practices aren’t contingent and arbitrary, but naturally emerge due to the canalization imposed by our cognitive biases and the physical and social world around us. An example Spencer Wells likes to use to illustrate […]
The enormous demographic impact of the Indo-Europeans
When I was a kid I remember seeing a map of the distribution of Indo-European languages, and being perplexed by their spread and distribution, from the North Sea to the Bay of Bengal. Later, I learned and understood that language families can spread by diffusion and cultural assimilation. In The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: […]
Migration at the roof of West Asia
The figure to the left is from The genetic prehistory of the Greater Caucasus. If you are a regular reader of this weblog, or Eurogenes, you can figure out what’s going on, and keep track of the terminology. But in 2018 I think we’re getting to the end of the line in making sense of […]
Near Prehistory in Northern Europe was an Indo-European world
The Picts were the topic of discussion on this week on In Our Time. They are a mysterious yet intriguing people because we don’t know much about them in their own words, but, they are one of the roots of modern Scottish identity. When I first encountered the Picts decades ago there was some debate as […]
Indian genetics, part n of many
I put up close to definitive piece for me in relation to South Asian historical population genetics. At least until new research is published. I did leave out some stuff about my own vague thoughts…but I think the takeover of Hattian and Hurrian cultures by the Nesha (Hittites) and Haryannu (Mitanni) have something to teach … Continue reading “Indian genetics, part n of many”
Indian genetics, the never-ending argument
I am at this point somewhat fatigued by Indian population genetics. The real results are going to be ancient DNA, and I’m waiting on that. But people keep asking me about an article in Swarajya, Genetics Might Be Settling The Aryan Migration Debate, But Not How Left-Liberals Believe. First, the article attacks me as being … Continue reading “Indian genetics, the never-ending argument”
How a Eurasian “band of brothers” shaped the world
When I was eight years old I saw a map which genuinely confused me. I had opened up deluxe dictionary at my elementary school and saw a map of the world’s language families, and noticed that there were a group of dialects which spanned the Bay of Bengal to the North Sea. In fact, according […]
The West Asian mix
IE-speaking West Europeans are West Asian-admixed relative to Non-IE speaking Basques. Dienekes explicitly confirms what seems obvious using ADMIXTURE. When I get a chance I’m going to see if this difference is evident when comparing some South I…
Rise of the planet of the Indo-Europeans
In response to my post below a friend emailed me the above sentence. As I suggest below it sounds crazy, and I don’t know if I believe it. But here’s an abstract from the Reich lab from June:
Estimating a date of mixture of ancestral South…
Continuing the search for Indo-Europeans
Dienekes P. is often rather laconic in commentary on the papers he links to, but of late he has “come out of his shell.” He has two posts which are important “weekend reading”:
– Population strata in the West Siberian plain (Bar…
Has Dienekes Pontikos found the signature of the Indo-Europeans?
I don’t know the answer to the question posted in title above, and I’m moderately skeptical that he has. But I wanted to give him full credit in the public record if researchers confirm his findings in the next few years. You can read the f…
The mystery of the origin of the Indo-Europeans may be solved within the next 2 years
Dienekes has a post up, The Bronze Age Indo-European invasion of Europe. The crux of his argument is as such:
But there is another component present in modern Europe, the West_Asian which is conspicuous in its absence in all the ancient samples so far….
How to reconstruct the Indo-Europeans
As must be obvious, I think now that the spread of Indo-European languages had some demographic impact. It wasn’t analogous to the spread of English to Jamaica, or the existence of French as an official language in Congo-Brazzaville. Because of this, I now believe it is possible in the near future that scientists will reconstruct […]
First Farmers Facing the Ocean
The image above is adapted from the 2010 paper A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for European Paternal Lineages, and it shows the frequencies of Y chromosomal haplogroup R1b1b2 across Europe. As you can see as you approach the Atlantic the frequency co…