The supplementary material has some very interesting maps of the distribution of all major Y-chromosome haplogroups, and lists the geographical centroids with the standard deviations of all haplogroups. For example, the centroid of haplogroup J is in the Mediterranean sea between Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey, while that of its sister haplogroup I is in Central Europe. However, the standard deviation (in degrees) of the two haplogroups is 27.45 and 13.58 respectively, which shows the limited geographical extent of the latter haplogroup (see map on left).As I have mentioned before, the origin (in space and time) of different haplogroups is related to their current geographical extent and demographic sizes, as well as their Y-STR diversity. This paper offers important data in assessing the first of these three factors.
Also of great interest is the updated Y-chromosome phylogeny, with two new branches (star: M522 that join IJ and KT, and diamond: M525 that unifies KMNOPS):
I am not so sure that drift has played a major role in human Y-chromosome diversity. As I argue in a previous post, I believe that the combination of recent TMRCAs and large haplogroup demographic sizes is best explained by selection (reproductive inequality) rather than drift.
PNAS doi:10.1073/pnas.0910803106
Y chromosome diversity, human expansion, drift, and cultural evolution
Jacques Chiaroni et al.
Abstract
The relative importance of the roles of adaptation and chance in determining genetic diversity and evolution has received attention in the last 50 years, but our understanding is still incomplete. All statements about the relative effects of evolutionary factors, especially drift, need confirmation by strong demographic observations, some of which are easier to obtain in a species like ours. Earlier quantitative studies on a variety of data have shown that the amount of genetic differentiation in living human populations indicates that the role of positive (or directional) selection is modest. We observe geographic peculiarities with some Y chromosome mutants, most probably due to a drift-related phenomenon called the surfing effect. We also compare the overall genetic diversity in Y chromosome DNA data with that of other chromosomes and their expectations under drift and natural selection, as well as the rate of fall of diversity within populations known as the serial founder effect during the recent “Out of Africa” expansion of modern humans to the whole world. All these observations are difficult to explain without accepting a major relative role for drift in the course of human expansions. The increasing role of human creativity and the fast diffusion of inventions seem to have favored cultural solutions for many of the problems encountered in the expansion. We suggest that cultural evolution has been subrogating biologic evolution in providing natural selection advantages and reducing our dependence on genetic mutations, especially in the last phase of transition from food collection to food production.
Link
190 comments:
"For example, the centroid of haplogroup J is in the Mediterranean sea between Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey"
Looks much more like the Arabian Gulf to me.
Great maps.
I is practically a map of Europe.
R seems to show a two pronged migration north and south of the mediterranean with flow east as well on the steppe superhighway.
N is firmly in the extreme North. Wonder what that means.
And What is with H?
Annina Topo says: “R seems to show a two pronged migration north and south of the mediterranean with flow east as well on the steppe superhighway”.
Where is its origin? The unique land which is be-leb yam is Italy.
"For example, the centroid of haplogroup J is in the Mediterranean sea between Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey"
Looks much more like the Arabian Gulf to me.
No, the centroids are all given in the supplementary material.
Very good work. Practically it confirms pretty everything I have said in these last years: Hg. G from Greece and not from Caucasus, then its very ancient presence in Italy (see Sardinia); hg. I-M26 centered in Sardinia; hg. J from Aegean Sea / West Turkey, then its very ancient presence in Italy (J1 and a subclade of J2 centered in North Italy)and above all R1b1b2 centered in the Cantabrian refugium and not in the Caucasus and above all not in Middle East as the strange Vizachero's hypothesis. My bet is that from an R1b1* from the Cantabrian refugium migrated to Italy during the Younger Dryas were born all the subclades. I am still waiting for the R-L23+/L150- from elsewhere than Italy.
Haven't we had SNPs linking IJK, and KMNOPS, for some time?
Also of great interest is the updated Y-chromosome phylogeny, with two new branches (star: M522 that join IJ and KT, and diamond: M525 that unifies KMNOPS).
I'm confused about this. Does this mean that M, S and some K-other (which ones?) have been found to be part of what was haplogroup NOP? Or does it mean that this new haplogroup is upstream of NOP?
Wonder for how long will H and G hang on their own.
I'd comment further but I fear I'm getting the flu (just the eve of my sister's wedding - damn!).
Of course M525 is upstream and NO and P (from which above all Q and R) are downstream.
I have had flu and probably it is better to take it now and to be immunized when the virus will have its "M525" mutation.
Annie Mouse made the observation that N is firmly in the extreme North.
The conclusion is based on the fact that the map shows shares of population.
In empty Siberian tundra a dozen families give a high percentage.
If we count where people really live the weighted average of N populations would be about latitude 58 in Europe, 30 in Asia.
North but not quite so extreme.
Apparently, now Underhill admits the possibility that E could have returned to Africa from Asia. Also, how could America have been peopled by one of the youngest haplogroups (Q) and one of the oldest haplogroups (C), with the oldest found in the North, mostly among Na-Dene-speakers as well as among the Inuits? N and O are phylogenetically between C and Q, and they are found in regions adjacent to America. How come they aren't found there? The sister clade of Q, namely R, has a very wide geographic distribution in Eurasia and Africa. If America was peopled only 15,000 years ago, how come a sister clade of Q was in Europe at 45,000 YBP? The supposedly oldest lineages, A and B, aren't found outside of Africa: why weren't they carried out as a result of a population expansion? How come the youngest haplotypes, Q and R, have the widest geographic distributions, while the oldest haplogroups, with tens of thousands of years to spread around, are so narrowly distributed? At the next phylogenetic level, C and D aren't found in Africa, it means they arose outside of Africa. So where's the connection between Africa and the rest of the world?
Despite the slew of genetic publications the phylogenies remain fishy and ad hoc. I suspect the order of mutations is simply wrong.
"how could America have been peopled by one of the youngest haplogroups (Q) and one of the oldest haplogroups (C)"
Because that oldest haplogroup didn't enter America until after the younger one had led the way. C is pretty much confined to Northwest America. It is also extremely common in Australia yet its centroid occurs at what is today the eastern end of the Gobi Desert. We can only assume it lived there for a very long time before it was inspired to move to America. And there's no evidence it reached its centroid via India, although in their migration diagram the authors assume that it did so. Likewise with D. Its centroid is a little south of C's, in the mountains bordering Tibet and Western China.
"N and O are phylogenetically between C and Q, and they are found in regions adjacent to America. How come they aren't found there?"
The answer is probably that they moved north after both C and Q had reached America.
"The sister clade of Q, namely R, has a very wide geographic distribution in Eurasia ..."
Probably because they were the first haplogroups to expand through Eurasia north of 55 degrees or so, R to the west and Q to the east. C and NO followed them north.
"How come the youngest haplotypes, Q and R, have the widest geographic distributions".
Because their expansion is associated with newly developed technology. Perhaps warm clothing and spear throwers.
"At the next phylogenetic level, C and D aren't found in Africa, it means they arose outside of Africa. So where's the connection between Africa and the rest of the world?"
To me they are the two most interesting haplogroups. I would have liked to see their respective divisions included. Expansion of the others is relatively straightforward.
Further to the above. I see that O's centroid in in coastal China, opposite Taiwan, and N's centroid is in the Urals. Interesting. I think we can assume N's arrival in the Urals is relatively recent.
how could America have been peopled by one of the youngest haplogroups (Q) and one of the oldest haplogroups (C), with the oldest found in the North, mostly among Na-Dene-speakers as well as among the Inuits?.
Native Americans only have one of the many subclades of C3b, which is a subclade of C3 (NE Asia).
Q and all the Y-DNA phylogeny is anyhow probably much older than the usual claims. Wikipedia mentions 15-20 KYa for all Q but with that age it's virtually impossible a subclade of Q (only Q1a3 and ill-defined Q* is found among NAs) could have participated in the colonization of America, which is of about the same date. Logically Q must be quite older and have coalesced in Altai c. 40-30,000 BP.
But I'm heterodox in this.
N and O are phylogenetically between C and Q.
No. NO and Q have no relation with C, except at the CF node. NO and Q are actually part of F.
and they are found in regions adjacent to America. How come they aren't found there?.
Why would they be. They never migrated to Beringia, it seems.
If America was peopled only 15,000 years ago, how come a sister clade of Q was in Europe at 45,000 YBP?.
A lot of people would argue that R was not in Europe at that date most probably. That at most only haplogroup I was.
But I think your real problem is that you confuse frequency and diversity and that you don't understand well the phylogenies of the NA lineages. Most Q in numbers is in America but most Q in diversity is in Asia. So Q coalesced in Asia and only later a branch migrated to America. Same for C or C3. And even the same for R in the opposite direction of migration.
The supposedly oldest lineages, A and B, aren't found outside of Africa: why weren't they carried out as a result of a population expansion?.
Because they never participated in that migration. Do you understand the concept of founder effect?
Anyhow they are no oldest: there are no older haplogroups. All haplogroups have the same phylogentic depth and are similarly old.
What do exist are older nodes and older branchings but the tip of all branches are present and alive.
I suspect the order of mutations is simply wrong.
I suspect that you just don't seem to understand genetics and phylogenies. Your previous comments show that you have a very shallow grasp of the matter.
But anyhow, I wanted to comment on centroids.
Vizachero (with whom I disagree in crucial aspects but has a good knowledge) pointed me to this paper in a previous discussion.
It shows, via simulations, how the origin and the centroid are different things and that in fact the centroid, in cases of demic replacement or colonization of virgin lands (all the simulation is designed for Paleolithic contexts), will always be rather near the end of the expansion than the origin.
This is only logical. When a population expands it seldom does concentrically because there are borders that are barely passable (other peoples at similar techno-cultural levels, the sea, whatever) and it magnifies some subclades randomly (founder effects) as the wave front advances.
So centroids tells us something of how the lineage is distributed today but hardly about its origins.
To find the likely origins, we'd needprobably to do the following:
1. Find the centroids of each of the sublineages at the lowest level possible.
2. Join the dots following the phylogenetic hierarchy and place the secondary "centroid" or median point of low level centroids at the median of each segment.
3. Repeat until you reach the desired phylogenetic level.
This should give you a much better approximation but it would still be a "centroid of centroids" and not necesarily a true origin, which is probably impossible to determine with total certainty.
But that's why diversity and not frequency is used to determine where a lineage is more likely to have originated. Maybe R2 is small but it is still one of two R sublineages. So the "true centroid" of R is the median between the centroid of R1 and that of R2 (and obviously should be SE of Daghestan, probably in South Central Asia). And the "true centroid" of R1 would be the median of R1a and R1b's centroids. Etc.
Even if you can't determine for sure the true origin, you can that way get a sense of the direction of the overall migration (East>West in the case of R), as you see lower level "true centroids" being more and more in this or that direction over the map.
Also it's important to consider the effect of natural barriers like the sea. If a hypothetical lineage would have expanded from, say, Cornwall, the centroid would always be further East because the lineage can't expand into the Ocean. The more it expands, the closer farther the centroid will be from Cornwall.
However highest diversity can and will probably be closer to that hypothetical Cornish origin.
Haven't we had SNPs linking IJK, and KMNOPS, for some time?.
IJK yes but it used to be NOP (i.e. NO and P share one SNP).
IJK is defined at ISOGG by: L15/S137, L16/S138, L69.1(=G)/S163.1. Guess this M522 is Underhill's addition to this stem's description.
However NOP was described by only one shared mutation: rs2033003, and did not include any other lineage (it does not at today's ISOGG version yet). That's why I asked if the diamond node is defined by that same mutation (i.e. if M, S and some K-other had been found to also share that SNP) or if this is some new node upstream of NOP.
So far I have got no satisfactory answer.
Don't have much to contribute, at this point, but note that G,H,I,J - and even T and L all have both somewhat archaic distributions, yet are partially European. Seems harder and harder to argue against a pre-glacial maximum population in Europe...
Anniemouse: The distribution of H is consistent with the hypothesis that it represents the indoeuropean expansion from ~ukraine, followed by a later (near-)extripation of local males in the centre by haplogroup C (the mongols): they didn't make it into india or the balkans (wikipedia: mongol empire).
I am a diletante entomologist (i.e., not an anthropologist), so my observations may come from (as they say) left field. One problem with these distributions is that they consider only the current state. But I see two interesting patterns in the distributions. 1) Australia (Aa)/Oceania/Americas. Knowing that the earliest human remains outside of Africa come from Aa, then the fact that the dominant y-haplotype in Aa is C, which shares an ancestor with (D + E) and that D is found in (approximately) (modern)Sichuan in (modern) China (I'll leave off the 'modern' now), suggests that the group that left Africa was predominantly E and that it split into the (D) group that migrated north from Bangladesh through northwestern Burma into China and the C group that continued along the coast, ultimately reaching Aa. I doubt that this is a major revelation. However, the presence of C all along the east coast of Asia into the Americas is consistent with a hypothesis that the bearers of the C haplotype were (at least initially) near-coastal seafarers. (How else would they have reached Aa?) Some models of the colonization of the Americas invoke a coastal route, and "Kennewick man" has been shown (arguably)to be more related to Polynesians and the Ainu than to modern Amerinds. Where am I going with this? A coastal migration might still be traceable if aboriginal members that possess the C group can be found along the Pacific coast of the Americas. (Unfortunately, failing to find such specimens would not falsify the hypothesis.)
2) Madagascar (Mgr). Knowing that Mgr was first colonized by Polynesians about 200 - 500 AD and about the same time by Bantu from African (and possibly earlier (possibly earlier, cf. the Mikea), the mixed bag of y-haplotypes (Arabia, India, Europe) may encode information on several waves of colonization. Deeper examination of the frequency of sub(sub)haplotypes, coupled with historical records, would be very informative.
Luis:
"But I think your real problem is that you confuse frequency and diversity and that you don't understand well the phylogenies of the NA lineages."
Frequency, diversity and geographic reach are the three pillars of phylogeography. Your problem is that you think diversity is the only thing that counts. In fact, diversity comes from effective population size, which is the only variable that has consistently increased throughout the human history. I understand the phylogenies, that's why I think they were wrongly constructed, and these mistakes made derived haplogroups such as A and B end up looking like the first ones to branch off.
Your constant mistake is that you uncritically accept the existing phylogenies and then start building historical fictions on their basis.
"Because they never participated in that migration. Do you understand the concept of founder effect?"
Of course, I do. But no founder effect can ever explain why African lineages (A, B, E) didn't end up outside of Africa as a result of the original expansion and why the oldest non-African lineages (C and D) aren't found in Africa.
Terry:
"C is pretty much confined to Northwest America."
Interestingly enough, it's also found in Muskogean and Siouan-speaking populations way down south.
"Because that oldest haplogroup didn't enter America until after the younger one had led the way. "
That's exactly what makes it unconvincing. As if someone was playing chess moving pawns from Asia to America, from Africa to Asia, etc. I suspect those chess players are the authors of this paper. These kind of scenarios require a special proof, and geneticists never offer them.
"To me they are the two most interesting haplogroups."
Yes. Because they represent the two major population movements in the Old World. YAP- C gave rise to A and B in Africa (after a bottleneck), while YAP+ D gave rise to E (without a bottleneck).
The H in Europe is due to Gypsies.
Q and C represent the oldest split in the human Y-DNA phylogeny. If we look at their distribution, they have the two largest geographic spreads: from West Siberia to Tierra del Fuego and from American Southwest to Australia. Plus, interestingly enough, their geographies are complementary: Q is all over America and it juts out into Northern Asia, C is all over East Asia and Australasia and it juts out into North America. So, apparently C branched off Q somewhere on North America or North Asia. Notably enough, C and Q occupy the territories marked with the greatest levels of linguistic diversity, which confirms the antiquity of these haplogroups.
All other haplotypes show geographic shrinkage, especially D, A, B, H (in India, with a subsequent Roma offshoot in Europe), and L. This indicates that they are derived lineages, which formed during a long period of isolation, genetic drift. Then they reexpanded but didn't have enough time to achieve the geographic range of Q and C. Linguistic diversity in these areas is low again suggesting a shallow time depth.
"So centroids tells us something of how the lineage is distributed today but hardly about its origins".
I had my doubts about the significance of the placement of the centroids in this paper. Thanks for reminding me of that other paper.
"the presence of C all along the east coast of Asia into the Americas is consistent with a hypothesis that the bearers of the C haplotype were (at least initially) near-coastal seafarers".
True. But there is no suitable ecological region for their becoming coastal seafarers along the South Asian or Arabian coastline. It's not until humans reached the many scattered islands in what is today Indonesia did they find suitable ecological conditions. In fact at the time those conditions existed all along the East Asian coast right up to Japan. There's nothing to say that Y-hap C didn't move south to the Indonesian islands. In fact the oldest human fossils found in Australia are very similar to those found in China at the time, and very unlike the ones found through islands in Indonesia. That's a problem for the currently fashionable hypothesis.
"diversity comes from effective population size, which is the only variable that has consistently increased throughout the human history".
I doubt very much that population size 'has consistently increased throughout the human history'. My guess would be that population size has fluctuated greatly during our time on earth. I'll grant population has grown steadily since the development of farming, but that's a relatively recent inovation.
"But no founder effect can ever explain why African lineages (A, B, E) didn't end up outside of Africa as a result of the original expansion and why the oldest non-African lineages (C and D) aren't found in Africa".
It can really. Just a very small subgroup of B made it out, or at least survived once they had. I'd guess just one male lineage made it out: C-T, although it's currently fashionable to argue in favour of three: C, D and F. E moved back in. If just the one lineage made it out the second part of your comment is easily explained. Only E came back into Africa until long after that single lineage had diversified considerably.
"Interestingly enough, it's also found in Muskogean and Siouan-speaking populations way down south".
But that's easily explained as being the result of relatively recent southward movement.
"That's exactly what makes it unconvincing".
Even H. erectus was able to occupy much of Eurasia. So most people would accept that humans were easily able to expand around most of Eurasia, except for the far north, long before they were able to move far enough north to be able to enter America.
"Q and C represent the oldest split in the human Y-DNA phylogeny".
At no stage do Q and C split. They are on completely different lineages. I suppose technically we could say the line that led to Q and the line that led to the Cs represent one of the very ancient splits.
"If we look at their distribution, they have the two largest geographic spreads".
Almost certainly because they were the first male lines able to move far enough north to enter those previously unoccupied regions. They were well established by the time other lines were able to follow them.
"This indicates that they are derived lineages, which formed during a long period of isolation, genetic drift".
I'd agree with that. However I suspect that they dropped off along the route humans took once they'd left Africa. Haplogroups G, I, J, C and D give us an indication of the route followed.
"That's why I asked if the diamond node is defined by that same mutation (i.e. if M, S and some K-other had been found to also share that SNP) or if this is some new node upstream of NOP".
I don't know the answer but this arrangement certainly shifts the western haplogroups T and L back a step and places any collective NOP with the New Guinea/Australia haplogroups S, M and K. Interesting, don't you think?
"Just a very small subgroup of B made it out, or at least survived once they had. I'd guess just one male lineage made it out: C-T, although it's currently fashionable to argue in favour of three: C, D and F. E moved back in. If just the one lineage made it out the second part of your comment is easily explained. Only E came back into Africa until long after that single lineage had diversified considerably."
It's a possibility but as of now, out of Africa, fails at a critical phylogeographic juncture. Notably, in mtDNA we have the same situation: L1, L2 and L3 (or the newer nomenclature) aren't found outside of Africa, and the earliest offshoots of M and N aren't found in Africa. The loss of Y-DNA B or mtDNA L2 outside of Africa is possible but unlikely because both systems fail to attest it.
"L1, L2 and L3 (or the newer nomenclature) aren't found outside of Africa, and the earliest offshoots of M and N aren't found in Africa".
Easily explained. Once again we have just a limited number of haplogroups able to emerge (in this case two, M and N or, if you prefer L3m and L3n). So:
"The loss of Y-DNA B or mtDNA L2 outside of Africa is possible but unlikely because both systems fail to attest it".
And not necessary to explain the end product. They didn't make it out.
"They didn't make it out."
This is a methodological problem, Terry. You're explaining away an empirical fact, and when it comes to prehistoric dispersals, apparently anything goes. The out of Africa theory is based on abstract connections between lineages (and there can be thousands), which are later projected onto geography in order to explain the patterns of dispersals of modern humans. I tend to consider phylogeography as an important aspect of building a phylogeny. Since genetic diversity is proportionate to geographic distance (African and Amerindian populations are the two extremes of genetic divergence), haplotypes with the widest geographic range are likely to be older than the haplotypes with a more limited geographic range. Even when you use the Lm and Ln notation for non-African macrohaplogroups you artificially attribute a worldwide distribution to African lineages.
Out of Africa is methodologically flawed, as can be seen by looking at the patterns of linguistic diversity. (Cavalli-Sforza, Feldman and others have always been trying to map one onto the other, but in order to make their genetic trees work they had to use wrong linguistic macrophyla.) There're only 20 language families in Africa vs. 140 in America and dozens in Papua New Guinea. Typologically, American Indian languages share unique similarities with such widely separated regions as Australasia and the Caucasus. African language stocks are not only few in number, they tend to show typological features (e.g., clicks) that are African-specific.
"The H in Europe is due to Gypsies."
gaack! A beautiful hypothesis that ("it represents the indoeuropean expansion from ~ukraine, followed by a later (near-)extripation of local males in the centre by haplogroup C (the mongols): they didn't make it into india or the balkans (wikipedia: mongol empire)." (refuted by a simple fact. But I'm not going to let it go so easily.
Dieneke: were the gypsies so common that they could leave a ~10% y-haplotype in the balkans? Please give references.
"Sometimes
there is complete geographic separation between areas showing
fairly important presence of the haplogroup, as in G, H, Q, and T.
For example, haplogroup H in Europe is often confined to ethnic
Roma."
MtDNA H in the first hypothesis, Y-DNA H in the second quite well established fact. Proper nomenclature (i.e. not just "H") and common sense should prevent these misunderstandings, right?
suggests that the group that left Africa was predominantly E and that it split into the (D) group that migrated north from Bangladesh through northwestern Burma into China and the C group that continued along the coast...
This is not a phylogeny but a mess: Y-DNA D and E are "brother" lineages, not "father and son", C is a common cousin, not a descendant.
But no founder effect can ever explain why African lineages (A, B, E) didn't end up outside of Africa as a result of the original expansion and why the oldest non-African lineages (C and D) aren't found in Africa.
1. Founder effect does in fact explain perfectly why A and B did not ever go out of Africa (or did so in amounts that did not allow them to survive early drift). This should be easy to understand and clear to all.
2. E and D did not probably exist yet as such when the OOA migration happened. Minor presence of DE* has been found in Africa and Asia. Hence it probably participated in the OOA as DE (leading basically to D later on).
3. I don't know why you claim that D and C are older than F, the main Eurasian lineage. Anyhow F and C probably adopted their final form in Eurasia, when they had the opportunity to expand.
Hence I think that the OOA was participated by CF'DE and DE. The first leading to CF and C and F and the latter to D. Another possibility is that it was just CF'DE and that DE(->E) has an ultimate Asian origin but I find this hard to support.
It is more likely, IMO, that a "latent" CF (or maybe already C and F) small "Arabian" population was pushed by a related DE(->D) into all three migrating further East into Southern and East Asia. Then sparkling several distinct more local founder effects as they expanded (F in South Asia, C and D in SE/East Asia).
Q and C represent the oldest split in the human Y-DNA phylogeny (...) L3 (...) [is not] found outside of Africa...
German: please stop making up fantasy phylogenies just because you like them. Or in other words: stop lying!
According to this map it seems that J hg feets well with lislakh(afro-asiatic+indo-european) languages family(with J1 clade responsible of the afroasiatic component and J2 of the indoeuropean one)
Whereas R hg seems to be connected with as different language families as Niger-Congo,Vasconic,Turkic,Afro-asiatic,Indo-european language families.
Thus R hg seems to have a paleolithic diffusion(post glacial migrations)and J hg a neolithic diffusion(with agriculture)both from the middle east apparently.
I hg could be from an anatolian origin(due to its connection with J hg under the IJ umbrella)and I presence in north africa seems to be partly explainable by attested historical Vandal and Goth migrations toward north africa.
H and L hg seem to be connected with pre dravidian pre indo-iranian indians.
G=caucasus origin
T=arabian peninsula
C=altaics,proto altaics and pre proto altaics.
But,why the F,K,M,S hgs' maps are lacking?
Luis,
Once you connect Y-DNA or mtDNA lineages in a certain sequence, of course, you're going to say: "E and D did not probably exist yet as such when the OOA migration happened" or "Founder effect does in fact explain perfectly why A and B did not ever go out of Africa (or did so in amounts that did not allow them to survive early drift)." But there's no proof of that, anywhere, so it's a myth, a myth in two senses: a fiction and a lie. Whichever one you prefer.
Why would drift instantly kill off the earliest and most diverse lineages and spare the new and rare ones? Why would drift kill off all the new genes in the source area but keep all the old ones? Why would this happen instantly at the exit from Africa (people moved around all the time before that, why would leaving Africa suddenly result in a bottleneck and selection for the new genes) instead of during a long period of time. It takes time for lineages to peter away and if people migrate and populations bud off you'll see a declining gradient of old lineages being replaced by new ones. It's reflected in frequencies, diversity levels and geographic ranges. Instead, out of Africa postulates a sudden long-range leap-frogging blitz with a huge "missing link" in both mtDNA and Y-DNA systems.
However if you look in reverse, whether out of Asia or out of America, you have a gradual process of replacement of the earliest lineages (Y-DNA C and Q) by the novel ones. The novel ones represent just a "geographic subset" of the original ones, which indicates a population migration or expansion. C and Q are the most divergent ones because they are separated by the greatest number of mutational nodes (6 according to the paper under discussion vs. 4 between A and C) among all the lineages found in geographically adjacent territories and often in the same population. If A and Q (with 10 nodes between them) were found in the same area or in the same population, then this area or population would have been even more divergent. But, as of now, C and Q indicate the primary split. Africa is in fact rather homogeneous, as only 4 nodes separating A from E and only 2 nodes separating A from B.
People have just made things overly abstract and complicated and missed a very simple pattern.
"I presence in north africa seems to be partly explainable by attested historical Vandal and Goth migrations toward north africa"
The Vandal/Alan realm was in Tunisia not in Lybia.
The migration of Q people to America perhaps should be reconsidered when it has recently been found that Q haplo has 3-7 per cent shares in Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
The assumed route to Beringia through Northeast Asian continent might have been too difficult or impossible close to LGM.
The Q people might have taken the maritime route via the Eastern Asia past Japan. The occurrence of Q in continental Northeast Asia seems to be very scarce.The area marked in the map west of Lena river must be almost unpopulated.
Thus the split of K haplo might have happened in circumstances where an ice barrier cut the Asian continent in two from Tibet to the Arctic Ocean.
R and N would have remained west of it, O and Q went via India to East Asia, Q further to America following the coastline which had some vegetation as well as animals for nourishment even close to Beringia.
C people later went same way by sea.
Hammer et al. (2006)
Q1-P36
17/98 = 17.3% Altai
4/41 = 9.8% Manchurian Evenk (i.e. Evenks from NE China)
5/70 = 7.1% Vietnam
2/44 = 4.5% Northern Han (from either Shanxi or Shaanxi)
4/95 = 4.2% Evenk (from Siberia)
3/91 = 3.3% Sri Lanka
1/31 = 3.2% Even
2/67 = 3.0% Uygur (from Xinjiang)
4/149 = 2.7% Mongolia
1/61 = 1.6% Shizuoka, Japan
1/405 = 0.25% India
Pakendorf et al. (2007)
Q1-P36
4/13 = 30.8% Yukaghir
9/55 = 16.4% Tuvan
1/32 = 3.1% NE Yakut
1/184 = 0.54% Yakuts total
Tajima et al. (2004)
P-P27(xR1a1-SRY10831b)
4/21 = 19.0% Nivkhi
4/49 = 8.2% Northern Han
1/34 = 2.9% Thai
1/45 = 2.2% Okinawa, Japan
1/50 = 2.0% Philippine
Lell et al. (2002)
P-M45(xQ1a3a-M3, R1a1a-M17)
6/17 = 35.3% Nivkh
5/24 = 20.8% Chukchi
5/27 = 18.5% Koryak
6/33 = 18.2% Siberian Eskimo
6/40 = 15.0% Tuvan
2/20 = 10.0% Udegey
2/53 = 3.8% Ulchi/Nanai
Q1a3a-M3
7/33 = 21.2% Siberian Eskimo
3/24 = 12.5% Chukchi
It seems that haplogroup Q in Asia should be strongly associated with the so-called Palaeo-Siberians (Kets, Nivkhs, Yukaghirs, Chukchis, Koryaks), but it is also fairly common in some northerly Turkic and Tungusic populations (e.g. Tuvans, Altaians, Udegeys, Evenks) and in some parts of China and Vietnam.
But there's no proof of that, anywhere, so it's a myth, a myth in two senses: a fiction and a lie. Whichever one you prefer.
There is proof: actual genetic data and actual phylogenies. That in itself is 100% consistent with what I said before, not like your wacky fantasies, which do not agree with anything real anywhere.
Why would drift instantly kill off the earliest and most diverse lineages and spare the new and rare ones?-
This question is in itself evidence of your arrogant ignorance in the field of genetics. The sentence is full of confusion, not just on genetics but on what I actually said before: one can't debate with you because, while you do understand (or should understand) perfectly how founder effects and drift work, you make pseudo-captious questions that have nothing to do with what really happened or with what I said.
If you really need that question answered after all, you'd need it with a private teacher, armed with a bullwhip (so you can't evade reality so easily).
you have a gradual process of replacement of the earliest lineages (Y-DNA C and Q) by the novel ones.
There's no such thing as oldest lineages.
And anyhow, the oldest branches should never be replaced totally.
If you can't find anything "older" it means that the colonization is surely recent. Logical, right?
Except for your stubborn arrogance.
@ Pikeperch:
Altai has very old dates of known human colonization: it was surely one of the earliest areas of Siberia to be colonized, roughly at the same time that Eastern Asians reached the Amour area, roughly 40 Kya. (my estimates for the East, as we lack of enough archaeological data there).
Altaians show rather high levels of Y-DNA Q and also of mtDNA X, the only two "Western" lineages found in Native Americans. It does look like the "Q people" were high latitude specialists, probably pre-dating the "N people", which surely arrived at the times you suggest, when the route to Beringia was less accessible.
The diversity of Q south of Siberia may be indicative of some branches heading south. I find very difficult to link Vietnam with Beringia without any intermediate step, sincerely. And all other P is almost unheard of in that area (except for recent IE-related influences).
However if Q starts popping up some day in middle-East Asia, I could reconsider this scepticism.
In any case, there was never an absolute ice barrier in East Asia as happened in Europe or America. Just dry permafrost. In general, it does look like NE Asia was the first subarctic region colonized anywhere.
"There're only 20 language families in Africa vs. 140 in America and dozens in Papua New Guinea".
Isn't that more a product of widespread language expansion in Africa, whereas America has had less of that. And New Guinea is finely divided by relatively impassable mountains and dense jungle?
"But,why the F,K,M,S hgs' maps are lacking?"
M and S are confined to Melanesia and New Guinea respectively, and so are assumed to be of no interest to anyone (except me). K and F have become extremely diversified with many downstream mutations. And maps of their respective distributions would cover virtually the entire world. However we can form a good idea of their original distributions by examining the distribution of their immediate downstream mutations. More of that soon.
"Why would drift instantly kill off the earliest and most diverse lineages and spare the new and rare ones?"
It didn't. Descendants of the earliest lineages survive in Africa.
"Why would drift kill off all the new genes in the source area but keep all the old ones?"
New versions of both A and B are found throughout Africa.
"Why would this happen instantly at the exit from Africa".
Check out the maps of B in the supplementary material. You'll see that both A and B are primarily sub-Saharan (centroids in the South Congo River basin actually) although they dribble north through the Sahara, probably during moister times. This easily explains the limited number of haplogroups that managed to emerge into the Levant.
"Instead, out of Africa postulates a sudden long-range leap-frogging blitz with a huge 'missing link' in both mtDNA and Y-DNA systems".
I disagree. Confining ourselves to just Y-haps for now we see the C, D and E centroids and early F derived haplogroups' distribution demonstrate the extent of early expansion of these four haplogroups. E centred on Lake Chad, C in the northern loop of the Hwang Ho River and D where the Yangtze River finally breaks out of the mountains of South China and Tibet. All the regions are inter-connected as part of a steppe/savanah ecology. Early F-derived haplogroups are spread from Europe (G and I) to just beyond the naturally steppe vegetation region of Northwest India (H), and then thinly spread through the remainder of India and into the Far East (F*, F1, 2 3 and 4) although the eastern end of this lot may be relatively recent. It's reasonable to suppose the early human migration rapidly occupied the whole of this steppe/savanah region. The middle of it is now occupied mainly by other F-derived haplogroups (I, J, T and L) with an overlay of K-derived ones (especially R).
"If A and Q (with 10 nodes between them) were found in the same area or in the same population, then this area or population would have been even more divergent".
No. Just subject to more immigration.
"Altai has very old dates of known human colonization: it was surely one of the earliest areas of Siberia to be colonized, roughly at the same time that Eastern Asians reached the Amour area, roughly 40 Kya".
It had been continuously occupied long before then, although one could argue, 'not by modern humans'. But we cannot be really sure of that.
Terry: "It didn't. Descendants of the earliest lineages survive in Africa."
We don't find the earliest branches of Y-DNA C or D in Africa. Neither do we find the earliest branches of mtDNA M and N in Africa. They are perfectly well and alive outside of Africa, though.
What you call "earliest branches" are Y-DNA A and B. But you need to prove that they are the earliest. Instead, you employ a circular argument.
"Isn't that more a product of widespread language expansion in Africa, whereas America has had less of that. And New Guinea is finely divided by relatively impassable mountains and dense jungle?"
Why would that be? America has lost an innumerable number of languages as a result of the recent European colonization. It has had large-scale language expansions (Quechua, Na-Dene, Oto-Manguean, Algic, etc.). Small demes must be subject to language loss as a result of adverse ecological and social conditions more than large populations. Language replacement occurs all the time everywhere, in America, Africa or elsewhere. I don't think Africa was more prone to it historically. There's no systematic theory why Papua New Guinea and America should have accumulated so much language diversity, while Africa should have so little of it. In general, Asia, America and Australasia have more language diversity than Europe and Africa, so it's not just an aberrant local development in fringe areas. I hypothesize that limited age, large population size and distance from source accounts for the limited linguistic diversity in Africa.
"A and B are primarily sub-Saharan (centroids in the South Congo River basin actually) although they dribble north through the Sahara, probably during moister times. This easily explains the limited number of haplogroups that managed to emerge into the Levant."
IMO, this is exactly what makes an exit from Africa unlikely. Taforalt remains at 10,000 YBP in North Africa attest to no L lineages whatsoever, but a whole bunch of European and Asian ones. It would take a few early foraging migrations to drop A and B into Sub-Saharan Africa and they've been locked in there for the rest of human history and never had enough time to expand geographically beyond their narrow provenance. Otherwise, we again have to rest the whole human history on the few hypothetical northward dribblings out of Sub-Saharan Africa.
""If A and Q (with 10 nodes between them) were found in the same area or in the same population, then this area or population would have been even more divergent".
No. Just subject to more immigration."
Yes, this is another possible explanation for high levels of sequence divergence.
What you call "earliest branches" are Y-DNA A and B. But you need to prove that they are the earliest. Instead, you employ a circular argument.
This discussion would be helped by the use of more precise and accurate language. "Earliest branches" is neither precise nor accurate.
The split between A and Y(xA) as the earliest node on the Y-DNA tree is very well attested. It is the overwhelmingly consensus view, and for good reason: it is far and away the most parsimonious solution to the human Y phylogeny. The split of Y(xA) into B and CF is equally well attested.
If there is a cogent argument to be made for seriously considering an alternate phylogeny, I'd love to see someone advance it.
VV
"The split between A and Y(xA) as the earliest node on the Y-DNA tree is very well attested. It is the overwhelmingly consensus view, and for good reason: it is far and away the most parsimonious solution to the human Y phylogeny. The split of Y(xA) into B and CF is equally well attested."
What do you call "well-attested"? In the parlance I'm used to, "attested" means either recorded in recent sources or found in living populations, found in an archaeological site or arrived at through a reconstruction (comparative method in historical linguistics).
What I propose on the basis of phylogeography (I haven't done sequence analysis yet) is that C and Q represent the earliest phylogenetic split: both show the widest geographic ranges (see my comments above), both are found in contiguous areas (on both sides of Beringia with an actual geographic overlap with C attested in North America and Q attested in Siberia), both can be found in the same living populations but diverge from each other by 6 mutational nodes.
Taforalt remains at 10,000 YBP in North Africa attest to no L lineages whatsoever, but a whole bunch of European and Asian ones
It's 12,000 BP. And what's the problem with this? Anyone with some knowledge of North African archaeology knows that Aterian seems to have gone extinct in the dry period and that the colonization of North Africa is originated in West Asia (Dabban industries, similar to Aurignacian).
Digging further, you may find that the second wave of colonization, can be original from Iberian Gravetto-Solutrean (and here is where we find Taforalt), and the third wave is from Upper Egypt or Sudan.
North Africans do not derive, at least in any significative amount from Aterian. That wave is believed to have gone extinct or, at best, had continuity only in Asia east of Iran.
...
You are a fucking moron, Maju.
WTF?! What do you mean by that? Do you agree?, disagree?, why?
...
This discussion would be helped by the use of more precise and accurate language.
This discussion, sadly enough, is totally unnecessary. German knows perfectly the matter, just that he chooses to ignore the genetic evidence because he has a "theory" of his own founded in something as solid and reliable as his own "heretic" interpretation of kinship systems.
He just likes the "heretic" limelight and annoying everyone...
The risk is that he could confuse some occasional reader with little knowledge.
Luis, who called you a "moron"?
I used the Taforalt example as a cautionary case study: the only ancient DNA of that antiquity in Africa doesn't attest to mtDNA L lineages. We need direct evidence to make our assumptions. Such as the Mungo man sequence. Yes, the study wasn't replicated but we have to savor whatever is available.
I'm still surprised how emotionally invested you are in the out-of- Africa idea. As if I'm trying to evict you from your home(land). I think it's premature to think of out of Africa as a fact. It has advantages (it's parsimonious for an external observer) and disadvantages (based on circular arguments, selective in proof points, etc.)
German: we know from modern genetic data that North Africans are much more related to West Eurasians than to Africans properly speaking. This is consistent with archaeology.
It would be of course nice to have DNA tests from around the globe but so far the interest has been focused in the West Eurasian area.
I'm still surprised how emotionally invested you are in the out-of- Africa idea.
I am worried that you could confuse any accidental reader with your fantasies that have no ground whatsoever.
You seem to think that you can go around a totally twist solid scientific results just because you feel that way. I find that attitude totally annoying and disrespectful.
There is absolutely no way that Q and C3 could be ancestral to all other Y-DNA. It's not just heretic, it is totally wrong. And you know it. And that is really nasty on your side.
Luis, who called you a "moron"? -
Wasn't you. It was someone who later deleted his comment. I copy-pasted from the email and only later noticed he had deleted.
"We know from modern genetic data that North Africans are much more related to West Eurasians than to Africans properly speaking. This is consistent with archaeology."
Good. This is exactly the kind of continuity we need to have between Sub-Saharan Africa and any other place in the world to make a founding migration out of Africa plausible. I just don't see these connections: not in languages, not in the distribution of cultural traits, not in kinship, not in archaeology. Even in genetics L3 lineages are closer to M and N than they are to L1 and L2. Same for E vs. A and B in Y-DNA.
"I am worried that you could confuse any accidental reader with your fantasies that have no ground whatsoever."
The good thing about the blogosphere, I thought, is that everyone is welcome here and that people don't police others' thinking trying to enforce a "party line." Out of Africa is not based on "solid scientific evidence" but on a selective choice of proof points. It's the most recent spinoff from the long-standing Old World-New World myth, which predates science by a few hundred years.
. . . or arrived at through a reconstruction (comparative method in historical linguistics).
You could consider phylogenetic analysis to be lineage "reconstruction", I suppose, but what I was driving at is that all geneticists support the A vs. Y(xA) split and not your rogue ersion.
What I propose on the basis of phylogeography (I haven't done sequence analysis yet) is that C and Q represent the earliest phylogenetic split. . . .
The Y phylogeny is a gene tree. Its integrity rises and falls exclusively on the phylogenetic reconstruction of genetic sequences.
That you admit your unwillingness to accept it is not based on genetics but on some other non-genetic grounds betrays the unsupportability of your position.
"The Y phylogeny is a gene tree. Its integrity rises and falls exclusively on the phylogenetic reconstruction of genetic sequences."
Thousands of gene trees are possible if they're taken out the geographic context of their distribution.
"All geneticists support the A vs. Y(xA) split."
I don't consider this a good argument. Science changes. Plus historically the role of true science was not to foster a new consensus but to combat stereotypes.
Thousands of gene trees are possible if they're taken out the geographic context of their distribution.
Here we have a case in which there is only one parsimonious tree on the one hand, and your fantasy on the other.
I don't consider this a good argument. Science changes.
Appeal to authority is my least favorite argument, but it is emotionally rewarding in this case where everyone who understands the technical issues disagrees with your position.
And science will change by people doing science, not by folks who don't understand the scientific process.
"And science will change by people doing science, not by folks who don't understand the scientific process."
You're talking to a scientist who understands the technicalities of several relevant academic and applied disciplines, from population genetics to the formation of public representations. You can read my book "The Genius of Kinship: The Phenomenon of Kinship and the Global Diversity of Kinship Terminologies" (Dziebel, 2007) for starters. It's not meant to dispel your fantasies but at least it'll give you an idea where I'm coming from.
You're talking to a scientist who understands the technicalities of several relevant academic and applied disciplines, from population genetics to the formation of public representations. You can read my book . . . .
Congratulations on finding someone to publish your book. But if it is supposed to be evidence that you understand the technicalities of the disciplines relevant to this discussion, it comes up a bit short.
"But if it is supposed to be evidence that you understand the technicalities of the disciplines relevant to this discussion, it comes up a bit short."
Read it first.
"But if it is supposed to be evidence that you understand the technicalities of the disciplines relevant to this discussion, it comes up a bit short."
Read it first. In the meantime, I could read some of your writings. And then we'll compare notes.
Did you understand what you were reading? Unfortunately, it was attended for a professional audience. But the main thing that any reader should be able get out of it is the need to integrate information coming from all disciplines, including linguistics and kinship studies, before we can make any definitive statements about who came from where.
The geneticists you seem to be reading have a very limited background knowledge. This affects their work because they are making assumptions that are not valid.
The geneticists you seem to be reading have a very limited background knowledge.
But they (and I) understand phylogenetics, which is a huge advantage when the question turns to - say - phylogenetics.
VV
"But they (and I) understand phylogenetics, which is a huge advantage when the question turns to - say - phylogenetics."
I doubt it. I know many of them personally (including two of the three authors of the paper under discussion), and phylogenetics is a vexed issue for everybody. (Phylogenetics is a contentious issue in historical linguistics as well, if you're familiar with this discipline.) Underhill and Roseman (another guy from Stanford) published a few years ago a whole paper arguing that there was no YAP+ migration back into Africa. Now Underhill is willing to admit that E may have come back into Africa.
Science change, and so do phylogenies.
"But they (and I) understand phylogenetics, which is a huge advantage when the question turns to - say - phylogenetics."
I doubt it. I know many of them personally (including two of the three authors of the paper under discussion), and phylogenetics is a vexed issue for everybody. (Phylogenetics is a contentious issue in historical linguistics as well, if you're familiar with this discipline.) Underhill and Roseman (another guy from Stanford) published a few years ago a whole paper arguing that there was no YAP+ migration back into Africa. Now Underhill is willing to admit that E may have come back into Africa.
Science change, and so do phylogenies.
German, please, give up. You're making a fool of yourself.
Whether E migrated from Africa to Eurasia or viceversa changes absolutely nothing about its phylogenetic position. When various SNPs defining DE and the CT (or CF'DE or Y(xA,B)) were discovered, then the phylogeny did change a bit.
One thing is that I'm the grandson of grandfather (phylogeny) and a different issue is where did my grandpa live (not phylogeny).
Luis, read the following: "Use of Y Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Population Structure in Tracing Human Migrations," by Underhill1 and Kivisild, and look at Fig. 8. The figure shows three possible "phylogenetic resolutions" of the CFDE node(s). Underhill used to favor one, now he's ready to accept another.
I admire your tenacity, though...
"Underhill used to favor one, now he's ready to accept another".
But that's two years ago and what he really changed his mind over was the realisation that C and F were connected. He already knew that D and E shared the YAP mutation so they were related. Nothing has changed in the years since except Underhill now realises CF and DE share a common origin, from the B group. I doubt if anything's going to change now regarding that diversification but who knows?
To change the direction of the discussion slightly. Two interesting facts spring out from the paper.
Firstly the new phylogeny has it that NO and P are removed a little from T and L, and even further from IJ. Their closest relations are now M (from Melanesia) S (from New Guinea) and the various Ks (K3 in Melanesia, K4 and K2 in Oceania, Australia and SE Asia and K1 in India). Tends to suggest a southeastern origin for the group, including NO and P, doesn't it?
Another interesting aspect of the study is C's centroid. Maju has reminded us of a recent paper on the subject of centroids. From that paper, 'The centroid of traveling mutants is located approximately midway between the end of the expansion and the place of origin of the expansion'.
So did C move to Australia from the centroid, making that continent the end of the expansion? Or did C reach Australia on the way to developing its centroid? Either solution makes India unlikely as a route. It's either too close or it involves doubling back over a route already traversed.
Terry,
In Underhill and Kivisild, the only phylogenetic resolution under which Underhill was willing to consider Hammer's back migration of YAP+ lineages to Africa was C vs. DEF. This would nest E inside a Eurasian clade. In Chiaroni 2009, he admits the possibility of a back migration (he strongly denied it earlier in Underhill and Roseman because A and B are African) but sticks to a different phylogenetic resolution, namely CF vs. DE. Once DE was discovered outside of Africa, it became obvious that C, F, DE, and D are found outside of Africa, while Africa only has DE and E. E is closer to CFD than it is to A and B, which effectively nests E outside of Africa.
It's very painful for Underhill and Cavalli to admit that the majority of African Y chromosomes derive from outside of Africa, so they hedge between accepting it and denying this possibility.
But then we end up having a slim couple A and B in Africa vs. a massive cluster CDEF outside of Africa.
Then, Chiaroni et al. write: "Haplogroups C and Q display Asian ancestry and hold the unique privilege of having settled America. Not surprisingly their origin seems to have been in northeast Asia."
So you have two widely divergent lineages outside of Africa, C and Q, both originating in northeast Asia (what a coincidence!) vs. two less divergent A and B lineages in Africa.
I guess, from here, you could go either way but I prefer to think of A and B as a subset of CQ.
Terry, I didn't see that you've changed the direction of the discussion. Fine with me.
Terry, it means that P and X are eastern lineages, to humorously contradict Maju.
^^ He's Russian, not from Stanford. Fringe researchers plague Russia in all fields, AFAIK.
But yeah, he seems a bit extreme even for Russia.
... it means that P and X are eastern lineages, to humorously contradict Maju.
Demonstrate it if you can. Your humor is pathetic and constitutes no evidence.
MtDNA X has highest diversity by far in the Middle East. The American branch is just an offshoot and does not exist in East Asia.
As of P, IMO coalesced in NW India/Pakistan. However I've read of some P(xQ,R) in America, and in North Africa too. P(xQ,R) sadly has not been sufficiently well researched. Normally scholars presume that if it's not Q or R it's the other, but it's not necessarily the case. And there seems to be some P* still around. The matter is far from clear but if you just look at the centroids, then Central Asia, South Asia maybe.
but I prefer to think of A and B as a subset of CQ.
You can't.
There's no such thing as CQ. No shared SNP since the CT node.
B and A do not have the defining SNPs of C or Q. Neither C nor Q have the defining SNPs of B or A.
I know that German will look to some other place again and ignore this, but Y-DNA phylogeny is a natural hierarchy of sets of shared SNPs.
And even if German choses again to ignore, it may help some unillustrated John Doe who comes around and reads:
Q is a subset of P, which is a subset of NOP (or now it seems: MNOPS), which is a subset of K, which is a subset of IJK, which is a subset of F,m which is a subset of CT (Y(xA,B)), which is a subset of BT (Y(xA)), which is a subset of the human Y-DNA MRCA, or Y chromosome "Adam".
Anyone with simple knowledge of sets' maths, something that I studied in 1st-3rd grade or so, knows that inclusion implies sharing traits, SNPs in our case. Inversely, exclusion, implies not sharing them. C and Q alone can't make a set.
Yes, I am originally from Russia. And yes I have a doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University. In addition to another doctorate and a master's degree. The fact that I disagree with existing mtDNA and Y-DNA phylogenies doesn't make me an impostor.
I suggest the comment by Eurologist be deleted as it constitutes a libel. There're certain ethical norms that Eurologist crossed regardless of whether he's right about Y-DNA A and B or not.
I don't understand why a large geographic dispersal of C or Q would necessarily make the phylogenetic structure incorrect? North and South America were uninhabited by humans when Q migrated from Asia. It is human nature to spread out when natural resources are available, and also to avoid direct competition when possible.
"North and South America were uninhabited by humans when Q migrated from Asia."
Aaron, I don't think we can assume that North and South America was peopled. We need to prove it. Archaeology hasn't found convincing evidence that Paleoindian cultures are derived from Asia. America harbors the greatest linguistic diversity (in terms of the number of isolates, small, mid-size and large families: 140 against 20 in Africa). My analysis of kinship systems and terminologies based on a sample of 2500 languages suggests that Amerindian kinship systems may very well be ancestral to Old World systems. You can access one of my trees or set structures at http://kinshipstudies.org/?page_id=5 but the book The Genius of Kinship will give you a full background. Since America and Asia share lots of similarities in genes and cultures, I don't entertain any trans-Atlantic scenarios but hypothesize that migration across the Bering Strait went in the opposite direction from what is usually believed.
I think one way to make linguistic and kinship data compatible with genetics is to suggest that Y-DNA C and Q, two haplogroups with the largest geographic reach that encompasses precisely the zones of the highest linguistic diversity, constitute the earliest phylogenetic split. Admittedly,
this may require a reassessment of what character states are ancestral and what are derived. However, at least one paper seems to have hinted at this possibility. See
Ward RH, Frazier BL, Dew-Jager K, Pääbo S. Extensive mitochondrial diversity within a single Amerindian tribe // Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1991 Oct 1;88(19):8720-4. In this paper the age of diversity found in a single Amerindian tribe was estimated to be 80,000 YBP, which exceeded my much the age of diversity found in African !Kung Bushmen. The method employed was sequence divergence estimate.
When you come up with the weirdest of ideas, like the non-existent "haplogroup CQ" being ancestral to the rest, into a space frequented by so many people with genuine interest in population genetics and rather good knowledge of it, and you arrogantly tell everybody that this absurd claim of yours is correct and that everything all of us KNOW is wrong, just because you say so, Mr. Stanford, you should not be surprised if someone throws you a rotten tomato or a dozen.
You are just asking for it.
"As such, you have not adhered to standards widely accepted in top journals, and likewise, I am quite satisfied and happy to call impostor when I see one."
Everything that I write is scientific. My book was peer-reviewed. As everybody can see from my web page, I have a physical presence and real credentials. I don't know what and who Eurologist is and why he's passing judgments on matters that I'm not sure he fully understands.
I recommend that you delete both of your comments. If you don't agree, you can argue or you can ignore it but calling somebody an impostor is uncalled-for.
Nowhere on this blog does it say that only pro-out-of-African comments are invited.
However, at least one paper seems to have hinted at this possibility. See
Ward RH, Frazier BL, Dew-Jager K, Pääbo S. Extensive mitochondrial diversity within a single Amerindian tribe // Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1991 Oct 1;88(19):8720-4. In this paper the age of diversity found in a single Amerindian tribe was estimated to be 80,000 YBP, which exceeded my much the age of diversity found in African !Kung Bushmen. The method employed was sequence divergence estimate.
For one thing this paper looked at only 363bp of HVR-region mtDNA, which makes it utterly irrelevant to the question of the Y-phylogeny.
For a second thing the authors of that paper drew a much more accurate conclusion from their data than you suggest. "Hence, we conclude that these lineage clusters originated well before humans entered the Americas. However, since the sequence differences observed within lineage clusters correspond to a divergence time of approximately 8000 to 15,000 years ago, we suggest that much of the lineage diversity within clusters reflects evolution that occurred within Amerindian populations."
In other words, the native population they studied comprised several haplogroups. These haplogroups diverged from each other about 60,000 years, and represent a peopling of the Americas between 8000 and 15,000 years ago. Where, again, is the controversy?
And what does that have to do with the Y-phylogeny?
"And what does that have to do with the Y-phylogeny?"
Nothing specific. I gave it as an example of unusual age estimates for Amerindian haplogroups.
Sure, the Ward paper didn't call for out of America. But the age was so surprising (and these estimates were made for many Amerindian tribes, not just one) that they had to make an assumption that this diversity was accumulated in Africa and Asia and brought to America ready-made.
Within-group diversities is just one way of estimating diversity levels. Among-groups diversities is another. And Amerindian groups have the highest among-group diversities on a worldwide scale (followed usually by Melanesia), whichever system you pick.
Age estimates based on within-group diversity are in contradiction with high levels of linguistic diversity in America, with kinship data, etc. So, within-group diversities may well represent long-term effective population size and not age, as several authors, including Relethford, suggested. This indicates that Amerindian population may be small but old, while African populations large but relatively young.
And Amerindian groups have the highest among-group diversities on a worldwide scale (followed usually by Melanesia), whichever system you pick.
That's not correct. It can only apply to a time when the known mtDNA haplogroups were few and the phylogeny was not well estabilished. Have you ever wondered why the four American haplogroups (except X which was only known later) are named A, B, C and D? And why higher level African lineages are called L1, L2, L3, etc.?
By any means Africa has by large the highest diversity, very specially in mtDNA. But in 1991 probably not a single African haplogroup was known in any detail.
Today that paper is ancient history, the same that Sykes' seven "sister" clades are now known to have diverse phylogenetic levels (K is "great-great-grandaughter of U for example).
Anyhow, at the African level of diversity, both Eurasia and America have extremely low values, because all they have is one lineage: L3.
I know you don't want to understand this, German. But we do and very well. Flat-Earthism and Out of America are simply not respectable scientific theories.
And we just don't have to waste our time arguing with Flatearthists if we don't want to (and certainly I don't).
If I were to formulate a general connection between the Ward paper and the Y-DNA phylogeny, I would describe it in the following way. Ward et al. derived their 80K estimate by coalescing all lineages found in an American Indian tribe, namely the ones that belong to macrohaplogroup M (C, D) and the ones that belong to macrohaplogroup N (A, B, X). Although Y-DNA and mtDNA phylogenies and distributions should not overlap with each other, there's a reason to expect some kind of congruence between them because men and women usually migrate together. So, it could be that the M(C,D)/N (A,X,B) split in mtDNA corresponds to the C/Q split in Y-DNA. C, D, A, X, B also have very wide geographic spans (from Tierra del Fuego to Melanesia, Europe and the Middle East), and again all African mtDNA lineages are geographically restricted. Also, in the Americas Y-DNA C, like mtDNA X and A, are associated with North America, while mtDNA C and D, just like Q are most frequent in South America.
If M(C,D)/N (A,X,B) don't constitute a set, how come Ward et al. could calculate their coalescent age?
"That's not correct. It can only apply to a time when the known mtDNA haplogroups were few and the phylogeny was not well estabilished."
This is correct, Luis, for all genetic systems studied. From the early studies by Neel, Ward and Salzano to the latest study by Tishkoff. And I quote: "The proportion of genetic variation among all studied African populations was 1.71%. In comparison, Native American and Oceanic populations showed the greatest proportion of genetic variation among populations (8.36% and 4.59%)" (Tishkoff et al. The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans // Science 324: 1035).
You can find it in any textbook on Molecular Genetics: Amerindian populations always have the highest Fst values in the world.
So, it could be that the M(C,D)/N (A,X,B) split in mtDNA corresponds to the C/Q split in Y-DNA.
Except for the fact that there is not a C/Q split in Y-DNA, of course.
There is, though, a CT node in the Y tree which appears to represent the same out-of-Africa event represented by the L3 node in mtDNA. Interestingly, both nodes have roughly the same estimated age. Interesting, all the Native American haplogroups descend from the out-of-Africa descendant branch of those nodes.
If M(C,D)/N (A,X,B) don't constitute a set, how come Ward et al. could calculate their coalescent age? -
They do constitute a phylogenetic set: L3 (and the ones above it, like L2'3, L1-6, etc.). Their MRCA is at the L3 node.
"There is, though, a CT node in the Y tree which appears to represent the same out-of-Africa event represented by the L3 node in mtDNA."
This is fine. Phylogeographically, though, it's unlikely that L3 is ancestral to M and N. All African L3 lineages are not found outside of Africa, while all the members of M and N haplogroups found in Africa (e.g., M1) aren't indigenous to Africa. In addition, African L3 are closer to M and N than they are to other African Ls. Notably, Chandrasekar, who supports the idea that YAP+ E haplogroup was brought back to Africa from Asia, has recently published a paper (Updating Phylogeny of Mitochondrial DNA Macrohaplogroup M in India: Dispersal of Modern Human in South Asian Corridor) in which he noticed the lack of a continuity between L3 and M if seen out of Africa.
Although I agree that there's a resemblance between the CFDE (or CF or CT) and L3/M/N node, I think there're several equally parsimonious resolutions, and phylogeographically I would favor the origin of L3 outside of Africa. In the same way as E represents a migration from Asia into Africa.
When I say "C/Q" and you say C/T we may be talking about the same node. I suspect some of the character states found on Q (e.g., DYS199T) are not derived (from DYS199C) but ancestral, though. However, like I said earlier, I haven't completed this level of sequence analysis yet.
In addition, African L3 are closer to M and N than they are to other African Ls.
Of course they are, since M and N are subclades of L3.
. . . and phylogeographically I would favor the origin of L3 outside of Africa.
What difference would that make to this discussion? Maybe an L woman left Africa before the MRCA of L3 was born. Maybe two L3 women left Africa, with one becoming the MRCA for M and the other becoming the MRCA for N. Maybe the MRCA of both M and N were in Africa and their descendants left. Any way you slice it, M and N are subclades of L3 and it is this set of matriarchs who represent the out-of-Africa event on the mtDNA side.
I suspect some of the character states found on Q (e.g., DYS199T) are not derived (from DYS199C) but ancestral, though.
If you want to re-root the human Y-DNA phylogeny, I'd start by - I don't know - actually doing some work on the human Y-DNA phylogeny. The hand-waving is going to get you nowhere.
"If you want to re-root the human Y-DNA phylogeny, I'd start by - I don't know - actually doing some work on the human Y-DNA phylogeny. The hand-waving is going to get you nowhere."
I'm afraid you are the one doing hand-waving now, Vincent. I'm just critiquing the papers and advancing alternatives.
I'm afraid you are the one doing hand-waving now, Vincent. I'm just critiquing the papers and advancing alternatives.
Spare us, please. What critique? What papers?
You are offering up an "alternate" phylogeny that doesn't even actually exist and are doing so without any basis in evidence or methodology. You expect us to quietly accept your assertion that 20 years worth of Y-phylogenetic research is wrong just because it doesn't "feel right" to you? That's not just silly, that's downright crackpot.
"What critique? What papers?"
Chiaroni et al. 2009, for example.
"You are offering up an "alternate" phylogeny that doesn't even actually exist and are doing so without any basis in evidence or methodology."
This is work in progress. I've outlined some aspects of my methodology right above.
"You expect us to quietly accept your assertion that 20 years worth of Y-phylogenetic research is wrong just because it doesn't "feel right" to you?"
You are free to believe in whatever phylogeny you want. Scientists criticize other scientists because they have reasons to, not because it simply doesn't feel right to them. Current phylogenies have been postulated, rather than proven. If they feel right to you, go with them.
Scientists criticize other scientists essentially in academic spaces, like peer reviewed papers. You are not doing that, obviously. Just being annoying.
Chiaroni et al. 2009, for example.
Chiaroni is about haplogroup J1, and contains no real phylogenetic work at all much less anything having to do with the deep rooting question under discussion.
Do you even know what phylogenetics is?
VV
"Chiaroni is about haplogroup J1, and contains no real phylogenetic work at all much less anything having to do with the deep rooting question under discussion."
Chiaroni's article is entitled "Y chromosome diversity, human expansion, drift, and cultural evolution." The title and the content befits an in-depth discussion.
"Scientists criticize other scientists essentially in academic spaces, like peer reviewed papers."
Regrettably, I would say. I would like scientists to actually get more actively involved with social media and the blogosphere instead of sending "finished" theories top-down to the consumer level. The reason we're bickering about these things is because there's never been any feedback loop (or the loop was very short) on human origins research during the past 20 years.
Pardon me for my ignorance about modern humans' origin, but German, if we did not come out of Africa, from where did we come? Can you give us details about our origin and early migrations?
Dean,
An alternative that I suggested in my book "The Genius of Kinship: The Phenomenon of Kinship and the Global Diversity of Kinship Terminologies" (Dziebel 2007) and in a lengthy post on anthropology.net (http://anthropology.net/2008/05/12/the-genius-of-kinship-human-kinship-systems-and-the-search-for-human-origins/) is the out-of-America idea. Although I specialize in the cultural and biological diversity of modern human populations, I hypothesize that "we" are ultimately an offshoot of Asian Homo erectus who entered America, speciated there and then migrated back to the "Old World" to replace all the pre-existing hominin species.
Just to interrupt the flow. Maju wrote:
"As of P, IMO coalesced in NW India/Pakistan".
I've noticed something very interesting (and perhaps significant) about the centroids. Now I know Maju has said we can't regard them as accurate representations of where a particular haplogroup first appeared, but we can assume the haplogroup spread from the centroid, or thereabouts.
The centroids of the first level of diversification are all on, or near, the margins of steepe/savannah vegetation. Makes sense. Early modern humans were probably savannah hunters. But something interesting happens when we look at the branch that includes haplogroups from IJ to T. As Annie Mouse quoted in the first comment regarding this subject:
"For example, the centroid of haplogroup J is in the Mediterranean sea between Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey".
Is that placement in the sea significant? associated with offshore boating? J's brother group I's centroid is smack on the Danube, almost exactly in the modern town of Regensburg. Interestingly both haplogroups, at a literal interpretation, are centred on water. Both associated with boating?
What about IJ's relations? L's centroid is in the Arabian Sea, just offshore from modern Karachi. Offshore boating again? To top it all off T's centroid is in Egypt, a region famous for being desert. But the centroid is placed very close to the Nile and could well belong there.
The various Ks along with S and M are very much associated with open water in and beyond SE Asia. So what are the chances of P and NO being associated with anything other than that? Rules out 'NW India/Pakistan' for P's coalesence, or centroid. Unless it's on the Indus. Or what about the Ganges?
"I hypothesize that 'we' are ultimately an offshoot of Asian Homo erectus".
I could start to agree with you there, but not only the Asian H. erectus. I definitely agree that the simple OoA hypothesis cannot be correct. After all if, as seems likely, just two mtDNA haplogroups and one Y-hap emerged from Africa that would indicate an extreme, and unlikely, level of inbreeding. Even allowing for four Y-haps that would still hold. So individuals carrying those haplotypes must have bred with people carrying other types, and spread from there.
I've also looked again at the supporting information, specifically the map on page 4. The authors have two extremely long and unlikely pale blue lines leading to S and M. They'd solve the problem by putting K somewhere in SE Asia and F about where K is placed. This would make the map much more believeable and tidy up all their 'estimated' black circles.
Terry: J's centroid on the sea is significant: it means that J exists both north and south of the Mediterranean Sea (but notice the differences in distribution between the various subclades). Similarly the centroid of O at the Chinese coast is reflecting the Austronesian O beyond the sea, etc.
You can't extrapolate as you do in the last paragraph. You're another illuminatus with the fancy idea that macro-haplogroup K expanded by boating. Considering that people almost always dwells by the seashore or riverside, you'll find much circumstantial evidence of that. But no proof.
"You're another illuminatus with the fancy idea..."
Typically, the deeper in time we go, the less direct evidence of past events we have. Hence, the more natural ambiguity and uncertainty should arise. The strange thing about human origins research, is that it quickly coalesces at a single idea (say, out-of-Africa) that commands the support of a majority. I would expect a bit more diversity of opinions than that, taken into account the lack of direct evidence and the growing number of interested disciplines and stakeholders. Overtime, ideas that don't work will naturally fall off the grid. In the meantime, the lack of a healthy diversity of opinions may mean the presence of a latent bias of sorts, which is external to the nature of the evidence at hand.
Terry is highly reasonable compared to you, German, I must add. He has his pet idea but it does not clash frontally with the overwhelming evidence. He just converges with you in the sense that he lets his pet idea rule his reason up to a point. But his hypothesis is much more reasonable than yours by all accounts.
Consensus can only be created either by a huge propaganda machinery (which I'm sure it's not the case) or by overwhelming rational evidence converging into a single solution, which is what applies in regard to the origins of humankind: we do have fossils and genes saying very clearly: out of Africa. So don't bother arguing your "heresy" unless you do get very solid evidence against what both genes and fossils tell (with genetic and fossil data, not cultural elements subjectively interpreted).
If you ever do (and I'm sure you won't), you should first publish the corresponding peer-reviewed papers. We don't have to put up with your fantasies otherwise. They are an insult to our intelligence.
Luis, you only prove my point. Peer-review journals have published plenty of critique/reservations regarding the out-of-Africa. See, e.g., Out of Africa and the Evolution of Human Behavior; Darwin and the recent African origin of modern humans, both by Richard G. Klein, with further literature. But apparently you don't read them. There's enough evidence in archaeology that out of Africa is an idea artificially imposed on very ambiguous evidence. See, e.g., Clark GA. 2006. Observations on systematics in Paleolithic archaeology. In Hovers E, Kuhn SL, editors. Transitions before the transition: evolution and stability in the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age. New York: Springer. p 29–56. Geneticists continue to point out that African diversity can be explained through larger long-term effective population size, not age. See, e.g., J H Relethford. Genetic evidence and the modern human origins debate (2008).
My book was peer-reviewed. You refuse to read it.
If you do have passion for knowledge, I suggest that you get a degree and start publishing in peer-review journals yourself to advance science in the direction you see fit and don't keep your intelligence in places where it's so easily insulted by alternative hypotheses.
Anything of what you say has to do with genetics? No. With archaeology maybe? No.
Plus I'm bored of reading papers that you claim support your hypothesis only to find that they don't.
Stop bothering.
"Considering that people almost always dwells by the seashore or riverside, you'll find much circumstantial evidence of that. But no proof".
And certainly no evidence of any sort of boats until the circumstantial evidence necessarily provided by the human crossing of Wallacea. It would make sense that boats developed slowly over time, as did most technological change, and then spread. If you can provide evidence for boats previous to the Wallacea crossing please do so. Flores certainly doesn't require any effective boating (almost certainly accidental) and the Gibraltar evidence is very shakey to say the least.
"The strange thing about human origins research, is that it quickly coalesces at a single idea (say, out-of-Africa) that commands the support of a majority".
And demands a single point of origin. I believe that happens because myth-based ideas of how evolution happens influence how we interpret the evidence.
"I believe that happens because myth-based ideas of how evolution happens influence how we interpret the evidence."
Absolutely agree. Science and its method haven't established themselves in all the domains of knowledge.
If you can provide evidence for boats previous to the Wallacea crossing please do so.
No material evidence but some logic yes: the crossing of Wallacea was the Middle Paleolithic equivalent to more modern great journeys like Colombus', Elcano's, Heng Zhe's, Red Erik's, Hanno's and those of the anonymous Austronesians who reached Easter Island and Madagascar. Their ships were not invented ex-professo for these journeys but existed and evolved since long before. Similarly I understand that boats must have existed before that epic crossing of Wallacea you mention, even if boat technology was refined in that region (speculative but possible).
And demands a single point of origin. I believe that happens because myth-based ideas of how evolution happens influence how we interpret the evidence.
It does not demand a single point of origin but almost necessarily a single population (a broad concept). Otherwise the lineages would be unrelated until a much greater phylogenetic depth.
Back to an earlier point you made Maju:
"J's centroid on the sea is significant: it means that J exists both north and south of the Mediterranean Sea (but notice the differences in distribution between the various subclades). Similarly the centroid of O at the Chinese coast is reflecting the Austronesian O beyond the sea, etc".
And Austronesian O moved out into the Pacific how? And various clades of J exist north and south of the Mediterranean because? Surely, in both cases, the spread was accomplished at least partly by boats. J's cousin, I, could even have entered Europe with the Danubian which, surprise surprise, largely followed the Danube. T presumably owes its spread, at least through the Mediterranean, to boats.
And what about L? Why is its centroid stranded in the water? Are you sure L reached Anatolia over land? But I thought you were one of many who insist that humans had easily moved in the other direction along the coast long before L's expansion. In fact when modern humans first emerged from Africa.
When we look at the disribution of the earlier Y-chromosome haplogroup brances we see immediately the possession of boats is in no way a necessary hypothesis to explain their spread.
"Their ships were not invented ex-professo for these journeys but existed and evolved since long before".
Of course they weren't invented specifically for the journey. Yet you seem to believe humans had invented them specifically to cross the Bab al Mandab. Boats had been gradually perfected in each region for years before those great voyages. But look at the order in which the voyages you mention happened.
"Similarly I understand that boats must have existed before that epic crossing of Wallacea you mention, even if boat technology was refined in that region.
It has to have been refined, at least to some extent, in that region or they wouldn't have crossed Wallacea for a start. I would argue that humans along the western margin of Wallacea had long had reason to perfect any primitive boats they possessed, either introduced or invented locally. Any uninhabited islands are always worth a look.
"It does not demand a single point of origin but almost necessarily a single population (a broad concept)".
But how broadly spread was that population? Just because just African-derived male and female haplogroups survive doesn't mean at all that genes from neighbouring populations don't survive. Other related subspecies certainly lived outside that continent, perhaps as far as India and the Altai. For that reason the few male and female haplogroups involved need not even have come out of Africa together.
Yet you seem to believe humans had invented them specifically to cross the Bab al Mandab.
No. You should know well by now that I think that boats are as old as humankind, so to say. You should also know that I'm not 100% of the South Arabian route (but that I see no objection to it because of boats or lack of them). IMO, Nassarius beads mean coast and coast means boats.
I just can't imagine a coastal or riverine people without some sort of boats.
Maju, I see you still attack me with the same fervor as when I mentioned to you that R1b is Neolithic, or Botai invented the horse, or that Basques are not Paleolithic, etc. Did not later findings confirm it?
Try to put rabid "Euro-nationalism" aside, sorry to say, but that's what it is that makes you angry. Do you have any idea where P(xQ, R) is actually found or the actual structure of "West Eurasian" mtDNA demography, and have you ever really asked yourself (by throwing aside a certain geo-centrism) what actually constitutes West Eurasians? I don't speak unless I know something about it.
BTW, Dabban is related to Aurignacian? Will you ever talk by actually acquainting yourself with the subject?
"You should know well by now that I think that boats are as old as humankind, so to say".
Extremely unlikely Maju, although I realise you've virtually claimed modern humans paddled out of Africa and then jumped on horses to ride off into the sunrise. It's a wonder you don't claim we've always had nuclear weapons.
By the way. One of my earlier comments is not strictly correct: 'When we look at the disribution of the earlier Y-chromosome haplogroup brances we see immediately the possession of boats is in no way a necessary hypothesis to explain their spread'. I should have said 'early' spread. Obviously Y-hap C needed boats to cross Wallacea by 50,000 years ago and D needed boats to reach the Andamans about 10-15,000 years ago. I'd guess it was members of Y-hap C who actually invented boats, in the Far East somewhere. Members of K and D then adopted them.
I don't speak unless I know something about it.
No: you speak to make claims without providing support for them.
Whatever the case, I know that you always do that in the same direction.
Dabban is related to Aurignacian? -
Yes, Dabban is generally described as an Aurignacoid industry, like proto-Aurignacian, Altaian early UP. Bacho-Kiro/Bohunician, Kostenki and the Emirian-Ahmarian sequence of Palestine that probably is at the origin of them all.
D.W. Philipso, African Archaeology: "The Dabban clearly belongs to the broad complex of clearly contemporary mode-4 industries in Europe and Western Asia conventionally known as the Upper Paleolithic. (...) the closest connections (...) appear to be in the Levant".
If you search for Dabban industries, you'll find nearly everybody converging into this West Eurasian early UP (or Aurignacoid) complex. It was in that period that H. sapiens colonized West Eurasia (probably from South Asia) and mtDNA U6, for instance, can surely be traced to that migration in North Africa, providing a calibration reference for the rest of clades.
"You should know well by now that I think that boats are as old as humankind, so to say".
Extremely unlikely Maju...
It is not "extremely unlikely" that I think that way, whether you agree or not.
You know that and nevertheless you accused me of "believing" that boats were "invented" at Djibouti. That is a gross misinterpretation of what I think and what you know that I think.
It's Turkey day, better known as Thanksgiving, in the US.
Quite a bit out of context, thank you, Maju, for sharing your insight and ideas, and generally doing so much educational work, here.
"If you search for Dabban industries, you'll find nearly everybody converging into this West Eurasian early UP (or Aurignacoid) complex. It was in that period that H. sapiens colonized West Eurasia (probably from South Asia) and mtDNA U6, for instance, can surely be traced to that migration in North Africa, providing a calibration reference for the rest of clades."
At this time, the "Eastern" wing of macrohaplogroup N (including A, X and B attested in America) was still in the East. South Siberian UP dated around 43,000 YBP/48,000 CAL (statistically identical to 46,000 YBP at Boker-Tachtit [Ahmarian]) is concentrated mostly at two areas in southern Siberia, at the Altai Mountains (Kara-Bom, Kara-Tenesh, Ust’-Karakol, etc.) and the Transbaikal (Tolbaga, Kamenka, etc.). At the same time, some occurrences at the Yenisey, Angara, and Upper Lena River basins witness the occupation of the whole southern Siberia. At Kara-Bom we find all the features of European UP (volumetric flaking, chisel-like burins, blades, scrapers, adornments, etc.) plus continuity traits with Middle Paleolithic.
I can see how humans quickly migrated from South Siberia through South Asia to West Asia to Europe and North Africa. But where's the migration from Africa here?
Does anyone know if the minor clades of K were tested for M525[MNOPS]?
"You know that and nevertheless you accused me of 'believing' that boats were 'invented' at Djibouti".
Certainly you give me that impression. Another thing I've mentioned before but you've never atempted to offer any real explanation. Question: if boats are as ancient as the OoA, and so widespread and ancient, and humans could reach Australia 50,000 years ago, how come they failed to reach most of the Mediterranean islands until much more recently?
"I can see how humans quickly migrated from South Siberia through South Asia to West Asia to Europe and North Africa. But where's the migration from Africa here?"
Not there, because the South Siberian migration is more recent than the OoA one. It mainly involves downstream Y-haps R, Q and N with some C thrown in. In fact some of it is BtA (Back to Africa).
"Does anyone know if the minor clades of K were tested for M525[MNOPS]?"
I presume so, because K appears after the diamond. Quote: "and diamond: M525 that unifies KMNOPS". So K*, K1, K2, K3 and K4 are brother haplogroups to S, M, NO and P. And what's more the minor clades of K along with S and M are mostly found in the stretch east from SE Asia out into the near Pacific. Maju and I disagree as to the significance of that fact.
Everybody wants their share of genetic pie and Terry's optimism need to be commended.
YesIt is significant to find minor clades of K in SE Asia.
Also significant is Terry micely skipping L and not talking about G,H, K in mainland aisa. G,H, I, J, K are older than sub clades of K.
"Also significant is Terry micely skipping L".
You obviously cannot read. Just take a look back a bit, 'And what about L? Why is its centroid stranded in the water? Are you sure L reached Anatolia over land?'
"not talking about G,H, K in mainland aisa".
Again, you cannot, or will not, read, 'Early F-derived haplogroups are spread from Europe (G and I) to just beyond the naturally steppe vegetation region of Northwest India (H), and then thinly spread through the remainder of India and into the Far East (F*, F1, 2 3 and 4) although the eastern end of this lot may be relatively recent. It's reasonable to suppose the early human migration rapidly occupied the whole of this steppe/savanah region. The middle of it is now occupied mainly by other F-derived haplogroups (I, J, T and L) with an overlay of K-derived ones (especially R)'.
"G,H, I, J, K are older than sub clades of K".
How can K be a subclade of K? Anyway I've adequately explained how T and L are also older than sub clade K. Can you provide us with any sort of sequence that explains the modern distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroups? Or do you believe they all diversified in India and spread from there, the modern distrubution being a result of a complex and unlikely series of drift, bottlenecks and founder effects? Dienekes wrote in his original post, 'am not so sure that drift has played a major role in human Y-chromosome diversity', and I tend to agree with him.
... if boats are as ancient as the OoA, and so widespread and ancient, and humans could reach Australia 50,000 years ago, how come they failed to reach most of the Mediterranean islands until much more recently?-
I hate to go over and over the same issue and I'm sure I have made my position on this aspect clear before more than once: boats do not mean seagoing ability. Surely the circumstances of Wallacea were particular and favored a more seagoing lifestyle eventually leading to the colonization of Sahul.
This is not the normal journey anyone would make with a simple canoe or raft, so it must be considered exceptional. People easily means boats but boats do not mean long transoceanic journeys between continents.
But boats existed in Europe almost for sure since at least the Middle UP, because the Strait of Gibraltar was crossed then almost for sure, and probably since the very beginning of human colonization. Just that they were used for much less hazardous activities.
Why would anyone risk their lives heading into the open ocean with their families in a simple canoe or raft when you don't even know if there's something at the other side. That's what the colonists of Sahul did at some point. Why? Beats me, sincerely.
You just mix a simple boat, used maybe at estuaries, swamps or rivers, with high seas navigation and these are two very different things.
But we have gone through all this before more than once. You have a feeble memory.
"You just mix a simple boat, used maybe at estuaries, swamps or rivers".
I could be persuaded, with evidence, that humans had simple water craft before they'd reached Wallacea. But it's not necessary to hypothesise that they did so. They would have done just as well without.
"Why would anyone risk their lives heading into the open ocean with their families in a simple canoe or raft when you don't even know if there's something at the other side. That's what the colonists of Sahul did at some point. Why? Beats me, sincerely".
That's almost certainly not what they did. You seem to forget that Wallacea consists of a huge number of closely packed islands, more so at times of lowered sea level. The first islands were within easy sight, and reach, of the western shore. It's therefore reasonable to assume that boating developed rapidly as people realised that to be first onto an uninhabited island was the equivalent of today winning the lottery. So, simple. There you have your motivation.
Eventually people in the region became braver and reached Australia, if not New Guinea. Yet somehow people in the Mediterranean didn't realise for such a long time that uninhabited islands were such a bonanza. Why? Because they didn't have the technolgy to even consider reaching them. So when did that technology develop? We certainly have plenty of time for it to spread from SE Asia to the Eastern Mediterranean shore, via the Ganges, Indus, Persian Gulf etc.
The really interesting thing about this particular post of Dienekes is that the Y-haps can be easily arranged to support just such a spread. The new haplogroup arrangement surprised even me.
"Not there, because the South Siberian migration is more recent than the OoA one. It mainly involves downstream Y-haps R, Q and N with some C thrown in. In fact some of it is BtA (Back to Africa)."
Taken into account the parallelism between Aurignacian technology and art and the technology and art found at sites such as Kara-Bom, Denisova cave, etc, a migration from South Siberia pretty much explains the whole of European Upper Paleolithic, without any need for an out-of-Africa migration. The earlier/co-existing Mousterian assemblages in Asia again show no connection to Africa. Hence, an earlier migration out of Africa is totally unnecessary (read: fictitious) as far as the origin of systematic modern behavior in Asia and Europe is concerned. However I agree that the presence of Y-DNA Q in India (as well as mtDNA D) can be correlated with this migration.
Most importantly, Terry, the timing of the migration from South Siberia to Europe fits right into the window of 50-45K YBP usually postulated for the onset of a migration out of Africa (see Klein, Out of Africa and the Evolution of Human Behavior, 2008). If Y-DNA C haplogroup left Africa around 60K, then the population that carried it left no identifiable signatures in the human archaeological record and possessed no adaptational advantage over other Eurasian hominins as exemplified by European Paleolithic. In a situation when Eurasia was quite densely peopled by Neandertals and Homo erectuses how could this tiny original migration survive and replace all hominin populations? I guess since you're suggesting not replacement but interbreeding, this won't bother you. But mainstream out of Africa doesn't explain these facts. We're left only with neutral gene phylogenies based on modern Sub-Saharan populations to work with. But doesn't the overall archaeological and cultural/linguistic context cast doubt on the phylogenetic validity of these early African clades?
If we are to attend to genetic phylogeny, specially mtDNA but also Y-DNA, the colonization of Europe and West Eurasia in general is not a beginning but a culmination. It is possible that the Altaian Aurignacoid complex played a role in the genesis of similar industries further West but it is also possible that is one among many branches (age is similar). Asia is not sufficiently sampled archaeologically, you know, so we have to rely almost only in genetics to reconstruct the past.
Personally I'd say that this is the period (50-40 Kya) when Y-DNA P branched out and mtDNA X arrived to Siberia. But who knows? There are different opinions, I'm sure.
In a situation when Eurasia was quite densely peopled by Neandertals and Homo erectuses how could this tiny original migration survive and replace all hominin populations? -
Erectus was not anymore, at least not at any significative levels. Have you read on the Toba supervolcano? It was also at that time when Neanderthals began expanding eastward into West Asia. The remnants of H. erectus in South/East Asia was no competition.
If we are to follow the genetic signal there was a huge expansion at some point (mtDNA M node particularly) either because of arrival at a virgin land or because of a post-catastrophe scenario (bottleneck?). Whatever the case there was a moment when that small population just boomed. This probably happened between South and SE Asia in what has been described as rapid coastal migration model, pretty much mainstream since some years ago.
Describing the details of the early expansion in Asia and Sahul without sufficient archaeological evidence, following mostly the genetic trail, naturally generates various speculations but what is clear is that some Africans eventually migrated to Asia where, many generations later, found a good place to thrive, probably when they reached Southern Asia.
"It was also at that time when Neanderthals began expanding eastward into West Asia."
Apparently Neandertals were in South Siberia until 38K, if not later, (Krause et al. Neanderthals in central Asia and Siberia, 2007), which gives this species a great geographic reach, tenacity and, as we know from Levant, their own "replacement capability."
"naturally generates various speculations."
Speculations indeed.
"a migration from South Siberia pretty much explains the whole of European Upper Paleolithic, without any need for an out-of-Africa migration. The earlier/co-existing Mousterian assemblages in Asia again show no connection to Africa".
I think even Maju would agree with that. The OoA haplogroup migration happened quite some time before 'modern' humans moved into Europe. They had been rattling around the rest of Eurasia for some time by then.
"Hence, an earlier migration out of Africa is totally unnecessary (read: fictitious) as far as the origin of systematic modern behavior in Asia and Europe is concerned".
But culture and technology can expand far beyong any genetic expansion, although there would usually be some sort of genetic connection in the early stages. Therefore much of 'systematic modern behavior' need not have originated in Africa, but later.
"the timing of the migration from South Siberia to Europe fits right into the window of 50-45K YBP usually postulated for the onset of a migration out of Africa".
Again both Maju and I (and many others) would agree that the OoA migration was much earlier than 50-45K.
"If Y-DNA C haplogroup left Africa around 60K, then the population that carried it left no identifiable signatures in the human archaeological record and possessed no adaptational advantage over other Eurasian hominins as exemplified by European Paleolithic".
The problem with dating OoA stems from the fact that many people imagine there was some sort of magic change between ancient and modern humans. The only change that fits this perception is the Upper Paleolithic, which immediately leads to problems for OoA and is why 'mainstream out of Africa doesn't explain these facts'.
"there was a huge expansion at some point (mtDNA M node particularly) either because of arrival at a virgin land or because of a post-catastrophe scenario (bottleneck?)".
I'd vote for both. A recent post at anthropology.net (which you've no doublt seen) could offer evidence for why a 'small population just boomed' in South Asia around that time. But that really only applies to mtDNA M and Y-hap F. It's very difficult to put Y-hap C and mtDNA N there. Although I'll concede mtDNA N-derived R may have been involved at that time, but possibly later.
"naturally generates various speculations."
Yes. As you wrote, 'I guess since you're suggesting not replacement but interbreeding, this won't bother you'. That's exactly what's been happening ever since.
The OoA haplogroup migration happened quite some time before 'modern' humans moved into Europe. They had been rattling around the rest of Eurasia for some time by then... But culture and technology can expand far beyond any genetic expansion, although there would usually be some sort of genetic connection in the early stages. Therefore much of 'systematic modern behavior' need not have originated in Africa, but later."
We kinda need to prove all that. Reifying mtDNA and Y-DNA phylogenies that supposedly attest to the pre-45K founder effect in Africa and subsequent "rattling" of human populations is not sufficient, especially since we have a solid record of cultural variation attested diachronically by archaeology and synchronically by linguistics, kinship studies, and comparative ethnology, which clearly disfavors Africa as having any formative effect on our origins.
"The problem with dating OoA stems from the fact that many people imagine there was some sort of magic change between ancient and modern humans."
I agree with this. But I take a different tack from here. The sporadic signs of modern human behavior in Africa (Blombos Cave, etc.) need not have any bearing on the evolution of Homo sapiens sapiens. Earlier hominins were undergoing their forms of biological and cultural modernization and experimenting here and there with "art and religion." Their similarity to our behavior is purely accidental and has no phylogenetic value.
I think even Maju would agree with that.
Don't put words on my mouth. Of course that I do not agree with that: I don't think there was any clear "migration from south Siberia" into the European early UP. As I said before it's just one of many Eurasian early sites. There is no particular reason to claim an Altaian origin of Palestinian or Balcanic or otherwise European or North African early UP. It's just connected: it is within the West Eurasian cultural area.
... many people imagine there was some sort of magic change between ancient and modern humans.
In this you nail it instead: many people seem unable to think of themselves as what we actually are: big headed two footed apes. We have to be somehow "better" or whatever. But I look around and I just see a bunch of bonobos with a sallow crust of what they call "civilization", a bothersome concept whose use I have never been able to find (that is often our master instead of being our tool).
Has there to be something "cultural" that makes us specifically humans? No. What defines us as humans is potential, not achievement. Otherwise the previous generation would never be humans, because they are always pre-something. The potential was already well defined in the earliest fossils of our species. We haven't changed that much.
"What defines us as humans is potential, not achievement. Otherwise the previous generation would never be humans, because they are always pre-something. The potential was already well defined in the earliest fossils of our species. We haven't changed that much."
A futurist idealizing the ephemeral ancient signatures furnished by the narrowly attested lineages of neutral genes.
I don't know what is more outrageous, your manic claims or the fact that eurologist actually applauds you for mis-"educating" us. Aurignacian is related to Dabban because of Mode 4? You clearly don't know what Mode 4 is, continuing your proclivity for not knowing something before you speak.
I see that you also keep changing your stance on the Altai Aurignacianoid. If the people who made it is "Eastern", whatever that means, then you vehemently deny it has anything to do with European Aurignacian. But if it is made by "Westerners" (as if this actually has meaning in this context), then not only is it related but people related to it somehow surely inhabited northern Asia before Y-hg NO Mongoloids replaced them. And it's ok if Altai Aurignacian comes from the Levant but kinda not ok if it's the other way around.
Nice academic standards. Real mature, unlike posts at say, one of the Euro-nationalist/racialist forums.
Also, equating Levallois-based industries with West Eurasia is a bit of a hyper chest-pounding that is also meaningless. Or are you even more manic and saying all blade industries are West Eurasian?
Levallois technique was invented by Neanderthals. UP industries employing it seem to develop independently of each other via contact with Neanders. But of course "Caucasoids" may have evolved directly from Neanders, based on your logic. Very OK with me.
The above post was meant for Maju. Hehe..
Ren:
1. Dabban. I told you to make a search. All sources I've ever read make it parallel to Aurignacian and proto-Aurignacian(s) and somehow related with them (via Palestine). Can you provide any opinion apart of yours that says otherwise? (i.e. I want to know if I really need to provide counter evidence, but first you'd need to provide some evidence).
2. I see that you also keep changing your stance on the Altai Aurignacianoid. If the people who made it is "Eastern", whatever that means, then you vehemently deny it has anything to do with European Aurignacian.
I don't think I ever described UP Altaians as specifically "Eastern". The fact that they had Aurignacoid (or should we say Ahmarian-Emirian related?) industries, like all other West Eurasians makes them part of the West Eurasian early UP puzzle (but not at the origin necessarily).
They do have some link with East Asia? AFAIK, yes. There are some industries in Mongolia and North China that seem influenced by these (but they "do not conform to western Eurasian typological expectations of the Initial Upper Paleolithic" - just in case you want to read it the other way around, following your patriotic instincts).
Generally speaking Altai looks like a northern East-West hub, not belonging to either area but acting as bridge between them. I'd say that in this period it acted as platform for West Eurasian genes and cultural items (probably just emerged from South Asia anyhow) to head East, maybe culminating in the first colonization of America later on.
And it's ok if Altai Aurignacian comes from the Levant but kinda not ok if it's the other way around.
It's ok either way. But I don't see any particular reason to think Altaian pseudo-Aurignacian as ancestral to European Aurignacian. But they could be related somehow (as I said before there's still a lot to dig in West/Central Asia).
Or are you even more manic and saying all blade industries are West Eurasian? -
No. There are precedents in South Asia (not sure if even in Africa). But unlike in other regions, West Eurasian initial UP is already very homogeneous in this aspect. West Eurasian genetics are also very homogeneous, so it's fair to assume that both elements are related: a relatively homogeneous population generated this colonization process.
Levallois technique was invented by Neanderthals.
How come? AFAIK the oldest Levallois artifacts are African and there were never any Neanderthals in Africa. But whatever.
"It's ok either way. But I don't see any particular reason to think Altaian pseudo-Aurignacian as ancestral to European Aurignacian. But they could be related somehow (as I said before there's still a lot to dig in West/Central Asia)."
The dates in South Siberia are older than those in Western Europe and, especially, Eastern Europe. Kara-Bom is a bit older than Dabban but contemporaneous with Levant sites. Technological similarities are sufficiently significant for the industries that are so widely apart geographically. Brantigam's article is a bit too old. Goebel and Kuzmin have published a lot since.
Technologically and chronologically speaking, it's logical to assume an east-to-west population movement from South Siberia to Levant, North Africa and Europe, or a movement from Levant to North Africa, Europe and South Siberia. The puzzle, the way I see it, is that there're no unambiguously modern human remains associated with this initial Upper Paleolithic in the East or in the West. The Okladnikov cave DNA is "Neandertal" (the teeth are morphologically either "Neandertal" [Turner] or "Moderns" [Shpakova]). We could hypothesize that either "Moderns" used to make MP tools long before they shifted to UP tools (independently in the East and in the West), hence we see continuity in North Africa, Western Europe and Soth Siberia, or that it were Neandertals who evolved to make UP tools. In this case the arrival of Moderns in all these areas happened much later than it's assumed.
But those Neanderthal remains belong to the Mousterian phase, right?. Only in Europe are Neanderthals related with blade technology (Chatelperronian and presumably its close relative: Szletian). Many imagine that Neanderthals adopted this technology because of imitation of H. sapiens, the same they did with the beads.
Technologically and chronologically speaking, it's logical to assume an east-to-west population movement from South Siberia to Levant, North Africa and Europe, or a movement from Levant to North Africa, Europe and South Siberia.
Or from some unknown area in the Turkey-Iran-Southern Central Asia-NW South Asia corridor. There are industries similar to these "Aurignacoid" ones in the area around Afghanistan but are ill dated.
Notice anyhow that proto-Aurignacian and Bohunician have dates that almost reach to the 50 Kya line, what makes them roughly contemporaries of the Palestinian and the oldest claimed dates for Altai blade industries (which are not confirmed, btw).
In my opinion, Altaian and Euro-Mediterranean UP are somehow related but we cannot at this stage determine the ultimate origin or origins because the archaeology of a good deal of Asia (including many areas in between) is just incomplete. You can't finish a puzzle when many key pieces are lacking, can you?
"But those Neanderthal remains belong to the Mousterian phase, right?"
Right.
"which are not confirmed, btw."
Confirmed.
"(Chatelperronian and presumably its close relative: Szletian)."
Also, Streletsian and Bohunician in Eastern Europe, Uluzzo in Italy.
"You can't finish a puzzle when many key pieces are lacking, can you?"
I can't. You apparently can.
Also, Streletsian and Bohunician in Eastern Europe, Uluzzo in Italy.
Not that we know. There are no remains associated to these cultures and there are reasons to think them as H. sapiens cultures.
It seems to me that human colonization of Europe was a long process and that it's not really detached from what happened in West Asia and its other peripheral areas (Central Asia and North Africa).
Not sure what is Streletsian but I guess it's a different spelling for Szletian.
"There are no remains associated to these cultures and there are reasons to think them as H. sapiens cultures".
Thanks for the link. From it:
"They are similar to assemblages probably made by modern humans in the Levant (Emiran) at an earlier date and apparently represent a population movement into the Balkans during a warm climate interval".
Note: 'probably'. So no compelling reason to think of them as being 'modern' human. Could well be Neanderthal, or even some mixed population, especially bearing in mind your earlier comment, 'Many imagine that Neanderthals adopted this technology because of imitation of H. sapiens, the same they did with the beads'. So why couldn't Neanderthals have adopted these incoming Emiran assemblages too? As you've just said, 'You can't finish a puzzle when many key pieces are lacking, can you?'
I never said "compelling reasons", just "reasons". Good reasons in fact but not jury evidence.
I think that the weight of the evidence, evolutionary relations with the Ahmarian-Emirian cultural area in most cases, perforated shell beads in Uluzzian (Neanderthal beads were not perforated), bone tools, suggests a H. sapiens cultural process and the signature of a slower and older colonization of Europe that is not really distinct from other cultures of West Eurasia (in the widest sense of the term).
I can't but percieve the MP-UP transition in Europe as a single process with several peripherical branches, of which Europe is only one, albeit the best known one.
Erratum:
Last sentence should read: I can't but percieve the MP-UP transition in West Eurasia as a single process with several peripherical branches, of which Europe is only one, albeit the best known one.
Otherwise it's confusing.
"Not sure what is Streletsian but I guess it's a different spelling for Szletian."
Streletsian (or Strelets) is in Russia near Kostenki (it's MP-UP transitional), Szletian (possibly Neandertals) is in Czech republic.
All right. I'm unfamiliar with that cultural group. Is it sometimes seen as similar to and/or being part of Kostenki?
The Streletsian inventories initially identified in the Kostenki area on the Don River (Russia) were later found on the Severski Donets River (Ukraine), in Central Russia (Sungir’), and on the Kama River. These inventories included archaic Mousterian elements combined with advanced blade/laminar technology.
"It seems to me that human colonization of Europe was a long process and that it's not really detached from what happened in West Asia and its other peripheral areas (Central Asia and North Africa)".
Agreed.
"Yes, Dabban is generally described as an Aurignacoid industry, like proto-Aurignacian, Altaian early UP. Bacho-Kiro/Bohunician, Kostenki and the Emirian-Ahmarian sequence of Palestine that probably is at the origin of them all".
Maybe from Africa, but maybe not.
So, over the long period of transition from 'archaic' to 'modern' humans (60K-40K) we have similar cultures and tool technologies scattered from Moravia in the northwest, into the Levant and Africa in the southwest, the Altai in the northeast and perhaps into Northwest India in the southeast. This geographic spread is centred on the Iranian Plateau.
But from across the whole region 'modern' humans are known from skeletal material only in the Levant( and possibly Africa). Elsewhere any human remains found from the period are classified as Neanderthal, although some regard the remains as showing signs of admixture. But any mtDNA extracted so far has confirmed them as Neanderthal.
To me the only conclusion we can draw is that over the Eurasian savannah and steppe incoming 'modern' humans gradually mixed with the resident 'archaic' humans, mostly Neanderthals, and formed a hybrid population. Hybrid vigour, the hybrids being 'fitter' than either inbred population. From there this hybrid population spread southwest back into Africa, east into North China then down the coast to Australia, and southeast into India then on into SE Asia and New Guinea. In that southeastern region the two separate lines mixed; exchanging genes, technology and culture. Hybrid vigour, and off they went again: east further into the Pacific, north back through China, and west back into India and then further west into Europe and yet again into Africa. Ultimately into America and Northern Siberia.
The mtDNA and Y-hap evidence can easily be interpreted as conforming to this scenario.
Terry:
As I see it, it's not in the 60-40 Kya period but rather in the 50-40 Kya period. The oldest cultures that can be classified as "sapiens" in Europe are from c. 48 Kya, AFAIK, and the Emirian of Palestine should not be much older. The aurignacoid industry of Altai has been (at most) suggested to be 50 Ky old too.
The 60-50 Kya period instead was that of Neanderthal expansion into West (and Central) Asia. AFAIK, all Neanderthal remains in Asia belong to this period, more or less.
... and perhaps into Northwest India in the southeast. This geographic spread is centred on the Iranian Plateau.
Why NW India specifically? There are blade industries all through the subcontinent, the oldest one (c. 103 Kya) being at Central North India. Many are ill-dated though (ref.)
However the centroid could still be around Iran-AfPak. But remember that centroid does not mean origin because demic flows don't expand concentrcally in most cases but are directional.
To me the only conclusion we can draw is that over the Eurasian savannah and steppe incoming 'modern' humans gradually mixed with the resident 'archaic' humans, mostly Neanderthals, and formed a hybrid population. Hybrid vigour...
Bah.
As you know there is zero evidence of any effective admixture with Neanderthals. And if your nearly-mythical "hybrid vigour" would cause such a population to be overly successful, what implies that the Neanderthal genes would not have been lost but would have expanded massively, thank to this mythical force.
So... rather not.
But from across the whole region 'modern' humans are known from skeletal material only in the Levant( and possibly Africa). Elsewhere any human remains found from the period are classified as Neanderthal...
There are no Neanderthal remains in South Asia and there are Sapiens remains in Russia too. There are remains in South China that are Sapiens too.
Your periodization anyhow is faulty, as I mentioned above.
"As I see it, it's not in the 60-40 Kya period but rather in the 50-40 Kya period. The oldest cultures that can be classified as 'sapiens' in Europe are from c. 48 Kya".
I'm not just talking about Europe. So Australian Aborigines are not sapiens?
"And if your nearly-mythical 'hybrid vigour' would cause such a population to be overly successful, what implies that the Neanderthal genes would not have been lost but would have expanded massively".
You obviously don't know anything about practical genetics. Inbred human populations don't necessarily all have six fingers and two heads. The first characteristic of inbreeding is the the population all looks much the same, for which Neanderthals are prime candidates. As probably were the first small group of 'modern' humans to emerge from Africa. As for Neanderthal genes spreading widely, how do you know they didn't? If they had we would have no way of differentiating them from 'modern human' genes.
"there are Sapiens remains in Russia too".
Possibly. But at the same time (from German Dziebel), 'Apparently Neandertals were in South Siberia until 38K, if not later, (Krause et al. Neanderthals in central Asia and Siberia, 2007)'.
"There are blade industries all through the subcontinent, the oldest one (c. 103 Kya) being at Central North India".
Do you mean by that that H. sapiens was in India that long ago? From your reference to 'some industries in Mongolia and North China':
"Moreover we hold that there is strong continuity between the regional Middle and Initial Upper Paleolithic".
Does that continuity, too, place H. sapiens in Mogolia long before any at-all-accepted date for OoA? Otherwise how do you explain it?
Do you mean by that that H. sapiens was in India that long ago?-
Not necessarily but it is a piece of the puzzle that we can't disregard. Whatever the case it's apparent to me (though can't confirm because of the limited data) that blade tech was surely present in various parts of South Asia in that 50-40 Kya critical period. I do suspect that the blade technology on which this West Eurasian early UP colonization is founded upon had its initial evolution in South Asia
Whatever the case we need a better understanding of Asian Paleolithic in order to judge properly. From Turkey to Vietnam there are just way too many gaps in the fossil record and some possibly critical areas like Afghanistan or Burma are totally blank because of chronic political troubles.
What I'm suggesting here anyhow, is consistent with the haploid phylogenetic trees of Eurasians.
Does that continuity, too, place H. sapiens in Mogolia long before any at-all-accepted date for OoA?-
AFAIK the "aurignacoid" industries of Mongolia are not so old. They are Altai-derived and Altai UP is not older than 50 Kya. You're mixing Mousterian and UP dates, I think.
'Apparently Neandertals were in South Siberia until 38K, if not later, (Krause et al. Neanderthals in central Asia and Siberia, 2007)'.
Have you read the full paper (paywall)? The abstract is not too conclusive. All it says is that Neanderthals lived in Uzbakistan (not "South Siberia at all) and Altai. The abstract does not provide datations nor cultural contexts, which are most important.
Teshik-Tash (Uzbekistan) and Okladnikov Cave (29-38,000 YBP) mtDNA clustered with European Neandertal DNA. The Okladnikov cave is associated with Mousterian tools but geographically it's smack in the middle of other South Siberian sites featuring "Aurignacian" tools at similar dates. And no unambiguously modern human remains/DNA have been found in that area around the same time.
The Krause paper is also too brief for such an important find.
The pattern of the MP-UP transition in South Siberia looks very much like that of Europe: 1. Neandertal skeletal remains are more consistently found than Modern skeletal remains; 2. Neandertals seem to have persisted into the 30K time range; 3. Mousterian technologies seem to have persisted into the 30K time range as well; 4) the types of lithics and adornments between European and Siberian UP seem to be very similar.
The Krause paper also noticed that Neandertals, despite the known age of their population, are not very diverse genetically. They fall somewhere between Asians and Europeans (their geographic kindred) and are much less diverse than Africans. This again reminds us that African diversity isn't likely to be an indicator of age.
Although, as Luis pointed out, all ancient DNA studies seem to disprove the idea that humans and Neandertals are related, these studies may not be conclusive. It's known that the majority of sites that are hypervariable in humans are fixed in all available Neandertal sequences. This may indicate that these sites are in fact very old and that they ended up dispersed in different human mtDNA lineages by recombination (or some other process). One such example, although unattested in Neandertals, is 9bp deletion that's found in Asia, Oceania and America, but also in the Pygmies where it's thought to be homoplastic as it occurs against a different haplotypic background.
Well, direct association of a specimen with an industry is what really tells who made that industry overall. Chatelperronian would not be considered a Neanderthal industry would not be for direct correlations between remains and tools.
Hence I see no reason to think that the blade industry of Altai was Neanderthal.
Also, you will have noticed that there are very few Sapiens remains overall for that period (though they do exist in various places through all Eurasia, etc.). I think this has to do with the robustness of the skeleton, quite greater in Neanderthals. Similarly we find more remains of men than of women and of adults than children. This is an important consideration.
The genetic diversity of Neanderthals has been considered elsewhere in this blog and I think also in mine. I said then that with the tiny population that Europe or West Eurasia had back then, that genetic diversity is about the one to expect. You can't have great diversity with a single population - and that is what Neanderthals had, more or less, before they migrated to Asia c. 60,000 BP.
Similarly, among Sapiens, the hypothetical East African original population was small at some point and hence the species diversity was narrowed. This happened long before the OOA, actually before the separation of Khoisan branch. However Africa is several times the size of Europe, and we know from the fossil record that our species was already expanding and branching out at least c. 100-75,000 BP, and we know by fossil data that we already existed as species c. 160,000 BP. So our species was diversifying in Africa long before Neanderthals did in West Eurasia, just because they used more space.
I have argued elsewhere that the only well defined advantage I can clearly acknowledge to our species over Neanderthals is the length of our legs, which allowed us to travel more and run faster. That way, when our cousins were expanding into West Asia, we were not just in Africa but also in South and East Asia, as well as Sahul. At that point Neanderthals had already lost the competition, I think.
"Hence I see no reason to think that the blade industry of Altai was Neanderthal."
I agree. Moreover, direct association between tools and bones doesn't exclude diffusion both ways, so in areas and times in which Neandertals coexisted with Moderns any such association leaves room for speculation. So it'd be good if out-of-Africanists could show that Sub-Saharan Africa in fact has UP/LSA technologies and adornments that are similar to the ones found in Europe and South Siberia but a few thousands of years earlier than those. Otherwise, we could hypothesize that from Levant behavioral Moderns colonized not just North Africa but trickled down into Sub-Saharan Africa as well. Hofmeyr skull at 36K with "Cro-magnon" features can represent a remnant of this very migration. Plus Khoisans aren't typical "Africans" either, as we know.
"I said then that with the tiny population that Europe or West Eurasia had back then, that genetic diversity is about the one to expect."
This is exactly right. Genetic diversity reflects population size. African diversity has no bearing on the age of this population, contrary to what a slew of papers says. Reduced diversity in Amerindians, similarly to the Neandertal situation, may indicate the survival of an ancient human population structure, as several generations of geneticists have argued.
"Also, you will have noticed that there are very few Sapiens remains overall for that period (though they do exist in various places through all Eurasia, etc.)."
Looks like that securely dated ones only begin to mushroom after 30K, which leaves the whole initial UP up for grabs between Neandertals and Moderns.
"Similarly we find more remains of men than of women and of adults than children."
One of the Okladnikov Cave specimens comes from a subadult.
So it'd be good if out-of-Africanists could show that Sub-Saharan Africa in fact has UP/LSA technologies and adornments that are similar to the ones found in Europe and South Siberia but a few thousands of years earlier than those.
There is a MSA-Indian MP (Jawalpuram) connection. Not sure right now if there is blade tech in Africa (vague memories but not feeling like checking) and or how it relates to West Eurasian UP.
There is a continuity in elements like perforated beads anyhow.
I don't think it's like "we Africanists" have to defend anything because there's no serious alternative theory. However all that adds up to the catalog of evidence is good.
Otherwise, we could hypothesize that from Levant...
I bet there's people who claim that too. However the mtDNA diversity disproportion between Africa and the rest (Eurasia-plus) makes that scenario highly unlikely. Add to that the fossil record, which is older for East Africa.
However there was a rather old presence of H. sapiens in North Africa and Palestine, whose demise may be somewhat explained by drought and Neanderthal advance but whose possible continuity in both Africa and Eurasia we know little about.
In my opinion there is a good chance that this short-lived Mediterranean cultural complex might have been at the root of the OOA. But I'm not sure, because the coastal migration theory via South Arabia, with a more recent date for the migration, is also pretty good. So far the data is inconclusive for this crucial "detail".
This is exactly right. Genetic diversity reflects population size. African diversity has no bearing on the age of this population...
Diversity can be measured in several ways. Talking about just genetic diversity is ambiguous. What matters here is that Africa hosts the oldest separate branches of both haploid phylogenies, having undoubtedly highest diversity for that phylogenetic ancestral level. This is specially marked for mtDNA, with all non-African lineages making up just two out of dozens at the 7th tier phylogenetic node! Additionally, the fossil record supports an African origin as well. This issue is very clear, so quit it please.
One of the Okladnikov Cave specimens comes from a subadult.
Rule -> exception.
"So far the Neanderthal genome and that of modern humans differ exactly the same regardless of what subgroup of modern humans you take".
It may come as a suprise to you but genes are not actually flagged as to which species they come from. If some Neanderthal genes had been carried by, for example, Y-haps C, D, E and F those genes would have been carried throughout the world and now be indistinguishable from 'modern' human genes.
"I do suspect that the blade technology on which this West Eurasian early UP colonization is founded upon had its initial evolution in South Asia".
And I suspect you're correct. But that is just the blade technology. This technology can in no way be automatically connected to the first 'modern' humans through the region. Anatomically modern humans seem to have become very widespread by the time this blade technology appeared. Even reaching Australia and New Guinea.
"They are Altai-derived and Altai UP is not older than 50 Kya. You're mixing Mousterian and UP dates, I think".
But that doesn't mean at all that 'modern' humans arrived in the region just 50Kya. The problem is continuity in the region across the Mousterian/UP boundary, so the same people are presumably involved. So when did 'modern' humans arrive in the Altai? Impossible to tell. You certainly can't use the first appearance of UP or blade technology to date the arrival.
"All it says is that Neanderthals lived in Uzbakistan (not "South Siberia at all) and Altai".
That still has them surviving in the Altai after modern humans had arrived there.
"The Krause paper also noticed that Neandertals, despite the known age of their population, are not very diverse genetically".
Exactly. Inbred. Yet Maju also insists that a group of people carrying no more than just two mtDNA haplogroups, and possibly just one Y-hap, were not inbred. On the other hand he actually admits they were: 'the hypothetical East African original population was small at some point and hence the species diversity was narrowed'. Narrowed even more with the small subset of that population that took part in any OoA.
"So it'd be good if out-of-Africanists could show that Sub-Saharan Africa in fact has UP/LSA technologies and adornments that are similar to the ones found in Europe and South Siberia but a few thousands of years earlier than those".
I'm sure it doesn't. The UP proper was introduced to Africa.
"Otherwise, we could hypothesize that from Levant behavioral Moderns colonized not just North Africa but trickled down into Sub-Saharan Africa as well".
Most likely that is correct. And we know that Y-hap E made it all through Sub-Saharan Africa, possibly originating outside that continent or at least from the Sahel region.
"which leaves the whole initial UP up for grabs between Neandertals and Moderns".
Or a mix of the two.
"However the mtDNA diversity disproportion between Africa and the rest (Eurasia-plus) makes that scenario highly unlikely".
But that diversity is totally irrelevant when considering the origin of UP/blade technology, in fact introduced to Africa. DNA and technology are not automatically intimately connected.
"In my opinion there is a good chance that this short-lived Mediterranean cultural complex might have been at the root of the OOA".
Almost certainly so, at least for mtDNA.
What I'm suggesting here anyhow, is consistent with the haploid phylogenetic trees of Eurasians".
Especially if you confine your consideration to Europe. Beyond that it requires much speculative use of drift, founder effect and bottlenecks. And requires major speculation to fit SE and East Asia.
"the coastal migration theory via South Arabia, with a more recent date for the migration, is also pretty good".
For a start any real evidence for such a route is much too recent to fit any realistic date for OoA.
If some Neanderthal genes had been carried by, for example, Y-haps C, D, E and F those genes would have been carried throughout the world and now be indistinguishable from 'modern' human genes.
Terry: you have actual Neanderthal full genome (one individual so far, five next year) and you have actual Sapiens full genomes. They just don't match. The sequencing of the Neanderthal genome sentences this matter as far as it can be reasonably solved.
This technology can in no way be automatically connected to the first 'modern' humans through the region.
Fair enough. But, considering that blade tech is accompanied by human remains in many different Paleolithic cultural contexts and only in Chatelperronian it is associated to Neanderthal, there is some logic in considering that many other cultural contexts where this technology is found could be work of Homo sapiens. Inversely, Mousterian is typically attributed to Neanderthals, tough it's possible that in some cases it was used by H. sapiens.
But that doesn't mean at all that 'modern' humans arrived in the region just 50Kya.
Fair enough again. But (per above) there is a reasonable suspicion.
The problem is continuity in the region across the Mousterian/UP boundary...
Sure. That problem is not privative of Altai: it happens in Palestine and Europe too. And it happens in the Chatelperron-Aurignac transition, where many sites correspond to both cultures and there are controversial cases of interstratification that have been recently attacked by Zilhao.
However the overall pattern is clear: Neanderthals and their related Mousterian industry recede and eventually vanish, while Homo sapiens and their related blade technology takes over. The local details may vary somewhat (and we don't know enough in many cases) but the overall pattern is clear.
...
...
Yet Maju also insists that a group of people carrying no more than just two mtDNA haplogroups, and possibly just one Y-hap, were not inbred.
I don't like this terminology because it is ambiguous and suggests certain implications that are not clear, like when you talk of hybrid vigor.
Those concepts may be applied in the intra-species realm maybe but hold no validity for the inter-species dimension, where most hybrids are faulty, when they can exist at all.
Also, we know that speciation happens in fact even when the two species share the same area. And we know that genes are not white or black normally but often of varied colors. And if the green gene can offer some advantages, the red gene surely can too, even if these are different. So "inbred" populations can perfectly do with less genetic diversity. It's not like people who can't reach a healthy adulthood can realistically reproduce themselves. Most of these will have pretty decent and viable genetic sets.
IMO, it's just one of your obsessions, like those "Wallacean boats". You put the cart before the horses: "I hypothesize this, hence it must be that way... I rationalize the whole matter so my hypothetical white elephants become crucial". However, I think this mental process is essentially wrong: pseudo-science.
But that diversity is totally irrelevant when considering the origin of UP/blade technology, in fact introduced to Africa.
Blade technology may have 500,000 years in Kenya, 380,000 in West Asia and 300,000 in Europe. Notice that these hyper-old dates do not correlate with H. sapiens (nor Neanderthal) expansion, they just show that the technology was fooling around looooong before it became one of the signatures of West Eurasian UP and H. sapiens colonization of this planetary region.
Especially if you confine your consideration to Europe. Beyond that it requires much speculative use of drift, founder effect and bottlenecks. And requires major speculation to fit SE and East Asia.
Not so big deal, you just have to remove your psychological barriers to coastal migration and also trans-mountain migration in the S-SE Asian borderlands.
The word "bottleneck" is another white elephant: pure sensationalism. There are no true bottlenecks in human history. Even the much genocided North American natives and other similar cases through the world retain rather high genetic diversity, not less and often larger than other better-off native populations of America.
Founder effects and drift are just logical and normal in any migration and with low population levels respectively. Who does not want to deal with these two concepts, cannot deal with population genetics.
"What matters here is that Africa hosts the oldest separate branches of both haploid phylogenies, having undoubtedly highest diversity for that phylogenetic ancestral level. This is specially marked for mtDNA, with all non-African lineages making up just two out of dozens at the 7th tier phylogenetic node! Additionally, the fossil record supports an African origin as well. This issue is very clear, so quit it please."
At least in a conversation between you and me you have to quit your recitation of the out-of-Africa idea. I brought new systematic evidence to the table and challenged the existing one. I understand the pros and cons of both sides. The fossil record is ambiguous because, as you know, there're many gaps in Asia, Australasia and America. Archaeologically, there's no evidence for an LSA migration out of Africa but there's evidence for an UP migration into Africa. Linguistic diversity is greater in America, Asia and Australasia. Kinship systems disfavor African antiquity. Genetic phylogenies are questionable in their determination of ancestral and derived nodes. Phylogeography brings those problems to light.
I brought new systematic evidence to the table and challenged the existing one.
Contemporary cultural traits are a most slippery and diffuse field. Even linguistics is. You can't prove anything only with your subjective interpretation of that: it's just wild speculation that contradicts fundamental "fossil" data, from both the archaeological and genetic fields.
It's just so absurd and surrealist that you have to insist on it again and again...
"Contemporary cultural traits are a most slippery and diffuse field. Even linguistics is. You can't prove anything only with your subjective interpretation of that: it's just wild speculation that contradicts fundamental "fossil" data, from both the archaeological and genetic fields."
It's your subjective interpretation.
"It's just so absurd and surrealist that you have to insist on it again and again..."
I'm not saying everybody should instantly adopt the out-of-America theory, but you at least should look at things holistically and see that out-of-Africa is not a fact but a hypothesis that has its strong and weak points.
"So 'inbred' populations can perfectly do with less genetic diversity".
Very seldom is that so. Inbred populations usually die out. The only time they don't is if all disadvantageous reccessive genes are bred out before the population becomes extinct. That happens very seldom. Extinction is usually ultimately caused by infertility so your comment, 'It's not like people who can't reach a healthy adulthood can realistically reproduce themselves'. That's usually the problem. They can't.
"they just show that the technology was fooling around looooong before it became one of the signatures of West Eurasian UP and H. sapiens colonization of this planetary region".
But not the signature of Eastern Eurasia. Note, '500,000 years in Kenya, 380,000 in West Asia and 300,000 in Europe'. So how come it didn't make it to Australia at all? Or didn't make it to East Asia until just 20-30Kya? Some sort of problem there obviously.
Those world diagrams of the spread of various paragroups are somewhat misleading.
Frequencies of these paragroups in the 21st century really doesn't say much about the past. The ages of haplgroups using whatever method, Dienekes or the peer accepted norm, do not reflect the spread of those haplogroups. Someone said in the beginning that the centroid for J looks like Arabia not the east Mediterranean. J is most frequent in SE Arabia but it lacks the genetic diversity of J in other parts of the Middle East and Anatolia indicating frequency and origin point are not concordant. Haplogroup I* is not likely Anatolian in origin.
That brings me to the concept of European versus Middle Eastern or North African. They are all connected to the Mediterranean Sea and the ancient peoples, pre Hellenic Greeks or Latin Romans or Phoenicians, prehistoric peoples traded all over the Mediterranean. To call some haplogroup European or Middle Eastern or North African in origin based on modern distributions and frequencies is rather simplistic. It is probably more realistic of actual population movements to view the regions of Europe, Africa, Anatolia and the Middle East as being Mediterranean, and having its own peopling events totally distinct from those that occurred in Central, North, Western, Eastern Europe, Arabia, Caucasus and NE Africa.
Linguistic and genetics have loose correlations. Too much is made of linguistics. How many languages can be traced back more than 10ky? I reckon none, unless you like fanciful ideas dressed up as theories. Linguistic diversity as found in Oceania is more due to isolation of many small populations. New Guinea is a prime example with its quick growing, and overgrowing vegetation, combined with mountainous terrain, and high rainfall causing communication and obstacles to transport and movement. Europe in comparison is as flat as a pancake which probably facilitated the spread of I.E languages after the Bronze Age.
All species will become extinct. It is inevitable. Humanity will have its day like all the other creatures that once crawled, swam, flew or walked.
Inbred populations usually die out.
Don't be so extreme: many populations survive brutal bottlenecks.
Anyhow, Wikipedia will reply to you better than this urbanite:
Natural selection works to remove individuals who acquire the above types of traits from the gene pool. Therefore, many more individuals in the first generation of inbreeding will never live to reproduce. Over time, with isolation such as a population bottleneck caused by purposeful (assortative) breeding or natural environmental stresses, the deleterious inherited traits are culled.
The cheetah once was reduced by disease, habitat restriction, overhunting of prey, competition from other predators (primarily lions, competition from human land use, etc.) to a very small number of individuals.[2][3] All cheetahs now come from this very small gene pool... The cheetah is also known, in spite of its small gene pool, for few genetic illnesses.
I know that the tiny population of certain South Atlantic island has suffered from inbreeding up to some extreme point. But this would hardly be the case in large areas such as Africa or Europe.
Some level of inbreeding happened to all large mammal populations at some point because large animals just can't bee too numerous (in pre-agricultural conditions). But as long as this level is not too high, it should be no big deal, just a marginal decrease if fitness in comparison with a hypothetical not inbred population (that can't exist because we are all related to some extent).
The proof is that humankind and cheetahs are still alive. And so do so many other "bottlnecked" species and populations. The case of Tristan da Cunha, a tiny island where inbreeding has effectively caused clear illness susceptibility, is extreme and can't represent the ancestral African or Eurasian population.
But not the signature of Eastern Eurasia.
Sure, there the technology follows a totally different pattern. We should not assume that this technology, maybe of some relevance for West Eurasia in the period mentioned, has some sort of "universal value", the same that eating with chopsticks is not better than eating with spoon or viceversa.
I can only see some relative correlation between H. sapiens and blade tech in West Eurasia. And that is why I think (together with the low genetic diversity) it was a specific homogeneous population who was behind Western UP overall.
@Ponto: there are many differences among the various Mediterranean peoples, and that is evident in genetics too. This is because most of their ancestry pre-dates high seas navigation (at least in most cases), so at that time the Med was a barrier and not a corridor, as was later on.
In the case of J, it's clear that the southern coast (Africa) has loads of J1 but very little J2, while the northern coast (Europe) has aboundance of J2b but not much of the other lineages. J2a, the third major lineage is pretty much limited to West Asia, where J2b and J1 are also found.
Only on these grounds I see futile to reject a West Asian origin. However the centroid is further west - and would not be for the Indian J2b, it would be even farther west, maybe near Sicily. But the centroid does not mean origin: just current center of spread and frequency.
I would say that, in Europe, J2b and E-V13 seem related to Cardium Pottery (whose makers had high seas navigation but spread essentially trough the northern coasts anyhow). However this can't be correlated with Indian J2b for instance, though a different Neolithic spread can be though for that semi-clade.
"I would say that, in Europe, J2b and E-V13 seem related to Cardium Pottery".
I agree with that. And I strongly suspect Y-hap I spread into Europe with the Linear Pottery, possibly from somewhere near J2's origin. E seems to have been picked up somewhere along the way in the Mediterranean, and may result from an independent movement.
"However this can't be correlated with Indian J2b for instance, though a different Neolithic spread can be though for that semi-clade".
Also, I agree. In fact it looks as though J, especially J2, is associated with the early development of farming in the Zagros and Anatolian foothills. It spread through the Mediterranean by sea and overland to India.
"I can only see some relative correlation between H. sapiens and blade tech in West Eurasia".
But it's not a marker for the H. sapiens expansion. It followed, rather than led, any expansion. Many H. sapiens populations did not originally have blade technology.
"Don't be so extreme: many populations survive brutal bottlenecks".
Very seldom, and usually these days only through human interference.
"The cheetah once was reduced ... to a very small number of individuals".
But how brutal was that bottleneck in fact? I strongly suspect the brutality has been exaggerated. Besides which human interference was certainly partly responsible for its survival in parts of its range.
"Some level of inbreeding happened to all large mammal populations at some point because large animals just can't bee too numerous (in pre-agricultural conditions)".
And that is the main problem for their survival today. The geographic range becomes fragmented and inbreeding does its thing. Historically people have often been surprised at what appears to be the sudden extinction of a species. Many adult individuals remain long after the population ceases to reproduce itself. When they die, that's it.
And I strongly suspect Y-hap I spread into Europe with the Linear Pottery...
Neither haplogroup I nor Linear Pottery appear to have originated outside Europe. Anyhow, haplogroup I2a has a Cardium Pottery area spread, if anything, while I1 and I2b highest concentrations don't correlate at all with LBK either.
Many H. sapiens populations did not originally have blade technology.
In West Eurasia? Which ones?
But how brutal was that bottleneck in fact? -
IDK, brutal enough. Seals, otters and other animals have also gone through brutal bottlenecks and survived (with some human help in form essentially of of protection). Nothing of the kind is likely to have happened to humans, though it's not impossible either. The convergence (fixation) in a single haploid clade is normal in a single population that just remains stable for long.
And that is the main problem for their survival today. The geographic range becomes fragmented and inbreeding does its thing.
But that did not happen to humans. Though was possibly a factor in the demise of Neanderthals.
For me this is another of your fetishes. If you'd be right, humankind would not exist today.
"In West Eurasia? Which ones?"
The ones in the Altai, for a start. But we can extrapolate, after a short introduction. There appears to be a connection between the Altai and the rest of Western Eurasia. From the link you provided on 'The Initial Upper Paleolithic in Northeast Asia':
"The most striking parallels with western Eurasian sites are found with the 'flat cores' and 'cores with lateral crests' of the Bohuncian ... as well as recently excavated Initial Upper Paleolithic assemblages in Turkey ... Syria ... and the Levant ... "
And:
"Throughout western Eurasia there appear to be common technological trends defining this phase, including (1) blade production from cores combining elements of both Middle ans Upper Paleolithic technologies".
But back to the Altai:
"As in western Eurasia, the Initial Upper Paleolithic emerges in Northeast Asia sometime after 45,000 years ago and is characterized by the elaboration of blade technologies showing a mixture of Middle and Upper Paleolithic characteristics".
The Altai site itself is described thus:
"The Middle Paleolithic collections derive from strata 9-7 and thus have an expected age of approximately 62,200 years B.P. (calendric). The Upper Paleolithic collections derive from stratum 6 and have a corresponding radiocarbon age of 43,000 B.P."
The transition to blade technolgies coincides with the break in deposition. But whether the population had moved away or stayed there:
"Initial Upper Paleolithic assemblages occur stratigraphically above Middle Paleolithic industries at Kara Bom and at Tsangaan Agui (Derevianko et al. 2000a), but it appears that they do not replace them".
And:
"Moreover, we hold that there is strong continuity between the regional Middle and Initial Upper Paleolithic".
So blade technology is intrusive to the region, not indigenous. So, either the 62,200 B.P. people were Neanderthal and/or descendants of Pekin man, and we have hybridization, or the pre-existing population was already modern. Take your pick.
Your lack of knowledge regarding practical genetics obviously precludes any productive discussion concerning the subtle interplay of inbreeding and hybrid vigour that underlies the evolution of all species and subspecies.
Terry said: "Many H. sapiens populations did not originally have blade technology".
Maju replied: "In West Eurasia? Which ones?"
Terry replied: "The ones in the Altai, for a start".
(...)
"So blade technology is intrusive to the region, not indigenous. So, either the 62,200 B.P. people were Neanderthal"...
Yes: they were Neanderthals most probably.
"... and we have hybridization, or the pre-existing population was already modern. Take your pick".
Why do you exclude replacement, like happened in similar conditions elsewhere in West Eurasia? There's nothing in all you mention that strictly excludes demic replacement. There's just a brief one sentence opinion on some "appearance" of non-replacements but it's hardly conclusive without further data.
Hybridation must be proven with genetic data, IMO.
"Moreover, we hold that there is strong continuity between the regional Middle and Initial Upper Paleolithic".
Oops, this is the sentence.
So how do you conciliate that there was species replacement and no cultural replacement? The same happens in West Asia for what I know: Mousterian becomes UP, Neanderthals vanish and eventually all that there is is Homo sapiens.
However no sign of hybridation anywhere.
As far as replacement vs, hybridization goes, an interesting case study to consider is that of the woolly mammoths. They first colonized America from Asia but then returned as a new species to entirely replace their old Asian and Western Beringian kin by 40K. Siberian mammoths didn't interbred with the New World newcomers and died out without a known cause.
Out of America: Ancient DNA Evidence for a New World Origin of Late Quaternary Woolly Mammoths
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2808%2900970-6
"Why do you exclude replacement".
Because there's continuity. Can't you read? Or do you only accept comments in scientific papers that support your own elitist concept of human evolution?
"So how do you conciliate that there was species replacement and no cultural replacement?"
Yes. That's what our theory demands; species replacement without cultural replacement, consistently, throughout the world. Very unlikely. Much more likely is cultural replacement without species replacement, an extremely common occurrence throughout history and much of recent prehistory. And a conclusion supported by the evidence we have so far for Northeast Asia. But a situation you are pathologically unable to accept.
"Hybridation must be proven with genetic data, IMO".
And how do you do that? Even humans and chimps share a huge number of genes, so humans and Neanderthals would share even more. We have no method of separately identifying any introgressed widespread Neanderthal genes from any anciently shared genes. The work you refered to above is, by definition, considering Neanderthal genes that were not advantageous for any expanding human population.
"and died out without a known cause".
I'm very sure that I know the cause, as do many others. However it's not a popular conclusion, for some reason or other.
"I'm very sure that I know the cause, as do many others. However it's not a popular conclusion, for some reason or other."
And what is? I'm fine either way, but I'm still learning about your ideas, Terry.
Because there's continuity. Can't you read? -
I can read but not only that, I can also read the genetic data that says there is no continuity between Neanderthals and us.
Where my family comes from there is a Paleolithic cave that has the full sequence from Chatelperronian to the Iron Age. It's apparently continuous but we do know now that this stratigraphic continuity may be misleading and that there is no genetic continuity from Neanderthals to us.
There are a zillion cases of stratigraphic uncertainty on this matter of continuity. We know from the skeletal remains that one species replaced the other, in Altai, in Palestine and in Europe, what we don't know exactly is the fine detail of this replacement at a local level in all places.
But to decide that there was genetic continuity against all available genetic evidence is just not acceptable.
And how do you do that? -
Finding the damn Neanderthal genes in us. So far there is nothing and our knowledge is rapidly increasing in this aspect but producing nothing that favors any sort of Neandetrhal contribution to our genome.
We have no method of separately identifying any introgressed widespread Neanderthal genes from any anciently shared genes.
Yes we have, unless you are claiming that all humankind was affected at the same levels by Neanderthal admixture, what is illogical. Pygmies for example did not even get blade tech until the LSA and only in vary localized cases - they should not have any or almost any Neanderthal admixture. Virtually the same applies to Khoisans and, for what I know to all people outside West Eurasia.
We can even study the full genome of ancient humans from various places and times, which would be very interesting on its own, regardless of whatever implications re. Neanderthals.
So, yes we can know.
"Pygmies for example did not even get blade tech until the LSA and only in vary localized cases".
Probably introduced with Y-hap E.
"they should not have any or almost any Neanderthal admixture".
And for that reason that's who we should be comparing posible Neanderthal-descended populations to. Any genes not possessed by Pygmies and Khoisans are possible candidates. This would narrow the search in the Neanderthal genome. But at present the pressure has been towards emphasising the similarity between all such present-day groups. That's what's so good about Dienekes blog. He's not afraid to explore the differences.
"But to decide that there was genetic continuity against all available genetic evidence is just not acceptable".
But you do have to explain why there appears to be technological continuity almost everywhere, despite the lack of evidence demonstrating genetic continuity. Very difficult.
We have to imagine that two species, who had separated half a million years ago (at least double that in your belief system), had somehow exchanged technologies, but not genes, over much of whatever period of separation, right up until the Middle Paleolithic gave way to the Initial Upper Paleolithic, around 45,000 years ago. That's a massive problem.
I agree that technology can, and does, spread independently of genes, but that's within just a single species. Surely, therefore, either modern humans were responsible for the late Middle Paleolithic (and had reached Central Asia by at least 60,000 years ago) or we're back to hybrids.
"So, yes we can know".
And may eventually do so.
"And what is?"
From the abstract:
"during the Last Glacial Maximum, mammoth populations do not appear to have suffered an overall decline in diversity, despite differing responses on either side of the Bering land bridge".
So we can't blame climate change. What is really interesting is that mammoths become extinct in each region soon after humans arrive. Not just mammoths in fact. Most other large and middle-sized species. And the big game in Australia died out by 45Kya.
Could it be possible that humans, along with their spears and fires, splintered the populations, leading to their extinction?
For Maju:
"Oops, this is the sentence".
Just one sentence? You really are blind. The article is full of references to, and examples of, technological continuity.
Any genes not possessed by Pygmies and Khoisans are possible candidates.
No. Any genes shared by real Neanderthals and parts of humankind (in particular West Eurasians) but not others, would be candidates. There is nothing of that so far (and as I don't think it's just bad luck with the first sample, I think we will be in the same situation when Paabo and colleagues release their conclusions from 5 more individuals).
But you do have to explain why there appears to be technological continuity...
Apparent stratigraphic continuity. Sure but I do not have an explanation and I don't see that the Neanderthal introgression hypothesis can be supported only on that, nor seems a good explanation for the problem.
Recently Zilhao argued in very harsh tones with Mellars because he believes that the interstratification of Chatelperronian and Aurignacian in at least two cases (out of three) is an artifact of faulty methods. He also apparently solved the problem of La Almagra style pottery in Southern Iberia, reassigning it to the Epicardial period (and not pre-Cardial as had been argued).
So maybe you could ask Zilhao for his opinion on the matter. Personally I will wait till archaeological clarification happens (if it ever does happen).
We have to imagine that two species, who had separated half a million years ago (at least double that in your belief system), had somehow exchanged technologies, but not genes...
I see no problem with that. In my reality people who gather to exchange technology or stories or whatever, normally don't end up sleeping together (and it's very likely that they are the of same gender anyhow, most likely guys). Most people (also foragers) marry (whatever the meaning of this word in each particular context) within their ethnic group, what does not hinder inter-ethnic relations.
Plus there is the issue of whether both Homo species could breed at all, biologically speaking. Plus also the bio-cultural issues that must necessarily rise between two so different species (tigers and lions can breed with some problems but they tend not to because of different mating behavior for example: tigresses intimidate male lions, etc.)
So, IMO they could exchange technology and have very little sex perfectly.
Surely, therefore, either modern humans were responsible for the late Middle Paleolithic (and had reached Central Asia by at least 60,000 years ago) or we're back to hybrids.
No. We have Neanderthal remains and we have Sapiens remains. We don't have hybrids. So there was demic replacement at some point, Just that the matter has not been yet sufficiently researched.
Take it easy.
"I see no problem with that".
It's fascinating that you've finished up having to argue enthusiastically that technology and genes are totally unconnected during the Middle Paleolithic (to accomodate the sameness of the tools over a wide region) yet next minute you're having to argue just as enthusiastically that technology and genes are intimately connected during the Initial Upper Paleolithic (to link blade technology only with modern humans). Something's inconsistent there.
It is what the data says:
Phase 1: Neanderthal, Mousterian
Phase 2: transition, no specific remains, "continuity"
Phase 3: H. sapiens, blade tech
The only issue I can see is the apparent stratigraphic continuity, which must have a logical explanation, that will be probably clarified as research advances.
Assuming otherwise would get us into a logical impossibility, which is what you are actually defending.
You're being deliberately obtuse, aren't you?
"Phase 2: transition, no specific remains, 'continuity'".
That's the problem I've been trying to discuss, but you keep dodging it.
"The only issue I can see is the apparent stratigraphic continuity, which must have a logical explanation".
And that logical explanation involves either the people were Neanderthals or they were already modern human. I actually plump for the latter, but am open to the former (but that simply shifts the Neanderthal/modern transition problem back a little).
We know modern humans had reached the Levant by 90,000 years ago, if not earlier. Of course you refuse to even consider the possibility that humans had moved so far north before the Toba-induced ice age. It messes up your nice, neat theory regarding India.
"Phase 2: transition, no specific remains, 'continuity'".
That's the problem I've been trying to discuss, but you keep dodging it.
And what do you want me to do? To finance an archaeological expedition to attempt to solve the issue? I wish I was that rich...
And that logical explanation involves either the people were Neanderthals or they were already modern human. I actually plump for the latter, but am open to the former (but that simply shifts the Neanderthal/modern transition problem back a little).
It's been mentioned before that we do have both Neanderthal remains and Sapiens remains... but in a chronological order. It's similar to what we see in Palestine or the Franco-Cantabrian region.
We just don't understand well the transition well. But we do understand the original situation (Neanderthals with Mousterian or transitional tech) and the final one (H. sapiens with blade tech).
I don't really know which is your point of contention. I am not sure anymore if you're arguing in favor of hypothetical hybridation or in favor of long Sapiens presence in the area or what? Neither has any evidence in favor.
"And what do you want me to do? To finance an archaeological expedition to attempt to solve the issue?"
That would be nice.
"We just don't understand well the transition well".
You seem very sure of the transition: Modern humans simply replaced Neanderthals. I maintain that we don't understand the transition yet, but it was far more complicated than the way you see it.
"I am not sure anymore if you're arguing in favor of hypothetical hybridation or in favor of long Sapiens presence in the area or what?"
Either one, but both probably involve hybridization, the latter involving much earlier hybridization than the latter. Interestingly eastern Neanderthals are not as extremely 'Neanderthaloid' as are western ones. And have you seen this at Mathilda's:
http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/neanderthals-%e2%80%98had-sex%e2%80%99-with-modern-man/
As I said to Mathilda (the comment is still awaiting moderation) Paabo is precisely the one who has smashed the hybridation hypothesis. He still thinks that there was sex but was inconsequential.
Maju, Maju... You are a hopeless case.
How can I disprove the relationship between Dabban and Aurignacian when it's a non-issue? How can I disprove the relationship between Dabban and Martian rocks? Is there an article that addresses this issue? And I keep telling you proto-Aurignacian and Aurignacian are unrelated phenomena. This is not news, and it basically states it in your own source in that post of your blog about the peopling of Europe.
As for the relationship between Altai and Sibero-Mongolian/North China/northern Asia UP, it should be in your own link, linking the the common use of Levallois and or blade technology, and hence inconveniently termed West Eurasian to be used manically by you. You have the habit of citing things that actually contradict your own claims, as if you don't bother to read your own sources. It's rather unbecoming.
As for commonalities.. Yes, these all shared initial UP characteristics (rather an inevitable) of transition from MP as distinguished from your Aurignacian or Gravettian. As for this beating of the dead horse of a Greater West Eurasia lebensraum that includes UP western India and Central Asia, you'd think by now you'd see what is in front of your eyes. The Russians have already passed through Brandenburg Gate.
Maju wrote, quoting from his link, "do not conform to western Eurasian typological expectations of the Initial Upper Paleolithic".
You assume Central Asian or Altai initial UP is like "Western" UP.
Maju wrote, "It's ok either way."
Maju, we've been there done that. As soon as I find something that vaguely suggests that the Altai Aurignacianoid should be considered Eastern moving west, a foreign element to your West Eurasian, you start to violently protest/argue that the Aurignacianoids are unrelated.
And as soon as you convince yourself the Altai is in some West Eurasia world, you fall back on narratives about wayward West Eurasians lost in East Asia, bringing fire and saving the locals.
So lost.
Ok, I clicked on your link. It's actually the first paper on UP Asia I gave you to read.
How many times have you cited things that is detrimental to your cause? You are something else, Maju, this habit of not bothering to read a full paragraph of your own sources. Is this Attention Deficit Disorder, or Mania, or some sort of personality disorder? I'm not kidding or trying to insult you. I know you get a fat check every month from the Castillians.
Maju wrote, "But unlike in other regions, West Eurasian initial UP is already very homogeneous in this aspect. West Eurasian genetics are also very homogeneous, so it's fair to assume that both elements are related: a relatively homogeneous population generated this colonization process."
Phylogeography now seems to suggest otherwise, both in the late introduction of P as well as in mtDNA patterns. But I let you stew.
Maju wrote, "How come? AFAIK the oldest Levallois artifacts are African and there were never any Neanderthals in Africa. But whatever."
You missed the point. UP industries develop gradually from the Mousterian, if we believe these authors. If the UP develops from the Neanderthal Mousterian, then for practical matters the Neanderthals developed Levallois and not incoming Moderns, right? I mean who cares if Homo erectus invented what in Africa. Even if you argue that way, Neanderthals are closer in form in many ways to erectus than we are, right?
Maju wrote, quoting from his link, "do not conform to western Eurasian typological expectations of the Initial Upper Paleolithic".
You assume Central Asian or Altai initial UP is like "Western" UP.
Maju wrote, "It's ok either way."
Maju, we've been there done that. As soon as I find something that vaguely suggests that the Altai Aurignacianoid should be considered Eastern moving west, a foreign element to your West Eurasian, you start to violently protest/argue that the Aurignacianoids are unrelated.
And as soon as you convince yourself the Altai is in some West Eurasia world, you fall back on narratives about wayward West Eurasians lost in East Asia, bringing fire and saving the locals. So lost.
Maju wrote, "But unlike in other regions, West Eurasian initial UP is already very homogeneous in this aspect. West Eurasian genetics are also very homogeneous, so it's fair to assume that both elements are related: a relatively homogeneous population generated this colonization process."
Phylogeography now seems to suggest otherwise, both in the late introduction of P as well as in mtDNA patterns. But I let you stew.
Maju wrote, "How come? AFAIK the oldest Levallois artifacts are African and there were never any Neanderthals in Africa. But whatever."
You missed the point. UP industries develop gradually from the Mousterian, if we believe these authors. If the UP develops from the Neanderthal Mousterian, then for practical matters the Neanderthals developed Levallois and not incoming Moderns, right? I mean who cares if Homo erectus invented what in Africa. Even if you argue that way, Neanderthals are closer in form in many ways to erectus than we are, right?
these all shared initial UP characteristics (rather an inevitable)...
Actually not. There were blades before UP and there were cultures without blades after UP. Unless you define UP in West Eurasian terms (very classical but not valid outside West Eurasia - and Eurocentric anyhow) there is no correlation between UP and blades.
Levallois is MP anyhow. It's very old and pre-dates human expansion OoA. From Wikipedia (as it seems you don't know):
"The technique is first found in the Lower Palaeolithic but is most commonly associated with the Neanderthal Mousterian industries of the Middle Palaeolithic. In the Levant, Levallois methods were also in use in the Upper Palaeolithic and later".
Levallois can also be used for flake and other technologies and is not even specifically any Homo sapiens thing. It might have something to do with some Erectus migration or even have been invented independently in several places.
The Russians have already passed through Brandenburg Gate.
WTF are you talking about? Quit drugs or whatever you are into.
You assume Central Asian or Altai initial UP is like "Western" UP.
I don't. My memory is pretty decent and I recall well that it was YOU who claimed first of all that Altai "Aurignacian" (as you called it happily) was the precise origin of European true Aurignacian. Altai pseudo-Aurignacian is not in fact more related to true Aurignacian than Bohunician, proto-Aurignacian or Dabban are. All are related of course but the origin should be searched for in West Asia, logically (or maybe even in South Asia?)
Maju, we've been there done that. As soon as I find something that vaguely suggests that the Altai Aurignacianoid should be considered Eastern moving west, a foreign element to your West Eurasian, you start to violently protest/argue that the Aurignacianoids are unrelated.
I tell you: quit drugs. You hold your hypothesis and I look to the facts. The only animosity I have against a hypothetical Altaian origin for Aurignacian is your commitment to it (because I hate you and the way you like to patronize people). But I can withstand that and I can look at the details and even at the blanks of information and build up my own opinion, which I believe is consistent.
you fall back on narratives about wayward West Eurasians lost in East Asia, bringing fire and saving the locals.
What locals? The only reference for pre-existant populations in the area I know of are Neanderthals, who obviously were not "saved" but found their doom.
Anyhow, you are implying ethnocentric imperialist intent in my reasoning and, well, sincerely, while such a distant possible relation with Native Americans might stimulate maybe one or two "romantic" neurones in the less rational parts of my brain (as would any other remote connection probably) I can assure you that otherwise I couldn't really care.
However that is, sadly enough, your emotional and manipulative way of reasoning: attacking the person and not really dealing with his or her arguments. Pathetic!
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How many times have you cited things that is detrimental to your cause? -
First, I don't have any cause but Truth. Second the paper is not detrimental to my thesis (which anyhow is flexible and should be able to adapt to new data - or be discarded if such data invalidates it): it is informative and helps to understand the whole arch of related technologies that were arising at that time in West Eurasia, precisely at the time of colonization by Homo sapiens of that area. The timing and the pattern is virtually the same and hence the process must be the same too, more or less.
I know you get a fat check every month from the Castillians.
I wish (as long as they don't ask for something in return). I always welcome free donations to "my cause" of survival.
If you are sooo knowledgeable (and I know you are up to a point where irrationality and misanthropy blind you totally), why don't you quit your ad hominem attacks and begin dealing with the substance of the matter. Thesis-antithesis>synthesis: that's how science (and reality) move on. Discussion and different serious opinions, contrasting factual data, etc. are good for the debate. But with you it is impossible because you don't deal with the matter but with the person.
In other words: you are an erudite troll. Would this be a forum and I a neutral moderator, you'd already got pass your life-long allowance of warnings for personal attacks (ok, "quit drugs" may also be taken as PA but I'm fencing off, so guess it's ok).
I don't even know why I bother discussing with you anyhow. It's just (unjustified) insult after insult, just pausing to read something that is insultingly patronizing. Sorry but that's why I left your forum and will never go back.
Anyhow, here comes the only part of your four posts that matters, as far as I can tell:
You missed the point. UP industries develop gradually from the Mousterian, if we believe these authors. If the UP develops from the Neanderthal Mousterian, then for practical matters the Neanderthals developed Levallois and not incoming Moderns, right? -
That's what a lot of research seems to suggest, not just in Altai but also in Palestine. But the fact is that at one point there are Neanderthals and at the next there are Homo sapiens. Neanderthals anyhow did not use blade tech in most cases, certainly not with Mousterian, so guess this is the crux of the matter.
However you might have a point in the sense that there was some cultural creolization and that West Eurasian UP arose in a context of interaction with Neanderthals by peoples who already knew of the blade technology. Hard to tell.
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