Historical Genetics

For the past few decades there has been a long standing debate as to the origins of modern Europeans. The two alternative hypotheses are: * Europeans are descended from Middle Eastern farmers, who brought their Neolithic cultural toolkit less than 10,000 years ago. * Europeans are descended from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, who acculturated to the farming way of life through diffusion of ideas. The two extreme positions are not really accepted in such stark forms by anyone. Rather, the debate is over the effect size of #1 vs. #2. Bryan Sykes, a geneticist at Oxford, has been arguing for the…

The Spittoon points to a new paper, Drawing the history of the Hutterite population on a genetic landscape: inference from Y-chromosome and mtDNA genotypes, which I've been meaning to look at more closely. Unlike some attempts to use genetics to illuminate questions about the human past here the historical record is rather complete. The 16th century was the high tide and maximal efflorescence of German Protestantism. Not only were vast swaths of what we think of as redoubts of German Catholicism in the Austrian lands brought into the Protestant fold, but the diversity was also at a peak, as…

In the early 20th century the geographer Halford Mackinder posited that the key to world domination lay in the control of the Eurasian Heartland. This was in sharp contrast to Alfred Mahan's emphasis on the role of naval power. Whatever the applicability of these geopolitical frameworks in the modern era, it is interesting to observe their precedents in the ancient and medieval world. The rise of Rome was facilitated by the Mediterranean essential role as a conduit for communication and trade which connected the cities which were the foci of the Empire. Easy transport of cheap grain from…

First Genetic Insight into Libyan Tuaregs: A Maternal Perspective: The Tuaregs are a semi-nomadic pastoralist people of northwest Africa. Their origins are still a matter of debate due to the scarcity of genetic and historical data. Here we report the first data on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genetic characterization of a Tuareg sample from Fezzan (Libyan Sahara). A total of 129 individuals from two villages in the Acacus region were genetically analysed. Both the hypervariable regions and the coding region of mtDNA were investigated. Phylogeographic investigation was carried out in order…