Raiding on DNA to explore Vikings’ genetic roots

Republication from  national geographic

Image credit: Wikimedia commons

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By Erin Blakemore

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While our modern ideas of these ancient seafarers paint a very homogenous picture, their reality was decidedly diverse.

In popular imagination, Vikings were robust, flaxen-haired Scandinavian warriors who plundered the coastlines of northern Europe in sleek wooden battleships. But despite ancient sagas that celebrate seafaring adventurers with complex lineages, there remains a persistent, and pernicious, modern myth that Vikings were a distinctive ethnic or regional group of people with a “pure” genetic bloodline. Like the iconic “Viking” helmet, it’s a fiction that arose in the simmering nationalist movements of late 19th-century Europe. Yet it remains celebrated today among various white supremacist groups that use the supposed superiority of the Vikings as a way to justify hate, perpetuating the stereotype along the way.

Canaanites: New insight from 73 ancient genomes

Republication from phys.org/

A general view of the Tel Megiddo site. Credit: Megiddo Expedition

The people who lived in the area known as the Southern Levant—which is now recognized as Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Lebanon, and parts of Syria—during the Bronze Age (circa 3500-1150 BCE) are referred to in ancient biblical texts as the Canaanites. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Cell on May 28 have new insight into the Canaanites’ history based on a new genome-wide analysis of ancient DNA collected from 73 individuals.

Archaeological mystery solved with modern genetics

Republication from chaali.com

Review of the currently accepted demographic model of the Japanese population on the continent. (University of Tokyo )

The current thinking about the origin of the Japanese population maintains that the original residents, Jomon’s people, were met about 2,500 years ago by a separate group mainly from the Korean Peninsula, the Yayoi people. However, archaeological evidence used to achieve this conclusion is insufficient to tell the final story. Now DNA evidence from Y chromosomes provided the necessary data.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo conducted a census of the Japanese population some 2,500 years ago using Y chromosomes living on the main islands of modern Japan. For the first time, the analysis of modern genomes estimated the size of the ancient human population before they were met by a separate ancient population.

Yamnaya nomads left a strong genetic mark on Europeans and Asians

By Ann Gibbons

Republication from www.sciencemag

The Bronze Age came to Europe and Asia 5000 years ago, leaving a trail of metal tools, axes, and jewelry that stretches from Siberia to Scandinavia. But was this powerful new technology an idea that spread from the Middle East to European and Asian people, or was it brought in by foreigners? Two of the largest studies of ancient DNA from Bronze Age and Iron Age people have now found that outsiders deserve the credit: Nomadic herders from the steppes of today’s Russia and Ukraine brought their culture and, possibly, languages with them—and made a relatively recent and lasting imprint on the genetic makeup of Europeans and Asians.

In the studies, published online today in Nature, two rival teams of geneticists analyzed the DNA from 170 individuals who lived at key archaeological sites in Europe and Asia 5000 to 3000 years ago. Both teams found strong evidence that a wave of nomadic herders known as the Yamnaya from the Pontic-Caspian, a vast steppeland stretching from the northern shores of the Black Sea and as far east as the Caspian Sea, swept into Europe sometime between 5000 and 4800 years ago; along the way, they may have brought with them Proto-Indo-European, the mysterious ancestral tongue from which all of today’s 400 Indo-European languages spring. These herders interbred with local farmers and created the Corded Ware culture of central Europe, named for the twisted cord imprint on its pottery. Their genes were passed down to northern and central Europeans living today, as one of the teams posted on a preprint server earlier this year and published today.

Genetic data reveal contrasting sex bias in Neolithic and Bronze Age Eurasian migrations

Republication from PNAS

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Amy Goldberg, Torsten Günther, Noah A. Rosenberg, and Mattias Jakobsson

PNAS March 7, 2017 114 (10) 2657-2662; published ahead of print February 21, 2017

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Significance

Studies of differing female and male demographic histories on the basis of ancient genomes can provide insight into the social structures and cultural interactions during major events in human prehistory. We consider the sex-specific demography of two of the largest migrations in recent European prehistory. Using genome-wide ancient genetic data from multiple Eurasian populations spanning the last 10,000 years, we find no evidence of sex-biased migrations from Anatolia, despite the shift to patrilocality associated with the spread of farming. In contrast, we infer a massive male-biased migration from the steppe during the late Neolithic and Bronze Age. The contrasting patterns of sex-specific migration during these two migrations suggest that different sociocultural processes drove the two events.

Abstract

Dramatic events in human prehistory, such as the spread of agriculture to Europe from Anatolia and the late Neolithic/Bronze Age migration from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, can be investigated using patterns of genetic variation among the people who lived in those times. In particular, studies of differing female and male demographic histories on the basis of ancient genomes can provide information about complexities of social structures and cultural interactions in prehistoric populations.