Indo-Europeans galore

Indo-Europeans galore

A whole bunch of papers in a journal I hadn't heard of before, but written by some of the best known people in this field. I see lots of "Buy pdf" links to accompany them, so if you want to spare me the expense, feel free to e-mail me a copy.

Anyway, here's a list of titles for reference:


Anthony, David Two IE phylogenies, three PIE migrations, and four kinds of steppe - p. 1-21
Balanovsky, Oleg; Utevska, Olga; Balanovska, Elena Genetics of Indo-European populations: the past, the future - p. 23-35
Blazek, Vaclav Indo-European zoonyms in Afroasiatic perspective - p. 37-54
Burlak, Svetlana Languages, DNA, relationship and contacts - p. 55-67
Dybo, Anna Language and archeology: some methodological problems. 1. Indo-European and Altaic landscapes - p. 69-92
Dybo, Vladimir Dialectal variation of Proto-Indo-European in the light of accentological research - p. 93-108
Gamkrelidze, Tamaz; Ivanov, Vyacheslav Indo-European homeland and migrations: half a century of studies and discussions - p. 109-136
Kullanda, Sergey Early Indo-European social organization and the Indo-European homeland - p. 137-144
Mallory, J.P. Twenty-first century clouds over Indo-European homelands - p. 145-154
Kornienko, Tatiana 'Archaeological Research in Northern Mesopotamia and North Caucasus' [Chronicle] - p. 155-162
Korovina, Eugenia 'Problems of the Indo-European Homeland' [Chronicle] - p. 163-166

UPDATE: Someone sent me the Anthony paper. Here is the main figure which suggests a correspondence between the linguistic phylogeny of Ringe et al. and the archaeological reconstruction of out-of-steppe movements of its author:

One of the weakest points of the steppe model is its treatment of Anatolians. Movement marked #1 perhaps takes some populations in an indistinct way into the east Balkans, but does not take them all the way to Anatolia.

The steppe model must propose some kind of early round-the-Black Sea mechanism to bring the Anatolians to their historical seats. This is not trivial; it might seem like a small jump from Thrace (where the endpoint of the first migration, marked with 1 is placed) to Anatolia, but it is in fact in the southern parts of the peninsula that we first find the Anatolian speakers. And, Anatolian place names are also recorded in Greece and its immediate environs, and not at all in the proposed migration route. Thus, the arrow must take the Anatolians further west (to account for the evidence from the Aegean, and then bring them south and east). I don't find this very plausible.

Estimating the date of composition of the Homeric epics

Estimating the date of composition of the Homeric epics

This might be an interesting way of dating literary works for which there are no/conflicting traditions about their date of composition.

Bioessays DOI: 10.1002/bies.201200165

Linguistic evidence supports date for Homeric epics

Eric Lewin Altschuler et al.

The Homeric epics are among the greatest masterpieces of literature, but when they were produced is not known with certainty. Here we apply evolutionary-linguistic phylogenetic statistical methods to differences in Homeric, Modern Greek and ancient Hittite vocabulary items to estimate a date of approximately 710–760 BCE for these great works. Our analysis compared a common set of vocabulary items among the three pairs of languages, recording for each item whether the words in the two languages were cognate – derived from a shared ancestral word – or not. We then used a likelihood-based Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure to estimate the most probable times in years separating these languages given the percentage of words they shared, combined with knowledge of the rates at which different words change. Our date for the epics is in close agreement with historians' and classicists' beliefs derived from historical and archaeological sources.

Link

Mongoloid origin of Yakuts

Mongoloid origin of Yakuts

Results from a recent paper indicate that the Turkic-speaking Yakuts from Siberia were originally racially Mongoloid and experienced genetic admixture with Indo-European speaking Sakas approximately 1,500-1,750 years ago.

Genetika. 2004 Apr;40(4):560-4. Related Articles, Links

Published data on two cases of linkage disequilibrium in Yakuts are analyzed. These are the disequilibria between loci HLA-A and HLA-B and between the mutation of gene SCA1 responsible for type 1 spinocerebellar ataxia and its flanking microsatellites D6S274 and D6S89. Both cases are regarded as consequences of the founder effect. The genetic archeological approach has been used to calculate the historical period when the mutant SCA1 gene and the HLA-A1\B17 haplotype spread in the population. It has been found that this was approximately 60-70 generations (1500-1750 years) ago in both cases. The time of the segregation of haplotype HLA-A1\B17 has also been calculated for some other populations. Caucasoids have proved to be the oldest carriers of this gene, which agrees with the well-known notion that HLA-A1 originated in Indo-Europeans. The general distribution of HLA genes in Yakuts is similar to that in east-central Asian Mongoloids; therefore, it is concluded that that Yakuts are east-central Asian Mongoloids by origin, except for the founder that had haplotype A1\B17. Historically, the time of the appearance of this haplotype coincided with the period when Saks conquered east-central Asia; therefore, it is hypothesized that the aforementioned founder was a Sak.

Link

mtDNA of ancient central Asians

mtDNA of ancient central Asians

An interesting new paper confirms the anthropological and archaeological picture of a westward spread of Caucasoids in Central Asia in early prehistoric times, followed by the spread of Mongoloids in the opposite direction during the 1st millennium BC. The Caucasoid-Mongoloid hybrid population resulting from these interactions is similar in terms of mtDNA with present-day Central Asians with some noted differences (e.g., presence of additional West Eurasian haplogroups). In the ancient samples, West Eurasian haplogroups H, HV, I, T*, T1, U*, U1, U5, U5a1 and W were represented:

• HV sequences have matches in the Central Mediterranean region
• H sequences are split between the common Cambridge Reference Sequence (CRS) found in many populations, and two other sequences found in the Central Mediterranean and the Caucasus
• The I sequence is present in a modern Central Asian and also in individuals from the Caucasus
• The W sequence is widespread in West Eurasia
• T* sequences are widespread in Europe, the Near East and the Central Mediterranean region
• T1 is widespread in West Eurasia, but also found sporadically in East Eurasia
• The U1a sequences are found in Turks, Armenians and Caucasians
• The U5a sequence has been found in an Egyptian
• The U5a1 sequence is frequent in the Caucasus and present in Europe, while a different U5a1 was reported previously in Mongolia

The East Eurasian haplogroups belong to A*, M*, M4 and G2:

• The M* sequence was observed in an Indian individual
• The M4 sequence has not been previously reported
• The G2 sequence is found in present-day China and Central Asia
• One A sequence is found in present-day Central Asians and Indians, while the other two have a motif found in a modern Chukchi

Most (78%) of the sequences are of West Eurasian (Caucasoid) origin, but before the 7th c. BC, East Eurasian (Mongoloid) sequences are absent, although they could be present up to 20.6% (p<0.05).
Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004 May 7;271(1542):941-7. 

Unravelling migrations in the steppe: mitochondrial DNA sequences from ancient central Asians.
Lalueza-Fox C et al.

This study helps to clarify the debate on the Western and Eastern genetic influences in Central Asia. Thirty-six skeletal remains from Kazakhstan (Central Asia), excavated from different sites dating between the fifteenth century BC to the fifth century AD, have been analysed for the hypervariable control region (HVR-I) and haplogroup diagnostic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the mitochondrial DNA genome. Standard authentication criteria for ancient DNA studies, including multiple extractions, cloning of PCR products and independent replication, have been followed. The distribution of east and west Eurasian lineages through time in the region is concordant with the available archaeological information: prior to the thirteenth-seventh century BC, all Kazakh samples belong to European lineages; while later an arrival of east Eurasian sequences that coexisted with the previous west Eurasian genetic substratum can be detected. The presence of an ancient genetic substratum of European origin in West Asia may be related to the discovery of ancient mummies with European features in Xinjiang and to the existence of an extinct Indo-European language, Tocharian. This study demonstrates the usefulness of the ancient DNA in unravelling complex patterns of past human migrations so as to help decipher the origin of present-day admixed populations.

Link (pdf)