January 31, 2011

Neanderthal as sprinters?

This is what some researchers from Moscow State University are proposing, according to Russia-InfoCenter. Neanderthals would have been actually specialist sprinters and that was what (allegedly) allowed them to hunt with heavy spears:

The ancient hunter could have crawled towards an animal as close as possible, and then had run as fast as he could, throwing a javelin, while running. However, a heavy spear is much more effective at small distances, than a light javelin. Calculations show that Neanderthal men had been able to cover 15-20 meters within 1-2 seconds, which is enough for a unexpected and successful attack. This means that Homo neanderthalensis were fast and accurate hunters, not clumsy snails as some may think.

Other details of their physiognomy are that they surely preferred to squat above sitting, because they lacked an intermediate layer of fat and muscle on their butts. They also got easily tired of long term standing, the researchers suggest.

Originally from Stone Pages' Archaeo News.

82 comments:

  1. Plausible. Most other top of food chain hunters are good sprinters. Neanderthals didn't have bows and arrows, and it isn't even clear that Neanderthals had an atlatl, so they'd have had to have gotten pretty close.

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  2. Hi Maju!


    I think this may be interesting to you, it's about North Africa and the origins of modern humans; I found it very interesting, because these archaic skulls resemble a lot the first modern Europeans, and also people from Skhul/Qafzeh:

    http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/North+Africa+(+Aterian)+possible+source+of+Eurasian+modern+humans--Balter+Science+news.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1058837-p173624756

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  3. Maria,

    That is the same paper I referred to in the "Coastal Route" thread. Nice short review, isn't it?

    As to the squatting, I believe to this date there are regional differences, which may also have anatomical reasons. For example, it seems to me that some Asians and Native Americans - particularly from South America - still prefer squatting.

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  4. Eurologist: it's not a paper but a press article. I wouldn't mind having the paper's reference, if it exists (sometimes news go ahead of papers).

    Re. squatting, there's a cultural element to it and also has some advantages: hygiene (less contact with the ground), quicker repositioning... What the authors say is not that Neanderthals would prefer squatting because of cultural reasons but that they lacked a butt proper and therefore they probably preferred squatting as sitting would be not comfortable.

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  5. ML: thanks for the link. I really do not think that North Africa was so important in the OoA and rather converge with Trinkaus in the "cul-de-sac" model. However I would say that "Aterians" were fully modern (H. sapiens, regardless of molar size) and that some lineages carried maybe upon the Aterian colonization are still today relevant among North Africans and may have permeated into Europe to some extent as well: L2a1j, L3k, L3d1c and L3b1b. However they are all 8-12 transitions under L3, what means that they are quite comparable to U6 and hence probably an arrival in the context of the recolonization from (partly) Eurasia c. 40 Ka.

    Anyhow the characteristic back-tipped point of Aterian somehow survived through all demic and cultural changes.

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  6. Sorry, Eurologist, I just realized your post was adressed to Maria Lluisa and the paper is a different one. :/

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  7. Eurologist:

    "That is the same paper I referred to in the "Coastal Route" thread. Nice short review, isn't it?"

    I think it's not. This one is called "Was North Africa the launch pad for modern human migrations?" but it's not a research article I think.

    Maju:

    "However I would say that "Aterians" were fully modern (H. sapiens, regardless of molar size) and that some lineages carried maybe upon the Aterian colonization are still today relevant among North Africans and may have permeated into Europe to some extent as well: L2a1j, L3k, L3d1c and L3b1b. However they are all 8-12 transitions under L3, what means that they are quite comparable to U6 and hence probably an arrival in the context of the recolonization from (partly) Eurasia c. 40 Ka. "

    They don't seem fully modern to me, or at least modern humans are quite different from them. Modern humans don't have such a pronounced supraorbital torus, for example. As for the teeth, I read they bear some similarity with those of neanderthals, but I'm not sure, because sometimes it's quite difficult to trace a line between neanderthals and other closely related hominids, including H. sapiens.

    Anyway, mousterian sites have been found in North Africa (mostly in Morocco) and they appear to be more ancient than the Aterian ones. Giving the proximity to the Iberian peninsula and Europe where neanderthals lived, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of some cultural and/or genetic exchange, although rather limited.

    The Aterians don't resemble modern Europeans at all. For example, their teeth are much bigger. As for the mtDNA lineages, it's unknown. North Africa is a very diverse region. Many North Africans resemble Asians, others Europeans, and others, sub-saharan Africans.
    More research is needed to clarify what's the % of Aterian ancestry, if they didn't go extinct. The author of that "study" thinks it's possible they migrated to East or South.

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  8. I found this blog (in Spanish) talking about ancient hominid contacts in North Africa and Europe.

    http://afroiberia.blogspot.com/2010/02/murcia-neandertal-esteta-o-ham.html

    The author(s) of this post think it's possible that archaic modern humans like Jebel Irhoud were living in the Iberian peninsula, rather neanderthals. He/she thinks there's no hard evidence at all to think neanderthals were living in Murcia by 50-60Ka, because only a few skeletons have been found, and many of them show some modern human affinities (like those of Palomas) and similar cultures also (like the painted shells), but for example in el Sidrón we know that by 50Ka there were only neanderhals living in the region, and that has been proved by mtDNA.

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  9. If the molars are like those of Pestera cu Oase, then they are not like Neanderthals but like Australopitehcus and maybe H. erectus.

    If the matter is the browridge, there are many moderns who have that feature, for instance Charles Darwin. It is in fact quite common depending on which population (for instance in Europe, I'd say it's more common towards the North).

    Here there's a photo and the skull looks very modern, more than Skhul 5, I'd say.

    "Anyway, mousterian sites have been found in North Africa (mostly in Morocco) and they appear to be more ancient than the Aterian ones".

    Yes. This is an important point. Did Jebel Irhoud (and co.) learn Mousterian from Neanderthals. If so, how does this correlate with Mousterian among H. sapiens in Palestine.

    Or did Jebel Irhoud (or relatives) taught Mousterian to Neanderthals?

    The hypothesis by Afroiberia is interesting indeed and I have already suggested at some moment a related idea (that the Neanderthals of Las Palomas borrowed the decorative ideas from North African H. sapiens - but without meaningful genetic flow).

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  10. "Here there's a photo and the skull looks very modern, more than Skhul 5, I'd say. "

    If the skull looks so modern, then why was it classified as a neanderthal until recently? There are still some pages which classify J.I as H. neanderthalensis:

    https://www.msu.edu/~heslipst/contents/ANP440/neanderthalensis.htm

    I'm not saying the people from J.I are neanderthal, but if archaeologists had some problems with J.I's classification it's because the skull is not fully modern. I guess no archaeologists would ever classify mine or yours skulls as H. neanderthalensis.

    "Yes. This is an important point. Did Jebel Irhoud (and co.) learn Mousterian from Neanderthals. If so, how does this correlate with Mousterian among H. sapiens in Palestine."

    I'm not sure if neanderthals crossed the sea, but the fact that very few sites with mousterian tools have been discovered in North Africa, and these ones are geografically very close to the strait give points to some kind of acculturation.

    "Or did Jebel Irhoud (or relatives) taught Mousterian to Neanderthals?"

    I think it's quite unlikely if we accept J.I were more akin to H. sapiens. Mousterian appears to be very related to neanderthals and widespread among Europe and Asia. J.I people lived in North Africa, there's no evidence they once migrated to Europe, and first modern humans into Europe theorically made Aurignacian and not Mousterian.

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  11. "The hypothesis by Afroiberia is interesting indeed and I have already suggested at some moment a related idea (that the Neanderthals of Las Palomas borrowed the decorative ideas from North African H. sapiens - but without meaningful genetic flow)."

    Yes, but we should not forget the dates. J.I are 160Ka old, and neanderthals from Las Palomas and their decorative ideas are less than 50Ka old. Does archaeology support continuous presence of people living in North Africa since the last 160.000 years?

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  12. It's very simple: Shanidar is Neanderthal, Qahfez 5 is not Neanderthal at all: you can quickly identify the differences, specially in profile shoots.

    For the same reason Skhul 5 is not Neanderthal: he/she has a too high vault and a too "brachicephalic" head (front to back length is short).

    However in that list the profile shot of Jebel Irhoud has a quite marked dolicocpehaly. This is typical from African H. sapiens, so inconclusive (yet probably the why of the misclassification) but then you see that JI has a much more vertical forehead, lesser prognathism and even the typical "Caucasoid" pear-like nose-hole (Neanderthals had "Negroid"-like round nose-holes).

    JI could never be a true Neanderthal (though arguing for hybridization to some extent is always possible: I'm hybrid and you wound not notice, right?)

    That site is pretty bad anyhow, look at what they call "H. sapiens": Dali, Jinniushan, Ngandong (all H. erectus), Hathnora (doubtful but not H. sapiens in any case because forehead is too low and sloped), LH18 (H. rhodesiensis?, similar to Hathnora: large cranial capacity but low forehead), Atapuerca 5 (H. heidelbergensis, "Miguelón"), Steinheim and Swanscombe (H. heidelbergensis or neanderthalensis).

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  13. In regards to Mousterian in North Africa, it may be indeed a case of acculturation by H. neanderthalensis. My question was if the Mousterian of Palestine may be derived from that of North Africa, after all the Palestinian early humankind was clearly related by other elements to North Africa and it is possible that they did not meet any Neanderthals in West Asia from which to learn Mousterian tech anyhow.

    "Yes, but we should not forget the dates. J.I are 160Ka old, and neanderthals from Las Palomas and their decorative ideas are less than 50Ka old. Does archaeology support continuous presence of people living in North Africa since the last 160.000 years?"

    That's what Aterian new chronology supports: continuity since at least 145 Ka (I think), what is almost the age of JI (160 Ka). Anyhow, I was not thinking in JI but in Aterian use of shells and ochre, no doubt related to that of Palestine and South Africa (and much older than that of Murcia).

    What some people are suggesting anyhow is that maybe our 2.4% Neanderthal is actually a legacy of early admixture in North Africa. This can only be tested by checking Neanderthal admixture levels in North Africans, Sahelians and Arabian. Something to be done, though it's very possible that it happens to be uninformative anyhow because of extreme dilution or otherwise non-visibility.

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  14. "For the same reason Skhul 5 is not Neanderthal: he/she has a too high vault and a too "brachicephalic" head (front to back length is short)."

    I agree. I can distingish easily when a skull is from a modern human or from an European neandertal. However, near-easterner neanderthals are sometimes very difficult to classify. Amud 1, although he is a neanderthal, he has more "gracile" traits. Some of these Skhul/Qafzeh have changed of species many times since they were discovered.


    "JI could never be a true Neanderthal (though arguing for hybridization to some extent is always possible: I'm hybrid and you wound not notice, right?)"

    Not all neanderthals look the same, but yes, I agree J.I doesn't look like a typical European neanderthal. You're a bit mixed, but only 2-3% and this can't be appreciated in your looks, that's pretty low; to make a comparison, people with an 1/16 black ancestor can look 100% white, even people with 1/8 could pass as a typical European, but we're discussing if the population from J.I had an important % of neanderthal ancestry (more than 20%). If it was less than 10% it can't be detected looking at their skulls.

    "That site is pretty bad anyhow, look at what they call "H. sapiens": Dali, Jinniushan, Ngandong (all H. erectus), Hathnora (doubtful but not H. sapiens in any case because forehead is too low and sloped), LH18 (H. rhodesiensis?, similar to Hathnora: large cranial capacity but low forehead), Atapuerca 5 (H. heidelbergensis, "Miguelón"), Steinheim and Swanscombe (H. heidelbergensis or neanderthalensis)."

    Yes I agree, it's not a good site, but anyhow some fossil classifications have changed a lot in the past 50 years, mostly because they show a mixture of modern and archaic traits, like the Zhiredong mandible.

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  15. "In regards to Mousterian in North Africa, it may be indeed a case of acculturation by H. neanderthalensis. My question was if the Mousterian of Palestine may be derived from that of North Africa, after all the Palestinian early humankind was clearly related by other elements to North Africa and it is possible that they did not meet any Neanderthals in West Asia from which to learn Mousterian tech anyhow."

    That's a very interesting possibility. If neanderthals only arrived in the Near East by 60Ka, then these modern humans perhaps learned mousterian from another site.

    "What some people are suggesting anyhow is that maybe our 2.4% Neanderthal is actually a legacy of early admixture in North Africa. This can only be tested by checking Neanderthal admixture levels in North Africans, Sahelians and Arabian. Something to be done, though it's very possible that it happens to be uninformative anyhow because of extreme dilution or otherwise non-visibility."

    Yes, that's interesting, and the authors never said the admixture happened in the near East, but people are sure that was the place because theorically neanderthals were living there when the ancestors of all Eurasians left Africa. Of course, some neanderthals could have been living in North Africa, but since then, and how many?

    North Africa hasn't been sampled, it's a very forgotten region, archaeologically and genetically speaking. Some north Africans have weird looks, and I'm not sure if their origins have been clarified yet, because in most genetic studies the authors only take a sample of "mozabytes".

    Anyway, if there's any difference, it must be very low and pretty diffused, because it didn't affect Europeans nor sub-saharan Africans.

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  16. "... but we're discussing if the population from J.I had an important % of neanderthal ancestry (more than 20%)".

    For me not - at least it's not apparent enough. Let's not confuse mere archaic features with Neanderthal-specific features. I do not see anything clearly Neanderthaloid in JI but of course genetics may one day say the opposite.

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  17. "North Africa hasn't been sampled, it's a very forgotten region, archaeologically and genetically speaking".

    True. A million people just marched in Egypt protesting against this discrimination... ;)

    Seriously: true.

    "Some north Africans have weird looks, and I'm not sure if their origins have been clarified yet, because in most genetic studies the authors only take a sample of "mozabytes"".

    That's true also. I think that there is an old layer in North Africans that relates to very old settlers from Africa and West Asia, which does not fit well our racial stereotypes (sometimes is said to be "Khoisanid", other times "Ethiopid", others "Veddoid" maybe). Additionally there are more recent layers, mostly from Eurasia.

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  18. "That's true also. I think that there is an old layer in North Africans that relates to very old settlers from Africa and West Asia, which does not fit well our racial stereotypes (sometimes is said to be "Khoisanid", other times "Ethiopid", others "Veddoid" maybe). Additionally there are more recent layers, mostly from Eurasia."

    See this man, for example. He's the son of one moroccan emperor:

    http://www.canalpatrimonio.com/imagftp/im153473king-mohammed-iv.jpg

    He doesn't look Caucasian nor African, and reminds me of an East Asian person.

    Apparently there are some Asian-looking (others say Khoisanid) in North Africa, this has been discussed in this forum, but apparently no one knows about their origins:

    http://www.anthrocivitas.net/forum/showthread.php?t=8312

    Unfortunately there aren't enough (if any) studies to clarify why is northern Africa so diverse, and why some of these persons look khoisanid or Asian, if Khoisans and Asians live far apart from them.

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  19. His father Hassan II was even more "Khoisanid". However it's a type you find even in Andalusia occasionally.

    I had this debate at Anthroplanet some months ago.

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  20. "His father Hassan II was even more "Khoisanid". However it's a type you find even in Andalusia occasionally."

    I've seen many of these faces in Catalonia, although the typical European is more common here. Most Andalusians I've seen don't look khoisanid, but like "normal" southern europeans; I don't know how common are these traits in Europe, it's a very interesting discussion, but I have the impression our knowledge is rather limited.

    Many would think these people arrived to Europe due to Arabs, but these people look very different from Arabs to me. In another post you told me they could have arrived during the Roman empire. It's an interesting possibility, but if they're relative common in Iberia, there may be other explanations.

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  21. "some fossil classifications have changed a lot in the past 50 years, mostly because they show a mixture of modern and archaic traits"

    Which suggests to me that the transition from archaic to modern was far from simple.

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  22. @ML: I did not mean to claim that there were many migrations under the Roman Empire, you probably got me wrong in that.

    However I cannot judge your "Catalan Khoisanid" type without first looking at some photos because I'm not even sure what you're talking about. I have never seen them and I'm relatively familiar with Catalan faces. In general Catalans are between Basque, Mediterranean (Iberian and Italian mostly) and Continental European. They are particularly akin to Occitans (or vice versa).

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  23. @Terry: "archaic" and "modern" are arbitrary words. They can just mean tendencies.

    However, in the context of your comment, "archaic" means other species and it also means that paleoanthropologists have been very confused on what is H. sapiens and what is something else. But careful, non-ideological, classification is almost always possible, specially when most of the skull has been preserved.

    When you have people saying that Dali is "sapiens" is when the confusion begins. But I'm not interested in that mud-throwing strategy: I'm interested in throwing light and only that.

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  24. "it also means that paleoanthropologists have been very confused on what is H. sapiens and what is something else".

    Exactly. There are many individuals that are difficult to classify as being one or the other. The transition was not sudden. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to draw a definite line between whatever you care to call the various 'archaic' species and whatever you care to call 'modern'.

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  25. But also a lot of classifications as "H. sapiens" were made in a conceptual context where H. sapiens was a much wider category than modernly, including Neanderthals (then excluded in this particular site) and others (kept).

    It's not really so difficult in most cases. Anyone looking at Dali skull knows immediately that is not an anatomically modern human: many would even think it is a non-human ape or some kind of weird falsification of the kind you find in sensationalist sites sometimes. So the classification of Dali and the other "advanced" Oriental H. erectus really beats me.

    Also I prefer not to use the terms "archaic" and "modern" but call each species by its own scientific name (what is possible in most particular cases with little or no doubt).

    I think that you, Terry, are just trying to mud the waters so you can go on with your hidden multirregionalist agenda. You often make a point of not being clear about such things, for instance when you claim that "humans" were in Altai since the MP... while never really addressing what category of "humans" we can accept for that time frame.

    For me that is playing dirty and I just do not like playing dirty: it's so Indoeuropean! :(

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  26. Nonsense, even if the animals did not hear or smell the hunters approach. The final rush would immediately startle the prey into fligh., No human could cover 15-20 meters fast enough to catch a animal stationary (if he could catch it at al, which I doubt). It would certainly be moving away from the hunter and so the spear strike would have very little actual velocity.

    Also Neanderthals lived in woodland so they could not charge in a straight line for 20M because of trees ect. What they did was lurk around the game trails and wait for the prey animals to walk into a prepared ambush then pop up to surround them.

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  27. "Neanderthals lived in woodland"...

    That's at least partly incorrect. The habitat of Neanderthals was the same as that of Paleolithic H. sapiens, which was diverse but largely steppary anyhow.

    As for the rest, I would certainly agree in principle that solo hunting looks like making little sense, yet the Hadza do it often, depending on season and such. However they use poisoned arrows, which is a much more efficient way of hunting than just spearing down the prey.

    In any case, I understand that if they claim that Neanderthals had good sprinting muscles they probably did and therefore they probably used them often. Hunting looks like a good reason for that, even if it may have been done in small groups rather than solo.

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  28. "However I cannot judge your "Catalan Khoisanid" type without first looking at some photos because I'm not even sure what you're talking about. I have never seen them and I'm relatively familiar with Catalan faces. In general Catalans are between Basque, Mediterranean (Iberian and Italian mostly) and Continental European. They are particularly akin to Occitans (or vice versa)."

    Catalan actors/actresses:

    http://encuentrosdigitales.rtve.es/2010/p/470_big.jpg
    http://www.tv3.cat/multimedia/jpg/7/9/1191845289197.jpg
    http://www.tv3.cat/multimedia/jpg/6/8/1258719008786.jpg
    http://www.ventdelpla.cat/multimedia/jpg/1/6/1268912183261.jpg

    I'm not saying there are "khoisanid Catalans", nor that Catalans don't resemble their neighbours, I'm just saying there are people here, where I live, that don't look Caucasian nor white, and it seems they're not so uncommon among the Catalan population. I can't say about Occitans or Basques, because I'm not familiar with them. I suppose there might be also some "khoisanids" among them, although Occitans for example can vary a lot in looks, because Occitania includes a very large region from southern France, which is anything but homogeneous.

    These actors/actresses are just "light" examples. I've seen people who look anything but white, but that isn't the topic of this thread, which is about neanderthal sprinters; I'm telling this to you because I'm curious about north Africans and why genetics apparently can't explain all we see.

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  29. "I'm not saying there are "khoisanid Catalans""...

    You better don't: they are typical South European Caucasoids. The most no. 2 could have a more marked Mediterranean vibe (but rather "Frenchy" than "Moorish" IMO). The only trait in common I can see among them is a rather broad nose (???) but they are well within the Iberian ranges in everything and even in some cases slanting towards France.

    "I'm just saying there are people here, where I live, that don't look Caucasian nor white"...

    If these are your examples, you certainly have a very narrow concept of Caucasoid ("Caucasian" means inhabitant of the Caucasus region, "Caucasoid" means "Caucasian-like" and therefore West Eurasian physiognomically and is the correct term to use).

    "... but that isn't the topic of this thread, which is about neanderthal sprinters; I'm telling this to you because I'm curious about north Africans and why genetics apparently can't explain all we see".

    Well, I do not mind going offtopic a bit if the matter is interesting but I really think that your perception of what fits within European typology seems extremely narrow. All these people, compared around the World, can only fit in subsets that are European (or at best circum-European, such as West Asia, which is very similar in looks, specially the northern part, or North Africa maybe).

    No. 4 reminds me to Hillary Clinton, go figure! While no. 1 is like that stupid Spanish famous woman... Obregón, and no. 2 is very similar to Africa Baeta (a Basque TV anchor) and also a late friend of my sister who killed herself years ago. Admittedly both have narrower noses but that's all.

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  30. "You better don't: they are typical South European Caucasoids. The most no. 2 could have a more marked Mediterranean vibe (but rather "Frenchy" than "Moorish" IMO). The only trait in common I can see among them is a rather broad nose (???) but they are well within the Iberian ranges in everything and even in some cases slanting towards France. "

    Ok, maybe the examples aren't too representative, because it's just only 4 photos and they're have nothing in common at all... but for example, one of my neighbours looks Asian: slanted eyes, pale-yellowish skin, very dark hair... another neighbour looks I don't know what, but he has a flat and broad nose, slanted eyes, brown-yellow skin, very dark hair and a weird head shape. Another neighbour has brown skin, flat nose, and black hair. Maybe it's just me, but these people don't look "normal". Even my mother and other families, when spoken about these persons, recognize they're "dark" and/or from another race, even though they are 100% Catalan.

    I'll try to get photos from them, even though that's nearly impossible, because I'm not lying when I say they don't look like the average southern European. Of course, I could be wrong, but when you told me their description reminded you of khoisanids and North Africans, I found that, efectively, they're somewhat akin to these peoples, and giving the fact that North Africa it's geographically and genetically quite close...

    "Well, I do not mind going offtopic a bit if the matter is interesting but I really think that your perception of what fits within European typology seems extremely narrow. All these people, compared around the World, can only fit in subsets that are European (or at best circum-European, such as West Asia, which is very similar in looks, specially the northern part, or North Africa maybe). "

    Maybe. That could be because most Europeans look quite different... but again, that's my impression.


    "No. 4 reminds me to Hillary Clinton, go figure! While no. 1 is like that stupid Spanish famous woman... Obregón, and no. 2 is very similar to Africa Baeta (a Basque TV anchor) and also a late friend of my sister who killed herself years ago. Admittedly both have narrower noses but that's all."

    Oh my God... that's terrible. I feel sorry for her...

    Well I remember Obregon's face, I thought that girl from a TV soap opera seems quite dark compared with others and not Caucasoid at all. I thought typical Caucasoids looked different, but I recognize I'm not an expert.

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  31. I think what you mean is people with more markedly Transmediterranean phenotypes, who may resemble some "more extreme" North Africans or East Mediterraneans. I can't think of anything else.

    My mother always says that my uncle in law (from Avila, who actually resembles Adolfo Suárez somewhat) must have "Filipino" blood and that this is apparent in some of my cousins. But the one who has "chinky" eyes looks like Brad Pitt, who also has "chinky" eyes but is archetypically Caucasoid at the same time. The other "exotic" looking cousin is quite dark ("brown") in pigmentation and also has very dark ("bluish black" as in contrast to my "brownish black") hair (straight). She could really pass as admixed Brazilian for example but I think that all her genetic components are in fact Mediterranean.

    A problem is that the huge diversity of Mediterranean phenotypes has not been researched. In part because they are very mixed, not forming clear clusters, at least not in Europe. And in part because phenotype obsessed scholars have almost only be Northern Europeans with a Nordic obsession, with their peculiar biased pair of glasses.

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  32. "I think what you mean is people with more markedly Transmediterranean phenotypes, who may resemble some "more extreme" North Africans or East Mediterraneans. I can't think of anything else. "

    Yes, maybe. Well, in my opinion, sometimes East Asians can look more European than them, that's why I don't think they're just weird caucasians, and also because I've seen some familiar faces among North Africans.

    "My mother always says that my uncle in law (from Avila, who actually resembles Adolfo Suárez somewhat) must have "Filipino" blood and that this is apparent in some of my cousins. But the one who has "chinky" eyes looks like Brad Pitt, who also has "chinky" eyes but is archetypically Caucasoid at the same time. The other "exotic" looking cousin is quite dark ("brown") in pigmentation and also has very dark ("bluish black" as in contrast to my "brownish black") hair (straight). She could really pass as admixed Brazilian for example but I think that all her genetic components are in fact Mediterranean. "

    It may be that "mediterranean" people really come from many different and unrelated groups, yes, I think that's the most likely explanation.

    "A problem is that the huge diversity of Mediterranean phenotypes has not been researched. In part because they are very mixed, not forming clear clusters, at least not in Europe. And in part because phenotype obsessed scholars have almost only be Northern Europeans with a Nordic obsession, with their peculiar biased pair of glasses."

    Yes, genetically it has been shown that europeans are a very homogeneous population, which doesn't convince me, at least in some cases. If these weird mediterraneans can pass as "normal" Europeans I don't see any reason to not include Japanese people, native americans and indians as well under the "caucasian" category.

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  33. "If these weird mediterraneans can pass as "normal" Europeans I don't see any reason to not include Japanese people, native americans and indians as well under the "caucasian" category".

    Well, please show me some photos because Japanese and other East Asians are almost invariably very distant in genetics and aspect from Europeans/Caucasoids. Unless you are thinking in less important traits like skin color.

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  34. "Well, please show me some photos because Japanese and other East Asians are almost invariably very distant in genetics and aspect from Europeans/Caucasoids. Unless you are thinking in less important traits like skin color."

    Yao Ming (Chinese basketball player):
    http://www.nba.com/media/allstar2006/yao_300_051215.jpg
    http://www.aropasado.com/images/xurris/yaomingyeli.jpg
    http://i.cdn.turner.com/nba/nba/multimedia/photo_gallery/0901/allstar09.westjerseys/images/yao_jersey.jpg

    I found his face very familiar, except perhaps for the eyes.

    Khoisan/Bushmen:
    http://www.tourismnorthwest.co.za/mafikeng/images/khoisan.jpg
    http://www.africanholocaust.net/img%20of%20people/khoisan-man-south-africa.png
    http://www.nma.gov.au/shared/libraries/images/temporary_exhibitions/extremes/extremes_large/africa/a_khoisan_woman_northern_cape_south_africa/files/6399/nma.img-ex20042116-263-vi-vs1.jpg

    Except perhaps for their hair and skin color, some of them look very akin the Caucasians -others don't.

    Japanese singers:

    http://images.smh.com.au/2009/11/10/848802/noriko420-420x0.jpg
    http://shrani.si/f/1D/11Z/453wDOBK/1/wadaayaka2625-2.jpg
    http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/sites/musique/img/2263_198463410_small.jpg
    http://kojaproductions.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/mika_kjp.jpg
    http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/showbiz/images/attachement/jpg/site1/20090613/0023ae606f170b9d8ec911.jpg
    http://img207.imageshack.us/i/masaharufukuyama.jpg/
    http://krnloop.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/lee-dong-gun-jap-single.jpg
    http://desertheart.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/hirai_fakin.jpg

    Native Americans:

    http://blog.wfuv.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/native-american.jpg
    http://ushistoryimages.com/images/sioux-native-americans/fullsize/sioux-native-americans-2.jpg
    http://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/pictures/images/indians-101a.jpg
    http://kirbysattler.sattlerartprint.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/nativeamericanart.jpg

    Do you know that in the past, Hollywood chose southern Europeans to represent native Americans in some old movies?

    As I said above, I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure most of these people could pass as European if they were born and educated here. I don't find them so "distant", but that's maybe because I'm familiar with weird faces.

    ReplyDelete
  35. I was asking for photos of exotic looking Iberians/Catalans....

    Maybe Nadal, the tennis player? He looks quite exotic looking to me yet his type is absolutely Iberian and hard to find elsewhere.

    I know that there are Europeans who look vaguely East Asian, I have often discussed a type very common among Basque women (extreme archetype Maddalen Iriarte, former director of EiTB informatives before fascism came back). And obviously there are some East Asians who may look somewhat like West Eurasians, specially after some hairdo or if their nose is large (typical of Japanese) or their epicanthic fold is incomplete.

    If you ignore pigmentation and hair texture, even some Africans can look "European". That's one of the things of being human: that our in-group variation is much larger (like 90%) than our between-groups variation (10% at most).

    But still I do not think Jeronimo looks European, sorry.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Maybe Nadal, the tennis player? He looks quite exotic looking to me yet his type is absolutely Iberian and hard to find elsewhere.

    Nadal, of course! He looks like a native american to me, it's kinda exotic.

    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_tHaumj7GrMA/TAvGPgJq_GI/AAAAAAAAW5A/vIt5MkmiLwA/s1600/rafa-nadal.jpg
    http://prensacorazon.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/boda-rafa-nadal.jpg
    http://goldinero.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/rafael-nadal.jpg

    Some persons think Carles Puyol looks neanderthal; I don't believe it, but still I think he looks a bit "savage" due to his hair style:

    http://www.football-wallpapers.com/wallpapers/puyol_2_1024x768.jpg
    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ef49iGqXiEE/SpP1wet-W4I/AAAAAAAACcQ/Wd--lgdxhU0/s320/carles-puyoljpg.jpg
    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ebkKjWakuxA/TPF-izYpbCI/AAAAAAAACO4/Ad0pbSfdKCI/s1600/puyol.jpg

    I had a teacher who looks exactly like the first Japanese woman I posted; even she once told us that when she was a child, people used to call her "the little Chinese girl".

    Some etarras have exotic faces as well, although this has nothing to do with being an etarra, I suppose:

    http://llanesnet.blogia.com/upload/etarras.jpg
    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_vb-2nlYieEk/STwFPD5tDsI/AAAAAAAABEI/u6E4ij-bHXM/s400/etarras+neandertales.jpg
    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oWTMojbwAXg/Rbfpua9vzSI/AAAAAAAAAT0/c35wQkJgclg/s320/otegi--200x300.jpg

    Otegi can look a bit Asian sometimes.

    About the Chinese-looking Basques,
    I have read a comment from an user who read a book written by Eduard Punset. In that book, Eduard aparently explains that some mongoloid (from Asia) population established around the Pyrenees and Ampurdan in Catalonia, and mixed with the natives.
    I don't know if I should believe it or not, but here's the the link:

    http://www.hislibris.com/gengis-kan-el-soberano-del-cielo-pamela-sargent/

    "Estimado Richar. Me llamo Antonio.
    He leído su comentario sobre este libro de Gengis Kan y quisiera hacerle una pregunta a usted o a quien pueda contestarla.

    ¿Han oida hablar de una incursión de los mongoles en España?
    Resulta que en el último libro de Eduardo Punset éste afirma que llegaron al Ampurdan y que incluso se cruzaron con la población nativa. De hecho, en medicina se denomina lunar mongoloide a una mancha morada en la espalda, cerca de la cadera, que presentan algunos niños al nacer. Al parecer es una herencia genética que dejaron aquellos mongoles."

    Muchas gracias."

    "If you ignore pigmentation and hair texture, even some Africans can look "European". That's one of the things of being human: that our in-group variation is much larger (like 90%) than our between-groups variation (10% at most). "

    I agree. To me, differences within the same group or race are much larger than between two different "races". But I'm not sure if genetics can detect all this variation, nor if a population which is so diverse like the Mediterranean one can be descended from an unique "Caucasoid-like" population.

    "But still I do not think Jeronimo looks European, sorry."

    Here's a Mapuche woman who looks Iberian:
    http://vasta.blogsome.com/uploads/vasta/mujer_mapuche.jpg

    Mapuche girls, but I don't know if they're mixed:
    http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/jpg/es-mapuche3901.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  37. Mapuches are quite admixed AFAIK.

    As I say, Nadal's type is almost impossible to find outside Iberia. He does not look East Asian but he does look "gracile Mediterranean", whatever that means.

    Puyol looks typical West European.

    Otegi does have a rather strange face and in this he reminds of his predecessor Jon Idigoras, who had an even more curious strange face. There are many Basques with rare faces (Mr. Spock Ibarretxe for example) but on the other hand, there are many more with super-archetypal West European faces.

    You are just hallucinating a bit about the diversity of types found in any population. IMO. It is interesting but all I have seen are local types, sign of the high diversity we enjoy.

    ReplyDelete
  38. "You often make a point of not being clear about such things, for instance when you claim that 'humans' were in Altai since the MP... while never really addressing what category of 'humans' we can accept for that time frame".

    I use the term 'humans' in that case precisely because we are absolutely unsure of what 'species' of human they were. As for the time frame, if H. sapiens was already present in India why on earth should it not also be present in Altai. Or, more likely, south of Altai.

    ReplyDelete
  39. "if H. sapiens was already present in India why on earth should it not also be present in Altai. Or, more likely, south of Altai".

    For three reasons:

    1. H. neanderthalensis remains are known from pre-Sapiens Altai period

    2. Mousterian tech, typically associated to H. neanderthalensis is also found there for the same period

    3. H. sapiens is not biologically adapted to cold nor even to low solar radiation levels before developing "white skin", so it's easier for our species to colonize warm tropical/subtropical India than freezing subarctic Altai.

    But what really irks me is that you know all that and just seem to love making me repeat things once and again like some sort of bothersome imp...

    ReplyDelete
  40. "Puyol looks typical West European. "

    I really don't know how a West European looks like :)

    "You are just hallucinating a bit about the diversity of types found in any population. IMO. It is interesting but all I have seen are local types, sign of the high diversity we enjoy."

    I'm not "hallucinating". Looking at the people's face, I found that, as you said, there's an high diversity, specially in the Mediterranean. I think that's really interesting, because we come from many different ancestors, and perhaps our origins haven't been clarified yet.

    ReplyDelete
  41. "H. sapiens is not biologically adapted to cold nor even to low solar radiation levels before developing 'white skin'"

    I can't see why you think of that as being a problem. Haven't you consistently emphasised the versatility and adaptability of our species?

    "Mousterian tech, typically associated to H. neanderthalensis is also found there for the same period"

    And I've consistently pointed out to you that 'technology' does not define 'species'.

    ReplyDelete
  42. "I can't see why you think of that as being a problem. Haven't you consistently emphasised the versatility and adaptability of our species?"

    Sure but even today living north of the tropics is problematic: you need to spend a lot more energy in heating, you need to have better homes and clothes than in the tropics... if you are dark skinned particularly, you need to follow a fish rich diet, specially if mother or young...

    It's a lot simpler at the tropics. Cold low insolation areas are marginal zones only exploited because there was no other place to go, no doubt.

    One thing is that we can overcome the obstacles and another thing is that it's the easy way to go. And the easy way to go is invariably the first option.

    "And I've consistently pointed out to you that 'technology' does not define 'species'"

    But what about the Neanderthal remains of Okladnikov, associated with the Mousterian industry? That settles the issue, so why do you insist once and again in ignoring this fact?

    This is also true for Uzbekistan and the Zagros area and for everywhere where Mousterian is found except Palestine (at some dates) and North Africa.

    ReplyDelete
  43. "Sure but even today living north of the tropics is problematic: you need to spend a lot more energy in heating, you need to have better homes and clothes than in the tropics... if you are dark skinned particularly, you need to follow a fish rich diet, specially if mother or young..."

    Possibly. But early European visitors to Tasmania remarked that the Tasmanian Aborigines walked around in the snow with no clothing, and didn't seem to be bothered in the slightest. I'd imagine they felt rather cold but were used to it. Tasmania is at latitude 41 to 43 degrees south, similar to relevant parts of Central Asia, although at a lower altitude and less continental than those regions. And we don't know whether any H. sapiens were able to get the idea of clothing off local Neanderthals, or whatever you like to call them.

    "And the easy way to go is invariably the first option".

    Not if it's already completely occupied.

    "This is also true for Uzbekistan and the Zagros area and for everywhere where Mousterian is found except Palestine (at some dates) and North Africa".

    And parts of East and Southeast Asia where it's doubtful if we can call the technology 'Mousterian' even. The Australian Aborigines hardly had even a Mousterian technology when Europeans first arrived.

    ReplyDelete
  44. "Not if it's already completely occupied".

    If it's already occupied then it's not the first option nor it's easy anymore. WTF!

    "And parts of East and Southeast Asia"...

    There are no Neanderthal remains there. Again WTF!

    ReplyDelete
  45. Finally, I found it! A berber man who looks EXACTLY like two of my neighbours:

    http://identidadandaluza.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/bereber.jpg

    In that page you can also find a genetic study who links berbers with basques and spaniards, but not other Europeans. I think that's intriguing and might interest you.

    http://identidadandaluza.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/vascos-adn-y-linguistica-dan-origen-bereber/

    ReplyDelete
  46. The guy is quite dark but otherwise he's like Chanquete of Verano Azul. That type looks basically Iberian to me. If not, he is in any case a West Eurasian with a heavy tan.

    Do your neighbors also have that almost full epicanthic fold? I ask because that trait is much more rare among Iberians and is instead more common in North Europe (but varies).

    The most anomalous thing about that guy is his quite wide mouth. Otherwise he looks totally normal (just darker than most Europeans but with Caucasoid features mostly if not totally).

    My opinion anyhow.

    ...

    "In that page you can also find a genetic study who links berbers with basques and spaniards"...

    No. In that page there is nothing like that. There is no link to nor quote of any genetic study. There is vague mention of something like that but no link nor data nor anything.

    The author of that blog doesn't seem to know what he's talking about.

    The linguistic section is a total nonsense as the term "segur" probably tells anyone that does not swallow everything blindly. Sure, there are probably some Vasconic (Iberian) terms in Berber, dating maybe from the Megalithic period (adstrate) or the Oranian culture (substrate) but most of those presented as such, for instance in that article you mention are not (not Basque, not Berber and/or not related).

    It's a huge falsification repeated by ignorants.

    ReplyDelete
  47. "There are no Neanderthal remains there. Again WTF!"

    So? I'm sure there's no need to be so abusive. Anyway the Australian Aborigines did not have anything like an 'Upper Paleolithic' technology when the Europeans arrived. Does that mean the Aborigines do not belong to the species Homo sapiens?

    "If it's already occupied then it's not the first option nor it's easy anymore. WTF!"

    There you go again. Exactly my point. Entry to India was not mtDNA N's first option. India was already occupied. I know you don't yet agree with me but the discussion we had regarding mtDNA M convinced me that the members of that haplogroup entered India along a narrow corridor: across the headwaters of the Indus River into the Punjab. In other words from Afghanistan. The route that most migrations into India that we know anything at all about have all taken. Makes sense to me.

    So how long ago did M enter India? Perhaps 120,000 years ago? Certainly long before the development of the Upper Paleolithic.

    You've several times mentioned that mtDNA X is centred on Pakistan. Of course it actually has two centres: the Middle East and Afghanistan. It makes sense to me that haplogroups M and N parted company in Afghanistan. M1 may even have originated there.

    Until 120,000 years ago the climate was actually quite a bit warmer and wetter than it is today. The Gobi Desert was almost certainly lush pastureland. Full of yaks or bison, horses or onagers, chiru or saiga antelope, camels, musk oxen. Possibly even mammoths and rhinos. Prime human habitat. For a while at least.

    To me it seems obvious that in the east mtDNA N spread south from Japan, perhaps as the climate cooled, not north from SE Asia. Or at least from somewhere round the Yellow Sea. One of the three branches of mtDNA N9 (Y) is extremely common amoung the Nivkh who live around the northern point of the Sea of Japan. The same haplogroup is also present in the Ainu and another branch (N9b) is also very common in Japan.

    I think you know the rest. Although my guess would be that the short period of greatly lowered sea level about 60,000 years ago was what allowed these East Asians to reach Australia.

    ReplyDelete
  48. "Do your neighbors also have that almost full epicanthic fold? I ask because that trait is much more rare among Iberians and is instead more common in North Europe (but varies)."

    Don't know but yes, they have tiny eyes, much like those of this guy.
    North Europe? I can't remember any case, except if these northern europeans are mixed with lapps, which is relatively common among Finns, and even native americans. Some native american ancestry has been discovered among Icelandics recently.

    "The most anomalous thing about that guy is his quite wide mouth. Otherwise he looks totally normal (just darker than most Europeans but with Caucasoid features mostly if not totally). "

    I don't see too many caucasoid features in him, but of course, I could also say that most Asians and Africans have caucasoid features as well. I don't know exactly what "caucasoid" means.

    "It's a huge falsification repeated by ignorants."

    I know there are some falsifications among Spanish historicists. For example, I read once a theory which said Basques were berbers who arrived at the iberian peninsula during the roman times, which makes me laugh.

    ReplyDelete
  49. "So? I'm sure there's no need to be so abusive".

    How "abusive"? You are the one being abusive in this matter, specially with my patience.

    Once and again we come to the same "dead end", where I point to Neanderthal skeletal remains and you keep talking about technology...

    "Anyway the Australian Aborigines did not have anything like an 'Upper Paleolithic' technology"...

    See what I mean: you keep talking about technology ignoring the skeletal facts.

    And again WTF?!: there was no "Upper Paleolithic" (understood as mode 4 industries: blades) in Eastern Eurasia (at least until much later than the initial H. sapiens colonization). But there was also no Mousterian either - nor Neanderthal remains...

    "Entry to India was not mtDNA N's first option. India was already occupied".

    I am not in agreement with this but at least here you are logically consistent.

    "So how long ago did M enter India? Perhaps 120,000 years ago?"

    Either that or c. 80 Ka ago, IMO. Though I would not use the word "enter" but "coalesce". Because we do not know if M formed already in SA or just before the arrival to the subcontinent.

    "You've several times mentioned that mtDNA X is centred on Pakistan".

    Wrong. X is centered around Palestine. W is centered in Pakistan.

    Anyhow, I do not care bout your sloppy discourse about particular sublineages of N, the greatest diversity of this clade by far is in SEA-Australia. And there's not a single such haplogroup that is centered in Central Asia.

    It's repetitive and methodologically wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  50. "North Europe? I can't remember any case"...

    If you pay some attention to North Europeans you'll soon notice they often have partial Epicanthic fold and "small eyes". Not always, not at all, but it's much more common than in the South.

    Your usual Holywwood actors like Brad Pitt or that arrogant guy, whatshisname... Tom Cruise, have similar small semi-slanted eyes caused by partial epicanthic folds.

    However they are different in shape of those of East Asians because of skull differences probably.

    "I don't know exactly what "caucasoid" means".

    Like everything, it's a bit relative, but maybe this helps:

    http://www.redwoods.edu/Instruct/AGarwin/anth_6_ancestry.htm

    Fore example here there is a comparison of Caucasoid and Mongoloid skulls. The differences are quite subtle to be honest and when you look at thousands of skulls they probably get quite blurry.

    These categories have only limited statistical importance, when you come to individuals things vary a lot!

    "I know there are some falsifications among Spanish historicists. For example, I read once a theory which said Basques were berbers who arrived at the iberian peninsula during the roman times, which makes me laugh".

    That's exactly the same falsification. I do not know who invented it but I know that Spanish nationalists love it.

    But my central point is that the list of alleged Basque-Berber cognates is totally untenable: I've seen more credible comparisons of Basque and Ainu and such (not much more admittedly but not worse either).

    In all that junk however there may be a few real words (1% at best) but that's another story.

    ReplyDelete
  51. "If you pay some attention to North Europeans you'll soon notice they often have partial Epicanthic fold and "small eyes". Not always, not at all, but it's much more common than in the South."

    I see. Do you think this has anything to do with Central/East Asian admixture? Epicanthal folds and tiny eyes aren't uncommon at all here.

    http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/03/xin_322100524095756283657.jpg

    "Fore example here there is a comparison of Caucasoid and Mongoloid skulls. The differences are quite subtle to be honest and when you look at thousands of skulls they probably get quite blurry. "

    I know, from that photo, that one difference is in the nose shape. From this point of view, the following people seem much more caucasoid to me than this berber man or my neighbours, who have flat and wide noses:

    http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41198000/jpg/_41198526_man203.jpg
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3265/2827147259_4aa2440a46.jpg?v=0
    http://images.imagestate.com/Watermark/2223365.jpg
    http://www.visit-algeria.com/img/touareg.jpg
    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cB2LXaxIvD4/SY-oC4m50-I/AAAAAAAAEWs/noLk7teEmsY/s400/42-15342323.jpg

    But of course, I don't know about other skull traits.

    "That's exactly the same falsification. I do not know who invented it but I know that Spanish nationalists love it."

    I know. Spanish nationalists often falsify history; sadly, this makes them to feel better.

    ReplyDelete
  52. "Do you think this has anything to do with Central/East Asian admixture?"

    Not necesarily. It may just imply retaining diversity. Khoisanids also have epicanthic fold and they are very much unrelated.

    However it is potentially notable that the area with greater frequency of this trait is also the one with greater frequency of the "Finnic" autosomal component. Finnish and other NE Europeans have minor but significant Siberian/East Asian admixture. (see Bauchet 2007 for a reference).

    But the trait should be unrelated to East Asian genetic influence because such a low genetic input should not cause such a widespread phenotype expression. So it's much more likely to be a native Western trait, just like diverse hair textures, colors, etc.

    "... one difference is in the nose shape. From this point of view"...

    But it's one trait among many. While West Eurasians tend to have narrow and prominent noses in comparison to other populations, individuals vary. There are prominent narrow noses in East Asia (not many but some) and there are wide "flat" noses in West Eurasia. You cannot classify people only on that: it's absurd.

    And even when you classify people properly (with anthropometric methods), there's always a 10% or so of error margin. It's not 100% accurate, not at all, just statistical tendencies.

    ReplyDelete
  53. And your photos are anyhow totally in disagreement with the idea of "flat nose".

    Ignoring the first guy (ambiguous) and, specially the last one, who is a clear non-Caucasoid (he's easily spotted as Fula because of the makeup), all the others have prominent Arabid noses and not particularly wide in most cases (though the Arabid type of nose is suppossed to be rather wide at the bottom - but not "flat" at all).

    The last guy (Fula) and one of the others are anyhow quite clearly Negroid or transitional to Negroid or whatever you want to call them.

    But this one is a very clear Caucasoid. You can find people who resemble him in Europe and West Asia no doubt. His nose is typically "Arabid": prominent and triangular (broad at the bottom).

    Well, we have gone off topic enough, I think. You just seem not to have much of an idea of what you are talking about, sincerely. :/

    ReplyDelete
  54. "You are the one being abusive in this matter, specially with my patience".

    And I'm losing patience with your pig-headed stupidity. But saying 'what the fuck?' is being fairly abusive as far as I'm concerned.

    "Once and again we come to the same 'dead end', where I point to Neanderthal skeletal remains and you keep talking about technology..."

    Hang on:

    "But what about the Neanderthal remains of Okladnikov, associated with the Mousterian industry? That settles the issue, so why do you insist once and again in ignoring this fact?"

    So it was you who first brought up the correlation between genes and technology.

    "there was no 'Upper Paleolithic' (understood as mode 4 industries: blades) in Eastern Eurasia (at least until much later than the initial H. sapiens colonization). But there was also no Mousterian either - nor Neanderthal remains..."

    But there were humans of some sort there. Obviously not Neanderthals. And because (in spite of what you appear to believe) technology is not a determiner of genes we cannot know whether they were H. spaiens or some other species. And because the Australian Aborigines didn't possess even mode 4 industries presumably humans in East Eurasia didn't possess such technologies at the time humans first entered Australia.

    "the greatest diversity of this clade by far is in SEA-Australia. And there's not a single such haplogroup that is centered in Central Asia".

    I'd be very surprised if any had survived the severe climate cooling that set in 30,000 years ago. In fact I'd bet big money that cooling is what caused the separation between eastern and western N haplogroups. It's certainly impossible to envisage a scenario where N (or pre-N) moved through India in an easterly direction leaving no trace of its passing. Then moved back west through India again leaving no trace, except possibly in the far northwest. The northwest Indian N haplogroups are easily as likely to have moved in from further west.

    But anyway, I give up on you for now.

    ReplyDelete
  55. "... saying 'what the fuck?' is being fairly abusive as far as I'm concerned".

    Where were you in 1977? In Utah? Attending a Mormon seminar or what?!

    "What the fuck" is perfectly normal English! And it's a clear expression of me being bothered.

    Notice also that Spanish is the language of the world with more curse words and therefore we who have been raised in that language use them all the time. Get used.

    However most of our curse words are about crapping on god and his mother. Sadly these are impossible to translate into English, which is such a stupidly polite language! The only curse word it has is "fuck", what the fuck?!

    ReplyDelete
  56. OK, I'll ignore your abuse. I doubt that you will take this link seriously, but here goes:

    http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL-DSJJ199003000.htm

    "The Gansu and Qinghai region was mainly influenced by the monsoons and was dry and cold in the ice age and warm-humid in the interglacial period".

    And:

    "These paleosols and loesses are evidently corresponding to the 5 sub-stages (a, b, c, d, e) of the deep sea isotope stage 5, showing that climate was mild and moist in the last interglacial period and thus the brown paleosols developed. According to TL dating, the last interglacial period persisted for about 140 000—80000 aB.P."

    Eighty thousand years. Didn't you say 'Either that or c. 80 Ka ago, IMO'?

    ReplyDelete
  57. "But there were humans of some sort there. Obviously not Neanderthals".

    Yes. So?

    Did they use Mousterian? No. Did they live in Altai? No.

    So?

    "And because the Australian Aborigines didn't possess even mode 4 industries presumably humans in East Eurasia didn't possess such technologies at the time humans first entered Australia".

    I know that perfectly well. It's totally irrelevant as far as I am concerned. You're mixing apples and oranges in an attempt of creating confusion again.

    "I'd be very surprised if any had survived the severe climate cooling that set in 30,000 years ago".

    Not me because I know that there is archaeological continuity. And also because I think that much more recent lineages such as Y-DNA Q, C3, N or mtDNA CZ, D4, A... colonized that area long before the "severe climate cooling" of, hmmm, more like 20 Ka ago in fact (the LGM, remember?)

    "In fact I'd bet big money that cooling is what caused the separation between eastern and western N haplogroups".

    I'd triple that bet but there's no way to demonstrate it in a way that you could be persuaded, so...

    "It's certainly impossible to envisage a scenario where N (or pre-N) moved through India in an easterly direction leaving no trace of its passing".

    For me it's not impossible at all: it's the very basis of the rapid coastal migration process. But as you reject that there could be rapid coastal migrants because humans could not have invented the boat by then...

    You just lock the gates and then say "impossible". Sure as impossible as planets orbiting other stars, as impossible as earth-like planets out there, as impossible as dinosaurs...

    "But anyway, I give up on you for now".

    For a week or so, I guess. :/

    ReplyDelete
  58. "Eighty thousand years. Didn't you say 'Either that or c. 80 Ka ago, IMO'?"

    For South Asia, based on the archaeological record of South Asia and not anything else.

    140-80 Ka seems an expanded version of 130-90 Ka and 120-100 Ka (or similar) windows suggested for the Abbassia Pluvial (interglacial?) However I had never seen such a wide window before.

    But what is this supposed to demonstrate, if anything at all?

    ReplyDelete
  59. "But what is this supposed to demonstrate, if anything at all?"

    That life in the region was quite possible for humans. And seeing that humans spread so rapidly at times it seems strange that they could not have lived there.

    ReplyDelete
  60. Life in the region is possible for humans now but it's still a much demanding corner of the world than, say, Kerala's beaches.

    Actually life is possible in the Moon or Antarctica... with enough energy expenditure and technological level. But Earth's tropics are still much better.

    ReplyDelete
  61. "For a week or so, I guess".

    I would give it a rest but, as you say, it's a matter of examining the evidence to find the truth.

    "Life in the region is possible for humans now but it's still a much demanding corner of the world than, say, Kerala's beaches".

    The recent information regarding the Denisova humans tells us that some H. sapiens certainly had contact with some close relations of the Denisovans of the Altai. Why on earth need we assume that the meeting took place anywhere other than the region where the Denisova humans lived? Unless we're already so committed to some particular theory that we're actually forced to concoct some complex and unlikely scenario whereby it was a population that had been isolated in SE Asia for a million years that provided those same genes. Ignoring the fact that the three populations (H. sapiens, Denisovans and SE Asian H. erectus) had each been subject to drift, if not selection, over the whole of those million years. The Denisovans may have been spread from the Altai to the Amur but it's doubtful they reached SE Asia. So how did those Denisova genes reach New Guinea while completely dodging India?

    "I'd triple that bet but there's no way to demonstrate it in a way that you could be persuaded, so..."

    Hang on. It's you who have the closed mind here. You stubbornly cling to the 'great southern coastal migration theory' in spite of there being no evidence for it at all.

    "For me it's not impossible at all: it's the very basis of the rapid coastal migration process".

    To make the evidence fit the 'rapid coastal migration theory' you've been forced to concoct a theory that 'coastal' includes regions actually a great distance from any 'coast'. In which case how would a coastal migration through India produce a result different from alternative any inland one?

    (continued)

    ReplyDelete
  62. (continued):

    In order to support your stubbornly held theory you've next been forced to concoct another theory that mtDNA N's present distribution can be explained by N having been a minority haplogroup in that coastal migration. In which case we would surely expect mere random chance to have driven N to fixation in at least a few of the presumably many remnant populations left behind along the route of such a migration, coastal or not. Pockets of Haplogroup N should therefore be scattered through regions where it had become the dominant clade. But we find no basal N clades anywhere around the coast, or along the rivers, in Greater India.

    Perhaps we might explain the evidence by imagining that the whole population moved on completely once it had exhausted the local resources, leaving no-one behind. Such over-exploitation would surely give rise to an increase in population numbers in which N could easily remain a minority haplogroup. But it's then necessary to accept that M repopulated the whole of India from the somewhere on east coast and/or the northeast.

    Whatever, we have to still to imagine that somehow N survived the eastward migration through India, coastal or otherwise. And next imagine that somehow N was then able to take over to some extent immediately the migration had eventually reached Zomia.

    "Wrong. X is centered around Palestine. W is centered in Pakistan".

    Sorry. I didn't bother to check my facts on that one. So we have N2/W in Pakistan/Afghanistan, X in Palestine and N1'5 somewhere in between the two. So once again we have to imagine that N somehow survived the trip back through India as a minor haplogroup, yet inexplicably expanded once it left the subcontinent. What did N have against India?

    "the greatest diversity of this clade by far is in SEA-Australia".

    Yes. We have O, N13, N14 and S in Australia; R, N21 and N22 in SE Asia; Y/N9 further north and A in some indeterminate region in Central/East Eurasia. Where are the India haplogroups? And wouldn't we expect the greatest diversity to survive in any regions that had never suffered severe cold or aridity over the last 100,000 years?

    I'm sure I won't have to wait a week before your next WTF.

    ReplyDelete
  63. "To make the evidence fit the 'rapid coastal migration theory' you've been forced to concoct a theory that 'coastal' includes regions actually a great distance from any 'coast'".

    That's not true: from Eritrea to Kerala there's a host of sites near the coast. What we may lack evidence for is coastal migration between Kerala and Bengal and further East. But we have to concede that much of the evidence can be hidden under the waves nowadays (and that the archaeological work is still far from properly combing the area even above sea level).

    Of course the RCM could have gone at times through inland or riverine routes. There's no absolute rule against that.

    What really matters is that we have a number of lineages in Eastern Eurasia, centered in SE Asia, that left no track between Africa and there. That needs an explanation and the RCM (with whatever variations you wish) is the best one by far (among other things because it does have archaeological backing where it has been searched for, unlike your continental impossible migration hypothesis).

    Appealing to "Denisovan admixture" when we do not even know yet with detail what are "Denisovans" (they probably represent H. erectus admixture in fact) is the proverbial burning nail. Someone please test H. erectus soloensis...

    "In order to support your stubbornly held theory you've next been forced to concoct another theory that mtDNA N's present distribution can be explained by N having been a minority haplogroup in that coastal migration. In which case we would surely expect mere random chance to have driven N to fixation in at least a few of the presumably many remnant populations left behind along the route of such a migration, coastal or not".

    No. L3-pre-N maybe but N only coalesced once in East Asia.

    I disagree with your conjecture that haplogroups go around dropping children as they move. I actually think that the origin is roughly static and children move from that origin.

    While this you say might be possible within mtDNA, as the mutation rates are slow (because of the small size of the DNA molecule), it is impossible with Y-DNA. And we are in the same situation with Y-DNA C and D

    If they would have been dropping children all around, we'd see C and D sublineages in West Eurasia, along with those of mtDNA N and R possibly. We do not.

    So all these lineages arrived to SEA after traveling as private lineages (super-minority clades) within a population that was fundamentally Y-DNA F and mtDNA M.

    In SA these two lineages (and their descendants) effectively annihilated the small lineages by mere genetic drift (probably). Hoever in East Eurasia (SEA essentially) these lineages experienced some marked founder effects (amplification) and that's why we see them today.

    "we have to still to imagine that somehow N survived the eastward migration through India"...

    Same as Y-DNA C and D, as private lineage (still in the "pre" stage: L3, CF and DE respectively).

    "So we have N2/W in Pakistan/Afghanistan, X in Palestine and N1'5 somewhere in between the two".

    I see N1'5 as older than N2 and X. N1 compares well with R0 for example by antiquity and that's why it was present in Europe before the Neolithic. I do not think N1 is "in between" other minor N sublineages but "before", maybe even older than the local R sublineages.

    You may protest "but N is older than R!" Of course. I'm talking about N and R subclades, not N and R as such. Even if, say, R0 has an intermediate node upstream towards N and X does not, R0 has less mutations towards N than X does, so R0 is older than her "aunt" X (same for N2).

    ReplyDelete
  64. "from Eritrea to Kerala there's a host of sites near the coast".

    Are there? Where? Mostly around the relatively benign region of Oman and the Persian Gulf as far as I'm aware. Humans could easily have arrived there from well inland. And, in my opinion, probably did so.

    "Appealing to 'Denisovan admixture' when we do not even know yet with detail what are 'Denisovans' (they probably represent H. erectus admixture in fact) is the proverbial burning nail".

    But even as a 'H. erectus' population they were still separated from SE Asian H. erectus for something like a million years, not to mention the huge distance. It's extremely unlikely that neither had changed over that period.

    "I disagree with your conjecture that haplogroups go around dropping children as they move".

    Not necessarily 'children'. In fact the offspring are probably more likely to move than the parents. But the only reason why a moving bunch of haplogroups wouldn't drop of members as they moved would be either if the whole population moved (only likely if the population had completely exterminated all local resources) or if it's members had later become locally extinct (which would also only happen if its members had exterminated all resources).

    "L3-pre-N maybe but N only coalesced once in East Asia".

    That merely shifts the problem. In which case we should find various 'pre-Ns' along the route.

    "it is impossible with Y-DNA".

    Why do you believe that? Surely not all men in a particular group would move off. Some would surely remain in the region, exactly the same as for the mtDNA. Of course you could quite easily argue that early haplogroup arrivals could be replaced by later arrivals. A situation I believe has been quite common, but you've stated you believe replacement has been very uncommon, if it's happened at all. But such a scenario would easily explain:

    "we have a number of lineages in Eastern Eurasia, centered in SE Asia, that left no track between Africa and there".

    And:

    "the same situation with Y-DNA C and D"

    They have been replaced by later immigrants.

    (continued)

    ReplyDelete
  65. (continued):

    "So all these lineages arrived to SEA after traveling as private lineages (super-minority clades) within a population that was fundamentally Y-DNA F and mtDNA M".

    That explanation is extremely unlikely. It can only be an adequate explanation if you're going to claim that the whole population moved on at every stage of the migration, leaving no-one behind. Even the Polynesian expansion into the vast expanse of the Pacific left members behind. Admittedly some islands did become uninhabited once the resourses on them became exhausted. So see if you can come up with a better explanation.

    "in East Eurasia (SEA essentially) these lineages experienced some marked founder effects (amplification) and that's why we see them today".

    It is inconceivable that they failed to establish any 'founder effects' in India, but suddenly were able to do so once the full complement of haplogroups had reached East Eurasia. Try again.

    "If they would have been dropping children all around, we'd see C and D sublineages in West Eurasia, along with those of mtDNA N and R possibly. We do not".

    Possibly we do, to some extent. C5 is concentrated largely in northwest India. Several N haplogroups are certainly spread from the Levant to northwest India and M1 stretches right back to the Mediterranean and Africa. Of course it's possible to argue that in all these cases the migration has been 'from' India rather than 'towards'. It's possible that the times of extreme aridity through SW Asia is what separated E from D.

    "I do not think N1 is 'in between' other minor N sublineages but 'before'.

    I meant 'geographically', not 'chronologically'. That's what I meant by:

    "So we have N2/W in Pakistan/Afghanistan, X in Palestine and N1'5 somewhere in between the two".

    ReplyDelete
  66. I presume you've seen this. In fact i seem to remember you posting on it:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11327442

    It deals with the early OoA. Quote:

    "Petraglia, whose co-workers include Australian and Indian researchers, presented his ideas at the British Science Festival, which is hosted this year at Aston University. 'I believe that multiple populations came out of Africa in the period between 120,000 and 70,000 years ago,' he said. 'Our evidence is stone tools that we can date.' Most of the tools are from far inland - hundreds of kilometres from the coasts. This means it was more likely humans migrated by land than in boats, he said".

    The 'period between 120,000 and 70,000 years ago' certainly is early enough to take advantage of the milder climete that extended wat to the north of where it reaches today.

    ReplyDelete
  67. "Are there?"

    Yes

    "Where?"

    I've been hours googling for a map of Paleolithic sites in India that used to be online and is not anymore (sadly enough). I know that there is a chain of sites all along the West coast but not the East coast, where sites are restricted to the area around the lower Krishna river. You can believe me or not in this.

    "Mostly around the relatively benign region of Oman and the Persian Gulf as far as I'm aware. Humans could easily have arrived there from well inland".

    In the recent entry about Jebel Faya, the only sites mentioned as old as that are all near the coast.

    "And, in my opinion, probably did so".

    Mind writing a blog with content backing that opinion?

    "That merely shifts the problem. In which case we should find various 'pre-Ns' along the route".

    We do not. And more critically we do not find either pre-C nor pre-D along any possible route.

    Actually we do find a pre-C: F but no pre-D. So DE must have arrived to the Far East (like mtDNA N) as minor lineage within a majority CF (evolving into C) and F (K evolving into MNOPS).

    Minor lineages in SA were simply drifted out early on. In SEA however, some of them established founder effects (others did not and died out - we will never know which ones unless found in aDNA).

    "Why do you believe that?"

    Because the Y chromosome is much much larger than the mtDNA molecule, so statistically several mutations happen in each generation (I estimate). Instead, mtDNA only accumulates one mutation every hundred or two hundred generations, if at all.

    "Surely not all men in a particular group would move off. Some would surely remain in the region, exactly the same as for the mtDNA".

    Then why do we not see anything pre-D or pre-C (other than F) in West Eurasia? According to your theory there should be a number of such lineages, the same that there are some mtDNA N sublineages in West Eurasia, yet all Y-DNA lineages of West Eurasia are stubbornly within F (except the recent arrivals from Africa, E).

    I say that's because the mtDNA N sublineages we see in WEA are back-migrants, who came with Y-DNA F derivatives, particularly P, the same mtDNA R ones did. That's why we do not see any pre-D nor pre-C in this part of the world.

    In your theory we ought to see them.

    "They have been replaced by later immigrants".

    How convenient a coincidence!

    C'mon! You cannot believe in that junk. You are just saying so I am brought to debate once and again the same thing.

    ...

    ReplyDelete
  68. ...

    "That explanation is extremely unlikely".

    It is a very reasonable one, not just for me but also for geneticists and archaeologists worldwide, who find it fits best with the known data overall.

    "Even the Polynesian expansion into the vast expanse of the Pacific left members behind".

    Not comparable:

    1. It's like 20 or 40 times more recent in time, the track is therefore still warm to follow.

    2. The numbers involved at origin and destination are without doubt many orders of magnitude larger.

    "It is inconceivable that they failed to establish any 'founder effects' in India, but suddenly were able to do so once the full complement of haplogroups had reached East Eurasia".

    Founder effects are not "conceivable" they are just stochastic. You cannot rationalize them beyond the fact that they happen randomly.

    It's like a lottery: let's say there were 10 numbers, upon arrival to SA, one was extracted (M), upon arrival to SEA another one was (N). Some other 8 numbers were discarded.

    That's founder effect, you cannot rationalize it. Sometimes you play lottery and win something, most of the time you do not.

    "C5 is concentrated largely in northwest India".

    Let's try with D. C5 is an obvious back-migrant, as all C sublineages are Oriental but this one, but anyhow, try with D because pre-C can be said to be F (alternative CF form), so never mind.

    "I meant 'geographically', not 'chronologically'".

    I know but I think that you should approach these three Western N lineages chronologically not geographically. Geography is (was) trivial as long as the lineage has (had) not yet coalesced.

    ReplyDelete
  69. I know Petraglia is arguing for inland routes because he finds sites and tools inland. But I do not see why one would contradict the other. Inland people surely would migrate more slowly: they would not be the avant-guard but epiphenomena.

    ReplyDelete
  70. "I know that there is a chain of sites all along the West coast but not the East coast, where sites are restricted to the area around the lower Krishna river".

    I remember someone recently blogging about some west coast India tribals. Perhaps you remember it too. I didn't take much notice at the time but I believe it divided the haplogroups there into eastern and west Indian origin. None were claimed to be ancient west coast in origin.

    "In the recent entry about Jebel Faya, the only sites mentioned as old as that are all near the coast".

    But the map shows only two sites on the southern coast of Arabia, 3 sites in East Africa nowhere near the coast, 3 near the Levantine coast and one in the Levant well away from the coast.

    "Minor lineages in SA were simply drifted out early on".

    So how come they managed to reach SE Asia?

    "Then why do we not see anything pre-D or pre-C (other than F) in West Eurasia?"

    Presumably Y-haps G and I'J replaced them in West Eurasia. Besides which, if the original ex-Africa population was spread from Africa to northern India we would expect indicidual haplogroups to coalesce in different regions within that distribution because of the presumably small populations involved.

    "I say that's because the mtDNA N sublineages we see in WEA are back-migrants"

    We cannot possibly be certain of that.

    ReplyDelete
  71. "Perhaps you remember it too".

    No unless it's my own entry on Maharastra.

    "3 sites in East Africa nowhere near the coast"

    I was thinking in Arabia, not Africa, when I referred to that map. We have in the past several times discussed the site on Eritrea's coast (island I think) with signs of beachcombing lifestyle.

    And, btw, remember please that the Nassarius globulosus so characteristic of early humans in Africa and Palestine are sea animals.

    "So how come they managed to reach SE Asia?"

    They did before totally vanishing. That's why the migration had to be FAST, coastal or not but FAST for sure.

    "Presumably Y-haps G and I'J replaced them in West Eurasia".

    That's not a valid pretext because G and IJ are all derived from F, not directly related to D.

    How do you explain that Y-DNA DE (D) arrived to East Asia, probably via SEA, without leaving any descendants in the way? It cannot happen with you way of thinking, you need to adopt my way of thinking: DE arrived to SEA as a minor clade, enjoying then a founder effect that magnified it.

    In fact we can easily conclude that the people who arrived to SEA were essentially of three Y-DNA lineages: C, MNOPS (or K) and D. There were maybe others of F* and DE* but these did not have much of an effect.

    "We cannot possibly be certain of that".

    Yes, because N must have coalesced in SEA, so its few descendants in the West must be offshoots, back-migrants.

    ReplyDelete
  72. "1. It's like 20 or 40 times more recent in time, the track is therefore still warm to follow".

    Exactly. We can actually see what happened instead of having to make things up. I'll come back to that.

    "2. The numbers involved at origin and destination are without doubt many orders of magnitude larger".

    which was larger? The migration into India or the migration into the Pacific? Surely both migrations are exactly comparable.

    "Founder effects are not 'conceivable' they are just stochastic. You cannot rationalize them beyond the fact that they happen randomly".

    But you can't just make up a 'founder effect' to explain inconvenient evidence. Let's look at the entry into India. For a start it is extremely unlikely that M actually coalesced in India. It's star-like nature displays all the features of having recently arrived in, and expanded through, a virgin habitat. So it arrived as fully-formed M. I'm not claiming that just a single M woman enterd India, and I'm denying that some pre-M haplogroups may have entered with M. But the presumably few pre-Ms were drifted out, as would have been any other accompanying minor haplogroups. And the population that entered India may already have been considerably diverse. For example M3 and M47 were almost certainly already present amoung the immigrants. The immigrants may even have included many of the 18 M haplogroups with one mutation in their tail. For example just M51 of M1'51 may have entered India. The other M haplogroups would have entered as some sort of M*. But the big question is: was N also part of that group?

    So back to considering the comparable Austronesian expansion east. We know that Y-hap C2 and mtDNA B4a became the two dominant haplogroups by the eastern margin of that expansion. This dominance may be a product of a series of bottlenecks along the way, but it is as likely that the two haplogroups formed the majority in the population that originally passed beyond the Admiralties.

    The fact that some haplogroups from near the Admiralties followed on behind them muddies the waters somewhat. But haplogroups from further west almost certainly made up a minor proportion of the early Austronesian movement east. None of them made it all the way, although B4b did make it to Western Polynesia. Possibly the most interesting is mtDNA E, which emerged into Wallacea from Borneo. M7b and B5 reached as far as the Admiralties.

    Several Y-haps were also originally part of the movement east. O3a survives as a minor haplogroup as far east as Central Polynesia. The 'Austronesian haplogroup', O1a, survives only as far east as the Admiralties and the eastern New Guinea coast.

    So haplogroups that are a minority in any migrating group tend to progressively dissappear as the migration proceeds.

    If N had entered India as a minor haplogroup it would have dissappeared from the immigrant group by the time the group reached SE Asia, and so not have been able to form any 'founder' group in that region.

    ReplyDelete
  73. "No unless it's my own entry on Maharastra".

    Could be. Can you provide a link please?

    "They did before totally vanishing. That's why the migration had to be FAST, coastal or not but FAST for sure".

    But there's nothing particularly 'fast' about M's migration to SE Asia, especially if it's been present there for more than 80,000 years. There seems to be a considerable pile-up of M haplogroups in NE India and Zomia as well.

    "It cannot happen with you way of thinking, you need to adopt my way of thinking: DE arrived to SEA as a minor clade, enjoying then a founder effect that magnified it".

    If it arrived as a 'minor clade' then you have the same problems as mtDNA N. It presumably enjoyed a wider distribution at some time in the past but shrank to several smaller regions. But it certainly has also expanded from those regions. Haplogroups don't arrive somewhere and that's it. Population grow and shrink all the time. But a minor haplogroup even in an expanding population has a small chance of surviving.

    "because N must have coalesced in SEA, so its few descendants in the West must be offshoots, back-migrants".

    In other words it went through India twice, once in each direction, and survived both to eventually expand. Hmmm ... Unlikely.

    ReplyDelete
  74. "I know Petraglia is arguing for inland routes because he finds sites and tools inland".

    In fact in reply to you he wrote:

    "In my view there is very weak (or rather nil) evidence to support the rapid coastal hypothesis".

    Exactly.

    "But I do not see why one would contradict the other. Inland people surely would migrate more slowly: they would not be the avant-guard but epiphenomena".

    But there's no evidence for anything other than an inland route, or several inland routes.

    ReplyDelete
  75. "Surely both migrations are exactly comparable".

    An agricultural village can feed hundreds, the land of dozens of agricultural villages is needed for maybe 20-100 huntergatherers.

    All Neolithic migrations involve larger numbers in origin and destiny.

    "But you can't just make up a 'founder effect' to explain inconvenient evidence".

    I make up nothing. The founder effect happened and the evidence demonstrates it: it's not inconvenient but actually most convenient for this model. They fit each other like glove and hand.

    "For a start it is extremely unlikely that M actually coalesced in India. It's star-like nature displays all the features of having recently arrived in, and expanded through, a virgin habitat. So it arrived as fully-formed M".

    You give too many thoughts to where exactly the last mutation leading to the M-node happened. What matters when we say "coalescence" is where the node branched out, not when the mutation happened.

    Mutations always happened before they become relevant, I guess. That's not too important.

    "I'm denying that some pre-M haplogroups may have entered with M".

    Are you? Why?

    "And the population that entered India may already have been considerably diverse. For example M3 and M47 were almost certainly already present among the immigrants".

    Then why don't we see then in Arabia? Why do we see so few M subclades in Arabia or the West in general? All them with rather lengthy stems, sign of long lives as "private" lineages.

    I disagree: M expanded in South Asia and not before.

    "So haplogroups that are a minority in any migrating group tend to progressively disappear as the migration proceeds".

    It depends. How do you explain the high frequency of I1 (a rather young lineage) in Sweden? How do you explain R1a in Central Africa? How do you explain N or Q in North Eurasia? They are not majority before their destinies.

    A good example may be America: you look for a majority of Q in Siberia and it's really difficult to find, yet (founder effect miracle!) all Native America is that way. You look for important mtDNA B in NE Asia and no way you can find it... but (founder effect miracle!) from Alaska to the East it's everywhere around!

    You may not want to accept founder effects, but they are everyday's bread in population genetics. That's why you are so confused because you don't want to see things as they are.

    "If N had entered India as a minor haplogroup it would have dissappeared from the immigrant group by the time the group reached SE Asia"...

    It would not because it did not. And as I have pointed out in the previous paragraph this is not anomalous at all.

    Why? Because the migration was fast. At least that's one of the reasons - and something we can also see in mtDNA M, with all those basal lineages in East Asia.

    ReplyDelete
  76. "Are you? Why?"

    Sorry. I left an important word out. I intended to write 'I'm NOT denying that some pre-M haplogroups may have entered with M.'

    "An agricultural village can feed hundreds, the land of dozens of agricultural villages is needed for maybe 20-100 huntergatherers".

    That only explains how the Polynesians were able to survive on the many small islands incapable of supporting hunter-gatherer populations. But any migration into India was not hampered by having to survive in such small, discrete environments. And the postualted larger numbers in the later migration should have aided the survival of private lineages able to emerge later, but it didn't.

    "I disagree: M expanded in South Asia and not before".

    I'm in complete agreement that M expanded rapidly because it entered the unexploited Indian environment. But I find it unlikely that the immigrants all belonged to just a single M haplogroup with a very small minority of just one N haplogroup.

    "I make up nothing. The founder effect happened and the evidence demonstrates it: it's not inconvenient but actually most convenient for this model. They fit each other like glove and hand".

    You far too often 'make up' founder effect to explain inconvenient haplogroup distributions. It is not always the correct explanation.

    I realise you're totally convinced that humans are completely different from every other species. However I'm convinced we can learn a great deal from other species. I also realise you will claim that 'haplogroups' are not 'species'. However surely the regional extinction of a haplogroup is the consequence of the extinction of the humans that carry it. Many species have discontinuous distributions, similar to the discontinuous distributions of many human haplogroups. Are nthose discontinuities the product of founder effect?

    Lions exist in much of Africa and in Gujarat, India, but not in between. Guess why. Not founder effect. We know that lions existed in all the regions between until relatively recently. And bison exist in Europe and North America, but not in Asia. Guess why. Not founder effect. Camels exist in Central and Southwestern Asia and the related species llamas/alpacas in South America. We know that similar species existed in North America when humans arrived there. Is the present camelid distribution a result of 'founer effect'?

    (continued)

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  77. (continued)

    You could argue that the above discontinuities/extinctions have been caused by humans. But when we consider discontinuities in the geographic spread of closely related species we see that extinctions go much further back. Tapirs exist in SE Asia and South America, but not in between. From a (1955) book I've had since I was in primary school:

    "They [tapirs] have been a fairly numerous group over the ages but today there are only four species left, one in Malaya, and three in Central and South America, one of which is sufficiently different to be placed in a distinct genus".

    Doesn't sound as though their distribution is a consequence of founder effect. And chevrotains:

    "The most obscure hoofed animals, known as Chevrotains or most misleadingly as Mouse-Deer, are but the remnants of a once numerous, diverse, and ancient group of ruminating animals that go back to the dawn of the age of mammals and almost to the basic stock from which the majority of the even-toed Hoofed Mammals sprang....Today, there are two kinds, one found in India, Ceylon, Malaya, and the Indonesian islands, the other in West and central Africa".

    Is this discontinuous distribution the result of 'founder effect'?

    So you can see that for species other than humans the sort of founder effect you postulate is very rare, if not altogether unknown. Perhaps that is also the case for human haplogroup distribution. For example the distribution of Y-haps D and E may be the product of exactly the same phenomenon. Y-hap DE may have originally (or soon after it formed) been spread from SW Asia/North Africa to the east, perhaps as far as SE Asia. As the aridity increased and the temperature decreased DE was broken into two: E in the west and D in the east. To me it's simple.

    Now back to the remainder of your comments:

    (continued)

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  78. "That only explains how the Polynesians were able to survive on the many small islands incapable of supporting hunter-gatherer populations".

    Why would "small" islands be unable to feed hunter-gatherers (fishermen)? I do not understand this concept: Andamanese have been living in "small" islands since always and they do fine, same for pre-Austronesian Melanesians, Wallaceans, etc.

    "... you're totally convinced that humans are completely different from every other species".

    Not at all.

    "... you will claim that 'haplogroups' are not 'species'".

    Of course.

    "However surely the regional extinction of a haplogroup is the consequence of the extinction of the humans that carry it".

    Not at all. Haplogroups go extinct while people survive. If I only have daughters my Y-DNA haplogroup goes extinct and so on. My genes survive, my people survives but my haplogroup goes extinct.

    "Many species have discontinuous distributions, similar to the discontinuous distributions of many human haplogroups. Are nthose discontinuities the product of founder effect?"

    I have no idea what you might be talking about or how you relate species and haplogroups. They are almost like apples and oranges, right?

    Or better, as it's said in Spanish: "speed and bacon": totally unrelated categories.

    "Is the present camelid distribution a result of 'founer effect'?"

    Your comparison makes no sense to me, sorry. Haplogroups do not define overall genetic affinity: in fact Europeans high in mtDNA R and Y-DNA K are closest to South Asians high in mtDNA M and Y-DNA H and not to Papuans high in mtDNA R and Y-DNA K.

    That's why haplogroups are subject to founder effects, which have little or nothing to do with overall genetic affinity.

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  79. (continued)

    Sorry to make this so long but I need to explain things so you can understand them.

    "You may not want to accept founder effects, but they are everyday's bread in population genetics. That's why you are so confused because you don't want to see things as they are".

    I totally accept that founder effects occur. But, unlike you, I am reluctant to use the concept to explain every inconvenient haplogroup distribution.

    "A good example may be America: you look for a majority of Q in Siberia and it's really difficult to find, yet (founder effect miracle!)"

    The absence of Q in Siberia, except amoung the Selkup/Ket and in some groups in the extreme northeast, is easily explained by the later migration north of Y-haps C and N, and their replacement of Q. I'd guess that before that migration Y-hap Q was spread right from the Yenesi, across siberia and right through America (perhaps sparsely of course). Nothing 'founder effect about its arrival in America at all.

    "You look for important mtDNA B in NE Asia and no way you can find it... but (founder effect miracle!) from Alaska to the East it's everywhere around!"

    B is actually reasonably common in Japan and Korea. To me B seems to be the only haplogroup that arrived in America by sea. But again mtDNAs C, G and Z have expanded and replaced B in most regions along the Northeast Asian coast. So no 'founder effect miracle'.

    "How do you explain the high frequency of I1 (a rather young lineage) in Sweden? How do you explain R1a in Central Africa?"

    You may have found examples of founder effect with these examples. But perhaps not. It's possible the same explanation applies. If R1b entered europe during the Gravettian it's more than likely it entered Africa even earlier, at a period when the Sahara had become grassland. It's therefore quite possible that African R1b was separated from Eurasian R1b as the Sahara expanded.

    What about Y-hap I1? I'm fairly convinced that I is later into Western Europe than is R1b. But is it earlier than R1a in Western Europe? If I's arrival in Western Europe is between the two R1 haplogroups its isolation in Sweden isn't an example of founder effect either. It is not an example of a minority haplogroup entering a region as a private lineage within a wider population, and then expanding.

    "Why? Because the migration was fast. At least that's one of the reasons - and something we can also see in mtDNA M, with all those basal lineages in East Asia".

    But all those basal lineages in East Asia demonstrate very clearly that they were held up considerably as they moved through Northeast India and Zomia. Once they were beyond that region their migrations north and southeast may have been rapid. But N doesn't show anything like the same pattern.

    "It would not because it did not. And as I have pointed out in the previous paragraph this is not anomalous at all".

    And I've just pointed out that it is completely anomalous. In fact extremely unlikely unless N preceded M into India and was then replaced by it.

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  80. "Why would 'small' islands be unable to feed hunter-gatherers (fishermen)?"

    Because the resources rapidly run out.

    "Andamanese have been living in 'small' islands since always and they do fine, same for pre-Austronesian Melanesians, Wallaceans, etc.

    Those islands are larger than many that the Polynesians survived on. In fact a link I recently supplied said exactly that.

    "Not at all. Haplogroups go extinct while people survive. If I only have daughters my Y-DNA haplogroup goes extinct and so on. My genes survive, my people survives but my haplogroup goes extinct".

    The difference between haplogroup extinction and species extinction is simply a matter of degree. Surely you are able to see that!

    "I have no idea what you might be talking about or how you relate species and haplogroups. They are almost like apples and oranges, right?"

    Not at all. They're basically the same.

    "Your comparison makes no sense to me, sorry".

    Presumably because you don't wish to see it.

    "Haplogroups do not define overall genetic affinity"

    Completely irrelevant.

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  81. People just don't understand the obvious: People came out of Africa and met the Neanderthals. They were both greatly impressed with their new friend's knowledge. They visited, fed each other, hunted together, fished together, slept together and made babies together. And those babies, due to hybrid vigor, genetic enhancement and the combined knowledge of their dual ancestry, were healthier, smarter, more ambitious; simply more capable, than any peoples which had ever existed theretofore, upon this planet. They thrived, learned quickly, multiplied, and rapidly spread over the Earth. And I have little doubt that they took excellent care of their Neanderthal and African grand-parents as long as they were around. Proof; lies in the fact, that for hundreds of million years, humanity progressed at a snail’s pace, until the Neanderthal and Africans mated in Asia and Europe. From that point in history, in far less than a hundred thousand years, humanity progressed into our modern societies.

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  82. What you say it's obvious is not necessarily so obvious. At least not for me. Particularly I'm not persuaded that the hybrids of two species separated for some one million years or more had any sort of "hybrid vigor" (which IMO is a cattle/pet-breeders' myth caused by their excessive tendency to inbreed their animals looking for "purebreds").

    It's possible that some specific Neanderthal genes were harmless or even benefitial, while others may well have been incompatible with our own specializations. Notably it's likely that hybrids were just hard to obtain, because of relative sex-appeal and biological incompatibilities (not absolute but notable enough).

    If things would have been as you say, Neanderthals and Sapiens would have melted in a single population which would have got much more than a mere 2.4% of average Neanderthal input.

    Hybridization was obviously impeded even if not absolutely.

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