Category Archives: Neanderthals

“Who We Are: #3 Neanderthals

Posted on April 3, 2018 by gcochran9

In Chapter 2, Encounters With Neanderthals, David Reich talks about his work in analyzing the first successfully sequenced Neanderthal genomes, and the discoveries that led to. Reich’s team, with Nick Patterson making an especially important contribution, found that Neanderthals were … Continue reading →

Posted in Archaic humans, Book Reviews, Neanderthals | 61 Comments

mtDNA capers

Posted on August 17, 2017 by gcochran9

There’s an interesting pattern in the mtDNA of archaic humans. Neanderthals have mtDNA that’s a lot closer to that of anatomically modern humans than to Denisovans, although Neanderthals and Denisovans are close if you look at nuclear DNA. While really … Continue reading →

Posted in Archaic humans, Denisovans, Genetics, Neanderthals | 6 Comments

Degenerate Neanderthals

Posted on November 3, 2015 by gcochran9

There are a couple of new papers out on how utterly fucked-up Neanderthals must have been, The Genetic Cost of Neanderthal Introgression by Kelley Harris and Rasmus Nielsen, and The Strength of Selection Against Neanderthal Introgression, by Ivan Juric, Simon … Continue reading →

Posted in Archaic humans, Neanderthals | 62 Comments

Faster than Fisher

Posted on November 22, 2014 by gcochran9

There’s a simple model of the spread of an advantageous allele:  You take σ, the typical  distance people move in one generation, and s,  the selective advantage: the advantageous allele spreads as a nonlinear wave at speed  σ * √(2s).  … Continue reading →

Posted in Denisovans, Dietary adaptations, European Prehistory, Evolutionary Medicine, Genetics, Indo-European, Linguistics, Neanderthals, Skin color | Tagged | 77 Comments

Ust’-Ishim & the Old Race

Posted on October 23, 2014 by gcochran9

There’s a new report out in Nature, on the DNA results from a 45,000 AMH skeleton found in Western Siberia.  It’s the oldest radiocarbon-dated modern human outside Africa and the Middle East. The Neanderthal admixture is there,  about the same … Continue reading →

Posted in Archaic humans, European Prehistory, Genetics, Neanderthals | Tagged | 30 Comments

The Genghis-Khan effect

Posted on September 7, 2014 by gcochran9

We know of several examples of a huge expansion of a paternal lineage, and several other cases seem likely to be the same thing.  It’s worth taking a close look at the first one found, the paternal lineage of Genghis … Continue reading →

Posted in Genghis -Khan effect, Neanderthals | 121 Comments

Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes

Posted on April 7, 2014 by gcochran9

Svante Pääbo has a book out, Neanderthal Man, in which he recounts his adventures sequencing ancient DNA.  He has had three big successes: the first successful sequencing of Neanderthal mtDNA in 1997, the first sequencing of the Neanderthal nuclear genome, … Continue reading →

Posted in Archaic humans, Book Reviews, Denisovans, Genetics, Neanderthals | 118 Comments

Silver Blaze

Posted on February 17, 2014 by gcochran9

The recent paper on three ancestral European populations has some truly interesting stuff buried deep in the supplements.   This is not the first time that this has happened: if you read the supplements to their big Neanderthal paper, back in … Continue reading →

Posted in Amerindians, Ashkenazi Jews, Denisovans, European Prehistory, Genetics, Indo-European, Linguistics, Neanderthals | 422 Comments

Adaptive Neanderthal admixture

Posted on January 30, 2014 by gcochran9

Finally, there are papers  out on the long-term consequences of Neanderthal admixture – one by Sriram Sankararaman in Nature, the other by Benjamin Vernot in Science. The general picture is that anatomically modern humans exiting Africa mixed, to a degree,  … Continue reading →

Posted in Genetics, Neanderthals | 97 Comments

Earl Grey

Posted on January 7, 2014 by gcochran9

In a previous post, I speculated that that Denisovans might stem from from Homo erectus, at least in part, rather than being a sister group to Neanderthals as suggested in the paper by Reich and Patterson.  It now looks as … Continue reading →

Posted in Archaic humans, Denisovans, homo erectus, Neanderthals | 21 Comments