prehistory

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/ancient-native-americans-were-among-world-s-first-coppersmiths "Now, a team led by Pompeani presents new evidence for the revised timeline. The researchers used modern methods to reanalyze 53 radiocarbon dates—including eight newly collected...

This is some groundbreaking news. The consensus had been that Siberians colonised the Americas around 15,000 to 14,000 years ago. This was not only supported by archaeology, but also but genetics, as the Q1a-M3 lineage of Native Americans was formed some 15,000 years ago. Pushing the date back...

Here is a map of the Megalithic cultures in Europe and North Africa, with the main sites highlighted. There are lots of maps on the web, but none that I found satisfactory as they didn't carefully list all the areas with megaliths. The oldest sites are dated to c. 6000 BCE in central Portugal...

See: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/stonehenge-other-ancient-rock-structures-may-trace-their-origins-monuments "A new study suggests these megaliths weren’t created independently but instead can be traced back to a single hunter-gatherer culture that started nearly 7000 years ago in...

UNSW scientists have shown – for the first time – that a series of high-profile burial sites in the Pacific, Mediterranean and northern Scotland were likely related to catastrophic tsunamis. The work was published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. Honorary Professor James Goff...

A lot of people interested in history and archaeology know that wheat, barley, chickpeas, and animals like sheep, goats, pigs and cows were all domesticated in the Fertile Crescent during the Early Neolithic period, between 12,500 and 10,000 years ago (perhaps as early as 20,000 years ago for...

Prehistory is being rewritten once again! BBC News: 'First of our kind' found in Morocco The idea that modern people evolved in a single "cradle of humanity" in East Africa some 200,000 years ago is no longer tenable, new research suggests. Fossils of five early humans have been found in...

I have considerably expanded my Genetic history of the Japanese, and added regional frequencies in Japan and in neighbouring populations. The Y-DNA data is still too scare to make fine-scale distribution maps by haplogroup, but this map with pie charts should help visualise the bigger picture.

I have created a new page dedicated to the genetics of Starcevo–Körös–Cris culture, which represents the advance of Near Eastern Neolithic farmers from Anatolia to Southeast Europe. As usual, I have also included a summary of the cultural and socio-economic features relating to that...

The Copper Age was a period of transition between Neolithic societies and the Indo-European migrations. Although the Chalcolithic started in Neolithic Southeast Europe and Anatolia, it quickly spread to the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, from where PIE Steppe people expanded cross most of Europe and...

You may have seen the new page on the Funnelbeaker (TRB) culture a few weeks ago. Today I have added another one for the Linear Pottery (LBK) culture. Starcevo will be next. Linear Pottery Culture (c. 5600-4250 BCE) The expansion of Neolithic farmers from the Danube to Central Europe as far...

The Hinxton genomes were released in October 2014 and I already analysed their admixtures using the Dodecad dv3 and K12b calculators at the time. Here is another look at them using the Eurogenes K36 admixtures instead. It's a good opportunity to see which component of K36 correlate most with...

I had not made any new archaeological maps for 6 years. Yet there are still periods that weren't covered, including that particularly interesting one that saw the emergence of the Khvalynsk culture, which may well have been the first PIE culture in the Steppe, before Sredny Stog and Yamna. That...

It's been a while since I haven't created a new map as we are running out of haplogroups (or data for subclades). I thought it would be interesting to visualise the whole of haplogroup U, as this is a very ancient lineage and apparently the first to colonise Europe from c. 40,000 years ago, and...

The Guardian is relaying this morning the publication of a new paper (Kuhlwilm et al. 2016) which established that a population that diverged early from other modern humans in Africa contributed genetically to the ancestors of Neanderthals from the Altai Mountains roughly 100,000 years ago...

In the news today, a partial femur found in the Red Deer Cave in China might show that a archaic species of human may have overlapped with modern humans until the end of the ice age. Since 2001 I have supported the theory that the main racial divisions among humans (Caucasoids, Negroids...

When G2a Neolithic farmers started advancing from the Near East into Europe, they encountered indigenous hunter-gathering tribes belonging to various haplogroups (C1a2, F, I*, I1, I2a, I2b, I2c, and possibly even H). Interestingly, most of these lineages didn't survive in significant number...

Last week Davidski wondered if the teal people really existed and if so who they were (referring to the teal admixture from Haak et al. 2015 found in Yamna samples). My theory so far had been that R1b-P297 had mixed with West Asian people around the South Caucasus (or rather between East...

I have just noticed that Genetiker ran the admixtures for a Unetice genome and an Urnfield genome. Here is a comparison with the Yamna and Bell Beaker genomes. There doesn't seem to be a big difference between Bell Beaker, Unetice and Urnfield. Let's keep in mind that these are individual...

Here is a summary of my observations posted in this thread regarding the autosomal analysis of the Mesolithic and Bronze Age samples from Haak et al 2015. Eurogenes K15 analysis The K15 admixtures for all the Yamna, Corded Ware and Bell Beaker samples can be found in this spreadsheet. As I...