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Monday, April 22, 2024

Two More Big Ancient DNA Papers

Eurogenes points out two more major European ancient DNA papers at bioRxiv (a pre-print server):

Germanic-speaking populations historically form an integral component of the North and Northwest European cultural configuration. According to linguistic consensus, the common ancestor of the Germanic languages, which include German, English, Frisian, Dutch as well as the Nordic languages, was spoken in Northern Europe during the Pre-Roman Iron Age. 
However, important questions remain concerning the earlier Bronze Age distribution of this Indo-European language branch in Scandinavia as well as the driving factors behind its Late Iron Age diversification and expansion across the European continent. 
A key difficulty in addressing these questions are the existence of striking differences in the interpretation of the archaeological record, leading to various hypotheses of correlations with linguistic dispersals and changes in material culture. Moreover, these interpretations have been difficult to assess using genomics due to limited ancient genomes and the difficulty in differentiating closely related populations. 
Here we integrate multidisciplinary evidence from population genomics, historical sources, archaeology and linguistics to offer a fully revised model for the origins and spread of Germanic languages and for the formation of the genomic ancestry of Germanic-speaking northern European populations, while acknowledging that coordinating archaeology, linguistics and genetics is complex and potentially controversial. We sequenced 710 ancient human genomes from western Eurasia and analysed them together with 3,940 published genomes suitable for imputing diploid genotypes. 
We find evidence of a previously unknown, large-scale Bronze Age migration within Scandinavia, originating in the east and becoming widespread to the west and south, thus providing a new potential driving factor for the expansion of the Germanic speech community. This East Scandinavian genetic cluster is first seen 800 years after the arrival of the Corded Ware Culture, the first Steppe-related population to emerge in Northern Europe, opening a new scenario implying a Late rather than an Middle Neolithic arrival of the Germanic language group in Scandinavia. Moreover, the non-local Hunter-Gatherer ancestry of this East Scandinavian cluster is indicative of a cross-Baltic maritime rather than a southern Scandinavian land-based entry. 
Later in the Iron Age around 1700 BP [250 CE], we find a southward push of admixed Eastern and Southern Scandinavians into areas including Germany and the Netherlands, previously associated with Celtic speakers, mixing with local populations from the Eastern North Sea coast. 
During the Migration Period (1575-1200 BP [375-750 CE]), we find evidence of this structured, admixed Southern Scandinavian population representing the Western Germanic Anglo-Saxon migrations into Britain and Langobards into southern Europe. During the Migration Period, we detect a previously unknown northward migration back into Southern Scandinavia, partly replacing earlier inhabitants and forming the North Germanic-speaking Viking-Age populations of Denmark and southern Sweden, corresponding with historically attested Danes. However, the origin and character of these major changes in Scandinavia before the Viking Age remain contested. 
In contrast to these Western and Northern Germanic-speaking populations, we find the Wielbark population from Poland to be primarily of Eastern Scandinavian ancestry, supporting a Swedish origin for East Germanic groups. In contrast, the later cultural descendants, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths are predominantly of Southern European ancestry implying the adoption of Gothic culture. 
Together, these results highlight the use of archaeology, linguistics and genetics as distinct but complementary lines of evidence.
and

The north Black Sea (Pontic) Region was the nexus of the farmers of Old Europe and the foragers and pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe, and the source of waves of migrants that expanded deep into Europe. We report genome-wide data from 78 prehistoric North Pontic individuals to understand the genetic makeup of the people involved in these migrations and discover the reasons for their success. 
First, we show that native North Pontic foragers had ancestry not only from Balkan and Eastern hunter-gatherers but also from European farmers and, occasionally, Caucasus hunter-gatherers. 
More dramatic inflows ensued during the Eneolithic, when migrants from the Caucasus-Lower Volga area moved westward, bypassing the local foragers to mix with Trypillian farmers advancing eastward. People of the Usatove archaeological group in the Northwest Pontic were formed ca. 4500 BCE with an equal measure of ancestry from the two expanding groups
A different Caucasus-Lower Volga group, moving westward in a distinct but temporally overlapping wave, avoided the farmers altogether, and blended with the foragers instead to form the people of the Serednii Stih archaeological complex. 
A third wave of expansion occurred when Yamna descendants of the Serednii Stih forming ca. 4000 BCE expanded during the Early Bronze Age (3300 BCE). The temporal gap between Serednii Stih and the Yamna expansion is bridged by a genetically Yamna individual from Mykhailivka in Ukraine (3635-3383 BCE), a site of uninterrupted archaeological continuity across the Eneolithic-Bronze Age transition, and the likely epicenter of Yamna formation. 
Each of these three waves propagated distinctive ancestries while also incorporating outsiders during its advance, a flexible strategy forged in the North Pontic region that may explain its peoples’ outsized success in spreading their genes and culture across Eurasia.
Davidski at Eurogenes comments that:
All of these studies are very useful, but there are some problems with each of them. Indeed, I'd say that the authors of the Lazaridis and McColl preprints need to reevaluate the way that they use ancient DNA to solve their linguistic puzzles. Once they do that their conclusions are likely to change significantly.

I tend to agree and will flesh out this post later as time becomes available. 

As an aside, stylistically, I think that it is poor form to put footnotes and references in a journal article abstract. I omit them per my standard formatting standards linked in the sidebar, when I quote them at this blog.

5 comments:

  1. arXiv:2404.12811 (gr-qc)
    [Submitted on 19 Apr 2024]
    Black Hole shadows of α′-corrected black holes
    F. Agurto-Sepúlveda, J. Oliva, M. Oyarzo, D.R.G Schleicher

    In this paper we study the qualitative features induces by corrections to GR coming from String Theory, on the shadows of rotating black holes. We deal with the slowly rotating black hole solutions up to order O(a3), to first order in α′, including also the dilaton. We provide a detailed characterization of the geometry, as well as the ISCO and photon ring, and then we proceed to obtain the black hole images within the relativistic thin-disk model. We characterize the images by computing the diameter, displacement and asymmetry. A comparison with the Kerr case, indicates that all these quantities grow due to the α′ correction, and that the departure from GR for different observable is enhanced depending on the angle of view, namely for the diameter the maximum departure is obtained when the system is face-on, while for the displacement and asymmetry the departure from GR is maximized for edge-on point of view.

    Comments: 14 pages, 8 figures
    Subjects: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
    Cite as: arXiv:2404.12811 [gr-qc]
    (or arXiv:2404.12811v1 [gr-qc] for this version)

    compare with lqg

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  2. [Submitted on 14 Mar 2024 (v1), last revised 21 Apr 2024 (this version, v2)]
    Signatures of the accelerating black holes with a cosmological constant from the Sgr~A⋆ and M87⋆ shadow prospects
    L. Chakhchi, H. El Moumni, K. Masmar

    Recently, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) achieved the realization of an image of the supermassive black hole Sgr~A⋆ showing an angular shadow diameter D=48.7±7μas and the fractional deviation δ=−0.08+0.09−0.09 (VLTI),−0.04+0.09−0.10 (Keck), alongside the earlier image of M87⋆ with angular diameter D=42±3μas, deviation δ=−0.01+0.17−0.17 and deviations from circularity estimated to be ΔC≲10%. In addition, the shadow radii are assessed within the ranges 3.38≤rsM≤6.91 for M87⋆ and 3.85≤rsM≤5.72 as well as 3.95≤rsM≤5.92 for Sgr~A⋆ using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) and Keck observatories, respectively. These values are provided with 1-σ and 2-σ measurements. Such realizations can unveil a better comprehension of gravitational physics at the horizon scale. In this paper, we use the EHT observational results for M87⋆ and Sgr~A⋆ to elaborate the constraints on parameters of accelerating black holes with a cosmological constant. Concretely, we utilize the mass and distance of both black holes to derive the observables associated with the accelerating black hole shadow. First, we compare our findings with observed quantities such as angular diameter, circularity, shadow radius, and the fractional deviation from the M87⋆ data. This comparison reveals constraints within the acceleration parameter and the cosmological constant...
    Lastly, one cannot rule out the possibility of the negative values for the cosmological constant on the emergence of accelerated black hole solutions within the context of minimal gauged supergravity...

    Comments: 37 pages, 10 figures, references updated
    Subjects: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
    Cite as: arXiv:2403.09756 [gr-qc]
    (or arXiv:2403.09756v2 [gr-qc] for this version)

    https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2403.09756
    Journal reference: Physics of the Dark Universe 44 (2024) 101501
    Related DOI:
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dark.2024.101501

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nikitin is also blogged at http://secher.bernard.free.fr/blog/index.php?post/2024/04/22/Histoire-g%C3%A9nomique-de-la-r%C3%A9gion-nord-Pontique-entre-le-N%C3%A9olithique-et-l-%C3%82ge-du-Bronze

    ReplyDelete
  4. For future reference:

    Zeng et al. 2023 (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.01.560332v1.full)

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  5. @neo

    While I understand the desire to provide updates on new papers that haven't been blogged yet, and actually appreciate it when you do that, I would appreciate it if you noted new physics/astronomy papers in comments to whatever the most recent physics/astronomy post at the blog is, rather than in comments to a non-physics/astronomy post, as this makes it easier to follow the flow of the discussion in non-physics/astronomy posts.

    Blogger makes me aware of all new comments that are made on the blog, regardless of where they are posted, so you don't have to worry that a post to an older physics/astronomy post that is the most recent one will get lost.

    ReplyDelete