DNA Sequencing Megathread! Neanderthals, Denisovans and other ancient DNA!

[mongers]

And for those of us who don't use facebook?

I'll make a followup post in TBR.

OMG Uss R the Messiah!   

[katmai]

Um i have, hence my last comment. I'm only 8% from Iberian peninsula.

Do you have an Ancestry account?

My mother the genealogist does, she and her sister have done mtDNA, and my dad and I have done the basic 12 marker yDNA

[PDH]

My DNA said MB was Hitler.

[PRC]

Thought this might belong in this thread.

Phylogenetic analyses suggests fairy tales are much older than thought
January 20, 2016 by Bob Yirka

(Phys.org)—A pair of researchers has conducted a phylogenetic analysis on common fairy tales and has found that many of them appear to be much older than has been thought. In their paper published in Royal Society Open Science, Sara Graça da Silva, a social scientist/folklorist with New University of Lisbon and Jamshid Tehrani, an anthropologist with Durham University describe the linguistic study they carried out and why they believe at least one fairy tale had its origins in the Bronze Age.

Fairy tales are popular the world over, some so much that they have crossed over into multiple societies—Beauty and the Beast for example, has been told in one form or another across the globe. Modern linguists and anthropologists have set the origin of most such fairy tales to just prior to the time they were written down, which would make them several hundred years old. But this new research suggests they are much older than that, with some going back thousands of years.

To come to these conclusions, the researchers applied a technique normally used in biology—building phylogenetic trees to trace linguistic attributes back to their origin. They started with 275 fairy tales, each rooted in magic, and whittled them down to 76 basic stories. Trees were then built based on Indo-European languages, some of which have gone extinct. In so doing, the researchers found evidence that some fairy tales, such as Jack and the Beanstalk, were rooted in other stories, and could be traced back to a time when Western and Eastern Indo-European languages split, which was approximately 5,000 years ago, which means of course that they predate the Bible, for example, or even Greek myths.

The researchers placed confidence factors on different results, depending on how strong the trees were that could be built—some were obviously less clear than others, but one fairy tale in particular, they note, was very clear—called The Smith and The Devil, they traced it back approximately 6,000 years, to the Bronze Age.

Notably, Wilhelm Grimm, of the famous Grimm brothers who published many fairy tales back in 1812, wrote that he believed the tales were many thousands of years old—that notion was discredited not long after, but now, the researchers suggest, they believe he was right all along.

Here is a link to the abstract and data at the Royal Society: http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/1/150645

[jimmy olsen]

Six thousand years ago predates the bronze age.

[PRC]

Six thousand years ago predates the bronze age.

The article doesn't say anything about 6,000 years predating the bronze age.

The researchers placed confidence factors on different results, depending on how strong the trees were that could be built—some were obviously less clear than others, but one fairy tale in particular, they note, was very clear—called The Smith and The Devil, they traced it back approximately 6,000 years, to the Bronze Age.

[The Minsky Moment]

Timmy's right though, I don't think there was any bronze working 4000 BCE anywhere.

[jimmy olsen]

Six thousand years ago predates the bronze age.

The article doesn't say anything about 6,000 years predating the bronze age.

The researchers placed confidence factors on different results, depending on how strong the trees were that could be built—some were obviously less clear than others, but one fairy tale in particular, they note, was very clear—called The Smith and The Devil, they traced it back approximately 6,000 years, to the Bronze Age.

I'm saying it.

It doesn't make sense for there have to been a myth about magic smiths at the time if bronze working hadn't been invented yet.

[The Minsky Moment]

I'm saying it.

It doesn't make sense for there have to been a myth about magic smiths at the time if bronze working hadn't been invented yet.

There I have to disagree, as copper smelting probably existed at that time.

[mongers]

I'm saying it.

It doesn't make sense for there have to been a myth about magic smiths at the time if bronze working hadn't been invented yet.

There I have to disagree, as copper smelting probably existed at that time.

Anyone read the report? Perhaps the 6,000 year figure is just an exaggeration made by the journalist as they do say approximately, which to me means he could have seen the figure 5,600 or 5,500 and lazily rounded it up.  Which would put it squarely in the early copper age in some places.

[PRC]

Here is a paragraph from the Royal Society page:

In some cases, it may also be possible to evaluate inferences about ancestral tale corpora in relation to other sources of information about past societies, such as historical, archaeological, linguistic and genetic data. Our findings regarding the origins of ATU 330 'The Smith and the Devil' are a case in point. The basic plot of this tale—which is stable throughout the Indo-European speaking world, from India to Scandinavia—concerns a blacksmith who strikes a deal with a malevolent supernatural being (e.g. the Devil, Death, a jinn, etc.). The smith exchanges his soul for the power to weld any materials together, which he then uses to stick the villain to an immovable object (e.g. a tree) to renege on his side of the bargain [26]. The likely presence of this tale in the last common ancestor of Indo-European-speaking cultures resonates strongly with wider debates in Indo-European prehistory, since it implies the existence of metallurgy in Proto-Indo-European society. This inference is consistent with the so-called 'Kurgan hypothesis', which links the origins of the Indo-European language family to archaeological and genetic evidence of massive territorial expansions made by nomadic pastoralist tribes from the Pontic steppe 5000–6000 years ago [3,46–48]. The association of these peoples with a Bronze Age technological complex, as reconstructed from material culture data [49] and palaeo-linguistic inferences of PIE vocabulary (which include a putative word for metal, a⌢ios) [50], suggests a plausible context for the cultural evolution of a tale about a cunning smith who attains a superhuman level of mastery over his craft.  By contrast, the presence of this story in PIE society appears to be incompatible with the alternative 'Anatolian hypothesis' of Indo-European origins. The latter proposes a much earlier and more gradual process of demic diffusion associated with the spread of agriculture from Neolithic Anatolia 8000–9000 years ago [51]—prior to the invention of metallurgy. However, it should be noted that according to some variants of the model [2,52], the lineage leading to all surviving Indo-European languages may have diverged from the now extinct Anatolian languages as recently as 7000–5500 B.C.E, a range which overlaps with the earliest archaeological evidence for smelting at numerous sites in Eurasia [53]. Consequently, a Bronze Age origin for ATU 330 seems plausible under both major models of Indo-European prehistory.

[jimmy olsen]

First of evidence of introgression from modern humans into Neanderthals, the gene exchange went both ways. Also, further evidence that the Denisovans came into contact with a more divergent ancient population.

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/neandertals/neandertal_dna/neandertal-early-modern-gene-flow-kuhlwilm-2016.html

[citizen k]

http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/study-says-hominids-may-have-entered-europe-strait-gibraltar-900000-years-020750?nopaging=1

http://www.agenciasinc.es/Noticias/La-entrada-de-hominidos-en-Europa-pudo-producirse-por-Gilbraltar-hace-900.000-anos

[Siege]

The Anatolian hypothesis is primarily linguistic.  And it's rubbish.

Who do you think speaks a language? Who spreads it?

It's people of course.

The farmers of Anatolia colonized Europe, overwhelming the natives with the numbers and assimilating them. They doubtlessly brought their language with them.

I was under the impression that farming spread through the adoption of the technology by imitation, not through migration. Early farmers seem to be less well nutrieted than hunter gatherers, who had a more diverse diet, but were more exposed to long spells of hunger.

I thought farming was only part time until the bronze age when better farming equipment became available.

[Queequeg]

Long story: no, Siege.