This morning Dienekes pointed out a new paper in the open access journal PLoS Genetics on polygyny and its impact on human genetic variation. Razib followed suite, providing a more in depth review of the study. I recommend you check out both. In this post, I’m also gonna have a stab at reviewing the paper [...]
Entries from September 2008
September 23, 2008
Major Histocompatibility Complex And Human Mating Systems
Human mating systems are mediated by many different variables, from cultural preferences to religious alignments. In some places, people marry and mate within their class or ethnic group. But there are more subtle, almost subliminal conditions behind mating that often affect the outcome of genetic variation and evolution. While I was out of the country, [...]
September 23, 2008
Zooarchaeological Analysis Of Animal Remains From Vanguard & Gorham’s Caves In Gibraltar
Zooarchaeology is an anthropological sub-discipline which focuses on studying animal remains from archaeological sites. Animal remains can tell us a lot of about prehistoric peoples’ diets and behavioral tendencies as well as the ecological makeup of the area. A new PNAS paper investigates the zooarchaeological record of two Neandertal sites in Gibraltar, Vanguard and Gorham’s [...]
September 19, 2008
Mark Stoneking’s Four Models Of Human Origins
Mark Stoneking is a population geneticist at the Max Planck anthropology powerhouse. He uses genetics to study the origin, relationships, structure and migration patterns of human populations. He’s written up a review of the origins of humans in the journal EMBO Reports under the title, “Human origins. The molecular perspective.” I’ve tried to get access [...]
September 17, 2008
Integrating Ancient DNA In A Reconstruction Of A 43,000 Year Old Neandertal
I’m back to internet land a bit earlier than expected and even though I’ve got several thousand unread items in my RSS reader, hundreds of emails and photos to sort through, I’ve stumbled upon some really interesting news first shared by Dienekes that I just had to pass on: A reconstruction of a Neandertal’s face [...]
September 4, 2008
I’m Off To Turkey Until September 20th!
I don’t regularly make announcements about my life, but I wanted to let you that blogging here will be sparse because I’m leaving to Turkey to do some fieldwork. I should return in two weeks time, unless we find something that needs a bit more time or if the PKK and Turkish government have another [...]
September 4, 2008
Peopling Of The Americas: Eva de Naharon, A 13,600 Year Old Skeleton Found Near Tulum, Mexico
National Geographic News is running some press about the oldest skeleton found in the Americas, Eva de Naharon, at 13,600 years old. This would make her the oldest known human in the Americas, but as of now no peer reviewed journal has reviewed the research. The discovery of the skeleton, along with three others, were [...]
September 4, 2008
Timing The Arrival Of The Modern Human Package In The Sahul
The Sahul is the Australia-New Guinea continent, which is exposed during glacial maximums. If one were to take a satellite photograph of the Sahul during an ice age, you’d see more or less a complete island in the picture, one that spans from New Guinea to Australia and Tasmania. Kind of like the one to [...]
September 3, 2008
Pinpointing The Geographic Origins Of Europeans From Their DNA
Last month, I read and reviewed two papers that correlated the genetic and linguistic structure of European populations to their geographic locations. A new paper came out several days ago in Nature which announces a new model where the genetics of 3,200 Europeans is used to predict their country of origin, with an accuracy of [...]
