Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Geography is hard (for some)
It's that time of the academic year again when bioRxiv is inundated with ancient DNA preprints. I'm not complaining, but I almost spat out my coffee when I saw this map in one of the new manuscripts (here).
What's the logic behind labeling almost all of Eastern Europe as "Steppe", and instead labeling just Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia as "Eastern Europe"? In my opinion those three countries, plus Poland, are better described as East Central Europe anyway.
It seems to me that many people working at the highest level in population genetics simply don't know what the Eurasian steppe is. They appear to see it as a continent of its own, when, in fact, it's a topographical feature and ecoregion that straddles the continents of Europe and Asia. That's why it's called the Eurasian steppe, and it's made up of three main parts: the Pontic-Caspian steppe of Eastern Europe, the Kazkah steppe of Central Asia, and the Eastern steppe of Mongolia.
Here's the same map with a few corrections (in red). Much better, don't you think?
Citation...
Antonio et al., Stable population structure in Europe since the Iron Age, despite high mobility, bioRxiv, posted May 16, 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.15.491973
See also...
Matters of geography
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
406 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 401 – 406 of 406@Assuwatana
It’s not a contrast, that is what I’m trying to tell you. A sound shift happens amongst a speech community, and it can also trigger other sound shifts that “make way” or “adjust” for new tongue-twisters or homophones created by it — all within a couple of centuries or even one human lifetime. It does NOT mean there’s any huge ”contrast” between that language and its close relatives. Even if it in olved hundreds of words, it would be a single change.
The odd exception does not alter the norm. Example: The French language is a centum (k rather than s) language, yet its word for dog is “chien” (ʃjɛ̃ ). It has a “š” sound instead of a k, it has a slight “y” or nasalised middle, and it has no n sound at the end. It comes from either Gaulish “cuno” or Vulgar Latin “ cane”, both having “k” and “n”. If in some dialects of French, the “sh” sound in chien softens to an h, it would be altogether unsurprising.
The fact that Latin k usually becomes s or š sound in modern French doesn’t affect the fact that French is a centum (k) language.
By the way, it is to be expected that the w or uo sound from PIE *kwón” is missing from “hoon”.
@Ramber
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ooK9QPEZ1J22lhf9M4J5L8dFr9N3isMZ/view?usp=sharing
@Gaska
Thanks for your sincere condolences, but my wife, like the Kurgan Hypothesis, is very much alive. She very nearly died from Covid, and spent five months in the hospital, two and a half of them in the ICU, but by the grace of God she survived and is home and doing well.
I wish to be much more polite than I was in the past, so I will be. I find your posts baffling. I think you mentioned the idea that we live on different planets. That is certainly a very apt figure of speech. On your planet the Iberian Peninsula looms large and dwarfs the rest of Europe, much as it did in genetic genealogy circles around 2005, before the advent of ancient DNA testing. On your planet there was no second population replacement or turnover in the third millennium BC, the one that introduced steppe autosomal DNA and Y-DNA, as well as IE languages and culture. Likewise on your strange planet, Single Grave BB wasn’t derived (as it obviously was) from Corded Ware, but arose among the Neolithic farmers of Iberia.
I don’t recall anyone here or on any respectable DNA discussion forum arguing that Yamnaya people had blond hair and blue eyes. That’s not something I care about, besides, last I heard, they tended to have dark hair and dark eyes. But I don’t care about that either.
You write fairly well, Gaska, I’ll give you that. It’s a shame you’re wasting your literary talent on absolute nonsense.
@Davidski,
Thank you so much. Really appreciated it. There are no Vietnamese samples in there? Because the paper has some but seems like they didn't give the link for genotype for the rest of the samples.
@Ramber
I just ran what was available.
Everything about the way that they have divided the regions is wrong. They've decided to include Egypt as part of the Levant for some reason, Anatolia and the Arabian Peninsula apparently belong in the same group too and best for last the towering Caucasian mountains are part of the "Steppe".
Post a Comment