tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post8751765104857538909..comments2024-03-22T15:55:34.030-04:00Comments on Evo and Proud: A look at an early EuropeanPeter Frosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04303172060029254340noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-82402946978089069262014-11-15T10:55:23.986-05:002014-11-15T10:55:23.986-05:00The visage on that bust reminds me of Aboriginal A...The visage on that bust reminds me of Aboriginal Australians for some reason.Beyond Anonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-23529218109836622702014-11-12T15:05:14.932-05:002014-11-12T15:05:14.932-05:00Sean,
Kostenki has a bit more Neanderthal ancestr...Sean,<br /><br />Kostenki has a bit more Neanderthal ancestry than we do: 2.4% versus less than 2%. The decline might be the cumulative effect of natural selection against maladaptive Neanderthal alleles. Or it might not even be a real difference, i.e., sampling error.<br /><br />Piffer cites studies showing the association between COMT and human cognition:<br /><br />"Stable and flexible cognition depend in part on different alleles of the COMT gene. Carriers of the Met allele are disadvantaged in tasks requiring cognitive flexibility, due to the<br />opposite effects of dopamine levels on WM and cognitive flexibility (Witte and Flöel, 2012). Whilst Met carriers show better performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test(WCST) and other tasks of WM or executive functions(Egan et al., 2001; Bruder et al., 2005; Caldù et al., 2007; Enoch et al., 2009), they also show larger switching costs when performing a task-switching paradigm (Colzato et al., 2010). Conversely, Val carriers are better at expressing their emotions in verbal form(Swart et al., 2011) and show lower switching costs, which translate into a higher index of cognitive flexibility (Colzato et al., 2010). In a recent study, the<br />COMT gene locus explained 5.8% of the variance in donation behaviour, with Val carriers donating about twice as much money as individuals without a Val allele. This suggests that the Val allele favors prosocial/altruistic behavior"<br /><br />Anon, SD,<br /><br />Soviet journals describe the Kostenki XIV skull as of "Negroid type." I'm still looking for a more detailed description.<br /><br />Anon,<br /><br />It's not so much my dumb idea as the dumb idea of this paper's authors. They see West Eurasians, East Eurasians, and basal Eurasians as having a common ancestry outside Africa. This ancestral Eurasian population postdates the split in the Middle East between the ancestors of Australo-Melanesians and other non-Africans. Given the rapidity with which modern humans colonized Europe, this subsequent split would have been somewhere in northern Eurasia.<br /><br />Barak,<br /><br />You don't have to pay for a copy of the paper. You can access it via a link in my references.<br /><br />Try clicking here:<br /><br />http://www2.zoo.cam.ac.uk/manica/ms/2014_Seguin_Orlando_et_al_Science.pdfPeter Fros_noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-30253293680012405822014-11-10T12:48:41.096-05:002014-11-10T12:48:41.096-05:00Re, photo:- Who said it was?; the post is about ge...Re, photo:- Who said it was?; the post is about genes.<br /><br />Anon."Random genomic noise doesn't have to be advantageous to remain after a few generations. This is what group A is; but that says nothing about what group A does."<br /><br />I think the finding that "Genes once thought to have arrived with the first farmers, for instance, now seem to have been around much earlier. “Until now, it seemed clear this was something that came into Europe during the Neolithic,” says Pontus Skoglund, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School." is relevant to the idea that separate populations were coming in and adding things.<br /><br />Only for a few out of tens of thousands of genes is there thought to be a certain (though very small) effect on intelligence, Variation in alleles at COMT for example.Seannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-2330451599919385812014-11-10T11:27:16.791-05:002014-11-10T11:27:16.791-05:00Thanks Michael,
I think what i'm understandin...Thanks Michael,<br /><br />I think what i'm understanding is that averages,SNPs?, deal with chemical formations (of the DNA) without reference to expression. ? This is what group A is; but that says nothing about what group A does.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-8176536055597621932014-11-10T10:45:13.126-05:002014-11-10T10:45:13.126-05:00"Maybe it would be less open to error to foll..."Maybe it would be less open to error to follow the spread of specific genes without trying to match genes to derived groupings?"<br /><br />This is actually less informative, but nonetheless useful. Y chromosome and mtDNA haplogroups behave as single genes. The problem/advantage is that single genes only tell you if two populations interacted a single time. If the gene was very advantageous, like lactose tolerance for a farmer/herder, then it would spread leaving few other signs of its original context. Whole genome averages show which entire populations were mixing. Random genomic noise doesn't have to be advantageous to remain after a few generations.Michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02838759240052063265noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-14389329545618367852014-11-09T23:09:44.477-05:002014-11-09T23:09:44.477-05:00Sean, thanks, my main confusion remains - how can ...Sean, thanks, my main confusion remains - how can the skull at Dienekes be the head above?<br /><br />EEF etc are derived from Principal Compenents analysis aren't they? Isn't this the danger of statistics, ie theory based on aggregations is only going to be as accurate as the aggregations were in the first place? Maybe it would be less open to error to follow the spread of specific genes without trying to match genes to derived groupings?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-60882408812509125212014-11-09T22:25:26.025-05:002014-11-09T22:25:26.025-05:00@barak
"Basically WHG-ANE ancestry correlate...@barak<br /><br />"Basically WHG-ANE ancestry correlates to his closest relatives. This is why native Americans(~44% ANE) are so close to him, and why Lithuanians(<80% WHG-ANE) are his closest modern relatives."<br /><br />Isn't that the point though? Is the EEF in places like Lithuania EEF or is it something similar that spread earlier?<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-27390283506310353592014-11-09T22:22:29.032-05:002014-11-09T22:22:29.032-05:00"You keep defending this theory of yours afte..."You keep defending this theory of yours after everything we now know...?"<br /><br />I don't know what I think about the main idea but what we "know" is changing with each genome.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-85472113998025055142014-11-09T17:50:12.284-05:002014-11-09T17:50:12.284-05:00Peter,
I can tell before you read the supp. info ...Peter,<br /><br />I can tell before you read the supp. info or if you payed the money the real paper, you were looking for this very early European to be something exotic, non-western, totally differnt from modern ones, etc., which distorted your reasoning. <br /><br />"This may be why Kostenki Man does not fit perfectly into any of the three groups, although he is genetically closest to Western Eurasians."<br /><br />He's closer to native americans than to middle easterns(not counting Caucasus). Overall he is by far closest to modern Europeans, specifically northern Europeans and Basque(high WHG), and even more specially northeast Europeans. Next he is closest to southern Europeans, then to Caucasus, then to native Americans, then middle easterns, and south-central Asians. <br /><br />Basically WHG-ANE ancestry correlates to his closest relatives. This is why native Americans(~44% ANE) are so close to him, and why Lithuanians(<80% WHG-ANE) are his closest modern relatives. Most middle easterns may have around as much WHG-ANE as native americans, but their majority basal Eurasian which is more distant to WHG-ANE than east Asian. <br /><br />I don't think we should use such clean cut distinctions such as south Asia, west Asia, and Europe when talking about people who lived some 36,000 years ago. His people are very important to the ancestry of native Americans, Siberians, south-central Asians, middle easterns, and Europeans. <br /><br />"An early European who was not yet phenotypically European."<br /><br />Obviously the typical mainland European appearance(mostly pigmentation), came from admixed population going through selection during the Neolithic and bronze age. I suspect EEF was similar to modern near easterns and Sardinians, and WHG-ANE were deep-brown like native Americans and south-Asians.<br /><br />It's interesting to think what ancient people looked like. In the stone age it would have probably been harder to make a clean cut distinction between Europeans, middle easterns, and south Asians. Krefterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01055804913528477710noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-44391720727797975452014-11-09T15:49:47.082-05:002014-11-09T15:49:47.082-05:00You keep defending this theory of yours after ever...You keep defending this theory of yours after everything we now know...?<br /><br />I will have a chuckle and congratulate you if it's ever 'confirmed' but let's just say I won't be holding my breath. Both Dienekes and Cochran have posited a much simpler and more convincing (so far) explanation.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-54665332851670711432014-11-09T13:20:32.286-05:002014-11-09T13:20:32.286-05:00K14 was a bit odd, it had a much lower cranial cap...K14 was a bit odd, it had a much lower cranial capacity that the general run of the Kostenki Man type. See <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vHKuxy69Lc8C&pg=PA201&lpg=PA201&dq=Kostenki+Man+cranial+capacity&source=bl&ots=DrltMoLGSN&sig=t0NkfotGcg3RF9ln-lPhqhtw7wE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6q9fVJbAKJLgsATliYCgBQ&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Kostenki%20Man%20cranial%20capacity&f=false" rel="nofollow">here</a>.Seannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-13598600362690833792014-11-09T12:53:40.211-05:002014-11-09T12:53:40.211-05:00Sean, have a look at the egypt search page, it'...Sean, have a look at the egypt search page, it's about the work of the artist, seems reputable, both photos are on the page (the malware link is the 'copy image location' and the same thing happens with the other photo too) Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-67924161421684298242014-11-09T12:40:31.918-05:002014-11-09T12:40:31.918-05:00"KOSTENKI XIV by Mikhail Gerasimov" link... "KOSTENKI XIV by Mikhail Gerasimov" link is to a site with malware.Seannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-48029697563432179962014-11-09T11:46:23.615-05:002014-11-09T11:46:23.615-05:00I'm confused - the man above doesn't look ...I'm confused - the man above doesn't look as if he could have come from the skull shown on Dienekes. <br /><br />There's another reconstruction of KOSTENKI XIV by Mikhail Gerasimov on this page* and it looks more like the skeleton shown at Dienekes - broad jaw and wide eyes.<br /><br />http://www.kunstkamera.ru/images/g/09_04.jpg<br /><br />*www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=15;t=005669Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-37375363371140920522014-11-09T11:00:27.519-05:002014-11-09T11:00:27.519-05:00Re. that reconstruction, he looks exactly like a g...Re. that reconstruction, he looks exactly like a guy I know from India! However, how old was he? Why is he clean shaven? As if the first thing palaeolithic men did after they woke up in the morning was to have a dump and then shave. The La Brana reconstruction at least had that bit right.SDnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-46105166751773592772014-11-08T17:21:41.352-05:002014-11-08T17:21:41.352-05:00The Gerasimov reconstruction looks strikingly like...The Gerasimov reconstruction looks strikingly like the face of an Australian Aborigine, or perhaps like some of the "Veddoid" tribal peoples of southern India. Something like this was probably the default phenotype across Eurasia prior to the evolution of the classically "Caucasoid" and "Mongoloid" traits.<br /><br />One of the more curious findings in this study is that Kostenki Man possessed some "Basal Eurasian" ancestry, which is absent in other Late Pleistocene North Eurasians. One hears more and more about these "Basal Eurasians" in genetic studies on prehistoric populations. Is there any way of ascertaining which modern populations retain this genetic component to the highest degree? I wonder if it might have some connection to the "Veddoid" element that some early 20th century anthropologists claimed to identify among the more isolated tribes of the southern Arabian Peninsula.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-45081765360556141332014-11-08T16:26:32.925-05:002014-11-08T16:26:32.925-05:00He had a excess of Neanderthal genes, which must h...He had a excess of Neanderthal genes, which must have been slowly purged from the modern human genome. The hair colour genes from Neanderthals would have been lying around unused in the genome in most people and only come through to expression in a few to confer the advantage that got them selected. <br /><br />Photos of the skull show he had a massive jaw and large though well spaced teeth. Magdalenian girl from southern France at least 13,000 years ago, had the first known occurrence of an impacted wisdom tooth. In 2012 Belezal et al said selective sweeps for the European-specific alleles at TYRP1, SLC24A5, and SLC45A2 started within the last 11,000-19,000 years. A lot of changes in that time, maybe they were adaptations for chasing reindeer!<br /><br />------------------<br />Re. the variant COMT Met allel and <i>how</i> it may do what it does.<br /><br /><b>"When Piffer (2013) looked at human variation in alleles at COMT, a gene linked to executive function, working memory, and intelligence, he found that northern hunting peoples had more in common with farming peoples than with other hunter-gatherers, "possibly due to the higher pressure on technological skills and planning abilities posed by the adverse climatic conditions."</b><br /><br />Piffer goes into how the other Val allele makes the Pygmies good dads. The <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23785672" rel="nofollow">Inuit and COMT</a> study Piffer references was really about the Inuit's Met varient being worse at clearing polutants. Pollutants are basically xenoestrogens, hence the same team's interest in breast cancer in Inuit women (see <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24629213" rel="nofollow">here</a>). So as I read it the COMT Met allele is for a suit ofr 'Men are from Mars' traits rather that warm 'Venus' emotions, and it seems to do that by clearing estrogens. <br /><br />Christopher Badcock has a theory "that we possess two parallel cognitive systems: one adapted to the real world of objects (mechanistic cognition), and one to the mental world of other people and their minds (mentalistic cognition); that the two systems are “anti-correlated” and vary inversely by way of mutual inhibition, producing a see-saw, either/or effect comparable to the way a Necker cube switches perspective (<a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201408/high-and-low-visualization-diametric-genius" rel="nofollow">here</a>)."Seannoreply@blogger.com