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Thursday, December 29, 2016
Early Indo-European migrations map
Wikipedia has a new animated gif of early Indo-European migrations (available at various resolutions here). It's pretty good overall, but very speculative and potentially erroneous in parts. For instance, my understanding is that the Vedic Aryans did not emerge from BMAC per se, as the map suggests, but rather from an post-BMAC phenomenon heavily influenced by steppe pastoralists. Hi-res ancient DNA from BMAC and post-BMAC sites should be able to resolve this issue. points us to an article from earlier this year at NIH Record featuring this quote from David Reich:"We've sequenced more than 1,000 samples in our own lab — there's not enough time to publish". That's probably why the second half of 2016 was so agonizingly slow. Next year should be awesome. See also... Maybe first direct hints of Yamnaya-related gene flow into South Central Asia qpAdm tour of Europe: the Bronze Age invasion
Saturday, December 24, 2016
Do it right or don't do it at all
At least a couple of academic teams working on the population history of Europe need to read this PDF and take it to heart.
This article reviews scientific publications that have attempted to use genetic and genomic data in order to investigate European migrations between the fourth and ninth centuries. It considers early single-locus studies that used mtDNA and y-chromosome data. These studies were successful in formulating hypotheses concerning migration and heterogeneity, primarily between the Continent and the British Isles and Iceland, but could only examine a small portion of the entire genetic inheritance. The article continues with a presentation of more recent genome-wide studies. In particular, it evaluates the problems of using modern genomic data to understand past migratory processes, arguing that modern DNA is a problematic source for understanding population histories of the past fifteen hundred years and urges the sequencing and analysis of ancient DNA. It also presents some of the problems of research teams that did not include archaeologists and historians as integral participants in the planning, collection, and evaluation of data. It concludes with a brief outline of the authors' current project that examines migration between Pannonia and Italy in the sixth century. ... This work is necessarily interdisciplinary, something notably lacking in the majority of genetic studies. The Ralph and Coop study, while highly rigorous at the level of the population genetic analysis, included no historians or archaeologists, and the only historical literature cited, presumably to »identify« the Hunnic contribution to European population, was a general history of Europe, [25] a survey of Slavic history, [26] and two articles in the New Cambridge Medieval History. [27] The Busby et al. study also included no historians or archaeologists on its team, and the only historical literature cited was a Penguin History of the World, Peter Heather's survey of the Early Middle Ages, and a survey of Muslims in Italy. [28] Unlike these studies, designed and executed exclusively by geneticists who then look through a few general historical handbooks to try to find stories that might explain their data, historians and archaeologists are integrated from the start in our project.Patrick J. Geary and Krishna Veeramah, Mapping European Population Movement through Genomic Research [PDF download], Medieval Worlds, No. 4, 201, 65-78
Sunday, December 18, 2016
Kristian Kristiansen on Corded Ware ethnogenesis
Danish archaeologist Kristian Kristiansen will have a paper out early next year in Antiquity Journal on the emergence of the Corded Ware Culture in Late Neolithic Northern Europe. His talk at the recent European Archaeologists Association (EAA) annual meeting was based on the forthcoming paper. Here's a Youtube clip of the talk. At 6:50 minutes into the clip, Prof Kristiansen speculates that neighborly tensions between Neolithic farmers and Corded Ware newcomers led to the violent deaths of the Corded Ware family buried in Eulau, eastern Germany. In other words, he thinks the farmers did it. This is a plausible scenario, but there's a chance he's being rough on the farmers. Another potential explanation for these types of macabre Corded Ware family burials, in which most of the individuals appear to have been beaten to death by crazed attackers, is an early form of the ancient Indo-European practice of Sati. More on that here... Bell Beaker Blogger: Szczepanowice Mass Grave, Eulau Redux Archeowiesci.pl: W Małopolsce odkryto prehistoryczny grobowiec z czterema szkieletami Wikipedia: Sati (practice)
So how many of you really read the preprints at bioRxiv?
There's a new preprint at bioRxiv about the spread of the plague across much of Eurasia via the expansions of Early Bronze Age steppe pastoralists. It's been up for a few days now. Judging by the number of tweets on the preprint, a lot of people have read it. Or have they? The manuscript contains a glaring error, a couple times over, in which the authors mix up the Afanasievo Culture with the Andronovo Culture. That's OK, this is why we have preprints and bioRxiv. I just found it somewhat amusing to see one lonely voice pointing this out under the rash of tweets recommending the paper. here. See also... Mobile and then some
Saturday, December 17, 2016
The Metal Age invader that never was
FTDNA has launched a new "Ancient Origins" analysis, and I've been asked a few times now what I think of the "Metal Age invader" component in this test. Essentially, I share the view of one of the commentators in the comments here.
See also... Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe (Haak et al. 2015 preprint).
Wolfgang Haak et al., Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe, bioRxiv, Posted February 10, 2015, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/013433
See also... The Metal Age invader that never was #2 Who's your (proto) daddy Western Europeans?
FTDNA now models Europeans as a mix of hunter-gatherers (Loschbour, La Brana 1 and Motala), early European farmers (Stuttgart, Iceman, LBK) and so called "Metal Age invaders" which are based on Corded Ware and Yamnaya samples - so the latter is what we more typically call "steppe admixture". (Plus they add non-European admixture in case someone has it very evidently.) This model looks crude for our present-day standards, and their results look very different from what I've seen here in Davidski's analyses or in other ancient-DNA calculators on Gedmatch, as their inferred proportions of steppe admixture are much lower, about half of that inferred by others. And moreover to me it looks completely wrong that FTDNA suggests that I (1/4 Italian, strong southwest European component) have more Metal Age invader admixture than my fully East Prussian grandmother.Indeed, any Early Bronze Age Steppe-inspired component should peak at 40-50% amongst Northern and Eastern Euros. This apparently doesn't. Why? No idea. I know better than almost anyone else that there's no such thing as a perfect ancestry test, and FTDNA has every right to offer an experimental analysis to its clients, so let's leave it at that. But if you want to see what an ADMIXTURE test with a half-decent Yamnaya component looks like, then check out my attempt HERE. These are graphs from the linked blog entry showing inferred levels of Yamnaya-related ancestry proportions for Europeans and West Asians.
See also... Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe (Haak et al. 2015 preprint).
Wolfgang Haak et al., Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe, bioRxiv, Posted February 10, 2015, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/013433
See also... The Metal Age invader that never was #2 Who's your (proto) daddy Western Europeans?
Mobile and then some
Update 07/12/2018: Europe's ancient proto-cities may have been ravaged by the plague ... I've now read the new Valtuena et al. prerprint a couple of times, and even though the plague angle is interesting, what really sticks out for me is how incredibly mobile our steppe ancestors were. It's been obvious for a while now that during the Early Bronze Age there was a massive expansion from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe in all directions, as far as the Atlantic shores in the west and the Altai region in the east. However, considering the phylogeny of Yersinia pestis genomes in Valtuena et al., it looks like the Yamnaya and/or closely related peoples also regularly roved across the entire length of the Eurasian Steppe. The oldest and phylogenetically most basal sample of Yersinia pestis to date comes from an Afanasievo skeleton from the Altai region dated to 4836-4625 YBP. Hot on its heels, the next oldest is a sample derived from the Afanasievo strain, but from a Corded Ware skeleton from the East Baltic dated to 4571-4422 BP. The two burial sites are separated by something like 3,000 kilometers. It's unlikely that Yersinia pestis spread from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, say, with the Yamnaya, both to the Altai region and the East Baltic, because it hasn't yet been found in any of the Yamnaya remains. It's also generally accepted that Yersinia pestis is indeed from Asia. So it must have been picked up by migrants from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe somewhere in Asia, probably the Altai region, whose descendants then returned to Europe with the bug, and may have taken part in the Corded Ware expansion. But of course it doesn't end there, because it appears that the descendants or close relatives of the Baltic Corded Ware people then moved back to Asia, because a sample of Yersinia pestis derived from the Corded Ware strain is found in an Andronovo skeleton from the Altai region dated to 3694-3575 BP. Note also that the genome-wide genetic structure of most of the Andronovo individuals sampled to date is Corded Ware-like, in fact more so than Yamnaya-like. In other words, ancient human DNA also shows a very close relationship between Andronovo and the older Corded Ware. Why were these people roving around so much? I know they were pastoralists and that the Eurasian Steppe became progressively drier during the Bronze Age, so it may have been necessary to move wherever suitable pastures were available. But still, it seems rather ridiculous that they spent so much energy on long range intercontinental travel when, by all accounts, all they had were wagons pulled by oxen. Citation... Valtuena et al., The Stone Age Plague: 1000 years of Persistence in Eurasia, bioRxiv, Posted December 15, 2016. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/094243 See also... So how many of you really read the preprints at bioRxiv? Bronze Age dope dealers
Thursday, December 15, 2016
More on the stone age plague
Update 07/12/2018: Europe's ancient proto-cities may have been ravaged by the plague ... Good stuff at bioRxiv:
Abstract: Molecular signatures of Yersinia pestis were recently identified in prehistoric Eurasian individuals, thus suggesting Y. pestis might have caused some form of plague in humans prior to the first historically documented pandemic. Here, we present four new Y. pestis genomes from the European Late Neolithic and Bronze Age (LNBA) dating from 4,500 to 3,700 BP. We show that all currently investigated LNBA strains form a single genetic clade in the Y. pestis phylogeny that appears to be extinct today. Interpreting our data within the context of recent ancient human genomic evidence, which suggests an increase in human mobility during the LNBA, we propose a possible scenario for the spread of Y. pestis during the LNBA: Y. pestis may have entered Europe from Central Eurasia during an expansion of steppe pastoralists, possibly persisted within Europe until the mid Bronze Age, and moved back towards Central Eurasia in subsequent human population movements. ... The first indication of plague in Europe is found in the Baltic region and coincides with the time of the arrival of the steppe component (Allentoft et al., 2015). The two Late Neolithic Y. pestis genomes from the Baltic in this study were reconstructed from individuals associated with the Corded Ware Complex (Gyvakarai1 and KunilaII). The Baltic Y. pestis genomes are genetically derived from the strain that was found in the 'Andronovo Complex' from the Altai region [my note: I think they mean Afanasievo], suggesting that the disease might have spread with steppe pastoralists from Central Eurasia to Eastern and Central Europe during their massive range expansion. The younger Late Neolithic Y. pestis genomes from Southern Germany are genetically derived from the Baltic strains and are found in individuals associated with the Bell Beaker Complex. Previous analysis have shown that Bell Beaker individuals from Germany also carry 'steppe ancestry (Allentoft et al., 2015; Haak et al., 2015). This suggests that Y. pestis may have been spread further southwestwards analogous to the human steppe component. The youngest of the LNBA Y. pestis genomes (RISE505), found also in the Altai region, descends from the Central European strains, and thus suggest a spread back into the eastern steppes.The Stone Age Plague: 1000 years of Persistence in Eurasia, bioRxiv, Posted December 15, 2016. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/094243 See also... Plague germs may have facilitated Bronze Age expansions from the steppe Mobile and then some So how many of you really read the preprints at bioRxiv?
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Genetic reproductive edge may have boosted Slavic expansions
Open access at PLoS ONE:
The vast majority of patients with Nijmegen Breakage Syndrome (NBS) are of Slavic origin and carry a deleterious deletion (c.657del5; rs587776650) in the NBN gene on chromosome 8q21. This mutation is essentially confined to Slavic populations and may thus be considered a Slavic founder mutation. Notably, not a single parenthood of a homozygous c.657del5 carrier has been reported to date, while heterozygous carriers do reproduce but have an increased cancer risk. These observations seem to conflict with the considerable carrier frequency of c.657del5 of 0.5% to 1% as observed in different Slavic populations because deleterious mutations would be eliminated quite rapidly by purifying selection. Therefore, we propose that heterozygous c.657del5 carriers have increased reproductive success, i.e., that the mutation confers heterozygote advantage. In fact, in our cohort study of the reproductive history of 24 NBS pedigrees from the Czech Republic, we observed that female carriers gave birth to more children on average than female non-carriers, while no such reproductive differences were observed for males. We also estimate that c.657del5 likely occurred less than 300 generations ago, thus supporting the view that the original mutation predated the historic split and subsequent spread of the 'Slavic people'. We surmise that the higher fertility of female c.657del5 carriers reflects a lower miscarriage rate in these women, thereby reflecting the role of the NBN gene product, nibrin, in the repair of DNA double strand breaks and their processing in immune gene rearrangements, telomere maintenance, and meiotic recombination, akin to the previously described role of the DNA repair genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. ... Of the 92 haplotypes that carried NBN c.657del5 and that could be deduced without ambiguity (S1 File), 22 (23.9%) carried identical alleles at all markers between the two most distant microsatellites D8S271 (allele 257) and D8S270 (allele 200). This haplotype (Table 8) was found in individuals from Poland, Germany, CS [Czech Republic/Slovakia] and Lusatia (Sorbs) and most likely represents the ancestral haplotype. The remaining 95 haplotypes from 40 homozygous and 15 heterozygous c.657del5 carriers (out of a total of 187 chromosomes) could not be resolved without ambiguity and are best guesses (S1 File). Among these haplotypes, we observed the putative ancestral haplotype not only in individuals from the countries mentioned above, but also from Bulgaria, Russia, and the Ukraine. Some 30% of chromosomes carrying the founder mutation showed the deduced founder haplotype (Table 8). Moreover, all 187 chromosomes carrying c.657del5 showed the same SNP alleles (Table 3). Therefore, the deletion is not only confined to individuals of Slavic origin but is most likely due to a single mutational event. All differences observed for individual microsatellite alleles are explicable by past recombination or mutation owing to the non-negligible recombination rate between the STR markers (Table 2) and the high mutation rates of microsatellites of 10−4 to 10−2 per generation.Seemanova E, Varon R, Vejvalka J, Jarolim P, Seeman P, Chrzanowska KH, et al. (2016) The Slavic NBN Founder Mutation: A Role for Reproductive Fitness? PLoS ONE 11(12): e0167984. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0167984
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Middle Ages: rotten time to be a spotted horse
Scientific Reports has a new paper on the history of coat patterns in domesticated horses and the domestication process itself. Emphasis is mine:
Horses have been valued for their diversity of coat colour since prehistoric times; this is especially the case since their domestication in the Caspian steppe in ~3,500 BC. Although we can assume that human preferences were not constant, we have only anecdotal information about how domestic horses were influenced by humans. Our results from genotype analyses show a significant increase in spotted coats in early domestic horses (Copper Age to Iron Age). In contrast, medieval horses carried significantly fewer alleles for these phenotypes, whereas solid phenotypes (i.e., chestnut) became dominant. This shift may have been supported because of (i) pleiotropic disadvantages, (ii) a reduced need to separate domestic horses from their wild counterparts, (iii) a lower religious prestige, or (iv) novel developments in weaponry. These scenarios may have acted alone or in combination. However, the dominance of chestnut is a remarkable feature of the medieval horse population. ... In addition, we discovered that tobiano spotting, which only occurs in domestic horses and had thus far only been detected after 1500 BC, was present in the Eneolithic/Copper Age (Kazakhstan, cal. 3654–3630 BC, and Germany, cal. 3368–3101 BC). Similar to chestnut and sabino spotting, the tobiano phenotype appears to arise shortly after domestication, which is assumed to have started approximately 4000–3500 BC in the Ponto-Caspian steppe region (modern day Kazakhstan and Ukraine) [17]. ... Moreover, the detection of the tobiano phenotype in two Eneolithic domestic horses from distant regions has important implications regarding the origins of horse domestication [17] and their subsequent distribution. It also supports previous claims that the emergence of domestic horses in Central Europe at the end of the fourth millennium BC was facilitated by introduced horses from the Ponto-Caspian steppe [19].Wutke, S. et al. Spotted phenotypes in horses lost attractiveness in the Middle Ages. Sci. Rep. 6, 38548; doi: 10.1038/srep38548 (2016). See also... Sintashta and Scythian horses came from Hyperborea
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Population history of Sardinia from 3,514 whole genomes
Just in at bioRxiv:
Abstract: The population of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia has made important contributions to genome-wide association studies of traits and diseases. The history of the Sardinian population has also been the focus of much research, and in recent ancient DNA (aDNA) studies, Sardinia has provided unique insight into the peopling of Europe and the spread of agriculture. In this study, we analyze whole-genome sequences of 3,514 Sardinians to address hypotheses regarding the founding of Sardinia and its relation to the peopling of Europe, including examining fine-scale substructure, population size history, and signals of admixture. We find the population of the mountainous Gennargentu region shows elevated genetic isolation with higher levels of ancestry associated with mainland Neolithic farmers and depleted ancestry associated with more recent Bronze Age Steppe migrations on the mainland. Notably, the Gennargentu region also has elevated levels of pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer ancestry and increased affinity to Basque populations. Further, allele sharing with pre-Neolithic and Neolithic mainland populations is larger on the X chromosome compared to the autosome, providing evidence for a sex-biased demographic history in Sardinia. These results give new insight to the demography of ancestral Sardinians and help further the understanding of sharing of disease risk alleles between Sardinia and mainland populations.Charleston et al., Population history of the Sardinian people inferred from whole-genome sequencing, bioRxiv, Posted December 7, 2016, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/092148
Friday, December 2, 2016
The Bell Beaker Behemoth coming real soon
Update 20/02/2018: Today is the day. Please navigate over to: The Bell Beaker Behemoth (Olalde et al. 2018) ... Interesting post here by author Jean Manco. Emphasis is mine:
Reporting back on the lecture on Bell Beaker by Volker Heyd this evening in Dorchester. The expected two aDNA papers on Bell Beaker have been delayed for the best possible reason. The two teams, one from Harvard and the other from Copenhagen, have agreed to amalgamate their results into one huge paper, which will give the results of over 200 samples. It is due to be published in a couple of months. Until then all the results are embargoed. Volker Heyd would only say that they are exciting. He would also prefer me not to divulge everything he said at the lecture on the archaeological side, since he has a paper coming out in the March issue of Antiquity on Bell Beaker; while in the same issue will be one by Kristiansen on Corded Ware. So I'll be brief. He went through the various theories of the origins of Bell Beaker: the Dutch model prevalent until the 1990s, the change wrought by the Muller and Van Willigen radiocarbon date compilation of 2001 and subsequent publications of early dates in Iberia, the various attempts to make sense of an Iberian origin. The problem of the latter and of the idea of a North African origin are the same in his view. There is no prior usage of cord in pottery decoration of either. So he sticks by the Yamnaya link to a pre-BB culture proposed in Harrison and Heyd 2007. The icing on the cake lies in two significant new discoveries, which are not entirely published as yet.See also... The man with the flat occiput Population genomics of Early Bronze Age Europe in three simple graphs
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Five foot Philistines
Vilified in biblical texts and even ridiculed by Iggy Pop, the Iron Age pagan seafarers known as the Philistines were basically the East Mediterranean version of the Vikings, except apparently much smaller:
Relatively short average heights for people buried at Ashkelon — about 5 feet, 1 inch for men and 4 feet, 10 inches for women — also fit a scenario of biological stress, Fox said. Short stature and minimal height differences between men and women occur with population-wide stresses such as malnutrition, she said. ... The Philistines were a famously combative crowd. Archaeologist Eric Meyers of Duke University, who was not a member of the Ashkelon team, wondered if at least some of those buried at Ashkelon had been killed in battles or fights. But no head injuries or other skeletal signs of violent encounters appeared among the dead at Ashkelon, Fox said. Neither did any skeletons contain evidence of tumors or cancers. If DNA can be extracted from the Ashkelon skeletons, scientists may get a glimpse of where the Philistines originally came from. Evolutionary geneticist Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, is currently directing efforts to retrieve genetic sequences from the Ashkelon bones.Source: Ancient cemetery provides peek into Philistines' lives, health, ScienceNews, November 22, 2016 See also... Evidence of European ancestry in the Philistines
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Big deal of 2016: the territory of present-day Iran cannot be the Indo-European homeland
It's been a pretty big year. Not as big as many of us had hoped for, but there's still a few more weeks till 2017, so who knows what will happen? In any case, for me 2016 will be the year in which we finally saw hard data - courtesy of Lazaridis et al. and Broushaki at al. - that crossed off the territory of present-day Iran from the list of potential Proto-Indo-European (PIE) homelands. Now, it's true, Lazaridis et al. and Broushaki et al. were somewhat vague in what their data meant in this context, and indeed, both sets of authors left open the possibility that what is now Iran might prove to be the PIE homeland. However, their data left no doubt: look elsewhere for the PIE Urheimat. Why? Here it is, in point form, as simply as I can put it:
- the Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples of the Zagros range and South Caspian region were highly distinct both in terms of genome-wide genetic structure and uniparental markers, and clearly only contributed meaningful gene flow to South Asia, not to Europe or Anatolia - after the descendants of Neolithic farmers from the Zagros range, or at least their very close relatives, migrated to South Asia, the territory of present-day Iran, as per the data in Lazaridis et al. and Broushaki et al., saw waves of migrations from the west and north that dramatically shifted the population structure of the region, bringing it closer in this respect to the Levant and Europe - most of the Neolithic samples from Iran in Lazaridis et al. and Broushaki et al. came from near the proto-Elamite homeland in the Kor River basin in central Fars, which strongly suggests that their close relatives who streamed into South Asia were not Indo-Europeans, but rather speakers of languages closely related to Elamite - even though Lazaridis et al. successfully modeled Early/Middle Bronze Age steppe populations, including Yamnaya, as largely of Iran Chalcolithic origin, this appeared to be a coincidence, because the Chalcolithic samples from Iran showed fairly typical South Caspian uniparental markers, such as Y-chromosome haplogroups J and G1 and mitochondrial (mtDNA) haplogroup U7, which are conspicuous by their absence from an exceptionally wide range of Bronze Age steppe samples.I do realize that many readers won't accept these arguments for emotional reasons, because the PIE homeland debate is an emotional one for a lot of people. Nevertheless, if you decide to argue with me in the comments, make sure you have a coherent argument. Actually, the territory of present-day Iran has never been a serious contender in the PIE homeland debate. This is something that many Iranian scholars will freely admit. Not only was central Fars the proto-Elamite homeland, but much of what is now western Iran was the stomping ground of the Hurrians. The Indo-Europeans, in the form of Indo-Iranians such as the Medes, only got there late in the game, in all likelihood from the Eurasian steppes. But a lot of newbies to the PIE debate don't know this, or they don't want to know it. I guess to them, Iran makes sense because it's in between Europe and South Asia? Or maybe it's the fact that the word Iran is kind of similar to the word Aryan? No idea, really, but like I say, it's now all over. See also... A homeland, but not the homeland Zarathushtra and his steppe posse The story of mtDNA haplogroup U7
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Multiple Holocene Eurasian migrations into north central Africa
The AJHG has a new open access paper on the population history of Chad. It lays out a reasonable hypothesis for the sources and timing of Eurasian gene flow into north central Africa. Just wondering, though, if the authors considered the possibility that R1b-V88 may have expanded into Africa from Iberia? After all, the oldest instance of a probable R1b-V88 to date is from an Iberian Early Neolithic sample (ID I0410, Els Trocs, Spain, Haak et al. 2015). But I don't have a strong opinion on the issue at the moment. From the paper (emphasis is mine):
Understanding human genetic diversity in Africa is important for interpreting the evolution of all humans, yet vast regions in Africa, such as Chad, remain genetically poorly investigated. Here, we use genotype data from 480 samples from Chad, the Near East, and southern Europe, as well as whole-genome sequencing from 19 of them, to show that many populations today derive their genomes from ancient African-Eurasian admixtures. We found evidence of early Eurasian backflow to Africa in people speaking the unclassified isolate Laal language in southern Chad and estimate from linkage-disequilibrium decay that this occurred 4,750–7,200 years ago. It brought to Africa a Y chromosome lineage (R1b-V88) whose closest relatives are widespread in present-day Eurasia; we estimate from sequence data that the Chad R1b-V88 Y chromosomes coalesced 5,700–7,300 years ago. This migration could thus have originated among Near Eastern farmers during the African Humid Period. We also found that the previously documented Eurasian backflow into Africa, which occurred ∼3,000 years ago and was thought to be mostly limited to East Africa, had a more westward impact affecting populations in northern Chad, such as the Toubou, who have 20%–30% Eurasian ancestry today. We observed a decline in heterozygosity in admixed Africans and found that the Eurasian admixture can bias inferences on their coalescent history and confound genetic signals from adaptation and archaic introgression. ... It is important to note that in this work we inevitably invoke Occam's razor to support the simplest model consistent with our data; the history of the populations studied here, including the time and sources of the Eurasian admixture in Africa, could be more complex. aDNA from Chad and neighboring regions remains a challenge given the poor DNA preservation in hot climates, but future successful efforts in aDNA research could provide additional insights and reveal additional complexities not considered by the modern-DNA-based models favored here.Haber at al., Chad Genetic Diversity Reveals an African History Marked by Multiple Holocene Eurasian Migrations, AJHG, Published Online: November 23, 2016, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2016.10.012 show See also... R1b-V88: out of the Balkans and into Africa?
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Days of high adventure
I've redesigned and streamlined my Principal Component Analysis (PCA) plot of West Eurasia in anticipation of the arrival of many more ancient samples. Rumor has it we'll not only get stuff from the Balkans, but also finally from the steppes north of the Black Sea and South Asia. I'd say my new plot does a better job of highlighting relationships between the different prehistoric groups and population shifts across space and time. The datasheet is available here. Who's your (proto) daddy Western Europeans?
Monday, November 7, 2016
Cryptic post-OOA African ancestry in Eurasians (?)
The Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History is holding the Human Dispersals in the Late Pleistocene - Interdisciplinary Approaches Towards Understanding the Worldwide Expansion of Homo sapiens conference this week. The conference web page and abstract book are here.
The abstract below from Stephan Schiffels is very interesting. It reminds me of some of the discussions that we've had in the comments about potential African ancestry in some Eurasians that might be hiding due to a lack of relevant ancient African samples (for instance, see here).
When and how modern humans left the African continent is still a debated question. Recently, three projects have analysed new genetic data from modern populations in Papua New Guinea and Australia, which has provided new insights on this topic. I will present analyses from one of these publications (Malaspinas et al. 2016), and compare results with findings from the two other projects (Mallick et al. 2016, Pagani et al. 2016). Here, we used MSMC2, a novel computational framework to analyse the distribution of times to the most recent common ancestor along multiple sequences. We find that all non-African populations that we analysed, including Australians, experienced a very similar population bottleneck in the past, consistent with only one out-of-Africa migration for all extant non-African populations. At the same time, we find evidence that some African populations are more distantly related to Australians than to Eurasian populations, and we show that this result is robust to haplotype phasing errors and archaic introgression. We interpret our result as evidence for gene flow between some Africans and Eurasians after the initial split, which is also consistent with results from other population genetic methods. Our analysis suggests that in order to understand human dispersal out of Africa, we need to better understand ancient population substructure within Africa, which is an important direction for future research.
Stephan Schiffels, Analysing Australian genomes to learn about early modern human dispersal out of Africa, Human Dispersals in the Late Pleistocene - Interdisciplinary Approaches Towards Understanding the Worldwide Expansion of Homo sapiens 2016 conference abstract
See also...
Two pronged AMH colonization of Eurasia. Or not
Friday, November 4, 2016
Caste is in the genes
I've built up a pretty good record over the past couple of years of pre-empting results that eventually show up in high end scientific journals. Here's another major finding that you'll see at some point in Nature or Science: in present-day India upper caste membership is strongly associated with Eneolithic/Bronze Age steppe-related ancestry, while low caste membership and Dravidian languages are strongly associated with indigenous South Asian and Zagros Neolithic-related ancestry. As far as I can see, with my somewhat limited dataset, the best way to show this is by plotting D-stats of the form D(Outgroup;Samara_Eneolithic)(Onge;X) versus D(Outgroup;Iran_Neolithic)(Onge;X). The relevant datasheet is available here. On the doorstep of India Indian confirmation bias The Out-of-India Theory (OIT) challenge: can we hear a viable argument for once?
Friday, October 28, 2016
Steppe boys, farmer girls
I updated my table of Steppe_EMBA mitochondrial (mtDNA) haplogroups with data from Wilde 2014, Broushaki et al. 2016, Sokolov et al. 2016, Jones et al. 2015, and extra data from Lazaridis et al. 2016. The accompanying map is from Wilde 2014 and shows sampling locations of many of the individuals in the spreadsheet. here). At least now I can see a few shared haplogroups. Some thoughts:
- Despite the small sample set from Neolithic Bulgaria and western Ukraine, two out of the four haplogroups are shared with Steppe_EMBA, including the fairly specific H2a2 - Steppe_EMBA potentially shares very deep ancestry with Iran_Neolithic, via basal clades such as T2c and possibly X2; these markers could have arrived on the steppe in any number of ways, and indeed may have been sitting there since the Mesolithic - But Iran_Chalcolithic is still a horrible match with Steppe_EMBA, and Maikop no betterNeedless to say, I'm looking forward to those new Neolithic Balkan samples from the upcoming Mathieson et al. paper (see here). I'm pretty sure now that at least some Steppe_EMBA groups will show admixture from Neolithic or Chalcolithic populations from the eastern Balkans. See also... Mixed marriages on the early Eneolithic steppe Modeling Steppe_EMBA Male-dominated conquest of Europe by Bronze Age steppe pastoralists The story of mtDNA haplogroup U7
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Strong mitogenomic continuity on the Armenian Plateau since the early Neolithic
Below is another abstract from the upcoming 6th DNA Polymorphisms in Human Populations conference in Paris. It was added to the abstract book after I first blogged about the conference here. The authors are probably first testing mtDNA to check which of the samples have enough DNA for full genome sequencing or enrichment capture of genome-wide SNPs. So the fact that they managed to sequence so many mitogenomes means that we might soon see genome-wide data for most of the same samples. The results make sense considering the genetic structure of present-day Armenians (see here). Indeed, I suspect that early Neolithic farmers from the southern Caucasus will come out looking very similar overall to present-day Armenians. If so, this will probably be hailed by many as evidence supporting the Armenian Plateau Indo-European homeland theory. However, as I've already shown, it's very likely that the Armenian Plateau was affected by population movements from the Eastern European steppe during the Bronze Age which may have introduced Indo-European languages to the region (see here).
The origin of the Armenian people is heavily debated among historians and archaeologists. Despite a long history and vast archaeological records in Armenia, it has proven very challenging to infer the demographic events that led to the formation of Armenians as a distinct ethno-cultural group. To obtain a detailed understanding of the demographic events in Armenia across millennia, we study complete mitochondrial genomes from 49 ancient individuals covering 7800 years and compare them with that of modern Armenians (n=206) and seven neighboring populations (n=482). In this context, the lowest genetic distance was observed between the modern and ancient Armenians and this was also reflected in network analyses and discriminant analysis of principal components (dapc) showing genetic proximity between the ancient individuals and modern Armenians. We used Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) to test five different demographic scenarios of the Armenian population, and the simulations favored a model where both ancient and modern Armenians derive from the same source population. We conclude that there is a strong signal of continuity in the maternal Armenian gene pool during the last 7800 years.Margaryan et al., 7800 years of Mitochondrial genetic continuity in Armenia, 6th DNA Polymorphisms in Human Populations, Talk Workhsop Genomic Demography, Musee de l'Homme, Paris, 7-10 December, 2016 Update 29/06/2017: The paper has just been published. It only has a few samples from before the Middle Bronze Age (MBA) and these don't match closely the mtDNA lineages from the Eneolithic/Bronze Age steppe, which is interesting and potentially important for the Indo-European homeland debate. See here.
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Sibero-Scythian idol's "racial realignment"
From The Siberian Times:
He has a massive nose with flared nostrils, wide open mouth, a bushy moustache and a beard. And yet all is not quite as it seems, for this sculpture, the most northerly of this genre in Asia, underwent an historic version of plastic surgery perhaps 1,500 years ago to give him a less Caucasian and more Asian appearance, according to experts. ... So the original European look of the idol was changed to a more Asian countenance. Why would this happen? 'Judging by archeological finds found inside the grottos, this anthropomorphic idol was made during the Scythian time,' Yuri Grevtsov said. 'The first change came when the more European looking face was transformed to make it appear more Mongoloid was likely to have happened in the early Middle Ages with a shift of the population in the Angara River area,' he said. In other words, incoming ethnic groups preferred the idol to be more akin to their own looks.Source: Siberia's stone idols - 2,400 year old Ust-Taseyevsky idol 'underwent racial realignment early in Middle Ages', losing his European looks by Tamara Zubchuk
Friday, October 14, 2016
Global 10: A fresh look at global genetic diversity
Update 06/02/2018: I'm working on a new version of this test. It's called the Global 25. See here. ... Below is my new Principal Component Analysis (PCA) or genetic map of global human population structure. I think it's a little bit special, and we can discuss why in the comments if anyone's interested. The datasheet is available here; it can be used to generate 2D and 3D PCA plots, and to model samples of your choice using the nMonte and 4mix R scripts. A similar sheet with average values for the ancient populations is here.
Karitiana Ulchi 64.45 AfontovaGora3 34.2 Dai 1.35 distance%=0.5479/distance=0.005479 Wichi Ulchi 66.8 AfontovaGora3 33.2 Dai 0 distance%=0.5055/distance=0.005055 Kalash Iran_Neolithic:I1945 38.6 Paniya 20.2 Yamnaya_Samara:I0357 17.4 Afanasievo:RISE509 16.55 Andronovo:RISE505 3.8 Iran_Late_Neolithic:I1671 3.45 Iran_Hotu:I1293 0 distance%=0.3793/distance=0.003793 Brahmin_Uttar_Pradesh Paniya 54 Yamnaya_Samara:I0357 24.55 Iran_Neolithic:I1945 21.45 Afanasievo:RISE509 0 Andronovo:RISE505 0 Iran_Hotu:I1293 0 Iran_Late_Neolithic:I1671 0 distance%=0.997/distance=0.00997 Brahmin_Tamil_Nadu Paniya 57.2 Iran_Neolithic:I1945 27.7 Yamnaya_Samara:I0357 15.1 Afanasievo:RISE509 0 Andronovo:RISE505 0 Iran_Hotu:I1293 0 Iran_Late_Neolithic:I1671 0 distance%=1.0312/distance=0.010312 Pathan Paniya 24.9 Iran_Neolithic:I1945 23.15 Andronovo:RISE505 19.95 Iran_Late_Neolithic:I1671 17.85 Yamnaya_Samara:I0357 14.15 Afanasievo:RISE509 0 Iran_Hotu:I1293 0 distance%=0.5729/distance=0.005729It's interesting to note that the Dai from southern China help to improve the fit for Karitiana from the Amazon basin, but not the Wichi from Argentina. Also, Andronovo significantly improves the fit for the East Iranian Pathans or Pashtuns, but clearly not as much for the Indo-Aryan Kalash, and none at all for Brahmins from India, who are also Indo-Aryans. Why? Don't know, but it might well be an important question in regards to the origins and spread of Indo-Iranian languages.
Monday, October 10, 2016
RIP with cannabis
Iron Age European-like people in what is now western China buried their dead with cannabis plants. Courtesy of Phys.org:
The skeleton has been identified as once belonging to a Caucasian man approximately 35 years old at the time of his death. Those that had buried him had placed a willow pillow under his head and had then placed a shroud of (13) cannabis plants over his chest reaching from below his pelvis at one end to the side of his face on the other. The skeleton lay in one of the 240 graves in the area known as the Jiayi cemetery. The people that lived in the area at the time were part of a Kingdom from 3,000 and 2,000 years ago known as the Subeixi. Prior research has shown the people lived there because it was an oasis in the desert, one that had become an important place for travelers to rest during their trek along the Silk Road.Full article: Ancient skeleton covered in cannabis shroud unearthed in China Based on this paper at Economic Botany:
Abstract: An extraordinary cache of ancient, well-preserved Cannabis plant remains was recently discovered in a tomb in the Jiayi cemetery of Turpan, NW China. Radiometric dating of this tomb and the archeobotanical remains it contained indicate that they are approximately 2800–2400 years old. Both morphological and anatomical features support the identification of the plant remains as Cannabis. Research discussed in this paper describes 13 nearly whole plants of Cannabis that appear to have been locally produced and purposefully arranged and used as a burial shroud which was placed upon a male corpse. This unique discovery provides new insight into the ritualistic use of Cannabis in prehistoric Central Eurasia. Furthermore, the fragmented infructescences of Cannabis discovered in other tombs of the Jiayi cemetery, together with similar Cannabis remains recovered from coeval tombs in the ancient Turpan cemetery along with those found in the Altai Mountains region, reveal that Cannabis was used by the local Central Eurasian people for ritual and/or medicinal purposes in the first millennium before the Christian era.Hongen Jiang et al., Ancient Cannabis Burial Shroud in a Central Eurasian Cemetery, Economic Botany (2016). DOI: 10.1007/s12231-016-9351-1 See also... Bronze Age dope dealers
Saturday, October 8, 2016
Dead cat bounce
Max Planck's Johannes Krause featured this curious map at a recent talk in Moscow on the Proto-Indo-European homeland debate (two hours into the clip here). Some German guy once said... Big deal of 2018: Yamnaya not related to Maykop Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Hurrians and the others
Here's another graph based on my new D-stats datasheet. The contrast in the population affinities of Armenia_MLBA (Middle Late Bronze Age) and Armenia_EBA (Early Bronze Age) is, at least for me, surprising.
Yoruba Sintashta Armenia_EBA Armenia_MLBA f4 0.000676 Z 1.395 Yoruba Potapovka Armenia_EBA Armenia_MLBA f4 0.000459 Z 1.275 Yoruba Corded_Ware_CE Armenia_EBA Armenia_MLBA f4 0.000383 Z 0.933 Yoruba Poltavka Armenia_EBA Armenia_MLBA f4 0.000373 Z 0.814 Yoruba Andronovo Armenia_EBA Armenia_MLBA f4 0.000214 Z 0.486By the way, these stats are based on transversion sites only to limit the effects of post-mortem damage on the ancient samples, some of which are not UDG treated. Update 06/10/2016: As far as I can see, the qpAdm modeling software shows that Sintashta is indeed the best available proxy for the European-like admixture in Armenia_MLBA.
Outgroups Andamanese_Onge Bichon Chukchi Han Israel_Natufian Karitiana Kostenki14 MA1 Mbuti Papuan Ust_Ishim Armenia_MLBA Armenia_EBA 0.799±0.069 Sintashta 0.201±0.069 chisq 7.181 tail prob 0.618257 Armenia_MLBA Armenia_EBA 0.835±0.068 Andronovo (3) 0.165±0.068 chisq 9.549 tail prob 0.388179 Armenia_MLBA Armenia_EBA 0.842±0.065 Andronovo (4) 0.158±0.065 chisq 9.742 tail prob 0.371809 Armenia_MLBA Armenia_EBA 0.838±0.069 Srubnaya 0.162±0.069 chisq 9.993 tail prob 0.351059Update 08/10/2016: By the way, the fact that Kura-Araxes shares high genetic drift with many Indo-European-speaking Southern Europeans, such as Albanians, has no bearing on its posited identity as an Hurrian-speaking population. That's because this inflated genetic affinity is mediated via ancient groups of largely Near Eastern origin not directly related to Kura-Araxes, such as Copper and Bronze Age pre-Indo-European Europeans. On the other hand, Caucasians, particularly Northeast Caucasians, in all likelihood do share direct ancestry with Kura-Araxes.
Monday, October 3, 2016
On Gamkrelidze-Ivanov's dubious map skills and then some
I've put together a new D-stats sheet that might be useful in the Indo-European homeland debate (see here). It features new samples from the EGDP dataset, with most of the stats based on over 750K SNPs. The stats are of the form D(Chimp,Ancient)(Mbuti,X). The idea that Indo-Iranian languages arrived in Central and South Asia from the Armenian Plateau and/or eastern Anatolia during the Bronze Age, as per Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (check out their article here and, if you don't have access, crazy map here), is still popular with a lot of people. But it's most certainly a dud. There's too much Bronze Age steppe ancestry in this part of the world, particularly among the more isolated Indo-Iranian populations like Pamir Tajiks and the Kalasha, as well as upper caste Indians, to ignore. At the same time, there is no hard data linking any of these groups to Bronze Age Armenia or Anatolia. here), which they clearly should if their Indo-European ancestors migrated en masse from Transcaucasia to the Pontic-Caspian steppe in an anti-clockwise direction around the Caspian Sea. here). And, judging by the affinities of CHG and ancient groups in large part of CHG origin, these people were more likely the speakers of Caucasian languages than of Proto-Indo-European. Hurrians and the others
Friday, September 30, 2016
Male-dominated conquest of Europe by Bronze Age steppe pastoralists
Just in at bioRxiv:
Abstract: Dramatic events in human prehistory, such as the spread of agriculture to Europe from Anatolia and the Late Neolithic/Bronze Age (LNBA) migration from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, can be investigated using patterns of genetic variation among the people that lived in those times. In particular, studies of differing female and male demographic histories on the basis of ancient genomes can provide information about complexities of social structures and cultural interactions in prehistoric populations. We use a mechanistic admixture model to compare the sex-specifically-inherited X chromosome to the autosomes in 20 early Neolithic and 16 LNBA human remains. Contrary to previous hypotheses suggested by the patrilocality of many agricultural populations, we find no evidence of sex-biased admixture during the migration that spread farming across Europe during the early Neolithic. For later migrations from the Pontic steppe during the LNBA, however, we estimate a dramatic male bias, with ~5-14 migrating males for every migrating female. We find evidence of ongoing, primarily male, migration from the steppe to central Europe over a period of multiple generations, with a level of sex bias that excludes a pulse migration during a single generation. The contrasting patterns of sex-specific migration during these two migrations suggest a view of differing cultural histories in which the Neolithic transition was driven by mass migration of both males and females in roughly equal numbers, perhaps whole families, whereas the later Bronze Age migration and cultural shift were instead driven by male migration, potentially connected to new technology and conquest.Familial migration of the Neolithic contrasts massive male migration during Bronze Age in Europe inferred from ancient X chromosomes, bioRxiv, Posted September 30, 2016, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/078360 Update 15/03/2017: "Failure to Replicate a Genetic Signal for Sex Bias in the Steppe Migration into Central Europe"
Monday, September 26, 2016
Estonian Biocentre Human Genome Diversity Panel (EGDP)
Published along with Pagani et al. 2016, the EGDP dataset is freely available at the Estonian Biocentre website as VCF and PLINK binary files here. It overlaps at ~550K SNPs with Harvard's Human Origins, and at an impressive ~1.1 million SNPs with the ~1.2 million SNP ancient DNA chip used by the Reich Lab and others. To see what's what, I ran a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of all of the samples except the Congo Pygmies. I then removed four Siberians that behaved as if they had very recent European ancestry, and reran the PCA. Below are a few screen grabs from the latter analysis. The datasheet is available here. here. Look for the individual IDs with the GS prefix. Using the K7 spreadsheet and nMonte, here's a model for Ashkenazi Jews with some of the new EGDP populations as references, including Avars from the North Caucasus and Arabs from Israel. The Arabs do help to improve the fit, but they're not as important as Samaritans and Tuscans.
Ashkenazi Anatolia_ChL 7.9 Arab_Israel_1 15.65 Avar 0.6 Bashkir 0.05 Cossack 0 Italian_Tuscan 30.45 Polish 11.75 Samaritan 33.6 Uygur 0 distance%=0.2874 / distance=0.002874In any case, that looks like a fairly sensible outcome, considering that it only took me a few minutes to put together. I've seen much worse in scientific literature.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
New rules for comments
All comments posted here must comply with the following rules. Comments that break these rules will be removed. Repeat offenders will be banned.
- no racial or ethnic taunts and insults - do not for any reason speculate about the people posting here - avoid discussions with obvious trolls and/or mentally unstable people* - no conspiracy theories - do some reading here before posting if unfamiliar with the relevant topics - do not discuss or cite any outdated physical anthropology work unless it's just the raw measurement data in the context of discussions about archeology and/or ancient DNA - do not post any illegal or defamatory material - stay on topic unless you have a good excuse for going off topic*Mental illness is not a joke, but it is a reality for a lot of people, so we're bound to see some visitors here occasionally with this problem. If unsure, simply ignore and move on. There is no rule against swearing and name calling, but try to keep things civil. Trolls should be regularly called out for who they are, but keep it short and then move on. See also... Banned commentators list
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Two pronged AMH colonization of Eurasia. Or not
A robust but healthy debate by proxy between three teams of population geneticists over at Nature today. Emphasis is mine:
Absract: High-coverage whole-genome sequence studies have so far focused on a limited number1 of geographically restricted populations (2, 3, 4, 5) or been targeted at specific diseases, such as cancer6. Nevertheless, the availability of high-resolution genomic data has led to the development of new methodologies for inferring population history (7, 8, 9) and refuelled the debate on the mutation rate in humans (10). Here we present the Estonian Biocentre Human Genome Diversity Panel (EGDP), a dataset of 483 high-coverage human genomes from 148 populations worldwide, including 379 new genomes from 125 populations, which we group into diversity and selection sets. We analyse this dataset to refine estimates of continent-wide patterns of heterozygosity, long- and short-distance gene flow, archaic admixture, and changes in effective population size through time as well as for signals of positive or balancing selection. We find a genetic signature in present-day Papuans that suggests that at least 2% of their genome originates from an early and largely extinct expansion of anatomically modern humans (AMHs) out of Africa. Together with evidence from the western Asian fossil record (11), and admixture between AMHs and Neanderthals predating the main Eurasian expansion (12), our results contribute to the mounting evidence for the presence of AMHs out of Africa earlier than 75,000 years ago.Pagani et al., Genomic analyses inform on migration events during the peopling of Eurasia, Nature, Published online 21 September 2016, doi:10.1038/nature19792 ...
Abstract: Here we report the Simons Genome Diversity Project data set: high quality genomes from 300 individuals from 142 diverse populations. These genomes include at least 5.8 million base pairs that are not present in the human reference genome. Our analysis reveals key features of the landscape of human genome variation, including that the rate of accumulation of mutations has accelerated by about 5% in non-Africans compared to Africans since divergence. We show that the ancestors of some pairs of present-day human populations were substantially separated by 100,000 years ago, well before the archaeologically attested onset of behavioural modernity. We also demonstrate that indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andamanese do not derive substantial ancestry from an early dispersal of modern humans; instead, their modern human ancestry is consistent with coming from the same source as that of other non-Africans.Mallick et al., The Simons Genome Diversity Project: 300 genomes from 142 diverse populations, Nature, Published online 21 September 2016, doi:10.1038/nature18964 ...
Abstract: The population history of Aboriginal Australians remains largely uncharacterized. Here we generate high-coverage genomes for 83 Aboriginal Australians (speakers of Pama–Nyungan languages) and 25 Papuans from the New Guinea Highlands. We find that Papuan and Aboriginal Australian ancestors diversified 25–40 thousand years ago (kya), suggesting pre-Holocene population structure in the ancient continent of Sahul (Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania). However, all of the studied Aboriginal Australians descend from a single founding population that differentiated ~10–32 kya. We infer a population expansion in northeast Australia during the Holocene epoch (past 10,000 years) associated with limited gene flow from this region to the rest of Australia, consistent with the spread of the Pama–Nyungan languages. We estimate that Aboriginal Australians and Papuans diverged from Eurasians 51–72 kya, following a single out-of-Africa dispersal, and subsequently admixed with archaic populations. Finally, we report evidence of selection in Aboriginal Australians potentially associated with living in the desert.Malaspinas et al., A genomic history of Aboriginal Australia, Nature, Published online 21 September 2016, doi:10.1038/nature18299
Thursday, September 15, 2016
R1a and R1b from an early Mongolian tomb
PLoS One has a new paper on a Mongolian imperial tomb dated to 1130–1250 AD, which is the early Mongolian era. Here's the table with the Y-haplogroup results:
Similarly, the high frequency of R1b-M343 in geographic regions associated with the past Mongol khanates including the Golden Horde (from Ural Mountain to Western Siberia, which includes Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan), Ilkhanate (Iran and neighboring territories including Armenia, Turkey, Georgia, Afghanistan, Syria, and Tajikistan), and Chagatai Khanate (from the Aral sea to the Altai mountain, including Pakistan (Hazara), Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, India, and China), strongly suggest a close association between the Y haplotype R1b-M343 and the past Mongol Empire.No, the distribution, frequencies and subclades of R1a or R1b do not show any sort of meaningful correlation with the past Mongol Empire. The most obvious explanation, although not the only possible one, for the presence of R1a and R1b lineages in Mongolian imperial remains are the migrations of the Afanasievo and/or Andronovo people into the Altai region from the Eastern European steppes during the Bronze Age. See here...
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
ISBA7 PalaeoBarn abstracts
The abstract book for this week's meeting is available here. Emphasis is mine. The two abstracts on the genetic shifts in the East Baltic region might look as if they contradict each other, but they don't. What they're suggesting is that the East Baltic was basically home to typical European hunter-gatherers right up until the Late Neolithic, when the Corded Ware people crashed into the area, probably from the steppe via East Central Europe. For more on this topic also see here.
Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of Human Remains from Estonia Pfrengle et al. The transition from hunter-gatherer subsistence to farming is one of the most important processes in human history. In Europe, it has been found to be a result of demic diffusion originating from the Near East. The arrival of the first farmers in Europe lead to an increase of genetic diversity as well as genetic admixture of local hunter-gatherer and the migrating farmers. Previous studies investigating European human history using mitochondrial and genome-wide nuclear data from early farmers and hunter-gatherers have provided detailed insights into the process of admixture and replacement throughout the Neolithic period. However this process has been poorly studied in the Baltic region where archaeological research suggests more extensive scenarios. Here we reconstructed the complete mtDNA of 19 individuals from different archaeological sites of Estonia covering the timespan from the Narva Culture to the Corded Ware Culture and determined their mitochondrial haplogroups. The results show that the typical European hunter-gatherer maternal lineages are represented exclusively in all individuals from until the Middle Neolithic. From the Late Neolithic on, haplogroups that are associated with European Neolithic farmers are detected. The results indicate genetic continuity of foraging cultures of Mesolithic and early Neolithic backgrounds and a late demic diffusion into the territory of Estonia associated with people of the Corded Ware culture. In addition, the generated genetic data are used to gain insights into the demography of burial complexes by sex determination and maternal kinship analysis. The Neolithic Transition at the Edge of Europe Jones et al. In Europe, the Neolithic transition marked the beginning of a period of innovations which saw people move from a mobile lifestyle, dependent on hunting and gathering for survival, to a more sedentary way of life based on food production. This new lifeway, which began in the Near East ~11 kya, spread quickly across the continental interior of Europe predominantly through demic diffusion. While the genetic impact of the Neolithic transition has been well explored in central Europe, its impact on more peripheral regions of the continent has not been as extensively studied. To broaden our understanding of this dynamic phase in European prehistory, we analysed genomes from a 4,000 year temporal transect through the Baltic region spanning from the Late Mesolithic to the Late Neolithic period. We found evidence for connectivity from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic however, we also detected signals consistent with influxes from non-local populations. These influences were distinct from the early farmer admixture which transformed the genetic landscape of central Europe during the Neolithic. Interestingly, dietary stable isotope analyses (δ15N and δ 13C) show that the genetic shifts coincide with diversifications in subsistence strategy. These results suggest that the Neolithic was a period of genetic flux in the Baltic however, the cultural and technological changes observed were largely independent of forager-farmer genetic exchange. Reconstructing population history in East Asia Wang et al. The deep population history of East Asia remains poorly understood compared to that of West Eurasia, due to the lack of ancient DNA data as well as limited sampling of present-day populations especially on the Tibetan Plateau and in southern China. We report a fine scale survey of East Asian history based on genome-wide data from ancient samples in the Amur River Basin, as well as 435 newly reported individuals from 53 populations. Present-day groups can be broadly classified into highly differentiated clusters, corresponding to Amur River Basin, Tibetan Plateau, southern natives and Han Chinese. Populations of the Amur River Basin show a high degree of genetic continuity from seven thousand years ago until today, and are closely related to the strain of East Asian related ancestry present in Native Americans. Tibetan Plateau populations are all admixed, deriving about 5%-10% of their ancestry from an anciently divergent population that plausibly corresponds to the Paleolithic population on the Plateau, and the remaining part from an ancient population that no longer exists in unmixed form but that likely corresponds to expanding farmers from the Middle and Upper Yellow River Basin who also contributed 40-90% of the ancestry of Han Chinese. A total of 10-60% of Han Chinese ancestry derives from southern Native populations, and we show that the type of southern Native ancestry that contributed to Taiwan Island Austronesian speakers is most closely related to present-day speakers of Tai-Kadai languages in southern mainland China. Contextualizing the Tianyuan genome within present and ancient human genomic diversity Yang et al. Recently, many studies have produced an unprecedented number of ancient human genomes, providing insight on human dynamics in many regions, particularly West Eurasia and the Americas. Here, we present genome-wide data from the Tianyuan specimen, dating to ~40,000 years ago. Unlike other ancient genomes studied to date, the Tianyuan genome is the first ancient Upper Paleolithic sample analyzed to have contributed greatly to the East Eurasian ancestral lineage. We compare Tianyuan to several ancient and present day human genomes to better understand both the genetic diversity in the Upper Paleolithic and the similarities and differences between Tianyuan and present day populations. Overall, the addition of genome-wide Tianyuan data provides greater insight into the population history in Eurasia over the last 40,000 years. Capture of ancient genomic DNA of individuals recovered from a Medieval Alemannic gravesite provides evidence for high mobility of fellowships during the 7th century CE. O'Sullivan et al. Whether the historic spread of cultural/language groups such as the Alemanni were migrations or local adoption of culture is still unresolved in archaeology. The Alemanni were a confederation of tribes that inhabited an area, from the third to the 10th century CE, which approximately overlaps with the modern distribution of Alemannic German dialect in Swabia. We present the genomic and isotopic data of eight individuals excavated from a gravesite in Niederstotzingen, Germany of supposed Alemannic origin dated to the 7th century CE. There were two multiple burials at the site suggesting either kinship or fellowship between the individuals. The tombs in the gravesite contained cultural artefacts and weapons indicating close contact of the Alemanni with Longobards and Byzantines. We investigated the genetic affinity of these individuals between each other and to modern West Eurasians. The genetic analysis utilised the targeted enrichment and sequencing of over 1.2 million genetic markers that have known ascertainment. From these data, we found no familial relationship among the individuals in the multiple graves, thus supporting a burial practice based rather on fellowship. All individuals were genetically male. The genetic affinities of the individuals, based on modern genetic distributions, were five Eastern Europeans, two Germans/Austrians and one Southern European. Isotopic data supports that only the Southern European individual was certainly born outside this region. The genetic data appear to correlate with the provenance of the burial artefacts, showing that westward movements and interactions among cultural groups likely occurred in this region during the 7th century CE. Origins and genetic legacy of the first people in Remote Oceania Skoglund et al. The appearance of people associated with the Lapita culture in the South Pacific ~3,000 years ago marked the beginning of the last major human dispersal to unpopulated lands, culminating in the settlement of eastern Polynesia ~1,000-700 years ago. However, the genetic relationship of these pioneers to the long established Papuan peoples of the New Guinea region is debated. We report the first genome-wide ancient DNA data from Asia-Pacific region, from four ~2,900 to ~2,500 year old Lapita culture individuals from Vanuatu and Tonga, and co-analyze them with new data from 356 present-day Oceanians. Today, all indigenous people of the South Pacific harbor a mixture of ancestry from Papuans and a population of East Asian origin that we find to be a statistical match to the ancient Lapita individuals. Most analyses have interpreted the ubiquitous Papuan ancestry in the region today-at least 25%-as evidence that the first humans to reach Remote Oceania and Polynesia were derived from mixtures near New Guinea prior to the Lapita expansion into Remote Oceania. Our results refute this scenario, as none of the geographically and temporally diverse Lapita individuals had detectable Papuan ancestry. These results imply later major human population movements, which spread Papuan ancestry through the South Pacific after the islands' first peopling. An ancient genomic perspective on the horse domestication process Librado et al. The domestication of the horse in the Pontic-Caspian steppes some 6,000 years ago represents one major turning point in human history. With horses, humans could travel for the first time well above their own speed and carry their germs, culture and genes across vast geographic areas. The development of horse-drawn chariots and cavalry also radically changed the history of warfare and was instrumental to the emergence of transcontinental empires. Additionally, beyond the battlefield, farm horses have massively impacted agricultural productivity. The biological changes that accompanied the process of horse domestication are, however, difficult to reconstruct from current patterns of genetic diversity both due to the development of intensively selected and extremely influential breeds during the last two centuries, and the almost extinction of wild horses. Recent developments in ancient DNA research have opened for the characterization of complete genomes, epigenomes and microbiota over long time series. We have applied such approaches to a large panel of horse remains spread across Eurasia and dated to 44,000-200 years ago. This started revealing the genetic structure of horse populations prior to and during early domestication stages as well as the history of genetic changes that accompanied their further transformation in a range of cultural contexts. I will present our latest progress made on an extensive dataset of ancient horse genomes spanning the whole domestication temporal and geographical range. Mobility between the Aegean and the Levant in the Late Second Millennium BCE: inference from ancient DNA of pigs Meiri et al. The Late Bronze and the early Iron Ages (ca. 1450-950 BCE) of the eastern Mediterranean region are characterized by dramatic historical processes. Empires emerged and collapsed, trade connections were established and severed, and at the end of this era socio-political unrest and migration of large groups of people were rife throughout the region. In the 12th century BCE the movements of the so-called "Sea Peoples" affected wide parts of the East Mediterranean. We study the nature of human movements during this period on trade connections, culture and animal husbandry using the ancient DNA of domestic animals, above all pigs. We recently showed that in Israel, European pig haplotypes appeared ca. 900 BCE, and soon after took over the gene pool, with all modern wild boars in Israel carrying European mitochondrial DNA. Here, we broadened the chronological and spatial scopes by studying ancient pig mitochondrial DNA from the southern Levant and Greece. The Near Eastern haplotype Y1 and supposedly Near Eastern haplotype Y2 were discovered in Greece in the mid to late 3rd millennium BCE, while the European haplotypes were found in Israel in the early Iron Age IIA (ca. 900 BCE). We propose that pigs were moved between Europe and Anatolia since the early Bronze Age. Connections between Greece and the southern Levant are observed in the Iron Age, and probably result from the migration of Sea Peoples to the east. These results shed light on networks and movements of people during both times of prosperity and crisis.
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text:
Lemons are nature's gift to a household. Lemon juice keeps prepared foods like guacamole and chopped lettuce fresh, acts as a disinfectant for cuts and scrapes and has numerous cleaning uses.
Keep your Cookware & Countertops Clean
Two easily stained surfaces in many kitchens are copper and marble. Copper oxidizes, giving way to frequent stains, and the porous nature of marble makes it hang onto grime. Tough stains on copper cookware and marble surfaces can be conquered with lemon and some salt. Dip half a lemon in table salt or sea salt and scrub away those tough stains fast. Stubborn counter top stains can be vanquished by simply squeezing a lemon over the stain, sprinkling a little baking soda on top and waiting a few minutes. Wipe away with a paper towel.
Lemony Fresh Laundry
Laundry odors and stains can be eliminated and replaced with a fresh lemon scent. Lemon carries a natural bleaching ability and can help lift rust spots and remove mineral discolorations. Just squeeze a few lemons and pour the juice in with your detergent.
Homemade All-Purpose Cleaner
The antibacterial properties and low pH of lemon juice make it an excellent all-purpose cleaner. Simply mix lemon juice with a little vinegar and water in a spray bottle. The solution can be used for your entire household, including porcelain surfaces, living room furniture, doorknobs and computer monitors.
Adding half a cup of the mixture to your dishwasher detergent will give an additional boost to get plates, bowls and silverware extra clean. Spray on tile or wood floors and wipe away with a Swiffer.
Beat Tough Fabric Stains
You can save money and skip the dry cleaner the next time you're dealing with stains on white linens and non-washable fabrics. All you need are lemons and sunshine. Simply squeeze lemon juice on the stains and let them dry in the sun. It's no coincidence that they are both round, bright, and yellow!

subset: commoncrawl


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Our office is conveniently located in the heart of Charlotte, North Carolina.
For map and directions to our office, click here.
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The Bump Baby Registry
Now is the perfect time to start your Baby Registry!START A REGISTRY
Lol, central time told me she was up at 4 I was like no way I'm bumping that early.kns1988 said:@ShadeofGreen816, just noticed when you started the thread. What were you doing up at 5 AM?
#1 DD Aug 2014 @39weeks via CS
#2 Due May 2,2017 hopeful VBAC
kns1988 - woke up to DH making bacon too! Every morning should start like this.
Jens_Hoes - WTF indeed! That's a lot to deal with all at once.
A slow day here. Hubby was up at 3 am. So he'll probably nap the day away. Think I'll catch up on some baby reading and projects I've been putting off.
Ha! First thing I noticed too!vrj0522 said:@clebl24 - I think that something like that is okay and probably better than having to tell someone directly that they can't come visit. I have a sil who sent a text asking for no visitors until they had been home for a couple of days and no one was offended, after all, it's their newborn and they are trying to adjust to their family changes.
The only thing that makes my eye twitch about the sign is that it says excepting instead of accepting.


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How to Use
the Readings
Inquiry Question
Reading 2: Building Going-to-the-Sun Road
The eastern and western sections of Going-to-the-Sun Road had been completed before Kittredge's survey of the central and most difficult portion. Even after the final route was chosen, it took eight more years to complete construction.
The story of building the section of the road through the extreme terrain and conditions west of Logan Pass illustrates why construction took so long. Because work on all parts of the road progressed at the same time, workers did not have a completed road below them to transport their supplies. The contractors relied on about 15 miles of construction trails and a crude road to haul supplies around incomplete sections of the road. The west side tunnel was a major obstacle. To get around the tunnel area, the contractors sent their supplies up an existing hiking trail. They then built a rough road downhill. They built a cabin to store supplies and even parked a steam shovel there during the winter of 1925-1926.
Most of the 12-mile central section was constructed with the aid of three power shovels--two steam shovels and one gas shovel. The contractors also used pneumatic drills and almost 500,000 pounds of explosives. Construction typically took place in stages. First, the engineering crew marked the way followed by laborers who cut down the trees and did the "grubbing," removing stumps and roots. Then the explosives men moved in. After the explosion broke up the rock, the power shovels cleared and loaded the debris on trucks or on "dinky" railroads. These little trains, powered by small gas locomotives, generally had about 12 dump cars and ran on tracks several hundred feet long to dump the rock in a designated location. Once the rock debris was removed, the remaining rock bed was essentially complete except for surfacing and any necessary masonry work.
Most of the masonry work--bridges, culverts, retaining walls, and guardrails--was done by subcontracting "station gangs." Typically, these were groups of eight to ten men whose efforts were particularly useful in places the power shovels could not be used--especially along the Garden Wall. Laborers came from all over. One group of Russian immigrants set up their own cook tent with their own cook. A number of Italian immigrants worked on the masonry guardrails. One Irish-American contractor tended to hire his fellow Irish from Butte, Montana.
Animals were sometimes a problem. One account describes a deer that became entangled in blasting wires and prevented a blast that would have killed it. There were many stories about the bears that were drawn to the camps by the smell of food. Employees had to watch their lunches; they would hang them in trees along with saws or other tools that would move with the wind and frighten off the bears. At food supply stations contractors would pound nails in the walls with the points outward. One meathouse was built on stilts and fitted out with a drawbridge. One black bear even set up a permanent post at the back door of a camp kitchen. Grizzly bears were far more dangerous than black bears and caused serious alarm. When one threatened the Russian crew at Camp 6 on Logan Pass, the contractors called in park rangers for protection.
Three men died during construction of the road. One man was hanging from a rope to check the safety of an overhanging rock and slipped and fell to the roadbed. Another man was hit on the head by a rock; the third man was killed in a rockslide.
When the road was ready for traffic in 1933, the Park Service prepared a dedication ceremony. Both Congressman Louis C. Cramton and Park Naturalist George C. Ruhle are credited with coming up with the name "Going-to-the-Sun Road," borrowed from nearby Going-to-the-Sun Mountain. The park superintendent, J. R. Eakin, liked the name because "it gives the impression that in driving this road autoists will ascend to extreme heights and view sublime panoramas." Visitors ever since have agreed.
Questions for Reading 2
1. How many years did it take to construct the central portion of the road? Why was this section the most difficult?
2. How did the road contractors get supplies to the highest sections of the project?
3. What stages did the road construction go through?
4. Who made up the labor force?
5. What were some of the dangers workers on the road encountered?
6. Why did the park superintendent like the name "Going-to-the-Sun Road"? Do you think it was a good choice?
Reading 2 was compiled from Kathryn Steen, "Going-to-the-Sun Road," (HAER No. MT-67), Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Historic American Engineering Record, 1990, 1, 23-32; and "Through the Years in Glacier National Park" (Glacier Natural History Association, 1960).


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Please click on the event titles below to learn more and register.
Legal Consultations- Wayne Evening
August 18, 2021 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
An event every month that begins at 6:00 pm on day Third of the month, repeating indefinitely
Register in advance for our most popular program.
Legal Consultations are available for women with family law questions. An experienced family law attorney will meet with you privately for up to 30 minutes to provide you with legal guidance on processes, rights and responsibilities regarding child support, divorce, custody/visitation, PFAs and more.
Space is extremely limited. $10 due at time of registration.
Registered attendees may arrive as early as 5:50pm. Clients are seen in order of first come, first served.
Call 610-687-6391 to register.


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Hydroxocobalamin (hi-DROX-oh-koe-BAHL-a-min) is a natural and uniquely powerful form of vitamin B-12. Clinical studies and practice have shown it can help to improve cognitive functioning, fight fatigue, promote heart health, and more.
Vitamin B-12 is an essential nutrient needed to make red blood cells that carry oxygen throughout the body, the myelin sheath that surrounds nerve cells, and various proteins. It also plays a role in fat and carbohydrate metabolism. Yet, despite its importance to overall health, vitamin B-12 deficiency is relatively common. It is estimated that up to 15% of the general population may be deficient in B-12 – and more among those with chronic illnesses.
Dietary Sources of Vitamin B-12
Vitamin B-12 is produced exclusively in the digestive tracts of animals. Therefore, the richest dietary sources of B-12 are organ meats like liver or kidney. Other good natural sources include meat, fish, eggs and dairy products. Although some food products like cereals and some beverages may be enriched with B-12, they do not contain adequate amounts to be used as the sole dietary sources.
In order for the B-12 obtained from food to be absorbed it must attach to a protein called intrinsic factor, which is secreted in the stomach. Unfortunately, a number of things can inhibit the secretion of intrinsic factor, which in turn blocks the absorption of B-12 and results in a vitamin B-12 deficiency.
Causes of Vitamin B-12 Deficiency
A deficiency of vitamin B-12 is not usually caused by insufficient dietary intake but rather by a lack of intrinsic factor secretion. Without intrinsic factor, vitamin B-12 cannot be absorbed. This situation can occur with:
• Digestive disorders such as celiac disease, Crohn's disease, bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine or a parasite.
• Surgery to remove or bypass part of the stomach or the part of the small intestine called the ileum.
• Certain medications, particularly diabetes medications like metformin, and long-term use of proton pump inhibitors (such as Prilosec, Prevacid, Nexium, etc.) commonly prescribed for heartburn, acid reflux and GERD.
• Vegetarian or vegan diets, since B-12 is found almost exclusively in animal foods.
• Pernicious anemia – a decrease in red blood cells that develops when the body lacks the intrinsic factor necessary to naturally absorb vitamin B-12 from food.
Symptoms of Vitamin B-12 Deficiency
Early symptoms of a B-12 deficiency may be overlooked, diagnosed as another illness, or attributed to "just getting older" because many of them mimic classic signs of aging. Of course, this isn't surprising since low serum levels of vitamin B-12 are fairly common in elderly patients.(1) Some of the symptoms of a vitamin B-12 deficiency may include:
– Fatigue
– Weakness
– Memory loss
– Cognitive functioning problems
– Diarrhea or constipation
– Loss of appetite
– Shortness of breath
– Beefy, red, smooth and sore tongue
– Sore mouth and/or bleeding gums
– Numbness and tingling of hands and feet
– Poor sense of balance
– Depression
– Confusion
– Insomnia
– Vision problems
– Loss of hearing and tinnitus
– Pale, possibly yellowish pallor in light-skinned individuals; blotchy pigmentation in dark-skinned individuals.
A B-12 deficiency can be difficult to diagnose because serum blood levels of B-12 may test normal. Having circulating B-12 in blood doesn't mean it is being utilized properly by the body's cells. Some doctors suggest that a test measuring methylmalonyl coenzyme A levels in the urine gives a more accurate reading of B-12's availability in the body.
Which Vitamin B-12 is Better – Hydroxocobalamin or Cyanocobalamin?
The name vitamin B-12 is used for a group of cobalt-containing enzymes called cobalamins. (It's the cobalt that gives B-12 its red color.) There are several members of the cobalamin family, but cyanocobalamin and hydroxocobalamin are two of the best known.
• Cyanocobalamin is the type of B-12 found in most supplements and in prescribed injectible forms – largely because it is inexpensive and the most stable form of B-12.
• However, studies have found that hydroxocobalamin raises B-12 levels higher and lasts longer than cyanocobalamin.(2)(3)
Another interesting fact – cyanocobalamin contains cyanide. It's actually a cyanide molecule attached to a cobalamin. Although the amount of cyanide is miniscule enough that it is not thought to be harmful to most people, it could be dangerous for those who have cyanide metabolism defects or kidney failure. There is also the possibility that it could be toxic if taken in extremely large doses.
On the other hand, hydroxocobalamin has a high affinity for cyanide. It pulls the cyanide out of the mitochondria of the cell and combines with it to form cyanocobalamin, which is then excreted in the urine. In 2006 hydroxocobalamin was approved by the FDA as an antidote for cyanide poisoning.
Since cyanide is present in cigarette smoke (and essentially reduces the cells' ability to use oxygen), hydroxocobalamin would be a good option for smokers seeking a B-12 supplement.
Hydroxocobalamin's Relationship to Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Many of the symptoms fibromyalgia and ME/CFS patients report are also symptoms of a B-12 deficiency – cognitive functioning problems, memory loss, and fatigue to name a few. Is that merely a coincidence or is there a connection?
In a 1997 study of 12 patients with fibromyalgia and ME/CFS: Most had little or no detectable B-12 in their cerebrospinal fluid – despite the fact that all had normal B-12 blood levels. Conversely, they had high levels of homocysteine in their cerebrospinal fluid.(4)
Homocysteine is an amino acid, too much of which can be toxic to nerves and blood vessels, and may result in increased pain sensitivity and/or heart disease.
• When there is not enough vitamin B-12, homocysteine levels increase.
• As B-12 levels rise, homocysteine levels decrease.
ME/CFS specialist and researcher Dr. Paul Cheney, MD, PhD, utilizes large doses of hydroxocobalamin as part of his treatment protocol. He believes it is a potent brain detoxifier and says data suggests that megadoses in the range of 10,000 mcg or more per day, given before bedtime, may be effective. He also notes that hydroxocobalamin is superior to cyanocobalamin as a detoxifier of the brain.(5)
Another researcher, Dr. Martin L. Pall, PhD, hypothesizes that elevated levels of nitric oxide and peroxynitrite (affecting brain function and pain sensitivity) may be the common etiology of ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivity and post-traumatic stress disorder.(6) He believes hydroxocobalamin's ability to "mop up" excess nitric oxide may be why it has proven to be so useful in treating those illnesses.(7)
Hydroxocobalamin's Effect on Other Conditions
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Studies have shown hydroxocobalamin to have positive effects on a variety of different diseases and disorders. In these examples, hydroxocobalamin:
• Improved cognitive function in older cobalamin-deficient persons.(8)
• Inhibited HIV-1 infection of normal human blood monocytes and lymphocytes.(9)
• Showed remarkable improvement in asthma wheezing.(10)
There are also individual or small case reports indicating a possible correlation with B-12 deficiency in some cases of infertility, dementia, diabetic neuropathy, neuromyelopathy, multiple sclerosis, autism, motion sickness, and even psychosis to name a few.
Shots or Pills – Is There a Difference?
Most hydroxocobalamin studies have used the intramuscular injection form. However, that requires patients to return to the doctor's office for every dose (unless they learn to do it themselves). Therefore injections are a more time-consuming, expensive and – let's face it – painful way to go. But are they more effective?
Two studies addressing that question concluded that oral supplementation with large doses of B-12 was as effective, if not more effective, than injections.
• A 1997 study showed that oral supplementation with 2,000 mcg per day was three times as effective as injections in increasing B-12 levels in pernicious anemia patients.(11)
• Another study done in 2005 concluded that 2,000 mcg doses of oral B12 was as effective as intramuscular administration in vitamin B-12 deficient patients. (12)
When it comes to oral supplementation of B-12, sublingual tablets are the best option because they are absorbed directly into the mucous membrane and don't have to go through the digestion process, which is often the cause of the deficiency to begin with.
How Much Is Enough? …Too Much?
There is no set upper dose limit for hydroxocobalamin because there are no known toxic effects, even at extremely high dosages. Many of the studies used 1,000 or 2,000 mcg/day. Dr. Cheney generally prescribes 10,000 mcg/day for ME/CFS patients. Dr. Susan Solomon, MD, recommends at least 5,000 mcg/day sublingual for chronically ill patients. Dr. Sarah Myhill, MD, usually starts with 5,000 mcg/day for ME/CFS and then adjusts the frequency according to the response.
In Summary
Clinical research and practice strongly supports the use of hydroxocobalamin as a safe and highly effective method for correcting a vitamin B-12 deficiency.
1. Stott DJ, et al. "Prevalence and haemopoietic effects of low serum vitamin B-12 levels in geriatric medical patients." Br J Nutr. 1997 Jul;78(1):57-63.
2. Hall CA, et al. "The availability of therapeutic hydroxocobalamin to cells." Blood. 1984 Feb;63(2):335-41.
3. Glass GBJ, et al. "Hydroxocobalamin V. Prolonged Maintenance of High Vitamin B-12 Blood Levels following a Short Course of Hydroxocobalamin Injections." Blood, 1966, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 234-241.
4. Regland B, et al. "Increased concentrations of homocysteine in the cerebrospinal fluid in patients with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome." Scand J Rheumatol. 1997;26(4):301-7.
5. Hoh D. "Treatment at the Cheney Clinic." The CFIDS Chronicle. July/August, 1998:13-14.
6. Pall ML. "Common etiology of posttraumatic stress disorder, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity via elevated nitric oxide/peroxynitrite." Med Hypotheses. 2001 Aug;57(2):139-45.
7. Pall ML. "New theory on explanations for chronic fatigue syndrome. ProHealth." February 13, 2001.
8. vanAsselit DZ, et al. "Cobalamin supplementation improves cognitive and cerebral function in older, cobalamin-deficient persons." J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2001 Dec;56(12):M775-9.
9. Weinberg JB, et al. "Inhibition of productive human immunodeficiency virus-1 infection by cobalamins." Blood. 1995 Aug 15;86(4):1281-7.
10. Wright, JV. "Treatment of childhood asthma with parenteral vitamin B-12, gastric re-acidification, and attention to food allergy, magnesium and pyridoxine: three case reports with background an integrated hypothesis." Journal of Nutritional Medicine, 1990; 1:277-282.
11. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. January, 1997; 45(1):124
12. Butler CC, et al. "Oral vitamin B12 versus intramuscular vitamin B12 for vitamin B-12 deficiency: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials." Fam Pract. 2006 Jun;23(3):279-85. Epub 2006 Apr 3.
* Karen Lee Richards is Lead Expert specializing in Fibromyalgia and ME/CFS, for HealthCentral's ChronicPainConnection (www.chronicpainconnection.com). Karen is co-founder of the National Fibromyalgia Association (NFA) and was Executive Editor of Fibromyalgia AWARE magazine for four years.
Note: This information has not been reviewed by the FDA. It is general information and is not meant to prevent, diagnose, treat or cure any condition, illness, or disease. It is very important that you make no change in your healthcare plan or health support regimen without researching and discussing it in collaboration with your professional healthcare team.