Category Archives: Amerindians

Déjà Vu all over again: America and Europe

Posted on November 12, 2014 by gcochran9

In terms of social organization and technology, it seems to me that Mesolithic Europeans (around 10,000 years ago) were like archaic Amerindians before agriculture.  Many Amerindians on the west coast were still like that when Europeans arrived – foragers with … Continue reading →

Posted in Amerindians, European Prehistory, Indo-European | 102 Comments

Remix

Posted on November 8, 2014 by gcochran9

There is a new paper out in Science that analyzes the genome of a man (K14) that lived and died about 37,000 years ago, in Russia. They found that this individual came from a population that had shared ancestry with … Continue reading →

Posted in Amerindians, European Prehistory, Indo-European | Tagged | 69 Comments

Horsepower

Posted on November 4, 2014 by gcochran9

The Comanche used to raid into Mexico. In the fall, small groups joined up and rode south on a network of trails, called the Comanche Trace. Some came from as far away as the Arkansas River. In places, there was … Continue reading →

Posted in Amerindians, European Prehistory, Indo-European | Tagged | 105 Comments

Degüello

Posted on August 28, 2014 by gcochran9

There’s a new paper out on the genetic prehistory of the Canadian Arctic. Basically, it says that existing Eskimos replaced a genetically different population less than 700 years ago, and that those earlier Paleo-Eskimos (Dorset culture) represent yet another separate … Continue reading →

Posted in Amerindians, Eskimo | 70 Comments

Silver Blaze

Posted on February 17, 2014 by gcochran9

The recent paper on three ancestral European populations has some truly interesting stuff buried deep in the supplements.   This is not the first time that this has happened: if you read the supplements to their big Neanderthal paper, back in … Continue reading →

Posted in Amerindians, Ashkenazi Jews, Denisovans, European Prehistory, Genetics, Indo-European, Linguistics, Neanderthals | 422 Comments

Slow times in the New World

Posted on February 13, 2014 by gcochran9

The pre-Columbian distribution of languages in the Americas is rather different from what we see in the Old World.  In Eurasia, Africa, and Australia, we mostly see large areas occupied by families of clearly related languages –  such as Indo-European, … Continue reading →

Posted in Altitude adaptations, Amerindians, European Prehistory, Genetics, Linguistics | 122 Comments

Basques

Posted on December 15, 2013 by gcochran9

The Basques are the only people in Western Europe that have a non-Indo- European language. In fact, there is no clear relationship between Basque and any other existing language: it is an isolate, as far as we know. The Basques … Continue reading →

Posted in Amerindians, European Prehistory, Genetics | 79 Comments

Ancestral Journeys

Posted on December 2, 2013 by gcochran9

Jean Manco has a new book out on the peopling of Europe, Ancestral Journeys.  The general picture is that Europeans arise from three main groups: the Mesolithic hunters (Hyperboreans),  Levantine farmers, and Indo-Europeans off the steppe.   It’s a decent … Continue reading →

Posted in Amerindians, Book Reviews, European Prehistory, Genetics | 67 Comments

True Names

Posted on November 21, 2013 by gcochran9

Now that Willerslev’s article is out in Nature,  there are a number of pieces discussing about it.  The gist is that there was a population that ranged from France deep into Siberia, one that accounts for part of the ancestry … Continue reading →

Posted in Amerindians, European Prehistory | 38 Comments

The First of the Mohicans

Posted on October 25, 2013 by gcochran9

I talked about some pieces of this puzzle earlier: Patterson and Reich found an Amerindian-like component in Europeans, especially northern Europeans.  Their first calculations showed such admixture in all Europeans other than Sardinians and Basques: later calculations found that all Europeans … Continue reading →

Posted in Amerindians, European Prehistory, Genetics | 135 Comments