Back to work

My apologies to readers for being for so long in "lazy mode". Actually I got interrupted largely by a request to provide a quality article on Basque, Sardinian and European origins for a soon to be published collective book in Basque language. This took me a lot of time and energies in late March and early April, so basically I put everything else on hold. The last weeks I've been resting indeed, what may be aggravated by a declining health that makes me sleep irregularly and often for much longer than most of you do. Being fed up with Internet information feeds and a quite active political reality also drain my energies to other endeavors, not to mention paperwork.

In this sense I want to announce that I have begun recently a new multi-purpose blog in Spanish language: Bagauda. Most of it is politics, I warn you, but I have also included the unedited raw article for that book I mention in the previous paragraph (prior to translation to Basque and corrections). I'm reasonably sure that those of you who have Spanish as primary or even secondary language will be interested in having a look (→ here).

Another relevant entry was the announcement of the upcoming congress on Iruña-Veleia to be held on May 7 in Vitoria-Gasteiz. You can still register but hurry up.

I will now proceed to comment in a separate entry on the news of the week, the Fu et al. study of a large array of Paleoeuropean ancient DNA. But, before I get to that, I must mention some interesting studies that I have not been able to get time to even properly read, let alone discuss:

• K. Voskarides, S. Mazières et al., Y-chromosome phylogeographic analysis of the Greek-Cypriot population reveals elements consistent with Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements. Investigative Genetics 2016. Open access → LINK [doi:10.1186/s13323-016-0032-8]
• B. Vernot et al., Excavating Neandertal and Denisovan DNA from the genomes of Melanesian individuals. Science 2016. Freely accessible (with registration?) → LINK [doi:10.1126/science.aad9416]
• Y.Y. Waldman, A. Biddanda et al., The Genetics of Bene Israel from India Reveals Both Substantial Jewish and Indian Ancestry. PLoS ONE 2016. Open access → LINK [doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0152056]

Another intriguing new independent paper by a regular visitor and commenter to this blog, Olympus Mons, that I have not yet read is:

→ R1b from Sulaweri-Shomu to Bell Beaker, available as PDF or in blog format.

He seems to argue for a Caucasus origin of both the lineage and Bell Beaker phenomenon. I have no opinion as of yet, because, simply put, I have not been able to read it in full.

Another regular visitor here to have put an independent paper online, also on the issue of R1b origins, is Paul Conroy:

→ Anatole A. Klyosov and Paul M. Conroy, Origins of the Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English R1b-M222 population. Available at Paul's Academia.edu account.

Again I have not yet got the opportunity to read it, so no opinion. 

Feel free to use this entry to comment on any of the aforementioned studies or articles or to provide info about stuff I may have missed.