I've been procrastinating about this in vane hope of returning to my old animical self of being more interested in writing (and reading) about stuff that interests me but nope. It doesn't seem like I'm going back, so I feel it's pointless to keep open a blog (actually two) that I don't regularly or even irregularly update at all. Time to draw the curtain, sorry.
I will still occasionally write (in Castilian language basically) at my blog Bagauda (Wordpress, where it's easier to control trolls and choose between pre-moderation or no moderation individually).
I considered opening a second WP blog in English but I don't feel energized enough at this point. If I do in the future, I will of course announce it here.
I will keep comments open for some weeks more but in a month or so I'll also close that because it's too much hassle. The blog will remain accessible as such "forever" (or for as long as Blogger maintains it) of course.
You can of course contact me by email if important at:
I'm also right now somewhat active at FB and YT under my legal (shortened) name Luis Aldamiz. But nothing too interesting going on there anyhow. Just comments and blah-blah, political discussions in FB, etc.
So, thanks for being there, thanks for your interest, your feedback, your collaborations in some cases, thanks to everyone (except to Chucky "I want to be your friend" the psychopatic troll of many names).
Enjoy the rest of your life, kids. Love and rage!
Thanks for blogging all these years on interesting topics, and thanks for linking to my own! First to do so. It is many times a chore to keep a blog going when other things keep robbing time away. Anyhow, I learned quite a bit following 'For What They Were'. Maybe it'll come roaring back to life when Michelsberg genomes start being published! - who knows! Thanks for everything!
ReplyDeleteTake care, BBB. We have still a lot more to learn but I think I have a quite good picture of what most likely happened by now. Hopefully I'll now write a small booklet for Basques (and others) to better understand our origins, but I'll do that in Spanish. That's my goal for 2019.
DeleteHello Luis,
ReplyDeleteI will miss your commentary.
Before you sign off, I wanted to let you know about this research:
https://www.amazon.com/Proto-Basque-Reconstruction-Proto-Indo-European-Euskarian-Hypothesis-Linguistics/dp/1138584606
All the best to you in the years to come,
Marnie
I thought you were still angry at me. Thanks for leaving a note, Marnie.
DeleteThe Blevins book/theory has been in the forums and conversations I have got with other, so not really new for me but thanks anyhow.
No, I'm not angry with you. Thank you for showing me the Bizkaia Museum of Archaeology. I'm sure in the years to come, people will realize the pricelessness of many of the artefacts there, especially the Paleolithic and Mesolithic ones. Again, many thanks.
DeleteOk, glad to read that. That's for all the fish to you especially, because I do remember you invited me to lunch and that we had fish (at least I did). Enjoy.
DeleteGlad you liked the fish. I especially liked the Basque region fresh cider. Hey, I'm sure I'll be back to Basque country at some point. I will be sure to look you up.
DeleteSure, any time. Cider is the best thing you can have as drink for sure, but watch for stomach acidity if you're prone to it...
DeleteStill awaiting for some entrepreneur who begins bottling the cider in small, one-serving, bottles like beer or any other beverage. Many taverns do not have cider because their cider-drinking customers are too few and sparse and the bottle (around 6 servings?) doesn't keep the cider well for long after being opened.
Anyhow, if you like cider, then next time you must come in early spring, the cider season, and we have to go to Gipuzkoa, in order to enjoy some wild cider party directly from the freshly opened barrels... txotx!
This is an official tourist video in English on the matter: https://youtu.be/m3eCaSLJrnM
DeleteFresh cider at Gipuzkoa sounds good. Luis, I'll get in touch with you by email after the holiday season about this.
DeleteMarnie
Honestly, I'm sad because of closed your block.You were open to almost any kind of Idea.At least keep the comment section open.So we can keep sharing new information,and you can read them at any time.
ReplyDeleteYears 2019 going to witness many new genetic discoveries,and I think you should not miss them.
Who knows,perhaps it is proven that "proto Bulgaro-Turkics" derive from local cultures of western Siberia(or vice versa).In any case, please do not close the comment section
Nope, because I would have to police the comment section and that's probably the most tiresome part of having a blog, more so since Blogger has been quite messy with sending mails about new comments and such in the last year.
DeleteWhy don't other people like yourself do things?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI am sad to hear this. I have greatly enjoyed and appreciated your commentary over these many years. Thank you for your many very interesting contributions/analysis. I will miss it. Perhaps I will read and comment at Baganda occasionally (though my Spanish is not very good).
ReplyDeleteThanks to you, JM8. Bagauda is a generic blog, lots of politics/current affairs and only occasional anthropology, history, genetics... but I need to focus on just one thing at risk of not doing anything at all.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteChucky not welcome. Go find a Hell to burn in, stalker!
DeleteIt's been a pleasure to read your stuff. Best wishes going forward.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Andrew, my pleasure. Not really following blogs much right now, so maybe you already discussed this at yours, what do you think of the new theory in which gravity is not anymore attraction caused by mass but repulsion/pressure caused by vaccuum and that allegedly explains dark matter without resorting to extra particles? Ref. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.07962.pdf
DeleteOur loss bro, good luck.
ReplyDeleteGood luck Maju, thanks for all your past efforts here
ReplyDeleteThanks to you for making often very good useful comments. Best wishes.
DeleteHi Maju
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nature.com/articles/ejhg2015206
I wrote to you earlier that the Anatolian Turks carried a significant amount of Eastern Asian and Siberian components and that other Near Eastern peoples were deprived of it.
But the fact that these results have not been obtained from a genetic article has caused you to reject it.
This article is actually about Armenians,but it has been studied in Turks
Good readings
And where is the Altaic admixture in Armenians there? In fig. 3 their inputs end before 1000 BCE, long before any Turco-Mongol reached the area.
DeleteMaybe it is you who needs to read it again?
Maju said,
ReplyDelete"And where is the Altaic admixture in Armenians there? In fig. 3 their inputs end before 1000 BCE, long before any Turco-Mongol reached the area."
I never told anything about any "altaic" input in Armenian.Contrary,I said they deprived of it.
"You" actually need to read it again.
"Previous genetic studies have generally used Turks as representatives of ancient populations from Turkey. Our results show that Turks are genetically shifted towards Central Asians, a pattern consistent with a history of mixture with populations from this region."
"We compared the patterns of admixture in Armenians with those of other regional populations and detected signals of recent admixture in most other populations. For example, we find 7.9% (±0.4) East Asian ancestry in Turks from admixture occurring 800 (±170) years ago. We also detect sub-Saharan African gene flow 850 (±85) years ago in Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians."
"The genetic landscape in most of the Middle East appears to have been continuously changing since then. For example, we detect East Asian ancestry in Turks from admixture occurring 800 (±170) years ago coinciding with the arrival of the Seljuk Turks to Anatolia from their homelands near the Aral sea. We also detect sub-Saharan African gene flow 850 (±85) years ago in Syrians, Palestinians, and Jordanians consistent with previous reports of recent gene flow from Africans to Levantine populations after the Arab expansions."
Where is the Central Asian input in Turks? Please lead me to the exact figure, thanks in advance. I'm interested in the data not in the blah-blah.
DeleteMaybe you could write about populations other than Spanish. Ultimately, you could have been born in any other family just by chance
ReplyDeleteNot sure if you noticed but this is a "farewell, closing" post.
DeleteThank you Luis. Great work all these years. Hope you will start again in a new blog in future. Meanwhile i will read you in Bagauda.
ReplyDeleteSalud.
Sorry to hear that you are closing the blog, I've enjoyed reading it over 5 years+. Your blog posts are always interesting, well-written and researched. You 'retired' leaving a great body of work. In closing, what do you make of this paper (don't know if you saw it?)
ReplyDeleteA western route of prehistoric human migration from Africa into the Iberian Peninsula
G. González-Fortes, F. Tassi, E. Trucchi, K. Henneberger, J. L. A. Paijmans, D. Díez-del-Molino, H. Schroeder, R. R. Susca, C. Barroso-Ruíz, F. J. Bermudez, C. Barroso-Medina, A. M. S. Bettencourt, H. A. Sampaio, A. Grandal-d'Anglade, A. Salas, A. de Lombera-Hermida, R. Fabregas Valcarce, M. Vaquero, S. Alonso, M. Lozano, X. P. Rodríguez-Alvarez, C. Fernández-Rodríguez, A. Manica, M. Hofreiter and G. Barbujani
Published:23 January 2019
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.2288
Not sure. Correct me if I'm wrong but the data from this paper seems to have two ancient samples that have something African:
Delete1. COV20126 carries L2a, a fairly common North African mtDNA haplogroup. A quick search in this blog shows it's as high as 15% among the Zenata of Algeria and it exists at lower frequencies through the country (and presumably NW Africa in general). Sure: the haplogroup is strictly African (non-Asian, non-OoA) but we have no idea how long it has been in North Africa, probably very long. Also the compared Tanzanian 3000 BP sample is oddly "North African" in its autosomal genetics, so I'd go with North African rather than Tropical African here.
2. One sample from "Mesolithic" (sic) or rather Epipaleolithic Iberia has minor admixture from Morocco-UP. This sample is surely La Braña judging on what we have seen before (but correcting if I'm wrong). This disappears when the steppe component shows up at K=7 but IMO K=6 is more trustworthy (because the steppe component is a composite and ancient steppe is way too overloaded with samples, what usually produces distorsions).
So undecided but it looks to me like at least some North African genetics were already part of the Iberian landscape since ancient times. It's possible that some other populations (yet to be sampled) were richer in this North African admixture or that there have been more flows at various times.
Personally I'd love to see some Southern and Central Portuguese ancient DNA because that region was very influential at various times (Megalithism first, Bell Beaker later) and it might have been a difussor of such North African genetics. But by the moment the mystery continues it seems.
Thanks for mentioning the paper, sadly it's anything but conclusive. And thanks for the compliments as well.
COV20126 is L2a1I, not yet found in any North Africa samples but frequent in West and West-Central Africa.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I'll miss my occasional visits here. Been reading off and on for over a decade I think.
ReplyDelete