Archaeogenetics channel

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇫🇷William the Conqueror's speech before the Battle of Hastings in 1066. How exactly did the Normans identify? William's speech may contain hints about the identity of the Norman elite. 🇫🇷🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Presentation by Dutch historical linguist Gus Kroonen showing the development of Germanic languages from the earliest stage of Paleo-Germanic/Germanic Parent Language (GPL) to Proto-Germanic and the genetic clusters associated with it (from McColl 2025). Also shows interactions with other neighboring language groups.

🇵🇱🇵🇱Interesting timeline of yDNA shifts in Poland. The change between Przeworsk (Vandals) Wielbark (Goths) to the Slavic era was remarkable. 🇵🇱🇵🇱 Credit to genomicatlas.org

How light-featured was the Globular Amphora culture? Judging by the only data currently available, not very. You often see the GAC referred to as the most depigmented Neolithic culture in Europe in online amateur aDNA circles. This is usually based on a series of phenotypical predictions made by the amateur blogger Genetiker back in 2018. He returned from a hiatus and launched adnaxp in 2024, and the predictions there are based on a very small number of SNPs and limited to the 1240k SNP panel. This causes results that often contradict phenotypical predictions you see in academic studies that include the original files with higher coverage. The attached image shows the only data on GAC pigmentation that is currently available. Brown eyes, predominantly dark hair. Light features were later selected for intensively in Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Northern Europe.

🇵🇱🇸🇰yDNA haplogroups of the Przeworsk culture, a diverse Iron Age culture that harboured both Germanic and Celtic peoples. It is most known for being the origin of the Germanic Vandals. Many of the Przeworsk culture individuals show a significant North European contribution autosomally, while some have more Celtic ancestry. 🇸🇰🇵🇱 Samples from: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09437-6 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352409X24001913 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0094-2

🇩🇰🇸🇪🇳🇴🇩🇪Origins of the common yDNA haplogroups in the Nordic Bronze Age. 🇩🇪🇳🇴🇸🇪🇩🇰

Map of settlements associated with the Globular Amphora culture. From 'Separation, hybridisation, and networks Globular Amphora sedentary pastoralists ca. 3200-2700 BCE' by Johannes Müller

🏹 The distribution of Bell Beaker ancestry during the Iron Age. 🏹

🐺The distribution of Corded Ware ancestry in Europe during the Iron Age. WSH ancestry in early speakers of Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages was predominantly derived from the Corded Ware culture. 🐺 From https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.28.640770v1

New preprint titled 'Ancient DNA indicates 3,000 years of genetic continuity in the Northern Iranian Plateau, from the Copper Age to the Sassanid Empire' reports on 13 newly sequenced nuclear genomes. The study prioritizes samples from northern Iran, focusing on the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanid periods (355 BCE–460 CE), along with a new Early Chalcolithic sample from the Zagros area. The Chalcolithic sample from Gol Afshan Tepe belongs to Y-haplogroup R2a2b1 (R-FGC12582). Achaemenid-Seleucid era samples from Marsin Chal (n: 4 male, 1 female) belong to J2b, while Parthian era samples from Liarsangbon (n: 7 male, 1 female) belong to J1a and J2a. PCA analysis shows these ancient samples cluster closely with modern Iranians.

A map made back in 2023 showing the frequency of haplogroup I1 based on the FTDNA Haplotree which is currently the largest yDNA database in the world. I have made similar maps for 5 other major European haplogroups which I plan on posting soon.

Rough chronology of the beginning of the Bronze Age in various European regions

Figure from a presentation about an upcoming paper on the genetic origin of the Slavs. The figure displays the Slavic expansions based on new aDNA samples from the same paper as well as the admixture events that separated Slavs from Balts.

🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿British archaeologist and paleolinguist Professor Lord Colin Renfrew passed away three days ago, at the age of 87. He developed the Anatolian hypothesis for IE languages, which he later dismissed on the basis of ancient DNA. Despite his age, Renfrew was a firm believer in younger scientific fields such as archaeogenetics and was willing to reject his older theories based on more recent evidence. May he rest in peace. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧 https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/professor-lord-colin-renfrew-1937-2024

🇱🇻🇱🇻The skull of a man belonging to the hunter-fisher Kunda culture in Mesolithic Latvia. Baltic HGs apparently had a religious use for the amber in their region and associated it with the passage to the afterlife. Baltic amber would play an important role in later European prehistory and in historical migrations. The men at the archaeological site of Zvejnieks had yDNA haplogroups R1b, I2 and Q. They were on a genetic cline between WHG and EHG, with a shift towards the former. 🇱🇻🇱🇻

Phylogenetic structure of haplogroup I, made by population geneticist Razib Khan to showcase a classic example of an old haplogroup with diverse branches (I2) and one that is the result of a recent and quick expansion and therefore has a star-shaped cluster (I1). Haplogroup I2 has a very old history in Europe that's reflected in its branching. The TMRCA (time to most recent commo ancestor) of haplogroup I2 is 23,000 BC and it was once the dominant haplogroup across most of Europe. The TMRCA of haplogroup I1 on the other hand is 2600 BC, meaning that all living I1 men descend from one man who lived in 2600 BC. https://www.razibkhan.com/p/chariots-of-ice-coursers-of-the-sun