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An interesting map which shows the location for DNA samples from the Paleolithic to early modern time. One can sort the objects in different ways; by time, by both male and female haplogroups, and by admixture. I do not know how complete it is but it seems to include quite many objects. Maybe the latest are not to find on the map yet.
When one clicks on an object a pop up window emerges where one can get more details like the dating of the find, the study where it is published and the dating.
Can maybe be handy
An example from the map of Y-DNA haplogroup J1a2a in the nortenmost part of the Levant from c 5000 BCE
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^ Thanks, Archaeopteryx. 5,000 BC is the Neolithic period for those who don't know, and the area in question corresponds to the Halafian Culture.
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^ The Abusir samples come from the Late Period. Are there even any samples from the Old Kingdom??
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^ And why is that?? As far back as the 90s Zahi Hawass talked about DNA tests on Giza samples from the Pyramid era.
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Guardian's Spotlight Interview, April 2, 2001 - Dr. Zahi Hawass
Dr. Hawass: We are also still excavating the tombs of the workmen of the pyramids and we found recently the new tombs that have a shape of a pyramid with a causeway an offering table and we found new titles like "Overseer of the Rollers", "Master of the Harbor" and such titles that tell us about the pyramid builders. This will be included in a story written for the National Geographic, November 1st, 30 pages.
Guardian: On a recent PBS program you mention that the results of the DNA tests conducted by the Cairo Museum on the remains of the pyramid builder indicate that the builders were Egyptian and genetically up and down the Nile, suggesting that they came from both Upper and Lower Egypt. People in the same tombs were related in family groups. Are you planning on publishing this in some journal?
Dr. Hawass: Yes I will publish this in a scientific article and I will send it to you, maybe in two months from now.
(Guardian's Spotlight, not the UK magazine Guardian) ____________________________________
"To add fuel to this fire Zahi Hawass the chief director of the Giza Plateau allow DNA testing of any mummies backed by the Egyptian government he said 'DNA testing was out of the question because it would not lead to anything."
The editor of Archaeology magazine, Mark Rose, reported in 2002 that the work was cancelled “due to concern that the results might strengthen an association between the family of Tutankhamun and the Biblical Moses.” An Egyptologist with close links to the antiquities service, speaking to me on condition of anonymity, agreed: “There was a fear it would be said that the pharaohs were Jewish.”
Specifically, if the results showed that Tutankhamun shared DNA with Jewish groups, there was concern that this could be used by Israel to argue that Egypt was part of the Promised Land.
In a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, scholars seek clues to the identity of a mummy that could clarify the royal succession at the end of Egypt's 18th Dynasty.
by Mark Rose
The Tomb 55 skeleton's age may be key to its indentification. Akhenaten as in his mind-thirties at death, but examinations of the Tomb 55 bones from Smith to the 1960s yielded estimates in the early twenties. Then, at a 1988 Egyptological conference, University of Michigan orthodontics professor James E. Harris and Fawzia H. Hussein of the Anthropological Laboratory, National Centre, Cairo, claimed a middle-to-late thirties age, just right for Akhenaten. That study, however, has never been published. Joyce M. Filer, latest to examine the bones, places the age in the early twenties at most, precluding their indentification as Akhenaten's. In addition to the Tomb 55 body, there are other late 18th Dynasty royal mummies. The best-known is Tutankhamun, which has been linked by blood type and by skull shape to the Tomb 55 body. Mummies found in 1898 have been identified as Amenhotep III and tiye, Akhenaten's parents and Tutankhamun's grandparents, but both indentifications have been questioned, especially the second. An alternative, speculative proposal is that the suposed Tiye mummy may be Nefertiti, but from the context of the fnd it is pretty clear that it is of a much earlier lady and has nothing to do with Akhenaten's family. Finally, two mummified fetuses from Tutankhamun's tomb were possibly carried by his wife Ankhesenamun.
DNA analysis might clarify relationships among these mummies, but just before an Egyptian-Japanese team took tissue samples from Tutankhamun's mummy last spring, the Egyptian government abruptly halted the work for what it said were national security reasons. Press reports, however, pointed to concern that some people might misinterpret the results to further claims that Akhenaten was the biblical Moses. This far-fetched link -- it assumes, among other things, that our understanding of Egyptian chronology is off by a number of centuries -- has been made in Moses; Pharaoh of Egypt, authored by Egyptian-born amateur historian named Ahmed Osman, and other books. While if is understandable that such creative interpretations might make the government skittish, the more solid evidence there is, the less room there will be for such wild claims.
Mark Rose Managing, Senior, Online Editor American School of Classical Studies, Archaeology Magazine (AIA), Dig into History 1985 - 2015 30 years __________________________
I'm not sure how capable they were in 2001 to estimate ancestry of ancient DNA, probably highly limited and also keeping in mind the Hawass team would later publish results for Rameses III and son as E1b1a in 2012 ___________________________
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Advancements and Challenges in Ancient DNA Research: Bridging the Global North–South Divide Vasundhra Dalal,1, 2023
The molecular Investigation of ancient DNA (aDNA) was initiated in 1984 when a team of researchers was able to isolate and sequence a short DNA fragment from the dried muscle of a museum specimen of the quagga, a South African equid (Equus quagga) that became extinct at the beginning of the twentieth century [2]. This initial aDNA study employed bacterial cloning to amplify short sequences retrieved from the skin of the animal. The very next year, another breakthrough research conducted by Pääbo et al. recovered a 3.4 kilobases long DNA fragment from the dried tissue of an Egyptian mummy that was 2430 years old [3]. These studies, nonetheless, in a way, were premature as the DNA from ancient samples can have a high degree of damage or have contaminated DNA along with it, which will make it difficult to isolate and clone the specific DNA sequences as desired. However, the advancements in molecular biology tools, primarily polymerase chain reaction, fueled aDNA investigations [4,5]. The PCR enabled the generation of an infinitely large number of copies from very few or even a single original DNA. Henceforth, several copies of the same DNA sequence from the same specimen could be amplified, allowing for the scientifically rigorous study of ancient DNA.
This is the problem with using burials for an origin for haplogroups. Africa becomes a country when England has more burials tested than Africa and India.
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This is the problem with using burials for an origin for haplogroups. Africa becomes a country when England has more burials tested than Africa and India.
Scientists don't use burials for the origin of haplogroups. The origins of haplogroups are predicted by modern samples and those predictions are refined by ancient samples if relevant. Not to mention, haplogroups by nomenclature or label are arbitrary in that they were created with the intent to designate origin. There's a reason why Macro Haplogroup L (maternally) has more than twice the diversity of all the others derivatives combined yet it remains L. While on the other hand we have an alphabet's worth of assignments.
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This is the problem with using burials for an origin for haplogroups. Africa becomes a country when England has more burials tested than Africa and India.
Scientists don't use burials for the origin of haplogroups. The origins of haplogroups are predicted by modern samples and those predictions are refined by ancient samples if relevant. Not to mention, haplogroups by nomenclature or label are arbitrary in that they were created with the intent to designate origin. There's a reason why Macro Haplogroup L (maternally) has more than twice the diversity of all the others derivatives combined yet it remains L. While on the other hand we have an alphabet's worth of assignments.
Would I be right in assuming that where a haplogroup is most diverse indicates its most probable origin, as seems to be the case with linguistic phyla?
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aDNA is handy when it concerns finding out the ancient geographic distribution of certain haplogrous or other genetic markers. Sometimes one can find haplogroups which are not found in todays population in the same area. And the opposite is also occurring: that you see haplogroups in current populations in an area where you can not find them among the ancient populations.
-------------------- Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist Posts: 2755 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020
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This is the problem with using burials for an origin for haplogroups. Africa becomes a country when England has more burials tested than Africa and India.
Scientists don't use burials for the origin of haplogroups. The origins of haplogroups are predicted by modern samples and those predictions are refined by ancient samples if relevant. Not to mention, haplogroups by nomenclature or label are arbitrary in that they were created with the intent to designate origin. There's a reason why Macro Haplogroup L (maternally) has more than twice the diversity of all the others derivatives combined yet it remains L. While on the other hand we have an alphabet's worth of assignments.
Would I be right in assuming that where a haplogroup is most diverse indicates its most probable origin, as seems to be the case with linguistic phyla?
That's typically how it goes. But even then you gotta be careful and base your hypothesis on variations in point mutations as opposed to counting the amount of different haplogroups.
Posts: 1784 | From: New York | Registered: Jul 2016
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quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: aDNA is handy when it concerns finding out the ancient geographic distribution of certain haplogroups or other genetic markers. Sometimes one can find haplogroups which are not found in todays population in the same area. And the opposite is also occurring: that you see haplogroups in current populations in an area where you can not find them among the ancient populations.
What's interesting is the distribution of aDNA markers at least based on the samples currently available.
Again there are large gaps due to unavailable samples and certain regions have more samples than others. There is an incredibly long chain of continuity in Africa with south Africans in one end and North Africans on the other with some gaps in between.
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Some of the population turnovers and changes which we for example see in Scandinavia would hardly have been possible to establish without aDNA. Admittedly, we could already trace changes with the help of archaeological material such as stone tools and ceramics, but we did not know exactly how they happened. Among other things, a major point of contention was how the transition to agriculture took place, through cultural diffusion or migration. With the help of DNA, we have now been able to see which waves of immigration have reached our area and how they correspond with changes in the archaeological material.
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