The Goths, an East Germanic people best known for being fierce adversaries of the Roman Empire, are mentioned in numerous ancient sources and played an important role in European history during the Migration Period. This article aims to explain their origin, ethnogenesis and tribal movements using newly published archaeogenetic data, archaeology and historical sources.
Genetic variation during the Three Kingdoms period in Korea
While the genetic history of Japan has been studied rather extensively in recent years, ancient remains from the neighboring Korean peninsula have remained almost completely unsampled until 2022. Luckily, Gelabert et al. (2022) and D-N Lee et al. (2022) brought an end to the complete drought of ancient Korean samples and featured newly sequenced ancient…
From Stone to Bronze in prehistoric Scandinavia
Recently, the preprint for a massive new study by Morten Allentoft and colleagues went online over at bioRxiv.org. It is a paper full of important and illuminating new data from all over Stone Age Eurasia. However, this article will mainly focus on the new data from Scandinavia. The newly sequenced ancient genomes from Scandinavia are…
Tibeto-Burman expansions: high-altitude adaptation and Paleolithic legacy on the Tibetan Plateau
Humans have been living at extreme altitudes for a very long time. However, only a very small percentage of the planet’s population inhabit such places. Today, the largest communities of high-altitude dwellers reside on the Tibetan Plateau. These mountainous people are speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages which came to be spoken as a result of relatively…
The Alvastra pile-dwelling: Farmer-Hunter interactions in Early Middle Neolithic Scandinavia
In 3100 BC, hundreds of years before the first Indo-Europeans would set foot in Scandinavia, two very different groups of people had been maintaining highly contrasting ways of life for at least 400 years. Despite often living in very close proximity to each other. Everything ranging from their spiritualism, to their burials and even diets…
Jōmon and Yayoi: the dual genetic origins of the Japanese
The island nation of Japan has a long and rich history that includes periods of relative isolation from the rest of the world. With the start of the Heian period in 794 AD, a distinct and unique Japanese culture had risen. A clan-based society with a strong literary culture and a centralized government, Japan’s early…
The genetic origins of the Polynesians
The Polynesian voyagers were undoubtedly some of the greatest sailors and navigators the world has ever seen. Using star signs, trade winds, ocean currents and even signs of animals in order to detect land, they were able to traverse massive distances in a short amount of time. This article will go through the genetic profile…
Human height in prehistoric Europe
Throughout the history and prehistory of Europe, the average height of its inhabitants has gone up and down many times. The reasons for this are many. Some of the more obvious examples being diet, climate, population movements (and thus the changing of the gene pool) as well as selection. Height is a polygenic trait. That…
Genetics of the Nordic Bronze Age
Bronze Age Scandinavia. Massive burial mounds full of wealth. Groups of armed men with bronze weapons manning boats. Status-obsessed hierarchical warriors and traders. The likeliest candidates for pre-Proto-Germanic speakers and a proto-Germanic material culture. But who were they, and where did they come from? The people of the Nordic Bronze Age were skilled metalworkers and…
Bell Beakers and the replacement of the megalith builders in Western Europe
Starting around 4800 BC, a new cultural horizon had begun to become dominant in Western Europe. Massive stones were used to construct burial sites, monuments and religious sites. Some of the most famous remnants of this ancient culture includes Stonehenge in England and Newgrange in Ireland, as well as the Almendres Cromlech in Portugal. Recent…