Neandertal ancestry "Iced":

Dienekes got his hands on Otzi's genome finally, and decided to confirm some suspicions. In general no great surprise, though I think the number of SNPs he used (44,000) is a little on the low side for the questions he was asking. But the details here aren't too relevant because all the available evidence points... Read More

Dienekes points me to the fact that Ewen Callaway has the dirt on what's going on with Ötzi: ~90 percent of a genome is way more than you'd need for some basic analysis and inference

Dienekes has some harsh words for the way some science is produced, focusing on the genome of Ötzi the Iceman as a case in point: What I don't understand: how come no one is editing the Wikipedia entry ahead of time? I wonder in hindsight if there's no there, there, though I hope I'm wrong... Read More

Dienekes relays that Ötzi the Iceman carried the G2a4 male haplogroup. He goes on to observe: Yes, I believe that the Paleolithic-Neolithic dichotomy is more hindrance than help in understanding the European past (the Paleolithic itself may have exhibited more population turnover than we can appreciate). I suspect that the two most common European Y... Read More

John Hawks points to a report in Science on some morsels of information about Ötzi-the-Iceman's genetics, The Iceman's Last Meal: I'm assuming we'll know a whole lot more before the end of summer. So I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction based on what I suspect about the southern European... Read More

The autosomal genome of Ötzi the Austrian "Iceman" is apparently in the pipeline (from what I can tell they're doing the analysis right now). What can we learn from one sample? Ann Stone, who was a graduate student on the original team which recovered his body, says: This is fine as it goes. Worries about... Read More