Comments on: Harappa Ancestry Project @ N ~ 50

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 23:34:30 +0000

For everyone else:
ADMIXTURE produces unbiased genuine results I believe. But you need to think what it’s doing because it doesn’t know better.
WAFR-Pygmies and San=1 less (very far away) pole. Also San and Pygmies likely significant WAFR admixture. Thus it pulls WAFR towards supposedly “unadmixed” Pygmies and San.
If you draw an “admixed” pop in a MDS without including its (more different) “unadmixed” parent, it becomes the “unadmixed” pole and you effectively change the MDS and corresponding distances.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 23:16:01 +0000

Contemporary West Africans (and above all contemporary East Africans) likely received unquantified significant “back to Africa” admixture (R1b, etc). Papuans were largely isolated, and there’s that Denisovan story. I would tend to agree with Zack.
ADMIXTURE is just a stupid computer program. Silicon is really not the best material available in nature for genuine intelligence (as opposed to solving straightforward logic puzzles).
ADMIXTURE needs to be managed instead of being relied on producing miraculous “ex-machina” results, and the new version tool has proven quite useful in allowing us to think while it does the boring work.

I think you were right South Asian populations are mostly Eastern Fertile Crescent+Kurgan (ANI)+some Yellow River+Native independent incipient neolithic (ASI)

By: arvind mishra

arvind mishra — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 04:24:16 +0000

I would appreciate an article over the topic from Zack written for lay people in easily understandable manner.

By: RK

RK — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 02:14:20 +0000

I think Maharashtra actually has a higher population than Bihar, and it only has one participant so far.

The representation is even more skewed by caste, though. The Nadar and the Rowther are the only participants who clearly aren’t from one of the “forward classes.”

By: Zack

Zack — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 23:07:46 +0000

Papuans being the most distant is a consequence of excluding the San and Pygmy.