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A working model on the peopling of Eurasia

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This post will deal with the peopling of Eurasia by modern humans and their subsequent Paleolithic movements and divergence patterns. – Part I of our "in development" series on the question to ' who we are and where we came from ': Paleolithic to Epipaleolithic period. Overview Modern humans have a "recent African" origin, having evolved within the African continent, and diversified there; one of those branches became isolated in Northeast Africa and would subsequently became ancestral to all modern living 'non-African populations': Eurasians . This branch would carry out the "Out of Africa" migration, – but they were not the first humans to leave Africa; they were preceded by earlier extinct waves of modern humans, possibly distantly related to those of the later main OoA wave – as well as deeper archaic groups which would have become ancestral to the Neanderthals or Denisovans. During or shortly after the Out of Africa migration of modern...
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On deep roots of Iranian hunter-gatherers, and possible scenarios on their formation

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The Iranian hunter-gatherers are among the more enigmatic lineages, with unclarified deeper roots. Although they fall broadly within the West Eurasian cluster, they are placed in an extreme position, displaying no strong genetic affilation with nearby Anatolian or Levant groups. – This distinct position is primarily attributed to them deriving a significant amount of their ancestry from a deeply diverged local West Eurasian branch (dubbed WEC2 by Vallini et al. 2024), which stayed in the supposed population hub on the Persian plateau, after the divergence of 'Ancient East Eurasian;s' (IUP = Initial Upper Paleolithic wave; c. 48–46kya), and after the deepest split within West Eurasian lineages, with the remainder WEC lineages expanding elsewhere (WEC; UP = Upper Paleolithic wave, such as Kostenki14 or Sunghir in Europe; >38kya). – Earlier proposals associated the distinct position to high amounts of Basal Eurasian ancestry, but this seems not accurate anymore. – For a more de...
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Southern route for the East Eurasian Core validated by archaeologic, viral/bacteria, and Ancient DNA data

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A short summary on evidence for the southern dispersal route of the EEC, in contrast to the Northern IUP route. The Northern IUP sites can be associated with a specific microblade material culture, streching from Eastern Europe via Central Asia/Siberia to the Baikal region. In contrast, Eastern Asia, Southeast Asia, Australasia and South Asia are characterized by a different set of core & flake material culture, representing the southern route. A particular link between East Asian, Tibetan and Hoabinhian core & flake types has been noted. Those two types are associated with the dispersal of Ancient East Eurasians (c. 48kya) from the eastern Persian plateau. The northern type spreaded with an early diverged lineage or lineages, represented by the genomes of the Ust'Ishim man, the Oase specimens, the Bacho Kiro specimen, as well as sites in the Baikal region and northeastern Uzbekistan. This lineage(s) appearently went largely extinct without substantial contributing to moder...
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