Our decade-long search for the genetic traces of the earliest Indo-Europeans has culminated in the two preprints we are releasing today! With Nick Patterson, David Anthony, and 91 co-authors, on "The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans" biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Plague was surprisingly abundant and widespread in Scandinavia in the period leading up to the Neolithic Decline. In fact, we found plague in 17% of the sampled population. Check out our new paper out in Nature today! nature.com/articles/s4158… #plague #NeolithicDecline #ancientDNA

This is a really important contribution to economic history, specifically British mediaeval economic history Neo-Malthusian models of the labour market effects of population collapse from the Black Death are still valid, but they are mediated by - drum roll - INSTITUTIONS!! 😁

An updated update on my ‘great leveler’ thesis: Inequality Reduction Between Tragedy and Progress: ‘The Great Leveler’ and Recent Scholarship, 2017-2024 SSRN papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

DNA evidence rewrites the relationships of people found buried together after the Pompeii eruption. Current Biology Learn more: cell.com/current-biolog… Università di Firenze David Caramelli, @harvard David Reich and Alissa Mittni

Scheidel wird über die vielleicht wichtigste Frage von allen reden: Gab es ein globales Altertum?

It’s actually a bit disturbing that the authors didn’t specify the period (1900-1969) in the title, and instead claim that they show how socio-economic background “shapes” (rather than ‘shaped’) academia, even though even the most recent cohort in this survey is dead or retired.

AKA did economic growth make the Romans stupid?

Research in nature suggests that women were at the centre of social networks in Iron Age British Celtic communities. The analysis of 2,000-year-old DNA reveals evidence for matrilocal Celtic societies. go.nature.com/4g13QTq

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐋𝐋𝐌𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐏𝐡𝐃-𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐥𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞? 🧐 Better than random, but far from what academic historians know, according to our recent #NeurIPS paper 👉neurips.cc/virtual/2024/p…

Our papers, out today in @nature, show how ancient DNA from the Eneolithic and Bronze Age steppe points to a North Pontic origin of the Indo-European language family and a Caucasus-Lower Volga (CLV) origin of Indo-Anatolian (inclusive of the now extinct Anatolian languages). 1/

Ancient genomes reveal trans-Eurasian connections between the European Huns and the Xiongnu Empire | PNAS pnas.org/doi/full/10.10…

How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers? | Science | AAAS science.org/content/articl…

An excellent new contribution to the Great Divergence debate (broadly defined)

Essential reading: In Covid's Wake | Princeton University Press press.princeton.edu/books/hardcove…

A comparison of income inequality in the Roman and Chinese Han empires | Nature Communications nature.com/articles/s4146…

Punic people were genetically diverse with almost no Levantine ancestors | Nature nature.com/articles/s4158…

I am very happy to share our new study on the genetic history of the Persian-Iranian Plateau! "Ancient DNA indicates 3,000 years of genetic continuity in the Northern Iranian Plateau, from the Copper Age to the Sassanid Empire" doi.org/10.1038/s41598…

My first publication regarding ancient economic history is out:😊 The economics of Greco-Roman slavery sciencedirect.com/science/articl…; with Walter Scheidel.