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Upward Sun River 1, an individual from a unique burial of the Denali tradition in Alaska (11500 calBP), is considered a type representative of Ancient Beringians who split from other First Americans 22000–18000 calBP in Beringia. Using a new admixture graph model-comparison approach resistant to overfitting, we show that Ancient Beringians do not form the deepest American lineage, but instead harbor ancestry from a lineage more closely related to northern North Americans than to southern North Americans. Ancient Beringians also harbor substantial admixture from a lineage that did not contribute to other Native Americans: Amur River Basin populations represented by a newly reported site in northeastern China. Relying on these results, we propose a new model for the genomic formation of First American ancestors in Asia.One Sentence SummaryAncient Beringians do not form the deepest American lineage, but harbor admixture from Amur River Basin populations.

This book first appeared in 1997. Now thoroughly refined and updated, yet with almost no increase in length (the original had eight fewer pages), its second edition warrants a fresh evaluation.Inte...

Background The history of human populations occupying the plains and mountain ridges separating Europe from Asia has been eventful, as these natural obstacles were crossed westward by multiple waves of Turkic and Uralic-speaking migrants as well as eastward by Europeans. Unfortunately, the material records of history of this region are not dense enough to reconstruct details of population history. These considerations stimulate growing interest to obtain a genetic picture of the demographic history of migrations and admixture in Northern Eurasia. Results We genotyped and analyzed 1076 individuals from 30 populations with geographical coverage spanning from Baltic Sea to Baikal Lake. Our dense sampling allowed us to describe in detail the population structure, provide insight into genomic history of numerous European and Asian populations, and significantly increase quantity of genetic data available for modern populations in region of North Eurasia. Our study doubles the amount of genome-wide profiles available for this region. We detected unusually high amount of shared identical-by-descent (IBD) genomic segments between several Siberian populations, such as Khanty and Ket, providing evidence of genetic relatedness across vast geographic distances and between speakers of different language families. Additionally, we observed excessive IBD sharing between Khanty and Bashkir, a group of Turkic speakers from Southern Urals region. While adding some weight to the “Finno-Ugric” origin of Bashkir, our studies highlighted that the Bashkir genepool lacks the main “core”, being a multi-layered amalgamation of Turkic, Ugric, Finnish and Indo-European contributions, which points at intricacy of genetic interface between Turkic and Uralic populations. Comparison of the genetic structure of Siberian ethnicities and the geography of the region they inhabit point at existence of the “Great Siberian Vortex” directing genetic exchanges in populations across the Siberian part of Asia. Slavic speakers of Eastern Europe are, in general, very similar in their genetic composition. Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians have almost identical proportions of Caucasus and Northern European components and have virtually no Asian influence. We capitalized on wide geographic span of our sampling to address intriguing question about the place of origin of Russian Starovers, an enigmatic Eastern Orthodox Old Believers religious group relocated to Siberia in seventeenth century. A comparative reAdmix analysis, complemented by IBD sharing, placed their roots in the region of the Northern European Plain, occupied by North Russians and Finno-Ugric Komi and Karelian people. Russians from Novosibirsk and Russian Starover exhibit ancestral proportions close to that of European Eastern Slavs, however, they also include between five to 10 % of Central Siberian ancestry, not present at this level in their European counterparts. Conclusions Our project has patched the hole in the genetic map of Eurasia: we demonstrated complexity of genetic structure of Northern Eurasians, existence of East-West and North-South genetic gradients, and assessed different inputs of ancient populations into modern populations. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12863-017-0578-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Reviewed by Edward J. VajdaThis handbook contains 35 detailed individual contributions, including the editors’ introduction, that successfully represent the vibrancy and diversity of historical lin...

This has been a landmark pair of years for Cherokee linguistics, with the appearance of the first published full-length reference grammar (Montgomery-Anderson, 2015, for which see my review in WORD...

Reviewed by (EDWARD J. VAJDA)Nivkh (formerly called Gilyak) is an indigenous language of the Russian Far East spoken fluently by a dwindling number of elderly people in several villages on the nort...

Reviewed by (EDWARD J. VAJDA)Tundra Nenets belongs to the Samoyedic branch of Uralic and is spoken in a vast swath of Arctic territory stretching from the Kanin Peninsula in European Russia to the ...

Much of the American Arctic was first settled 5,000 years ago, by groups of people known as Palaeo-Eskimos. They were subsequently joined and largely displaced around 1,000 years ago by ancestors of the present-day Inuit and Yup’ik1–3. The genetic relationship between Palaeo-Eskimos and Native American, Inuit, Yup’ik and Aleut populations remains uncertain4–6. Here we present genomic data for 48 ancient individuals from Chukotka, East Siberia, the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and the Canadian Arctic. We co-analyse these data with data from present-day Alaskan Inupiat and West Siberian populations and published genomes. Using methods based on rare-allele and haplotype sharing, as well as established techniques4,7–9, we show that Palaeo-Eskimo-related ancestry is ubiquitous among people who speak Na-Dene and Eskimo–Aleut languages. We develop a comprehensive model for the Holocene peopling events of Chukotka and North America, and show that Na-Dene-speaking peoples, people of the Aleutian Islands, and Yup’ik and Inuit across the Arctic region all share ancestry from a single Palaeo-Eskimo-related Siberian source. DNA analysis of ancient individuals and modern populations suggests that the population history of North America can be explained by the admixture of two ancestral lineages—Palaeo-Eskimos and First Peoples.

Ket is the last surviving member of the Yeniseian family of central Siberia. The language has been the topic of scholarly research for over 70 years, mainly by linguists from the Russian Federation...

The language described in this book is remarkable in a number of ways. ǂHȍa may have one of the world’s most complex phoneme inventories, with five basic release positions for velaric airstream con...

The Ket language isolate of Central Siberia differs morphologically from the surrounding languages in having a strongly prefixing polysynthetic verb. Grammatical markers are interdigitated between lexical morphemes, creating a discontinuous stem based on a template of eight prefixal positions, a base position and a single suffix position expressing plural agreement with animate-class subjects. Finite verb forms distinguish past from non-past indicative, as well as an imperative form. Verbs are strictly transitive or intransitive and express person, number, and noun class agreement with the subject and direct object. Although the language has accusative alignment, with subjects marked differently than objects, much of the verb’s linear complexity derives from lexically conditioned agreement strategies. There are three productive transitive configurations of agreement markers, and five productive intransitive configurations. Noun incorporation is productive for only a small number of stems. Some Ket verbs incorporate their object, others their instrument, and others their unaccusative subject.

Polysynthetic verb morphology can be extraordinarily complex, with interacting subsystems arranged in phonological and morphological layers, some of which are more readily transparent on the synchronic level. Historical-linguistic comparisons demonstrate that this type of structure can be surprisingly persistent across time, with slow phonological attrition being one of the primary causal agents. Metathesis and reanalysis of morphemes and morpheme positions was also noted as an important agent of change. This chapter examines what is known about the historical layering of two distinct, but possibly genealogically related prefixing verb morphologies: Yeniseian and Athabaskan, both of which have developed different strategies of expressing agreement with subjects and objects, layering these grammatical markers between lexical morphemes and markers of tense–mood–aspect. Phonological fusing of certain sets of adjacent markers renders the pre-root portions of both morphological templates particularly challenging for assigning morpheme glosses. Historical reasons for this evolution are identified and assessed.

Paleo-Eskimos were the first people to settle vast regions of the American Arctic around 5,000 years ago, and were subsequently joined and largely displaced around 1,000 years ago by ancestors of the present-day Inuit and Yupik. The genetic relationship between Paleo-Eskimos and Native American populations remains uncertain. We analyze ancient and present-day genome-wide data from the Americas and Siberia, including new data from Alaskan Iñupiat and West Siberian populations, and the first genome-wide DNA from ancient Aleutian Islanders, ancient northern Athabaskans, and a 4,250-year-old individual of the Chukotkan Ust’-Belaya culture. Employing new methods based on rare allele and haplotype sharing as well as established methods based on allele frequency correlations, we show that Paleo-Eskimo ancestry is widespread among populations who speak Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut languages. Using phylogenetic modelling with allele frequency correlations and rare variation, we present a comprehensive model for the complex peopling of North America. - Results -- Dataset -- Gradient of Paleo-Eskimo-related ancestry -- Source of distinct ancestry in Na-Dene -- No evidence for population turnover in the Aleutian Islands around 1,000 calBP -- A Paleo-Eskimo with West Siberian ancestry -- Demographic modelling - Discussion - Methods -- Ancient DNA sampling, extraction and sequencing -- Sampling present-day populations -- Dataset preparation -- ADMIXTURE analysis -- Principal component analysis (PCA) -- Admixture modelling with qpWave and qpAdm -- fineSTRUCTURE clustering -- Haplotype sharing statistics -- Dating admixture events using haplotype sharing statistics -- Rare allele sharing statistics -- Demographic modelling

Reviewed by (Edward J. Vajda)In pre-contact times, languages belonging to the Wakashan family occupied much of Canada's Vancouver Island and coastal British Columbia, as well as a small enclave on ...

Prehistory of Native Americans of the Na-Dene language family remains controversial. Genetic continuity of Paleo-Eskimos (Saqqaq and Dorset cultures) and Na-Dene was proposed under the three-wave model of America’s settlement; however, recent studies have produced conflicting results. Here, we performed reconstruction and dating of Na-Dene population history, using genome sequencing data and a coalescent method relying on rare alleles (Rarecoal). We also applied model-free approaches for analysis of rare allele and autosomal haplotype sharing. All methods detected Central and West Siberian ancestry exclusively in a fraction of modern day Na-Dene individuals, but not in other Native Americans. Our results are consistent with gene flow from Paleo-Eskimos into the First American ancestors of Na-Dene, and a later less extensive bidirectional admixture between Na-Dene and Neo-Eskimos. The dated gene flow from Siberia to Na-Dene is in agreement with the Dene-Yeniseian language macrofamily proposal and with the succession of archaeological cultures in Siberia.

The author of this long-awaited book has published many other important books and articles on Amazonian languages. This monograph synthesizes her findings regarding how several of these languages h...

Although Russian today is the dominant language in virtually every corner of North Asia, Siberia and the Northern Pacific Rim of Asia remain home to over three dozen mutually unintelligible indigenous language varieties. Except for Tuvan, Buryat, and Yakut, most are rapidly losing ground to Russian if not already critically endangered. Several more have already become extinct in the four centuries since the area's incorporation into the Russian state. From an ethnographic perspective, Siberian languages merit attention for their interplay of pastoral and hunter–gatherer influences and also for the fact that Siberia represents the staging ground for prehistoric migrations into the Americas. North Asia contains several autochthonous microfamilies and isolates not found outside this region – the so-called ‘Paleo-Asiatic’ (or ‘Paleosiberian’) languages Ket, Yukaghir, Nivkh, and the Chukotko-Kamchatkan microfamily, which includes Chukchi, Koryak, and Itelmen. Ainu, formerly spoken on Sakhalin and the Kuriles as well as in Hokkaido, and the three varieties of Eskimoan spoken in historic times on the Russian side of Bering Strait, likewise belong to the earlier, non-food producing layers of ethnolinguistic diversity in North Asia. All of these languages, aside from Eskimoan, are entirely autochthonous to the northern half of Asia. Siberian languages spoken by pastoral groups, on the other hand, belong to families represented more prominently elsewhere. Families, such as Uralic, Turkic, Mongolic, and especially Tungusic (the northern branch of the Tungus-Manchu family), became dominant in Siberia long before the coming of the Russians. As an extension of pastoral Inner Eurasia, Siberia displays many traits characteristic of a linguistic area: suffixal agglutination, widespread dependent marking typology, a fairly elaborate system of spatial case markers, and the use of case suffixes or postpositions to signal syntactic subordination. There are also notable idiosyncratic features, particularly among the so-called Paleo-Siberian languages. These include the areally atypical feature of possessive prefixes and verb-internal subject/object prefixes in Ket, the unique verb-internal focus markers of Yukaghir, the extensive numeral allomorphs that serve as nominal classifiers in Nivkh, and the reduplicative stem augmentation used by Chukchi nouns to express the absolutive singular (in contrast to plurals and oblique case forms, where the stem is simple). While North Asia has long been the preserve of linguists writing in Russian or German (including many Finns and Hungarians), since the collapse of the Soviet Union the number of English-language treatments of Siberian languages is increasing.

(2004). HEINRICH WERNER, Vergleichendes Worterbuch der Jenissej-Sprachen.. WORD: Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 499-502.

(2004). PETER SIPTAR and MIKLOS TORKENCZY. The phonology of Hungarian.. WORD: Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 491-495.