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The technique of digital unwrapping was used to unwrap a burned scroll from En-Gedi, at the Dead Sea, demonstrating that the scroll held a part of the bible, the book of Leviticus...

After horses, I would like to bring up another peculiar topic. Wheels. I mean, it's compelling to argue that PIE had a word for 'wheel', but which one? *kwel- or *kwekwelos: - English "wheel" - Greek "kyklos" - Polish "koło", Russian "koleso" - Persian "tʃarx" - Sanskrit "cakra" - (probably)...

You bring up some very interesting ideas there. I absolutely agree that the position of Ireland is intriguing, and the origin of the Celtic language in Ireland is puzzling. As I mentioned before, there are several unanswered problems with the idea that Beaker-Bell was Proto-Celtic: first is the...

In this thread, I would like to shed some light on the origin and ethnic identity of the enigmatic Sea Peoples, who were intricated into the collapse of the bronze age civilizations in the eastern Mediterranean in the 12th century BC. Our main account of the Sea Peoples comes from Egyptian...

I know this may sound trivial, but in discussions about ancient ethnicities, this gets consistently confused. Namely, the difference between the self-designation of an ethnic group (endonym) and the foreign designation of the same ethnic group (exonym). Here are some modern examples of exonyms...

Until relatively recently, I was quite convinced myself that Haplogroup E1b1b would be associated with the Proto-Afroasiatic peoples, and that the language family has it's origin in Africa (specifically, the Horn of Africa), around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum. But I'm beginning to have...

We've had a lot of heated discussions lately - some of them not located in the Linguistics section despite the fact that they should have been held there, which concerned the origin of the Albanians of the Albanian language. Because these were almost always off-topic in other threads I decided...

I originally wanted to post this in Linguistics, but I realized that this is a topic that straddles both linguistics and genetics, so I decided to post it here. The Beaker-Bell Culture is one of the most puzzling archaeological cultures, and it has been frquently discussed on the forum as s...

The Nuristani people are an obscure ethnic group in northeastern Afghanistan which is, as I will explain, however very interesting from the bigger perspective: Up until the late 19th century, the region of Nuristan was refered to as 'Kafiristan' (from the Arabic word for 'heathen' or...

Since the discussion recently came up, I would like to elaborate the situation on the Iberian penninsula in Antiquity a bit, especially on the aspect of linguistic heterogenity. Note that the analysis below excludes the Basque-Aquitanian and Iberian areas in the east and southeast of Iberia, and...

As recently discussed in the thread about Ötzi, the origins of E1b in Europe are - for the greater part - quite mysterious. By it's distribution patterns we might speculated in the past that it is somehow linked to a Neolithic expansion, but since then it has been shown to absent in Neolithic...

I saw two different articles which refer to the above: "Brit men descend from mammoth hunters, not farmers" "DNA study deals blow to theory of European origins" Granted, the case that R1b (at least in Western Europe) is not Neolithic is quite compelling, but where do people take the...

I don't know if this has been brought up already in any thread, but there is this article about mitochondrial DNA from graves of the Atlantic Megalithic Builders (from ca. 4200 BC). Link here In a nutshell, the following mito-Haplogroups were found present: - N1a - U5b - X2 Thoughts?

Following this thread on the relationship between the Celtic and Pre-Germanic languages, I would like to focus on a different but kind of similar linguistic question: when was Proto-Slavic (or "Common Slavic", if you will) spoken? In Common Balto-Slavic, Proto-Indo-European Initial *g´ becomes...

A while back, Maciamo posted this thread about a relationship between the Celic and the Italic peoples. What I'm going to do here is a linguistic consideration about the relationship between the Celtic and the Germanic peoples. - Celtic name evidence in Germany (or, I should say, Germania Magna...

We are al aware of the R1b-U152 map found in the Myres et al paper. I found this larger, more detailed map of U152 below: I don't know how accurate it actually is, but there's a few thoughts that crossed my mind: If we assume that the U152 marker originated in Urnfield (or possibly Unetice)...

I earlier saw this article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42072469/ns/technology_and_science-science/ The article keeps talking about "Atlantis", but given the location, the connection with the (also lost but nowhere nearly as mythical) city of Tartessos is much more straightforward. Of course...

I found this paper that argues that the spread of I2b2-L38 is associated with the spread of La-Tene. Obviously, I2b2-L38 is rather rare, but I thought it was interesting because it's something that may allow us to actually map the La-Tene expansion. Link here...

I'm not sure if this paper has been linked to already in a thread, but I decided to post it, anyways. What do you think does this mean for the identity of the Beaker-Bell peoples?

What's up with Norway? Specifically, I noticed something very strange on multiple Y-Haplogroup maps which has puzzled me: - The presence of Haplogroup subclade R1b-L21 (ca. 10-15%) in Norway (it caught my eyes in the Myres paper). - Likewise, the presence of Haplogroup Q (ca. 4%) in Norway...