Kendra Sirak

Submissions go here ➡️ safa2025.icarehb.com/poster-and-o...

A 2025(!) reminder to submit an abstract to Session 25 "The ancient DNA revolution in Africa: New data, broader applications, and evolving research practices” @ the upcoming SAfA meeting (w/ a virtual option). Deadline Jan 31. Write to me at kendra_sirak[at]fas.harvard.edu if you want more details!

We are interested in talks that include but also go beyond standard pop gen, so please write to me (kendra_sirak [at] fas [dot] harvard [dot] edu) if you want to know more, or submit your talk here: safa2025.icarehb.com/poster-and-o... (and make sure you select our session, #025!)

Do you love #ancientDNA, #Africa, and beautiful beaches?

Submit a talk to “The ancient DNA revolution in Africa: New data, broader applications, and evolving research practices” session that I'm co-chairing with at the 2025 SAfA meeting in Portugal!

Paper is available for download here: reich.hms.harvard.edu/publications
(12/12)

A huge thank you to Nada Salem for translating our abstract into Arabic, which helped us share results with people on Soqotra (more of this to come!) (11/n)

This National Geographic project would not have happened without the amazing men & women on Soqotra who contributed to this collaboration. Thank you to GOAM especially for permitting this study. I’m incredibly proud of the community engagement aspect of this work. (10/n)

A longstanding question in Soqotri archaeology asks if burial tafoni were segregated by sex? We show that 7/13 tafoni included individuals of both sexes & provide evidence of matrilineal & patrilineal relationships among people buried together. (9/n)

With ROH, we see a reduced rate of cousin marriages in medieval relative to present-day Soqotra. More research will show if there was a relatively recent shift in marriage practices btwn medieval times and today on Soqotra and perhaps in other parts of the Arab world. (8/n)

Despite being located off the Horn of Africa, medieval Soqotri have extremely little sub-Saharan African-related ancestry: models of genome-wide data can be fit without this ancestry, while we find evidence of only one L3 mtDNA haplogroup. (7/n)

However, traders and mariners (from India and elsewhere) rarely moved from coastal areas and plausibly not having much of a genetic impact, which we document in the stability of the Soqotri gene pool over the span of more than a millennium. (6/n)

This is consistent with the location of Soqotra along Indian Ocean trade routes: Indian inscriptions in Hoq Cave are written in varieties of Brāhmī script and in Sanskrit or vernacularized Sanskrit & the Periplus records India’s provision of female slaves to Soqotra (5/n)

The medieval Soqotri gene pool is best modeled as deriving ~86% ancestry from people from the Hadramawt, with the remaining ancestry well-proxied by an Iranian related source with up to 2% ancestry from the Indian sub-continent. (4/n)

We observe this same pattern in only one other group - present-day people from the Hadramawt region of present-day Yemen - which represents a likely source for the peopling of Soqotra. Genetic connections between these regions are extremely strong.(3/n)

Most modern Arabians can be modeled as deriving all of their Levantine/Anatolian-related ancestry from a Neolithic farmer-related source; however, the medieval Soqotri had relatively more ancestry from ancient groups closer to Natufian hunter-gatherers (2/n).

Medieval DNA from Soqotra points to Eurasian origins of an isolated population at the crossroads of Africa and Arabia - Nature Ecology & Evolution Ancient DNA from Soqotra, an island off the coast of Yemen, evidences a population history differing from other areas of the Arabian Peninsula and suggests there has not been complete population repla...

🏺New paper alert! We report #ancientDNA data from 39 people who lived on island of #Soqotra 650-1750CE and provide new evidence that there was not complete population replacement between the Pleistocene and Holocene throughout the Arabian Peninsula (1/n).

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Research reveals man born thousands of miles to the east travelled to Cambridgeshire 2,000 years ago Scientists from the Francis Crick Institute, Durham University, and MOLA Headland Infrastructure have discovered that a man who lived between AD 126-228 during the Roman period did not originally come...

Researchers from the Crick, Durham University, MOLA and Headland Archaeology have discovered that a man whose 2,000-year-old remains were found in the Cambridgeshire countryside originally came from near the south of modern-day Russia 🌍🧪 @marinasdsilva.bsky.social

www.crick.ac.uk/news-and-rep...

🏺New paper tracing genetic changes across the rise/fall of the Roman Empire, showing the genetic impact of people w/Anatolian-, Cent/North European- & Steppe-, and Slavic-related ancestry in the 1st millennium CE. This is a beautiful synthesis of arch + genetic data.

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Human evolution: Neanderthal footprints in African genomes Human and Neanderthal populations met and mixed on multiple occasions over evolutionary time, resulting in the exchange of genetic material. New genom…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🏺 I'm excited to see the first paper stemming from the vibrant discussions at #DNAirobi! This work reminds us about the skeletal biology research that forms the foundation for much of our genomic work today, but may not be on the radar of most geneticists 💀🧬🇰🇪

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Reconstructing the human past: using ancient and modern genomics

Reconstructing the human past: using ancient and modern genomics 17 - 20 Sep 2024

This conference will take place at EMBL Heidelberg, with the option to attend virtually.
Registration is not yet open for this event. If you are interested in receiving more information please register your interest.

Postglacial genomes from foragers across Northern Eurasia reveal prehistoric mobility associated wit... bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

Preprint alert 🧬! We explore population history in the N Eurasian forest/forest-steppe zones spanning the Mesolithic/Neolithic/Bronze Age. Esp interesting is the correlation early Uralic speakers w/expansion of Seima-Turbino metallurgical traditions.

(PS: work led by bluesky-less colleagues!)

The fact that this amazing resource is open access is nothing short of 👏🙌🤩. Not only a step forward in sharing knowledge, but one that increases equitable access to the resources that are necessary for our field. I'll be reading/sharing with everyone and you should too 🧬

South African hominin fossils were sent into space and scientists are enraged Experts insist there is no scientific reason for allowing these fossils to travel to space.

"Which community has been engaged in science awareness? Surely no South African or any African community has been engaged through this act?"

Statement from the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists regarding the transport of two hominin fossils aboard the recent 3rd Virgin Galactic commercial space flight.

Hey folks, just trying to maximize the number of eyes on this job posting, for which I serve on the search committee. If you work on "genes, genomes, and evolution" writ large, and are on the job market, please apply! Please repost and share widely!

employment.unl.edu/postings/87675

Well this explains a lot…I’m not finding Bluesky super intuitive to use, but better than the alternative?

Absolutely worth a read 💀🧬

#ISBA10 feels like a good time to kick off some activity in this new blue place 💀🧬🦠

I’m excited to share and consume science in this space!

Preprint with Raphaël Forien & Harald Ringbauer showing how spatially heterogeneous dispersal can be identified using long shared haplotypes. #popgen
#evolsky
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...