A Bit More Detail

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait looks at Abell 30, a star that has been reborn in the long process of dying.


• Centauri Dreams uses the impending launch of LightSail 2 to discuss solar sails in science fiction.


• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber, as part of a series of the fragility of globalization, considers if migration flows can be reversed. (He concludes it unlikely.)


• The Crux considers if the record rain in the Midwest (Ontario, too, I would add) is a consequence of climate change.


• D-Brief notes that the failure of people around the world to eat enough fruits and vegetables may be responsible for millions of premature dead.


• Dangerous Minds introduces readers to gender-bending Italian music superstar Renato Zero.


• Dead Things notes how genetic examinations have revealed the antiquity of many grapevines still used for wine.


• Gizmodo notes that the ocean beneath the icy crust of Europa may contain simple salt.


• io9 tries to determine the nature of the many twisted timelines of the X-Men movie universe of Fox.


• JSTOR Daily observes that the Stonewall Riots were hardly the beginning of the gay rights movement in the US.


• Language Log looks at the mixed scripts on a bookstore sign in Beijing.


• Dave Brockington at Lawyers, Guns, and Money argues that Jeremy Corbyn has a very strong hold on his loyal followers, perhaps even to the point of irrationality.


• Marginal Revolution observes that people who create public genetic profiles for themselves also undo privacy for their entire biological family.


• Sean Marshall at Marshall's Musings shares a photo of a very high-numbered street address, 986039 Oxford-Perth Road in Punkeydoodle's Corners.


• The NYR Daily examines the origins of the wealth of Lehman Brothers in the exploitation of slavery.


• The Planetary Society Blog shares a panorama-style photo of the Apollo 11 Little West Crater on the Moon.


• Drew Rowsome notes that classic documentary Paris Is Burning has gotten a makeover and is now playing at TIFF.


• Peter Rukavina, writing from a trip to Halifax, notes the convenience of the Eduroam procedures allowing users of one Maritime university computer network to log onto another member university's network.


• Dylan Reid at Spacing considers how municipal self-government might be best embedded in the constitution of Canada.


• The Speed River Journal's Van Waffle pays tribute to the wildflower Speedwell, a name he remembers from Watership Down.


• Strange Maps shares a crowdsourced map depicting which areas of Europe are best (and worst) for hitchhikers.


• Window on Eurasia notes the distribution of native speakers of Russian, with Israel emerging as more Russophone than some post-Soviet states.

The idea of a European Military didn’t work out too well in W.W. I or 2. But the U.S. was there for you, and always will be. All we ask is that you pay your fair share of NATO. Germany is paying 1% while the U.S. pays 4.3% of a much larger GDP - to protect Europe. Fairness!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2018

The idea of a European Military didn’t work out too well in W.W. I or 2. But the U.S. was there for you, and always will be. All we ask is that you pay your fair share of NATO. Germany is paying 1% while the U.S. pays 4.3% of a much larger GDP - to protect Europe. Fairness!

• Apostrophen's 'Nathan Smith updates readers on his writing projects and points them to anthologies looking for new submissions.


• blogTO talks about the origins of Bay Street.


• Centauri Dreams notes new discoveries about the origins of mysterious "fast radio bursts".


• The Dragon's Tales notes how a genetic study of Panama's population showed the impact of colonization.


• Joe. My. God. notes Germany's opening of a centre for LGBT refugees.


• Language Log notes controversy over simplified characters in Hong Kong and poor fluency in kanji in Japan.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the controversies surrounding the commemoration of the death of Scalia at Georgetown University.


• Steve Munro looks at various routes for a relief line in the east of the city.


• North's Justin Petrone talks about teaching his daughter who ran Estonia during the Soviet era.


• Strange Maps maps Europe divided into city-states.


• Window on Eurasia notes Kazakhstan's plan to shift to Latin script for Kazakh and looks at ethnic Russian converts to Islam.

How modern humans dispersed into Eurasia and Australasia, including the number of separate expansions and their timings, is highly debated. Two categories of models are proposed for the dispersal of non-Africans: (1) single dispersal, i.e., a single major diffusion of modern humans across Eurasia and Australasia; and (2) multiple dispersal, i.e., additional earlier population expansions that may have contributed to the genetic diversity of some present-day humans outside of Africa. Many variants of these models focus largely on Asia and Australasia, neglecting human dispersal into Europe, thus explaining only a subset of the entire colonization process outside of Africa. The genetic diversity of the first modern humans who spread into Europe during the Late Pleistocene and the impact of subsequent climatic events on their demography are largely unknown. Here we analyze 55 complete human mitochondrial genomes (mtDNAs) of hunter-gatherers spanning ∼35,000 years of European prehistory. We unexpectedly find mtDNA lineage M in individuals prior to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). This lineage is absent in contemporary Europeans, although it is found at high frequency in modern Asians, Australasians, and Native Americans. Dating the most recent common ancestor of each of the modern non-African mtDNA clades reveals their single, late, and rapid dispersal less than 55,000 years ago. Demographic modeling not only indicates an LGM genetic bottleneck, but also provides surprising evidence of a major population turnover in Europe around 14,500 years ago during the Late Glacial, a period of climatic instability at the end of the Pleistocene.

The ‘average’ reading of Bakhtin most in circulation, as far as I can see, is that we can tale the novel as a literary form particularly devoted to plurality of voices, and inclusion of the colloquial, going back to the genre of Menippean Satire, particularly the Satyricon of Petronius written in Rome in the first century CE. That all fits in with a Roman oriented history of Rome, not excluding Greece, but leaving Homer as the representative of a Europe which is hierarchical in social structure and ornate-rhetorical in aesthetic style.

My recent reading in Bakhtin does not exactly contradict this, but has drawn my attention to what it seems to me is an under-represented aspect of at least the most familiar kinds of assumptions about Bakhtin. He gives considerable importance to an Ancient and Medieval Greek heritage for the development of the novel. The Greek novel, also referred to as a Sophist novel, is placed in Roman history from the second to the sixth centuries, so the time in which the Roman Empire passed from its peak, or what has traditionally been regarded as the golden age of the Five Good Emperors to the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, though of course not in the east, where is carried on centred on the New Rome of Constantinople.

The collapse of the Empire in the west is conventionally linked with the deposition of the last Emperor in Italy, for which anyway there are two date, 476 (the most familiar) and 480, depending on who is accepted as the last reigning Emperor in Italy, though in terms of the reality of power the Rome-Italy centred western Empire disappeared in the 450s when the ‘Emperor’ became the puppet of the chief German ‘barbarian’ leader in Italy. Significantly for the purposes of this post, there is an argument for saying that the Empire in the west fell in 550, so the sixth century, when Justinian’s reconquest of the city was reversed so that the city was never under a ‘Roman Emperor’ again or not in the sense of the direct line of Roman Emperors, leaving aside titles given to German kings later in the Middle Ages.

So Bakthin’s choice of the sixth century as the end of the Greek Novel, signifies the end of western Rome and the emergence of a distinct empire, in which Greek language and culture were dominant, in the sixth century. Bakhtin thinks of the ‘Byzantine’ novel as the successor to the Greek novel. Byzantine was a name given to eastern Rome sometime after it was swallowed up the Ottomans, so its usage is rather questionable, but it has stuck. Anyway, the context here is that Bakhtin thinks of the novel as having a Greek version, which refers to places outside Italy and the western Empire, or indeed the whole Empire.

Bakhtin’s emphasis on Rabelais as well as Petronius, may give the impression of literary thinking that works within a western canon. However, despite what some people seem to assume it is no accident that Bakhtin focuses on Rabelais rather than another Great Work of Renaissance to Early Modern western Europe, like Don Quixote. Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel appeals to Bakhtin, because it is Greek and ‘Byzantine’, by his standards, because it is more open to the life oriented forces of the folk, the peasantry, in its craziness, structural strangeness, and obscenity. Bakhtin is Russian folk centred enough for him to take up a west European work he finds close to what he values without being chauvinistic enough to reject French literature.

With his vociferous call on Monday to elevate an older form of Turkish in the national school curriculum, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is attempting to dismantle the linguistic cornerstone on which modern Turkey was built — and challenge the legacy of its master builder. If 20th century Turkey had been modeled on the obsessively secularist “modernizing” vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Erdogan has revealed the extent of his ambition to root the country’s future in the image of its imperial Ottoman past.

Erdogan’s comments came on the heels of a decision last weekend by Turkey’s National Education Council to make Ottoman language classes compulsory for the religious vocational high schools that train imams and elective for secular high schools across the country. The council’s position was widely criticized by Turkey’s secular opposition parties. But Erdogan made clear where he stands in a Dec. 8 speech in Ankara.

“Whether they want it or not, Ottoman [language] will be learned and taught in this country,” Erdogan said. “There are those who are uneasy with this country’s children learning Ottoman.”

The Ottoman language, which was abolished by Ataturk’s decree in 1928, is a predecessor to modern Turkish. It was written in Arabic script, and can still be found on monuments and buildings throughout Turkey. Added Erdogan, “They say, ‘Will we teach children how to read gravestones?’ But a history and a civilization is lying on those gravestones."

Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have never concealed their intention to uphold traditional notions of piety and establish a regional power base that would act as a counterweight to Western influence in the Middle East and Central Asia. The government lifted a decades old ban on Muslim headscarves in state high schools in September, and Erdogan’s political allies on the education council recently voted to ban bartending classes in tourism-industry vocational high schools. Last Thursday, Erdogan lashed out at the United Nations Security Council for being a “Christian body”that didn’t properly represent the interests of Muslim nations.

But changing the Turkish language is different; it is striking at the heart of the grand transformation ushered in by Ataturk in the 1920s. When Ataturk came to power as the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the language spoken in Turkey had been a rich tapestry of Arabic, Turkish and Farsi woven together in flowing Arabic script. As part of Ataturk’s scheme to “modernize” Turkey, Arabic script was replaced with the Latin alphabet. Arabic and Farsi words were systematically replaced with German and French.

• blogTO notes that the Union-Pearson Express train line is going to be quite expensive, perhaps unworkably so.


• Centauri Dreams looks at the imminent flyby by Pluto of the New Horizons probe.


• Will Baird of The Dragon's Tales reacts with upset to the confirmation that the CIA engaged in torture.


• Geocurrents' Martin Lewis looks at the controversies surrounding performances of an Indonesian popular music genre, dangdut, which features sexualized female performers.


• Marginal Revolution talks about which economies around the world are the most undervalued. (Sri Lanka comes up.)


• The Planetary Society Blog's Emily Lakdawalla talks about China's plans for space, including a Mars mission.


• Spacing Toronto talks about the day in 1950 when the sun above Toronto turned blue.


• Bruce Sterling shares a Washington Post article noting how forests have regrown across Europe in the past century.


• Torontoist notes that the city of Toronto has sought to secure heritage status for El Mocambo.


• Towleroad observes that the Irish Catholic Church has severed its links to a Northern Irish adoption agency for being GLBT-inclusive.


• Window on Eurasia notes a Russian expert who says that Ukrainian decentralization will be impossible at present and suggests that a new Munich arrangement over Ukraine is unlikely owing to Western distrust.

• Bad Astronomy shares a picture of the astonishingly crowded center of the Milky Way galaxy.


• blogTO recommends things to do in the Junction and Liberty Village.


• Centauri Dreans notes an interesting new binary star discovery, one where a hot Jupiter orbits each star.


• The Dragon's Gaze reports on further research done of a close brown dwarf.


• The Frailest Thing notes an interview with spaceflight proponent Elon Musk painting him as a messianic figure, a Moses or Noah.


• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that western Europe experienced growign longevity from an early age.


• The New APPS Blog notes the intersections of philosophy, religion, and euthanasia.


• Registan notes the arrival of Islamic banking in the former Soviet Union.


• Steve Munro notes the return of streetcar service to Queens Quay.


• Torontoist is skeptical of Olivia Chow's transit plan, not detailed enough.


• Towleorad reports on a Russian exchange student in the United States who has claimed asylum and reports on civil unions' new introduction in Chile.


• Window on Eurasia notes the weaknesses of the Belarusian economy, observes the linguistic links between Crimean Tatars and various north Caucasian peoples, argues that 1600 Russian soldiers have died, observes Russian belief that China is an ally, and notes that older Muslim communities in Moscow separate themselves from the newer immigrant communities.

We sequenced the genomes of a ~7,000-year-old farmer from Germany and eight ~8,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Luxembourg and Sweden. We analysed these and other ancient genomes with 2,345 contemporary humans to show that most present-day Europeans derive from at least three highly differentiated populations: west European hunter-gatherers, who contributed ancestry to all Europeans but not to Near Easterners; ancient north Eurasians related to Upper Palaeolithic Siberians, who contributed to both Europeans and Near Easterners; and early European farmers, who were mainly of Near Eastern origin but also harboured west European hunter-gatherer related ancestry. We model these populations’ deep relationships and show that early European farmers had ~44% ancestry from a ‘basal Eurasian’ population that split before the diversification of other non-African lineages.

The findings suggest that the arrival of modern humans into Europe more than 40,000 years ago was followed by an influx of farmers some 8,000 years ago, with a third wave of migrants coming from north Eurasia perhaps 5,000 years ago. Others from the same population of north Eurasians took off towards the Americas and gave rise to Native Americans.

Modern Europeans are various mixes of the three populations. Sardinians are more than 80% early European farmer, with less than 1% of their genetic makeup coming from the ancient north Eurasians. In the Baltic states such as Estonia, some modern people are 50% hunter-gatherer and around a third early European farmer.

The modern English inherited around 50% of their genes from early European farmers, 36% from western European hunter-gatherers, and 14% from the ancient north Eurasians. According to the study, published in Nature, modern Scots can trace 40% of their DNA to the early European farmers and 43% to hunter-gatherers, though David Reich, a senior author on the study at Harvard University, said the differences were not significant.

By leapfrogging from island to island across the northern Mediterranean, Neolithic people were able to quickly spread their farming lifestyle across southern Europe some 9,000 years ago, a new genetic study suggests.

Archaeological investigations have shown that individuals in the Near East first developed farming and herding around 12,000 years ago. Agriculture then quickly replaced the more mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle—in what's called the "Neolithic transition"—as farmers migrated into Europe and other parts of the world.

"The establishment of agriculture provided the possibility for population growth, and that growth led people to expand to new horizons," said University of Washington geneticist George Stamatoyannopoulos.

In a new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stamatoyannopoulos and his colleagues analyzed the DNA of individuals from modern Mediterranean populations to reconstruct the migration patterns of their ancient ancestors.

The genetic data showed that the people from the Near East migrated into Anatolia-modern—day Turkey—and then rapidly west through the islands of Greece and Sicily, before making their way north into the center of the continent.

"The gene flow was from the Near East to Anatolia, and from Anatolia to the islands," Stamatoyannopoulos said. "How well the genes mirror geography is really striking."