Ardipithecus, chimps, bonobos and christians

Martín Cagliari has uploaded at his most interesting blog Mundo Neandertal, the full documentary of Discovery Channel on the Ardipithecus Ramidus. A must view (while the blog is in Spanish, the film is still only available in English).

I was watching it yesterday and is most educative, specially for the amateur with just a side interest in ancient hominins, as is my case. But, as always they have to outline a theory, a Christian-sounding one, of course.

So I was not too persuaded that the two most surprising features of aunt Ardi and her kin, the grasping but bipedal feet and the very short and blunt canines responded too well to the theory suggested at Discovery Channel. They argue that this means two things: bipedalism in forest area (this last ratified by botanical and zoological research of the sediments - excellent job with that too) and lack of the kind of male competition we see among chimps for group dominance and hence reproductive advantage (they talk about controlling females but it's in fact more as I describe it here, as chimps are polyamorous, even if in a hierarchical manner).

So far sounds good. But the hypothesis launched is that these new bipedal males with low aggresivity responded to a new kind of bond (couple) sort of reproductive economy, in which the males could go farther looking for "quality food" (whatever that means) and carry it on their backs sounded kind of implausible and too moralist to be real. I was not persuaded.

As it happens often checking with your pillow helps to clarify thoughts and when I woke up I came with fresh ideas: they had been all the time ignoring bonobos!

Bonobos have relatively large canines but are much more bipedal than chimps, ability that they use to carry things around or just to walk, either on ground or on branches (someone pointed out recently too that even gibbons, the most distant ape, are sort of arboreal bipedal animals, that arboreal bipedalism is not that rare among our kin). Bonobo males also do not compete for the females (so their canines may well be somewhat redundant) but that is not because they live in couples and males have any enhanced role looking for food in far away places but because they are even more polyamorous than chimpanzees but females tend to lead the groups up to a point.

And when you look at Ardi after considering the bonobos, she looks very much like one in fact, right? In fact it is then when she stops looking like some sort of ape-ish chimera and starts making sense. At least for me.

Bonobos are more closely related to chimpanzees than to us but they share with us some traits that chimpanzees do not: they have a clear sense of empathy and compassion and the females are sexually available all the time, not just when ovulating. This allows them to have much more cohesive and horizontal societies, where males do not need anymore to compete for females' favors.

As I said before, they are also more bipedal than regular chimpanzees. They look like a much better comparison than regular chimpanzees for our evolution, at least in many aspects.

So my hypothesis is that Ardi and her kin were to some extent like bonobos in the social aspect. What do you think?
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Anti-feminist trials as example of the Spanish madness

The madness of "all is ETA", I mean, by which nearly anyone has been repressed one way or another in the last many years.

On March 8th 2008, International Women's Day, the then delegate of the government in Navarre, Vicente Ripa, after apparently much legal insecurity and doubts, decided in the last minute to forbid a feminist demonstration in Pamplona, called by more than 40 associations. The pretext was given by Spanish court that decided that, as feminist claims such as the right to abortion are not shared by all Spanish political parties, feminism is partisan and hence the demo could be forbidden.

The demonstration was then met by the force of the Spanish police at its arrival to Gazteluko Plaza, and protesters reacted mostly (some just run away) with nonviolent resistence, putting up with the "democratic" beatings.

Now 15 women are facing trial for misdeamanors, being asked to pay fines between 300 and 600 euros each. For that reason a demonstration has been called for tomorrow at the historical Basque capital.

Source: Gara.
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Basque Nationalist Left debates new strategy

This seems to be a good deal of what was going on behind the scenes when the latest inquisitorial round up happened in Donostia a week ago: Batasuna is launching an internal debate with what seem to be quite novel proposals and the Spanish government is just stuck and content in its process of Turkish-style repression and undemocratic administration.

According to Gara this new proposal talks in terms of a new cycle headed to the resolution of the political conflict, process that should be democratic and centered in the decission of the Basque citizenship and that, importantly, should happen without any violence or external interference.

It is notable that the document makes a self-criticism of the previous failed peace process of 2005-07 in the sense that they used to follow the so-called "Argel parameters" (for the also failed negotiation of Argel in the 1980s): concession in the armed struggle issue in exchange for a democratic frame (self-determination). In other words: weapons for freedom. They argue that this happened because the political bloc had issues of cohesion during the truce, specially as it was quite obvious that the Spanish government was not making any concessions.

They also mention that while there are positive new elements, there are also negative ones, like social evolution itself. They warn that the speed of such changes is faster than that of the liberation process. The positive elements are said to be the international context (crash of globalization and speculative capitalism, advance of the Left in Latin America, acceptance of some independentist proposals like those of Greenland, Scotland or Quebec), as well as the local one (exhaustion of the autonomical frame, weakening of the political hegemony of the Basque Christian-Democrats or the unity of action acheieved in the North, as well as the increase of independentist initiatives in specially Catalonia but also in the Basque Country itself). The labor unions' support of the essentials of the Nationalist Left's goals and proposals is also percieved as a very important supportive element that should not be wasted.

The new proposed focus seems to be in the so-called democratic process, which is vaguely defined as the procedure to change the current "game rules" and to carry the confrontation to parameters in which the Nationalist Left will be stronger and more efficient. Emphasis is made in that such democratic process is not limited to negotiation and does not depend on it but that it follows its own dynamics that are described as gradual.

The pillars for such process would be accumulation of forces, change in force correlation and national construction. This is further detailed as four steps: rally the Nationalist Left, build an independentist bloc, create a popular wall against the attacks from the state and re-create negotiation.

The first of these pillars is described as urgent, and leaves a feeling of wanting to rebuild ties with the breakaway party Aralar, which has improved somewhat its electoral results (while not even remotely approaching the historical levels of the Nationalist Left before ilegalization). The emphasis in being legal as central goal around this pillar makes me think that they are feeling nostalgic of the time when they could still rule towns and be decissively influential in other elected bodies.

The overall tone of this proposal seems to be in leaving somehow the armed struggle out of the equation and in emphasizing political action. However, in my opinion, the democratic process seems to be lacking in any specific plan of action, such as switching to a strategy of nonviolent disobedience or mere wishful parliamentarism that will probably go nowhere?

It is my impression that this debate could cause some greater loss of cohesion within the Nationalist Left. After all, most followers are there because ETA has been and still is, sadly enough, the only one really facing the state, while the parliamentary action so far has been totally powerless and pissed at by Madrid, where the will of the Basque People has no legal currency (after all Basques are only some 6% of the Spanish population).

I suspect that while Spain does not offer a realistic alternative to ETA as expression of the Basque popular will for self-rule, it may not matter what debates are held, because there will always be an important sector that just finds making politics in such a restrictive frame as something meaningless and idiotic.
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People punish for social acceptance

Interesting experimental sociology item that I found at Science Daily. Sociologist Christine Horne, author of The Rewards of Punishment: A Relational Theory of Norm Enforcement, found experimentally that people is much more likely to scold a bad-spoken kid when they were in company of the right people, like a group of like-minded friends, than when among people who may not support that stance.

Apparently people do that not just because such like-minded allies would back them but specially because expressing such shared views will gain them the respect and admiration of those allies.

This is interesting because it offers an unusual insight on how traditional views hold sway in closely knit societies, like those of prehistory and even modern less impersonal ones, and how social consensus is created, kept and also eventually broken.
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On Nobels and "Alternative Nobels"

While we are still digesting the absurdity of giving the Peace Nobel prize to Barack Obama, who has done nearly nothing to deserve it. I find in Rebelión a couple of articles that seem indicated to mention.

On one side, Mario Ramírez-Orozco analyzes the insides of the Peace Nobel committee, that by now are already quite public at least in Norway. This committe is no any council of wisemen or anything of the like but just a politically appointed board that includes veteran members of the Norwegian political scene. These politicians are of course like any other: not particularly wise and rather short-sighted, machiavellian and with their own agendas.

So it seems now that most members of the committee were rather quite against the candidature of Obama, logically, but that the president of the board, Thorbjörn Jagland, of the social-democrat party (Arbeiderparti) seems to have managed almost solo to force the choice of Obama as this year's Peace Nobel. Even if he was apparently able to make his party colleague, Sissel Marie Rönbeck, follow his lead, the article does not explain clearly how he managed to overcome the apparently tough opposition of the other three members.

Guess we will find out in due time.


Alternative Nobels

Meanwhile the "alternative Nobel prizes" or Right Livelihood Awards have gone almost unnoticed once again. Canal Solidario (mirrored at Rebelión) tells us of this year winners, who get 50,000 euros each (except the honorific prize):



René Ngongo of the D.R. Congo got the prize for his dedication to protect one of the largest natural ecosystems on Earth: the Congo rainforest. Ngongo created in 1994 OCEAN, an organization that promotes sustainable practices and reforestation.



Alyn Ware of New Zealand got another award for more than two decades promoting peace education and elimination of nuclear arsenals. He even was advisor to the Wellington government and the UN on these areas.



Catherine Hamlin, a gynecologist from Austria, was awarded as well for her work in Ethiopia creating health infrastructures, specially those oriented to women with obstetric fistula, a disease that breaks the lifes of many women through the world even if it can be easily operated because they just cannot afford it.



The honorary prize was given to someone maybe better known for the average reader: David Suzuki, for his work oriented to broaden the conscience on climate change.

The RLAs have no specific categories and anyone can in principle propose candidates for them.

Sincerely, my personal choice would have been for the campaigns to breach the Gaza blockade, that have shown the courage and determination to challenge one of the most inhuman and criminal abuses against a population of mostly powerless refugees by one of the most mischievous and influential regimes on Earth. Maybe the next year?
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Acheulean spread from Africa to Eurasia

Important paper the one that David Beard mentions at Archaeology in Europe:

Stephen J. Lycett, Understanding Ancient Hominin Dispersals Using Artefactual Data: A Phylogeographic Analysis of Acheulean Handaxes. PLoS ONE, 2009. (Open Access).

Lycett analyzes the structure of Acheulean handaxes of Africa and Eurasia and concludes that there is very strong support (>94% likelihood) for an out-of-Africa scenario.

In all maximum parsimony trees, Eurasian axes appear as derived from African ones, possibly indicating that a migration (H. erectus or H. ergaster, depending on your naming preferences) from Africa to Eurasia happened along that techno-cultural spread.

Acheulean was first developed in Africa, some 1.6 million years ago. The most ancient confirmed date for Eurasian Acheulean is that of 'Ubeidiya (Palestine), dated to c. 1.4 million years ago though often thought of as a penetration without further consquences, followed by European ones (southern Spain, c. 900,000 BP) and more recent ones (c. 780,000 BP) in Palestine and other European areas (c. 600,000 BP). South Asian Acheulean is less well dated but most findings seem to be older than 800,000 BP.

However in Lycett trees, South Asian handaxes' typology appears consistently as older than European one (but more recent than the African types). He does not seem to have analyzed the very old Iberian or Palestinian tools though.
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Huge demo against repression

One of the largest demonstrations ever in the Basque Country was the one gathered yesterday in Donostia (San Sebastian) in protest for the recent Spanish repression against Basque politicians.

The demonstration, called by the important labor union LAB, whose secretary general, Rafa Díez, was arrested in the latest political roundup, and backed by virtually everyone but the unionists (even the right-wing Basque Nationalist Party, always flirting with the state, joined it) gathered some 37,000 people in the Gipuzkoan capital, embracing totally the bay.

The president of the Athletic football club, J. M. Arrate, who also joined the demo, declared:

I have come because, if this situation extends in time, we are going to end like when Franco. Before they bring the tanks in we have at least to say that we do not agree.

Josu Loroño, well known sports journalist for the public media EITB, said showing his outrage:

This has been an abuse. And they are laughing at us Basques, they are laughing! This has to stop by any means.

There were of course many other declarations and many other personalities there... and many chants too, including many in support of the Basque prisioners, whose memory has been so often attacked as of late.

Source: Gara. Video link.


The Spaniards nervous

The so-called Socialist Party (social-democrats with a very pro-Capitalist stance in fact) and the so-called Popular Party (elitist ultra-conservatives lead by extremist Catholics and recycled fascists) who part the cake of Spanish "democracy", where no alternative is ever possible (and if it is, it goes to jail), showed some clear restlessness at the massive reaction to their latest abuses.

Notably, the so-called Lehendakari (president of the Western Basque autonomous region), Patxi López, who is in charge only after a decade when democracy has been suspended in the southern Basque Country, what allows him a parliamentary majority without anything close to a popular majority, dared to insult our intelligence saying nothing less that those that went to that demonstration "question the very democratic system" (source).

Mr. López: you can get your fascist idea of "democracy", put it in whatever bodily hole you find room for it, and start looking for political assilum in such "democratic" countries as Saudi Arabia, Iran or Burma. Because that is the "democracy" that you are talking of.

Get lost, damn "Lehendakari by the grace of God" and the Spanish Army. We have one of the oldest democracies in Europe and the whole World and we are not going to let a buffoon like you teach us lessons about democracy.

Democracy is the will of the people, democracy is that towns are ruled by an elected mayor and council, not one appointed from some dark hall at the Spanish Inquisition's headquarters, democracy is that you are not our Lehendakari. No way! You are only a pathetic usurper with as much legitimity as that Mossad agent that is Abbas.

Get lost! Let the Basque People choose!
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Bronze Age Greek city surveyed underwater

Just a heads up. The city of Pavlopetri, now sunk off the coast of Laconia, southern Greece, has been surveyed by submarine archaeologists, revealing a long history dating to c. 2800 BCE, long before the Mycenaean period. It was probably a major trading hub and the analysis of the many discovered artifacts (pottery, etc.) is now being take care of.

The earliest dates may be the most interesting ones, in my opinion, because they correspond chronologically with the pre-Indoeuropean Cycladic and Minoan cultures, of which only so much is known. However we will have to wait until the archaeological work is finished.

More at Science Daily, including a video and a podcast.
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Analyzing Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

Interesting new paper at PLoS Genetics by Gil McVean of the University of Oxford, UK: A Genealogical Interpretation of Principal Component Analysis.

Author summary:

Genetic variation in natural populations typically demonstrates structure arising from diverse processes including geographical isolation, founder events, migration, and admixture. One technique commonly used to uncover such structure is principal components analysis, which identifies the primary axes of variation in data and projects the samples onto these axes in a graphically appealing and intuitive manner. However, as the method is non-parametric, it can be hard to relate PCA to underlying process. Here, I show that the underlying genealogical history of the samples can be related directly to the PC projection. The result is useful because it is straightforward to predict the effects of different demographic processes on the sample genealogy. However, the result also reveals the limitations of PCA, in that multiple processes can give the same projections, it is strongly influenced by uneven sampling, and it discards important information in the spatial structure of genetic variation along chromosomes.

The distortions introduced by unequal sampling are quite obvious in figure 3, where equidistant hypothetical samples in a lattice (A) are subsequently distorted by simply increasing some of the samples: when only one sample is increased, this one appears as more distinct (B), when several samples are increased in different ammounts, they artificially dominate the PCA graph, with smaller samples losing their distinct personality.

This influence of sampling choice I have already noticed previously, so I am glad to see it clearly explained and due warning issued.

... the results also demonstrate the way in which sampling schemes can influence PC projections and how similar projections can arise from very different demographic scenarios. Consequently, using these results to motivate inference from PCA about underlying demographic process may prove difficult.

There is more than just this. In fact the author makes an important effort to show how PCA can be used to infer admixture apportions when this admixture is a known fact, either when the source populations are known or when they are not as well.

Worth a read.
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Nuclear utopy: a dirty hell in fact

The latest news in Europe are largely about how dirty the nuclear energy business is resulting to be. The big problem is, of course, residues.

In Italy the Mafia has been sinking ships full of nuclear residues in the sea for may years now, meanwhile France and Germany have been exporting their own to Russia, where they are awfully stored, abandoned, in open air spaces without any sort of pollution control at a Soviet era base near Tomsk (we can imagine the Russians do themselves the same with their own residues more or less).

If all that would not be dirty and scary enough, the closure of a French reactor has revealed that some weapon grade plutonium was stored with no registry in that very plant. Where they expected just a few kilos of the dangerous nuclear byproduct, they found 22, three times the registered amount. This same reactor was ordered closure in July after leaking uranium to the local water supply.

The image of European nuclear industry is right now that of a total chaos and inability to manage their own production safely or in any controlled way. The "nuclear utopy" that some wanted to recycle for the Global Warming era is falling apart into pieces. And this is only what trascends to the media: the situation in Spain, famous for its lack of transparency and some very old nuclear reactors, for example, could be also awful.

Anyhow, there is not enough uranium on Earth to generate enough power for nuclear energy to be a viable substitute of anything. Once oil production peaks (and either has already done by now or is extremely close in the very near future), the only alternatives are dirty coal or more or less clean "alternative" energy sources like wind and solar power. We want it or not, we are bound to go ecological or kill ourselves.

Unless nuclear fussion happens to make a huge leap forward, something that doesn't seem likely in the next many many decades.
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Would a Peace Nobel veto sanctions against criminal Israel?

Indeed if that one is Barack Obama.

And the Norwegian prize has covered itself in shame with this year's decision of giving it to the US President Obama only because he sells "hope" and "change" well, talks smoother and looks smarter than his extremist cowboy predecessor.

The first test of the validity of this wishful thinking Nobel prize is precisely now at the UN, as the Goldstone Report, denouncing some of the criminal brutality of the occupying power in Gaza Strip this past winter, brutality that continues every single day, as the nuclear residues cause mutations and the rebuilding aid is systematically blocked at the ghetto's checkpoints. As the report makes its way through the General Assembly, the US threatens with veto, showing again that justice and human rights don't matter in the agenda of the Empire but only what Israel and the Zionist Lobby wish.

By the way, some days ago Joachim Martillo wrote at Ethnic Ashkenazim Agains Zionism, explaining that the Lobby's GDP is the size of that of large power like the UK or France, more than 2 trillion USD, without the liabilities of running a state, what in his opinion makes the GDP effectively 10 times larger or more. For comparison the US GDP is of 14 trillion dollars, and a good deal of it belongs to the Lobby anyhow.

But there are some timid signs that the all-encompasing influence of Zionism in the West is weakening. Recently Sweden rejected to bow to Zionist pressure to persecute a newspaper that denounced Israeli crimes, and later they rejected the visit of the particularly extremist Zionist foreign minister Avigador Liebermann. Now Turkey has snubbed Israel, by swiftly discarding them from a NATO military exercise, what has brought the Zionists to ponder if they can count on their traditional Turkish allies anymore.

The Zionists still have the money and lots of power but some are feeling the potentially greater pressure of the public shame that comes from association with such overtly racist criminals. Or maybe is that even among politicians there are some who still have a bit of dignity.

But Obama is certainly not among those. He has fulfilled so far the more pessimistic analysis that I could read upon his ascenssion, betraying the people that supported him, not reverting or investigating the criminal policies of his predecessor for the most part, keeping the sanctions against Cuba and anyone who dares to trade with them, and also keeping the criminal association with the Zionist apartheid regime up to the point of vetoing a clearly objective and neutral report that happens to condemn Israel for some of its worst criminal practices, widely denounced worldwide. Practices that have in fact backfired in the public opinion arena much further than Zionists would ever have expected, clouted as they are in the extreme arrogance that too powerful people and gangs often fall into.

But practices that are still active for the most part, causing the slow death of Gazans and continuing with the daily ethnic cleansing of other parts of Palestine.

Criminal practices and criminal nature that we can't but denounce once and again until the apartheid regime itself falls.

We shall overcome.
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More political arrests in the Basque Country. Sastre's open letter

I have been reading but not yet commenting on the new spat of political arrests in the Basque Country decreed by super-judge Baltasar Garzón in what the Spanish Interior Minister justified by claiming that the arrested were trying to re-found the forbidden party Batasuna, one of the largest ones in the Basque Country quite obviously.

Some nine members of this party, including the secretary general of the second largest labour union, LAB, were arrested two days ago under the anti-terrorist law and the law of political parties. The charges are not yet officially known as the arrested are being kept incommunicated in police dependences under the special laws that rule in Spain since... well, since always. The only information comes from the Interior Minister, who stated that it was an action to abort the reorganization of Batasuna, within the context of the Spanish Law of Political Parties and the recent EU sentence acknowledging that this initiative of banning parties is legitimate.

Among the arrested, were historical leaders of the Basque Nationalist Left, like Arnaldo Otegi and Pernando Barrena, the secretary general of workers' union LAB, Rafa Díez, and the daughter of the leader of the breakup faction Aralar, Patxi Zabaleta.

One of the few advantages of being split between two states is the fact that the law that is imposed at one side of the internally dividing border, does not apply necessarily at the other side. Hence Batasuna is still perfectly legal in the French state and has issued a public declaration protesting the arrests from Bayonne.

Other political parties protested that this was an action oriented to abort any chance of Batasuna heading towards a political solution of violence. Though in my opinion it is just empty blah-blah of rather marginal politicians who aim to scratch some of the votes that cannot anymore be delivered to their legitimate destinataries. But who knows?

My biggest worry anyhow is that, as they have been arrested in the offices of LAB (Patriotic Workers' Union), including the secretary general of this class organization, I can only imagine that this is nothing but the prelude of the illegalization of LAB, in the hope that it will pave the way for a formal "majority" of the Spanish Nationalist unions UGT and CC.OO., that so far has proved highly elusive. This would be yet another step into the legal dismantling (that is never the same as real dismantling) of the Basque grassroots socio-political networks.

Source: Gara.


Open letter by Alfonso Sastre to the Spanish judges

Alfonso Sastre is the most prominent theatre author in Spanish language still alive and recently was candidate to the European Parliament by the list Iniciativa Internacionalista. He was probably elected by popular vote but the poll was massively rigged so he could not become legally a representative. What follows is his public reaction to the new spat of political arrests (my translation).

Faced with the ongoing policial roundup, the signatary, Alfonso Sastre Salvador, natural from Madrid, 83 years old, Basque citizen since several decades ago, requests from you that urgently do all what is possible in order to deactivate the ongoing roundup of Basque citizens, and that these get their freedom restored. Also in this letter, he wants to expose what follows:

1. That he finds unbelievable that there is not among you some who are in radical disagreement - starting from the exercise of your activity of jurists, professionals of the Law - with measures like this one and do not feel ashamed that, in the name of Justice, Justice itself is attacked by means of persecution of pacific people, whose only "crime" is being left-leaning patriots and attempting to express themselves in the fields of politics and labour unionism. No one among you keeps, at least in his inner self, such a thought? I just cannot believe it.

2. That the legal existence of an abertzale (Basque patriotic) left, which does not "condemn" publicly the violence of ETA does not just imply a support for this kind of struggle and the subsequent attempt to extend it in time but that, on the contrary, this left bloc is necessary for the solution of the political conflict and, with it, for the end of this type of struggle (which is a very painful tragedy) and the desired arrival of peace, being, as I say, the legal existence of this political force nothing less than a conditio sine qua non for such a happy outcome. Otherwise, Basque patriotism is a legitimate idea, even if nowadays, and here there is a key of the conflict, is not legal, fact on which is founded and explained the violence we suffer.

For me, those who are applauding - enthusiastically in many cases - these arrests are not supporters of peace but actually prefer the existence of armed violence.

At least some of you, magistrate gentlemen, do what is possible for, by the moment, suspend the violence of these arrests that are exerted on people of peace, and, certainly, very patient ones themselves.

Source: Gara.
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Is the Higgs boson sabotaging the hadron colliders from the future?

Sounds silly, crazy, absurd... but that's what two respectable physicists, Holger B. Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya have proposed to test... using a huge card deck of 5 million cards.

Ok, this sounds even more crazy. And even more that Mr. Nielsen seems to be the person who is going to be in charge of the LHC of Geneva in no time... that is unless this paper gets him fired.

Holger Nielsen (from Wikipedia)

According to this hypothesis the Higgs boson, the ultra-elusive so-called "God particle" that is central to Quantum Mechanics, cannot be uncovered and hence all efforts to do so are doomed because the future conspires against them, causing to them such unusual bad luck that they fail even when they should not, like the Texas particle accelator that saw its funding cut when a fourth of it was already built. According to Nielsen, this is an anti-miracle, surely caused because God hates Higgs bosons and the physics related with them.

Sure: totally crazy. But the paper is out there in PDF format: Search for Effect of Influence from Future in Large Hadron Collider and blogs and scientific media are paying attention to it, though with a good deal of disbelief or looking for the funny side of the story, what is about the same.

Some say they have gone crackpot, others that it is a prank... and, apart of the more neutral but disbelieving attitude of the media, no one seems to give a dime for the hypothesis. I imagine that, if the rumor about Nielsen been set as next director of the LHC are correct (could not confirm them), the actual reason behind this theory, that he just wants to call the attention to funding issues at the LHC and is doing it in a provocative manner with his firend and colleague Ninomiya.

But modern physics are sometimes so extremely bizarre that one wonders if they could be in fact unto something. According to Wikipedia, that is always right except when it's wrong, the pair of scientists are famous for the "Nielsen-Ninomiya no-go theoreme for representing chiral fermions of the lattice". Sounds bizarre but the lattice is a real thing in physics and maths, though I won't pretend I have any idea about it. Nielsen's home page also shows that, among his interests, the lattice holds a prominent place: Lattice Quantum Gravity and Chaos in Yang-Mills Lattice.

So is it even remotely possible that, while it looks like a prank, Nielsen and Ninomiya have in fact hinted, while looking for the Higgs boson, at Destiny? Or in other words, is this a bizarre but realistic window into the frame of spacetime beyond the constrains of our human 3i-dimensional perception? Among Nielsen's interests also is something that I'm quite concerned about: why do we have three plus one dimensions? Or, rather what is hidden behind this apparently simple frame?

As the NYT article puts it:

“For those of us who believe in physics,” Einstein once wrote to a friend, “this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”

However, I have a real problem with the proposed experiment: it cannot be replicated. Each time anyone draws a card from the proposed 5 million cards stack, the odds are that the "death card", the only one that would prove the hypothesis correct, are immensely small so the odds of falsification are clearly very high. But what happens if the "death card" is drawn in experiment A and not in experiment B?

So guess it's just a prank.

Main references: New Scientist, New York Times.
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R1b1b2 tree revisited

A few days ago a reader made me notice a meaningful error in my previous version of the West Eurasian R1b structure. The tree was correct but I had an error in the DYS loci numbers that caused me some confusion when comparing with other data, like that at the valuable Ht35 project (FTDNA).

So I have been rethinking all the issue from scratch and have just finished producing a new version of the same tree, where haplogroup and haplotype structure are blended as far as my knowledge reaches.

Click to expand

As is mentioned in the picture, the haplotypes are taken from Alonso 2005, paper that may be somewhat limited in some aspects, like the restrictive choice of DYS markers but is anyhow the wider academic survey I know of R1b in West Eurasia. More specifically they are taken from his selection of the most common (above 2%) haplotypes, as shown in the distribution map (two were duplicated and hence irrelevant, and another one only frequent in Iceland has also been ignored for convenience). As R1b1b1 is only found in Central Asia, R1b* is extremely rare outside Africa (Egypt and south of the Sahara, where it surely makes up a distinct subhaplogroup, whose defining SNPs have not been found yet) and the minor haplogroups R1b1a and R1b1c are practically limited to Sardinia and Lebanon, not sampled by Alonso, this is in practical terms the same as talking of haplogroup R1b1b2.

In any case, I have been checking that the haplotypes correspond with haplogroup-described ones and I am quite sure that the above haplogroup sets (yellow boxes with orange legend) are very much correct. All haplotypes seem to correspond to only one of the R1b1b2 structural layers, excepting the modal (most common) 14-24-11-13-13, which in fact belongs to two of them: R1b1b2a1* and R1b1b2a1a. This and the haplotype tree structure imply that all SNPs at the root of R1b1b2a1a (only L11 is mentioned but there are three others known) happened within this haplotype, though there may be some differences in other loci, which I have not bothered researching yet. What is clear is that there are some mutations (haplogroup-defining SNPs at least) in this most common (modal) haplotype and hence I had to duplicate this haplotype to show it with and without the L11 (and the other three) SNP mutations that define haplogroup R1b1b2a1a (I did so anyhow with a colored line, so the difference is easy to spot).

The four most common haplotypes by local frequencies are shown in bold and larger type and with the same color as in Alonso's map, for easier identification. It is noticeable that all haplotypes have an either West Asian or European distribution (once we exclude the somewhat mixed Croatian pool and maybe minor erratics) excepting two: the "modal" 14-24-11-13-13 (in red) and what I call the "Anatolian modal" 14-24-11-13-12 (in cyan blue). However the latter is rare in Europe except maybe in Croatia and Italy and the former is much more common almost anywhere in Europe than in Asia. The dividing line between West Asia and Europe (mostly West Europe) is therefore around the R1b1b2a1 node.

Geographic structure

R1b1b2* - Its only major haplotype is found only in West Asia (rare) and among Berbers (more frequent).

R1b1b2a* - It is found almost only in West Asia, with some offshots into SE Europe and even at very low frequencies, Central Europe, Iberia and Ireland. Excepting Croatia all its presence in Europe seems to belong to the "Anatolian modal" clade. It is not found among Berbers though.

R1b1b2a1* - It is found almost exclusively in Europe. The only exception are some amounts of the modal haplotype, that is also found in West Asia and among Berbers, though I am not sure if this belongs to this haplogroup or the derived R1b1b2a1a. Apart of the modal haplotype (that is also the root), it has two branches, both rather widespread in their root haplotypes, however they seem more frequent towards Central/Northern Europe. The most common of the two (root at 14-23-11-13-13, color: purple) has highest frequencies in the Low Countries of all places, while the less important one seems to have its highest frequencies in Wales, with some Atlantic distribution if anything.

R1b1b2a1a - This is the most common R1b in Europe, being quite obviously rare elsewhere, except among Berbers. As such it shows a relatively wide array of more relevant (above 2% in Alonso's sample) haplotypes. Surely the most important haplotype is the "modal" one (I'd say from other data that about 80% or 90% of this haplotype belongs to this haplogroup), which is widely distributed. Besides, it has three branches, one of which is quite important too (root at 14-24-10-13-13, color: black) and is widely distributed as well, with a highest frequency in Scotland (though also common in other populations, including Berbers but not West Asians). The other two are less important and show certain Atlantic tendency maybe, with lower tier haplotypes being rather common among Berbers.

And this is what I can tell about this important haplogroup by the moment.
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Pamplona rejects pathetic fascist disembark

Some two thousand people gathered in Pamplona's streets under the slogan "A thousand colors against fascism", in protest against a scheduled demonstration of the much hated but tiny Falange party, who managed to bring just some 50 people from Spain.

Extremist fascist discourse

The pitiful bunch of fascists, highly protected by the police, launched a message of hate and the most extremist Spanish nationalism. Miguel Valenciano, leader of the fascist students' union (and surely one of just few members) charged in his discourse against independentism, abortion, gays, reds and immigrants, claiming the old Francoist slogan of Spain as a "unit of destiny in the universe", whatever that means. He particularly attacked linguistic diversity, asking for the closure of all ikastolak (Basque language schools) and the imposition of a monlithic language system.

His colleague, Manuel Andrino, national leader of the hate group, asked for the death penalty for "terrorists" and prophetized vague visions of a day when the fascists will take back Navarre by force. He also made apology of terrorism, a crime, when he openly supported the "ghost group" Falange y Tradición, that has been involved in several acts of vandalism and death threats in the Basque Country in the last months.

Two women managed to infiltrate the fascist mob and perform acts of protest. One managed to grab the microphone and cry: "long live Freedom!", being then beaten by the fascists until police intervened and expelled her. Another woman managed to deploy a banner in support of Basque prisoners, being also expelled from the plaza.

Anti-fascist acts

The anti-fascist activities included a homage to the victims of fascist violence at Gazteluko Plaza, including floral offerings and a honor dance (aurresku). It is worth remembering here that fascism caused in the Spanish state one of the largest democides of the 20th century with more than a million victims, often forgotten.

After that act, a demonstration with some 2000 people walked along Sarasate Alley, under extreme police surveillance and some threats. Once this demonstration was finished, some people attempted to breach the police belt that protected the fascists, what got the police charging wildly. Some six people were arrested, including one who tried to protect a demonstrator who was being savagely beaten by the cops.

Aftermath

As the fascists packed to go back to the hole they came from, neighbours insulted them from balconies, with sentences like: "you are just thirty and have come here to fuck us precisely on Sunday, when we strive for a bit of peace and tranquillity".

In spite of the heavy police protection that they enjoyed, the fascist cars were hit by several rocks, causing some of them to jump out of the vehicles in search of fight. Police impeded that.

Member of the organization of Antifaxista Eguna (Anti-Fascist Day) showed their satisfaction for the outcome of the protest journey, even if, because of the rain, some of the activities had to be suspended. He thanked the participants who dared to stand up in spite of the massive police deployment. Patxi Belasko nevertheless denounced that these fascists are not the most dangerous ones but the covert ones who hold public offices.

Today there will be another demonstration, also in Pamplona, against aggressions and dirty war.

Protest against fascist vandalism in Lizarra

Yesterday too, there was a protest against the felling of a spawn of the Gernika Tree in the Navarrese city of Lizarra (Estella) by fascists of that "ghost group" mentioned before. They also denounced the beating of a neighbour of Zirauki at hands of a known fascist of the area.

However, while I acknowledge that public demonstrations are a good way of showing strength, I also think that against these individuals some more direct action is needed. Otherwise they will believe themselves impune and that's very dangerous.

Source: Gara.
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Circadian clock is about dusk and dawn, not day and night

Of particular interest for all who have sleep disorders of any sort.

Ever stood awake for all night only to suddenly feel terribly sleepy precisely at dawn? There is an explanation: the circadian clock. It used to be believed that the neurones involved in it (the superchiasmatic nuclei, SCN, of the central brain) were firing like mad at day and virtually inactive by night, at least in normal people. But it has now been found that what the SCN does in fact is to signal dusk and dawn, remaining essentially inactive for the rest of the day and night.

Source: Science Daily.
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Istanbul IMF-WB summit protests: silenced?

I have been looking in several news sites and could find nothing. Only Basque left-wing newspaper Gara makes a meaningful mention of the protests and violent repression that have shaken Istanbul as the yearly IMF and World Bank summit took place. Please, if you know anything more, let me know.

Per Gara, the city of the Bosporus has been virtually taken over by a huge police deployment, very specially at the centric area of Sisli, where the globalist financial meeting took place.

On Tuesday ago the main fights happened at the district of Beyoglu, beginning at Taksim Plaza and and continued for hours until the gases made the situation unbearable. The demonstration called there was mercilessly smashed by the police, what nevertheless did not avoid inccidents but in fact seems to be the main cause of them. A trader, Issac Kalvo, died of a heart attack in them.

Yesterday it was the centric district of Sisli the scene of the main struggles. In spite of the overwhelming police presence, demonstrators managed to block Pangalti Avenue for some time. There, a student identified as Mehmet, declared that the IMF and World Bank have sunk our country into misery, those who make deals to sell weapons that are used to kill Kurds, Alevis, Communists and that dissidence is smashed, want to come here to sell recipes to get out of the crisis.

Some masked street guerrilla groups managed to succesfully attack cash machines, bank offices and shops of multinational corporations. A different group managed to reach to the E5 highway and block it for some time.

Yesterday there were 34 people arrested, three of which in the mostly Alevi (a progressive Shia sect) and leftist neighbourhood of Gaziosmanpasa, who are being accused of membership in the illegal Revolutionary People's Liberation Party (DHKP-C) and of carrying more than twenty molotov cocktails.
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Buyers beware (specially in the USA)

Continuing with my review of the latest articles published at Rebelión, there is an interesting article by David Biello (Scientific American) and Mark Schapiro (Democracy Now!) where they denounce that the US industry has achieved in the last decade almost legal irresponsability, allowing them such criminal activities as selling lipstick with mercury and endocrine disruptors in children's toys.

This aggresive industrial policy has worked in the USA but has failed dramatically in Europe, where the lobbying efforts have got only very limited effect. Biello and Schapiro denounce that this irresponsible policy is not just bad for the US consumer but also for the industry in the mid-run, because the global trend is to protect the consumer, causing that exports are becoming inviable on public safety grounds.

When I studied in the USA in the late 80s I learned that the caveat emptor (buyer beware) policy had been reverted a century ago or so by a more active intervention of the state (FDA, now mostly inactive) but sadly it seems that a decade later this advance began being eroded in the name of "free market" and "small state".

So, friends and readers from the USA (in particular), beware!
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Honduras and Colombia: the double standards of Liberalism

Preliminary note: Liberalism as understood on planet Earth, not just in the USA, where it's often used as synonym of Social-Democracy and even Socialism. In other words: Liberalism as the paradigmatic bourgeois ideology of "free market" and "democracy".

Catalan professor, Vincenç Navarro, makes a good analysis at Rebelión of Liberal hypocrisy and double standards by comparing the cases of Honduras and Colombia. In both cases the presidents have tried to modify the legal frame in order to extend their mandates, but while in the case of Honduras many Liberals like the famous Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa have ferviently defended the coup against Zelaya on such grounds, in the case of Colombia, where human rights are a cruel joke and where the president Uribe is a well known narcotrafficant, they have not even raised a finger in protest.

Of course, he does not forget to mention historical examples of this Liberal hypocrisy, as when the Liberal Catalan and Spanish bankers financed the bloody coup of Gral. Franco or when the same kind of Liberal ideologues, like the infamous Milton Friedman, openly supported the criminal takeover of Gral. Pinochet in Chile.

He also denounces the active intervention of Colombian death squads, one of the main pillars of Uribe's fascist (ops, I mean "liberal" and "democratic" - wonder what was I thinking) power in the devastated Colombian narcostate, in the Honduran coup. Intervention that of course has not been denounced by the "liberals" like Vargas Llosa at any moment. He concludes: do you imagine what would have the liberal media said if troops of the Chávez grovernment would have arrived in Honduras to support Zelaya? Their reaction would have been hystrionic! These are examples not just of the deep incoherence of the defenders of individual freedoms but also of their double moral standards, extremely malleable according to their class interests.
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Legal neofascist patrols take Italy's streets

Interesting, yet very scary article at BBC today on the newly implemented "citizen patrols": they seem mostly to be made up of neofascists and even wear fascist-like uniform and ensigns, pride of extremely racist views and even make fascist salutations.

Just some pics so you get the idea:

A Messina patrol with khaki uniforms and (not visible) eagle ensigns, the chief or the "National Guard" and a member saluting to the cameras

When is Italy going to be kicked out of EU?
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European ancient mtDNA in sequential maps

I'm posting here five maps for all the ancient mtDNA I know of. Mostly compiled from the Ancient Eurasian DNA site, but checking the references when I thought necessary. Two of the maps have been posted here before.

Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic:

Already commented here.

Updated (Oct 8): a likely H individual from Villabruna (Trentino-South Tirol, Italy) from Di Benedetto 2000 belongs also to this period (c. 14,000 BP) and is also an important counterpoint to the apparent U dominance of Central Europe, somehow ratifying my idea of H being common throught the south of the continent already in this period.


Neolithic and early Chalcolithic (up to c. 3000 BCE):

Already commented here.


Late Chalcolithic and Bronze (c. 2800-1000 BCE):

Note on Germany: the Eulau (Saxony-Anhalt) and Liechtenstein (Lower Saxony) sites are not too distant geographically but, in time, they are at the extremes of the temporal scope of this map, with Eulau belonging to Corded Ware (c. 2600 BCE) and Liechtenstein Cave to Urnfield culture (c. 1000 BCE). This may be an important reason behind the quite radical differences in the mtDNA pools, though I fail to understand well the processes that might have been involved; after all both were Indoeuropean cultures, right?

Nevertheless, while Corded Ware would seem to express influences from the East (Poland and beyond), Urnfields belongs rather to the West, being its core area at the Rhine. Why would this make a difference? I am not sure but I have read that in the late Bell Beaker there may have been a real demic replacement in the Rhine area (from the Austrian-Czech area?). This might have allowed for founder effects that later spread with Urnfield culture maybe. Just a tentative conjecture anyhow.

Another possibility could be the older influence of Megalithism and "collective burial" (clannic burial probably) cultural package directly in that region (but not in East Germany).

Note on Basques: the three Basque samples of Izagirre & De la Rúa for this period are shown as two: I have merged the two samples of Biscay but shown as distinct the one from Navarre (Longar).


Antique and early Medieval (c. 600 BCE-800 CE):


Note: map updated (Oct 6th) in order to include the Iron Age Iberian data of Sampietro 2005.

Notice how Britain and Denmark already show a high apportions of H, as is the case of Italy (and SE Romania too in the previous map). While this says nothing directly on the previous situation, it may suggest that either (1) H was relatively high in southern Europe (besides Iberia) already in Paleolithic times and that (2) H spread (partly?) with Megalithism through the Atlantic. Still conjectural anyhow.

Take note also that one of the Italian samples is attributed to Luke the Evangelist (hence presumably of Syrian origin, haplogroup H2a2).


Late Medieval (c. 890-1300 CE):

Most noticeable is maybe the still relevant presence of N1a (2/27) in Medieval Hungary, haplogroup also found in the Danubian Neolithic that originated there. This really suggests that, in spite of its apparent numerical decline towards the present, European N1a can be rather safely considered of Middle Danubian origin. Haplogroup I, while not a direct descendant, is a close cousin of N1a and may have also coalesced in Central Europe.

The small Italian sample in this map belongs to Francesco Petrarca (J) and a woman buried in the same tomb (H).
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Post-glacial colonization created a "Celtic fringe" among small mammals too

It's not just humans, other mammals, who have not been affected by Neolithic or the Kurgan invasions as such, also show that pattern of genetic specificity at the edges of Great Britain. The animals (voles and shrews) show two unrelated clades, one of them more closely related to the continent, which arrived in a second phase, pushing the pioneering clades into forming a "Celtic fringe" of sorts at the periphery of the island.

Source: Jeremy B. Searle et al. The Celtic fringe of Britain: insights from small mammal phylogeography. PNAS 2009 (freely available, early publication).
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The IgNobel yearly fun

Always worth a good laugh, even if some of the winners actually researched truly interesting, albeit bizarre things.

While the winner that seems has caught the media attention has been a group of Chicago people who have developed the apparently absurd bra-gas mask (not just one but two!), I find that there are others more interesting and also funnier:

The IgNobel of Veterinary Medicine went to a couple of British researchers who demonstrated that named cows produce more milk. Love pays off and we all love that fact, right?

The Peace IgNobel was won by a Swiss team who researched what is better: to be hit on the head with an empty or full bottle of beer. Better to dodge it, right? Anyhow, according to an old friend and namesake of mine the best strategy is to break the bottle at the bar and put the remaining pointy half-bottle by the neck of your opponent, who will quickly admit defeat. If you don't have a beer bottle at hand, then maybe grab a stool and wave it over the opponent's head wildy (similar effect probably). Also, another self-defense trick is to use your home keys as improvised pointy knuckles and hit right to the eyes, though this applies more for an empty street than a crowded tavern. But well, my brawler friends are not IgNobel winners, so guess I'm just ranting.

The Medicine IgNobel was indeed well deserved: a Californian, Donald L. Unger, researched a possible cause of arthritis by cracking his left hand knuckles systematically every day for 60 years, while keeping his right hand untouched. Quite admirable sense of self-discipline, really!

The Physics IgNobel is quite weird too: a team of the University of Texas got it for determining why pregnant women do not tip over. Wonder why, really.

But the best is maybe the Chemistry prize that went to a team of Mexico University for creating diamonds out of nothing less than the national liquor: tequila! Diamonds may be forever but they are not anymore what they used to be, that's pretty clear.

For the rest, read the source: BBC.
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Paleolithic tools in Japan from 120,000 years ago

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Most fascinating discovery the one that Mundo Neandertal mentions today: lithic tools have been found in Japan dating (by stratigraphy) to 127-110,000 years ago. The information I could read so far is very limited (metions sharp lithic tools, not the typical Mosuterian or Acheulean biface) but it may suggest that our kin were already in Asia as early as that date.

Of course, the tools could have been made by some other Homo species, like Homo erectus but the dates are in concordance with the earliest known presence of our species in West Asia (dated arguably to maybe as early as 130,000 BP) and maybe South Asia too, where the first bladelets appear c. 105,000 BP. Even if not conclusive as of yet, the finding seems to add evidence to support an early out of Africa migration at the time of the Abbassia Pluvial, when the Sahara was green and transitable.


Update (Sep 11): I found a half-decent article from the blog Heritage of Japan that even includes a picture of some of the 20 artifacts. Most interestingly the artifacts have been re-dated to c. 70 Ka ago, a quite reasonable date for the arrival of the very first H. sapiens to the area. They are clearly  not Acheulean (the technology of H. erectus) and could well belong to the flake industry tradition of our kin in Eastern Eurasia.

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The Neolithic aDNA map of Europe

Voilá:


Based on: Izagirre & De la Rúa 1999 (Basque Country by the Upper Ebro, huge sample), Di Benedetto 2000 (Catalonia), Chandler 2005 (Portugal), Haak 2005 (Neolithic Central Europe), Sampietro 2007 (Italy), Bramanti 2009 (Neolithic "hunter-gatherers" of mainland Northern Europe) and Malström 2009 (Funnelbeaker and Pitted Ware from Sweden). But I mostly used the Ancient Eurasian DNA site for the references.

For comparison, see my previous post and map, on Paleolithic aDNA. I tried to use the same color coding.

Notes:

• Other means N1a in Central Europe, T+X (sic) in the Basque Country and I1 and W1 (one each) in Catalonia.
• T is T2 where tested downstream, but in some cases this is not determined.
• U* is U4 in Catalonia and Götland, U3 in SW Germany. Not determined in the other cases. In the Basque Country it should be U5 or U8a attending to modern clades and in Portugal could well be U6 for the same reason.

Interpretation:

It is quite hard to deal with, as we have huge blanks, specially in the East and SE. It would seem that Danubian Neolithic (LBK) meant a "Mediterraneization" of Central Europe. The new lineages nevertheless should have been picked up in the Balcans or Middle Danube but we have very limited data for that area. What we do have though (Austria, Hungary, North Italy) is consistent with such idea: 2 H, 1 T, 1 N1a (or 1 H, 1 N1a if you prefer to skip Italy).

It must be said that the importance of the oddball N1a seems somewhat hyped, as most of the cases appear in a small and then rather marginal area of East Germany that just happens to have been oversampled. If we exclude that district, the LBK mtDNA pool has only one N1a case, with T2 (4), H (3) and K (2) being the dominant lineages instead.

A counterpoint is Iberia, where Neolithic data is abundant:

In Portugal, continuity is pretty obvious: H, U5 and U* (U6?) persist at similar apportions as before and the main change is the loss of some "other" lineages and incorporation of novel V ones.

The large Basque sample does not belong to the archetypical mountain Basques but to the populations of the Ebro Valley, where the anthropometric data shows a clear input of "gracile mediterranean" types upon Neolithic arrival. It has nevertheless loads of H (c. 40%), suggestive of a good deal of continuity with the pre-Neolithic populations, if these were similar to the known Portuguese ones. The presence of U in large amounts is also suggestive of continuity and should be U5 and possibly U8a. K, J and that T+X "other" groups (totalling c. 40% too) look of Neolithic arrival, though the place of coalescence of K and T2 has not yet been determined safely.

A similar case seems to be that of Catalonia, though here I miss the mtDNA K, so over-abundant in the Basque case.

Review by lineages:

Haplogroup U:

• U5 - Clearly Paleolithic, once dominant in Central Europe and maybe other regions of the north but also frequent elsewhere. Today still somewhat common but specially in NE Europe.
• U4 - Also spotted among Central European hunter-gatherers. Today more or less like U5.
• K (derived from U8) - First seen in Neolithic Basque Country (lots!) and Central Europe (proportionally also very important), as well as Swedish Pitted Ware (regressed foragers of Chalcolithic Age) and Alpine Italy (Ötzi). Today is widespread at low amounts with highest frequency around the Alps, Bulgaria, Kurdistan and Georgia.
• Other U - Found in Swabia, Portugal and Morocco in the Paleolithic/Epipaleolithic. In the last two cases it could be U6 (today somewhat common in North Africa and Iberia). U3 first spotted in Neolithic Baden-Würtemberg (today most commonly found in Bulgaria, the Upper Danub and Britain maybe).

Haplogroup R0:

• HV - Found in Gravettian Italy and maybe other locations. Rare now in Europe but somewhat common in West Asia.
• H - First spotted without doubts in pre-Neolithic Portugal and Morocco, though it could have been common in Paleolithic southern Europe. Expanded to the North since Neolithic, it seems. Today widespread in Europe but most frequent in the Atlantic coasts and SW, as well as Albania, South Italy, Denmark and Norway.
• V - First detected in Paleolithic Morocco, in Europe not until Neolithic (Portugal, Central and North Europe). Today most common among Saami (Lapps), sub-Pyrenean areas and parts of North Africa. Also North Italy, Finland and at lower frequencies almost ubiquitous.

Haplogroup JT:

• JT - First spotted in Paleolithic Morocco. Today JT(xJ,T) is rare and mostly seen in North Africa and Italy.
• J - First found in Neolithic Basque Country, Catalonia East Germany and Sweden. Today widespread at low frequencies, somewhat higher in Northern Germany. Quite frequent in West Asia. Used to be the archetypal "Neolithic mtDNA marker".
• T - First detected in Neolithic Central and Northern Europe, as well as North Italy and Catalonia. Rather dominant in Neolithic Rhine area (40%) and Alpine Italy (50%). Seems all T2. Today variedly common, maybe most frequent in North Italy, Georgia and some Eastern European locations.

Haplogroup N1:

• N1 - Found in Gravettian Italy. Not found as such anymore, I believe.
• N1a - First spotted in Neolithic Central Europe, being dominant in East Germany (35%) and East Hungary (1/1). Apart of one case in Rhineland, not seen elsewhere. Today very rare.
• I - First found in Neolithic Catalonia (I1). Today variedly common... or not, at low frequencies anyhow.

Haplogroup N2:

• W - First detected in Neolithic Catalonia too. Today variedly common, specially in the Mediterranean and NE Europe. More frequent in West Asia and even India (where its cousin N2a is also found) and for me a quite clear "Neolithic marker" too.

Haplogroup X: not detected in aDNA up to Neolithic. The Basque Neolithic sample of Izagirre mentions 3 "T+X" but considering what is found elsewhere in Europe at the time, it's probably all T. Today mostly West Asian (X2), North African (X1) and Native American (X2).

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Updated (Oct. 5):

1. Corrected the legend to show haplogroup K.
2. Added Ötzi's K lineage to the series of Alpine Italy, as it's within that timeframe.

Please notice that the dates of the samples vary from c. 5500 to 3000 BCE. The later samples would be considered Chalcolithic by most prehistorians but the Baltic groups with high U were all (regressive?) hunter-gatherers. The dividing line between the various periods is not something straight but I find better anyhow that the maps follow consistent chronological timeframes. In this case, the map covers the period between Neolithic arrival and that of consolidation of Kurgan immigrants (Indoeuropeans), at the early/middle 3rd milennium (Globular Amphora and Corded Ware), event that may well split European Late Prehistory in two.
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Map of Paleolithic mtDNA in Europe

This seems to be what we know as of now of pre-Neolithic European mtDNA:

I just needed to create this map after the sometimes heated discussions at Dienekes' blog (and probably other places) after the publication of Bramanti 2009 (paywall but the supplementary material is freely available) and the even more confusing Malmstöm 2009, which in fact studies Neolithic hunter-gatherers rather than true Paleolithic samples.

I have included all hunter-gatherer samples from Bramanti's work except those of Funnelbeaker culture, which do in fact belong to the Neolithic period, even if they were (regressed?, subneolithic?) hunter-gatherers and (update) another case from NE Poland that would seem to belong to the same period (3rd milennium) and cultural area.

It's worth noticing that the samples in fact belong to various different periods anyhow: middle Upper Paleolithic in the case of Paglicci (Italy) and Sunghir (central Russia), late Upper Paleolithic in the case of Taforalt (Morocco) and a couple of the Swabian samples (the U* ones), and Epipaleolithic ("Mesolithic") in the rest.

The key issue is the lack of mtDNA H, the most common European lineage nowadays, in most or even maybe all the samples of Central/Northern/Eastern Europe, clearly dominated by U5 instead. On the other hand, H has been detected in dominant ammounts in pre-Neolithic Portugal and Morocco and its precursor, HV, was determined in the case of Gravettian age Italy.

I will deal with Neolithic aDNA later on but the case is that, while it begins to show up some H in Central and Northern Europe, it does not yet have it in the amounts that is found nowadays, while instead carries high amounts of mtDNA that is now pretty much rare (the most striking case is N1a, at least 12% among Danubian Neolithics but extremely rare today).

Notes:
- The other category includes a case determined to be N1 in Paglicci (Italy). It could be anything "exotic" in Portugal and Morocco.
- U(xU5) is determined to be U4 in the case of East Germany and Lithuania. It seems to be U6 in Morocco.

Sources:
- Ancient Eurasian DNA (reference site, thanks to PConroy for indicating this site)
- Caramelli 2003 and 2005
- Chandler 2005
- Kèfi 2005
- Bramanti 2009

Update (Oct 8th): a likely H individual from Di Benedetto 2000 (Villabruna, Trentino-South Tirol, c. 14,000 BP) was missing from this map. Somehow this was the piece that the puzzle needed so much to confirm widespread presence of H not just in Portugal but elsewhere in Southern Europe in the Paleolithic. So it's an important sample even if it only includes one individual.
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