On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib discusses the genetic and archaeological history of Europe from the arrival of modern humans (permanently) 45,000 years ago, to the end of the Bronze Age in the decades after 1200 BC. He covers these time periods:

• Pre-Aurignacian (before 43 kya)

• Aurignacian (43-26 kya)

• Gravettian (33-21 kya)

• Solutrean (22-17 kya)

• Magdalenian (17-12 kya)

• Epigravettian (21-10 kya)

• Mesolithic (12-7 kya)

• Neolithic (9-5 kya)

• Bronze Age (5-3 kya)

The full episode is available for paid subscribers on: https://www.razibkhan.com/p/europe-40000-bc-to-1200-bc

Relevant papers:

• Reconstructing contact and a potential interbreeding geographical zone between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans

• The Persian plateau served as hub for Homo sapiens after the main out of Africa dispersal

• A genome sequence from a modern human skull over 45,000 years old from Zlatý kůň in Czechia

• An early modern human from Romania with a recent Neanderthal ancestor

• Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers

• Survival of Late Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherer Ancestry in the Iberian Peninsula

• A 23,000-year-old southern Iberian individual links human groups that lived in Western Europe before and after the Last Glacial Maximum

• Population genomics of Mesolithic Scandinavia: Investigating early postglacial migration routes and high-latitude adaptation

• Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first farmers of central Anatolia

• Genomic Evidence Establishes Anatolia as the Source of the European Neolithic Gene Pool

• ​​Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe

• The genomic ancestry of the Scandinavian Battle Axe Culture people and their relation to the broader Corded Ware horizon

• The genomic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 8000 years

• Steppe Ancestry in western Eurasia and the spread of the Germanic Languages

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Misha Saul, the host of the Kvetch Substack. Saul is a first-generation Jewish Australian, born in Georgia (former Soviet republic), who grew up in Adelaide and now lives in Sydney. He graduated from the University of Adelaide with degrees in commerce and law. His day job is in finance, but the Kvetch highlights his interests in history and Jewish culture.

Razib and Saul discuss extensively the differences and similarities between the US and Australia, and how each relates to other Anglophone nations like Canada, New Zealand and of course the UK. Saul asserts though Australia leans into its frontier reputation, in reality it is much more of a bureaucratic-ruled nation than the US, albeit with more of a Scots-Irish flavor than comparatively middle-class New Zealand. He also contrasts the relatively generous welfare-state of Australia and America’s inequality, which he describes by analogy to the film 2013 Elysium, with its contrast between an earth dominated by favelas and a well-manicured low-earth orbit utopia for the super rich. They also discuss the geographical and cultural coherency of a vast nation like Australia, which has a desert at its center. Saul mentions it is often actually cheaper to fly to and vacation in Bali or another Asian locale than going to Perth from Sydney. Despite the reality that Australia has exotic fauna, it is notably an overwhelmingly urban society, where few have any interaction with the “bush.” Though Australians appreciate archetypes like “Crocodile Dundee,” Saul paints a picture of a much more urbane reality. Razib asks about the phenomenon of “white-presenting” Aboriginals, and Saul argues all societies look somewhat crazy from the outside because of their shibboleths, and the debates around Aboriginality are Australia’s.

As an immigrant and first-generation Australian, Saul also discusses Australia’s immigration system, which strictly controls and regulates migration. Saul argues that because of the high educational and skill qualifications most Australian immigrants assimilate well, and he contends that there is a broad consensus to maintain strict limits on inflows. He argues that the Anglo-Australian identity is strong enough that the assimilative process continues to work even with the large number of Asians from China and India, who have triggered nativist worries and political activism.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Cremieux, a Twitter anon who is regularly retweeted by the likes of Paul Graham, Noah Smith and Elon Musk. A data scientist and statistician, Cremieux specializes in visualizations and analyses that cut to the heart of social and cultural dynamics, from economics to behavior genetics. Cremieux and Razib first discuss the polls and demographic results of the 2024 election, in which Donald Trump seems to have made broad-based gains across all demographics. They also discuss the mirage of the “emerging Democratic majority,” and the possibility that Latinos and Asians shifted so much in the last four years that the racial depolarization predicted by analysts like David Shor since 2012 has finally come to pass.

Cremieux also talks about the likely policy outcomes implied by Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk’s slated heavy involvement in the next Trump administration, from the exit of Lina Khan to the reversal of numerous Biden executive orders in areas like employment and civil rights. Cremieux argues that there will be a massive house-cleaning in the civil service. Cremieux has talked to Ramaswamy’s people; if Ramaswamy gets a role like chief of staff, they plan to operationalize insights from Richard Hanania’s book, The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics.