Ready for the final concert of the unbelievable Bach-Marathon, with Thomas-Organist Johannes Lang performing all(!) organ works from J.S.Bach in 14 back-to-back concerts, through 21 hours. I have attended 4 of the concerts, and it was a transcendental experience, for lack of adequate superlatives.

Two papers to which I contributed came out back to back in Antiquity recently, which discuss African ancestry in early medieval individuals from England. Even though the data has been available since 2023, we now dedicated more space to these two special samples, and highlight this unusual […]

There is a very nice documentary about the ancient Saxons on Arte and YouTube available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzwMzEEnKEE

It features our genetic study from 2022 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05247-2 with prominent interviews of lead authors Joscha Gretzinger and […]

Menschheitsgeschichte in den Genen ablesen Die DNA ist eine Art Gedächtnis unserer Geschichte. Von Generation zu Generation vererben Menschen Eigenschaften weiter. Das Genom wird so zu einem Archiv.

Faszinierender Einblick in die Populationsgenetik von @stschiff im #Deutschlandfunk Nova Hörsaal: www.deutschlandfunknova.de/beitrag/populationsgenet...

Mein Vortrag bei der langen Nacht der Wissenschaften ist nun verfügbar als Podcast bei Deutschlandfunk Nova, z.b. hier (www.deutschlandfunknova.de/beitrag/populationsgenet... oder hier (https://open.spotify.com/episode/1s6N6Yv9tUQu5X20noqcrg […]

Excited to share our new preprint "High resolution analysis of population structure using rare variants" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.... where we investigate and formalise using rare allele sharing to quantify population structure, with application and examples in […]

#SMBE #SMBE2025
Just notice the preprint of Rare Allele Sharing (RAS) statistics was out on the same day of my talk in @official-smbe.bsky.social . Great thanks to my supervisor @stschiff.bsky.social and co-author Thiseas Christos Lamnidis!

Pls spread the word! We have a postdoc position available in the Rocha Lab @mpi-muenster.bsky.social. Join our team to study mechanisms underlying robust organ development using zebrafish embryos and human organoids.

mpi-muenster.mpg.de/career

Out-of-Anatolia: Cultural and genetic interactions during the Neolithic expansion in the Aegean West Anatolia has been a crucial yet elusive element in the Neolithic expansion from the Fertile Crescent to Europe. In this work, we describe the changing genetic and cultural landscapes of early Hol...

Happy to share our new study from my PhD on the spread of farming across Anatolia and into the Aegean and then into Europe. @compevohumang.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

👇🏽

Seeking a few Postdoctoral Researchers at Mathematical Genomics RIKEN ECL Research Unit (25-695)

Postdoc position in my group in Tokyo!
Please get in touch if you are interested.

And happy to discuss projects - these would range from developing new methods to analysis of new genomes that we are now sequencing in the lab.

Job Ad: www.riken.jp/en/careers/r...
Lab page: speidellab.github.io

Morgen auf der langen Nacht der Wissenschaften gibt's von mir um 22:00 Uhr einen Vortrag mit dem Titel "Gene und Geschichte – Wie alte DNA unsere bewegte Vergangenheit erzählt". Herzliche Einladung ans @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social

Am 20. Juni ist es soweit: Das @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social lädt zur Langen Nacht der Wissenschaften ein! 😊 Ab 18 Uhr erwarten Euch spannende Vorträge & eine bunte Vielfalt an Mitmachstationen rund um #Menschheitsgeschichte 🧬🧪 & #Primatenevolution. 🐒 Unser Programm: www.eva.mpg.de/de/veranstal...

Seminars

Our #PhD students are excited to hear @stschiff.bsky.social speak about "Spatial inference of population structure and prehistoric human mobility from ancient and modern #genomes" tomorrow for our #PopGen Seminar series.
Full schedule and streaming signup at www.popgen-vienna.at/news/seminars/

Abstract deadline 30th June for the London ancient genome and human biology event of the year this November! @gensocuk.bsky.social

🧵1/n ✨🔮✨ Meet (y)our instructors of this year's #HAAMsummerschool 👇 #aDNA #course #humanpopgen

Professur für Archäologie des antiken Mittelmeerraumes und seiner Umwelt (W2)

Open position at @unileipzig.bsky.social for professor of archaeology of the antique Mediterranean! www.uni-leipzig.de/stellenaussc...

Mailand: Die Toten im Untergrund In Gewölben unter einem alten Krankenhaus in Mailand liegen die Gebeine Tausender Menschen. Sie erzählen von Hunger, Leid - und Drogen.

For my German Leserschaft: New story on the crypts of Milan's Ca' Granda hospital in ‪@szde.bsky.social‬ this weekend / neue Geschichte im @szde.bsky.social über die Krypten von Ca' Granda in Mailand, reprinted from @science.org and translated by @jakwet.bsky.social:

90% of doing science is being open to new ideas.

Weshalb der Rechtspopulismus christlichen Werten fundamental widerspricht - 27.05.25, 18:30 Anmeldung bis zum 21.5.2025 erforderlich, bitte hier klicken! Die liberale Demokratie ist ja weit mehr als nur ein politisches System. Sie schützt grundlegende Werte wie Freiheit, Menschenwürde und Ge...

Hallo Oberbergischer Kreis! Am 27. Mai spreche ich in der #Demokratiekirche Oberberg: www.demokratiekirche-oberberg.de/veranstaltun...

Clothing—not agriculture—helped spread a tick disease 5000 years ago New study of a pathogen’s Bronze Age spread challenges longstanding links between disease and early agriculture

Scientists used to think diseases that jump from animals to people really took off when people started domesticating cattle, sheep and goats 11,000 years ago. A new look at ancient bacterial DNA in @science.org by @poojaswali.bsky.social and colleagues suggests the pivotal moment came much later.

Really impressive and moving interview by @baym.lol about the Harvard cuts.

Poseidon now supports VCF files (and pileupCaller does, too)! blog.poseidon-adna.org/posts/vcf_po...

Call for #PhD students open! Apply by 14 May to start your research career in #evolution #genetics in beautiful #Vienna among a fun international and interdisciplinary crowd of peers #evolVienna #bioinformatics #bigdata #Drosophila #adaptation #popgen

photo of MPI-EVA's pond in the courtyard

Happy to see that Max Planck institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is on @bsky.app as well! @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social welcome! Also great that the weather slowly starts to allow lunch outside by the pond at the institute ;)

Ancient DNA Points to Origins of Indo-European Language (Gift Article) A new study claims to have identified the first speakers of Indo-European language, which gave rise to English, Sanskrit and hundreds of others.

If you need another break from current news, come with me 7000 years ago to search for the first speakers of Indo-European languages. 🧪 Gift link: nyti.ms/42ILio5

Continental influx and pervasive matrilocality in Iron Age Britain - Nature An analysis of ancient mitochondrial and nuclear DNA shows evidence of matrilocal communities in Iron Age Britain.

Sorry: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Woah. Two of my top trigger words in one paper. Gotta read!

Part of ancient Britain was a woman’s world, burials reveal 2000-year-old graves suggest women wielded as much—and sometimes more—power than men in some Celtic tribes

Here is a nice News piece (science.org/content/arti...) by
@spoke32.bsky.social about the work, with a quote from my former student Joscha Gretzinger 6/6

What I get from this is that we should all be more data-mining of published data. There are still hidden gems in there, and as the data is growing faster than people can analyze, the rate of unpublished gems may be growing! 5/6

Turns out the British Iron Age really stands out with its low MT-diversity, being almost uncannily consistent with Roman and other historic writers about Celtic tribes in Britain and their powerful women. Amazing! 4/6