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Hugh McColl

@hmcccoll
 Copenhagen, Denmark
Joined December 2015
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Photo by Hugh McColl (@hmcccoll)Photo by Hugh McColl (@hmcccoll)Photo by Hugh McColl (@hmcccoll)Photo by Hugh McColl (@hmcccoll)
Super excited to share our two papers published in Nature today! 🧬 We use ancient genomics to explore how Germanic and Celtic languages spread across Europe. Here's a video of our findings, produced by Nicolas Delgado Clausen! youtube.com/watch?v=gyxAROOa…
Tracing the Spread of Celtic and Germanic Languages Using Ancient...

Tracing the Spread of Celtic and Germanic Languages Using Ancient...

How did Celtic and Germanic languages spread across Europe, and wha...

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Further west, Celtic languages survive mainly in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Brittany. But where did they come from? For over a century, scholars have debated whether Celtic languages originated along Europe's Atlantic coast or farther east. nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
Tracing the spread of Celtic languages using ancient genomics

Tracing the spread of Celtic languages using ancient genomics

Nature - Genome-wide data from 4,587 ancient individuals are analysed, focusing on Bronze and Iron Age Europe, to test the extent to which alternative archaeological and linguistic models for the...

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We found a movement from Central Europe ~3,000 years ago, spreading west into France, Britain, Ireland and Iberia. This provides a compelling explanation for the spread of Celtic languages, challenging theories of an Atlantic origin
Image from Hugh McColl (@hmcccoll)
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Do you like riddles(and molecular biology)? Maybe you can help me solve this one. We’ve found a short piece of DNA (plasmid) present in almost all plague samples from the Second Plague Pandemic (1338-1840), but absent in all earlier or later plague cases. biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…
A near-ubiquitous plasmid characterises Second Pandemic Yersinia pestis

A near-ubiquitous plasmid characterises Second Pandemic Yersinia pestis

Yersinia pestis , the causative agent of plague, crippled population across Eurasia in three well-described historical pandemics: The Justinianic plague (541-780), the Second Pandemic (1346-1840) and...

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Excited to share our preprint on the spread of megaliths in Neolithic Europe. Trade networks formed in the wake of migrations, and megaliths then spread within those networks. On their own, migration and cultural diffusion tell an incomplete story. biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…
Migrations facilitated the cultural diffusion of megaliths in Neolithic Europe

Migrations facilitated the cultural diffusion of megaliths in Neolithic Europe

Around 6700 BP (years before present), Neolithic Europe saw the emergence of megalithic monuments in northern France, followed by a rapid spread to the rest of the continent[1][1]. However, whether...

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Image from Hugh McColl (@hmcccoll)
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A little bit of reading material for your easter vacation: We found evidence of a population collapse in France 5,000 years ago in our new paper in Nature Evology and Evolution. Check it out! nature.com/articles/s41559-0… #NeolithicDecline #ancientDNA
Population discontinuity in the Paris Basin linked to evidence of the Neolithic decline

Population discontinuity in the Paris Basin linked to evidence of the Neolithic decline

Nature Ecology & Evolution - Analysis of ancient human genomes from a Neolithic collective gallery grave in northern France points to population discontinuity and turnover between the third and...

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Celtic languages are now limited to NW Europe, but they were once far more widespread. How did they spread? I'm excited to have contributed to this new ancient DNA study led by @hmcccoll exploring exactly that. 🧬 1/n biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Image from Will Barrie (@WilliamBarrie)
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Keen to work on the co-evolution of domesticates, humans and their pathogens? Come join us at Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen! We're hiring a postdoc in ancient genomics for a super cool project on Neolithic Sweden: employment.ku.dk/faculty/?sh… #AcademicJobs #AncientDNA
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Our paper is finally out: Genetic and training adaptations in the Haenyeo divers of Jeju, Korea: Cell Reports ⁦@ras_nielsen⁩ ⁦@andrewhvaughn⁩ cell.com/cell-reports/fullte…
Genetic and training adaptations in the Haenyeo divers of Jeju, Korea

Genetic and training adaptations in the Haenyeo divers of Jeju, Korea

Aguilar-Gómez et al. find evidence of evolutionary adaptation with potential relevance to breath-hold diving in the Haenyeo divers of Korea. Genetic variants under selection in this population may...

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aDNA/aeDNA folks: tired of eyeballing hundreds of damage plots? I am excited to introduce AdDeam—a tool to rapidly generate damage profiles, cluster them, and spot outliers. biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
AdDeam: A Fast and Scalable Tool for Estimating and Clustering Reference-Level Damage Profiles

AdDeam: A Fast and Scalable Tool for Estimating and Clustering Reference-Level Damage Profiles

Motivation DNA damage patterns, such as increased frequencies of C → T and G → A substitutions at fragment ends, are widely used in ancient DNA studies to assess authenticity and detect contaminati...

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Exploring the power of IBD, we took a fresh look at the Celtic linguistic dispersal. Following up on Patterson et al. 2022, we found not one, but two ancestry pulses into M/LBA Britain during the M/LBA: one from France/Iberia and another from C Europe. biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Tracing the Spread of Celtic Languages using Ancient Genomics

Tracing the Spread of Celtic Languages using Ancient Genomics

Celtic languages, including Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Breton, are today restricted to the Northern European Atlantic seaboard. However, between 3 and 2 thousand years before present (BP)...

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Hugh McColl retweeted
Leo Speidel (@leo_speidel) profile picture
Leo Speidel@leo_speidel1 Jan 2025
Happy New Year! Our Twigstats paper is now out! nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
High-resolution genomic history of early medieval Europe

High-resolution genomic history of early medieval Europe

Nature - Twigstats, a method for ancestry reconstruction, provides high-resolution genetic histories and movement patterns of people living in Europe during the first millennium ce.

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Kicking off the new year, our paper by @leo_speidel et al. is out describing what to me is a breakthrough in ancient genomics. By using genealogies to study ancestry we can get much more resolution to study finer-scale history. We call this method Twigstats.
Image from Pontus Skoglund (@pontus_skoglund)
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Deadline extended to Sept. 27th!
Rasmus Nielsen (@ras_nielsen) profile pictureRasmus Nielsen@ras_nielsen18 Jul 2024
Faculty position in Human Evolutionary Biology at UC Berkeley: aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04…
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So so excited to see our paper on Thorin, a late Neanderthal man from Grotte Mandrin, out in Cell Genomics today! He belonged to a genetic lineage deeply diverged from other known late Neanderthals. Check it out here cell.com/cell-genomics/fullt…
Long genetic and social isolation in Neanderthals before their extinction

Long genetic and social isolation in Neanderthals before their extinction

Slimak et al. report the discovery of a late Neanderthal individual from Grotte Mandrin in Mediterranean France and its genome. The genome reveals a relatively early divergence at ∼100,000 years ago...

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Hugh McColl retweeted
Tom Higham (@tommyhigham) profile picture
Tom Higham@tommyhigham11 Sep 2024
Really proud to co-author this paper on the genetic history of the Rapa Nui people. The genomes of 15 Rapa Nui reveal admixture with ancient South Americans took place soon after first landfall w. no later drop in gen. diversity consistent with 'ecocide'. nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
Ancient Rapanui genomes reveal resilience and pre-European contact with the Americas

Ancient Rapanui genomes reveal resilience and pre-European contact with the Americas

Nature - An analysis of 15 ancient genomes from individuals dating to AD 1670–1950 from Rapa Nui (also known as Easter Island) addresses questions about the population history of the island.

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