Franz Manni’s research while affiliated with Natuurhistorisch Museum - Rotterdam and other places

A data mining technique called Self-Organized Maps (SOM) was used to select the surnames with populational information (monophyletic) to be used in the reconstruction of past demographic processes, in order to show the historical population migrations that have generated the current structure of the Spanish population. The technique made possible to identify groups of surnames with the same origin. Once the origin of each surname has been established, we can assume that each surname found outside its origin would have moved, at some point in the past, out of that original area, which allows to study historical movements. The observed movements reveal the existence of two main migratory arcs. Both migrations have moved along the coast; the first following the Mediterranean and the second following the Cantabrian Sea. It appears that these two arcs are those that have provided the backbone of the Spanish population, dividing it into two halves that would reach the limits of areas of influence of these arcs. Several types of movement have taken place (Isolation due to distance, Short-distance movements, Medium-distance movements, Long-distance movements). Those of short-medium distance have been the most frequent and most determinant in the current structure.

Gabon is an African country located very close to the homeland of Bantu languages (Cameroon). Starting about 5,000 years ago, Bantu-speaking populations diffused into almost all sub-Saharan Africa. By processing with computational linguistic methods (Levenshtein distance) two independently collected lexical data sets recording the pronunciation of 88 and 158 words in more than 50 linguistic varieties spoken in Gabon, we obtained a numerical classification of the major linguistic groups. We compared this classification to those available based on historical linguistics methods (cognate-sharing defined by experts), and found them to overlap, which indicates that the two methods capture the same signal of linguistic difference (and relatedness). To focus on the historical relatedness between major linguistic clusters, we controlled for the linguistic similarity related to contact, proportional to geographic vicinity, and suggested that the first Bantu-speaking groups to people Gabon where those speaking KOTA-KELE (B20) languages. The other varieties concern five different immigration waves (B10, B30, B40, B50-B60-B70—Guthrie nomenclature) that penetrated Gabon later in history. To conclude, we suggest a peopling scenario that incorporates available paleoclimatic, archaeological, and population genetic evidence.

Studies are shown on many aspects of migration, population development, human genetics, archaeology, anthropology, biology, linguistics, and a broad range of genomic studies on migration and cultural and social structures in the past and present. Human migration started in Africa spread to Asia and other regions of our globe and was assessed by studies on ancient and contemporary mtDNA sequencing distributed from the artic to South America. The evolutionary consequences of the settlement of the Aleutian Islands, Samoyedic-speaking populations from Siberia; early human migrations in Gabon Africa, the Republic of Sakha (formerly, Yakutia), African migration to Europe during the twenty-first century, and the Y-chromosome diversity in Aztlan descendants associated with the History of Central Mexico. Human migration influenced by cultural practices was evaluated by biocultural approaches to migration and urbanization in the Peruvian Amazonia, the Ch’orti’ Maya Diaspora in Search of Fertile Forests and Political Security. Evidence of human migration in the Puyil Cave (Puxcatán, Tabasco), the Maya and Zoques to the Mountain Region of Tabasco, Chiapas, Campeche, Quintana Too and Yucatan (from linguistic and archaeological perspectives) are also considered. It documented the migration of specific populations in the geographic distribution of diseases such as Dengue, and Mycobacterium. Human Migration: Biocultural Perspective explains human migration as a major contributor to globalization that facilitates gene flow and the exchange of cultures and ideas.

In a previous study concerning 33,753 single Spanish surnames (considered as tokens) occurring 51,419,788 times we have shown that the present-day geography of contemporary surname variability in Spain still corresponds to the political geography of the country at the end of the Middle Ages. Here we reprocess the same database, by clustering surnames with Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs) according to their geographic distribution, to identify the monophyletic surnames showing a geo-historical origin in one of the 47 provinces of continental Spain. They are 25,714, and they occur 12,348,109 times, meaning that about 75% of the Spanish population bears a surname that had a polyphyletic origin. From monophyletic surnames we compute migration matrices accounting for the internal migrations that took place since five centuries ago, when Spanish surnames started to be patrilineally inherited. The mono/ polyphyletic classification we obtain fits ancient census data and is compatible with published molecular diversity of the Y-chromosomes associated to selected Spanish surnames. Monophyletic surnames indicate that i) the provinces exhibiting a higher percentage of autochthonous surnames are also ii) those from which emigration corresponds to a local isolation-by-distance model of diffusion and iii) those that attracted a lower number of immigrants. These are also the provinces where languages other than Castilian are spoken. We suggest that demographic stability explains linguistic resilience, as people prefer to move to areas in which the linguistic variety is more similar to their own. So far the reciprocal influence of migration and language has been investigated at local scales, here we outline how to investigate it at national scales and for time-depths of centuries.

We have documented language varieties (either Turkic or Indo-European) spoken in 23 test sites by 88 informants belonging to the major ethnic groups of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (Karakalpaks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Yaghnobis). The recorded linguistic material concerns 176 words of the extended Swadesh list and will be made publically available with the publication of this paper. Phonological diversity is measured by the Levenshtein distance and displayed as a consensus bootstrap tree and as multidimensional scaling plots. Linguistic contact is measured as the number of borrowings, from one linguistic family into the other, according to a precision/recall analysis further validated by expert judgment. Concerning Turkic languages, the results of our sample do not support Kazakh and Karakalpak as distinct languages and indicate the existence of several separate Karakalpak varieties. Kyrgyz and Uzbek, on the other hand, appear quite homogeneous. Among the Indo-Iranian languages, the distinction between Tajik and Yaghnobi varieties is very clear-cut. More generally, the degree of borrowing is higher than average where language families are in contact in one of the many sorts of situations characterizing Central Asia: frequent bilingualism, shifting political boundaries, ethnic groups living outside the “mother” country.

To assess whether the present-day geographical variability of Spanish surnames mirrors historical phenomena occurred at the times of their introduction (13th-16th century), and to infer the possible effect of foreign immigration (about 11% of present-day) on the observed patterns of diversity, we have analyzed the frequency distribution of 33,753 unique surnames (tokens) occurring 51,419,788 times, according to the list of Spanish residents of the year 2008. Isonymy measures and surname distances have been computed for, and between, the 47 mainland Spanish provinces and compared to a numerical classification of corresponding language varieties spoken in Spain. The comparison of the two bootstrap consensus trees, representing surname and linguistic variability, suggests a similar picture; major clusters are located in the east (Aragón, Cataluña, Valencia), and in the north of the country (Asturias, Galicia, León). Remaining regions appear to be considerably homogeneous. We interpret this pattern as the long-lasting effect of the surname and linguistic normalization actively led by the Christian kingdoms of the north (Reigns of Castilla y León and Aragón) during and after the southwards reconquest (Reconquista) of the territories ruled by the Arabs from the 8th century to the late 15th century, that is when surnames became transmitted in a fixed way and when Castilian linguistic varieties became increasingly prestigious and spread out. The geography of contemporary surname and linguistic variability in Spain corresponds to the political geography at the end of the Middle-Ages. The synchronicity between surname adoption and the political and cultural effects of the Reconquista have permanently forged a Spanish identity that subsequent migrations, internal or external, did not deface.

The paper illustrates how the application of a specific version of Artificial neural net- works, Self-organizing Maps (SoMs), enabled a more accurate analysis of human dental mor- phology. SoMs enable the processing of individual samples (dentitions) because they can cope with missing data. In fact, in archaeological samples of human remains, teeth are often broken or missing making a complete set of morphological traits often impossible to achieve. other classification methods like principal component Analysis, Multidimensional Scaling, Mean Measure of Divergence, Multiple correspondence Analysis do not handle missing descriptors and incomplete data matrices have to be “filled in”, thus leading to a certain approximation in the outcome with a lack of geographical or temporal resolution, as many incomplete samples have to be merged into a virtual one that does not present missing descriptors. our discussion about the proficiency of SoMs, and Anns in general, in the exploration and classification of anthropological databases concerning morphology is based on a specific case study, that is the classification of a neanderthal sample. Through this example we would like to attract the attention of anthropologists and archaeologists to a very flexible methodology that is seldom applied, despite being widely used in many other disciplines.