"Huge" Genographic Project ancient DNA study underway?

A reader forwards a comment posted to a mailing list yesterday by a project administrator attending FamilyTreeDNA's Houston conference:

Report from the mixer -- Spencer Wells was there and spoke enticingly of a huge ancient DNA research project that's been underway for some time, in which, instead of a simple replacement by incoming Neolithic populations, they are seeing wave after wave of peoples coming over thousands of years, each wave adding a stratum superimposed on those before it. The set of haplogroups seen in the earlier strata were not like the ones we see today. In particular he says mtDNA H was not there until a fairly recent, post-Neolithic date.

It's clear from already-published ancient DNA results that at least some sublineages of H were present in Neolithic Europe -- but H does seem to have become much more common since then.

He is still apparently clinging to a rather old date for R1b, though. He seems to think it had a major expansion about 10,000 years ago. Haven't genetic genealogists mostly been arguing for a considerably more recent time frame? I hope to see some R1b experts engage him in dialog on that point.

That's a 20,000 year step in the right direction. I won't begrudge him the other 5,000 years for now. I just hope the "huge" ancient DNA effort underway includes Y chromosomes. Another comment from the FTDNA conference:

Katherine, Emily, Joan and Bonnie are already tweeting from the FTDNA conference. Their Twitter accounts are: @khborges, @Genealem, @Luxegen and @Greenleafy

You can also follow the hashtag #FTDNA2011 though not all the tweets are going out with the hashtag. [. . .]

FTDNA has tested over 600,000 people.

The Genographic Project has 450,000 public participation samples and 75,000 indigenous samples.

The Genographic Project has two Basque papers going into journals this week and another paper which includes mtDNA haplogroup U5 is due out next year.

And a few more twitter comments:

khborges Katherine H. Borges SW-Phase 1 of Geno is wrapping up. Phase 2 to begin #FTDNA2011

khborges Katherine H. Borges #FTDNA2011 #Genographic SW- 1 in 17 men in Med are descended from Phoenician traders

khborges Katherine H. Borges #FTDNA2011 #Genographic SW-East Asian human migration patterns follow the rivers

khborges Katherine H. Borges #FTDNA2011 #Genographic SW-10 papers are going off to the journals next week and about a dozen more in the pipeline

Luxegen Joan Miller SW - teaser - big announcement coming in Genographic project next year. #FTDNA2011