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Thursday, February 2, 2017

The Neolithic transition in the Baltic


Open access at Current Biology:

Summary: The Neolithic transition was a dynamic time in European prehistory of cultural, social, and technological change. Although this period has been well explored in central Europe using ancient nuclear DNA [1, 2], its genetic impact on northern and eastern parts of this continent has not been as extensively studied. To broaden our understanding of the Neolithic transition across Europe, we analyzed eight ancient genomes: six samples (four to ∼1- to 4-fold coverage) from a 3,500 year temporal transect (∼8,300–4,800 calibrated years before present) through the Baltic region dating from the Mesolithic to the Late Neolithic and two samples spanning the Mesolithic-Neolithic boundary from the Dnieper Rapids region of Ukraine. We find evidence that some hunter-gatherer ancestry persisted across the Neolithic transition in both regions. However, we also find signals consistent with influxes of non-local people, most likely from northern Eurasia and the Pontic Steppe. During the Late Neolithic, this Steppe-related impact coincides with the proposed emergence of Indo-European languages in the Baltic region [3, 4]. These influences are distinct from the early farmer admixture that transformed the genetic landscape of central Europe, suggesting that changes associated with the Neolithic package in the Baltic were not driven by the same Anatolian-sourced genetic exchange.

...

Further, the Y chromosomes of two of our Latvian Mesolithic samples were assigned to haplogroup R1b (the maximum-likelihood sub-haplogroup is R1b1b), which is the most common haplogroup found in modern Western Europeans [36].

Jones at al., The Neolithic Transition in the Baltic Was Not Driven by Admixture with Early European Farmers, Current Biology, Published Online: February 02, 2017, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.12.060

See also...

First look at Latvian and Ukrainian ancient genomes

70 comments:

Samuel Andrews said...

The Baltic Hunter Gatherers had R1b1 but were much closer to WHG than to WHG. Maybe R1b1 is a WHG lineage.

Rob said...

Matt

The MN Latvians are U4
IIRC, they've been found in Mesolithic Motala and Germany, as well as Siberians

Rob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Samuel Andrews said...

Baltic HG mtDNA....
U5a1=2(U5a1c=1), U4=2(U4a1=1), U2e1=1

Those are lineages which have been considered EHG. pre-U2e has found Paleolithic Belgium, early forms of U2'3'4'7'8'9 have been found all over Paleolithic Western Europe. So the reason Baltic HGs and EHG had similar mtDNA could be because EHG's mtDNA is mostly WHG(ultimaty Paleo Western European).

Samuel Andrews said...

@Rob,
"The maximal "diversity" of R1b is in Southern/SEE Europe . This has been known for long time"

We still don't know where WHG is orignally from or even exactly what it is. They could be very mixed, a hyprid who remained isolated for 1,000s of years, acquired drift, then expanded. They could be from Spain, Italy, SE Europe, pretty much any plot of land that wasn't covered in Ice 20,000+ years ago.

ElMiron died in Spain 20,000 years ago, had mtDNA U5b, and had lots of affinity to WHG. Therefore we shouldn't be confident WHG originated in SouthEast Europe.

EastPole said...

“The presence of a Steppe-related component in Latvia_LN1 in the absence of an Anatolian farmer-related genetic input supports a Steppe rather than an Anatolian origin for the Balto-Slavic branch of the IndoEuropean language family.”


This is interesting and indeed may be the clue to the origin of Corded Ware, and Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages.
Such a hypothesis comes to my head:
PIE most likely originated somewhere on the step. Split into two main dialects associated with R1a and R1b before the admixture with EEF.
So for example Early Corded Ware could come from Late Sredny Stog Dereivka culture. When it migrated North and West it spoke an early Balto-Slavic. Then mixed with EEF in Poland and evolved into early Slavic: after that it migrated north-east and mixed with some Balto-Slavic groups and HGs and became Balts; the CWC which migrated east later mixed with some steppe groups and became Indo-Iranians.

Davidski said...

Lack of any sort of ancient R1b in Balts means there was a population turnover from the MN to LN in the East Baltic, and it came from the steppe with people who carried R1a-M417.

R1b-M269 also comes from the steppe. I don't see the results in this paper changing that perception. It's a pity the Ukrainian foragers were females.

Rob said...

@ Sam

It's still guessing, but I guess that's where the prerequisite knowledge of European prehistory that some people have comes into play in making informed and credible predictions instead of random hypotheses

rozenblatt said...

@ Davidski : "It's a pity the Ukrainian foragers were females." Are they? In the paper they described as males: "The Ukrainian Mesolithic and Neolithic male samples (Ukraine_HG1 [11,143–10,591 cal BP] and Ukraine_N1 [6,469–6,293 cal BP], respectively)". Unless it's a typo of course.

Samuel Andrews said...

The Baltic HGs and Ukrainain HGs were mostly WHG with some ANE.

Davidski said...

Wait, so the Ukrainian samples are males? Where's their Y-DNA?

Shaikorth said...



Lazaridis tweeted:
"D(Mbuti, MA1; Ukraine_HG1, Ukraine_N1) has Z=0.636 in Table S2, so no evidence of increased ANE from Mesolithic->Neolithic in Ukraine"

That contradicts what the study suggests (increased ANE). But then again:


Mbuti MA1 Loschbour Ukraine_HG1 0.0114 0.936 447952

Mbuti MA1 Loschbour Ukraine_N1 0.0510 4.179 439711

So perhaps the lower amount of SNP's in the Mbuti, MA1; Ukraine_HG1, Ukraine_N1 comparison (84801) depresses the Z score.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Rob,
"It's still guessing, but I guess that's where the prerequisite knowledge of European prehistory that some people have comes into play in making informed and credible predictions instead of random hypotheses"

Cheer up and ask yourself why you're always a douche bag.

Unknown said...

Samuel Andrews said...
Ukrainain HG was mostly WHG with some ANE.

It was the western part of EHG 11000 years ago.

Shaikorth said...

Ukrainian HG indeed does look like EHG sans ANE, closer to Karelia but not to MA-1 compared to Bichon and Loschbour.

Mbuti MA1 Bichon Ukraine_HG1 0.0062 0.520

Mbuti Karelia Loschbour Ukraine_HG1 0.0269 2.451

Mbuti Karelia Bichon Ukraine_HG1 0.0348 3.069

Ukrainian Neolithic and Mesolithic are quite equally lacking in CHG:

Mbuti Kotias Bichon Ukraine_HG1 0.0054 0.494
Mbuti Kotias Bichon Ukraine_N1 0.0057 0.551

Unknown said...

Ukraine hunters will be R1b and are closer to EHG than WHG and SHG.

Rob said...

@ Alberto & Frank

We were right all along
This makes complete sense now:

Hungary_BA:I1502
Mentese_Neolithic:I0723 37.95 %
Hungary_HG:I1507 23.85 %
Motala_HG:I0012 19.95 %
Kotias:KK1 14.35 %
Loschbour:Loschbour 3.9 %

bellbeakerblogger said...

"...two of our Latvian Mesolithic samples were assigned to haplogroup R1b (the maximum-likelihood sub-haplogroup is R1b1b), which is the most common haplogroup found in modern Western Europeans"

By this I assume they mean R1b1a, not R1b1b.

Rob said...

@ BBB

Sergey Malyshev suggested that they are R1b-M297*, if I understood correctly.

Matt said...

@ Shaikorth, that's a nice spot!

What do you think of D (Mbuti Karitiana; Ukraine_HG1 Ukraine_N1) D: -0.0122, Z: -0.567, SNP: 132697? Shouldn't there be a significant result if Ukraine_N1 is enriched for ANE and ANE contributes to Karitiana?

Matt said...

By the way Rob, where did you get the dating for LN1 at 2000BC in the other thread from? (If I'm reading "By this LN sample is from 2000BC") Their table gives: Latvia_LN1 - 3089-2676 cal BC.

Not as old as the earliest Steppe_EMBA samples (3335-2882 calBCE is the oldest date range for those, with most clustering around 2800-2200 BCE as I read it). But it doesn't look like 2000BC.

Rob said...

@ Matt
Quite right, my mistake
In fact, the earliest of the dates are very much on par with the early stages of classic Yamnaya
This makes things very interesting !

Shaikorth said...



@Matt

Probably but I suspect it requires a similar comparison to Loschbour or Bichon as MA-1 to become apparent.

Consider that the MA-1 comparison has a d-stat increase of 0.0354 when we do Mbuti MA-1 Loschbour Ukraine_X instead.

bellbeakerblogger said...

@Rob, Thanks,

Unknown said...

P297 is irrelevant. Between M269 and L23 is where Beaker and Yamnaya ancestors would be at this time. Wait for Ukrainian data coming soon.

Rob said...

Chad
Yes I suspect too that M269 expanded from Ukraine
But I have to admit it is surprising any R1b was found in Mesolithic NEE. R1a and I would be much less surprising

Unknown said...

I think we're just seeing R1b and accompanying mtDNA brought the ANE to WHG. Odd and extinct lineages should be expected. I wouldn't be surprised to see one in the South Caucasus, as the L389 in Kura Araxes may point to. Of course, m269 is what we're chasing and, yes, I'll put money on Ukraine having plenty.

Unknown said...

Latvia is closer than Italy ; )

Unknown said...

Some R1a's that are also irrelevant will likely show up somewhere too.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Chad,

mtDNA R1 might be an ANE lineage. AfortoGora had R1b1, HungaryHG had R1b1, two Catacombs had R1a, two Unetice samples had R1, and R1 is found throughout Europe and Caucasus and SC Asia today.

Nirjhar007 said...

But still oldest R1b is from Italy and there is someone, who will laugh and say its coming from there !.

Eastpole,

The dates can even be contemporary of Yamnaya and they most likely predate, anything like 'Balto-Slavic' . We also don't have the Y-dna .

And certainly R1b-R1a split predates PIE and its pre forms by thousands and thousands of years. If you say the emergence of R1a-M417 and M-269 , that is another issue .

Mark said...

Long time reader of this blog, first time I’ve posted. I couldn’t resist commenting.

I was excited to finally get some new ancient DNA since not much has been released lately. So I see the Y-DNA on Latvia_HG2 and Latvia_HG3 was reported as R1b1b so at first I'm like "meh...another dead and line...meaningless". Then later I find out it's actually R1b1a1a P297 and they were using terminology FROM 2008!?!? Really? WTF?

Can somebody please shed light on why a group of ancient DNA researchers (who are supposed to be experts) would use completely outdated terminology from a tree from almost 10 years ago?

I find this frustrating because so many ancient DNA research papers have idiotic/poorly presented aspects that require me to dig through and sort out. This one has to be the most blatant.

Assuming researchers use the most up-to-date tree, let's look at the difference:
R1b1b: boring dead-end lineage that's pretty insignificant
R1b1a1a: ANCESTRAL TO THE MOST COMMON Y-DNA LINEAGE IN EUROPE

As many of you point out, the source of M269 might very well be the Ukraine, I'm not opposed to that theory. But that does not take away the significance of these results. P297 is just 2 steps from M269 (based on the ISOGG 2017 tree): P297→ M73→ M269. So at the very least these were cousins of the M269 folks and thus are an important part of the story. For the researchers to purposely obfuscate their own results with their cute little “snafu” is at best, incredibly sloppy. The universities and institutions that funded these researchers deserve better.

And speaking of the Ukraine, WHERE ARE THE 2 UKRAINIAN Y-DNAs? Aren’t they male? Inquiring minds want to know. And if the results exist, how will they be reported? Using Morse code?

And no, I’m not from Latvia, I live in the USA (Alabama). I’m not of Latvian descent, I’ve never even met a Latvian. I did have an Estonian exchange student try to sell me a magazine subscription once. Does that count?

But perhaps there is a reason for all this. Thus I decided to post and ask everyone if they can provide a logical explanation. To facilitate this I created a poll. I hereby ask the esteemed and knowledgeable followers of this blog to please shed their wisdom on this subject by selecting what they think is the best answer:

THE RESEARCHERS OF JONES ET AL. USED A Y-HAPLOGROUP TREE FROM 2008 BECAUSE:
a. Their internet connection has been down since 2009. Couldn’t get an updated ISOGG tree. Doh!
b. They actually wrote this in 2009. Too lazy to edit it. Research is so tiring! I mean, wow I have to write this all over?
c. What? They updated the tree since 2008? Why did they do that?
d. I mean, who cares about Y-DNA? 2008...close enough! Nobody pays attention to that stuff!
e. OMG! It's 2017? WHERE DID THE TIME GO???
f. Hey Man! It’s RETRO! Wait to you see our 8-track collection!
g. Wait...ISOGG stands for the International Society of Geriatric Gigolos. Right??

If anyone is feeling charitable, please email the 2017 ISOGG tree to the researchers:
http://isogg.org/tree/ISOGG_HapgrpR.html

And finally, in case I never post again I wanted to thank Davidski for running this blog

Davidski said...

Academic teams take a long time to adapt to new changes. Once they get into a groove with something, they keep with it until it becomes really obvious that a change needs to be made.

I guess they're being cautious and trying to avoid knee jerk reactions.

EastPole said...

@Nirjhar007
Read the paper. They write about Neolithic Corded Ware sample Latvia_LN1:

“this individual lived around the time of later date estimates (4,500–7,000 cal BP) proposed for the split of Proto-Balto-Slavic from other Indo-European languages”

I think there were two different early PIE dialects, one associated with R1a and the other with R1b. Otherwise why didn’t they mix if they spoke the same langugee.

Davidski said...

I hope these BAM files come online soon.

I reckon there's a chance that the Latvian MN sample, the Comb Ceramic one, is N1c. The Latvian Corded Ware LN is probably R1a-Z280.

The Ukrainian foragers might be R1b and/or R1a.

Gioiello said...

@ Nirjhar007
"But still oldest R1b is from Italy and there is someone, who will laugh and say its coming from there !. "

The problem for my opponents is that I demonstrated not only that R1b1-L389+* came from the Italian Refugium, but also all the linked haplogroups, and I hope that also R1a will be found, beyond J1 of course and much other.
These are the last two posts in my private letters to some friends and my FB page:
1
It is interesting to know that the YFull sample YF07902
R-V88 Z30230/Y7770 * V88/PF6279 * PF6332+59 SNPs formed 17200 ybp, TMRCA 11800 ybp
id:YF07902 + (Y7777)
R-V88*
id:YF07201 - (Y7777)
is breaking this subclade
R-Y7777 FGC20993/Y7786 * SK2065/FGC21014/Y7777 * Y7768+28 SNPs formed 11800 ybp, TMRCA 7700 ybp
being positive for some SNPs but negative for others.
I am curious to know if it belongs to the Lumsden subclade, found in Italy (Malugani), France (Racine) and Great Britain. See
28424 George Lumsden, d. 1785, Louisa County, VA United Kingdom R-V88
13 25 15 10 13-16 12 12 11 14 13 29 15 9-10 11 12 26 15 19 29 12-12-16-16 11 11 21-21 15 17 19 16 34-34 12 11 12 8 15-16 8 10 10 8 10 10 12 21-23 15 11 12 12 14 8 12 22 20 11 12 11 11 11 12 12 11 36 15 9 15 12 25 26 19 13 11 11 12 11 9 12 11 10 11 11 30 12 13 25 13 11 10 23 15 18 11 22 16 13 16 26 12 23 18 9 14 18 9 12 11
2
Of course these new data reinforce my theory of an Italian Refugium. We have now this new subclade R-V88-Y7777 with other 6 SNPs (Y7768, Y8460, Y7775, V3608, Y8459, Y7785 beyond some no calls: Y8442, PF7545, Z30239, Z30243, Z30276), if it is that of Malugani, Racine, Lumsden, and the expansion would have happened 11800 years ago (if YFull dates are reliable), i.e. the expansion after the Younger Dryas. R-V35, survived in Sardinia, formed after and very likely the R-V88 (xV35) found at Els Trocs belonged to the expansion via sea of 7500 years ago whose Zilhao spoke. The ancestor of the African and Middle Easterner samples is very likely R-Y8447, formed 7700 years ago as to YFull, but whose descendants have only 3600 years (R-FGC20973) and 5500 years (R-Y7771).

Azarov Dmitry said...

Much ado about nothing. All ancient R1b from Eastern Europe were found near the Volga or the Caspian Sea. And Latvia as well is not far away from the Volga (~ 300 km). So it’s obvious that the core of R1b folks lived somewhere near the Caspian Sea(the Iranian Plateau) and used the Volga for migrations. Nothing new.

Davidski said...

So it’s obvious that the core of R1b folks lived somewhere near the Caspian Sea (the Iranian Plateau) and used the Volga for migrations.

Hahaha.

Yeah, it's all over now for the Iranian Plateau. I wasn't gonna drive the point home, but thanks for reminding us.

Azarov Dmitry said...

@Davidski
Yeah, it's all over now for the Iranian Plateau. I wasn't gonna drive the point home, but thanks for reminding us.


The Iranian Plateau at least can explain presence of ancient R1b samples in Spain, Italy, Armenia and Volga region.

Davidski said...

The Iranian Plateau can't explain R1b in any of those samples, because none of those samples have ancestry from Neolithic Iran.

They're all part WHG or EHG, and that's why they have R1b.

Azarov Dmitry said...

@The Iranian Plateau can't explain R1b in any of those samples, because none of those samples have ancestry from Neolithic Iran.


And why the hell they should have any ancestry from Neolithic Iran if all those r1b samples are as old as mammoth shit.

Davidski said...

Wait for the first R1a and R1b samples as old as Mammoth shit from the Iranian Plateau, and then we'll talk.

Alberto said...

Ok, but the thing is: if those Ukraine_HGs turn out to be R1b-M269, with whom did they mix to become Yamnaya-like? Because, though we'll have to wait to check exactly how they look like, MA1 not being any closer to them than to Loschbour or Bichon should mean they have little ANE.

Matt said...

@ Rob: In fact, the earliest of the dates are very much on par with the early stages of classic Yamnaya. This makes things very interesting!

Yeah, indeed. I admittedly don't know as much about the archaeology as I'd like; my expectation was that Yamnaya (3300-2500 BCE) would form as a culture, then split off into the Corded Ware Culture (2900–2350 BCE wiki) relatively later, and this makes me wonder more about how accurate my impression of that sequence was, and whether the Pontic Caspian Yamnaya Culture stage specifically had as much to do with Corded Ware (and then Europe) as I would've thought.

Also quite interested in LN1's stat

D (Mbuti Kotias (CHG) Latvia_HG Latvia_LN1) = 0.0182, Z: 2.138, 715,061

which seems weaker than my expectation would've been for a comparable

D (Mbuti Kotias EHG Yamnaya) stat

and seems at odds with its otherwise Yamnaya-like makeup in their ADMIXTURE analysis

(unfortunately can't find one in the literature - if it's quick, Davidski would you mind running that stat?).

Would be interesting to test D

Mbuti Kotias Yamnaya Latvia_LN1
Mbuti Kotias EHG Latvia_LN1
Mbuti Kotias Ukraine_HG Latvia_LN1
Mbuti Kotias Latvia_HG Yamnaya
Mbuti Kotias Ukraine_HG Yamnaya
Mbuti Corded_Ware_Germany Yamnaya Latvia_LN1

when Davidski has the data and has done what he wants to do first with it and all sorted etc.

Nirjhar007 said...

Eastpole,

I am sorry but you are not making any sense dude . Think about it , think about first attestations , first identifiable cultures and then try to correlate to what have been found , you will find that its not sounding exactly neat .

Ratna,

Yes Italy do have diversity of R1b clades , one of the most .I do expect some shocking results .

Davidski said...

I've got the genotype data.

Running it now.

Nirjhar007 said...

New Mtdna from Ukraine folks,
http://www.nature.com/jhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/jhg201712a.html

It speaks of Iran with Lazaridis in note: "The other significant genetic component in the EBA steppe ancestry appeared to hail from the Zargos (sic!) mountain area in northwestern Iran."

Davidski said...

"The other significant genetic component in the EBA steppe ancestry appeared to hail from the Zargos (sic!) mountain area in northwestern Iran."

Total nonsense.

EastPole said...

@Nirjhar007
I don’t understand you. I am just quoting the article. You should ask the authors. Write to them and see what they say.

Nirjhar007 said...

Eastpole,

I am not understanding you too mate . I am just saying a simple truth regarding the ethnic correlations that are tried to forced .

Dave,

Total nonsense. .

Maybe you should publish , some of your conversations with Dr. Lazaridis regarding this issue ;).

Ric Hern said...

Did the Epi-Gravettian appear in the Crimea at +-17000 ybp ? The Villabruna people are said to show physical similarities to East Africans. This I think is because both evolved in a plains environment. Does this point towards the Steppe?

Matt said...

Alberto: if those Ukraine_HGs turn out to be R1b-M269, with whom did they mix to become Yamnaya-like? Because, though we'll have to wait to check exactly how they look like, MA1 not being any closer to them than to Loschbour or Bichon should mean they have little ANE.

Loschbour and Bichon may still have ANE ancestry compared to the Europeans who came before them (Vestonice and El Miron cluster), and ANE may be the ultimate origin of R1.

It may be that Loschbour and Bichon and Latvian HG and Ukraine HG all had about the same ANE ancestry, but Loschbour and Bichon and WHG in general in Western Europe just tended to be dominated by I2 also found in El Miron cluster (with the outlier being La Brana with its C1 Aurignacian survivor lineage), while the ANE y-dna (R1) made no real impact (while female ancestry may have done, since there's an mtdna turnover around then?).

But it does seem to make it less favoured, the story where R1b during the Mesolithic -> Neolithic is totally not found within Eastern Europe outside of Western Russia, and then it moves from Siberian ANE into EHG in the late Upper Paleolithic-Mesolithic, then from there to Yamnaya, then from there to Europe (with Villabruna just being explained as an odd outlier). R1b may have branched from R1 and evolved totally within Eastern Europe...

Alberto said...

@Nirjhar

Thanks for that link. More surprises from Ukraine!

This report presents results of the investigation of maternal genetic lineages of individuals buried in kurgans constructed during the Eneolithic–EBA transition in the western part of the North Pontic Region (NPR). Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages from the interments belonging to the Eneolithic as well as the EBA cultures such as Yamna (Pit Grave), Catacomb and Babino (Mnogovalikovaya or KMK) were examined. In the 12 successfully haplotyped specimens, 75% of mtDNA lineages consisted of west Eurasian haplogroup U and its U4 and U5 sublineages. Furthermore, we identified a subgroup of east Eurasian haplogroup C in two representatives of the Yamna culture in one of the studied kurgans. Our results indicate the persistence of Mesolithic hunter–gatherer mtDNA lineages in western NPR through the EBA, as well as suggesting a mtDNA lineage continuum connecting the western NPR inhabitants of the Early Metal Ages to the North Pontic Neolithic population groups.

So the Mesolithic western steppe had no EHG, and the EBA western steppe had no CHG mtDNA???

Nirjhar007 said...

Yes Alberto , I think its now suggesting how 'sexy' ;) , the idea of CHG through female exogamy is.

Rob said...

@ Matt

I would agree with your traditional impression, as it holds chronological water when going through detailed chronology in archaeological literature. That is, the explanation that CWC are a splinter group of early or pre-Yamnaya, 'gone forest' is still parsiminous, although we have to admit other possibilities (with eHG showing up in MN Baltic, and probably also being present in CT, if we ever get some genomes from there)

I think the data will be exciting .
Clearly even just looking at PCA there seem to be a few things happening.

Davidski said...

@Nirjhar

I've already e-mailed Dr. Lazaridis and told him that Yamnaya doesn't have any ancestry from the Zagros.

Why don't you e-mail him and ask if he thinks that it does? And then come back and tell us what he said.

Nirjhar007 said...

Dave,
Well regarding that . I have talked to them , they all agree that Yamnaya does .

But since you have the problems and some others also , I think it can be interesting, if a publication of the correspondence can be published . Keeping in mind, that the scientists agree, on that publication . I think knowing the technical raesonings of both parties will be very valuable. I consider you as an important figure, regarding genetics and its interpretations .

Davidski said...

Well regarding that, I have talked to them, they all agree that Yamnaya does.

Either you misinterpreted what they said, or they don't have any clue how to interpret their own data.

The latter, if true, would be very interesting indeed.

Krefter said...

@Alberto,
"So the Mesolithic western steppe had no EHG, and the EBA western steppe had no CHG mtDNA???"

The study only sampled about 10 samples. Some were Yamnaya and Catacomb. A bunch were U5b, which is unheard of in Yamnaya and Andronovo and the like. Maybe this lots of U5b, some C4a, no CHG or EEF mtDNA means Yamnaya/Catacomb Ukraine was differnt. Maybe. Maybe.

Krefter said...

Post at my blog where I argue high frequencies of U5a and especially U4 in Eastern Europe is partially due to Eastern European WHG ancestry...

http://mtdnaatlas.blogspot.com/2017/02/new-mtdna-from-stone-age-eastern.html

U5a frequencies in Europe are pretty uniform except for abnormally low frequencies in Iberia, Italy and abnormally high frequencies in East Baltic and Volga Russia. U4 on the other hand is twice as popular in Eastern Europe than Western Europe.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

I want to see the Rathlin Beakers modeled as Latvian MN + Ballynahatty.

Unknown said...

I've got them too. I'll merge and run some stats. There's not a lot of coverage though. Only 110k SNPs in what we were sent.

Grey said...

"So the Mesolithic western steppe had no EHG, and the EBA western steppe had no CHG mtDNA???"

my guess is an R1b majority alliance centered originally on the river running through Kargaly copper field

/// the one going north just past Orenberg
/// https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Ural_river_basin.png
/// nb rivers to samara are on the other side of the watershed

spreading along trade routes in multiple directions

eventually getting displaced at some later point by an R1a dominated alliance

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

@Grey

"R1b majority alliance"

Sems you've got the mind of a child, body too hopefully?

Gioiello said...


The mutation found incertain from Genetiker in Latvia_HG3 (7252-6802YBP) Y: 22334107 (T>C) is present in Asian an Eastern European R-M73 (perhaps also with the mutation M478, being R-M73* present only in Western Europe, thus older)

Sample ID HG 22445107
REFSEQ T
YF03139 R-Y14051 C
YF03179 R-Y14051 C
YF02940 R-Y22195 C


Gioiello said...

Latvia_MN1 isn't only R-P297, but also with some mutation at the R-M269 level, having CTS1422/M8209+.

Grey said...

@Romulus

patrilineal clans will have specific ydna clades

groups of allied patrilineal clans will have a majority or plurality of regionally specific ydna clades

Gioiello said...

It is clear that all these R-M73 found in Latvia (as the previous found before) are mostly dead end line, because only one of them survived in Eastern Europe/Asia, and, after long bottlenecks, gave life to the R-M73-M478* lines of to-day. Western European samples descend from an R-M73+ (M478-), thus they don't come from these samples. Of course we may not exclude that also the Western European ones descend from one of these R-M73* samples, but that would be against all what we found of the upstream subclades in Western Europe. Of course a deep SNP test on some of these samples will be useful.

Unknown said...

South African Hofmeyr skull is very similar to upper paleolithic Vestonice cluster skulls, especially Kostenki so it's possible that Vetonice types came to Europe directly from Africa though there doesn't seem to be any back migrations of European HG types to Africa as modern Africans don't have any WHG-UHG or australoid/south asian type of admixtures. Direct African origin would explain their skin color. But if so that poses questions about origins of basal eurasians, east eurasians, australoids and Ust'-Ishim(ASI) types, and when did they split. Vestonice cluster unlike Villabruna cluster does not have ANE admixture but they seem to have ASI/ASE admixture.
Vestonice individuals seem to be an intermediate form between mesolithic HGs and australoid types like Ishim, with their WHG-UHG ancestry being predominant over australoid. Hard to tell if those south asian alleles were a leftover because they were still in process of evolving into full west eurasians or they were directly admixed with australoids but by mesolithic ASI-like alleles were no longer present in the Villabruna cluster. ANEs could simply be drifted Vestonice types admixed with Amur River type protomongoloids.
Tianyuan seems to be east asian equivalent of Ust-Ishim, it's mostly australoid but already had some east asian like alleles just like Ishim had some WHG like alleles.

Unknown said...

I doubt it's very accurate but according to this reconstruction that upper paleolithic woman from Dolni Vestonice looked already fully caucasoid.
http://www.anthropark.wz.cz/pavlova.htm
What's interesting is that many vestonice cluster samples including her, had mediterranean type of skulls despite zero or nearly zero basal eurasian admixture.