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Tuesday, November 28, 2017

The ancient genomics revolution (Skoglund & Mathieson 2017 preprint)


Two former Harvard scientists Pontus Skoglund and Iain Mathieson are working on a new review paper on the wide range of scientific breakthroughs provided by ancient genomics over the past decade. The preprint is available at Dropbox here. There's also a thread about the preprint at Mathieson's Twitter account here.

I've read through it a couple of times, especially the parts about Europe, and haven't been able to spot any major problems; the authors obviously chose their words very carefully, and their geography is beyond reproach. [Edit: first problem spotted, see here]

Now, you might think that geography is easy, but apparently not when it comes to the location of the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Recent media articles have claimed that it's located in West Asia, and, I kid you not, even that it's hilly (for instance, see here), while scientists from Max Planck and other supposedly high brow places seem to think that it's in Central Eurasia (see here). Nope, as Skoglund and Mathieson correctly point out, it's actually located in (far) Eastern Europe, while Central Eurasia is generally posited to be further to the east. From the preprint (emphasis is mine):

Anatomically modern humans were widely distributed in Europe by at least 42,000-45,000 BP (3; 41). The oldest genomic data from a modern human in Europe is the Oase 1 individual from present-day Romania dated to 37,600-41,600 BP. This individual, which had a direct Neanderthal ancestor in the past four to six generations, did not contribute detectable ancestry to later Upper Paleolithic populations (24). During the Upper Palaeolithic, a major transformation ~30,000-35,000 years ago was likely associated with the replacement of the Aurignacian with the Gravettian culture in western Europe(28). As the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) came to an end and the ice sheets receded, Europe was repopulated, possibly from southern European and central Eurasian refugia (28). Another transformation may have taken place during an interstadial warm period ~14.5 kya, replacing the original recolonizers with a population that would come to form the Mesolithic populations of Europe (28; 93). These Mesolithic populations were outside the genetic diversity of present-day Europe (114; 131) and themselves display a clinal structure, with an east-to-west cline (32; 37; 38; 47; 57; 62; 72; 78; 112; 130). The origin of this cline is not clear, although it plausibly reflects two or more major sources of ancestry in the post-LGM or post-14.5kya expansions.

Starting from the southwest around 8,500 BP, the Mesolithic ancestry of Europe was largely replaced (29; 38; 42; 130; 131) as a new type of ancestry related to that found in Neolithic northwest Anatolia (73; 87) and, ultimately, to early farming populations of the Levant and Northern Iran (11; 56) expanded throughout Europe. This ancestry rapidly reached the extreme edges of Europe, with direct evidence of its presence in Iberia at 7300 BP (86), in Ireland at 5100 BP (14) and in Scandinavia at 4900 BP (131). This “Anatolian Neolithic” ancestry was highly diverged relative to the “hunter-gatherer” ancestry of the populations that previously inhabited Europe (F ST ~ 0.1, similar to the divergence between present-day European and East Asian populations) (73; 132). Across Europe, its appearance was closely linked in time and space to the adoption of an agricultural lifestyle, and it now seems established that this change in lifestyle was driven, at least in part, by the migration. However, the Anatolian Neolithic migrants did not replace the hunter-gatherer populations. Over the next 4000 years, the two populations merged, and by 4500 BP, almost all European populations were admixed between these two ancestries, typically with 10-25% hunter-gatherer ancestry (29; 38; 42; 50; 62; 71; 73; 130; 131). Across Europe, this “resurgence” of hunter-gatherer ancestry (10) was independent–driven by local hunter-gatherer populations who lived in close proximity to farming groups (7; 62; 72; 130).

The next substantial change is closely related to ancestry that by around 5000 BP extended over a region of more than 2000 miles of the Eurasian steppe, including in individuals associated with the Yamnaya Cultural Complex in far-eastern Europe (1; 38) and with the Afanasievo culture in the central Asian Altai mountains (1). This “steppe” ancestry is itself a mixture between ancestry that is related to Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of eastern Europe and ancestry that is related to both present-day populations (38) and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (46) from the Caucasus mountains, and also to the populations of Neolithic (11), and Copper Age (56) Iran. Steppe ancestry appeared in southeastern Europe by 6000 BP (72), northeastern Europe around 5000 BP (47) and central Europe at the time of the Corded Ware Complex around 4600 BP (1; 38). These dates are reasonably tight constraints, because in each case there is no evidence of steppe ancestry in individuals immediately preceding these dates (47; 72). Gene flow on the steppe was extensive and bidirectional, as shown by the eastward flow of Anatolian Neolithic ancestry–reaching well into central Eurasia by the time of the Andronovo culture ~3500 BP (1)–and the westward flow of East Asian ancestry–found in individuals associated with the Iron Age Scythian culture close to the Black Sea ~2500 BP (143).

Copper and Bronze Age population movements (14; 78 Martiniano, 2017 #8761; 85; 112), as well as later movements in the Iron Age and Historical period (70; 119) further distributed steppe ancestry around Europe. Present-day western European populations can be modeled as mixtures of these three ancestry components (Mesolithic hunter-gatherer, Anatolian Neolithic and Steppe) (38; 57). In eastern Europe, further shifts in ancestry are the result of additional or distinct gene flow from Anatolia throughout the Neolithic and Bronze Age in the Aegean (42; 51; 55; 72; 87), and gene flow from Siberian-related populations in Finland and the Baltic region (38).

And I really like this part; sounds ominous for the Out-of-India (OIT) crowd, doesn't it? Hopefully we won't have to wait too long for the relevant paper from Harvard, which, I can assure you, is coming sooner or later.

There are no published ancient DNA studies from South- or Southeast Asia. However, data from neighboring regions provides clues to the population history of this region. In particular, present-day South Asian populations share ancestry with Neolithic Iranian (11) and Steppe (56) populations. This strongly suggests Neolithic or Bronze Age contact between South Asia and west/central Eurasia, although only direct ancient DNA evidence from the region will resolve the timing and structure of this contact.

Citation...

Pontus Skoglund and Iain Mathieson, Ancient genomics: a new view into human prehistory and evolution, preprint 2017

See also...

Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...

Who's your (proto) daddy Western Europeans?

Ancient herders from the Pontic-Caspian steppe crashed into India: no ifs or buts

203 comments:

1 – 200 of 203   Newer›   Newest»
Jaydeep said...

David the Instigator, ever baiting us unsuspecting Indians.

And I really like this part; sounds ominous for the Out-of-India (OIT) crowd, doesn't it?

Whats so ominous about it ? That there was contact between Neolithic Indians and Iranians as well as contact between Bronze Age Indians & the steppe ? The authors are only talking of contact, but they are still not talking about the direction of the gene flow. Pray tell me why ?

If the South Asian aDNA paper is no near to publication, as you're suggesting (& I hope it is true), do you think the likes of Mathieson & Skoglund have access to the results of south Asian aDNA ? If so, and if that data shows direction of movement from the steppe into South Asia, why are they not even giving a hint ? Why are they only talking of contact ? Surely you do realise that genetic contact can also take place if the direction of the movement is from India outwards towards Central Asia and then into the steppe.

So, really, whats new and what is so ominous ? Quit trying to stir and incite. It won't work.

Lastly, can we expect the aDNA paper to come up before the end of this year ? Or is that being too optimistic ?

Davidski said...

Obviously, they can't reveal the results from the upcoming paper, which may or may not come out this year.

And no, there was no gene flow from India to the steppe. That really should be clear to anyone by now.

AWood said...

Starting from the southwest around 8,500 BP, the Mesolithic ancestry of Europe was largely replaced (29; 38; 42; 130; 131) as a new type of ancestry related to that found in Neolithic northwest Anatolia

Oops, they probably meant southeast, but confusing nonetheless.

Razib Khan said...

Iain is already at UPenn if i recall correctly. Pontus goes to Crick shortly....

Razib Khan said...

super confused here. the supplements of iosif's paper makes it pretty clear that the reich lab sees massive migration from steppe to india. honestly a little too high for my taste/credulity! :-)

i think until papers are out they are reasonably cautious about what they will put into print. but david r and iain (don't talk to pontus about this issue) never seem to push back when i express a view closer to what david our blog host expresses when i've met them in person (though i'm frankly vaguer and more uncertain on a lot of details; honestly i haven't analyzed the data nearly as much as david). and i know david r quite liked tony joseph and my articles on this topic, cuz he told me so.

but none of these guys are strongly ideological on these topics. they've been surprised at several turns and express lots of uncertainty on a range of topics if you try to nail them down, as i regularly do when i meet them in person (or harass them on twitter in pontus and iain's case). until the preprint/paper is out i'm assuming that in public they will express a decent agnosticism :-) a lot more than most of the commenters on this weblog ;-)

Davidski said...

Iain is already at UPenn if i recall correctly. Pontus goes to Crick shortly....

OK, thanks.

Al Bundy said...

As far as the big picture PIE urheimat I believe Patterson when he says they don't know and really can't until the Hittites, maybe they see where things are headed and can rule some things out.With India it's game over except was it a migration or invasion?

andrew said...

The archaeology and contemporaneous historical accounts form Akkadian traders both point tot the Hittites as recent arrivals to Anatolia ca. 2000 BCE. The seemingly greatly linguistic divergence is substrate influence not time depth.

Al Bundy said...

The latest date I've seen for an Anatolian split from PIE is 4500-4200.

Al Bundy said...

@Rob Melchert right?

Rob said...

@ Al
Melchert what ?

Al Bundy said...

Maybe I got the name wrong...a linguist you cited who pushed Anatolian further back?

Rob said...

What you suggested is general ball park consensus, give or take
But I think Mlechert did state that the supposed Hattic substrate in Hittite has for too long been overestimated and played up
Certainly the idea that Anatolia was clambering to the wall with people (more than, say, Iberia) is an argument made from ignorance; as are claims for a clear invasion horizon in 2000 BC

Al Bundy said...

Ok yea it wasn't about dating per se but substrate...which could affect the dating.

Kristiina said...

"the supplements of iosif's paper makes it pretty clear that the reich lab sees massive migration from steppe to india."

I think that most, if not all, the people can agree that Yamnaya component did not originate in India. As for me, I am most of all interested in the time frame of that change. Did it start 2500 BC or earlier or only 1500 BC. Did the steppe ancestry increase gradually over time or abruptely? Which Indian culture introduced the steppe component? Where do the archaeological links of this culture point to?

Sofia Aurora said...

Guys have you seen these two articles:

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1867/20171540

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1867/20172064

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

The stuff in the paper about height is wrong.

Carlos Aramayo said...

@Kristina

As far as I know by now, R1a-Z93 chromosome-Y haplogroup can not be regarded as earlier than 4000 BCE (as per some Indian geneticists, Chaubey and Thangaraj, based on modern DNA analysis), and its "branch" R1a- L657, most widely spread in modern South Asian populations, not earlier than 3000 BCE. A 2015 study, I think by British geneticists, also based on modern populations, attested a possible presence near Indus Civilization region of R1a-Z93 between 2500 and 2000 BCE. In my view, this can be regarded as Indo-Aryan or Indo-European "genetic ancestry" in such a region, but not attested in material culture there (like absence of widespread use of horses for instance). So my hypothesis is that early Indo-European people arrived in Indus region and mixed their genes with earlier inhabitants there (maybe Dravidians and/or Austro-Asiatics) around 2500 BCE, but lost their culture (like their language and horses) progresively or even almost immediately and were assimilated by the Indus civilization people and culture. Later on, other two migrations of Indo-Aryans arrived, Atharvavedic and Rigvedic ones after 2000 BCE like in Parpola´s model. I call the arrival beginning around 2500 BCE the "Revised Steppe Hypothesis".

Archaelog said...
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Archaelog said...

@Carlos Aramayo 2500 - 2000 BCE is too early for Indo-European presence in the region. The Indo-Europeans arrived in South Central Asia only after the expansion of the Andronovo culture took place 2000 - 1500 BC. Any Aryan people that migrated into the Indus region must have done so during this time period.

Archaelog said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sanuj said...

@Carlos Aramayo

The horse myth has been debunked many times over. Aside from the positive identification of horse remains at IVC sites, there's also the fact that there has been no increase in horse remains in the 2nd millennium BC as would have been expected in case of the concocted AIT\AMT.
http://www.academia.edu/23185706/The_Horse_and_the_Aryan_Debate

If R1a is found at Harappan sites, a civilization which shows unbroken organic growth from circa 7000 BC, it's essentially game over. So, don't just create more concocted theories on a whim.

Carlos Aramayo said...

@ Chetan

R1a-Z93 in all probability occurred outside South Asia, but not R1a-L657. Maybe earlier archaeological and linguistic studies pointed to Sintashta/Andronovo (after 2100 BC) for movements of Indo-Europeans towards India, but geneticts do not. And I do not expect these modern-DNA studies (for Indus valley) can be much different to new aDNA for Rakhigarhi.

Recently a new book on Oxus civilization by Massimo Vidale suggests a revision of the beginning for this culture to 2400 BC, leaving more space for the IE movement in such a region.

Archaelog said...

@Sanuj The horse wasn't an alien animal invented by the IE speakers. Although the natural habitat of the horse is the steppes, it was known in many Middle-Eastern cultures. But none of these cultures (including the IVC) were horse based nomadic cultures while Vedic society (IE) clearly is. So the finding of some horse remains in IV (I don't even know if that is true) doesn't identify the Vedas with the IVC at all.

Let them find evidence for horse domestication, horse sacrifice burials, horse totems and then you may have a better case. OTH Gandhara grave culture from 1800 BC has clear evidence of ritual horse burial.

Carlos Aramayo said...


@ Chetan

There was few examples of horses in Indus civilization mature times, one is horse bones remains in Surkotada, dated around 2100-2000 BCE. This evidence implies IE can be found in the region, but as I pointed out probably being absorved by Indus people.

Sanuj said...

@Chetan Vit

Did you even go through the paper, or just want to debunk everything anyhow. This is what the paper says,
"The occurrence of true horse (Equus caballus L.) was evidenced by the enamel pattern of the upper and lower cheek and teeth and by the size and form of incisors and phalanges (toe bones). Since no wild horses lived in India in post-Pleistocene times, the domestic nature of the Surkotada horses is undoubtful. This is also supported by an inter- maxilla fragment whose incisor tooth shows clear signs of crib biting, a bad habit only existing among domestic horses which are not extensively used for war."

The RV society is nomadic, the later vedic texts gradually have more knowledge of building materials etc., which is fine, if the civilization had an gradual growth.

Rob said...

It's rather dubious that the horse was ridden in the western steppe Bronze Age, so it's rather moot if it was found in IVC or not.

Anonymous said...

@Davidski & All
What's the chance PIE was first spoken in a Southern EHG population who later became Samara_CA due to more (but still less than the Yamnaya) admixture from the Caucasus?
What's the chance of the remaining population becoming the Yamnaya and thus Late-PIE while an earlier subgroup migrated deep down the Caucasus, acquire or not more ancestry from there and became the Early-PIE?
We have to consider that the "EHG+CHG" admixture didn't happen overnight, but throughout millennia and earlier groups may have separated.

How would this be verified? They need to find such offshots in the Caucasus and know their haplogroups, then sequence Hittites and see if they match.

If correct, this would explain Early-PIE and Late-PIE, with only the CENTUM/SATEM still hazy. Or someone here has an explanation? (The R1a/SATEM, R1b/CENTUM seems plausible).

Archaelog said...

@Carlos Aramayo Maybe there were but I find it hard to believe that IE made it into the Indus Valley that early. Is there archaeological evidence for the expansion of the Andronovo culture into Central Asia in 2100 BC? The Oxus civilization was not IE in origin. Taken over by the Indo-Aryans later but definitely not IE in origin.

Anonymous said...

@Rob
It's rather dubious that the horse was ridden in the western steppe Bronze Age
Inform yourself more? I'm trying not to curse you now, because I thought people here at least knew something about this question.

Rob said...

Arkaim
Lol Do you think I'd care if you cursed me ?
So what, you just read david Anthony's book now and your IQ has jumped to 70 ?

Anonymous said...

@Rob
No, I never read Anthony because I find him a hack.
You shouldn't assume things about people you don't know, maybe you could see Horse Burials in Ireland 2500BCE.

Archaelog said...

@Arkaim Centum/ Satem is a late innovation really (in PIE history). c. 2500 BC, it started in the Caspian region among the Indo-Iranian speakers and spread arealy westwards. Only IIr was completely satemized

I-Ir > Balto-Slavic > Armenian > Balkan. Greek was barely affected and Celtic-Germanic was already disconnected from the homeland

Anonymous said...

@Chetan Vit
Yes, I'm familiar with linguistics and the same thing happened to the Romance languages after Latin, the process would indicate SATEM being derived from CENTUM, just like the Corded Ware (mainly R1a) succeeded the Yamnaya (mainly R1b, if not only) in the expansions.
I'm asking if there's something concrete among Linguists (not last time I checked) or Geneticists concerning this question, who "plagued" the IE question specially due to Tocharian.
But yes, what you said I also agree, except for the I-Ir > Balto-Slavic > Armenian > Balkan part because it suggests that Balto-Slavic/Armenian/Illyrian are offshots of Indo-Iranian languages, when in fact, they all had a common SATEM predecessor, with I-IR getting deep into it.

Anonymous said...

Addendum:
The SATEMization process in some languages such as Armenian (or maybe Illyrian or Balto-Slavic for that matter) shouldn't be necessarily due to an earlier SATEM ancestor though, but to independent convergent continuation processes.
Again, something similar happened very late in the game with the Romance languages

Rob said...

@ Arkaim

-' maybe you could see Horse Burials in Ireland 2500BCE'

And that proves that horses we ridden militarily how ?

''It was only at the end of the Bronze Age that a sporadic development in the steppe cultures occurred in which horseback riding was mastered–and this was probably by shepherds. It is during this time that finds of bone and rod-shaped cheekpieces with various modifications are noted, as well as being illustrated in numerous rock drawings''

- The Origins of Horse riding and the Development of Ancient Central Asian Nomadic Riding Harnesses . N. A. Bokovenko


'' The hypothesis regarding the so called “Pit Grave package” is similarly not entirely applicable to this problem (Harrison – Heyd 2007, 196–197). In accordance with the literature of Russian scholars (Saposnikova et al. 1988; Levine et al. 1999; Shishlina [ed.] 2000; Tsuthkin – Shishlina [eds] 2001; Morgunova et al. 2003; Morgunova 2004; Rassamakin 2004; Merpert et al. 2006), the third (social status and sex is markedly expressed), and eighth characteristics (the importance of the horse) are not confirmed.

-- Multidisciplinary Contributions to the Study of Pit Grave Culture Kurgans of the Great Hungarian Plain. Horvath et al.

aDNA from horses suggests it was being domesticated c. 3000 BC, or just had been done so, seen by abrupt modification in caot colour, but its a steep learning to curve to then mastering riding of a previously wild animal.(Coat Color Variation at the Beginningof Horse Domestication - Ludwig et al)


# Early Rider by R Drews (military archaeologist) - entire book dedicated to issue.
Horses were still a food and traction animal in Bronze age

# When did it take off in Europe ?
''Horses have always played an important role in human society. First in the provision of hides and meat, later in ceremonies and symbolism. After their domestication wagons were adjusted to their speed and from then on played an important role in warfare and transport. With the start of the wagon-grave burial tradition in the Urnfield Period and the continuation of it in the subsequent Hallstatt Period, the horse became inextricably linked with the burial ritual in Central Europe.With the domestication of the horse, the development of horse tack also starts. First in the form of organic bits, but with the upcoming bronze and later iron production in the form of metal parts. The development of this early horse gear started in the Middle East and quickly spread to Europe and Asia. The peoples in the Eurasian Steppes in particular started focusing on herds of horses and from there new types of bits developed. These new objects were soon taken over by the peoples in Central Europe and form the core of the early prehistoric horse harness. Although clear influences from the east are visible in the use of horse harness in Europe a more local tradition of producing and using horse gear was created. This is clearly reflected in the objects coming in to use in the Hallstatt Period. In Central Europe, in particular with Bohemia and the area north of the Alps as core area, a strong regional tradition with horse harness develops. In general a distinct standardization of the horse gear develops, in particular in the Hallstatt C-Period in which a clear typology of objects becomes visible.

- Two Bridles and a Yoke. A new study into the horse gear from the chieftain’s burial of Oss.


Rob said...

@ Arkaim

''You shouldn't assume things about people you don't know'

I didnt assume. you told me

Archaelog said...

@Arkaim That was the presumed direction of the satem spread I-Ir > Balto-Slavic > Armenian > Balkan

I wasn't implying that Indo-Iranian was the parent language. I see satemization as an areal feature rather than a proto-language feature. It started in IIr and spread westwards.

Jaydeep said...

Chetan,

You have very little idea of what you're talking about. Let me make things simple for you. There is no evidence of any genetic legacy of Scythians or Indo-Greeks or Huns or Turks or Turko-Mongols on most populations of the Indian subcontinent. Cite me a study which actually makes such a claim. The fact is, barring Indo-Greeks all of the other groups had received heavy admixture from East Eurasians. In South Asia, barring Afghanistan and the Himalayan regions, there is non-existent East Eurasian admixture across the entire Northern portion of South Asia. You may also want to think over the fact that most of these invading groups that you talked about were elites coming from a sparsely inhabited regions of Central Asia into a region with a much greater population density. Their capacity to leave any long term genetic legacy on South Asia was severely limited.

-------------------------

On the other hand, you might want to educate yourself regarding migrations from South Asia into Iran & Central Asia. There is significant ASI ancestry in Central Asia & Iran (as much as 10 %). The most obvious source for this ASI ancestry into Central Asia & Iran would the neighbouring South Asian regions of Afghanistan, Pakistan & Kashmir. All of these regions themselves have only a minority of ASI ancestry and a majority of ANI ancestry. If these groups spread their genes into Central Asia and Iran, they would be spreading more of ANI ancestry and less of ASI ancestry. However we cannot at the moment distinguish the South Asian ANI from Central Asian & Iranian ancestral groups. So the ASI presence is the only way to assess the genetic impact of South Asia on Iran & Central Asia. Now since the ASI ancestry itself in these regions hovers around 10 %, you can bet that the South Asian ANI ancestry in these regions would be even greater. So it is very much possible that as much as 25 % of the ancestry of Iranians and Central Asians derives from South Asia.

You may also want to know how. Well right from the Bronze Age up to the period of the Islamic invasions of Ghaznavi, South Asians have been constantly moving about Central Asia and eastern regions of Iran. The Bronze Age Iranian civilizations of Helmand & Jiroft (Hari Rud) were heavily influenced by IVC and so was Central Asia. The Eastern IrAnian & Central Asian native cattle is Zebu which was domesticated in South Asia and spread to these regions as early as 3000 BC. In the Bronze Age there is evidence that the IVC people were present in Central Asia, in SE Arabia and in Mesopotamia. The Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC were rice farming and using buffaloes. Both of these could only have been obtained from the IVC people with which they were clearly in contact.

Also, how do you think in later periods, Buddhism & Hinduism spread into Central Asia in Bactria, Sogdiana, the city states of Xinjiang all the way up to China ?

Sanuj said...

And it's not just Tocharian that muddles it up for the linguists, ther's also Bangani, a centum language in Indian Himalayas, which lie unexplained.

Here's professor Hans Hock delving into that, and we have no answer from it,
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pehook/bangani.hock.html

Anonymous said...

@Rob
If this is your idea of argument, then you're only grasping at straws.
You told me
That I didn't read Anthony? Right.

@Sanuj
To me, this smells of Kalash. We use modern languages as references, but it might have been the case that there was a major CENTUM sphere in the Tocharia-Western Himalayas before.
We know that the Kalash greatly lack Farmer admixture.
All speculation of course, I can't speak of any of that with academic "authority".

Archaelog said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Arch Hades said...

"Another transformation may have taken place during an interstadial warm period ~14.5 kya, replacing the original recolonizers with a population that would come to form the Mesolithic populations of Europe (28; 93)"

So Mesolithic WHGs and EHGs are not genetically descended from early populations of Europe? Where the hell did they come from then? Is there any 'Cro-Magnon' ancestry in modern Europeans? I guess not


"This “Anatolian Neolithic” ancestry was highly diverged relative to the “hunter-gatherer” ancestry of the populations that previously inhabited Europe (F ST ~ 0.1, similar to the divergence between present-day European and East Asian populations) (73; 132)."

I find that a little hard to believe..don't Anatolian farmers and Mesolithic Hunter Gatherers share a common ancestor 45,000 years ago was already divergent from the people that would become East Asians?

Michalis Moriopoulos said...

Reviewing the big picture and especially the Mathieson GAC paper, can we safely conclude that GAC is the northeasternmost boundary of EEF-heavy ancestry in pre-Kurgan expansion Europe? GAC is starkly different to Latvia MN, which looks totally WHG/EHG. Anyone have any ideas why the farmers didn't push further into northeastern Europe? They replaced or absorbed the WHGs they encountered everywhere else but stopped short of the East Baltic and Russian Plain... Why? Bad land? Fierce hostility from locals?

Anonymous said...

"SATEM being derived from CENTUM"

NO, just, NO.

"Bangani, a centum language in Indian Himalayas"

It was a mistake.

Anonymous said...

@supernord
NO, just, NO.
I know it's not, why people here get triggered so easily?
It just proposes that SATEMization is really a process that would happen to K>S, and for that, there would be the need of a K in the first place.
There were other changes, that's obvious, and one is not derived from the other.
But yeah, at least you were not like Rob, who thought that using Horses for labour would make impossible the riding, like they were mutually exclusive or something, and like he that was even an argument against anything in the first place.

I still want to know what Davidski think about an earlier Samara_CA split.

Sanuj said...

@Chetan Vit @supernord

I haven't seen any refutation of the comprehensive work done by Anvita Abbi's work on Bangani. Van Driem and Sharma were shown to be wrong by Abbi's work and Hans Hock also sides with Abbi in the link shared earlier.

Where's the latest after that? Where are you getting your conclusions from?

Anonymous said...

There was two different processes (groups): Satemization and Centumization.

Satemization:
*K'> sibilant
*K > K
*K^w > K

Centumization:
*K'> K
*K > K
*K^w > Kw > K|P

Rob said...

@ Arkaim

"If this is your idea of argument,"
No that was not an argument, but an old fashioned schooling

Anonymous said...

@Rob
No that was not an argument, but an old fashioned schooling
Are you a Comedian, perhaps? Must be.

@supernord
There was two different processes (groups): Satemization and Centumization.
Yes, I think everybody here knows that. I'm not saying otherwise, if you interpreted as such.

Samuel Andrews said...

Things like this won't give insight into unpublished ancient DNA. Opinons these ancient DNA researchers offer to the public always only alines with published ancient DNA.

If Mathieson and Skoglund had access to Hittite DNA and ancient Indian DNA with loads of Steppe ancestry I gurentee you they'd still say "Well, it's unknown whether Steppe peoples, who could plausible be the source of their Indo European languages, ever migrated into Anatolia or South Asia."

Anonymous said...

@Rob
Empirical evidence of Horses being used for labour? There's nothing wrong with that - but they can't attest in any way they weren't rode, they don't even account how possibly these Horses arrived there, from what culture, with what purpose, they atomized the situation and genetic relationships weren't accounted (human ones).
Don't also ever forget that Absence-of-Evidence is not Evidence-of-Absence.
Also, will you continue to use the fallacy of authority in the humanities field?
Please, your bias is screaming and flashing for anyone to see.
Seeing you deleting and rewriting stuff is also very pitiful, please stop embarrassing yourself.

Rob said...

@ Arkaim

"Rob, who thought that using Horses for labour would make impossible the riding, like they were mutually exclusive or something, and like he that was even an argument against anything in the first place."

Invoking strawmen sin't going to prove your case. I implied no mutual exclusivity, rather i - or rather the specialists I read - outline a longue duree in the development of relationship between man and horse.
Their empirical evidence outlines that it took 1500 or so years after the horse was domesticated until people had learned to ride them on back in any coherently useful manner.
The earliest *real* evidence of domesticated, trained horses are in Sintashta - Arkaim (you should know that), which is the MBA, and the earliest *conclusive* evidence of horseback riding is the LBA, as I just outlined.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Arch Hades,
"So Mesolithic WHGs and EHGs are not genetically descended from early populations of Europe? Where the hell did they come from then? Is there any 'Cro-Magnon' ancestry in modern Europeans? I guess not"

Yeah, Arch, I agree it's pretty interesting. WHG might have emerged from decent sized replacements like Neolithic then modern Europeans did. WHG isn't a direct decendant or at least doesn't only decend from any pre-LGM genomes. But hardly any pre-LGM genomes have been sampled. I say let's wait. El Miron looks like she's half WHG. I have a super tiny, premature, theory with WHG emerging, near El Miron, in Paleolithic Italy, then later expanding out of Italy like 15,000 years ago.

Rob said...

@ Arkaim

"" fallacy of authority in the humanities field?
Please, your bias is screaming and flashing for anyone to see."

LOL. Resorting to authorities is biased ? I should listen to a random warrior called Arkaim, funnily enough.
That's not bias ?

"Absence-of-Evidence is not Evidence-of-Absence."
So cheesy.
It's called cumulative weight of evidence and appraisal by people who've studied the matter.
A concept seemingly lost on you.

Anonymous said...

"The SATEMization process in some languages such as Armenian (or maybe Illyrian or Balto-Slavic for that matter) shouldn't be necessarily due to an earlier SATEM ancestor though, but to independent convergent continuation processes."

Satemization was not independent convergent process, because, in this languages was the common RUKI law, unique in the world that its independent appearance is impossible.
SATEM group = RUKI group.


"Again, something similar happened very late in the game with the Romance languages "

The Palatalizations (in Romance, Slavic, etc...) are independent processes from the satemization.

Vara said...

@Rob

The oldest evidence of horse riding actually comes from a chlorite statue found in Jiroft and the oldest evidence of camel riding is found there as well. I do not think it is a coincidence.

Matt said...

@Arch Hades: I find that a little hard to believe..don't Anatolian farmers and Mesolithic Hunter Gatherers share a common ancestor 45,000 years ago was already divergent from the people that would become East Asians?

It's to do with how the fact that both Barcin_N and WHG are essentially both heavily drifted relative to present day Europeans, and that the process of genetic drift is somewhat *reversed* (to put it in a over-simplistic way that's not 100% literal) in present day Europeans.

Example Fst distances in latest table from David:

WHG-Barcin_N: 0.106, WHG-Han: 0.172, Barcin_N-Han: 0.135, Dutch-Han: 0.112

Barcin_N and particularly WHG both have a lot of "extra drift", and this pushes them far away from each other. I'm probably coming across as rude, but it's not super complicated stuff, and it's a little frustrating to see it come up online.

Here are a few diagrams to try and represent the ideas with simple geometry (which is basically what they follow): https://imgur.com/a/ePwMg. It's a little stylized, and doesn't represent real distances, but I think you'll get the ideas.

tl;dr, two samples can come from a clade, and if drift in both is high enough, they can even end up further from each other than either are from a common ancestor, or another offshoot from that common ancestor.

bellbeakerblogger said...

"Across Europe, this “resurgence” of hunter-gatherer ancestry was independent–driven by local hunter-gatherer populations who lived in close proximity to farming groups"

So Hunter-gatherers increasingly INCREASED their progenial share to 15-25% of the total ancestry of Europe before the Bronze Age.
The acorn and rabbit harvest must have been bountiful. Sorry, I don't see how this works in most of Europe.

It's like saying that the dramatic rise in Amerindian ancestry in every county of the U.S. in the past three decades is the result of a localized American Indian resurgence. It's not. Almost all of the continental U.S. nations were statistically destroyed by the 300 million descendants of Europeans and Africans.

Whatever increase in American Amerindian ancestry is solely the result of a wave of 40 million or so recent mestizo immigrants from Mexico and Central America, a genetic bastion large enough to impact the receiving population.

I think the question that will be asked a year from now is which of the hunter-heavy bastions was most responsible for this dramatic rise of HG percentage in the blood and guts Middle Neolithic.
Maybe it was more than one region or episode, but gene flow for 4k years from an ambiguous source isn't very satisfying, especially given the cultural changes associated with this genetic shift.

Davidski said...

The recent Lipson et al. paper showing transects of time in genetic structure from the Mesolithic to the Copper Age for several European regions argues that the resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry in each region was due to admixture with local hunter-gatherers. Based on the data in the paper, including the uniparental markers, it's hard to argue with them.

Matt said...

BBB, I understand your skeptical take, but there seems no other way to explain either

a) obvious Cardial or Atlantic / Danubian wave continuities (at the imputed haplotype, Fst, and f3 level!) in the "Neolithic" parts of the ancestry

b) measurable shifts in affinity to El_Miron vs Hungary_HG in different farmer groups

c) somewhat different levels of HG ancestry present within British, Iberian, French, German, Polish, Swedish WHG rich farmer groups

We're also not talking about an analogy to independent county level effects! They are not, I think suggesting that Anatolian/Aegean farmers fanned out through Europe, with no HG admixture, then each independently picked up admixture from locals with no further contact between any Neolithic groups.

It's more that there is a rough structure such that groups along the Cardial or Atlantic route mostly picked up ancestry from local HG and mixed with each other.

For another analogy than the USA, think of Latin America, and this poster presentation - https://imgur.com/a/geDXs

In basic world PC1 and PC2 Latin America groups with ancestry from difference South and Central American Indians overlap, net of basic proportions of African-European-Amerindian ancestry. In PC3 and PC4 they show structure, such that each regional group is clearly separated because they clearly derive ancestry from local Amerindian groups...

(Less succinctly than Davidski here).

Carlos Aramayo said...

@ Chetan,
You wrote: "The Oxus civilization was not IE in origin. Taken over by the Indo-Aryans later but definitely not IE in origin".

That`s true, anyway Parpola (2012)commented that "early on" the Proto Indo-Aryans had campsites around proto-urban BMAC sites, and when he wrote that, Massimo Vidale`s new dating of Gonur Tepe`s beginnings (around 2400 BC) was not yet published.

Dennys Frenez (2017)"Manufacturing and trade of Asian elephant ivory in Bronze Age Middle Asia: Evidence from Gonur Depe (Margiana, Turkmenistan)" mentions this re-dating of Vidale.

Anonymous said...

Two points:

1) The presence of Horse Remains in Southern Asia before 2000 BC does not mean the IVC was IE speaking, steppe genetically, or Vedic culturally. The Vedic people were nomads, and the same geographic range can hold remains from two cultures. One might find 3rd Century Gothic remains in the Roman Empire, and 2nd Century Alan remains, but that does not mean that the Roman Empire was either. It isn't until the very end of the 4th century that we can see the Roman Empire become 'barbarianised'. Unless horse remains are found in both a ritual and urban context, the most parsimonious explanation is that this is an encampment in the large empty space between zones of concentrated settlement.

2) The argument for the Sarasvati being the Ghaggar-Hakra has just been demolished. This was perhaps the one piece of textual evidence used by out-of-India supporters to connect the riparian Vedic culture with the IVC. It turns out the IVC was not as riparian as imagined, and that the Ghaggar-Hakra had dried out long before the early Harappan phase:

"Our paper clearly demolishes the age-old river-culture hypothesis that assumed that the disappearance of the river triggered the demise of the Harappan civilisation," said IITK's Prof Rajiv Sinha.
"We have argued that while large rivers have important connections with ancient societies, it is their departure that controls their stabilisation rather than their arrival.
"This has clearly been demonstrated by the large difference in age data between the demise of the river (8,000-12,000 years ago) and the peak of mature civilisation (3,000-4,000 years ago)," he told BBC News.
"Some of their sites were actually built in the palaeo-channel itself and that makes no sense if there was a big raging Himalayan river there at the time because these people would have been wiped out."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01643-9

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42157402

Rob said...

There's no mystery - the were late mesolithic groups all across northern, eastern and Atlantic Europe, some as late as 3000 BC in few zones

Carlos Aramayo said...

@ aniasi,
you wrote:"...The presence of Horse Remains in Southern Asia before 2000 BC does not mean the IVC was IE speaking, steppe genetically, or Vedic culturally. The Vedic people were nomads, and the same geographic range can hold remains from two cultures..."

IVC possibly was multicultural (possibly speaking Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, Indo-Aryan, Sino-Tibetan), as archaeologist Jonathan Mark Kenoyer suggests in his most recent lectures. Of course, that does not imply that Indo-Aryan culture was dominat there, but genetically speaking, steppe ancestry with R1a-Z93 branches in all probability were already there mixed with previous populations before 2000 BC.


EastPole said...

Interesting new paper on mtDNA: “Mitochondrial genomes uncover the maternal history of the Pamir populations”

“Around 4000 years before present, the migrations of Andronovo Culture reached the Pamirs. And then, the Scythians (also known as Saka and Sai), the speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, began to dominate this plateau [7]. It indicates a wave of eastward expansion of the Indo-European language family [7]. Although the Scythians are evident in archeological and historical records [6], their population history remains unclear. Nowadays, the Pamirs are the homelands to the highland Tajiks [4]. Both linguistic and physical anthropological evidence suggest the highland Tajiks likely being the descendants of ancient Scythians [7, 8].”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41431-017-0028-8

H5a1 with mutation 15833 was found in Corded Ware:

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/03/baltic-corded-ware-rich-in-r1a-z645.html?showComment=1488537435683#c2361904565646502138

It is also present among Pamiri Tajiks:

https://s33.postimg.org/4g1s9t7tr/screenshot_308.png

An example of Pamiri girl:

https://youtu.be/rKaecMDew60?t=430

Jaap said...

@Matt, you are never rude! Being unfamiliar with genetics - due to an aversion of statistics - and only looking for the narrative, your posts are always helpful. Like this one, that I don't understand, but I still get the drift, as a manner of speaking.
@Rob, you are somewhat vitriolic, but as long as no one (mis)takes this personally, you are priceless in delivering hard facts. Or rather, helping to deliver them, which may be even more important. Surely the ability to ride a horse precedes - or comes together with - harnessing them to carriages? LBA horse-riding is everywhere, as is charioteering. Shouldn't we make an educated guess as to horse-riding somewhere around 4000 BP? Even without evidence? Just plain common sense? Domestication and riding shouldn't be drawn too far apart in my estimation ... R1a could well have arrived in IVC-country (brought in!) on horseback 3900BP-ish, and made quite a splash! What happened afterwards is another matter ...
IMO there are parrallels here with the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain: once the grapevine starts buzzing (North-sea trade), there's no telling who will join the fray. But a very funny detail is that R1b seems to have (largely) missed out here! Did 'whatever come afterwards' hail from Iran?

Davidski said...

Nothing funny about R1b not being common among the Bronze Age migrants to South Asia, since the steppe peoples of the Middle to Late Bronze Age were rich in R1a-Z93.

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/r1a-z93-from-bronze-age-mongolia.html

South Asians mostly share ancestry with Iranians from Neolithic Iran and from the Bronze Age steppe, because Iranians also have significant steppe ancestry.

Rob said...

@ Jaap

" Surely the ability to ride a horse precedes ?"

I don't know does it ? I haven't produced empirical data for it, and thus refer to those who have.
But i'd be interested in your research findings.
In the meantime, I was summarizing the stages of development and the inferred learning curves.


"Rob, you are somewhat vitriolic, "

That's a rather blind statement, given that I made a general observation and was taken shot at by Arkaim, whom i've barely interacted with prior. Im entitled to return the favour.
Get off your high horse.

Rob said...

I mean let's look at the basic picture of use-

Eneolithic - horse hunting
Yamnaya - EBA : wagons pulled by animal traction
MBA Sintashta - earliest chariots
LBA - IA: true equestrianism

Does this exclude someone try to mount a horse in 4000 BC ?
I didn't suggest otherwise

mzp1 said...

Aryan Migration Theory or Invation Theory is just a joke. It is absurs. I mean just go and walk around in Peshawar and try and imagine South Indians living there just a few thousand year ago. It makes no sense.

There are so many problems with. For instance if Dravidians inhabited all the lands from Punjab to South India then why does the IVC only exist in those lands now speaking IA. Occams razor must apply.

Aryan Migration Theory is
Absurd
Foolish
Uninformed
Arrogant
Stupid
Ridiculous etc

Guys serously..

Im going crazy reading these comments.

If PIE society developed in Europe then why is it so perfectly preserved in an INDIAN text and the closest we have from its homeland are the Eddas lol. I mean Eddas vs Rigveda.

I mean IEs were masculine and patriarchal like North Indians. Europeans as PIE is unimagineable given their propensity towards feminism.

Davidski and Razib khan know much about genetics but little about Indo European. They should stay out of topics they are ill-qualified to opine about.

Out of India theory does not mean INDIANS invaded and IEized all of Eurasia.
Out of India theory means CENTRAL ASIA was IEized very early with moderate gene flow from India.
Europe was IEized from Central Asia.

How many of the commentators here who happen to experts have read the Rigveda and the shahnama. Davidski? Razib?

Do you guys know the Shahnama mentions the Zoroastrian Iranians with stronghold in Eastern Afghanistan conquering pagan areas westwards (mazandaran) for instance. Then in historic times we see the medians, a zoroastrian dynasty ruling in the same area. Such a clear westward move.

I mean Iranian is such a good example. Avestan is considered the ancestor of all Iranian languages and it is originally attested in areas adjacent to South Asia. Iranian languages then spread out over Central Asia and even into Europe.

What about the Dasa/Daha. The oft-derided enemies of the Indic Aryans in the Punjab are later mentioned in the Avesta as residing around North Easter Afghanistan. Later still herodotus mentions them as a royal clan amongst the sakas and now they are to be found called Dahestan near the borders of Europe.

What about the Brigus/Bryges/Phrygians?

Did I mention Mitra?

Wait..did you say something about bronze age (european) steppe crashing into south asia? Sorry must have that little fantasy-fiction post, you see I was busy doing some real research

bellbeakerblogger said...

@Davidski, Matt,

Lipson et al admit that their inferred average estimate of Iberian Farmer/Hunter admixture is older than the earliest farming in Iberia and still showing confident affinity to Iberian LB1.
That either means that full-blooded farmers arrived in Iberia much earlier than expected where they immediately mixed with local hunters, or that farmers arriving in Iberia already had hunter admixture similar to LB1 (but from somewhere else), or that LB1 is slightly over-represented over other hunter ancestry in the model of all Iberians of the stone age for whatever reason.

But they do seem to admit to the contribution of a non-local hunter source apart from continued LB1 in the MN and CA if I am reading correctly on page 12. Regardless, I don't see how Figure S8.1 supports a gradual increase of a local, unsampled phantom population other than farmers rolling around in the hay.

In essence, with the exception of the Blatterhohle outlier, they are predicating all of this on the fact that the samples of humans during the Neolithic Age are biased toward archaeological graves of individuals who practiced farming and have that genetic profile, but that there also existed individuals who are less represented in the archaeological record but who are more similar to samples from the Mesolithic which continue to raise the HG levels across Europe, excluding selection or something.

Some of them, like Blatterhohle, are nearly straight up spear-chuckers, and that's rather late for people who mixed well and often from the earliest contact.


Jaap said...

Hi Rob, I'm not on any high horse, wouldn't know how to. Just interested in the narrative of how exactly things got where they are. So I admit to being partly idiot. But I've got intelligence, and I can read, even if reading is insufficient to fully inform myself. And I have noted this strain in your posts. But I'm not really interested in what you can't do. What's important is what you can do! And that's where I want to give you full credit. And of course you're right in claiming no evidence in horse-riding before LBA. It's futile to ask me, as you know there isn't any! Asking for it nonetheless is your vitriolic side. It doesn't take away anything from your value. I don't want to to give you any more examples at this point, as it would take me a full day to go all through your postings for the last two years, just to give you the obvious. If you really want to know I'll specify! A day of work, but hey, I'm a pensioner with time on his hands. Problem is you know everything already, and I'd just be stating the obvious. Plus being played for a fool. And I am a fool; no question!

Jaap said...

'Nothing funny about R1b not being common among the Bronze Age migrants to South Asia, since the steppe peoples of the Middle to Late Bronze Age were rich in R1a-Z93.

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/r1a-z93-from-bronze-age-mongolia.html

South Asians mostly share ancestry with Iranians from Neolithic Iran and from the Bronze Age steppe, because Iranians also have significant steppe ancestry.'

That's not enough! Suppose an R1a clan ventured south making quite a splash, that still wouldn't do for a migration. And sourcing this back to cultures that have both R1a and R1b doesn't work!
The founder R1a must have had some R1a-tribe to hark back to, in order to be reinforced. And no R1b there says: story!

Davidski said...

You mean a steppe overrun with people rich in R1a isn't a plausible source of the steppe-related and R1a rich ancestry in South Asia?

Well if you say so.

Jaap said...

All I'm saying is that all the genes may be there, but the sorting of the genes needs a story! You've got the adult, but you've left out the child! Story! 'Daddy, where were the red-haired folks when you left for India?' It seems to me that for a singular R1a source we must look to Iran. I'm talking second wave here.
If a steppe-overrun in India took place it's inconceivable R1b weren't part of the slaughter.
Them bloody Scots were bleeding all over the place, but somehow they never got a look in on India. And them being both R1b-Afanasievo as well as Red-haired Taklan Makan with their tartans and their sheep ...
Them NOT being there requires a story .,,
I know very well all the mistakes I am making here: But I equally know the job of the one putting me straight! I doubt very much Davidsky could do it. For all his postures and for all his expertise ...
Please put me straight? For I must be 100% TOTALLY WRONG here!

Davidski said...

You're not just totally wrong, you're not making any sense whatsoever.

R1b is more common in many parts of Iran than R1a, and the one Iron Age sample from Iran that is available belongs to R1b.

On the other hand, all Middle and Late Bronze Age males from the steppe belong to R1a, and many to R1a-Z93 which is the type of R1a found in India.

The conclusion is obvious, so I'm really not sure why you're missing it.

Anonymous said...

@Rob
First you say there were dubious evidences of Horses in the Western Steppe, then you backtrack and say that there were only Labour Horses, not Riding Horses or any other, then you backtrack again saying that you don't know.
Please, rest your case.

So cheesy.
Tell that to the supporters of the Anatolian hypothesis.
It's called cumulative weight of evidence and appraisal by people who've studied the matter.
It's called selective bias, something you also posses.
A concept seemingly lost on you.
Good, because I'm all in for the scientific method.

@Jaap
This thread was made with the opener of an all-around paper who would tell the whole history so far. I was not impressed though, and the available preprint seemed to be in a very early stage.
Short story is that the Indo-Europeans expanded everywhere and arrived at India - they might or might not have contacts with the Harappans and other earlier peoples of the territory that would become known as "Ariana".
They were Pastoralists by choice, as they knew agriculture, practised it a little but chose not to specialise. They were Nomads also, a common behaviour specially concerning their Herds.
Genetically, the best candidates for the Aryans of India are the people of Andronovo, Corded Ware-like peoples.
We know that due to the Steppe ancestry still present in Indians today, specially North Indians, and the R1a haplogroup. Central Asia as a whole also reinforces this.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Jaap,
"And them being both R1b-Afanasievo as well as Red-haired Taklan Makan with their tartans and their sheep ..."

Off topic. Just as by the way, the Tarim mummies=Celts is false. They have no connections to Celts. If let's say they do descend from Afanasievo that's a very distant connection.

Davidski said...

Most of the Tarim Basin mummies belong to R1a and none to R1b anyway.

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/lots-of-ancient-y-dna-from-china.html

Ric Hern said...

Can someone throw some light on the R1b in Uyghurs ? Did they bring some R1b with them from the Northeast or where all R1b local Pre-Turkic in the Tarim ?

Ric Hern said...

Did the Afanasevo R1bs die out or are there populations with some descendant clads out there ?

Ric Hern said...

How does R1b M73 fall into the broader R1b picture considering the Mesolithic R1b finds ?

Seinundzeit said...

For what it's worth, a bunch of the HGDP Pashtun ("Pathan") samples are R1b, and if I'm not mistaken, it is the same lineage seen with currently sampled Yamnaya/Afanasevo.

Not to mention noticeable R1b percentages among Afghan Tajiks.

So, there is some R1b in South Central Asia (and again, if I'm not mistaken, it's the same kind seen with Steppe_EMBA), which must mean something.

EastPole,

Totally off-topic, but around two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting some Shugni-speaking people (extremely polite, and very kind/good sense of humor).

Regardless, they already figured that I was from their general neck of the woods (Tajikistan/Afghanistan/northern-northwestern Pakistan), just by looking at me.

Anyway, I was struck by the fact that three of them looked straight-up Russian-Ukrainian, and the other three looked like whatever I get construed as (I have an extremely ambiguous phenotype, which these other three shared with me; anywhere from Spain to Afghanistan, but not typical for any locality. Probably best described as having the facial features of a Volga-Ural European, but with the long/prominent/chiseled nose of a Near Easterner/Southern European, and the skin color and hirsuteness of a northern West Asian. With this sort of combination, people don't know WTF they're looking at, especially North Americans with zero international exposure, so they often assume Hispanic. But people with roots in Iberia, Italy, the Balkans, the Levant, the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, and northern South Asia will all recognize me as being something loosely related to whatever they consider themselves).

Long story short, it was my first time seeing Pamiri people in the flesh.

So now, I can say with confidence that photos of Pamiri Tajiks which show Eastern European-looking people are not cherry-picked at all; many of them do look full-blown European, but much more robust/rugged, and those that don't look full-blown European look very much like Pashtuns or northern Pakistanis (the Pashtun-looking ones have that same European/West Asian/South Asian ambiguity; without contextual information/framing, and when dressed in "Western/American/European" attire, you can't honestly tell if you're looking at a European, a Near Easterner, or a northern South Asian).

Everyone,

Not much happening right now, so I'll just post two southern Central Asian models, involving a new setup I'm tinkering with.

Kalash:

47.0% Iran_N

38.2% Srubnaya_outlier + 4.2% Latvia_MN1

10.6% ASI

distance=0.3628


Karlani Pashtun, central highlands:

32.25% Iran_N + 18.70% Armenia_Chal + 4.55% Levant_BA

30.65% Srubnaya_outlier + 4.05% Latvia_MN1

8.10% ASI

1.70% Mongola

distance=0.2774

Compared to North Indian Brahmin:

37.70% Iran_N + 7.45% AfontovaGora3

27.70% ASI

27.15% Srubnaya_outlier

distance=1.1063

I really hope that the Central/South Asian aDNA paper is unleashed sooner, rather than later.

Balaji said...

@Razib Khan

I agree with you about David Reich. His a priori position is to accept AIT/AMT. In Moorjani et al. 2013, we find, “The third possibility is that West Eurasian genetic affinities in India owe their origins to migrations from Western or Central Asia from 3,000 to 4,000 years BP, a time during which it is likely that Indo-European languages began to be spoken in the subcontinent.”

In his talk at the American Philosophical Society Meeting on April 29, 2017, he discussed only the Anatolian and Steppe hypotheses for the PIE homeland. He did not mention OIT even to dismiss it. In his talk accepting the Dan David prize in February 2017, he showed a slide with arrows from the steppe aimed at India, clearly implying AIT/AMT.

The Russian archaeologist Elena Kuzmina had suggested that the Andronovo gave rise to the “Indo-Iranians” and the Andronovo or their descendants could have been in the right place at the right time to be the “Aryans” doing the invading in 1500 B.C.

But there is a fly in the ointment, namely that the Andronovo have Anatolian Neolithic ancestry and Indians have none of it. Reich mentioned this problem in his American Philosophical Society talk. It is no doubt this problem which is delaying the publication of aDNA results from Pakistan and India.

Aram said...

Ric Hem

"Did the Afanasevo R1bs die out or are there populations with some descendant clads out there ?"

It didn't die out. It has sporadic presence all over Eurasia. The closest match from Hollard paper was a Mongolian.
And it even migrated to West Asia in Bronze Age.
Henning's theory about Gutians is correct?

Aram said...

Samuel

I made a comment in Your blog.
http://mtdnaatlas.blogspot.am/2017/07/the-evidence-says-one-thing-they-say.html?m=1

Please find a time to answer. Thanks in advance.

Rob said...

@ Jaap

Come up with a new word.
You guys are bullcrap artists with little real insights and false bravado, who bully anyone with a different opinion .
So when someone calls you out, you tuck tail and cry victims
So shut up you lame hypocrite .

Archaelog said...

@Carlos Aramayo I wasn't aware of the Gonur Tepe discoveries. How did they conclude that it was an Indo-Iranian settlement from a supposed fire-altar and some drinking cups. Drinking cups were fairl universal. Fire altars were not even an IE feature originally.They are not found in any of the other dozens of IE cultures in Europe. So the incoming Indo-Aryans must have picked it up from whichever people occupied the Gonur Tepe along with the SOma rituals. That's how it seems to me because the date (c. 2500 BCE) is simply too early. 2500 BCE is still the period of late Yamna unity and they are telling us there was a settlement of I-Ir as far south as Turkmenistan already? Either the identification is wrong or we have missed some very early eastern migrations (before the Sintashta and Andronovo) in the archaeological record.

@Jaap Horse-riding gear is first found only c.1000 bc that is way way after the first domesticated horses (which goes back to the 3rd or even 4th millennium BC). That doesn't mean of course that no one had ever ridden a horse before. Maybe they did but horse riding became incorporated into nomad societies only after 1000 BC.

@mzp1 There were no 'south indians' living in the Indus Valley. That reference is anachronistic. The people who lived in the Indus Valley contributed to both modern south and north indian populations to varying degrees. We can't say for sure before genomic studies are out.

Olympus Mons said...

@Aram,
your question to Samuel... easy, easy : 9000-8000Ybp! :) at least H15a1!

Samuel Andrews said...

Aram, I'll get back to you soon. My blog "mtDNA Atlas" will be shut down soon for a new blog in December. Someone emailed me the calculator I don't think Soares offers it in the paper.

Carlos Aramayo said...

@Chetan,
you wrote:
"...the date (c. 2500 BCE) is simply too early. 2500 BCE is still the period of late Yamna unity and they are telling us there was a settlement of I-Ir as far south as Turkmenistan already? Either the identification is wrong or we have missed some very early eastern migrations (before the Sintashta and Andronovo) in the archaeological record".

Poltavka`s lack of EEF ancestry shared with modern South Asians can be the alternative reply. Poltavka (c.2500- 2000 BC). I know Davidski argued for "commoners" and "outliers" of Post-Poltavka period, but I still think of people from this previous period and culture.

MomOfZoha said...

@mzp1:
While I totally agree that the "PIE Aryan Invasion" has too often been phrased in an arrogant, culturally appropriating, racist way (making me wonder if it is possible to phrase that particular theory otherwise), some of your remarks are kind of fashy too. As Chetan Vit pointed out, when you say that "it's hard to imagine South Indians walking around Peshawar", you succumb to the same European racial discourse that pollutes all PIE discussion. Likewise, when you talk about "Daha/Dasa" versus "Aryans", the present day Zoroastrian community would have a lot to correct about those misunderstandings of ancient terminology. As for your statements regarding feminism, the original Central Asians and also Siberian peoples -- with horse-riding female archers on the one hand and shaman women on the other hand -- have been far more “feminist” than any historic European...

It's a sad state of affairs when the alternative to the David Duke inspiring "Aryan Invasions PIE theory" becomes just another fascist Central Asian "Aryan purity" or Modi-inspiring Hindu Nationalist theory. If we're left with inspiring some form of fascism in all cases, then I hope that conscientious anthropologists will attempt responsible discourse in the "worst case scenario" upon discovering plausible evidence in favor of some form of "Aryan invasion theory". I hope they clearly separate the present terminologies from racial ones referring to notions of purity, dehumanizing "Asiatic" and Dravidian peoples – the kind based upon the not-so-silent question “How could such savage people give rise to anything poetic”? And, when talking about a massive replacement of the male population, I hope they do not brag about how that might have taken place...

@Seinundzeit and EastPole:
Since we're in the game of mentioning Central Asian phenotypes, and you have mentioned my own mtDNA haplogroup in particular: According to my mother, her beloved H5a maternal grandmother (from Hotamis village, known for its Turkmen kilims) was a tiny woman with blondish hair, greenish eyes, yellow-wheat (not white) skin and pronounced East Asiatic facial features. Thanks for sharing the historic occurrence of that haplotype in the greater Khorasan region, from which the non-Near Eastern parts of my ancestry are known to have migrated. I guess it also makes sense why my mom shares more cMs with Andronovo than other cultures…

As for my Iranian Azeri husband of primarily Caucasus (last name shared by both Armenians and Azeris) and also Iranian and Central Asian origin: He could easily "pass" for anything from Ethiopian to Georgian, from Indian to Armenian. Imagine a tall Haile Sellasie with larger eyes and more hair. His 6 foot tall sister, on the other hand, would be swept away in an instant if discovered by a Hollywood producer wanting to make a new Pocahontas movie…

A wonderful thing about the broad region spanning from West to East of Central Asia is that one does in fact see almost all phenotypes represented -- though of course showing a classically "European looking" girl in national ads is more likely to garner Western sympathies. They do the same thing with Kurdish and Syrian pictures, always focusing on blondish kids. I have nothing against blondish kids (my brother and I were like that too), but given what I know about the beautiful variety in these regions, it's hard to trust the unbiased nature of pictures chosen for Western eyes...

Sanuj said...

@aniasi

1. Regarding the horses in IVC. The horse remains at Surkotada have been found at an urban IVC site, not some "encampment in the large empty space between zones".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surkotada

2. Regarding the latest paper on Ghaggar-Hakra/Saraswati, it does not change anything for the IE argument, because we already knew it was a dying river during the mature Harappan phase, and all flow ceased 5 kya(which is what this paper is saying too). Infact, the river flowed to the Ocean only during the composition of RV(by pastoral people, not urban), and it's subsequent drying up and ending in a swamp is recorded in subsequent literature. So, the only thing that's certain now is that, it was a full river only till 6000 BC.

Anonymous said...

@Rob
I'm done with you.

@Chetan Vit
Horse-riding gear is first found only c.1000 bc that is way way after the first domesticated horses (which goes back to the 3rd or even 4th millennium BC). That doesn't mean of course that no one had ever ridden a horse before. Maybe they did but horse riding became incorporated into nomad societies only after 1000 BC.

By your logic, the North American Indians never rode horses, right?

@MomOfZoha
Go virtue signal somewhere else? Preach your religion to your church.

Rob said...

@ Arkaim

'By your logic, the North American Indians never rode horses, right'

Yeah they were already domesticated horses, which is differnt.
You cant just up and ride a wild or barely domesticated horse. Different learning curves

Once a horse has been dometicated for thousands of years, and there is collectiver cumulativer knpowledge, you can ride it naked upside down. Not the case at the start of the curve though

Vara said...

@Arkaim

"By your logic, the North American Indians never rode horses, right?"

How does that even relate? We have all kinds of evidence, pictures, writings of travellers...etc, that they rode horses.

There is no evidence of Steppe people riding horses before the Late Bronze Age. No thigh-bone trauma. No horse riding gear. Of course this doesn't mean that we may never find evidence of horse riding. It just means that as for now there is little evidence to believe that the Steppe folk rode horses in the EBA. In fact all evidence suggests that the Steppe folk adopted it from BMAC.

Anonymous said...

"In fact all evidence suggests that the Steppe folk adopted it from BMAC."

ahhah-ahhaha, bullshit.

Al Bundy said...

@Rob What do you make of the Globular Amphora paper?

Vara said...

@Supernord

It seems you haven't learned your lesson from the last intellectual beatdown where you thought the word Araxes is the same as the Aranha.

But here I am being generous and willing to share my knowledge. So, let's start shall we?

Earliest evidence of riding comes from a chlorite statue found in Jiroft dating to approximately 2500 BCE, where the oldest evidence for camel riding is also found. This is no coincidence of course as the remains of what is thought to be a proffessional messenger is found.

The second oldest evidence is from 2100-1700 BCE in Turkmenistan. You can find that seal in Sarianidi's works and was even mentioned by David Anthonny. Again implying a movement from Jiroft to BMAC as the genius Sarianidi predicted before even the discovery of the Jiroft complex.

The third oldest is from Mesopotamia's 21st century Akkadians.

Anyways, go enjoy swimming in your imaginary Sarasvaiti river that dried up in 500 CE. LMAO!

Rob said...

@ Al

A very nice paper overall, despite a couple of funny PCA positions, but as has been pointed out, the samples were already featured in Mathieson, and would like to see more sites sampled in the future. Still, the two sites - on from Poland and one hundreds of Km away in Ukraine speak volumes.
For me it just confirms that pastoralism and the rise of individuality is not something that originated in the steppe, but was part of broader processes which eventually saw its adaptation in the steppe (via multiple channels), before coming back again from the steppe in a re-vamped version.
More specifically, it confirms/ shifts much further east the origins of complexes like BB, at least from a male lineage perspective..
Is there anything specific you were asking ?


Al Bundy said...

No nothing specific just your general impression thanks.

Al Bundy said...

The steppe,geographywise,was in a great position to receive influences from different directions and then that package spread out to a lot of different places.

Rob said...

One other point- GAC moved from northwest to southeast . It shows that all sorts of people were moving, but some of the geneticists don't pick up on it because they are either unaware what to look for, even if their own data is staring them in their face, or have approached their analysis on a post hoc basis

Carlos Aramayo said...

I`d like to announce here the most recent lecture by Colin Renfrew on Gimbutas, Genetics and Indo-Europeans. You can find the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6vByg1lVdA

Al Bundy said...

Reich was a part of the massive migration Haak paper and on this one as well ...they say it's unclear whether IE to Europe spread from the Pontic Steppes or Anatolia,it could be both.I don't think anyone thinks it could solely be through Anatolia.

Anonymous said...

@Vara
"It seems you haven't learned your lesson from the last intellectual beatdown"

You've embarrassed themselves, everybody is laughing at you. What is intellectual defeat, it was you. Saw it all, so you live in their delusional fantasies.


"Anyways, go enjoy swimming in your imaginary Sarasvaiti river that dried up in 500 CE. LMAO!"

Uzboy dried up in с.1500-1000 BC, these are the findings of all modern geological science, but not myth from 19th century that you cited, and not your fantasy date.
You go bathe in the river which dried up 8000 years ago, that I wrote to you.


You will not find in the world stupid who would believe even a single word you say.

Davidski said...

@Rob

It shows that all sorts of people were moving, but some of the geneticists don't pick up on it because they are either unaware what to look for, even if their own data is staring them in their face, or have approached their analysis on a post hoc basis.

Bitterly ironic.

Vara said...

@Supernord

Again you cite nothing and just ramble on and on. Are you a preacher or something?

Here comes the smackdown again though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzboy

The best part is that I don't even need to show the archaelogical findings to you.

Rob said...

David
What exactly do you mean ?

Davidski said...

@Rob

I'm talking about your habit of ignoring obvious data, like, for instance, the data suggesting very strongly that Corded Ware and R1a-M417 came from the steppe.

Anonymous said...

@Vara
"Here comes the smackdown again though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzboy
"

As always you are a disgrace, can't even see what is written there.

"This a summary of Glukhovskoy’s book of 1893,[4] which probably needs updating."

Everything you write, you just collect the myths of outdated sources mainly wikipedia. You can go to relax.

Rob said...

Dave
You're more intelligent than to resort to straw man also
I was stating people were moving from multiple sources and in multiple directions including to the steppe . By that I mean some lineages
I made no referemce to R1a did I?
In fact I just stated that groups like BB (and by assoc cwc) came from further east than GAC (or steppe).
Don't get paranoid

Archaelog said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Davidski said...

@Al Bundy

I don't think anyone thinks it could solely be through Anatolia.

Why through Anatolia at all?

Obviously, the reason the Anatolian hypothesis still gets mentioned in papers as a possible, but unlikely, alternative to the steppe hypothesis, is because of professional academic courtesy.

I don't think even Renfrew really believes it now.

Al Bundy said...

I haven't looked at his Gimbutas talk on YouTube but I believe he's now accepted IE spread to Northern Europe from the steppe, so Gimbutas would be right about that, but that the PIE homeland is south of the steppe or it's unclear without Hittite...the steppe would be a secondary expansion of some IE.

Vara said...

@Supernord

Can you link what the expert geologists say or is that only in your fantasy world?

Actually how about you just google stuff and learn while you swim in the Volga that is called the Araxes river? Lol

Here last one: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.unesco.org/silkroad/sites/silkroad/files/knowledge-bank-article/route%2520via%2520the%2520caspian%2520sea.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiotM3hnefXAhWBKlAKHVocC5I4ChAWCC8wBA&usg=AOvVaw1GXg32GW5vCEKdAb7jimI6

Al Bundy said...

If it turns there is an IH homeland it would be the Caucasus I assume not Anatolia.

Rob said...

@ Al

What are your thoughts linguistically ?

Al Bundy said...

Greek came from the North but before the steppe migration to Europe it's more conservative than the rest of European IE...actually I'm just blowing smoke I know very little about linguistics.But what about a movement through the Balkans?

Samuel Andrews said...

@Rob,
"One other point- GAC moved from northwest to southeast . It shows that all sorts of people were moving, but some of the geneticists don't pick u"

Here you go again trying to diminish the importance of Steppe migration. Everybody wasn't on the move. The Steppe migration is compared to the migration of Anatolian farmers. It was the second big genetic shift, the second big migration in European history.

Remeber, by "Steppe migration" people pretty much just mean Corded Ware and Bell Beaker bteween 2600 and 2300 BC. The R1a M417 nation and R1b L151 nation weren't just two pparticipants in an age of migration phenomanon. What they did was unique and radicle and deserves special attention.

Al Bundy said...

You've talked about it with Matt I think, assuming Greek didn't come from the East.

Rob said...

@ Sam

"Here you go again trying to diminish the importance of Steppe migration. Everybody wasn't on the move. The Steppe migration is compared to the migration of Anatolian farmers. "

Im not diminishing anything.
There was a migration of GAC to steppe as there were of some individuals from Balkans & Caucasus too. The matters aren;t mutually exclusive.

Rob said...

@ Al
Haha okay. Your opinion is nevertheless noted.

Al Bundy said...

A possibility if the elite model doesn't work, one of them

Rob said...

I don't think Greek is that conservative, I'm not a linguist, just from what I've read. It is just re-lexified, but early 'Mycenean' is reconstructed to be similar to NPIE.

Davidski said...

@Rob

There was a migration of GAC to steppe.

Did GAC even make it to the steppe, or just the forest steppe?

Al Bundy said...

Like you said we had movements from different directions to Greece.

Al Bundy said...

Well Ancient Greek the inflections I've read are pretty similar to Sanskrit..they have things in common that Latin for example does not.

Davidski said...

Well, the ancestors of the Minoans came from Anatolia, and perhaps somewhere near the Caucasus before that, but not many people think they were Indo-Europeans.

So it looks like the non-Indo-European wave into Greece came from Anatolia/Caucasus.

Al Bundy said...

Definitely

Al Bundy said...

Maybe Heggarty is still a believer who knows for an early farmer PIE but since that whole teal thing was discovered the Caucasus is the main area of interest besides the Pontic Steppe, as a possible source for IE, emphasis on possible.That's my understanding.

Rob said...

@ Dave

IRC, forest-steppe at Dnieper, further down in Moldavia and into eastern Transylvania.
Yamnaya formed a frontier with GAC at the steppe - forest steppe line, as mildly interacting but separate groups and otherwise separate territories.. Whilst it was CWC which occupied the same area as GAC, but distinct niches.
In Transylvania they coexisted with Yamnaya Tumuli, late Cotofeni etc

A said...

"Gene flow on the steppe was extensive and bidirectional, as shown by the eastward flow of Anatolian Neolithic ancestry–reaching well into central Eurasia by the time of the Andronovo culture."

The authors seem to be trying their best to make it sound like these steppe people weren't Europeans. Maybe they were 'anatolians' or 'iranians' or asians or something. You would never guess that these later steppe people -sintashta, andronovo etc - were very similar or even identical genetically to Bronze Age and modern-day Northern/Central Europeans, that they had light hair and eyes and looked more or less like davidski's profile picture. I.e they were the 'Nordic-type' blond, blue-green eyed 'aryans' that historians used to write about. But that doesn't sound very PC so it's best to completely ignore it and describe them as 'anatolians' or 'iranians' instead.

Funnily the paper they cite refers to 'European Neolithic ancestry' but the authors inexplicably changed it to 'Anatolian Neolithic ancestry', even though it was actually from Europeans and included western hunter gatherer ancestry.

Ric Hern said...

As far as I can remember GAC Archaeological find was not nearly as numerous as Corded Ware. This reminds me more of scattered refugees trying to cope with a new kind of lifestyle....

Unknown said...

@Philippe It's not accurate to say that they were modern Northern and Central Europeans. Although, they were 60 to 70% similar to the modern day populations mentioned above. Still, 30 to 40% is a huge difference, but yes, Northern Europeans are genetically the closest to these people. Although, the light pigmentation, as well as the blond hair and light eyes did not develop until much later on, and most of these populations were closer to Slavs than to Germans and Scandinavians.

Ric Hern said...

I think riding a pig will not get you as far as riding a horse. Heheheeeh...

It is certainly much easier to control herds of cattle and horses with the help of horses.Young lightweight men and women could have been responsible for this job. Light weight equals less trauma on the horses skeletal structure....etc.

Then there is the Salzmünde Tabiano Horse +-3000 BCE which shows clear connections to the Steppe....

Archaelog said...

Well Ancient Greek the inflections I've read are pretty similar to Sanskrit..they have things in common that Latin for example does not.

That's because ancient Greek and Indo-Iranian are part of the later IE dialects. Our reconstruction of IE is largely based on these two dialects that is why they appear conservative than the rest.

Now it appears that Italo-Celtic languages were part of a much earlier migration out of the steppe dated around 3000 BC. Probably R1b-L51 crowd.

Balto-Slavic and Germanic were both Corded Ware languages so they both expanded out of the steppe 2800 BC. Germanic was heavily influenced by multiple substrates while Balto-Slavic underwent Satemization around 2500 BC due to the influence of the southern dialects Greek and Indo-Iranian

The Greco-Aryan dialect continuum was the last remaining on the steppe from 2500 - 2000 BC before the contact was broken and Greek headed off westwards leaving Iranian on the steppe.

Archaelog said...

Correction : Only Indo-Iranian was completely satemized. Balto-Slavic and Armenian partially and Greek shows traces at best

Archaelog said...

Concerning the new GAC genomes, I don't understand why some people seem to think it's such a devastating blow to the Yamnaya -> Corded Ware Theory. It certainly dates earlier than the proposed CW culture formation and it doesn't negate the fact that CW shows a nearly straight derivation from Yamnaya (with Caucasian substrate and all, it's pretty hard to disprove).

Aram said...

Well Behar gives an age of 8700 ybp for H15. But some are sceptic of Behar's ages. H15b was found in Mathieson's Yamna. I wanted to know what would be the age of their common ancestor. In general I am testing the idea of Steppe foragers getting their southern admix from Meshoko in NW Caucasus.

Al Bundy said...

Aren't the similarities between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian greater than Balto-Slavic and Germanic?

Rob said...


@ Ric
Don't confabulate on matters you don't know about. It's truly amazing how people as ignorant as you sam and arkaim feel so enetitled to vomiting your unsubstantiated nonsense . No reference no basis nothing
It's the curse of the Steppe Tard

Archaelog said...

@Al Bundy It seems otherwise. Balto Slavic and Indo-Iranian don't share many dialectal similarities other than the satemization. And the ruki rule is violated in many Balto-Slavic words showing that the satemization was incomplete. Probably sometime between 2500 - 2000 BC Indo-Iranian dialects underwent satemization and partially satemized its IE neighboring dialects.

Balto-Slavic shares many more isoglosses with Germanic languages and Indo-Iranian with Greek.

The classification given in Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Raimo Antilla 1989) is a good reference.

http://www.languagesandpeoples.com/Eng/SupplInfo/AnttilaNeighborNet.htm


http://www.languagesandpeoples.com/Eng/SupplInfo/SupplInfoFigures/AnttilasDataAsANeighborNet.gif

Rob said...

@ Chetan Vit

"Concerning the new GAC genomes, I don't understand why some people seem to think it's such a devastating blow to the Yamnaya -> Corded Ware Theory. It certainly dates earlier than the proposed CW culture formation and it doesn't negate the fact that CW shows a nearly straight derivation from Yamnaya (with Caucasian substrate and all, it's pretty hard to disprove"

Who said that ?
Do you understand what you're actually saying or are you just speaking gibberish ?

Archaelog said...

@Rob I have read many blog posts after the publication of that paper where the authors claim the new findings are a blow to the Corded Ware from Yamnaya theory.

EastPole said...

@Samuel Andrews
“In modern data, I consider H1b a pan-European lineage but it only reaches appreciable frequencies in Eastern Europe (2-5%). One Globular Amphora person had H1b2 which today only appears in eastern Europe (Baltic and Slavic speakers).

Another form of H which appears in Globular Amphora; H28a, also only appears in eastern Europe (Baltic and Slavic speakers). A very specific form of U5b in Globular Amphora; U5b2b1a1, is in England, Norway, Ireland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, and Spain.”

Globular Amphora Culture is very interesting. They were putting swastika signs on the inside of their pots which suggests that it was not a mere decoration but a religious symbol:

https://s2.postimg.org/yyprjr7h5/screenshot_302.png

https://s2.postimg.org/b7qe1rhll/screenshot_303.png

https://goo.gl/YBSEJ2

I wrote about IE religious symbols found in Tripolye earlier:

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/10/tollense-valley-bronze-age-warriors.html?showComment=1509128436456#c2576589362402082565

@Chetan Vit
“Concerning the new GAC genomes, I don't understand why some people seem to think it's such a devastating blow to the Yamnaya -> Corded Ware Theory.”

The fact that first IE religious symbols were found in Neolithic cultures like GAC and Tripolye complicates PIE steppe theory IMO. I used to think that GAC came from the steppe like CWC and was IE. But now it seems that GAC didn’t come from the steppe and was not IE. Tripolye also was not IE.
According to linguists languages change really fast when people mix, when their religions and cultures mix, and change very slowly when people don’t mix and have stable cultures and religions.
Now it seems that the religion of Neolithic farmers influenced very much steppe pastoralists with R1a-M417 hg. from Sredny Stog who by migrating west and mixing with Neolithic farmers like Tripolye, GAC and TRB created CWC culture.
They didn’t only influenced religion of the steppe people but also contributed many important inventions like for example wheeled vehicles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronocice_pot

It is hard to believe that the languages of Neolithic farmers didn’t influence the languages of steppe pastoralists. CWC language should therefore be a mixed language. But from R1a dominated CWC came Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Hellenic and other languages. Especially Indo-Iranian and Slavic are very close and religious terminology in Slavic and Sanskrit is very similar.

https://postimg.org/image/cvz03e7qn/

Burrow “The Sanskrit Language” p. 14:

PIE has been reconstructed mainly from Greek and Sanskrit, but if Greek and Sanskrit are derived from mixed CWC language what is the true pure steppe PIE?

Rob said...

Chetan
Ok I thought you we referring to my comments above
To reitertate, GAC genomes are important for themselves and general European history. But CWC and BB are from steppe, I think here we all agree on that (or almost all).

Archaelog said...

I don't think Greek and Indo-Iranian were corded ware languages. They were late Yamna - Catacomb languages. The CW languages were pre-Germanic and pre-BaltoSlavic. And it doesn't seem the CW had a lot of European Neolithic ancestry like the CT and the GAC. They were a directly steppe derived people.

EastPole said...

@Chetan Vit
Sintashta and Andronovo are derived from CWC and Indo-Iranians are linked with Sintashta and Andronovo. Greeks are also linked with CWC and Sintashta influenced steppe.

Archaelog said...

@East Pole Yes Sintashta was partially derived from an eastern CW culture and the Late Yamnaya Poltavka culture but it seems the language they spoke was a southern dialect related to Greek and Armenian rather than a northern CW dialect. Greek was not related to CW at all. Greek was derived from the Catacomb culture

Rob said...

@ Chetan Vit

"Greek was not related to CW at all. Greek was derived from the Catacomb culture"

A popular theory amongst old orthodoxy (Kuzmina, Darden).
Is there any basis to this ?
I see barely any catacomb graves in Bulgaria, let alone Greece

Archaelog said...

The boundaries between the cultures are somewhat obscure. There is a significant period of overlap for example between Late Yamna (3000 - 2300 BC) and Catacomb (2800 - 2200 BC). It seems that both Greek and Indo-Iranian were derived from dialects spoken in this broad continuum during this time period. You have to excuse my mistake about the correct name of the culture because it is all muddled up. What I meant to say was Greek and IIr were both "southern dialects" different from the "northern" CW dialects (which I take to be Balto Slavic in the east and Germanic in the west).

* And I remember that burial face masks were proposed as a link between the Mycaeneans and the Catacomb/Late Yamna. I don't remember correctly

EastPole said...

@ Chetan Vit

Here is the latest linguistic tree from the lecture by Prof. David Reich:

https://s7.postimg.org/uyz1kz30r/tree.png

My suggestions are in red.
What is your hypothesis in regard to DNA, cultures and languages? Can you put it on this drawing?

Archaelog said...

@East Pole I agree with most of the Don-Ringe tree except the position of Balto-Slavic

This is how I see it
https://s33.postimg.org/jdbmwt2en/ie_tree.jpg

Ric Hern said...

@ Rob

Only the truth can upset you as much so naturally I'm glad I struck a nerve....

Olympus Mons said...

@Rob
So BB came from the steppe loaded up with EEF? So its ok for the BB Coming from the steppe and getting Neolithic Farmer ancestry but not the other way around that is WHG+EEF (coming from the west) and getting Yamnaua by exogamy (something known for decades)?
Yeah, makes sense.

Olympus Mons said...

@Aram,
For that matter, you find in Yamnaya H15, I, and H2 which is the mtdna we have so far for Shulaveri from Arkanshen. The Shulaveri I say made to Mesokho by 4900bc and later into samara- Problem is that I say R1b L23 and related were in the package of that migrating people…. And that “they” dont like.

EastPole said...

@Chetan Vit
Balto-Slavic R1a-Z283 and Indo-Iranian R1a-Z93 are brothers both coming from R1a-Z645 found in CWC.

https://s7.postimg.org/8uovnxmjf/screenshot_308.png

Could you add Y-DNA to your diagram.

A said...

Shahanshah

"the light pigmentation, as well as the blond hair and light eyes did not develop until much later on"

No, you're wrong.

"Our results also confirm that at the Bronze and Iron Ages, south Siberia was a region of overwhelmingly predominant European settlement, suggesting an eastward migration of Kurgan people across the Russo-Kazakh steppe. Finally, our data indicate that at the Bronze and Iron Age timeframe, south Siberians were blue (or green)-eyed, fair-skinned and light-haired people and that they might have played a role in the early development of the Tarim Basin civilization"

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00439-009-0683-0

A said...

"30 to 40% is a huge difference"

Where are you getting those numbers from?

Olympus Mons said...

@Aram,
Do you have any idea why Armenian (Shulaveri!) Mtdna (I1, H2, H15a1) never got to the databases of AncestralJourney and others?

What was wrong with "Eight Millennia of Matrilineal Genetic Continuity in the South Caucasus" from Ashot Margaryan and Allentoft et al ?

Archaelog said...

@East Pole I don't think you can find one to one correspondences between languages and subclades

But here goes my attempt https://s33.postimg.org/gtts87tdb/ie_tree_2.jpg

Olympus Mons said...

@Samuel Andrew
aren't you an expert on Mtdna HPs? - So does a population I1, H2 and H15a1 tell you something? Anything?

Anonymous said...

In Slavic was full satemization and RUKIzatsii, in contrast to the Baltic. There was some restrictive position, determined by the laws of the Meyer and Pedersen, respectively. Already in PIE were a number of words having forms with K and K', which gave different words in the Slavic,like korova vs. serna, or remained only one option like kamen vs. ak'men.


Pre-Greeks are not associated with the Catacomb culture, they are associated with the Babyno culture. This culture comes from post-corded cultures of Central Europe, as well as related Sintashta, which conquered the region in the Catacomb cultures, it is included in the first charioteers culture like Abashevo, Sintashta, Potapovka. In it was found the Mycenaean prototype phenomena.
Yamnaya people do with any subsequent Indo-European people could not be contacted.

Rob said...

@ Chetan

''The boundaries between the cultures are somewhat obscure. There is a significant period of overlap for example between Late Yamna (3000 - 2300 BC) and Catacomb (2800 - 2200 BC). It seems that both Greek and Indo-Iranian were derived from dialects spoken in this broad continuum during this time period.''

No. Maybe chronologically they bleed into one other, but theyre seperatable archaeologically
The catacomb period is when kurgan cultures disappear from southeast Europe & Hungary, and recede East of the Dnieper.
SO your link is not built on anything physical demonstrable, nor supported by Y DNA

Ric Hern said...

@ Rob

So you somehow think that GAC Archaeological finds were just as numerous as Corded Ware ?

Rob said...

@ Ric

Do you know what your even asking ? Just as numerous where / when ?

Archaelog said...

@Rob I think Catacomb culture never extended west of the Dnieper. The kurgans continue in south eastern europe and hungary until 2300 BC.

Ok so if Greek doesn't come from the Late Yamna cultures, where does it come from in your opinion?

Anonymous said...

Some insights.
What's the chances of:
1. The GAC genomes sequenced being from Slaves? Looking at their state when found, in piles, broken and mixed up, even with the bones of cattle and pigs, really suggests something.

2. The Swastika being a borrowing. Actually, it was found in many unrelated cultures, but in the IE case there's the Harappan and the EEF possibilities (or both might come from the Steppe). The same question goes to wheeled veichles, as pointed out here (although I find the evidence for that weak).

3. The Indo-European genesis being very much of Caucasus culture. To me, there's a Religious link between the Sumerian, Egyptian and the IE (might include Harappan there), with shared Archetypes and narratives which would point to a CHG common origin, if not just an unlikely (to me) cultural-only diffusion.

4. The Indo-Europeans were actaully like Islam. What does that mean? It means: Pastoralists who spreaded conquering peoples and then claiming the conquered culture, civilisations, history, technology, etc as their own. What Islam did to Persian culture and the myth of the Golden Age being Islamic could also be applied to what the IE did? There's evidence for both it being full of borrowings and full of innovations amd that might be the case - they were healthier, more mobile, had the same technological level and Pastoralism at their time wasn't lagging behind Agriculturalism, but was a real on par competitor system. Insights?

5. The role of Samara_CA and if might have anything to do with Early PIE.

Rob said...

@ Chetan

Sure I think Yamnaya itself is possible, because there are Kurgans all aroudn the Balkans. I was merely pointing out that Catacomb itself is too late, materially.

Rob said...

@ OM

''So BB came from the steppe loaded up with EEF? So its ok for the BB Coming from the steppe and getting Neolithic Farmer ancestry but not the other way around that is WHG+EEF (coming from the west) and getting Yamnaua by exogamy (something known for decades)?
Yeah, makes sense''

Well that just looks the case to me. As you know, Im not a crazed steppist, but when the evidence is there, it's there.
R1b M269 looks to be eastern around Black Sea or beyond -Caucasus. Then you have the copper daggers, kurgan style orientain of burials.

What's your (new) theory ?

Anonymous said...

More Insights:
6. So far, no R1a Yamnaya and no R1b Corded Ware. This is serious.

7. Found in EHG: R1a, R1b and J.

8. What's the possibility of Proto-Indo-European, or "Proto/Pre-Proto-Indo-European" being associated with a Caucasus expansion to both South (into Farmer territory, of what would become the Harappans, Elamites, Sumerians, Levantines, Egyptians and Minoans) and North (mixing with EHG, thus the Yamnaya later), but then being reconquered in the North by another EHG wave? Something has to explain the R1b/R1a and not the J - A Caucasus population with R1b (acquired earlier, we know they had little previous EHG/pre-EHG ancestry) might also be an explanation.

Carlos Aramayo said...

@Chetan,

you mention "Late Yamna (3000 - 2300 BC)".

What`s the reference for this? Anthony and Brown (2017) assert that Yamnaya period (or Late Yamna, as you say) is from 3300 to 2600 BC.

On the other hand, migrations from Yamnaya region to Afanasievo took place since 3000 BC covering a distance of more than 2000 km, leaving few traces in the way as they were nomads. So a paralell migration to South Asia, from Poltavka culture or even Yamnaya, covering long distance leaving no traces, is also likely around 2500 BC.

Rob said...

Yeah they should sample the single GAC burials under Megalithic barrows

Archaelog said...

@Carlos I have seen all kinds of starting and ending years given for Yamna. 3500 - 2500, 3000 - 2300 etc from different sources. Different authors have different definitions for 'Yamnaya' I guess. Many fail to make the distinction between the later Sredny Stog and Yamnaya and between Yamna and post Yamna cultures. If it just means 'kurgan' literally, then Yamnaya culture ends at different times in different areas. I was talking to Rob earlier and he said kurgans recede east of the Dnieper after the Yamnaya ends

@Rob Do you know the accurate starting and ending years for Yamna?

EastPole said...

@Arkaim
@ OM

Forget Shulaveri and Caucasus, people there were making wine 6000 BC:

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/11/whos-your-proto-daddy-western-europeans.html?showComment=1510636944007#c2993459189461670010

PIE didn’t know wine. In the north wine cannot be produced. They were drinking mead.

Carlos Aramayo said...


@Chetan,

The two most "academic" sources I found for Yamnaya are: Parpola (2012): 3200 to 2500 BC; and Anthony & Brown (2017): 3300 to 2600 BC.

Of corse there are other "datings" in wikipedia for instance, but not quoting the sources.

Rob said...


The optimal direct readings as of current from the Field that do the datings

(2015) A. Frînculeasa, B. Preda & V. Heyd, Pit-Graves, Yamnaya and Kurgans at the Lower Danube: Disentangling late 4th and early 3rd Millennium BC Burial Customs, Equipment and Chronology

Multidisciplinary Contributions to the Study of Pit Grave Culture Kurgans of the Great Hungarian Plain. TÜNDE HORVÁTH et al


Essentially, 3300-3000 BC is often described as pre-Yamnaya
33/3200 - 29/2600 Early to Classic Yamnaya
28/2700 -25/2400 ''Late Pit GRave with Catacomb INfluences', however ''In contrast to former theories, we assume that the Catacomb culture – one of the later waves from
the Eurasian steppes – did not exist as a discrete tribe on the territory of the Carpathian Basin. Although the late Pit Grave horizon shows similarities with the graves of the Polish Corded Ware culture that are found under mounds as well, it cannot be classified as Catacomb culture.''

etc.


@ Carlos

Parpola ?

Anonymous said...

@EastPole
The plant itself isn't so important, but the manufacturing process. Grape, Barley, Wheat, Rice, Potato, Maize - really doesn't matter.
Actually, this wouldn't be an argument against, but something to look for positively.

Archaelog said...

@Rob Thanks. That clarifies a lot

Olympus Mons said...

@Rob,
Same as ever. Thanks for asking. Always a chance to summarize/explain.

a. Type A- 7000BC (or already there) – a very much pastoral (Ovčarovo Gorata/Iron gates) moved from Balkans/thrace along the south shores of black sea. -- (R1b-M269 - mostly WHG a bit of EHG (as iron gates did) and EEF).

b. 6000BC, with a more solid mudbrick architecture (from something like Fikertepe) moved/reached South Caucasus (bringing Cattle and Sheep from Anatolia and not Iran as proved by Adna). Hence the Shulaveri Shomu (R1b-M269) arriving with mtdna I1, H2 and H15a1) – R1b-L23 with a bit more EEF ) – HERE is your epicenter of PIE!!

c. 4900 BC (mass dispersal of people for some reason). Already with a good percentage of CHG (or not) moved into svonodnoe and Mesokho. Here while moving up the Kuban and into north Caucasus, some picked up massive CHG – Hence finding Yamnaya (r1b-l23 and Z2103).

d. Type B – stayed. Moved back into Anatolia, and around. Some M269, some L23… whatever. Remember. Shulaveri Caucasus might have lots of CHG by the end… but those in Armenia (south lesser Caucasus) not really.
e. 4700BC - Type C – Moved south. You see them in Merimde and El-omari. Moved west to enjoy the vast grasslands of north Africa. With the birth of Sahara, 5900kiloyear jumped into Iberia. (R1b -L51!!- Yes the ones)

It’s a theory. Lets see if correct, wrong and by how much.

Olympus Mons said...

By the way. Extracting Dna will become ubiquitous and only then we will have the full picture, the complex filigrane of humans moving everywhere all the time and mostly males taking exchanging wives with other tribes. So in the end there will be a very complex diagram to describe what some today are oversimplifying.

Anonymous said...

Some include the dating of the Poltavka culture in the Yamnaya culture, calling first the Yamno-Poltavka culture. In fact, Poltavka culture is different from the Yamnaya primarily in ceramics.

It is possible to distinguish three layers Poltavka people:

1. Actually anthropological descendants of pit culture people, who are called Yamno-Poltavka.

2. A distinct anthropological type, closer to the Corded.

3. Volsk-Lbische ceramics carriers, widely represented in Poltavka culture, intruders from post-corded ware Volsk-Lbische culture or plundering or occupying Poltavka they have a dominant position. This culture lived in the fortified proto-cites, but more small & simple than the later Sintashta, their region had connections with Unethical culture. Perhaps the second type and the third type is the same. They apparently began to beat Yamnaya culture people, and finished it already Abashevo and Potapovka with the formation the Srubnaya culture.

Olympus Mons said...

Just an oddity for these days.
Bell beakers in Portugal (the oldest) were a specific people that lived in a 50 KM region. So Rui Martniano et al was such a botched job because he got samples from has beens in a cave not really anything bell beakers. Truly shame on him.
Anyway. These Bell beakers were clearly connected to the VNSP culture, the fortified settlement that closed and guarded the entrance into Lisbon Tagus river region, so into Zambujal where there is the most bell beaker pottery and so forth area.

So, VNSP village was really important… however it has not been worked on since the 30… and not even been cleaned in the last 20 years…. Because the local authorities and the previous owner, and now his daughter, do not come to an agreement on the amount of monthly rent. I mean, it’s a 100 euros amount. 120 dollars!!?
Just a couple month back a team manages to get back and very easily found the settlement was much bigger. So now the problem is the amount can reach 200 dollars a month. So no agreement again!
Anyway. It will happen and the team is planning on a 4 year work in there and definitely will get around to some inhumations and we will have their adna for sure.

Vara said...

@Davidski

Do you know if we will be getting more papers on Mycenaens anytime soon?

Also, when are the South Asian papers coming?


@Supernord

I'm still waiting on the expert geologists. Do they work with Anonymous or something?

Rob said...

@ OM
Thanks. Hopefully more samples come from Portugal, a difficult area for aDNA with its aridity and soils.


@ Supernord

How do you think proto-forts were developed in these people ? Contact with Unetice or HUngary ?

Unknown said...

@Arkaim Not really like Islam. Do you mean like Arabs? Anyway, Arabs did not have a similar genetic impact as the Indo-Europeans, but both were certainly borrowers, rather than innovators. The Indo-Europeans borrowed much of their civilization from non-Indo-European peoples, i.e. Indus Valley peoples, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Minoans, Etruscans, etc.

@Philippe Yamnaya were dark haired and brown eyed, with a fairly light pigment. Anyway, this is all irrelevant. People like you are just good for any excuse to appropriate OUR ancient civilizations, which were a product of a fusion between various cultures. In Iran it was the Elamites and Mesopotamian civilizations, in India it was the Indus Valley Civilization, and in Europe it was the Minoans and Etruscans. The civilizations of the Indo-Europeans were built on those which preceded them. Since northern Europe did not have any large scale preexisting civilization, the Indo-Europeans struggled to establish anything notable early on. Therefore, you can claim our histories all you want, but the reality is far different than what you perceive it to be.

Unknown said...

@Arkaim "What are the chances of thr GAC genomes being sequenced from slaves?"

Not exactly on the subject of GAC but of subjugation and EEF origin substrates in Germanic:

"skalka- (m.) "servant." Proto-Germanic. Intriguingly proposed to be from the name of a subjugated people. Boutkan & Siebinga 2013; Kroonen 2014."

From The Cranberry Letters blog

A said...

"Yamnaya were dark haired and brown eyed, with a fairly light pigment."

Some of them were, certainly. But I'm talking about the later steppe cultures, who were apparently the classic blond, blue eyed 'nordic' -type 'aryans' which were often written about in pre-PC historical accounts. I'm not sure exactly where they came from or how they supplanted the earlier steppe people, but they seem to have had a genetic mix of earlier Yamnaya-like ancestry and Neolithic European ancestry.

A said...

"Since northern Europe did not have any large scale preexisting civilization, the Indo-Europeans struggled to establish anything notable early on"

The indo-Europeans were originally semi-nomadic warrior types and not as civilised as the farmer-types they encountered in their migrations. However they appear to have come up with certain key technological innovations, which may have given them an upper hand, and they also appear to have had a very rich oral culture, and a particular way of looking at things which differentiated them from the earlier Middle-eastern or meditteranean people. So whilst they appear to have been primarily warrior-type people who imposed themselves on earlier cultures, they also brought new technologies and ways of thinking, which might be why the fusion of indo-European and meditteranean people produced so much.

A said...

It may also have to do with the fact that most of the population in the ancient western world was located in or around the meditteranean and miiddle-East. In the northern regions the indo-Europeans had no populations to rule over other than themselves, whereas in the much more populous south they could set themselves up as ruling classes with large populations of subject workers.

Unknown said...

@Philippe

"Some of them were, certainly. But I'm talking about the later steppe cultures, who were apparently the classic blond, blue eyed 'nordic' -type 'aryans' which were often written about in pre-PC historical accounts. I'm not sure exactly where they came from or how they supplanted the earlier steppe people, but they seem to have had a genetic mix of earlier Yamnaya-like ancestry and Neolithic European ancestry."

Later populations were certainly blond haired and blue eyed, no doubt. I never denied this, as I was solely referring to the Yamnaya people, not the other Indo-Europeans who came later. Yamnaya are very distinct from northern Europeans, as evidenced by their plotting on Davidski's PCAs. I certainly agree with you in regards to the later Steppe peoples, who were more or less 70 to 80% similar to present day Northern Europeans, as confirmed by Davidski many times. In fact, the only difference between Northern Europeans/Central Europeans/Eastern Europeans and the later Steppe populations is that the former seem to exhibit a bit more farmer and hunter gatherer admixture. Remember though, South Asians have more Yamnaya like admixture, whereas Iranians seem to have more Sintashta like admixture, i.e. later Steppe cultures. However, there's also evidence that the Indo-Iranians were partially BMAC derived, both genetically and culturally, prior to entering Iran, and possibly India (although, South Asians have more admixture from earlier Steppe populations).

"The indo-Europeans were originally semi-nomadic warrior types and not as civilised as the farmer-types they encountered in their migrations. However they appear to have come up with certain key technological innovations, which may have given them an upper hand, and they also appear to have had a very rich oral culture, and a particular way of looking at things which differentiated them from the earlier Middle-eastern or meditteranean people. So whilst they appear to have been primarily warrior-type people who imposed themselves on earlier cultures, they also brought new technologies and ways of thinking, which might be why the fusion of indo-European and meditteranean people produced so much."

This is true, and I am not denying this. One of their great innovations was the wheeled chariot. And certainly, their way of thinking helped the fusion, and the emergence of these civilizations was a direct result of the Indo-Europeans mingling with the Mediterranean farmer types in both Europe and Asia (although, I am not sure whether or not Neolithic/Chalcolithic Iranian populations could be considered a Mediterranean people). Anyway, I definitely agree with you. Thanks for acknowledging this fact. The Indo-Europeans did not simply create civilizations over night. They created them by fusing with the native cultures they conquered and occupied. Although, there was always a caste element, it seems that the natives did play an important role in the ancient Greek, Roman, and Iranian civilizations. This is likely why the descendants of the Indo-Europeans struggled in Northern Europe for quite a while, as they lacked a solid foundation upon which to build a civilization.

Unknown said...

@Philippe

"It may also have to do with the fact that most of the population in the ancient western world was located in or around the meditteranean and miiddle-East. In the northern regions the indo-Europeans had no populations to rule over other than themselves, whereas in the much more populous south they could set themselves up as ruling classes with large populations of subject workers."

This is true as well, although, and I think it is exactly what happened in Europe, and possibly in South Asia, as well. But in Iran, the Indo-Europeans relied heavily on the natives and surrounding Semitic cultures. For instance, the Achaemenids, relied heavily on the Elamites for soldiers and artisans. The reliefs at Persepolis and Susa were built by Elamite, Lydian, and Mesopotamian craftsman. The lingua franca of the Achaemenids was Imperial Aramaic, rather than Persian. Furthermore, all colored depictions of the Immortals portray them as brown skinned, similar to most modern Iranians. Finally, we do not even know how the Achaemenids looked like, and I would not be surprised if they had considerable admixture from the native Iranian populations, with a high steppe component obviously (45 to 60%). I guess, even in Greece this was largely the case, as the Mycenaeans took great influence from the Minoans. The Minoan palaces were some of the first and greatest of their kind in the world, and the Mediterranean farmers had achieved quite a lot prior to the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. Many of the subject workers were actually capable of producing excellent works, as they were inheritors of great farmer cultures. I think a fine line must be drawn between myth and reality. While I concede the point that the Indo-Europeans did establish ruling castes in Southern Europe and the Middle East, one cannot deny the influence the natives of these regions had on their rulers, both culturally, and to a lesser extent, genetically as well. We already saw this when the Yamnaya migrated into Northern and Central Europe and mixed with the Early European Farmers living their, and then proceeded to migrate to Asia and the Middle East from there. Surely, they must have picked up some non-European admixture once they came into contact with the natives of Iran and India, as well as those of the BMAC culture.

Carlos Aramayo said...

@Rob,

you wrote: "Parpola?"

I suppose that means you want details on Parpola`s view and sources regarding Yamnaya, to which he calls "Yamnaya (Pit Grave) cultural complex". Following quoting is from his paper:

Parpola, Asko, 2012 (2013). "Formation of the Indo-European and Uralic (Finno-Ugric) language families in the light of archaeology". Pp. 119-184 in: R. Grünthal & P. Kallio (eds), A Linguistic Map of Prehistoric Northern Europe. Helsinki.

"...Yamnaya (Pit Grave) cultural complex (c. 3200–2500 BCE) (cf. Parzinger 2006: 241; Anthony 2007: 300–339, 361–368), which eventually extended from the Danube to the Urals (on the Yamnaya cultures and their formation see especially Rassamakin 1999: 113–124 and Anthony 2007: 311–321). A large number of wagon graves belonging to the Yamnaya horizon have been found, attesting to a pastoral economy based on mobility (cf. Anthony 2007: 312–322). Penetrating deep into the Danube Valley and the Balkans in the west (cf. Mallory 1989: 238–243; Anthony 2007: 361–367), it formed the “Circumpontic interaction sphere”, which can be correlated with the later emergence in these regions of various branches of the Indo-European language family. The Yamnaya cultures can be said to have spoken variants of “Southeast Indo-European”, which was still close to Late PIE, but undoubtedly soon split into a number of local dialects..." (page 134).

Rob said...

Thanks Carlos. I was just a little surprised you mentioned him, because he is someone I normally associated with Uralic and more northern latitudes, but you're right he sets out a good summary.

Aram said...

Olympos

There is no problem with Margaryan's data. Most of them are high coverage and full sequence enough to be added in Ian Logan's website.
http://www.ianlogan.co.uk/sequences_by_group/h15_genbank_sequences.htm

Those Shulaveri mtdna were never found in Anatolia Neolithic and EEF. So I don't think they came from west.
I think in Meshoko we will see some J Y dna. All currently published papers favour the idea that L23 formed in Steppe.

Aram said...

Well H2a was found in Kumtepe6. But Kum6 is from East.

Olympus Mons said...

@Aram,
No, no! This is why I am pushing questions about H15a1
a. Shulaveri H15a1 is found by 6000bc in the arriving population of Shulaveri to Armenia. And we know that at least their cattle/sheep was coming from Anatolia not iran (just next to them).
b. We have H15 then in steppe Yamnaya (as we have I1 another Shulaveri mtdna found).
c. We have downclades H15a1a1 in Armenia/Iran but mostly in Pamiris people, the ones Davidaky so keenly “proves” are Yamnaya derived, steppe, steppe. Pamiris that show lots of R1a/r1b-M269.
d. We have downclade H15a1b1 also prevailing in Pamiris the “yamanya steppe” people.
e. Sister clade H15b is found in Armenia, not in east!, but also Europe (mostly Denmark).

So, if earliest H15a1 is found in Shulaveri and it is seen later following “the great steppe” into east but not west doesn’t it imply or at least strongly supports that the Yamnaya seen thus far in samara was an offshoot of those Shulaveri, the south Caucasus master of domestication (plant and animal) moving to steppe, and explaining why the steppe R1b clade (Z…) died in steppe?
Yeah right…. Steppist are very smart to what suits their confirmation bias.

Olympus Mons said...

@Aram,
Adding to previous.
Yes H2a was found in Kum6...but Kum6 is 4600BC south black sea shores...shulaveri is 6000-5000bc and dispersal started 5000BC. If not earlier by Ubaid to Halaf transition to those closer to Halaf, the armenian Shulaveri.

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