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Friday, June 8, 2018

Of horses and men


Y-HT-1 is today by far the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup in domesticated horse breeds. According to Wutke et al. 2018, this is probably the result of artificial, human induced selection for this lineage, initially on the Eurasian steppe during the Iron Age, and then subsequently in Europe during the Roman period (see here).

However, during the Bronze and Iron Ages, before Y-HT-1 reached fixation, another very important Y-haplogroup in domesticated horses was its older sister clade Y-HT-4.

Indeed, it's likely that both Y-HT-1 and Y-HT-4 first dominated the domesticated horse gene pool during the Bronze Age, probably because they happened to have been present in the horse population exploited by the early Indo-Europeans. This was missed, or at least not directly discussed by Wutke et al., but I'd say it's a fairly obvious conclusion that can be drawn from their data, especially if we consider the fact that horses are the most important animal in the Indo-European pantheon.

Thus, the story of Y-HT-1 and, up to a point, Y-HT-4 is probably very similar to that of two human Y-haplogroups, R1a-M417 and R1b-M269. Both of these lineages also rose to prominence rather suddenly during the Eneolithic and Bronze Age, in all likelihood because they were present amongst early Indo-European-speaking males (see here).

Below is a map of the earliest reliably called and dated instances of Y-HT-1, Y-HT-4, R1a-M417 and R1b-M269 in the ancient DNA record. Not surprisingly, all of the points on the map are located on or very close to the Pontic-Caspian steppe, which is generally accepted to have been the Proto-Indo-European homeland. Fascinating stuff.


See also...

Central Asia as the PIE urheimat? Forget it

Cultural hitchhiking and competition between patrilineal kin groups may have led to the post-Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck (Zeng et al. 2018)

Was Ukraine_Eneolithic I6561 a Proto-Indo-European?

67 comments:

Davidski said...

If anyone wants to argue that the earliest instance of R1b-M269 is actually in Hajji Firuz, Chalcolithic Iran, then you need to read this first...

Likely Yamnaya incursion(s) into Northwestern Iran

Grey said...

Hajji Firuz: if the possibilities are
1) mis-dated
2) non-steppe source region
3) early steppe arrivals
then (considering (3)) the possible wine trade aspect of Hajji Firuz could fit the presence of distant merchants.

Davidski said...

@Grey

Number 2 is not a possibility, since, as shown by me first, there is actually no Hajji_Firuz_ChL-related admixture in Yamnaya.

Another look at the genetic structure of Yamnaya

Grey said...

Davidski

fair enough

#

off-topic but related to various other threads, from

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

"...the Gutians began a campaign, decades-long of hit-and-run raids against Mesopotamia. Their raids crippled the economy of Sumer. Travel became unsafe, as did work in the fields, resulting in famine. The Gutians eventually overran Akkad..."

is an example of "conquest" not by direct invasion but through constant hit and run guerrilla tactics which weakens (and maybe drives off?) an adjacent population.

epoch said...

Is anyone aware if there are initiatives to sample the Dereivka horse remains? It seems like a logical, necessary and important research and frankly, David Anthony wasn't worth his salt if he wasn't lobbying for it.

Ric Hern said...

All I know is that someone is apparently busy testing the two different types of horse remains at Alikemek-Tepesi...

With a Steppe like environment stretching into Dagestan and Azerbaijan (Shirvan Steppe) it is hard to imagine that Steppe people did not also migrate into that areas. After all Hajji Firuz is just a Stone Throw away from Alikemek-Tepesi...

I think the Steppe Origin of Proto-Indo-European is already proven and anything else are just a bonus....

Dmytro said...

Is the May1 Y-HT-4 (Maiaki) horse from the famous Usatovo culture site (the dates 3600-3100 seem to imply this)? Usatovo was still distinct from Yamna at that time. It would be nice to get "human" results therefrom (:=))

Lee said...

Steppe peoples obviously spread late pIE all over the place. This does not mean the Steppe is the origin of pIE. Possibly, even probably, but not certain. We cannot exclude the possibility the early pIE originated in other location. Language transfer by migration of a small group with superior tech could have done it, or simply cultural diffusion. If the later, genetics will never solve it.

Davidski said...

@Lee Albee

Iosif Lazaridis tweeted recently that the lack of steppe admixture in Bronze Age Anatolia will "largely falsify" the steppe hypothesis.

I think he's making the same mistake as you by assuming that all things are equal between the steppe and Anatolia in this context.

I can assure that they are not. I might write something up soon with a lot more detail in regards to Iosif's tweet, but for now, consider these two points:

- Bronze Age Anatolia was a relatively civilized place under the control of various proto-states that used writing to help them govern what were often multi-ethnic populations, which means that people could be fairly easily persuaded to shift languages depending on who was in power and which language was more convenient to use

- the Eneolithic/Bronze Age steppe was populated by bands of clannish yahoos, who would sooner whack you over the head and throw you in a ditch than consider the suggestion that they should speak a language other than what their male ancestors spoke, whom they worshiped like gods.


So taking these points into consideration, the steppe hypothesis can still be viable even with no steppe ancestry being discovered in Bronze Age Anatolia (which I think is ultimately unlikely anyway), while an Indo-European homeland south of the Caucasus will always look like a lame duck without a clear, unambiguous paternal signal from south of the Caucasus on the Eneolithic/Bronze Age steppe.

And then there are the horses. Hittites really liked their horses...

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

Nub question. Are you saying all domesticated horses in the world come from PIE breeds.

Lee said...

@Davidski

I think it is likely that pIE originated in a steppe or steppe related clan.
The genetic and liguistic evidence is fairly compellingly. But we cannot be certain. Never really can be without a time machine.

However, one thing you should be mindful of. These steppe people respected power and force. If a tribe of whatever origin moved in riding horses and pulling wagons and with early copper age/bronze age tools and took over a region. they could certainly through force of arms, and Cult of Personality significantly influence the cultures that existed around them. The step tribes often formed confederacy's where you would have multiple tribes swearing allegiance to another tribe. If that core leadership tribe was a pie speaking but non step origin population and relatively of a small size they could significantly have a disproportionate effect on language with having a minimal to no effect on genetics. Especially if after a hundred or 200 years they were replaced buy bona fide step culture one that would have more step legitimacy but because of their presence the lingua Franca of all of the tribes had become late pIE.

Not the most parsimonious explanation, Occam's razor is a wonderful thing, but humans often do very complex and bizarre things that defied a simple explanation.

Jijnasu said...

"the Eneolithic/Bronze Age steppe was populated by bands of clannish yahoos, who would sooner whack you over the head and throw you in a ditch than consider the suggestion that they should speak a language other than what their male ancestors spoke, whom they worshiped like gods" This seems like a very random statement for which we have very little support

Davidski said...

@Rob

A couple of new blogs have sprang up lately. I'm sure you'll be welcome there, so what's the big deal? There isn't one. All the best with everything.

Davidski said...

@Samuel Andrews

Nub question. Are you saying all domesticated horses in the world come from PIE breeds.

Yep, have a look at the phylogenetic tree of horse breeds here.

Central Asia as the PIE urheimat? Forget it

Sintashta and Scythian horses are in the Ancient-Domestic node, and almost all Scythian horses belong to Y-HT-1.

Davidski said...

@Lee Albee

It's fine to speculate about various, perhaps unexpected, scenarios that may have led to the expansion of Indo-European languages to the steppe, but it's also useful to expect a very high burden of proof for this, because 200 years of scholarship generally agrees that the Proto-Indo-European homeland was on the steppe.

And the one thing that I find really annoying is how quickly a lot of people dismissed all of this because they happened to see Iran Neolithic-related or -like ancestry in Yamnaya. The funny thing is that this ancestry might well be native to the southern part of the steppe since the Mesolithic, and have nothing to do with Iran or even the southern Caucasus within any reasonable stretch of time.

Davidski said...

@Jijnasu

This seems like a very random statement for which we have very little support.

I disagree totally. You need to keep up more with the latest data.

Al Bundy said...

@Davidski Anatolian was there way before any steppe migration to Anatolia.Hittites have no steppe ancestry.Based on that, isn't it reasonable to assume Anatolian didn't come from the steppe?

Davidski said...

@Al Bundy

How do you know exactly that Hittites had no steppe ancestry?

How many Hittites have been sampled? I don't know of any. But having said that, I'm pretty sure that one of the Anatolia_MLBA samples from Damgaard et al. does show steppe ancestry.

Al Bundy said...

I don't know it exactly but if they do it's a small amount.At any rate Anatolian was there before any steppe migration to Anatolia.You're saying we don't have any real Hittites until they have steppe ancestry?How long should we wait?

Al Bundy said...

They cremated their dead apparently we won't have a lot to go on.Somehow a preYamnaya steppe group migrated to Anatolia?

Davidski said...

Obviously, we have to wait for a fairly dense sampling of Copper and Bronze Age Anatolia, comparable to that of Copper and Bronze Age Central Asia.

Otherwise, there's no way you can say that Hittites (Nes) had no steppe heritage. But if they did, then it's game over.

Al Bundy said...

We've talked about this before but any steppe ancestry whatsoever seems like a low standard.

Al Bundy said...

Both Reich and the Wang paper are talking about IE coming from the Caucasus to Greece and Anatolia.I don't see how that's unreasonable.

Davidski said...

@Al Bundy

Not sure which Reich paper you mean. The Lazaridis one? If so, you should read that again, and pay attention to the part where Europe_LNBA/Steppe_MLBA are the best fit for the steppe-related ancestry in Mycenaeans. You know, the same kind of ancestry that Indo-Aryans have.

Damgaard et al. maintain that Hittites came from the steppe, albeit via the Caucasus. They have a linguistic supplement. You should read it.

And the data in the Wang paper actually debunked the idea of any recent migrations from the Caucasus or Iran giving rise to Yamnaya, which now just looks like a mix of Steppe Eneolithic and something like Globular Amphora. I didn't pay much attention to their conclusions, and don't care to.

What's the bet that when the Maykop data are released, Maykop will show by far the highest affinity to non-Indo-European Caucasus populations? No way was Maykop Indo-European, let alone Proto-Indo-European.

Al Bundy said...

They're working within the steppe framework which overall has been the most popular theory and can't draw any conclusions.I'm talking about what Reich wrote in his book.I don't see how you can spin the Mycenean paper and Damgaard as somehow being good for the steppe theory.

Davidski said...

Not sure what you mean, because the limited Mycenaean data are very good for the steppe theory. Mycenaeans have the same type of steppe ancestry as Indo-European speaking Indians. That's awesome, but I guess the goal posts have now shifted accordingly, right?

But wait, there's more ancient Greek data on the way. Do you think that the heavily steppe shifted Crete Armenoi sample was a mistake or fluke? Think again.

The dataset from the Damgaard paper only had two samples that had any chance of being Hittites. Hanging your hopes on two samples that may or may no be relevant seems more than a bit desperate.

Al Bundy said...

Fair enough but I only hope for the truth.

Lee said...

I do not disagree with any of your statements.

I just like to be rigorous in my thinking, when i have not been sipping on some gin and juice. 😀.

I am keeping my mind open so I can let the data guide me, even if it surprises me. Do not want to fall into the trap of the blindness due to expectation.

Wastrel said...

I really don't think it's fair to say that 200 years of scholarship has confirmed that early PIE (Indo-Hittite) was spoken on the Steppe. The Anatolian Hypothesis was still very live until quite recently. Linguistically, while it seems pretty clear that late PIE was spoken in a steppe-like context, I'm not sure there's much evidence to confirm that the same was true of proto-Anatolian, which seems to either lack or have developed different meanings for a lot of the core vocabulary. The clearest evidence might be that although Anatolian shares many core PIE farming-related words, it often has different, and sometimes non-farming-related meanings for them. This sort of suggests that perhaps Anatolia and late PIE developed (or encountered) farming independently of one another, which in turn suggests a pre-agricultural origin of PIE, which in turn, given the sort of time period, probably points to the steppe. But that's based on contentious analysis of literally a handful of roots, and is hardly conclusive.


Regarding steppe culture: OK. But wasn't that culture, of huge male-lineage clans and a differentiated warrior culture with probably ancestor worship, a recent development? If you go back a thousand years before Yamnaya (because if those Armi names are interpreted correctly we've got recognisably distinct Anatolian spoken by a seemingly non-invasive population in Syria contemporaneous with Yamnaya), is that still true of the culture?

Davidski said...

@Wastrel

But wasn't that culture, of huge male-lineage clans and a differentiated warrior culture with probably ancestor worship, a recent development?

It depends what you mean by recent, because Yamnaya-like R1a/R1b-rich groups almost certainly existed on the steppe well before Yamnaya.

If you go back a thousand years before Yamnaya (because if those Armi names are interpreted correctly we've got recognizably distinct Anatolian spoken by a seemingly non-invasive population in Syria contemporaneous with Yamnaya), is that still true of the culture?

Ukraine_Eneolithic I6561 dates to more or less 1000 years before Yamnaya (4045-3974 calBCE), and is Yamnaya-like but belongs to R1a-M417, which is one of the main modern "Indo-European" Y-DNA clades, but hasn't yet been found in any Yamnaya remains. It's very common in Corded Ware and Sintashta, etc. though.

So as things stand, the ancient DNA record suggests that Yamnaya may not be Late PIE as such, but one of the Late PIE groups, and earlier PIE groups may have been expanding out of the steppe around a 1000 years before Yamnaya.

Matt said...

Wastrel: But wasn't that culture, of huge male-lineage clans and a differentiated warrior culture with probably ancestor worship, a recent development?

Not actually sure how that could be tested archaeologically, or linguistically.

That is, David W Anthony and Marija Gimbutas don't seem to have ever believed from the archaeology and linguistics that any reconstructed PIE layer showed strictly patrlineal clans. It's not evidenced in either Anthony's own writing, or any of the commentary around Gimbutas's writing. Both emphasized models of expansion of IE languages driven by an elite chiefdom that could incorporate groups outside the male lineage.

E.g. Anthony's idea of the spread of Indo-European languages was a spread of "Indo-European chiefs (who) probably carried with then an ideology of political clientage ... becoming patrons of their new clients among the local population", rather than anything supporting a strictly patrilineal mode of social organization.

So this obviously means he believes that this is how pIE society worked, based on the shared social terminology and what he sees in the steppe archaeology. He could be wrong about this (he didn't predict that steppe ancestry would actually "migrate", for'ex!) but I don't have confidence if so that anyone has got it right...

The idea (from the recent paper) of a strictly patrilineal clan organisation among pIE and that this was maintained during spread of pIE languages seems sort of a "Well, how else do you explain the y phylogeny?" and not anything that actually arises from, well, anything at all in archaeology or linguistics. It's not like the models know that anything at all indicates this mode of society existed and then have shown that the y phylogeny is just congruent with this.

epoch said...

One detail on the the Amri Hittite names: They are not *from* Syria, they are found in the archives of a Syrian city. Nobody knows where Amri was. But that Syrian city did have trade relations with South-Anatolia.

Davidski said...

@Matt

That is, David W Anthony and Marija Gimbutas don't seem to have ever believed from the archeology and linguistics that any reconstructed PIE layer showed strictly patrlineal clans.

That may have changed, for Anthony at least.

Corded Ware as an offshoot of Hungarian Yamnaya (Anthony 2017)

Matt said...

@Davidski, I don't see anything new there about patrilineal clans tbh. He acknowledges y dna bias to steppe, but no mention of patrilineal clan organisation, or anything that sounds similar.

Final conclusion is still emphasis on: "If it is an admissible source, PIE contains vocabulary that can help to explain the process of language expansion and recruitment (Anthony and Ringe 2015:210–14).

Patron-client relationships extended political protection to outsiders, guest-host relationships offered reciprocal obligations of hospitality, and feasting and praise poetry enhanced the individual prestige of patrons and hosts at public events, recruiting some local people into the IE social and political world.

Balancing these positive attractions were negative compulsions: youthful warbands were a predatory IE institution that threatened the livestock and families of outsiders, and restitution for their depredations was possible only by appealing to IE institutions and patrons. These institutions, while not unique to the PIE community, were certainly present in it, and can help to explain the eventual recruitment of non-IE people into IE communities."


Like, if there is something in there and I've missed it...?

Davidski said...

@Matt

Page 47...

They had a kinship vocabulary most compatible with patrilineal, patrilocal lineages.

Link

Matt said...

@Davidski, sure, but Anthony already knew this when he wrote "The Wheel..." and patrilineal kinship is compatible with a society which is not based on patrilineal clans but larger chiefdoms (societies which did have regional chiefdoms and which were not clan based did have patrilineal kinship). That's not him saying that they actually had a patrilineal clan based society in the manner described in "Cultural Hitchhiking..." by Zeng.

Davidski said...

@Matt

I didn't say anything about that. I just pointed out that, according to Anthony: "They had a kinship vocabulary most compatible with patrilineal, patrilocal lineages".

old europe said...

"So as things stand, the ancient DNA record suggests that Yamnaya may not be Late PIE as such, but one of the Late PIE groups, and earlier PIE groups may have been expanding out of the steppe around a 1000 years before Yamnaya"

So as for now the steppe theory should favor the Sredni Stog culture as the PIE culture.

corded ware as an offshoot of hungaria Yamnaya???

How can Anthony sustain this theory after the discovery of the proto-corded ware sample R1a M-417 in the same culture ( SS) that had corded ware pottery and stone battle axes?

DDeden said...

Non-geneticist.

"...the Gutians began a campaign, decades-long of hit-and-run raids against Mesopotamia."

Culturally, this reminds me of former residents getting back at rich intruders who took their land, rather than an invasion by outsiders.

Jijnasu said...

Nearly all societies are patriarchal and most societies as patrilineal. Ancestor worship isn't rare either. That's no barrier to switching from an ancestral language to a more useful language at some point in time. A presence or absence of ancestry from the south caucasus in the steple can't solve the problem. The maximum genetics can do is add support to the theories proposed by linguists

Davidski said...

@Jijnasu

The maximum genetics can do is add support to the theories proposed by linguists.

I agree, and that's why the purported absence of steppe ancestry in Hittite-era samples can't "largely falsify" the steppe hypothesis.

But I find it easier to accept that there were large-scale language shifts in the proto-state societies of Bronze Age Anatolia, than in the tribal, patrilineal societies of the Eneolithic/Bronze Age steppe.

I don't accept the notion that all things were equal between these two worlds in the context of language change.

Ric Hern said...

As we can see Native Americans used a Horse drawn travois. So was the wheel really necessary to be mobile on the Steppe at an earlier stage ?

Ric Hern said...

Does everyone here understand the abduction of brides in the Northwestern Caucasus area and what it entails ?

According to some documentaries I've seen and some books I've read the Husbands never have to meet with the brides parents and the bride most cases never see her parents again. So grooms don't even know how their inlaws looks like.

In a scenario like this assuming that Steppe Men could have done the same, what chances are there that Steppe Men had time to adopt the Inlaws Language ?

Aram said...

DDeden

Gutians being an IE tribe related to Tocharians was favoured by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov to support their theory of Near Eastern origins of PIE. It is based on linguistic onomastic data.
Henning on the other side was not considering them as natives. But intruders. And he even suggested migration of some Gutians to Tarim bassein. If such a migration was real this could explain how the Mesopotamian idea of mummification appeared in Tarim bassein.

Ric Hern said...

And here is a maybe simple Modern Example of what could have happened.

I speak Afrikaans and my Wife was English speaking. We migrated to an area where people speak mostly Afrikaans. My wife now speaks a more proper version of Afrikaans than most actual Afrikaans Born people speak. People don't even know that she is actually English....

In fact I have to remind her of some English words when she speaks English...

Ric Hern said...

Just a reminder why Steppe people could have retained their original Steppe Language while moving into Central Europe.

http://www.pnas.org/content/113/35/9751

epoch said...

@Ric Hern

What could have happened is something similar like Napoleon Chagnon described, i.e. raiding for women. The abduction practices are reminiscent of that, the myth of Rape of Sabine Virgins as well.

Or a bride swap between the fringes of the Caucasus and a very small group of hunter-gatherers. The different demographics mean that this had a huge impact on the HG's and a minimal impact on the Caucasian population. Recall that the Caucasian paper needed 4% EHG to properly model Caucasian Maikop? Something like that.

epoch said...

@David

"But I find it easier to accept that there were large-scale language shifts in the proto-state societies of Bronze Age Anatolia, than in the tribal, patrilineal societies of the Eneolithic/Bronze Age steppe.

I don't accept the notion that all things were equal between these two worlds in the context of language change.
"

Especially as Hittite has a massive Hattic substrate and Luwian a Hurrian substrate. But late PIE doesn't seem to have a substrate compared to Anatolian. This means that a total language change is required. It is not that this is a first - Old English doesn't seem to have a Brittonic substrate - but the necessity of female mediation makes it very hard to accept.

Ric Hern said...

@ epoch

But English has a Massive Romance Substrate because of Romanization plus later reinforcement by Romanized Normandians ? Plus inbetween thees two we have Germanic.And we know that Gaulish was a P-Celtic language just like Brittonic who got Romanized and some tribes did migrate to Britain.

So it is not a surprise that very little evidence of a Brittonic Substrate survived. Do we see Archaeological evidence of such clear invasions of the Steppe by outside groups ? This evidence is perifiral at best and we still see hundreds of Kilometres of untouched areas....plus the population therein was Semi-Nomadic and Nomadic mostly. When the Persian King campeigned against the Scythians they simply packed their bags and moved deaper into the Steppe

So I do not think the formation of English can be compared with what happened in the Steppe frustrating the Hell out of him....

Ric Hern said...

@epoch

The occupation of Fortresses in the Caucasus by Steppe people certainly do not hint at a Small Hunter Gatherer group....and if the admixture happened before that the CHG Hunter Gatherers would also have been Hunter Gatherers. The presence of Steppe people in the Steppe for +-3000 years before the admixture event started to be visible in the DNA also do not hint at a specifically small Hunter Gatherer Group....

Grey said...

DDeden said...

"Culturally, this reminds me of former residents getting back at rich intruders who took their land, rather than an invasion by outsiders."

sure, could be but either way the point i was making was conquest doesn't have to involve a big army invading and defeating another big army - it can sometimes involve depopulation by guerrilla style raiding.

Grey said...

Lee Albee said...
"These steppe people respected power and force. If a tribe of whatever origin moved in riding horses and pulling wagons and with early copper age/bronze age tools and took over a region. they could certainly through force of arms, and Cult of Personality significantly influence the cultures that existed around them."

That was my original thinking - to me, looking at the geography and assuming the Kargaly copper field was significant - the Samara bend looked like an obvious spot for a fortified trading outpost of a metal-working culture from the south so you'd have (like one of the theories about Zimbabwe) an intrusive population in a fortified town trading metals to the local herders for food - with the possibility of language transfer taking place as a result.

Then (unlikely as it still seems) a lot of R1b HG ydna was found on the steppe so i switched to thinking the same thing but the other way round i.e. from Kargaly rather than to.

(However even if that is correct in this case the idea of intrusive populations moving into and building defensive walls in regions that contained a precious resource seems plausible in itself and may have happened elsewhere a bunch of times.)

Ric Hern said...

@Grey

A string of forts makes more sense than a Fort in the middle of nowhere. Zimbabwe were connected to the coast of Tanzania by a string of forts....

Are there such a string of forts all the way from the Caucasus to Samara ? If you are surrounded by semi-hostile tribes that can ambush your trading caravan at any point on a stretch of hundred mile road a fort in the middle of nowhere certainly looks like a less strategic option.

EastPole said...

@Davidski

“Ukraine_Eneolithic I6561 dates to more or less 1000 years before Yamnaya (4045-3974 calBCE), and is Yamnaya-like but belongs to R1a-M417, which is one of the main modern "Indo-European" Y-DNA clades, but hasn't yet been found in any Yamnaya remains. It's very common in Corded Ware and Sintashta, etc. though.
So as things stand, the ancient DNA record suggests that Yamnaya may not be Late PIE as such, but one of the Late PIE groups, and earlier PIE groups may have been expanding out of the steppe around a 1000 years before Yamnaya.”

I agree with you and it is all very confusing. In the recent article in ‘nature’ “Analysis of 3800-year-old Yersinia pestis genomes…” they write:

“The Bronze Age in Eurasia was a period of technological transition among human populations, often associated with the initiation of cultural and societal complexity22. Recent aDNA analysis of human remains from the time period between 5500 and 3200 BP has linked such transitions to a large-scale expansion of “Yamnaya” pastoralists from the Pontic–Caspian steppe both westwards into Europe, giving rise to the so-called
“Corded–ware complex”, and eastwards into Central Asia and the Altai region, represented by Early Bronze Age (EBA) cultures such as the “Afanasievo”23,24. Specifically in Europe, the “Yamnaya” migrations resulted in admixture with the local Neolithic farmer populations, forming the gene pool that appears to constitute European populations to the present day23–25. In addition, recent studies propose subsequent population
expansions from Europe back into Central Asia during the Middle and Late Bronze Age (MLBA), which is genetically reflected by the appearance of European farmer-related ancestry among Late Bronze Age (LBA) steppe populations such as “Sintashta”, “Srubnaya”, “Potapovka” and “Andronovo”.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04550-9


They use quotation marks for “Yamnaya” as for all other cultures. So they surely mean Yamnaya culture, not Yamnaya-like component. Surely Ukraine_Eneolithic I6561 couldn’t come from Yamnaya culture because it was much older. Where is the proof that CWC came from Yamnaya culture and not from SS? I don’t think that referred to articles by Haak and Allentoft [23,24] proved that CWC came from Yamnaya culture. Either they know something we don’t know or it is some kind of politics. It is very important for PIE theory.

Ric Hern said...

@EastPole

Maybe they are waiting for most people to get up to speed with Genetics ? We still see many that harbours the idea that Genetics has got nothing to do with Linguistic spread...and if Geneticists change to quickly between theories they will be quick to paunch upon them with all kinds of nuttiness....

epoch said...

@Eastpole

There is the hammer-headed pins, a Yamnaya feature occasianally found in CWC graves.

Davidski said...

@EastPole

The ethnogenesis of proto-Corded Ware on the steppe might be a fairly complex story.

No doubt that Corded Ware is derived from Sredny Stog to a significant degree, but then so is probably Yamnaya. In fact, Yamnaya is most often described as a synthesis of Repin, Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk.

So Corded Ware can still be derived from Yamnaya, especially considering that Yamnaya was a horizon, with, if I recall correctly, something like nine different archaeological cultures.

Wait for Yamnaya male samples from Ukraine. You might be surprised by their Y-haplogroups.

mzp1 said...

So according to Steppe Hypothesis, Maykop is not IE?

Davidski said...

Maykop people are generally regarded to have spoken some sort of Caucasian language or languages.

And Kura-Araxes people, who are thought to be related to them, are usually seen as Hurrian speakers.

FrankN said...

@Dave:
The Hurrian <-> Kura-Araxes case is quite strong, see, e.g.,;
http://www.urkesh.org/EL-MZ/Buccellati_and_Kelly-Buccellati_2007_Urkesh_the_Hurrian_Homeland_-_Georgian_Bulletin.pdf

However, Kura-Araxes and Maykop were culturally quite different from each other:
- KA was essentíally a sedentary culture, Maykop appears to be predominantly pastoralist [in KA, settlement finds prevail over burials, with Maykop, it is the opposite];
- KA settlements and burials display an egalitarian, collectivist structure, while in Maykop, individual, socially differentiated burials dominate);
- Maykop has "oriental" preferences (Lapis Lazuli, Carnelian), which are completely absent from KA;
- Ceramics are substantially different;
- The KA "hearth cult" is missing from Maykop (but present in Hurrian Urkesh)

For an in-depth discussion see, e.g.,
https://www.webdepot.umontreal.ca/Usagers/tuitekj/MonDepotPublic/cours/3876-PDF/Kohl_The_Making_of_Bronze_Age_Eurasia_%28Chapter3%29.pdf

https://www.persee.fr/doc/paleo_0153-9345_2014_num_40_2_5634

Instead, Maykop is archeologically related to the Chaff-faced ware (CFW)oikomene that entails, a/o, NW Iran, Leyla-Tepe, and Nakhkichevan/ S. Armenia (Armenia_CHG). IMO that relation has also been shown in the recent Maykop paper. Interestingly, CFW expandéd not only to the N. Cauc (Maykop) but also into Anatolia, e.g. the Amuq valley around Antakhia.

More on CFW;
https://www.persee.fr/doc/paleo_0153-9345_2010_num_36_2_5387
https://books.google.de/books?

id=ueg7DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA184&lpg=PA184&dq=chaff-faced+ware&source=bl&ots=TdtfXYMWLZ&sig=lhx1V_NHFH4SiJKOEn6HK96gszI&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjloNCt6JnbAhXMDewKHWAnCkEQ6AEIXTAL#v=onepage&q=chaff-faced%20ware&f=false

So, if KA spoke Hurro-Urartian, which language did CFW / Maykop speak?

Davidski said...

@FrankN

So, if KA spoke Hurro-Urartian, which language did CFW / Maykop speak?

I'm predicting a very strong genetic relationship between Maykop and present-day Northwest Caucasians. If this bears out, then I'll say that they spoke a Caucasian language or languages.

The fact that Maykop made it onto the steppe is being interpreted as a potential entry of Indo-European languages into the steppe by Wang et al., but in reaching this conclusion, they actually ignore their own finding that there was a genetic and cultural border between Maykop and the steppe peoples.

Genetic and cultural borders usually correlate well with linguistic borders.

Indeed, Maykop is certainly not related to Yamnaya or Corded Ware, which show a very strong relationship to present-day Indo-European speakers.

FrankN said...

@Dave;
Yamnnaya/CWC "show a very strong relationship to present-day Indo-European speakers" as far as concerns Balto-Slavic and Germanic. For the remainder, not so much - there, Armenia_CHG, i.e. CFW, appears to work at least as well, if not better.

Indeed, "Genetic and cultural borders usually correlate well with linguistic borders." And, that's puzzling. Agreed, we don't get genetically from CFW/ Maykop into the Steppe and beyond. As we don't get from the Steppe into Myceneans, Tocharians, Italics, and apparently also not Indics.
So, the spread of IE must in part have been related to factors beyond demic ecpansion. IIRC, there recently has been a paper on the spread of Austro-Asiatic, demonstrating that the first, demic wave, just affected Papua and surrounds, while the later expansion into Polynesia was genetically rather Papuan than Ami-like.

Davidski said...

@FrankN

Yamnnaya/CWC "show a very strong relationship to present-day Indo-European speakers" as far as concerns Balto-Slavic and Germanic. For the remainder, not so much - there, Armenia_CHG, i.e. CFW, appears to work at least as well, if not better.

That's not exactly true. All of the ancient samples from Armenia from the Middle to Late Bronze Age and Iron Age show steppe ancestry. Indeed, they show uniparental markers from the Bronze Age steppe which are still very important among present-day Armenians.

There are no such unambiguous links between Maykop and Corded Ware/Yamnaya.

Agreed, we don't get genetically from CFW/ Maykop into the Steppe and beyond. As we don't get from the Steppe into Myceneans, Tocharians, Italics, and apparently also not Indics.

Again, that's not exactly true. There's unambiguous admixture from the steppe in Mycenaeans, Bronze Age Italian Beakers, and certainly in South Asians.

So what was the point you were trying to make?

Ric Hern said...

I think Maykop that made it onto the Steppe was a effort of Maykop people to protect Caucasus Fortresses and Trade routes running between them against Steppe Raids. Interestingly Maykop did not expand all the way to the Caspian Sea and the Steppe areas in Dagestan into Azerbaijan seems to have been unaffected by Maykop.

Ric Hern said...

An interesting conclusion to the Kura Araxes Cultural spread and its general makeup.What is also interesting is the map and ereas least affected by the Kura Araxes around the Southwestern edge of the Caspian Sea and the thin stretch of land along the West Coast leading from the Kuban Steppe to South of the Caucasus....

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/30/9190

Grey said...

@Ric Hern

"If you are surrounded by semi-hostile tribes that can ambush your trading caravan at any point on a stretch of hundred mile road a fort in the middle of nowhere certainly looks like a less strategic option."

yes, probably need a string of forts if a land route - rivers would be the same but more widely spaced maybe?

(if longer daily travel distance)