A couple of years ago Moorjani et al. concluded that present-day Georgians of the Transcaucasus were the best available proxy for the ancient West Eurasian population that mixed into the South Asian gene pool.
This was a solid statistical fit. And you can see on the TreeMix graph below, featuring a Georgian and a Kalash, why it worked so well.
But it was also a big fat coincidence, because check out what happens when I add another migration edge to the same graph.
Thus, the Indo-Iranian and hence Indo-European speaking Kalash no longer looks very similar to the Kartvelian speaking Georgian. In fact, he appears to be most closely related to the supposedly Indo-European speaking Afanasievo and Yamnaya nomads of the Early Bronze Age Eurasian steppe. The rest of his ancestry is probably best described as South Central Asian, which is an unknown quantity to me at this stage, but probably in large part of indigenous South Asian origin (see here).
I'm only able to show this thanks to the ancient samples that are on the tree, for which, as far as I know, there aren't any useful substitutes among present-day populations. Obviously, Moorjani et al. didn't have this luxury, so they ended up with a model that was statistically sound, but didn't make much sense otherwise, especially in terms of linguistics.
My TreeMix model is easily reproducible with most of the other South Asian samples from the Human Origins, and it gels nicely with uniparental marker data too. For instance, here's a close up from a similar graph featuring a Pathan, with a few extra details.
Yep, not only do Pathans cluster among these ancients of the Eurasian steppe, but most of them also carry the same Y-chromosome haplogroup: R1a-Z93, which is derived from R1a-M417, and in all likelihood first expanded in a big way with the Proto-Indo-Iranians of the Trans-Ural steppe.
By the way, the Human Origins has four different sets of Gujarati samples from Houston, USA, marked A, B, C and D, and each one shows a different level of ancient steppe admixture as inferred with my test. GujaratiA score around 50% while GujaratiD only 40%. Does anyone know why these Gujaratis were grouped in such a way? Was it based on genetic structure or caste origin?
Full output from the analysis above is available in a zip file here. The reference samples and markers are listed here and here. The ancient samples are from Allentoft et al. 2015 and Haak et al. 2015.
See also...
The Poltavka outlier
Davidski
ReplyDeleteMaybe I am missing something. But why in all trees Sintashta seems to have an earlier split than Yamna/Afanasievo/CW group? How this can be interpreted?
Very interesting. They actually mention in the ASI/ANI paper that many populations are consistent with 2 different admixture events, especially Indo-Aryan ones. So this could mean that there was a first one more Georgian-like (Dravidian) and a second one more Andronovo-like (IE). GujaratiD would already fall into the Georgian-like part of the tree, though with a large Andronovo-like admixture.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest concern about these models with Andronovo/Sintashta/CW-like admixture, is why don't they work with well proven and consistent methods like ADMIXTURE (on a good calculator like K8, for example) or with IBS sharing (here with CW only, I haven't seen Sintashta or Andronovo IBS sharing). Treemix and qpAdm show more volatile and inconsistent behaviour in general, and depending on how you feed them they can show quite different results.
Aram,
ReplyDeleteIt's because of EFF-derived admixture in Sintashta and Andronovo, and also low level Siberian admixture in Andronovo.
Sintashta actually has more EEF than this Corded Ware, which is a mixture of the younger Allentoft and older Haak Corded Ware. This suggests that Sintashta was indeed a back migration of steppe people from the west, after they acquired EEF-related ancestry, while the earliest Corded Ware was basically like Yamnaya.
Judging by that map of chariot burials from Allentoft et al., I'd say Sintashta was a blowback from near the Dnieper, maybe even with some admixture from the Carpathian Basin.
David,
ReplyDeleteYou guys are just picking up common Ancestry and the steppes were not dense enough to make such huge impact on S Asian population anyway not to mention the lack of trail in Archaeology etc for any such hypothetical movements....
The type of Migrations that we see after Alexanders retreat from India hardly fits the bill...
the houston gujuratis have one pretty dense cluster of people from the "patel caste",, at one end of the PCA. the rest of it is pretty varied, and shows a cline toward sindhis. the ones close to sindhis are probably guju brahmins.
ReplyDeleteCool. Glad to see Georgian could be fit at the same time. The phylogeny looks pretty much like it makes a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteOnly thing which looks strange is the drift lengths, which look odd, in that there are lots of zero drift length branches? IRC only the horizontal scaling indicates drift
(http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1002967).
For the ancient samples it makes sense, because of the low sample quality causes errors which look like drift, but it seems surprising to see a contrast between GujuratiA and Kalash with these quite long drifts within the LNBA clade (indicating they've drifted far from other members of their clade), then combining with a diverse (low drift, central) Central Asian like population and a lot of the other moderns without it (pushing them closer to other populations at the centre of the tree like Georgian). For the Kalash and changing from Kalash being another zero drift twig in the 2 edge model.
You wonder whether an ancient LNBA steppe input to South Central Asia really did undergo those kind of extremely high drifts and without them whether that tree really makes sense as the scenario it looks like.
(But then, thinking again about it, maybe those high drift lengths are only another consequence of high sample error in the ancient samples? I can't think why though, because there would seem no reason for treemix to do that).
Don't want to be too nitpicking though, this is quite impressive (and fundamentally there must be something truthful underlying why treemix has produced it for this tree of populations).
"the Indo-Iranian and hence Indo-European speaking Kalash no longer looks very similar to the Kartvelian speaking Georgian. In fact, he appears to be most closely related to the supposedly Indo-European speaking Afanasievo and Yamnaya nomads of the Early Bronze Age Eurasian steppe."
ReplyDeleteI am increasingly of the view that the Afanasievo and Yamnaya peoples (and also the Bell Beaker people) were not linguistically Indo-European, and spoke a language more similar to one or more Caucasian languages.
How much EEF do the modern Georgian and Kalash samples have? if any
ReplyDeleteSince the IVC was collapsing at the same time as the putative IA migration, it may well be that two distinct populations were moving across India. One Georgian-like group may reflect an agricultural population while the other is more indicative of the horse-nomads from Swat.
ReplyDeleteThat aside, using the Pathans and Kalash is something that confuses me. The Pathans are an Iranian group, and while they do have some ancient local origins, they are equally descendants of much later migrants. Equally the Kalash are an isolated population, and I don't see much of their component amongst any Indian populations.
Moorjani saw two admixtures, and that the oldest signals came from the South. With that in mind, surely it makes sense to do this sort of analysis on South Indian castes. Their admixture occurred between 4000 and 3600 years ago, and then almost entirely stopped. Their components are a better idea of the populations involved with the Subcontinent's Bronze Age migrations.
There's a difference between the Kalash and Pathan individuals in this anlaysis. The Pathans are more similar to Corded Ware, Andronovo and Sintashta, probably because they have some EEF-like ancestry which is missing in the Kalash, Afanasievo and Yamnaya.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't have any South Indian caste groups in this dataset. But I don't see why they're relevant to the genetic structure of the early Indo-Aryans, since they're mostly of Dravidian origin. Unless of course you subscribe to the idea that early Dravidians were purely ASI, rather than a West Asian/ASI mixture?
And what do you mean by Kalash component? Like in Admixture?
ReplyDeleteIf I try hard enough I can get an Ashkenazi component using Admixture, and it won't show up much in Sephardi Jews, and yet we know that both of these Jewish groups are closely related.
Btw, I did analyse the Gujaratis, who, unlike South Indian caste groups, are mostly of Indo-Aryan origin. As you can see, they're not much different from the Pathans and Kalash, just more South Asian.
Aniasi,
ReplyDeleteSome see the South Indians as receiving their admixture from a different source, and prior to Indo-Aryans, sometime early in the 2nd millennia BCE. The South Indians supposedly skipped the Bronze Age, and went into Iron, much later. They may not have much Steppe admixture, at all.
I'm really not seeing anything much in the way of Steppe like admixture in the Kharia.
ReplyDeleteAndrew,
ReplyDelete//I am increasingly of the view that the Afanasievo and Yamnaya peoples (and also the Bell Beaker people) were not linguistically Indo-European, and spoke a language more similar to one or more Caucasian languages.//
Then which site spoke?
AniAsi,
//Since the IVC was collapsing at the same time as the putative IA migration, it may well be that two distinct populations were moving across India. One Georgian-like group may reflect an agricultural population while the other is more indicative of the horse-nomads from Swat./
Apart from the first sentence the rest you told makes no sense unfortunately though as i said before they didn't disappear they continued.
//Their admixture occurred between 4000 and 3600 years ago, and then almost entirely stopped.//
Considering evidences all around the expansion was a local one where the ANI dominant harappans moved into ASI dominant Southern and Eastern Areas.
Chad,
//The South Indians supposedly skipped the Bronze Age, and went into Iron, much later//
Sorry Dear Chad but unfortunately as latest discoveries suggest the South Indian Iron Age is OLDER that of the North Apparently.
^than of the North
ReplyDeleteAnd Interestingly the Traditional Iron Workers belong to Lower Castes and Sometimes of Non IE origin hmmm...
ReplyDeleteMost South Indians, especially the Dravidian speakers, won't have much genome-wide steppe admixture because they're Dravidians not Indo-Aryans.
ReplyDeleteKharia are Austroasiatic. So they're as irrelevant to what the early Indo-Aryans were like as Dravidians, if not more so.
@Davidski
ReplyDeleteDravidian is a language group, not an actual origin. South Indian castes show West Eurasian admixture, albeit in lesser amounts, that is dated to the period of the steppe migrations.
Some of these groups, like South Indian Brahmins, may have some Indo-Aryan ancestry. It would be worth seeing what their steppe percentages look like. Is there somewhere you can get a hold of some samples? HarappaDNA hasn't been active, but the information may still be available. I would even be willing to provide you my sample.
Concerning the Kalash, I meant the components that show up when you do admixture analysis, not necessarily actual admixture. If you do a K (I forget what number) analysis of south asiana, the Kalash component doesn't really show up in other populations.
The fact is also being ignored that most North Indian groups either show another round of admixture around the 4th and 5th centuries AD, or were heavily mixed with invading groups. The Pathans are more of an Iranian tribe than a South Asian caste group, and therefore were far less endogamous. In addition, they are far larger and more diverse. There are perhaps 2.5 million Tamil Brahmins, forgetting the further divisions that governed marriage until fairly recently, compared to at least 40 million Pathans.
@Chad
Perhaps they did, but unless some actual analysis a higher level is done it remains an assumption. Considering the time period of South Indian admixture, it is difficult to rule out the possibility of steppe admixture, even if at lower levels than in the North. I know that some South Indian castes show consistent levels of Eastern European components in admixtures analyses.
Dravidians were mostly Hunter Gatherers their Farming "identity" is as valuable as the notion of Biblical origins of Pathans...
ReplyDeletethe premise that modern georgians can act as an ANI proxy is flawed. because of ancient and recent recent iranian/south asian admixture in georgia and contributions to both from other populations.
ReplyDeleteSudden depopulation of IVC is not correct. The archeological record shows a large shift of the IVC population from western india/pakistan deeper into india. This cant be ignored.
The region north of bmac was depopulated from 2700 bc to 700 bc. So any demographic impact from this region is questionable ... needs probing..
The mountain corridor to the east of the kazakh steppe had water...the tianshian and pamir. Thats where some demographic impact is possible.
its a tortuous path for the purported late bronze age "eastern european" component in Afghanistan. Teleportation is needed from eastern europe to the altai and then a rapid march to the pamir and hindu kush.
Aniasi,
ReplyDelete//The fact is also being ignored that most North Indian groups either show another round of admixture around the 4th and 5th centuries AD, or were heavily mixed with invading groups//
I don't see any such admixture happening that time.
// The Pathans are more of an Iranian tribe than a South Asian caste group, and therefore were far less endogamous. In addition, they are far larger and more diverse.//
They are also very Ancient Ethnic group.
We have Bronze Age genomes from the Altai that are obviously European in terms of genome wide and uniparental markers.
ReplyDeleteHow did you manage to overlook this? Are you really this delusional?
@PostNeo
ReplyDeleteThe migration of people away from older IVC centers, with newer settlements showing less standardisation and a general decline is pretty much an indication of collapse.
@Nirjhar
Plenty of studies have shown it, and it coincides with the introduction of an East Asian component into Bengalis. Moorjani's paper noted the second round with plenty of evidence.
The Pathans may have ancient origins, but as a people today they are so broad and diverse that we cannot say with any certainty how ancient Pathan identity is.
"We have Bronze Age genomes from the Altai that are obviously European in terms of genome wide and uniparental markers.
ReplyDeleteHow did you manage to overlook this? Are you really this delusional?"
I don't know who this is directed at, but I certainly do not deny European genomes and markers in the Altai.
@ postneo
ReplyDeleteYou repeat my words also. I didn't see evidence for inteusion from andronovo to South asia (being a largely depopulated desert zone immediately North of BMAC). If anything it just have come from caucasus or via the Tien shan
But if IVC shifted inland, this could have allowed a founder effect from elsewhere (?)
I was talking to postneo, who obviously has some major denial issues.
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDelete//We have Bronze Age genomes from the Altai that are obviously European in terms//
So much for their European like Autosome but their Y-DNA is Asian i.e. Z-94+ and more importantly who were they? a bunch of loosely connected Nomads? what kind of population they had? hardly anything to make any impact of SC Asian genome which was densely populated and where is the Archaeological trail? we have the Archaeological observation that some Advanced cultures from south like BMAC created impact on Sites Like Arkaim or Sintashta! can anyone deny that?.
the pathetic dream that you are ''living so practically'' will end soon...
I'm not seeing any Central Asian impact on Sintashta or Andronovo.
ReplyDeleteBut I am seeing plenty of European impact in the Bronze Age Altai.
So Z94 is of European origin. No doubt about it.
Mike Thomas,
ReplyDelete//But if IVC shifted inland, this could have allowed a founder effect from elsewhere (?)//
Then we should had traces in Archaeology from Out Side
Aniasi,
As I said they shifted and whats the word yes adapted after the Climatic catastrophe and there were no Archaeological trail from Out Side so in normal neutral sense that pretty much is with i proposed.
''The Pathans may have ancient origins, but as a people today they are so broad and diverse that we cannot say with any certainty how ancient Pathan identity is.''
Take about 4000 Years....
David,
ReplyDelete//I'm not seeing any Central Asian impact on Sintashta or Andronovo.//
Well trust me you have a very selective observation....
//So Z94 is of European origin. No doubt about it.//
absolutely no doubt indeed.
Dave
ReplyDeleteHow would adding Dravidians affect the analyses, out of interest. Id agree that they have west eurasian mixture too, significantly. Don't they have high levels of R1a in some cases too?
Nirj
Try leaving spaces in between your sentences/ paragraphs. That way your easier to follow
Mike, All right:P.
ReplyDeleteBTW Dravidians have mixed heavily with the IE groups from North So its not unusual that they would show R1a and some of the Drv. speaking groups are also of IE origin...
Dravidians wth significant Indo-Aryan ancestry would get very similar results to this GujaratiD individual, just with a lower level of steppe ancestry.
ReplyDeletehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9o3EYTdM8lQaVlGbzBvX3FVdHM/view?usp=sharing
Those with much lower levels of Indo-Aryan ancestry would just sit on a branch like the Gujarati, but with no admixture edges from the Corded Ware/Yamnaya part of the tree.
Early Dravidians were probably a mixture of something very basal Near Eastern and ASI. They're likely to be the population that contributed 35-50% of the Central Asian-like admixture in the samples analyzed above.
Dravidians were mostly of ASI the opposite of Harappans...
ReplyDeleteJust to be Sure do all the Gujrati folks there have R1a or R2?
ReplyDelete@aniasi @mthomas
ReplyDeleteThe migration of people away from older IVC centers, with newer settlements showing less standardisation and a general decline is pretty much an indication of collapse
etc....
Even under decline the IVC and hinterland populations would have dwarfed the combined populations of neighbouring bronze age civilizations not to speak of arid steppe zones. This is simply based on rainfall and the multiple river systems.
@Nirjhar
I am not sure we can say for sure dravidians remained hunter gatherers. Very possible that the IVC was a mixed population with multiple groups adapting to food production.
Gujaratis must have a lot of R1a-Z93 since they have 40-50% Sintashta/Andronovo admixture.
ReplyDeleteR2 is irrelevant here, as it's not an EBA steppe marker, and not surprisingly it hasn't turned up in any Kurgan remains from the steppe, not even near the Altai.
@aniasi @davidski. I am not denying european like uniparental markers in the altai afnasievo and Tarim. In fact I am highlighting them. The collective evidence seems to hint that a big component of what we today think of as modern europeans lived east of yamnaya and only recently moved to europe.
ReplyDeletePostNeo
ReplyDeleteYes i agree with you on an archaeological level- for IVC.
But are you suggesting that the flow of R1a and genes in general was from Afansievo to Yamnaya and thence europe ?
postneo,
ReplyDeleteThe evidence clearly shows that Sintashta and Andronovo originated west of Yamnaya.
Did you not read the Allentoft paper, or you did but your mind is playing tricks on you again?
@Mike
ReplyDelete"But are you suggesting that the flow of R1a and genes in general was from Afansievo to Yamnaya and thence europe ?"
I think Its possible and theres partial truth here. Very simplistically If we think of R1b dominated yamnaya and R1a dominated Afansievo simply moving westwards. We get the modern european distribution of these lineages.
Postneo,
ReplyDelete//I am not sure we can say for sure dravidians remained hunter gatherers. Very possible that the IVC was a mixed population with multiple groups adapting to food production.//
Dravidians are IMO of H-G stock and yes SSC/IVC may had Drv. Speaking groups but in Southern Fringes
Dravid,
//Gujaratis must have a lot of R1a-Z93 since they have 40-50% Sintashta/Andronovo admixture.//
Sounds huge for me and most likely impossible those are Shared Ancestry in All Likelihood.
Crazy postneo, here's a map to help you out...
ReplyDeletehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9o3EYTdM8lQYVlVc3dvVHM4N28/view?usp=sharing
Corded Ware and thus R1a-M198 is from #4 or #10. Burn this into your delusional mind.
David, Please we are discussing possibilities here with logic and you just wait for some Eneolithic digs from Central Asia and SC Asia to have a fair debate, they will rock your world.
ReplyDeletePostneo,
I truly think Afanasevo will have R1a-M417 and it will be very interesting.
Be warned, I'm not going to tolerate trolling, stupidity and downright insanity here.
ReplyDeleteAfanasievo is derived from Yamnaya. Archeology and genetics say so.
Corded Ware doesn't come from east of Yamnaya. It's most likely from Sredny Stog, which actually has Corded Ware pottery and stone battle axes similar to Corded Ware.
Two more important points that crazy duo postneo and Nirhjar have ignored:
- Eastern European hunter-gatherers belong to R1a and R1b
- a Copper Age sample from the Altai belongs to Q, and R1a only shows up there later, during the Bronze Age in Kurgans
Kharias basically appear like Paniya, plus an extra 15% Atayal.
ReplyDelete//Two more important points that crazy duo postneo and Nirhjar have ignored:
ReplyDelete- Eastern European hunter-gatherers belong to R1a and R1b
- a Copper Age sample from the Altai belongs to Q, and R1a only shows up there later, during the Bronze Age in Kurgans//
Don't laugh us, btw that R1a hunter gatherer is Non-IE.
A sample from Altai is not much a thing, you need various samples from Afanasevo,Jeitun,BMAC,SSC then we can have something to talk about.
I'll give you something to think about. From Allentoft et al. supp info...
ReplyDelete"The later Okunevo Culture was a local, south Siberian early Bronze Age adaptation of Afanasievo influences, and is characterized by stone stelae with expressive art of a shamanistic nature."
These were the natives of the region. We already have their DNA. They're actually more similar to Amerindians than to Europeans.
So much for postneo's ramblings.
afansevo predates cw. okunevo is irrelevant. The only only seeming contradiction to my hypothesis is the statement in the Allentoft paper that the intervening yamna had low enf. More Copper age samples from east yamnaya are neede.
DeleteI know many might scoff at the 'naivety' of this comment, but when you compare a modern day 'typical' Ukrainian to a modern day 'typical' Gujarati, it seems very hard to reconcile the notion that Gujaratis have '40 to 50% Sintashta and Andronovo' ancestry, and what's more, a connection with the European Corded Ware culture.
ReplyDeleteI mean Mahatma Gandhi is about as far from a typical Ukrainian phenotype - think of those beefy civil war fighters you see on TV - as you can get.
Yes, yes, I know all about comparing ancient populations with moderns, but at the instinctive level, I just don't get it.
Perhaps if you spoke of the Kalash or the Kashmiri Pundits, I would be more inclined to accept.
I've seen some Pamir Tajiks who could pass for Ukrainians on photos.
ReplyDeleteOkunevo people are relevant because they're natives of the region who adopted Afanasievo culture.
ReplyDeleteAndronovo represents a fresh wave of European migrants to the region after Afanasievo disappears.
You couldn't be more full of shit even if you tried.
The bearers of the Okunev culture came to southern Siberia from the *northern* taiga regions.
ReplyDeleteIt appears it *replaced* Afanasevo and Preceded Andronovo which also Perhaps replaced the Former, but its typical for steppes.
ReplyDeleteA small subset of maharashtrians south of Gujarat have east European faces some times Russian looking others from these communities can look med or even australoid This tapers as you go north into Gujarat. the panjabis Kashmiris and Pashtun lack these facial types.
ReplyDeleteGandhi is not particularly representative of gujaratis. Usually you have a bizzare range of phenotypes within most communities.
David, Is this rumor on ''Afanasevo R1b'' still applicable?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4123559132014627431&postID=312117757237072964&isPopup=true
"I've seen some Pamir Tajiks who could pass for Ukrainians on photos."
ReplyDeleteFor those that find physical anthropology interesting, there is this new site that summarizes the work of many authors and researchers:
http://www.humanphenotypes.com/index.html
This is a type that is found in Eastern Europe as well as among the Pamiris:
http://www.humanphenotypes.com/ProtoNordid.html
This type is also related:
http://www.humanphenotypes.com/IndoNordic.html
Of course this is not based on any modern genetic research.
Thanks Mateus very interesting!.
ReplyDelete@ andrew
ReplyDeleteA huge expansion at exactly the right time and going to the right places, it's incomprehensible to me how anyone can suppose that this wasn't IE but belonging to a language family that is now spoken only in a small mountainous refuge area. If this wasn't IE, what else was? And it's impossible that Bell Beaker people spoke one single language. The early Iberian Bell Beaker folks most certainly didn't speak the same language as the Yamnaya-like ones, they were from opposite ends of the West Eurasian PCA. It's possible that one of the two groups assimilated parts of the other group. We don't know yet when the LNBA admixture entered southwestern Europe, it may have occurred after the Bell Beaker era. But we know that the Yamnaya-like Bell Beakers in central Europe acquired Iberian-like Copper Age Europe admixture, so perhaps some of them lost their IE language at that point, though we don't know for sure. I guess you probably consider an R1b connection between some non-IE languages, the problem's just that the R1a-Corded people were autosomally also predominantly Yamnaya-like, so the apparently neat separation in the y-chromosomes shouldn't be overestimated, unless you want to suggest a Caucasian language for Corded people too.
@ Alberto
The problem with ADMIXTURE is that it finds real clusters, but these are not necessarily real ancestral populations. Some clusters, like the Atlantic, or the Atlantic_Med, are evidently of mixed origin (WHG and ENF in this case). And unless we have some ancient DNA, the cluster will be based on modern population clustering. Since we don't have ancient DNA from the Hindukush, we'll inevitably get a modern Hindukush component, which may be of mixed origin.
The problem is also that R1b isn't really typical for Northeast Caucasian languages as a whole, just for Lezgins and Tabassarans on the Caspian coast. But overall J2 and J1 seem to be the most typical markers for Northeast Caucasian.
ReplyDeleteAnd the purported relationship between Basque and one or the other of the Caucasus families is much too flimsy and controversial to go back to a common ancestor as recent as c. 6000 years ago.
ReplyDeleteAlthough physical anthropology isn't a good guide to anything, and even though Carleton Stevens Coon was an idiot (I mean that, one only needs to read his personal correspondences. He wasn't very bright, and his political views were disgusting), I just can't help but quote some stuff he wrote, since this topic has been mentioned.
ReplyDeleteHe was describing an Afridi Pashtun tribesmen from modern day northwestern Pakistan (the Afridi are a massive tribal group in northwestern Pakistan). As someone who is very familiar with how they look, I can say that this individual has a face that is exceedingly common among his tribe. Here is what Coon writes about the individual:
"... Afridi from eastern Afghanistan (my note: the individual is not actually from eastern Afghanistan). Its high, narrow cranial vault, in combination with a great facial and nasal height, and its general cast of cranial features makes this type nearly identical with that of the Corded (Ware) people who invaded Europe from the east toward the beginning of the third millennium B.C."
So, he thinks that a rather typical Afridi tribesmen is basically identical in terms of facial and cranial features to the Corded Ware physical "type".
Conversely, writing about a Finn individual who he thinks is a "Nordic":
"A Finn of predominantly Corded (Ware) type; note the ash-blond hair and grayish eyes, the great head length, and extremely low cephalic index. In head and face proportions a resemblance is seen to the Corded-like Irano-Afghan sub-type, a resemblance which is enhanced if pigmentation differences are ignored..."
And this:
"(c) Irano-Afghan:... It is probably related to the old Corded (Ware) type of the Neolithic and Bronze Age."
Clearly, he was struck by a strong physical similarity between the present day inhabitants of this region, and the Corded Ware people. Also, when discussing Pashtun facial measurements:
"In the total face height and the three facial breadths, these Pathans cannot be distinguished from Nordics. The upper face height, however, serves as a means of differentiation, since it is extremely long; and the noses, at the same time, reach the extreme length of 61 mm. Their mean facial index of 94 and upper facial index of 56 place these people in an extremely long- and narrow-faced category, while the nasal index of 61 confirms their extreme leptorrhiny... the facial dimensions are essentially similar, except that the upper face and nose heights of the Afghans and Pathans are greater."
For him, the main difference between Pashtuns and Corded Ware + modern northern/eastern Europeans would lie in pigmentation. But this is where he was probably incorrect, as we now know that many Andronovo individuals likely had rather dark skin (look at RISE505's markers for various SNPs implicated in skin color. This individual was clearly medium to light brown. Even if we don't try to be that specific, we can be certain that he was definitely darker than what is normal for any living European population). In fact, many living Pashtuns (and Kalash, and Tajiks of all stripes) have lighter skin than many ancient Andronovo individuals (of course, this is assuming that RISE505 is representative, and he might not be).
I don't think the Gujaratis are the best reflection. Again, they are a more recent population, and roll-off analysis points to their formation some time in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. Even the name of the people, and their region, comes from a late 5th century tribe. Their steppe percentages can just as easily reflect changes in North India with the collapse of the Sunga Empire.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I still think that South Indian castes are a better reflection of Bronze Age migrations.
Also, let us stop talking phenotypes. Over 4000 years, different admixture events, and changes in climate and diet, you are not going to see populations look the same. If phenotypes were fixed, we would all look the same.
Also
ReplyDelete@ Seinundzeit
Thank you. It needs to be established that physical anthropology doesn't prove anything when it comes to deep ancestry.
Rolloff is not an accurate way to date ancient admixture events. It always gives results that are way too late. Sometimes the results are off by a couple thousand years.
ReplyDeleteUsing Rolloff Dienekes was sure that he found a signal of a Bronze Age invasion of the Baltic by Indo-Europeans from West Asia. But the goofball was just picking up the Corded Ware expansion from Eastern Europe dating to the Late Neolithic. I told him that. He wouldn't listen.
Oh, and he used Pathans as the proxy for this so called Bronze Age admixture in Poles and Balts.
ReplyDeleteHehe.
aniasi,
ReplyDelete//This is why I still think that South Indian castes are a better reflection of Bronze Age migrations.//
Migrations from where? the only possible thing so far is that ANI dominant groups started to move South and East its the only practical explanation we don't have anything to suggest a major influx from outside yet.
David,
its impossible to put a late bronze age migration to SC Asia or India, at least it have to be put around ~2000 bc if we want to create a theory! unless the Aryans used Modern Technology.
There are some interesting patterns in the migration edges. For example let us take the tree with GujaratiD.
ReplyDeletehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9o3EYTdM8lQaVlGbzBvX3FVdHM/view?pli=1
There is a 4% migration edge from Denisonvan to Australian and Papuan. This is the well known Densiovan admixture in Oceanians. There is a 12% migration edge from Copper_Age_Europe to Corded Ware. This is the small amount of Middle Neolithic ancestry that was absorbed by the Corded Ware people that Haak found. There is a 9% edge going from Ulchi to Andronovo, Corded Ware, Afansievo and Yamnaya. This, I believe, is a new discovery by Davidski. There is a 34% edge going from Sintashta to Andronovo. This is consistent with Sintashta as being ancestral to Andronovo which is widely accepted. Finally we have the 41% edge from a West Eurasian node to GujaratiD. This magnitude and the node location is consistent with it representing ANI as found by Reich Lab. The interesting thing is that this node also gives rise to Andronovo, Corded Ware, Afansievo and Yamnaya. Now Andronovo are the putative ancestors of the so-called “Indo-Iranians” according to some linguists. But there is no migration edge from Andronovo to GujaraitD.
Davidski's Treemix analysis does not support the notion of gene flow from Europe to India. It is, however, consistent with gene flow from India to Europe.
Regarding the provenance of R1a-Z93, I am aware of Davidski's views and that he is very knowledgeable on these issues. But Underhill is regarded as a leading authority on Y-chromosome phylogeny. He is of the opinion that R1a diversification happened in Western or Central Asia. Until the difference of views between the two camps is resolved by new evidence or analysis, we can reserve judgment on whether R1a-Z93 originated in Europe or in Asia.
Davidski, it will be interesting if you could do a Treemix including Iranian with some Indian population and these ancients.
@David
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't look so bad to me. Pathans are a good proxy for Yamnaya admixture with MN Euros, because half of Yamnaya was Pathan-like and the other half (EHGs) also share a good amount of ancestry with Pathans. So it's normal to pick a Pathan signal of admixture in Balts and Slavs (and all Europeans, at that).
The rolloff for Poles was at about 4330 +/- 1120 years. Now we know that the first event was probably around 4800 ya. But there might have been successive admixture events that make the dates vary a bit.
Obviously the more complex the admixture, the less accurate rolloff will be, but as an approximate tool it looks like it kind of works.
Balaji,
ReplyDeleteGujaratis, Kalash and Pathans are obviously from South Asia, so the fact that the migration edges run from South Asia to them doesn't mean that there's Indian admixture in Europe.
What it means is that their European ancestors migrated to South Asia and acquired native admixture there.
postneo
ReplyDelete"Sudden depopulation of IVC is not correct. The archeological record shows a large shift of the IVC population from western india/pakistan deeper into india. This cant be ignored.
The region north of bmac was depopulated from 2700 bc to 700 bc. So any demographic impact from this region is questionable"
Pastoralists have the advantage of mobility so the situation you describe sounds ideal for hit and run raids leading to IVC people moving to get away from the horse dudes - less an invading horde and more a question of raiding leading to depopulation like the Med. coast during the time of Arab raids - once depopulated the horse dudes use the new territory as summer pasture for a while until it gradually fills up again with horse dude y dna and local mtdna.
Rinse and repeat on the next region south.
.
wild speculation
1) Logically I think there ought to be a connection between Hindu attitudes to cattle and IE attitudes
2) Possible connection of corded ware poleaxe to ritual killing of cattle e.g. cattle have a religious significance so can only be killed in a respectful ritual way?
3) Travelling through a desert leading to that view becoming more hardcore i.e. cattle cannot be killed at all (as milk too valuable as a food source)?
I wouldn't bet my house on the details but I think there's likely some religious connection related to cattle.
.
mickeydodds
"when you compare a modern day 'typical' Ukrainian to a modern day 'typical' Gujarati, it seems very hard to reconcile the notion that Gujaratis have '40 to 50% Sintashta and Andronovo' ancestry"
I think Ukrainians were probably darker back then. Although the population as a whole may have had all the depigmentation genes each individual may not have had the full set yet.
For example say there were six depigmentation genes with additive effects and now the average Ukrainian has 5 out of the 6 back then maybe they only had say 3 out of the 6.
"I think Ukrainians were probably darker back then"
ReplyDeleteOn average - there could still be individuals who had the full set.
Fascinating insights Grey, as usual.
ReplyDeleteWhen are you starting your own blog ?
@Grey
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't even take raiding. Consider the urban and agricultural populations that are facing reduced crop yields, flooding, or a number of environmental disasters. Some rebuild (Cemetery H), but like much of human history, many leave for better areas.
These people are not used to migration, and they are also trying to farm new areas. At the same time, they are in closer interaction with the pastoralist arrivals from the North (Swat/Gandhara Grave). Population densities in the past were far lower, and these nomads were previously in the areas away from the main population centres. The former agriculturalists and city-dwellers, however, have been forced into these hinterlands, and are simply not very good survivors. Again, they aren't used to migration, and these areas are not as fertile, so those that succeed are the ones who adopt the ways of the Horse/Cow people, and intermarry with them. (Copper Hoard/OCP)
When more permanent settlement and stability begins in the new river valleys of the Ganga and Yamuna, probably after generations of pioneering and clearing the jungles/forests, these new cultures (PGW/BRW) have elites that mostly descend from the horse/cow people and those who culturally assimilated most. These groups were most successful previously, and by settlement were the new elites.
Mike Thomas
ReplyDelete"Fascinating insights Grey, as usual. "
I'm pleased you've come round to the idea that the most likely evidence of an IE conquest is... nothing
i.e. a depopulated no man's land used for pasturage that only very slowly gets repopulated with people who happen to speak an IE language (with the additional possibility of evidence of a decline in cultures on the opposite side of the IE advance as refugees from the depopulated zone cause havoc among their neighbors).
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cattle & ritual
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargaly
"Ethnographic materials provide evidence for the unbelievable mass slaughtering of animals during rituals accompanying mining and metallurgical processes."
although my googling hasn't thrown up any direct connections with India though so maybe not
Grey
ReplyDeleteBut 'gradual repopulation of a no man's land' should and does have evidence. SO maybe we just have't yet found it, or the story is a bit more complex than we yet think. That period 2000 - 1000 in central Asia is not well studied.
Page 37...
ReplyDelete"Therefore, one can conclude that the Sintashta societies were organized as military aristocracies, a system that was later implemented in central Asia, as groups of steppe dwellers began to migrate south. These migrations can be seen in the change of architecture and burial rites in the middle and late 2nd millennium BC. Not only did several Sintashta-Arkaim type settlements begin to appear further south, a new type of culture emerged, formed by elements of both cultures in symbiotic union (Vakhsh type cultures). Furthermore, in cemeteries in Bactria and Margiana, new types of graves appeared, where stone laying and ceramic facing in the walls were reminiscence of northern burial types59."
https://www.academia.edu/765506/THE_ORIGIN_AND_SPREAD_OF_THE_WAR_CHARIOT
David, Yes Some Nomads of Pre-Scythian origin touched but not changed much on that period its not much of A value OTOH the opposite i.e. BMAC type settlements in Sintashta Arkaim is much more convincing.
ReplyDeleteAniasi, I am disappointed in your ridiculous interpretations.You need to Study more those GGC etc are local developments just like PGW etc.
The SSC tradition continued though heavily disturbed by Climate and the drying up of Sarasvati and they shifted South and East Creating the ANI-ASI admixture that we know of.
Read the Works of B.B. Lal,Shaffer,Possehli etc then you will understand the situation.
Balaji,
ReplyDeleteIf the migration edge was merely reflective of general West Eurasian ancestry in GujaratiD (ANI), that 41% could easily have come from the BA/IA Armenians, or from the EEF samples, or perhaps from the very base of all the West Eurasian populations on that tree. Yet, it comes specifically from the LN/EBA Europeans. When we take into account the fact that the Pashtun and Kalash trees show both populations to be predominantly LN/EBA European, we can quite easily come to the realization that a very consistent pattern is presenting itself.
Although, some Kalash and Pashtun samples are modeled by TreeMix in a manner that resembles the old ANI-ASI model. Basically, some samples turn out to be around 90% West Eurasian + 10% Dai (for example, the Kalash sample HGDP00328 is modeled as 88% West Eurasian + 12% Dai in the TreeMix graph posted by David). But as David noted, 88% West Eurasian + 12% ASI or 65% LN/EBA European + 35% ancient South Central Asian are saying the exact same thing, but at different levels of analysis.
Aniasi, Take a look at this on the origins and identity of Indo-Iranians, though a bit old but very important and easy also since reading the works of those Scholars i mentioned will be a daunting and long task;)-
ReplyDeletehttp://new-indology.blogspot.in/2013/02/indo-iranians-new-perspectives.html
Davidski, Seinundzeit,
ReplyDeleteMy point is that the ANI element in GujaratiD does not originate from Sintashta, Afansievo, Andronovo or Yamnaya. Davidski has qpAdm models with each of these as ancestors of South Asians. But there are no migration edges from any of them to GujaratiD. The Treemix models do not support any of the qpAdm models.
Many archaeologists believe that Andronovo are ancestors of the so called “Indo-Iranians”. But Treemix does not support this. Andronovo has a migration edge from Sintashta – this makes sense. But there is no migration edge from Andronovo to GujaratiD.
To the contrary the ANI node is also the point of origin of Yamnaya, Afansievo, Corded_Ware and Andronove. It looks like all these ancients shared ancestry with GujaratiD, not that any of them were the ancestors of GujaratiD. This shared ancestry could well have been native to the northwestern part of the Indian Subcontinent and migrated to the Steppe from there.
But...
ReplyDelete- Most of the variation in GujaratiA is sitting on a branch very close to the Andronovo branch
- GujaratiB shows a migration edge from a branch that joins the Andronovo and Sintashta branches
What this suggests is that there was a significant migration from somewhere within the Andronovo/Sintashta horizon to India.
We don't need to see migration edges to the Gujarati precisely from the ends of the Andronovo and Sintashta branches to come to this conclusion.
hi,
ReplyDeletedo you have any information on the Gujarati_a group? is that group fully Gujarati or is it mixed? some south-central Asians on anthropology forums have suggested that group could be half West eurasian and not full Indian based on Gujarati_a's close genetic proximity to afghan pashtuns on gedmatch oracles. Could you make a clarification on this please David?
I've been told a couple of times that GujaratiA are upper caste Gujaratis. No idea if that's true, but they're very similar to upper caste Brahmin Tiwaris from east Central India from the Human Origins dataset.
ReplyDeleteAll of the Gujaratis, A, B, C and D, are definitely fully South Asian in the modern sense, with no recent admixture from outside of India.
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions, David. If you have any information at all on the PJL (Punjabis from Lahore) group from the dataset, I would appreciate it as well. Is there anything to suggest that this group is from a Dalit colony? It has been suggested by some on forums that the samples are from Dalit Punjabis, however I don't know whether casteism is of any relevance in modern Pakistan to the extent that a "Dalit colony" would exist in Lahore.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any detailed info on the PJL sample set, but I have analyzed the few individuals that have been added to the Human Origins dataset, and they're very similar to GujaratiD in that they're unusually South Indian-like.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't be surprised if they were the descendants of fairly recent migrants to Lahore from India, but I don't have any evidence that they are.
However, their genetic structure actually matches the language map of South Asia from around 1000BC. If we are to assume that PJL and GujaratiD are the descendants of the 1st wave of Indo-Aryans, with inflated Dravidian admixture, while groups like GujaratiA and Brahmin Tiwaris from Uttar Pradesh are largely from the 2nd wave, then things make a lot of sense. Here's that map.
https://78462f86-a-871ac6f1-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/sudiptodas.com/www/thearyantrail/peoples-1000bc.gif?attachauth=ANoY7coq5AG98_-701mZsq26OljrNiB051I6NL_VaE8_uFpPf9CLiPV9Qe2sNG5Rwxgo85QWBTvTtDVZ25c4YR1ae9ZAdMA3q-CB7iEIQJDK-C0XfiRdZKEGRWgDYmLKzMrnA6PfrTDLlN1jOYRGyabXeJ2uYpjPGNaCk9BeJPngY4vNG90h2hJfbnpBt_lbSqIxuwkr7kWqqagPZQ2BR1Ir_4BsCRtzpv-oE9635nDDWsU9X2wzKJY%3D&attredirects=0