Update 05/10/2015: Yamnaya's exotic ancestry: The Kartvelian connection
...
The Afanasievo and Yamnaya samples published to date are remarkably homogeneous. Hopefully the bar graphs below, based on a couple of my recent ADMIXTURE runs, illustrate this well enough.
The Near Eastern-related ancestry proportions among the Yamnaya individuals do appear to rise steadily from early Yamnaya to late Yamnaya/early Catacomb. But the ancestral components remain the same, and if the increase in the Near Eastern-related admixture is real, the process is very subtle.
What this suggests to me is that groups of a southern provenance - in all likelihood Neolithic farmers seeking new land - arrived somewhere on the Pontic-Caspian steppe very early, perhaps even during the Early Neolithic, to eventually blend with local foragers. That's because the basic Yamnaya genotype had to have existed before the Yamnaya or pre-Yamnaya ancestors of the Afanasievo nomads set off on their 2000 km trek to the Minusinsk Basin in South Siberia, probably around 3,300 BC.
No doubt, the mixing didn't stop after the initial farmer/forger admixture event, and this is probably why the Near Eastern-related ancestry proportions rise gradually throughout the Yamnaya period. Indeed, considering the high mobility of Bronze Age steppe pastoralists, it's likely that long distance trade, alliances and marriages resulted in the genetic homogenization of vast stretches of Eastern Europe during their reign.
In this analysis I used samples from the Allentoft et al., Haak et al. and Lazaridis et al. datasets, all of which are publicly available. The latter two are found at the Reich Lab site here.
60 comments:
More specifically, the bar graphs are based on these results...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-hsilFBC9pJpe-0H-HJB10e2qPnRj6qY94UL48G4Nfo/edit?usp=sharing
Davidski,
"What this suggests to me is that groups of a southern provenance - in all likelihood Neolithic farmers seeking new land - arrived somewhere on the Pontic-Caspian steppe very early, perhaps even during the Early Neolithic, to eventually blend with local foragers."
Interesting. How do you explain the lack of empirical evidence for farming on the Pontic-Caspian steppe at such an early date?
I'd say some more work needs to be done in this area, because there's no way Yamnaya have ancestry from the Neolithic Balkans, nor from the Late Neolithic/Bronze Age Armenian Plateau.
Maybe they were pushed by some climatic events (desertification) seeking better pastures or maybe the EEF people started to put pressure on them.
If we look at the age of rapid expansion of R1b/R1a it is somewhere at 5500-6000 ybp. So before Yamna. This rapid expansion of SNPs can be explained by rapid demographic increase. The demographic increase is impossible without more food.
The genetic evidence points strongly to a farmer of different origin than the EEF/Stuttgart type. Rather, the stronger argument is towards BMAC related cultures/ancestry onto the steppe.
"What this suggests to me is that groups of a southern provenance - in all likelihood Neolithic farmers seeking new land - arrived somewhere on the Pontic-Caspian steppe very early, perhaps even during the Early Neolithic, to eventually blend with local foragers. That's because the basic Yamnaya genotype had to have existed before the Yamnaya or" """pre-Yamnaya ancestors of the Afanasievo nomads set off on their 2000 km trek to the Minusinsk Basin in South Siberia, probably around 3,400 BC."""
Basically, No Shi*t. Man you finally starting to get it. This has been pretty evident for at least the last 10 months, considering all the recent dope. Peaople need to stop nudging the evidence in the direction they'd like it to go and start understanding the basic general picture that emerging.
hey EUROGENES !! pls chek this new study
Genetic Heterogeneity in Algerian Human Populations
link:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0138453
A very nice post! thank you David.
AWood:
"the stronger argument is towards BMAC related cultures/ancestry onto the steppe."
I strongly agree. Since we seem to be suggesting a Neolithic time frame, that would be Jeitun, in southern Turkmenistan. That culture likely came from northern Iran, which is where I should look for the source of these "farmers".
That we should also find this same signal in Afanasevo does not surprise me, either. Cultural elements in the later Namazga sequence of southern Turkmenistan appear at Sarazm, in western Tajikistan, settled in the late fourth millennium BCE. The presence of metal in Afanasevo graves suggests contact with these eastern settlers. If there is evidence of metal production in the Afanasevo culture, a question I can't answer off the top of my head, then that implies a group of people from southern Central Asia went there to produce it.
All we need now is some aDNA from the South and in reality its happening, within 6 months the picture is going to change massively.
@Va_Highlander
Do you mean to say that the Afanasievo graves had artifacts in Namazga style? Why shouldn't the knowledge of metallurgy have come from the west?
@capra metallurgy spread is more discontinuous and bursty and local since it depends on discovery of ore deposits
Mountain ranges make life easier for a prospector
capra internetensis:
"Do you mean to say that the Afanasievo graves had artifacts in Namazga style?"
No, I do not. I mean to say that elements of the Namazga culture appear to have settled in Tajikistan, near what would become a regular path of communication between southern Central Asia and the eastern steppe.
"Why shouldn't the knowledge of metallurgy have come from the west?"
It almost certainly came from the west. The question is by what route. No one seems to be suggesting that steppe herders mined there way across Eurasia and it seems most unlikely that a skill as highly-specialized, and labor intensive, as metallurgy could be preserved across multiple generations without actually practicing it. Therefore, a route across the steppe seems unlikely, unless someone can show that the metallurgy found in Afanasevo is very unlikely to have come from anywhere other than the steppe.
Conversely, in southern Central Asia, we have fairly strong evidence that metal workers were moving east and were practicing their craft in a settled community within reasonable trading distance of southern Siberia.
Which is more likely? I think there's more evidence supporting a southern route and I see nothing in particular making that route unlikely.
postneo:
"metallurgy spread is more discontinuous and bursty and local since it depends on discovery of ore deposits
"Mountain ranges make life easier for a prospector "
Exactly so, these mountain ranges in particular. Metallurgy seems to have followed this rich mineral belt all the way from its likely origin in Anatolia, across the Iranian plateau, and eventually into the Hexi corridor, in Gansu Province, China.
Metallurgy was indeed discontinuous in several ways. Not only did it depend upon mineral deposits, it also required fairly substantial quantities of fuel. Even then adoption was not uniform. It was a multi-disciplinary, labor intensive undertaking. A culture had to also want it, or have good reason to adopt it, adding yet another layer of complexity.
Afanasievo doesn't just show the same signals as Yamnaya, it's the same population.
And this population existed in Eastern Europe well before the Bronze Age.
@Va_Highlander
It is about as far from the Zeravshan to the Altai as it is from the Urals to the Altai.
3000 km over mountain and desert is not any more of a reasonable trading distance than 3000 km over forest and steppe. That is not to say that they couldn't have been in contact with the south, but I see no geographical grounds for preferring it.
actually I think the paths are fundamentally different. But we should check:
on one hand you have MOIST mountain corridors, from the eastern anatolia, caucasus, elburz, kopet dagh tian shan and altai. lined by rivers, goat/sheep, dung, vegetation, walnut groves and exposed ore deposits that are easier to exploit
vs more arid steppe
Finally whats good for pond scum is also good for humans, live stock and of course demand/market for durable and non durable goods.
as for metallurgy, there are two independent traditions the perhaps older caucasian one and the seima turbino which met in the bronze age from opposite directions in the Urals
Afanasievo came from Eastern Europe. This was known a long time ago, but now the case is closed. We have their genomes.
Hi, interesting post and comments.
@ Post-Neo.
The Seima-Turbino phenomenon is much, much later (c. 1500 BC), so I think it has little bearing on the topic at hand.
@ Davidski
One can accept the genetic evidence at hand. However, we also need an explanation to make sense of / confirm the genetic pattern. The major overall problem is with chronology – despite decades of research, this is still a bit iffy at present. But some things are for certain: 1) Yamnaya is now placed after 3000 BC, making the notion that Afansievo "deriving" from it difficult to sustain, and by difficult I mean impossible.
I know some prominent scholars thus came with a new solution: Afansievo derives from Repin. Again, this is difficult to sustain given the lack of evidence. Repin was excavated c. 1948 – and rather poorly. The supposed findings from this early excavation have been echoed from scholar to scholar uncritically, with only a handful actually bothering (or being able) to re-examine the evidence first hand. The present stance is that it is difficult to sustain a Repin ---> Afansievo migration due to a lack of explanatory mechanism/ means/ motives. Certainly, it is difficult to match the economy and ceramics from Afansievo with Yamnaya, despite some generic similarities.
Of course, this is not to deny that Afansievo came from somewhere ‘non-local’, and indeed further west. But until we sample a wider area of the steppe and central Asia and include pre-Bronze Age samples, this commentator keeps an open mind.
We should note that the "EHG" pre-Eneolithic peoples in northern Eurasian were found widely- from Karelia to Samara. There is no reason, this didn't extend further east. The possibility is that whatever population admixed with the EHGs at Samara to 'form' Yamnaya also did so to produce a near-identical picture in Afansievo territory.
No West Asian region in particular has a close mtDNA relationship to Yamnaya but I have very few samples from Caucasus and Central Asia which might have a very close relationship. Plus I don't have a lot of high coverage data. One interesting find is J1b1a and T1a1'3 probably originated in the Near East and migrated to the Steppe and became J1b1a1 and T1a1.
It's not possible that Afanasievo and Yamnaya are derived from separate admixture events. They're the same population derived from the same admixture event. This is very clear to anyone who understands the data, especially the formal statistics.
Archaeology and the new dating results don't contradict this.
NEW RADIOCARBON DATES AND A REVIEW OF THE CHRONOLOGY OF PREHISTORIC POPULATIONS FROM THE MINUSINSK BASIN, SOUTHERN SIBERIA, RUSSIA
https://www.academia.edu/602596/New_radiocarbon_dates_and_a_review_of_the_chronology_of_prehistoric_populations_from_the_Minusinsk_Basin_Southern_Siberia_Russia
@Rob, VA_Highlander,
The simple narrative given by ancient DNA is Yamnaya, Afanasievo, and Corded Ware(had EEF/WHG admixture) are from the same populations. Don't complicate things.
There's no reason to complicate this and no convincing genetic evidence for it anyways. Your line of logic is: If I can find any evidence at all for a theory that opposes this narritive I'm going to treat as more likely.
Just because something is possibly wrong doesn't mean it is probably wrong.
Both R1a and R1b are Indo-European markers but I wonder how two lineages could speak the same language 6000 years ago when their last shared paternal ancestors lived more than 15000 years ago. That was also the reason why I could at first not believe that R1b is also Proto-Indo-European but now we have ironically only R1b in Yamnaya. So it could be that the first Proto-Indo-European speaking groups were R1b carriers and that R1a carriers became indoeuropeanized by them. Or both lineages existed in one culture but because of founder effects and bottle necks the various descendants of this Proto-Proto-Indo-Europeans became either entirely dominated by R1a or R1b.
@ Davidski
Thanks for that paper. Indeed, the probability curve from Svyatko/ Mallory suggest 3000 - 2500 BC dating for Afansievo, which coincides with Yamnaya, not post-dating. As for the formal stats, i'll take your word for it, pending further evidence.
@ Krefter.
You're making straw -man arguments. In fact, I clearly stated "Of course, this is not to deny that Afansievo came from somewhere ‘non-local’, and indeed further west"
To remain open to all possibilities is not to 'needlessly complicate things'.
@Davidski
"Afanasievo came from Eastern Europe. This was known a long time ago, but now the case is closed. We have their genomes."
You're absolutely right.
"or pre-Yamnaya ancestors of the Afanasievo nomads set off on their 2000 km trek to the Minusinsk Basin in South Siberia, probably around 3,400 BC."
Spot on. Whith emphasis on "pre Yamnaya" Or perhaps slightly earlier.
Ok the teal has this constraints.
It shouldn't be too close to India because of ASI.
It shouldn't be too close to Anatolia because of EEF.
It shouldn't be too North or too close to places that can have ENA.
So we have a triangle.
For the metallurgy. There was a lot off discussion about copper-smiths and IE.
But I don't think that smiths and metallurgy was the most important part of IE spread. The most important part was the search of pastures and later power/control.
Copper-smiths in Sumer were not a free people. He was not a slave but more close to serf status. And I don't think that situation in Balkans and South Caucasus could be much different. A chiefdom who controls the mining and metal trade and the craftsmen themselves could have very different ethnic and social origins.
https://books.google.am/books?id=9q83AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA86&lpg=PA86&dq=tibira+sumerian+copper+smith&source=bl&ots=hkHthc4F0t&sig=4UaYH1byCd3FRhkVX5d1vejkegM&hl=hy&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=tibira%20sumerian%20copper%20smith&f=false
Va_Highlander
"Not only did it depend upon mineral deposits, it also required fairly substantial quantities of fuel."
This is a good point but
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargaly
"The volume of extracted copper ores (malachite and azurite) from the Bronze Age is amazingly large and can be quantified by a wide approximation ranging from two to five million tons.
Within Kargaly alone, a large amount of copper ore was smelted during the Bronze Age, its total weight estimated at between 55,000 and 120,000 tons."
if they smelted between 55,000 and 120,000 tons at Kargaly they must have got the wood from somewhere. The closest would appear to be to the NE.
"The Kargaly deposits are surrounded by typical steppe land cover, consisting of grasslands containing only an occasional small forest consisting of willow, alder, birch, and aspen trees near springs and deep ravines. More substantial forests occur 200–250 km northeast of Kargaly, where they form part of the mountainous-taiga zone of the southern Urals."
Unless the forests were further south then?
Aram
"But I don't think that smiths and metallurgy was the most important part of IE spread. The most important part was the search of pastures and later power/control."
I think that's likely true but it seems to me we have three phases:
1. spread of Yamnaya related pops over the steppe.
2. possible independent spread of copper miners *beyond* the steppe before the main IE tribal expansions
3. main IE tribal expansions.
@ Davidski
Where do you think the ancestors of Corded Ware came from? Which culture do you think is ancestral to Yamnaya, Afanasievo and Corded Ware?
For Corded Ware, the most immediate source has to be either 4 and/or the eastern part of 10, otherwise their autosomal structure doesn't make sense, because proto-Corded Ware are deduced to be basically Yamnaya with a little more EHG. In other words, very similar to Afanasievo, and that's why I won't be surprised if Afanasievo actually comes out mostly or exclusively R1a.
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=TIkABAAAQBAJ&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=Fig+22.+Eastern+Europe+in+the+Middle+Neolithic+Key+1&source=bl&ots=qGdKu0j8jW&sig=uboxKGsqNWF-se1a3fvZb8QNj5U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMIwoL86cGjyAIVhRqUCh2u9wHs#v=onepage&q=Fig%2022.%20Eastern%20Europe%20in%20the%20Middle%20Neolithic%20Key%201&f=false
Yamnaya/Pit Grave is probably mainly derived from Khvalynsk, but with more significant admixture from the south.
@Grey
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_animal_dung_fuel
capra internetensis:
"3000 km over mountain and desert is not any more of a reasonable trading distance than 3000 km over forest and steppe."
Indeed, therefore, given the unlikelihood of retaining the practical knowledge of metallurgy over multiple generations without actually practicing metallurgy, it is more likely that metal in southern Siberia came from the known metal-producing peoples of southern Central Asia.
All we can ever say about the past is which scenario was more likely.
postneo:
"as for metallurgy, there are two independent traditions the perhaps older caucasian one and the seima turbino which met in the bronze age from opposite directions in the Urals"
It's my understanding that the Seima-Turbino phenomenon is much, much later than anything in the Caucasus and the tradition in the Caucasus is later than the metal industries in Serbia and on the Iranian plateau, to cite just two examples. Anatolia still presents the oldest evidence for metallurgy. There is no compelling evidence that Seima-Turbino is an independent development.
Davidski:
"Afanasievo came from Eastern Europe. This was known a long time ago, but now the case is closed."
I can understand you believing that, but I have to go with what is more probable. Even if true, it doesn't necessarily support the steppe hypothesis, since there is no compelling cultural link between Afanasevo and the Tarim Basin.
Rob:
"We should note that the "EHG" pre-Eneolithic peoples in northern Eurasian were found widely- from Karelia to Samara. There is no reason, this didn't extend further east. The possibility is that whatever population admixed with the EHGs at Samara to 'form' Yamnaya also did so to produce a near-identical picture in Afansievo territory."
Indeed.
Davidski again:
"They're the same population derived from the same admixture event."
It's curious that on your graph the other day Yamna and Afanasevo plotted close to each other, but not identically. That's a bit puzzling, if they are indeed the same population.
"Archaeology and the new dating results don't contradict this."
It really depends on who is looking at the archeology, where they choose to look and where they tend to shut their eyes. Those that want to believe see confirmation of their own bias. I saw David Anthony try to argue, in print, that the northern Silk Route through Samarkand was impassable to humans.
We all suffer from confirmation bias. Recognizing that fact and adopting a sane methodology helps us get past it, at least on good days.
Krefter:
"There's no reason to complicate this and no convincing genetic evidence for it anyways."
I'm genuinely interested in the origin of PIE, wherever that might have been. Consequently, I have to follow the evidence wherever it leads and evaluate all claims in terms of their probability. If that means rejecting simplistic narratives, however convenient they might be, then that's what must be done.
DNA samples are like potsherds. No matter how hard you squeeze them, they still can't talk. I think genetics could sustain or deny a claim of linguistic spread through demic movement, but languages can spread without any significant demic movement. There are hard limits to what genetic analysis can tell us.
"Just because something is possibly wrong doesn't mean it is probably wrong."
"Possibly wrong" is a misstatement of my point. What I said was that it is more likely that metal, or metallurgy, found in Afanasevo arrived there via southern Central Asia than from the steppe. Both hypotheses are "possibly wrong". It would be naive to pretend otherwise. Given the evidence that we have, today, the claim that metallurgy wandered across the Eurasian steppe with sheep herders is in fact "probably wrong". If someone has evidence and a compelling argument demonstrating otherwise, then I shall be happy to reevaluate my belief. Until then I have to go with what is more likely.
Aram:
"It shouldn't be too close to India because of ASI."
The teal component peaks in Afghanistan, so it's already close to India.
"It shouldn't be too close to Anatolia because of EEF."
And it peaks in the Caucasus, too.
"The most important part was the search of pastures and later power/control."
Maybe, if the steppe hypothesis can be established as the most likely origin of PIE. Otherwise, this is circular reasoning.
"And I don't think that situation in Balkans and South Caucasus could be much different. A chiefdom who controls the mining and metal trade and the craftsmen themselves could have very different ethnic and social origins."
So, you have evidence of chiefdoms in these areas at such an early date? That would be interesting.
Grey:
"if they smelted between 55,000 and 120,000 tons at Kargaly they must have got the wood from somewhere."
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Obviously, they got the wood from somewhere, transported ore to another site, or something. The point is that the practice of metallurgy depended upon many factors, making for a patchwork of development and adoption.
Karl_K (on animal dung as fuel):
That is a possibility I've considered, but haven't seen discussed. The most obvious problem is that, at least at this early date, charcoal was required to smelt copper. The crucible was heated from the inside.
Va_Highlander,
Could you provide some solid examples of linguistic spread with neither (a) demic movement nor (b) a state? I'd like to study up.
Davidski,
Do you think the South Caspian is a possibility for the non-EHG side of Yamnaya? I thought the sudden, large increase in mtDNA distance from PPNB in that location was very interesting. This would also seem to fit the IE/NE-Caucasian relation. How do the mtDNA haplogroups from the South Caspian compare to the Yamnaya? Thanks for all your posts.
Va_Highlander
I don't mean the modern situation. If I understand correctly the previous thread the 'teal' that appears in Yamna/Afanasievo can't have an additional EEF or ASI.
If the teal was already mixed with EEF or ASI some 5000-6000 years ago before moving to Steppe we would see those components in Yamna but as far as I know Yamna don't have any of them.
Taymas
The map that You linked is very intriguing.
@VA_Highlander,
Archaeological evidence Afanasievo had contact with people south of them isn't good evidence they are not of the same population as Yamnaya. Rarely do two identical admixed populations form independently.
@Va_Highlander,
Anyways, archaeologist don't have a survey of all remains left on earth by humans throughout all of time. Afanasievo could have been mining metal as they moved from Russia to Siberia. We might just not have the remains of their ancestors who lived in-between Russia and Siberia.
@coldmountains
Clearly R1a and R1b learnt from older haplogroups that they came across.
We know the R1 family is the youngest haplogroup created. Logic says the older haplogroups where already communicating to each other prior to the R1 group arriving, anywhere.
don't you find it strange that most people think/dream the R1 group created everything and other older haplogroups did nothing.
Here is what Haak said in Figure S9.20, “The Yamnaya show a pattern of negative correlation when using Karelia_HG and either Iraqi_Jew or Armenian as reference. This is consistent with it having a component of ancestry related to the Caucasus/Near East suggesting that ancient DNA work in these regions may reveal a good surrogate for this type of ancestry.”
We do now have ancient DNA from Armenia and Davidski's analysis has disqualified ancient Armenians from the role of the ancient near-Eastern ancestor “Q” of the Yamnaya.
In retrospect, this is clear. When farmers spread from the Middle East to Europe, they mixed very little with the local population for a long time and were very similar over great distances. So why would farmers in the Levant, Anatolia, the Caucasus or Mesopotamia be very different? EEF was about 44% BEA and 56% WHG-like. Middle Eastern farmers were probably about 50% BEA and 50% WHG-like.
The Neolithic population Q could not have been derived from the Middle East.
@Va_Highlander
Well, I don't see how the West Siberian Plain forms an impenetrable barrier to the transmission of metallurgical knowledge. No one ever went back and forth between the Urals and the Altai in the course of a lifetime?
I don't know what constitutes teal, but one fairly coincidental event preceding it's appearance in Yamna was the rise of the Black Sea which mostly affected its northern shore.
Something around 43,000 square miles of the North Black Sea was above water level (not sea level) in 5,600 B.C. Sometime in the 5th millennium the alluvium began more rapidly infilling with brackish water. Without question farmers lived here before this, in fact it would have been very desirable for early farming.
It's possible these components were already mixed during the time of the Samara hunter.
@Balaji
We already knew that Bronze Age Armenians didn't mix into Yamnaya, because they lacked the requisite time portal technology. That everyone in the Transcaucasus 2000 years earlier had the same kind of ancestry is speculation.
Neolithic Europeans came from the same area (Greece), already had the full Neolithic package, and were colonizing a large area inhabitated by a sparse population of foragers. Assuming that the same dynamic applied in the Near East, where the Neolithic package was assembled gradually over a large area, is again speculation. In any case it would apply equally well to Central Asia or wherever else you want the Q farmers to have come from.
Until we have a decent sampling of Neolithic aDNA from the Near East we simply don't know what kind of ancestry was where.
Which is not to say that Yamnaya couldn't have got their farmer ancestry via Central Asia, I have no problem with that in principle.
bellbeakerblogger,
That's interesting and it would explain what we're seeing.
Taymas,
The profile of the Near Eastern mtDNA in the Yamnaya suggests that it could have easily come from the Caucasus or surrounds, including the South Caspian. However, if so, it arrived on the steppe before Caucasians and Iranians acquired their present genetic structure with significant EEF-related ancestry, which is missing in Yamnaya.
I think this is basically what happened, and the farmers we're looking for lived just northwest of the Caucasus, and maybe in areas that are now under water.
Karl_K (on animal dung as fuel):
I think Dung fires don't not yield high temperatures needed for ores. its ok for cooking and fertilizer.
@ BBB
" Without question farmers lived here before this, in fact it would have been very desirable for early farming."
Sounds like an unsubstantiated claim that Farmers existed on the Black Sea c. 6000 BC. To be sure, we'd need t least one piece of evidence for this. So your "without doubt" is more like major doubt. The peoples living on north Black Sea littoral c. 6000 BC would have been foragers
VA_Highlander
At present one has to accept the evidence of the Yamnaya - Afansievo similarity, if not identity. Of course, with all the troubles in dating, and yet unsampled areas, the ultimate source of these two populations remains to be proven unequivocally. Some Y DNA from Afansievo will certainly be enlightening.
@Rob
Impresso-Cardial ceramics are present North of the Black Sea, I think it's a question of degree and how early.
Postneo,
The Eurasian steppe was warm and humid until 3,000 BC. Significant aridization began only around 2,600 BC. See Table 1 here...
https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/view/3511
But of course that was well after the migration of the ancestors of Afanasievo from Eastern Europe to South Siberia.
So do you have any evidence at all that Afanasievo had even minor admixture from Central Asia?
@Rob,
"Some Y DNA from Afansievo will certainly be enlightening."
A Russian guy claimed to have sampled Afansievo Y DNA several years ago and that 3/3 were R1b, one being confirmed R1b1a2. Makes sense because Eastern Yamnaya was almost 100% R1b-Z2103.
@Rob
Impresso-Cardial ceramics are present North of the Black Sea, I think it's a question of degree and how early.
@postneo
"I think Dung fires don't not yield high temperatures needed for ores. its ok for cooking and fertilizer."
Cattle dung is still used in Nepal and India to supplement wood for smelting in small traditional operations. In pre-Columbian Peru, a lot of the smelting was done with only llama dung and no wood.
I was not suggesting that all the smelting was done with only dung. However, it can make a little bit of wood go a lot further.
@Va_Highlander
"I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Obviously, they got the wood from somewhere, transported ore to another site, or something."
I'm saying that although fuel ought to have been an issue - as you say - the evidence from Kargaly seems to suggest it wasn't in practice - which is odd imo.
@Karl_K
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_animal_dung_fuel
I hadn't thought of that. For various fuzzy logic reasons I wonder if the forest zone may have been further south back then (cos colder).
@Gaspar
"don't you find it strange that most people think/dream the R1 group created everything and other older haplogroups did nothing."
As far as copper working goes the sheer size of the Kargaly copper field could quite possibly have attracted metal workers from outside with the size also leading them to recruit locals so any connection between R1b/red hair/copper - if it exists - may have come about indirectly.
(If that connection does exist the African V88 populations ought to have trace amounts of the red hair gene.)
@BBB
"Something around 43,000 square miles of the North Black Sea was above water level (not sea level) in 5,600 B.C."
Interesting thought. It does seem to me that the earliest post-glacial large populations were likely to have been along coasts in which case most of the evidence will be under water but given how far back monumental masonry goes it does seem possible (to me anyway) that there will be stone evidence somewhere underwater in some places.
.
on the teal what i find interesting is the route around the Caspian which is marked on a lot of Silk Road maps
http://archive.silkroadproject.org/Portals/0/images/lg_SilkRoadWallMap_color.jpg
A population starting somewhere in the foothills of the Tien Shan then drifting west along the edge of the steppe would hit various rivers taking them to the Aral Sea so if one branch took that route it would get them a large part of the way along that route.
http://media-1.web.britannica.com/eb-media/40/7240-004-2F862B56.jpg
The possibility of population movements in the past along that route would probably depend a lot on the level of desertification at the time.
Maybe they chopped down all the trees smelting metal :)
@ Bell Beaker
Very interesting. I did some digging around abiut Cardinal / Impresson sites in the Black Sea "Unfortunately, at present it is based on isolated finds, radiocarbon dates which are often questionable, and sites researched quite a few decades ago".
But certainly a viable possibility .
@ Krefter
Z2103 would make sense
Some posters assume all Neolithic European mtDNA was like it was in Hungary/Germany. This isn't the case; Iberian, French, Romanian Neolithic mtDNA is very differnt. Who knows maybe Yamnaya's Neolithic ancestors traveled through the Balkans(not saying it is likely).
Romanian Neolithic shares W6 with Yamnaya while all Hungary/German W is not W6. T1a exists in Hungary/Germany, although all Romanian T is T1a, so that's another connection with Yamnaya. Besides that there's no special link between Romanian Neolithic and Yamnaya.
Taymas:
"Could you provide some solid examples of linguistic spread with neither (a) demic movement nor (b) a state?"
Apparently, the pattern of language adoption on the steppe during the Mongolian expansion serves as one example. A tribe could adopt the language, and even claim to be Mongolian, despite having no Mongolian ancestry.
Aram:
"If the teal was already mixed with EEF or ASI some 5000-6000 years ago before moving to Steppe we would see those components in Yamna but as far as I know Yamna don't have any of them."
Well, yes. 6000 years ago, I wouldn't expect to find ASI in Afghanistan, either. That may be too early for EEF in the Caucasus. I don't know. I'd say the most likely source of that teal component was northern Iran, looking at its modern distribution.
Krefter:
"Archaeological evidence Afanasievo had contact with people south of them isn't good evidence they are not of the same population as Yamnaya."
As I say, my interest is in the origin of PIE. The presence of metal among Afanasevo remains is cited in support of the steppe hypothesis. If there is an alternative explanation that is at least as plausible, then the likelihood of the steppe hypothesis being true is reduced by that much.
"Rarely do two identical admixed populations form independently."
You would think that, down through the generations, as a population wandered eastward across the steppe, that they would pick up some other genes along the way, wouldn't you? As you say, they're so close as to be nearly identical. Maybe much of the steppe looked like that, at least for a while.
"Afanasievo could have been mining metal as they moved from Russia to Siberia. We might just not have the remains of their ancestors who lived in-between Russia and Siberia."
And when that evidence comes to light, we will reassess the probability of metallurgy wandering across the steppe with sheep herders at such an early date. Until then, we must address the evidence we have.
capra internetensis:
"No one ever went back and forth between the Urals and the Altai in the course of a lifetime?"
With all due respect, I think you're confusing possible with probable. Is it possible that metallurgy went east across the steppe? Sure. Is it likely? I don't think it's likely. We have evidence that it moved east along the mineral belt to the south at a fairly early date. All else being equal, it's more likely that this is the source of metallurgy in southern Siberia.
The most we can ever say about the past is what is likely to have happened. In the absence of a time machine allowing direct observation, that's all we have.
Davidski:
"I think this is basically what happened, and the farmers we're looking for lived just northwest of the Caucasus, and maybe in areas that are now under water."
How do you know they were farmers?
Rob:
"At present one has to accept the evidence of the Yamnaya - Afansievo similarity, if not identity."
I don't believe I'm rejecting it, either. I'm questioning whether an eastward migration is the most likely explanation. When combined with observed patterns of movement on the Eurasian step, wouldn't a movement east to west be more likely?
Karl_K:
"Cattle dung is still used in Nepal and India to supplement wood for smelting in small traditional operations."
That appears to be correct. I just found an account of using dung to smelt copper. Thanks!
Grey:
"I'm saying that although fuel ought to have been an issue - as you say - the evidence from Kargaly seems to suggest it wasn't in practice - which is odd imo."
The first question I should ask is whether there is evidence of smelting at Kargaly.
VA-Highlander
Can you point to the evidence/ papers of central Asian affinity of Afensievo metallurgy ?
Thanks in advance.
btw, as I said, i remain entirely open as to exactly where / how the group of Similar cultures from Danube to Altai formed.
But we should not assume everything went east to west just because it did during the Turko-Mongol era . in no small part, it is the result of modern scholarly axioms, and the fact that Greeks/ Romans always highlighted new eastern groups, but did not concern themselves with 'European" groups moving east.
For the sake of not being confusing, you shouldn't have called the the yellow portion "Near Eastern ancestry", which implies the rest is non.
If anything the yellow portion is the non ANE admixed part of EEF related ancestry. But quite frankly a good chunk of the other 3-4 components did also start their journey together with the yellow component in the Near East. I honestly doubt that the Eastern farmers were just a bunch belonging to only the yellow componet. Jut like we call ANE portion in EHG "East European H&G " so should we call the ANE or WHG in Near Eastern farmers also "Near Eastern farmer ancestry"
So no the yellow component does not equal Near Eastern ancestry. It's just a big part of it.
Rob:
"Can you point to the evidence/ papers of central Asian affinity of Afensievo metallurgy ?"
I wish that I could. I can't even find an assertion that they practiced metallurgy as such. A history of Siberia I glanced at claimed they were cold-forging native metals and included silver among them. Native silver is quite rare. It's possible that's what they used, but given the presence of silver and lead at Sarazm, it seems more likely that it was a traded good.
"the fact that Greeks/ Romans always highlighted new eastern groups, but did not concern themselves with 'European' groups moving east."
We can look at that a couple of ways. Given that we don't have compelling evidence of 'European' groups moving east and taking a viable language with them, Greek and Roman bias may not be a problem, at least when we're confining ourselves to the subject of PIE. The only exception on the steppe is the Russian expansion east, but that was part of a broader European expansion that began in the Middle Ages.
If we're speaking of population movements more generally, then we're still constrained by observation. Throughout history, movements have generally been east-to-west. It's possibly due to climate, as the weather grows milder as you move west across the Eurasian steppe.
That said, there may have been significant population movement east at times and, if someone can demonstrate that Afanasevo could only have come from the western steppe, then the genetic similarities between that population and Yamnaya may provide proof of such movement.
I haven't been able to find anything substantial on Afanasievo metal use either. Apparently most of their copper was in the form of simple ornaments such as beads, which are not very diagnostic. There was a single find of a shaft-hole axe of the Pontic-Caspian type, but no analysis was done to determine whether it was manufactured locally or imported (I would guess the latter).
From what I have seen there is no actual evidence of metal production from Afanasievo context; only a reference to a very old report of ancient mining tools that *might* have been from Afanasievo period.
Capra / Va_ H
Thanks.
Then if Afansievo were recent arrivals from Yamnaya, we should expect to see Caucasian-Pontic (ie CMP) metallurgy
capra internetensis:
"From what I have seen there is no actual evidence of metal production from Afanasievo context; only a reference to a very old report of ancient mining tools that *might* have been from Afanasievo period."
Many thanks for looking. That agrees with what I'm seeing as well.
Rob:
"Then if Afansievo were recent arrivals from Yamnaya, we should expect to see Caucasian-Pontic (ie CMP) metallurgy"
One would think so, but Afanasevo are looking increasingly like an indigenous culture. The round-bottom pots, for instance, that are said to demonstrate a cultural link between southern Siberia and the mummies of the Tarim Basin are in reality part of a regional ceramic tradition that began in the Neolithic.
In any case, if Afanasevo did not have a developed metal industry, then it seems they could not have been the source of the metal-producing cultures that passed through the Tarim into northwest China. It's been suggested that these people were culturally and technologically related to southern Central Asia and looks like that may be correct.
Post a Comment