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Monday, January 9, 2017

Forager country


The findings in this new paper at the Journal of Archaeological Science might help to explain the unusually high levels of Mesolithic ancestry amongst present-day Northeast Europeans.

Abstract: Pottery was adopted by hunter-gatherers in the Eastern Baltic at the end of the 6th millennium cal BC. To examine the motivations for this cultural and technological shift, here we report the organic residue analysis of ceramic vessels from the earliest pottery horizon (Narva) in this region. A combined approach using GC-MS, GC-C-IRMS and bulk IRMS of residues absorbed into the ceramic and charred surface deposits was employed. The results show that despite variable preservation, Narva ceramic vessels were preferentially used for processing aquatic products. We argue that pottery was part of a new Late Mesolithic subsistence strategy which included more intensive exploitation of aquatic foods and may have had important implications, such as increased sedentism and population growth.

Oras et al., The adoption of pottery by north-east European hunter-gatherers: Evidence from lipid residue analysis, Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 78, February 2017, Pages 112–119

Related stuff...

Recent studies of ancient genomes have revealed two large-scale prehistoric population movements into Europe after the initial settlement by modern humans: A first expansion from the Near East that brought agricultural practices, also known as the Neolithic revolution; and a second migration from the East that was seen in a genetic component related to the Yamnaya pastoralists of the Pontic Steppe, which appears in Central Europe in people of the Late Neolithic Corded Ware and has been present in Europeans since then in a decreasing North-East to South-West gradient. This migration has been proposed to be the source of the majority of today’s Indo-European languages within Europe.

In this paper we aim to show how these processes affected the Eastern Baltic region where the archeological record shows a drastically different picture than Central and Southern Europe. While agricultural subsistence strategies were commonplace in most of the latter by the Middle Neolithic, ceramic-producing hunter-gatherer cultures still persisted in the Eastern Baltic up until around 4000 BP and only adopted domesticated plants and animals at a late stage after which they disappeared into the widespread Corded Ware culture.

We present the results of ancient DNA analyses of 81 individuals from the territory of today’s Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that span from the Mesolithic to Bronze Age. Through study of the uniparentally inherited mtDNA and Y-chromosome as well as positions across the entire genome that are informative about ancient ancestry we reveal the dynamics of prehistoric population continuity and change within this understudied region and how they are reflected in today’s Baltic populations.

Mittnik et al., A genetic perspective on population dynamics of the pre-historic Eastern Baltic region, EAA 2016 presentation, TH4-11 Abstract 06

48 comments:

rozenblatt said...

When are they going to publish this Baltic Mesolithic aDNA? Are they waiting for Bell Beakers or what?

bellbeakerblogger said...

The conclusion of the first paper fits with the theory that ceramics were developed for, and most used by, early cultures that exploited small water creatures.

I'd bet the spread of ceramics among cereal exploiters is likely the result of the spread of early cereal beer. Brewed wort is the only thing farmers would make that needed a hard, rolling boil. Everything else could be pounded with a mortar and pestle.

Ceramics Before Farming: The Dispersal of Pottery Among Prehistoric Eurasia Hunter-Gatherers. Left Coast Press. Jordan, Zvelebil (2009)

Unknown said...

Do we have any Y DNA from the Narva culture? My understanding is that Narva pottery was influenced by Comb Ceramic ceramic pottery and I am wondering if they may have had any influence on Narva people's DNA.

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

Neolithic farmers on the other hand were using their pots to hold dairy, going back to the earliest phases in Anatolia.

MOCKBA said...

In more recent times, wooden barrels and salt were used to preserve herring and salmon. My own Northern European ancestors lived off fish without any agriculture as recently as 5 generations back. Does the ceramic-jar technology indicate that the Mesolithic fishermen didn't have access to salt?

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

They probably kept the fish alive in water in the pots, like this :
https://youtu.be/e5nfrehyWDM

MOCKBA said...

If the fishes were happily alive than how did their oils seep into the ceramic layer?

capra internetensis said...

@Moskva

I wouldn't care to try making a barrel using sharp rocks. ;)

MOCKBA said...

I know, we city-folk are notoriously unskilled with axes. Woodcraft folk up North were famous for making *anything* out of wood with the help of an ax without any other tools. Having witnessed their amazing feats, I'm ready to believe that even stone axes could do the trick.

capra internetensis said...

@Moskva

I'm sure a sufficiently skilled craftsman *could* make a barrel with stone tools and non-metal hoops - but I really don't think it would be worth the time and effort. And as far as I know there is no evidence that this was ever done, anywhere.

Anonymous said...

People having fish but no salt used a technique called fermentation in the past. The most well known product based on this approach nowadays is surströmming, "sour herring". Icelanders, incredible enough, sometimes even eat fermented testicles of a ram.

All edible, still divide opinions. Better than starving though, I'd guess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming

Grey said...

"People having fish but no salt used a technique called fermentation in the past."

I was reading about that recently.

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

"the traditional Eskimo practice of allowing animal products such as whole fish, fish heads, walrus, sea lion, and whale flippers, beaver tails, seal oil, birds, etc., to ferment for an extended period of time before being consumed...instead of the old-fashioned, traditional method, a grass-lined hole"

although if these Baltic people buried pots of fish to ferment as a variation on this preservation technique you'd think it might have survived into historical times?

(this is assuming that somehow improving fish preservation is what caused the population increase - maybe it wasn't)

Grey said...

apparently fermentation pots for preservation are actually a thing - in Korea anyway

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimchi

"The kimchi is allowed to ferment for a period of time, usually outdoors in a large kimchi pot. It is also quite common for these pots to be buried under ground. Kimchi can be kept for a long time and does not go bad. Koreans make kimchi with their families in December."

Grey said...

sorry for spam but it's funny when this happens

i wonder if the Baltic pots look anything like Korean Kimchi pots?

http://www.lovethatkimchi.com/Kimchi_Pots/Adam_Field_Pottery/kimchipot7.gif

MOCKBA said...

East Asia has an incredibly old and rich salt-fermentation tradition, to the extent that traditional cuisine never uses salt "straight" but only in the form of various "pickles", and fish sauce too. Yes, clay jars there.
Europe is no stranger too, with Rome prizing garum (liquefied fermented fish sauce, the mainstay of the Sea of Galilee econoy in Jesus's times). Garum was prepared in stone vats and transported in amphorae.

It's true that in the absence of stone basins, fermentation can be achieved in turf-lined basins. And in Iceland, sone thick-skinned sharks are fermented in their own skin (bury a shark in the beach sand and it becomes prized hakarl in a short time - ever tried it?)

Shaikorth said...

Mesolithic fish fermentation was practised in Sweden.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440316000170

Anonymous said...

@Mockba and re :"And in Iceland, sone thick-skinned sharks are fermented in their own skin (bury a shark in the beach sand and it becomes prized hakarl in a short time - ever tried it?)"

Yes,a couple of times. Greasy and smelly. I'd say that testicles were better, though only in relative terms. Salmon smoked with horse shit, on the other hand, was really good, even for a foreigner.

Grey said...

i recall reading on Maju's blog about a pottery using HG culture along the west shore of the Black Sea. if pottery spread from east Asia connected to fermentation preservation it's easy to imagine it hopping across the steppe from lake to lake - which makes me wonder if the trace of east Asian dna found in unexpected populations might come from the potters themselves?

jv said...

I wonder if some of the mtDNA's associated with the Yamnaya Culture in Samara Russia arrived with the much earlier pottery producing women of the Elshanka Culture(?) jv

Davidski said...

Yeah, maybe, but it looks like pottery spread into the East Baltic without much gene flow from the east, because there wasn't much, if any, EHG in the East Baltic right up until the Corded Ware people got there.

MOCKBA said...

Could the early potters have formed a quasi-endogamous guild? If the practitioners of different professional skills didn't intermarry then it will be difficult to find their genetic traces in a few randomly sampled bones?

Yes, I found the fermented shark very hard to wash off my palate :)

Chad said...

New paper out. It looks like my claim that MA1 is Asian admixed rather than Asians being MA1 admixed is now backed by Reich. Hate to boast, but I do have an idea of what I'm doing.

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2017/01/09/molbev.msw293.short?rss=1

Chad said...

Bi-directional gene flow is not ruled out, but the east to west flow is statistically better.

Matt said...

Hmmm... So comment here or on another post?

Chad said...

I'm sure David will have a post about it within a day or so. I may come up with some more models to work on some of their questions.

Matt said...

Ok, preliminary comments, and I'll probably repost on any new thread:

Not expected: In addition to the previously documented Denisova-related introgression into Australasians (here 3.5% into the common ancestor of New Guinea, Australia, and Mamanwa), we find suggestive new evidence for Denisova-related ancestry in MA1, which we believe may explain the preliminary residual statistic f4(MA1, Ami; Denisova, Dinka) mentioned above. A consistent signal of excess allele sharing between MA1 and archaic humans can be observed when using any of Denisova, Altai Neanderthal, or the Vindija and Mezmaiskaya Neanderthals (Green et al., 2010) (Table 2). We also used an ancient ingroup in place of Ami to ensure that this pattern does not reflect an ancient DNA artifact (Table 2, bottom half).
While the differences between the rows in Table 2 are not statistically significant, MA1 appears to share the most drift with Denisova; the excess shared drift with Neanderthals would also be expected in a scenario of Denisova-related introgression on the basis of the sister relationship between Neanderthals and Denisova


East Asian and MA1 geneflow: To support our inference of the directionality of gene flow between eastern Eurasians and MA1 (which was not addressed in Fu et al. (2016)), we compared the two statistics (1) f4(MA1, K14; Ami, Ust’-Ishim) = 1.89 (Z = 2.76) and (2) f4(Ust’-Ishim, MA1; Onge, Ami) = 0.23 (Z = 0.52) (computed on all available Human Origins SNPs).... We also repeated the computation with other western Eurasian populations in place of MA1 and found the same signal of eastern Eurasian relatedness, including the same preferred directionality, in WHG (defined as in Table 2; Z = 2.04 for the difference), Caucasus hunter-gatherers (CHG (Jones et al., 2015); Z = 1.77), and Afontova Gora 3 (AG3, a 17 kya individual from Siberia closely related to MA1 (Fu et al., 2016); Z = 2.17).

There's still a problem here of considering the (3) f4(MA1, K14; Onge, Ust’-Ishim), as to whether MA1 flow went to a Basal ENA clade. Need ancient dna from East Eurasia to check.

Note also there's a shading of difference from Laz in this whole section. Laz built its findings around Ancient North Eurasian geneflow to East Asians primarily around EHG related statistics, not MA1 statistics.

f4 (EHG MA1 Han Onge) = 0.00121 3.5

f4 (EHG Kostenki14 Han Onge) = 0.00140 3.9

The words EHG are conspicuously absent from this paper. How does this affect their models? I haven't really been able to consider any possible angles yet.

Laz also noted "AG2 appears to be a valid source for populations across the Eastern Eurasian cline, but MA1 is not, especially for populations with the lowest levels of Onge ancestry".

So this seems like a peculiar lacuna if they're addressing Lazaridis's models...

I would also say re their retesting of their model with WHG, they've used La Brana and Loschbour. Given Fu's "The affinity of pre-Neolithic Europeans to Near Easterners beginning around 14,000 years ago is distinct from the affinity to East Asians in Mesolithic Europeans", why not also test with Villabruna and Chaudardes1? And GoyetQ116-1, which is within the Loschbour-LaBrana range in affinities to East Asian?

(Genome quality? I assume.)

Unknown said...

Han being a bi-directional group with EHG admixture, plus Onge and MA1 having a little extra archaic admixture would do that. When you replace the Onge with an African they're virtually identical.

Unknown said...

Even a little extra later E Asian into EHG is possible too, with both Han and EHG exchanging together. I've had plenty of stats show some later Asian and WHG into EHG. I can dig up or re-run some of that.

Rob said...

Well done Chad
But I said it even earlier (though observation based on haploid lineages only). Let's recall: the real "Altai" admixture came with Y hg Q and mtdna C

Matt said...

If you have any significant extra edge of East Eurasian->EHG (to explain any significant EHG stats), it seems like you should have:

f4(WHG,EHG;Onge,Ust Ishim) and f4(SHG,EHG;Onge,Ust Ishim) to some degree.

Can't remember if I ever saw how those stats turn out. Offhand, I only know the f3(Mbuti,Onge,Test) is flat for SHG, WHG, EHG, AG2 (not MA1) -

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v536/n7617/fig_tab/nature19310_SF8.html

When you replace the Onge with an African they're virtually identical.

Sorry, in which stat? :)

Rob said...

Ah good . They also clarified Oase's position:

"Oase 1 was inferred to diverge from the western Eurasian (K14) lineage, slightly later than Ust’-Ishim (shared drift 1.6), but still close to the split of the eastern and western clades."

Unknown said...

EHG MA1 Han Onge

Chad said...

This should about cover what I'm talking about.

result: WHG EHG Onge Yoruba -0.0083 -2.483 26355 26797 581691
result: WHG EHG Onge Chimp -0.0067 -1.837 47896 48538 856671
result: WHG EHG Onge Ju_hoan_North -0.0080 -2.204 26721 27154 581690
result: WHG EHG Onge Neandertal -0.0060 -1.414 33976 34389 652681
result: WHG EHG Onge Denisovan -0.0061 -1.573 49470 50075 888465
result: WHG Motala_HG Onge Yoruba -0.0032 -1.273 25197 25356 587068
result: WHG Motala_HG Onge Chimp -0.0040 -1.533 45925 46292 869919
result: WHG Motala_HG Onge Ju_hoan_North -0.0027 -1.023 25516 25653 587067
result: WHG Motala_HG Onge Neandertal -0.0032 -1.070 32463 32669 661249
result: WHG Motala_HG Onge Denisovan -0.0034 -1.244 47414 47739 902522
result: WHG MA1 Onge Yoruba -0.0187 -4.528 20909 21705 442573
result: WHG MA1 Onge Chimp -0.0074 -1.602 39814 40405 671616
result: WHG MA1 Onge Ju_hoan_North -0.0180 -4.086 21170 21944 442573
result: WHG MA1 Onge Neandertal -0.0064 -1.152 27842 28199 505989
result: WHG MA1 Onge Denisovan -0.0044 -0.914 41268 41635 697021
result: EHG MA1 Han Yoruba 0.0034 0.870 19245 19114 418890
result: EHG MA1 Han Chimp 0.0089 1.609 19584 19238 409322
result: EHG MA1 Han Ju_hoan_North 0.0038 0.885 19463 19316 418889
result: EHG MA1 Han Neandertal 0.0137 2.167 16874 16419 360975
result: EHG MA1 Han Denisovan 0.0136 2.269 19934 19400 418721
result: Onge Han Denisovan Yoruba 0.0040 1.514 25334 25130 616397
result: Onge Han Neandertal Yoruba 0.0046 1.548 21828 21628 531196
result: MA1 Han Denisovan Yoruba 0.0187 4.095 19260 18553 442359
result: MA1 Han Neandertal Yoruba 0.0180 3.426 16577 15991 381921

Chad said...

WHG is Loschbour, LaBrana, Villabruna, Bichon, and KO1. EHG is Karelia and Samara. Motala is, of course, all Motala samples.

Alberto said...

Interesting paper, though I think that the East Eurasian admixture in MA1 is taken a bit out of context.

If I understand correctly, this is not East Eurasian admixture into MA1 specifically, but rather East Eurasian admixture into all post 25K y.a. West Eurasians (though it's probably a bit higher in MA1, especially Onge-like ENA, but they didn't measure the differences specifically, just took MA1 as a "modern" West Eurasian sample and confirmed with Loschbour, AG3 and CHG).

Grey said...

"but it looks like pottery spread into the East Baltic without much gene flow from the east"

that's the thing about technology changes though - *if* they were spread by artisanal groups the genetic influence might generally be very small except in exceptional circumstances

someone should test Bjork's pottery skills

Unknown said...

So ADMIXTURE results showing ENA admixture in MA1, AG3 and WHGs seem to be right after all. I doubt ANE gene flow was bidirectional because NE Asians don't display any west eurasian admixture components unlike ANE admixed Amerindians.

https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/molbev/msw293/2838774/A-working-model-of-the-deep-relationships-of?rss=1

Davidski said...

I doubt ANE gene flow was bidirectional because NE Asians don't display any west eurasian admixture components.

Sure they do. Read that paper you linked to more carefully.

Unknown said...

Could you link pdf or copypaste a revelant part as I don't have access to that article and just read comments here. Are they suggesting that east asians have Villabruna-like or Vestonice-like admixture? By west eurasian admixture elements I meant that some amerindian samples I seen are showing up to 20% North or East European admixture but no South European admixture so it can't be from recent colonists. It could be from ANE admixture in North and East Europeans but it still suggests West Eurasian ancestry in Indians as MA1 is West+ENA(most likely Siberian-like which isn't exactly like modern East Asians because they only have small Siberian admixture and a small Onge/australoid-like component around 6%) and AG3 which is supposed to fit better as the ancestor of Amerindians has even more West Eurasian than MA1.

Davidski said...

It's a working model, not fact. It might turn out to be mostly wrong.

The last Lazaridis et al. paper argued that there was ANE admixture across much of East Asia.

These two models from the two papers will now have to be reconciled somehow, and the best way to do that is with Paleolithic samples from across Asia.

That's basically what the Lipson paper says. So now we wait for more ancient genomes from Asia.

Unknown said...

While we did not carefully model present-day Europeans in our main admixture graph, we did build an extended graph with French added (25 individuals). A good fit was obtained with four ancestry components, related to western (K14), northern (near the base of the MA1 lineage), and eastern (specified as the same source as for MA1) Eurasians, plus Basal Eurasian (specified without Neanderthal introgression (Lazaridis et al., 2016)). The inferred proportions were 27.7%, 34.9%, 23.2%, and 14.2%, respectively , with essentially no change in the list of residuals. We note that these sources do not represent the proximal ancestral populations of present-day Europeans (Lazaridis et al., 2014; Haak et al., 2015), and this fit also may not be the optimal one, but it does provide a sense of the relationships of Europeans to the major lineages defined in our model.

Unknown said...

Previous studies assumed that Kostenki14 was the oldest European man with Basal Eurasian ancestry, who survived the Ice Age, but Fu et al. (2016) put it more accurately. Kostenki14 was likely to be a mixed-race individual between populations related to East Asians (hg C) and the ancestors of Europeans (hg U2). This new study also found that some of the Villabruna Cluster individuals such as Loschbour and LaBrana1 are closely associated with Han Chinese but not all Villabruna individuals have an affinity with East Asians. The ancestors of Loschbour and LaBrana1 in the Villabruna Cluster may have interbred with ancient populations related to East Asians as well, which was why excess allele sharing with East Asians was detected. Moreover, the ‘Villabruna Cluster’ is composed of 15 post-Last Glacial Maximum individuals from 14,000–7,000 years ago. Of these fifteen Villabruna samples, older twelve samples belonged Haplogroup R or R1 and haplogroups R1b and R1b1 only appear in more recent three samples, which are dated around 7,000 years ago (Table S4.2. Details of Y haplogroup SNPs in Villabruna Cluster samples).



The Villabruna Cluster is represented by the largest number of individuals in this study. This allows us to study heterogeneity within this cluster (Supplementary Information section 13). First, we detect differences in the degree of allele sharing with members of the El Mirón Cluster, as revealed by significant statistics of the form D(Test1, Test2; El Mirón Cluster, Mbuti). Second, we detect an excess of allele sharing with east Asians in a subset of Villabruna Cluster individuals— beginning with an ~13,000-year-old individual from Switzerland—as revealed by significant statistics of the form D(Test1, Test2; Han, Mbuti) (Fig. 4b and Extended Data Fig. 3). For example, Han Chinese share more alleles with two Villabruna Cluster individuals (Loschbour and LaBrana1) than they do with Kostenki14, as reflected in significantly negative statistics of the form D(Kostenki14, Loschbour/LaBrana1; Han, Mbuti)4. This statistic was originally interpreted as evidence of Basal Eurasian ancestry in Kostenki14. However, because this statistic is consistent with zero when Han is replaced with Ust’-Ishim, these findings cannot be driven by Basal Eurasian ancestry, and must instead be driven by gene flow between populations related to east Asians and the ancestors of some Europeans (Supplementary Information section 8).

Unknown said...

Beginning around 14,000 years ago with the Villabruna Cluster, the strong affinity to GoyetQ116-1 seen in El Mirón Cluster individuals who belong to the Late Glacial Magdalenian culture becomes greatly attenuated (Supplementary Information section 10). To test if this change might reflect gene flow from populations that did not descend from the >37,000-year-old European founder population, we computed statistics of the form D(Early European, Later European; Y, Mbuti) where Y are various present-day non-Africans. If no gene flow from exogenous populations occurred, this statistic is expected to be zero. Figure 4b shows that it is consistent with zero (|Z|<3) for nearly all individuals dating to between about 37,000 and 14,000 years ago. However, beginning with the Villabruna Cluster, it becomes highly significantly negative in comparisons where the non-European population (Y) is Near Easterners (Fig. 4b; Extended Data Fig. 3; Supplementary Information section 11). This must reflect a contribution to the Villabruna Cluster from a lineage also found in present-day Near Easterners (Fig. 4b)."

Affinities of pre-Neolithic Europeans to the Near East When neither of the two pre-Neolithic Europeans analysed in the statistic is in the Villabruna Cluster—that is, both are older than about 14,000 BP—they tend to be symmetrically related to populations outside Europe including present-day and ancient Near Easterners. However, when one lived prior to the Villabruna Cluster (e.g. Vestonice16, ElMiron, Kostenki14, KremsWA3, and GoyetQ116-1) and the other is in the Villabruna Cluster (e.g. BerryAuBac, Bichon, CuiryLesChaudardes1, Falkenstein, Hungarian.KO1, LaBrana1, Loschbour, Ranchot88, Rochedane and Villabruna), there is a distinct attraction of the Villabruna Cluster samples to Near Eastern populations (Figure 4b; Extended Data Figure 3). Table S11.1 shows the statistics when the Near Eastern population is Iraqi_Jew. There are several possible explanations for these findings. One is gene flow between relatives of Near Easterners and pre-Neolithic Europeans after ~14,000 years ago, beginning with the Villabruna Cluster. A second is population substructure in Europe. In this scenario, after post-glacial re-peopling of Europe, the balance of ancestry could have shifted toward populations that were more closely related to Near Easterners. In either case, however, major population turnovers must have occurred. The affinity of pre-Neolithic Europeans to Near Easterners beginning around 14,000 years ago is distinct from the affinity to East Asians in Mesolithic Europeans."


Unknown said...

Abstract: Modern humans arrived in Europe ~45,000 years ago, but little is known about their genetic composition before the start of farming ~8,500 years ago. Here we analyse genome-wide data from 51 Eurasians from ~45,000–7,000 years ago. Over this time, the proportion of Neanderthal DNA decreased from 3–6% to around 2%, consistent with natural selection against Neanderthal variants in modern humans. Whereas there is no evidence of the earliest modern humans in Europe contributing to the genetic composition of present-day Europeans, all individuals between ~37,000 and ~14,000 years ago descended from a single founder population which forms part of the ancestry of present-day Europeans. An ~35,000-year-old individual from northwest Europe represents an early branch of this founder population which was then displaced across a broad region, before reappearing in southwest Europe at the height of the last Ice Age ~19,000 years ago. During the major warming period after ~14,000 years ago, a genetic component related to present-day Near Easterners became widespread in Europe. These results document how population turnover and migration have been recurring themes of European prehistory.

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS—BBC News (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36150502) reports that a new genetic study of the remains of 51 Europeans between 45,000 and 7,000 years old has been led by David Reich at Harvard Medical School. The results suggests that beginning 37,00 years ago, all Europeans came from a single founding population that developed deep branches in different parts of Europe. At the end of the last Ice Age some 19,000 years ago, people thought to have come from Spain spread northward. Then some 14,000 years ago, populations from Turkey and Greece spread westward into Europe and replaced the first group. “We see multiple, huge movements of people displacing previous ones,” said Reich. The analysis also suggests that Ice Age Europeans had dark complexions and brown eyes until about 14,000 years ago, when blue eyes began to spread across the population. Pale skin began to appear after 7,000 years ago. Earlier populations also had more Neanderthal DNA than present-day people, which is consistent with the idea that it may have had harmful effects on modern humans and was lost over time through natural selection."

Unknown said...


Seems like Baikal Hunter Gatherer/Devil's Gate East Asian types almost totally replaced ANE types in Siberia. Ami/ANE/Amerindian types seem to be paleomongoloid, closer to Jomon. Also it seems steppe invaders had EA Baikal admixture in addition to ANE admixture.

Genome-wide data from hunter-gatherer populations of the Upper Paleolithic to Neolithic has provided unprecedented insight into the human evolutionary and demographic trajectory. However such datasets have hitherto been largely confined to Western Eurasia. The sole representative of Inner Asian past populations post-dating the split between paleolithic Europeans and Asians, as well as paleolithic Siberians and East Asians, are the Mal’ta and Afontova Gora individuals, the Ancient North East Asian (ANE) branch, clouding the dating of the population split, and subsequent admixture events, between ANE and East Asian hunter-gatherers. Our genome data (~1X) reveal that Baikal Hunter-Gatherers (BHG) are an uncharacterized genetically homogeneous branch of Inner Asian hunter-gatherers, displaying highest shared genetic drift with present-day East Asians. Targeted sampling strategies coupled to excellent biomolecule preservation has permitted the generation of an advantageous sample size dataset (n = 31), rendering possible to estimate allele frequencies within these groups, thereby optimizing population tests. BHG model as an excellent proxy for an Inner Asian source population admixing into the late Bronze Age Andronovo groups, becoming Iron Age steppe nomads. With genomes allowing for kinship analyses, pathogen detection and strontium ratios, coupled to archaeological interpretative approaches we extend possible means to elucidate behavioral processes and cultural transformation.

2. Kim, Alexander (Harvard University, Dept. of Anthropology), Alexander Kozintsev (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography), Nadin Rohland (Dept. of Genetics, Harvard Medical School), Swapan Mallick (Dept. of Genetics, Harvard Medical School) and David Reich (Dept. of Genetics, Harvard Medical School; Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard)


Genome-wide ancient DNA data from Upper Paleolithic Siberians and deep time series in Europe challenge many traditional models of relationships between Native Americans, West Eurasians, and East Asians—commonplace units in physical anthropology—by recasting them as fusions of prehistoric ancestry streams that may unexpectedly cross-cut or fracture these categories. We evaluate new and published genome-wide data from remains attributed to Okunev—an archaeological culture of the Middle Yenisei and eastern steppe in southern Siberia (latter third–first half second millennium BC), famous for slab graves, massive stelae, and fantastic zoomorphic and anthropomorphic petroglyphs—to test an unusual physical anthropological hypothesis. Russian anthropologists have argued Okunev remains to exhibit pronounced affinity to Native Americans, surpassing that of other ancient groups from the region as well as recent Siberians and Central Asians. Kozintsev et al. (1999), in the most systematic investigation, suggested Okunev people to derive much of their ancestry from late-persisting “collateral relatives” of Native Americans who remained in Eurasia. We evaluate this proposal in special light of the “Ancient North Eurasian” concept (sensu Lazaridis 2014) and offer considerations on the future of skeletal morphology in framing and motivating investigations of human population history.

Unknown said...

Siberia and Northwestern Russia are home to over 40 culturally and linguistically diverse indigenous ethnic groups, yet genetic variation and histories of peoples from this region are largely uncharacterized. We present deep whole-genome sequencing data (∼38×) from 28 individuals belonging to 14 distinct indigenous populations from that region. We combined these data sets with additional 32 modern-day and 46 ancient human genomes to reconstruct genetic histories of several indigenous Northern Eurasian populations. We found that Siberian and East Asian populations shared 38% of their ancestry with a 45,000-yr-old Ust’-Ishim individual who was previously believed to have no modern-day descendants. Western Siberians trace 57% of their ancestry to ancient North Eurasians, represented by the 24,000-yr-old Siberian Mal'ta boy MA-1. Eastern Siberian populations formed a distinct sublineage that separated from other East Asian populations ∼10,000 yr ago. In addition, we uncovered admixtures between Siberians and Eastern European hunter-gatherers from Samara, Karelia, Hungary, and Sweden (from 8000–6600 yr ago); Yamnaya people (5300–4700 yr ago); and modern-day Northeastern Europeans. Our results provide new insights into genetic histories of Siberian and Northeastern European populations and evidence of ancient gene flow from Siberia into Europe.

Unknown said...



Little is currently known about the genetic history of ancient Europeans before the advent of agriculture ~8,500 years ago. Here we have analysed genome-wide data from 51 modern human remains that span around 40,000 years of Eurasian prehistory. Over this time, the proportion of Neanderthal DNA decreased from 3–6% to around 2%, consistent with natural selection against Neanderthal variants in modern humans. Whereas the earliest modern humans in Europe did not contribute substantially to present-day Europeans, all individuals between ~37,000 and ~14,000 years ago descended from a single founder population which forms part of the ancestry of present-day Europeans. A ~35,000-year-old individual from northwest Europe represents an early branch of this founder population which was then displaced across a broad region, before reappearing in southwest Europe during the last ice age ~19,000 years ago. During the major warming period after ~14,000 years ago, a new genetic component related to present-day Near Easterners appears in Europe. These results document how population turnover and migration have been recurring themes of European pre-history.

Johannes Krause, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
Genomic history of Upper PaleolithicEuropeans
Here we have analysed genome-wide data from 51 modern humans remains that span around 40,000 years of Eurasian prehistory. (..) Whereas the earliest modern humans in Europe did not contribute substantially to present-day Europeans, all individuals between ~37,000 and ~14,000 years ago descended from a single founder population which forms part of the ancestry of present-day Europeans. A ~35,000-year-old individual from northwest Europe represents an early branch of this founder population which was then displaced across a broad region, before reappearing in southwest Europe during the last ice age ~19,000 years ago. During the major warming period after ~14,000 years ago, a new genetic component related to present-day Near Easterners appears in Europe.

Unknown said...

Recent ancient DNA studies have revealed that the genetic history of modern Europeans was shaped by a series of migration and admixture events between deeply diverged groups. While these events are well described in Central and Southern Europe, genetic evidence from Northern Europe surrounding the Baltic Sea is still sparse. Here we report genome-wide DNA data from 24 ancient North Europeans ranging from ~7,500 to 200 calBCE spanning the transition from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural lifestyle, as well as the adoption of bronze metallurgy. We show that Scandinavia was settled after the retreat of the glacial ice sheets from a southern and a northern route, and that the first Scandinavian Neolithic farmers derive their ancestry from Anatolia 1000 years earlier than previously demonstrated. The range of Western European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers extended to the east of the Baltic Sea, where these populations persisted without gene-flow from Central European farmers until around 2,900 calBCE when the arrival of steppe pastoralists introduced a major shift in economy and established wide-reaching networks of contact within the Corded Ware Complex.