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Tuesday, September 26, 2017

The beast among Y-haplogroups


A lot has been written about Y-haplogroup R1a over the years. Sadly, most of it was wrong, such as its posited Pleistocene origin in the Indian subcontinent and subsequent migration to Europe.

In all likelihood, R1a was born somewhere in North Eurasia. More importantly, its R1a-M417 subclade, which encompasses almost 100% of modern-day R1a lineages, no doubt came into existence somewhere on the Pontic-Caspian (or Western) steppe in what is now Ukraine and southern Russia just 7,000-6,000 years ago.

And within a couple of thousand years it expanded in almost all directions, probably on the back of the early Indo-European dispersals (see here), to cover a massive range from Scandinavia to South Asia. It is the beast among Y-haplogroups.


The most common subclade of R1a-M417 in South Asia today is R1a-Z93, and, realistically, it couldn't have arrived there earlier than about 2,000BC. So much for the Pleistocene.

See also...

Y-haplogroup R1a and mental health

The Poltavka outlier

Yamnaya isn't from Iran just like R1a isn't from India

305 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   201 – 305 of 305
Anonymous said...

@Davidski

Compare my text

Oldest R1a1 is 8280 calBP in Yuzhnyy Oleni Ostrov, Lake Onega, Russia.

and your
ID: I1819 R1a Ukraine_Mesolithic Vasil'evka 8825-8561 calBCE

Are you see difference between R1a1 and R1a?

Davidski said...

@supernord

R1a1 is neither here nor there, and that's especially true of the R1a1 from Karelia, which is too far away to matter.

The R1a from Ukraine is important because it's by far the oldest R1a recorded to date. And the R1a-M417 from Ukraine is important because it confirms the steppe origin of Corded Ware and also the steppe origin of the vast majority of the R1a in the world today.

Anonymous said...

Rob, "The period of the Khvalynsk and Skelya cultures is contemporaneous with the Cucuteni A-Tripolye B1 phase"
No. Skelya culture is rename Sredny Stog culture from Don river. Skelya is a name of subtype of first phase Sredny Stog culture.


Synchronization between the cultures got from archeology contexts like imports of potteries and others things, not only not by radiocarbon dates. Origin of Sredny Stog culture from Don river was received without any radiocarbon dates due to archeology analyses by Merpert, Danilenko (1974), etc.



"After applying a reservoir effect correction for the steppe Eneolithic period, the time interval for the Caspian steppe Eneolithic population has now changed to 4300–3800 cal BC."
If you subtract reservoir effects then you must subtract the effect from Sredny Stog and Cucuteni-Tripolye and other cultures for correct compare.
The dates of Khvalynsk I cemetery by Shishlina the bones of ruminant animals is 4800-4400 cal BC. Bones of animals cannot have reservoir effects. Shihlina suggests to subtract 300-350 years.

Therefore it is not changes in hole. Synchronization between cultures isn't changed.




Anonymous said...

"R1a1 is neither here nor there, and that's especially true of the R1a1 from Karelia, which is too far away to matter"

See Mathieson et al. where EHG from Karelia&Samara is parent to the steppe component, but not the Ukrainian HG. Therefore it is matter. R1a lived in the vast spaces.

Rob said...

You'd have to also subtract from others if they too are liable to reservoir effects. That has to be demonstrated by C/ N isotopic study, or at least an archaeological pattern of high fish diet. Was that the case for CT?
For example, the new C14 dates for Varna came back even higher than expected -4500 BC, even after reservoir effect considered.

Anonymous said...

Shishlina doesnot isotop analyses to Khvalynsk culture. She only assumed that it exists by difference between bone of humans and one of late bone of sheep. Reservoir effect for Khvalynsk culture has no evidence. There are not any study for Trypolye culture and others step cultures.

Therefore you assumes have not justification, relative archeological dates is not changed.

Bulan Goldstein said...

@a
Actually, the name of the Scythian king is not ATEAS, but ATAIL[S]. It is clear in legends of his coins: Alpha+tau+alpha+iota+lambda+masculine suffix.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Everyone,

Btw, to anyone still reading this thread, I'm in the process of creating an mtDNA blog (later website) that will increase the amateurs knowledge of mtDNA 10fold. Currently, online mtDNA resources are stuck in 2008 and academia still hasn't written any legit mtDNA papers addressing the indications recent ancient DNA studies have on European mtDNA.

I'm discovering all kinds of cool stuff I can't disclose right now. On my blog/website I'll offer an individualized mtDNA report for $5. In it will be a list of your closest mtDNA matches, a frequency map of your very specific subclade, and its possible history. Plus, I will email you anytime I make a big discovery about your mtDNA haplogroup.

I have almost every West Eurasian mtDNA genome ever sequenced in my database. Plus, about 20,000 low coverage samples from almost every little country in Europe.

Samuel Andrews said...

One thing I will disclose is something many of you already know. Both Baltic and Slavic speakers share a significant amount of "recent" mtDNA lineages. I say "recent" because lots of it isn't recent and probably has nothing to do with proto-Slavs or proto Balto Slavs. Much of it dates to the Neolithic and Mesolithic and indicates Balto-Slavs have decent from specific WHG or EEF groups that other Europeans don't.

For example, I'm pretty sure I've found a few "Baltic HG" lineages shared by Balts, Finns, and to a lesser extent Slavs.

Ric Hern said...

So Sredny Stog was basically a contact area between three Haplogroups R1a, I2a, and R1b.

Maybe these represented three different cultures however I can not see how at least 4000 years of contact between these three in that area did not leave a significant underlying relatedness in later Cultures in that broader area.

We already see some broader connection between Samara and Dnieper Donets Cultures. We also see some relatedness between WHG and EHG....

I wonder which component dominates EHG ? WHG or ANE ?

Anonymous said...

@David

Massively off topic, but if you spare the time could you do:

Mbuti Iraqi_Jew AfontovaGora3 ElMiron
Mbuti Iraqi_Jew Samara_HG ElMiron
Mbuti Iraqi_Jew Karelia_HG ElMiron
Mbuti Iraqi_Jew Vestonice ElMiron
Mbuti Iraqi_Jew Villabruna ElMiron

Mbuti Iraqi_Jew Karelia_HG Vestonice
Mbuti Iraqi_Jew Samara_HG Vestonice

Davidski said...

result: Mbuti Iraqi_Jew AfontovaGora3 ElMiron 0.0063 1.048 131988
result: Mbuti Iraqi_Jew Samara_HG ElMiron -0.0205 -4.023 219981
result: Mbuti Iraqi_Jew Karelia_HG ElMiron -0.0155 -3.180 346497
result: Mbuti Iraqi_Jew Vestonice16 ElMiron 0.0090 1.835 333551
result: Mbuti Iraqi_Jew Villabruna ElMiron -0.0186 -3.891 365695
result: Mbuti Iraqi_Jew Karelia_HG Vestonice16 -0.0212 -4.654 392712
result: Mbuti Iraqi_Jew Samara_HG Vestonice16 -0.0248 -4.796 242936

Rob said...

Supernord
shishlina did isotope study both to human and animal bones, as can be seen in table 2 and Fig 2 in the above linked paper.

Anonymous said...

@David

And if we swap Iraqi_Jew for Natufian?

Mbuti Natufian AfontovaGora3 ElMiron
Mbuti Natufian Samara_HG ElMiron
Mbuti Natufian Karelia_HG ElMiron
Mbuti Natufian Vestonice ElMiron
Mbuti Natufian Villabruna ElMiron

Mbuti Natufian Karelia_HG Vestonice
Mbuti Natufian Samara_HG Vestonice

Davidski said...

result: Mbuti Natufian AfontovaGora3 ElMiron 0.0484 4.584 76678
result: Mbuti Natufian Samara_HG ElMiron 0.0206 2.275 117997
result: Mbuti Natufian Karelia_HG ElMiron 0.0112 1.509 180504
result: Mbuti Natufian Vestonice16 ElMiron 0.0131 1.658 179207
result: Mbuti Natufian Villabruna ElMiron -0.0272 -3.527 194330
result: Mbuti Natufian Karelia_HG Vestonice16 0.0032 0.452 198981
result: Mbuti Natufian Samara_HG Vestonice16 -0.0029 -0.317 127601

Anonymous said...

Rob, you don't understand those tables, Shishlina wrote that she did not isotopic analyze on marine collagen, therefore your comments are meaningless. We're talking about marine collagen.

Shishlina only saw the difference between ages of the human bones from Khvalynsk II cemetery and the only one made of bone sheep from Khvalynsk I cemetery, but other animal bones coincide with Khvalynsk II cemetery.

The Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog culture has a completely different culture, it is a fact, the elements of similarity, this phenomenon is even the level of hypothesis. No archaeologist imagined that some of them derives from another, it is the imagination of the fans. Your opinion does not play any matter.

Rob said...

Supernord
Maybe you should learn how to speak English if you want yours to matter
Because I did not state one derives from another, but rather the flow of influences (cromlech construction, copper pnjevts( in the early Eneolithic went west to east.
But the fact is these cultures date from 4500 BC, with Khvalynsk possibly slightly later 4300 BC.
It's written in plain English in the quoted texts, so your obfuscations are irrelevant

Rob said...

And maybe you should read the Kotova paper you cited

"The traditions of the group of the Early Sredniy Stog population of the Don basin, which had to migrate during the aridity to the northern regions along the valleys of Don, Medveditsa and right bank of Volga, became its basis. The population of Sredniy Stog encountered the local population of the Late Neolithic Orlovka culture on the right bank of Volga and, perhaps, assimilated some of its groups, as well as southern groups of the Samara culture population. As the result of those complex processes, the Khvalynsk culture was formed"

Thanks for coming

Anonymous said...

You cut off the text.

"The Khvalynsk Eneolithic culture was also formed about 5250-5150 BC." When Sredny Stog formed about 5300 BC. "The beginning of the formation of the Sredniy Stog culture was connected with the aridity of the climate about 5300 BC, which caused some worsening of the conditions of living and disrupted the traditional way of life
of the Surskaya and Lower Don population of the Late Neolithic."
By new opinion of Kotova the origin the Khvalynsk is Early Sredniy Stog population from Don, but not Khvalynsk culture. In original version had not this suggestion, it was common that Sredniy Stog & Khvalynsk source population like Lower Don culture.


The Sredny Stog spreads from east to west, contrary to your belief.
"It would be onnected, mainly, with the full publication of the materials of Lower Don and excavations in the Don-Kalmius interfluve, where the oldest Sredniy Stog
monuments were localized."
"The minor humidifying of climate about 5050-4800 BC created favorable
conditions for dwelling in the south of steppe zone, that has caused the growth
of population in these areas. The Khvalynsk culture population migrated to the
south and reached of the Lower Volga and Caspian Sea region. The Sredniy Stog
culture population settled to the west in the Dnieper-Kalmius interfluve, where
the first Sredniy Stog cemeteries with the flexed burials (Krivoy Rog cemetery)
appeared among the monuments of the second period of Azov-Dnieper culture. It
was the beginning of formation of the western variant of Sredniy Stog culture,
the bearers of which gradually assimilated the Azov-Dnieper population to 4800-
4750 BC (the peak of new climate aridity) and adopted some of their traditions,
including making of sacrificial grounds on the surface of ground burials."


Only spreads from east to west is evidenced fact.

Rob said...

Those dates are 1000 years off. I mean, they have the Nachik Cemetery at 5100 BC (!!).
Brings us back to the correct, new dates, which you are ignoring
4500 BC

Anonymous said...

"Nachik" means Nalchik?
Nalchik cemetery is late Khvalynsk type cemetery. He is later derived from the Khvalynsk culture.


It is not exists new dates because no studies entering these dates. So there is nothing to ignore. There have been no studies on the calculation of the new ages using a reservoir effect correction after calculation marine collagen for the Trypolia, Sredniy Stog, Khvalynsk cultures. There is only known radiocarbon date and nothing more. Synchronization between them remains the same. To synchronize of cultures the absolute dating is not important, important only to the date calculated by one method. If you want to move to your new dates, then as advised Shishlina subtract ~300-400 years of each date, that's all.


Ric Hern said...

@ supernord

So according to you Sredny Stog originated near the Lower Don and migrated Northwestwards to the Dnieper River where they settled around the Middle Dnieper ?

So did the migration towards the East from the Lower Don which introduced domesticates to the Lower Volga also originate from this Early Sredny Stog of the Lower Don ?

Rob said...

@ supernord

I am not ignoring relative typology, and it is not my opinion. PLease observe again :

"The recently obtained radiocarbon data of the Csongrád-KettÅ‘shalom grave is 4370–4240 calBC, in good correlation with other Steppe Ochre Grave data (goveDarica 2004), but a little bit earlier then the Middle Copper Age. In Eastern Europe this is the period of the Early Eneolithic (4550–4100/4000 BC) of the Eurasian steppe region. The period of the Khvalynsk and Skelya cultures is contemporaneous with the Cucuteni A-Tripolye B1 phase."

Re you saying everyone else is wrong ?

Anonymous said...

@Ric Hern
This is opinion of Kotova. But Lower Don culture not so simple. Danilenko pointed out the broader region to east of the Don.

@Rob "you saying everyone else is wrong ? "
Yes, because it compares the dates obtained by different methods without a direct calculation of the reservoir effect. In some dates it is only supposed on indirect symptoms and corrected after indirect calculation, and in others dates it actually is not evaluated and not corrected.

Rob said...

Reservoir effects are pertinent to high marine source Regions
And as stated, the recent dating at Varna incorporated such corrections
So we at least have 2 clear points of reference for 4500 BC. Sure many more would be ideal, but the nihilism is perhaps an overkill

Anonymous said...

Slight deviation from topic. When are the Rakhigarhi dna results going to be published? They were projected to be released end of september 2017 last I had heard!

Ric Hern said...

I wonder if the Mariupol Culture were mostly I2a individuals like the early samples of Vasilievka and surrounding area...where they indigenous I2a or did they maybe migrate along the Black Sea coast from the West ?

Grey said...

Ric Hern said...
"So Sredny Stog was basically a contact area between three Haplogroups R1a, I2a, and R1b.

Maybe these represented three different cultures..."

maybe kept partly separate through adaptation to distinct biomes: mountains, black sea coast and steppe?

"...however I can not see how at least 4000 years of contact between these three in that area did not leave a significant underlying relatedness in later Cultures in that broader area."

maybe it did for a long time until horse domestication changed the balance and one of the three came to dominate?

Ryan said...

@David - "By all accounts, Sintashta and close relatives were quite a civilized bunch. They did help to revolutionize warfare with their chariots and whatnot, but developments in warfare were always one of the main driving forces of human civillization."

I'm not saying they were any worse than their peers. I'm just saying that you don't expand across the whole of Eurasia in a couple thousand years by just hugging things out. Bad things happened.

I think it was your Prime Minister Gough Whitlam who said "only the impotent are pure" though, no?

Ryan said...

@David - "The R1a from Ukraine is important because it's by far the oldest R1a recorded to date. And the R1a-M417 from Ukraine is important because it confirms the steppe origin of Corded Ware and also the steppe origin of the vast majority of the R1a in the world today."

Are there any R1a markers out there that seem to not have originated with Corded Ware or a closely related group? Or did that steppe expansion manage to exterminate all of their R1a cousins?

Matt said...

@ Rob and @Davidski, not strictly on the topic of The R1a Beast!, I was reading over some of your discussion about Maykop and Yamnaya on Anthrogenica (where I lurk occasionally, no login) and stimulated some thoughts in me, which I'd be interested in your thoughts on.

Namely, thinking some more about the shifts in ancient Armenia

So the sequence goes,

1. Chalcolithic Armenia ~4000 BCE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areni-1_cave): Much more Anatolia_EN like than CHG, also more EHG like
2. Kura-Araxes Culture (EBA Armenia) ~3347-2410 BCE: Less EHG like, more CHG like
3. LBA Armenia (Indo-European speaking?) ~1501 BCE: More EHG like, less CHG like
4. Present day Armenia: Shift to more similarity to Levant and the Gulf, less similar to EHG

One interpretation of the shift 1->2 (Chl->EBA) was that the surgence of CHG relatedness was caused by CHG heavy populations in the Caucasus migrating down towards Armenia. And I accepted this kind of without thinking about it too much.

Thinking about this now, though, isn't this kind of weird? To say that literally, we'd be saying that the population to the south of the Caucasus, in Armenia, in the Chalcolithic, had a *heavier* EHG influence in their makeup than CHG heavy populations to their north.

How would this actually happen? Does this also make any sense with the Kura-Araxes Culture apparently expanding north from Armenia towards the Caucasus?

Alternatively, then, could the Chalcolithic->EBA transition in Armenia be related to the "A homeland, but not the homeland" (http://eurogenes.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/a-homeland-but-not-homeland.html) idea? Essentially (leaving aside the detail of whether a singular population expansion was involved) that populations in the Near East seem to get more Iran_Chl like (and in Iran_Chl itself, less Iran_N like). That is, Kura-Araxes isn't actually distinguished from the preceding Armenia_Chl by an influx of CHG, but of Iran_Chl ancestry. It's another one on the list, and another validation for the phenomena Davidski spotted, described and discussed.

Purely in terms of PCA, Iran_Chl actually looks more like the "right direction" both on Lazaridis's PCA and Davidski's, than CHG, though I can't say I've tested this with nMonte or anything.

(And if we've got Iran_Chl admixture reaching all the way into Central Anatolia_BA, how would it miss Armenia?)

One implication would be that this would weaken my "prior" that there even were heavily CHG populations with almost no EHG living in the Caucasus to interact with early Yamnaya. (On the contrary, a simple isolation-by-distance working hypothesis could lead us to expect a population more EHG like than Armenia Chl was.)

This may have been discussed before on here - seems like the kind of thing someone may have spotted and discussed before - but I can't remember it if so.

Davidski said...

@Ryan

Subclades like R1a5-­YP1272 are still around the place, mostly in Eastern Europe, but very, very rare. See here.

Davidski said...

@Matt

Your assumption seems to be that the Armenia_ChL samples currently available are representative of the populations that lived in the Caucasus from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. But based on the mtDNA data I've seen, I think this is the wrong assumption.

I think you'll find that Neolithic Armenians will be very similar to Iran_ChL, and that Armenia_ChL has admixture from the Eneolithic steppe, from Sredny Stog or a closely related population.

Also, I'd say that in the North Caucasus there will be populations heavy in CHG and light in EHG, and one or more of these populations will be identified as the source of southern ancestry in Sredny Stog, Khvalynsk and Yamnaya.

Matt said...

No, no, I'm say nothing about what the Neolithic Armenians are like, just that:

a) It would be odd in the extreme for North Caucasians of the time to be less influenced by the Eneolithic steppe (or even the Mesolithic steppe, as changes could have come earlier) than populations from Armenia. Therefore a decline in EHG relatedness probably would not be related to a migration from the Caucasus to Armenia.

b) If we model EBA Armenia based on Armenia Chl+X, Iran_Chl seems like a more viable X than CHG based on PCA, and it would have the added benefit of fitting into the general pattern you describe in the Bronze Age, and actually making sense as well if we're thinking new technology and from what I know (which is little), the origin positions for KA culture based on archaeology.

What Neolithic Armenians were like is actually not, I don't think, relevant to the patterns I'm talking about at all.

Although I would say that if I had to describe and expectation for Neolithic Armenia, probably 60:40 CHG:Anatolia_N (which is close to Iran_Chl, but not quite).

Matt said...

Graphically using Lazaridis's PCA:

https://imgur.com/a/jXJN5

- Red Circle is the Neolithic "starting point"
- Purple line is Neolithic to CHL (shift towards steppe)
- Dark blue line CHL->EBA (shift towards Iran_Chl)
- Light blue line EBA->LBA (shift towards Europe/Steppe continuum [in theory a la one model for Mycenaeans])

Just an idea.

Davidski said...

@Matt

It would be odd in the extreme for North Caucasians of the time to be less influenced by the Eneolithic steppe (or even the Mesolithic steppe, as changes could have come earlier) than populations from Armenia.

Not odd at all. It's sort of like saying that it's odd for the Kalash from the Hindu Kush to have more Eneolithic steppe ancestry than Abkhazians, who live near the steppe. But they sure do.

It just looks like parts of Armenia and probably Anatolia were affected by migrations from the steppe during the Eneolithic, while other parts of the Caucasus weren't. There's no way that what is now Abkhazia saw any major steppe input like Armenia did, otherwise where would Abkhazians and Georgians get their basal genetic structure and unusually high genetic affinity to CHG?

Anonymous said...

@Ryan
>>I'm not saying they were any worse than their peers. I'm just saying that you don't expand across the whole of Eurasia in a couple thousand years by just hugging things out. Bad things happened.<<
If you want to know how they lived, look up for Arkaim.

https://www.ancient-code.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/238eb93193bafcbd5dd7e3b1916f2e40f4151f3d.jpeg

You say that 'bad things happened'. I say that they were just too succesful, and specially because Pastoralism requires vast amounts of lands, more than in Agriculture, because your herds must rotate fields.

Ryan said...

@JohnP - "You say that 'bad things happened'. I say that they were just too succesful, and specially because Pastoralism requires vast amounts of lands, more than in Agriculture, because your herds must rotate fields."

There were other people living in those lands before they got there though. So yah, bad shit happened.

Anonymous said...

@Ryan
War is a constant due to the limitation of resources available to a given stage of technological development crossed with population size.
It will never end, because the two variables tend to catch with one another only going higher.
If technology advances, consequently the amount of people the resources can support, than the amount of people will increase and the technological gain will become meaningless.
The only way to break this cycle is to achieve Equilibrium, something that, for instance, Europe managed to do, with a stable population for centuries while increasing technology and therefore resource-efficiency.
Other places in the world actually increased their population higher than a sustainable level granted by their technology, due to outsiders and of course not themselves, so there's no self-sustaintability.
Now that they're in an impossibly crossroad, they have to migrate, hence a parallel with the Indo-European migrations, with the difference being that they did not migrate, but collonized.
You see, there are 2 movements of people:
Migrating is going from a worse to a better place due to circumstances that made the place unsustainable for a given amount of population.
Colonizing is going from a better to a worse place due to foresights of unsustaintability.

Indo-Europeans never migrated, and always colonized. Be it in the early expansions that we study here, or in the Greek times, Roman times, or in the Transatlantic Navigations.
This is a sign of a sucesful model, too much for its own good.

Matt said...

@Davidski, IRC Abkhazians and Georgians have high affinity to CHG relative to other people today. Compared to the Chalcolithic, and even Late Bronze Age Armenians, I suspect they would mainly have it because of lesser admixture from Anatolia_EN and western farmers, not necessarily lower admixture from the steppe, and some pattern of "leapfrogging" EHG / steppe influence into Armenia Chalcolithic.

I'm not saying that the North Caucasus of the time wouldn't have had *relatively* higher CHG affinity than Armenia at the Chalcolithic, but that I have doubts they were less effected by EHG admixture.

Have to admit, I was kind of half expecting to see you just pop out a few qpAdm models that go "No, Armenia EBA definitely CHG+Armenia_CHL, here and Iran_Chl+Armenia_CHL doesn't work".

Another point I wanted to ask, if I remember didn't you say you believe that South Caspian mtdna was present in the Caucasus via Maykop, so if so wouldn't that support a northward drift of Iran_Chl ancestry in the early Bronze Age? (to the Caucasus, and more effect on regions further south).

Rob said...

@ Matt

Yes I'm sure I noted that somewhere, it is interesting but not surprising
There was probably "conservative" areas in the South Caucasus (eg the western seaboard side) which got less EHG and even ANF (perhaps paradoxically). With the onset of K-A , which does represent a cultural rift cf preceding "Chalcolithic", then perhaps it was born from a CHG rich group in the Kura basin etc. Certainly, KA seems to have moved to Iran, not from it.

Buy the EHG in Chalcolithic armenia is a clue, because it means that there was contact for South Caucasus to north and steppe between 5000 and 3600 BC, which then stopped, until 2220Bc.

Matt said...

Ah, Rob, so your take is that in this case you're in agreement with Davidski on the side of the Kura-Araxes as a higher CHG, lower EHG heavier group than the Armenia Chalcolithic, but certainly from the broader Armenia-Caucasus region, and not another incidence of contact with Iran_Chl like groups (that is otherwise the dominant shift in the Near East in the EBA)?

Rob said...

@ Matt
Yeah, from what I'd presume on current level of evidence.
But of course, more sampling might change that.

Davidski said...

@Matt

Another point I wanted to ask, if I remember didn't you say you believe that South Caspian mtdna was present in the Caucasus via Maykop, so if so wouldn't that support a northward drift of Iran_Chl ancestry in the early Bronze Age? (to the Caucasus, and more effect on regions further south).

Can't remember saying that. I think I actually said that there was gene flow from the South Caucasus and surrounds to Iran after the Neolithic, which resulted in the shift from the Iran_N genotype to the Iran_ChL genotype.

But the small selection of Maykop mtDNA that we have available already looks very eclectic, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was gene flow from Iran or even South Central Asia to Maykop, maybe via the migration of select social groups like traders or government reps from the southern civilizations.

Having said that, these people are unlikely to have made a big impact on the Caucasus, and clearly none at all on the Bronze Age steppe. The ancient Armenian mtDNA data that was published recently suggest that the South Caucasus was practically always very similar to the South Caspian.

To sum up, I think the currently available Armenia_ChL samples are recently admixed with significant steppe ancestry and not representative of Armenia of that era, let alone the Caucasus. Also, I suspect that the Caucasus-related admixture in Eneolithic/Bronze Age steppe groups comes from Caucasus-derived farmers living along the eastern coast of the Sea of Azov. And I think that this gene flow slowed to a trickle, or even stopped, by the time Maykop formed.

Matt said...

Just to be reiterate, I'm definitely not making an argument that Iran_Chl gene flow affected the early steppe groups at all, or even affected the Caucasus in any significant way. Only ancient Armenia, as part of the broader phenomenon observed in the Near East.

Rather that if our reasoning for persistence of CHG heavy groups in the northern Near East is dependent on the idea Kura-Araxes received CHG admixture, that seems suspect and that Kura-Araxes may (autosomally, rather than culturally) fit into the broader phenomena of the apparent spread of Iran_Chl ancestry instead.

Also saying that, as a consequence, the groups from the Caucasus which mixed with steppe EHG to form Yamnaya may have already had a lot of EHG (from after the time of CHG, but much earlier in history than the Bronze Age), and in that case, there'd probably be more ancestry proximally and recently from them (above 50%).

I'm personally assuming the Armenia_Chl were representative... until we get some other samples showing us differently. They may not have been, but this is less parsimonious.

@Rob, cheers (and I'm not ignoring the broader content of your comment in case this appeared so). What do you think about the fits on Lazaridis PCA that I posted up? The vector between Armenia_Chl and Armenia_EBA (Kura-Araxes) samples doesn't seem like a CHG vector. Perhaps this is distorted or something then?

Rob said...

@ Matt
Yes it seems so on the PCA
However, it might be due to different processes : Arm EBA looks like extra CHG + Tepecik group, which is "historically sound".
So that 'Iran Chalc' vector is just an average of a pull toward CHG and Anatolia. I can show this on nMonte, but maybe dave can do wit qpAdm

Davidski said...

Already have...

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2017/08/the-iron-age-iranian.html

Rob said...

@ Dave

Which Azov sea farmers ?

Davidski said...

Farmers from the Lower Don: ancestors of the Prikaspiiskaya culture farmers.

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2017/09/two-starkly-different-neolithic.html

Rob said...

Yes I concur. However these people are not native to lower Don.
So where do you suppose they came from, in 4500 Bc ?

Davidski said...

I suppose they came from the Caucasus. But this happened well before 4500 BC, because according to that paper, they were already in the Lower Volga region earlier than that.

Alberto said...

Here I have to agree with Matt on his main point, and even extend it.

First, I think that the assumption that Early Holocene population from the North Caucasus was identical to the one from the South Caucasus is not parsimonious. The Great Caucasus mountains were a big barrier then. And if the population from the lower Don and Volga were EHG-ish, there's really no barrier at all between them and the North Caucasus.

And then, more directly related to Matt's point, if CHG/EHG admixture in Yamnaya dates to ca. 4000 BC, it's again unlikely that the North Caucasus was less EHG than Armenia at that time. At least as an assumption it sounds quite strange. (And I agree with Matt that it's less parsimonious to assume that the Armenia_Chl samples we have are outliers).

I also find suspicious the big gap between Yamnaya and anyone else to the south. No cline at all? If there was gene flow going on at such a high rate, we should see a cline there. So we're probably missing samples that will fill that gap, from around North Caucasus, Lower Volga, maybe lower Don,...

Rob said...

The problem is the north Caucasus sequence is difficult to understand still
Poorly represented Mesolithic, only few Neolithic sites , a relatively pauper Chalcolithic, then a sudden flowering in Majkop
Combined with a problematic radiocarbon date series for the don - Volga area (which most local archaeologists happily admit to), it'll be aDNA which will help solve everything

Btw: there are documented links between south Caucasus and north Caucasus during Epipalaeolithic, so there's no issue with CHG being in north Caucasus for long time, if there is continuity between Mesolithic and Chalcolithic

Nirjhar007 said...

According to that research paper ,the Prikaspiiskaya culture is the origin of Khvalynsk Culture :

Khvalynskaya culture sites date to 4900–4600 BC (Tab. 1). There are two hypotheses about the origin of this culture. It has been suggested that it was an autochthonous culture formed on the basis of the preceding Prikaspiiskaya culture. Other researchers suppose that it could have appeared as the result of the migration of tribes from the southern region of the Trans-Caspian area

Remains of domesticated animals were also recently found at Prikaspiiskaya
sites, preceding Khvalynskaya culture (Vybornov et al. 2015). It is located in the same area as Khvalynskaya culture.


Pottery was decorated with comb impressions and traced lines (Fig. 4). All of these features are similar to the material from Khvalynskaya culture (Vasiliev 1981; Vybornov et al. 2015; 2016). Domesticated sheep bones were found alongside the bones of wild species (kulan, saiga, tarpan) (Vybornov et al. 2015). The Prikaspiiskaya sites are dated to 5500–4800 BC

Of course the arrival of domesticated sheep imply a West Asian influence :
The origin of Prikaspiiskaya culture is reckoned to be connected with the Lower Don region. Some migration from Western Asia could also have occurred

Alberto said...

@Rob

Yes, I'm really mostly ignoring the archaeology here, since it's too scarce to get any clear picture. It's more about what we know from ancient DNA and geography.

Surely there was CHG in the North Caucasus since the Mesolithic (after all, we see it at low levels in Ukraine Meso/Neolithic and even in the Baltic, and it's present in Samara_HG too).

But the question is if they were 100% CHG or rather more related to (or admixed with) the more geographically connected areas to the north. We'll see with ancient DNA.

Nirjhar007 said...

'CHG' herders brought Sheep it seems .

Rob said...

@ Nirjhar

Yes good point. It need have come from somewhere

@ Alberto
Agreed. It's not a wild to argue that a prospective north Caucasus group c 4000 BC will be EHG / CHG. ..
But will they also have ANF ?

Anonymous said...

The Lower Don culture aka Rakushechny Yar culture, so called the oldest settlement Rakushechny Yar near Volgograd, has nothing to link with the Caucasus. In it lived the North Europeods and ceramics is directly related to the Southern Ural region and the Kama region. This is the first Neolithic culture in Don region, it's approximately the same age as the Bug-Dniester culture.

In the Caucasus on the merits of the Neolithic was not, there very long time was the Mesolithic, and then quickly passed the formal stage of the Neolithic. The Caucasus before the Maikop culture are very behind in the change of phase in general.



Oldest R1a1 is no further from the R1a-M417 than the R1a-Z93.

Grey said...

Matt said...

"a) It would be odd in the extreme for North Caucasians of the time to be less influenced by the Eneolithic steppe (or even the Mesolithic steppe, as changes could have come earlier) than populations from Armenia."

I think biomes act as barriers even when there is no obvious physical barrier so admixture between two groups of HGs each adapted to one of two different but bordering biomes may have been selected against (cos someone from one side of the line doesn't know the survival techniques of the other side of the line).

On the other hand once there is a farming or pastoralist culture they can move en masse from one suitable region to another. The clue would be which specific regions of Armenia (if any) were more heavily influenced by a steppe population and see if they fit a pattern e.g. cattle country, copper deposits etc.

Grey said...

Nirjhar007 said...
"'CHG' herders brought Sheep it seems."

That's how I see it.

If you look at the distribution of wild sheep/goats it's the hilly/mountainous regions south of the steppe

https://jww.de/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/old_images/877_201_20050607143200.jpg

so i imagine some population from somewhere in that zone domesticated sheep/goats first and then spread out over that zone, including some expanding over the edge of the steppe displacing the local steppe HGs, until they hit some ecological limit - afterwards acting as the catalyst for the surviving steppe HGs to develop a horse culture which eventually did a reconquista of the steppe - hence the disparity in male/female dna at the end.

(very similar imo to the Spanish ranchers expanding into New Mexico and getting repulsed by the Apache / Comanche)

Alberto said...

@supernord

The Caucasus before the Maikop culture are very behind in the change of phase in general.

I agree that the North Caucasus before Maikop is quite underwhelming (just like the steppe itself), but where do you think that the domestic sheep and goats got to the lower Don and Volga from if not from the Caucasus? Central Asia?

@Rob

Yes, I'd guess that by the Chalcolithic, North Caucasus should have some ANF admixture too. There probably were no pure CHG left by then anywhere.

Anonymous said...

The most parsimonious explanation for the lower frequency of R1a in the Iranian plateau is more recent historical migrations.

1) Mesepotamian expansion westward under the Achaemenids. It shows up throughout the Empire, and as far east as Kandahar.

2) Turkic expansions eastward. The areas with less RNA seem to overlap with the Seljuq regions.

Rob said...

@ Alberto

There is a minority view that the ceramics in Black Sea aren't "eastern" but actually a Ukrainian branch of Cardial-Impresso ware, and that a number of (actual farming) Neolithic settlements now lie submerged under sea.

Rob said...

^^BBB discussed links recently

Samuel Andrews said...

@Alberto,
"I also find suspicious the big gap between Yamnaya and anyone else to the south. No cline at all?"

It's possible. There was no cline between Steppe and Eastern European farmers.

Alberto said...

@Rob

No idea about that. Maybe there was a cultural influence from the west? Or just coincidence in pottery types? At any rate, it's quite at odds with DNA. Yamnaya-like people could not come from the west to the steppe.

@Sam

There is a clear cline between Yamnaya and European Neolithic farmers once they started to mix. From early Corded Ware (~75% Yamnaya) to Portuguese BA (15-20% Yamnaya?) and everything in between (BBC, Hungary BA, etc...).

So if Yamnaya was the product of the mixing of CHG and EHG, we should find a similar cline somewhere.

Grey said...

Alberto said...
"where do you think that the domestic sheep and goats got to the lower Don and Volga from if not from the Caucasus? Central Asia?"

personal pet theory of the original goat/sheep source region is southern kazakhstan where the apple/pear forests are/were (cos mythological reasons)

Rob said...

@ Alberto
I think you misunderstood :
You asked about where the sheep etc came from in the 5th century Black Sea
That's a different question to where proto-Yamnaya came from c 3500 BC.

Alberto said...

@Rob

True. But shouldn't both events be related? Or did the sheep arrive to the Lower Don and Volga from the Balkans and later some proto-Yamnaya population appeared there unrelated to those early pastoralists?

Samuel Andrews said...

@ALberto,

A cline between Steppe and Armenia makes more sense than one between Steppe and Balkan farmers becaue Steppe had CHG admixture and Armenia had EHG admixture but Balkan farmers didn't have any EHG admixture. But don't be suprised if no cline existed.

Today, there's really not much of a cline between Russians and Caucasians. Maybe.....the same was true in 4000-5000 BC.

"There is a clear cline between Yamnaya and European Neolithic farmers once they started to mix"

Not really. LNBA Europe didn't even have a Steppe vs EEF/WHG cline. And Before Steppe migration occurred there was no cline at all.

That's because the farmers in Bulgaria and Ukraine were ultimately an immigrant population from Anatolia. They didn't form due to a long gradual processes. They formed from a sudden, explosive migration. The Steppe had little or no EEF admixture, therefore there was no cline.

Matt said...

@Rob: "However, it might be due to different processes : Arm EBA looks like extra CHG + Tepecik group, which is "historically sound". "

This is true within the constraints of that PCA, but we would be talking about complete replacement(!). Whereas Iran_Chl admixture would be significant, but also involve, like, 50% continuity. That's not necessarily saying replacement is wrong - complete replacement and extinct populations are possible and Davidski's hypothesis that the Armenia_Chal are an outlier could be correct - but I just want to put that out there to totally be clear.

Lots of things possible in the landscape of ancient Near East, since so little is sampled and there are so many directions where unsampled populations could sit, and combine.

Davidski said...

Steppe mtDNA is first seen in the Near Eastern ancient DNA record in Armenia_ChL (mtDNA U4a).

So I think it's pretty clear that the inflated EHG in Armenia_ChL is from a new pulse of admixture from the north.

Armenia_EBA/Kura-Araxes is indeed essentially a mixture of CHG and some sort of Anatolian farmers. But this need not be a new post-ChL phenomenon in the region, but rather continuity from the Neolithic, via either a migration into Armenia from another part of the Caucasus, a local resurgence in Neolithic ancestry, or, most likely, both.

Looking at Armenia_EBA, and the seemingly high correlation between Caucasus admixture in the Near East and the spread of Kura-Araxes culture, I'd say that the Kura-Araxes homeland was rich in CHG.

Rob said...

@ Matt

", but we would be talking about complete replacement(!). "

Yep. I'm not shocked. Local extinctions, neighbouring range expansions etc
Archaeologists studying the area have sensed significant discontinues between Chalcolithic horizon and K-A.
The latter seems to have expanded from lowlands of South Caucasus, somehow co-linked with eastern Anatolia, and then moved into highlands, and mor distant territories like Levant and NW Iran.
But yes as more data piles up we'll get clearer picture. Absolutely

MomOfZoha said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

@MomOfZoha

You're not the only woman here, and they don't care about what you said for various reasons. First one is that you can't judge the past with the morals of the present, second is that, if the women got raped, their "maternal ancestors", it was by their "paternal ancestors", so, you got both the rapist and the raped in your blood, they're both in you, no need to pick sides.
Also, every time different peoples met each other, there was war, the yDNA and mtDNA are absolute in showin this: as the Men genocided their male enemies, the women became spoils/prizes.
Different peoples living together always, and I mean always with no exception, leads to conflict and violence, no matter when or where, regarding no matter what race or space in time.

And why? Because ingroup preferences is absolute and part of our genetics - outgroup bias is actually only a mechanism women developed in case their men were on the losing side, then the women would shift alliances with the victors to just survive.
This is all known already.

Now, about War and Rape: Resources aren't infinite, and even today, you have to manage limit resources to an infinite influx of people being born and living and dying - this leads to ingrouping favouring the gathering of resources to your own people, because your own people is also you, it's your genotype's and phenotype's survival (and when I say phenotype, culture is involved, as culture is also a phenotype of a people's genes).
If you don't do that, you're prey. Nature is amoral and actually favour those who play by its rules, not those who wish to surpass it or reject it.

So, stay mad, snowflake.

Grey said...

MomofZoha

Humans were mostly wolves until quite recently.

Anonymous said...

@MomOfZoha

Just to compliment. The hatred you harbour can be explained by the upbringing of the Western youth today, who's thought to abandon their in-group preferences (in favour of some global-citizenship nonsense. The world doesn't consider you their kindred, they haven't been thought to abandon their in-groups, just you) which generates a feeling of self-loathing, low self-esteem, ethno-masochism, pathological altruism and civilizational suicide into one's mind (I'm talking about you).

I can see that you're young too because your manner of speech is passive aggressive, full of low quality sarcasm.

Actually, while you're here, why don't you actually try to learn something about history and genetics? About the Indo-European question, which has now been proved to be a Demic shift, after decades of hacks like Boas and Cavalli-Sforza trying to impose their evidenceless views on all that (Of all the "pots aren't people", it might be that only the Beakers qualified, being everything else Demic shifts).
Ps: Max Muller also was unfortunate in his remarks, but at least his work has some value, contrary to the other two above.

You can also try to learn about the Hajnal Line, regarding human behaviour patterns.

Davidski said...

@MomofZoha

Realistically, only a small percentage of the growth of R1a-M417 can be explained by rape, even if rape was common during the conquests of Eurasia by M417-rich groups, and that's not even guaranteed.

A more likely scenario is that local men were marginalized socially to some extent by the incoming steppe rabble, and it was thus more difficult for them to pass on their Y-chromosome lineages. Local women, on the other hand, probably had a better chance of integrating into the new scene, as is often the case even today, and thus a better chance of passing on their mtDNA lineages.

This might explain the higher ratio of steppe Y-DNA to steppe mtDNA in many modern day populations, not only in South Asia, but perhaps in Southern and Western Europe, where the steppe marker is likely to be R1b-M269.

Anonymous said...

I always think of these things whenever I read about Caucasian women on the steppe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/science/napoleon-chagnons-war-stories-in-the-amazon-and-at-home.html

Recall the Sabine virgins?

Anonymous said...

@MomofZoha

One of the many things feminism gets so massively wrong is the idea that the monogamous marriage is a tool for oppression. Its ascend actually improved lives of women greatly, making them a party - even if not equal - rather than prey.

Karl_K said...

There is no requirement for any rape or violence to obtain the rapid expansion of a haplotype or haplogroup. Selective sweeps are extremely fast genetically, but usually occur over many generations and hundreds of years. The only requirement is a strong link between the genes and the selecting force.

In the case of R1a and the other successful bronze age Y haplogroups, the link was a new ability to accumulate vast amounts of wealth and status in physical objects, along with social constructs allowing inheritance of that wealth and status.

Wealthy high status men were in a position to have a large number of children, and it is reasonable to assume that much of the wealth and status was inherited by the oldest male children, who could continue the cycle.

Wealthy high status women, however, had almost no ability to have more children than poor low status women.


Ric Hern said...

There is basically no such thing as an Utopia here on Earth. Even some trees eg. Acacia trees do chemical warfare and produce Hydrogen Cyanide when being overgrazed....

Davidski said...

It's actually not uncommon to hear these sorts of theories about successful Y-chromosome lineages being successful due to mass rapes. It's as if one of the most common forms of procreation in ancient times was rape.

This makes very little sense, of course, because women who are raped rarely have a child as a result. Often they're also victims of homicide. In ancient times I guess they would've often been taken into slavery after being raped by invading soldiers.

Anonymous said...

@Karl_K said:

"There is no requirement for any rape or violence to obtain the rapid expansion of a haplotype or haplogroup. Selective sweeps are extremely fast genetically, but usually occur over many generations and hundreds of years. The only requirement is a strong link between the genes and the selecting force."

Especially in a polygamous society.

Anonymous said...

@David

But raiding for women is a different story, I'd say.

Rob said...

@ Alberto

"True. But shouldn't both events be related? Or did the sheep arrive to the Lower Don and Volga from the Balkans and later some proto-Yamnaya population appeared there unrelated to those early pastoralists?"

They appear unrelated, in my reckoning. And again there is contention of chronology, but now most seem to be downtrendifn earlier dates, eg C-T dates 4000-2800 BC, not 5000 -> .
This culture had sheep , pigs and cattle. So there's a source right there.
The steppe groups remained primarily hunters, althouh supplemented their economy with primitive farming and certain domesticated, the character and extensor of which was variable by site. So perhaps they had simply exchanged the domesticates with Balkan -CT farmers or were beginning to try and breed them for themselves.
As we have seen the genetic correlate of these events of the late "Steppe Neolithic" was a slight WHG shift of the Ukrainian foragers, and the appearance of individuals with a Balkan farmer profile. So clearly there were people moving east onto the steppe, as predicted by classical physical anthropology, bringing with them pastoral know how, and ultimately mutating into steppe pastoralism.

I think what happens from 3500 BC -> is a new exchange system and ideology based on arsenic metals, stelae, secondary products, etc. At its core were the Majkop groups and its steppe offshoots, which moved along the Black Sea and then directly up to the Dniester first steppe: the proto-CWC zone, where the CT was "collapsing". It seems to have initially neglected the former Varna zones and instead went directly to Hungary and Vucedol.
So if these groups on the Lower Don/Kuban steppe were the primary movers and shakers of the late 4th century, the result was the rapid dispersal of a distinctive EHG/ CHG signature.
So the question remaining is exactly what was happening here at the Kuban steppe.

Alberto said...

@Rob

Thanks. That makes sense. It will be interesting to see what's the difference between the 2 Eneolithic Ukrainian samples. They're probably both from around 3500 BCE, but the one from Central Ukraine seems to have no EHG admixture, while the one from East Ukraine (the R1a-M417) probably does.

And I hope we get samples from the Kuban soon.

Anonymous said...

@Davidski

I get what you are saying, but in South Asia we also have to take into account the near absence of Steppe MtDNA. It is almost as though the IA peoples lost all their women and picked up entirely new ones. I cannot for the love of me understand how this radical shift happened.

I am also inclined to believe that the male population had already shrunk as the IVC declined, and conflicts reduced the male population, but this does not explain the complete mismatch.

Anonymous said...

Rob "And again there is contention of chronology, but now most seem to be downtrendifn earlier dates, eg C-T dates 4000-2800 BC, not 5000" No trend decreasing date.

Shishlina 2014 more accurately considered a reservoir effect in Khvalynskiy culture.
"Eneolithic Culture
Only one pair of dates is presently available, i.e. cow and human bones from the Eneolithic Khvalynsk Cemetery II, grave 10. The offset is 220 14C yr. We assume that other 14C dates of human bones available for this culture also would show this apparent age. The average value of the δ15N ratio in human bone collagen from the Khvalynsk humans is +13‰ (Shishlina et al. 2012a). This provides the size of the reservoir effect correction (Shishlina et al. 2009)."

Of the known 17th radiocarbon dating, Khvalynsk culture fit into the range 5300-4230 cal BC 1sigma, just need to subtract 220 years. (Only three dates are younger than 4700-4600 cal BC.) That is, the dates will be 5000-4000 cal BC, this will be the approximate range of existence of the Khvalynsk culture. This range corresponds to the Tripolie A - Tripolie B1.

Rob, your text on which you referenced for your personal chronology is just wrong. A common mistake, it is fact.

Rob said...

Shishlina 2014- https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Natalia_Shishlina/publication/270183423_Reservoir_Effect_of_Archaeological_Samples_from_Steppe_Bronze_Age_Cultures_in_Southern_Russia/links/56894db808ae1975839a935f/Reservoir-Effect-of-Archaeological-Samples-from-Steppe-Bronze-Age-Cultures-in-Southern-Russia.pdf?_iepl%5BviewId%5D=zBHJYSYKGR5tVn1KAxWs060p&_iepl%5BprofilePublicationItemVariant%5D=default&_iepl%5Bcontexts%5D%5B0%5D=prfpi&_iepl%5BinteractionType%5D=publicationDownload

So have a look at table 1 and see what chronology is offered for Khvalynsk

Anonymous said...

See Shishlina's texts
"We studied populations that exploited the area between the Lower Don and the Lower Volga rivers and the North Caucasus piedmont."
"Their time intervals and regional distributions are shown in Table 1 and Figure 1, respectively."
"The relative chronology of the Bronze Age cultures of this region is based on stratigraphy of the main archaeological funerary sites of the region, i.e. kurgans. This chronology is shown in Table 1."
The table for Lower Caspian Region only. Eneolithic the Kvalynsk Culture, the Sredny Stog Culture are not included in it. For that one late grave of the Khvalynskiy culture, he cites the date 4500 cal BC in Figure 4.

Rob said...

OK. Vybornov states that productive Neolithic begins in Caspian area (=Prikaspiiskaya culture) c. 5500- 4800 BC. This is followed by Khvalynsk, the main distinguisher being the appearance of some Copper.
OFfsetting ~ 220 years, give us the same ballpark for Khvalynsk / SS ..

Anonymous said...

According to Vybornov producing economy starts in the Caspian region about 5500-4800 BC, and the Khvalynsk culture exists the interval 4900-4600 BC that is the Eneolithic. The Khvalynsk culture appears earlier than the end the Pricaspiiskaya and Orlovskaya cultures. The Neolithic starts in the Caspian region in the 7th Millennium BC, earlier than in the rest of Europe. The original concept of the Neolithic was the presence of ceramics, but not newfangled the presence of a productive economy.

Rob said...

Yes I recall his article a few posts back. It was suggested Khvalynsk moved in from lower Don region ?
With such wide chronologies, I guess each analysed sample for aDNA needs to be tested individually.

Foster Ryan LAc said...

Why all this freaking out about the term 'Beast'. I'm from the northeast US and to us it just means hard to beat/conquer, succesful, or big. Like a team that nobody can beat, or a tough competitor. It's has no negative implication at all, unless you're trying to compete with them and know that it won't be fun. I don't get how people interpret that as a racist statement.

Sabmiester said...

I'm not an expert in genetics so I apologise in advance if I sound ignorant. My question is of personal importance.

My Y-Haplogroup is R1a (M420) and my ethnic background is Zaza a Western Iranic, Indo-European speaker who are meant to have migrated to Anatolia from the Caspian coast of present-day Iran.

Please correct me if I am wrong but according to the topology it seems that my particular haplogroup M420 is the oldest lineage in R1a grouping.

Does anyone know which regions of the world R-M420 clusters in the highest frequency and if it might shed any light on my ancient paternal ancestry if any?

Cheers.

Davidski said...

You don't really belong to R1a (M420) per se, but a much younger lineage under the M420 mutation. The problem is that your subclade hasn't been properly identified, probably because your Y-chromosome test was very shallow.

What you need to do is get a much deeper test done, even a full Y-chromosome scan, and then get the mutations analyzed by Yfull.

But even then you won't be able to work out where your subclade formed and how it got to Iran unless you can identify it and its ancestral lineages in the ancient DNA record.

The safest bet is that your lineage came from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, and it arrived in Iran during the Iron Age with the descendants of the Andronovo people. Most Andronovo males belonged to R1a-Z93, but they also probably carried many other types of R1a at much lower frequencies.

Joe Flood said...

See my new R1a paper. Which suggests that R1a probably derived from the Middle East as a very early subclade of R1, found its way North within R1 through the Balkans, broke out from two men following a severe bottleneck event north of the Black Sea around 3000BC, expanding as (Z283) Corded Ware and also (Z93) somewhere on the steppe (location yet to be determined). It would not rank as a haplogroup at all if not for that lucky bottleneck plus their proximity and control of a whole lot of resources in big demand during the Bronze Age.

Still more questions to be answered than solved - but much easier than the rest of R1(b); paper describes how to look for answers.
https://rmit.academia.edu/JoeFlood/Drafts

Joe Flood said...

Davidski, R1a is highly spatially segregated because of its bottleneck origin. While R1a-Z93 had a lot of basal subclades yet to be tracked, I doubt there was anything but Z93 in Andronovo - and maybe only Z94, no other basal subclades have been found near the Urals.

The interesting question is why is there not a whole lot of admixed R1b in India, as it seemed to make up most of the South Urals population all the way from Samara culture 5500BC to the present day. 4.2 ky event is long after the proposed R1a bottleneck.

Davidski said...

@Joe Flood

Andronovo R1a comes from Corded Ware R1a, and Corded Ware R1a comes from the Eneolithic steppe R1a, and Eneolithic steppe R1a is from the R1a native to the steppe.

It goes like this: Steppe R1a > Steppe M417 > Corded Ware Z645 > Andronovo Z93 > Central Asian, Indian and Iranian Z93/Z94

You know, like what autosomal DNA and archeology show as well. It's not that complicated anymore. You just don't have a clue, that's all.

Sabmiester said...

Hi, I am the "Unknown" person who asked about their R1a (M420) haplogroup, five questions up.

After one and half years I finally ended up doing a Y-111 test with FTDNA and have subsequently found out that I belong to the rare R1a2b (YP5018) haplogroup. It appears to be an archaic branch of R1a which predates the Indo-European expansion and clusters around the Eastern Anatolia/Southern Caucusus/ Mesopotamia region with a few outliers in Yemen and Qatar. With almost half the recorded samples coming from or around my ancestral town in Turkey (Dersim). The other closest haplogroup to our own is R1a2a (YP4131), which split off from our parent branch R1a2 (YP4141) and appears to be concentrated on the other side of Europe exclusively in the British Isles.

I and two other people in this haplogroup have now ordered the Big Y-700 test and we are hoping to get some more information about our unique and mysterious haplogroup. I would love to see some research being done to find out how R1a2a and R1a2b came about and how they ended up so far apart.

If anyone wants to propose a theory I would like to hear about it.

Cheers!

Davidski said...

There is no R1a in the Middle East that predates the Indo-European expansion.

All of the R1a in the Middle East arrived there during or after the Bronze Age and is ultimately from the Indo-European homeland in Eastern Europe.

What you belong to is a rare clade of R1a that went extinct in Eastern Europe after the Bronze Age and now only survives in the Middle East.

Sabmiester said...

Hi David,

As I mentioned, I am not an expert on this topic and I'm not pretending to be one either. I'm not a proponent of out of Anatolia theory or anything crazy like that. The the reason that I thought it predated the Indo-European expansion was because it is very rare, it's very old as in broke away from R1a very early on, and presuming that it arrived to it's current location in the Middle East with Andronovo migrants from the steppe, the lack of samples turning up in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Greater Iran, or India is highly unusual. Also the fact that it turns up in countries in the Middle East and Caucuses where they don't speak Indo-european languages also threw me off. It is very unusual to say the least.

Hopefully some more samples turn up in other locations so it doesn't seem so weird. Thanks for taking your time to respond to my question.

Ebrelios said...

R1a was like a ram or a berserk, stubbornly going forward no matter the extremes. Wim Hof like style: I can't stand the extreme cold? Hold my beer. Then getting bored of long ice cold bath.. hey you are icemen now, you can't stand an extreme hot! I can't? I can't nothing. I can even run a marathon on a desert (don't ask what for). Hold my vodka.. its just.. did they visit their starting point again? They were sucessful in expansion but could you say they ever found home? Weren't they like gypsies? You know, having home in a wagon under stars, chachary type, like in the polish song "opròcz błękitnego nieba nic mi więcej nie potrzeba" - except the blue sky there's nothing else i need; or maybe more like: our beds are burning...
The R1a concentration in Poland, if the map is accurate, coincides with all 3 of our most stubborn, hot-blooded, conservative subpopulations: Seamen Kashubians/Pomeranians, Forest ppl Kurps(Kurpie), Highlanders Vistulans/Górale/Chrobatians PS The second grade shade spreads to the Balcans fully covering Highlanders Slovaks and Slovenians + Croatians(supposed legendary other part of White Chrobatians). Could it also mean that R1b was more characteristic for Sorbs, Lusatians and Serbians? It seems in origins of Poland starting in lowlands with Polans tribe is nowhere near these R1a concetration zones. But it makes sense since innovation propagation isn't usually linked with the most conservative, least mobile groups but these most elastic, mobile, experienced one.

Analisa Melano said...

The beast? Yeah literally.
All it takes is for u to c*m in a fugly ho for 5 seconds and u think u rule the world.
Men don't get to rule the life they don't create!

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