search this blog

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Graeco-Aryan parallels


The clearly non-local admixture in the geographically and genetically disparate, but Indo-European-speaking, ancient Mycenaeans and present-day North Indian Brahmins is very similar. So similar, in fact, that it could derive from practically the same population in space and time. The most plausible source for this admixture are the Bronze Age herders of the Pontic-Caspian steppe and their immediate descendants, such as those belonging to the Sintashta and other closely related archaeological cultures.

To prove and simultaneously illustrate this point, below are a couple of Admixture graph or qpGraph analyses. Note that I was also able to add Balkans_BA I2163 to the Mycenaean model. This is an Srubnaya-like ancient sample from the southern Balkans dating to the early Mycenaean period. Not only does Balkans_BA I2163 help to further constrain the model, but it also suggests a proximate source of steppe-related admixture into the population that potentially gave rise to the Mycenaeans. The relevant graph files are available here.

Considering that the Bronze Age peoples of the Pontic-Caspian steppe are the only obvious and direct, and, hence, most plausible link between the Mycenaeans and Brahmins, it follows that they are also the most likely vector for the spread of Indo-European speech to ancient Greece and South Asia. Or not? But if not, then what are the alternatives, and I mean real alternatives, not just excuses? If you think that you can offer a genuine alternative then feel free to do so in the comments below. However, be warned, stupid sh*t won't be tolerated.

See also...

Main candidates for the precursors of the proto-Greeks in the ancient DNA record to date

On the doorstep of India

Steppe admixture in Mycenaeans, lots of Caucasus admixture already in Minoans (Lazaridis et al. 2017)

378 comments:

1 – 200 of 378   Newer›   Newest»
Davidski said...

I'll try and add the Hittite-era genomes to the Mycenaean model when I get the data.

Davidski said...

Let me just reiterate that this thread is going to be a quality thread.

Trolling and stupid sh*t won't be tolerated.

Mikkel said...

It's noteworthy that Greek (contrary to Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic which I guess seem to have a likely common origin in Z645) has escaped the Satem shift (in Grassman's Law common to both Indo-Iranian and Greek is normally said to be a quite late innovation in Greek, so likely a parallel development).
Greek is also often grouped together with Albanian and Armenian, although if they form a subnode on the language tree or just a later ”Balkan group” is uncertain. Armenian also has some satem features, so perhaps that could be the Balkan_BA newcomer (incl. Z93?) to Bulgaria and then the arrival of the Armenian linguistic branch to the "Balkan group"?

You earlier mentioned the steppe-derived I2a2a1b1b in Bulgarian Yamnaya and it's ancestral proximity to one of the Mycenaean females, so I still think this could be the ancestor of Greek before it moved into the Aegean.

It's also noteworthy (and is still discussed among Indo-Europeanists at Copenhagen University at least) that some of the other shared traits between Greek and Indo-Iranian (like the augment) could be a sample bias due to the much earlier attestation of large corpora of text from these branches compared to most other branches, so these traits could be archaisms, rather than common Greek-Indo-Iranian innovations.

I hope I'm making sense :)

Mikkel said...

By the way, did you see?:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0097-z
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/05/08/science.aar7711
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0094-2

Anonymous said...

All results on the classics of archaeology are. The Greeks come from the Babyno (MCWC/MVK) culture, the Indo-Aryans of Sintashta and Potapovka cultures.
Of course the Srubnayas did not participate, but they come from these cultures.

Davidski said...

@Mikkel Nørtoft

You earlier mentioned the steppe-derived I2a2a1b1b in Bulgarian Yamnaya and it's ancestral proximity to one of the Mycenaean females, so I still think this could be the ancestor of Greek before it moved into the Aegean.

Yes, I did, and that's still an option, but not really a different one in the context of this analysis, because Yamnaya_Bulgaria is rather similar to Srubnaya etc.

By the way, yes, I did see those papers. I'll blog about them when I get the genotype datasets. I'll have more to say then.

Samuel Andrews said...

Did, anyone notice the Ottoman genomes vary in Asian/West Eurasian ancestry. One looks like he clusters between Central Asia and old Anatolia.

Anonymous said...

@David

If the samples are out, could you see if the Bavarian Germanics with elongated skulls will choose Xiongnu over others? It is a longstanding theory that these people are the proto-Huns, but it would be nice to see that confirmed.

ryukendo kendow said...

@ All
The authors present a very important piece of new evidence (I wonder why they exile this to the supp mat???).

There is an extensive linguistic supplement to the paper itself, found here:

G. Kroonen, G. Barjamovic, M. Peyrot, Linguistic supplement to Damgaard et al. 2018: Early Indo-European Languages, Anatolian, Tocharian and Indo-Iranian. 10.5281/zenodo.1240524 (9 May 2018).

It is at least as important as the genetic paper in terms of discussion, I think.

The authors of the supplement summarise the literature on the topic:
1) There is no consensus on the Balkan or Caucasian route for the Anatolian languages.
2) The languages are diverged for at least a millenium before we get the written records of their varieties (Palaic, Luwian, Hittite etc)
3) The linguistic evidence does not indicate mass migration or elite conquest, because the language characteristics are relatively in line with the language area, rather it appears "diffusional".
4) New evidence is presented from the Eblaite state with personal names from "Armi" (we don't know where that is, probably a statelet under the control of Ebla) with Anatolian derivation, in Southern Turkey, 500 years before the earliest attestation of the other Anatolian languages (which therefore push the split of the language group even further back). These personal names also appear in Assyrian records about trade with "Armi". These names occur contemporaneous with Yamnaya, so the hypothesis that even Anatolian derives from Yamnaya can be safely rejected.


Some genetic evidence that they allude to:
1) Maykop contains EHG.

Steven said...

Don't all Bronze Age Europeans share DNA with North Indian Brahmins or is this unique to the Mycenaeans?

Ryukendo K said...

^^ The personal names from "Armi" appear mixed together with names of Semitic origin and names of unclear derivation.

The "Assyrian colony" thing is also explained well. Interestingly the Assyrians never make a distinction between Nes and Hattics in their administration of the local population, the two groups were probably not that socially differentiated by this time.

I recommend everyone go and read the archaeological and linguistic supplements, they contain incredibly important pieces of information (I wonder why they were exiled to the supp mats??) and drop hints as to future papers (Maykop released v soon probably, "in preparation"). Also the names are also the leading lights in their fields.

The Northern European labs have really have assembled a superstar team in all respects... they seem to have moved to interdisciplinarity somewhat faster than those from Havard have.

Ryukendo K said...

The authors refer to an rather obscure Italian publication and a publication in Journal of Cuneiform studies, from 2011 and 1990. I wonder if anyone can tell me if these were only recently identified as Anatolian, but were published for a while already, or if these were known to be Anatolian all along since 1990?

Nevertheless, these authors seem to be the first ones working in archaeogenetics drawing the connection between Anatolian in Armi and the rejection for a Yamnaya derivation of Anatolian (the 500 years earlier thing is probably what seals the deal).

Rob said...

Imo We could personally come up with a more specific model than “gradual integration “, and i’m still sceptical of their model for Germanic -CWC, but it’s good to have even more evidence against the fringeist theories of a late IE migration to Anatolia & they’re in line with long understood linguistic splits

Synome said...

@ryukendo

It sounds like what they are implying is an Anatolian divergence during the Sredny-Stog era with a movement into the Caucasus and possibly Balkans, one of which eventually found its way to Anatolia proper by the the time of Yamnaya. Is that what you're gathering?

Ryukendo K said...

The papers are so obscure that I am completely unable to find any copies of them. They are:

Bonnechi, M. 1990. Aleppo in età arcaica; a proposito di un’opera recente. Studi Epigrafici e Linguisul Vicino Oriente Antico 7:15–37.

Archi, A. 2011. In Search of Armi. Journal of Cuneiform Studies 63:5–34

A lot of Italians here... looks like, to understand these regional facets better we need to shed some of the Anglocentrism.

Anyone can access them and read them (one of them is in Italians)? If it was not them, but Gus Kroonen, who unearthed the Anatolian derivation of these names then the finding is literally a major result that is relevant to the arguments and deserves to be in the main paper! The reviewers should understand the extremely interdisciplinary nature of the undertaking...

Ryukendo K said...

@ Psynome

The authors are very well-balanced in their discussion and do not take a stand. They point out that the only thing we know for sure is the Yamnaya derivation of Anatolian is ruled out (as linguistic unity of Anatolian precedes even Yamnaya formation, i.e. Anatolian separated and also itself split before Yamnaya) but no consensus exists over the Balkan vs Caucasus route for Anatolian (but the Balkan route is supported more), and also the fact that the spread seems "diffusional" with "small bands" also suggests that PIE may still be located in the Pontic-Caspian but left no genetic trail.

Synome said...

@ryukendo

Thanks. Haven't gotten around to reading the supplements.

Boy oh boy, what I wouldn't give for more Balkan/Danubian sampling these days. Hittites, Greeks, Phrygians, Armenians...even eastern Beakers, all balkan-danubian travelers? We need a lot more attention here.

rozenblatt said...

@ryukendo kendow : simple googling gives JSTOR link to the second paper: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5615/jcunestud.63.0005 , Now you need to to have JSTOR access to read it though.

Archaelog said...

@rykendow There is ample time between the point at which Proto-Anatolian would have got detached from the main body of Indo-Hittite speakers and the point at which they become attested in Anatolia. Something of the order of 2000 years. That is enough to dilute some components of ancestry (EHG) to near-zero. Probably that's why Kroonen takes that position.

Anonymous said...

ryukendo kendow said...
"Some genetic evidence that they allude to:
1) Maykop contains EHG."

Maykop or Novosvobodnaya?

Ryukendo K said...

The authors stress that the split between Anatolian and late PIE must have happened 'no later than the 4th millenium BCE', i.e. leaving 1500 years at the shortest between the Anatolian attestation in the Eblaite state and the time when Anatolian detached from late PIE.

I'm guessing the authors got this date from the dating of splits between the Anatolian languages (up to a millenium) plus some time for Anatolian itself to diverge from Indo-European.

This is an incredibly long time frame and is very different from the BB and CW or even Steppe MLBA phenomena (all in a couple centuries only).

Anonymous said...


In any case, in North Caucasus stays of Khvalynsk and Sredniy Stog cultures were.

Ryukendo K said...

@ Rozenfeld

Thanks for the link. It makes brief mention that the names have endings that look suspiciously Anatolian, but piles most of them to the "unclear origin" bucket. So it seems this step was taken by Kroonen.

@ Rob

These are the authors' conclusions.

Personally this new finding strongly reduces my confidence for Indo-Hittite in the Steppe. The Anatolians from Ebla in SE Anatolia were not elites but a noncentral "ethnic" population in some hinterland ("Armi") managed by Semitics in the city, and they had this status ~5-7 centuries before Hittites proper, so the "late conquest model from the Steppe" for Anatolian already cannot be correct.

Rob said...

indo - Hittite likely formed in east balkans or Caucasus. Steppe seems a more distant but still viable option

Rob said...

^ of course, these aren’t mutually exclusive, as visualised by those who understand the interaction spheres inthe formative 5000-4000 BC period

Ryukendo K said...

@ Rob

Hmmm but how do you reconcile this with sociolinguistic models though? Linguistics requires that proper "speech communities" be present and that these behave in an orderly way, how do you match an archaeologically inferred "interaction sphere" (what does this even mean in social terms? Akin to the question of how to interpret network analyses of archaeological sites) and a linguistic community?

Anonymous said...



"Armi"(Armuna) is Arameans.

Ryukendo K said...

This is really quite incredible.

The old consensus that Anatolian reached Turkey in the late IIId millenium BC is literally done in by this new evidence, because we already find Anatolian names in the Syrian-Anatolian border at 2500BC (i.e. mid-3rd mil, not late). We don't know which branch of Anatolian the newest names in texts are (because the Eblaite script obviates certain phonological distinctions that would help to clarify) but even if we assume that this was still proto-Anatolian we still have to give time for the language to diverge from late PIE (i.e. "Yamnaya language").

This just makes an arrival in the late IIId millenium BC impossible.

Anonymous said...

I haven't looked at the evidence yet, but I would caution that while I respect the scholarliness of those who assign these names to Anatolian status, it's worth remembering that this wouldn't be the first time that names were misassigned to a language. It's easier than for other words, because you only get to see one side (the form) and not the other (the meaning), so it's easier to have false-positive matches. It's particularly easy when you can cherry-pick the most promising names out of a big bucket of "unknown origin" - some number of resemblances can be assumed by shear chance. So I think any evidence of this type has to be considered in the "compelling circumstantial evidence" category, rather than in the "definitively debunks previous theories" category.


Regarding David's original question: is that really an interesting question? I think it's absolutely settled among respectable linguists that Indo-European was spread by the kurgan invasions - it's so incredibly obvious that it doesn't seem plausible to deny it. [Encylcopedias and the like sometimes still pay lip-service to the Anatolian Hypothesis so as not to offend any respected old scholars who haven't been keeping up, but I don't think anyone seriously believes it.]


Instead, the two interesting questions are a) where did PIE come from before the invasions? and b) what was the structure of the invasions? On this latter question, genetic evidence could potentially help settle questions about the relationships between IE branches.

In particular, if Mycaeneans were descended from Sintashta, that would strongly assist the Graeco-Aryan idea, whereas if they were demonstrably related to a pre-Sintashta group then maybe a different idea is needed. Of course genetics can't settle the argument, but it can certainly put a finger on the scale.

Rob said...

@ RK
Yes of course we’re dealing with organic communities speaking a real language, not an “osmosis” of creoles wafting around.
So it’s beyond interaction- the genetic data already points to migrants as individual agents vertical and horizontal admission (I2a2a1b moving east , Varna Outlier moving west, CHG moving north, Pontic influence in Armenia Chalc). These were codified interactions with significant ideological impacts.

Cpk said...

Quantitative models almost always predicted Anatolian origin for PIE.

Ryukendo K said...

@ Vacuouswastrel

This is the really irritating thing, because this linguistic conclusion was exiled to the Supp Mats there is a chance that no linguists (or very few linguists) will hear of it! I hope at least Kroonen publishes separately, so that the broader linguistic community will hear this and evaluate how secure the assignments are.

At least, he deserves credit and recognition!

If they had included the linguistic discovery in the paper itself they could include linguists among the reviewers (not very common for a paper in Science I suppose), then this would have been pored over to some degree already. (Maybe it has, but since its in supp its less likely).

Hopefully it wasn't some narrow-minded reviewers who want a monodisciplinary manuscript and it was just due to length that they had to chop it off, or smth along those lines.

Ariel said...

@ yukendo kendow

Very interesting, but let's try to think outside the box here. To me there are evidence of contact between pastoralists from the steppe and more southern populations even before Yamnas (Iran CHL, Armenia EBA). And we don't really know what was going on with Maykop and the caucasus area. Let's say that even early Maykop had EHG and they were in contact with the steppe, is it out of the realm of possibility that some migrants from Maykop or from the caucasus ended up in Anatolia or Syria in that time frame? I don't think is impossibile, also considering the high mobility of some those steppe populations. Obviously there were non IE speakers in Anatolia, I think that the relevant samples are not just random samples from the era, but samples that were associated with some IE speaking culture. The issue here is that we are focusing on Yamnas, a culture that at best is late PIE, but more likely early IE. There were other IE speakers around, west for sure and maybe south. We need Maykop, we are really missing that piece of the puzzle.

Rob said...

Ariel please read the supp data
It’s not a random sample - it’s from an elite mound in central Anatolia from the Hittite period
Please remind me again about your non-falsifiable doctrines ? :)

postneo said...

finally read the paper:
It has greater clarity vs the Reich, Narsimhan. They try to look at the same region through time a great improvement.

I have never been a supporter of the steppe hypothesis but this is coming close to a believable argument for steppe MLBA component in S Asia, or at least its well argued ...we will see...

language is a different matter.

Ariel said...

Rob

I don't think that the paper states that they were hittite remains.

Ryukendo K said...

@ Ariel

But if IE speaking Anatolian people were present in SE Anatolia and surrounds ~5-7 centuries before the Hittites already (and as a mass ethnicity ruled by a city instead of an ephemeral elite), why is it that EHG has still not percolated or suffused throughout the Anatolian area by the time of our samples? Why do we get that the Armenia_Chl is EHG-rich but all the later samples from Anatolia are not?

Surely it cannot be the case that complete endogamy lasted for 5-7 centuries straight?

PF said...

@ryu and others,

I recall a looong time ago I mentioned that the old Anatolia_Chl sample, at ~4000 BC, contains obvious proclivities to EHG... and was ignored as if it's not important. I don't know enough about archeology but this seems important to bring up again now.

*Anatolia_ChL*

[1] "distance%=3.943"

Hajji_Firuz_ChL,64.6
Barcin_N,35.4


adding EHG:

"distance%=3.0991"

Hajji_Firuz_ChL,57.8
Barcin_N,35.8
EHG,6.4

All other quick runs I've tried using ancestral genomes are always worse without the inclusion of EHG. Someone more knowledgeable than I should explain this... but I've always felt seeing some EHG-related influence here at such an early date was relevant.

PF said...

@ryu

Oh damn, I see you alluded to a similar thought as I was writing my post. :-)

EHG in Anatolia_Chl must be explained!!

Rob said...

@ Ariel

So point out to me solid proof which language cwc or B.B. spoke

Chad said...

If Hittites are as identical to the other Anatolia_BA samples as appears, then both the Balkans and Caucasus are out. It is further south and maybe east for the source.

bellbeakerblogger said...

@RK,
I bet Armi was in the Amuq plain. Hopefully someone can find the paper you ref on theories to its location. The Amuq is connected to the Middle Euphrates in the NE where a Euphratic substrate is hypothesized to exist also.

Thanks for linking the supp. It was a great read.

Al Bundy said...

@all Yea it's pretty clear that the steppe spread IE to Northern Europe, I wouldn't say Greek is settled.Mycenean is very close to reconstructed PIE and if PIE is Iran or wherever it makes sense to have come from there directly.For now the steppe signal in Myceneans is pretty small and of course they have J2 and CHG.We need more elite samples.Of course Yamnaya is too late for Anatolian no surprise at all.The question is whether the PC steppe is A late PIE homeland or The late PIE homeland.

Rob said...

@ Dave
You model for Myceneans doesn;t seem optimal
Running your same source list via nMonte gives a decent fit.
Mycenaean
"Minoan_Lasithi" 64.4
"Anatolia_BA" 21.2
"Srubnaya" 14.4
Warning message:
d 2.4%

But it can be improved significantly by not ignoring the genetically and archeologically documented inflow from post-Neolithic Balkans.

Mycenaean
"Peloponnese_N" 40.15
"Balkans_ChL" 29.8
"Armenia_EBA" 23.2
"Yamnaya_Samara:I0370" 6.85
d 1.9%

And with Srubnaya (MBA steppe)

Mycenaean
"Peloponnese_N" 40.15
"Balkans_ChL" 29.8
"Armenia_EBA" 23.2
"Yamnaya_Samara:I0370" 6.85
"Peloponnese_N_outlier" 0
"Srubnaya_MLBA" 0
d 1.9%




Rob said...

@ PF

"EHG in Anatolia_Chl must be explained!!"

Probably from the EHG in adjacent Armenia

Anatolia_ChL
"Armenia_ChL" 40.25
"Barcin_N" 32.45
"Hajji_Firuz_ChL" 26.6
"Samara_Eneolithic:I0122" 0.3
d 2.5%

Davidski said...

@Al Bundy

Yea it's pretty clear that the steppe spread IE to Northern Europe, I wouldn't say Greek is settled. Mycenean is very close to reconstructed PIE and if PIE is Iran or wherever it makes sense to have come from there directly.

Well, Mycenaeans have about zero direct admixture from Iran, so that's probably something worth considering.

mzp1 said...

Greek and Vedic are closer to PIE than any European language and mythology.

Both are further away from the Steppe and have lower steppe input than any European language.

Both are the ONLY IE languages (inc Iranian) to apply Grassmans Law.

Davidski said...

@Rob

Your model for Myceneans doesn't seem optimal.

Pretty sure it is optimal.

You're comparing the old apples to oranges there.

Rob said...


See what Central Greek LN is like . It’ll have Baden - Boleraz impact
By assuming that Minoans are representative of all Greece, the model that you build overcompensates with extra steppe
But you know that ya cheeky bugger

Anonymous said...

I want to test some things, but meanwhile:
1. There's too little EHG/WHG in Anatolia in general, it only appears there close to the Iron Age. Could be small sampling.
2. J, J2a, J2a1, G2a2b1.
3. No signs of shared CHG/Iranian-like ancestry between Anatolia and the Steppe.
4. CHG/Iranian-like admixture in Anatolia could be from any source presented there. Probably not Armenian, as it had much EHG already by the time, something that doesn't show in these Anatolians.
5. There's a possibility that these Anatolians were not IE, although small. The Burial Mound custom could have passed to the general non-IE population of the place.
6. There's the possibility of the away "Anatolian" development: Anatolians separated from main IE clusters very early (around Samara_Eneolithic maybe), but didn't immediately go to Anatolia, and instead stayed somewhere else until finally going to Anatolia later.
7. Anatolian IE language may seem very divergent, but their culture resembles more the late Steppe (MLBA) than Yamnaya and Samara_Eneolithic. They could have lived in Turkmenistan, as the study is suggesting, being an offshoot of the Namazga_CA communities and earlier - they could have coexisted with the late Steppe.
8. This may contradict the linguistic model of continuity, as it would imply very fast and late migrations.
9. And a Namazga_CA model of IE with J yDNA could suggest that the Anatolian languages aren't actually IE, but that both IE and Anatolian shared a very recent ancestral component, which seems to be more and more the ANE. Very fragile stuff here, take it with a pile of salt.
10. More and more, it seems to me that a big hooked nose is definitely and absolutely a CHG/Iranian-like thing.

The mystery deepens.

Unknown said...

@Chad Rohlfsen

"If Hittites are as identical to the other Anatolia_BA samples as appears, then both the Balkans and Caucasus are out. It is further south and maybe east for the source."

How further south and maybe east are you thinking if you don't mind sharing an unsubstantiated quick attempt at placing a location/region?

Open Genomes said...

Here's something that apparently no one noticed:

I4243 was not analyzed by Narasimhan (2018) because she was an "intrustive burial":

"We also identified one genetic outlier that we removed from our main analyses:
• F11, 3 (I4243): Date of 2465-2286 cal BCE (3875±25 BP, PSUAMS-2113). Genetically female. This individual is a genetic outlier and is also an intrusive burial from the Bronze Age based on its radiocarbon dating, so we remove them from the main analysis dataset (thus, the main analysis dataset only contains 6 individuals)."

What's remarkable about I4243 is that she's a Near Easterner from before the 4.2 kiloyear event, but very clearly has a significant amount of steppe ancestry.

This is the restricted nMonte3 against Yamnaya and Sintashta, as well as Hajji Firuz (modal) Chalcolithic, but Sintashta, which starts at 2200 BCE, is too early for I4243, so the second run uses Yamnaya, Poltavka, and Afanasievo instead. Poltavka is a bit further east than Yamnaya, and directly succeeds it from 2700-2100 BCE, just right this admixture.

Notice that (mostly) Poltavka + Afanasievo is a better fit than Sintashta, and also the admixture is not directly from Yamnaya.

So there was a specific "Eastern" Poltavka (akin to Afanasievo) migration to the northern Near East (Northwest Iran).

Who could this have been?

Sample ID: Hajji_Firuz_BA:I4243
nMonte3 with restricted nMonte3
Source data table: Global25

Total number of samples compared: 46

Number of cycles: 1000
Batch size: 500
Distance penalty: 0.001
Restricted nMonte minimum percent limit 1%

Restricted nMonte distance: 1.30990

48.2% Sintashta_MLBA
17.2% Yamnaya_Kalmykia
13.8% Seh_Gabi_ChL
 9.2% Hajji_Firuz_ChL
 5.8% Hajji_Firuz_ChL_o
 5.8% Hasanlu_IA

Nearest Item Distances:
3.1442 Sintashta_MLBA:I1086
3.1831 Sintashta_MLBA:I1022
3.1914 Sintashta_MLBA:I1063
3.2124 Sintashta_MLBA:I0984
3.2643 Sintashta_MLBA:I1090
3.4395 Sintashta_MLBA:I1027
3.5325 Sintashta_MLBA:I1082
3.6072 Sintashta_MLBA:I0989

Full nMonte distance: 1.42000

55.4% Sintashta_MLBA
13.0% Yamnaya_Kalmykia
10.6% Seh_Gabi_ChL
 9.6% Hajji_Firuz_ChL
 6.4% Hajji_Firuz_ChL_o
 2.2% Hasanlu_IA
 1.6% Seh_Gabi_LN
 1.2% Wezmeh_Cave_N

Source populations:

Hajji_Firuz_ChL
Hajji_Firuz_ChL_o
Hasanlu_IA
Seh_Gabi_ChL
Seh_Gabi_LN
Sintashta_MLBA
Wezmeh_Cave_N
Yamnaya_Kalmykia

____________________________

Here is the nMonte3 comparison with Yamnaya, Poltavka, and Afanasievo:

Sample ID: Hajji_Firuz_BA:I4243
nMonte3 with restricted nMonte3
Source data table: Global25

Total number of samples compared: 44

Number of cycles: 1000
Batch size: 500
Distance penalty: 0.001
Restricted nMonte minimum percent limit 1%

Restricted nMonte distance: 1.39380

35.6% Poltavka
24.0% Hajji_Firuz_ChL
17.2% Afanasievo
 7.6% Seh_Gabi_ChL
 6.6% Hajji_Firuz_ChL_o
 5.0% Yamnaya_Kalmykia
 4.0% Hasanlu_IA

Nearest Item Distances:
3.8775 Poltavka:I0371
4.1187 Poltavka:I7671
4.1253 Afanasievo:I3388
4.3657 Poltavka:I0126
4.3742 Hajji_Firuz_ChL_o:I2327
4.4287 Afanasievo:I5272
4.4346 Yamnaya_Kalmykia:RISE547
4.4484 Poltavka:I0440

Full nMonte distance: 1.37730

35.6% Poltavka
21.4% Hajji_Firuz_ChL
16.6% Afanasievo
 9.2% Hajji_Firuz_ChL_o
 6.8% Seh_Gabi_ChL
 4.4% Hasanlu_IA
 4.4% Yamnaya_Kalmykia
 1.6% CHG

Source populations:

Afanasievo
CHG
Hajji_Firuz_ChL
Hajji_Firuz_ChL_o
Hasanlu_IA
Poltavka
Seh_Gabi_ChL
Seh_Gabi_LN
West_Siberia_N
Wezmeh_Cave_N
Yamnaya_Kalmykia

ryukendo kendow said...

@ PF @ David

Is it a sure thing that Anatolia_Chl contains EHG? Are we completely, completely sure that this is the case?

Reich and Lazaridis both make it known in their statements and in their twitter feeds that they do not see how EHG could have made it south into Anatolia in the right time frame to explain Anatolian thus far (as there is no evidence for EHG in Anatolia at the right time so far). Sometimes we can disagree with them (e.g. the Steppe MLBA vs Steppe EMBA thing for Indians, or the Srubnaya-Sintashta derivation instead of Yamnaya derivation of Scythians and Sarmatians) but generally either the thing we're seeing is super obvious or the data that contradicts their statements come from rather "hard" evidence like IBD or haplotypes.

David you wanna look at this maybe? This will place the Anatolians in the area among an extremely early milieu, and may have something to do with the Kumtepe sample.

Open Genomes said...

There's a good candidate for an early Indo-European group in the mountains of Northwest Iran from 2400-2200 BCE:

The Gutians

Map of the Kura-Araxes and adjacent cultures in the 3rd millennium BCE

"Gutium" was located in the Central or Northern Zagros, north of Sumeria.
The Gutians were first reported in the 25th century BCE. After the 4.2 Kiloyear Event at 2194 BCE, the Gutians ruled Mesopotamia for "100 years". This was before the Amorites arrived from the north.

There is almost nothing that survives from the Gutian language, but from names, the Gutian language has been compared to Tocharian:
Gutian Language

The Kura-Araxes culture in the 3rd millennium BCE had some features like Poltavka, namely high-status burials in kurgans. This may have been the result of the entry of an early Indo-European group into the Near East. That group could very well coincide with the historical Gutians.

Up until now, there was no evidence for Indo-Europeans in the Near East before the 2nd millennium BCE, but with Hajji Firuz I4243 from the later 3rd millennium BCE, we for the first time have good evidence of a signficant steppe migration into the Near East. Her mtDNA I1b is found in many places, from Ireland and Sweden to the Burusho, but it's also found in Armenia. I4243 is about 60% steppe, with the remainder being local ancestry, akin to Hajji Firuz and Seh Gabi Chalcolithic.

The question is, did they have any lasting influence? The IE language of Poltavka would have been pre-Satemization, so a Tocharian-like Centum language seems possible.

We have an odd situation with what some people classify as a "Greco-Armenian-Phrygian" clade in IE. The Greeks were located nowhere near the Armenians, but the Phrygians were located between the two, after the replacement of Hittite and Luwian. The Phrygians were called the "Mushki" by the Assyrians, and there were "Eastern Muskhi" around Lake Urmia. It may be that the Phrygians / Mushki originated further east, and moved westward into Anatolia in the early Iron Age.

Of course, it may be that these early pre-Sintashta / Andronovo Indo-Europeans of the Near East were ancestors of the Anatolians. We don't know, and we don't have any clear steppe-admixed Hittite genomes available just yet.

Interestingly, Armenians have a high percentage of "pre-Yamnaya" R1b1a1a2a2a-L584, which is absent from the steppe and only really found among Near Easterners and a few Europeans. F38 from Iron Age (800 BCE) Tepe Hasanlu, right next to Hajji Firuz south of Lake Urmia was in R-L584. He looks like he has some relationship to the ancestry of I4243.
Since Poltavka was R-Z2103 like Yamnaya, Poltavka is a good candidate for the origin of R-L584 among Armenian and in the Zagros (the Lurs), where it's very common today.

So in the 3rd millennium BCE, we have clear evidence of steppe Proto-Indo-Europeans in Eastern and Northern Europe with the Corded Ware, the Altai with Afransievo, and in the Northern Zagros with I4243, which may represent the Gutians. The model fits this very well.

@royking

Open Genomes said...

@David

Do you need the 1240k SNPs for some of the higher-quality samples? I can create those for you.

ryukendo kendow said...

It appears the authors of the paper do treat the discovery of Anatolian materials close to the borders of Syria in 2500BC as a major finding of the paper.

From an interview conducted by ScienceDaily:

Gojko Barjamovic, Senior Lecturer on Assyriology at Harvard University, explains:

"In Anatolia, and parts of Central Asia, which held densely settled complex urban societies, the history of language spread and genetic ancestry is better described in terms of contact and absorption than by simply a movement of population."

He adds:

"The Indo-European languages are usually said to emerge in Anatolia in the 2nd millennium BCE. However, we use evidence from the palatial archives of the ancient city of Ebla in Syria to argue that Indo-European was already spoken in modern-day Turkey in the 25th century BCE. This means that the speakers of these language must have arrived there prior to any Yamnaya expansions."

Davidski said...

@All

Here are the preliminary G25 coordinates for most of the samples from the two new papers. I'll try and add more soon.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nPoYmzhEVtDzsYaJO9NQ4qEW_EekojRD/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J_AexSjjz0K8pv3GHK5v06N_5TgTjsyu/view?usp=sharing

Davidski said...

@Open Genomes

Maybe, but I'll try first to get as much data from the authors as possible, because it's best to compare results from a paper with samples genotyped on exactly the same pipeline.

EastPole said...

@Rob

“So point out to me solid proof which language cwc or B.B. spoke”

CWC most likely spoke languages related to Balto-Slavic family:

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/04/protohistoric-swat-valley-peoples-in.html?showComment=1524395157471#c4042982462833590064

Now confirmed genetic and archeological links CWC –> Sintashta/Andronovo –> India support what linguists have been saying for long time.

https://s17.postimg.cc/71fgzkv4v/screenshot_388.png

Rob, what is the solid proof that Yamnaya was IE and what languages were spoken there?

Anonymous said...

Davidski,
Are the Kol samples in the Global 25 datasheet mislabelled? I noticed when making a PCA with the datasheet they clustered with North Indians and completely different to other Austro Asiatic groups like the Juang and Bonda.

https://imgur.com/pG1OcIK

This was confirmed when I check the distances in nMonte.
"1. CLOSEST SINGLE ITEM DISTANCE%" (Kol)
Punjabi_Lahore 1.703977
Uttar_Pradesh 3.521690
Kshatriya 4.319669
Bengali 4.992095
Mala 8.689441
Ho 19.834017
Bonda 23.177109
Juang 23.542849

I read that some Kol populations inhabit Uttar Pradesh. Do you know specifically where these samples are from if they aren't mislabelled?

Seinundzeit said...

David,

Thanks!

As I expected, Namazga_CA is very much like Geoksiur_Eneolithic (not even similar to Sarazm_Eneolithic). In fact, it's a bit more western than even Geoksiur_Eneolithic. (I tried some quick modelling)

So, it might be a tad bit better than Iran_N, but it won't be as good as Sarazm_Eneolithic, and it'll be far worse than Shahr_I_Soktha_BA2.

Regardless, do you think you can eventually add the northern Pakistani populations? (Yusufzai, Tarklani, Uthmankhel, Kohistani, and Gujar)

Thanks in advance.

Rob said...

@ RK
Maybe it’s time to revisit some of the concepts espoused by Johanna Nichols, without necessarily taking all conclusions at face value

“Eurasian spread Zone..”

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=48iKiprsRMwC&pg=PA26&dq=Eurasian+spread+zone+indo+european+,+Nichols&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi28bDSif3aAhWBU7wKHX7ECNoQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Anonymous said...

Another possibility related to the linguists' thoughts, IE might have happened like that:
1. Pure IE develops in a CHG-related population.
2. Even with the female-biased admixture of CHG-related ancestry in Samara_Eneolithic and Yamnaya, mothers can change the way a language would end up developing, in contrast to the imposition of a language on an already grown-up population.
3. So, what EHG spoke? Something close to Proto-Uralic, derived from the ANE.
3.5 ANE>EHG = Finno-Ugric. ANE>Siberians = Samoyedic. Makes you think, the language of WHG could be there hiding in a substratum.
4. Late IE, Steppe IE, non-Anatolian IE would then be an Uralic+Pure IE mixture. You can even speculate that not only Pure IE girls were brought North, but also Proto-Kartvelian girls and whatever else. The close relationship IE have with some lamguages might not be from common origin, but from female-mediated intermixing and introduction.

vAsiSTha said...

@namedguest
Because Indo iranian has no FU loans, it would mean that IIr came from early IE as per your model.

Rob said...

@ Cpk

“Quantitative models almost always predicted Anatolian origin for PIE.”
Heggarty pointed that out, and despite what is claimed on the blogosphere, more and more linguists see that, aside from a (overly)vocal sector.
But that doesn’t mean >The< Anatolian model is correct, I don’t think it is

ryukendo kendow said...

Here are the issues as I see them associated with each 'out' we have atm:

If we wait for more genomes like the Hajji Firuz BA and I4243 (which OG has so kindly analysed for us), both of which we discovered by accident, and we treat them as representing the Anatolian branch of IE, why has Anatolian EHG ancestry not spread throughout Anatolia since the 5-7 centuries of Anatolian tenure in the region (post-Ebla inscriptions)?

Which movements from the Steppe can we associate with Anatolian (it cannot be later than 2500 BC and in fact must be much earlier, at least by several centuries). Did the movement, or the descendants of that cultural movement, reach the Syria-Turkey region by 2500 BC?

If we look for EHG instead among Kumtepe and Anatolia_Chl, why has it disappeared in Anatolia_BA? (Or does it actually remain, but is obscured by the references)?

If we think of IE as a "CHG language", why is there extremely male sex-biased admixture from EHG in Yamnaya and surrounds and no J clades in the early Steppe?

Aram said...

Supermord

Armi are not Arameans. Arameans were initially called Ahlamu. Only later they got a new name. Aram-Ahlamu. Later Ahlamu dropped and only Aram remained.
It is possible that the moment when they got the new name Aram is the moment when they integrated an R1b rich group into their community.

Cpk said...

@Rob

-Right now, no Steppe found in Anatolia until Iron Age
-Non-Elite (can't be conquerors) Indo Europeans found in Northern Syria at 2500 bc (the area where later Luwians lived)

What are the counter arguments?

Rob said...

@ CPk
Sorry I don’t understand the Q
Counter argument to what ?

Shaikorth said...

Some nMonte modeling on Botais, using the same sources West_Siberia_N was modeled with in qpAdm by Reich team (AG3, EHG, Han) and adding farmers because they're geographically more southern than WSHG and Dali_EBA had that kind of mixture. It looks like Botai is more like WSHG than Dali_EBA, and also provided the strongest ANE-related admixture signal in Narasimhan et al. in the single test it was included as a source.

Botai:BOT2016 (Female, mtDNA Z1a)

AfontovaGora3 76.80
Han 15.25
EHG 7.95
Barcin_N 0.00
Abdul_Hosein 0.00

Botai:BOT15 (Y-DNA N, mtDNA R1b1)

AfontovaGora3 70.7
EHG 15.6
Han 12.4
Abdul_Hosein 1.4
Barcin_N 0.0

Highest EHG of the bunch which makes him the most similar to WSHG's of the forest zone. Not sure if the Iran-related admixture is noise or not, dating is not much more recent than that of the other two.

Botai:BOT14 (Y-DNA R1b, MtDNA K1b2)

AfontovaGora3 84.2
Han 15.8
EHG 0.0
Barcin_N 0.0
Abdul_Hosein 0.0
This guy is interesting, he differs from West Siberia_N, Dali_EBA and the other Botais in that he's even more extremely ANE, there is seemingly no European HG admixture at all and no farmer despite K1b2 mtDNA.

Alberto said...

A quick look at the new (and old, for comparison) Anatolian samples. Sheet1 without EBA sources, Sheet2 adding Yamnaya and Armenia_EBA):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SWEhuykZsnX6aRw89GfRTGoIKKIQluvfaq52V4691Ws/edit?usp=sharing

The IA sample requires a lot of Scythian input (mostly Scythan_East), so never mind about the poor model.

Matt said...

@Davidski, thanks.

First plotting samples together using only ancients: https://imgur.com/a/1OYUKJk

The new samples are individual, ancients are averages.

(I did as many PC crossplots as I could be bothered to, would advise worth looking at other dimension in PAST as well).

More limited plots using moderns and ancients: https://imgur.com/a/FuOJbVg

From the perspective of these dimensions, the early Baikal HG and East Asian Xiongnu are relatively "boring".

The EA Xiongnu samples are about 2/3 close to present day Han_N and 1/3 close to Xibo/Mongola (DA39). That's interesting in that it hints that early pastoralist confederations in East Asian were probably more Han-like at this time, and became more Mongola like at this time.

But they're not really outside modern variation. Albeit we'll have to check out pre-Xiongnu samples from North China and those from sedentary civilization as a cross check.

This makes pretty good sense as we are pretty close to present day by this point, and it would be hard to see as much turnover in a dense region (unlike thinly populated, ecologically mutable Central Asia which never encompassed as much world population).

The Baikal HG also don't hugely seem to be more or less East Eurasian than present day people from the same region.

When we look at them from the PC11 that splits Japan, Han_NChina and Korean on one end from Nganasan and Austronesian on the other, they do seem to have a position parallel to Ulchi, at the mid, and distinct from Mongols who load heavily on the Japan, Han_NChina and Korea end.

This can combine with a split tendency to be more ANE than the Ulchi today (while being less ANE than the LNBA who followed them) to give a slightly unique position that doesn't overlap any present day population on 2x11.

It'll be nice to cross check this with Fst scores and population nucleotide diversity at some point, to see how diverse these populations were compared with present day East Asians.

If for the Baikal HG in particular, they're less diverse, there's some diversity enriching process and structure that we're missing in G25, but if they're about the same, then there just was not so much population turnover.

Cpk said...

@Rob

Currently, it looks almost impossible that PIE came to Northern Syria from Pontic-Caspian. Reich & Krause weren't messing with us.

EastPole said...

Glottochronology is pseudoscience, there is no doubt about it. So all those dates for language splits are pure speculations and are not reliable. We should not treat them seriously.
But we have a new tool which can help in proper dating of languages separation i.e. genetics. It is especially useful where genetic markers and languages correlate.
Balto-Slavic languages correlate well with R1a-Z283 and Indo-Iranian with R1a-Z93. The split of PIE into Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian can be thus related to the split of R1a-Z645 into R1a-Z283 and R1a-Z93 which is around 3000 BC.
So thousands of similar words in Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian must be at least 5000 years old and many of them possibly much older.
3000 BC is the time when most likely proto-Slavic originated according to Oleg Trubachyov who stresses uninterrupted origin of Slavic (which excludes mixing and development outside PIE homeland):

“Currently, there is an objective tendency to deepen the dating of ancient Indo-European dialects. This also applies to Slavonic as one of the Indo-European dialects. However, the question now is not that the history of Slavonic may be measured by the scale of the II to III millenniums B.C. but that we can hardly date the ‘emergence’ or ‘separation’ of proto-Slavonic or proto-Slavonic dialects from Indo-European dialects because of the proper uninterrupted Indo-European origin of Slavonic.
The latter belief is in line with the Meillet’s indication that Slavic is an Indo-European language of archaic type, vocabulary and grammar of which has not experienced shocks in contrast to, for example, the Greek (vocabulary)”

Trubačёv, O. N. 2003. Ėtnogenez i kul’tura drevnejščix slavjan: Lingvističeskie issledovanija.
Moskva: “Nauka”.

4500-3500 BC Sredny Stog II Dereivka culture seems to be now the best candidate for PIE homeland.
The IE religion and poetry too were born there which explains many similarities in Vedic, Greek and Slavic traditions.
Hittite language and religion are very hybridized and cannot be considered as pure IE and they are also much later.

I believe that similar cultures and similar religions result from the use of similar intoxicants. In case of Balto-Slavs, and early Greek and Indo-Iranians before their migrations south, it was alcohol i.e. soma/haoma was humulus/hops.

https://s17.postimg.cc/j3auttc3z/screenshot_389.png

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00334-018-0678-7

Aram said...

Mikkel Nortoft

That sample in Bulgaria MLBA has much more chances to be related to Thracians than to anybody else.
About Armenians. Many things depend from what culture is the Proto Greek. Is it from Yamna/Catacomb level. Or from Sintashta/MCWC level.
As I said earlier Armenia has witnessed two migrations from this two levels.
And Balkanic like onomastic was alrwady present in Hayassa. 1400bc.(Jahukyan).

Anonymous said...

@Alberto

It's very small, but one Anatlion_EBA (MA2212) has 1,8 % Ukraine_Eneolithic and one Anatolian_MLBA (MA2203) has 4.3%.

Can we call that a trace of EHG?

@David

The D-stat in the paper that refutes EHG in the BA samples lumps them all together. But what if one of the individual samples actually has a whiff of EHG?

@All

Guus Kroonen paper confirms EHG in Maykop!

Samuel Andrews said...

@Saikorth,

"there is seemingly no European HG admixture at all and no farmer despite K1b2 mtDNA"

Iron Gate results indicate K1 is a non-Basal affected haplogroup. It's an 'HG haplogroup'. Also, all modern K1b2 belongs to two young subclades that almost definitely derive only from STeppe folk. Those subclades have been found in Yamnaya and Corded Ware. Earlier K1b2* had been found in Narva. Already, K1b2 was linked to non-Near Eastern and ANE-rich eastern Europeanas so it is not a huge suprise to see it in a super ANE-rich person in western Asia.

Aram said...

EHG in Maykop. Well not surprising if we remember that Armenia CHL has a lot of northern shift. I think Leyla Tepe culture will also have high level of EHG/Ukr_Neo. Higher than Armenia Chl.

@All

Here is a good read about Anatolian loanwords in Armenian. Hrahc Martirosyan.
He also discuss Dragon Stone (Stellaes ) theory and a possible presence of at last two Armenian ( Hayassan ) words in Hittite texts.

https://iling.spb.ru/confs/armenian_2015/slides/Hrach_Martirosyan_ALaC2015.pdf

Anthro Survey said...

I gotta say: the East Balkan scenario involving EEF-rich vectors is really looking good in terms of its ability to explain Anatolian languages.

The way things look, South Caucasus is taken to be the dominant vector for spread of Iran/CHG ancestry into Anatolia. Starting from about 4500BC, the region experienced migrations bearing ANF-like and Iran_N ancestry from, presumably, northern Mesopotamia. It's hard to see these migrants as being IE(Hurro-Urartian is more like it), and harder yet to see them being assimilated linguistically given their apparent numbers and sophistication.

The only way IE can be a CHG language is if we somehow envision a Maykop expansion into Anatolia. Of course, in this case, Maykop is assumed to be relatively rich in LOCAL CHG (i.e.not as affected by the stream of southern migrants, at least compared to contemporary South Caucasians) and poor in EHG(or a serial dilution scenario to account for its dearth in Anatolia_BA). Then again, though, to what would we attribute the north Caucasian languages which, to my knowledge, aren't considered to be para-IE?

Can EHGs be the culprit? Well, it would be inconsistent for me to favor this if a Balkan route is envisioned. Its spread into Anatolia would almost certainly require EEF-admixed mediators in the Balkans and, again, it's hard to see EEFs being assimilated by EHGs for the same reasons given in the first paragraph. Of course, that isn't to say there weren't *some* individuals shifted towards the Varna outlier among putative Balkan PIE communities. After all, there's the theorized interaction area connecting pre-Repin, south Ukraine and eastern Danube cultural zones. Again, though, it's hard to see them predominating. Throw in the serial dilution factor, and we really wouldn't expect to see much of it in neither Hittite nor Luwian speakers.

The implications of the Balkan hypothesis are interesting since it implies para-IE speech in neighboring contemporary Balkan and Danubian Neolithic groups.

Anthro Survey said...

@Aram and Epoch

Since this fact pertains to what I've written above, roughly how much EHG? Do we know?

Anonymous said...

@Alberto

MA2203, the one with 7.9% Yamnaya_Samara is from the Old Hittite layer, right after the "Assyrian Colony" time.

Anonymous said...

@Anthro

It's Alberto's sheet. It has 7.9% Yamnaya.

Rob said...

That steppe-admixed Iron Age individual is fascinating, not the least it dispels myths that Anatolia is 'too dense' to show steppe admixture , if it occurred. And from a lucky one of one samples.

Rob said...

@ Sam

"Iron Gate results indicate K1 is a non-Basal affected haplogroup. It's an 'HG haplogroup'"

Iron Gates do have some Basal shift on D-stats compared to other hunter-gatherers, including 'pristine' WHGs.
Also, the K1 in Narva occurs after the arrival of Neolithic in Europe as a whole. If we also look at U6, and distant U4 lineages (central Eurasian varieties), it means that U isn't simply a non-basal lineage, although it is not from the Ur-Basal Eurasians of ? north Africa

Rob said...

@ cpk
Yep I know Krause ;)
I remain open minded . I think more data from Myceneans will really help mold are more concrete proposal

Anthro Survey said...

@Epoch

I'm asking about EHG in Maykop.

Anonymous said...

@Anthro

Ah! It's from the linguistical paper (Highly recommended) by Guus Kroonen that accompanies the paper. The Maykop paper is mentined as "in prep" but Kroonen does state that the Anatolian samples contain no clear EHG signal contrary to Yamnaya and Maykop.

@Cpk and Rob

I think the Syrian tablets refer to Anatolians from the Anatolian state of Armi

Anonymous said...

@Anthro

https://zenodo.org/record/1240524#.WvSm0ogvw2x

It is quite interesting that the Damgaard paper doesn't go for an Iranian or Trans-Caucasian homeland for Early PIE. They simply state that the Anatolian languages weren't spread by massive migrations.

Anonymous said...

@Aram

What the name of the Aramaeans from the sky or what? No, the so-called Semitic people, and then to the extent of its spread, this title became applicable to related tribes when the Aramaeans began to spread after the Millennium. The synchronous sources were Ahlamu, Ahlamu-Arameans and separately Arameans.

@ryukendo kendow

Do not exaggerate, there is no special similarity to the Indo-European names, this is only a hypothesis of the authors that this a dozen names there is greatly distorted Anatolian. They could belong to any language and people, in them there is no Indo-European or Anatolian signs of, but there is simply interpretation that this writing there is distortion Anatolian formants.

And in general, it is not clear what is 70 of the kings of the coalition in which included Armanum (Armi). Maybe these 70 kings included the kings of Troy, in which the Indo-European elite were most likely already at that time.

Anthro Survey said...

@Epoch

Ah, cool, thanks for clearing that up!
To be honest, I'm not going for a homeland there, either. I was a bit disappointed not to see them address east Balkan/south Ukranian phenomena like Suvorovo, Novodanilovka and Cernavoda.

Anthro Survey said...

Addendum to what I've written about the Balkan scenario above---

People are going to have an issue given the prevalence of R1a and R1b in putative LPIE groups, but it's really not such a deal-breaker. Let's consider the para/proto-Semites whom consensus associates with the Harifian horizon. It's hard to see anything but E1b and maybe T in Harifians, yet J1 is strongly associated with Semitic groups today, be they Kohanim or Saudis. Reduction in haplogroup diversity could have occurred in a similar manner with LPIE.

Anthro Survey said...

@Seinundzeit

On a somewhat lighter note, we got pretty darn spatio-temporally close to Biruni and Khwarizmi with Zarafshan_IA this time. lol Relatively safe to say they weren't far removed from him, barring major late Sassanian migrations from the two Iraks or Hepthalitic and Turkic influence.

Archaelog said...

@ryukendow Now that L51 (given as P312, although that is unlikely) is rumored to have been found from an early steppe sample dated to 4500 - 4000 BCE, I think that renders the scenario you propose even more likely.

If there was an early differentiation of R1b-M269 on the steppe, then some of those subclades could indeed have migrated through the Caucasus, bringing "steppe ancestry" and a proto-Anatolian dialect. But over the millennia, as they migrated west, they mixed with local CHG groups, so that the EHG got thoroughly bred out of them.

Archaelog said...

@David Could you try modelling these "Hittites" as steppe-deficient CA/ EBA Balkan samples + CHG ?

EastPole said...

@Anthro Survey


“The only way IE can be a CHG language is…”


This discussion is becoming weird. It is going the wrong way.
CHG was not PIE because there are plenty of CHG rich populations with no trace of IE.
EHG was not PIE because there are plenty of EHG rich population with no trace of IE.
Any mixes of CHG and EHG, including so called Yamnaya component defined as approximately 50/50 CHG/EHG, were not PIE because there are plenty of such mixes with no trace of IE. Yes, there is absolutely no evidence that Yamnaya component was IE.

You cannot find PIE by looking at genetic components.
PIE originated on small territory, much smaller than the areas where CHG, EHG and Yamnaya mixes occurred at that time.
The area has been estimated as not much greater then 500 000 km2.
It was the area where CHG, EHG, EEF and WHG components mixed, but not all members of the PIE population had to have the same autosomal profile. You should also look at Y-DNA and mtDNA.

How to find PIE?
Let’s start from the proper definition of IE as languages and cultures common to Europe and India.
We should answer some questions then.
Which populations in Europe and India are the most closely related by languages and cultures?
What are the genetic links between them: autosomal, Y-DNA and mtDNA?
What was the direction of genetic, linguistic and cultural influences? From where to where and when?
Only after determining the IE source population for India and Europe you can start looking for PIE. Was that IE source population PIE or did PIE come from somewhere else? Then look for it but stop talking nonsense about IE CHG, EHG or Yamnaya components for which we have absolutely no evidence that they were IE.

Nirjhar007 said...

Told ya long ago , PIE didn't originate in steppe....

Rob said...

@ EPoch

"It is quite interesting that the Damgaard paper doesn't go for an Iranian or Trans-Caucasian homeland for Early PIE. They simply state that the Anatolian languages weren't spread by massive migrations."

That scenario isn;t likely. There were *massive* changes in Anatolia.
Lets compare the Bronze Age to Neolithic

eg Anatolia MLBA MA220
Armenia EBA 25%
Haji Firuz 32%
Barcin 28%/ Lvant 2%

We have significant admixture of 3 putative zones- enough to cater for various ethnies, but not necessarily in any simple linear connection.

Cpk said...

Looks like you need around 10% - 15% genetic contribution to change the culture in Anatolia. (Occurred two times in history: Iron Age IEs & Turkic people)

vAsiSTha said...

@eastpole

i agree. a fresh look is required.

Rob said...

@ Shaikorth
With using WSHG, Botai are basically ~ 90% it, even the # 14. The rest is Baikal Meso-Neo.

Botai:BOT14
West_Siberia_N 86 %
UstIdaLN:DA342 11.95 %
Sarazm_Eneolithic 2.05

_______________

It's amazing Yamnaya just skipped over Botai and continued to Afansievo. Did they smell bad ?

Shaikorth said...

@Rob
Try including both WSHG and AG3, Botai14 still gets over 25% AG3 because it's more ANE and less EHG than WSHG.

I figure that both Dali_EBA and Botai weren't skipped but displaced after EBA, if Yamnaya didn't do it someone else did soon after. The extra ANE MLBA outliers like Oy_Dzhaylau_o1 are better modeled with WSHG so pre-Yamnaya steppe looks like a genetic dead end.

Shaikorth said...

Actually almost 35% AG3 in Botai14 if BHG is used instead of Han
Botai:BOT14

West_Siberia_N 52.50
AfontovaGora3 34.55
ShamankaEN:DA249 12.50
Barcin_N 0.45
EHG 0.00
Abdul_Hosein 0.00

Rob said...

@ Shaikorth

Ah yep

Botai:BOT14
West_Siberia_N 52.35 %
AfontovaGora3 30.7 %
UstIdaLN:DA342 14.5 %
Dai 1.25 %
d.2.6%



"I figure that both Dali_EBA and Botai weren't skipped but displaced after EBA, if Yamnaya didn't do it someone else did soon "

Yes but Afansievo is contemporary to the latter phase of Botai. So it co-existed at the same time as Botai without admixture from it. Dali is somewhat later (2700 BC). Then the two were overwhelmed during the MBA phase.

Anonymous said...

@Shaikorth @all

Without an estimation of probability (P-values), these estimates of percent contributions of each sample are little. If there is not even a range of errors of each percent, it is impossible to understand the reliability of the model even approximately.
All models are suboptimal, especially if they are approximate, which is expressed in the distance.

Ariel said...

[1] "distance%=2.4177 / distance=0.024177"
Anatolia_MLBA:MA2203
"Barcin_N" 66.6
"Ganj_Dareh_N" 21.05
"Yamnaya_Samara" 7.3
"CHG" 2.1
"Natufian" 2
"Levant_N" 0.95

Aram said...

Ok then. Just to see an alternative. Is there any theory proposing West Asian origin of Greeks? A theory that was proposed before genetic era but not related to Renfrew's IE farmers.


postneo said...

Semitic pharyngeals are the best candidate for attested Anatolian laryngeals ancestral to IE. They could have caused multiple vowel coloring reflexes in the daughter languages

postneo said...

They date Mitanni Aryan speakers at 1800 bc in Syria bassd on a single letter. The anatolian names at 2500 bc is more solid

Shaikorth said...

@All
The accuracy of nMonte models is (or should be) checked against models on the papers where bias and deviation are listed. If a nMonte fit gets too different it is probably better to drop it. In the case of Botai nMonte duplicate fits look like those in the paper. Fig 4 in the paper models Botai as basically 77% Sidelkino(bootstrap estimation for bias +3, standard deviation +-3) 23% Shamanka(+2,+-1).
With the scaled sheet nMonte fit is well within those parameters.

"distance%=12.1525 / distance=0.121525"

Botai:BOT2016

Sidelkino:Sidelkino 76.7
ShamankaEN:DA249 23.3

The distance is bad (gets much better with AG3 included) but the paper notes Fig 4 tree's uncertainty is also likely underestimated due to simplified tree model etc.
In this case more complex nMonte fits with Afontova Gora provide much better distances and considering Narasimhan et al. it's safe to say significant amounts of AG3 ancestry is what the researchers would get if they tried a more complex model for Botai using whatever method they pick.

Dmytro said...

"They date Mitanni Aryan speakers at 1800 bc in Syria bassd on a single letter. The anatolian names at 2500 bc is more solid"

Unfortunately, not solid enough. What I actually find more interesting here is something else. Unless I am mistaken the Anatolian languages have no archaic IE word for "horse". Hittite has a kind of descriptive multi term expression (forgot the specifics), Luwian has what must be a borrowing from a Satem IE language (closer to "asv-" than to "ekw-". Tocharian we know to have the Centum word ("Yakwe"). Now the horse was a pretty important animal to the PIE's (remember those horsehead grave symbols) already in the 5th millennium BCE if not even earlier. So if the Anatolian IE came from the "steppe area" (I continue to think this is the best hypothesis) how does one explain this horse problem unless one also assumes a very early transplantation? Everything is still open here I think. And the genetic evidence is still far too meager.

Anonymous said...

@postneo said...
"They date Mitanni Aryan speakers at 1800 bc in Syria bassd on a single letter. The anatolian names at 2500 bc is more solid"

No, Mitanni names are well recorded around 1600 BC, and do not allow for a different interpretation. While "anatolian names at 2500 bc" is a pure interpretation, they do not correspond to real Hitto-Luwian languages, that is, they are pure hypothesis only.

Karl_K said...

No matter how early Anatolian names or words are found, we know that Anatolian wasn't PIE itself, but already was split from the rest of the IE language(s).

So, if a common ancestry link is never found between Anatolian and Yamnaya, then you can not say absolutely what the genetic makeup of the PIE speakers was.

However, from the vocabulary of IE, you may be able to determine more likely locations where the PIE speakers lived. Perhaps.

Any evidence of one location over another would lend support, but not proof, that the people living in that location at the right time were the PIE population.

In either case, you would then need to explain how the language spread without a genetic shift to the other earliest known population.

Atriðr said...

Most interesting comments section in a long time -> thinking outside the box.

@Rob @RK
Maybe it’s time to revisit some of the concepts espoused by Johanna Nichols, without necessarily taking all conclusions at face value.

Yep, it's always been about Johanna Nichols. I hope she gets her rightfully earned due. She had it right almost 3 decades ago - as right as it could get - until groupthink thought otherwise and muffled her.

postneo said...

@dmytro
"Now the horse was a pretty important animal to the PIE's (remember those horsehead grave symbols) already in the 5th millennium BCE if not even earlier"

I don't know about it ..Where is this?

Atriðr said...

@EastPole
Which populations in Europe and India are the most closely related by languages and cultures?

Sanskrit and Balto-Slavic very closely related, no question about this. North branch.

Al Bundy said...

Yea she wrote some weird almost apology for her work and said PIE is on the western steppe.She was on the right track, not sure when she said all my work is basically wrong.

Al Bundy said...

@Atrior Mycenean being close to PIE, except some local terminology, means Greek very well could have come from the PIE homeland directly.We're also seeing as you predicted a big role for J2.

Atriðr said...

@Al Bundy

Yea she wrote some weird almost apology for her work and said PIE is on the western steppe.She was on the right track, not sure when she said all my work is basically wrong.

Exactly. Her retraction was painful to read. Basically she was soft-bullied into submission. There is still hope though, finally.

Mycenean being close to PIE, except some local terminology, means Greek very well could have come from the PIE homeland directly.We're also seeing as you predicted a big role for J2.

Yes, you're right. Still some big mysteries to resolve, but at least now it is clear what I've been saying about J2.

Al Bundy said...

Where are you leaning now concerning your 3 not mutually exclusive options, R1B not in the PIE community?

Dmytro said...

"I don't know about it ..Where is this?" (Postneo)

The horsehead mace as a typical symbol of "steppe power" is mentioned in a number of contexts (some of the best pictures you can find in Anthony (2007) p. 235. They are from the Suvorovo-Danilovka component of Sredny Stog (5th millennium BCE). But if the PIE "horse" word was different in the Anatolian languages (or a late borrowing as in Luwian), it seems difficult to postulate their arrival from the steppe area as late as currently mainstreamed. Possibly much earlier. In any case I think every possibility remains technically open, though the OA hypothesis is as weak as OIT IMHO.

Atriðr said...

Where are you leaning now concerning your 3 not mutually exclusive options, R1B not in the PIE community?

R1b tricky. I'm mostly of the stance that R1b is not original to the IE/PIE movements, but I wouldn't say that it's not integral. Cultures absorb each other and become each other. However - there is one zone that I think can harmonize R1b's position with R1a; have it included with original movements, but I'll wait for more sampling for that scenario.

One thing though is that these groups (during Mesolithic and earlier) might, and likely were, floating/moving all around, before any culture or language was in place.

Al Bundy said...

Do you see loads of R1A in Mycenean shaft graves? I don't.

Atriðr said...

Do you see loads of R1A in Mycenean shaft graves? I don't.
I don't either. But who knows. Indo-Europeans operate as confederated clans, which is why the culture allows for non-exclusive multiple Y-haplos within a culture... there would be a bit more Steppe if there would be R1a, hence why I think it's unlikely.

Al Bundy said...

Makes sense, Greek not from the steppe seems likelier to me as well.

Anonymous said...

Just to observe: if there really was a low-level Indo-Hittite population in the middle east long before the steppe expansions, it greatly increases the chances that Indo-Hittite did not originate on the steppe, but in the middle-east - or the environs of the Caucasus.

If we imagine a language group in the area of Georgia and Armenia, that could easily send a few migrants into cities in the Semitic sphere. And settlers crossing the caucasus could bring their language into a new fusional culture on the steppe, which could then be the source of the Late PIE expansions.


I think the biggest problem with this idea is the reliance on coincidence. We know that two branches of Indo-Hittite became dominant in different areas: in Anatolia and in... well, everywhere else. It's easy to explain the Late PIE dominance as a result of population explosion and technological advances (particularly the use of horses). But if the Anatolian branch wasn't from the steppe, then they can't share the same explanation: so a) how did Anatolian go from low-status dispersion to total dominance of Anatolia (and not just one Hittite empire, but multiple languages and polities), and b) so it's just a total coincidence that the dominant family in Anatolia happened to be related to the dominant family elsewhere?

However, that doesn't mean it didn't happen...

Anonymous said...

@Dmytro

"Luwian has what must be a borrowing from a Satem IE language (closer to "asv-" than to "ekw-""

No, it is phonetic law PIE. K'w > luw. suw. cmp. luw. suwan "dog", latin. canis. Etc.
Hittitic also.

Therefore, Hittitic-Luwian horse is not borrowing from a Satem IE language.

postneo said...

@dmytro
thanks the horse head mace is attested with no language. How do we even know that horses were important in IE at this early date? conventional dating of vedic and Avestan are too late to back infer anything for these objects.

TruthPrevails said...

I understand people here are talking about genetics and archaeology.

Since some folks mentioned Johanna Nichols, here is one well argued linguistic OIT case which considers all isoglosses.

Can anyone help critique it?

http://ancientvoice.wdfiles.com/local--files/article%3Arigveda-and-avesta-the-final-evidence/The%20Out%20of%20India%20Theory%203%20-%20The%20Linguistic%20Case.pdf

mzp1 said...

Talegeris work is a bit loony. He just takes European languages and puts them in India. There is nothing much there to discuss.

I am an OITist. Talegeris work is interesting where he puts the Indo Iranian homeland in South Asia and finds common names between Avestan and Vedic.

Everything else is really bad i.e. Druhyus = Druids lol and also he comes across as Hindutva by placing the origin East of the Punjab instead of in Sapta Sindhawa proper.

Ric Hern said...

Did Hittites make use of Mercenaries ?

TruthPrevails said...

you should read the presentation. I dont see anywhere druyhus = druids?

a) the Druhyu (ancestors of the Anatolian, Tocharian, Italic, Celtic, Germanic,
Baltic and Slavic dialects) were settled in Afghanistan,
 b) the Anu (ancestors of the Albanian, Greek, Armenian and Iranian dialects)
were settled in the Sapta Sindhu area or present day northern Pakistan, and
 c) the Puru (the Vedic Indo‐Aryans) were settled in and around Haryana.

mzp1 said...

@truth prevails,

Davidski wants this to be a quality thread so I think I will not say more on this theory.

Anonymous said...

@TruthPrevails

Johanna Nichols does not absolutely no linguistic evidence of their opinion, only a finger in the sky draws patterns and claims that other views are wrong. There is nothing to discuss, because it lacks evidence. No one will waste their time on such an empty paper describing imaginary unsubstantiated schemes.

Ric Hern said...

There were non-domesticated horses in Southwestern Asia before domesticated horses arrived so maybe the Hittites adopted a Hattic word used for horses ? Maybe the Hattic people found the pronunciation of some Indo-European words difficult ?

TruthPrevails said...

We dont need to discuss it, just read it.

If you are an OIT'ist it will give you a good hold on the linguistic side of the argument.

Because all linguistic cases for a homeland only have to consider the isoglosess.

Archaeology comes next to prove the route and then Genetics to confirm the mode elite or diffusion.

Atriðr said...

@supernord
Johanna Nichols does not absolutely no linguistic evidence of their opinion, only a finger in the sky draws patterns and claims that other views are wrong. There is nothing to discuss, because it lacks evidence. No one will waste their time on such an empty paper describing imaginary unsubstantiated schemes.

You don't know what you are talking about.
She's familiar with Turkic, Caucasian, and Indo-European languages and linguistics. No small feat. But rant on, if you must.

Karl_K said...

From the Science Commentary

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/greeks-really-do-have-near-mythical-origins-ancient-dna-reveals

"
Archaeologist Colin Renfrew of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom says he and others now have hope for getting DNA from groups such as the mysterious Hittites who came to ancient Anatolia sometime before 2000 B.C.E. and who may have been the source of Caucasian ancestry in Mycenaeans and early Indo-European languages in the region.
"

Is there any genetic reason to think that this would be the case?

Anonymous said...

Ric Hern said...
"so maybe the Hittites adopted a Hattic word used for horses ?"

No.

Cpk said...

Latest Reich work makes it clear that OIT is incorrect. Yamnaya related secondary/tertiary expansions brought IE to Europe and India. Now the question is where the original PIEs lived which is very likely somewhere around Eastern Anatolia.

mzp1 said...

@CPK,

Reichs study:

AIT+ : No R1A or Steppe DNA in very few Indus Periphary samples.
AIT- : No correct R1A in Andronovo (~100 samples)
AIT- : No BMAC penetration by Andronovo

Ric Hern said...

@ Cpk

The problem is that there were any early Southward push of Steppe people into the Northern Caucasus as can be seen within the Cultural remains in fortresses of that area. This was before Maykop came into being...

Dmytro said...

supernord said...

I think you're wrong on both counts as to the "horse" word in Hittite and Luwian.

And as for this: "How do we even know that horses were important in IE at this early date?"

The less said the better. Sapienti sat.

vAsiSTha said...

atrior
J2a is seen in georgia, anatolia, east europe and karelia very early right?

You think that early movement has anything to do with IE? Could the karelia J2a explain the IIr loanwords in FU?

Anonymous said...

@Cpk said...
"Now the question is where the original PIEs lived which is very likely somewhere around Eastern Anatolia."

The probability of this is zero practically.

Dmytro said...
"I think you're wrong on both counts as to the "horse" word in Hittite and Luwian"


You think wrongly, because it is written on the topic in which you know nothing. Even the Hittite-Luwian form of the word horse you DoesN't know.
I wrote what I know for sure, direct information from linguists-hittitologists.
I only write what I know and nothing more.

Anonymous said...

@Dmytro

I saw different interpretations of the zoomorphic scepters. Boar, for instance. Although some are clearly horse heads, other look like bear heads. Some are highly stylised. A zoomorphic scepter was found in the Leyla-Tepe Kurgans as well, and another one in a Kurgan in NW Iran.

Couldn't that be the route Anatolian took?

Alberto said...

@epoch2013

Yes, that Anatolia_MLBA:MA2206 sample has some steppe admixture. Hurray! (Yes, everyone looking for confirmation can find it, right?).

I don't remember if you were around 3.5 years ago when I was arguing that if Yamnaya was IE (something strictly hypothetical), the homeland of the PIE language could not be in the steppe because just at the time of its presumed genesis the steppe saw a huge influx of an "Armenian-like" population from outside the steppe that had some 50% genetic impact and a bigger cultural one.

But no, that didn't matter. It was just that EHG males were taking Caucasus wives. And Y-DNA was what really mattered for language transmission and many other excuses.

So pardon me for finding the comments in the last several months amusing from the very same (and related) people.

Anonymous said...

mzp1 said...
"
@CPK,

Reichs study:

AIT+ : No R1A or Steppe DNA in very few Indus Periphary samples.
AIT- : No correct R1A in Andronovo (~100 samples)
AIT- : No BMAC penetration by Andronovo
"

No, correction fix:

AIT+ : No R1a or Steppe DNA in very few Indus Periphary samples.
AIT+ : Only correct R1a in Andronovo (~100 samples)
AIT+ : No BMAC penetration by Andronovo

Anonymous said...

@Alberto

You sound like you have an axe to grind. I don't even remotely care about that.

"Yes, everyone looking for confirmation can find it, right?"

It's not that, it's that the paper lumped them all together and stated there is no EHG in Hittites. Well, when taking the samples apart apparently there is some. That is quite a surprise and quite relevant as well.

Al Bundy said...

@Alberto Yup, south of the steppe moves in and IE moves out.But before that a spread directly through Anatolia.

Dmytro said...

"Couldn't that be the route Anatolian took?" (epoch 2013)

Don't see why not. I feel pretty sure that it cam from the north ultimately. I don't know when. I doubt it could be very late because of the "horse name" issue. And I think the possibility of IE being born in Anatolia is less than infinitesimal at this time of research. I await a lot more genetic information inflow.

Atriðr said...

@Kulkarni

You think that early movement has anything to do with IE? Could the karelia J2a explain the IIr loanwords in FU?

Great question. To be honest, don't want to say too much, but without being overly reticent, IIr in FU imo comes from north vector. And this because, the nature of the loan words.

Vara said...

@Aram

"Ok then. Just to see an alternative. Is there any theory proposing West Asian origin of Greeks? A theory that was proposed before genetic era but not related to Renfrew's IE farmers."

There is Greco-Armeno-Aryan from the South Caucasus.

@all

I'm not sure why you guys are taking superdork seriously. Dude is a big buffoon he thinks Uzboy is the Sarasvati that dried up 1500BCE.

Anonymous said...

@Alberto

Sorry, the D-stat is the paper made clear there was no *uptick* of steppe ancestry in MLBA samples when compared to EBA samples.

Seinundzeit said...

@Anthro Survey,

"On a somewhat lighter note, we got pretty darn spatio-temporally close to Biruni and Khwarizmi with Zarafshan_IA this time."

Lol, very true.

Speaking of which, I'm seeing some beautiful patterns with this data; I'll make sure to post the output tonight.

Jaydeep said...

Since everyone is wondering how the Anatolian IE got to Anatolia, let me also add my few observations on this subject -

As per the paper, a test of the type

D(Iran_N,Mbuti;Anatolian_EBA,Anatolian_N) fails to show any Iran_N admixture into Anatolian_EBA relative to Anatolian_N. However, as per the Lazaridis et al 2016 study, Anatolian_Chl can be modelled as admixed with Iran_Chl. Isn't this a little contradictory ?

Hpw different is Anatolian_Chl from Anatolian_EBA ? I am presuming not very much. So if by the Chalcolithic you already had Iran_Chl type admixture in Anatolia, it would mean that relative to the Neolithic, the Chalcolithic, EBA & later populations of Anatolia are closer to Iran_N. Iran_Chl did have significant Iran_N ancestry after all.

--------------------

The paper also argues that there is no EHG admixture in Anatolian_MLBA relative to Anatolian_EBA. But it does not show whether there is increased EHG affinity in Anatolia between the Neolithic & the EBA period. Why leave this question unanswered ?

Now if we were to look at the 1st PCA, Figure 2A, the Anatolian_EBA/MLBA cluster together and are on a cline from Anatolian_N towards EHG. So it looks like there is an increase in affinity towards EHG relative to Anatolian_N. However the 2nd PCA does not seem to support it.

What is also observed from both the PCAs is that Anatolian_EBA/MLBA cluster is intermediate between Anatolian_N & Namazga_CA. The admixture (fig 3) shows the EHG component in Anatolian_Chl/EBA/MLBA in very trace amount but it also shows a sliver of light pink component which is maximised in South Asians. Namazga_CA has ydna J2a1 while Anatolian_EBA has J2a while Anatolian_MLBA has J2a1.

So is it possible to model Anatolian_CA or Anatolian_EBA as admixed between Anatolian_N & Namazga_CA ? Maybe the Anatolian languages had come from Central Asia leaving its cousin the Tocharian behind.

PF said...

The new Willerslev et al paper asserts that Anatolia_BA is pretty much identical to Anatolia_Chl, and that both lack EHG. I'm not quite ready to step in the ring with the big boys on this one, but, as I wrote above, literally every single time I add EHG to Anatolia_Chl modeling in nMonte the fits improve significantly. This includes the recreated models from the original first farmers paper that proposed A_Chl = ~67% A_N + ~33% Iran_Chl. So *something* is going on. (I have no opinion on what this means archeologically or linguistically, I'm just commenting from a purely genetic POV).

Anonymous said...

@Vara You shameful ignoramus that lying, nothing to versed in anything. You know nothing, and you always shame buffoon. You do no believe anybody, because you believe it is impossible.



@Jaydeep

Increase Iran_N/CHG in the Anatolian samples is in good agreement with the Hattic language is a relative of the North Caucasian languages and Hurrit-Urartic languages.

PF said...

Thrilled to see G-M406 aDNA finally pop up! Wassup great-gramps. ;-D

Gotta say, given the present-day distribution beyond Turkey seems highly biased towards East Med coastal regions, it does give just a bit more credence to the whole "Luwians" = Sea Peoples spreading post Bronze Age collapse...

EastPole said...

"The study also shows that the spread of the Indo-Iranian languages to South Asia, with Hindi, Urdu and Persian as major modern offshoots, cannot result from the Yamnaya expansions. Rather, the Indo-Iranian languages spread with a later push of pastoralist groups from the South Ural Mountains during the Middle to Late Bronze Age.

Prior to entering South Asia, these groups, thought to have spoken an Indo-Iranian language, were impacted by groups with an ancestry typical of more western Eurasian populations. This suggests that the Indo-Iranian speakers did not split off from the Yamnaya population directly, but were more closely related to the Indo-European speakers that lived in Eastern Europe."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180509185446.htm

Ryukendo K said...

Excited to see all of you guy's work, but I'm gonna go into radio silence for quite a bit.

Gonna leave behind a few thoughts:
1) Some people are still not grasping the significance of the Ebla Anatolian traces. If its true that the Ebla Anatolians were really Anatolians (the discovery from Ebla, which the authors simply claim as "obviously Anatolian" without equivocation, will probably be published in a separate paper in a linguistics journal so people in the directly relevant fields can evaluate the claim objectively) then the endless search for "Royal Hittites" is not gonna amount to much. The reasoning behind the "Elite EHG" idea is that the Anatolians arrived recently prior to their attestation and the records from the states they ruled, and that a minority somewhat endogamous elite better preserves the Steppic signal, which did not have enough time to leak into the population at large. If it is the case that the Anatolians were in already at the Turkey-Syria border 5-7 centuries before their attestation in the Hitties, then a) the Anatolians do not originate in the Steppe "recently" and b) the "elite endogamy" hypothesis immediately falls flat because their first attestation is not in an elite role and c) there would have been more than enough time for the signal to leak into the general population, especially at this late stage when the Assyrians do not make any distinction between "Anatolian-speaking ruling classes" and 'Hattic natives", in fact they refer to the local populations by their political origin (e.g. this guy the Nesite, that guy from Kadesh) and show no awareness of an ethnic or even a social distinction between Anatolian speakers as a category (Luwians, Nes, Palaics etc) and others.

2) The Central Asian hypothesis is not tenable either because from the BMAC outliers, the WSHG and Botai, we see that the entirety of Central Asia, including Kelteminar in all probability, is extremely heavily WSHG and neither these Anatolian samples nor the Yamnaya themselves show any trace of this type of ancestry. In fact it looks very marginal, it looks like a substrate in some Eastern Uralics in Siberia and and as a minor contributor in some South Central Asians. So there is even more that is unexplained here. If WSHG in fact exists in Yamnaya or the Anatolians it is very subtle and the same kind of tests used to prove it might as well prove that a slice of EHG existed (in fact EHG is probably more likely just due to geography).

Ryukendo K said...


3) There are now so many samples from the Steppes in Damgaard et al and the other paper that the ADMIXTURE in Damgaard show separate components for Steppe MLBA (peaking in Sarmatian, well-represented in Tajiks, West Asian Turkics like Azeris and Turkmen and Uralics) and Steppe EMBA (well represented in Europeans). This makes me think that drift unique to different Steppic groups, e.g. maybe a Graeco-Armeno-Iranian group that unites Yamnaya_Bulgaria, Poltavka, Srubnaya and Sintashta, may become visible in the Global25, since drift unique to different subgroups on the steppe is already discerned by ADMIXTURE. If anyone wants to please, please explore this! There may even be a dimension that, when plotted, obviously distinguishes different Steppic groups from each other (like the EEF dimension that uniquely disitnguished "Cardial Neolithic" affinities in Western Europe from "Danubian Neolithic" affinities in the East and which shows that different aDNA samples from different periods in Europe waver from East to West depending on the type of EEF contribution they have). If its not in the lower 25 dimensions for Global25 we should go into higher dimensions to see if there is one, or look closely at the fst matrices instead.

This will be extremely helpful context for David's analyses of which Steppic groups contributed where.

Aside to Aram: I added Yamnaya_Bulgaria to the fits for Armenia_MLBA and its a much better proxy than anything else, may be relevant to your ideas about the "Mushki" and the role of Multi-Cordoned Ware in the Balkans.

Arza said...

@ Jaydeep

Re: PCA
Panel B does support it very well. Take a look at the position of CHG and Iran_N. This shift in 2 of 5 MLBA samples is perpendicular to the Anatolia_N - CHG line. In other words its Steppe_MLBA.

And indeed, when I run MA2203 against whole spreadsheet it "voluntarily" picks up 7-8% of Steppe_MLBA ancestry.

Re: ADMIXTURE
Best approximation of a source of the "steel" component is WHG or Stepe_MLBA.
Although entry "Mittani-style" is also possible, as the most "liked" sample is Oy_Dzhaylau_MLBA:I4791.

Re: D-stat
As epoch2013 already wrote - they've lumped everything together. Why they don't analyse aDNA sample by sample is for me incomprehensible. GAC, Hajj, CWC_Czech, Baltic_BA... in every paper they miss a ton of detail.

Also note the inverted order.

D(CHG,Mbuti;Anatolia_EBA,Anatolia_N) Z=3.95
source,Mbuti,admixed,source

D(EHG,Mbuti;Anatolia_EBA,Anatolia_MLBA) Z=-1.83
source,Mbuti,source,admixed

...that at a first glance, intentionally or not, gives the impression that with time we are moving even further away from EHG, when in fact it's the opposite.

Ryukendo K said...

@ Arza

Blessed post, affinities to EHG increases from N to EBA to MLBA.

Ppl should check this out to see if its wholly explained by indirect drift paths through CHG or Iran_Chl or if there is a direct drift path through EHG.

Anonymous said...

@ryukendo kendow

All that is known about Armi (Armanum) is that he did not enter in the area of Ebla, but was to the North of it. Moreover, between them was the area Simurum, the exact position of their unknown as unknown size area Armi(Armanum) and to what limits it extends.

For orientation map of region of Ebla
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/First_Eblaite_Empire.png

Rob said...

@ Aram
There is Nichols for a start (see link I provided for RK)
More fully is drews - he draws distinct similarities between the swords and weapons in Mycenean graves (which he thinks arrived c 2200 bC) to Armenian area, eg Trialeti culture. Funnily enough , Armenia EBA is the largest exogenous component in Myceneans

Rob said...


@ PF
Your question ha already been answered - from Armenia Chalcolithic. Not rocket science

Rob said...

@ Arza

It is only one MLBA Anatolian which has increased stepe affinities, not the entire period- the rest of MLBA individually score zero..


It is MA2203, scoring ~ 7% "Yamnaya".
Probably acquired from a Hepatitis B viral transposon
LOL
He's a Male - Yhg J1c, mtDNA C5c
So an exotic oriental great-grandmother ?
Honing in with all possible steppe sources -

Anatolia_MLBA:MA2203
Barcin_N 62.75 %
Ganj_Dareh_N 18.95 %
Srubnaya 7.35 %
Levant_BA 5.95 %
Armenia EBA 3.90%
d2.3%

Sanuj said...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0094-2
"Wusun and Kangju groups are descendants of Bronze Age pastoralists that interacted with the civilization of the Bactria–Margiana archaeological complex in southern Uzbekistan and eastern Turkmenistan, yet remained much less admixed with East Asians than did the Iron Age steppe Sakas."

The Yuezhi tribes which moved westwards and displaced many such groups as the Wusun on it's way. There was certainly a move of such groups southwards and which led to the ultimate establishment of the Indo-Scythian rule in 150 BC, which lasted in some form till 400 CE. These people are a completely legitimate source of Late Bronze Age pastoralists related admixture in the North Indian populations.

Anonymous said...

@Rob

Ma2206 and MA2005 are what the paper calls "Assyrian Colony Period" Samples. MA2200 and MA2203 are old Kingdom Hittites. One of those two carries 1/16th steppe.

That seems relevant enough.

Rob said...

Epoch
Totally agree
As the waves of immigrants from Iran arrived, some chiefs might have married exotic steppe brides from Andronovo area

Rob said...

With G25, couldn’t detect anything for MA2200 however

Anonymous said...

@Rob

The paper uses Anatolian_N versus Anatolian_EBA to make the case for CHG admixture rather than Iran_N admixture. It uses Anatolian_EBA versus Anatolia_MLBA to make the case against EHG. That would mean that the Iranians immigrants aren't from the same era as the suspected EHG admixture.

I think the dispersal of Anatolian was completely different from the rest of IE. But that doesn't refute the steppe hypothesis. It just requires a slight adjustment: PIE existed before Yamnaya and spread before it came into being.

Hello Maikop, perhaps? Not necessarily as PIE origin, but as early branch.

Anonymous said...

@Rob "As the waves of immigrants from Iran arrived, some chiefs might have married exotic steppe brides from Andronovo area "

Ahaha. It is not Mitanni! It is OLD Hittitic Kingdom.

Anonymous said...

@Rob

From what I read the Iranian Chalcolithic is divided in three parts. The latter part, Late Chalcolithic, saw a substantial decline in habitation.

This is somehow relevant. I don't exactly can find a good scenario, though. But it has its counterpart in Middle-Neolithic Europa, which saw declines in population just before the huge dispersal of Corded Ware.

It could be pointing to large upheaval.

Ryukendo K said...

Final interjection-

If we find slices of unambiguous EHG ancestry in Hittite commoners (or really any other of the post-Neolithic Anatolian genomes), this immediately causes everything to "snap" together and all the data so far, including the discoveries from Ebla, become consistent with the Steppe hypothesis (plus the "EHG language" hypothesis, if you want to go as far as to require that the speech community leave autosomal traces).

Ppl should explore this intensively from now on if they want an easy way to reconcile the data.

Bob Floy said...

@namedguest
1. Pure IE develops in a CHG-related population.
2. Even with the female-biased admixture of CHG-related ancestry in Samara_Eneolithic and Yamnaya, mothers can change the way a language would end up developing, in contrast to the imposition of a language on an already grown-up population.
3. So, what EHG spoke? Something close to Proto-Uralic, derived from the ANE.

This is exactly what I was thinking.

Simon_W said...

epoch2013 said
"Ma2206 and MA2005 are what the paper calls "Assyrian Colony Period" Samples. MA2200 and MA2203 are old Kingdom Hittites."

I was just about to write the same. In Alberto's sheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SWEhuykZsnX6aRw89GfRTGoIKKIQluvfaq52V4691Ws/edit#gid=743227579 only MA2200 and MA2203 are from the MLBA "Old Hittite period". And none of the samples are from the LBA "Hittite period". MA2205 and MA2206 are from the MBA "Assyrian colony" period and the EBA samples obviously even earlier. Anatolian may have been at the Syria/Turkey border a couple of centuries earlier, but all of these new samples are from central Anatolia, the old Hattic land. It's curious that MA2203 in Alberto's sheet gets also substantial Seh Gabi admixture along the 7.7% steppe, more than all other ancient Anatolian samples.

Anonymous said...

@yukendo kendow

Rerun the D-stats in the paper with *only* MA2203 rather than Anatolian_MLBA.

Al Bundy said...

How is Myceneans having a few percent EHG and loaded with J2 and CHG consistent with the steppe hypothesis?

Anonymous said...

@epoch2013

Before the Hittites in Anatolia no one lived?
But if it lived, why all rests only in the Hittite and all forget about the much more numerous Hattians?
If the language of the Hattians are related to the North Caucasian languages and Hurrit-Urartian as fact then can their genetics not contain common components (like Iran_N/CHG)?

In any case, the Hattians being relatives Hurrite-Urartu and North Caucasians came to Anatolia from the East of it. To assume their connection with the Maykop and PIE unnecessarily.

Anonymous said...

@Simon_W

I saw that too. If I read correctly Seh Gabi has been abandoned and resettled more than once.

https://books.google.nl/books?id=C-TQpUtI-dgC&pg=PA183&lpg=PA183&dq=seh+Gabi&source=bl&ots=S5xvicr0aB&sig=9soMTQIMEmly6j81gqscMF6ywHQ&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjK4dGgzv7aAhWC6qQKHR8TAvMQ6AEITzAI#v=onepage&q=seh%20Gabi&f=false

Al Bundy said...

@RK Sorry for being snippy I'm just saying more samples are needed there was only one Mycenean male.

Al Bundy said...

But look at the Mathieson paper last year. There doesn't seem to be much evidence for a steppe through Balkans movement bringing IE to Greece.

Anonymous said...

@all

You all just PIE PIE and PIE PIE and PIE PIE, etc PIE. All forget about the far more numerous peoples at a time Hurrito-Urartians, Proto-North Caucasians, Hattians, Proto-Kartvelians, Semites and even a bunch of people with undefined languages. Each of them was probably more numerous than all the Indo-Europeans of that time. But no, all should be entered only in PIE, the influence of other Nations will not consider principally?

Al Bundy said...
" But look at the Mathieson paper last year. There doesn't seem to be much evidence for a steppe through Balkans movement bringing IE to Greece."

There is one sample about Greece of that time which is necessary, and it just shows genetics that necessary, and other samples necessary time are not in the study.

Alberto said...

Is someone looking at the Y-DNA in more detail than in the papers? For now it seems that J2a1 is a common link between Mycenaean (the only sample), Anatolian/Hittite and the Swat Valley. But J2a1 is too old, we'd need better resolution to see if the links are close or not.

Al Bundy said...

Thanks for clarifying.

Matt said...

Against a lot of the drift of the main thread (focus on Hittites!) a bit more of an attempt at work around the XiongNu and Baikal samples, which fascinate me as the earliest ancient East/Northeast Eurasians proper that we have.

First thing, resampling the Global25 PCA data back through PAST3's PCA function: https://imgur.com/a/5IzzP1n

This is sort of basically in the hope that the PCA will "rejuggle" dimensions in a way that makes pulls together some subtle tendency in new ancient samples which weren't in the original Global25 as Davidski could build it. (The overall distances will remain the same, but the shape and size dimensions will change)

For the most part, this mostly doesn't rejuggle things *too* much in a way that throws light on the older samples, though does give a different "look" that might be more or less intuitive than the straight Global25.
But, it does reveal eventually (at dimension 14 of the re-processing) a pattern where the Baikal_BA are loaded away from Eskimo, Itelman, Chukchi, and beyond intersection of any other samples.

This could relate the "beyond the cline" pattern that Ryu talked about in the paper's PCA?

Second thing, in context of my above comment that noted that the 2/3 Xiongnu samples clustered closer to Han_N than any present day population, a quick comparison of 50 closest distances comparing Han_N to a few other populations with a reasonable time transect in their region: https://imgur.com/a/3nIdXot

I've labeled the average of two Han_N like Xiongnu (DA43 and DA45) here as Xiongnu and DA39 as Xiongnu_O.

Two things to note:

1) Han_N like Xiongnu is the closest average in this panel to Han_N, more than any recent population(!) but...

2) absolute distance of Xiongnu to Han_N isn't that actually very close comparing other examples of pairs of populations about 2000 years apart from a similar area in West Eurasia (e.g. England_Roman + English / Welsh or Loebanr_IA + Pashtun).

Rather this does reflect that Han_NChina's closest recent population, Korean, is relatively more distant to Han_N than closest populations pairs in Europe. (For the most part, this mirrors Fst scores, by the way.)

So this is perhaps more of a commentary on the relatively high structured differentiation between East Asian populations today, compared to Europe, and the relatively West Eurasian focus of the panel than a sign of a very close relationship between Han-like eastern Xiongnu and geographically proximate present day Han_NChina...

Rob said...

@ epoch

“I think the dispersal of Anatolian was completely different from the rest of IE. But that doesn't refute the steppe hypothesis. It just requires a slight adjustment: PIE existed before Yamnaya and spread before it came into being.”

Sure .
Perhaps you’re suggesting a Repin female migration to Anatolia ?
Any data on that ?

Rob said...

“The latter part, Late Chalcolithic, saw a substantial decline in habitation.”

No quite
It was settlement shifts and agglomeration with incipient Proto -urbanism
Many small settlements abandoned for larger, Central ones

old europe said...

@all

miss a lot of debate...the narrative is changing? looks you're talking about ANF lineages being now the PIE markers?

Rob said...

@ supernord
PIE PIE PIE PIE

Arza said...

Brand-new Indo-Europeans:

Peloponnese_N
Barcin_N 92%
Anatolia_EBA_av 8%
Distance 1.1636%

Minoan_Lasithi
Barcin_N 63%
Anatolia_EBA_av 37%
Distance 2.2148%

Tepecik_Ciftlik_N
Barcin_N 61%
Anatolia_EBA_av 39%
Distance 2.2424%


Samuel Andrews said...

Ummm....Czech Hallstat in G25 shares drift with Bell Beaker. Maybe, Beaker=proto Celtic isn't too crazy.

Chad said...

A Hittite with 1/16th steppe? LOL right... Remember, EHG penetrated West Asia in the Mesolithic. This is not necessarily Steppe, at all... Anatolian pre-dates any Yamnaya or Srubnaya, or anything else you can input. Nothing outside of West Asia is needed. There is no Steppe in Armenia EBA or Anatolia ChL. Nothing in the southern Balkans before the mid-late BA. This isn't that hard to grasp if you think objectively and without the bias that is rampant lately.

RK,

As far as the original PIE and the model questions you have, please e-mail me at chadrohlfsen@gmail.com. It is way too hard to follow conversations or answer questions with all the ridiculous stuff and cross-conversations.

Richard Rocca said...

@Samuel Andrews said...
Ummm....Czech Hallstat in G25 shares drift with Bell Beaker. Maybe, Beaker=proto Celtic isn't too crazy.

The Czech Hallstatt sample is R-U152+L2+ which is found in almost all Bohemian Bell Beaker samples. Continuity in Bohemia (aka the Land of the Boii) is confirmed.

Ryukendo K said...

Unfortunately, the Anatolian MLBA samples do not consistently show a steppic signal in comparison to Anatolia EBA.

This is as good as no signal at all.

We are back where we started.

Signing off,
RK

Ariel said...

Chad Rohlfsen

Yes, but only one of these samples show that "extra" EHG affinity, ANE was there since Satsurblia 14.000 years ago, in 10.000 years that ancestry should have been equally spread out in the region, down to the percentage points. We made a big deal about 10% steppe in Mycene, we made a big deal about 5/10% in Chalcolithic Iran, what has changed now? I don't think that the 7% is relevant per se, but that could mean that there were people in the area with a significant level of EHG ancestry. We already have a similar case. Think about tha Hajji Firuz BA sample that is like 50% Steppe. Are we sure that we are not going to find similar cases around Maykop? In simple terms, I'm not going to change my mind on Bell Beakers because some Bell Beakers have no steppe.

Rob said...

Yeah, no extra EHG in any of the samples (over and above what might be from the LUP- Meso) until the Iron Age. Oh and one of the Mycenean females has 2% EHG.

https://i.imgur.com/vcbqJuO.png

Rob said...

@ Rocca

"The Czech Hallstatt sample is R-U152+L2+ which is found in almost all Bohemian Bell Beaker samples. Continuity in Bohemia (aka the Land of the Boii) is confirmed."

Very interesting. Of course, those familiar with the region know its not such a simple matter of continuity based on U152, but have to take all dimension of evidence. Nevertheless, Bohemia is a good candidate where a core segment of the former BB world became Indo-Europeanised c. 2000-1500 BC. The region in turn became a cultural core for the Celticization of the rest of western Europe over the succeeding generations.

Simon_W said...

@ David

Is "Hungarian_Med" in the preliminary Global25 update the Medieval sample from Poprad? That would be in Slovakia...

«Oldest ‹Older   1 – 200 of 378   Newer› Newest»