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Wednesday, May 16, 2018

On the genetic prehistory of the Greater Caucasus (Wang et al. 2018 preprint)


Finally, the focus shifts to the Eneolithic/Bronze Age North Caucasus. In a new manuscript at bioRxiv, Wang et al. present genome-wide SNP data for 45 prehistoric individuals from the region along a 3000-year temporal transect (see here). From the preprint (emphasis is mine):

Based on PCA and ADMIXTURE plots we observe two distinct genetic clusters: one cluster falls with previously published ancient individuals from the West Eurasian steppe (hence termed ‘Steppe’), and the second clusters with present-day southern Caucasian populations and ancient Bronze Age individuals from today’s Armenia (henceforth called ‘Caucasus’), while a few individuals take on intermediate positions between the two. The stark distinction seen in our temporal transect is also visible in the Y-chromosome haplogroup distribution, with R1/R1b1 and Q1a2 types in the Steppe and L, J, and G2 types in the Caucasus cluster (Fig. 3A, Supplementary Data 1). In contrast, the mitochondrial haplogroup distribution is more diverse and almost identical in both groups (Fig. 3B, Supplementary Data 1).


Thus, the most important "Indo-European" Y-haplogroups today, R1a-M417 and R1b-M269, did not arrive in Europe from the Caucasus or Near East. They're native to Europe. Hence, it appears that Eneolithic/Bronze Age Eastern Europeans mostly acquired their Near Eastern-related ancestry via female exogamy from populations in the Caucasus. That's basically what I've been arguing for a few years now. It feels good to be vindicated, especially considering the unfair criticism that I was subjected to here and elsewhere because of expressing this opinion (for instance, see here).

However, as far as I can see, based on the samples in this preprint, neither the Caucasus Maykop nor steppe Maykop appear to be unambiguous sources of this southern admixture in ancient Eastern Europe. That's because the Caucasus Maykop mtDNA profile still looks somewhat off in this context, while steppe Maykop harbors West Siberian forager-related genome-wide ancestry that is practically absent in the Yamnaya and all other closely related peoples.

In any case, please note the happy coincidence that academia has finally caught up to this blog and managed to find European farmer-derived ancestry in Yamnaya:

Importantly, our results show a subtle contribution of both Anatolian farmer-related ancestry and WHG-related ancestry (Fig.4; Supplementary Tables 13 and 14), which was likely contributed through Middle and Late Neolithic farming groups from adjacent regions in the West. A direct source of Anatolian farmer-related ancestry can be ruled out (Supplementary Table 15). At present, due to the limits of our resolution, we cannot identify a single best source population. However, geographically proximal and contemporaneous groups such as Globular Amphora and Eneolithic groups from the Black Sea area (Ukraine and Bulgaria), which represent all four distal sources (CHG, EHG, WHG, and Anatolian_Neolithic) are among the best supported candidates (Fig. 4; Supplementary Tables 13,14 and 15).

Check out what I had to say about this issue exactly two years ago: Yamnaya = Khvalynsk + extra CHG + maybe something else. Not bragging, just making a point that I do know what I'm doing here, most of the time anyway.

Wang et al. conclude their preprint with, unfortunately I have to say, some downright bizarre comments in regards to the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) homeland debate. But I'll get back to that later, when the ancient data from this and forthcoming related papers are released online.

Citation...

Wang et al., The genetic prehistory of the Greater Caucasus, bioRxiv, posted May 16, 2018, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/322347

See also...

Yamnaya: home-grown

Ahead of the pack

Genetic borders are usually linguistic borders too

241 comments:

1 – 200 of 241   Newer›   Newest»
Karl_K said...

Looks good!

Anonymous said...

You're experiencing cognitive dissonance w.r.t their conclusion. Its so abundantly clear that the PIE homeland is south of the Caucasus.

Anonymous said...

@Davidski

Is it possible that the female Caucasians weren't actually directly from the Near East or Caucasus, but instead a related/descendant population in the steppe?

Think small agricultural groups that exist between the vast spaces inhabited by pastoralists. You mention that Maykop doesn't work perfectly, so is it possible that the "Near-Eastern/Caucasus" genetic boundary once extended farther to the North and into pockets of the Ponto-Caspian steppe?

Davidski said...

@thorin23

You're experiencing cognitive dissonance w.r.t their conclusion. Its so abundantly clear that the PIE homeland is south of the Caucasus.

Sorry, what?

I just pointed out that I've been vindicated by the data on a couple of very important points.

And all I said about their comments in regards to the PIE issue was that they were bizarre. That's my opinion for now, and I'm entitled to my opinion, especially considering my very strong (and getting stronger) track record on this blog.

andrew said...

Be honest. Totally bragging.

Anthro Survey said...

Wow! Finally a juicy Maykop paper we've all been patiently(or not?) waiting for. Haven't done a thorough read yet, but--

Those Eneolithic steppe samples are pretty interesting in that they looks to be contemporaneous with yet more CHG-rich than Samara and effectively acts as the non-EEF, CHG-rich donor to Yamnaya.

So, the "Uruk"/southern migrant phenomenon from Mesopotamia had its start about a millenium earlier than what Pitskhelauri said judging by Eneolithic Caucasus' profile. Hmmm.
http://science.org.ge/old/moambe/6-2/153-161%20Pitskhelauri.pdf

Novosvobodnaya---surprising results.

@Karl/Rob
We're looking at Eneolithic_Steppe-like populations being formed pretty early on around southern Russia as opposed to there being a copper-age CHG female refugium. My guess is that those lower-volga cultures like Kairshak, Seroglazova, Elshanka, etc. were already CHG-EHG hybrids.

@Sam

"What do the supposed Hittite and Yamnaya genomes share? A slither of CHG?"

Nah, the key is probably a "slither" of EEF and some associated ancestry(EHG-like? Eneo-steppe-like?) coming from a NE Balkan or SW Ukranian source. The way I see it, Balkans and southern steppe are our PIE options. Don't see much hope for the Caucasus at this point.

Anonymous said...

Glorious, I love when they use the standard/classical ADMIXTURE colors, the orange, teal, blue, bright green, yellow, etc

MaxT said...

Comparison of Y-chromosome haplogroup distribution in the Steppe and Caucasus cluster.


Steppe cluster : R1b1, Q1a2

Caucasus cluster : G2a, G2b, J2, J1 & L

Also, EDAR alleles and shovel-shaped incisors made it's appearance again. Previously, they found same alleles in mesolithic SHG's.

"Interestingly, one of the Steppe Maykop individuals carried the derived alleleat the EDAR 370A locus, which was shown to be at high frequency in East Asia thus associated with straighter, thicker hair and shovel-shaped incisors. This finding is consistent with the ancestral East Asian/Siberian affinity shown above."

Arza said...

Our fitted model recapitulates the genetic separation between the Caucasus and Steppe groups with the Eneolithic steppe individuals deriving more than 60% of ancestry from EHG and the remainder from a CHG-related basal lineage, whereas the Maykop group received about 86.4% from CHG, 9.6% Anatolian farming related ancestry, and 4% from EHG.

Sup. p. 36
Figure SF3.5: The model in which Eneolithic_piedmont are admixed deriving ancestry from CHG related basal Eurasian and EHG related lineages, which is a fit to the data in the sense that there are no f-statistics more than |Z|>3 different between model and expectation. The worst f-statistic is f (MA1, Loschbour; EHG, Eneolithic_piedmont) = -1.815.

This "CHG-related basal lineage" in their trees is not some slightly older CHG, but Basal Eurasian.

Karl_K said...

@Arza

That remains to be determined. It is definitely not clear at this point.

Rob said...

@ Anthro

“My guess is that those lower-volga cultures like Kairshak, Seroglazova, Elshanka, etc. were already CHG-EHG hybrids. ”

Kairshak dates from 6000 BC, so if it were a potential source of CHG in Yamnaya - Khvalynsk thread, should we not expect it to have appeared more tangibly than one individual in the late Eneolithic ?

Davidski said...

@Rob

All three of the currently available Khvalynsk samples show tangible CHG admixture.

Arza said...

@ Karl_K

They are pretty clear about this. That's how they've constructed the tree. Line going to "Eneolithic_piedmont" aka Yamnaya_minus_GAC departs before the HG admixture that have lead to the formation of CHG.

Karl_K said...

@Azra

Sure. That's the model. But nobody has any 100% Basal Eurasian genomes to actually test that. And it seems like that would much more significantly lower the Neanderthal content of Yamnaya if so.

Anthro Survey said...

@Dave

High five re/S.Caucasus(not that it was a strong contender before), but you have to start seriously considering EEF/Balkans if you're not already.

Have you gotten a chance to look into the Historical Nomad in the datasheet, btw? That's NOT a 19th cent Kyrgyz. The genome file must be mislabeled somehow.

@Rob

To clarify a bit: the said cultures may not have been exact sources, per se, but I expect them to have been hybrids nonetheless. At some point after 5500BC, I take it either Volga or other, similar co-latitudinal groups started making inroads north. Samara is quite a ways upstream and, afaik, the said Volga groups weren't strong agriculturalists, unlike EEFs.

Davidski said...

@Anthro Survey

High five re/S.Caucasus(not that it was a strong contender before), but you have to start seriously considering EEF/Balkans if you're not already.

I'm not and don't see why I should.

If someone shows me that actual Hittites (not some random Hattians) didn't carry any steppe ancestry, then I'll think things over. But even then, EEF is way down on my list as a plausible PIE signature.

Anthro Survey said...

@Arza

I wouldn't read too much into it. Eneolithic steppe is still getting that para-Western_Eurasian HG ancestry into it(through the EHG node) just like CHG. Maybe the tree, if it works better than if they'd chosen a para-CHG node for steppe, just reflects a considerable difference b/ween CHG and some contemporary, ghost basal-rich population in south Russia.

PF said...

How far we have come since the "teal people!"

Yet even then, before CHG was identified, and before all the Iranian genomes, looks like Davidski (and some others here) got a lot of it right.

Anthro Survey said...

@Dave

Even if those actual Hittites, as you put it, do carry Steppe_Eneolithic(S_E) admixture, East Euro EEF(I do stress the subset here) groups will still be a contender, since we'll be looking at EEF-S_E hybrids transmitting it to pre-3000BC Anatolia.

I'm not saying, btw, that the relevant subset of S_E-related folks didn't play a pivotal role in PIE's formation. It's just a question of whether those subsets EEF or S_E played a more decisive role.

Leron said...

"Actual Hittites" is a misnomer as you aren't dealing with a discrete population unit. Instead an amalgation of sorrounding and often unrelated people who adopted a single wayward strand of Anatolian language used in a small city, that through political circumstances became the headquarters of a fledging dynasty. There was no roving band of IE invaders conquering native lands but roving band of natives invading a distant IE lands. Hence why you have Hittites advancing west to conquer proper IE groups: Lycians (Lukka), Carians (Karkiya), Mycaeneans (Ahhiyawa), Maeonians (Arzawa) and early Lydians (Mira and Seha River Land), from their seats of power in deeply Hattian Kanesa and Hattusa. For your purposes you should be chasing after pre-Hittite IE Anatolians than anything else.

Davidski said...

@Leron

Fair points.

Nevertheless, my prediction is that there should be some steppe ancestry in at least some early elite Hittite remains.

I'll check that for myself when and if the data become available (rather than leave it to someone who runs a single D-stat and thinks job well done), and then go from there.

Arza said...

@ Karl_K

Wouldn't this be undetectable?
HG input in CHG is related to European HG, so CHG without it would be further away from HG cline in Europe. Ergo smaller admixture would be required to put Steppe where it is. And smaller admixture = proportionally smaller Neanderthal ancestry drop.

The only shift it would eventually cause would be on a WHG - ANE line. Steppe wouldn't be EHG + CHG, but e.g. Ukraine Mesolithic + Basal (compensation for missing WHG-related ancestry).

And I can even show a proof that there is no EHG in Yamnaya.

Some time ago I was arguing with David about something that have looked like an Asian shift in Yamnaya Ukraine outlier. It was present when YUo was modelled with Yamnaya, but was disappearing in the presence of EHG.

The reason is that YUo probably has actual EHG ancestry, contrary to Yamnaya.

https://s6.postimg.cc/fxhikbs9t/YUo.png

This is a plot rotated in such way that CHG is overlayed on Armenia EBA, so any difference on this axis is nullified.

As you can see Yamnaya Ukraine outlier is exactly between EHG and Armenia_EBA-CHG, while Yamnaya is between CHG/Armenia and WHG-Ukraine_Mesolithic.

https://s6.postimg.cc/kks5zmmy7/basal_triangulation.png

Red line from CHG trough Yamnaya flies over EHG as in the first plot.
Line from something on a WHG-CHG-Yamnaya level would hit WHG/Latvia_HG/Ukraine_Mesolithic.

Also note two Ukraine_Eneolithic samples on WHG-CHG-Basal line and potential pull towards basal in Ukraine Meso/Neo (zig-zag in the "cline").

Karl_K said...

@Arza

" And I can even show a proof that there is no EHG in Yamnaya. "

I'm sorry, but you can't show that, because it is false.

You can't just pick and choose which axis or cline or dimension gives the results you want. You have to use all of the data.



Davidski said...

This is hilarious.

Based on these latest data, neither Maykop nor any group from ancient Iran look like the real sources of southern ancestry in Khvalynsk, Yamnaya, etc.

But they're still talking about Iran as a potential PIE homeland. What the F is going on here?

pnuadha said...

Thus, the most important "Indo-European" Y-haplogroups today, R1a-M417 and R1b-M269, did not arrive in Europe from the Caucasus or Near East. They're native to Europe.

We know R1a-M417 and R1b-M269 are the most important IE haplogroups post break up of anatolian and PIE, where the latter is almost entirely r1a/r1b. I suspect you are still invested in the origin of Anatolian. Now that r1b is well established in mesolithic/neolithic Eastern Europe and decidedly absent in West Asia it becomes very hard to argue that the meat of PIE is not native to the steppe, apart from some outside influence. But we still dont know if early anatolian involved r1a/r1b (I believe it does) or if the ancestors of anatolian and PIE were ever one population.

Its nice to get confirmation that r1b m269 was not in the caucasus/near east but I think the most interesting revelation is that steppe mayokop has a west siberian element that isnt even in the yamnaya. Was west siberian a recent intrusion into the area of the myokop or is yamnaya from the northern and western pc steppe?

Karl_K said...

@Davidski

In order to get their future papers published in really good journals, there must be some controversy. So... They are setting up the controversy.

Davidski said...

@Colin

The West Siberian influence in steppe Maykop might be due to rather late gene flow to the Caspian steppe from Central Asia.

But the fact that it's missing in such important steppe groups as Yamnaya and Sredny Stog, as well as Corded Ware and the Mycenaeans, confirms to me that Maykop had nothing to do with the Indo-European expansions.

Karl_K said...

Well, as of the present, the PIE and Anatolian issue is unresolved.

The rest of the IE is case closed, besides the finer details (which will be very interesting, of course).

EastPole said...

I wonder about possible trade routes by which Caucasus wives were transported to EHG husbands in Khvalynsk or Sredny Stog:

https://s14.postimg.cc/cpnp160gh/screenshot_391.png

Samuel Andrews said...

Considering recent developments we shouldn't be suprised Maykop is not Steppe's southern ancestor. Maykop is too young. Steppe formed before Maykop. With the data we had before this study, we could see Steppe formed sometime before 4300 BC.

Steppe's southern ancestor lived before Anatolian farmers settled in the Caucasus. This may mean we're talking before 5000 BC. They may have been hunter-gatherers.

Open Genomes said...

The G2b-M3115 found in the Kura-Araxes culture in Armenia is possibly related to the G2b2a-Z8022 found in the Early Neolithic cereal farmer and cattle herder from Wezmeh Cave in the Central Zagros, c. 9300 BP. However, a very early branch of G2b1-M377 is found in a single Armenian family from Kashatagh, Lachin in Nagorno-Karabakh. A single Armenian from Suleymanli (Zeitun) in the foothills of the Taurus in Southern Turkey is G2b2b. The YFull tMRCA of G2b-M3115 is 19,800 ybp, and the tMRCA of G2b2 alone is 18400 ybp. The tMRCA G2b and its immediate subclades dates well into the Upper Paleolithic. There is a distinct Lebanese G2b1-M377 clade with a tMRCA of 8800 ybp with the remainder of of the later sequenced branches.
What's also interesting is that like L-M27 which was found in the Kura-Araxes culture, G2b1-M377 spread eastward to the region around the Khyber Pass, where it may even form the absolute majority among some Karlani Pathan tribes, like the Wardaks, Orakzai, and Yusafzai. Perhaps G-Y12297 co-migrated with L-M27 eastward to the Hindu Kush region?

The Y of the Maykop G2a2a-PF3147 (G-PF3147*?) was found everywhere from Early Neolithic Iberia, to Tepecik-Ciftlik in the Pottery Neolithic of Central Anatolia c. 6500 BCE, to Sappali Tepe in Bronze Age BMAC 2000-1600 BCE and Aligrama in the Iron Age Swat Valley c. 970-550 BCE/ G2a2a-PF3147 is the signature Y haplogroup of the Early Neolithic Farmers. It's completely absent from the steppe. However, today G2a2a1-PF3148 is actually common among the Brahui (8%) and found in some Punjabi Jatt clans (Saho and Kalyal).

Here is a direct connection between the Pottery Neolithic farmers of Anatolia, the Early Neolithic farmers of Europe, the Bronze Age Maykop culture, and the BMAC Sappali Tepe culture, as well as the Iron Age Swat Valley.

The Neolithic spread from the PPNA northern Fertile Crescent in all directions, along with bread wheat cultivation and cattle herding. These were settled farmers, not nomadic herders.

We should see some small autosomal "Neolithic" connection between all these these groups, or at least with Tepecik-Ciftlik, who clusters with the Bronze Age Anatolians.

Samuel Andrews said...

**Steppe ancestry formed in North Caucasus hunter gatherers?

Steppe Eneolithic lived in the North Caucasus. Maybe, CHG and EHG mixed there like in 6000 BC or even earlier. Maybe, Steppe ancestry originated in hunter gatherers from the North Caucasus who adopted knowledge from southern neighbors then moved north and replaced EHG hunter gatherers in Russia.

When did EEF ancestry become pervasic leaving no pure CHGs? That's the key question. Steppe formed before that date. The Mesolithic Caucausus genomes might really be our best fit for Steppe's southern ancestor.

Rob said...

"It remains unclear whether the local CHG ancestry profile (represented by Late Upper Palaeolithic/Mesolithic individuals from Kotias Klde and Satsurblia in today’s Georgia) was also present in the North Caucasus region before the Neolithic. However, if we take the Caucasus hunter-gatherer individuals from Georgia as a local baseline and the oldest Eneolithic Caucasus individuals from our transect as a proxy for the local Late Neolithic ancestry, we notice a substantial increase in Anatolian farmer-related ancestry. This in all likelihood is linked to the process of Neolithization, which also brought this type of ancestry to 546 Europe. As a consequence, it is possible that Neolithic groups could have reached the northern flanks of the Caucasus earlier"

and .. "Due to the temporal limitations of our dataset, we currently cannot determine whether this ancestry is stemming from an existing natural genetic gradient running from EHG far to the north to CHG/Iran in the south or whether this is the result of farmers with Iranian farmer/ CHG-related ancestry reaching the steppe zone independent of and prior to a stream of Anatolian farmer-like ancestry, where they mixed with local hunter-gatherers that
carried only EHG ancestry."

IN the Supp Section they suggest "The earliest attested evidence of the Neolithic lifestyle in the North Caucasus, including domesticates and settlement architecture, dates to the mid-5th millennium BCE and is associated with a cultural formation termed Darkveti-Meshoko Eneolithic or ‘pearl-ornamented ceramic’", something I have pointed out previously, but do mention a possible role of the lower Don Neolithic and it's possible role of mediating southern influences. I have also heard about unpublished data of possibly 6th century Neolithic sites in North Caucasus.

Queequeg said...

@Davidski and re: "The West Siberian influence in steppe Maykop might be due to rather late gene flow to the Caspian steppe from Central Asia."

Steppe Maykop indeed looks like having WSHG/Botai and might explain for instance Pre Scythian IR1 in Hungary, having paternal N but also something Caucasus related on the autosomal side.

However, the Steppe Maykop groups seem to develop in parallel i.e. with a connection with Maykop itself. From the supp's:

"A specific component of the Maykop phenomenon is found in sites located in the modern steppe zone. We refer to them here as Steppe Maykop (cf. 3). These burials share elements of mortuary practices and artefacts with piedmont Maykop groups but at the same time reveal Eneolithic and autonomous components from the steppe. Both Maykop-related phenomena develop in parallel. The Maykop individuals in the present study stem from a variety of sites related to both Steppe and piedmont and date to an earlier (3900-3500 calBCE) and later chronological phase (3500-2900 calBCE), respectively"

So, WSHG/Botai can't have been too far, I'd guess.

Open Genomes said...

@David

Who are the Mogush? Are they an modern Altaian group, or is it an ancient Shamanka site?

I can't find anything about the Mogush anywhere, except that there's a river in the Altai with a similar name.

Seinundzeit said...

"Steppe Maykop" nicely explains Srubnaya_outlier, and the Botai-related signal among the Western Scythians/Sarmatians.

Davidski said...

@Open Genomes

Who are the Mogush?

No idea. They came in the dataset. I ran them.

Anthro Survey said...

@Sam and Arza

"Steppe Eneolithic lived in the North Caucasus. Maybe, CHG and EHG mixed there like in 6000 BC or even earlier. Maybe, Steppe ancestry originated in hunter gatherers from the North Caucasus who adopted knowledge from southern neighbors then moved north and replaced EHG hunter gatherers in Russia."

This kinda captures my basic idea above re/Elshanka, etc., too.

Also, no need to limit ourselves to the Caucasus mountain chain. There was once a spillway north of the range connecting the sea of Azov to the Caspian which dried up about 12KYA or so. Have a look:
http://paleogeo.org/spillway_en.jpg

What if this spillway represented the northernmost boundary of basal-rich Zarzianate populations, some of which began to interact with EHG-like people north of it shortly after it dried?

Matt said...

@Sam: Considering recent developments we shouldn't be suprised Maykop is not Steppe's southern ancestor. Maykop is too young. Steppe formed before Maykop. With the data we had before this study, we could see Steppe formed sometime before 4300 BC.

That's a pretty reasonable comment. Ancestors (female?) of Khvalynsk_Eneo / Samara_Eno may well have left the Caucasus/Northern Near East for steppe well before formation of Maykop genotypes.

Still also note Yamnaya looks less like a genomically single population here, that formed in a single pulse and more like it formed heterogenously over time from different streams, and from differing southern, eastern, western streams over time.

Considering the Yamnaya Caucasus samples who do have southern Maykop ancestry in this paper, and also if we consider the Corded_Ware_Early, and well as differences between Khvalynsk and later Yamnaya in Samara, and Yamnaya outliers.

I'm not sure we can talk about "Steppe's southern ancestor" as a single population that donated ancestry in a single wave exactly.

Paper uses Globular Amphora+general Steppe Eneolithic bucket for models, but it may be historically plausible to model slightly heterogenous Yamnaya/early Corded Ware groups forming from slightly variable mixes of Khavlynsk_Eneo, Steppe_Maykop, Dereivka and Sredy Stog II groups, plus more Caucasus Maykop influence (with patrilocality on uniparental lineages through this maintaining fairly consistent y signature between these groups).

Fst based models I made for Yamnaya a couple of threads back were fairly specific on Khavlynsk_Eneo+Ukraine_Eneo+CHG, so will be interesting to see what these new groups do to them.

(Hopefully it will be easier to sort this out than different streams of European Neolithic ancestry, since Yamnaya is directly on crossroads of both WHG->West Siberia N and north of west->east farmers, even if giving precise proportions may be ultimately impossible due to sample and site heterogenity).

Seems kind of less likely that the early Yamnaya / CW groups would derive language from either early or late small migrations from south (small considering this happened in stages and not as a single pulse?), which weren't initially any elite. But this may be what is still tenable and being argued for Hittite, so what's good for the goose?.

mzp1 said...

Don't see why both groups can't be IE already.

Anthro Survey said...

@Dave

"But they're still talking about Iran as a potential PIE homeland. What the F is going on here?"

Scientific trolling, maybe.

Anthro Survey said...

@Matt

Consider the Iberomaurisians. They clearly have some substantial divergent/outgroup ancestry to that found in mainstream West Eurasians, but what did we see with Y-DNA? Nothing but E1b1b in NW Africa until the Mid-late Neolithic KEB. No A, B, E2, E1a or even E1b1a. No L1 or L2 for mtDNA---just U6 and some L3.

Similarly, if it was the case that basal-rich groups north of the Caucasus mixed with EHG-like fairly early on, there needn't be any AMOGing dynamics(for lack of a better, more PC term) involved. Combo of small population size and time would have reduced haplogroup diversity.

Davidski said...

@Matt

But this may be what is still tenable and being argued for Hittite, so what's good for the goose?

Not really.

The spread of PIE to Anatolia from the steppe is generally described as an elite conquest scenario, basically with the Hittites or Nes conquering the Hattians and Hurrians.

And let's be honest, this has yet to be falsified by ancient DNA.

On the other hand, the recently revived theory about the spread of PIE from the South Caucasus to the steppe posits that this happened via a mass migration, simply because Yamnaya harbors ~50% ancestry from the Caucasus or thereabouts.

So there's no talk of any elites. But even if there was, then so what, because the ancient data aren't showing it. For instance, where are the elite steppe burials with southern males? There are none. And the mass migration theory is now also looking like crap.

It was more like a series of female-mediated trickles from several different directions. Not exactly the perfect recipe for language change.

Rob said...

Dave
The Majkop / southern males are buried in kurgans too, which are earlier than the Yamnaya ones
They also popularised the daggers used in Yamnaya and balkans, and later B.B.
So not elite conquest but a case can be made for elite emulation

Matt said...

Davidski: The spread of PIE to Anatolia from the steppe is generally described as an elite conquest scenario, basically with the Hittites or Nes conquering the Hattians and Hurrians.

And let's be honest, this has yet to be falsified by ancient DNA.


Though that's probably falsified by the new onomastic evidence cited by the paper as Ryu explained, if that's correct. And if correct again, that leaves some kind of process of heavy dilution over space and time, before any rise to power of Hittites.

If that kind of heavy dilution idea *is* what's left (if) then it is quite parallel and as reasonable to suppose one way as the other (leaving aside linguistic considerations, which only linguists are capable to discuss).

Davidski said...

@Matt

Let's see now if ancient DNA falsifies it though. No steppe ancestry in the Nes would do it.

I reckon they'll have it if they're sampled.

Matt said...

If it's more than the possible range of Caucasus Maykop ancestry into Yamnaya, that would be interesting (e.g. 10% Steppe_EMBA / Steppe_MLBA, no more or less interesting than similar proportion of Caucasus Maykop into Yamnaya).

Davidski said...

@Matt

No, I'm also and especially talking about Y-chromosomes. There has to be R1a-M417 and/or R1b-M269 in the Nes.

Aram said...

So M52 in Maykop was not a coincidence. Btw M52 was found in Swat valley also.
We have also KA from Daguestan Velikent. They were trading with Steppe. So I guess they will be different from Armenian KA.

Matt said...

True. That would be evidence if they did.

Though Mycenaeans didn't and the low steppe Balkans (not the Croatians and the outliers) didn't even when they did have Steppe related ancestry, so it would be pretty surprising if they had those after coming via a Balkans route, as seems to be favoured by linguists.

Davidski said...

@Rob

So not elite conquest but a case can be made for elite emulation.

That's possible. Although I'd give preference to mass migration and elite conquest as mechanisms for language change in those times.

Davidski said...

@Matt

One Mycenaean didn't.

Come on.

Aram said...

Well I think Davidski is right on this point.
The presence of this R1b branch is simply imminent in BA Anatolia.
https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-PF7562/

And it crossed Caucasus and not Balkanes. There is no ambiguity on this matter anymore.

The linguistic is different. People can have different opinions.

old europe said...



@all

Correct me if I'm wrong but we are starting to get some samples from more western part of yamna and still no R1b L-51 right?

Alberto said...

I only had time to go rather fast through this paper, but my first thought is that there is no "CHG into Yamnaya". We have finally the ancestors of Yamnaya, in the North Caucasus steppe. Labelled "Eneolithic steppe". The 2 males are Y- DNA R1b1 and mtDNA i3a and H2, while the female is mtDNA T2a1b.

So the way it looks to me is that there is EHG/Ukraine_N admixture (via female exogamy) to form the Yamnaya people (who do have a lot of EHG/Ukraine_N mtDNA).

Alberto said...

@Anthro Survey

Novosvobodnaya---surprising results.

The main difference between Maykop proper and Novosvobodnaya is a large chunk of Iran_Chalcolithic ancestry in the latter. How is that surprising?

"Arsenical bronze tools and weapons were much more abundant in the richest late Maikop graves of the Klady-Novosvobodnaya type than they were in the Maikop chieftain’s grave. Grave 5 in Klady kurgan 31 alone contained fifteen heavy bronze daggers, a sword 61 cm long (the oldest sword in the world), three sleeved axes and two cast bronze hammer-axes, among many other objects, for one adult male and a seven-year-old child (see figure 12.11). The bronze tools and weapons in other Novosvobodnaya-phase graves included cast flat axes, sleeved axes, hammer-axes, heavy tanged daggers with multiple midribs, chisels, and spearheads. The chisels and spearheads were mounted to their handles the same way, with round shafts hammered into four-sided contracting bases that fit into a V-shaped rectangular hole on the handle or spear. Ceremonial objects included bronze cauldrons, long-handled bronze dippers, and two-pronged bidents (perhaps forks for retrieving cooked meats from the cauldrons). Ornaments included beads of carnelian from western Pakistan, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, gold, rock crystal, and even a bead from Klady made of a human molar sheathed in gold (the first gold cap!). Late Maikop graves contained several late metal types—bidents, tanged daggers, metal hammer-axes, and a spearhead with a tetrahedral tang—that did not appear at Maikop or in other early sites."

https://erenow.com/ancient/the-horse-the-wheel-and-language/12.html

Davidski said...

@Alberto

I only had time to go rather fast through this paper, but my first thought is that there is no "CHG into Yamnaya". We have finally the ancestors of Yamnaya, in the North Caucasus steppe. Labelled "Eneolithic steppe". The 2 males are Y- DNA R1b1 and mtDNA i3a and H2, while the female is mtDNA T2a1b.

No one ever seriously claimed that Yamnaya had direct ancestry from CHG. You can look back at all the claims in the various relevant threads, like this one...

Two starkly different Neolithic traditions in the Lower Volga basin

Rob said...

@ Matt

“That's a pretty reasonable comment. Ancestors (female?) of Khvalynsk_Eneo / Samara_Eno may well have left the Caucasus/Northern Near East for steppe well before formation of Maykop genotypes.”

Just check the dates again - meshoko / Caucasus Eneolithic is to 4500 BC. They are essentially the same as Majkop - a later cultural development
Then you have Yamnaya Caucasus (R1b) somehow commodifying with them , spreading back out onto the The steppe, acquiring some EHG / Ukraine wives
But your other point about the haplogroups is interesting - I guess soon we’ll see some R1 coming up in historic IEs

EastPole said...

In the Harvad publication “The Common Heritage of Greek and Indic Meter” we read about some similarities between ancient Greek, Vedic poetic meters and Slavic meters:

https://s22.postimg.cc/a5wbsz7xt/screenshot_151.png

http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/6442

The same archaic meters as in Slavic are noticed in the most archaic phases of Rigvedic composition:

https://s22.postimg.cc/illwahasx/screenshot_149.png

https://s22.postimg.cc/jp60mfvg1/screenshot_150.png

http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/6429

In my opinion these many links in poetry, religions and languages between Slavs, Greeks and Indo-Iranians should be related to their expansion from PIE homeland in Sredny Stog. One example of such expansion is confirmed by recent genetic discoveries CWC –>Sintashta/Andronovo–>India.

It supports this model:

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



Hittite poetry, religion, language, grammar, syntax, lexicon etc…. etc…. are so completely different from Slavic, Greek and Indo-Iranian which show many similarities and can be considered true IE cultures. Why is Hittite are even considered IE and not Indoeuropeized Anatolians?

People who claim PIE south of Caucasus should explain to us their religion, poetry, language, grammar, syntax, lexicon etc… etc and show how recorded proper IE religions, languages etc. are derived from those south of Caucasus, by explaining etymology of words, names of IE gods, customs and believes etc.

It is becoming insane. PIE languages, religions, poetic conventions etc. are reconstructed from Indo-Iranian, Greek and Slavic and then it is claimed that reconstructed culture originated south of Caucasus where there is absolutely no trace of such culture.

The question is then what is PIE for the supports of South of Caucasus PIE homeland? Maybe we are talking about two different PIE cultures which are linked only by few words?

Davidski said...

@Rob

Then you have Yamnaya Caucasus (R1b) somehow commodifying with them, spreading back out onto the The steppe, acquiring some EHG/Ukraine wives.

Haha.

But of course Caucasus Yamnaya isn't exactly early Yamnaya, and in fact, Yamnaya doesn't come from the Caucasus at all.

I was right about the female exogamy thing with southern wives moving onto the steppe.

I put up with Alberto's snide remarks for years, because I was waiting for the data. But that's it. You guys better behave now.

Folker said...

@Dave
IE Anatolians could very well lacking R1a/R1b. We have little knowledge of Y DNA diversity of Yamna populations in Western Steppe and Balkans (by the way, their map is wrong about datation as they failed to notice the early arrival of Yamna there, C14 dated from at least around 3100 BC).
As you know, the only Yamnaya wéve got is I2a.
So, due to founder effect, IE Anatolian could very well have another Y signature than other Steppe derived population. Perhaps I2a, perhaps another one.
It's the absence of any Steppe soecific subclade which could be problematic with enough sampling.
In any case, an arrival in Anatolia during the IIId millenium remains the best explanation. Central Anatolia was a contact zone between Balkans, Caucasus, Levant and Pontic Steppe at the time. And cremation is seen as a Balkans cultural feature imported in Anatolia.

Davidski said...

@Folker

I focused on R1a-M417 and R1b-M269, because these are the markers that are most commonly found to date in the steppe cultures expanding out of the steppe.

But if, say, some sort of steppe Kurgan-specific subclade of Y-hg Q is found in Hittite remains instead, will anyone reasonable quibble that it's a signature of expansions from the steppe? Don't think so.

vAsiSTha said...

@eastpole
Where is the "PIE languages, religions, poetic conventions" in andronovo which is your preferred route for south Asia?
Convenient argument.

Archaelog said...

So, all the R1b samples are again M269 and Z2103. Except one (Catacomb?) M73 individual in the Caucasus. Looks like L51 had a more northerly/westerly distribution. If the rumors about the Samara L51 are true, we will know soon enough.

Davidski said...

@Chetan

I'm going to ban you if you keep trying to promote crazy Carlos's website here.

Consider this a warning.

Archaelog said...

@Davidski I wasn't trying to promote anything. I had to give credit to the website because that's where I found the news. That's it.

Rob said...


"But of course Caucasus Yamnaya isn't exactly early Yamnaya, and in fact, Yamnaya doesn't come from the Caucasus at all."

There is Yamnaya in the Caucasus flatlands, and steppe Majkop which is R1b. Not talking about the mountain peaks here.
The aforementioned were obviously in a key position to benefit from the opening trade routes, and rise to prominence, etc. So we agree that R1b is from north of the Caucasus, and originally E-WHG, but one groups became 'CHG' enriched (to use a broad term) and then refluxed back over the steppe & beyond.

Davidski said...

@Rob

I know you weren't talking about the mountains, but about the adjacent steppe.

But my point was that the idea of some sort of cohabitation between steppe groups and Maykop that gave rise to Yamnaya is very novel, to say the least.

Yamnaya has it's origin further to the north. That's not to say that the Caucasus and nearby steppe groups didn't have a profound influence on its development, but it wasn't via cohabitation. Rather, it was via regular, probably seasonal long range contacts made possible by the high mobility of steppe groups.

Davidski said...

@Chetan

I wasn't trying to promote anything. I had to give credit to the website because that's where I found the news. That's it.

Just don't post any links to that idiot's website or work. Simple.

EastPole said...

Mr. Kulkarni

“Where is the "PIE languages, religions, poetic conventions" in andronovo which is your preferred route for south Asia?
Convenient argument.”

What is your preferred route for south Asia? And what is the evidence for that route?

Anonymous said...

@Folker

David Anthony proposed the Suvorovo Culture as an early offshoot of Sredny Stog. The Matieson paper on SE Europe didn't sample it. It did however sample the Varna culture which was the immediate predecessor to it. And that had an outlier (female, mtDNA H7a1) with substantial steppe admixture. It also had another steppe admixted individual from a Chalcolithic site right west of the Suvorovo area with one steppe admixted outlier (Y: R mtD: HV15).

I think these are Suvorovo samples

Rob said...

@ Dave

I said commodification, not cohabitation.
I think Yamnaya is a cultural and genetic homogenization of preceding Eneolithic, with some groups coming up trumps, some not. Majkop was not a part of this process - they seemed more fixed to their ecotone and had less mobilie economy.

Anonymous said...

Folker said...
" IE Anatolians could very well lacking R1a/R1b. "

We do not know any sample of IE Anatolians. No IE Anatolian has been tested yet.

Alberto said...

@Davidski

I don't get your remarks about no one saying that Yamnaya had direct ancestry from CHG. I guess we all know that it wasn't Kotias and Satsurblia, because those samples are much older.

What is new, and I think you didn't understand me either, is that we've already found a population that is the most likely ancestor of Yamnaya. And such population (samples from c. 4300 BCE in the North Caucasus steppe zone) already had all the CHG needed and all the "West Asian" mtDNA needed, plus Y-DNA R1b. (The origin of this population is unknown so far, they might just be Mesolithic North Caucasus people living there for thousands of years. Or not. We'll see with older samples).

What they seem to lack to become Yamnaya is a bit of Northern and Western admixture, and Euro_HG mtDNA.

So yes, there probably was a small amount of female exogamy from this pre-Yamnaya group. But it was with Euro_HG mostly, and a bit with Euro_Neolithic. Nothing huge, but visible.

Davidski said...

@Alberto

Too bad for you that EHG is Euro_HG.

The non-EHG part in Eneolithic_Steppe is due to female exogamy with non-Euro Near Easterners from the Caucasus.

Anonymous said...

" Perceiving the Caucasus as an occasional bridge rather than a strict border during the Eneolithic and Bronze Age opens up the possibility of a homeland of PIE south of the Caucasus, which itself provides a parsimonious explanation for an
early branching off of Anatolian languages."


Fantastic logic, equal to that it opens up the possibility that Indo-Europeans from Mars. Evidence of this is even less than belief in UFOs.


Anthro Survey said...

@Alberto

I admit, I mixed Novosvobodnaya up with another horizon that preceded Maykop. After looking at the dates in the paper carefully, it really does makes sense.

What's still surprising, though(for me, at least), was to see such an ANF-rich pre-Maykop North Caucasian sample. It suggests extensive population turnover if we assume a baseline CHG population unless the newcomers from upper Euphrates were ANF-like(which I doubt).

Totally agree with your "What is new...might just be Mesolithic North Caucasus....thousands of years.." paragraph, btw. As I wrote above (w/Iberomaurisian/IAM as an example) relatively ancient admixture events coupled with small population sizes obviates the need for southern female exogamy when it comes to Hg diversity shifts. We'll see if it was like this.

At any rate, I can't help but wonder how divergent the basal-rich donors to steppe_eneolithic were to Kotias and how the whole Malych-Kerch spillway as a boundary to Zarzian influence ties into this.

Davidski said...

@Alberto

Tell us again how EHG are native to Uzbekistan and Yamnaya came from Uzbekistan. I really need a good laugh.

Or have you now shifted to claiming that EHG are native to the Caucasus?

Just be careful though, that's CHG turf. You know, Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers, just in case you're still confused.

Santosh said...

@davidsky thanks for this awesome blog.

I am an amateur here. So let me get this straight please.

The maykops northward expansion hits an R1b rich population. That population picks up the knowledge, but not the language and genes, from maykops, forming the yamnaya.

Yamnaya expand into the corded ware. They hit R1a there. Majority R1b with some R1a expand westward. Majority R1a with some R1b move east to form the Sintashta. And Sintashta move on to south Asia.

Looks like a very simple plausible story.

old europe said...

Anthro

As for possible connections between ANF ( or EEF) and north caucasus north maykop take a look to this study. It is from 2014

Analysis of the Mitochondrial Genome of a Novosvobodnaya Culture Representative using Next-Generation Sequencing and Its Relation to the Funnel Beaker Culture

A. V. Nedoluzhko, E. S. Boulygina, A. S. Sokolov, S. V. Tsygankova, N. M. Gruzdeva, A. D. Rezepkin, and E. B. Prokhortchouk

I quote the abstract:

The Novosvobodnaya culture is known as a Bronze Age archaeological culture in the North Caucasus region of Southern Russia. It dates back to the middle of the 4th millennium B.C. and seems to have occurred during the time of the Maikop culture. There are now two hypotheses about the emergence of the Novosvobodnaya culture. One hypothesis suggests that the Novosvobodnaya culture was a phase of the Maikop culture, whereas the other one classifies it as an independent event based on the material culture items found in graves. Comparison between Novosvobodnaya pottery and Funnelbeaker (TRB) pottery from Germany has allowed researchers to suggest that the Novosvobodnaya culture developed under the influence of Indo-European culture. Nevertheless, the origin of the Novosvobodnaya culture remains a matter of debate. We applied next-generation sequencing to study ~5000-year-old human remains from the Klady kurgan grave in Novosvobodnaya stanitsa (now the Republic of Adygea, Russia). A total of 58,771,105 reads were generated using Illumina GAIIx with a coverage depth of 13.4x over the mitochondrial (mt) DNA genome. The mtDNA haplogroup affiliation was determined as V7, suggesting a role of the TRB culture in the development of the Novosvobodnaya culture and supporting the model of sharing between Novosvobodnaya and early Indo-European cultures.

Davidski said...

@Santosh

Yamnaya expand into the corded ware. They hit R1a there. Majority R1b with some R1a expand westward.

Not really. R1a was already present in Yamnaya-like populations in Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog on the steppe before the Corded Ware expansion, and Corded Ware was entirely R1a (don't know of any 100% confirmed R1b yet).

So what looks to have happened is that there were different populations on the Eneolithic steppe, some rich in R1a and others in R1b, and many of them started expanding out of the steppe during the Early Bronze Age for one reason or another.

The decedents of some, like Sintashta, may have re-entered the steppe from the forest steppe during the Middle Bronze Age, but that's yet to be confirmed and worked out. There's a chance that Sintashta is actually from the North Pontic steppe, as I speculated here...

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-mystery-of-sintashta-people.html

Santosh said...

@davidsky got it. thanks.

Anonymous said...

@Rob

"The Majkop / southern males are buried in kurgans too, which are earlier than the Yamnaya ones
They also popularised the daggers used in Yamnaya and balkans, and later B.B.
So not elite conquest but a case can be made for elite emulation
"

Maykop turns out to be highly interesting. Two very different ethnicities in one cultural horizon, kind of sort of a miniature bell beaker phenomenon. I wonder if those two actually spoke the same language.

vAsiSTha said...

@eastpole

IE & RV people entered SA between 4000-3000BC from somewhere between south of caucasus and haryana.
Namazga has evidence of fire altars and deity worship. Kalibangan has multiple fire altars, some of them close to ritual baths for ceremonial cleansing before yajna.

Grey said...

Anthro Survey said...
"At some point after 5500BC, I take it either Volga or other, similar co-latitudinal groups started making inroads north. Samara is quite a ways upstream and, afaik, the said Volga groups weren't strong agriculturalists, unlike EEFs."

if the subset of EHG (or EHG/CHG hybrid) people we're talking about were originally sedentary wetlands foragers around the Black Sea and if the rivers back then were also mostly wetlands then maybe that population stretched from the Black sea along the rivers (with standard HGs in between the rivers).

or maybe (like Ertobolle) originally wetlands foragers from the Black Sea picked up some aspects of farming from the south e.g. domesticated animals and that gave them an edge over HGs further into the steppe (at least along the rivers) and so they expanded after they gained that edge?

Grey said...

@Leron
""Actual Hittites" is a misnomer as you aren't dealing with a discrete population unit. Instead an amalgation of sorrounding and often unrelated people who adopted a single wayward strand of Anatolian language used in a small city, that through political circumstances became the headquarters of a fledging dynasty."

or mercenaries hired to protect the city who later took over

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamluk

(nb originally slave soldiers)

Davidski said...

@All

Idiotic, irrelevant comment by the ironically named TruthPrevails deleted.

Fair warning to you all: if you don't have a clue and refuse to learn, don't post here.

Anonymous said...

@Rob

"to be precise, kurgans (IMO) occur even earlier in Black Sea."

Where the zoomorphic scepters are found. These are also found in Khvalynsk. And also in Kolosova Polyana, Adygea. I reckon that would be considered Caucasus Maikop.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1563011015000896

So we see cultural traits being taken over back and forth yet no population movement.

zardos said...

@Rob: There is no reason to assume they adopted the language. Or did Turks, Ugrians or Mongols adopt IE when changing to the Scythian ways? Male lineages matter.

@Grey: Hittites being mercenaries which took over the city is a theory I read more than once decades ago.

Only early elite graves of different Anatolian speakers could prove something. Random individuals from somewhere under Hittite influence are not enough.

Richard Rocca said...

A special shout out to Olympus Mons for finally getting proof of a Copper Age movement from the South Caucasus through the Middle East, North Africa and finally Iberia in the form of Bell Beaker. Oh no, wait a minute, that's exactly the opposite of what all the data shows. My bad. (Sorry, I couldn't resist given how adamantly and nasty he was).

Matt said...

@Davidski, re; Mycenaeans, true, but things don't look like R1 is at any high frequencies considering the Balkans BA / Balkans Chl and Myceneans as a "set" representing steppe ancestry in SE Europe. (Even the Croatians who I misremembered as R1 had J). Other than that outlier, it doesn't seem too probable that even elite Hittites (if they are ever sampled) will have any much R1 going on, and nothing too probable to hit with a few samples. More Greek, Balkan and Anatolian samples will tell I suppose.

(Though actually not sure what R1 would tell us that autosomal steppe wouldn't, now that I think about it, other than to offer a less ambiguous and debatable signature is the strong point).

Also, @all, does anyone have any good explanation for why Armenia_Chalcolithic at 4000 BCE has an obvious displacement towards WHG/EHG that both Eneolithic Caucasus at 4500 BCE and Maykop at 3500 BCE lacks?

(E.g. compare plots in Laz 2016 and this paper. Or a Fst PCoA: https://imgur.com/a/DVZSep0)

Another question is why R1b1 shows up in Armenia_EBA, which is autosomally displaced towards CHG compared to Armenia_Chalcolithic, again despite making no showing in Maykop. You could have said before this paper that R1b1 was likely to be present in a CHG richer population, and so this explains why Armenia_EBA shift towards CHG combines with R1b1. But this seems maybe less tenable given Maykop?

Anonymous said...

@Davidski
Maybe Maykop exchanged brides with the north? Female mediated language shift.
That would presume an origin of PIE in a CHG group - females who went north would gradually change the language of the EHG-like peoples (Uralic, for the lack of a better one).
But maybe, some communities from this CHG peoples didn't engage in such bride exchanges with the north, and maybe they were the Anatolian speakers.

This is an extention of a post of mine in a past thread, pure speculation, but I'm just trying to make sense of the lack of Steppe-like presence in those Anatolians. Of course, everything changes if new samples show Steppe.

Rob said...

Hold up ! Am i reading the paper wrong or are they saying the R1b is R1b1a2. That’s V88?

Davidski said...

@namedguest

Maybe Maykop exchanged brides with the north? Female mediated language shift.
That would presume an origin of PIE in a CHG group - females who went north would gradually change the language of the EHG-like peoples (Uralic, for the lack of a better one).


I find that very difficult to believe, because language is associated with Y-DNA, not mtDNA, and early Indo-Europeans were especially patriarchal.

See here...

Correlation Between Genetic Structure and Linguistic Phylogeny in East Asia

zardos said...

@Rob: You on the other hand have to make up an overly complex construct to get to any form of solution which suits you. There is no single instance of a language shift through brides on that scale and especially not in the context of steppe people.
It would be against anything which PIE seems to have been in later times and all what could be reconstructed. It makes absolutely no sense at all.

There is of course your last option that "Southern" patrilineages established something and inside of this established community, for whatever reason, there was almost something like a coup and indigenous lineages took over and completely annihilated all other lineages, even those of their former masters.
But thats your only scenario and it is even less realistic than others.

The idea of female mediated language and culture shift in the context we see and with an indiginous majority is really the least likely thing that could have happened.
Also, Hittite culture and social structures are too different from the surrounding ethnocultural groups. Why doesn't it ring your bells that Hittite is among the very few IE people which took so much from the Hattians? The Hattians were always there, they were present before Hittites and some authors postulated that even the majority of the Hittite army seems to have been of non-Hittite origin. How can some random samples from the Assyrian period prove anything?

vAsiSTha said...

"I find that very difficult to believe, because language is associated with Y-DNA, not mtDNA, and early Indo-Europeans were especially patriarchal."

That's great because so far no male r1a samples found in south asia till 400bc. May we close the steppe bringing IE into South Asia chapter then?
Why assume the society of the rig vedic people being the same as that of early PIE?

Some assumptions of yours broken ready:
1. Steppe males invaded south Asia - steppe ancestry found in female skeletons in swat. Closest steppe males found in 1200bc lashkar hi.
2. Invasion happened - no chariots, no horses, no mass weaponry, no destroyed towns have been found
I'm sure a lot more of your assumptions have been breached already.

vAsiSTha said...

*1200bc kashkarchi

Open Genomes said...

@David

I think you left out the Sidon_BA samples from your latest Global25.


Sidon_BA:ERS1790729
Sidon_BA:ERS179073
Sidon_BA:ERS1790730
Sidon_BA:ERS1790732
Sidon_BA:ERS1790733

Rob said...

@ Zardos
The impact of Hattic on Hittite is over-exaggerate and uour scenarios aren’t really coming to fruition thus far.
But feel free to your opinions just as I’ll freely ignore them

Davidski said...

@Rob

Zardos isn't digging anything.

His comments are spot on. Only a lot of the right samples from Hittite Anatolia can prove anything because...

- Anatolia was mostly populated by Hattians and Hurrians

- Hittites cremated their dead.


zardos said...

@Kulkami: Do you know how many battlefields, even of historically proven large battles in much later times, left no trace or were not found to this day?
Do you realise how problematic the South Asian conditions are for conserving remains, especially wooden ones?

No matter what you say, there were no Northern European or steppe related people in South Asia before we can see traces of the steppe incursions, but now and especially the Northern and Upper Caste Indians, being all heavily influenced.

Its just about the exact time and path, both has to be determined. The Vedic culture is Indo-Aryan and IA has a common PIE root. So there are just two options:
1st PIE came from South Asia
2nd IA came to South Asia

The first option is not possible, because ASI would have spread and there should have been migrations counter clockwise through the steppe. Both didn't happen, while the clockwise expansion is proven.

zardos said...

Counter clockwise through the steppe to Central Europe I meant of course. Sure there were movements in both directions, but by largely similar, closely related IE people.

Davidski said...

@Open Genomes

I think you left out the Sidon_BA samples from your latest Global25.

Yes, because there's something not right with them. They're clearly shifted north relative to my Levant_BA samples, and they shouldn't be.

vAsiSTha said...

Construct PIE society based on Rg Veda. Call society patriarchal, and claim only men could spread language. Meanwhile -

"The Rig Veda mentions Romasa, Lopamudra, Apala, Kadru, Visvavara, Ghosha, Juhu,
Vagambhrini, Paulomi, Yami, Indrani, Savitri, and Devajami. The Sama Veda adds
Nodha, Akrishtabhasha, Sikatanivavari and Gaupayana.
When it comes to talking about significant female figures of the Vedic period
Ghosha, Lopamudra, Sulabha Maitreyi, and Gargi Kakshivati, Dakshina Prajapathya,
Vishvavar, Atreyi,, Godha,, Apala, Yami Vivasvathi, Lopamudra, Romasha Svanya,, Aditi
Dakshayeni,, Ratri Bharadwaja, Vasukra Pathni, Surya Savitri, Indrani, Sarma Devasuni,
Urvashi, Shashwati, Angirasi, Sri Laksha
10. Women Rishish
Female Rishis (Rishikas) of about 30 of them are named in the Rig Veda.
"

Karl_K said...

Rob

I put this on the earlier post.

R1b1a2
R1b1a2a2

vAsiSTha said...

@zardos

theres no large scale culture change in South asia apart from few areas like gandhara, cemetery H. The cultural continuity is attested by archaeologists who spent 60 years in the field in the area.

IVC folks moved east due to weather and disease.

spare me your nonsense.

zardos said...

Also I would stress that not just Hittite samples should be taken into account. After all, the Anatolian languages were a language group. What with Luwians and Lydians for example?
Hittites had a state and administration, sampling any kind of people inside of this state or its influence is like going to Italy and sampling former Greek colonies for getting knowledge about the "original Romans".

As for the mercenary scenario, we have historical examples of what might have happened , one being the Mamertines. Without a large scale campaign against them, they could have turned into the masters of much larger lands, while starting from a small warband.

zardos said...

@Kulkami:
Again, this proves little, because we have historically proven massive population changes, including language shifts, which left little trace in the archaeological record.
Also, it is obvious from everything we have that the IVC people didn't disappear completely and for sure they survived, their descendents dominate India to this day, even if applying the highest possible numbers for IA influence on modern Indians. But it was the newcomers which brought the new language and customs.

andrew said...

Mildly surprised to see Y-DNA L so far Northwest of South Asia.

The linguistic supplement isn't very trustworthy.

bellbeakerblogger said...

@Eurogenes,

Good job on consistently hitting the target. I have to say that the foreign brides hypothesis at first seemed implausible, but as the Mesolithic and Paleolithic data mounted, it became clear that this is what happened over time in the Northern and Western Black Sea areas. No way around it. The social process is strange, but not too different modern examples.



Open Genomes said...

@David

The Levant Bronze Age samples from 'Ain Ghazal are (mostly) J2b2-M205 and in fact pre-Amorite.

The Bronze Age Sidon samples are clearly Amorites. (The Kingdom of Amurru was in Lebanon at the time.) Also, there were the "Maryannu" in Middle Bronze Age Damascus (See the Tale of Danel and Aqhat) and Amarna Age Canaan.

The Amorites originated north of the Euphrates in Northeast Syria in the Hurrian-speaking region. J1-P58* is found in Dagestan. Given that they were J1-P58, they were probably Hurrian-speakers who adopted Eblaite, and transformed this East Semitic language into Proto-Central Semitic. The initial move southward may have been part of the Kura-Araxes culture expansion. Therefore, the Middle Bronze Age Sidonians should be very much shifted northward relative to the Early Bronze Age pre-Amorite 'Ain Ghazal Levantines, right? The only things "wrong" here the early Kura-Araxes expansion southward (the Khirbet Kerak culture) and Amorite Expansion after 2034 BCE. ;)

I think you should add them back in, because what we're seeing is historically and archaeologically correct.

Open Genomes said...

@David

Oh, and the 'Ain Ghazal Early Bronze Age individuals cluster with Yemeni Mehris. The reason seems to be that relative to the Early Bronze Age "East" Semitic-speaking Eblaites to the north, they must've been speaking the other basal clade of the Semitic languages, South Semitic. (Mehri is a South Semitic language, and J2b1-M205 is very common among South Arabian speakers.) The Early Bronze Age is not that long past the linguistic tMRCA of the Semitic languages, so it makes perfect sense if you think about it that the pre-Amorite Early Bronze Age South Levantines would be speaking a "South" Semitic language relative to the "East" (actually North) Semitic language of Ebla. (Eblaite, unlike Akkadian, is completely Afro-Asiatic and free from Mesopotamian Sumerian influence.)

So now that we have both Kura-Araxes individuals (Armenia_EBA) and Amorites (Sidon_BA) we have to really consider the Kura-Araxes / Khirbet Kerak origins of the Amorites, and what we can find in the "north-shifted" admixture among the Middle Bronze Age Amorites of Lebanon.

I wonder if the Kharman-Tepe (Velikent mound II) J1 VEK009.A0101 (relative date 3000-2800 BCE) is J-Z1842 or J-P58?

Leron said...

Sea Peoples?

Davidski said...

@Open Genomes

Those Sidon_BA samples are producing somewhat different results than in the paper, so I can't include them in the G25 daatsheets. But their G25 coordinates are still available here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IuHoFKUvgQHK1OC6GIYPm9-NSVn0Lf0-/view?usp=sharing

Accuracy is very important to me, so I can't make many compromises.

Leron said...

Mercs of the Ancient Near East aka the Habiru/SAGAZ. Most were Semites and Hurrian, very few Anatolians. IE came into central Anatolia most likely through merchant and trade connections. Luwians in the west (Asian Minor), proto-Hittite speakers around the Konya plain, and Assyrian traders to the east. Proto-Hittite as middle men expand into the inner Halys river as property owners. Hattic chieftains take over the trade and commercial centers, adopting it as the lingua franca of Anatolian trade to the west and fight against their more rustic cousins up north. First Hittite kingdom is established. Expand into an empire due to Hurrian and Semites they conquer joining their ranks. Reflected on Homeric stories of distant easterner Memnom helping the Amazons.

Rob said...

@ Zardos
I'm not sure how you're getting female mediation ideas about a prestige trade language between males. I mean, don;t get me wrong, i support your feminist stances.

Karl_K said...

@Davidski

" the CHG spread into the steppe at some point via female mediated gene flow. "

This looks likely, but it could have been that the males in incoming families just had a major disadvantage at every generation, while the local males had a huge advantage.

So. Technically correct "female mediated gene flow" but not in the sense that only females migrated.

Does anyone have a problem with that?

Davidski said...

@Karl_K

So. Technically correct "female mediated gene flow" but not in the sense that only females migrated.

Sure, but please note that I never claimed that only females migrated to the steppe.

Does anyone have a problem with that?

Probably only Alberto, but it seems like he's finally pissed off. Saves me the trouble of banning him.

Karl_K said...

"Sure, but please note that I never claimed that only females migrated to the steppe."

Well noted. And I hope everyone else understands this as well.

Open Genomes said...

@David

The Sidon Bronze Age individuals in Global25 cluster with a Lebanese Christian. ;)

Sidon_Middle_Bronze_Age_individuals_cluster_with_a_Lebanese_Christian.png

It's the Early Bronze Age Levantines from 'Ain Ghazal that are "southern shifted". They cluster with South Semitic speakers from Yemen:

Bronze_Age_Levantines_from_Ain_Ghazal_cluster_with_South_Semitic_speakers_from_Yemen.png

Davidski said...

@Open Genomes

The Sidon Bronze Age individuals in Global25 cluster with a Lebanese Christian.

I know, but in the paper they cluster with Levant_BA.

Lebanese Christians have a few per cent of steppe ancestry that pulls them north. Sidon_BA should lack this ancestry if we are to believe the results from the paper.

Open Genomes said...

@Nick Patterson (Broad)

Would it be possible for you to add these Middle Bronze Age individuals from Sidon from Haber et al. (2017) to the Reich Lab database?

Davidski said...

@Open Genomes

Those samples will probably be added to the next Reich Lab dataset release that pertains to the Near East.

But in any case, you should e-mail Nick if you want to ask him anything.

Richard Rocca said...

@Rob said...
Hold up ! Am i reading the paper wrong or are they saying the R1b is R1b1a2. That’s V88?

They used ISOGG 2016. Their R1b1a2 is M269 as can be seen by the calls in their supplementary information.

Open Genomes said...

@David

BTW, the cluster analysis that I'm doing using your Global25 uses all 25 dimensions from which to create clusters. Therefore your Global25 when all 25 are used is much more accurate than the published PCAs which are only based on PC1 and PC2.

Davidski said...

@Open Genomes

BTW, the cluster analysis that I'm doing using your Global25 uses all 25 dimensions from which to create clusters.

Yes, I know, but you mentioned that, for instance, Mycenaeans cluster with Hajji_Firuz_ChL, which seems rather unlikely based on my cluster analyses using the Global25 and formal stats.

Davidski said...

@All

The following ancient Southeast Asians are now in the Global25 datasheets...

Man_Bac_all:I0627_all
Man_Bac_all:I1137_all
Man_Bac_all:I2731_all
Man_Bac:I2947_new
Nui_Nap_all:I2497_all
Nui_Nap_all:I2948_all_new
Oakaie1_all:I4011_all_new

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FSzKKknFGcOgfyA76q9PD7B-n-MJs7L8/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bPt1Xqy0HwXpJFcug3vaC3MBqFTMvj5A/view?usp=sharing

I had a quick look, and they don't proxy well for AASI. Certainly not as well as the Onge and Jarawa. The latter population has now also been added to the Global25 datasheets.

Unknown said...

@Davidski
"BTW, the cluster analysis that I'm doing using your Global25 uses all 25 dimensions from which to create clusters.

Yes, I know, but you mentioned that, for instance, Mycenaeans cluster with Hajji_Firuz_ChL, which seems rather unlikely based on my cluster analyses using the Global25 and formal stats."

Which clustering algorithm did you use on your Global25? Ward's method is very robust against outliers and avoids the chaining effect of other hierarchical cluster methods. Your Global25 is incredibly rich in nuances! The archaeology agrees with the Sidon-BA culture having a North Syrian immigration during the early MBA or EBA iv. The EBA samples in Jordan don't archaeologically have such an immigration. Maybe your PC25 data can unearth or reveal such a movement in the early MBA that PC1 vs PC2 cannot. Also the Hajji Firuz ChL cluster with Central Anatolia BA samples may just track the movement from Persia into Anatolia post-Neolithic.Open Genomes analysis corresponds almost exactly to the -ss- and -nth- substratum toponyms in the Aegean, Greece and Anatolia.


Davidski said...

@Roy

Which clustering algorithm did you use on your Global25? Ward's method is very robust against outliers and avoids the chaining effect of other hierarchical cluster methods.

I used nMonte to model their ancient ancestry, and clustered them based on this. Mycenaeans are clearly different from Hajji_Firuz_Chl using such an approach, and I backed up these results with qpAdm and qpGraph. I pretty much do this for every new population of interest.

The archaeology agrees with the Sidon-BA culture having a North Syrian immigration during the early MBA or EBA iv. The EBA samples in Jordan don't archaeologically have such an immigration.

Maybe, but OG's Sidon_BA samples clearly pull north in the usual type of West Eurasian PCA relative to Levant_BA, while those in the paper don't.

I can't just ignore this problem, which looks like a basic QC issue, and assume that OG's genotyping is of a higher quality than that in the paper.

You guys should investigate this further by getting the genotype data from the authors. Let's compare the two sets and see what's going on.

Open Genomes said...

@David

Is there an unscaled Global25?
Both of these files are scaled.

I'm looking for the unscaled Global25 without population averages.

Rob said...

@ Davidski

No offence, but I don't think you were correct about the 'CHG female exogamy' question.
What appears to be the situation is that R1b-M269 and perhaps other lineages were already "CHG- EHG". We now know that the incoming Majkop peoples have significant ANF ancestry, and were indeed migrants from the south. We also know that Eneolithic males, R1b, from SW Russia (Stavropol) dating to 4300 BC - the start of the known sequence - were already CHG from the outset. No suitable foreign females were around for them to obtain CHG from.
Therefor, the explanation might lie in the Caucasian neolithic being related to SCA, incoming bullet-cores etc related to Kelteminar, Jeitun etc c. 7000 BC.
Then Meshok-Majkop migration was a later, more ANF rich and from a different origin.
And yes, this means CHG was progressively diluted as lower Don groups moved north, east, west etc
I think I had mentioned a 2 -tier migration process and chads getting some feelings about Neolithic too.

@ AnthroS
I think LUP spillway scenario is probably too early ?

Arza said...

Re: South-East Asians

Some time ago I showed how to built an ASI (AASI now) ghost out of Iran_N, Paniya and Cambodian:HGDP00711, who looked like a perfect source of Proto-Austroasiatic ancestry, mostly because:

Bonda
Paniya:PNYD3 66.5%
Cambodian:HGDP00711 33.5%
Distance 3.4594%

And now:

Bonda
Paniya:PNYD3 69%
Man_Bac:I2947_new 31%
Distance 3.6296%

Modern guy is still better, but finally we have something with a "right" age for people afraid of using moderns.

Davidski said...

@Rob

No offence, but I don't think you were correct about the 'CHG female exogamy' question.

I am indeed correct.

The Eneolithic_Steppe samples are a mixture of EHG and CHG. The CHG part is from the Caucasus, or even from south of the Caucasus, and it arrived north of the Caucasus mainly via female mediated gene flow.

So that's that.

Now, if you're claiming that Eneolithic_Steppe is a long-standing homogeneous population from as far back as the Mesolithic, perhaps that's correct too. But it doesn't change the fact that, at some point, mainly EHG males mixed with mainly southern CHG females to form this population.

Also, the other issue is that this northern and southern divide in terms of Y-chromosomes between the steppe and Caucasus lasted across the ages, so female exogamy between these two regions was obviously a very persistent feature.

Hence, we can't assume that the EHG and CHG mixture event happened just once to form Eneolithic_Steppe. Rather, it's more reasonable to assume that it happened on several occasions, and even continuously, and both Khvalynsk and Yamnaya formed somewhat independently of Eneolithic_Steppe, albeit in a very similar way.

Ric Hern said...

The reason why R1b was found in the Steppe and Armenia but not in Maykop could be simple. R1b migrated through Dagestan and Azerbaijan past the Southeastern end of the Caucasus rather than through a pass in the Middle Caucasus....

Davidski said...

@Ric

Armenia_EBA (Kura-Araxes) probably has some ancestry from steppe Maykop, hence the R1b.

But it's probably something of a fluke that it showed up in these samples. The vast majority of KA Y-haplogroups are bound to belong to J.

bellbeakerblogger said...

@David/Rob
I would add that the directionality of ceramic influence in the steppe from the south is an indication recent influence involving women which syncs with the timing of skeletal diversity and that the steppe composition was formed by a process insitu over time, not one where a population mixed somewhere else an moved in.

Im sure rampant piracy and fort burning could have been a factor, but until someone finds some roasted Uruk villages under Volvograd, it would rather appear that women were exchanged over time. Plenty of historical examples of this in the Americas and Indo-China

Ric Hern said...

@ Davidski

What prevented R1b from migrating from the Steppe in a Southeastwards direction into Azerbaijan and from there into Kura Araxes and Armenia ?

Davidski said...

@Ric

I don't know the route it took, but my point was that, by all accounts, Maykop had rich contacts with KA, so it's not difficult to imagine the integration of a fair few Maykop and steppe Maykop people into KA communities.

Ric Hern said...

@ Davidski

Thanks.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Davidski,

I haven't wrapped my head around all the possible scenarios. Ancient DNA will resolve it eventually. You talk about continuous female exogamy from the south for centuries.

How does that work if by 4300 BC the Caucasus had lots of EEF admixture which Yamnaya lacks. It doesn't look like by 4300 BC there were no true CHG females left to move north.

Samuel Andrews said...

@All,

"Steppe Eneolithic", an EHG/CHG mix in the North Caucasus in 4300 BC, may be a recent migrant from the north. Think about it, Khavlynsk and Sredny Strog are about as old as Steppe Eneolithic and contain the same kind of ancestry.

Karl_K said...

@Samuel


"I haven't wrapped my head around all the possible scenarios. Ancient DNA will resolve it eventually. You talk about continuous female exogamy from the south for centuries."

The thing is, we already see about 50:50 CHG:EHG in the earliest Yamnaya.

After that, there could not be large amounts of gene flow from any outside source that wasn't nearly identical. We can see the trickle in of EEF & WHG over centuries, but this simply dilutes the 50:50 ratio of CHG:EHG.

So, no matter whether this was a single pulse admixture, or a centuries long female introgression, it was over by the time we have the earliest Yamnaya genomes.

Open Genomes said...

Here is the Yamnaya Ukraine outlier woman I1917 clustering with a Tabasarans from (Southern) Dagestan, an Azeri from (Southern) Dagestan, a Medieval Alan, and the Bronze Age Hajji Firuz woman I4243 who shows substantial steppe (probably Poltavka) ancestry.

Yamnaya_Ukraine_outlier_with_Hajji_Firuz_Bronze_Age.png

Perhaps it was this region of Dagestan that was the source of CHG admixture in Yamnaya, rather than Maykop? This would be the region of the "Caspian Gates", the narrow strip between the end of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian Sea. This area would have been accessible from the steppe to the north. This would be a good area for Yamnaya to trade with to obtain sedentary agricultural products and handicrafts in return for cattle, meat, and wool bred on the steppe.

Since the Indo-Europeans were exogamous, this is the area where they could have traded for brides as well.

Davidski said...

@All

This is the Admixture/qpGraph from the paper. Yamnaya_Caucasus is modeled as mostly Eneolithic_Steppe from the North Caucasus area. But this need not be taken literally for Yamnaya overall, or even for Yamnaya from the North Caucasus area.

Wang et al. Fig 5

It's likely that Yamnaya and this particular Eneolithic_Steppe population are largely the products of independent admixture events in different parts of the Pontic-Caspian steppe involving EHG and CHG or just CHG-rich populations.

The reason I say that is because Yamnaya doesn't derive from the Caucasus foothills, and neither do the preceding Khvalynsk, Repin and Sredny Stog steppe cultures.

For instance, this might better explain the Sredny Stog II guy with R1a-M417 in eastern Ukraine.

Mixed marriages on the early Eneolithic steppe

I think what I should have really emphasized in my blog post, but can't be bothered editing it now, is that the samples that we see in the figure below span three thousand years, and yet they show the same picture, which is almost a total barrier to male gene flow between the steppe and Caucasus, but varying levels of female mediated gene flow.

Wang et al. Fig 3

EastPole said...

Kotova writes about “the existence of mixed marriages between the Sredniy Stog and Northern Caucasus population.”

In such a case the PIE is an open question. There is absolutely no reason to assume that Yamnaya was PIE as claimed in Wikipedia and many articles.

Sredny Stog is related to Corded Ware, Sintashta, Andronovo etc. and to Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian and Greek languages. Corded Ware also influenced Bell Beakers so Western European languages may also be related.
What IE languages is Yamnaya related to?

Open Genomes said...

From the new Lipson Southeast Asia aDNA study data:

The Man Bac indivudals cluster with Cambodians and Malays.

Oakaie clusters with Yi and Naxi from Yunnan and more distantly with Burmese

Nui Nap clusters with Thai and more distantly with Vietnamese

@David

Aren't the Mlabri and Nicobarese Austroasiatic hunter-gatherers in the new Reich dataset? They aren't in this Global25 dataset ...

Davidski said...

@Open Genomes

Aren't the Mlabri and Nicobarese Austroasiatic hunter-gatherers in the new Reich dataset?

I'd probably have to sign a waiver to get them. Can't be bothered.

Open Genomes said...

@David

What do you make of the Yamnaya Ukraine outlier I1917 clustering extremely closely with Hajji Firuz Bronze Age I4243? They're both women with a mix of Steppe and Caucasian admixture, but one is far to the north and west of the Caucasus and the other is due south of the Eastern Caucasus, south of Lake Urmia. They're both close to small adjacent populations of Southern Dagestanis, an Avar, Tabasarans (a subset of the Avars) and an Azeri from the Azeris who live just south of the Avars and Tabasarans and who is probably of Tabasaran ancestry.

The same exact process seems to be going on with these two women. Remember that Hajji Firuz EBA lived 2400-2100 BCE, and she would be as of now the earliest individual with Steppe admixture in the Near East, predating the first mention of the "maryannu" in 1900 BCE by 200-500 years.

Is there some way of combining these two into a a single population, and then modeling the admixture of that population?

Davidski said...

@Open Genomes

Probably no need to combine them...

The Yamnaya outlier

Likely Yamnaya incursion(s) into Northwestern Iran

Ebizur said...

Open Genomes said,

"Oakaie clusters with Yi and Naxi from Yunnan and more distantly with Burmese"

Did you mean to write, "Oakaie clusters with Burmese and more distantly with Yi and Naxi from Yunnan"?

EastPole said...

“The new results solve an old puzzle: Who domesticated the horse? And it was not the Yamnaya who already kept livestock such as goats and sheep.
Instead, it was an ancient hunter-gatherer people known from the archaeological site of Botai from east of the Urals. The Yamnaya then continued this domestication, probably inspired by the Botai and this allowed their culture to “explode.”
“This starts the explosion of these herding communities who come to Europe,” says Damgaard.
“Domestication of horses allows the Yamnaya to flourish and all of a sudden they are these large groups of people that move into existing societies,” he says”

http://sciencenordic.com/bumper-crop-ancient-dna-solves-key-mysteries-ancient-human-societies

There is no genetic evidence that Yamnaya horses were the earliest IE horses.
Horses were also domesticated at Sredny Stog Dereivka and Corded Ware had steppe horses. Why Yamnaya then?
Everybody is talking about Yamnaya PIE, from Wikipedia to Reich, from Carlos to Damgaard.
But what is the evidence that Yamnaya was IE?

Open Genomes said...

@David

So it seems that what they have in common is Hajji Firuz Chalcolithic, which of course is about 2000 years older than Yamnaya.

Hajji Firuz Chalcolithic clusters with Assyrians and Armenians

It seems likely that these are from the Urmia region.

Perhaps this had something to do with the Kura-Araxes culture rather than Maykop, because Kura-Araxes was further south and east?

Matt said...

@Cheers for the ancient SE Asian dna, Davidski.

Quick few graphics involving averages of all samples, then averages of Burmese vs Oakaie1_all: https://imgur.com/a/mOTtYxJ (and @Ryukendo for interest).

Euclidean neighbour joining on G25 actually does find that Oakaie's closest relative is Burmese, rather than Naxi / Yi! Oakaie1 looks a bit more like a proto-Burmese than a Naxi clone.

Comparing the residuals of Burmese and Oakaie1, the obvious pattern shows up with differentiation peaking at Burmese closer to Bengali and Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burmese NE India at one end, and then Hezhen and Xibo at the Oakie1 end. Austronesian populations slightly on Burmese side, but intermediate.

Plotting distance against Burmese vs Oakaie1 vs Naxi all together in PCA finds a main dimension reflecting shared relatedness to them all, then a dimension mainly splitting apart Naxi and Burmese, with Oakaie1_all slightly on the Burmese side. Finally Naxi and Burmese dimension (very small amount of variance) against Oakaie_1.

Final residual plot of Naxi vs Oakaie_1 shows Naxi closer to Naxi, Yi, Han_NChina particularly as against Oakaie1 closer to mainland and insular SE Asians with some Austroasiatic ancestry, particularly Man_Bac.

Once again, another sign of the Global25's high resolution (in terms of giving intuitive results and intuitive signs of continuity, on untested samples)...

(Btw, there's some slight puzzle where a few of the East Asian ancients who are close to moderns, e.g. Oakaie vs Burmese or the main XiongNu vs Han_NChina, seem to have the ancient displaced further from Native Americans on a subtle level. Not sure why that is).

Aram said...

This branch of R1a also can show up BA Anatolia.
It is present among Kurds , Turks, Arabs as far South as Yemen. Also in Georgia.

https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-YP4141/

Concerning that R1b V1636 in KA in most likelihood it represent an assimilated Leyla Tepe guy.
Most of KA will be J1, J2-M67, plus some remnants of Shulaveri like G2b. And maybe E-M84.(found in MBA Armenia)

Anonymous said...

@EastPole
The Botai and the Yamnaya both domesticated the horse independently. The Botai lineage didn't thrive, and the Yamnaya lineage did - the horses of the world come from the Yamnaya horses, not the Botai ones.
There's even a genetic paper about this, posted on Eurogenes even.

Davidski said...

@Open Genomes

So it seems that what they have in common is Hajji Firuz Chalcolithic, which of course is about 2000 years older than Yamnaya.

Only superficially. In other words, their similarity is something of a coincidence.

Unknown said...

@Davidski
"Probably only Alberto, but it seems like he's finally pissed off. Saves me the trouble of banning him."
I have looked at this blog every day for years, read all the articles and most of the comments. I have occasionally written my own comments.
And I have always considered Alberto's comments among the most interesting.
Please Davidski do not ban him.

Davidski said...

@Martin Clifford Styan

And I have always considered Alberto's comments among the most interesting.

Well, I'm not looking for "interesting", I'm looking for useful.

Alberto has a record of coming up with stupid theories that have no chance of ever working out, seemingly just for the sake of opposing my theories, such as...

- the Pathan invasion of Eastern Europe that created modern Eastern Europeans by the said Pathans mixing with an Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer-like population

- the Georgian invasion of Eastern Europe that created modern Eastern Europeans by the said Georgians mixing with an Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer-like population

- Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers (EHG) being native to Central Asia and hence Yamnaya forming in Central Asia and moving to Eastern Europe.


I've tried to be civil to him and to set him straight, but all I got in return were snide remarks about my own ideas and theories.

Now that one of the my main theories that we've argued about for a while has been totally backed up by ancient DNA, he refuses to acknowledged this, and simply claims that I was wrong.

Overall I'm a tolerant and nice guy, even though I can be pretty rough at times. But there's a limit to how much stupid shit I can take here, especially when it's directed at me.

So, I don't know if I can let him post here again, even if he wants to, because I just don't see the point. He doesn't contribute anything much except what you call "interesting", and I don't care for that.

Arza said...

I wish that I didn't show this earlier. Methinks that in the future I shouldn't be afraid of sharing ideas just out of fear of being ridiculed...

2.5 months ago, before it was cool:

left pops:
Yamnaya_Ukraine_outlier
Yamnaya_Ukraine
Armenia_EBA
Kennewick

right pops:
Mota
Ust_Ishim
Kostenki14
Vestonice16
ElMiron
MA1
Iran_N
Natufian
Levant_N
Anatolia_N
WHG
EHG
AfontovaGora3
CHG

chisq: 6.474 tail: 0.839935683
best coefficients: 0.498 0.446 0.056
std. errors: 0.201 0.111 0.115

Yamnaya_Ukraine_outlier = Steppe_Maykop_outlier?
https://s6.postimg.cc/fxhikbs9t/YUo.png

Unknown said...

I am not sure why David should ban Alberto. He is one of the few unbiased individuals with a genuinely original perspective on things. Much like Rob.

Does David want the comments on his blog to become like his echo chamber ?

It is ironical that David is the thinking of banning Alberto when it is now becoming increasingly clear that the whole Maykop, Kura-Araxes, Armenia_Chl, Anatolia_Chl cultural sphere that came into being around 4000 BC or thereabouts is clearly showing links to Chalcolithic Central Asia.

The only missing piece is how this massive cultural sphere influenced the steppe.

zardos said...

There was bride exchange, bride robbery and female slaves, probably even slave trade. Depending on the circumstances.
Maykop was pivotal as the culturally superiour neighbour of the steppe people. They traded goods and tribal allies at the border zone kept the Maykops save.
The relationship should have been similar to that of Romans and Germanic. The latter were transformed over time but not tamed, even on the contrary.
The relationship was more symbiotic in the Pontic region.
If they exchanged slaves, this could explain genetic profiles foreign to both.For example females from further south.
The material and cultural dominance of Maykop would only lead to language shift with male settlers and political colonisation. This is absent.

Davidski said...

@Jaydeepsinh Rathod

I am not sure why David should ban Alberto. He is one of the few unbiased individuals with a genuinely original perspective on things. Much like Rob.

Hahahaha.

Nice one. You're totally crap at anything to do with genetics, but at least you've got a stellar sense of humor.

AWood said...

@Ric Hern

Look to R1b-L584/L277 as moving along the steppes west of the Caspian sea from the north. That could be an answer to Anatolian/Hittite and is most likely quite old.

Anonymous said...

@Davidski

Caucasian wife may have been affected by weakly. Look at their Graphs, they generally refuse CHG in ancestry to the steppe component. They derive this influence from a state more ancient than CHG. It is possible that here we can talk about some North Caspian population, which was not associated with the Caucasus, but was like CHG.
Calculations are needed.

TruthPrevails said...

@all

I think there was no gene flow between Maykop <--> Maykop-Steppe + Yamnaya Caucasus.

I suspect a different vector for the genetic profiles of these 3 groups.

Is it possible to see a K=12 for all the samples from Vagheesh, Damgaard and Wang et al only for specimens from 2500BCE and before.

Anonymous said...

@David

Have you tried to model MA2203 with the Varna_o outlier?

Davidski said...

@TruthPrevails

Is it possible to see a K=12 for all the samples from Vagheesh, Damgaard and Wang et al only for specimens from 2500BCE and before.

The data from Wang aren't available yet, but in any case, if you're talking about an Admixture run, that wouldn't prove anything anyway because Admixture isn't a formal mixture test.

Start thinking formal stats, qpAdm, qpGraph...

@epoch

Have you tried to model MA2203 with the Varna_o outlier?

Yes, I have. Doesn't work. But that might be due to the lack of data.

Grey said...

zardos said...
"@Grey: Hittites being mercenaries which took over the city is a theory I read more than once decades ago."

yep

we know 1) cavalry mercenaries from the steppe were recruited throughout recorded history so it seems possible this might have started some time before recorded history and 2) we have numerous historical examples of mercenary coups and 3) iirc the Hittites were recorded as having been around in Hattian times but not in charge for a long while before they took over

so the mercenary revolt option should be considered imo.

TruthPrevails said...

@davidski

Yes formal stats is even better. Just that it will be multi page to do proper justice.

Ideally top 10 F3 admixture tests for each similar group as seen in admixture with all other groups from the 3 papers.

Then followed by qpadm for ancestry proportions at neolithic level sources and narrowing it down to proximal sources in time and space.

If you can do it when you have access to Wang et al, it will help everyone to get closer to reality.

Grey said...

Matt
"Also, @all, does anyone have any good explanation for why Armenia_Chalcolithic at 4000 BCE has an obvious displacement towards WHG/EHG that both Eneolithic Caucasus at 4500 BCE and Maykop at 3500 BCE lacks?"

more a wild guess than an explanation but... shiny metal

1) arrived after 4500 cos shiny metal in some way e.g. miners or guards for miners

2) disappeared before 3500 cos
- stomped by other people who wanted the shiny metal
or
- more simply the seam or local supply of wood ran out so they left

#

"Another question is why R1b1 shows up in Armenia_EBA, which is autosomally displaced towards CHG compared to Armenia_Chalcolithic, again despite making no showing in Maykop. You could have said before this paper that R1b1 was likely to be present in a CHG richer population, and so this explains why Armenia_EBA shift towards CHG combines with R1b1. But this seems maybe less tenable given Maykop?"

Another wild guess but if we assume metallurgy 101 (before mining or smelting) would have been confined to populations from regions with native metals then maybe there was a transition between those people and the ones who took the next step to metallurgy 201 (mining and smelting) - kinda like a relay race - example, traders/artisans from group 101 arrive in a region that has mineable soft metals but it's people from group 201 who figure out how to use fire to crack rocks to mine it (in the process figuring out smelting also).

EastPole said...

@namedguest
“The Botai and the Yamnaya both domesticated the horse independently. The Botai lineage didn't thrive, and the Yamnaya lineage did - the horses of the world come from the Yamnaya horses, not the Botai ones.
There's even a genetic paper about this, posted on Eurogenes even.”

I know about Botai.
Could you however show some sources showing that Yamnaya indeed domesticated horses before other steppe populations, like for example Sredny Stog, and that the horses of the world come from the Yamnaya horses and not Sredny Stog horses or other horses.
But please, show some genetic research not some BS from Carlos or others.

PF said...

Allow me to third what Open Genomes and Roy King said: the Sidon_BA results make complete sense to me. I previously mentioned that the G25 reflects structure in the region that was ignored in the original Canaanite paper (when contrasting Sidon to Ain Ghazal).

20 closest modern populations for each:

Sidon_BA
Lebanese_Christian Cypriot
2.281352 2.933026
Druze Lebanese_Druze
3.032116 3.265326
Samaritan Lebanese_Muslim
3.544580 3.953353
Iraqi_Jew Tunisian_Jew
4.841870 4.865019
Sephardic_Jew Italian_Jew
5.008798 5.008822
Libyan_Jew Greek_Central_Anatolia
5.134976 5.351525
Iranian_Jew Palestinian
5.754453 5.783939
Greek_Crete Georgian_Jew
5.887344 5.890172
Moroccan_Jew Ashkenazi_Jew
5.924753 6.076216
Assyrian Armenian
6.257664 6.675995

Levant_BA
Yemenite_Amran Yemenite_Jew
4.596572 4.725418
Yemenite_Ma'rib Yemenite_Al_Jawf
5.050773 5.208028
Yemenite_Dhamar Saudi
5.357664 5.393395
Yemenite_Al_Bayda BedouinB
5.478121 5.547102
Samaritan Yemenite_Mahra
5.743649 5.845260
Palestinian Lebanese_Christian
6.799833 7.046751
BedouinA Lebanese_Druze
7.144226 8.074138
Druze Lebanese_Muslim
8.148856 8.269722
Tunisian_Jew Libyan_Jew
8.396691 8.586291
Iraqi_Jew Cypriot
8.812457 8.866605

Grey said...

"which is almost a total barrier to male gene flow between the steppe and Caucasus, but varying levels of female mediated gene flow"

seems like hard but invisible borders between distinct biozones might be a thing

zardos said...

From what we have seen so far, the Maykop people might have been cautious and prevent to move on the steppe for the same reason Romans avoided both the steppe and forests: Not their terrain if the foreigners attacked them.
Obviously the steppe people had more horses and were more mobile. So the Caucasian people were able to fight them off on their own ground, but unable or simply unwilling to move on to the steppe and conquer it.
Yet they might have needed different resources, among which were horses and slaves. Probably even some of the males from further East were caught by steppe groups to sell them to the Maykops and further South. The Maykops were exceptionally rich and if they couldn't conquer the steppe, why should they be there, with the exception of individual traders, diplomats, captives and refugees?

If they didn't move onto the steppe, its because they didn't wanted to or the locals didn't wanted them in their homeland. There is no "natural" reason for this other than whats logical: No foreign males in your territory unless they have something very special to offer or can force you to let them in.

Ric Hern said...

@ AWood

Yes I was thinking about the same thing. The Kuban Steppe borders on Dagestan. The two different types of horse remains found in Azerbaijan makes me think that some Steppe people made it early into that area or traded early on with the people of that area. Archaeological evidence of Steppe occupation in North Caucasus Fortressess Pre-Maykop makes me think that Steppe people were looking for an easy trade route to the South which they found through Dagestan and Azerbaijan. Maybe to cut out the Middleman ?

Ric Hern said...

@ EastPole

Maybe the Samara people adopted the horse domestication knowhow from the Botai Culture and spread this knowledge Westwards and Southwards ?

And yes maybe the benefits of this knowledge didn't sink in immediately among all Steppe tribes...

EastPole said...

@Ric Hern

“Maybe the Samara people adopted the horse domestication knowhow from the Botai Culture and spread this knowledge Westwards and Southwards ?

And yes maybe the benefits of this knowledge didn't sink in immediately among all Steppe tribes”

Everything is possible. I don’t know and would like to know what really happened.
Just don’t understand why some very serious people together with trolls and spammers like Carlos claim that Yamnaya was PIE, Yamnaya domesticated horses and all horses came from Yamnaya, and that Yamnaya moved to Europe and Asia spreading IE languages.
Maybe it is true, but I don’t believe in it right now because there is no evidence for it. There is plenty of evidence for completely different story i.e. that Sredny Stog was PIE, not Yamnaya.
What IE languages are related to Yamnaya? What is the evidence for it?

old europe said...

East Pole

You know what my ( fringe) theory for IE is but I agree with you that the big player connecting steppe and steppe forest and taking the best from both was Sredni Stog.

Anonymous said...

@EastPole
"Ancient genomes revisit the ancestry of domestic and Przewalski’s horses"
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6384/111

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/03/central-asia-as-pie-urheimat-forget-it.html

EastPole said...

@namedguest

“"Ancient genomes revisit the ancestry of domestic and Przewalski’s horses"
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6384/111

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/03/central-asia-as-pie-urheimat-forget-it.html”

I know about Botai horses. I was asking you about Yamnaya horses.

Anonymous said...

@EastPole
I see, you didn't read the paper.

EastPole said...

@namedguest
“I see, you didn't read the paper.”

I read the paper some time ago:

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/02/migration-of-bell-beakersbut-not-from.html?showComment=1519329504020#c7075149170507004208

Can’ t recall anything about Yamnaya horses there.

You claim that :” the horses of the world come from the Yamnaya horses”.
Prove it!

Open Genomes said...

Dzarkutan2 I4901!

Sapalli Culture excavation sites

She's Northwest Caucasian!

I4901_Dzharkutan2_clusters_with_Northwest_Caucasians.png

So how did she get <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Abkhazia/37.75%0967/@39.0460328,47.6333185,4.25z/data=!4m12!4m11!1m5!1m1!1s0x405f2f4f13a442ff:0x934852e625989a6f!2m2!1d41.023407!2d43.0015544!1m3!2m2!1d67!2d37.75!3e2>3265 km from Abkhazia to Dzarkutan in Southern Uzbekistan, which is almost in Afghanistan?</a>

Sample ID: Dzharkutan2_BA:I4901
nMonte3 with restricted nMonte3
Source data table: Global25

Total number of samples compared: 4238

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

Full nMonte populations >= 1% limit: 11

Restricted nMonte distance: <b>1.02020</b>

Restricted nMonte percentages:
32.6% Cherkes
25.6% Karachay
15.4% Balkar
12.0% North_Ossetian
 9.6% Kabardin
 3.0% Chechen
 1.8% Adygei

Nearest Item Distances:
1.3881 Cherkes:730_R02C02
1.4129 Balkar:GS000016172
1.4932 Karachay:243_R01C02
1.5396 Cherkes:730_R01C01
1.6748 Kabardin:303_R02C02
1.7269 Adygei:262_R02C01
1.7564 Karachay:872_R01C01
1.8811 Karachay:244_R01C01

Open Genomes said...

I4901 is not a "one off". We have another too, I5608. What's going on here?

I5608_Dzharkutan2_clusters_with_Northwest_Caucasians.png

Sample ID: Dzharkutan2_BA:I5608
nMonte3 with restricted nMonte3
Source data table: Global25

Total number of samples compared: 4238

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

Full nMonte populations >= 1% limit: 14

Restricted nMonte distance: 1.17320

Restricted nMonte percentages:
38.2% Abkhasian
34.0% Adygei
21.8% Georgian_Imer
 6.0% CHG

Nearest Item Distances:
1.7905 Abkhasian:462_R01C02
1.8649 Abkhasian:462_R01C01
1.9013 Abkhasian:350_R02C02
1.9112 Abkhasian:349_R02C02
1.9461 Adygei:261_R01C02
1.9645 Abkhasian:460_R02C01
1.9941 Abkhasian:S_Abkhasian-2
2.1250 Georgian_Imer:GEO73_georgian_imer

Anthro Survey said...

Allow me to fourth Open Genomes, Roy, and PF. It is indeed reasonable to suspect genetic structure in the Levant, whereby southern Levant was more Natufian/CAPC shifted while Lebanon and present-day Syria had less of this influence. There was also more influence from the "West Asian highland zone", which appears to have continued trickling down after the bronze age even into the medieval era: Mardaities and Armenian Muslims in the region are a couple of examples.

So, Lebanese Christians have a good chunk of additional Armenia_EBA-like CHG-containing ancestry relative to the Sidonians and this is reflected as a steppe-ancestry signal in the model.

Open Genomes said...

I think I have the answer:

"Circassian beauties". Since time immemorial (4200 years?) the Northwest Caucasian peoples have exported their girls, by selling them far and wide. The land couldn't support a large population, and this was a means of population control. Even more than that, these women maintained connections with their homeland, and fathered sons in distant lands who were "half-Circassian". Girls were one of the main "exports" of the "Circassians". (A former generic name for Northwest Caucasians.)

So this was the Maykop culture selling their girls to the Sintashta culture, who transported them all the way to the tin sources in BMAC. These girls were worth their weight in gold, or shall we say, tin. ;)

In return, Sintasha in places like Arkaim refined bronze, and possibly manufactured goods like socketed bronze spearheads. They probably traded the bronze to the Northwest Caucasian Maykop, who then traded it at a big profit to Mesopotamia and Egypt. Perhaps they got agricultural products that couldn't be grown in the north, like olive and sesame oil, and dates, and items such as cloth.

This explains the large-scale production of bronze by Sintashta, far in excess of their own needs. And we know that the tin used in the Near Eastern Bronze Age came from Afghanistan. (Lapis too, which may have been another trade item.) There's no tin in the Near East and Egypt, so Mesopotamia and Egypt had to get it from somewhere. The bronze itself could have come directly from the steppe.

Other scenarios don't seem possible:
These Maykop women wouldn't be driving their wagons - or walking - by themselves for over 3200 km through the steppe with no towns, full of hostile warlike tribes, or somehow cross the mountains and deserts of Iran. There's no evidence of males moving east, just females.

The mtDNAs of I4901 and I5608 are U5a2a and <a href="http://www.ianlogan.co.uk/sequences_by_group/i4_genbank_sequences.htm><b>I4a</b></a> respectively. I4a is quite European, although it's also found in Armenia. Remarkably, U5a2a is found in China, and U5a2a1 is found across the steppe, from Iberia to Eastern Europe, the Pamirs, and out to the Koryaks of Far Eastern Siberia. U5a2a1 was found in the ancient Baltic and in an ancient Scythian. so it's probably a "steppe" mtDNA.

@David, maybe you'd like to make a post about I4901 and I5608?

vAsiSTha said...

@opengenomes

could you also check I7493 Sappali_teppe_BA_o

this also has similar steppe like ancestry same as the prior 2. This is also Namazga area.

vAsiSTha said...

@OG

i7493 is a male Q1b2

Arza said...

Waldemar@anthro said...
https://www.ibch.poznan.pl/uploads/ibch/aktualno%C5%9Bci/Premyslovci_Piast_Meeting_final-1.pdf

"The history of populations inhabiting Central Europe in the 1st-4th centuries in the context of genomic research"

Any bets? Predictions?

Rob said...

@ open genomes and BBB
Your romantic hypotheses are interesting, but you don’t seem to be understanding the findings
The Majkop or Uruk “brides” cannot be the source of CHG in Proto-Yamnaya because theyre too heavily ANF.
The source of CHG is R1b-M269 males moving northward from the eneolithic (4300 bC) site near Nalchik , Balkar republic (packed as they are with some 50-60% CHG l, looking at their graphs).
How this came to be is what we need to find next, but for a long time we’ve known that the simple equation R1b= EHG is wrong

Bob Floy said...

@open genomes
"So this was the Maykop culture selling their girls to the Sintashta culture, who transported them all the way to the tin sources in BMAC. These girls were worth their weight in gold, or shall we say, tin. ;)

In return, Sintasha in places like Arkaim refined bronze, and possibly manufactured goods like socketed bronze spearheads. They probably traded the bronze to the Northwest Caucasian Maykop, who then traded it at a big profit to Mesopotamia and Egypt. Perhaps they got agricultural products that couldn't be grown in the north, like olive and sesame oil, and dates, and items such as cloth."

Sintashta and Maikop were not contemporary.

EastPole said...

@Rob
“The Majkop or Uruk “brides” cannot be the source of CHG in Proto-Yamnaya because theyre too heavily ANF.
The source of CHG is R1b-M269 males moving northward from the eneolithic (4300 bC) site near Nalchik , Balkar republic (packed as they are with some 50-60% CHG l, looking at their graphs).
How this came to be is what we need to find next, but for a long time we’ve known that the simple equation R1b= EHG is wrong”

Very interesting.
This would explain why Yamnaya cannot be linked with any IE language.
Do you have any theory what language those R1b-M269 males from Nalchik were speaking?

Arza said...

@ Rob
The source of CHG is R1b-M269 males moving northward from the eneolithic (4300 bC) site near Nalchik , Balkar republic

Where they have moved and with whom (I'm more interested in genetic profile than culture) they have mixed?

a said...

a said...

OpenID namedguest said...
The Botai and the Yamnaya both domesticated the horse independently. The Botai lineage didn't thrive, and the Yamnaya lineage did - the horses of the world come from the Yamnaya horses, not the Botai ones.
There's even a genetic paper about this, posted on Eurogenes even.

R1b-Z2103 + Horses- Yamnaya[zoomorphic horse scepters =also found in the region of Botai[ large horses]+Szigetszentmiklós Cemetery[horses (Santa's Six Foot Elves)-Hungary Bell Beaker a lot of horse remains[horse husbandry?] and found in Dereivka region[Sredny Stog[I5884-mtDNA: U5a2b-Y-DNA: R1b1a1a2a2]

EastPole said...

@a

“OpenID namedguest said...
The Botai and the Yamnaya both domesticated the horse independently. The Botai lineage didn't thrive, and the Yamnaya lineage did - the horses of the world come from the Yamnaya horses, not the Botai ones”

Notice that namedguest still hasn’t proved that “horses of the world come from the Yamnaya horses”. It may not be true.

postneo said...

@opengenomes

We don't need wagons and fanciful adventures. All sheep and goat herders are under pressure to undertake seasonal migration to maintain their flocks down to this day. This phenomenon is seen through out the mountain ranges from western Iran, Himalayas all the way to TianShan. Obviously the mountain pastures provide the necessary fodder.

https://archive.org/details/bakhtiarimigrationthesheepmustlive

postneo said...

The caucasus is connected and would have similar traffic.

a said...

EastPole said...
@a

“OpenID namedguest said...
The Botai and the Yamnaya both domesticated the horse independently. The Botai lineage didn't thrive, and the Yamnaya lineage did - the horses of the world come from the Yamnaya horses, not the Botai ones”

Notice that namedguest still hasn’t proved that “horses of the world come from the Yamnaya horses”. It may not be true


Still the Yamnaya liked to make scepters like a particular animal, that stamps its feet.
"Indo-European Dispersals and the Eurasian Steppe with J.P. Mallory"
@ 22:36
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0HCs6PVnzI

Rob said...

@ eastpole
The “ steppe Majkop” (with Siberian signal and Q1a) could be from Botai , bringing / trading horses

Davidski said...

@supernord

Caucasian wife may have been affected by weakly. Look at their Graphs, they generally refuse CHG in ancestry to the steppe component. They derive this influence from a state more ancient than CHG. It is possible that here we can talk about some North Caspian population, which was not associated with the Caucasus, but was like CHG.
Calculations are needed.


Not sure about the North Caspian as the homeland of this northern CHG-related population. It's much more likely that it was Ciscaucasia.

Yes, as I said above, it's possible that we're dealing with a very ancient lineage here that eventually formed the greater part of the ancestry of Eneolithic/Bronze Age Pontic-Caspian steppe populations.

But the mtDNA data from the Eneolithic/Bronze Age steppe suggest something different, because most of the "southern" lineages are phylogenetically rooted in the Near East and aren't super old. What this means is that this is likely to have been a continuous process of sex-biased mixture, or more or less continuous, perhaps from as far back as the Mesolithic right up to the Yamnaya and Catacomb periods.

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