Genetic continuity in the western Eurasian Steppe broken not due to Scythian dominance, but rather at the transition to the Chernyakhov culture (Ostrogoths) Jarve et al. The long-held archaeological view sees the Early Iron Age nomadic Scythians expanding west from their Altai region homeland across the Eurasian Steppe until they reached the Ponto-Caspian region north of the Black and Caspian Seas by around 2,900 BP. However, the migration theory has not found support from ancient DNA evidence, and it is still unclear how much of the Scythian dominance in the Eurasian Steppe was due to movements of people and how much reflected cultural diffusion and elite dominance. We present new whole-genome results of 31 ancient Western and Eastern Scythians as well as samples pre- and postdating them that allow us to set the Scythians in a temporal context by comparing the Western Scythians to samples before and after within the Ponto-Caspian region. We detect no significant contribution of the Scythians to the Early Iron Age Ponto-Caspian gene pool, inferring instead a genetic continuity in the western Eurasian Steppe that persisted from at least 4,800–4,400 cal BP to 2,700–2,100 cal BP (based on our radiocarbon dated samples), i.e. from the Yamnaya through the Scythian period. However, the transition from the Scythian to the Chernyakhov culture between 2,100 and 1,700 cal BP does mark a shift in the Ponto-Caspian genetic landscape, with various analyses showing that Chernyakhov culture samples share more drift and derived alleles with Bronze/Iron Age and modern Europeans, while the Scythians position outside modern European variation. Our results agree well with the Ostrogothic origins of the Chernyakhov culture and support the hypothesis that the Scythian dominance was cultural rather than achieved through population replacement. ... Unveiling early horse domestication and mule production with ancient genome-scale data Fages et al. Despite being one of the last large herbivores to be domesticated, the horse has deeply transformed human civilizations. It provided not only important primary domestication products including both meat and milk, but also invaluable secondary products, such as fast transportation, which impacted patterns of human movements and facilitated the spread of vast cultural and political units across the Old World. The steps underpinning early horse domestication are, however, difficult to track in the archaeological record, especially due to (1) the relative scarcity of horse bone assemblages until the Neolithic and Bronze Age transition, and (2) the absence of clear patterns of size differentiation prior to the Iron Age. Some of the more recent steps accompanying horse domestication, and in particular how it was transformed to fit a range of utilizations in different human groups, are also poorly documented. One such step pertains to the development of mules, and other kinds of F1-hybrids, which are difficult to identify on fragmentary remains using morphology alone. Within the course of the ERC PEGASUS project, we have generated genome-scale sequence information from hundreds of equine archaeological remains spread across Eurasia and spanning the last ~40,000 years. These data helped us test the extent to which candidate domestication centres in Central Asia and Europe contributed to the genetic makeup of the modern domestic horse and propose a minimal time boundary for the earliest utilization of mules by mankind. ... The genetic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the last 8000 years Olalde et al. The Iberian Peninsula, lying on the southwestern corner of Europe, provides an excellent opportunity to assess the final impact of population movements entering the continent from the east and to study prehistoric and historic connections with North Africa. Previous studies have addressed the population history of Iberia using ancient genomes, but the final steps leading to the formation of the modern Iberian gene pool during the last 4000 years remain largely unexplored. Here we report genome-wide data from 153 ancient individuals from Iberia, more than doubling the number of available genomes from this region and providing the most comprehensive genetic transect of any region in the world during the last 8000 years. We find that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers dated to the last centuries before the arrival of farmers showed an increased genetic affinity to central European hunter-gatherers, as compared to earlier individuals. During the third millennium BCE, Iberia received newcomers from south and north. The presence of one individual with a North African origin in central Iberia demonstrates early sporadic contacts across the strait of Gibraltar. Beginning ~2500 BCE, the arrival of individuals with steppe-related ancestry had a rapid and widespread genetic impact, with Bronze Age populations deriving ~40% of their autosomal ancestry and 100% of their Y-chromosomes from these migrants. During the later Iron Age, the first genome-wide data from ancient non-Indo-European speakers showed that they were similar to contemporaneous Indo-European speakers and derived most of their ancestry from the earlier Bronze Age substratum. With the exception of Basques, who remain broadly similar to Iron Age populations, during the last 2500 years Iberian populations were affected by additional gene-flow from the Central/Eastern Mediterranean region, probably associated to the Roman conquest, and from North Africa during the Moorish conquest but also in earlier periods, probably related to the Phoenician-Punic colonization of Southern Iberia.See also... How relevant is Arslantepe to the PIE homeland debate?
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
ISBA 2018 abstracts
The ISBA 2018 conference is in a couple of weeks and the abstract book is now available here. Below are a few examples of what's on offer this year. Admittedly, the Scythian abstract looks a bit weird to me, because we know for a fact that the Scythians who lived in the Pontic-Caspian steppe harbored Siberian genome-wide and maternal admixture (see here and here). The abstract about the horses and mules looks like it's from the major horse paper that I blogged about a few days ago (see here). Emphasis is mine...
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[quote]However, the transition from the Scythian to the Chernyakhov culture between 2,100 and 1,700 cal BP does mark a shift in the Ponto-Caspian genetic landscape, with various analyses showing that Chernyakhov culture samples share more drift and derived alleles with Bronze/Iron Age and modern Europeans, while the Scythians position outside modern European variation. [/quote]
Maybe somebody tell me why they think Scythians were just pre-Chernyakhov popualtion. Because I always heard they live Sarmatians in Ukraine in this time which few centuries earlier defeated Scythians...
Arriving in Iberia at 2500 BCE. Interesting....
Good stuff. This will change our view of Scythians. Not so much an ethnic group as much as a language. Maybe, the first example of how archaeologists used to think all languages & cultures spread.
The Iberian stuff finally includes mention of minor recent East Mediterranean ancestry in Iberia, something we've seen for a long time but no ancient DNA papers mentioning it. It'll be interesting to see the process that made R1b Df27 & Steppe ancestry prevalent in Iberia.
For the most part, North Africa & Iberia have been in two different worlds. The strait of Gibraltar did a good job seperating them. Epipalelithic Morocco & Iberia completely different, Neolithic Morocco shows influence from Iberia but most were very different. The first legitimate North African gene flow into Iberia I'm pretty sure will turn out to be from the Medieval Moors.
@Davidski
“Admittedly, the Scythian abstract looks a bit weird to me, because we know for a fact that the Scythians who lived in the Pontic-Caspian steppe harbored Siberian genome-wide and maternal admixture “
Yes, it looks very weird, especially this part:
“inferring instead a genetic continuity in the western Eurasian Steppe that persisted from at least 4,800–4,400 cal BP to 2,700–2,100 cal BP (based on our radiocarbon dated samples), i.e. from the Yamnaya through the Scythian period.”
But we know that R1a dominated Sintashta and Srubnaya tribes replaced R1b dominated Yamnaya tribes on the steppe and later got replaced by some tribes with Siberian admixture.
Wooo an Iberian paper!
So if R1b-M269==Indo-Europeans, can someone please explain the Basque results in this?
There were a host of tribes in the Pontic steppe and forrest-steppe which represented a continuity from Yamnaya and ethnically were not a part of elite Royal Scythians proper: Agathyrsi, Neuri, Budini, Androphagi, Melanchlaini, Tauri etc. It would be interesting to have a look at their Baltic HG component and relatedness to modern Slavs.
It'll be interesting to see if early Scythian royal burials constitute a widespread ethnic group. Maybe we'll see this guy later this year:
http://www.ancientpages.com/2018/01/16/earliest-and-largest-scythian-princely-tomb-discovered-in-siberia-by-swiss-archaeologist/
Yeah, can't imagine R1b Z2103+ populations stayed intact 2,000 years after the R1a Z93 clan moved in. The authors, like in other papers, are probably misconstruting Steppe-rich genetic makeup with "therefore the same as Yamnaya."
The current Samara Samartain & Scythian genomes do look to be of mostly local Russian origin (R1a Z93, R1b Z2103 clans) not recent Central Asian origin.
OT: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-earliest-mediterranean-cheese-production-revealed.html - ancient early Neolithic cheesemaking by Impresso (Cardial). Interesting for these questions of when use of milk arose, and how that relates to lactase selection (e.g. more evidence that thousands of years go by before any lactase selection).
Blogger EastPole said...
@Davidski
“Admittedly, the Scythian abstract looks a bit weird to me, because we know for a fact that the Scythians who lived in the Pontic-Caspian steppe harbored Siberian genome-wide and maternal admixture “
Yes, it looks very weird, especially this part:
“inferring instead a genetic continuity in the western Eurasian Steppe that persisted from at least 4,800–4,400 cal BP to 2,700–2,100 cal BP (based on our radiocarbon dated samples), i.e. from the Yamnaya through the Scythian period.”
But we know that R1a dominated Sintashta and Srubnaya tribes replaced R1b dominated Yamnaya tribes on the steppe and later got replaced by some tribes with Siberian admixture."
Samples of R1a-Z93[Scythian core clade] are not found in the earliest Sarmatian samples. Samples of R1a Z93 are not found in higher/elevated numbers among the modern day Bashkir tribes[occupying lands once considered Sintashta and Arkaim fortress strongholds]. It is not found in higher numbers among day Ossetian tribes both Iron and Digor[who are the only Northern Steppe group to survive and speak an Iranian related language]It is not found in higher numbers among modern day Armenians a separate Indo-European speaking group. All the above groups[not R1a-Z93] are connected to Yamnaya by way of R1b-Z2103 and or downstream R1b-Z2109/Z2110.
@Ryan
The answer to your question is here...
Beginning ~2500 BCE, the arrival of individuals with steppe-related ancestry had a rapid and widespread genetic impact, with Bronze Age populations deriving ~40% of their autosomal ancestry and 100% of their Y-chromosomes from these migrants. During the later Iron Age, the first genome-wide data from ancient non-Indo-European speakers showed that they were similar to contemporaneous Indo-European speakers and derived most of their ancestry from the earlier Bronze Age substratum.
In other words, expansions by steppe-derived groups had a huge impact on Iberia, so much so that during the Iron Age both the Indo-European speakers and non-Indo-European speakers there had about the same amount of steppe ancestry. Basques are derived from the latter.
The mule paper is interesting because it may provide evidence for a case James Downs made in 1961 that the Onager (or the Ass) was first domesticated but their deficiencies drove onager-owning steppe folk to keep two breeding stocks of wild horses and onagers for crossing. Downs asks why was the domestic onager completely eclipsed about the time in history the domestic horse starts smashing through the gates??
Feges et al may see this phase differently, instead believing that intentional hybridization is evidence of two domestics being present. But Downs's argument was that realistically the larger North European wild horse was too crazy for anything useful other than to sire interspecies hybrids. He thinks over time in this role that the internal disposition of the breeding proto-horse lines improved enough to be self-sustaining as a breeding domestic.
If this was the case, you can imagine how quickly the domestic horses would begin to multiply from a particular region.
@David - "In other words, expansions by steppe-derived groups had a huge impact on Iberia, so much so that during the Iron Age both the Indo-European speakers and non-Indo-European speakers there had about the same amount of steppe ancestry. Basques are derived from the latter."
How does a migration that profound (100% of the Y-DNA!) no produce a language shift. Compare that to the Steppe % in Greece for example...
@Ryan
I'm assuming that when the authors say that there was a 100% Y-chromosome shift, they're referring to the samples they have, not to the entire Bronze Age Iberia.
Obviously, the steppe-related population movements caused language shifts in much of Iberia, but some regions may have been more resilient to this process, either because they had enough economic and political power to do so, or they were geographically isolated and could be more easily defended.
Basque regions probably qualify as the latter, although they weren't totally isolated, because, as far as I know, archeology does suggest foreign influence in Basque country associated with Indo-European regions to the south.
I guess that Iberia abstract suggests that the male biased long distance migrations of pastoral groups were fairly opportunistic about adopting languages and religious beliefs and cultural practices of other groups in some instances, at least in Iberia (possibly less so elsewhere).
40% Steppe ancestry seems high judging by GBR today seems probably only 46-50% today, vs early British Bell Beakers probably 60%, but that may be a question of methods.
Dear Matt,
You would have the 100% replacing warriors adopting the language of Basque females, whilst in Anatolia, foreign males adopting the language of in-absentia R1 male rulers “by decree”.
That’s a special kind of special pleading :) .
@Matt, I understand that – in some cases until quite recently – Basque culture was relatively matrilineal and matrilocal. That is, land and other property was often inherited through female lines. And if the first bearer/s of R1b arriving in SW Europe did so in dribs and drabs, i.e. they were "lone wolf" types, they may quickly have realised there were advantages in conforming with the ways of wealthy prospective mothers-in-law, including the adoption of a Vasconic language.
How could the Basque be matrilineal if their y DNA is dominated by a young R1b founder effect? Their origin can be patrilineal non-IEs who carried R1b.
Sadly, backwards French and EU tinkering laws prevent us from learning more about the descendants of DF27+ who most definitely originate in west-central Europe in and around 2500 BC.
@Nirjhar007
Why is that special pleading? We have a pretty good idea how that may have worked: Agricultural cultures had a completely different way of inheritance than pastoral tribes.
On account of Anatolia, we know pretty sure that during large pars of the period we know that IE languages were spoken other languages were spoken as well. Please elaborate which of the Anatolian samples were IE speaker and which weren't and tell us why we can be sure.
@David - "Obviously, the steppe-related population movements caused language shifts in much of Iberia, but some regions may have been more resilient to this process, either because they had enough economic and political power to do so, or they were geographically isolated and could be more easily defended."
And the latter would make sense for the Basques, except that they seem to have they have some of the highest %s of R1 lineages in Europe. It seems implausible that the more easily defended and isolated areas would simultaneously see the highest rates of Y-chromosome replacement but the lowest rates of linguistic replacement. What mechanism do you propose to account for that discrepancy?
And if we accept that R1b-M269==Indo-Europeans originally, when and where did the first language shift to non-IE languages for R1b-M269 occur?
@nirjar, purely male migrations of "warriors", a minority imposing language "by decree", these are things of your own mind's invention, not anything you'll find in my comments.
(I suppose you might wish to argue with non-existant people now that the comments section has quieted down, but I'm not going to encourage it!)
Migrations bearing steppe ancestry into Iberia must have been over 40%, if the paper does mean 40% steppe_EMBA ancestry. If they were for anything like the NW European Beakers, then at 60% steppe ancestry, something like 66% migration into Iberia, or if the bearers of steppe ancestry had 50% steppe ancestry (more like Central European Beakers, or perhaps a more robust sample of Southern French Beakers), something like 80% replacement.
Male biased yes, warriors purely or males purely, no.
Sometimes these groups I'd guess may have found themselves in situations where they would adopt the languages of others from Iberia (which is not too surprising a thing; if all your neighbours speak one thing, then sometimes that often tends to spread among your subpopulation, if you are largely endogamous, in the examples we know about). Though I think they could just about plausibly have adopted Vasconic languages or assimilated into cultures speaking them in France or Central Europe, before mass migration into Iberia.
Likewise for Anatolia, R1a elites imposing a language are your own invention or at least nothing I'd see reason to support; any plausible idea compatible with the steppe hypothesis (which I accept as still the most plausible) probably involves mass migration (which may be as little as 20-30%) by groups mostly diluted down to very low levels of steppe ancestry, by Anatolian related ancestry (and possibly without any steppe diagnostic y haplogroups!).
(For truly special pleading, see for instance the idea that sometimes comes about in the fringes of online discussion that Vasconic languages were originally associated with steppe ancestry on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, but left no traces of this anywhere from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to anywhere east, west, north or south of their range, except Iberia!).
@leucuuo, it's a romantic image, but I don't know if I can think of much happening in dribs and drabs necessarily, re: the scale needed, and that it must have been quite large in volume.
Not that I'm either sure that Basques were every really matrilineal or matrilocal, let alone matriarchal. I'm not knowledgable about the topic but from a quick browse of wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basques), we see:
- "Strabo's account of the north of Spain in his Geographica (written between approximately 20 BC and 20 AD) makes a mention of "a sort of woman-rule—not at all a mark of civilization". But Strabo said similar things about the Celts, in a similar vein of identifying the culture as barbarian.
- For anything actually substantive beyond that, only a lengthy quote by none other than... Marija Gimbutas. Who tended to be somewhat... partial... in interpretation of history and archaeology in support of her ideas within "Civilization of the Goddess".
- A comment that "A widespread belief that Basque society was originally matriarchal is at odds with the current, clearly patrilineal kinship system and inheritance structures. Some scholars and commentators have attempted to reconcile these points by assuming that patrilineal kinship represents an innovation." Or the more parsimonious idea might be...
I agree with Sam and I think Matt here - the only thing that makes sense for the Basques is if at least some of these steppe-ancestry bearing immigrants/invaders were speaking something non-IE.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the areas where the frequency of R1b peaks all show evidence of non-IE languages in their speech either. Celtic was not originally vigesimal.
@Nirjhar
You might be surprised, and indeed shocked, to learn that the "decree" theory, which is more commonly known as the elite dominance theory, for the spread of languages and/or culture from north of the Caucasus into Anatolia has been a very popular one in academia. Case in point...
The Arslantepe Royal Tomb (in the Upper Euphrates Valley, eastern Anatolia), which is dated to 3100-2900 B.C., shows that far-reaching influences from the Northern Caucasus were already crossing the Greater Caucasus range and that they were being assimilated by the Anatolian power groups.
How relevant is Arslantepe to the PIE homeland debate?
Feel free to dazzle us with some real arguments whenever you're ready.
@David - if a small elite can impose a language (which I agree they did), why couldn't a replacement of ~80% of the male populace?
@Ryan
I'm not sure what you mean, because much of Iberia became Indo-European speaking right after it experienced the large scale steppe-related population shifts, so the inference from this is rather obvious, no?
I don't find it so strange that non IE languages survived in Iberia despite widespread steppe genetic influx. I think something similar happened with the Etruscans. The IE impact in southern Europe was clearly lessened compared with the north. Language shift is idiosyncratic, it depends on many factors and the correlation to genetic change can vary widely.
In his recent book "Who We are and How we Got here" David Reich makes mention to the "40% population ancestry, 100% Y DNA replacement in BA Iberia." In the same reference, he contrasted this to Britain which experienced 90% replacement. So, the 40% replacement level in Iberia, is referring to Northern Beaker (50-60% Steppe EMBA) not Steppe_EMBA proper.
Bronze age Iberians are the same as modern Iberians, minus East Meditreaen & Northwest African stuff.
If there were continuity in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe isn't it reasonable to think that some kind of Language formed there out of Proto-Indo-Iranian or something closely related ? Maybe something between Slavic and East Iranian ?
Something to consider ?
When we look at the Basque speaking area we see that it is small. There are other areas in Europe with the same and even Higher proportions of R1b that covers the same amount of territory....also take into account that Basque R1b makes up +-2% of all the R1b in Western Europe...
R1b, R1a dominated discussion of European genetics for years. The mystery of their origin is solved. Kurgan culture PIEs: Corded Ware & Bell Beaker. Their rise to prominence was sudden and dramatic. R1b P312+ Bell Beaker is probably the main ancestor of western Europeans, R1a M417+ Corded Ware is probably the main ancestor of northeastern Europeans.
Hopefully, genetic testing companies will update themselves. 23andme describes the first bearers of R1b L151 as elite foriegn metel traders. No, they were apart of huge populations who are the main ancestors of most modern western Europeans.
Just a speculation, but let’s try to consider it.
If the BBs were a mixture of cultural influence from Iberia and mostly steppe derived stock form CE, it seems fairly plausible that BB adopted an Iberian language from the source of the Iberian cultural influence.
There are many insights that the shift to Celtic was a later event (Iron Age) and I cannot see any cause it could not have been a shift from non-IE to IE language. In this scenario Vasconic would be a relic of much broader language group which have expanded with BB and was replaced only later (Iron Age), leaving some relic of Vasconic. And the resistance of Vasconic would has nothing to do with the initial expansion of steppe derived folk to Iberia, because the genetic composition would have changed a millennium earlier than IE languages would expanded.
Dear Matt ,
Why do we need to see Basque east or south of the steppe?- as nobody proposes that ALL R1b-M269 (i.e. Z2013) people spoke Vasconic. But we do have hints of languages proposed to share some similarities with Vasconic, like Hurrian & other Caucasus-like languages (although just beyond proof these have long been around).
Nevertheless, it is recognised that Vasconic was spoken over a much wider area than today, and was focussed around western Europe , exactly where the largest BB period turnover occurred, not talking simply about the autosomal percentages you allude to, but overall in terms of societal change.
Modern Basques is a rump survival of an older Bronze Age (Bell Beaker) network. By contrast, it is well known that linguists date Celtic to the late bronze age. The reconstructions, and more importantly similarity of inscriptions testify to this. The Ogham stones in Medieval Ireland are eerily proto-Celtic, so much so that Schriver proposed a very late expansion of Celtic in the British Isles. .
Your speculation about supposedly IE -speaking R1b groups switching language in upon their arrival to northern Iberia does not hold any water. With the L51+ arrival, there was striking rupture to the previous social order- closing megaliths and the ending the old ditched enclosure settlement system, a mass replacement of their men, and perhaps enslavement of women. Yet apparently they then decided to find it ''expedient'' to adopt the language of the societies which they just vanquished ? Mind you, this is especially in northern Iberia & south France , exactly where the B.B. phenomenon first took hold and lasted the longest. No offence your arguments have started becoming long-winded but ultimately vacuous, speculating as you do on areas and topics you have not heeded much more than a graph about.
Dear David,
Feel free to dazzle us with some real arguments whenever you're ready.
How do I know what the Arslantepe data will show ? I thought you’re the VIP hot-shot here ? Just be careful though, it might come back and bite you bro, just like your brazen predictions about ‘population replacement in the Swat valley” ;) .
"...with Bronze Age populations deriving ~40% of their autosomal ancestry and 100% of their Y-chromosomes from these migrants."
Oh, the R1b-S116 nonsense again! Who started it and why do all geneticists copy it like parrots? The R1b lineages associated with the Bell Beaker culture have nothing to do with the R1b lineages associated with the eastern Corded Ware culture!!!
"R1b, R1a dominated discussion of European genetics for years. The mystery of their origin is solved. Kurgan culture PIEs: Corded Ware & Bell Beaker."
And yet, somehow, we have R1b1 in northern Italy 14 000 years ago, and multiple R1b men at the Iron Gates 8000 years ago.
"It seems implausible that the more easily defended and isolated areas would simultaneously see the highest rates of Y-chromosome replacement but the lowest rates of linguistic replacement. What mechanism do you propose to account for that discrepancy?"
You would demand too much. They don't want to think about it. It's easier to sing with the steppe crowd.
@War Lord
The R1b lineages associated with the eastern Beakers all belong to R1b-M269, this is not what was present in northern Italy 14000 years ago, nor in the Iron Gates foragers.
And there's no reliable record yet of R1b of any kind in any Corded Ware remains either.
Read this very carefully, and make sure you understand it well before attempting to post anything on this topic here again.
Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...
@ nirjar, I'll keep it short then: I don't belive that you actually understand the strength of the hypotheses which you are trying to offer as a counterargument. You are giving strong statements to things which there is no consensus on and you are discussing things in absolute terms which are probably impossible to know.
There is no linguistic consensus on Vasco-Caucasian, there is no linguistic consensus on a Vasconic substratum widely across Western Europe (the latter, if not both, is really a fringe hypothesis, if anything). There is probably no archaeological consensus on your so called "rupture" either, and archaeologists are a tentative lot who would probably not launch into using such a term.
You are opining on things which are necessarily speculative hypotheses as if they are fact. Particularly speculative by the linguistic standards that you would apply to, say, the chalcolithic Pontic-Caspian steppe hypothesis of the proto-Indo-European Urheimat.
@Sam: "In the same reference, he contrasted this to Britain which experienced 90% replacement. So, the 40% replacement level in Iberia, is referring to Northern Beaker (50-60% Steppe EMBA) not Steppe_EMBA proper."
That's possible. I'm not sure that it has to be though though, just judging from simple PCoA+Fst analysis, the level of Steppe_EMBA in present day Basques should be about 30%, and then level of Northern Beaker 52%, while for Beaker_Southern_France, Steppe_EMBA 40% and Northern_Beaker 70%. Beaker Iberia as a whole sample, by contrast is well short of even 13% Steppe_EMBA / 23% Northern Beaker. See: https://i.imgur.com/7HsrHni.png.
So I think the other interpretation, that the abstract does talk about total Steppe_EMBA ancestry, would be possible, if the samples are somewhat different to the early Beaker Iberia samples we hold. We will have to see.
As far as I can remember Central European Farmers were not particularly closely related to Iberian Farmers.
There were many different cultures in the Balkans and Greece throughout the Neolithic and Chalcolithic. Did all of them speak the same language at some time before they split up and migrated independently to Central Europe and Iberia ?
Sam, you got Reich's book quote wrong, it goes as follows:
"We found that approximately 30 percent of the Iberian population was replaced along with the arrival of steppe ancestry. However, the replacement of Y chromosomes was much more dramatic: in our data around 90 percent of males who carry Yamnaya ancestry have a Y-chromosome type of steppe origin that was absent in Iberia prior to that time."
This abstract gives us a 40% autosomal replacement, so we're seeing a 30-40% replacement of the original native population. I'm pretty certain they mean that the newcomers, Bell Beakers form CEU, rather than pure Yamnaya-like, unless we're talking restrict groups who had arrived at a relative short while, ago and had an excess of Steppe ancestry. These figures are similar to other BB samples from Iberia we've seen in the past who carried this sort of ancestry, ie ~20% Steppe (again implying a ~40% replacement rate).
This is akin to peoples with Steppe-ancestry replacing 90% of the neolithic British population, it doesn't mean that the newcomers had 90% Steppe.
These Steppe values are actually lower than today's, even when you consider the additional and later Mediterranean/NA layers modern Iberians have.
I'll use a Portuguese example because it's the one I care for the most:
Portuguese - scaled Global 25/nMonte
Barcin_N 54.2
Yamnaya_Samara 29.8
WHG 10.8
Iberomaurusian 5.3
Levant_N 0.0
Yoruba 0.0
Portuguese - Davidski's qpAdm
Caucasus_HG 0.0
Lengyel_LN 59.3
Nganasan 2.0
Onge 1.0
Steppe_EBA 30.6
Western_HG 3.8
Yoruba 3.3
And this is what I found wierd, because they don't make any mention of subsequent IE colonisations of Iberia (besides Roman) when there was clearly an increase in Steppe-related ancestry there. It feels like they dismissed para-Celtic and Germanic migrations in the abstract, or God-forbid, in the paper altogether.
As for IE-speakers and non-IE-speakers being similar, it shouldn't be shocking. The movement of Central European peoples into Iberia starting at ~2500BC wasn't one massive migration but rather many small movements, for example they only appear to have arrived at VNSP, not far from Lisbon, by ~2200BC when their material culture starts appearing alongside the previous one. Them eventually adopting non-IE languages in the following centuries isn't surprising considering they were still a minority in the peninsula, and many small groups rather than one big wave who swept across the land. It could also be the case some groups had adopted a non-IE even before crossing the Pyrenees, although I find this less likely.
Also, considering R1b is higher in the East than in the West, and that there were no known catastrophic population replacements in the area up to today, if we see R1b in IA_Iberian samples (so East Iberia in non-IE-speaking groups) no one should let their jaw drop.
When did R1b reach the Lowlands(Netherlands and Belgium) ? Did R1b reach these areas long before their entry into Iberia at 2500 BCE ?
@David - "I'm not sure what you mean, because much of Iberia became Indo-European speaking right after it experienced the large scale steppe-related population shifts, so the inference from this is rather obvious, no?"
The Basques experienced the largest population shift in terms of Y-chromosome replacement though. Why didn't they also experience a language shift?
This mysterious East Med stuff also hit France. E1b, J2a1 are its Y DNA signatures.
@Ryan
There is no one model of language shift, there are many variables involved. For example in the case of the Basques if there happened to be a slow trickle of IE invaders over 3 or 4 generations there may not have been a big enough mass to cause language shift. It could also have been something similar to the Norse invasion of Normandy where the invaders adopted the local language quite quickly.
The exact conditions for language shift or invader linguistic assimilation for a particular case may be undiscoverable. We may just have to accept the most plausable explanations.
@Ryan
The Basques experienced the largest population shift in terms of Y-chromosome replacement though. Why didn't they also experience a language shift?
I'm not sure if this is true. As far as I know, Basques have rather low R1b diversity, so it seems that their high frequency of R1b is in large part due to founder effects.
Keep in mind also that, unlike Basque country, most of Iberia experienced significant gene flow from outside after the Iron Age.
Good point re: the diversity. Hrm. The distribution of R1b-DF27 seems to be specific to non-Indo-European areas in Iberia though, not Celtic or Lusitanian areas. That's why I have a hard time believe it was introduced into Iberia by Indo-Europeans while being virtually absent among the pre-Roman Indo-European parts of Iberia.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-07710-x
Tangent: The Khan is tweeting ASHG 2018 abstracts at the moment - https://twitter.com/razibkhan/status/1038179747187044353
ASHG abstracts something we've already discussed? If not, surprised that no one has scooped rozenfeld for it yet... ;)
This is the Rakhigarhi abstract...
https://eventpilot.us/web/page.php?page=Session&project=ASHG18&id=20304013
And Iain Mathieson has a poster on European pigmentation...
https://eventpilot.us/web/page.php?page=Session&project=ASHG18&id=10304054
@Davidski, yeah, a pleasant surprise that the Rai paper has multiple samples from across India.
That Mathieson abstract is also interesting - my main interest is whether, with the wider set of 43 polygenic pigmentation risk scores, they will find as much differentiation on the European HG cline from WHG->EHG as they do (e.g. from dark WHG to lighter EHG), or it will collapse into more similarity.
They talk about a trend over long time, confirming that selection happened over a long time (but may have been slower before Holocene under conditions of small population size?) which is pretty cool, in contrast to ideas that lighter pigmentation is strictly due to Neolithic and post-Neolithic diets or something, which I've been increasingly skeptical of (e.g. ancient European population were relatively dark pigmented until the populations of the Neolithic, who needed more vitamin d so became light). Or that light pigmentation was just impossible to select for in European HG before EHG / Near Eastern populations introduced SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 variants.
PgmNr 2719, the Sardinian abstract is cool; confirms of course relative absence of steppe ancestry in Sardinians, and I'd like to see what the "Interestingly, we also detect elevated affinities with pre-Neolithic peoples of Europe" means - if it means, as I think, influxes of Balkans_Chl / Iberia_Chl related ancestry to Sardinia, even if total steppe ancestry influx is low.
There are a couple of bits about Chinese ancient dna there as well - PgmNr 2717 seems the most interesting, as actually has genome wide from 4500 BCE to 1000 BCE from Central China for 12x people, apparently able to resolve into 4 separate populations. Though there is some slightly strange aspect (to me) of trying to match present day y-haplotype bearers to the ancient groups.
@Matt
I think those extra ancient Indian samples will probably appear in the revised Central and South Asian paper, maybe after ASHG 2018?
By all accounts, the Rakhigarhi paper should be out very soon as a stand alone.
@ Matt
How is "Pre-Neolithic" = Chalcolithic ? Shouldn't it be Mesolithic ?
@Nirjhar
The Bronze Age peoples who came from the steppe/forest steppe of Eastern Europe and spread their R1a-M417 all over South Asia, and especially in the upper caste populations. They show no traces of South Asian or Iranian ancestry before moving into Asia.
What languages do you think they spoke?
For some background see HERE.
Dear Matt,
I did not claim anything as fact about Vasconic’s relations , in fact I distinctly stated that there is lack of concise proof , but highlighted past suggestions by some linguists worth re- considering. I don’t understand your insistence on needing to see evidence for Basque being spoken on the steppe when modern basque is a relict, drifted and “youngened” language of a former Bronze Age continuum of western Europe, whose even more distinct ancestor might go back to one of several languages spoken around the eneolithic steppe. Your demands are therefore like asking for proof that French was spoken on the steppe.
Indeed, we lack evidence for any language on the steppe until the late Scythian/ sarmartian period, when the first toponyms and personal names reach us!.
I wouldn’t expect such misrepresentation from you!.
It is well and good to eloquently echo what you believe is consensus, but there’s little point in tapping on the “consensus” sign and dismissing something as fringe or speculative when you don’t even understand how the said consensus was generated in the first place, or its inherent limitations. For example, the linguistic relations of IE and FU are one of the cornerstones of your “consensus”, yet one school would have Fino-Uralic forming in the Altai (Altaicists), and the other in the west (Indo -Uralic). And I won’t even go into Indo -Iranian loans:)
What’s left - the *wheel and *wooly sheep?
Back to Iberia, you, Andre and psynome might be correct at a broad level: language shift can go either way when populations mix. But when looking at the specific situation here - it is hard to imagine foreign language adaptation in the face of a relatively abrupt and antagonistic social turnover in northern -central Iberia. This isn’t absolutely set but it is likely given the weight of evidence. So who is engaging in “speculative analysis” ?.
Your dissmissive arrogance is rather rich in the light that up until a few weeks ago you were absolutely adamant that there is no proof for such a massive turnover in Iberia from male perspective; not to mention the idea echoed here of early scouts adopting the language of their overbearing mother- in-laws seems to be a comical abstraction based on zero Analysis.
At least we can agree south Portugal and El Agar are different, but they have little to do with Basque.
Linguistics suggests Celtic / paraceltic expansion much later than the B.B. period; and funnily enough these recent abstracts have suggested :
(a) Basques align specifically with earlier Iberian Bronze Age
(b) Iron Age movements into Britain.
So do incorporate the evidence, even if it does somewhat muddy “the party line”.
@ric, the shorter answer is that I didn't read that section properly at first. The longer answer is that, looking at it, increases in affinity to pre-neolithic populations on the European mainland could mean gene flow from mainland Europe, where we know admixture was happening (alternatively, European HG living on Sardinia and being absorbed over time - seems less likely to me though).
As per fig 7 Sardinian WHG affinity is enriched in the X-chromosome just like their Neolithic affinity, and in similar proportion as well. If it's really coming from mainland post-Neolithization, it should then be female-mediated too?
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/12/07/092148.full.pdf
@Shaikorth, affinity to Loschbour / Stuttgart in Chiang paper elevated on X relative to autosome for Loschbour / Stuttgart against CEU.
Seems indication that post-Chalcolithic admixture into Sardinia from mainland Europe (relatively more CEU like) is male mediated, not Loschbour related admixture reflects female mediated movements from mainland (though there are imaginable scenarios where that could be, of course; insular patrilocality where moves from mainland to island tended to have a female bias to leaving descendants, for'ex).
My point here is that the WHG imbalance in Sardinian-CEU X-autosome relation seems similar to the ENF imbalance, which could plausibly mean the WHG introgression into Sardinians was not necessarily sex biased. A female mediated WHG would further widen the WHG gap compared to the ENF gap, male mediated WHG would narrow it. There is more variation within the shifts between the two farmers than between WHG's and farmers. Post-Mesolithic migrations from mainland quite likely were all sex-biased (male biased in particular), so the extra WHG could well be local. Presently the most Neolithic-like Sardinians reside in remote mountain regions, and during the Neolithic hunter-gatherers might have survived in the same regions to be absorbed later causing a MN style WHG bounceback.
The ancestry that dampens Sardinian autosome's WHG/ENF affinity compared to CEU is another matter and strongly looks male mediated.
@All
Stupid comment from banned commentator "Bronze" removed. He still seems to think, against all the data, that R1a came from Central Asia. I'm guessing he means that it was a marker associated with the Botai people.
This is obviously wrong, because ancient DNA shows that R1a appeared in Central Asia after the migration of Corded Ware-related peoples from Eastern Europe to Central Asia that gave rise to the Sintashta and Andronovo cultures.
Here's some reading for Bronze, so that he finally stops posting his nonsense here, which I'll just block/delete anyway...
The mystery of the Sintashta people
Please note that stupid theories, especially those that go against the data, won't be tolerated here, and, in any case, all posts from banned members blocked/removed.
@Shaikorth: Post-Mesolithic migrations from mainland quite likely were all sex-biased (male biased in particular), so the extra WHG could well be local.
I'm not so sure about that; could be true, but I think I would be very wary to go to assuming that (sex-bias). We'll have to look at specific drift in detail at specific dimensionality that emerges on G25 / Fst analyses splitting Iberia_N from Barcin/Koros/Balkans_N that is unrelated to HG cline, I think, and compare position to Sardinian groups today, then we can think about this topic. Sardinians have strong affinity with Iberia_N out of all Neolithic samples we have access to so far.
@Sam:This mysterious East Med stuff also hit France. E1b, J2a1 are its Y DNA signatures.
From present day y distributions, kind of seems like could have radiated out from around Balkans in general - Eastern Europe is on a cline between Baltic_IA and Germany_medieval_o / Baltic_BA and Balkans_BA? Picking up Balkan I2 along the way? Though some Baltic groups might be more clinal between Baltic_IA and Nordic_IA?
SW Europe also on a cline between Balkans_BA and Bronze Age SW European populations - I think the expansion here may be something like Balkans->Italy, then actual expansios of ancestry with the Roman Empire. As the abstract indicates, if it doesn't show up in Iron Age Spain, then it seems like the Italian population expansion is the right vector? Roman Empire probably more demographically influential in Spain+Portugal than Germanic migrations?
Ryan said...
"The Basques experienced the largest population shift in terms of Y-chromosome replacement though. Why didn't they also experience a language shift?"
i don't know how likely it is but one logical possibility is the first R1b outsiders in the Basque region were originally a minority who adopted the majority language and then they somehow ended up taking over later - originally miners maybe and in a very sparsely populated region so unusually large founder effect?
@Matt
It is fairly certain that females from Iberia ended up in Sardinia. This can be seen in the X2c2 mutation history with a founding line from Iberia and present in both Sardinia and Iberia. Olivieri et al., Mitogenome Diversity in Sardinians: a Genetic Window onto an Island's Past, Mol Biol Evol (February 8, 2017).
"Ancient DNA links extend beyond Sardinia. A Copper Age (∼5 Kya) mitogenome from Northern Spain (ATP16 in Günther et al. 2015) identifies Iberia as the likely homeland of the molecular ancestor of the SSH X2c2a (supplementary fig. S6, Supplementary Material online), and indicates that the founder mtDNA arrived in Sardinia between 8.9 ± 1.7 Kya (age of X2c2) and 5.7 ± 1.8 Kya (age of X2c2a) (supplementary fig. S6, Supplementary Material online)"
So it is rather apparent that X2c2a arrived in sardinia sometime between the late Mesolithic or early neolithic. It is known, verifiable archeology, that the Neolithic reached southern spain by at least 6000 BCE. So X2c arrived in Iberia very early Neolithic or we are seeing a pre-neolithic migration into Iberia.
Lee
Ancient DNA from Italy should be interesting imo. Looking at modern DNA, there's lots of possibilities. Here's a fascinating possibility which I think might be true.....
-At the sametime R1b Df27 pops went into Iberia, R1b U152 went into Italy. In northern Italy, more of the local population was replaced than in Iberia. 50%+ replacement.
-At around the same time, via the Mediterranean sea or mainland Italy, pops of almost entirely Anatolian origin arrived. Not Agean or Balkan origin but straight from Anatolia.
And, so you had a clash of two worlds, one mostly Anatolian & one mostly Bell Beaker.
Central/southern Italy does not have excess farmer ancestry. They pull away from northern Italy towards Anatolia BA. If, you model them as Beaker U152/Italy farmer+other, the other comes out mostly Anatolian. There's not a lot of room for anything other than Steppe-rich ancestry from the north and Anatolian ancestry.
Think about it. How, did Tuscans become so similar to Greeks? That doesn't make sense geographically. This suggests people with lots of Anatolian ancestry, lots more than what Minoans & ancient Greeks had, moved into Italy making Tuscans similar to Greeks in West Eurasian variation.
Re Basques. High male turnover, low female, if I understand correctly. So kids learned mom's language better than dad's. A small number of invader males, lots of local females.
I'd like to know more about the #s of females traveling with these invaders. Smaller numbers, but significant, and apparently very few female invaders got to the Basque areas, so broad categories of invader culture got left behind.
"How could the Basque be matrilineal if their y DNA is dominated by a young R1b founder effect? Their origin can be patrilineal non-IEs who carried R1b"
Reality is more complex than a model with only two parameters.
Old vasconic people culture was rather matrilineal according to old historians, and according to it own tradition, and the vasconic language was spoken by people living in Aquitaine from de Garonne to the Ebro river until de First century AC.So there were lots of people speaking that language.
There are traces of vasconic language in hydronimics and other geographical names from Caucasus to Spain.
In euskera (actual basque language) the word Ibai means River and River banks are Ibar. You find rivers Iber, Tiber, Ebro, in Pontus, Balkans, Italy, Spain.
The word Gora means High in euskera. The basque anthem sais : Gora ta Gora Euskadi meaning High, high Euskadi.
You have this word in a lot of Caucasian names of high locations, in the native name of the Republic of Montenegro, Crna Gora. And so on
Euskera shares with old Iberian language, the numerals and the family names.
How R1b-27 became important without people loosing the language? Iberian culture was very important and that language related to proto basque was spoken until the coming of the romans from France to Gibraltar.
Why a haplogroup becomes important? More resistence to plague and other diseases could be the answer. More tolerance to certain foods, new staples or milk. Biology may have an answer.
olga said...
"and the vasconic language was spoken by people living in Aquitaine from de Garonne to the Ebro river until de First century AC."
that's raises a possibility - maybe the dudes who eventually showed up in the Basque territory originally adopted the language somewhere else?
Hittite
zalti-
‘chariot’ is considered a loanword from (Hiero-
glyphic) Luwian
zalal(a)-
‘wagon, cart’
Asko Parpola
Formation of the Indo-European and Uralic (Finno-Ugric)
language families in the light of archaeology
zaldi,zaldu basque word -Horse-
Perhaps the dudes came from Anatolia or somewhere close to at some point of the history.
Samuel Andrews said...
"How, did Tuscans become so similar to Greeks? That doesn't make sense geographically."
it might if they sailed there for a particular reason.
for example at some point some people somewhere figured out how to mine ore using heat to crack rocks. it seems to me after that moment regions with ore would likely see intrusive populations from the direction of where mining was first figured out.
if that was the reason for a wave of colonization at a certain time then you wouldn't expect it to be contiguous - only hops from place to place.
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