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Wednesday, October 17, 2018

A closer look at a couple of ancients from Hellenistic Anatolia


Not sure if anyone's mentioned or noticed this already, but the two currently available genomes from Hellenistic Anatolia (samples MA2197 and MA2198 from Damgaard et al. 2018) pack an impressive amount of steppe ancestry. Moreover, one of these individuals also shows obvious admixture from Central Asia.

This isn't particularly surprising, considering the well attested presence of Galatian Celts from deep in Europe and Cimmerians from the Eurasian steppe in Iron Age Anatolia. But it's worthy of note, because it's yet another example of ancient DNA correlating very strongly with archaeological data and historical records. Below are a couple qpAdm models for each of the two aforementioned Anatolians:

Anatolia_IA_MA2197
Anatolia_MLBA 0.429±0.073
Beaker_Hungary 0.571±0.073
chisq: 4.073
tail prob: 0.967727
Full output

Anatolia_IA_MA2197
Anatolia_MLBA 0.431±0.085
Hallstatt_Bylany 0.569±0.085
chisq: 4.056
tail prob: 0.968241
Full output

...

Anatolia_IA_MA2198
Anatolia_MLBA 0.469±0.037
Kangju 0.531±0.037
chisq: 12.091
tail prob: 0.356839
Full output

Anatolia_IA_MA2198
Anatolia_IA_MA2197 0.588±0.165
Cimmerian_Moldova 0.412±0.165
chisq: 11.657
tail prob: 0.390007
Full output

Hence, MA2197 can be modeled very successfully with more than 50% ancestry from a source closely related to the Bell Beakers from the Carpathian Basin and the presumably Celtic-speaking Hallstatt population of what is now Czechia. This almost certainly proves to me that MA2197 is largely of Galatian Celtic stock. The models for MA2198 aren't quite as statistically sound, but they still work, and indeed suggest that this individual might be in large part of Cimmerian origin.

See also...

Celtic probably not from the west

Focus on Hittite Anatolia

Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians came from...

87 comments:

Davidski said...

@All

Please still post all ASHG 2018-related comments in the previous thread here...

ASHG 2018 open thread

Erikl86 said...

I see only Anatolia_IA:MA2198 in the non-averages scaled spreadsheet - does the average in the average spreadsheet include the second sample you modeled here as well?

Davidski said...

@Aric

The pop averages are always only based on the individuals in the main datasheet.

I'll try and get Anatolia_IA:MA2197 into there later today, but I'll mark it as a low res sample, just in case it's producing wobbly results due to its low coverage.

Erikl86 said...

Thanks !

Davidski said...

@All

Anatolia_IA_low_res:MA2197 is now in the Global25 datasheets. All of the relevant links are here...

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/10/cimmerians-scythians-and-sarmatians.html

Samuel Andrews said...

Um. But, MA2197 is already in G25. I remember getting results for him. He looks like Balkan_IA so I assumed he was an immigrant from somewhere in southeastern Europe.

Anatolia_IA:MA2197 0.112685 0.146236 0.029415 -0.021318 0.033852 -0.014223 -0.023031 -0.003 -0.009613 0.043919 0.009906 -0.003297 -0.011744 0.000826 -0.019001 -0.003182 0.019688 -0.002534 0.001006 -0.003877 -0.022835 -0.009645 0.006162 -0.011086 -0.003592

Barcin: 66
Yamnaya: 31.1
WHG: 3
CHG/Iran Neo: 0

Ric Hern said...

I wonder how much genetic impact the Persians (Darius) had in Eastern Europe with his campaign against the Scythians ?

Davidski said...

@Samuel Andrews

Um. But, MA2197 is already in G25. I remember getting results for him. He looks like Balkan_IA so I assumed he was an immigrant from somewhere in southeastern Europe.

That was a different sequence, which I took out. The one that is in there now is based on more markers, although still low coverage.

Suevi said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHdCuhYRHqo

EastPole said...

David Reich speaks about IE migrations and at 47:06 he says:

https://youtu.be/fHdCuhYRHqo?t=2825

„We have now established chains of transmission of this Yamnaya steppe ancestry into Europe and South Asia between 5000 and 3500 years ago that tracks very well the spread of spoken IE languages and even tracks features of the way those languages are related like funny features such as Balto-Slavic languages have a particular relatedness to Indo-Iranian languages.”

I wander how they tracked Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian linguistic relatedness by genes. Is it Corded Ware –Andronovo genetic link?

Davidski said...

@EastPole

„We have now established chains of transmission of this Yamnaya steppe ancestry into Europe and South Asia between 5000 and 3500 years ago that tracks very well the spread of spoken IE languages and even tracks features of the way those languages are related like funny features such as Balto-Slavic languages have a particular relatedness to Indo-Iranian languages.”

I'm guessing he meant to say peculiar rather than funny per se. But yeah, makes sense. He's probably talking about the close relationship between Corded Ware and Steppe_MLBA and maybe even R1a-Z282 and R1a-Z93.

Palacista said...

At 42:00 minutes Reich says something very odd, he says that the Dravidian languages are distantly related to IE. This is news to comparative linguists unless you are an extreme nostraist. Everything else he says appears to be based on evidence but there is no evidence for this. The only thing that comes to mind is page 120 of his book where he seems to claim that IE came from south of the Caucasus. I think that he is trying to tie together the Iranian farmer contribution he sees in IV and Yamnaya.

Balaji said...

Similarities between Slavic and Iranian languages are best explained as a result of Scythian, Saramatian or Alan influence on Slavic.

Bob Floy said...

@balaji
Do you really not know that the similarities are much deeper and more ancient than that, or are you trolling?

Davidski said...

@Balaji

Similarities between Slavic and Iranian languages are best explained as a result of Scythian, Saramatian or Alan influence on Slavic.

I think that deep down you know that this is impossible, but I guess that's all you have left.

It's a really poor last option though, considering the massive genetic impact that Steppe_MLBA had on Asia, versus the virtually no genetic impact that the steppe Iranics had on Balto-Slavs.

Davidski said...

@Palacista

At 42:00 minutes Reich says something very odd, he says that the Dravidian languages are distantly related to IE. This is news to comparative linguists unless you are an extreme nostraist. Everything else he says appears to be based on evidence but there is no evidence for this.

Absolutely. I think Reich is getting very bad linguistics advice from someone, which is surprising, considering that Mallory was one of the co-authors on the Central Asian preprint.

The only thing that comes to mind is page 120 of his book where he seems to claim that IE came from south of the Caucasus. I think that he is trying to tie together the Iranian farmer contribution he sees in IV and Yamnaya.

Yep, and the problem being of course that there's no Iranian farmer contribution in Yamnaya.

Heck, there's practically no Maykop contribution in Yamnaya either. That's like the big deal of 2018.

rozenblatt said...

Does Harvard group has any "own" linguists? Because if not, he may be influenced by the linguists from Max Plank in Jena, and they do have ... not very mainstream people there(Gray, Robbeets).

Davidski said...

@rozenfag

Seems like Harvard has various departments that focus on different historical linguistics issues. One of the authors on this paper is from Harvard...

https://zenodo.org/record/1240524#.W8q_ehRBU8q

Davidski said...

By the way, good call, Max Planck might well be behind this.

Matt said...

I don't know that it's clearly wrong that specific Indo-Iranian to Balto-Slavic similarities (within IE) could be mediated by Iranic influences on Balto-Slavic (and something the other way). Rather than a shared period in which a genetic Balto-Slavic-Indo-Iranian group formed.

We have people practicing Scythian material culture who are autosomally Balto-Slavic and no sign of a special genealogical relationship between Balto-Slavic groups and late Steppe_MLBA groups (even the R1a subtypes split a bit earlier than would indicate for evolution of separate shared linguistic features?).

This has no impact on the overall story of dispersal of R1a and steppe ancestry to South Asia though.

Matt said...

Interesting that Reich talks (about 27 mins in) about the Yamnaya "bringing" wagons and the "newly domesticated horse" into the steppe lands, and replacing pre-existing cultures (who "disappear"), rather than coalescing from them. I wonder if this reflects his interpretation of the Wang (and Orlando?) data?

Bob Floy said...

@matt

You don't think that Sintashta, Andronovo, etc. consistently clustering right next to Baltic and Slavic groups in every PCA is a sign of a special genealogical relationship?

Grey said...

@matt

"replacing pre-existing cultures (who "disappear"), rather than coalescing from them"

relative population density?

Matt said...

bob floy: You don't think that Sintashta, Andronovo, etc. consistently clustering right next to Baltic and Slavic groups in every PCA is a sign of a special genealogical relationship?

They can be slightly closer in the simple 2D West Eurasian PCA than many other groups because of higher steppe ancestry which is on a fairly gentle cline today maximising in Russia. But that's also the case for early Beakers and so on. It's not a sign of ancestry from a shared late steppe population that has experienced some specific path of unique drift.

Fst distances don't find any special relationship, and there's no trace of any of the Balto-Slavic specific drift that Davidski has described in any of Global 25 and his PCA that track such things, or which is evident in statistical sharing with the Bronze Age Balts (on a number of statistics), in any of the Steppe_MLBA populations.

@grey, possibly and more mobility.

epoch said...

@Palacista

Frankly, I think he simply made a mistake and tried to save the speech by stating that the relations are unclear and bla bla and simply hoped not too many people heard it. Public speaking is a strange thing. My only experience is speaking at funerals but when I made a ghastly mistake I tried to "paper that over" in similar ways. The motto is to keep on talking :-)

I wouldn't read to much into that fragment.

Davidski said...

@Matt

It's not necessary for Steppe_MLBA to show Balto-Slavic-specific genetic drift to postulate that it's closely related to Balto-Slavs.

What this might mean is that Steppe_MLBA split from the ancestors of Balto-Slavs before the Balto-Slavic drift became widespread, and/or Steppe_MLBA didn't come from near the Baltic. The said drift first clearly shows up in one late Corded Ware sample from Lithuania, and at this time Steppe_MLBA is already deep in Asia.

The genealogical paternal relationship between Steppe_MLBA and Balto-Slavs is very clear thanks to their shared Y-haplogroup R1a-Z645.

Palacista said...

@Epoch
I don't think that it was a mistake, it has too much in common with Krause's mad map.

Also When Reich refers to Iranian farmers I think he means anyone descended from the original farmers from present day West Iran about 9ky BP.

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2016/10/dead-cat-bounce.html

Davidski said...

@Matt

By the way, there's also no need for a close correlation between the R1a and Indo-European topological trees for there to be a close genetic relationship between proto-Balto-Slavs and proto-Indo-Iranians.

Keep in mind that there was some R1a-Z282 in Srubnaya, and there are unusual, basal subclades of R1a-Z93 in Slavic populations (have a look at the Z93 YFull tree).

So the most likely scenario probably involves genetic founder effects and linguistic evolutionary processes in the common proto-Balto-Slavic/Indo-Iranian population somewhere in the western steppe or forest steppe.

The Scythian explanation for the strong but overall deep relationship between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian looks very naive and like obvious special pleading, especially considering that we have a much better explanation via the close genetic relationship between Corded Ware and Steppe_MLBA, which also fits traditional historical linguistics models.

And in regards to the horses, well, it seems to me based on ancient horse Y-DNA data that the modern domesticated horse lineage was present in pre-Yamnaya eastern Ukraine, at a site likely associated with Sredny Stog. Oops.

Davidski said...

Just posting this as a bit of background...

The large majority of special correspondences between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian are archaisms, not innovations. This is important because it implies that a comparison of Balto-Slavic with Indo-Iranian leads to a reconstruction of an early stage of Indo-European.

http://www.baltistica.lt/index.php/baltistica/article/view/2284

Bob Floy said...

Yeah, the connections between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian are fundamental and ancient, I thought that was common knowledge?

Davidski said...

@Bob Floy

Yeah, the connections between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian are fundamental and ancient, I thought that was common knowledge?

They are, it is, and in this case the mainstream linguistics theory totally fits the ancient DNA evidence.

But there's an online effort by a few people to try and confuse the issue, suggest that Steppe_MLBA wasn't Indo-Iranian, or even Indo-European, and make out that the close relationship between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian is due to historical contacts between Slavs and Scytho-Sarmatians.

This is so far out of the ballpark that I'm very surprised Matt is even considering it.

Don't mind his reference to the Balto-Slavic-specific drift in my PCA, because the first ancient sample that obviously shows this influence is Spiginas2, which is dated to 2130–1750 calBC. Steppe_MLBA was already in Central Asia at that time.

Also, claiming that the timing of the separation between R1a-Z282 and R1a-Z93 complicates things for the Steppe_MLBA = Proto-Indo-Iranian theory is like saying that R1a-M417 and R1b-M269 couldn't have been present in the PIE gene pool because they separated something like 10,000 years before PIE probably appeared.

I mean, come on. :)

Nirjhar007 said...

@ Dave.
From Trubachev to Andersen you have linguists pointing out that the original languages of Bronze Age east Europe were not what they are today, and Balto-Slavic emerged due to continual impacts from the southeast. Whenever the first IE language arrived in what is now considered the Balto-Slavic core zone, they would have been centum -like initially, and was subsequently replaced during the era of Iranic influences.

Davidski said...

@Nirjhar

The long standing academic consensus is that the Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian branches derive from the same Bronze Age steppe population, hence the close but deep relationship between them.

This has been firmly backed up by ancient DNA, so the consensus is now even stronger than before, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Bob Floy said...

@Davidski

"I mean, come on. :)"

Lol, yes, I'm a little baffled to be seeing longtime posters here defending ideas like that when they fly in the face of established facts.

But I know what you mean about this effort to muddy the waters, I'm guessing that the pushing of Iranian farmers=PIE idea is a part of that as well, along with what Reich was saying about the Dravidian languages. It's disappointing to see this happening.

Davidski said...

By the way, there are a couple of points that are being overlooked by some...

1) it's not certain that those Scythian era samples from Europe are all Scythians, as in the same population culturally as Central Asian Scythians, because some of them have been described as pre-Scythian in literature

2) no one knows what language they spoke, because the term Scythian was very broadly used to describe steppe peoples and near and far related groups of the Iron Age

EastPole said...

@Davidski

“The large majority of special correspondences between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian are archaisms, not innovations. This is important because it implies that a comparison of Balto-Slavic with Indo-Iranian leads to a reconstruction of an early stage of Indo-European.

http://www.baltistica.lt/index.php/baltistica/article/view/2284”

Specialists in Sanskrit also say so. There are examples here:

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/04/on-doorstep-of-india.html?showComment=1523740548383#c6191530895381495941

It is from T. Burrow “The Sanskrit Language”

https://goo.gl/mBeFD8

Davidski said...

This quote is interesting...

https://postimg.cc/5Xk9VMG7

So I guess those Slavic-like Scythians of Eastern Europe spoke Indo-Aryan not Iranian. Hehe.

Coldmountains said...

@Davidski
"For a long time there have been investigators who believe that the number of loanwords from Iranian languages in Proto-Slavic is substantial. For example, Gołąb (1992) maintains that all Slavic words with unexplained initial *x- are in fact Iranianisms. However, there have been other Slavists who have claimed that confirmed Iranianisms in Slavic are in fact surprisingly few, and Matasović has raised broad objections to the body of past Iranianist research. Meillet and Vaillant[4] cite the Slavic word *taparu, axe (Russ. topór, Pol. topór, Sr-Cr. tȍpor),[1] which came from Iranian *tapara- (cf. Persian tabar). (Gołąb, noting the etymological connection with Slavic *tepǫ, I hit, holds that this word is in fact a loan from Slavic into Iranian.) Meillet and Vaillant explain the alleged lack of Iranianisms in Slavic with the argument: "the civilization of warrior and partially nomadic tribes, like Scythian and Sarmatian, could have exerted only a cursory influence on the patriarchal civilization of Slavs."

I agree the Scythian influences are actually quite minimal and the lack of R1a-Z93 and scythian loanwords points to this. East Germanic influences were much more important for the Slavic ethnogenesis.

Bob Floy said...

The extremely close relationship between Lithuanian and Sanskrit is well known and has been for a long time. I forget how many almost identical words they share in their respective vocabularies, but it's a lot. I don't think it's because of iron age contact.

Nirjhar007 said...

@ Dave
Not to belabour the point, or counter your perception of what “consensus” means, but e.g. you have Chang & Garett who have Balto-Slavic forming a clade with Northwest IE, after the Indo-Iranian split.

https://www.linguisticsociety.org/sites/default/files/news/ChangEtAlPreprint.pdf

Davidski said...

@Nirjhar

How does Chang & Garrett's analysis contradict what I said? Here's what I said, read it again carefully...

The long standing academic consensus is that the Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian branches derive from the same Bronze Age steppe population, hence the close but deep relationship between them.

Who seriously opposes this? Give me an example of someone credible.

Davidski said...

@Nirjhar

Let me help you out: Chang & Garrett's analysis doesn't contradict what I said. In fact, if you look at page 196 of their preprint you'll see that they don't have any objections to locating the Proto-Indo-Iranian homeland in the steppe.

As for their topological trees, I think that if you e-mailed them and asked them about the position of Slavic in these trees versus the consensus that Slavic and Indo-Iranian are especially closely related branches of Indo-European based on historical linguistics data, then they'd probably admit that their trees are highly experimental.

But I think that the position of Slavic in their trees might be explained by Western Indo-European influences in Slavic. You're probably aware that Slavic was significantly influenced by Eastern Germanic (rather than Iranian). Of course you are.

EastPole said...

Davidski

“„We have now established chains of transmission of this Yamnaya steppe ancestry into Europe and South Asia between 5000 and 3500 years ago that tracks very well the spread of spoken IE languages and even tracks features of the way those languages are related like funny features such as Balto-Slavic languages have a particular relatedness to Indo-Iranian languages.”

I'm guessing he meant to say peculiar rather than funny per se. But yeah, makes sense. He's probably talking about the close relationship between Corded Ware and Steppe_MLBA and maybe even R1a-Z282 and R1a-Z93.”

Here is linguistic tree from recent Reich’s paper (red marks are mine):

https://i.postimg.cc/kMWmvfjm/language-tree.png

https://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/2018-08/attachments/Reich.pdf

I wonder how will Y-DNA and languages correlate when they publish more data. For example what will be the common link for Indo-Iranian, Greek and Balto-Slavic.

Some researchers suggest mixed models i.e. linguistic tree models mixed with wave models to explain IE languages. Those who prefer wave models usually place Slavic at the center, which makes sense as Slavs stayed close to R1a’s IE homeland:

https://postimg.cc/r0mr68t4

Matt said...

@Davidski, I suppose there's no genetic evidence against it, but also doesn't seem like much genetic evidence for any shared population history, certainly post-CW. I guess that's why I find a mainly cultural-linguistic co-influence between early Indo-Iranians and Balto-Slavic speakers plausble, if not like I actually think it has to be true.

Though linguistically wouldn't shared innovations be a better indicator of a shared linguistic-population history stage than shared archaisms?

Kortlandt states: "The large majority of special correspondences between Balto-Slavic and IndoIranian are archaisms, not innovations. This is important because it implies that a comparison of Balto-Slavic with Indo-Iranian leads to a reconstruction of an early stage of Indo-European.".

That is, in his view, comparison of Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian allows you to reconstruct early IE, whereas if they just shared because of a stretch of post early-IE shared linguistic population history, that wouldn't be true...

(E.g. under Kortlandt above, archaism = very early Indo-European, innovation = later than very early Indo-European, not archaism = early to late Bronze Age, innovation = Iron Age)

Like if you ended up, with a layer of innovations that clearly weren't before the break up of IE, and at the late Bronze Age after it, and no more innovations from after that, then it's easy to say that this population was linguistically one at the late Bronze Age, then went their separate ways. While at the other extreme if you have a lot of shared archaisms from the early Bronze Age, and then not many late Bronze Age innovations, and then some Iron Age innovations enter, that's probably an early split and then some contact later in history. I have to step back a bit here though, as clearly the specific linguistic issues are not simple to count or assess, and I'm mainly interested in the genetics and material culture changes.

And in regards to the horses, well, it seems to me based on ancient horse Y-DNA data that the modern domesticated horse lineage was present in pre-Yamnaya eastern Ukraine, at a site likely associated with Sredny Stog. Oops.

Could be the case - to be honest, that is the most likely scenario. But it could well have been present at other places too. I am probably looking too much into Reich's statement here.

Davidski said...

@Matt

I suppose there's no genetic evidence against it, but also doesn't seem like much genetic evidence for any shared population history, certainly post-CW. I guess that's why I find a mainly cultural-linguistic co-influence between early Indo-Iranians and Balto-Slavic speakers plausble, if not like I actually think it has to be true.

But why does there have to be any significant shared population history between Balto-Slavs and Indo-Iranians post-CW?

Like I said, CW Spiginas2 is the key sample here with the earliest unambiguous Balto-Slavic affinities, and he's dated to 2130–1750 calBC, when Steppe_MLBA is already off and moving through Asia.

So those uncanny similarities that we're now seeing between, say, Lithuanian and Sanskrit had to have been the result of links before Spiginas2 was alive.

I have to step back a bit here though, as clearly the specific linguistic issues are not simple to count or assess, and I'm mainly interested in the genetics and material culture changes.

Yep, but to me it doesn't seem like there's anything in the genetics to complicate matters for the mainstream theory, certainly nothing major enough to force us to look for an unusual solution like really heavy Iranian influence on Balto-Slavic to explain, for instance, those similarities between Lithuanian and (non-Iranian) Sanskrit.

Mouthful said...

I don't think you'd be able to explain shared similarities of Baltic branch with Indo-Iranian trough contact, since I don't think they lived anywhere close each other in recent times, this may in in small part explain the case with the Slavic, but even then contacts with Slavs were rather limited from what we can see. These are shared archaisms, not Indo-Iranian influence on Balto-Slavic as someone tries to argue here.

Nirjhar007 said...

@ mouthful
It’s okay. You must have not heard of all the Scythian mounds and artefacts which are present in the forest steppe, heck even as far as Poland.
This cultural influence lasted for 1,000 years.

Davidski said...

@All

Italy_Medieval_Collegno_o2:CL31 is now in the Global25 datasheets. All of the relevant links are here...

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/10/cimmerians-scythians-and-sarmatians.html

This is the potentially contaminated sample from the Collegno burial site, but not from the part of the site associated with the Longobards.

Contamination could well be an issue, but the interesting thing is that this sample comes out Asian rather than Italian.

Davidski said...

@Nirjhar

It’s okay. You must have not heard of all the Scythian mounds and artefacts which are present in the forest steppe, heck even as far as Poland.
This cultural influence lasted for 1,000 years.


You seem to set a very low burden of proof for anything that contradicts the steppe PIE homeland theory.

Do you actually have any evidence of meaningful contacts between Balts and Scythians? You know, like for example, in South Asia there's widespread Steppe_MLBA admixture, which goes along well with the theory that Sintashta was a Proto-Indo-Iranian culture.

Anything like that will do.

Nirjhar007 said...

@ Dave
Btw, One linguist’s archaism is another’s innovation .
This is not Y haplogroups, which can be traced linearly and relatively uncontroversially.

Davidski said...

@Nirjhar

Y-chromosome data support close but deep links between Balts and Indians.

And the direction of gene flow is from near the Baltic to India.

So there's no problem.

Mouthful said...

@Nirjhar

That's okay, but Balts only lived on North-Eastern Poland, and few artifacts don't indicate close relationship, it could've appeared trough trade. There's Baltic Amber found in burial of King Tut, I don't think anyone would instantly jump to conclusion that people from somewhere around Baltic Sea brought it there themselves. As I've said earlier in case you missed it, there's hardly any evidence for direct contacts of Balts and Indo-Iranians. Yes Slavs had contacts with Schytians or Sarmatians in the South, but that doesn't work for Balts. From what I've read there are very few Indo-Iranian loans in Baltic if any, as nearly all of them are with disputed etymologies.

Nirjhar007 said...

@ mouthful
I did not say anything about Balts. That seems to be your recent sidetracking make it seem like you that you have now said something correct & meaningful.

@ Dave
The direction of gene flow for scythians is from Asia to Europe.
And yes, that you mention it, there is also an Iron Age migration from C Asia to the Indus region . They both occur after ~ 1000 BC
Oh, but one is “Indo-Aryan” and the other just “Scythian”
Oops !

Bob Floy said...

@Mouthfull

Nirjhar is a person who hates the Steppe PIE theory, and who, instead of accepting what the mounting evidence now points towards, continues to clutch at straws, proposing one contrived, ad hoc alternate idea after another in an attempt to keep reality at bay. For example, he would never accept a weak idea like this "contact" explanation if it went against what he wants, but because it's a way to undermine the Steppe theory he loves it and is willing to lower his standard of proof to almost nothing. Archaism, innovation, meh, it's all relative, ya know? LOL.

No one takes him seriously.

Davidski said...

@Nirjhar

Eastern European-derived Steppe_MLBA was sitting in South Central Asia (for example at Dashti-Kozy) during the Bronze Age around 1700 BC.

And there's loads of Steppe_MLBA genetic influence in South Asians, especially in the Y-chromosomes of Indian upper castes. This is the kind of stuff that screams language transfer.

But of course you know this.

Mouthful said...

@Nirjhar

Either you have problems with text comprehension or some mental issues, my first post was about Balts whom we know share linguistic similarities with Indo-Iranian speaker. Yes, we know Slavs have had contacts with Indo-Iranians, and you then mention Scythian mounds or artifacts in Poland, but that doesn't explain Balts whom really never had any proven meaningful contacts with Indo-Iranians. The only logical conclusion that can be drawn from the current data is that Corded Ware or later Corded Ware derived Steppe_MLBA population were speakers of some ancestral Satem dialect out of which later Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian developed. If you keep posting nonsense as other people are also indicating it, I'll just ignore you.

Samuel Andrews said...

People, please, stop accusing people you dis agree with of having mental illness. You have no grounds to stay that.

Bob Floy said...

@Sam

It's not just a question of disagreeing, the guy is delusional, and he exhibits classic Dunning-Kruger effect symptoms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

He also spent years calling anyone who disagreed with him a retard, a buffoon, etc., you should know that as well as anyone here. So you're defending him why again?

Bob Floy said...

@Mouthfull

"...you then mention Scythian mounds or artifacts in Poland, but that doesn't explain Balts whom really never had any proven meaningful contacts with Indo-Iranians."

And it really, really dosen't explain why Baltic languages are so closely related specifically to Indo-Aryan, tee hee. Maybe there's a story about the conquest of Lithuania in the Mahabharata, and I just missed it.

Davidski said...

@Bob Floy

He also spent years calling anyone who disagreed with him a retard, a buffoon, etc., you should know that as well as anyone here. So you're defending him why again?

To be fair, I think that was Rob, and he was banned for that reason. Nirjhar is generally polite, unless things generally get out of hand.

But you're right, there's something amiss about our Indian friend. He gets called out for arguing nonsense on a regular basis, and yet doesn't seem to lose any confidence.

Yeah, what the hell do the contacts between Slavs and Scythians got to do with the awesome similarities between Lithuanian and Sanskrit?

Nothing. But Nirjhar refuses to get it.

Bob Floy said...

@Davidski

Nirjhar did say things like that on multiple occasions, I wouldn't confuse him with Rob(or anyone), trust me. Especially before his recent setbacks, he certainly went around insulting other posters. He and Rob have different styles.

Nirjhar007 said...

@ Bob Floy
Stop psychoanalysing people you don’t know, and using terms whose irony is lost on your own self. You seem incapable of engaging in a point by point rebuttals, but instead lower the discussion on false premises. This is all rather reflective on your attitude (aka mental state).

Davidski said...

@Nirjhar

You're arguing a position that is highly unusual, with a big logical hole to boot (Balts never had any meaningful contacts with Indo-Aryans or Iranians, and yet Baltic is as closely related to Sanskrit as Slavic is), and has no chance of ever succeeding.

And this is at a time when the Steppe_MLBA origin of the Proto-Indo-Iranians is being solidified as an academic consensus thanks to ancient DNA.

There's no logic to what you're trying to do here. You're just wasting your time.

Stop wasting your time, go back to Alberto and your other buddies, and propose that you all get together to come up with some realistic theories that are actually worth considering.

Try it. Come back when you actually have something worth sharing.

Nirjhar007 said...

Dear David,
Maybe I am not expressing myself properly, but I am not
I am not advocating any straight descent relationship from Iranic to Baltic. But what the mentioned linguists outline is that, Balto-Slavic was originally a more western type of language which underwent Iranic influences.
Obviously this impact was far more profound in Slavic in the south then Baltic in the north which is why baltic is only partly Satemized!.
By the way I am not sure what you really have against Alberto, you seem to be upset that he was right that the progression of CHG in the steppe was not simply due to exogamy (the scenario you’d long been pushing), but instead involved a more concerted movement of of family units and groups from north of the Caucasus!. Similarly, thanks to the Wang paper, we now know that Rob was also correct that steppe admixture reached Greece since the Chalcolithic!.

So I am sorry to say this but you are coming off rather hypocritical, not only because you are unable to accept when you are wrong, but the moral high ground routine from a bunch of bullies is just plain ridiculous...

Davidski said...

@Nirjhar

At least try and get the basics right.

Eneolithic_Steppe is called Eneolithic_Steppe because it's from the steppe, not from the North Caucasus.

Eneolithic_Caucasus is a very different, genetically southern population, and has practically nothing to do with Yamnaya, Corded Ware etc...

And how did Eneolithic_Steppe form, with its EHG Y-DNA and CHG mtDNA? Obviously, via lopsided mating patterns between EHG and CHG.


Did you get that?

So I was correct. Alberto was wrong. He can go on pretending that EHG isn't European if that makes him feel better about the world, and that R1a and R1b are from CHG. I don't care.

And in regards to Rob, I seem to recall that he denied that there were any migrations from the steppe to Greece, and that instead the steppe ancestry in Mycenaeans just kind of gradually got to the Aegean over a long time, or some crap like that.

So what the hell was a Corded Ware clone doing in Greece during the Chalcolithic, if that was the case?

Never mind, that was a rhetorical question.

Mouthful said...

@Nirjhar

"Balto-Slavic was originally a more western type of language which underwent Iranic influences."


Again what mystical influences on Balts are you speaking of? Slavs received some influences from Scythians and Sarmatians even if you look at loanwords from Indo-Iranian languages all of them seem to be borrowed at Proto-Slavic or even Common-Slavic stage which is well after Balto-Slavic split. So what influences are you exactly speaking of? I've haven't seen linguists arguing for this. Even Kortlandt says large majority of special correspondences between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian are archaisms. You kept mentioning contacts, then influences but I've yet to see any evidence for it.

Anonymous said...

If I understood Kourtlandt right, reconstruction of common ancestor language for Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian brings us to dialect of Late PIE itself. And all the fascinating parallels between f.e. Lithuanian and Sanscrit are due to similar archaisms preserved in both.

It is similar-ish how he treats East Baltic and West Baltic. Similar preserved archaisms is what makes them seem more closely related, but formal reconstruction of common ancestor brings back to Proto-Balto-Slavic stage.

Mouthful said...

@Parastais

That's what seems logical to me and plenty of others. I don't understand why is he arguing for some influences when there's no proof for any Indo-Iranians living close to Balts. I'd understand his reasoning if there was a profound Indo-Iranian influence on Balto-Slavic stage, but that doesn't seem to be the case and even the Indo-Iranian influence on Slavic is rather limited, if we're to believe current Slavicists like Matasović.

Anonymous said...

It is interesting to which age he dates the influence. If it was Late PIE and he argues (pre proto) Indo-Iranian villages were the first to s every ķ, and only later that fashion got into perhaps somewhat more Northern (pre proto) Balto-Slavic villages, then well - maybe. Have not updated myself on the latest materials on dating for Satemization.

Aniasi said...

Baltic is more conservative, and Sanskrit is a frozen language itself based on an artificial imitation of an archaic form of speech.

That aside, we do know that the Satem languages are related, though there may be some debate on specific close relationships vs a generic late PIE branch with similar innovations.

That said, Galindian, a Baltic language, was spoken on the border of the Iranic speaking steppe, and east slavic has some Iranic influence, though the extent is still not agreed.

Bob Floy said...

@nirjhar

"Stop psychoanalysing people you don’t know"
You're not hard to psychoanalyze, you wave your issues around like a flag, and they're pretty self-explanatory.

"You seem incapable of engaging in a point by point rebuttals, but instead lower the discussion on false premises. This is all rather reflective on your attitude (aka mental state)"

More projection and rhetoric.

Like Davidski said, you're wasting your time.

Bob Floy said...

@aniasi

"Baltic is more conservative, and Sanskrit is a frozen language itself based on an artificial imitation of an archaic form of speech."

Yes, and this is strong evidence that they sprang from the same initial source. The resemblance is too uncanny. That they sprang from the same source has been suspected for a long time, and now ancient DNA is confirming this. Their are fine details to be worked out, as always, but on the whole it's not too complicated.

Ryan said...

Question from Reddit:

Why does Ancestry DNA's North African DNA show a hotspot in South Africa?

https://imgur.com/a/nfA681Z

Can anyone make sense of that? Is there some deep connection or is their K-whatever ADMIXTURE result just screwy?

Anthony Hanken said...

@Davidski

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/10/22/448829

Here is a new study on ancient Northeast Siberia. The aDNA is actually quite ancient the oldest being 31.6kya.

rozenblatt said...

Summary table in this preprint for some reason weirdly turned sideways and cannot be easily copied. So I grabbed a screen: https://i.imgur.com/0TQXklu.png

Y-DNA P in Paleolithic Siberia, inetersting.

Nirjhar007 said...

Dear brother Dave,
It is important that you recall accurately and honestly, because it is not about keeping scores amongst friends!, but a man’s word does mean for something right?.

Luckily, things are easily searchable, so we can simply check your claims.

You suggest :
Eneolithic_Steppe is called Eneolithic_Steppe because it's from the steppe, not from the North Caucasus.

The definition of north Caucasus is ‘’the northern part of the Caucasus region between the Sea of Azov and Black Sea on the west and the Caspian Sea on the east, within European Russia‘’ : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Caucasus.
The north Caucasus is not limited to the snow-peaked mountains, and we naturally need to distinguish the various parts of the broad steppe zone (say Budjak steppe, Volga steppe, north Caucasus steppe). The north Caucasus steppe Eneolithic sites from Wang et al are …in the north Caucasus region, but hey, if that is too unpalatable for you, we can call it something else. Suggest a neologism.

‘’ He can go on pretending that EHG isn't European if that makes him feel better about the world, and that R1a and R1b are from CHG.’’

You seem to be confusing Azarov Dimitry’s theories. What Alberto’s seems to have been contemplating is the source of eastern ancestry in Armenia Chalcolithic, which we are *still* awaiting clarification.

‘’ And in regards to Rob, I seem to recall that he denied that there were any migrations from the steppe to Greece, and that instead the steppe ancestry in Mycenaeans just kind of gradually got to the Aegean over a long time, or some crap like that.
So what the hell was a Corded Ware clone doing in Greece during the Chalcolithic, if that was the case?’’

Sorry you recall incorrectly, that is, if you understood at all, in the first place. Easily searchable -‘’ Putting it all together, the 'northern signal' in Mycenean Greeks comes from something like Cernavoda culture which formed in the East Carpathian region after 4000 BC and appears in southern Thrace & Macedonia c. 3400 BC.’’ (http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/08/steppe-admixture-in-mycenaeans.html).

Where do you think the Late Neolithic , steppe admixed Greek sample came from if not somewhere around there ? Again, if you want to call this a ‘’corded ware clone’’ to please your personal predilections, suit yourself, but these ‘’C.W. clones’’ existed some 1,500 years before Corded Ware even began!. And you seem to take anything along a steppe -EEF admixture cline as being “’Corded Ware’’...

Indeed, back when you had knowledgeable commentators on your blog, others (e.g. Alogo) commented on the very same phenomenon, perhaps a gradual accumulation of steppe ancestry due to several movements beginning much earlier than Yamnaya due to a complex interaction pattern which still requires elucidation. This would be of no surprise to well-read, but it seems some people seemed to have an issue with it. In that same thread you can see who in fact was being rude and offensive.

But you can take solace that your G25 is useful. Maybe we will even find some cwc chiefs in Mycenaean graves so you can still save face :) .

Davidski said...

@Nirjhar

As you must know, Alberto was claiming repeatedly that EHG, Yamnaya, R1a and Corded Ware came from Central Asia, so his theories are so far out of the ballpark compared to my own, and to my analyses, that he can only be mentioned here in the context of comedic relief.

And of course that most things are still searchable here. So why don't you do it? I'll give you some help with a couple of examples.

Ahead of the pack

Blast from the past: Yamnaya prediction from 2016

Have you read these? Do you actually understand them? Of course not. You don't understand much.

And as for Rob, he's denied that there were migrations from the steppe not only to Greece, but also everywhere else. Repeatedly.

According to Robbie: no migrations to Central Europe, Western Europe, India, and many other delusions. All searchable here.

Now go back to Alberto's fantasy blog while it still lasts and maybe provides some comedy.

Anonymous said...


@Davidski
You claim that the PIE homeland in Iran is false. Yet we have Kristiansen who backtracked from PIE homeland being Yamnaya and agreeing with Reich, we also have Krause agreeing with PIE homeland equals Iran. So we have these renowned experts who have done the research and hold the data we are all going off on. I’m curious, do you have your own lab where you are doing research to contract these three researchers. If so can you also release them for us to see.

Anonymous said...

@David

“I'll tell you what I've got: facts. Consider these two facts...”

Where did you get these facts? From, other expert researchers? Can you provide the sources to these please.


“These renowned experts that you speak of weren't aware of these facts before they canvassed their various theories.”

Are you sure they weren’t aware of these? They didn’t in fact release quite a bit of data they held. Do you also have proof the R1b found in Haji Firuz Tepe_C was in fact Yamnaya influenced?

Forgot to mention that CC Wang also agreed with PIE = Iran perhaps. So we got us here some experts you are quoting and some I’m quoting.

One other question, where did the Medes come from? We know they existed during the Assyrian empire and yet no proof that they migrated to the region in NW Iran. The Assyrians claimed the Medes called themselves “Aryans”. Later on we get Herodotus claiming also that Persians call themselves Aryans. Do we have any proof that the Yamnaya and later Europeans calling themselves Aryans anytime before BC? Im not suggesting anything about the word “Aryan”, just curious if you know.

Davidski said...

@DT

You seem very confused, and I'm not here to educate you, so I can't guide you through this thing.

Try reading this and do your best to understand it (and if you can't, the oh well)...

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

Anonymous said...

@David

So wait, you don’t even have any actual third party sources other than your own assessment on the subject contradicting published scientists like Reich, Wang, Krause and Kristiansen? Do you have a lab yourself that you do genetic research?

Davidski said...

@DT

Why do I need third party sources to confirm anything when Reich, Wang and Krauze have confirmed it themselves by repeating exactly what I said on this blog?

Obviously, myself, Reich, Wang and Krauze are in agreement now that Yamnaya is a mixture of EHG, CHG and Europe_MN, like I first argued, so what's the problem?

Anonymous said...

@David

“Obviously, myself, Reich, Wang and Krauze are in agreement now that Yamnaya is a mixture of EHG, CHG and Europe_MN, like I first argued, so what's the problem?”

No problem. However, before you mentioned they didn’t know about these facts. But apparently they do, and yet none are budging on Iran/S. of Caucus being the original PIE homeland.

Davidski said...

@DT

No problem. However, before you mentioned they didn’t know about these facts. But apparently they do, and yet none are budging on Iran/S. of Caucus being the original PIE homeland.

But Reich, Krauze and Kristiansen came up with their theories that the PIE homeland was in or south of the Caucasus before the Wang et al. preprint was published (and rightfully rubbished by me).

However, in the preprint, now that they're aware of the facts, the authors don't argue for a PIE homeland in or south of the Caucasus, but the "possibility" of a PIE homeland south of the Caucasus via occasional gene flows between the Near East and the steppe.

What are the chances of this actually being accepted as the consensus? Zero.

Anonymous said...

@David
“What are the chances of this actually being accepted as the consensus? Zero”

Well the original consensus was derived heavily from anthropological research in the 1900s. With an enormous amount of holes in the story, such as the IE language popping out of thin air about 4800 years ago, no mention of where the Medes/Persians actually came from, even though we have Assyrian scriptures dating back to 2500 BC which claim Medes existed in NW Iran and called themselves Aryans, Persians later the same. Yet never any mention of the word Aryan in the steppes nor in Europe in the BC era. We just have to wait for more concrete proof on the subject.

Nirjhar007 said...

@ Dave
NN Haha Dave, you are turning into CNN Fake News ;). Denied what exactly ?

The formerly educated element in your blog spelled it out for you ‘’A connection of, at least southern/eastern, Greece and especially Crete (almost definitely the Aegean too when it's sampled) to Bronze Age Anatolia and then a population likely coming from the Balkans carrying some steppe ancestry. Both were very accepted possibilities in archaeology and linguistics and discussed on previous posts on here and for the time being this seems like the best explanation for these data to date …’’

And, given that you missed it,putting it all together, the 'northern signal' in Mycenean Greeks comes from something like Cernavoda culture which formed in the East Carpathian region after 4000 BC and appears in southern Thrace & Macedonia c. 3400 BCE

In case you do not know, Cernavoda is from the westernmost steppe/ northern Balkans, And the early accretion model has now already been proven, thanks to the good people at M.P.

Now, we wait for your Sintashta model to be proven…And also your ‘’Greek Lombards’’ theory.

Should be a good sequel to your ‘’Bronze Age Greeks being super-steppe but diminished by Roman Slaves’’ (http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2016/01/ancient-greeks-and-romans-may-have.html) theory which was immediately and politely quashed by Rob .

‘’ I suspect we'll continue to find near-eastern Romans scattered throughout the former empire. But I don't think it's the major vector of change (but happy to be proven incorrect). Rather, I think there was a large late Neolithic / EBA movement(s) from Anatolia to Southern Europe ‘’

Quite prodigious.

But you do great work sometimes. You’d be even better if you were less dogmatic, more educated and more honest.

Take care bro...

velvetgunther said...

@DT
"...even though we have Assyrian scriptures dating back to 2500 BC which claim Medes existed in NW Iran..."

Not sure if you're confusing BP with BC but Assyrian scriptures mentioning Medes are most certainly not from 2500 BC, but more than 1500 years later.