At the interface of culture and biology – First results from a paleogenetic transect through Bronze Age populations of the Caucasus Svend Hansen, Sabine Reinhold, Wolfgang Haak, Chuan-Chao Wang The Caucasus is one of the most important geographical joints in Western Eurasia. Linking Europe, Western Asia and the Eurasian steppe zone, this region today is one of the genetically and linguistically most diverse spots of Eurasia. It is easy to imagine that repeated population influx and drain, but similarly compartmentalisation in the remote mountain valley is behind this modern situation. Eneolithic and Bronze Age populations play an important role in this scenario, as they represent the first epochs of formations, which can be regarded either as associated ‘cultures’ and/or coherent biological populations. A first study on the paleogenetic background of 50 individuals from the 5th to the 2nd millennium BC, which represent all cultural formations of Bronze Age Caucasia, give a first insight into highly complex scenarios of interaction. The paleogenetic perspective could proof the presence of populations with different genetic-make ups and different biological vectors of formation among these individuals. Affiliation by material cultural and other archaeological attributes, however, revealed epochs of interaction, where cultural and biological borders were crossed, and those, where no population exchange seemed to have happened among the neighbouring inhabitants of one area. This region thus allows to study in detail the mixing and interdigitation of people, their materiality and cultural systems and challenge many of the too simple models developed for another interface of the Eurasian steppe zone those directed towards Europe. ... Steppe and Iranian ancestry among Bronze Age Central and Western Mediterranean populations Ron Pinhasi, Daniel Fernandes, David Reich Steppe-related ancestry is known to have reached central Europe ca. 3000 BCE, while Iran-related ancestry reached Greece by 1500 BCE. However, the time course and extent of their spread into the central/western Mediterranean remains a mystery. We analysed 48 Neolithic and Bronze Age individuals from Sicily, Sardinia and the Balearic Islands aiming to investigate when and how continental European and Aegean influences affected these insular populations. Results show that the first Balearic settlers had substantial Steppe-related ancestry which was subsequently diluted by increasing proportions of farmer-related ancestry. In Sardinia, we identified the appearance of Iran-related ancestry from the Aegean as early as the Middle Bronze Age, with no genetic influences seen from populations carrying Steppe-related ancestry despite cultural or commercial exchanges with Bell Beaker populations. In Sicily, during the Early Bronze Age, and possibly earlier, we found evidence for admixture with groups carrying both these ancestries. These results suggest that Steppe-related migrants had a crucial role in the settlement of the Balearic Islands and their ancestry reached as far south as Sicily, and that the population movements that brought Iran-related ancestry to the Aegean also impacted the Western Mediterranean around the same time the first civilizations started to develop.See also... Yamnaya: home-grown Big deal of 2018: Yamnaya not related to Maykop Steppe Maykop: a buffer zone? Ahead of the pack Genetic borders are usually linguistic borders too Yamnaya isn't from Iran just like R1a isn't from India On the genetic prehistory of the Greater Caucasus (Wang et al. 2018 preprint)
Saturday, December 1, 2018
How should we interpret the movements of people throughout Bronze Age Europe?
Below are a couple of interesting talk abstracts from the upcoming Genes, Isotopes and Artefacts conference in Vienna (see here). The first one looks like the abstract from a rewritten version of the Wang et al. preprint on the genetic prehistory of the Greater Caucasus. But I could be wrong. In any case, check out the links at the bottom of the post to see what I've said about this manuscript. Admittedly I've said a lot, maybe too much. Feel free to speculate to your heart's content in the comments about what these abstracts "really" mean, but try to keep it real. Emphasis is mine:
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I noticed this abstract and it sounds little bit weird to me:
Kiss, V.1, Barkóczy, P., Czene, A., Csányi, M., Dani, J., Endrődi, A., Fábián, Sz., Gerber, D., Giblin, J., Gyöngyösi Sz., Hajdu, T., Káli Gy., Kasztovszky, Zs., Köhler, K., Maróti, B., Melis, E., Mende, B. G., Patay, R., Pernicka, E., Szabó, G., Szeverényi, V., Szécsényi-Nagy, A., Reich, D.; Kulcsár, G 1.
1 Hungarian Academy of Sciences
People and interactions vs. genes, isotopes and metal finds from the first thousand years of the Bronze Age in Hungary (2500-1500 BCE)
There is a long tradition in archaeological research of explaining the observed changes in the archaeological record through the appearance and immigration of a new population. Although these first interpretations were based on an outdated theoretical background, migration is indeed an important social strategy, often used both individually and by communities to solve their problems and improve their situation, as recent scientific results suggest. A basic question in archaeology remains: “who moved: people, objects or ideas?”
The Momentum Mobility Research Group will present the current state of research from the central part of the Carpathian Basin in the first ten centuries of the Bronze Age (2500–1500 BCE), concerning bioanthropological data including stable isotope and aDNA, as well as analyses of metal finds including lead isotope results.
Why do they focus on this period, 2500-1500 BC, and not on an earlier one, 3500-2500, studying Hungarian Yamnaya and other cultures? Did they already studied them?
True, nobody cares about Hungary during that period to be honest - I don't know why they didn't choose to study 3500-2500 BC either.
It seems a West Asian PIE homeland is becoming popular in some circles.
If Iranic ancestry (in that Pinhasi abstract) had already arrived by 1500 BC, doesn't that mean they arrived plum in time for Mycenean conquest of Greece, as pointed out by Drews ? I recall the Lazaridis study on Myceneans suggested similar things.
@Toby_P
So you're suggesting that Indo-Europeans arrived in Sardinia by the Middle Bronze Age, because the so called Iran-related ancestry was in Sardinia by that time?
This is highly unlikely.
More likely is that steppe ancestry (which, by the way, isn't closely related to the Iran-related ancestry) is associated with the Indo-Europeans, and the Iran-related ancestry is associated with the spread of the first civilizations. As per my map...
So far so good for the Kurgan hypothesis
@Davidski I agree, but a date as late as 1500 BC is odd.
By the way, Peloponnese_Neolithic I3920 is clearly shifted east towards the Caucasus/Iran in all PCA and shows that type of general Iran-related ancestry.
This sample is dated to 3933-3706 calBCE. Thus, C14 dated.
So I don't know what that Pinhasi/Reich abstract is trying to communicate, unless the authors are actually seeing a signal of ancestry from what is now Iran arrive in Greece that is different from the eastern admixture in Peloponnese_Neolithic I3920.
But I doubt that.
I wonder if they are not talking about BMAC related ancestry when talking about Iran related ?
Nah, I reckon they just couldn't see a clear signal of that type of CHG/Iran_N admixture in Peloponnese_N, and decided that it's safer to say that it first appears in the Mycenaeans as far as mainland Greece is concerned.
But I3920 certainly has that type of ancestry, even if, overall, Peloponnese_N seems to lack it.
@ Davidski
Thank you for clarifying.
I guess they must mean it was already done by 1500 BC. It must have started 500 - 1000 years earlier.
Odd wording indeed. I guess abstracts can be confusing hehe
So basically Minoan expansion within the Mediterranean ?
Well if anything it proves that Steppe related people were not sitting Land Ducks when it came to dipping a toe into water....
"The Caucasus is one of the most important geographical joints in Western Eurasia. Linking Europe, Western Asia and the Eurasian steppe zone, this region today is one of the genetically and linguistically most diverse spots of Eurasia."
Such Bull shit. Every study says this about every region.
"This region thus allows to study in detail the mixing and interdigitation of people, their materiality and cultural systems and challenge many of the too simple models developed for another interface of the Eurasian steppe zone those directed towards Europe."
Maybe they've finally found evidence of steppe folk migrations through the caucuses in the early bronze age? Maybe the Hittites didn't go through the Balkans after all?
@Bob Floy
Maybe they've finally found evidence of steppe folk migrations through the caucuses in the early bronze age? Maybe the Hittites didn't go through the Balkans after all?
Pretty sure those Armenia_ChL samples have steppe ancestry so at some point during the Chalcolithic there was gene flow from the steppe into the southern Caucasus, but anyway, what I think these authors mean here is that in the Caucasus and nearby steppes there is evidence of strong cultural interactions in spite of very little or no gene flow associated with it.
For instance, Maykop and Steppe Maykop are genetically distinct, with only minor gene flow between them seen in the ancient DNA available, and yet Steppe Maykop people used Maykop pottery.
@Davidski
You're probably right, but I'm hoping for something a little more dramatic than that.
@Bob Floy
Well, it's interesting to note that the Wang et al. preprint talks about 45 ancient individuals while the Hansen et al. abstract says 50. So whatever happens, we'll have some new data to look at.
@All
In regards to the Iran-related ancestry appearing in Greece by 1500 BC, here's a quote from Mathieson et al. 2018. Emphasis is mine.
By contrast, data from five southern Greek Neolithic individuals (labelled ‘Peloponnese_Neolithic’)—three (plus one that has previously been published 26) from Diros Cave and one from Franchthi Cave—are not consistent with descent from the same source population as other European farmers. D statistics (Supplementary Table 2) show that these ‘Peloponnese Neolithic’ individuals, dated to around 4000 bc, are shifted away from WHG, and towards CHG, relative to northwestern Anatolian Neolithic and Balkan Neolithic individuals. We detect the same pattern in a single Neolithic individual from Krepost in present-day Bulgaria (I0679_d, 5718–5626 bc). An even more marked shift towards CHG has previously been observed in individuals associated with the Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean cultures 26, suggesting gene flow into the region from populations with CHG-rich ancestry throughout the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age.
doi:10.1038/nature25778
@ Davidski
Thanks. That makes a bit more sense.
"Steppe and Iranian ancestry among Bronze Age Central and Western Mediterranean populations
Ron Pinhasi, Daniel Fernandes, David Reich"
Can't believe "Iranian" made it into the title. You don't need to be educated in archaeology to know these movements were coming from western Anatolia or Mediterranean islands not Iran.
It would have been nice if they sampled ancient data from interior Italy not just Mediterranean islands because looking at modern DNA we can see seen mainland Italians have some Eastern Med ancestry.
In my West Eurasia G25 index...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_jr6EMoG_1eFm1x8hltNHW2bE5A0lW9N7XDjCU_jO_k/edit#gid=0
Sicilians score 14% (7% Iranneo-7% CHG), South Italians 16% (8%, 8%). I believe both are mostly of East Med origin. These people from the East med had mostly ancient Anatolian not Iranian ancestry.
@ Samuel
Yes I agree. It is almost like referring to Steppe people in Europe as Northeast Siberians.....
@Davidski
"So whatever happens, we'll have some new data to look at."
It's going to make a great holiday present for us, no doubt.
@Sam&Ric
No one can tell me that a lot of professional scientists in this field aren't losing the plot, it's kind of disturbing. Thank God for capable and dedicated independent researchers.
So, if all CHG type ancestry is "Iran-related", it's easy to spin the steppe narrative into one where PIE came from Maykop or even neolithic Iran. Convenient for them.
@Samuel Andrews
They probably mean a type of ancestry that is represented by Iran_N, so it is Iranian in a greater time depth. Nevertheless, just calling it Iranian is an easy to misunderstand phrasing. More than one way, because Iranian speakers could be also seen behind the term.
@ Bob Floy
Yes,interesting days Bob. I wonder if they are trying to link Greeks to Armenians via Hajji Firuz ?
@Sam, well, I mean, the Caucasus is one of the most linguistically diverse parts of Eurasia. Genetically the distances are quite high between populations as well, though more like relative to distance.
Anyway, more substantively, it seems Iran related ancestry in Sardinia at MBA is actually probably useful for the argument that Mycenaeans = Minoans+some form of Steppe influenced population (Balkans preferred IMO, but we've had that argument), as enhances the idea that this ancestry is widespread outside Crete already at the time of likely formation of earliest Greek populations. Of course, that this was an island hopping movement, it may be.
Be interesting to see how much to with the introduction of haplogroup J this has.
It'll be interesting to see now how the legions of South Caucasus PIE homeland fanboys spin everything with the fact in mind that the Iranian or Iran-related ancestry arrived in Sardinia during the Middle Bronze Age from the pre-Mycenaean Aegean region.
The only way out of this problem is to claim that the Aegean region was multi-lingual at the time, and only the non-Indo-European speakers migrated west, while the Indo-Europeans there were unusually sedentary for their kind.
Hehe.
@Matt,
"The Caucasus is one of the most important geographical joints in Western Eurasia. Linking Europe, Western Asia and the Eurasian steppe zone, this region today is one of the genetically and linguistically most diverse spots of Eurasia"
This suggests they mean the Caucasus is diverse in that it is mixed between Europe, west Asia, etc. Eneolithic Caucasus genomes are basically the same as modern North Caucasians. Anyways, I'm sure the Caucasus is not the most diverse location in Eurasia by any measure.
But I guess I was wrong. They mean linguistically and 'genetically' (ethnic drift?).
I've seen this phrasing so many times in DNA papers. "It's one of the greatest hubs in world history, it is a passing point between worlds, etc, etc." I think it's mainly an attempt to make their papers more sexy.
@Ric
"I wonder if they are trying to link Greeks to Armenians via Hajji Firuz?"
I get the impression that any scenario in which PIE ultimately comes from northwestern Iran will suit these guys, lol. I'm open to the idea that PIE(or maybe "indo-Hittite") originated with the CHG ancestors of Yamnaya, but it's clear now that those CHG ancestors were long divorced from any roots they may have had in Iran when that happened, if it did.
@Sam, yeah, you're right that it is pretty standard boilerplate to get interest, and to be fair does apply more linguistically than genetically and there is the role of recent genetic drifts there as well (though seems the genetic distances can still be fairly substantial relative to the amount of space).
Why would Iranian-related be a problem, CHG is like 80% Iran_N.
@Davidski
“Pretty sure those Armenia_ChL samples have steppe ancestry so at some point during the Chalcolithic there was gene flow from the steppe into the southern Caucasus, but anyway, what I think these authors mean here is that in the Caucasus and nearby steppes there is evidence of strong cultural interactions in spite of very little or no gene flow associated with it.”
Combined with the “too simple models” line it sounds they’re trying to keep immobilism alive. Sheesh. Some people do not move with genetics.
@Bob Floy
If that was the case, do these researchers even care about Hajji Firuz’s radiocarbon dating or steppe ancestry or just see “R1B IN NEOLITHIC IRAN OMG” and ignore everything else? Because it does feel like Hajji Firuz made this South Caucasusian/Iranian PIE homeland theory popular.
@ rozefag
Yes indeed. I still wonder who the Suvorovo expansion into the Transylvanian Plateau were and if some related people reached Hungary before Yamnaya ?
"In Sardinia, we identified the appearance of Iran-related ancestry from the Aegean as early as the Middle Bronze Age, with no genetic influences seen from populations carrying Steppe-related ancestry despite cultural or commercial exchanges with Bell Beaker populations."
And from another recent paper:
"the relatively high prevalence of haplogroup R1b1a2 (R-M269) in Sardinia (~18%) has been interpreted to reflect a large component of pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer ancestry in Sardinia (see Contu et al. and Morelli et al.), although recent modern and aDNA studies support a recent coalescent time for the haplogroup throughout Europe, in line with an expansion during the late Neolithic and Bronze Age."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0215-8.epdf?author_access_token=m5JXNcoqqnFVpZn9Qv40VtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NAgrDcTnHLukkHqktqMDwvotOoRVheUjl48G9WLksFJDVbYFz63NoP6UrzkUGAzsGNsTWDsHwCVhA9SIV60FGYsxedL6SaA0LXgE7RJ0fP5A%3D%3D
...
@Cpk
Why would Iranian-related be a problem, CHG is like 80% Iran_N.
Its not really though, because Iran_N is younger than CHG.
@Cpk
My understanding is that Yamnaya's CHG ancestry(however long it had been present on the steppe prior to their mixing) came up from Kotias/Satsurblia or thereabouts, and so actually has nothing to do with Iran. Davidski has shown over and over that Yamnaya's mtDNA dosen't match up with what's south of the caucuses. The fact that this same type of ancestry is also present in Iran is another story.
@Them Meee
"it does feel like Hajji Firuz made this South Caucasusian/Iranian PIE homeland theory popular."
It definitely has, but this idea has been trying to shove it's way in for awhile, there were a ton of people on Eupedia arguing for something like this as far back as 2012 or earlier.
I wonder how much current socio-political events in Europe impact ancient DNA conclusions ? (e.g. Iran = PIE idea )
I don't buy the political fingerpointing. If there is any vice involved by Reich's people, it's probably just lack of precision (because the authors don't think it's that important to differentiate CHG from Iran) or, worse, laziness.
Or maybe it's just not that easy to differentiate CHG from Iran Neolithic in the first place. It would be interesting to know when these ancestry types diverged. Dzudzuana, the pre-ANE precursor to these populations, is about 26,000 years old. The oldest CHG genome is Satsurblia at about 11,000 years old and the oldest Iranian genome is Hotu at about 9,000. So CHG and IHG were already differentiated at a minimum of 11,000 years ago. Sometime between 26,000 and 11,000 years ago, ANE must have swept into the Middle East and created both CHG and IHG-- a 15,000 year window. Based on the data Reich's lab already has, I would think there are statistical inferences that could be made on how and when this likely happened. I hope we see the issue explored soon because it's tiresome to see the Iran/not Iran trope come up again and again.
I honestly believe that there are political considerations involved here, even if just on a subconscious level.
Surely it's more politically correct, and socially inclusive, nowadays to say that the Indo-European migrations started in the Near East and affected Europe, rather than the other way around, which sort of suggests that the European colonization of other continents during historic times had an ancient precedence.
It's very interesting that despite the mountain of data now showing clearly that there were population movements from the steppe to Iran, I'm the only one so far who has pointed this out. The people producing the data are quiet about it, as if it wasn't even there.
And what about that Hajji Firuz fiasco? That R1b-M269 sample sticks out like an outlier in PCA and in formal stats. How wasn't that noticed by anyone until I looked at the data?
I do wonder what exactly Reich means by Iran in ancient DNA contexts.
Hmm... I don't like getting into the politics of it - distracts from the data and makes it hard for us to believe that each other are arguing honestly. Same kind of rot you get in hundreds of online discussions where people become aware of each other's politics. But... I think you do find that there were some people in the online "sphere" where we discuss this stuff, who were quite comforted by some ideas prevalent in the late 90s and 2000s.
Those are the ideas where Europe and particularly Northern Europe, was thought of as a kind of eternal backwater, where people sometimes go to but never from and where culture innovations never really came from and were received later than where they were invented.
This all arises naturally out of presenting a sequence of Out of Africa, the recolonization of Europe from Glacial Refugia, the birth of agriculture (presented by Cavalli-Sforza as a theoretically beautiful, simply, inevitable demographic expansion) and the ideas of the first civilizations. The movement is always from outside Europe->Europe or South->North. And that was the presentation, certainly when I became interested in this stuff in the 2000s.
I suspect this was a bit comforting to some people whose backgrounds were not European (or sometimes from South Europe) and perhaps often were both invested in national pride and a bit conscious of the present day balances of power and development between nations. In particular it allows them to re-frame the modern age as a kind of odd, inexplicable aberration between times when the Near East or Asia or Africa (and to a lesser extent South Europe) have "always" been the important or "natural" centres of human culture.
So for people who were invested in that, it's a bit of a shock to find ancient dna that appears to confirm that movements of culture and peoples from north to south (from Europe to elsewhere, or from Northern Europe to Southern Europe) did happen, and that Europe (and Northern Europe) was not the eternal backwater they had become quite comfortable with thinking of it in the long view as, destined in the 21st century to return to its "norm".
They've got to rethink of things in terms where exchange is a bit more two way (Europe as neither unstoppable force and eternal center of the world, nor eternal backwater and sink), and I think some who became more extremely attracted to earlier ideas are still having some trouble readjusting.
That said, I really don't think this is Reich lab's motivation. I think they just like being the finders of counterintuitive disruptive ideas more than just confirming and rubber stamping older ones, and they also don't want to miss any possibilities and get caught out by other researchers, and are committed to the idea of being unbiased by the assumptions of other disciplines. I have less idea about Planck though, but I think probably the same thing.
Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.
@Davidski
"How wasn't that noticed by anyone until I looked at the data?"
There's no way it wasn't noticed, it was ignored, along with a lot of other things. It's actually pretty disturbing, all of this.
@matt
" I think they just like being the finders of counterintuitive disruptive ideas more than just confirming and rubber stamping older ones"
Regardless of what they *like*, their job is to report and interpret the data objectively. For them to do anything else is inexcusable.
I don't think Reich is being politically correct about this - this isn't the sort of thing that could be covered up. One "rogue" lab would ruin everything, including his credibility.
I DO however think the history of the Americas is being covered up, in fact I am strongly confident in that. But that's a different story...
@Davidski
Yeah, something about inclusiveness and colonialism has something to do with it, but I’d say a desire to be connected to ancient Middle Eastern civilizations is also very strong. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve seen people say “The steppe cannot be the PIE homeland. They’re backwards and had no civilization!” thinking that the IEs’ impact is determined by whether or not they had civilizational prowess. If so, what about the Turkic migrations? Didn’t they conquer peoples that were more advanced than them?
@Bob Floy: "Regardless of what they *like*, their job is to report and interpret the data objectively. For them to do anything else is inexcusable."
Dude, science does not depend on them lacking biases. If the data eventually makes some theory totally untenable they are not gonna stick with it. Let the people actually doing the work decide what reporting and interpreting the data objectively is, not the armchair guys who favour IE from the steppes / not from the steppes for whatever equally or for more biased personal reasons and preferences they have.
I really doubt any lab, specially esteemed ones such as the Reich or Max Planck labs, would push an unrealistic agenda that which hard data could easily discredit. This is really special pleading from Eurocentrist Steppe Theory cult members. And why would these labs, if they are under the pressure of Liberal ideology and inclusiveness try to make Iran as a possible source since Iran and anything Iran reated has been on the opposite end of this Liberal (Communistic) plot to create this currentsocial environment, ie the 300 movies etc.
@Matt
Keeping an open mind and even getting things wrong as the work progresses is OK, but arguing the opposite to reality and really pushing it is not.
So I can't agree that criticism in this case isn't warranted. It is, because canvassing crazy things makes a lot of people crazy. I've been trolled and harassed online and over e-mail simply for noticing that Yamnaya didn't come from Iran and R1a didn't come from India.
For those reading this and wondering what I'm on about, here's some background...
Yamnaya isn't from Iran just like R1a isn't from India
Whatever they do, they better not say PIE was spread by women. It's just so dumb.
@Matt
Yeah, you're right, who gives a damn if they do their job?
By the way, I wouldn't give a damn if IE turned out to be from the Horn of Africa, as long as the researchers aren't playing games and using misleading labels for things.
@Bob Floy I'm not even Indo-European, but the Horn of Africa would be such a disappointing conclusion to this archaeogenetic saga - the IE homeland definitely matters, and I think you would actually give more than a damn.
Let's not pretend that the identity of the IEs (essentially the modern term for Aryan) is definitely, underneath it all, very racially charged. With very few exceptions, like if you were some kind of modern feminist or anti-Nazi, almost everybody would want to be descended from them - they're basically the victors of history. In my time on the internet on very strange discords, I've had people like Romanians claiming they want to keep their "Aryan blood" pure - clearly they have barely any, but the appeal to have these people as ancestors is that immense. Indians are also famous in this part of the web for getting extremely rowdy about being the "true Aryans".
Aryans ultimately conquered most of the known world during the latter parts of the Metal Ages, and they did the same during Ancient History and, most spectacularly with colonialism, Modern History too. From the early Renaissance and even to some extent before (if looking at the amazing architecture of things like Gothic cathedrals), while most of the civilised world was relatively backwards, these "Aryans" were writing classical music (the ultimate forms of harmony, just compare it to the traditional music of non-European regions, it's pathetic in comparison), creating brilliant works of art, developing a detailed understanding of reality through scientific and philosophical thought, and inventing essentially every invention of the last 500 years. Of course, to attribute these achievements to "Aryan blood" is ludicrous, but it's a connection that is easily made when looking at history VERY simplistically. I personally put European supremacy down to the university system organising thought into an efficient system of learning, but that's just my opinion (as people like the Chinese did make lots of scientific discoveries, but there was never a theory developed for anything).
To have a purely European origin of IE WOULD suit a Eurocentric agenda nicely. I can see why, if you were more or less PC-brainwashed, you would want to put the homeland in the Middle East - to spite those "evil Nazis", who by way of the media are the default aggressors in this world that has been taught to think in terms of haves and have-nots.
I actually think the original homeland IS in the Middle East, but for different reasons. I don't think they would have looked Middle Eastern, though. I think they'd look something like this Turkish woman that I just happened to see on Twitch this week, originally from Giresun near the Black Sea (the same region with lots of R1b-Z2103 today): see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suax9OAPais and https://www.twitch.tv/videos/336875471.
@an idiot
Your point is well taken and no doubt that's all true a lot of the time, but it really isn't true for me. If PIE came from the step, that's fascinating. If it had turned out that out of India was true, that would have been fascinating in a different way. Wherever the data points is fine with me. I have and have had pet theories, sure, but I make sure that they stay in their proper place. A lot of people seem to have trouble doing that.
It's labeled "Iran" ancestry because that is the source in the model that most closely represents the admixture in Bronze Age Sardinia, there is no agenda here. This is not really news because we saw previous articles suggest similar Iran ancestry spread to the Aegean in the Bronze age within the last year or so. This is different from steppe ancestry, although the shared ancestry between the two may originate in the Caucasus or northern Mesopotamia. Recall that Yamnaya ancestry is rich in EHG (where as Iran_N is not). These are two different groups of people with some shared genetics with ancient herders.
@AWood
This is different from steppe ancestry, although the shared ancestry between the two may originate in the Caucasus or northern Mesopotamia. Recall that Yamnaya ancestry is rich in EHG (where as Iran_N is not). These are two different groups of people with some shared genetics with ancient herders.
Yamnaya certainly doesn't have any ancestry from northern Mesopotamia, and there's no guarantee that even CHG came from what is now Iran, or even by way of Iran.
The picture emerging now is that Anatolian forager-related groups lived in the Caucasus and surrounds, and they mixed with populations moving in from Siberia, by way of the steppe and/or Central Asia, resulting in similar parallel processes that produced populations like CHG and Iran_N.
The mystery of the formation of CHG will be solved somewhere between the Paleolithic Imeretian Culture of the Caucasus and the Lower Don River(Delta) area....
'An Idiot''
I have never felt like that.
I'm interested in Eurogenes and genetic genealogy purely as a search for the truth.
This is why the obsessive - and demented - chauvinists whom David belatedly banished from this forum annoyed me so much. The one thing I can't stand are liars, particular barefaced liars who *know* that they are lying. Science has no place for them.
^This.
Samuel
Yes off course the ancestry that moved to Mediterranean coasts was not from Iran. But claiming that they came from west Anatolia or East Med is not correct. Beacause Levant N ( East med ) didn't have such a ancestry. It came there from North Mesopotamia during Chalcolithic. Neither Anatolia had a such a ancestry before Tepecik farmers. This push continued also after Tepecik.
The same can be said about the so called ANF ancestry in Iran Turan Eneolithic. Anyone who knows those haplotypes (J2-L24,J2b, L1, R2 etc ) found in BMAC , and other Iran Turan eneolithic sites would laugh about the idea that they are coming from Anatolia. Hajji Firuz already had ANF shift at 5000 bc.
Isn't it obvious that somewhere between Iran and Anatolia is the true source of this migrations. Both to west and east.
@An Idiot
Add to that the current PC culture of the academic world and presto, you have academic bias.
David Reich actually mentioned this more than once:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03773-6
"The conclusions immediately met with push-back. Some of it began even before the papers were published, says Reich. When he circulated a draft among his dozens of collaborators, several archaeologists quit the project. To many, the idea that people linked to Corded Ware had replaced Neolithic groups in Western Europe was eerily reminiscent of the ideas of Gustaf Kossinna, the early-twentieth-century German archaeologist who had connected Corded Ware culture to the people of modern Germany and promoted a ‘Risk board’ view of prehistory known as settlement archaeology. The idea later fed into Nazi ideology.
Reich won his co-authors back by explicitly rejecting Kossinna’s ideas in an essay included in the paper’s 141-page supplementary material7. He says the episode was eye-opening in showing how a wider audience would perceive genetic studies claiming large-scale ancient migrations."
The point obviously is that we do not conduct science to prove Hitler wrong. We conduct science for science itself. Hitler was proven wrong in the spring of 1945 when he lost the war and left Germany in ruins.
Checking out some of our past discussions about the Iran-related ancestry might be useful for those new to this topic...
A homeland, but not the homeland
A homeland, but not the homeland #2
A homeland, but not the homeland #3
After reading David Reich's book, I'm confident the direction of aDNA science is in good hands. He cares about the science, he cares about the truth. And it's reflected in the work his lab does.
One reason I think the Reich lab and others are currently favoring West Asian PIE theories is that as geneticists and not linguists or archaeologists, they are deferring on linguistic questions to experts in that field, rather than relying on their own intuition. That's sound scientific practice. It's what we would expect from linguists and archaeologists when it comes to the genetic findings.
Experts can be wrong. They frequently are, especially in fields that are relatively poor in available high quality empirical data. There's only so much you can be sure of in a field like linguistics or archaeology, so naturally experts will disagree, sometimes to an extreme extent.
The theory that PIE originated on the Pontic Caspian Steppe is the dominant one in archaeology and linguistics. But it's not a universal consensus. It seems that the experts affiliated with the Reich lab and Max Planck have different theories about PIE origins. That's ok. I trust that as the aDNA record grows, the leading scientists will follow the data. They may have to change their theories. They may not. But I trust the process currently. The aDNA will not lie.
The Nazi taint on genetics/archeology (and so much else) really just needs to end already; the crybabies need to get over it.
Hitler was wrong from the beginning. Germans (let alone Austrians) are not the populations with the highest steppe / IE ancestry -- and some of the ones that are, he considered untermenschen and planned on eradicating or evacuating to make room for German settlement.
That said, there's no need to deny the idea that there was something special about early IE societies and some of their later derivations. The massive influence speaks for itself. However, most of the great societies that some alluded to earlier in the post were cherry-picked individual examples, all came out of a fusion of people and cultures, and always spawned later than the initial IE migrations that influenced them.
If any population is the most influential, demographically and in terms of the greatest foundational cultural innovations (agriculture, urbanism, trade, etc.), it's the early farmers. The Dzudzuana paper seems largely correct to me... Dzudzuana-related people, already around ~26k years ago, eventually had the greatest impact in west Eurasia. Looking forward to those genomes too! :)
@ An Idiot
"With very few exceptions, like if you were some kind of modern feminist or anti-Nazi, almost everybody would want to be descended from them - they're basically the victors of history."
I guess you're quite right - after having followed the heated online discussions about the PIE homeland for years I can't deny this. I even made a little pun on it: Everyone wants to be a PIE, lol. But I guess I'm one of those few feminists or anti-Nazis then, because I'm wired differently. I always had a crush on Minoan and ancient Egyptian civilisations, I also find the Etruscans fascinating, etc. And I really don't need to boost my ego with steppe or PIE descent. But, as facts are, I do have substantial steppe ancestry, and my yDNA goes back to the Corded people. I think that's cool, but wouldn't have been disappointed if it had went back to ancient non-IE civilisations. Yes, I'm rather social-liberal than right-wing conservative, but I'm critical and don't quite fit into any pigeonhole.
As for the political influence on how scientific findings are presented: I've heard there's now a new exhibition in Berlin on archaeological finds from Germany from the recent couple of years. I haven't watched it, but read about it. They also make mention of ancient DNA, in the context of the spread of farming. The journalist who wrote about it rendered it like this: First there were two different genomes, one from the farming immigrants who came from the Levant (following the same Balkan-route as modern Syrian refugees), the other from the indigenous foragers. And later they merged into one. So the journalist concluded: We Europeans all have Syrian ancestors! :-D And migration has always been a motor for innovation, back then just as - allegedly - now.
Not sure if they in that exhibition also make mention of the DNA evidence suggestive of Steppe expansions. And of course my understanding has always been that the early European Farmers are descended from Anatolian foragers, not from the Levant.
That's the link to the description of that exhibition on the site of the museum:
https://www.smb.museum/en/exhibitions/detail/bewegte-zeiten.html
I just skimmed it, it seems alright, they do mention "four major migrational events of the Neolithic Age that had lasting effects on the European gene pool". That's fair.
@Aram @Samuel
I agree with Aram. No doubt there was "Iranian-related" ancestry pushing into Anatolia and the Levant starting in the late Neolithic and Chalcolithic, respectively. What we see in some modern southern Euros might come from either of those places, and of course not Iran directly, but it doesn't mean they don't have "Iranian-related" ancestry.
We don't have a better proxy for this other than the various Iran_N samples. I agree with Aram that the likely source is actually between Iran and Anatolia... unfortunately, that region is currently a worn-torn nightmare where it's kind of hard to do any scientific fieldwork. Best bet now is looking for samples in eastern Turkey.
It is interesting what people regards as Civilization....Great Civilizations were responsible for Great Slaughter as well. What is civilized about that ? Apparently a wooden house designed to keep out the cold is not as inventive as a Stone or Mud Brick house to keep out the heat. Wearing cotton is apparently more sophisticated than wearing wool and animal skins which are more effective against the cold....etc. etc...
This is an experimental model for Kurgan populations. It looks like it makes sense.
I've been working around Yamnaya & Steppe-rich EBA Europeans to work out who their common ancestor was. A few facts seem undeniable...
-Yamnaya's HG ancestors had more ANE than our current EHG genomes.
-Ukraine_Eneolithic & Sintashta & EBA Europeans have UkraineHG-like ancestry on top of European farmer ancestry.
Here are some results.
Khvalynsk_Eneolithic: 37.6% PIE, 40.4% ANE, 19.75% WHG, 2.3% EEF
Ukraine_Eneo_I6561: 48.5% PIE, 9.43% ANE, 10.64% WHG, 31.4% EEF
Yamnaya_Samara: 85.8% PIE, 0.8% ANE, 4.63% WHG, 8.8% EEF.
Afanasievo: 86.1% PIE, 1% ANE, 3.1% WHG, 9.8% EEF
CWC_Baltic_Early: 68.4% PIE, 7.1% ANE, 11.3% WHG, 13.1% EEF
Sintasta: 48% PIE, 9.7% ANE, 14.2% WHG, 28.1% EEF
Bell Beaker_The_Netherlands_nooutliers: 43.4% PIE, 5.7% ANE, 18.7% WHG, 32.2% EEF
@Simon_W,
"I just skimmed it, it seems alright, they do mention "four major migrational events of the Neolithic Age that had lasting effects on the European gene pool". That's fair."
But there were only two major migration events. People misunderstand, WHG, ANE, CHG, EEF didn't arrive in independent movements.
@Synome
Decipherment of Lineair A will be enough to settle the issue. If that turns out to be non-IE it will make de spread of Iranian ancestry + Y-DNA J a non-IE event and the start of IE a steppe related event.
Sardinia was non-IE speaking until the Roman occupation, so I do not see how CHG ancestry showing up there in the Bronze Age supports a PIE homelands south of the Caucasus.
@PF
That and Dzudzuana-related ancestry is present in steppe populations, including most if not all those who migrated out the steppe, and most Bronze Age/Chalcolithic western steppe populations we have. Assuming CHG is Dzudzuana-derived or related it could have been present as early as the Mesolithic, and although I doubt EHG wasn’t the primary source of IE languages, a Dzudzuana-related population was important to their emergence, and essentially by merging with EHG created the “steppe” genome (which in this case is basically IE-related ancestry anyway). That alone magnifies their impact as it extends all the way to Mongolia and the Arctic circle.
@Samuel Andrews
“Ukraine_Eneolithic & Sintashta & EBA Europeans have UkraineHG-like ancestry on top of European farmer ancestry.”.
Didn’t David suggest the same thing, Ukrainian hunter-gatherer ancestry on top of the mostly Balkan EEF that Sredny Stog acquired? If anything these models basically support the theory. Looks like we can finally discard any important contribution from GAC for now.
@All
I trashed a bunch of comments from some guy who calls himself Helios. They were mostly just rants against this blog.
@Helios
You're on track to be the first commentator here to get banned without a single comment showing up.
If that's not your aim, then my advice is stop ranting and try to post something with substance.
@epoch
There is no hope at all of a dechipherment of linear A without orders of magnitude increases in the number of inscriptions, but that is not really important as we already know that the eteo-cretan pre greeks were non IE.
@Helios
You're now banned after that last rant.
Banned commentators list
By the way, yeah no sh*t there will be lots of J2 and G2 in Mycenaean remains. Have you ever heard about the substantial non-Indo-European substrate in Greek? Well there you go, that explains things rather well.
@Dude ManBro
“
Sardinia was non-IE speaking until the Roman occupation, so I do not see how CHG ancestry showing up there in the Bronze Age supports a PIE homelands south of the Caucasus.”
Because some people want to desperate link these movements (in this case also claimed to be Iran_Neolithic) to the Indo-Europeans, which would make Minoans Indo-European and Iran the PIE homeland, a movement in no small part influenced by an allegedly Chalcolithic Iranian sample with R1b, which ironically enough seems to be from the Bronze Age.
It’s that simple.
I'm not aware of the general sentiments among the Molgen crowd in regards to these issues, but last time I looked there, a bunch of them were arguing that R1b-M269 moved into the steppes from Armenia.
Very sharp, obviously.
23andme tells its millions of R1b customers that R1b originated in early farmers in Mesopotamia. And that it became popular because of Bronze age traders from the Steppe.
This is obviously wrong. R1b1a* is all over Mesolithic Europe & no where in ancient West Asia. R1b P312+ Beaker folk weren't male traders, they represent an entire population that made huge impact on overall ancestry. Ancient DNA gives very obvious answers but it always takes the established voices a super long time to understand them.
@JuanRivera,
The excess ANE thing makes sense considering Yamnaya is 12-15% WHG-rich farmer but its WHG/ANE ratio is still consistent with EHG. I was skeptical of West Sib input at first. It might just be excess ANE but maybe there is a drop of East Asian in there as well.
Yeah, 23andMe also claims that R1a originated in Iran and moved to the Eastern European steppes during the Bronze Age. Haha.
Well I don't think Sythians came from near Iran.
The earliest Scythian genomes are like a mix of Srubnaya and Karasuk, so they can be described as an Iron Age steppe population in origin.
@Davidski Given Scythians are Iranian (and so their ethnogenesis took place after the Indo-Iranian split, which occurred in Central Asia), surely it makes more sense that the Scythian homeland was in Central Asia (somewhere East of the Caspian) before conquering the Steppe proper?
For Corded Ware-derived IEs, the association with the Nordid phenotype is just so overwhelmingly strong that any Caucasian influence can't have been especially large. Corded Ware folk were really narrow-faced and long-headed, which is basically in opposite to Caucasians. Yeah, you said no talking about phenotypes, but here I'm linking it to archaeogenetics so it's not so bad.
@An Idiot
The earliest Iranian speakers are generally regarded to be the Srubnaya people.
And the linguistic splits within Iranian are regarded to have happened on the steppe.
Scythians are the Iranians who stayed on the steppe.
See here...
An early Iranian, obviously
A Mycenaean and an Iron Age Iranian walk into a bar...
@ Davidski
What do you think about the so called "older" diverged Sub-clads of R1b in Modern day population samples in Iran and some other parts of the Middle East ? Should they maybe be retested or could they be legit ? If I remember correctly then these people were tested about 10 years ago or earlier....
If still accurate then how do we explain their presence there ? Could it be that R1b moved down the Volga from the Southern Urals, mixed with an early CHG-related people in the Don Delta, then split up with one group moving towards the West (End up in Italy and the Balkans) and a minority (Non-Proto-Indo-European related) moving with CHG towards the Southern Caucasus (Ending up in pockets) ?
@Ric
These so called basal and old R1b lineages in the Near East aren't really older than M269, they're just nested within subclades that are more basal splits from the R1b trunk than M269.
Their ancestral lineages probably mostly arrived in the Near East at the same time as M269 or even later.
That's why modern DNA can be so misleading when looking for the homeland of a Y-haplogroup. The only way to test that sort of thing is with ancient DNA.
@an idiot
If you were to travel to a very ethnically homogeneous place like, for example, rural northwestern Ireland(as I have), where the people are uniformly descended from central European Beaker folk, and 98% of the men carry R1b-L21, I think you would be struck by how much phenotype(including cranial features) can vary, even in a single village. Phenotype is not a very good tool for these kinds of investigations, and now that we have all this ancient DNA it's practically obsolete. I think that's why Davidski discourages talk about things like that.
@ Davidski
Thanks.
Hi Epoch. You quoted '' To many, the idea that people linked to Corded Ware had replaced Neolithic groups in Western Europe was eerily reminiscent of the ideas of Gustaf Kossinna, the early-twentieth-century German archaeologist who had connected Corded Ware culture to the people of modern Germany and promoted a ‘Risk board’ view of prehistory known as settlement archaeology. The idea later fed into Nazi ideology.
Reich won his co-authors back by explicitly rejecting Kossinna’s ideas in an essay included in the paper’s 141-page supplementary material''
But maybe Reich did make an error here, technically speaking. It seems that it was Bell Beaker groups who did the mass replacing, not Corded Ware. From what I hear, BB and CWC are actually different groups (different men, different weapons).
@Toby_P
Corded Ware did a lot of the replacing of Late Neolithic farmers right up to what is now France, deep in Western Europe, before the Bell Beakers showed up.
How all of this went down is yet to be worked out, but very roughly the chronology is first Corded Ware moves in from the east, and then the eastern Beakers do, and then the Beakers replace Corded Ware west of Poland, while in the east Corded Ware morphs into Sintashta, the Trzciniec Culture, and eventually Balts and Slavs.
@ Davidski
Thanks for your reply.
Yes I know CWC is earlier, but just recalling seeing maps here and there- Corded Ware isn't that prominent in western Europe, a few enclaves here and there. Even in central Europe, they seem to have slotted in amongst other groups - as we saw in Mathieson 2018, which if I recall correctly has GAC samples from CWC period without any steppe admixture, and then a later paper (I forge the name) from Poland even has non R1a CWC members. There were similarly such cultures in Germany, but have not been sampled to date.
But the point remains, I think there is a significant err there in the quote. It just seems to me CWC & BB were quite different in their attitudes.
@Toby_P
Those GAC samples from Poland are dated to around 3,000 BC, so they're earlier than Corded Ware.
And I wouldn't put too much stock into those Polish Corded Ware samples lacking R1a, because the two males who belonged to I2 were related, and R1a was already popping up at the time in Corded Ware west of Poland.
Weren't we supposed to have Abashevo genomes two or three years ago? Anyone know what happened with that?
Seems like there wasn't enough DNA in the remains. That happens a lot.
They'd probably just be almost identical to Sintashta and carrying z93, anyway.
@Bob Floy
“They’d probably just be almost identical to Sintashta and carrying z93, anyway.”
Still a net loss IMO, it would have solved a genetic puzzle and maybe we would have a few surprises here and there. We can only ever guess about these surprises though...
Hi Davidski,
The early Iranic speaker in your blog post An early Iranian, obviously , hoe can he explain Western Iranians such as the Persians.
Sorry I meant *how can we
@Zarzian
At the onset of the Iron Age, after c. 1200 BC, Iran was a place of major social transformation. After the collapse of the Bronze Age urban civilisations, the land was inhabited mainly by groups of mobile pastoralists that gradually transitioned from tribal organisation into loose federations, before finally developing into the Median and Persian early states (Potts 2014).
...
The most direct analogies of collective cremains are noted farther north of Iran and are associated with the Colchian culture in Georgia, or the Andronovo culture in Central Asia (Gorjachev & Mar’jashev 1998; Gobejishvili 2014). The unusual grave at Estark-Joshaqan may, therefore, be the evidence of a new tradition that originated in the steppe areas north of the Caspian and Black Seas and was transferred to Iran during the Iron Age.
A palimpsest grave at the Iron Age cemetery in Estark-Joshaqan, Iran
@An idiot: Concerning phenotypes, the same is true as for yDNA. You have to look at the phenotypes which were dominant at the time in question. If you do so, there is no problem with the ancestral regional phenotypes and Corded Ware, if you include some selection into the equation.
Bell Beakers on the other hand are much more of a mystery in this respect, as in all the others. Their main phenotype needs an explanation.
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