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Thursday, March 7, 2019

A challenge


The datasheets below contain outgroup f3-statistics for a wide range of ancient and present-day populations. Five of the ancient groups and individuals are labeled "Unknown". In fact, I do know what they are, but I'd like you to try and work out whether they were the speakers of Indo-European or non-Indo-European languages by analyzing the datasheets with, say, PAST or nMonte.

f3-stats_language_challenge1.dat

f3-stats_language_challenge2.dat

I'll reveal the identities and likely languages of the mystery ancients in a couple of days. It'll be interesting to see if any of you nail this challenge. It shouldn't be too difficult, but to help things along, I color coded the populations in the datasheets (black = Indo-European, blue = Uralic, and grey = neither). If you haven't done this sort of thing before, these blog posts might be useful as background reading.

Maykop: a multi-ethnic layer cake?

D-stats/nMonte open thread

Update 09/03/2019: Samuel nailed the challenge in the first post below. And then Matt almost figured out the precise identities of the mystery ancients here. In hindsight I should've made this more difficult. Here are the answers:

Unknown1 = England_Anglo-Saxon (Indo-European) > more here
Unknown2 = Levanluhta_IA (non-Indo-European) > more here
Unknown3 = Minoan_Lasithi (non-Indo-European) > more here
Unknown4 = Slavic_Bohemia (Indo-European) > more here
Unknown5 = Turkmenistan_IA (Indo-European) > more here

213 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   201 – 213 of 213
Mouthful said...

Seems like Iberia paper is out.

Gaska said...


Olalde has finally arrived, good news for science in Spain and for all those interested in European genetics

Mouthful said...

Supplementary info.

https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/sites/reich.hms.harvard.edu/files/inline-files/2019_Olalde_Science_IberiaTransect_Supplement.pdf

Samuel Andrews said...

Unbelivable amount of samples. mtDNA haplogroup H was still at 25% in the Bronze age/Iron age. It reaches 40% in the Middle Ages. That looks like natural selection. I've been saying some kind of natural selection explains high H frequencies in Europe.

Gaska said...

CHA002 was assigned to haplogroup R1b-M343, which together with an EN individual from Cova de Els Trocs (R1b1a) confirms the presence of R1b in Western Europe prior to the expansion of steppe pastoralists that established a related male lineage in Bronze Age Europe


It seems that the earthquake has arrived, Let's see what happens, at the moment it's very good news

Drago said...

I1 in Mesolithic Iberia ! (MPI paper)

a said...

@JuanRivera
IMO, my expectations, the anti-steppe crowd will double down on their position[no steppe], even though R1b- Iberia clearly shows steppe.

Drago said...

@ Sam
But weren’t you suggesting mtdna H expanded form Iberia ?
What are your current thoughts ?

Gaska said...

the anti steppe crowd was right, R1b is in western Europe at least from Villabruna, the steppe ancestry is the least.

Gaska said...


@Sam- Unbelivable amount of samples. mtDNA haplogroup H was still at 25% in the Bronze age/Iron age. It reaches 40% in the Middle Ages. That looks like natural selection. I've been saying some kind of natural selection explains high H frequencies in Europe.
the mitochondrial haplogroup H, H1, H3, H6, H7 are documented in Iberia since the Paleolithic, you are right in natural selection because they were imposed on all Neolithic lineages

Andrzejewski said...

@JuanRivera "H2a and J1b are examples of EEF clades of ultimate Anatolian origin that entered to the steppe mtDNA pool."

No. It was CHG.

Simon_W said...

@Andrzejewski
"you completely, utterly and totally fail to mention the later Ostrogothic and especially Longobardi conquest which altered the gene pool substantially in Northern Italy."

I was speaking of pre-Roman Northern Italy, thoses Germanic tribes you mention arrived later. And BTW the Ostrogoths were Arian Christians, they were not allowed to marry Catholics, hence they cannot have had a big impact.

Simon_W said...

And, @Andrzejewski

As for the Longobards, in case you're drawing upon the evidence from Collegno, I would be cautious. The locals were indeed rather south Italian- and Greek-like, but they are just a handful and from just one site. Importantly, modern North Italians cannot be properly modeled as a two-way mixture between Germanics and South Italians/Greeks. Because they have more West Anatolian Farmer ancestry than either of these populations. So there's also an Iberian-like element in the mix. Now, CL94 and CL23 have quite a lot of Iberian-like ancestry. They were non-local to Collegno, but who knows where else they came from, they may well have been from somewhere in Northern Italy. In Matt's PCA CL94 is close to modern people from the Aosta Valley and CL23 to modern Lombards. Moreover, there's also the very North Italian-like CL36. He's from a slightly later occupation phase of Collegno, but he doesn't look like a Germanic-South Italian mix. See for instance this Global25/nMonte model:

[1] "distance%=2.4045"

Italy_Medieval_Collegno:CL36

Italian_South,41.9
Hallstatt_Bylany:DA111,34.2
Beaker_Northern_Italy,13.2
Italian_Abruzzo,10.7
Germany_Medieval,0

Rather looks like a Celtic/Ligurian/South Italian mix.

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