Partial genetic isolation of the Lithuanians is a possible explanation for the structure results observed. Until the late Middle Ages, the eastern Baltic region was one of the most isolated corners of Europe [27]. Moreover, after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the eastern Baltic region was spared by the subsequent population movements of the Migration Period [26,28], which allowed the most archaic of all the living speaking Indo-European languages [1] to survive. Thus, Lithuanians could retain their cultural identity.Urnikyte et al., Patterns of genetic structure and adaptive positive selection in the Lithuanian population from high-density SNP data, Scientific Reports volume 9, Article number: 9163 (2019), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45746-3 See also... Fresh off the sledge Uralic-specific genome-wide ancestry did make a signifcant impact in the East Baltic It was always going to be this way Inferring the linguistic affinity of long dead and non-literate peoples: a multidisciplinary approach
Monday, June 24, 2019
Genetic substructures and adaptations in Lithuanians (Urnikyte et al. 2019)
Over at Scientific Reports at this LINK. Apparently, the genotype data from this paper will be available at figshare in just over three months (see here). Among other things, the paper makes some interesting points about the relationship between the genetic ancestry of Lithuanians and their language:
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Offtopic but any of you know if the genetic variation that suposedly irish travellers have respect to irish is the same as irish have to spaniards ?
It seem quite strange that only in 350 years of isolation were able to evolve so quicly
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thejournal.ie/traveller-community-study-rcsi-3231070-Feb2017/%3famp=1
@Srtmil
Offtopic but any of you know if the genetic variation that supposedly Irish travelers have respect to Irish is the same as Irish have to Spaniards?
Irish travelers are just an isolate Irish population with their own specific genetic drift and character due to endogamy.
That sort of difference is rather superficial, and it can disappear faster than it formed with enough mixing.
So no, the Spaniard comparison doesn't work for me at all. I find it totally absurd actually.
i guess the recongnition as a different ethnic group is another political maneuver after all .
Thanks
Also your blog seem to be reaching the maintream , a french europarlament is trying to built a common european narrative with the indo european question in its center , they took even one of your pics
Moreover, up to three HG populations can be inferred to contribute to the main genetic component identified the Lithuanians being the contribution of the WHG and the Scandinavian HG greater than that of the EHG.
That sentence got messed up somehow. But anyway, I can't see that they've actually shown that SHGs have contributed to Lithuanians? I guess that SHGs just fit nicely as a contributor as they are a mix of WHGs and EHGs (with a bit of their own drift), and since Lithuanians have lots of both WHG and EHG, but more of the former, WHGs and SHGs look like larger contributors.
Or am I blind and they've really shown that Lithuanians have SHG specific drift?
Off topic. It would be nice to start parsing dna by selecting specific ydna in ancetral models. For example could parse R1b-Z2103+>and all downstream---- from all known branches of R1a and R1b-L51+samples. In other words;use the genetics of every known female sample in your data base, and and every known R1b-Z2103+ydna sample-- with the exclusion of R1a and L51+(Corded Ware or Corded Ware like)
Any idea what happened to
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-homeland-in-footprints-of-early.html
http://homeland.ku.dk/ interactive map?
“Iran Neolithic (in blue) farmers, respectively. Notably, this latter component is also highly present in the Early to Middle Bronze Age (EMBA) Steppe pastoralists, from which it arrived to the Baltic and the rest of Europe.“
For some reason or another, researchers are wedded to the notion of a South Caspian origin of PIE
“Furthermore, when compared to their contemporary neighbouring populations in western and northern Europe (West Europe and North Europe groups in Fig. S3), Lithuanians seem to lack the Natufan/Levant Neolithic ancestry component (in purple) present in them; on the contrary, Lithuanians carry higher proportions of HG ancestry.”
I did not know that other Europeans (except for Greeks, South Italians and some Balkanic groups) carry ANY Natufian/Levant (=Cardian?) DNA. I thought they only had Anatolia_N /EEF in them...
I'm not 100% on their comment that Lithuania was one of the most isolated parts of Europe and tying this to Indo-European archaisms; Lithuanians are pretty distinctive, but the cascade of changes from Baltic Corded Ware->Baltic_BA->modern Lithuanians doesn't seem to have a lot more obvious continuity than a Norwegian or Irish or Swedish sequence. The change in y-dna seems relatively significant as well (e.g. Hap N).
Not sure why they don't look at relationship of Lithuania to Baltic_BA either. Oh well I guess they're using a fairly old panel.
In the supplement, comparing the f3 stats for the LT set against the normal Lithuanian panel, basically the same position in the rank order. Generally they share slightly, and almost uniformly less, drift with European ancients.
That only looks to shift rank order slightly against the pops where they're not heads and shoulders more related than other pops; Steppe_IA, EuropeENMChl, Iberia_BA, etc. (Lower sharing).
The only pops LT converge with more than prev. Lithanian are Iran_N, Iran_LN, Iran_recent, Ust_Ishim and AG2, and with CHG they are at parity.
So I guess this set is very slightly less WHG and slightly more Steppe_EMBA than the HO 'classic' set but otherwise pretty much the same.
@Matt
The area was largely a peat bog with habitable islands, which may function as a barrier. But then again, so were large parts of the Netherlands and NW Germany.
@Matt
I guess they're sort of saying what I said here a few weeks ago...
It was always going to be this way
Although my efforts were somewhat more eloquent, even if I do say so myself. :)
Matt: Yeah - the tone of the paper somewhat sucks. It falls into the "We, Pop X, have always been special and distinct from everyone else as proved by DNA" class (replace X by "Basques", "Hungarians", "Danes", "Lithuanians" or whatever small nation under perceived assimilation pressure comes to mind.)
I mean, when they talk about "apparently long isolation of the Balts", they obviously don't count Old Prussians as Balts. Baltic (Prussian) hydronyms are found as far west as the Pommeranian Parseta/Persante (PIE *pers "to spray", c.f. NGerm fors "waterfall", plus Anatolian/ Tocharian attestations), an area certainly not isolated even prior to Goths, the Teutonic Order, and Polish colonisation, see e.g. the Pommeranian Face Urn Culture connected to NE Italy. There also was the Migration Period "Balti-Culti" phenomenon described in Kontny 2013 (link) - again rather Prussian than Lithuanian, but not too distant from the latter.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269607117_TRADE_SALT_AND_AMBER_THE_FORMATION_OF_LATE_MIGRATION_PERIOD_ELITES_IN_THE_'BALTI-KULTI'_AREA_OF_NORTHERN_POLAND_THE_ELBLAG_GROUP
It is outright ridiculous to consider a region that during the MBA supplied amber as far as Egypt, and was known as major source of said commodity to the Romans, as "isolated". Afterwards, we a/o have Vilnius' large Jewish community, a German-speaking majority in Klaipeda Region/Memelland (W. Zemaitija in the study's nomenclature) until 1945, and a still sizeable Polish minority in S. Lithuania (S. Aukstaitija). All of these groups would have deserved analysis, but none of them gets it. E.g., their statement that "Lithuanians seem to lack the Natufan/Levant Neolithic ancestry component" suggests very limited genetic interaction between Lithuanian Jews and the non-Jewish population, but the topic isn't assessed further or thematicised in any way.
The genesis of Baltic languages, including their perceived conservatism and closeness to Sanskrit, is a fascinating question. Was Iranian (Skythian) involved? Their identification of Iran_Neo ancestry, rather than CHG, in Lithuanians might suggest so. But, again, the issue isn't discussed further and followed up in any way.
One detail that bothered me in the study was the fact that it referred to Lithuanians mtDNA having lots of Slavic influence but neglecting to mention that at least 50% of Lithuanians' Y-DNA is R1a1, even a higher degree than N1c1 Finno-Ugric one.
"Their identification of Iran_Neo ancestry, rather than CHG, in Lithuanians"
So now it's just standard everywhere to misidentify CHG as Iran_Neo, I see.
Nice.
"Notably, this latter component("Iran Neolithic" is also highly present in the Early to Middle Bronze Age (EMBA) Steppe pastoralists, from which it arrived to the Baltic and the rest of Europe..."
Right.
It'll take most of these researchers some time to catch up to the fact that the southern ancestry in Steppe_EMBA is actually closest to a mix of CHG and EEF, rather than anything from Iran.
But how will the researchers talk of a South Caspian PIE homeland if they acknowledge that CHG is not Iran_N? The horror!
Yeah, the blurring between CHG and Iran_N seems like it was being done deliberately to help push the PIE homeland into Iran. We discussed this issue briefly here in the comments...
The tracer dye
It's a very strange situation and I don't know what to make of it to be honest.
Do you think indo european narrative will be able hold terrain and serve as foundational myth for europeans ?
Is there any chance that can be hickjacked and ending backfiring badly?
Maybe creation of unified Duchy of Lithuania isolated and protected local population against foreign gene influx?
@Dujokaukė
Modern Lithuanians are derived from rural populations in Lithuania. These populations weren't affected by foreign gene flow because basically it didn't make sense for anyone to marry into peasant stock.
Upper class Lithuanians were often Polonized and many moved to Poland. On the other hand, Polish upper classes didn't become Lithuanians, and neither did Ruthenian upper classes.
But overall the situation was very similar in Poland. Most Poles today are of rural, peasant stock that generally didn't mix with anyone, and the upper class and urban populations in Poland that did mix to some extent were decimated during the Second World War.
So now there are a lot of people wondering why genetic studies show that Poles aren't a complex mix of Slavs, Germans, Jews, etc. But it's not a mystery, because it's easily explained by the fact that no one wanted to mix with a bunch of peasants who were at the bottom of the social ladder.
@Srtmil
Do you think indo european narrative will be able hold terrain and serve as foundational myth for europeans? Is there any chance that can be hickjacked and ending backfiring badly?
An Austrian guy with a funny mustache tried something like that back in the 1930s and 40s. It didn't work out for him.
What is the reference to the Levant_N/Natufians? I didn’t know European populations had it, except some Greeks, Southern Italians, etc.
That's true. Only Southern Europeans have post-Neolithic admixture from the Near East.
In my opinion, the percentage of EEF was probably much underrated and undervalued. I wouldn’t be surprised if it came up to at least 20%
@FrankN
The genesis of Baltic languages, including their perceived conservatism and closeness to Sanskrit, is a fascinating question. Was Iranian (Skythian) involved? Their identification of Iran_Neo ancestry, rather than CHG, in Lithuanians might suggest so.
This is an exceedingly stupid comment. First of all, Lithuanians don't have any Iran_Neo ancestry. Secondly, Scythians weren't from Iran.
Baltic languages are conservative compared to other extant Indo-European languages, while Sanskrit is a dead language, so it's been as conservative as it gets for a while, hence the relatively close affinity between Baltic languages and Sanskrit.
How would recent Iranian influence in Baltic make Baltic more conservative? That's an oxymoron.
I think that Reich et al were throwing a sop to the South Asians, to make AMT/AIT look less European.
@David: Dont have most Europeans post-Neolithic admixture from LN and BA, just on a lower level than Southern Europeans? Some yDNA came in rather late too, didnt it?
Not that big, but recognizable.
I mean the Near Eastern influx didnt really stop at the Balkans or the Alps, it was just thinned.
@David - "So now there are a lot of people wondering why genetic studies show that Poles aren't a complex mix of Slavs, Germans, Jews, etc. But it's not a mystery, because it's easily explained by the fact that no one wanted to mix with a bunch of peasants who were at the bottom of the social ladder."
I doubt that. What is it Dave Chapelle said - my mouth may be racist, but my penis is a humanitarian? I'd suspect that what's more likely is the elites were already fairly mixed.
That and the elites may not have been very numerous at first.
In Poland the nobility might have been much more numerous in historic times than its descendents are in modern Poles. A lot of them died out or left the country.
And Poland had a high percentage and very broad noble class.
@Zardos
Dont have most Europeans post-Neolithic admixture from LN and BA, just on a lower level than Southern Europeans?
Generally no, although with big enough sample numbers I suppose you could find some people with unusual ancestry in almost every population.
The most detailed paper dealing with this issue is still this one...
Recent gene flow from Africa and the Near East into Europe
An impressive effort considering its age and it lines up very well with recent ancient DNA from Europe.
Davidski
Post-Neolithic flow certainly is evident in French etc
I don’t think it stops in Italy
France is partly Southern European though, with a lot of Roman influence, so I'm not surprised.
Wait till you see all of the Roman samples, especially the late Romans.
But even if we look at the Romans alone, their influence went far beyond the Alps, up to Britain and Germany.
Davidski
Yeah I’d agree that it probably relates to Romans, in that particular case
“Do you think indo european narrative will be able hold terrain and serve as foundational myth for europeans ''
More broadly, we can see how Europeans began to emerge, and this had already taken hold by the Bronze Age, for most parts of Europe - WHG, Near East Neolithic, steppe ancestry and some additional post-Neolithic Near Eastern flow in southern Europe. All these proceses culturally shaped Europe, and the different streams began to fuse, and subsequent tribal & linguistics groups emerged from this.
So we can say ''Europeans'' existed since the Bronze Age, even if some might not like that idea.
@Zardos
I can't say much about the Roman presence in England and Germany, but the impression I always had was that these were outposts of the Roman world, and they were left to the natives and Germanic invaders when abandoned by Rome.
So if there is any post-Neolithic Near Eastern ancestry in England and Germany, then I'd say it's more likely to date to later periods and events, such as the Medieval period.
The recently published ancient data from Estonia was very interesting in this regard, because a typically Mediterranean Y-haplogroup (J2b2) finally showed up in the Estonian samples around 1600 AD and, as far as I know, without any accompanying Mediterranean autosomal ancestry. So it probably arrived there via Hanseatic League trade routes from Northwestern Europe.
"I can't say much about the Roman presence in England and Germany, but the impression I always had was that these were outposts of the Roman world, and they were left to the natives and Germanic invaders when abandoned by Rome."
There are a couple of German cities that have preserved there (Celto-)Roman names and in all likelyhood also Latin speakers over the Migration Period. Examples include Xanten, Neuss, Jülich, Cologne, Bonn, Remagen, Koblenz, Mainz, Bitburg, Worms, Trier, Sarrebruck, Augsburg, Kempten, Regensburg. P. Shrijver explains the High German Sound shift as caused by Romance speakers shifting to W. Germanic, thereby replacing uncommon sounds by the nearest Romance proxy.
Toponymy furthermore demonstrates that several placenames didn't undergo the High German sound shift, meaning they should have housed a Romance-speaking majority at least until the late 7th cBC. Examples are the so-called "Moselromania", and the Bavarian Alps (e.g. [Garmisch->]Partenkirchen <- Patanium).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moselle_Romance
As such, some Roman genetic influence should be expected W. of the Rhine and S. of the Danube. IIRC, there was an older German DNA study that showed some 7-8% yDNA E on the Middle Rhine south of Cologne.
@ Frank
'' Toponymy furthermore demonstrates that several placenames didn't undergo the High German sound shift, meaning they should have housed a Romance-speaking majority at least until the late 7th cBC ''
7th century BC ? Do you mean AD
I think the suggestion that Latin speakers survived around Bonn e.a. doesnt have much solid evidence. The area was evacuated by Romans, and settlemed by Germanic c. 250 AD.
At best; southern Bavaria and parts of Austria had continuity; however even in Salzburg there is a big gap. The case for Switzerland is solid
Dragos: Yes, I meant 7th century AD, not BC.
Roman evacuation around 250 AD applies to areas east of the Rhine, i.e. the Frankfurt area and parts of the Neckar valley. Even there, the Romans appear to have maintained some bridgeheads, e.g. at Aquae Mattiacum (Wiesbaden) [Pforzheim, half-way between Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, is also believed to continue a Latin "portus"]. The western bank, where Bonn lies, remained firmly under Roman control until the famous Vandalic-Suebian-Alanic Rhine crossing in the winter 406/407 AD.
A well known toponym of Celto-Roman origin is -ach/-ich (Andernach, Jülich, etc.), from Gallo-Roman -iacum. Now, if you check Bonn's City map, you'll come across its western suburb Endenich. In 804, a "Roman" (!) named Rungus donated 2 morgen of land there to Bonn's St. Cassius Collegiate. How, do you think, he had acquired ownership of that land?
There isn't much of a gap for Salzburg. It is well evidenced under its Roman name Municipium Claudium Iuvavum, e.g. in a 696 AD document. Sometimes in the late 8th cAD, it was renamed Salzburg, for obvious political reasons in order to strengthen the Germanic (Bavarian) claim on the still predominantly Romance population.
To add to the Salzburg case: The area abounds of Gallo-Roman toponyms, e.g. Morzg (720 AD: villa Marciago, Gnigl (gall. glanicle "clear water"), Kasern (Late Latin casaria "cottage"), Gneis (from canales, "canals", the area borders swampland), Parsch (unclear etymology, but apparently not affected by the High German sound shift), Anif (most likely pre-Roman, clearly not Germanic), Grödig (related to Friulian cret "rock"), Wals (<-"welsh", i.e. Gallo-Roman).
@ FrankN
I m not sure how clear the continuity is. Roman infrastructure had collapsed by 450 AD. So a gap until 696 is pretty big. I would not rule out some groups surviving, but most wealthy Romans fled as they could. The time between 450 & 600s is pretty “dark”.
Toponyms have to be interpreted with great care. A continuity in toponyms doesnt necessarily equate with settlement continuity, but merely continuity of the placename itself. In other words, someone, somewhere remembers what the ruins were once called. Therefore continuity needs to be established by hard evidence - excavations.
The case of wals is particularly interesting in this respect. Long thought to represent survivng Roman settlements (denoting German term for Roman 'foreigners''), a careful analysis of high medieval charters and archaeological evidence has suggested that these '-wahl settlements actually represent towns founded as grants of land on the charity of ruling Bavarian (German) nobles founded c. 10th & 11th centuries. Indeed, nobles often styled themselves as “Romans”, without actually being so. So 2 brothers could be different - the solider a Frank, the senator a “Roman “
Demographically speaking; greatest discontinuity in these Roman frontier provinces - whether Germania or Pannonia was not with the coming of the romans; but perhaps more so in the wake of their departure
That’s because the Romans assimilated non-belligerent/non- rebellious tribes; and so they’d form the bulk of their province
Dragos: "someone, somewhere remembers what the ruins were once called." Exactly. And that can only happen if his/her ancestors already lived close to that place. Otherwise, we at best end up with an "Alten-/Oldenburg", "Star(i)gard" or similar. Now, if the ancestors already lived there, isn't that population continuity?
The case of wals is particularly interesting in this respect. Long thought to represent survivng Roman settlements (denoting German term for Roman 'foreigners''), a careful analysis of high medieval charters and archaeological evidence has suggested that these '-wahl settlements actually represent towns founded as grants of land on the charity of ruling Bavarian (German) nobles founded c. 10th & 11th centuries.
Can you provide examples? Many of the *wals settlements I am aware of, beyond the famous Walsertal (of a high medieval dating) denoted real Romance enclaves, e.g. Mannheim-Wallstadt (766 AD Walahastath) or - near Salzburg - Traunwalchen (790 pagus Trunwalha, qui dicuntur Romanos tribunales). Should you comprehend German, I recommend the link below that a/o discusses evidence of the Salzburg Romania, and Bavarian traces of the Tyrolian Romania (Wallgau/ Isar, Walchensee etc.).
https://www.uni-regensburg.de/forschung/forschergruppe-namen/medien/greule_geographische_namen_in_bayern.pdf
I wonder if "wal" has something to do with "abhaile" meaning Home ?
@All,
If you want an idea what ancient ancestry percentages are in West Eurasia look here
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LPWAEC3dbAEDu8aBAAcxIOa5CQjuflt0f0cvhCpZ_ME/edit#gid=1497568895
I will add estimates I have for the Middle East making them a mix of Caucasus_Eneo, Iran_Eneo, Anatolia_N, Levant_N, Natufian-excess, Iran_N-excess.
....Baltic Bronze age had more northern European hunter gatherer than northern European farmer. Overall, they were mostly a Steppe+local hunter gatherer mix. Modern Latvians are the most like Baltic_BA. Lithuanians have significant 'southern ancestry' which Baltic_BA did not. Overall, Lithuanians have about 25% Anatolian ancestry (36% North European farmer ancestry).
I'd say the parts of Europe least understood genetically are.....Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland.
Most of the few German samples in David's G25 are to a large extent not Germanic. Most have a lot of Slavic ancestry, several have a lot of French ancestry. It is unknown what parts of Germany these samples come from. It is interesting no Polish samples have significant German ancestry but most German samples have significant Slavic ancestry.
Of historical ethnic groups least understood are....Continental Celts/Gauls.
A lot of possibilities are open for the Bronze age, Iron age, Medieval origins of France & Germany. It's possible the Gallic tribes that Ceasar conquered were closer to Iberia than to Britain in the western European cline. It's also possible France has both Italian & Frankish/Germanic ancestry.
An Austrian guy with a funny mustache tried something like that back in the 1930s and 40s.
People really need to stop making this guy the center of history and negatively construct morality based on him. Not everything fits into a simple duality of the current system vs hitler.
Europeans shy away from foundational myths because they are afraid of who they are. They avoid identifying themselves. Thats why we see phrases such as "we are all immigrants" or "being English is just a state of mind", or "French is just citizenship". It only happens with Europeans. Europeans are throwing away their heritage because they don't believe in themselves. And you guys really wonder why there is a push to place the origin of Indo Europeans outside of Europe?
Every other group believe in themselves and they have a foundation myth. The Chinese view themselves as a continuum of 5 thousands years of civilization. Zionist Jews took over a piece of land because some of their ancestors lived there 2000 years ago. Is it too much for Europeans to have a creation myth related to the indo europeans. Heck, its pretty unifying for the continent.
@pnuadha
Amen.
And some of us, maybe even most of us, know exactly why there's a push to place the origins of indo-Europeans outside of Europe, but many are in denial about it, I think. The truth is just too ugly.
@Samuel Andrews "Overall, Lithuanians have about 25% Anatolian ancestry (36% North European farmer ancestry)."
I told you they were underestimating the EEF/Anatolia_N ratio... ;-)
@Sam "Neolithic Levant Levant_N 42.5 52.8 1.5 3.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0"
Levant_N are almost 50:50 even Antalian + Natufian mix.
A recent (2018) paper by Dr. Lazaridis from Peki'in in Israel found out an influx of Anatolia_N population roughly 6,500 years ago (refugees from the "Black Sea Deluge"?) with a huge proportion of Y-DNA T (classic farmer one, surprisingly Thomas Jefferson was Y-DNA T!). This population was characterised as red-haired and blue eyed plus possessing a light skin pigmentation alleles. Lazaridis wrote that this farmer population replaced the native Y-DNA from E1b1b into mostly T.
Reading that, besides checking facts about Adyghe, it wouldn't surprise me that descendants of Anatolia_N in either Europe or Asia look the most "Northern looking" whereas it's quite possible that both WHG and Yamnaya were looking rather darkish.
I’m talking about THIS one:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327118987_Ancient_DNA_from_Chalcolithic_Israel_reveals_the_role_of_population_mixture_in_cultural_transformation
Frank
I see no issue with continuity in areas like Ausgburg or the Inntal.
The -walh issue is treated in - Walchensiedlungsnamen und ihre historische Aussagekraft by Christa Jochum-Godglück
@Andre,
"I told you they were underestimating the EEF/Anatolia_N ratio... ;-)"
Ok, I thought you & others said the opposite.
"A recent (2018) paper by Dr. Lazaridis from Peki'in in Israel found out an influx of Anatolia_N population roughly 6,500 years ago"
I dis agree with Laz on this. Looking at Chalcolithic samples from Israel (in the G25 PCA), they are the same as Levant_Neolithic except for having minor (16%) ancestry from 'Iran' or 'Iraq.' Their ancestors from Iran/Iraq were not pure Iran_Neo. They had some admix from the Caucasus. But, there is no sign of recent Anatolian ancestry in Chalcolithic Israel.
There's strong genetic continuation in Isreal from 9000 to 4000bc. The first big change happens in 3000-2000bc, when there was a big influx of people from Iran/Iraq. This created the modern southern Levantie cluster (which Jews, Phoecians, Cannites were apart of).
@ Samuel Andrews
Baltic Bronze age had more northern European hunter gatherer than northern European farmer. Overall, they were mostly a Steppe+local hunter gatherer mix.
We have plenty of samples of HG from the Baltic area and not a single one can be used to model Baltic_BA.
HG ancestry in Baltic_BA IS NOT LOCAL.
@pnaudha,
"Every other group believe in themselves and they have a foundation myth. The Chinese view themselves as a continuum of 5 thousands years of civilization. Zionist Jews took over a piece of land because some of their ancestors lived there 2000 years ago. Is it too much for Europeans to have a creation myth related to the indo europeans. Heck, its pretty unifying for the continent."
No, diversity unites Europe & always has been what united it.
Maybe, in 100-200 years, when western Europeans are minorities (or near minorities) in their own countries it will be acceptable to recognize they have a culture/history. And, maybe it will then be acceptable to view that culture/history in a positive or at least neutral way. It might be viewed nostalgically like all ancient civilizations are.
There is a clear Roman presence in most of the formerly imperial provinces. The least so in the areas conquered and settled by Avars and Slavs, because that seems to have been a much bigger upheaval than most of the Germanic overtakes.
The real issue is how many of the local Romance speakers were just assimilated Celts? How many came from Italy, like veteran settlers or other Roman European provinces,like Illyrians, and how many as traders and slaves from the Eastern Mediterranean, even the Near East and beyond?
Now I guess especially the latter where a small minority even among local "Romans", but still there in the single-digit percentage.
This should have been further diluted by incoming Germanics, Slavs and Celts respectively, so nowhere more than 5, rather less than 1 percent.
Especially since the urban population seems to have collapsed more than the rural one. The former certainly was more "cosmopolitan".
But still it should be noticeable considering the late Roman profile.
@Sam: Postcolonial propaganda and the ideological distortion of Europeans being discriminative and oppressive do not create a postive image even for those immigrants which profit from the current Western society objectively. If Europeans fall down, they will fall deep. Probably even with a damnatio memoriae for crucial aspects of their existence or as an all negative counter image for the successors. There is no hope for the losers in history.
Remember, the Germanic conquest of Rome was, as brutal as it was, largely a friendly overtake by already Romanicised, Christian warrior groups. Overtakes can be much more aggressive and ruthless than that.
@pnuadha
“Europeans shy away from foundational myths because they are afraid of who they are. They avoid identifying themselves.
…
Every other group believe in themselves and they have a foundation myth.
…
Is it too much for Europeans to have a creation myth related to the indo europeans. Heck, its pretty unifying for the continent.
I am more interested in truth than in myth. Europe cannot be unified because we don’t have common language and culture (except Christianity which is less relevant now).
What is Indo-European foundation myth? I know nothing about it except that some steppe people contributed something to our languages and genes. But what exactly they contributed in terms of culture is very debatable.
Foundation myth should be based on truth, otherwise it will not cure us, it will not save us.
The future of medicine are population-based drugs or so called ‘ethnic’ drugs. But to work they must be based on research and not on myth.
The same with psychology. Universal psychology doesn’t work so well for everybody. The future is Indigenous Cultural Psychology. Psychology designed to satisfy local needs based on history and culture of the local people.
Building a Indigenous Slavic Psychology should take into account historical, religious, ecological, and other indigenous factors that make Slavic culture. It should be based on truth not on myth.
@pnaudha,
"Every other group believe in themselves and they have a foundation myth. The Chinese view themselves as a continuum of 5 thousands years of civilization. Zionist Jews took over a piece of land because some of their ancestors lived there 2000 years ago. Is it too much for Europeans to have a creation myth related to the indo europeans. Heck, its pretty unifying for the continent."
Yep, any honest history book on Europe would include reference to the "Kurgan Indo Europeans" and "Single Grave" cultures (Bell beaker, Corded Ware).
"Europeans shy away from foundational myths because they are afraid of who they are. They avoid identifying themselves."
If, we're trying to identify a foundation myth for European culture/civilization it wouldn't be the Single Grave culture. Single grave is important but not THE thing which connects Europeans & defines what it means to be European. Maybe, it defines ancestry but it doesn't define culture/civilization.
The foundations for modern Europe were built between 500-1000ad. Western civilization was built on top of the ruins of the (western) Roman empire. A new, shared culture=civilization formed. Maybe, the thing which connected Europeans the most was Christianity.
(Western) Europeans recently have decided they have no identity/culture they believe in and willing to continue in future generations. After Rome fell in 500ad a new civilization was built in its place. This civilization still stands today.
Right now, something new is replacing this civilization. In 2200ad I bet western Europe will no longer be "western" but will be some kind of new civilization. Eastern & Southern Europe however will of course still be themselves.
@Sam: Southern Europe sits in the same boat, so they will most likely go the same path as the West and North, whereever thar will be. Eastern Europe most likely too. But thats not for certain.
@Samuel Andrews
“A new, shared culture=civilization formed.”
Sam, culture and civilization are not the same thing. Some even think that civilization, being more rational and socially driven, is not fully in accord with human nature, and "human wholeness is achievable only through the recovery of or approximation to an original prediscursive or prerational natural unity".
Foundation myths, that pnaudha wrote about, are needed to recreate that culture in which people were happy and mentally, spiritually well, desired children etc. Civilization is killing it. Multiculturalism is against human nature, it will never work.
What I think is that such foundation myth do not exist for the whole Europe but can only be formulated for ethnic groups. Genetics, linguistics, history will help us to understand our culture and take care of it.
@Sam Would you define this mysterious Iran/Iraq population as Sumerian refugees? Or may it be some other group? The big influx from Mesopotamia may have had some resonance in the biblical story about Abraham coming from Harran and telling him folk to “stay away from native Canaanites”?
I’ve always dismissed the old or New Testament as very unreliable when it comes to history, much less now with all the new dna discoveries, but...
Well, at least the R1a1 in them can be sourced to Ukraine HG via the Steppe pastoralists of the BA era. Yea, they are not local
@ Zardos
“Remember, the Germanic conquest of Rome was, as brutal as it was, largely a friendly overtake by already Romanicised, Christian warrior groups. Overtakes can be much more aggressive and ruthless than that.”
Hmmm partially. Perhaps the Italian Romans despised the Gallic Romans more than Odoacer; and preferred him to Belisarius.
But those which conquered Rome were hardly romanised. Recall that of those goths which had dwelt in Rome and Constantinople, many had been slaughtered in 2 separate incidents. This which arrived, although de iure from within Roman borders, would have been quite barbarian; coming from the backwaters of Thrace and so on
@Samuel Andrews “Maybe, the thing which connected Europeans the most was Christianity.”
Unfortunately! Nothing was wrong about pagan “heathen” Europe, where mythology varied across tribes and borders but they ultimately all stem from a common PIE root.
@Dragos: Ok, partially romanised Christians, agree on that? The Goths even wanted a deal, legal status in the Imperium at first and only started the violence after a series of Roman provocations.
The Franks in particular, as the most important Germanic group was even much more Romanised already when taking control of Gallia.
Compare that with the Cimbri and Teutones and think about them marching together, defeating Rome and conquering the city...
No long term Germanic adaptation to Roman customs, no Romanisation at all and no Christianity or Roman church.
Very different I guess and much worse for Roman survival rates.
@Sam so no Anatolian_N in Middle Eastern populations? I thought that pre-Muslim West Asian ethnicities had lots of EEF in them. The graph you yourself posted showed that Levant_N was 52% Natufian v. 42% Anatolian.
The funny thing is, though, that the largest component in Europeans’ ancestry, including the uniparental marker mtDNA H is a legacy of Anatolian Neolithic Farmers, who were technically from Asia, not Europe, and so is the phenotype so mistakenly thought of as a typical Steppe appearance by some misguided Austrian...
All that matters is Europeans are unique. They are also one of the most native groups there is. All there heritage is from the interior of Europe or the borderlands. The same cant be said for the Middle East, India, Africa, or parts of East Asia. So what does Europeans being unique or being more 'native' than most have to do with an Austrian guy?
Again, due to a creation myth zionist jews of mixed heritage have conquered a piece of land where some of their ancestors lived 2000 years ago. Identity is very much alive in non Europeans and its shaping the world. All im saying is that Europeans should know the reality of their IE heritage but also understand the large and unifying role it played in the story of Europe.
Im talking about an identity in line with reality. Im not talking about make believe or conquering lands that aren't really ours.
@All
I'm going to start banning people who mention 19th century typology in the discussions here.
@JuanRivera "As for the southern ancestry of steppe, its best fit (as already most of us know) is the Eneolithic population from the North Caucasus steppes (Piedmont). Piedmont in turn has at least the bulk (>90%) of its ancestry derived from local (CHG) and northern sources (EHG, extra ANE and maybe West_Siberia_N), with very little, if any, coming from Iran-like sources."
I suspect Piedmont was the original Ur-PIE and other Steppe groups just adopting its language and lifestyle. Until we have more samples, however, we can never verify that.
Is it accurate to say that populations closer to the Steppe and surrounding area remained Linguistically more conservative until the expansion of Proto-Uralic peoples ? How much did Pre-Proto-Uralic Languages (Substrate in Proto-Uralic ?) influence Proto-Indo-Europeans ? How much of this is detectable within Celtic and Anatolian ? Is this potential Substrate closer to EHG or was this Substrate already influenced by CHG-like (Pre-Proto-Kartvelian) ?
Pre-Peoto-Kartvelian was most likely an Anatolia_N language, and not a CHG-like one
@ Andrzejewski
That does not make sense when you consider the Eneolithic Piedmont Steppe area as the Homeland of PIE...
@ Andrzejewski
A Steppe Proto CHG related Language could have been a Substrate within Later Proto-Kartvelian just as it could have been a Substrate within Proto-Indo-Europeans...as far as I can remember CHG have some EHG in it...
@ Andrzejewski
Maybe rather a Palaeolithic Anatolian Language when thinking about Dzudzuana...
@ Andrzejewski
Remember that at one or other time there was a migration from East of the Urals which predates Villabruna, maybe sometime between 20 000 and 16 000 years ago after Mal'ta Buret.
Caucasus related populations were found at least as far North as the Lower Don (Kamennaya Balka) where they could have started to interact with migrating populations from the East maybe to form CHG who moved into the Caucasus from the North, and some staying behind in the Piedmont area and mixed more with EHG. The initial admixture could have been 25% EHG 75% CHG with an added 75% EHG 25% CHG later to even out at +- Yamnaya 50% levels. It need not have been a first Generation 50/50 admixture who seperated from the rest...
Going on that tangent, I would say trying to use Indo-European languages, or Christian religion, or the Roman Empire to try and create some founding myth for Europeans is always going to have a problem that none of these categories really intersect with the groups that people place as European, and include groups who are not European as such.
E.g. if were to be maximal, Indo-European speaking Christians who were part of the Roman Empire fits Armenians better than Finns or Albanians or Ashkenazi Jews, etc. Certainly that is at the margins in terms of numbers, but many of these groups are still important to the history of Europe, and I think the culture as a whole would feel bad about and resist definitions which exclude them (not to mention that it could provoke strife at the edges).
But that's a problem for the European Union, if it wants to try and create a misbegotten unified state built around a shared European identity when there is a perfectly good existing set of states that have largely lived in peace since they became nation state democracies.
I just hope it doesn't distort views of the past too much - you already have a lot of nonsense going on where people identify Indo-Europeans with a "European" male-centered individualism or pre-Indo-Europeans with "non-European" female-centered collectivism on the basis of interpretations of burial traditions or art. Or try to reconstruct ancient proto-Indo-Europeans as basically Slavic speaking guys who liked collectively drinking together and discussing the ideas found in Greek and Indian philosophy. And so on.
Matt: Thx for that voice of reason! Everyone trying to work on IE=European does not only marginalise the Indo-Iranic part of the family (a quite large part in numbers of languages and speakers). He/ she implicitly also negates speakers of Basque, Uralic, NW Caucasian, descendants of Etruscans, surviving Andalusian conversos etc. their place in Europe. Most importantly, the IE focus bears an implicit anti-semitic notion that takes us back to funny beards.
If one wants to build an European foundation myth, it should have two elements:
1. Demos kratein, Res Publica, Thing, and a tradition of communal self-rule that apparently wasn't restricted to IEs, but also existed among Etrurians and in Iberia;
2. A melting pot tradition where - voluntarily or less voluntary - existing populations constantly interacted, merged with new entrants, and formed a network of units that were homogenised by some shared "culture" (Megalithicism, TRB, CW/SGC, BB, etc.), yet maintained local specificness in terms of their economic base, to some extent also genetically.
I mean: Why are we all here, discussing European aDNA? Because the continent's history was so dynamic, with a new cultural horizon appearing every 4-500 years. One may appreciate that dynamic, or not (I personally appreciate it, as it has made Europe wealthy in a cultural sense, but also materially). But even if not: What has made Europe special is that there is more to its (pre-)history than just "first there were some HGs, then came potters and Farmers, afterwards metalworkers..".
Yes. Seems like you are tilting towards the notion that PIE originated in Piedmont_Eneolithic among some “CHG”-speaking tribe.
I believe that Kartvelian, NW Caucasian, Hatti and Hurrian (NE Caucasus may have originated in Iran, among Iran_Neo tribes) all date to the Kura-Araxes complex, and so does apparently Maykop. It all began when Anatolian Farmers swarmed the Caucasus 6,000 YBP and replaces the Sioni Culture, transforming it in the process into Shulaveri Shomu. That’s how Satsublia and KK1 pure CHG disappeared with K-A being at least 55% Anatolian. Perhaps these processes were attached the misnomer of “Uruk Expansion”. Then a couple of millennia later K-A groups spread westbound and replacing the pure Anatolian_N in Turkey and Greece with CHG-rich groups to form the Hatti and the Mycenaeans.
All these languages therefore might’ve arrived with the Kura-Araxes and by extension with EEF-like tribes rather than with CHG.
If you look at it, NW Caucasus people have a majority of y-dna G but also look very Europoid, with Circasians looking very fitting in Southern Europe, some of them even in Northern Europe. I think it may be the EEF legacy of KA
Ric, Andrzej:
It's quite likely that something akin to PIE (possibly rather late PIE, i.e. excluding Anatolian & Tocharian) was spoken in the Eneolithic Elbrus piedmont. Not in the whole piedmont - that would include Meshoko, which was a very different unit genetically and most likely also linguistically. Eneolithic Dagestan is so far also very much terra incognita, archeologically poorly described (at least not in English).
However, note that there was hardly any North Caucasian Neolithic except for Chokh/ Dagestan, that some authors connect to Sioni, others to Shulaveri-Shomu. Virtually all Mesolithic sites, be it Gubs Cave near Meshoko, Baksan near Progress 2, or Tsmi in N. Ossetia, show a hiatus after ca. 6,000 BC. And even Chokh seems to have been given up sometimes during the late 6th mBC.
The reasons for that hiatus aren't yet fully understood. One factor appears to be extreme aridity during the 6th mBC. In addition, there were two outbreaks of the Elbrus in the early 5thmBC, and a major earthquake during the first half of the 6thmBC (link 1). "In the Dvoinaya Cave the Upper Mesolithic level was covered by large slabs of limestone up to one metre thick, above which cultural deposits from the Stone Age were not found in the area under investigation. Partial collapse of the cave roof could be attributed to large fluctuations in temperature or to seismic activity. (Link 2).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241370753_Dislocations_Caused_by_Ancient_Strong_Earthquakes_in_the_Elbrus_Region
http://nfd2009.com/stone-age/gubs/
As such, the Elbrus piedmont population most likely was a newcomer to the region. Progress 2 and Vonyushka appear to be related to the Nalchik cemetary a couple of km further south, the relation of which to Khvalynsk is discussed in Anthony 2007. Intriguingly, many buried individuals, including the ones from which we have aDNA, were trepanated. The earliest European attestation of trepanation is from the late Mesolithic Dniepr Rapids Region, and a couple of similar trepanations that date somewhat earlier are also attested from the Lower Kuban area.
Triangulation between Khvalynsk, Dniepr Rapids and the Elbrus piedmont points to an "epicentre" somewhere around the Lower Don. Yamnaya is best modelled as some 60% Elbrus piedmont, 20% Khvalynsk and 20% Sredni Stog II (Donezk basin), which again, by triangulation, points towards the Lower Don.
Everyone trying to work on IE=European does not only marginalise the Indo-Iranic part of the family
They are focusing on their own heritage.
Most importantly, the IE focus bears an implicit anti-semitic notion that takes us back to funny beards.
They are focusing on their own heritage.
My goodness you are pathologically averse to Europeans identifying themselves. You immediately jump to the conclusion that Europeans who are curious about their own heritage and then identify with it are neglecting others or hateful to others. Do you say the same thing when a parent teaches their kid the talmud? I mean it literally talks about chosen ones. But you get all shaky with Europeans identifying themselves.
The Indo Europeans had a major role in the formation of Europeans, both genetically and culturally. This includes the Basque, Hungarians, and Fins... ie all Europeans. Nobody said it was the only thing that shaped Europe. Its just a big part in our story. You are trying to nitpick when you brought up basque and the like, but its really just an attempt to deconstruct any identity.
Because the continent's history was so dynamic, with a new cultural horizon appearing every 4-500 years
Its just so dynamic you cant even define anything... yeah, total nonsense.
Most importantly, the IE focus bears an implicit anti-semitic notion that takes us back to funny beards.
What happened to the very dynamic and complex world you were just talking about? Somehow things became very simple when it comes to Europeans and the guilt they all bare.
"first there were some HGs, then came potters and Farmers, afterwards metalworkers.."
This is exactly what happened and it's why Europeans are relatively similar genetically and culturally. There is variation with each ethnicity but these 3 groups surprisingly made us all.
Are you suggesting that Elbrus Piedmont settlements have South Caspian origins?
But this is where @FrankN, @Ric Hern and @Samuel Andrews got the story *backwards* lol:
http://nep2014.com/bronze-age-and-early-iron-age/caucasus/
"A number of assemblages unearthed in 2014 suggest that the steppe people also influenced the culture of the piedmont residents, which is confirmed by finds of boat-shaped axes that appeared on the steppe earlier than in the piedmont areas and therefore they have a steppe origin. More importantly, finds of an ornamented bone plate with bronze rivets, a horn pin with a simple zonal pattern and a set of flint arrows is another sign of the northern influence. Analogies to these objects and their sets lead directly to the steppe areas of the Fore-Caucasus. Therefore, the examined sites is a strong case in favor of the hypothesis on mutual enrichment of the North Caucasus steppe and piedmont populations in the first half of the 3rd millennium BC.
_________
Here we have it. Although I was quoting an old (2014) reference, it could point out that perhaps Piedmont_Eneolithic and Progress_Eneolithic are a southern extension of some northern Eneolithic Steppe culture and not vice versa?
Andrzej: "Are you suggesting that Elbrus Piedmont settlements have South Caspian origins?Are you suggesting that Elbrus Piedmont settlements have South Caspian origins?"
Read my post again: "Triangulation between Khvalynsk, Dniepr Rapids and the Elbrus piedmont points to an "epicentre" somewhere around the Lower Don."
The next question, of course is: How and when did CHG get to the Lower Don? The Epi-Paleolithic can be ruled out - UA_Mesolithic has some traces of CHG (even IronGates has a little bit), but those traces are too small to assume a "steppe-like" population on the Lower Don already during the EP/Mesolithic.
Next possibility is the Pottery Neolithic, which in fact appears to have been triggered from the SW Caspian (most likely Azerbaijan). And, in fact, introduction of pottery to the Dniepr Rapids area is associated with an uptick of CHG ancestry. But again, that uptick is small.
The third, and most likely possibility is the (Pre-)Caspian Culture, which Russian archeologists now regard as the base on which Khvalynsk formed. There is general aggreement that the (Pre-)Caspian Culture was intrusive, with a completely different lithic industry. What is still unclear is from where the (Pre-)Caspian Culture came. When looking at the lithics, and the absence of EEF ancestry in Khvalynsk, the only plausible explanation is that it arrived from the E. Caspian, e.g. the Mangyshlak Peninsula. Or - maybe - from lands now covered by the Caspian Sea. The Northern Caspian Sea is extremely shallow, only 5-10m depth. Much of that seafloor was exposed after the 8.2 kya event and only became flooded when the climate got more humid again. The appearance of the (Pre-)Caspian Culture corresponds to the Holocene highstand of the Caspian Sea, some 7m higher than to date, triggered by substantial run-off from the Hindukush that entered the Caspian Sea via the Uzboy Channel.
Note otherwise that your quote above relates to the 3rd mBC. Elbrus piedmont/ Nalchic cemetary dates to around 4,500 BC.
@FrankN "The third, and most likely possibility is the (Pre-)Caspian Culture, which Russian archeologists now regard as the base on which Khvalynsk formed. There is general aggreement that the (Pre-)Caspian Culture was intrusive, with a completely different lithic industry. What is still unclear is from where the (Pre-)Caspian Culture came."
So in other words, you are proposing a Central Asian homeland for PIE? According to what you've just posted, Samara_HG R1b clades have been completely annihilated and replaced by different sets of R1b clades, but this time from...THE EAST?
"Triangulation between Khvalynsk, Dniepr Rapids and the Elbrus piedmont points to an "epicentre" somewhere around the Lower Don. Yamnaya is best modelled as some 60% Elbrus piedmont, 20% Khvalynsk and 20% Sredni Stog II (Donezk basin), which again, by triangulation, points towards the Lower Don."
By which you claim that Yamnaya is mostly an extension of Piedmont_Eneolithic, above any other (previously it was thought to be an outgrow of Repin).
BTW, what do you suspect happen to Sredny Stog I? What (and who, how) is responsible to the transformation from Sredny Stog I (R1a1?) into Sredny Stog II?
@Matt
The slight differences between this study's Lithuanian set and Human Origins Lithuanians are likely the result of more extensive sampling. The HO Lithuanians are taken (AFAIK) from one town.
Uniparental differences within Lithuania look more significant than autosomal differences. From the regional data in Kushniarevich 2015:
Southern Aukštaitija (Central-Eastern Lithuania)
R1a 60,6% (M458 13,2%)
N1c 28,9%
R1b-M269 2,6%
I2-P37.2 2,6%
E1b-M78 2,6%
G2a 2,6%
Northern Zemaitija (Northwestern Lithuania)
N1c 49,2%
R1a 33,8% (M458 4,6%)
R1b-M269 7,7%
I1 4,6%
E1b-M78 3,1%
H 1,5%
The combination of M458 and P37.2 seems to gain frequency in the south (southern Zemaitija and Aukštaitija have more than the four other sampled regions, all more northern). It may indicate some Slavic admixture, which in turn could be related to the autosomal difference you noticed. When the data here comes public that hypothesis can be tested.
The North seems to be more German(ic) and Finnic influenced going by these numbers. Interesting that once more E1b is quite evenly distributed. I wonder who brought it when to the region.
Note that if Kushniarevich used the divisions of Lithuania used in this new paper then southern Aukštaitija is actually southeastern Lithuania (Dzūkija), which is even more proximal to Slavic neighbours.
@FrankN, Matt
Europe is a big place so there is no single unifying feature. The standard definition of western civilization is very restrictive/exclusive yet it is accepted as the shared history/heritage/origins of Europe.....this version of history isn't anymore restrictive than one focusing on Indo Europeans.
Ancient Greek civilization: It only existed in Greece & its colonies in southern Italy. It also existed in the Middle East becausse of Alexander's successor kingdoms, then these Greekfied regions in the Middle East continued later in the Roman period. This category includes basically no Europeans.
Roman Empire: It was created by a small group in central Italy that built a civilization based on the Greek model. They created an empire which included southern Europe, northern Africa, and southwestern tip of Asia. It did not include the ancestors of Slavs, Germans, Finns, etc.
500-1000ad kingdoms: They existed where the western Roman empire as well as modern day Germany. The definition of European civilization in this period didn't include Slavs, Norse, Finns, etc.
Even up till the present eastern Europe isn't really considered 'western.' The core of "Europe" since 1000ad is considered to be Germany, France, Italy, England (mostly old western Roman territory). It is a somewhat restrictive definition.
*Btw, I don't think Indo Europeans should be considered the foundation stone in European history. It is more important for some places than others. It is least important for Greece which is where the first civilization in Europe was built, the foundations for European philosophy-science were created.
The haplogroup difference between north and south Lithuania leads me to believe that northern Lithuanians are balticized Livonians, given the rather high amount of N1c, and that the ethnogenesis of Lithuanians happened as the Slavic expansion in Poland caused the indigenous Balts in northeastern Poland to migrate northward into the more sparsely populated region that is now Lithuania, with the language being brought by the R1a early Balts; the frequency of M458 seems to be geographic, with a higher frequency the further south and west you get in the west Slavic area.
@Matt
“Or try to reconstruct ancient proto-Indo-Europeans as basically Slavic speaking guys who liked collectively drinking together and discussing the ideas found in Greek and Indian philosophy. And so on.”
Of course, I have been saying it all the time. That culture, religion, which originated in Vistula-Dnieper area and which influenced Vedic religion in India and Orphic-Pythagorean religion in Greece so much was not proto-Indo-European but much later.
So let me get this straight. Indo-European isn't important doesn't matter if more than a Billion people speak Indo-European Languages today....?
@ Samuel Andrews
"*Btw, I don't think Indo Europeans should be considered the foundation stone in European history. It is more important for some places than others. It is least important for Greece which is where the first civilization in Europe was built, the foundations for European philosophy-science were created."
the indo-european element was extremely important and central to the development of greek civilization. Greece already had a civiilzation before the indo-europeans took over, just not the kind of civilization which was created there after the indo-european input. Indo-European + mediterranean european = greatest civiization ever.
Sopot Culture.....
@ Andrzejewski
Looks like you forgot or didn't read about the destruction of forts in the Caucasus area by Steppe related people around 4500 BCE...and you didn't read the part where I specifically talk a the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic and not about the Eneolithic...
@ Ric
There weren’t any destruction of forts , certainly not in 4500; which is when they were established
In 3800 they appear to have been abandoned; which is when Majkop arrived
Are you talking about the CWC?
@Dragos
There's evidence that chalcolithic forts in the North Caucasus weren't simply abandoned, but also attacked, burned and overtaken.
And why would anyone build forts in the first place if there wasn't a risk that their settlements would be attacked and overtaken?
“Forts” can have many functions- symbolism; trade organisation, bases from which attacks can be launched, in addition to defence
The shift from Meshoko to Majkop is marked by the lack of a need for forts . Majkop is characterised wattle -daub settlements in more accessible areas. Kositsev, Korenevskii don’t mention anything about about destruction of those forts.
Well, one thing we can agree on was that there was a large scale population replacement, with a mostly EEF Kura-Araxes civilization displacing or replacing Shuvaleri Shomu, Sioni, Dzudzuana or any other CHG ethnicity.
@Andrzejewski
Well, one thing we can agree on was that there was a large scale population replacement, with a mostly EEF Kura-Araxes civilization displacing or replacing Shuvaleri Shomu, Sioni, Dzudzuana or any other CHG ethnicity.
Nope.
For one, there's obvious continuity from Shulaveri-Shomu to Kura-Araxes in Armenia.
The story of the earliest wine
And secondly, Dzudzuana wasn't CHG genetically, so probably also not ethnically.
Dzudzuana Ice Age foragers: a different type of Caucasus hunter-gatherer
Did I say Dzudzuana? I meant KK1 and Satsurblia.
Also, there may be a continuity from Shuvaleri to K-A in Armenia but there was a large scale migration of Anatolia farmers and metallurgists into Caucasus, wrongly known as “Uruk expansion”, and population discontinuity from Satublia to something else along the way.
@Andrzejewski
Also, there may be a continuity from Shuvaleri to K-A in Armenia but there was a large scale migration of Anatolia farmers and metallurgists into Caucasus, wrongly known as “Uruk expansion”, and population discontinuity from Satublia to something else along the way.
Doubt that. Shulaveri-Shomu will be identical to Kura-Araxes Kaps IMO.
But I think there must’ve been a discontinuity between Mesolithic Trialetians (=Satsurblia, Kotias Klade) and Sholaveri Shomu, who were the early Neolithic bearers in the Caucasus. My guess is that SS came from Anatolian with a prevalence of y-dna G2a and that all subsequent populations: NW Caucasus, Kartvelian, Hatti, Hurrian (maybe even Mycenaean) are all EEF languages.
@ Davidski
“For one, there's obvious continuity from Shulaveri-Shomu to Kura-Araxes in Armenia.”
To speculate, what if S / Shomu was ANF heavier; more like Tepecik. K/A would represent a CHG-enriched successor (kind of like post-LBK Europe)
No way, @Dragos. S/S was ANF but it replaced and likely admixed with Trialetian CHG KK1 or Satsurblia. Just like EEF is ~75% Anatolian, ~25% WHG
Andre
That’s what i just said- Shuvaleri might be ANF heavy; then admixed with more CHG
Btw
EEF aren’t 25% WHG; that’s middle Neolithic EF
At the end of the day we need to find out what the Nature of interaction between EHG and Proto-CHG people were during the Mesolithic in the Pontic Caspian Steppe area and especially along the Lower Don and maybe Middle Volga Rivers because somehow EHG contributed to form CHG.
Even Villabruna had some CHG-like (Maybe Proto-CHG) ancestry. So at one or other time Villabruna, R1b Ancestors migrated from the East and came into contact with CHG-like people before moving into Northeast Italy and the Balkans. The most likely place for this to have happened is along the Upper to Middle Volga and the Lower Don.
The more elevated CHG in Later Steppe Ancestry seems to point to the Caucasus Piedmont Steppe as source. One thing is for certain and that is that R1b and R1a Men dominated the Pontic Caspian Steppe area with CHG-like Ancestry basically coming from the Women.
How much influence these Women had on the Men will determine if PIE formed as an peaceful mixture of Languages or were adopted by one or the other peacefully or forcefully...
The Lower Don makes sense. However people needn't have been Cave Dwellers as we already see at Mal'ta Buret...Any case something interesting to add is the Maximum extent of the Crab Apple towards the East which ends at plus/minus the Lower Don area....For me Personally the Piedmont area is important because of the currently proven elevated CHG in that area early on. If in the future some Lower Don samples or surrounding area could prove to be a better fit as a source for elevated CHG, I will adjust my theory accordingly, however at this stage the Piedmont area takes the cake...Heheheeh.
How isolated was Belarus during the Chalcolithic to Iron Age period ? The Wetlands in that area maybe were ideal for Conservatism of Language ? Belarus isn't far from Lithuania. Apparently some Lithuanian ended up in Mordvinian, so I was wondering if some migration from the Belarus area ended up in Lithuania ?
@Ric Hern "Apparently some Lithuanian ended up in Mordvinian, so I was wondering if some migration from the Belarus area ended up in Lithuania ?"
Historians theorized that the range of Baltic people was far more extensive, stretching far to the east to encompass Moscow and other eastery regions until the Eastern Slavs and the Kievan Rus kingdom spread and put a wedge between the Baltics to the West and the Finno-Ugric to the East. There must've been a lot of assimilation into Eastern Slav tribes of both Baltics and Uralic foragers. I presume that some of the N1c1 and R1a1 in Russians could be attributed to assimilated Lithuanian-like admixture/substrate.
@Ric Hern "At the end of the day we need to find out what the Nature of interaction between EHG and Proto-CHG people were during the Mesolithic in the Pontic Caspian Steppe area and especially along the Lower Don and maybe Middle Volga Rivers because somehow EHG contributed to form CHG."
Me: Isn't CHG Yana-derived? Or a Yana-ish population, sibling to Ancient North Eurasians? If affirmative, then does it show why Yamnaya, with its elevated CHG admixture had also had 50% ANE, stemming from BOTH EHG AND CHG?
"Even Villabruna had some CHG-like (Maybe Proto-CHG) ancestry. So at one or other time Villabruna, R1b Ancestors migrated from the East and came into contact with CHG-like people before moving into Northeast Italy and the Balkans. The most likely place for this to have happened is along the Upper to Middle Volga and the Lower Don."
Me: Villabruna is considered to be "Ur-WHG" but it's R1b like most Western Europeans and seems to be Steppe-derived (or at least AG3-derived). But on the other hand WHG had different uniparental markers such as C4 (La Brana) or Luschbur (12). Something is still murky here in the water...
"The more elevated CHG in Later Steppe Ancestry seems to point to the Caucasus Piedmont Steppe as source. One thing is for certain and that is that R1b and R1a Men dominated the Pontic Caspian Steppe area with CHG-like Ancestry basically coming from the Women."
Me: Yes, to a degree. They found an EHG sample in Karelia which was y-dna J...
And we know that PIE had farmer admixture + I2 in them as well.
"How much influence these Women had on the Men will determine if PIE formed as an peaceful mixture of Languages or were adopted by one or the other peacefully or forcefully..."
I first read the theory that PIE was a mixed language jargon of EHG + CHG on Eupedia circa 2014. On there they asserted that an "Indo-Uralic" language melanged into a "Hurrian-like" language to form early PIE. Both accounts can NOT be true, because:
I. Hurrian, Kartvelian, NW Caucasian, Hatti, (Maykop?) - all seem to be more of ANF languages of the Kura-Araxes complex than CHG. First there was a wave of migration mistakenly termed "Uruk expansion" of farmers into the Caucasus to form Shulaveri-Shomu, Sioni and then they evolved into Kura-Araxes. These groups admixted the pure CHG Satsurblia and KK1 complex of the previous Mesolithic Triletians the same way their kin EEF assimilated WHG foragers in Europe. Genetics supports this views, to wit: Svans, Circassians and even Georgians have a very high portion of G2a (the one Otzi had!). K-A had 55% ANF/EEF ratio of aDNA, hence: Kartvelian, Hurro-Urartian, Adyghe and Maykop spoke languages similar to LBK, not to the original Piedmont Eneolithic. And,
II. The whole "Indo-Uralic" theory was debunked. First off, Proto-Uralic wasn't even around back then; lots of Sintashta influences were exerted on PU much later period (Bronze Age), and there was no language contact before. Second, PU was too far from the ethnogenesis of PIE. BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING WAS - THERE'S ALMOST Z-E-R-O COGNATES IN COMMON BETWEEN PIE AND ANY URALIC LANGUAGE.
So we need to look ELSEWHERE to which language(s) eventually evolved/was imposed on to form PIE.
@Ric Hern, all:
Is it possible that PIE was just formed INDEPENDENTLY with a whole new vocabulary regardless to the previous languages? Narasimhan 2018 proposed that Dravidian languages were formed when Iran agriculturalists (Iran_N) admixed with AASI hunter gatherers (Onge-like) to form 25% of the former and 75% of the latter. He added that Dravidian languages were formed as a brand new language family, and that's why Dravidian and Elamite don't have much in common. Could it be that PIE was formed the same way when EHG and CHG tribes mutually decided to develop a new language dissimilar to both?
@Andre: There are no such decisions in real life and rarely two equals meet to form a new ethnicity in which both parts make an equal contribution to language in particular.
My guess is that IE was the EHG language, but that it, especially its vocabulary, was strongly influenced by more Southern, Caucasian and Neolithic groups.
Ric: "How isolated was Belarus during the Chalcolithic to Iron Age period ? "
So isolated that it acquired obsidian from Armenia. IOW - not isolated at all. For a long time, the main way of travel/ transport was via rivers. The Vistula-Bug-Pripjat-Dniepr waterway that leads through Belarus constitutes a major connection between the Baltic and Black Seas that is in use until today.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/provenancing-the-first-obsidian-artefact-discovered-in-belarus/F67E62D251F54A75AF085734EEB160B9/core-reader
Andrzej: Please note that KK1/Satsurblia were not Trialetian, but Colchian HGs. Trialeti is in E. Georgia, i.e. on the Middle Kura. Colchis has been culturally distinct from E. Caucasia (the Kura catchment area) since the LGM separated it from the Caspian basin. E.g., Epi-Paleolithic and Mesolithic traditions differed between W. and E. Georgia, and Colchis did neither partake in ShuSho, nor Sioni, nor Kura-Araxes. Even at the time of the MBA E. Georgian Trialeti Culture, Colchis still had its own distinct culture, the Colchian Culture. As Proto-Kartvelian is commonly dated to around 2000 BC, the Colchian Culture was most likely already Kartvelian-speaking.
The Medieval Georgian Chronicles attribute the Kartvelian expansion into E. Georgia to Alexander the Great. Modern Historians rather consider Assyrian resettlements in this respect, but the process may already have commenced around 1000 BC, when the ancient Georgian capital Mtskheta (30 km W of Tbilissi) was established.
@ Andrzejewski
Firstly Haplogroup K split from IJ thousands of years before Yana and Dzudzuana, because Ust Ishim 45 000 years old already was K2...and Yamnaya originated thousands of years after Yana....
That sounds a bit like Star Wars...Heheheeh. Nope, why reinvent the Wheel ?
Andrzej: "The whole "Indo-Uralic" theory was debunked. (..) BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING WAS - THERE'S ALMOST Z-E-R-O COGNATES IN COMMON BETWEEN PIE AND ANY URALIC LANGUAGE."
This isn't true - there a numerous PIE-PU cognates, attesting a long history of language contact. But the cognate-based discussion misses the main point: PIE allowed for intra-syllabic consonant clusters, a feature phonotactically forbidden by most language families around the world, including Uralic. Now, there are cases where non-IE languages have under IE influence acquired the possibility to use and pronounce such consonant clusters, e.g. Malay (Indonesian), and some Burmese and Austro-Asiatic languages. But the Uralic resistance to consonant clusters was so strong that it could impose it onto expanding E. Slavs, turning e.g. Proto-Slavic *grad "city" into E. Slavic gorod. This fundamental difference in phonotactics is a main argument against Indo-Uralic (other points are the lack of grammatical gender in Uralic, and that Uralic is agglutinative, not synthethic as PIE).
The "consonant cluster" issue may IMO shed more light on PIE origins. In Eurasia (aside from Beringia that I haven't checked), there are only a handful of language families allowing them aside from PIE, namely Afro-Asiatic (especially Semitic, known for its consonant-based roots), Kartvelian, and N. Caucasian. We probably should add to this the yet unidentified language that has provided Germanic with words like "hand", "breast", "drink", and "sing" (all lacking a plausible IE etymology), and the substrate that has enforced even more consonant clustering on N. Germanic, e.g. turning Proto-Germanic *habukaz into English "hawk". Intra-syllabic consonsant clusters are/were a.o. disallowed by Basque, Etruscan, Sumerian, Elamite, Hurro-Urartian, and Turkic.
Due to the prohibition against consonant clusters that prevails in E. Eurasia, I find it difficult to regard PIE as EHG/ANE-derived language.
For the same reason, I am also sceptical whether Kartvelian might really be considered as ANF-derived. We don't (and will probably never) know which language(s) ANF/EEF spoke, but whatever qualifies as possibly post-ANF/EEF (Basque, Etruscan, Hurro-Urartian) disallow(ed/s) consonant clusters. And, yes, I am aware of modern Svan/Georgian DNA. But this wouldn't be the first case of yDNA switching language, see "Semitic" J, and "Uralic" N1.
So you think that both PIE and Proto-Kartvelian are CHG languages?
@ FrankN
I do not think that EHG could have retained much similarities to Original ANE Languages after 10 000 years of evolution of Languages. Any Language West of the Urals would have retained very little similarities to ANE Languages, originally spoken +-24 000 years ago, after +-14 000 years ago because of separation from the core. And Steppe people would have had very little in common with the Original EHG Language by the time Yamnaya formed....
So you think that Georgians are Colchian HG (CHG) who later spread east and assimilated/merged with ANF groups?
Do you regard Kartvelians as CHG speakers?
Can both of you answer me how come Dr. Vayda found out similarities between Dene and Yenisseyan after 24,000 years, and how come linguists found/established relations between Algonkian and Nivkh after 24,000 years?
24,000 years of separation, that is!
Andrzejewski - Dene and Yenesian didn't separate 24,000 years ago. It's more like 6,000.
I think what is relevant to the formation of PIE is the happenings After 8000 BCE in the Pontic Caspian Steppe area. Everything older than that is extreme speculation...
@Rick - Maybe, maybe not.
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2015/09/support-for-linguistic-macrofamilies.html
Just one question. Does 2% similarities between two different Languages make them the Same ? Can you really put two different Languages with 98% influence from other seperate languages in One Family just because they shared 2% ?
@ Ryan
Yes. I still think that it takes a whole dictionary of similarities to really say that Two Languages are in the same Family. 2% or a handful of words just do not cut it for me, personally.
FrankN: the prohibition against consonant clusters that prevails in E. Eurasia
That's true today in much of East Asia. But that seems much to be due to the all conquering Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainland_Southeast_Asia_linguistic_area).
As I understand it, Old Chinese permits cluster initials and is quite rich in them, while Tibetan has perhaps preserved cluster initials. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Tibeto-Burman_language) Mon-Khmer languages permit complex consonant cluster initials (e.g. kmer as a simple one) as well (and the general consensus seems that Austoasiatic languages with simplified consonantal clusters, like Viet, probably more due to the MSEA effect, while Khmer has less profound influence from Indian languages. See - https://www.academia.edu/7929150/The_Austroasiatic_language_phylum_A_typology_of_phonological_restructuring).
(Of course it's true that the maximum syllabic complexity in these languages may not have been as high as permitted in English, but certainly they permit clusters)
An overview is - https://wals.info/feature/12A#2/49.2/146.3
Clusters tend to have be reduced in many East Asian languages families in a complex way that is connected to the emergence of syllabic tone, although many languages have neither.
As I understand it, these phonotactic constraints, like typological features (analytic, synthetic, aggulitinative), doesn't tend to have much weight as evidence of genetic relatedness, because of the possibility of these known dramatic changes in languages in which genetic relatedness is evidenced through sequences of changes and shared core vocabulary, and because of the tendency to be affected by areal/sprachbund trends.
Given that these are demonstrated even within genetically related language families which are known to be <8kya split, it's difficult to imagine using them to reconstruct language divergence about twice as deep as this (which must often be very profound if we consider differentiation of Native American languages, for'ex).
???
@Ryan so when did Dene cross into NA? Beringia was already inundated
@Ric Hern Uralics are originally Baikal HG with later (mostly) European admixture but people still think that they have lots of ANE/EHG. Hard habits die hard!
If they found out that families in Asia and North America were one protolanguage st some time, then tracing back the origins of PIE should be a piece of cake, because Berinians crosses over something like 20,000 years ago
Ric: Vocabulary is overrated, see Pagel e.a.'s "ultraconserved words". They have established an average half-life of around 50,000 years for certain words, especially personal, demonstrative and interrogative pronouns. E.g., you'll find something like *ti/ta "this/that" in manifold languages around the globe, including Africa and the Americas. The same applies to k(w)a/o?, "what?, who?". [I suppose that both roots were already useful, and maybe even mutually understandable, in AMH - Neandertaler communication…]. Into the same class fall "water"-words on wä, equally with global presence. The "tongue/ taste/ tooth/ (m)eat" semantic cluster around "t" is also anything but special to IE, but, a.o. present in Siouan and many other Amerindian languages.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236644088_Ultraconserved_words_point_to_deep_language_ancestry_across_Eurasia
To this one needs to add "Wanderwörter". Nahuatl (Aztec) quintl "dog", e.g., is probably not only by chance correspondance a cognate to PIE *kwon, because similar "dog" terms are found across all of Eurasia [Domesticated dogs seem to have reached the Americas some 11,000 years ago via the Arctic Sea and the Mackenzie-Great Lakes waterway]. Intriguing in this respect is also the numeral "seven", a root shared by PIE, Afro-Asiatic, Kartvelian, Basque, and various Bantu languages. The standard assumption is that the root originated in Afro-Asiatic, and was borrowed from there by everybody else in question - so far on "numerals define language families" [c.f. Austronesian dua vs. English "two", and, for the same numeral, Georgian "ori" vs. various Nilo-Saharan cognates.] The case of *kar "rock, mountain" (Slav. gora, Georgian gori, Basque harri, plus various analogies from Africa, Asia and the Americas, c.f. Engl. "hard" and the Harz mountains) I have already discussed in a comment to an earlier post here.
Inbetween all of these "paleo-words", and ancient borrowings from elsewhere, there are still a handful of roots proprietary to a language family, e.g. PIE *pṓds "foot". Such roots are certainly informative when it comes to identifying language families, provided one can really ensure they are unique, i.e. not shared with other families (which, unfortunately, applies to only a fraction of the reconstructed PIE vocabulary). However, in general, morphology, i.e. the principles according to which words are formed, seems to be more instructive. Such principles include root phonotactics, e.g. allowing or dis-allowing intra-syllabic consonant clusters as discussed above, and pre-/suffixing principles which place the roots into grammatical context. PIE, e.g., is quite specific by suffixing for grammatical gender (unlike Uralic and Kartvelian, which both don't have grammatical gender, or NEC and Bantu, which use gender prefixes, so-called "noun classes").
'' Please note that KK1/Satsurblia were not Trialetian, but Colchian HGs. Trialeti is in E. Georgia, i.e. on the Middle Kura. Colchis has been culturally distinct from E. Caucasia (the Kura catchment area) since the LGM separated it from the Caspian basin. E.g., Epi-Paleolithic and Mesolithic traditions differed between W. and E. Georgia,
-- ''
We should be careful not to over-zealously create distinctions which are of questionable validity
The term Trialetian was recently dismissed. It was a heterogeneous mixture of sites, many of which were Aceramic Neolithic sites from Anatolia, so lumping these with hunter-gatherers makes no sense.
In conclusion, to keep things simple for our boy Andre, just call them CHG, or post-Imeretian
June 28, 2019 at 4:13 PM Delete
The fact remains that many current similarities between languages could have evolved seperately and many times over throughout history...
@ Andrzejewski
Remember that Languages change at different rates but they change non the less. The best we can do is to say that people with ANE once upon a time shared some similarities. We will basically never know if, 1 or 2% Similarities that seems Ancient, meant 100% shared similarities in the past because of change, reinvention, adoption etc. throughout time. As some stated before, some Australian Aboriginal Languages are closer to French than they are to their Neighbours....
Dragos: "just call them CHG, or post-Imeretian"
In fact, Satsurblia, which dates prior to the Younger Dryas, was Imeretian proper. Kotias was Mesolithic Darkveti Culture (Kotias Kide only lies a couple of km south of Darkveti). But the Darkveti Culture is poorly defined, ranging from the Mesolithic to the Eneolithic, so I tend to avoid this term. Colchian HG, abbreviated CHG, is an appropriate simplification.
Andrzej "So you think that Georgians are Colchian HG (CHG) who later spread east and assimilated/merged with ANF groups?" That is more-less my current working hypothesis, albeit, as all hypotheses, it might change when new information comes in.
Historically, Kartvelian was spoken as far west as Trabzon (compare several ancient Greek historians). It seems that agriculture found its way into Colchis from the coast, rather than from E. Georgia, around the beginning of the 5th mBC, and progressed from south to north, with Meshoko as endpoint. ANFs might have entered from North-Central Anatolia, e.g. Ikiztepe (n. Samsun).
Interestingly, several linguists, especially from the Moscow School, have connected Hattic to NW Caucasian (see, e.g., the link below). So, a plausible scenario could be proto-/para-Hattic speaking ANF introducing agriculture to Colchis/ NW Caucasia, where they co-habitated with pre-proto Kartvelian-speaking Colchian HGs. At an unknown point in time, this multilingual setup broke up, with Kartvelian dominating in the south, and NW Caucasian in Abkhazia and further north.
https://www.academia.edu/1215069/The_Relation_of_Proto-West_Caucasian_to_Hattic
[Note, towards the end of the paper, the discussion about Kaski (Northern neighbours of the Hatti) vs. Circassians (Arab ksk, Oss. kaesaeg), and Abesla (members of the Kaskian union) vs. Abkhasians (OGrk apsilae).]
@ FrankN
So if Satsurblia is Imeriatian, then Kotias would be post-Imeretian.
In anycase, we are free to create whichever neologism we prefer, but there is no reason to purport that eastern & western Georggia somehow had completely different HG populations- the all derived from the same basic group.
@Ric Hern
One thing that is rarely taken into account is the possible presence of extinct parafamilies and language contact mediated by them affecting the genealogical ancestor of modern families. Their effects could often be attributed to chance resemblance, real contact between genealogical ancestors or a genealogical relationship. For a simple hypothetical example PIE did not need to be next to either "ancestor of proto-Kartvelian in the Caucasus" or "ancestor of Proto-Uralic in the Urals" to account for resemblances but there might have been something in the gaps between. Urheimats are not generally assumed to be very large spatially by historical linguists, but the gaps were populated by something.
“Ric Hern
One thing that is rarely taken into account is the possible presence of extinct parafamilies and language contact mediated by them affecting the genealogical ancestor of modern families.”
Exactly
Which is why PIE doesn’t “must have” come from the steppe
Yes that is my point also.
However there is a clear recent Genetic connection...
Ric
We really should appreciate the difference between association and causality
It also helps to understand where direct steppe migrations made a major impact; and where they didn’t
Dragos: " there is no reason to purport that eastern & western Georggia somehow had completely different HG populations- the all derived from the same basic group. "
Well, the question is when this "same basic group" lived. According to Damgaard e.a. 2018, that was some 20,000 years ago, i.e. around the time of the LGM. They clearly showed that Colchian HGs were related to, but not ancestral to Steppe CHG.
During the LGM, glaciation of the Caucasus reached down to around 500m, i.e. it ended just west of Tbilissi, creating a major barrier to human movement. And since then, East and West Georgia remained culturally different until the Iron Age. Wherever those CHG that ultimately contributed to "steppe" populations whethered the LGM (my guess is the S. Caspian shore), the Damgaard e.a. analysis demonstrates that they didn't admix with Colchian HGs.
You can read more about it here:
https://adnaera.com/2018/12/10/how-did-chg-get-into-steppe_emba-part-1-lgm-to-early-holocene/
However we can not look past the Steppe like admixture entering North/Western Europe, and we can not look past the fact that, that admixture had substantial CHG in the Mix, and existed at the proposed formation of PIE...
@ Frank
Yes it’s very interesting Question
However, for some reason, I find it hard to believe
east & west Georgia remained completely separated
And perhaps it’s best to wait for direct aDNA evidence.
Dragos: "I find it hard to believe east & west Georgia remained completely separated"
Actually not completely separated. There is indication of innovation flow during the late 6th mBC. E.g., the earliest West Georgian pottery resembles Sioni ware - a process possibly triggered by both E. Georgians and Colchians using the same obsidian source around Paravani Lake on the Javakheti plateau. Also, Colchians probably didn't re-invent gold mining, copper smelting and (arsenic) bronze-making, but rather learnt it from their Sioni neighbours, and the same should apply to viticulture.
Still, E. and W. Georgia remained very distinct from each other for a long time. This concerns a/o lithic forms, housing (mudbrick or stone in the east, caves and/or wattle & daub in the west), delayed introduction of agriculture and pottery to Colchis, and also a specific, strongly pig-based Colchian (& Meshoko) agricultural system. Even the metalurgy appears to have been different, with Colchians prefering antimonic over arsenic bronze. E.g., C. Hamon concludes that "very few comparisons can be drawn between the Neolithic grinding tools from eastern and western Georgia. If some contacts between western and eastern Neolithic cultures of Georgia have occurred, they apparently concerned the subsistence economy rather than “craft” activities." [Note the "if"..]
https://www.persee.fr/docAsPDF/paleo_0153-9345_2008_num_34_2_5258.pdf
The Likhi mountains that separate West and East Georgia aren't particular high, just a bit above 1000m, and easily passable. So said separation must have had other reasons. A language barrier?
So, @FrankN, according to you Sioni were ANF while Meshoko were CHG?
Andrzej: "So, @FrankN, according to you Sioni were ANF while Meshoko were CHG?
ShuSho and Sioni aDNA should be interesting. Neolithic East Caucasia is a bit reminiscent of Central Europe:
- ShuSho had a very restrictive settlement strategy, focusing on alluvial fans where Kura tributaries left the mountains, at a maximum elevation of 400-450 m. These fans were intensively exploited. Kind of a similar pattern as practised by LBK, whereby the latter focussed on loess areas. Interestingly, settlement of alluvial fans was also practised in the Jordan valley, so I wouldn_t be surprised if ShuSho also incorporated a considerable Levantine element.
- Sioni apparently was more mobile and pastoralist, entered much deeper into the Kura basin, and even settled mountain areas up to 1,700 m a.s.l above the Upper Kura close to the Georgian-Armenian border. Kind of reminds me of Michelsberg, especially the Michelsberg colonisation of the Western Alps. I could imagine a quite substantial East Caucasian HG portion in Sioni, including a lot of yDNA J. Otherwise, mountain agriculture at 1,700 m required cold-resistant, non-light sensitive barley varieties that seem to have originated on the Iranian Plateau, so some Iran_Neo element could also have been present in Sioni.
G25 nMonte had a tendency to put Iran_N in Sredny Stog when using Neolithic sources which could be relevant in the protolanguage stage (the same problem as Piedmont Eneolithic samples which I mentioned before) but this is apparently caused by EHG overfitting, removing Sidelkino (which fits as a mix of Iron_Gates and West_Siberia_N in qpAdm) removes Iran_N and increases CHG in Sredny Stog.
UKR_Sredny_Stog_II_En:I6561
Sidelkino_HG,47.4
Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG,31.8
CHG,17.4
Iran_N,3.4
Baikal_HG,0
Iron_Gates_HG,0
West_Siberia_N,0
Sidelkino out:
UKR_Sredny_Stog_II_En:I6561
Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG,32
West_Siberia_N,27.4
CHG,22
Iron_Gates_HG,18.6
Baikal_HG,0
Iran_N,0
Kura-Araxes still gets high Iran_N though:
Kura-Araxes_RUS_Velikent:VEK007-009
CHG,42.8
Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG,30.6
Iran_N,24.6
West_Siberia_N,2
Baikal_HG,0
Iron_Gates_HG,0
Later samples near the Caucasus, linguistic identities unknown, NW Caucasian, Kartvelian:
RUS_Lola:NV3001
West_Siberia_N,55.6
CHG,21.8
Iran_N,10
Iron_Gates_HG,9.6
Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG,3
Baikal_HG,0
Adygei
CHG,48.4
Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG,35.2
West_Siberia_N,10.2
Iran_N,4
Baikal_HG,1.6
Iron_Gates_HG,0.6
Georgian_Imer
CHG,54.4
Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG,35.6
Iran_N,10
Baikal_HG,0
Iron_Gates_HG,0
West_Siberia_N
Later more northern samples, no or negligible Iran_N even in non-IE:
Baltic_EST_IA:0LS10_1 (likely Uralic)
Iron_Gates_HG,36.4
West_Siberia_N,27.4
Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG,23.8
CHG,12.4
Baikal_HG,0
Iran_N,0
RUS_Srubnaya_o:I0354 (unknown)
West_Siberia_N,64.4
CHG,25.8
Iron_Gates_HG,6.4
Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG,3.4
Baikal_HG,0
Iran_N,0
RUS_Mezhovskaya:RISE525 (unknown)
West_Siberia_N,42.8
Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG,25
Baikal_HG,12.8
CHG,10
Iron_Gates_HG,9
Iran_N,0.4
@Shaikorth “RUS_Srubnaya_o:I0354 (unknown)
West_Siberia_N,64.4
CHG,25.8
Iron_Gates_HG,6.4
Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG,3.4
Baikal_HG,0
Iran_N,0
RUS_Mezhovskaya:RISE525 (unknown)
West_Siberia_N,42.8
Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG,25
Baikal_HG,12.8
CHG,10
Iron_Gates_HG,9
Iran_N,0.4”
It’s interesting that Srubnaya (Indo-Iranic) and Mezhovskaya had so much West Siberia in their samples
That's because Srubnaya_o is not a normal Srubnaya, but probably an outsider with loads of WSHG that has been assimilated into the community which is why I marked the linguistic identity as unknown instead of Indo-Iranian. If we use a more specific test with regular CWC-like Srubnaya added to the previous sources:
RUS_Srubnaya_o
RUS_West_Siberia_N,55.8
RUS_Srubnaya_MLBA,28.4
GEO_CHG,15.8
All the rest 0.
@Shaikorth "That's because Srubnaya_o is not a normal Srubnaya, but probably an outsider with loads of WSHG that has been assimilated into the community which is why I marked the linguistic identity as unknown instead of Indo-Iranian. If we use a more specific test with regular CWC-like Srubnaya added to the previous sources:
RUS_Srubnaya_o
RUS_West_Siberia_N,55.8
RUS_Srubnaya_MLBA,28.4
GEO_CHG,15.8
All the rest 0."
Maybe it's a Botai assimilated into Srubnaya? Sintashta has lots of Botai substrate in it as well as BMAC, if I'm not mistaken.
@Andrzejewski
Sintashta has lots of Botai substrate in it as well as BMAC, if I'm not mistaken.
There's exactly zero Botai and BMAC admixture in the main Sintashta cluster, which overlaps with modern Eastern and Northern Europeans.
The mystery of the Sintashta people
@ Frank N
“Still, E. and W. Georgia remained very distinct from each other for a long time. This concerns a/o lithic forms, housing (mudbrick or stone in the east, caves and/or wattle & daub in the west), delayed introduction of agriculture and pottery to Colchis, and also a specific, strongly pig-based Colchian (& Meshoko) agricultural system. Even the metalurgy appears to have been different, with Colchians”
Yes that’s true
But that relates to different Neolithic processes ; differential adaptation and local HG admixture
It’s got less directly to do with LGM
@FrankN "It's quite likely that something akin to PIE (possibly rather late PIE, i.e. excluding Anatolian & Tocharian) was spoken in the Eneolithic Elbrus piedmont."
If Tocharian turns out to be an Andronovo-offspring like Indo-Iranian, then it casts into a big doubt the whole discussion and discourse about its "archaic" nature and its "antiquity". The reason that Tocharian was regarded as such is because of the now-obsolete hypothesis that Tocharians are Afanasievo-derived. This theory is now debunked in the trash bin of history.
What is quite clear about Afanasievo is that it contributed some Steppe ancestry into the conquering Okunevo, who were of the Botai/Native American clade. And later when Andronovo settled the area, the Okunevo provided some East Asian and extra ANE contribution into the Tagar Culture and therefore to waves of Cimmerians, Saka and Sarmatians.
What's unique about Piedmont_Eneolithic is that it may provide Dr. Reich some ground into assuming that both Hittites and PIEs came from some South-Caspian tribes, where some migrated west and became Anatolian speakers and the majority headed to the Steppe and subsequently became the Yamnaya etc. The furthest away samples could be found from Piedmont_Eneolithic as the starting point of PIE (Samara HG? Khvalynsk? Sredny Stog?), the less plausible Reich's strange theory would look.
@Andrzejewski
Wrong on both counts.
There was no "conquering" Okunevo. The migration of the Afanasievo people from the west was very limited, and so eventually they mixed with the local foragers, giving rise to the Okunevo culture, which was then replaced by Andronovo and related groups from the west.
And you can't use Piedmont_Eneolithic to back up Reich's theory, because the Piedmont_Eneolithic people were foragers who lacked Anatolian admixture that was all over the Caucasus and south of it at the time, and they were culturally much more related to the people of the Don Caspian steppe than to anyone in the Caucasus or south of it.
Did they maybe weather it out in the Southern Urals or Crimea ?
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