Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Did South Caspian hunter-fishers really migrate to Eastern Europe?
The idea that most of the Near Eastern-related ancestry in the ancient populations of the Pontic-Caspian (PC) steppe is, one way or another, sourced from the territory of present-day Iran is a fairly popular one nowadays (for instance, see here). It might turn out to be correct, once there are enough relevant samples to test it properly, but in my opinion the chances of this are slim.
My skepticism is based on literally hours of analyses with the currently available ancients from the Caucaso-Caspian region, like, for instance, the admixture graphs below featuring foragers and early farmers from Russia, Georgia and Iran. The relevant qpGraph and dot files are available here.
Note that the further I move away from Eastern Europe in these graphs when looking for the source of the southern ancestry in the Eneolithic population from the southernmost part of the PC steppe (Piedmont_En), the more difficult it is for me to create a statistically sound model. What might this tell us about the provenance of this so called southern ancestry?
See also...
The PIE homeland controversy: August 2019 status report
Some myths die hard
Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...
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62 comments:
CHG and Ganj_Dareh_N are not the same CHG/Iranian population!
Heck, even Ganj_Dareh_N and the Belt and Hotu foragers aren't the same.
Is the "West Eurasia" here supposed to stand for an ANE-like population without eastern influence?
Obviously not, since it's the ancestral node to Eastern_Euro_Meso and the non-Basal part of the ancestry of the Caucasus, Caspian and Zagros forager populations, all of which have various types of eastern influences.
You're reading too much into the graph. It's not supposed to correlate closely with certain other analyses, but rather test whether the southern ancestry in Piedmont_En is due to the bifurcation in CHG-related pops around the Caucasus, or some migration from further afield.
But how did so many people become convinced Steppe southern ancestry came from Iran? Do they want the steppe component to be as non-native as possible? It is because it’s constantly mentioned by ancient DNA papers or what?
Off topic, but how many Paleolithic and Mesolithic samples were found outside of Europe? Other than the ANE samples, Yana, Dzudzuana, Tianyuan, Natufian samples, and Taforalt samples. Has there been any East Asian or South Asian samples yet, especially ones where DNA can actually be extracted?
@Gabriel
But how did so many people become convinced Steppe southern ancestry came from Iran?
I don't know, because as more and more data accumulated it became obvious that the steppe and South Caspian region were very different biogeographical zones and, in fact, that eventually there were significant population movements from the steppe into Iran.
Really, the only Pontic-Caspian steppe population that might have ancestry from the South Caspian or Central Asia is Steppe Maykop.
I really think in situations like these it's best to yield to the scientists, many of whom are the first and most experienced pioneers of this field. If most of them suggest a South Caspian input, I wouldn't dismiss it so quickly and adamantly. Often times they have samples we do not have access to, and intuition & knowledge they've gained over the years that nobody else has.
The vocal minority claiming these researchers have some sort of agenda to make the Steppe people more exotic is not forgivable. I find it really difficult to believe life long scientists and respected academics would turn their back on the facts in favor of some deceit. It also invalidates the the fantastic work they've been doing, and none of this would be possible without their contributions. I feel as though some are being hypocritical, denying the statements of authoritative academics and their science, because of their OWN prejudices.
Regardless, I agree with David, we can only wait until there's more samples.
I read FrankN’s blog and it said something about Prikapiist Culture supposedly of ANE origin being largely replaced by Elshanka Culture which is supposed to be CHG but from the Caucasus, although the overall increase of CHG over Sudelkino is just 3% - 4%. Very confusing.
@Andrzejewski
I don't really know what Frank is up to and if he even knows what he's talking about. He posted these stats in the other thread claiming that they support his arguments.
CHG EHG Progress -0.001668 0.002449 -0.681 413273
Iran_Meso EHG Progress 0.010461 0.003531 2.963 70383
Hajji_Firuz EHG Progress 0.005077 0.002363 2.149 448044
Geoksiur EHG Progress 0.004428 0.002316 1.912 347963
He doesn't even know what he's looking at IMHO.
Stats like these can only be used to more or less confirm that an admixture event took place, and not to pinpoint the real sources of the mixture, because they produce the best signals with the mixture proxies from the extreme ends of the mixture cline.
@When_In_Rome,
Sikora 2019
The population history of northeastern Siberia since the Pleistocene
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1279-z#Sec19
DevilsCave_N, Eastern Siberia, 9,000 years old. Nearlly identical to modern Ulchi who live in the same location.
Kolyma_M, Northeast Siberia, 9,000 years old. Mix between ANE & DevilCave. Important ancestor of modern Northeast Siberia & Eskimos.
Damgaard 2018
The first horse herders and the impact of early Bronze Age steppe expansions into Asia
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/05/08/science.aar7711
Lokomotive_EN, Shamanka_EN. Lived near lake baikal. 8,000 years ago. Main ancestor of modern people on the same location. Main source of East Asian ancestry in Turkic-speakers in central Asia.
McColl 2018
Ancient Genomics Reveals Four Prehistoric Migration Waves into Southeast Asia
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/08/278374
Two different East Asian pops in southeast Asia 4,000 years ago. One related to Cambodians, one to Vietnamese.
So based on that graph, Basal was the more differentiated and diverse population than West Eurasian?
@Ryan
The graph isn't about Basal Eurasian. You can call that node something like Basal-rich and it wouldn't matter.
Let's see what happens with Sarazm Eneolithic, since it has a bit higher outgroup f3 shared drift with Piedmont and Yamnaya (closer to CHG's level than what Iran_N gets):
Graph 1: https://pastebin.com/uiXCrLbc
Graph 2: https://pastebin.com/bkasyP9C
Samuel,
The specimens from Devil's Gate should be about 7,700 years old, not 9,000 years old.
Furthermore, the indigenous peoples who live nearest to Devil's Gate at present should be the Udege and Hezhe (Nanai in the PRC). The Ulch are currently clustered geographically with the Oroch, Nanai in Russia, Negidals, and mainland Nivkhs in an area near the mouth of the Amur River, far north of Devil's Gate.
@Matt
Interesting idea, but Sarazm_En doesn't really fit into this topology. You'd need to add a mixture edge or two, or even a new node or two to account for its eastern ancestry.
The highest Z scores for these models were 4.613 and -8.450, with a whole heap of outlier stats in each case, most of them involving Sarazm_En.
@Sam “DevilsCave_N, Eastern Siberia, 9,000 years old. Nearlly identical to modern Ulchi who live in the same location.
Kolyma_M, Northeast Siberia, 9,000 years old. Mix between ANE & DevilCave. Important ancestor of modern Northeast Siberia & Eskimos.”
Aren’t Native Americans modeled as a mix of Ulchi/Devil’s Cave (62% - 83%) Transbaikal with a MA1-like population from West of Baikal?
Yea but from Samara to Yamnaya there was a 40% increase of chg ancestry. Wonder where the latter one came from.
@Matt
Here's a barely passable model with Sarazm_En.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=15LzK8NY_bgHlQ-9Oe8Q2cdsmOe8AH7GQ
Heaps of outlier stats...
Mbu Ust Wes Eas -0.000137 -0.002949 -0.002812 0.001247 -2.256
Mbu Cau Gan Sar -0.001622 0.001522 0.003143 0.001372 2.292
Mbu Gan Wes Eas 0.000258 -0.001756 -0.002014 0.001004 -2.005
Mbu Gan Eas Pie 0.006828 0.008859 0.002031 0.000974 2.085
Mbu Gan Cau Pie -0.005021 -0.002727 0.002293 0.001102 2.081
Ust Cau Wes Eas 0.001058 0.004256 0.003198 0.001456 2.197
Ust Cau Wes Sar 0.011747 0.015281 0.003533 0.001728 2.045
Ust Sar Wes Eas -0.005336 -0.002130 0.003206 0.001404 2.284
Wes Eas Cau Gan -0.000664 -0.003063 -0.002400 0.001155 -2.077
Wes Eas Gan Sar -0.005730 -0.003322 0.002408 0.001192 2.020
Wes Cau Gan Sar -0.016538 -0.012576 0.003962 0.001522 2.603
Wes Sar Cau Gan 0.007569 0.004610 -0.002960 0.001405 -2.106
Eas Gan Cau Gan 0.025677 0.028549 0.002872 0.001372 2.093
Eas Pie Gan Sar -0.001292 -0.003521 -0.002229 0.001094 -2.037
Cau Gan Gan Sar -0.017444 -0.020876 -0.003432 0.001382 -2.484
Cau Pie Gan Sar 0.009517 0.005733 -0.003783 0.001270 -2.979
Cau Pie Gan Pie 0.031832 0.028926 -0.002906 0.001399 -2.078
Piedmont has some variation
The most homogeneous is “eastern” Yamnaya. This suggests it was a founder population expanding through steppe; & -> Afanasievo .
~ Fixation of Z2103.
Brought pastoralist east
A couple of comments.
1. Reinforcing something Davidski has said
Consider f = f3(Target; A, X) where X varies on a cline.
Say X = a B + (1-a) C
Then f is linear in a and will be minimized either at a=0 or a=1 .
The minimum is (probably) not at the true X.
Similar remarks apply to f4
2. I am much less sure about the origins of Yamnaya than
the blog seems to think.
There's no doubt that Yamnaya has lots of
"Iran-Related" ancestry but so does ancient CHG.
I'm thinking about this right now. Is there a paper
describing a scenario for Yamnaya formation?
If so I don't remember it.
@davidski, I'm quite surprised by that! Had thought that in the absence of an explicit West_Siberia_N population the qpGraph would be minimally sensitive to differences between Sarazm_EN and other pops (save for Basal level). What stats went wrong?
@Nick Patterson
I think Damsgaard in their Supp Info (S2.13.1 A simple model for Yamnaya ancestry) at least tried to come up up with split times and indeed did consider a very old split between Yamnaya's CHG and KK1.
2 caveats:
(a) The number of admixtures you are adding is larger than the number of constraints imposed by the number of samples you have - thus your framework is not well defined.
(b) What is the guarantee that Piedmont_En or indeed even that the CHG are the right source population for Yamnaya? After all the CHG samples are around ~10,000 years old, and prior to the formation of the Yamnaya there is considerably higher Iran_N ancestry in Armenia.
I believe Corded Ware is descended directly from Sredni Stog and not Yamnaya. It makes more sense in terms of DNA and archaeology, the autosomal DNA is a better fit, and the y-dna is a match. Corded pottery and battle axes are also older there. When the Tripolye and other European Neolithic cultures went in to decline it must have had a had a profound impact on Sredni Stog, triggering the migration into what would become the Corded Ware Zone. Yamnaya were Steppe people living in the North Caucasus area and their higher levels of CHG like ancestry reflects their ancient proximity to the caucasus. The Yamnaya expanded with Maikop technology and culture into the void left by Sredni Stog and Tripolye, but were not directly ancestral to Corded Ware as is evidenced by the overwhelming presence of Z2103 on their Y.
Whether West Yamnaya was directly ancestral to Beaker I doubt, I agree with Davidski's hypothesis that they originated in the Single Grave Culture of the Corded Ware zone.
Did Tripolye contribute any long lasting heritage to any modern population or did they go completely extinct like Botai and BMAC?
GUYS THE NEW ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL
"BALTIC-PONTIC STUDIES" IS RELEASED AND IT IS OPEN ACCESS.
SEE BELOW:
https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/bps/23/1/bps.23.issue-1.xml
It deals with the Corded Ware culture in Swiete and the adjacent areas and to the spread of the Corded Ware culture in Poland and Centraleast Europe (more or less).
There is also a paper about the Dutch Corded Ware culture and how it spread there!
You might consider checking it out:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X19301634
@music lover
I'm not claiming that the qpGraph output that I posted is definitive in any way. It was just a test to see what happens when I stick CHG, Belt-Hotu and Ganj_Dareh_N on the same tree, and try them one by one as admix sources for Piedmont_En.
The point I was trying to make, especially with the first tree, was that there seems to be a deep and relatively close relationship between CHG, EHG and Piedmont_En, and by extension also Yamnaya. And that as one moves away from this zone of probable long-standing interaction between these ancient groups, the stats get even more complicated and things become more difficult to explain.
Piedmont_En might not be ancestral to Yamnaya, and probably isn't. But it's obviously very closely related to Yamnaya, and it's almost certain that they both descend from the same population one way or another.
@ Romulus
I would count B.B. as deriving from ''Late east Yamnaya'' (Broadly construed - east of Dnieper- not suggesting this is any sort of definitive catgorization); not West Yamnaya or >Post-Stog<.
They might link to a second wave from the East ( incipient Catacomb phase) rapidly moving to western Europe via southern Poland (niche grave horizon); which however did not last very long there. So, a foundng group of migrated west fairly rapidly c. 26/2500; thus after CWC; and a therefore a culturally distinct entity
(Of course we need to clarify Hungarian Yamnaya ; Mako; etc )
@Matt
I'm quite surprised by that! Had thought that in the absence of an explicit West_Siberia_N population the qpGraph would be minimally sensitive to differences between Sarazm_EN and other pops (save for Basal level). What stats went wrong?
I'd have to run the tests again to get the stats. Can't do that now.
But the second test, with the higher highest Z score, was a disaster, with something like 50 outlier stats and 80% of them involving Sarazm_En.
@epoch
Thanks for the Damgaard (supp) ref. but it doesn't really give a
realistic scenario for Yamnaya formation -- postulating admixture from very deeply
diverged populations. I would like to see some scenario that archaeologists
can relate to.
@JuanRivera
Unfortunately, it looks like you misinterpreted the paper, so it might be useful to drop this line of inquiry.
@Davidski,
Why not say Iranian instead of South Caspien?
Because the term Iranian implies a relationship with the modern state of Iran and/or the speakers of Iranian languages.
However, these foragers may have lived not only in what is now Iran but also nearby areas that are in present-day Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. And it's extremely unlikely that they spoke Iranian languages or that they can be identified as Iranians in any other way.
We call it Iran Neolithic.
@Zulfiqar
That is not how science works. Nothing is accepted except evidence, reputations mean nothing unless the facts stand up to scrutiny. Science works by published work being tested and contested. Unpublished work counts for nothing.
You just have to look at the abomination called string theory to see how science can go wrong if reputations carry weight.
@All
I updated the graphs in the blog post by making the following changes...
- adding an 8th real population (West_Siberia_N)
- reducing the number of mixture edges
- changing some of the labels
Please note that the changes are not material, in that they don't affect any of my main points. But they do make the trees look better.
Here's a challenge to anyone who has a bit of time to burn: modify the graph files to show that Caucasus_HG is not the best fit for the southern ancestry in Piedmont_En. How about Sarazm_En? But don't go too crazy. That is, keep things simple and tidy.
The old graphs are still available here...
https://drive.google.com/open?id=14Bnwt4NoTtSwuRSfkInMXI307nVFbF1S
[1] "distance%=3.0953 / distance=0.030953"
Corded_Ware_Baltic_early
UKR_Sredny_Stog_II_En 43.1
RUS_Progress_En 34.9
RUS_Khvalynsk_En 18.9
Baltic_LTU_Mesolithic 3.1
[1] "distance%=2.6627 / distance=0.026627"
Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
RUS_Progress_En 55.40
UKR_Sredny_Stog_II_En 23.55
RUS_Khvalynsk_En 17.20
UKR_Dereivka_I_En1 2.10
RUS_Vonyuchka_En 1.75
[1] "distance%=2.8016 / distance=0.028016"
Yamnaya_RUS_Kalmykia
RUS_Progress_En 53.6
UKR_Sredny_Stog_II_En 29.2
RUS_Khvalynsk_En 17.1
a moderator at eupedia posted this models for corded ware and yamnaya .
I found particularly interesting the early baltic CWC outcome. IIRC juan rivera said that later CWC samples prefer Sredni Stog II as a source. But it seems that also the ties between early CWC and Sredni Stog are very strong.
Dave: A main shortcoming of your graphs appears to be that it doesn't explicitly include Basal Eurasians. From the Dzudzuana paper, BE appears to be the major component that sets apart Zagros_Neo from Colchian_HGs, to a lesser extent also from Iran_Hotu. [Other differences are Natufian and AASI influence on Zagros_Neo, inclusion of which also might help towards a clearer picture]. IMO, BE represents population from the LGM Persian Gulf Oasis. Archeology suggests that the post-LGM recolonisation of the Zagros occured from both the North (i.e. CHG-related ancestry) and the Persian Gulf (BE-related ancestry)].
Otherwise, those f3-stats by Chad that I had re-posted here show that the Elbrus Piedmont doesn't prefer Colchian_HG over Iranian/ Turanian sources. From these stats alone it already becomes evident that "Caucasus_HG is not the best fit for the southern ancestry in Piedmont_EN", just one of amidst a whole bunch of candidates that all are sub-optimal. IOW: The source of the "southern ancestry" in Elbrus_Piedmont, Khvalynsk, SSII, ultimately Yamnaya hasn't yet been identified and aDNA-wise described.
[I am certain Saraszm will also not fill this gap. The interesting thing about Saraszm it that it may capture some specific genetic drift that originated from the Pamir Epi-Paleolithic, but I doubt that such "Pamir_HG" substrate is of much help for the issue at hand here.]
If we triangulate between Kotias, Geoksiur, Hotu/Belt Cave and the Volga-Caspian Steppe, we end up somewhere in Chorasmia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khwarazm], i.e. the Turkmenistan Caspian Coast, and the lands along the Uzboy up to the Aral Sea. Nowadays, most of that area is desert-like, but the Uzboy is still recorded on 17th cAD maps as linking the Amu Darya to the Caspian, and nourished vibrant oasis cultures from at least the BA onwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzboy
More specifically, Russian papers regularly point towards cultural influence from Chorasmian sites such as Dam Dam Chesme or Dzhebel [Jebel] on the N. Caspian, e.g. as concerns the Neolithic Lower Volga with its pottery in triangular/zigzag "steppe decoration" - a decoration that otherwise a/o finds parallels in Kelteminar, Cheshmeh Ali, Late Jeitun, Haji Firuz, Neolithic Jericho, even W. Anatolian Fikirtepe/ Barcin. In addition, some researchers have linked "Steppe" lithics, e.g. fish/leaf-shaped arrowheads, backwards to Chorasmian Meso-/Neolithic assemblages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Dzhebel
The excavation works in Chorasmia date back to 1946, weren't radiocarbon-dated, and I have been unable to find any somewhat detailed English language descriptions on the finds. In some papers by Russian authors, Dzhebel Layers IV and above, tentatively dated to ca. 6,000 BC, are qualified as containing bones of domesticated goat and sheep, but that doesn't seem to be consensus yet. OTOH, Hotu and Belt Cave have also traditionally been considered to represent foragers, until Daly e.a. 2018 produced domestic goat aDNA from nearby Sang-e-Chakhmakh AMS-dated to ca. 7,000 BC, plus evidence that selection for domestication traits (colour, reproduction, milk production) in that „eastern“ (S. Caspian) goat population already started around 8,000 BC.
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10055921/1/Ancient_Goat_Genomics_Resubmission_Combined.pdf
@FrankN
The region you describe is more likely the source of Steppe Maykop and similar populations. We have no samples from Kalteminar et al., but my guess would be that they were all too rich on WSHG-related ancestry to be the source of "CHG-Iran" in Yamnaya. Sample from around there are also seem to be somewhat AASI influenced and as far as I know there is no hint of such trace in Yamnaya either.
If CHG, Ganj Dareh and Hotu are all wrong, then the obvious alternative would be not the East, but the West Caspian. That is un-sampled in the critical time range and it pretty much had to have a "CHG-Iran" related population.
Slumberry: "If CHG, Ganj Dareh and Hotu are all wrong, then the obvious alternative would be not the East, but the West Caspian."
There are three problems with the W. Caspian:
1.) Lack of a plausible migration path, in view of the apparent lack of a North Caucasian Neolithic, and the Elbrus Piedmont Eneolithic seemingly reflecting immigration from the North (Lower Don);
2.) Neither the "Steppe" subsistence model, nor its lithics, correspond to the W. Caspian. All of Shulaveri-Shomu, Sioni, Chokh (Daghestan), Darkveti-Meshoko, Leyla-Tepe etc. were cereal-farming cultures. For most of the a/m, domesticated pigs are attested (we even have pig aDNA from ShuSho). Similarly, there is no attestation of Khvalynsk/Yamnaya-typical leaf-shaped points from the (E-)Neolithic W. Caspian. Leaf-shaped points are OTOH well attested for BMAC and beyond (IVC, CA Tarim Basin, Eneolithic Mongolia).
3.) Darkveti-Meshoko and Maykop aDNA both include an ANF element. It is IMO fair to assume that already the Neolithic W. Caspian - as also Zagros_EN - incorporated some ANF and also Levantine admixture, a/o for evidence of Armenian obsidian being traded to E. Anatolia and the Levante. Such ancestry however seems to be absent from Progress and Khvalynsk.
Is it possible to have another look at Otzei man's DNA. Now, we are able to differentiate between Neolithic Italy & southeast Europe.
Otzei has an mtDNA match in Mesolithic Serbia. His maternal line is from southeast European hunter gatherers. This could mean he was apart of a western extension of Balkan farmers into Italy.
@Sam can you tell me the difference between Iron Gates and Mesolithic Serbia?
2. By Balkan Farmers, can Ötzi be of Cucuteni Tripolye Culture?
3. Aren’t South Eastern Europe HG close to the UHG component in Anatolia_Epipaleolithic? (Especially with mtDNA K).
4. Ötzi has 19 living modern relatives. Does it imply a continuity since the Mesolithic in that area?
@FrankN
A main shortcoming of your graphs appears to be that it doesn't explicitly include Basal Eurasians.
If you look more closely at the graphs, OoA bifurcates into Near_East and Eurasia nodes.
Since Ust_Ishim_UP and Eastern_Euro_Meso derive from the Eurasia node, you can call the Near_East node Basal or Basal-rich.
So your main argument is a non-starter.
@JuanRivera
Pinarbasi_HG also shows up in Ukraine HGs and EHG (via their proto-Balkan HG ancestry).
Don't think there's really any Pinarbasi_HG in EHG. There might be something wrong with your model or you're ignoring its statistical fit.
And that's why you're getting noise in your models.
@ JuanRivera
The nMonte penalty was in the default level.
Penalty should be set to 0. Always.
Dave: "If you look more closely at the graphs, OoA bifurcates into Near_East and Eurasia nodes.
Since Ust_Ishim_UP and Eastern_Euro_Meso derive from the Eurasia node, you can call the Near_East node Basal or Basal-rich. "
Point taken!
However, at 55% "Near Eastern" in your graphs, Colchian_HG still look pretty different from the Dzudzuana paper analyses. I am unsure where that difference comes from. One possibility is that your "Near Eastern" conflates BE, Iberomaurusians (including their effect on Natufians), and AASI. OTOH, the Dzudzuana paper's approach to estimating BE ancestry may also be questionned.
Sorting out the origin of these differences might be worth some further effort - not neccesarily here and now (and also not because it may resolve our disaggreement on the origin of the "southern portion" of Steppe ancestry). Ultimately, that whole BE/ "Near Eastern" stuff may help to better understand things like post-LGM population movements, genesis of the Afro-Asiatic language family, or the Mesopotamian Neolithic.
@JuanRivera
Modeling deep ancestry with ancient DNA is very, very difficult even when using tools specifically designed for the purpose, like qpGraph, and it's easy to come up with nonsense results.
So you can't use the output from your models as arguments here, unless you can back up these results with a wide range of analyses, especially those based on formal statistics.
If you're not able to run a wide range of analyses then you need to consult scientific literature to check that your models are firmly grounded in reality.
And if you keep making various claims here based on a few random quick models then most people are going to tune out and stop reading what you have to say.
@FrankN
Here's a challenge for you.
Learn to edit qpGraph graph files, and manipulate my graph to argue whatever it is that you want to argue about Piedmont_En. I'll run the analyses for you.
You can use any of the published ancient samples. Those that are in my dataset are listed here...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FSzKKknFGcOgfyA76q9PD7B-n-MJs7L8/view?usp=sharing
Designing and editing graph files is easy. There's a really simple one in this post that will help you to learn the basics...
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/06/qpgraph-open-thread.html
@FrankN said...
"1.) Lack of a plausible migration path, in view of the apparent lack of a North Caucasian Neolithic, and the Elbrus Piedmont Eneolithic seemingly reflecting immigration from the North (Lower Don);"
Otherwise would you see a CHG migration path plausible? Because the migration path from the West Caspian could be the same. They might very well migrated into the west by the Kura river in the time between Kotias (9800 BP) and Darkveti-Meshoko (6500 BP).
"3.) Darkveti-Meshoko and Maykop aDNA both include an ANF element. It is IMO fair to assume that already the Neolithic W. Caspian - as also Zagros_EN - incorporated some ANF and also Levantine admixture, a/o for evidence of Armenian obsidian being traded to E. Anatolia and the Levante. Such ancestry however seems to be absent from Progress and Khvalynsk."
This is a matter of timing. That is, when this type of ancestry arrived to the later Yamnaya territory? Seeing that Samara HG (8600 BP and pretty far from the Caucasus) already had an elevated CHG-related ancestry compared to Sidelkino, the arrival of this ancestry possibly pre-dates Darkveti-Meshoko significantly.
BTW, Zagros_EN means Ganj Dareh N here and that is very south-western in this context, almost in Mesopotamia. There was time for a West Caspian scenario to play out, before Anatolian and Levantine ancestry was all over the region.
"2.) Neither the "Steppe" subsistence model, nor its lithics, correspond to the W. Caspian. All of Shulaveri-Shomu, Sioni, Chokh (Daghestan), Darkveti-Meshoko, Leyla-Tepe etc. were cereal-farming cultures. For most of the a/m, domesticated pigs are attested (we even have pig aDNA from ShuSho). Similarly, there is no attestation of Khvalynsk/Yamnaya-typical leaf-shaped points from the (E-)Neolithic W. Caspian. Leaf-shaped points are OTOH well attested for BMAC and beyond (IVC, CA Tarim Basin, Eneolithic Mongolia)."
OK, this is a problem for the West Caspian, but not a bigger one than the apparent strong WSHG-related influence in the East for the East Caspian theory.
And our primary concern here is genetics. If it won't work from the genetic side then archaeological plausibility won't save it.
Frank
Which leaf-shaped points do you refer to exactly ? Anything to do with bullet core technology ?
Has anyone noticed Saami have about 15-20% EHG ancestry from the last hunter gatherers of northern Russia. Those last hunter gatherers in Europe did leave behind some descendants.
I noticed this 3-4 years ago btw. I think this is really interesting. Overall Saami are 75% European (55% Corded Ware northern European, 20% EHG-excess), 25% Siberian.
EHG ancestry in Saami makes Bolshoy_Oleni relevant because Bolshoy was 40% EHG, 60% Northwest Siberian. Bolshoy_Oleni is an ancestor of Saami.
Did Bolshoy speak Uralic? Even if not, its Y DNA N1c & its specific kind of Siberian ancestry means Bolshoy descends from the same Siberian population who contributed to early Uralics.
Sweden_IA? I haven't modelled them with it yet. I'm skeptical of Saami having Nordic ancestry.
I'm skeptical of Saami having Nordic ancestry.
Pft...
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/12/on-trail-of-proto-uralic-speakers-work.html
Saami has a significant (30%) non-Uralic substrate. You both forgot the WHG contribution
@Andrzejewski said...
"Saami has a significant (30%) non-Uralic substrate. You both forgot the WHG contribution"
Saami are a mixture of various ancient populations depending on the time-depth at hand, as everybody else, but they do not seem to have more WHG ancestry that what is proportional to their Anatolian Neolithic ancestry, so their (low level) WHG is pretty much from European Farmers and channeled via later European populations (like CWC ancestry in Baltic Fins and Nordic mixture). Unless you count the WHG-related ancestry in EHG, but that is again a different time-depth. There is no direct WHG ancestry in them that is even remotely in the same time-depth as the arrival of Uralic speakers there.
(I'd say even their SHG ancestry is very low and indirect, but that is difficult to discern from the WHG + EHG interference.)
@Sam re: Ötzi the Tyrolean Iceman: can you tell me the difference between Iron Gates and Mesolithic Serbia?
2. By Balkan Farmers, can Ötzi be of Cucuteni Tripolye Culture?
3. Aren’t South Eastern Europe HG close to the UHG component in Anatolia_Epipaleolithic? (Especially with mtDNA K).
4. Ötzi has 19 living modern relatives. Does it imply a continuity since the Mesolithic in that area?
Ötzi has 19 living modern relatives.
What is that even supposed to mean? Did he have 19 immortal siblings? He had lived such a lobg time ago that he is either an ancestor of tens of millions of people or the ancestor of novody. Even if it is the former, relative is not the right word for it.
@Nicke Patterson (Broad)
The article of David Anthony is the first I read to try to consolidate archaeology with genetics, with regard to the steppe cultures. In it he already states that there is a lot of archaeological information available, but all in Russian and there is hardly anything translated.
That makes it hard for well meaning amateurs such as me to appreciate what scenario would fit. I did find this interesting read from Yuri Rassamakin: https://www.persee.fr/doc/mom_2259-4884_2012_act_58_1_3470
In it he states that the earliest burial custom he could tie to kurgan burial customs was from a Skelia culture. As far as I understand this is also called Mariupol culture and is what I think Mathieson et al called Ukraine Neolithic.
I think models with these samples failed, but as Anthony said in his article that a I2a that was found among these samples also popped up in Yamnaya.
@Davidski
Is it correct these samples failed in any model?
PS: A nice detail is that these earliest supposed Kurgan burials often were in natural hills.
@epoch
I can get an awesome model for Yamnaya using Ukraine_N, and it makes perfect sense too. But the key is probably Piedmont_En, which wasn't available until recently.
Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
BGR_Late_C 0.059±0.013
RUS_Piedmont_En 0.792±0.019
UKR_N 0.149±0.015
chisq 13.968
tail prob 0.302785
Full output
Thank you very much for this blog post. For the longest time I had to deal with some individual(s) who tried to pass off Hotu cave/Iran mesolithic people as being just like CHGs. This ought to bring a conclusion to that meaningless episode of mine.
The whole south of Caspian argument just seems moot to me, why would they go on to push for such an idea if the given data doesn't support the assertion? Even the unreleased samples will surely suggest that the "CHG" ancestry was from local HGs, right? Though I find the idea of the base of PIE and the base of proto-Uralic both stemming from a common EHG language more persuasive. Perhaps the features that differentiated PIE from its EHG language ancestor has something to do with a local CHG language north of the Caucasus. Whatever the case is, I don't think that there is any need to force a south of the Caucasus group into this mixture.
Dear Davidski
I Just reading your Articles and admiring you and thanks fro Ormazd for having you, but for God sake please do not refer Iran or Iranian Platue as " Middle /Near Eastern, Iranian platue located at Eurasian Plate and Middle Eastern country are inside Arabian plate , Zagros Great fold (Ganj Dareh - Tappe ABDOLHOUSAIN- Tappe Hasanlu - Tappe Giyan , Tappe Golan - etc....that all inside Our Great Zagros MOUNTAINS ) divide us from Arabian plate ( Middle East ) and Anatolian Plate - this is Pivot Area
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