Fifteen of the Roopkund Lake samples from the
Harney et al. paper published today at
Nature Communications made it into the Global25 datasheets. Look for the prefix IND_Roopkund here...
Global25 datasheet ancient scaled
Global25 pop averages ancient scaled
Global25 datasheet ancient
Global25 pop averages ancient
Their genotypes are freely available in a ~590K SNP dataset via the Reich Lab
here. I might be able to run more of the samples at some point if and when they're released in a dataset with more SNPs.
In any case, much like everyone else, I don't have a clue how those Mediterranean migrants ended up in the Himalayas back in the 1800s, but I do know where they came from. Most appear to have been from Crete, while others from mainland Greece. However, one of the individuals that I was able to analyze with the Global25 was almost certainly an Anatolian Greek. Below are a couple of Principal Component Analyses (PCA) based on the Global25 data. The relevant datasheet is available
here.
I don't yet have a strong opinion about the origins of the earlier, typically South Asian Roopkund dead. They may have been visitors from all over India, or members of different castes from northern India. A PCA with six of these individuals can be seen
here and the relevant datasheet gotten
here. Any thoughts? Feel free to share them in the comments below.
Update 23/08/2019: A new ~1240K SNP genotype dataset with the Roopkund Lake samples is now available
here. More markers means that I can produce more accurate PCA and run almost twice as many of the samples. I've updated all of the datasheets accordingly. The links are the same.
See also...
Getting the most out of the Global25
A surprising twist to the Shirenzigou nomads story
The Poltavka outlier
174 comments:
One individual on Twitter hypothesized that they could have been Janissaries who eventually turned mercenaries and were recruited by Muslim sultans in India. That could possibly be the case but still why did they end up in Roopkund of all places?
Janisseries were mostly recruited from western Balkans ; not Crete
There was a substantial Greek community in Calcutta from the 17th century on. Large enough to warrant building a church.
https://indrajitdas.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/greek-cemetery-kolkata-calcutta/
@Draco,
Yeah, his hypothesis is definitely not a strong one.
One individual on Twitter hypothesized that they could have been Janissaries who eventually turned mercenaries and were recruited by Muslim sultans in India.
Doesn't explain the women in either time transect very well.
The authors will be releasing a dataset on the 1240K array soon
Some soldiers? Or a pilgrimage gone wrong perhaps? Or perhaps a group of a little too adventurous mountaineers.
@epoch
You are right, this is the best explanation, there were Greeks in Calcutta those days:
"Greek or Hellenic Presence – Calcutta was the major commercial Capital not only for British East India Company , like other community it also allured Greeks . Two Greek tombstones, dated 1713 and 1728, it is preserved in the Catholic Cathedral of the Virgin Mary of the Rosary in Murgihatta, Kolkata (Calcutta) Commonly known as Portuguese Church, major prove of presence of Greeks in Calcutta in early 18th Century.
"Although, the first eminent [Greek], who settled in Kolkata(Calcutta) was Alexander Argeery or Hadjee Alexios Argyree from Philippoupolis (According to some documents, Hadjee is a Turkish word and subsequently not to be found in Greek Lexicon) and he came to Bengal in the year of 1750. Greek merchants settled here in Bengal , mostly from Thracian cities of Philippoupolis (Now Plovdiv in Bulgaria) and Adrianoupolis, during the Turko-Russian war, there was huge destruction of their properties and significant number of Greek families migrated here.
"There are around 120 graves, named gravestone is 108 and remaining 12 gravestone is unnamed. Oldest grave is 1777 of Alexander Argeery, who died in Decca (Now Dhaka in Bangladesh) subsequently brought here and newest 1949 but according to Basanta Das, caretaker of the cemetery, the newest one is 2013, grave of a Greek Lady".
https://indrajitdas.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/greek-cemetery-kolkata-calcutta/
Surely the most logical explanation is that they represent a survival of Alexander's legions.
You mean they stayed totally segregated from the Indian population for 2,000 years and still managed not to be inbred?
It was sarcasm, what with all the Greek origin claims for the Kalash, Burusho, Pashtuns, Nuristanis and Lord knows what other ethnic groups in that part of the world.
Where did the Burusho come from, that’s a mystery. Could they be a pre-Andronovo pre-Dravidian relic tribe?
Modern Afghans don’t look European at all, and there must be something else in Pashtun aDNA besides Andronovo. Can it be due to some much later post-Bactrian expansions of Arabs, Turks and Moghuls, or can we attribute modern Afghans to BMAC and/or Botai/Sarazm admixture?
The one obvious Anatolian Greek from this paper shows very little if any Central Asian/Siberian ancestry, and thus Turkic ancestry, which is consistent with other Anatolian Greeks that I've analyzed.
Here's a quick G25 model using this tool:vahaduo.github.io/vahaduo
Target: IND_Roopkund_B_o:I6935
Distance: 4.0006% / 0.04000637
Aggregated
30.6 Anatolia_Tepecik_Ciftlik_N
26.8 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kaps
13.8 Anatolia_Barcin_N
13.8 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
7.8 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
6.8 Levant_PPNB
0.4 Nganassan
Do all the samples show this Greek profile? Also, are the remains supposed to be from much earlier than 1700, unless things have changes recently?
@Andre
"Modern Afghans don’t look European at all"
You know that Afghanistan is really, really diverse, right?
@Andre,
Burosho & brahui are genetically identical to each other. Burosho speak Dravidian, Brahui speak Persian. They are about 30% Persian and 70% something roughly similar to Kalash. I don't know why Burosho speak Dravidian.
@Samuel Andrews & Andrzejewski
Burosho & brahui are genetically identical to each other. Burosho speak Dravidian, Brahui speak Persian.
Are you guys maybe tripping on the same illicit substance?
Burushaski is a language isolate that isn't even closely related to Dravidian. And the Brahui don't speak Persian but in fact northern Dravidian.
Also, the Burusho are very different genetically from the Brahui. The Burusho have less Neolithic ancestry from West Asia, but more Sintashta-related, Siberian and East Asian ancestries. The Brahui are basically identical to the Balochi who speak a Western Iranian language, but not Persian.
In fact, considering their genetics, the Burusho might be related in some way to the Shirenzigou nomads.
And yeah, a small but noticeable proportion of the Burusho and Afghans, including Pashtuns, look more or less European.
I've seen Pashtuns with red hair and bright blue eyes, and that's not an anomaly either, it's kind of semi regular. There's another ethnic group, I think it's the Hazara, who are completely east Asian in appearance, could pass for Chinese easily.
@Bob Floy - Hazara are not completely East Asian in appearance, they are quite heavily mixed. Some do look very Asian, but some look quite mixed, similar to Uzbeks. This guy is Hazara and does not pass for Chinese - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasrullah_Sadiqi_Zada_Nili
@rozenfag
That's all true, and I'm not trying to start an Andre style debate about racial appearances, but I have seen numerous photos of Hazara who could easily have passed for Chinese or maybe Mongolian. My whole point, though, was that "Afghan" isn't an ethnic group.
There are 3 language isolates in the India/Nepal cultural horizon: Burusho, Nihali and Kusunda. I wonder where they all came from. Andronovo per Narisimhan 2018 didn’t pack neither Botai/Sarazm not BMAC so where these languages originated fro is anyone’s guess. It seems however that Dravidian languages came with the Iran_N migrants.
Had to look up the Hazara now that they've been mentioned. They a kind of modern case study; apparently a fusion of Mongol-like groups wiith local Iranian =speakers. They're language Iranian + Altaic elements. Pretty interesting
@Drago
Yeah, they're a very interesting group. Funny thing, I once knew a martial arts instructor who was Hazara, and, everyone just assumed that he was Chinese or Korean. He looked considerably more "eastern" than say, an Uzbek or Tajik.
I guess it depends on who is looking at them. I am Kyrgyz and for me Hazara look like a mixed group. Some of them would fit among Kyrgyz, some among Uzbeks, but none of them would fit among Chinese. Speaking about genetics, they do have a lot of C-F4002 Y-DNA. It would be nice to have a genetic study dedicated to their origin.
@Bob Floy
I kind of agree with your point, just that “ethnic group” doesn’t mean “phenotypic homogeneity” if that’s what you meant.
@rozenfag
I can see how that would give one a different perspective, haha.
Central Asia is really fascinating, and I agree that it would be awesome to have a proper study of the Hazara. Did not know that about the Y-DNA, really interesting.
@Gabriel
Without getting into a long digression about what does or dosen't define an ethnic group, I would say that "Afghan" dosen't meet any criteria that would make sense to me.
@Davidski,
I don't know why you are such as a jerk. I mixed up Burusho with Balochi. Who gives a shit. There's a million random foreign tribe names to memorize you can't expect anyone to know all of them.
I'm one of the most knowledgeable people who posts on this blog. But, this blog is used to have the same boring discussions about Indo Europeans and over and over again so I guess it isn't the place for me.
@davidski,
Could you do a run on the samples by time and closest match? I'd love to know what populations they match, and what they might tell us about SA genetic past.
@Samuel Andrews “But, this blog is used to have the same boring discussions about Indo Europeans and over and over again...”
What’s wrong about wanting to know about the largest component of my ancestry?
@Bob Floy
Right, Afghans are made up of multiple ethnic groups. Phenotypically diverse groups, but ethnic groups nonetheless.
If Afghan is being used as an ethnic designation, it usually just means Pathan/Pashtu. That's even the historical meaning afaik.
Ethnicity based on citizenship makes almost never any sense.
@Aniasi
You can check out the affinities of the IND_Roopkund samples with these tools using their Global25 coordinates...
vahaduo.github.io/vahaduo/
vahaduo.github.io/g25views/#
I'll add more of them to the Global25 datasheets when they become available in a 1240K dataset.
Speaking of Mediterraneans and all...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/741900v1
The article assumes important role of the Meds in LBK at least
Interesting. Thanks.
Wonder if that Individual 1 was somehow related to Blatterhole and Baden...
I wonder which Y haplogroups the "BT" and "CT" bearing guys actually belong to.
We obtained genetic data passing quality control for three out of the four individuals interred at
Brunn 2. No usable genetic data was obtained from Individual 4. Individuals 1-3 were males by
genetic typing. The mitochondrial lineages of Individuals 1-3 were J1, U5a1, and K1b1a (Table
1), while their Y chromosomal lineages were BT, CT, and G2a2a1a, respectively. For Individual 1, we note that we ostensibly observed derived alleles at the diagnostic haplogroup P sites CTS3446 and F212, the R1 site CTS997, and the R1b1a1a2 sites PF6444 and L749 (nomenclature from the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, http://www.isogg.org), but
these were mostly carried on long sequencing reads (41, 96, 74, 131, and 96 bases, respectively), none of which had evidence of ancient DNA damage, so we believe some or all of them to be due to low levels of contamination. We also observed an ancestral allele at the haplogroup R site L1225 (read length 45, likewise not damaged).
It would be good if some guy took a close look at these German farmers. It seems like a curse, because whenever there are cases of R1b in Neolithic Europe we have damaged ADn, pollution, lack of coverage, etc..
Interesting to see hunter-gather admixture in LBK, previously missing in LBK samples to date. Its not only steppe migrations which have been presented over-simplistically. We keep reading how Farmers replaced hunter-gatherers, who then somehow ''bounced back'' - well obviously the wewrent replaced ! Some greater attention by some teams to relative population densities would not go astray. As a result, the prehistory of Europe is reduced to Neolithic migrations & steppe migrations, & therefore miss events in the middle which are very important. Case in point - the suggestion that British farmers came from the Middle East. Nothign wrong if they did, but that's a really twisting the evidence, in fact is outright wrong
@ Gaska
I agree with you in the general respect that the middle Neolithic in Central Europe has been ignored. A paultry few genomes from Germany is pretty lame; considering MPI is centred there
The 1240K SNP dataset is out. I've updated all of the datasheets. There are now 28 of the Roopkund individuals in the Global25 datasheets.
@Drago- Do not worry about the abandonment of the middle Neolithic in Western Europe, sooner or later we will have many more samples and surely we will also have interesting surprises.
Regarding Austrian farmers, their mitochondrial lineages say nothing special because
J1- It has been found in Barcin, Anatolia (6,350 BC), Austria (Brunn), Gurgy (French County-5,018 BC), Alsace, Michelsberg Culture- Iberia, Cave of the Cascajos Navarra (4,500 BC), Cave of Bom Santo ( Portugal-3,675 BC) and Great Britain (Kelco Cave-3,586 BC
K1b1a- has been found in Zemunica Croatia, cardial ceramic-5,886 BC, Schletz, also in Austria (LBK-5,000 BC), Szmely (Hungary), Greece, (Peloponnese-3,897 BC), Iberia, (Fuente Pecina-4,048 BC)
U5a1 it's more interesting because the oldest one comes from Serbia (Iron Gates Mesolithic-8,580 BC), but it also appears in Motala (Sweden), Latvia, and in the Iberian Neolithic. Then it passes to the BB culture (Kromsdorff-Germany and Juncal, Spain)-The presence of mitochondrial lineages from WHGs throughout Europe is much more important than people think, you just have to take a look at the BB sites to check.
I have been away for many days but I have heard rumors that the Etruscans and Italics are R1b. It is true?. Do you know anything?
@Drago you wanna read this article re: Iron Gates forager/farmer interactions:
http://discovermagazine.com/2018/nov/the-farmer-and-the-forager
@Drago https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/25/15685614/hunter-gatherers-farming-spread-europe-dna-sex
“Early farmers and hunter-gatherers got it on with each other, study says
It helps us understand how farming spread in Europe
“It’s the first time we can really show that hunter-gatherers and farmers really mixed,” Hofreiter says. “There was no positive evidence before.” The finding shows that, when it comes to the spread of farming across Europe, “actually the situation is very variable,” says study co-author Clive Bonsall, a professor of early prehistory at the University of Edinburgh.”
———
PS That HG reconstruction from Spain looks quite like some modern European people.
@Bob Floy
"I wonder which Y haplogroups the "BT" and "CT" bearing guys actually belong to."
I reckon simply G2a. All LBK Y-DNA haplogroups that resolved far enough were G2a.
@epoch-That is because the Kurganists are blind, and you are not interested in knowing the truth. Surely your anthrogenica friends also see G2a. If you have to follow the criteria of your friend Rms2 (that you mentioned in another thread), you will surely continue looking for P312 in the steppes, and denying any evidence of R1b in Central and Western Europe. In a short time more than one person will have to stop making a fool of himself.
@epoch-You should also know that both in Blatterhole and in Baalberge culture, there are R1b and they are German Neolithic cultures, it is not surprising that many more cases of R1b appear even in the Michelsberg culture. Delenda est Yamnaya
@epoch-You also forgot about this gentleman-I0795- Germany, Karsdorf, Neolithic-LBK (0,15)- (5.140 BC)- Hap Y-T1a. Mit-H1
"We confirm that Mediterranean populations, represented in our study by individuals associated with the Epicardial Early Neolithic from Iberia, are closely related to Danubian populations represented by the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) from central Europe and that both are closely related to the Balkan Neolithic population. These three populations form a clade with the NW Anatolian Neolithic individuals as an outgroup, consistent with a single migration into the Balkan peninsula, which then split into two"
You know who wrote this?- Iain Mathieson, last year
Therefore, if you only recognize G2a, it is that you are truly blind or do not know the LBK well-
@Gaska In the article I quoted for @Drago there was a paragraph re: replacement of foragers in Central and Western Europe vis-a-vis a more integration and intermarriage in SE Europe (Balkan, LBK). But we all know that Western and Central European Neolithic societies- Rössen, Michelsberg etc had much more WHG rich blood lines than the former ones.
Sorry Blatterhole and Baalberge
The biorxiv paper has just appeared so it will increase its data with every new edition.
I hope that it will be peer-reviewed and and appear in some journal.
What really troubles me it's that even now, that we now that the Neolithics of Anatolia, Levante etc. did not have the impact that they were supposed of having prior to 2013 both in demographic terms and cultural ones as well, people (i.e. scientists) have the propensity to "find" them everywhere!!!
It's like "Mediterraneans here, Mediterraneans there, Mediterraneans everywhere"!!!
When steppe folk is concerned in order to accept its presence the samples have to pass through "hell and fire".
On the contrary there is a leniency when it comes to Neolithic proto-farmers.
Honestly guys i don't know how many of the Meds that appear in articles are real Meds and not mixbreeds or something parallel!
The term Meds has become a "tabula rasa" and anyone that has a specific mtDNA or Y-DNA Haplogroup is labelled as Mediterranean.
It would have been very helpful if we had an anthropological study as well (where possible) to really observe how many different breeds have the same "genetic outfit".
Haplogroups are not species or races (sensu lato) and sometimes they are not even clades
@Rick Hern
The Baden culture was more like an amalgamation of various sub-cultures.
The same can be said for Boleraz.
The Late Baden had "included" elements that could be attributed to Baalberge but more scrutinized research is required to label the cultural identity of Individual 1
@ Sofia Aurora
Well, what's the meaning of Med or Mediterranean? Of course there's stuff like the Mediterranean cuisine, but originally, in our context, the word Med means nothing but a racial type in physical anthropology. But there are variants, like the small, gracile Mediterranean, the taller Atlanto-Mediterranean, and Coon even considered the Nordic type a depigmented Mediterranean. He also considered peninsular Arabs to be part of the Mediterranean race, while Bertil Lundman in contrast counted these among a closely related, but different Arabid race, and instead considered Mesopotamians, Iranians and Northern Indians as Eastern Mediterraneans. In short: Mediterranean can be a terribly vague term, referring to all sorts of dark pigmented leptodolichomporphic people. In popular culture it's even worse, because the average Joe doesn't know these factual details, so to him Mediterranean can be anything southern European-like looking, even brachycephalic people. Egon v. Eickstedt instead only considered parts of Europe and Northern Africa as Mediterranean, but he called them Westisch, i.e. Western race, not Mediterranean. This is all very elderly thought, and not useful, but knowing the basic genetic relationships you can make some sense of it: The western Anatolian ANF and the Starcevo-Körös-Kris-to-LBK ENF were physically a variant of the gracile Mediterraneans and their closest living relatives, the Sardinians, are probably the most gracile Med population in the world. Moreover we know the metrically very Nordic looking central European Corded Ware was only partly steppe and partly ENF, which explains easily why it was more gracile than pure steppe people. And we know that ENF ancestry also increases from eastern Europe towards western Europe and the Atlantic fringe, hence it makes sense that Eickstedt called the Mediterranean type Western. In any case, Sardinians and MN European farmers are mildly WHG admixed, so you could say Mediterraneans may have some low-level WHG admixture, they are a mixed race or stabilised blend. And even though it seems true to me that the steppe ancestry of especially northern Europeans is underrepresented in the mainstream media, it's also undeniably true that the EEF ancestry still does make up a large proportion of the ancestry even in northern countries like Germany or Britain.
And in the Roopkund Lake paper Mediterranean or Eastern Mediterranean refers very simply to the inferred geographic roots of part of these people, suggested by genetic affinity. Or since (as David says) they were similar to Cretan and Anatolian Greeks, to a population with strong ENF and Anatolia_BA and lower steppe admixture. Indeed it doesn't necessarily mean they were all physically Mediterranean in type.
@ Sofia Aurora
In the paper you linked they refer to the Cardium Pottery people as Mediterranean, simply because they were excavated in the Mediterranean region. LBK instead is called Danubian and just genetically similar to the Cardium Pottery people, but this has been known for a while. In general, genomic papers seem to use the term Mediterranean mainly in a geographic sense, refering to the origin of samples.
@Simon y’all keep ignoring @Drago’s comment re: WHG ancestry
Andrzejewski
That article “”It’s the first time we can really show that hunter-gatherers and farmers really mixed,” Hofreiter says. ”
Well Hofreter seems to have forgotten Gamba 2015; which showed Ko1 as an earlier acculturated predominantly Forager ancestry person
But this nice little study also adds isotopic data to
@‘SimonW
Yep; not really sure what Sofia is going on about here
@Simon_W
Dear Simon
I wrote Meds in order to avoid the longer word Mediterraneans being written over and over again.
When i said that, where possible, an anthropological study must take place along with the genetics one i meant a physical anthropological survey.
What you reffered is more "phenetic anthropology" that passed as physical i.e. biological in the end of 19th century and the first half of the 20th.
Nowadays biological anthropology (including physican & genetic anthropology) have the tools and the experience to give us a complete image of the past.
Physical anthropology goes well beyond the..."hair and eye color, the cranial and head index and we are well beyond the Lamarckian or Lyssenkoist "plasticity" of the skeleton".
The same rules that govern paleontology and paleoanthropology do so in anthropology!
Why is it only the latter that it is looked down?
As for the Meds from Crete, Anatolia, Mainland Greece or even worse the Mediterranean that you say that the paper refers specifically, bardon me, but it is the juxtapoint of specification!
The Meds that you mention are so diverse phenotypically as they are genetically. They do not only look different but they are different in terms of ancestry!
I can not accept that their differences are just..."different adaptations and natural selections" made by a biblical kind of providence and its mechanisms called by anti-racialists "Environment" or "Nature" in order to "protect its creations".
@Drago
Please read the post of mine to Simon.
I hope it will disolve your querries
This is my analysis of the ancestry of the Roopkund_B individuals:
I6936 and I3404 appear to be Mainland Greeks.
I6397 may be a South Italian.
I3405, I6939, and I3403 seem to be Cretans, but possibly also South Italians.
I6935 is a Cappadocian Greek (from Central Anatolia).
However, I3350 appears to be Italian.
You can view this PDF in Chrome, or download an open-source PDF reader for searching. Adobe Reader can't handle a PDF this big:
Global25 Ward's distance-squared clustering tree
Why Greeks in Early Modern India? Perhaps this can explain it:
Three Centuries of Hellenic Presence in India
Roopkund Y SNP calls
The Roopkund_A South Asian individuals appear to be a diverse group:
I6938 and I2871 appear to be a Brahmins from Gujarat.
I2872 is a Gujarati, but it isn't clear if I2872 is a Brahmin or not.
I3406 appears to be a Brahmin from Uttar Pradesh.
I3352 and I3346 appear to be Iyer Brahmins, or a related Brahmin group.
I6934 appears to be a Gujar or a Punjabi Jat.
I3343 and I3354 appear to be a Punjabis from Lahore.
I7036 appears to be a Kamboj, a Kshatriya caste.
I2868 and I7035 seem to be Dusadh or Pallan (Pallar).
I6942 appears to be a Pallan.
I3342, I6941 and I6944 seem to be Dharkar from Uttar Pradesh.
I6946 appears to be a Paniya or Irula a from a tribal or scheduled caste.
So what we have here is a mix of upper caste individuals, and what appear to be a few lower caste individuals. Perhaps the upper caste individuals were Brahmins on pilgrimage or court retainers, and the lower caste individuals were their servants?
@ Sofia
Yes I was kind of in a hurry when I wrote that. I actually wanted to say Baalberge and Blatterhole...
@ Gaska
Still does not explain where R1b Z2103 and his Brother L51 went their seperate ways...I'm starting to think that the Baltic region and Forest Steppe might be an option....
@Open Genomes
As I commented earlier, I agree the best explanation of the Mediterranean people presence in the Hymalayas can be attested through a Greek cemetery in Bengal around 1800 BCE, but still I wonder how these people reached Uttarakhand region moving more than 1000 km (from Calcutta to Roopkund).
On the other hand, it would be interesting to take samples from that Bengali cemetery in order to see if genetical connections are possible.
@ Gaska
Don't forget U5a1 in Mesolithic Russia etc. So very widely spread mostly towards the East early on and later towards the West...
@JuanRivera
Srubnaya and Sintashta definitely weren't derived from Bell Beakers in any way, if that's what you're suggesting.
Even Unetice in Central Europe wasn't a Bell Beaker offshoot.
@ Gaska
R1b Blatterhohle was V88...
And in damaged DNA there are always derived calls on high levels: from P or R1 to R1b1a1a...etc there are too many SNPs to check, so it is impossible to say if it's genuinely a R-M269 sample or only a P one. If you have complete the path from P to R-M269, so it is a genuine M269 sample. But it isn't.
It's time for you to stop to be highly aggressive: I read some posts of yours where you state that if Etruscans are R1b like Basques, so R1b isn't steppic or anything like this. A statement like that is heavily impregnated by personal bias and scarce linguistic knowledge: where and how on Earth and Heaven Vasconic and Tyrsenic languages are linked???
Juan actually makes a point. There of course was a population replacement on the steppe - of Yamnaya & Catacomb by Andronovo*. Even individuals from from eastern parts of Andronovo pack heaps of MNE, and there's the R1b -> R1a shift.
This is very important, and suggests (somewhat surprisingly) that Srubnaya might have originated from further west, and did not simply ''evolve'' from Poltavka.
I also remember Slumberry & ''Music Lover '' were in denial about this.
I also note that Narasinham didn't illustrate that adequately, instead created a wishy-washy Yamnaya-based map (figure 4.a)
Nah, it was pretty clear ages ago that Sintashta-Petrovka and related cultures, like Srubnaya, came from well to the west of Poltavka. In other words, from deep in Europe. This is from back in 2016...
The Poltavka outlier
I don't think anyone in their right mind would still argue against this idea.
The funny thing is that on the steppe Bell Beaker-like populations rich in R1a replaced the older groups rich in R1b, while in many parts of the former Corded Ware complex Sintashta-like populations rich in R1b replaced the older groups rich in R1a. Hehe.
Just goes to show that it doesn't pay to rely solely on Y-haplogroups.
@Blasonario Cremonese-
For a long time in anthrogenica I ignored your provocations not only because of your lack of archeological and genetic knowledge but because it seemed pathetic to me to have to argue with a lackey of the troll admins of that blog. So apologizing to the rest of the people who participate in this blog, in this case if I'm going to answer you
For an eminent genealogy expert like you, who also has developed the famous theories of the John Smith Kurgan Bell Beaker culture (with the invaluable help of Rms2) and the theory of the similarity of European prehistoric pottery, it should not be very difficult to understand that the eastern branches of R1b (V1636 and Z2013), are totally different from the western branches of the lineage (R1b-P312) and that sooner or later R1b-L51/P311 etc. will appear in any Neolithic culture of Central and Western Europe, despite the effort of the Kurganists to avoid it. Any attempt to deny the evidence is ridiculous and therefore sooner or later many people will have to rethink their positions.
Regarding the linguistic debate, I suppose that the guardians of Kurganist ultra-orthodoxy and their lackeys in anthrogenica will continue to support the theory of the expansion of the IE language by haplogroup R1b-M269 and more specifically by P312 thanks to the BB culture-For many people, the genetic results of the Hittites, Mycenaeans, Basques, Iberians, and Tartessians have meant realizing that at least we have to appreciate that the BB culture did NOT speak an IE language and that the extension of the languages related to it in Western Europe it is probably much later (probably the Celts of the Iron age).
This would obviously entail the definitive destruction of the Gimbuta's Kurgan theory in its traditional formulation, but we all have to understand that no prehistoric culture (not even the famous steppe cultures) were genetically homogeneous enough to link a particular language to a certain uniparental marker (much less a certain autosomal marker)-If the origin of IE is in the steppes, what culture spoke it? For example, if it was Khavlynsk, it turns out that the least there are 4 male lineages involved (R1a, R1b I suppose V1636 and Z2013, Q1a and even J) Don't you realize that it doesn't make any sense? If it was the Yamnaya culture it would speak IE Z2013, V1636, I2a, and if it were the Maykop culture another bunch of lineages that have nothing to do with Western Europe.
You mentioned the Etruscans and my little linguistic knowledge. Indeed I am not a linguist and I also speak a Non-IE language. But I am Western European and the Basques (and also the Aquitanians, Iberians and Etruscans) are the demonstration that Europe is not only the steppes, the Yamnaya culture and the IE language.Despite my few linguistic knowledge, I know that the Etruscans spoke a NO-IE language, and if they turn out to be R1b (in any of its western branches), it will be the definitive nail in the coffin of the Kurgan culture.
I have never said that the Etruscan and Basque were related, but I have said that the Etruscan plots very close to the Iberians and therefore there must be a link probably related to the BB culture, between Spain and northern Italy, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily.
I think you should focus on studying your lineage and stop bothering others
“Just goes to show that it doesn't pay to rely solely on Y-haplogroups.“
Nor just autosomes; as per the current crop of dishonest and uninformed accountants
Regarding the issue of the "Meds", quoting Coon is not a good idea because this man who apparently is a reference in North America in Europe is considered a true ignorant. The Mediterranean world is very large and covers large regions of Europe, Africa and Asia. There are many races, phenotypes, peoples and cultures that inhabit this part of the world. We Spaniards have many kilometers of coastline in the Mediterranean, but we have more kilometers in the Atlantic Ocean and in the Cantabrian Sea. We are less Mediterranean than the Greeks, Jews, Italians, Egyptians or Turks, and although genetics has shown that we are much more similar to the French or the English than to the Italians or the Greeks, we will undoubtedly always prefer to be Mediterranean rather than British, Anglo-Saxon or Russian.
@ Gaska
First of all, thanks again to give me the certainty you actually are a 8 y.o. child who can't discover the difference between metaphors and actual meanings of words. The John Smith theory was invented by you as a way to provoke me... and I'm the provoker! Please, be quiet and think about your devious and bad-taste behaviour before dealing with me... it's probably because I'm used to deal with people with a minimal education. That John Smith thing was only a way to explain you a thing... well: mission not accomplished... you didn't understand last time... you don't understand now. And again: only you are speaking about a John Smith theory... in my post (that, thanks God, is yet on the web) I only took John Smith as an example... but it's up to you to show us how is fashionable to be a minstrel who repeats the same things again and again.
You even don't understand how much did you provoke me until I began to answer badly to you... but, as an old (not so old) conversation about immigration topics and Italian involvement in it between us enlightened me about your double standard attitude... but it's not your problem: it seems you were trained to think in a double-standard way. I remember you were angry against Italy because it was the first time it closed its ports and Spain welcame the NGO ship in its port (I don't remember which one) and you acted like Spain was the hero of entire world. I remember that I answered to you that, in the last 10 years, Italy welcame millions of immigrants without pointing its finger against anyone. But you know: savoir-faire isn't your way to deal with others and also good taste isn't. Don't worry: I thought you were a rude and devious person also before our conversation.
About what lineage I'm interested in, it's not your business. I don't even care a single piece of my attention to my own lineage, because it's more or less sure its historical path. I'm much more interested in R1b history, because it's gloomy and not resolved. Are you happy? I'm sure R1b history hasn't resolved yet and steppe vs western origin is for me the same. I only said to you that, papers at hand, it's more likely the steppe. Then, I know the difference between different subclades of R1b... it seems that you don't understand well that difference.
The main difference between us, instead, is that I can speak about R1b without being biased... you, on the contrary, are!
Last thing: I don't know what you friend Gioiello wanted to do, but his message (that, probably, he erased just after posting) was really heavy offensive. If that's the provoking way of mine... well, look at the mirror before.
Please get back on topic everyone.
@Bob Floy
There is more LBK Y-DNA than G2a. There is a Hungarian C1a2, there is T1a and even, how could I have forgotten, I1!
So you are right. Would have been interesting to see those.
@Davidski."Just goes to show that it doesn't pay to rely solely on Y-haplogroups"
Ok, but I suppose you will agree to admit that the solution will only be reached using all the knowledge available to us (uniparental markers, autosomal markers), archeology and linguistics. It is possible that some clues lead us to different conclusions, which in the genetic issue is more than evident because the autosomes take us to the steppes and the uniparental markers, both female and male, to the West. How to solve the problem? Being as honest as we can, that's why I often think that geneticists should not get into archeological or linguistic arguments to satisfy certain agendas.
Most people in continental Europe do not have much interest in genetics (unlike in North America where there is a true genetic boom) and yet we Europeans have to be careful because our identity is at stake. We cannot put aside the problem of migration and the political use of genetics because even if a steppe origin was finally demonstrated for R1b-L51, we have had enough time in Western Europe (4,500 years-135 generations) to feel that this is our land and this is our origin. And we cannot allow public opinion to end by assuming that we have origins in Iran, Mesopotamia, the southern Caucasus or the Levant without having sufficient evidence for it (in any case it is a problem that the Kurganists have created without realizing the consequences)
Why geneticists do not take more care of the French, Italian German or Balkan Neolithic?. Why don't we study our own cultures well and then we speculate on the origin of other peoples? If they take away our identity, Europe and Europeans have no future.
You are right in saying that solutions and explanations should not be sought south of the Caucasus either for our lineages or for European languages (whether IE or not)
@Drago
"...that Srubnaya might have originated from further west, and did not simply ''evolve'' from Poltavka. ... I also remember Slumberry & ''Music Lover '' were in denial about this. "
I am afraid you did not understand what I said or just remember wrong. I was on the opinion that Sintashta and Srubnaya came from west of their respective ranges even since their aDNA came up. I had problems only with the idea that they came from as west as the Unetice territory (specifically from Unetice even) and I still hold this opinion. Not that it is impossible, but the currently available data does not support that theory.
@Gaska Spaniard = on avg.:
50% Anatolia_N/Barcin
25% WHG (LaBrana) or Magdalenians
20% Steppe
5% North African
@ Slumbery
Slumberry-> “Also Sintashta supposedly have a good archaeological continuity with Abasevo and Abasevo is older than Unetice (and does not show apparent western connections either). ”
Me: “No western connections apart from the 35% EEF
I’m not sure how much continuity we can guess at present b/w Abashevo and Sintashta given the lack of aDNA
The sudden increase in complexity after 2000 BC in the Urals warns against it ; as does the EEF admixture.
I’m looking toward MDC ; which falls into the european Bronze Age orbit “
Not that it matters; but you should work on your recollections
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/04/early-chariot-drivers-of-transcaucasia.html?m=1
@Drago
It is not your memory then, you just misunderstand. At least this became clear.
"I’m not sure how much continuity we can guess at present b/w Abashevo and Sintashta given the lack of aDNA"
Archaeological: adjective, of or relating to archaeology.
“No western connections apart from the 35% EEF
1. At that part I talked about archaeology. Abasevo did not have apparent direct/immediate Central European roots in its material culture.
2. Also, in the context of that discussion western = Unetice territory, since that was the idea I was arguing against.
I hope this helped to clear things for you about my standpoint.
The EFF ancestry of Srubnaya and Sintashta possibly had a very westerly roots at a certain time depth and Srubnaya and Sintashta clearly represent a west to east movement (relative to their respective Geographical range). However from Poltavka outlier we know that people who would pass as Srubnaya/Sintashta people in terms of genome-wide ancestry and also had R1a-Z93 were already on Steppe before Unetice even existed at the other hand we have the complete lack of R1a-Z93 in Unetice territory before the Iron Age when it arrived with the Scythian.
It's certainly a delicious mystery how the R1a-packed Sredny Stog II, Poltavka outlier, and main cluster Sintashta individuals are related and where and when they formed exactly. Also, we can easily add Bulgaria_MLBA to this line up.
It's tempting to think that they're all derived from the Sredny Stog II population, which probably took form when Eneolithic groups from the Caspian steppe started mixing on the North Pontic steppe with groups derived from local foragers and newly arrived farmers from the west.
But it's probably not that simple, and indeed still possible that the same mix happened several times over in different places, although the high frequencies of the fairly specific R1a-Z93 in these groups and individuals suggests that they do, at least to a large extent, derive from the same gene pool on the steppe.
@ Slumberry
I think you’re misunderstanding- I did not suggest that Sintashta or Poltavka outlier came from Unetice, which would obviously be lineage-discordant. But their overall ancestry & culture points to the west; and Poltavka outlier seems to be a precoccious move East. The final realisation of Sintasha represents an extension of a European Bronze Age system to the southern Urals. This is multidimensional analysis; not a statement simply on genomes.
It's okay if you don't understand this.
''Archaeological: adjective, of or relating to archaeology. ''
Well that archaeologist doesn't seem to be correct, yet again.
' It's certainly a delicious mystery how the R1a-packed Sredny Stog II, Poltavka outlier, and main cluster Sintashta individuals are related and where and when they formed exactly. Also, we can easily add Bulgaria_MLBA to this line up.''
Perhaps a longue duree development in the western-steppe, with periodic shifts in prevailing trade, migration & exogamy networks. For some reason*, c. 24/2200 BC they really began to command the steppe. Obviously there were links between Sintashta & Europe. The recurring motifs which begin to emerge from the Nordic Bronze Age to Hungary to Helladic Greece warrant more attention than speculations about Khvalynsk; Dereivka; Progress; Varna or C-T
* reasons include : collapse of Yamnaya; migration of catacomb; expansion of BB west
3000+/-years of Continuity of uniterupted R1b-z2103+V1636 Elite status burials along the Volga.Exciting to see the new results for Khvalynsk.
@ a
Did they publish the paper?
I’m not sure about 3000 years ?
Z2013 appears to have dominated from 3600 (but possibly earlier) to 24/220o BC; profiting from & then apparently taking over Majkop
Ekaterinburg should be really interesting
BC-not yet. Drago the R1b elite burial status lines have remained in tact for thousands of years along Volga.Despite Sintashta, Scythians, Sarmatians,Huns,Mongols Turks. The lines have remained unbroken and uncucked for thousands of years along the Volgs. I would compare Roman empire or Sintashta, but there is not enough samples of elite burials.
It's not the Y-haplogroup that lingers on the steppe the longest that's important for the Indo-European question, but the one that suddenly goes BOOM!
Think about it.
@ Davidski
Couldn't the same be argued for the Y-Haplogroup who went Boom in Western Europe ?
@a
R1b-z2103 and R1b-V1636 are full different haplogroups. They don't come from one another.
Davidski said...
"It's not the Y-haplogroup that lingers on the steppe the longest that's important for the Indo-European question, but the one that suddenly goes BOOM!
Think about it."
I'm just parroting xx work/opinion's on successful starburst R1b-Z2103>z2109+ R1b>z2103>z2109 on the Great Eurasian Steppe expansion[2,500 miles from east to west and between 200 and 600 miles from north to south] from Vucedol/Hungary/Poland to Mongolia occurred 1000+/- years before Sintashta fortifications were erected. If that does not qualify as a genetic boom on the Steppe I don't know what does. To boot, even the R1b-Fredo and R1a-Sintashta lines were not able to take out the original R1b-Z2103>z2109 males from the Khvalynsk and Volga lines[5000+/-] as they expanded in opposite trajectories.
@ a
If the paper hans't come out yet, how can you be so sure of the subclades of R1b in Khvalynsk?
I mean, the new paper by David Anthony doesn't specify the exact subclades of R1b...
"@a
R1b-z2103 and R1b-V1636 are full different haplogroups. They don't come from one another."
No they were in close proximity to each other, just like fair featured HG M73+, perhaps they even derive from the same language. And maybe the same reason we see that z2103+ and v1636 did not have evidence of flax or terrace cultivation. Ever notice that the ancient Georgian samples[5000-30000+/-] used linen/flax fibers, some even being dyed?How many kurgans with or without wagons contained [linen] twine or clothing made from flax in their burial rites?Can the word for flax/linen in proto-Indo-Iranian?
Blasonario Cremonese said...
@ a
If the paper hans't come out yet, how can you be so sure of the subclades of R1b in Khvalynsk?
I mean, the new paper by David Anthony doesn't specify the exact subclades of R1b..."
Your right. Let's wait and see....
Drago: For some reason*, c. 24/2200 BC they (Steppe_MLBA R1a) really began to command the steppe.
Looking at the sequence of y-dna from Narasimhan's supplement, and putting into sequence: https://imgur.com/a/yL8ApTD
It seems by the samples available to Narasimhan (and there may now be more, certainly Wang's data would supplement this), although the steppe deme set is vast, they don't actually have much in the interval with mean BP 2400-2200. (If the list seems too short, all other samples are female).
Taking mean BP at face value (and yes, wide age intervals, and yes, papers get the y wrong), then there still a good bit of y diversity in samples that bridge 2050 BCE to 1850 BCE, though R1a is dominant.
The communities with really solid dominance of R1a seem to have more of a tendency to be those which are later and positioned relatively south and east, perhaps as a tendency of exploring more outlying and thinly population environments combining with founder effects.
It could be that the crossover happened in 2400-2200 BCE, but the dataset so far seems to thin to be able to speak on the subject.
As above, merging in the Wang et al 2019 data for sequences: https://imgur.com/a/uyET3Kd
(although, yes, this misses at least one early R1a in Steppe_Maykop).
It's probably a good argument that putting Sredny Stog II in there as well would be useful.
@a
Linen is not a Proto-Indo-European word. The Proto-Indo-European people didn't cultivate linen. They used wool.
R1b-Z2103 and R1b-V1636 are very rare haplogroups. R1b-V1636 is very very very very rare haplogroup. R1b-Z2103 and R1b-V1636 are very far kindred, the time of difference is more 15000 ybp.
"Linen is not a Proto-Indo-European word. The Proto-Indo-European people didn't cultivate linen. They used wool.
R1b-Z2103 and R1b-V1636 are very rare haplogroups. R1b-V1636 is very very very very rare haplogroup. R1b-Z2103 and R1b-V1636 are very far kindred, the time of difference is more 15000 ybp."
Yes, exactly my point.R1b-V1636 and R1b-Z2103>Z2108/9+ specifically KMS75[lets narrow down the field of specific snp's since modern Bashkirs share this snp with ancient Yamna found in Kurgans dating 5000YBP+/-] Even though both branches are separated by 15k+/-we know that Progress R1b-V1636 can be used in KMS-75 models[Yamnaya_RUS_Caucasus
RUS_Progress_En_PG2001 0.808±0.058
RUS_Steppe_Maykop 0.000
UKR_Sredny_Stog_II_En_I6561 0.192±0.058
chisq 13.859
tail prob 0.383882
Full output]. Furthermore we may be able to construct both R1b-V1636&KMS-75 with a combination of--https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4270521-- 26K+/-Dzudzuana & Satsurblia/Kotias, CHG, 11100-11400 BC+EHG and or ANE.
@Davidski,
"But it's probably not that simple, and indeed still possible that the same mix happened several times over in different places, although the high frequencies of the fairly specific R1a-Z93 in these groups and individuals suggests that they do, at least to a large extent, derive from the same gene pool on the steppe."
I made the exact same point last year. But you dis agreed. You said something about a genetic continuum between Ukraine and Samara. That Sintashta simply came from the western edge of the continuum but didn't represent a separate population.
Not just same gene pool but the exact same ancestor. They were all the same people/ethnic group. Y DNA was tied to ethnicity in Neolithic, Bronze age Europe.
qpAdm can't really tell the difference between Karelia_HG and Samara_HG. Global25 probably can't either in most cases. It'll often switch back and forth depending on what else is in the model because Karelia_HG and Samara_HG are so similar.
There's a post and interesting comment thread about Bolshoy_Oleni_Ostrov here. It has some ancestry from Central Asia (mtDNA T2d1b1).
How did Y-haplogroup N1c get to Bolshoy Oleni Ostrov?
@Matt
Those R1a-rich populations weren't just exploring. They were moving into areas where they could link up economically with the Bronze Age city states of Central and West Asia, and later even China.
After these city states collapsed they migrated south in a big way as far as India.
Heh, we've discussed in more and better detail what was going on in around South and Central Asia, and what the extent samples can and can't tell us, in the other thread... I'm gonna have to pass on further talking about what the role of those southern reaching Steppe_MLBA related Central Asian populations was or was not, any further here.
Well, there's plenty of literature on the topic as far as the archeology and linguistics are concerned, we've both read plenty of it, and we both know what the consensus is.
Forgot to say- Srubnaya is the western anlage of Andronovo. We can therefore infer that they’ll be R1a-Z93; and this is supported by Z93 appearing in MBA Thrace
Thus for Z93 appears to have been the dominant western steppe lineage until the Goths & Huns arrived
Finally, here we have the first R1a-L657 in ancient DNA, I6942 R-Y928 (mtDNA R30b2a):
Harney et al. (2019) Roopkund Y-SNPs
R-Y928 on the YFull tree
I6942 Y-DNA R-Y928 mtDNA R30b2a on the Global25 Ward's distance-squared clustering tree
The date is 770-887 CE. Autosomally he clusters with Pallar (Pallan), Mala, Madiga, Maratha, Hakkipikki, and North Kannadi. These are South Indian Tamil castes.
A fascinating coincidence is that Diana, Princess of Wales, and her sons Princes William and Harry are also at least mtDNA R30b.
It's no coincidence Open Genomes, the direct maternal line of Diana comes from an Indian woman.
@Drago Vucedol R1b-z2103 maybe a link between Steppe and Albanian. We don't know for sure. The Steppe handled outright challenges of opponents with lethal force. This contrast with other cultures elevated with R1b. Rumor has it Caesor last words were Fredo"you broke my heart."
Adjusted versions of those plots from my above post plotting y-dna groups over time in the steppe deme, using latitude/longitude* against time: https://imgur.com/a/gNHTgD7
I am quite struck by how there does seem to be a bit of an acceleration of y diversity towards the tail of Poltavka->Sintashta-Potopovka sequence, with Sintashta with its plentiful outliers, only to decline afterwards. Both the Potapovka males seem to have been R1a-M417, however we know that the autosome of the Potapovka samples that get through to G25 is in anything more diverse than Sintashta, and the samples we have are generally dated earlier (e.g. I0244 is like the West Siberian Srubnaya outlier, I7670 and I7489 are Catacomb like and only I0419 is truly close to the general Steppe_MLBA cluster).
Just as seems to have been predicted by bioarchaeology on cranial traits ("The Final Middle Bronze Age Potapovka-Sintashta population of the Middle Volga region was the most heterogenous population of the Bronze Age, with many new population elements from the forest zone, from the steppes east of the Ural Mountains and perhaps from the North Caucasus or the lower Volga regions. This diversity carried through into the Bronze Age population, although to a lesser degree" - https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KWmRDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA122).
These groups must have mixed together, but the clan/subpopulation dynamics probably led to the most frequent haplogroup from the ultimately largest contributing group (the main Sintashta cluster) tending to become the dominant y-dna founder. Ultimately it seems like their descendant culture were very Corded Ware like in their autosome and y, however there is quite a bit of diversity in the autosome and y composition during these groups' formation.
Then that is followed by the more homogenous Srubnaya phase, where "It is considered that the Late Bronze Age (Srubnaya) is characterised by a lack of inter-societal conflict due to the acquisition of new resources. This is believed to have resulted in a change in societial structure from one which focused on status to one which may have had an emphasis on horizontal differentiation, such as kinship (Epimakhov 2009, 87)" (https://pure.qub.ac.uk/portal/files/42562597/CHAPTER_8_Murphy_and_Khokhlov_pdf.pdf). Khokhlov also notes "an overwhelming dominance of children's burials" in contrast to othe earlier period, a well as "not only burial monuments but many settlements". Also when a reduction in body size occurs (but no shift to caries prevalence suggesting more agricultural diet, which comes later with Iron Age groups that seem to be more securely Iranian and more able to support a cavalry elite).
In contrast to "The Sintashta and Potapovka cultures are generally characterized by a major increase in demand for metal and they are believed to have been largely warrior societies (Anthony 2007, 391; see also Anthony 2009 and Chernykh 2009)."
*long and lat, plus a small random variable to avoid samples plotting on top of each other
@Matt
On Catacomb and Poltavka culture was a military invasion of a post-corded cultures: Volsk-Lbische, Abashevo, Babino, Potapovka, then Catacomb and Poltavka cultures were destroyed and populations have changed completely created Srubnaya culture. On the Srubnaya culture wasn't attacked. Many burial of Poltavka culture come from the attacker at her of Volsk-Lbische culture.
There you go Matt, it was an invasion.
Quote from an interesting read which came to my attention this morning - "Eurasian Steppe Chariots and Social Complexity During the Bronze Age (Chechushkov, 2018)" -
"Anthony stated that chariots were invented in the southern Ural steppes (Anthony 2009, p. 62); however, it is important to underline the fact that the Sintashta–Petrovka two-wheelers represent already-developed technology, and do not have known local prototypes. Even the earliest types of shield-shaped cheekpieces have very developed attributes and demonstrate long-term preceding evolution.
Since the whole Sintashta phenomenon was likely developed not in the Urals, but elsewhere (Vinogradov 2011), chariot technology also likely developed before the year 2000 BC in the Sintashta homeland, which is the Don–Volga interfluve.
The reference point might be two-wheeled carts from the Catacomb culture, the Sintashta predecessor, dated to cal. 2400–2200 BC (Korenevskiy et al. 2007, p. 111;Pustovalov 2008). These might be the prototypes for the later Sintashta–Petrovka chariot complex."
(Elaborate burials of the Catacomb culture, especially with wagons and carts, are interpreted as those of high-status people, possibly chiefs and warlords of local communities (Cherednichenko and Pustovalov 1991). At the beginning of this period, the first two-wheeled vehicles in the steppes appeared and were buried in the cemeteries of Tyagunova Mogila (Cherednichenko and Pustovalov 1991; Pustovalov 2008) and Bolshoi Ipatovskyi Kurgan (Korenevskiy et al. 2007), both in the Black Sea region. These carts have small (up to 60 cm diameter), single-piece disk wheels with an integral nave independently rotating on the axle. They can thus be seen as forerunners of an actual chariot, similar to those vehicles known in the Near East at this time. The role of domestic horse in the economy of the Catacomb people is unclear; however, the undoubted presence of horses as ritual offerings in the burials suggests their great importance (Andreeva 2009; Shishlina et al. 2014))
Nah, the Catacomb culture isn't ancestral to Sintashta and solid wheeled wagons aren't the forerunners of light spoked-wheel chariots.
Both claims are downright ridiculous.
@interesting if there's a match in horse dna between the two regions.Since there are burials stratified beneath Sintashta.
Shame for the chariot technology expert behind this thesis, a person closely acquainted with academic archaeology understanding the complex's genesis and immediate precursors, to be wrong about something such as this... The technology for the chariot must have come from somewhere else which provides no known predecessors, then...
(Just as when he writes, However, the relationships between the geographical entities and chronological phases of the whole development (of Abashevo-Pokrovka) are still widely debated (for discussion see Semenova 2000; Pryakhin 2011), as are its relationships with the Catacomb, Fatyanovo, Balanovo and other cultures of the Middle Bronze Age. He must be ignorant that Archi has already explained it).
Well, for one, he probably didn't have the insights that we do now from ancient DNA. Like, for instance, Sredny Stog II being Sintashta-like well before Catacomb, and probably even with the same R1a subclade, which is unlikely to ever show up in Catacomb.
As for chariots, indeed let's leave it to the experts, but keep in mind that they haven't been able to reach a consensus on how Sintashta got the idea to develop the spoked-wheel chariot, and this is just one opinion that you're quoting.
David,
Is there any way preview these genomes? Seems to be around the corner
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0219850
@ bellbeakerblogger
Ha !! I was just thinking about how White Backed Cattle spread. The Irish Droimeann Cattle look very similar to the Dutch Witrik, Norwegian Telemark, Swedish Fjall, Finnish, British White, the Vosgienne from Alsace and Pustertaler from Northeast and Northwest Italy.
It looks like trade up and down the Rhine and along the Northsea coastline...basically like the Paper you mentioned suggests....
BBB:
Thx for the interesting link. Let's hope they will also be able to extract aDNA from some of the new samples (acidic soils, as quite typical for the North European Plain including Denmark, aren't conducive to aDNA preservation).
Ric: The Black Forest is one possible source of high Sr isotope values as recorded in some of their Nordic BA samples. And, in fact, there is further evidence of BA trade along the Rhine. E.g., metalurgical analyses point to the presence of Black Forest copper in some Nordic BA bronzes. However, Sr isotope analyses can only distinguish "locals" from "migrants", but not identify the geographic origin of these "migrants" with certainty.
More specifically, geologically old bedrock resulting in high Sr isotope ratios has not only been found in/around the Black Forest, but also the Bavarian Forest, relevant parts of Bohemia, and IIRC the Tatra. As such, other parts of Central Europe such as Bohemia, Silesia and surrounds may equally have supplied migrants (together with Slovakian and E. Alpine copper supply to the Nordic Bronze Age). Ultimately, we will need aDNA to figure out whether the immigrants into the Danish BA came from Sweden, the Upper Rhine, the Upper/Middle Elbe, or even the catchment areas of the Upper Oder and Upper Vistula.
Looks like these dead people are queued up for a following paper by Allentoft and Sikora. All the other authors are geologists, anthropologists and archaeologists.
It will be interesting if they were able to recover dna from any of the bog bodies (probably not). In any case, the SGC-ish individuals from the dolmen look promising.
@ “a”
“Vucedol R1b-z2103 maybe a link between Steppe and Albanian. ”
Albanian is from the post -Roman Balkan region; hence its linked to the entire gammut of lineages currently found in modern Albanians
@ FrankN
What precisely is your point ? Did I say anything about Migrants ? Did you read the part where they suggest connections between Sweden and Cornwall and Sweden and the Italian Alps... ?
Chariot was probably like the cart n wheel - ideas floating around . As some classicist said- it was perhap galvanised in Sintashta but made the biggest impact in near east; where large pitched battles could occur. l. Have to track down exact quote
@All
Rumor has it that early Italics belong to R1b (most, if not all, of which is probably P312 and U152), J2b and G2a, while Etruscans are mostly R1b, which is probably of the same type as in Italics.
Considering the genome-wide structure of the early Italics, which basically makes them look like a two-way mix between Bell Beakers and early Mediterranean farmers, I wasn't really expecting the J2b, but it does make sense if there were links between the more southerly early Italics and Balkan populations. Of course, J2b has already been reported from a Middle Bronze Age site on the Croatian coast and Bronze Age Nuragic Sardinia.
Interesting times ahead.
Some duscussions ahead
Have long been intrigued since the leaks coming out about early italics being “Mycenaean-like”; and those Italian Lombards coming out Greek like
Early Italics aren't Mycenaean-like. They're like the less steppe-admixed Beakers.
Ric: The Sweden-Cornwall connection has been known already for some time - S. Sweden has provided a tin ingot of Cornish origin, IIRC. However, seemingly Cornwall doesn't provide for sufficiently high Sr isotope ratios. Otherwise the Amesbury Archer, with similar high Sr ratios, would rather have been linked to Cornwall than to Central Europe.
The points that I wanted to make were:
(i) BA Denmark appears to have been a pivotal point in manifold long-distance networks - kind of foreshadowing a similar role during the Roman IA and the Viking Age (the latter a/o trading Frankish ["Rhenish"] swords as far as Bagdad). Aside from Cornish tin, Black Forest and Slovakian Copper, Nordic BA Bronze smiths also sourced their raw material from Sardinia, Iberia, Brittany, and Cyprus, paid for a/o by amber export.
(ii) These manifold long-distance relations were in all likelyhood connected to long-distance migrations of at least individuals (merchants, sailors), possibly professionals (smiths etc.), maybe even larger migratory events as e.g. hinted at by the Tollensee finds. There is still quite a lot to do before we can fully understand these processes, but it is good to see that respective research is under way.
(iii) For the time being, I find it premature to single out only one connection, such as the "trade up and down the Rhine and along the Northsea coastline" mentionned by you, as influence on the Danish BA. Don't get me wrong here - such trade certainly existed during the BA (and before, c.f. "atypical", Ertebölle-like pottery in Alsatian LBK described a/o by Gronenborn). My point is that the genesis of the Nordic BA was probably much more complex, including stuff like amber trade to Mykeneaens and Egyptians, mirrored by Cypriote copper in S. Swedish bronzes.
@ Davidski
“Early Italics aren't Mycenaean-like. They're like the less steppe-admixed Beakers.”
I didn’t say they were; I was echoing what was outlined in the basis of abstract
The point is - italics aren’t a 2 way mix of beakers and Mediterranean farmers . That’s anachronistic
They’re a 3 way mix of Italian farmers; BB and something Balkan like
Etruscans are a 2 way mix of BB & Italian farmers
So what distinguishes the italics from Etruscans ?
It’s long been clear
a lot of people are going to be sorely disappointed that Etruscans aren’t Mediterranean
Well, I'm certainly disappointed that the Etruscans aren't anything really exotic. It's an underwhelming result after so much has been said about their supposed eastern Med or even Near Eatsern origins.
Also, based on what I've seen, I certainly wouldn't say that the Etruscans were locals while early Italics migrants from the Balkans. There's practically no difference between them in terms of genome-wide ancestry, and indeed considering where a couple of almost outliers from both groups are positioned, it looks like both the Etruscans and Italics might have some minor Balkan and/or eastern Med ancestry.
“”Also, based on what I've seen, I certainly wouldn't say that the Etruscans were locals while early Italics migrants from the Balkans. ””
That wasn’t the suggestion, Dave.
Prehistoric processes weren’t so cut & dry
Anywhow; let’s wait and see
Speaking of farmers; there was suggestions that Italian EEF was “hyperbasal”. Not sure what to make of that
It's interesting that there is J2b in Nuragic Sardinia with no Steppe or Iranian related ancestry and now also in early Italics.
That I took from your post here: http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/03/ancient-island-hopping-in-western.html
Also interesting how those Remedello samples will factor into this. They all belonged to I2a1a1 along with that Hungarian Beaker with no Steppe ancestry, and that Celt-Iberian. I think they were the vector responsible for the spread of the Beaker material culture into the Steppe people, who later spread it elsewhere.
Based on this, the question is whether Tyrsenian (Etruscan, Raetian, and Lemnian) was the descendant of the Early Neolithic language, and whether Vasconic is a descendant of the WHG language with an Early Neolithic superstrate?
That of course still leaves "too many" unrelated language families in Pre-Indo-European Europe for two ancestral populations, like Iberian (suffixing), Tartessian, "Nuragic" (like Iberian?), and Minoan.
This is the same problem as the ancient Near East, with Hattic, Hurrian, Semitic, Sumerian, and Elamite, too many language families for three ancestral populations.
Anatolian Neolithic should also share a language family with Early European Neolithic. It's interesting that such a widespread population like the Anatolian / Early European Neolithic should have been completely overtaken everywhere by Indo-European, even in Anatolia, unless one of the three Caucasian language families is a descendant.
BTW, the Italics from around Rome had G-P303. G-P303 was found in Barcin in Neolithic Northwest Anatolia, and pretty much everywhere in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Europe, but what's interesting is that G2a2b2a1a1b1a1a1-L42 was found in Cucuteni-Trypillia and G2a2b2a1a1b1-CTS9737/Z1815 and G2a2b2a1a1c1a-Z1903 was found in Baden Late Chalcolithic. G2a2b2a1a1c1a-Z1903 was also found in Sicily in the Late Bronze Age.
Today, haplogroup G (likely G2a2b2a1a1c1a-Z1903) occurs at a frequency of 18% in the region immediately to the northeast of Rome and G2a2b2a1a1b1-CTS9737/Z1815 is common in Italy. G2a2b2a1a1b1a1a1-L42 is at very high frequency (up to 40%) in the former Tyrsenian-speaking region of Eastern Switzerland and nearby Austrian Tyrolian Alps.
Perhaps this represents the patrilineal lineages of pre-Italic Tyrsenian speaking population of Italy, with connections much further east to Cucuteni-Trypillia and Baden?
Yes indeed. However I wrote about the distribution of a certain kind of Cattle which you only find in the places I mentioned. No such cattle breed in Germany and Poland...
What will even be more interesting is if the British Aurochs was responsible for this colour pattern....
For a start; Anatolian should be split into western (Barcin-Fikrtepe) & central (Tepecik)
“That of course still leaves "too many" unrelated language families in Pre-Indo-European Europe for two ancestral populations, like Iberian (suffixing), Tartessian, "Nuragic" (like Iberian?), and Minoan.”
I guess that’s indeed a problem if we believe that Yamnaya & BB were IE; and also think that european prehistory ended with the steppe migrations.
Often there is a proposed link between Iberian &/ or Basque with Nuragic.
Although there might have been in the Late Neolithic - Chalcolithic, they diverged during the Bronze Age. - this is obvious genomically*
However, Frank had previously mentioned, there is something 'oriental' appearing in El Argar. Certainly not worth overlooking, but its limited to a a couple of cultural diffusions (e.g. Pithos burials, some of the designs at La Bastida) incroporated into an otherwise very much Beaker society. Moreover, these aspects are missing in islands such as Sardinia & Sicily. What this means is that the contacts SE Iberia entertained with the East Mediterranean were not mediated via a down-the-line Mediterranean network, but were instead predicated on an occasional & individual basis between El Argar elites & partners in ? Levant & Aegean
*even Sardinia has had some pretty significant shifts since the LN/ Copper Age.
I can get that some disappointment that Etruscan adna apparently shows no Near Eastern links, if you thought that was going to happen and be an interesting.
For my part though, Etruscan dna seems fine. No particular link to the Near East, but nothing from the linguistic side ever seemed to suggest they did, only an early Greek attempt at ethnography (which elsewhere abounds with suggestions we'd suspect to be false). There's nothing in our record of languages that suggests anything like Etruscan was ever spoken in Anatolia, so....?
(Not to grandstand here, I probably would've gone with the idea of an Etruscan link to the Near East in the past, but I think I have become more skeptical and careful of such things?)
Taking the described results at face value I would assume Etruscan as an "EEF language". It's actually fascinating that we have a potential window on at least one of the languages that may have come before IE. Though we don't know how such languages as are "EEF languages" would have come to be spoken - maybe Basque truly does ultimately have middle stone age (mesolithic) roots from post-LGM hunter gatherer groups in Western Europe, a la OG's suggestion?
(We probably cannot attach the idea of "One Upper Paleolithic level component, one language family". On the one hand, the UP level components (Iran_N, Natufian, Anatolian, WHG, CHG, etc.) probably abstract out further population structure and linguistic communities at that time depth. On the other, the best case for an almost single founding language at the 10-16kya depth that we know of in the Americas, simply because nothing else is too likely (despite some ongoing migration), do not form one linguistically reconstructable family using the Comparative Method. So in either case we shouldn't expect that correlation at the time when writing dawns into history).
Though I wonder if the high R1b in the Etruscan limited sample size (4 samples?) will lead to suggestions here that Ibero-Vasco-Tyrennhian came from the steppes/Central Europe at 2500 BCE (then differentiated to an unparalleled extent that the family has eluded linguists!), or if it will be claimed that an EEF elite dominance from their 1/4 I/J was an exception to Basque takeover of Europe from the steppes, or what?
Lol Yep; Vasconic is from the Mesolithic; & Indo-Aryan expanded with R1b.
@Drago there is one group of Eastern speaking Iranians called Ossetians, descendants of Alan tribe.Incredible they share R1b. You can look up their ydna project and compare ydna R1a Scythians and Sintashta lines to bring forth evidence of your pet theories.
IF the Italian study is out, can you provide a link?
@Matt
There are at least five Etruscan samples on the way. But I'm not sure how many of these are males.
I can't say for sure that Etruscans didn't come from the steppe, along with Proto-Basques, Proto-Iberian speakers and/or Proto-Indo-Europeans. Probably not.
But if early Italic males show a complex mixture of Y-haplogroups, and they share R1b-U152 with Etruscan males, and if this is the main and perhaps only Y-haplogroup that they share with them, then this possibly complicates things for the mainstream narrative, doesn't it?
For instance, what if when the Beaker networks collapsed, post-Beaker groups had to adapt to new economic and social realities, and they readily took on new identities and languages just to survive?
If so, it's possible that those Beaker-related groups like the Vascons, Iberians, Etruscans etc. were language shifters, and many of them may have shifted languages also when Celtic and Italic languages were introduced into Western Europe by genetically more heterogeneous groups from Central and even Southeastern Europe rich in a variety of Y-haplogroups including I2 and J2.
Indeed, perhaps Italic was introduced into the Italian Peninsula by populations from the western Balkans with high frequencies of J2b, which appears alongside R1b-U152 in early Italic speakers?
I'm not saying that's what happened, just that there are different options, and it's interesting and useful to consider them, because that's the only way we'll work out what really happened.
@Drago-
I have been watching an interview with two of the archaeologists responsible for El Argar-La Bastida and Almoloya project. They basically say that
1-The genetic analysis is over and it won't take long to publish the results
2-Apparently there is genetic discontinuity between Los Millares and El Argar. Although I really do not think they have analyzed skeletons of the culture of Los Millares (they may refer to other published results of pre-BB Iberian chalcolthic)- Textually-"we can already say publicly that the genetic changes between the two cultures are very important
3-"with El Argar a new genetic component appears" (it is assumed that they refers to R1b-P312, which is a mistake because it appears in Iberia at least 300 years before the beginning of El Argar culture)
4-Regarding the issue of the language spoken by this culture, they DO NOT clarify anything
although they refer to genetic continuity with Iberians
5-They have also found paintings on the walls of the houses with linear, geometric and decorative motifs. Apparently also points and stripes in a kind of agricultural products accounting (wine, cereals, honey). Silver and gold jewelry usually have a standard weight (in fact they think that silver is a kind of primitive currency) , but still do not dare to talk about writing.
6-Textually-"With the Argar a new social structure is formed, taxes began to be paid, society was divided into rich and poor, and social exploitation and environmental degradation began"
7-Question of the journalist-Is there a link between the culture of Los Millares and the culture of El Argar?-
Answer-
"without any doubt there are technological connection points but there is also a great rupture at the level of political organization"
"The population is largely the same (here the archaeologist contradicts himself with respect to what he previously said regarding genetic discontinuity)"
"The culture of Los Millares is more commercial and mobile while El Argar deposits are strategic and oriented to effectively control their territory"
https://twitter.com/bastidadetotana?lang=es-
Obviously the interview is in Spanish
@ Gaska
Thank you for the link.
So; it seems those local experts echo what I’ve been suggesting ?
Call it a lucky guess
We really have to look at the transition from BB to the following cultures in Central Europe. After looking at what happened in Unetice I'm sure that this was a strong break with the preceding BB and only some remnants were integrated or rather swallowed by Unetice. On the fringes BB communities stayed intact though.
But from then on, the direction of geneflow and cultural influences was from East to West again.
Tumulus culture seems to have been a big break again and Eastern habits, including chariots were introduced.
Its then and not earlier I'm confident about IE continuity in Central Europe.
But at that point in time you had an pre-state elite culture established, so elite dominance is feasible and so is language transfer from minorities.
I'm sure CW was largely IE, but BB less so, Unetice more likely but not certain.
Italics came in later, after Tumulus/Urnfield was formed.
It is very important to check if there is genetic continuity between the North-Italian Bbs and the Etruscans. The BB culture was never an important phenomenon in mainland Italy. Probably R1b-U152 are Czech, Moravian or German Bbs, although the Italian samples analyzed by Olalde are not very "steppe" and have similarities with the Iberians (especially in the mitochondrial lineages)-If this genetic continuity can be demonstrated as it has happened in Iberia, then there are no reasons for language changes and the best explanation for IE in Italy would be migrations from the Balkans in the Iron Age (probably even in Bronze Age).
U152 in Etruscans and early Italics is the same as Df27 in Iberians and Lusitanians in Iberia. That is to say, same lineages speaking different languages. The reasons?-
1-If the BB culture spoke an IE language, then the R1b-P312 population had to be very mobile and scarce (NEVER massive migrations or conquests, but small population movements and men acculturating in different societies)
2-If the BB culture didn't speak IE, then the linguistic changes in Western Europe-British Isles, Iberia and Italy occurred very late that is to say in the Iron Age when in addition, the cultures were even more heterogeneous (genetically speaking) that in the Bronze Age and Chalcolithic
@ Davidski
I wasn’t really implying that Italic came from the Balkans; or with J2.- although there were certainly trans Adriatic movements.
But it is certainly intriguing that there are differences between Etruscans and Italics in both autosomes and Y-DNA.
It’s as if steppe-BB & Western European MNE produced a variety of non-IE languages (some local some from the steppe?); whilst the cacophony of interacting groups around east Central Europe produced prospective IE groups.
@Drago: I recently thought about Tumulus culture coming as a new phenomenon from the East with chariots and having a huge impact and overwhelming Unetice. Which was Neolithic farmer-Corded Ware with BB sprinkles.
When looking at Unetice again, I got the vibe of relative farmer revival after CW and BB. Tumulus culture on the other hand is like Eastern reinforced, more developed CW.
Since people always talk about Sintashta/Andronovo in the East, there are weaker but corresponding tendenciesin the West, wouldnt you agree?
@Drago
I was sort of referring to this, and also thought you were too. Then I realized you're not a big fan of the man.
For instance, David W. Anthony suggests that Proto-Italic (and perhaps also Proto-Celtic) speakers could have entered northern Italy at an earlier stage, from the east (e.g., the Balkan/Adriatic region).[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumulus_culture
@Drago, if we go with a tree model with "Southern" (Iranian+Armenian+Greek+Albanian) vs "Northern" IE split (Celtic+Italic+Balto-Slavic-Germanic), which is supported in some tree models (sharing of isoglosses and lexemes), then it seems like the other members of high level structure of "Southern" outside South Asia are associated today with little R1a, while the present day Armenians show some R1b enrichment, and the historical Mycenaeans mainly show J2.
That would tend to indicate that if there was expansion of a shared "Southern" IE language family, it was not generally associated to a clear sign of shared y-dna expansion, or if so, not R1a nor R1b. If that "Northern" and "Southern" turns out the be the least wrong tree model - who knows after all, what is or is not the correct tree model...
That would be about the most I would argue is possible in terms of associating R1b with Indo-Iranian. Not that an expansion of the haplogroup was associated with Indo-Iranian linguistic expansion specifically (because I don't see any evidence of that, really), but that the horizon which the Indo-Iranian language and closest relatives branched off from may have been an early one in which R1b was most frequent, and that the language may possibly have taken an alternative route through any of the Balkans and Anatolia, or through the Caucasus, to Iran and thence through to Central Asia and the steppe.
@Davidski, OK as a proposal, but then later it will take some concrete ideas for how we evidence any of that.
How do we show a Bell Beaker network collapse and then adoption of other languages and distinguish that from an evolution/increase in local trade networks? How do we distinguish a language bearing pulse migration of Italic speakers from slow, long term migration deme-to-deme migration?
Those are probably the sort of questions Indo-European studies and archaeology generally will ask to proposals like that, and any academics reading this blog will probably be asking themselves at this point.
With my flippant comment on Vasco-Ibero-Tyrrenhian (or in whatever order ;) ), I'm only really saying that if that is rejected while someone argues for Vasco-Iberian from the steppe, then a small difference in non-R1b haplogroups is all that seem to be the main basis for rejection, since there is no more established linguistic unity at 2500 BCE between that group than Vasco-Iberian.
If we are at the point of admitting that language shifts happened in various ways between interacting steppe ancestry related and MN groups, then it is a big thing to try and hang a shift being possible with a minority of non-R1b haplogroups (attested much later), while impossible in another context due to R1b only. That may be explained with differences in founder effects/reproductive success in almost identical social conditions and we have no actual window on the dynamics, other than impressionistic and selective readings of archaeology by someone or other (whether they believe that they have a particularly "good eye" or not). That is a big thing which is even bigger when it is placed against a lack of strong evidence of Vasco-Iberian in the first instance, and lack of evidence of a wider distribution than particular parts within SW Europe, and to the degree there may be evidence, that provides no clear evidence or even an indication of a time of unity or homeland.
To be honest, I was expecting both the early Italics and Etruscans to share the same Y-haplogroups, basically just R1b-P312, because they look so similar to each other and to Italian Beakers in terms of genome-wide ancestry. But apparently they don't share the same Y-haplos, and my point was that this might prove interesting. I bet it'll be the topic of many debates online.
By the way, when I say early Italics I don't mean any of the Romans, who don't overlap with the much more northerly Italic/Etruscan Iron Age cluster.
In my opinion elite lineages in the early phase of cultural core areas are key. If those did not change, language shift is highly unlikely.
Also, there must be an uninterrupted spatial and spatial chain of transmissions. For example, key aspects of Mycenaean culture show steppe influences, while the transmission from Anatolia is highly unlikely.
Cultural and genetic flow must come in together. So if looking at Mycenaeans, one has to anslyse what happened in Bulgaria and Romania first. Was there an assimilation of a J heavy population by incoming steppe related people. I think so.
The same cant be said for Central Europe in the opposite direction to the same degree.
The collapse of the Bb culture in Western Europe was a slow process that for example in Iberia lasted more than three centuries (2,000-1,700 BC), and although the forms of ceramics and metals to make weapons and tools were changing, the truth is that all Bronze-age cultures, including El Argar culture and Las Motillas culture are heirs of the Bb culture to a greater or lesser extent.The new super-dominant lineage R1b-P312-Df27 also took around 500 years to create advanced cultures such as those I have mentioned in the southern half of the Iberian peninsula, with complex hydraulic works in those regions with water supply problems. The northern and western half was much colder and poorer than the south with a very complicated orography that impedes many profitable crops and forced people to resort to cattle, horses, sheep and pigs. But even in those regions, the shepherds of the Castilian Plateau of the culture of Las Cogotas were absolutely Df27. Nor do we know invasions during the Bronze Age until the emergence of the Urnfield culture, but by then the Iberian population was large enough for this culture to influence genetically or linguistically in the Iron Age peoples.
In Italy, the situation had to be very different, because the BB culture lasted much less time and had much less extension without affecting much of the Italian peninsula, with many regions where a BB site has never been found. The geographical situation of Italy and its proximity to the Balkans forces us to think about population movements during the Bronze Age from that region.
But in the north, the descendants of the Italian Bbs, fundamentally U152, had an evolution similar to what happened in Iberia, leading to the Etruscan culture. I hope we have Italian genomes from the Bronze Age to be able to demonstrate that genetic continuity. If this were so, Haak and company, Quiles and company etc etc have to be suffering from an irreversible nervous disease process. No doubt the debate will be exciting and once again we must mention the famous conclusions of Wolfgang Haak (2.015)- which have also been repeated to satiety in most of the genetic papers published since then-"Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe"
Olalde's claims that there was no genetic exchange between the Iberian Bbs and the rest of European regions and that the steppe ancestry spread throughout Western Europe exclusively thanks to P312 are also great. The best way for a geneticist to lose professional prestige is to review issues that he does not know as archeology or linguistics simply to try to square preconceived theories.
The Central European cultures of the bronze age are key to understanding the dispersion of the IE language with the Unetice culture probably as the main diffusion vector, but obviously without the language being linked to certain uniparental markers
One thing is clear, from Tumulus culture on their is too much continuity to Urnfield, Hallstatt and La Tene. Italics too have to be from that horizon. Anything before is more of a mystery and doubtful.
Even though I'm sure about the IE character of CW, BB is surely not and Unetice not enough.
So whatever happened in between BB period and Tumulus culture in Central Europe is key.
One question to me is whether the transition from Unetice to Tumulus is strictly continous or shows a significant impact from the East or South East.
Few further plots based on the above plots of y-haplogroups over time on the steppe, plotting them against G25 dimensions and including female samples: https://imgur.com/a/S0a5mlB
Plotted against dimension 2, 3, 5 of G25, though others could be more relevant.
Datasheet here if any of you would like to have a look in PAST3: https://pastebin.com/BMz3pViS
You can see really see the diversity of Potapovka (or at least the samples from that here) relative to sample size compared to later groups, with the small set of samples varying from Steppe Maykop like people to Yamnaya like to Steppe_MLBA like. Overall, it also seems samples which are strongly Steppe_MLBA admixed here, where male, seem to be a fairly even mix of R1as and other groups, not much strong evidence of any sex-bias in admixture, or a quite subtle one.
I'd also note the two samples here from Sintasha_MLBA_o3 which Narasimhan describes as Khvalynsk_EN like actually seem to be roughly transitional between Khvalynsk_EN and something more West Siberian, fitting with being from the forest zone to the east rather than local Khvalynsk like survivors somehow (while Sintashta_MLBA_o1 seem Steppe_Maykop like and Sintashta_o2, true to the paper do seem fairly Yamnaya like).
(I couldn't get - KAZ_Kazakh_steppe_EMBA, KAZ_Botai, UKR_Sredny_Stog_II_En, UKR_Srubnaya_MLBA, Yamnaya_BGR, Yamnaya_KAZ_Karagash, RUS_Karasuk, RUS_Karelia_HG:.UzOO77, RUS_Srubnaya_Alakul_MLBA on there unfortunately as not in the references I used to pick out time and haplogroups. Hopefully most others should be on there up to Iron Age
Also couldn't get any on there which were not on G25, for obvious reasons!).
In relation to my above post, of the most West_Siberia shifted Potapovka sample, I0244, Narasimhan's supplement says of her "In her grave were sacrificed skulls of a cow and a goat ram. Her craniofacial type was unusual and exhibited eastern features associated with Uralic or Mongoloid populations, according to analysis by A.A. Khokhlov"
However it is also noted of "Skeleton 1 (I7480) was a woman of 47 mature age. Like Grachevka II k5/3 above (I0244), her craniofacial type was unusual and exhibited eastern features associated with Uralic or Mongoloid populations, according to analysis by A.A. Khokhlov..
I7480 is fairly within the main Sintashta cluster though, so that only seems like half a win for physical anthropology ;) ...
Also of interest is that I7670 (the R1b, Yamnaya like male within Potapovka) was recovered from a kurgan that yielded no other published samples, so perhaps that would place him open to question as associated to Potapovka, however the grave goods are noted as "grave type and artifacts of the Potapovka culture".
@Matt
I think the main thing to take note of in this context is that from the Middle Bronze Age a Corded Ware/Sredny Stog-related population rich in R1a-Z93 began expanding across the steppe, and, at it's peak, is seen in the ancient DNA record from Bulgaria to China and from the Urals to the Fergana Valley.
Sure, other peoples were incorporated into the ranks of these guys, but this isn't so remarkable. The remarkable thing is how fast and wide they spread, and stayed largely unadmixed at their peak.
This expansion was also associated with a very specific and important military tool kit, which included the light battle chariot, and it had to have been associated with a language family.
By the way, based on my reading it seems like the light chariot may have first taken shape just west of the Urals in the Abashevo culture, which was an offshoot of the Corded Ware culture. This makes a lot of sense considering the R1a-M417 link between Corded Ware and Sintashta, and the linguistic link between Balto-Slavs and Indo-Iranians.
If BB were not the cultural and linguistic ancestors of Celts, the Corded group in its widest sense was ancestral to all IE, or at least all we know of besides Anatolian.
The Eastern influence is clear and present in Celts, Germanics and Greeks.
Are we sure that the Etruscans belonged to U152? There was that Bronze Age Sicilian DF27. It would be really interesting if any of the Etruscans belonged to the Iberian/Basque DF27. Based on the overlap of the Etruscan kingdom with the distribution of U152 it's probably most likely Etruscan but the Celts could have been a later vector of U152 into the Italian peninsula.
Fusion of Yamnaya Steppe + post-Old Europe northern Balkans always seemed like a safe bet on finding the first IE. YDNA may sometimes be closely associated with languages, but not in all the time and not in all the places. Language switching may actually be the norm rather than the static model.
@Matt
I don't think that ‘southern IE’ is a concerted sub-group within I.E.
Instead - we have several I.E languages in the southern extent of IE range
In other words, there'd have been proto-Anatolian, Phrygian- Macedonian (& its offshoot- south Macedonian - a.k.a. Greek ;)) Illyrian*, Daco-Thracian, etc; all arriving from E.C.E. at slightly diffferent times; rather than a ''Anatolo-Balkan IE 'block'' arriving, then differentiating.
(but there was persistent contact central Balkans <-> west Anatolia; & there is complex issue of Veneto-Illyrian)
Similarly IE languages in west Europe seem to be more complex development than a BB - Italo-Celtic model.
The only clear path, at present, seems to be R1a-Z645 & Balto-Slavic-Indo-Aryan; but as you know, some of our friends are unconvinced about that too
@Romulus
Are we sure that the Etruscans belonged to U152?
Apparently one Etruscan did, and others belonged to at least M269. So if this is correct, then it's a safe bet that U152 was common among Etruscans.
But we have to wait for the paper to be absolutely sure about any of this.
@All
The similarities and differences between the early Italic and Etruscan samples will be very important to the Indo-European debate. It'll be almost like the replay of the Mycenaean vs Minoan thing.
Steppe admixture in Mycenaeans, lots of Caucasus admixture already in Minoans
Fascinating times ahead!
This is what I got:
IND_Roopkund_A
Distance: 0.9359%
34.4 Brahmin_Gujarat
24.8 Brahmin_Ultar_Pradesh
24.8 Paniya
16.0 Brahmin_Tamil_Nadu
With the closest distance being Brahmin_West_Bengal at 0.03154340
IND_Roopkund_B
Distance: 0.6349%
41.0 Greek
20.6 Greek_Central_Anatolia
18.8 Italian_Jew
8.2 Romaniote_Jew
7.6 Albanian
2.8 Armenian_Hemsheni
1.0 Greek_Crete
With the closest distance being Greek_Crete at 0.01791493
IND_Roopkund_B_o
Distance: 1.8739%
65.2 Greek_Central_Anatolia
13.4 Iraqi_Jew
13.0 Italian_Jew
4.6 Greek_Trabzon
3.8 Turkish_Trabzon
With the closest distance being Greek_Central_Anatolia at 0.02120486
IND_Roopkund_C
Distance: 3.9598%
89.4 Indonesian_Java
9.6 Indonesian_Bali
0.8 Papuan
0.2 IND_Great_Andamanese_100BP
With the closest distance being Indonesian_Java at 0.03943050
So it looks like two Greeks, an Indian, and an Indonesian. What do these results suggest?
@Davidski, I think there is a question of interpretations here; all leaving linguistics aside, I would tend to see the earliest Sintashta-Potapovka on basis of samples we have, as a heterogenous phenomenon with multiple sources (reflecting multiple pools of knowledge for advancement - https://imgur.com/a/YopPNzU), transformed over time into a more homogenously Corded Ware like population.
Re; Abashevo, Khokhlov tends to point at distinction between the Eastern Uralic end and Western end, with more of the physical type at the Eastern end which he appears to have at least once successfully associated with the West Siberia rich ancestry. (Quote - https://imgur.com/a/YopPNzU).
The Abashevo horizon itself seems to form a relatively long and narrow borderland between Catacomb, Poltavka, Fatyanovo, and Volosovo. (Excerpt - https://imgur.com/a/8TvW9cQ). Seems almost like a contact zone? Catacomb and Poltavka we know are Yamnaya like, Volosovo are described in terms that we'd look at as West Siberian/Steppe Maykop like, and then Fatyanovo might provide our Corded Ware impulse that over time became dominant in raw population base.
(While the following may be outdated, wiki also provides - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abashevo_culture - "The pre-eminent expert on the Abashevo culture, A. Pryakhin, concluded that it originated from contacts between Fatyanovo / Balanovo and Catacomb / Poltavka peoples in the southern forest-steppe.")
We talk a lot about dynamics on here of multiple peoples being drawn in to a central phenomenon by metal working and opportunity etc and elite transfer of culture on a contact horizon, so it's pretty interesting to as I interpret it actually be able to see it happening in sequences.
@Drago, the extinct languages are hard to place on the framework generally, and it doesn't seem like that many linguists do, unfortunately (and they are quite important as you stress).
Regarding Balto-Slavic-Indo-Aryan, there are a lot of tree inconsistent phonological and morphological innovations on that, where Greek/Armenian and Indo-Iranian share to the exclusion of Baltic and Slavic (http://armchairprehistory.com/2018/01/30/words-and-rules-and-the-contrasting-family-trees-of-indo-european/). Though this is the problem with these "All or nothing trees" (which probably work better where languages really are branching off with no further interaction, as with a dispersal across islands or into mountains.)
(This is before considering the problem Andrew Garrett raises of how languages reconstructed from their daughters often show features which aren't actually shown in the parent language when evidence has later come to light, as in Mycenaean when translated showing previous reconstructions to place features in all descendents which weren't in the parent, or the case of recent findings of early Celtic branch offs lacking reconstructed proto-Celtic features...).
Lexical data trees also tend to produce Iranic-Albanian or Indo-Iranian as a separate clade diverging before the break of European IE (the exception being the recent Russian paper posted by Rozenfeld, which had to make several changes to get there, using a separate and smaller 100 word dataset, using reconstructed proto-languages and Vedic Aryan only, and then removing a number of items as identified as due to homoplasy).
@Matt
Not sure if you understood my point, but it was basically this: Corded Ware > Abashevo > Sintashta > Andronovo > Airyanem Vaejah etc.
Apparently, Abashevo had chariots, and considering that it was a Corded Ware variant, samples from its burial sites will be similar to those from Sintashta sites, probably with a lot of Z93 too. And Z93 is kind of important.
I can't see any room for Catacomb here, not in the Ural steppes and not in Central Asia via the Caucasus.
Not sure why you've become so obsessed with this, but it's a lost cause, and worse, it makes no sense. You need to wait for the new papers and make yourself acquainted with all of the new data before you go full bore Carlos Quiles on us here.
@Matt
Khokhlov's conclusions of cannot always be trusted, he is a very biased researcher.
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Tree decay IE languages from the Russian researchers is traditional, it is fundamental in different studies appear.
See
https://b.radikal.ru/b23/1907/49/a2d37ba6f1fb.jpg
https://c.radikal.ru/c25/1908/56/b82d2c6369ef.png
https://a.radikal.ru/a40/1908/34/039245e67298.png
More questions than they answered. Somehow people would rather discuss the bell beakers than the these samples, but they indicate that there were visitors to this part of India from a wide variety of communities.
I have seen a lot of people obsesed with pie theories but usually only the concerning part of their ethnogenesis like is the case with iranian or indian
You seem to want to destroy the entire edifice of indo european studies and PIE as a founding myth of europe, even trivial things like the yamnaya high heights is contested by you with eternal skewed monologues that defy any scientific proof.
Take a rest its not sane for you .
@Archi
"Khokhlov's conclusions of cannot always be trusted, he is a very biased researcher."
Agree. The skull of Grachevka II 5/3 (I0244)
https://i.postimg.cc/VvYs4ryq/Grachevka-II-k53.jpg
@Matt @Davidski "I'd also note the two samples here from Sintasha_MLBA_o3 which Narasimhan describes as Khvalynsk_EN like actually seem to be roughly transitional between Khvalynsk_EN and something more West Siberian, fitting with being from the forest zone to the east rather than local Khvalynsk like survivors somehow (while Sintashta_MLBA_o1 seem Steppe_Maykop like and Sintashta_o2, true to the paper do seem fairly Yamnaya like).
(I couldn't get - KAZ_Kazakh_steppe_EMBA, KAZ_Botai, UKR_Sredny_Stog_II_En, UKR_Srubnaya_MLBA, Yamnaya_BGR, Yamnaya_KAZ_Karagash, RUS_Karasuk, RUS_Karelia_HG:.UzOO77, RUS_Srubnaya_Alakul_MLBA on there unfortunately as not in the references I used to pick out time and haplogroups. Hopefully most others should be on there up to Iron Age"
Was Volosovo a Botai-like population? Did they contribute to the creation of Sintashta after all? Could their language be a similar language to the non-IE non-Uralic substrate in Baltic languages, or could the latter be attributed to Kunda and/or Narva cultures?
Is it fair to say that West Siberian HG/Botai/Sarazm/Volosovo looked more or less like modern day Yenniseyan Ketts?
@Davidski, I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with it, but when Dragos brought up the question of when the R1b->R1a transition actually happened on the steppe, and I plotted the samples we have against time, a few things seemed pretty obvious and to stand out (how we don't really have many samples in the 2400-2200 BCE period he mentions as critical, and that those that are present and immediately after seem to be relatively heterogenous compared to later, much in line with what the archaeologists and anthropologists seem to have suggested).
I think when you have the fairly significant experts in the chariot, in the archaeology of steppes, in the archaeology of Abashevo itself all seeming stress the appearance of heterogenity in the steppes during the Middle to Late Bronze Age, multiple cultural origins, and the connection of that with the very emergence of the Sintashta-Potapovka and Abashevo phenomena, and the very earliest samples in the sequence largely seem to back that up in their genetics and y-dna (which is mostly positive; it confirms that they know what they're talking about), then... it seems a little odd to revert to a narrative where there is just a single origin in the Corded Ware and then other samples are just caught up and assimilated into that as an almost afterthought?
Like it doesn't really make a lot of sense to me for you to say "I don't see a lot of room for Catacomb here" when you supposedly have the foremost experts on this saying that the material archaeology does show exactly that?
@ Davidski
“Steppe admixture in Mycenaeans, lots of Caucasus admixture already in Minoans”
Well; Mycenaeans have more CHG; even after accounting for Yamnaya admixture
This is why 2 way models for Mycenaeans are incorrect
@ Matt.
In general I agree that the language trees are idealisation based on the “”final result”” of a dynamic process and depend on the methods involved.
@Drago: Yes, true, although I think we do still need the structure of the trees (as much as all trees are masking tree inconsistent shared innovations/derived changes between languages), as they're the only thing that can really provide meaningful structure, dates and sequence to dispersal (otherwise we end up in the world of "anything is possible" or move into overtly dna and archaeology led arguments which will become circular).
...
Slight update to above datasheet (if anyone is interested ;) ) adding on a few more samples.
Sheet: https://pastebin.com/sQaWXucy
Graphic (Time by G25 PC5 plot): https://imgur.com/a/RxWWNBC
Whether or not we agree on what these sort of plots show (interpretation), I think most of us would agree (hopefully) that this style of plot (y-dna coded, autosome measure on the Y, time on the X) first popularized by Olalde's papers on Bell Beakers and following presentations, is pretty useful for putting samples into sequence and visually understanding the temporal sequences of samples we have (and where there are gaps!).
No need to suggest such a thing because it is written already by classics and we have cultural connections with Balkans,old toponyms are pretty good evidence too.
Plot from my last comment with West Eurasia 9 data on rather than G25 (loses a few samples, gains a few others):
Datasheet: https://pastebin.com/3LeqVyt7
Plots: https://imgur.com/a/eivIAyw
From the point of view of my above comment on Potapovka, interesting because it lets us get I0246 on there, who seems to both the earliest Potapovka sample and from a rich and unusual grave*.
He's R1a**, but seems to be admixed between West Siberian related (Steppe Maykop/Botai/West Siberian) and a Corded Ware like culture. Another early Potapovka who doesn't quite cluster exactly with later representatives of Steppe_MLBA.
Lazaridis previously described him as lacking EEF admixture, as discussed by Davidski here -http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/05/through-time-and-space.html - and so to be Poltavka like but it seems like he may instead simply have that masked out by an admixture West Siberian related ancestry.
*Narasimhan preprint - "Grave 2 contained 6 humans; a male female couple buried facing each other aged 15-17 and four children and infants too old and numerous to be the offspring of the couple .... Horse sacrifices, shield-shaped studded bone cheekpieces interpreted as chariot driving gear, weapons (three copper dagers, a flat copper age, 16 flint projectile points), copper beads and rings and other objects were found in the grave. Samples I0246 is from the 15-17 year old male"). Seems pretty elite?
**labelled as R1 in the papers but it looks like the good people on the net have determined him to actually be R1a
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