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Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Y-haplogroup R1a and mental health


I've updated my map of pre-Corded Ware culture R1a samples with a couple of new entries from Central and South Asia (the original is still here). However, before any of you get overly excited, please note that these samples aren't older than the Corded Ware culture. The reason I added them to my map is to counter the ongoing absurd claims online that South Asian R1a isn't derived from European R1a.


Just in case the map can't be viewed in all of its glory in some devices, here's what the fine print says:

The oldest example of R1a in ancient DNA from Central Asia is dated to 2132-1940 calBCE (ID I3770, Narasimhan 2019). Moreover, this sequence is closely related to much older R1a samples from Central, Eastern and Northern Europe, and phylogenetically nested within their diversity. Thus, it must surely represent a population expansion from Europe to Central Asia. Indeed, it's also associated with the Bronze Age Andronovo archeological culture, which is usually seen as an offshoot of the Corded Ware culture (CWC) of Late Neolithic Europe. The vast majority of present-day R1a lineages in Central Asia are closely related to that of I3770, and so must also ultimately derive from Europe.

The oldest instance of R1a in ancient DNA from South Asia is dated to just 1044-922 calBCE (ID I12457, Narasimhan 2019). This sequence, as well as the vast majority of present-day South Asian R1a lineages, are closely related to much older R1a samples from Central, Eastern and Northern Europe, and phylogenetically nested within their diversity. Thus, they must surely represent a population expansion from Europe to South Asia via Central Asia, in all likelihood during the Bronze Age. Even if R1a existed in South Asia before the Bronze Age, which is extremely unlikely, because it's found in samples from indigenous European hunter-gatherers, the vast majority of present-day R1a lineages in South Asia must be ultimately from Europe.

The idea that most, if not all, South Asian R1a is derived from European R1a seriously scares a lot of people. This is obvious in many online discussions on the topic. I suspect they're so frightened by it because, in their minds, it has the potential to encourage discrimination and even racism, perhaps by re-defining the colonization of much of the world by European nations in the recent past as the natural order of things?

In any case, clearly we're dealing with some sort of mass phobia here. I've got advice for those of you suffering from this problem: if you're honestly worried that the geographic provenance and expansion history of some Y-haplogroup is going to negatively impact on your life in any meaningful way, then it's time to find yourself a quality mental health professional. All the best with that.

See also...

The mystery of the Sintashta people

The Poltavka outlier

Yamnaya isn't from Iran just like R1a isn't from India

716 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   401 – 600 of 716   Newer›   Newest»
Richard Rocca said...

@zardos, OK, so when you state as a fact that non-IT languages survived in areas of BB without any proof it is OK, but when I point out Celtic Italic place names all over Bell Beaker territory before and during early Roman expansions it's irrelevant. Nice try. By the way, try explaining why Ireland, which probably has the highest percentage of genetic continuity since the Bell Beaker period and were far from any Urnfield, Hallstatt or La Tene territory continued to speak Celtic languages until the modern era.

vAsiSTha said...

@archi said
"They consider themselves Kshatriyas, nothing else matters." hahahahahahahahahaha.

Brahmins consider original Vedic people to be indigenous, and IE culture to be totally native. Case closed on IE origin. Shut down this blog.

I will repeat what I have said before, you are retarded.

natsunoame said...

Larth Ulthes
"Don't forget that the Greek city of Thebes was proud of its myth of foundation, by a non-IE person coming from a Semithic-speaking world."

I do not know where you get your information, but it is a good idea to check it from several sources. The etymology of the city founded by Kadmos /Thebes/ is not oriental.
The relatives of the founder of Thebes belong to the Paleo-Balkan community, not to the Orient. His father bears the Thracian-Trojan name Aghenor, and Kadmos sister is Europe. He marries Harmony, the daughter of Thracian Ares. She gives birth to Zemela (revered by the Thracians as goddess of the earth), who is also the mother of Dionysus (the most famous Thracian deity).
Toponyms and hydronyms in the Kadmos Boeotia are of Thracian character. From the testimony of Strabo: before went to Athens, the Pelasgians lived in Boeotia. Elsewhere, the old author says that the Boeotian Mount Elikon was called sacred by the Thracians. Lycophron, called the Boeotian city of Antedon- the seat of the Thracian kings.
I know it's kind of modern to make semitics ancient but lets be more realistic. Find some history about them first on "their "land.

Anonymous said...

@Richard Rocca
The Irish are switching to any master's language, that's just recently switched to English, in Ireland there has almost forgotten the Irish language. Considering that in the myths of Ireland was six migrations of peoples, it is clear that Irish people always easily changed the language. However, since the BB all migrating peoples have been R1b.

mzp1 said...

My theory on Jaats is that they are an indigenous group that remained outside of the Aryan religious system, which would have been that of the IVC settled peoples during the post-RigVedic Brahmnanical period. They are not low-caste as much as they are 'outside' the system.

Interestingly, the name Jaat is said to be cognate to Goths, Getae, etc themselves derived from Dasa and Daha, again outside of the Aryan system.

Anonymous said...

vAsiSTha said...
" hahahahahahahahahaha.
Shut down this blog.

I will repeat what I have said before, you are retarded."

You are an uneducated boor that knows nothing and carries only yourself political propaganda of your racism and nationalism. You've disgraced yourself here by your lies and ignorance completely.

vAsiSTha said...

@mzp
Rors claim ancestry from maratha soldiers who fought in the north. That looks highly unlikely given their genetic profile.

zardos said...

@Richard:
So you state the Irish population shows greater continuity from BB to modern times than the Basque?

Just as an inspiration: Full Bronze Age, chariots and Iron Age.

Also, the Celtic languages are not that diversified for a Copper Age continuity in Britain.
Again, if there would been quite different IE languages around in North Western Europe with records in Roman times, that would be much better for your argumentation.
But there was just Celtic and it colonised the territory of the former Atlantic Bronze Age, which is probably a direct BB descendent.
But there are very few people around claiming it was Celtic. The Atlantic Bronze Age regions were Celticized from the (relative) East.

Ric Hern said...

@ zardos

Can you please point me towards the oldest evidence of Chariots in Ireland ? As far as I can remember they only appear in the 500s AD...

Ric Hern said...

@ zardos

The Irish used Pole Drags up until photos could be taken of them being used....

Anonymous said...

According to legend, the chariots in Ireland were brought by the Tuatha De Danann people for war against Fomors(BB). In Ireland not were buried with chariots, apparently because they were very valuable, all chariots us known from tombs.

Ric Hern said...

@ zardos

Divergence of Languages within Language families are problematic when it comes to Languages being in close proximity to one another because of cross fertilization and this surely was the case when looking at interaction between Irish, Welsh and Scottish during the ADs...

Ric Hern said...

@ zardos

Then there is the similarities between Q-Celtic and Q-Italic languages to consider...

Hodo Scariti said...

@ natsunoname

Nobody here is trying to give or not to give truth to Thebes' myth of foundation: the fact is that sources said that Kadmos was son of a king in Phoenicia. Then, it's only a myth of foundation: also Romans took Aeneas as their founder... and were Trojans IE? Were Trojans non-IE? Does it really matters? The fact is that the Thebans chose to believe in a Pheonician founder hero, because Phoenician civilization was considered more ancient than other Greeks' ones.

@ Gioiello

I took a screenshot of the highly offensive message you wrote to me and I continue in Italian to be sure you understand: nei prossimi giorni ho intenzione di presentare una denuncia nei tuoi confronti, a meno che tu non chieda scusa per il tuo comportamento. In caso contrario, ci vediamo in tribunale. Conto sul fatto che un giudice possa esserti utile ad avere a che fare con gli altri senza insultarli.

And, about your post, your bibliography isn't updated at all: Lucretius or Vergilius only have latinized names, as everyone in Rome. Take in account that Etruscans and Etruscan cities were given Roman citizenship many decades before Vergilius or Lucretius lived. So, why did they need to hide their etruscan name, if every etruscan name (as also many others names from different areas and ethnicities) was latinized? High class people had the complete tria nomina system... system that was invented by Etruscan (they actually had a more complex one for themselves) and transmitted by them to Romans when they ruled upon Rome.

Richard Rocca said...

@zardos, there wasn't a monolithic "Celtic" as you are so ignorantly portraying. There were Celtic languages (plural). Big difference.

By the way, Vasconic was a Copper Age language and Italic and Celtic Bronze Age languages. That a Copper Age language survived in Iberia, an area where Copper Age genes survived in greater proportion than then in Central European Bell Beaker where only Celtic (a Bronze Age language) survived is very telling.

Ric Hern said...

@ Archi

The Switch to English is misleading. There are totally different forces at play between the Iron Age and what happened in Modern times. Firstly the English had a substantial Navy with which they could block traderoutes from Ireland to the Continent. This was a huge obstacle to overcome. Technologically and Resource wise the English also had the upper hand.

During the Bronze and Early Iron Ages there was nothing that could compare to this that could have threatened the Irish Language. Even the Romans did not employ such total shutdown of Irish connection with Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and the Continent...so to imply that the Irish jumped nonchalantly from Language to Language is totally misguided....

Gioiello said...

@ Gaska
Who is this moron who hides himself beyond an Etruscan name (Larth Ulthes)? "In the age of Martial there was the taste for antiquities" etc etc, but, even though it is true that many families or cities searched for an old origin for themselves, suggest him to read Schulze Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen for knowing how many Roman families had an Etruscan origin and the surname was latinized and not exhibited. Uergilius was from Etruskan Verxnei, Licinius from Leixne, Lucretius from Luxre etc etc

@ Gioiello

I took a screenshot of the highly offensive message you wrote to me and I continue in Italian to be sure you understand: nei prossimi giorni ho intenzione di presentare una denuncia nei tuoi confronti, a meno che tu non chieda scusa per il tuo comportamento. In caso contrario, ci vediamo in tribunale. Conto sul fatto che un giudice possa esserti utile ad avere a che fare con gli altri senza insultarli.

And, about your post, your bibliography isn't updated at all: Lucretius or Vergilius only have latinized names, as everyone in Rome. Take in account that Etruscans and Etruscan cities were given Roman citizenship many decades before Vergilius or Lucretius lived. So, why did they need to hide their etruscan name, if every etruscan name (as also many others names from different areas and ethnicities) was latinized? High class people had the complete tria nomina system... system that was invented by Etruscan (they actually had a more complex one for themselves) and transmitted by them to Romans when they ruled upon Rome.

@ Larth Ulthes
La mia lettera sarebbe “highly offensive” per avere usato la parola “moron”? Su questo blog è una parola usata migliaia di volte, anche contro di me, e io sono per il libero e anche saporito uso del linguaggio e del pensiero. Ma con la tua lettera mi hai rivelato la tua identità. Ora so chi sei e dove stai. Ti consiglio quindi di far valere le tue teorie sul piano del sapere (se ci riesci) e non minacciare querele, perché, se ora qualche dubbio mi può rimanere sulla tua identità, con la querela riveleresti il tuo nome, e allora non avrei più dubbi, e sai che io non uso i tribunali. Sul piano teorico (in ogni campo) penso che tu valga poco, e la tua risposta lo dimostra, cioè non hai capito nulla di quello che ho detto e non ti sei reso conto di non avere detto nulla con la tua prima e questa lettera. Ma io sono per la libertà di espressione e lascio a te la tua.

J.S. said...

@Gaska

"You have forgotten to say that all of southern France to the Garona river and the Rhone river, that is Aquitaine and Occitania (more than 100.000 km2-a territory much larger than the Netherlands, Switzerland etc) spoke Aquitanian and Iberian until the arrival of the Romans."

You forget all the Gaulish tribes settled very south From the Garona till Marseille.

Anonymous said...

@Ric Hern
"The Switch to English is misleading. There are totally different forces at play between the Iron Age and what happened in Modern times. Firstly the English had a substantial Navy with which they could block traderoutes from Ireland to the Continent. This was a huge obstacle to overcome. Technologically and Resource wise the English also had the upper hand.

During the Bronze and Early Iron Ages there was nothing that could compare to this that could have threatened the Irish Language. Even the Romans did not employ such total shutdown of Irish connection with Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and the Continent...so to imply that the Irish nonchalantly jumped from Language to Language is totally misguided...."

What are you writing? Always people passed from language to language, there was always a difference in strength. The Gauls passed into Latin in Western Europe! Celtic languages do not exist on the mainland. The Britons switched to English. So you're wrong.

In Ireland, the people of Danu (Tuatha De Danann) completely defeated and subjugated underdeveloped giants Fomors, because they have swords and chariots with horses, which Fomors did not possess, and, moreover, was unkillable (which implies some kind of armor).

Hodo Scariti said...

@ Gioiello

Chiedo venia... ma io ti ho mai offeso? Non mi pare. Se altri ti hanno offeso, dovresti prendertela con loro, non con me che non ho fatto altro che rispondere ad un utente che non sei tu.

Se tu sai chi sono io, buon per te. Io non so chi tu sia, ma so che neppure hai risposto al mio messaggio: hai risposto a Gaska riferendoti a me con un insulto. Perdonami nuovamente, ma, date le premesse, non sono certo io quello poco avvezzo ad un discorso civile e intorno ad argomenti che impongono una certa dose di autocontrollo, visti i fervorini nazionalistici che girano qua dentro.

Infine, mi hai detto che non ho capito nulla del tuo intervento. A parte il fatto che non era indirizzato a me (ma questo ti è sfuggito, vero?), che cosa dovevo mai capire quando mi citi lo Schulze e mi dici che i personaggi citati nascondevano il loro nome Etrusco. Non serve un genio o un tuttologo come te per rendersi conto che tutti avevano il nome romanizzato: a questo punto, allora, anche il buon Balbo difeso da Cicerone non avrebbe dovuto farsi chiamare alla latina, ma utilizzare il suo originale nome... dai, siamo seri...

Ric Hern said...

@ Archi

Okay, now just give me the Archaeological evidence of what the Myth says. If we go by Myths we then also have to recognize that Irish Myths also describe how Neolithic Mounds were re-used for burials during the Bronze Age and what the reasons were. We also have to accept that Ireland can be seen from Spain via Breogans Tower (Which is totally impossible because of the vast distance and curvature of the Earth...

Myths are just that. Although they may contain some truth here and there it is impossible to be 100% sure because of later additions and subtractions from them for political and other purposes.

Ric Hern said...

@ Archi

All I'm saying is that a Group of People do not give up their Language easily. There had to be a very good reason. Examples that you mentioned shows good reasons why those people lost their Languages. But was there a good reason for Ireland during the Iron Age ? I personally don't think so

Gioiello said...

Larth o Yohanan chiunque tu sia, dici che non mi conosci, ma io sono esattamente Gioiello Tognoni come mi firmo, i miei dati sono pubblicati (Y-R1b1a2-L23-Z2110-FGC24408-FGC24396-FGC24444... , mt: K1a1b1e, vedremo cosa rtireranno fuori a YFull se capiranno qualche mio suggerimento). Spero che tu non abbia dato troppo peso al mio "moron" (a Firenze direbbero "bischero", e non penso che qualcuno sia stato denunciato per averlo detto). Non ho ora voglia di locupletarti del mio sapere sugli Etruschi, io che dedicai un mio libro Elinasi clenarasi Velthurusic, vergato proprio dal grande Pallottino, ma ti voglio solo ricordare che sembra che gli Etruschi, migliaia di anni fa, avessero già un I1*...

Hodo Scariti said...

@ Gioiello

Io non mi sono offeso, sono solamente indispettito dal fatto che, senza sapere chi io sia, tu ti sia permesso di offendermi... oltretutto in maniera poco cavalleresca, cioè attraverso un messaggio indirizzato ad altro utente.

Per carità, io non discuto la tua preparazione, ci mancherebbe. Ciò che discuto, al contrario, è il tenore dei tuoi messaggi: per esempio, va bene che gli Etruschi avevano già un I1 (anche se, finché non vedo la pubblicazione, io non credo appieno), ma che cosa c'entra con tutto ciò che abbiamo detto prima?
Sarò tardo di comprendonio, ma sembra che tu sia convinto che R1b in Italia sia Indoeuropeo, dico bene? Tuttavia, se gli Etruschi non parlavano una lingua Indoeuropea (e, su questo, penso tutti siano d'accordo) e presentavano R-U152, vorrei sapere come diamine possa ciò integrarsi con la tua teoria.
Io sono convinto che gli Etruschi, quelli veri, siano realmente orientali e siano stati una élite che si è imposta sugli italici Indoeuropei già presenti in Italia. Poi non so: sembra che il boss di questo blog sappia in anticipo i risultati e che R1b non sia per niente Indoeuropeo, per quanto lascia intendere... sarebbe piacevole sapere che cosa ne pensi tu di ciò... magari senza darmi del "bischero"...

Anonymous said...

@Ric Hern

Irish myths were composed in Ireland itself, they do not have any prototypes, they have many versions. It is recognized that many of them have historical prototypes. To invent these migrations to the Irish just did not make sense, there was simply nowhere to take the topics.

It's all very plausible from the point of view of modern science.

1. The Fintan's people are typical hunter-fishers, only able to hunt and to fish, themselves utterly wild animals and turn around in fish. The first people to settle Ireland there was no people before them.

2. Next came the Partalon's people, the grandson of Noah, they are committed farmers, for the first time, build houses and brew beer.

3. Next arrive monsters - giants Fomorians, completely destroy the entire population of Ireland and populated it himself. Clearly the BB.

3. Then immediately there arrive the Nemede's people that is at war with the Fomorians, part of their win, but are forced to flee from the island as they are still not stronger Fomorians. Maybe some CWC, because they're running into Hyperborea.

4. Their descendants through a long time come together with the people of Danu and destroy and capture Fomorians, it is the Celts, a description of one to one matches the description of the Celts.

5 and 6. Some Iberian peoples. Here reflected trade links with the Iberian Peninsula, which were before the Celts, and at the Celts, because there were the trade ships.


I'm not an expert in the Irish archaeology.

Hodo Scariti said...

@ Archi

Just an information: and what language did those Fomorians speak?

Anonymous said...

Larth Ulthes said...
" @ Archi
Just an information: and what language did those Fomorians speak?"

No information, in Ireland the writing came late, and the Celts appeared early. Most likely some relative non-Celtic Pictish, but having regard to relationships Ireland with Iberian Peninsula may be a relative of the Iberian.

Ric Hern said...

@ Archi

When you read more about the Myths you see that many of those Peoples were related to each other. I think most of the Myths describe migrations during the Bronze Age by related Bell Beaker peoples...the Bronze Age collapse had a very negative effect on Ireland and I think people rather preferred to migrate from it than to it...the uptick only started during the later Roman times and with the adoption of Christianity...

Anonymous said...

@Ric Hern No one from Ireland has migrated, only to Ireland. Myths are also claimed.

Ric Hern said...

@ Larth Ulthes

The Fomorians could have been similar to the Norse Ice Giants, Trolls (Natural Phenomena)...or they could have been Hunter Gatherer remnants. We'll never know...

Anonymous said...

@Ric Hern The Fomorians are not Hunter-Gathers and not natural phenomena.

Ric Hern said...

@ Archi

Looks like you have all the absolute answers which no Archaeologist, Historian, Linguist or Geneticist could answer without doubt until today.

Ric Hern said...

@ Archi

There are certainly parallels between some Scandinavian and even Lithuanian Myths in Ireland...

zardos said...

@Ric: "there wasn't a monolithic "Celtic" as you are so ignorantly portraying. There were Celtic languages (plural). Big difference.

By the way, Vasconic was a Copper Age language and Italic and Celtic Bronze Age languages. That a Copper Age language survived in Iberia, an area where Copper Age genes survived in greater proportion than then in Central European Bell Beaker where only Celtic (a Bronze Age language) survived is very telling."

I know that of course, but the different Celtic languages, even Insular vs Continental Celtic, is not what you would expect for that time frame. However, this is no proof for the opposite of course, because in theory there could have been various "Celtic related" waves and just the last ones survived to being historically recorded in writings.

The issue can't be solved by us, but archaeologists too were split on the issue. So I'd say, once more and like with Italics, we will most likely see a wave of immigration, no replacement though, in the late Bronze and Iron Age. This will be proven once there are enough samples and small changes can be recognised. That's what I think, but I might be wrong, which would truly surprise me.
We'll see.

But in any case, Celtic speech in historical Western Europe proves zero, nothing, nada, nichts.

Your scenario might be right or mine, but the evidence is not there to decide it with certainty. But there are hints like the late Bronze Age and Iron Age immigrations and the incoming CNE lineages. But these are no definite proof, like the relative continuity is none, more data points needed.

And Italy might decide the whole issue, if the samples are as good as I hope. Or they might solve nothing, if there are bad chosen and just too few samples. Can't wait to hear about the results and hope they are good...

natsunoame said...

Larth Ulthes
Then, it's only a myth of foundation: also Romans took Aeneas as their founder... and were Trojans IE? Were Trojans non-IE? Does it really matters?

Well you know so many things but nothing about Troy / Ilion!?
I will be fast: They were 100 % IE people. And yes it matters if some individuals playing with foreign peoples history, so easily transcribes it to others. Very common method for some scientific circles but this I am sure will stop with some help from DNA findings.
***
“Ceramics were no longer made on a wheel, and betray strong influences from the Balkans. The houses were different. There may have been a connection to the Phrygians , who migrated from Thrace to Asia Minor: Troy may have been a first stop during this migration”.
Herodotus says about Paeonians that they were colonists from among the Trojans - They declared to him that they had come to give themselves up to him, and that Paionia was a country situated upon the river Strymon, and that the Strymon was not far from the Hellespont , and finally that they were colonists from the Teucrians of Troy - V. 13.

The place where Troy is located belongs to the region of Moesia/Mysia. The Troad is only one of the five parts of Moesia - “The principal city of this part was Pergamum, from which the country is also called Mysia Pergamene (Μυσία ἡ Περγαμηνή; Strab. Lc; Ptol. 5.2. §§ 5, 14.) 3 .TROAS (ἡ ωρωάς), the territory of ancient Troy, that is, the northern part of the western coast, from Sigeium to the bay of Adramyttium. ”- (W. Smith Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, illustrated by numerous engravings on wood).

There were found ceramic vessels and spindle weights, looms on which special characters were engraved. They differ sharply from the literacy of the Trojans' neighbors, the Hittites and the Luwians. There is no resemblance to the Egyptian characters, or the cuneiforms of Sumer and Akkad ...
But there are clear parallels with Linear A and specific runes from Balkans.
The city where King Priam ruled was created by settlers from various Thracian tribes - Moesians/Mizi, Tjekker / tevkri /, Paeonians/Peoni. In later times, these tribes consolidated into one community.

Gaska said...

!!! Mamma Mia !!! really Italians seem very interesting people-And all because of Martial, I'm not surprised that the poet had to return to Celtiberia from time to time to escape from Rome

@Lars Ulthes, to affirm that the Etruscans did not have a differentiated ethnicity or that they did not have genetic continuity both in Rome (many patrician families had Etruscan ancestors) and in Etruria makes no sense. In fact the Romans razed the Celtiberians, ancestors of Martial, and he, although romanized continues to proclaim itself proud of being celtiberian 200 years after the conquest of Numantia by Scipio the African. With more reason the Etruscans would continue to be considered as such despite having been romanized. And of course if any case of U152 is confirmed in the Etruscans from whom do you think the current North-Italians are descendants?

Gaska said...

And more Italian Friends

@Richard Rocca said-"By the way, Vasconic was a Copper Age language and Italic and Celtic Bronze Age languages. That a Copper Age language survived in Iberia, an area where Copper Age genes survived in greater proportion than then in Central European Bell Beaker where only Celtic (a Bronze Age language) survived is very telling.

You would be kind enough to tell us how you managed to date the language called Vasconic/Euzkera?
Have you used C14?

You should share your knowledge with Spanish linguists

Hodo Scariti said...

@ natsunoname

Yes, of course I know what you wrote. With the post of mine that you quoted I wanted to say that for Romans it didn't matter if Trojans were IE or not IE... that's a thing that only matters to us (and not all of us). For Romans only matters to link their origins to someone very far in time to compete with the ancient civilization they came to rule on.


@ Gaska

I definetly don't like you sarcastic and racial-stereotypes-loaded way of dealing with others.

I wrote that Etruscans as separated and defined ethnicity didn't exist anymore at Martial's time. Do you understand now what I have been writing to you for many posts? The notion of Etruscan was an antiquarian notion: the ethnicity as itself was felt as too far in time for first imperial Romans. I doesn't matter what Martial was proud of... we are speaking of Etruscans in Italy, and in Italy Etruscans were totally assimilated after 89 a.C. The way scholars and poets dealt with ancient ethnic cathegories has to be linked to the period they wrote and the taste of their time. But these are things you seem not to understand. Surely you didn't classical studies... or you wouldn't shout out those amateurial statements. As I said, I have a Ph.D. in classical literature, if you'll pardon my expression, I feel to have my two cents to give on literature topics.

Ric Hern said...

@ zardos

Richard not Ric said that...

zardos said...

@Ric: Sorry. Names and comments were too close :)

Gaska said...

@JS

Of course I don't forget the Gauls. More Romans, in this case Julius Caesar-

"All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in our Gauls, the third. All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws. The river Garonne separates the Gauls from the Aquitani"

The Aquitans were Basques and also brothers of the Cantabrians. What did these people speak? Of course Euzkera and what is its predominant lineage-R1b-P312. What was the typical lineage of the Gauls?. Does anyone know?

"One part of these, which it has been said that the Gauls occupy, takes its beginning at the river Rhone ; it is bounded by the river Garonne, the ocean, and the territories of the Belgae"

The Iberian language was also spoken in France reaching at least the Herault river in Gallia Narbonense.

Ric Hern said...

@ zardos

No problem. :)

At the end of the day I think Celtic came about due to dialect Levelling events...

Bob Floy said...

@Ric

"At the end of the day I think Celtic came about due to dialect Levelling events..."

I think this too.

zardos said...

"At the end of the day I think Celtic came about due to dialect Levelling events..."

I know the concept, but do you have any proven case for a similar kind of setting? Isnt it one of those funny ideas which might sound halfway plausible on theory but wont make it in reality?
Dont forget we talk a huge space, many, many tribes and people and they all were so similar as would they have expanded just a short time before.

TLT said...

@CpK
>That guy looks like a Native American. In fact if the steppe hypo is correct Pie came from EHG and EHG look quite East Asian like.

Did they though? The EHG skulls that I do know of don't look east Asian-like at all. They don't have the very round orbitals or the other distinct recent east Asian characteristics. Pre-gracialization (UP) east Asians probably didn't look too different from UP west Eurasians. As far as the "mongoloid" appearance of MA1 is concerned- he was probably Mongoloid in the same sense as Chancelade man was, whose more recent reconstructions don't look Mongoloid at all. Maybe he would have looked partially Eskimo-like but that is it.

Andrzejewski said...

@TLT can you post a link to what EHG looked like?

Matt said...

Demonstrating horizontal leveling, non-tree like relationships and conformity in in Celtic or many language families pre-writing would be hard specifically due to a poverty of data to draw from, without written histories of many dialects.

Whether it would be called leveling exactly I'm not sure but it is not hard in Chinese (Sinitic) to demonstrate conformity to the prestige and core dialect and contact mediated horizontal transfer directly, and see even for instance - https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6edc/b49e50d5e243d6a9826cf1b63a629778ce14.pdf (List of the Planck/Jena group has various papers on this matter).
Though that would probably lead to the objection that Chinese is a unique case (mechanisms of civilization and so forth), so there you go, but it's possibly unlikely we'll get better evidence that this.

Japonic dialects are also discussed in this fashion in Verkerk 2019 - http://alex.francois.free.fr/data/Kalyan-Francois-Hammarstrom_2019_Tree-model-Historical-linguistics_JHL_9-1_Special-issue.pdf. (Using data from the 2011 phylogenic paper which reconstructed proto-Japonic at about 200 BCE - "Bayesian phylogenetic analysis supports an agricultural origin of Japonic languages").

This is all lexical cognacy driven of course. Greenhill 2017 may be worth reading for integrating some treatment on grammatical features into this, in their analysis of Austronesian - https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/10/02/1700388114.

Dita said...

Albanian will have to start being taken into account when having these discussions.

The two contending theories of Albanian position on the IE tree are the "North IE" group (Celtic/Italic/Germanic/Baltic/Slavic/Albanian) with Albanian being part of the "Illyric" branch in between germanic and baltic, slightly closer to baltic, and the second theory is that of the "Balkan IE" group, with Albanian, Greek, and Armenian, having all come from the same proto-group.

If Albanian is part of the North IE, then its linguistic and genetic dataset is very relevant to these celtic and italic, baltic, germanic, etc questions being discussed so heavily. If it is part of the Balkanic IE group then its dataset becomes very relevant to the question of Mycenaeans, Romans, Dorians, Macedonians, etc.

The Albanian linguistic and genetic dataset, with respect to isoglosses, and y-haplogroups (of which the Albanian Bloodlines project has managed to test 800+ from many regions of Albania here: http://www.gjenetika.com/rezultatet/ ) will need to corroborate many of the arguments made, since it is a part of the same puzzle.

J.S. said...

@Gaska

Dr Emmanuel Arbabe explains in his thesis that Caesar, in spite of the famous introduction you quoted, always talked about Gaul as jut one entity.

From peoples to cities : political life and institutions in Comatan Gaul from independance to the end of the Julio-Claudians

"ln fact, Gaul is a reality that precedes the Roman description. It is a coherent political space with common political practices: assemblies at different levels, among which one for Gaul, the recognition of a hegemonic people, the use of general coalitions headed by a war leader. These practices, well established already during Caesar's time, provided for a part of the basis of the Roman administrative system in Gaul. Thus the Gallic entity is perpetuated though the cult at the Confluent which ignored the provincial tripartition and partially obeyed criteria inherited from the independence."

http://www.sudoc.abes.fr/xslt/DB=2.1//SRCH?IKT=12&TRM=170325059&COOKIE=U10178,Klecteurweb,I250,B341720009+,SY,NLECTEUR+WEBOPC,D2.1,Ef5146bcb-873,A,H,R82.124.208.210,FY

The Gallic tribes settled from the North of the Garona river to Marseille's neighborhood.
About 40 Gallic Y-dna from late Iron Age has been analysed( from Curgy and Urville-Nacqueville); all of them are R1b.

Davidski said...

@All

Here's a purely hypothetical question: if, after thorough sampling of the Yamnaya horizon, it turns out that Yamnaya Y-haplogroups are basically R1b-Z2103 and I2a-L699, without R1a-M417, R1b-L51 or any other Y-haplogroups common in modern and ancient Indo-European speakers, can we still consider Yamnaya to be relevant to the PIE homeland debate or even an Indo-European speaking culture?

Palacista said...

That question can only really be answered when the location of R1a at the same time is known.

Davidski said...

Well, for the sake of the discussion, let's assume for now that R1a-M417 vacated the steppe to the west with the ancestors of the Corded Ware and other such peoples just before the expansion of Yamnaya.

In other words, the Corded Ware complex did come from the steppe, but not from Yamnaya. We'll have to leave L51 out of this discussion for now.

Gaska said...

@Davidski- said"Here's a purely hypothetical question: if, after thorough sampling of the Yamnaya horizon, it turns out that Yamnaya Y-haplogroups are basically R1b-Z2103 and I2a-L699, without R1a-M417, R1b-L51 or any other Y-haplogroups common in modern and ancient Indo-European speakers, can we still consider Yamnaya to be relevant to the PIE homeland debate or even an Indo-European speaking culture?

NO

@Davidski said-"Well, for the sake of the discussion, let's assume for now that R1a-M417 vacated the steppe to the west with the ancestors of the Corded Ware and other such peoples just before the expansion of Yamnaya-In other words, the Corded Ware complex did come from the steppe, but not from Yamnaya. We'll have to leave L51 out of this discussion for now.


Ok there is no problem in thinking that R1a-M417 took IE to Central Europe whatever its culture of origin

Bob Floy said...

@David

"...can we still consider Yamnaya to be relevant to the PIE homeland debate or even an Indo-European speaking culture?

If R1b-Z2103 turns up true Hittite samples, then yes.

Bob Floy said...

*In* true Hittite samples, pardon me.

Davidski said...

@Bob Floy

If R1b-Z2103 turns up in true Hittite samples, then yes.

This is a huge if.

epoch said...

@Davidski

Hammer-headed pins considered typical for Yamnaya have been found in some CW graves in Germany, e.g. Eulau.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0155083

Davidski said...

@epoch

Yes, I know but they don't prove that Corded Ware was an offshoot of Yamnaya, just that Corded Ware had some sort of contacts with Yamnaya. So those pins may have been traded.

Hodo Scariti said...

@ Davidski

Do you expect Hittites to be R1a?

Cpk said...

Anatolian speakers have to be separated from Corded Ware ancestors before they move the Europe, wherever they were at the time. I think currently Yamnaya and CW seems equally distant to Anatolians so Davids question makes sense.

Anonymous said...

@Davidski
" Here's a purely hypothetical question: if, after thorough sampling of the Yamnaya horizon, it turns out that Yamnaya Y-haplogroups are basically R1b-Z2103 and I2a-L699, without R1a-M417, R1b-L51 or any other Y-haplogroups common in modern and ancient Indo-European speakers, can we still consider Yamnaya to be relevant to the PIE homeland debate or even an Indo-European speaking culture?"

No, it is impossible. The Yamnaya culture has no descendants except dead end of the Poltavka culture and the sisterhood Afanasyevo culture. No one Indo-European people can be traced from the Yamnaya culture, even the Hittites, who are clearly from a pre-Yamnaya culture. Then we can consider the territory of the Yamnaya culture.

Davidski said...

@Larth Ulthes

Do you expect Hittites to be R1a?

No, I expect their Y-haplogroups to be basically the same as those of other Central and Western Anatolians.

But I think that with enough samples we will see both Balkan and Steppe Y-haplogroups appear in Bronze Age Anatolia, including R1a, and probably R1a-Z93.

epoch said...

@Davidski

If Yamnaya was a dead end we will never know what they spoke. But the whole BB thing shows that even if we find the languages some descendants spoke we may not know.

Maybe aDNA isn't going to solve the IE homeland question after all. For exactly the reason you once stated: Genes don't speak languages, people do. And while genes can tell a lot about the movement of these peoples the whole BB ancestry thing shows it might not be the be-all and end-all to settle it. Maybe the best we can achieve is seeing if we can fit this or that Urheimat theory with the data.

zardos said...

The way I see it, the steppe horizon was in some way a unity and Yamnaya and Corded Ware are two children of the same family. If it turns out the overall Western farmer influence was earlier, you might rather say same father, but different mothers, so half-brothers or even just cousins.
But in any case they are closely related, but whether that made Yamnaya PPIE speakers too is completely open. But culturally, ancestrally, they are related no matter what, just different branches taking different cultural and spacial paths. And Yamnaya did influence CW and Cernavoda culturally.

So Yamnaya would still be relevant because Yamnaya and CW are just the Eastern and Western branch of the same original ancestral and cultural horizon. If you get closer to the origin of one, you get closer to the origin of the other. Because the steppe cultural influence and genetic ancestry didn't pop up two times independently from each other, but from the same source, just possibly, with an early separation of the two main branches with just one being relevant for the later developments if Yamnaya didn't made it to Anatolia or the like.

Davidski said...

@epoch

I think more ancient DNA from the eastern Balkans and western Anatolia will basically settle it. And I mean hundreds more samples from a lot of places, not a few from here and there.

Davidski said...

In regards to Yamnaya, I think that if nothing changes in terms of the ancient DNA results, then it will be eventually ignored, and the question whether it was an Indo-European speaking culture will be an academic one.

epoch said...

@Davidski

Samples like Kumtepe 4, but better? Troas, the area of Troy and Kumtepe, might prove to be crucial. One very interesting thing is that this would mean steppe ancestry entered even earlier than 2500 BC.

Davidski said...

@epoch

Yeah, we have to see how the populations from around the western Black Sea area interacted with each other from the Copper Age to the early Hittite period.

So we need samples from Cernavoda, Usatovo, Ezero, Troy, etc.

Matt said...

Re; the Yamnaya question, I would answer yes, if pushed between yes and no, *but* if and only if the linguistic arguments and models converge on this being most likely. Though our confidence may not be high one way or the other! I'm basically saying the y-dna is not very decisive.

Reasoning is: If were to try and estimate which historical groups were IE speaking or not, without direct linguistic evidence, on the basis of whether their main or only y-dna haplogroup is most common in IE speakers today, we'd almost certainly have got the Mycenaeans wrong (say, "But for Michael Ventris..."), and the Iberians wrong and probably would've got the Etruscans wrong. That suggests it's not a very good means to do this.

That the Yamnaya coverge fairly closely autosomally converge with early Baltic Corded Ware* would add some supporting evidence, if we are to assume (questionably) that Corded Ware has a stronger line of evidence for being securely IE, and that early Corded Ware represent a population that later Corded Ware is a dilution of (a more sensible idea than supposing that early Corded Ware similarities to Sredny Stog are related to a direct descent that early Baltic Corded Ware confuses). But ultimately it is a question of whether they fit in a position where it is likely, from linguistic data. However closely related autosomally two populations are, it is quite possible that they can diverge linguistically.

*Looks like more with each other than early Baltic Corded Ware (2900-2800 BCE) with later Baltic Corded Ware (2500 BCE) or Sredny Stog II.

I am here defining "early BCW" as I4629, Plinkaigalis242 with date of 2900 BCE, then middle BCW as Plinkaigalis241, Kunila2 and Gyvakarai1 with date of 2540 BCE, and then late BCW as Spinigas2 with date of 1940 BCE. The two early BCW are roughly like Yamnaya with a slight HG and maybe EEF offset, the middle BCW are like the later Steppe_MLBA, and then the late sample Spinigas2 contemporous with Steppe_MLBA has an infusion of EuroHG again. Though you could perhaps argue the two early samples are between Sredny Stog II and Khvalynsk.

(This is different to how the early and middle Baltic Corded Ware seem to be defined in some data, which doesn't line up in sequence with the median dates provided in the paper).

See: https://imgur.com/a/7M2xCrS - Plots of ydna vs time and Eurogenes West Eurasian PCA dimensions, including the new samples from Narasimhan.

Davidski said...

@Matt & zardos

It's likely that many Indo-European languages and even whole language families have gone extinct since the PIE expansion, so Yamnaya and its derivatives like Afanasievo might be examples of this.

However, despite Yamnaya's close relationship to Corded Ware, might there not be a better way to classify it linguistically than as a dead end Indo-European culture? How about Northwest Caucasian, proto-Hurrian or proto-Sumerian? :)

Matt said...

Away from the thread of conversation, but some other things may be of interest I've noticed looking at the latest new samples from Narasimhan in the time + PCA + y-dna perspective:

- I0360 looks to add another Srubnaya outlier sample
- The three UZB_Kokcha_BA samples from Uzbekistan are pretty different from each other in dates and have some differences in composition:

1) I8507 is from converting BP, at 2000 BCE, quite early compared to most of the Steppe_MLBA sequence. He's R1a, however, autosomally on the West Eurasia PCA he clusters fairly intermediately between Yamnaya, and is on a low level a bit of an outlier compared to the Steppe_MLBA centre. That could be caused by some low level Central Asian ancestry.

2) I8506 is later, at 1600 BCE, and though on balance fairly "Steppe", much more southern, and he has Q1a, which probably suggests that he is probably paternally and in his autosome more descended from Uzbekistan groups with y-dna Q1a and more Central Asian Neolithic ancestry.

3) I12499 is latest in the sequence and fits best with Steppe_MLBA, with R1a and autosomal composition in their cluster.

So together these three samples seem consistent with the general sequence, where R1a is showing up in the Steppes and Central Asia in the interval 2200 - 2000 BCE, but not always in 100% identical conjunction with a typical Steppe_MLBA autosomal profile (even if close to it), and we are seeing not a clear signal of sex biased admixture towards steppe in interactions with Central Asia by 1600 BCE.

Davidski said...

@Matt

What do you think of the Kushan samples?

epoch said...

@Davidski

What happened to I6420, the Greek Neolithic sample with steppe from the admixture run from Wang et al? The admixture entry didn't make it into the final release.

Matt said...

@Davidski, not a great deal more than the obvious I'd say.

In PC1 vs PC2, I12294 is a bit like present day Tajiks, but also a bit tilted towards Kangju and Wusun from Kazakhstan and the IA Turkmen set, while I12292 seems closest to outliers from the BMAC complex, but given the time period, *maybe* more relevantly so to DA161, who I view as an outlier to the Medieval Alan set from Russia, in a space little occupied by present day populations.

PC3 suggests that I12294 has a fair bit of East Eurasian related ancestry (still securely between Kangju/Wusun and Tajiks today), while I12292 spits apart from DA161 in that DA161 appears to have East/South Eurasian related ancestry while I12292 does not.

(Visually, black dots are Kushan: https://imgur.com/a/KytQXK4).

I12294 is R1a1a1b2a2a and I12292 is R2. R1a makes sense given the proximity to populations like Wusun, Tajiks, Kanju, but I don't know if R2 fits somehow with a Iran / Turan related ancestry in I12292.

Narasimhan's PCA suggests there was another Kushan who he could get on his PCA (I12293) who is somewhat intermediate between the two but closer to I12294 (and ADMIXTURE results roughly match).

In general it looks like I would guess that I12294 looks like a closer proxy for the ancestry of present day Tajiks. Though you could have some geneflow from I12292 if matched by a slight South Asian flow as well?

@epoch, maybe it will come in the so called big paper on Caucasus+Anatolia+SE Europe by Harvard which seems to have been a long time coming.

TLT said...

@Andrzejewski

I don't have links, just saved images of EHG skulls.

Ric Hern said...

@ Davidski

Is the Eneolithic Caucasus Piedmont now suddenly redundant ? Or did I miss something ?

Davidski said...

@Ric

The Piedmont Eneolithic samples are still useful because they show that the most important type of ancestry for Corded Ware and Yamnaya already existed on the steppe ~4,300 BCE, and probably much earlier.

But I never considered them to have spoken PIE or been the direct ancestors of Corded Ware or Yamnaya, just a closely related population and a proxy for groups from around the Don Caspian steppe.

Davidski said...

@Matt

Maybe it will come in the so called big paper on Caucasus+Anatolia+SE Europe by Harvard which seems to have been a long time coming.

So there's actually one big paper or several different papers on the way? Where'd you hear about this in any case?

Matt said...

Wasn't it mentioned in discussion around Wang's paper, many moons ago, or am I forgetting?

Davidski said...

I can't remember, but there are a lot of new samples from the steppe, Balkans, Caucasus and Anatolia ready to go, so I suppose they might be from one paper.

Bob Floy said...

@David

"How about Northwest Caucasian, proto-Hurrian or proto-Sumerian? :)"

How about proto-Vasconic?

Andrzejewski said...

@TLT pls post them here somehow! I’d like to know what they actually looked like via-a-vis Yamnaya

Sarah said...

@Matt,Davidski
When will this new big paper with a lot of new samples from the steppe, Balkans, Caucasus and Anatolia be out? Will there be samples from the Chalcolithic Varna coast? How many samples from Neolithic Eastern Anatolia / Mesopotamia? More samples from Khvalynsk and neighbouring cultures other than the ones reported in D. Anthony's paper?

zardos said...

@David, even if haplogroups from the later Western expansions would be found among Yamnaya, we don't know whether these were really the ones moving West.

I would recommend, for the question of Sredny Stogs importance, to everyone to read this older paper if you haven't already:
Dimitry Yakolevich Telegin: Dereivka. A Settlement and Cemetery of Copper Age Horse Keepers on the Middle Dnieper.

He writes about the spread of Corded Ware decoration, to the Balkans as well as CWC and Yamnaya, horse breeding with possible horseback riding (!) in SSC, single graves with the possible development of mounds, the anthropologial characteristics with quite large cranial measurements and a development from the earlier HG type of f.e. DDC in the direction of CWC. Quite impressive and a pretty clear case for CWC as THE daughter culture of that phase of Dereivka imho.

vAsiSTha said...

@matt
Could you tell us the steppe mlba ancestry as per your calcs ino those 3 kokcha samples? How fast is the movement of steppe southwards?

Anonymous said...

@zardos "possible horseback riding"

This assumption was made because of an error, a Scythian horse got in the layers of the Dereivka culture that was fixed thanks to radiocarbon dating.

FTC said...

@ Archi

BB in Italy can't be associated only with Ligurians.



@ Larth Ulthes

Avrai anche un Ph.D. in classical literature ma Etruschi veri archeologicamente non significa niente. Se la lingua etrusca arriva da una elite orientale implica che anche la lingua retica delle Alpi discenda da questa elite, e questo è poco probabile. La lingua lemnia non risolve la questione e non c'è evidenza di una derivazione dell'etrusco dal lemnio.

Anonymous said...

FTC said...
" @ Archi
BB in Italy can't be associated only with Ligurians."

Is really with the Martians? The Ligurians had many different tribes.

zardos said...

"This assumption was made because of an error, a Scythian horse got in the layers of the Dereivka culture that was fixed thanks to radiocarbon dating."

Its not just about one horse, but the bridle peaces and the percentage of horses used for their herds, especially the high male ratio for slaughtered horses and other facts which led to the assumption they bred horses in large herds.

A bad radiocarbon dating wouldn't have changed that. But can you point me to a revised version?

Anonymous said...

@zardos

There are not bridle peaces.

"But can you point me to a revised version? "

Anthony, David W., Brown, Dorcas (2000). «Eneolithic horse exploitation in the Eurasian steppes: diet, ritual and riding». Antiquity 74: 75–86.

Andrzejewski said...

@Davidski What are the chances that the switch from Sredny Stog I to SS 2 was not accompanied by a Khvalynsk-like Volga-Don R1b population migration at all, and was instead just a natural evolution as a result of interbreeding of the autochthonous R1a1 Bug-Dniester and Dnieper-Donets HG with a high dosage of Cucuteni and Lengyel EEF?

Davidski said...

In that case, where did the high ratios of CHG come from in SS II and Corded Ware?

Andrzejewski said...

@Davidski “
In that case, where did the high ratios of CHG come from in SS II and Corded Ware?“

Perhaps they might instead represent an introgression of Piedmont_EN or Progress_EN and not a Samara/Khvalynsk westbound migrants?

PS: I know that you’re not keen on physical anthropology, but I’m completely baffled on how come reconstructions almost always yield a facial type very much resembling a modern European? Whether they are WHG (La Brana, Loschbour), EEF (Ötzi and that 5,500 year old Brit), or Steppe skulls - the result ALWAYS looks like average people I can bump into at a coffee shop in Paris or the “Tube” in London? I read that WHG, ANF, EHG and CHG originally were as distinct from each other as modern Europeans would be from Han Chinese, however they all look the same to me, give or take.

And the Google Images rendering of Yamnaya people look identical to busts of Roman Emperors, whereas the amount of Steppe component within late Romans didn’t exceed 20% the most?

How come?...

Davidski said...

@Andrzejewski

I’m completely baffled on how come reconstructions almost always yield a facial type very much resembling a modern European?

Because they're useless.

Anonymous said...

@Andrzejewski

Sredny Stog I is part of the Dnieper-Donets culture. The Sredny Stog culture originates from Don river. In Samara, the Khvalynsk culture were also R1a. You are so famously gave the autochthonous R1a1 in Bug-Dniester when no such data. There is not R1a in the Dnieper-Donets culture.

Andrzejewski said...

@archi “There was no Sredny Stog I. The Sredny Stog culture originates from Don river. In Samara, the Khvalynsk culture were also R1a. You are so famously gave the autochthonous R1a1 Bug-Dniester when no such data. There is not R1a in the Dnieper-Donets culture.”

Samara HG had mostly R1b clades but as far as I recall they were different ones than the succeeding Khvalynsk Culture merely 300-500 years later. It’s even possible that the R1b in Samara was identical to the one in Botai Culture to the East.

Khvalynsk had, as far as I can remember, mostly R1b clades which signal a break from R1b in Samara; another notable fact was the sudden jump from 5%-10% CHG ratio in Samara HG to 25%-30%, which makes me assume that PIE was basically more of a CHG language. It makes me surmise a large scale migration of Piedmont_EN into Samara and a shift in lifestyle whereas horses turned from a source of good into domesticated animals.

Khvalynsk had also Q1a, which was either a migrant from Botai or Steppe Maykop cultures or some retention of the ANE in the populations; if I remember correctly, the Q1a sample, which turned out to have died violently, had a high ratio of CHG.

The most remarkable fact, on the other hand, is that Khvalynsk Culture had, besides R1b and Q1a - also a minority of R1a1: it therefore indicates that maybe the trajectory of migration was more likely from West —> East, ie from Ukraine into Don Volga Khvalynsk and not the other way around.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Andre,
"I read that WHG, ANF, EHG and CHG originally were as distinct from each other as modern Europeans would be from Han Chinese, however they all look the same to me, give or take."

That doesn't mean their facial features were as different as Europeans and Han Chinese. I think it's possible WHG, EEF, EHG, CHG all didn't look extremely from each other. For example, Afghans and Lebanese can be confused for each other even though they're really distant genetically.

Matt said...

@Davidski and Sarah, yeah, sorry, I don't have any special knowledge.

Btw, Davidski, have you done anything with formal stats to look at the Kumsay (Central_Steppe_EMBA) samples from about 3000 BCE? They are overwhelmingly West Siberia N/Botai, but I was having a look over West Eurasia 9, and it looks like in some CHG dimensions they tend to tilt towards preferring CHG / Piedmont_En as their other admixture source (in preference to anything Iran related, etc.). Maybe more pronounced than Steppe_Maykop. It looks to me like possibly post-Botai, pre-other expansions, some ancestry related to the PC steppe region was filtering into Kazakhstan. I'm not sure if this was covered in the paper or if they conflated it was Iran related ancestry or something.

Anonymous said...

@Andrzejewski

"Khvalynsk had, as far as I can remember, mostly R1b clades"

Only 1 sample!

"another notable fact was the sudden jump from 5%-10% CHG ratio in Samara HG to 25%-30%, which makes me assume that PIE was basically more of a CHG language."

An unwarranted assumption. There is no logic in it. As the Sredniy Stog culture and the Khvalynsk culture spread up to the Caucasus, where there are their graves. There is no spread of Caucasian cultures.

"It makes me surmise a large scale migration of Piedmont_EN into Samara and a shift in lifestyle whereas horses turned from a source of good into domesticated animals."

It wasn't any Caucasian haplogroups, R1b in Piedmont_EN has the same subclade as in Khvalynsk, and he virtually disappeared V1636.

"Khvalynsk had also Q1a, which was either a migrant from Botai or Steppe Maykop cultures or some retention of the ANE in the populations; if I remember correctly, the Q1a sample, which turned out to have died violently, had a high ratio of CHG."

It is impossible. The Botai and Maykop were much later after the Khvalynsk culture. In the Maykop and the Darkveti-Meshoko cultures there was big Anatolian componrent, that there was not in Steppe.

"The most remarkable fact, on the other hand, is that Khvalynsk Culture had, besides R1b and Q1a - also a minority of R1a1: it therefore indicates that maybe the trajectory of migration was more likely from West —> East, ie from Ukraine into the Don Volga Khvalynsk and not the other way around."

It is impossible. The Ukraine has not Q1a and R1a in the Neolithic. There was big WHG, that there was not in Steppe. Oldest R1a is in Oleny Ostrov in Onega lake.

Andrzejewski said...

@Samuel “That doesn't mean their facial features were as different as Europeans and Han Chinese. I think it's possible WHG, EEF, EHG, CHG all didn't look extremely from each other. For example, Afghans and Lebanese can be confused for each other even though they're really distant genetically.”

Yea, but Afghans and Lebanese don’t look like Europeans, for the most part. I’m trying to understand how come there’s some post-LGM continuity in Europe regardless of ancestry which kind of stops right outside the geographical boundaries of Europe, sort to speak.

Lithuanians have 35% WHG, Italians 65% EEF and Norwegians are at least 50% Steppe but they all look within more of less the range, both in terms of PCA and appearance-wise, compared to either Middle Easterners, North Africans, South and East Asians or Native Americans. Even Ashkenazi Jews, with 2,500 years of intermarriage with European population and high ratio of EEF and Yamnaya within them, could in many instances be distinguished from their Christian neighbors just by their appearance.

zardos said...

@Archi: "There are not bridle peaces."

So you mean the whole paper I pointed to of Telegin is wrong in your opinion? Look at Fig 51 with the bridle cheek pieces and read the text about wooden ones.

You referred to the horse heads, but that was not the only evidence. Yes, some scholars don't accept what's in Dereivka as conclusive, final evidence for horse domestication, but what's there is more likely to prove than disprove it. But ok, its not definitive in nature.

But even if Dereivka would be unable to produce proof for horseback riding, the rest would be valid nevertheless. And I hope you agree that the idea of domesticated horses not being used for riding before the LBA/EIA is not sustainable, even if it wasn't as effective then as in later times.

@Andre,
"I read that WHG, ANF, EHG and CHG originally were as distinct from each other as modern Europeans would be from Han Chinese, however they all look the same to me, give or take."

That idea being spread by Reich, one of the worst aspects of his book, because he wants to emphasise how different the West Eurasian ancestral components originally were and how mixed modern WEA populations are. He is not completely wrong, but its an unreasonable exaggeration for making an ideological distortion of reality.

Only from a certain perspective it can be argued that the differences approach those of modern WEA and EA in a way, and yet he himself came to the conclusion, in his books and papers, that there was a common basic component present in all the major ancestral components uniting WEA.

The only reason why you could argue like that at all is in my opinion Basal Eurasian, which was, whatever it really was, an important component for ancient and modern Western Eurasians and is highly differentiated from the other most basic components.

Phenotypically it is absolutely out of question that at the time the major mixtures took place (Late Neolithic, Early Bronze Age) we already have a WEA, a basic Caucasoid variation throughout the whole macroregion.
None of the major components involved (WHG, EHG, CHG, ANF) showed high proportions or strong expressions of non-Caucasoid traits at all. Even on the contrary actually. We can't be sure about all the soft parts, skin and hair, but its highly unlikely there were deviations in this respect as well. All we know from the genetic data is that they might have been somewhat darker skinned (Western WHG in particular) than moderns, but that's all. Otherwise they could all have blended into modern European populations.

Andrzejewski said...

@zardos “The only reason why you could argue like that at all is in my opinion Basal Eurasian, which was, whatever it really was, an important component for ancient and modern Western Eurasians and is highly differentiated from the other most basic components.”

So are Middle Easterners, who basically share Natufians (Basal Eurasians/Anatolian-like + Iberomaurasians), Iran_N (Dzudzuana + ANE) + extra dose of Anatolian_N, although they look quite distinct than most Europeans.

Davidski said...

@Archi

Oldest R1a is in Oleny Ostrov in Onega lake.

Take a closer look at my map. The two oldest R1a samples are from Ukraine.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CdN1sEbEiis/XXocjUcDplI/AAAAAAAAIOo/5peJ8j1tMYQ7kHpl1ET2p-v5FlmgRGWAACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Ancient_Y-hg_R1a_v2.jpg

Anonymous said...

@zardos

"So you mean the whole paper I pointed to of Telegin is wrong in your opinion? Look at Fig 51 with the bridle cheek pieces and read the text about wooden ones."

Modern archaeologists deny it, the assumption Telegin nobody confirms, there is no evidence that this domesticated horses, and especially about riding. Telegin is accused of having interpreted the findings too boldly. They think that he made a mistake by adopting elements of the fishing nets for the bridle.

zardos said...

@Archi: Probably they are right, probably Telegin was right, the problem is we can't know, because there is no definitive proof which survived.
The most important argument Telegin made though was that they had domesticated and bred the horses, while some of his critics claim they just hunted them.

But the idea of horses being spread from one end of Europe to the other - long before anyone would have ridden them - is no reasonable assumption. And Telegin was not the only one to propose earlier timings. Its hard to prove though in the early phase of domestication and riding, with little surviving evidence.

The best argument I read against early riding in Sredny Stog is, that it would have spread like wildfire if the experiment would have been successful and eventually conclusive, early evidence should have popped up in different places. That's the hardest to counter I guess.

Anonymous said...

@zardos The fact that these things are found only in two places on the coast of the Dnieper, and nowhere else and never.

Davidski said...

@Matt

Yep, I'm planning to take a closer look at the relationship between Central_Steppe_EMBA and Steppe Maykop, maybe in a few days.

Ric Hern said...

Sofar I will stick with the places where both R1a and R1b are found together or following each other on their heels as the most likely possible Indo-Europeans speakers. Currently Khvalynsk, Sredny Stog and the Baltics.

Michalis Moriopoulos said...

@Andrzejewski
"Lithuanians have 35% WHG, Italians 65% EEF and Norwegians are at least 50% Steppe but they all look within more of less the range, both in terms of PCA and appearance-wise, compared to either Middle Easterners, North Africans."

Phenotypic variation is clinal across Europe and blends smoothly into the Near East. This is in accordance with the genetic data. Anyone who thinks your average Southern Italian or Greek islander (or ancient Greek for that matter) looks more like a Briton or Finn than a Lebanese or Armenian needs to have their eyes checked. East Mediterraneans may be outliers compared to most Europeans, but they cannot be ignored. They are the bridge connecting the rest of Europe to the Middle East.

Anyway, you have a rather annoying preoccupation with phenotypic differences, mate. Morphology is an interesting subject, but do you really feel the need to bring it up in every blog entry on Eurogenes?

CrM said...

Regarding the Yamnaya language question.
Am I correct to assume that the Catacomb culture is the direct descendant of the Yamnaya? If so then they are the most likely source of the Yamnaya-like ancestry found among North Caucasians, specifically North East Caucasians. And certain ethnic groups in the Caucasus, like the Avars, Tabasarans and Lezgins, can get up to 40% if not more Yamnaya.
With such a high IE ancestry, why do North Caucasian languages (minus Ossetian, but that's another story) lack any IE influences? All the latter invaders in the Caucasus, such as Turkics and Mongols left a sizeable amount of loanwords in all Caucasian languages.

Davidski said...

@AuckeS

With such a high IE ancestry, why do North Caucasian languages (minus Ossetian, but that's another story) lack any IE influences?

Good point there.

In fact, there's probably much more direct Yamnaya/Catacomb ancestry in the North Caucasus than anywhere in Indo-European speaking Europe.

Gaska said...


We have been saying for a long time that Yamnaya is not the "source" but the "sink", and that linking certain lineages and certain autosomal components with languages ​​is very complicated and risky.

In any case, the Yamnaya culture did expand to the west as Gimbutas predicted because we have seen Z2103 in the Eastern BBS (Hungary and Poland). Now, continuing to claim that this culture is the urheimat of PIE makes no sense at present. This leaves only R1a as an expansion vector for IE in Central Europe, in which it seems that we all agree. It is known that this lineage never reached Western Europe, which opens up many questions regarding the role played by R1b. A few days ago Davidski has categorically stated that R1b-L51 is eastern but now we have left this debate aside, and I see that you are trying to find solutions at the exit of R1a from the steppes advancing that possibility even to Sredni Stog. Ok no problem, because we have always said is that Yamnaya was NEVER the solution, but it is possible that other previous steppe cultures are. In addition, researchers have insistently told us that the so-called autosomal steppe signal detected in Europe is after 2,900 BC. However, we all know that this type of CWC ancestry existed in the steppes at least 2,000 years before. Then, if R1a left the steppe long before the Yamnaya culture was formed why it has not been detected in the cultures of Central and Western Europe before? Maybe geneticists have been wrong in tracking that autosomal component?

Suppose that certain groups of R1a left the steppe in the IV or even in the V Millennium BC, someone would still think that this lineage is linked to PIE?. The linguistic debate is distorting the genetic debate and we should try to unlink them until we have more European ancient DNA.



Slumbery said...

@Davidki

Yep, I'm planning to take a closer look at the relationship between Central_Steppe_EMBA and Steppe Maykop, maybe in a few days.

That is going to be interesting. However the full WSHG data would be probably useful for those models. You wrote as an answer to my question recently that you renamed West Siberia N to Tyumen HG, however currently only one Tyumen HG sample is in the Global 25 (scaled) data-set (I1960). I remember that there were three WSHG samples, two normal and one low resolution handled separately. So part of that data is still missing from Global 25.

BTW the Srubnaya outlier is also interesting for this topic, although it is technically not from Central Asia. Also Potakovka possibly received some gene flow from a similar population (alongside with western admixture).

Srubnaya outlier vs. Srubnaya in G25 nMontes:

"sample": "RUS_Srubnaya_MLBA:Average",
"fit": 1.1105,
"RUS_Poltavka": 65,
"POL_Globular_Amphora": 22.5,
"UKR_Dereivka_I_En2": 10.83,
"RUS_Tyumen_HG": 1.67,
"TKM_Geoksyur_En": 0,

"sample": "RUS_Srubnaya_MLBA_o:Average",
"fit": 3.2093,
"RUS_Poltavka": 51.67,
"RUS_Tyumen_HG": 41.67,
"TKM_Geoksyur_En": 6.67,
"POL_Globular_Amphora": 0,
"UKR_Dereivka_I_En2": 0,

Two completely different populations.

Davidski said...

@Slumbery

RUS_Sosonivoy_HG:I5766

Remember, you can search for samples by their individual IDs too.

Davidski said...

@Gaska

A few points:

- L51 is definitely from Eastern Europe, it's just a matter of time before this is proven with ancient DNA

- R1a and steppe ancestry moved west from the steppe around 3,000 BC, and again, there's no need to wonder if this will be shown, but when

- but it's not yet clear how and when L51 moved from Eastern Europe to the west, and sadly it might not be clear even with the next big release of ancient samples from Eastern Europe

- I admit that I wasn't cautious enough with the claims that both Corded Ware and Bell Beakers were Yamnaya offshoots, and I now want to see some direct evidence in the ancient DNA for this

- Yamnaya and its proven offshoots, namely Catacomb, Poltavka, etc., are starting to look less and less Indo-European unless someone can actually link them unambiguously to attested ancient or modern Indo-Europeans, like, for example, via the Bell Beakers.

Slumbery said...

About R1b-L51.

Several years ago my concept about the main West European R1b branch was that it had either a South-Central European or an Iberian origin and I thought that Bell Beaker was 100% non-IE. I let myself to be convinced of the opposite on both account at some point. The reason for this was the absence of the right R1b lineage in the critical regions and its apparent bond to the "steppe" or "Yamnaya-related" genome-wide ancestry when it finally shows up.

Now it seems that my original idea about BB-language was _possibly_ closer to the truth or the very least it is "complicated". This brings up the possibility that the origin of R1b-L51 was indeed a non-IE population and we have to disconnect its origin from the IE origin.

However the correlation between R1b-L51 and "Yamnaya-related" ancestry still remains. Opponents of the eastern origin of R1b-L51 like to point out that it is missing from Eastern European aDNA data, but it is missing from any aDNA data before the arrival of 'steppe" ancestry to the West. In fact the closest we have is still Yamnaya R1b-Z2103 and it is not like the TMRCA of their common ancestor is that super ancient. R1b-L23 has a 6100 years BP estimated TMRCA according to Yfull. That is very close to the formation of early Pit Grave (Repin phase) and Repin had a very solid continuity to Yamnaya (so much that archaeologist sometimes misidentified Yamnaya burials to Repin before C14 dating). So the L51 source population had to have a reasonably recent common ancestry with this branch.
And Yamnaya had hardly any recent Central European or more Western ancestry.

I am always ready to adapt my view to the data, but the eastern origin of R1b-L51 is still looks better than a western origin.

Gaska suggests that maybe scientist got the entire autosomal ancestry thing fundamentally wrong. If that was true, we would have to trow out pretty much everything we thought to know, but there is simply no reason to assume that this point.

CrM said...

@Davidski

I'm also curious about Yamnaya Ozera. Surprisingly it has some Iran_N ancestry, it even prefers Hotu over Ganj Dareh. It's likely a mix between Yamnaya and Maykop.
Does it represent some specific population or was it a lone outlier much like Dzharkutan2?

Gaska said...

@Davidski-

Regarding L51, Eastern Europe is very large and I will not insist on the debate, but the important thing for us was to disconnect it from the Yamnaya culture. Other eastern options are possible (Baltic WHgs, Balkans etc.), the important thing is to know the truth and end dogmatism.

As you have aroused my curiosity I have been asking some friends about the papers that are going to be published (Italy, Switzerland, Lech Valley, Bohemia), they assure me that they have the key to the relationship between CWC and BBC and that apparently it is easier to what we think. If what they tell me is true, I am not surprised that there are people looking for solutions because things are not going to move in the sense that many people thought- I guess you already know

There are other papers that will be interesting

The population genetics of Prehistoric Portugal- Emily Bresli, LM Cassidy- "To investigate questions such as hunter-gatherer admixture in the Neolithic and Steppe introgression in the Bronze Age"

+ Out of Iberia-Irish Prehistoric Metalworking expertise originated in Spain and spread to Britain-David Bell (Queen’s University Belfast)- . It is further argued that while British Beaker traditions may have been rooted in central Europe, the evidence from Ireland now points firmly to northern Iberian origins.

Although the linguistic debate seems increasingly complex to me, the truth is that some linguists have to be on the verge of a stroke, especially those who have put their prestige in demonstrating that the Yamnaya culture is the source of all Indo-European languages. It will be a pleasure to see how they react to future events.

Davidski said...

@AuckeS

I'm not sure what Yamnaya Ozera represents. For now, this is a highly unusual outlier from a burial with no grave goods, and thus no clear cultural affiliation. I'm not even sure what the Yamnaya classification is based on?

If dated correctly, then this person may have been a captive or the remnant of an unsuccessful attempt by Maykop to start a colony on the steppe.

Slumbery said...

@Davidski

RUS_Sosonivoy_HG:I5766
Remember, you can search for samples by their individual IDs too.


Thank you very much. The thing about individual ID-s that it is sometimes time consuming to look them up if you don't have the source materials "nearby" (flower language to say that I was lazy and it was easier to bother you, sorry for that).

Davidski said...

@Gaska

As you have aroused my curiosity I have been asking some friends about the papers that are going to be published (Italy, Switzerland, Lech Valley, Bohemia), they assure me that they have the key to the relationship between CWC and BBC and that apparently it is easier to what we think.

That's very interesting and I really hope that these forthcoming papers actually get it right.

Next time you're chatting with your contacts, ask them where the earliest L51 is currently in the ancient DNA record. I reckon they know, and they might be able to convince you that it's far in the east even if they can't reveal the details.

Ric Hern said...

@ Gaska

Remember that Metallurgy can mean Any Metal, not necessarily Bronze. As far as I can remember Copper and Gold were used in Ireland Prior to the influx of Steppe related Ancestry who brought the Bronze...so there could have been a connection between Iberia and Ireland during the Chalcolithic. But that has got nothing to do with how and from where R1b reached Ireland. Autosomaly the Bronze Age population points towards Germany near the Elbe..

Gaska said...

@Slumbery

What we are saying is that R1b is a lineage clearly related to Whgs. The way it spread throughout Europe from the Gravetian is an unknown for all of us because there are clades, subclades and relatives moving throughout Europe since then. The possibilities of small migrations and movements are very high towards both east and west. Then eventually L51 can appear in Central-Europe (German or French Neolithic cultures) or in Eastern Europe (Baltic Countries, Greece, the Balkans, Carpatian Basin and even some steppe culture). What we have never accepted is that it has its origin in the Yamnaya culture, which in turn is NOT the origin of IE languages-

Regarding the steppe signal, nobody doubts that it exists and that it is an important component of our autosomal DNA (to a greater or lesser extent), what happens is that we also know that in some cases it has been used (forced even) to demonstrate certain theories preexisting. That is, we all know that some samples may be more or less Yamnaya depending on the individuals used. What I say is that perhaps, due to the attempt to force massive migrations from the Yamnaya culture, researchers may have closed the door unduly or prematurely to other possibilities, that is, to previous population movements from the steppes

batman said...

Keep banging your bans and flying your fans, Polok.

One day you might wake up and realize that you've spent the last decade acting like a self-indulgant jester producing software-programs aimed at feeding a rigid form of narsicism rarely seen outside the greek-ortodox ('slavic') parts of the HRE.

The Emperor of the HRE was always very happy about guys like you, Polok. There are no subjects more useful than the self-apppointed geniouses ready to perform the blunt arrogance and rigidity proving him more catholic than the pope. As in "more kurgan than Ginutatis", "more Steppe than Anthony", "more Anatolia than Cunliffe" and "more Harvard than Harvard".


Better get your feet back, Polok - before you have to ban yourself from this blog - for presenting unfounded allegations based on blunt misconceptions, chronic xenophobia, brute censorship and contra-productive inuendos.

Time to stop FOOLING around Polskoj. Time to end your projective psycho-babble and grow up - to behave as an adult among adults. As in "self-aware and reasonable", rather than "self-centered and rightous".

Among the determining factors of the Human Evolution the new branch of biology called Human Genetics is obviously highly significant. But it's still but one of the MANY factors known to have formed The History of Humankind. Which means that the facts produced by modern genetics ALWAYS needs to be adressed to a broader Context, in order to be confirmed - as well as making sense.

Ric Hern said...

@ Gaska

Yes maybe a Suvorovo expansion through the Transylvanian Plateau and from thereon in Mountain Valleys towards the West. Or an expansion from the Lower Don up the Dnieper towards the Baltic and from there hugging the coast via a Maritime expansion towards the West.. or the Usutovo hugging the Northern foothills of the Carpathians...

Anonymous said...

With the Catacomb culture is a very difficult question, this culture was not a descendant of the Yamnaya culture, but in a biological sense is very likely was. In any case, it has no descendants.

All the same, it is likely that the Yamnaya culture was para-proto-Tocharians or a para-Hittite-Luwians.

R1a is in Western Europe, it was distributed with the Urnfield culture.

Gaska said...

@Ric, at the moment I am not talking about Iberian R1b in Ireland, my interest towards the Irish is reduced to that I like them because they are Roman Catholics like me, and because an ancestor of mine was the Colonel of the Ultonia regiment in the Spanish Army that was formed by Irish volunteers.

I just wanted to remind you what Lara Cassidy said-"Haplotypic affinities and distributions of steppe related introgression among samples suggest a potentially bimodal introduction of Beaker culture to the island from both Atlantic and Northern European sources, with southwestern individuals showing inflated levels of Neolithic ancestry relative to individualized burials from the north and east.

And what Fiztpatrick said-"Deehomed ornament, earliest gold object from Ireland, recent analyses confirm that the ornament is not of Irish gold and as its best parallel is from Estremoz (Evora, Portugal), it is probably an import"

And Barry Cunliffe- In the west, copper was first began to be produced in significant quantity in Iberia towards the end of the IV Millenium BC, and from there the technology spread along the metal rich Atlantic façade reaching the south west of Ireland about 2.400 BC and western Britain at the end of the III Millenium. The earliest copper extracted from the Ross Osland mines in Ireland had a high arsenic content, which gave the metal a hardness that pure copper lacked.

Obviously this does not mean that R1b in Ireland is Iberian, but it certainly cannot be ruled out because the connections between the two territories from the Neolithic are indisputable


Slumbery said...

@Gaska

"What we are saying is that R1b is a lineage clearly related to Whgs. The way it spread throughout Europe from the Gravetian is an unknown for all of us because there are clades, subclades and relatives moving throughout Europe since then. The possibilities of small migrations and movements are very high towards both east and west."

I agree with this.

"Then eventually L51 can appear in Central-Europe (German or French Neolithic cultures) or in Eastern Europe (Baltic Countries, Greece, the Balkans, Carpatian Basin and even some steppe culture)."

It could be, but as I pointed out in my comment, R1b-L51 is still a rather young lineage when it shows up and it is very close (in terms of the branching-out time) to the Yamnaya R1b-Z2103 _and_ its spread correlates with the spread of "steppe" ancestry. Even with the possibility of big founder effects and drastic frequency changes due to patriarchal clans this still creates a tilted field of probability where it can show up originally.
A side note that when this lineage born a considerable part of Central Europe and the Balkans was already populated by sedentary farmers (more sedentary than HG-s at any rate) who in turn limited the mobility of the remaining HG groups too (and also mixed with them naturally).
Of course I cannot state absolutes here, I am talking about probability.

What we have never accepted is that it has its origin in the Yamnaya culture, which in turn is NOT the origin of IE languages-

Well, the fact that the Yamnaya R1b variant is not ancestral to the West European was noted from the beginning and there was a reason why terms like "Yamnaya-related" were coined. It is still a very useful proxy for something important. Until we have something better.

Regarding the steppe signal, nobody doubts that it exists and that it is an important component of our autosomal DNA (to a greater or lesser extent), what happens is that we also know that in some cases it has been used (forced even) to demonstrate certain theories preexisting. That is, we all know that some samples may be more or less Yamnaya depending on the individuals used. What I say is that perhaps, due to the attempt to force massive migrations from the Yamnaya culture, researchers may have closed the door unduly or prematurely to other possibilities, that is, to previous population movements from the steppes

Thank you for the detailed clarification. However I have to emphasize a point: regardless of whether it is actually Yamnaya ancestry, the fact that Yamnaya works as a stand-in reference for this "steppe" ancestry suggests that the whatever population at play was at least related to Yamnaya in some way. The idea that Yamnaya was the source itself was not a dumb one, even if it turns out to be wrong.

Gaska said...

@Davidski-"Next time you're chatting with your contacts, ask them where the earliest L51 is currently in the ancient DNA record. I reckon they know, and they might be able to convince you that it's far in the east even if they can't reveal the details"

Unfortunately, my contacts have given me solutions for the relationship between CWC and the BBC, they have not clarified anything for the moment regarding L51, then I understand that you know more than I do about it. What they have told me is that many people will be surprised. Interesting times await us. By the way, Italy is somewhat disappointing, but we can still draw certain conclusions.

Davidski said...

@Gaska

What they have told me is that many people will be surprised.

OK, that sort of makes sense actually. Haha.

Sarah said...

@Gaska
Do you mind telling us the reason why Italy is disappointing? When will we see the Italian paper being published?
And by what will people be surprised of?

@Matt
Do you have any indications about when this paper about steppe, Balkans, Caucasus and Anatolia be out?

M.H. _82 said...

'By the way, try explaining why Ireland, which probably has the highest percentage of genetic continuity since the Bell Beaker period and were far from any Urnfield, Hallstatt or La Tene territory continued to speak Celtic languages until the modern era.''

There are a laudable number of post-Beaker items & people migrating even to Ireland.
It would be wrong to think of Ireland as disconnected from the rest of Europe; even if L21 remained 90% of the haplogroup mix.
Many groups, regions & haplogroups switched languages. It's odd that some L51+ genealogist think of themselves as pure Ur-Ino-Europeans

Gaska said...

@Davidski

It may be a good business to sell tranquilizers to some ultrakurganists

@Sarah

Disappointing for me, because probably Italy will continue to be the great unknown of Europe speaking in terms of ancient DNA, that is to say I have been told that they are relatively few genomes and that they do not clarify much about the Italian Neolithic. and many people believe is fundamental to understanding European genetics. Regarding the linguistic debate we are going to see what happens with the Bronze Age and if the genetic continuity between the Bbs and the Etruscans can be demonstrated (beyond which it seems that there is U152 in some Etruscan sample)

Gaska said...

@Sarah

People surprised because things are not going to work as supporters of the steppe theory believed they would work. They will have to find new solutions if they want to keep their theory alive.

Sarah said...

How can we say anything about Etruscans with only 3-4 samples? The early Etruscans were immigrants, dont you think that the U152 among Etruscans is from assimilated Celts / Italics? What about the minor paternal markers in the Iron Age of Italy? Are these not more compatible with the early Etruscans and the origin of the Etruscan language?

Matt said...

AuckeS: I don't have any clear idea either about the answer to your question, but it does seem like

A) On a genetic basis, the ancestry shared between North Caucasians and Yamnaya doesn't seem to have any particular reason to be preferentially from Yamnaya* over later steppe peoples, and is quite reasonably plausible from location to be explicable in terms slow, repeated, low levels of admixture.

(Some may also be from people like the Central Asian EMBA like folk and folk like the Lola sample and Steppe Maykop who are transitional between these and the ancestry more typical of the Western Steppe, and some may have been more like the post-LBA groups of the steppes, with their BMAC/Turan related ancestry).

It's not like in very distant locations from the steppe where you would possibly need a big pulse, and this is also actually what we see in adna and it happens at a specific time.

In Wang's paper MBA North Caucasus and Dolmen LBA, which are post Yamnaya (and the Dolmen samples also post Catacomb), are pretty much the same as Maykop, for'ex.

It looks more like in the Caucasus, from the record we have so far, we don't see any big signs of a large intrusion that overhauls the genetics during the time of the Yamnaya or Catacomb, though transitional cultures like the late Kubano-Tersk certainly do get going. (And the Dzharkutan BA 2 samples from the BMAC also suggest people like this - Caucasus+Steppe).

There's also no big transfer of y-dna and some indications of local continuity. (And when it comes to y-dna, it seems like R1a tends to be better represented than R1b, in the North Caucasian speakers). Though upthread, I am skeptical of association between y-dna and language, as this seems compatible when present with some language change scenarios during migration events, though I think this is easy when it's local language despite a pulse of incoming males, than language shift through incoming females and males over a long time.

B) The majority linguistic opinion seems to be Northwest and Northeast Caucasian languages aren't that closely related to each other, while Yamnaya ancestry in both populations is comparable.

So we would have similar problems to try and attach either to Yamnaya as already discussed for looking to attach Beakers to Basque/Iberia/etc (Since unrelated within the time scale of movements, at least one switching is required, if one switching why not both switching? If related beyond the timescale where Yamnaya ancestry could affect, that also argues for both switching and locality, as this better explains the persistence of two languages related deeper than Yamnaya in that local area.).

Northeast and Northwest Caucasian languages do have a bit more support for being a family than Iberian and Basque though, at least, though it is far from well supported.

Hodo Scariti said...

@ Gaska

"What they have told me is that many people will be surprised."

May you elaborate, please?


@ Gioiello

Sure Italian academics are wasting time... not a single interesting paper from Universities... only partial results, only autosomal, or only mtDNA... a real waste.

M.H. _82 said...

@ Matt

''- It seems not so funny that non-IE tongues would survive best furthest away from the point of eastern expansion (wherever this was) - that's exactly what you'd expect from a wave of advance.''

That's categorically incorrect.
Where non-IE languages survive is the crux of BB expansion.
>90 % Y-lineage replacement; 50-90% autosomal replacement, complete cultural replacement.

On the other hand, where we see IE languages attested early - there is a always a mixture of lineages - Nordic BA, Balkans, Swat.
Even in east-central Europe- right next to the steppe, the reality of steppe migrations shows that its ''replacement'' was actually less. It's the ''Yamnaya Paradox''

Matt said...

There's no evidence about non-IE languages or not in Britain, or in fact most of the Beaker region; we can only speak about non-IE language attestation in parts of Iberia and SW France (the east of Iberia and SW of France).

Britain and Iberia don't have 50-90% autosomal replacement by steppe ancestry.

M.H. _82 said...

@ Matt

''There's no evidence about non-IE languages or not in Britain, or in fact most of the Beaker region; we can only speak about non-IE language attestation in parts of Iberia and SW France (the east of Iberia and SW of France).''

Agree.

''Britain and Iberia don't have 50-90% autosomal replacement by steppe ancestry.''

Which ''steppe ancestry'' do we refer to ? Yamnaya, CWC, BB Germany, Usatavo, Suvorovo ?
Yamnaya did not migrate to Britain nor Iberia. so what is the basis for that model ?
A distant model on the basis of Yamnaya / MNE Admixtgure is not useful beyond the Late Copper Age.

Moreover, the BB exapnsion cannot be understood as a 'Wave of Advance'

Gaska said...

@arah said -The early Etruscans were immigrants

Really?, and where do you think the Etruscans come from? From Anatolia? From Greece?

What minor paternal markers in the Iron Age of Italy? What lineages and what italic peoples do you mean?


If it is true that there is R1b-U152 in the Etruscans, what do you think this means?

So far the Central Europeanans BBs are absolutely U152, and in the three cases of Bbs that we have from northern Italy there are R1b-P312, then for the Etruscans there are only two possibilities either they descend directly from the Czech BBs who settled in northern Italy aprox 2.000 BC, or this lineage entered the Italian peninsula with the Urnfield culture that is also related to the culture of Vilanova and of course to the Etruscan culture. In both cases the final result is the same, the Etruscans spoke a NO-Indo-European language and also plots very close to the Iberians unlike the southern Italians who are more Levantine. The consequences can be devastating to continue linking the Bb culture with an IE language, or at least that is what I and many people in this blog and other forums think.

Anonymous said...

@Matt
"There's no evidence about non-IE languages or not in Britain, or in fact most of the Beaker region; we can only speak about non-IE language attestation in parts of Iberia and SW France (the east of Iberia and SW of France)."

Non-IE language was recorded in Britain in writing, it is the language of the Picts who called themselves Prydyn. It is believed that it was akin to the language of the tribe Kruitens in Ireland, to the pre-Celtic population of Ireland, which it is unfortunately not recorded in writing.

Simon_W said...

@ Zardos
Sure, the Celtic oppida civilisation was quite advanced. But this was just the last stage of the La Tene culture. Earlier stages of Hallstatt and La Tene were still more "barbaric". That's why the Celts on the British Isles were still more archaic in culture, with the most advanced being the recently arrived Belgic tribes in the southeast.
I don't want to rule out that there were genetically mixed Germanic-Celtic tribes. In fact, I think the Baiuvarii were partly Celtic by ancestry, because their ancestors had assimilated part of the Boii in Bohemia. I'll demonstrate this below with nMonte. And conversely there may have been Celtic tribes with partly Germanic ancestry. But at least with regards to language the differences are quite large and I don't expect that a Celtic-Germamic Pidgin language ever existed.
But anyhow, it's interesting and very noteworthy that in David's Celto-Germanic PCA the Hallstatt sample from Bohemia plots close to modern Belgians. While the Baiuvaric sample "Germany_Medieval" plots between the North Dutch, the Norwegians and the Swedes:
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YMii4ZFFx7k/W55QUJB-L7I/AAAAAAAAHN4/ZANhxNSOhssU6hiWO39rSJziehTKu2uXACLcBGAs/s1600/Celto-Germanic_PCA.png
So whatever more northern-like the Belgians are compared to the Southern French, Celtic ancestry from central Europe may explain a large part of it.
But returning to the point above, I've noticed something interesting with Global25/nMonte:

distance%=2.6135
DEU_MA
DEU_Halberstadt_LBA, 53.1
CZE_Hallstatt_Bylany:DA111, 30.9
Nordic_BA, 14.7
DEU_Welzin_BA, 1.3

So whatever the Germanic homeland was, these Baiuvarii had about 30.9% Celtic admixture, most likely from the Boii. But then I went on and checked the Iron Age and Viking Age Swedes:

distance%=4.3136
SWE_IA
DEU_Halberstadt_LBA, 66.6
DEU_Welzin_BA, 19.5
Nordic_BA, 13.9

distance%=3.0395
SWE_Viking_Age_Sigtuna
DEU_Halberstadt_LBA, 59.8
DEU_Welzin_BA, 29.7
Nordic_BA, 10.5

So, surprisingly, it looks like Halberstadt_LBA is a better proxy for the proto-Germanics than the Nordic Bronze Age! And thinking about it, it makes sense. People in this blog's comments like to point out that Celtic is an Iron Age language. But the same holds true for Germanic! The Germanic sound shift is dated by linguists to the middle of the first millennium BC. So apparently Celtic and Germanic both expanded with the spread of iron. And iron didn't spread from Scandinavia to the south, it took of course the other way. Indeed I remember reading somewhere that the Jastorf culture spread from somewhere in northern Germany northwards. I think Coon also noticed a change in the physical type in northern Europe with the change to the Iron Age.

Simon_W said...

@Slumbery

"It was a colony of an Anatolian city. Derivate of a derivate."

I know. But the Phocaians were ethnic Greeks, as were the Mycenaeans. I just find it stupid calling ancient, ethnic Greeks who spoke Greek and were culturally Greek anything other than Greeks.

Slumbery said...

@Archi

"Non-IE language was recorded in Britain in writing, it is the language of the Picts who called themselves Prydyn. It is believed that it was akin to the language of the tribe Kruitens in Ireland, to the pre-Celtic population of Ireland, which it is unfortunately not recorded in writing."

Pict being a non-IE language is hardly the consensus of the linguists even if it is indeed believed by some. It is just one of the multiple theories about Pict and not even the most supported one. At any rate you cannot use this as a proven fact.

Anonymous said...

@Simon_W

Greeks were very different, Herodotus wrote that in his time the Greeks by origin were a minority, the majority of the Greeks were the Pelasgians and others origins, and these languages were still alive at the time of Herodotus. The real Greeks consisted of Achaeans, Dorians, Danae, etc. We know for sure that in Mycenaean civilization Achaeans were a minority, whole kingdoms had kings Minoan dynasty.
Accordingly, the Greeks were very mixed and it is impossible to judge them by any indirect data.

Slumbery said...

@Simon_W

I know. But the Phocaians were ethnic Greeks, as were the Mycenaeans. I just find it stupid calling ancient, ethnic Greeks who spoke Greek and were culturally Greek anything other than Greeks.

I do not know if you actually aimed the last sentence at me or it is just a general remark, but I never questioned the Greek-ness of the Phocaians. Still, they might had significant local admixture and it is possible that in early Roman times there were Greek populations in the Balkan that were more northern than them. (Either because of the Anatolian admixture of the Phocaians or because of the Thracian (or similar) admixture of northern Greeks or both.)
But I definitely not going argue with you whether this was the case or not, I just noted that this is still an existing possibility.

Anonymous said...

@Slumbery

All linguists admit that the Pictish language was non-Indo-European, but there are linguists who believe that some Pictish inscriptions were made in a some Celtic language, that is, there are two different Pictish languages. For fifteen hundred years the Pictish language accumulated Celtic and even Scandinavian loanwords.

Matt said...

@Davidski, I will be interested to see what you come up with re; Kumsay_EBA.
On the basis of the West Eurasia PCA data, it certainly looks to me like Kumsay_EBA, Dali_EBA and KAZ_EMBA are all fairly distinct in direction despite coming from Kazakhstan and mainly being represented by Botai related ancestry.

KAZ_EMBA deviates towards East Asians, KAZ_Kumsay towards CHG (actually looks more like direct CHG, strangely, than Piedmont or Steppe, though this may be a strange illusion caused by small PCA deviations) and Dali_EBA unclear to me on the basis of only one sample (probably mostly towards the same "direction" as Kumsay).

A probably excessive number of plots using West Eurasia 9 making this point: https://imgur.com/a/bigi4Zb

(One other thing that seems interesting on this is that the Yamnaya_Caucasus samples with more CHG related ancestry - SA6010 and RK1007 - look to possibly be mixing with Piedmont_En, rather than Maykop related pops, since they seem shifted in a Piedmont_En direction.).

......

Off this topic but on Central Asia, I am wondering again why Afanasievo samples look to have less subtly WHG related ancestry than Yamnaya.

That shows up in Narasimhan's ADMIXTURE results. Though with some overlap, there's a fairly clear split there where Afanasievo seem to have Anatolian:WHG related component ratios more typical of SE Europe Copper age, or even pure Anatolian related populations, rather than the ratios which are present in Yamnaya populations, which are GAC-like or higher.

Given the archaeological stuff that suggests that Afanasievo is a branch off of Repin, I wonder if that suggests that Repin were mixing with less WHG:Anatolian rich populations, and then Yamnaya subsequently has a top up of WHG related via contacts with Sredni-Stog and Khvalynsk. Or that may be an ADMIXTURE artefact.. I want to see Repin samples! Preferably a large set, so we can catch any outliers if they show up.

Gaska said...

@Slumbery-

Maybe we should all speak more clearly so that no one can feel frustrated - Given that "leaks" are "leaks" and that everyone seems to enjoy shutting down data and even lying, what they have told me is that there is no L51 in the CWC, at least in the first centuries of evolution of this culture, neither in Poland, nor in Germany, nor in Bohemia nor anywhere else, and therefore, even through the CWC, this lineage cannot be linked to the Yamnaya culture. Everyone who understands some genetics can draw quick conclusions.

The first consequence is that many people have stopped considering the Yamnaya culture as the panacea of ​​the Kurgan theory and are looking for emergency solutions.

Actually, if this is true, it does not matter much what the origin of L51 is (Balkans, Samara, Latvia or Romania) because it is evident that before or after it was introduced in the BB culture and thanks to it it expanded throughout Western Europe.

Where or how he acquired his autosomal steppe signal is another matter- In origin (directly in the steppes) or by exogamy (it is shown that all European Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures favored this practice)

By the way, in the same way that they have told me that at the moment, there is no L51 in the CWC, they have not confirmed me that they have found it in the Baltic Countries or in any other region, with which I remain as intrigued as ever.

CrM said...

@Matt

I think Kubano Tersk is the likely source of steppe ancestry in North Caucasians. You can see that RUS_Kubano-Tersk_Late has a substantial increase of CHG and Anatolian ancestry compared to the earlier RUS_Kubano-Tersk, which hints towards intense contacts between North Caucasians and Kubano Tersk people. However another potential source of PIE ancestry in North Caucasians are the Cimmerians. Cimmerian invasions in the Caucasus are well documented, and since many Cimmerians already had Altaic ancestry, that too could be the source of East Asian ancestry found among North Caucasus. And as you pointed out R1a is pretty common among Northwest Caucasians, that too points in favor to Cimmerians being a source of IE ancestry. However I did try to model Caucasian populations with GAC (something that Cimmerians and Scythians should have) and Anatolia_N, and it always seemed to prefer Anatolia_N over GAC. In fact it will also strongly favor Levant_N over GAC were I not to use Anatolia_N.

As for Dolmen, I don't have Dolmen samples, but looking at Wang et al we can see that Dolmen isn't that far from North Caucasus MBA, it only has slightly less Anatolian/Levant ancestry. Personally I think Dolmen represents the ancestors of NWC, who over time received additional Anatolian/Levant and Steppe ancestry. The Anatolian ancestry is quite curious because it could be related to the Hattians and Kaskians, who according to some academics spoke a language very similar to NWC. And also the fact that many ethnic groups used to call Circassians "Gashk", "Kashak", "Kashk", "Kosok" etc.

I have these images that simplify my lines of thoughts.
https://imgur.com/a/zGdZ46h

Matt said...

AuckeS: Re; GAC vs Anatolia_N that sounds a lot like something which would depend on proximal v distal modelling; if distal using Anatolia_N+CHG, etc, then it seems since most of the Anatolian ancestry should, in the very simplest case, descend via Darkveti-Meshoko populations, they should certainly prefer Anatolian over GAC.

Low level Levant like ancestry over time seems plausible as well, which would also offset with GAC to a vaguely Anatolian direction, and as well there is the known issue in some methods of how Inner Asian ancestry can create pseudo-Yamnaya like effects when combined with Steppe_MLBA like ancestry (as in the analysis of Shirenzigou nomads).

As well, I think you may not be wrong about further contacts with populations to the south with richer Anatolian ancestry (I'm gonna not touch the linguistic aspects though!).

Davidski said...

@Gaska

The first consequence is that many people have stopped considering the Yamnaya culture as the panacea of ​​the Kurgan theory and are looking for emergency solutions.

Who in particular? Academics working in this area?

Slumbery said...

@Archi

"All linguists admit that the Pictish language was non-Indo-European,..."

Palpably untrue statement. I do not wish to go into an argument about the nature of that language, because it is little interest for me, but just a quick glance-like search made it obvious that the non-IE theory is not a consensus at all.

There is a very nice article about the history of this controversy from early time up until recent years:
https://www.academia.edu/14461786/The_Pictish_Language_-_A_Historiography

The second to last chapter's title is "The new consensus" and start like this:
The last decade or so, despite some dissenting voices, has seen the normalising of the view that Pictish was fundamentally rather similar to Brittonic...

Matt said...

@AuckeS: A couple of extra versions of the same plot I did upthread, with more Caucasus present day, etc populations: https://imgur.com/a/HesgjwL

These may not be of any use to you investigating these questions, but on the off chance that they.

Anonymous said...

@Slumbery
"The second to last chapter's title is "The new consensus" and start like this:
The last decade or so, despite some dissenting voices, has seen the normalising of the view that Pictish was fundamentally rather similar to Brittonic..."

This author wrote a untruth. The Pictish language is not decrypted, so in no way can it be a Celtic. All alternatives are just wishful thinking.

"1.13 Conclusion
Objective, inclusive and informed investigations of the Pictish language are very few and far between. Since the seventeenth century there have been competing views regarding its affiliations. The earlier commentators considered it to be close to Brittonic, using modern terminology. Some later commentators argued that it was Germanic while some argued that it was Gaelic, but such views were not free of ideological motivations. Ritson and others maintained that it was similar to Welsh. Skene argued that Pictish was Gaelic while the southern Picts spoke Brittonic and his view dominated most of the nineteenth century. Numerous scholars thought that two languages were spoken in Pictland, non-IE in the north, where ‘Pictish’ place-names are extremely rare
"

Simon_W said...

@Larth Ulthes
"Io sono convinto che gli Etruschi, quelli veri, siano realmente orientali e siano stati una élite che si è imposta sugli italici Indoeuropei già presenti in Italia."

Good to see there are still users around, even from Italy, supporting this old theory, which usually attracts heavy opposition from people claiming it's already a resolved thing that the Etruscans were native to Italy and anyone claiming otherwise doesn't know the facts. No it's not resolved and there is the possibility that the spread of Etruscan was by elite dominance and that the Orientalizing period was more than just a fashion inspired by Greek traders.

Anonymous said...

Bede wrote that the Pictish language was not a Briton, that is, was not Celtic. Bede was a witness to this is still the living language. Even on structure this language in sight that he not has nothing in common with Indo-European languages.

Gaska said...

@Davidski

You can imagine it, I can say the sin, but not the sinner. I'm being honest with you, but all these situations make me sad, because everything could be much more honest. Right now I would not put my hand in the fire regarding any option about the origin of R1b-L51. I am envious of not having things as clear as you.

Regarding the Yamnaya culture, the opinions are obviously very different, but the inability to link population movements both east and west has left it absolutely out of the game. There are even people trying to resurrect the genetic relationship between Yamnaya and the Maykop culture through mitochondrial lineages

Richard Rocca said...

David, regarding your question about Yamnaya - we have the curious case of an M269 with slight Yamnaya ancestry in the Levant:

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/04/r1b-m269-in-bronze-age-levant.html

You have said that you think that eventually R1a-Z93 will be found in Bronze Age Anatolia, so what is the issue with seeing Z2103 there as well? I think both are likely but we already have circumstantial evidence of the latter already overshooting Anatolia albeit at a later date.

Andrzejewski said...

@Simon “So whatever the Germanic homeland was, these Baiuvarii had about 30.9% Celtic admixture, most likely from the Boii. But then I went on and checked the Iron Age and Viking Age Swedes”

So how come Medieval Bavarians cluster with Swedes? Does it imply a lack of continuity during the Great Migration time?

Andrzejewski said...

@archi almost all linguistists now regard Pictish as a Brythonic language close to Welsh

CrM said...

@Matt
Thank you. It will definitely come in handy.

@Richard Rocca
That Levant sample has quite a bit of Kura Araxes. And Kura Araxes Kalavan was also M269. The sample could be possibly related to the Hurrians, who were associated with the Kura Araxes culture. KAC spanned all the way to Levant.

Anonymous said...

@Andrzejewski It's not linguists it's freaks. They have decrypted no Pictish text, and invite us to believe in their ideologized fantasies. I trust the testimony of Bede who knew that this language is quite different from Celtic and Germanic.

Davidski said...

The Kura-Araxes sample probably belonged to R1b-V1636. In any case, it was xM269.

Davidski said...

@Gaska

Well, it's interesting that your contacts have apparently indicated that there's no L51 in the Corded Ware culture.

But like I said before, if they have their fingers on the pulse they'd also know where L51 is sitting well before the Bell Beaker culture appears. This is what you should be asking them.

Let us know what they say.

Gaska said...

@Davidski

Don't worry I'll let you know, I hope you do too. For now you will have a hard job

Simon_W said...

@Archi
"Greeks were very different, Herodotus wrote that in his time the Greeks by origin were a minority, the majority of the Greeks were the Pelasgians and others origins, and these languages were still alive at the time of Herodotus. The real Greeks consisted of Achaeans, Dorians, Danae, etc. We know for sure that in Mycenaean civilization Achaeans were a minority, whole kingdoms had kings Minoan dynasty.
Accordingly, the Greeks were very mixed and it is impossible to judge them by any indirect data."

Of course already the ancient Greeks, like most ancient peoples, had a mixed origin, and the pre-Greek, non-IE substratum was considerable. Yet it's ridiculous claiming that the majority of the people living in archaic and classical Greece, that is, the people who created the much admired Greek culture, were not really Greeks. The Achaians and Danae you mentioned were Bronze Age Greeks appearing in Homer's Iliad. The Bronze Age Greeks are also known as the Mycenaeans. Hence, the Mycenaeans in the Global25 are perfect examples for what Achaians and Danae must have been like. That they also had non-Greek ancestry doesn't contradict this at all. Dorians on the other hand are indeed a different story. It's not a new theory that the Dorians and the Northwestern Greeks migrated into Greece long after the Mycenaeans, at the time of the Bronze Age collapse, and that they pushed the descendants of the Mycenaeans aside, who in turn developped into the Ionian and the Aeolian tribes. Now, the Phocaians belonged to the Ionian tribe, hence their genetic similarity with the Mycenaeans is in perfect agreement with this theory. So it remains possible that ancient Greeks of Dorian or Northwestern Greek (let alone Macedonian) provenance were somewhat different and more "northern". But remember, the famous Athenians were Ionians for instance.

Simon_W said...

@Slumbery

"I do not know if you actually aimed the last sentence at me or it is just a general remark, but I never questioned the Greek-ness of the Phocaians."

I didn't mean you, rather Archi, but you had replied to my rhetorical question ("what are the people of Empuries if not Greeks?") that I had aimed at Archi.

Anonymous said...

@Simon_W It is impossible to judge anyone by indirect data, especially if these data are indirect to indirect, mixed with mixed.

vAsiSTha said...

For those who understand Hindi, Dr gyaneshwar Chaubeys talk regarding upcoming R1a paper is out. He has associated with Stanford(Underhill), Tartu estonia (Kivilisid, Villems et al) among others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIeiHsGUeEU

Key points:
5000 modern samples
They have found R*. around 20 samples in this study.
R1a diversity and frequency of subclades highest in East & south India, much higher than N india.
R-M780 branch and subranches completely native and not of steppe origin.
Indian and european R1a split 6000-10000 years ago.

Simon_W said...

@Andrzejewski
"So how come Medieval Bavarians cluster with Swedes? Does it imply a lack of continuity during the Great Migration time?"

I suppose it's because the authors of the paper focused on Germanic gravesin Germanic settlements; I suspect remnants of the Gallo-Roman population withdrew to fortified cities where they survived and got assimilated eventually.

Simon_W said...

@Archi

" It is impossible to judge anyone by indirect data, especially if these data are indirect to indirect, mixed with mixed."

It's not indirect at all. Mycenaeans were culturally, ethnically and liguistically Greek, albeit Bronze Age Greek, but Greek nonetheless. Empuries was just a colony of a colony (Massilia), but a Greek one, inhabited by Greeks very similar to the Mycenaeans. That both Mycenaeans and Empuries had a big proportion of non-IE pre-Greek ancestry just proves that the ancient Greeks, at least those of the Bronze Age and those of the Ionian tribe, had a big proportion of non-IE pre-Greek ancestry, but if this implies in your view that they were not Greeks, then the ancient Celtiberians were not Celts, and the Italics presumably not really Italics, that's quite a nonsensical way of putting it, imho.

Anonymous said...

"R-M780 branch and subranches completely native and not of steppe origin.
Indian and european R1a split 6000-10000 years ago."

R-M780 branch is not Indian, there are samples from Russia and the Middle East (R-Y2>F1417). South Asian branch is R-L657, which sold no earlier than 4200 years ago, so the European and South Asian branch was divided not earlier than 4700 ybp.

R* was 25000 ybp in Siberia.

Simon_W said...

Re: Pictish, the Lunnasting stone is one of those Ogham inscriptions that some have claimed to be in a non-IE language:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunnasting_stone

The transcription looks very strange to me, but due to lack of expertise I can't say more.

Anonymous said...

@Simon_W

Data Empuries does not say how to look like the real ancient Greeks. A colony of a colony which is mixed with mixed, therefore, as real genetic portrait of her to be absolutely impossible.

The Greeks can be judged only by the direct data of the ancient Greeks, the Achaeans only by the graves of the Achaeans, the Dorians only by the Dorian time, the Athenians only by the Athenians.
And then, we must remember that the Greeks for a very long time maintained a tribal structure, and all the citizens were divided according to tribes, and they remembered from some non-Greek people was one or another tribe.

Simon_W said...

@FTC

"Se la lingua etrusca arriva da una elite orientale implica che anche la lingua retica delle Alpi discenda da questa elite, e questo è poco probabile. La lingua lemnia non risolve la questione e non c'è evidenza di una derivazione dell'etrusco dal lemnio. "

The relationship between Etruscan and Lemnian is close, the relationship between Etruscan and Raetic may be less close, at least it's harder to tell, because Raetic isn't well attested. So it could go back to older Neolithic contacts of the Balkans with central Europe. At any rate an origin of the family deep in Anatolia or even the Levant seems out of question.

Simon_W said...

@Archi
I'm slowly getting enough discussing with you, you seem to be thick. Yes Empuries was a colony of a Greek colony, so in theory it could be terribly mixed. But we have found that one group of its inhabitants, Empuries2, is genetically very very similar to Bronze Age Greeks, the Mycenaeans. The only logical conclusion is: They were not mixed at all, inspite of being the colony of a colony. It's just not possible that they were like Mycenaeans by chance, because of mixture with Celts, Ligurians and Iberians. That's stupid talk. So they were real ancient Greeks, even though not living in Greece. Yes the Greeks remembered and talked about pre-Greek Pelasgians. But facts are: Apart from the Lemnian inscriptions on the island of Lemnos there is no direct evidence for the survival of pre-Greeks into classical time. There may have been some in fringe areas, like on Athos, but they were definitely not common, let alone in the majority by the classical era.

Anonymous said...

@Simon_W Your knowledge of the structure of Greek society is zero, you frankly look thick.
Well, prove that Empurieses were the Mycenaeans, provide evidence that they are not different from the Mycenaeans because the origin was the Mycenaeans.

I do not even understand how to talk to such a person, because it is elementary - you need direct data, otherwise it is like saying that once Maikop went to the steppe, then the Steppe Maikopians did not differ from the Mountain Maikopians. And so on.

vAsiSTha said...

@archi said "R-M780 branch is not Indian, there are samples from Russia and the Middle East (R-Y2>F1417). South Asian branch is R-L657, which sold no earlier than 4200 years ago, so the European and South Asian branch was divided not earlier than 4700 ybp."

if only they had consulted you. too bad for them.

"R* was 25000 ybp in Siberia." Theyre not claiming indian origin, just old presence on the himalayas.




TLT said...

Speaking of haplogroups in south Asia, does anyone have any idea of how C1b1 got there? It isn't an Australian aboriginal subclade- that would be C1b2 and C1b1 + C1b2 had a common ancestor around the time when east and west Eurasians separated. Could it be that C1b1 is some kind of an Aurignacian marker (like C1a2)? According to the yfull page list of C, the C1b1 seems to be limited to south Asia + 2 Chinese samples. The Chinese samples have a combined TMRCA of 3200 years (recent intrusion maybe) meanwhile the south Asian ones have a TMRCA of over 20,000 years ago. Highly doubt that it entered south Asia with the original AASI wave though. At the same time I do not think that it is an Iranian HG or an IE marker either. Has any south Asian sample thus far shown even a mildy elevated affinity to UP (Aurignacian era) Europeans? Perhaps a tribe of them wandered into south Asia.

vAsiSTha said...

@TLT east india has deep & old connection from SE Asia. Thats how Munda & santhali got there. along with Y haplo O2

Davidski said...

@vAsiSTha

Ancient DNA shows that the oldest P1 is in eastern Siberia, the oldest R in southern Siberia, the oldest R2 in Iran, the oldest R1b in southern Europe, and the oldest R1a in Eastern Europe.

Chaubey's Youtube performance isn't going to change that.

Simon_W said...

@claravallensis
"Also, would it be possible to get some samples from Emilia Romagna?"

The bulk of the samples from the Emilia-Romagna in Raveane et al. 2019 is the same as those from Fiorito et al. 2015: a large number of people from the province of Ferrara. Could be interesting indeed!

In Fiorito et al. 2015 they write: The list of all the genetic and epigenetic data sets are accessible upon request at the HuGeF repository, and information to request data download authorization are available at the following web link: http://www.hugef-torino.org/site/index.php?id=286&t=articolo_secondo_livello&m=extra

At the very bottom of this link they write:

Per la richiesta di accesso ai dati prodotti dal consorzio, contattare la signora Maria Grazia D'Ardes mariagrazia.dardes@hugef-torino.org

So there you know where to get them...

Sarah said...

@Gaska
Olalde et al. 2018 finds 28 Bronze Age Bell Beaker males from Britain who belonged to R1b-L21. Then we have 3x R1b-L21 from Hinxton Celts of the Iron Age period. We have dozens of R1b from Iron Age Gauls of Urville-Nacqueville and Gurgy Les Noisats. So there is proven genetic continuity from Bell Beakers into the Celtic language.
If the Iron Age Italic people also have a lot of R1b, then it is correctly established that there is linguistically an Indo European language continuity from the central European Bell Beakers into the Iron Age of Italy.
In such a situation, 3 Etruscan individuals with R1b and one with I1, wont settle anything regarding the origin of the original Etruscans and their language(not IE).
Historical sources show clearly that they were immigrants and minor in population size.
So we should look at the minority Iron Age paternal markers that were found in the Italian peninsula, rumours spoke about G2a, I1, J2b and T1a being the other paternal markers found in Iron Age Italy. Are these maybe associated with the original (early iron age) minority elite Etruscans? And the R1b among the Etruscans are assimilated Celts/Italics?
It is also a fact that a lot of Etruscans were in time assimilated into the Italic people, and most of them began speaking the Latin language. So, except I1/I2, the other non R1b markers could be related to the Etruscans.


@Larth Ulthes,Simon_W
"Io sono convinto che gli Etruschi, quelli veri, siano realmente orientali e siano stati una élite che si è imposta sugli italici Indoeuropei già presenti in Italia."

"Good to see there are still users around, even from Italy, supporting this old theory, which usually attracts heavy opposition from people claiming it's already a resolved thing that the Etruscans were native to Italy and anyone claiming otherwise doesn't know the facts. No it's not resolved and there is the possibility that the spread of Etruscan was by elite dominance and that the Orientalizing period was more than just a fashion inspired by Greek traders."

I agree with above.

Simon_W said...

As for the new samples, it's interesting, Piedmont, even without the outliers, gets some ABA and more Natufian than the other North Italian samples:

[1] "distance%=2.1696"

Italian_Piedmont

Barcin_N,56.8
Yamnaya_Samara,35
WHG,4
Anatolia_EBA_Ovaoren,2.2
Natufian,2
Anatolia_EBA_Isparta,0
Ganj_Dareh_N,0
Morocco_Iberomaurusian,0
Han,0
Yoruba,0

TLT said...

@vasistha:
Here is the thing- C1b1 has nothing to do with south-east Asian C. The only 2 east Asian samples that I know of under this subclade have a TMRCA of 3200 years, and that is present in China only.
>old and deep connection from SE Asia
The Munda migrations are probably 4,000 years old. Probably less than half the age of the Iran HG presence in India.

zardos said...

BB could have spoken IE indeed, but:
"Olalde et al. 2018 finds 28 Bronze Age Bell Beaker males from Britain who belonged to R1b-L21. Then we have 3x R1b-L21 from Hinxton Celts of the Iron Age period. We have dozens of R1b from Iron Age Gauls of Urville-Nacqueville and Gurgy Les Noisats. So there is proven genetic continuity from Bell Beakers into the Celtic language."

I can't agree as long as we only have a small number of samples of early Celts. Because in the full Bronze Age and Iron Age elite dominance is a feasible option for a language shift. Even more so if assuming a wave like expansion. So we need more samples to be sure no new element appeared which might have spread Celtic languages. Uniparentals and autosomal DNA of course.
Also the exact variant of R1b matters, because if, just as a scenario, a mixed yDNA group of culture bearers started the Celtic expansion and they converted one place, mixing, letting locals participate. This new group did the same and so on, in the end very few of the original bearers will be around on the Western fringes of the Celtic world. Still they would have started the wave. But in any case, some continental European (including continental R1b) yDNA and autosomal signature should appear in the late Bronze to Iron Age in Britain. Not huge, but really significant. Otherwise autochthonous development is indeed more likely.

Davidski said...

@zardos

Purely hypothetical this, but what if the situation in Iron Age Central Europe is similar to what I described in this post about Scandinavia.

Commoner or elite?

In other words, Hallstatt elites are shown to have somewhat different Y-haplogroups than later, more securely Celtic speaking peoples?

Gaska said...

@Sarah

If you want to believe that the Bbs spoke Celtic, and that the Etruscans were recent migrants you are free to do so. I think you have not thought well about the arguments you have used

zardos said...

The Hallstatt culture was more elitarian than the later La Tene culture, which had a much broader base of free warriors and is in most places clearly and securely associated with Celts.
But even the later LTC showed strong hiearchies and stratification, which might have increased over time though, so when the Romans and history met them, they were more stratified (again?).

What I want to say is that Hallstatt might very well have been an elite culture of a very strongly stratified kind. If elite dominance is likely, its the most likely in Hallstatt. At the end of Hallstatt, like at the end of Unetice, we could speak of a situation which is like a revolution. The commoners and local groups take over, the old elite being dethroned.

Now the question would be: Did the elite and the commoners in Hallstatt speak the same language from the start, did the elite or commoners, respectively, gave the other part their language? We know of Eastern influences on many levels in Celtic, were they brought by an Eastern elite, or just adopted?

In any case, the Hallstatt period was long and the power and wealth of the elite was very pronounced. So if after the collapse of the elite system the common warriors spread a language, it was most likely, but not securely, the language of the elite.

Another issue is, that the Hallstatt culture can be at least partitioned in an Western and Eastern regional horizon. The differences between West and East are quite signficant. And we don't even know whether in all Hallstatt territories the same language was spoken. So in theory, it could be just one small region spreading a new way of life and destroying the old elite culture while it expanded and probably this was Celtic - and the regional Hallstatt group. But still other Hallstatt regions might have spoken a different language - unlikely but possible.

So there are different aspects to keep in mind:
- Was the elite in Hallstatt local or foreign?
- Is there a genetic difference between elite and commoners?
- Where there significant regional differences among Hallstatt groups and how was their relation to the closest neighbours?

As you can see, I think aDNA can answer a lot of questions, but not with a few samples here and there from a long lasting and widespread culture with a complex background like Hallstatt.

You need aDNA from different times, different places and different social strata at the same time. So not early Hallstatt from Austria and late from France. But a diachronic and spacial survey with large enough samples.

That doesn't mean single samples can't tell us the most important things by chance, but probably they don't. But such complete survey would definitely.

This means however, that a lot of conclusions might be of just preliminary nature, unless we've get a lucky punch.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

Blogger Sarah said...
@Gaska
Olalde et al. 2018 finds 28 Bronze Age Bell Beaker males from Britain who belonged to R1b-L21. Then we have 3x R1b-L21 from Hinxton Celts of the Iron Age period. We have dozens of R1b from Iron Age Gauls of Urville-Nacqueville and Gurgy Les Noisats. So there is proven genetic continuity from Bell Beakers into the Celtic language.


You forgot about the Roman gladiators where was found two instances of U106(M405) and one U152(S28) from samples autosomally who cluster with the Welsh. Remind me how much U106 or U152 was found in British Beakers? Zero is the answer. They were all L21.

What about Urnfield where U106 was found? and U152 as you say in Halstatt/La Tene Celts?

Celtic began to arrive in the British Isles long after the Beakers, from Central Europe. Most likely bringing a large amount of U106 as the frequency of U106 in the Isles is not consistent with a Germanic migration. The map of U106 itself is centered directly on the core Halstatt/La Tene area. We have an absolute ton of Viking DNA now and you can see it's dominant Germanic Y HG is I1 at 32% followed closely by R1b U106 and R1a. If the U106 in the Isles was as a result of Anglo Saxon migration then we should see just as much I1 there (and much more R1a than we do), but I1 only makes up about 12% of British Y DNA. Realistically we should not expect to see more than 12% U106 in England if it was exclusively Germanic. Instead we see much more because there was a Celtic migration beginning in 1200 B.C. bringing U106, U152, and apparently some I2a2b/R1a as per the rest of the Urnfield samples.

Anonymous said...

@vAsiSTha
"if only they had consulted you. too bad for them."

Yes, they (Bharat patriot foundation)) contradict their conclusions their data have invented to deceive us and you. I use public scientific data.


"R1a diversity and frequency of subclades highest in East & south India, much higher than N india."

You're always cheating, it written a very important word - frequency of several R1a (i.e. R-L657) subclades, and there is not word "diversity" (they are showing that in North India diversity is highest that South India).
Shameful, it completely changes the meaning of what is said, and everything says about your decency.

Vadjzna said...

@ Sarah

"How can we say anything about Etruscans with only 3-4 samples? The early Etruscans were immigrants"

Really? I'm afraid it's not so obvious that early Etruscans were immigrants.

Unknown said...

R-M780 branch is not Indian, there are samples from Russia and the Middle East (R-Y2>F1417). South Asian branch is R-L657, which sold no earlier than 4200 years ago, so the European and South Asian branch was divided not earlier than 4700 ybp.

R* was 25000 ybp in Siberia.

M780 is L657. diversity in India, SNP diversity Arabia and Persian gulf is highest.
I think they found R1* not R* and z93- clades but the footage is too blurry

Also not finding and not looking are very different things.

Bob Floy said...

@vAsiSTha

"For those who understand Hindi"

LOL, I can remember way back when there was still something to debate.
Now you OIT guys are just a 3rd rate comedy act, it must suck to be you.

Ebizur said...

TLT wrote,

"Here is the thing- C1b1 has nothing to do with south-east Asian C. The only 2 east Asian samples that I know of under this subclade have a TMRCA of 3200 years, and that is present in China only."

The TMRCA of C1b1-K281 is 47,200 [95% CI 43,800 <-> 50,600] ybp according to YFull YTree v7.08.00. Chinese and Southeast Asian C1b1a2-B65 is only marginally more closely related to South and Southwest Asian C1b1a1-M356 than the entirety of Asian C1b1-K281 is related to Oceanian C1b2-B477. They probably have not been part of the same population since around the time of the migration of ancestors of Papuans and Aboriginal Australians to Sahul.

However, C1b1a2-B65 is quite interesting in its own regard, although it is woefully understudied. Besides the examples on YFull (one individual from Guangdong, one individual from Shaanxi, and one individual from the HGDP sample of Dai people, with the individual from Shaanxi and the ethnic Dai having an estimated TMRCA of 2,700 [95% CI 1,650 <-> 4,200] ybp and the individual from Guangdong having an estimated TMRCA with the aforementioned pair of 3,200 [95% CI 2,200 <-> 4,200] ybp), Karmin et al. (2015) have found C-B65 in two Lebbo (a tribe in eastern Borneo), three Murut (a tribe in northern Borneo), two Malays from Singapore, and an Aeta (a tribe in Luzon). The branching order is ({Lebbo + Lebbo} + {Murut + [(Malay + {Murut + Murut}) + (Aeta + Malay)]}), so the Lebbos from eastern Borneo are basal to the others from northern Borneo, Singapore, and the Philippines.

Furthermore, Karmin et al. have found C-B68 in one Dusun individual. The Dusun are another tribe who inhabit northern Borneo. The authors have positioned C-B68 as belonging to C-K281(xB66), with C-B66 subsuming South/Southwest Asian C1b1a1-M356 and Chinese/Southeast Asian C1b1a2-B65. Therefore, the maximal diversity of C1b1-K281 at present appears to exist in populations of Borneo, immediately west of the Wallace Line. (East of the Wallace Line, members of C1b2-B477, which forms a sister clade to C1b1-K281, are common among Australian aborigines, Papuans, and Polynesians.) However, the maximal diversity of C1b1a-B66 appears to be in Southwest Asia, as C1b1a3-Z16582 has been found so far only in Saudi Arabia and Iraq (alongside some cases of C1b1a1-M356). In any case, the spread of C1b1-K281 is so ancient that attempting to infer where it has evolved based on the present-day distribution of downstream diversity is probably a futile endeavor.

C-B65 is quite widespread in present-day China. However, it appears to have low extant diversity. The HGDP Dai individual who belongs to this clade has a Y-STR haplotype that forms a tight cluster with the haplotypes of individuals from various ethnic groups throughout central and southwestern China, including Han from Guizhou and Yunnan, Miao, Yao, Tujia, Qiang, Tibetan, Mulam, Sui, Zhuang, and Buyei. The clade seems to be absent from Japan, which otherwise seems to have received a random subset of Chinese genetic diversity through gene flow, so I suppose that it most likely was not a part of the original Han Y-DNA pool.

AWood said...

@Archi

Apparently you haven't been paying attention. Khvalynsk is and was mostly R1b, but there were a few other haplogroups. Unpublished paper -

Khokhlov, A.A. Preliminary results of anthropological and genetic studies of materials of the Volga-Ural region of the Neolithic-Early Bronze Age by an international group of scientists.

Ric Hern said...

@ Romulus

Personally I think R1b L21 and U106 were always in close contact with one another near the Lower Rhine. I think the Belgae spoke a language close to Brythonic. When listening at Brythonic being spoken I can not help thinking of some connection with a Germanic like language when compared to Gaelic...

Proposed Bronze Age trade routes between Britain and Denmark I think strengthens this connection between peoples of the Low Countries and Britain. That is just my personal thoughts...

vAsiSTha said...

Why are you such a pest @archi

"You're always cheating, it written a very important word - frequency of several R1a (i.e. R-L657) subclades, and there is not word "diversity" (they are showing that in North India diversity is highest that South India).
Shameful, it completely changes the meaning of what is said, and everything says about your decency."

Bharat Patriot foundation just called the speaker for a lecture. It has nothing to do with the research.

If you don't understand Hindi, then stfu and stop being a pest. He clearly says that frequency is highest in south India.

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