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Saturday, October 26, 2019

Warlike herders and their weapons


Who had the best gear? The Yamnaya guys? And if it came down to it, who would've won an all out rumble? Let me know your thoughts after reading this paper...

The weaponry of the pastoral societies in the context of the weaponry of the steppe/forest-steppe communities: 5000-2350 BC

See also...


239 comments:

1 – 200 of 239   Newer›   Newest»
Richard Rocca said...

I don't know who would have one, but it looks like the Middle Dnieper Culture spent the most amount of time finishing their weaponry given their designs.

Anonymous said...


These are questions from the category: Who won the Tollense battle?

Mikkel said...

Re-reading Anthony's Chapter 14 on Usatovo-Middle Dnieper-Tripolye relations and hirearchies, I would love to see deep archaeogenetic studies of Middle-Dnieper and Usatovo (and late Tripolye) culture sites in the style of Mittnik 2019 and Schroeder 2019.

Any rumors of upcoming DNA studies from these cultures in the near future?

Bob said...

@ Mikkel Yes, couldn't agree more.

@ David
Interesting paper I had not seen before.

Your questions are a little tabloid sensationalism.

More interesting question is whether there is a pattern regarding weapon type - geographically AND through time.

Is there a pattern through time re tanged daggers / battle axe v rivetted dagger and flat axe.

We know tanged daggers are related to Yamnaya / to Eastern Bell Beaker (originally linked to Majkop??) and rivetted daggers link to Usatovo and later into the Wessex Culture and Unetice. Will there turn out to be any aDNA linkages through time reflecting these weapon type patterns?

If so, it will not be simple - as there is clearly not a straight forward Majkop - Yamnaya link (for example).

un said...

Three episodes from the Tripolye wars (in Russian)
http://www.balto-slavica.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=19581&p=303782

samples of weapons from Trypillian culture
http://www.balto-slavica.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=19581&p=303855

epoch said...

@JuanRivera

"What I didn't expect was that their HG ancestors/relatives were also agressive"

The samples thatb more or less define SHG, Motala, are heads on a stick.

EastPole said...

@Archi
I showed you a qoutation from a book written by an archeology profesor, and you answered.

"It don't know about any steppe(!) breeds of horses in CWC, it's just someone's fantasy. And I don't care what some fantasist wrote in some children's book."

So you admit that you are a troll.

I was puzzled by your criticizm of Narasimhan et al. paper where it was stated that the link between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages was confirmed by genetics. It is a very good paper and it says precisely:

„The Steppe ancestry in South Asia has the same profile as that in Bronze Age Eastern Europe, tracking a movement of people that affected both regions and that likely spread the distinctive features shared between Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages.”

„Our observation of the spread of Central_Steppe_MLBA ancestry into South Asia in the first half of the second millennium BCE provides this evidence, which is particularly notable because it provides a plausible genetic explanation for the linguistic similarities between the Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian subfamilies of Indo-European languages, which despite their vast geographic separation share the “satem” innovation and “ruki” sound laws (62)".

https://i.postimg.cc/3NMqkgpc/Narasimhan.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/bJykYydv/screenshot-10.png
https://i.postimg.cc/mk4tbRjr/screenshot-12.png

Your response to my qoutations, maps and most recent linguistic trees was:

„You are insolent, you is Troll, the Baltic-Slavic-Germanic group is considered by some linguists as genetic (see trees), in any case, it is closely related languages in which a lot of common innovations - read Porzig and etc.”

Why should I read Porzig or other NSDAP-professors you love?

„From 1925 ord. Professor of comparative linguistics and classical philology at Bern. In 1935 he was dismissed for political reasons (as Nazi) and returned to Jena as Professor.”

https://whowaswho-indology.info/4850/porzig-walter/

If you have phobias and don’t like certain ethnicities you should seek psychiatric help, not let it blind you to obvious truths.

Anonymous said...

It's rubbish about Tripolye at the Russian forum, in one case it's not clear that, apparently, it's a personal conflict, in another case it's about defensive structures from the steppe nomads, in the third case it's about the non-Tripolye Usatovo culture.

@EastPole "So you admit that you are a troll."

You're a troll. Your child reference only says that if the horses then from the steppe. But it is not said that these are steppe horses.

Porzig is a great linguist, he has never been criticized, everyone recognizes his merits and his work is scientific. Unlike you, who only brings children's books. Everybody admitted that his research did not include a single gram of ideology.
Otherwise, I don't give a damn about your shouting at a deeply non-smart person.
You have phobias and biases of an antiscientific freak.

Ric Hern said...

@ Davidski

It kind of looks like most were pretty evenly matched. I think it would have boiled down to tactics, logistics and experience...

Ric Hern said...

@ Davidski

The other possibility is the ones wearing the most effective protective armour...

Davidski said...

@Mikkel

Any rumors of upcoming DNA studies from these cultures in the near future?

Yes, apparently remains from several Usatovo kurgans have been tested, and they're different from the earlier Tripolye samples that have already been published because they have steppe ancestry.

And it sounds like a lot more stuff is on the way from the western edge of the steppe dating to that period.

I haven't heard anything about remains from the Middle Dnieper culture, but hopefully someone is working on that too.

Ric Hern said...

If horses were not in any kind of combat and pulling wagons they surely could have been used for communication between troops on the Battlefield. Effective Communication between commander and different sections of troops is usually vital....This could have been done by blowing horns but a messager on horseback I think could also make sense especially if the enemies horns sounded just like yours...

Anonymous said...

@Davidski "I haven't heard anything about remains from the Middle Dnieper culture, but hopefully someone is working on that too."

I will disappoint you, the the remains of the Middle Dnieper culture are not even known to anthropologists, so they are hardly tested, because they are not known.

Arza said...

As a reminder - there was a paper with a time transect from Verteba Cave (forest-steppe, Western Ukraine) presented at SMBE 2018 which may be relevant to the current discussion:

The Transition to Farming in Eneolithic (Copper Age) Ukraine was Largely Driven by Population Replacement

Schmidt et al.

The transition to a farming-based economy during the Neolithic happened relatively late in southeastern Europe. Material changes occurred through pottery manufacture, but it wasn't until the sixth millennium BCE that farming was adopted by the Cucuteni-Trypillian archaeological complex (4800-3000 BCE). In many parts of Europe, early farmers who were descended from Anatolian migrants slowly admixed with local hunter-gatherers over the course of the Neolithic. In Eastern Europe and the Balkans, this process may have been more complex since early farmers would likely have admixed with local groups prior to spreading into continental Europe. Studies from the Baltic and Estonia suggest little genetic input from early farmers or continuous admixture with hunter-gatherers. Here, we investigate the impact of Trypillian migrations into Ukraine through the analyses of 19 ancient genomes (0.6 to 2.1X coverage) from the site of Verteba Cave. Ceramic typology and radiocarbon dating of the cave indicate continuous occupation from the Mesolithic to the Medieval Period, with peak occupation coinciding with the middle to late Tripolye. We show that the Trypillians replaced local Ukrainian Neolithic cultures. Also, hunter-gatherers contributed very little ancestry to the Trypillians, who are genetically indistinct from early Neolithic farmers. The one exception is a female that has mostly steppe-related ancestry. Direct radiocarbon dating of this individual places her in the the Middle Bronze Age (3545 years before present). Her lack of farmer ancestry suggests abrupt population replacement resulting perhaps from inter-group hostilities or plague that spread through Europe during the Late Neolithic.

Davidski said...

@Arza

Relevant how? We were discussing Usatovo, not the Middle Bronze Age.

Rob said...

I don’t think the suggestions of Schmidt et al are correct. Even early CT has notable HG ancestry .
By the late phase of CT; there should be plenty of HG ancestry
This was a process; not the battle for Helms deep, as some seem to imagine

Sofia Aurora said...

Hahahaha!!

David mou wrote it down like if ti is a pro-wrestling match of the kind of WWE etc.!

John Cena vs Hulk Hogan vs the Ultimate Warrior!

Catchy headline for a post!
:)

Arza said...

@ Davidski

Maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like a pretty important spot to have a time transect from there:

https://i.postimg.cc/3N356DT3/usatovo-verteba-cwc.jpg

Davidski said...

@Arza

By the sounds of it there is a genetic time transect study being prepared for that western edge of the steppe.

And yeah, Corded Ware and Usatovo people, or at least males, probably did derive from the same Eneolithic steppe population.

zardos said...

The main problem of the crop farmers is that they have to defend their fields. If they being in the defensive, they can move into their fortifications and probably even defend for once, probably twice. But if they are unable to regain control, and the prevention of raids is even harder to manage, they will starve and being ravaged by plagues.
If they go in the counter offensive, they have to move onto the steppe with supply and leave their undefended homes. The pastoralists on the other hand are able to evade the larger army and lead a war of small attacks, traps and attrition of the enemy.
Might I remind you on the Persians trying to catch the Scythians.

Obviously the steppe people were not as mobile as the Scythians at that time, but they were better equipped for surprise attacks, supply on campaign and the fast retreat if being outnumbered.

If TCC had no central organisation, which it doesn't seem to have had in later times at least, they would have had a hard time fending the steppe warriors off and keeping their production running at the same time.

So they could:
- Ally up with the steppe people or submit to their rule in the hope of mercy
- Try to fend them off while keeping up their economy - which most communities didn't manage to do on the longer run
- Adapt to such a more mobile life themselves as long as they had a chance to.

We see all three developments in South Eastern Europe.

That the hunters and pastoralists did rarely built larger fortifications is easy to explain, because they more portable goods and preferred to flee if necessary.

TCC on the other hand had large stocks and immobile goods to protect and was able to do so. But in a long war of attrition with the pastoralists and no superiour organisation of their defense they were in a bad spot.

Also interesting that we have a good variety of weapons, including different social status weaponry (like maces), from the Lower Don region, including armament, including pieces made of leather and boar fangs. Can anyone tell how common that was in Europe? We know it from Eastern Europe and later Greece. Elsewhere?

Arza said...

@ Davidski

Now it becomes clear in what kind of paper this guy will appear:
I1927 8V8a-M5 5228   3619-2936 calBCE (4550±90 BP, Ki-13388) Trypillia_outlier Verteba Cave H1b G2a2b2a1a1b1a1a1:L42

Bob said...

@ David

"And yeah, Corded Ware and Usatovo people, or at least males, probably did derive from the same Eneolithic steppe population."

Oh, how very very interesting and exciting!

Re. Lech Valley EBA R1b burials = 'acquired' Unetice 'brides' and jewellery and rivetted daggers and appeared in burials. Was this by exchange of brides to create peaceful co-existence or by war with Unetice and 'stealing' their womenfolk and possessions??

Re. Usatovo: Kurgan cemerery 1 has Balkan/Med style daggers, Trypolye pottery and also Majkop/Novesbodyana pottery/artefacts.
So, a key question is, where are the females from? What does the mtDNA and autosomal tell us? Will there be isotope data suggesting possible geographical movement. Just how have this range of burial goods been acquired?? Very exciting stuff that I hope is addressed in the forthcoming paper..

I spoke to a leading archaeology academic in the summer who claimed aDNA was useless as it told nothing about social archaeology. Just how very very wrong is that view. It is helping us towards a whole new level of understanding that is going beyond my expectations of even only a couple of years ago......

Matt said...

@arza, I'd agree somewhat with Rob in this instance that from the samples we have it seems a little strange to talk of Trypillians replacing the Ukraine_N population as such, at least at sites to the west of Verteba like the samples at Derivka.

There we see three samples of rich Ukraine HG ancestry up until the latest (and richest in HG) I5884 at 2793 BCE.

Visually: https://imgur.com/a/fst6u7p

These three are actually overlapping the time of the Yamnaya samples we have; the designation Eneolithic might lead us to have the impression that these samples precede the Trypillian Samples at Verteba Cave, or the Yamnaya in Ukraine. But this is not the case and there are still HG rich people at Dereivka at the time that we have the Yamnaya (including the Ozera sample and more "normal" Yamnaya) and GAC elsewhere in Ukraine.

We don't see rich HG ancestry Ukraine Eneolithic at Dereivka then *afterwards* high Anatolian or steppe related with no continuity, but these things all present in Ukraine in an overlapping time frame at different sites.

Now there might be some reservoir effect and if that were included possibly there is more of a transition, but ostensibly on the face of things as they stand, any talk of a replacement can only really be talking of it locally at Verteba, not at sites further east.

(Two of these three samples are female with mts: I4110:J2b1, I5882:U5a2a, but I5884 is a male y:R1b-Z2103 and mt:U5a2b).

weure said...

And what about the possibility CW/SGC> BB NW and a reflux to the east?

The Trzciniec culture started in the BB hotspots the sandy place just inland of the North Sea Area. This spread to Poland, Baltic etc.

https://www.academia.edu/36071374/_Trzciniec_Borderland_of_Early_Bronze_Civilization_of_Eastern_and_Western_Europe_The_Trzciniec_Area_of_the_Early_Bronze_Age_Civilization_1950-1200_BC._Poznań_1998_Baltic-Pontic_Studies_vol._6_р._190-202

and
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/01/r1a-z280-from-early-bronze-age-northern.html

The auDNA of Roman York (also a BB derivate) are highly nowadays Welsh and Polish/Baltic like.

Matt said...

For the above plots in my comment above, trying to use bubble plots to co-visualize time with PC1 and PC2 of West Eurasia PCA at the same time: https://imgur.com/a/0yCVwaI

Bigger bubbles = older sample

(On a side note, where I mentioned that reservoir effect discussions may matter to the Eneolithic Ukraine samples with heavy Ukraine_N ancestry that overlap Yamnaya and GAC_Ukraine in time, thinking about it, reservoir effect would mean that these samples were younger that the radiocarbon date suggests, which would if anything strengthen the idea that a high cut of Ukraine_N ancestry was still about in some cultures and places in Ukraine during the late Copper/early-mid Bronze Age....)

zardos said...

@Bob: "Re. Lech Valley EBA R1b burials = 'acquired' Unetice 'brides' and jewellery and rivetted daggers and appeared in burials. Was this by exchange of brides to create peaceful co-existence or by war with Unetice and 'stealing' their womenfolk and possessions??"

They might have been hostages, court ladies, priestesses or their sons might have been send abroad. The real wives of the BB came from abroad, but largely from the same clan bride exchange network. Their sons appear in the burials, their daughters being send in exchange. The women from Unetice however stick out, as they found no descendents at all. They were kept with all honours it seems, but either not bred with or their descendents were send back to Unetice.

Its really strange and nothing we could have ever expected without DNA testing. Either their ancestry nor the very unusual position they had in the community.

Kotova argued for the Western steppe having taking TCC womensfolk in, as brides. So a female mediated admixture and cultural influence early on is to be expected.

weure said...

The emergence of Trzciniec in Mierzanowice territory has been described by Jacek Górski and Sławomir Kadrow as follows (Czebreszuk 1998):

1. Migration of “Trzciniec” population from the Lowlands (= Barbed Wire/Protruding Foot Beaker!!!)

2. Initially the migrants occupy in the south only those ecological niches which they know from the Lowlands, i.e. the sandy oecumene.

3. The migrants come into contact with local settled farmers, represented by the Mierzanowice culture, which was then in a crisis; they adopt traits that will enable them to exploit loess niches.

4. Finally, the Trzciniec package is shared also by the communities of settled farmers of loess areas.

Anonymous said...

@weure
It doesn't matter, because
"Origins of the morphology of Trzyniec vessels with a S-profile Polish archaeologists
can be traced back to the Middle Bronze Age in archaeological cultures in the Southern Baltics.
Tulip-shaped vessels (Riesenbecher) ornamented along the neck with one or two smooth rollers or grooves are known already on the monuments of the Corded Ware cultures of the Lower Saxon, Danish, Schleswig-Holstein, from where they are distributed to the Oder and Vistula basins, to the TCC formation area (Fig. 4, 5) (Czebreszuk 1998: ris. 1, 2, 7, 9; Makarowicz 1998: tabl. 100). In Poland such ceramics with roller ornamentation is typical for the late monuments of the Ivienne culture (Makarowicz 1998: tabl. 101 )." 2017

weure said...

Barbed Wire/ Protruding Foot Beaker is also rooted in SGC (CW). So it's a kind of reflux.

"The final stage of development of Bell Beaker traits on the southwest Baltic is marked by the so called barbed wire ornament [/B](Fig. 11) (Czebreszuk 2001), which is visibly less accurate and varied than in the previous stages.

In Kujawy and Wielkopolska, this late Bell Beakers stage also marks the inception of a new sequence of changes, taking the form of the so-called Trzciniec horizon (Czebreszuk 1998). Phenomena consistent with the Trzciniec cultural circle can be foTund across vast areas of central and eastern Europe, from the Warta drainage as far as the middle Dnieper (Makarowicz 2010)."

https://www.mupload.nl/img/lk22o74nf5h.54.41.png

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319881379_Bell_Beakers_and_the_cultural_milieu_of_north_European_plain

It's a founding population of the whole North European Plain (incl. Isles).

Arza said...

@ Archi & Rob

Is Yamnaya Chelyabinsk important in any way?

Davidski said...

@Arza

Is Yamnaya Chelyabinsk important in any way?

If I may answer, no, I can't think why it would be important in any way.

I'm guessing you've probably heard something about R1a in Yamnaya up that way. It's probably a badly dated Scythian or Sarmatian.

Gabriel said...

@Davidski

Do you know what kind of autosomal signal and uniparentals Usatovo samples are said to show?

Davidski said...

Z93 and a lot of steppe ancestry. Can't really add anything more to that.

Gabriel said...

@Davidski

Can Usatovo still be an ancestor to Corded Ware? Does the Z93 suggest it?

Davidski said...

You tell me, and then we'll both know.

zardos said...

Rather unlikely Usatavo was the ancestor, more likely it was a separate, but neighbouring branch, more Western and with closer ties to TCC than the more conservative CW.
Would imagine them as neighbouring tribes influencing each other rather than one being ancestral.
The parentals and analyses will prove it.

Anonymous said...

@Davidsky Tell us what kind of team did this to us? I don't think that the name is a secret. Is it the same that doing Fatyanivo, Mariupol, Khvalynsk?


Davidski said...

Dublin or Jena.

Ryan said...

Re: the Sintashta Q1a outliers highlighted in this post and others, I'd bet good money they're not actually Uralic speakers, but something Paleosiberian and dead with no close (<10,000 years) living relatives. Assuming that last part isn't describing Indo-European itself.

Ryan said...

BTW David (or anyone else for that matter), any chance of blogging about some of Lara Cassidy's work? This paper from the spring for example: https://t.co/98c5HEPecY?amp=1

Or the ancient R1b-M222 she recently dug up in Ireland.

Disclosure: I may be R1b-M222 lol

Davidski said...

@Ryan

The article you linked to is a comment piece. Nothing to blog about.

Do you have a link about the ancient R1b-M222 find?

Ryan said...

I can forward you what I have from the M222 FTDNA project. It's pretty limited what they have though - just that it seems to have been from Connaught, from a site in use between 500 CE and 1500 CE, and included Df106, DF108 and DF105 as subclades. That's with 40 remains tested so far. The paper's under embargo and due out May 2020 but I was hoping someone here might know more (this information is from a lecture Dr Cassidy gave).

Maybe I should ask if there's a pre-print coming earlier.

Davidski said...

I don't think I can blog about data from an FTDNA project or an embargoed thesis.

Ryan said...

Fair. I've reached out on Twitter to Dr. Cassidy to see if there's anything she can share.

Mikkel said...

@David
"Yes, apparently remains from several Usatovo kurgans have been tested, and they're different from the earlier Tripolye samples that have already been published because they have steppe ancestry.

And it sounds like a lot more stuff is on the way from the western edge of the steppe dating to that period."

"Z93 and a lot of steppe ancestry. Can't really add anything more to that"


Amazing! Those deep transect studies are really important.

If Z93 is already clear in Usatovo (and earlier in Eastern Ukraine? (I6561, still haven't seen official confirmation on that one)), I wonder how that relates to its sister lineage Z283 in North and East Europe.
Did they co-exist somehow before splitting up?
Or were they already in different regional pockets by the Usatovo period?
And then there's also the question if/how that relates to Indo-Slavic and (para?-)Germanic.

The plot thickens...
What a time to be alive :)

Anonymous said...


Here it is necessary to be very accurate with time, the matter is that Z93 has only 3 mutations that makes a maximum of 400-450 years, Z94 has only 2 mutations that makes a maximum of 250-300 years. Therefore, I asked about the dates of burials and whether the reservoir effect would be deducted, it may not even be the Usatovo culture, but something later.

Davidski said...

@Archi

The problem is with your theory. It doesn't match the ancient DNA evidence.

There's no sign of R1a-M417 in the Russian forest zone (north of the steppe) until the expansion of Corded Ware from the south.

But there seems to be plenty of R1b-M269 there already during the Eneolithic, well before Yamnaya.

Jatt_Scythian said...

There was R1b-M269 in the Russian forest zone before Yamnaya?

Davidski said...

Yep, and that's what Gaska's friends were talking about.

Mike said...

@Davidski Is there any kind of rumor about the Haplogroups found in the Mariupol cemetery.

Davidski said...

@Mike

Yes, there is, and there might be something relevant there, like L51, but singleton results at this stage aren't worth much, because they might be caused by errors of different kinds. So we have to wait for the publication of the data, and indeed the release of the BAM files, to be sure.

However, the reason that northern Russia is being mentioned in this context is that there are multiple M269 results from there, so they probably can't all be erroneous. And just to clarify, this is indeed the forest zone, not the Khvlaynsk culture or anything like that.

Anonymous said...

@Davidski

The problem is that you are looking only under the lantern, because to the north of the Forest - Steppe border (Khvalynsk and Alexandria are not steppes as such, it is the border) nothing but Onega Lake with its R1a was not tested, so there is nothing there can be.

Anonymous said...

@Davidski "northern Russia is being mentioned in this context is that there are multiple M269"

Who's got the M269 in northern Russia? Specify.


Davidski said...

@Archi

I know where the forest zone is. I never said that Khvalynsk was in the forest zone, did I?

And yeah, your theory that R1a-M417 came from near Onega Lake is brilliant, or it would be, if it actually made sense.

Jatt_Scythian said...

Wow that is exciting. So will we see those R1bs in the CW chain of cultures in Russia (Middle Dnieper-Fataynovo-Abashevo-Balanovo).

So many suprises.

Expect Yamnaya to be R1a and they were R1b.
Then found and R1a in Maykop.
Expected to find only R1b in Sredny Stog and Usatovo. But we have found Z93+.

Does Khvalysnk have more R1a?

Who would have guessed R1a is the more southernly and westernly lineage?

Anonymous said...

@Davidski Are you saying that there was no R1a in the forest zone on Onega Lake in northern Russia?
This is the only place where we tested in northern Russia, except for Pit-Combed Pottery, which also has R1a.


Still, who in northern Russia has the M269 in forest zone?

Davidski said...

@Jatt_Scythian

Does Khvalysnk have more R1a?

Not that I'm aware of.

Based on what I've seen, I don't think that R1a-M417 comes from anywhere near there.

Jatt_Scythian said...

Where are the R1a in Pit-Combed Potter Ware?

@ Davidski

Where will see more R1a? Repin? Sredny Stog? Lower Don culture?

Anonymous said...

@Jatt_Scythian "So will we see those R1bs in the CW chain of cultures in Russia (Middle Dnieper-Fataynovo-Abashevo-Balanovo). Then found and R1a in Maykop. ... So many suprises."

We won't see, they haven't found it. No surprises.

Mike said...

@ Davidski Could R1a be found in there?

Davidski said...

@Archi

You seem to be confused.

R1a and R1a-M417 are different things, and it's R1a-M417 that really matters in the context of modern R1a variation.

Like I said, there's no sign of R1a-M417 in pre-Corded Ware northern Russia. All you'll see there are a few R1a lineages that don't matter mixed in with a lot of R1b.

But that shouldn't be surprising, considering the genetic structure of the earliest samples with R1a-M417, especially those steppe-like Corded Ware males.

You should've understood this a long time ago.

Anonymous said...

@Davidski
All I can say is that you can't see it in any way, because nothing north of Khvalynsk was tested since Mesolithic, zero! (except Combed Ware Estonia R1a).

M417 is already the Neolithic! Which is just for this region has not been tested at all!

Davidski said...

@JuanRivera

Is it part of another big study of the steppe and the forest?

Yes, it seems that way.

Lots more samples are on the way from Meso/Neo Samara, Khvalynsk, and other Eneolithic and Bronze Age cultures from Russia, including from the forest zone.

Archi will have to come up with a brand new theory after this stuff gets released.

Anonymous said...

@Davidski I don't think I have to come up with anything new, because I don't see any rebuttal of what I'm writing. And I'm sure I won't see.

Anonymous said...

@Davidski

In your opinion R1a on Onega Lake in Mesolithic and in Estonia in Neolithic appeared from the underground? Even though R1b had previously been there in Estonia.

Davidski said...

@Archi

Those early northern R1a subclades are irrelevant.

R1a was present across Eastern Europe at very low frequencies, at least compared to R1b and I2a, until the Corded Ware period, when it suddenly reached high frequencies in many regions.

But the Corded Ware R1a didn't come from the north. You should have known this a long time ago.

Angantyr said...

@Jatt_Scythian

"Where are the R1a in Pit-Combed Potter Ware?"

Kudruküla3 reported in Saag et al. 2017, Extensive Farming in Estonia Started through a Sex-
Biased Migration from the Steppe
is R1a5-YP1272.

Rob said...

Has the R1a (xM417) in Steppe Majkop been confirmed by the YFull guys or Open Genomes ?

Davidski said...

Yes...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wkLjTA856nW6On8Q10U-WrhyTBWlwCVdK6AMQFCfIaw/edit#gid=202340943

Davidski said...

@All

For all those interested in the Uralic question, you should find this thesis useful...

The prehistory of Estonia from a genetic perspective: new insights from ancient DNA

Related Eurogenes blog posts and links are here...

It was always going to be this way

Fresh off the sledge

More on the association between Uralic expansions and Y-haplogroup N

Also, here's a website for a very promising looking project dealing with the origins and phylogeny of Uralic languages...

BEDLAN (Biological Evolution and Diversification of LANguages)

Vladimir said...

@ Davidski. the chrY data is here: https://terheninenmaa.blogspot.com/2019/10/saag-et-al-2019-ydna-aspects.html
but there is no sample-time-bound data anywhere

Davidski said...

@Vladimir

It's in the paper. You have to get a copy and read it.

Basically, when the Corded Ware culture arrives in the East Baltic from the steppe, all of the hunter-gatherer Y-haplogroups (I2, R1axM417, R1b) are replaced by R1a-M417.

And then Y-hg N arrives during the Iron Age with Uralic speakers. See here...

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H-Atg6dgTok/XbqMTMyfLMI/AAAAAAAAITQ/bJJB-PxbO0kfS30WAgg6zG0ywNjGUyKnQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Table.png

Gaska said...

Those same friends told me that ATP3 (El Portalón is with absolute certainty R1b-P297 and probably R1b-M269 and that looking in the right places this lineage will continue to appear in Western Europe- So if we believe the rumors, we have to believe them all- They think of a remote origin in northern Russia but an appearance of this lineage in Central and Western Europe well before the CWC and clearly mentioned the LBK- Following Olalde they think that R1b-P312 has nothing to do with IE

Davidski said...

@Gaska

I'm not talking about any rumors but pre-publication results.

Anonymous said...

A corded ware came from the northeast! Even before Dereivka culture, it lived in the north of Russia in pre-Sperrings. And in general, corded ware from Siberia, where it lived for a very long time, including the Baikal. And even earlier it was in Japan - Jomon means Corded Ware.

Studies of the peoples of Siberia having Corded Ware established precisely, corded ware is the so-called male's ware, it was located in the male part of the house (the female part did not have corded ware), it represents the masculinity, patriarchy, his potential. In Dereivka, this is still clearly visible in the "caterpillar" ornament.

What is there with the ancient distribution of haplogroups and their origin is not known to anyone.

Sarah said...

@davidski
In august you had a post on the paper with preliminary results of David Anthony.
At this stage, are there new samples tested than the mentioned 30+ samples from the Khvalynsk culture(David Anthony: R1a, Q1a, J, I2a2)?
You wrote these would be possibly published in the forthcoming Narasimhan et al. paper, do you know exactly when?
Is there any influx from the early Neolithic farmer revolution into the Khvalynsk culture?
Was there any Anatolia_N ancestry in the Sredni Stog and Khvalynsk cultures?
Do all of the Steppe Maykop samples(Q1a, R1a, T1a) mentioned at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wkLjTA856nW6On8Q10U-WrhyTBWlwCVdK6AMQFCfIaw/edit#gid=202340943 have a geentic link with the cultures like Sredni Stog and Khvalynsk?
What do you think about the Neolithic revolution maps mentioned at the ESEB2019 conference on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFWeCNLDtaQ ? Individuals from the Steppe Maykop (Ipatovo) has been plotted in one of the maps in the video. Also the migration map of the Neolithic revolution mentions a migration from around 6500-6000 bce into the region of Khvalynsk.

Davidski said...

@Sarah

There never was any Neolithic migration from south of the Caucasus into the steppe. This is a very strange theory not backed by any hard data that never made any sense, and yet it keeps getting mentioned by academics. Why? I have no idea.

Eneolithic populations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, like those associated with the Khvalynsk culture, were derived from steppe forager groups from different parts of the steppe. And the so called "Iranian" ancestry in the Khvalynsk and Yamnaya populations was in fact from steppe foragers near the North Caucasus, rather than any Proto-Indo-Europeans from the Maykop culture or the Iranian Plateau.

Yamnaya differs from Khvalynsk in that it has minor early European farmer (EEF) ancestry from the western edge of the steppe, but this was gradually mediated via Sredny Stog and other such North Pontic steppe cultures.

Steppe Maykop is interesting, and its population probably did have ancestry from south of the Caucasus, including even from Iran, but it's not relevant to Yamnaya, Corded Ware or anything to do with modern Europeans, because it seems to have simply vanished one day as Yamnaya expanded into its territory.

Apart from that, the Narasimhan paper was already published, and it didn't have the new Khvalynsk samples. But I guess they'll be out soon in another paper, probably along with other Eneolithic and Bronze Age samples from all over European Russia that have been sequenced recently. There are hundreds of them on the way.

By the way, the Y-hg J in the Khvalynsk samples is J1, and probably the same subclade as that in the Mesolithic foragers from northern Russia.

zardos said...

Dnieper-Donets and Middle Don Culture,
analysing subgroups, will be highly interesting, because a related tribe should have taken control of the Lower Don culture.
So I would not wonder to find related R1 lineages in the whole Russian region.
However, it was just a subset, those which mixed with the Caucasian Southern population, which really mattered in the end.

That R1-lineages appear in the North was to be expected, it will prove which exact population and culture added the dominant, mostly EHG forager part to the PPIE mix.

Jatt_Scythian said...

So Khvalynsk is mostly R1b with a lone Q1a, R1a and J1?

zardos said...

R. yar and the Mariupol cemetery will be very important probably. If there was a Neolithic immigration from Transcaucasia after the Mesolithic proper, adding additional CHG related ancestry, this should be visible in R. yar. Later influences took probably place too, but they were not formative for PIE.

Vladimir said...

Davidski. Thank you, understood.

Davidski said...

@zardos

That's unlikely, because ancestry from south of the Caucasus was already all over the Caucasus well before 4,000 BCE, and this sort of ancestry only shows up on the steppe in Steppe Maykop outliers.

Keep in mind that Yamnaya-like forager groups, minus early European farmer admix, existed on the steppe just north of the Caucasus well before 4,000 BCE as well. That's where Khvalynsk and Yamnaya got their so called Caucasus/Iranian ancestry.

Anonymous said...

Information for reflection about mtDNA

Mesolithic Russia Yuzhnyy Oleni Ostrov [I0061 / UzOO 74; Karelia in Fu 2016; MAE RAS collection number 5773-74, grave number 142] 6773-5886 BCE M R1a1* C1g
Mesolithic Russia Yuzhnyy Oleni Ostrov [UzOO 7 and 8] 7500 BP C1g

Neolithic Dnieper-Donets Ukraine Yasinovatka [Ya 45] 5471-5223 calBC (6360±60 BP, OxA-6164) M C
Neolithic Dnieper-Donets Ukraine Nikolskoye [Ni 58] M C
Neolithic Dnieper-Donets Ukraine Yasinovatka [Ya 34] 5323-4941 BC C4a2

Bronze Ukraine Odessa province, Liubasha, kurgan 2 [L8] 2512 ± 105 BC M C4a2
Bronze Ukraine Odessa province, Liubasha, kurgan 2 [L15] 2161 ± 107 BC C4a2

Bronze Potapovka Russia Utyevka VI, Samara River, Samara [I0246 / SVP 41] 2469-1928 BC M R1 C1



zardos said...

I know, I'm talking about 7000-5000 yBP. 4000 everything I'm talking about was done.
What I had in mind is an early solely Mesolithic CHG expansion on the Southern steppe and in a second phase an additional group of PPN colonisers landing around the Lower Don and founding R. yar etc.

They mixed with locals and the EHG lineages from the North (DD, MD?) got at some point the upper hand, like in Northern Europe in TRB/GAC.

This new group is visible in Mariupol cemetery, but the starting point is about 7000 BP in the Lower Don area.

Whats the earlist sample(s) with the classic steppe ancestry mixture to your knowledge?

Davidski said...

@zardos

ID VJ1001, Vonyuchka 1, kurgan 1, grave 8, 4332-4238 calBCE, female, mtDNA T2a1b

~60% CHG-related, ~40 EHG-related

You have to add some Ukraine forager and early farmer to get from this to Yamnaya.

zardos said...

Thsnks David!

Of course, DD adds Ukraine forager, Surskaja and Bug-Dnieper add EEF. These are the direct neighbours of the Lower Don culture and helped to create the pastoralist tribes.

What this might prove is exactly that: Yamnaya expanded from the West as a newer wave from the LDC area.
Now the steppe ancestry could have run circles, like GAC later around the Carparthians, but more likely the center of the steppe amcestry's expansion was just further West.
Progress and Vonyuchka would in this scenario be the Eastern branch, probably a dead end?
The Western, more Balkan influenced became the main body for all expansion.

Either way do you know of really old, pre 5000 BP samples in the pipeline?
That's all too late, we need earlier samples.

Davidski said...

You have to add some Ukraine forager and early farmer to get from this to Yamnaya.

But don't take the above too literally, because no one knows yet what sort of populations precisely were involved in the mixture that led to the Yamnaya genotype.

For instance, it may have been a two or three-way process with all of the ancestral populations already having some CHG-related ancestry.

Anonymous said...

@zardos "additional group of PPN colonisers landing around the Lower Don and founding R. yar etc."


The Rakushechnyi Yar culture has no connections with PPN, it is the culture of Hunter-Gatherer-Fishermen, with the appeared cattle. The connections were not with this culture, but in Mesolithic and they did not lead to anything. Many people think that these connections were made through the Bug-Dniester culture.

Ric Hern said...

Were there already CHG admixture in the Forest Steppe/North Russian Eneolithic or Neolithic R1bs ?

zardos said...

You don’t know for sure what happened there without human and animal bones (possible early sheeps/goats) being securely dated and genetically analysed.

zardos said...

CHG ancestry predates all those events in a lot of regions in the East. Its about it being very low before the steppe expansion.
So a new group from the steppe didnt necessarily bring CHG where it wasnt before, but spreading its ancestry with a specific proportion of EHG : CHG.
I'd assume some Southern regions were more CHG before the steppe, and the Northern more EHG obviously.
Steppe replaced the predecessors and spread its ancestry proportion everywhere.

Rob said...

By the time cattle appeared in the lower Don region; LDC / R Yar C. was long gone
We’d instead be talking something like Konstantinovka culture . But without samples who knows if K. was even that relevant ?
In any case; I doubt the key lineages all came from one village.

zardos said...

@Rob: Surely not from one village, but the larger Lower Don region.
R. yar early is so important because if Transcaucasian migrants came in, they will be clearly recognisable there and heavily mixed with older layers of CHG and EHG later.
If its not in early R. yar, it was not there at all. That's why I consider it being so important, R. yar will clearly prove/disprove the Zagros/Eastern Anatolian colonisation for the early LDC.

Anonymous said...

@zardos "Zagros/Eastern Anatolian colonisation for the early LDC."

This simply cannot be the case, since the connections are too weak and have not changed anything in the life of the local population, these connections are very hypothetical.

Sarah said...

@davidski

So, the Khvalynsk and Sredni Stog had EEF / Anatolia_N ancestry?

That Neolithic Revolution map mentioned by the ESEB2019 conference speaker Alexander Herbig, is pinpointing a direction from the Southern regions into north of the Caucasus where the Steppe regions of the Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog are located. This migration happened roughly between 7500 - 5000 bce.

And then in the other map related to the specific bacteria (Salmonella) distribution made by the Southern people of the Neolithic revolution, there is a sample shown with the id of "IV3002". This is the Steppe Maykop outlier (Y-dna T1a) with Anatolia_N ancestry from roughly 3600 - 3000 bce. I couldnt find the other id's defined in the map, so most of it should be from unpublished data or something. Could it be possible that Southern people from 7500 - 5000 bce whom carried an ancestry type such as the one of Steppe Maykop outlier IV3002, were the ones that brought the Southern components like Anatolia_N, CHG, Iran_N, Iran_Chl into the Steppe cultures like Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk? Will the recently sequenced hundreds of Eneolithic Russian Steppe samples show evidence for this?

Are there any new Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk related samples other than the ones mentioned by the earlier paper of David Anthony?

Can we expect a paper on these new sequenced samples at the end of this year?

Davidski said...

@Sarah

I don't take those maps seriously.

Sredny Stog and maybe Khvalynsk had early European farmer (EEF) ancestry, but no other Anatolian-related ancestry.

They didn't have any Anatolian or CHG ancestry from south of the Caucasus.

The Steppe Maykop outliers did have Anatolian/CHG ancestry from south of the Caucasus, but they're not linked in any way to Sredny Stog, Khvalynsk, Yamnaya, Corded Ware or modern Europeans, so they don't matter much.

They seem to have gone extinct, or maybe moved back into the Caucasus.

zardos said...

@Archi: Its all hypothetical, but there are facts which can be interpreted that way and you can only prove/disprove the hypothesis by secure dating and genetic testing of humans and animals.

@Rob: Kotova and others postulated a direct link, even if with intermediate stages, from late LDC to Sredniy Stog.
Mariupol looks highly important to me in this context.

Anonymous said...

JuanRivera said...
"EHG itself is part CHG"

This is not in any gate does not climb.

On the subject of Neolithic R1bs, the clade was widespread during the time (stretching from Iberia to Western Siberia or maybe even Lake Baikal)

Where did you see the R1b on Baikal?

Neolithic Kitoi Russia Lokomotiv, Irkutsk [LOK_1980.006 and LOK_1981.024.01] 5500-4885 BC M R1a1-M17 2 samples

And it(R1b) is unknown in Western Siberia.

zardos said...

@David: If they really test Mariupol, I really, really hope they do more samples, because this might be the single most important site of all, probably packed with PIE lineages before they finally split along clan and tribal formations. Not that earlier branching off is so unlikely, but that was the last time they had such a central place and region in which new innovations were taken up big time.
But it will postdate the formation of steppe ancestry obviously.

Davidski said...

@zardos

Lots of Neolithic and Eneolithic samples from Dereivka I and Vil’nyanka, which are apparently both Mariupol type cemeteries, have already been published with Mathieson et al. 2018.

And more samples from this area dating to the Eneolithic are apparently on the way, possibly with some interesting and useful outcomes, but let's wait and see.

Anonymous said...

Botai is Khazakhstan.

Sarah said...

@davidski
Early European farmer (EEF) ancestry is build upon people with Anatolia_N ancestry. The Neolithic revolution(9600 - 4000 bce) happened in a major part of Western Eurasia, starting from the Fertile Crescent going into Eastern and Western regions. So, maybe what the academicians are trying to tell is that the people of the Neolithic revolution made migrations into the Steppe regions of the Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog cultures at the same time as they were making migrations into the direction of Central / Western Europe where the Early European Farmers settled mostly in the 6th / 5th millennium bce. Maybe this is the explanation for Anatolia_N / EEF ancestry in Khvalysnk and Sredny Stog cultures?

And these Southern people only made a minor impact on the genetics of the regional local Steppe people which were genetically / paternally distinct from the Southern people as you said (not related to Corded Ware and related subsequence cultures). So, I am not talking about a population replacement but a minor Southern affection in the Neolithic period of the Steppe.

So, if the Steppe Maykop outlier IV3002 (Anatolia_N, CHG) mentioned in that map is as early as from 3600 bce it probably means that its genetic components started minorly effecting the Khvalysnk and Sredny Stog like cultures in the 5th millennium bce following the South-North Caucasian route into the Steppe.

How else can we explain the Steppe ancestry in the Armenia_ChL samples of the Areni-1 site? The Armenia_ChL from roughly around 4000 bce samples had 52.5% Anatolia_N, 29.2% Iran_N and 18.3% EHG. It is also important to notice that Armenia_ChL belonged to Y-dna L1a and that the Ipatovo Kurgan of the Steppe Maykop outlier IV3002 belonged to Y-dna T1a, both branching from LT*. So, the admixing of the Southern populations with the Steppe populations started probably during the period of the Neolithic Revolution focusing on the early 5th millenium bce.

And the presented map also shows evidence for the appearance of Y-dna J1 (CHG) into the Steppe starting already in the Mesolithic period as a part of the pieces of the Neolithic revolution.

Anonymous said...

The Eneolithic Dereivka I is not a burial place of the Mariupol type cemeteries. Vil’nyanka has not Eneolithic burials.

Davidski said...

@Sarah

Sredny Stog, Khvalynsk, Yamnaya etc. don't have any direct ancestry from the Near East.

The Anatolian-related ancestry that they have moved first from Anatolia into southeastern Europe, and then gradually into the steppe from the west.

You can argue that they have Anatolian ancestry if you like, but it's so far removed from Anatolia, and mixed up with European hunter-gatherer admixture, that I won't be calling it Anatolian ancestry.

Ric Hern said...

Yes, I specifically asked about CHG in R1bs of the Forest Steppe. I know R1b were widely spread. And it looks to me if Eastern and Western R1b split near the Urals but the amount of CHG will be interesting because there maybe were some CHG in the Southern Urals also during the Mesolithic. Maybe not a large population...

Davidski said...

And Steppe Maykop didn't have anything to do with Khvalynsk or Yamnaya, so I'm not sure why you think it had a genetic effect on them??

zardos said...

I don’t expect Mariupol being that homogeneous, thats why I want more samples too. But if in those mace warrior burials are no CW-like people
, I will be shocked ;)

In an ideal scenario, some of the leaders, high status males, would even be founding fathers for some major lineages we always talk about for later times.

zardos said...

But anything is possible, since some postulated a post Mariupol change in physical anthropology. But then, even if true, I would have assumed Mariupol being an PIE group already.
Will be exciting and is in any case, like R. yar an important site to prove/disprove some of the possible hypotheses once and for all.

Sarah said...

@davidski
Did you see the maps in the video of the ESEB2019 conference at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFWeCNLDtaQ? Have a look at the two arrows (direction of 2 migrations) coming from Southern Caucasus into the Steppe regions of where Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog are located around 6600 - 6000 bce. And then in the other map the id of the Steppe Maykop outlier IV3002 is illustrated. Id's of probably not yet published samples are shown too. The speaker is Alexander Herbig from the Max-Planck Institute (publishers of Wang et al 2019).

The subject of the lecture is specifically about the Neolithic revolution and the salmonella bacteria.

Davidski said...

@Sarah

Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk obviously don't have any ancestry from south of the Caucasus, so some arrows on a map can't change that, can they?

And Steppe Maykop isn't related to Sredny Stog or Khvalynsk, so it doesn't matter.

I'm really not sure what point you're trying to make? Are you saying that just because some guy from Max Planck put a few arrows on a map then that makes anything possible?

zardos said...

@David: I think all those guys being influenced by the idea of R. yar being Eastern Anatolian-Zagros influenced. The timing Sarah mentions would fit roughly.

The authors demanded genetic testing years ago and would surely provided samples if being asked. So the real question is, do they all still speculate just because of this insecure archaeological hypothesis, or was some testing already done and they know more than you do.

Ric Hern said...

@ Sarah

Isn't there Minor CHG/like ancestry in Villabruna already ? If CHG only reached the Steppe during the Mesolithic/Neolithic then how can Villabruna Epi-Paleolithic already show some minor CHG ?

Davidski said...

@zardos

So the real question is, do they all still speculate just because of this insecure archaeological hypothesis, or was some testing already done and they know more than you do.

With all due respect to the scientists at Max Planck, they still think that Steppe Maykop and Yamnaya are part of the same steppe cluster, so that's the sort of nonsense we're dealing with here.

zardos said...

@David: I know that they do good and bad things, I already mentioned the manipulative ideological nonsense Krause talks himself into at times.

But how sure can you be? We don’t have early samples from the right places right now. R. yar might be quite specific and do we have samples from the M'lefatien or related groups?
We might even deal with different CHG waves and the one responsible for R. yar following that model would be heavily mixed, but with additional Transcaucasian influences.
Are you really sure thats not possible?

Vladimir said...

There is an interesting article on the culture of the Shell Yar researcher T. D. Belanovskaya. Quote: "thus, the technique of separately placed triangular incision is also characteristic of the oldest ceramic complexes of Central Russia (Tsetlin, 1996. P. 161), ornamentation prints fish vertebra, "retreating spatula", prints in the form of Roman numerals I (Belanovskaya, 1995. Pp. 102-103) may be the first in Eastern Europe to appear in the materials of the lower pack of Neolithic layers of the Shell pit. The first manifestations of other elements — for example, the spiked bottom of vessels, subsequently characteristic of a number of Baltic cultures, the pattern of a grid of drawn lines,": pearl ornament" and some others-appear first of all on Elshan ceramics. It can be assumed that the addition of the first ceramic styles of the forest strip of Eastern Europe, which appeared in different parts of this vast territory in the period from 7200-7000 l. t. n. (upper Volga culture) to 6600-6400 l. t. n. (Neolithic Baltic, Karelia, southern Finland and adjacent regions) occurred as a result of infiltration to the North of small populations of different origins, their interaction with each other and with the aboriginal late Mesolithic population. In the process of these contacts and interactions, most likely, exogamous connections should have had an important role (Formozov, 1959. Pp. 114-115).

zardos said...

@Vlad: The ceramic might indeed have a different origin and some of the other sites were aceramic in the Lower Don area. Its more about tool-making, house buildings, use of clay and art.
The supposed Transcaucasian linking cultures were PPC too.
I'm not sure at all, but its the only sensible link to Anatolia-Zagros, what they constantly mention, I can think of considering whats known already.

Anonymous said...

@zardos Lower Don severed all hypothetical connections with the Fertile Crescent as early as in Mesolithic (7000-6600BC), when there was Pre-Pottery Neolithic. No farming, cattle breeding or agriculture was borrowed. He borrowed pottery from the Elshanskaya culture and wider, from the Volga.



It is necessary to see who else was tested there in Mariupol burial ground, because there are a lot of layers there, Neolithic, as well as Eneolithic Novodanilovka cultural type of Sredniy Stog and burials with cremation.



Vladimir said...

Zardos. The researcher, as I understand it, connects the ry culture with the Elshan culture. The marker of these crops, as I understand it, is the use of silty clays for cooking pots, not silt

Vladimir said...

As I understand it, Samara culture also comes to Elshan culture through the middle Volga culture. Can this and there is two flow of Z2103 and L51. Part of the culture Shell went upstream don, it is present in the Neolithic Middle don, then in the Neolithic Lipetsk lake. Can about this tribe Davivski says. I used to think it was an M478, but maybe an L51

Anonymous said...

@Vladimir Before you write your own hypotheses, look at the age of the subclades at least.

Vladimir said...

Well, then all the same M478, although who knows ... radiocarbon Dating of Rakushechniy Yar gives 7500-4500 BC

zardos said...

@Archi: I know they were no fully developed Neolithic people, but a big part of the reason might have been the rich natural resources of the Pontic coastal region.
One idea of mine was a group of PPN moving along the coast, taking local Caucasian Mesolithic in and settling in the best places close to rivers were they get into contact with local foragers. In the case of R. yar they adopted pottery among other things. Whether the PPN brought in sheeps/goats and of when would be highly important. Because early sheeps would make an Eastern Neolithic entrance highly likely.

Agreed on Mariupol for sure, different layers, social strata and burial types ideally.

The final verdict will be DNA testing because with the data we have now different scenarios are possible.

Ric Hern said...

@ zardos

Mouflon were found as far as the Crimea. Knowledge of domestication could have spread without any major migration. Singletons could have spread the knowledge...if I remember correctly we see this with Ancient Pig DNA.

Anonymous said...

@zardos Why fantasize about some social strata in the Mariupol burial ground? - They were not there.

Most likely, the Eneolithic of Novodanilovsky type was tested from the Mariupol burial ground. The safety of the Neolithic burials there is much worse, only very little has been preserved. But I think that Mariupol is mean to be burial grounds of Mariupol type.

zardos said...

@Ric: That's why I said before human and animal DNA should be tested. If both can be related to Transcaucasia it would be a 100 percent save thing.

@Archi: Its one of the most important features of Mariupul that there were social strata. But not necessarily very pronounced ones or some related to ethnicity or different ancestries of course.

"But I think that Mariupol is mean to be burial grounds of Mariupol type."

What do you mean by that (Mariupol type)? Can you tell me something about the anthropological category? Read about opposing views and different layers associated with different physical characteristics. Whether that was a replacement and if to which degree is open to debate and can only be solved by DNA testing once again...

Anonymous said...

@zardos " Its one of the most important features of Mariupul that there were social strata. But not necessarily very pronounced ones or some related to ethnicity or different ancestries of course."

No, there was no such thing. The general place is in the Mariupal burial ground of different cultures from different times and there is no social stratification. There is no need to invent what is not in it, there is no weak social stratification - not at all.

Mariupol burial ground is Mariupol burial ground, Mariupol type burial grounds are Mariupol type burial grounds.

zardos said...

@Archi: Well, I read other opinions on the social distinction at least, by status, age, sex etc. from different sources. One of the main sources is obviously Kotova, one of the experts in this field.

Kotova N. S.. 2013. The social structure of the Neolithic population in the Pontic Steppe. In S. Kadrow and P. Włodarczak (eds.)

Kotova concluded:
"Thus, it is possible to separate two large groups of burials in the Azov-Dnieper and Low Don cemeteries:
1) skeletons with an eastern orientation and grave goods (bone points, bone disks, flint tools). Their clothes were decorated with disks from boar teeth with holes and different beads;
2) skeletons with a western orientation and unio shells. Their clothes were ornamented with teeth of red deer. There are cemeteries with burials belonging
to one group and cemeteries with burials that belong to both groups."

And her sensible conclusion is:
"The existence of two types of burials and two types of cemeteries
in one culture can be explained only by correlating cemeteries of the first kind with clan burial grounds, because the burial rite must be closest in the framework of a clan."

Azoz-Dnieper, to which some of the samples so far might have belonged, was definitely a different ethnicity/tribe and had more Neolithic/EEF influences than the LDC after all we know. Azov-Dnieper to Surskaya had a more of fluent border. In the draught phase (5650–5500 ВС) she recognises the appearance of a second ethnic group in the LDC area with differing burial rites.

Kotova again about the character of the LDC:
"The Low Don culture differed from other Neolithic cultures of eastern Europe by numerous and various adornments of costumes and grave goods (Kotova 2010). Perhaps this shows the advanced social structure of that population and the clear stratification of age and sex groups."

She also identified leaders, men of power (p. 406):
"This level of development is evident for the Low Don culture and the second period
of the Azov-Dnieper. Their leaders were buried with symbols of power, such as stone
maces (Nikolskiy and Mariupol cemeteries).
It should be noted that two leaders from the Mariupol burial ground could belong to different clans with different burial orientation"

So we have different clans/ethnicities, differentation by sex, age and social position in the LDC. Overall a more complex society than most at that level of economic development. Distinctive patrilineages for different clans and tribes are to be expected, even if they live as neighbours and do bride exchange.



zardos said...

But of course, that's about the LDC phase of the cemetery, we have different phases which might prove that different people used it over time.

Davidski said...

@zardos

What do you think about this?

Princes, armies, sanctuaries: the emergence of complex ...

zardos said...

@David: I'm still not sure how Unetice came up. I know he is the expert, I'm an amateur, but when he writes:
"This is especially noteworthy considering that the
memories pertaining to the Corded Ware Culture must
have been preserved for at least two and a half centuries."

Honestly, I don't think he is right and like I proposed, and like it happened most of the time when aDNA was able to prove it, migration might have happened. And my bet goes to the Carpathian (post-Cotofeni, Usatovo-GAC mixtures) and Eastern areas. Since I got to know from writers on this blog that GAC did run in circles, I'm even more sure considering the reappearence of GAC like lineages in Unetice.

"The
analysis of the Leubingen grave suggests not merely an
accidental fusion of material inventories of two cultural
groups but rather an intentionally induced process of unifi
cation by the political leadership."

Looking at the South, like Lechtal, where BB kept a more dominant regional position, again it looks to me rather unlikely that, without external pressure, such a fusion, even "worse", with a rather Corded-Eastern dominance (!) would have suddenly appeared, after CW was regionally disappeared. Either they expanded from outside of the region back to Central Europe, or they hid somewhere. I'd say the first option is more likely, but that's another aDNA case with more samples having to make it clear. But so far, both physical anthropology and genetic tests provide evidence for a Corded-related ancestral dominant in Unetice, not some sort of integration of some remains here and there. The Leubingen burial as an example is even materially, imho, more CW than BB oriented. Like modernised CW rather than BB dominance. So the BB dominance was broken and transformed (they were not replaced) in Unetice, that is a clear cut thing to me.

The additional legitimation of the prince might be the result of the highest class being of foreign, non-regional ancestry, bringing in, like BB before, new and secret knowledge to the region. Not just to unify different cultures, of which one was virtually dead in the region at that time (local CW), which makes it even more strange. But that's all speculation from my side, a local clan could have taken power and still use trade relations to the Carpathians and East. Tests and careful analyses needed - do you know something about that region in particular which could help in this respect?

A lot in the paper is speculative, but reasonable speculation. Regardless of what the hoards really meant, it is obvious that the "princes" controlled armies, it was beyond the usual clan hierarchy like we have it in CW, but also BB to a large extend and most other PIE/early IE groups.
This approaches a state with a high caste, aristocracy with a certain amount of monopoly on the use of force and a staff, relatives, soldiers, mercenaries, tribal soldiers etc., at his disposal. Otherwise the control over land and humans, their resources and wealth is hard to explain anyway.

Concerning the possible SEE relations of Unetice, this had to be explored more in depth by direct comparisons, but this was, like the origin of Unetice, not the real focus of the paper:
"The phenomenon of precious-metals weaponry ultimately
originated in the Middle East and Southeastern Europe,
where they have been encountered in graves, hoards, and
temple treasures, demonstrating their owner’s superior
status"









zardos said...

I know he says local BB show genetic continuity from the preceding CW inhabitants, but then again, this doesn't explain the cultural revival, unless we assume they kept their tradition while hiding or living as an unfree, rather poor class of people.
But how it was brought back and the new elements coming in, the upper class is hard to imagine from the strictly regional perspective.

Davidski said...

@zardos

I had a closer look at that paper again, and especially Meller's arguments in regards to the genetics of the Bell Beakers.

I don't think he knows what he's talking about there, which isn't surprising, since the genetics of the Bell Beakers appears to be largely a mystery even for people working on the topic of the genetics of the Bell Beakers.

Rob said...

Well at least Meller's attempts to differentiate the cultural identities of these groups, which is a step in the right direction compared to the amorphous models of ''steppe mass-migration'' which are currently circulating.

Hodo Scariti said...

@ Gaska

Has that ATP3 sample been radiocarbon dated?

I remember that many analysis by amateurs noticed that it was very eastern.

Davidski said...

ATP3 is a garbage sample. There's not enough markers to work anything out.

Anonymous said...

@zardos
Kotova writes not about social stratification, she denies it everywhere in her works, but about people of different clans/tribes with different traditions, but not for Mariupol burial ground. All the difference within these clans is in the gender-age differences, people of different sexes and different ages buried with different things and numbers, there is no social stratification here. In the Mariupol burial ground there also, there are signs of matriarchy/matrilineal in the lower layers, female burials are richer than male ones, and in the upper layers, on the contrary, traces of the beginning of patriarchy/patrilineal, male burials are richer than female ones.

zardos said...

@Archi: They most certainly had no caste or aristocracy, but there was more social distinction than in other groups, including the leaders burials.
Their is no proof for matriarchy anywhere in the region.
If I give my wife jewellry and pots, this doesnt mean I created a matriarchy in my family and it didnt mean it then. An elobarated mace and other classic male war & status Symbols in just a handful of maLe burials surely means a lot.

What are the features you associate with an early "matriarchy"?

Mike said...

@Archi To what cultural background can these early layers be attributed?

zardos said...

@David: That's good to hear, because I began to question my concept when he talked so clearly about continuity, which I can hardly bring in line with the archaeological, material evidence. Even if just looking at this own arguments and chronology, it makes little to no sense without external influences and at least smaller scale migration imho.

But its clear, from all the evidence, that Unetice was a remarkably hiearchical and well organised, at least proto-state society with king-like leaders. It doesn't really fit into what was before or immediately afterwards.

Would be highly interesting if some lineages of GAC moved first around the Carpathians to evade the pressure, met up with Usatovo-Cotofeni and came during the EBA-Unetice back North as part of a new elite. Also, whether Unetice elite and craftsmen migrated and directly created the NBA.

All speculative, but so far you don't see a factual contradiction from the genetic record?

Anonymous said...

@zardos Once again, I haven't seen any opinions about social strata in the Mariupol burial ground. The matriarchy I wrote only as an option, there is a direct evidence of the matrilinearity - women remain in the clan structure, so they are richer in the burials of foreign men, although the same can be observed in matriarchy when high-ranking women go to another clan, the wealth of them is preserved.
I have not seen any statements about social stratification in Mariupol type burials, there is there the gender and age differentiation is common in Eastern Europe, which is that children and adult men have more rich burials than women and old people.

@Mike Everything is also of the Mariupol type. I do not remember exactly, there are 5 or more layers that divided on 9 cultural complex in the Mariupol burial ground.

Rob said...

@ Zardos

I agree that Unetice seems to have been heriarchical. However,

''Would be highly interesting if some lineages of GAC moved first around the Carpathians to evade the pressure''

They don't seem to have been evading anyone. They moved southeast from the north.


'' came during the EBA-Unetice back North as part of a new elite'

Unetice are different lineages to GAC. I think you & Archi keep repeating this error.
Unetice might refer to Boleraz & Baden lineages, which makes sense.
GAC stayed in northern Europe, for the most part, and is seen in Germanic groups.

Anonymous said...

Rob,we don't know how different they were, all three known samples from the Unetice culture show different haplogroups.

Bronze Unetice Germany Eulau [I0804 / EUL 57] 2137-1965 calBCE (3671±26 BP, MAMS-22821) M I2
Bronze Unetice? Germany Esperstedt [I0116 / ESP 4] 2134-1939 calBCE (3650±32 BP, MAMS-21495) M I2c
Bronze Unetice Germany Esperstedt [I0114/ESP 2] 2131-1979 BC M I2a2b


Baden-Boleraz was one of two variants proposed by me.

zardos said...

Yes, Baden-Boleraz is possible, but rather unlikely because it lacks the Eastern/CW component which was stronger in the Carpathians.

Also, what about an alliance pushing North? I mean we see alliances and mixtures of Cotofeni, Usotovo-GAC, and they were all related, including Baden, at least in cultural and social networks which seem to, at times, especially in the SEE context, clearly crossed clan and ethnicity based borders.

For the NBA its very important to solve the I1a origin. So far we don't know a lot about it. But is one sample from Pannonia for sure? Also, with the few Unetice samples we have so far, there is more a revival of CW related ancestry rather than anything else.

Vladimir said...

GAC this, apparently, mostly I2a-L801, which during CWC together with R1a-CTS4385 are gone in district modern the Netherlands and Lower Saxony, part of of them then resettled on British Isles and part of in Scandinavia

Anonymous said...

There is no need to fantasize who went where, because we do not know the distribution of subclades of the haplogroup I2 before the arrival of CWC. Who lived there Western GAC? In TRB? And so on. All walks of the CWC with the GAC together is from the field of fantasy.
We also do not know the structure of the complex Unetice culture.

zardos said...

@Archi: "All walks of the CWC with the GAC together is from the field of fantasy."

That's the point, not in the Carpathian region. Because there you have the prove of GAC and Usatovo coming together, at least in the archaeological record. Genetically we will see too of course.

But even more important, what exact genetic structure, lineages and phenotypical traits they had is completely unknown. Just think about the pigmentation status of different GAC groups. Its still like trying to illuminate a football field with a pocket lamp. It worked out before the panmixture brought about by the steppe people, because of the clearly different ancestral components, but not any more.

Vladimir said...

And where else in Europe, except Poland, found I2a-L801 age 3000 years BC?

Anonymous said...

I is not found, not because they searched and not found, but because they did not search and test. As early as 6 years ago, all aDNA studies were performed without Y-haplogroups, with rare exceptions. The GAC was just very lucky, it was tested later than anyone else, only in the last two years.

Richard Rocca said...

ATP3 is so low quality that it was not used in subsequent studies that included the other Atapuerca samples. That should tell you all you need to know about the sample. Furthermore, every single ancient DNA sample has calls for R1b SNPs, including samples that belong to completely unrelated haplogroups like E, I, J, etc.

EastPole said...

A new analytical paper:
“A geostatistical approach to modelling human Holocene migrations in Europe using ancient DNA”

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/10/31/826149.full.pdf

David, please note modern ancestry proportions in Poland:

Yamnaya steppe ancestry proportion :

https://i.postimg.cc/1Rv84v11/screenshot-29.png


Northern Africa ancestry proportion

https://i.postimg.cc/NfNCJvhC/screenshot-30.png

So according to their data we have much lower Yamnaya steppe ancestry proportion than our neighbors and much higher Northern Africa ancestry proportion than our neighbors. I have never seen anything like this in your data. Have you been cheating us or this paper is junk, or I missed something?

Davidski said...

They used Ashkenazi Jews to represent Poland. This sort of thing has happened before.

EastPole said...

@Davidski
„They used Ashkenazi Jews to represent Poland. This sort of thing has happened before.”

But this is an obvious lie. Ashkenazi Jews are not representative of the Polish population and there are very few of them in Poland. Are the authors retards or this is done on purpose? What can this purpose be?

Davidski said...

The problem is with Harvard's Human Origins dataset.

Its public release has Ashkenazi Jews as the only population from Poland, and they're not listed as a diaspora or outlier population.

Ethnic Poles are only available in the non-public version that requires users to sign a waiver, but some of these samples have obvious Dutch/German ancestry.

EastPole said...

@Davidski
“The problem is with Harvard's Human Origins dataset.

Its public release has Ashkenazi Jews as the only population from Poland, and they're not listed as a diaspora or outlier population.”

If they make such mistakes how can we trust in anything they do?
It is like those NSDAP-professors doing IE linguistics by eliminating from their studies the most important IE languages.

Davidski said...

Well, there's also the Estonian Biocentre that tries to pass off Polish-speaking Estonians with 10-15% Siberian admixture as Poles from Poland, so there you go. LOL

Bob Floy said...

I have to echo EastPole, this does rather undercut their credibility ;|

Rob said...

@ Zardos

“Yes, Baden-Boleraz is possible, but rather unlikely because it lacks the Eastern/CW component which was stronger in the Carpathians. ”

If a group lacks steppe ancestry in 4000BC; they can have acquired it by 2000 BC, no ?

@ Vlad
Yes GAC is I2a2a1b2. It’s also the lineage in Zlota; and is found in corded ware central Poland samples .
It means; there was some admixture; but after the early cwc phase . Initially there was avoidance

Gabriel said...

Well it could also feed trolls that claim Slavs are Jews or East Asian.

zardos said...

@Rob: "If a group lacks steppe ancestry in 4000BC; they can have acquired it by 2000 BC, no ?"

Sure, that's what I was saying, because the most likely scenario for them acquiring it was via the Balkan-Danubian complex network and associated alliances, like with local Yamnaya, Cotofeni and Usatovo.

Anonymous said...

@Rob The Złota has 1 I2a2a. Only one sample in the GAC is tested to the level of I2a2a1b2, the rest of I2a2a, there is a pair of I2a2a1b, but the same haplogroup is present in the Eneolithic Bulgaria 3100BC.

But in general, you should always check what people write, my opponents cheated me here a couple of times, I took their word for it and did not check it, and it turns out that they lied to look smarter and make me look like an idiot.

That's the same best fit haplogroup as in the GAC:

Neolithic Megalithic Spain La Mina [I0406 / Mina4] 3900-3600 BC M I2a2a1b2
Neolithic Late Neolithic Spain Cueva de los Cuarenta/South [c40331] 5710-5587 cal BP (4900 ± 30 BP, Beta-424648) M I2a2a1b2-Z161
Mesolithic Iron Gates Serbia Vlasac [I4881 / VLSC_U64] 6570-6255 calBCE (7570±63 BP, PSUAMS-2385, corrected for Freshwater Reservoir Effect) M I2a2a1b2
Mesolithic Iron Gates Serbia Hadučka Vodenica [I4914 / HJDK_19-20(1)] 6355-5990 calBCE (7264±80 BP, OxA-16941, on Burial 20 - skull) M I2a2a1b2
Mesolithic Iron Gates Serbia Vlasac [I4880 / VLSC_U62] 6000-5725 calBCE (6979±75 BP, PSUAMS-2384, corrected for Freshwater Reservoir Effect) M I2a2a1b2

Rob said...

@ Archie

“The Złota has 1 I2a2a. Only one sample in the GAC is tested to the level of I2a2a1b2, the rest of I2a2a, there is a pair of I2a2a1b, but the same haplogroup is present in the Eneolithic Bulgaria 3100BC.

Eneolithic Bulgaria is different - I2a2a1b1

Always be mindful that calls are sometimes conservative when published; and samples vary in coverage. So when looked
Into deeper; it holds
But it should be no shock that GAC were also agnatic .

But it’s true- that same lineage is found in megalithic Iberia ; transiently during MN.

zardos said...

@Archi: The one from Bulgaria at 3100 BC could be GAC derived, because they made it to Wallachia from where they spread to Transylvania and of course South too.

zardos said...

@Rob: Whats your best bet for the origin of "Germanic" I1a right now?

Do you think the NBA is the result of Unetice elites moving North West when their system collapsed?

Anonymous said...


Here in some abstract it was written that the Unetice were a mixture of only the CWC & BBC, now it is impossible to believe it. And it's not just about archaeology and Y-haplogroups, but also autosomes, the Unetice has more Anatolian component than the CWC + BBC, as shown in Schroeder et al. (2019), Unraveling ancestry, kinship, and violence in a Late Neolithic mass grave.

Anonymous said...

zardos said...
" @Archi: The one from Bulgaria at 3100 BC could be GAC derived, because they made it to Wallachia from where they spread to Transylvania and of course South too."

It's all fairy tales, nothing like that. The movement south of the GAC was very weak, ephemeral. Don't exaggerate, I2a2a1b was just spread everywhere, before any GAC there.

Copper Tiszapolgar/Bodrogkeresztur Hungary Törökszentmiklós, road 4, site 3 [I2793 / GEN67] 4444-4257 calBCE (5480±35 BP, Poz-83629) M I2a2a1b

Mesolithic Iron Gates Serbia Hadučka Vodenica [I5402 / HJDK_15(1) ] 6361-6050 calBCE (7315±63 BP, OxA-16942, corrected for Freshwater Reservoir Effect) M I2a2a1b
Mesolithic Iron Gates Serbia Vlasac [I4882 / VLSC_U69] brother_of_I4880 6200-5900 BCE M I2a2a1b
Mesolithic Latvia Zvejnieki [I4596 / ZVEJ9] 6000-5100 BCE M I2a2a1b
Mesolithic Latvia Zvejnieki [I4441 / ZVEJ22] 4837-4713 calBCE (5900±30 BP, PSUAMS-2265) M I2a2a1b
Neolithic Mariupol Ukraine Dereivka I [I5875 / S5875.E1.L1 / Grave 53] 5291-5060 calBCE (6210±25 BP, PSUAMS-2810) M I2a2a1b

Neolithic Scotland_N Great Britain Holm of Papa Westray North, Orkney, Scotland [I2650 / GENSCOT10] 3638-3380 calBCE (4754±36 BP, SUERC-68642) M I2a2a1b

@Rob
"Eneolithic Bulgaria is different - I2a2a1b1"

Bronze Copper Age tell Bulgaria Smyadovo [I2176 / 12 Burial 20B] Silver hair ring 3338-3025 calBCE (4470±30 BP, Ly-5516) M I2a2a1b [CTS10057]

Rob said...

@ Archi
I’m afraid you don’t understand the evidence; nor have the ability to analyse it for yourself
Hence you’re jumbling up all the lineages

For ex- Mariupol is the same lineage as Bulgaria eneolithic not GAC

GAC certainly did expand in a big way; to claim otherwise is sheer ignorance

Anonymous said...

@Rob
You don't understand that if there's no data, you can't fantasize. I have shown a wide spread of this line, because Spain has the same I2a2a1b2 as the GAC, so it cannot be claimed that it is from the GAC. So, what, we're going to fantasize that it flew in a plane between the GAC and Spain?

Rob said...

@ Archie

''You don't understand that if there's no data, you can't fantasize. ''

Of course there is data, which is why I don't fantasize.

''I have shown a wide spread of this line, because Spain has the same I2a2a1b2 as the GAC, so it cannot be claimed that it is from the GAC. So, what, we're going to fantasize that it flew in a plane between the GAC and Spain?''

You havent shown anything, because you're not involved in aDNA. You're just listing samples which you don;t quite understand how theyre connected
The Spanish samples have nothing to do with GAC. Theyre an extinct, earlier offshoot.
Then I2a2a1b2 exapnded across northern Europe in earnest with GAC.

Rob said...

@ Zardos

''The one from Bulgaria at 3100 BC could be GAC derived, because they made it to Wallachia from where they spread to Transylvania and of course South too.''

There is no GAC in Wallachia . It expanded to Transylvania from Moldovia


The Eneolithic & Bronze Age samples in Bulgaria link to Mariupol Ukraine, but also ALPc & Tiszapolgar culture.


''Whats your best bet for the origin of "Germanic" I1a right now?''

I1 is probably from continental North-Central Europe. That's all we can guess

Anonymous said...

@Rob "You havent shown anything, because you're not involved in aDNA. You're just listing samples which you don;t quite understand how theyre connected"

I see you don't understand aDNA.

"The Spanish samples have nothing to do with GAC. Theyre an extinct, earlier offshoot."

The GAC is full extinct. So you're saying there was no I2a2a1b2 between Spain and the GAC? And on what ground, what they come out of the ground through the black hole?

And you agree with Vladimir's assertion that this line was distributed by CWC with GAC during CWC time? And not some later culture.

Rob said...

@ Archi

''So you're saying there was no I2a2a1b2 between Spain and the GAC? And on what ground, what they come out of the ground through the black hole?''

As explained above, there was a precoccious expansion to Spain & Britain from somewhere in central Europe c. 4500 BC of this lineage.
Its major expansion, however, was associated with GAC in the north European plain, and this occurred much later (3000-2400 BC).

Anonymous said...

@Rob "Its major expansion, however, was associated with GAC in the north European plain, and this occurred much later (3000-2400 BC)."

What makes you claim that? There is no logic to your statement and no support for data.

Matt said...

Re; R1b-M269 in Northern Russia, a problem with this might be that though you might find a lot somewhere, it may be difficult to say if this has any relevance to modern populations or not, or even other ancient populations.

Considering the phylogeny, M269 estimated splits around 15kya (early UP), and then the split into the L21 and Z2103 clades about 7kya.

So plenty of time for extinct sidebranches to exist in extinct HG populations.

Capture-based methods which are ascertained for certain y-snps (and so not vulnerable to problems with damage and contamination from shotgun data) don't tend to allow for much ability to recognize extinct sidebranches, by their nature*.

It may be hard to distinguish with capture samples that just barely more relevant than anything ancestral to Yamnaya+Western European M269 than the existing samples with are M269 negative, vs ones which are actually quite close. (And if they're from a bunch of random northern HGs, they're probably *not* going to be relevant, on the balance of probabilities).

* Kivisild 2017 - "The advantage of the capture approach, as mentioned above, is that it allows for the generation of data with higher coverage and higher overlaps among large number of individuals for a given set of SNPs (Pickrell and Reich 2014). This means that even in case of poorly preserved samples, robust haplogroup inferences, supported by multiple phylogenetically equivalent SNPs, can be made. The generic limitation of the approaches that focus on the enrichment-targeted SNPs is the ascertainment bias towards previously discovered variants and that the capture approach does not enable the user to discover novel variants and clades that have either become extinct or that have been not presented in the ascertainment set used for the design of the panel of SNPs to be captured ... But also in Europe it should be noted that clades that have become infrequent or extinct over time due to extensive admixture or population replacement would have less chance to be recognised with the SNP-targeting capture approach."

zardos said...

"There is no GAC in Wallachia . It expanded to Transylvania from Moldovia"

Well, apparently Glina-Schneckenburg is supposed to have moved from Wallachia (Oltenia and Muntenia) into Transylvania, having incorporated in its formation Globular Amphora elements.

In any case, GAC burial rites seem to have been widespread and well distributed in the region, but mostly in solution (with Usatovo, Cernavoda, Cotofeni) or patchy distribution. Quite typical burials (stone slab cists) appear throughout the region and reach Wallachia. This could be interpreted as GAC elements moving South, wouldn't you say?

Davidski said...

@Matt

These Eneolithic M269 (and possibly L51) instances from the Eastern European forest zone must be important and also relevant to Western European M269, because these are the only instances of pre-Yamnaya M269 in the ancient DNA record, which now includes hundreds if not thousands of pre-Yamnaya Y-chromosome samples.

You'd have a point if there was M269 popping up all over the place at around that time and earlier, but since it's not, then you have to concede that these samples do mean something important, even if it's not yet clear what exactly.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Rob,
Btw, GAC is largely of Western European origin. This might be where they got their Y DNA.

Anonymous said...


What's so strange about that? In the Narva culture is R1b1a1a, it may well turn out to be an ancestor to R1b1a1a2, it is likely that the entire west of Eastern Europe was occupied by the R1b1a1a in Early Neolithic, because in the Dnieper-Donets culture R1b1a, too, on Balkans.


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

GAC is interesting because of the high degree of homogeneity they display on the Y Chromosome. All that very specific I2a2-L801 or along that branch. It's similar to the Lech Valley Beakers in that way, who seemingly get their farmer ancestry from GAC (or close to it).

Davidski said...

@Archi

There's no M269 in Narva or anywhere else until it shows up in Yamnaya, not even a singleton case, except at that one forest site in Russia when it shows up in multiple, fairly high quality samples.

So do keep that in mind.

Rob said...

@ Zardos

“Well, apparently Glina-Schneckenburg is supposed to have moved from Wallachia (Oltenia and Muntenia) into Transylvania, having incorporated in its formation Globular Amphora elements. ”

Nope. You misunderstood last threads’ comments

Anonymous said...

@Davidsky I wrote "ancestor to R1b1a1a2".

Davidski said...

@Archi

The discussion was about R1b1a1a2 and the relevance of the north Russian samples to Western European R1b1a1a2, so I wanted to make sure no one was confused by your comment.

Rob said...

Archi

“What makes you claim that? There is no logic to your statement and no support for data”

Because GAC expanded from central Poland, east and to west
These are basic knowns. Perhaps you should read some literature published in the last decade or 2

Anonymous said...

@Rob "Its major expansion, however, was associated with GAC in the north European plain, and this occurred much later (3000-2400 BC)."
"Because GAC expanded from central Poland, east and to west. These are basic knowns. Perhaps you should trad some literature published in the last decade or 2 "

The GAC isn't growing anywhere at this time, it's dying out, it's completely dying out. The same subclade starts to spread known later than CWC, not earlier than Unetice culture time. Read the literature. So you have no basis for your claim other than faith.



Rob said...

@ Sam

“Btw, GAC is largely of Western European origin. This might be where they got their Y DNA.”

Thway have some western genomic ancestry; but GAC is not from Western Europe . It expanded from Poland to the west ( and east )

zardos said...

@Rob: "Nope. You misunderstood last threads’ comments"

It wasn't the comments from last thread, but various sources claiming that G-S had GAC influences, so had other regional groups which, after having been formed (!) in Moldova moved South. Now how much of this can be attributed to GAC ancestry is open to debate, so is the distribution of stone slab cists.

Those of Transylvania were clearly categorised as GAC derived by most, but some burials in Oltenia and Muntenia, related to G-S and Montearu culture respectively, as well as those in other contexts (Usatovo) could be interpreted as GAC influences (not GAC proper necessarily). At least that's what I gathered from different sources on the issue. Please correct me if I'm completely off on the issue and explain how you see the idea of GAC having influenced G-S/Montearu South of Carpathians.

Rob said...

@Archi

From the latest multi author Book from Poland

https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-past-societies-2/id1346717622

“The central group of the GAC has the most opulent chronometers record; which spans from 3500 to 2400 BC”.

It reached its maximum expansion in 2700 BC.

Rob said...

Further - “in other areas the communities considered here (GAC) appeared after 3100 BC and disappeared by 2400 BC”

Samuel Andrews said...

There's several P297 from Mesolithic Latvia. Now there's M269 in Northwest Russia which isn't far away from Latvia. This Looks like a trend. It looks like P297, M269, L23's origins in Northeast Europe going back to the Mesolithic.

Davidski said...

Yeah, and last time I checked, according to 23andMe Yamnaya got its M269 from Near Eastern traders, while some idiot at Wikipedia claimed Yamnaya actually came from northern Mesopotamia.

I have no words for these people. Well, I do, but I can't really post them here.

zardos said...

@Rob: The association of later stone slab cists with GAC influenced cultures and people is something I encountered in various sources. Especially for Monteoru, even for the Sărata-Monteoru site itself.

This comment gives the hint as well:
"In the same region with early Monteoru discoveries from long time are known several slab-cist graves, in some of whom were discovered askos like cups. This kind of cups has similarities in the Zimnicea pottery. The slab-cist graves from northeastern Walachia are in good relation with the similar tombs belonging to the Globular Amphorae Culture discovered in north Moldavia."

http://www.archaeology.ro/pagini/revista_EA_6_en.html

Gabriel said...

@Davidski

There's no M269 in Narva or anywhere else until it shows up in Yamnaya, not even a singleton case, except at that one forest site in Russia when it shows up in multiple, fairly high quality samples.

Tell that to Gaska.

Rob said...

@ Zardos
Yes the slab- grave culture was concentrated in eastern Transylvania; so we would see the site at Sarrata Monteoru as the southernmost outpost rather than the main vector. So the GAC expansion was rather huge. BA samples from Romania are very interesting

Rob said...

@ Matt / Davidski

If M269 does turn up in northern Russia, then it will radically change our understanding of 'eastern Corded Ware' & Bell Beaker. However, for me it's a case of believing when seeing (the formal paper).

Matt said...

@Davidski, there aren't hundreds to thousands of samples from the dry steppe zone before Yamnaya.

We have hundreds to thousands of samples from across West Eurasia but I hope you're not suggesting that M269 could have originate there?

M269 is old enough (~15kya) and geneflow between populations extensive enough that Pit-Comb Ware Culture groups may well have had basal M269.

(Pit Comb Ware Culture has "R1a5-YP1272 and mt-haplogroups U5b1d1, U4a, U2e1.[7] Y-haplogroup R1a5-YP1272 14,000 years ago has a common ancestor with the main Indo-European haplogroup R1a-M198" for example. Clades that diverge on this level of time can be in several places, which by 5kya are EHG and others).

This is a technical point about the challenges of capture dna on the y.

Davidski said...

@Matt

I can't say where M269 will be found eventually, but I know where it has been found; in a homogeneous group of forest forager samples. And that's it so far.

I'm aware of a good number of forager R1b samples from different sites on the steppe, but none belong to M269.

Matt said...

Basically, I am implictly asking here what of the mutations on the M269 branch leading up to the common ancestor of Z2103 and L21 are actually present in the design of the current SNP capture.

If or many of them are, we may be able to tell if any M269 found is immediately or relatively recently (>3kya?) ancestral to Z2103+L21, because persumably it will have some markers in the sequence and not others. If they are not, then the samples could be or might be diverged at a level of 15kya, and we wouldn't be able to tell either way. (Which would be a poor basis for overturning any archaeological models, for'ex).

Davidski said...

@Matt

I'm not trying to overturn any archeological models, just pointing out the facts.

I don't know, for instance, if the forest forager M269 is closely related to the likely L51/M269 in the later Corded Ware samples, including Tauber_CWC.

Possibly it is, because there might be L51 up there too, but let's not get too excited and wait for the BAM files.

Matt said...

Though there are even more problems that even if lots of SNPs defining the branch are in the design, you may not be lucky enough to capture them. Then if you capture some subset of them, if most basal R1b-M269 is extinct today, then you may not be able to place the ones you do capture in sequence (because there is not much branching phylogeny represented in present day people to allow you to do so).

R1b-M269 in (pottery using?) foragers in Russian northern forest zone certainly means *something* but telling if the *something* is, 1) "M269 after its expansion at 15kya was in several EHG descended cultures in Russia by 7kya, but most of these are irrelevant to 5kya expansions" or 2) "M269 northern foragers from the forest zone are somehow in a non-archaeologically predicted(?) way ultimately paternally ancestral to the Yamnaya" may be difficult. Or not possible on current technology and these samples.

@Davidski, yes, the detail it will depend on what we see in data and the consensus the folk who comb over the y sequence in fine detail come to.

Anonymous said...

@Rob "It reached its maximum expansion in 2700 BC."

It's obviously not. The GAC hasn't grown anywhere since CWC started. Your arguments are not convincing at all, nothing says that I2a2a1b2 was only in the GAC, nothing says that it began to spread from the GAC by the CWC because the GAC was extinct, and there is nothing left of its distribution of I2a2a1b2 - they all died without leaving any offspring, nothing says that the subclades of I2a2a1b2 began to spread before the time of the Unetice culture.

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