Monday, January 20, 2020

Graphing the truth


I haven't used TreeMix since qpGraph became freely available for Linux. Among other things, the latter offers greater control, reproducibility and transparency.

However, I'd say that in its current form qpGraph is not the most objective way to analyze data. That's because if you're really good with it, and you want a graph to work, then often you can make it work by tweaking whatever it is that needs to be tweaked.

It's not possible to do a lot of tweaking with TreeMix. Indeed, once the user picks the samples for the TreeMix run, the rest of the process can be totally unsupervised, and thus free from human interference. Obviously, that's not a guarantee of accuracy, but it can be useful.

I feel I need to run more unsupervised analyses, especially when exploring new data. So to that end, I've dusted off TreeMix and will be using it regularly again.

There's been some talk lately online about migrations from Central Asia giving rise to the Eneolithic populations of the North Caucasus Piedmont steppe. In my opinion, that sounds like nonsense. But let's see what TreeMix has to say on the matter. In the graphs below look for the samples labeled Progress_En and Vonyuchka_En, respectively.




As far as I can tell, both of these graphs essentially corroborate the results from my recent Principal Component Analyses (PCA) with many of the same ancients (see here). In other words, Progress_En and Vonyuchka_En can be described as mixtures of populations closely related to the hunter-gatherers of the Caucasus on one hand, and those of Eastern Europe on the other. How does Central Asia fit into this, you might ask? It doesn't, unless you really want it to.

See also...

Did South Caspian hunter-fishers really migrate to Eastern Europe?

162 comments:

  1. kindly do same for caucasus eneolithic.

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  2. btw, EHG + Kotias does not work for steppe eneolithic in qpAdm. It should have if your tree was correct, as f4 is insensitive to drift in case of no external admixture.

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  3. @vAsiSTha

    Pft...

    The trees don't show that Steppe Eneolithic is a mixture of EHG + Kotias. They show that it's a mixture of populations closely related to, but different from EHG + Kotias.

    And Caucasus Eneolithic is already there. Look for Meshoko_En. It forms a deep clade with Kotias.

    Same as in my PCA.

    https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/12/a-final-note-for-year.html

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  4. Like last year, my opinion us still that it all will boil down to sufficient sampling of the Lower Don culture and region. Different times and cultures. To find the CHG related more developed inhabitants of the earlist settlements and their profile, as well as the incoming EHG local foragers. We need the smoking gun to end the speculation.
    Anything in the pipeline for the next months?

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  5. @zardos

    The Caucasus, linking Mesopotamia to the Eurasia and Europe, is for the first time in the focus of a study on innovation transfer. The study will make a major contribution by investigation of four axial innovations: wheel and wagon, metal alloys, silver metallurgy and woolly sheep. 40 wheels will be analysed by computer tomography and strontium isotopes. Some 300 copper alloys artefacts and 200 silver objects will be examined using mass spectrometry with laser ablation. 400 aDNA genom-wide analyses of humans from burials in the North Caucasus will offer the unique chance of elucidating the role of migrations for the spread of innovations. The pottery in the region, often linked to Mesopotamia, will be studied under technical aspects and is a complementary path to shed light on migration and the transfer of knowledge. Excavations in settlements will allow building up a chronology using 400 AMS 14C analyses. The project is multidisciplinary, making use of the most up-to-date analytical methods. Our long experience and reputation on both sides of the Caucasus is the ideal background for cutting-edge research.

    Technical and social invention in the Caucasus

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  6. The key is creating a processual paradigm, instead of a creationist one (''all we need is that magic sample from this arbitrary place or genomic signaml'').

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  7. How do you average out two global 25 samples? You need a matrix or something? I can't get it right!

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  8. @Ariel

    You should be able to do it with nMonte2...

    source('nMonte2.R')

    averages <- aggr_pops('Samples.txt')

    write.csv(averages,"Samples_average.txt")

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  9. What does average out mean? Combine samples from same population to create average coordinates?

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  10. What is it about this humble little blog that attracts the nutters - real hardcore bats hit insane ranting matters - like flies to the proverbial shit?

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  11. @Rob: I'm aware of that, obviously, but the so called steppe ancestry has, as you know too, a very specific profile. And this profile seems to be the result of one or two big admixture events.
    And this admixture event created new people and cultures, of which one became PIE in the narrow sense while receiving Western farmer influences.
    Now I see the main admixture event represented by the Lower Don settlements, caused by a Caucasian people moving up the coast and rivers, where they came under the dominance of a local forager people. And the resulting amalgamation gave birth to the PPIE which spread much further along the rivers and a significant subset developing on to PIE at the border to Balkan farmers.
    But the decisive moment was when the Caucasian stream met the Eastern hunter-fisher people. And I really think that happened in a clearly defined time and space.

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  12. @ Zardos
    We already know where the “specific steppe signal“ formed- the north Caucasus , perhaps sprawling out further along the caspian .
    We also apparent that it wasn’t the major impetus for kurgan cultures or Sredni Stog phenomenon, although it something that spread along with their subsequent major expansion .
    Of course; future data might confirm your proposal that R1b-V3616 and J1 were highly relevant in later groups; but that seems a very slim chance.
    Lower don groups would of course be interesting, but I see no magical significance there

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  13. Well, there special significance is cultural development and demographic size. It was a real centre and able to keep the primarily forager tradition on a high cultural level. The transition to a more agro-pastoralist and prestige good (metal) oriented society was fluent and based on the ethics of the "hunter-warrior". Sredny Stog would have been not think able the way ot was without that tradition and I don’t think the peripheral hunter-fisher groups at the rivers further North East were as important. But thats just my current concept. I just want to know what really happens and without Lower Don being sufficiently sampled, there wont be conclusive evidence.

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  14. I agree with the theoretical premise, although that can be said for much of the steppe and forest steppe zone

    I take it you know that the lower Don zone broadly correlated with the Konstantinovka culture. What can we say about it empirically ?

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  15. I bet we’d see some of Ukraine -Ozero-outliers relatives

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  16. @zardos “Now I see the main admixture event represented by the Lower Don settlements, caused by a Caucasian people moving up the coast and rivers, where they came under the dominance of a local forager people. And the resulting amalgamation gave birth to the PPIE which spread much further along the rivers and a significant subset developing on to PIE at the border to Balkan farmers.
    But the decisive moment was when the Caucasian stream met the Eastern hunter-fisher people. And I really think that happened in a clearly defined time and space.”

    Why do you think that the EHG people were the dominant ones? I think CHG had more impact of PPIE.

    But I agree with you that a farmer language contributed to the creation of PIE, particularly when it comes to agricultural vocabulary. My first guess would be CT Culture

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  17. As for the Lower don. Of particular interest is the multi-layered settlement of Razdorskoe. "The lower Neolithic layer of the Rakushechniy Yar culture (layer # 1) is followed through the loamy sterile layer by the early Eneolithic layer 2 with finds of carved bone of the Mariupol type and characteristic flint products on large plates. Then, through a sterile layer of river gravel, lie the antiquities of the so-called lower Don culture with thin-walled, gray from the abundance of crushed shells, richly ornamented collar ceramics. Next, without any sterile gaps, is layer 4, whose Eneolithic ceramics are comparable to those found on such monuments as Svobodnoye in Kuban (the steppe of the North Caucasus, Meshoko culture) and, in part, as S^ezhee the Volga region (Samara culture). Its unambiguous cultural identity is problematic. In layer 5, two horizons are traced that generally correspond to the Eneolite of the Sredniy Stog culture.Layer 6 with gray polished thin-walled ceramics, ornamented with neat notches and thin impressions of the cord, the morphology of ceramic products can be compared with the Konstantinovsky culture, with its early stage. Layer 7 presents a classic version of the Konstantinovsky culture. Finally, layer 8 with its characteristic rough collar ceramics is confidently compared with the Repin culture. Actually 6-8 layers already belong to the early bronze age. The sequence of the remaining layers: 9-catacomb culture, 10- Multiple-relief-band ware culture, the Babyno culture and the Mnogovalikovaya kul'tura (MVK), 11-12-different stages of Srubnaya culture, 13-scythoid, IV century BC, 14-Saltovo-Mayak culture and 15-Cossack culture of the XIX – early XX century, no doubt unspoken."V. ya. Kiyashko, Professor of the southern Federal University, Russia.

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  18. @Andre: The answer is simply because the EHG paternal lineages dominate, so did the hunter-warrior cult. We will find J in the steppe and I, E and G in its Western parts in significant numbers eventually, but the overall dominance of R1 will be just confirmed.
    If the Caucasian element would have been the dominant part for PPIE, the frequencies would be the exact opposite.
    Its the same with the warlike agro-pastoralists in the West, there too, the hunter-warriors took over. Just with less of ab overall genetic input.

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  19. @Davidski
    Will that study("Technical and social invention in the Caucasus") be published in the next month? Do you know any other study being published in february-march?

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  20. @zardos “If the Caucasian element would have been the dominant part for PPIE, the frequencies would be the exact opposite.
    Its the same with the warlike agro-pastoralists in the West, there too, the hunter-warriors took over. Just with less of ab overall genetic input.”

    Yes, but that doesn’t mean that PPIE/PIE was an EHG language rather than a CHG one. And please also don’t forget the Hap J found in Karelia EHG sample. There is a gradual increase of CHG in EHG from Sidelkino all the way to Yamnaya

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  21. Apart from the Wang papers remarks I haven't seen anything about the archaeological context from the Steppe Eneolithic Piedmont samples.

    And the Wang remarks are pretty interesting:

    "Complementary to the southern Eneolithic component, a northern component started to expand between 4300 and4100 calBCE manifested in low burial mounds with inhumations densely packed in bright red ochre. Burial sites of this type, like the investigated sites of Progress and Vonyuchka, are found in the Don-Caspian steppe, but they are related to a much larger supra-regional network linking elites of the steppe zone between the Balkans and the Caspian Sea. These groups introduced the so-called kurgan, a specific type of burial monument,which soon spreadacross the entire steppe zone"

    One of the references is "Zepterträger: Die frühen Ockergräber des älteren Äneolithikums im karpatenbalkanischen Gebiet und im Steppenraum Südost- und Osteuropas" which isn't freely available but also talks about general steppe culture from what little information I have seen.

    What exactly is the cultural context of the Progress and Vonyuchka samples? Can anybody elaborate on that?

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  22. There are some researchers who posit some influence from Mesopotamia eg Kurgans, metallurgy, you-name-it due to the so-called Uruk Expansion or whatever. I can grasp Kartvelians or Adyghe as part Kura Araxes, or whatever influence coming from either the Sumerians or the Ubaidians/Halafians preceding them, but attributing cattle, metallurgy, Kurgans, and even some R1b subclades (mind you!) per the Reich school is not only far fetched, it’s ridiculous!

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  23. @Andre: It will be all in the record, probably we need more underwater archaeology along the Eastern coast of the Black sea even. But once the movement will be detected, you will see that a paternally J dominated people came into the Pontic region from the South, but the percentage was reduced first somewhat, then drastically by R1a+b. They were captured and while it remains possible, it is very, very unlikely the language of the Caucasians prevailed. Also, the possibility for PIE being a creole language is slim, so what remains as the most likely scenario, hard to prove though definitively, but that might be impossible anyway, is that PPIE was a language spoken by EHG hunter-fishers in the North Pontic region with Caucasian influences and PIE the later development with Neolithic/TCC influences.

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  24. @ Zardos

    “ there special significance is cultural development and demographic size.”

    Is there any data or evidence for this ? Are you able to answer about Konstantinovka culture
    You imagine that all the evidence for you model is unfortunately underwater ? Are you aware that sea levels were at their present level by 6000 BC
    Are you sure that PPIE definitely originated with so-called EHG tribes . We’ve heard your stories; let’s hear some facts

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  25. @ Epoch


    @ epoch

    Yes that’s phase 3 (of 3) of the expansion of the ochre grave phenomenon/ Skelya culture phenomenon; with the earliest phase (I) being in Danube- Azov

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  26. @zardos @Rob “They were captured and while it remains possible, it is very, very unlikely the language of the Caucasians prevailed. Also, the possibility for PIE being a creole language is slim, so what remains as the most likely scenario, hard to prove though definitively, but that might be impossible anyway, is that PPIE was a language spoken by EHG hunter-fishers in the North Pontic region with Caucasian influences and PIE the later development with Neolithic/TCC influences.”

    Stories of Gilgamesh/Noah’s flood DO point to possibility that refugees from a flooded Pontic region may have been a vector in creation/spread of PIE tribes. What’s not known is who they were or where they came from.

    There are a few posters besides me who support a Forest Steppe interaction with farmers in the ethnogenesis of LATE stage PIE. Don’t forget that farmer dna was up to 20% in Sredny Stog.

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  27. Shum Laka paper released today. It's available to read on the Reich publication website:

    https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/publications

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  28. These burials are described in detail in this article in Russian:
    New burIals of the proto-yamnaya Culture In the staVropol regIon
    Abstract. The paper reports on new finds from five burials of the Chalcolithic period discovered in the earliest kurgans of the Progress-2 burial ground in the Kirovsky district, Stavropol region, in the course of the excavations conducted by S.Ya Berezin in 2009–2010; the excavations of the Konstaninvosky-1 burial ground conducted by A.A. Kalmykov in 2010; and excavations of the Konstaninovsky-6 burial ground near Pyatigorsk by Ya.B. Berezin in 2013. Investigated materials are dated to the second half of 5000 BC. The article analyzes both finds and anthro- pological remains. As the earliest kurgans burials are recorded rarely, this material is of great value for characteriza- tion of the early Chalcolithic period in the central Fore-Caucasus region. https://www.archaeolog.ru/media/books_2019/Gory_Kavkaza.pdf
    “ Conclusions
    In the published series of six burials, four burials belong to men, one female and one paired child. This series of burials reflects the traditions common to the bearers of the oldest mound rite of the proto Ymnaya culture. The preserved mounds above the graves are small up to 1 m in height. They were constructed from surface soil for reasons of cult nature (soil magic). Admixture of mainland land was not used. According to mound 6 of the Konstantinovsky-6 burial ground, a platform was formed on top of the mound.
    Burials were made in small underground pits or catacombs. Moreover, burials of women and children of the proto-Yamnaya culture and the novodanilov group were usually built in catacombs (Korenevsky, 2016). The burials were thickly covered with red paint. The postures of the deceased: on the back, crouched, feet standing on the ground. This position of the foot may reflect the belief in the magic of mother earth, according to which the human soul, located in the foot, touched its original basis – the earth (Korenevsky, 2012. P. 93).
    Funerary inventory regularly includes flint knife-shaped plates that lie close to a person's hand, i.e. according to a specific tool tradition. It reflects the belief that a person, having moved to the land of his ancestors, continued to do everyday things and put the tools in the grave were right at hand. On the other hand, a set of things could illustrate the status of a person during life, or some magic of the funeral rite, obeying the canons. Subsequently, this element of mound construction will be perceived by carriers of the mound traditions of the Maikop-novosvobodnenskaya community (Korenevsky, Berezin, 2016).

    Thus, burials with stone adzes in the proto-Ymnaya culture and the novodanilovo group are associated with the burials of men and are part of prestigious sets of burial equipment. This fact highlights the special importance of Tesla in the funeral rite and the prestige of woodworking (Korenevsky, 2016).
    A special category of inventory pendants - shells made of copper, fixed in women's burials, reflect the symbolism of the cult of the mother of the goddess of fertility. They are characteristic costume ornaments of those buried in the cultures of the Danube Chalcolithic and the Kukuteni-Trypillya culture (Korenevsky 2017).
    Published a series of graves of the proto-Yamnaya cultures from the area of the Caucasian Mineral Waters shows that this area was well established tribes of proto Ymnaya culture in the period preceding the establishment of the Maikop-Novosvobodnaya community, and reflect a stable presence in the Caucasus mobile Eastern European component of the population in the V Millennium BC., along with native traditions of the local stroke-ornamented pottery pearl of the Caucasus, known from finds at the village, the Castle, the lower layer (korenevskiy, 1998)”.





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  29. @Rob: I quoted and linked scientific comments on the issue before and won't search for it again and the sea levels in the crucial phase were lower. 6000 BC is a time when the coastal people moved further inland along the river valleys by the way. The Caucasian settlers were there already:

    "The multilayer settlement Rakushechny Yar situated in the lower Don River (Rostov region, Russia) is one of the oldest early Neolithic sites in this region, dated to the 7th and 6th millennia BC. Recent investigations have shown a particular importance of this site in the study of the spread of the Near Eastern “Neolithic package” and the neolithisation of Eastern Europe. Long-term study has provided unique evidence of lives of ancient communities. New 14C dates contribute to refining the chronology of the recently excavated to dating the development of cultural traditions more precisely. The excellent preservation state of organic materials led to uncovering a rich assemblage of faunal and fish remains, household constructions, hunting and fishing tools, as well as pottery. The subsistence strategies and the life cycle of these communities were reconstructed through multiple proxies, which describe a particular system of resource management determined by specific economic, environmental and cultural conditions. Rich fish remains, shell middens, site location, specific toolkit with restricted categories, and incomplete context of tool production testify all that it was a specialized site for aquatic resource procurement. Faunal remains indicated the use of resources from other ecological niches as well. Finds of bones of domesticated animals in the same Early Neolithic layers may suggest even a more complicated organization of this ancient community and may indicate the northern limit of the Neolithic package distribution."

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618219300126

    I just hope they come up with ancient DNA (humans and animals) from the site soon. My guess is that these settlers represent the Caucasian element with still more J paternally and mixture with local, Eastern European foragers. Let's see.

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  30. @ Michalis Moriopoulos - Great paper. The possible (but not definitive) archaic ancestry in Bantu populations is pretty interesting, though I wonder if we will ever have good samples of this ghost archaic population (if the signal is real). They date the ghost archaic's split with modern humans to the same time as our split from Neanderthals.

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  31. @ Zardos

    Unfortunately the study doesn’t back any of your
    Claims

    “ Evidence of domesticated sheep dated to the middle of the 6th mill BC and domesticated cereals are known to the west of the Lower Don area - in Bug- Dniester culture societies (Pashkevych, 2012; Motuzaite Matuzeviciute, 2013). New evidences found at Rakushechny Yar site of domesticated species testify that here also existed another zone of interaction. Small sizes of cattle and pig recorded may testify that domestication of these species occurred long before. Small sizes of domesticated animals were also noted for some other sites located in the North Pontic region (Benecke, 1997)

    However, although there are a number of well-known early Neolithic sites in Transcaucasus with clear traces of contacts with Near Eastern com- munities (Nishiaki et al., 2015; Kadowaki et al., 2015, 2016; Badalyan et al., 2007), only one early Neolithic site is currently known in the Northern Caucasus – Chokh cave (Amirhanov, 1987), which complicates verification of this hypothesis at this stage.“

    The data from chokh is all very flimsy , no supportive modern data. The main cultural impetus is from the west and PPIE emerged from hunter gatherers there.

    Ps: can’t recall you bringing forth any scientific data about submerged Eneolithic settlements .

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  32. Andrzejewski said...

    "Why do you think that the EHG people were the dominant ones? I think CHG had more impact of PPIE."

    maybe it was a two stage process - people pulled north from Anatolia / Mesopotamia (looking for gold and silver?) being dominant initially but the resulting tech transfer in the contact zone (domestic sheep etc) boosted the native forager population into a herder population changing the balance of power.

    i think a likely historical analogy will be Spain expanding into New Mexico bringing the horses which eventually lead to the Comanche driving them out again.

    (and maybe somewhere in the middle of this process the incomers hiring some of the steppe dudes as mercenaries for cities back in Anatolia who eventually became the Hittites?)

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  33. @JuanRivera - The archaic ancestry is in the Neanderthal line. It's not. It splits at the same time as Neanderthals but doesn't share additional drift them.

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  34. @JuanRivera - It's not paywalled. Enjoy.

    https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/sites/reich.hms.harvard.edu/files/inline-files/Shum_Laka_published_online_0.pdf

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  35. @Rob: I know most Neolithic influences came from the West, but there is a distinguishable Caucasian-related migration in the Lower Don sphere which I'm speaking about and even though the evidence is flimsy indeed, genetic data of human and animal remains is the only way to clear that up. Other than that very lucky, decisive archaeological finds, but that's much harder to achieve and even if, the final word will come from genetic analyses.

    "Ps: can’t recall you bringing forth any scientific data about submerged Eneolithic settlements ."

    Well, it was mentioned as a possible scenario in papers on the Lower Don culture, some of which I quoted. But I'm definitely not alone with the idea of a South-North migration largely along the littoral Black Sea region, which was at the time in question water free and became submerged in meantime.
    Its actually a problem not just for the East, for the Caucasian migration, but in the West and the Neolithic settlements there too, as many other papers suggest, you can check it.

    Unfortunately the underwater archaeology is at its beginnings, like ancient DNA mass analyses in this context. But there are first successes, like here, even for a later time period that we speak about:

    "The submerged Early Bronze Age settlement, which has now been found and explored by the Black Sea MAP archaeologists, is located close to the mouth of the Ropotamo River on Bulgaria’s Southern Black Sea coast.

    “The Black Sea MAP completes its final phase of fieldwork having excavated the remains of an Early Bronze Age settlement at Ropotamo in Bulgaria near the ancient shoreline when the sea level was much lower than today," the project team says.

    It explains that as the waters of the Black Sea rose, the Bronze Age settlement was abandoned.

    The archaeologists have found remains of house timbers, hearths and ceramics off Bulgaria’s present-day shoreline, lying 2.5 meters below the seabed.

    As a result of the advancement of environmental change and the advancement of the sea waters, the valley in which the Bronze Age settlement had laid turned into a Black Sea bay."

    http://archaeologyinbulgaria.com/2017/10/17/maritime-archaeologists-find-bronze-age-settlement-black-seas-seabed-off-bulgarias-coast/

    Also:
    "In the Holocene between (11th–6th
    millennium BP), the Sea of Azov, as part of the Black
    Sea basin, underwent a sustained transgression of
    its surface, which was 3.5 to 4m lower than at present,
    with an ensuing flood of the coastal shelf (Balabanov
    2007.715). There are different scenarios of
    transgression of the Black Sea level, with both a
    rapid and gradual flooding of the coastal shelf (Ryan
    2007.63–117; Balabanov 2007.711–730; Glebov,
    Shel’ting 2007.731–773). ‘The Black Sea flood’ probably
    significantly changed the line of the shore; it
    certainly flooded settlements nearby and the borders
    of arable land."

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313125698_'Neolithisation'_in_the_NE_Sea_of_Azov_region_One_step_forward_two_steps_back

    There are more papers on the issue, all new, younger than 2015. Just wait for the results to come. Looking at the early sites already, in comparison to the surrounding populations, the mouth of the Don was definitely a population center for its time and region imho.

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  36. NP. I haven't dug into the Supplementary Information yet myself. This should be juicy.

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  37. @ Zardos

    “ but there is a distinguishable Caucasian-related migration in the Lower Don”

    In fact, whilst the paper appeals to such a connection, it concedes its rather difficult to conclude.
    IMO, apart from some microliths and pottery, there’s Nothing really formative as far as kurgan cultures are concerned

    “ the mouth of the Don was definitely a population center for its time and region “”

    Which time & what region ? Are you taking about 6000 BC, 4500 BC or 3000 BC ? Can we see any demographic indices in support


    Yes there was a big earthquake or flood in Bulgaria - the west Black Sea region . Probably explains why Varna-Karanovo VI disappeared

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  38. Indo-Europeans have absolutely nothing to do with the problem of the emergence of a producing economy, wherever cows and sheep come from; this has absolutely nothing to do with the problem of the great Indo-European ancestral home. The borrowing of a productive economy is not a consequence of migrations for among most peoples. This is just a cultural borrowing and nothing more, the same as a metalworking borrowing, which by the way was made in the Balkans without any migration from Anatolia. A producing economy and metalworking are not signs of Indo-Europeans, since they were owned by everyone. Signs of Indo-Europeans are only corded ware pottery, battle axes, mounds, wheel and wheeled transport, horses. All this has nothing to do with the west, it all comes from the east and northeast.
    The problem of the Lower Don culture is that it does not have any markers of the Indo-Europeans, the only thing that it is associated with the Sredniy Stog culture, and these markers appear with the corded Dereivka culture, the first sporadic signs may a little earlier.
    Naturally, there is generally no data on Neolithic migrations from the Caucasus.

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  39. corded ware was just one component incorporated into the package ; it’s a forest idea, not China or Siberia
    Battle axes and mounds / cromlechs are of course western ideas , and maybe even wheels are too
    Agropastoralism was obviously vital for expansion
    Most of these ideas from the Balkans, central & Northern Europe, and so first adopted by the western -most tribes of EE.

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  40. On cord decorated pottery, from Kotova-
    “ Corded ornamentation was observed for the first time in the steppe area between the Dnieper and the Don rivers in the Sredniy Stog culture monuments of the early Eneolithic Age. Artefact ornamentation was represented by imprints of a coiled cord [Kotova 2008]. Classic ‘corded’ ornamentation appeared in the Middle Eneolithic in the monuments of the Dereivka culture and the lower layer of the Mykhailivka settlement”

    Pottery itself is a local development in EE

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  41. “ This is just a cultural borrowing and nothing more, the same as a metalworking borrowing“

    It must be a coincidence that I2a2 starts appearing in deep Ukraine & Russia c 5000 BC + EEF ancestry in the Dnieper -Donets

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  42. I was talking about 6000 BC. The importance of the region decreased afterwards, while other places catched up, especially after agro-pastoralism became more widespread.

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  43. @JuanRivera and Ryan

    We might have a sample: Homo mauritanicus (or Atlanthropus mauritanicus) is a name for some 700 ky old samples of an Algerian archaic human.

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  44. @epoch - You'd think if it introgressed primarily into West Africans it would have been living in West Africa though, not North Africa. 700kya may be too close to the split between Neanderthals, modern humans and this ghost archaic too.

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  45. @Ryan

    Yes, that's indeed a good point. It also is pretty interesting that West-African have such admixture. Maybe it is a marker that AMH did not originate there.

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  46. Сorded ware pottery is definitely an idea from the east from Siberia and from North-Eastern Europe, where this idea appeared much earlier than in the Steppe. Kotova only examines when she appeared in the Steppe, but not the origin of this feature. Kotova does not investigate the genesis of corded ware ceramics. The battle axes are not from the west; they themselves were brought to the west from the Stepps. Kurgans are not from the West; they themselves first appeared in the Volga-Don region. Pastoralism did not come from the west, cattle from the west may have come, but not pastoralism. These are all facts.

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  47. Corded Ware might have evolved independently from more mobile people binding their baggage on animals, from which the decorative tradition evolved.

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  48. @zardos "Corded Ware might have evolved independently from more mobile people binding their baggage on animals, from which the decorative tradition evolved."

    The genesis of corded ware has been explored and understood. He has nothing to do with animals. This is an image of the male principle, which is still clearly visible on its most archaic part with a "caterpillar" ornament. In the societies that preserved it, it refers to male ceramics, it is found in the male part of the house, unlike the female part where it is not. The spread of this pottery is associated with the transition to a patriarchal way of life, which was especially felt in the Steppe.

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  49. I give some credit to the idea that it came from containers out of organic materials, like leather, which were fixed with cords. Evolved into peaked ceramic, tied on an animal too, into the classic shape.
    This was used by males on the move originally, so I agree with the masculine connotation, but think such an evolution could be real.
    So its rather a mobile life, patriarchal they were before already.

    ReplyDelete
  50. @ zardos

    I think animals carrying stuff will have the same effect as riding and as far as I can remember there is no evidence of riding in the Steppe Zone that early. I personally think if animals were used, the travois will make more sense...

    ReplyDelete
  51. @zardos "I give some credit to the idea that it came from containers out of organic materials, like leather, which were fixed with cords."

    Impossibly, the "caterpillar" style of the early steppe corded ware ceramics has nothing to do with leash (to leather, which were fixed with cords).

    ReplyDelete
  52. @Ric: Without starting that debate once more, I think horse riding started quite early. But lets wait for more evidence.

    However, if you are constantly on the move over long distances, you will adapt and fix your stuff, even if you use ox wagons and carry it yourself.
    The point is, a classic pot with a broad standing base is not very practical in this respect.
    Leather containers and peaked (I know there is some more correct tern) pots fixed with cords are more useful.
    Whether they rode horses or not. But they has pack animals, wagons and carried on the body.

    ReplyDelete
  53. @zardos

    The corded ware pottery appears in the Steppe much earlier then appears a wheel and of course riding!

    ReplyDelete
  54. I refer to Western Sredny Stog/Dereivka and the appearance of a more mobile way of life with the use of pack and draft animals.

    Specifically Dereivka to Corded Ware/Battle Axe and Usatovo/Balkan Corded pottery.

    ReplyDelete
  55. @zardos

    In Eastern Europe, ceramics was never used for personal transportation, it is generally meaningless, it will break right away. They always used wooden utensils, which even the Indo-Aryans made even in the Iron Age for these purposes. No ceramics were needed, wooden utensils are an Eastern European tradition dating back to the Mesolithic.


    ReplyDelete
  56. Which is why the earlist CW groups had little ceramic grave goods at all. However, there are early pots with a narrow, peaked base, which couldn’t stand properly. They look like transport vessels.

    Also, where do you see the older, uninterrupted tradition leading to Dereivka if you propose an old, very Eastern origin of the decoration?

    ReplyDelete
  57. @zardos

    Here you need to know archeology. Peaked utensils were never intended for transportation, it is a purely kitchen utensils for storing food and cooking in stationary conditions and nothing more. This tableware was dug into the ground, hence the sharp end.

    It is in the early-middle Eneolithic Steppe that the corded ware "caterpillar" ornament is present from which the classical corded ware ornament develops already in the Dereivka culture.

    ReplyDelete
  58. What do you say to this comment:
    "This was followed shortly afterwards by the deposit of A-
    type battle-axes in male burials, but there was as yet no pottery (Furholt 2014: 6, fig. 3).
    Corded Ware pottery appeared later in Northern Europe, and we may suggest that this did
    not happen until women with ceramic skills married into this culture and started to copy
    wooden, leather and woven containers in clay. This process began in the early phase both
    south and north of the Carpathians."

    https://orbit.dtu.dk/files/132362907/retheorising_mobility_and_the_formation_of_culture_and_language_among_the_corded_ware_culture_in_europe.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  59. zardos said... " What do you say to this comment:"

    This is a crazy ridiculous assumption and nothing more. In Eastern Europe, they simply did not put ceramics in graves in the Eneolithic. There was no tradition of burial with ceramics.

    ReplyDelete
  60. @ Archie

    Of course, all your “facts” are slightly off

    Pottery - is not from Siberia. East European Pottery developed in .... Eastern Europe in the lower don - Volga centres. thats where Zardos’s views find partial / minor redemption: flow of ideas and female from caucasus and Kelteminar helped shape traditions; then once developed , the idea of pottery flowed north to the forests . The corded design is symptomatic of the development of quasi pastoralism

    Battle axes are obviously a development of .. the axe. used for felling trees and clearing land. A Neolithic idea; absent in Russia . Of course the specific CWC battle axes then flowed back to Northern Europe, replacing TRB forms

    “ Kurgans are not from the West; they themselves first appeared in the Volga-Don region. ”
    Kurgans are just the megaliths of the East. The earliest and most complex kurgans are in NW Black Sea region. I’m not even bother debating this.

    “ Pastoralism did not come from the west, cattle from the west may have come, but not pastoralism. “
    You of course are missing the boat here. Cattle transformed steppe society completely. But cwc weren’t pastoralists, they had a mixed economy just like other European cultures, esp Baden. Definite Pastoralism only emerges in late catacomb due to severe aridization & drying of rivers (fish) and other resources

    And the interplay between EEF and the steppe were I2a and R1b-V88 groups. The latter disappeared; the former changed history forever

    ReplyDelete

  61. Also Archie mischaracterises the steppe as “the East”. The start of steppe/ forest steppe biome is in East Central Europe, in the heart of Europe. That’s where it all began. Of course there’s be nothing wrong it if began further east in the Ural-Volga or trans-Siberia; but that’s simply not the case .

    ReplyDelete
  62. On battle axes - “ In the Tiszapolgár culture (4500 BC), male and female graves differed consid- erably in their inventory. Male burials were equipped with e.g. axes or battle-axes made of stone, copper or antler, wild boar tusks, flint cores and blades,..” (S Kadrow)

    ReplyDelete
  63. @Rob

    "Pottery - is not from Siberia. East European Pottery developed in .... Eastern Europe in the lower don - Volga centres. thats where Zardos’s views find partial / minor redemption: flow of ideas and female from caucasus and Kelteminar helped shape traditions; then once developed , the idea of pottery flowed north to the forests . The corded design is symptomatic of the development of quasi pastoralism"

    Well, of course, your fantasies they are the most real, the funny thing is that
    there is no Neolithic in the Caucasus, so there was simply no flow of ceramics from it! Ceramics came to Eastern Europe from the east, have a look at these scientific facts already. Corded ware ceramics, too, in Siberia and in the northern part of Eastern Europe, it has existed for a long time, come to terms with this.

    "Battle axes are obviously a development of .. the axe. used for felling trees and clearing land. A Neolithic idea; absent in Russia . Of course the specific CWC battle axes then flowed back to Northern Europe, replacing TRB forms"

    Do not funny, the Neolithic stone tools in Eastern Europe appeared before to the rest of Europe, this is the initial definition of the Neolithic era, and not the presence of a productive economy. Stone axes in Eastern Europe have always been made and they chopped trees. Once again, you show that you lack any knowledge, there is only blind faith. But battle axes are not ordinary axes, they appear only in the Copper Age, because a stone battle ax is an imitation of a metal battle ax, it was made from a metal sample as a result of a lack of metal. It arises precisely from the people who had access to copper, knew metallurgy, but did not have much copper to satisfy their needs. Such were only the Sredniy Srtog and Khvalynsk cultures within the framework of the BCMP. It is there that the oldest examples of stone battle axes are found. It has nothing to do with any TRB.

    "Kurgans are just the megaliths of the East. The earliest and most complex kurgans are in NW Black Sea region. I’m not even bother debating this."

    And no need to discuss. You absolutely do not know the studies on the dating of the mounds and therefore just use your fiction.

    "You of course are missing the boat here. Cattle transformed steppe society completely. But cwc weren’t pastoralists, they had a mixed economy just like other European cultures, esp Baden. Definite Pastoralism only emerges in late catacomb due to severe aridization & drying of rivers (fish) and other resources"

    Do not funny, the pure pastoralists were Sredniy Stog, and later the Yamnians. As always, you think up, even pure nomads, pastoralists of Arians were still engaged in agriculture, because it was necessary to harvest forage for the winter.

    "And the interplay between EEF and the steppe were I2a and R1b-V88 groups. The latter disappeared; the former changed history forever "

    Believe what you want, all the facts, without exception, are only against you.

    "Also Archie mischaracterises the steppe as “the East”. The start of steppe/ forest steppe biome is in East Central Europe, in the heart of Europe. That’s where it all began. Of course there’s be nothing wrong it if began further east in the Ural-Volga or trans-Siberia; but that’s simply not the case"

    You are simply mistaken because you are a purely religious believer and no more.

    ReplyDelete
  64. @ Archie

    Please do not funny and point in sky !

    ReplyDelete
  65. @Rob

    Do not make people laugh or cut quotes! You did not notice that there is a "or": "axes or battle-axes made of stone, copper or antler" . Meanwhile, it is directly written there:
    quotes
    "Copper battle-axes or stone sceptres deposited in graves of adult(adultus) or older (maturus) men (Fig. 10) signify the most privileged social group within the Tiszapolgár culture" Scepters from Eastern Europe, they characterize the steppe people, and even earlier were widely distributed in the Onega culture (Yuzhny Oleniy island).

    "Another male group included men interred with stone axes, long blades and pendants made of wild boar tusks, yet another – men whose graves contained pigs’ mandibles." There is no battle or copper, only stone.

    Indo-Europeans are characterized by simple battle axes, that is, made of stone, not metal. Stone battle axes are called battle axes simply, and metal ones with the indication of metal.


    ReplyDelete
  66. @zardos,
    "type battle-axes in male (corded ware) burials"
    @Rob response,
    "“On battle axes - In the Tiszapolgár culture (4500 BC), male and female graves differed consid- erably in their inventory. Male burials were equipped with e.g. axes or battle-axes made of stone, copper or antler, wild boar tusks, flint cores and blades,..” (S Kadrow)"

    DNA speaks louder than vague cultural similarities such as two cultures both producing Battle axes.

    ReplyDelete
  67. @Samuel Andrews

    "Jan Lichardus, attached to the theory of the decisive influenceof steppe cultures on the development of Early Eneolithic communi-ties in south-eastern Europe (Lichardus 1991b, 187–191), interpretsthe presence of long flint blades, wild boar tusks etc. at the cemetery in Varna as resulting from contacts and migration of human groupsfrom the doab between the Dnieper and the Volga (Lichardus 1991b,189). The latest absolute chronology for Early Eneolithic cultures onthe Ukrainian and South Russian steppes does not contradict this view.
    In Jan Lichardus’ opinion, burial rites in the Hamangia and theVarna cultures assumed many foreign characteristics, including suchitems of grave inventory as round or square golden pendants, zoomorphic plaques, and long “flint knives” (cf. Garašanin 1978). Moreover,Lichardus sees influence of northern Pontus in the customary inhumation at cemeteries separated from settlements, in burying the deadin an extended supine position, and their gender-differentiated arrangement and equipment (Lichardus 1991b, 175–176)." Kotova came to exactly the same conclusions.

    ReplyDelete
  68. @Rob: "Pottery - is not from Siberia. East European Pottery developed in .... Eastern Europe in the lower don - Volga centres. thats where Zardos’s views find partial / minor redemption: flow of ideas and female from caucasus and Kelteminar helped shape traditions; then once developed , the idea of pottery flowed north to the forests . The corded design is symptomatic of the development of quasi pastoralism "

    Exactly, but one thing I want to add and stress, which is what I meant before: Not just "the idea" flowed north to the forests or better along the rivers, but a population element. This is "the steppe ancestry", formative and decisive for PPIE and later PIE in Eastern Europe. Not just ideas, but people. Mostly female transmitted from the original Lower Don settlements indeed, the male forager counterpart was the dominant side.

    ReplyDelete
  69. @zardos @Rob “Exactly, but one thing I want to add and stress, which is what I meant before: Not just "the idea" flowed north to the forests or better along the rivers, but a population element. This is "the steppe ancestry", formative and decisive for PPIE and later PIE in Eastern Europe. Not just ideas, but people. Mostly female transmitted from the original Lower Don settlements indeed, the male forager counterpart was the dominant side.”

    Kelteminar was mostly Steppe Maykop which went the way of the dodo. You think that its the female exogenous bridal exchange which brought the CHG element, I think OTOH that it’s the traders and warriors who brought this element (CHG) To the Steppe. We might never know.

    ReplyDelete
  70. There must be some confusion here, because the Eneolithic (>4,000 BCE) samples from the North Caucasus Piedmont steppe in my graphs above are hunter-gatherers indigenous to where they were buried.

    There's no evidence that any of their recent or distant ancestors were traders, warriors or even farmers from the Caucasus, let alone from south of the Caucasus.

    ReplyDelete
  71. They lived in caves on either side of the Caucasus. Emerging evidence suggests they knew pottery but were still hunters. Ergo, they might have shaped emerging ceramic traditions on the steppe & helped form the biblical “steppe signal”

    ReplyDelete
  72. @Rob "This is what I wrote : “ Battle axes are obviously a development of .. the axe. used for felling trees and clearing land. A Neolithic idea; absent in Russia ."

    And you wrote a lie.

    ReplyDelete
  73. @Davidski I have no idea where the CHG admixture came from and how Steppe people (let’s just call them “original Indo-Europeans”) were created. There’s some sort of a consensus that the earliest form of whatever resembled Indo-European speech was formed 6,500-6,000 years ago on the Pontic Caspian Steppe. We don’t know exactly where, but Vonyuchka or Piedmont comes to mind more often. I’m sure that they didn’t look very different than the average modern Eastern European but I would like to finally unravel the mystery behind them

    ReplyDelete
  74. @ Archie
    Oh ok. I’ve never tried fishing & catching birds with an axe. Might give it a go

    ReplyDelete
  75. @Rob "They lived in caves on either side of the Caucasus. Emerging evidence suggests they knew pottery but were still hunters. Ergo, they might have shaped emerging ceramic traditions on the steppe"

    Your anti-science fantasies are ridiculous.

    @Andrzejewski "but Vonyuchka or Piedmont comes to mind more often."

    There are no arguments in support of this in any of the Sciences. This is almost
    impossible.

    ReplyDelete
  76. @Archi @Rob our Steppe ancestors were warriors, that’s why the had horseback riding skills, metallurgy skills, battle axes and everything that came with it

    ReplyDelete
  77. @Archi “There are no arguments in support of this in any of the Sciences. This is almost
    impossible.”

    The CHG component makes it more likely than Khvalynsk/Samara (today’s Russian Tatarstan)

    ReplyDelete
  78. @ Archie

    “” The tradition of pottery decorated with triangular
    impressions, individual linked impressions and lines
    first appeared in the basin of the Lower Volga and
    Northern Caspian in the first quarter of the 7th mil-
    lennium calBC (Vybornov 2008). The early pottery
    in the Lower Volga region is accompanied by a stone
    industry, which, according to researchers of this re-
    gion, have Mesolithic traits (Vybornov 2008) and
    could have been connected with the first stage in the
    distribution of ceramic traditions. This conservation
    of Mesolithic flint traditions in complexes accompa-
    nying the first pottery can be also found in differ-
    ent areas of Western and Eastern Europe (Lozovsky
    2001; Polkovnikova 2003; Nikitin 2013.26; Sinyk
    1986; Robinson et al. 2013), although some resear-
    chers also outline the possibility that different com-
    plexes were mechanically mixed (Viskalin 2013).
    Early Neolithic materials in the Northern Caspian
    have analogues in Neolithic material from the Cau-
    casus, Lower Volga and Azov areas, and the central
    Asian Neolithic [Kelteminar] (Vybornov 2008)”

    -The oldest pottery in hunter-gatherer communities
    and models of Neolithisation of Eastern Europe
    Andrey Mazurkevich, Ekaterina Dolbunova

    ReplyDelete
  79. @David: "There must be some confusion here, because the Eneolithic (>4,000 BCE) samples from the North Caucasus Piedmont steppe in my graphs above are hunter-gatherers indigenous to where they were buried.

    There's no evidence that any of their recent or distant ancestors were traders, warriors or even farmers from the Caucasus, let alone from south of the Caucasus."

    But what about Mesolithic-early Neolithic migrations from the Caucasian region, the same one which might have (helped to) create(d) the Lower Don culture, settlements like R. yar etc.? That's about events and migration ca. 3000 years earlier.

    We have no idea when the Caucasian element increased in the region to the levels we see in Progress and Vonyushka, or do we? It was, most likely, present long before, even up to Karelia, but the increase and cultural change which happened presumably shortly before and during the Lower Don Culture was formed is something different. Please correct me and point to alternatives if I'm off.

    ReplyDelete
  80. But I wouldn’t put it past anyone that late PIE (Sredny Stog/CWC) contained between 20% -25% Cucuteni Tripolye vocabulary

    ReplyDelete
  81. @David: "There must be some confusion here, because the Eneolithic (>4,000 BCE) samples from the North Caucasus Piedmont steppe in my graphs above are hunter-gatherers indigenous to where they were buried.

    There's no evidence that any of their recent or distant ancestors were traders, warriors or even farmers from the Caucasus, let alone from south of the Caucasus."

    But what about Mesolithic-early Neolithic migrations from the Caucasian region, the same one which might have (helped to) create(d) the Lower Don culture, settlements like R. yar etc.? That's about events and migration ca. 3000 years earlier.

    We have no idea when the Caucasian element increased in the region to the levels we see in Progress and Vonyushka, or do we? It was, most likely, present long before, even up to Karelia, but the increase and cultural change which happened presumably shortly before and during the Lower Don Culture was formed is something different. Please correct me and point to alternatives if I'm off.

    ReplyDelete
  82. @Andrzejewski "our Steppe ancestors were ... horseback riding"

    Only in fantasies.

    "metallurgy skills"

    Very primitive, they knew only metal in general (copper) and gold. They only knew forging, they did not know the casting of metals.

    ReplyDelete
  83. @zardos “We have no idea when the Caucasian element increased in the region to the levels we see in Progress and Vonyushka, or do we? It was, most likely, present long before, even up to Karelia, but the increase and cultural change which happened presumably shortly before and during the Lower Don Culture was formed is something different. Please correct me and point to alternatives if I'm off.”

    There were 2 different waves. I think the most recent one (closer to Late Neolithic) was the formative one in terms of ethnogenesis of PIE

    ReplyDelete

  84. @ Sam

    “ DNA speaks louder than vague cultural similarities such as two cultures both producing Battle axes.”

    This is what I wrote : “ Battle axes are obviously a development of .. the axe. used for felling trees and clearing land. A Neolithic idea; absent in Russia . Of course the specific CWC battle axes then flowed back to Northern Europe, replacing TRB forms”

    Sam if you can’t even read or lack the faculties to understand (clearly the case); then simply keep quiet

    ReplyDelete
  85. @Rob

    You always give meaningless quotes, you claimed about the Caucasian way of distribution of ceramics, but you gave a quote in which there is no question of any Caucasus even close. there it is essentially denied. This is ridiculous.

    @zardos " But what about Mesolithic-early Neolithic migrations from the Caucasian region, the same one which might have (helped to) create(d) the Lower Don culture, settlements like R. yar etc.? That's about events and migration ca. 3000 years earlier."

    Such a migration does not exist under any assumption, no archaeologist has ever assumped such a thing from any data. On the contrary, they deny everything. For some reason, you are confusing these hypothetical connections with the Fertile Crescent, calling it the Caucasus. Even those archaeologists who suggest such a relationship categorically deny the Caucasus. How can you confuse the Fertile Crescent with the Caucasus I do not understand.

    ReplyDelete
  86. @Archi “Such a migration does not exist under any assumption, no archaeologist has ever assumped such a thing from any data. On the contrary, they deny everything. For some reason, you are confusing these hypothetical connections with the Fertile Crescent, calling it the Caucasus. Even those archaeologists who suggest such a relationship categorically deny the Caucasus. How can you confuse the Fertile Crescent with the Caucasus I do not understand.“

    Because of the overhyped “Uruk expansion”, I bet

    ReplyDelete
  87. @Andrzejewski "Because of the overhyped “Uruk expansion”, I bet"

    No, it is connection related to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic 7500-7000 BC, the lower Don pottery has Volga-Ural genesis.

    ReplyDelete
  88. @Archi “No, it is connection related to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic 7500-7000 BC, the lower Don pottery has Volga-Ural genesis.“

    Aren’t the Pre-Pottery Neolithic the ancestors of Semitic people? I don’t think they have anything to do with Anatolia farmer expansion?

    There WAS an Eastern expansion from Anatolia into the Caucasus and I suspect that it gave birth to Kura Araxes (CHG + ANF/EEF) but I’m not sure about the PPN

    ReplyDelete
  89. @Rob

    Do not repeat nonsense. Quote

    "no such ancient sites with pottery have survived in the Caucasus, where Early Neolithic complexes have been dated to the end of the 7th and to the 6th millennium calBC"

    ReplyDelete
  90. The Lower Don culture has different influences, some point to the South, as you should know. But this will be, most likely, being backed up by new data (DNA of human and animal DNA) soon. However, that doesnt mean their impact on later populations was that big, thats a separate question which needs more samples from around and a lot of comparisons.

    ReplyDelete
  91. @Andrzejewski "I don’t think they have anything to do with Anatolia farmer expansion?"

    Most likely it was brought by traders floating for obsidian.

    ReplyDelete

  92. @ Archie

    As above, emerging data suggests that pottery may have been present in caucasus НОВЫЕ ДАННЫЕ О НЕОЛИТЕ СЕВЕРО-ЗАПАДНОГО КАВКАЗА ИЗ МЕЗМАЙСКОЙ ПЕЩЕРЫ
    Л.В. Голованова*, Et al 2017

    This explains the the CHG in north Caucasus

    ReplyDelete
  93. @Rob

    There is no dating or understanding even to what times that applies and what connections it has, but it definitely does not have a connection to the South of the Caucasus. This is literally the only case, and then only because it is not clear to what time it belongs. So don't be under any illusions, never under any circumstances could ceramics penetrate from the Caucasus, it is categorically impossible, ceramics was a broad front (from the East), it was a powerful influence that instantly spread to the entire territory and changed people's lives. And snotty hypotheses about penetration from the Caucasus are simply shameful.

    ReplyDelete
  94. @Rob

    You just need to understand very well what place we are talking about - this is of course the North-Western Caucasus, but it is much closer to the Lower Don than to the Neolithic centers, because there is nothing Neolithic to the South of it.

    https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mezmay/@44.5268121,40.7961175,8z

    So who could have left the shards there and at what time is still a big question. It is characteristic that in the Middle Eastern Neolithic tradition, ceramics were never used for cooking on fire, this was done only in Eastern Europe, in this case, apparently, the shards were left after cooking on fire.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Archi i read article which i can't find anymore about difference between India and China - China was characteristic in prefering cooking &boiling and later steaming, their porcelain reached India eatly but was never incorporated influencing their food preparing style & preferences because of ease of use & fitting rice farming, it was opposite, their culinary tastes were established and influenced farming affecting selection of rice grains to reach the food facture they were already used to. They also prefered frying, grinding. I point it out only to show that some inventions spread but arent sucessful despite useability just because of not fitting a groups existing tastes, beliefs - at least when the alternative isn't really gamechanging. The division of taste can be as real as ethnical, lingual - that's the power of habit.

      Delete
  95. @ Archi
    You’re not grasping my statements . It has nothing to do with farming or production economy of PPN type
    It is spread of ceramic ideas amongst hunter gatherers (CHG, EHG). This is why ceramic traditions appear earliest in Lowe don and lower Volga (as opposes to middle Volga). CHG are CHG, not what you term “middle eastern farmers”

    ReplyDelete
  96. @ Archie

    “ s, it is categorically impossible, ceramics was a broad front (from the East), it was a powerful influence that instantly spread to the entire territory and changed people's lives. And snotty hypotheses about penetration from the Caucasus are simply shameful.”

    That’s simply untrue
    There were several centres of ceramicization; Far East; Middle East, Africa etc
    Far eastern ceramics have no influence on Eastern Europe . It’s just an empirical myth .

    Moreover , you continue to twist & misunderstand everything, as I outlined that Ceramics developed in Eastern Europe but via some form of contact of hunter -gatherers further south. I have no qualms of taking the views of the quoted archaeologist over yours

    ReplyDelete
  97. @Rob "It is spread of ceramic ideas amongst hunter gatherers (CHG, EHG). This is why ceramic traditions appear earliest in Lowe don and lower Volga (as opposes to middle Volga). CHG are CHG, not what you term “middle eastern farmers”"

    This is absolutely untrue; you are simply lying. Moreover, it appears there before ceramics appears in the Middle East, so it is more than impossible.
    I gave you the appearance of ceramics in Eastern Europe in a large fundamental work of a huge team of authors, which you brazenly forgot and ignore while continuing to lie.

    " That’s simply untrue
    There were several centres of ceramicization; Far East; Middle East, Africa etc
    Far eastern ceramics have no influence on Eastern Europe . It’s just an empirical myth ."

    This is an absolute lie. This is all fiction autochthonists, and I wanted to spit on these pseudoscientific fiction. Ceramics comes from one center in the East, it only spread in two different ways: North and South. Northern ceramics was characterized by the fact that it was not painted because they made food on it at the stake; Southern ceramics was characterized by being painted because food was never cooked on it at the stake. These are two completely different paths; Eastern European ceramics has nothing to do with the Middle East.


    "Moreover , you continue to twist & misunderstand everything, as I outlined that Ceramics developed in Eastern Europe but via some form of contact of hunter -gatherers further south. I have no qualms of taking the views of the quoted archaeologist over yours"

    Behind me, the opinion of all archaeologists involved in ceramics, behind you is only yours. You are impudently deceiving everyone. You do not quote anyone, you simply invent and directly distort the facts, turning the archaeologists.

    ReplyDelete
  98. @ Archi
    Russian scholars quoted above state kelteminar & caucasus
    You repeating your fallacies won’t make them true

    ReplyDelete
  99. @Rob,
    "Sam if you can’t even read or lack the faculties to understand (clearly the case); then simply keep quiet"

    That new post of yours, wasn't up when I wrote my response. I didn't read it because it wasn't there.....

    @Rob,
    "Battle axes are obviously a development of .. the axe. used for felling trees and clearing land. A Neolithic idea; absent in Russia"

    And Corded Ware utilized the axe in order to cut down forests to create flat land that fit their pastoral lifestyle.

    ReplyDelete
  100. @ Sam

    All good
    (BAxs also became ceremonial gifts for the male warrior etc)

    @ All

    New horse paper

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-57735-y

    An LBA origin of horseback riding ?

    ReplyDelete
  101. @Rob
    "Russian scholars quoted above state kelteminar & caucasus
    You repeating your fallacies won’t make them true"

    This is absolutely untrue; they do not say so.

    You are simply impudently confusing notes about a later similarity, which may be generally the influence of Eastern Europe on Keltiminar and the Caucasus. Kelteminar and Neolithic Caucasus were much late Elshan, Middle and Lover Volga - Don cultures!


    Samuel Andrews said...
    "Battle axes are obviously a development of .. the axe. used for felling trees and clearing land. A Neolithic idea; absent in Russia"

    And Corded Ware utilized the axe in order to cut down forests to create flat land that fit their pastoral lifestyle.
    Rob said...
    @ Sam
    All Good. We(!!!!!!!!!))))))) agree"

    You see, both of you absolutely do not know the subject of what you are reasoning about, but simply invent. Battle axes have never been used to cut trees, from hitting trees they simply break, they have a form completely unsuitable for work. It seems that you have never even seen a battle ax in your life.

    ReplyDelete
  102. @ Archie

    I will summarise so that even you can understand; and even you can’t slime out of your misunderstanding

    “ The early appearance of pottery that is not related
    to the distribution of productive economies can also
    be traced in Southern China at the 20–16th millen-
    nium BP, in the Far East and Japan at 17–15th mil-
    lennium BP, in Southern Siberia at the end of the
    14th millennium BP (Budja 2010.118; Cohen 2014.
    62), and in the 10–8th millennium BP in Southern
    Africa (Close 1995). Pottery appeared in these re-
    gions independently and has been discovered over
    a vast area. After pottery making appeared in South-
    ern Africa, it spread over a distance of 3000km (Close
    1995.32). Recently, a hypothesis suggesting the east-
    ern origin of East European pottery has been discus-
    sed (Gibbs, Jordan 2013.16). However, there are no
    intermediate sites with pottery similar and synchro-
    nous with the first pottery in the Far East over a
    huge area from the Far East to the Southern Urals,
    a distance of over 9000km, which could prove this
    theory; nor might any similarities be found between
    the pottery of Eastern Europe and early Eastern or
    Western Siberian ceramic assemblages.”


    Don-Volga pottery is a local development; under some yet to be defined south influences
    Get used to it :)

    ReplyDelete
  103. @Rob No need to quote false quotes from nonexistent texts. I categorically disagree with the unscientific nonsense that you write and pass off as quotes, like all scientists whose work I know.

    How is your invention about the origin of battle axes from stone axes for logging, which is just ridiculous. Battle axes come from hunting axes made of deer antlers that were intended for hunting.

    I always write what science has established, and not some marginal opinions. So with riding, I always wrote only what science confirms and, as you see, exactly what is written in the latest paper.

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  104. Was the Chemurchek Culture a developement out of Afanasevo or a later unrelated arrival in Mongolia ? Were there migrations from the Western Steppe between Afanasevo and Andronova ? It seems as if domesticated horses reached Mongolia during the Chermuchek Culture ?

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  105. With the spread of ceramics in Eastern Europe, everything is clear. It appeared as a Volga-Kama from Siberia in the Elshan culture, then it went down the Volga on boats or rafts, perhaps even by gravity, and also crossed the narrow isthmus between the Volga and the Don and went down the don. A small group sailed conditionally up the Volga, there is a quiet current to the Dvina, where it came to the Dvina. Along the way, there are ancient ceramics from the first half to the middle of the 7th Millennium BC. That's right, there is simply no other way, because the most ancient ceramics of the beginning and middle of the 7th Millennium are concentrated along the entire Volga.

    https://i.ibb.co/sCgy0cg/image.png


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  106. I always thought that Elshanka were CHG, after reading Frank N’s blog

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  107. Frank talks out of his ass a lot.

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  108. What I’m trying to figure out is the CHG introgreasion into the Steppes: is it like what Archi said a Mesolithic period one having to do with the PPN, or a more recent one with a gradual increase from Samara —> Khvalynsk —> Repin —> Yamnaya and Corded/Sredny

    ReplyDelete
  109. Andrzejewski said... "I always thought that Elshanka were CHG, after reading Frank N’s blog"

    It is impossible, it's simply contradicts all the tested data.

    ReplyDelete
  110. The destruction of the Caucasus Forts comes to mind. Did some of those pottery filter into the Steppe from those conquered forts ?

    ReplyDelete
  111. @Andrzejewski @Ric Hern @zardos

    The most likely reason for the connection of the Mesolithic hunters and fishers of the Lower Don with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Fertile Crescent is obsidian. Since ancient times, obsidian played the role of metal, it was mined on distance for hundreds, and sometimes thousands of kilometers, and went after it on purpose. These campaigns were not only widespread in the Middle East, where already 40 thousand years ago people from Syria went to Central Anatolia for 700 km for obsidian, but also, for example, the population of the Zhokhov site in the Mesolithic Arctic went for obsidian as much as 1,500 km to Chukotka! This was a common occurrence. Since Eastern Europe did not have its own obsidian, it received it from the south, from Anatolia, very possibly from the same field in Anatolia.

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  112. @ Archi

    So there was basically very little reason for a community with obsidian resources to migrate to the Steppe but rather the other way around....

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  113. @Archi “The most likely reason for the connection of the Mesolithic hunters and fishers of the Lower Don with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Fertile Crescent is obsidian.”

    From what I read I can’t fathom whether the PPN were Anatolian Farmers or were they pre-(or post) Iberomaurasian admixture into Natufians that created the Afro-Asiatic Semitic branch?

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  114. @Ric Hern “
    The destruction of the Caucasus Forts comes to mind. Did some of those pottery filter into the Steppe from those conquered forts ?”

    What exactly created the current diverse Caucasus population? I know that the post-Imertian CHG were joined by immigrants from Anatolia 7,000 years ago and that Kura Araxes was also a layer of Iranian immigrants? As far as I understand Northwest Caucasus people lack this admixture but Kartvelians do (Iranian)?

    As far as Maykop goes, does it have KA or is Leyla Tepe that gave rise to it just mostly Halafians or Ubaidians? It’s so confusing

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  115. Let's concentrate on the "steppe signature" of a ~50:50 mixture of EHG:CHG. I don't think that was present much before the Lower Don culture, but it was widespread afterwards. The LDC shows obvious Southern influences, which could, but are hard to explain without a real movement of people and settlers coming in along the Black Sea coast. R. yar looks almost like an organised colony imho.
    So the most likely conclusion, from my very limited knowledge about the North Pontic archaeological developments, is that this is no coincidence.
    Also, we have large portions of the littoral Pontic areas being submerged by the now higher sea levels (coastal fisher settlements!), we have still isufficient knowledge about the Caucasian archaeological record in general and the Meso-Neolithic transition in particular.

    I see little speaking against such a scenario, but a lot of need for it. Because how elese do you explain the rise of CHG ancestry and influences in the region, leading to the Piedment population like in Progress?

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  116. @Andrzejewski
    We need more Chalcolithic samples from the Caucasus to be sure, especially Shulaveri Shomu culture.

    If we were to ignore the Steppe ancestry in North Caucasians, and more recent Anatolian and Levantine ancestry in South Caucasians, then going by aDNA you can divide Caucasians into two types -
    - West Caucasians, who are CHG-rich, with low to zero Iran_N, this includes NWC and Kartvelians, bulk of their ancestry should derive from Darkveti-Meshoko, which is modeled as 50/50 CHG/Anatolia_C in Wang et al.
    - East Caucasians, those being NEC along with Azeris and Armenians, who have a lower amount of CHG and a significantly higher amount of Iran_N, the reason for their high Iran_N ancestry possibly has to do with Shulaveri Shomu culture, which I speculate to be Iran_C Hajji Firuz-like autosomally. Kura Araxes imo is a mix of Iran_C-like SSC and native CHG/Darkveti, and is the perfect proxy for pre-Steppe NEC and pre-Anatolia/Levant Armenians.

    Evidently Maykop started off what I called East Caucasian, but gradually became more West Caucasian-like after mixing with Darkveti-Meshoko derived natives in NWC.
    OSS001, which is the oldest Maykop sample is similar to KAC but it has quite a bit of Steppe/EHG/ANE ancestry, much like Areni.

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  117. @zardos Steppe signature is 60% EHG : 40% CHG. The Lower Don didn't have a southern influence except in Late Mesolithic time. You are exaggerating too much, this influence was so insignificant that this hypothesis about this influence arose quite recently because it has very small and very indirect arguments, something similar to contacts, there is something similar in common, but there can be no question of any migrations, because these hypothetical connections are literally units on the fingers of one hand, they are so insignificant that they simply drown in the facts of their lack of influence on the local population. In General, such connections affected the local culture in no way, after the end of the Mesolithic, the local population does not have them at all and all this simply disappears.
    They did not bring any producing economy, they did not even bring any agriculture, they did not bring pottery either, and they could not, Pre-Pottery Neolithic is only called Neolithic, it differs from Mesolithic only in the presence of a productive economy. There are several controversial points, whether the local technique of pressing stones came from the South or the West, but it could even arise locally on the spot.

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  118. There was a longer debate in an older topic about this and like then, I still find the arguments of authors seeing a significant new element in the LDC convincing.

    To which people/culture do you attribute the CHG component visible later? You explicitely refuse any major movements from the Caucasian zone for ~8000-6000 BC?

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  119. @zardos The CHG that impacted PIE was clearly a much more recent one, and there’s a gradual but strong increase from Sidelkino through Samara, then Khvalynsk, Repin and finally Yamnaya, stedny and Corded.

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  120. When it comes to Middle Eastern/West Asian populations - as far as I know - Anatolians are Gravetian-like, or Dzudzuana if you will, Levantines/Natufians/Pre-Pottery Neolithic are Dzudzuana infused with Iberomorausians who imposed their Afro-Asiatic language on them, and Iran_/CHG are Dzudzuana with varying amounts of ANE genes (35% ANE for CHG, 50% for Iran_N). I may be wrong, though

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  121. @Andrzejewski

    The CHG that impacted PIE was clearly a much more recent one, and there’s a gradual but strong increase from Sidelkino through Samara, then Khvalynsk, Repin and finally Yamnaya, stedny and Corded.

    Bullshit.

    Vonyuchka Eneolithic has an EHG/CHG ratio of ~40/60, higher than Yamnaya, which is something like 50/40 EHG/CHG plus around 10% of European Middle Neolithic farmer.

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  122. I believe that the so-called “Uruk expansion” and its role in the creation of Darkveti-Meshoko/Shulaveri-Shomu/Sioni is much more overhyped. First off, which civilization was it: Halafians, Ubaidians or Sumerians? And what ancestry were any of these tribes? Also, maybe the immigrants who brought metallurgy to the Caucasus mountains were not Mesopotamians but actually Anatolians?

    It would be interesting on a side note to discover which one of the Caucasus language families originated with what genetic group.

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  123. @zardos

    You drew a picture of something gigantic and significant, while it was so insignificant that it only generates assumptions.

    We do not know anything about the distribution of CHG in the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, (E)Neolithic. We do not know the area of CHG, as it was distributed in the Caspian and Central Asia. The lack of influence of the Caucasus and migrations from it does not mean that people on the border of EHG and CHG did not mix. At the moment, we can only say that the migration of EHG to the Northern pre-Caucasus was significant in the Eneolithic along with the appearance of the Sredniy Stog and Khvalynsk cultures, this is recorded by archaeology, genetics, and anthropology. And accordingly, there was an export of women.

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  124. @Andre: The CHG component did only increase where the expansion of the hunter-fisher and later agro-pastoralist people decreased first by thinning out through mixture where they moved up the rivers, like Samara. The centre was in Northern Pontic region and spread from there. Increase and decrease of CHG depended in Eastern Europe for the most part on the strength of the steppe component AFTER it was formed.

    I was speaking about its initial formation in late Mesolithic to early Neolithic times and proposed an origin due to movements from the Caucasus zone along the shore of the Black sea, to the mouth of the river Don and Sea of Azov, where the Lower Don Culture was established, and that CHG spread from there from about the 7th mill. BC on upwards, along the rivers.

    Depending on where they moved they mixed with other, local populations. Will be interesting to see the profile of the LDC population through time. I'd assume a peak of CHG/Southern components in early times and a decrease later.

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  125. @Archi: Of course, you are right, we don’t know enough about the populations in the Caucasus and North of it for definite conclusions. But right now I don’t think my speculative scenario being contradicted by hard facts? And like I said, there are scientists with different models out there. Only new data can decide which one is right.

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  126. @Davidski
    Will that study("Technical and social invention in the Caucasus") be published in the next month? Do you know any other study being published in february-march?

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  127. @Sarah

    ARCHCAUCASUS: End date 30 June 2024

    So you might see a paper from that project within a couple of years, but probably not until 2024.

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  128. The problem is that EHG has CHG in them, because it’s 75% ANE/WSHG + some WHG + CHG. To complicate matters, the deep ancestry of both seem to stem from sister sources - ANE for EHG and ”Yana” for CHG. On top of that all, both EHG and CHG have a considerable ammount of Ancient North Eurasian, measured at 35% for Caucasus Hunter Gatherers and 75% for Eastern European Hunter Gatherers, so at a 50:50 ratio at Yamnaya we even it out at 50% ANE.

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  129. @Andrzejewski
    CHG has an EHG part.

    @Davidski

    I have run different tests in different ways and everywhere I got only the fact that Yamnaya_Samara has ~60% EHG, the Anatolian component subtracts only from CHG, it practically does not touch EHG, that is, when adding Anatolian components, EHG remains 57-59%, CHG becomes ~30-20%.
    In the case of Yamnaya_Kalmykia, the Anatolian component affects CHG much less, by only two or three percent, but also does not affect EHG at all.

    ReplyDelete
  130. @ Archi

    I think the small bit of CHG-like Ancestry in Villabruna says it all....CHG-like people were already North of the Caucasus prior to the Mesolithic.

    ReplyDelete
  131. @Ric Hern “I think the small bit of CHG-like Ancestry in Villabruna says it all....CHG-like people were already North of the Caucasus prior to the Mesolithic.”

    First of all, Villabruna was R1b. Unless R1b came to the Steppe mediated by CHG, it was a clear signature of ANE.

    Secondly, there was a late Neolithic resurgence of non-Steppe CHG in Greece, the Balkans and Anatolia, perhaps having something to do with Kura Araxes? (There WAS after all an ANF migration into the Caucasus 7,000 years ago, and then 3,000 years later a pendulum moving back with a mixed EEF/CHG people into Anatolia and beyond). I suspect that the Hatti language and whatever Herodotus referred to as “Pelasgians” has something to do with it.

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  132. @ Andrzejewski

    I see you clearly forgot how old Villabruna is....Nothing to do with the Neolithic.

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  133. @ Andrzejewski

    That CHG-like Ancestry was probably picked up somewhere along the Lower Don (Kammenaya Balka) as some R1b moved Westwards from the Southern Urals during the Late Upper Paleolithic...

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  134. @ Andrzejewski

    The split between Eastern and Western R1bs seems to be between 20 000 and 17 000 years ago. I think the Window between 17 000 and 14 000 years ago is when Villabruna Ancestors picked up some CHG like Ancestry...

    ReplyDelete
  135. You can test if EHG is part CHG using G25. Model it as ANE+WHG. Neither ANE or WHG have CHG. So, if EHG is part CHg they should score a significant amount.

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  136. Obviously, we don't have much ancient DNA to go on to know the formation of Mesolithic Europe & Middle East/.

    mtDNA is a good shortcut to answers. For example, based on some models the experts believed WHG originated in the Middle East only 15ky and that Anatolian farmers had recent WHG ancestry. And, mtDNA showed this was impossible before ancient DNA proved it was false.

    Literally all mtDNA from EHG and Ukraine HGs is U5 and U4. None so far have a Near Eastern haplogroup. However, mtDNA H has been found in a few Serbia HGs and in one Baltic HG. But both are 99% U5, U4. Same with Scandinavian HGs who had a lot of EHG ancestry.

    Because, of this I doubt EHG had significant CHG ancestry. Y DNA J1 has been found in EHG. That's super good evidence for CHG ancestry. But, we don't know where Y DNA J1 is from. It's a brother to European yHG I. Maybe, Y DNA J originated in Europe.

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  137. @Samuel Andrews “Literally all mtDNA from EHG and Ukraine HGs is U5 and U4. None so far have a Near Eastern haplogroup. However, mtDNA H has been found in a few Serbia HGs and in one Baltic HG. But both are 99% U5, U4. Same with Scandinavian HGs who had a lot of EHG ancestry.“

    Ukraine HG ARE her basis of Yamnaya mtDNA. I wouldn’t be surprised if what Reich and other researchers attribute U4 and U5 to WHG are actually Indo-European myDNA. They hypothesized the ratio of PIE M:F in the migration to 14:1, but in all actuality I believe that just like in the agricultural revolution, Indo-Europeans were both a make and a female migration

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  138. @ Davidski

    “Frank talks out of his ass a lot.”

    He has overemphasised the importance of the low-grade connections to be sure; but that post his highlights hunter-gatherer networks in incipient ceramicization in Central Eurasia, as outlined by Russian scholars

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  139. @ Sam

    “ Sam

    “mtDNA is a good shortcut to answers. For example, based on some models the experts believed WHG originated in the Middle East”

    Exactly ; it doesn’t pan out . = The perils of blind statistical constructs in absence of collateral understanding

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  140. @ Andrzejewski
    I always thought that Elshanka were CHG

    They were EHG.

    ReplyDelete
  141. @Davidski

    What do you think of the YDNA variety in Iran_N(J2, G2a, G2b, G1, R2)?
    Do you think it is possible that G2a1a was also present in CHG?

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  142. @CrM

    Do you think it is possible that G2a1a was also present in CHG?

    Only ancient DNA will tell.

    But obviously there was a significant rise of Anatolian ancestry in the Caucasus after the Mesolithic, so G2a might be associated with this genetic shift.

    Also, keep in mind that CHG didn't live in Iran. It was only found in the Caucasus. The people who lived in Iran at that time were closely related to CHG but clearly different.

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  143. @Davidski

    Yes, but far as I know Anatolians only had a specific G2a clade thanks to founder effect, while the Caucasus G2a1a was not found among Anatolians, but it was found in Iran_N. Unless I'm wrong?

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  144. @CrM

    I'm not aware of any G2a1a in Early Neolithic Iranian farmers. The sample from the Wezmeh Cave belongs to G2b2.

    G2a1a does show up in a Late Neolithic Iranian farmer, but that individual clearly has some Anatolian ancestry.

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  145. @Davidski

    You're right, I'm talking about I1671. When I tested him he showed some slight Natufian and Anatolian ancestry, but what I want to make clear is this:
    Did Anatolians ever had G2a prior to mixing with Iranians? Pinarbasi was C and as far as I know lacked Iran_N admixture that later was found in Boncuklu and Barcin.
    Iran_N had all the G variety, while Anatolians only had a specific G2a clade, and G2a1a was not one of them.

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  146. @CrM

    We need more data, especially from eastern Anatolia.

    ReplyDelete
  147. @Davidski

    Hopefully we will get more data.

    From what I see either G2a1a was introduced to the Caucasus by Chalcolithic Anatolian farmers rich with Iran_N ancestry,
    or G2 was present in CHG from the start and was passed on to them by a population that was ancestral to both CHG and Iran_N, perhaps connected to the Baradostian, Zarzian and Trialetian cultures.

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  148. What are the closest samples out to the Zarzian and M'lefaatian? If, just if, Transcaucasian migrations reached the Northern Pontic region, they are most likely from these people.

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  149. Which ones are the Zarzian and M'lefaatian?

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  150. What do you mean? The M'lefaatians were the aceramic people of the Eastern fertile crescent after the Zarzian. They were largely independent from the Western groups and started to build settlements.
    Some researchers recently suggested that elements of the early Lower Don culture show similarities. The timing with an influence reaching the coastal Black Sea region about 8.000 BC seems possible.
    Just read it and thought it could be real depending on their genetic profile and more excavations in the Caucasus and coastal area, especially more underwater archaeology, as suggested.
    Probably its impossible, but its one proposed scenario.

    I don’t know whether any samples being taken so far from region and for the time in question.

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  151. @zardos

    WC1 should be closest to Zarzian, but it dates a few millennia after the Zarzian culture. Nonetheless it probably is the best proxy we have to Zarzian, and it is very close to GD genetically, which in turn is closer to the Zarzian timeline.

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  152. @davidski
    What do you think about the paternal haplogroups of Neolithic Eastern Anatolia?

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  153. @Sarah

    I don't have any opinion about that. Let's wait for the data.

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  154. CrM: Still there is a gap of time and place between GD and the Northern M'lefaatian.
    So if an Eastern group (ancestors of GD) had the demographic and cultural edge, they COULD have replaced an earlier, different (e.g. more CHG like) population.
    Just saying we don’t know for sure yet.

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  155. There's obvious genetic continuity between CHG and Meshoko, and the main difference between CHG and Meshoko is a greater level of Anatolian ancestry in Meshoko.

    Meshoko is basically CHG with more Anatolian ancestry. There are no indications that it carries any ancestry from Iran.

    Steppe Eneolithic is also more closely related to CHG than to Iranian farmers.

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  156. I know and believe that, but what do we know about the older populations South of the Caucasus, like the Northern M'lefaatian? Couldn't they have been closer to CHG than to the Iranian farmers? Where was the Southern border of CHG 10.000 BC? Was the Iranian farmer already existing in its later form? Where exactly? Aren't these unanswered questions?

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  157. When looking at where Bezoar Goats and West Caucasian Turs could have admixed and the Human Population who could have spread it, it seems to me that Haplogroup G were found South of the Caucasus/Georgia as early as 8000 BC. maybe displacing and or admixing with CHGs since then....?

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  158. So maybe the Southern Border of where CHG proper could be found was the Northern side of the Caucasus...with distant relatives South of it. My guess is that CHG ancestors was already as far North as the Lower Don between 17 000 and 14 000 years ago. So maybe separate from the Southern Caspian groups for at least 5000 years ?

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  159. Target: Anatolia_Boncuklu_N:ZMOJ_BON014
    Distance: 3.0784% / 0.03078414
    90.2 Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG
    9.6 IRN_Wezmeh_N
    0.2 GEO_CHG
    0.0 Levant_Natufian
    Target: Anatolia_Boncuklu_N:ZKO_BON001
    Distance: 2.7632% / 0.02763180
    92.0 Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG
    4.0 GEO_CHG
    4.0 IRN_Wezmeh_N
    0.0 Levant_Natufian
    Target: Anatolia_Boncuklu_N:ZHJ_BON024
    Distance: 2.7684% / 0.02768444
    92.8 Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG
    6.8 IRN_Wezmeh_N
    0.4 GEO_CHG
    0.0 Levant_Natufian
    Target: Anatolia_Boncuklu_N:ZHAJ_BON034
    Distance: 4.5724% / 0.04572423
    92.6 Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG
    7.4 GEO_CHG
    0.0 IRN_Wezmeh_N
    0.0 Levant_Natufian
    Target: Anatolia_Boncuklu_N:ZHAG_BON004
    Distance: 5.5642% / 0.05564211
    94.2 Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG
    5.4 GEO_CHG
    0.4 Levant_Natufian
    0.0 IRN_Wezmeh_N

    "Interestingly, while we observe a continued presence of the AHG-related gene pool throughout the studied period, a pattern of genetic interactions with neighboring regions is evident from as early as the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene. In addition to the local genetic contribution from earlier Anatolian populations, Anatolian Aceramic farmers inherit about 10% of their genes from a gene pool related to the Neolithic Iran/Caucasus while later ACF derive about 20% of their genes from another distinct gene pool related to the Neolithic Levant."
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09209-7

    Bon001 is G2a, Bon014 is C.
    Do you think Bon001 having an equal amount of CHG and Iran_N is a coincidence/error, or does this hint to there being some Iran_N and CHG mixed population which contributed to Anatolians?

    ReplyDelete

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