Monday, February 3, 2020

Did Caucasus hunter-gatherers ever live in what is now Iran?


Nope, they only lived in the Caucasus Mountains. See that's probably why they're called Caucasus hunter-gatherers, or CHG for short.

But what about the hunter-gatherers from the Belt and Hotu caves in northern Iran, you might ask? Well, what about them? They're not CHG, nor are they significantly more CHG-like than the early farmers of the Zagros Mountains.

To illustrate the point, below are a couple of TreeMix graphs. I'd say they're rather straightforward and self-explanatory.



However, please note that I combined the Belt and Hotu individuals into one sample to help keep the marker count at over 100K. Also keep in mind that CHG is represented by Kotias_HG.

See also...

A final note for the year

A note on Steppe Maykop

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

268 comments:

  1. If any of you self-proclaimed geniuses out there still want to argue, then here are a couple of D-stats as well.

    Chimp IRN_Belt_Hotu GEO_CHG IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N 0.0292 4.653 160536
    Chimp IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N GEO_CHG IRN_Belt_Hotu 0.0218 3.280 160536
    Chimp GEO_CHG IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N IRN_Belt_Hotu -0.0073 -1.182 160536

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  2. @Davidski

    Why do certain Boncuklu samples have a 50/50 mix with CHG and Iran_N on G25?
    Why does BMAC and Iran_C show CHG admixture?

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  3. There's probably something wrong with your models in the sense that you're using CHG as a proxy for something else.

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  4. Modern Armenia was the meeting point of Iran_N and CHG. Trialetian was the descendant of Baradostian. It expanded Westward and Northward and the material culture has spread even to Western Georgia (Imereti culture, Kotia and Satsurblia were part of the Trialetian culture) which is the birthplace and original habitat of CHG. However I doubt mixing with Iran_N happened in Western Georgia at any point unless the CHG samples we have are themselves a mix of some pre-CHG population which mixed with Iran_N. Anyway from Modern Armenia the expansion continued Westward to Anatolia and eventually they went as far as the Western coast of Anatolia, Barcin, and even beyond that.

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  5. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Map_of_Trialetian.png

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  6. Maybe for Boncuklu, since it only has a small amount of non Pinarbasi admixture.

    Target: Anatolia_Boncuklu_N:ZMOJ_BON014
    Distance: 3.1306% / 0.03130629
    90.4 Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG
    5.8 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
    3.8 IRN_HotuIIIb_Meso
    0.0 GEO_CHG
    0.0 ITA_Grotta_Continenza_Meso
    0.0 Levant_Natufian
    0.0 Levant_PPNB
    0.0 RUS_AfontovaGora3

    Target: Anatolia_Boncuklu_N:ZKO_BON001
    Distance: 2.7821% / 0.02782107
    92.2 Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG
    4.0 GEO_CHG
    3.8 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
    0.0 IRN_HotuIIIb_Meso
    0.0 ITA_Grotta_Continenza_Meso
    0.0 Levant_Natufian
    0.0 Levant_PPNB
    0.0 RUS_AfontovaGora3

    Target: Anatolia_Boncuklu_N:ZHAJ_BON034
    Distance: 4.5679% / 0.04567908
    92.4 Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG
    7.0 GEO_CHG
    0.6 RUS_AfontovaGora3
    0.0 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
    0.0 IRN_HotuIIIb_Meso
    0.0 ITA_Grotta_Continenza_Meso
    0.0 Levant_Natufian
    0.0 Levant_PPNB

    Target: Anatolia_Boncuklu_N:ZHJ_BON024
    Distance: 2.7147% / 0.02714660
    92.8 Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG
    6.6 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
    0.6 RUS_AfontovaGora3
    0.0 GEO_CHG
    0.0 IRN_HotuIIIb_Meso
    0.0 ITA_Grotta_Continenza_Meso
    0.0 Levant_Natufian
    0.0 Levant_PPNB

    But what about those BMAC samples, what can possibly be wrong with them?
    Would extra CHG in this case be a part of some Steppe cline?

    Target: TJK_Sarazm_En:I4910
    Distance: 4.7215% / 0.04721542
    62.6 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
    22.8 KAZ_Kumsay_EBA
    14.6 GEO_CHG
    0.0 Anatolia_Barcin_N
    0.0 Anatolia_Boncuklu_N
    0.0 Anatolia_Kumtepe_N
    0.0 Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG
    0.0 IRN_HotuIIIb_Meso
    0.0 ITA_Grotta_Continenza_Meso
    0.0 Levant_Natufian
    0.0 Levant_PPNB
    0.0 RUS_AfontovaGora3
    0.0 RUS_Progress_En

    Target: TJK_Sarazm_En:I4290
    Distance: 4.7772% / 0.04777200
    38.2 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
    20.0 GEO_CHG
    18.6 IRN_HotuIIIb_Meso
    17.6 KAZ_Kumsay_EBA
    5.6 RUS_Progress_En
    0.0 Anatolia_Barcin_N
    0.0 Anatolia_Boncuklu_N
    0.0 Anatolia_Kumtepe_N
    0.0 Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG
    0.0 ITA_Grotta_Continenza_Meso
    0.0 Levant_Natufian
    0.0 Levant_PPNB
    0.0 RUS_AfontovaGora3

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  7. @CrM

    Sarazm_En isn't BMAC. But anyway, it looks like you're missing something important because the fits are kind of high.

    It's likely that you're missing a CHG-like pop that spread across Central Asia at some point. Maybe the Kelteminar people?

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  8. @Davidski

    And the CHG in Iran_C, would come in one package with Anatolia and PPN?

    Could you run a similar mix on Boncuklu and see if some of them have both CHG and Iran_N, like the G25 model shows?
    From "Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first farmers of central Anatolia"

    "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."

    Of course the part "Neolithic Iran/Caucasus" can be ambiguous, since they often like mixing these populations and label them under the same name, despite their difference.

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  9. @CrM

    It's obvious that Boncuklu_N has some near or far CHG-related ancestry, but I don't feel like investigating this any further.

    For one, because I don't really have a lot of interest in the topic, and two, we don't have enough of the right samples from around the Caucasus to run the sort of fine scale analysis that you appear to be interested in.

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  10. @David: The remaining question is timing, because Belt-Hotu is fairly late. But too much East anyway probably, like you say.

    Would you say CHG is the result of Dzudzuana + ANE? And after its formation stayed in place, then moving into the steppe without additional gene flow from the South?

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  11. @zardos

    I doubt that CHG ever migrated onto the steppe. It's even more unlikely that anything like Belt/Hotu/Iran_N did.

    I think the population we're looking for formed on the steppe a long time ago and it was very similar to Vonyuchka_En.

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  12. @zardos “Would you say CHG is the result of Dzudzuana + ANE? And after its formation stayed in place, then moving into the steppe without additional gene flow from the South?”

    That’s what I think happened. Basically the CHG is akin to a Neolithic farmer/Gravetian-like/Dzudzuana population with an ANE input which is almost like ANF + EHG to a degree.

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  13. @David: So you're suggesting the same mixture, but earlier and in situ.
    Like a Dzudzuana-WHG population in the Northern Caucasus mixing with incoming ANE? Or a CHG population first, EHG second, like expected, but again just in situ?
    I mean all say, you too usually, its EHG + CHG forming the steppe profile. So they had to form first and meet second. The current methods are able to distinguish which ancestral components mixed first (with certainty?).


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  14. @zardos

    Strictly speaking this is a CHG-related population.

    I don't know how it formed precisely.

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  15. @zardos “I mean all say, you too usually, its EHG + CHG forming the steppe profile. So they had to form first and meet second. The current methods are able to distinguish which ancestral components mixed first (with certainty?).”

    I’m intrigued by this Q as well. Might it be the CHG were “native” to the Steppe before the EHG? But then again, you’re forgetting that Ukraine HG (Sredny Stog I) were largely EHG before they got replaced by SSII with the current Steppe component admixture profile.

    IE are not only EHG-CHG but also about 20% European farmers.

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  16. What does the Mariupol and R. Yar tell us about PIE genetic origins?

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  17. Am I completely mistaken in recalling that the first farmers from the Zargos to points east were derived more or less entirely from CHG? I distinctly recall seeing that in one of the original papers to characterize a CHG component.

    Usually, when I see a CHG component in a population, my initial assumption is that the chain is CHG --> Caucasian farmer --> West Asian farmer (east of Anatolia). I seem to recall papers seeing CHG components in Iranian farmers via this route.

    Now, sure, the first farmers in Iran who were derived from the Caucasian farmers who were derived from CHG may have had non-CHG hunter-gatherers who were almost totally replaced by first farmers. So, in that sense there was no CHG that was in a hunter-gatherer subsistence mode in Iran. But, I'm almost sure I recall (and I admit that I could be mistaken) papers talking about some CHG component in Neolithic Iranian farmer ancient DNA.

    @Davidski I also wonder if there is a lumper v. splitter issue going on in your analysis. And, if while there is no CHG in sensu stricto in Iran, if there is something more closely related to CHG than to anything else. Not saying that there is, but that seems like one possible explanation.

    This is in contrast to the first farmers, for example, in Europe, who were Anatolian farmers derived from Anatolian hunter-gatherers on the eve of the Fertile Crescent Neolithic, rather than having predominant origins from local hunter-gatherers and becoming farmers by cultural diffusion.

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  18. @Davidski post,"They're not CHG, nor are they significantly more closely related to CHG than the early farmers of the Zagros Mountains."

    What? But, they are significantly more related to Iran Farmers than to CHG.

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  19. @andrew

    If these groups are the same population, they why do they form distinct poles in PCA like here?

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

    Keep in mind also that Kotias and Satsurblia are separated by thousands of years, and yet they always cluster very close to each other, but they never overlap with the Belt/Hotu/Zagros ancients.

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  20. @Samuel

    You didn't understand my sentence. Read it again carefully.

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  21. Ok, after reading it a second time I understand. But, it's really easy to miss interpret so you should probably edit it. Just saying.

    If you put (to) before "Early Farmers of Zagros Mountains" it would sound like you're saying the iran hunter gatherers aren't more related to Iran farmers than to CHG. My brain assumed there was a to there.

    If you add an ARE at the end it would make more sense.

    "They're not CHG, nor are they significantly more closely related to CHG than early farmers of the Zagros Mountaisn ARE."

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  22. @Samuel

    I changed it to this...

    They're not CHG, nor are they significantly more CHG-like than the early farmers of the Zagros Mountains.

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  23. Well, yes, oldest Satsurblia apparently is inconvenient. They are called CHG by the first place they were found, and not because they are different clusters in ADMIXTURE. TreeMix does not prove anything, because there are there no components, CHG can be called exactly what sits on the same branch.

    Just leave HG: Hotu, Satsurblia, Kotias (mixed with EHG), and you will see that they differ within the WHG variation.

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  24. @ Davidski

    ADMIXTURE these are genetic components, TreeMix does not isolate components at all and does not prove anything, it is looking for mixtures ("migrations").

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  25. Dave: For some reason, you seem to tend towards overlooking the findings of Damgaard e.a. 2018, whereby the CHG present in "Steppe" populations split from Colchian HGs (Satsurblia, Kotias) some 20 kya ago, i.e. by the time of the LGM. Colchis has been evidenced as LGM refugium for a number of species, so I think it is fair to assume that Colchian HGs (Satsurblia, Kotias) represent the offspring of humans that also found refuge from the LGM in Colchis.
    This, of course, raises the question where the CHG that became involved in "Steppe" populations wheathered the LGM, if not in Colchis. One possibility could have been the Lower Don (Kamennaya Balka). However, if so, one would expect to find significant shares of CHG already in Ukraine_Mes, possibly even in IronGates. Since this isn't the case (and as archeology actually suggests a population hiatus at Kamennaya Balka during/after the LGM), we can in all likelyhood rule out the possibility that any CHG-like population survived the LGM North of the Caucasus. There seems to have beeen a settlement hiatus in NW Caucasia during the LGM. The Late / Final Upper Paleolitic “Imeretian Culture” that is represented a/o by Satsurblia Cave (and as such doesn't aDNA-wise qualify as immediate ancestor of "Steppe" populations) is described to have only from ca. 15-14 ky BC onwards expanded into the NW Caucasus, e.g. Gubs Cave (Golanova e.a. 2014, Leonova 2014).
    This only leaves one other reasonable option, namely the South Caspian, well evidenced as LGM refugium for, e.g., warm-loving trees such as the Persian Walnut. Paleo-Climatic models, but also the archeological record, make pretty clear that any other candidate regions such as Cappadocia, the Armenian highlands or the North-Central Zagros were not suited for human habitat prior to ca. 14 ky BC. For details and sources, see https://adnaera.com/2018/12/10/how-did-chg-get-into-steppe_emba-part-1-lgm-to-early-holocene/ [read also the comments].
    Now, you state correctly that Bell/Hotu Cave samples (which is btw the same location, once named in English, once in Iranian) provide a rather poor fit to CHG. However, I suppose your data has been taken from Lazarides e.a 2016. And, in the SuppMats, these authors warn that, for inconsistent AMS dates that reach as low as ca. 6,100 BC, instead of being Mesolithic, the sample may have been introduced from overlaying Neolithic deposits. IOW: This Hotu/Bell Cave sample may possibly not reflect anymore the Epi-Palolithic/ Mesolithic population of the South Caspian, but instead a recent, Neolithic incursion from the Central Zagros. As such, we currently don't have enough and/or chronologically secure data for any conclusion on the genetic profile of the South Caspian during the EP and Mesolithic.
    Maybe there never lived people that could have contributed the CHG to the "Steppe", but it is equally possible that the CHG in the Steppe came exactly from there. We just can't tell from that one available sample with questionable dating. What is clear, however, is that (i) the CHG in the Steppe isn't of Colchian origin, and (ii) it in all likelyhood cannot have originated from the post-LGM repopulation of North Caucasia (the Elbrus peidmont), since that repopulation occured out of Colchis and is archeologically connected to Satsurblia.

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  26. @Archi

    Satsurblia forms a clade with Kotias. Here's a tree with both of them.

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bRCukZgq2HG5yHpeQywxZ0E8AQDJjAot

    TreeMix is just a program that produces phylogenetic trees based on formal statistics, and so it can infer clades. Its advantage is that it can also incorporate migrations into its framework.

    The ADMIXTURE program is garbage for these sorts of things. It can't be used to infer clades. All it can be used for is to explore structure in the data at a very basic level.

    Obviously you don't have a clue what you're talking about here.

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  27. @FrankN

    Dave: For some reason, you seem to tend towards overlooking the findings of Damgaard e.a. 2018, whereby the CHG present in "Steppe" populations split from Colchian HGs (Satsurblia, Kotias) some 20 kya ago, i.e. by the time of the LGM.

    Quit acting like a total moron.

    The model in the Damgaard paper was way off, because the authors made the wrong assumption that Yamnaya was just a mix of CHG and EHG.

    They forgot about its significant Middle Neolithic Euro farmer admix.

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  28. @Davidski Obviously you don't have a clue what you're talking about here.


    ADMIXTURE is very good program, only it assigns genetic components, TreeMix does not assign components, it only shows drift. The fact that you don't use ADMIXTURE is bad.

    Satsurblia for you is not too comfortable, of course.

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  29. @Davidski

    Would it be possible to run a TreeMix or two with either Tianyuan or the ancient Andaman sample included? Would the ANE embedded in both CHG and Iran_Hotu automatically draw an edge from either one of Tianyuan/Andaman, or would an edge only go to the population with ENA ancestry in excess of what's already in ANE?

    I ask because I know Chad has stated in the past that Iran_Hotu/Iran_N have some excess Tianyuan/ENA affinity that CHG doesn't, so I'm curious to see if you could corroborate that with TreeMix.

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  30. Dave: "The model in the Damgaard paper was way off, because the authors made the wrong assumption that Yamnaya was just a mix of CHG and EHG.

    They forgot about its significant Middle Neolithic Euro farmer admix.
    "

    "Significant MN Euro farmer admix"? In Yamnaya? There is quite some in SSII (around 20%, IIRC) but in Yamnaya?
    Even if MN Euro farmer admix should be an issue in Yamnaya, how would that disqualify the Damgaard paper's conclusion? EEF bear some CHG (possibly of Colchian origin, having reached Antaolia via Obsidian trade from the Georgian/Armenian highlands), but that element is rather homeopathic, and was diluted further until arriving in Yamnaya. Any presence of such Colchian HG ancestry in Yamnaya (via MN Euro Farmers) would result in an underestimation of the split date between Colchian HGs and the "Steppe" CHG, pushing down the effective split date rather towards 22 kya.

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  31. @FrankN

    Yamnaya is not CHG/EHG. It's a more complex mix, so you can't characterize its CHG-related ancestry without taking that into account.

    Grow a brain.

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  32. @Archi

    Satsurblia for you is not too comfortable, of course.

    Totally comfortable.

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bRCukZgq2HG5yHpeQywxZ0E8AQDJjAot

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  33. Davd: Thanks for your well thought through and substantiated reply.

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  34. The answer is probably here:

    "Among the monuments of Gobustan, the oldest shelters and caves, belonging to the end of the Upper Palaeolithic era and the Mesolithic period, are concentrated on the upper slopes of Boyukdash and Kichikdash Mountains. The eleven skeletons found in the Mesolithic site of Firuz arouse particular interest. Two of them are women and one a child; the others are all male skeletons."

    https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000368411

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  35. @Cy Tolliver

    There is extra East Eurasian ancestry in the Belt/Hotu/Ganj Dareh samples over what is found in Kotias and Satsurblia.

    But TreeMix is only able to easily pick it up in the Belt/Hotu individuals, possibly because it's too diluted and mixed up with some western stuff in the Ganj Dareh samples.

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GSX6JHfCDTasbuJu_Z6F_c7we4kIlCqf

    Trying more edges makes the analysis too complex and nonsensical.

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  36. @ https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GSX6JHfCDTasbuJu_Z6F_c7we4kIlCqf

    This fork between Satsurblia and Hotu_Belt is the CHG or CHG/Iran component, what to call it. Each component can, with proper resolution, be further divided into components.

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  37. @Davidski,
    "There is extra East Eurasian ancestry in the Belt/Hotu/Ganj Dareh samples over what is found in Kotias and Satsurblia."

    The placement of that East Euraisan makes it look basal, like it isn't necessary closely related to modern East Asians. Also, why not just say East Asian instead of East Eurasian since we're not talking about anypart of Europe?

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  38. There is an important update concerning Western Steppe Herders (WSH):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Steppe_Herders

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  39. It is cool wikipedia made an article about "Steppe people." They say they have CHG instead of IranN ancestry which is good.

    But, they also make typical mistakes.
    "Around 3,000 BC, people of the Yamnaya culture, who belonged to the WSH cluster, embarked on a massive expansion throughout Eurasia, which might have resulted in the dispersal of Indo-European languages."

    It wasn't Yamnaya.

    There's also issues with how they describe the distribution of Steppe ancestry.
    "The modern population of Europe can largely be modeled as a mixture of WHG (Western Hunter-Gatherer), EEF and WSH. In Europe, WSH ancestry peaks among Norwegians (ca. 50%), while in South Asia, it peaks among the Kalash people (ca. 50%) and Brahmins."

    Kalash have more like 28% Sintashta which is you divide into actual Steppe ancestry is like 20%. No one in Asia has close as much Steppe ancestry as most Europeans do. They lived in Europe, had a bigger impact on Europe than Asia, but to say this is "Eurocentric" so no one does.

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    Replies
    1. @Samuel Andrews

      If IE came from the steppes it ultimately came with ANE and from Asia.

      Delete
  40. How was Volosovo related to Vonyuchka, Progress, Samara and Sredny Stog ? What is also interesting is the Latitude. Light hair and Lactase Persistence in Europe West of the Urals seems to have a connection with Latitude....

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  41. @ Ric Hern. From the work of the Ukrainian archaeologist Kotova: "Another observation related to the most Eastern monuments Deriivka culture located around river Donets, and about the forest-steppe area of the Don river basin of the Tsna and Moksha, where is recorded the influence of the traditions of Konstantinovka culture, as well as the penetration of certain groups that population of the Lower don in that region (Kotova 2003; 2004). Under this influence, vessels with a peculiar straight throat and a сorolla bent outwards appear, which are not typical for the Deriivka culture (Fig. 123: 4), as well as complex corded compositions known from the monuments of the Eastern periphery (Fig. 165; 171). It is not excluded that in the forest-steppe area of the don river watershed of Tsna and Moksha Deriivka culture, already modified by the influence of Konstantinovka culture, remains to 3600-3500 BC this is evidenced by the stratigraphy of the settlement Imerka 8 on the river Vad, where a layer of material close Deriivka culture, blocked the materials of the middle stage Liyalovo culture (mid — last quarter of the IV Millennium BC. and, in turn, was overlaid by a layer of early Volosovo culture (about 3500-3100 years BC) (Korolev, Stavitsky 2006; Archeology of the Mordovian region 2008)."So here's the intersection of cultures: Sredniy Stog II (Deriivka), the Lower don Culture (Konstantinovka), the pit-comb pottery Culture (Liyalovo), and the Volosovo culture.

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  42. @ Vladimir

    If that turns out to be correct then I think it went like this

    1) 4500/ 4000 a blending of EEF and steppe eneolithic is formed between Danube and Dneper ( Suvorovo-Novodanilovka phase)

    2) this mixed population expanded on the steppe eastward and south eastward and absorbed more Progress like population. The push is also westward were Usatovo is formed ( where they find another R1a IIRC)

    3) This cluster incorporated a ( then ) small clan of R1b( L51 ) from the northern forest zone.

    4) In the Yamnaya horizon big clans made up of predominantly R1b Z103 folks start to expand all over the steppe driving ( or maybe chasing?) the western steppe population westward

    5) the western steppe population ( usatovo)moving westward along the north eastern flanks of the carpathian range is corded ware/single grave culture.

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  43. @Cpk, Yeah, but their ANE ancestors in Asia lived like 15,000 years ago so too long ago to matter linguistically.

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    Replies
    1. @Samuel Andrews
      You can't be sure about that. Also there are some similarities between IE and Native American languages.

      Delete
  44. @cpk

    No EGH is WHG+ ANE

    The interesting question is if Pre PIE comes from the WHG component or from the ANE one.

    ANE was a native american ( like) or a mongoloid like population.eneolithic eastern european peoples ( both in the steppe and in the forest zone) were european like. That means that the WHG factor largely prevailed over the ANE one.

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  45. NWC apparently has more eastern features than *PIE
    But given that ANE has been around EE since the paleolithic; some of the (chance) resemblances amongst north Eurasian languages could simply be that

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  46. American Indians came from different waves to North East Asia and Beringia. The dominant ones seem to have been more East Asian and even the ANE component split from its, for this debate relevant, Western relatives early and clearly.
    So chances are rather slim for a very close relationship to Indian languages.
    But that EHG spoke the Western ANE branch' language is practically certain. They contributed all/vast majority of the the patrilineages and much more than 50 percent of the total ancestry!
    For CHG things look different, because Southern patrilineages and Southern genetic dominance.

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  47. @old europe "No EGH is WHG+ ANE"

    Nope. Absolutely nope.

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  48. Quick experiment I ran recently to try and check "late ANE" vs NE Asian levels in Native Americans and Siberians, using G25 data, some ghosts customs calibrated for the task and the real West_Siberian, AG3 and Devil's Gate samples: https://imgur.com/a/8rsNRZj

    Looks approximately 50:50 as best guess for those samples ancestrally in the "Amerind" language macrofamily (the set of Native American languages that are not Na-Dene, not Eskimo-Aleut).

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  49. @Samuel Andrews The thing about the Wikipedia entries regarding WSH (let’s stop calling them “Steppe Component” or some other nickname here and start referring to them as “Western Steppe Herders”) quotes liberally from Dr. Anthony’s recent 2019 work, anf it underpins lots of new ideas. Among them is that WSH were a mixture of EHG on their paternal side and CHG + EEF on their maternal side. Anthony goes on to talk (quoted on every recent entry pertaining to PIEs) that PIE must be therefore an EHG language at its core.

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  50. I also saw some notes on entries quoted from Anthony’s, Damgaard’s and other scientists that basically mention something very similar to what @zardos and other posters on this blog highlight: Volga PIEs had broad faces and they went to Ukraine and mixed with the native population that was more “dolichocephalic”. It’s probably that the original PIE were Cromgnoid or brachyceohalic and as they moved west they became more “gracile” as the absorbed farmer populations. Therefore, Eastern and southern Yamnaya were more EHG looking whereas Northern and Western Yamnaya + Sredny Stog II, who were already 20% EEF, were dolichocephalic. The notes go on to claim that Sintashta as well as Scythians, Catacomb, Poltava, Potapovka, srubnaya, Cimmerians and Saramatians were very dolichocephalic by the Iron Age, reflecting strong Western farmer admixture.

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  51. @Matt “Looks approximately 50:50 as best guess for those samples ancestrally in the "Amerind" language macrofamily (the set of Native American languages that are not Na-Dene, not Eskimo-Aleut).”

    Do you believe that Native American languages came from ANE rather than East Asian Ulchi-like Devil Gate?

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  52. @Matt & @zardos “American Indians came from different waves to North East Asia and Beringia. The dominant ones seem to have been more East Asian and even the ANE component split from its, for this debate relevant, Western relatives early and clearly.
    So chances are rather slim for a very close relationship to Indian languages.
    But that EHG spoke the Western ANE branch' language is practically certain”

    I’m amazed how some renowned linguists claim that they have proven a Dene-Yenisseyan link dating back more than 15k-20k years but they debunk any PIE link to anything dating back more than 8,000 years!

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  53. Could someone point us to the similarities between Indo-European and Amerindian without doing extraordinary linguistic gymnastics ? Remember 2 words out of a Dictionary of thousands are hardly the making of a Language....

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  54. @Andrezj, could well have done. It's a long time ago so the details you'd need to understand to know how these fusion of populations might be totally obscured - like if you had bits of A) ANE ancestry entering a B) NE Asian community over time or what, in which case it's more likely that the language would be from B, or if the reverse then more likely to be from A). My linguistic knowledge is not good enough for an linguistic guess.

    I guess the only point of me mentioning that is that there are lots of estimated proportions floating about still, some with NatAm taking only 33% from ANE, and I just wanted to sort of suggest that actually it may be higher than these low bound estimates, in which case our guess that the language is mainly from an ANE group with influence from an NE Asian group (and then lots of evolution and divergence) might also be higher probability.

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  55. @Andre: Please inform yourself before posting on physical anthropology, which is not the focus of this blog anyway. But if you write such things...

    First you have to differentiate between absolute and relative measurements. Then you have to distinguish facial and head shape.

    You totally mix things up. The Eastern hunter gatherers were not uniform, but they had very massive, robust bones, especially skulls. They were more often broadfaced than later steppe people or the narrow faced Corded Ware carriers. But they were usually dolicho-mesocramic, not at all brachycranic.
    Skulls could be massive boned but still narrow faced (samples from Yamnaya, especially Corded Ware) and they can be broad faced and dolicho-mesocramic, like DDC and again some Yamnaya (variable).
    These can be completely independent variables, don’t lump and mix them up.

    Brachycephaly was actually less common in Eastern than in Western Europe for most of the time. None of the major possible contributors to PIE was brachycranic. The first major related group to show that cranial shape were the Bell Beakers. Which makes their appearance and origin even more puzzling.

    @Matt: That's interesting, I always read lower ANE estimates for American Indians in articles and papers.

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  56. @zardos, yeah I get that, Posth came up with a 33% estimate in 2018 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867418313801, while Yang+ Fu's qpGraph did produce 30% as well https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(17)31195-8.pdf, and this paper suggests 25% - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/801548v1.full.pdf. It seems like it's higher from testing Global25 fits but maybe that fit is wrong; I am really just experimenting with it.

    I would have guessed the G25 would be OK, as it be as it seems like neither reference would be disadvantaged more than the other by Native American private drift, but it could be the case.

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  57. @old Europe

    >ANE was a native american ( like) or a mongoloid like population.eneolithic eastern european peoples ( both in the steppe and in the forest zone) were european like

    ANE wasn't mongoloid. The dental patterns were more like that of upper paleolithic and modern Europeans than that of mongoloids. It did have an ENA component of 25% to 32%, but that component entered the genepool back when there weren't any Mongoloid crania on record, just Australo-Melanesian ones.

    See: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-35426-z

    So it would have looked like some Australo-Caucasoid mix.

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  58. Brachycephals invade Anatolia at 2000 BC, ratio of brachys suddenly goes from 16% to 42%-50% so it is a huge migration and coincides with the rise of the Hittites too. The problem is there are already Anatolian languages there at 2500 BC and even those invader brachys don't have steppe. It's a mystery.

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  59. What are the likelihood that:

    1. The high farmer component in late CWC is not due to recent admixture with GAC but an already strong (up to 20% EEF) component ALREADY present in both Yamnaya and Sredny Stog much earlier (because of either GAC, CTC or other EEF civilization)? For instance, marriage networks with farmer women 6,000 years ago?

    2. What we think of as a “WHG mtDNA” in modern populations is what could easily be an underrepresentation of Western Steppe Herder mtDNA: U4, U5 ad even U6 may be originally WHG signals but what carried them into modern Euro populations might be WSH, or “Proto-Indi-Europeans”.



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  60. @Ric Hern “Could someone point us to the similarities between Indo-European and Amerindian without doing extraordinary linguistic gymnastics ? Remember 2 words out of a Dictionary of thousands are hardly the making of a Language....”

    My point here is that linguists (eg Vaida) go out of their way to prove the putative existence of “Dene-Yenisseyan” language family/macrofamily wheres any time someone suggests that PIE might have any links to any other, they claim that “you can’t go back in time more than 8,000 years”

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  61. @zarsos - from Yamnaya on Wikipedia:

    “Examination of physical remains of the Yamnaya people has determined that they were Europoid, tall, and massively built. Their cephalic index varies depending on the region, with brachycephaly being prevalent in its southern and eastern areas, and dolichocephaly being prevalent in its northern areas.[e] The later southward advance of the Srubnaya culture into the former territories of the Yamnaya is accompanied with increasing dolichocephaly among skulls of the southern steppe, probably through the merging of Srubnaya people with descendants of the Yamnaya among the Poltavka culture and Catacomb culture. The dolichocephalic Europoid type prevalent among the Srubnaya had earlier been found among the Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture, Abashevo culture, Sintashta culture and Andronovo culture, which were themselves ultimately partially derived from Yamnaya.”

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  62. @Andrzejewski from Yamnaya on Wikipedia:

    To quote Wikipedia LOL.

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  63. Wikipedia mentions on various entries that Yamnaya shares ydna (and facial features) with Dnieper–Donets culture, as well as quotes from Dr. Anthony saying that WHG and EHG makes married EEF and CHG females to create WSH ancestry profile, alluding strongly to his opinion that PIE is most likely an EHG language.

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  64. @Andrzejewski

    Wikipedia is not an authoritative source, it is written by bloggers like you who insert their thoughts (like "which were themselves ultimately partially derived from Yamnaya.”) and are not responsible for anything.

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  65. @Andre: Wikipedia can be a good starting point, but sometimes the authors, like Archi said everyone can be an author, write crap. One way to check it is looking at the sources they give.

    There were regional variants, yes, but overall Eastern Europe and Yamnaya in particular was clearly dolichocranic. However, how variable it can be you see later. The Iranian speakers vary a lot, especially Sarmatian/Saka sphere. The typical Sarmatian is dolichocranic too, but depending on the admixtures they have, more or less so, and some, especially Mongoloid influenced ones are even brachycranic. So depending of which time + region + sample you are speaking, you can say Sarmatians were still very Caucasoid physically, very dolichocranic too or partially Mongoloid and brachycranic. So even if someone quotes a recent study on "the Sarmatians", it might mean little for the bigger picture. Genetic studies will reflect the same thing. Like if you test Anatolians without looking for clearly Hittite samples.

    Anyway, don't jump to conclusions from such entries and keep in mind that traits like pigmentation and headshape are, in the end, determined by a fairly limited number of genes. So especially in a mixed population, selection and drift can change the phenotype quite rapidly. Two branches, one brachycephalic and dark, the other dolichocephalic and light, but both related to each other by ancestry. You can see that in many Central European siblings. Two brothers could found two phenotypically quite different clans. Add to that partner selection in the same direction, for some generations, and you get completely different variants from the same source.

    That's not the rule, but it did happen often enough, since we don't look the same as our ancestors did 50.000 years ago, because there is always change. The same can be said about our ancestors 5.000 years ago, they mixed and changed.
    That's why ultimately only genetic methods are safe. Physical traits are reliable too, but in dubious, heavily mixed cases, there remains reasonable doubt, even with the best methods applied. For example nobody could have predicted the exact or even approximate ancestral proportions of Corded Ware from the physical remains: Nobody.

    Which groups were involved in the formation, that yes, but the exact mixture and background information? No, simply not feasable, especially with limited material. Because you never have a complete chain of mixture and evolution, you usually have just single specimen and small samples. Of CHG we have only teeth and fragments so far. They did measure the teeth, but that was just sufficient to determine that they were Homo sapiens...

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  66. @Andrzejewski

    I don't think that U4 would be WHG at all. It originates in the LGM and is only found in WHG zones when there was ANE intrusion in the very late UP to mesolithic. Probably originated in western Siberia or the zone west of Siberia
    which includes European part of Russia. I guess it originated in pre-EHG ANE since it is also found in modern Georgia which has ANE but very little if any EHG.

    To Andrzejewski and co discussing the cranial shapes: Yamnaya and other steppe cultures were mostly dolichocephalic but they varied in the height-length index. Yamnaya had the lowest one because they had higher cranial L+B values on average in comparison to Khvalynsk and later post-Yamnaya steppe cultures. They also had among the lower auricular height of the steppe cultures in question: Khvalynsk, Yamnaya, Poltavka and Srubnaya.

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  67. The closest relatives of the PIE language in Siberia.
    EHG is by origin from Siberia.
    R1(a) is by origin from Siberia,
    etc.



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  68. “Macro-linguistics” enjoys little support outside Russia ; And the dataset is obviously skewed because there is very little nin-Indo-European languages surviving in Europe, apart from Basque, which could be of north Eurasian origin.
    Anyway I’m not sure about R1a from Siberia given that it has not appeared in Siberia before the Bronze Age, you better wait for evidence to lend you support

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  69. @TLT "Yamnaya and other steppe cultures were mostly dolichocephalic"

    Yamanaya was brachicephalic mainly. Other Steppe cultures were not. Yamnians in general did not resemble anyone in the main, those are especially not any of the Dnieper-Donetsk as Wikipedia writes.

    Yamnians have your own cluster.

    https://ibb.co/mK8CSa



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  70. Denial of the kinship of languages is freaking all languages are relatives to others with common root, this is a fact. Anyone who denies the affinity of languages is simply racist. All over the world this is accepted. No one in the world denies the kinship of Indo-European and Uralic languages.

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  71. @archi

    >Yamanaya was brachicephalic mainly. Other Steppe cultures were not. Yamnians in general did not resemble anyone in the main, those are especially not any of the Dnieper-Donetsk as Wikipedia writes.

    Nonsense

    https://imgur.com/a/fWQ7ByR

    Average Yamnaya dry skull cranial index was 75.1. Dolichocephalic.

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  72. @Archi: TLT is right, where do you get that from? Even if you find a sample somewhere in a corner which was brachycranic, the big picture of Yamnaya people is that they were absolutely dolichocranic. Decisively so for Caucasoids. That's a defining feature of their phenotype. From all sources I ever read, English, German, French and translated Russian, all said so and proved it with different data sets. Brachycranic individuals were in most series as rare as Mongoloid admixture. So you might find a short skulled individual, but you can't characterise the Yamnaya population as such.

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  73. @TLT

    I don’t know where you got this picture from, it’s just funny, only 11 samples taken from nowhere, but calling > 75% as dolichocephalic is just ridiculous, it’s already mesocephalic.

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  74. That's why I talked about dolicho-mesocranic, because most modern Caucasoids of the "long headed shape" are at the borderline, extreme dolichocephalism is rare. Brachycranic is more clear and they are far, far away from it. So what's the point?

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  75. @ zardos

    No, he not right, among the pit culture people dolichocranic was only the North-Western population, the rest were strictly speaking mesocephalic, along with brachycranic groups. Yamnians was not dolichocranic, they are called subbrachycranic, of course not as strong as brachycranic of the Catacomb culture.

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  76. @archi

    https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr&id=KWmRDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA105&dq=sintashta+cranial+measurements&ots=D1CwtNZ8EG&sig=vZ_sLx0V-Fdx_pmagr5AaNTqLn0#v=onepage&q&f=false

    Ignore what is written in the url, it will take you to chapter 6 and the measurements were taken from there.

    75.1 is either very high dolicocephalic or extremely low mesocephalic depending on the scale that you are using. Living skulls add another ~11 mm so the average living skull would have been between 76 and 77. Below 77 and hence low mesocephalic on average. Far from your brachycephalic average value claims. In my original comment I wrote high dolichocephalic but amended it because the others generally had a lower cephalic index than Yamnaya did.

    These cranial length and width average values in Yamnaya are 0.49 SD higher and 1.47 SD higher than the LBK average length and width respectively. So yes, their cephalic index was higher than that of EEF neolithic Europeans (on average), which might be perhaps why the latest Srubnaya culture in the list also has the lowest cephalic index in the list. Srubnaya would have been ~3/4th Yamnaya and 1/4th EEF. But that doesn't mean that Yamnaya is outright brachycephalic.

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  77. @archi
    Sub-brachycephalic? The sub-brachycephalic range is from 80 to 83. Yamnaya dry skull average was just above 75 and the living skull average would have been somewhere between 76 and 77.

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  78. @ TLT

    You have a very limited source, it gives you incorrect data simply because there is very little of it. It's not serious, so you just make a mistake, but you can't figure out your mistake.

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  79. @archi

    You on the other hand have literally nothing, and don't even know the different categories of the classification of something as simple as cephalic index.

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  80. Archi, if you have sources, with regional differentiation inside of the Yamnaya cultural horizon, please show it to us - if in Russian with basic translation please. That Yamnaya formed a cluster on its own is known, but because of other measurements, not because of a high cranial index. Data wins.

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  81. @Archi “No one in the world denies the kinship of Indo-European and Uralic languages.“

    Any semblance of superficial similarities stem from borrowing from Sintashta to Fatyanovo. PU and PIE have almost zero in common

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  82. @zardos @Archi “Wikipedia can be a good starting point, but sometimes the authors, like Archi said everyone can be an author, write crap. One way to check it is looking at the sources they give. “

    That’s true, but they quoted David Anthony repeatedly and extensively

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  83. @ Andrzejewski

    "Any semblance of superficial similarities stem from borrowing from Sintashta to Fatyanovo. PU and PIE have almost zero in common"

    You don't know what this is about, you don't understand. This isn't about similarities and borrowings, it's about kinship. There are no similarities between English and Sanskrit either, but they are kinshiped. So don't speculate on topics where you don't understand anything at all. Professional linguists don't chew their bread for nothing so. There are no professional linguists who deny it, and the opinion of people who have no idea about linguistics at all does not bother anyone. The kinship of PIE and Uralic languages is a proven fact beyond scientific doubt.

    There is no semblance between Sanskrit/Aryan and FU at all, so no resemblance was borrowed, only individual words were borrowed.

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  84. I found an excel file uploaded by commentator "Lukasz" in a 3 year old+ thread. It has 17 male pit grave measurements along with 2 questionable male measurements from the pit grave cultures. Average for males was ~74.3 while the total average for the whole group was ~74.96/ almost 75. Pretty much in line with 75.1 from the book. IDK if there is an overlap in the samples in question, but regardless, this supports a ~75 dry skull index among Yamnaya and in general pit grave remains since there were more samples from this list, so the overlap wouldn't be a complete one.

    Definitely going up there in the high dolichocephalic/borderline mesocephalic range. This should correspond to low mesocephalic values for living individuals. Certainly not brachycephalic or even sub-brachycephalic in average. There was one ultrabrachycephalic male (CI = ~95) and one extremely ultradolichocephalic female (CI = ~49) from the next period, so extreme outliers do exist. Probably related to craniosyntosis in most cases I guess.

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  85. @All how come all the Dnieper-Donetz (and some Yamnaya/WSH) look like Greek gods' busts, and some Yamnaya skulls look almost like Nero or some other Roman emperors? Perhaps it implies that in all reality, the WSG percentage in ancient Greeks and Roman must've been much higher than 15%-30%.

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  86. @Andrzejewski

    Maybe but not necessarily. I doubt that Kadyrov has a lot of Dnieper Donets ancestry even though he looks like one of the busts. A more appropriate comparison would come from comparing Roman and Greek skulls to the Yamnaya and Dnieper Donets skulls using a multivariate method/PCA.

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  87. I was reading a language blog about FU & PIE
    This is what some said
    “ As a Uralicist, I can tell you that the vast, vast majority of Uralicists reject any genetic relationship between Uralic and other language families. Lyle Campbell's contribution to the volume Nostratic: Sifting the Evidence ed. Joseph & Salmons (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1998) explains many reasons why.

    The only folks regularly publishing on Indo-Uralic at the moment are Kortlandt and his students. Their work is awful. Kloekhost especially has a completely dilettante understanding of the history of Uralic”

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  88. @Andre: The correlation between phenotypes and ancestry is there, but like explained its not bound to percentages. There are Greeks looking like Vikings and Swedes which might be more Greek looking, but they can still have the basic ancestry of their population.
    A people with 10 percent admixture of a light pigmented people could become 100 percent light pigmented in a couple of generations if there is a strong selection for that trait.
    Also.the Roman busts represent the social elite on the one hand and the pre-IE inhabitants were not that different anyway and could produce similar physiognomies.

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  89. They keep repeating that Yamnaya is the archeological culture of PIE.

    at 57:30:

    https://youtu.be/Pe4jnBdVxjw?t=3449

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  90. What is interesting about Goedegebuure's suggestions is that it is IE speakers were originally subordiate to Hattians, with significant langauge shifting causing interference in Hattian
    IMO, Hattian must be the language of new groups from the East, perhaps a post-Kura Araxes group, into northern Anatolia

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  91. @zardos “Also.the Roman busts represent the social elite on the one hand and the pre-IE inhabitants were not that different anyway and could produce similar physiognomies.”

    How is that? (I know that both Ötzi, Loschbour Man and some British Neolithic guy from 5,000 year ago all can resemble modern living Europeans, but...) - what you are saying is that WHG, EEF and Western Steppe Herders (WSH) don’t look that different overall from each other.

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  92. @Rob “IMO, Hattian must be the language of new groups from the East, perhaps a post-Kura Araxes group, into northern Anatolia”

    That’s what I’ve been thinking myself for a long time. But otoh it’s goihg to be hard to decide if Kaskian and Hattian derive from the Anatolian or the CHG of KAC.

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  93. @Rob

    Haven't seen the video yet but she has published an interesting article where she argues that Hattic has a Luwian substrate.

    https://www.academia.edu/350837/Central_Anatolian_languages_and_language_communities_in_the_Colony_period_The_Luwian_substrate_of_Hattian_and_the_independent_Hittites

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  94. @Andre: Corded Ware and GAC skulls could overlap in a general inspection. That's why the exact relationship was unclear before genetic testing. So yes, the later steppe people and the local Neolithics were not completely different.
    And Bell Beakers on the other hand, though having steppe ancestry, show distinctive physical traits which made them a more different physical cluster than CW and GAC.

    But what I really meant is that similar phenotypes did pop up everywhere after the mixture and do so to this day. Rather the frequencies of e.g. light and dark pigmentation varies, but not presence or absence.

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  95. New here, from which paper is Tyumen_HG?

    Furthermore, could anyone help me understand the East Eurasian ancestry in ANE and CHG? Is there a population that can be a reasonable proxy for it or where there many such gene flow events?
    Also, interested in how old it is, if anyone knows.

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  96. @JuanRivera

    Thank you for the info and explanation. So would it be safe to assume that East Eurasian affinities of Yamnaya and descendant populations are through ANE?

    Is there additional East Eurasian in CHG than its ANE component?

    Also, could I trouble you with why in their ADMIXTURE analysis Narasimhan et al,2019 modeled Afanasievo and Samara as heavily WSHG (with 20% East Asian ancestry unless I am misunderstanding something)? I thought they were similar to the Yamnaya, unless Yamnaya itself harbored extra East Asian ancestry than ANE did.

    (Apologize in advance for any silly questions,relatively new to ancient DNA)

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  97. @JuanRivera

    Thanks for the elaboration so that means that Yamnaya are more East Eurasian than their predecessors (whether more ANE or WSHG)?

    I thought they were becoming more West Eurasian as time progressed.

    As for CHG, I am not sure how to ask David, I just hope that he or anyone who knows about them sees my posts.


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  98. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227984

    The data indicate that the Paleoindians from the YP are all in the mesocephalic index range (75–80), contrasting with the individuals from Central Mexico and North America with dates older than 9 ky BP which are in general dolicocephalic (68–75). Graph modified from Hernández Flores

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  99. There's no East Eurasian in Yamnaya unless you consider ANE to be part East Eurasian. Of which we have no idea whether it is or not. All we know is it is a really diistinct thing. Ma'ta boy shows no relation to modern East Asians. If ANE is part East Eurasian it is not something closely related to any modern East Asians.

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  100. @SamuelAndrews

    Are you sure? Because based on some posts on here or other websites, qpGraph models I have seen and a fair amount of papers, there is East Eurasian admixture in ANE.

    I am not saying East Asian proper, but I do not know, hence why I am asking. The ADMIXTURE analysis by that Narasimhan et al paper seemed to suggest some East Asian in Yamnaya_Samara for example mediated by Western Siberian Hunter Gatherers. However, I also know that ADMIXTURE estimates should be treated with caution when it comes to ancient DNA or complex mixtures.

    If you have any analyses or papers on the issue, I would greatly appreciate them.

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  101. There's definitely no WSHG in Yamnaya.

    Very old layers of East Eurasian ancestry in Yamnaya, CHG and early Iranian farmers are possible, but characterizing and estimating the levels of such deep ancestry components is very difficult.

    Phylogenetic trees done with qpGraph can never be treated as unambiguous evidence in such matters, only as rough guides.

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  102. ANE were much more related to UP Europeans than to anything East Eurasian (Tianyuan?). Kostenki14 I believe is the ancestor of ANE groups such as MA1 and AG3. Sunghir is (as far as I can remember correctly) the predecessor of Tianyuan. American Indians, just like Okunevo and Botai, are (different ratio) of admixture between Trans-Baikal (BHG, Ulchi-like) tribes and ANE from west of Baikal. Therefore, what I think toook place was that ~20ky bp ANE people migrated east across Lake Baikal, intermarried into Baikal HG groups and then millennia later crossed the Bering Strait.

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  103. Two things I haven’t figured out yet:

    1. Are Finns-Ugric people from Baikal HG (Ulchi, Devil’s Gate), or from ANE/EHG?

    2. If genetic drift is responsible for a change in appearance in Europeans (aside from intermarriage between WHG, EEF and WSH), then how come American Indians look very similar to the East Asian part of their ancestry?

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  104. @Andre: Uralics/Finno-Ugrians came with more Mongoloid people which had yDNA N for the most part. Not EHG, not ANE. Modern Finno-Ugrians are another matter, because this East Asian impact was rather weak, the more West one moves. Finns are among the most EHG people.

    The phenotype of the American Indians is mixed and the Eastward migration of ANE might even predate the fully Caucasoid development. Also, they lived under extreme cold conditions and adapted accordingly, which should have favoured the Mongoloid traits rather.

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  105. @Andrzejewski

    "ANE were much more related to UP Europeans than to anything East Eurasian (Tianyuan?)"

    Meaningless statement, i.e. Indians.

    "Kostenki14 I believe is the ancestor of ANE groups such as MA1 and AG3."

    LOL You are deeply mistaken, as always.


    "Sunghir is (as far as I can remember correctly) the predecessor of Tianyuan."

    You, as always, remember wrongly.


    "American Indians, just like Okunevo and Botai, are (different ratio) of admixture between Trans-Baikal (BHG, Ulchi-like) tribes and ANE from west of Baikal. Therefore, what I think toook place was that ~20ky bp ANE people migrated east across Lake Baikal, intermarried into Baikal HG groups and then millennia later crossed the Bering Strait."

    Baikal HG at that time did not exist at all.

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  106. @Davidski

    Thank you very much for the comment. If you have any time I am also curious if you think these East Eurasian components are from ANE as often seen in the literature or additional later gene flow? Also, how old do you think that East Eurasian ancestry is?

    Finally, if you or anyone else can help me with the WSHG component, did it affect Europe or did it contribute more to Central Asian populations?

    @Andrejewski I am not sure about the rest but no way that Sunghir is ancestral to Tianyuan at the very least.

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  107. WSHG didn't make a significant impact on Europe at any time.

    It did make a major impact on Central Asia, but was then diluted to noise levels. You can read about that here...

    Some myths die hard

    I don't know much about the pre-Neolithic East Eurasian or maybe rather East Eurasian-related ancestry that seems to have affected West Eurasian populations. No one really does at this stage.

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  108. @gamerz_J, @David - Didn't Mal'ta boy show some East Eurasia-related ancestry? So it's at least 24,000 years old.

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  109. @JuanRivera "Yana RHS also has East Eurasian (specifically Tianyuan-like) ancestry, estimated at ~29% by Sikora et al. I think Salkhit would be a better proxy than Tianyuan for ANE's East Eurasian ancestry, given that's closer both in time and geographically and that it shows some West Eurasian ancestry (according to "Genomic analyses of the 34,000-year-old Salkhit individual from Mongolia")"

    Can you tell me what's the relationship between Yana RHS and ANE/Mal'ta (MA1)? Is it true that CHG are from the former and that EHG are from the latter? Or that Yana and ANE are "Sister clades"?

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  110. Western Steppe Herders have up to 50% Yana/ANE because of the 75% ANE in EHG and 35% in CHG, and they still came up as being very Europoid. It buries any notion that ANE had anything to do with East Asians.

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  111. @Andrzejewski

    "It buries any notion that ANE had anything to do with East Asians."

    Then how do you account for the 25 to 32% in ANE that is ENA?

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  112. @All

    Interesting D-stats. No wonder Meshoko forms a clade with CHG in all my analyses.

    Chimp GEO_CHG RUS_Darkveti-Meshoko_En IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N -0.0437 -10.207 740127
    Chimp IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N RUS_Darkveti-Meshoko_En GEO_CHG 0.0039 0.92 740127
    Chimp RUS_Darkveti-Meshoko_En IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N GEO_CHG 0.0476 11.505 740127

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  113. @robertN


    Is there west eurasian ancestry in ANE?

    I wonder if ANE was "pulled west" very early, much before the formation of the WHG-ANE cline

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  114. @Andre: Ancestry doesnt always equal race or phenotype. 30.000 years ago modern Mongoloids might have been even less of a reality than modern Caucasoid!

    There are populations which are much closer to Mongoloids than ANE was by ancestry and they have differing phenotypes like the Ainu.

    You have to look at it from a completely different perspective, because the typical Mongoloid variants seem to have developed in an isolated region during the LGM. They expanded from there and fused with or replaced other populations.
    So far we know very little about what happened in East Asia in detail. One of the first modern-like East Asian samples comes from Devils Gate. But thats fairly late and it tells us little about what happened in the rest of the region. It seems to me not even representative for the main branches of modern Mongoloids.

    East Asia is imho an highly interesting, evolutionary dynamic place and so far horribly undersampled for the crucial time and places.
    So far ANE is better defined than the ancestral lines leading to modern East Asians.

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  115. Since there was a discussion about anthropology in this topic and the previous one, I post some skull’s pics and their measurements.

    Malta boy’s replica
    http://guntheraxelsson.se/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/thehermitage182.jpg

    Sidelkino 3
    https://i.postimg.cc/CLmpw45B/Sidelkino-skull.jpg

    Sidelkino 3 measurements
    https://i.postimg.cc/nzg1Jr9w/Sidelkino-measurements.jpg

    Sidelkino EHG wasn’t an Uraloid, it looked like there might have been some influence, but it looked quite Caucasoid, also he wasn’t massive and wasn’t broad-faced. Maybe that's why: - “As on the first skeleton (Sidelkino 1 without a skull), there are apertures (one or more) on the humeri, between the cubital and coronoid fossae. There is osteoporosis on the cubital fossae and medial epicondyles... The necks of femoral bones, especially right near the head, as well as greater trochanters and lower metaphyses are affected by osteoporosis. On the rear, above the medial con-dyle, both bones have strong texture, but also with porosis... The up-per and lower ends of both bones are affected by osteoporosis. There is periostitis on the right bone, on the medial side of its lower half... The fibular bones have lateral malleoli affected by osteoporosis” But nevertheless its height was great. - “The intravital stature defined with the use of Dupertuis, Hadden and Bunak formulae (Alekseyev 1966) amounted to 180.1 cm.” Sidelkino 3: - “We should also note
    a number of pathologies: osteoporosis in the radial notch, as well as small porosis and signs of osteolysis on the lateral part of the olecranon, on the styloid process and laterally, between the styloid process and the cubitus head…The right bone has small porosis on the articular circumference, as well as porosis with osteolysis of the styloid process base and the ulnar notch. Small poro-sis is also revealed on the lower epiphysis of the left radius. There is also osteoporosis on the sternal articular surface of both collar bones…The acromial processes of both bones have considerable osteoporosis;… The pelvic bones are also affected by osteolysis and osteoporosis in the cotyloid cavities, there is also incon-siderable osteoporosis in the frontal part of iliac wings…The intravital stature defined with the use of Dupertuis and Hadden formulae (Alekseyev 1966) amounted to 174.4 cm”
    Popovo, Peschanitsa little bit different
    Male
    http://oi530.photobucket.com/albums/dd348/meon7/popovo1.jpg

    Female
    http://oi530.photobucket.com/albums/dd348/meon7/popovo2.jpg

    I can post their measurements (not only their, rare Vovnigy measurements), if it is interesting to someone. They are written in Cyrillic, but you can understand Martin's numbers.

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  116. @zardos “Ancestry doesnt always equal race or phenotype. 30.000 years ago modern Mongoloids might have been even less of a reality than modern Caucasoid!

    There are populations which are much closer to Mongoloids than ANE was by ancestry and they have differing phenotypes like the Ainu.”

    Understood. What does get me going is hypocrisy within the ranks of the scientific community that on one hand it makes sense to Dr. Vayda that Dene-Yenisseyan macrofamily exists (20,000 year old split), but that in the other one rule out any connection between PIE and any other language dating back more than 7,000 year old.

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  117. @zardos I don’t know anything about WSH’s original phenotype or pigmentation, although various researchers like Anthony claim they were light skinned and BROWN eyed, BROWN haired. It’s too bad that because of history subjects such as race are so controversial. But looking at Google Image photos of both Kalash and Norwegians, and in light of a Wikipedia entry regarding “Yamnaya” and/or “Western Steppe Herders” quoted here earlier by blogger @Samuel Andrews, specifying that both groups have up to 50% WSH ancestry, I can’t eliminate the possibility that Corded Ware/Single Grave offsprings- Norwegians and Kalash are listed as the highest rate by percentage- have similar phenotypes (and so do some Yezidis and Tocharians). I’m talking about not only skin color or eye/hair pigmentation but mainly also a round cranial shape, etc.

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  118. @Andre: There is a lot of hypocrisy in contemporary sciences, but why do you think thats the case here?
    There are languages with possible, yet speculative connections and such without. I don’t think IE was a true creole language, but it is highly likely it was more than once transformed by substrate and neighbour languages. It split from other Eastern languages very long ago and those you mentioned might have just spread with the first East Asian expansion.
    So this doesnt have to be about hypocrisy. Yet I'm no linguist at all, can just trust the judgement of others.

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  119. @Andre: Just wait for more and better predictions for phenotypical traits.
    And just keep an important selective sweep like lactase persistence in mind.
    We still don’t have the full picture to rush to conclusions imho.

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  120. @Draft Dozen All the Eastern European Eneolithic cultures: Bug Dniester, Dnieper Donets, Yamnaya, Sredny, Combed Ware - are listed as strongly Europoid. It’s too bad that some bad apples have poisoned the well 70 years ago, so now Reich and others are attempting to twist genetic (pre)history in Europe and make PIE/WSH partly “East Eurasian”. It’s rather possible that from Kostenki14 onward WHG, SHG, EEF/ANF, WSH and other groups didn’t look that different from each other, and that only fairly recent developments in Europe, Western Asia/Middle East, Central Asia and Siberia east of the Urals - be it selective breeding, genetic drift, isolation, adaptation or whatever- that caused megapopulations look different according to geographic areas.

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  121. @zardos “There are languages with possible, yet speculative connections and such without. I don’t think IE was a true creole language, but it is highly likely it was more than once transformed by substrate and neighbour languages. It split from other Eastern languages very long ago and those you mentioned might have just spread with the first East Asian expansion.”

    Or, maybe PIE was a brand new language created independently of either EHG, CHG or a neighboring farmer language when ~7,000 years ago EHG males and CHG females married and thus created a brand new lifestyle in Samara, Khvalynsk, Vonyuchka, Progress and Sredny Stog. Might’ve been a language isolate.

    What I do find likely and intriguing is that I believe there was a very strong influence from a farmer language from its immediate west, with Cucuteni Tripolye coming into mind. Of course, whether GAC was either a farmer or a WHG one I still don’t believe they exerted any strong impact on PIE.

    PS: As a German, what’s your opinion when it comes to the Germanic Substrate Theory? To me, it’s a hogwash, and Germanic languages were strictly created during Nordic Bronze Age primarily as a fusion of Centum Beaker/Unetice and Satem CWC/SGC dialects, sans any considerable influence from indigenous languages in situ.

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  122. @Andre: You are going too far. We still don’t even know for sure what BB and Unetice spoke to begin with.
    There are special tendencies in Germanic which could be explained by a substrate, but who can tell for sure? Its all conjecture and you can find different explanations too.

    Greek and Anatolian languages are more clearly substrate influenced. So is Indo-Aryan. But thats also because we have old texts and know some neighbouring languages. For Germanic and Slavic we have nothing like that to compare with.

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  123. @Andrzejewski "It’s rather possible that from Kostenki14 onward WHG, SHG, EEF/ANF, WSH"

    Remember, Kostenki14 (and Sunghirs) did not give birth to anyone at all, it was absolutely a dead-end branch that has no relation to any of the living later.

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  124. @ zardos @Andrzejewski

    In the Germanic pre-Germanic substrate (may be it is adstrate) it is very likely, there are many words with obviously non-Indo-European etymology. In Slavic non-Indo-European substratum nobody yet found.


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  125. "In Slavic non-Indo-European substratum nobody yet found"

    Does anyone know the origin of some Slavic words for "horse" and "dog"? "mare" (KOBYLA) seems similar to Latin CABALLUS. One dog-word (SOBAKA) to Old Iranic SPAKA. But what about the dog word PES ((PIES): does it have Old IE cognates? And KOMON/KON'/KIN' ("horse")? The term asva/aspa for horse which is found in Indic and Iranic and Baltic (and elsewhere probably) is missing in Slavic.

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  126. @Dmytro

    This is all either borrowings or common European words such as linen, that is, borrowed in ancient times, say in all times of the CWC. Kobyla and komon'/kon' are the same root European words of Cabalus "horse". Pis "dog" is not a loan, it is actually a Slavic innovation, cf. Old Indian pic̨áŋgas, Gr. ποικίλος.
    The substratum of a language is a fairly large set of words that is unique only for this language.

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  127. @Andre

    > Wikipedia entry regarding “Yamnaya” and/or “Western Steppe Herders” quoted here earlier by blogger @Samuel Andrews, specifying that both groups have up to 50% WSH ancestry, I can’t eliminate the possibility that Corded Ware/Single Grave offsprings- Norwegians and Kalash are listed as the highest rate by percentage- have similar phenotypes (and so do some Yezidis and Tocharians). I’m talking about not only skin color or eye/hair pigmentation but mainly also a round cranial shape, etc.

    That entry is nonsensical. Kalash aren't even close to being 50% Yamnaya. Normally people put them at 30% Sintashta now a days, but I think that they have excess Tyumen type ancestry. Using Tyumen with Sintashta reduces Sintashta to 22% with 7.2% Tyumen, but using Afanasievo + Tyumen + Sintashta gives them 13.4% Afanasievo + 14.2% Sintashta + 3.6% Tyumen. The latter has a slightly better fit. One of the reasons for using Afanasievo along with Sintashta is because Kalash have plenty of mtDNA U4 (more common in Afanasievo than Sintashta).

    Ironically 23% equivalent to Yamnaya that you get from 13.4% Afanasievo + 14.2% Sintashta is similar to the Yamnaya equivalent in the 'normal' 30% estimation.

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  128. Yeah, Central Asian ANE-rich hunter gatherer is why Kalash, Pashuten used to score as much "Yamnaya" as Europeans. In reality, they have 25-30% Andronovo which equals 20% Yamnaya.

    Tajik are the only ethnic group in Asia with Steppe ancestry levels above 30%. They have 40-45% Andronovo which equals 30-35% Yamnaya.

    There's also a few ethnic in Southern Siberia who have around 30% Andronovo which is as much as Kalash, Pashuten have. They mostly of Okenevo-like origin alongside lots of Andronovo.

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  129. @ Samuel Andrews

    Kalash end up getting more Afanasievo and less Sintashta when these 2 inputs are used in comparison to certain other south Asian groups. Is there something actually going on with the steppe in Kalash specifically being a mix of MLB and EMBA or is this just the software placing things inappropriately?

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  130. You can get slightly better fits when including Afanasievo for Kalash. But, considering Kalash speak Indo-Iranian language, it's safe to assume their Steppe ancestry is all from Andronovo.

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  131. "I’m amazed how some renowned linguists claim that they have proven a Dene-Yenisseyan link dating back more than 15k-20k years but they debunk any PIE link to anything dating back more than 8,000 years!"

    The Dene's distinctive genetic component (about 16% of their autosomal DNA on average but as much as 30% in some individuals) derives not from the Founding population of the Americas, but from a second wave of Paleo-Eskimo migration ca. 5000-4400 years BP (ca. 3000 BCE - 2400 BE). See, e.g., Pavel Flegontov, et al., "Palaeo-Eskimo genetic ancestry and the peopling of Chukotka and North America" Nature (June 5, 2019); Flegontov et al., "Na-Dene populations descend from the Paleo-Eskimo migration into America" bioRxiv (September 13, 2016). While the Paleo-Eskimo genetic contribution is a minority, the linguistic and cultural contribution was a majority.

    Pure blooded Paleo-Eskimos went extinct close in time to the arrival of the ancestors of "Neo-Eskimos" like the Inuits in North America (ca. 1100 BCE and 200 BCE).

    Thus, the time depth of the Dene-Yenisseyan link is comparable to the time depth of the links between fairly basal branches of the IE languages through PIE like Sanskrit v. Latin and Old Norse. This is a time depth accessible to historical linguistic methods.

    This is underscored by improve ancestry matching techniques in the 2016 paper cite above which show a genetic link between the Na-Dene and the Yenesians. Using a relatively novel method of focusing in rare genetic variants, the 2016 study fairly conclusively established (1) that many Na-Dene individuals have significant (up to 30%) ancestry from Paleo-Eskimos admixed with a majority of founding population genes and a smaller contribution of Inuit admixture in some individuals, (2) that the Saqqaq and Dorest derive from a single wave of migration that arrived in North America ca. 2,400 BCE, and (3) that the Paleo-Eskimo wave of migration from a Trans-Baikal population that had a genetic affinity to populations that ended up in Western and Central Siberia, where the Yenesians live. Previous studies using methods based on average genetic similarity, uniparental markers and common genetic variants, had been unable to find the subtle genetic connections between the Na-Dene and Central Siberian populations, due to roughly 75 generations of dilution with neighboring populations on each side of the Pacific.

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  132. Just to back up @andrew's point, at some point the ancestors of either the Dene or the Kets had to have crossed the Bering Strait using wood boats (their boat making techniques and terminology are shared), and the Bering Strait only had trees on its coast between 8kya and 4kya. So that common terminology puts a fairly narrow window on went such a crossing happened that supports the genetic and archaeological evidence.

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  133. @samuel andrews

    The lack of language shift from Indo-Iranian could be because the Afansievo type input into a Sintashta mixture was largely or entirely maternally derived. I think this could explain the high U4 in Kalash (very rare in regular Sintashta) along with the vahaduo results.

    However if the vahaduo result is somehow ruled out, then the U4 frequency alone would not support the notion of an unusually high Afanasievo ancestry in Kalash.

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  134. @Andrzejewski - FYI Villabruna has been shown to have some low level East Eurasian admixture too (balanced by some basal-like admixture). The simplest explanation is that that came with their minor ANE admixture. So no none of what you said is true.

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  135. @Ryan

    What you mentioned is interesting.

    "sample": "ITA_Villabruna:Average",
    "fit": 2.4804,
    "ITA_Grotta_Continenza_Meso": 89.17,
    "Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG": 5,
    "RUS_MA1": 4.17,
    "RUS_AfontovaGora3": 1.67

    The mior basal and east Eurasian can be explained with minor ANE and Pinarbasi. ANE is on the order of something like 25% east Eurasian (broadly speaking) and Pinarbasi is supposed to be 25% basal.

    G25 prefers MA1 over AG3 in this run. IDK if this is in error margins, but this might be indicating that a different kind of ANE contributed to Villabruna than the one which was most important in the formation of EHG.

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  136. @Samuel Andrews So to summarize, there is no East Eurasian ancestry in Vonyuchka, Progress, Samara, Khvalynsk, Dnieper–Donets, Sredny Stog, and Yamnaya. The same applies for the latter Wester Steppe Herder derived cultures, such as Catacomb, Corded Ware, Poltavka, Potapovka, Srubnaya, Abashevo, Fatyanovo–Balanovo, and Volosovo. I believe most of the Afanasievo and Sintashta samples lack this admixture as well with the exception of a few Central Asian admixted samples. Concerning said admixture in some of the Sintashta and Afanasievo samples, would that East Asian like admixture come from the WSHG derived hunter gatherers of the region? Or are there some WSHG populations that don't have East Asian admixture?

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  137. @Simon Stevin,

    It's possible some didn't have East Asian but not likely. So, far all ancient DNA samples from Central Asia, from before Andronovo, have some East Asian ancestry. The West Siberian hunter gatherers are from Siberia but they lived pretty close to Botai hunter gatherers in Kasazkhstan. They're all kind of the same people. "Ancient Central Asians" (pre-Andronovo).


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  138. @All: I saw some Yamnaya skulls with obvious Mongoloid admixture. They stick out, but they seem to be present. My guess is that occasionally some of the Steppe Maykop and West Siberian HGs made it into the early Yamnaya and PIE tribes. Here and there, not a big deal, but present nevertheless. My guess would be that in really large samples, individuals with one quarter of that ancestry or the like would appear. They are not formative, but they might have been assimilated in some times, places and groups.
    But since the Western derived groups like Sintashta rolled over them, my guess would be too their impact on Europe was marginal at best and they were rather reduced to noice level or pushed East.
    Real East Eurasian, Mongoloid proper admixture came with Uralics and with Indo-European contacts in the East and back migration (like among Scythians and Sarmations noticeable).

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  139. West Siberia HG: 84.7% ANE, 5% WHG, 11.1% ENA (East Asian)
    Botai: 80.5% ANE, 2% WHG, 18.2% ENA
    Dali_EBA: 68% ANE, 3% WHG, 11% ENA, 18% BMAC (mostly Iran farmer).
    Kazakh_EBA: 57% ANE, 2% WHG, 27% East Asian. 2.8% BMAC.

    Those are all of Central Asian HG samples. Okenevo lived in South Siberia, was mostly decended from Central Asian migrations. Steppe Maykop was about 50% Central Asian. This type of ancestry is pretty well documented.

    Eneolithic Southcentral Asia had a little bit which is why Kalash, Pashuten have some.

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  140. Those Kazakh EBA steppe samples are interesting. Apparently buried in similar burial styles to Yamnaya, but very different population

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  141. Did Kurgans start with the Mesopotamian populations moving up the Caucasus, allegedly giving rise to Leyla Tepe and Maykop, or was the Kurgan something that the WSH picked up from WHG or EEF civilizations west of the Danube?

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  142. Speaking of Caucasus and CHG - who came up with the (now-absolutely-debunked?) notion that some Sumerians or Ubaidians moved up from Mesopotamia to the Caucasus to work in mining and metallurgy? I keep on reading about supposedly an “Uruk Expansion”, even though we do know now that the only large scale migrations to the Caucasus were 7,000 years ago by ANF, which are responsible to the current CHG+ EEF admixture Doug’s in extant Caucasus based nations, and another one with some minor Iranian component who gave rise to Kura-Araxes, Hurrian-Urartians, Hatti, Kaskians and some non-Steppe-CHG in Mycenaeans.

    But any Halafian or Sumerian aDNA was nowhere to be found in their genetic signature...

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  143. Physically less Mongoloid to more:
    CWC < Yamnaya < EHG < ANE

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  144. @andre - I don't think we even have Sumerian samples yet to make any claims one way or another do we?

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  145. @ Ryan
    Looking at the transect from Armenia chalcolithic to Majkop and KA; the main pattern is CHG introgression; akin to WHG “bounce back”’in Europe
    So it looks like the Uruk expansion theory isn’t supported by adna .
    How might data from Sumer change that ?

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  146. Sumerians are interesting on their own, so far little to nothing is known, but they should be somewhere between CHG and Iranian farmers I would guess.

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  147. Both CHG and pops like the early Iranian farmers were extinct by around 5,000 BCE.

    From the Late Neolithic they were replaced by closely related groups but with much higher levels (>30%) of Anatolian admix, like Darkveti-Meshoko and Seh Gabi ChL.

    Sumerians are going to be very similar to Seh Gabi ChL, which cannot explain anything in regards to steppe pops. There's not much wiggle room there.

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  148. @Salden

    I haven't heard anything specifically about Sumerians. But what I have heard about some new data fits the patterns that we've already seen in the ancient Near East. So my guess is that Sumerians will be very similar to Seh Gabi ChL but maybe with more Anatolian and Levant stuff.

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  149. Re; South Asia and Central Asia, quick example of simple model fits from Vahaduo - https://imgur.com/a/iv6Zrb2 (using Sintashta, Sarazm_En, Ganj_Dareh, Paniya and Indus Periphery Shahr_I_Sokhta).

    Fits followed by projecting both the fit (star) and real (dot) and their midpoint (triangle) onto first raw G25 PC 1-4, then reprocessed PCA.
    You can see that the fits are pretty close (like 99% close), but there are still some differences in very low PC dimensions (that mostly explain rawest global variation) and others. I am not sure if this is due some slight compression of ancient vs modern references or what.

    When introducing an array of Iran age Turan, Iranian and Central Asian populations (IRN_Hajji_Firuz_IA, IRN_Hasanlu_IA, TKM_IA,KAZ_Kangju). Those can become favoured mediators of steppe related ancestry too.

    (Also, wish we had a better quality version of the Afghanistan Darra-I-Kur sample from 2500 BCE).

    (Also yes, the Tajik samples are somewhat out, only really included for very approximate comparison).

    @Vahaduo, if you're reading at all, suggestion that might be an interesting/useful feature to add to your service if you have time - printing out the generated PCA data for the fits and comparing it to the real sample (much as qpAdm does), so that people can extract and visualize where fits do or don't exactly fit.

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  150. Re; Goedegebuure's lecture upthread, interesting to listen to. Not totally sure how to take a totally linguistic argument but nice to see what someone who is clearly an expert in these languages thinks, as opposed to what we get thirdhand.

    39 mins - Goedegebuure backs onomastic Hittite elements at Kultepe 2000-1720 BCE.

    43 mins - Avunculate descent of kingship? Not exactly your typical patrilineal IE stereotype.
    (https://www.academia.edu/34554308/Shall_No_Man_Raise_His_Sisters_Son_The_Anatolian_Avuncular_System_in_the_II_and_I_Millennia)

    50 mins - suggesting large influence of Luwian language on Hattian via a *subordinate* social position of Luwian speakers and and adoption of Hattian by Luwian speakers seems to suggest large migration necessary. opposite of "small intrusive elite group brough Anatolian languages to Anatolia, imposed on Hattians, no change in dna necessary".

    60 mins - rejects shared horse and wheel terminology for Anatolian languages and core IE.

    65 mins - shared terminology for wine between Anatolian+core pIE + Anatolians split from core pIE before agriculture? Slightly confused about idea of shared wine terminology across IE which is *not* a loan between branches (which she seems to be arguing).

    70 mins - Anatolian names at Ebla 2500-2400 BCE again. Argument is Anatolians entering Anatolia from the east, live there and form substrate for latter Hattians.

    80 mins - Kura-Araxes = early Anatolians?

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  151. K-A is a good fit for Hatti-Minoan

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  152. Any cultural influences of Kura Araxes on Yamnaya and vice versa?

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  153. @zardos “ I think decisive for Sumerians is the shift noticeable with their appearance, if there is one. There might be something unexpected”

    So now all of the sudden appearance mattter? How come it doesn’t apply to Indo-Europeans/WSH?

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  154. @David

    Thanks for those TreeMixes. Regarding the East Eurasian input in Iran Hotu/Neo, I was recently going through the supplements of the Lazaridis et al 2016 paper on Fertile Crescent genomes and noticed that Hotu/Iran_N both had less Neanderthal than Natufians/Levantines. In fact, according to that paper on Taforalt from 2018, the Iranians even had less Neanderthal than Taforalt did. How could this be if Hotu/Neo had excess East Eurasian relative to Natufian/Taforalt? Even in that recent paper on Neanderthal introgression in Africans, they still found East Eurasians had excess of 8% Nean ancestry than West Eurasians, not as much as previously thought but still more than in West Eurasians/North Africans. Even if West and East Eurasians had the exact same levels of Nean, there shouldn't be any significant difference in Nean ancestry between the Levant and Iran populations, unless the Iran group had more basal ancestry than the Levantines, which is claimed in Lazaridis 2016 but I think you've called that into question before but I can't seem to find the relevant post on your takedown.

    It also seems odd why Hotu/Iran_N would have even less Nean than Taforalt...

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  155. @Matt

    "Avunculate descent of kingship"

    It will make the genetic make up of samples even harder to use to pinpoint the origin of the Anatolian languages. That the descent of kingship was messy and not linear is also clear from the Proclamation of Telepinu, which sought to straighten this towards making a primagenetic descent a law. Take a look Figure 1, to get an idea what happened before.

    https://www.academia.edu/39148814/The_Edict_of_Telepinu_and_Hittite_Royal_Succession?auto=download

    "suggesting large influence of Luwian language on Hattian via a *subordinate* social position of Luwian speakers"

    In my response to Rob above is a link where she argues this. Main point is word order. It is interesting that the earliest Hittite kings had Hattian names.

    "rejects shared horse and wheel terminology for Anatolian languages and core IE."

    But far more interestingly, also rejects shared terminology for certain agricultural terms such as plough (a loan word in Anatolian languages) which in her view disproves a Anatolian origin for PIE. She states that if you consider the lack of shared terminology for wheeled vehicles an indication for the origin - as David Reich does in his book - you should consider this an indication as well: As the whole area knew ploughs from a long time before the oldest origin dates of PIE we have to accept Anatolian languages as foreign to the region. That also means foreign to the South of the Caucasus areas.

    "Slightly confused about idea of shared wine terminology across IE which is *not* a loan between branches (which she seems to be arguing)."

    Maybe a loan from the Caucasus into PIE? There must have been trade networks. I can't help thinking about how Strabo describes the fondness for wine the Celts displayed. He describes how they even don't mix it with water, to his great horror.

    "Anatolian names at Ebla 2500-2400 BCE again."

    The names are situated in a city called Amri. She positions that city north living. Most of the names of traders from Amri are clearly Semitic and there appears to have been long caravan trails from the Balkans through Anatolia to the East. There is bound to be movement of a number of traders. These Anatolian traders could been from the west. See figure 2 below:

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318440933_Drawing_Pathways_from_the_Past_the_Trade_Routes_of_the_Old_Assyrian_Caravans_Across_Upper_Mesopotamia_and_Central_Anatolia_2017/link/5969e595aca2728ca681c2ea/download

    And that trade was happening is very clear from the Semitic loanwords in PIE. Words for donkeys - the caravan animals back then - and trade itself for instance.

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  156. @Matt

    Sorry, plough in Anatolian is an own construct from a PIE root, not a loan word. But the argument remains.

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  157. @Andre: "So now all of the sudden appearance mattter? How come it doesn’t apply to Indo-Europeans/WSH?"

    The difference between Sumerians is that they have no close relationship to anyone, while the Indoeuropeans came from a broad cultural and genetic base living on the steppe, expanding in all directions and living on with a lot of branches to this day. The Sumerians on the other hand appeared and disappeared in mystery. Their importance for the cultural history of mankind is of course much bigger than their ethnocultural direct legacy.

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  158. @ Cpk said...
    Any cultural influences of Kura Araxes on Yamnaya and vice versa?

    I don't know about KA. However you might find the work on page 155 of interest in relation to burial rites with weapons and tool Progress sites
    -pre Yamnaya
    "Caucasian Mountains and Mesopotamian Steppe on the Dawn of the Bronze Age"

    You will need a good translate function, alot of interesting points connecting burials.
    https://www.archaeolog.ru/media/books_2019/Gory_Kavkaza.pdf

    "These materials identified as a result of excavations by S.Ya. Berezin in 2009–2010 burial ground Progress-2, which is located in the Kirov district of the Stavropol Territory, A. A. Kalmykova in 2010 burial ground of Konstantinovsky-1, and excavations of Ya. B. Berezin in 2013 of the barrow necropolis of Konstantinovsky-6 at
    Pyatigorsk. The work provides descriptions of burials, including anthropological definitions. Published materials date back to the second half of V millennium BC. Due to the rare occurrence of mounds
    of this time, this information is of great interest for characterizing the era of the beginning of chalcolithic in the Central Ciscaucasia"

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  159. @epoch, thanks for comments. (Just to make sure I'm clear, commenting on all her points was as of interest, not endorsement of any of them.)

    Only thing I'd add on is that re; non-shared terminology of plough, I may have missed that but if you are reporting accurately, I think she may be eliding here a little between "Presence of a term shows that family must have branched after this date (or else you are arguing for copious homoplasy)" and the absence of a term, which can be plausibly attributed to term loss. Evidence of a term for agricultural stuff shared between languages would tell us more than the absence of a term from one branch (which could simply be erosion). A set of languages that all share agricultural terminology likely descended from a common ancestor knew agriculture (without complex patterns of borrowing and homoplasy), but a set of languages which do not have shared terminology are less clearly ones that did not.

    That said, it's becomes increasingly unlikely as you look across the whole class of agricultural vocab (erosion across a large set of words unlikely).

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  160. Relating to upthread discussion about ANE in Native Americans, quick attempt to use outgroup f3 stats in Vahaduo, from a set given by Davidski, to run a quick cross check for the proportions for Native Americans from my G25 Vahaduo run upthread: https://imgur.com/a/doqlYXJ

    Outgroups columns: Igorot, Onge, Natufian, Barcin_N, MA1, WHG, ElMiron, EHG, Botai, Abdul_Hosein_N (all are f3 stats relative to Mbuti). Pastebing for the data: https://pastebin.com/ckGFP1zb

    Outputs and PAST3 Graphics: https://imgur.com/a/doqlYXJ

    Only two Native American populations in the outgroup matrix from Davidski I am using Brazil_LapaDoSanto_9600BP and Chile_LosRieles_10900BP.

    Seems to come to about 42:58 ANE:East Eurasian. Note in the run where I've included Tianyuan, that's just a kind of compensator to adjust for the actual ENA contributor in Native Americans being likely to be slightly diverged from Han. Somewhat between the G25 nMonte runs where these groups can come out with >50 ANE, and some models where they have only 33%.

    (Further quick run to try and measure West_Siberia_N contribution to BMAC and Sarazm N - https://imgur.com/a/P8Taffk. Suggests that West_Siberia_N contrubution to Sarazm is quite high around 25% but also to me that Barcin related input may be more substantial to Sarazm_En than suggested by Narasimhan's paper as around 15% here.)

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  161. @Cy Tolliver “In fact, according to that paper on Taforalt from 2018, the Iranians even had less Neanderthal than Taforalt did. How could this be if Hotu/Neo had excess East Eurasian relative to Natufian/Taforalt? Even in that recent paper on Neanderthal introgression in Africans, they still found East Eurasians had excess of 8% Nean ancestry than West Eurasians, not as much as previously thought but still more than in West Eurasians/North Africans.“

    East Eurasians had mostly Denisovan, not Neanderthal per see.

    And a recent (2019) study found out that West Africans had an admixture from a previously unknown humanoid specious

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  162. @Matt

    It's the next slide after the horse and wheel argument.

    "Linguistic paleontology: agriculture

    Ploughing:

    . Hitt. harra- 'to crush', terip- 'to plough'. Different root than PIE
    . PIE *h2erh3- 'to plough', *trep= 'to turn'"

    She therefore concludes:

    "Anatolian did NOT share agricultural terminology with rest of PIE"

    I wholeheartedly agree with your notion that this might not mean a thing. But her argument is a 'can't have the cake and eat it' variant. If we agree this might just be term loss we should also not make to much of the absence of wheel related terms.


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  163. That's true as an analogy but: "The common ancestors of Anatolians and other IE knew of the wheel, and the Anatolians then forgot all of related terms and reinvented them from different roots within about a millennium (i.e. the kind of time scale consistent with Copper Age, wheel having common homeland for both branches, and then their attestation in Anatolia)" is a bit harder to swallow as a position than erosion of common agricultural terms over a much longer timescale, although as said, that itself is hard to bear if it runs across a large number of terms (as she states).

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  164. @Andrzejewski

    >East Eurasians had mostly Denisovan, not Neanderthal per see.

    https://imgur.com/a/SuEGiQl

    Denisovan ancestry is considerable in Papuans, but its pretty low in both south and east Asians. East Eurasians in east Asia do have higher Neanderthal than west Eurasians and part of this is because of the lack of basal Eurasian ancestry.

    Hotu simply had a lot of basal ancestry.

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  165. @epoch @Matt “Hitt. harra- 'to crush', terip- 'to plough'. Different root than PIE
    . PIE *h2erh3- 'to plough', *trep= 'to turn'"“

    To me, terip and trep seem like a cognate.

    Btw, do word like “white”, “black”, “green” or “dog” have any PIE cognates?

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  166. I don't understand the term East Eurasian. I think it originated from the fact Eurasians (non-Africans) make a separate genetic branch. Therefore, coming from this line of thinking reseachers call people who live in Eastern Asia the Eastern members of Eastern family.

    Or, maybe Eastern Eurasia started to be used because you already had the West Eurasian genetic cluster. But, the whole reason West Eurasia is called that is because it includes Europe. But, East Eurasia doesn't include Europe so why not just call it East Asia?

    All of Eastern Eurasia is in Asia so why not call it East Asia? It makes as much sense as calling India "Southern Eurasia" instead of South Asia.

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  167. @Samuel Andrews now when turns out that Niger-Congo black African people are >30% “Eurasian”, I think you’re right. Can you possibly date the time of the back-migration? Was it before or after the LGM?

    Do you agree with me that the WHG is far overstated, and that lots of the putative WHG introgression is basically misrepresented? My point of view is that, just like with the Neolithic agricultural revolution, the WSH spread both women and males, but since their mtDNA U4 and U6 were common among post-Villabruna forager tribes and clans, researchers attributed the WHG mtDNA lines to Bronze Age farmer societies rich in WHG (CTC, especially GAC) instead of to the very obvious - that Western Steppe Herders like Corded Ware exterminated lots of farmers and hunters and married Steppe women even after invasion of Central Europe.

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  168. @ epoch

    Although not the only one, K-A is an obvious entry of new groups into Anatolia. However, K-A main movement is into northeastern Anatolia - exactly where non-IE are found. Such KA/ post-KA might have controlled some of the trade routes into the region.
    I suppose Gb is presuming that there won't be any steppe-realted groups in Anatolia. The notion seems to be that IE came with KA, with new leaders who somehow became subordinate, to rise up a few hundred years later, with their entry path then becoming wholly de-Indo-Europeanised, whilst to their west theyre abutted by a sea of IE groups. It's becoming an increasingly untenable model. So it might take a few years for studies to catch up as data comes in. This is not to take away from her linguistic investigations, though, which is a welcome reversion to old-fashioned analogue linguistics (in place of the dubious attempt to use statistics in linguistics)

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  169. @Rob “So the notion that IE came with KA, with new leaders, but were somehow subordinate, to only rise up a few hundred years later doesn't really gel, with their entry path then becoming wholly de-Indo-Europeanised, whilst to their west theyre abutted by a sea of IE groups doesn't really make much sense.”

    I agree but I think that Hatti and Kaskian came with K-A. Do you think that KA are mostly 1:1 ANF/CHG? It looks like 7,000 ybp Anatolian Farmers migrated into the Caucasus, admixture thoroughly with the pure CHG and then millennia later KA groups made a back migration into Anatolia and ushered in Hatti and Kaskian, hurrians etc.


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  170. @ Andrze

    From what I have read; agriculture arrived to South Caucasus with Shomu-Shuvaleri
    Their ceramic analogies etc match with Hassuna , Halaf etc
    So from northern Mesopotamia/ Syria; which would be Tepecik like. their impact would be 30-70%, depending on site/ region
    Kura -Araxes in turn would be a couple Millenia later; with CHG rise and movement into anatolia , Amuq plain, NW Iran etc
    Karaz-inspired ware can be seen far as Greece and Cyprus too

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  171. @Rob “From what I have read; agriculture arrived to South Caucasus with Shomu-Shuvaleri
    Their ceramic analogies etc match with Hassuna , Halaf etc
    So from northern Mesopotamia/ Syria; which would be Tepecik like.”

    So it’s not ANF who are in modern Kartvelians but Levant_N or Iran_Chl then

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  172. More like the people which moved west into Anatolia (to mix with Pinarbasi-types) also moved northward to caucasus
    Hence the presence of various Y-Hg G2a

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  173. Now, it turns out that Philistines rather than being an IE Aegean people with a minority IE Anatolian people (Carians, Luwians) were actually the reverse. Is that correct?

    (Goliath was probably a Carian name cognate with “Valiant”).

    One interesting finding I don’t find all that credible is that according to some researchers the town named “Ziklag” means “Sicilian” and indicated settlement by migrants from Sicily (Italic tribes Sicarian and Siculi).

    I do know that the books of Samuel in the OT mentions among his mercenaries “Carians”, which were likely the bulk of the Philistine invaders.

    Philistines were discovered to be heavy beer drinkers based on their ceramics.

    The most incredulous thing I read about the topic is that according to some, “Sisera”, who was the leader of Canaanites fighting against the Israelites was actually from a town in Sicily named Sisera. If this account is true and it checks out then Sisera was not a Semite “Canaanite” but an Indo-European Philistine, however low the odds may be.

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  174. @Andre,
    "Do you agree with me that the WHG is far overstated, and that lots of the putative WHG introgression is basically misrepresented?"

    No I wouldn't. Because, the autosomal DNA makes it very clear what percentages of WHG, EEF, Steppe ancestry modern Europeans have. Plus, WHG isn't overstates it's at 15-20% in Northwest Europe which isn't high, it is at 10-15% in SOutheast Europe, it is only "high" in Northeast Europe at 20-30%. WHG ancestry isn't being exaggerated, the numbers show it is the leats signifcant of the three ancestors of modern Europeans.

    About, mtDNA. Most U5a is from Steppe. But, almost all U5b is from WHG. In Northeast Europe there's U5a, U4 clades from local hunter gatherers not from Steppe. Steppe's U5 is ultimatly from their WHG ancestors anways.

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  175. @Rob “More like the people which moved west into Anatolia (to mix with Pinarbasi-types) also moved northward to caucasus
    Hence the presence of various Y-Hg G2a”

    But LBK was G2a already 8,500 years ago. So your theory may not check out.

    Besides the point, that Anatolian farmers have been in situ for 10ky before, largely descending from local HGs.

    However, it greatly fascinates me that among EEF there were found lots of different mtDNA: H, J, N, X,Z, R, K, V, W, T and others. That fact to me would pony out that perhaps during their long sojourn in Anatolia (which is an enormous landmass anyway), G2a people have constantly and consistently admixed and intermarried with lots of unrelated clans to produce a fairly genetic heterogeneous group who was to become EEF.

    And maybe that is the reason that many areas in Europe had different farmer phenotypes.

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  176. Andre, the ancestry percentages for most modern Europeans isn't going to change. The tools used are really effective. No one has more than 50% Steppe.

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  177. @Samuel Andrews “Andre, the ancestry percentages for most modern Europeans isn't going to change. The tools used are really effective. No one has more than 50% Steppe.”

    What do you make of the variety of EEF mtDNA? Does it indicate that Anatolian Farmers ancestral to LBK and EEF were already vastly heterogeneous, both in terms of their genotype and their phenotypes?

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  178. @Rob @Samuel “From what I have read; agriculture arrived to South Caucasus with Shomu-Shuvaleri
    Their ceramic analogies etc match with Hassuna , Halaf etc
    So from northern Mesopotamia/ Syria; which would be Tepecik like.”

    What deep ancestry did Halafians and Hassuna have? ANF, Iran_N or Levant_?

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  179. Or are Halaf, Ubaid and Hassuna some sort of the early mix of Levant_N (mainly Natufians?) and Iran_N (Dzudzuana + ANE?) who gave rise to early Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages?

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  180. @ Andrze

    “ But LBK was G2a already 8,500 years ago. So your theory may not check out. “”

    Yeah the move through Central Europe was quite early ; but S/S was appearing c 8200 cal BP


    “Besides the point, that Anatolian farmers have been in situ for 10ky before, largely descending from local HGs.”

    Not really , “Largely” is a relative term. There’s a pretty notable shift between AHG and ANF; even if it’s subtle on PCA

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  181. @Andre,
    "What do you make of the variety of EEF mtDNA? Does it indicate that Anatolian Farmers ancestral to LBK and EEF were already vastly heterogeneous, both in terms of their genotype and their phenotypes?"

    Imo, LBK and Balkan farmers and Barcin (western Anatolian) farmers all come from the same population. Imo, they're 'the same people', same ethnic group.

    But, Western European farmers come from a different Anatolian population. So, imo, there were multiple Anatolian populations moving into Europe. You can see evidence for the distinctiveness of Western European farmers in autosmal DNA and mtDNA.

    In pigmentation SNPs, all Western European farmers are 'darker' than mainstream farmers, so probably a little more brown in skin color.

    More on skin color, I'd say all Anatolian farmers were more 'white' than 'brown' as are Sardinians today. Not, as 'white' as Central-North Europeans are today. But definitly more 'white' than most Middle Easterners are today. If they were as brown as let's say Iranians, it'd be hard to explain how Southern Europeans (and Europeans in general) are so 'white' today.

    The whole natural selection thing can't be used as an excuse all the time. So, I find it hard to believe white skin magically became unanimous all over Europe in the Bronze age after the three ancestors mixed. I tend to think the main reason Europeans are white today is because both Anatolian farmers & Steppe folk, were pretty much 'white.' EHG, CHG, Anatolian farmers, UkraiveHGs, Latvia Hgs were all probably pretty 'white' skinned. It really may have been only WHG who was truly brown.

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  182. @Andrzejewski

    "Speaking of Caucasus and CHG - who came up with the (now-absolutely-debunked?) notion that some Sumerians or Ubaidians moved up from Mesopotamia to the Caucasus to work in mining and metallurgy? I keep on reading about supposedly an “Uruk Expansion”, even though we do know now that the only large scale migrations to the Caucasus were 7,000 years ago by ANF"

    From what I've read metallurgy spread to the Caucasus from the Balkans, possibly by boat. From northeast Anatolia it seems to have spread south into the Levant, arriving with the new Israel Chalcolithic population. From there it spread into Egypt. Early imported copper in Israel appears to come from northeast anatolia, near the black sea coast. However the oldest gold artefacts in Israel have the same chemical composition as gold from the Balkans and in Varna culture burials.

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  183. @Samuel Andrews “The whole natural selection thing can't be used as an excuse all the time. So, I find it hard to believe white skin magically became unanimous all over Europe in the Bronze age after the three ancestors mixed. I tend to think the main reason Europeans are white today is because both Anatolian farmers & Steppe folk, were pretty much 'white.' EHG, CHG, Anatolian farmers, UkraiveHGs, Latvia Hgs were all probably pretty 'white' skinned. It really may have been only WHG who was truly brown.”

    Don’t forget the SHG. And if going off on a tangent on the SHG/PitComb ancestry, one research said that they contributed a lot to modern day Swedes while another one asserted that their role was fairly minor and limited. Who was right?

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  184. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_C_(mtDNA)

    mtDNA C1f used to be common in Northwest Russia 7,500 years ago but it went extinct. What role did it possibly play in the formation of WSH populations? We will never know.

    "In 2014, a study discovered a new mtDNA subclade C1f from the remains of 3 people found in north-western Russia and dated to 7,500 years ago. It has not been detected in modern populations."

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  185. @Samuel Andrews According to Guenter, EHG were light-skinned and brown-eyed:

    https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2003703

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  186. @Andrews et al "So, I find it hard to believe white skin magically became unanimous all over Europe in the Bronze age after the three ancestors mixed. I tend to think the main reason Europeans are white today is because both Anatolian farmers & Steppe folk, were pretty much 'white.' EHG, CHG, Anatolian farmers, UkraiveHGs, Latvia Hgs were all probably pretty 'white' skinned. It really may have been only WHG who was truly brown."

    That's what I tend to think too. I don't know why modern Middle Easterners and ancient WHG were dark-skinned, though.

    When you say "Baltic HG", do you mean both Kunda and Narva cultures? Are they related to the Pit-Comb Cermanic culture, or PWC are strictly SHG?

    And when you say "Ukraine HG", do you refer specifically to the Dnieper-Donetz (and Bug-Dniester) Culture? Do Ukraine HG have anything to do with Sredny Stog I (before the WSH-related Sredny Stog II)?

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  187. UkraineHG only refers to Ukraine hunter gatherers. Any WSH (Steppe) ancestry in Sredny Stog arrived from outside of Ukraine into Ukraine.

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  188. From what I've been reading, Ancient North Eurasian populations (including EHG and CHG) had alleles for blond hair. I surmise that since Western Steppe Herders e.g. Yamnaya are a mixture of both groups, and ANE in Yamnaya peaked at 50%, Indo-Europeans DID HAVE a high frequency or potential for blond hair (yes, I acknowledge that EEF populations and SHG had it as well):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_North_Eurasian

    QUOTE: "Evolution of blond hair
    The derived allele of the KITLG SNP rs12821256 is associated with, and likely causal for, blond hair in Europeans.[18] The earliest known individual with this allele is the Siberian ANE individual Afontova Gora 3, which is dated to 16130-15749 BCE. This allele is also present in one hunter-gatherer from each of Samara, Motala and Ukraine (I0124, I0014 and I1763), as well as several later individuals with Steppe ancestry. Since the allele is found in populations with EHG but not Western Hunter-Gatherer ancestry, it suggests that its origin is in the Ancient North Eurasian population."
    ______________

    I also remember reading about Afontova Gora 3 (AG3) being the first population where blond hair was noted. That dates 14,500 years ago.

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  189. Looking at a set of outgroup f3 statistics previously generated by David, Darkveti-Meshoko is pretty different from all other Caucasus populations in outgroup f3(CHG) vs outgroup f3(Ganj Dareh) / outgroup f3(CHG) vs outgroup f3(EHG): https://imgur.com/a/G9mHWyx

    It seems like just considering the f3 outgroup stats: KorosN, CHG, Ganj_Dareh, EHG, Piedmont_En would work OK as Darkveti+Khvalynsk from the perspective of considering only the KorosN+EHG+CHG stats, but when considering the Ganj_Dareh stat instead, the affinity for CHG and KorosN relative to Ganj_Dareh would be too high. That can't be resolved by replacing supplementing Darveti_Meshoko with direct Ganj_Dareh like ancestry, as that would then break mean that CHG relative to Koros_N and CHG relative EHG would break! So some other solution would be needed, poss. third population diverged for GD and CHG.

    PCA using outgroup f3 stats (using outgroups often used on here for qpAdm): https://imgur.com/a/we3akRy . The CHG related differences pop fairly well by PC4 in Caucasus populations (and I think the dispersal on them seems decent for Steppe EBA as well, though maybe partly because some of those are shotgun sequenced).

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  190. @Matt

    Darkveti-Mashoko has too much Anatolian ancestry to be relevant.

    The CHG-related ancestry that found its way into Steppe Eneolithic and Yamnaya was already on the steppe before Darkveti-Mashoko.

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  191. Yeah, I said it wouldn't satisfy the stats.

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  192. But the reason why Darkveti doesn't work is because if you combined with Khvalysnk, the f3 affinity it would give to Ganj Dareh is too low, not that the affinity to Koros_N / Barcin_N would be too high.

    There doesn't seem to me to be any way to square that circle without a population that is neither Ganj Dareh / CHG, but is related to both.

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  193. The CHG-related ancestry in Steppe Eneolithic is definitely more related to CHG than to Ganj Dareh.

    But it's not CHG.

    The fact that it's not CHG shouldn't be surprising, since CHG is from south of the Caucasus and Steppe Eneolithic from north of the Caucasus, and the Caucasus has always been one of the main barriers to gene flow in West Eurasia.

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  194. My recent TreeMix graphs do a pretty good job of estimating where the CHG-like ancestry in Steppe Eneolithic fits into the overall picture, no?

    https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/01/graphing-truth.html

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  195. Most scientist: Patterson, Damgaard, Lazaridis, Günter, Mathieson and Anthony pin the CHC introgression on ~7,000 years ago, which happened to be around the same time frame that Khvalynsk and Samara Cultures formed in today’s Tatarstan Russian Republic.

    What I can’t determine is whether a Vonyuchka-like or Progress-like population with the explicit WSH aDNA took over Volga Cultures and even Dnieper and Dniester ones or if these WSH migrants integrated with native inhabitants but imposing their languages and cultures superimposed on Khvalynsk, Samara and Ukraine HG.

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  196. This is increasingly fun.

    1-When it came to claiming Yamnaya as the source of migration to Europe, what really distinguished that culture from European Neolithics was precisely the CHG component because obviously EHG has a WHG component-

    2-Then EEF appears in Yamnaya and CHG also appears in the Balkans and the steppes long before the Yamnaya culture existed.

    3-Harvard tells us do not worry because that steppe signal only appears in mainland Europe with the appearance of the CWC which is supposed to be 75% Yamnaya

    4-Then it turns out that Yamnaya's uniparental markers do not match those of Central Europe or those of Western Europe

    5-But nothing matters because we continue to detect the Yamnaya signal in mainland Europe after 3.000 BC, although now, we are not going to call it that, but "steppe signal"

    6-Then suddenly, nobody knows what CHG is, or where it comes from, or the way it spread throughout Europe because the uniparental markers typical of that ancestry do not match the European markers either (we will have to assume then that it was the women who were responsible)

    7-Meanwhile everyone is still looking for R1b-M269 in Russia, the Urals and the steppe forests because that lineage is inextricably linked to that magic steppe signal-

    8-Soon it will turn out that R1a and R1b have their origin in Iran, that the steppe signal is actually a Persian signal, and that the BBs brachycephaly is a typical anthropological feature of Southern Caucasus or the Middle East

    9-And so magically the swarthy dolichocephalus and uraloids Yamnaya riders become just 300 years later in Western-looking brachycephalus Basques-

    It's a joke right?-Manda huevos






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  197. "From what I've read metallurgy spread to the Caucasus from the Balkans, possibly by boat."

    One of the dumbest things I have read in this thread.

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