Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Villabruna people existed in Europe at least 17,000 years ago (Bortolini et al. 2020 preprint)


Over at bioRxiv at this LINK. So, like I said here a few years back, there was no migration into Europe from the Near East ~14,00 years ago. I don't think there was even such a migration ~17,000 years ago. My view is that the so called Villabruna cluster formed somewhere in Europe at least 20,000 years ago. Below is the Bortolini et al. abstract, emphasis is mine:

The end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in Europe (~16.5 ka ago) set in motion major changes in human culture and population structure. In Southern Europe, Early Epigravettian material culture was replaced by Late Epigravettian art and technology about 18-17 ka ago at the beginning of southern Alpine deglaciation, although available genetic evidence from individuals who lived ~14 ka ago opened up questions on the impact of migrations on this cultural transition only after that date. Here we generate new genomic data from a human mandible uncovered at the Late Epigravettian site of Riparo Tagliente (Veneto, Italy), that we directly dated to 16,980-16,510 cal BP (2σ). This individual, affected by a low-prevalence dental pathology named focal osseous dysplasia, attests that the very emergence of Late Epigravettian material culture in Italy was already associated with migration and genetic replacement of the Gravettian-related ancestry. In doing so, we push back by at least 3,000 years the date of the diffusion in Southern Europe of a genetic component linked to Balkan/Anatolian refugia, previously believed to have spread during the later Bolling/Allerod warming event (~14 ka ago). Our results suggest that demic diffusion from a genetically diverse population may have substantially contributed to cultural changes in LGM and post-LGM Southern Europe, independently from abrupt shifts to warmer and more favourable conditions.

Bortolini et al., Early Alpine human occupation backdates westward human migration in Late Glacial Europe, bioRxiv, posted August 10, 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.10.241430

See also...

Villabruna cluster =/= Near Eastern migrants

98 comments:

  1. So the earliest Villabruna type sofar carried Y-DNA Haplogroup I2...makes me wonder when R1b came into the picture...

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    1. Well, Villabruna itself is somewhat shifted toward AG3 compared to Grotta Continenza Mezolithic. It is going to be interesting to fit the new sample into this picture.

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    2. @ Slumbery

      Yes indeed. I wonder if East European like MtDNA had the first impact and East European Y-DNA followed on their heels...or a certain Subclad of I2 came from the North East accompanied by U4'9 ? Interesting times ahead.

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  2. After the LGM pressure flaking appears in the lower Danube area. That might be associated with AG3 ancestry/R1b.

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  3. The paper states that their qpGraph models seem to suggest up to 10% Gravettian admixture. But all their models have outliers over |Z| = 3, even if only slightly. And all these are modeled with basal Villabruna cluster as an unadmixted very old ancestry. Could that have influenced their conclusions?

    The Dzudzuana paper was able to model Villabruna with automated qpAdm as half dzudzuana, 35% Vestonice and 15% AG3.

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    1. @ epoch

      Just a bit of speculation.

      If those ratios have any truth to them and Tagliente turn out to have the same ratios it could mean several things.

      Either I2 came from a Heavy Dzudzuana-like population or mixed into a Heavy Dzudzuana-like population. So a 100% Dzudzuana-like population mixed into a 70% Vestonice/30% Afontova Gora like population. Or I2 came from a 70% Vestonice/30% Afontova Gora like population and mixed into a 100% Dzudzuana like population.

      Or Tagliente could turn out to be only a Mix of Dzudzuana-like and Vestonice-like with later addition of Afontova Gora.

      Could it be that R1b was present within or came from nearby a 70% Vestonice/30% Afontova Gora like population ?

      Or back and forth mixing created this ratios over time.

      Naturally more info about Dzudzuana will throw some light into this darkness.

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  4. @ epoch "The Dzudzuana paper was able to model Villabruna with automated qpAdm as half dzudzuana, 35% Vestonice and 15% AG3."

    And the point is, until the data of Dzudzuana paper appear, it is impossible to understand anything. It feels like it will never be published.

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  5. Yes, both the finished paper and the sample is dearly missed.

    By the way, I recall reading there is an occupation hiatus in Anatolia during the LGM. This might be old information, though.

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  6. @epoch

    "I recall reading there is an occupation hiatus in Anatolia during the LGM."

    Yeah, that's right. There were no people in the Upper Palaeolithic in Anatolia, so there were no sites, only from Europe along the seas and rivers sometimes people came.

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  7. How did everything happen in the Upper Palaeolithic:

    1. People came to Europe from Siberia. It's a vector of migration from East to West.

    2. The next Maximum Ice Age was coming. People migrated from Central Europe to Southern and Eastern Europe, and even penetrated Anatolia along the coast.

    3. The glaciers were retreating, people were going back North to Western Europe.

    As a result of constant repetition of steps 2 and 3, it turned out that Aurignacian penetrated into the Levant, and people from Cantabria penetrated beyond the Urals, where they left their drawings in the Kapova cave.

    But all has changed with Last Ice Maxim, the vector of migrations became strictly from East to West and did not change any more. The main factor was climate change, in Siberia, where before there was a good climate began to deteriorate, and in Europe the climate began to improve. Because of what in Siberia mammoths migrate to the north, and behind him and a man and already through the Northern Urals, he penetrated into Europe at the beginning of Mesolithic.
    Very characteristic, that in Kostenki the person lived always, not in vain this area and it is nicknamed Kostenki that means Bones as there found scatterings of bones from ancient times, but absolutely there are no remains of times of Mesolithic, people in Mesolithic did not live in Kostenki!

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  8. The authors assume WHG is a Balkan/Anatolia lineage even though there is no ancient dna evidence that this is the case.

    They cite Fregel 2016 which made this claim, so now authors treat it as fact even though it is only a claim with little evidence.

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  9. Well, they are dragging to Anatolia in vain, in other they are close to the truth.

    quotes
    "from Early to Late Epigravettian material culture in a vast area ranging from the Rhone river to the Southern Russian plain35. In this broad context, the individual found at Riparo Tagliente denotes thepresence in the region of human groups from Eastern Europe/Anatolia, therefore backdating by at least 3ka the occurrence of genetic components previously reported for the later Villabruna cluster (~14ka ago). At the same time, even earlier migrations into Southern Europe might be envisaged to explain the presence of Villabruna- or Tagliente2-related genetic components in the ~18.7 ka-oldsample found at El Mirón, Spain"

    "Our results rather show that population movements were already in place during the cold phase immediately following the LGM peak. At this stage, Italy, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe/Western Asia were already connected into the same network of potential LGM refugia, and exchanged both genes and cultural information."

    Actually the Epigravette culture goes so far to the south, in the Balkans it's rare and more hypothetical. It is in the Northern Balkans and the Carpathians.

    "The latter scenario stems from interpreting the traces of Villabruna/Tagliente2 genetic components recorded at El Mirón (~19ka ago4,34) as the result of an early phase of this westward expansion, rather than as a proliferation from Western European refugia."

    "Tagliente2, therefore, suggests that cumulative cultural change observed in Southern Europe from the end of LGM to the end of the Younger Dryas(~11.7 ka ago) was at least in part triggered by gene flow from eastern refugia into Northeastern Italy and that this process, in its early stage, was independent of warming events, and contributed to the gradual replacement of pre-LGM ancestry across the Italian peninsula."

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  10. So does that mean that the Villabruna component is from somewhere in Eastern Europe?

    Could the connection with Near East be shared ANE ancestry (as in CHG)? or could it be that Villabruna-related populations were intrusive in the Near East, possibly related to the WHG component of pops like Barcin and Pinarbasi?

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  11. In fig 1b, they show a map which includes a mesolithic sample from greece called diros. Does anybody know about the results of this individual and which study it came from?

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  12. They mostly talk about cultural changes but I think that it can also be seen in physiological changes. Late Upper Paleolithic (LUP) European hunter gatherers are shorter than older UP European hunter gatherers. The earlier Vestonice cluster Gravettians were not just taller but also more physically massive. Mammoths dying out might have been a great boon to the smaller bodied WHGs since the smaller bodied hunter gatherers would fare better with smaller prey.

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  13. I think the initial dispersal is man is still tbd . Both Siberia and Europe were colonised by 45,000 BP
    curiously the Caucasus was only colonised c 40,000 BP; truly a Neanderthal refuge; as were southern Iberia; west Balkans which were only solidly colonised by AMH as late as Gravettian

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  14. @ TLT

    LUP had also more Neanderthal traits.WHG/Mesolithic Europeans were quite gracile compared to them,by far less robust and by far more lookable and similar to modern Humans despite their unique pigmentation.It is also quite obvious that Mixes with ANE related populations from eastern eu and siberia change their looks.For example the Baltic HG were not dark skinned but fair/pale!!!

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  15. @Anatolian farmer

    According to this : https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02437472

    "The Epigravettian sample is characterized by significantly greater tibial length, robustness and platycnemia, significantly lower circumferences in the upper limb bones and the clavicle, and a high degree of asymmetry."

    Late Epigravettian Arene Candide had a greater lower limb mass and robustness but had a lower circumference in upper limbs and clavicle. Is that a more Neanderthal trait? No, seriously, I haven't really seen Neanderthal postcranial evaluations yet, so you tell me.

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  16. North Balkan- carpathian - Ukraine was probably one zone housing the relevant HG networks
    U5, U4 are likely to have expanded from there
    History has a habit of repeating itself

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  17. @Michalis Moriopoulos,

    You commented on last thread, saying you dis agree on my opinon WHG is from Italy.

    You make good points. We have many DNA samples from Gravitean Italy dating ~28ky and they are clearly not the ancestors of later WHG people who lived in Italy at least by 17ky. This is undisputable.

    I agree, WHG itself did not originate in Italy. But, I think that the Western European variety of WHG did originate in Italy and that it expanded out of Italy across Western Europe "replacing" the Magdalonian-derived hunter gatherers.

    A unique view I have, that I think others might agree with, is there are two different types of WHG. A Western type and Easter type. The Western type had mtDNA U5b, the Eastern type U5a. The Western type had blue eyes the eastern type had brown eyes.

    I think WHG itself probably originated in Southeast Europe in Upper Paleolithic, but the Western variety (mtDNA U5b) originated in Italy from whence it expanded into France, Germany, Britain, Spain.

    But I think the WHG ancestry in Serbia, Ukraine, Latvia, Russia hunter gatherers is mainly from Balkans not Italy. But WHG ancestry in France, Germany, Britain comes from Italy.

    Which, you would probably agree with. The consensus seems to be Italian WHG replavced Magdalonian HGs but that WHG itself did not originate in Italy.

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  18. @Michalis Moriopoulos,

    Looking at mtDNA/Y DNA, the Near East link which geneticists make for WHG, seems unlikely. And the distinction made between WHG and Gravitean also seems misstaken.

    Almost all WHG carried mtDNA U5, if you ignore ANE mtDNA in Eastern Europe. Yet, we see no mtDNA U5 in Near East. But, we do see pre-U5 in Gravitean.

    There is Y DNA J in Near East, but there is Y DNA I* in Gravitean. This places WHG's mtDNA/Y DNA in Europe by 29,000 years ago even if Gravitean isn't their direct ancestor.

    They are smart to point out there is something Near East and WHg share which Gravitean lacks, but this doesn't mean WHG is from Near East. But it could support Southeast European origin of WHg.

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  19. It should not be forgotten that Epigravette differs from Gravette primarily by changing from large plates to microplate technology, but this technology appeared in North Asia, even in North-East Asia (Korea. Japan) it appeared much earlier than in Europe. Sharp primitivization of all is a characteristic of Epigravette, the art from the expressive naturalistic Gravette is replaced by geometric, which is typical for Siberia. This was all learned by Epigravette together with the traditions of Gravette, this merger took place somewhere in the territory of Moldova-Hungary, where the main monuments of Epigravette of early time are concentrated.
    Epigravettian was almost not much in the Balkans, it was in small numbers in the Northern Balkans, and certainly, it did not happen from the Balkans.

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  20. @ TLT


    The EEMH lineage in the European Mesolithic is also known as "West European Hunter-Gatherer" (WHG). These mesolithic hunter-gatherers emerge after the end of the LGM c. 15 ka and are described as more gracile than the Upper Paleolithic Cro-Magnons


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


    This is the WHG girl from Denmark and Chedar man,figure out...


    https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/cheddar-man-mesolithic-britain-blue-eyed-boy.html

    https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-5-700-year-old-chewing-gum-reveals-danish-woman-had-dark-skin-blue-eyes-and-stds-1.8284919


    As you can see they do not look exactly like Cromagnons and they were definitely not so robust as their forefathers..!!!

    It is actually the opposite,the Chedar guy is actually quite leptoprosopic(not in the amounts of modern west eurasians,but still).

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  21. They point about the West Asian origin is that WHG is closer to Dzudzuana than the pre-LGM samples from Europe are. Without gene flow from a Dzudzuana-like source to Europe this could not be the case.

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  22. @Tetris

    But it's not much of a point if WHG didn't originate in West Asia, is it?

    And there's no way that WHG existed anywhere in West Asia. It's obviously a very European-specific cluster.

    So it had to have formed in Europe.

    Some migrations from West Asia may have contributed to this process, but even this isn't necessarily true, because bidirectional contacts between populations in Southeastern Europe and Anatolia/Caucasus make for a better explanation.

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  23. @ Archi

    “ Sharp primitivization of all is a characteristic of Epigravette, the art from the expressive naturalistic Gravette is replaced by geometric, which is typical for Siberia”

    For some reason; this is often not stated ; even by Russian archaeologists

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  24. I have to say it's the oldest I2 known. Where is the hypothesis that I2 originated in the Epigravette culture, and in general the place of its origin may be associated with Eastern Europe and Dzudzuana.

    I2 Z2672/CTS11806/PF3845 * FGC77992 * Z2647/CTS2257/PF3704+63 SNPs formed 27500 ybp, TMRCA 21500 ybp

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  25. Has anyone confirmed that there's ANE in the Epipaleolithic Anatolian sample? If there isn't, then that would rule out an Anatolia/West Asian home for WHG would it not?

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  26. @Tetris

    But the whole point of Dzudzuana is that it had Basal Eurasian and European HGs have not. So where did it come from?

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  27. @All,

    This is the oldest example of WHG mtDNA. Paglicci71's genome has not been sequenced. But he will for sure come out as a WHG person. 2,000 years older than Tagliente. Southern Italy.


    Italy, Epigravettian, 19,250-18,210 cal BP, Paglicci71 U5b2b

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  28. Paglicci71 is contemporary to Elmiron in Spain.

    Yet This paper, claims Elmiorn decended from an earlier less successful wave of WHG into Western Europe. No, chances are WHG entered Southern Europe during the Ice age. And for whatever reasons was more successful in Italy than in Spain.

    The authors of this paper go for a recent origin of WHG in Italy. They say it arrived with Late Epigravitean culture. But considered Paglicci71, it was probably there earlier. And with ElMiron we can confidently say it reached Spain by 20,000 years ago.

    Paglicci71 is 2,000 years older than the Tagliente, is for sure a WHG person, and lives in Southern Italy, suggesting the whole peninsula of Italy was covered by WHG people by 19,000 years ago. Two thousand years before these Tagliente samples.

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  29. What is Basal Eurasian precisely ? And why do we expect to see Basal Eurasian in populations who already lived 30 000 plus years outside of Africa ? And does the proposed early back migrations into Africa from Eurasia put a huge questionmark on what Basal Eurasian actually means ?

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  30. Ust Ishim is the Oldest Eurasian sofar and should hypothetically be the closest to an original Basal Eurasian population but it isn't. So is it reasonable that the so called "Basal Eurasian" should actually be called Afro Eurasians who maybe migrated into Eurasia After real Basal Eurasians like Ust Ishim Ancestors, who mixed and pushed back Neanderthals, migrated into Eurasia leaving Western Eurasia clean for others following ?

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  31. @Ric Hern,

    I doubt Basal Eurasian is a kind of African ancestry, considered no ancient African mtDNA DNA exists in Southwest Asia.

    Despite what some say, Y DNA E is not African. It is nested in Eurasian family tree. Its brother is D which is entirely Asian and its cousin is CF which is entirely Eurasian.

    In my opinon, Basal Eurasian is totally and utterly Eurasian. But nothing is off the table considering how little we know about.

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  32. I guess I miss interpretated you.

    You say Basal Eurasians were Eurasians situated in Africa. Genetically Eurasian, but living in Africa.

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  33. @pnuadha

    In fig 1b, they show a map which includes a mesolithic sample from greece called diros. Does anybody know about the results of this individual and which study it came from?

    Apparently, there's a late Mesolithic forager from Greece coming soon and it's basically identical to early Western Anatolian and Balkan farmers.

    But maybe there's a problem with the dating?

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  34. @ Samuel Andrews

    No you understood perfectly both times because it seems that many interpret Basal Eurasians as those who left Africa and contributed to all Eurasian Ancestry which would be around the proposed Y-DNA Haplogroup CT time. Others propose that Basal Eurasian is completely Southwest Asian with little or no direct connection to the original population who left Africa. I just want to know which one it is that people are referring to when they talk about Basal Eurasian because the different views causes misunderstandings. I personally do not view Proposed Haplogroup DE as closer to Basal Eurasian than CF.

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  35. @Ric Hern,

    Ust ishim shouldn't be closest to basal Eurasians, because he was decended from the same population who populated East Asia, South Asia, Australlia, Europe 50,000-40,000 years ago.

    The idea is, closely related groups of humans suddenly exploded across all of Eurasia starting roughly 50,000 or 60,000 years ago. This is what is seen in archaeological record. All of a sudden human sites pop up everywhere by 40,000 years ago suggesting a pretty rapid expansion. This expansion was supposedly done by people like Ust Ishim who gave rise to all populations in Asia today (and also gave rise to Paleolithic Europeans).

    The idea is, Basal Eurasian represents a different group of humans who stayed behind in Southwest Asia.

    The truth is more complicated than this. But, anyways, it is well understood Ust Ishim is not any closer to basal Eurasian, but a dead-end member of the family of humans who basically populated all of Eurasia.

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  36. Diros is a Neolithic cave burial site

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  37. @pnuadha
    "In fig 1b, they show a map which includes a mesolithic sample from greece called diros. Does anybody know about the results of this individual and which study it came from?"

    There are ones at Mathieson 2017-18 and Lazaridis 2017, but it says they're all Neolithic. Perhaps they mean the oldest of them?

    Neolithic Greece Peloponnese, Diros, Alepotrypa Cave [I3708 / A561] 6005-5879 calBCE (7050В±30 BP, PSUAMS-2682) F T1a 703259 Mathieson 2017
    Neolithic Greece Peloponnese, Diros, Alepotrypa Cave [I2937 / A2197 multi-burial, Chamber B, Layer 14, ] 5479-5338 calBCE (6441±38 calBP, OxA-22012) F K1a26 https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/SAMEA104106966 481848 Lazaridis 2017
    Neolithic Greece Peloponnese, Diros, Alepotrypa Cave [I5427 / A2055 ] 5000-3200 BCE F K1a24 767650 Mathieson 2017
    Neolithic Greece Peloponnese, Franchthi Cave [I2318 / FR115, FR115] 4043-3947 calBCE (5170±30 BP, Poz-81125) F H2 160291 Mathieson 2017
    Neolithic Greece Peloponnese, Diros, Alepotrypa Cave [I3709 / A236] 3990-3804 calBCE (5130±30 BP, UCIAMS-186358) F K1b1a 620624 Mathieson 2017
    Neolithic Greece Peloponnese, Diros, Alepotrypa Cave [I3920 / A68, A68, _ 20, 2(1?)4-7-70] 3933-3706 calBCE (5000±25 BP, UCIAMS-186359) F H 545319 Mathieson 2017


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  38. Ust-Ishim is very far from Basal Eurasian. Basal Eurasian looks like West Asian specific drift which takes West Asians (and others who they contributed ancestry to) away from North (ANE) and East Eurasians. This drift could have occurred in West Asia so the separation can post-date the expansion out of Africa. 'Basal Eurasian' is not necessarily the correct term because we dont know if this is really Crown Eurasian or some drift occurring in-situ in West Asia. That Ust-Ishim doesnt contain any Basal Ancestry supports the theory that this is West-Asian specific drift.

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    1. @ mzp1

      "Basal Eurasian' is not necessarily the correct term"

      Thank you. That is precisely what I was trying to say with all my mumbling. Heheheeh.

      Delete
  39. @Ric Hern

    Ust Ishin is nowhere near, not even close, the oldest Eurasian. The populations of Skhul and Qafzeh are certainly Homo Sapiens and are more than 100,000 years old. And there are other examples of Eurasian Homo Sapiens population as old as. Ust Ishin is simply the oldest human being ever sequenced, because it was discovered in permafrost.

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  40. @Anatolian farmer

    >It is actually the opposite,the Chedar guy is actually quite leptoprosopic(not in the amounts of modern west eurasians,but still).

    Long faces weren't uncommon among the Vestonice cluster Gravettians. Masculine faces tend to have a higher facial index so this isn't unexpected, though this is starting to go off topic.

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  41. @Cy Tollover

    There is evidence that after the LGM "North Asian" influences appear at the middle Danubian.

    "Contrary to the Gravettian based predominantly on lithic imports and producing long blades from the classical crested and prismatic cores, the Epigravettian blanks (flakes, shorter blades, microblades) are produced from short and cubical cores as well as from elongated blade cores. Typically, some of the microblades were made by pressure technique from wedge-shaped cores strongly recalling the North Asian parallels.

    https://journals.openedition.org/paleo/607

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  42. @Davidski

    "Apparently, there's a late Mesolithic forager from Greece coming soon and it's basically identical to early Western Anatolian and Balkan farmers"

    Do you have any thoughts on the CHG-related ancestry that appears in some (but apparently not all) Greek Neolithic farmers among other samples in Mathieson et al 2018?

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  43. @Samuel Andrews

    I doubt Basal Eurasian is African. This a bit confusing to me, do you know what is the earliest sample in Europe with Basal Eurasian ancestry?

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  44. @Sam

    A few months ago there was a paper on ancient East African DNA, and there was a Kenyan sample (I believe it was about 4-5,000 years old) which was found to by y-DNA CT. There have been several other y-DNA CT samples reported from Upper Paleolithic Europe, however they were all low-coverage, poor quality samples. This Kenyan was different, I believe they were able to sequence around 500,000 SNPs at around 1.0 genome coverage, so fairly high quality for ancient DNA. There's a good chance that guy was a genuinely basal form of CT. Other than Genetiker, I don't know of any other amateurs who could have investigated his data and actually verified what his Y really was. Genetiker was mostly insane but his Y-Calls always seemed to be on point.

    I suppose even if that 4-5,000 year old Kenyan is a real CT*, it ultimately doesn't say that much about ultimate origin of CT, which is around 70,000 years old, and started diverging from it's brother B tens of thousands of years even before that.

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  45. @ Samuel Andrews

    So, Basal Eurasians were basically Not-Basal to all Eurasians then...

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  46. @gamerz_J

    Do you have any thoughts on the CHG-related ancestry that appears in some (but apparently not all) Greek Neolithic farmers among other samples in Mathieson et al 2018?

    It must have come from somewhere deep in Anatolia, and not only affected parts of mainland Greece, but also Crete, because the Minoans show this influence too.

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  47. Cy Tolliver,
    "A few months ago there was a paper on ancient East African DNA, and there was a Kenyan sample (I believe it was about 4-5,000 years old) which was found to by y-DNA CT"

    Interesting. That needs to be looked into. But, this ancient kenyan's Y DNA might not be of African origin. Considering 4,500 years ago, a migrations pastorals from Middle East migrated deep into East Africa including into Kenya.

    But, anyways, we'll have to wait till someone such as Davidski and smrtl looks at that sample.

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  48. mary said...
    "The populations of Skhul and Qafzeh are certainly Homo Sapiens and are more than 100,000 years old."

    Whether or not they were Homo Sapiens does not matter how much they are mixed with Neanderthals, too, because they are guaranteed to died out without leaving their descendants.
    Treating Skhul as Eurasia is a purely modern political geography approach, in fact it is essentially an extension of Africa, the border between Africa and Eurasia is conditional, it does not coincide with natural zones.

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  49. @Archi,

    The border between Africa & Eurasia is natural. The Sinai peninsula is a tiny piece of land which connects them. Other than that they are two separate land masses.

    Skhul and Qafzeh probably weren't Eurasian genetically but they did live in Asia.

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  50. I have a hypothesis about the origin of the Epigravette and Gravette cultures.

    The Epigravette originates from the movement from Trans-Urals to Hungary in Eastern Europe where near the Caucasus they mixed with people like Dzudzuana, who may even have been I2(?).

    The Gravette originates from the Mezmaiskaya cave of the Northwest Caucasus, where probably the ancestors of I lived. In cultural terms, the Mezmaiskaya cave is most suitable for the ancestor of Gravette, and IJ most likely went to Europe through the Caucasus.

    Samuel Andrews said...
    "The border between Africa & Eurasia is natural."

    This is not the case, there is no difference between Africa and Asia. It is precisely there that the geological boundary does not coincide with the geographic boundary, if you look at the map you will see that this area is an extension of Africa and is separated from the rest of Asia by relief.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Israel_relief_location_map.jpg

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  51. The so-called ''proto-Gravettian'' attributes of the Caucasus U.P sites is well recgonised
    Curiously, however, the Buran Kaya sample from Crimea happened to be dead-end lineages of Y-hg C/C1 and mtDNA N.
    But clearly, the Gravettian developed in Europe itself, as did the preceding Aurignacian, even though proto or related versions of each are found in West Asia, Zagros, etc

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  52. @ Archi

    ''The Epigravette originates from ....''

    There can be no theory unless you define what epigravettian we are talking about. Different regions, different time.
    There is no universal theory

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  53. The supposed CT Kenyan should be sample KPL001, I gave it a shot with Yleaf but from what I can tell he isn't CT, in fact, he seems ancestral for almost all markers defining CT, instead he seems to be deeply within B, B2b1a1 specifically. They apparently used the program yHaplo in the paper, not sure about it.

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  54. @Archi

    Well, first, this:
    "because they are guaranteed to died out without leaving their descendants."
    It is nothing more than speculation. For now, there is no way to guarantee this. In fact, more than one paper concluded that the date of the separation of the Basal Eurasians from the rest of the Eurasians was around 100ky. Obviously these are statistical analyzes and may change as we get more samples, but it is a real possibility. Now, if you consider part of Asia to be Africa, it matters little. The point is that it is a population that split up long before Ust' Ishim was alive.

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  55. Davidski
    “ It must have come from somewhere deep in Anatolia, and not only affected parts of mainland Greece, but also Crete, because the Minoans show this influence too.”

    If it’s found in Crete we a safer to assume it’s coming by sea, along the south Anatolian coast and Cyprus. This could be tied to the use of hieroglyphs and Minoan-related script along that region.

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  56. @mary
    "It is nothing more than speculation. For now, there is no way to guarantee this. In fact, more than one paper concluded that the date of the separation of the Basal Eurasians from the rest of the Eurasians was around 100ky."

    You wrote speculation, and I didn't. What every anthropologist knows is that they are extinct, these people were more like Neanderthals than Cromagnon, and after they were extinct, the people did not live there, the Neanderthals lived there. The fact that they were not the ancestors of any of the people is not even two opinions about it.

    -------------

    The Aurignac people are also coming to Europe, there is no prototype for the Aurignac culture in Europe at all, but it is in the Altai.

    Altai, Karakol culture >
    Russian Plain, Streleckaya culture >
    European Aurignac >
    Levantine Aurignac.

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  57. The prevailing theories link the european protoAurignacian with the Ahmarian.

    Karakol culture has not been mentioned . Maybe sources can be provided ; because it seems to be a Bronze Age culture in the altai
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakol_culture

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  58. @Archi,

    You are arguing against basic geography if you think Asia & Africa aren't two separate continents.

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  59. "A Basal Eurasian lineage in the Near East is plausible given the presence of anatomically modern humans
    in the Levant ~100 thousand years ago and African-related tools likely made by modern
    humans in Arabia"

    This is from "Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral
    populations for present-day Europeans"

    Although the study authors do not directly say Skhul and Qafzeh, if it were an absolute certainty that the 100ky Levantine humans did not leave descendants, the above sentence would not be written. The above study was written by a lot of guys from Harvard and the Marx Plank institute, so ... yes, there is no such unanimous opinion that you wrote.

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  60. @Claravallensis

    Yep, that's the guy, KPL001. That's awesome you were able to dig deeper into that sample, you are hereby the designated Y-SNP Call guy moving forward. It's interesting they seem to have got his call wrong like that, there are other samples from that paper with comparable, and some much worse, coverage than him whom they were able drill down to more granular Y-calls. A lot of these papers coming out within the past a year or two seem to be really bungling Y-Calls, I think it's due to that YHaplo program you mentioned.

    I double-checked the paper just now and they modeled KPL001 as mostly Mota-like with 18% Mbuti-related admixture, so B2b1a1 would make a lot of sense in his case.

    Btw, where did you get his genotype data?

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  61. @mary

    "humans did not leave descendants, the above sentence would not be written. "

    Well, then at least read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skhul_and_Qafzeh_hominins

    -----

    The hypothesis about the Ahmarian is a very ancient hypothesis, when nothing was yet known about the archaeology of other places. Ahmarian has almost nothing like Aurignacian, it is very difficult to consider him as the ancestor of Aurignacian.
    Especially since the Levantine Aurignacian is clearly derived from the European Aurignacian.

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  62. @Cy Tolliver
    The sample is available on ncbi, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/ERX3805719[accn]

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  63. @epoch

    Yes, Dzudzuana has Basal Eurasian admixture that is missing in WHG, so Dzudzuana is not a direct ancestor of WHG. A Dzudzuana-related population without Basal Eurasian admixture (so basically WHG) must have existed somewhere else at that time (26Kya).

    Where? Somewhere that can connect Europe and the South Caucasus. Anatolia? North Caucasus?

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  64. @Tetris

    WHG formed in the Balkans during the Paleolithic as a result of gene flows from the west, east and north.

    This process continued until it resulted in the formation of the Mesolithic Iron Gates cluster with elevated EHG ancestry.

    So by the time this happened, the WHG cluster had dispersed into other parts of Europe.

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  65. @Davidski
    "WHG formed in the Balkans during the Paleolithic as a result of gene flows from the west, east and north."

    Why? Where's the evidence? Where are the flows? In what cultures was it formed and when?

    Let me remind you that the Epigarvettian culture has nothing to do with the Balkans, it is Central European and Eastern European.

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  66. Archie ;
    You’re not appreciating the complexities here- granted it is a complex issue for the non-familiar


    One of the most recent articles outlines the hypotheses

    “ early appearance dates from Manot and Kebara begin the Ahmarian by 46 ka cal BP, securely before the earliest Protoaurignacian, and therefore allow for the hypothesis that the Ahmarian of the Levant gave rise to the Protoaurignacian of Europe.”

    Whilst
    “ In terms of chronology, the secure Levantine Aurignacian dates from Manot are contemporaneous with or slightly later than the 39.5 to 35.5 ka cal BP modeled start dates of the Evolved Aurignacian in Southwest France/Northern Iberia at L’Arbreda, La Viña, and Abri Pataud and substantially later than Early Aurignacian assemblages, which begin between 43.5 and 40 ka cal BP across Europe at sites including Abri Pataud, Labeko Koba, and Willendorf II (48, 49). Thus, dates from Manot do not refute the hypothesis that the Levantine Aurignacian developed from a European Aurignacian precursor.”

    https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/11/e1701450?rss=1

    Of course Siberia, could have some relations too; but nobody has mentioned it. So far; is only relevant for late paleolithic ANE

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  67. Dzudzuna without Basal Eurasian would not be WHG, it'd be a distant relative of WHG. A common miss conception is Middle East pops are literally part WHG when in reality they have ancestry from a population related to WHG.

    Ancestry models in ancient DNA papers are always approximate when they use ghost populations.

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  68. Middle East shares something with WHG which currently published samples from Paleolithic Europe do not. It is annoying how Harvard then treats this as meaning WHG was super Middle Eastern.

    Anyways, if WHG is from Balkans that is close enough to share an ancestor with Middle East. One. WHG might derive from three different populations, maybe all related to Gravitean, and have just one who it shares with Dzudzuana.

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  69. @Davidski,

    Interesting you share your opinion on the origin of WHG. It makes sense me. Would you agree ANE was not apart of the makeup of early WHG since it is not present in earliest Italian WHGs?

    Even though Villabruna carries R1b and is part ANE, doesn't mean WHG is part ANE considering Villabruna isn't a pure WHG. He is part Iron gates-like hence where he got his R1b.

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  70. @David

    Feldman et al had with the Pinarbasi paper a nice little surprise: 28k old gravettian Ostuni1 showed affinity to the AHG sample, but not to Natufians.

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  71. If Skhul and Qafzeh aren't Eurasian what are they? African or something else that died out?

    ReplyDelete
  72. @ David

    Probably the best comment so far here about WHG.This is exactly what WHG it is and how it formed.I totally agree with your post 100%!!!!!

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  73. Yes, the Balkans could be where WHG formed. But not by drift from previous Paleo European populations, but through admixture with another unsampled population (from Anatolia?). A Dzudzuana-related population without Basal Eurasian would be UHG, and this mixed with Vestonice-cluster? ANE doesn't seem to have been so far west before the LGM. Maybe Kostenki-related too?

    What would the UHG and Vestonice/Kostenki ratios in WHG be? Without an UHG sample it seems difficult to know.

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  74. @Davidski,
    "WHG formed in the Balkans during the Paleolithic as a result of gene flows from the west, east and north."

    I tend to think WHG isn't very mixed in this way.

    I tend to think it is more so created by drift and isolation. This is because its mtDNA diversity is so low. Vast majority of WHG carry mTDNA U5, excluding U4 which is almost for sure of ANE origin.

    There was a wide variety of mtDNA U lineages in Paleolithic Europe, but in WHG we only see U5 and U2e (and U8b/K1, but almost only in Iron Gates). That looks like the product of drift, isolation to me.

    But, obviously mtDNA isn't definitive evidence for determining these things.

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  75. @Rob

    The dates obtained for Kebara are attributed by most to Emiran. The fact is that, typologically, it is not clear how the Aurignacian can turn out from Ahmarian, and the Levantine Aurignacian appears immediately in its finished form as a rather late European Aurignacian, it does not have transitional forms in the Middle East. In Europe, the evolution of Aurignacian is visible, there are all of its intermediate stages, but in the Levant he simply does not exist, he appears there immediately in a finished form and several exists simultaneously with Ahmarian. While in Mountainous Altai the Aurignacoid Ust-Karakol tradition exists 50 thousand years ago, it appeared there before Ahmarian and man's penetration into Europe. In European literature, Ust-Karakol is often even called simply Aurignacian although it is immediately obvious that it is more archaic there and is intermediate in technology between the Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic.

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  76. @Samuel Andrews
    "There was a wide variety of mtDNA U lineages in Paleolithic Europe, but in WHG we only see U5 and U2e (and U8b/K1, but almost only in Iron Gates)."

    K1 this is the primordially Balkan mitohaplogroup, but in it in the Paleolithic there is no other place in Europe.

    "That looks like the product of drift, isolation to me."

    There was no isolation there.

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  77. Archi

    That’s because the protoAur is from ahmarian; not the later “classic” Aur; which evolved in Danubia and then back migrated
    So it went like:

    Ahmarian —> proto Aurignacian; Kozarnika, Fumane
    (47,000) (43,000)

    Levantine aurignacian <—- European aurignacian
    (37,000) (42,000)


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  78. @Archi + Rob

    Too bad "Egbert" is lost, because the sample is from exactly the right time and spot to settle the dispute.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksar_Akil#Ksar_Akil_1:_%22Egbert%22

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  79. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  80. Another interesting fact is that we somehow have to explain Oase 1 and 2 being something totally different from Europeans or even other West-Eurasians. Both are quite related, clearly part of one distinct separate population but different enough to be evidence that they were part of a larger population.

    Where did these come from? What culture are they associated with?

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  81. In Ahmarian there is practically nothing from Aurignac, and it is simply impossible to derive Proto-Aurignac from it. This is a long outdated hypothesis, which exists only due to the fact that the dates from Kebar are ascribed to Ahmarian, and not to Emiran, to whom they really relate. But Ust-Karakol is a real Proto-Orignac, in all respects, including dating and attributes. In general, there is no chance that Ahmarian was the ancestor of Aurignac.

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  82. epoch said...
    "Too bad "Egbert" is lost, because the sample is from exactly the right time and spot to settle the dispute."

    This is Emiran, it is more archaic, it rather belongs to the Middle Paleolithic. In Altai, its typology is also represented, it is in Kara-Bom (like Early Emiran), local cultures originate from it that do not belong to the Aurignacian Ust-Karakol tradition.

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  83. @ Archi

    That’s true; the alternative proposal tend to ‘Central Asia’ (broadly); which is why I previously mentioned Zagros for a ‘ proto-West Eurasian ‘.

    ReplyDelete
  84. All known genetic data deny the connection of the Aurignacians with Western Asia.

    Palaeolithic Aurignacian Belgium Troisième caverne (Goyet) [GoyetQ116-1] 33210-32480 calBCE (30880+170-160 BP, GrA-46175) M C1a M130, V232, F3393, CTS11043 M
    Palaeolithic Aurignacian Belgium Troisième caverne (Goyet) [Goyet376-3] 33940-33140 cal BP M

    mtDNA M, Y C1a

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  85. "At the end of the Middle Paleolithic (60-50 thousand years ago) in Gorny Altai, “two technical variants” (“development lines”, in some works - “technocomplex”) were outlined - Kara-Bomovsky and Denisovsky (Ust-Karakol).

    The first of them is characterized by the predominance of Levallois cleavage and the technique of lamellar cleavage. The typological set of tools was determined, first of all, by Levallois forms, in combination with denticulate and Upper Paleolithic tools. The Denisovian (Ust-Karakol) variant is characterized mainly by parallel and radial splitting, the predominance of various types of side-scrapers in the toolkit, and the presence of expressive Levallois artifacts (Derevianko, Shunkov 2005a: 284; Derevianko 2005: 504).

    On the basis of these two variants, in the period about 50–40 ka BP. In Gorny Altai, two independent "traditions" ("developmental lines") of the Early Upper Paleolithic are formed - Kara-Bom and Ust-Karakol (sometimes also called "variants"). The Ust-Karakol tradition (industries of Ust-Karakol-1, Denisova cave, Anuya-3, Tyumechina-4 and, apparently, Strashnaya cave) (Fig. 21: A) is characterized, in particular, by a complex of Aurignacoid forms, including end scrapers on plates with Aurignacian retouching (including “with interception”), “Karene” -type scrapers, middle incisors (including multi-faceted ones), large blades with regular retouching along the perimeter, retouched microplates (Fig. 22-24). On this basis, the industry of Ust-Karakol-1 and Anui-3 is sometimes considered in European literature as “Aurignacian” (Kozlowski, Otte 2000: 526). It is significant that the indicated Aurignacian forms are supplemented in this “tradition” with leaf-shaped, bilaterally processed points - a situation that is extremely reminiscent of the Early Upper Paleolithic of Central Europe.

    According to the authors of the excavations themselves, the Ust-Karakol tradition was formed on the local Mousterian basis (Derevianko, Shunkov 2005a). On the one hand, it grows on the basis of the Levallois technique of removing blanks, on the other, it includes double-sided leaf-shaped forms. Numerous bone artifacts, including needles with ears, were found here. The extremely early appearance of an expressive set of jewelry is indicative. Most of the bone tools and ornaments come from layer XI of Denisova Cave, the oldest of the sites containing such finds (Fig. 25)."

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  86. In upper paleolithic terms; it’s baseless to consider mtdna M as “east Eurasian”
    The aurignacian -type assemblages in Central Asia date to 35,000 BP ; which means they cannot be ancestral to Europe . Rather they are part of similar processes

    “ A signi cant difference is that the Kulbulakian assemblages include a number of typologically distinct tools that are not typical of classical Aurignacian, for instance, the backed bladelets linking Kulbulakian with the Zagros industries (Bordes, Shidrang, 2012).
    he evolution of the Kulbulakian, then, was part of the evolution of “Aurignacoid” industries of the Middle and Near East. It cannot be considered Aurignacian sensu stricto. ”

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  87. “ CARINATED PIECES IN PALEOLITHIC ASSEMBLAGES OF CENTRAL ASIA*” Kolobova et al

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  88. The Kazarnika Cave has nothing to do with Aurignacian, most likely it is directly related to the nearby Oase Cave, which originates from Ust-Ishim.

    The fact is that Aurignacian is immediately recognizable by its bone industry.

    "The magnificent set of decorations from the 'layer XI' of the Denisova Cave includes items made of stone, shells, bones, tusks and shells of ostrich eggs. There are forms typical of the Aurignacian (spirally ornamented beads, pendants made of animal teeth with a hole in the root, previously refined by scraping , parts) and for Chatelperrone (pendants made of animal teeth with a circular groove around the root, ivory rings), and even for MSA / LSA Africa (shell beads) (Fig. 25). Particularly impressive are fragments of a stone bracelet with a hole for a lace (?) made of serpentine (coil) (Fig. 25: 28). On the surface of the product there are traces of very advanced technologies - sawing, drilling, grinding. This find is confined to the middle part of "layer XI" (more precisely, to the base of the upper lit. horizon 11.1 according to the description of 2005)
    (Derevianko, Shunkov, Volkov et al. 2005: 102–104, Fig. 2: 2; Paleolithic childhood… 2005: 10–11).
    It should be especially noted that bone artifacts and adornments are found both in the middle and in the lower horizon of the “layer XI” habitat, which lies at the base of this member of deposits.

    Initially, the conventional 14C date> 37,000 + 235 BP was obtained for the “layer XI” (middle part). (Derevianko, Shunkov, Agadzhanyan et al. 2003: 110–111). Later, during the excavation of the eastern gallery of the Denisova Cave, 2 14C AMS dates were obtained: for the lower part of this member deposits - 48.650 + 2.380 / 1.840 BP (KIA 25285 SP 553 / D19); for the roof –29.200 + 360 BP (AA – 35321) (Derevianko, Shunkov, Volkov et al. 2005: 102; Derevianko, Shunkov, Tsybankov et al. 2006: 124). Thus, the earliest Upper Paleolithic deposits of the Denisova Cave (the lower part of the “layer XI”) are dated within 50–45 ka BP, and the upper ones - ~ 30,000 BP. The Early Upper Paleolithic Beds IX – XI of the Ust-Karakol-1 site, dated by A.P. Derevianko in the range 45–35 ka BP (Derevianko 2005a: 13)."

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  89. Mitohaplogroup M was never West Asian, it was never Zagrosian and further to the West. Aurignacian GoyetQ116-1 clearly shows its connection to North-East Asia Tianyuan.
    Autosomes are unequivocal proof.

    Central Asia has nothing to do with Altai. Kulbulakian is Uzbekistan, closer to South Asia, and Altai is more belong to Siberia. Nobody speaks Kulbulakian at all. Central Asia at that time was a completely lifeless region, and Siberia between Altai and Baikal was crammed with humans settlements older than they appeared in Europe. The Zagros cannot be the ancestor of the European Aurignac, it is later, it is very homogeneous, there is no such Aurignacian bone industry. But Kulbulakian may be descended from Ust-Karakol and be the ancestor of the Zagros's Baradostian.

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  90. Seems reasonable to propose that. We really need some early UP stuff from Asia

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  91. So does Goyet's MtDNA account for his affinity to Tianyuan?

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  92. @Ric Hern

    Gravettian samples Pavlov1 and Paglicci133 were assigned Y DNA Haplogroup I by Fu et al. Also, mtDNA U5 was present among Gravettians. I think these are currently the only pre-LGM I's. Also KremsWA3, Vestonice15 and 16, and Pavlov1 were mtDNA U5.

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  93. @Epoch

    "Feldman et al had with the Pinarbasi paper a nice little surprise: 28k old gravettian Ostuni1 showed affinity to the AHG sample, but not to Natufians."

    What do you think this means? Could AHG have ancestry from Europe?

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  94. @gamerz_J

    I think there is no doubt it has. The question is to what extent and when it happened. Since Iron Gates HGs seem to have a special relationship even compared to WHG I'd say several layers of European ancestry exist in AHG.

    ReplyDelete

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