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Friday, May 14, 2021

A Greek tragedy


I wasn't going to blog about the Clemente et al. "Aegean palatial civilizations" paper, because I think that it's a rather strange effort overall. But apparently a lot of people want to know my thoughts on the topic, so here goes.

If you download the relevant PDF file (here) and do a search for "Slav", you'll see that the word doesn't even appear in the bibliography. How is that possible, considering the massive impact that the Slavs had on the Balkans, including Greece, during the Middle Ages?

Indeed, here's a quote from page 12 of the PDF: "Present-day Greeks - who also carry Steppe-related ancestry - share ~90% of their ancestry with MBA northern Aegeans, suggesting continuity between the two time periods."

That's a very optimistic view. In fact, there's no evidence whatsoever in the paper that there's even 1% genetic continuity between present-day Greeks and any ancient Greek population, let alone the MBA northern Aegeans.

The genetic impact of Medieval Slavic migrations on most present-day Greek populations is easy to see. For instance, below are several linear models based on D-statistics of the form D(Outgroup,Test;Ancient1,Ancient2). You don't need a PhD in mathematics to understand them. The relevant data file is available here.

Note that most of the present-day Greek groups cluster together, and they also form fairly neat clines with the other Greeks, as well as Cypriots, other Balkan populations, including those speaking Slavic languages, and also the Slavic-speaking Ukrainians. On the other hand, they don't overlap with any of the ancient groups from Greece and surrounds, nor do they generally form obvious clines with them.

To me this suggests that most present-day Greeks harbor significant levels of Slavic ancestry and some sort of recent Cypriot-related ancestry, and in large part they're only coincidentally similar to ancient Aegeans, including those from the MBA (labeled Greece_Helladic_MBA in my graphs).

And let me assure you that no matter which ancient populations you run in such D-stats, you'll always see similar present-day Greek clusters and present-day Balkan clines.

Obviously, it's fair enough to assume that there's been some genetic continuity in the Aegean from the Iron Age, Bronze Age, and even the Copper Age and Neolithic era to the present-day. But the point I'm making is that no one has yet proved this, or even attempted to measure it properly.

See also...

Greek confirmation bias

350 comments:

1 – 200 of 350   Newer›   Newest»
old europe said...


Good point. The most significant take of the paper was the claim steppe ancestry in the greek peninsula and in the Balkans was mostly of euro-hunter stock. They model EBA ( yamnaya like) folks as being 65/70 EHG and the rest CHG like. It reminds me of another take from the 2019 paper on the arrival of steppe ancestry in Cucuteni_Trypilla sites and they said this:

We ran D statistics and qpAdm15 on the four Moldovan data sets to estimate the direction of genetic influx and the amount of the ancestry components. When the data sets from all four Moldovan CTC individuals were combined, they showed a stronger influx 1) from LBK than Anatolian Neolithic and 2) from Western hunter-gatherers than steppe-related populations. When looking at various proxies for steppe-related ancestry (Yamnaya Samara, Ukraine Mesolithic, Caucasian hunter-gatherer (CHG), Eastern hunter-gatherer (EHG)), we did not observe any significant difference in genetic influx from either Yamnaya Samara, EHG or Ukraine Mesolithic. However, relative to CHG, we detected a substantial shift towards Yamnaya Samara steppe-related ancestry (Supplementary Table 1). Consequently, Yamnaya Samara, Ukraine Mesolithic and EHG appear to be equally suitable proxies for steppe-related ancestry in the Moldovan CTC individuals. This finding was confirmed by our results from the two-way admixture qpAdm models (Supplementary Table 2) for each individual separately and for the combined data.

Aren'they saying the same thing basically? That Ukraine Mesolithic could be the non CHG component of Yamnaya?
So confirming steppe ancestry is Dneper-Don foragers mixing with a population on the Volga-Northern Caucasus cline?

Leper said...

Basically the same previously done by Lazarids too.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/greeks-really-do-have-near-mythical-origins-ancient-dna-reveals

Based on the PCA provided in the article they've been saying modern Greeks derive 70% of their ancestry from Myceneans. Now it is increased up to 90%. Next year it'll be 100 I guess.

Onur Dincer said...

David, can you also do the same analyses using the Cappadocian and Central Anatolian Greek samples? Because the post-Mycenaean or post-Empuries (probably Hellenistic and Roman) eastern influx to Greece was more of Anatolian kind than of Cypriot kind, Cypriots have too high Levant N for that.

BTW, I recently uploaded my Ultimate World Deep Ancestry Calculator, which is Global25-based, to the Vahaduo Global25 Custom Calculators site, you can check it out:

http://g25vahaduo.genetics.ovh/Ultimate%20World%20Deep%20Ancestry%20Calculator.htm

http://g25vahaduo.genetics.ovh/

Davidski said...

Maybe Lazaridis will have another shot at this soon, with new samples from the Iron Age and Classical era?

But he won't be able to prove continuity with a West Eurasian PCA or even qpAdm models, unless he figures out how to accurately split steppe ancestry from Slavic ancestry.

CHG Chad said...

Mystery Is how Slavs arrived in Greece. South Slavic like or more northrn shifted Like modern Belarussians/Ukranians/West Russians. As For the evidence of Slavic migration In Greece you have to Look just the toponyms nothing else. Even If you dont trust genetics, the toponyms In mainland Greece showing that Slavs had a Huge impact There. Mainland Greece was under the Slavic domination For 2 centuries when finally Byzantines started assilimated them and convert them to Christianity.

Rob said...

@ FoxVillager

For the southern Balkans, the Slavs seem to have chosen key regions rather than simply 'wandering' or diffusing down. Paradoxically, Aegean parts of Macedonia, around Thessaliniki, Epirus and Thessaly were chosen. Northern Macedonia might have been settled some 1-2 centuries later, as some fell back north in light Justinians reconquistae or diplomatic negotiations. But it is clear that they were at least semi-autonomous. Byzantine seals of Slavic rulers (archontes) have been found throughout Greece.

CHG Chad said...

@ Rob

Well,Yes.But how they were In terms of autosomal DNA? They were mixed already with native balkanites? I am taking about Sclavinies For the most part and the seven Slavic tribes that settled In Greece, Albania,N.Macedonia, Bulgaria etc. They were Like the Hungary Slozad Av2 or Like the recent results we got From Moravia with some of them aproached N.Macedonian/Bulgarian/Serb Like results. Thats My point. Also the majority of Slavic toponyms In Greece ending In (-itsa) Witch seems to be South Slavic ending.

Andrzejewski said...

It’s amazing how strong of an impact South Slav’s colonization of Greece have had, if we also remember that post-1923 no less than 1.5 million Greeks from Anatolia were moved to Greece proper via a popular transfer. Unless that happened, the Slavic impact might’ve even been much higher!

Rob said...

@ FV
Im not sure. But if i were to take a guess, many would be similar to Szolad, as the Balkan interior in the 6-700s was sparsely, if at all inhabited. Indeed, 20th century anthropologists noted that Slavic burials e.g. in Serbia (when they became Christianised and abandoned cremation) had Nordid features, only undergoing brachycephalisation/ Dinaricization after the 13th century (perhaps due to urbanization & intermixture with Greek & Albanian settlers coming back north during the prosperous times of the Slavic Principalities & kingdoms)

Andrzejewski said...

But it’s not hard to imagine why it happened, if accounts of the Justinian Plague’s consequences of depopulation of Byzantine Empire, resulting in roughly 100 million deaths according to estimates are accurate. It facilitated and hastened the demise of Byzantine rule in the Near East, first by Sassanid Persians and by Parthians and later by invading Muslim Arabs in or after 600AD, as well as the Slavic conquest and inhabitation of the Balkans and the ensuing assimilation of its indigenous Greek and Romance speaking pops. After Justinian Plague, the Thracians in Bulgaria were greatly outnumbered by Slavs as an outcome.

Andrzejewski said...

@Rob “ Indeed, 20th century anthropologists noted that Slavic burials e.g. in Serbia (when they became Christianised and abandoned cremation) had Nordid features, only undergoing brachycephalisation/ Dinaricization after the 13th century”

Most likely East Baltic type, like modern Russians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians.

A said...

Is this the Greek paper you mentioned a while ago, or is there another one coming out?

Davidski said...

There's at least one more paper coming soon about Greece or the Balkans and Greece, with samples from the Iron Age, Classical period, Middle Ages, etc.

Andrzejewski said...

Any model that “shows” PIE as 2:1 EHG: CHG raises my suspicion.

But off on a tangent, if the Dnieper pop (rich in R1a1?) that ultimately gave rise to Sredny Stog, Yamnaya and CWC was different in comparison to Khvalynsk, Progress, Yanyuchka etc, then the latter ones may not have been IE speakers (or at least - some people spoken IE and some didn’t within the same culture). After all, Gimbutas used to think that GAC was an IE culture only to be debunked decades later, and by the same token scientists don’t regard Samara HG as PIE speaker either anymore.

Andrzejewski said...

According to Carlberg et al. 2020 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/exd.14142 Yamnaya Steppe Herders did have alleles for blond hair and were also instrumental in the spread in that trait in Europe post-BA. I doesn’t surprise me since WSH were 50% AG3 descendants.

Davidski said...

@Andrzejewski

You're going way off topic.

CHG Chad said...

@ Andrze

Its still quite high in modern Greeks autosomal.It would had been prolly higher If it wasnt the Imperial Rome Like input they have. They can be modeled as a combination of Polish/Belarussian and Cypriot i would say. As For those who come From Anatolia(modern Turkey) only those From the deeper interior Are genetically alliens to mainland Greeks Like those From Pontus and Cappadocia. Those who come From the West coast(Costantinoupoli, Smyrna,Prusa,etc) are immigrants From mainland and islands who migrated There during the ottoman times. They have slavic input as well(check the Greek-Izmir samples).

Davidski said...

@Onur

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zWYML__ZQciqJZiLRMSoAJkRwi6p9FsD/view?usp=sharing

Onur Dincer said...

@Davidski

Thanks!

Would be nice if someone competent in the visualization software used those data to better illustrate the positions of the populations vis-a-vis each other. Do not want to keep you busy with these, maybe Matt can step in if he has enough time.

Michalis Moriopoulos said...

There is also a Battle of Himera study in the works at Max Planck which promises some Magna Graecian genomes, as well as that of foreign mercenaries in their employ. Here's the abstract for the initial archaeological paper preceding the genetic study:

Isotopic evidence for geographic heterogeneity in Ancient Greek military forces

Katherine L. Reinberger ,
Laurie J. Reitsema,
Britney Kyle,
Stefano Vassallo,
George Kamenov,
John Krigbaum

PLOS

Published: May 12, 2021
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248803

Abstract

Increased mobility and human interactions in the Mediterranean region during the eighth through fifth centuries BCE resulted in heterogeneous communities held together by political and cultural affiliations, periodically engaged in military conflict. Ancient historians write of alliances that aided the Greek Sicilian colony Himera in victory against a Carthaginian army of hired foreign mercenaries in 480 BCE, and the demise of Himera when it fought Carthage again in 409 BCE, this time unaided. Archaeological human remains from the Battles of Himera provide unique opportunities to test early written history by geochemically assessing the geographic origins of ancient Greek fighting forces. We report strontium and oxygen isotope ratios of tooth enamel from 62 Greek soldiers to evaluate the historically-based hypothesis that a coalition of Greek allies saved Himera in 480 BCE, but not in 409 BCE. Among the burials of 480 BCE, approximately two-thirds of the individuals are non-local, whereas among the burials of 409 BCE, only one-quarter are non-local, in support of historical accounts. Although historical accounts specifically mention Sicilian Greek allies aiding Himera, isotopic values of many of the 480 BCE non-locals are consistent with geographic regions beyond Sicily, suggesting Greek tyrants hired foreign mercenaries from more distant places. We describe how the presence of mercenary soldiers confronts prevailing interpretations of traditional Greek values and society. Greek fighting forces reflect the interconnectedness and heterogeneity of communities of the time, rather than culturally similar groups of neighbors fighting for a common cause, unified by “Greekness,” as promoted in ancient texts.

-------

My commentary copies and pasted from AG:

I'm very much looking forward to that study. The nice thing is that these will be pre-Alexandrian genomes. If we see a bunch of Imperial Roman-looking profiles among the isotopically local soldiers, that will confirm the Anatolian/Levantine gene flow into Southern Italy happened before the Hellenistic era. If they all look Mycenaean, then that will suggest it indeed happened in the Hellenistic/Roman era.

a said...

Tried to post this article to Spacebook; marked as spam!

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

There are lots of samples with no EHG or ANE ancestry that have blonde hair.

Małgorzata said...

@Andrzejewski:

What do you mean with "East Baltic"? Do you mean it the way it was defined in the times of Lundmann and Günther (encompassing a spectrum of different types) or how it is usually used today, where it is clearly differentiated into "West Baltid", "Baltid" and "East Baltid"?
And just because these types are common today, it doesn't mean that they were that common in the past. The "Nordic" character of early Slavs was noted by several different physical anthropologists - even those quoted by Günther. So even the "Race Pope of the Reich" was convinced that the early Slavs were actually "pure Nords". ;)

Anyway, using that exact same line of reasoning we would expect Dutch Bell Beakers to have skulls like modern Northwestern Europeans and that's not really the case either.
I like physical anthropology too, but I'm a bit more cautious with it nowadays. It's just so hard to line it up with the DNA - and not just with that, some problems became obvious way earlier... for example why Bell Beakers where overwhelmingly "Dinaric" at some point and then suddenly not. Physical anthropologists struggled to make sense of it back then and now it turns out that these "different Beakers" are basically the same dudes, just with different skull shapes.

Same thing could have happened between early and modern Slavs.
And if "Dinaricization" or "Alpinicization" are just "processes" that can "happen" to a population, physical anthropology becomes tricky to rely on. Especially the stuff about Dinaricization... wasn't there a correlation between living in the mountains and Dinaricization?
Well, what mountain were the Dutch Beakers supposed to come from, considering they look like an offshot of Single Grave and the whole "went up the Danube and then down the Rhine" doesn't quite work out for them?

On top of that, eastern Poles seem more "Nordic" to me than western ones (but I admit that's just my impression, I don't have any data). And as I expect Slavs to come from further east and therefore think that East Poles are "more Slavic" than West Poles... this would fit. Of course I don't think my casual observations about modern skull shape distribution are something that anyone should draw conclusions from - as I said, anything could have happened between then and now.

George said...

Mycenaeans kind of look like they could be extra AnatoliaBA shifted now with those MBA samples. The big leap is assuming that the MBA population was pulled in the EBA samples direction over time, so I'm picturing a roughly 1/2 MBA 1/2 EBA ghost dot, then that dot would look like it's in a nice cline position with BA Anatolians and Mycenaeans. Maybe has something to do with wishy washy Steppe/CHG levels. Don't know if I'm looking at this right or if it doesn't line up w/ archaeology/dates etc etc. Is there anything here?

John Thomas said...

Love the title ;)

John Thomas said...

If I only had one wish in this whole genetic archaeology business, it would be for nationalism and chauvinism to keep its nose out of science.

It's bad enough dealing with a high proportion of the commenters here.

gamerz_J said...

I don't really think most Greeks (the mainlander populations at least) have much Cypriot. Their Levantine levels seem to indicate a more Anatolian than Cypriot origin.

As for the Slavic drift, it's obviously there but perhaps not all of the northern ancestry is due to Slavs. Some if it seems more ancient, more western even, if we go by G25 at least.

Ryan said...

The significant thing to me is that steppe ancestry shows up around the 4.2 kya event. Around the same time as a massive influx of CHG ancestry in the Middle East too. Seems like that climate event was pretty pivotal in turning over the west Eurasian gene pool.

Davidski said...

It came back out of nowhere.

But I toned it down just in case.

truth said...

@gamerz

Scientists sometimes are so simple-minded. While they use Cypriot as one reference sample for ancestry, it comes up with high percentage for Greeks (not surprisingly) and they conclude that Greeks must have some Cypriot-like ancestry (really ?)..

Davidski said...

Greeks do have Cypriot-like ancestry, it's just that it's not necessarily from Cyprus.

This is obvious by looking at modern Greek DNA vs Mycenaean DNA.

But it'll also be shown with new samples from Classical Greece, some of which actually cluster with Cypriots and Anatolians.

CHG Chad said...

Greeks like Italians have received Imperial Rome admixture,nothing new...nothing weird about it.Even balkaners have some of it.During Roman Imperial times thousands of west asian immigrants settled in Italy,Greece,Balkans etc.

@ Gamerz

Many Greek mainlanders have levant influences as well(ofc in lower amounts compared to Greek islanders).

Wise dragon said...

@Davidski,


"But it'll also be shown with new samples from Classical Greece, some of which actually cluster with Cypriots and Anatolians."

That‘s quite Southern shifted. Were there more Northern shifted Classical Greeks who either cluster with modern Greeks or even on top of them?

Davidski said...

@Wise dragon

Then from the north came the Slavs.

KM said...

The aDNA papers put out by Cell in the past two years have been surprisingly hit-or-miss. Cell is supposed to be one of the premier journals in all of science – the first glyph of the hallowed CNS club – but when it comes to aDNA, I am beginning to associate them with work that's boring, sloppy, or both. This paper is one example. "Archaeogenomic distinctiveness of the Isthmo-Colombian area" was very misguided. "Illuminating Genetic Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls" was pretty weak and uninformative. And it even seems like the main players are occasionally treating it as a publishing house for their B-tier papers: "The Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant" was not up to the usual standard of a Reich co-led project; and it was kind of bizarre to see a journal as big as Cell publish a paper centered on a single sample, "An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers", regardless of how impressive it might have been to wring DNA out of it. I mean, it's fine that these papers got published, but I'm surprised that they share pages with the stuff Cell is *supposed* to be about: molecular bio papers on a groundbreaking new method to generate induced stem cells developed after ten years' painstaking wet lab work, that kind of thing. Don't know why this is happening, but I'd guess it's an editor making bad judgment calls and/or the journal's desperation to cash in on the inevitable splashiness of any and every aDNA paper. Obviously, many of the recent aDNA papers in Cell are still fine, like the ones on Siberia, Central Asia, Yersinia, and the Andes (although that last one felt slightly cursory, which may be caused by the perhaps excessive prolificness of its first author), but it's a weird and annoying development nonetheless.

KM said...

Regarding the Aegean paper at hand: I think the authors' ability to elide the, imo, obvious Slavic (and post-antiquity West Asian) components of modern Greek ancestry reflects the weaknesses of the current canonical aDNA toolkit. The current implementation of F-stats, F-stat derivatives like qpAdm, PCA, and ADMIXTURE – basically the whole framework of analyzing up to a million or so reasonably common, directly genotyped autosomal SNPs, treating each as a totally independent data point, while ignoring or ablating linkage disequilibrium – work fine when you're analyzing differentiation on the scale of sapiens vs. Neanderthals or ANF vs. Yamnaya, but they're just not powerful enough to accurately investigate questions whose answers could be affected by gene flow between populations as weakly differentiated as post–Bronze Age West Eurasians, or to demonstrate continuity. Reminder: the ultimate aim of all the tools mentioned is to recreate some set of allele frequencies/observations as a linear combination of some other sets of allele frequencies, and if there are many plausible ways to do that, or if the source allele frequencies are very similar to each other, it's going to be very hard to reach the right answer.

Ramping up the number of variants analyzed (e.g. by moving from capture to shotgun, as the Reich guys are possibly doing) or increasing your reference pop sample sizes helps, but I think the future will increasingly involve methods that leverage quite different information. I think the big players are showing signs of this: see the Reich guys' recent and apparently very fruitful focus on IBD sharing methods, and also the increasing adoption of imputation plus ChromoPainter, used to great effect in the Irish incest paper and to okay effect in the Vikings paper. (The ChromoPainter tool ecosystem has its problems, and it seems quite easy to produce very weird-looking results with it, but I think it and the "haplotype donation" concept can be used very well.) The galaxy-brained "unified genealogy" paper that some Reich guys were on might represent another such play. Not sure what else might be used: perhaps rare variant sharing à la rarecoal; perhaps very detailed analysis of Y haplogroups, which academics don't exploit nearly as much as they should and which, with truly huge numbers of WGS, can be more informative than even the most learned graduates of the online yeshivas of the ISOGGic Talmud can currently comprehend.

A said...

are you saying the Greeks were Slavs...?

Davidski said...

@A

Mycenaeans + Anatolian/Levant migrants + Medieval Slavs = modern Greeks

A said...

so the Classical Greek samples are like Mycenaeans + Anatolian/Levant, from what you've seen?

Skordo said...

I believe we also have to take into account migrations of Albanians into Greece in the late Middle Ages?

Skordo said...

Also I wonder when we’ll see EV13 enter into the Greek population?

Davidski said...

@A

Overall yes, but they're all over the place.

Davidski said...

@Skordo

Yes, the Albanian wildcard. But how do we even start to measure that?

Skordo said...

That would have to be viewed regionally I think. Albanians mostly migrated to the Attica, corinthia, Cyclades region. You can kind of draw a circle around it.

Skordo said...

Also it seems that Albanians are virtually genetically indistinguishable from modern Greek Peloponnessians.

Ardian said...

Studies on the origin of Proto-Albanian language and samples from all over Balkans and Greece are needed to figure that out.If we go by the theory that the proto-Albanian was spoken somewhere in Dacia the question then is how much genetic impact did these proto-Albanians have on Epirotes and the Greco-Illyrians of Nova Epirus?From such results we'll get to know If Arvanites and Tosks are Albanians or Albanophone Greeks of Roman Epirus.

Skordo said...

I believe that Albanian is part of messapic languages? Correlates with ev13 as well?

Zulfiqar said...

My god, when are those new Classical Greece samples coming out!? Are we talking weeks, months year(s)?

Was always curious where socrates, plato, aristotle fit on the West Eurasian PCA haha!

Davidski said...

No idea when they're being published.

They've been sitting around for months and even years.

Genos Historia said...

The most Near Eastern shifted classical Greeks are probably similar to the Imperial Roman samples who are mainly of Hellenistic origin.

Greek, Levantie, Anatolian mix.

This mix was definitely created in the Greek colonies. Near East admix in classical Greece is probably backflow into Greece from their colonies.

Cypriot are the best proxy for the Near Eastern ancestry because they have mixed ancient Levantie, Anatolian origins.

Genos Historia said...

I've done interesting G25 runs with modern Greeks.

Peloponnese is mainly West Anatolia BA+Greece BA. No Levantie. They are the most ancient Aegean of modern Greek samples.

Maybe Armenians went to Greece in Middle Ages. But modern Peloponnese has high EEF signal, is obviously mostly ancient Aegean. They're definitely mostly from classical Greeks.

CHG Chad said...

It's obvious that you have no idea what are you talking about.Have a look to the Laconian samples and come again. There are many Peloponnese samples in G25 with Levantine mix(some are high while other have it limited). The 2 of 3 from the Laconian samples have Greek islander/Cypriot like influx.

Genos Historia said...

If you didn't notice, I have a youtube channel. I think I know a thing or two.

Ric Hern said...

What is tragic is a weekend without the promised CHG...Heheheeh.

Genos Historia said...

I will post my CHG video done within a week from now.

Rob said...

Albanians formed in Albania. There is clear evidence that provincials from Dacia Ripensis were moved to Epirus in the 600s, but it would be wrong to state that ‘Albanians come Dacia’, They probably felt the need to articulate a shared identity as Slavophone Duklja began to expand politically

Dibran said...

They were supposedly already Serbian/Romanian-like in the 9th century Macedonia. Apparently a study will confirm soon. He can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe it was mentioned by Generalissimo on Anthrogenica.

Davidski said...

There's definitely a shift from the Iron Age to the Medieval period in the northern Aegean/North Macedonia from Helladic_MBA-like to Serbian-like.

Copper Axe said...

"It's obvious that you have no idea what are you talking about."

"I have a youtube channel. I think I know a thing or two."

I've been laughing about this exchange for a good minute now hahahaha

CHG Chad said...

@ Genos

So, everyone with a YouTube chanel is an expert?LOL.If you don't know how to model modern pops in G25 then you know nothing. There is Levantine mix in various Greek mainlander individuals.Even balkaners can score some of it.

@ Rob

Well, the funniest thing is that your people who claim ancient Macedonian ancestry/heritage with so much passion besides your genetics(who are pretty much half Slavic) you still speak a South Slavic(Bulgarian/Serb) dialect.Both Greek_Macedonians and also your folks have nothing to do with the Ancient Macedonians. You are both highly admixed with Slavs and besides that you have both Roman Imperial input.Do you really believe Ancient Macedonians had anything to do with such genetics? The only reason that Greeks can be taken more seriously compared to you it is because they speak Greek and not Serbo-Bulgarian like you do.If you want the world and the EU specifically to take you serious you have to leave behind your Yugoslavian/Bulgarian culture,language and customs.But do not cry... You have done some progress and i am pretty sure you will join the EU club at some time. The name of N.Macedonia is not tha bad actually. Remember that No1s in the world knew you before.

gamerz_J said...

@Foxvillager

I am seeing on average about 5-10% Levantine in Greek mainlanders on G25, is that what you mean? Some seem to have even less than that. It appears lowest in Greek_Thessaly and Greek_Central_Macedonia.

Only ones who score high amounts of it are Greek_Laconia and of course all islanders.


gamerz_J said...

@KM

"The galaxy-brained "unified genealogy" paper that some Reich guys were on might represent another such play"

I had a hard time comprehending that paper but some of the results were kind of odd in the supplements, mind if I ask you your thoughts on it? Are there potential limitations to its inferences?

Onur Dincer said...

@Ryan

The significant thing to me is that steppe ancestry shows up around the 4.2 kya event. Around the same time as a massive influx of CHG ancestry in the Middle East too. Seems like that climate event was pretty pivotal in turning over the west Eurasian gene pool.

The influx of the CHG/Iran N-related ancestry in West Asia is twice older than that, nothing to do with the 4.2 kya event.

Simon_W said...

@Małgorzata

It's against the rules to discuss outdated physical anthropology here, but since Andrzejewski brought that up and your reply to him wasn't entirely correct IMHO, I'll add a little bit something, if Davidski allows: There's also the problem that the term Nordic or Nordid is ambiguous. There is a broad meaning, encompassing all dolichomorphic, depigmented, robust types; and a narrow meaning, referring only to the long/narrow faced variants among these, which is sometimes specified as Teuto- or Skando-Nordid. According to a study by Ilse Schwidetzky, the early Slavs were dolichomorphic, but they varied between a long-faced pole and a broad-faced one. She described the latter type as an Osteuropid that hasn't yet been brachycephalised, because the facial similarity to modern Osteuropids was already there. Needless to say that probably all pops vary between longer and broader faced individuals, so there's no need to speak of different races here. And the whole concept of a different Osteuropid race is outdated, considering the genetic relatedness with Northwest Europeans, which is also apparent physically, for what its worth.

According to data gathered by Mydlarski, the pre-1945 distribution of Poles shows lower values for the cephalic index in the north, higher ones towards the south, with the exception of longer-headed patches also around the central east. The faces however tended to be longest shaped in the southeast.

CHG Chad said...

@Gamerz

Better to model individuals not just averages.There are Greek_Macedonians who score some Levant IA or medieval Levantine admixture.As for Thessalians....these samples on G25 have a very western shift(very close to Albos as well).They might be easily Vlachs(Aromanians).They have Slavic and something paleo-balkan IMO that shifts them to west balkans and to North Italy.Thesaly has many Aromanians,Sarakatsanis and other nomadic balkan groups that their roots are still on debate.

Matt said...

KM: Ramping up the number of variants analyzed (e.g. by moving from capture to shotgun, as the Reich guys are possibly doing) or increasing your reference pop sample sizes helps, but I think the future will increasingly involve methods that leverage quite different information.

I guess on that point, I'm getting the impression from qpAdm that there's really a lot of statistical power in just having two or three samples samples without much relatedness (lower than 3rd degree?) of quite high coverage from the more differentiated populations. It seems like you really just need enough to systematically sift apart what is a kind of drift particular to a population from a feature of an individual and even quite minimal numbers of unrelated samples (1-3) can do that, and there's returns to more coverage diminish fairly quickly. If you have two independent samples, both are high coverage, then you could usually cover a lot of SNPs (because if one doesn't have a polymorphic SNP covered the other will) and any SNPs covered in both you will have quite a good estimate for the ABBA-BABA type tests.

While having large number of capture samples and so some extent population specific levels of particular highly selected SNPs is more informative to identify outlier interactions and that kind of thing.
I think tools like the ChromoPainter and IBD reconstruction are interesting, but I've never really seen them convincingly used to reconstruct population history in terms of proportions so far, at least in terms of telling us things which ADMIXTURE and qpAdm can't...

Big advantage of shotgun sampling is that by an unbiased look at rare variants which only show up in ancient individuals and the spectrum of these, more can be determined about history of expansions in population size and that's informative about what admixture models can work. For an example, there are these very small Tibeto-Burman speaking populations who are pretty similar to Northern Han Chinese, looked at in terms of common variants and deeper ancestry (not identical but pretty similar). But looking at allele frequency spectra would probably tell that one of these groups is from the largest human population, while one is a fairly small group for a long term. And that could be used in admixture models.

Also useful for ancient dna models - e.g. does Yamnaya group have any ancestry from a large farming population or all from small hunter-gatherer populations? There are ways that allele frequency spectra could be used for that problem.

Simon_W said...

In short, the early Slavs were predominantly Nordic in the broad sense, about half of them also in the narrow sense, but on average they were broader faced than the vast majority of Germanic tribes, and probably not quite as blond, too.

CHG Chad said...

@ Rob

A lot of propaganda in your last post....i am not going to discuss it further,i don't want to ruin David's blog.People who know two things from the history of balkans knowing very well that your state is a newborn country like Azerbaijan for example.Btw,keep in mind that i am pro to N.Macedonian agreement and i am pro for N.Macedonia to join the EU and NATO. and i am not native Greek.I am anatolian Greek.And the vast majority of people here were against the agreement.I was one of the few here supporting this agreement for political reasons that i am bored to explain here.I have not hate or rival against your people or your country but some things should be put in a place.It is not bad to claim Macedonian ancestry/heritage...but at least do it properly.As for your dialect and what language you speak i know very well.I have to do with N.Macedonians,Bulgarians,Serbs and other Slavs for many years.You are talking with a guy from Thessaloniki and Chalkidiki.I might know your people even better than you(As i know you don't live in N.Macedonia but in Australia).Your people speak a language very close if not the same to Bulgarians it is a south Slavic dialect and ofc it has nothing to do with what language Ancient Macedonians used to speak.Others speak Serb/Bosniak and ofc there are many Albanophone among your people.Also stop claiming that Macedonians were not Greeks or they were some kind of aliens to other Greeks.They were just the more barbarian version of Greeks/Hellenes of Dorian subtype.For Ionian Greeks pretty much the majority were barbarians and uncivilized.Ancient Macedonians used to speak a Greek dialect.Your people as Greek_Macedonians have anything to do with Ancient Macedonians as modern Hungarians have to do with Magyars.

CHG Chad said...

@ Simon

How do you know how they looked like?Any source about it?

Ardian said...

@Rob
I'd say that any kind of Greek as partial descendant of the Ionians ,Dorians etc can hold a claim in Macedonia , they are in essence the closest existing "nephews" (If any "sons" don't exist) to the ancient Macedonians because what is Macedonia If not a geographical designation for Dorians went east and what are Dorians If not a Greek tribe.
On the other hand ,can the same be said for Paeonians or Drougoubitai?I doubt it and I'd even dare say a Palestinian could have more of a claim in Macedonia than them.
And If the region of Macedonia was overran by Slavic tribes ,what does that legitimize?Isn't history full of reconquistas?

Andrzejewski said...

@Genos Historia I’ve just watched your Tolense vid. Can you actually provide us (an) unbiased peer reviewed paper(s) that corroborates your theory that Tolense warriors were a WHG rich non-IE group? It goes against the conventional wisdom.

What happened to these Bronze Age Hungary/Serbia/Poland WHG? How come their ratio is so low nowadays?

You’re likely aware that GAC male lines were mostly I2a too, right?

Arza said...

@ KM
by moving from capture to shotgun, as the Reich guys are possibly doing

Reich Lab moves to another capture method (Twist):
https://youtu.be/xF18mYe5WoA?t=412

Rob said...

@ Foxvillage

I did not really want to get into it, as the issue is more of modern politics than ancient history; and i certainly dont support the Macedonian nationalists pretensions and aggravations of Greece, either.
But in historical terms, its a very interesting case of historical legacy. The Greek case is entirely embellished & only supported because of western Philhellenes own cultural pretensions, anti-Russian sentiment & general ignorance of the matter. Greeks have therefore acquired the delusion that they are the noble Hellenes who 'own' Macedonia by historical right. The average Greek in the 19th century had no idea about any of these matters, quoting from Professor Valavanes surveys from his own native lands concluded that:

the Asia Minor Greek “does not even know the name of the tribe to which he belongs”. Asked what he is “he will answer you promptly Christian”. “Very well, others are Christian too, the Armenians, the French, the Russians … ” “I don't know”, he will tell you, “yes, they too (may) believe in Christ, but I am a Christian”. “Aren't you perhaps a Hellene?”
“No, I'm not anything (of the sort). I told you I am a Christian, and again I tell you I
am a Christian!” he will answer you impatiently. According to Valavanes, this
demonstrates the close relationship of the notions of Christianity and ethnicity for
these people, and they “love Russia as a bulwark of the faith against the enemy of
Christ”



So lets get a few things straight
- you're right : ancient Macedonians have little to do with more contemporary issues of who or what Macedonia is. Like many ancient tribes, their identity was held by kings and warriors, and when they were eventually defeated by Rome, the land impoverished, this collectivity ended. In any case, the Macedonians were generally not accepted as Greeks by their contemporaries
- the choronym Macedon alings with Mygdon, & the like which were Thracian-oid groups
- the ancient Greeks came from the north, and were a subset group related to Brygians and other northern Groups.
- Macedonia then became a Roman province, with a large amount of demographic flux. Even Visigoths dwelt there for a while in late antiquity
- the Slavs then inhabited it after earthquakes, plagues, so forth
- even after the attempted reconquista by the Byzantines, the Slavs were the major demographic element, with Vlahs in towns, and Greek fisherman along the Aegean coast.
- don't mistake medieval & Millet-related terms like 'Bulgarian' with modern national meaning of the terms
- Unionists simply espoused a united Macedonia with ethnolinguistic plurality, and were open either to merger with Greece, Bulgaria or independence
- the Slavs did the bulk of the liberation of Macedonia from the Turks


So what case do Greeks have exactly ? They are either Grecized Macedonians or mass-imports from Turkey, Sicily or Egypt. Their refusal to admit this identity really stems from a refusal of its implications - admitting the existence of macedonian minorities in greece, recompence for the Isis-style dessicration of Slavic culture (incl destroying Slavic inscriptions throughout Greece) and return of stolen lands



Małgorzata said...

@Simon_W:

Thanks for mentioning Schwidetzky's study, I didn't know about it.
It makes sense to me, though - I was mostly joking about the Nordic Slavs.
I mean Günther indeed quoted anthropologists who insisted that early Slavs were Nordic (and Günther clearly differentiated between "Nordisch" and "Fälisch"), but I was always surprised that he just accepted it without scepticism.
Of course some Czech guy says he found only Nordic skulls. Considering how the Nordic type was perceived compared to others, bias is to be expected.

So I was joking that if the German "Rasse-Papst" himself accepted it without question, we Slavs can do it too. ;-)
Of course this isn't reasonable because even the CWC wasn't completely "Nordic", so why should the Slavs be?

My main point was just that an ancient population doesn't necessarily have to look like the closest modern relative, just look at the Bell Beakers.
But then I couldn't resist digging up Hans F. K. Günther to "prove" Nordic Slavs to another Pole. I just think it's funny, but maybe that's just me.

And if the early Slavs were 50/50, do you happen to know how the early Germanics were roughly?

Andrzejewski said...

@Genos Historia your YT clip about Serbian BA is misleading. The I2A uniparental is obviously Globular Amphora mediated. Modern Europeans have 55%-60% Yamnaya Steppe Herders, 30% *Globular Amphora* and 10%-15% WHG.

DragonHermit said...

This is a mess that's going to be very hard to solve. Mostly because the definition of "Greek" is so wide it's almost useless.

We have:

(i) pre-IE "Greeks" similar to Minoans

(ii) Early Bronze Age Greeks

(iii) Iron Age Attic Greeks

(iv) Broader Hellenic tribes like Macedonians, Epirotes, Proto-Spartans who were probably more similar to Thracians/Illyrians genetically

(v) Modern Day Continental Greeks

(vi) Modern Day Southern Greeks (Crete/Cyprus)

The only way to get a major breakthrough is to compare Iron Age Thracians/Illyrians with Macedonians/Epirotes with Attic Greeks in Athens/Thebes, and then compare those to modern day Greeks, Albanians, and South Slavs.

Like someone mentioned it's not just the problem of determining how much Slavic DNA is incorporated into Greeks, but also how much Albanian DNA got incorporated during Ottoman times, and how much did Macedonians/Epirotes/Proto-Spartans differ from the Greeks in Athens.

Rob said...

@ Ardian

''I'd say that any kind of Greek as partial descendant of the Ionians ,Dorians etc can hold a claim in Macedonia ''

Nonsense. As Dragon Hermit suggests, Greeks are the subset of a larger group, mis-called ''Hellenic''. Original genealogy doesn't align Makedones with Dorians, their place was ambivalent. In any case, this isnt a royal succession dispute, where one embellishes some claimed genealogy
For the actual history of the region, refer to above


''and I'd even dare say a Palestinian could have more of a claim in Macedonia than them.''

LOL Ok Taki

Genos Historia said...

@Andre,
"Can you actually provide us (an) unbiased peer reviewed paper(s) that corroborates your theory that Tolense warriors were a WHG rich non-IE group? It goes against the conventional wisdom"

And then Andre said I shouldn't go against conventional wisdom....
https://imgflip.com/memetemplate/9422987/GOODFELLAS-LAUGHING-SCENE-HENRY-HILL

I don't mean this to come off as disrespectful. I just couldn't help but notice the coincidental use of the word conventional wisdom, just after Davidski made a post about it.

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/03/against-conventional-wisdom.html
You should read it. "Conventional wisdom" is genetics sometimes is no more than speculation.

I respect your desire for rational evidence. But, rationality isn't a strong trait for geneticists in academia. I mean this Greek paper is a great example.

Ryan said...

@Onur - "The influx of the CHG/Iran N-related ancestry in West Asia is twice older than that, nothing to do with the 4.2 kya event."

Source? That's not what I recall seeing here.

Arch Hades said...

I notice in their ADMIXTURE runs that they did not include Levantine Hunter Gatherers/Neolithic Levantines. So more than likely the ancestry modern Greeks carry that is truly "Levantine" is being picked up by the CHG and Anatolian farmer component in their run. But modern Greeks from the mainland do differ surprisingly little from those 2 (possibly Proto Greek) genomes circa 2,000 BC from Northern Greexe. If Natufians were sampled modern Greeks might show 3-5% Natufian related ancestry. The Cypriots have MUCH more around 15%+ but I'm not sure Greek Cypriots ever had negligible amounts of it...like the Mycenaeneas and Minoans and Bronze age populations of the Southern Balkans do.

Andrzejewski said...

@Genos Historia “ I respect your desire for rational evidence. But, rationality isn't a strong trait for geneticists in academia. I mean this Greek paper is a great example.”

You go by uniparental markers only. Your Bronze Age Poland and Serbia I2a carriers are likely deriving from Globular Amphora, not WHG. If you go by ydna or mtDNA ou then you’re bound to claim U5, U4 and U2 in Yamnaya as WHG.

By any means, what happened to that 30% elevated WHG ancestry?

How come did it taper off to a 15% level at most between BA and modern time?

Andrzejewski said...

I just watched your Italian video. You grossly underestimate the huge, tremendous impact wielded by the invading Wandering Era Germanic tribes, especially the Longobards.

Quote from clip: “Lombardy is a true refuge of pre-Greek Italian Roman era samples”.

Reality: Lombardy is THE MOST to have undergone a genetic changeover because of Germanic settlement, particularly the Longobards.

Stoyan Denev said...

https://www.facebook.com/stoyan.denev.14/posts/913200209429676

Arch Hades said...

How can we even know the Longobards had a bigger genetic impact on the North of Italy than the Vandals and Goths and Normans had in Southern Italy? Hell, even a Gothic King (Alaric I) was buried in Calabria.

Onur Dincer said...

@Ryan

Source? That's not what I recall seeing here.

Your memory must have confused you then because that is not what anyone says or would say here based on the ancient DNA results. Here is the evidence for the existence of the CHG/Iran N ancestry in most parts of West Asia since about 8500 years ago:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a5byEejcptHST6X2L6Exb60uGXnyI6tZYI7HWG-EkkE/edit#gid=0

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eHUpDQduMv78Mfk3WjPEZKxAhmnrwt3E/view?usp=sharing

See the Chalcolithic and Initial/Early Bronze Age samples from Anatolia and the Levant, they all long predate the 4.2kya event and show the CHG/Iran N mix already.

Also see the Skourtanioti et al. 2020 paper:

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03041651/document

Gene pools of Anatolia and Caucasus were biologically
connected 6500 BCE

We find that 6th millennium BCE populations of North/Central Anatolia and the Southern Caucasus shared mixed ancestry on a genetic cline that formed during the Neolithic between Western Anatolia and regions in today’s Southern Caucasus/Zagros.

We find that mid-6th millennium populations from North/Central Anatolia and the Southern Caucasian lowlands were closely connected; they formed a genetic gradient (cline) that runs from Western Anatolia to the Southern Caucasus and Zagros in today’s Northern Iran. This cline formed after an admixture event that biologically connected these two regions ca. 6500 BCE. Chalcolithic and Bronze Age populations across Anatolia also mostly descended from this genetic gradient.


Also check out their test results.

Arch Hades said...

@Onur

That paragraph you posted doesnt say there's CHG in the pre Chalcolithic Levant though. There's CHG in Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Syria going back to the Neolithic?

There's also the paper on Neolithic North Africans and there was no CHG in that area either as late as 3,000 BC IIRC.

I think Eurogenes has covered this in his "a homeland but not the homeland" series of blog posts.

Genos Historia said...

@Andrzejewski,

I appreciate my comments about my videos.

I understand, the basic geographic & Y DNA indicate a Globular Amphora origin for Tollense warriors. But there's several things which exclude this possibility.

Two main things.

1: They have more WHG than GAC could give them.
2: They have low West European farmer ancestry while GAC had a lot. Different types of farmer ancestry can be detected in G25 PCA.

These issues can't be resolved. If they are true, then Tollense doesn't come from GAC.

In G25 runs, the Tollense warriors mainly come out as Neolithic Hungary, Lithuania-like hunter gatherer mix.

This is unlike GAC, who had, like I said, a big chunk of West European farmer ancestry. GAC also had recent Lithuania-like hunter gatherer ancestry but not a lot.

The Tollense warriors aren't a lone. The oldest samples of people like them come from Corded Ware Poland and Bronze age Hungary. Like, I said in the video this indicates an origin for them there. This is a perfect place for a Neolithic population who was a mix between Neolithic Hungary (LBK) and Narva hunter gatherers to come into existence.

Genos Historia said...

@Andrezejewski,
"Reality: Lombardy is THE MOST to have undergone a genetic changeover because of Germanic settlement, particularly the Longobards"

You can comment on my youtube videos. The comment section is alive there.

Yeah Man, I'll admit this makes sense but the DNA evidence is lacking.

I have not seen people put forth good DNA evidence for significant Germanic ancestry in Northern Italy. It seems more like speculation.

The few Lombard samples, ironically, look the least Greek/Near East & Germanic admixed in Italy. But more Lombard samples might tell a different story.

I like that you are back in the comment section. It is helpful to have new perspectives on these issues who see things other people don't see.

Onur Dincer said...

@Arch Hades

That paragraph you posted doesnt say there's CHG in the pre Chalcolithic Levant though. There's CHG in Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Syria going back to the Neolithic?

I did not say the Neolithic Levant had CHG/Iran N mix, I meant to say that such mixes started to appear around the time of the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic and demonstrated it with the analyses of the Skourtanioti et al. 2020 paper and my own analyses. In any case, we start to see such mix in Anatolia and the Levant thousands of years before the 4.2kya event clearly.

There's also the paper on Neolithic North Africans and there was no CHG in that area either as late as 3,000 BC IIRC.

I think Eurogenes has covered this in his "a homeland but not the homeland" series of blog posts.


Even in modern North Africa CHG/Iran N mix is quite low, and some populations still do not show any of it:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hB1A8EciGkmWbWu8tiiAhh5nkaE3Hofr/view?usp=sharing

Do not know when exactly such ancestry first arrived there, but if it is around 3000 BC that means it is before the 4.2kya event in North Africa too even if not thousands of years before as in Anatolia and the Levant.

Vladimir said...

David, could you include the Italian models in the G25? Estonian Biocenter published genotype files:
https://evolbio.ut.ee/

Rob said...

@ Genos

I now think that GAC 'comes from' Germany, although this is somewhat contrary to archaeology. But a perfect match for the Y-DNA is seen in one of the German_TRB from Rivollat et al.
qpADM supports this

Copper Axe said...

Re the Tollense samples,

Does Wartberg+outliers not work as a source for the very WHG-rich ancestry seen in some of the Tollense samples? Havent taken a look at the Tollense samples in a while. 2 were western I2 and the other one was P312 no?

Davidski said...

@Vladimir

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aFNlz03fW0lOHt59Gfq8t7qrL9nEZTz3/view?usp=sharing

Vladimir said...

@Davidski

Great!


Ryan said...

@Onur - That's not what I'm referring to. There was genetic turnover in the Levant around the 4.2 kya event with an influx of Iran_Chl. I'm not talking about the pre-existing background levels of CHG, nor am I denying it.

See this series by David: https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/05/a-homeland-but-not-homeland.html

Genos Historia said...

@Copper Axe,

Yeah, I checked if Wartburg fits as an ancestor of Tollense. They are both in Germany, but no they don't fit as an ancestor.

Wartburg looks like a different WHG revival. Their WHG matches Loschbour.

While the Tollense's WHG matches Narva in Lithuania.

I think the Tollense's warrior's ancestors came from deep in Poland. A Corded Ware individual from Poland is just like them but has more Step ancestry. ID=N49.

Onur Dincer said...

@Ryan

That's not what I'm referring to. There was genetic turnover in the Levant around the 4.2 kya event with an influx of Iran_Chl. I'm not talking about the pre-existing background levels of CHG, nor am I denying it.

See this series by David: https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/05/a-homeland-but-not-homeland.html


Now we have Levantine ancient DNA from a much broader spatiotemporal range than in 2017. We now know that the CHG/Iran N influx in the Levant is thousands of years before the 4.2kya event. Check out the genetic results I shared in my previous posts. The Levant has both a CHG/Iran N influx and Anatolia N influx during the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic and then the Bronze Age. It is related to the population movements all over West Asia during that transition and those movements were in all directions in West Asia.

Rob said...

Wartberg Y-hg are different to Tollense. Tollense Y-DNA is similar to some seen in British Neolithic, but also one of the Vatya culture samples from Hungary

Rob said...

@ Genos & Andrze

The I2a-CTS10228 in modern Slavs isn't from GAC. It hasnt really surfaced in any Bronze Age genomes form Hungary or Poland either, yet.

Genos Historia said...

@Copper Axe,

Yeah, Tollense guys have mostly I2a2, but also significant R1b P312. One individual has R1a M417, he comes out as half Baltic Bronze age.

There's quite a more samples than what are included in G25 PCA.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdfExtended/S0960-9822(20)31187-8

Autosomally they come out as a mix between ancient Poland/Hungary & Bell Beaker. Which fits their Y DNA.

So, the origins of Tollense warriors looks pretty clear cut. WHG rich people from Poland moved west, mixed with Bell Beaker descendants.

I have a feeling Lustinian culture was WHG rich and I2a2.

vAsiSTha said...

"If you didn't notice, I have a youtube channel. I think I know a thing or two."

Thanks Genos, this cracked me up..

Rob said...

I enjoyed Genos' Video. Appreciate the passion there

Copper Axe said...

@ Genos and Rob

Awesome, thanks guys.

Andrzejewski said...

@Genos Historia “ So, the origins of Tollense warriors looks pretty clear cut. WHG rich people from Poland moved west, mixed with Bell Beaker descendants.

I have a feeling Lustinian culture was WHG rich and I2a2.”

But what happened to this pop, and how come WHG ratio within extant modern pops (barring Balts, Basques and Norwegians) are so insignificantly low??

Andrzejewski said...

@Ryan @Onur - “That's not what I'm referring to. There was genetic turnover in the Levant around the 4.2 kya event with an influx of Iran_Chl. I'm not talking about the pre-existing background levels of CHG, nor am I denying it.”

This entire Near Eastern genomic history confuses the heck out of me: we know that first a Barcin-type pop spread into the Caucasus and mixed with the pure CHG natives to form Colchians, ancestors of modern Kartvelians and Sioni, Shuvaler-Shomu, KAC and so forth. But they also migrated into the Levant to mix with Natufians and form Levant_N and PPNB and PPNC.

Then we had the Sumerians in Iraq, who may or may have not Barcin farmers or Iran_N.

But around 4,300 BP, when Sumer was invaded by Levant Semites, an actually reverse migration of CHG and Iran_Chl into the Levant and Anatolia to form the modern Lebanese and ancient Caananites and Israelites.

And the Jewish ancestry tradition clearly states some sort of a migration event whereby a man from Harran (Tepecik Ciftlik?) and his clan migrated into Biblical Israel and ruled over foreigner Canaanites.

But, we kinda know that Iran_N is not Iran_Chl because of a huge influx of both Barcin-like ANF and Levant_N to fix with the 50% Dzudzuana 50% ANE living there.

Am I missing something here? Can anyone help me sift through it and make sense of what’s happened in the Middle East between 8,000BC and 1,000BC?

Andrzejewski said...

@Rob “ The I2a-CTS10228 in modern Slavs isn't from GAC. It hasnt really surfaced in any Bronze Age genomes form Hungary or Poland either, yet. ”

So the 30% ANF/EEF in Slavs, where did it come from? Baden? Tripolye?

Rob said...

@ Andrze

''So the 30% ANF/EEF in Slavs, where did it come from? Baden? Tripolye?''

Could be multiple sources & so its a difficult question to answer.
Because this is not a Bronze Age population where a relatively straightforward X = Yamnaya + GAC, or Z= Yamnaya + Baden

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

Early Trypilla (B-C1, 4600 B.C.- 3500 B.C.) + Sredny Stog (4500 B.C. - 3500 B.C.) = Late Trypillia (3600 B.C. - 2800 B.C.) -> Corded Ware (2900 B.C. - 2350 B.C.)

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/11/21/849422/F1.large.jpg



Davidski said...

That doesn't make any sense.

Because early Corded Ware samples from Poland the Baltic states are the same as Yamnaya from the Lower Don.

Onur Dincer said...

@Andrzejewski

West Asia still has huge areas not covered in ancient DNA studies like Arabia and almost all of Mesopotamia and the Western Armenian Highlands. Post-Mesolithic Georgia is not covered as well. So any summary of West Asian archaeogenetic history will inevitably be incomplete. Even the covered regions are not well covered except probably the coastal Levant. What is clear is the breakdown of the genetic barriers especially after the Neolithic.

Arza said...

@ Copper Axe
Does Wartberg+outliers not work as a source for the very WHG-rich ancestry seen in some of the Tollense samples?

It doesn't. Tollense shares its specific WHG ancestry (aka "Balto-Slavic drift") with Baltic_BA, Balto-Slavs, and many groups from the Balkans or Carpathians. From the samples we currently have: Mokrin, Kyjatice, Fuzesabony, Mako, Hungarian Bell Beaker, Hallstatt, La Tene, Vekerzug. All these groups are closely related to each other and are a part of a Carpathian metapopulation (Baltic_BA and Balto-Slavs included).

https://i.postimg.cc/Pfsyg43z/Baltic-BA-Tollense-Wartberg.png

Genos Historia said...

@vAsiSTha, Rob

Thanks, it is time to talk about ancient DNA!

@Andre,

I know, it is confusing. What did happen to the WHG-rich people like Tollense is one of the new mysteries for Bronze, Iron age Europe. I have no idea.

Weird that in both Baltic States and Central Europe, there were groups with 33% WHG. Which is a lot. How do the Slavs fit into this?

Genos Historia said...

@Rob,

I now see you had a point about I2a survival after Indo European invasion. There was some survival. You had been saying this for a while.

But, most still consider I1 and I2a-Din to be accidents. But now we can see they are not accidents. Quite a few I/I2a lineages survived.

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

Not inclusive of genetics it's the best explanation of the origin of Corded Ware as
-the Battle Axes and Corded Pottery originate in Late Tripyillia.
-Chronologically Late CT ends exactly when the Corded Ware Migrations begin, and they had the population size.

Includisve of genetics, the argument only gets better:

-If individuals from Romania 3500–3100 cal. BCE could be similar to German Beakers, we should expect individuals from Northeastern Trypillia in Ukraine from the same period to fall between them and Yamnaya, i.e. like Poland/Baltic Corded Ware.

-R1b M269 in Bulgaria 4500 B.C.
-R1a M417 in Usatovo/Sredny Stog
-R1b Z2103 in Yamnaya is not compatible as an ancestor of either

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

Your theory is

Sredny Stog (4500 B.C. - 3500 B.C.) -> Yamnaya (3300 B.C. - 2600 B.C.) -> Early Corded Ware Culture (2900 B.C.) + Import of Farmer women from somewhere -> Late Corded Ware (2350 B.C)


Chronologically this is impossible, and y chromosomes incompatible.

Davidski said...

Your theory is impossible purely due to the fact that Corded Ware acquired its excess farmer ancestry outside of the steppe in Central Europe.

Proto-Corded Ware was identical to Don Yamnaya, whatever that means. So you have to work with that.

Rob said...

It’s too early to tell. Although poor coverage; the Smyadovo individual is the earliest attestation of R1b-M269, has plenty of Ukraine N and EEF . 1,500 years later; R1b-M269 seems as it derives from Progress Eneolithic (the Vanilla Harvard model)
So I’m always reluctant of autosomal based models unless the statisticians are very familiar with the material

Davidski said...

Doesn't the Smyadovo sample have any Progress-like steppe ancestry?

Rob said...

It does; but only ~ 30%; and grew to even more by the Yamnaya period
On the other hand, the EEF & Ukr N dropped during the eneolithic, for reasons why remain to be clarified
Then EEF rises again; but from different sources; in CWC and Balkan Yamnaya

Vladimir said...

@Davidski
“ Proto-Corded Ware was identical to Don Yamnaya, whatever that means. So you have to work with that.”


I wonder if the Yamnaya Don samples have any surprises with Y-DNA? Or are they all Z2103 too? But even so, Yamnaya on the Don did not come to an empty place, and there were also people who lived there before them, who were the basis of both Yamnaya Don and the early CWC

Davidski said...

As far as I know, Don Yamnaya is just Z2103.

And I'm not sure if CWC is derived from Don Yamnaya. The point I'm making is that a population much like early CWC lived on the steppe as far east as the Lower Don.

So obviously the rather popular idea that CWC came from the western edge of the steppe doesn't make much sense.

old europe said...


Rob

How would you model Smydovo?
How much EEF and Ukraine HG if Progress is 30%?

Stoyan Denev said...

@Davidski,

"But the point I'm making is that no one has yet proved this, or even attempted to measure it properly."

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13d9syvFH7gbytQ4Ah1BrxZ6BgCXF94DE/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1voK50qz9C8-1SyzADrbAqyyOMoaTmkQE/view?usp=sharing
with score ~3.72

Please comment.

Davidski said...

@Stoyan Denev

Your qpGraph doesn't show anything new, because it's testing ancestry from proxy sources that are near or far related to the real sources, rather than direct ancestry from the real sources.

Also, your model is far too complicated, with several zero admixture edges, which isn't good.

And there's a serious problem with your PCA because it lacks shape. The most likely explanation for this is that you included some samples that were closely related or derived from an inbred ethnic group.

So you need to run the PCA again after taking care of this issue.

Stoyan Denev said...

@Davidski

Your qpGraph doesn't show anything new, because it's testing ancestry from proxy sources that are near or far related to the real sources, rather than direct ancestry from the real sources.

https://uqrmaie1.github.io/admixtools/articles/graphs.html#valid-graphs

"Every population for which we have data should be a terminal node with only one incoming edge"

I need a valid graph after all. What is a proxy source? I have used some relabeling:

new_snps <- relabel( snps, EHG = c("Russia_HG_Samara", "Russia_HG_Karelia"), WHG = c("Spain_HG_brother.I0585", "Hungary_EN_HG_Koros", "Switzerland_Bichon.SG"), EEF = c("Turkey_N"), CHG = c("Georgia_Kotias.SG", "Georgia_Satsurblia.SG"), Ukraine_EBA_Yamnaya = c("Ukraine_EBA_Yamnaya_published"), Bulgaria_C = c("Bulgaria_C_published"), Russia_EBA_Yamnaya = c("Russia_Samara_EBA_Yamnaya", "Russia_Kalmykia_EBA_Yamnaya.SG"), outfile = "/Users/sdenev/Downloads/v44.3_1240K_public/1.ind" )

That PIE and Balkan_Late_IE are simplifications for Yamnaya and Balkan product of Yamnaya kurganizations.

Also, your model is far too complicated, with several zero admixture edges, which isn't good.

Please point them.

And there's a serious problem with your PCA because it lacks shape. The most likely explanation for this is that you included some samples that were closely related or derived form an inbred ethnic group.

What is inbred ethnic group?

Davidski said...

@Stoyan Denev

A proxy source means a source that is in some way related to the real source, but it's impossible to prove that it's the real source or even especially closely related to the real source.

See that's why in genetics papers the authors use the term "related", like Yamnaya-related, because they don't know what the real source is.

For example, you can use Swedes as a proxy source for northern Slavic ancestry in many models, because Swedes are northern Slavic-related at some level, but this doesn't mean that Bulgarians have Swedish ancestry.

The zero admixture edges are easy to spot. They're marked with 0.

In regards to your PCA, its lack of shape suggests a major problem. My guess is that some of your samples are too closely related (like siblings or close cousins) or they're missing too much data, which is pushing the rest of the samples into the top of the plot.

So try to filter out these bad samples from your dataset.

Rob said...

@ Old Europe

I’m not on my desktop; but this a previous run I did

left pops:
Smyadovo_steppe
Russia_Steppe_Eneolithic
Ukraine_N
Bulgaria_C

best coefficients: 0.138 0.278 0.584
TP 0.86

Progress eneolithic is lower than I thought. However (I) this is low quality samples (Ii) & is from the extreme western range
Have to wait for more early eneolithic western steppe samples

old europe said...


@great

this guy looks like a ukraine neolithic just arrived from central eastern ukraine. ( surely nort east of the Don Kalmius region)
He was a Dneper Don forager that switched to agropastoralism and likely domesticated the horse
Specifically he was a Suvorovo-Novodanilovka king or prince
We already know that ukraine meso/neo has the right r1a and I2 and now we have the final proof that the right R1b was in ukraine neolithic too.
Progress adieu.
We reached the end of the story

old europe said...



this is a take from Razib khan about Yamnaya /CWC/BBC relationship.
Glad that he share my opinion about the importance of western Yamnaya

In 2015 Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe and Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia were published. These two papers were game-changers. They established that the Yamnaya pastoralists of the Pontic steppe contributed a substantial proportion of ancestry to modern Europeans (later, the same was found to be the case in Indians and other Asians). As I’ve been reading and thinking about the expansion of Indo-Europeans ~3000 BC for my Substack series on the steppe, I have come to the conclusion that the populations sampled in these two papers were actually marginal to the primary expansion.

The first thing to note is that the Yamnaya samples were R1b, but of a haplogroup distinctive from that of the R1b common in Western Europe, and brought by the Bell Beakers. The Yamnaya R1b is the same as that in the Afanesievo culture of western Mongolia though. The early Corded Ware tended to be R1a. How to resolve this issue? On my podcast about Indo-Europeans with David Anthony, he posits that the elite during the early period was R1b, but that later on R1a (and Bell Beaker R1b) came to the fore due to social convulsions. Perhaps.

I think the other option, that there’s unsampled paternal diversity, is more plausible. I labeled where the 2015 Yamnaya were sampled from. It seems like they’re on the eastern end of the Yamnaya range. Anthony in The Horse, The Wheel, and Language, seems to lean toward the position that these eastern Yamnaya were culturally more significant than the less nomadic western Yamnaya. That’s fine, but I think it was the western Yamnaya that were the precursors to the Bell Beaker and Corded Ware. In my conversation with Nick Patterson he mentions that the Reich lab has detected Corded Ware who descend from the Yamnaya samples genealogically. How to square this with what I’m saying above?

The people of the Yamnaya horizon were patrilineal and exogamous. If Corded Ware men took Neolithic wives, they almost certainly took Yamnaya wives. The western and eastern Yamnaya may have had different paternal lineages, and even been different ethnolinguistically, but still shared similar gods and folkways so that intermarriage occurred. Their autosomal genome was very similar because exchanging wives across these patrilineal kindreds was common and prevent whole-genome distinctiveness from building up.

Davidski said...

Well, you can believe me when I say that early Corded Ware is identical to Yamnaya from the Lower Don, or not. Up to you.

Rob said...

Yeah, during the Yamnaya & CWC period, the western way to Poland was ‘blocked’ by GAC

Davidski said...

The western way into Poland was blocked how?

There are many CWC and GAC sites only a few miles apart from each other in southeastern Poland.

Copper Axe said...

I think that when you come up with a theory and it needs so many work-arounds and reachings while Davidski basically makes a very good case by just simply pointing out where these samples plot on a PCA, you might have to reconsider...

Rob said...

Davidski is talking about CWC; which expanded after 2800 bc
I’m talking about the phase leading up to Yamnaya .. different issue
Check out some time-slice some maps

old europe said...


other samples with some models. One is of the tipical Yamnaya line
the other I bet he is a R1 M417

Ukraine_Eneolithic:I5882
Ukraine_N 66.85
Trypillia 23.2
CHG 8.6
Yamnaya_Samara 1.35
EHG 0

[1] distance%=2.8944 / distance=0.028944

Ukraine_Eneolithic:I5884 (R1b-Z2103)
Ukraine_N 71.4
Trypillia 28.6
CHG 0
EHG 0
Yamnaya_Samara 0

Stoyan Denev said...

@Davidski

The zero admixture edges are easy to spot. They're marked with 0.

"Drift edge weights and admixture edges weights are optimized until the (negative) likelihood score is minimized. The likelihood score is based on the squared difference between estimated and fitted f3-statistics."

So if a drift edge(filled line) has 0 as a value that mean less drift(less time). So these values should not bother you.

I tend to remove the admixture edges(dotted lines) with 0%, there are no such in the graph.

Thanks about the PCA, I have removed some samples.

If you are willing to help me, here is my email: stoyan.denev@gmail.com
Just drop me a line, so I can share more results with you without flooding the comments thread.

But the point I'm making is that no one has yet proved this, or even attempted to measure it properly.

Let's measure it properly. They do not have admixture graph in that article with a reason. It is hard for the greek population. They accepted half a million pontic greeks, they have slavophonic hellenes. But the article made it to nature.com. The previous on the topic is more problematic. Just drop me a line to share some admixture graphs with you, why it is problematic. They have non zero weights for the drift edges.

Davidski said...

@Stoyan Denev

You should talk with Nick Patterson or Robert Maier about the zero admixture edges and why too many of them are a problem.

But anyway, in my experience, qpGraph isn't good for fine scale ancestry analyses, like when trying to differentiate between European populations.

Identity-by-Descent (IBD) tests and fine scale PCA are much better for that.

If you'd like to see how Greeks cluster in fine scale PCA compared to other Europeans, including Bulgarians, then check out this plot.

https://vahaduo.github.io/g25views/#Europe1

Matt said...

If Arza's right I think we'll soon get a rock solid sample of the Smyadovo man that's higher coverage than the published. I think there's a good chance a better quality version was one of the two Bulgaria Chalcolithic outliers in the PCA from David Anthony's recent presentation, which would bode well for him not being contaminated or misdated.

Rob said...

@ Davidski

“ There are many CWC and GAC sites only a few miles apart from each other in southeastern Poland.”

Not necessarily contemporaneous; it is specifically with the Zlota culture phase of GAC with which south polish CWC parallels
The ‘blocking” scenario explains why there’s no R1b-Z2103 or I2a2a1b in CWC

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

Can you do run Muierii?

PRJEB33172

Yamz said...

Hey Davidski, sorry for the late reply regarding the academic samples if you recall, I jumped the gun a little bit and I'm still in talks with my source if I can technically outsource the data legally etc. Its just a big modern African dataset for my own curiosity really.

@vahaduo

Hey dude sorry for the late response, instead of sharing my email publicly can I just make a request here if Davidski doesn't mind - I'd love for there to be a Chebyshev option/mode on your g25 runner. No argument as to Euclidean against others, its just that Chebyshev is really useful to me personally.

Garvan said...

@Stoyan Denev

Can you remove all the 0 value drift edges, so the graph is smaller and easier to read? If you are correct, that these values should not bother us, it should make no difference to your model.

I think you are correct, but I want to see.

gamerz_J said...

@Foxvillager

"Better to model individuals not just averages.There are Greek_Macedonians who score some Levant IA or medieval Levantine admixture.As for Thessalians....these samples on G25 have a very western shift(very close to Albos as well).They might be easily Vlachs(Aromanians).They have Slavic and something paleo-balkan IMO that shifts them to west balkans and to North Italy.Thesaly has many Aromanians,Sarakatsanis and other nomadic balkan groups that their roots are still on debate."

But some individuals have extremely low or no amounts of some components while others have larger amounts, so I think averages better tell you about the population at large with expected variations in ancestry components.

I was making a general point earlier, not too familiar with fine-scale Greek ancestry. I do remember though seeing in genealogy forums Greeks from a variety of provinces plotting close to these samples from Thessaly, though I think all of them were mainlanders.

pnuadha said...

@davidski

Are you going to post the "Genetics and material culture support repeated expansions into Paleolithic Eurasia from a population hub out of Africa" paper?

They basically argue that west eurasians and east eurasians were differentiated before they physically separated into East Eurasia and West Eurasia. They say that Zlaty Kůň, earliest European sample, was basal to all Eurasians, Bacho Kiro was the "east eurasian" (misnomer) type, and kostenki was the "west eurasian" type. They also explain MA as a mix of this Eurasian E type (common in modern East Asia) and Eurasian W type.

Im really curious where kostenki's ancestors were 45kya and if the any goyet ancestry has survived.

gamerz_J said...

A bit off topic but 2 new papers are out,

1 by Vallini et al, seems pretty big, about a joint analysis of Zlaty Kun, Bacho Kiro and later Eurasians (apparently Ustishim, Tianyuan and Bacho Kiro are all IUP populations and Kostenki and Sunghir later UP-related groups while ANE seems an almost even mix of UP and IUP groups) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.18.444621v1

and 2 by Svensson et al, about Pestera Muierii from 34kya. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221005923

Interestingly, they claim that "reduced diversity in Europe caused by Last Glaciation, not out-of-Africa bottleneck"

(PS: I may be citing the lead authors incorrectly)

Carlos Aramayo said...

@Davidski

Maybe you already know, but if not, I want to tell you that Sanauli's samples failed to the test of quality and geneticists from India decided not to publish the results of aDNA. But, recently, Vagheesh Narasimhan commented on his account of Facebook that this problem can be solved and he would take the samples and apply the same techniques he used to "rescue" the Rakhigarhi's one.

Arza said...

@ Andrzejewski
So the 30% ANF/EEF in Slavs, where did it come from? Baden? Tripolye?

It's not easy to say where it did come from, but it's pretty easy to say from where it didn't.

Michał said...

@Davidski
"The western way into Poland was blocked how?
There are many CWC and GAC sites only a few miles apart from each other in southeastern Poland."

See this:
https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?20310-L51-into-Europe-West-of-the-Steppe-Via-Corded-Ware&p=753292&viewfull=1#post753292

and this:
https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?20310-L51-into-Europe-West-of-the-Steppe-Via-Corded-Ware&p=753602&viewfull=1#post753602

Matt said...

@GamerzJ, yeah, that's a different model from the previous Bacho-Kiro paper, where 1st and 2nd wave ancestry admixed into Ust-Ishim and Tianyuan.

That's basically because they've selected a different set of frame populations for the base graph.

There's this unexplained relationship between GoyetQ116, Tianyuan and Ust Ishim, where T is a lot closer to G than to Kostenki14/Sunghir, and both of T and G are a bit closer to UI than K/S are.

So previous paper noticed that T, G and UI also closer to Bacho-Kiro and postulated a model where all are essentially mixes between BK and some other populations.

The new paper basically removes Goyet in their base model, so come to a different conclusion. Because they don't use Goyet, they can resolve the BK connection to T and UI by simply plonking the BK and UI on the East Asian branch.

This does absolutely break when they try to introduce Goyet back into the picture in the supplements, which then drives them to a complex model where Goyet has both Tianyuan and BK admixture.

So it's up to us what we find simpler, Tianyuan and UI being admixed *or* this pretty complex scenario for Goyet.

This shows us how papers can easily come to different parsimonious models by being *very* selective with who they pick as their frame qpGraph...

EastPole said...

@Arza

Slavs came from Indo-Slavic population which originally looked more like Corded-Ware:
Indo-Slavs split into Balto-Slavs and Indo-Iranians and then Balto-Slavs split into Proto-Slavs and Proto-Balts.
Taking into consideration Y-DNA and languages it probably looked like this:

https://i.postimg.cc/Dv9shKKP/Proto-Slavs-Balts.jpg

So we have to find that Balkan population which caused Balto-Slavic drift from CWC. That drift for Slavs is visible only in PC2 which explains 6% of variability, so it is not large.

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

Balto-Slavic drift more than likely arose entirely independent of any admixture away from LBA.

Andrzejewski said...

@Arza “ It's not easy to say where it did come from, but it's pretty easy to say from where it didn't.”

It may indicate a survival of Balkanic Farmer groups into BA or even the IA.

I always suspected that the Paleo-Balkanic languages (Thracian, Illyrian, Messopic, Panonian, Dacian etc) arose from a Yamnaya Hungary/Bulgaria mixing with Tripolyans and Beaker Hungary pops.

So now we can also basically nail down (some) of the differences between the archeogenetic origins of Balto-Slavs and Nordic BA (Proto-Germanics) to the latter’s farmer ancestry deriving from GAC while B-S’s one is more “Southern”.

Is there a discontinuity between LBK v. TRB/GAC? I read that LBK were the groups that moved to Germany from the Balkan (Kurus, related to CTC) but the TRB are mostly a Cardial Pottery groups who had taken the maritime route and then massively assimilated various and distinct WHG groups along the way and they replaced the LBK by way of displacement/replacement?

Andrzejewski said...

Do these massacres in early Neolithic Europe potentially indicate a replacement event of LBK groups by TRB/GAC from the west?

https://www.pnas.org/content/112/36/11217

Rob said...

@ Andrze

''Do these massacres in early Neolithic Europe potentially indicate a replacement event of LBK groups by TRB/GAC from the west?

https://www.pnas.org/content/112/36/11217''

Nope. It was LBK village vs LBK village, as recently demonstrated by combining aDNA and isotopic data. They were all EEFs, with the usual Y-hg G2, but were non-locals vs locals.
? vandettas or fight for land

Desdichado said...

@Andrzejewski

All of those paleo-Balkan languages almost certainly did not come from the same source, in spite of all being Indo-European. You're probably right about the genesis of at least one of the groups, but it seems likely that at least four separate waves of Indo-Europeanization passed over the Balkans prior to the historically attested ones (like Roman and Slavic.) Lining up material cultures and archaeogenetics with the linguistic hypothesis is still a work in process because in many ways, we don't know enough about most of it to say much. The earliest intrusions, like Usatovo, have traditionally been interpreted as the Anatolian branch breaking away. Your postulate would probably be a good explanation for the formation of a branch including Greek and probably Armenian and Phrygian. Albanian is clearly not related to either of these, though, so it has to come from somewhere too, probably Illyrian. Linking it to the other branches has not been a fruitful exercise, although part of that is surely based on the fact that we know so little about the paleo-Balkan languages. But if it's truly a separate branch, then it needs a separate cradle of formation. And finally, Thracian (and probably Dacian) seem to exhibit satem language features and links linguistically and culturally to the eastern Corded Ware variants. They've often been compared with the Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic branches, and probably represent a final prehistoric intrusion from a Corded Ware source and did not develop in the Balkans per se.

The TRB culture does seem to be a new culture with a new pop that spread from the west into Central Europe. I can't see that GAC is a new pop, so I presume—unless there's evidence I don't know of—that it was more of a cultural revolution on the southern edges of the Funnelbeaker culture that spread through the Funnelbeaker area, but was always the same population.

mzp1 said...

Whats Balto-Slavic drift?

gamerz_J said...

@Matt

"So it's up to us what we find simpler, Tianyuan and UI being admixed *or* this pretty complex scenario for Goyet."

Do you find this model or the Bacho Kiro as more parsimonious? What I thought was interesting here is that they integrated archaeology (albeit I am not really familiar with it).

Could the Neanderthal input in Bacho Kiro perhaps explain why Goyet needs Tianyuan as well? (Could be entirely off mark here, just a thought)


@mzp1
"Whats Balto-Slavic drift?"

In the case of Greeks I guess it's Slavic ancestry from Medieval times.

Arza said...

@ mzp1
More or less this: https://i.postimg.cc/1sQH6dsc/Balto-Slavic-drift.png

A bunch of correlated SNPs that peak in the Baltic_BA. To see it in action go here:

https://vahaduo.github.io/3d/g25/westeurasia/

or here:

https://vahaduo.github.io/3d/we/

and in both cases switch dimension Z to PC6.

@ Andrzejewski

This neolithic ancestry was rather mediated via some Italian-like population.

@ Norfern-Ostrobothnian

There are samples older than LBA that show this drift.

Rob said...

@ Arza
If you have time & downloaded the data from this study

can you see what else further you get for individuals :
# 122E
# 163
# 211

Rob said...

@ Michal/ Dave

Re CWC
Notwithstanding, all the features in CWC (battle axes , corded pottery) are seen in western (Budzhak) Yamnaya. It doesn’t look too eastern . Also, MDC is a poorly characterised group


@ Deadichado
TRB is heterogeneous . Cant really say from the west , although some portions were

Andrzejewski said...

Evidence is beginning to emerge that every regional Neolithic Farmer group was genetically distinct than all others: LBK and TRB were strongly differentiated both archeologically and genetically. Rössen had a female with a V1a mtDNA but Lengyel culture displayed more males with ydna H than the G1a typical to farmers. So I’m starting to think that they all arrived from different areas in Anatolia at different times and were completely different from each others.

It would be interesting to figure out if LBK was exterminated by TRB groups or did it survive genetically.

If the former scenario is correct, then it may be that the “Western” people are all partially from Cardial Pottery taking maritime routes, although Slavs and Balkan people are from LBK, Farmer ancestry wise.

Matt said...

@gamerzj, in terms of "Admixture edges on the tree", then three edges leading up to Goyet (to mix BK Tianyuan, then BK-Tianyuan composite into Goyet) is fewer edges than six edges combining to explain all of Ust Ishim, Tianyuan and Goyet as BK plus something else. So that takes it, purely in terms of the tree.

In a wider and more conceptual way, I'm not sure it's simpler to have three layers of ancestry in Goyet alone to having two layers across Eurasia. I guess I'm making the point that their tree sort of gets to a simpler state in a way by using different populations that don't have the complex and correlated relationships that Goyet introduces...

I don't think the Neanderthal input into BK greatly influences things as in the first topology they had a 2% extra admixture into BK before it admixed into others and it didn't seem to cause problems I think.

Matt said...

On the other topic, I tried looking into this Balto-Slavic question with a few more formal models with qpAdm.

Set Right populations as: ('Cameroon_SMA_published','Brazil_LapaDoSanto_9600BP','Russia_Sunghir.SG','Mongolia_North_N','Morocco_Iberomaurusian','Serbia_IronGates_Mesolithic','Iran_GanjDareh_N','Israel_C','Georgia_CHG.SG','Russia_HG_Karelia','Russia_Steppe_Eneolithic','Turkey_N','Latvia_BA','England_BellBeaker')

Running directly with allSNPs=true against the HO1240k datafile. Basically a number of references sensitive to deeper ancestry proportions, then using Latvia_BA to split off the "Baltic BA peaking drift". That seemed to be pretty sensitive to the Balto-Slavic drift.

When I tried then modelling modern day Belarusian and Ukrainian samples (called in the HO file 'Ukrainian' and 'Ukrainian North). I could only get working models for them as 1) each other, 2) fitting them via a bunch of (largely single) attested Medieval Slavic samples - Russia_Sunghir_Medieval.SG (Sunghir6.SG), Ukraine_Medieval (VK541.SG), Poland_Medieval_1.SG (VK210.SG) And generally with over ridiculously high p-values for the first two of 80-40%, though I also got Hungary_Avar5 AV1 to fit with a just about passing value of 6%.

Any kind of fit like with the other Viking Age samples with Scandinavian/Western European affinities, early Medieval Saxons / Germans, combinations of Lithuania_BA with any southern population, combinations of modern day Lithuanians and southern populations (Hungarian, Moldovian, Czech) - all failed quite decisively. (Closest modern blend for Ukrainian was a mix of Lithuanian, Moldavian, Karelian but still failed quite badly.)

I will say the closest fit I could get for Ukrainians with more than one population with samples older the medieval period and using the populations as Reich Lab has labelled them was a specific set of Ukraine_Scythian (scy009.SG, scy010.SG, scy011.SG) 83% + Lithuania_BA 17%, which this marginally failed at 4.5% (Hungary_Scythian+Lithuania_BA failed). The population triple of samples labelled Ukraine_Scythian has a mix of three samples with different positions (G25 version - https://imgur.com/a/19t6UEu). Taking Scy010 out of the file and running a model of a mix between Lithuania_BA and (scy009, the most Western + scy011, the most Eastern) gave me proportions of 13.5% and 86.6% and a passing fit of 9%. This seems a bit dubious though by selecting samples (population labels with many more, admixed ancient Ukrainians didn't work at all). But on the other hand, it does seem intuitive for the population of Ukraine today to be on a cline between ancient Ukraine and Lithuania.

So I don't know; I may be pushing the tools further than they will go. But it's still seeming plausible to me that whatever G25 seems to show, there is still some way in which Belarusians/Ukrainians relate to these outgroups in ways that can't yet quite be captured by combinations of the populations (ancient or modern) I could find in the HO file.

(For some cross checks on that qpAdm setup other populations, I got passing fits likewise for English with England_LBA, and Scotland with Scottish_Viking, while that was rejected for respectively for England_EarlyMedieval_Saxon.SG and for Norway_Medieval.SG, but on the other hand I got fails for Norwegian with Norway_Medieval.SG and Icelandic with Iceland_Viking.SG. So that is partly consistent with the idea it is detecting fine continuity, partly maybe too sensitive or something wrong with it.)

Arza said...

@ Rob

163 MOK15 is here:
https://www.yfull.com/samples-from-paper/436/

122E MOK12 I-Y13331 (xY13339)
211 MOK18A I-Y13336 (xY13339), no call @ Y13331

https://www.yfull.com/tree/I-Y13336/

Desdichado said...

@Rob: I'm sure you're right; I'm remembering specifically the Sanchez-Quinto et al study from 2019 that had the TRB skeletons that they analyzed coming from Britain and the Atlantic coast. But I believe that was only one location, and not necessarily indicative of TRB everywhere else.

Genos Historia said...

@Andrze,

There was no extermination. Just as the Indo Europeans didn't exterminate farmers.

TRB is mixed. They have LBK and Western Farmer ancestry. But, yeah they were created by a migration from France into Germany.

Globular Amphora is TRB admixed with Central European hunter gatherers.

Andrzejewski said...

@Genos Historia “ There was no extermination. Just as the Indo Europeans didn't exterminate farmers.

TRB is mixed. They have LBK and Western Farmer ancestry. But, yeah they were created by a migration from France into Germany.

Globular Amphora is TRB admixed with Central European hunter gatherers.”

Arza brought up a unique point, that one of the features distinguishing Baltic-Slavs from Proto-Germanic/Battle Axe/Nordic BA was the difference of Farmer ethnic admixture, e.g. former having more LBK/Korus-sourced (Balkan route) v. latter having mainly GAC and/or TRB source. Until recently the common perception was that most Euro pops Bronze Age onward were WSH + GAC. Thus, a novel notion emerged.

I believe that other distinguishing factors between Balto-Slavs v. Germanics are:

1. Western and East Slavs + Balts are R1a1 (never mind the N1C in Lithuanians), descendants of CWC, whereas Nordics/Germanics are from the Single Grave/Battle Axe Culture that gave rise to Bell Beaker and were overwhelmingly R1b.

2. Germanics (and Italy-Celts) have an extra EEF admixture acquired in Central and later also in Western Europe, all the while Balto-Slavs maintained an even-keel balance of farmer v. WHG (Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Belorussians and Estonians have 55% - 60% Steppe and a 1:1 ratio of WHG : ANF but Poland, Czech, Hungarians along with Central and Western Euros have 2:1 Farmer : WHG proportion).



Genos Historia said...

@Andrze,

Are you using the G25 PCA? It'll clarify a lot of this stuff. G25 is messy if you use raw spreadsheets. I'll come out with organized spreadsheets eventually. Like Neolithic farmer population averages. That'll make it more enjoyable for everyone.

Genos Historia said...

@Andrze,

Looking at G25 these are pretty much established facts.....

-GAC, TRB have mixed Western & Eastern farmer ancestry.

-GAC is the main farmer population who Corded Ware admixed with.

-Therefore, anyone descended from Corded Ware has both western and eastern farmer ancestry.

So, for your pondering about what kind of farmer ancestry Slavs have. They have western & Eastern. We don't know where all of it comes from, but at least half of it is from Globular AMphora.

Even, Sintashta shows originally Western European farmer mtDNA lineages like J1c1b and K1b1a1.

Genos Historia said...

The weird thing is.....

The Tollense warrior's farmer ancestry is basically all Eastern (LBK). The same goes for their WHG rich relatives.

Arza has some ideas about how they relate to Slavs. I don't think know what they are yet or how they relate to Slavs. BUt there's no doubt Slavs have signifcant Globular AMphor ancestry. You can even see this in specific mtDNA matches like H1b and U5b2b1a.

Andrzejewski said...

“ TRB is mixed. They have LBK and Western Farmer ancestry. But, yeah they were created by a migration from France into Germany.

Globular Amphora is TRB admixed with Central European hunter gatherers.”

It seems as though every Neolithic farmer culture was archeogenetically distinct from its neighbors:

LBK had more affinity with current Near Easterners - mtDNA K, T and K (although H is common in both Caucasus and ME albeit in lower proportions). Ydna was more G1a as in modern Kartvelian speakers.

Rössen had V1a - which may indicate a WHG/Iron Gate assimilation?

Lengyel had lots of ydna H (common nowadays in India!) much more than ydna G1a.

On top of it all, Balkan pops have lots of E1b1b and J, which is very common in both SE Europe and the Near East, which can indicate either an Anatolian BA admixture into both directions, or a PPNB/PPNC amalgamation of Anatolians and Levantines in the NE alongside a high survival rate of y dna uniparental haps in Balkans into modern day.

Taking into account also the high variety of mtDNA - H, K, V, T, X, Z, J, I etc within any extant Neolithic pop in Europe- and it seems that the origins of EEF were very diverse, as they may have come from different regions in Anatolia and they may have even spoken completely unrelated languages; and all these variables existed even before admixing with forager pops.

Andrzejewski said...

One thing that most people aren’t aware of or at least tend to forget: in spite of the Siberian origin of N1c carrier Uralic language speakers in Europe, all Finno-Ugric speaking nations, be it Finnish, Hungarians, Sami or Estonians- have at least 55% of their aDNA deriving from Yamnaya-like stock. It makes them very similar and cluster with Eastern Europeans for that reason.

Onur Dincer said...

@Genos Historia

There was no extermination. Just as the Indo Europeans didn't exterminate farmers.

It was mostly the males who were exterminated. The more WHG-admixed I2a Neolithic farmer males exterminating the less WHG-admixed G2a2 and H2 Neolithic farmer males, the R1 and I1 early IE males exterminating the I2a, G2a2 and H2 Neolithic farmer males, meanwhile some I2a Neolithic farmer male groups joining the IE invaders and attacking their own kinsmen. Females spared much more during all these processes leading to the mixing of diverse female lines.

Copper Axe said...

The patterns show in Y-dna frequencies is more the result of patrilineal social structures, patrilocality and good old fashioned Y-DNA founder effects amongst these people rather than "haplogroups" exterminating each other in my humble opinion.

Rob said...

@ Onur
it sounds like you just made up some some theories there.
It's a lot more complex than that with numerous factors incl attrition, economic uptake , etc. You would need to know unique regional demographic trajectories in fairly specific detail

Rob said...

@ Arza

Thanks

@ Andrze

“ On top of it all, Balkan pops have lots of E1b1b and J, which is very common in both SE Europe and the Near East, which can indicate either an Anatolian BA admixture into both directions, or a PPNB/PPNC amalgamation of Anatolians and Levantines “”

But it fact it’s doesnt. For ex E-V13 / which is the “European” clade of E-M78 has a near-absence in the Near East .
It’s not even common in Neolithic Balkans. It means there’s some pretty complex history going on there which the public isn’t yet aware of (& I doubt most academics are either, because they’re don’t tend to look at this sort of detail)

With J; you’d need to specify which clade you’re talking about :J1a2, J2a1h, J2b2 ?
There’s no single narrative.
For all these sort of discussions you guys are having; we need to know every aspect of detail in fairly fine time-slices to make sound proposals

Rob said...

To give an example of how 'blind genetics' can lead to false conclusions.
One can claim that Anatolian Farmers had 'exterminated' all of the native hunter-gatherers in Greece & the Balkans, because early Farmers were essentially 100% derived from Anatolia with no WHG admixture.
But in reality - there were very few HGs in the Balkans to speak of, apart from places like the Iron Gates (the Balkans had become too forested for their liking, so hunter-gatherers had kept moving north as the Ice retreated).
I know even academics not aware of these (relatively simple) facts, because the Feldman et al paper claimed a 'population turnover' had occurred. But the reality is very different - virgin colonization.

Genos Historia said...

@Copper Axe,

About Y DNA patterns. I have to respectfully disagree. I am not a fan of over hyped dramatic stories.

But, when you see one Y DNA haplogroup popular over a large geographic area, it is probably due to expansion and replacement.

N1c, R1b P312, R1a M417.

EastPole said...

It was mentioned earlier that GRC_Helladic_MBA:Log04 can be modeled as HUN_Fuzesabony_MBA and Cycladic/Helladic BA.

Target: HUN_Fuzesabony_MBA:I20772
Distance: 2.2627% / 0.02262661
53.4 Corded_Ware_POL
46.6 HUN_Mako_EBA

https://i.postimg.cc/rw4vjrCX/Vahaduo-Global-25-North-Europe-PCA.png


https://i.postimg.cc/CLs8qvXW/Hyperborean-Slavs.jpg


Common elements in Slavic, Orphic and Vedic religions, languages and cultures can be explained by common origin. It all fits very well.

Copper Axe said...

@Genos Historia

And that in itself can be caused by a plethora of reasons and does not have to be due to extermination. That was what I was stabbing at. Obviously a wide dispersal of a particular Y-dna clades is linked to population expansions and replacements of preceding populations, but thst was more due to the social structure of the peoples (patrilineality and especially patrilocality) than mass genocides everywhere.

Not to say there wasn't any violence or anything, there obviously was and probably a decent amount of it but I dont think the pattern represents a long series of exterminations.

Especially if you consider that our current understanding of the total distribution of Y-DNA in ancient times is still quite limited and can lead to skewed interpretations. Remember that whole debacle about how Corded Ware was only R1a thus Beakers had to come from the Hungarian Yamnaya or something?

Genos Historia said...

I suppose for the rise of many different I2a lines in Neolithic, this is more so local social processes not expansions.

Matt said...

@Genos, I think the thing is, did y-expansions happen because 1) some group massacred another? "Exterminated", or 2) some group that was unwilling to accept foreign males had stronger population growth, without trying to "exterminate" anyone?

Rob said...

The end result is pretty clear in Western Europe, the details of how it happened remain to be determined
Must be some social aspects at play. Eg the transition from barely a Neolithic society in Britain to a Bronze Age one seems to have been radical . Different social systems- from sacral kings to independent households with chief Men. Once the kings were defeated; the pre-Beaker society became acephalus. I guess similar to Aztecs ?

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

@Andrejewski
It's most likely sub 40% and the additional Yamnaya is due to the placement in the west to east Eurasian PC. Also Saami have genuine EHG ancestry.

Andrzejewski said...

@Norfern-Ostrobothnian “ It's most likely sub 40% and the additional Yamnaya is due to the placement in the west to east Eurasian PC. Also Saami have genuine EHG ancestry.”


I’m not sure if I’m catching your drift. What do you mean “placement in the west to east Eurasian PC”?

The Sami have I believe something akin to 55%-60% Steppe Herder + about 20% EEF + about 20% - 25% Ngamasan. It’s hypothesized that they may have up to 25% Pittware Culture (=SHG?) but I’m not that convinced.

People are still conflating EHG and Uralic ancestry, when we know that Hap N originated in Northern China 8,000 years ago, was found in Botai and traveled westbound to form N1c east of the Ural. Yamnaya was EHG indeed but we forget that it’s essentially also 50% CHG-like but combining its components it’s roughly 50% ANE. Finno-Ugric at best is “Ulchi-like” or “transbaikal”, i.e. “East Eurasian” in its origins.

Heyerdahl said...

@Genos Historia
"But, when you see one Y DNA haplogroup popular over a large geographic area, it is probably due to expansion and replacement."

Yeah, you can always look at the phylogeny too. It doesn't always have to be extermination but European haplogroups with recent coalescent times probably expanded through a mix of violent conquest and dominance of the social hierarchy. If the process of R1b replacing I2 in Iberia wasn't violent but was caused by disease then it makes no sense that the local males disappeared while the maternal DNA remained. The replacement process in Britain must have been on a similarly violent scale, just maybe not as brutal as it was in Iberia.
Batini et al 2015 offers a good look at the phylogeny of European patrilineages.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8152

"Dating indicates that three major lineages (I1, R1a and R1b), accounting for 64% of our sample, have very recent coalescent times, ranging between 3.5 and 7.3 KYA. A continuous swathe of 13/17 populations share similar histories featuring a demographic expansion starting ∼2.1–4.2 KYA. Our results are compatible with ancient MSY DNA data, and contrast with data on mitochondrial DNA, indicating a widespread male-specific phenomenon that focuses interest on the social structure of Bronze Age Europe."

Nothing new here but what happened in Iberia can't be explained only trough social changes, elite dominance, or whatever.

Andrzejewski said...

“ With J; you’d need to specify which clade you’re talking about :J1a2, J2a1h, J2b2 ?
There’s no single narrative.
For all these sort of discussions you guys are having; we need to know every aspect of detail in fairly fine time-slices to make sound proposals...”

Because we don’t really know, therefore we merely are left to speculate based on that data we have so far. My understanding based on examining all this various diversity when it comes to Neolithic farmer societies is that they have diverse mtDNA Haplogroups so they were probably heterogeneous before they even migrated into Europe: H, K, T, N, Z, J, I, X and so on.

Now, in addition to that, it may be possible that even if the Balkanic route groups such as Korus and LBK were identical in the first place to the Cardial one, their split may have induced a mutual genetic drift that may have rendered them distinct and thus even utterly different phenotypically and linguistically.

We don’t really understand whether Barcin farmers were the only pop or if other regions in Anatolia contributed completely unrelated pops, although we do have a clue that at a different time frame there was a migration of different ethnic groups, e.g. in the case of Anatolian BA 2,000 years after Barcin, albeit in a more geographically restricted area.

On top of that, there must’ve been involving a process of acculturation and assimilation of different WHG tribes or clans, with an increasing rate over time. But as @Genos Historia claimed in one of his videos, these aforementioned WHG groups may not have been similar to each other either, with Baltic HG looking more like Loschbour phenotypically than to Chedar Man, perhaps.

It comes down to various origins of both WHG and EEF groups, uneven admixture both within and between WHG and Farmer groups over time and space, nature v. nurture, genetic drift, and maybe even preservation of Goyet- and Magdalenian-like ancestry in Spain and Poland (not just Villabruna) which could be responsible to these pre-IE European nations being so dissimilar from each other.

Garvan said...

@Matt & Genos Historia,

There is the question of why farmers leap frogged over superior farming land in France to the west coast of Ireland where it rains 200 days a year. As a #3 to Matt's list, I would suggest that the hunter/gather/fisher men could have acquired farmer brides, and through them gradually adopted animal husbandry and later farming. And then later had a more diverse economic base when farming became less viable.

Andrzejewski said...

@Rob “ To give an example of how 'blind genetics' can lead to false conclusions.
One can claim that Anatolian Farmers had 'exterminated' all of the native hunter-gatherers in Greece & the Balkans, because early Farmers were essentially 100% derived from Anatolia with no WHG admixture.
But in reality - there were very few HGs in the Balkans to speak of, apart from places like the Iron Gates (the Balkans had become too forested for their liking, so hunter-gatherers had kept moving north as the Ice retreated).”

Greeks score ~10% WHG, although it could’ve be attributed to the later, massive Slavic influx

Andrzejewski said...

In Scandinavia for example, the indigenous Erteboelle was subsumed into TRB, subsequently TRB was replaced somehow by PWC (SHG?), then later Sami partially assimilated PWC, after which CWC groups displaced the remaining PWC/SHG. The entire history of Southern Scandinavia hints of successions of replacement events.

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

@Andrejewski
Even the modern mixed Saami shows quite a lot of EHG rich ancestry, not Pitted Ware like.
Target: Saami
Distance: 3.6348% / 0.03634806
27.2 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
23.8 RUS_Krasnoyarsk_BA
23.4 RUS_Karelia_HG
14.8 TUR_Barcin_N
10.8 WHG

Target: Saami
Distance: 2.9130% / 0.02912970
29.6 VK2020_NOR_North_LN_HG
26.2 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
24.8 RUS_Krasnoyarsk_BA
19.4 UKR_Globular_Amphora
0.0 RUS_Karelia_HG
0.0 SWE_Motala_HG
0.0 TUR_Barcin_N
0.0 WHG

Target: Saami
Distance: 2.3011% / 0.02301138
25.6 RUS_Krasnoyarsk_BA
21.2 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
20.4 VK2020_NOR_North_LN_HG
19.8 Baltic_LVA_BA
13.0 UKR_Globular_Amphora
0.0 RUS_Karelia_HG
0.0 SWE_Motala_HG
0.0 TUR_Barcin_N
0.0 WHG

However, this is a mixed average so individual samples are better to be inspected.

Target: Saami:saami7
Distance: 2.9684% / 0.02968379
26.4 VK2020_NOR_North_LN_HG
26.0 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
25.2 RUS_Krasnoyarsk_BA
13.8 POL_Globular_Amphora
8.6 Baltic_LVA_BA
0.0 RUS_Karelia_HG
0.0 SWE_Motala_HG
0.0 WHG

However, I think these Yamnaya GAC ratios are unrealistic, I think there's even more EHG related ancestry in Saami that just gets consumed by Yamnaya. It's pretty hard to decipher using just G25 but from what I've seen Saami don't have that much Yamnaya.

Onur Dincer said...

@Rob

it sounds like you just made up some some theories there.
It's a lot more complex than that with numerous factors incl attrition, economic uptake , etc. You would need to know unique regional demographic trajectories in fairly specific detail


Yes, I was oversimplifying the millennia-long process to draw attention to the end results with many Y-DNA replacements with much less replacement in mtDNA lines. I think such a process cannot be without heavy doses of violence and massacres. I think that patrilineality and patrilocality do not contradict this conclusion, but rather complement it. But I agree with you that the Neolithic farmer expansions to the hunter-gatherer territories might have been less violent than some assume.

Genos Historia said...

@Rob,

That's interesting if Balkans was basically unpopulated in Mesolithic. Yeah why doesn't anyone talk about that? Just a little bit ago I was considering a Greek Mesolithic origin for some European farmers. Not anymore.

@Garven,

Wait so France, north of Med Sea, wasn't colonized by Farmers till 5th millennium BC? This must be where the I2a lines West European farmers are coming from.

Ric Hern said...

What happened to the CHG ?

Anthony Hanken said...

@Andrzejewski

"we know that Hap N originated in Northern China 8,000 years ago, was found in Botai and traveled westbound to form N1c east of the Ural. Yamnaya was EHG indeed but we forget that it’s essentially also 50% CHG-like but combining its components it’s roughly 50% ANE. Finno-Ugric at best is “Ulchi-like” or “transbaikal”, i.e. “East Eurasian” in its origins."

N has an estimated TMRCA of 22,000ybp and was already in the Circum-Baikal region 8000 years ago.

Finno-Ugric was spoken by a Nganasan-like people if anything. Some primordial version of Pre-Proto-Uralic may have been spoken in Trans-Baikal, but even that seems like an arbitrary assignment.

Rob said...

@ Genos

''That's interesting if Balkans was basically unpopulated in Mesolithic. Yeah why doesn't anyone talk about that? Just a little bit ago I was considering a Greek Mesolithic origin for some European farmers. Not anymore.''

Along the Danube, and further north, we see quite a lot
But not much south of the Danube. Few cave sites in Greece, some in Maramara region. NW Greece might have had a few WHG-like gorups. Eastern Greece & Aegean might have had some Boncuklu-like groups which arrived during the Younger-Dryas. Im still looking into it ...

Rob said...

@ Genos

''Wait so France, north of Med Sea, wasn't colonized by Farmers till 5th millennium BC? This must be where the I2a lines West European farmers are coming from.''

much earlier than that
Impressa farmers had reached the southern Frence coast by 5700 bce, from Italy. We have aDNA from the subsequent Cardial phase, these are all I2a1; not sure if this was acquired in Tyrrhenian Italy, or they came down from a Rhine-Rhone HG refuge. Continenza HG , Sicilian HGs, is a different clade, however, I2a2a..
The LBK guys reached northern France by 5200 bce. These were G2a heavy, like those east of the Rhine

@ Onur
Yes, i was quering some of the minor points. E.g. I dont think being I2a would necessarily make people 'kin', having separated in the Ice Age. Also remember a large part of CWC & Yamnaya expansion was over other R1-li

Copper Axe said...

@Genos

Re the Tollense samples (again):

I looked at them again taking your findings into account and yeah I agree with you, beyond what is present in Bell Beaker populations Wartberg isn't doing much.

How do you envision their ethogenesis? Was it a case of Central/Eastern Euro HGs mixing with Carpathian farmers to then later on mix with Corded Ware/BB populations or do you imagine a different chronology? The lack of western farmer is kinda odd right given how GAC was more or less sandwiched between these two points.

The samples you mentioned from Poland are interesting because I kind of overlooked them. The article they are from seems to match your findings too. Or rather the articles they refer to corroborate your take:

"In the territories like north-central Poland these farmers came into contact with well established hunter-gatherers communities of the Baltic region, which in turn occupied habitats not attractive for the agricultural lifestyle of LBK and post-LBK cultures. As a consequence, a borderland between the Neolithic farmer and HG worlds was constituted where farmers and HGs coexisted with each other for over one thousand years (during the fifth millennium BCE).

The Kuyavia region is one of the most representative areas of north-central Poland from the point of view of these processes when considering the archaeological record. Farming was introduced to this region with the arrival of LBK farmers ca. 5400 BCE. During the 5th millennium BCE, following the dissolution of the LBK, Kuyavia continues to be populated by post-Linear Pottery Neolithic cultural units of local expression such as the Stroke Band Pottery and later the Middle Neolithic Brześć Kujawski Group of the Lengyel culture (BKG). This cultural tradition is also known as the ‘Danubian Neolithic’ for its clear cultural ties with Carpathian Basin cultures on the one hand, and contrast to subsequent indigenous cultures on the other. After this phase, Kuyavia went through cultural transformations dominated by pan-European Middle and Late Neolithic cultural units like Funnel Beaker culture (TRB), Globular Amphora culture (GAC) and Corded Ware culture (CWC)."

Also which samples from Hungary was similar to these peoples again?

I'm still wondering where they were hiding out though during the onset of the GAC and later the CWC. The Tollense samples are near the Baltic, the Polish samples are quite central and the Hungarian samples I have no idea.

Maybe they didnt move and we just havent been able to identify them by way of material culture? Those CWC samples pretty much right at that contact zone as described here. But then again it kinda begs the question how GAC ancestry failed to make an impact despite them being widely present and also being one of the main populations ultimately assimilated by steppe derived populations.

Genos Historia said...

@Copper Axe,

Yeah, they are one of the mysteries of Bronze age of Europe. I have asked the same questions but can't get an answer. I think someone like Rob can find their signal in archaeology. Because they were clearly a real people.

Individual N49, Corded Ware Poland, is the oldest representative.

The next oldest come from Bell Beaker..... (all are mixed except I3528)
I3528, Hungary.
I7286, Czech
I5025, Czech
I5531, Germany

Most of the Bronze age individuals from Hungary have this ancestry....
I1502, I1504, I20772, I20771

These Bronze age Serbs are all identical to I1502 and I3528 from Hungary.
MOK23, MOK22, MOK21A, MOK28A, MOK30, MOK19A

All Iron age samples from Hungary have some of this ancestry. Some of them also have Slavic like ancestry.

One Hallstatt Celt from Czech is largely Tollense like. He is really a Central European Scythian.
DA112

One Scythian in Ukraine looks like a mix between Slavs & Tollense.
Scythian_Ukraine:scy009

Genos Historia said...

@Copper Axe,

I recall a video on unpublished DNA in Hungary. I believe they showed WHG rich people there during the Chalcolithic. This may be the source of the WHG rich people in bronze age Europe.

But as you said, it makes more sense they formed in Poland at the borderland between hunter gatherers & farmers. But they would have to of formed before TRB whch doesn't make sense.

Maybe Baltic hunter gatherers migrated south into Hungary. Or maybe a LBK-HG mixed pop lived as hunter gatherers in northern Europe then moved south in Chalcolithic. It is confusing.

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