Monday, June 28, 2021
The PIE homeland controversy: June 2021 status report
Archeologist David Anthony has made several appearances online recently to promote his theories about the origins of the Corded Ware and Yamnaya cultures and peoples.
In a clip on Youtube he reiterated his theory that the so called Iranian-related ancestry in the Yamnaya people actually came from what is now Iran, and, more precisely, that it was carried by hunter-gatherers who travelled relatively rapidly from the South Caspian region into the Volga Delta in what is now Russia.
It's still a complete mystery to me as to why a group of hunter-gatherers from the South Caspian would undertake such a migration, instead of, say, expanding their range gradually over thousands of years, first into the Caucasus and eventually into Eastern Europe.
But there's a more serious problem with Anthony's theory: it contradicts the currently available ancient DNA. That's because the so called Iranian-related ancestry in the Yamnaya people is most closely related to the Kotias and Satsurblia hunter-gatherers from what is now Georgia, and these hunter-gatherers form a separate clade from the earliest samples from what is now Iran. For instance, see here and here.
Also, in a podcast on Razib's blog, Anthony doubled down on his theory that Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a was closely associated with Yamnaya plebs who were excluded from Kurgan burials, and, as a result, their remains haven't yet been sampled.
At least this theory isn't yet contradicted by ancient DNA, but it's more complicated and less parsimonious than my theory, which posits that R1a, or rather R1a-M417, was simply a very rare lineage in the Yamnaya population, and that it only became a common and widespread marker thanks to the Corded Ware expansion (see here).
Intriguingly, my understanding is that there are several unpublished R1a samples from the Caspian and Volga steppes at Harvard's David Reich Lab that have been classified by its scientists as Yamnaya outliers. Of course, Anthony is collaborating on at least one major paper with this lab (see here).
Ergo, I strongly suspect that Anthony's theory is in part based on these Yamnaya outliers. However, I also believe that these samples are wrongly dated and probably represent Scythians and/or Sarmatians. I'll be able to look into that if they're ever published.
Speaking of the David Reich Lab, its leading scientists, David Reich and Nick Patterson, have also made appearances online recently, on Youtube and Razib's blog, respectively, to reveal that the Corded Ware and Yamnaya peoples aren't just very similar genetically, but in fact close cousins.
This is a very interesting finding. Apparently it's based on a relatively high level of Identity-by-Descent (IBD) segment sharing between Corded Ware and Yamnaya samples, but that's all I know. I'm guessing that the relevant paper is coming soon (that is, within the next five years).
However, the long-standing question that the readers of this blog want to see answered is not whether the Corded Ware and Yamnaya peoples are close cousins, but whether Yamnaya migrants founded the Corded Ware culture. The obvious way to prove that they did is to find at least one ancient population unambiguously classified as part of the Yamnaya horizon that is rich in the typically Corded Ware Y-haplogroups R1a-M417 and R1b-L151.
See also...
On the origin of the Corded Ware people
The PIE homeland controversy: January 2019 status report
The PIE homeland controversy: August 2019 status report
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Speaking about PIE why Reich/Razib do not examine the Kumtepe evidence for the arrival of proto anatolians / Hittite in the EBA.
Maybe because it arrives from the balkans and has zero CHG ancestry?
There are new samples coming from that area dating to the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age, and apparently they do show steppe ancestry in varying degrees.
Also, check this out...
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/06/perhaps-hint-of-things-to-come_2.html
I saw but Kumtepe has 30% Euro-hunter admixture. Before there was zero.
That is much more than a meagre 10% progress
But that ancient Greek paper was kind of crap, so I wouldn't take that figure seriously.
Davidski, are there any tools for IBD analysis available to the public? IIRC David Anthony used some 23andme cousin finder tool to prove close relationship between Yamna and CW?
Comparing generic ancient population ratios between groups of people doesn’t imply kinship. You kind of alluded to this with that Greek “study”. You need proper IBD analysis.
Late PIE was spoken by Corded Ware, not Yamnaya.
"That's because the so called Iranian-related ancestry in the Yamnaya people is most closely related to the Kotias and Satsurblia hunter-gatherers from what is now Georgia, and these hunter-gatherers form a separate clade from the earliest samples from what is now Iran."
I don't know why you double down on this when a simple g25 model can show you that there is additional Iran component in steppe eneolithic which is more eastern than CHG. It is ok to say that you don't know fully on basis of current published samples.
"Ergo, I strongly suspect that Anthony's theory is in part based on these Yamnaya outliers. However, I also believe that these samples are wrongly dated and probably represent Scythians and/or Sarmatians."
How can you even hypothesize this without knowing something about the samples. Or do you know something more?
David Anthony has a penchant for pseudoscience, like his claim that the EEF-outlier in Dereivka was a slave.
Anybow; I wouldn’t listen to what a bunch of ((Americans)) claim about Europe
@Vasistha Khvalynsk CHG might’ve been shifted in direction of Iran. It also had an extra WSHG. To me it reads BMAC introgression, or perhaps Steppe Maykop influences.
Yamnaya and CWC had none.
Hey, Rob, care to tell the class who you're talking about with those parentheses? Do you really think nobody here is going to call you out for that?
Besides just being outright moronic, I'll remind you that racial taunts are against the rules on this blog.
So there are going to be chalcolithic anatolians with more steppe\EHG?
Target: TUR_Barcin_C:I1584
Distance: 2.9584% / 0.02958446
39.8 TUR_Tepecik_Ciftlik_N
25.6 RUS_Darkveti-Meshoko_En
20.4 TUR_Barcin_N
7.6 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
6.6 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
@vAsiSTha
Yes, I do know more. But even if I didn't, this looks like a case of mistaken identity.
Think about it: outliers with R1a buried outside of Yamnaya Kurgans.
Come on, we don't need Sherlock Holmes to figure this out.
@Davidski
"There are new samples coming from that area [Kumtepe, Anatolia] dating to the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age, and apparently they do show steppe ancestry in varying degrees."
Days ago philologist Guus Kroonen, who was part of the Daamgard et al (2018) paper, commented that just like in that study there was no trace of substantial influx of Steppe ancestry in Anatolia, he wouldn't be surprised if nothing turns up in coming years, but that he's holding his breath for the forthcoming genomes from the burial mounds of Ikiztepe to be published soon. He also commented that it is still possible that Steppe ancestry is hiding in an isolated and yet unsampled population, but if it's not found, "we're at some point going to have to deal with that."
@Davidski
I have a question regarding the Y-haplogroups associated with the CHG component of the Khvalynsk culture.
According to the rumours we now clearly know that Y-DNA J1 (associated with CHG) is also found among the Khvalynsk culture.
Besides the J1, could there be other Y-lineages associated with the CHG component?
How and when did the Steppe Maykop individual IV3002 with Y-DNA T from 3600 BCE come into the Steppe region? How did the Areni-1 individuals from 4000 BCE and the Maykop individuals with Y-DNA L receive their Steppe admixture? In addition to the J1, could it be that L and T were also incorporated into the Khvalynsk culture as a part of the CHG component? Could it be that G2 is associated with the introduction of the Anatolia_N component into the Steppe?
@Carlos
I can't speak for Guus, but I've known for a long time that there are unpublished samples from Late Neolithic and Bronze Age Anatolia with some steppe ancestry.
That's what this thread was about.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/08/fascinating-stuff.html
@Ariel
Yeah, a lot more steppe ancestry than I1584.
@Luuk
Steppe Maykop is archeologically related to Maykop, which is a culture that moved up into the North Caucasus from the south. So it's not surprising to find a southern lineage like Y-hg T in Steppe Maykop.
But I'm not aware of any southern lineages apart from J1 in Khvalynsk. The J1 may or may not represent recent southern admixture in Khvalynsk. Keep in mind that J1 is also found in Eastern Euro hunter-gatherers from as far north as Karelia.
I'm not aware of any J1, G2, T or anything like that in Yamnaya or Corded Ware.
So even though there was some gene flow from the south into the North Caucasus, and maybe as far north as Khvalynsk, it didn't impact on the populations that were to become Yamnaya and Corded Ware.
I don't know what the Areni Cave samples represent. But yeah, they do have some steppe ancestry, and there's also steppe ancestry dating to the Copper Age at Arslantepe in the form of R1b-V1636.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/01/a-tantalizing-link.html
So there were people from the steppe moving into Anatolia and the southern Caucasus as early as the Chalcolithic/Copper Age. I don't know who they were, maybe Anatolian speakers, but in my view Anatolian speakers moved into Anatolia via the Balkans.
@Norfern
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kFxlzWsPMv0qkCVIb5DrBaBsGgeLgCPi/view?usp=sharing
@David
Thanks for these! I formatted the labels for you:
https://pastebin.com/raw/7sZ6Mt9L
I really want some good stuff to come out regarding the Pontic-Caspian steppe during the neolithic and eneolithic. New samples for sure, but also updates on archaeology and such. I think that is necessary, because there is a whole bunch if outdated stuff still floating around.
Such a fascinating period of prehistory. Unfortunately though, I think too much time is wasted on salvaging broken theories.
Speaking of broken theories - before aDNA there was a bunch of talk of Steppe Maykop peoples expanding north from the Caucasus into the steppes. What was this based on? It cant just be the sheer presence of Maykop pots and goods in their graves right?
@Davidski
Thanks!
@ Rob
Why does an anthropologist being American make him less credible?
@ Tom
Apologies for losing my cool, but there does seem to be an element of study bias & anecdotal theories
@Tom
„being American make him less credible?”
Because Americans are heirs of German science and we know how biased and racist they have been.
This is why they don’t have any clue about PIE language, culture, religion etc. right now and their theories don’t hold water.
@Davidski-"Steppe Maykop is archeologically related to Maykop, which is a culture that moved up into the North Caucasus from the south. So it's not surprising to find a southern lineage like Y-hg T in Steppe Maykop.
But I'm not aware of any southern lineages apart from J1 in Khvalynsk. The J1 may or may not represent recent southern admixture in Khvalynsk. Keep in mind that J1 is also found in Eastern Euro hunter-gatherers from as far north as Karelia."
Does, finding Y-hg T in Steppe Maykop (3600 BCE) not indicate that this lineage (together with L and J1, J2) could have reached this region (coming from Southern Caucasus and more southern regions) during the Khvalynsk culture period (or a bit earlier like the J1 arrival in the 6th millennium BCE)? The formation of the Steppe Maykop culture should have started at least in the end of the 5th millennium BCE. With I, R1a and R1b being natives of the region during the early Neolithic period, and Y-lineages like G, J, L, T reaching the Khvalynsk region from the South. And Y-lineages like Q reaching the Khvalynsk region from Northern/Eastern regions. Together these 3 groups could have formed the Khvalynsk culture (newly arised culture in the Steppe)? And finally in the middle of the 4th millennium BCE the Steppe Maykop culture mixed population is developed after a period of around 1000 years. And then in the late 4th millennium BCE, a group of people whom didnt mix a lot, migrated West to form Yamnaya and Corded Ware?
Andrze said
@Vasistha Khvalynsk CHG might’ve been shifted in direction of Iran. It also had an extra WSHG. To me it reads BMAC introgression, or perhaps Steppe Maykop influences.
Indeed. that signal is very clear in Progress, vonyuchka and khvalynsk outlier (low coverage) but not the 2 main khvalysnk samples.
Andrze
"Yamnaya and CWC had none."
There is no better ancestor for yamnaya than progress/vonyuchka and those samples show the Iran signal. Yamnaya also seems to show best match as ancestor for western_steppe_mlba, except for the issue of absence of R1a.
As time passes and there is more mixing and therefore dilution, its much harder to formally test for such an input without actually samples which are source of this eastern signal.
The American education system is a joke. They have people in colleges and universities that still can barely read and write.
@Luuk
Steppe Maykop is very different from Khvalynsk.
Khvalynsk is actually entirely derived from local hunter-gatherers, and that includes its CHG-like ancestry. That is, there were hunter-gatherers in the Volga steppes that already had a lot of CHG-like ancestry.
There is no L, T or G in Khvalynsk samples, and possibly there never will be.
On the other hand, Steppe Maykop is around 50% West Siberian hunter-gatherer.
And then there are also Steppe Maykop outliers, and its these outliers that have Near Eastern Y-haps like T.
It's interesting how Iran_N display a large diversity of G lineages on top of the J2 Hotu Hunter Gatherer. CHG however seem to be exclusively J1 + J2. If any haplogroup is present among CHG other than J, then it would be G, perhaps via the Trialetian Mesolithic horizon.
Ancient DNA, Indo-Europeans, and the Steppe: Interview with Professor David Anthony
Jun 24, 2021 | 59 min
https://wondery.com/shows/tides-of-history/episode/5629-ancient-dna-indo-europeans-and-the-steppe-interview-with-professor-david-anthony/
Does he say anything interesting?
The interesting thing was that he mentioned that they found people, just around the Yamnaya expansion, from the Altai, Moldavia, Samara and Slovakia that had common ancestry only 4/5 generations before.
@ Vasistha
For now we have squeezed what we can from autosomic and YDNA
What does mtdna suggest ? Eg that can give clues about whether a stream is epipalaeolithic vs eneolithic via the diversity asssociated with putative CHG
no he tells nothing new. Pretty much wasted time listening to it
@Davidski
Before the Khvalynsk culture, the local hunter-gatherers had multiple different cultures which were totally not related to the Khvalynsk culture. So, it must have been some cultural package which came with a minority group (mostly CHG) from the southern regions (mixing with the majority of local hunter-gatherers) which caused for the arising of a new culture in the steppe regions. This is contemporary with the movements of the farmers from the Neolithic Revolution (6500 - 4000 BCE).
How and when did this outlier IV3002 (Y-haplogroup T, 3600 BCE, Steppe Maykop) come into the Ipatovo Steppe Maykop region? It is certain this individual didnt arrive exactly at 3600 BCE, there should be at least a background of 1000 years in which his ancestors came from southern regions and settled in this steppe region (and probably also settled in the more northern regions), which means around 4500 BCE. Doesnt this correlate with the beginning of the Khvalynsk culture and the arrival of the unpublished J1 result?
David Anthony in his podcast talked about the fact that there were very different genetic structures among the Khvalynsk like cultures divided by regions which are located more in the West/North and other regions which are located more in the East/South. So, maybe the unpublished results until now are just site-specific, and in more eastern/southern cemeteries of the Khavalynsk culture we will maybe find more southern Y-haplogroup lineages like J, L and T?
I've just finished listening to it and no, he doesn't say there anything new. But it's still worth a listen to get an idea of what Harvard's future theory about PIE might look like.
From what I have read, the Pre-Corded or "CWC-X" Horizon (3000-2900 BC) in Małopolska in SE Poland is going to be central in tracing the transition from Yamnaya to Corded Ware, both genetically and culturally. Polish archaeologist Piotr Włodarczak laid out the CWC chronology in April of 2019 at the "Yamnaya Interactions" conference in Helsinki:
I – (ca. 3000-2900 BCE) Pre-Corded, related to the appearance of the oldest kurgan communities (horizon CWC-X);
II – (ca. 2800-2600 BCE) associated with the oldest Corded Ware horizon (horizon CWC-A); and
III – (ca. 2600-2550 BCE) the migration of Middle Dnieper groups and the appearance of features of Catacombnaya culture.
In her recent paper, Anna Linderholm stressed the importance of the CWC-X Horizon and of the CWC-X site at Hubinek in SE Poland. There is a second such site not far from Hubinek at Srednia. It would be nice if some ancient DNA from those two sites would show up sometime soon.
@EastPole
"Because Americans are heirs of German science and we know how biased and racist they have been."
Lol, ze evil Germans are the culprits again. Without negating the crimes of National Socialism, may I remind you that e.g., Arthur de Gobineau was a Frenchman, Houston Stewart Chamberlain was English, and Madison Grant was an American. They were some of the most influential roots of German Nordicism and Anti-Semitism. However I don't think anything of this still matters today.
@Luuk
IV3002 has recent ancestry from the Caucasus Maykop, hence his Y-DNA T.
Target: RUS_Steppe_Maykop_o:IV3002
Distance: 2.5253% / 0.02525286
58.8 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya
22.0 RUS_Steppe_Maykop
19.2 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
Target: RUS_Steppe_Maykop_o:IV3002
Distance: 2.4896% / 0.02489646
51.6 ROU_BA
48.4 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya
I find his non Caucasian ancestry more interesting. As you can see, there once was a population with a mixed Yamnaya/Steppe Maykop ancestry.
I have recently found what might be a Steppe Maykop skull. It looks very unique. Extremely narrow headed, dolichocephalic, but with a large browridge and skull height, also large jaw and cheekbone width in comparison to overall skull width.
Couple that with EDAR and you get a very weird looking population. Wonder if he's a good representative of Steppe Maykop as a whole.
Ipatovo 5, kurgan 4, burial 6.
https://i.imgur.com/zyAsBWH.png
Alternatively, if IV3002 really has ancestry from some ROU_BA-like population, then his T Y-DNA might come from the Balkan EEF.
Target: ROU_BA:I11910
Distance: 1.8092% / 0.01809175
33.2 BGR_MP_N
24.0 RUS_Steppe_Maykop
22.8 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
13.0 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya
7.0 POL_Globular_Amphora
Target: ROU_BA:I11914
Distance: 2.3870% / 0.02387008
38.0 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
25.4 BGR_MP_N
20.6 RUS_Steppe_Maykop
9.6 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya
6.4 POL_Globular_Amphora
Target: ROU_BA:S11955
Distance: 2.1834% / 0.02183415
46.8 RUS_Steppe_Maykop
25.6 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
17.8 BGR_MP_N
9.8 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya
@ Copper Axe
'' before aDNA there was a bunch of talk of Steppe Maykop peoples expanding north from the Caucasus into the steppes. What was this based on? It cant just be the sheer presence of Maykop pots and goods in their graves right?''
The basis is burials in e North Caucasus steppe which possess Majkop type goods, esp pottery, but not the full package as that seen in the burials of Majkop chiefs themselves back in the core region. These finds go as far as the Dnieper, and some believe burials of the Zvivoltilovka-Volchansk horizon (as far as Podolia) show Majkop features too.
Traded Majkop goods were to be seen as far as the Balkans. The Usatavo culture seems to have a link with Majkop also, although they are different peoples.
There are several archaeogenetic trails to explain these links - (1) majkop people themselves (Ozera outlier) (ii) steppe majkop (iii) Yamnaya; with (ii) & (iii) representing intermediators.
@Simon_W: Don't think EastPole won't regard those things you mentioned of Chamberlain, Grant and Madison as the main bad things he dislikes about "German history" (though he doesnt support them and he has never supported anti-Semitism that I can remember so I would not want to imply such!). What he has clearly indicated thinks is bad is that Niemcy spread ideas that the lost Polish Corded Ware expanding Aryans culture-bearers who brought higher religious and ethical ideas to Greece and India were German and Slavs were latecomers. This seems about the limit of his beef with German WWII era ideas about prehistory - the jist is "Kossina had the right ideas, but the Corded Ware wuz Slavs, not Teutons, (and Western Indo-European people have a spiritual and religious philosophy that is distinct and vaguely corrupt )...". To me it just seems like bog-standard turbo-nationalist prehistory, but there you go.
@Crm: when it comes to the admixed samples like IV3002 it is difficult to tell what the connections between Steppe Maykop, Maykop and other steppe groups that were more like Yamnaya. Hopefully the new resolution to identify long range (4th degree etc) relatives will help us talk about the outliers that are found. We know that Anthony has recently talked about Maykop ancestry fairly far north (and this seemed north of the samples we know of and he seemed to be talking about Caucasus Maykop) and of a close family relationship found between Usatovo and Steppe persons. These people will probably be outliers with little contribution to later people but Anthony mentions them as part of an increase in mobility that preceded, and may have caused, steppe expansion.
I'm hoping that they use the new IBD software to sort out these R1a "Yamnaya outliers".
Not that they really need to. Just run a Eurasian PCA and watch them cluster with Scythians.
@Arza
“I've just finished listening to it and no, he doesn't say there anything new. But it's still worth a listen to get an idea of what Harvard's future theory about PIE might look like.”
Great discovery about PIE. PIE were eating dogs in some boys initiation sacrifice. Because some dog rituals were found among Germanic people and in Rome everything is clear. And you know Odin (the all-father) just sits on a chair guarded by two dogs. By comparative mythology you can understand everything, the whole PIE story unravels.
All those advanced, beautiful Slavic, Vedic and Orphic religions are so different, so who cares.
@CRM
The ROU_BA samples are probably late bronze age/pre-Cimmerian samples, so modeling them as ancestral to 4th millenium b.c samples is strange imo.
@Rob
Thanks.
Still feels like they jumped the shark with that name. Interesting population though - you find ancestry from these type of peoples throughout Central Asia And Siberia. Maybe WSHG mixed with EHG+CHG in the Volga-Caspian in the 6/7th millenium b.c or something and spread through Central Asia, a link to the Elshanka pottery?
@Copper Axe
"The ROU_BA samples are probably late bronze age/pre-Cimmerian samples, so modeling them as ancestral to 4th millenium b.c samples is strange imo."
Was it ever confirmed that they're LBA? Their upper dating estimate is up to 3500BC. One of them even shows too much Steppe Maykop related ancestry, which would have been very unusual in Romania during LBA, I think.
Target: ROU_BA:S11955
Distance: 2.4207% / 0.02420685
41.6 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
38.6 RUS_Steppe_Maykop
17.2 BGR_C
2.0 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya
0.6 RUS_Baikal_N
@CrM
One of skulls from the bronze age Aigyrzhal site looks similar and those people quite a bit of Steppe Maykop/Kumsay type ancestry, but it doesn't have the wide jaw. But those populations also had central asian farmer ancestry which could've added to their more gracile features in comparison to that individual you posted.
@Copper Axe
Interesting, do you have images of the skull? And yeah, Central Asian farmers were generally more gracile than Steppe_MLBA, but not by much, it depended on the sites. Can't make a conclusion on Steppe Maykop and related people because other than the Ipatovo skull, I don't have any other measurements.
@CrM
That dating is clearly off. It was a common phenomenon for people to be re-buried in older burial mounds on the steppes.
You see a combo of steppe_emba, R1a-z93, EEF (GAC) , Central Asian forager/pastoralist (Steppe Maykop is near identical to Kumsay and Mereke) and Caucasian qncestry and you think it is likelier they are from 3500 bc rather than misdated LBA samples?
MJ31 is likely a contemporary of the Glavanesti samples or part of the same phenomenon.
@CopperAxe
WSHG presence is old, mtDNA C in EHG suggests that.
There might even be a tiny amount of Altai related ancestry in those glavanesti samples but it might be noise or just a slight amount of excess east asian ancestry when using steppe maykop or kumsay as a reference.
They are 100% not from 3500 bc.
@CrM
Check out "New Discoveries about Ancient Naryn" it has photographs of one of their skulls.
@Crm,
That Steppe Maykop skull has a very robust face. He is a bruiser.
@MaxT
MtDNA C is probably a lineage related to ANE/ANS, for half of Yana’s ancestry is related to a IUP Bacho Kiro derived, Tianyuan—like population. Tianyuan also belonged to mtDNA B. So it seems a variety of mtDNA M and N lineages were spread by this Crown Eurasian population, probably around east West Asia, Central Asia, northern South Asia, and southeastern North Asia.
@Rich S.
(…) From what I have read, the Pre-Corded or "CWC-X" Horizon (3000-2900 BC) in Małopolska in SE Poland is going to be central in tracing the transition from Yamnaya to Corded Ware, both genetically and culturally. (…)
Thank you very much for this data!
Do you have any knowledge where the construction of the first burial mounds / kurgans started?
Here is some additional data about the kurgans in Hubinek and Srednia and more, see:
https://zabytek.pl/en/obiekty/hubinek-kurhan-st-1
https://zabytek.pl/en/obiekty/hubinek-kurhan-st-2
https://mapio.net/pic/p-6318377/
https://pl-pl.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1060471187490194&id=216532571884064&comment_id=1060476357489677&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R0%22%7D
There are even 80 mounds there! This is not Małopolska/ Lesser Poland, but the eastern Lubelszczyzna / Lubelskie / Lublin region!
Średnia is located either in Lesser Poland ...
https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=52232
https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=52229
... or in the vicinity of Hubinek, see:
http://www.tuhistoria.pl/kurhany-w-sredniej/
http://pruchnik.pl/zabytki/kurhany.html
http://www.straznicyczasu.pl/viewtopic.php?t=5072
https://vici.org/vici/44309/
I recommend it especially:
https://www.academia.edu/20445941/Kurhany_KCS_na_pog%C3%B3rzach_i_wysoczyznach_karpackich
Kurhany i obrządek pogrzebowy w IV-II tysiącleciu p.n.e.
pod redakcją Hanny Kowalewskiej-Marszałek i Piotra Włodarczaka
Best regards
SKRiBHa
@Davidski
Last year a chapter on Vakhsh culture was published by archaeologist Mike Teufer in the book The World of the Oxus Civilization, edited by Dubova and Lyonnet. There, the findings at three new cemeteries related to steppe people were reported in Tajikistan's sites called Gelot, Darnajchi, and Farkhor. These cemeteries are further east and are at least four centuries older than previous Narasimhan et al's aDNA with Steppe ancestry reported in Central Asia. I wonder if samples were already taken for genetical studies. Particularly the cemetery at Farkhor is from around 2500 BCE and is located very near Shortughai, the outpost of Indus civilization in Central Asia!
Vakhsh culture was considered until recently as a 2nd millennium BCE fenomenon, but now its datings were found to be earlier, from the middle of third millennium BCE, even earlier than Sintashta, and located very near to South Asia. Take a look at some details of this steppe-related culture here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vakhsh_culture
In my view, it is a very important culture, unfortunately neglected until now, that could shed more light on the Indo-Aryan's arrival to South Asia.
It seems plausible that GAC, Tripolye, TRB, Khvalynsk were not a homogeneous culuture but rather a horizon, in which different clans living in different geographic areas and/or deriving from different Haplogroups or cultures (WSHG v. EHG c. EEF or WHG) - spoke completely different languages and perhaps their only relationship within the broader horizon may have been economic. As such, maybe we cannot refer to PIE as an “EHG language” (as Anthony used to do), but instead as a dialect that arose in Sredny Stog culture as a lingua Franca between EHG, Vonyuchka/Progress, Farmer and WHG groups.
@ Copper Axe
''Still feels like they jumped the shark with that name''
In what way ? It was an archaeological term, long before aDNA, based on the group's location in the steppe region of the Caucasus. It was not a supposition about steppe ancestry
''Interesting population though - you find ancestry from these type of peoples throughout Central Asia And Siberia. Maybe WSHG mixed with EHG+CHG in the Volga-Caspian in the 6/7th millenium b.c or something and spread through Central Asia, a link to the Elshanka pottery?''
More or less, i think aDNA will show that it starts arriving from ~ 5500 bce
I did read an article that, due to ecological shifts, Siberian populations ancestry moved as far south as the Aral Sea, but lost it
To clarify, I said this earlier:
"you find ancestry from these type of peoples throughout Central Asia And Siberia. Maybe WSHG mixed with EHG+CHG in the Volga-Caspian in the 6/7th millenium b.c or something and spread through Central Asia, a link to the Elshanka pottery?"
What I didnt mean was that these populations spread Elshanka pottery, I meant that the WSHG movement westwards could maybe be linked the Elshan materials popping up.
And since we are talking about that I might as well speculate:
If EHG+CHG populations were moving up the Volga in the 7/6th millenium b.c, this seems like a perfect region for Steppe_En type people to mix with WSHG populations to create the profile we see with the Steppe Maykop.
These populations also work well as a source for many of the copper and bronze age central asian samples. Two from Kazakhstan are basically identical.
Could it be possible that the Kelteminar were such a population? WSHG+Steppe_En people migrating into Central Asia along the Caspian, from there on spreading throughout the region, also spreading to the Pamirs and Tian Shan over time. I'm not sure how archaeologically viable this would be from an archaeological perspective, is anyone here well read on that material culture?
If one populations goes left and the other goes right as they hit the Caspian shores, and they keep going that way, one eventually reaches the Caucasus and the other reaches Turkmenistan.
Although you could argue that this profile only showed up later on throughout Central Asia. I guess it depends on whether the earliest Central Asian farmers have "pure" ANE/WSHG or mixed in with steppe_en. Or if Botai genuinely has this type of ancestry (g25 picks up some).
@ Copper Axe
Thanks. Very interesting. What is specifically interesting is that the physical type of those people were different from Botai although they were connected to the Botai Culture. Wonder if Maykop or specifically Steppe Maykop migrated to the East ?
@Copper Axe
I mean, Usatovo samples are supposed to be z93 as well, there's also the Maykop ancestry in Ozera and what seems to be a Caucasian input in Yamnaya Bulgaria.
But Kubeno Tersk + BGR_MLBA/Srubnaya + Srubnaya outliers and local farmer ancestry sounds plausible as well.
Either way, the Steppe ancestry in IV3002 is quite similar to ROU_BA.
Target: IV3002_-50%MaykopNovosvobodnaya
Distance: 4.9288% / 0.04928823
56.8 RUS_Steppe_Maykop
23.6 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
18.4 BGR_C
1.2 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya
0.0 POL_Globular_Amphora
0.0 TUR_Tepecik_Ciftlik_N
Distance to: IV3002_-50%MaykopNovosvobodnaya
0.05422292 ROU_BA:S11955
0.05872395 RUS_Potapovka_MLBA_o:I0246
0.05883271 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2:I4784
0.06551879 Sarmatian_KAZ:DA26
0.06587747 Sarmatian_KAZ_Aktobe:KBU001
0.06610786 Sarmatian_RUS_Caucasus:MJ38
0.06666497 Yamnaya_RUS_Caucasus:RK1001
0.06893630 Sarmatian_RUS_Pokrovka:I0574
0.06915546 Sarmatian_RUS_Urals:tem003
0.06944410 Sarmatian_RUS_Urals:tem002
0.06969441 Yamnaya_RUS_Caucasus:RK1007
0.06981736 RUS_Kubano-Tersk:GW1001
0.06999131 RUS_Kubano-Tersk_Late:KBD002
"Check out "New Discoveries about Ancient Naryn" it has photographs of one of their skulls."
Nice. Although it doesn't look very similar. Pity they didn't include craniometrics.
https://i.imgur.com/hNvoVJ8.png
So it was not on the Dnieper, as some postulated, but on the Bug and San that the Yamna turned into CWC.
While I've learned to be quite critical regarding Anthony's ideas over the years concerning the IE debate, lets remember that this aspect of scholarly inquiry begins among Europeans who quite frequently got things miserably wrong or sensationalized for well over a century. Gimbutas in particularly easily comes to mind here but there are many others who weren't without error. Anthony is just merely following in a long line of theory manglers concerning the IE debate which Europeans first established the very foundations for. Most scholars at this point, regardless of where they come from, would be wise to simply wait and let the aDNA do the talking before getting on youtube, academia.edu or where ever and spinning tall tales.
@CrM
Nice one! Isn't the reference image of the skull a bit flattened (not as elongated) as the one you provided earlier? Does one of the two have incorrect dimensions?
"I guess it depends on whether the earliest Central Asian farmers have "pure" ANE/WSHG or mixed in with steppe_en. Or if Botai genuinely has this type of ancestry (g25 picks up some)."
Botai is WSHG/ANE nothing else.
Central asia (sarazm, easternmost) has some non-insignifant traces of CHG, but no steppe_en.
Geoksyur_en, namazga_en etc (western SCA) might harbor additional steppe_en like ancestry.
Rob
"For now we have squeezed what we can from autosomic and YDNA
What does mtdna suggest ?"
Havent looked at it. busy these days, maybe someone else can look.
Central Asia is a genetic sink.
Not a source.
@ JJ
That's true. With current evidence of aDNA, certain pre-established theories are upheld whether the data supports it or not
This is perplexing & even frustrating for methdological reasons rather than any concern of geographical specifics of said theories.
SKRiBHa,
The map I have (in Polish) shows that whole region of SE Poland as Małopolska, bounded by Slask on the west, Wielkopolska on the northwest, Mazowsze on the north, Podlasie on the northeast, Slovakia on the south, and Ukraine on the east. According to it, Hubinek and Srednia are in Małopolska. Of course, the important thing about Hubinek and Srednia is the CWC-X Horizon burials in those places, not what modern or historical district of Poland they are currently located in. After all, there was no Poland, and no Małopolska, when steppe pastoralists settled there and buried their dead there.
@Copper Axe
Yeah, you're right. How about now?
https://i.imgur.com/DNsjHnv.png
SKRiBHa -
Here is the old, historical map of Poland I was referring to when I described the region in which Hubinek and Srednia are located as Małopolska:
https://masterpage.com.pl/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/large-map-of-regions.jpg
Interesting that the distance between Łubcze and Hubinek is only about 3.2 km (~2 miles): https://tinyurl.com/4hmacfw7.
Łubcze is the site of several CWC Catacombnaya/niche-style burials dated 2459-2351 BC, reported on in Linderholm et al (2020). Pcw361 and pcw362 were R1b-L52 (P310). Pcw350 was R1b-M269. (BTW, these individuals were not Beaker bleed-overs, not autosomally anyway.)
I know there is a big time gap between the CWC-X Horizon burials at Hubinek and the burials at Łubcze, but the proximity of the sites to each other is still kind of interesting.
@Vasistha “ Botai is WSHG/ANE nothing else.”
I really doubt that they are. The only ydna found so far at Botai sites are Basal N (ancestral to Uralic?) and R1b (Indo-European). No Q1a like in Khvalynsk. We don’t even know what language they spoke. I don’t rule out ANY WSHG in Botai (they found BMAC to be mostly Iran_Neo like the Elamites plus a considerable amount of both Anatolian farmers and WSHG). Nevertheless, it’s more likely that Kett are direct descendants of WSHG than Botai were.
@CopperAxe @CrM “Nice one! Isn't the reference image of the skull a bit flattened (not as elongated) as the one you provided earlier? Does one of the two have incorrect dimensions?”
From the reconstruction you created, that Steppe Maykop specimen would easily pass as a White American, we’re he to roam the streets of Chicago. But so far, all the reconstructions of WHG, EEF or WSH (in particular!) would, with the notable exception of Cheddar Man.
@John Johnson,
I will agree archaeologists seem to often push fantasy stories that aren't backed up by hard evidence. Then tell gullible public the story is true. This can be quite annoying.
But the overall "Kurgan hypothesis" is right on the money. It has been proven to be correct. So those sensationalist archaeologists were on to something and should not be totally dismissed.
@Crm,
How did you make that Steppe Maykop face reconstruction so fast? Very interesting.
The skull to me looks strange. Like he has a very wide face. It reminds me of Ameridian skulls from Clovis culture.
Then again the face you gave him is wideset and looks somewhat Ameridian.
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/bDLFappSxRFIWO_yMXGWZipff6o=/291x0:1624x1333/1080x1080/media/img/mt/2017/10/Kennewick_Man/original.jpg
@Rob
"In what way ? It was an archaeological term, long before aDNA, based on the group's location in the steppe region of the Caucasus. It was not a supposition about steppe ancestry"
I didnt see my reply in the comments, maybe I forgot to press publish or it was flagged as spam or something.
What I meant was that prior to aDNA there were several archaeological descriptions of Steppe Maykop being akin to an expansion or colonization from Caucasians/Maykop culture folks into the steppes, based on the presence of Maykop goods. That was what I referred to jumping the shark, considering the ancestry of the peoples tell a different story, not to mention the presence of the artefacts can be explained by a myriad of reasons which do not involve an expansion or colonization from people X into region Y, or a geneological relation between the two populations. Because lets face it, if They are called them Steppe Maykop, it sure sounds a lot like they were derived from the Maykop proper.
@Genos Historia
Check the newer one, I screwed up with the skull dimensions. His skull was very narrow, only 136mm, but his face is indeed pretty wide and short, just not as wide as I made him originally. He reminds me of Australian aborigines in that sense, - very dolichocephalic, narrow cranium, strong zygomatic arch and browridge, wide face.
https://i.imgur.com/FdRRHap.png
I use Artbreeder to give a general face shape, then edit the result with photoshop to make it more in accordance to the skull. For final touches I use faceapp.
@Andrzejewski
Don't think he can pass anywhere outside of heavily mixed countries like America.
@GH
Just to be clear on something, I'm not negating any geographical point for the PIE homeland by my statement. I think geographically speaking, the PCS has been a fairly reasonable proposition based alone on the concept of 'geographic weight' which Mallory did a very good job of discussing in his 1989 book. The problem of IE origins has been just as much a geographical or spatial problem in as much as it is archaeological, linguistic, and genetic. I always felt better geographic/spatial studies could be useful to shedding light on the matter. Though there are some things that archaeologists of the past should have had more restraint with regarding the theory. Often times this led to inaccurate generalizations. So while those sensationalist archaeologists may have been right geographically, they decided to sacrifice more appropriate analysis of fauna remains in the name of, let's just say, story telling. Although, allegedly its claimed some data sources regarding the matter were destroyed that could have been quite illuminating...
Gimbutas was of course very influential and I often times feel many are just simply rewriting her at times. She kinda did a good job at times of connecting the dots but at other times was a bit too imaginative. So not everything she said was entirely accurate. That's why we still have the problems we do today with the like of Anthony and what not. Researchers like Anthony and Gimbutas essentially reached a very privileged 'Ivy tower'status where they have been and were given free reign to be conceptualizers. The problem is, this is very controversial to do in archaeology, because most of your grizzled field archaeologists will tell you the discipline is really about collecting what you can in the field and then discussing what is there. When you don't to that and decide to imagine too much, you start seeing things that naturally may not have been there...
@Rob
Yes and I know people who favor certain theories over others regarding geographic locale are particularly frustrated by this. I've also noticed in particular you have keen to point out the problems facing horse domestication within the Yamna culture. Naturally, this effects the nature of how people view the CWC. I've visited an archaeologist once upon a time who had one of those reconstructed depictions of a CWC horse warrior holding weapons and what not hanging in his office. Based upon one of the studies you shared in the past about Yamna and some of the other things we know about CWC, this may not actually be a reality. The only study I know of to date that discusses horse remains in the CWC is by Milisauskas and Kruk but I have been told by others that what was presented may in fact be questionable.
@Genos Historia “ The skull to me looks strange. Like he has a very wide face. It reminds me of Ameridian skulls from Clovis culture.
Then again the face you gave him is wideset and looks somewhat Ameridian.”
Not at all! Like i had said, he looked like a Caucasian, European-American.
You might say he looks Indian because he might be 50% WSHG, but we know that WSHG were actually closer to WHG than to East Asians.
Quoting part of the original blog post:
"However, the long-standing question that the readers of this blog want to see answered is not whether the Corded Ware and Yamnaya peoples are close cousins, but whether Yamnaya migrants founded the Corded Ware culture. The obvious way to prove that they did is to find at least one ancient population unambiguously classified as part of the Yamnaya horizon that is rich in the typically Corded Ware Y-haplogroups R1a-M417 and R1b-L151."
If I'm right, the Pre-Corded or "CWC-X" Horizon (3000-2900 BC) will prove to be critical in answering that question, since it is supposed to mark the transition from Yamnaya to Corded Ware.
The following is from Anna Linderholm (Linderholm et al, 2020, Supplementary Info, pp. 2-3):
"At the same time, the possibility that steppe communities dispersed into Małopolska regions was indicated - starting from the turn of the fourth and third millennium BCE. This phenomenon, called the "CWC-X horizon" [10, 13, 14], would precede the rather static formalisation of the CWC barrow ritual, i.e. the A horizon. Until recently, this was only a theoretical idea. Recently, this has been confirmed with the discovery of graves with skeletons coloured with ochre in burials at site 2 in Hubinek, dated to 3000-2900 BCE [15]: supplement; see also [16]. The barrow burials of the older phase of the CWC - both from Małopolska and from other regions of Europe - have not been the subject of archaeogenetic research so far."
Here's the drive from one of the known CWC-X Horizon burial sites to the other: https://tinyurl.com/ycmsm4d9
That region could be the birthplace of the CWC. Not far away are the headwaters of the Dniester in Ukraine. Its valley would have provided a natural pathway from the Pontic steppe to the very doorstep of SE Poland.
Rich S.
At one time, there was a dispute about where the Fatyanovo (Aryans) population was born. So it was not the middle Dnieper. The middle Dnieper was just a transfer point. The homeland of this population was south-eastern Poland. Do I understand it correctly?
@ Copper Axe
I guess that might have been the implication. So the aDNA was a surprise
Well, genetically Steppe Maykop is overall very different from Maykop, but it is linked to Maykop via the Steppe Maykop outliers.
I think the real shock for many people was the fact that Steppe Maykop is so different from Yamnaya.
That wasn't a shock for me though. I knew that Maykop wasn't ancestral to Yamnaya, or even mixed with it.
ambron -
I think SE Poland or thereabouts (maybe also NW Ukraine) was the birthplace of Corded Ware, so yeah, probably.
As for Middle Dnieper, this is from page 248 of Mallory's In Search of the Indo-Europeans:
"Artemenko, and others, see in the Middle Dnieper culture the roots of some of the other local variants of the Corded Ware horizon in easternmost Europe, but no one seriously entertains the hypothesis that the Middle Dnieper culture is the earliest expression of the Corded Ware horizon, the one from which it later expanded westwards."
@ JJ
There's the issue of horse-riding -vs- horse domestication as a whole.
My main criticism was toward the notion that horse-riding raiders destroyed the Varna, etc. There is a significant temporal gap between the end of Varna and the pre-yamnaya steppe groups, and the affected areas were too widespread to make any notion of people from Khvalynsk inflicting this plausible.
But yeah, the incontrovertible evidence for individuals riding horse-back comes with the pre-Scythian Iron Age.
@CrM
Awesome! Looks a bit like the kelteminar drawed reconstructions floating around. You should try and do more of "WSHG" related peoples because they were pretty unique both genetically and feature wise.
If I may ask, how did you pull this off? Is it just magnificent photoshop skills or do you use a program to sculpt the face around the skull dimensions? I have a whole bunch of skeletons and skulls saved up in a folder, would be nice to give them a face lol.
@Davidski “ Well, genetically Steppe Maykop is overall very different from Maykop, but it is linked to Maykop via the Steppe Maykop outliers.
I think the real shock for many people was the fact that Steppe Maykop is so different from Yamnaya.”
Maykop was 50:50 Anatolian : CHG; Steppe Maykop was 50:50 Maykop : WSHG; Yamnaya was 55% EHG : 35% CHG : 10% farmers + WHG. Right?
@Andrzejewski
Nope.
There are blog posts about this stuff here, but I'm not able to link to them now.
@Rob
"But yeah, the incontrovertible evidence for individuals riding horse-back comes with the pre-Scythian Iron Age."
Right, that's basically what I've read from the more sobering archaeological input on the matter. I think its what is sometimes referred to as Srubna culture and perhaps a few others in the area is when you get something that looks like a 'classical-nomadic-horse-riding-warrior' society. Of course we all know mounted equine warriors is what Gimbutas assigned to Yamna culture which appears to be erroneous based on the data as it currently stands. I know most archaeologists nowadays who are intricately more familiar with the fauna remains of Yamna argue for more of a type of semi-nomadic pastoral society but nothing like what we see with Mongols, Kazakhs and the like let alone Scythians. Unfortunately, Anthony picked up the reigns on this matter right from Gimbutas and went into somewhat fanciful models to defend this position to the hilt. That and of course his Dereivka stallion mis-analysis did alot to actually hurt the credibility of the PCS theory. Naturally, the aDNA studies by and large have been like manna falling from the sky to him. And so its no wonder we see him alllll the time on youtube and elsewhere all over the data derived from the studies complete with new theory spinning. Overall, I kinda wish he stop and just wait for more data....
@Crm
Very nice reconstruction!
Why did you give this particular mouth shape?
Do you have a personal page with other reconstructions?
I’m confused about Baikal HG (BHG); I read a couple of previous blog entries from 2019 dealing with Steppe Maykop and it’s origin, and I accidentally came across this designation (BHG). But I don’t remember if they refer to the trans-Baikal pop that the WSHG/AG3 mixed with to form Beringians and Paleo-Siberians, and which may have been Ulchi-like and perhaps ancestral to Altaic peoples like Tunguska and Mongolians. Or whether Baikal HG actually refers to the Hap N/N1c3 carrying ancestors and progenitors of the Uralic speakers?
Rich S.
Thus, we find a good explanation of the cultural (linguistic and religious) relationships in the Indo-Slavic branch that the EastPole often talks about.
@Copper Axe
Yes, he does look Kelteminar-y. Send me some skulls, their context, craniometrics (if you have them) on my AG - Korotyr. I'll see if I can reconstruct them when I'll have time.
Like I said, I use Artbreeder, Photoshop, Faceapp.
@mary
"Why did you give this particular mouth shape?"
Predicting the mouth width and lip thickness is possible by looking at the mouth area of the skull (how wide it is, how jutting it is etc), but overall a good part of it is a guesswork. Don't take soft tissue reconstruction such as mouth shape and nose tip at a face value.
"Do you have a personal page with other reconstructions?"
No page yet, I can upload an imgur album.
https://imgur.com/a/JvpWW9l
@ambron said...
(...) Thus, we find a good explanation of the cultural (linguistic and religious) relationships in the Indo-Slavic branch that the EastPole often talks about. (...)
It is more logical to call it the other way around - Slavo-Indo-Iranic... see:
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-history-of-scythians-gnecchi.html
The question is: What about the others like Armenian, Hellenic, Celto-Italic, Germanic, etc, see secondary devoicing i.e. rough breathing, S>H, D/B/P>PH/F, D/T>T/D, G>H/K, loss of W, etc.? :-)
By the way, do you have any knowledge where the construction of the first burial mounds / kurgans started?
To clarify, its not as if horsemanship suddenly appeared in the Iron Age. Obviously it had a long period of development. I think the LBA forest-steppe and southern forest zone might have played an underappreciated role, but materially was in still dormant state.
Do you all recall the box on Map B in Figure 11 on page 20 of Nordqvist and Heyd's 2020 paper, "The Forgotten Child of the Wider Corded Ware Family: Russian Fatyanovo Culture in Context", the one that reads, "Transformation of Yamnaya to Corded Wares [sic] c. 3000-2900 BC"?
That's the CWC-X Horizon or "Pre-Corded" phase described by Piotr Włodarczak and Anna Linderholm. Nordqvist and Heyd put it on the map, kind of like an afterthought, but they don't say much about it in the paper, which is more concerned with the eastward reflux of the CWC that formed Fatyanovo.
But here's something on the subject from Nordqvist and Heyd on page 19 of "The Forgotten Child":
"The CWC undoubtedly received its formation incentive from the initial westward migrations of Yamnaya populations from the Caspian-Pontic steppe. Only two or three centuries later, Fatyanovo-Balanovo, as the easternmost child of the wider CWC family, derives out of a probable eastward migration of these Corded Ware people just 5–10° latitude further north in the Upper and Middle Volga basin."
I am much more interested in the CWC-X Horizon and the genesis of Corded Ware itself than I am in Fatyanovo. I think the reason for the close cousin relationships between Yamnaya and Corded Ware, based on a "relatively high level of Identity-by-Descent (IBD) segment sharing between Corded Ware and Yamnaya", is that Corded Ware was directly derived from Yamnaya settlement in SE Poland during the CWC-X Horizon period. The cultural differences between Yamnaya and Corded Ware can probably be chalked up to the influence of GAC, since apparently the steppe pastoralist settlers were taking wives from among the GAC population.
I wish a crack team of geneticists and archaeologists would thoroughly investigate the CWC-X Horizon, at least the burials at Hubinek and Srednia.
Here is something Mallory wrote way back in the mid-1990s on page 248 of his book, In Search of the Indo-Europeans:
"While the Corded Ware variant most proximate to the steppe cannot be seen as the point of origin for the Corded Ware culture, many archaeologists still envisage a major influential role here from the steppe cultures. One of the foremost authorities on the Corded Ware horizon, Miroslav Buchvaldek, has, on several recent occasions, addressed the problem of Corded Ware origins. He emphasizes the methodological problems of demonstrating whether the Corded Ware horizon was the product of an invasion or local development. According to both models, the number of sites belonging to either the intrusive culture or to the transitional phase between a former Neolithic culture and the subsequent Corded Ware horizon would be extremely small, a generation’s worth of sites perhaps constituting no more than 5 per cent of the potential archaeological remains. The odds of discovering enough intrusive or transitional sites to establish a convincing pattern would consequently be extremely small."
"Maykop was 50:50 Anatolian : CHG; Steppe Maykop was 50:50 Maykop : WSHG; Yamnaya was 55% EHG : 35% CHG : 10% farmers + WHG. Right?"
Maykop probably more like ~50% CHG + a mixture of Anatolia + Levant + NW Iran. Overall they were very similar to Kura-Araxes. The Levantine ancestry seems to increase over time.
As for Steppe Maykop, there are a few outliers with significant Maykop related ancestry, but the main group have pretty much noise level Maykop related ancestry. They are a mixture of WSHG + EHG / pre-Maykop North Caucasus + some Iran-related ancestry that looks much more like ancient Turan than actual Iran or Maykop. (My interpretation is that they are a Kalteminar related group or soething along the line.)
Hypothesis: the Gata-Wieselburg culture is the EBA culture that influenced Sögel-Wohlde c.q. the range North-Dutch- Jutland in 1800-1600. The Sögel warriors were most probably an offshoot of this culture!?
Sögel-Wohlde gave a kickstart to the Nordic Bronze Age and is an important part in the (proto) Germanic trajectory.
I have two assumptions:
1. Sögel-Wohlde is the result of immigrants that caused a break around 1800 BC. This is more (prof. Fokkens) or a bit less (prof Butler) confirmed.
2. The Sögel-Wohlde and the area of the highest amount of R1b U106 are overlapping. That is no coincidence, seen the immigration I suppose a connection between the immigration of Sõgel-Warriors and the founder effect of R1b U106. Also seen the fact that before 1800 BC there was no single R1b U106 sample. But even if the rumor is right there is a Dutch BB with R1b 106the connection with the GW culture makes sense.
The Gata-Wieselburg culture is a hub/ bridgehead between the PC Steppe and Central Europe (and beyond).
The linguist Kuzmenko (2011) gives here the key clue:
"Many artifacts of the Sögel-Wolde culture, compare, for example,
the famous outfit of the so-called princess from Fallingbostel,
correspond to the artifacts of the culture prevalent in the areas
lower Austria and Hungary (Probst 1996: 86–88)."
Wiki:
"Typical grave goods in men's graves in the Sögel-Wohlde district are bronze short swords and edge ridge axes, and more rarely Sögeler daggers. The two short swords, after which the Sögel type was first described, were discovered in 1898 when the new path from Spahn to Werpeloh was being built. As has been proven over a large area, there is a connection between the short swords of the cultural area and swords from eastern Hungary at about the same time, as evidenced by their type, shape and decoration. Characteristics of the Sögel type are the round staple plate and a striking decoration with groups of lines, dotted lines and bow garlands. In contrast to the Sögel sword, the short sword of the Wohlde type was provided with a trapezoidal staple plate. This type of sword was first described in 1937. The short swords of the Wohlde type are derived from Hungarian short swords with a trapezoid grip plate. But they are also mixed with features of the Sögel type (Toppenstedt, Harburg district).
Perhaps the swords were made by craftsmen from the Moravian-Hungarian region. This is indicated by small clay nozzles found in settlements and graves. The clay nozzles, as the mouthpieces of the bellows, are evidence of the existence of melting furnaces in the early Bronze Age of northwest Germany. The scattering of their finds extends from Hungary through central Germany to northwestern Europe, through southern Germany to northern Italy and in eastern Europe to Kalinovka, north of Volgograd. The grave of a bronze caster was excavated near Kalinovka, which contained handicraft equipment. The bronze casting is also documented. One already knew the casting in one or two shell form or in a lost form (lost wax process)."
Part II
The Gata Wiesel burg culture is situated in east Austria, West Hungary and West Slovakia.
We have two examples of 'elite migrants' from this area.
First the 'princes of Fallingbostel' (Lüneberger Heath/ Lower Saxony) in full Gata Wieselburg culture wear! (see add, by Probst 1986)
https://postimg.cc/629qmRrc
Second the 'chieftain of Drouwen' (Drenthe/ North Dutch) had spiral earrings, like this one from the Gata Wieselburg culture
https://www.documenta-pannonica.eu/objects/bronze-age-gold-hair-ring-from-zsennye/
See also this fine description:
https://mobilitas.ri.abtk.hu/?media=a-tarsadalmi-retegzodes-emlekei-a-bronzkori-temeto-kincsei-nagycenkrol-2&lang=en
Linguists like Kuzmenko (2011) and Euler (2009) and earlier on Kuhn and Gysseling who stated that around the North Sea they spoke in (E)BA a language with a pre-Italic touch. That is also pointing at Gata-Wieselburg culture (as it is also the foundation for the North Italian Polada BA culture).
See this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7La3f7MQhtQ
Gata-Wieselburg is also the culture that contained R1b M269 around 1800 BC (Allentoft 2015)! And the R1b U106 from Jimonice/Prague (2000 BC) is not that fare.....
It's known that the Gata-Wieselburg culture is an offshoot of the Bell Beakers. Davidski proposed that Bell Beakers from the North Sea even reached the Lech Valley. This quote supposes that this could also be the case for the area of Gata-Wieselburg:
"Previously archeology considered the Bell-beaker people to have lived only within a limited territory of the Carpathian Basin and for a short time, without mixing with the local population. Although there are very few evaluable anthropological finds, the appearance of the characteristic planoccipital (flattened back) Taurid type in the populations of some later cultures (e.g. Kisapostag and Gáta–Wieselburg cultures) suggested a mixture with the local population contradicting such archaeological theories. According to archaeology, the populational groups of the Bell-beakers also took part in the formation of the Gáta-Wieselburg culture on the western fringes of the Carpathian Basin, which could be confirmed with the anthropological Bell Beaker series in Moravia and Germany."
http://www2.sci.u-szeged.hu/ABS/Acta%20HP/44-75.pdf
So in fact it seems like a continuous flux and reflux, within the same network!
Single Grave went from Central Europe to NW Europe, Bell Beakers went from NW Europe to Central Europe, and Gata Wieselburg went from Central Europe to NW Europe (> Sögel-Wohlde).
Here are some quotes from Polish archaeologist Piotr Włodarczak on the significance of the old historical region known as Małopolska in SE Poland in the Yamnaya-to-CWC story.
This is from the abstract entitled, “Eastern impulse in cultural and demographic changing during the ending southeastern Polish Eneolithic”, from the Abstract Book of the 2019 “Yamnaya Interactions” conference, University of Helsinki, 25-26 April 2019:
"Comparing to other areas of central Europe, the funeral ritual of the Final Eneolithic communities in Małopolska (Lesser Poland) looks quite original. The reason for this is an exceptionally strong connection with the traditions recorded in the North-Western territory of the Black Sea region. This is justified by geographic conditions: the loess highlands of south-eastern Poland are a natural extension of the areas of Volhynia and Podolia. These areas were not only the main route of east-west migrations, but also a zone with desired raw material base (e.g. copper, flints, rock raw materials)."
This next one is from Piotr Włodarczak, “Chronometry of the Final Eneolithic Cemeteries at Święte, Jarosław District, from the Perspective of Cultural Relations among Lesser Poland, Podolia and the North-Western Black Sea Region” (in Baltic-Pontic Studies, vol. 23: 2018, 178-212 ISSN 1231-0344 DOI 10.2478/bps-2018-0006):
"The central burial from a barrow in Hubinek also yielded a 14C date from the 3000-2900 BC range [Juras et al. 2018]. In this case, the burial rite recorded in the site suggests associating the grave with the older wave of migrations from the North Pontic steppe/forest steppe area.
Accepting the results for barrow 1 at Średnia as correct, one should assume a long duration of the earliest CWC phase in south-eastern Poland: from around 3000/2900 BC to ca. 2600 BC (as suggested by dendrochronology) or to ca. 2700 BC (assuming that the youngest among barrow graves can be assigned to a later phase, defined as “Central European horizon” for example)."
The following is from page 7 of Piotr Włodarczak, “The Traits of Early-Bronze Pontic Cultures in the Development of Old Upland Corded Ware (Małopolska Groups) and Złota Culture Communities” (in Baltic-Pontic Studies, vol. 19, 2014):
"In Małopolska (south-eastern Poland)1 , Final Neolithic finds (Fig. 1) illustrate a rich and unique set of funerary rites unknown in any other region of the south-eastern branch of the Corded Ware culture complex (CWC)2 . Moreover, the finds from cemeteries are numerous and meaningful enough to allow their correlation with the rites of Early Bronze communities, settling the steppes and forest-steppes north of the Black Sea in the 3rd millennium BC."
Włodarczak attributes the 25th century BC Catacombnaya/niche-style burials in old Małopolska investigated by Linderholm et al in their 2020 paper to migration from the steppe/forest steppe. He says this about them in the abstract already cited above:
"The unique character in the Corded Ware circle has primarily the third of the specified stages. In the area of Małopolska appear niche graves, which present the features of Catacombnaya culture, and burials of men equipped with weapons as well as sets of instruments emphasizing craft specialization (first: flint working). Typical is the presence of numerous graves in which the main weapon element is archery equipment. The context for the emergence of such burials is the presence in some of the graves of ceramics characteristic of Middle Dnieper cultural complex. All these characteristics testify to the role of migration (ca. 2600-2500 BCE) from the eastern territories (forest and forest-steppe borderline) in the origin of the new ritual. Specialized analyzes (archeogenetics and stable strontium isotopes) seem to confirm this hypothesis."
You guys know the Nova documentary about horsemen, they depicted Yamnaya as basically Scythian horseback warriors.
Their clothing was even based on Scythian art.
When describing their spread across Europe, they showed them on horseback.
Why do archaeologists allow this? I am tired of Kurgans being lumped together with Iron age nomads.
Just watched the NOVA documentary for the first time. Interesting how when discussing horse domestication at Botai, they are able to show the genetic sampling of horse remains excavated from the site as well as actual traditional archaeological analysis of said remains. Yet, for Yamna, all this is conspicuously absent. No concrete archaeological evidence at any Yamna site regarding horse domestication is actually discussed or offered. Bummer....
Does anyone here know of any papers with solid data showing the presence of domesticated horses at Yamnaya sites?
@John Johnson,
That's an insightful observation. If Yamnaya really were rapid horsemen they would have examples in archaeology to show us.
There *is* something unique to Proto-Indo-Europeans, or at least to their ANE streams of ancestry. A bunch of ignorant racist warmongers ruined it for the rest of us, but Europe would’ve been completely different unless our ancestors conquered and settled it.
I am certain that between the EHG and the CHG one, the 50% Ancient North Eurasian component is somewhat responsible to the PIE mythology, lifestyle, religion, language and customs. The reasons that Native Americans are so different than us is not only owing to a divergence and genetic drift but mostly to extensive intermarriage with East Asians.
IMHO, Eastern and Northern Europeans, who have 50%-60% WSH genetics (that includes the Sami), resemble the typical Yamnaya genotype.
Re: Yamnaya in Ashkenazi Jews
Just in the case of Etruscans, Sami, Finns, Basques, Estonians and Hungarians, who (except for Basques and Etruscans) have > 50% aDNA descending from Steppe Herders, it might soon turn out that Eastern European Jews may possesss more Yamnaya related admixture than had turned up in previous studies: the last 2 centuries since the barriers between Jewish and “gentile” society broke down included intensive intermarriage, and I’m pretty sure that Yamnaya in average Ashkenazi person wouldn’t account for less than 30%.
Ashkenazi Jews have about 15-20% Yamnaya/steppe ancestry and about 10-15% Central/Eastern Euro ancestry. So most of the steppe ancestry isn't from Central/Eastern Euro admixture.
The levels of Central/Eastern Euro ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews are very even, so this is admixture that entered the Ashkenazi gene pool a long time ago in a limited way and wasn't enriched significantly since then.
Ergo, it's unlikely that there was extensive intermarriage between Jews and gentiles in Central/Eastern Europe during the last 200 years.
Actually, the main puzzle in regards to Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews is how much Southern Euro/western Anatolian ancestry they have, and where from exactly.
From the recent Arbuckle paper
“ The abundance of horse bones and images of horses in Maikop culture settlements and burials of c. 3300 BCE in the northern Caucasus led to the suggestion that horseback riding began in the Maikop period”
This looks like a wild Przewalski's horse to me. And no one's riding it.
https://erenow.net/ancient/the-horse-the-wheel-and-language/12.php
You'd think that if domestic horses were important in Maykop, we'd see some illustrations of them doing domesticated stuff.
The SM might have brought their Botai horses & stimulated the develop of WSH horses
Rich, Skribha
First of all, we must see the consequences of the division of the Indo-Slavic branch on the San and Bug, and not on the Dnieper.
At the moment, all the combined archaeological, linguistic and genetic data exclude the middle Dnieper as the Slavic homeland. The division of the Indo-Slavic branch far west of the Dnieper is another argument that excludes the Slavic homeland on the middle Dnieper.
What is interesting for me like I have said many times before is the Tabiano coloured horse of Salzmunde, +-3200 BC. Some Botai horses had this gene but their direct descendants do not. I have never seen a Prezwalski Horse with this colour pattern. So from where did Botai horses get those genes from ? Early Anatolian horses also did not have this colour.
Maybe Tabiano coloured horses were the Icecream with Chocolate topping for the Botai people ? Heheheeh. Anyway, I still think that the Tabiano colour was spread from somewhere West of Botai. Somewhere between Botai and Salzmunde.
'Przewalski’s horses were in the same part of the tree as the Botai horses. From their relationship, it was clear that these “wild” horses were escaped Botai horses.'
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/ancient-dna-upends-horse-family-tree
@Rob
"The SM might have brought their Botai horses & stimulated the develop of WSH horses"
I am not sure this works out as a timeline. As far as I know Steppe Maikop started earlier than Botai. There could be a connection between them, but "bought their Botai horses" does not seem to work here.
Just how far the horse-culture of Botai goes back anyway? Was it started by Botai?
The horses at Maykop were probably a local wild breed.
Keep in mind that until recently all horses looked more or less like Przewalski's horses, even those that belonged to the modern domesticated horse lineage.
One modern example that comes to mind are Polish Konik horses, which aren't of wild stock but still look a lot like Przewalski's horses and Maykop horses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konik
I just wonder the IE-people were not little "fellahs" so I can't cope that very well with that "pony format" ....
Would be nice if there is a connection with the Shetlanders.....seem to be in Scotland since BA.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/short-history-shetland-pony-2463583
Prezwalski horses have a different amount of Chromosomes than Modern Horses.
Yeah, Przewalski's horses are a different species from all other surviving horse breeds.
But until recently, like the Iron Age I think, all horses basically had that primitive pony look like Przewalski's horses.
Ponies can carry a lot of weight however they excell at pulling carts. If there is no evidence of horses carrying weight then the only logical thing would be that they pulled either a small cart or travois. This could have given Steppe people a logistic advantage over people with slow moving oxen.
I have a suspicion that PIE people used the travois. Wheels seems to have appeared in Ireland fairly late... It is efficient in Snow, Mud, and Sand whereas wheels get stuck.
Wagon and chariot remains from the steppe tell us that the wheel was an important invention for the peoples there, including I'm guessing PIE speakers.
However, they may have switched to the travois and sleds after leaving the steppe and moving into colder and wetter regions.
@ Slumberry
Botai & Steppe Majkop were essentially contemporaneous (-> 3700). But from the quote above, from ~ 3300 bc horses appears to be symbolised in Majkop & related groups. Given the perceptions that SM were a sort of buffer, mobile groups with links to central asia, and genomically-related groups in Botai were experimenting with horses, I merely guessed a possible link
@ Davidski
Yes it could be. Is there any evidence that Corded Ware peoples used wheeled vehicles ?
Yes, wagons, wheels, or at least impressions of them, have been found in CWC burials in Germany and I think Poland.
Rob: Guimares and Arbuckle 2020: “ The abundance of horse bones and images of horses in Maikop culture settlements and burials of c. 3300 BCE in the northern Caucasus led to the suggestion that horseback riding began in the Maikop period”
...
The SM might have brought their Botai horses & stimulated the develop of WSH horses
Possibly - think Anthony mentioned in his old book he believed the Repin Culture may have been raising horses for export to Maykop, so it might be linked to that phenomenon.
Certainly there seem likely to be some economic connections between Maykop and Western steppe societies, even if the genetic connections are some transient influence.
In the recent presentation, David Anthony talks about the selection of genetic data he's seen from Reich lab showing an explosion of mobility in societies *before* Yamnaya where samples and relatives show up where they're not expected - the ancestral links between Steppe_Eneolithic like samples and one of the Steppe Maykop main cluster; Anthony talking about connections between Steppe Maykop and Usatovo (clearly some "high status elite" link); Anthony talking about people found fairly far north; "Yamnaya_Ozera" outlier from Ukraine with mixed Maykop and Yamnaya like ancestry being very early in or before the main Yamnaya/steppe expansion.
Anthony places this exactly at this date of 3300 BCE (the same as the date of horse bones and images in Maykop burials as mentioned by ).
One model that seems plausible to me is that the Maykop (Caucasus and somewhat assimilated "Steppe Maykop" groups) introduced the use of higher mobility technology (i.e. wagons) to the steppe as part of a trade network, but had no interest or cultural inclination to the wide-ranging settlement of the steppe and forest that the Yamnaya / later WSH like groups would do. Their conception of wealth in precious metals and luxury goods, not head of cattle and sheep. Then when their trade networks collapsed, we stop seeing them about and instead the expansion of the WSH who've taken the technology and used it for demographic expansion. (Along with adopting some other cultural evolutions of steppe practice that are earlier in the Steppe Maykop, like the wagon burials under large kurgans).
(It's often the case in history that people who first exploit a transportation/mobility technology do so for trade, and then aren't necessarily the same as the people who use it for expansion.)
Where we find a Steppe Maykop founding kurgan close to the Caucasus, this may not be where they lived for most of their lives exactly, but a place relatively close to where the Caucasus Maykop lived and where the CM could commemorate them. They may have been more typically travelling across the Western Steppe and into Central Asia as part of the trade network.
(Quick table of dates for some selected samples taken from HO file anno: https://imgur.com/a/jhKkpwm ).
@ Davidski
It is interesting that the Tabiano coloured horse and the Ljubljana Wheel with axle are roughly dated to the same age...
There is osteological evidence that the CWC-derived Beaker people rode horses, and they must have ridden them a lot for it to be reflected in their bones. So, unless one imagines that the Beaker people invented horseback riding, it must have been passed on to them by their CWC ancestors, and they must have inherited the practice from their Yamnaya ancestors.
Antler cheek pieces have been found in steppe pastoralist sites and burials, which shows that their horses were bitted, which is also what Anthony and his wife Dorcas Brown have demonstrated via their studies of bit wear in ancient horses. One can also infer that herd management on the scale practiced by Yamnaya, and subsequently by the CWC, required mounted shepherds: it could not have been done on foot.
It would be interesting to see some analysis of Yamnaya and CWC skeletons for osteological evidence of horseback riding. I'll bet the evidence is there, if only someone would check for it.
Gonna have to agree with Rich here. I think argueing that people had domrsticated the horse as a food source for more than 2000 years before someone had the grand idea to sit on the back of one is a little unlikely.
Horse riding requires no advanced technology, just an animal that doesn't freak the F out when you jump on its back. Which is something I used to do with pet goats and calfs as a kid too (yes you can actually ride cows, pretty effectively too).
The Botai showcase this phenomenon quite well - in a few centuries people who hunted horses started raising them, and eventually riding them. This probably developed completely on its own and with people who did not have great technology or even prior knowledge of animal stockbreeding.
I've grew up with horses and horse riding and I most likely do not have any osteological evidence for horse riding reflected in my body, so its a pretty big deal that this is present in their skeletons.
There is riding gear from the Andronovo period as well, as bronze age depictions of people on horseback and attestations of riding on horseback (and I think all three date to around 1700 bc).
Now using a horse in a mounted warfare context is a different story, that definitely came later. This is also exactly what Anthony said, who did not describe the Yamnaya as Huns charging down on Europe in any way. It was mostly for herd management and fast travels, which is a pretty logical assesment in my opinion.
@Weure
"I just wonder the IE-people were not little "fellahs" so I can't cope that very well with that "pony format" ...."
According to Anthony the horses at Dereivka and Botai were close to the same size as the horses used by Roman cavalry.
Beside the horses what about the last" IE expansion" (or reflux ;) between Gata-Wieselburg, on the western fringes of the Carpathian Basin, and Sögel-Wohlde, around the North Sea during EBA!
Some 'extra evidence':
In Northern Italy, two small gold wire spiral rings were found in an EBA fossa grave cemetery near Verona, at Gazzo Veronese, under the skulls of two skeletons; they were also part of a headdress (List 1, n. 2). The fossa tombs appear to contain either poor or no grave goods at all, but might have also been looted, a frequent practice in contemporary Austrian cemeteries where similar gold finds were common (Neugebauer-Maresch and Neugebauer, 1988/89).
https://journals.openedition.org/archeosciences/2066
Spiral golden rings chieftain of Drouwen, Drenthe/ North Dutch 1800 BC:
https://i.postimg.cc/mkvkJ7XS/Schermafbeelding-2021-07-03-om-11-01-14.png
And about the same time in Verona/ Northern Italy. Both Gata-Wieselburg derived:
https://i.postimg.cc/13bx6PCb/Schermafbeelding-2021-07-03-om-11-56-08.png
Real of BS?
Anyone hear of or know what is going on with this study?:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C47&q=The+First+Rider%3A+Osteological+Evidence+for+Earliest+Horsemanship+in+a+Yamnaya-related+burial+from+Romania.+&btnG=
Allegedly, it was supposed to come out in 2019 in PNAS but appears substantially delayed at the moment.
Copper Axe -
You and I must have grown up in a similar environment, because I and my friends also tried riding any and all animals big enough to support our weight, starting when with large dogs when we were kids.
I did some horseback riding when I was a teenager, including bareback riding. It strikes me as a natural thing for humans to do if they are around horses, so I agree with you that people who had domesticated horses must have tried riding them.
I realize Old Europe's Neolithic farmers were much reduced by Yersinia Pestis, but I think there was also something else which gave the steppe pastoralist newcomers a big advantage. I think that thing was horseback riding.
Actually, in some of the older papers where Anthony is discussing the Plains Indian Model for what the horse does when introduced to society, he essentially did advocate horse + people = mounted warfare and that it would apply for Yamna. It really has been quite humorous to see Anthony flip flop the way he has all these years on a multitude of aspects concerning the IE debate. I always say the type of jobs where you can be habitually wrong or quite inaccurate at times and still be praised and have prestige are clearly dream jobs.
To play devils advocate here and not be too narrow minded though, it has come to my attention that there is some evidence for the use and make of composite bows throughout the Yamna culture and also at the Novosvobodnaya Tombs. Some argue that when you start to see evidence of this type of bow being manufactured and used, it can possibly be correlated with mounted equine warfare. I know there have been some who apparently push for this in Bell Beaker culture as well, as there is comparable material evidence for this. Just throwing it out there.
I do hope more valuable data rich papers comes our way soon that can perhaps offer more clear and concrete answers as to what the exact uses and interaction between man and horse was on the PCS.
Weren't the Romans little fellas Copper Axe? ;)
@Rich S.
(…) Antler cheek pieces have been found in steppe pastoralist sites and burials, which shows that their horses were bitted, which is also what Anthony and his wife Dorcas Brown have demonstrated via their studies of bit wear in ancient horses. (…)
The book "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language" is a laugh. Anthony (and certainly most of this kind) do not know and understand the basic vocabulary of the wheel, cart and horse, see the lack of most Slavic equivalents. What he wrote about those teeth from Derievka was questioned some time ago. From what I remember, it was a horse's jaw from a later Scythian burial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse#Bit_wear
By the way, what if not domesticated horses caused formation of the CWC?
@John Johnson
"Allegedly, it was supposed to come out in 2019 in PNAS but appears substantially delayed at the moment."
Given the absolute silence on this article maybe this individual was incorrectly dated and attributed to the Yamnaya period?
@CA
Perhaps....
@ RichS
''I realize Old Europe's Neolithic farmers were much reduced by Yersinia Pestis, but I think there was also something else which gave the steppe pastoralist newcomers a big advantage. I think that thing was horseback riding.''
There's no catch-all model in reality. Regional populations were in regular flux, demographically & culturally.
@ Copper Axe
''Horse riding requires no advanced technology, just an animal that doesn't freak the F out when you jump on its back. Which is something I used to do with pet goats and calfs as a kid too (yes you can actually ride cows, pretty effectively too).''
But these have been domesticated & around humans for thousands of years, right ? I suspect the situation might have different in 4000 BCE during the early stages of the domestication process. Maybe by BB & Sintashta period, things had evolved
@Arza
How far can you get with that R1a from Steppe Maykop SA6013.B0101?
If Usatovo has Maykop/Steppe Maykop admix, and also belongs to R1a, then there's a very interesting link there.
In light of recent developments, did they figure out if Maykop or Steppe Maykop have left any living descendants, at last?
Vagheesh Narasimhan participated in an online symposium held on 7 May, 2021. He rejected his lecture to be uploaded on youtube, but he briefly answered some questions on aDNA in India.
You can find him since 1:02:51 to 1:19:50, in this link:
https://tinyurl.com/vabfawa
@Carlos Aramayo
I have very little interest in what Vagheesh Narasimhan has to say.
I already knew all the useful things that were in his paper years before the paper was published. For instance...
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-poltavka-outlier.html
I don't need to listen to his highly dubious theories about PIE coming from Neolithic Iran or steppe ancestry arriving in India with females.
@Davidski “ I don't need to listen to his highly dubious theories about PIE coming from Neolithic Iran or steppe ancestry arriving in India with females.”
He also said that Andronovo (“Aryans”) in India had very little BMAC and WSHG. Do you agree with his assertion?
I think there's definitely BMAC or BMAC-like ancestry in modern Pakistan/northern India and in the Bronze/Iron Age Swat Valley samples.
So yes, this was something that his paper got wrong.
Not sure about WSHG, because there were people like this in Central Asia, so it's hard to be sure where it came from and when.
It is so ridiculous on many levels to suggest that Indo-Aryan and most steppe ancestry was female mediated when most Indo-Aryans have something like 2-5x more Steppe Y-DNA than Steppe mtdna. Also Swat_IA is absolutely ovverated with many of the samples likely not even being IEs (see the outliner from Saidu Sharif which is basically a pure descendant of IVC-like people). Making any conclusions based on Swat_IA is like suggesting based on Hungary_BA that Steppe Bell Beakers spread by Steppe females.
Here is something new about Botau I think.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-86832-9
So if Botai was not the epicentre of horse domestication then I do not see WSHG in Steppe Maykop as bringing anything significant to the table...
I think that the riding of Cattle could have sparked the idea to try and ride horses. And similarly also the use of Cattle to pull carts could have sparked innovations in this direction using horses. The same for milking. So in short I think the exposure to Cattle husbandry was a necessity for horse domestication. So my best bet will be the areas where both Cattle and Horses were present in the Pontic Caspian Steppe.
Looks like Horse Milking was practices somewhere near the Black Sea during the 3rd Millennium BC. Horse Milk residue on human teeth...
Maybe Botai peoples horse hunting skills were advantageous for the Steppe Maykop peoples. Maybe to keep raiders at bay or depleting of enemy resources ?
I don't think from the QA point at 1:12 that Narasimhan is suggesting Indian gene flow was only female mediated. More that this is the case in Swat (and some groups)... but then, he's hypothesizing later events involving an unsampled group with higher male bias, and a higher share of steppe ancestry*, may have changed things over (so that you have a R1a bias in y-chromosome, and a more neutral X to autosome situation). He's suggesting that this may have happened almost at the time almost at which Vedic texts were written down... If you listen to what he's saying there is no need to be responding to it in a very knee-jerk reactive way.
I think this is all getting pretty late in history though! I don't think there's much strong evidence for this, but I also I don't think it's an implausible hypothesis (and provides an alternative to somewhat producing after-the-fact assumptions that the Swat samples are simply outliers in a way that was not hypothesized before the study). Also mentions wave of ancestry into Swat as happening around 2000 BCE though this seems very early compared to the samples we have (and indeed the samples attributed to the Sintashta culture even, which we have).
(Another thing he mentions in Q&A is that believes the evidence shows likely only HG people in South India until 500 BCE, although this is not based on any samples. Again stuff happening relatively late in history).
*The suggestion is this other group would have 60% Steppe_MLBA ancestry, which would equate to 39% Steppe_EMBA probably about the same as in Northern France today, where the most ANI groups today have about 30% Steppe_MLBA (equating to 20% Steppe_EMBA).
Even if Botai was the epicentre of horse domestication it wouldn't be relevant to the Steppe Maykop at all.
In that article they did refer to this article which hasn't been released yet:
Wilkin, S., Miller, A. V., Fernandes, R., Spengler III, R. N., Taylor, W. T. T., Brown, D. R., Reich, D., Kennett, D., Cullerton, B. J., Kunz, L., Fortes, C., Kitova, A., Kuznetsov, P., Epimakhov, A., Outram, A. K., Kitov, E., Khokhlov, A., Anthony, D. & Boivin, N. Dairying enabled Early Bronze Age Yamnaya steppe expansions. Submitted to Nat Comms, January 2021 (In Review).
"However, we suggest that more careful attention should be paid to the domestic horses and chariots of Sintashta, and the preceding cultures of the Black Sea steppe, where horse milk proteins have recently been directly identified in human teeth dated to the 3rd millennium BCE31. We also point to the likely significance of cultural connections between Transcaucasia and adjoining areas of the Near East, where donkeys and onagers were used for transport by the 3rd millennium BCE or before."
SA6013.B0101 seems to be fully R-M459*, so if there is a connection, it's rather distant.
I think Indo-Aryan genesis occurred in southern Turan, and by the time it diffused through Haryana, Swat, etc the exclusive relationship with R1a/Anronovo ancestry was de-coupled
This might be similar to the situation in the Mycenean age
Also, I still refuse to believe that Sintashta was proto-Indo-Iranian rather than a late variant of IE
I think the Swat Y-haplogroups look weird because those people were high up in the mountains.
So they were isolated and isolation can make closely related groups look very different in a very short time, especially in terms of Y-DNA.
@Davidski
It is not just their Y-DNA which could be low in R1a because of founder effects but autosomal dna which is very low in steppe too compared to Kalash, Jatt/Ror and some Brahmins. You can not use Swat_IA as reference for Indo-Aryan ancestry because people live Jatts/Ror can have up to 2x more Steppe than them and they also are rich in R1a (40%). But this extra steppe and R1a among Jatts and Brahmins is basically all under R1a-L657 and Indo-Aryan Z2123 clades so not derived from Saka or later migrations. Based on the non-IVC ancestry of Jatts early Indo-Aryans arriving in South Asia were around 40-70% Steppe_MLBA and the rest was something similar to BMAC_O (BMAC-like but with much more extra WSHG and possibly some Steppe_EBA)
@Rob
“I think Indo-Aryan genesis occurred in southern Turan, and by the time it diffused through Haryana, Swat, etc the exclusive relationship with R1a/Anronovo ancestry was de-coupled
This might be similar to the situation in the Mycenean age
Also, I still refuse to believe that Sintashta was proto-Indo-Iranian rather than a late variant of IE.”
I also don’t believe Sintashta was proto-Indo-Iranian. More likely it was some Indo-Slavic dialect. Look at genetic distances:
https://postimg.cc/rRsgMpQW
Rigveda has only some common elements with Slavic religion. It is a very different religion in many other aspects. Those common Vedic-Slavic elements are also present in Orphic religion. I suppose the Indo-Slavic dialect of Sintashta was closer to Slavic than Indo-Iranian and the religion of Sintashta had more Slavic-Orphic elements then Rigveda.
@East Pole
This talk about Indo-Slavic is pseudoscience at best and if anything Sintashta was (Pre)-Proto-Iranic and post-Proto-Indo-Iranian because we have first mentions of Indo-Aryan Maryannu in the 18th century in West Asia what would mean that Indo-Aryans split from Iranics already before 1700 B.C likely around 2000-2200 B.C with Proto-Nuristani splitting slightly before from both Iranics and Indo-Aryans. Abashevo looks so far like the best candidate for Proto-Indo-Iranians (right timing, contacts with Catacomb, rich and diverse in Z93 clades unlike bottlenecked Sintashta Z2124, developing of proto-chariot technologies, ..)
@Ric, I don't think the WSHG like ancestry in Steppe_Maykop is necessarily from Botai anyway. Botai shows variable enriched East Asian ancestry, and that seems less what Steppe_Maykop has.
...
On the Swat samples, here's a possible other line of evidence about the besides the projected PCA and qpAdm ones.
Used ADMIXTOOLS2 to generate a big matrix of fst (https://pastebin.com/N7EWTsCi) with a focus on South Asia.
Then took a subset of them and used the Principal Coordinates Analysis (PCoA) method (turns a table of distances into dimensional data, a type of MDS) to generate dimensions. Results: https://imgur.com/a/zc6a2jk
Tried in this example to use only minimal modern samples outside South Asia, and just using ancient references from outside South Asia to form a "frame".
Basically what I get here is: Component 1 distinguishes West Eurasian from AASI ancestry, Component 2 distinguishes Iran_N like West Eurasian ancestry from other West Eurasian ancestry (e.g. both WHG, EHG *and* EEF), finally Component 3 splits other West Eurasian ancestry into Steppe vs Turkey_N.
What I then see is that
1) Looking at Component 1 and 2, Shahr-I-Sohkta_BA_2 ("Indus Periphery") is perfectly between Mala/Irula and Iranian Early Neolithic,
2) Iron Age Pakistan is shifted towards the other West Eurasian / European ancients relative to SISBA2 ....
3) ... but modern samples from Pakistan are more subtly even further shifted towards "other West Eurasian" / European ancients
4) However, when the other West Eurasian / European ancients are split (Component 3), only Kalash really seems to have a strong signal in favor of Steppe, while for Balochi/Brahui/Makrani this is somewhat compatible with more signal from present-day Iran (Pathan somewhat intermediate Kalash and Balochi/Brahui/Makrani). I'm fairly certain this dimension signals Near East related ancestry, as Cochin Jews are another outlier from the cline here.
As I would look at it, it seems like the Swat IA samples may have had slightly less steppe ancestry, slightly less ASI and also very slightly less post-Neolithic ancestry from the Near East, compared to some people in Pakistan today (it seems logical anyway to me that later events would have some impact). Make of this what you will I guess! The Fst method is not really proven...
(Zoomable PDFs of above: https://pdfhost.io/v/zQNkUvDUK_south_asia_fst_principal_coordinates_methodpdf.pdf and https://pdfhost.io/v/jHNqBoF~I_south_asia_fst_principal_coordinates_method_2pdf.pdf)
@Rob -
"There's no catch-all model in reality. Regional populations were in regular flux, demographically & culturally."
I agree with you on that, but it is both necessary and possible to speak of things that were generally true and prevailed over much of Old Europe, like Yersinia pestis and the advantages the steppe pastoralists enjoyed by riding horses.
@Rob, @EastPole
“I think Indo-Aryan genesis occurred in southern Turan, and by the time it diffused through Haryana, Swat, etc the exclusive relationship with R1a/Anronovo ancestry was de-coupled
This might be similar to the situation in the Mycenean age
Also, I still refuse to believe that Sintashta was proto-Indo-Iranian rather than a late variant of IE.”
I have the same opinion, but it is not about a faith but the facts, see the purely Slavic etymology for the name Altay < (Z)+aLTay < ZL"oTy / Z"o'L "y, while the original form of Proto-Indo- Iranian is * ȷ́ʰárHiš, see:
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-history-of-scythians-gnecchi.html?showComment=1623624273047#c5205275487713251290
(…) I hope that from now on, you will remember forever that the word Altay has an IE / slavic etymology (Z)Altay / Z"o'LTy. It has nothing to do with the Iranian languages, see L>R, Proto-Indo-Iranian *ȷ́ʰr̥Hanyam (“gold”), Proto-Indo-Aryan *źʰárHiṣ, from Proto-Indo-Iranian *ȷ́ʰárHiš, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃- (“to shine”), cognate with Avestan (zairi) Sanskrit हिरण्य (hiraṇya), Avestan (zarańiia, “gold”), etc., much less with the Proto-Turkic languages, as you said. (...)
@SKRiBHa -
"The book "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language" is a laugh. Anthony (and certainly most of this kind) do not know and understand the basic vocabulary of the wheel, cart and horse, see the lack of most Slavic equivalents. What he wrote about those teeth from Derievka was questioned some time ago. From what I remember, it was a horse's jaw from a later Scythian burial."
We are going to have to disagree on that. Besides, most people who have actually read Anthony's book know that in it he openly discusses the Scythian anachronism and other possible criticisms of his argument.
IMHO, Anthony's The Horse The Wheel and Language is a great book, a little dated now, but still a great book.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the lack of most Slavic equivalents" when it comes to wheel, cart and horse vocabulary.
Fully agree with Coldmountains there by the way, I indepedently came to similar conclusions. The Andronovo derived steppe_mlba pastoralists along the Tian Shan and Pamirs is probably where Proto-Indo-Aryan developed (maybe Nuristani as well) and if those populations would've migrated from there to South Asia during the middle bronze age then a population with like 50-70% steppe_mlba and the rest being derived from the pastoral populations along those regions and the BMAC makes tons of sense.
Substract 50% South Asian from the Ror and that is exactly what you see. Substract 50% from the outlier of Megiddo and you see the same thing as well.
Those swat samples are unlikely to have been Indo-Aryan if you'd ask me, they likely lived in proximity with them and had contacts with them however.
@EastPole “ Rigveda has only some common elements with Slavic religion. It is a very different religion in many other aspects. Those common Vedic-Slavic elements are also present in Orphic religion. I suppose the Indo-Slavic dialect of Sintashta was closer to Slavic than Indo-Iranian and the religion of Sintashta had more Slavic-Orphic elements then Rigveda.”
Slavic is a rather late, post 500AD development, but I can see both elements stemming from a common CWC 4,000 years ago.
I might be missing something here, but doesn't the fact that Steppe-related ancestry begins to appear west of Ukraine around the time of Corded Ware strongly indicate a migration of Yamnaya to that region? How else could 80% of CWC ancestry be explained?
@davidski
I think the Swat Y-haplogroups look weird because those people were high up in the mountains.
No, udegram altitude is only 800m. Average altitude of swat is 1000m ie 3200feet. This is not that high at all, and makes for comfortable weather and living conditions.
@davidski
"I don't need to listen to his highly dubious theories about PIE coming from Neolithic Iran or steppe ancestry arriving in India with females."
Too bad, the only samples we have so far from swat do show excess steppe ancestry on the X chromosome as compared to the autosomal steppe ancestry (15-20%). So your bias may lead you to shit your senses to actual data, but others can see what's going on.
In fact, the narsimhan data (when correctly analyzed) just raises more questions on the Aryan invasion theory and gives us new insights as well. That there would be some steppe autosmal ancestry was mostly clear to all of us before that. What was most suprising to all is the low prevalence of R1a, presence of significant bmac like ancestry and female mediation of steppe ancestry. The steppe ancestry itself is not from Sintashta but from somewhere in the dzhungar plains on the IAMC.
@Andrzejewski
“In light of recent developments, did they figure out if Maykop or Steppe Maykop have left any living descendants, at last?”
Regarding Maykop, I think this lineage might be a surviving lineage that is found throughout much of Europe today:
https://www.yfull.com/tree/J-L283/
@Sam Elliot “ https://www.yfull.com/tree/J-L283/”
Very unlikely. Not in Europe because Maykop didn’t contribute to Yamnaya
@vAsiSTha
The steppe ancestry itself is not from Sintashta but from somewhere in the dzhungar plains on the IAMC.
It's ultimately from Sintashta you moron.
Obviously, no one is claiming that Sintashta took a plane to India, but rather that its descendants eventually migrated there via Central Asia.
@William
In fact, early Corded Ware samples from the East Baltic and Poland are almost 100% Yamnaya-like, and we've just been told by David Reich and Nick Patterson that Corded Ware and Yamnaya peoples were often close cousins.
However, the problem is that a population like early Corded Ware/Yamnaya already lived in the northwest Black Sea region during the Eneolithic.
It's even possible that this is where the Yamnaya ethnogenesis took place.
So it's also possible that Corded Ware isn't derived from Yamnaya, but that both are derived from the same ancestral population, and that they kept in contact and mixed even after Corded Ware moved out of the steppe.
I'm not saying that this actually happened, but it's a plausible alternative to the idea that Corded Ware was a Yamnaya offshoot.
@ Matt
Yes however the point I wanted to make is that Botai was not horse domesticators so we rather have to look somewhere to their West considering the Tabiano Coloured horse at Salzmünde and the fact that Prezwalski horses do not have this colour.
And as stated by the paper I shared, Horse Milk residue was found on human teeth dated to the 3rd Millennium BC. in the Black Sea Steppe which is basically somewhere between the Prut and Kuban Rivers.
My guess is somewhere between the Dnieper and Kuban Rivers we will find the epicenter of Horse Domestication. And it is not an extreme mental jump from seeing someone ride an ox which they trained from a young age to try and ride a horse which they raised and trained from a young age.
@Rich S.
(…) Besides, most people who have actually read Anthony's book know that in it he openly discusses the Scythian anachronism and other possible criticisms of his argument. (…)
If, according to him and you, this jaw is not from the later Scythian burial, but from the SS, then it is great. Unfortunately, from what I read, the radiocarbon dating does not confirm this and points to around 700 BCE.
If the SS were riding their horses, that is great. What is important to me is that they did not get domesticated horses from Botai. If the SS supposedly were riding them, they had to domesticate them themselves.
I have not been a fan of the Reich, Anthony or Kristiansen’s claims for a long time. I am Malory's boy, see:
https://youtu.be/_xQNVexhSJQ
Round table discussion
https://youtu.be/4jHsy4xeuoQ
Mismodeling Indo-European Origins: The Assault On Historical Linguistics | GeoCurrents
(…) I'm not sure what you mean by "the lack of most Slavic equivalents" when it comes to wheel, cart and horse vocabulary. (…)
I mean e.g. this:
https://erenow.net/ancient/the-horse-the-wheel-and-language/the-horse-the-wheel-and-language.files/image018.jpg
https://erenow.net/ancient/the-horse-the-wheel-and-language/4.php
@Andrzejewski
Do you think that particular J2b lineage arrived and spread all throughout Europe via a CHG/Iran_N admixed population from Anatolia, during the Bronze Age, Chalcolithic, or the late Neolithic? Or was it a CHG—related linage indigenous to the Steppe?
@Matt
So what’s the ancestral breakdown look like for Steppe Maykop? Are there any resources online I can check out to see for myself?
@ SkirbHa, EastPole
I was mostly referring to the physical separation : a geographic divide opens up ~ 1200 BCE east vs west of the Urals
This is also when the earliest steppe ancestry appears in South Asia
@matt
"Another thing he mentions in Q&A is that believes the evidence shows likely only HG people in South India until 500 BCE, although this is not based on any samples. Again stuff happening relatively late in history"
At least SE inia already had iran famrer like ancestry around 1800bce.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-40399-8 (tatte et al 2019)
The southeast asian ancestry entered southeast india around 1850bce and met a local population which already had Iran farmer like ancestry.
"The independence between the amount of Southeast and West Asian components in our North and South Munda populations contradicts the expectations and therefore points to an opposite and simpler scenario: both South and North Munda could be modelled as an initial admixture between Southeast Asian populations and an autochthonous Indian group with a slightly lower West/South Asian composition compared to what observed in Paniya today. South Munda then kept isolated from additional gene flow, while North Munda received a longer admixture pulse from the local Indian groups, which caused the dilution of the newly arrived Southeast Asian components in North Munda, without affecting the relative proportions of West and South Asian components."
"The admixture midpoint was 3846 (3235–4457) years ago for South Mundas, which may point to the time of arrival of the Southeast Asian component in the area,"
@coldmountains
"It is so ridiculous on many levels to suggest that Indo-Aryan and most steppe ancestry was female mediated when most Indo-Aryans have something like 2-5x more Steppe Y-DNA than Steppe mtdna."
There are many faults in your statement above.
1. the only ancient samples we have so far shows elevated steppe admixture in x chromosome as compared to autosomal. So you have not established how and when this paternal invasion/migration happened. It is still an unproven hypothesis.
2. Your assumption is that 2-5x "steppe ydna" in moderns is all through breeding. What is the chance that it is due to founer effects? Also i am not sure of this 2-5x claim of yours. North indians have quite elevated west eurasian mtdna profile.
3. As you very well know, there is not a single instance of R-Y3 or L657 found yet in ancient steppe. If a single 2500-2000bce R-Y3 is found in south asia at some point, your theory is demolished.
4. The castes in modern Uttarakhand are predicted by mtDna not Y-dna R1a. "The paternal ancestry of Uttarakhand does not imitate the classical caste system of India" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26511066/
So if the mtDna is west eurasian, higher chance of person being 'higher caste'. But if Y-hg is R1a, no such prediction can be made. What it tells us is clear - higher castes got the choice of brides, and also possibly enriched the steppe autosomal ancestry over time in this way.
@eastpole
You will enjoy the speaker after Narsimhan in the link posted above. I think after 1hr:20min mark.
And to all others who think Vedic religion is mostly about horses and chariots lol.
@Davidski,
Apologies for off topic but I want to ask something. G25 distance runs shows many Uralics such as Mari, Udmurt, Saami, etc to be genetically closer to many Turkics/Central Asians than to most Euros. Is this really true?:
Distance to: Mari
0.11547308 Bashkir
0.13857526 Tatar_Siberian
0.14622919 Tatar_Siberian_Zabolotniye
0.15879922 Mansi
0.16609517 Turkmen
0.17229907 Uzbek
0.17348576 Khanty
0.17705239 Finnish_East
0.17783813 Nogai
0.18422090 Iran_Turkmen
0.19255765 Finnish
0.19535284 Tajik_Shugnan
0.19586713 Hazara_Afghanistan
0.19923069 Uygur
0.19996889 Karakalpak
0.20260554 Tajik_Ishkashim
0.20344348 Hazara
0.21081083 Russian_Tver
0.21182997 Tubalar
0.21232139 Tajik_Yagnobi
0.21763448 Estonian
0.22557314 Russian_Smolensk
0.22981453 Polish
0.23081106 Hungarian
0.23128921 Latvian
0.23172467 Swedish
0.23796045 Icelandic
0.23996963 Bosnian
0.24026907 German
0.24118352 Irish
0.24241418 English
0.24252065 Romanian
0.26465765 Italian_Piedmont
Distance to: Udmurt
0.09797134 Bashkir
0.12750545 Finnish_East
0.13114207 Turkmen
0.13310796 Tatar_Siberian
0.14089777 Tajik_Shugnan
0.14179315 Finnish
0.14393915 Iran_Turkmen
0.15093452 Uzbek
0.15098617 Tajik_Ishkashim
0.15155844 Tatar_Siberian_Zabolotniye
0.15961422 Tajik_Yagnobi
0.15979505 Russian_Tver
0.17017327 Estonian
0.17152629 Mansi
0.17241783 Nogai
0.17796271 Russian_Smolensk
0.18020743 Swedish
0.18059071 Polish
0.18103482 Hungarian
0.18369906 Latvian
0.18382164 Hazara_Afghanistan
0.18579149 Khanty
0.18647838 Icelandic
0.18890984 Uygur
0.18894553 Irish
0.19010287 German
0.19029509 Bosnian
0.19164537 English
0.19445041 Hazara
0.19510247 Romanian
0.19868197 Karakalpak
0.21214030 Tubalar
0.22032703 Italian_Piedmont
Distance to: Saami
0.11182593 Bashkir
0.12036459 Finnish_East
0.13826217 Finnish
0.14216068 Tatar_Siberian
0.15607780 Tatar_Siberian_Zabolotniye
0.16075159 Russian_Tver
0.16336793 Turkmen
0.16632238 Estonian
0.17367742 Uzbek
0.17400811 Mansi
0.17827602 Tajik_Shugnan
0.17868672 Iran_Turkmen
0.17931411 Latvian
0.17952044 Russian_Smolensk
0.18157993 Nogai
0.18279075 Swedish
0.18381285 Polish
0.18837516 Tajik_Ishkashim
0.18848438 Khanty
0.18949914 Hungarian
0.19039592 Icelandic
0.19534091 Irish
0.19658845 Tajik_Yagnobi
0.19719818 German
0.19782542 English
0.20117721 Bosnian
0.20194140 Hazara_Afghanistan
0.20432707 Uygur
0.20636918 Karakalpak
0.20953171 Romanian
0.21102027 Hazara
0.21653079 Tubalar
0.23687648 Italian_Piedmont
Most East Eurasian-shifted Udmurt individual
Distance to: Udmurt:udmurd8
0.08187760 Bashkir
0.11499101 Tatar_Siberian
0.12768661 Turkmen
0.13030726 Tatar_Siberian_Zabolotniye
0.14008865 Uzbek
0.14503560 Iran_Turkmen
0.15002433 Finnish_East
0.15051991 Mansi
0.15082985 Tajik_Shugnan
0.15733351 Nogai
0.15932898 Tajik_Ishkashim
0.16412459 Finnish
0.16433979 Khanty
0.16977493 Hazara_Afghanistan
0.17150233 Tajik_Yagnobi
0.17470455 Uygur
0.17977632 Hazara
0.18225833 Karakalpak
0.18263746 Russian_Tver
0.19334510 Estonian
0.19378021 Tubalar
0.20046634 Russian_Smolensk
0.20108449 Swedish
0.20161450 Hungarian
0.20302204 Polish
0.20680134 Icelandic
0.20715504 Latvian
0.20848813 Irish
0.21031218 German
0.21038218 Bosnian
0.21127078 English
0.21365826 Romanian
0.23643305 Italian_Piedmont
Just wondering if these Finno-Ugrics are really genetically closer to many Turkics/Central Asians than to most Euros?
Yes, overall they're closer, because they have so much Asian ancestry.
But of course they're more closely related to other Europeans.
@Simon Stevin,
Here is Davidski's blog post on Steppe Maykop.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-steppe-maykop-enigma.html
This is not just Davidski's opinion. Everyone agrees Steppe Maykop is 50% Asian Steppe (Botai-related), 50% European Steppe (Steppe Eneolithic). A few individuals have Caucasus (Maykop) admixture.
Ancient DNA identical to Steppe Maykop is also in Western Kazakhstan from Kumsay and Merke sites. The samples are in G25 PCA. They're the same people as Steppe Maykop.
@Davidski,
I see. I'm still slightly confused though. So Udmurts, Maris, Chuvashs, Saamis, etc. are overall genetically closer to Turkics/Central Asians and Ugrics such as Khanty, Mansi than to most Euros due to their very high East Asian ancestry?
But they are still more closely related to other Euros in terms of ancestral components and other stuff?
You have to learn what distances are, what they show exactly and how to use them correctly.
@salden
"either Amazonian Steppe women, Hindu conquerers forcing the White Man to hand over women, or women in any pre-indudtrial society being allowed to socialize casually with males who are strangers)."
You are wildly projecting. i never used any such words ever. Shows your insecurities I guess. I do not think in terms of white black or brown, you very clearly do. I do not talk about conquering, you do.
Mahabharata for example clearly shows kings of kurukshetra taking princess from far off lands of gandhara as wives, with approval from both parties. a normal matrimonial relation to forge bonds between kingdoms. It also shows a large no of clans from S central asia who participated in the war between cousins on one side or the other. matrimonial relations between them are just natural.
I have been the first one to say repeatedly that Vagheesh was wrong and that Swat had bmac like ancestry. I also said that sintashta is not a good source of steppe ancestry in swat, dali_mlba possibly is. both of these have found no challenge yet. Davidski, for example has accepted both these views in his comments above. And now is the mainstream view in this community.
@Davidski,
Yes I need to learn more about distance and how to interpret them.
I'm assuming the distances of the Finno-Permics in this case are showing the genetic closeness to other pops rather than genetic relatedness due to shared autosomal components/genomes?
If they don't have this much East Asian ancestry, they will be closer to mainstream Europeans in distance?
Although if I remember from learning from others in Anthrogenica and doing some runs on Finno-Permics like Udmurt, Mari, Besermyan, etc, they seem to also have a lot of Iranic/Central Asian-related ancestry which could be why it pull them closer to Turkics/Central Asians than to Euros as well?
I want to ask which distance runs are more reliable for Finno-Permics: G25 or Gedmatch calcs such as Dodecad K12b/Eurogenes K13? The latter two gives very different results from G25, which is showing them to be closer to mainstream Euros than to other Uralics such as Khanty, Mansi and Turkics/Central Asians.
@Ramber
Hi.
Spreadsheets based on "Gedmatch calcs" are not suitable for distance comparisons. They also shouldn't be used for modelling.
Note that the page called "Vahaduo tools for Gedmatch calculators" was made by LukasM without any permission or my approval and I don't take any responsibility for anything that you find there, including my tools that have been modified and broken to some extent.
@vAsiSTha
I do not think in terms of white black or brown
Off course you do. You use terms like "white supremacy".
@Ramber, if you're interested in distances, earlier last week I wrote up some comments on an Open Thread on Razib's blog about how the f2 distance (the distance from which the other f stats are products) relates to G25 distance and to fst, which I've abridged and rearranged below.
The tldr version is basically the scaled G25 euclidean distance does relate to the direct genetic distances, fst and f2 (which are basically linearly perfectly correlated with each other), but its slightly non-linear so scaled G25 euclidean tends to be higher for close populations (so in a way G25 overestimates close by populations).
However, the rank order of real genetic distance and scaled G25 distance is usually pretty good (provided a population's unique drift is taken into account by G25, which is not the case only for a few small or ancient populations, like Onge, Sunghir, Yana etc). Generally if a population X is, say, 20th furthest from population Y in Global 25, then it won't always exactly be 20th always, but it won't be far from it in real distance (it could be from like 16th to 24th or something). Generally there's a good relationship between the relative ranking of distances in G25 and *real* distances.
Excerpts from my comments on GNXP Open Thread are below (p1):
https://imgur.com/a/NCfbpwO - includes a tree made from G25 and "some crossplots between Global25 euclidean distance and the f2 scores – Global25 euclidean distance has a power relationship with f2, which means that the Global25 euclidean distance rises a lot faster than f2 statistic for geographically close populations. And so populations in G25 who are close to one another are probably a bit closer under the f2 statistic than they appear in G25. (There’s also some shifted isoclines, even after I remove populations with problem f2 scores – this probably reflects that there is some extra differentiation of Karitiana, Sunghir etc which is deemphasized in G25, probably because David tried to avoid it or its lost in modern references). This probably explains the tree differences.
Looking at G25 distances as proxy for f2 (assuming direct f2 is more “real” maybe) would probably make us overestimate the local f2 distances within continent (but maybe also underestimate drift within some isolated populations a bit, which are lost in large scale components; isolated groups like Orcadians and Argyll Scots from the Western Isles seem to show slightly boosted f2 distances where these don’t show up in the general G25 PCA)."
@Ramber, p2:
I also made some graphics comparing the f2 statistics and the fst statistic:
"Here are some graphics for fst vs f2 like I mentioned above.
First, comparison of all Fst and all f2 pairs between a set of 122 populations from the Human Origins latest release (ancient 17, modern 105). Here https://imgur.com/a/KC6I5M9
In general f2 is pretty linear with fst, though with some differences. There are a lot more apparent outlying problems with the f2 calculation as a measure of population differentiation when it comes to the ancient sequences (e.g. quite a few ancient+modern or ancient+ancient are displaced “up” on the y axis compared to the fst measure). Really only some of the ancients seem to be driving the problem (three populations; a Caucasus Maikop one, Sarazm Eneo and a South China LN one) which just have abberant f2 for no real reason.
Remove those three and its even more linear. Here https://imgur.com/a/fXgno24. In general, as ADMIXTOOLS2 works it out, f2 is simply 0.27*fst, with a r^2 of 0.98.
Using only moderns you get up to r^2 of 0.99. Here https://imgur.com/a/TgQ8bQK. Though the residuals seem to indicate that AfricanVEurasian/OoA differences are higher in f2 than fst (and that this is most pronounced for most drifted OoA populations), while Eurasian/OoAVEurasian/OoA differences, particularly between most highly drifted populations are less pronounced in f2.
They’re mostly linear, but with this slight difference, it seems to me, where fst is reduced in Africans by intragroup heterozygosity and increased in Eurasians/OoA by intragroup homozygosity. (I think that makes sense given that f2 is the raw allele frequency difference between populations while fst takes into account frequency difference within population?).
I would say as well though, note that Pontus Skoglund / his lab worked out that African:Eurasian Fst is elevated under the Human Origins panel as its ascertained in Africans. See here https://arborbiosci.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Skoglund_Ancestral_850K_Panel_Design.pdf. So I don’t know if that bleeds over even worse to f2 stats.
....
Basically overall I’d say, on high quality data like moderns, f2 and fst seem to “tell the same story” so I wouldn’t overly take much time thinking about about the difference too much (like “This is fst so its questionable and what are the f2 distances?” because they’d probably just be linear, with the above mentioned variation"
"Here are also some trees for fst and f2 including both ancients and moderns: https://imgur.com/a/hlYctz5"
@SKRiBHa
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BB%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%8B
So I actually missed it too, which cultural context is the early CWC like group from and what is the date for these guys? Also, was there a blog done specifically on them?
@ RichS
''I agree with you on that, but it is both necessary and possible to speak of things that were generally true and prevailed over much of Old Europe, like Yersinia pestis and the advantages the steppe pastoralists enjoyed by riding horses.''
Frankly i find most of these theories so far as underwhelming. The term Old Europe is an outdated Gimbuatean throwback which creates a false staticness & duality
@ Matt
''One model that seems plausible to me is that the Maykop (Caucasus and somewhat assimilated "Steppe Maykop" groups) introduced the use of higher mobility technology (i.e. wagons) to the steppe as part of a trade network, but had no interest or cultural inclination to the wide-ranging settlement of the steppe and forest that the Yamnaya / later WSH like groups would do. Their conception of wealth in precious metals and luxury goods, not head of cattle and sheep. Then when their trade networks collapsed, we stop seeing them about and instead the expansion of the WSH who've taken the technology and used it for demographic expansion. (Along with adopting some other cultural evolutions of steppe practice that are earlier in the Steppe Maykop, like the wagon burials under large kurgans).''
Majkop used wagons for the labour which which erected their large kurgans whislt steppe comunities used them for day-to-day activities. On balance, given the presence of wheels in quasi-contemporaneous groups further west, (TRB, epi-Baden, etc), I wonder if it was Majkop which in fact adopted the wagon
@ Vasistha
True, before your input, we thought that the Swat valley was at the foot of the Urals . Nobody would have ever have thought that it might be a tad more complex than a 70% turnover by imaginary pseduo-Huns
@SKRiBHa
According to G. Ramstedt, the name Altai comes from the Mongolian word alt - "gold" and the pronominal formant -tai, that is, from the word Altay - "gold-bearing", "the place where there is gold." This version is confirmed by the fact that the Chinese used to call Altai "Jinshan" - "golden mountains", obviously, this is a tracing paper from Mongolian
@Rob
"wonder if it was Majkop which in fact adopted the wagon"
Slightly off-topic, but I noticed that for quite many things when there is dual presence in the steppes and in the caucasus, an origin in the Caucasus and a dispersion into the steppes is often immediately assumed by many.
I'm guessing its because they were derived from "Mesopotamian colonists" or whatever, too mighty and advanced to learn a thing or two from the simple-minded steppe brute lmao
I've seen authors (so not just blogger hottakes) argue for steppe kurgan burials being derived from Maykop ones and earlier ones from Transcaucasia (ignoring the fact that mound burials exist in the steppes well before the Yamnaya period), same with the kurgan stelae having a Maykop origin due to the nalchik kurgan having similar stones in a cromlech position, although other takes were that these stones came from earlier eneolithic cemeteries/religious sites which were then reused by the Maykop - a pattern we see repeated throughout prehistory and history.
Personally I cant really say conclusively from which side the wagons were adopted by the WSH, but given the importance of the trade networks and relations with eastern european farmers for the formation of the entire WSH complex, a western origin would be far from surprising imo. Yamnaya is more western genetically than the earlier steppe populations found east of the Don anyways, and I'd imagine those expansions were coupled with wagons.
@Rob said…
(…) I was mostly referring to the physical separation : a geographic divide opens up ~ 1200 BCE east vs west of the Urals
This is also when the earliest steppe ancestry appears in South Asia (…)
Distance and time alone would not cause such distortions of the roots as seen between Slavic vs. Sanskrit and Avestan.
If the continuity of the roots is maintained from CWC to Sintashta and further to Z+altay, then it disappears in Proto-Indo-Iranian language.
The so-called dialect continuum would not introduce distortions like L>R, etc. Something must have happened that led to such changes, eg NIE substrate, see Sanskrit, Avestan, Armenian, Greek or later Germanic.
I repeat that haplogroup N and Seima-Turbino is completely omitted from this puzzle, see e.g. very mixed Scythians ...
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