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Intriguingly, my understanding is that there are several unpublished R1a samples from the Caspian and Volga steppes at Harvard's David Reich Lab that have been classified by its scientists as Yamnaya outliers.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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532 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 532 Newer› Newest»@Rob, to be honest the wagons evidence seems so near contemporaneous over such a wide area that it could have come from anywhere. (I don't intend to get into any of the Archi like arguments where he asserted only the steppe people could've originated it due to sleds or somesuch, or the arguments of some others that seem to think the potters wheel must have come before the wagon wheel and therefore Mesopotamia). Anthony seems to think its plausible that wagons came to the steppe from Maykop cultural contact though. And the Steppe Maykop do seem to have among the earliest wagon evidence and the earliest wagon-burials I think?
Chariots and Horses in the Carpathian Lands During the Bronze Age
Carola Metzner-Nebelsick
https://books.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeum/reader/download/886/886-30-94213-1-10-20210701.pdf
@vahaduo
Hello. Thank you for your explanation. Would the "Vahaduo tools for G25 custom calculators" be much more suitable for distance comparisons than those of "Gedmatch calcs"? Why shouldn't they be used for modelling? Would G25 be a lot better to utilize for modelling?
I see. I thought he was the owner tbh. What are your original tools?
@rob
No need to be snarky lol. Truth is that most commenters including davidski hardly bothered to go into detail of narasimhan's modeling. Noone bothered much about what was actually going on.
@epoch
Personal attacks from likes of salden and you do not interest me. If you have a rebuttal to the points I raised against coldmountains, you are free to critique. Meanwhile it would be nice if you could show where I used the term and in what context.
David:
"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."
This most closely resembles Parpola's theory. David, however, I cannot answer two questions:
1) how was the EHG/CHG population formed far in the west?
2) why we don't see EEF admixture in Yamna?
@Ex
'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'
This is outdated data, see:
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-history-of-scythians-gnecchi.html?showComment=1622153600094#c8910071101329071483
(…) (…) On the etymology of Altai I suggest this article:
https://www.academia.edu/33611500/SOME_NOTES_ON_THE_ETYMOLOGY_OF_THE_WORD_altai_altay (…)
Here is the point of this paper at a glance:
(…) The word altay is is an oronym referring to Altai Mountains, but it, in this phonological form, is not attested to have existed in Old Turkic’. (…) The nominal altun yış attested eight times in Old Turkic runic inscriptions is used for ‘Altai Mountains’ . (…) The former ( Jīn 金 ) means ‘gold’ ( altın in Turkic) (…) 4. Semantically, the words referring “Altai Mountains” and have the meaning of “gold, golden”, support this etymology. (…)
On May 17, 2021 at 9:55 PM you already confirmed that peoples from Yamna / Yamnaya / Afanasievo and CWC spoke IE languages around Altai / Altay much, much earlier before the arrival of the Turkish peoples there.
This is why the etymology of the meaning of the word Altai / Altay should be sought in IE languages, see:
Altay / (Z)+aL+Tay
Żółty / Z”o’L’+Ty
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C5%BC%C3%B3%C5%82ty
Złoty / ZL”o+Ty
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/z%C5%82oty
The e/o > a transition complies with the Brugmann's law.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-history-of-scythians-gnecchi.html?showComment=1622753610247#c4213616006979280998
Onur Dincer said...
@SKRiBHa
Yes, it is possible that the etymology of the Turkic word altun/altay (both forms meaning ‘gold’ apparently) could be traced back to some IE language. Could be some extinct IE branch or extinct Iranic branch with a word similar to Proto-Slavic *zoltъ with the same meaning. But the form altun/altay obviously evolved in Turkic as dropping of initial z is typical in Turkic. (...)
@Vasistha
Chill, I was having a joke
@ambron
The EHG/CHG mix is very ancient and formed somewhere between the Black and Caspian seas before spreading across the steppe.
And Yamnaya does have some EEF ancestry. I explained that here.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/05/understanding-eneolithic-steppe.html
@JJ
Yeah, early CWC from Poland and the Baltics is almost 100% Yamnaya Samara. And basically 100% Yamnaya from more westerly locations.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-battle-axe-people-came-from-steppe.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02825-9
@Ex
“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”
This does not contradict what SKRiBHa said. There are plenty of Slavic words in Altaic languages. Even in Chinese words like “wheel” and “mead” are Slavic. I wrote about it earlier:
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/11/on-spread-of-dairy-pastoralism-to-east.html?showComment=1541590399715#c2591241538550021717
@vAsiSTha
Calm down, it wasn't meant as serious as you might think. You used it here:
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/12/fully-automated-graph-exploration.html?showComment=1609684011779#c5343753294349322186
Your reaction did make me realise that Europeans traditionally would naturally consider their civilisation as of foreign origin, though: Roman, Greek and Biblical.
@SKRiBHa
But the form altun/altay obviously evolved in Turkic as dropping of initial z is typical in Turkic. (...)
What's wrong. If it were a Slavic word, then in the Turkic languages it would sound like "zolty" or "iolty", not "olty".
Also "Kurgan" has clear turkic etymology: from turkic verb "kur"- to build+ affix "gan". Literally meaning "built", "constructed".Usually meaning handmade hill(wall).
@ Anyone
What are the ancient routes into & out of Mongolia/ the Altai region from the West ?
Its entire western aspect is barracaded by mountains
@epoch
It was a direct tongue in cheek response to a poster fransesco who said this to me,
"That's the reason why I said the term "chariot" is used by Hindutva-minded archaeologists....""
To which I replied this to make a point. Game can be played both ways. I would rather that it's not
Thats why I keep saying 'aryan' 'invasion' being true is held and propogated by white supremacist europeans since centuries..
Hence I asked you for context.
@Vasistha
The Uttarakhand paper you cited considers R1a not a western haplogroup:
"Y chromosome: East/Southeast Asian specific haplogroups N, O2 and O3; South Asian specific haplogroups F, H, L and R2; West Eurasian-specific haplogroups J and T; unresolved haplogroups C,D, K, P, Q and R1a."
However if you do a link between R1a and caste is very clear. See supp info table 3. 46% for Brahmins, 42% for Kshatriya.
@epoch
It is irrelevant. Vaishya upper castes (Shah and Goswami) have less than 10% R1a where as the shudra caste (Arya jati) has 30%. So R1a cannot predict caste.
Even the difference between brahmin, kshatriya and Arya R1a is statistically non significant.
Brahmin n=83 r1a 46%. Margin of error at 95%, ci=11%. Ci 35-57%
Arya n= 46 R1a 30%. margin of error at ci 95% = 13%. Ie 17-43%.
Both ranges overlap, hence statistical difference is insignificant. Given a sample is R1a, you will not be able to predict with high accuracy the caste of the person.
No one who considers R1a not a 'western' haplogroup in an Indian context should be taken seriously. R1a is only not 'western' in, say, a case involving my autosomal origins of the British Isles, northwest France, west-central Germany, and Sicily. Earliest R1a samples which are instructive to the Indo-European world are found in the Ukrainian steppe, which is quite western to the Indian subcontinent.
@Vinitharya “ @Vinitharya “ one who considers R1a not a 'western' haplogroup in an Indian context should be taken seriously. R1a is only not 'western' in, say, a case involving my autosomal origins of the British Isles, northwest France, west-central Germany, and Sicily. Earliest R1a samples which are instructive to the Indo-European world are found in the Ukrainian steppe, which is quite western to the Indian subcontinent.”
R1a arrived with the Sredny Stog through Corded Ware. No one has yet any clue to its origins. I suspect that PIE language continuum arose among the carriers of this Haplogroup. I’m pretty sure that @Davidski concurs.
@Davidski,
Right, and pardon my confusion here but where is the earlier Eneolothic Corded Ware/Yamnaya like population from that possibly spawns both CWC and Yamna? Are these the guys called 'Progress' or were they found in Sredny Stog? I'm actually confused too over the 'Progess' sample matter.
Colleagues, sad news. Oleg Balanovsky is dead. He died saving a drowning child. He saved the child.
@Arza
"Chariots and Horses in the Carpathian Lands During the Bronze Age
Carola Metzner-Nebelsick."
In the paper you post, in page 114, figure 2, we can see the depiction of a chariot in a jar from Slovakia (dated to 14th century BCE):
https://tinyurl.com/42raz4ar (scroll down to page 114).
There's a very similar figure in rock art in Mirzapur, India (previously dated to c. 800 BCE), likely in Iron Age. The way in which the horses were depicted is extraordinarily the same to the one in Slovakia! Here's the one from India:
https://tinyurl.com/a2zth9fr
I wonder if this Mirzapur's image can be earlier, closer in time to that of Slovakia.
@JJ
The earliest likely ancestor is Sredny Stog. Samples from Sredny Stog are very similar to Yamnaya/early CWC.
The data hasn't yet been published but we've known this for a while, and Anthony talked about it recently on Youtube.
@ Carlos
From what I skimmed , the carpathian chariots are similar to those in near east & Greece, rather than Sintashta
Might be broadly linked with arrival of Y-Hg J2a1h
@ Ambron
Sad news indeed. He was a nice guy; had a few chats with him
Interesting. So the genetic links corresponding with the culture blocs are as follows:
Sredny stog> Yamna >Corded Ware
Or
Sredny stog > yamna / Stendy stog > cwc via 2 different developmental proccesses.
Khvalynsk is now out of the picture apparently.
Copper Axe: 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
Some folk may believe this (as the sort of mirror image to the equally ridiculous notions of the "Culture Bearing Steppe People Who Brought Proper Individualistic High Warrior Culture" to ignoble Mediterranean farmers and oriental peoples, and whatnot)... But it would be hard to apply to David W Anthony for'ex (given more or less *everything* he said in his magnum opus!).
Rob, an unimaginable loss for family, friends and world genetics.
I understand Skribha's hint. The first kurgans appear at the end of the fifth millennium simultaneously in the vicinity of the Carpathians and the Caucasus.
@John, as it stands, the Khvalynsk 3 samples have an EHG:CHG ratio that requires extra admixture from Caucasus to get to Yamnaya, which is currently dispreferred compared to just having them descend from the Sredny Stog samples, based on where the pre-Yamnaya SS samples seem to cluster in David Anthony's recent presentation (since taken down from YouTube). Khvalynsk+Caucasus always seemed to me to work okish in qpAdm, even with CHG outgroup, but it is less parsimonious.
However 1) the Khvalynsk samples we have may not be 100% representative and others may have a more Yamnaya like EHG:CHG ratio and 2) we don't know about the details of the Sredny Stog population yet so when these samples date is still a mystery. So I think it might be extreme to say that people living around and burying dead at Khvalynsk are precluded from being an ancestor group to the Yamnaya. But it is dispreferred.
Well, I wouldn't say Khvalynsk is just dispreferred. It actually makes a lot less sense than Sredny Stog.
For one, because both Sredny Stog and Yamnaya are shifted west compared to Khvalynsk. So if we assume that Yamnaya isn't derived from Sredny Stog, then we have to figure out how Yamnaya's DNA got shifted west to exactly the same point as that of Sredny Stog.
Also, there's no R-M269 in any of the Khvalynsk samples, but there is M269 in the Eneolithic Balkans in a sample that possibly has steppe ancestry from Sredny Stog.
When I did models combining the Khvalynsk and Caucasus groups, the fits in qpAdm work OK (it gets to the same place), but that's less parsimonious and probable as a solution so why I'd say it's dispreferred (for me) but not refuted nor impossible. Will be worth trying again with a full set of Khvalynsk cemetary samples.
Yamnaya is shifted west, not south, relative to the full set of the Khvalynsk samples.
So mixing Khvalynsk with something from the Caucasus doesn't work.
The full set of Khvalynsk samples may be workable in other models, let's see.
The referenced PCA are here anyway: https://m.imgur.com/a/MWX38hE
One "Early Sredni Stog" shifted north from Yamnaya (but hard to say how representative that is, and of what), many Sredni Stog (middle? late?) overlapping Yamnaya, Khvalynsk slightly north east but no as dramatically as three published taken together. It might be interesting to see if they can get any cousin matches out of the Sredni Stog and Khvalynsk, or if just nothing like that shows up suggesting no recent connections. And the sample dates.
In G25 PCA Yamnaya is west shifted, but when I tried qpAdm a while ago I think that Khvalynsk + Progress worked better than the GAC model, or any attempt at Ukraine-HG related.
The Khvalynsk samples also have quite a bit of WSHG ancestry in addition to the "EHG to CHG" ratio being off.
@Davidski-"Also, there's no R-M269 in any of the Khvalynsk samples, but there is M269 in the Eneolithic Balkans in a sample that possibly has steppe ancestry from Sredny Stog."
Do you mean the outlier individual "Bulgaria_Varna_C_o2" (VAR44, R1b, 4550-4368 calBCE)? If not, what do you think of this individual?
David Anthony mentions in one of his paper the following:
"At the cemetery of Khvalynsk on the middle Volga, dated about 4700 bc, 320 copper ornaments were found in 201 graves. Some objects were made or repaired locally, but
most were made of Bulgarian copper, and a handful (rings and spiral bracelets) were made in the same way as the copper ornaments found at Varna, and probably were imported from Bulgaria."
The elite individual with the most gold items from the Varna culture (Bulgaria_Varna_C, VAR43, T, 4678-4371 calBCE) belonged to Y-haplogroup T. And also, the Steppe Maykop outlier individual IV3002 from the Ipatovo kurgan (Russia_Steppe_Maikop_o, 3617-2885 calBCE) belonged to Y-haplogroup T. Could this be an indication that Y-haplogroup T was involved in the formation of the Khvalynsk culture, and the ancestors of the Steppe Maykop outlier individual IV3002 were to be found as minor outliers in the Khvalynsk culture?
Could there be an Eneolithic network of two populations (Fertile Crescent natives and Steppe natives) from the West of the Black Sea to the North of it, until the Southern Caucasus which was caused by a movement of people who performed the Neolithic Revolution?
It's an outlier to some extent, due to its steppe ancestry. But the samples from the Balkan Eneolithic are fairly heterogeneous anyway.
It's going to be interesting in the coming few years to try to pick apart the locations where horse domestication, final PIE, and a possible ancestor of PIE all originated.
Of course these pivotal events are closely associated and likely occurred in a relatively confined area on the Pontic Caspian Steppe within the span of a few millennia at most. But within these bounds we know there was profound movement and change.
I agree that Sredny Stog is the best candidate for the great PIE expansion. Questions that follow from this conclusion concern whether it was also the site of earliest horse domestication, or the earliest identifiable ancestor of the a language community directly ancestral to PIE.
What's needed, of course, is more and denser sampling and sound interpretation bringing in archaeology and linguistics. Looking forward to it.
@Davidski,
Sorry to be a burden but can you run do two f4 runs (or qpadm) for my CHG video.
Test: Yamnaya_Samara
References for test 1: Kotais, Karelia_HG, Globular Amphora
Reference for test 2: IranChl, Karelia_HG, Globular Amphora
Outgroups for both tests.
Ust_Ishim, Kostenki14, MA1, Han, Onge, Karitiana, Mbuti, Maykop_Novosvobodnaya, Georgian_Imer, Ganj_Dareh_N, Bustan_BA, Iron_Gates_HG, Motala_HG, Ukraine_Mesolithic
This is a recreation of the f4 test done by Lazaridis 2016 but with new outgroups who can differentiate Iran and Caucasus.
They never tried to differentiate Caucasus from Iran!! But despite this they proudly said Iran is a better reference (but based on poor outgroups). It is quite annoying how blind they are.
I'm fully aware you've done many, many runs in your blog posts over the years showing CHG is a better reference. I'm going to reference all of them.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2016/06/yamnaya-eastern-hunter-gatherers-iran.html
But i couldn't find a test of yours mirroring Lazardis 2016's test. I don't want to give critics of my video room to say "Well according to Davidski's tools it is CHG, but according to the experts' tools it is Iran."
I wan
@Copper Axe, all,
New CGI reconstruction of Yamnaya man by Survive the Jive.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZAENaOaceQUMd84GDc26EA/community?lb=Ugxpoxs-XUeEQnG4YEJ4AaABCQ
This is definitely a more accurate reconstruction. He looks like a big faced Slav!
He is also twin of Tyson Fury and Nikolai Valuev.
@Sam, I ran those qpAdm models:
CHG Model: https://pastebin.com/bQKHEVqQ
SEH GABI Model: https://pastebin.com/UreJKmDQ
I used ancient dna in place of some of your modern references and tried to use references with high SNPs which were older than Yamnaya. They both don't give a passing p but the CHG model is less bad.
Variants of same model with Steppe_EN with CHG in the outgroup:
https://pastebin.com/cUGRgy6g / https://pastebin.com/XE4NeXmn / https://pastebin.com/i3qvxkZF / https://pastebin.com/YGZiYknh
@Genos
Yeah, those models are really bad, because they use present-day pops as outgroups (right pops).
You can't do that, because you're supposed to avoid situations where there's gene flow from the left pops into the right pops.
So what you should say in your video is that these models aren't valid anyway, so they don't prove anything.
@Genos Historia “ His skin tone is at the darker end of the European spectrum and was based on that of modern Georgian people from the Caucasus who have a similar range of complexions as the Yamnaya.”
Where did this bullcrap come from?
@Rob
"From what I skimmed , the carpathian chariots are similar to those in near east & Greece, rather than Sintashta
Might be broadly linked with arrival of Y-Hg J2a1h"
So, how do you explain that people from India drew the two horses yoked to the chariot in the same schematic form as in Slovakia?
@ Carlos
Sorry I dont quite understand yur question. Can you elaborate ?
@Matt,
Thanks much for running those mate. I didn't realize the references don't work for f4 stats. It is disappointing. But we used to use D-stats here. CHG was always preferred for Yamnaya because Georgian_Laz was used as an outgroup.
@Davidski,
Yeah I suppose my argument will be F4 and qpadm aren't capable of figuring out whether Iran or Caucasus are the best reference. So, Lazardis F4 stats don't hold much water.
I've got plenty of other sources from your blog posts which differentiate Iran from Caucasus. Going back to 2015, when you found Georgians are best modern reference using TreeGraph.
@Rob
"Sorry I dont quite understand yur question. Can you elaborate?"
In page 114, figure 2, of the following paper we can see the depiction of a chariot and two horses in a funeral urn from Slovakia (dated to 14th century BCE):
https://tinyurl.com/42raz4ar (scroll down to page 114).
There's a very similar figure, also with two horses, in rock art in Mirzapur, India (previously dated to c. 800 BCE):
https://tinyurl.com/a2zth9fr
Of course you already commented that Slovakias chariots are not related to Sintashta as Mirzapur's one should surely be. But the way in which the horses were depicted (only with lines) in both distant regions are the same. I wonder what can be the explanation of very similar ways to depict the horses. I'm not asking you necessarily a genetical answer, but a possible explanation of similar ways to depict horses attached to chariots. Maybe this imply a common origin of people from Slovakia and Mirzapur, India.
@Genos
Here's a brief rundown of the situation:
- Mathieson et al. 2015 modeled Yamnaya as half modern Armenian, which is something that I opposed strongly, because this didn't make any sense to me based on my Admixture and TreeMix runs, or any sort of logic. So instead I hypothesized that Yamnaya had very ancient ancestry from Iran or even Central Asia. See here.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-teal-people-did-they-actually-exist.html
- Then, as you noted, I hypothesized that Yamnaya got its southern ancestry from what is now Georgia based on my TreeMix runs...
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2015/10/yamnayas-exotic-ancestry-kartvelian.html
- Shortly after the CHG genomes were published and so I kind of felt vindicated, but we were still lacking a proximate source of this CHG-related ancestry in Yamnaya.
- Then something weird happened, with the Harvard crew going for Iran as the source of southern ancestry in Yamnaya, and I was totally against this idea, considering the ancient DNA that was available at this time. Their mistake, of course, was treating the Armenia_ChL samples from the Areni Caves as representative of the Copper Age Caucasus, so they went for a more southern source than the Caucasus.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2016/06/yamnaya-eastern-hunter-gatherers-iran.html
- in his book, David Reich even went so far as to link Yamnaya's southern ancestry to Bronze Age Uruk migrants from Mesopotamia, but then the Wang et al. preprint dropped with those samples from the Eneolithic steppe, and in parts this preprint actually looked like a copy some of my work here.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/07/ahead-of-pack.html
- the discussions continued well after these Eneolithic steppe samples were published, but eventually it became clear thanks to leaks that this type of ancestry was already present in significant amounts in some hunter-gatherers on the steppe, and this has now been officially confirmed by David Anthony.
In fact, as some of us here are well aware, a Yamnaya-like population already existed on the steppe during the so called Pottery Neolithic there. So again, I was vindicated, at least in large part, because I'm not claiming that I got everything right...
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/02/ancient-dna-vs-ex-oriente-lux.html
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/05/understanding-eneolithic-steppe.html
@ Carlos
Right, my suggestion was a J2a1-assoc link
Taldysay, Tepe Hissar, Shahr-i-Shakhta, Sappali Tepe, Bustan
<-> Anatolia BA, Myceneans, eastern Urnfield (Kyatice)
@Rob
There were horse drawn chariots at Tepe Hissar, Shahr-i-Shakhta, Sappali Tepe etc.?
You mean in pre-Sintashta Central and West Asia?
I'm pretty sure that chariots were invented in Sintashta, and that the Mycenaeans got this technology from the steppe.
The so called chariots in the Near East were solid-wheeled wagons pulled by donkeys.
But yeah, there are different theories about that.
Chariots and Proto-Indo-Iranians did not spread from Sintashta but from the Kopet Dagh. The "Proto-Chariots" of Gonur and Hissar predate those of Sintashta by a few centuries.
"The presence of chariots at Gonur-Depe (pic. 2) disproves the hypothesis of an appearance and spread in Bactriana and Margiana of domestic horses and chariots originating from the steppe cultures of Andronovo, in particular those of the southern Urals belonging to the Sintashta culture [9].Prior to it, no chariot was ever found in the immense steppes of Central Asia[2]. Moreover, it is necessary to add that horse age from the burial № 3200in Gonur-Depe, which has a radio-carbon dating 2250 BC [5], i.e. one and half century prior to burial of Sintashta culture dated to 2100-1700 years BC"
https://www.academia.edu/48987305/2021_J_BENDEZU_SARMIENTO_Horse_domestication_history_in_Turkmenistan_and_other_regions_of_Asia_MIRAS_1_p_17_29
@Vara
Three questions:
1) Why should we take the paper that you linked to seriously, considering that it actually shows a solid-wheeled wagon and not a spoked-wheel chariot?
2) If horses were domesticated in Asia, then how come pre-Sintashta Western and Central Asian horses don't belong to the modern domesticated horse lineage, the earliest attestation of which is actually found in aDNA from Sintashta burials and in Eastern Europe?
3) If Indo-Iranians didn't come from the steppe, then how do we explain the massive expansion of Fatyanovo-related populations rich in R1a-Z93 across Asia, especially into areas associated in ancient times with Indo-Iranians?
@Carlos Aramayo
Do you have anything else to add in regards to the very dubious paper linked by Vara?
@Davidski
1) That has been the hypothesis by chariot experts Littauer and Crouwel for decades. Only now do we have a bit of confirmation.
https://ancient-world-project.nes.lsa.umich.edu/tltc/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/WAR_Moorey-1986-WorldArch_The-Emergence-of-the-Light-Horse-Drawn-Chariot-in-the-Near-East-c.-2000-%E2%80%93-1500-BC.pdf
2) It doesn't matter where the horse domestication occurred since we are talking about chariots a thousand years later.
3) It's pretty clear that R1a is pretty irrelevant to the ancient Indo-Iranians of Yaz, Swat....etc.
Don't worry, I will go over it in detail soon.
@ Davidski
'There were horse drawn chariots at Tepe Hissar, Shahr-i-Shakhta, Sappali Tepe etc.?
You mean in pre-Sintashta Central and West Asia?''
I was not suggesting that there are chariots in Eneolithic central Asia. However, Mycenean chariots apparently had 4-spoked wheels which were similar to Near East rather that to Sintashta , which had more. but this could be a local adaptation.
What is interesting is that the eastern Carpathian region had links with extra-Carpathian regions (Trziniec, Komaravo) and Sintashta which have clear evidence of horse burials and/or chariots; whilst Transdanubia had links with the south (Greece) & north (Scandinavia). So a filtering of ideas was occurring in the Carpathian basin.
@Vara
The link you just posted leads to an old, outdated paper. Here's a more recent effort.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/04/latest-on-sintashta-petrovka-chariots.html
And R1a-Z93, which is today closely associated with Indo-Iranian populations, does appear at Yaz and Swat exactly at the right time.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/07/an-early-iranian-obviously.html
@Davidski
"The link you just posted leads to an old, outdated paper. Here's a more recent effort."
Because it shows that by 2350 BCE there where "proto-chariots" in Eastern Iran now confirmed to be pulled by horses?
"And R1a-Z93, which is today closely associated with Indo-Iranian populations, does appear at Yaz and Swat exactly at the right time."
A thousand years after the Maryannu warriors appear in West Asia, 400 years after the Zamyad Yasht, 250 years after the Iranians first trade camels with the Assyrians, and 200 years after the Atharvaveda. Definitely the right time!
Were the chariots of the Sintashta burials and their antiquity even discovered by 1986?
@Luuk
"Could this be an indication that Y-haplogroup T was involved in the formation of the Khvalynsk culture, and the ancestors of the Steppe Maykop outlier individual IV3002 were to be found as minor outliers in the Khvalynsk culture?"
You're reaching really hard here to explain a presence of Y-dna T on the steppes/with the WSH, and I wonder why considering it hasn't shown up with them so far. Do you have that Y-dna haplogroup by any chance?
Yeah that's pretty good; it seems like we can have high confidence that light wheeled vehicles developed more less at the same time in the Near East and steppes. Certainly if they spread from an origin point they indicate that this happened fast and without really gene or language flow.
I don't know about some of these heavy, ornamented vehicle burials, like the Sanuli vehicle. They may have been some special ornamented vehicle to accompany the dead into the afterlife, for elite leaders, and lighter and more practical vehicles may have been spreading at the same time as they were in use without being attested in burials.
@Vara
R1a-Z93 not only shows up at the right time at Yaz and Swat, but also in the Near East.
And you'll never see R1a-Z93 in Asia before Ind-Iranian languages are attested there.
That's because R1a-Z93 is an Indo-Iranian marker you knucklehead.
@Rob
“Mycenean chariots apparently had 4-spoked wheels which were similar to Near East rather that to Sintashta , which had more. but this could be a local adaptation.
What is interesting is that the eastern Carpathian region had links with extra-Carpathian regions (Trziniec, Komaravo) and Sintashta which have clear evidence of horse burials and/or chariots; whilst Transdanubia had links with the south (Greece) & north (Scandinavia). So a filtering of ideas was occurring in the Carpathian basin.”
4-spoked wheel resembles Slavic Solar Cross which Slavs probably got from CWC and Tripolye. So it was known around Carpathians. Here is one from Tripolye:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/%E5%BA%93%E5%BA%93%E7%89%B9%E5%B0%BC%E9%99%B6%E7%BD%90.JPG/954px-%E5%BA%93%E5%BA%93%E7%89%B9%E5%B0%BC%E9%99%B6%E7%BD%90.JPG
@Davidski
"R1a-Z93 not only shows up at the right time at Yaz and Swat, but also in the Near East."
Look at the math again: A thousand years after the Maryannu warriors appear in West Asia, 400 years after the Zamyad Yasht, 250 years after the Iranians first trade camels with the Assyrians, and 200 years after the Atharvaveda.
I hope you realize the Persians and Medes were already in Western Iran by that time?
"And you'll never see R1a-Z93 in Asia before Ind-Iranian languages are attested there."
I know. Because it gets there pretty late after Indo-Aryan languages are attested. On the other hand, we have literal texts dated to 1760BCE confirming the presence of Indo-Aryans in the Near East and we pretty much have confirmation Proto-Indo-Iranians were interacting with the Zagros tribes.
Anyways, you can strawman and move the goalposts every 3 seconds. You can check everything when I post it if you want.
@Vara
It's extremely unlikely that we'll ever see samples from the first Indo-Iranian speakers to have entered West Asia.
The best we can ever hope for are early Indo-Iranians.
The important point is that R1a-Z93 is closely associated with Indo-Iranians and shows up in the ancient DNA record when Indo-Iranian languages are attested in Central Asia, South Asia and West Asia, but not before.
You should probably go and find another hobby at this point.
@ Vara
“On the other hand, we have literal texts dated to 1760BCE confirming the presence of Indo-Aryans in the Near East and we pretty much have confirmation Proto-Indo-Iranians were interacting with the Zagros tribes.”
Which texts are they ?
I mean we have samples that were a mixture of native levantines and bronze age central asians. You know the ones heavy on the R1a and bronze age eastern european ancestry. The ones that spoke Indo-Iranian languages.
They aren't contemporary to the one mentioning of maryannu in an 18th century letter but they were admixed with locals so they couldn't have been very recent either.
These samples are somewhat contemporary to the Kikkuli text and the Mitanni-Hittite treaty, actually a little earlier.
So David is right, this type of ancestry shows up exactly when Indo-Iranians are supposed to show up there - just like in every other region of the world.
These type of denialist comments were cute a decade ago but they just look so pathetic nowadays.
@Ex
But the form altun/altay obviously evolved in Turkic as dropping of initial z is typical in Turkic. (...)
What's wrong. If it were a Slavic word, then in the Turkic languages it would sound like "zolty" or "iolty", not "olty".(…)
Read what you yourself quoted above which is my quote from Onur Dincer, please. Stop fooling yourself at last. This is boring and not funny.
Also "Kurgan" has clear turkic etymology: from turkic verb "kur"- to build+ affix "gan". Literally meaning "built", "constructed".Usually meaning handmade hill(wall).
Read this finally, please.:
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-history-of-scythians-gnecchi.html?showComment=1622988449087#c4892354283444667223
(…) As for the word kurgan, whatever its ultimate etymology, it must have been loaned to Old East Slavic from some Turkic language and spread to other European languages from the East Slavic languages in the modern era. The form kurgan is very Turkic in sound, transformation of initial g to k is typical in Turkic. (…)
It is possible that sometime, perhaps during the Hun invasion, the distorted original meaning of the word Go'R+Ka / ‘hill’ was secondarily borrowed into some Slavic dialect, and then transferred further, see:
Go’R+Ka > Ko’R+GaN > Ko’R+HaN > Ko’R+GaN
However, this does not change the fact that the Slavic meaning of the word Go'Ra / Go'R+Ka is primary and 'ultimate etymology' for Turkish meanings, such as ‘refuge, fortress, rampart, major shrine, fence, protection, to protect, to defend, to erect (a building), to establish’, etc., compare with Z"o'L" Ty / ZL"oTy> (Z)+Altai / (Z)+Altay. (...)
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-history-of-scythians-gnecchi.html?showComment=1622550562708#c4200701120537757858
(…) By the way, I do not know why the second part of my comment on the etymology of the word kurgan can not be published here for the third time. Maybe the Blogger is allergic to something I have included in it. ;-) I published it at my blog, so if everyone can read it, even in two languages… (…)
@Rob
There is a cuneiform letter from the Tell Leilan site which contains the term Maryanni/Maryannu and is dated to the end of Zimri-Lim's reign - around 1761 bc.
@ambron
I understand Skribha's hint. The first kurgans appear at the end of the fifth millennium simultaneously in the vicinity of the Carpathians and the Caucasus.
I have to explain that I do not claim the above, see especially this ‘simultaneously’.
I claim that no one really knows where, when, how and why the first burial mounds / kurgans appeared.
I repeat my questions about I2 and whether the burial mounds / kurgans, such as a wheel, were 100% PIE's invention, or were they just a secondary borrowing from someone else?
@ copper axe
Is that a secure attribution & dating ? (Refs if possible)
Otherwise the texts of Indo-Aryan names are ~ 1300s
@ Copper axe
“There is a cuneiform letter from the Tell Leilan site which contains the term Maryanni/Maryannu and is dated to the end of Zimri-Lim's reign - around 1761 bc.”
Thanks. that seems to be specific term referring to mounted warriors. This might imply familiarity with such forms of warfare . It’s harder to infer what it means about ethnic situation in Mesopotamia or the Zardos at the time
@SKRiBHa
I might not be important who actually invented the wheel, but I can imagine that the steppe will change from an almost insurmountable barrier to a huge resource for cattle and other livestock once you have cards and horses. So even if PIE people didn't invent the wheel but simply start using it the benefit to them might have been far larger than to others.
Mind you, this is all just a thought.
SKRiBHa wrote,
"However, this does not change the fact that the Slavic meaning of the word Go'Ra / Go'R+Ka is primary and 'ultimate etymology' for Turkish meanings, such as ‘refuge, fortress, rampart, major shrine, fence, protection, to protect, to defend, to erect (a building), to establish’, etc., compare with Z"o'L" Ty / ZL"oTy> (Z)+Altai / (Z)+Altay."
On what basis would you reject either of the usual Turkic etymologies suggested for kurgan?
(1) kurgan = imperfective participle of Turkic kur- "to erect (a building), to construct, to build, to found, to establish, to install, to set (up), to create"
(2) kurgan < Turkic root of Turkish koru- "to protect, to shield"
@copperaxe
"I mean we have samples that were a mixture of native levantines and bronze age central asians. "
Do you mean that 1 sample of not so certain origin? Or do you have more?
"These samples are somewhat contemporary to the Kikkuli text and the Mitanni-Hittite treaty, actually a little earlier."
The mitanni indo iranian words actually correspond to the latest mandalas of the RV, and from Yajur and Atharva Veda. Ie.. they have no bearing and connection to the oldest mandalas of the RV, and by extension they have no connection to any group who spoke proto indo iranian. Those guys lived 500-1000yrs earlier than 1800bce mitanni period.
The whole theory of a group of people from steppe heading into south asia and others into West Asia is a non starter, and quite laughable. To imagine that these people could overturn the local language of south asia completely without leaving a trace but at the same time only could give a few loan words in west Asia which had a considerably smaller population makes me laugh a lot. You guys should listen to yourselves sometimes.
https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/jbsc/044/03/0058
Witzel wrote this in a recent 2019 paper. How sad haha. According to him 15-20% autosomal ancestry = predominantly steppe aDna.
"Now, the prepublication paper (2018)3 has established the
first ancient DNA from South Asia, found in the Swat Valley
– which is mentioned, by the way, in the Ṛgveda as a ‘good
place’. For the first time, we can see who was around, at
1250 BCE in that area; that is, as expected by linguists and
textual scholars, not South Asian but predominantly steppe
aDNA, from 1250 BCE"
He also writes
"Other skeletons, also at other graveyards in Haryana, etc.,
were of no use for aDNA due to contamination. In the
present case, the aDNA reportedly does not show the Central
Asian haplogroup R1a1: of course not, as a Harappan
specimen is just too early."
Someone tell him that the rakhigarhi sample was from a female and therefore cant have y chromosome.
@Davidski
"Do you have anything else to add in regards to the very dubious paper linked by Vara?"
The paper is writen by French archaeologist Julio Bendezu-Sarmiento, a serious scholar, based on earlier findings, but regarding the "chariots", there was found only a wagon with four wheels in Gonur depe, it's a little cart not a chariot. Of course the claim that horses were present in Margiana a little earlier than the beginning of Sintashta is possible, but the provenance can be also from the steppes. Dating of the cart and a foal in Gonur depe is mentioned by Bendezu-Sarmiento as being from 2250 BCE, but a recent recalibration in Lyonnet and Dubova's recent (2020) book is 2200 BCE.
@Copper Axe
This topic includes discussing the origins of the Steppe Maykop culture.
IV3002 is from the Steppe Maykop culture and belongs to Y-haplogroup T, and I am wondering how the ancestors of this outlier individual arrived in this region.
Like David Anthony mentioned, in a Khvalynsk cemetery 320 copper ornaments were found in 201 graves, and majority of them were originated from the Eneolithic Varna Eneolithic culture (the Varna culture is contemporary to the Khvalynsk culture).
The leader individual (VAR43) with the most golden items from the Varna Eneolithic cemetery also belongs to Y-haplogroup T. Can you follow the connection between IV3002, VAR43, and the Khvalynsk culture in which the West Asian Y-haplogroup J1 was found?
So, if the source of most of the Khvalynsk items are originated from the Varna Eneolithic culture, and if the IV3002 and the elite Varna individual belongs to the West Asian Y-haplogroup T, then is it not logical to hypothesize that T will be found together with J1 among the Khvalynsk culture as minor outlier migrants from the Southern Caucasus (migrants from the Neolithic Revolution)?
All, I watched Ringbauer's talk at SMBE and took some copies of the slides - https://imgur.com/a/HZsLznU
He mentions the Maykop sample who is a relative of a Usatovo sample. There is a map of where the Maykop person is sampled from, and its either one of the published Steppe Maykop or another Maykop from the steppe. 5th degree relative.
There is a Google Map in the slide and cross referencing indicates it will be one of the 2x Steppe_Maikop or 1x Steppe_Maikop_o at Sharakhalsun 6. Ringbauer also mentions that one of the individuals is in a wagon-burial, and therefore it would be SA6004 ("SA6004.A0101 (BZNK-003/1+4), kurgan 2, grave 18, Steppe Maykop. This exceptional grave is an inhumation of a male individual sitting on a four-wheeled wooden wagon in a narrow catacomb. No additional grave offerings were found. The physical anthropological examination of this individual revealed a large number of pre-and peri-mortem injuries42. Dating: wood, 3336-3105 calBCE (4500±40BP, GIN-12401)". So the Q1b2b1b2b, not the R1a Russia_Steppe_Maikop_o, SA6013 or the woman SA6001.)
(You can watch it too under Symposium 26 at the links under https://www.smbe.org/smbe/MEETINGS/SMBE2021.aspx if you wish).
Skribha, kurgans from Skalbmierz are dated in the same way as kurgans from Ipatovo - 4000 BC.
@ copper axe
“ There is a cuneiform letter from the Tell Leilan site which contains the term Maryanni/Maryannu and is dated to the end of Zimri-Lim's reign - around 1761 bc.”
Thanks . However, that doesn’t really imply that there were indo-Iranians in the near east
It seems like a jargon use of the term
@Luuk
I've already explained to you that there's no recent relationship between Khvalynsk and Steppe Maykop, and that there's no Y-haplogroup T in any of the Khvalynsk samples, including all of the ~40 new ones yet to be published.
You don't need to take my word for it, you can check this for yourself.
Also, the Steppe Maykop sample with Y-haplogroup T is an outlier because he has recent Anatolian-related ancestry, which suggests that his people were recent arrivals to the steppe from the south.
My guess is that this sample has recent Caucasus Maykop ancestry, and his Y-haplogroup T is probably from the Caucasus.
@Rob
Copper Axe is right, the Tell Leilan letter can be dated to the end of Zimri-Lim's reign, around 1761 BC. These are details of it:
It mentions "marijannu" soldiers to be exchanged between a ruler of Tell Leilan and another king with a Hurrian name. The letter is classified as L.87–887, and was sent from Kirip-seris to Himdija, and it refers to a journey to Babylon to visit the "king". Presumably the letter dates to the very end of Zimrı-Lîm’s reign, or shortly after the fall of Mari. The soldiers exchanged are described as:
sab ma-ri-ia-nim /sabı sa ma-ri-a/ia-nim.
The letter has been first studied by F. Ismail, and next mentioned by Jasper Eidem in his (2014) paper,(See page 142, and footnote 16):
https://tinyurl.com/p77zzd36
@ Genos Historia
I like the reconstruction, but the map was very strange... Like... the darkest the green, the greater the Yamnaya ancestry. But is the darkest green in northern Finland among the Samis? Does not make sense.
I read lots of articles that point to a bubonic plague like disease being largely responsible to the conquest of England by the Saxons, the Justinian Plague of 535AD. According to the theory, the Romans left in 410AD, to defend France and Italy. Then the Britons invited AS mercenaries (Vortigern inviting Hengist and Horsa) to defend them against the Pictish. The “English” warlords turned on their masters, and slaughtered 300 Celtic warriors. In 500AD Ambrosius (King Arthur) managed to check the Germanic advance “for 50 years”. Then in 535AD, with today’s England split evenly in the middle, the Justinian Plague wiped out and decimated the Cymru like smallpox ravaged Native Americans 1,000 years later. AS advanced until they reached the Ofa Wall.
Any takers?
Y-hg T1a seems to be a minority marker assoc. with Early farmers, present in karsdorf LBK & maljak Preslavets EN (earliest Jordan PPNB). It then shows up in Varna, then Steppe majkop
That Varna man was T1 suggests that status was acquired in that society
@Rob
"Thanks . However, that doesn’t really imply that there were indo-Iranians in the near east
It seems like a jargon use of the term"
There is not really a way to know of the term maryannu if Indo-Iranians werent present, as it has an Indo-Iranian etymology. The implication being that Indo-Iranians at the least were already present in Hurrian territories.
@Luuk
IV3002 is from the Steppe Maykop culture and belongs to Y-haplogroup T, and I am wondering how the ancestors of this outlier individual arrived in this region.
His father or grandfather came from within the Caucasus, moved into Steppe Maykop territory and got frisky with one of the ladies there. It isn't rocket science. The steppe Maykop outliers were recently admixed.
See what I find intrigueing is that David has explained all of this several times and you are basically ignoring it to continue your delusional little tale about how. Like you bring up this "West Asian J1" which we already have found with hunter-gatherers very far from the Caucasus and prior to the Khvalynsk, Varna, Maykop and Steppe Maykop cultures. That clade could have been outside of the Caucasus since the mesolithic, and probably was.
But you'll continue to go on on probably.
@All
So based on this analysis by Ringbauer (David Reich Lab) it seems that Corded Ware mixed with Globular Amphora in the forest steppe, right after coming out of the steppe in western Ukraine.
https://imgur.com/a/HZsLznU
Note also the relatively close relationships between Corded Ware and Yamnaya from Ukraine.
The one thing that looks sort of strange to me are the very close links between Lithuania LN and Yamnaya from the Volga/Poltavka.
The EEF component in CWs is not primarily from Polish CW then. A few years back, they found GAC mass graves in eastern Poland, dated 2800s BC, of women and children, and were speculated to be done by CW invaders. They were all executed by blows to the head.
The Polish GAC were 70% EEF, and 30% WHG, with no steppe ancestry. This would back that up, and timeline matches.
@Matt
Did you see the stats for the shared IBD between Yamnaya and Khvalynsk/Russia Eneolithic?
How's that theory of Yamnaya being derived from Khvalynsk coming along?
That's exciting news about the GAC IBD sharing, but I'm still confused about how, where, and when EEF admixture was acquired by Corded Ware. We've seen the early Corded samples in the Baltic without EEF admixture, so is the idea that they left the steppe in waves, with the earliest group not mixing and later groups mixing with EEFs?
Can we presume Baltic Corded was replaced later on by different Corded groups (now featuring EEF ancestry)?
What can we expect people from the Middle Dnieper culture to be like autosomally-- very EEF-mixed like later Corded Ware or will they be Yamnaya-like?
@ dragon Hermit
“ The EEF component in CWs is not primarily from Polish CW then. A few years back, they found GAC mass graves in eastern Poland, dated 2800s BC, of women and children, and were speculated to be done by CW invaders. They were all executed by blows to the head.
The Polish GAC were 70% EEF, and 30% WHG, with no steppe ancestry. This would back that up, and timeline matches.””
Not necessarily. CWC acquired graduated admixture across N/C Europe
It’s not like they planned not to mixed with the Polish variety. It’s speculative that the conflict was with cwc , although it could have been. It might have been with other groups, like Baden or even other GAC . It had all the hallmarks of a Vandetta
Apparently, this suggests that the main flow of CWC went through Belarus, where Ukraine GAG and Lithuania LN just intersect. It is necessary to check Belarus 3500-3000 BC or at least the Russian regions adjacent to Belarus of this time, Usvyatskaya culture and the like
The GAC samples with the highest IBD sharing with Corded Ware are from Ilatka, Ukraine.
That's not all that close to Belarus.
https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/49%C2%B033'28.0%22N+27%C2%B041'19.0%22E/@49.5577778,27.6886111,12z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d49.5577778!4d27.6886111
In fact, since the early Baltic Corded Ware samples lack GAC ancestry, then we can hypothesize that once this Corded Ware population mixed with GAC in the Ukrainian forest steppe, it moved west into Poland.
Baltic Corded Ware acquired it's EEF ancestry later from links with Central European Corded Ware.
And how to explain such a connection with Lithuania LN?
What connection?
Lithuania LN shows IBD sharing with Sintashta, not with GAC.
Not only with Syntashta, but also with Germany CWC, Czech CWC, Poland CWC, Sweden CWC, Germany BBC, Czech BBC
Lithuania LN is early Baltic CWC, that's why it's closely related to other CWC populations.
Thank you, now I understand. And where did the early Baltic CWC come from? On the Antony chart, it was combined with Yamnaya Don. Here it is combined with Yamnaya Volga
No one knows yet where the Proto-CWC homeland was on the steppe.
But I suppose that it may have been somewhere in Ukraine, based these IBD results showing close links between CWC and Ukrainian Yamnaya.
The close IBD links between CWC and Volga Yamnaya can be explained by a migration of Yamnaya from Ukraine to the Volga region.
"And you'll never see R1a-Z93 in Asia before Ind-Iranian languages are attested there.
That's because R1a-Z93 is an Indo-Iranian marker you knucklehead."
At least 4pi worth of circular reasoning here. What is the first attestation of indo iranian in the steppes?? Ever thought about that? Lol
Davidski:
Did you see the stats for the shared IBD between Yamnaya and Khvalynsk/Russia Eneolithic?
We'll eventually see how plentiful the IBD links are between Yamnaya and Sredni Stog too ;)
Well, the point is that there are no IBD links between Yamnaya and Khvalynsk.
So Khvalynsk wasn't ancestral to Yamnaya.
Ergo, the Yamnaya homeland was somewhere in the west of the PC steppe, and it may even have been west of Sredny Stog.
Generally, if I will comment on the patterns in the sharing plot compared to earlier one:
- I expect this would eliminate most of the problem sharing between Corded Ware and Unetice that we saw in earlier plots. Beaker do not show links to Yamnaya and only the weak link to Lithuania LN, and the link to Corded Ware is fairly weak.
- None of the Eneolithic populations (not Russia Eneolithic, not Ekaterinova, not Khvalynsk) show links to Yamnaya.
So this raises confidence that the links are mediated by recent ancestry, and does not capture broadly shared between populations separated by >1000 years.
I also would not be totally surprised if the Yamnaya with strongest patterns of sharing with CWC, who are currently "unreleased" (like Yamnaya Moldova and these other populations who are connecting into CWC cline on the PCA from Anthony's presentation) tend to be dated closer to CWC.
At least there is a clear link between Corded Ware and the Beakers.
The Beakers share practically nothing with Hungarian Yamnaya, and just a weak, anomalous signal with Romanian Yamnaya.
Sucked in Quiles. :)
Ok, so this confirms much of Corded Ware's farmer ancestry was picked up pretty far east in Ukraine. This is an important detail.
I always knew major Globular Amphora admixture happened in Poland or Ukraine. Then GAC ancestry was distributed west and east from there.
This is why the Corded Ware Swiss dude with R1b L51 has Globular Amphora ancestry not Swiss farmer ancestry.
@Matt
Your theory that Khvalynsk might be ancestral to Yamnaya sounds kind of desperate anyway.
There were people on the steppe with CHG ratios higher than Yamnaya's already at least 4,000 BCE, and yet you're proposing that Yamnaya is actually a mixture of a Khvalynsk subset with low level CHG ancestry plus something from the Caucasus.
Good luck with that. ;)
@Davidski "The close IBD links between CWC and Volga Yamnaya can be explained by a migration of Yamnaya from Ukraine to the Volga region."
This is such a long dispute, which is already 50 years old, between archaeologists from Ukraine and from the Volga region. Now, apparently, it is becoming clear that the archaeologists of Ukraine are right. At least as for Yamnaya, it was formed in Ukraine. Nevertheless, the question remains on the basis of which Eneolithic both Yamnaya and CWC were formed in the period 3500-3000 BCE. The absence of GAG components in the early Baltic CWC apparently excludes the Eneolite of Ukraine and the Don Eneolite will be a more likely candidate.
Lithuania LN doesn't show any GAC ancestry, but GAC was located in the forest steppe, while the Proto-CWC homeland was on the steppe.
Also, Lithuania LN, Yamnaya and Sredny Stog do all show some GAC-like EEF ancestry, but obviously from an earlier source than GAC.
I guess they may have picked this up near the Don, but we'll see.
No, that's just something I said worked in qpAdm (just to note it doesn't have a strong preference against that model).
It looks like there is a signal between Germany Corded Ware and Germany Beaker which is interesting if holds up in a wider panel (some persons in the Beaker and CW group were cousins.)
Another interesting feature is that it looks like Western Yamnaya and Eastern Yamnaya loosely form blocs on the IBD chart, the Don Yamnaya is somewhat intermediate and it looks like Afanasievo had nice connections to both.
@Genos Historia
"This is definitely a more accurate reconstruction."
It's funny how he cherrypicked the most robust looking Yamnaya skull he could find, and took liberty in making it 10x more robust thanks to the soft tissue assignment, which is just way over the top. Neither were the Yamnaya skull massive, their average width was 148mm, only about 3mm bigger than the current average, whilst also being below average if you're comparing them to the likes of Caucasians and Siberians.
I have made my own reconstruction of a Yamnaya skull that is about just as robust, if we were to judge both without any craniometric data. I can see certain likeness in their looks, difference is that the soft tissue isn't exaggerated: https://i.imgur.com/KrhkS0g.png
And the skin tone, I assume he googled Georgians and saw a bunch of West Georgians thinking that it's what the average is like, not to mention the fact that modern Georgians score a lighter skin tone on hirisplex than Yamnaya.
GH: This is why the Corded Ware Swiss dude with R1b L51 has Globular Amphora ancestry not Swiss farmer ancestry.
That makes me wonder whether we'll find the same kind of links later in other sets, with other farmer mixing like the I2 samples called "Switzerland Corded Ware" by Furtwangler (which Reich lab doesn't label them with). We may have run into the "good fortune" that GAC (particularly at the very edge of their range in Ukraine?) was a small population on the margins of farming that could be "gobbled up" by a small early CWC group that could them grow rapidly (once adopting agriculture more). So we find cousins because both were small and highly related. Where later farmer ancestry reflects interaction between larger populations (e.g. Beakers from France moving into Spain?) we not be so lucky.
The chart might hint at that; from the PCA from Anthony's presentation Yamnaya moving into SE Europe seem to have some samples with enriched farmer ancestry, but they have no cousin links in long IBD with any of the farmer panels here (neither SE Europe or GAC), possibly because the SE Europe farmer populations are large so we don't have a good chance of finding cousins. The exceptions to this might be things like the link between Usatovo and Steppe Maykop, where we find a link possibly because sampling two elite/long distance trader graves would be enriched in long distance links.
A couple other notes:
1) Although the 12th of the slides I screencaptured is getting most of the attention here, I would note it's worth looking at slide 13 to anchor your expectations.
That shows the rates at which IBD actually falls off over time between pairs that they find with 16-20cm matches (and other length classes).
The numbers of pairs identified in each plot also gives us some idea of how many matches in each class they're finding (although this is quite rough since we don't know the % pairs they're comparing, but it is surely quite high).
We can see that the highest frequency of 16-20cm pairs actually match to within 0 years (radiocarbon date) while, by the time we get to 1000 years, practically none of the samples with 16-20cm are separated by this long. So we probably shouldn't expect any matching at this level between samples separated by 1000 years, even we'd expect them to be linked over a long term (e.g. Sintashta at just past 2000 BCE doesn't seem to show these links to any Corded Ware/LN who are about at 2900 BCE, nor their descendants, right?).
Ringbauer talks about using this to correct or anchor dates (i.e. like perhaps if you can get links for some of those contentious Romania samples with *crazy* long intervals of thousands of years on the RC date, then you can calibrate your dating accordingly and place other things nicely in the chronology).
I did think that the German Corded Ware are surprising because from memory they are dated relatively late among CWC, but have quite plentiful links in the preceding slide showing links at the >16-20cm level. Maybe that's because they either maintained a small population that stopped IBD from being broken up *or* that they are actually in reality simply a bit earlier than their radiocarbon dates would suggest (both might be consistent with them preserving a fairly high clip of steppe ancestry).
There's also evidence in the same plot that 8-12cm segments still have a fair frequency after 2000 years. This might be interesting for folks who are interested in the Slavic and Celtic and Germanic languages expansions, because any links between people today, or adna within the last 500-1000 years, and people from migration period and LBA and so on, might throw up some information to link things up.
(It may also be interesting to India/South Asia, if we can actually match LBA/IA people from the Southern steppe to Swat!)
Cont. 2) Not in the presentation but, one other interesting thing that comes to mind that could be possible, when they find people like the Steppe Maykop and Usatovo who are connected by 4th-6th cousins... In theory, if you can identify the matching regions, then you could isolate these and then project them onto a PCA.
E.g. in this case the Usatovo and Steppe Maykop have a 5th degree relationship, so they would share about 6.25% of their dna. From that, if you can identify the stretches that are shared, then pool the SNPs in that segment from both donors, then if there are enough SNPs it could project onto PCA.
If that's possible, then what you could do is that you could identify a person who mediated the cousin-relationship between the individuals. Like, in the case of the Usatovo and Steppe Maykop connection, if the projected person comes back as Caucasus Maykop like, that would tell you that Caucasus Maykop likely mediated the connection (perhaps by seaborne contact), while if it's perhaps more like Sredni Stog, then its more likely to be mediated via the steppe.
As a quick guess of how much you had, say two individuals are covered for 700k SNPs, likely there's some overlap between their dna, but you might get 1,000,000 snps between them, then you from 6.25% of their dna, you would have 62,500 SNPs. Not a lot but could be enough to project.
I guess you might have to have good coverage to do this (so you would have to be lucky that these samples could have high coverage potential and spend the money), but it does seem like this sort of thing would present a means by which you could really confirm some things about how marriage and social networks worked.
This might be easier if the links are plentiful, as you can average the links out between several samples to get a sort of "consensus connection". E.g. maybe CWC and the Yamnaya samples, and then you can say, "Well, actually we know from this matching that the segments CWC share with Yamnaya are 100% within the "Steppe EMBA" cluster!" and then that would totally kill off any remaining argument that CWC was an earlier splitting population that mixed extensively with neolithic people early on (which I think is just an consequence of conversations that spun off from the misdating of the supposed "Sredni Stog" MLBA outlier in Ukraine).
David are you going to open the G25 store?
Soon. Later this month hopefully.
@Matt
6.25% shared DNA does not come in a single segment, it will be in multiple segments from both donors. Maybe 15 or 20 segments. Projecting the shared segments in a PCA will have random results in between the two populations. It takes 2 to have children. Predicting relatives with modern DNA samples works down to ten degrees of separation. The data is too spliced up after that,
As I understand it, 23andme identify segments that are typical markers of different populations, and color them, so they can start to be able to predict which of the mixing population the shared segments came from. The more data they have, the more accurate their predictions become. They are now very good with Britain & Ireland, but struggle with France and Germany.
Garvan, I know full well it does not come in a single segment, but I am unsure that it would be a problem to use the segments that are shared and then treat the rest as missing data. Ancient DNA SNPs are after all randomly sampled from across the genome.
@CrM “not to mention the fact that modern Georgians score a lighter skin tone on hirisplex than Yamnaya.”
Where did you get this conclusion from?
I am dividing my comment in two pieces because it contains a lot of information.
Part 1 of my comment:
Quotations from the podcast of Anthony:
"Khvalynsk is the largest cemetery in this pre-Yamnaya era in this eastern region. It has everything except the added ancestry from European Farmers. Its pure EHG and CHG.
You can see these two components coming from the North and the South. The pre-Yamnaya population was admixing between Northern forest derived populations and a Southern derived population that we actually dont have the origin of yet."
"In those pre-Yamnaya populations ... There is a lot of Y-haplogroups out there.
And pre-Yamnaya, so far, none of them are the typical Yamnaya Y-haplogroups."
The most important point in here is that he is saying that they dont know where the origin of this Southern derived population (the CHG) is located before 6.500 BCE. So, the origin of this "pure CHG" doesnt have to be in the Caucasus, maybe it is in a more southern region.
There are a lot of archaeological findings in the early Neolithic period (10.000 - 6.500 BCE) of the Fertile Crescent consisting items which are equal to the Kurgan stelae and other cultural customs which are seen in the cultures like the Shulaveri Shomu, Leyla Tepe, Maykop and the Khvalynsk.
There is a cultural migration pattern starting from the Southern regions into the Steppe regions.
So, the Neolithic Revolution starts in the Fertile Crescent when Farming is invented, around 10.000 BCE, and it continues until around 4.000 BCE moving into almost all West Eurasian territories.
You can see a differentation of Y-haplogroups between the northern Fertile Crescent and the Western Anatolian part of Turkey. The northern Fertile Crescent Y-haplogroups were probably G, J, L, T around 10.000 BCE.
And the Western Anatolian part of Turkey were probably C1a2 and H2 around 10.000 BCE.
I am dividing my comment in two pieces because it contains a lot of information.
Part 2 of my comment:
And Anthony mentions that there were populations in the more southern regions whom had higher proportions of CHG.
So, maybe there were a lot of waves into the Steppe coming from the South.
Maybe there was a first Southern wave (pure CHG) somewhere between 10.000 - 6.500 BCE and a second Southern wave (same CHG population admixed with the western hunter gatherer proto Anatolia_N population during the Neolithic Revolution migrations) made by the same population between 6.500 - 4.000 BCE.
Both Southern originated Neolithic Revolution waves into the Steppe admixed with the pure EHG population (natives of the Steppe from before 6.500 BCE), the first wave introduced CHG into the Steppe, and the second wave introduced amix of CHG+Anatolia_N/Levant_N into the Steppe.
Maybe this first Southern wave was from the PPNA+PPNB period of the Northern Fertile Crescent. And then the second Southern wave was from the Late Neolithic period of the Northern Fertile Crescent.
And there are a lot of Khvalynsk sites, and maybe they have only tested individuals from 1-2 Khvalynsk sites, so the results until now are just site specific (containing higher proportions of more EHG related Y-haplogroups)?
The Khvalynsk culture extends as far South as in Northern Caucasus.
This is a quotation from one of Anthony's papers:
"The body pose and grave ritual at the Khvalynsk cemetery, without mounds, was recognized as similar to the Nalchik cemetery in the North Caucasus, with mounds, by the archaeologists who exxcavated Khvalynsk in 1977.
Nalchik was excavated mostly before Worl War II, but the grave rituals there were similar to Khvalynsk, as well as other cemetery sites on the lower and middle Volga excavated later."
Maybe the Khvalynsk culture cemeteries within the more Southern regions will contain more (in majority) CHG related individuals also including other Southern Y-haplogroups like G, L and T? Anthony mentions that there are a lot of Y-haplogroups out there.
Maybe the ancestors of the Steppe Maykop individual IV3002 with Y-haplogroup T were from this Nalchik Eneolithic southern Khvalynsk variant?
Maybe these Nalchik Eneolithic kind of population were part of the Neolithic Revolution, and during the second southern wave (6.500 - 4.000 BCE, I described above) some of them were constantly moving around the Black Sea borders from Northern Caucasus until the Balkan Eneolithic regions in which it was found that the Varna elite individual belonged to Y-haplogroup T.
Hence, the connection mentioned by another user, in Ringbauer's talk at SMBE, where it is shown that there is a close genetic relationship between Steppe Maykop and Usatovo individuals, confirming that the Steppe/Caucasus Maykop population (and probably also the earlier Eneolithic Caucasus populations such as the Nalchik Khvalynsk population whom is contemporary to the Varna Eneolithic population) was moving constantly in a wide area between the Caucasus and the Balkans.
"Remnants of it have
recently been discovered at Krasno-Samarskoye, just west of
the Urals.45 In the same area, some 40 years ago, a grave has
been found with a headless body; instead a horse head had
been substituted, just as in the Ṛgvedic Dadhyañc myth.46"
Please someone tell Witzel that the horse and the human are now dated 1000yrs apart and both are female. It was due to a grave having fallen onto the lower one. Hard to take him seriously with these huge gaffes.
@CrM
It is necessary to distinguish between the measurement of the skull and the measurement of the face on a living person. And if average width of Yamnaya skull was 148 mm, then you can average add 10 mm.
@Luuk
There weren't any waves into the steppe from the south.
Hunter-gatherers rich in CHG lived on the steppe at least since the Neolithic, and maybe the Mesolithic.
Then there was some sporadic gene flow into the steppe from the Caucasus during the Maykop period.
It was definitely sporadic, see that's why the Steppe Maykop sample with Anatolian ancestry and Y-haplogroup T is an obvious outlier.
You have to try and understand what I've written in my reply to your posts, instead of pushing your theory against all of the evidence.
@Draft Dozen
Modern 145mm is raw skull measurement, and the tissue thickness can range from 5 to 10mm.
Here are some Yamnaya measurements: https://i.imgur.com/pl5wdqu.png
Modern American width, in flesh: https://i.imgur.com/12FCpSv.png
Modern Caucasian measurements, in flesh: https://i.imgur.com/BRD7eCd.png
@Andrzejewski
See here, compare Georgians and other Caucasians with Yamnaya: https://imgur.com/a/rROCOaX
Open the images in new tab and zoom in.
@Davidski
The Shulaveri-Shomu culture in the Caucasus starts around 6.000 BCE, as part of the Neolithic Revolution. As was shown in a recent study, the Shulaveri-Shomu individual ARO008 belonged to southern Y-haplogroup H2. This is definetely showing that the Anatolia_N admixture did arrive already in the Northern Caucasus region in the early 6th millennium BCE. So, why should Anatolia_N have come into the Steppe only with the Maykop culture? And why should the Steppe Maykop individual IV3002 with the southern Y-haplogroup T be a recent migrant whom came into the Steppe only after the Maykop period?
The Areni culture from Southern Caucasus belongs to a proto Kura Araxes culture, and is a bit earlier than the Maykop culture. And we see a mixture of Steppe, Anatolia_N and CHG/Iran_N in the Areni individuals whom belong to the southern Y-haplogroup L.
So, I dont find it logical that the introduction of Anatolia_N into the Steppe is only after the Maykop period. As I described in my previous comment, it could be that in the Southern variants of the Khvalynsk culture (the Eneolithic sites like Nalchik) we could find admixture of Anatolia_N in some individuals (with higher proportions of CHG and only minor proportions of EHG) as part of the second Southern wave between 6.500 - 4.000 BCE into the Steppe. And before 6.500 BCE, as part of the first Southern wave between 10.000 - 6.500 BCE, pure unadmixed variants of CHG were introduced in the more Northern parts of the Steppe.
Please have a look at the migration patterns of the Neolithic Revolution at: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Expansion_of_farming_in_western_Eurasia%2C_9600%E2%80%934000_BCE.png .
There is a migration route from the Caucasus dated around 6.600 BCE into the Steppe regions. Maybe the initial migrants of the early 7th millennium BCE were the ones with the pure CHG, and then after 6.500 BCE the migrants were the people from the same population but admixed with Anatolia_N / Levant_N. And in the 5th millennium BCE these southern people build the foundations of the Khvalynsk culture by mixing with the native EHG population of the northern Steppe regions. And then after the collapse of the Maykop culture, the Yamnaya culture arised (after all of the autosomal admixture which happened) in the more north / western regions of the Steppe with a group of people whom have a more homogeneous Y-haplogroup structure then before.
@ambron
Skribha, kurgans from Skalbmierz are dated in the same way as kurgans from Ipatovo - 4000 BC.
I was looking for any information about these kurgans from Skalbmierz, but I did not find much, see:
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skalbmierz
Skalbmierz – miasto w Polsce w woj. świętokrzyskim, w powiecie kazimierskim, w gminie Skalbmierz. (…) Badania archeologiczne potwierdzają, że w okolicach Skalbmierza były osady, które sięgają nawet 4000 lat p.n.e. (...)
However, I found this :
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierza_Wielka
(...)Pierwsze ślady osadnictwa w widłach Nidzicy i Małoszówki pochodzą sprzed około 6000 lat. U schyłku neolitu żył na tych ziemiach lud, budujący monumentalne grobowce o drewniano–ziemnej konstrukcji. Ich pozostałości odkryte zostały w położonych nieopodal Kazimierzy Słonowicach. Jest to największy tego rodzaju kompleks odkryty w Europie Środkowej. (…)
I do not trust wiki, for example because it does not contain any information about the kurgans from Hubinek or Średnia, see:
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurhan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan
(…) The earliest known kurgans are dated to the 5th millennium BC in the southeastern Europe [7] (...)
7. Govedarica 2016, p. 85.
https://www.academia.edu/30815005/Conflict_or_Coexistence_Steppe_and_Agricultural_Societies_in_the_Early_Copper_Age_of_the_Northwest_Black_Sea_Area
Conflict or Coexistence: Steppe and Agricultural Societies in the Early Copper Age of the Northwest Black Sea Area
Blagoje Govedarica
@ambron
https://www.academia.edu/30815005/Conflict_or_Coexistence_Steppe_and_Agricultural_Societies_in_the_Early_Copper_Age_of_the_Northwest_Black_Sea_Area
Conflict or Coexistence: Steppe and Agricultural Societies in the Early Copper Age of the Northwest Black Sea Area
Blagoje Govedarica
(...)
III.2. Phase Suvorovo
Stone sceptres and presumably the first burial mounds as signs of power and high rank appear after that in the second, Suvorovo phase of the sceptre bearers (Cucuteni A4; Varna 3, 4300—4200 B. C.,Fig. 5: 61, 64—70; 6; 7)3.
These new “wealthy” persons, that is, this burial custom, spread rapidly into the vast steppes, first as far as the area of the Dnieper River (Krivoj Rog, Čapli) and during the Suvorovo phase on to the Caspian Sea and the North Caucasus. And with that the large complex of early ochre graves with several local variations emerged (Suvorovo, Decea, Novodanilovka, Volga-Caucasus) (Govedarica 2004: 251 ff. and further recommended literature). Thereby, the practice of carrying a sceptre in the northwest Black Sea area has proven to be an autochtonous appearance (Govedarica 2004: 251).
3. There are several indications that the sceptre graves in Suvorovo, Căinari and Casimcea, like related graves inthe south Russian steppes (Chutor Šljachovskij, Verchnij Akbaš, Komarovo, among others) were covered with a small tumulus. Due to uncertain find contexts of these burials, however, views about this in research are not in agreement. For a discussion about the situation see Govedarica 1998:179 ff.; and 2004: 168—169.
(...)
V. Conclusions
The course of culture during the 5th millennium described here presents a distinct depiction of the specific character of the northwest Black Sea region and particularly its role as mediator between the various cultural worlds. This can be demonstrated and verified on the basis of the emergence and dissemination of “sceptre burials”. The example shows impressively how a culturally and socially affective unit could develop out of a culture historical indolent substrate.
Thereby, of crucial relevance was the economic interaction with an advanced and foreign cultural sphere, which occurred in this geoculturally exposed borderland. The fact that the sceptre bearers did not cause an interruption in the long-standing nomad ideology, but rather re-enforced them, is just as significant. Thus, the formation and rapid expansion of new social conditions, that is, hierarchical division, as reflected in the distribution of sceptre bearers in the steppes from the Danube to the Volga rivers and to the North Caucasus, cannot be seen as the result of some purported conquests, but rather as the social cultural chain reaction of like-minded groups that was initiated in this borderland. The formation of a leading level in society —the steppe elite — brought forth a socio-cultural dynamic in the northwest Black Sea region as well as farther regions of the steppe, a dynamic from which some new forms of economy such as trade and the beginnings of animal husbandry were probably derived.
…..
So, according to these data, cultures from the Balkans, such as Cucuteni / Gumelnița – Karanovo / Varna / Suvorovo and I2 were responsible for the formation of the first kurgans, not Khvalynsk or Steppe Maykop ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumelni%C8%9Ba%E2%80%93Karanovo_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suvorovo_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novodanilovka_group
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karanovo_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Europe_(archaeology)
@epoch
I might not be important who actually invented the wheel, but I can imagine that the steppe will change from an almost insurmountable barrier to a huge resource for cattle and other livestock once you have cards and horses. So even if PIE people didn't invent the wheel but simply start using it the benefit to them might have been far larger than to others. Mind you, this is all just a thought.
I agree on the great importance of the wheel, but also on the cart / wagon for steppe cultures, for example as a portable home, etc.
However, the origin of the wheel, the wagon and their names / roots, as well as the so-called PIE itself is the problem for me, see e.g. the origin of the burial mounds / kurgans, etc.
@Ebizur
On what basis would you reject either of the usual Turkic etymologies suggested for kurgan?
(1) kurgan = imperfective participle of Turkic kur- "to erect (a building), to construct, to build, to found, to establish, to install, to set (up), to create"
(2) kurgan < Turkic root of Turkish koru- "to protect, to shield"
Logic and timing, see:
1.
The first burial mounds / kurgans were established in Europe, northwest of the Lake / Black Sea, in the vicinity of the Carpathians, over 6,000 years ago. Slavic / IE root GR, one meaning Górka / Go'R+Ka / hill.
2.
The Proto-Turks from Slab Grave culture formed in central Mongolia some 2700-3700 years later. They borrowed everything also burial mounds / kurgans, either from the IE peoples from Zaltay, or from the Chinese - stirrups, etc. Turkic root kur- , qur- etc., have got many different secondary meanings, see:
"However, this does not change the fact that the Slavic meaning of the word Go'Ra / Go'R+Ka is primary and 'ultimate etymology' for Turkish meanings, such as ‘refuge, fortress, rampart, major shrine, fence, protection, to protect, to defend, to erect (a building), to establish’, etc., compare with Z"o'L" Ty / ZL"oTy> (Z)+Altai / (Z)+Altay."
Ebizur, do you seriously think that there were Proto-Proto-Proto-Turks who built the first burial mounds / kurgans in Suvorovo culture over 6000 years ago?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan
(…) The monuments of these cultures coincide with Scythian-Saka-Siberian monuments. Scythian-Saka-Siberian monuments have common features, and sometimes common genetic roots. Also associated with these spectacular burial mounds are the Pazyryk, an ancient people who lived in the Altai Mountains lying in Siberian Russia on the Ukok Plateau, near the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The archaeological site on the Ukok Plateau associated with the Pazyryk culture is included in the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Scythian-Saka-Siberian classification includes monuments from the 8th to the 3rd century BC. This period is called the Early or Ancient Nomads epoch. "Hunnic" monuments date from the 3rd century BC to the 6th century AD, and Turkic ones from the 6th century AD to the 13th century AD (...)
@Luuk
The Nalchik mound was erected during the later Maykop period and the stelae used in the grave might have originated with steppe peoples. Either way there is no real connection to the Khvalynsk here. The Nalchik cemetery wasn't build by them, the Khvalynsk culture predates the cemetery and the Khvalynsk culture also didnt have a presence there.
There is no association between "CHG" and the entry of agricultural techniques, or even neolithic traditions as a whole into the steppes. Arguably the opposite even, as they entered the steppes as foragers and the very CHG rich samples like those from Progress and Vonyuchka were those of foragers, yet contemporary to already pastoral peoples.
Some screencaptures from Isabel Alves talk on early medieval dna from France - https://imgur.com/a/ZGDbxVU
Their model seems to be that Iron Age Britons better fit the French samples compared to Iberian and Roman samples and are p>0.05 with their qpAdm setup, though the presentation also notes the French samples seem slightly less rich in northern ancestry (which would fit into a general slight homogenisation of Europe North and South since Antiquity). More information in the talk I think.
@ Davidski,
This question I have may be a little off topic but it does generally related to things so pardon if it seems a bit out of place, I hope you don't mind.
I was just thinking about some things relating to how the CWC and some Bell Beaker individuals changed the genetic landscape of the North European plane and NW Europe significantly but also how by the time we get to the Bell Beaker individuals that are steppe derived, the Iberian Bell Beakers individuals are very different. So my question is do Iberian Bell Beakers by chance cluster with GAC and TRB individuals?
This might interest you, David. Hundreds of Polish samples from all over Poland. Based on the PCA in the paper there are just a handful of outliers (presumably non-Poles) but these should be easy to weed out. The data is apparently available upon request. Maybe G25 worthy? Might be worth exploring on your Polishgenes blog...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.07.451425v1
The Thousand Polish Genomes Project - a national database of Polish variant allele frequencies[/URL]
Kaja et al
Davidski wrote: "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."
A tough question about aDNA is how much is missing because of funerary practices like cremation, exposure, etc. If a pre-historic group handled dead bodies in a way that would leave no recoverable DNA, then that space is objectively a blank unless there's other evidence of genetic relationship. What's strange about Anthony's theory is that it almost depends on the Yamnayans knowing who belonged to which haplogroup group so they could know who to bury and who not to bury. The way humans mate and reproduce, that had to be chancy. One out of five paternity test these days have some kind of unexpected surprise. It just feels like it would be a lot more likely that R1a represents an immigration that brought in a new group from somewhere else -- likely west or southwest of Yamnaya. And if R1a types did not in fact bury their dead, it is going to be hard to find out where that was.
Maybe it's worth checking if these genomes are available somewhere...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.07.451425v1
The podcast notes the lack of EEF (so Anatolian) ancestry. I add that Progress and Voynucka also lack it and they are relatively late samples from the North Caucasus region. From a time when the South Caucasus was already full of Anatolian ancestry. You can pretty much forget any big vawe from West Asia to the Steppe once Anatolian acestry spreads there and the latter happened fairly early in the local Neolithic.
@ Copper Axe
There is the grand kurgan at Nalchik, which is probably of Majkop affinity, vs the Nalchik cemetery which is similar to Khvalysnk; and likely established by “eastern sredny stog” groups from the Volga-Don
Yamnaya was not a heirarchical society - within the steppe. All free males were more or less equal. Any cultural or ethnic minorities who might have ventured into the steppe were buried according their own, distinct forms of burials.
If Yamnaya lacks R1a-M17 burials, then it's not because they were an invisible underclass.
@Luuk
There's no Anatolian ancestry in any of the Khvalynsk samples.
That's how we know that Anatolian ancestry only arrived on the Caspian-Volga steppes with Maykop.
@Rob
Yamnaya was not a heirarchical society - within the steppe. All free males were more or less equal. Any cultural or ethnic minorities who might have ventured into the steppe were buried according their own, distinct forms of burials.
If Yamnaya lacks R1a-M17 burials, then it's not because they were an invisible underclass.
Yep, this is correct.
That's why I'm extremely disappointed with David Anthony.
The conclusion from this latest study of a thousand Polish genomes is as follows:
"The analyses of Polish population similarities to other populations performed in presented work clearly proved the homogeneity of POL as well as the closest ancestry with GBR and CEU populations."
Understand the general thinking that the Yamnaya kurgan burials don't represent an elite.
But, if we're finding that loads of these people are cousins of each other, then that has either two explanations:
1) Their society is just really small and they're very closely related as a consequence.
2) They're non-randomly selected for burial.
Now, if 1) is precluded by short RoH sharing between samples, that leaves 2).
There are probably possibilities for why 2) might hold other than a social classes (perhaps these people just practiced a tradition that other groups were, like, uninterested in or something? they didn't care about kurgans). But it certainly does leave open that Yamnaya are not necessarily representative of all the patrilineal diversity that was about (nor all the phenotypal diversity, in turns of skeletal height and whatnot).
(Analogously, I don't think people generally thought that Neolithic Ireland had a class based society - and yet Lara Cassidy claimed to find strong RoH connections between the barrow burials, beyond chance for the size of society that was supposed to be there...)
Has Harvard found a single Yamnaya male who isn't R1b Z2103 (or I2a)? If so, then mean c'mon! This is getting annoying!
We have to start considering the possibility that the Yamnaya expansion represents the rise one clan aka the R1b Z2103 clan. They lived from Hungary to Mongolia. It was truly a phenomena.
I can't help but thing R1b Z2103's dominance of Steppe land, is what forced R1b L51 and R1a M417 out of the Steppe into the heartland of Europe.
My guess right now, is Corded Ware comes from the mysterious Eneolithic Steppe groups who were 'replaced' by the Yamnaya expansion. Ustavo is one of them. Who knows maybe R1a M417 is from Ustavo. Maybe most Ustavo didn't have farmer admixture.
@Matt
Nope, the Yamnaya samples from the richest kurgans aren't especially closely related.
So the fact that they were all Z2103 must be explained in some other way.
@Genos
I think the key to understanding the Yamnaya and Corded Ware expansions is to realize that these were very closely related populations that were also highly adapted to very different environments.
Yamnaya was adapted to the steppe, while Corded Ware to the forests.
Maybe they both expanded at the same time from the steppe/forest steppe boundary, with Yamnaya heading south and Corded Ware heading north?
@SKRiBHa
The term kurgan (mound) is recorded only in the Old Eastern Slavic languages), it is not even a common Slavic term.
In other European languages this term penetrated only in the 20th century (from the Soviet archaeological vocabulary).
The Slavic term "gora" means mountain ("gorka" is a small mountain). It seems that there is not even a special term for burial or man-made hill (mound) in the proto-Slavic language.
@Davidski: I didn't say anything about "Richest kurgans". But the finding is that there are high frequencies of relatedness at the 16-20cm level among the burials in general. In some sense that would suggest non-random selection (if it's not due to a small society).
@Davidski
„That's why I'm extremely disappointed with David Anthony.”
David Anthony is trying to explain facts. He has a theory. But there are other theories possible. You should present your theory.
I can propose following theory:
R1a and R1b didn’t mix. This suggests different languages and religions i.e. there were cultural genetic barriers on the steppe.
So we have two groups on the steppe speaking different languages and having different religions associated with different paternal lines. Let’s call them “R1b Indo-Germanic” and “R1a Indo-Slavic”.
The question is which one was PIE?
There are three possible theories:
1. “R1b Indo-Germanic” was PIE.
2. “R1a Indo-Slavic” was PIE.
3. Neither was PIE. PIE were Tripolye women who mixed with both and indoeuropeized them.
Theory NO. 2 is the most convincing for me because Indo-Slavic languages and religions best explain everything related to PIE. “R1b Indo-Germanic” Yamnaya group was originally not-IE and became indoslavicized by Indo-Slavic women which they managed to marry.
David Anthony believes that “R1b Indo-Germanic” tribes were dominant and what follows were PIE. “R1a Indo-Slavic” group was originally not-IE and became indogermanized by “R1b Indo-Germanic”. So let him prove his theory and we will try to prove our theory.
Skribha wrote,
"Logic and timing, see:
1.
The first burial mounds / kurgans were established in Europe, northwest of the Lake / Black Sea, in the vicinity of the Carpathians, over 6,000 years ago. Slavic / IE root GR, one meaning Górka / Go'R+Ka / hill.
2.
The Proto-Turks from Slab Grave culture formed in central Mongolia some 2700-3700 years later. They borrowed everything also burial mounds / kurgans, either from the IE peoples from Zaltay, or from the Chinese - stirrups, etc. Turkic root kur- , qur- etc., have got many different secondary meanings..."
The time and place at which burial mounds are first attested archaeologically has practically no bearing on the etymology of the word kurgan.
For another example, consider the present-day Japanese archaeological term for "tumulus, kurgan, burial mound": 古墳 kofun. This word is derived from Chinese 古 "ancient" and Chinese 墳 "grave, mound." However, the actual protohistorical Kofun period of Japan predates the massive adoption of Chinese loanwords and loan morphemes in the Japanese language. Kofun is an anachronistic term of art invented recently and used mainly by archaeologists; the mounds that the term denotes were probably called tuka, mi-sanzaki, or mi-paka by the people who actually constructed them.
It is entirely possible that the word kurgan may have a Turkic etymology even if the so-called kurgans themselves have been constructed by speakers of proto-Indo-European.
@EastPole
"There are three possible theories:
1. “R1b Indo-Germanic” was PIE.
2. “R1a Indo-Slavic” was PIE.
3. Neither was PIE. PIE were Tripolye women who mixed with both and indoeuropeized them."
4. The division (even if existed) post-dates PIE. What we see as division is simply the immediate consequence of multiple founder effects. Small closely related groups of the original population expanded and grew fast.
@EastPole
???
Corded Ware was R1a-M417 and R1b-L51 (for example, the Corded Ware samples from southeast Poland had both).
Yamnaya was R1b-Z2103 and I2-L699.
@CopperAxe-"The Nalchik mound was erected during the later Maykop period and the stelae used in the grave might have originated with steppe peoples."
The following is a quotation from the "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language" book of Anthony:
"Near Nalchik, in the center of the North Caucasus piedmont, was a cemetery containing 147 graves with contracted skeletons lying on their sides in red ochre-stained pits in groups of two or three under stone cairns.
Females lay in a contracted pose on the left side and males on their right.
A few copper ornaments, beads made of deer and cattle teeth, and polished stone bracelets (like those found in grave 108 at Khvalynsk and at Krivoluchie) accompanied them. One grave yielded a date on human bone of 5000-4800 BCE"
"Herding, copper-using cultures lived here by 5000 BCE. The Early Eneolithic cemetery at Nalchik and the cave occupation at Kammenomost Cave (chapter 9) date to this period. "
"The Nalchik-era sites clearly represent a community that had at least a few domesticated cattle and sheep/goats, and was in contact with Khvalynsk."
The quation from another paper of Anthony:
"The body pose and grave ritual at the Khvalynsk cemetery, without mounds, was recognized as similar to the Nalchik cemetery in the North Caucasus, with mounds, by the archaeologists who exxcavated Khvalynsk in 1977.
Nalchik was excavated mostly before Worl War II, but the grave rituals there were similar to Khvalynsk, as well as other cemetery sites on the lower and middle Volga excavated later."
Addition to this, the Kurgan stelae, the same grave rituals (red ochre, flexed burials, ...) as in the Khvalynsk and Nalchik, and the letters of the Runic alphabet, all are found in the early Neolithic period of the northern Fertile Crescent.
@Davidski-"There's no Anatolian ancestry in any of the Khvalynsk samples."
Did they test individuals from the more Southern Khvalynsk sites like the one in the Nalchik cemetery which is located in Northern Caucasus?
What are the names of the Khvalynsk sites which are tested for aDNA so far?
@Davidski
„Corded Ware was R1a-M417 and R1b-L51 (for example, the Corded Ware samples from southeast Poland had both).
Yamnaya was R1b-Z2103 and I2-L699.”
David, I am not claiming that my theory is perfect but I think it can be compared with Anthony’s theory. Maybe Anthony was partially right, Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b-L51 was closely associated with Yamnaya plebs who were excluded from Kurgan burials, and, as a result, their remains haven't yet been sampled. R1b-L51 were lucky to marry Indo-Slavic girls and escaped their R1b-Z2103 overlords on the steppe by moving into the forest steppe.
It depends on which part of the skull you are measuring. You add 14 mm to the cranial length, you add 13 mm to the cranial breadth, and you add 10 mm to the bizygomatic breadth. From the face of living person you subtract respectively.
Add these numbers to Yamnaya measurements, and subtract from measurements of Caucasians and compare.
@Rob
Ah gotcha, thanks. The cemetery that perhaps is part of the Orlovka culture.
@Luuk
You forgot to leave this part of anthony's quote in the text:
"They probably got their domesticated animals from the Dnieper, as the Khvalynsk people did."
Its actually the sentence right after one of the sections you quoted, I wonder why it was left out...
Actually I don't, the agenda is pretty obvious here.
Mind you that Anthony doesn't state that these were Khvalynsk burials, burials of Khvalynsk ancestors or burials from Khvalynsk descendants, just that the cemetery was build by people with similar traditions and contact with Khvalynsk.
Also the stelae at Nalchik Kurgan (not the cemetery, as Rob pointed out) have no Maykop analogues, and runic inscriptions play no role here as they werent around.
Agriculture in the steppes came from the west and the earliest neolithic toolkits came from the east.
@Davidski
You sure that the three Khvalynsk dont have any Anatolian ancestry? G25 seems to pick up on a small amount of Eastern Euro farmer. Or did you mean 'recent anatolian' ancestry like in the Caucasus when the Neolithic arrived?
@Copper
A small amount of EEF is OK with me, and more or less in line with what I said.
@Luuk
"Did they test individuals from the more Southern Khvalynsk sites like the one in the Nalchik cemetery which is located in Northern Caucasus?"
The samples from Progress and Vonyuchka likely belong to a similar population as these were Eneolithic people fairly proximate to the city of Nalchik.
Seeing that we have already ventured into Physical Anthropology’s realm and are debating Yamnaya’s appearance: doesn’t it make sense that the PIE looked almost exactly (or st least the closest) to any modern pop that has >50% WSH aDNA, ie - Poles, Finns, Estonians, Latvians, Norwegians etc?
Regarding the Corded Ware situation;
If Yamnaya and Corded Ware formed simultaneously, with the Yamnaya culture occupying the entire steppe region and the Corded Ware outside of it, where are the archaeological trails pointing toward the outside-of-steppe presence of Pre-CWC peoples?
Corded Ware basically begins around/after 3000 bc, that is when they appear outside of the steppes.
But the formation of the Yamnaya horizon was around 3400-3200 bc and pretty much covered all the relevant bits of the steppes.
In that case the Corded Ware progenitors had to be outside of the steppes by about 3300 bc and had to be somwhere for about 3 centuries before we see their migration deeper into Europe. A migration of people who at the earliest stages were practically identical to the Yamnaya from a genetic perspective.
So where would this somewhere be?
Was the "Pre-CWC" (3300-3000 bc) population a mixed one of M417 and L51 people, without Z2103 folks, who then separated their ways? Because there is quite a bit of variation in regards to burial practises, with some groups only using flat (small mound) burials and others using proper burial mounds.
As always, most of what we say will look silly a few years from now with the extra data and all but currently what I think might be case is that various groups (different clans, different lineages) migrated out of the steppes around 3100 bc (Yamnaya horizon), adapted to their new surroundings and neighbours, which then lead to a shared material culture which was then spread around by about 3000 bc onwards.
Davidski always mentions the importance of Y-dna founder effects - you're not going to find a giant region or material culture that was fully M417 or fully L51 or both of those mixed prior to the Corded Warw Culture. These lineages likely only exploded when the Corded Ware did so.
Its strange that for so much of the talk about ancient DNA and Indo-Europeans, there is such little talk about the subclades and founder effects in academia. Yet we get things like "R1a were slaves in R1b society". Its crazy because the social structures which lead to these founder effects were already established by linguists centuries ago.
@Matt,
Sorry for the very late reply. These information are very new to me and rather advanced for a layman like me. Thank you very much for the detailed explanation. It will take quite a while for me to grasp all of this. In this case, would you say the G25 distance showing many Finno-Permics such as Udmurts, Maris, Saamis that they are genetically closer to Ugrics such as Khanty, Mansi and Turkics/Central Asians such as Siberian Tatars, Turkmens, Uzbeks, Karakalpaks, Nogais, etc. than to most Euros (the exceptions seem to be Finns, Finnic admixed Northern Russians) to be correct/accurate? Like can you do a f2 distance run on them?
@Draft Dozen
It's been a while since I've looked through the sources that estimate the facial tissue thickness. I see bizygomatic breadth at 7.5mm, width should be between 5-10mm and length slightly higher, but I'm not completely certain about the last two.
"From the face of living person you subtract respectively.
Add these numbers to Yamnaya measurements, and subtract from measurements of Caucasians and compare."
As I said, I'm not entirely sure about the numbers that you've provided, but either way there is no need for that,
I have the craniometrics of Georgian skulls from the Feudal Era: https://i.imgur.com/cNil1qe.png
and Ukrainian ones: https://i.imgur.com/O0euUKx.png
compare this with Yamnaya craniums: https://i.imgur.com/pl5wdqu.png
Yamnaya width (Martin's number 8) is smaller compared to the series from Georgia and about the same as the ones from Ukraine, the length however (Martin's number 1) is greater in Yamnaya than in the former two. That difference in length however, does not mean that their skulls were massive, it's not exceptional, especially combined with the given width.
@Andrzejewski
Possibly, they would resemble them somewhat, albeit with a darker pigmentation.
Dagestanians are another population with 40-50% Yamnaya, and with a pigmentation that is much closer to what was given to Yamnaya.
I'll throw this out here too regarding CWC genesis:
I was always told that apparently CWC is hard to date. However, in one of the Baltic-Pontic series mongographs, I vaguely recall some pushing for the Middle Dnieper culture to act as a very early example of the CWC based on some dating techniques. MDC is the only CWC cultural variant that has some territorial overlap with Yamnaya. Of course Mallory surveyed this idea in his 1989 book, as has previously been discussed here, and those who support it. His summary of the idea was mostly dismissive as has already been discussed.
The 2003 Furholt study on CWC dating techniques suggested the earliest sites for CWC were in eastern Poland. Again, though I believe the Baltic-Pontic series showed some evidence for mixed Yamna-CWC type graves in this area.
Needless to say, the interpretation of the material remains in order to account for CWC origins has presented many challenges in regards to pinning down exact origins.
"Andrzejewski said...
Seeing that we have already ventured into Physical Anthropology’s realm and are debating Yamnaya’s appearance: doesn’t it make sense that the PIE looked almost exactly (or st least the closest) to any modern pop that has >50% WSH aDNA, ie - Poles, Finns, Estonians, Latvians, Norwegians etc?"
Dude you've been commenting on these threads for a long time, you should be familiar with fundamental genetics. "Basic sense" doesn't matter when we have the SNPs. Yamnaya didn't look like modern north Europeans. Especially people like Finns and Estonians who have strong recent selection for blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin. I know it's hard for some to accept this but it is what it is.
Yeah, there are a lot of interesting possibilities here; I'd tend to have a hunch/bias to see the Corded Ware departure to be after the big increase of mobility that Anthony sees happening around 3500-3300 BCE, and really closer to the time of the Lithuania_LN samples who are both dated 2840 BCE and Poz81 in Poland who is dated 2700 BCE, and then relatively rapidly steppe ancestry spreads across Europe (e.g. earliest at Switzerland is the MX304 dated at 2670 BCE and CBV95 in North France at 2510 BCE). It would be a neat thing in terms of a model. But it is all still open, and perhaps they could have lived in the forest steppe post 3300 BCE and then only got to the Baltic around 12 generations later or something.
(Although I do think Anthony is not crazy in suggesting that groups could have lived together because the Yamnaya burials might be unrepresentative in some ways, having these >3 degree but still relatively tight <6 kinship connections within and between sites. He's not saying they're "slaves" or anything like this - although I wonder what folk would say if we found a bunch of kurgans with one particular steppe haplogroup and close 5th degree relatives appearing in Anatolia or something.).
There are some very interesting patterns in that slide on the IBD links. I don't know if we've discussed it, but what it's showing is the number of sample pairs out of the comparison that have a matching IBD > 16-20cm, and then the colour reflects a % of pairs that the checked for those two populations. (E.g. for Poland CordedWare and Ukraine Yamnaya, the figure is 3/32, reflecting that they checked 8 Poland CordedWare for matches against 4 Ukraine Yamnaya and then out of the resulting 8*4=32 pairs, 3 had this kind of match, and so they coloured it light green reflecting the 10% match rate). One pattern that seems to be there is that the Western Yamnaya don't match each other nearly as frequently as the Eastern Yamnaya, and it also seems to be the Western Yamnaya who have some more links with Poland Corded Ware and Germany Corded Ware (although there are some links with Eastern Yamnaya. This is true for Western Yamnaya *within* countries as well as between them, although this may be a bit apples to oranges if the Western sites span a much larger distance...
(While Eastern Yamnaya always have quite a significant level of this kinship at a site, except for at the Volga).
Those patterns seem like they could reflect: 1) either of the Eastern Yamnaya being a smaller more intensely connected population of Yamnaya that's a subset of Western Yamnaya *or* the Western group being founded by the Eastern and but incorporating more people, and 2) wrt the Corded Ware it could reflect either CWC and Yamnaya (particularly Western Yamnaya) branching from the same parents, recently, *or* contact following migration. So I might have to dampen some of my own hype! It might be that the ratios among slightly shorter ROH they infer might be more informative about when Corded Ware and Yamnaya actually split, and will confirm that the split happened within 500 years or so.
Actually the lack of matching at Western Yamnaya sites might push back a bit any idea that Yamnaya sites strongly represent an extended kin group and are unrepresentative though, if these sites still have the excess of R1b-Z2103 and yet don't have so much close recent kinship (within 6 degrees) either at the site or between them. I think all the indications are that the the Yamnaya at these sites are similar to others in autosome and y-dna with a definite but modest increase in samples with enriched EEF ancestry, (see first PCA here - https://imgur.com/a/MWX38hE). Although of published samples Yamnaya Bulgaria did turn up a relatively rare instance (1/2) of I2a1b in a quite autosomal outlier.
(Circling back to the N of the samples list on the slide at each site, its interesting that in the case of the German Corded Ware they only seem to have used 2 samples, but still got quite a good match with Lithuania_LN, and GAC_Ukraine, and Beaker Germany. I'm not sure why they used 2 though, since there are a good 11 Corded Ware Germany samples. Maybe some are just unsuitable for the method.
Also remarkable that Lithuania_LN matches so extensively for 2 samples. It seems fairly clear that the people were within a population that must have expanded quite a bit and contributed to the Corded Ware generally (whether or not they themselves are directly ancestral here).
In some ways we could respond to the low N in two different ways, either "It's amazing that we find such links with low N! Because it's so improbable it raises confidence" or "Because low N it may not be found as strongly in large groups").)
@Copper Axe
"You sure that the three Khvalynsk dont have any Anatolian ancestry? G25 seems to pick up on a small amount of Eastern Euro farmer. Or did you mean 'recent anatolian' ancestry like in the Caucasus when the Neolithic arrived?"
G25 picks up a small amount of Anatolian ancestry even in EHGs, probably because their WHG side came from the Balkan and WHG-s there were Anatolian admixed very early. Yamnaya however had significantly more.
(Interestingly Samara_HG is the least Anatolian of all EHGs in G25 nMontes, even Veretye had more.)
@Copper Axe
"But the formation of the Yamnaya horizon was around 3400-3200 bc and pretty much covered all the relevant bits of the steppes."
If I remember correctly the westward expansion was quite late, centuries after the formation, so before 3000 BC Yamnaya did not cover the region west of the Dnieper.
@Copper Axe,
"what I think might be case is that various groups (different clans, different lineages) migrated out of the steppes around 3100 bc (Yamnaya horizon), adapted to their new surroundings and neighbours,"
Are you thinking, Corded Ware comes from Yamnaya who lived in the forest Steppe in Ukraine?
Davidski just talked about Corded Ware being adapted to forest Steppe while Yamnaya to Steppe.
I suppose it is possible Harvard hasn't gotten DNA from Yamnaya in forest Steppe.
Ambron, what study is that?
@Matt
Can you make a Yamnaya/CWC phylogenetic tree based on that IBD slide?
@Davidski, er, well I think somebody with the data could but I couldn't transcribe all that detail (not sure I can totally make out all the values even, but the above examples seemed visible).
(Is that a comment on going overboard drawing too many conclusions from limited data? ;) ).
@Ramber, sure yeah that was a lot of information. I don't know specifically about those population pairs you mention, but generally the point is that G25 translates fairly well into asking if population A and B are closer together than A and C. If they are in G25 that's probably true in reality/ under direct f2 or fst statistic. But the ratio of distances is not always the same. So if G25 says A and B are 20x closer than A and C, that bit might not be quite true. Does that make sense? So long as you're just asking if A is closer to B than A is to C, and you're not concerned about working out how *much* the difference is, you can just use G25 and the rank order is probably pretty close.
If I have those populations in the Human Origins file I will have a look at running f2 statistic. I think they're possibly not there though.
@ Slumberry
“ If I remember correctly the westward expansion was quite late, centuries after the formation, so before 3000 BC Yamnaya did not cover the region west of the Dnieper.”
That’s not really true; unless you believe the “Volga primordialists”, although now they come up with funny metaphors like 'Yamnaya's uncle'
There are pre-yamnaya kurgans are far as Hungary.
@Matt
I just thought that you made a table from the results that you could make out.
Not sure if a phylo tree would reveal anything, but there should be a way of working out with some degree of certainty with this output which of the Yamnaya pops is the most basal.
I don't want to take these guys' word as gospel, because they're speculating just like the rest of us, regardless of how many PhDs they have.
But this forest steppe division can't be the explanation, when we know R1a already existed very far north since the Mesolithic. Yet, the Bronze Age archeological horizon north of the Black Sea is entirely dominated by Z2103. R1a was not some small pocket of people. They covered as much area as R1bs in Russia. There is no reason for them to constrain themselves to the "forest". The Corded Ware people are distant cousins of Yamnaya, meaning at one point they lived in the SAME area, and probably shared the same culture/diet/lifestyle. You can't have that forest steppe vs. not division, if that's the case.
We also seem to have entirely forgotten that L51 also hasn't been found, and that's even more widespread than R1a in modern day Europe.
Anthony might have phrased it badly by saying "underclass" when we have little clue about Yamnaya social standings, but some form of discrimination must have been applied since we only have Z2103 graves but no R1a/R1b-L51 in Yamnaya territory, when we know these populations overlapped. Whether that discrimination is based on social status, or just clan specific burial practices remains to be seen. Z2103s seem to have had some type of status within Yamnaya. Fuck, maybe they were the underclass or some type of warrior/gladiator class, that was given special burial.
I didn't mean that Proto-Corded Ware came from the forest steppe.
What I wanted to communicate is that I think the ancestral population to Corded Ware/Yamnaya lived on the steppe, but also very close or even on the steppe/forest steppe boundary.
This can explain why the niche for Corded Ware became the forest zone, while the niche for Yamnaya the dry steppe.
Also, even though there are now several R1a samples from northern Russia, I can tell you that R1b was much more common even there. For instance, there are many R1b Volosovo samples yet to be published, and just one or two R1a samples. Why? I don't know, but maybe because R1b is the older haplogroup?
~ 10 years ago, I suggest that groups were moving into the steppe
That’s the best explanation for the Z2103 founder effect
"I didn't mean that Proto-Corded Ware came from the forest steppe.
What I wanted to communicate is that I think the ancestral population to Corded Ware/Yamnaya lived on the steppe, but also very close or even on the steppe/forest steppe boundary."
Aaahh, ok then. Makes sense. But even then I'd still expect some mixing in terms of patrilineality. This split is freakishly uniform. There has to be an additional non-geographical factor for this uniformity of Z2103 burials.
The split is due to strong founder effects.
That is, small populations with very little diversity rapidly spreading out across the forests and the steppe, respectively.
@Rob
"That’s not really true; unless you believe the “Volga primordialists”, although now they come up with funny metaphors like 'Yamnaya's uncle'
There are pre-yamnaya kurgans are far as Hungary."
I do not know labels like "Volga primordialist". Yamnaya seems to stem mainly from Repin, so from the Don side, but it looks like it mainly expanded eastward, to the bigger open Steppes first.
As for the pre-Yamnaya kurgans as far west as Hungary: so what? It is not like every previous area with kurgan burials automatically transformed to Yamanya on a signal. Kurgans assigned specifically to Yamnaya are late in Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and probably in Moldavia and adjacent Ukrainian parts too, aren't they?
John, me and Michalis previously linked this study:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.07.451425v1
We find the same conclusion in the Anagnostou study:
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep41614
Generally, Poles are more closely related to Central Europeans and Brits than to Russians from Kargopol and Croats. Other Slavic populations were not compared, probably due to the lack of an adequate number of genomes in academic databases.
@Davidski
So Volosovo was typical of other Eastern European Hunter Gatherer populations in that they belonged to R1a, R1b, and Q1a correct? Volosovo like Mesolithic Latvia, had Q1a2-L56, and similar to the Karelia HGs, R1a5-YP1301 was also present in Volosovo, along with mtDNA T2 and K1. Are these results official? Where do you think the J1 in Karelia came from, a Dzudzuana-like population, pre-CHG, that formed part of the ancestry of both EHG and CHG/Iran_N?
These Volosovo samples haven't been published yet, but yes, they're what we'd expect anyway, and rich in R1b.
I think the J1 in Karelia HG came from the CHG-related population that also contributed ancestry to Yamnaya, but that's just my opinion.
@Slumbery
I seem to remember that the earliest Yamnaya kurgans are actually in Ukraine and the Samara region.
This has always stuck out for me, because it seemed like Yamnaya appeared more or less at the same time at the western and eastern ends of the PC steppe.
I am aware of the theory that Yamnaya is a direct offshoot of Repin, but this is an archeological theory, and it might end up being contradicted by aDNA.
@ Slumberry
“As for the pre-Yamnaya kurgans as far west as Hungary: so what? It is not like every previous area with kurgan burials automatically transformed to Yamanya on a signal. Kurgans assigned specifically to Yamnaya are late in Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and probably in Moldavia and adjacent Ukrainian parts too, aren't they?''
Yamnaya represents a homogenization of burial rite across the steppe, incl. westernmost steppe. Its dates in the Volga-Don steppe are in fact no earlier than in the NW black Sea region.
As an addition, some archaeological perspectives have been too rigid to divide these shifting cultural practices within the steppe into separate cultures or people, but this is not the case
Quite simply, i doubt that “Yamnaya came from the Don on 3000 BC” rings true. This is a ‘primordialistic’ construct
'Yamnaya seems to stem mainly from Repin, ''
Maybe maybe not. We would need solid data , as per above
''I do not know labels like "Volga primordialist".''
I coined it to refer to the perspective of a continuous & uninterrupted evolution of Yamnaya from Khvalynsk, with claims in that region Yamnaya began in 3600 BCE, an embelished view to say the least.
@Ex
As I can see, you do not question anymore the Slavic etymology for the word Altay / (Z)+aLTay. By this I mean that you have nothing more to add to this and my, and EastPole’s arguments from July 6th, 2021 at 1:23 AM remain unchallenged and valid.
The term kurgan (mound) is recorded only in the Old Eastern Slavic languages), it is not even a common Slavic term. In other European languages this term penetrated only in the 20th century (from the Soviet archaeological vocabulary). The Slavic term "gora" means mountain ("gorka" is a small mountain). It seems that there is not even a special term for burial or man-made hill (mound) in the proto-Slavic language.
Here it is the same, but described in more detail, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan
(…) According to the Etymological dictionary of the Ukrainian language the word "kurgan" is borrowed directly from the "Polovtsian" language (Kipchak, part of the Turkic languages) and means: fortress, embankment, fortress, high grave. The word has two possible etymologies, either from the Old Turkic root qori- "to close, to block, to guard, to protect", or qur- "to build, to erect, furnish or stur". According to Vasily Radlov it may be a cognate to qorγan, meaning "fortification, fortress or a castle".[5]
The Russian noun, already attested in Old East Slavic, comes from an unidentified Turkic language.[6] Kurgans are mounds of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Popularised by its use in Soviet archaeology, the word is now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology. (…)
Which of these above Turkish etymologies is true and why are the others not? Are they all equally true / untrue?
There are more similar vague Turkish etymologies, see previous posts.
I have already written it earlier:
(…) It is possible that sometime, perhaps during the Hun invasion, the distorted original meaning of the word Go'R+Ka / ‘hill’ was secondarily borrowed into some Slavic dialect, and then transferred further, see:
Go’R+Ka > Ko’R+GaN > Ko’R+HaN > Ko’R+GaN
However, this does not change the fact that the Slavic meaning of the word Go'Ra / Go'R+Ka is primary and 'ultimate etymology' for Turkish meanings, such as ‘refuge, fortress, rampart, major shrine, fence, protection, to protect, to defend, to erect (a building), to establish’, etc., compare with Z"o'L" Ty / ZL"oTy> (Z)+Altai / (Z)+Altay. (...)
Even if the Proto-Slavs / Slavs did not use the word ‘kurgan / kurhan’ as a description of a hill-shaped grave, it does not prove that they did not know the concept of a Góra / Górka / hill or Kopa / mound or Kupa / pile or Kopiec / tumulus, barrow, etc.
The number and variety of Turkish meanings, as well as the late period of their creation, indicate that the basis for all of them could have been a much older and originally simple concept, such as Slavic / IE Górka / hill.
There is also another Slavic etymology, which I will describe in response to Ebizur.
@Ebizur
(…) The time and place at which burial mounds are first attested archaeologically has practically no bearing on the etymology of the word kurgan. (…)
On what basis do you claim that the same situation as in Japanese and Chinese was the case with practically exactly the same roots visible in IE and Turkish languages, see GR / GRK / KR / KRG/H?
Why, in your opinion, the Proto-Turks could not borrow the Slavic / IE concept of Górka / hill from IE peoples of Zaltay, whose ancestors had been building hill-shaped graves for thousands of years? After all, they did that with a lot of other things and IE words, see EastPole's post from July 6th, 2021 at 1:23 AM!
(…) It is entirely possible that the word kurgan may have a Turkic etymology even if the so-called kurgans themselves have been constructed by speakers of proto-Indo-European. (…)
It is just as likely as that Proto-Turks simply borrowed the meaning of Górka / hill and distorted it both in pronunciation and meaning and transformed it into many other meanings, see above.
By the way, annaM has proposed another Slavic / IE etymology for the word kurgan / kurhan, see:
Krąg / Kra”/oNG
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kr%C4%85g
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/kr%C7%ABg%D1%8A
Okrąg / o+KRa”/oNG
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/okr%C4%85g#Polish
I wonder how much we solve of this problem without different data... Maybe this new method of adna capture focused on y-dna would help (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.19.431761v1.full). The 1240k capture ancient dna don't necessarily capture new point mutations on the y-dna so much while the shotgun methods give back more randomly distributed data for given level of sequencing that is not necessarily informative. If you could really reconstruct better resolution on y-dna expansions among these groups, perhaps that could zero in on the expansion times.
Does seem maybe one thing against Anthony's idea is that intuitively I don't know that we'd expect a group that is sort of excluded from some burial practice to be undergoing a rapid founder effect expansion? There are ways to explain this but it seems less intuitive. So if these expansions would already be estimated to be underway at this time, then perhaps that is a strike against it. You might also be able to compare some of the tight kinship clustering inferred by Ringbauer's method to a higher resolution y-dna kinship (that is not as biased by the limitations of the present day tree).
Your data is most likely from very old works. The numbers that I gave, are from the dissertation(2016) of Veselovskaya E.V. These numbers for men, she also gave for women.
Do you think, that the larger width than the more massive? Neither the large length nor the large width is an indicator of the massiveness of the skull. The level of massiveness is when the skull is heavy or light.
@Simon Stevin “ along with mtDNA T2 and K1.”
Were so you think they came from, an Anatolian farmer admixture?
@Davidski “ I seem to remember that the earliest Yamnaya kurgans are actually in Ukraine and the Samara region.
This has always stuck out for me, because it seemed like Yamnaya appeared more or less at the same time at the western and eastern ends of the PC steppe.
I am aware of the theory that Yamnaya is a direct offshoot of Repin, but this is an archeological theory, and it might end up being contradicted by aDNA.”
Many assumptions have been debunked over the years:
1. I turned out that the first Kurgans were NOT originated in Maykop but on the Steppes.
2. Steppe herders adopted the Potter’s Wheel from their agriculturalists neighbors to their west, contrary to the previously held theory of a cultural migration trajectory from Uruk —> Leyla Tepe —> Maykop —> Yamnaya.
3. The first domestication of the horse (of any breed) took place in Sredny Stog centuries before the Botai did theirs.
As time progresses we may find more and more “sacred cows” being sacrificed 🙂
The Polish in that IBD-plot are the ones that had a R1b subgroup, isn't it? It shows affinity to Yamnaya Romania and Ukraine. Just a loose thought, by the way
Another loose thought: If Anthony's idea that only some sort of R1b-elite is only buried in Kurgans is correct we'd expect at least *some* R1a in later Kurgans. Some men could have begotten only daughters and knowing history they would promote their sons in law. The only way that could not have been causing some "leakage" of the lower caste Y-DNA is if the R1b-elite would promote nephew-niece marriage such as is common in MENA and West-Asian countries. See consang.net.
But one of the slides states that consanguinity was rare in the past.
@EastPole, @Slumbery, @All
"There are three possible theories:
1. “R1b Indo-Germanic” was PIE.
2. “R1a Indo-Slavic” was PIE.
3. Neither was PIE. PIE were Tripolye women who mixed with both and indoeuropeized them."
4. The division (even if existed) post-dates PIE. What we see as division is simply the immediate consequence of multiple founder effects. Small closely related groups of the original population expanded and grew fast.
I agree with @Slumbery, but I also claim that we have to take into account the mixing of different languages IE and NIE, i.e. not only the so-called dialect continuum, but primarily NIE substrate and NIE adstrate, see formation of e.g. Germanic languages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratum_(linguistics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substratum_in_Vedic_Sanskrit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Greek_substrate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_substrate_hypothesis
According to the data, statistics and logic, it is the mixing of languages which causes the formation of simplifications and distortions, such as secondary devoicing, +H, B/P>PH/F, S>H, or other losses of sounds i.e. W>?, KRa”G>(K/H)RiNG, or Z"o'L" Ty / ZL"oTy>(Z)+Altay.
1.
Data, statistics and logic do not indicate the existence of something like 'Indo-Germanic', see secondary distortions and devoicings like e.g. PIE D/T, K, S, P/B > Germanic T/D, H/?, H/K/?, PH/F, etc.
2.
On the other hand, data, statistics and logic point to the existence of something like Proto-Slavo-Indo-Iranic, which is very much in line with the so-called PIE, with the exception of the allegedly original forms of the so-called centum / kentum and other similar secondary devoicings and distortions.
3.
Not only the formation of the Proto-Slavic language is problematic, see no substrate in Polish, etc. but as well as most of all the Proto-languages, i.e. Baltic, Indo-Iranian, Hellenic / Armenian, Celto-Italian and Germanic, see R1b Basques 100% from steppe / Yamna, R1b Aria z Kutuluk / Yamna.
4.
The problem is also the time, place and cause of the formation of the so-called PIE, see Bomhard's alleged Kartvelian substrate / G2, or I2 and the Balkans / Varna / Suvorovo and the first burial mounds, wheels, carts / wagons, horses, etc.
It could be that I2 from Varna / Suvorovo passed PIE to the steppe, just like it passed the burial mounds, agriculture, wheels, carts / wagons, etc.
@EastPole, @Slumbery, @All
5.
One thing is for certain. Both archaeologists / KoSSinna, Anthony, Kristiansen, etc., and 'German linguists' (most of them except Schmidt, etc. or Poles like Dębołecki, Mańczak) have been wrong and wandered in the fog and still logically been in a deep dark hole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Schmidt_(linguist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojciech_D%C4%99bo%C5%82%C4%99cki)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Ma%C5%84czak
https://journals.akademicka.pl/lv/article/view/446
Grochowski, M. (2019) „O poglądach Profesora Witolda Mańczaka na paradygmaty językoznawstwa”, LingVaria, 12(spec), s. 19–28. doi: 10.12797/LV.12.2017.2SP.02.
This is because Neogramarians etc. and their successors adopted and 'develop' at the outset logically false and outdated XIX assumptions and biases, see i.e. 'ex oriente lux', etc, i.e. shit on imput> shit on output ...
The recent delirium of Anthony, Reich, Harvard, Max Planck, etc. prove that in genetics the same illogical bias holds firmly. Davidski wrote about it e.g. here:
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/02/ancient-dna-vs-ex-oriente-lux.html
I mean the founding lie which Curta perfectly formulated at the level of archeology and linguistics, see the alleged formation of the Proto-Slavic in the 8th century as alleged ‘a lingua franca of Avar kaganate’, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florin_Curta
https://www.academia.edu/227792/The_Slavic_lingua_franca_Linguistic_notes_of_an_archaeologist_turned_historian_
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/making-of-the-slavs/AFD2FC388080F2ADC408D15C2230E5E4
I am a Schmidt and Mańczak’s boy, by the way...
@EX
There are more similar vague Turkish etymologies, see previous posts.
I will try to explain this.
There is a verb "kur" - to build (in some languages it sounds like "kor" (u>o). And there is a verb "kory" - to protect, strengthen (also "kuri" - u>o). Kurgan is translated as erected (object) , korigan is translated as "protected" (object, place) - fortress.
In the Old Russian language and in many Turkic languages "kurgan" means both (a burial mound and a fortress : there are recorded forms - kurgan, korgan and korygan).
It seems that there was a contamination of these two meanings in the ancient Turkic languages.
As I can see, you do not question anymore the Slavic etymology for the word Altay / (Z)+aLTay
No. Altai has a good Mongolian etymology.
The Turkic etymology is problematic because Turkic peoples use only form "altyn" (gold), while Mongols use two forms - altyn and alt (gold). But in ancient times, it could be different. The etymology of altyn is not entirely clear (possibly from the turkic word "alty" or "altyn" - low)
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