There's been a lot of talk lately about the finding that the peoples associated with the Corded Ware and Yamnaya archeological cultures were genetic cousins (for instance, see
here). As I've already pointed out, this is an interesting discovery, but, at this stage, it's difficult to know what it means exactly.
It might mean that the Yamnayans were the direct predecessors of the Corded Ware people. Or it might just mean that, at some point, the Corded Ware and Yamnaya populations swapped women regularly (that is, they practiced female exogamy with each other).
In any case, I feel that several important facts aren't being taken into account by most of the interested parties. These facts include, in no particular order:
- despite being closely related, the Corded Ware and Yamnaya peoples were highly adapted to very different ecological zones - temperate forests and arid steppes, respectively - and this is surely not something that happened within a few years and probably not even within a couple of generations
- both the Corded Ware and Yamnaya populations expanded widely and rapidly at around the same time, but never got in each others way, probably because they occupied very different ecological niches
- despite sharing the R1b Y-chromosome haplogroup, their paternal origins were quite different, with Corded Ware males rich in R1a-M417 and R1b-L51 and Yamnaya males rich in R1b-Z2103 and I2a-L699
I suppose it's possible that the Corded Ware people were overwhelmingly and directly derived from the Yamnaya population. But right now my view is that, even if they were, then the Yamnaya population that they came from was quite different from the classic, R1b-Z2103-rich Yamnaya that spread rapidly across the steppes.
Indeed, perhaps what we're dealing with here is a very early (proto?) Yamnaya gene pool located somewhere in the border zone between the forests and the steppes, that then split into two main sub-populations, with one of these groups heading north and the other south?
I do wonder what David Anthony would say if he was made aware of the above mentioned facts? Then again, perhaps he's already aware of them, and simply chose to ignore them when formulating his
latest theory about the origin of the Corded Ware people?
See also...
743 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 401 – 600 of 743 Newer› Newest»"Here, we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses."
So this is not Fatyanovo and not Sintashta. This is either a late Catacomb, or Abashevo, or most likely Babino
EAA 2021 abstracts are online
https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA2021/Programme.aspx?Program=3
______
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=1659
Absolutely disgusting.
@Davidski
What about the horses of the people who didn't move out of the steppes between ~ 3000-2000 bc?
I don't know, because the argument that these people widely used domesticated horses is an archeological one. Look what happened to the archeological argument that Yamnaya widely used domesticated horses.
So I need to see these new samples and what they reveal about the presence of domesticated horses on the steppe outside of Sintashta and related contexts.
R. A. Mimokhod. Post-catacomb period in the Lower Volga region:
from the Krivaya Luka cultural group to the Volga-Don Babino culture
Abstract. This article is devoted to an analysis of post-catacomb sites dating from the
end of the Middle Bronze Age in the Lower Volga region and the Volga-Don interfluve.
A description is provided of the funerary rite and the grave-goods accompanying the burials. It is argued that the pottery from the burials, which defines the culture, is represented
by vessels decorated with multiple ridges, known also from the settlements of the region
under discussion. On the basis of stratigraphic observations and cultural-typological comparisons, synchronization lines of local post-catacomb antiquities are established, particularly in relation to the Dnieper-Don Babino and Lola Cultures. According to calibrated
radiocarbon dates, the post-catacomb period in the lower reaches of the Volga was determined as the 22nd–20th cc. BC. Examination of the terminology from a new angle has made
it possible to conclude that the designation the so-called Krivaya Luka Cultural Group,
which was previously used to mark post-catacomb sites in the region during the last ten
years, has lost its relevance by this time. Given that the Lower Volga antiquities from
the final stage of the Middle Bronze Age represent the eastern part of the Babino Cultural circle, a new term is suggested – «Volga-Don Babino culture» – in keeping with the
principles used to denote other Babino cultures: Dnieper-Don and Dnieper-Prut Babino
cultures.
https://elibrary.ru/download/elibrary_22702296_56161477.pdf
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=947
Title:
Multiple isotopic and aDNA analyses of Nevali Çori shed light on a socio-section of ancient southeast Anatolia
Content:
Nevali Çori in Southeast Anatolia, the "eastern wing of the Fertile Crescent", is associated with a socio-economic system of Pre-pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) of the 10th–8th millennium BC. Together with other sites in the eastern upper Tigris region, southeast Anatolia became another independent region with one of the earliest Neolithic lifestyles in sedentism and domestication. The site was repeatedly settled also later during the Halaf period, the Early Bronze and the Iron Age.
In my paper, I will first present the results of strontium and oxygen isotopic analyses conducted on human and animal remains recovered from Nevali Çori. The results indicate a decline of mobility already during early PPNB. The carbon and oxygen data also revealed the seasonal hunting times of gazelles in that time. The carbon and nitrogen analysis informs about nutritional practices through time indicating changes in subsistence strategies. This enables a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms and motivations of Neolithization in west Asia. The genetic analyses of the PPNB people in Nevali Cori shed new light on the genomic structure of aceramic southeast Anatolian farmers and their genetic relations to adjacent Anatolian and Levantine regions. The post-PPNB inhabitants of Nevali Cori showed a different genetic makeup compared to the PPNB people related to the admixture event of regional gene pools across Anatolia and the Southern Caucasus during the Late Neolithic.
______________
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=830
Title:
Early Bronze Age Aegean genomes from Perachora cave, Corinth, Greece
Content:
Research involving ancient DNA (aDNA) has experienced a true technological revolution in recent years, mainly through the advance of high-throughput sequencing. Archaeogenomic research on present-day Greek/Aegean sites has been focused either on Neolithic (covering the period from ~ 8.000 to 4.000 BCE) or on Middle to Late Bronze Age specimens (covering the period from ~2.400 to 1.200 BCE). Hence, there is a sampling gap concerning the period from the Final Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, an important transitional phase during of which noticeable changes have been documented on archaeological basis that may indicate broader cultural changes. Previous analyses of ancient genomes have concluded that Middle/Late Bronze Age Peloponnesian populations (attributed as Myceneans) and Middle Bronze Age Cretan populations (attributed as Minoans) could be modelled as a mixture of the Anatolia Neolithic-related substratum with additional ‘eastern’ (Caucasus/Iran-related) ancestry and could be considered as distinct from Neolithic Aegean populations who had only Anatolian farmer ancestry. In this study we provide archaeogenomic evidence from an Early Bronze Age (Early Helladic) population located in central present-day Greek mainland (Perachora cave, close to the Early Helladic settlement of Perachora in the Gulf of Corinth), in order to examine if the Bronze Age ‘eastern’ ancestry was present in the mainland Aegean area from the early onset of the Bronze Age. Our preliminary results suggest that the Early Bronze Age Perachora population is clustering together with Early/Middle Neolithic farmers from Europe, Aegean, and Anatolia, an indication of distinctiveness from Middle/Late Bronze Age Peloponnesian and Cretan populations. Hence, southern mainland Early Bronze Age Aegean people may not have been genetically admixed yet, with populations carrying the additional ‘eastern’ ancestry, an event that possibly occurred immediately after, during the Middle Bronze Age and the advent of the intensified Minoan mobility and interchange network.
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=3776
Title:
Exploring the genetic diversity of Magna Graecia – The case of Campania
Content:
Starting in the 8th century BCE, coastal Campania in Southern Italy became a melting pot of various cultures and peoples when Etruscan and Greek colonizers joined local Italic tribes. By establishing cities and trade posts, the contact networks of Campania were further expanded across the Mediterranean and inland.
We generated ancient genomes from Campania, spanning the 8th to 3rd century BCE, i.e. the Orientalizing, Archaic and Hellenistic-Roman period in this region. While most individuals can be attributed to a genetic ancestry that arose on the Italian mainland, we also discover descendants of migrants from the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. Most notably, an individual dated to the 8th century at the first Greek settlement, Pithekoussai, a site that also yielded the earliest example of writing in the Euboean alphabet, was genetically of Aegean origin, and we find that this type of ancestry persisted at the site for several centuries. We compare the genetic composition of these descendants of Greek settlers to the local Campanians represented by individuals from the site San Marzano and Etruscan immigrants from Pontecagnano.
We integrate a thorough analysis of the associated material culture and, where available, strontium isotopes to establish temporal and cultural patterns of mobility, ancestry and admixture that shaped the genetic landscape of Campanian Magna Graecia.
___________________
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=2185
Title:
The Punic Mediterranean - a new ancient DNA perspective
Content:
Towards the end of the 6th century BCE, the former colony Carthage in present-day Tunisia emerged as a hegemonial power in the Western Mediterranean. While keeping the Phoenician language as well as many aspects of cultural practices, a new set of "Punic" customs spread rapidly from the Northwest African coast throughout the Western Mediterranean, including coastal sites in Iberia, Ibiza, Sicily and Sardinia. In this study we produced novel ancient DNA evidence from human remains buried in Western Mediterranean Punic necropoli. So far, ancient DNA data from Punic sites has been sporadic, and here we generated genome-wide ancient DNA as well as new Radio Carbon dates to fill this gap. Together, this new data allowed us to probe whether cultural links to North Africa are also accompanied by North African genetic ancestry. Moreover, we studied putative genetic connections to the Levant and Aegan. Finally, we investigated the complex interaction with local populations.
Some abstracts of note (only reporting the first two authors as very many n some abstracts):
MIGRATION, MOBILITY AND SOCIAL INTERACTION IN BRONZE AND IRON AGE BRITAIN: INITIAL RESULTS OF THE COMMIOS PROJECT Armit, Ian, Bleasdale, Madeleine
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=92
EARLY EVIDENCE OF DOMESTIC SHEEP FROM CENTRAL ASIA Shnaider, Svetlana, Taylor, William
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=2868
FIRST DIRECT 14C DATING OF EQUINE PRODUCTS PRESERVED IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL POTTERY VESSELS AT BOTAI AND BESTAMAK, KAZAKHSTAN Casanova, Emmanuelle, Knowles, Timothy
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=1268
INTERDISCIPLINARY EVIDENCE FOR MIGRATION, MOBILITY, AND COMMUNITY FORMATIONS AFTER THE DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE CARPATHIAN BASIN Knipper, Corina, Koncz, István - Rácz
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=2563
EARLY BRONZE AGE FAMILIES IN THE NORTHWESTERN CARPATHIAN BASIN Szecsenyi-Nagy, Anna, Šefčáková, Alena
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=1894
KIN AND POWER IN EARLY CELTIC COMMUNITIES OF SOUTHWESTERN GERMANY Gretzinger, Joscha - Mötsch
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=3180
ANCIENT GENOMES REVEAL SOCIAL AND GEOGRAPHIC STRUCTURING OF THE POPULATION IN CARPATHIAN BASIN AT THE TIME OF THE AVAR EMPIRE Gnecchi Ruscone, Guido Alberto
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=1884
USING ADNA AS PART OF A MULTI-PROXY APPROACH TO UNDERSTAND BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL KINSHIP OF UNUSUAL BURIALS FROM PORTMAHOMACK (SCOTLAND) Fischer, Claire-Elise, Olalde, Iñigo
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=1384
GENETIC CHANGE AND POPULATION MOVEMENT C. 1200 BCE: A VIEW FROM THE NORTH AND WEST Armit, Ian, Bleasdale, Madeleine
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=93
ISOTOPIC AND GENETIC EXPLORATIONS OF CROSS-CHANNEL CONNECTIVITY IN BRONZE AGE AND IRON AGE KENT Bleasdale, Madeleine, Fischer, Claire-Elise
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=1465
INSIGHTS INTO ANCIENT EGYPTIAN GENOMES IN THE FIRST MILLENNIUM BC Salem, Nada Gnecchi Ruscone,
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=3703
ANCESTRAL ORIGINS AT THE ROMAN DANUBIAN LIMES Carrion, Pablo, Olalde, Iñigo
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=571
There is some real cool stuff inbetween those submissions. Early Scytho-Siberian samples from, Tuva, Celts from Germany, Alans, Magna Graecia, Avars, lots of stuff from the Carpathians and Pannonia in general and a lot more! I hope we wont have to wait too long for those studies.
@Arza
Thanks for providing all those very interesting abstracts.
However,
"https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=1659
Absolutely disgusting."
It's not an aDNA paper, but there has to be some room for the history of scientific theories, too. Did you notice any serious error in this abstract? It makes some good points imho, especially that "the concept of autochthonism has apart from academic discussions always seemed to fulfill a specific function in memory politics, too. It provided arguments in inter-war German-Polish geopolitical disputes, but also played a significant role in the legitimation of the territories shifted from Germany to Poland after 1945" is hard to deny.
Coming of the Celts ?
“ Genetic change and population movement c. 1200 BCE: a view from the north and west”
@
Matt
“ It kind of seems to me like it maybe actually makes more sense that the "fast horses" were domesticated and then immediately spread within a few centuries without much human genetic turnover within a few centuries.”
Might explain the precocious appearance of indo-Aryan names in Hurria
@Davidski,
Do you know the name of the Volga Neolithic site which has lots of CHG? I am making a map and need the name.
I don't know where to find it.
@Genos
Can't remember the details. It's around Saratov though.
@Rob in both cases quite possibly. I'm not totally sold that there's evidence for a sudden pulse of migration from what Reich and Patterson have done which is on Youtube (https://imgur.com/a/HYJZLfv), as it looks more continuous to me, but the paper will probably present some evidence for a pulse.
...
Some more interesting abstracts, searching Ringbauer's name to see what he contributed to and uses his relative detection and population size detection methods:
"Social genomics of the LBK, insights from three differentiated site typologies"
"We have revealed the presence of large family clusters in the cemeteries of Nitra and Polgár-Ferenci-hát, as well as high degrees of unrelatedness between parents (indicated in the aDNA of children) in the culture, indicating large population sizes at the onset of the LBK. From the site of the Schletz massacre, we have produced genomic data from the entire assemblage of individuals, providing a snapshot of a “living” LBK population. "
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=2124
"Insights into admixture history and social practices in the prehistoric Aegean from ancient DNA"
"Our results indicate multi-phased genetic shifts in the Aegean populations since the early Neolithic that can be traced to populations related to Anatolia and then, during the Late Bronze Age, to Central-Eastern Europe. Besides the long-lasting biological connections with these adjacent regions, we also found that Bronze Age Aegeans exhibited endogamy in high frequencies so far unobserved in the rest of the ancient West Eurasia. These close-kin marital practices, likely equivalent to first-cousins unions, were substantially higher in Crete and other Aegean islands than in Mainland Greece."
(The first cultural inbreeders of West Eurasia, provides some evidence that this method is really finding consanguinity if it is present, and the absence of such in Iron Age Pakistan and so on where some tradition is present today really is because it was culturally absent).
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=2323
"Investigating Neolithic social structures on the basis of unprecedentedly large family trees from the site Gurgy “les Noisats” in France"
"Thanks to an extensive sampling and use of the 1240K capture array, we obtained genomic data for 94 out of 128 individuals. We reconstructed two large pedigrees, one of them spanning seven generations and connecting 62 individuals. These unprecedently large genealogies allowed us to look beyond the immediate genetic relatedness, and to explore the potential social structure of the group, its size, and its funerary and mobility practices.
We observed a strong patrilocal and patrilineal system with a single male lineage for the main family. The group practiced female exogamy, as no adult daughters were buried at the site (except for three females), and all mothers in the pedigree (except one) came from genetically-unrelated external groups, suggesting a wide regional network. Accompanying Strontium analyses confirm the non-local origin of adult females, but also reveal a non-local signature of the first-generation founders of the site. Biological relatedness reveals a spatial organization of the graveyard, showing chronological and nuclear family groupings that were not visible through archaeological elements. The seven-generations pedigree also allowed us to constrain the chronological range of the site use and led us to propose a narrower occupation phase."
(Great stuff. Will be interesting to see if they can ever turn these methods on more collective burials (this cemetary is single burials) and identify if those are also structured in particular ways that aren't evident through archaeology.)
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=3000
@Davidski
Have you performed any runs on that R1b-V1636 Anatolian Cooper Age sample by chance? I got into a dispute with a certain Basque nationalist, who claimed that the V1636 in the LCA Anatolian was unrelated to the SGC/Vonyuchka/Progress samples, because of no Steppe autosomal DNA in the former. I thought some of the Kura-Araxes samples had Piedmont Steppe admixture.
Re; Celts again and 1200 BCE pulse basically I think that one of the things that they've found is that the same individuals who isotopes indicate were raised abroad also seem to have higher EEF fraction.
For instance - the abstract for "Isotopic and genetic explorations of cross-channel connectivity in Bronze Age and Iron Age Kent" mentions specific sites "This paper synthesizes existing and new multiproxy data at a regional-scale, focusing on sites from Kent, including Margetts Pit and Cliffs End Farm. Given its proximity to the Channel, Kent is an important locale for exploring cross-channel connections. Indeed, several individuals from Cliffs End Farm have already yielded isotope measurements demonstrating they spent their childhood outside of Britain. New aDNA analysis targeting individuals from Cliffs End Farm and elsewhere has now identified the continent, and perhaps France as a potential point of origin for incoming individuals".
Now if we look at the excerpt from Reich's presentation (https://imgur.com/a/HYJZLfv), with a sneak preview of Patterson's paper in the works, the individuals from Margetts Pit and Cliffs End Farm are among the ones labelled for enriched EEF ancestry, quite a lot in one instance.
Also, "Genetic change and population movement c. 1200 BCE: a view from the north and west" does mention "A new study of whole genome ancient DNA from Bronze and Iron Age populations, focusing on Britain but including substantial new datasets for areas of continental Europe, has also identified major genetic changes in the Middle-Late Bronze Age (c. 1300‒800 BCE). In Britain specifically, a rise in ancestry derived from Early European Farmers (EEF) appears to represent an influx of people from a region most likely located in present-day France. Due to a paucity of aDNA coverage in the potential source region(s), it is presently impossible to determine whether the movement of people was reciprocal or unidirectional." (My personal gut assumption would be that it would be bidirectional but possibly biased for population size?) "It is striking, however, that many of those who moved appear to have been female. Similar genetic changes are evident in the Netherlands and Czechia, although based on fewer samples, while in Iberia we see a decrease in EEF ancestry. Taken together, the genetic data suggest a period of complex connectivity between regions in Central and Western Europe, including significant movements of people. The underlying social processes are likely to be complex and not reducible to the simple outward spread of a single population."
So, I don't know - certainly they're finding migration, but does the finding possibly female biased migrants over 500 years really tell us something clear about Celtic? Not excluding that it does - I can imagine a scenario where a male elite come, and then they arrange for their sisters and nieces to marry into local males to really solidify their cultural power, and the children are raised in the Celtic language and learn to speak it, and there's a constant cultural assimilation that might take a while but then expands outwards throughout the island.
I guess there's also a question of how diverged languages would have been between Southern Britain and Northern France, where the migrants proximately came from - this is about 1000-800 years down from the Beaker expansion into Britain and broadly of Western Europe, so these languages might have still had some intelligibility, but also possibly not depending on various factors that we can't perceive sharply. (Certainly it's pretty early compared to the "La Tene first" kind of model? Seems more Bronze Age but not really trying to push a Koch style "Atlantic Bronze Age" model since mentions Czechia, Netherlands?)
@Simon
That Anatolian V1636 probably doesn't have any autosomal steppe ancestry, but this isn't a big deal, because the oldest instances of V1636 are obviously on the steppe, and autosomal ancestry can be bred out within a few generations.
The Kura-Araxes sample from Armenia that belongs to V1636 also probably doesn't have any steppe ancestry, or at least nothing significant, but again, this is a rather young sample.
It looks like a bit of a Copper Age north to south trail is starting to form in ancient DNA when it comes to V1636. So sooner or later we'll at least find samples in the Caucasus with V1636 and autosomal steppe ancestry.
@ Matt
Yeah “coming for the Celts” is shorthand for the overall set of processes which could have led to some form linguistic convergence during the LBA which led to the expansion of Celtic languages rather than necessarily a monothetic expansion.
@ Matt
If I remember correctly they focused specifically on Southeastern Britain and apparently this change did not affect the rest of Britain. Was Southeastern Britain wetland marshes during that period looking at all the Pile dwellings...? Could this area really have incubated Celtic within the British Isles ? I'm not so sure.
Re: IA Britain abstract/Celts
Trying to make sense of this here. From the Reich presentation video thing that was I think about this new paper, or at least about this finding, it sounded like this incoming ancestry was more or less unique to southern Britain. If it isn't present in Ireland for instance, that wouldn't act as evidence that these people weren't the prime suspect Celts, but I don't think it would rule out many other options either (assuming there are many other options). But then maybe like Matt said there were mostly elite governed cultural transitions elsewhere, and I'm assuming there were enough of these people, or maybe all it would take is for a couple of native groups to adopt an incoming language/culture and then spread it themselves. Also maybe this ancestry will be or has been found in IA Ireland? Also would it line up with Celtic branch split dates?
We don’t need to reinvent the wheel on this occasion
The more plausible theory about Celtic has been sketched out - Celtic from the Middle
Hi Davidski, I found an interesting genetic paper abstract about BA Aegeans. In that study, they detected a genetic shift during the late BA that can be linked to Central-Eastern Europe. Do you think this study is talking about the arrival of the Indo-Europeans or Proto-Greeks arrival to Greece?
Insights into admixture history and social practices in the prehistoric Aegean from ancient DNA
Abstract:
European genetic history went through major transformations during the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Despite the significance of the Aegean for European prehistory, preservation challenges have hindered a comprehensive understanding of human mobility and population dynamics in this region through time. In this paper, we present insights from ancient DNA (genome-wide) analyses on Early Neolithic and Bronze Age individuals from Mainland Greece, Crete and the Aegean islands. Our results indicate multi-phased genetic shifts in the Aegean populations since the early Neolithic that can be traced to populations related to Anatolia and then, during the Late Bronze Age, to Central-Eastern Europe. Besides the long-lasting biological connections with these adjacent regions, we also found that Bronze Age Aegeans exhibited endogamy in high frequencies so far unobserved in the rest of the ancient West Eurasia. These close-kin marital practices, likely equivalent to first-cousins unions, were substantially higher in Crete and other Aegean islands than in Mainland Greece. Our study highlights the potential of novel biomolecular methods to unravel the interplay of genetic admixture and cultural entanglements in the Aegean and beyond.
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa202...?Abstract=2323
Ancestry from the Eastern European steppes arrived in the Aegean earlier than the Late Bronze Age, so I'm guessing that this upcoming paper is somewhat constrained by the samples that were available to its authors.
That is, they probably didn't have access to material earlier than the Late Bronze Age with steppe ancestry.
@Davidski
Thanks for your answers that provide some context. Besides, the authors speak of a genetic shift. Doesn‘t that implicate a substantial gene flow from the Steppe, that is at least around 30%? In the Minoan paper, Mycenaeans had only minor Steppe ancestry.
Samples from Middle Bronze Age Greece have as much as 50% steppe ancestry.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/05/beware-of-greeks-bearing-gifts.html
And there are more Mycenaeans on the way, some with much more steppe ancestry than the currently available Mycenaean samples.
So there were significant genetic shifts in Greece involving steppe ancestry, but different parts of Mycenaean Greece was affected in different ways.
From the paper Rob posted: "Since Celtic may well have been moving into areas with patchworks of minor languages—5000 speakers being the median for languages worldwide (Nettle 1999, 113)—quite a low number of Celtic speakers could be enough to effect a language shift. For example, if only 10 per cent of people in Britain spoke Celtic but the rest of the population spoke a dozen other languages, Celtic might have the advantage, especially when reinforced by the language of the adjacent part of the Continent."
If I'm remembering right, this newly detected group made up ~ half (?) of the ancestry of southern Britons as well, there probably were plenty of them to pull a dominoes style language shift off. Assuming there was a patchwork and there wasn't rough language homogeneity in the isles by the time this new group arrived.
About the Celts:
"It is striking, however, that many of those who moved appear to have been female. Similar genetic changes are evident in the Netherlands and Czechia, although based on fewer samples, while in Iberia we see a decrease in EEF ancestry. Taken together, the genetic data suggest a period of complex connectivity between regions in Central and Western Europe, including significant movements of people. The underlying social processes are likely to be complex and not reducible to the simple outward spread of a single population."
IMO someone must be a blockhead to ignore this:
https://postimg.cc/m1ZPqY8k
a woman in EBA Lüneburg Heath dressed in proto-Tumulus gear (from Gata Wieselburg West Hungary/ East Austria).
These proto-Tumulus people spoke probably Italo-Celtic.
Anthony:
"The widely separated pockets of Yamnaya settlement in the lower Danube valley and the Balkans established speakers of late Proto–Indo–European dialects in scattered islands where, if they remained isolated from one another, they could have differentiated over centuries into various Indo–European languages. The many thousands of Yamnaya kurgans in eastern Hungary suggest a more continuous occupation of the landscape by a larger population of immigrants, one that could have acquired power and prestige partly just through its numerical weight. This regional group could have spawned both pre–Italic and pre–Celtic. Bell Beaker sites of the Csepel type around Budapest, west of the Yamnaya settlement region, are dated about 2800–2600 BCE. They could have been a bridge between Yamnaya on their east and Austria/Southern Germany to their west, through which Yamnaya dialects spread from Hungary into Austria and Bavaria, where they later developed into Proto–Celtic.31
Pre–Italic could have developed among the dialects that remained in Hungary, ultimately spreading into Italy through the Urnfield and Villanovan cultures. Eric Hamp and others have revived the argument that Italic and Celtic shared a common parent, so a single migration stream could have contained dialects that later were ancestral to both.32 Archaeologically, however, the Yamnaya immigrants here, as elsewhere, left no lasting material impression except their kurgans."
The linguist KH Schmidt already stated in 1984 that Italic and Germanic uniquely share the word for 'copper, bronze' (Latin aes ~ Gothic aiz, Old Norse eir, Old High German ēr), while Germanic and Celtic uniquely share the word for iron: *īsarno- 'iron'. This would parallel the connections in the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Proto-Celtic came from Corded Ware not from Hungarian Yamnaya.
Proto-Celts were P312. Hungarian Yamnaya was Z2103.
And by the way, reading Carlos Quiles will rot your brain.
David,
Sorry that are only some statements. This evokes some kind of defensive reaction.
I don't follow that way. I only stress that the Gata-Wieselburg find in the Luneberger Heath is no lady gaga avant la lettre.
It certainly points at EBA movements between Central-East and Northwest Europe. Nothing more nothing less. No fake.
You can't simply ignore this by mentioning your favorite prick doll, imo too simple.
Pointless affair Dave ^_^
@Copper Axe if someone can convince us that that woman in Faklingbostel is fake, than you got a point. But how must we see or judge a clear Hungarian/ Austrian EBA found in Lower Saxony? Your turn....
@Rob
Interesting new paper:
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/molbev/msab174/6299394
In it the following:
"In contrast, gene-flow between Western HGs (Loschbour) and early farmers (LBK) appears strongly bidirectional in our analysis, as do lineages ancestral to LBK and Scandinavian or Caucasus HGs, therefore suggesting widespread migration between ancestors of these groups predating the European Neolithic."
Garrett Hellenthal is one of the authors on that new paper.
I just stopped reading it when I saw his name.
Never heard of him. But Pontus should do better
Here's a blog post about one of Garrett's greatest hits...
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-enigma-of-kalash.html
From the article
"First, some worry about purist and simplistic narratives of human history as told through genetic evidence that downplay or deny the complexity of human evolutionary history. For example, archaeologists (as well as historians) question the extent to which socio-cultural categories neatly correspond to genetic and biological categories. They highlight the variety of epistemological and political risks in trying to make connections between them (Frieman and Hofmann, 2019; Furholt, 2019; Hakenbeck, 2019). Here, they are concerned about biodeterminism and reducing complex concepts of identity and belonging to biological explanations. This is most problematic when scientists claim that genetic events are correlated to historical population movement, cultural change, and ancestry. Some aDNA studies, for example, present cultures as bounded social groups of homogeneous biological descent. For archaeologists, this perception evokes less-than-desirable memories of Gustav Kossinna’s contention that archaeological cultures were distinct and bounded entities and that changes in culture come through migration. Such ideas were used to legitimize the German Nazi political philosophy and following World War II researchers distanced themselves from this view of human culture. Consequently, archaeologists view neat and tidy stories of human history as a setback reflecting outdated biodeterministic perspectives (Heyd, 2017).
After decades of internal disciplinary struggles within the humanities over concepts such as culture, ethnicity, and migration, these scholars have arrived at more nuanced understanding of human history (Furholt, 2020; Samida and Eggert, 2013). Today, it is generally agreed that identities are negotiated and consolidated through discursive formations and cultural symbols and are therefore historical and variable (Díaz-Andreu et al., 2014). Archaeologists use archaeological cultures as a concept to map the diffusion of artefact types (Brather, 2016; Burmeister, 2016). Archaeologist Daniela Hofmann explained how the current application of ancient genomics to understand the Neolithic Transition, for example, poses an unnecessary challenge to the field: “It seems that as a discipline, we are being asked to go back to an explanatory paradigm we have long left behind and to equate an archaeological culture with a new population. This throwback is shaking our ambition to be a sophisticated, humanities-aligned discipline, and archaeologists rightly refuse to give up the theoretical insights of many decades of research” (Hofmann, 2015: 457)
Ancient human DNA: A history of hype (then and now)
Feb 2021
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1469605321990115
It's not a coincidence that R1a-Z93 is now such a common marker among Indo-Iranian speaking populations and it comes from the long hypothesized Indo-Iranian homeland in Eastern Europe.
Obviously, the chain of ancient cultures that included Fatyanovo, Abashevo and Sintashta was responsible for the spread of Indo-Iranian languages into Asia as far as India.
Haha.
@epoch, preprint for a while but its a pretty cool paper yeah. Its good as a check to find similar things using a genealogy of new mutations (most of which tend to go extinct) as with f2 statistics on common polymorphisms. The proposal of being able to date mutations within genealogies and coalescence of samples within those mutations is a unique one to compare to the idea of trying to estimate split times through f2 trees. The finding around the European-modal unique TCC/TTC mutation signature is very nice.
Lol I knew Matt would find it a “cool paper”
Well, we all knew you'd fulminate against the machinations of Harvard biostatisticians who don't know the true history that can only be discovered by the broad and opaque intuitive leaps and assertions of those who have read thousands of archaeological papers. ;) . Not exactly surprising each other are we at this point?
@ epoch
Thanks for sharing . I’m not sure how useful their methods are if their conclusions are seriously flawed
Possibly a case of bells & whistles
@ Matt
Of course I would 'fulminate' against false narratives; but I guess that's because some of us are genuinely interested in understanding holistic population-cultural histories of regions rather wantonly projecting praise to aspired methodological niches :)
Their paper propagates a false narrative. There is nothing opaque about this, not unless one is entirely ignorant of bare facts, including those from aDNA.
And no archaeologists haven't always been correct, esp the recent tendencies of 'the enlightened school'. I'm not even an archaeologist, if you're implying an epistemlogical bias, but that's where it all begins. Unless you know these facts intimately, the analysis is vaacuous. And this trend of blind autosomalism is pathognomonic of the Reich Lab despite their great technological contributions.
@Davidski & Rob
Hm, OK. Anyway. The paper actually doesn't come to conclusions that much different from what was published before. What I wanted to show was is its claims that WHG (partly) comes from a tree which also formed AHG. Say, the Common European model that is being promoted. I find it strange that uniparental markers are found in Gravettians, in that case.
Mind you, not to make a point. Just interest.
@Vashistha
That is just another run of the mill "used to legitimize the Nazi's" argument one can safely ignore. Apart from the fact that not a soul less would have died if Kossina never lived, Marxism has done far more to deteriorate the field, as it claims to be a scientifically based ideology and needs certain features in (pre-)history.
@epoch
Na it is not to be ignored completely. Especially when lots of commenters here routinely make the claim of genes = languages even if separated by 2000km.
@Rob @epoch @Matt This paper reminds me of the Kostenki14 finding from a while back, where researchers found out that it had been ancestral to all 3 strands of modern Euro pops: WHG, ENF and WSH. In effect, it was both ancestral to Gravetians/AHG/Dzudzuana and to Indo-Europeans.
@Matt
"The finding around the European-modal unique TCC/TTC mutation signature is very nice."
It is a change in mutation rate, which seems to me more error prone. So I keep David and Rob's remarks in the back of my mind. But frankly, how it is described in the paper would support a model of WHG as a mixture rather than an immigration, as they claim the signal is significantly weaker in WHG.
@ Vasistha
Yes the ''enlightened school'' claimed to "prove'' that archaeological cultures are constructs in the minds of archaeologists which do not correspond to 'peoples''.
Of course, they proved nothing. Their entire premise was theoretical, analogical (at best) and ideological.
Ancient DNA has shown that there is indeed a close correlation between genes, cultures and people. So the enlightened ones are now decrying aDNA because it has disproven their bedrock in a very real & empirical manner. They resort to writing articles about essentially nothing, like the piece you posted.
So rather than making stale & blanket cliches about kossina & the 1930s, each case needs to be analysed on its own merit. For ex: if a group expands relatively rapidly, maintains the cultural template of its parental region, and demonstrates Y-DNA continuity (such as CWC & its derivatives in west & east), then obviously these groups are culturally cohesive, regardless of distance.
If on the other hand, the genetic expansion occurrs over 2,000 years, experiences several stops & pauses, cultural & Y-DNA shifts along the way (as in the case of neolithic-> west Europe); then the case can be made for disjunctions, creolizations & novel formative processes. It's really not rocket science, although so many academics struggle with it
So you need some form of consistency. We cannot claim that Andronovo-derived groups in Turan don't have anything to do with CWC, whilst Sarmatians with some BMAC-related ancestry do come from & identify with, populations from South-central Asia. Which cake piece are you eating ?
@rob
"We cannot claim that Andronovo-derived groups in Turan don't have anything to do with CWC, whilst Sarmatians with some BMAC-related ancestry do come from & identify with, populations from South-central Asia. Which cake piece are you eating ?"
See i tried to make you understand this before, but seems it needs little more drilling to get into you.
Scythians, sarmatians are ATTESTED in ancient literature to have spoken an iranian dialect and their rough area of origin has been described as well, which everyone but you believes to be somewhere in SC asia.
Whereas noone has any direct proof at all about what the Andronovo or CWC, or Dali_MLBA guys spoke. Did anyone hear them speak, any incriptions which tell us their language? anything? Any spoken poem passed down through generations?
So how do you explain the remarkably close (relative to geography) genetic, cultural and linguistic relationships between many Eastern, Northern and Western Europeans and Central and South Asians, all of whom happen to have significant Corded Ware ancestry?
@epoch, well, it does have to be a systematic thing for quite a long time. There are some different ideas about how that mutation signature arose. There's also disagreement about the age of the signature.
One of the less plausible for me is that there was a systematic difference in paternal age, since this mutation is biased to younger paternal ages, but on the other hand if it's happening in a pulse over a short time (as this paper suggests) that becomes unfeasible (because the shifts in paternal age required to allow it to happen would seem to be impossible impossible). Another is that it's due to some mutator allele or disease within the West Eurasian population, which both might not necessarily be associated with common ancestry (since either an allele or disease could spread in ways which don't generally reflect population history, although it's difficult for me to see why a mutator variant like this isn't deleterious and would get to high frequency, particularly through selection rather than drift?). So linking it to a common ancestry rather than gene flow or a contact that would allow disease spread might have some issues.
However this paper does seem to help produce some extra information that constrains possibilities, by confirming the presence/absence in different adna populations in different time and place, and drawing up some correlations.
Likewise with bidirectional migration - it seems like they're saying that there is a signal of unidirectional migration evident in their data for Scandinavian HG (WHG into SHG, without SHG into WHG), but no such signal in other pairings (Anatolia<->CHG,CHG<->WHG,WHG<->Anatolia, etc.). I'm not sure that requires bidirectional migration exactly (or they haven't explained how) as could be mediated by common descent from ghost populations in the time frame? But they don't sound incredibly confident in it.
The interesting thing, if I'm understanding the paper right, is the new methods using dated mutations and their associated frequencies and haplotype backgrouds, where those arise and whole genomes (rather than frequency shift in capture common SNPs) to look at these questions of directionality and timing of geneflow more directly than more inferential methods that could allow more possibilities where key events could happen at a much wider range of times or be solved through different directional trees.
H2a2a 9500 y. Anatolia https://scontent-hel3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/178487053_10159491749466802_1278255684664500478_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=b9115d&_nc_ohc=a4i8aCpiTLgAX9NP8dq&_nc_ht=scontent-hel3-1.xx&oh=466c33f8228305c891e1d28b8f00c8cc&oe=61429CF1
@davidski
"So how do you explain the remarkably close (relative to geography) genetic, cultural and linguistic relationships between many Eastern, Northern and Western Europeans and Central and South Asians, all of whom happen to have significant Corded Ware ancestry?"
South asians do not have any corded ware ancestry. They received 15-20% ancestry from the eastern steppe between 1600-1000bce, and from the aDna data we have so far it was not male mediated. If you want to call this % significant, sure go ahead. If there is additional steppe % in modern indians it could well be from iron age and post iron age inflow nrelated to any language change. If you claim that bronze age steppe inflow was male mediated, it is still just a hypothesis which has not been proven by the swat data. You have to wait for more data to have another shot, but at some point the obsession must stop. Let data guide our theories not the other way around.
As far as cultural changes are concerned, south asian archaeology is remarkably continuous from the bronze age to the iron age. Steppe autosomal ancestry does not seem to have brought any significant changes in the religious habits. For eg it could not even make the gandhara culture people make kurgans for burials. for that matter kurgans are missing from all over south asia - correct me if im wrong. If they could not even do that, you are asking me to believe that they ended up changing the language of the whole region from modern Afghanistan till the Ganges without leaving any extant remnants of the older languages of the region? Is there even any arch trail of steppe horses and chariots from steppe to south asia? In fact, ritual sacrifice of horses "as a part of human death ritual" has no mention in the Rig Veda or any of the brahmanas (the associated ritual book). The Ashwamedha Yajna is actually one for the King to showcase his strength - the king leaves a horse free to roam and mark a territory for one year and is sacrificed in a feast for all when the horse returns.
The most important marker of Vedic culture is actually the fire altar, made of bricks. No offering is complete without it. Where is the trail of that? Bustan did have these altars, but Bustan aDna lacked steppe completely.
Even the date of this aryan migration to SA doesnt make sense in light of Mitanni inscription dated to 1600bce which has newer language that the oldest layers of the RV - impossible if both these migrations to Mitanni and south asia are believed to have happened simultaneously. Furthermore how these steppe warriors managed to only give loanwords to mitani whereas completely eradicated the language a much more populated culture in south asia is extremely puzzling.
As for the connections between the I & E of IE languages, one will have to go deeper in time, to possibly 5000-4000bce and look at the iranian component somewhere near the caspian once we get more samples. Or maybe aDna will never be able to help us out for this question, similar to how buddhism reached China from east india --> NW india --> SC asia-->China without much of any solid genetic trace.
One of the most important Y-chromosome haplogroups in India is a Corded Ware marker you knucklehead.
Obviously I'm talking about R1a-Z93.
Find me the R-Y3/Y2/L657 in corded ware. R-Y3 tmrca is 2900-2200bce, and yfull is usually conservative, so it is possibly older. So where is it? How many samples do you need?
You have enough male aDna from all the sites that you propose is the indo aryan homeland. Sintashta, fatyanovo, abashevo blah blah. How many more chances should you get? Do you want infinite attempts to find the elusive R-Y3?
Why is R-Y3/l657 not present in modern samples from the corded ware region? What explains the almost complete absence? Was it specifically chosen and exterminated?
@vAsiSTha
I don't need to find R-Y3/Y2/L657 in Corded Ware.
My argument still stands.
All of that R1a-Z93 in India is from Europe, you knucklehead.
@ Vasistha
Again, you need to establish a common framework which has veracity instead of cherry-picking how you digest the evidence
''Whereas noone has any direct proof at all about what the Andronovo or CWC, or Dali_MLBA guys spoke. Did anyone hear them speak, any incriptions which tell us their language? anything? Any spoken poem passed down through generations?''
BMAC & BA Iran languages are also unattested
''Scythians, sarmatians are ATTESTED in ancient literature to have spoken an iranian dialect and their rough area of origin has been described as well, which everyone but you believes to be somewhere in SC asia''
One would have to be profoundly confused or biased to believe that Sarmatians come from SCA
''As for the connections between the I & E of IE languages, one will have to go deeper in time, to possibly 5000-4000bce and look at the iranian component somewhere near the caspian once we get more samples.''
Even if it was, that is female mediated admixture
Ant then, Indo-Iranian arent even basal in the IE tree. Anatolian is, whilst IA languages are nested within European language diversity
@ Vasishtha
You once mentioned that if R1a-Y3 was found outside India, you would rest your case. Does this continue to be true?
We do not have aDNA of the key period 2500-2000 from the steppe. Abashevo, Babino, Volsk-Lbishchevo, Voronezh. For example, almost all the graves of Babino in the Volga-Don region contain cow bones, which suggests certain thoughts with the cult of cows in India.
@ANI excavator
Yes R-Y3 needs to be found in the steppe prior to 1500bce.
Otherwise modern south asian samples contain all upstream Y Hgs of Z93 starting from R1*, R1a, R1a1 and so on. Hopefully that Chaubey data will be published soon. Which makes it unlikely that Y3 will ever be found in that time period in the steppe. R2 clearly originated in south asia /Iran.
Middle East has shit tons of modern samples with z93, y3, l657 whereas they do not speak an IE language at all. People like davidski should pause and think about their uber simplistic and frankly stupid one to one relations between autosomal ancestry/ paternal ancestry and language/culture.
Also, the western Scythians who are Andronovo - east Urnfield mix have Iranian names.
So it predated Sarmatians
And the instance of I6561 2000-1500BP with Y-DNA R1a-Y3 is not random. Apparently, the population of R1a-Z93 began to disintegrate even in Ukraine, before their campaign in Fatyanovo. Part of the population went to Fatyanovo, and some remained in Ukraine. The first to encounter the Catacomb tribes were not Fatyanovo or even Abashevo, but Babino and Volsk-Lbishchevo. And if Babino absorbed the Catacomb culture, then Volsk-Lbishchevo did not enter into interaction with the Catacomb tribes, but only fought with them. Then we find the ceramics of Volsk-Lbishchevo in the second phase of the Krotovo culture already in Western Siberia. As for the steppes of eastern Europe, then the Abashevo tribes gradually took over, which, apparently, were more numerous. That is why in the Srubnaya culture we find mainly R1a-Z94/Z2124, whose homeland is probably Abashevo. All other subclades R1a-Z93 (FGC82884, YP5585, BY226207, Z94/Y40, Z94/Y3) and even Z283/YP4858 either directly from Ukraine or from Fatyanovo via Voronezh formed the Babino and Vols-Lbishchevo cultures, whose path was completely different from the Z94/Z2124 Abashevo path.
@vAsiSTha
Hey knucklehead, there was no R1a-Z93 or even R1a in South Asia or the Middle East before the Bronze Age.
It arrived there from Eastern Europe via the steppe during the Bronze Age.
@Rob
And then beyond that you even have those names with the Cimmerians as far back as the 8th century b.c. so yeah, a very old phenomenon.
@vladimir
Alexandria sample i6561 is not R-Y3+. The sample is labeled damaged/questionable for a good reason. Be very careful about interpreting C>T substitution at a single SNP in samples labeled questionable, as these are the most common types of deamination damage in aDNA.
Hey knucklehead, basal Z93 is found in Fatyanovo.
So you'll never see Z93 in Asia in samples earlier than Fatyanovo.
@Arza and Ambron:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-94932-9 - "Reconstructing genetic histories and social organisation in Neolithic and Bronze Age Croatia"
"Ancient DNA studies have revealed how human migrations from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age transformed the social and genetic structure of European societies. Present-day Croatia lies at the heart of ancient migration routes through Europe, yet our knowledge about social and genetic processes here remains sparse. To shed light on these questions, we report new whole-genome data for 28 individuals dated to between ~ 4700 BCE–400 CE from two sites in present-day eastern Croatia. In the Middle Neolithic we evidence first cousin mating practices and strong genetic continuity from the Early Neolithic. In the Middle Bronze Age community that we studied, we find multiple closely related males suggesting a patrilocal social organisation. We also find in that community an unexpected genetic ancestry profile distinct from individuals found at contemporaneous sites in the region, due to the addition of hunter-gatherer-related ancestry. These findings support archaeological evidence for contacts with communities further north in the Carpathian Basin. Finally, an individual dated to Roman times exhibits an ancestry profile that is broadly present in the region today, adding an important data point to the substantial shift in ancestry that occurred in the region between the Bronze Age and today."
More evidence for unusual HG proportions near East-Central Europe.... Let's put these people on G25 and find out if any of these people have le drift Balto-Slavique! (More exciting than the dead horse arguments about the Indo-Iranians anyway).
Not yet read the paper, but from phys.org's summary of it (https://phys.org/news/2021-08-genetic-histories-social-organisation-neolithic.html), note that these unusual HG rich samples are from the "Encrusted Pottery Culture" that we discussed earlier in the year in June in light Daniel Gerber's research - https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/06/balto-slavic-drift.html
(Also, these seem to have some other early inbreeders it seems, again another piece of evidence like the Aegean island abstract I mentioned upthread indicating that Ringbauer's method does find these examples when they exist!).
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB46875
https://edmond.mpdl.mpg.de/imeji/collection/OMm2fpu0jR3jSqnY?q=
The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies
Here we present genomic data from 5 individuals dating to ca. 3000-2800 BCE from the Dzungarian Basin and 13 individuals dating to ca. 2100-1700 BCE from the Tarim Basin, representing the earliest yet discovered human remains from north and south Xinjiang, respectively. We find that the Early Bronze Age Dzungarian individuals exhibit a predominantly Afanasievo ancestry with an additional local contribution, while the Early-Middle Bronze Age Tarim individuals only harbor a local ancestry. Our results do not support previous hypotheses for the origin of the Tarim mummies, who were argued to be Proto-Tocharian speaking pastoralists descended from the Afanasievo1,2 or to have originated among the BMAC3 or IAMC cultures4. Instead, although Tocharian may have been plausibly introduced to the Dzungarian Basin by Afanasievo migrants during the Early Bronze Age, we find that the earliest Tarim Basin cultures appear to have arisen from a genetically isolated local population that adopted neighboring pastoralist and agriculturalist practices, which allowed them to settle and thrive along the shifting riverine oases of the Taklamakan Desert.
_______________
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB45006
Dynamic changes in genomic and social structures in 3rd millennium BCE central Europe
Europe’s prehistory oversaw dynamic and complex interactions of diverse societies, hitherto unexplored at detailed regional scales. Studying 271 human genomes dated ~4900-1600 BCE from the European heartland, Bohemia, we reveal unprecedented genetic changes and social processes. Major migrations preceded the arrival of “steppe” ancestry and at ~2800 BCE three genetically and culturally differentiated groups co-existed. Corded Ware appeared by 2900 BCE, were initially genetically diverse, did not derive all “steppe” ancestry from known Yamnaya, and assimilated females of diverse backgrounds. Both Corded Ware and Bell Beaker groups underwent dynamic changes, involving sharp reductions and complete replacements of Y-chromosomal diversity at ~2600 and ~2400 BCE, respectively, the latter accompanied by increased Neolithic-like ancestry. The Bronze Age saw new social organization emerge amid a ≥40% population turnover.
Re; Freilich 2021 I've linked above, interestingly these samples from Encrusted Pottery Culture are all G2a, which is different from the Encrusted Pottery Culture samples reported here - https://agi.abtk.hu/en/news/news - from Balatonkeresztúr, by the Hungarians (those samples being according to their figure, chiefly I2a with a little R1).
The paper states that these are closely related patrilineally (Phys.org - "We also found that all male individuals at the site had identical Y chromosome haplotypes," says Freilich. "We identified two male first degree relatives, second degree and more distantly related males, while the one woman in our sample was unrelated. This points to a patrilocal social organization where women leave their own home to join their husband's home."), so it seems like this is a broad cultural group where there are diverse and locally structured y haplotypes, and that these are so far not particularly rich in R1, but include both EEF (G2a) and possibly HG (I2a) haplotypes.
They look to overlap a European cline rather than being sharply different, but the qpAdm does seem to be finding enriched HG and models them as similar to HUN_Mako_EBA.
There are evidentially some socially quite different processes going on here than elsewhere in Europe.
"So you'll never see Z93 in Asia in samples earlier than Fatyanovo."
We will. Let the samples come. Don't jump around with uber simplistic theories when one half of the IE region has 0 male samples from the bronze age.
@Vasistha
So if Y-3 is found on the Steppe before 1500 BC you will walk back everything you said? Can we hold you to that commitment?
teepean47 did Etrurian samples a bit ago, I wonder if there'd be anything interesting here
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WII_z-1_JmIByf5MCa0kg5hM768q9TRq
Looks like the ENA data for Freilich's paper isn't up yet - https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB46357
It's they peg the Roman Era Croatian as similar in genetic structure to present day people. We might be skeptical of this due to the Balto-Slavic drift... On the other hand, the top f3 distances are might point to a little bit more BS drift than expected... or not.
They also report that there are no significant differences in f4(Mbuti,Present_Day_West_Eurasian, Croatian_Roman_Period, Croatian), including where the present day West Eurasians are Belarusians and Lithuanians... Although I don't like that when they do the same for ancients, Latvia_BA is not in the table.
See - https://imgur.com/a/ccUKlPY
If there really is no significant difference in Lithuanian/Latvia_BA affinity between Roman Period Croatia and present day Croatian, then that leads to some questions...
@Arza
What are the Y-haps for the new Xinjiang samples?
"https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB46875
https://edmond.mpdl.mpg.de/imeji/collection/OMm2fpu0jR3jSqnY?q=
The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies
Here we present genomic data from 5 individuals dating to ca. 3000-2800 BCE from the Dzungarian Basin and 13 individuals dating to ca. 2100-1700 BCE from the Tarim Basin, representing the earliest yet discovered human remains from north and south Xinjiang, respectively. We find that the Early Bronze Age Dzungarian individuals exhibit a predominantly Afanasievo ancestry with an additional local contribution, while the Early-Middle Bronze Age Tarim individuals only harbor a local ancestry. Our results do not support previous hypotheses for the origin of the Tarim mummies, who were argued to be Proto-Tocharian speaking pastoralists descended from the Afanasievo1,2 or to have originated among the BMAC3 or IAMC cultures4. Instead, although Tocharian may have been plausibly introduced to the Dzungarian Basin by Afanasievo migrants during the Early Bronze Age, we find that the earliest Tarim Basin cultures appear to have arisen from a genetically isolated local population that adopted neighboring pastoralist and agriculturalist practices, which allowed them to settle and thrive along the shifting riverine oases of the Taklamakan Desert."
Ooouuhh! Thanks for sharing Arza.
Seems like they only tested bronze age samples, that would be unfortunate. It doesn't seem this will get us much closer to solving the Tocharian riddle.
I wonder which sites those Dzungarian samples are from, because those dates are really early and they could just basically southern Altai Afanasievo which doesn't sound as spectacular.
I'm still wondering about the take that the Tarim cultures were derived from a "local" population rather than an IAMC, or Afanasievo/BMAC (does anyone still propose that?) population. Local in which sense? Habitation in the deserts was a fairly novel thing.
Also the time gap between some of these mummies can be more than a thousand year old so they do not necessarily have to come from a singular population.
Maybe they are implying that these were native Tian Shan/Pamir populations who then also lived on the other side of the ranges facing the Tarim Basin. Or a population from western China or whatever.
But that would go against what we already know from the haplogroups at Xiaohe, which clearly show haplogroups coming from Europe and Siberia and these were one if the earliest Tarim cultures. Not to mention all the archaeology we have of the region certainly doesn't support it either.
Maybe just an odd sampleset or something? Maybe they mischaracterized the ancestries of the people there? Or maybe they think steppe_mlba ancestry from "2100-1700 bc" is what you'd call local in the Tarim Basin. We will see I guess, but that description sounds a bit odd too me. What do you think @Davidski?
@ Davidski
Dzungaria - 2x Q2a and one R1b (probably R1b1a1b1b R-M12149)
Tarim - all are R1b - two xL754 (probably pre-PH155), one R1 (xR1a, L754) [no coverage]
Off topic: Kind of had a look at some Italian samples, given there's so many; first reprocessed the G25 samples to make a PCA of all ancient Italian samples only, then plotted them against time: https://imgur.com/a/hpsFIDq
PCA splits into first a distinction of Copper Age vs post-Copper Age, then splits the post-Copper Age North (Steppe related) and South (Near East related) ancestry from each other.
Excluding the Sardinian samples, it seems like there's a remarkable constancy of trend of slow steady transition away from Copper Age like ancestry to post-Copper Age ancestry from 2000 BCE to 0 BCE, with lots of outliers, but no big pulse that just happens suddenly. Then within Italy there's a split where Sicily is tending toward the South (Near East related) ancestry to shift away from Copper Age, while North Italy shifts towards steppe related.
In the period post 1000BCE to 0 BCE, there are south related outliers showing up in the north, but we have kind of a gap in samples in the South, so its not clear if the trend of movement away from Copper Age ancestry without shifting towards steppe would continue... Need more samples!
Wow so Tarim Mummy genomes have finally been sequenced?
They say they are part Afanasievo. I don't believe them quite yet. Yeah, we need to see their DNA.
@ Copper Axe
It doesn't seem this will get us much closer to solving the Tocharian riddle.
It does. Zero impact of Afanasievo on the Tarim Basin. Only later there is an influx of Europeans - R1a(xZ93) and EEF derived mtDNA in Xiaohe.
They're Botai-like. Maybe even more extreme.
@Arza.
So you're saying the study mistook Botai ancestry in EBA Tarim (3000-2800 BC) for AFanasievo ancestry?
If so, then c'mon. They can't do this and not face serious critic from their peers.
When you say later there is European influx, do you mean Middle Bronze age (1500 BC) or Iron age? Because, if MBA, this would mean the R1a Tarim guys we only had Y DNA from before do in fact descend from Andronovo.
@vAsiSTha
If no R1a-Y3 or subsequent R1a-L657 are found in the steppes or Central Asia is obvious they can have their provenance from South Asia, and being formed around 4500 and 4200 ybp (as per yfull recent estimate) they can come from a rapid movement of a good number of people from Fatyanovo towards South Asia in that period, before the invention of horse-driven chariots in Sintashta culture. So through this movement a portion of Indo-Iranians could have reached the subcontinent transforming themselves later into Indo-Aryans there. But, of course, their R1a-Z93 ancestry came from the steppes.
"It does. Zero impact of Afanasievo on the Tarim Basin."
Based on these pre-IE Botai like peoples? Or are there iron age and historic samples from known Tocharian regions included in this dataset as well? Because without that you aren't going to get any closer to solving the Tocharian riddle.
Xiaohe unfortunately doesn't mean much because the existence of early/divergent Indo-Iranian substrate (thus not Khotanese or Indo-Aryan) in Tocharian has already been suggested before. The existence of divergent but quite likely steppe_mlba derived populations like those at Xiaohe could fit the bill, if eastern tian shan Andronovo doesn't. Anyhow the point is that the first sign of European ancestry there isn't automatically the first sign of Tocharians there, because they weren't alone.
Tocharian was attested beyond the Tarim Basin. Tocharian A has some geographical overlap with Chemurchek btw.
Here are their G25 coords.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_2AqYQQ3qi3wTCdkQIQ_Y55z60uy7kh2/view?usp=sharing
All but one made it.
@Carlos Aramayo
If no R1a-Y3 or subsequent R1a-L657 are found in the steppes or Central Asia is obvious they can have their provenance from South Asia, and being formed around 4500 and 4200 ybp (as per yfull recent estimate) they can come from a rapid movement of a good number of people from Fatyanovo towards South Asia in that period, before the invention of horse-driven chariots in Sintashta culture.
Let's not put the cart before the horse.
There's no evidence of any pre-Sintashta migration from the steppes into South Asia, and it's extremely unlikely that ancient DNA will provide such evidence.
Please keep in mind that, in Y3, L657 and many other steppe Y-haplogroups, we're dealing with very rapid founder effects, which means that it might be rather difficult to locate the founder populations rich in these Y-haplogroups before these founder effects.
Of course, when a large enough number of steppe samples from the relevant sites are finally sequenced, we will find Y3 and L657 on the steppe, but it might take some time.
@Genos
The Tarim culture samples are the Botai like ones, the samples with Afanasievo ancestry are from.
Shouldn't be a surprise that you had these type of populations with PH155 related R1b clades in the Tarim if you look at the populations further west and the Shirenzigou samples from the iron age. One of those samples seemed really WSHG-rich so you must've had quite a bit of survival up to fairly late of these populations I'd say. There are some slight signs in archaeology of populations being there prior to the 2nd millenium b.c, but its all quite sporadic.
What I do wonder is if there is iran_chl ancestry present like in the Pamirs, or if its missing like with contemporaries further north on the Tian Shan.
Some information regarding the archaeological sites would be very helpful too here, I hope this article drops soon.
"Here are their G25 coords.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_2AqYQQ3qi3wTCdkQIQ_Y55z60uy7kh2/view?usp=sharing
All but one made it."
🙏🙏🙏
Those Tarim EMBA samples look pretty crazy actually:
"Target: CHN_Tarim_EMBA1:L5209
Distance: 6.2695% / 0.06269510
75.0 RUS_Tyumen_HG
19.4 RUS_AfontovaGora3
5.6 RUS_Devils_Gate_Cave_N
0.0 CHN_Tianyuan
0.0 RUS_Karelia_HG
0.0 RUS_MA1
0.0 KAZ_Kumsay_EBA
Target: CHN_Tarim_EMBA1:GMGM1
Distance: 6.2850% / 0.06285016
58.0 RUS_Tyumen_HG
29.6 RUS_AfontovaGora3
12.4 RUS_Devils_Gate_Cave_N
0.0 CHN_Tianyuan
0.0 RUS_Karelia_HG
0.0 RUS_MA1
0.0 KAZ_Kumsay_EBA"
Am I missing something here?
The Dzungarian samples look as expected:
Target: CHN_Dzungaria_EBA1:AYIM22BN
Distance: 2.1577% / 0.02157652
58.8 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
36.4 KAZ_Dali_EBA
4.2 RUS_Okunevo_BA
0.6 KGZ_Aigyrzhal_BA
0.0 RUS_Baikal_BA
Target: CHN_Dzungaria_EBA2:G218M5-2
Distance: 2.1954% / 0.02195409
41.6 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
40.6 KAZ_Dali_EBA
17.4 RUS_Okunevo_BA
0.4 KGZ_Aigyrzhal_BA
Target: CHN_Dzungaria_EBA1:AYIM22BY
Distance: 3.1203% / 0.03120337
54.4 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
21.0 KAZ_Dali_EBA
18.6 RUS_Okunevo_BA
6.0 KGZ_Aigyrzhal_BA
Yeah the Afansievo scenario was always going to be a stretch. Another hit to the ''classic'' theory
The Dzhungar IA sampples are basically western Xiongnu. I think we need to focus on Karasuk-like, Altai Scythians & W. Xionnu as probable vectors
Well, well, well.....
CHE_Tarim_EBAavg
84% Botai
16% West Siberia_N
CHG_Dzungria_EBAavg
55% Afanasievo
28% Botai
7% West Siberia_N
5% Turkmenistan_CA
Yes, it is interesting to see such ANE rich people living so far east only 4,000 years ago.
But I suppose most of Central Asia may have been pure breed ANE until the Indo Europeans came.
Maybe this means the R1a Y DNA in the Tarim mummies is native to Central Asia. Hence why it isn't Z93.
maybe this also means the "East Asian" mtDNA, C4, in them is also native to Central Asia. Maybe it is of ANE origin.
This would be quite a twist. The impression was these were East Asian, European admixed people. Now, it might turn out they were pure blood indigenous Central Asians. Very strange. Did anyone predict this?
The Tarim BA are probably derived from Dali_EBA groups (''Botai-like'') , given they diffused early agro-pastoralism in Inner Asia. However they differ from their EBA_Jungarian cousins, as the latter have Afanasievo ancestry, whilst the Tarims do not.
So the stimulus was Afansievo, but essentially a local subsequent diffusion.
It also means that Inner Asian natives were WSHG like rather than anything East Asian, and now Mebrak is not required at all.
Also, whilst there is patchy BMAC-related admixture in Chemurchek, it doesn't seem to have played a major role, demographically.
Quick look
@ Matt
Judging by the f3-stats alone the Bronze Age samples will surely show the drift.
@Genos
I've got a prediction for you: there will be no such thing as R1a native to Central Asia.
These are wild genomes! I was not expecting to see that much WSHG/Botai-like ancestry this far east. Very pleasant surprise.
Is it at all plausible that the ancestor to Tocharian was spoken by Chemurchek/Dzungar Basin EBA type people in Dzungaria first, and only moved into the Tarim Basin after the EMBA (the time of these Tarim mummies)? Perhaps it is even possible that it moved into the Tarim Basin only after mixing with Indo-Iranians moving into Dzungaria? Very intrigued either way.
@Davidski,
I am not saying it is a high possibility the Tarim R1a is of Asian origin. You know this is not like me.
I'm just saying it is strange that the first Tarim culture samples are basically West Siberian hunter gatherers.
If they are the same people as the mummies who carry R1a, what does this mean?
But, on second thought I don't believe they are the same people. Namely because I now recall the Tarim R1a is R1a M417+ and also because some of their mtDNA was Kurgan, yet these Tarim genomes show no Kurgan ancestry.
@All,
What is the Tarim culture? Is the famed Xiaohe Tarim cemetery apart of this culture?
@All These Botai-like WSHG Tarim Mummies must’ve been Okunevo. And as we know, both Okunevo and Botai are WSHG.
So, I’m not surprised to find Botai like samples.
But Afanasievo must’ve gone the way of the dodo, with the later, IE ones being Andronovo R1a1
These Tarim Basin mummies aren't mixed. They're actually an extreme version of WSHG.
Okunevo was mixed, and only partly WSHG.
The only one linking Afanasievo, Tarim Mummies and Tocharian languages is Carlos Quiles.
@Davidski “These Tarim Basin mummies aren't mixed. They're actually an extreme version of WSHG.
Okunevo was mixed, and only partly WSHG.”
It might’ve been that Afanasievo mixed with Botai-like to form Okunevo, and when the later wave of Europeans, the Andronovo swept by, they were all subsumed into a new IE speaking polity.
If early Tarim Basin turn out to be Europoid appearance wise and WSHG genetics wise, my theory would be corroborated. Which is, that IE (50% ANE) and WSHG didn’t look that different, and that’s despite of the genetic drifts, founder effects and the fact ANE in WSHG, EHG and CHG aren’t similar.
A new study on Croatia's Neolithic and Bronze Age was published:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-94932-9
Abstract
Ancient DNA studies have revealed how human migrations from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age transformed the social and genetic structure of European societies. Present-day Croatia lies at the heart of ancient migration routes through Europe, yet our knowledge about social and genetic processes here remains sparse. To shed light on these questions, we report new whole-genome data for 28 individuals dated to between ~ 4700 BCE–400 CE from two sites in present-day eastern Croatia. In the Middle Neolithic we evidence first cousin mating practices and strong genetic continuity from the Early Neolithic. In the Middle Bronze Age community that we studied, we find multiple closely related males suggesting a patrilocal social organisation. We also find in that community an unexpected genetic ancestry profile distinct from individuals found at contemporaneous sites in the region, due to the addition of hunter-gatherer-related ancestry. These findings support archaeological evidence for contacts with communities further north in the Carpathian Basin. Finally, an individual dated to Roman times exhibits an ancestry profile that is broadly present in the region today, adding an important data point to the substantial shift in ancestry that occurred in the region between the Bronze Age and today.
A comment of this paper can be found here:
https://tinyurl.com/3t4n74d8
Wow all the MBA individuals are yHg G2a
The “Roman” is probably a Sarmatian derived R1a-Z93
@Andrze,
I was thinking the same thing. This may mean ANE, was "Europoid."
A rather questionable assertion based on qpWave
A minor glich in otherwise cool sample set.
Wow, the tarim data is spectacular. These ANE rich people should have been tocharian speaking. Date and location is a good fit.
If these Tarim mummy samples turn out to be Tocharian then it would confirm "EHG" were Proto-Indo-European speakers in my view. Tocharian and Anatolian split branched right off from Proto-Indo-Europeans in Western steppe. This would support the idea that EHG were already PIE speakers.
Back in 2018, Matthison et al. had EHG labeled as Indo-European, while CHG was not labeled as IE.
Wang et al. 2020 also confirms that EHG was dominant ancestry of Eneolithic steppe, with CHG-related ancestry less than 30%. Another unpublished sampled eneolithic Ekaterinovka is 5% CHG.
We can't expect them to be mute, they spoke something that was PIE or Para-PIE. Genetically - EHG remains dominant ancestry of steppe people - Linguists should reconsider idea of Para-PIE or PIE already being spoken by EHG group in light of genomic studies.
So let me confirm this.
The tarim mummies are R1a (earlier study) and Basal R1b with the R1b ones autosomaly being largely WSHG, implying that the R1a would be largely WSHG too?
Sound right?
Three points:
- the R1a results for the Tarim Basin mummies were obtained with outdated PCR technology which is prone to errors
- Andronovo people moved into the Tarim Basin during the Late Bronze Age, so the R1a in the Tarim Basin mummies, if real, might be from them
- Tocharian is attested from the Medieval Period, and no one really knows where it was spoken during the Bronze Age
@Rob
Not sure if that R1a-Z93 would be Sarmatian. The R1a subclade looks more West Asian related.
@ copper
Could be ; just said it off the cuff
Plenty of Near eastern chaps in the provinces
The Xiaohe R1a samples were from after 1800 BC.
So based on the distances, the early Tarim samples here are like Botai people, while the later ones are like Lola culture found in the Caucasus and also the Steppe_MLBA outliers.
List of closest distance: https://imgur.com/a/LzvwCvD
Can either of these populations sensibly be called isolated when there are similar samples about across Central and North Asia at their time?
@arza, I think so, although they seem to be just akin to the Maros, Vatya etc samples in Hungary at the moment. See if they're any different or not in G25, or if the RomP sample is off cline in any sense. And want to see f4(Mbuti,Latvia_BA;RomPCroatia,PresentDayCroatian) and whether including Latvia_BA in outgroups would break the qpWave pattern they have where Croatian and RomPCroatian are consistent with being a single population.
6% distances on g25 oO.
Some deeply diverged ANE ancestry is what we are looking at here. Anyone run qpAdm yet?
I got in touch with the authors of that Croatian paper. The genotype data will be ready in a few days.
These are arguably native Central Asians (although probably recent migrants to Tarim basin) , & those closest to the IAMC picked up variable amounts of WSH ancestry
In theory they have acquired some form of IE by trading with WHSs, and that then developed into Tocharian. Not sure, the more likely is a post-Andronovo group
Some deeply diverged ANE ancestry is what we are looking at here. Anyone run qpAdm yet?
How is this possible though? We must be missing some admixed component.
@slmd
These tarim mummies don't have any genetic connection with EHG.
@andrze
No connection with okunevo either.
We have a seemingly inexplicable tocharian language in the same region where seemingly inexplicable variant of ANE exists. If tocharian is supposedly to be one of the oldest branches to split off, 2000bce or older timing makes sense.
Also, pre ph155 suggests that basal R1b definitely lived close by.
Tocharian and these mummies are separated by a couple thousand years.
In that time, a lot of people moved into the Tarim Basin. You know, like people from the steppe.
And these mummies don't have basal R1b. It's just a branch that separated early from the European M269.
You knucklehead.
@Rob
"These are arguably native Central Asians (although probably recent migrants to Tarim basin) , & those closest to the IAMC picked up variable amounts of WSH ancestry"
In theory they have acquired some form of IE by trading with WHSs, and that then developed into Tocharian. Not sure, the more likely is a post-Andronovo group"
Given their odd results I wonder if it isn't a relic population from the late mesolithic or something because they dont exactly look like the populations you find to their west, who have kumsay_eba related ancestry and some of them have central asian farmer ancestry too.
Alternatively it could be migrations from a Bolshemys/Botai related population going into the Tarim via the Tian Shan at a later date.
Including Kolyma_meso seems to reduce the fits a bit for me yesterday but I was shitfaced last night so I'm gonna have to look at it again today.
Weird thing is that on G25 there is a preference for Tyumen when included, but it doesn't want any EHG when removing Tyumen.
Arza said
"Tarim - all are R1b - two xL754 (probably pre-PH155),"
R1b>pre PH155> PH155
Since there is no ph155 or pre Ph155 in Europe, what makes most sense if Arza is correct is that basal R1b lived close by. We also have the bmac guy who is pre Ph155. This would just be additional confirmation.
R1b has definitely been in Europe since the Upper Paleolithic.
No one knows when it made it to Central Asia yet.
Btw when many people were so sure R1b-Ph155 came from "East Asian Huns" (despite it only showing up in people with West Eurasian ancestry) Davidski was on the money in regards to the origin of this particular lineage.
Mystic Dave predicts these things ^_^
The Tarim ANE seems to be a better source of ANE-like ancestry in Sarazm than the usual AG3 or Tyumen. Also, those Central Asian Steppe_Maykop-like groups can be successfully modeled as just Progress + Tarim.
Target: TJK_Sarazm_En
Distance: 4.1517% / 0.04151696
57.8 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
21.6 GEO_CHG
15.2 TarimANE
5.4 RUS_Progress_En
0.0 IRN_HotuIIIb_Meso
0.0 MNG_North_N
0.0 RUS_AfontovaGora3
0.0 RUS_Tyumen_HG
0.0 TUR_Pinarbasi_HG
0.0 WHG
Target: TJK_Sarazm_En
Distance: 4.5412% / 0.04541246
57.2 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
16.0 GEO_CHG
14.0 RUS_Progress_En
8.0 RUS_Tyumen_HG
2.8 IRN_HotuIIIb_Meso
2.0 RUS_AfontovaGora3
0.0 MNG_North_N
0.0 TUR_Pinarbasi_HG
0.0 WHG
Target: KAZ_Kumsay_EBA
Distance: 1.8035% / 0.01803485
50.6 RUS_Progress_En
49.0 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
0.4 WHG
0.0 GEO_CHG
0.0 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
0.0 IRN_HotuIIIb_Meso
0.0 MNG_North_N
0.0 TUR_Pinarbasi_HG
Target: KAZ_Kumsay_EBA
Distance: 2.2296% / 0.02229608
53.6 RUS_Tyumen_HG
39.4 RUS_Progress_En
6.2 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
0.8 MNG_North_N
0.0 GEO_CHG
0.0 IRN_HotuIIIb_Meso
0.0 TUR_Pinarbasi_HG
0.0 WHG
I dont understand why your simplistic brain cannot fathom the idea that R1b can live in 2 places, especially since it is 20000yrs old. and mutate separately into L754 and PH155 respectively. Its not rocket science.
Also, Botai has R1b-M73 which is a sister clade of M269 on the L754 tree. AG3 is also R1b correct? R1b presence in this region is likely very old.
Using distance difference mode in Vahaduo, it mostly looks like the CHN_Tarim_EMBA are just a little further on the cline going from WHG->EHG->WSHG/Botai, and have a bit more Native American and East Asian affinity.
Results: https://imgur.com/a/qEPwZCw
Distance difference to West Africans does suggest they are more drifted overall than Botai population: https://imgur.com/a/25b0jGK
(Also Botai are slightly more close to East Africans relative to West Africans here which suggests this is via some link of Botai->WHG->Levant_N->East_African).
Seem like "Botai but more so" relative to EHG.
@crm
Thanks. many models wil have to be redone du to this.
@vAsiSTha
These people are not native to Central Asia at that sort of time depth, and neither is R1b.
A Botai-like population initially lived in Siberia, and it expanded into Central Asia after the Mesolithic when conditions there improved.
Before this happened, there were very few people in Central Asia, because it was basically a cold desert.
By the way, Siberia had more in common with Europe back then, because people moved back and forth across the Mammoth steppe hunting big game.
And AG3 has mtDNA R1b. Haha.
This population is pretty similar to Botai, could they have been one single population at one point before Yamnaya and Afanasievo? I wonder what the correct Eastern ancestry is. Baikal_BA_o?
They just need something like Baikal or Fofonovo
So they could be the Bazaikha variant of WSHG
However ; those were full of Q1a. These R1b point to being originally from west Siberia
Target: RUS_Khvalynsk_En:I0434
Distance: 2.9023% / 0.02902345
67.4 RUS_Khvalynsk_En
14.0 GEO_CHG
10.0 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
6.0 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
2.6 RUS_Karelia_HG
0.0 CHN_Tarim_EMBA2
0.0 CHN_Tianyuan
0.0 Han_Chongqing
0.0 KAZ_Botai
0.0 RUS_Tyumen_HG
I0434 is different. should be marked as an outlier. Its different than the other 2 khvalynsk samples.
@SLMD “
If these Tarim mummy samples turn out to be Tocharian then it would confirm "EHG" were Proto-Indo-European speakers in my view. Tocharian and Anatolian split branched right off from Proto-Indo-Europeans in Western steppe. This would support the idea that EHG were already PIE speakers.
Back in 2018, Matthison et al. had EHG labeled as Indo-European, while CHG was not labeled as IE.
Wang et al. 2020 also confirms that EHG was dominant ancestry of Eneolithic steppe, with CHG-related ancestry less than 30%. Another unpublished sampled eneolithic Ekaterinovka is 5% CHG.
We can't expect them to be mute, they spoke something that was PIE or Para-PIE. Genetically - EHG remains dominant ancestry of steppe people - Linguists should reconsider idea of Para-PIE or PIE already being spoken by EHG group in light of genomic studies.”
I’ve never seen it in their reports. However, Anthony 2019 is the only one speculating that PIE was an EHG language.
And WSH ancestry throughout the Steppe during the Eneolithic was 50:50 EHG:CHG, before Yamnaya and Sredny Stog acquired a considerable dose of EEF.
If people hypothesize that PIE was originally an EHG, mostly because of the uniparental paternal markers were ANE-descended, can we also assume that CHG was one as well, since 36% of CHG was one too? Or should we expect a Dzudzuana connection to a Basal Eurasian/AHG language similar to LBK (and perhaps Sumerian)?
We also know, speaking of the latter, of “language isolates” with no proven relationship to any others. Can PIE therefore be one?
Botai and WSHG have always fascinated me, and let’s see if I recap the events correctly:
* Supposedly when Sintashta/Andronovo migrated to Central Asia, Botai fled with their Parzelski horses East and integrated with Afanasievo to form Okunevo.
* BMAC is mostly Iran_Neoithic like Elamites (50% ANE + 50% AHG/Dzudzuana), although with significant chunks of Anatolian and WSHG elements.
* According to Narasimhan 2018 and 2019, the Indo-Aryans did not possess a central asian admixture in ratios >8%, neither BMAC nor Botai.
* Nevertheless, WSHG in India preceded the Aryan invaders.
So, can we surmise that the Burusho population and their Burushaski language is a relic population preceding Dravidian, Munda and IE in India?
Would it be plausible to link Botai or anything similar with either Burushaski or with the Yenisseyan language family?
Or could there be a third possibly- ie that PIE is linked at the root with WSHG languages such as Botai, Kelteminar and Steppe Maykop, via AG3?
@ Matt
Hey its nice to see folks using sample sets that I sourced! (H3Africa/Malaria Africa/ & Mozambique+Angolans). For some reason they've been removed from Lukasz g25 shell site but they've removed a bunch of other great samples there too.
I have others in the pipeline hopefully Davidski can sort em out for g25'ing and I can link them here. Seems you're missing tha Fulani Burkinabe and amaXhosa samples though?
p.s. @vahaduo if you're reading dude please can we get a Chebyshev mode for the g25 runner.
@Andrzejewski
-EHG is the only thing that stands out in all of this. They were already spreading everywhere out much before even Yamnaya was born.
-CHG ancestry peaks in non-IE speaking people in Southwest Caucasus.
-Indo-European linguistics diversity spread out from Eastern Europen steppe.
-In patriarchal society like early Indo-Europeans, you can guess why CHG-like admixture is entirely female mediated.
-In Northern Europeans, despite high steppe ancestry CHG/CHG-like admixture in Northern Europeans does not exceed over 10%.
That should itself tell you what all of this means.
@Andrze,
For reasons you said, I think it safe to assume the ancestor of PIE comes from EHG. PIE itself obviously originated in a EHG, CHG mixed population.
Before, that I presume the linguistic ancestor of PIE probably comes from ANE considering EHG is 70% ANE.
But EHG got its ANE ancestry probably back in the Upper Paleolithic. Like 20,000 years ago.
So I mean, I doubt PIE has any resemblance left with the language of ANE rich Central Asians. Considering their common ancestor lived in the Upper Paleolithic.
Mallory's 2015 work on Tocharian is worth revisiting. Basically, tarim mummies = proto tocharians is very viable.
"Both geographically and temporally, then, we may expect that Common Tocharian was probably spoken sometime at least around the middle of the first millennium BCE or, indeed, up to a millennium earlier, generally in the north central and eastern reaches of the Tarim Basin. It may have been spoken beyond this region, especially in the case of TA, but without written evidence this is nearly impossible to establish. How much earlier it could have been spoken in the Tarim Basin is examined below."
"A comparison of the material culture of the Xiaohe horizon and that reconstructed from Proto-Tocharian reveals enough correspondences that one certainly cannot exclude the possibility that the ancestor of Tocharian was spoken in the Tarim Basin as early as 2000–1800 BCE. The routine placement of wheat in burials indicates the use of domestic cereals, while there is also evidence for the basic domestic animals (cattle, sheep/goat and horse). The problematic pig remains, but the wild boar was reputedly found both in the Tarim Basin (though obviously not in the desert) and on the lower slopes of the Tianshan; slight traces of pig were recovered in addition from the Iron Age site of Yumulak Kum on a now desiccated stretch of the Keriya River. It might be noted that Gumugou also yields the remains of the camel, an animal we cannot reconstruct to Proto-Indo-European, but which the Tocharians came to know. TB gives us an adjective derived from a putative *koro ‘camel’ (or ‘mule’?; the word occurs in caravan passes), and this word has no convincing etymology, although it may be related to a similar word that could mean ‘camel’ in Kroranic (D. Adams, pers. com.). Wheeled vehicles have not been recovered from the burials, but this could merely be the result of cultural practice; the earliest dated wheel in the Tarim Basin is from Wupu (c. 1400–1000 BCE; Mei 2000, 12), but it is likely that wagons were known here much earlier, as they are found from the third millennium onwards in the Eurasian steppe, including Mongolia. We might observe that there are two words associated with boats in Tocharian, TB olyi ‘boat’ and kolmo ‘boat’. Both of these words have etymologies that suggest they originally designated a hollowed-out log. So the boat-shaped coffins of the Xiaohe horizon could at least have found a linguistic referent in the Tocharian vocabulary"
@Davidski
Some of those Tarim_EMBA samples are probably from Xiaohe based on their labels and if so they are from the same layers (5 and 4) as the samples from the previous articles which looked at haplogroups, and some of them were featured in them. One of the samples would be from Gumugou in that case.
That complicates things a bit lol. Would you say this is reason to cast doubt on those earlier R1a calls?
What would be the odds that none of the samples show any sign of ancestry from the western steppes when the same cemetery has shown WSH related Y-dna and mtdna (not sure about that one) during the same time period? Especially when multiple sites show the same pattern.
R1a was shown in the 5th layer and one of these new samples is from the 4th layer so my earlier assumption that they would've just been samples which predated the R1a influx doesn't really hold up.
List of samples (sites and dates) from the upcoming "The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes" study:
https://pastebin.com/raw/qmV1i1zA
This new material does really deepen the fascination of the mysterious Steppe_Eneolithic+West_Siberian_HG group.
To recap the examples of this genotype we now have, (although some of these are *not* 100% from the group, they don't have huge distances):
1. Earliest examples: RUS_Steppe Maykop (3400-3200 BCE): This group includes SA6004, the first wagon burial, who is related to within 3 degrees to a contemporary Usatovo person. (Y-dna Q1b2b1b2b and R1a).
The group also seems to be interacting with at least Caucasus Maykop (mixed samples, including 1x male with y-dna, T1a, founding grave in a large kurgan).
There's also probably some limited 8-12 cm IBD sharing with them and some Yamnaya (https://imgur.com/a/vsIHv2z). Not a lot and seems on the level or a bit lower than some GAC samples and Corded Ware, and only to with some Yamnaya groups on Volga, at least per that image.
(This is also contemporary with Botai samples).
2. KAZ_Kumsay_EBA (approx 3100-2900 BCE): A family found in a Kurgan burial at this time, in Kazakhstan, at a site which was hypothesized to be a southern outlier site of the Yamnaya culture. 3 F and 1 M with Q1b2b1b.
(2/3: The new CHN_Dzungharia_EBA lot around 3000-2800 BCE).
3: MNG_Chemurchek_EBA (2460 BCE): (Postdating Afanasievo presence at 3000 BCE). Flexed burial, little detail on graves in paper. 2 males R1b1a1b1b3 and R1b1a1b1.
4. KAZ_Mereke_EBA (approx 2200 BCE): This is a mound cemetary which had been attributed to the Poltavka culture. Burials in flexed position, and there is a ritual/otherwise notable inclusion of a horse. 2 samples from this time are 2 main cluster males, with y-dna N(!) and then what Reich lab labels an outlier female but which is lablled as Yamnaya sample (I11736) on Global_25, at around 3000 BCE.
5: RUS_Potapovka_MLBA: I0244 (2150 BCE): Found in the Grachevka II, kurgan 5, grave 3, female. "The radiocarbon date of this individual is among the earlier dates for the Potapovka culture". (Another Potapovka sample I0246, a male, is apparently intermediate between her and the one Potapovka sample who clusters firmly with "Steppe_MLBA", I0419.)
6: Latest attestation in the Caucasus region, RUS_Lola:NV3001 (1950 BCE). Male, burial in a pit associated with metal casting equipment (rare) and animal bones. Q1b2a1a1.
7: A number of MLBA outliers: I1017 (Sintashta - 1790 BCE - Q1b), I0354 (Srubnaya - 1790 BCE), I6795 (Alakul - 1600 BCE), I3860 (Oy Dzhaylau - 1600 BCE - R1a1a1).
It's not, I guess certain, that this group actually is a single group rather than a genotype recreated again and again, and there is some variation. But since the proportions seem reasonably constant maybe one group.
If I had to guess, they're some group that branched from the Steppe_Eneolithic group and went east early, maybe with wagons, and mixed with some people, before the Sredny Stog derived groups with increasing proportions of EEF / WHG did. But ultimately weren't able to maintain as high a population size and were gone after about 1700 years?
With some low contribution into Central_Steppe_MLBA? (Narasimhan reckons 10% Central_Steppe_EMBA in Central_Steppe_MLBA).
@Matt
"If I had to guess, they're some group that branched from the Steppe_Eneolithic group and went east early, maybe with wagons, and mixed with some people, before the Sredny Stog derived groups with increasing proportions of EEF / WHG did. But ultimately weren't able to maintain as high a population size and were gone after about 1700 years?"
Why not something like this: West Siberia meets Progress type populations west of the Ural river during the "neolithic" period, close to 1/1 mixed descendants travel down both sides of the Caspian shore, one ending up as Steppe Maykop and the other as the Kumsay/Mereke samples (perhaps via the Kelteminar).
This profile is in Central Asia before wagons thats certain. Seems to be the predominant source of 'wshg' in the BMAC samples. I think there is a small amount in Botai even.
@Yamz
I've made a separate experimental version:
https://vahaduo.github.io/chebyshev/
May I ask what you need this distance measurement method for?
@Arza, cheers for that; in case it helps anyone get a sense of when these horse samples are dated to, I took that list of sample IDs and placed it into two sets which I ordered by date, depending on how the sample dates were written (if at all):
Dated by uncal BP - https://pastebin.com/PTbBabp3
Dated by Other Methods - https://pastebin.com/zHqQ45w7
(Both CSV format, open in Excel, Libreoffice, your spreadsheet program of choice. First column is the row number in Arza's original list, then the sample ID from that, then the cal BP date where applicable.).
They got some Repin and Yamnaya horses after all and quite a few from Neolithic contexts in Central Europe too. Dates are uncal BP so I guess that's why they're off from what we'd expect for Yamnaya (e.g. 4000 BP, not 4600-5000 BP).
@Copper Axe, sounds as reasonable as anything. I leant towards it being relatively recent and relatively close to time of wagons, because of the slight IBD matching with Khvalynsk and Yamnaya in Ringbauer's data (as presented by Reich) at 8-12cm, but it could be earlier than this, and no one knows when Steppe_Eneolithic profile arose (Davidski thinks mesolithic, etc.)
@Rob, possibly; I thought the lack of apparent WHG/EEF components indicated a branch off of the Steppe_Eneolithic, and then it seems simpler to me that the population is simply one stable thing given the relative (not absolute) consistency in proportions, but maybe this is not so. I think it would be surprising if various different Steppe_Eneo groups had left before getting WHG/EEF admixture, and then we don't find them in any unadmixed form, but only in various different admixtures, but it is possible. Possibly this IBD matching can find recent links between them if they're close in date (some of them are) or not.
@ Matt
Just thinking again, it could be possible.
However, the patchy character of steppe admixture - cycling though Khvalynsk-related, to Afansievo to Andronovo suggests that their admixture with WSH occurred at several regions, several times; and I think WSH were encountering several region WSHG groups, although the latter were also not static & passive either
So yeah, IBD matching for the WHSG component might clarify things.
@SLMD @Genos Historia If I agree with your claims, then would you also in turn concur that EHG outside the PIE horizon also spoke some para-PIE, ANE-descended language? If so then we can assert that Volovovo, Narva and Combed Ware Cermamic spoke a language related to PIE just by virtue of being also EHG.
We can also go back further and link Botai, Kelterminar and other WSHG with PIE, even though it’s a stretch. My notion, and I suspect that @Copper Axe harbors similar doubts, is that Botai might be closely related to either Kett/Yenisseyan or to Burushaski.
@vahaduo
Wow thank you so much this is really appreciated.
I've been curious as to the efficacy and accuracy of Chebyshev for some time now - in particular against Euclidean [straight line vs longest distance on one axis?] in teasing out ancestral stream(s) for multigenerationally admixed individuals.
Single population distance is also very interesting in contrast to Euclidean imo. I just tested it quickly and had some brilliant results! I'd like to discuss the nuances of the difference even more but I can't figure out a way of sharing my email privately on here.
Although of course Euclidean is the standard for a reason so I'm not suggesting it shouldn't be so. Having a lot of fun with this so thanks again!
What's the consensus on the idea that uralic harbours loan words from tocharian?
It would be interesting if WSHG ancestry is still dominant in Tarim during the Iron Age..
I think it's awesome that the Tarim mummies turned out like this.
As a result, in theory, it should now be much easier to trace the origins of the Tocharians.
Basically, the major pulse of admixture that arrives in the northern Tarim Basin after about 1,500 BCE should be the one associated with the arrival of Tocharian speakers.
It doesn't make any sense that a later migration is responsible for tocharian. Mallory points this out. Tarim basin on its east is supposedly dominated by iranian speakers in the iron age. However tocharian bears no resemblance to indo iranian but has iranian and indian loanwords which presumably came from interactions with the sakas and later the Buddhism from India.
Tocharian A and TB are mutually unintelligible hence Adams and Mallory conclude that they diverged in situ and were isolated for very long period of time.
With The special position of tocharian and the special nature of ancestry found in tarim mummies, it would make complete sense that these ANE people were proto tocharians. There is little evidence of any afanasievo ancestry in tarim till the iron age. This ANE ancestry is the best bet that we have.
@Davidski
"I think it's awesome that the Tarim mummies turned out like this."
It is fascinating for sure. There is some artistic overlap in the designs of figurines and stone slabs shared by many of these west-siberian/central asian populations which is also present at Xiaohe. Anthropomorphic figures with a face similar to that of the Shigir idol basically pop up everywhere where you also find WSHG ancestry.
It also confirms my suspicion that researchers dealing with craniology have struggled to properly classify skulls from WSHG related populations in the past. Thank god for ancient DNA!
Sorry to ask again but what do you think about the discrepancy in regards to the previous Y-dna/mtdna results from Xiaohe and these samples?
By the way many of the other Tarim mummies like those from Zaghunluq (Cherchen man and women) and those at Yumulak Kum are quite a bit younger than these samples. I know you're probably aware of this but many people tend lump all these mummies together when some of them have 2000 yesrs inbetween them.
@Copper Axe
It's possible that the old PCR results for the mummies that were tested were wrong and none of them belonged to R1a.
If the mummies in this new paper are the same samples, then that's what must've happened.
But I don't know yet. The R1a mummies might be from a more recent burial layer than these Botai-like mummies.
@vAsiSTha
"What's the consensus on the idea that uralic harbours loan words from tocharian?"
You also have this article:
https://brill.com/view/journals/ieul/7/1/article-p72_3.xml?language=en
Not loanwords per se but it suggests a period of contact.
I'm going to have a little chat with V. Napolskikh who is one of the people who proposed that (Para) Tocharian had a significant presence during the Seima-Turbino phenomenon and that this reflected in the Uralic languages and perhaps others. This theory is not without controversy but in the context of ancient DNA and archaeology it is interesting I think.
@vAsiSTha
It doesn't matter what Mallory said. He didn't have these aDNA results to work with back then.
Learn some basics about the Tocharians and their Silk Road cities instead of just parroting what Mallory claimed decades ago.
It's totally insane to suggest that the genetic profile of these Botai-like mummies is associated with proto-Tocharians.
Obviously, it's much more sensible to expect that Tocharians arrived in the Tarim Basin from somewhere else, even as late as the Silk Road era, and were more closely related to other Indo-European speakers than these mummies.
But of course you're just another online crazy person, so I don't expect much from you.
@Davidski
Does it work in a way that if you mess up one call, say mistake what is actually PH155 for M417 that this would extend towards all the other ones? Isn't it odd that the mtdna seems consistent with the other findings then?
I have no idea how all that stuff works anyways, talking well above my intelligence level here.
"The R1a mummies might be from a more recent burial layer than these Botai-like mummies."
Yeah thats the pickle, because several of these probably came from that recent article which only looked at mtdna, and if so then the R1a samples are not supposed to be from a more recent layer. They were sampled from the 5th layer, and these new samples would be from the 5th and one (M75) from the younger 4th layer! But the two samples I could link to other articles were both women so who knows, paternal replacement during layer 5 with these women just representing unadmixed natives? Not sure if that works though.
Another option would be that those R1a layers are not really from the 5th layer and have been incorrectly classified as such. Or someone is witholding data lol.
@Copper Axe
Yeah, those old PCR based tests target very few sites, often just one, and they're susceptible to contamination. And there's no way to check whether the calls are actually based on ancient DNA rather than modern DNA, because there's no way to check if the DNA shows ancient damage.
So it's quite possible that someone who belonged to R1a handled those remains, and all of the mummies came out R1a. Or there was some other error like that.
Think about it, R1a(xZ93) in mummies from Asia? I guess we should've known that something was off.
@Andrzejewski
"It might’ve been that Afanasievo mixed with Botai-like to form Okunevo, and when the later wave of Europeans, the Andronovo swept by, they were all subsumed into a new IE speaking polity."
The differences between these Tarim people and Okunevo do not end with the varying level of western admixture in Okunevo. Okunevo also had much more East Asian (East Siberian). The Tarim samples have excess East Asian ancestry above Tyumen HG in the range of 0-10%, the Okunevo samples have it in the range of 20-40%.
---------------------------
BTW, the Tarim mummies to be basically identical to Botai is something I did not see coming at all.
"It doesn't matter what Mallory said. He didn't have these aDNA results to work with back then."
See the problem as always is that you have a theory in mind, and then you look at genes when new samples come out and based on that you decide the language of those depending on whether it suits your theory or not.
That's really a great way to do this sort of science lmao
No, the problem is that you're significantly mentally unstable.
Go and see a psychiatrist ASAP.
@vAsiSTha
“However tocharian bears no resemblance to indo iranian but has iranian and indian loanwords which presumably came from interactions with the sakas and later the Buddhism from India.”
Exactly, no links between Tocharian and Indo-Iranian. But there are some links with Slavic. According to G. S. Lane their last Indo-European contacts were with Slavic. Armenian and Greek links could be from Silk Road as David suggested.
This link of Tocharian with Slavic, and Slavic influences in Turkic and Chinese languages, are some of the reasons why I think Andronovo was Indo-Slavic, not Indo-Iranian, i.e. closer to Slavic than to Vedic Sanskrit:
https://postimg.cc/sMchkSFS
@Davidski
"And there's no way to check whether the calls are actually based on ancient DNA rather than modern DNA, because there's no way to check if the DNA shows ancient damage."
Thanks for the explanation David, makes sense.
"Think about it, R1a(xZ93) in mummies from Asia? I guess we should've known that something was off."
Well there is an Andronovo site dating to about 1950-1900 bc in Xinjiang (Eastern tian Shan facing Dzungaria) and Z283 in steppe_mlba context as well, so I dont think it was outside the realm of prossibility. All of them having R1a but none having Q or basal R1b clades should've been a sign maybe, but if there is one place where you'd expect significant bottlenecking it is there.
But then again from an archaeological perspective there was pretty much nothing indicating a solid relation betwen Abashevo derived populations and Xiaohe anyways.
Also those western looking mummies probably threw us off, but its only the younger mummies (LBA/EIA) which look like our mythical eastern Celts rather than ambigiuously europoid-ish in my opinion.
Tarim samples probably are actually R1a as well. Deal with it. You're in denial
There seem to be significant population shifts in Dzhungaria during the IA. Slab-Grave & Saka ancestry both appear; could be Xiongnu -related.
@vAsiSTha
That's right knucklehead, there will be R1a in the Tarim Basin, in samples that are clearly related to the Andronovo expansion, and it'll be Z93+.
@Rob
"There seem to be significant population shifts in Dzhungaria during the IA. Slab-Grave & Saka ancestry both appear; could be Xiongnu -related"
If you're referring to the Shirenzigou samples, I think more likely Yuezhi related. Fits better with the timing, location, material culture, historical records of the region etc. Going by the archaeology it wasn't a very friendly replacement either going by the bits I could uncover from archaeology, with the newcomer nomads using the preceding inhabitants as human sacrificial victims.
The "Central Asian" Xiongnu samples from Damgaard's article look like they come from a similar population.
@Davidski “ As a result, in theory, it should now be much easier to trace the origins of the Tocharians.
Basically, the major pulse of admixture that arrives in the northern Tarim Basin after about 1,500 BCE should be the one associated with the arrival of Tocharian speakers.”
Andronovo?
Can anyone please post a link to what these WSHG samples looked like?
@Andrzejewski
Can anyone please post a link to what these WSHG samples looked like?
Very good maps on Anthrogenica showing what modern populations these people from Tarim are close to https://i.imgur.com/jlsuyI0.png , https://i.imgur.com/grh149J.png
That is, this is a Siberian population that has not mixed with either the MLBA steppe dwellers or the Turks. It also confirms my hypothesis that N1a has already come to the Urals very strongly mixed with Q /ANE
“ Very good maps on Anthrogenica showing what modern populations these people from Tarim are close to https://i.imgur.com/jlsuyI0.png , https://i.imgur.com/grh149J.png
That is, this is a Siberian population that has not mixed with either the MLBA steppe dwellers or the Turks. It also confirms my hypothesis that N1a has already come to the Urals very strongly mixed with Q /ANE”
Thank you, @Vladimir 🙂
I meant mostly in terms of phenotype/phys anthropology. The latter, Andronovo-based reconstructions like Cherchen Man (“Ur-David”) and the “Beauty of Lulan” have 1/3 EEF and WHG, therefore are similar to modern European and Euro-American extant pops. I was hoping we’d find some Afanasievo relics, to shed a light on what the “original IE speakers” looked like, ie sans the GAC, Baltic HG, Tripolye and Dnieper Donets admixture, especially the Globular Amphora in particular.
Finding Tarim Basin skulls and applying precise and relevant reconstruction techniques might help us shed a light of the evolution of ANE from Mal’ta Boy to the present, through Botai, Native Americans, Kett and of course - our Indo-European ancestors.
@Vladimir “ That is, this is a Siberian population that has not mixed with either the MLBA steppe dwellers or the Turks. It also confirms my hypothesis that N1a has already come to the Urals very strongly mixed with Q /ANE”
Good point! Now, mind you that the Botai samples had both R1b (albeit a different clade than Yamnaya and other WSHs) but also a basal N.
Someone on AG suggested that Uralic languages arose as a mixture of WSHG and trans-Baikal languages, a theory which is unproven and I tend to discount.
@All If it’s proven that WSHG skeletons look more or less Europoid, then it will prove, once and for all, that not only did the current “Caucasian” appearance originated with Ancient North Eurasians, but to put beyond any reasonable doubt that our IE languages and cultures are based on these 25,000 year old Siberian mammoth hunters from the Baikal-Sayan region.
I strongly object to the way White Nationalists and antisemites have distorted the science for 200 years when it comes to IE studies, so I understand how come the Reich school is trying to claim hogwash such as “IE or CHG came from Iran”, however - if science finally proves that IE languages, culture and looks (by which I mean body build and craniometry, not hair or skin color) mostly came from Siberian ANE/WSHG - then I’ll readily accept it.
@Andrzejewski
"that not only did the current “Caucasian” appearance originated with Ancient North Eurasians"
What the hell do you mean? You have completely Caucasoid/Europiod skulls in UP Europe and Middle East who either predate ANE or are completely unrelated to them.
"but to put beyond any reasonable doubt that our IE languages and cultures are based on these 25,000 year old Siberian mammoth hunters from the Baikal-Sayan region."
This is worse than Nostratic-tier bullshit.
@andrezjewski
ANE is mostly of upper paleolithic europeans origin. It is mostly ( 75%)made up of aurignacian dna. So ANE is just an older version of the WHG.
A group of paleo euros made it to Siberia. The ones who stayed back evolved into WHG after the LGM. The two groups mixed again forming EHG. Then EHG and WHG mixed again in Ukraine to form PIE
@Vladimir
(…) It also confirms my hypothesis that N1a has already come to the Urals very strongly mixed with Q /ANE. (…)
Could you explain that, please? In your opinion, could the appearance of N1a in the (G)Ural be related to Seima-Turbino?
Having a bit more of a look at these with Vahaduo's West Eurasia PCA: https://imgur.com/a/XCKmOTS
It actually does look like Dzungaria_EBA1 might be intermediate Dzungaria_EBA2 and Afanasievo potentially? So where I was a bit skeptical of any Afanasievo ancestry, it may actually be there...
The Tarim_EMBA also look a *lot* more interesting than they seemed on the North Eurasia PCA - it really does look to me like they're positioning further "east" on the WHG->WSHG cline than the WSHG are! WSHG are probably clinally intermediate between these guys and the EHG (mostly like Tarim_EMBA but somewhat intermediate). Further out than AfontovaGora3...
I also find with some custom PCA that they do seem to peak "their own dimension" in a large PCA and are not just intermediate betwen existing samples. See - https://imgur.com/a/WLYzPX2
They're definitely further on a cline than Botai and WSHG (and WSHG might be modellable between them and EHG, anachronistic though it is).
Amazing that such a group survived until such a relatively late date.
@Copper Axe,
Do useful archaeological knowledge on inner Asia before the arrival of Indo Europeans? I've seen you talk about it a few times.
Did they practise pastorlism or were they hunter gatherers?
Okenovo, Slab culture I have heard were pastorlists.
The Tarim mummy cemeteries dating 2000-1700 BC, have skins of domesticated animals. Sheep and cattle. So they practiced pastoralism.
People seem to think this is evidence they were of Indo European origin. Yet, would it be just as likely they were indigenous people who practised pastorlism.
I find it interesting how some saw Slab culture as Indo European just like people saw Tarim mummies as Tarim mummies. Yet for both of them they are indigenous Central Asians.
@vlad
"That is, this is a Siberian population that has not mixed with either the MLBA steppe dwellers or the Turks."
Except this tarimAne is present in khvalynsk i10434 as I pasted somewhere above. It is also present in steppe_maykop and steppe_kumsay_eba. And more likely than not also is responsible for the ANE signal in steppe eneolithic (progress, vonyuchka).
This ANE is definitely present in the Turan region as well (sarazm, geoksyur bmac etc) and is probably responsible for the ANE signal in south Asians.
More conversation needs to be had on this, and lots of analyses redone.
@ Copper Axe
'If you're referring to the Shirenzigou samples, I think more likely Yuezhi related. Fits better with the timing, location, material culture, historical records of the region etc. Going by the archaeology it wasn't a very friendly replacement either going by the bits I could uncover from archaeology, with the newcomer nomads using the preceding inhabitants as human sacrificial victims.
The "Central Asian" Xiongnu samples from Damgaard's article look like they come from a similar population.''
Perhaps, but I was stating more broadly that the population looks like something coming out of Mongolia during the Xiongnu Era rather than asserting the identify as Xiongnu per se (for which we would need to study what statements they made with their material culture).
The Shirenzigou samples, acc. to C14, are somewhat earlier than the historical Yuezhi migration, by a couple of centuries (~ 5/300 cal BCE vs 176 BC).
So their arrival to the Dzhungar basin corresponds with the commencement of the Xiongnu confederacy, just like Xiongnu-like people & material culture expanded into the Kazakh steppe, south Siberia & other directions at this time.
@Genos “ I find it interesting how some saw Slab culture as Indo European just like people saw Tarim mummies as Tarim mummies. Yet for both of them they are indigenous Central Asians.”
Because they were partially Afanasievo
The upcoming Bohemia abstract seems interesting
i wonder what they mean by ''at ~2800 BCE three genetically and culturally differentiated groups co-existed.''
Steppe, EEF-derived, and something higher in WHG affinities ?
Corded Ware appeared by 2900 BCE, were initially genetically diverse, did not derive all “steppe” ancestry from known Yamnaya
There's also an 'unknown Yamnaya' ?
Hi Davidski,
They posted a paper about bronze age bohemia over on anthrogenica:
https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?24561-Bohemia-Dynamic-changes-in-genomic-and-social-structures-in-3rd-millennium-BCE-centr
any idea if its related to the La Tene L1029 sample?
(sorry if this is getting double posted, this google blogger format is a bit hard to follow)
@Brent
The upcoming Bohemian paper is from the lab at Max Planck. I don't know if there are any L1029 samples in it.
The La Tene L1029 is waiting to be published at the Harvard lab. I guess if it passes all the checks we should see it in a paper soon.
@Rob
I'm guessing these will be the three genetically distinct groups in Bohemia:
- run of the mill EEF
- Yamnaya-like CWC
- something unexpected rich in HG ancestry, possibly in some way related to Narva
In regards to "known" Yamnaya, I suppose they're referring to the "unknown" Yamnaya that is supposed to be rich in R1a-M417 and R1b-L51, but they haven't sampled it yet.
@Andrzejewski
I strongly object to the way White Nationalists and antisemites have distorted the science for 200 years when it comes to IE studies, so I understand how come the Reich school is trying to claim hogwash such as “IE or CHG came from Iran”...
Hogwash is hogwash, even if it's well meaning hogwash, and it has no place in science.
@Rob
176 bc is when the Yuezhi suffered their first major defeat, which eventually lead to the bulk (Da Yuezhi) migrating to the Ili valley in Kazakhstan. Remnant groups (Xiao Yuezhi) remained in western Gansu and allied with the Qiang, and others founded a city state near modern day Hami, very close to where Shirenzigou is. There is a mention many centuries later that these people were the descendants of those Xiao Yuezhi, but I cant say if it was because those people identified as such or because the Chinese remembered that once upon a time the Xiao Yuezhi founded a state there.
Its precisely those early dates why you cant ascribe it to the Xiongnu in my opinion. They were way further east back then, north of the Yinshan mountains, Ordos loop and Yanshan mountains. According to A. Kovalev the material culture of the nomads over there was significantly different from Pazyryk related materials like those at the Ordos culture. The barkol steppe nomads have those Pazyryk related links however.
Modu's conquest of the northern tribes (Mongolia proper) doesn't begin until after 215 bc, and then you still have several decades before the Xiongnu overthrow the Yuezhi as the big boss in the region.
So in the 3rd century bc (around the time the nomadic materials show up) you shouldn't really expect Xiongnu in those regions, at least not based on historical records. It was slightly west to the core Yuezhi territory and around this time they were the main nomadic power in the region (Touman's tribe having been vassals to them in the past). Its only later that the Xiongnu are there and quite limited because several of those city states were allied with the Xiongnu and had been from quite early on.
I'd say that most of the significant expansions into south Siberia and Kazakhstan happened during the Hunno-Sarmatian period (post Xiongnu collapse), and once that period is over its Turkic people everywhere.
During the Xiongnu empire period there is considerable continuity in a lot of those places. Fits with the historical records as well as Modu's letter to emperor Wen indicated, stating that entities such as the Wusun and Loulan have joined/become Xiongnu, with all the peoples of the bow united as one.
@Genos Historia
The general position was that Okunev was a culture of native Siberians (or mixed caucasoid/mongoloids) which were influenced by the Afanasievo from which they derive their pastoralism and metallurgy. This seems to be the case in the Soviet materials and Mallory says the same in his encyclopedia of IE culture I think. David W. Anthony does as well.
Several of the south Siberian material cultures during the bronze age were pastoral actually. In Central Asia during the bronze age it had spread as well. Some acquired it from southern Central Asia, others from the western steppe herders, both Afanasievo and the Indo-Iranians later on. Not just pastoralism by the way, advanced metallurgy spreading with the Seima-Turbino phenomenon is also part of this.
Michael Frachetti has a bunch of articles about the diffusion of pastoralism in eneolithic and bronze age Central Asia which might be helpful:
https://www.academia.edu/6106267/Frachetti_2013_Bronze_Age_Pastoralism_and_Differentiated_Landscapes_along_the_Inner_Asian_Mountain_Corridor
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/663692?seq=1
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.1273
https://www.academia.edu/6106267/Frachetti_2013_Bronze_Age_Pastoralism_and_Differentiated_Landscapes_along_the_Inner_Asian_Mountain_Corridor
Those mountain ranges in Siberia and Central Asia are key for these movements here.
In Xinjiang there was some evidence of presence of foragers and agriculturalists prior to the Tarim mummies, but its all quite sporadic and mostly quite recently discovered.
The thinking behind Xiaohe was more like this I think: First there is (next to) nothing indicating habitation, suddenly you have these europoid peoples with material links to Central Asia in the eastern Tarim (Xiaohe, Gumugou etc.). Over time you have more mummies and eventually you reach a point where the languages of the region are textually attested and we got Tocharian and Khotanese/Tumshuqese.
I think that if back in the days they had the awareness which we do in regards to what kind of populations lived in Central Asia and Siberia the automatic association with Indo-European speaking peoples may not have been so easily suggested. Well maybe if we didn't had a study in addition which suggested all the paternal lineages were European.
Its kind of funny how these finds from a genetic perspective seem very surprising, but it makes understanding the archaeology behind Xiaohe quite a bit easier to be honest.
Here are some articles related to the Tarim Basin:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318170600_Diverse_lifestyles_and_populations_in_the_Xiaohe_culture_of_the_Lop_Nur_region_Xinjiang_China
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep18939
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-70515-y
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0068957
This is a good one to read:
http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1328477&dswid=4977
Although I remember some of its assumptions/conclusions were guided by the ancient DNA results which I'm questioning now.
You can find some interesting stuff on sino-platonic.org as well, but certainly don't take everything on that site at face value. Many really interesting articles however.
Oh and here is some stuff regarding early habitation in Xinjiang:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339180234_Agriculture_and_palaeoeconomy_in_prehistoric_Xinjiang_China_3000-200_bc
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261374083_The_earliest_well-dated_archeological_site_in_the_hyper-arid_Tarim_Basin_and_its_implications_for_prehistoric_human_migration_and_climatic_change
I have a whole bunch more but I tend to save them on my PC so I had to look the links up, but this should get you a long way I feel.
@ Copper Age
''So in the 3rd century bc (around the time the nomadic materials show up) you shouldn't really expect Xiongnu in those regions, at least not based on historical records. It was slightly west to the core Yuezhi territory and around this time they were the main nomadic power in the region (Touman's tribe having been vassals to them in the past). Its only later that the Xiongnu are there and quite limited because several of those city states were allied with the Xiongnu and had been from quite early on.''
Of course you can , and thats' what archaeology & aDNA shows
The birth of the Xiongnu polity had wide-ranging impacts, well beyond Mongolia, and earlier than the Chinese-historical mentions of the Xiongnu
Re the Bohemian abstract:
Major migrations preceded the arrival of “steppe” ancestry and at ~2800 BCE three genetically and culturally differentiated groups co-existed.
Mention of major migrations preceding steppe ancestry would suggest to me that there are some differentiated EEF groups present prior to Steppe ancestry arriving. (GAC like people? More France/Germany farmer like people? Balkan farmer like people?).
Corded Ware appeared by 2900 BCE, were initially genetically diverse, did not derive all “steppe” ancestry from known Yamnaya, and assimilated females of diverse backgrounds.
Seems to be suggesting that CWC had more y-chromosome diversity and autosomal ancestry profile diversity initially, and also did not just mix with GAC ("females of diverse backgrounds").
Both Corded Ware and Bell Beaker groups underwent dynamic changes, involving sharp reductions and complete replacements of Y-chromosomal diversity at ~2600 and ~2400 BCE, respectively, the latter accompanied by increased Neolithic-like ancestry.
This is less clear (sharp reductions and complete replacements of Y in both groups? reductions in CWC and then replacements in BB? Increased Neo in BB or both groups, or Neo at 2400 BCE?)
The Bronze Age saw new social organization emerge amid a ≥40% population turnover.
Sounds like what Patterson's model suggested happened in Southern Britain, again wonder if this will fit evidence or it will be plausibly also a gradual change...
@Matt
Yeah, there will be CWC samples from Bohemia with R1a-M417, R1b-L51 and Q1a. Maybe also I2 of some sort.
But eventually most CWC samples will be R1a-M417 and most BBC samples R1b-P312.
That’s what I understood - ascribing R1a-M417 & R1b-L151 lineage levelling/ founder effects to the middle and final corded ware period
But I’m not sure if that’s the case . Would need to see body & data
P.S.
There's also Z2103 in early Czech CWC.
But I have a hunch that's a signal of a Yamnaya incursion from Hungary. Let's wait and see.
@Matt
"The Tarim_EMBA also look a *lot* more interesting than they seemed on the North Eurasia PCA - it really does look to me like they're positioning further "east" on the WHG->WSHG cline than the WSHG are! WSHG are probably clinally intermediate between these guys and the EHG (mostly like Tarim_EMBA but somewhat intermediate). Further out than AfontovaGora3...".
I think it is mistaken to think Tarim EMBA as some kind of remnant extreme ANE. They are further on that cline simply because they have have more East Asian admixture. That is the opposite of being a pure remnant of something.
Generally all Mesolithic-Neolithic ANE based groups in the region and now Tarim EMBA have excess East Asian ancestry above AG3, it is an admixture that arrived after the ANE ancestors of EHG moved to Europe. (Because no European group before Steppe Maikop shows it.)
BTW, they are very similar to Botai. Botai is also more East Asian than Tyumen and Sosonivoy.
@vAsiSTha
"Except this tarimAne is present in khvalynsk i10434 as I pasted somewhere above. It is also present in steppe_maykop and steppe_kumsay_eba. And more likely than not also is responsible for the ANE signal in steppe eneolithic (progress, vonyuchka)."
1. We should not talk about this like a never before seen type of population was discovered. Tarim EMBA is a close cousin of Botai, so really nothing new on the table in that regard.
2. It is not likely at all that a population like this is the source of ANE ancestry in Progress and Vonyucka, because Tarim EMBA and Botai are a way too East Asian for that. Steppe Maikop and Kumsay are another story, but again, there is nothing fundamentally new on that regard.
(Second attempt because I dont see my comment posted)
@Genos Historia
The general position was that Okunev was a culture of native Siberians (or mixed caucasoid/mongoloids) which were influenced by the Afanasievo. This seems to be the case in the Soviet materials and Mallory says the same in his encyclopedia of IE culture I think. David W. Anthony foes as well.
Several of the south Siberian material cultures during the bronze age were pastoral actually. In Central Asia during the bronze age it had spread as well. Some acquired it from southern Central Asia, others from the western steppe herders, both Afanasievo and the Indo-Iranians later on. Not just pastoralism by the way, advanced metallurgy spreading with the Seima-Turbino phenomenon is also part of this.
Michael Frachetti has a bunch of articles about the diffusion of pastoralism in eneolithic and bronze age Central Asia which might be helpful:
https://www.academia.edu/6106267/Frachetti_2013_Bronze_Age_Pastoralism_and_Differentiated_Landscapes_along_the_Inner_Asian_Mountain_Corridor
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/663692?seq=1
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.1273
https://www.academia.edu/6106267/Frachetti_2013_Bronze_Age_Pastoralism_and_Differentiated_Landscapes_along_the_Inner_Asian_Mountain_Corridor
Those mountain ranges in Siberia and Central Asia are key for these movements here.
In Xinjiang there was some evidence of presence of foragers and agriculturalists prior to the Tarim mummies, but its all quite sporadic and mostly quite recently discovered.
The thinking behind Xiaohe was more like this I think: First there is (next to) nothing indicating habitation, suddenly you have these europoid peoples with material links to Central Asia in the eastern Tarim (Xiaohe, Gumugou etc.). Over time you have more mummies and eventually you reach a point where the languages of the region are textually attested and we got Tocharian and Khotanese/Tumshuqese.
I think that if back in the days they had the awareness which we do in regards to what kind of populations lived in Central Asia and Siberia the automatic association with Indo-European speaking peoples may not have been so easily suggested. Well maybe if we didn't had a study in addition which suggested all the paternal lineages were European.
Its kind of funny how these finds from a genetic perspective seem very surprising, but it makes understanding the archaeology behind Xiaohe quite a bit easier to be honest.
Here are some articles related to the Tarim Basin:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318170600_Diverse_lifestyles_and_populations_in_the_Xiaohe_culture_of_the_Lop_Nur_region_Xinjiang_China
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep18939
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-70515-y
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0068957
This is a good one to read:
http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1328477&dswid=4977
Although I remember some of its assumptions/conclusions were guided by the ancient DNA results which I'm questioning now.
You can find some interesting stuff on sino-platonic.org as well, but certainly don't take everything on that site at face value. Many really interesting articles however.
Oh and here is some stuff regarding early habitation in Xinjiang:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339180234_Agriculture_and_palaeoeconomy_in_prehistoric_Xinjiang_China_3000-200_bc
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261374083_The_earliest_well-dated_archeological_site_in_the_hyper-arid_Tarim_Basin_and_its_implications_for_prehistoric_human_migration_and_climatic_change
I have a whole bunch more but I tend to save them on my PC so I had to look the links up, but this should get you a long way I feel.
Key question....
Was the Tarim Basin not inhabited by humans till 2000 BC? Do the oldest mummies represent the earliest human settlement there?
@Matt
I have to refine my earlier (yet to appear) comment. I looked at the North Eurasia PCA and I think I see what you mean. Although the excess East Asian ancestry in Tarim EMBA (compared to AG3 and even Tyumen HG) is clear, but if I try to visualize Tarim EMBA as a two way mixture of "ANE" and East Asians, then the end endpoint of the line is interesting. If I fix one end at AG3 then the other end is pretty much Eskimos. Something that is not impossible, but does not feel right. And if I fix the other end of the line on Shamanka_N or something similar, then the other end is somewhere behind AG3 on the WHG - AG3 cline. So yes, I can see them being an East Asian shifted "extreme AG3".
Fascinating stuff Davidski. It seems like that has some obvious implications for how we talk and think about the early steppe societies of 3500-3000 BCE were before the expansion to Europe. I.e. were they actually already heavily structured in y-dna and in spatially separated groups *on the steppe/forest-steppe*, or is the expansion of particular clades a consequence of expansion and dynamics and different sampling of socially separated burial traditions of different visibility?
Without me saying it definitely proves any particular arguments anyone has made right or wrong. It's another data point to put in that. Hopefully we can also compare this to the picture in Stog, Usatovo, Khvalynsk (at this time and earlier).
Re; Z2103, I guess whether this actually show that whether or not in any sense Yamnaya was ancestral in any sense to most European steppe ancestry today (and cultures like CWC), it shows that at least some ongoing contact and that if these cultures did speak IE dialects that diverged at Sredny Stog time depth, possibly still ongoing linguistic influence between them.
@Slumbery, I think you could run some stats on f4(Mbuti,Papuan/DevilsGate/etc;Botai,Tarim_EMBA) and there might be something small in this direction, but I don't think that explains entirely because they also peak on other dimensionality. I think it's a combination of that, + continued drift that AG3 lacks (the lack of later specific drift relevant to present day West Eurasia which compresses AG3 and MA1 towards the centre of the graph, while Tarim_EMBA probably has more drift to the east relevant to present day West Eurasia), + Botai possibly having slightly more WHG related ancestry (which makes sense as they're further west). Multiple effects. Formal stats on f4(Mbuti,WHG;Botai,Tarim_EMBA) and f4(Mbuti,AG3;Botai,Tarim_EMBA) would also be interesting stuff. Some of these effects may exist and others not. Most likely the upcoming paper will do this stuff anyway.
@Davidski
Am I not allowed to share those links from researchgate and academia.edu here? Or is it spam filter?
@Genos Historia
Drop your e-mail and I'll send you a bunch if those articles I tried to post here.
@Slumbery
Are you saying Afontova Gora has East Asian admixture? If so, based on what population and samples? AG3, MA1, and Yana all have Aurignacian-like Paleo-European ancestry, mixed with something Bacho Kiro related, which apparently helped spawn Tianyuan and Salkhit. What exactly defines “East Asian?” I feel this is similar to SSA. A blanket term that doesn’t accurately describe the complex populations involved.
@Copper Axe
Spam filter. Sometimes I can recover them, and other times I don't know where they go.
It's generally safer to keep things short and without too many links.
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