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Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Modern domestic horses came from the Eastern European steppe


Over at Nature at this LINK. I'm getting the impression that geneticists and the editors at Nature are really crap at geography. Obviously, this paper argues that modern domestic horses came from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, which is located very firmly in Eastern Europe. But, inexplicably, instead of actually saying this, the authors came up with the much more ambiguous term Western Eurasian steppes, and even put that in the title. I wonder why? Here's the paper abstract:

Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare 1. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling 2,3,4 at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 bc3. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia 5 and Anatolia 6, have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes [my note: they actually mean the Pontic-Caspian steppe, which is located in Eastern Europe], especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Furthermore, we map the population changes accompanying domestication from 273 ancient horse genomes. This reveals that modern domestic horses ultimately replaced almost all other local populations as they expanded rapidly across Eurasia from about 2000 bc, synchronously with equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled chariots. We find that equestrianism involved strong selection for critical locomotor and behavioural adaptations at the GSDMC and ZFPM1 genes. Our results reject the commonly held association 7 between horseback riding and the massive expansion of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists into Europe [my note: the Yamnaya culture was located in Europe] around 3000 bc 8,9 driving the spread of Indo-European languages 10. This contrasts with the scenario in Asia where Indo-Iranian languages, chariots and horses spread together, following the early second millennium bc Sintashta culture 11,12.

Librado, P., Khan, N., Fages, A. et al. The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes. Nature (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04018-9

Update: I emailed one of the lead authors, Ludovic Orlando, asking him for a comment. Here it is:

Thanks for your interest in our research. We indeed struggled finding the term that would be most appropriate and this was discussed with our coauthors. The Pontic-Caspian steppe would seem the most obvious choice but my understanding is that this would include a large region, stretching from the most north-western side of the Black sea to the foothills of the Urals. This is larger than the signature recovered in our data. My understanding is that the Eastern European steppes would also stretch more northernly than the region that we narrowed down. Eastern European steppes was also not immediately clear, even for European scholars such as myself. Therefore, it did not seem that there were any terms that were ready-made for truly qualifying our findings. We thus went for Western Eurasian steppes in the main title, and sticked to more precise locations such as the Don-Volga region in the main text. I guess that this is one of those cases where the activities of past herders did not exactly follow some geographic terms that would only be defined thousands of years later.

However, the Pontic-Caspian steppe and the Eastern European steppe are in fact terms that describe the western end of the Eurasian steppe. So they should be totally interchangeable with the term Western Eurasian steppes. Except, at least to me, they seem less ambiguous.

Ergo, the Eastern European steppe can't be more northerly than the Western Eurasian steppes, because it's the same thing. Moreover, the Pontic-Caspian steppe can't stretch further west than the Western Eurasian steppes, because, again, it's the same thing.

Indeed, the land north of the Eastern European/Western Eurasian steppes is called the forest steppe.

See also...


236 comments:

1 – 200 of 236   Newer›   Newest»
Davidski said...

Here's the email I sent to Ludovic Orlando...

In regards to your new paper, I've never seen the term Western Eurasian steppes before.

The region of Eurasia that you pinpoint in your paper as the source of modern domestic horses is actually the Pontic-Caspian steppe or the Eastern European steppe.

Why did you use the term Western Eurasian steppes instead?


Onur Dincer said...

I'm getting the impression that geneticists and the editors at Nature are really crap at geography. Obviously, this paper argues that modern domestic horses came from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, which is located very firmly in Eastern Europe. But, inexplicably, instead of actually saying this, the authors came up with the much more ambiguous term Western Eurasian steppes, and even put that in the title. I wonder why?

Many view the modern-era extension of the boundary of Europe from the River Don to the Ural River as a result of Russian colonialism and imperialism (which seems to be a correct observation), but some people go even further and object to it for that very reason. I suspect such objections at least partly play a role in the definition of the Pontic-Caspian steppe in a more vague and less politically loaded Western Eurasia rather than Europe in some academic circles. Not saying I agree with them, just making an observation.

Genos Historia said...

Lol.

Yeah, even the idea Botai lived in Central Asia is wrong. They lived in Western Asia. Most of Kazakhstan is Western Asia.

There's a misconception that the moment you step east of the Urals you are in Central Asia. No you are in West Asia.

Geneticists need to take a geographic 101 course.

Copper Axe said...

Replying here:

@Davidski

"Yes, possibly, and this is exactly what the authors should have tested considering their other findings."

I also find it unfortunate they have nothing from the Afanasievo culture or the bronze age Altai-Sayan reyion except for horse bones from the LBA/EIA Deer Stone Khirigsuur complex of Mongolia. Not that I would expect all that much given their time of migration but it would have made the picture a bit more complete.

Davidski said...

@Genos

Nope.

Botai was located in Central Asia.

In fact, the Urals are technically the border between Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Sometimes the western parts of Kazakhstan are indeed labeled western Asia, but this isn't common.

West Asia, as opposed to western Asia, is always south of the Caucasus and Caspian Sea.

Genos Historia said...

I can't help but suspect it is political.

The academics don't say this is why upfront. But I think we all suspect it is why.

To say the Indo European languages originated in Europe, is 'Eurocentric.' To say modern domesticated horses originated in Europe, is 'Eurocentric.'

So they chose to use the term Eurasian instead.

Onur Dincer said...

@Genos Historia

Yeah, even the idea Botai lived in Central Asia is wrong. They lived in Western Asia. Most of Kazakhstan is Western Asia.

There's a misconception that the moment you step east of the Urals you are in Central Asia. No you are in West Asia.


Well, no, this is the most common modern definition of West or Western Asia:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Western_Asia_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg

Genos Historia said...

@Davidski,

Alright well, this may be common vernacular outside genetic circles. But it doesn't make sense to me.

I'm going to call it Western Asia, Northwest Asia on my youtube channel. This I think helps people mentally map ancient populations better.

Why should a western border of Asia be considered central Asia instead of western Asia?

I understand Southern Asia extends further west than northern Asia. But then maybe call Kazkahstan northwest Asia. Then you won't be making the mistake of saying it is as western as the middle east.

Davidski said...

@Genos

It's OK to broadly use the term western Asia for western Kazakhstan.

But if you want to be more specific, then follow modern geographic conventions.

That means Botai was located in Central Asia, Yamnaya in Eastern Europe etc.

Andrzejewski said...

@Genos I would be much more interested to figure out what language Botai people spoke, (if they were even one unified culture) - be it Yenisseyan related or closer to PIE. I’m extremely fascinated by their possible phenotype as well, because it will settle once and for all whether the looked more European (WHG or WSH) v. East Asian. I somewhat suspect that the Kett language is more affiliated with Yukaghir and Inuit than with WSHG.

Andrzejewski said...

@Genos If Proto-IE rose independently on the Steppes, vis-a-vis Caucasus (CHG) or Siberian (ANE/EHG) derived, it means that PIE actually was created in Eastern Europe rather than brought there by Asian migrants.

A said...

The mainstream narrative is that Europeans were Black Africans who mixed with Asian invaders ...

Onur Dincer said...

@Genos Historia

You should always take into account cultural factors in the naming and definitions of regions. When you see that Russians, a genetically Eastern European, linguistically Slavic-speaking and religiously Christian-majority population, have been neighbors of Kazakhs, a population with genetically mostly East Eurasian ancestry but with a high amount of West Eurasian ancestry as well, with a Turkic language and with Islam as the majority religion, for some centuries, bordering of Eastern Europe and Central Asia should not be that surprising. All regional names and definitions are man-made and arise from human needs and preferences after all. No need to seek mechanistic consistency in everything.

Rob said...

This was interesting:

'' This may have provided the basis for the conquests over the subsequent centuries that resulted in an almost complete human and horse genetic turnover in Central Asian steppes. The expansion to the Carpathian basin38, and possibly Anatolia and the Levant, involved a different scenario in which specialized horse trainers and chariot builders spread with the horse trade and riding.''


Seems like horses reached Mycenae and parts of Near East via some form of trade networks. Perhaps horse-traders and trainers were afforded priviliegs, semi-autonomous status (to speculate).

Cy Tolliver said...

@MH_82

In one of the recent threads I saw you made a reference to qpGraph and how some professional geneticists and amateurs make some mistakes either over-interpreting its outputs or making bad assumptions from it, something like that. Recently on Anthrogenica (apologies in advance, it seems not to be your favorite site on the internet) it seems like there's been an uptick in users getting involved with Admixtools and working on graphs. What would you say are the biggest flaws with qpGraph in particular, or just in general what would you recommend people keep in mind when looking at a particular graph and not taking it too literally? I've seen some kind of weird results over the past few months and I don't want to get too caught up in any particular output.

Also a question for David or anyone else who feels like chiming in. I'm here to learn.

Carlos Aramayo said...

It seems there's a "sub-study" by Guus Kroonen related to this paper.

"Genetics proves it: Indo-European did not come to Europe on horseback"

20 October 2021

"...Horses were first domesticated in South-West Russia, is the conclusion drawn by an international team of researchers writing in the well-respected journal Nature. Their conclusion resolves a longstanding archaeological question. But, surprisingly enough, this domestication did not contribute to the rapid spread of Indo-European languages in Europe, according to a sub-study carried out in Leiden...[This] sub-study carried out by Leiden linguist Guus Kroonen has, however, shown that the domestication of horses was not the cause of the rapid spread of Indo-European languages in Europe in the same period..."

https://tinyurl.com/v8wkpjsz

Unfortunately there's also a typo in this review-article by Leiden University, in which Merijn van Nuland says:

"...Surprisingly enough, horses do seem to have played a role in the spread of the language family in India, thus from Russia in an easterly direction. Indo-European was introduced there some ten thousand years later, together with combat chariots..."

van Nuland should have said "a thousand years later."

Ric Hern said...

Corded Ware horses ALMOST had no DOM2 ancestry. Interesting word to use. ALMOST.

Ric Hern said...

DOM2 ancestry in Pre-CWC horses are LIMITED. Another interesting word. LIMITED.

PES said...

@Onur Dincer

But couldn't one argue that your argument is reliant on similar criteria. Namely the Turkic migration across Eurasia and between the 6th and 11th centuries, and then the Mongol conquests?

vAsiSTha said...

Lol, Indo European did not come to europe on horseback, but they're so sure it did come to south asia with horses haha. Jokers.

"Horses were introduced along with combat chariots..." Based on what evidence?

Vladimir said...

MN_82
“ Seems like horses reached Mycenae and parts of Near East via some form of trade networks. Perhaps horse-traders and trainers were afforded priviliegs, semi-autonomous status (to speculate). ”

It is possible, however, it is not excluded that the populations themselves who lived in the Ponto-Caspian steppe in the period 2500-2000 BC came on these horses. Novotitarovka in Trialetti. The Catacombs in the Middle Helladic culture, Babino in Mycenaean culture. The Volga-Ural group, apparently predates the Syntashta, in Mittani. Also interesting is the connection with the Somogyvár-Vinkovci Culture, which in turn has a connection with the Vucedol culture, in which R1b-Z2103 was found.

Ric Hern said...

Why did DOM2 become dominant in the Volga-Don during the Sixth Millennium BC. ?

vAsiSTha said...

@tolliver

For qpgraphs, you have to look at the outlier z scores in the output file. The worst zscore is also printed on top of the graph image. Ideally the worst of the z scores should be less than mod 3, but for complicated graphs that can be relaxed a bit.

Matt said...

@vAsiSTha, it's a great study, but yeah, I'm scratching my head at the idea that they suggest domestic horses spread in tandem with human gene flow in South Asia... Without *any* horse samples from that region to calibrate timing.

There quite a lot of burials of horses and horse iconography at the Oxus civilization, before any gene flow is apparent or common - https://www.academia.edu/48987305/2021_J_BENDEZU_SARMIENTO_Horse_domestication_history_in_Turkmenistan_and_other_regions_of_Asia_MIRAS_1_p_17_29 (while some conclusions may be questioned, the direct evidence discussed here is the interesting bit).

If they could get no DNA out of horses from Gonur, or identify any later horses from the region, that could go with comment, but it seems to be an inference without direct evidence that horses did not spread before human gene flow.

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

Why do you publish Ric Hern's stupid comments but mine get deleted?

Rob said...

@ Vladimir

The Catacomb (groups, I guess you mean?) in Trialetti is uncontroversial and demonstrated. What do we know of 'Volga-Urals' in Mittani ?
I think horse-riders constituted a sort of adstratum in Thrace and Greece which came after Cernavoda and Yamnaya. But we would need some pretty fine-scaled DNA to understand the issue of warriors & elites in Mycenae


@ Ty Colliver
I do not have any expertise on the matter, but from what I personally have seen so far is that adding more samples, whilst making the analysis lengthy and more challenging lends to a more robust tree. Usual cautions about coverage, type of data, etc. probably others can comment more on that. But otherwise, what we see in papers is replicatable (the IUP cluster of BK, Tianyuan, UstIshm; the ''west Eurasian'' common block, so forth).
The thing we need to aware of is that these statistical formulations is how they relate to 'real life', as we are at the mercy of our current sample set. What do we mean by 'the Villabruna people", for ex ? Unless we go to the effort of going through volumes of archaeological papers, then we might never reach the correct answer. There are no short-cuts
Whilst it seems to be a main component in old genome analysis, it might be also useful for more recent groups .e.g the issue of Urnfelder vs Atlantic LBA input in various 'Celt' groups


ancestralwhispers.org said...

"Multi-dimensional scaling further identified three horses from the western lower Volga-Don region as genetically closest to DOM2, associated with Steppe Maykop (Aygurskii), Yamnaya (Repin) and Poltavka (Sosnovka) contexts, dated to about 3500 to 2600 bc (Figs. 2a, b, 3a)."

Wonder how relevant Steppe Maykop was, given their relation with Botai.

John Thomas said...

It's not being 'crap at geography'.

It's all part of the anti-white animus which is now de figure amongst the so called 'great and good'.

Ric Hern said...

Will be interesting to see where the Salzmünde Tabiano coloured horse fit into this picture.

Ric Hern said...

Wonder if the Corded Ware horse was a more stocky type of animal since the Tarpan was basically a mix between the fine bones DOM2 and Corded Ware which gave a more sturdy maybe rideable animal ? Ponies and Drafthorses comes to mind...

alex said...

@Genos Historia

"I can't help but suspect it is political."

Of course it's political. It's because Western propaganda presented for decades Soviet Russia as a form of 'Asian despotism' and the corresponding geographical classification has stuck.

Onur Dincer said...

@PES

But couldn't one argue that your argument is reliant on similar criteria. Namely the Turkic migration across Eurasia and between the 6th and 11th centuries, and then the Mongol conquests?

Which of my arguments do you mean?

Davidski said...

@All

I got a reply from Ludovic Orlando. Scroll down to the update...

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/10/modern-domestic-horses-came-from.html

a said...

@Ringbauer, Novembre & Steinrücken bioRxiv (2020) IBD sharing research,

Interesting, perhaps in the future as IBD sharing data bank research is expanded into horses like ---DOM2, Samples, from Steppe Maykop (Aygurskii), Yamnaya (Repin) and Poltavka (Sosnovka), (Turganik (TURG) can be compared with samples of horse milk consumption like Krivyanskiy 9 (3305 to 2633 calibrated years BC) and areas where large amount of horse bones are found like Eastern Bell Beaker from Szigetszentmiklós, Hungary.

"It could also be viewed as fray from a region that in some past time sent out founder lineages; but whether true or not, I don't think that would really describe this man's personal history, not on Csepel Island. Some sites on the island have ridiculous quantities of horse remains. I2787's family history may reflect the horse trade and networks that connected different peoples in this area. Maybe his parents were some of those different peoples"

https://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.com/2017/07/szigetszentmiklos-cemetery-santas-six.html

vAsiSTha said...

@Matt
Indeed, bmac had horses, and SC asia has had domestic horses since 6th mill bce.

@all
Have done a working qpgraph covering some of eurasia. The z-score on top is the only one above 3.

https://imgur.com/gallery/737Z4GC

However, im having problems adding Yana and ZlatyKun without breaking z scores. ideas are welcome.

Davidski said...

All of those horses in Central and South Asia were quickly replaced by Eastern Euro horses.

And those Eastern Euro horses moved south because of the Sintashta expansion.

vAsiSTha said...

@davidski

"Multi-dimensional scaling further identified three horses from the western lower Volga-Don region as genetically closest to DOM2, associated with Steppe Maykop (Aygurskii), Yamnaya (Repin) and Poltavka (Sosnovka) contexts, dated to about 3500 to 2600 BC (Figs. 2a, b, 3a). Additionally, genetic continuity with DOM2 was rejected for all horses predating about 2200 BC, especially those from the NEO-ANA group (Supplementary Table 2), except for two late Yamnaya specimens from approximately 2900 to 2600 BC (Turganik (TURG)), located further east than the western lower Volga-Don region (Figs. 2a, b, 3a). These may therefore have provided some of the direct ancestors of DOM2 horses."

Point 1: There is direct archaeological evidence of south asian trading with maykop, carnelian/lapiz lazuli has been found in maykop.

Point 2: Wheeled vehicles appeared in maikop and IVC together.

Mariya Ivanova has this to say about the appearance of the wheeled vehicles in Maykop ,

The evidence for wheeled vehides dating to the preceding Maikop period, in contrast, is very tenuous… The vehicle from which the wheels at Novokorsunskaja originate might have been a two-axle wagon like the roughly contemporary wagon from Koldyri on the Lower Don (see Chapter 5). But it is also possible that the find from Novokorsunskaja was a two-wheeled cart. Clay· models of two-wheeled carts with rotating wheels attest to the use of this type of vehicle in central Asia and the Indus valley in the late fourth millennium BC. At Altyn-depe in south Turkmenistan, such models occur in the second half of the fourth millennium (Namazga III period) and become more common in the earlv centuries of the third millennium (Kircho 2009). Cattle figurines with holes in the withers for attaching the yoke have been recovered at Kara-depe (Kircho 2009, 30). Comparable models appeared in the Indus valley around 3500-3300 BC, during the Ravi-Phase of the Indus culture at Harappa.

Point 3: Note the late yamnaya dom2 horses from the east. if you look at fig 3. the location is north tip of caspian, close to SC asia. How do you know what role SC asia played in this without any samples from there?

Point 4: They had no samples in this study from BMAC, SC asia or south asia. How can you claim replacement of horse population? what sort of science is this?

Point 5: There is no similarity between sintashta chariot and sanauli chariot because, funnily enough, the body of sintashta chariot doesnt exist. No body was dug up. So on what evidence does this paper claim that chariots came to south asia from sintashta?

Davidski said...

Steppe Maykop was located in Eastern Europe too.

Yamnaya expanded east of the Volga-Don region, all the way to Mongolia.

And Sintashta horses and human DNA did make it to South Asia, because they're still there.

So what's your point?

vAsiSTha said...

So now DOM2 became 'Sintashta horses'? convenient

Copper Axe said...

Can people please stop this dumb equation of steppe Maykop with Maykop because they are two different things.

Steppe Maykop could ver well descend from a neolithic wave of WSHG related ancestry coming from Siberia/Central Asian which admixed with the EHG/CHG pops on the Caspian.

The horses there are probably the same type of horses depicted on Maykop art and the same types of horses the neolithic populations of the steppes hunted there. There is no link with Botai or IVC in regards to the horses there.

vAsiSTha said...

Not that I think the horse issue has much relevance but answer this.

How do you know that Gonur horses were not already DOM2 lineages without being tested? And of course you do know that Gonur had no contact with Sintashta but with IVC.

Ric Hern said...

@ vAsiSTha

Turganik is still West of the Urals on the same latitude as the Samara Bend....

vAsiSTha said...

Littauer and Crouwel 1996 (chariot experts)

""Let us consider what is actually known of the Sintashta & Krivoe Ozero vehicles. At Sintashta, there remained only the imprints of the lower parts of the wheels in their slots in the floor of the burial chamber; Krivoe Ozero also preserved imprints of parts of the axle & naves."

"The present reconstructions of the Sintashta and Krivoe Ozero vehicles above the axle level raise many doubts and questions, but one cannot argue about something for which there is no evidence (FIGURE 4)."

"It is from the wheeltrack measurements and the dimensions and positions of the wheels alone that we may legitimately draw conclusions and these are alone sufficient to establish that the Sintashta-Petrovka vehicles would not be manoeuvrable enough for use either in warfare or in racing."

"..these dimensions would render the vehicle impractical at speed and limit its manoeuvrability. These cannot yet be true chariots."
From: Littauer, M. A., & Crouwel, J. H. (1996). The origin of the true chariot. Antiquity, 70(270), 934–939. doi:10.1017/s0003598x00084192



Aram said...

Well DOM2 horse in MLBA South Caucasus is not surprising.

And here the linguistics.

Hurrians had two words for horse.
One from Aryans while the other was something like isi or eshi.

This is derived from PIE *h₁éḱus With satemic shift. k>s
Closest parallels are found in Armenian esh "donkey" and Phrygian es'

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h%E2%82%81%C3%A9%E1%B8%B1wos

Synome said...

I must admit, I found the article's conclusion that CW did not spread with domesticated horses to be surprising.

@Davidski

What do you make of this finding? Do you find it convincing? The strongest evidence for it seems to be the close relationship between CW and local Euro Neolithic horses. But there is some other evidence (like the Y bottleneck evident in the supplemental material in uniparentals) that horse domestication itself began well before either CW or Yamnaya existed. And so it would seem strange that CW made no use of early domestic horses if the domestication process he already been well underway in the steppe by the time they came into being.

capra internetensis said...

Looking at the dataset, all the Corded Ware horse samples (6) come from one site in Central Germany dating to about 2700 BC. There is only one Bell Beaker horse sample, from Zambujal, Portugal, about 2600 BC. I would not base sweeping conclusions on this sample set.

None from south of Kazakhstan, either. Considering that the Anatolian and Botai horses are supposed to be distantly related, Central Asian ones might fall in a cline with them, but obviously we want to see the results.

This is an excellent start, but the map is still full of blanks.

Andrzejewski said...

@Davidski “ Steppe Maykop was located in Eastern Europe too.

Yamnaya expanded east of the Volga-Don region, all the way to Mongolia.”

Reminds me of the poster who claimed that Tatarstan is not in Eastern Europe…

Genos Historia said...

@Davidski,

Since Orlando thinks the terms PC Steppe, East Euro Steppe include too much land.

Ask him why West Eurasian Steppe is better if it includes Asia in its name even though Asia is not where the modern horse domesticated lineage started.

Genos Historia said...

The end of Ludovic Orlando's email response tell his real justification.

He thinks the boundaries of Europe are arbitrary. Created thousends of years after the Indo Europeans. Therefore it should not be identified as where they lived.

This is a whole discussion to have. It is a common stance at Anthrogenica. I don't like how they use 'Eurasian' for everything. People even say East Eurasian to describe China which doesn't make sense.

Matt said...

@vASiStha: I'm a bit skeptical of SCA being an important source for horses, certainly as early as you suggest. (If nothing else, it's pretty inconsistent to me with this explosion of horse domestication at 2200 BCE, an instantaneous starbust, for civilizations with full contact to have domesticates for ages and nothing happens. If fully domesticated "fast horses" were about, then wouldn't it be obvious?).

My point is really more limited to the small-scale chronology - these new domesticates seem to get to Mesopotamia really fast, so it seems a bit doubtful to me that they didn't reach into at least the BMAC region (possibly even further South Asia but little evidence for that?), where we know there are horse related icons and horse burials.

Of course if there are samples like you suggest, then in the long term they should test them, and maybe something would be true - I don't expect the authors to have tested everything (they've tested a lot), but the authors shouldn't say that these domestiated horses spread with a population migration when they've got no actual horse samples that they can line up with human dna.

(I do think the sudden expansion suggests there was something different about these new horses; if there was an earlier Yamnaya/other DOM2 domestication event, then it may have been primarily for meat and the milk that we know that some Yamnaya samples seem to have drunk, and they didn't trade them successfully to other groups of people.)

vAsiSTha said...

The problem is that no researcher bothers about new finds. They rather stick to the studies published by their old friends in the cabal. So the 2009 Uzbekistan paper about ayakagytma sees no reference to it because Anthony had published a book in 2000s claiming there were no domesticated horses south of the steppe in Asia.

Just the evidence from Gonur, the horse sceptre heads, horse pins, multiple horse burials, tepe hissar3b horse chariot with spoked wheel etc should be enough for these researchers to pause and think.

Anyway, I have put in a mail to the author and the paper editors. Let's see what happens.

Matt said...

Re; words, I think Orlando just doesn't think the words matter; it's like, he's shown us what's happening on a visual map. The picture is the real thing and the words are not the real thing and not important. It's up to people who want to build stories and words around it to do so.

Ric Hern said...

@ Romulus

My point is that Corded Ware horses and Pre-Corded Ware horses had some DOM2 Ancestry in them, not much, but some. This could mean that Corded Ware split earlier from the Common Ancestor during early horse domestication when it maybe wasn't as prominent in the Ancestral homeland yet and taking only a few DOM2 with them.

The selection for colour patterns are usually associated with domestication almost in all domesticates. The Salzmünde horse and the facts that there was already limited DOM2 ancestry in Pre-CWC could be evidence that Corded Ware related people already traded some horses with the Pre-Corded Ware population a bit earlier than they arrived in that area. So if that sounds stupid to you, then so be it.

Ric Hern said...

@ Romulus

And the fact that DOM2 became dominant in the Lower Volga-Don area during the Sixth Millennium BC. already does not exclude the Ancestors of Corded Ware people from contact with the early horse domestication process.

Cy Tolliver said...

@Genos

What is China if not East Eurasian?

Rob said...

@ Vasistha

maybe remove Oase_1 until you're ready to include archaics
The exact affinities b/w Bk, UI, TY might vary, so accept that
Maybe a focus on SA/SEA might benefit from adding U-I as well as other sources of East Asian for the pre-Irula ?

Ric Hern said...

@ Romulus

And you do not need thousands of horses to herd a 100 or even a 1000 head of cattle, and teenagers were used for herding until the 1900s. This in itself would have been a massive advantage for a migration. Young people usually weigh less and do not need big horses to carry them. Combine this with the use of a travois for transporting lighter but bulkier goods and you have a winning recipe.

Mark B. said...

@Alex

"Of course it's political. It's because Western propaganda presented for decades Soviet Russia as a form of 'Asian despotism' and the corresponding geographical classification has stuck."


In fact, Russians have a long history of bouncing between seeing the Mongols as Asian monsters and boasting of being Asians themselves. Much like it was Kaiser Wilhelm II who told his soldiers to 'behave like Huns' when he saw fit. And Stalin himself famously told a reporter 'I am not European - I am an Asian.' But other than that, yeah, you're right.

Onur Dincer said...

Corded Ware, Single Grave and Bell Beaker peoples most likely mainly migrated using ox-drawn wagons and carts. Future ox ancient DNA papers can clarify these issues.

Rob said...

@ Vasistha

Also, when including Africans prepared to allow for Eurasian back-migration (over-and-above any recent West Asian Chalcolithic/ pastoralist stuff), but even at the BK/ IUP level

Francesco Brighenti said...

@ vAsiSTha

“So now DOM2 became ‘Sintashta horses’? convenient”

Look at this quote from the paper:

“Of note, the DOM2 genetic profile was ubiquitous among horses buried in Sintashta kurgans together with the earliest spoke-wheeled chariots around 2000–1800 BC.”

Davidski said...

@Mark B

Stalin was Georgian, so...

Davidski said...

@Matt

"Western Eurasian steppes" is ambiguous bullshit.

Matt said...

Vasistha: OK, hope you get a response; I want to see how they argue for this.

Matt said...

@Vasistha, I think this paper seems to think that an ancestry expansion/conduit between Botai and Anatolia precludes the idea that Southern Central Asia is a source for the earliest horse lineages which may be related to DOM2 ("Horse ancestry profiles in Neolithic Anatolia and Eneolithic Central Asia, including at Botai, maximized a genetic component (coloured green in Fig. 1e, f) that was also substantial in Central and Eastern Europe during the Late Pleistocene (RONPC06_Rom_m34801) and the fourth or third millennium bc (Figs. 1e, 3a, Extended Data Fig. 4). It was, however, absent or moderately present in the Romanian lower Danube (ENEO-ROM), the Dnieper steppes (Ukr11_Ukr_m4185) and the western lower Volga-Don (C-PONT) populations during the sixth to third millennia bc. This indicates possible expansions of Anatolian horses into both Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia regions, but not into the Western Eurasia steppes. The absence of typical NEO-ANA ancestry rules out expansion from Anatolia into Central Asia across the Caucasus mountains but supports connectivity south of the Caspian Sea prior to about 3500 bc")

Individual Sample Profiles: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04018-9/figures/7

I've put some selected samples into date order, highlighting the first of each clade: https://imgur.com/a/XYfkHZz

On their OrientAGraph model, the split between TURG, C-PONT, DOM2, NEO-ANA and BOTAI does look quite star-like to me, but I suppose this is related to the great depths of time involved. (Both NEO-ANA and BOTAI have some divergent pulses into them).

It would have been useful to see some simple clade testing between DOM2, C-PONT, N-NCAS and TURG.

Andrzejewski said...

The STJ vid that @Genos Historia (whose own channel I actually enjoy perusing as well) pertaining WSH and European phenotype: I suspect that STJ is a WN or Alt-Right with an agenda, although I tend to agree with his conclusions that although our Yamnaya progenitors were light skinned but brown haired and brown eyed, it was a natural selection process as well as a genetic drift that rendered them light pigmented, and it took many generations, starting with the IA onward.

Looking at Sardinians, some images looks more or less European, while a few can look just the same at any MENA country (no offense). Not all Poles are light pigmented either, therefore I tend to think that WSH contributed mainly to the physique of current day Eastern, Central and Northern Europeans, not necessarily regarding colors or shades. Hitler has poisoned the well for good.

If modern day Middle Easterners are Natufians, Anatolians, Iran and Caucasus but lacking WHG and WSH, then it must be the latter who made the physical difference in appearance, as uncomfortable it may be for Broad MIT to acknowledge.

Cy Tolliver said...

@MH_82

I've seen some threads on Anthrogenica where people were able to model Africans as part Ust-Ishim like, have you noticed the same thing with Bacho Kiro and/or Zlaty Kun?

Andrzejewski said...

@Onur Dincer “Abraham”, if that character even existed, passed through Haran. Biblical researchers claim that many of the customs described in the Book of Genesis were Hurrian, not Semitic in origin, and some even assert that the names of the Patriarchs, e.g Abraham, Sarah, Rebekah and Jacob have Hurro-Urartian etymologies. Whether of not it was true, it could be that this harkens back to a ruling elite who imposed themselves on native Canaanites (PPNB, Anatolians and Levant?). I would go even further and champion the argument that the Jebusites who are probably an offshoot of the Mitanni Kingdom were probably descendants of these migrants and that the stories in Genesis are a faint echo.

I put forth a theory, which could be debunked, that the wave of Iran_N and CHG into Anatolia and Levant circa 4.3kypa ushered in a darkening of the population. Lazaridis 2018 refers to a Pequi’in pop with y Hap T and blue eyes who were mostly Barcin related, possibly as part of PPNB migration wave from Anatolia.

The 2 perplexing points in these theories are:

1. Assuming that Afro-Asiatic languages originated with the Iberomaurasians 15,000 years ago, then Natufians were AHG who mixed with North African immigrants and adopted their language. Later on, Levant_N was over 50% Anatolian but yet Semitic languages prevailed. Subsequently, CHG/Iran_N migrants assimilated and adopted Semitic speech. How could it be that the Iberomaurasian element, a small overall minority, ultimately prevailed?

2. The Iran + Caucasus mass migration corresponded contemporaneously with the Sumerian kingdom being conquered by Semitic Acadians for the 1st time (2300 BCE). Now, there’s a juxtaposition here, whereas on one hand Iran/CHG migrate en masse into Levant and Anatolia lands, on the other hand the trajectory of migration seems opposite (Levant Semitic speakers into Sumer).

Can anyone sort through the contradictions here and fill in the supposed gaps?

Onur Dincer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Onur Dincer said...

@Davidski

"Western Eurasian steppes" is ambiguous bullshit.

The Pontic-Caspian steppe was the term they should have used. Terms like the European steppe, the Western steppe, the Western Eurasian steppe and the Eastern European steppe can also be used, but they do not exclude the Pannonian steppe, at least not in any unambiguous way, so the Pontic-Caspian steppe is the best choice.

Onur Dincer said...

@Davidski

Stalin was Georgian, so...

In his talks Putin mentions the country of Russia as geographically a Eurasian space but its dominant people, culture and language, i.e., Russian for all three of them, as European. Indeed I do not see much Eurasian identification among ethnic Russians, and an Asian identification next to never.

vAsiSTha said...

@mh82

maybe remove Oase_1 until you're ready to include archaics
The exact affinities b/w Bk, UI, TY might vary, so accept that
Maybe a focus on SA/SEA might benefit from adding U-I as well as other sources of East Asian for the pre-Irula ?

Oase isnt causing problems, it got added on first try without breaking stuff. I dont have BK in geno file. maybe ill try adding Ust Ishim.

The problem im having now is addition of Irula.DG as a admixture of preirula and some edge from one of the iran nodes is breaking the z scores.

But i could confirm one thing, IVC I8728 cannot be modeled using IranN, rather I had to use an edge from a node above IranN to get a working graph.
also adding Hoabinhian posed no problems. latest graph is here https://imgur.com/gallery/hg06y0x all zcores below 3. worst being 2.77.

vAsiSTha said...

the good thing is that my dzudzuana ghost almost perfectly matches laziridis tree in terms of proportions.

Andrzejewski said...

@ MH_82 @Cy Tolliver

“I've seen some threads on Anthrogenica where people were able to model Africans as part Ust-Ishim like, have you noticed the same thing with Bacho Kiro and/or Zlaty Kun?”

Living in a country rife with racial tensions due to slavery’s implications, I’m fascinated by where Proto-Niger-Congo actually originated from, and what was there before their advent; some Anthropologists and geneticists advocate that NC speakers were not native to West or Central Africa but essentially from the Sahel or the supposed “Green Sahara”, and that they advanced following the African Neolithic revolution south- and west- bound 5,000 years ago. Moreover, there are abiding proposals being put forward concerning the replacement of the Atorians, allegedly West African HG related to the Baka pygmies by Niger-Congo. Research papers with the underlying conclusions that current day Africans have lots of (at least 33%) owing to waves of Eurasian backmigrants or even that NC languages came from Eurasia also run in academia circles.

On the other hand, the more traditional approach is that black Africans originated in forest zone of West Africa, and that they assimilated HG as late as 1600AD.

I really can’t wrap my head around which approach is more accurate, however to assume that modern Africans (in whole or in part) are descendants of Eurasians rather than evolving in-situ strikes me as more than just far-fetched.

Rob said...

@ Cy Tolliver

There was a paper on Bioarxiv:
'' We find evidence for substantial migration from the ancestors of present-day Eurasians into African groups between 40 and 70 thousand years ago, predating the divergence of Eastern and Western Eurasian lineages''

i see some pre-Bk level admixture, but it's in the order of ~ 5% (although, the lack of paleolithic African genomes makes it difficult to gauge)

This might however suggest that ~ 50 kybp 'Eurasians' moved out of somewhere in SW Asia rather than Africa, and even a limited amount moved back to Africa

Genos Historia said...

The term "Western Meditereaen" to describe the genetic identity of early Romans, is another example where people avoid using European to describe a prestigious culture in history.

This term isn't used in academia. They call the early Romans, Western European. It is at Anthrogenica where I have seen the term Western Meditereaen.

Onur Dincer said...

@Andrzejewski

“Abraham”, if that character even existed, passed through Haran. Biblical researchers claim that many of the customs described in the Book of Genesis were Hurrian, not Semitic in origin, and some even assert that the names of the Patriarchs, e.g Abraham, Sarah, Rebekah and Jacob have Hurro-Urartian etymologies. Whether of not it was true, it could be that this harkens back to a ruling elite who imposed themselves on native Canaanites (PPNB, Anatolians and Levant?). I would go even further and champion the argument that the Jebusites who are probably an offshoot of the Mitanni Kingdom were probably descendants of these migrants and that the stories in Genesis are a faint echo.

Which biblical researchers claim that many of the customs described in Genesis or the patriarch names have Hurro-Urartian origins? Never heard those hypotheses despite following the biblical literature for years. Can you give the names of those researchers so that I can check out what they say?

I put forth a theory, which could be debunked, that the wave of Iran_N and CHG into Anatolia and Levant circa 4.3kypa ushered in a darkening of the population. Lazaridis 2018 refers to a Pequi’in pop with y Hap T and blue eyes who were mostly Barcin related, possibly as part of PPNB migration wave from Anatolia.

2. The Iran + Caucasus mass migration corresponded contemporaneously with the Sumerian kingdom being conquered by Semitic Acadians for the 1st time (2300 BCE). Now, there’s a juxtaposition here, whereas on one hand Iran/CHG migrate en masse into Levant and Anatolia lands, on the other hand the trajectory of migration seems opposite (Levant Semitic speakers into Sumer).


Do not understand why you are fixated on 4.3k yBP. The major CHG/Iran N influx to Anatolia and the Levant happened thousands of years before that date. The major CHG/Iran N and Levant N influx to Anatolia happened during the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic and the major CHG/Iran N influx to the Levant happened by the beginning of the Bronze Age at the latest. Check out these Global25-based analysis results (they are in sync with the formal analysis results in the academic papers):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OLetE_SsTjPHrG258r4FCad0y9s9ftBbf1QR6hqXrEY/edit?usp=sharing

Onur Dincer said...

Check out these Global25-based analysis results (they are in sync with the formal analysis results in the academic papers):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OLetE_SsTjPHrG258r4FCad0y9s9ftBbf1QR6hqXrEY/edit?usp=sharing


BTW, this analysis uses my own Global25-based calculator. I designed the calculator in such a way to be the most unbiased Global25-based calculator using mostly Neolithic-era source populations from all over the world (it is scaled and all the source populations are from ancient DNA). I recommend it to everyone. You can reach it from this site (search the title "(Onur) Ultimate World Deep Ancestry Calculator") and try it on yourself and other targets of your choice. And here is the direct link.

Andrzejewski said...

@Onur Dincer “Abraham the Hurrian”:

Dr. Sh Arabian: https://www.amazon.com/Hurro-Armenian-Origins-Abraham-John-Ahmaranian/dp/B00CMGLYUA

http://bhebrew.biblicalhumanities.org/viewtopic.php?t=771

https://creationmoments.com/sermons/the-most-famous-hurrian/

https://medium.com/the-bible-archives/sarah-hagar-the-hurrian-contract-93d38fb1c78b

Dr. Claude Mariottini - Prof. of the Old Testament- https://claudemariottini.com/2019/07/01/the-mittani-empire-and-the-bible/

Nuzi Texts - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuzi_texts

https://www.biblia.work/sermons/thenuzi-tablets-reflections-on-the-patriarchal-narratives/

Quote: “ The influence of Hurrian society on the Patriarchs was undoubtedly very strong, not only because of the origins of Abraham in Mesopotamia, but also because all the Patriarchs maintained contact with the area. This is borne out by the fact that many of the incidents in the Biblical narratives relating to the Patriarchs in reality reflect Hurrian social and legal customs, and prove beyond reasonable doubt that the Patriarchal way of life had its roots in Hurrian society.”

Andrzejewski said...

@Onur Dincer Hurrians being descendants of KAC, it’s yet to be discovered if their linguistic affiliation derived from their CHG ancestors or from their Anatolian Barcin-like ones; if, otoh, their link with Maykop Culture is firmly established, then the Hurrian speech of the Patriarchs (though I wouldn’t deny that the may’ve been bilingual East Semitic/Hurrian speakers) and the pre-IE Urartian substrate in Armenian point to
what the extinct Maykop language could’ve sounded like.

Andrzejewski said...

@Onur Dincer “ Do not understand why you are fixated on 4.3k yBP. The major CHG/Iran N influx to Anatolia and the Levant happened thousands of years before that date. The major CHG/Iran N and Levant N influx to Anatolia happened during the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic and the major CHG/Iran N influx to the Levant happened by the beginning of the Bronze Age at the latest.”

Here- https://www.juancole.com/2021/02/canaanites-israelis-palestinians.html

Quote: “ As for when people came from the Zagros down into the Levant, they suggest

“that gene flow into the region started before ca. 2400 BCE. This is consistent with the hypothesis that people of Kura-Araxes archaeological complex of the 3rd millennium BCE might have affected the Southern Levant not only culturally, but also through some degree of movement of people.Our data also imply an increase in the proportion of Zagros-related ancestry after the Intermediate Bronze Age…”

—————

But, if the >50% (i.e. majority) of BA Canaanites came from Zagros (Iran_N?) then how come they adopted the Iberomaurasian (aka West Semitic) speech of the minority natives (PPNB), and in turn - how come PPNB Levant_N, whose Anatolian_N ancestry proportions outrank Natufian, spoke Semitic and not LBK-related languages?

These facts boggle my mind…

Andrzejewski said...

And if indeed Israelite Old Testament Jews are mainly Iran_N (and/or CHG), is it plausible that the 5% who are Hap Q inherited it not from the Khazarians or from intermarriage with Indo-Europeans neighbors in Eastern Europe, but from the ANE element in Iran/CHG? It’s known that the Jewish Hap Q subclade is rather ancient and is Middle Eastern, not European, in origin?

Onur Dincer said...

@Genos Historia

The term "Western Meditereaen" to describe the genetic identity of early Romans, is another example where people avoid using European to describe a prestigious culture in history.

This term isn't used in academia. They call the early Romans, Western European. It is at Anthrogenica where I have seen the term Western Meditereaen.


Terms like Mediterranean, Western Mediterranean and Eastern Mediterranean are too ambiguous, they can include North African lands too depending on the context. Both Western Mediterranean and Western European are ambiguous terms when it comes to Italy and early Romans. Southern European would be a better choice for them, or you can simply call them European.

Slumbery said...

Orlando's answer does not make any logical sense. He basically says that because Pontic-Caspian Steppe describes a too big region, they decided to with West Eurasian Steppe that describes as even bigger region and includes the entire Pontic-Caspian Steppe. Seriously?

Intentionally vague geographical terms like this is why people like John Hawks think that Corded Ware came from Central Asia.

Rob said...

Kira-Araxes C is sort an a mirror of Yamnaya, south of the caucasus. It’s a pretty interesting phenomenon. One day, perhaps after some more data come forth, I might do a paper on it synthesising archaeology; uniparental, GW models , etc

Onur Dincer said...

@Andrzejewski

“Abraham the Hurrian”:...

I have no time to assess all the claims made in the links you give and this subject is well off topic for this blog thread. I will just pass on the statements of a biblical scholar on this subject with a rather critical view and will not add anything more to avoid much digression.

Here they are. https://drive.google.com/file/d/19YbgOoqzre5K_HW7qz415xpX-AEQ1LUI/view?usp=sharing

From this book

Here- https://www.juancole.com/2021/02/canaanites-israelis-palestinians.html

Quote: “ As for when people came from the Zagros down into the Levant, they suggest...


The quotes in that article are from the Agranat-Tamir et al. 2020 paper. In the quoted parts they are referring to a relative increase in the CHG/Iran N ancestry, not to the main influx, they refer to the main influx of CHG/Iran N in the Levant in this section:

Two previous studies of Bronze Age individuals from ‘Ain Ghazal and Sidon modeled them as derived from a mixture of earlier local groups (Levant_N) and groups related to peoples of the Chalcolithic Zagros mountains (Iran_ChL) (Haber et al., 2017; Lazaridis et al., 2016). These groups were estimated to harbor around 56% ± 3% and 48% ± 4% Neolithic Levant-related ancestry for ‘Ain Ghazal (Lazaridis et al., 2016) and Sidon (Haber et al., 2017), respectively.

The ‘Ain Ghazal genomes are from the Early Bronze Age and already carry a big CHG/Iran N input. BTW, I forgot to add another EBA (but this time partially EBA and partially MBA) Levant population in my analysis previously, SYR Ebla EMBA, now I have added them too, they also show the impact of the major CHG/Iran N influx to the Levant. Here is the link of my analysis again. I am also adding the individual scores of the ‘Ain Ghazal EBA (called Levant JOR EBA here) and Ebla EMBA samples as some of the Ebla EMBA samples are from the MBA rather than EBA as the name EMBA implies, here they are. Do note that the Megiddo IBA and Yehud IBA samples are from the Early Bronze Age Levant too, and they also show large CHG/Iran N input already. So by now it must be clear that the major CHG/Iran N influx to the Levant happened during the transition from the Chalcolithic to the Bronze Age (and not during the transition to the Middle Bronze Age) as my above quote from Agranat-Tamir et al. 2020 and the below statements of the Skourtanioti et al. 2020 paper point to:

During the Late Chalcolithic and/or the Early Bronze Age, more than half of the Northern Levantine gene pool was replaced

Now we can come to your last points.

But, if the >50% (i.e. majority) of BA Canaanites came from Zagros (Iran_N?)...

And if indeed Israelite Old Testament Jews are mainly Iran_N (and/or CHG)...


You seem to assume that Iran N and Iran Chl are genetically similar populations. It is not case, Iran got very mixed during the transition to the Chalcolithic with migrations from the west and northwest, especially in its Zagros part, which is the relevant part of Iran for our discussion. See this analysis.

Anyway, we have already wandered a lot from the topic of this thread. Let's stick to the topic, which is horse genetics, not the Levant or Jews.

Ric Hern said...

@ MH_82

Very interesting paper. Thanks. Just goes to show how difficult it is to find the first population out of Africa and even establish where the so called Basal Eurasians came from. Interesting that the Upper limit of this back migration from Eurasia could even be 100 000 years ago....

Ric Hern said...

Why did DOM2 become dominant in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe during the Sixth Millennium BC. ? Selective Hunting ? Some kind of bottleneck due to drought ? Less aggression should have put them at the bottom of the hierarchy. Less skittish should have made them a prime target for hunters. Pure Luck ?

Davidski said...

@SKRiBHa and Simon_W

Please take your discussion to email.

Andrzejewski said...

@MH_82 “ Kira-Araxes C is sort an a mirror of Yamnaya, south of the caucasus. It’s a pretty interesting phenomenon. One day, perhaps after some more data come forth, I might do a paper on it synthesising archaeology; uniparental, GW models , etc”

Certain parts in the OT seem to mirror IE culture - pastoralism, a tripartite social hierarchy division into priests, levis and commoners, name of Jehovah/Yahweh may be assumed to be related to Div Pater, and many Hebrew words have similar cognates in IE languages. I have deliberated and wondered whether these similarities boil down to the Andronovo origins of the Mitanni elite, or is it much more dated and can even be attributed to a common CHG ultimate origin.

Andrzejewski said...

@Onur Dincer “ The ‘Ain Ghazal genomes are from the Early Bronze Age and already carry a big CHG/Iran N input.”

Yes, and bottom line is that I strongly suspect that what started diverging Chalcolothic Middle Eastern populations from European ones in terms of phenotype (the other significant factor is the dominant Steppe IE admixture in the latter) is the huge Iran_N and CHG element in ME’ern ones, including when it comes to skin pigmentation. Iran and Caucasus rendered ME pops swarthy compared to their PPNB predecessors, whereas the Indo-Europeans caused the opposite effect (lightening).

Also, when it comes down to pyshical anthropology, regardless of pigmentation, WSH had a huge impact of head shape, facial features and overall “look” of modern Europeans, and we can assume that Yamnaya looked more or less like the average Swede, even if Yamnaya did have a dark hair and dark eyes.

It was proven that Steppe nomads inherited light skin from ANE ancestors, therefore - should it be corroborated they had dark eye age hair colors overall, knowing that AG3 had blond mutation - then it must be the CHG who are responsible for their relative “swarthiness”.

(Yamnaya, just like Anatolia farmer pops, had genetic recessive alleles for light hair and skin, it turns out).

Matt said...

@Ric, the DOM2 clade of horses with the derived functional mutations wasn't detected in 5000-4000 BCE, though possible ancestral/"uncle" clades were, so in a sense that question is not right.

The reason why DOM2 expanded from the steppe/bordering forest steppe, in my opinion, is probably going to be simply that wild herds were larger, and that increases the probability of successful domestication because with a larger pool, humans can perform more selection from wild horses for horses with domesticated traits, and have fewer problems with inbreeding and genetic drift. Most people looking at the subject have agreed that population size of horses was probably higher in the steppe than Anatolia, Iberia, etc, because horses have more ecological advantage there against cattle etc. Even if the other cultures were occasionally opportunistically taming and using wild horses as well, then its less probable that they'll get the ones that have the right set of mutations and can be bred without inbreeding depression.

Rob said...

@ Capra

''Looking at the dataset, all the Corded Ware horse samples (6) come from one site in Central Germany dating to about 2700 BC. There is only one Bell Beaker horse sample, from Zambujal, Portugal, about 2600 BC. I would not base sweeping conclusions on this sample set.''

And the sample from Portugal might be different type of Beaker group to the CWC-related ones.

Ric Hern said...

@ Matt

Thanks yes maybe they meant the C-Pont group became dominant in that area during the Sixth Millennium BCE. And the sister DOM2 only later...

Matt said...

Though there are a couple of Iberian horses from the EBA (2050 BCE - 1970 BCE) who still belong to the older IBE clade. Dispersal of DOM2 horses probably was faster to Turkey (Acemhoyuk 2125 BCE on) and Mesopotamia(?) than to Iberia? There isn't anything from the west to Czech Republic in terms of DOM2 until around 1000 BCE, yet. Even though this sample set is massive, it's still very limited compared to what we've built up in human adna over the years...

Ric Hern said...

Those horses Northwest of Repin looks a bit CWC type like...

Andrzejewski said...

The spread of BMAC-like and BMAC-related ancestry in the Eneolithic is probably what made Middle Eastern people diverge from us (and of course, the massive Steppe contribution from Eastern European into BA Europeans).

If using Pashtu as a proxy to BMAC, then rather than looking like Sardinians (more or less), this BMAC’ish influx caused middle easterners to look like Iranians or Afghans, by and large. To us European-diaspora people it’s hard to distinguish phenotypically between Levantines and Afghans, but the factors, the chronology and the trajectory is diametrically opposed:

Instead of ascribing it to the Islamic conquests of Iran and Bactria in the 700AD-800AD, it was this Iran_Chl and/or CHG 5000bp-4000bp wave(s) into Levant (and Anatolia) that largely changed and homogenized ME phenotype.

pnuadha said...

@ onur
Many view the modern-era extension of the boundary of Europe from the River Don to the Ural River as a result of Russian colonialism and imperialism

You say they are against colonialism and yet there very position is that europe was colonized by non europeans. Their problem is with europeans, not colonization.

Remember that the steppe migration led to the formation of a huge chunk of the modern european gene pool and so they are basically calling Europeans foreigners to their own land.

@ genos

To say the Indo European languages originated in Europe, is 'Eurocentric.' To say modern domesticated horses originated in Europe, is 'Eurocentric.'

Do the europeans themselves even have a home? I have never heard authors obscure the middle east as a source of the western neolithic.

Matt said...

Off topic, but possibly interesting (found while searching for what early evidence for horse riding is actually about in Iberia):

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2021/10/face-to-face-with-the-prehistoric-inhabitants-of-el-argar/141591 - "Our faces contain information about our family history and lifestyle. For example, certain facial traits can be passed down from parents to children for generations. Is it therefore possible that the physical resemblances among a group of individuals can provide clues about common blood ties? ... “So far we have the representations of the faces of 22 women, 16 men and two children, mostly all from the site of La Almoloya. This is the largest corpus of facial representations from a single prehistoric site that we have to date, and an unprecedented look at an important part of the community,” ... The results of the quantitative comparisons of facial and cranial traits will be contrasted with those of the forthcoming ancient DNA analyses from the same sample, to verify the reliability of the facial approach."

I can't remember if any El Argar people were sampled in the ancient dna record yet (possibly I3486, I3488, I3487, I8144, I8136). A couple certainly were in this paper - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/emblems-and-spaces-of-power-during-the-argaric-bronze-age-at-la-almoloya-murcia/B27A3C7AD23625DD39C6D4F2C3981C2F - but I don't think their genotypes are anywhere to be downloaded.
I expect they're just ordinary BA Iberian people but the kinship analysis might be interesting.

Matt said...

@Andrezjewski: Another one of these polygenic skin/hair prediction things from SMBE this year: https://imgur.com/a/C67Rnx7

It suggests that the EHG and CHG have pretty similar polygenic scores on blonde hair and light skin prediction and the Yamnaya are not very different from what you'd expect for a population between them. Then the later Europeans ("post BA") who are a mix of EEF and Steppe seem to have lighter scores. People on the North Italian end of the North->South Imperial/Post-Imperial Rome cline seem to have lighter scores for blonde hair and skin colour than do the Yamnaya. Steppe_MLBA (Sintashta etc) come out slightly lighter than Yamnaya but not as much as Europeans today. MN/LN EEF are pretty similar to steppe people, slightly more "blonde" scoring than Yamnaya, but that may be a function of limited Yamnaya population size.

None of these scores are perfect though, so it's possible there's something they're not accounting for, they're all just the best people can do at the moment.

We can't say much about the facial shape at the moment, as not very much seriously has been done about it. It's likely as you say that Yamnaya were more different to Near Easterners compared to EEF given the genetics. However the steppe people only contributed about half to Northern Europeans so I'm not sure that Northern Europeans today would look more like them than they did the EEF. On top of this the likely natural selection for greater height probably affects face shape too and contributes to European differences from Near Eastern people today.

Aram said...

Davidski

From a little bit different subject.
I can't find Georgian Meskhetians in Your G25 dataset from the recent paper on Georgian subpopulations. All others are present except them.
Can You add them please. Thanks in advance.

Razib Khan said...

americans view eastern europe as east-central europe (Poland, czechia, etc.). so it confuses them. the eurasian steppe is pretty much a single biome, so 'west eurasian' makes sense then since it's the western edge of that. it happens to be in Europe of course. but most Americans don't know that

Andrzejewski said...

@Matt “ blonde hair and skin colour than do the Yamnaya. Steppe_MLBA (Sintashta etc) come out slightly lighter than Yamnaya but not as much as Europeans today. MN/LN EEF are pretty similar to steppe people, slightly more "blonde" scoring than Yamnaya, but that may be a function of limited Yamnaya population size.”

By the same token, we could claim that the increase in “blondness” in MN through LN is a by product of a continuous and persistent rise in WHG ratio :)

Genos Historia said...

Is that Razib Khan in eurogenes comments? Cool.

Rob said...

@ Matt

''I can't remember if any El Argar people were sampled in the ancient dna record yet (possibly I3486, I3488, I3487, I8144, I8136). A couple certainly were in this paper - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/emblems-and-spaces-of-power-during-the-argaric-bronze-age-at-la-almoloya-murcia/B27A3C7AD23625DD39C6D4F2C3981C2F - but I don't think their genotypes are anywhere to be downloaded.''


Yep. Middle-Late El Argar phase, going by C14 date of I3487 (1734-1617 calBCE (3365±20 BP, PSUAMS-2161))

People were expecting something 'exotic' in El Agar, due to 'Aegean' influences in the constructions at La Bastida, etc. But seem to be all R1b-L151 derived Beaker people, commoners & elites.

Genos Historia said...

@Razib,

This is the best argument for using Eurasian Steppe term.

It all boils down to making the Eurasian Steppe a more defining geographic feature than the northern border between Europe & Asia. Which can be argued because little separates the European & Asian sides.

But the argument about familiarity doesn't resonant with me. Because, in fact I would say it is clear the general public is more familiar with Europe & Asia than the Eurasian Steppe. Eurasian Steppe sounds more ambiguous.

If you say Russia, Ukraine to Americans, most will know where you are talking about.

While if you say Eurasian Steppe, Americans think you are saying Indo Europeans originated in the heartland of Central Asia. Many in fact do. Look at news articles from 2015. As one person here mentioned, John Hawks claimed Corded Ware came from Central Asia.

Really both Eurasian Steppe & Eastern Europe are correct. But the thing is people only say Eurasian Steppe, which leads to the false claim of an IE migration INTO Europe.

Onur Dincer said...

@Andrezjewski

You seem to believe that CHG were darker than Levant N, there is no indication of that, rather the opposite. CHG could even be lighter than Anatolia N. Also, do not understand why you believe a BMAC-like ancestry expanded to all of West Asia, a Western Iran Chl-like ancestry expanded rather.

Onur Dincer said...

@Nuadha

You say they are against colonialism and yet there very position is that europe was colonized by non europeans. Their problem is with europeans, not colonization.

Remember that the steppe migration led to the formation of a huge chunk of the modern european gene pool and so they are basically calling Europeans foreigners to their own land.


What matters at the end of the day is what kinds of ancestry profiles people carry rather than the name of the geography they inhabit. Indeed it can be argued that the Eurasian steppe (not just the European part) came closer to its older genetics with the Russian colonization. The same can be argued for large chunks of Siberia as well. Also, the regions Russians settled in Asia were in general sparsely populated to begin with, not too different from the Western/Central European settlement of most of North America, Australia and New Zealand in that regard (though contributed by the Old World diseases too in the New World).

What I mean by all these is that even if some people deny the fact that the Pontic-Caspian steppe is within the borders of Europe (it is based on the commonly accepted definition of Europe today), they still cannot change the fact that the old populations that expanded from the Pontic-Caspian steppe and spread the steppe genes and IE languages had genetics closest to Europeans if we take the average genetic profiles of all continents today and compare them with each other.

Onur Dincer said...

You seem to believe that CHG were darker than Levant N, there is no indication of that, rather the opposite. CHG could even be lighter than Anatolia N. Also, do not understand why you believe a BMAC-like ancestry expanded to all of West Asia, a Western Iran Chl-like ancestry expanded rather.

An addition: though to the northern parts of West Asia such as Anatolia CHG-rich populations expanded more than Iran Chl-like ones.

Andrzejewski said...

@Onur Dincer “ You seem to believe that CHG were darker than Levant N, there is no indication of that, rather the opposite. CHG could even be lighter than Anatolia N. Also, do not understand why you believe a BMAC-like ancestry expanded to all of West Asia, a Western Iran Chl-like ancestry expanded rather.”

IIRC, Iran_Chl = Iran_N + Levant_N (=PPNB) + Anatolia_N.

Thus, it seems that Iran_Chl is mostly Iran_N + ~Barcin components.

The Natufians are an enigma: they diverge from Dzudzuana by receiving an Afro-Asiastic admixture in the LGM, but Levant_N was >50% Barcin/Dzudzuana, hence the Iberomaurasian element has been further diluted. And subsequent the Iran_Chl component arrived and blended in. I still can’t figure out how Semitic languages prevailed.

Andrzejewski said...

These are my notions about ethnolinguistic landscape in the LN/early BA:

* Sumerians were mostly Anatolian farmers, who perhaps migrated and merged with Iran_N to form Iran_Chl. Sumerian language may be related to LBK and Tripolyian.

* Elamites were Iran_N or Iran_HG related and they had something to do with Dravidians and BMAC.

* Borushaski and Botai had something in common with Yenisseyans. Not sure where Nihali and Kusunda fit in.

* Etruscan and Tripolye were related on some level, and Ötzi’s tribe was somewhat affiliated.

* Basque, Nuraghi (original Sardinian language), Globular Amphora and other Cardial Pottery related languages came down from the same root and branch.

* Pre-Proto-pre-primordial PIE was created on the Don when Dnieper Donetsk foragers interacted with farmer cultures to the west of them.

* Native American languages are closer to East Asian rather than WSHG/ANE languages; could be something to do with Nivkh, Koryaks or Kamchadals. There are phonetic similarities with Japanese.

* Ainu and Inuit languages may be related. It’s noteworthy that the word for “man”, “human being” is similar in both language families.

Rob said...

ok think i understand the supposed Onge-> ANE thing
Explanation: Asia was repopulated from south to north during / after the Ice Age (TianYuan and AR-33K are 'extinct' populations), hence apparent more southern affinities of the 'East Asian' component in ANE. However, at some point, in southeast Asia, proto-Papuan populations were replaced by East Asians.

ancestralwhispers.org said...

@Andrzejewski

CHG, much like Levant_N, are predicted as light skinned, dark haired and dark eyed, with Satsurblia CHG also being positive for blue eye alleles. It's Israel_C that had a high prevalence of blue eyes and such, Jordan_BA too, going by Genetiker's analysis. Difference between those two and Levant_N is that they have received an additional Iran_C ancestry. Is it the extra foreign input that depigmented them? You shouldn't be so hasty to assign certain traits to certain groups, especially when the sample pool is very small. In addition, West Georgians (who range from 50-65% CHG) are the most depigmented South Caucasians and probably West Asians as a whole, it doesn't really follow your logic.

@Aram
The sampled Meskhetians are pretty much Armenians, very different from the Ahiska samples, who show an East Georgian-like genetic profile.
When asked Irakli Akhvlediani, he mentioned that they have specifically sampled Catholic Meskhetians.

Georgian_Meskh:MSKH1,0.099026,0.127957,-0.054682,-0.059432,-0.035699,-0.014781,0.011986,-0.002538,-0.037019,-0.007472,-0.000325,-0.003597,-0.000743,0.00055,-0.005836,0.003315,0.003912,-0.004054,0.002263,-0.001876,0.000998,-0.002349,0.008627,0.004338,0.00012
Georgian_Meskh:MSKH2,0.108132,0.138112,-0.065619,-0.068476,-0.029236,-0.020917,0.00376,-0.006461,-0.032315,-0.001822,0.005846,-0.001199,-0.005649,-0.00234,-0.010043,0.009944,0.017471,-0.0019,-0.002137,0.001626,0.001872,0.000371,0.002342,-0.000241,-0.00491
Georgian_Meskh:MSKH3,0.110408,0.132019,-0.058077,-0.057817,-0.030467,-0.013108,0.009165,-0.007846,-0.037223,-0.006925,0.003897,0.004046,-0.01115,-0.000963,-0.006786,0.010077,0.018515,0.002407,0.008673,0.003001,0.002121,-0.000371,0.006779,0.001325,0.002275
Georgian_Meskh:MSKH4,0.105855,0.140143,-0.054682,-0.053295,-0.026159,-0.019801,0.00564,-0.002308,-0.03661,-0.006925,0.006658,0.004796,-0.012339,-0.002064,-0.005157,-0.001061,0.003129,-0.001647,0.000377,-0.006503,0.001747,0.001484,0.001232,-0.001566,0.002515
Georgian_Meskh:MSKH5,0.108132,0.131003,-0.052797,-0.049096,-0.029544,-0.011156,0.00564,-0.007384,-0.032724,-0.002369,0.001949,0.003447,-0.004757,-0.001789,-0.00665,0.010342,0.018645,0.003167,0.005154,0.003126,-0.001872,-0.00779,0.001356,0.004699,-0.003712

Onur Dincer said...

@Andrzejewski

IIRC, Iran_Chl = Iran_N + Levant_N (=PPNB) + Anatolia_N.

Thus, it seems that Iran_Chl is mostly Iran_N + ~Barcin components.


Also some CHG:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AlDMASYqTX0EXAdjR9bzjT0J9hKG861u/view

But not enough to explain the CHG levels in post-Neolithic or post-Chalcolithic Western West Asia, especially in the northern parts like Anatolia:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OLetE_SsTjPHrG258r4FCad0y9s9ftBbf1QR6hqXrEY/edit#gid=0

but Levant_N was >50% Barcin/Dzudzuana

No, Levant N is somewhat more Natufian than Barcin N, but not much:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zjoC5q_dn3CAEns2Geb6jlwd_F6U7ZQs/view?usp=sharing

I still can’t figure out how Semitic languages prevailed.

The question of Semitic origins could be better tackled if we had ancient DNA from Iraq, especially from Sumerians and the early Semitic groups who lived there.

Matt said...

@Rob/MH_82/Mammoth_Hunter_1982(?), although, there are some hints from Roberto Risch that the shortly upcoming paper on this will be more interesting than that!:

(Following all crossposted from comment at GNXP yesterday with a couple additions):

Found by chance, an interesting archaeological podcast from September: https://foreigncountries.podbean.com/e/51-archaeology-of-later-prehistoric-europe-bronze-age-state-societies-in-spain-crete-1630718368/

Dr Roberto Risch (who has been a contributing author on several adna papers before) talking about how new large scale excavations in Spain in the last 10 years are finding the rise of what appear to be early state societies in both El Argar in Southeastern Iberia, and parallels with the Unetice Culture in Central Europe.

Particularly relevant to ancient dna (for anyone hungry for new info) are Risch’s comments at 10:40: “We are now doing systematically genetic analysis on the ancient dna, which we extract from the (petruous bone) of the skulls and this is working very well, we have about 60% success rate, in this so, (in every 10 burials we get 6 in the dna). And the dna shows us in relations, (and this will be published very shortly), how was El Argar formed as a society, which populations came together in Southeast Iberia to form.

In Central Europe we know, the Central Europe Bronze Age, the Unetice, is a mixture of the Bell Beaker communities and the so-called Corded Ware communities. And these two communities, which both have their ancestry in Eastern Europe, they intermingle and stop producing Bell Beaker and Corded Ware pottery and produce undecorated pottery, which is typical Unetice pottery. (That compares to El Argar in that) the typical pottery is also undecorated. We have the Bell Beaker period before and we have symbolic Los Millares (Spanish Copper Age Culture) decorated bowls and suddenly at 2200 BCE there is no more Los Millares, no more Bell Beaker culture, and we have a new type, which, now we see genetically is the coming together of two or even three different groups which have different origins, and create in a small territory a new political system, which slowly becomes a state society.”


Then some more comments about mapping kinship at these sites.

Potentially quite exciting as this may solve the question of “Why did these non-Indo-European, Iberian languages persist?”. Well, this may have been the language of these late Iberian CA Los Millares groups… One of the interpretations of El Argar has been of an arriving society that replaces Los Millares, however it seems like a bit more, as Risch describes it, perhaps this yes, but also some form of cultural synthesis.

I actually think Unetice may be more complex than he describes, as from the Bohemian paper we have lots of I2 and even some G2 in the Unetice population – it’s not just R1b-M269 Beakers and R1a-M417 Corded Ware, but more diversity. (The Unetice sites we have are obviously dominated by R1b-M269, but then theres a fair bit of I2 as well). It’s speculatively very interesting to think that there may have been these situations where the post-early IE expansion societies took on more characteristics of complexity, and moved away from being simple patrilineage societies, and that involved some shifts away from the variants of the single burial rite (even if they did not seem to be able to make these very sustainable in the longer term).

Some of Risch’s comments about the formation of states and the possibility of seeing the effect of the growth of states in the kinship structures in adna in almost in ‘real time’ are very interesting; another use for the technology, to tell us how really these changes did (or did not!) change kinship relationships at least in El Argar. Also discusses as a big question, why the “states” in El Argar (and Unetice) were short lived.

(tbc)

Matt said...

@Rob, cont: This will probably be the relevant paper for the adna data Risch describes – https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/faces/ViewItemOverviewPage.jsp?itemId=item_3342061 – “Genomic transformation and social organization during the Copper Age – Bronze age transition in Southern Iberia” – Villalba-Mouco, V et al

Add: EEA 2020 also had a preview of this upcoming paper in its abstracts, referring to the La Almoloya site where Risch talks about the identification of a palatial economy:
"LA ALMOLOYA AND THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF ARGARIC SOCIETIES IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE OF SOUTHERN IBERIA - Abstract author(s): Villalba-Mouco, Vanessa (Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History)

The emerging Bronze Age in Southern Iberia involved important changes from an archaeological perspective: Late Chalcolithic settlements were abandoned in favour of – occasionally fortified – hilltop sites. At the same time, funerary rites changed with collective graves disappearing and individual and double burials emerging. Some of the later exhibit very distinctive grave goods which indirectly reflect an increasingly hierarchical social organisation. These changes are particularly marked in the Early Bronze Age group of El Argar, which embodies all these changes well. In order to understand whether these social changes involved people coming from other territories, as well as to disentangle the role of descent in socio-political asymmetries already defined by archaeological indicators alone, we performed population genetic and kinship analyses at La Almoloya, one of the key sites of the El Argar group that is nearly fully excavated. We integrated the genetic results with chrono-stratigraphy, information about burial rites and the anthropological record.

Our results revealed the persistence of male lineages over at least three generations. In contrast, adult females buried at the site were found to be genetically unrelated at either first or second degree, suggesting a strong patrilocal system and female exogamy as dominant practices. We also found that adult individuals from double burials were unrelated, and in some cases had offspring together. Moreover, some males also had children with different females, resulting in detectable half-sibling relationships. Despite the observation that adult women do not have close relatives among themselves at the site, they are still buried with high status grave goods. Our results show how the integration of genetics with archaeological and anthropological results provide powerful, unprecedented insights into the social organisation of past societies."


Despite the press findings from March this year talking about how findings at La Almoloya indicated "powerful women", this is another strongly patrilocal culture with female exogamy, by the looks of it. And it's probably no surprise to us that, at a site where we are likely finding early evidence of hierarchical inequality, we are also finding polygamy that is otherwise fairly infrequent in our adna record.

Matt said...

@Rob (cont):

Rob, this stuff on El Argar seems quite relevant for your interests actually. One of your good points for our discussions is you've long been fairly prodding everyone in adna research for a long time to be more rigorous in look into how genetic transitions really relate to ethnogenesis in an integrated way, with close detail around the times of shifts and of symbolic culture.

And I think we've discussed the puzzle of the Iberian languages in the past; where I think you've argued that the nature of the genetic shifts and y-dna makes it hard to think of continuity in the peninsula, while I've argued that the low level relationship with any language outside the peninsula, relationship even being sketchy with Basque, makes it improbable for them to have come with migration.

It seemed to me that no one had a good answer - the persistence argument being hard to fit with dna and the introduction argument being hard to say had an existing positive linguistic evidence behind it (rather than just arguing that "Vasco-Iberian" languages stretching from Iberia to perhaps the steppe had all been erased with no evidence left). So it would be great if this "solved" that puzzle.

Aram said...

Ancestralwhispers

Thanks for coordinates. Being Catholic can offcourse affect the result but in most likelihood we see here a relic population related to Classic era Moschoo from Graeco-Roman sources. Moschoi themselves almost certainly descend from Iron Age Mushki ( Biblical Meshekh ) who were attested in different places. From the west of lake Van , where they left the city name Mush to Anatolia where they left in most likelihood the city name Mazhaka ( modern Kayseri )

So this similarity with Armenians is not due to recent gene flow. Because their fst with Armenians is quite high 0.007 ( compare 0.006 for Laz ) . This mean their autosomes had some drift and they were isolated from all neighbours. Their fst with other pops is also high.

Davidski said...

@All

Ludovic Orlando explained the problem himself.

He doesn't know what the Pontic-Caspian steppe is or where it's located. And neither do any of the other authors on his paper.

I think that's kind of alarming.

Obviously, as he pointed out, we're discussing modern geographic concepts that didn't exist during the Bronze Age.

But since we have these geographic concepts and indeed conventions, then why not use them accurately in a modern scientific paper?

Why be ambiguous and pretend that the Volga-Don region is somewhere in Western Eurasia, when it's easy to work out that it's in Eastern Europe?

Rob said...

@ Matt
yep im the caveman....different workstation logins

Unetice and El Argar have indeed drawn comparisons- their chronology almost matches and both are deemed to be 'complex' Bronze Age chiefdoms, with heirarchization.

As you say, Unetice (which also importantly features R1a-Z280, in addition to R1b-M269 in addition to various I2a, I2c, G2a.) moves beyond the partilineal tribal societies of CWC, early BB and even GAC. Unetice is therefore highly diverse due to new forms of social structure

I don't really see the same picture for El Argar. I understand that Risch might be seeing the Chalcolithic Iberian admixture (Im not sold on the "60%'' figure), but it's a ~ 100% R1b-L151 (so far at least). So something very different went on

If El Argar was truly matrifocal, which doesnt seem to be the case, then we might envisage BB males as the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas of southern Iberia, adopting the language of their Queens. Nor is it a case of 'accomodation of barbarians' like historic Germanics

I cannot do justice to the topic here (nor have i completely understood all angles), but across southern Iberia, the entire social structure changed c. 2400 BC. This was not a coming together, this was a decapitation of previous elites. However, unlike SW Iberia, where not much else seems to have happened, the El Argar system grew to dominate most of Iberia. I think much of the population moved toward SE Iberia, perhaps exacerbated by the 4.2 ky event. beaker pots were abandoned, but there is still much continuity, including the Hallberds, arrowheads & copper daggers. Signs of a very malitarised ruling caste enforcing their rule by violence or the threat of it.

To put it simplistically, it seems as if the ruling elite lived in an 'Apocalypse Now' type scenario. Heavy burden on the working stratum but also on the reproductive demands placed on women. At the end, and despite last ditch attempts to please the 'Old Gods', their society collapsed ~ 1550 bc.

The more direct link to Iberian languages would be whatever society emerged after this collapse. So the part of mediterranean encompassing eastern Iberia, western Italy, and perhaps Liguria remained non-IE.

What we need to see is:
- admixture models using proximate sources
- more Y-DNA
- is there any early East Med admixture which might account for pithos burials, Asian ivory, etc
- post El Argar data




Targamos the Based, son of Kavkasos son of CHG son of said...

@Aram

You are one of the many reasons why no one takes Armenian historiography seriously. Sometimes it is almost comedic just how much Armenians pretend like they are completely out of the loop about the massive migrations that happened during the Russian empire, which filled Southern peripheries of Georgia with Armenian settlements, counting 200k people in 1897. Then you act like you have completely no idea about the existence of Catholic Armenians. Then you specifically also very conveniently forget the existence of Ahiska samples on G25 who are autosomally very different from Georgian_Meskheti samples, despite being inhabitants of the same place. At some point you have to choose what exactly Armenians are, because if you grab ancient cultures and peoples around you like a thief grabbing everything in sight in a jewelry store, then no one will start taking you seriously. You are Mushki, you are Urartians, you are even Neolithic Van Bassein farmers. I am sure some other Armenian schizophrenics will add many other cultures to the list, Nairi, Yamnaya, Hayasa-Azzi. This is the same people that makes fun of Azerbaijanis for claiming ancient Albania.

Arza said...

@ Davidski

"Why be ambiguous(...)":

Ethics of DNA research on human remains: five globally applicable guidelines
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04008-x

_________

Baltic-Pontic contact space in 4th and 3rd millennium BC
A keynote lecture by Marzena Szmyt held on Thursday 9 September, during 27th Annual Meeting of EAA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlpFqN3VM6Q

Rob said...

@ Arza
Do you know how to convert eigenstrat to FASTA ?

Andrzejewski said...

@Onur Dincer “ The question of Semitic origins could be better tackled if we had ancient DNA from Iraq, especially from Sumerians and the early Semitic groups who lived there.”

Except that the relationship between Hamitic and Semitic ones (now it’s called “Afro—Asiatic”) makes me suspect that the Profo-Afro-Asiatic speakers were the Iberomaurasians.

Rob said...

@ Vasistha

'my latest graph is here https://imgur.com/gallery/hg06y0x ''

Aren't you curious to see what happens when you add Yana & compare that to Afontova ?

E.g.
admix ANE2 SSEAsia WE1
edge_ ANE Yana_UP

Arza said...

@ MH_82

You'd have to simulate the reads around the called bases using reference genome. Depending on what you are actually trying to achieve, it may or may not make sense.

Slumbery said...

@Davidski

This seems to be the case for science journalists too. Last year Ars Technica had an otherwise interesting article about the spread of domestic cats in Europe. There the author claimed that farming had spread to Europe from Central Asia. (Yes, again, this is the favorite of Americans apparently.) There was no direct contact to the author, so I wrote to the science editorial staff. And they doubled down on it, literally claiming that the first European farmers coming from Central Asia is "the scientific consensus". I could not find out if this is because the Ars Technica staff genuinely have no idea where is Central Asia and Anatolia or something else, because my further attempt to clear things up was wholly ignored by them.

(The same happened with John Hawks. I also politely wrote to him, he politely answered, doubled down on his misconception and proceed to ignore my attempt to clear things up.)

DragonHermit said...

Davidski,

The meaning of "Eastern Europe" in an American context mostly means places like ex-Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Balkans, etc...

You can nitpick about the steppes still TECHNICALLY being part of EE geographically, but that's not usually what comes to mind when people say Eastern Europe.

Aram said...

Targamos

You need to calm down.
Catholics appeared in that region in 19th century with European preachers. It couldn't affect people DNA neither do this Meskhetian Georgian descend from Catholic Armenians which is ridiculous. Despite being close to modern Armenians they are _very_ different in proportions from Armenians.

If they had recent Armenian ancestry their fst distance with modern Armenians would be much lower.

As for Mushki and Moschoi. It's not me but Georgian scholars were saying that Meskhetians are related to this people. Meskh + the Georgian suffix -ti

So now genetics seems to favour that idea. And what You were expecting that a tribe which was active in South East of modern Turkey would be like Laz or Megrels and not like modern Armenians?

Kind a strange logic and expectations. To whom You complain is not clear.

A said...

@ ancestral whispers,

when you post your 'reconstructions' online can you at least add a disclaimer stating that they are completely unscientific, thanks.

Aram said...

FYI

The first scholar who associated Mushki with Armenians was Diakonov who was a Sovietic Russian scholar. His idea was NOT welcomed in Armenia because the most popular idea in Armenia is that Armenians descend from Hayasa Azzi. Which is quite natural given that Hay is the endonym of Armenians.
Current mainstream in Western Academy is mostly based on Diakonov's theories about Armenian origin.
And here a summary about Mushki. So accusing Armenians grabbing Mushki is funny.


----

The Mushki (sometimes transliterated as Muški) were an Iron Age people of Anatolia who appear in sources from Assyria but not from the Hittites.[1] Several authors have connected them with the Moschoi (Μόσχοι) of Greek sources and the Georgian tribe of the Meskhi. Josephus Flavius identified the Moschoi with the Biblical Meshech. Two different groups are called Muški in Assyrian sources (Diakonoff 1984:115), one from the 12th to the 9th centuries BCE near the confluence of the Arsanias and the Euphrates ("Eastern Mushki") and the other from the 8th to the 7th centuries BCE in Cappadocia and Cilicia ("Western Mushki"). Assyrian sources clearly identify the Western Mushki with the Phrygians, but later Greek sources then distinguish between the Phrygians and the Moschoi.

Identification of the Eastern Mushki with the Western Mushki is uncertain, but it is possible that at least some of the Eastern Mushki migrated to Cilicia in the 10th to the 8th centuries BCE. Although almost nothing is known about what language (or languages) the Eastern or Western Mushki spoke, they have been variously identified as being speakers of a Phrygian, Armenian, Anatolian, or Georgian language.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushki

Matt said...

@Rob, there is the *one* exception - COV20126.SG Covacha del Angel, Southern Iberia, Gonzales Fortes 2019, I2a1b1b1a1~ dated 1751-1615 calBCE, currently our southmost sample in Spain (though not Spain+Portugal).

One exception is not very many of course! I do look forward to seeing what Risch is seeing to make him think there is a combination of three groups with different origins...

Arza said...

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/proceeding-caution

"Click on any icon to hear that co-author’s perspective on what the proposed guidelines mean for the region in which they work. Map compiled by Stephanie Dutchen" (map)

Davidski said...

@DragonHermit

American geographers use the same definition of Europe as everyone else.

Here's a map of Europe from Wikipedia.

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

So I'm not sure what you're still confused about?

Vara said...

It's not a big deal.

The boundaries of Europe have changed throughout the years due to politics.

"Herodotus mentioned that the world had been divided by unknown persons into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa), with the Nile and the Phasis forming their boundaries—though he also states that some considered the River Don, rather than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia.[29] Europe's eastern frontier was defined in the 1st century by geographer Strabo at the River Don.[30] The Book of Jubilees described the continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons; Europe was defined as stretching from the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar, separating it from Northwest Africa, to the Don, separating it from Asia."

Also:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe#/media/File%3AHerman_Moll_A_New_Map_of_Europe_According_to_the_Newest_Observations_1721.JPG

I mean Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia compete in the EU games these days.

Genos Historia said...

@Slumbery,

That's an interesting experience you had.

I can't believe they mistook Anatolia for being in central Asia. Like, how? How did someone as educated as John Hawks make this mistake?

@DragonHermit,

Yeah, but when people hear Russia, Ukraine they do think Eastern Europe. If they hear just Steppe they think Central Asia.

Right now, Harvard only says Steppe. They don't mention the country names.

Davidski said...

@Vara

It's a big deal because it shows that none of the relevant authors, peer reviewers, or Nature editors knows the basic geography of the region that they're focusing on.

This casts doubt on the accuracy of the rest of their work.

And the only person who would say that coming up with a bullshit ambiguous term like the Western Eurasian steppes isn't a big deal is someone with an agenda, like you.

Vara said...

Geographical names and boundaries change over time (see the map above) but that's just politics. IMO, the Pontic-Caspian steppes would be better.

On the other hand, I agree the work is far from accurate as the actual use of of horses spread from Hissar predating Sintashta.

Davidski said...

Yeah, traffic rules and gun laws change over time too, you dumbass.

Andrzejewski said...

@Vara “ IMO, the Pontic-Caspian steppes would be better.”

How about referring to it as the “Pontic-Caspian Steppes of Eastern Europe”?

Genos Historia said...

Andrze has a point.

Vara said...

I don't understand why you're so butthurt.

"A continent is one of several large landmasses. Generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent

The Greeks defined Europe as being bordered in the east by the Don. That definition changed over time and still is changing so what? Someone came up with some new shit for the Americantzi. WOAH BIG DEAL!

Let's be real, you don't care about accuracy. If you did you'd be asking did they look at the Gonur horses? Tal Iblis?

All you care about is "muh steppe" which is in "muh Eastern Europe".

Davidski said...

I'm showing that the scientists who published a paper in Nature, as well as the peer reviewers and editors there, don't know very basic geography.

I think this is important because it suggests that there are other things that they don't know, are careless about, and/or simply can't be arsed checking properly.

Rob said...

@ matt

From the original paper, COV20126 3637+/- 60 bp => ~ 2000 BCE
And they have given it as Y-hg G2a2b; from a small cave burial.

Genos Historia said...

@Vara,

Something to consider in this discussion, is that the European/Asian genetic boundary in the Mesolithic matched the modern border.

The PC Steppe in the Mesolithic was apart of the Mesolithic European genetic cline not the Northern Asian cline. WHG barely existed east of the Urals, East Asian didn't exist west of the Urals.

Y DNA Q and mtDNA C were the most common uniparental markers in northwest Asia. But they were rare in the PC Step. mtDNA C was basically nonexistent west of the Urals.

mtDNA U5a, U4, Y DNA R1b1a were the main markers in the PC Step and in Central Europe. They existed in Northwest Asia, but were a minority.

EHG had deep direct ties to people deep in Europe but not in Asia.

What I'm saying is the bulk of the Indo Europeans' ancestry was European to the bone. The best way to describe their deep ancestry, is European & SW Asian (CHG).

Andrzejewski said...

@Genos Historia “ Y DNA Q and mtDNA C were the most common uniparental markers in northwest Asia. But they were rare in the PC Step. mtDNA C was basically nonexistent west of the Urals.”

Population with a deep ancestry to Indo-Europeans (Ancient North Siberians, Yana) were the first inhabitants of Japan (TUP). They lived in Hokkaido 30,000 years ago. The Ainu are the descendants of the Hokkaido Jomon (themselves an admixture of TUP with East Asian Jomon) with an Okhotsk population which came from Siberia and merged with it. These TUP, Yana/ANS-related ancestry in Ainu coups solve the mystery that has haunted anthropologist for a very long time as to why Ainu have Caucasoid facial features lacking in (other) East Asians.

Bottom line: the original dwellers of Japan were had deep ancestry with Europeans and Caucasoid features.


https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020Sci...369..282Y/abstract

https://www.quora.com/Who-were-the-Ainu-and-who-are-they-most-related-to-linguistically-and-culturally#&gid=1&pid=1

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abh2419

https://heritageofjapan.wordpress.com/just-what-was-so-amazing-about-jomon-japan/1-temp-from-africa-to-east-asia-the-tale-of-migration-and-origins-emerges-from-our-mitochondria-dna/origins-of-the-jomon-jomon-connections-with-the-continent-and-with-todays-japanese/who-are-the-ainu-people/ainu-populations-share-genetic-affinities-with-nivkhi-and-other-peoples-from-north-asia-including-sakhalin/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jōmon_period



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

@Genos

Only WHG is European. Steppe is Eurasian. EEF is Mediterranean. Steppe is Iranian Neolithic + EHG, Iranian Neolithic obviously isn't European. EHG is between WHG and ANE, ANE peaks in Siberian Kets but is also more abundant in Native Americans than in Europeans. WHG is the only DNA exclusive to Europeans. Maybe some adjacent countries have trace amounts but only Europeans carry it in significant amounts. Just like I-M170 is exclusive to Europe but R1a and R1b are not, there are actually more men in the world with R1a living outside Europe than in it because the Indian population is so high.

Andrzejewski said...

@Genos “ The PC Steppe in the Mesolithic was apart of the Mesolithic European genetic cline not the Northern Asian cline. WHG barely existed east of the Urals, East Asian didn't exist west of the Urals.”

If anything, then Japan’s original humans were TUP, came around 30kybp, and were distantly related to Indo-Europeans from the PC Steppes of Eastern Europe. Ancient North Siberians —> Japan’s TUP.
ANS —> ANE —> EHG —> Yamnaya.

The puzzle of the Europoid features of Ainu is now solved.

Our ancestors originated in ANS populations in NE Siberia, but their culture was formed in Eastern Europe, and that’s what counts.

Slumbery said...

@Genos Historia

Just to be clear, only Ars Technica said EEF is from CA. John Hawsk just wrote about a Bronze Age migration from Central Asia that tranforded large parts of Europe genetically. He interpreted the super vague term Eurasian Steppe as Central Asia. That is a mistake, but given the phrasing of these journal articles, a somewhat more understandable one.

And yes, I met the Anglo-Saxon mentalitiy of confusing the geographical Europe with the political one. A Scottish guy taught me English a long time ago and there was a talking exercise where I had to recignize cities from descriptions. He described Moscow, but to my question he said the city is not in Europe. So I could not fugure it out. When we cleared it up, he genuinely surprized that I place Moscow into Europe. And was surprized that he does not.

Regardless, it is not an excuse for a scientific paper. There is no sense of using political Europe when talking about the Bronze Age. If they find this confusing, it would be better to use a term like European Subcontinent even, however awkward it is.

Andrzejewski said...

@Romulus “ ANE peaks in Siberian Kets”

Siberian Ketts are only 25% WSHG; 75% of their make up is Yukaghir/Inuit related Ymakhtakh (East Asian). That’s why I started doubting recently that their language is related to Botai or Steppe Maykop.

Vara said...

@Genos
I don't have a problem with the boundaries. Though, I don't think it makes sense coming up with boundaries based on Mesolithic DNA.

The problem is getting worked up over something so trivial yet being fine with the dubious conclusions of this article :"This contrasts with the scenario in Asia where Indo-Iranian languages, chariots and horses spread together, following the early second millennium bc Sintashta culture." There is zero evidence horses should be related with the spread of the Sintashta culture. Traded? Sure. The presence of horses in Jiroft, BMAC and Mesopotamia can't be attributed to the spread of Sintashta especially when that is disproven by both DNA and archaeology. What's next, Shulgi of Ur was an Indo-Slavic monk?

Also, It's understandable if someone wants to come up with some new names since the current ones are mixed up all the time. For example, Poland with Eastern Europe or Central Europe. I know a guy from Pakistan says he's Middle Eastern and not South Asian.

I'd have to admit this isn't the first time I've read the term Western Eurasian steppes. Some guy years ago used to say horses were domesticated in the Western Eurasian steppes, not in the Eastern ones(Botai).

Davidski said...

Botai is located in the western steppe. The eastern steppe is in Mongolia.

The western steppe is the Pontic-Caspian steppe + the Kazakh steppe.

But the long standing term is western steppe, not Western Eurasian steppes.

In fact, Western Eurasian steppes is so vague that it can even include the steppe areas of Hungary and Anatolia.

Andrzejewski said...

@Vara “ The presence of horses in Jiroft, BMAC and Mesopotamia can't be attributed to the spread of Sintashta”

It is. Read up about Mitanni and their Indo-Aryan elite

vAsiSTha said...

They should have just used the name of the cultures

vAsiSTha said...

@Vara “ The presence of horses in Jiroft, BMAC and Mesopotamia can't be attributed to the spread of Sintashta”

It is. Read up about Mitanni and their Indo-Aryan elite

@andrze

All 3 are before Sintashta even existed.

vAsiSTha said...

@vara
"This contrasts with the scenario in Asia where Indo-Iranian languages, chariots and horses spread together, following the early second millennium bc Sintashta culture."

They changed the wording, removed the word horse

Davidski said...

@All

The following samples have been added or updated in the G25 datasheets.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PLB1gP0mLJg7LFrQoRMwzPh6HF5QvHVK/view?usp=sharing

Same links as always...

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/07/getting-most-out-of-global25_12.html

Let me know if you spot any errors.

ancestralwhispers.org said...

@Aram
I really doubt that Akhaltsikhe Catholics would manage to "preserve" such archaic admixture, considering that everyone around them is mixed, and considering the history of the region.
Far as Mushki go, there's a strong possibility that the Ahiska have some Mushki ancestry, in the form of Arm_LBA and other, see https://i.imgur.com/n3cgSRF.png

@A
How do you define "unscientific"? The trickiest part is defining the eye area, nose cartilage, while other features are quite clear to recreate. The scientific part is the method created by Gerasimov and refined by others, which is taken into account.

Targamos the Based, son of Kavkasos son of CHG son of said...

@Aram

Armenians used to be a big group, many isolated pockets would exist, from some of which the resettlements would also happen into Georgia. If you model Meskhetians and Armenians with basic components on G25 they are virtually identical. Considering how often Armenians moved around and how many historical events happened revolving around Mushki areas, like Arab invasions and formation of unified Georgian kingdom and then golden age. Considering Hemshin Armenians are also a recent, medieval phenomenon and also considering their emergence happened not very far from Meskhetians, it makes no sense to me to assume that there is an undisrupted MLBA-modern continuity in a region such as Meskheti.

As for the Georgian historians identifying Meskheti with Mushki, this is obvious, but this was not my point at all. I have told you, the Ahiska samples are Islamized Meskhetian Georgians while the Meskhetian Catholics "by coincidence" lived in the same areas where Armenians were resettled to. Whether you explain the Georgianization of those Catholics by one thing or another it doesn't matter. We have Ahiska samples, they are identical to other East Georgian lowlander samples. I would not have the audacity to claim that Ahiskas themselves are the same admixture-wise as the Mushki, let alone claim such a thing about Meskhetian Catholics. Speculating on the nature of a people about which so little is known except their various ethnonyms, is a very pointless activity where national interests and unsubstantiated claims arise. The whole Mushki were Kartvelian thing that Georgian historians do is a simple Occam's Razor argument which truly is the best theory based on the fact that the Meskhi ethnonym was most well-preserved and widely used among Kartvelian people. Not to mention that Mushki in Greek sources was mentioned as Moschoi, where ch is the Georgian kh sound equivalent, while in Jewish sources as Meshech, both of which are closer to Meskhi than the toponym of "Mush" that Armenians often like to mention. On top of that both Mo- and Me- are part of Georgian and Zan grammar signifying relation to the rest of the world, the Meskhi ethnonym is very logically explained by Me-Skhi/Mo-Skhi where Skhi is an archaid dialectic form of "Siskhli" or more likely of Zan "Ziskhir" meaning blood, the world literally means "of shared blood". Such a group would be much closer admixture-wise to Kartvelian groups than to modern Armenians/Meskhetians or at least would be a roughly even mixture of two if kidnappings or later intermarriages are proposed. The explanation of archaic toponyms with Zan in the habitat area of Mushki is no novelty. The same can be applied to another matter of contention between Armenians and Georgians with Diaokhi, which literally means "land" in Zan and is a cognate with PIE "deghom" for soil/land, while the closest Armenian equivalent I am aware of is "hogh". It is simply unlikely that Mushki were autosomally like modern Armenians or Meskhetians based on the current evidence.

Rob said...

''Baltic-Pontic contact space in 4th and 3rd millennium BC
A keynote lecture by Marzena Szmyt held on Thursday 9 September, during 27th Annual Meeting of EAA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlpFqN3VM6Q''


great talk by Madam Professor. Having read her work, I point out some time ago that it is almost as if GAC started the whole process, because they made 'first contact' with pre-Yamnaya/ Yamnaya groups (to the usual protests by lagging nay-sayers). Having become aware of distant lands, steppe groups then moved deep into Central Europe to acquire Volhynian flint, Baltic amber, and whichever. The one thing still to be clarified is precise routes, mechanisms & phases of this process.

Matt said...

@Vara, I wouldn't say that this dataset should have included more horses from SCA, particularly pre-2200 BCE ones. I want them to actually publish stuff and I wouldn't want to impose really high burdens of data collection on them before they do - it's already a massive dataset.

But I do think if they're not going to include them, then there should really be a caveat about the existing evidence (which is widely noted, and not peripheral to the subject at all, e.g. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RhYHEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA749&lpg=PA749#v=onepage&q&f=false) and there should be a clear distinction between suggestions that the Indo-Iranians migrated with the horse (reasonable), and that the horse migrated only with the Indo-Iranians. It does fail at least my standard on that basis.

@Sam/Genos, re; genetic / mesolithic borders, the attempt I can remember to work out a sensible genetic border at the mesolithic was the one made by Mathieson here using EEMS (Estimated Effective Migration Surfaces) - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/135616v1.full , Figure 2.

That gives us a strong, sharp border at the Ukraine cutting through Belarus and to some extent cutting off most of Europe from the steppe (and Scandinavia and the Baltic). Doing this with a larger and wider selection of samples, ideally from a closer time period and with a larger area extending further into Central Asia, might tell us more about where the real "genetic borders" lie at any given time in history.

@ancestralwhispers, I think what defines scientific here is in description of your methods; if you lay out your whole general process flow, and the science based reasoning behind each step, in a series of blogposts, then I think what you're doing could be called scientific, if that's the general consent of a set of experts in the field who look at your blogpost. No one can really say what how scientific you are or not it is, because we're not really party to your methodology!

That's something that for instance I would expect the suite of upcoming El Argar reconstructions to do, if they're publishing in the scientific literature.

Without that I think it's fundamentally best considered an artistic enterprise which might be informed by elements of science. I would consider it that way, though I've got no problem with you indulging this artistic side - if people took them too seriously, I'd respectfully tell them not to take them too seriously, but I wouldn't try to tell you that you shouldn't publish.

This is admittedly a higher bar than sometimes we apply to the genetic blog community, where many details about how these methods work are pretty opaque/broadly explained and played close to the chest! And we just take a lot of this stuff on trust and reputation. But I think it's the sort of bar that would have to be cleared if we wanted to start going "Oh, this is actually peer reviewed science" rather than something that we accept as an amateur analysis guided by and informed by science.

I don't think you should be compelled to do this of course; what you're doing is not fundamentally different from what the Kennis Brothers do, and that's fine, you're just doing it in a digital medium. But what the Kennis Brothers do isn't science, and that's OK; it's art.

Aram said...

Targamos

Once more I will restate my opinion based on hard facts.
Those Meskhetians are coincidentally identic to Armenians. They don't have recent ancestry from Armenians.

This is obvious from fst published in that paper. They are more distant from Armenians than Kumyks to Armenians.

This can be shown with G25 also.
Meskhetians do not show any affinity with Alalakh. While it's the predominant feature of most Armenians ( except Hamshen )
Meskhetians have East Asian ancestry. While Armenians not.

Target: Georgian_Meskh
Distance: 1.7540% / 0.01753957
36.2 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA
28.6 IRN_Hajji_Firuz_C
13.0 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya
11.6 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_LC
9.4 RUS_Catacomb
1.2 KAZ_Karakhanid
0.0 BGR_C
0.0 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kaps
0.0 TUR_Alalakh_MLBA


Target: Armenian_Erzurum
Distance: 1.0426% / 0.01042559
56.6 TUR_Alalakh_MLBA
20.2 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kaps
10.6 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya
7.6 RUS_Catacomb
5.0 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA
0.0 BGR_C
0.0 IRN_Hajji_Firuz_C
0.0 KAZ_Karakhanid
0.0 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_LC


Look how different affinity those two people show yet they live side by side.

Moreever after reading the paper's ethic disclaimer it turns out that authors asked for three (!!!) generation geneology. That's go far beyond the 1897 year that You mentioned. So they can't be any recent migrants. That's impossible.

As for Ahiska Turks. That's not an argument since those samples we have in G25 are not from Academic paper and they are other Ahiska Turks who have different autosomes.

Read this thread. This Meskhetian Turkish guy obviously do not have Armenian ancestry but in most likelihood he do have ancestry from those Meskhetians.

https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?19276-Why-are-Armenians-the-closest-population-to-me

In sum it is clear for me that this type of ancestry even it had some relation to Armenians had separated from them more than 2000 years ago. But in most likelihood even earlier.
And I really don't see any reason to doubt about their authenticity.

After all this is a Georgian paper who gathered samples from their citizens. Four Meskhetians are absolutely unrelated to each other, while the fifth has fourth degree of relation.

Erik Andersson said...

@Davidski
irk00x is the same sample as Dzhylinda1, and yak025 as Khaiyrgas1 (Kilinc et al., Table S1).

Targamos the Based, son of Kavkasos son of CHG son of said...

@Aram

This is not quite what I meant by modelling with basics. Look at this, Laz for contrast:

Target: Georgian_Laz
Distance: 3.0000% / 0.02999974
44.6 GEO_CHG
41.0 TUR_Barcin_N
9.0 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
5.4 Levant_Natufian
0.0 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara

Target: Armenian_Erzurum
Distance: 4.0046% / 0.04004598
41.8 TUR_Barcin_N
24.2 GEO_CHG
19.4 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
10.8 Levant_Natufian
3.8 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara

Target: Armenian
Distance: 3.5912% / 0.03591235
43.0 TUR_Barcin_N
24.0 GEO_CHG
21.0 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
9.2 Levant_Natufian
2.8 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara

Target: Meskheti_average
Distance: 3.4475% / 0.03447460
43.8 TUR_Barcin_N
24.4 GEO_CHG
21.4 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
6.2 Levant_Natufian
4.2 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara

These guys are almost identical. The study from which these samples come is mostly made by amateurs and their PCA is absolutely stupid as well, as evidenced by the position of North-East Georgians, but I don't want to delve into that. As for the Ahiska Turk whose thread you linked, here is how the K13 model of him looks:

Target: MeskhetianFromThread
Distance: 5.0272% / 5.02717511
62.1 Armenian
18.3 Georgian
13.9 Laz
5.7 Turkmen
0.0 Georgian_imereti

This one is mixed. My acquaintance from Trabzon sent me this, demonstrating that the Ahiska samples in G25 are indeed correct and representative of how Ahiska really were. There are both Ardahan Ahiska and Artvin Turks here, both having a more Kartvelian profile - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1r8-el2MSQ8pa69f_NUwHEvKwh61PFpq8sBRY0NzcHDo/htmlview#gid=493442652

Here is how Ahiska3 from that spreadsheet looks in K12b: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/787222754600550400/902160517903290389/unknown.png

I don't think more evidence is required to prove that Meskhetian Catholics were in fact of recent Armenian stock.

Aram said...

Ancestralwhispers

I think we need more samples from Ahiska people. Those three samples we have are good and authentic but in Caucasus sometimes it's not exactly Your ethnicity that can be important but Your physical location. And of Your ancestors offcourse.

It is quite obvious for me that Pontic mountains were quite strong barrier separating people in the South from North living on the Black sea cost.

Anyway extra Steppe ancestry in Ahiska is not surprising. As for Mushki. Let's hope one day we will see ancient DNA from Early Iron Age Turkey especially associated with grooved ware. Then we will have better idea about ancient Mushki DNA and their potential modern affiliation.

Genos Historia said...

@All,

Does know someone who can get SNP allele calls like how Geneticker did?

Davidski, Arza just get one allele call for each SNP. Geneticker got up to 20 calls.

The Bohemian DNA is great data to get a close look at phenotyep SNPs for understanding the trajectory of natural selection in prehistoric Europe.

Matt said...

Thanks David

Comparisons of old and new Mokrin and Tollensee positions via Vahaduo PCA: https://imgur.com/a/qoMAmxd

First the Mokrin necropolis: https://imgur.com/a/lXvaXim
A lot of agreement - I think the new positions are slightly more northern than the old positions. Essentially no shift on the Balto-Slavic vs West European axis.

Now Tollensee. This one's more difficult as I'm comparing a few different versions of them, and they're not all the same samples, so it's less obvious:
https://imgur.com/a/SWqpuvM

The changes are still fairly slight, but I think they're a bit more compressed around a central point (particularly WEZ57, the Lithuanian like sample is somewhat more tamed and more modern Lithuanian like and less Latvia_BA like, while WEZ57 is closer to the other end of the Tollensee cline too), and they may have slightly reduced "Balto-Slavic drift".

StP said...

Andrzejewski said
„Certain parts in the OT seem to mirror IE culture - pastoralism, a tripartite social hierarchy division into priests, levis and commoners, name of Jehovah/Yahweh may be assumed to be related to Div Pater, and many Hebrew words have similar cognates in IE languages. I have deliberated and wondered whether these similarities boil down to the Andronovo origins of the Mitanni elite, or is it much more dated and can even be attributed to a common CHG ultimate origin.”
It's great that you are writing this. In the lineage of the patriarch Jacob there were twelve sons, certainly genetic Semites, but one of them, Levi, the father of the Levite priestly line, was of the PIE line. PIE Z645>Z93 >Z94>Z2124>Z2122>1345>CTS6/M582
I think that high priest Melchizedek was of the same lineage. After all, he did not have a Semitic or biblical lineage.
See: Doron Behar et al. 2017, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5668307/

Genos Historia said...

@Davidski,

Do you know how to get many SNP calls similar to how Geneticker used to?

https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2015/06/21/phenotype-snps-from-prehistoric-eurasia/

vAsiSTha said...

https://imgur.com/gallery/FHdkg8R

Latest qpgraph attempt with 11 pops. all zscores below 3, no outlier fstats.

1. Tarim seems to be 75% ANE, 25% east eurasian related mostly to laos/onge.
2. Basal eurasian concept does seem true because its needed for good fits.
3. Seems to be high Tarim_eba like admixture in iranN.

let me know if you find something weird/interesting.

Arza said...

@ Genos

FASTQ/bam files weren't available at that time and these results were based on genotyped pseudo-haploids which aren't fully accurate for individuals, but allow to estimate allele frequencies in a population. I thought it was obvious.

Genos Historia said...

@Arza,

I'm uneducated on the science of DNA files on computers. So no I didn't know the Bohemia DNA was in type of file that can only get allele frequencies in a population.

I greatly appreciated the work you did. The allele frequencies for Bohemia Neolithic & Early Corded Ware were especially interesting.

Do you know how to get accurate allele calls for individuals samples similar to what Geneticker did?

a said...

R1b-Turganik-Potapovka cluster. R1b-Z2103
Potapovka-Sintashta R1b/Z2103-- I7670 and I1020, I4253

Turganik 2786-Yamnaya kurgan burial.
...two late Yamnaya specimens from approximately 2900 to 2600 BC (Turganik (TURG)


Date: 2200-1800 BCE Potapovka kurgan burial.

Grachyevka I, Samara I7670 (the R1b, Yamnaya like male within Potapovka) was recovered from a kurgan that yielded no other published samples, Potapovka, "grave type and artifacts of the Potapovka culture"


Both Potapovka and Sintashta have DOM2 horses in this study, at about the same time (some overlap between cultures). (Also, wiki – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potapovka_culture – “The Potapovka culture is especially distinguished by the presence of bone cheek-pieces for controlling horses.”)

Though also note from paper: “genetic continuity with DOM2 was rejected for all horses predating about 2200 bc, especially those from the NEO-ANA group (Supplementary Table 2), except for two late Yamnaya specimens from approximately 2900 to 2600 bc (Turganik (TURG)), located further east than the western lower Volga-Don region (Figs. 2a, b, 3a).”

Onur Dincer said...

@Vara

The thing is, there is a general consensus among geographers today on a Ural border of Europe, and academics in general should thus employ the Ural border of Europe as defined by the current geographical consensus and should employ a definition of the European borders in conflict with a Ural border only if the geographical consensus changes on that in the future, and they are free to make proposals for the replacement of a Ural border by another border anytime already.

Matt said...

OT: @Vasistha: https://www.deccanherald.com/national/south/archaeological-excavations-in-tamil-nadu-ancient-dna-lab-to-function-from-year-end-1044116.html - "Archaeological excavations in Tamil Nadu: Ancient DNA lab to function from year-end"

Carlos Aramayo said...

@Stp

"...In the lineage of the patriarch Jacob there were twelve sons, certainly genetic Semites, but one of them, Levi, the father of the Levite priestly line, was of the PIE line. PIE Z645>Z93 >Z94>Z2124>Z2122>1345>CTS6/M582
I think that high priest Melchizedek was of the same lineage. After all, he did not have a Semitic or biblical lineage..."

People from Israel (in the north) and Judah (in the south) did not worship Yahweh from the beginning. Their first God was El, a Cananite deity. Yahweh came to them around 900 BCE (in Iron Age II period), and scholars consider Yahweh cult arrived from Edom and Midian (even from further South of Judah) and was also related to the Kenite hypothesis, which holds that traders brought Yahweh to Israel along the caravan routes between Egypt and Canaan. So, Levites could have come from these southern regions.

vAsiSTha said...

@mh_82

"Aren't you curious to see what happens when you add Yana & compare that to Afontova ?"

I am. But graph takes a long time to run now, so I'll have to delete some pops to add these 2.

@matt
Yeah the tamil state govt is excited about their new archaeological finds, rightly so. Hopefully they receive good training as well to retrieve and preserve aDNa.

@to those who were discussing Anatolia in the comments
There's a 10% iranN related ancestry in barcinN which was absent in pinarbasi.


Matt said...

@a, yes, the Potapovka and Sintashta horses are basically contemporary.

I'm still a bit puzzled by the Reich Lab's treatment of I7670, and generally the Potapovka samples. He seems to have been reclassified from Potapovka to first Yamnaya and in the latest anno to late Poltavka, with no real explanation given in either instance.

Meanwhile the remaining 4 Potapovka are grouped into two sets, one of which is given _o (outlier) status... But neither group is actually smaller in sample count than the other, and neither are less genetically diverse in PCA placement (e.g. there is uneven West Siberian / Lola / EHG / Yamnaya admix across 3 of 4).

It's all very puzzling and it seems like they've somehow decided that the Potapovka main population was Sintashta like. But no published sequence yet seems to support this, so it's either arbitrary or heavily based on unpublished samples. I hope it's the latter so it has some basis... We still don't know actually what was Potapovka from the published sequence, and it seems pivotal in timing to the era of turnover from Yamnaya/Poltavka/Catacomb like people to Fatyanovo like people.

Davidski said...

Can anyone make a list of important reclassifications, like that of I7670?

I'd like to make sure the G25 datasheets are updated.

Onur Dincer said...

@vAsiSTha

to those who were discussing Anatolia in the comments
There's a 10% iranN related ancestry in barcinN which was absent in pinarbasi.


Barcin N has an extra Levantine input rather than Iranian:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bcWPENKL9E2dqTBHi1QyzxMcP_fEHc88/view

Onur Dincer said...

@Matt

We still don't know actually what was Potapovka from the published sequence, and it seems pivotal in timing to the era of turnover from Yamnaya/Poltavka/Catacomb like people to Fatyanovo like people.

It is also pivotal to the question of which of the two genetic clusters domesticated our modern horse.

a said...

Dom2 influence
Deriivka-R1b-Z2103--I5884/Surskaja culture

In terms of possible R1a-z93/R1b-Z2103 shared burial grave sites and Dom2 cultures Eastern Europe.

I7670-R1b Potapovka--- R1b Z2103 Sintashta I1020, I4253
https://imgur.com/a/Iibvy8K


In terms of R1a/R1b Corded Ware shared burial grave sites that cluster- Dom2 Central Europe
R1b-Z2103 OHR001 Czech Corded Ware
R1b-Z2103 I2787 Eastern Bell Beaker
https://i.imgur.com/gmj85HU.png

StP said...

@Carlos Aramayo
„Levites could have come from these southern regions.”

Thank you for that voice in the discussion. The origin of Elohism or Yahwism already has great literature. As for Abraham, as far as I am aware, the scientific biblical-oriental studies do not doubt the origin of Abraham from Ur from the Euphrates and this region. My guess is that the migrating from Central Asia (southern Uzbekistan?) branch of the paternal line R1a-Z93> CTS6/M582 and the famous Melchizedek (R1a?) may have met Abraham (J1a?) in Ur. There, they both experienced a conversion to monotheism. And they came together to the land of Canaan in Palestine. Perhaps this is where their friendship comes from.

Copper Axe said...

@Matt

"It's all very puzzling and it seems like they've somehow decided that the Potapovka main population was Sintashta like. But no published sequence yet seems to support this, so it's either arbitrary or heavily based on unpublished samples."

No offense mate but a bit more familiarity with archaeology would take care of many of the questions or uncertainties you seem to have. Anyhow the Poltavka outlier is from the original Potapovka site, but it's probably misdated or even simply mislabeled. The relation between Potapovka and Abashevo/Sintashta groups is unquestionable.

vAsiSTha said...

@Onur
Barcin N has an extra Levantine input rather than Iranian:

sure, but theres IranN related ancestry in your vahaduo run too. fstats should make it clear. i wouldnt rely on vahaduo for these ancient samples with deep ancestries.

Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first farmers of central Anatolia - feldman et al
"Accordingly, a mixture of AHG and Neolithic Iranians provides a good fit to AAF in our qpAdm modeling (χ2p = 0.296), in which AAF derive most of their ancestry (89.7 ± 3.9%) from a population related to AHG (Supplementary Tables 4 and 6). A simpler model without contribution from Neolithic Iranians (i.e., modeling AAF as a sister clade of AHG) shows a significant reduction in model fit (χ2p = 0.014). This suggests a long-term genetic stability in central Anatolia over five millennia despite changes in climate and subsistence strategy. The additional Neolithic Iranian-related ancestry (10.3 ± 3.9%) presumably diffused into central Anatolia during the final stages of the Pleistocene or early Holocene, most likely via contact through eastern Anatolia. "

In my qpgraphs, i got the same %, around 10 for barcinN. Although i didnt have ppnb as a pop.

@mh_82
"yeah I'm up to trees that are taking 10-12 hours.
im still not sold on "Basal Eurasian'"
wow thats a lot. how many populations for that tree? mine is taking around 70 mins for 11 pops and 13 admixture events.

Im pretty convinced basal eurasian or a 3rd branch apart from west and east eurasians is needed, especially for CHG, IranN and dzudzuana. For iranN im getting upto 50% of this basal ancestry. Laziridis 2016 also gives about 50%, whereas Almarri et al 2021 The genomic history of the Middle East gives around 40% in their qpgraph as well (figure 3 a)

Copper Axe said...

P.s Potapovka also isn't from 2500 bc - 2000 bc. It's fully contemporary with Sintashta and such.

Rob said...

BE peaks in Northern Africa , it’s considerably lower in near east . I wouldn’t put it at ~ 50%
I’m some models, it’s not even needed for AHG.
To clarify it; need to include enough Eurasian UP reference groups

Vara said...

@Matt

More data the better. I have nothing against the data, just the dubious conclusions.

"which is widely noted, and not peripheral to the subject at all"

This is only recently when the horse = IE presence argument is no longer true. I was the one who linked the "dubious paper", remember? Over the years Kuzmina and others have denied the presence of the horse in South Central Asia before the supposed steppe migrations(that never happened). Back then every horse outside the steppe was not a horse but an onager! You can go back a few years ago and read this blog when every evidence of the horse outside the steppe was being disputed.

I mean it was already pretty clear as I argued years ago with David over PIE religion. The absence of the horse in Anatolian and in the core IE dragonslaying myth was the first clue. Even Parpola believes in a late 3rd millennium Indo-Iranian spread of the Divine Twins to other IE groups. I'd argue that the concept of the Divine Twins was spread by East Iranians who adopted it from Indo-Aryans but that's spoilers and off topic.

In fact, a lot of things are still suppressed an example: http://www.payvand.com/news/11/nov/ancient-artifacts-Jiroft-Iran-40.jpg

^Earliest evidence of horse riding in the entire world yet not a single paper on it. Can you imagine if this was found in Sintashta? We would never hear the end of it.

SKRiBHa said...

@Davidski
@SKRiBHa and Simon_W
Please take your discussion to email.


Dear Davidski

I have just noticed that you did not post my last comment, but deleted Simon_W’s and my two previously published comments as well. However, you did not delete the original comment made by @John Thomas.

I must admit that it surprised me a lot, because all these comments were very reasonable and contained nothing but logical statements and arguments.

We wrote about the same scientific prejudices and misinformation that you have been writing about e.g. here:

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/10/modern-domestic-horses-came-from.html?showComment=1635124909054#c6513675922922308414

Davidski said...
I'm showing that the scientists who published a paper in Nature, as well as the peer reviewers and editors there, don't know very basic geography.

I think this is important because it suggests that there are other things that they don't know, are careless about, and/or simply can't be arsed checking properly.

October 24, 2021 at 6:21 PM

The only difference is that we did it in a polite way, although the core of the problem was exactly the same like in? yours.

Would you be so kind and explain what was supposedly inappropriate in our deleted comments so that we all can avoid any similar situation in the future?

Best regards
SKRiBHa

a said...

Fatyanovo

Target: RUS_Fatyanovo_Moscow_BA:HAN004
Distance: 1.3755% / 0.01375480
79.8 Corded_Ware_CZE_early
12.4 UKR_Globular_Amphora
3.4 RUS_Vologda_Veretye_Meso
2.0 UKR_Dereivka_I_En1
1.8 POL_Globular_Amphora
0.6 Corded_Ware_POL_early

Target: RUS_Fatyanovo_Moscow_BA:HAN002
Distance: 1.7752% / 0.01775188
87.2 Corded_Ware_CZE_early
6.8 Corded_Ware_Baltic_early
3.2 UKR_Trypillia_En
1.8 UKR_Dereivka_I_En1
1.0 RUS_Volga-Kama_N

--------------------------------
Czech Corded Ware
Target: Corded_Ware_CZE_early:VLI081
Distance: 4.7915% / 0.04791521
69.2 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
14.8 HUN_Protoboleraz_LCA
10.6 RUS_Volga-Kama_N
3.0 UKR_Dereivka_I_En2
2.4 POL_TRB

-------------------------------
Yamnaya-Caucasus -- Yamnaya Samara
IBD 8-12 Yamnaya Caucasus, @ Czech Corded Ware, German Corded Ware, Poland Corded Ware Germany Unetice.

https://indo-european.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/identity-by-descent-ringbauer-yamnaya-corded-ware.png?x37279

Matt said...

@Onur, I'm not sure they form two clusters, and don't agree that this is necessarily a meaningful way to phrase the question, but yes, something related to that?

@CopperAxe: What do you mean by that? That we should "know" that the main Potapovka population is Sintashta like from the material culture, without samples?

The Potapovka may not precede Sintashta, taken as a whole, but the samples we have are dated in the 2500-2000 BCE interval, while Sintashta samples we have are post 2000 BCE (or in both cases at least largely so).

Carlos Aramayo said...

@StP

"...As for Abraham, as far as I am aware, the scientific biblical-oriental studies do not doubt the origin of Abraham from Ur from the Euphrates and this region..."

Actually Abraham is a mythical character and serious academic studies do not consider him a historical figure, his "origin" from Ur is also mythical.

Here's a fragment from the article "Abraham" in Wikipedia:

"In the early and middle 20th century, leading archaeologists such as William F. Albright and G. Ernest Wright and biblical scholars such as Albrecht Alt and John Bright believed that the patriarchs and matriarchs were either real individuals or believable composites of people who lived in the 'patriarchal age', the 2nd millennium BCE. But, in the 1970s, new arguments concerning Israel's past and the biblical texts challenged these views; these arguments can be found in Thomas L. Thompson's The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives (1974), and John Van Seters' Abraham in History and Tradition (1975). Thompson, a literary scholar, based his argument on archaeology and ancient texts. His thesis centered on the lack of compelling evidence that the patriarchs lived in the 2nd millennium BCE, and noted how certain biblical texts reflected first millennium conditions and concerns. Van Seters examined the patriarchal stories and argued that their names, social milieu, and messages strongly suggested that they were Iron Age creations. Van Seter and Thompson's works were a paradigm shift in biblical scholarship and archaeology, which gradually led scholars to no longer consider the patriarchal narratives as historical. Some conservative scholars attempted to defend the Patriarchal narratives in the following years, but this position has not found acceptance among scholars.
By the beginning of the 21st century, archaeologists had given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac or Jacob credible historical figures."

On the other hand, your view on Ashkenazi R1a connection with Indo-European genetics is possible, but not through relationship with legendary figures.

vAsiSTha said...

@mh_82

not sure if youre using it already, but using qpfstat output as input to qpgraph and limiting iterations by using initmix: 1000 as option, will speed up your qpgraph execution.

Mita said...

@Targamos the Based: You really shouldn't be talking critically about Armenians being Hayasans, Armenians being Urartians, etc. None of those groups lived outside of where Armenians traditionally lived, and they certainly had Indo-European elements (Mita, a number of Hayasan names, a ton of Urartian words/names). In fact, Azzi overlaps with Uruatri, Uruatri was part of Nairi. Armenians don't claim Yamnaya. Armenians come from Yamnaya, like most/all other Indo-Europeans.

Anyway, Georgians frequently claim groups like the Tibarenoi (despite the ancient Greeks explicitly calling them "Scythians"), Chalybes (despite the one Chalybe word we have, Kakmori, their name for the Black Sea, clearly be Indo-European), Diaeuhi (despite the known Diauhian names being Indo-European and Hurrian), and Tabal in Cilicia (simply because "Tabal" sort of sounds like "Tibarenoi,' but there is no recorded presence of Kartvelians in Cilicia and the Tabalians had clearly Indo-European names).


Yes, the Mushki=Moschoi connection is well established. However, Diakonoff suggested that the -ki was a plural suffix, which survived into Classical Armenian as -k'. This is comparable to Greek -choi, which functions in the same way. Remember, Greek and Armenian have a linguistic connection.

As for the Mushki being Kartvelian, that's not really Occam's razor. They were first attested in the 1160s BCE to the west of Lake Van region. By the end of the 12th century, they had settled in the Upper Tigris. In the 8th century, the Mushki under Mita were active in Cilicia and Cappadocia. If they were Kartvelians, where are the Kartvelian names in these regions in antiquity? Where are they now? They should be easily identifiable. Cappadocian Greek should have Kartvelian loanwords (it has Indic loanwords, presumably from Mitanni, which was 800 years prior to Mita's Mushki). All we have in these regions are Indo-European, Semitic, and Hurrian names/words. So it really doesn't make much sense at all that the Mushki were Kartvelians. They were too widespread.

And it wasn't Armenian scholars who suggested that Georgian "Somekhi" (meaning Armenians) is etymologically connected to Mushki.

As for Diaokhi (the Greek form of Diauhi), the root is likely Diaus (land of the Diau tribe). Regardless, if you're going to go with the "lands" argument, the Zan is probably loaned from Iranian or another IE language. Dahyu meant "the land" in Proto-Iranian. There is an Armenian form, by the way. It is "deh."

Your own username refers to a Georgian legend which was adapted from an Armenian legend. And in the Georgian legend, Kartlos (i.e. Georgians) is the younger brother of Haos (i.e. Armenians).

Matt said...

Re; Potapovka again, error by me upthread, memory fail on posting on my phone and not checking the data directly. I7670 is still Potapovka from Grachevka, it's I0418 (may or may not still be in G25 datasheets, can't remember) who is rebranded in latest Reich lab anno as Russia_MBA_Poltavka_published, but who is dated at 2131-1767 calBCE (mean date 1934 BCE) and pretty late compared to other Poltavka who are on average around 2600 BCE.

(I think the individual that was actually reclassified as Yamnaya from Potapovka, was I7489, a female who was both reclassified and redated, properly and publicly in the published paper.)

Anyway, I7670 has not changed at all and is still an R1b in the Potapovka classified by Reich lab in the main cluster. He's currently still in the Potapovka cluster.

I will try and do a proper comparison of different IDs in the latest anno and actually get it right, if possible and no one else gets to it first!

Anywhere here are some graphics putting the Poltavka, Potapovka and Sintashta samples that we have so far into date sequence and plotting on Vahaduo G25 PCA: https://imgur.com/a/oUeeaLF

Although the Potapovka samples aren't as early relatively to the Sintashta samples as I had remember, they are still clearly a fair bit earlier, and bridge the gap between the late Poltavka samples we have and Sintashta samples we have. I'm open to the idea that it's just bad luck for us to get early Potapovka culture samples and late Sintashta samples, but this is what we have so far.

There also clearly isn't any unity even in the Potapovka main cluster samples we have that Reich lab accept as within the group; only one of them is much near Sintashta. Again, I'm open to the idea that actually that one is going to be the representative one should we get more samples, but this is the data as it stands.

As far as classifying one cluster as main and another as outlier on the basis of material culture (and even considering that main cluster isn't a close cluster), then this is not something that has ever been done before with any other set of culture samples, as far as I am aware.

(Also will again note that I0246, although dated with a wide interval 2468-1925 BCE, is on the basis of the mean date the earliest Potapovka sample we have, and is admixed with WSHG like ancestry, and still is the earliest apparent chariot rider we have - "The Utyevka VI cemetery was located 0.8 km north-northeast of the village of Utyevka, Samara oblast, south of the Samara River. It contained some of the richest and most unusual graves of the Potapovka culture. Kurgan 6, grave 2 contained six humans: a male-female couple buried facing each other aged 15-17; and four children and infants too old and numerous to be the offspring of the couple—perhaps siblings. Horse sacrifices, shield-shaped studded bone cheekpieces interpreted as chariot-driving gear, weapons (three copper daggers, a flat copper axe, 16 flint projectile points), copper beads and rings, and other objects were found in the grave. Sample I0246 is from the 15-17-year-old male (confirmed genetically).").

Mita said...

@Targamos the based: Additionally, as far as the Diaeuhi go, most scholars connect them to the earlier Dayaeni/Diaeuni of Assyrian texts. Tiglath-Pileser I explicitly included the Dayaeni as one of the tribes of Nairi, and a few scholars have thusly concluded that the Dayaeni, if they were connected to the later Diaeuhi, must have moved north from somewhere between Elazig and Lake Van, another region where there has never been a Kartvelian-speaking presence. The one historically attested Dayaenian king had a Hurrian name (Sien). The two historically attested Diaeuhian kings had Indo-European names (Asia and Utupursi). And, ironically, Melikshivili placed the Diaeuhi even further south originally, in Nuzi, and suggested they were Hurrians (from the Hurrian personal name Taiuki).

Rob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Matt said...

@Vara, what's "the dubious paper"? Re; Central Asia and horses, I think one interesting implication of this paper to me anyway was the finding in their Fig 3b of that both Anatolian and Botai horses, are descended from something deeply rooted (in the case of Botai, related to Pleistocene Siberian horses), combined with something that split near the root of Western Pontic-Caspian Eastern European (&c, &c.) steppe horses. And the the main ancestry of WPCEE steppe, Anatolian and Botai horses is a clade relative to the main ancestry in CWC horses, and Iberian horses. If that represents a post-Ice Age refugium then it's not necessarily so relevant to domestication of the horse, but it seems possible that a refugium like that could be somewhere in Central Asia. I don't know how expected that would be.

Open Genomes said...

@Davidski

The new Ward's distance-squared clustering tree including in the newly added and updated samples is here:

http://open-genomes.org/analysis/PCA/clustering/Eurogenes_Global25_tree_scaled.pdf

Please notice that quite a few samples have "alternate" population names that are basically equivalent, but which are just spelled differently. For example "Scythian_HUN" and "HUN_IA_Scythian" and "HUN_LaTene_IA" and "HUN_IA_La_Tene".

capra internetensis said...

@Matt

Thanks, I didn't notice that the Bronze Age ones were still IBE. Still 2000 BC is pretty early.

@Vara

AFAIK the Jiroft stuff is mostly looted, archaeological context is mostly guesswork. Don't know where it's really from, how old it really is, and how much is faked. Are any of those horse-rider figurines from a proper excavation with secure dates?

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