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Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Local origins of the earliest Tarim Basin mummies (Zhang et al. 2021)


Over at Nature at this LINK. It's nice to see yet another huge surprise courtesy of ancient DNA. Please note that most of the ancients from this paper are already in the Global25 datasheets. Here's the abstract:

The identity of the earliest inhabitants of Xinjiang, in the heart of Inner Asia, and the languages that they spoke have long been debated and remain contentious 1. Here we present genomic data from 5 individuals dating to around 3000–2800 bc from the Dzungarian Basin and 13 individuals dating to around 2100–1700 bc from the Tarim Basin, representing the earliest yet discovered human remains from North and South Xinjiang, respectively. We find that the Early Bronze Age Dzungarian individuals exhibit a predominantly Afanasievo ancestry with an additional local contribution, and the Early–Middle Bronze Age Tarim individuals contain only a local ancestry. The Tarim individuals from the site of Xiaohe further exhibit strong evidence of milk proteins in their dental calculus, indicating a reliance on dairy pastoralism at the site since its founding. Our results do not support previous hypotheses for the origin of the Tarim mummies, who were argued to be Proto-Tocharian-speaking pastoralists descended from the Afanasievo 1,2 or to have originated among the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex 3 or Inner Asian Mountain Corridor cultures 4. Instead, although Tocharian may have been plausibly introduced to the Dzungarian Basin by Afanasievo migrants during the Early Bronze Age, we find that the earliest Tarim Basin cultures appear to have arisen from a genetically isolated local population that adopted neighbouring pastoralist and agriculturalist practices, which allowed them to settle and thrive along the shifting riverine oases of the Taklamakan Desert.

Zhang, F., Ning, C., Scott, A. et al. The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies. Nature (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04052-7

See also...

How the Shirenzigou nomads became Proto-Tocharians

282 comments:

1 – 200 of 282   Newer›   Newest»
Carlos Aramayo said...

The study, shows there were two different populations in Xinjiang, one in the north (Dzungaria_EBA2)beginning around 3000 BC, and Tarim_EMBA1 in the south, around 2000 BC. The first one was Pontic-Caspian-Steppe-related, with R1b1a1a2a2 in sample G218M5-2 at the site Nileke, and this paper's authors can not denny that they were Indo-Europeans.

But I still wonder how can we explain that the southern people, Tarim basin's proper one, was sampled in the site Xiaohe as featuring Y-haplogroup's subclades R1b1c in two individuals with no Steppe ancestry.

These two samples are:

L5209, Xiaohe, C4(mtDNA), R1b1c(Y-hapl)
L5213, Xiaohe, R1b1(mtDNA), R1b1c(Y-hapl)

Davidski said...

The paper argues that these Botai-like mummies were locals.

This might be true, but how did they acquire their relatively advanced culture and economy if they were isolated in the Tarim Basin?

Perhaps they were only isolated genetically, but not culturally/economically?

Rahul Chawla said...

@Carlos this isn't the only case, as I recall from Narasimhan paper, there was another Darra-e-kur samples which was found across the mountains from Harappan region. It also had R1b but NO steppe ancestry dated to ~2800 BCE. At the same time, there was significant Anantolian ancestry found in the Turan/Iran region (in C&B age) so this person could not have come from those regions either.
Darra-e-kur was R1b with 89% IranN + 11% ANE ancestry.

Andrzejewski said...

Tarim Basin Mummies like Ur-David, Beauty of Lulan, Cherchen Man look very modern European. They could either be:

1. Afanasievo/Okunevo with Steppe (+ possible WSHG).

2. Andronovo (which also means GAC, WHG and some traces of BMAC).

Or WSHG who through common descent from Mal’ta Boy relatives looked very similar to our Pontic ancestors. There is no other way around it.

Copper Axe said...

@Davidski

A clue for their relatively early isolation is the complete lack of pottery in the Xiaohe-Gumugou culture.

But there are plenty of signs of recent contact: copper/bronze mirrors which were traded in and signs of domesticated camels, which only were domesticated halfway through the 3rd millenium b.c.

I still wonder if there were WSHG proper (including EHG or EHG+CHG ancestry) derived populations living in the foothills of the mountain ranges beyond the great desert in Xinjiang, which would have been one of the vectors of these cultural influences into the Tarim Basin. I remember that being my takeaway looking at those Shirenzigou samples again but it's been a while since I last looked at them.

Andrzejewski said...

Tocharian must’ve come with Andronovo horizon then.

Andrzejewski said...

From the article:

Quote: “ The Tarim mummies’ so-called Western physical features are probably due to their connection to the Pleistocene ANE gene pool,”

I rest my case. I couldn’t say it any better :)

Rob said...

By virtue of being an admixed population it is unlikely to be isolated. Strange conclusions.
I think this is a case of authors trying to 'hype up' their findings


@ Carlos

I don't see two different populations
I see one similar population, but a subset in Dzungaria has Afansievo ancestry

Genos Historia said...

Interesting, the Tarim Basin mummies have ancestral/dark skin alleles in SLC24A5 and SLC45A5.

The same is true for the few West Siberian hunter gatherers. It would be interesting to see what other indigenous northern Asians show.

EHG in Europe was genetically mostly the same as them (ANE) but had 100% light skin version in SLC24A5, and decent frequency of SLC45A5.

This is showing regional selective pressures for skin color.

One mystery is why Anatolian Farmers and EHG have the same light skin genes, but are genetically really distinct.

There's clearly selection going on before the Neolithic in multiple West Eurasian populations. It doesn't all follow UV rays.

Andrzejewski said...

This history turning research left me with more questions than answers. Among the Q it raises:

1. Are “Okunevo” the EMB1 and EMB2 samples? Were they the autochthonous pops who assimilated Afanasievo?

2. Yamnaya/Afanasievo were 50% ANE, so does it mean that they didn’t look that different from autochthonous after all, did they?

3. Did Andronovo spread into Tarim Basin in the IA age after all, and did they assimilate some autochthonous populations? I have a theory that the Saka, Eastern Scythians and Cimmerians are Andronovo merging with Okunevo: Paternal ydna were European whereas maternal ones were local Asians.

4. If Tocharians = Yuezhi = Kushan = Andronovo after all, does the common WSH profile facilitate transmission of a common culture? After all, (Greco-)Bactria, Western Mongolia, Xinjiang and Central Asia and Sassanic Iran (not to mention Brahmin India) had more or less Indo-European culture and lifestyle 1,000BC-1000AD. There’s a fascinating article pertaining to the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism, then could it be that descendants of Afanasievo and Andronovo recognized each other as similar and as almost a kin, and could it be the glue that made Buddhism (rooted in Brahmin hInduism) spread that far and wide?

5. I had recently been debating ANE’s source for Yamnaya’s appearance and thus our current facial features, albeit this article corroborates it to the T; actually, any scenario establishes my narrative:
(I) Tarim Mummies are Afanasievo, which means WSH without farmers and foragers.
(Ii) TBM are Andronovo (almost identical genetic profile to post-BA Europeans);
(Iii) or - Tarim Mummies are ANE or WSHG.

In either case, their proximity to what research paper authors termed “western appearance” and their emphasis on their European looks due to ANE roots, explicitly - serves to put my hypothesis on a pedestal.

Andrzejewski said...

@Genos Historia “ Interesting, the Tarim Basin mummies have ancestral/dark skin alleles in SLC24A5 and SLC45A5. ”

Where did you find it in the article?

“ The same is true for the few West Siberian hunter gatherers. It would be interesting to see what other indigenous northern Asians show.”

WSHG have 20%-40% East Asian. That’s likely why.

“ color.

One mystery is why Anatolian Farmers and EHG have the same light skin genes, but are genetically really distinct”

TRB + GAC were 70% farmers but I believe they had a fairly light skin.

Andrzejewski said...

I wonder if by “autochthonous” they mean EMB1 and EMB2 = “Okunevo”.

vAsiSTha said...

It's clear that R1b was also present in this SC asian region where it underwent mutation into ph155 branch

Davidski said...

Okunevo has some Afanasievo ancestry. The Tarim mummies don't.

Rob said...

It's a case of Musical Chairs

vAsiSTha said...

@andrze
Tarim mummies are 75% ane + 25% east eurasian. They are not okunevo, afanasievo,bmac, chemurchek or andronovo related at all.

Copper Axe said...

Looking at the descriptions of the Afanasievo sites where the Dzungaria_EBA samples came from, they found over well over a hundred Afanasievo skeletons and tested 6. I figured that they were from Afanasievo sites anyways given the timeframes, but I wasn't aware that they managed to find such a significant amount of them.

The Afanasievo site at Shatar Chuluu is also interesting as it is pretty much in Central Mongolia, south of the Khangai and north of the Gobi Altai.

Andrzejewski said...

BTW, a bit OT, but if the supposed reconstruction of this ANE-rich individual is indeed a SHG then he wouldn’t stand out at any bar in the Western world either:

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-f6e69d8e4e1fdea1455471940c8f8469

vAsiSTha said...

Milk consumption by tarim people without LP alleles.. just shows how outdated the LP research is. I think they haven't found out all the associated LP markers yet

Carlos Aramayo said...

@MH_82

"I don't see two different populations. I see one similar population, but a subset in Dzungaria has Afansievo ancestry."

But especially Dzungaria_EBA1 has overwhelming proportion of Afanasievo ancestry, more than 70%. And Tarim_EMBA1 has no relationship with Afanasievo.

MaxT said...

@Genos Historia

"One mystery is why Anatolian Farmers and EHG have the same light skin genes, but are genetically really distinct."

Y-DNA J in EHG is a clue in my view. We don't yet have relevant samples to put together full puzzle. I think Dzudzuana could solve some of the clues once they are released, I believe they are related to both Anatolians and steppe according to the study.

It's highly likely Dzudzuana-related group lived on both sides of Caucasus mountains but were diverged from eachother very anciently.

ambron said...

So where does R1a (xZ93) in Taklamakan come from?

Davidski said...

It's no longer certain if any of the mummies belonged to R1a(xZ93), because those results were based on old PCR tests.

My bet is that there will be late mummies with R1a in the Tarim Basin, but all or almost all will be Z93, and derived from the Andronovo population.

Rob said...

@ Carlos


''
But especially Dzungaria_EBA1 has overwhelming proportion of Afanasievo ancestry, more than 70%. And Tarim_EMBA1 has no relationship with Afanasievo.''

That's obviously untrue, because we see plenty of material interchange between Tarim horizon and Afansievo, Andronovo, karasuk, etc
however, at a genetic level, this exchange did not entail en masse admixture, but rather at the individual level (similar to Farmers and steppe in the West). The link between Tarim & Afnasievo in this case was mediated via the 'WSHG' populations themselves

ambron said...

I see, thanks!

Andrzejewski said...

@Max T “ It's highly likely Dzudzuana-related group lived on both sides of Caucasus mountains but were diverged from eachother very anciently”

Pretty much: Dzudzuana contributed to both Anatolian farmers and to the CHG that’s in Steppe groups. Also, if Dzudzuana is related to WHG then it could be related to the WHG within EHG side of Steppe dwellers.

I would go even further in time to Kostenki14, which is related and could even be ancestral to all components of modern Europeans- WHG, EEF and WSH.

Andrzejewski said...

@Davidski “ My bet is that there will be late mummies with R1a in the Tarim Basin, but all or almost all will be Z93, and derived from the Andronovo population.”

Except that perhaps that Andronovo pop isn’t “pure” but could’ve assimilated Okunevo and remnants of Afanasievo. Maybe that’s how certain Saka, Cimmerian and Sarmatians came to acquire East Eurasian mtDNA.

Andrzejewski said...

@Max T “
@Genos Historia

"One mystery is why Anatolian Farmers and EHG have the same light skin genes, but are genetically really distinct."

Y-DNA J in EHG is a clue in my view.”

Anatolian farmer weren’t that dark, if we think about TRB and GAC. There was a 5,000 y/o “British” Neolithic farmer who looked almost like a 21st century Briton and who had red hair and light skin and whose facial features looked like any Englishman walking the street today (case in point: the SHG person I linked earlier that Romulus uses as his profile pic could pass as a modern Swede despite the latter having almost zero SHG ancestry; I had made a joke that he could fit at any bar in the western world based on his appearance. So maybe physical anthropology and reconstructions are way off the mark after all).

Moreover, Ötzi the Iceman wasn’t dark skinned/pigmented.


Not sure how come the Hap J in EHG could provide a clue. However, since we know that Hap J is common among CHG (plus the fact that the latter had a small contribution to/ played a small role in the formation of EHG), it is possible or even plausible to ascribe Hap J to a common ANE lineage.

And another thing: Genos claims that Tarim Mummies had a dark pigmentation, but reading the entire study I could not trace any references whatsoever to skin, eye or hair color. To the contrary, Tarim mummies have surprised scientists for over a century with their fair pigmentation, and knowing that they were at least 75% ANE then with what we know about AG3’s mutation for blond hair I wouldn’t be surprised that they turned out that way.

MaxT said...

@Andrzejewski

Not the same mummies you're thinking about, these Tarim EMBA are from oldest layer. Lighter ones appear to be later migration from Eastern European steppes.

It's from Supplementary Data 1

Andrzejewski said...

@Max T “ Not the same mummies you're thinking about, these Tarim EMBA are from oldest layer. Lighter ones appear to be later migration from Eastern European steppes.”

It's from Supplementary Data 1

Thank you for referring me to the sup data. I must’ve skipped that part.

By “lighter ones” do you refer to the “famous” ones, the more renowned Lulan, Ur-D and Cherchen M?

Simon Stevens said...

@Andrzejewski

SLC45A2 and SLC24A5 are present in both ANFs and EHGs; one of the two is also present in CHGs. This leads me to believe there is a deep, Dzudzuana related connection between all three ancestral populations. Firstly, there is CHG/Iran_N-like ancestry in some ANFs/EEFs, like in the Anatolian Aceramic Farmers (ACF); I believe Otzi has minor CHG related ancestry as well. This explains the appearance of J2a in Sopot (Croatia), Lengyel (Hungary), LBK (Austria), and Neolithic Italy. Secondly, we have the aforementioned J1 in one of the Karelia EHGs. Finally, I’d like to touch upon WHG. We know some WHGs have ANE (Villabruna), while others do not, such as Loschbour and Cheddar man. Various WHGs/EHGs appear to be on this cline, in which some have a lot of ANE (Veretye, Sidelkino, and Karelia), while others have little or none. Instead of there being WHG admixture in EHG, or EHG descending from WHG, these two are likely the same Gravettian/Vestonice descended European hunter gatherers, just with varying levels of ancestry from ANE and Goyet (Aurignacian).

@MaxT

Is the western ancestral component in ANE/ANS more similar to Goyet (Aurignacians), or to Kostenki, Sungir, and Vestonice (Gravettians)? Goyet also has some IUP ancestry, likely related to Bacho Kiro and Oase.

old europe said...



@ Simon

it is more similar to Goyet. Read the Salkhit paper. Also because the wave that gave rise to Yana is older than the Gravettian arrival. WHG are from Villabruna which is a different genetic cluster from Vestonice. And EHG goes in the same direction. That is a mix between Villabruna/WHG and Afontova Gora

Andrzejewski said...

@Simon Stevin “ SLC45A2 and SLC24A5 are present in both ANFs and EHGs; one of the two is also present in CHGs.”

Bingo! Bullseye! EHG are described as being fair skinned (descendants of AG3, mind you!), and they inherited both genetic mutations for evolution of light skin. CHG, on the other hand, only had one. This fact leads me to the conclusion that Yamnaya’s more tanned or swarthy in appearance is all because of the CHG possessing an intermediate rather than light skin color.

Anatolian (GAC, TRB, Tripolye) and certain WHG groups such as Narva HG or SHG, all of which the later CWC intermarried in the centuries following their migration into Central, Northern and non-Steppe parts of EE, who had light skin (the only pre-WSH pre-Corded group described as not being light skinned was Cheddar Man) were responsible for “restoring” the original pigmentation that the Sidelkino, Samara HG, Volosovo, Combed Ceramic and other predominantly EHG ethnos had prior to certain EHG mixing with CHG to form Sredny, Corded and Yamnaya.

Andrzejewski said...

Going off on a tangent and answering @Genos Historia on another thread: no, Finns can’t be from extra EHG affinity which is non-Steppe; the reason is that the expanding IE essentially wiped them out of the face of the earth without a trace so by the time that the Nganasan N1c possessing Proto-Uralic speaking founding populations crossed the Urals from Western Siberia into the forest zone north of the Steppes in Eastern Europe, none of these groups had any discernible identity nor genetic impact of the Finns. I’m talking about the Combed Ceramic Culture and Volosovo, both groups outcompeted by CWC related pops, Volosovo by the Fatnayovo.

Therefore, the 50%-60% WSH in Finns, similar to Poles, is wholly due to Corded W admixture and/or founding effect.

Simon_W said...

@Andrzejewski

"Tocharian must’ve come with Andronovo horizon then."

Wouldn't it seem more likely that Tocharian came from a population that was derived from the Afanasievo-heavy Dzungarian Basin EBA with its R1b1a1a2a2 or a related nearby pop? I would think so, because of its very non-Indo-Iranian features that look partly Celtic-like and the fact that it split from the IE mainstream right after the IE Anatolian did. Andronovo people on the other hand were very mobile (given their chariots), so unlikely to harbour languages as diverged as Indo-Iranian and Tocharian at the same time. Moreover Andronovo seems to be R1a-Z93 dominated, IIRC, which is associated with Indo-Iranian.

AWood said...

@Andrzejewski

The reconstruction looks closest to people in modern European Russia, although he'd be a minority in the looks department elsewhere in Europe, nobody would question him being foreign (in northern Europe).

We must remember that even north Europeans have upwards of 40% EEF ancestry which has altered our physical appearance. So indeed, these ANE guys are kind of a ghost population. I reckon the male ancestors to Native Americans (24-30 ybp) looked similar to this as well prior to receiving East Asian ancestry and crossing the Bering strait.

Carlos Aramayo said...

@MH_82

"...That's obviously untrue, because we see plenty of material interchange between Tarim horizon and Afansievo, Andronovo, karasuk, etc..."

You can argue the cultural affinities, but genetically there's no relationship between Afanasievo and Tarim.

Genos Historia said...

@Andrze,

CHG making Yamnaya darker, doesn't explain why UkrainHGs are darker than Yamnaya. We don't have a lot of DNA from EHG. UkraineHG is the best proxy though.

We only have two CHG samples. So nothing can be said about their skin color based on that.

Also, check the supplemntary files. Yes, the early tarim Mummies have dark skin alleles.

Genos Historia said...

@Andrze,
"Finns can’t be from extra EHG affinity which is non-Steppe;"

How can you say this, when we have had Bolshoy Oleni DNA for several years.

Bolshoy Oleni dating 1500 BC, is mix between EHG and East Asian. They were definitly early Uralics in Europe. They may even represent what the ancestors of European Uralics looked like.

How can you know this, then say a Uralic speaking ethnic group (Finns) can't possibly have extra EHG ancestry. The oldest uralic DNA in Europe is literally around 50% EHG.

Finns definitely have ancestry from Bolshoy Oleni-related people. For all we know Bolshoy oleni represents the genetic makeup of the ancestor of all European Uralics.

But even if that is not the case, Finns get Bolshoy Oleni ancestry from their significant Saami ancestry.

Saami are like 50% Bolshoy Oleni, btw.

Genos Historia said...

@Andrze,

I'll give it to you one of the key achievements of Corded Ware expansion was absorbing many of the last hunter gatherers in northern Europe. But apparently they didn't absorb the ones in the far north in Scandinavia & Northern Russia, because Bolshoy Oleni has lots of ancestry from them.

gamerz_J said...

Are these the famous "European-like/Caucasoid" mummies of Xinjiang? Does anyone know? They seem to have dark pigmentation though unless I am getting something wrong.

Rob said...

@ Old Europe


''(Yana) is more similar to Goyet. Read the Salkhit paper. Al''

the Salkhit paper did not state what you suggest. It rather repeated the now outdated view that Goyet-Q116 has east Eurasian admixture
The west Eurasian in Yana is more similar to Kostenki/Sunghir

Andrzejewski said...

Am I the only one who noticed that paragraph?

Quote: “ The Tarim mummies’ so-called Western physical features are probably due to their connection to the Pleistocene ANE gene pool,”

Cy Tolliver said...

Is the East Eurasian-ish affinity of ANE heavy populations (Yana, CHG, Iran_N, Mal'ta, AG3, etc) universally more closely related to Tianyuan, or do some of them prefer Onge?

Anonymous said...

@Genos Historia
Not only Anatolian farmers, but some very old Natufian individuals also carry the mutation in the SLC24A5 gene. In fact, all populations around the Black Sea/Caucasus will have individuals with the mutation in the SLC24A5 gene.

Cy Tolliver said...

@Nyan

I've seen qpAdm models of Yana as being a near 50-50 split of Kostenki/Sunghir and Tianyuan. What kind of models are you seeing where this mix fails, or that they don't need specific Tianyuan-related ancestry?

Andrzejewski said...

Can Iran_N (Ganj Dareh) be conflated with the Elamites? And were Elamites kin to BMAC? If Pashtun are mainly descendants of BMAC it means that they were 50:50 ANE, and that’s even w/o the WSH layer in Andronovo. Kalash, OTOH seem to have much more Steppe proper.

It’s interesting, because both Sumerian, Elamite and also BMAC languages were partially deciphered (just like with Etruscan), and hence there’s a 50-50 chance that Elamite & BMAC were ANE-descended languages (other 50% odds would be a Dzudzuana one). And if indeed the Sumerian language arrived with the Anatolian (or Levant PPNB) migrants into the Fertile Crescent, its significance lies in the notion that we know more of less what (some, at least) language(s) Barcin people could’ve spoken and therefore hypothesize what language LBK farmers spoke.

I still can’t make up my mind whether Blažek was right to assert that Botai was a Yenisseyan language, and if any of these languages: Botai, Kett, Inuit, Yukaghir and Evenk were from ANE or from ENA (East Asian). I think more likely it’s the latter. Same goes to Native American language families.

Andrzejewski said...

@Genos Historia I thought that Barcin were light skinned but maybe it had more to do with natural selection, genetic drift and founder effect that were stronger factors in Globular Amphora, Tripolye and TRB being light pigmented. Could be a gradual, multigenerational process.

Nyan said...

ANS/ANE like Yana prefers Proto-West Eurasian (something before the split of Kostenki & Sunghir) and Proto-East Eurasian (something ancestral to Tianyuan, Onge, Hoabin split from eachother or related to all of them).

They can't simply be modeled as sunghir and tianyuan cuz it fails. Instead, they need mix of all those ancestries mentioned above to get reasonable fit. They need mix of Kostenki/Sunghir, close to western eurasian ancestral ancestral base, and something ancestral or related to all three east eurasians.

It does not want Ust Ishim, Goyets etc no matter how many times i tried adding it with others but they prefer 70% mix of Kostenki/Sunghir and rest is mix of three ENA's.

Rob said...

I doubt Onge are relevant for ANE. They're a modern Population, and have too much Papuan-related ancestry.
The East Asian ancestry between Yana and Afontova could be slightly different, given their separation of 20,000 years. Now that Salkhit is available, i might look at it again

Dromichaetes said...

I've always wondered if the Tocharian-Afanasievo connection actually made sense, it always seemed too early to my layman eyes for 2 reasons.

1) AFAIK, isn't the Tocharian & proto-Samoyed contact phase dated to the EBA, that would put it around 2000BC, far too late for Afanasievo. This also reminds me of an earlier linguistic analysis that found Tocharian contacts with Finno-Volgaic groups much further west than Afanasievo, which would put proto-Tocharian in the Volga-Kama region around 2500-2000BC.

https://paperzz.com/doc/9080518/the-geohistorical-stratification-of-uralic-indo-european


2) As I recall, an earlier study established that the Tarim basin mummies had R1a which means that IF they represented a Tocharian speaking population as early as 2000-1800BC, they were associated with Sintasha-Andronovo and not Afanasievo.

This is the study and it seems that they did screen for R1a SNPs (unless I'm misreading something):
https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7007-8-15

Davidski said...

I think the chances of anyone speaking Uralic in the Volga-Kama region around 2500-2000BC are pretty slim.

Piyush said...

@Rahul, i thought that Darra-e-Kurr was heavily damaged and was of low coverage. Regardless,in some cases, odd Y-HGs can be found far away from their places of origin where generations of admixture can make them autosomally similar to the local population(example being a case of 14,000 year old R1b in italy in a WHG population)

gamerz_J said...

@Nyan

"It does not want Ust Ishim, Goyets etc no matter how many times i tried adding it with others but they prefer 70% mix of Kostenki/Sunghir and rest is mix of three ENA's."

So would you say ANE are mixed between Kostenki/Sunghir (UP pops) and a common proto-East Eurasian population? If so then that mixture would have to be more ancient than it is no? ANE share uniparentals with East Eurasian groups less than 40kya (but upwards of 30kya) apparently on their paternal line more than their maternal one.

@Andrzejewski
“ The Tarim mummies’ so-called Western physical features are probably due to their connection to the Pleistocene ANE gene pool,”

Considering that the remains in their study also had some low but substantial East Asian ancestry it's quite surprising they appear anthropologically so western.

Tarim basin doesn't seem to have been occupied prior to 7kya so I suppose these ANE-like people came from further north, perhaps somewhere east of lake Baikal.

There was apparently a cline back then from ANE-like to Amur river-like ancestries, the latter being represented by the Devils_Gate Neolithic individuals it seems.


old europe said...



Kostenki and Sungir are mostly of Goyet ancestry. No matter what the west eurasian side of ANS is aurignacian because proto ANS formed before gravettian so at the time in Europe there was only aurignacian dna

Rob said...

“ so I suppose these ANE-like people came from … somewhere east of lake Baikal. ”


Lol seriously? Sorry , but that’s just comically absurd
Take a look at the ample Baykal N data available

old europe said...



kostenki and Sungir are a mix of Goyet and proto gravettian dna ( likely from the caucasus) but that is after the proto aurignacian phase that starts around 42 ky in central western europe

Matt said...

Possibly of interest here: new method to detect relatives among shotgun adna with only very low shotgun coverage required - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00581-3/tables/1

Identifies that some of Estonia_BA group sampled by Saag et al 2019 from a cist grave are likely to be related within 2nd degree, which was not identified by the published paper, and also all interrelated to a cist grave at another site.

old europe said...

https://www.academia.edu/50085907/On_the_inhabitation_of_the_northeast_of_East_European_plain_and_the_Urals_in_the_beginning_of_Upper_Palaeolithic_MIS3_


Quote


Thus, age, distinctive features of stone and bone assemblage and the types of personalornaments unambiguously allow to relate Zaozer’e to the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic.The complex of the basic characteristics of the site, including spatial organization (for detailssee Svendsen et al. 2010: g.6) and the main features of the site’s assemblage, completely fit within the AMH behavioral “package”. The industry of Zaozer’e has certain similarityto assemblages of the contemporaneous sites of the Kostenki group (Kostenki XVII, layerII and Kostenki XIV, layers IVb-w), but also yielded some implements resembling elementsof the Uluzzian (lunates) and Protoaurignacien (straight bladelets) assemblages of Southern and Southwestern Europe (Moroni et al., 2013; Dinnis et al., 2019). Thus, in my opinion, he materials of Zaozer’e support suggestions of a rapid spreading of the Upper Palaeolithic industries and accordingly of modern humans across the territory of the plain, at least, up to58 ° N, during the chronological interval of 41-38 cal kyr (Hoffecker, 2011).

This is north eastern Russia and the ties are with southwestren Europe ( aurignacian) not with Iran

Rob said...

@ Old Europe

''Kostenki and Sungir are mostly of Goyet ancestry.''

I don't know where you got that idea from (perhaps 20th century ideas that Aurignacian spread from western Europe)

Quite the contrary, some models have Goyet deriving most of its ancestry from Kostenki/ Sungir-related groups.
But whatever the case, the large pre-Aurignacian-industries came via eastern Europe, perhaps via contact with UP groups in Iran

old europe said...


Aurignacian in Iran is 5000/6000 years younger than in Europe

http://www.em-consulte.com/en/article/120954

Abstract

The Zagros “Baradostian” clearly belongs to Aurignacian traditions; earlier than traditions in the Levant, it now seems to be later than those in the Balkans. The Aurignacian territory is thus even larger than previously considered, extending from Portugal to Afghanistan.

A said...

@ Andrzejewski :

Ancient Mitochondrial Genomes Reveal Extensive Genetic Influence of the Steppe Pastoralists in Western Xinjiang (Ning et al. 2021)

"By analyzing complete mitochondrial sequences from the Xiabandi (XBD) cemetery (3,500–3,300 BP), the up-to-date earliest cemetery excavated in western Xinjiang, we show that all the XBD mitochondrial sequences fall within two different West Eurasian mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) pools, indicating that the migrants into western Xinjiang from west Eurasians were a consequence of the early expansion of the middle and late Bronze Age steppe pastoralists (Steppe_MLBA), admixed with the indigenous populations from Central Asia. Our study provides genetic links for an early existence of the Indo-Iranian language in southwestern Xinjiang and suggests that the existence of Andronovo culture in western Xinjiang involved not only the dispersal of ideas but also population movement."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8493956/

This paper seems to have slipped under the radar.

old europe said...

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi1qvP5te_zAhXK5KQKHYX2CtQQFnoECAMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F330522251_An_early_Aurignacian_arrival_in_southwestern_Europe&usg=AOvVaw2VFTyeBgJkqOAGAZke4_pG


Abstract

Westernmost Europe constitutes a key location in determining the timing of the replacement of Neanderthals by anatomically modern humans (AMHs). In this study, the replacement of late Mousterian industries by Aurignacian ones at the site of Bajondillo Cave (Málaga, southern Spain) is reported. On the basis of Bayesian analyses, a total of 26 radiocarbon dates,
including 17 new ones, show that replacement at Bajondillo took place in the illennia centring on ~45–43 calibrated thousand years before the present (cal ka bp)—well before the onset of Heinrich event 4 (~40.2–38.3 cal ka bp). These dates indicate that the arrival of AMHs at the southernmost tip of Iberia was essentially synchronous with that recorded in other regions of Europe, and significantly increases the areal expansion reached by early AMHs at that time. In agreement with human dispersal scenarios on other continents, such rapid expansion points to coastal corridors as favoured routes for early AMH. The new radiocarbon dates align Iberian chronologies with AMH dispersal patterns in Eurasia.

quote

Recent reviews highlighting the genetic complexities that underlie AMH expansion in Eurasia tend to focus on data from Asia, and fail to consider the possibility that a crucial part of that evidence may lie on the westernmost tip of the Mediterranean2. Given the relevance of the palaeoanthropological and archaeological data that are slowly emerging from this region, further efforts to determine whether coastal dispersals played a major role in the arrival of mod-
ern humans in the region are crucial. Given the growing evidence that humans were also capable of crossing bodies of water before 50 cal ka bp2, investigation into whether the Strait of Gibraltar played any role as a connector of European Neanderthals and North African AMHs is also a promising area of research. It is within this interpretative framework that the presence of an early Aurignacian at Bajondillo Cave may bear wider implications for the origin of Upper Palaeolithic industries and the appearance of AMHs in the
European subcontinent than can be foreseen now.

Draft Dozen said...

@gamerz_J

"Considering that the remains in their study also had some low but substantial East Asian ancestry it's quite surprising they appear anthropologically so western"

But some really don't look so Western, for example Loulan has a Asian influence, as to me.
This male mummy near Keriya River (3rd millennium BC) also has it, as to me.

https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/local/cache-vignettes/L934xH622/a9aacbcdda5cefe8ed0177413f8c70-e2030.jpg?1532815938

While female from the same cemetery look more western

https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/local/cache-vignettes/L525xH700/7314b516576cd55470d6ed496b3c88-cd0e6.jpg?1584998984

https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/local/cache-vignettes/L525xH700/b5c4167fe444978cabfe79104d74be-d3fe0.jpg?1584998984

@Genos Historia

"One mystery is why Anatolian Farmers and EHG have the same light skin genes, but are genetically really distinct"

MENA people or some Indians will show same "light skin genes" with Icelanders, but also will be genetically distinct

"This is showing regional selective pressures for skin color"

No, it's not

"Interesting, the Tarim Basin mummies have ancestral/dark skin alleles in SLC24A5 and SLC45A5"

Awwww, Tarim mummies ruined the picture. They were black by genes, but in reality they were white, how so. And some strongly argued here, that the Tarim people were fair 'cause of EEF. Surprise surprise.

Desdichado said...

@ Andrze "It’s interesting, because both Sumerian, Elamite and also BMAC languages were partially deciphered (just like with Etruscan), and hence there’s a 50-50 chance that Elamite & BMAC were ANE-descended languages (other 50% odds would be a Dzudzuana one). And if indeed the Sumerian language arrived with the Anatolian (or Levant PPNB) migrants into the Fertile Crescent, its significance lies in the notion that we know more of less what (some, at least) language(s) Barcin people could’ve spoken and therefore hypothesize what language LBK farmers spoke."

What?! Sumerian, Elamite and Etruscan are certainly known from a wide variety of texts, so we can say something about them. Notably that they are generally seen as completely unrelated to each other and considered as three completely separate language isolates. They're not all some lingering Ur-ANE language, or anything like that.

I don't know what you're talking about with BMAC. That language, whatever it is, certainly isn't partially deciphered. Not a single word of it is known to us, and we have no idea what it was or where it came from.

LBK farmers probably spoke some kind of language descended after many thousands of years, from a language that comes from Anatolia and which no longer exists at all. Whether or not Basque or Etruscan represents a lingering distant relative of this language or not is a completely speculative proposition.

I do like the idea put forward by people like Peter Schrijver and Guus Kroonen that there was probably a Neolithic-aged language family centered on the Anatolian area that spread outwards, which probably included Hattic, Minoan, and (possibly) some of the Caucasian languages, to which the Neolithic farmers' various languages were probably distantly related. But that isn't based on a lot of evidence, just a little bit of evidence, and it's not meant to be a testable hypothesis, just a suggestion.

Ric Hern said...

So did R1b1c split +-9100 years ago from their closest relatives in Europe maybe somewhere near the Urals ?

Ric Hern said...

Was one guy at Mesolithic Ostrovul Corbului also R1b1c ? So maybe they split from the same population with some going East and others West...

H₂Å•̥ḱtos said...

I definitely agree with your assessment, I find the attempts to associate the Tocharian language with Andronovo-derived groups very confusing, considering the fairly confident assessment by linguistics that Tocharian represents a divergent branch of IE language that significantly pre-dates Indo-Iranian. We need to remember that "Tocharian", as a name of the language, is a misnomer. We know that the Tokharoi mentioned by Helleno-Bactrian sources were Iranians, and not speakers of the language we have (perhaps confusingly) come to call "Tocharian". Afanasievo is kind of undoubtedly the only sensible steppe-derived culture to consider a vector of pre-proto-Tocharian language to the area.

Sure, we apparently have R1a-bearing mummies appearing in the Tarim basin ca. 1800 BCE or so, and these *might be* Andronovo-derived. However, until we see autosomal analysis or more precise subclade analysis, could it just be that the ANE ancestors of the EBA Tarim mummies had both R1a and R1b, and R1a lines increased in frequency for whatever reason? I think so. That said, I trust what's said about a shift in burial practice towards something more Andronovo-like, and so I feel like these LBA Tarim mummies being Andronovo-derived - and therefore almost certainly Iranian-speaking - quite likely, or at least perfectly feasible. However, more to the point, when do Tocharian language texts appear in the archaeological record? Not until 400 CE or so. That's about 2200 years between our rough time of an Andronovo expansion into the Tarim basin and actual attestation of Tocharian language. Bear in mind that Afanesievo-derived cultures are right next door during the EBA and later. I'm willing to bet we'll see R1b-Z1203-bearing, Dzungaria-derived individuals in the Tarim mummy record at some point prior to and/or during the attested Tocharian language period, were we to sample all the mummies available. Examination of Chemurchek and post-Chemurchek samples, as well as obviously of more LBA, IA and medieval Tarim samples, would likely be illuminating.

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

@Desdichado “ What?! Sumerian, Elamite and Etruscan are certainly known from a wide variety of texts, so we can say something about them. Notably that they are generally seen as completely unrelated to each other and considered as three completely separate language isolates. They're not all some lingering Ur-ANE language, or anything like that.”

No, thus is jut what I wrote. I did write that Sumerian can be a Barcin language whereas Elamite can be either an ANE language from 50% ANE in Iran_N or a Dzudzuana one (from the 50% Dzudzuana element in Iran_N).

Genos Historia said...

@Ric Hern,

According to this database the Ostrovul Corbului guy is not R1b-PH155 (R1b1c). He is R1b-L754 (R1b1a).

https://indo-european.eu/ancient-dna/

All ancient European R1b so far is R1b1a-L754. R1b1c looks to be an Asian brother which split in the Upper Paleolithic. Very interesting if you ask me.

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

You can't infer a human's living skin color with any accuracy from what their 4000 year old mummy looks like.

Nyan said...

@Gamerz_J

Oddly, when it comes to Yana's Eastern ancestry by distance Laos Hoabin is closer to Yana (but only by a point* compared to Tian/Onge) something that i noticed few weeks ago but none of them are actually close enough to Yana to say one or the other is ancestral to Yana, since Yana prefer all three as mixture when modeling.

Also in Tarim study under Extended Data Fig. 3 Hoabin is scoring some ANE/Tarim_EMBA (red) and Yana_UP shows affinities to all ENA like i mentioned above. I'm not sure what to make of it other than that it's something very deep.

Ric Hern said...

@ Genos Historia

Yes they mention in the paper a date of +-9100 years ago...

Ric Hern said...

Wonder if the Boat Type burials maybe give a clue to their origins ? Maybe migrating up or down a River to get to near where they eventually settled ?

Ric Hern said...

Maybe the Ob, Yenesei or Lena River ? Migrating upstream from somewhere in the North...

vAsiSTha said...

Apparently four out of seven Xiaohe samples carry a derived allele G of rs2470102 (Indian light skin) whereas the three others have that snp not sampled.

Rob said...

''That said, I trust what's said about a shift in burial practice towards something more Andronovo-like, and so I feel like these LBA Tarim mummies being Andronovo-derived - and therefore almost certainly Iranian-speaking''


I know it goes against the grain, but I don't necessarily think Fatyanovo, Sintashta & even Andronovo were Indo-Iranian from the outset because language trees aren't like Y-hg trees, as they are more pliable & rhizomic.

And Andronovo actually expanded ~ 2000 bce (thus much earlier than the historic Sakae & Xunu-related groups brought their own variety of Andronovo-related admixture later on). For some reason, genetic studies have so far omitted Xingjiang Andronovo from their sample set, and it was certainly there and as far as the doorstep of the Tarim basin.


Theoretically, between 2000 BC and 600 AD is plenty of time for an isolated community with major non-IE language interference + whatever Afanaseivo-related language might have lingered around. to diverge & develop into proto-Tocharian

Cy Tolliver said...

@Nyan

I wonder if the East Eurasian affinity of Yana/ANE is really just an older layer of undifferentiated IUP ancestry. I believe Rob recently speculated as much a few threads ago.

Arza said...

https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB47891

Large-Scale Migration into Southern Britain During the Middle to Late Bronze Age
HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL

Present-day populations from England and Wales harbour more ancestry derived from Early European Farmers (EEF) than did people of the Early Bronze Age. To study how this occurred, we generated genome-wide data from 803 individuals, almost all from the Middle to Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age, increasing data in this period from Britain by 12-fold, and from Western and Central Europe by more than two-fold. Between 1000-875 BCE, EEF ancestry increased in southern Britain (England and Wales) but not in northern Britain (Scotland), due to incorporation into the population of a stream of migrants who arrived at this time and in previous centuries and who were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from France. These migrants cumulatively contributed about half the ancestry of Iron Age people of England and Wales, thereby documenting a previously unknown demographic process that is a plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain. These patterns are part of a broader trend of EEF ancestry proportions becoming more similar across Central and Western Europe in the Middle to Late Bronze Age, coincident with intensification of cultural exchange and highlighting this period as a peak of interaction and mobility. We find no evidence of a comparable rate of migration into Britain in the Iron Age. The distinct genetic trajectories of Britain and continental Europe in the Iron Age are also exemplified by the fact that the allele conferring lactase persistence rose to ~50% frequency in Britain by this time whereas it was only ~7% in Central Europe and underwent a comparable rise in frequency only a millennium later, a pattern that could only occur if there were qualitative differences in how dairy products were used in Britain and in Central Europe.

Arza said...

To download bam index add .bai at the end of the path.

https://pastebin.com/0mN76PUk

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

@ Cy Tolliver

“ I wonder if the East Eurasian affinity of Yana/ANE is really just an older layer of undifferentiated IUP ancestry. I believe Rob recently speculated as much a few threads ago.”


To clarify, it’s def within ENA, but ENA is derived from a surviving IUP in the East
But it’s definitely not Onge related. People keep bringing it up although it fails a basic sanity check. ANE were nowhere near South Asia

Rob said...

.. until they moved halfway down during the epipaleolithic

zulla said...

@rob

"Theoretically, between 2000 BC and 600 AD is plenty of time for an isolated community with major non-IE language interference + whatever Afanaseivo-related language might have lingered around. to diverge & develop into proto-Tocharian"

afanasievo ancestry surely is a contender for proto tocharian, although not proven yet inside Tarim and i also dont think that it is going to be found. at least theres no indication of it yet. The later mummies are said to have more andronovo connection.

however for those claiming that andronovo related groups in tarim were proto tocharians, they have to choose - was andronovo indo-iranian or proto tocharian. cant have it both ways.

i personally believe that these ane+east eurasians tarim mummies were proto tocharians as was widely hypothesized until recently. i suspect that theory will be killed soon by people like Anthony though as the genetic facts dont match the steppe proponents beliefs.

Andrzejewski said...

@Rob “ Present-day populations from England and Wales harbour more ancestry derived from Early European Farmers (EEF) than did people of the Early Bronze Age. To study how this occurred, we generated genome-wide data from 803 individuals, almost all from the Middle to Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age, increasing data in this period from Britain by 12-fold, and from Western and Central Europe by more than two-fold. Between 1000-875 BCE, EEF ancestry increased in southern Britain (England and Wales) but not in northern Britain (Scotland), due to incorporation into the population of a stream of migrants who arrived at this time and in previous centuries and who were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from France. These migrants cumulatively contributed about half the ancestry of Iron Age people of England and Wales, thereby documenting a previously unknown demographic process that is a plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain.”

No. This EEF-rich Celtic Iron Age pop from France was 50-
%-67% replaced 450AD -650AD by Steppe-rich Germanic Anglo-Saxon, Vikings and Normans.

gamerz_J said...

@MH_82

"Lol seriously? Sorry , but that’s just comically absurd
Take a look at the ample Baykal N data available"

I meant to say -west- of Lake Baikal, my bad.

@Draft Dozen

Would you know of any anthropological publications examining these remains?

@Nyan

I think the Hoabinhian samples are not very high quality so they might be noisy. It seems old yes, but the ENA affinity in ANE has an upper ceiling of 40kya (and irl more like 35kya).

gamerz_J said...

@MH_82

"But it’s definitely not Onge related. People keep bringing it up although it fails a basic sanity check. ANE were nowhere near South Asia"

But to be fair, an Andamanese person has been found carrying P1* and subclades of P are found in Southeast Asia today, including populations like Negritos.

Have you checked with qpGraph/formal stats etc if ANE prefer Tianyuan to Hoabinhian or Onge?

If the ENA in ANE is not Onge-related then the only explanation imo would be that there were migrations from the northern pasts of East Asia to the south that were rapid around 40kya and that P-related lineages were replaced in northern mainland East Asia by K2a-related ones.

I am not arguing for or against the Onge relationship, it's the haplogroups that puzzle me. Though obviously populations migrate and even die out etc their distributions are odd.

Genos Historia said...

@Arza,

You saying those 815 Bronze, Iron age Britons' DNA is available? Wow.

Rob said...

@ Gamerz


''I meant to say -west- of Lake Baikal, my bad.''


ha yeah that makes sense


''But to be fair, an Andamanese person has been found carrying P1* and subclades of P are found in Southeast Asia today, including populations like Negritos.""


hard to say the significance of "P*" at the present


"Have you checked with qpGraph/formal stats etc if ANE prefer Tianyuan to Hoabinhian or Onge?''


The eastern admixture is neither Tianyuan related nor Onge/Hhbn. Tianyuan is an extinct clade, whilst Hoabinhan and Onge are too southern
Rather, a population which moved into SEA also admixed into ANE. Amur_LUP, Devlis Gate, Baikal and the post-Papuan ancestry of SEAs seem to come from this gorups - the Villabruna of East Asia, if you will

but in reality, ANE is probably heterogeneous, with several possible layers of eastern and western admixture which would vary Yana->MA-> Afontova


@ zulla

''however for those claiming that andronovo related groups in tarim were proto tocharians, they have to choose - was andronovo indo-iranian or proto tocharian. cant have it both ways.''

I dont have to choose anything, because I understand how languages form, and there is plenty of sociolinguistic platforms which can explain the phenomenon


''i personally believe that these ane+east eurasians tarim mummies were proto tocharians''

naturally, I find the idea that PIE deriving from ANE pseudoscience
it's sort of the runner-up pony for the OIT theory :)


@ Andrze

No what ? I didnt post the Celtic paragraph

JR97 said...

@gamerz_J @MH_82

I don't think it looks that way, since Papuans and aboriginal Australians do not show such northern signal, yet they are overwhelmingly Y-DNA K derived.

I believe K2 is found in native Australian hair DNA sample and they also still carry basal K-M526 to modern day. Historic Andaman sample is P*, not P1. I believe we have several P1, P2, P3 from Philippines. Along with P* in both Philippines and Malayasia.

Looking at Y-DNA tree, older siblings of Y-DNA P is M & S (Papuan/Australian), P and P1 in (Southeast, East and Siberia) Q/R (Siberia, Steppes).

In genetic studies, Papuans and Australians are often shown as branching from East Eurasian tree but separately from Onge and East Asians.

They branched away from mainland Asia by 40,000 ybp.

That leaves P* somewhere in Southeast Asia, since Y-DNA P's older siblings are in Australasia.

Paleofan said...

@gamerz_J
What's puzzling about the haplogroups?
I'm sure IUP populations carried a big diversity of haplogroups when they got to eastern Eurasia, including K2b1, P, K2a, and all kinds of Cs and Ds.
Later climatic events and population bottlenecks must have surely affected the distribution of the haplogroups so how is the presence of P1 in Onge and southeast Asian negritos an indicator of a special relationship between them and the ENA in ANS, why would autochthonous north Eurasian ENA be more closely relate to SEA onge/hoabinhians than to more northern ENA like Tianyuan for example? Can you elaborate?

Whatever the case, I think P clearly continued its diversification in north Eurasia and it wasn't very successful or predominant in eastern Eurasia, and it just piled up in SEA.

Ric Hern said...

About the proposed Celtic I think the people with more EEF ancestry maybe brought the Brittonic version of Celtic...

vAsiSTha said...

@rob
"I dont have to choose anything, because I understand how languages form, and there is plenty of sociolinguistic platforms which can explain the phenomenon"

Yea sure, phenomenon which is brought out of the magic bag only after realizing that genetics don't match the theory for Tarim. That sounds more like charlatanry

Rob said...

@ Old Europe

To clarify, I do agree that some movement of Aurignacians out of Europe also occurred subsequent to 40 kybp.

vAsiSTha said...

"naturally, I find the idea that PIE deriving from ANE pseudoscience
it's sort of the runner-up pony for the OIT theory :)"

Lol imagine changing theory about language spoken based on ONLY the genetics of a culture and nothing else. Especially when the language of the alleged source culture is unknown as well. But yeah that sort of lunacy is expected in IE studies.

Davidski said...

I won't be surprised if Medieval samples from Tocharian speaking Silk Road settlements don't show any of the early Tarim Basin ancestry.

There must be a reason why those mummies didn't pass on their genes, except maybe to the early Hunnic peoples.

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

I have a feeling this British paper is going to cause some people to have a mental meltdown.

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

''between 1000-875 CE"

That's smack in the middle of Urnfield, and consistent with shared proto-Celtic terms for Iron, etc. Should be a fascinating paper.

Genos Historia said...

Romulus aren't you British. Or are you American.

Genos Historia said...

Why mental meltdown? The abstract is saying what many of us including me expected. British after the Bronze age shift towards France due to arrival of Celts.

I'm most interested in seeing what new Y DNA the Celts brought. R1b U152, R1b DF27, some new I2a and G2a. They may have also had R1b L21 but we won't be able to tell if it is indigenous or not.

Your I2a might be from Celts. Because it isn't British Neolithic.

Genos Historia said...

It is a crime that the British Isles are so poorly sampled for DNA.

We have almost no good data from Scotland & Wales. If we did we'd definitely be able to begin to differentiate Britonnic from Anglo-Saxon, Gealic from Pictish.

We'd be able to better understand this upcoming British ancient DNA.

A British mystery, is why English are slightly more southern-shifted than Irish. This is even though they were founded by super northern Anglo Saxons.

Is this because British Celts were very French like. Is it because of Norman French ancestry? Or is it because of 'southern' geneflow in Roman times?

No one has tried to answer this. Don't expect academics sequencing British ancient DNA to even understand the question.

Andrzejewski said...

@Romulus “I have a feeling this British paper is going to cause some people to have a mental meltdown.“

Because the IA turnover is meaningless for post-410AD England.

The Pictish and Scotti fighting their Brythonic kin basically doomed Celtic Britain. Vortigern sending emissaries to Hengist and Horsa, followed by the Justinian Plague decimating Cymru speakers in England proper 150 years later are 2 fatal events that are the primary causes why the English language has less Celtic words than even Hebrew ones (from Bible) or Algonquin.

There were 4 replacement events in GB in which the following incomes wiped out their predecessors almost completely:

1. WHG by Anatolian Barcin farmers 6,000 YBP
2. Dutch beakers annihilated aforementioned farmers 4300 ybp
3. IA Celts killing off 50% of Bell Beakers.
4. English, Danes and Norman Germanics plus Justinian Plague decimating Brythonic Cymru Welsh in England by 50%-67% rate.

The last event means that English and Lowland Scots have a higher Yamnaya content than Irish, Welsh and Highlander Scots. Coincidentally or not, the former are lighter than the latter on average.

I suspect that the Pictish language was some relic, refugee Bronze Age Non-Celtic Bell Indo-European beaker language that was extinguished by the Dal Riata Irish immigrants into Highland Scotland.

Matt said...

@Romulus, I think it'll be mostly accepted, but a bit contested; the previews that Reich has given seem to show it's more like a doubling of the pre-Iron Age sequence, and then they have absolutely hundreds of Iron Age/Roman Era samples. So it's a question whether the sequence in their period of interest is really strong enough to support a pulse over 4 generations.

Matt said...

@Andrezjewski, the cline within the British and Irish Isles is for Yamnaya ancestry to increase as we go from South to North and East to West (roughly peaks in Ireland). Genetic height also slightly decreases as Yamnaya ancestry increases. Nick Patterson did a paper on it using the UK Biobank. No one who has ever so much even used G25 casually to answer the question has ever found English to have more Yamnaya ancestry than Irish.

Rob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
old europe said...



why nobody is commenting in Anthrogenica about the Don samples dated at 3600-3200 BC ( likely belonging to the Repin culture) showing only euro-hunter ancestry (WHG/EHG but more EHG shifted than Dereivka) and no steppe at all. This is the big deal of 2021.

MH_ 82

I think the west eurasia side of Yana/ANE/AG will turn out to be a population on the Goyet/Kostenki cline with contributions from the proto aurignacian of the iberia peninsula/France/Italy/ Balkans and aurignacian sites like Siuren (Crimea) and Kostenki

epoch said...

@Vasishta

"Genetics don't match the (IE) theory for Tarim."

What has been found that is not matching?

Rob said...

@ Andrze
British farmers come from Normandy & Brittany

Davidski said...

@old europe

I've seen Eneolithic samples from the Middle Don region with steppe ancestry.

So which samples are you talking about?

old europe said...



see it
https://i.imgur.com/5sbrk9h.png

I commented

Don't you think there is something strange or surprising to say the least: the Don samples are all on the european hunter cline with barely any steppe ancestry, Obviously they are more EHG shifted than the average Dereivka samples but still overall Ukraine/ western Russia mesolithic like.


Vladimir replied:

Yes, these samples are similar to the Neolithic of the Middle Don, and not to Repino. But in the period of 4000-3000 BC, there was a complex archeology on the Don. There were still Neolithic populations of the Middle Don, but Sredniy Stog populations settled between them. This period is still called Neolithic /Eneolithic, as it is difficult to understand what prevailed.

What do you think? That basically kills the theory that CHG/Progress has anything to do with PIE.

Rob said...

I think that some people suggest that this Urnfield migration was P-Celtic, whilst earlier Beaker stuff could have been more archaic forms. But I would not over-exagerate that sound distinction.
Lusitanian could be representative of a more archaic form of western IE, before Celtic, although its attestation is fairly late.

Davidski said...

@old europe

That PCA plot is very vague.

Wait for all of the relevant new samples from the steppe and Caucasus, properly dated and labeled.

Matt said...

On my comment about upcoming British paper, here are the slides Reich has shared so far, along with a similar model using G25: https://imgur.com/a/jmB0WCk

The newest version that Reich shared is at the top, followed by the previous one from March.

The model that Reich presented back in March didn't have a sharp change in 1000-800 BCE, but just had a series of plateaus of increasing EEF ancestry over time, and timed an event at 1200 BCE rather than 900 BCE. On the same data.

So this is why I think it might be open to challenge as to whether they can really demonstrate a pulse rather than a more 500 year like timespan. It's really a question of the model fit. I think people might look at the first very close fit and go "Well, wouldn't you get something different if you'd just happened to sample some people in 1200-1000 BCE with more steppe ancestry than average?". It's also noticeable the only gap they have is in 800-600 BCE. It's all plausible but I think people will probably want to push at it a bit.

Wee e said...

@Davidski
“ The paper argues that these Botai-like mummies were locals.
This might be true, but how did they acquire their relatively advanced culture and economy if they were isolated in the Tarim Basin?”

Perhaps because it was a specialised aspect of the economy/lifeway that led to them being the sole relict of a once more widespread unadmixed population. It has been suggested that their burials are boat burials.

Some communities are less easy for outsiders to join (or for insiders to desire outsider partners) because the women as well as the men have specialised knowledge, skills and techniques they use daily. What were the rivers like in and around the Tarim basin at that time? Almost certainly many have since become desertified that were probably linear oases that supported seasonal wildlife, herds, crops, even orchards.

The people who lived on junks & sampans up to the 20th C. in places like Hong Kong: right in the metropolis, cooking on an open fire on a boat deck. In the centre of things, intimately linked in to the city’s trade life, yet a community apart.

In my country, the sea created similar conditions: being a fishwife meant that girls started aged 11 carrying a half-hundredweight (25.4kg). This meant you met the boat, gutted the fish, then carried your creel several miles to town and walked a route selling it. Adult women carried the weight of an adult man, 50-75kg. In fact the women carried the men through the shallows into their boat. A day or two of standard housework and childcare. Then a very long, hard day’s work when the boats came in. The fisher villages enjoyed their life, had a good material standard of living compared with many, dressed well and were proud of their independence — but it would be very hard for a man to find a partner from outside that community who could do the women’s half of the job. In the 1840 census in some places, the boat name was recorded as part of the family identifier. It was villages nearer the cities that this way of life lasted longest. Although fishwives had a notorious reputation (for their independence of mind, being the household trader & banker, and for playing football matches and golf) these communities were not insular, they were very sociable and open. The bar to marrying in was a very practical one, or social/reputational, from the point of view of wider society.

Wee e said...

PS @Daviski Please don’t take it too literally.

Maybe the men were horse trainers/traders and the women milking mares and making cheese or whatever. Maybe they were early adopters of some other lifeway/skillset that remained specialised/exclusive for long enough that endogamy just became their custom because it was their custom, even after other peoples had adopted it.

Or maybe they hung into a way of lufe or identity based on one that had become defunct. The Brazilian Piraha people are still hunter gatherers, undaunted by Christian proelytisers — and excellent linguists. Being multilingual is considered by them to be a typical Piraha thing. There are only 800 of them left, though. If you marry someone who’s not a hunter-gatherer you’d pretty much have to leave your community: It’s pretty hard to marry into a hunter gatherer people if you’re not yourself a hunter-gatherer.

Wee e said...

The short version: fishwife - a synonym in my country for a gossipy, opinionated extravert.
But to literally be one, you had to be born and raised in a fisher community.

Draft Dozen said...

@gamerz_J
"Would you know of any anthropological publications examining these remains?"
I don't, unfortunately.

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

@Genos / Andrezjewski / Matt

Irish believe the Gaelic identity is their true identity. Many people of the British Isles still don't comprehend that Newgrange, Stonehenge, and other Neolithic tombs in the isles were not built by Celts. People to this day use the spirals on those tombs as symbols of Celtic identity. The Irish hate the British for committing a genocide, and culture genocide against them. The Gaelic language and Celtic identity is a rallying point of resistance for them against the British. But how can the Gaelic/Celtic identity be a rallying point against genocide and cultural genocide when its genesis in the Isles was a genocide and cultural genocide itself? It's very hypocritical.

It boils down to "The British are so bad, the British did this the British did that, we are the victims, they are the enemy". If you belong to L21 chances are the Celts did the exact same to your ancestors except worse. It's like a rapist getting raped and then playing the victim act. The theoretical moral high ground of the Irish being an oppressed indigenous people is completely undermined, and everything built up around that identity is a fraud. These things have real world consequences, for example the IRA or Ireland remaining neutral in WW2. "We must resist to preserve our Celtic identity" but actually the Celtic identity became your identity no differently than what the British began to do.

@Genos with respect to your other comments I am Canadian and my Ancestry is British. I would be shocked and have a mental meltdown if I2a-L233 showed up in some Celts. Based the absence of Celtic surnames in the I2a project on FTDNA it's pretty doubtful(we're a very Norman group). I2a-L161 on the other hand looks a lot like a real Stonehenge builder branch. Reich suggests "How much descent can the British people claim from the builders of Stonehenge whom they barely descend at all?". He says this based entirely on autosomal data, but if you look at uniparental markers I2a-L161 is certainly not extinct and showed up in the Neolithic tombs. In certain areas 1 in 20 British men could be a direct paternal descendant of them. There is even an American President descendant from them according to Eupedia (Munro).

There is a lot of I2a-M223 in the Isles, even in Ireland. I2a-M223 was abundant in British Isles WHGs and even in the Neolithic alongside I2a-L161. Will be neat to get more insights into where modern I2a-M223 comes from. The abundance of I2a-M223 in Unetice->Urnfield groups and those Tollense valley warriors makes me expect this contemporaneous migration into Britain will be rich in it.


zulla said...

@davidski

"I won't be surprised if Medieval samples from Tocharian speaking Silk Road settlements don't show any of the early Tarim Basin ancestry."

The genes of those people are 'almost' irrelevant to the question of tocharian. These silk road settlements wore indian buddhist attire and followed buddhism which was a clear cultural borrowing without much genetic impact from india. so the genes and culture correlation very clearly breaks down in tarim at this time period, and same is possible for language as well.

@epoch
None of the evidences for tarim region match with the steppe theory. there is no yamnaya/afanasievo component found inside Tarim yet for the relevant proto tocharian time period (pre 1000bce according to mallory). This is Anthony's frontruner theory for Tocharian, but no evidence of that yet.

The proto tocharian time period has to be pushed back so much because of following reasons.
1. Mallory - While the two languages (Toch A & B)
belonged to the same branch, they were mutually unintelligible, at least as much as modern Germanic or Romance languages, and possessed considerable differences in even their most basic vocabulary (Lane 1966, 222–223). Moreover, as has long been recognized, they also differ in the technical vocabulary relating to Buddhism, so that it is safe to conclude that they were already different languages before their speakers adopted Buddhism (Lane 1966, 221; Pinault 2002, 245), some time around the first century CE.

2. Mallory - The only Tocharian specialist to advance an earlier date is Douglas Adams (2006, 388) who suggests that the dissolution of ProtoTocharian could have occurred “in the mid to late second millennium BC.This earlier date has some support since we can “test” what about 500 years of separation might look like by comparing the
differences between Albanian (as spoken in Albania) and the language where it was brought to Italy, and even after five hundred years of total separation, they are still more similar to one another than
the two Tocharian languages (Adams pers. comm.)

Matt said...

@Rob, btw, re; previous discussion on El Argar sites, ENA abstract indicates no I2 or y-dna continuity in El Argar, as would be expected:

"Genomic transformation and social organization during the Copper Age-Bronze Age transition in southern Iberia" - "The emerging Bronze Age (BA) of southeastern Iberia saw dramatic social changes. Late Copper Age (CA) settlements were abandoned in favor of hilltop sites, and collective graves were largely replaced by single or double burials with often distinctive grave goods indirectly reflecting a hierarchical social organization, as exemplified by the BA El Argar group. We explored this transition from a genomic viewpoint by tripling the amount of data available for this period. Concomitant with the rise of El Argar starting ~2200 cal BCE, we observe a complete turnover of Y-chromosome lineages along with the arrival of Steppe-related ancestry. This pattern is consistent with a founder effect in male lineages, supported by our finding that males shared more relatives at sites than females. However, simple two-source models do not find support in some El Argar groups, suggesting additional genetic contributions from the Mediterranean that could predate the Bronze Age."

https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB46907

Davidski said...

@zulla

There's no direct or indirect evidence that these Trim Basin mummies were Tocharians.

If anything, they were replaced by Tocharians.

Genos Historia said...

@Romulus,

Yeah, I just realized a few days ago that Unetice & Tollense warriors show that I2a replaced a lot of R1b in Central Europe after Bell Beaker.

If Celts originated here, they aren't going to be 100% R1b. So I bet the strangling I2a in british isles, which is not of Neolithic origin, comes from Celts.

Then again it is possible Celts originated in France not east of Rhine.

Rob said...

Wrt Tocharian yeah it’s not 100% clear yet, but nobody has claimed otherwise. Whatever the case; there’s dozens of afanesievo & Andronovo burials in the region & wholescale cultural adaptation of WSH-models . So it’s just a matter of time until things are clearer
Which is way more than any sign of Bactrian chiefs or Onge-like huntergatherers in Europe

CHG Chad said...

@Rom

L21 is not Celtic.If Irish or any other 'Celtic' nation consider it as a 'Celtic' lineage...then they are wrong.Gaelic,cornish,brittonic dialects did not arrived with L21 to Isles.Britain during the bronze age period was not 'Celtic'speaking.IE for sure but Celtic?Hell no.

Genos Historia said...

@Romulus,

Ok I see what you mean. Yeah, I see how it will change Celtic identity in Ireland. No one ever knew what Celtic represents, but now we are learning, of course it will change what people expected.

However, I don't like the nihilistic conclusions about it.

The fact is Irish are Irish, and nationalists are preserving something real. Because, 2,800 years ago their language, Celticiness which they use as core of their identity came from "invaders" from Europe isn't very relevant. It doesn't take away moral high ground.

The actual core of Irish identity, like most ethnicities, is just being Irish. It is rooted in history not academic theories about prehistory. It starts with Geals in 500 AD, not something they don't know about 1,000 years earlier.

The Celtic aspect was added couple hundred years ago from academic research. It was added on top of the core.

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

further to my last comment, you can see the British Neolithic DNA on Y-full and modern relatives from these SNPs.

https://www.yfull.com/tree/I-L161/
https://www.yfull.com/tree/I-Y4213/
https://www.yfull.com/tree/I-M284/

This tree from the I2a project visualizing ancient and modern branches is great, also has British Neolithic DNA on it but not all:
https://i.imgur.com/EOEe4Qp.jpeg

Rob said...

@ Matt
Right ; so they’re finding some Mediterranean admixture ; hence 3-way models

zulla said...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wPD2KPLslQdvVHuDAC-DUGqZX7lA_czp/view?usp=sharing

Latest graph using 13 populations is on this link. worst f-stat is below 3, so all good. copy the file and paste it on https://dreampuf.github.io/GraphvizOnline to see the graph

@rob
adding taforalt does not reduce basal eurasian ancestry needed for ganj_dareh. Yana has more east eurasian ancestry than ANE.

@all
also detecting some 10% villabruna related ancestry in tarim.

Wee e said...

@romulus: later people, the ones you are calling Celts did use these spirals etc as symbols too. They either already had them too, before they arrived,p (as in Brittany) or they adopted them not too long after they arrived: just as they reused neolithic tombs.

Either way, they used them as symbols. You wouldn’t say that the bald eagle “isn’t an American symbol” just because European incomers adopted it as a symbol after native Americans did.

And by the way, the Irish don’t “hate the British”. In fact they get on pretty well with Brits. It’s not as if they hold living people responsible for genocide that happened before we were all born. They are also well aware that very many contemporary Britons have Irish ancestry from the 19th century. They are very tolerant of the British, even when talked down to by stupid arrogant schoolboy governments. Things have moved on in the last century. Probably more than some sections of British society have.

I say that as someone with recent ancestry and living relatives on both sides of the water and from across the denominational spectrum.

Wee e said...

“The Irish hate the British for committing a genocide, and culture genocide against them. The Gaelic language and Celtic identity is a rallying point of resistance for them against the British”

This is almost exactly a century out of date. The Irish have no need whatever to be “against the British”, or to “resist the British”, unless you mean as EU citizens they are exasperated by British relations with the EU as a whole.

CHG Chad said...

@Andrzejewski

English and Lowland Scots being lighter from Irish?LOL.Irish are prolly the palest people in the world.As a person who has to do every summer with tourists from all over the world i can confirm that the average British is darker compared to an Irish.Same about Irish-Americans or Irish-Australians.That is also the reason why Southern Americans from dixie are lighter on average compared to the yankees from northeast.Dixie folks are mostly Scots-Irish(Ulster Protestants) and Northern English/Scottish Highlanders while Yankees are mostly coming from the urban areas of south-central England.The only people close to Irish in terms of lightness are Finns and Balts(Lithuanians,Latvians etc and some North Russian groups with Uralic mix).Funny thing that these groups never getting tan.They simply burning up...

Wee e said...

“ It boils down to "The British are so bad, the British did this the British did that, we are the victims, they are the enemy". If you belong to L21 chances are the Celts did the exact same to your ancestors except worse. It's like a rapist getting raped and then playing the victim act. ”

Not sure this makes sense. Aren’t most Irish and Scottish males L21?

And of course, the actual Irish in actual Ireland don’t go on like that at all. They shrugged off the British a century ago, and are cool with anyone whose been born since.

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

@Wee e

A century out of date you say? They don't hate the British you say?

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

Wee e said...

What a lot of tosh is being talked about Ireland and Scotland here in recent days.

As someone who is both Irish and Scottish and lives in the west of Scotland, where there are plenty of Irish and Scots and a great part of the population are a time-immemorial mixture from both sides of the Irish Sea — Irish and Scottish skin colours are the same. Fishbelly-white in winter, sunburned in summer. Dark hair accentuates the pallor; a lot of redheads have freckles that mitigate it. My brother on holiday in England once got shouts of “Oi, milkbottle!” on the beach.

People in the West of Scotland often appear extremely pale because we average fewer hours of sunshine than just about any population on the planet - less than Orkney, less than Rejkavik, less than Tomsk. And half if what we get us at 4am in June. For December, the average number if sunshine hours is half an hour a day. So you can be at work one afternoon when the sun comes out for a couple of hours, and see no sun whatsoever the entire rest of the week. Like this week, really.

What is often neglected is the bug seasonal change people with our skin type can go through. If you work outdoors, at least after the first couple of years, you burn less and tan a kind of teak or tea-colour, dark enough in my dad’s case to be asked if he was Pakistani. Both parents in Portugal kept being mistaken for Portuguese. But without a summer top-up they reverted to the palest-skinned people on the planet.

My mother’s sister though is one of the small percentage of what used to be called “swarthy” skin colour, to the extent that people in openly racist wartime years called her “the darkie”.

JR97 said...

"Papuans and aboriginal Australians do not show such northern signal, yet they are overwhelmingly Y-DNA K derived.
I believe K2 is found in native Australian hair DNA sample and they also still carry basal K-M526 to modern day. Historic Andaman sample is P*, not P1. I believe we have several P1, P2, P3 from Philippines. Along with P* in both Philippines and Malayasia.
Looking at Y-DNA tree, older siblings of Y-DNA P is M & S (Papuan/Australian), P and P1 in (Southeast, East and Siberia) Q/R (Siberia, Steppes).
In genetic studies, Papuans and Australians are often shown as branching from East Eurasian tree but separately from Onge and East Asians. Including in studies that came out in 2021.
They branched away from mainland Asia by 40,000 ybp.
That leaves P* somewhere in Southeast Asia, since Y-DNA P's older siblings are in Australasia."


Expanding on previous post, I think something like this took place when Yana were formed.

Europe <--Central Asia--->> Yana <<---NEA <--SEA--> Australia

Selina Carlhoff et al 2021 supp. this is pretty telling about pre-Neolithic SEA

"There is no detectable Denisovan ancestry in the oldest Hòabìnhian-associated individual
from Laos,
but this increases slightly with the younger Hòabìnhian-associated individual
from Malaysia"

Wee e said...

“No one ever knew what Celtic represents,”
That is because “celtic” was an adjective coined in late 18th century English to represent a linguistic concept, a subgroup of,IE languages (with primary focus of insular languages).

It was then borrowed by proto-archaeologists — antiquarians who wanted to talk about racial groups or phenotypes or populations.
They presumed that the people who built Stonehenge were speaking some sort of Brittonic.

Arguing about which people to call “Celtic” is pointless. Right from the start it was conceptually garbled.

Rob said...

@ Wee

Arguing about which people to call “Celtic” is pointless. Right from the start it was conceptually garbled.


Recent scholars have re-examined who were the Celtoi, Galli, etc critiquely

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10814-021-09157-1


In fact, omitting past historical refences would be throwing away invaluable data. The major need is to understand it carefully of course.

Celts are no exception here. I have previously outlined how poorly understood Scythians have been by modern scholars and various forum posters.


@ Vasistha

I still see no need for BE, although Ive only looked at it for natufians, AHG & CHG only thus far .
Interesting that your graph doesn't have Mota.
I might post somethign later tonight or tomorrow

Wee e said...

@genos historia
A lot of Scotlan’s soils are very acidic. In addition, there is quite a gap in the iron age where funerary rituals seem to have been quite various: possible excarnation, cremation, and a lot of “left no trace”

After Septimus Severus, a fair bit of Fife seems to have fallen out of cultivation. These might have been some of the population he claimed to have annihilated, or Roman-supplying farmers fleeing Picts, rather than Picts. Or just people with no customers any more, and getting early incursions of Germanics.

Many geneticists seem unaware of significant recent population movements within Scotland: eg Manx people and sometimes Irishised vikings fleeing subsequent viking invasions — large numbers into Galloway and Carrick. Which were Gaelic speaking (similar to Argyllshire Gaelic) until the 16th century or so.

But that was nothing new: there has been an almost constant crossing and recrossing of the tiny stretches of water between western Scotland and Ireland. The distance is comparable to the Staten Island ferry. You can stand on the Mull of Kintyre and look at the Antrim coast. Rathlin Island and our three bronze age R1b ancestors are directly between.

Big resettlements of people from Northumbria into borders & Lothians following Norman ”harrying” and depopulation of Northumbria. Their grand & greatgrandchildren were planted with burgess status in new Royal Boroughs. Not to mention Flemings. And of course Scotland also had its lowland as well as highland clearances in the 18th and 19th century.

By the end of the 19th a quarter of Glasgow’s population was first generation Irish.

In short, modern populations in Scotland — especially the north east and the south west, are no guide to prehistoric population structure or culture.

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

With respect to the spirals. The original spirals on Newgrange are from 3200 BCE, we don't see them reused untill 500 BCE in Central European Celtic ornaments. There isn't anything even close in Ireland. It's all a big fraud made up to sell junk art to Irish tourists and these dumb dumbs eat it up. Some even have tattoos. All just made up bullshit to peddle a fictional history. The new age spiritual garbage associated with it is the worst. The spirals really piss me off.

Wee e said...

@Romulus
Did you miss the bit where I said what my personal background is?!!!!

Do I really have to point out to you that the people your wiki reference references are UK citizens who were mostly born and raised and always lived in the UK and not in Ireland?

Almost none of the bombs in the UK were set by the people from the country I was talking about: Ireland.

They were set by people born and bred in the UK.

Need I also point out to you that the last 25-30 years have seen very, very few bombings in Britain, and not very many in the UK overall. Almost all are in that part if the UK called Northern Ireland.

Do you really not understand the distinction between northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland? Don’t start getting precious and arguing that NI is Ireland: you knew perfectly well which nation and population I was referring to: the one that has EU membership.

The FACT is that the citizenship of the bombers was nearly always British. Irish people got over it: and in fact are markedly less enthusiastic than their neighbours in NI (aka the UK) for Ireland to reunify. They want them to grow the fuck up first.

If the Irish were as set in “hating brits” as you imagine, then the people they would hate most of all are those Brits of NI that stage anti-Irish, religious sectarian marches every year, the people who also bombed their own local streets and pubs out of hatred for Ireland.

But they don’t hate them. They do not insist that these people become Irish. They just want them to calm down and grow up and respect democracy. This is why Ireland signed the Anglo-Irish agreement, whose contents I have no doubt you know nothing.

I would not presume to tell the world about what Quebecois or Micmacs think and feel about “Canadians”; because I am aware that I have no first hand knowledge and have never studied it. Take the hint.

Wee e said...

@MH82
You misunderstand.

Lluyd & co were not speaking of the people of that Romans called Keltoi.

There is no continuity. Your concept is anachronistic.
This is exactly where so much confusion comes in.

The word “Celt” did not exist in the English language until very recently. When it was coined, it was coined after the adjective “Celtic” was couned as a LINGUISTIC label to put Gaulish, Cornish, Breton, Welsh, Irish and Scots Gaelic into.


An analogy: let us say that someone names a US football team “the Boston Celtics”. Does that make you think there is some relation between the players and the people that the Romans called Keltoi?

No more did the linguists who coine “Celtic” IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE to apply to largely insular languages plus Gaulish think that they were actually talking about the people the Romans called Keltoi.

The Celts were WHOEVER was speaking Celtic languages in the British Isles. BY DEFINITION.

Wee e said...

@Romulus. At the risk of getting ever more off topic, I was not even aware that spiral designs were used in central Europe. I was thinking Brittany, Iberian peninsula and maybe Sardinia were the only other places they crop up in a similar context as in Ireland and (less so) in Scotland.

Why did they start being used in Central Europe around 500 CE? Is it thought to have anything like the same meaning/purpose as in Ireland, or is it just because human beings start doing spirals here and there now and then?

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

Ok how about this article

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

Rob said...

@ Wee e

But any educated person understands that. Inhabitants if NBritain weren't keltoi, but modern scholars adapted the term Celt as a linguistic umbrella term
But it still doesnt render the term worthless, despite claims by the now-disproven 'new school'. What is needed is nuanced undertanding of how the variuos concepts might relate. Which is the point of Pope's article, but you misunderstood because you're flinging your arms saying 'oh it's all so hopeless'

ambron said...

Open Genomes

I did not find samples from Pohansko on the Ward's tree. Is there any problem with listing them there?

epoch said...

@Vasishta

This paper actually *solves* some problems for the theory. If the split of TA and TB was in the Tarim basin it would be very hard to explain why TA and TB are so very close to each other.

Mallory's idea was Afanasievo > Chimurcheck > Xiaohe, the latter because of them being apparently Europeans. The link between Chimurcheck and Xiuohe horizon is very hard to make archaeologically.

Well, we have Afanasievo > Chimurcheck and are now relieved from the need for explaining Chimurcheck > Xiaohe. PLUS the later arrival of one or both of the Tocharian branches can neatly explain the split.

vAsiSTha said...

@rob

I tried using taforalt only but fatata were bad and iranN would always want more shared drift with Oase. So had to put back in basal input to resolve it.

Basal Eurasian is not needed until GanjDareh is included in the tree populations.

Matt said...

@Rob, yeah, it seems like this; I wonder if it will be Aegean *or* North African *or* if it will be more like connections to the Balkans or Italy and to other parts of Southern Europe without much extra Levant/CHG related ancestry, but with distinct Anatolian:HG ratios.

@Romulus, I think it won't be anything dramatic like that - Irish and Scottish folk who are smart enough to understand already know that the Gaels invaded Scotland and took it from them, and that the ancestor of Celtic originally came with some of population displacement (whether with a lot of killing or not so much, and whether its Middle Bronze Age or they believe its Copper Age). They know that the events between England, and later Britain, and Ireland were often things with causes on both sides, that the Irish often got the worst of from being a smaller and less powerful country, and that in their early stage weren't even much due to anyone English at all (rather than the Normans). The CyberNats out there who exist and who choose not to emphasize all this will still continue to do so, and will focus on the 'Irish suffering' of recent centuries as solely caused by the English. I don't think changes found by adna will be so powerful in changing any narrative in their heads.

vAsiSTha said...

"PLUS the later arrival of one or both of the Tocharian branches can neatly explain the split."

@epoch
The question is where did it come from. Afanasievo/chemurchek doesn't explain it yet.

Also tochA and tochB are not close to each other. they developed independently without intermingling for a long time.

Wee e said...

“ the Gaels invaded Scotland and took it from them, and that the ancestor of Celtic originally came with some of population displacement (whether with a lot of killing or not so much, and whether its Middle Bronze Age or they believe its Copper Age). ”
There is zero archaeological evidence for this, however.

Nor is it clear that “Gael” is even a coherent concept for the bronze or Copper age in the sense you are using it to distinguish between populations in what is now Scotland and Ireland.

On Rathlin island, a stepping-stone in the dozen miles between Scotland and Ireland, were found the remains of some of the very earliest Beaker incomers to the Atlantic islands.

They did not find Ireland and stop there for centuries and then become “Gaels” invading Scotland: just like the neolithic people before them, they in fact used the western seaways to get around right from the very start.

Right up until the 19th C it was far easier and quicker to get between the western side of Scotland to & from Ireland by boat than it was to get from the western side of Scotland to the eastern side by any means.

The population of northern and eastern Ireland and the population of western mainland & island Scotland have been biologically the same population since these first Beaker incomers from the continent found Ireland. The three R1b men are closely related, probably grandfather and grandson generations. They could quite easily have sailed down the Clyde from what is now Glasgow on the outgoing tide and got to Rathlin in one morning. It is highly likely that these individuals routinely went between the Antrim and Kintyre coasts. A majority of Scottish men, all over Scotland, and of Irish men all over Ireland are descended from precisely the same male lineage as these three men.

You are imagining a scenario that somehow delays crossing six miles of water for many centuries: as if Scotland and Ireland existed politically at that time.

If there was any population difference between Ireland and Scotland from the time the Beaker incomers arrived, (up until Germanic & viking invaders) the place where the division would be from the start would be IN Scotland and IN Ireland. Between the east and west of each country, in all likelihood.

Rob said...

@ vasistha

interesting. iI might look into that

@ matt
maybe Aegean, East Med, or Sardinia, some combination of..

CHG Chad said...

@ Wee

People in the West of Scotland often appear extremely pale because we average fewer hours of sunshine than just about any population on the planet - less than Orkney, less than Rejkavik, less than Tomsk. And half if what we get us at 4am in June. For December, the average number if sunshine hours is half an hour a day. So you can be at work one afternoon when the sun comes out for a couple of hours, and see no sun whatsoever the entire rest of the week. Like this week, really.


That is a very wrong statement and completely untrue.Sounds like a leftie propaganda to me.

I have a brother and a father both being very fair/almost pale skinned and they see the sun almost every day.We live in Greece.They getting a redish burn-tan only during the summer period...and this only if they be under the sun for many hours/ much time.So,what you described above has nothing to do with individuals being less pale or more pale because of the weather,sun and so on.I am a swarthy meditteranid olive skinned individual and again.. i am seeing the sun every day.I have not turned to a 'Somali' looking guy yet.Being pale skinned is 100% a genetistic issue.Being a black guy from Congo the same.The sun influences our skin only if we doing sunbathing or spending a lot of time under it.. and more specific during the summer period under very high degrees.

Wee e said...

How did things get so off topic from the Tarim basin to “gaels”?

Anyway, I have a strong feeling that many of the contributors here really do not understand basic physical geography of Scotland and Ireland. You can sail, unpowered, down the Clyde from modern day Glasgow on an ebb tide and be on the Antrim coast (with all your goods) the same day, weather depending. The odd canoeist or sailboarder even gets inadvertently driven from west coast seaside towns halfway to Ireland every now and then. You can hop over from Antrim to Kintyre in a matter of hours too. (The winds and currents are often ferocious: but very effective.). It is much harder to get the 40 miles east to Edinburgh, until the modern era.

The continental Beaker incomers (whether or not they spent some preliminary generations in Cornwall) seem to have colonised some few bits of Ireland and not others (while they were still doing Beaker burials) and some areas of Scotland and not others, likewise. The Rathlin burials are some of the earliest beakers found in either Ireland or Scotland. This progenitor lineage of today’s overwhelmingly predominant Scottish and Irish R1b lineages are buried on a stepping stone island in the channel between the two coasts.

Probably because they regarded it as the middle of their personal stamping-ground. The perfect rendezvous point for people coming from any part of what are now the coasts and islands of Ireland and Scotland. It’s like a motorway interchange.

It is incoherent to retrospectively try to fit modern political geography and ideas of beaker-era “gaels” conquering people who had some sort of Scottish identity different from neolithic people in Ireland or elsewhere on Britain. There were neolithic people in Britain and Ireland - and no-one is even sure if their population had already dwindled - and then along come the Beakers.

Some spots in both Scotland & Ireland the Beakers inhabited while they still did Beaker burials, and large tracts in both countries have basically none. It is important to understand there is no case made for an earlier Beaker habitation of either (modern day) country than the other.
worth considering — in various scenarios (language bringing, or second-language influence) it would also explain why Cornish was so similar to Irish, Manx and Scots Gaelic rather than to the Brythonic languages.

There is no reason whatever that the Beakers would regard present day Scotland as inherently different from the coasts of Ireland, or why the first generations would reach Rathlin island yet for many centuries halt there.

The difficult bit of geography is in fact the terrain within Scotland. To get from west to east you’d have to either trek up the Great Glen to get through the highland massif, or trek across some inhospitable bits of unroaded, bleak hilly moorland and undrained marshy central belt (Scotland’s narrow waist) from the Clyde over to the east coast. At best you could use pack animals. And that was the case until an astonishingly late date.

The amazingly simple alternative was just to load a ton into your boat and sail round the coast and again, until an astonishingly late date, that was how it was done. Apart from pilgrims using the great glen, who walk because it’s onerous.

The people buried at Rathlin - the Beaker pioneer generations — were beyond any doubt as familiar with the western half of Scotland as they were with whatever bits of Ireland they favoured.

So far as I know, no-one has even made a case, rather than an assumption, that they came from Ireland to Scotland rather than vice-versa.

What I am saying is, lose the “Scotland-Ireland” dichotomy, it is meaningless for that period. The sea was the highway, not the barrier.

Calling the Beakers or some putative copper-age invaders Gaels is as daft as calling them Picts. These were polities and identities forged in the last two thousand years at most.

Wee e said...

@ foxviolager.

Yes, we are pale in the extreme because we get virtually no sun, that is what I said.
But my friends born and bred in Scotland, descended from Italian immigrants, are still not so pale.

Some of us can tan deeply, as I also said, but others just burn bright red. The expressions redneck and redlegs were not coined to describe people living in Scotland and Ireland, but immigrants from here to the Americas and the Caribbean — after they had lived and formed communities there.

Wee e said...

@ Foxvillager. You are reading something into what I said that is simply not there.
I was not saying our paleness is because of lack of sun, In was saying that it is THE EXTREMITY of our paleness in western Scotland (and Ireland) even when compared to other Brits which is down to our lack of sun.

Extremity of paleness, not pallor as such.


Living in England, tactful people would suggest I might be anaemic. Even in the Baltic, people would constantly ask me if I felt OK because I looked so white. As I said, dark hair accentuates the pallor. I need a better than average Scottish summer to get my skin tone up to normal-pale-Brit. An English Summer, and even a Baltic summer, changes that. A west of Scotland summer often doesn’t.

Take your tinfoil “leftie propaganda” bleating and burn it, it might give you some better light for reading comprehension.

Wee e said...

@Foxvillager
Have you ever even been to the west of Scotland? Do you know many people from the southern, western quadrant of Scotland or from the nearer Irish coast? It sounds as if you are telling *someone who is* that I don’t know what colour we are, or why, or how we variously change (or don’t change) when we do get enough sun.

epoch said...

@Vashista

"The question is where did it come from. Afanasievo/chemurchek doesn't explain it yet. "

There is no way that we can definitively link anything to the Tocharian speakers as they were Buddhist. But a link via the Dzungarian Basin is exactly what Mallory suggested in the same article you quote from:

"The probable mechanism for the dissolution of Common Tocharian is a spatial separation
over time, i.e., the ancestors of the different languages lost contact with one another over a protracted
period. There are two basic models that one could propose to account for this fragmentation."

In exploring the second option he writes:

"The plausibility of this model is distance-dependent: the further the migration, the less likely that all three languages would remain separated linguistically and still arrive in adjacent areas. For example, one might ground such a model with a starting point in the Junghhar Basin, but it seems increasingly less plausible the farther away one places the area of differentiation."

a said...

MH_82 said...
''"Theoretically, between 2000 BC and 600 AD is plenty of time for an isolated community with major non-IE language interference + whatever Afanaseivo-related language might have lingered around. to diverge & develop into proto-Tocharian"
Have you noticed the type of pottery around DOM2 culutres like Dereivka, Repin, Yamnaya Turganik, Afanasievo,Catacombe(40 head horse burial Elista)and Chimerchek?
Have a look at Hittite Donemi period.
https://quartzceramics.com/content/hittite-ceramics-pottery-14

The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes
"By around 2200–2000 BC, the typical DOM2 ancestry profile appeared outside the Western Eurasia steppes in Bohemia (Holubice), the lower Danube (Gordinesti II) and central Anatolia (Acemhöyük), spreading across Eurasia shortly afterwards, eventually replacing all pre-existing lineages"

Wee e said...

@ Romulus
For the last time, the “Brit haters”. you are talking about are citizens of and in the UK. Not Irish living in ireland.

These terrorist organisations exist in the UK and their membership are born and bred and live that part of the UK called Northern Ireland. They have virtually no IRISH members. They have not had for a century.

Their membership are UK nationals who live in the UK, are subject to UK law and pay their taxes to the UK government. They don’t like that. Anyine from NI is granted Irish citizenship by the Irish state if they claim it. But that does not affect the fact that they are UK citizens in the UK when they remain in NI.


Geddit? Ireland has been its own country for 100 years. Many Irish people come to Britain for a few years as young adults. The Irish are hospitable to British tourists. The “hate” you imagine is hatred of each other by two communities in a small corner of THE UNITED KINGDOM.

As the Irish say, “The Troubles — that’s a British problem”

Wee e said...

@Arza
The study of a population change in England. & Wales has a flaw of logic about language. It is not parsimonious either.

If this iron age influx “brought Celtic languages” to these islands then why did Scotland and Ireland, without this influx, get Celtic languages? And by what mechanism? Ireland seems to have become economically and culturally isolated during the iron age, if anything. And why did it get Q rather than P Celtic?

The unspoken necessity in this scenario is that after this influx, in the later-yet iron age, some invisible cultural conquest of Scotland AND Ireland (and Cornwall and Man) must have thoroughly wiped out other previous non-Celtic languages before the Romans arrived, and replaced them, not only with Celtic but with language(s) strangely more alike to each other than to the language spoken by the southerners who presumably imposed it.

The more economical explanation is that a progenitor of insular Q Celtic languages was already present (which would account for undoubted Q placenames in various parts of England, as well as account for Cornish and Manx) and that the Iron Age influx into southern Britain is what brought some sort of Brythonic or its progenitor.

Leaving areas away from that iron age influx still developing their Q variants.

It would also make sense of why Old Welsh more resembles Gaulish than it does Irish or Gaelic.
.
(The P/Q sound change is not even a very helpful way to categorise the insular languages. It is a sound-change that sweeps across Europe, present in different language groups and even within other languages. Welsh vocab got heavily Roman-Latinised. But Welsh, and Scottish Gaelic, are both grammatically/syntactically conservative compared to Irish. Scottish Gaelic seems to change sound-wise rapidly compared to Irish, losing consonants and syllables, but is often more conservative in structure and vocab than Irish is.)

zulla said...

@epoch

"For example, one might ground such a model with a starting point in the Junghhar Basin.."

Sure, but the problem is that the dzhungar basin genetic profile is not seen in the tarim basin yet.

zulla said...

Mallory, anthony etc expected the Tarim mummies to be afanasievo related genetically, but theyre not. So in no way is the steppe theory validated by these tarim aDna. its the opposite.

Matt said...

@"Wee E", I think you're confused here; I'm not talking about Bronze Age or Copper Age Gaels. You've confused yourself on that point. I'm saying that Copper Age migrations of the Beakers into Ireland and the invasions into Scotland that founded the first Gaelic speaking kingdoms there in the post-Roman period, are *separate* events that I'm saying had no influence on those that do believe in the narrative of the Irish as, effectively, a suffering people whose ancestors and kin never conquered. That being the case, I'm skeptical that discovering on MBA Celtic invasion of Britain would affect their thinking.

Andrzejewski said...

@Wee @arza “ If this iron age influx “brought Celtic languages” to these islands then why did Scotland and Ireland, without this influx, get Celtic languages? And by what mechanism? Ireland seems to have become economically and culturally isolated during the iron age, if anything. And why did it get Q rather than P Celtic? ”

Who were the Picts, then?

Grant said...

Wee e, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your general hypothesis, but technically the Cornish language is P-Celtic and a direct ancestor/"aunt" of Breton, as well as a sibling of Welsh.

I'm not sure why you're suggesting affinities to Irish, unless this is in population genetics. We should know better than to conflate genetics and language?

For what it's worth, Scots Gaelic and Manx are both relatively new (c. 1st millennium) languages and direct offshoots of Q-Celtic Irish. (Their precursors, Pictish and Old Manx, are now generally believed to have been P-Celtic siblings of Welsh. This is evident in place names in Scotland, such as Perth, which is a cognate of Welsh berdd/perdd "bush, shrub".

Rob said...

on the topic of ANE & Asia, another look at some Populations
Some inferences

- most basal split of East Asian populations is between Papuan and mainland East Asians. This migght have occured in eastern West Asia or Central Asia

- Papuan-related populations were overlaid by East Asians west of Wallace line, but remain relevant for Onge, Jomon, Hoabinhan, etc

- proto- East Asian are probably a northern population, but the main branch expanded from southern China after or during Ice Age (whilt Tianyuan and Amur_UP are extinct branches)

- ANS & ANE are distinctive, suggesting sublte discontinuities in Paleo-Siberia

Matt said...

On a complete tangent to the discussion around Western Scotland (aside: I think it's pretty cool to have such wide ranging discussions), and actually focusing on the period of the Dal Riata (*not* anything earlier) and whether the seas were highways or barriers, I wonder if adna will be able to help sort things between the traditional account (Gaelic speakers relatively suddenly expand from Ireland into this region around Coast of Argyll around 400 AD, thence to Gaelic expands to the rest of Scotland later) or the more "modern" accounts (one large extended Gaelic speaking community encompassing the Western Isles quite a bit before, then expanded relatively suddenly to rest of Scotland).

Adna can't detect if people spoke particular languages at a particular time, but one thing more recent adna work has been able to do is demonstrate different scenarios of genetic interconnectivity around islands at a fine scale. It's found (published paper) that the pre-Columbian populations of the Caribbean were one, relatively small, interconnected population, and also found (unpublished paper) that the populations of the Greek Islands in the Bronze Age seem to have been lots of insular communities that weren't very socially connected and married within the island quite a lot. Sometimes seas were barriers and sometimes they were not.

So adna may be able to find if there's a scenario where the Western Isles had small, insular, genetically separated communities that then became connected to a larger community around 400 AD. That would provide some good evidence in favour of something like the traditional account (although not as a sure thing). Generally we would tend to win more money on these things if we are placing our chips on the traditional accounts, but it's not a rule.

gamerz_J said...

@Arceus

"There is no detectable Denisovan ancestry in the oldest Hòabìnhian-associated individual
from Laos, but this increases slightly with the younger Hòabìnhian-associated individual
from Malaysia"

Is this not odd? Tianyuan man seems to have it, I wonder if it's in part an artefact of the sample quality.

"Europe <--Central Asia--->> Yana <<---NEA <--SEA--> Australia"

That sounds reasonable. But I think the SEA expansion into East Asia should be prior to 30kya then. Still interesting that P seems to have been entirely replaced in East Asia proper, unlike Southeast Asia.

@Paleofan

"I'm sure IUP populations carried a big diversity of haplogroups when they got to eastern Eurasia, including K2b1, P, K2a, and all kinds of Cs and Ds... why would autochthonous north Eurasian ENA be more closely relate to SEA onge/hoabinhians than to more northern ENA like Tianyuan for example? Can you elaborate?"

Why would IUP populations carry C, D and K2 to East Asia? They seem somewhat discordant to have arrived together. North Eurasia ENA should not normally be closer to Onge it just seems it's not close to Tianyuan either. And when it comes to haplogroup ANE share more with Southeast Asians than Northeast Asians. That's what puzzles me, it may simply be a case of P clades going extinct in the north, but how come Australasians carry M and S (descendants of K2b like P) but not Northeast Asians? Did they also go extinct?

Most likely nobody knows at this point tbh.

gamerz_J said...

@MH_82

"
The eastern admixture is neither Tianyuan related nor Onge/Hhbn. Tianyuan is an extinct clade, whilst Hoabinhan and Onge are too southern
Rather, a population which moved into SEA also admixed into ANE. Amur_LUP, Devlis Gate, Baikal and the post-Papuan ancestry of SEAs seem to come from this gorups - the Villabruna of East Asia, if you will

but in reality, ANE is probably heterogeneous, with several possible layers of eastern and western admixture which would vary Yana->MA-> Afontova"

I think the western admixture in ANE remains more or less the same throughout but the ENA does change, it starts with more Tianyuan-like in Yana and becomes more East Asian-like later on. I think you had mentioned that in an earlier post and it seems to be the case.

The concept of an East Asian Villabruna is def interesting, and it also seems to me this pop probably existed, though I am imaging it somewhere along the Tianyuan-Ustishim (because he is K2a) cline.

Saw your graph btw, it's interesting but I do have a question. Would you have any guesses about why Papuans and Australians don't show any Ydna D? They seeem autosomally more related to Onge-type pops but their haplogroups appear closer to Tianyuan.

Your graph implies that East Eurasia was populated by Papuan-type pops (perhaps better to say early ENA than Papuan? They didn't carry that much Denisovan ancestry after all and were not from Papua) before the arrival of more "East Asian" ancestry. That would explain the Papuan edge to Afontova Gora being a relic population of this first expansion to East Asia, akin the Jomon.

gamerz_J said...

@Vasistha

Your graph is also interesting. Some things are surprising such as how the Basal admixture in Iran_N appears to be Taforalt-like and how Onge are 3% Taforalt (!) as well as the Villabruna in the Tarim samples.

epoch said...

@Vasishta

"Mallory, anthony etc expected the Tarim mummies to be afanasievo related genetically, but theyre not."

You really need to read that article, again. Mallory clearly states that linking the Xiaohe to Chimurcheck is very difficult and even not very likely in some points. It is one of the hardest nuts to crack

"So in no way is the steppe theory validated by these tarim aDna."

This is a straw man fallacy because we didn't talk about validation. It is quite simple, aDNA will never validate the steppe theory for Tocharians as there are no remains of them left.

We talked about *matching*, which is all we can hope for. And the results do match the theory. They even take away some of the troubles Mallory noted.

"its the opposite."

No. You are wrong.

ambron said...

David, is this the La Tene L1029 you once wrote about?

https://slavicorigins.blogspot.com/2021/10/uncanny-genetic-proportions-from.html?showComment=1635819105396#c6680243684429516788

Davidski said...

Yes, that's the one.

ambron said...

Thanks!

Garvan said...

Wee e said...'If this iron age influx “brought Celtic languages” to these islands then why did Scotland and Ireland, without this influx, get Celtic languages?'

Ireland also has a South to North cline in farmer like ancestry, it is just not as pronounced as in Britain. I once argues that this cline was a relic of the founding beaker populations arriving via land from Britain and sea from France, but Matt arguments to the contrary dented my confidence. The remaining option is that Celts from Europe and Britain entered Ireland from the South, In Ireland we have navigable rivers in the south that make it vulnerable for the sea, as the Vikings later demonstrated.

As a kid in school, I was told that the Celt "invasion" of Ireland came from France and possibly Spain, and that the contemporary invasion of Britain was less successful, leading to a redeployment to Ireland. This invasion was estimated to 500 or 600 BC.

The idea of Spain as an origin is always derided, but most people don't realize that Ireland is North of Spain. It is 26 hours by ferry to Spain, and 24 hours to France. A movement through the North is not supported by genetics, but a migration to Ireland via Liverpool, or along the southern cost of Britain is very likely.

I do not think Irish people care very much about these details, except in the sense that we tend to believe what we were told as children, and are interested in learning more.




Wee e said...

@ matt
My question to you is why you think iron age and post-Roman dynastic games of thrones (which undoubtedly went on, even if they were basically elite rivalries) — why would this be necessary to bring a new language which wasn’t already there — to a population that had the same late bronze age origin?

To put it another way, since the seaways were the highways, why would people on the western side of Scotland and in the islands NOT already speak the same language as people in the northern part of Ireland?

To put it a third way; Why would the descendants of same lineages of the Rathlin men START speaking separate languages less than ten miles from where they were buried, split right down through everybody’s main communication & trade route?

And fourth - where in the west of Scotland is any trace of this mysterious old-new language?

Fifth: Isn’t it axiomatic that one shouldn’t multiply entities? (Ockham). Why invent a new unknown language in the west of Scotland when it was in fact even easier for people in the north of Ireland to travel around than it was for them to travel to the interior of Ireland?

Look at a physical map of Scotland and Ireland. Look at the terrain and mentally add large tracts of Caledonian forest that still existed, huge marsh across the lowland centre of Scotland, and ask yourself where would any substantial isolation and language split been prone to develop?

if it did, then it’s within Scotland itself. where siloation actually could develop. Between west and east.

Garvan said...

Andrzejewski said... "Who were the Picts, then?"

The Picts were northern Britons, with a diverged language. The Scottish Gaelic word for a Pict is Cruithen, which has the same origin as the word for Britain.

Wee e said...

@ matt Well, the adna does tell us one thing: that an absolutely huge proportion of Scottish men, almost as much as Irish men, descend from the very same R1b lineage as the early (to the British Isles, ie late) Beaker men on Rathlin, the stepping stone between Ireland and the islands and coasts of Scotland. (And more so in the west than east). This is ferry distances, or across-a-lake distances we’re talking about.

The women in Scotland and Ireland too have shockingly few mdna haplogroups — again, they share the same few. There must be some differences, I am sure, but they also must be subtle. So if there was some large group of language-bringers (rather than dynastic replacement) from Ireland to Scotland, they must have wiped out the women too.

My question to you is, how do you know this relatively sudden expansion of Gaelic speakers brought Gaelic?

How does anyone know it was not already there?

You are asking us to imagine a barrier to communication, or a cause for lingusitic split (born of whatever those Rathlin guys spoke) and of cultural isolation like a curtain coming down the very middle of the actual lines of trade and communication.> Your account of gaelic being newly brought presumes that since the late bronze age some completely other language must have developed down the middle of the information (and trade) highway…then vanished without a trace.

Ockham would be spinning in his grave.

I guess what I’m saying is this: whatever culture area existed before Dalriada (or pre-Dalriada) coalesced as a polity — it would have been along the lines of Dalriada for the same reasons. Incorporating lands around the Irish sea which — only in our heads — are split into Scotland and Northern Ireland. There is just no reason why the people around it would not already speak the same langauge: you would have to posit some major and enduring event that made them speak different ones.

An enduring phenomenon like the relative difficulty of getting from one side of Scotland to another would be a reason to think the Picts might have developed their language in a different direction, especially cut off even more by Roman doings.. But why wouldn’t people in Kintyre, the Galloway coast, the Clyde estuary, the Hebrides speak the same language already as people in Antrim?

Everything we know about the material culture of that time is already shared around that area. The question really is how far north it went, or how far around Cape Wrath. (Those two place names have the same origin, Cape Wrath and Rathlin: they both mean a turning point or waypoint. A place that, once you reach it, you take different headings depending on where you’re headed for.)

Rob said...

BB arrived to Ireland via (i) northeast and (ii) southwest. See Fitzpatrick "Arrival of beaker set to Britain & Ireland"

Wee e said...

@Garvan
You made me remember hearing someone read aloud something about the people of Ireland being thought to come from Portugal (it might have been some late Roman or mediaeval thing) because Portugal is “next Ireland”.

And indeed it is. If you take off from the Portuguese coast (or that bit of Spanish coast just north of it) and head straight north, you hit Ireland. If you get blown off course a bit, you’ll end up either going up the Irish coast (east or west) or you’ll hit the English coast. As I understand it, it is roughly a 30-hour sail from Lisbon. (I don’t now remember why I think that is the time it takes, so I wouldn’t depend on it.) And for much of it you can stay within sight of the Iberian coast, and stop off.

Possibly people saw the connection of neolithic designs in stone all up and down that coast - Iberia, Brittany, Ireland and Scotland.

But as for later, Beakers, I don’t know anything about beaker culture in Iberia. Apparently Irish population dna suggests more of a relationship with French adna than anticipated.

Tom said...

Preliminary haplogroup results from the LBA/IA paper courtesy of altvred. Many of them are from central europe.

~400x samples of R1b
~60x samples of I2
10x samples of J2b
1x sample of J2a
~20x samples of G2a
4x samples of E1b
9x samples of R1a
1x sample of I1
1x sample of N1a
1x sample of H2

Wee e said...

@Grant
From what I understand, the “early” Beakers in the Atlantic islands (ie quite late Beakers) had their first foothold in Cornwall, and may have been there a few generations before they then started establishing more widely in the British Isles.

Maybe we should call them “food vessel people”, since this seems to be what they favoured in Cornwall, Ireland and Scotland in their burials.

Wee e said...

@Grant
I think sometimes the terminology makes people make assumptions.
Gaelic is not an “offshoot of” Old Irish any more than modern Irish is. They just developed in different ways from the same root.

Until mediaeval times they both used exactly the same (already archaic to both) written language. (Scotland’s pre13th C records of any kind are especially sparse because Edward i mounted an entire invasion specifically to tour Scotland taking &/or burning every written record he could search out. But there are a few.)

While in Ireland the grammar and syntax changed more, and vocabulary too, , they preserved much the same sound system. In Scotland the language is more conservative of grammatical & syntactical structure (& orthography) and vocabulary but in speech, mutation & elision went on turbo, and they are still dropping entire syllables. (I am not even a Gaelic speaker and I can hear it. When I was a child, “and” = “agus”. You hardly hear anyone young say that now. The first syllable is absent, they mostly just say a schwa sound with an “s”.)

Hardly anyone in Argyll speaks Gaelic any more, but it is said to resemble the Gaelic of Ulster more than Ulster Gaelic resembles the language of places further south.

The poet Iain Chrichton Smith (A Lewisman who didn’t know any English when he started school.) — he was a visiting or guest-resident academic at the time he told us this: he had recently been in Ireland doing some sort of guest-writer thing. the high-school kids would giggle at his “old fashioned” Gaelic. One of them said it was akin to hearing an American speaking in Shakespearean English — the relative formality of expression at odds with what sounded like chopped or slurred casual diction.

Wee e said...

@Davidski
Are the “unadmixed” Tarim basin mummies ever found with jade? Eg, Hetian jade, maybe “seed jade” beads? (This is often black & white, and the bigger stuff gets carved into cameo-like work). This washes out each spring, or did before they started mining it in bigger lumps in the mountains. The rivers where it’s found downstream seem to be in the right area.

Something like that, a claim to particular spots in the landscape, and specialist skills in adding value — it is the sort of thing that would lead to men wanting wives from their own, rather than distant communities. Either women with specialist skills themselves, or who can be relied on (as their whole family comes from the same community) to keep the home fires burning and not sell up and run off while hubby is gone.

Then things change for them: other communities acquire the same skill. Or desertification changes access to the specialism. Rivers and trade routes change course. Claim jumpers. Inbreeding. Enslavement. A resource used up.

Or just, they happened to be the last to drop the custom of marrying only other Tarim-basin people, when people of mixed descent around them had become just some more eligible families. A rejigging of who is considered eligible. Maybe that is the most economical explanation. It could change in a single generation with the adoption of a new economic path or a religion or whatever else changes the concept of “us”.

vAsiSTha said...

@epoch

"Mallory clearly states that linking the Xiaohe to Chimurcheck is very difficult and even not very likely in some points. It is one of the hardest nuts to crack"

you are the one creating a strawman here. Anthony is the lead proponent of the steppe theory today whereas Mallory lately has had his doubts (refer 21st century clouds over IE homelands https://www.proto-indo-european.ru/ie-cradle/_pdf/clouds-over-ie-homelands-nallory.pdf)

Anthony's theory is that afanasievo brought proto tocharian. nothing from tarim aDna proves this yet. this is how science works - a hypothesis is formed and then data tests that hypothesis.

Tom said...

Autosomals of yDNA outliers from the LBA/IA paper by Standardized Ape over at Anthrogenica

https://i.imgur.com/PqnwpTK.png

Paleofan said...

@MH_82

That tree you posted is very interesting. The case of Ancient Northeast Asians (Tianyuan-like) reminds me a lot of the European "Vestonice cluster", nowhere to be found after LGM. The LGM clearly affected all of these ancient people.

I think crown east asians expanded immediately after the LGM because there are samples in the Amur from 19 ka. Do you have any theory about when Ancient Paleosiberians, Ancient Beringians and Amerindians split from the other east asians? do you think it was at the start of the LGM (27-25 ka) like many papers have stated?

I have a question about the tree, why did you name the branch that contains modern east asians SEA instead of something like South Chinese?

Genos Historia said...

@Tom,

Thanks for sharing.

yeah, so I guess the Celts weren't pure Beaker folk. They had 80% beaker Y DNA, not pure ;).

Most non-R1b L21 in the Isles today is Germanic Y DNA. So if you include this little bit of I2, G2a brought by Celts. Add it with Germanic Y DNA, you will get modern Isles Y DNA genepool.

Plus some, Roman E1b and J2a.

Genos Historia said...

Note G2a is next most common haplogroup after I2. It is really rare but it is there.

G2a is found in two Celts in mainland Europe. One is confirmed to be under the subclade L497.

Today the majority of G2a in the British Isles is L497. I wonder if those new G2a(s) will turn out to be L497 too.

There's a G2a-L497 in my family ultimately from England.

Urki said...

MH82
What does "Mediterránean" mean in this argaric context?

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

@Genos

400/500 R1b

250/500 P312

150/500 L21

The y calls have not been vetted though and may have errors. Also not all these samples are from the U.K., some are from Slovenia IA and some are from Netherlands IA. There are probably more from Central/West Europe too. Some might even be new Late Neolithic samples.

Is the G2a in your family related to Richard III? To bad they never released his genome or did a good Y-SNP analysis.

Genos Historia said...

Did Richard III have G2a L497?

My grandma's paternal side is probably not related obviously. They were just ordinary people. I don't know where in England they came from, just that they came to America in the 1600s.

The oldest L497 is in Trypilla Ukraine, it is the main form of G2a today. Maciamo at Eupedia used to call it Indo European.

Genos Historia said...

@Romulus,

I admit, naive Celtic nationalism in Ireland is annoying. I did see an Irish article once call Newgrange Celtic. Ah, that was frustrating to read.

Considering people like to stick to familiar narratives, I doubt the British Isles public will learn what ancient DNA says about their origins.

Also considering, their leaders don't want them to have a sense of identity. Which is why they make big news stories about Cheddar man but not Bell Beaker.

Genos Historia said...

The study claims to be about Britain. Yet they have a bunch of DNA from other parts of Europe.

Ok. That is bit a miscommunication. It makes those Y DNA results meaningless.

I'll wait till people at anthrogencia sort things out before saying anything.

Rob said...

@ Paleofan

''I think crown east asians expanded immediately after the LGM because there are samples in the Amur from 19 ka. Do you have any theory about when Ancient Paleosiberians, Ancient Beringians and Amerindians split from the other east asians? do you think it was at the start of the LGM (27-25 ka) like many papers have stated?''

I haven't look at that aspect yet. might in future add in Anzick etc


"I have a question about the tree, why did you name the branch that contains modern east asians SEA instead of something like South Chinese?''

maybe that would be a better name, but 'SEA' was meant to signify south East Asian rather than 'southeast Asian'




@ gamerz_J


''The concept of an East Asian Villabruna is def interesting, and it also seems to me this pop probably existed, though I am imaging it somewhere along the Tianyuan-Ustishim (because he is K2a) cline.''


The post-Glacial East Asians seem to be uniparentally diverse: lines of C, N, O, D. There's probably structure under that too



''Saw your graph btw, it's interesting but I do have a question. Would you have any guesses about why Papuans and Australians don't show any Ydna D? They seem autosomally more related to Onge-type pops but their haplogroups appear closer to Tianyuan.''


I think this basic structure of early Papuan and later East Asian propper has been observed in published works too. Onge only have ~ 50% Papuan/Australian ancestry, so the rise of Y-hg D in Onge could be related to arrival of EA populations.

epoch said...

@vasishta

Even the problems Mallory saw in "Clouds over IE homelands" for the Steppe Theory are largely solved. Remains of wheat has been found in Afanasievo context, and the admixture of CW into Andronovo makes another trajectory possible.

The Steppe Hypothesis is in great shape.

epoch said...

@vasishta

That was barley, not wheat.

Arza said...

A Bronze Age Mystery: When Nomads Conquered Europe - Volker Heyd | University of Helsinki | 30 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQG0kznIfeA

No new data, but still worth listening.

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