Blond hair is only indirectly associated with Anatolian ancestry in Estonia...duh

In a recent paper about complex traits in Europeans, Marnetto et al. found that blond hair and blue eyes showed a relatively high association with ancient Anatolian ancestry.

This is a somewhat curious finding considering that ancient Anatolians weren't particularly blond haired or blued eyed, and that's probably an understatement.

However, the Europeans that Marnetto et al. based their analysis on were Estonians. And in Estonia ancient Anatolian ancestry peaks in the west and north, probably because this is where Estonians have the most Germanic and Finnish ancestry.

Germanic and Finnish populations are somewhat richer in ancient Anatolian ancestry than Estonians, and, unlike ancient Anatolians, they're often exceptionally blond haired and blue eyed.

So it makes sense that, in Estonia at least, ancient Anatolian ancestry is associated with blond hair and blue eyes, but only indirectly so. The more direct link is between Germanic and Finnish ancestry and blond hair and blue eyes.

I feel that Marnetto et al. should've investigated this, and they also should've made it clear that the associations they found won't necessarily be seen in other European countries.

For the doubters out there, and I know there are at least a few of you, below is a series of Principal Component Analyses (PCA) showing how Estonians compare to other populations from around the Baltic Sea, as well as to present-day Turks from central Anatolia.

Note that, by and large, the same Estonians who show more affinity to the Germanic and/or Finnish individuals are also shifted slightly closer to the Turks, and this is because they harbor elevated ancient Anatolian ancestry. The relevant datasheets are available here.

Citation...

Marnetto et al., Ancestral genomic contributions to complex traits in contemporary Europeans, Current Biology (2022), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.01.046

See also...

Ancient ancestry and complex traits in Estonians (Marnetto et al. 2022)

Mainstream media BS: Europeans owe their height to Asian nomads

The PIE homeland controversy: February 2022 status report

I think we'll see the emergence of two main competing proto-Indo-European (PIE) homeland theories over the next few years:

- a homeland in the Eneolithic North Caucasus, and the spread of Anatolian languages into West Asia with Maykop-related ancestry

- a homeland in the North Pontic region, possibly within the Eneolithic Sredny Stog archeological culture, and the spread of Anatolian languages into West Asia via the Balkans.

Both theories have support from ancient DNA. Some of it has already been published (for instance, see here).

At this point, I can see myself firmly in the North Pontic camp, even if it turns out that North Pontic-related ancestry only made a fleeting impact on Bronze Age Anatolia.

After all, there's no direct relationship between genes and languages, so to prove that Anatolian languages came from the North Pontic, there's no need for North Pontic-related ancestry to persist in Anatolia, as long as we have solid evidence that people with this type of ancestry moved there at the right time.

In my mind, for now, the Maykop culture provides an excellent explanation for non-Indo-European influences in PIE, and there's no need to make it Indo-European speaking, let alone PIE speaking.

See also...

The PIE homeland controversy: June 2021 status report