Saturday, March 12, 2022
Lousy intel
I don't like discussing current events and politics here, but it's impossible to ignore what is happening in Eastern Europe.
It's a tragedy and catastrophe for both Ukraine and Russia. It's also likely to have a negative impact on ancient DNA research, Indo-European studies, and thus also on this blog.
I'm seeing a lot of confusion online about why Russia invaded Ukraine, but I don't think it's very complicated.
After getting the better of the West in recent years, Russia finally overreached and made a massive tactical blunder, in large part because of lousy intel. More broadly, I also see this as the Soviet Union's dead cat bounce moment.
Russia will now have to reinvent itself, possibly as China's junior partner or even vassal state.
As for the "special military operation", Russia's initial plan was to achieve a quick, relatively bloodless victory, followed by a military parade in Kyiv. But obviously that's not going to happen.
Russia's back up plan, if we can call it that, seems to be to keep pushing into Ukraine at any cost, and hope that the Ukrainians finally tap out. But right now that looks like a long shot.
See also...
Matters of geography
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«Oldest ‹Older 601 – 668 of 668About traces of the Harappan civilization in Bengal, Shinde later told TOI, “At Pandu Rajar Dhipi in Midnapore, we find pottery similar to Harappan ones of 1900 BC, a later period of Harappa. It showed that the Harappan civilization gradually moved from the Indus and Saraswati basin along the Indo-Gangetic plain and left its imprints all along it.
https://m.timesofindia.com/city/kolkata/we-are-carrying-same-harappan-gene-culture-from-gujarat-to-bengal-indus-valley-experts/amp_articleshow/90808908.cms
Follow up to the previous post
IMO, Late harappan ancestry 1900bce in Bengal can better explain the spread of Indo aryan languages in Bengal and near by regions which were Indo Aryan speaking probably from the time of the composition of Rigveda.
"Some scholars have identified the Kīkaṭa tribe—mentioned in the Rigveda (3.53.14) with their ruler Pramaganda—as the forefathers of Magadhas because Kikata is used as synonym for Magadha in the later texts."
600bce Middle indo Aryan or Prakrits like Pali and Maghadi were spoken in the region by the masses.
Harappans weren't Indo-Aryan speakers.
That should be obvious to anyone by now.
Paper on sanauli by Niraj Rai hopefully gets published this year.
He has made it clear that no steppe in these 100+ samples. Upto 85% IVC related and 15% Gangetic HG. Site dated 2000-1500bce. Sanauli is a very important site as it belongs to late Rig Vedic-Epic age.
1600bce-750bce chalcolithic bengal Archaelogically proving migration of harappans into bengal.
And it seems andronovo ancestry replaces afnaseivo ancestry in xinjiang in late bronze age. Are you sure Andronovo was not Proto-Tocharian ;)
Where i live Genetic tests like 23&Me are hard to get done but thankfully at agenetics i came across one Kashmiri Pandit data which is something like this;
SiS_BA2 52%
Kangju 38%
Sintashta_MLBA 0%
Bustan_BA 10%
Keeping in mind we brahmins mostly marry within the community its most likely I too would have a similar ancestry profile.
Only 600k kashmiri pandits exist rest converted by Abrahmics :)
Kinda disappointed by such low % of Harappan ancestry. Nearby Indo-Aryan groups carry as high as 70% harappan ancestry.
The Bengals are a somewhat separate group in the PIE family
See Kaja et al. 2021
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.07.451425v1.full.pdf Fig. S8A,
or
https://github.com/MNMdiagnostics/NaszeGenomy/blob/main/admixture/World.jpg
@Norfern-Ostrobothnian
"Seems like there was some turnover if those Yaoi genetic proportions are accurate and not just localized."
I do not know if this was autocorrect or just a simple typo, but watch out for it, because the altered word does have a meaning too. Although it could be a way to broaden the the readership of the blog with people who come here with a different search term. :)
@Norfern-Ostrobothnian
"Unexpectedly, we identify a later influx of East Asian ancestry during the imperial Kofun period."
Interestingly the Wikipedia article on the Kofun period writes about large-scale Chinese and Korean immigration in the period as a well known fact.
@Rob
"Who are these Zaghunluq sites thought to be?"
Zaghunlug is a site located near Qiemo (also known as Cherchen). At Cherchen there was found a famous mummy called the "Cherchen Man", see here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherchen_Man
Zaghuluq is actually in the southern region of Tarim Basin, not in the northern Tarim Basin which is the real Tocharian region. In the last quarter before the Common Era, this site may have been part of the Loulan Kingdom or Shanshan Kingdom, please see here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loulan_Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanshan
Zaghuluk samples are from around the second half of first millennium BCE, maybe they are slightly earlier or from the Loulan Kingdom times.
I think Putin has the wrong priorities: He could be trying to improve the material wellbeing of the Russians, and that they could enjoy a long life in peace. Instead he is trying to increase the geographical size of Russia at any price. OK you might argue, that's a heroic set of mind: that you prefer a short life of glory over a long life in luxury. That's an old PIE attitude. But in fact Putin himself enjoys great luxury, and he doesn't risk his own life at the front.
His argument that the "special military operation" is intended to protect the ethnic Russians in Ukraine is a joke. In Kharkiv for instance there are lots of Russian speaking Ukrainians, and they are being killed by Russian bombs and rockets. Truth be told: Putin doesn't care about people.
In my view this isn't a war between the west/the Nato and Russia. This is a war between a progressive path characterized by freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and a deeply archaic world, characterized by imperialism, authoritarianism and the absence of the former values. The Ukrainians have chosen the progressive path, and that's something Putin doesn't want.
In my previous comment I wrongly spelled the cemetery's name in southern Tarim Basin as "Zaghuluq" and "Zaghuluk." This cemetery is properly called in two ways: Zaghunluq or Zaghunlug.
This is actually a burial site, not a settlement, and here there are some pictures of the findings from around 1000 to 800 BCE:
http://tinyurl.com/43ux82du
More info on the nearby site of Qiemo here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiemo_Town
Zaghunluq new samples info, uploaded by Matt time ago, can be seen here (in light green, Y-haplogroup R1b2):
https://imgur.com/a/i5fQjxl
@ Carlos
Thanks, so i guess based on Davidski's run people would think these are some kind of Saka, but very mixed.
I doubt Afansievo ancestry will be found in Tarim people, although I 'm sure Reich & Fu will try claim their models do so
@ SinonW
Lol your posts sound like a Walt Disney movie
Maybe stick to posting page-long essays of your own genetic autobiography ; at least they’re semi interesting
Read what one of your countryman analysed
https://www.thepostil.com/the-military-situation-in-the-ukraine-an-update/
Simon_W wrote: Putin could be trying to improve the material wellbeing of the Russians, and that they could enjoy a long life in peace. Instead he is trying to increase the geographical size of Russia at any price. OK you might argue, that's a heroic set of mind…”
No, after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2015, Angela Merkel
appeared in a discussion at the economic forum in Davos 2015. She proposed wider cooperation between the European Union and the (Russian) Eurasian Economic Union,
but under the so-called "Economic Space" "Eurasia Without Borders" described by Putin as "the area of trade between Lisbon and Vladivostok."
- "This must be our goal," Merkel said, thinking of the European Union. The idea was accepted in Germany with great enthusiasm, as it gives them immense economic opportunities.
Putin, on the other hand, responds to his dream about the "Third Empire".
No wonder Germany clings so tightly to Putin and his "Third Empire" despite his cruel warfare.
@StP
"Putin, on the other hand, responds to his dream about the "Third Empire".
Heh, Putinist nutcases call the European Union the Fourth Empire for years, framing it as a resurrection/continuity if the Nazi Germany (widely referred to as The Third Empire). Apparently there is a subsect of morons who won't go along with that numbering and stick with the "third".
But the paralel is unintentionally apt in a sense. Putin is not a Hitler (yet?), but he is the closest to it among the current European leaders. The Donbas Russians are his Sudeta-Germans. The fact that the force most resembling to the Nazis call their Lebensraum creating war on Ukraine "denazification" is some 1984 level bullshit.
Kherson will be retaken by the Ukrainians within days.
Huge battles have already begun in eastern Ukraine, with Ukrainian and Russian reinforcements continuing to stream into the area.
The Russians are about to get their asses whooped.
It will be very dangerous for us when Russians will really start to lose:
https://youtu.be/dcgJB_Qf2rg
@slumbery
The problem of this Russian empire, the political one from Vladivostok to Lisbon according to Putin's dreams, or the German economic empire from Lisbon to Vladivostok according to Merkel's dreams, lies in the fact that it would have to be realized "on the corpse of Poland" as in 1920 called the Russian general Tukhachevsky, and as today we already know that also "over the corpses of Ukraine and the Baltic states"
These countries had already experienced the actions of both the "imperial" sides when e.g. the Ribbentrop-Molotov plan was being implemented in 1937.
@Rob
That Russian attempt to surround the main Ukrainian forces in the east isn't going very well.
Russian forces moving from the north are being annihilated around Izium.
Russian forces that were supposed to be moving from the south to link up with the northern forces are still busy in Mariupol.
Haha.
@EastPole
It will be very dangerous for us when Russians will really start to lose.
Russians are already losing and there's nothing they can do about it.
@ Davidski
I don't know what's so 'ha-ha' about this war.
Some of the commentators here are delusional from their own chauvanisms & projections of victimhood. I question the mental status of people who are so dumb & one sided, but then again, having read many of their stupid comments over the years, Im not exactly surprised - they dont understand DNA, so they wont understand the intracacies of geopolitics & morality
According to Baud, the Ukrainian army has been encircled
@Rob
Quit being a total dickhead.
https://www.cell.com/iscience/pdf/S2589-0042(22)00514-4.pdf - "Genomic and dietary discontinuities during the Mesolithic and Neolithic in Sicily" Yu et al, Planck,
OT: Possibly this could be useful to provide an ancient dna dataset:
https://poseidon-framework.github.io/#/genotype_data - "Poseidon is a framework offering a standardized way to store and share archaeogenetic genotype datasets with archaeological context information. It aims to fill a desideratum in the current handling of research data."
(Max Planck)
https://poseidon-framework.github.io/published_data/
@Davidski
Amen
@ Davidski and all
If I can, I would like to introduce a question on a different topic for a moment.
It's a CWC z2103 sample from the Czech Republic. It is referred to as corded ware. But is it correct? Looking at the body system, equipment etc shouldn't it be BB?
Happy Easter!
"True, Don jr’s remarks (made on and off through the years) that he isn’t concerned about GOP losing donors in the US because “we get all the money we need from the Russians” are remarkable for their candour: but again, he did say it very publicly."
If that's a prime example of your "facts" I wouldn't believe you if you told the time of day. A quick google shows it has nothing to do with the GOP and was from a golf writer quoting DTjr on golf course investments.
@EastPole
Jes!
"A dog wounded to death becomes the most dangerous."
Russia will take revenge on those who helped Ukraine.
He has already announced: "Poland must be punished!" (with an atomes?)
A bit back to the Avar study. It contains some Sarmatian samples from their final period in the Carpathian Basin (4th-5th century). I find it interesting (not very surprising, but interesting) that a lot of them look Germanic. That is, they are placed into Germanic territory on the G25 North European PCA.
In my country, Switzerland, there are still a few people around (a small minority) who express their understanding for Russia's alleged security concerns. But Latvia and Estonia are EU- and Nato-members, and they share a direct border to Russia. How does this threaten Russia's security? With the Ukraine it wouldn't be any different.
Also there are some (predominantly leftists) who suspect that the Nato-enlargement serves an imperialistic American agenda. But how so? Countries like Poland or the Baltic states profit much more from the Nato-enlargement than the USA do. It's no coincidence that the nationalist Trump has called the Nato "obsolete".
Another thing: I recently read an article claiming that the sanctions against Russia increase Putin's popularity among the Russians. For instance, a self-declared former liberal said that Putin had no other choice than to command the invasion of the Ukraine, to save Russia from the Anglo-Saxons. Lol, she seems to have erred by 1500 years, and nevermind the fact the Saxons attacked at the other end of the continent.
“ they dont understand DNA, so they wont understand the intracacies of geopolitics & morality”
Either you’re a terrific wind-up merchant or this is the single most patronising, fatuous and grandiose piece Dunning-Kruger ridiculousness I have read in decades on any subject.
Paradoxically, Kadirov looks like the typical reconstruction of a Yamnaya male. Whether or not the PIE had blond hair and blue eyes, he has these added features. Who would’ve thought that a typical “Aryan race” lookalike would be a Muslim man from the Caucasus…
An excellent article by the historian Timothy Snyder, not sure if it has been linked already:
https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-genocide-handbook?s=r
"Putin's Russian regime talks of “Nazis” not because it opposes the extreme right, which it most certainly does not, but as a rhetorical device to justify unprovoked war and genocidal policies. Putin’s regime is the extreme right. It is the world center of fascism. It supports fascists and extreme-right authoritarians around the world."
So, really bizarre that some leftists (not many) still defend this regime. I guess it's their deep-seated anti-Americanism.
Putin recently called the western sanctions an "own goal" and that this "economic blitzkrieg" has failed. But it was never meant to be a blitzkrieg. The sanctions are working steadily and their devastating effects are becoming apparent more and more. The inflation is currently at 17% IIRC, and according to the mayor of Moscow, 200'000 residents may lose their jobs.
@Hi all!
Are there any studies on where this enormous aggressiveness, cruelty, sadism, genocid, Nazi brutality of Putinists and some Russians against neighboring countries came from?
People of the Slavic language and culture did not have such inclinations and do not have a bad reputation in this field!
It is true that - despite the Slavic language - Russia is a genomically people in autosomes rather little related to the Slavs (see the vast excess of Finno-Ugric IBDs). But still, at least is European .
How did they come up with what they doing?
Are Putin's fantasies about an empire from Vladivostok to Lisbon and the offended ambition over Ukraine's resistance the very reasons?
It is important tema!!
hi davidski, there's a new study about some tunisian samples from the Kerkouane necropolis, they are from the mid-iron age, 650 - 250 BCE, the study refers to them as punic samples
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/423079v1
the problem is that the admixture model they used is imo pretty bad and so are the conclusions.
they use a WHG-Yamnaya_Samara-Anatolia_n-Iran_n-Morocco_LN model (morocco_EN is only used for 1 sample if i'm not wrong, the R11759 instead of the morocco_LN to increase the fit) and from that they conclude that there's no levantine admixture in the samples, i don't know how would they conclude that from such a model where none of those components are "levantine" but "levantine is a mixture of some of those components, many samples in that model score a pretty high percentage of iran_n too that to me could be an indication of levantine admixture
the PCA seems more useful to me, as you can see from the pca and as the study says:
"At Kerkouane, a Carthaginian town on the Cap Bon peninsula in Tunisia (see extended description in Materials), we observe a highly heterogeneous population, spanning across the PCA space in Fig. 3 from modern Mozabite populations to modern Sicilian populations"
the samples seem to be on a cline from modern mozabites to modern sicilian populations and as you probably already know the latter have some levantine admixture
1 sample (the R11759) seems to be the only one that actually clusters with modern berbers and with ancient guanche samples from the canary islands
"For R11759, who projects near modern Mozabite and Moroccan populations in PCA space, there were no working distal qpAdm models with the original set of 5 distal source populations (Fig. 5). We replaced Morocco Late Neolithic with Morocco Early Neolithic farmers and a hunter-gatherer individual from Ethiopia from ~4500 BP (24), both of which produced working models. Using competition modeling (where possible sources are rotated to the outgroup), the best model uses ~70% Morocco Early Neolithic ancestry and ~30% Anatolia Neolithic (Fig. 4, Fig. S6). When compared to other ancient individuals using qpWave analysis (Fig. 5), this individual forms a clade with ancient Canary Island inhabitants thought to be representative of the original founding population (25)."
while 7 samples seem to plot closer to europe especially sicilians according to the study
"Kerkouane was highly cosmopolitan. We observe individuals who show genetic continuity with the preceding populations of the Maghreb. Many individuals with non-local ancestry cluster with contemporaneous Greek and Sicilian communities rather than with genomes from the eastern Mediterranean. One individual has ancestry most likely from nomadic populations of the Sahara."
and finally there are 4 samples more inbetween modern berbers and "greek/sicily"
their genotypes are available if you are interested in converting them to g25
And Sergey Lavrov just explained to "India Today" that the current events in the Ukraine were caused by the attempt of the Americans and the west to rule the world. He said they were trying to show the world that there can only be unipolarity, no multipolarity. Of course this argument is deeply flawed, because the Ukrainians themselves had democratically opted for a western orientation. They were not forced by the Americans. This wasn't necessary, because the western values, which go back to the enlightenment, are superior, universal values. What has the Russian regime to offer in comparison?
It makes sense that for a true Russian chauvinist, who believes that the west is decadent, that the Russian culture is the pinnacle of human cultures, and that the historic mission of Russia is to save Europe, the idea that the Ukrainians freely and by themselves chose a western orientation must seem completely impossible. That's why they come up with the alternative view that the Americans control them all: the Europeans, the Ukrainians, and especially Zelensky.
Another brilliant article by Timothy Snyder on the topic:
https://snyder.substack.com/p/how-to-think-about-war-in-ukraine?s=r
Some excerpts:
"Putin assigns the West responsibility for something that Russia did, which is to push Ukrainian public opinion towards NATO. In Putin's essay, the claim is that Ukrainians belong to a larger community with Russia, but have been misled by Western perfidy. Now, there is always plenty of perfidy to go around, and reasonable people can disagree about whether Ukraine should be invited to join NATO. But the simple fact is that Ukraine's present western orientation is a result of the last Russian invasion. So the Americans are in an impossible situation. It is America's fault, supposedly, that Ukrainians have turned away from their natural Russian destiny. If Americans point out that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, and that this stands behind the unpopularity of Russia in Ukraine and Ukrainian desires for security guarantees, they meet obstinate denial and brute hostility. Putin's official ideology is enraged by the basic facts."
"The Russian propaganda that worked the last time around was directed against Ukraine, which was portrayed as reactionary or homosexual, nationalist or cosmopolitan, depending upon the target audience. This time, it is more as though we are meant not to think about Ukraine at all, and remain fixed on the geopolitics. The Russian line that America is to blame for suggests that Ukraine is not really sovereign and its people's experiences of war do not really matter. It also distracts us from what Ukrainian policy has actually been."
"One of the first actions of independent Ukraine was nuclear disarmament. (...) Under the current presidential administration, Ukraine has been conciliatory to Russia. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelens'kyi, was elected in 2019 by a weary society on a platform of bringing the war to an end. His gestures of reconciliation to Putin have now been met with Russia's threat of an escalated war. This is perhaps one reason why Russian propaganda focuses on the West and on the United States."
"Unlike Russia, Ukraine is a democracy. Unlike Putin, Zelens'kyi came to office in a credible election where opposing candidates (one of them was the sitting president) had access to media and were able to compete. (That is a fundamental difference between Ukraine and Russia: in Ukraine, presidents have lost elections and left office. That has not yet happened in Russia.) One of the central elements of Russia's traditional attacks on Ukraine has been that "Russian speakers" in Ukraine are subject to oppression. This is conceptually misleading, in that most Ukrainians are bilingual in Ukrainian and Russian to one degree or another, and in that language does not determine identity (if it did, I'd be English). But insofar as it is reasonable to talk about "Russian speakers" in Ukraine, the Ukrainian president himself is certainly one of them. Zelens’kyi is from eastern Ukraine, and his dominant language is Russian. So a "Russian speaker" in Ukraine can be elected president. Indeed, "Russian speakers" in Ukraine are far more free in Ukraine in this respect than are "Russian speakers" in Russia. In Russia, there is no democracy for anyone."
"America is not actually responsible for everything, so it cannot deliver what Russians seem to want, which is an alternative reality where Russia had not alienated its neighbor by invading it; or perhaps an alternative reality in which the Soviet Union had never fallen apart, or one where the old Soviet empire was held together by admiration for Russia. These are dreams that no one can make true."
I came across a few more kashmiri samples (Muslims). All have 40% kangju ancestry on average. Significant portion of remaining ancestry is harappan.
Kangju is 50% sintashta_mlba on average but was eastern iranian speaking group.
Can any expert explain whats happening here?
40% Iranian admixture yet the language is Indo-Aryan. When Alexander made his way to India he met a local king Abisares (or Abhisara) which clearly shows an indo-Aryan presence in the region.
Kangju admixture is most likely post this date during the kushan dynasty when 4th buddhist council was held in kashmir which may have brought many in the region.
So we are left with 50% harappan ancestry whose language as of now is undeciphered but its unlikely to be a Dravidian related language.
Kashmiri as per Asko Parpola is a direct discendent of Vedic dilect. Also the traditional Agni Aag Ag changes to Ogun in Kashmiri.
It seems that Mariupol has fallen, the Kremlin butcher will be satisfied. Russia has never been, is not, and will never be a civilized European country, its future is with the Chinese and other Asians. I hope they pay for what they are doing
What happened to archi?, he commented on this blog years ago and I think he was Russian, I would like to know his opinion about what is going on.
@Rob
Ukrainians are not encircled. Russia que are trying to, but don’t be fooled, à large part of Donbass has been bunkerised by UAF in the last 8 years. Heavy shelling will not be enough, and Russians have lost around 40 battalions since the beginning. More than 120 engaged the 24th february, 82 still engaged today (with some arrived recently from various regions of Russia, or elle where). Not all battalions have been fully replenished. Some are likely still depleted. A normal battalion is around 700 men. Some have lost 70/90% of their men. That is why the remaining was sens to complete other battalions.
If you to make a successful attack, you are needing something like 3X/4X more troops than the defender. UAF in Donbass was about 40K before the war. Given there was general mobilization and troops available in the West (since victory in the battle of Kyiv). So they were replenished and will cet more numerous with time. Make the maths. 82 battalions is perhaps something like 50k to 80k. But probably at best 60k. Even if there were still only 30k for UAF, russians are not numerous enough. I don’t forget separatists but their troops are la king everything, from training to arms, and they are lacking men. Even with general mobilization. Some teens (15 years old) are forced to join the army.
Ukraine will have hundred of thousands more men in the next weeks (in training). For Russia, à Big Victory before that is crucial. They know this. Hence why they claimed victory at Marioupol to free some troops. But it is taking a big risk.
Here are the bed files for the Japanese aDNA.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/nurxnwqpi31fc1d/Cooke_2021.zip/file
@Rob
UAF are not encircled. Russian Forces are planning to encircle the main UAF in Donbass, but it has not happened yet, and it will be very difficult to do. A rule of war: attackers must be 3X more numerous than defenders. Russia has put 82 BTG (theorically with around 700 men per BTG, but could be a bit more). Originally, Russia send around 120 BTG in Ukraine, but due to heavy losses, they managed to reform only around 70, with new ones send to Ukraine (from Kaliningrad,....)
They have at best around 100k men, including separatists and mercenaries. UAF in Donbass did have around 40k men at the beginning of the year, with reinforcements since february. UAF have fortified their lines. And general mobilization in Ukraine is meaning hundreds of thousands more men available in the next weeks/months. They are in training now.
Moreover, most of NATO countries new arms send to Ukraine are needing training (drones, howitzers (especially the last generation ones, like the CAESAR).
Time is not in favor of Russia.
That is why Russians are needing a rapid big victory. That is why they declared victory in the battle of Marioupol, even if resistance is still present. To free some BTG for conquest of Donbass.
Since Netherlands, France and USA have announced sending heavy artillery, it is now clear that the goal is now to "demilitarize" Russia. That is why Ukraine ceasefire discussions are going bad, because neutrality of Ukraine is no more on the table. They are preparing for counterattacks in may, when UAF will new trained troops and new equipments.
I'm already a little late, but Pink Floyd have published a nice pro-Ukrainian song. About 20 years after they entered their pension:
https://youtu.be/saEpkcVi1d4
I've thought about scenarios how this war might have been avoided. At first I've thought that, if the west had been more conciliatory, Putin might have been content and stayed peaceful. Nobody believes in this scenario anymore. Now the critique is rather that the consequences of this war should have been communicated to the kremlin in more detail before it started. According to reliable sources the kremlin is very surprised by the severeness of the western sanctions. So yeah, had Putin known that he would earn this, he would perhaps not have started the "special military operation".
@Davidski
I was doing some digging into Yamnaya's mtDNA, and I found a few supposed C4 bearers.
Two C4A2 bearing "Yamnaya" samples--L8 and L15--were published in the paper "Subdivisions of haplogroups U and C encompass mitochondrial DNA lineages of Eneolithic–Early Bronze Age Kurgan populations of western North Pontic steppe" (2017). I suspected that they used PCR methods, considering the strange results, and I wasn't wrong:
"Ancient DNA research is prone to errors, in part, based on the nature of the material and, in part, on the methods used. Although the low-resolution SNP-PCR method may have a potentially higher error rate than the whole-genome capture analysis using next-generation DNA sequencing technology, it can deliver results on the samples where other methods fail, particularly on those samples coming from geographic areas with potentially poor DNA preservation conditions...In this report, we present the maternal genetic lineage composition of kurgan builders in western NPR during the Eneolithic–EBA from a subset of geographically linked stratified kurgans, using the method of low-resolution mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) PCR-SNP (single-nucleotide polymorphism-PCR). While the recently developed sophisticated DNA sequencing techniques like the next-generation DNA sequencing technology greatly expand the resolution of ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis, some basic questions about the connections among various population groups can still be answered by a low-resolution mtDNA screening of representative samples, especially when dealing with samples with potentially low DNA yield."
Additionally, Alexey Nikitin--the primary author--has published three C4a bearing, Yamnaya/Yamnaya-related samples using PCR methods: Ya34 (mtDNA C4A2'3'4', Dnieper Donets), L8 (mtDNA C4A6, Yamnaya), D1.8 (mtDNA C4A3, Catacomb), and L15 (mtDNA C4A6, Babyno). Since all of these were tested using lower coverage PCR methods, would you say that these are false positives? All other studies done on Yamnaya (and their antecedent/cousin populations) via NGS, Shotgun, and WGS show no sign of C4. Nikitin has published these C4 bearers before in 2012, and in Newton et al., 2011. I frankly don't trust anything not done in NGS/WGS or Shotgun, which means many papers pre-2014-2015 have tainted data.
@Rob - you're posting Russia's initial plans for the war, not the status on the ground.
Would be great if Russia really did lose. But at the moment it's looking like they will be successfully annexing Kherson, Mariupol, Donezk and Luhansk. And after that they will interpret any Ukrainian attempt to get these territories back as an attack on Russia, which will turn from aggressor to victim, at least in the propaganda.
A pity Davidski seems to have decided to close the thread. Today I read an article by the Russian economist Vladislav L. Inosemtsev. He argued that Putin's Russia is headed backwards, into the past, and that Putin would have been a respected leader in the 18th or 19th century, when it was normal to think in spheres of influence, where the big countries dominated the smaller ones, and where the prestige of a country was measured on the size of its territory, and of its colonies. Inosemtsev is ready to believe that Putin honestly considers the western talk about human rights etc. to be a mere trick. So while in the west we have changed completely with regards to ethics and the appraisal of imperialism, the leaders of Russia are stuck in the past; and that's why they fail to understand each other. Putin seems to be obsessed by the spheres of influence, and he regards Ukraine as part of the Russian sphere. And therefore the mere possibility that the Ukraine joined the Nato (which he sees as the American zone of influence) was inacceptable to him. That's not to say that he had the right to invade Ukraine. But the idea that both sides don't understand each other seems intriguing to me.
Population Genomics of Stone Age Eurasia
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.04.490594v1.supplementary-material
. Following the second transition, Neolithic Anatolian-related farmer ancestry remains in
503 Scandinavia, but the source is now different. It can be modelled as deriving almost exclusively from
504 a genetic cluster associated with the Late Neolithic Globular Amphora Culture (GAC)
505 (Poland_5000BP_4700BP; Extended Data Fig. 4). Strikingly, after the Steppe-related ancestry was
506 first introduced into Europe (Steppe_5000BP_4300BP), it expanded together with GAC-related
507 ancestry across all sampled European regions (Extended Data Fig. 7I). This suggests that the spread
508 of steppe-related ancestry throughout Europe was predominantly mediated through groups that were
509 already admixed with GAC-related farmer groups of the eastern European plains. This finding has
510 major implications for understanding the emergence of the CWC.
how do you parse this
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.04.490594v1
I am happy your blog is back, looking at the comments on this post I can kind of see why you shut it down now.
@ Folker
I’ve stopped following what’s happening tbh
It’s too upsetting and I don’t want to come across as a Putin apologist. But yeah; this isn’t even a case of “2 sides to the story”, but multiple sides, lobbies and forces
I read an interview with the German 1980 born professor of philosophy Markus Gabriel. He said that the Russian argument of feeling threatened by the eastern enlargement of the Nato is a spurious argument, because there is not a single sign or argument hat the Nato was threatening Russia. And he points out the difference: Russia has started a war of aggression. This is not merely a potential, but a factual threat. So if Russia feels threatened by the Nato, this has nothing to do with rationality, but rather calls for a psychiatrist for those who feel threatened. Personally I would add that Russia being a nuclear power, it would be suicidal to attack it. And the Nato knows this, they are not buffoons. It's impossible to invade Russia.
Sorry, I didn't mean "call boy" lol, I was just confused by an online dictionary. He is what the Germans call a "Shootingstar", but I know this word has an entirely different meaning in English. I don't think there is a proper English equivalent to German "Shootingstar", which is someone who progresses very quickly and at a young age from nobody to very successful.
Tsar Peter the Great was born 350 years ago. That's why there is now an exhibition about him in Russia, with the subtitle "The Birth of the Empire". So far, so unspectacular. But Vladimir Putin chatted with selected young business people for almost 2 hours at the opening. Typical for hobby historian Putin, he claimed that Peter the Great did not conquer anything in the war with Sweden. He just retrieved and secured what had always belonged to Russia. This is only partially true: Karelia had already been under Russian influence before the Swedish rule, but Estonia and Livonia had never been Russian before. Be that as it may, Putin left no doubt that this policy of Peter the Great is still relevant to him today. "Nothing's changed," he said with a confident laugh. Today it's again about "taking our country back." He meant Ukraine. "It is also our responsibility to retrieve and secure," said the President. He added that, when the tsar founded St. Petersburg as the new capital, no European country recognized the area as Russian. "Everyone regarded it as part of Sweden," Putin said. But Peter brought the country back and defended it. And that's how he will do it today. I find these statements highly remarkable, because up to now the Russian justification for the Ukraine war had always been: there is a genocide going on in the Donbass, we have to stop it. And Ukraine was planning an attack on Russia, we just got ahead of them. We only defend ourselves preventively. And Lavrov and Peskov constantly emphasize that Russia does not want to occupy any country and that the people of Ukraine should decide for themselves once they are liberated from their alleged Nazi regime. Now, for the first time, Putin publicly admitted that the main thing is to secure Ukraine for Russia.
The Russians don't get tired of phantasizing about the 3rd WW, the nuclear war. Some of them, like the politician Andrey Gurulyov, who suggested that they would attack London first, because of the threat that's coming from the "Anglo-Saxons", naively seem to believe they could win an exchange of nuclear blows. Others, like the TV host Vladimir Solovyov, who recently said that only a couple of mutants on lake Baikal would survive, apparently hope that, if the Russians cannot win the war, then at least it will be the end of mankind altogether. This however is an unrealistic hope, because there are not enough strategic nuclear bombs in the world to achieve this. The Americans and the Russians have enough nuclear bombs to completely destroy each other for many years, but not enough for a global armageddon. The nuclear radiation would be negligible on a global scale. There have been plenty of overground tests of nuclear bombs, especially in the 60ies. They blew up about half of the arsenal the USA and Russia have today. Yet mankind survived it. So a nuclear war between Russia and the Nato would make China the unrivalled number one power, and islamists like the IS or the Iranian mullah regime would probably fall in extasy of joy and regard it as a gift of Allah. This cannot be in Russia's interest, I dare claiming.
@Davidski
TRUE! However, rebuilding anything right now, is not prudent.
All effort(s) must singularly focus on delivering a Non-Recoverable Military DEFEAT to Russ-Federation. S-300s are too old and too slow, what's needed right now is EW [New Technology] and Satellite based comms., for real-time target tracking. There are not too many ways to slow down/shoot down Ziron type Hypersonics; maybe EW based jamming will confuse them to slow them down.
Too bad we may not have access to Ancient DNA samples from the Volga to the Tobal, anytime soon.
BTW:- If there are any Russians reading this, please inform your president, that these "ANCIENT LANDS", belong to the Indo-Iranians. And we'd love to collect PAST-DUE RENTs & TAXES!
OMG, what has ridden Roger Waters here? https://youtu.be/iZsRj3_iDfM
He called Biden a war criminal and suggested that the western countries should stop delivering weapons to Ukraine, in order to force Zelensky into negotiations. The problem here that he doesn't understand is that it takes two for a peace through negotiations. Of course the Russians claim that they are open to negotiations, but that means nothing. As long as one side can hope to reach all its goals on the military way, they will hardly abstain from it. Without western support for Ukraine, Russia would be superior on the battlefield, so they could hope to win even more than they can now. In the end this would result in an Ukrainian capitulation. Yeah, then would be peace, but not a nice one for the Ukrainians! So the problem is how to force the Russians into fair negotiations, and the answer is: with more western weapons for Ukraine.
Just another useful Russian idiot.
Obviously, the idea that stopping arms supplies to Ukraine will lead to a peace settlement makes no sense whatsoever.
What it will lead to is a more bloody war, in which Russians perhaps push into western Ukraine, and maybe even get rid of Zelensky, but aren't able to pacify the population.
The only way to end the war quickly is to give Ukraine all the necessary means to end it. That is, long range missiles and F-16s.
What you wrote here, that Russia attacked Ukraine because of poor intelligence information, is complete nonsense. the only reason why Russia attacked Ukraine was its imperiality, the imperial ambitions of Russia. she wants to crush all her neighbors under her, subjugate everyone, control everyone, control all processes, but now she plays absolutely no role in the world, only as a raw material appendage, but even raw materials are running out. Western countries are now actively coming up with new ways to extract energy from wind and sun. from sea water and so on, and Russia does not want to lose this oil market, Russia further wants to earn huge money from oil and gas. So, Russia understands that there is nothing more to catch in this area, and simply stupidly wants to control vast vast territories. In order to satisfy my ego, this is a complete country with complete people, I, as a resident of Russia, declare this directly and responsibly. Russia has occupied many territories where many indigenous peoples live, and in fact is engaged in the destruction of the gene pool of the languages and cultures of these peoples. while hypocritically declaring that the Russian language is being oppressed in Ukraine, the Russian language is being oppressed in the neighboring countries of Kazakhstan, and so on. Ukraine is black soil, it is a very fertile land, many steppe nomadic civilizations arose on the territory of Ukraine, Russia wants to stupidly control all this. I wish its complete destruction and collapse
Sorry for my English
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