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Tuesday, June 21, 2022

My take on the Erfurt Jews


I had a quick look at the genotype data from the recent Waldman et al. preprint focusing on the ancestry of early Jews from Erfurt, Germany. My impression is that the genetic origins of these Jews are somewhat more complex than claimed in the manuscript.

Indeed, I'd say the Waldman et al. characterization of the Erfurt Jews as a three-way mixture between populations similar to present-day Lebanese, South Italians and Russians doesn't exactly reflect reality.

Unlike Waldman et al., I designed an ADMIXTURE analysis that separated East Asian ancestry into East Asian and Siberian clusters, and also included Mediterranean and North African clusters. The output is available in a spreadsheet HERE. Below is a bar graph based on some of the output.
Now, keeping in mind that ADMIXTURE is not a formal mixture test, and that it estimates ancestry proportions from inferred populations, as opposed to ancient groups that actually existed, here are some key observations:

- in terms of fine scale ancestry, the Erfurt Jews show enough variation to be divided into three or four clusters, as opposed to just two as per Waldman et al.

- some of the Erfurt Jews show excess "Mediterranean" ancestry, while others excess "North African" ancestry, and this cannot be explained with ancestral populations similar to Lebanese and/or South Italians, but rather with significant gene flow from the western Mediterranean and possibly North Africa

- several of the Erfurt Jews show relatively high levels of "East Asian" ancestry that cannot be explained by admixture from Russians, or even any Russian-like populations, because such populations almost lack this type of ancestry, and instead show significant "Siberian" admixture

- as far as I can see, there are no correlations between any of the observations above and the quality of the samples. That is, low coverage doesn't appear to be causing the aforementioned excess "Mediterranean", "North African" and/or "East Asian" ancestry proportions.

Investigating this in more detail with, say, formal statistics will take some time. But I was able to reproduce the results from the above ADMIXTURE run using several somewhat different datasets, so that's something.

It seems to me that Waldman et al. want a simple and elegant model to explain the data, which is understandable, but I do think they should at least expand their ADMIXTURE analysis to include "Siberian", "Mediterranean" and "North African" clusters, and go from there depending on what they find.

Citation...

Waldman et al., Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century, bioRxiv, posted May 16, 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.13.491805

See also...

Mediterranean PCA update

308 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   201 – 308 of 308
Urki said...

Gaska: Could I get in touch with you to comment on some specifically Spanish issues that are not probably of interest to our friends here? jglatorre2@gmail.com

Rob said...

@ Simon S

I think that's true, which means that Khvalynsk & Progress type people are broadly contemporaneous, and part of a shared social network.

Gaska said...

@Urki

Ok

Agelmund said...

Hi I was wondering, is there anywhere that has sampled ancient individuals listed? Things like their grave goods, burial rites, photos of skeletons, Haplogroup, weapons etc? Or is all of this just found in separate published papers?

Michalis Moriopoulos said...

Getting the word out:

Yes, Anthrogenica (which I co-founded in 2012) is currently down, most likely because of a domain name expiration. I have reached out to the administrator (I know him personally) but have not been able to get a hold of him yet. I'm hoping some mutual friends will be able to help, but I am not optimistic at the moment. Hopefully we will get to the bottom of what's going on and save the forum, but you never know what's going on in someone's life.

In the mean time, AG's community will exist in Discord form. We've always needed a place to go when the forum was down anyway (for maintenance, DDOS attacks, etc.). If you are an AG refugee, please email me (the email is in my blog profile) and tell me who you were on the forum so I can approve you and send you a Discord invite. This blog will always be a great place to discuss IE and European-centric genetic issues, but AG has a broader focus which we must preserve. There's no serious alternative to AG out there that I know of.

David, you are of course most welcome to join us, too, if you so choose. You, too, Matt, and any other quality Eurogenes blog regulars that I've had the pleasure to read over the years. Naturally, I won't suffer any lunatics, abusive ideologues, or dumbasses in my server, and I know David can barely tolerates them here. Cheers to all and hopefully we will be discussing/debating Southern Arc here and on AG in the coming weeks!

Ric Hern said...

So the Red Deer People apparently had Modern Human MtDNA and Y-DNA Haplogroups....

epoch said...

@Ric Hern
She a female, mtDNA extinct M9 branch. Autosomacally she is most like the Asian part of American Indians and clusters with post-LGM Paleo-Siberians.

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00928-9?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982222009289%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

Assuwatama said...

Teach

I am hearing that apparently there are new IVCp samples in which they have detected AnatolianN ancestry. What impact will this have on our understanding of the issue?

"They did, more than 50 models.. For admixture events =3, Shinde conclusion stands. But for adm events = 4, they see Hajji Firuz/Tepe Hissar admixture in Indus periphery....."

Source: Ashish
Paper: Maier et al preprint 2022

Assuwatama said...

Not sure if they are talking about new samples or the older ones.

Assuwatama said...

Nope. Its the old samples ....

"In a 4 way modelling this is what it's getting....

IranN 54% Onge 28% WSHG 10% AnatolianN 8%"(roughly)

Using sis_ba1 as a source
67% SiS + 33% Onge

Or

The best model I have is InPe = 26% Onge + 6% Tarim + 68% ShahrSokhtaBA1 p-value 0.01

https://pastebin.com/eihtadQC

P-value not great, so we are missing something.

Source: Archaeogenetics

Samuel Andrews said...

Her relation to Ameridians is a surprise because her mtDNA, M9, doesn't exist in Ameridians.

Samuel Andrews said...

M9 is a rare lineage restricted to Eastern Asia. It doesn't exist in Northern Asia or America.

It, along with R9 and M7, are the only universal East Asian mHGs which don't exist in America.

mHG C, in America & North Asia, doesn't exist in Eastern Asia. This is because it comes from "Ancient North Eurasians".

Ric Hern said...

@ epoch and Samuel

Thanks for the info.

ambron said...

Gaska, the Visigoths could also bring the E-V13 to Spain directly from Poland, because we have several old lines of this haplogroup in Poland.

Some Spanish Visigoths also had a clear Slavic admixture, such as for example this:

Target: Iberia_Northeast_c.6CE_PL:I12163
Distance: 2.5052% / 0.02505166 | R5P
46.8 Europe_Northwest
19.6 Europe_East_Central
16.8 Europe_Southeast
12.4 Europe_South_Central
4.4 Europe_Southwest

Target: Iberia_Northeast_c.6CE_PL:I12163
Distance: 2.6554% / 0.02655441 | ADC: 0.5x RC
52.0 Italian_Aosta_Valley
37.4 Slovakian
6.6 Tabasaran
4.0 French_Pas-de-Calais

Gaska said...

Yeah, Polish origin and Slavic blood cannot be denied in many of the samples.

Target: Iberia_Northeast_c.6CE_PL:I12163
Distance:: 1.8264% / 0.01862420
57.2 Kowalewko_Goths
33.2 HRV_IA
9.6 Kura Araxes_ARM_Kaps

The mitochondrial markers originating from Wielbark culture are HV0f and H1e2. Other markers are typical of Polish GAC-neolithic, I suppose Polish Goths would inherit them from their neolithic ancestors-mtDNA-U5b1/b1d, mtDNA-H3t (Pitutkowo)-These lineages had not been previously documented in Spain. Regarding the male markers we have E1b-V13 but also I1 (I12133-Pla de l'Horta) and J2a-Z2177 (I12162).

In Spain there are dozens of Gothic cemeteries, especially in what was formerly called the Gothic Fields (Castilian plateau). I have been looking for genetic studies and I have only found one from the gothic cemetery of Segobriga, only women were analyzed and there is nothing interesting. When I find out something I will let you know.

Gaska said...


@Ambron

Could you check some of the Gothic samples from El Castillon (Granada-I3574, I3575, I3576, I3577, I3578, I3579, I3581, I3582, I3583), two of the men are E1b and seem to have some North African ancestry and yet they are in a typical Gothic cemeter (dated 550 CE)

Matt said...

@Mike, thanks for the offer and update on status of AG!

@epoch, I think that's not quite right, exactly; the sample clusters with ancient Southern Chinese samples at highest f3 (e.g. "among the major East Asia aDNA samples (40.0–7.0 kya), MZR clusters with Early Neolithic coastal southern East Asians (sEastAsia_EN, including Qihe3 [11.5 kya], Liangdao2 [7.5 kya], Baojianshan5 [7.4 kya], and Dushan4 [8.7 kya]),19,39 and they form the southern clade, clearly separated from the northern clade covering Early Neolithic coastal northern East Asians (nEastAsia_EN, including Bianbian [9.5 kya], Boshan [8.2 kya], and Xiaogao [8.6 kya]), Yumin (8.4 kya), DevilsCave (7.6 kya), and Amur (19.0 kya) (Figures 2C and S3).")

The sample is *only* closest to the paleo-Siberian UKY when considering only "global Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene populations" rather than the full dataset. Unsurprisingly as there are no other Southern East Asian like samples from the time. Surprisingly though, she also shares most with UKY than with the Amur19k sample.

The paper then states also "The D tests also indicate that MZR/UKY and MZR/Amur-19.0K are cladal with respect to First Americans (Data S1Q), suggesting the East Asian contribution to Native Americans likely originated prior to the south-versus-north East Asian divergence."

The sample is an ancient Southern Chinese like individual, surprisingly, given its divergent morphology, and the finding of later individuals from Longlin slightly to the NW of this site who represent a dead branch of para-East Asians.

@Assuwatama, that whole paper is a lesson in why not to take unstable features of qpGraph too definitely. Anyway, the Indus_Periphery samples have always seem to me to be quite plausibly have admixed on route to their destinations and not to be perfectly representative of the source IVC. Although they are the closest or best we have now or may ever get.

...

Off topic: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.19.500636v1.full.pdf - some new paper on the imputation of ancient genomes by the Copenhagen group. may or may or not be of interest.

Rob said...

@ Ambron

The Visigothic E-V13 is from Bronze Age Polish Slavs rather than Gothicized Balkaners ?
Hard sell

epoch said...

@Matt

You are absolutely right, i should have phrased that differently.

Carlos Aramayo said...

Though Davidski does not consider modern DNA studies as important as those of aDNA, here I post a recent paper by Priya Moorjani's Lab, in PLoS Genetics, that shows the ealiest founder event, in South Asian current populations, took place in Gujaratis, 3446+/- 844 years BP, [1496+/- 844 BCE], and the team concludes that:

"There were no significant differences in founder ages across speakers of the four major language families spoken in India (i.e., Austro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Indo-European and Tibeto-Burmese languages) (Kruskal-Wallis test: P>0.05), suggesting that the spread of languages is not associated to the founder events in these groups" (Tournebize et al. 2022: 9).

Even if the dating has a wide error range, pointing out that the founder event, in Gujaratis, could have happened anytime between 2340 and 652 BCE, it's important to highlight this is an Indo-Aryan speaking population. Moorjani's team used the new developed tool ASCEND.

See the full paper and 'Supporting information' in S2 Table (in Excel) here:

https://tinyurl.com/ysvavmw9

ambron said...

Gaska, there are probably only 7 Visigoth genomes in the G25. None of those you mentioned are there. If you can find a link to their BAM files, I please have Temenable do the conversion.

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

@Davidski
Could you do these Indonesian samples please?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE80534

Rob said...


''Yeah, Polish origin and Slavic blood cannot be denied in many of the samples.

Target: Iberia_Northeast_c.6CE_PL:I12163
Distance:: 1.8264% / 0.01862420
57.2 Kowalewko_Goths
33.2 HRV_IA
9.6 Kura Araxes_ARM_Kaps''


where are the Slavs there ?

Gaska said...

@Ambron

I have checked the site and although it is a cemetery with some Visigothic tombs the majority are from the late Hispano-Roman period (including several African slaves). So Olalde only analyzed 3 Visigothic sites, no wonder there are only 7 samples in G25.We will have to wait

Davidski said...

@Norfern-Ostrobothnian

They're already in the G25 datasheets.

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

@Davidski
Either they are not in the current spreadsheet or they're not.
Have a look at the samples

Davidski said...

Indonesian_Bali and Indonesian_Java are there when I open the current links.

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

@Davidski
Sorry, I was asking if we could get all the samples to G25?

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

There are a plenty of populations that are entirely unrepresented but would be really interesting.

Davidski said...

I often don't include all of the samples from large cohorts because I don't want to blow out the datasheets.

Usually, 15 to 25 individuals are enough to capture all the variation.

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

@Davidski
I see, but the dataset has some populations with no samples as of now.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5850824/#!po=0.384615

Yamz said...

Norfern,

Are these the samples in question?

https://pastebin.com/D7fmRkgb

Davidski said...

OK, so let's put the correct detailed population codes on these samples and I'll put them all in the datasheets.

ambron said...

Rob, there was a lot of Balto-Slavic drift in Kowalewko:

Baltic BA
Polish – 47.0%
WEZ56 – 43.4%
WEZ40 – 41.2%
WEZ51 – 31.0%
German East – 27.6%
Kow54 – 26.8%
Kow29 – 24.4%
Kow26 – 19.6%

Rob said...

@ Ambron
Ok will look at it in greater detail in due course


Rob said...

As an aside, I think EHG have Dzudzuana-related ancestry. But not the level quoted in Lazaridis preprint, which seems to grossly blow it out, more like 10-15%

ambron said...

Rob, we already know the conclusions of the published study by Dąbrowski and Pudło and the unpublished study by Figlerowicz and Stolarek... the Slavic admixture in the Goths comes from the population living in Poland earlier before the Roman period and later in the Middle Ages.

Vladimir said...

David, and here perhaps there are haplotype data for a sample from China with an age of 14,000 BC?
https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/gsa-human/browse/HRA002402
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00928-9

Ebizur said...

Vladimir wrote,

"David, and here perhaps there are haplotype data for a sample from China with an age of 14,000 BC?
https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/gsa-human/browse/HRA002402
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00928-9"

Is this MZR specimen from Malu Dong (aka Red Deer Cave) one of the specimens that has previously been described as a fossil of an archaic Homo species?

Now, this specimen has turned out to be the remains of some run-of-the-mill Late Paleolithic East Asian AMH. 14,000 ybp is pretty close to the beginnings of agriculture in some parts of China, and it actually post-dates the earliest evidence for "pre-agricultural Neolithic" culture, i.e. hunter-gatherers possessing ceramic vessels and polished stone tools, that has been widely practiced in East Asia and the Japanese Archipelago prior to the onset of agriculture.

I want to see results from more specimens who belong to Y-DNA haplogroup O and whose estimated dates of deposition are greater than 10,000 ybp. The subclades O2-M122 (TMRCA 29,560 ybp according to 23mofang) and O1b1-K18 (TMRCA 26,800 ybp according to 23mofang) in particular should have been widespread and common by 10,000 ybp judging from the extremely high diversity within each of these subclades among present-day East and Southeast Asians. (They are very high in frequency, too: about 53.33% of males in present-day China should belong to O2-M122, and about 10.87% of males in present-day China should belong to O1b1-K18.) One pre-agricultural specimen from Ando, an islet off the south coast of Korea, has been found to belong to O2-M122, but his Y-DNA appears to belong to a subclade that is found among present-day Koreans and Japanese rather than among present-day Chinese!

A great number of members of different subclades of O-M175 had to be living somewhere prior to the onset of agriculture. Hunting and gathering cannot sustain such a dense population of humans as agriculture can sustain, so, for the observed diversity of extant subclades of O-M175 to have accumulated and be passed down to present-day individuals, the carriers of these subclades should have been quite widely spread during the Paleolithic.

Rob said...

''https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00928''


great sample, but i have some issues with article although overall it is a laudible work

They favour a 'south to north' dispersal of East Asians and make claims that AMHs reached East Asia as early as 65,000 calBP
There is no evidence to back either of these claims.
The latter rests on misdated remains, a tradition of Chinese homo-autochthonism, romantic notions of southern coastal dispersals and pop-science theories on pre-Toba migrations
For the south-> north theory, they cite some modern DNA studies from 2010 to support it

Instead, archaeology & aDNA support a dual clonization. Hoabinhian-type people settled south China, but then followed a north-> south migration ~ 30 kya.

Rob said...

@ Ambron

''Rob, we already know the conclusions of the published study by Dąbrowski and Pudło and the unpublished study by Figlerowicz and Stolarek... the Slavic admixture in the Goths comes from the population living in Poland earlier before the Roman period and later in the Middle Ages''

Yes there are already clues , from the Halbstestadt R1a-Z280 to the Slav-like La Tene outliers.
nevertheless, as I always point out, only precise correlation with demography/ archaeology will provide historically useful models.

Davidski said...

@All

Very busy over the next few days, so comments might not be approved for a while.

I'll be able to spend more time on the blog after this weekend.

Matt said...

Off topic:

As it's all slow while we wait for big papers on ancient Near East / Anglo-Saxons to drop, thought I'd quickly revisit modern day Europe PCA with an idea I had to display the dimensions along with a colour map from a distance from ancient samples (sort of like a combination of ph2ter's heat maps with a PCA):
https://imgur.com/a/F19lIEJ

Could be useful to get a sense of the structure of present day populations and distance from a given ancient sample/population, at the same time.

Matt said...

Offtopic:

New preprint for interest : https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.01.502257v1 - "Imputed genomes and haplotype-based analyses of the Picts of early medieval Scotland reveal fine-scale relatedness between Iron Age, early medieval and the modern people of the UK."

This relates to the upthread discussion of upcoming paper on Anglo-Saxons.

Upthread, I noted:

"So I still have trouble seeing (English as a three-way mix of "North-Central European IA", "French_IA" and "Britain_IA", with the first two dominant); unless there's a very large difference in these guys' (Schiffels and Gretzinger - https://medievalarchaeology.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/SMAConference2022_ConferenceBooklet3.pdf) continental North European ancestry samples from the Scandinavian VA samples we have, or their France IA from the published, or they're projecting very differently on a very different PCA. But G25 should be quite good at detecting this fine structure already."

I also noted that: On G25 data projected onto present day Europe, "note that the Scandinavia VA set is significantly different from England_Saxon: https://imgur.com/a/OzSc17q "

This pattern kind of seems to continue in the PCA in this "Imputed Genomes" paper:

https://imgur.com/a/veFkfEa

They build a custom PCA using POBI and some large set of German-Scandinavian samples. It seems to be detecting specifically British/Germanic differentiation relatively sharply. On that it seems like the Iron Age English overlap the British part, and the Iron Age Scandinavians overlap with Norway (or almost, just beyond the edge of the present day) but the early medieval Anglo-Saxon samples are kind of in a "No man's land" between Norway and England.

So this is pretty curious! It seems like the Anglo-Saxon samples we have so far are already quite from the Iron Age Scandinavian samples (also different from two Germany EarlyMedieval sample, who overlap modern day Danes).

On the other hand, even though these Anglo-Saxons are in this "No man's land" between Norway and England, they have quite a lot of IBD with Scandinavian people, and more with present day England that the Iron Age groups who overlap in the above PCA: https://imgur.com/a/LlGGara

Which makes it more curious. It seems like these Anglo-Saxons were in some way already more British like than continental groups, and quite different. Since these existing Saxon samples span over hundreds of years (from 520CE to 840CE), I think this'll need fine grained resolution of whether this affinity changes over time to really understand.

There might also need a lot of spatial sampling of the coast of NW Europe to work out if this sort of shift towards Britain of the early Anglo-Saxons represents either admixture within Britain, or some pattern that existed before migration.

It doesn't seem as simple as "Single unstructured continental Germanic population migrates to Britain". The model of England as primarily early Anglo-Saxon+French_IA may work, but a model of primarily Scandinavian/Germanic_IA+French_IA looks like it would fail. How and when the early Anglo-Saxons become different from these other Germanic IA to Medieval populations needs to be identified.

Also interesting is that the population distinctiveness of Orkney seems laid down quite a lot in the Iron Age and then maintained through direct IBD links, so there's not a replacement from mainland Scotland+Vikings.

On the other hand, they note that the Eastern Scottish people today share much less ancestry with the Pictish samples from Scotland, who share more ancestry with Western Britain - Wales, West Scotland - and Northern Ireland. That kind of upends a bit the tendency to think of settlement and population reconnection in Britain during the medieval period as overwhelmingly in the southeast, and a tendency to homogenize Scotland into a single people.

Rob said...

@ Matt


''There might also need a lot of spatial sampling of the coast of NW Europe to work out if this sort of shift towards Britain of the early Anglo-Saxons represents either admixture within Britain, or some pattern that existed before migration.''

If there are enough 'early Anglo-Saxon' samples, which lack that admixture, then that would give the answer relatively stratightforwardly

ambron said...

Matt, note the Slavic-Celtic cline that runs along the second principial component. Interestingly, the modern English are drawn away from the original inhabitants of the British Isles along the second component, towards the Slavs, and not along the first, towards the Scandinavians.

It looks as if with the Anglo-Saxons arrived more Slavic than Germanic genetic element, although 8 Anglo-Saxon samples did not indicate this. Only one shared a relatively large number of IBD segments with Poles and was located exactly on the Slavic-Celtic cline. More Anglo-Saxon samples need to be analyzed.

Matt said...

Rob, it's possible - the structure in shift between Celtic-Germanic is very weak in the existing set of Saxon's though, and not strongly correlated with time, even though samples are as early dated as 500-550 CE. Maybe a bit set will uncover things.

Matt said...

@ambron, there are relatively few populations on the PCA used to construct it - none of them are strongly defined by Slavic modern day samples -, and we don't know what the influence of putative French ancestry would do to a position.

I'd expect that the Anglo-Saxons and Viking Era settlement did bring some increased genetic connectivity with Slavic speakers on some level (those points of origin should have less isolation by distance from Slavic communities), but I'd doubt that it brought in more shift on those respective genetic axes.

Rob said...

@ Matt
Ok so maybe “Franks” did play a significant role . Or very early integration of Britons, adaptation of A-S models, etc

Assuwatama said...

No steppe ancestry in 1200bce kashmir.

200ce sample is very high on steppe. Could be 1st or 2nd generation.

I believe that could be kangju-Kushan admixture.

Assuwatama said...

Sanauli royal is also local and not from BMAC or Andronovo.

epoch said...

@Matt

"On the other hand, they note that the Eastern Scottish people today share much less ancestry with the Pictish samples from Scotland, who share more ancestry with Western Britain - Wales, West Scotland - and Northern Ireland. That kind of upends a bit the tendency to think of settlement and population reconnection in Britain during the medieval period as overwhelmingly in the southeast, and a tendency to homogenize Scotland into a single people."

Romans used the word Scotia to refer to Ireland, so Scots likely migrated from Ireland to Scotland.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scot

Erik said...

@Gaska
The Romans probably failed to contribute any meaningful degree of Levantine ancestry to the Iberian peninsula for the same reason Roman Gaul didn’t — because Rome annexed most of the territory during the ‘Republican period’ (i.en when the genetic composition of the Roman population was far more ‘European’ in character). The last major struggle for Roman supremacy over Iberia (The Cantabrian Wars) ended a about decade before Teutoburg, so I can’t really envision many scenarios where any meaningful degree of ‘Romano-Levantine’ ancestry would/could have occurred.

As for the level of Berber ancestry in Iberia, it clearly follows an East-to-West cline. Iberomaurusian admixture is present in Iberia as far back as the late Iron Age, so I feel certain ‘pockets’ of ancestry (particularly around the Franco-Cantabrian region) is better accounted for through those earlier population movements than positing some Moorish hypothesis. (I think ‘Moorish’ derived admixture best tracks with areas where Levantine-derived admixture is also present — given the history and geography we’re dealing with.)

Wee e said...

@Matt the modern population of much of eastern Scotland, towns particularly, is from the inception of royal burghs within the last thousand years. (When it’s not the usual port mixture or Dutch and Flemish craftsmen settlers). A handful of the founding charters still exist, and you will find in the witnesses of the charters, families who were in those town records (and those of associated landed estates, small ports etc) as burgess families for centuries. (It should also be remembered that royalty was peripatetic still, in this period, and the court travelled, routinely shedding or planting offspring who were raised and educated to the church, trades, burgess status etc.)
Many of the people who were given burgher status, or who became churchmen of the concomitant new abbeys, cathedral, monasteries and universities were the more junior members of high-status families in southern Scotland (mainly Borders & Lothian, some in Galloway) the offspring of minor gentry— who in turn were just a generation or two away from having been settled in border areas as refugees from the Norman conquest of England and the subsequent “harrying” of Northumberland.
Some of these families subsequently “died out” in their “main” southern branches (ie extinct socially, lacking a legitimated male heir, but plenty of actual descendants), Even so you can still see many of the same surnames/placenames as surnames (like Kennedy, Errol, Hay, Graham, Vaus/Vass, Johnson, Chalmer, Spott) recurring in both districts. Burgess status was jealously guarded for centuries, and it alone gave the right of residence in towns like Aberdeen: some of the wealthiest families of Scotland were kept at bay on their country estates this way. The burgesses of Aberdeen, even when most spoke Gaelic, also went to some lengths at times to distinguish themselves from the Gaels (town records have injunctions against burgess families and their servants wearing the blue bonnet etc). Again, this was to keep the town and its market out of the hands of powerful feudal interests like the Gordons and Forbses.
Inverness and Forres and Dingwall to a certain extent also got some of these families. Other border families arrived there as morganatic marriages of heiresses whose male relatives appropriated the main family estates and found a co-operative husband: eg the Gordons of the north come from a de Wyntoun guy who made a morganatic marriage with the Berwickshire Gordons. He was actually the son or grandson of a neighbouring Seton — another morganatic marriage. Setons were said to be 11th or 12th C refugees from the troubles of England. Look for the keeps of the south and you will find collateral relatives in the north-east.
You should expect to see later mediaeval traces of these descent-groups in Orkney too, as merchants, administrators, churchmen etc. (Scotland’s churchmen normally had offspring, all through the centuries until the Refirmatiin when it became official.)

Matt said...

@Wee e, are there any ancient genetic data predictions that you think from your description? In terms of timing of shift with more data.
I also think they should check it out with the White British cluster from the UK Biobank because there's lots of structure there - https://twitter.com/kristjanmoore/status/1496811529269821448/photo/1 . Similar to the PoBI without its recruitment strategy (to target people in particular regions who are certain to have deep roots there by looking at number of local grandparents) just by sheer sample size.

Wee e said...

I am not qualified to say about the ancient data. Just speaking personally, I would not expect any significant difference between the east and west (or any great difference from Ireland) until the late iron age at the earliest. The distribution as far as I am aware seems to be mosaic like, small pockets of “local” dna all over the place, until later bronze age. Neolithic and bronze age people from various places may have made different attempts to colonise which seem to have petered out, or stayed very local for quite a time. But that impression might just be because a ferocious Darwinian reckoning left the Rathlin Y lineage the one still standing in both Ireland and Scotland. There are archeological hints that bronze-age beliefs and practices in the north (east and west) carried right on up through the iron age into early medieval, so that would hint rather at some population continuity. And yet even up to the late iron age / early medieval, you still see all sorts of different mortuary and burial practices in close proximity.
As far as I know, mtdna is very similar to the rest of the British Isles, especially Ireland. (Or just less changed than southern England’s?)

Although Orkney isn’t that far offshore, its tides and just-below-surface skerries need expert local knowledge, so the people there, while they are just a day’s sail to the mouth of the Elbe, could maintain control over incomers for a long time. The vikings seem to have destroyed much of the population (and clergy) on some islands but left others. The current inhabitants mostly are a similar mix as on western islands like Lewis, and stretches of the Caithness coast. (Scandinavian component often romantically exaggerated, but a persisting neolithic component intriguingly suggestive of older links). Then there was an influx of medieval clerics, fishermen, administrators, merchants etc. Shetland seems to be a slightly different story at some point, but what it is I do not know.

People tend to forget that Scotland barely had roads to speak of until the 19th C other than a few Roman remnants for Roman purposes. Boats were extremely important. Look at a map sideways on, from the Atlantic looking east, and you realise that today’s Scotland/Ireland division is meaningless in demographic and trade terms. There are some important barriers that cut across each country too. The tides and winds from the Antrim coast can get you up into what is now central Glasgow in an astonishingly short time (and the opposite way too) but much of the 40-odd miles from there across to what’s now Edinburgh had a lot of rough moor and bog for a long time. The Great Glen, going from southwest, on the Argyll coast, to the north-east, the Moray coast, was also very important, really the main land route and still a pilgrimage route for medieval Irish visitors. While the Romans controlled parts of southern Scotland it would have been effectively the only land route across Scotland for anyone who wanted to avoid them. (Moray and Aberdeenshire areas have very good farmland, by the way. Not at all what many outside of Scotland expect when they hear the words “northern Scotland”.)

The “rath” in Cape Wrath on the north coast is the same as in “Rathlin”: it means a waypoint or turning point, a maritime crossroads where you change direction according to which destination you are heading to. For Rathlin — Man or the Galloway, Antrim, Argyll or Clyde coasts, or north to the southern islands of the Hebrides. For Cape Wrath — mainland coast, or western isles, or northern isles and then the Norwegian coast (latterly Iceland would have been an option from here too). These were the motorway junctions until surprisingly recently.

LivoniaG said...

@Matt wrote
"There might also need a lot of spatial sampling of the coast of NW Europe to work out if this sort of shift towards Britain of the early Anglo-Saxons represents either admixture within Britain, or some pattern that existed before migration."

Matt - this is good work you've done. And, along with the absence of French IA & BA you found in Ireland, maybe it points to different kinds of migrations going back and forth between the continent and the British Islands as far back as the early Bronze Age. The pockets of populations in Scotland Wee e mentions may apply all over not just to Britain, but also western France.

I can't find the source, but there was someone -- either Saxon or Angle -- claiming that Germanics had left Britain and the invasion was just them coming back. This kind of churn might have produced a patchwork of small locale populations on both sides of the Channel.

Arran said...

https://i.ibb.co/sqphSnS/image.png

Thoughts on this map?

Could the centum-satem isogloss come from location along the left or right bank of the Dnieper?

I am not convinced there were not at least two levels of migration/ethnogenesis of "paleo-Balkan languages", because we don't see many common features between for example Thracian/Dacian and Illyrian/Messapic. Also, the genetics look different. Perhaps an earlier centum layer (Illyrian) and later satem layer (Thracian), not to mention backflow of various groups along the navigable Danube watershed, seeking fertile pasturage throughout the Pannonian plain

Davidski said...

The map looks strange.

Indo-Iranians came from eastern Corded Ware, not Yamnaya.

Arran said...

Right you are. Updated the map somewhat:

https://i.ibb.co/0sfF9hn/europe-indo-euro.png

The people of classical-age Pannonia, besides Corded Ware Celts, Italics, and Illyrian/Paleo-Balkan speakers, may have included older (Tisza) Yamnaya, younger (Para-Greek) Yamnaya, as well as (possibly) Anatolian elements.

A good 2,000 years separate the Afanasievo Yamnaya (Tocharians?) from their southbound Proto-Greek relatives...

Carlos Aramayo said...

@ Arran

It seems Steppe ancestry arrived in 'Central Italy' around 2000-1600 BC, as per Moots, Hannah M., et al. (2022). They report 4 samples from the cemetry in 'Pian Sultano', near Tarquinia: R11107, R11105, R11104, and R11102. They claim the samples are Yamnaya Samara + WHG + Anatolian Neolithic.

See page 7, Figure 4, in pdf of:

https://tinyurl.com/3bhhtp9b

Vladimir said...

@arran
https://i.ibb.co/0sfF9hn/europe-indo-euro.png

In general, I agree with the corrected map, but you need to add this Reich information to it:
“ A striking signal of steppe migration into the Southern Arc is evident in Armenia and northwest Iran where admixture with Yamnaya patrilineal descendants occurred, coinciding with their 3rd millennium BCE displacement from the steppe itself. This ancestry, pervasive across numerous sites of Armenia of ~2000-600 BCE, was diluted during the ensuing centuries to only a third of its peak value, making no further western inroads from there into any part of Anatolia, including the geographically adjacent Lake Van center of the Iron Age Kingdom of Urartu.”

Rob said...

Thracian seems trickiest of all Paleobalkan groups. More regionally specific perspectives would also take into account relevant substrates

Vladimir said...

@arran
https://i.ibb.co/0sfF9hn/europe-indo-euro.png

I would add your card like this
https://imgur.com/2kMGgD7

Ric Hern said...

So maybe Proto-Armenian was an Eastern branch of Proto-Anatolian. Eastern Yamnaya/Western Yamnaya....?

Wise dragon said...

@Carlos Aramayo

Do you know how much Steppe and WHG the 4 Italic samples scored?

LivoniaG said...

@All
Consider that one problem with the map is that it avoids water.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Cardial_map.png

If Cardial Ware could make it from the Levant to Spain before 4000 BCE,
then steppes-related people could make it directly to present day Greece and Turkey
by sea. There's even a coastal route along the eastern shore of the Black Sea
that avoids the higher places in the Caucasus.

Maybe we're working too hard in our thinking to avoid an Anatolian connection.
That's a long way around to get from north of the Black Sea to get to south of the Black Sea.

Dave the Slothtopus said...

Any luck on G25'ing the Klosterneuburg guys?

Davidski said...

Don't think the genotypes from the authors are available yet.

Rob said...

Hittites moved from south to north In the conquest of Hatti

@ Livonia G

That map is wrong. Cardial Neolithic didn’t “jump” from the levant to balkans

Carlos Aramayo said...

@ Wise dragon

The four samples hold 35-38% Yamnaya Samara, and 10-14% WHG ancestry.

Authors will release the exact numbers in Supplementary material, I think once the paper be peer-reviewed. By now we can see Central Italy (Bronze Age) proportions in the graphic here:

https://tinyurl.com/28etchmp

Rob said...

@ Ric
Maybe an isolated, drifted , iranicized left over ?

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

@Carlos
CWC couldn't account for the steppe component?

@Ric Hern
It's a tossup, but on the basis of Pelasgian a Balkan route seems more sound to me.

@LivoniaG
The early Indo-Europeans can't be compared to Neolithic farmers and pig-breeders, who regularly expanded by the seas. With very few exceptions we don't see IEs undertaking long sea journeys.

Honestly I should divide the map into date layers, at present it covers ~2000 years and obscures a lot. Maybe 4 maps of 500 years each. Will work on it when I get some time

History nerd said...

@ Arran
My suggestion, I think this theory for the Germanics gains more and more support and will be verified by a solid aDNA analysis. The Jastorf Civilisation by Gustav Schwantes from 1911 is totally outdated by now (at last). Waiting for the post on the Proto-Germanic that was hinted of.

https://postimg.cc/bSJ8Ct8q

Wise dragon said...

@Carlos Aramayo

Thanks a lot. Unfortunately the links don‘t work. Can you give me ehe title of the Moots paper in order to google it?

Gaska said...

The origin of the Homo sapiens lineage: When and where?Jose Mª Bermúdez de Castro (2.022)-Perhaps this may be of interest to you, the Atapuerca scholars doubt the origin of homo sapiens in Africa. The face of Homo antecessor (1.2-800.000 BC) in his childhood is surprisingly modern, it seems that homo sapiens retained those features in his adulthood, while homo heidelbergensis and homo neanderthal developed more primitive facial features. I think it is for 50 days in free access, then paywalled.The evidence points to southwest Asia not Africa.

Rob said...

@ History Nerd

''https://postimg.cc/bSJ8Ct8q''

aDNA does not suport a mono-dimensional BAx origin of proto-Germanic

On the contrary, we recognize the mixed character of Germanic (incl western SGC, eastern BAx, local TRB, GAC, etc). The prevalent 'Germanic markers' are U106 & I1, followed by R1a-Z84, R1a-L664, I2a2, I2c, etc
Also, a 'proto-'langauge is commonly defined as the language state before an expansion burst, in which case the figure of 500 BC remains an entirely reasonable supposition. Jastorf certainly explains early continental Germanic language forms. The incubation of proto-Germanic can therefore be placed within the NBA sphere

Wee e said...

@Matt I have extracted about as much as I am capable of understanding now, from the paper, and the surprise is really how unsurprising it is. It seems to accord well with the slow consensus reached by archaeologists. The difficulty with sampling a lot of Scotland for aDNA is an enduring mixture of degraded burials in acid soil, cremations and more arcane mortuary practices like part-mummification, bone curating (caves and tombs which early archaeologists cheerfully “cleaned out”) and possibly sea deposition — that leave almost nothing.

The geology and combination of scouring gales and tides (plus 200 years of acid rainfall) also mean that artefacts, including carved stone images, degrade very quickly. As well, anything cultural that does survive is likely to be just called “Pictish” and assigned to the early-mediaeval, even if elsewhere it would be seen as part of a wider context — a bog-standard neolithic sunboat on a cave wall, or a “striding man”, obvious candidate for the Dagda, or a (part) human with accoutrements that would have them easily accepted on the continent as Gaulish gods like Esos, Smertriu or Tarvos Trigarannos.

Also in a certain genre of Pictish stones is a repertoire of images shared between Iberian “warrior” stelae and Scandinavian petroglyphs. It smacks of anachronism, emulation, like Victorian brits putting up statues of Mercury: but it is rooted in a period and a location that is always represented as inward, isolated, and is passed over — Britain’s narrative is located hundreds of miles south: Romans leaving and Germanics arriving.

Despite a relatively small population, one Pictish kingdom had enough ships to, allegedly, lose 200 of them in a battle. Doubtless their ancestors got about too.

Others got to Scotland long before what the paper rather anglocentrically calls “the Viking period”. Scandinavians (&/or Northumbrian Germanics) were looting Pictish collegiate churches and metalworking centres when England was still pagan. There is an intriguing hypothesis that an east coast emporium might have been scoured away by the seas, its fragmented detritus not recognised in the era when it was still commonly found. Those promontory forts, some of which turned out to be a few centuries older than anyone thought — they aren’t much cop as land defences, but they were built to look imposing from the water.

Carlos Aramayo said...

@ Wise dragon

Moots, Hannah M., et al., (2022). "A Genetic History of Continuity and Mobility in the Iron Age Central Mediterranean", in: bioRxiv, March 15, 2022.

@ Arran

It's also a surprise to me that they're not considering CWC, but they write they're using: Mbuti.DG, Russia_Ust_Ishim.DG, CHG, Russia_EHG, Czech_Vestonice1, Russia_MA1_HG.SG for modeling the ancestries, and will publish every individual in Dataset S2.

History nerd said...

My suggestion was to point where Germanic originate, on the map by Arran that illustrates the CW migration paths. That's why I explicitly wrote BAC. Too early even for any paleo Germanic ofc. The first arrow pointed to where later West Germanic developed after migration from Scandinavia in IA. The distinct archaeological Jastorf culture is not the same as NBA, it's heavily influenced by Hallstadt/La Téne, we have no idea what language they spoke but most probably a Celtic language. I'm not sure what your argument is but if you want to argue for the Germanische Urheimat in Jastorf, just give me one single scientific undisputed fact that supports this theory. It's been refuted by linguistics (Kallio etc) and aDNA (Allentoft 2022) and is now outdated.

Rob said...

@ History Nerd


I'll elaborate on your comments


''The distinct archaeological Jastorf culture is not the same as NBA, it's heavily influenced by Hallstadt/La Téne, we have no idea what language they spoke but most probably a Celtic language.''


Wow that's a bizarre claim. In reality, Jastorf and Halstatt/ La Tene maintained 'persistent cultural barriers', as described by Peter Wells. Only individual Celtic aspects were selectively adapted by J. societies.

The J culture emerged in Jutland & northernmost Germany, which were the core regions of the NBA. It spread south later. The cremation burial rite which typified J.C. was already prevalent in Late phase of NBA, and in turn are distinct to the wagon inhumations of Halstatt, for example. Even if some important sites are found in Sweden, the core of the NBA was its southern zone in northern Germany




'' I'm not sure what your argument is''

As stated above, the J.C. is the link to 'early continental Germanic'. East Germanic obviously has long-established links to Sweden, but that's not proto-Germanic.




'' It's been refuted by linguistics (Kallio etc) and aDNA (Allentoft 2022) and is now outdated.''

Nothing in linguistics provides 'undisputated facts' that you demand placing proto-Germanic in the East Baltic or Sweden. Of course, Finniush linguists are often hoping to ''prove'' that FU is from west of the Urals, so they'll bring up plenty of evidence to support this, including early western contacts of FU of whatever type. In turn, a handful of amateur Nordicists from AG painted an imaginative scenario based on their own linguistic re-interpretation of the former. But said ''early Fino-Germanic' loans do not bring PGe homeland to Sweden or East Baltic anymore than it brings it to the Murmansk region. Instead, they simply document any form of contact between Fu & Germanic with a wide-reference range of territory and chronology. This includes the well-known seafaring, the synthesis of Tarand Graves around Feno-Scandia at the Turn of the Era, and/or the presence of 'Germanic' axeheads amongst 'Uralic' people in Bolshoi Olenbi Ostrov, undoubtedly obtained by mobile FU people themselves and then brought back north.

As for genetics, can you clarify what in Allentoft 2022 supports your contention?
The penultimate 'pan-Germanic' lineages are U106 & I1, and theyre from northwestern Europe & Jutland. Or maybe theyre just Finnicized Celts ..

Matt said...

Looks like Anglo-Saxon study will not remain vapourware for too long - https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB54899?show=related-records - "Here we study genome-wide ancient DNA from 460 medieval northwestern Europeans – including 278 individuals from England – alongside archaeological data, to infer contemporary population dynamics. We identify a substantial increase of continental northern European ancestry in early medieval England, which is closely related to the early medieval and present-day inhabitants of Germany and Denmark, implying large-scale substantial migration across the North Sea into Britain during the Early Middle Ages. As a result, the individuals we analysed from eastern England derived up to 76% of their ancestry from the continental North Sea zone, albeit with substantial regional variation and heterogeneity within sites."

Need to wait to see the results though - I do hope they've not classified the early AS into continental northern European based on haplotypes, and then used them as the base model, if they show the possibly intermediate status of the Anglo-Saxons in the Pict paper.

On a related note, though getting into the phys anth stuff that Davidski is not into but I think it's relevant, this study from last year - https://theconversation.com/ancient-skulls-show-anglo-saxon-identity-was-more-cultural-than-genetic-163338 - compared basicranial shape to dna and found: "The results we obtained suggested a substantial difference between the Early Anglo-Saxon Period sample and the Middle Anglo-Saxon Period. We found that between 66 and 75 per cent of the Early Anglo-Saxon individuals were of mainland European ancestry, while between 25 and 30 per cent were of local ancestry. In contrast, we found that 50 to 70 per cent of the Middle Anglo-Saxon Period individuals were of local ancestry, while 30 to 50 per cent were of mainland European ancestry." (This analysis ignores the shape of the face and just looks at the in theory more selectively neutral base of the brain).

If there is some overlap in samples, then maybe they can test whether the basicranial shape analysis got it right.

History nerd said...

@ Rob

Your arguments are all over the place, East Germanics are later linguistic developments, as spoken by the Goths, there is no clear theory of how it developed. Later North Germanic is Scandinavian, don't understand what you are saying. Yea, Murmansk seems like a probable contact zone?

Finnic has +500 Germanic loanwords from early PGmc, well documented. Read Kallio or one of the highly reputable "Finniush linguists".

There are six assumed Tarand Graves in Scandinavia compared to thousands of burials of local Scandinavian type, look it up, there are at least two papers on this. I do not understand why this is an argument for anything, but I've seen it frequently repeated by Germanists.

The maritime trade networks in the Baltic Sea and further were operated by Scandinavians since BA, not by any Finnic tribes, your way off, this is well documented.

Just get to the point so we can close this; give me one single scientific undisputed fact that supports the Jastorf Germanishe Urhemiat. There are none. It originates in Gustav Schwantes association of archaeology with the Urgermanen in 1911. Higly disputed already then. At one point the Germanists included the hole of Scandinavia in the Urheimat.

Some facts for you;
Allentoft 2022, 678-689.
Petri Kallio, The Prehistoric Germanic Loanword.., p234.

Rob said...

@ History Nerd
no mate my arguments are rock solid; I master cross disciplinary analysis.
If you want to learn, then do so; but don’t bring your arrogant daftness direct from an inconsequential & rather odd sect of AG. They clearly project from an odd sense of Germanophobia. So their theories will remain in the echo chamber that is

History nerd said...

Thanks Rob, I see you're out of arguments, which puts an end to this discussion.

I'm waiting for the Proto-Germanic post David hinted at. Is it still in the pipeline?

Matt said...

https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB44282?show=reads -

"Genetic continuity of Bronze Age Ancestry with increased Steppe-related ancestry in the Late Iron Age Uzbekistan" - 2022-08-04

"While a well-studied Bronze Age civilization, Bactria-Margiana Complex (BMAC), is an important part of ancient Uzbekistan and Central Asia, the Iron Age was also a dynamic period that resulted in increased interaction and admixture among the different cultures from this region. To broaden our understanding of how events following the Bronze Age impacted the regional demography and population structure of this region, we generated 27 genome-wide SNP capture datasets of Late Iron Age individuals (~2100-1900 BP) from three sites in South Uzbekistan. Overall, Bronze Age ancestry persists into the Iron Age in Uzbekistan, with no major replacements of populations with Steppe-related ancestry.

However, these individuals suggest diverse ancestries comprising Iranian farmers, Anatolian farmers and Steppe herders, with small amount of West European Hunter Gatherer and East Asian ancestry.

Genetic affinity towards the Late Bronze Age Steppe herders and a higher Steppe-related ancestry than that found in BMAC populations suggest an increased mobility and interaction of individuals from the Northern Steppe in a southward direction.

In addition, a decrease of Iranian farmer-like and an increase of Anatolian farmer-like ancestry in Uzbekistan Iron Age individuals were observed compared to the BMAC populations from Uzbekistan. Thus, despite continuity from the Bronze Age, increased admixture played a major role in the shift from the Bronze to the Iron Age in southern Uzbekistan. This mixed ancestry is also observed in other parts of the Steppe and Central Asia, suggesting more widespread admixture among local populations."


BMAC populations didn't have steppe ancestry so this is a little bit of a puzzling comment...

Enriched Anatolian ancestry suggests more integration with the west.

It suggests no "high-steppe" people were found, though I don't think this would be expected at 100BCE-100CE so it's hardly surprising.

weure said...

@History nerd, I can't wait to get this 'Saxon paper samples' in G25, especially because it contains more than 20 early middle age samples of my hometown Groningen. So it reveil not only thing about the English ancestry, also about the North Dutch!

What I expect to see in this respect is this. Julius Caesar coined Germani for the right side of the Rhine. Tacitus already stated it loud and clear, the name Germani was artificial and forced up on the tribes above the Rhine. The ones who assimilated into the Roman empire had no choice but to accept this label. At the end the Roman period, the Roman army had loads of German foederati. But the Romans left the scene and there was a severe population decline in the Dutch area. Tribes like the old Frisii even disappeared from the archeological radar.
And there was another big factor! From the Danish/North German "bottleneck" a bunch of pirates- to be known as Saxons- came in, and ruled the scene around the North Sea. The old Germani- between Rhine and Weser- gathered around the flag of the "free Franks" under their warlords like "rex foederatus" Childeric they partly moved away SW wards were Childeric became dux Belgica secundus. His son Clovis became the first king of the Franks.
So in fact the Saxon invaders and the Franks are not to be lumped together under the Germani label (no genetic one size fits all). They preferred their one label derived from PIE *teuta and Proto-Germanic *theudō, like Dutch, Deutch, or Teuton, and means something like tribe or folk. The (hated) label German(i) left the scene until the early modern period. The Saxons spoke also different. *theudo corresponds to the Old English adjective þeodisc "belonging to the people," which was used especially of the common language of Germanic people (as opposed to Latin), a derivative of the Old English noun þeod "people, race, nation." The language name is first attested in Latin as theodice (786 C.E.) in correspondence between Charlemagne's court and the Pope, in reference to a synodical conference in Mercia; thus it refers to Old English. Its first use in reference to a German language (as opposed to a Germanic one) is two years later. That's the difference between old English/ old Frisian and old Frankish (that was early Latinised).
In genetic sense this means that the Saxon factor- called CNE in the paper- will be prevalent (80-90%) in the outmost North Dutch area of Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe (the paper includes samples of Mildum Friesland and Groningen). But who knows....can't wait to see some G25 results c.q. some analysis of Davidski!

Assuwatama said...

BMAC had no steppe.

Had knowledge of horses.
Warriors and horses buried in Royal necoropolis of Gonur.

Indo-Iranian were in Gonur not steppe.

Pre-Gonur Turan population had admixture from IranC most likely from Northern Iran. Other part of ancestry originated in Iranian Plateau.

Matt said...

On the ENA data, the paper was actually published last year already - https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/11/4908/6329832 - and the data was put on a Chinese archive. I guess they've now put it on ENA (somewhat belatedly).

@Davidski, since the eigenstrat genotype calls were actually uploaded to this Chinese archive by Qiaomei Fu (https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/gsa-human/browse/HRA000810), can we get them on G25?:

Geno: ftp://download.big.ac.cn/gsa-human/HRA000810/processed/Uzbek.geno
Ind: ftp://download.big.ac.cn/gsa-human/HRA000810/processed/Uzbek.ind
SNP: ftp://download.big.ac.cn/gsa-human/HRA000810/processed/Uzbek.snp

(Another thing on this Chinese archive that may be of interest to some readers who are interested in East Asian stuff: https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/gsa-human/browse/HRA002671 - "A multidisciplinary study on the social customs of the Tang Empire in the Medieval Ages" - 2022-07-18 - "In this study, multidisciplinary analyses were undertaken on a joint burial (M56) in the Shuangzhao cemetery of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) to shed light on the genetic profile and sociocultural aspects of this dynasty. The archaeological investigation suggested that this burial belonged to the Mid-Tang period and was used by the common civilians. The osteological analysis identified the sex, age, and health status of the three individuals excavated from M56, who shared a similar dietary inferred from the stable isotopic data. Genomic evidence revealed that these co-buried individuals had no genetic kinship but all belonged to the gene pool of the ancient populations in the Central Plains, represented by Yangshao and Longshan individuals, etc. Multiple lines of evidence, including archaeology, historic records, as well as chemical and genetic analyses, have indicated a very probable familial joint burial of husband and wives.")

Davidski said...

@Matt

I'm having problems downloading these files via ftp.

Matt said...

I'm having some problems too :/

If I can get the files I'll try and upload them onto a dropbox or something like this and then provide the link.

Matt said...

@Davidski, got through on the server (think they've got high traffic so it's tough to connect).

Downloaded the files, compiled to a single .zip, here for download: https://easyupload.io/ayc9sx

Rob said...

Bronze Age proto-Germanic developed in a broad range including Sogel-Wolde, Luneberg, Nordic Bronze Age, Unetice spheres. I now think Celtic developed between British post-Beaker, Armorican tumuli groups, etc

The early historical 'Germani' of Caesar are 'Germanicized Celts' of sorts, archaeological Rhine-Weser groups. Old Frisi are part of this broad group.
'Germani' was probably an exo-ethonym of Roman or Celtic origin (e.g. Romans heard it from Celts who used Germanic merceneries in the Gallic wars). But they did share common customs and language, there's little utility in being too deconstructivist.

Matt said...

Btw, kind of off topic from what we've discussed, but relevant to Jews - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.03.501074v1.full.pdf - "Haplotype-based inference of recent effective population size in modern and ancient DNA samples"

One interesting finding is a falling population size in Arras Culture samples in the British Iron Age. Maybe this unusual population was reducing in size as it became more elite and narrower in its interbreeding?

This method is a cool prospect because its supposedly sensitive to the last 2000 years.

Maybe this can be applied to the early identified Slavic samples to really clear up the nature and timing of any population boom by this population. Was it closer to 500 CE and beyond, or more like 500 BCE or something like this?

Davidski said...

@Matt

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19eeEAWXNAnC8FIEAMzpxwDKIL0VN4IyO/view?usp=sharing

weure said...

@Rob the thing is: German(i) was one big Roman frame, and they knew it! Tacitus already wrote, the label Germani was artificial, it was forced up on and the tribes in question refused it. The assimilating ones had no choice to accept it. But it's a fact that when the Roman went away the label Germani(c) also became in disuse. NO coincidence. Until during the sixteenth century it was picked up and later on it was loaded with presumptions, national myths (Celts vs Germanics, fake claims of unity etc etc), all BS.


Matt said...

Thanks David. Some quick Vahaduo plots: https://imgur.com/a/dpfGzKZ

Nothing too unexpected.

Of the samples that made it through the quality threshold and got onto G25, L8619 seems like a far outlier on G25 by quite a lot, so I've labelled them oWestern/oWest on my plot.

I can't see any indication that they spotted this in the paper, which seems to be because all their PCA exploration happened on PCA made with present day Eurasians, which might have compressed the obvious difference that we see on West Eurasia PCA, and even North Eurasia PCA which includes ancients. (To be kind of a jerk on this, not the first time that the Chinese researchers haven't made full use of references that we have available to separate streams of West Eurasian ancestry. Though Central Asian ancestry is often complex so they can't totally be blamed.). L8619 is a male but they don't seem to have recovered his y haplogroup.

L8619 is considered by the paper to have a second-degree relative of L8629 according to the paper, which is interesting. It seems like L8619 represents not just a foreign person with no ancestral links to the main cluster, but someone who has ancestors from far afield from the main cluster and also a link to a member of the main cluster. Unfortunately there is no individual burial information to say any more. This resulted in them removing L8629 and L8619 from some of their analyses, which probably led to them missing L8629's outlying ancestry. However they've included L8629's identical twin, I5138. (Note, this also makes it unlikely that the outlier is a time/layer error).

I8619 (Western outlier) seems closest to ancient and modern day Balkan people (with some populations in Turkey that have Balkan related ancestry). Something to do with Greeks?

I think we found something interesting here that the authors didn't spot.

The whole Rabat_IA set is far different from the most recent previously ancient Uzbekistan samples at Bustan at approximately 1400 BCE (I5605, I11026, I4157, I4159) that basically look to show what looks like 100% continuity (or close to it) with the BMAC. So a transition between continuity with Bustan to a profile more like these people may have happened in the timeframe between 1400-100 BCE.

Judging by the results of the Vahaduo North Eurasian PCA and West Eurasian PCA, it confirms the paper's finding that these samples, compared to the earlier BMAC like people, have both enriched ancestry from:

1) the Western Near East (which shifts them away from North Eurasia on the Northern Eurasia PCA, where they're not intermediate Steppe_MLBA and Bustan Bronze Age)

2) the steppe (which shifts them north on the West Eurasia PCA),

3) have some East Asian ancestry but not as much as present-day people from Uzbekistan.

The samples L8001 and L5140 look to have appreciably more East Asian ancestry than the others. These two are females. L8001 is a second-degree relative of L8005, who seems in the main cluster.

A quick model of the main cluster and outliers in Vahaduo: https://imgur.com/a/bRDQC0j

These aren't terribly good distances and this almost certainly overrates continuity as the real sources on Western and East Asian shift are going to be admixed and proximal, not distal. But gives some flavour of the admixture shape.

Rob said...

@ weure

to a certain extent, which is why most scholars suppose it was originally an exo-ethonym. However, we shouldn't be too misled by deconstructivists, which come from the same era as the non-migrationist, non-culturalists, etc. 'Germani' warriors had inscriptions displaying their Germanic identity ("Germanus"), whatever it might meant specifically, and even if constructed within the context of the Roman limes. Nobody can force somebody to feel that way. Yes, the term was eventually superceded by more specific terms like Franks, Alamanni, etc, and then re-adapted in more recent times, hence the term 'Germanic' somewhat arbitrary, and not necessarily something every historic Germanic speaker aspired to. But as far as those early trans-Rhenian groups go, they probably felt a sense of German-ess.

Scholars are trying to make the same claim for Slavs - there was no real Slavic identity, just a labelling process by Greco-Roman sources. If so, why did the Slavic warriors from Kiev to Greece often bear names ending in -slav long before literacy

Matt said...

Quick closest populations for those Rabat samples (I've lumped them into three clusters here): https://imgur.com/a/i1Air7K

weure said...

@Rob

I prefer reality above fake frames c.q. myths and fairy tales.

My intrest goes to my ancestry and with the 'Saxon paper'- and connected samples- this is literally and ultimate at stake.

But please without mystifications!

weure said...

@Rob

'Germani' warriors had inscriptions displaying their Germanic identity ("Germanus"), whatever it might meant specifically, and even if constructed within the context of the Roman limes. Nobody can force somebody to feel that way.

That's typical. It's with a mindset of now looking at nearly 2000 years ago. Too bad...

As Tacitus already told they were forced to use that label, even more serving in the Roman army.

Nothing to do with 'feeling' and 'identity'....Germani Lives Matters (GLM) ;) anno 350 AD huhuh ;)

Si said...

@Wee e

Highly unlikely the East Asian in these Erfurt samples is from Bukharian Jews considering Bukharian Jews themselves only average about 1-3% East Eurasian on G25. It could maybe be from some, now extinct, ancient Central Asian Jewish community that a had a larger chunk of Central/North Asian ancestry but that has nothing to do with modern Bukharian Jews.

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

@ weure

I understand the theoretics of anthropology and identity . Judging by your comments, you don’t
There was no ancient “German nation” but to claim that people were incapable of forming bonds & identities unless brainwashed by Romans is ridiculous . Too much Walter Goffart

weure said...

@Rob
Of course they had a sense of belonging. That was to their own tribe, folk, in their language from Proto-Germanic *theudō", from PIE *teuta-. In which we can recognize: Dutch, Deutsch, Teuton. That was their attachment. Not German.

In de oldest national anthem the Wilhelmus (1570), it is is called (first sentences), Wihlemus van Nassouwe, ben ick van Duytschen bloedt (not Germaanschen). Not to mention the anthem of Germany in which there is a meanwhile not longer current ;) passage is not called Germanien, Germanien but Deutschland, Deutschland (über alles in der Welt). So fare the attachments....;)

German (i) became in total disuse after the Roman period (until the early modern period).When they were attached to this name, this would not be the case. Simple as that.

Wee e said...

@Rob
-slav as a name particle refers to glory, renown or fame. The germanic equivalent would be hlud / hlotha (as in Ludwig or Lothar)

andrew said...

Note that this city was the site of the Erfurt latrine disaster of July 26, 1184 CE in which a floor collapsed dropping nobles in the court of Henry VI, King of Germany into the latrine pools below the common room where sixty of them died from drowning in the muck.

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