PL046 R-YP6228 PL048 I-PH833 PL049 I-A11537 PL052 R-Y48961 PL059 I-PH833 PL062 I-S15301 PL065 I-Y294193 PL066 R-FGC2555 PL067 R-S7759 PL070 I-CTS10028 PL071 I-BY316 PL076 I-S9318 PL082 I-Z2041 PL085 J-Z38241 PL086 I-FT29339See also... Early Slavs from Tribal Period Poland Wielbark Goths were overwhelmingly of Scandinavian origin High-resolution stuff
- the Wielbark Goths (Poland_Wielbark_IA) and Medieval Poles (Poland_Middle_Ages) are two distinct populations - moreover, the Wielbark Goths form a relatively compact Scandinavian-related cluster and must surely represent a homogenous population overwhelmingly of Scandinavian origin - on the other hand, the Medieval Poles form a more extensive and heterogeneous cluster that overlaps with present-day groups all the way from Central Europe to the East Baltic, and that's because they are likely to be in large part of mixed origin - I know for a fact that at least some of these early Poles harbor recent admixture, because their burials are similar to those of Vikings and their haplotypes have been shown to be partly of Scandinavian origin (see here) - one of the Wielbark females is an obvious genetic outlier (Poland_Wielbark_IA_outlier), and basically looks like a first generation mixture between a Goth and a Balt.Please note that the PCA is only based on relatively high quality genomes, so as not to confuse the picture with spurious results and noise. Also, all outliers with potentially significant ancestry from outside of Central, Eastern and Northern Europe were removed from the analysis. The relevant datasheet is available here. However, sanity checks are always important when studying complex topics like fine-scale genetic ancestry. To that end I've prepared a graph based on f3-statistics of the form f3(X,Cameroon_SMA,Estonia_BA)/(X,Cameroon_SMA,Ireland_Megalithic), that reproduces the key features of my PCA. The relevant datasheet is available here.
f3(X,Estonia_BA,Cameroon_SMA) Poland_Legowo_MA 0.226406 Poland_Ostrow_Lednicki_MA 0.225996 Poland_Plonsk_MA 0.225017 Poland_Trzciniec_Culture 0.224215 Poland_Lad_MA 0.224142 Poland_Viking 0.223838 Poland_Niemcza_MA 0.223659 Poland_Weklice_IA 0.223549 Poland_Kowalewko_IA 0.222584 Poland_Pruszcz_Gdanski_IA 0.222324 Sweden_Viking 0.222091 Russia_Viking 0.222042 Poland_Maslomecz_IA 0.221914 Norway_Viking 0.221825 Denmark_EarlyViking 0.221257 Denmark_Viking 0.221174 England_Viking 0.220979 f3(X,Ireland_Megalithic,Cameroon_SMA) Poland_Maslomecz_IA 0.219816 Poland_Weklice_IA 0.219501 Denmark_Viking 0.2192 Poland_Kowalewko_IA 0.219176 Poland_Ostrow_Lednicki_MA 0.218916 Norway_Viking 0.218854 Poland_Pruszcz_Gdanski_IA 0.218684 Sweden_Viking 0.218626 Denmark_EarlyViking 0.218529 England_Viking 0.218308 Russia_Viking 0.217999 Poland_Viking 0.217914 Poland_Plonsk_MA 0.217756 Poland_Lad_MA 0.217719 Poland_Legowo_MA 0.21765 Poland_Niemcza_MA 0.217001 Poland_Trzciniec_Culture 0.216551Interestingly, the Middle Bronze Age samples associated with the Trzciniec Culture (Poland_Trzciniec_Culture) show a closer genetic relationship to Medieval Poles than to Wielbark Goths or Northwestern Europeans. This is indeed the case both in terms of genome-wide and uniparental markers, including some very specific lineages under Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a. But that's a much more complex issue that I'll leave for another time. So please stay tuned. See also... Slavs have little, if any, Scytho-Sarmatian ancestry
- isotopic data suggest that 0LS10 wasn't born where he died, and considering his elevated Siberian ancestry relative to earlier and most contemporaneous Baltic ancients, he was very likely a migrant to the Baltic region from the east - the tarand grave tradition appears to be specifically a Finnic (west Uralic) phenomenon that probably spread from the Volga-Oka region, which is just west of where most people place the Proto-Uralic homeland - 0LS10 belongs to Y-chromosome haplogroup N-L1026, a paternal marker that is especially closely associated with Uralic-speaking populations and probably only appeared in the East Baltic region during the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age
Baltic_EST_IA_0LS10 Baltic_EST_BA 0.826±0.045 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA_o1 0.174±0.045 chisq 12.527 tail prob 0.564048 Full output Baltic_EST_IA_0LS10 Baltic_EST_BA 0.683±0.102 RUS_Mezhovskaya 0.317±0.102 chisq 13.811 tail prob 0.463864 Full outputPlease note that RUS_Sintashta_MLBA_o1 isn't representative of the Sintashta culture population as a whole. It's a group of the most extreme genetic outliers among the Sintashta samples, and they may or may not have been Uralic speakers (see here). Interestingly, the Mezhovskaya culture population is generally associated with the Ugric branch of the Uralic language family. I was also able to closely replicate these results with the Global25/nMonte method; down to almost one per cent. However, the statistical fits (distances) are poor, probably because the reference populations aren't the real mixture sources. This is in line with the fact that their Y-haplogroups are Q1a, R1a and R1b, rather than any type of N.
Baltic_EST_IA:0LS10 Baltic_EST_BA,83.8 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA_o1,16.2 distance%=4.7955 Baltic_EST_IA:0LS10 Baltic_EST_BA,69.8 RUS_Mezhovskaya,30.2 distance%=3.5783
The Early Iron Age nomadic Scythians have been described as a confederation of tribes of different origins, based on ancient DNA evidence [1-3]. It is still unclear how much of the Scythian dominance in the Eurasian Steppe was due to movements of people and how much reflected cultural diffusion and elite dominance. We present new whole-genome sequences of 31 ancient Western and Eastern Steppe individuals including Scythians as well as samples pre- and postdating them, allowing us to set the Scythians in a temporal context (in the Western/Ponto-Caspian Steppe). We detect an increase of eastern (Altaian) affinity along with a decrease in Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) ancestry in the Early Iron Age Ponto- Caspian gene pool at the start of the Scythian dominance. On the other hand, samples of the Chernyakhiv culture postdating the Scythians in Ukraine have a significantly higher proportion of Near Eastern ancestry than other samples of this study. Our results agree with the Gothic source of the Chernyakhiv culture and support the hypothesis that the Scythian dominance did involve a demic component. ... Out of the 31 samples of this study, 16 are male, and with sufficient Y-chromosome coverage for haplogroup assignment (Table S2). R1a (43%) and I (27%) are the two most frequent Y- chromosome hgs in present-day Ukrainians [142]. R1a is also the predominant lineage among Cimmerians, Scy_Ukr and ScySar_SU in our data, and present among Scy_Kaz as well. Thus, although acknowledging our small sample size, the individuals sampled from archaeological context associated with Scythian identity do not appear to stand out from the context of other groups living in the region before and after them. One notable difference from the present is the absence of hg N, nowadays widespread in the Volga-Uralic region and West Siberia as well as among Mongols and Altaians [165-167]; however, this result is consistent with the absence of hg N among Bronze Age and Eneolithic males from the Steppe [168]. In context of their claimed Altaian homeland it is interesting to note that one Scy_Ukr and the single Sar_Cau sample belong to the Q1c-L332 lineage which is a sub-clade of hg Q1c-L330 that today has peak frequency of 68% in Western Mongolians [169] and occurs at 17% in South Altaians [170] while being very rare (<1%) in East European populations and absent elsewhere (https://www.yfull.com/tree/Q-L330/).
Armenia_MBA_Lchashen CWC_Kuyavia 0.183±0.036 Kura-Araxes_Kaps 0.817±0.036 chisq 13.941 tail prob 0.378021 Full output Armenia_MBA_Lchashen Balkans_BA_I2163 0.193±0.045 Kura-Araxes_Kaps 0.807±0.045 chisq 14.780 tail prob 0.321267 Full output Armenia_MBA_Lchashen Kura-Araxes_Kaps 0.788±0.043 Sintashta_MLBA 0.212±0.043 chisq 14.871 tail prob 0.315451 Full outputI sorted the output by "tail prob", but the fact that Sintashta_MLBA is in third place isn't a problem because the stats in all of these models are basically identical. Indeed, CWC_Kuyavia (Corded Ware culture samples from present-day Kuyavia, North-Central Poland) and Balkans_BA_I2163 (a Bronze Age singleton from what is now Bulgaria) are both very similar and probably closely related to each other and to the Sintashta samples. Interestingly, and, I'd say, importantly, ancients from the steppe that are closest to Lchashen Metsamor in both space and time, but not particularly closely related to the Sintashta people, don't work too well as a mixture source in such models.
Armenia_MBA_Lchashen Kubano-Tersk 0.184±0.046 Kura-Araxes_Kaps 0.816±0.046 chisq 22.179 tail prob 0.0526526 Full outputA couple of months ago I suggested that populations associated with the Early to Middle Bronze Age (EMBA) Catacomb culture were the vector for the spread of steppe ancestry into what is now Armenia during the MLBA (see here). After taking a closer look at the Lchashen Metsamor samples, I now think that the peoples of the Sintashta and related cultures were also important in this process. If so, they may have moved from the steppe into Transcaucasia both from the west via the Balkans and the east via Central Asia, and brought with them spoked-wheel chariots. I don't have a clue what language they spoke, but I'm guessing that it may have been something Indo-European. See also... The mystery of the Sintashta people A potentially violent end to the Kura-Araxes Culture (Alizadeh et al. 2018) Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...
Celtiberian_LaHoya Halberstadt_LBA 0.207±0.077 Pre-Celtiberian_LaHoya 0.793±0.077 chisq 15.031 tail prob 0.522396 Full output Celtiberian_LaHoya Halberstadt_LBA 0.196±0.074 Non-Celtic_Iberian 0.804±0.074 chisq 17.366 tail prob 0.362297 Full outputThe Celtiberians show a stronger signal of (Urnfield-related?) ancestry from the northeast than their Bronze Age predecessors in northern Iberia (Pre-Celtic_LaHoya) as well as their Iron Age contemporaries from eastern Iberia (Non-Celtic_Iberian). The latter group very likely spoke the non-Indo-European Iberian language. It's not clear what the Bronze Age northern Iberians spoke, but it may have been a language related to Basque, which is also non-Indo-European. Of course, the fact that the Celtiberians harbored more northern Bell Beaker-related ancestry than basically all earlier Iberian groups was already reported in the Olalde et al. paper (on page 2), but I just wanted to see if I could flesh out some more details in regards to this observation by using chronologically and archeologically more proximate reference populations. See also... Open thread: What are the linguistic implications of Olalde et al. 2019? An exceptional burial indeed, but not that of an Indo-European Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...
Turkmenistan_IA Namazga_CA 0.528±0.040 Srubnaya_MLBA 0.472±0.040 taildiff: 0.561330411 Full output Turkmenistan_IA Dzharkutan1_BA 0.530±0.037 Srubnaya_MLBA 0.470±0.037 taildiff: 0.485083377 Full outputThe fact that the MLBA Srubnaya samples from the Pontic-Caspian steppe can be used to model DA382's ancestry (alongside Bronze and Copper Age populations from Turan) with such ease shouldn't be surprising, considering the he belongs to R1a-Z93, which is the dominant Y-haplogroup in the Srubnaya and all other closely related MLBA steppe peoples. Now, Srubnaya is generally regarded to be the proto-Iranian archaeological culture. How awesome is that considering those qpAdm fits? But, admittedly, this is just an inference, even if a robust one, based on genetic, archaeological and historical linguistics data. So apart from the fact that DA382 comes from Iron Age Turan, an Iranian-speaking realm, is there any other way to link him directly to Iranians? Well, he's very similar in terms of overall genetic structure to some of the least Turkic-admixed Iranian speakers still living in Turan, and might well be ancestral to them. For instance, below is a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) featuring a wide range of ancient and present-day West Eurasian samples. Note that, in line with the qpAdm models, DA382 clusters about half-way between the populations of the MLBA steppe and pre-Kurgan expansion Turan, and amongst present-day Yaghnobi and Pamiri Tajiks. In fact, he clusters at the apex of a southeast > northwest cline made up of Tajiks that appears to be pulling towards Europeans.
Tajik Turkmenistan_IA 0.892±0.023 Han 0.108±0.023 taildiff: 0.794566182 Full outputWow, it's an awesome fit! My mind's made up: DA382 was probably an Iranian speaker and, more specifically, an Eastern Iranian speaker. Who disagrees and why? Feel free to let me know in the comments (unless you're banned, in which case, f*ck off). See also... A Mycenaean and an Iron Age Iranian walk into a bar... Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but... New PCA featuring Botai horse tamers, Hun and Saka warriors, and many more...
