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Friday, February 24, 2017

Trypillian mtDNA + hints of things to come?


Over at PLoS ONE there's a new paper on the maternal ancestry of Trypillian Culture (TC) farmers. It's based on just eight mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences, which, despite the authors' valiant efforts to interpret their significance, aren't especially informative. The paper's main conclusion is that, at least maternally, these farmers aren't much different from the Neolithic farmers of Anatolia and Central Europe.


But here's the interesting part: several researchers from Harvard are co-authors on this paper, and some of the sequencing was done at the Reich lab at Harvard. What this probably means is that the Reich lab has also sequenced the genome-wide and Y-chromosome data for at least some of these ancient individuals. My guess is that this data will be published in the upcoming Bell Beaker Behemoth.

Indeed, despite the small number of samples and relatively limited data, a good chunk of the paper is devoted to documented and hypothesized links between the Trypillians, Funnel Beakers, North Pontic Steppe populations and the Maikop Culture of the North Caucasus. Moreover, interestingly, the authors make no distinction at any point between Funnel Beakers and Bell Beakers; they're just referring to a single European-wide Beaker cultural complex. Emphasis is mine:

The mtDNA frequency analysis presented in this report revealed close genetic association, at the mtDNA level, between TC and European Neo-Eneolithic farming groups, particularly those from central and northern Europe, including representatives of the Funnel Beaker/TRB complex such as Funnel Beakers from Scandinavia (FBC [23–27]) as well as the Baalberge (BAC) and Salzmünde (SMC) Funnel Beaker groups from central Germany (Fig 1). Like TC, the FBC group lacked representatives of hunter-gatherer lineages of haplogroup U such as U5, while the U5 component in the BAC and SMC populations comprised less than 5% of the mtDNA haplogroup variety. All three abovementioned European Funnel Beaker groups featured representatives of haplogroup H at or over 25% frequency, as well as having representatives of haplogroups J and T2b. The BAC and SMC populations also contained individuals belonging to haplogroup HV. The similarity in mtDNA lineage composition between TC and the Funnel Beaker/TRB culture complex may be a result of inter-group contacts due to the proximity of the TRB populations to the TC territory. An overlap of TC and TRB settlements has been documented to the northwest of the Verteba site, in the upper parts of the Dniester River basin and adjacent areas, and evidence of contacts between the two cultures exists in the archeological record [28]. Certain artifacts found in Verteba (clay buttons, perforated bone plates, a massive megalith inside the cave across from the cave entrance, some of these discussed in [7]) can be viewed as the influence of the Beaker cultural horizon on the Verteba cultural complex.

The geographic proximity might have promoted cultural and biological contacts between TRB and Trypillian groups throughout the entire extent of the TC distribution along the Carpathian arc and reaching the western part of the NPR, thus providing the Beakers with an access to the North Pontic steppe. A recent study revealed close genetic proximity of the Eneolithic NPR as well as western NPR Yamna groups of the Early Bronze Age to the Funnel Beaker Bernburg population (3,100–2,650 BCE) from Germany [29]. There is also evidence that the contacts involving Beakers and the Pontic steppe and forest-steppe populations potentially extended further eastward into the Ponto-Caspian region during the Early Bronze Age (EBA). An mtDNA analysis of the Novosvobodnaya and Maikop cultures (3,700–3,000 BCE) from the northern foothills of the Caucasus mountain range produced mtDNA lineages of T2b and U8b1a2 [30], although displaying different polymorphism patterns compared to the T2b and U8b1a2 lineages reported for TC (this report) and ancient farming groups from central Europe. At the same time, Novosvobodnanya culture artifacts suggest a Funnel Beaker influence [31]. Additional mtDNA sampling from Novosvobodnaya, Maikop, Trypillia and the North Pontic steppe should clarify the relationship between the EBA cultures from northern Caucasus and Trypillia and their genetic connection with the Beaker cultural horizon, as well as the extent of the Beaker influence on the genetic landscape of prehistoric Ponto-Caspian region.

...

Archeogenetic evidence points towards the expansion of the major sub-branches of haplogroup H such as the H1 mtDNA lineage from western Europe during the second half of the Neolithic, thus not being directly associated with the initial spread of farming in Europe, but, instead, being connected to the spread of the Beaker groups across the subcontinent [22,43]. The frequency of haplogroup H and the presence of H1 in mtDNA lineages found in TC population at Verteba further strengthen the genetic connection between TC and populations of the Beaker cultural complex.

Was this an oversight? Or are we going to learn in the Bell Beaker behemoth that Bell Beakers are in fact the product of contacts between Funnel Beakers, Trypillians and North Pontic Steppe groups?

Nikitin AG, Potekhina I, Rohland N, Mallick S, Reich D, Lillie M (2017) Mitochondrial DNA analysis of eneolithic trypillians from Ukraine reveals neolithic farming genetic roots. PLoS ONE 12(2): e0172952. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0172952

214 comments:

1 – 200 of 214   Newer›   Newest»
rozenblatt said...

Do you think Maikop samples also will be included to Bell Beaker paper? Or they are not relevant in this question?

Karl_K said...

@rosenfag

Likely a different paper. Unless there is a major unexpected link.

Davidski said...

Do you think Maikop samples also will be included to Bell Beaker paper?

I heard that they will be, along with samples from Eastern Europe and even Central Asia. But I guess we'll see.

rozenblatt said...

>even Central Asia.

Oh, if true, that would be awesome.

Aram said...

I don't understand this part.

""A recent study revealed close genetic proximity of the Eneolithic NPR as well as western NPR Yamna groups of the Early Bronze Age to the Funnel Beaker Bernburg population (3,100–2,650 BCE) from Germany [29]. ""

They are citing their recent paper about Yamna kurgans

This one

Subdivisions of haplogroups U and C encompass mitochondrial DNA lineages of Eneolithic-Early Bronze Age Kurgan populations of western North Pontic steppe.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title%20Word&term=Nikitin[author]%20AND%20Subdivisions%20of%20haplogroups%20U%20and%20C%20encompass%20mitochondrial%20DNA%20lineages%20of%20Eneolithic%E2%80%93Early%20Bronze%20Age%20Kurgan%20populations%20of%20western%20North%20Pontic%20steppe

So do this mean that Funnel Beaker Bernburg was full of U and C??
If yes this will mean they have tons of EHG.

Davidski said...

They're talking about Supplementary Table S4 from that other paper which has the Fst distances, and shows a low distance between western Yamnaya and Bernburg Culture from Germany. It's a pretty rough comparison though, based on only a few sequences.

Helgenes50 said...

David,
A few days ago, you were speaking of Moldavia as a possibility to find a lot of M269
Are these new mtDNA samples located in the same area ?

Davidski said...

Sort of, but this Trypillian site is in the forest steppe, and I was talking about the nearby Western North Pontic steppe.

Ryan said...

"Was this an oversight? Or are we going to learn in the Bell Beaker behemoth that Bell Beakers are in fact the product of contacts between Funnel Beakers, Trypillians and North Pontic Steppe groups?"

I think you're 100% correct there and it would explain a lot both genetically and linguistically. It's the right spot for Bell Beakers to emerge and for a lot of R1b's spread to be accounted for.

Which language came from where though?

Gioiello said...

But haven't you realized yet that all these data demonstrate that R1b expanded from West and that my theory of an Italian Refugium, not only about the oldest subclades, is demonstrated? Read my posts about R-U152-L20-Z291 and you'll understand that meanwhile I went long far from your questions...

Davidski said...

But what if R1b-L51 is from Western North Pontic Steppe Mesolithic foragers? And what if it arrived in Italy only during the Bronze Age?

The data in the new paper will probably be able to demonstrate this if that's what happened.

Gioiello said...

@ Davidski

Look at my avatar, the map of R-L51-PF7589 that Argiedude and me did many years ago: Eastward Italy R-L51(in its survived subclade PF7589) is 0,00%. Italy has the highest frequency and variance...

Davidski said...

But that's irrelevant if West North Pontic Steppe foragers have a lot of L51, and it doesn't show up in the ancient DNA record in Italy until the Bronze Age, along with steppe admixture.

Gioiello said...

I have Always considered that R1b (and much other) from the Italian Refugium after the Younger Dryas expanded and Balkans may have been one of the places, but also all the other subclades are more in Western Europe than the Balkans, and you should know what I think about the R-L23 found at Samara and eastern Europe. Anyway we all are waiting for the aDNA, but it seems to me a complete defeat of all the PhDs of Harvard, Stanford and all their sponsors, and also the false agenda they had. I regret only for my dear friend Sam Vass, and Ashkenazic Jew belonging to R-V88 perhaps I caused some grief with my theory. "A grief ago" the poet said...

Nirjhar007 said...

Well Y-dna will be awesome, if are tested .

Olympus Mons said...

Most incredible is you all seeing bell beaker in germany with l51, being called bell beakers for some reason (humm wonderig why!) with all those traits of ancestral iberian bell beakers and still....yeah steppe, steppe is what must have been.

Like a paper talking about beakers pottery around the caspian... And you all,like junkies, start talking about bell beakers which is a reference for western europe.

Olympus Mons said...

Looks like those commie newspapers where all is an oppresion of capital or us campus where all is racism.

Weird times we are living....

Volodymyr Lutsyk said...

Very similar to Maykop mtdnas published last summer.

Karl_K said...

To me, at least, the true facts are the most interesting. Not anyone's thesis or theory.

AWood said...

The TC mtDNA looks like haplogroups common among west Europeans today. I might give this study a read if it's open access.

bellbeakerblogger said...

They'd probably include the CWC as one of the European goblet cultures along with the BBC. I don't think that means much, but they do suggest a Bronze Age migration out of Europe(?).

Rob said...

BBB
The title of the archaeology volume to be printed associated with the new data is be called "Kossina's smile", if one wants to read between the lines

Rob said...

@ Volodomyr

Yes Ive always wondered if the real players in these events are CT and Majkop; one providing the demographic surplus and the other new ideas and metallurgical techniques..

Davidski said...

Yes Ive always wondered if the real players in these events are CT and Majkop; one providing the demographic surplus and the other new ideas and metallurgical techniques.

The real players literally bumped off both CT and Majkop on their way west and south. This is not a new idea.

Rob said...

LOL. Dave it's time you start reading big boy Books

Davidski said...

Here's a big boy paper.

The beginning of mobile populations, marked by kurgans and the contemporaneous building of walls at Shengavit, Mokhra Blur (23, 28, 29), and Ravaz (48), is already evident in the early third millennium BCE. Ultimately, in the homeland, the Kura-Araxes adaptation would be displaced by a more mobile and militaristic one associated with the so-called Kurgan Cultures (15, 49).

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/30/9190.abstract

Samuel Andrews said...

@Rob,
"Yes Ive always wondered if the real players in these events are CT and Majkop; one providing the demographic surplus and the other new ideas and metallurgical techniques.."
genetically identical
Unless they were to Yamnaya then they aren't the real players. U8b1a2 and T2b in CT and Maijkop doesn't indicate any close relationship.

Davidski said...

Yeah, I read it.

It's in line with other stuff I read about CT, Maikop and Kura-Araxes, and in line with the ancient DNA evidence we now have.

These cultures got bumped off more or less by Kurgan groups. CT probably provided some admixture, but not the demographic surplus, because if it did then Northern Europe would be mostly EEF today.

CT was not a steppe group and will not resemble Yamnaya or Corded Ware in terms of overall genetic structure. Maikop will just look West Asian like Kura-Araxes.

Rob said...

The paper you cited talks about an emigration of Kira-Arax communities toward Iran and Levant, followed by movement of some kurgan groups to some regions south of the Caucasus in 2200BC.
I'm not sure how it supports your contentions about events north of the Caucasus 1,000 years earlier ?

Davidski said...

Same thing different name, from the Early Bronze Age to the conquest of the Americas.

The same thing happened in South Asia.

Rob said...

It's not quite the same
For example, when Yamnaya kurgans appear in the former heartland of CT culture in 2700BC, the area had already been abandoned for a couple centuries; CWC had already formed a century or so earlier (at least).

On the other hand, Majkop lasted to 2500 BC, which is when Yamnaya itself also ended (Majkop's heyday appears to have ended due to a loss of its monopoly in metal production.)

So there are actually 3 quite different scenarios

1) moving into vacant land
2) continued co-existence
3) selective migration and assimilation

Aram said...

Because this CT mtdna had matches with Romanian post Starcevo mtdnas. I decided to refresh my memory.

_-----

Early Neolithic farmers of the Starčevo Criş culture in Romania (Cârcea, Gura Baciului and Negrileşti sites), confirm their genetic relationship with those of the LBK culture (Linienbandkeramik Kultur) in Central Europe, and they show little genetic continuity with modern European populations. On the other hand, populations of the Middle-Late Neolithic (Boian, Zau and Gumelniţa cultures), supposedly a second wave of Neolithic migration from Anatolia, had a much stronger effect on the genetic heritage of the European populations. In contrast, we find a smaller contribution of Late Bronze Age migrations to the genetic composition of Europeans. Based on these findings, we propose that permeation of mtDNA lineages from a second wave of Middle-Late Neolithic migration from North-West Anatolia into the Balkan Peninsula and Central Europe represent an important contribution to the genetic shift between Early and Late Neolithic populations in Europe, and consequently to the genetic make-up of modern European populations.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0128810

Aram said...

Impatient to see CT Y dnas. They could be very interesting.

pnuadha said...

this is what caught my eye A recent study revealed close genetic proximity of the Eneolithic NPR as well as western NPR Yamna groups of the Early Bronze Age

we havent actually recieved any results on western yamnaya, as long as you dont consider the samara and the region just north of the caucasus in that category.

I expect that BB will be a mix of yamnaya type and farmer type. The one intrigue is what the western yamnaya were like. How much anatolian farmer did they have and thus how much yamnaya did the BB have.

Hodo Scariti said...

Davidski wrote:

"Sort of, but this Trypillian site is in the forest steppe, and I was talking about the nearby Western North Pontic steppe."

Is there the possibility that R-M269 and R-L51 were from CT culture and so neolithic farmer lineages?

Rob said...

I guess western Yamnaya will be just like Eastern Yamnaya, and mostly Z2013

pnuadha said...

These cultures got bumped off more or less by Kurgan groups. CT probably provided some admixture, but not the demographic surplus, because if it did then Northern Europe would be mostly EEF today.

CT was not a steppe group and will not resemble Yamnaya or Corded Ware in terms of overall genetic structure. Maikop will just look West Asian like Kura-Araxes.


theres a good chance you're right but there is still a lot we dont know. we are somewhat blind to what CT were and what the people, northwest of the steppe, were during the neolithic. If you change one of them you allow for totally different combinations.

Karl_K said...

It is extremely unlikely that two parts of a single culture with a single language would have entirely different genetics, and Y haplogroups.

That could really only occur if there were a physical barrier preventing further contact after a founder event.

pnuadha said...

Is there the possibility that R-M269 and R-L51 were from CT culture and so neolithic farmer lineages?

that doesnt work. Eastern Bell beakers represent two significant shifts in the genetics of their respective territory. One is the introduction of ydna m269 and the other is the introduction of steppe heritage. The change in ydna was nearly 100%. For you to claim that m269 came from a farmer like CT people is to claim that the huge influx, nearly 50%, of yamnaya dna into BB territory contributed no ydna and the far less than 50% CT heritage in BB accounts for all their ydna.

I say the contribution of CT to bell beakers is much less that 50% because of the 50% non yamnaya heritage in bell beakers a good chunk of that is surely from central europe.

all of this ignores the unlikelihood that a farmer group would even have m269. We also dont know if CT contributed ancestry to BB in a meaningful way.

pnuadha said...

t is extremely unlikely that two parts of a single culture with a single language would have entirely different genetics, and Y haplogroups.

That could really only occur if there were a physical barrier preventing further contact after a founder event.


and how are you defining different? at one level they would all be m269. at another level there are the mutations that occur every single generation and therefore every region within a culture has "entirely different genetics". L51 and z2013 are pretty damn close in origin and when the yamnaya culture coalesced they were probably next to each other. You arent suggesting that a culture would have self imposed ydna boundaries or that every culture comes from one man?

Rob said...

Colin
Your probably aware that all the R1b in pre-Slavic Balkans was Z2103 ? That's Western Yamnaya

Unknown said...

I don't know about that. All kinds of stuff under L51 stretches into the Balkans and West Asia.

Unknown said...

L51 and Z2103 were from the same guy living around 4500-5000BCE.

Davidski said...

@Colin

I don't have any strong opinion where R1b-L51 is from originally in Eastern Europe. There are several options now, considering the recent Baltic results, including one of the Western Pontic Yamnaya cultures or the nearby forest steppe. But we can't also rule out something further afield like western Kazakhstan.

Considering the recent results from Ukraine, I'm pretty sure for the time being that Corded Ware and European R1a are from Dnieper Donets and Dereivka, and that's my main interest, so whatever happens apart from that happens.

Rob said...

@ Chad

It's mostly Z2103
Then you have sprinklings of U152 & U106, even L21, which can only relate to Germanic groups and celts moving in in small numbers

Gioiello said...

@ Davidski
Read your compatriot Witczak ("I accept the Kurgan area as a homeland of the Indo-Iranians, one of the main nations of Indo-European origin"), thus not all IE from the kurgans, but only the Indo-Iranians and other satem languages, as I am saying from so long.You may read Witczak also in your language, above all the fundamental book on Lusitanian language.

Davidski said...

@Blasonario Cremonese

Is there the possibility that R-M269 and R-L51 were from CT culture and so neolithic farmer lineages?

No chance any R1 lineages can be defined as farmer IMO.

I'm expecting G2a and I2a2 in CT, not R1b, although there might be one or two instances if enough samples are tested, say 50 or so.

Rob said...

@ David

"There are several options now, considering the recent Baltic results, including one of the Western Pontic Yamnaya cultures or the nearby forest steppe. "

Then you better go change the title of your thread "no game changer", and where I pointed this out to you, to your negatives.

Davidski said...

Then you better go change the title of your thread "no game changer", and where I pointed this out to you, to your negatives.

The Latvian results don't change anything because Latvian forgers can't explain the very specific Yamnaya-related ancestry in modern-day Europeans, nor do they affect their levels in any significant way.

And it makes no difference if L51 is from the western end of the steppe, the eastern end, or from an Yamnaya-like group in the forest steppe, which is probably the least likely option right now.

The basic model stays as it is.

Karl_K said...

@Colin

"At another level there are the mutations that occur every single generation and therefore every region within a culture has "entirely different genetics".

You should know as well as everyone else here that mutations are rare and that statement makes zero sense.

Hodo Scariti said...

@ Rob

So, if Western Yamna is - according to you - Z2103... where do you put the first L51 in Europe?

Rob said...

@ Blasonario
The short answer is I don't know.
All I ever advocate is that all reasonable possibilities & complexities should be considered, and I think most people do.

Archaeologically, as I previously pointed out (based on readings) a broad area of Eastern Europe underwent a similar set of changes around 4000 BC.

The idea that west Yamnaya will also be Z2013 isn't mine, you can read it widely, but again i don't think anyone insists on it; it's just an inference at this point.

I suspect that it could be from an early Yamnaya group, or distinct pre-group. But it could be somewhere like Poland or Transylvania.

Rob said...

@ Dave

I was joking. I didn't actually mean you should change the title.

Grey said...

Karl_K
"It is extremely unlikely that two parts of a single culture with a single language would have entirely different genetics, and Y haplogroups.

That could really only occur if there were a physical barrier preventing further contact after a founder event."

this post about mammoths

http://eurogenes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/following-mammoth-herds.html

implies (to me) separate mammoth populations east and west of the urals gap so i was thinking the original split may have something to do with that - east and west of the Urals gap

after the western branch of the split killed off all the megafauna west of the Urals they might have needed to move away from the interior and join refuge populations closer to marine sources of food e.g. Baltic, Atlantic Coast, Mediterranean or the Black Sea.

in which case the Black Sea variety would still be close to the eastern branch after the climate got warmer and any barrier at the Urals gap melted away?

that seems plausible to me - not sure if fits the timing of ydna splits

Rob said...

@ Grey
The Z213 - L51 is a lot younger than the ice age
But your thinking about the extinction of mammoth and resulting latidutinal moves is close to the mark

Olympus Mons said...

All write this down....western yamnaya will be so R1A that your heads will spin. Z2013 in eastern steppe will be a very local, shifting a bit East.but nothing else. The same region that TODAY shows a R1B in any map is roughly where they stood. That's it.

Davidski said...

The Corded Ware/R1a mystery is solved more or less thanks to the data from that last Baltic paper.

It's like this Dnieper-Donets > Dereivka > Corded Ware > 99% of modern R1a

So the Western North Pontic Steppe will be rich in I2a2 or it'll be a mixture of I2a2, various R1b, including L51, and just maybe some R1a. That would explain Bell Beaker and Unetice.

Olympus Mons said...

@Davidski.

That is game of thrones. Its a.different thing. Reality? That is going to be simple, real simple.

Unknown said...

DF27 too.

Dmytro said...

From the 2010 Nikitin article referred to in footnote 7 of the 2017 study:
"it is likely that early Trypillians disposed of their dead in an archeologically untraceable manner. On the other hand finds of singular bones within TC settlements from different chronological periods (Videiko 2004) could be linked to some form of ritual involving the dead, which may not have been directly associated with burial practice. In fact the variety of material artefacts found in the cave, such as bovid head-shaped plaques, stone mills and loom weights, may have had to do with spirit communication rather than funerary rite. It is noteworthy that the practice of bone deposition in the cave does not seem to change from the SHY (BII-CI) to KO and KA (CII) phases, suggesting a long-lasting ritual that might have transcended cultural changes associated with a change from one local phase to another.
Material culture evidence suggests that Trypillian inhabitants of the Verteba Cave area had extensive relations with such contemporary central European cultures as Tisza-Polgár and Baden (Tkachuk 2000), likely prompted by copper mining around the Verteba Cave area (Sokhatskij et al. 2000). Caves with human remains attributed to the latter two cultures are known in Slovakia (Soják, Horváthová 2008), implying and eastward-bound flow of ritual practices in Eneolithic Europe and the likely origin of the Verteba tradition.
The overall mtDNA haplotype composition of TC specimens from Verteba suggests that the local TC population around Verteba was fairly heterogeneous."

The corpses intermittently dumped in the cave were thus not exactly "burials", nor is it at all certain that they belonged to the local communities, despite the presence of CT artefacts which may perhaps be associated with some form of "ritual". IMHO the most likely Trypilian disposal of the dead pattern was cremation with no subsequent "special ingrounding of ashes", hence no traceable remains whatsoever. A human adaptation of settlement ending village burning... The best bet for finding actual CT aDNA would be analysis of Usatovo and nearby Dnister preceding cultures which left inhumations due to burial practice switch. Or the very early northern pore-Sofiivka burials (before they adopted cremation and grave deposits thereof.) We can probably guess that these would be similar to the recently analyzed Dnipro-Donetsk results (I2a2 and R1a) especially since craniological analysis demonstrated that these pre-Sofiivka CT communities involved the mixing of "Mediterranean" and "robust Europoid" types (the latter being acculturated DniproDonetskians). Sofiivka after 2750 BCE was likely integrated into the CWC.

Rob said...

About CWC
It could even come from the middle Dnieper - a kurganized Pit-Comb Ware group: full of R1a and the most proximate group which used corded design (c. 3300 BC)

Davidski said...

It could even come from the middle Dnieper - a kurganized Pit-Comb Ware group: full of R1a and the most proximate group which used corded design (c. 3300 BC).

That would be very surprising, considering the genetic structure of Corded Ware, which looks like its from the steppe. We've been through this before many times.

Rob said...

Do you even know the distribution of Dnieper -Donets culture ?

Davidski said...

I understand that you don't like the steppe hypothesis and would prefer other outcomes, but you can't ignore the basic facts.

The chance that people like Latvia_LN1 was of Pit-Comb origin, rather than from the steppe is slim at best.

Rob said...

And if -as you have claimed - CWC Coyle descend from DD - which lacked CHG- how did they acquire it ?

Davidski said...

Have a look at the map here...

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/three-way.html

Olympus Mons said...

@Rob,
The answer is...women back then, did have a rough time, I guess.

-Some R1b guys from south Caucasus moving to the steppe snatched some women up Samara river and those show very EHG and CHG.

- Some R1a Guys, snatched some women from the previous for a 1000 years and show up a couple centuries even later on the Bohemia, Poland and even Germany already with CHG.

-Some Iberian R1b Bell beakers snatched some of the previous women in Bohemia and around and moved on to north Europe.

-Some R1b Bell beakers from the previous group, moved to Baltic to fight the known battle there in northern Germany, because even much earlier (bronze age) they were already also moving south to visit old cousins in Iberia, married cousin Maria, and start giving them that EHG.

Like I said... probably not a very good time to be a woman. But surely Kinship Networks were very solid. Until people accept full strength of kinship networks will cut slices in space and time that make no sense.

Unknown said...

Wow! Whatever you're smoking, you might want to quit.

Rob said...

@ OM

Yes, I agree broadly, it could be females responsible for most of the diffusion of relatedness, with a wider arc of R1 males around Europe giving the false impression of an 'explosion' from Yamnaya. I'm not sure about the specifics of BB though.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Rob,
"R1 males around Europe giving the false impression of an 'explosion' from Yamnaya."

That can't be true because....

>R1 in modern Europeans belongs to two subclades; R1a-Z280, R1b-L151. If modern European R1 were descended from the various R1s from all over Europe then there'd be greater diversity in modern European R1.

>Autosomal DNA confirms modern Europeans have a big chunk of Yamnayaish ancestry. Ancient DNA confirms people essentially identical to Yamnaya(Corded Ware) settled all over Europe in the late 3rd millennium BC.

>Modern Europeans do have decent amounts of U5a and U4 compared to Neolithic ones but not enough for their Yamnaya-related ancestry to be mostly from females. Modern Dutch and English for example have about 5-6% U5a and 2% U4 while Yamnaya had about 20% U5a and 4% U4.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Rob,

I think this is realistic for modern Dutch; Maternal ancestry: 25% Steppe. Paternal ancestry: 60% Steppe.

Davidski said...

@Rob

Yes, I agree broadly, it could be females responsible for most of the diffusion of relatedness, with a wider arc of R1 males around Europe giving the false impression of an 'explosion' from Yamnaya.

Then why is 99% of the R1 in Europe limited two subclades that experienced massive expansions during the Eneolithic and Early Bronze, which is exactly the time when Yamnaya clones start popping up far west of the Samara steppes?

Rob said...

@ Sam
I don't disagree with your general overview , only in your limited consideration, and as usual you're missing the point. No one is denying movements from Europe's east, in a broad sense.

You are informing me of basics which I'm all too familiar with, and you have actually made an error. It is Z282 which most Europeans descend from, Z280 is just a subbranch of that.

So most European R1a is overwhelmingly Z282 and R1b L51. These two lineages could come from different parts of Eastern Europe. Theoretically speaking, Z282 could be from a forest steppe culture like Dnieper Donets, and L51 (and P312 and U106) from an even broader prospective region (eg poland); that is from any region in which adopted a like cultural norm such as patriarchal chieftains, pastoralism etc, close to or on the steppe.
As such, the reason such lineages became expensive is because of the fact that hereditary chieftains came into being, not because they all came from the same spot of the step

Rob said...

@ Dave

"Then why is 99% of the R1 in Europe limited two subclades that experienced massive expansions during the Eneolithic and Early Bronze, which is exactly the time when Yamnaya clones start popping up far west of the Samara steppes?"

As explained to Sam; it relates to rapid social transformations and the the rise of male orientated chieftains which monopolised breeding rights within their territory. Given that the broader area which was under the influence of the Yamnaya model, anything from North-East Germany through to the Volga would be part of this chain of cultures; and the said expanse was likely replete with R1 lineages which had otherwise existed separately for thousands of years (eg M417 vs other unsuccessful R1as, vs L51, etc). So one lineage striked it lucky and came to dominate their area for centuries (M417 centred in the Vistula-Dnieper); and L51 (?Silesia).

I am not claiming this is *the* parasiminous scenario, but will have to be the case in the (probably unlikely) scenario that no L51 or M417 surfaces in Yamnaya.

The single lineage - chiefdom scenario is supported by the carved out territories associated with I1 in parts of Nordic BA and Unetice (I2a).
I also think the LN-BA study from Switzerland will be very enlightening .

Davidski said...

@Rob

You're confusing phylogeny with geography.

R1a-M417 and R1b-M269 both show star-like expansions starting at the Eneolithic, and a high correlation with the spread of a very specific autosomal profile from the western steppes - not from anywhere near Northeast Germany - during the same time.

The age of the mutation shared by R1a-M417 and R1b-M269 and its geographic origin has absolutely no relevance to this.

It's a pointless factoid so far as the Eneolithic/Early Bronze Age steppe expansions are concerned.

Rob said...

@ Davidski

I agree that M417 and L51 show star like expansions, I just said to that effect.
Can you prove at this juncture that L51 and M417 came from Yamnaya?


Samuel Andrews said...

@Rob,
"Can you prove at this juncture that L51 and M417 came from Yamnaya? "

Because modern Europeans have a huge chunk of ancestry from people (pretty much)exactly like Yamnaya. Latvian HG and Ukrain HG and MOtala HG and Loschbour can't explain the CHG or EHG in modern Europeans.

Like I said before we have literal documentation of Yamnayaish people all over Europe in the 3rd millennium BC. We have literal documentation of Yamnayaish people carrying R1a Z280(East European specfic) and R1a Z284(Scandinavian specfic). The R1b-U106 carrying LN Swede RISE98 and the R1b-L21 carrying EBA Irishman were genetic intermediate between Srubnaya and modern Northern Europeans, meaning they had more Yamnayaish ancestry than any modern Europeans.

Rob this debate was over 2 years ago. Since 2015 we've only been waiting for the details to be filled in.

Rob said...

Ok Sammy. Derpty derp

Unknown said...

When the aDNA is twice as Yamnaya as the X, we know it wasn't female movements, or this Corded female hybrid bullshit. It's over.

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

and current age estimates are infallibale within a thousand year margin of error LMAO

Davidski said...

So what, ancient DNA shows that R1a and R1b only become common in Central and Northwestern Europe when steppe-specific admixture arrives there.

By the sounds of it the story in Southern Europe will be the same.

The conclusions are obvious to most people. You and the other irrationals can keep screaming all you like. But this has already happened.

Davidski said...

99% of the R1a/R1b in Europe and the world today is the direct result of expansions from the steppe along with steppe-specific Yamnaya-like ancestry.

Realize this and keep it in mind from now on.

Rob said...

Dave do you play table tennis, or collect stamps ?

Davidski said...

Maybe you should take that up, along with Romulus?

Rob said...

I'm already reigning champ actually

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

Dave is from Australia so I figure he is round the clock drunk and hence this explains the argument style.

Unknown said...

R1a and R1b are two lines separated by more than 20,000 years and they do not all come from the Yamna. Most likely some R1b does perhaps a minority. Or possibly the vast majority excluding V88. More ancient dna evidence is needed. Most modern R1a appears to come from the Dnieper–Donets culture perhaps and NOT the Yamna. PERIOD. I have R1a and my direct male ancestor was not and never will be a Yamna :). The Yamnava like ancestry doesn't come from the Yamnava but from a population 5ky-10kya older than the Yamnava. Yamna probably has no very few/ descendants (or maybe most R1b). I think PIE is much older than the Yamna. Yamna is not the ancestor of PIE or IE and probably spoke a extinct IE language with 0 languages descended from it (or maybe just the Satem languages). I think the aging methods for all the languages are wrong and IE is probably 2 to 3 as old as linguists think it is and I am 99% sure the Dnieper Donets spoke some type of IE (not even PIE at that time). Either that or the haplogroups are 2-3 times younger than the scientists think they are which is basically impossible. Some dates need to be adjusted or nothing makes sense. Furthermore the Corded Ware are not and never will be descendants of the Yamna rather the Corded Ware who came from the Dnieper Donets destroyed them most likely or drove them west.

Unknown said...

*Centum not satem

Davidski said...

You're making things unnecessarily complex there John, and relying on unwarranted assumptions.

PIE is generally dated to the Eneolithic on the steppe, and so is the start of the star-like expansions of the two most commonly seen Y-chromosome haplogroups in Indo-European speakers: R1a-M417 and R1b-M269.

Coincidence? Pretty big one if it is.

Moreover, I can assure you it's not just lose talk that Corded Ware is very closely related to Yamnaya, so close in fact that it may well be an offshoot from Yamnaya. I think you'll find that many people who know a thing or two more than you do about analyzing ancient DNA would back me up on this one. In fact, they've put out major papers on the topic saying exactly that and showing in great detail why they said so.

So as you can see John, the odds are stacked against you.

Rob said...

And you happen to know that L51 and M417 expanded at the exact same time ?
Last I read your not too good with haplogorups

Rob said...

Every group has Starlike expansion when analysed at a specific enough level.

Davidski said...

You're wrong. There's obviously something special in this regard about M269 and M417, and it has been pointed out recently with the help of full Y-chromosome sequencing.

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/large-scale-recent-expansion-of.html

Also, it's not about single pieces of evidence, but the totality of evidence.

If the evidence from modern Y-chromosome sequences showing that there's something special about M269 and M417 is wrong or way off, then why does ancient DNA back it up, with data showing expansions of these haplogroups in Central Europe during the Bronze Age, along with the arrival of Yamnaya-related ancestry?

I won't even get into the linguistic and archaeological evidence that's available.

You haven't even made a dent in this totality of evidence. None of you have. This just seems like some sort of therapy session for you guys until you finally admit the facts. It's a waste of time.

Kristiina said...

You are funny with this Yamnaya mantra.

Rob "Can you prove at this juncture that L51 and M417 came from Yamnaya? "
Sam “Because modern Europeans have a huge chunk of ancestry from people (pretty much)exactly like Yamnaya.”

And as a Finn, I am more Yamnaya than Germans and you, and the Uralic speakers in the Volga area are more Yamnaya than anyone else. With your logic also N1c comes from Yamnaya.

@Rob “It relates to rapid social transformations and the rise of male orientated chieftains which monopolised breeding rights within their territory.”

In a sense, yes, but I do not think that the system was like the system of certain mammals where only one male breeds. I think that many males had offspring but, due to the drift (caused by social factors), mostly the lines of the dominant males survived and expanded further.

Rob said...

Kristiina
I agree, I don't think only 1 man per tribe bred, but we are definitely seen the slow emergence of hereditary status from 3000 BC onward.
The social and genetic factors, combined with the low density character of the steppe zone from Central Europe to Central Asia.

The great thing about the BB paper is that it'll (hopefully) include pre- and non-BB cultures to characterise events in greater details

REZA said...

@ John Smith
If PIE is 2 or 3 times older than what linguists say, all of Amerindian languages should be genetically linked. But that's not the case.

Kristiina said...

Yes, I completely agree. There was also a very low density in Finland, so the drift also seems to have easily eliminated earlier branches and leaving mostly the successful Bronze Age/Iron Age lineages.

Davidski said...

@Kristiina

You are funny with this Yamnaya mantra.

You'll have to accept the mantra, more or less, sooner or later. Like I said, this has already happened.

And as a Finn, I am more Yamnaya than Germans and you, and the Uralic speakers in the Volga area are more Yamnaya than anyone else. With your logic also N1c comes from Yamnaya.

We'll see about that.

Unlike the North-Central Euros I tested, Finns and some other Northeast Euros show a fairly poor fit with just Yamnaya as an EHG source, and do much better with Latvia_MN2 as an additional source. See here...

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2017/01/qpadm-tour-of-europe-bronze-age-invasion.html

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/post-ane-siberian-admixture-in-middle.html

Kristiina said...

@Davidski
You are so smart that you can model your fittings as you please. :)

I see that you could lower the Finnish Yamnaya percentage to only 35% by adding 14% of Latvia Middle Neolithic. However, you should also take account of MN2 when modeling Latvians and Lithuanians because MN2 lived in Latvia.

Davidski said...

The Latvians I have didn't take any Latvia_MN2. All of the their EHG was from Yamnaya. It's in that thread.

Davidski said...

Yup, just to add to the above comment, I haven't done a detailed survey of Europe with Latvia_MN2 as a reference yet, but Finns appear to take a larger proportion of ancestry from Latvia_MN2 than more southerly populations, who take none or only a couple per cent, and fail to see a clear improvement in their stats even when they do.

Might be worth a blog entry at some stage, although I'd rather wait for more Comb Ceramic samples to make sure the results are robust.

Matt said...

Assume Latvia_MN virtually = at least 73.5% EHG, while Yamnaya about 53%. This is smooth with the direct qpAdm proportions and with for Yamnaya how the qpAdm proportions of EHG and Yamnaya in Davidski's tests relate to each other.

If you take those estimates of Finnish - 14% MN2 and 35% Yamnaya vs Latvian - 48% Yamnaya, then Finnish should be quite a bit richer in overall EHG ancestry. Finnish would be approx. 29.1% EHG, Latvian 25.6% EHG. So a slightly larger difference in EHG than comparing Latvian to English (who would have approx 22.2% EHG by this method).

Seems somewhat inconsistent with the more modest increase in EHG in Finns compared to Latvians in the direct qpAdm scenario (Latvian 26.7%, Finnish 27.9%). Then again that shows as a relatively poor fit. Should imply fairly robust differences on D(Kotias,EHG)(Finnish,Latvian).

(Implied CHG fractions would be Finnish 16.6%, Latvian 22.7%, English 19.7%).

As various HG from Eastern Europe turn up, it will be good to test them all.

Kristiina said...

Okay, it is not far-fetched to presume that Baltic Finns are the closest modern relatives to MN and LN1 ancestry in that area, and Latvians and Lithuanians came later on from the south from the Balto-Slavic core area.

Davidski said...

@Matt

Keep in mind that the level of Latvia_MN2-related ancestry in Finns might not be as high as in my model, and so the level of Yamnaya-related ancestry in Finns might not be as low as 35%.

However, the point I was making was that Finns appear to benefit more from the addition of Latvia_MN2 to the model than, say, Balts, Germans or Poles do.

This suggests that they do have some of that type of ancestry, and it might well mean that their Yamnaya ancestry proportion isn't as high as it appears in other tests, and perhaps in reality lower than in the more southerly Indo-European speaking populations.

Kristiina said...

Linguists often refer to an extinct IE language substrate in the Finnic languages. Now we could presume that LN1 spoke such a language and we could also presume that a language closely related to it was spoken in Finland and Estonia during the Corded Ware period.

However, the origin of Proto-Uralic is closer to Volga and the area of maximum Yamnaya ancestry.

Davidski said...

However, the origin of Proto-Uralic is closer to Volga and the area of maximum Yamnaya ancestry.

Definitely not closer to the are of maximum western Yamnaya ancestry, which probably had more EEF and resembled Corded Ware more than Yamnaya Samara.

jv said...

Looking forward to the Bell Beaker results and other articles like this one! Especially interested in Cultures associated with subclades of mtDNA H. I see H1 & H5 were found in the TC and both were found in Neolithic Farmer populations. I will be looking for any mtDNA H6a finds earlier than CWC in Central Europe. Right now, it appears H6a was a Yamnaya to Corded Ware Culture lineage but I guess that could change.

Matt said...

@Davidski; Could be. Something like 7% Latvia_MN plus 42% Yamnaya / Steppe_EMBA would be seem to be around the consistent level of EHG with the worse fitting qpAdm model. (Compared to your qpAdm estimates around the same Yamnaya as Poland, Hungary, East Ukraine, around a shade less than Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Scottish, Norway. (Disclaimer - standard errors etc.)).

Kristiina said...

@Davidski, yes, you are right, I could not agree more with you: closer to the maximum Yamnaya Samara ancestry.

I have noticed that the presumed proto-IE area has shifted to Caucasus and to the Western Yamnaya area.

Palacista said...

A more realistic name for the Uralic language family would be North Eurasion, forget about the Volga.

Unknown said...

I do not care who is right or wrong only who is true and perhaps your theory of Yamna is correct. Would it be possible for the Yamna like ancestry to not be from the Yamna but rather from a pre-Yamana population?

Plains Wanderer said...

This discussion has me wondering about proposals like Indo-Uralic. It seems reasonable that a continuum of related languages existed from the Dnieper-Don to the Volga during this period. PIE formed due to contact with North Caucasian languages (associated with increasing CHG admixture) and proto-Uralic formed farther north/east with a different substratum (the so-called Paleo-European).

Al Bundy said...

@Kristiina Balto-Slavic,Germanic and Tocharian came from the steppe.Based on Davidski's modeling it looks like Indo-Iranian did too.Celtic,Greek and Anatolian await upcoming papers and samples.I know this is overly simplistic but is that how you see the situation at this point?

Kristiina said...

Not really. Trzciniec culture is a good candidate for Proto-Balto-Slavic, IMO Proto-Germanic developed close to Denmark and Southern Sweden.

I say nothing about Proto-Indo-Iranian as long as that India paper is not out. As for Tocharian, I abstain from saying anything as long as we do not know Afanasievo yDNA and the autosomal makeup of Xiaohe mummies is not available.

However, proto-IE may have been spoken close to Caucasus and the IE(xAnatolia) branch may have been spoken in Western Yamnaya, but this is just a guess.

Al Bundy said...

Ok thanks.We all agree we need more data from those undersampled areas.Hopefully soon.

Al Bundy said...

Bell Beaker behemoth India and Greece among others are on the way.

Nirjhar007 said...

Kristiina,

Your proposals make sense . But already before the North Indian aDNA , we have a hint from Ulug Depe , suggesting Yamnaya similar ancestry , somewhat paralleling, the preference of Yamnaya over Sintasta and Andronovo of Modern S Asian pops.

Ric Hern said...

Okay. So where does the Cernavoda Culture fit into this picture ?

Ryan said...

I'd think Sintashta culture is a pretty good candidate for all satemized languages.

So in this Cucuteni-Trypillian/Yamnaya/Funnelbeaker zone of interaction, how do we think things breakdown linguistically?

What I mean by that is that there's are 3/4 deep streams of ancestry here - WHG, ANE and Neolithic farmer (broken down into Caucasian and Levant ancestry).

R1b is almost surely either a WHG and/or ANE lineage. R1a and Q are almost certainly ANE lineages (I don't think they've been found in other ancient groups at least?). J2 and G are Neolithic farmer ancestry (though there is a J2 sample in EHG).

This zone of interaction seems to be the origin of most western European R1b (which seems to branch off from the headwaters of the Danube) probably thanks to the Bell Beakers. Do we assume the Bell Beakers originated Vasconic languages too, bringing it over from the farmer side of their ancestry - perhaps taking the Dene-Caucaisan hypothesis as at least partly correct and assuming it is specifically from CHG? Or if Funnelbeakers had as high WHG ancestry as people are saying, is WHG an option? And while unlikely I suppose ANE can't entirely be excluded as I imagine hunter gatherers around the Carpathians would have had some steppe ancestry as well.

And for Indo-European - do we assume it came from the WHG side of their EHG heritage, or did it come from the ANE side?

Rob said...

I have come to the conclusion that Yamnaya isn't even IE
!:)

Ryan said...

I think it's pretty much a slam dunk that Yamnaya is IE. Tracing the path both backwards and forwards is the interesting part now.

Rob said...

Yeah maybe. Not sure about that

Rob said...

Probably spoke Basco- Abkhazian

Ric Hern said...

If Celtic and Hittite didn't come from the Steppe then how do they share the same Archaisms as Tocharian ?

Rob said...

And CWC wasn't Proto-Balto-Slavic
(which came about much later as a fusion of LBA centrum dialects form Central Europe and Scythian from south Central Asia)

Dude Manbro said...

Yamnaya weren't IE? Right. That explains why Yamnaya-related ancestry appears to push further west, all the way to the Atlantic coast during the transition from the Neolithic to the Metal Age. Because these related groups were spreading their Basque-like languages across Europe along with their DNA.

Makes sense given that Yamnaya-related ancestry peaks in Northern Europeans and groups like the Kalash in Asia that all speak languages closely related to Basque...

Rob said...

Yes it makes complete sense.
You'll find out in 1 year.

Rob said...

It's just a hunch still, do don't start crying 😭
But some clues
- nordwestblock was still non-IE in Roman times
- no correlation between R1b and IE in Iberia
- heavy substratum in Germanic (no it's not due to I1)

Dude Manbro said...

R1b in Western Europe may not be IE in origin, we need more ancient DNA from the Iberian peninsula and Western Europe to clear up this issue. However, you still need to explain how the last great migration that impacted the AuDNA of Europe (Yamnaya-related) did not spread with IE languages, and if the IE languages in Europe spread after Yamnaya-related migrations, what genetic signature spread with them? None?

Rob said...

As I said, it'll all become clear soon
I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand

Ric Hern said...

The Northwestblock were Belgae tribes during Roman times. The Belgae were maybe not pure Celtic or Germanic but they were certainly Indo-European speakers. The Helversum Culture shows clear connection to the Wessex Culture in Britain and the Wessex Culture shows connection to the Irish Bronze Age which we know were R1b L21 already....

Dude Manbro said...

@ Rob, so you have no answers? Just more arrogance and condescension? Good to know I'm wasting my time with someone that has nothing but unsupported claims and an attitude problem.

Later, jerk.

Ric Hern said...

How precisely is R1b DF27 not connected to Indo-European ? Because 1,5 Million R1b DF27 Males speak Non-Indo-European while 7 Million other R1b DF27 Males surrounding that territory do speak Indo-European....?

Backmask said...

I don't want to go off topic. i was unable to comment on your older K36 post and I wanted to contribute my results, since there are admixture proportions I previously knew nothing about. How would i go about getting them to you?

Ryan said...

"However, you still need to explain how the last great migration that impacted the AuDNA of Europe (Yamnaya-related) did not spread with IE languages, and if the IE languages in Europe spread after Yamnaya-related migrations, what genetic signature spread with them?"

Last great migration? Huh?

Dude Manbro said...

Unless something has changed, which is possible as I'm not as passionate about this topic as most here, Yamnaya-like ancestry was the last large scale genetic change in Europe. You had a largely WHG/EEF Western European population that absorbed incoming Yamnaya-like groups to form present-day Western Europeans. If IE languages spread across Europe after this Yamnaya-like genetic component, as Rob suggests, then I assume Rob is implying there was not a significant change in genetics to accompany the change in culture and language.

Ric Hern said...

Even with a Heavy Substratum Germanic is still classified as Indo-European and nothing else.

Dude Manbro said...

@Rob, Whatever helps you sleep at night, buddy. Whenever you feel like showing some form of evidence to back up your claims, I will take you seriously. Until then, you're just appear to be a troll that spews bs without any way to support it. Attacking someone personally when asked for evidence to support a claim makes you look so superior and intelligent.

Maybe, if I work hard, I can be like you when I grow up. :)

Rob said...

You're the one who called me a jerk. So yes, you're a pathetic sucker with a lame ass avatar

Rob said...

And why would I share incites with an idiot like you ?

Azarov Dmitry said...

@Rob
And CWC wasn't Proto-Balto-Slavic


Exactly. Formation of CWC can be best modeled as a result of exodus of W.Yamnaya folks(mostly R1a-YP1272) banished by a new wave of migrants from Maykop culture (R1a-M417).
http://s019.radikal.ru/i631/1702/c3/b19a90221dc2.jpg
http://s019.radikal.ru/i638/1702/11/b5ee0adeae19.jpg

Dude Manbro said...

Still no evidence, just another ad hominem attack with no substance? Why am I not surprised. Btw, you attack me first, remember?

"I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand"

jerk - a contemptibly obnoxious person.

I would say my usage of the word "jerk" was adequate given your quote above.

Still waiting on that evidence, btw. I'm off work today. No rush.

Dude Manbro said...

@Rob, Then there is no point in continuing our exchange. I'll leave you to your genius and go back to my menial existence now, wise master.

Later.

Rob said...

*triggered*

Samuel Andrews said...

Nice job Dude ManBro!

Ryan said...

Well this went south fast.

Dude - There wasn't a single migration of Indo-European speakers for one. There were multiple waves that reached different parts of Europe at different times. And some parts of Europe were never touched at all - see Sardinia.

Rob said...

@ Sam

I agree !
By the way, do you think that U5a is more popular in Europe because people miss-understand that it didn't cum from Western Europe? But in actual fact Ukraine isn't from Russia who bopped into Eastern Europe
I'm what they need to realise is that natural selection created the popular mtdna H . Idiots ! When will they learn . It's all in my 10000 sequences in my blog that no one reads
Bloody rebels.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Rob,

You seriously need to grow up. Let go of your pride, realize you're being an immature jerk, and grow up.

Dude Manbro said...

@ Ryan, Of course the spread of IE languages across Europe didn't happen at one time by one group of people. That goes without saying.

Sardinia only strengthens the stance that Yamnaya-related ancestry is tied to the expansion of IE languages in Europe. It is a place with very little steppe admixture and only began speaking an IE language after Roman occupation.

My only real point is that Yamnaya-related (steppe) ancestry appears to be associated with the expansion of IE languages in much of Europe, Central and South Asia. If someone is going to claim the Yamnaya horizon was associated with non-IE, Basque-like languages, they are going to need some serious and hard proof to counter what archaeology and recent ancient DNA studies has been telling us.

Al Bundy said...

@Ryan your comment from earlier is spot on.The issue is what happened backwards before Yamnaya spread ,and it looks like they did spread some IE to Europe.But did it spread only a subset of IE to Europe or was it a secondary expansion after PIE originated around the Caucasus or somewhere South of the steppe.I kind of hope because of my ancestry that PIE is from the steppe but I don't want to declare victory prematurely and look stupid.At the very least steppe groups brought some IE to Europe and a large chunk of Northern and Central Europeans' ancestry.Hopefully the next papers clear things up.

Ryan said...

@Dude - Gotcha.

@David - what's your most up to date calculator for ancient DNA components? The K7 on the side of the page is old I believe?

Rob said...

Lady ManBro
Just because your small cerebrum can't permutate more complex scenarios, it doesn't mean it can't happen
Otherwise, most things won't exist

Davidski said...

what's your most up to date calculator for ancient DNA components? The K7 on the side of the page is old I believe?

The Basal-rich K7.

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/sneak-peek-basal-eurasian-k7.html

I won't be updating it for a while, not until I see a good number of Meso and UP genomes from Central, South and East Asia.

Al Bundy said...

@Dude I agree that Yamnaya was IE.Was it PIE? We're not quite there yet.

Dude Manbro said...

@ Rob, you know a simpleton like myself has a hard time understanding the complexities great minds like yourself consider trivial, but that's why I was asking for your evidence and foresight. I figure if I start trying to understand these "complex scenarios" you mention now, a little of it may make sense to me before I die.

Be charitable and share your vast knowledge with someone less fortunate than yourself.

Al Bundy said...

There are a lot of simpletons on here but I won't be naming names.

Al Bundy said...

Correction the steppe theory isn't that Yamnaya was PIE but that earlier steppe groups were.I guess I'm a simpleton too.

Rob said...

Well you've lost the privilege
Alls I said was that I have inklings that Yamnaya isn't PIE
To which you responded as if I had insulted your mother
So yes, it shows you're not open to discussion and are deeply emotionally attached to certain perspectives . Thus my summary of this circle jerk of a thread is on the mark

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

@Rob,

We get angry at you when you dis agree is because...

>The view there was a massive migration of Yamnaya people to us isn't an opinon it's proven fact.
>People who dis agree often don't ever take the time to look over data which has been aviable for years.
>People who dis agree, including you, often have big mouths and are often rude, insulting, and arrogant.
>We want discussion to move past "Did R1b come from the Steppe?" "Did Steppe people migrate to Europe" to topics which aren't resolved yet.
>We don't like wasting our energy arguing something which to us was proven a long time ago.

Samuel Andrews said...

@ROb,
"And sam, many people have told you- you don't know what you're taking about
Shut your mouth and learn"
"It's all in my 10000 sequences in my blog that no one reads "

I'm literary the only person here with knowledge of mtDNA that goes beyond skimming through a few studies and info other people posted online. I actually put work towards learning about this stuff, I don't just wait for the next paper to come out. I'm pretty sure that's what you do. Also my blog gets 4,000-5,000 views per week.

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

"To which you responded as if I had insulted your mother"

Sorry if my response offended you. I didn't take your comment about Yamnaya being non-IE and likely Basque-related as an insult. To be honest, I just thought it was a dumb and baseless claim.

"So yes, it shows you're not open to discussion and are deeply emotionally attached to certain perspectives."

How exactly am I not open to discussion? For one, I agreed that R1b in Western Europe may not have arrived with IE languages and that we would need more data from Iberia etc., to know the truth. Second, I've asked you for evidence to support your claims about the Yamnaya Horizon's association with your so-called "Basco-Abkhazian" several times.

You're the one still refusing to back up your claims and instead started the ad hominem attack, and that is why there has been no discussion so far. You simply refuse to do so.

"Thus my summary of this circle jerk of a thread is on the mark"

It's called confirmation bias. You already have your conclusion, you're just looking for anything to interpret as evidence to back it up.

Al Bundy said...

@Rob I thought that according to the steppe theory Yamnaya was late stage PIE not PIE or something.Yamnaya could have replaced everyone in Europe but if at first they got their language from the south then the steppe theory is wrong.All the focus on Europe proper is maybe obscuring the big picture.Like I said before I kind of hope PIE is from the steppe but for some people the steppe is too boring and not that exotic.

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

As explained to Sam; it relates to rapid social transformations and the the rise of male orientated chieftains which monopolised breeding rights within their territory. -rob

The same silly point keeps being made no matter how much ancient dna ends up contradicting this viewpoint.

adna is telling us that the yamnaya traveled as families, not as warriors and warlords who took local women. Yamnaya-like men by and large mated with yamnaya-like women and not with the MN women around them. Thats why bell beakers and CW people in germany look so steppe like. And the reason so much steppe blood is in europe is because of the population boom that accompanied the steppe movements into central europe; im sure thats not coming from huge numbers of polygamy.

societies where fathers arent with their kids tend to suck. The yamnaya behavior of women migrating (in one direction) alongside the men and reproducing a lot sounds nothing like what you describe.

What is factual is that the much greater mtdna diversity than ydna diversity is not the simple result of a lopsided mating pool of men and women. In the neolithic transition and the bronze age transition both male and female newcomers migrated in similar numbers but it just so happens that ydna is more easily replaced regardless of the mating pool.

pnuadha said...

You should know as well as everyone else here that mutations are rare and that statement makes zero sense. -karl k

technically no. only when it comes to identifying and cataloging the mutations is the change "rare".

dna replication isnt perfect and it leads to errors. even the cells in your body dont have the exact same dna.

the point is that L51 and z2013 weren't that drifted around the time of the yamnaya and it was likely that they were geographically close to each other

Rob said...

@ Colin

I am was not taking about how Yamnaya moved. I never subscribed to the idea of Broke back Mountain style migrations. In fact if you'd bothered to read my comments with Kristiina I agreed.
But I was referring about social structure post -3000 BC. Only men became chiefs; and the only thing that is silly is to deny that social practices don't condition gene pool

pnuadha said...

am not taking about how Yamnaya moved
I am talking about social structure post -3000 BC.


we are both talking about the social structure.

i brought up the migration aspect because even when yamnaya men were surrounded by non yamnaya women, they mostly chose yamnaya women. social...

the fact that yamnaya blood is heavy in europe means they, to some extent, outbred the non yamnaya. I doubt that happened with massive polygamy as you suggest. Women migrating long distance with men doesnt remotely sound like massive polygamy.

yamnaya were a family wagon, and some kind of nuclear family, type of people. its not hard to see that.

pnuadha said...

you are wrong about the gene pool and massive polygamy.

you can define the social structure however you want.

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

I think CT gets overlooked. It's the perfect spot for the formation of the BB genotype both Y and Autosomal. CT was arguably the most successful Neolithic culture of it's era and had the largest populations ever seen on earth. That didn't happen through linear expansion of farmers, it's a fact they incorporated local HGs, probably in their entirety by the LN. Once the massive cities exhausted the nearby resources they migrated west and BB was born. Yamna are just the remnants not absorbed into CT and left behind.

Rob said...

Can you demonstrate where I used the word polygamy ? Go on...
I was talking about heredity, and establishment of competing and successful lineages
Sure, the cattle breeders had better health and demography. its well described in literature, in case you weren't aware

andrew said...

@DudeMan Bro

"My only real point is that Yamnaya-related (steppe) ancestry appears to be associated with the expansion of IE languages in much of Europe, Central and South Asia. If someone is going to claim the Yamnaya horizon was associated with non-IE, Basque-like languages, they are going to need some serious and hard proof to counter what archaeology and recent ancient DNA studies has been telling us."

The case for a non-IE, Basque-like language spreading with R1b, possibly from a Yamnaya source isn't counter to archaeology or recent ancient DNA studies.

First of all, I think we can all agree that the expansions from the steppe were driven by technology rather than language per se. Language is a part of culture, and culture can indicate technology. But, the link isn't die hard. For example, we know that the Etruscans weren't IE speakers and didn't worship the IE gods because this is historically attested, but they had a technology package quite similar to that of nearby people who spoke Italic languages. Indeed, they were almost certainly the last surviving non-IE speakers in Italy precisely because they adopted comparable technologies. People who didn't were defeated.

Second, I think that the ancient DNA data argue very convincingly that the archaeological culture that spread Y-DNA R1b, lactose persistence, increased mtDNA H frequencies, and resulted in a major shift of the autosomal DNA frequencies of Western Europeans was the Bell Beaker culture. Its geographic range corresponds to the places that experienced this kind of population genetic change, the timing is right, and this expansion was accompanied by a metal age technology package.

Third, the Celtic languages spoken at the earliest historically attested era have a diversity consistent with an Urnfield, Hallstadt and Le Tene time depth (i.e. after Bronze Age collapse) and not with a Chalcholithic/Early Bronze Age origin more than a thousand years earlier. The more recent date for Celtic is also a good fit for Italic languages, which are somewhat closely related to Celtic, spreading at the same time.

Fourth, there are enough differences between the Bell Beaker cultural/technological package and the contemporaneous Corded Ware Culture cultural/technological package, to suggest that they were significantly culturally distinct from each other even though they were military near peers. Bell Beaker cultures were known for their long bows and maritime capabilities. Corded Ware Culture people where known for their mounted warriors. Their boundaries were relatively stable for roughly 1000 years, which is the kind of non-mixing you would expect more strongly with groups that have very distinct language boundaries as opposed to ones that are in a dialect continuum.

andrew said...

Continued . . .

Fifth, there are a couple of possible scenarios by which you could get a Vasconic language. One is that the R1b people were linguistically distinct from R1a people and took their language with them when they migrated. Another is that the male dominated migration of R1b people, probably originally to Iberia and then to the rest of Western Europe from there in the archaeologically established Bell Beaker migration from an Iberian starting point, may have married local women and adopted the local first wave Neolithic language (much as Roman invaders of Greece eventually came to speak Greek). The geography of Vasconic toponyms supports a Vasconic substrate in Celtic, as do features like a vestigal base twenty number system not found in other Indo-European languages.

A cultural/linguistic shift due to elite dominance without much of a demic component following Bronze Age collapse wouldn't be too surprising. It is a known phenomena that happened in Ireland (English), England (Celtic->Latin, then Latin->Anglo-Saxon then Old English to Middle English via French Norman influence), and Hungary, to Arabic in Egypt and North Africa, to mention a few cases. Also, most of Western Europe has a low but not insignificant amount of R1a that could reflect the later migration. Once a society reaches the metal age level, major demic replacement is less likely associated with language shift since the technological edge is less extreme.

It is highly unlikely that the Basque, the most R1b and highest LP culture in Europe came to speak their language by converting from an IE language later on. If there was a shift to a local Neolithic language it would have happened early on when they were few in number and gender imbalanced, not when they were in a conquering/expansion stage.

Sixth, the Yamnaya/Poltavka people went from R1b to R1a in the Srubnaya period which would be a natural moment for them to shift from a non-IE language to an IE language in their homeland. This 18th century BCE transition would have predated any historical attestation in the region and they were illiterate and so left no inscriptions from which we can determine their language. Indeed, the fact that Yamnaya were R1b while other steppe dwellers were overwhelmingly R1a, a division with lots of time depth and that R1a and R1b weren't well mixed, is a reasonable piece of evidence to suggest that they were patrilineally organized and linguistically divided.

So, bottom line, the case for the demographic transition in Western Europe being Vasconic rather than IE and then experienced language shift following Bronze Age collapse, is at least as solid, if not more so, than the case that it was IE. And, it is very hard to come up with an alternative explanation for the Basque, or for the shallow time depth of the Celtic languages.

andrew said...

@DudeMan Bro

Also, I really have to second the view that you are unnecessarily and unjustifiably behaving like a jerk and that it really detracts from the quality of the discussion here. Ultimately, this is Davidski's blog to curate as he sees fit, but it is perfectly possible to get across a difference in opinion while being civil about it, instead of resorting to insults that tend to convey the impression that you are insecure and want to substitute bravado for knowledge. If you took the approach that you do here at my blog, I would ban you even though you seem to have a moderate level of knowledge about the subject, simply because your interactions are so unpleasant.

Aram said...

Number one Y dna of Burushos is the R1a. I would like to hear a theory how R1a Burusho speakers became Indo Aryan. :)

Rob said...

Burusho are the Basques of South Asia, :)

pnuadha said...

it relates to rapid social transformations and the the rise of male orientated chieftains which monopolised breeding rights within their territory.

which is polygamy, one man many women. It wasnt the norm for yamnaya. Yamnaya men migrated with their yamnaya women and bred like crazy. These were bands of families...

Rob said...

Fair enough. I really don't disagree with that. I've always pointed out- Oxe, carts, ~ families
Not horses ~ men

Davidski said...

@Colin

North/Central Bell Beakers are only 45% steppe and, as far as we know, 100% R1b.

Where did their 55% non-steppe come from?

pnuadha said...

I think CT gets overlooked. It's the perfect spot for the formation of the BB genotype both Y and Autosomal. -rom

the only issue i see there is that i think the CT people ended up migrating into R1a heavy territory. So when the CT culture fell the people scattered to the north and east. If true, its hard for me to imagine them being r1b. A while i said that they might be r1a, and that their descendants may have merged with forest steppe people and spoke what would become Balto-slavic and indo-iranian.

The problem with this interpretation is that m417 seems very much a EHG lineage and the CT are probably not EHG.

pnuadha said...

daviski, there were many many generation between yamnaya and bell beakers. The fact that their heritage was only diluted to half means that most breeding was internal. So that was the norm; autosomal dna says so.

also, even when mating pool of men and women are the same, the ydna will become less variable. I have linked that study multiple times. some of it has to do with natural selection on ydna

Davidski said...

The steppe people and steppe-derived cultures in Central Europe seemed to have practiced male patrilocality/female exogamy (wait for the upcoming study on the Lach Valley in Bavaria).

How does that square with the statement that most of the breding was internal?

Folker said...

Sorry, but I can't be agree with you with the (hypothetical) Northwestern Block. At Caesar's time, the Belgians spoke various Celtic related languages. It is clear from toponyms and anthroponyms. I know that some were contesting the case, but I would think better of you.

pnuadha said...

davidski, most mating during the transition from yamnaya to bell beaker was "internal" and in not mating with MN people.

there were about 15 generations between the yamnaya leaving the steppe and beaker people being in central europe. Only half of the yamnaya heritage was diluted after 15 generations! you should know the math of this situation.

It means the yamnaya mixed males were far far more likely to mate with yamnaya mixed females.

let x be the percentage of yamnaya males who mated with non yamnaya females (for simplicity assume homogeneity in the yamnaya mixed population after each generation). then after 15 generations (1-x)^15 = .5 solve for x. x is very small

pnuadha said...

x is about 1 in 20.

Ric Hern said...

Didn't Marija Gimbutas mention that the Bell Beaker complex looks like an amalgam of Yamna and the Vucedol Cultures ?

Rob said...

@ Ric Hern

1) Belgae were from northern Gaul, not 'NWB' territory.

2) (someone posted this on earlier thread) DF 27 has higher frequencies in east Iberia - the land of the "Iberi', which was non-IE until Roman times, than Atlantic Iberia. Romans (Italians) are U152, but U152 is a small minority. So according to your story, DF27 were originally PIE, then they converted to Basque (non-IE) and Iberian (non-IE), and then reconverted to IE by way of Roman women. Ok

Aram said...

Ryan
J2 was very rare in Neolithic. Absent from Levant N.
In many places in Europe J2 reached later than R1. Basques have only 2.5% of J2.
The oldest J2 M67 we have from Europe is fron Iron Age Hungary. The oldest J2b is from Merovingian burial.
We have no single J2 L25 adna until now!!!
The Karelian was J1.

Ric Hern said...

Just read this. Dour you see the words Belgium and Northern France there ? I rest my case.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordwestblock

Rob said...


Yes, the NWB is from pre-Roman Iron Age. Changes in settlements occurred after the Roman conquest up to the Rhine (& beyond), when new tribes were settled as vassals (your belgae, Chatti, etc)

"The term Nordwestblock itself was coined by Hans Kuhn,[3] who considered the inhabitants of this area neither Germanic nor Celtic, thus attributing to the people a distinct ethnicity or culture up to the Iron Age."

"Linguist Peter Schrijver speculates on the reminiscent lexical and typological features of the region, from an unknown substrate whose linguistic influences may have influenced the historical development of the (Romance and Germanic) languages of the region. He assumes the pre-existence of pre-Indo-European languages"

And you didn't reply about Iberia.

Anonymous said...

Wspomniano tu o Bawarii Sadzę że Europejskie R1b-CT9219 narodził się gdzieś pomiędzy Bawarią a Czechami. Tam znajdują się R1b-cts9219 bez przydziału do gałęzi. Osetyńska Grupa CTs9219 jest dosłownie ja jedna rodzina. Mają kuzynów w Bawarii we Włoszech no i Bułgarii. Osetyński odział CTS9219 to świeżynka na Kaukazie.

Ric Hern said...

Did you actually haver a look at the Map of Languages spoken in Spain and Portugal before the Carthaginian invasion 300 bC. ? 3/4 of that territory was already Indo-European speakers.That is long before Rome arrived there.

Ric Hern said...

So Celtic also have a substrate but they could have acquired that anywhere from the Ukraine to Ireland. Of cause there were Old Europeans living in Europe before Indo-Europeans arrived but their DNA sofar do not show much of a connection to the bulk of Indo-European speaking R1a and R1b people.

Ric Hern said...

The Iberian speaking territory hugged the Eastern Coastline mostly and a Hotspot outside the Basque Territory actually was in Celtiberian territory and not within Pure Iberian territory.

Ric Hern said...

How does Non-Celtic and Non-Germanic suddenly become Non-Indo-European ?

Ric Hern said...

The Wessex Culture shows clear connections to the Helversum Culture in the Northwestblock. The Wessex Culture also show clear connections to the Irish Bronze Age which produced the R1b L21 samples.These R1b area clearly related to the samples from Kromsdorf and Quedlinburg in Germany etc. So did the Central Europeans not speak Indo-European at that time ?

Ric Hern said...

From an Archaeological point of view Marija Gimbutas mentioned that the Bell Beaker complex looks like a amalgam of Yamna and the Vucedol Cultures. R1b was found at a Vucedol site in Hungary. So you have R1b at +-2800 bC.in Hungary +-2600 bC.in Germany +-2200 bC.in Britain and +-2000 bC.in Ireland. Mmm....

Rob said...

I don't think everyone spoke IE, no. The languoscape was variegated. Not every R1b -L51 was IE; nor were all non-L51 in WE non-IE. IF there was a simple linear relationship between Haplogroup and language, that dissipated to no small extent after 2200 BC .

Rob said...

You're again making straw man arguements. I never suggested that R1b expanded from Iberia or Ireland did I ?

Rob said...

But I don't think Vucedol relates to BB strongly. I see it more an Adriatic "cousin", but who knows

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