Y-DNA haplogroups of Tuvinian tribes show little effect of the Mongol expansion
Open access Estimating the impact of the Mongol expansion upon the gene pool of Tuvans, by Balanovskaya et al., Vavilov Journal of genetics and breeding (2018), 22(5):611-619.
With a view to trace the Mongol expansion in Tuvinian gene pool we studied two largest Tuvinian clans – those in which, according to data of humanities, one could expect the highest Central Asian ancestry, connected with the Mongol expansion. Thus, the results of Central Asian ancestry in these two clans component may be used as upper limit of the Mongol influence upon the Tuvinian gene pool in a whole. According to the data of 59 Y-chromosomal SNP markers, the haplogroup spectra in these Tuvinian tribal groups (Mongush, N = 64, and Oorzhak, N = 27) were similar. On average, two-thirds of their gene pools (63 %) are composed by North Eurasian haplogroups (N*, N1a2, N3a, Q) connected with autochtonous populations of modern area of Tuvans. The Central Asian haplogroups (C2, O2) composed less then fifth part (17 %) of gene pools of the clans studied. The opposite ratio was revealed in Mongols: there were 10 % North Eurasian haplogroups and 75 % Central Asian haplogroups in their gene pool. All the results derived – “genetic portraits”, the matrix of genetic distances, the dendrogram and the multidimensional scaling plot, which mirror the genetic connections between Tuvinian clans and populations of South Siberia and East Asia, demonstrated the prominent similarity of the Tuvinian gene pools with populations from and Khakassia and Altai. It could be therefore assumed that Tuvinian clans Mongush and Oorzhak originated from autochtonous people (supposedly, from the local Samoyed and Kets substrata). The minor component of Central Asian haplogroups in the gene pool of these clans allowed to suppose that Mongol expansion did not have a significant influence upon the Tuvinan gene pool at a whole.
Interesting excerpts:
Haplogroup C2 peaks in Central Asia (Wells et al., 2001; Zerial et al., 2003), though its variants are abundant in other peoples of Siberia and Far East. For instance, in one of Buryat clans, namely Ekhirids, hg C2 frequency is 88 % (Y-base); in Kazakhs from different regions of Kazakhstan, total occurrence of hg C2 variants averages between 17 and 81 % (Abilev et al., 2012; Zhabagin et al., 2013, 2014, 2017), in populations of the Amur River (such as Nanais, Negidals, Nivkhs, Ulchs) – between 40 and 65 %, in Evenks – up to 68 % (Y-base), in Kyrgyz people of Pamir-Alay – up to 22 %, correspondingly; of all Turkic peoples of Altai, relatively high hg C2 frequency (16 %) is detected only in Telengits (Balanovskaya et al., 2014; Balaganskaya et al., 2011a, 2016). In Tuvinian clans under the study, hg C2 frequency is rather low – 19 % in Mongush and 11 % in Oorzhak, while in Mongols it makes up almost two thirds of the entire gene pool an comprises different genetic lines (subhaplogroups).
Y-chromosomal haplogroup spectra in gene pools of Tuvinian Oorzhak and Mongush clans and of the neighboring populations of South Siberia and Central Asia.
Haplogroup N is abundant all over North Eurasia from Scandinavia to Far East (Rootsi et al., 2007). The study on whole Y-chromosome sequencing conducted with participation of our group (Ilumäe et al., 2016) subdivided this haplogroup into several branches with their regional distribution. In gene pools of the Tuvans involved, hg N was represented by two sub-clades, namely N1a2 and N3a.
Sub-clade N1a2 peaks in populations of West Siberia (in Nganasans, frequency is 92 %) and South Siberia (in Khakas 34 %, in Tofalars 25 %) (Y-base). In Tuvans, N1a2 occurrence is nearly 16 % in Mongush and 15 % in Oorzhak clans, respectively, while in Mongols, the frequency is three times less (5 %). Hg N1a2 is supposed to display the impact of the Samoyedic component to the gene pool of Tuvinian clans (Kharkov et al., 2013).
Sub-clade N3a is major in the Oorzhak clan comprising almost half of the gene pool (45 %); it is represented by two sub-clades, namely N3a* and N3a5. The same sub-branches are specific to the Mongush clan as well, though with lower frequencies: N3a* – 9 % and N3a5 – 14 % (see Table). In Khori-Buryats from the Transbaikal region, a high frequency is observed – 82 % (Kharkov et al., 2014), while in Mongols, N3a5 occurs rather rarely (6 %). Hg N3a* was detected in populations of South Siberia only, and was widely spread in Khakas-Sagays and Shors (up to 40 %) (Ilumäe et al., 2016) (Y-base).
Map of distribution of Samoyedic languages (red) in the XVII century (approximate; hatching) and in the end of XX century (continuous background). Modified from Wikipedia, with the Tuva region labelled.
Within the pan-Eurasian haplogroup R1a1a, two large genetic lines (sub-haplogroups) are identified: “European” (marker M458) and “Asian” (marker Z93) the latter almost never occurring in Europe (Balanovsky, 2015) but abundant in South Siberia and northern Hindustan. In the Altai-Sayan region, high frequencies of the “Asian” branch are spread in many peoples – Shors, Tubalars, Altai-Kizhi people, Telengits, Sagays, Kyzyl Khakas, Koibals, Teleuts (Y-base) (Kharkov et al., 2009). Hg R1a1a comprises perceptible parts of gene pools of Tuvinian clans (19 % in Mongush, and 15 % in Oorzhak), though its occurrence in Mongols is much lower (6 %). Those results also count in favor of the hypothesis of autochtonous component dominance even in the gene pools of clans potentially most influenced by Mongolian ancestry. If we add R1a1a variants to the “North Eurasian” haplogroups, the “not-Central Asian” component will compose average four fifth of the entire gene pools for Tuvinian clans (in Mongush 77 %, and in Oorzhak 81 %), being only 16 % in Mongols. Such data are definitely contrary to the hypothesis of a crucial influence of the Mongol expansion upon the development of Tuvinian gene pool.
I found interesting the high proportion of R1a-Z93 subclades among Sagays in Khakhasia, which stem from a local Samoyed substratum, as described by the paper…
Open access structured abstract for The first horse herders and the impact of early Bronze Age steppe expansions into Asia from Damgaard et al. Science (2018) 360(6396):eaar7711.
The Eurasian steppes reach from the Ukraine in Europe to Mongolia and China. Over the past 5000 years, these flat grasslands were thought to be the route for the ebb and flow of migrant humans, their horses, and their languages. de Barros Damgaard et al. probed whole-genome sequences from the remains of 74 individuals found across this region. Although there is evidence for migration into Europe from the steppes, the details of human movements are complex and involve independent acquisitions of horse cultures. Furthermore, it appears that the Indo-European Hittite language derived from Anatolia, not the steppes. The steppe people seem not to have penetrated South Asia. Genetic evidence indicates an independent history involving western Eurasian admixture into ancient South Asian peoples.
According to the commonly accepted “steppe hypothesis,” the initial spread of Indo-European (IE) languages into both Europe and Asia took place with migrations of Early Bronze Age Yamnaya pastoralists from the Pontic-Caspian steppe. This is believed to have been enabled by horse domestication, which revolutionized transport and warfare. Although in Europe there is much support for the steppe hypothesis, the impact of Early Bronze Age Western steppe pastoralists in Asia, including Anatolia and South Asia, remains less well understood, with limited archaeological evidence for their presence. Furthermore, the earliest secure evidence of horse husbandry comes from the Botai culture of Central Asia, whereas direct evidence for Yamnaya equestrianism remains elusive.
We investigated the genetic impact of Early Bronze Age migrations into Asia and interpret our findings in relation to the steppe hypothesis and early spread of IE languages. We generated whole-genome shotgun sequence data (~1 to 25 X average coverage) for 74 ancient individuals from Inner Asia and Anatolia, as well as 41 high-coverage present-day genomes from 17 Central Asian ethnicities.
Model-based admixture proportions for selected ancient and present-day individuals, assuming K = 6, shown with their corresponding geographical locations. Ancient groups are represented by larger admixture plots, with those sequenced in the present work surrounded by black borders and others used for providing context with blue borders. Present-day South Asian groups are represented by smaller admixture plots with dark red borders.
In Anatolia, Bronze Age samples, including from Hittite speaking settlements associated with the first written evidence of IE languages, show genetic continuity with preceding Anatolian Copper Age (CA) samples and have substantial Caucasian hunter-gatherer (CHG)–related ancestry but no evidence of direct steppe admixture.
In South Asia, we identified at least two distinct waves of admixture from the west, the first occurring from a source related to the Copper Age Namazga farming culture from the southern edge of the steppe, who exhibit both the Iranian and the EHG components found in many contemporary Pakistani and Indian groups from across the subcontinent. The second came from Late Bronze Age steppe sources, with a genetic impact that is more localized in the north and west.
Our findings reveal that the early spread of Yamnaya Bronze Age pastoralists had limited genetic impact in Anatolia as well as Central and South Asia. As such, the Asian story of Early Bronze Age expansions differs from that of Europe. Intriguingly, we find that direct descendants of Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers of Central Asia, now extinct as a separate lineage, survived well into the Bronze Age. These groups likely engaged in early horse domestication as a prey-route transition from hunting to herding, as otherwise seen for reindeer. Our findings further suggest that West Eurasian ancestry entered South Asia before and after, rather than during, the initial expansion of western steppe pastoralists, with the later event consistent with a Late Bronze Age entry of IE languages into South Asia. Finally, the lack of steppe ancestry in samples from Anatolia indicates that the spread of the earliest branch of IE languages into that region was not associated with a major population migration from the steppe.
Cystic fibrosis probably spread with expanding Bell Beakers
New paper (behind paywall) Estimating the age of p.(Phe508del) with family studies of geographically distinct European populations and the early spread of cystic fibrosis, by Farrell et al., European Journal of Human Genetics (2018).
Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):
Perhaps most remarkably, the estimated ages of p.(Phe508del) in the three western European regions (France, Ireland, and Denmark) were similar with closely overlapping 95% CI values. This observation is also in line with previously documented spatial autocorrelograms expressing genetic and geographical distance for these populations [24]. Such data provide more insight about the ancient origin of CF in our judgment—both when and where—and lead us to propose that CFTR p.(Phe508del) is derived from ancestors who lived in western Europe during the Bronze Age, as early as 2700 BCE, and that its relatively rapid dissemination occurred because of human migrations around the northwestern Atlantic trading routes [21] and then towards central and eastern Europe [22]. Diffusion from northwestern to central Europe in approximately 1000 years is consistent with the prominent Bronze Age migrations evident in the archeological record [21, 22] and from genomic studies of aDNA [27]. On the other hand, we are assuming a discrete origin of the principal CF-causing variant, but it is possible that p.(Phe508del) arose more than once or earlier, and then reached western Europe subsequently through Neolithic migrations.
[About Bell Beakers] (…) More specifically, their distinctive Bell Beaker pottery appeared and spread across western and central Europe beginning around 3000–2750 BCE and then disappeared between 2200 and 1800 BCE [22, 29]. Their migrations are linked to the advent of western and central European metallurgy, as they manufactured and traded metal goods, especially weapons, while traveling over long distances [30]. Most relevant to our study is the evidence that they migrated in a direction and over a time period that fits well with the pattern of tMRCA data we found for the p.(Phe508del) variant. Olalde et al. [29] have shown that both migration and cultural transmission played a major role in diffusion of the “Beaker Complex” and led to a “profound demographic transformation” of Britain after 2400 BCE. Moreover, the cultural elements that unite the widely distributed Beaker folk are so obvious that some have considered them a distinct ethnicity of Bronze Age people [33].
From our results, we propose the novel concept that large scale, long term west-to-east migrations of the Bell Beaker Europeans [22, 28–30] during the Bronze Age, could explain the dissemination of p.(Phe508del) in Europe and its documented northwest-to-southeast gradient [4].In fact, our tMRCA data show a temporal gradient also.
As you can see from the references, they consulted with Barry Cunliffe (or people accepting his theory), who is obsessed with Bell Beakers expanding Celtic languages from the British Isles. He is like the British equivalent of Danish scholar Kristian Kristiansen, and his obsession with Corded Ware = Indo-European (and Germanic = CWC Denmark), immutable no matter what genetic results might show.
The funny thing is, the interpretation of the paper is probably right. From what we can see in the data, it is quite possible that the disease spread with expanding Bell Beakers…only it spread from the East group in Hungary, i.e. from east to west. The regional difference in TMRCA and apparent west—east cline would point to the different expansions of affected lineages in the corresponding regions, and not to an origin in the British Isles.
There has been an undercurrent of intellectual tension between geneticists studying human population history and archaeologists for almost 40 years. The rapid development of paleogenomics, with geneticists working on the very material discovered by archaeologists, appears to have recently heightened this tension. The relationship between these two fields thus far has largely been of a multidisciplinary nature, with archaeologists providing the raw materials for sequencing, as well as a scaffold of hypotheses based on interpretation of archaeological cultures from which the geneticists can ground their inferences from the genomic data. Much of this work has taken place in the context of western Eurasia, which is acting as testing ground for the interaction between the disciplines. Perhaps the major finding has not been any particular historical episode, but rather the apparent pervasiveness of migration events, some apparently of substantial scale, over the past ∼5000 years, challenging the prevailing view of archaeology that largely dismissed migration as a driving force of cultural change in the 1960s. However, while the genetic evidence for ‘migration’ is generally statistically sound, the description of these events as structured behaviours is lacking, which, coupled with often over simplistic archaeological definitions, prevents the use of this information by archaeologists for studying the social processes they are interested in. In order to integrate paleogenomics and archaeology in a truly interdisciplinary manner, it will be necessary to focus less on grand narratives over space and time, and instead integrate genomic data with other form of archaeological information at the level of individual communities to understand the internal social dynamics, which can then be connected amongst communities to model migration at a regional level. A smattering of recent studies have begun to follow this approach, resulting in inferences that are not only helping ask questions that are currently relevant to archaeologists, but also potentially opening up new avenues of research.
There are two major, somewhat intertwined, problems that currently exist.
First, archaeologists are not critiquing whether the migrations identified by paleogenomics using sophisticated population genetic machinery are actually occurring. Instead, the technical criticism arrives in terms of how these migrations are being ascribed to specific cultures. In many paleogenomic papers, there is a tendency (and often an analytical and technical need) to associate samples with particular archaeological cultures, for which all samples are then treated as possessing some kind homogenous and pervasive social identity that is bound in space and time. The major critiques of this thus far have been directed to those studies examining Corded-Ware and Bell-Beaker-related individuals and their potential relationship to the Yamnaya [Vander Linden (2016), Heyd (2017), Furholt (2017)], but are applicable to many other ‘migration’ scenarios described in the recent literature. This is compounded by the use of sometimes small numbers of samples to represent certain cultures from a particular geographic area as representatives of the entire culture at a supra-regional level. Yet often these archaeological cultures such as Corded-Ware and Bell-Beaker themselves show considerable variability in space and time, and even within cemeteries, which is not factored into the genetic analysis.
From a population geneticists point of view, this kind of simplification is somewhat understandable and will often likely have very little impact on the final analysis, given that the primary goal is usually to use ancient samples to better understand modern genetic variation. Though there may be a specific historical interest in some of these past events, I would argue that the aim for most population geneticists at a higher level is to try and fit modern patterns of genetic variation using the simplest models possible that take into account past demographic events (for example fitting f-statistics using the ADMIXTUREGRAPH approach), as this is how we are trained. Although sharing an archaeological culture may not mean that a set of individuals are part of the same homogeneous social group in reality, this approach may be a good enough heuristic to find broad genetic connections compared to another group represented by a different culture, which can then ultimately help understand and model modern human population structure. However, for an archaeologists interested in the ancient individuals themselves and their social identity, this lumping is unsatisfactory, where sophisticated narratives of the individual migrants and their ancient communities are the intended goal.
From the paper. Barplot showing cumulative number of ancient Eurasian genomes published on a yearly basis up to 8th July 2018. Includes samples undergoing both whole genome shotgun and SNP capture sequencing.
The second related problem is that ‘migration’ in the sense used currently in the paleogenomics literature lacks sufficient detail to be of much use for an archaeologists attempting to disentangle the complex social dynamics within and between communities. To truly understand the role of migration as a social process and its contribution towards cultural changes, it is necessary to describe it as a structured behaviour, rather than treating it as an explanatory ‘black box’. Are the migrations occurring as a result of short range waves-of-advance movements, or as long-distance movements via leapfrogging models or stream migrations along established routes dependent on key kinship networks. Are there return migrants, and are some subset of individuals more predisposed to migration driving the signals? Although such models were implemented in past studies (even with classical markers [1]) and are part of the population genetics literature, they are lacking in the current paleogenomics literature when discussing migration. The finding that there is an increase of 12.3% of ancestry type X in population A compared to the preceding population B that is suggestive of a migration, is not particularly useful for examining these kind of models. It is also unclear to what degree standard population genetic parameters estimated from genomic data such as effective population size, Ne, and gene flow are relevant to models studied in archaeology, given they reflect (somewhat undefined) long-term population sizes and average rates of movements over time, rather than reflecting any kind of reality of census size and mobility in the ancient communities the archaeologists are actually attempting to study.
define levels of genetic relatedness, but also in terms of material culture, age, sex, stress and activity indicators, stable isotopes for diet reconstruction (nitrogen, d13C and d15N, carbon, 13C/12C) and strontium and oxygen isotopes for mobility (87Sr/86Sr, d18O). Where possible, sites should be examined over multiple generations. In addition it will be incredibly useful to characterize the impact of disease in these communities, which is also proving to be a highly fruitful realm for paleogenomics.
I would say that the main problem is not the obvious limitations of palaeogenomics in terms of identifying prehistoric ethnolinguistic communities and their evolution, which is why it is just another tool to complement archaeology and linguistics. The main problem is the narrow understanding that some people have of the inherent limitations of palaeogenomics – especially when it interests them – , when publicizing simplistic conclusions based on these tools and their results. And I am not referring only to amateurs.
Kortlandt: West Indo-Europeans along the Danube, Germanic and Balto-Slavic share a Corded Ware substrate
Lazaridis’ evolutionary history of human populations in Europe
David Reich on social inequality and Yamna expansion with few Y-DNA subclades
David Reich on the influence of ancient DNA on Archaeology and Linguistics
Massive Migrations? The Impact of Recent aDNA Studies on our View of Third Millennium Europe
The uneasy relationship between Archaeology and Ancient Genomics
The new “Indo-European Corded Ware Theory” of David Anthony
Correlation does not mean causation: the damage of the ‘Yamnaya ancestral component’, and the ‘Future American’ hypothesis
Germanic–Balto-Slavic and Satem (‘Indo-Slavonic’) dialect revisionism by amateur geneticists, or why R1a lineages *must* have spoken Proto-Indo-European
On the origin of haplogroup R1b-L51 in late Repin / early Yamna settlers
A recent comment on the hypothetical Central European origin of PIE helped me remember that, when news appeared that R1b-L51 had been found in Khvalynsk ca. 4250-4000 BC, I began to think about alternative scenarios for the expansion of this haplogroup, with one of them including Central Europe.
Because, if YFull‘s (and Iain McDonald‘s) estimation of the split of R1b-L23 in L51 and Z2103 (ca. 4100 BC, TMRCA ca. 3700 BC) was wrong, by as much as the R1a-Z645 estimates proved wrong, and both subclades were older than expected, then maybe R1b-L51 was not part of the Yamna expansion, but rather part of an earlier expansion with Suvorovo-Novodanilovka into central Europe.
That is, R1b-L51 and R1b-Z2103 would have expanded wih Khvalynsk-Novodanilovka migrants, and they would have either disappeared among local populations, or settled and expanded with successful lineages in certain regions. I think this may give rise to two potential models.
A hidden group in the European east-central steppes?
Here is what Heyd (2011), for example, has to say about the effect of the Khvalynsk-Novodanilovka expansion in the 4th millennium BC, with the first Kurgan wave that shuttered the social, economic, and cultural foundations of south-eastern Europe (before the expansion of west Yamna migrants in the region):
As the Boleraz and Baden tumuli cases in Serbia and Hungary demonstrate, there are earlier, 4th millennium cal. B.C. round tumuli in the Carpathian basin. There are also earlier north-Pontic steppe populations who infiltrated similar environments west of the Black Sea prior to the rise of the Yamnaya culture. This situation can be traced back to the 2nd half of the 5th millennium cal. B.C. to a group of distinct burials, zoomorphic maceheads, long flint blades, triangular flint points, etc., summarized under the term Suvurovo-Novodanilovka (Govedarica 2004; Rassamakin 2004; Anthony 2007; Heyd forthcoming 2011). They also erected round personalized tumuli, though smaller in size and height, above inhumations of single individuals. Suvorovo and Casimcea are the key examples in the lower Danube region of Romania. In northeast Bulgaria, the primary grave of Polska Kosovo (ochre-stained supine extended body position: information communicated by S. Alexandrov) can also be seen as such, as should the Targovishte-“Gonova mogila” primary grave 1 in the Thracian plain with a burial arranged in a supine position with flexed legs, southeast-northwest orientated, and strewed with ochre (Kanchev 1991 , p. 56- 57; Ivanova Gaydarska 2007). In addition to the many copper and shell beads, the 17.4cm long obsidian blade is exceptional, which links this grave to the Csongrád-“Kettoshalom” grave in the south Hungarian plain (Ecsedy 1979). It also yielded an obsidian blade ( 13.2cm long) and copper, shell and limestone beads.
The Southeast European distribution of graves of the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka group and such unequipped ones mentioned in the text which can be attributed by burial custom and stratigraphic position in the barrow, plus zoomorphic and abstract animal head sceptres as well as specific maceheads with knobs as from Decea Maresului (mid-5th millennium until around 4000 BC). Heyd (2016).
However, no traces of a tumulus have been recorded above the Kettoshalom tomb. Conventionally, it is dated to the Bodrogkeresztur-period in east Hungary, shortly after 4000 cal. B.C., which would correspond very well with the suggested Cernavodă I (or its less known cultural equivalent in the Thracian plain) attribution for the “Gonova mogila” grave, a cultural background to which the Csongrád grave should have also belonged. Bodrogkeresztur and Cernavodă I periods are not the only examples of 4th millennium cal. B.C. tumuli and burials displaying this steppe connection. Indeed we can find this early steppe impact throughout the 4th millennium cal. B.C. These include adscriptions to the Horodiștea II (Corlateni-Dealul Stadole, grave I: Burtanescu l 998, p. 37; Holbocai, grave 34: Coma 1998, p. 16); to Gordinești-Cernavodă 11 (Liești-Movila Arbănașu, grave 22: Brudiu 2000); to Gorodsk-Usatovo (Corlăteni Dealul Cetăţii, grave I: Comșa 1998, p. 17- 18, in Romania; Durankulak, grave 982: Vajsov 2002, in Bulgaria); and to Cernavodă III(Golyama Detelina, tum. 4: Leshtakov, Borisov 1995), and early (end of 4th millennium cal. B.C.) Ezero in Ovchartsi, primary grave (Kalchev 1994, p. 134-138) and Golyama Detelina, tum. 2 (Kanchev 1991) in Bulgaria. Also the Boleráz and Baden tumuli of Banjevac-Tolisavac and Mokrin in the south Carpathian basin account for this, since one should perhaps take into account primary grave 12 of the Sárrédtudavari-Orhalom tumulus in the Hungarian Alfold: a left-sided crouched juvenile ( 15- 17 y) individual in an oval, NW-SE orientated grave pit 14C dated to 3350-3100 cal. B.C. at 2 sigma (Dani, Ncpper 2006). Neither the burial custom (no ochre strewing or depositing a lump of ochre has been recorded), nor date account for its ascription to the Yamnaya!
All of these tumuli and burials demonstrate, though, that there is already a constant but perhaps low-level 4th millennium cal. B.C. steppe interaction, linking the regions of the north of the Black Sea with those of the west, and reaching deep into the Carpathian basin. This has to be acknowledged. even if these populations remain small, bounded to their steppe habitat with an economy adapted to this special environment, and are not always visible in the record. Indirect hints may help in seeing them, such as the frequent occurrence of horse bones, regarded as deriving from domesticated horses, in Hungarian Baden settlements (Bokonyi 1978; Benecke 1998), and in those of the south German Cham Culture (Matuschik 1999, p. 80-82) and the east German Bernburg Culture (Becker 1999; Benecke 1999). These occur, however, always in low numbers, perhaps not enough to maintain and regenerate a herd. Does this point us towards otherwise archaeologically hidden horsebreeders in the Carpathian basin, before the Yamnaya? In any case, I hope to make one case clear: these are by no means Yamnaya burials in the strict definition! Attribution to the Yamnaya in its strict definition applies.
Distribution of Pit-Grave burials west of the Black Sea likely dating to the 2nd half of the 4th millennium BC (triangles: side-crouched burials; filled circles: supine extended burials; open circles: suspected). In Alin Frînculeasa, Bianca Preda, Volker Heyd, Pit-Graves, Yamnaya and Kurgans along the Lower Danube.
Also, about the expansion of Yamna settlers along the steppes:
However, it should have been made clear by the distribution map of the Western Yamnaya that they were confining themselves solely to their own, well-known, steppe habitat and therefore not occupying, or pushing away and expelling, the locally settled farming societies. Also, living solely in the steppes requires another lifestyle, and quite different economic and social bases, most likely very different to the established farming societies. Although surely regarded as incoming strangers, they may therefore not have been seen as direct competitors. This argument can be further enforced when remembering that the lowlands and the steppes in the southeast of Europe had already been populated throughout the 4th millennium cal. B.C., as demonstrated above, by societies with a similar north-Pontic steppe origin and tradition, albeit in lower numbers. It is only for these groups that the Yamnaya may have become a threat, but their common origin and perhaps a similar economic/ social background with comparable lifestyles would surely have assisted to allow rapid assimilation. More important, though, is that farming societies in this region may therefore have been accustomed to dealing and interacting with different people and ethnic strangers for a long time. (…)
When assessing farming and steppe societies’ interaction from a general point of view, attitudes can diverge in three main directions:
the violent one; with raids, fights, struggles, warfare, suppression and finally the superiority and exploitation of the one over the other;
the peaceful one; with a continuous exchange of gifts, goods, work, information and genes in a balanced reciprocal system, leading eventually to the merging of the two societies and creation of a new identity;
the neutral one; with the two societies ignoring each other for a long time.
What we see from trying to understand the record of the Yamnaya, based on their tumuli and burials, and the local and neighbouring contemporary societies, based on their settlements, hoards, and graves, is likely a mixture of all three scenarios, with the balance perhaps more towards exchange in a highly dynamic system with alterations over time. However, violence and raids cannot be ruled out; they would be difficult to see in the archaeological record; or only indirectly, such as the building of hill forts, particularly the defence-like chain of Vucedol hillforts along the south shore of the Danube on the Serbian/Croatian border zone (Tasic 1995a), and the retreat of people into them (Falkenstein 1998, p. 261-262), with other interpretations also possible. And finally, we are dealing here with very different local and neighbouring societies, as well as with more distant contemporary ones, looking, in reality, rather like a chequer board of societies and archaeological cultures (see Parzinger 1993 for the overview). These display different regional backgrounds and traditions leading to different social and settlement organizations, different economic bases and material cultures in the wide areas between Prut and Maritza rivers, and Black Sea and Tisza river. They surely found their individual way of responding to the incoming and settling Yamnaya people.
The presence of R1b-L51 (xZ2103) in cultures related to the ‘Yamna package’, but supposedly not to Yamna settlers. So for example I7043, of haplogroup R1b-L151(xU106,xP312), ca. 2500-2200 BC from Szigetszentmiklós-Üdülősor, probably from the Bell Beaker (Csepel group), but maybe from the early Nagýrev culture.
The expansion of its subclades apparently only from a single region, around the Carpathian basin, in contrast to R1b-Z2103.
The already ‘diluted’ steppe admixture found in the earliest samples with respect to Yamna, which points to the appearance after the Yamna admixture with the local population.
Ukrainian archaeologists (in contrast to their Russian colleagues) point to the relevance of North Pontic cultures like Kvitjana and Lower Mikhailovka in the development of Early Yamna in the west, and some eastern European researchers also believe in this similarity.
If R1b-Z2103 and R1b-L51 had expanded with Suvorovo-Novodanilovka migrants to the west, and had admixed later as Hungary_LCA-LBA-like peoples with Yamna migrants during the long-term contacts with other ‘kurganized cultures’ ca. 2900-2500 BC in the Great Hungarian Plains, it could explain some peculiar linguistic traits of North-West Indo-European, and also why R1b-Z2103 appears in cultures associated with this earlier ‘steppe influence’ (i.e. not directly related to Yamna) such as Vučedol (with a R1b-Z2103 sample, see below). That could also explain the presence of R1b-L151(xP312, xU106) in similar Balkan cultures, possibly not directly related to Yamna.
A hidden group among north or west Pontic Eneolithic steppe cultures?
The expansion of Khvalynsk as Novodanilovka into the North Pontic area happened through the south across the steppe, near the coast, with the forest-steppe region working as a clear natural border for this culture of likely horse-riding chieftains, whose economy was probably based on some rudimentary form of mobile pastoralism.
Although archaeologists are divided as to the origin of each individual Middle Eneolithic group near the Black Sea after the end of the Khvalynsk-Novodanilovka period, it seems more or less clear that steppe cultures like Cernavodă, Lower Mikhailovka, or Kvitjana are closer (or “more archaic”) in their steppe features, which connects them to Volga–Ural and Northern Caucasus cultures, like Northern Caucasus, Repin or Khvalynsk.
On the other hand, forest-steppe cultures like Dereivka (including Alexandria) show innovative traits and contacts with para- or sub-Neolithic cultures to the north, like Comb-Pit Ware groups, apart from corded decoration influenced by Trypillian groups to the west, especially in their later (‘Proto-Corded Ware‘) stage after ca. 3500 BC.
If Ukrainian researchers like Rassamakin are right, Early Yamna expanded not only from Repin settlers, but also from local steppe cultures adopting Repin traits to develop an Early Yamna culture, similar to how eastern (Volga–Ural groups) seem to have synchronously adopted Early Yamna without massive affluence of Repin settlements.
Furthermore, local traits develop in southern groups, like anthropomorphic stelae (shared with Kemi-Oba, direct heir of Lower Mikhailovka), and rich burials featuring wagons. These traits are seen in west Yamna settlers.
Problems of this model include:
On the North Pontic area – in contrast to the Volga–Ural region – , there was a clear “colonization” wave of Repin settlers, also supported by Ukrainian researchers, based on the number of new settlements and burials, and on the progressive retreat of Dereivka, Kvitjana, as well as (more recent) Maykop- and Trypillia-related groups from the North Pontic area ca. 3350/3300 BC. It seems unlikely that these expansionist, semi-nomadic, cattle-breeding, patrilineally-related steppe clans that were driving all native populations out of their territories suddenly decided, at some point during their spread into the North Pontic area ca. 3300-3100 BC, to join forces with some foreign male lineages from the area, and then continue their expansion to the west…
Similar to the fate of R1b-P297 subclades in the Baltic after the expansion of Corded Ware migrants, previous haplogropus of the North Pontic region – such as R1a, R1b-V88, and I2 subclades basically disappeared from the ancient DNA record after the expansion of Khvalynsk-Novodanilovka, and then after the expansion of Yamna, as is clear from Yamna, Afanasevo, and Bell Beaker samples obtained to date. This, in combination with what we know about Y-chromosome bottlenecks in post-Neolithic expansions, leaves little space to think that a big enough territorial group with a majority of “native” haplogroups could survive later expansions (be it R1b-L51 or R1a-Z645).
Supporting an expansion of the same male (and partly female) population, the Yamna admixture from east to west is quite homogeneous, with the only difference found in (non-significant) EEF-like proportion which becomes elevated in distant areas [apart from significant ‘southern’ contribution to certain outlier samples]. Based on the also homogeneous Y-DNA picture, the heterogeneity must come, in general, from the female exogamy practiced by expanding groups.
There is a short period, spanning some centuries (approximately 3300-2700 BC), in which the North Pontic area – especially the forest-steppe territories to the west of the Dnieper, i.e. the Upper Dniester, Boh, and Prut-Siret areas – are a chaos of incoming and emigrating, expanding and shrinking groups of different cultures, such as late Trypillian groups, Maykop-related traits, TRB, GAC, (Proto-)Corded Ware, and Early Yamna settlements. No natural geographic frontier can be delimited between these groups, which probably interacted in different ways. Nevertheless, based on their cultural traits, admixture, and especially on their Y-DNA, it seems that they never incorporated foreign male lineages, beyond those they probably had during their initial expansion trends.
The further expansionist waves of Early Yamna seen ca. 3100 BC, from the Danube Delta to the west, give an overall image of continuously expanding patrilineal clans of R1b-M269 subclades since the Khvalynsk-Novodanilovka migration, in different periodic steps, mostly from eastern Pontic-Caspian nuclei, usually overriding all encountered cultures and (especially male) populations, rather than showing long-term collaboration and interaction. Such interaction is seen only in exceptional cases, e.g. the long-term admixture between Abashevo and Poltavka, as seen in Proto-Indo-Iranian peoples and their language.
We are living right now an exemplary ego-, (ethno-)nationalism-, and/or supremacy-deflating moment, for some individuals of eastern and northern European descent who believed that R1a or ‘steppe ancestry proportions’ meant something special. The same can be said about those who had interiorized some social or ethnolinguistic meaning for the origin of R1b in western Europe, N1c in north-eastern Europe, as well as Greeks, Iranians, Armenians, or Mediterranean peoples in general of ‘Near Eastern’ ancestry or haplogroups, or peoples of Near Eastern origin and/or language.
These people had linked their haplogroups or ancestry with some fantasy continuity of ‘their’ ancestral populations to ‘their’ territories or languages (or both), and all are being proven wrong.
Apart from teaching such people a lesson about what simplistic views are useful for – whether it is based on ABO or RH group, white skin, blond hair, blue eyes, lactase persistence, or on the own ancestry or Y-DNA haplogroup -, it teaches the rest of us what can happen in the near future among western Europeans. Because, until recently, most western Europeans were comfortably settled thinking that our ancestors were some remnant population from an older, Palaeolithic or Mesolithic population, who acquired Indo-European languages by way of cultural diffusion in different periods, including only minor migrations.
Judging by what we can see now among some individuals of Northern and Eastern European descent, the only thing that can worsen the air of superiority among western Europeans is when they realize (within a few years, when all these stupid battles to control the narrative fade) that not only are they the cultural ‘heirs’ of the Graeco-Roman tradition that began with the Roman Empire, but that most of them are the direct patrilineal descendants of Khvalynsk, Yamna, Bell Beaker, and European Bronze Age peoples, and thus direct descendants of Middle PIE, Late PIE, and NWIE speakers.
Steppe-related migrations ca. 3100-2600 BC with tentative linguistic identification.
The finding of R1b-L51 and R1b-Z2103 among expanding Suvorovo-Novodanilovka chieftains, with pockets of R1b-L51 remaining in steppe-like societies of the Balkans and the Carpathian Basin, would have beautifully complemented what we know about the East Yamna admixture with R1a-Z93 subclades (Uralic speakers) ca. 2600-2100 BC to form Proto-Indo-Iranian, and about the regional admixtures seen in the Balkans, e.g. in Proto-Greeks, with the prevalent J subclades of the region.
It would have meant an end to any modern culture or nation identifying themselves with the ‘true’ Late PIE and Yamna heirs, because these would be exclusively associated with the expansion of R1b-Z2103 subclades with late Repin, and later as the full-fledged Late PIE with Yamna settlers to south-east and central Europe, and to the southern Urals. The language would have had then obviously undergone different language changes in all these territories through long-lasting admixture with other populations. In that sense, it would have ended with the ideas of supremacy in western Europe before they even begin.
The most likely future
However limited the evidence, it seems that R1b-L51 expanded with Yamna, though, based on the estimates for the haplogroups involved, and on marginal hints at the variability of L23 subclades within Yamna and neighbouring populations. If R1b-L51 expanded with West Repin / Early Yamna settlers, this is why they have not yet been found among Yamna samples:
Simplified map of Repin expansions from ca. 3500/3400 BC.
The subclade division of Yamna settlers needs not be 50:50 for L51:Z2103, either in time or in space. I think this is the simplistic view underlying many thoughts on this matter. Many different expanding patrilineal clans of L23 subclades may have been more or less successful in different areas, and non-Z2103 may have been on the minority, or more isolated relative to Z2103-clans among expanding peoples on the steppe, especially on the east. In fact, we usually talk in terms of “Z2103 vs. L51” as if
these two were the only L23 subclades; and
both had split and succeeded (expanding) synchronously;
that is, as if there had not been multiple subclades of both haplogroups, and as if there had not been different expansion waves for hundreds of years stemming from different evolving nuclei, involving each time only limited (successful) clans. Many different subclades of haplogroups L23 (xZ2103, xL51), Z2103, and L51 must have been unsuccessful during the ca. 1,500 years of late Khvalynsk and late Repin-Early Yamna expansions in which they must have participated (for approximately 60-75 generations, based on a mean 20-25 years).
If we want to imagine a pocket of ‘hidden’ L51 for some region of the North Pontic or Carpathian region, the same can be imagined – and much more likely – for any unsampled territory of expanding late Repin/Early Yamna settlers from the Lower Don – Lower Volga region (probably already a mixed society of L51 and Z2103 subclades since their beginning, as the early Repin culture, ca. 3800 BC), with L51 clans being probably successful to the west.
The Repin culture expanded only in small, mobile settlements from the Lower Don – Lower Volga to the north, east, and south, starting ca. 3500/3400 BC, in the waves that eventually gave a rather early distant offshoot in the Altai region, i.e. Afanasevo. Starting ca. 3300 BC in the archaeological record, the majority of R1b-Z2103 subclades found to date in Afanasevo also supports either
a mixed Repin society, with Z2103-clans predominating among eastern settlers; or
a Repin society marked by haplogroup L51, and thus a cultural diffusion of late Repin/Early Yamna traits among neighbouring (Khvalynsk, Samara, etc.) groups of essentially the same (early Khvalynsk-Novodanilovka) genetic stock in the Volga–Ural region.
Both options could justify a majority of Z2103 in the Lower Volga–Ural region, with the latter being supported by the scattered archaeological remains of late Repin in the region before the synchronous emergence of Early Yamna findings in the whole Pontic-Caspian steppe.
Most Z2103 from Yamna samples to date are from around 3100 BC (in average) onward, and from the right bank of the Lower Don to the east, particularly from the Lower Volga–Ural area (especially the Samara region), which – based on the center of expansion of late Repin settlers – may be depicting an artificially high Z2103-distribution of the whole Yamna community.
Yamna sample I0443, R1b-L23 (Y410+, L51-), ca. 3300-2700 BCE from Lopatino II, points to an intermediate subclade between L23 and L51, near one of the supposed late Repin sites (based on kurgan burials with late Repin cultural traits) in the Samara region.
Other Balkan cultures potentially unrelated to the Yamna expansion also show Z2103 (and not only L51) subclades, like I3499 (ca. 2884-2666 calBC), of the Vučedol culture, from Beli Manastir-Popova zemlja, which points to the infiltration of Yamna peoples in other cultures. In any case, the appearance of R1b-L23 subclades in the region happens only after the Yamna expansion ca. 3100 BC, probably through intrusions into different neighbouring regions, if these Balkan cultures are not directly derived from Yamna settlements (which is probably the case of the Csepel Bell Beaker or early Nagýrev sample, see above).
The diversity of haplogroups found in or around the Carpathian Basin in Late Chalcolithic / Early Bronze Age samples, including L151(xP312, xU106), P312, U106, Z2103, makes it the most likely sink of Yamna settlers, who spread thus with expanding family clans of different R1b-L23 subclades.
Even though some Yamna vanguard groups are known to have expanded up to Saxony-Anhalt before ca. 2700 BC, haplogroup Z2103 seems to be restricted to more eastern regions, which suggests that R1b-L51 was already successful among expanding West Yamna clans in Hungary, which gave rise only later to expanding East Bell Beakers (overwhelmingly of L151 subclades). The source of R1b-L51 and L151 expansion over Z2103 must lie therefore in the West Yamna period, and not in the Bell Beaker expansion.
Yamna migrants ca. 3300-2600. Most likely site of admixture with GAC circled in red.
The R1b-Z2103 found in Poltavka, Catacomb, and to the south point to a late migration displacing the western R1b-L51, only after the late Repin expansion. This is also seen in the steppe ancestry and R1b-Z2103 south of the Caucasus, in Hajji Firuz, which points to this route as a potential source of the supposed “Earliest Proto-Indo-Iranian” (the mariannu term) of the Near East. A similar replacement event happened some centuries later with expanding R1a-Z93 subclades from the east wiping out haplogroup R1b-Z2103 from the Pontic-Caspian steppe.
Many ancient samples from Khvalynsk, Northern Caucasus, Yamna, or later ones are reported simply as R1b-M269 or L23, without a clear subclade, so the simplistic ‘Yamna–Z2103’ picture is not real: if one takes into account that Z2103 might have been successful quite early in the eastern region, it is more likely to obtain a successful Y-SNP call of a Z2103 subclade in the Volga–Ural region than a xZ2103 one.
There are some modern samples of R1b-L51 in eastern Europe and Asia, whose common simplistic attribution to “late expansions” is usually not substantiated; and also ancient R1b-L51 samples might be confirmed soon for Asia.
‘Western’ features described by archaeologists for West Yamna settlers, associated with Kemi Oba and southern Yamna groups in the North Pontic area – like rich burials with anthropomorphic stelae and wagons – are actually absent in burials from settlers beyond Bulgaria, which does not support their affiliation with these local steppe groups of the Black Sea. Also, a mix with local traditions is seen accross all Early Yamna groups of the Pontic-Caspian steppe, and still genetics and common cultural traits point to their homogeneization under the same patrilineal clans expanding continuously for centuries. The maintenance of local traditions (as evidenced by East Bell Beakers in Iberia related to Iberian Proto-Beakers) is often not a useful argument in genetics, especially when the female population is not replaced.
Yamna settlers in the Great Pannonian Plain, showing only kurgans of Hungary ca. 2950-2500 BC. Yamna Hungary was one of the biggest West Yamna provinces. From Hórvath et al. (2013).
This is what we know, using linguistics, archaeology, and genetics:
Middle Proto-Indo-European expanded with Khvalynsk-Novodanilovka after ca. 4800 BC, with the first Suvorovo settlements dated ca. 4600 BC.
Archaic Late Proto-Indo-European expanded with late Repin (or Volga–Ural settlers related to Khvalynsk, influenced by the Repin expansion) into Afanasevo ca. 3500/3400 BC.
Late Proto-Indo-European expanded with Early Yamna settlers to the west into central Europe and the Balkans ca. 3100 BC; and also to the east (as Pre-Proto-Indo-Iranian) into the southern Urals ca. 2600 BC.
North-West Indo-European expanded with Yamna Hungary -> East Bell Beakers, from ca. 2500 BC.
Proto-Indo-Iranian expanded with Sintashta, Potapovka, and later Andronovo and Srubna from ca. 2100 BC.
It seems that the subclades from Khvalynsk ca. 4250-4000 BC were wrongly reported – like those of Narasimhan et al. (2018). However, even if they are real and YFull estimates have to be revised, and even if the split had happened before the expansion of Suvorovo-Novodanilovka, the most likely origin of R1b-L51 among Bell Beakers will still be the expansion of late Repin / Early Yamna settlers, and that is what ancient DNA samples will most likely show, whatever the social or political consequences.
The only relevance of the finding of R1b-L51 in one place or another – especially if it is found to be a remnant of a Middle PIE expansion coupled with centuries of admixture and interaction in the Carpathian Basin – is the potential influence of an archaic PIE (or non-IE) layer on the development of North-West Indo-European in Yamna Hungary -> East Bell Beaker. That is, more or less like the Uralic influence related to the appearance of R1a-Z93 among Proto-Indo-Iranians, of R1a-Z284 among Pre-Germanic peoples, and of R1a-Z282 among Balto-Slavic peoples.
I think there is little that ancient DNA samples from West Yamna could add to what we know in general terms of archaeology or linguistics at this point regarding Late PIE migrations, beyond many interesting details. I am sure that those who have not attributed some random 6,000-year-old paternal ancestor any magical (ethnic or nationalist) meaning are just having fun, enjoying more and more the precise data we have now on European prehistoric populations.
As for those who believe in magical consequences of genetic studies, I don’t think there is anything for them to this quest beyond the artificially created grand-daddy issues. And, funnily enough, those who played (and play) the ‘neutrality’ card to feel superior in front of others – the “I only care about the truth”-type of lie, while secretly longing for grandpa’s ethnolinguistic continuity – are suffering the hardest fall.
Haplogroup G reached 21.7% in Corsica and 13.3% in Tuscany. Sub-clade G2a2a1a2-L91 accounted for 11.3% of all haplogroups in Corsica yet was not present in Provence or in Tuscany. Thirty-four out of the 37 G2a2a1a2-L91 displayed a unique Y-STR profile, illustrated by the star-like profile of STR networks (Fig 1). G2a2a1a2-L91 and G2a2a-PF3147(xL91xM286) show their highest frequency in present day Sardinia and southern Corsica compared to low levels from Caucasus to Southern Europe, encompassing the Near and Middle East [21,47–50]. Ancient DNA results from Early and Middle Neolithic samples reported the presence of haplogroup G2a-P15 [51–53], consistent with gene flow from the Mediterranean region during the Neolithic transition. Td expansion time estimated by STR for P15-affiliated chromosomes was estimated to be 15,082+/-2217 years ago [49]. Ötzi, the 5,300-year-old Alpine mummy, was derived for the L91 SNP [21]. A genetic relationship between G haplogroups from Corsica and Sardinia is further supported by DYS19 duplication, reported in North Sardinia [14], and observed in the southern part of the Corsica in 9 out of 37 G2a2a1a2-L91 chromosomes and in 4 out of 5 G2a2a-PF3147(xL91xM286) chromosomes, 3 of which displayed an identical STR profile (S4 Table).
This lineage has a reported coalescent age estimated by whole sequencing in Sardinian samples of about 9,000 years ago. This could reflect common ancestors coming from the Caucasus and moving westward during the Neolithic period [48], whereas their continental counterparts would have been replaced by rapidly expanding populations associated with the Bronze Age [46,54,55]. Estimated TMRCA for L91 lineage in Corsica is 4529 +/- 853 years. G-L497 showed high frequencies in Corsica compared to Provence and Tuscany, and this haplogroup was common in Europe, but rare in Greece, Anatolia and the Middle East. Fifteen out of the 17 Corsican G2a2b2a1a1b-L497 displayed a unique Y-STR profile (S4 Table) with an estimated TMRCA of 6867 +/- 1294 years. Haplogroup G2a2b1-M406, associated with Impressed Ware Neolithic markers, along with J2a1-DYS445 = 6 and J2a1b1-M92 [22,49], had very low levels in Corsica. Conversely, G2a2b2a-P303was highly represented and seemed to be independent of the G2a2b1-M406 marker. The 7 G2a2b2a-P303(xL497xM527) Corsican chromosomes displayed a unique Y-STR profile (S4 Table).
First and second axes of the PCA based on 12 Y-chromosome haplogroup frequencies in 83 west Mediterranean populations.
Haplogroup J, mainly represented by J2a1b-M67(xM92), displayed intermediate frequencies in Corsica compared to Tuscany and Provence. J2a1b-M67(xM92) derived STR network analysis displayed a quite homogeneous profile across the island with an estimated TMRCA of 2381 +/- 449 years (Fig 1) and individuals displaying M67 were peripheral compared to Northwestern Italians (S2 Fig). The haplogroup J2a1-Page55(xM67xM530), characteristic of non-Greek Anatolia [22], was found in the north-west of Corsica. Haplogroup J2a1-DYS445 = 6 was found in the north-west with DYS391 = 10 repeats, and in the far south with DYS391 = 9 repeats, the former was associated with Anatolian Greek samples, whereas the second was found in central Anatolia [22]. The 7 J2b2a-M241 displayed a unique Y-STR profile (S4 Table), they were only detected in the Cap Corse region, this sub-haplogroup shows frequency peaks in both the southern Balkans and northern-central Italy [56] and is associated with expansion from the Near East to the Balkans during Neolithic period [57].
Haplogroup E, mainly represented by E1b1b1a1b1a-V13, displayed intermediate frequencies in Corsica compared to Tuscany and Provence. E1b1b1a1b1a-V13 was thought to have initiated a pan-Mediterranean expansion 7,000 years ago starting from the Balkans [52] and its dispersal to the northern shore of the Mediterranean basin is consistent with the Greek Anatolian expansion to the western Mediterranean [22], characteristic of the region surrounding Alaria, and consistent with the TMRCA estimated in Corsica for this haplogroup. A few E1b1a-V38 chromosomes are also observed in the same regions as V13.
Haplogroup J spread in the Mediterranean due to Phoenician and Greek colonizations
Genetic origins of Minoans and Mycenaeans and their continuity into modern Greeks
Carlos Quiles	Anthropology, Genetics	Leave a comment August 3, 2018 August 3, 2018
Mitogenomes show likely origin of elevated steppe ancestry in neighbouring Corded Ware groups
Open Access Mitochondrial genomes reveal an east to west cline of steppe ancestry in Corded Ware populations, by Juras et al., Scientific Reports (2018) 8:11603.
Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine, references have been deleted for clarity):
Ancient DNA was extracted from the Corded Ware culture individuals excavated in southeastern Poland (N = 12) and Moravia (N = 3). Late Eneolithic (N = 5) and Bronze Age human remains (N = 25) originated from western Ukraine and came from the Yampil barrow cemetery complex located in the north–western region of the Black Sea. Bronze Age individuals were associated with different archaeological cultures, including Yamnaya (N = 14), Catacomb (N = 2), Babyno (N = 4) and Noua (N = 5).
Modified image, from the paper. PCA based on mitochondrial DNA haplogroup frequencies with k-means clustering. The two principal components explained 50.62% of the total variance. Loading vectors, representing mitochondrial haplogroup contributions, are highlighted as grey arrows. Populations are grouped into four clusters according to k-means. Population abbreviations are as follows: BABA – Bronze Age Balkans; CAT – Catacomb Culture; CWPlM – Corded Ware Culture from Poland and Moravia; CWBal – Baltic Corded Ware Culture; IAK – Iron Age Kazakchstan; IASI – Iron Age Syberia – Aldy Bel Culture; SCA – Scytho-Siberian Pazyryk (Altai); SCR – Rostov-Scythians, Samara; SCU – Scythians from Moldova and Ukraine; TAG – Tagar Culture; GAC – Globular Amphora Culture; YAW – western Yamnaya horizon population from Ukraine and Bulgaria; YAE – eastern Yamnaya horizon population; BAC – Baalberge Culture; BANE – Bronze Age Near East; BEC – Bernburg Culture; CHAHu – Chalcolithic Hungary; CWW – Corded Ware Culture west; CHABA – Chalcolitic Balkans; EBAG – Early Bronze Age Germany; FBC – Funnel Beaker Culture; IAG – Iron Age Germany; MNG – Middle Neolithic Germany; LBK – Linear Pottery Culture; LDN – Late Danubian Neolithic; MIC – Minoans; NEBA – Neolithic Balkans; PPNE – Pre-Pottery Near East; SCG – Schöningen group; SMC – Salzmünde Culture; AND – Andronovo Culture; BASI – Bronze Age Siberia; PWC – Pitted Ware Culture; HGE – eastern hunter-gatherers; NEUk- Neolithic Ukraine; HGS – southern hunter-gatherers; HGBal – Baltic hunter-gatheres; HGC – central huther-gatherers.
Pairwise mtDNA-based FST values, visualized on MDS using the raw non-linearized FST (stress value = 0.099) (Fig. 4), also supported the PCA results and indicated that western and eastern Yamnaya horizon groups (YAW and YAE) were closer to people associated with the eastern Corded Ware culture (CWPlM) (FST = 0.00; FST = 0.01, respectively; both p > 0.05) and Baltic Corded Ware culture (CWBal) (FST = 0.00; FST = 0.00, respectively; both p > 0.05), than to populations associated with the western Corded Ware culture (CWW) (FST = 0.047 and FST = 0.059, respectively; both statistically significant p < 0.05). Western and eastern Yamnaya horizon groups also showed close genetic affinity to the Iron Age western Scythians (SCU) (FST = 0.0022 and FST = 0.006, respectively, both p > 0.05). The most distant populations to the Yamnaya horizon groups were western hunter-gatherers (HGW) (FST = 0.23 and FST = 0.15, p < 0.001). The FST-based MDS reflected the general European population history in the post-LGM period as the three highest FST scores were detected between western hunter-gatherers (HGW) and people associated with Linear Pottery culture (LBK) (FST = 0.33, p < 0.001), between eastern hunter-gatherers (HGE) and Baltic hunter-gatherers (HGBal) (FST = 0.35, p < 0.05), and between western (HGW) and eastern hunter-gatherers (HGE) (FST = 0.36, p < 0.05). The Yamnaya horizon groups (YAE and YAW) were placed centrally between northern hunter-gatherers (HGN) and Neolithic farmers (LDN), in direct proximity to the Bronze and Iron Age populations from Eastern Europe (SCU, BARu, SRU) and close to individuals associated with eastern and Baltic Corded Ware culture.
Among the analyzed samples, we identified two Catacomb culture-associated individuals (poz220 and poz221) belonging to hg X4. They are the first ancient individuals assigned to this particular lineage. Haplogroup X4 is rare among present day populations and has been found only in one individual each from Central Europe, Balkans, Anatolia and Armenia.
Moreover, we have reported mtDNA haplotypes that might be associated with the migration from the steppe and point to genetic continuity in the north Pontic region from Bronze Age until the Iron Age. These haplotypes were assigned to hgs U5, U4, U2 and W3. MtDNA hgs U5a and U4, identified in this study among Yamnaya, Late Eneolithic and Corded Ware culture-associated individuals, have previously been found in high frequencies among northern and eastern hunter-gatherers. Moreover, they appeared in the north Pontic region in populations associated with Mesolithic (hg U5a), Eneolithic (Post-Stog) (hg U4), Yamnaya (hgs U5, U5a), Catacomb (hgs U5 and U5a) and Iron Age Scythians (hg U5a), suggesting genetic continuity of these particular mtDNA lineages in the Pontic region from, at least, the Bronze Age. Hgs U5a and U4-carrying populations were also present in the eastern steppe, along with individuals from the Yamnaya culture from Samara region, the Srubnaya and the Andronovo from Russia. Interestingly, hg U4c1 found in the Yamnaya individual (poz224) has so-far been found only in two Bell Beaker- associated individuals and one Late Bronze Age individual from Armenia, which might suggest a steppe origin for hg U4c1. A steppe origin can possibly also be assigned to hg U4a2f, found in one individual (poz282) but not reported in any other ancient populations to date, and to U5a1- the ancestral lineage of U5a1b, reported for individual poz232, which was identified not only in Corded Ware culture-associated population from central and eastern Europe, but also in representatives of Catacomb culture from the north Pontic region, Yamnaya from Bulgaria and Russia, Srubnaya and Andronovo-associated groups. Hg U2e, reported for Late Eneolithic individual (poz090), was also identified in western Corded Ware culture-associated individual and in succeeding Sintashta, Potapovka and Andronovo groups, suggesting possible genetic continuity of U2e1 in the western part of the north Pontic region.
Hgs W3a1 and W3a1a, found in two Yamnaya individuals from this study (poz208 and poz222), were also identified in Yamnaya-associated individuals from the Russia Samara region and later in Únětice and Bell Beaker groups from Germany, supporting the idea of an eastern European steppe origin of these haplotypes and their contribution to the Yamnaya migration toward the central Europe. The W3a1 lineage was not identified in Neolithic times and, thus, we assume that it appeared in the steppe region for the first time during the Bronze Age. Notably, hgs W1 and W5, which predate the Bronze Age in Europe, were found only in individuals associated with the early Neolithic farmers from Starčevo in Hungary (hg W5), early Neolithic farmers from Anatolia (hg W1-T119C), and from the Schöningen group (hg W1c) and Globular Amphora culture from Poland (hg W5).
Some comments
The most recent radiocarbon dates show that Early Yamna expanded to the west with Repin settlers of the Lower Don ca. 3350/3300 BC. At the end of the 4th millennium, then, these settlers dominated over groups whose population had in turn also elevated ‘steppe ancestry’ (at least from ca. 4000 BC, as shown by Ukraine Eneolithic samples from the forest-zone), and probably replaced the male population completely, as evidenced by other Yamna and Poltavka, and later Bell Beaker, Catacomb, and Sintashta samples.
The ‘second wave’ of expansion of Yamna settlers to the west, into east-central European steppes, began probably ca. 3100/3000 BC, and – based on material culture – stemmed mainly from the North Pontic area. The Yampil Barrow Complex on the Dnieper (which I recently wrote about) seems to be part of one of the groups of western Yamna migrants: those who migrated westward from the left bank of the Dniester to the west into the Prut-Siret region, and north along the Prut.
This region is the key for population movements that gave rise to the Corded Ware culture (see another recent post on Corded Ware origins). It is quite likely that we will see a dance of late Trypillia / Usatovo, GAC, (Proto-)Corded Ware, and Yamna samples in this area. Judging by the clear-cut Y-DNA bottlenecks we are seeing in Neolithic populations, especially among steppe pastoralists, the difference between groups in recovered ancient samples will not only be clear from their culture, but also from their male lineages.
Based on the number of burials studied from the different settlement regions for West Yamna migrants, the Prut-Siret group was one of the smallest new Yamna ‘provinces’ in south-eastern Europe, and was probably overrun early, although – since kurgan findings continued into the Catacomb culture in the Yampil complex – the Dnieper region was well-enough connected to the core North Pontic area to be kept into its retreating territory by 2500 BC, as was the Danube delta, in contrast with other east-central European areas.
Taking into account that the earliest Corded Ware burials are from ca. 2900 BC (in the Single Grave culture), and that the earliest A-horizon pottery expanded from Lesser Poland (a syncretic pottery based on the previous GAC-type) a century later, it is likely that what this paper shows for Corded Ware in eastern Europe and the Baltic is what I have suggested many times (see here, or here) as the most likely reason for elevated steppe ancestry (and close PCA cluster) of the Baltic LN ‘outliers’: the exogamy of Corded Ware groups with females from Yamna or a North Pontic steppe culture with similar ancestry.
If Proto-Corded Ware populations of the North Pontic region did not have an identical “steppe ancestry” to these eastern CW groups already during the Eneolithic (which is the other possibility), I might be right in their more recent exogamy, and this could be seen in this study by the close cluster of east Corded Ware (especially Baltic) mtDNA to GAC and Yamna West groups, and distant from previous hunter-gatherer populations of the area, which suggests that expanding males from the Volhynia/Podolia region practiced exogamy mainly with southern groups.
I think this is probably related to demographic pressure imposed on other populations by the explosive expansion of pastoralists with their new subsistence economy (part of the “Secondary Products Revolution”), which the hunter-gatherer and farmer population of Europe could not keep up with (as seen later in the admixture of expanding East Bell Beakers), although studies on European prehistoric demography are scarce and too general to tell us anything relevant for this precise period and region.
1. I3719 (mtDNA H1, Y-DNA I2a2a) Ukraine Neolithic sample from Dereivka ca. 4949–4799 BC, described in Mathieson et al. (2018) as of “entirely northwestern-Anatolian-Neolithic-related ancestry”.
2. ANI163 from Varna I ca. 4711–4550 BC (mtDNA H7a1), and I2181 from Balkans Chalcolithic (Smyadovo, in Bulgaria) ca. 4500 BC (mtDNA HV15, Y-DNA R) show the first steppe ancestry in regions known to be affected by the expansion of Suvorovo chiefs.
3. The Yamna Bulgaria outlier (Y-DNA I2a2a1b1b), 3012-2900 calBCE, shows apparently an admixture with cultures of that region (but 1,500 years later).
Trypillia and Corded Ware
4. There is one ‘Trypillia outlier’ among five samples from the Verteba cave in Wang et al. (2018): I1927 (Y-DNA G2a2b2a1a1b1a1a1, mtDNA H1b), ca. 3619-2936 BC, a sample published previously in Nikitin et al. (2017) and Mathieson et al. (2017). We were very quick to dismiss Trypillia (three samples of haplogroup G2a, one sample E) and GAC as a source of Corded Ware admixture, but archaeology clearly shows important population movements at the end of the fourth millennium between late Trypillia groups, GAC, and post-Sredni Stog populations, and genetics is showing that in both cultures, too.
I am not a fan of the ‘lack of samples’ argument, but (similar to Old Hittite samples related to all Anatolian speakers) one site is not enough to describe a culture that spanned millennia and many different early and late groups. One among five Trypillian samples (from a single site), showing a late date (ca. 3228 BC) compared to the other samples (ca. 3700 BC), and quite close to the only three Ukraine Eneolithic samples we have may mean much more than what we may a priori think, i.e. some simplistic unidirectional punctual ‘intrusion’ of steppe ancestry, and instead hint at the known close contacts of late Trypillian groups and North Pontic cultures, including also the Caucasus.
NOTE. The big difference in PCA among GAC-like Hungary LCA – EBA samples (see above two star symbols close to Ukraine Neolithic outlier in the PCA, in contrast with the other three at the bottom) may also be significant, although we don’t have any data about their culture, sites, or the relationship between them.
Location of Verteba Cave in relation to different stages and neighbouring groups of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture. Image from the paper A Subterranean Sanctuary of the Cucuteni-Trypillia Culture in Western Ukraine, by Kadrow and Pokutta (2016).
Greece Neolithic outlier: Proto-Anatolians?
5. Especially interesting is I6423, one of the Greece Neolithic samples referred to in Wang et al. (2018), which is obviously an outlier among the three used in the paper. It does not seem to correspond to any of the ancient DNA samples published to date; it is not in Hofmanova et al. (2016), in Lazaridis et al. (2017), or in Mathieson et al. (2018).
Since the Neolithic in Greece could mean any period from ca. 6500 BC to ca. 3200 BC, I guess we are talking here about some migration related to the expansion of Khvalynsk-Novodanilovka chieftains after ca. 4500 BC, because it appears on the PCA precisely on the same spot as Varna and Smyadovo outliers, and its ADMIXTURE shows similar components…
So, this may be the smoking gun of Proto-Anatolian (or maybe early Common Anatolian) expansion with steppe migrants up to the border of Western Anatolia, and we may be able to get rid of those unfounded doubts about Anatolian origins once and for all…
NOTE. Also interesting seems another Greece Neolithic sample, I6420, in ADMIXTURE, although its position in the PCA (near Minoans and Mycenaeans) does not necessarily point to potential steppe influence, but rather to the extra ‘eastern (Caucasus/Iran-related) ancestry’ contribution found in Minoans and in Mycenaeans (and Anatolia Chalcolithic) compared to previous samples of the region. The third Greece Nelithic sample, I5427 (mtDNA K1a24), from Diros, Alepotrypa Cave, is dated 6005-5879 BC (mean 5892 BC), and appeared first in Mathieson et al. (2018).
Modified from Wang et al. (2018) (Greece_Neolithic in red). Supplementary Table 10. P values of rank=2 and ancestry proportions in modelling a three-way admixture in the Caucasus cluster testing additional contribution from Iran_ChL. Here, we used an extended set of outgroup populations populations to constrain standard errors: Right populations: Mbuti.DG, Ust_Ishim.DG, Kostenki14, MA1, Han.DG, Papuan.DG, Onge.DG, Villabruna, Vestonice16, ElMiron, Ethiopia_4500BP.SG, Karitiana.DG, Natufian, Iran_Ganj_Dareh_Neolithic, EHG, WHG, Levant_N.
If this Greece Neolithic sample is not related to Yamna migrations – and its use for statistical analysis of Caucasus samples from Wang et al. (2018) suggests that it is not – , it may have important consequences:
If it is located near the Western Anatolian coast – especially near Troy – there won’t be much to add about the potential site of entry of Common Anatolian languages into Anatolia… I have read some comments about how ‘impossible’ it was for steppe migrants and their language to ‘invade’ the more advanced cultures of Anatolia from the west, but it seems as ‘impossible’ as it was for Barbarians to invade the Roman Empire and impose their language as elites in certain regions. (And yes, we have at least one important weak political period among Middle Eastern cultures in the early 3rd millennium BC, similar to the period of the Fall of the Western Roman Empire).
Most likely Proto-Anatolian expansion in the North Pontic and Balkan area with Khvalynsk-Novodanilovka chieftains, including ADMIXTURE data from Wang et al. (2018).
If it is located somewhere more ‘central’ in the Greek Peninsula, then it could also be used to support the Anatolian nature of the controversial Pre-Greek (‘Pelasgian’) substrate. While we know that Greek (at least since Mycenaean) shows a strong Pre-Greek cultural and linguistic heritage (also reflected in its genetic continuity), the nature of that language is usually believed to be non-Indo-European, and Anatolian contacts are rather few and coincident with the Mycenaean period. I don’t think this sample can tell much about the Pre-Greek language, though, because – if it is really Neolithic, and comparing it with later Minoan and Mycenaean samples – it seems a clear outlier.
Heyd (2016): The Southeast European distribution of graves of the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka group and such unequipped ones mentioned in the text which can be attributed by burial custom and stratigraphic position in the barrow, plus zoomorphic and abstract animal head sceptres as well as specific maceheads with knobs as from Decea Maresului (mid-5th millennium until around 4000 BC). The site in the south-west Balkans is Suvodol-Šuplevec, Northern Macedonia (FYROM).
If it is, however, related to later Yamna migrations after ca. 3000 BC (and, like the ‘Ukraine Eneolithic’ sample that is likely from Catacomb, it is classified as Neolithic just because it cannot be attributed to precise Helladic periods), then we may be in front of the first obvious Yamna migrants in Greece. If that is the case (which I doubt), the sample wouldn’t be so informative for PIE dialectal expansions, because by now it is evident that we will find steppe ancestry and R1b-Z2103 subclades accompanying Yamna migrants in the southern Balkans, and probably well into Mycenaean Greece.
NOTE. Whatever the case, I am sure that for those fond of absurd autochthonous continuity theories, as well as for anti-steppe conspirationists, this sample will be just another good way of arguing for anything, ranging from a rejection of the Middle PIE – Late PIE division, to a support for some mythic ancient autochtonous Proto-Graeco-Anatolian group, or maybe some ancient Graeco–Indo-Slavonic split, or whatever new dialectal stage one can invent to support the own genealogical fantasies…
So, if it actually is a Neolithic sample, let’s hope that it shows a clear R1b-M269 (xL23 or early L23) subclade distinct from those (likely Z2103) expanded later with Late PIE-speaking Yamna (and probably to be found among Mycenaeans), so that there can be no more place for ethnic fantasies.
As you can imagine from my latest posts (on kurgan origins and on Sredni Stog), I am right now in the middle of a revision of the Corded Ware culture for my Indo-European demic diffusion model, to see if I can add something new to the draft. And, as you can see, even with ancient DNA on the table, the precise origin of the Corded Ware migrants – in spite of the imaginative efforts of the Copenhagen group to control the narrative – are still unknown.
Corded Ware origins
The main objects of study in Corded Ware origins are necessarily the region where the oldest Corded Ware vessels appeared, Lesser Poland, as well as the adjacent (traditionally considered Proto-Corded Ware regions) Volhynia, Podolia, and upper Dniester river basin. These are some relevant points, continuing where I left the Eneolithic steppe developments (following Szmyt 1999, Rassamakin 1999, Kadrow 2008, Furholt 2014):
Kadrow (2008). Cultural interactions around Carpathians at the beginnings of the 3rd millennium BC: 1 – Globular Amphora culture; 2 – Sofievka group of Trypillia culture; 3 – Funnel Beaker culture; 4 – Baden culture; 5 – Kostolac culture; 6 – Coţofeni culture; 7 – Cernavoda II culture; 8 – Yamnaya culture and Usatovo group of Trypillia culture (apud Kadrow, 2001).
More frequent contacts were seen ca. 3500-3000 BC, with an interaction showing multidirectional migrations of larger human groups in the centuries around 3000 BC, involving a significant part of the population of central-east Europe.
The easternmost area of the Funnel Beaker culture had become more Baden-like with the expansion of the Baden culture in its western area ca. 3300-2900 BC (with findings up to 2600 BC), and these younger groups with Baden features moved increasingly into the western part of Volhynia.
The influence of the neighbouring Trypillian culture is seen in the eastern parts of Volhynia, from ca. 3000 BC, either from a younger phase CII (cf. Troyaniv, Koshilivtsy, Brînzeni, Zhvaniets, or Vychvatintsy) or later groups (cf. Gorodsk, Kasperivtsy, Sofievka, Horodiştea-Folteşti, Usatovo).
In the forest-steppe zone, herding and hunting activities intensified, while agricultural traditions were preserved, as shown by the Sofievka, Kasperivtsy, and Gorodsk groups. From the end of the 4th millennium BC mobile parts of the late Trypillian populations moved to the steppe zone, absorbing more and more steppe elements; among others, cord ornamentation (in Vykhvatintsy, Troyaniv, and Gorodsk groups), pottery forms (Vykhvatintsy, which served as prototype for the Thuringian Apmphorae, dispersed along the Dniester river, too), flat burials with bodies in contracted position on the left or right side (Vykhvatintsy, reminding of Polgár culture different male-female position, and later Corded Ware burials, and also Lower Mikhailovka, under a mound without stone constructions). At the end of the Trypillia culture, its agricultural system collapsed completely.
Globular Amphorae culture „exodus” to the Danube Delta: a – Globular Amphorae culture; b – GAC (1), Gorodsk (2), Vykhvatintsy (3) and Usatovo (4) groups of Trypillia culture; c – Coţofeni culture; d – northern border of the late phase of Baden culture;red arrows – direction of Globular Amphora culture expansion; blue arrow – direction of „reflux” of Globular Amphora culture (apud Włodarczak, 2008, with changes).
Slash and burn techniques of agriculture – especially those practiced by Trypillian and Funnel Beaker populations – must have intensified effects of natural growth of humidity (ca. 3400-2400), increasing fluvial activities in west Ukrainian river valleys, and increasing deforestation processes, which favoured pastoralism and nomadisation of the settlement system, and a consequent change of the social structure
At the same time, Yamna communities expanded along the lower and central Danube to the west, while the populations of the late phase of the Baden culture took the opposite direction and reached as far as Kiev in the north-east, contributing to the culture of the Sofievka group.
Globular Amphora communities migrated from the north-west, from eastern Poland, towards the Danube Delta and as far as the Dnieper in the east, destroying the primary structures of the communities in the supposed cradle territories of the Corded Ware culture. These communities found refuge and conditions for further development in south-eastern margin zone of the Funnel Beaker culture territories, penetrating at first the upper parts of the loess uplands like typical Funnel Beaker sites, but on the margins of their range, and also on areas avoided by Funnel Beaker settlement agglomerations. They brought with them the so-called Thuringian amphora up to Lesser Poland, borrowed from the late Trypillian Usatovo group. This resulted in the Złota culture, which eventually gave rise to the A-Amphorae.
Map of territorial ranges of Funnel Beaker Culture (and its settlement concentrations in Lesser Poland), local Tripolyan groups and Corded Ware Culture settlements (■) at the turn of the 4th/3rd millennia BC.
In the end, we are left with this information about the oldest CWC (Furholt 2014):
The earliest radiocarbon-dated groups associated with the Corded Ware culture come from new single graves from Jutland in Denmark and Northern Germany, ca. 2900 BC. This Early Single Grave culture is associated with the appearance of individual graves (some time after the decline of the megalithic constructions), composed of a small round barrow and a new gender-differentiated burial practice emphasising male individuals orientated west-east (with regional exceptions), combined with the internment with new local battle-axe types (A-Axe). However, there is no single type of burial or burial custom in Corded Ware:
In southern Sweden the prevailing orientation is north-east – south-west, and south-north, contrary to the supposed rule male individuals are regularly deposited on their left and females on their right side.
In the Danish Isles and north-eastern Germany, the Final Neolithic / Single Grave Period is characterized by a majority of megalithic graves, with only some single graves from typical barrows. In south Germany, west-east and collective burials prevail, while in Switzerland no graves are found.
In Kujawia (south-eastern Poland), Hesse (Germany), or the Baltic, west-east orientation and gender differentiation cannot be proven statistically.
Furholt (2014). Map of the Corded Ware regions of central Europe. The dark shading indicates those regions where Corded Ware burial rituals are present regularly
The oldest Corded Ware vessels (the A-Amphorae, which define the A-Horizon of the CWC) come probably from the Złota (or a related) group in Lesser Poland, where a mixed archaeological culture connecting Funnel Beaker, Baden, Globular Amphorae and Corded Ware appears ca. 2900-2600 BC. No cultural (typological) break is seen between earlier Globular Amphorae and the first Corded Ware Amphorae, but rather a continuum of traits and characteristics among the recovered vessels. This strengthens the connection of Corded Ware with Globular Amphorae peoples. The A-horizon expanded thus probably from Lesser Poland ca. 2800-2600, as seen in local contexts.
And of course we have a third way of defining Corded Ware individuals, which is the presence of herding, and thus a transition from hunter-gatherers to agropastoralists. This is how some Baltic Late Neolithic individuals with no archaeological data have been classified as members of the Corded Ware culture: Even though no cultural remains were extracted with the two ‘outlier’ individuals, their haplogroup and ancestry point to a direct origin in or around the steppe and forest-steppe region (yes, that risks circular reasoning).
Correspondence analysis of amphorae from the Złota-graveyards reveals that there is no typological break between Globular Amphorae and Corded Ware Amphorae, including ‘Strichbündelamphorae’ (after Furholt 2008)
Corded Ware peoples in genetics
So, no clear origin of Corded Ware migrants, a lot of data pointing to intense migrations and interaction among GAC, Trypillia and the western steppe population (remember Kristiansen’s ‘long-lasting GAC-CWC connection’, now ignored to favour their Yamnaya admixture™ concept), and also three ways of defining Corded Ware culture…
Maybe genetics can help:
Ukraine Neolithic cultures – mainly from Dereivka – show haplogroups R1b-V88, R1a1, and R1b-L754 (xP297, xM269), which is similar to the haplogroup distribution found in Ukraine Mesolithic, but apparently with an expanding group marked by haplogroup I2a2a1b1 (possibly I2a2a1b1b).
The first thing that stands out about Ukraine Eneolithic samples is that only two of them can be said to be really Ukraine Eneolithic (i.e. from “Sredni Stog”-related groups):
I5876 (Y-DNA R1a-Z93(Y3+), mtDNA U5a2a), from Alexandria, 4045-3974 calBCE (5215±20BP, PSUAMS-2832)
I4110 (mtDN AJ2b1), from Dereivka, 3634-3377 calBCE (4725±25 BP, UCIAMS-186349), J2b1
The other two samples are quite late, and in fact one of them is clearly too late (maybe from the Catacomb culture):
I5882 (mtDNA U5a2a), from Dereivka, 3264-2929 calBCE (4420±20BP, PSUAMS-2826)
I3499 (Y-DNA R1b-Z2103, mtDNA T2e), from Dereivka, 2890-2696 calBCE (4195±20BP, PSUAMS-2828)
Corded Ware samples from Mittnik et al. (2018) offer very wide radiocarbon dates, so it is unclear which of them may be the oldest one. Most of them cluster closely to the older Ukraine Eneolithic sample I5876, but also to later steppe_MLBA samples i.e. Sintashta, Potapovka, and especially Srubna and Andronovo). This points to a genetic continuity from Pre-Corded Ware to Classic and late Corded Ware peoples. Therefore, much like Khvalynsk-Yamna and apparently many other Neolithic cultures, these peoples did not really admix; at least not with the male population.
File modified by me from Mittnik et al. (2018) to include the approximate position of the most common ancestral components, and an identification of potential outliers. Zoomed-in version of the European Late Neolithic and Bronze Age samples. “Principal components analysis of 1012 present-day West Eurasians (grey points, modern Baltic populations in dark grey) with 294 projected published ancient and 38 ancient North European samples introduced in this study (marked with a red outline).
Lucky for us, even though the culture remains undefined, haplogroup R1a-Z645 seems like a unifying trait, as I said long ago, so we only have to wait for more samples to trace their origin. Nevertheless, it is clear that Corded Ware may not have been as genetically homogeneous as Khvalynsk, Yamna and Yamna-related cultures, further supporting its archaeological complexity:
Jagodno1 and Jagodno2 (Silesia), dated ca. 2800 BC, show haplogroup G? and I/J? – compatible with an origin of CWC in common with Trypillia (which shows 3 samples of haplogroup G2a2b2a, and one E) and Ukraine Neolithic (showing the expansion of I2a2a1b1 subclades).
I7272, from Brandýsek (Czech Republic), dated ca. 2900-2200 BC shows haplogroup I2a2a2 (compatible with an origin in Ukraine Neolithic peoples – this haplogroup is also found in Yamna Kalmykia and in the Yamna Bulgaria outlier, i.e. late western samples from the Early Yamna culture).
NOTE. This precise subclade is only present to date in Chalcolithic samples from Iberia, which points (possibly like the Esperstedt family) to local Central European haplogroups integrated in a mixed Proto-Corded Ware population. The upper subclade I2a2a is found in Neolithic samples from Iberia, the British Isles, Hungary (Koros EN, ALPc), and also south-east European Mesolithic and Neolithic samples.
RISE1, from Oblaczkowo (Greater Poland), ca. 2865-2578 BC, shows haplogroup R1b1.
The Esperstedt family samples have been analysed as R1a-M417 (xZ645), although the supposed ‘xZ645’ has not been confirmed – not even in the risky new Y-calls from Wang et al. (2018) supplementary materials.
Network analysis based on the quantitative occurrence of Corded Ware pottery forms, pottery ornamentation styles, tools,
weapons and ornaments as stated in Table 1, based on the catalogues given in Table 2, line thickness representing similarity
Maybe this heterogeneity is a problem of better defining the culture, but from what we can see the oldest CWC regions and the unifying ‘Corded Ware province’ – formed after ca. 2700 BC by Jutland and Northern Germany, the Netherlands, Saale, Bohemia, Austria and the Upper Danube regions – are for the moment not the most genetically homogeneous groups.
Homogeneity comes later – which we may tentatively identify with the expansion of the A-horizon from the northern Dnieper-Dniester and Lesser Poland area – , as seen around the Baltic (like the Battle Axe culture) with R1a-Z283 subclades, and around Sintashta (i.e. probably Abashevo – Balanovo) with R1a-Z93 subclades, which is compatible with the late spread of different Z645 groups (and potentially a unifying language) .
Mitogenomes show continuity of Neolithic populations in Southern India
New paper (behind paywall) Neolithic phylogenetic continuity inferred from complete mitochondrial DNA sequences in a tribal population of Southern India, by Sylvester et al. Genetica (2018).
This paper used a complete mtDNA genome study of 113 unrelated individuals from the Melakudiya tribal population, a Dravidian speaking tribe from the Kodagu district of Karnataka, Southern India.
Some interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):
Autosomal genetic evidence indicates that most of the ethnolinguistic groups in India have descended from a mixture of two divergent ancestral populations: Ancestral North Indians (ANI) related to People of West Eurasia, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East, and Ancestral South Indians (ASI) distantly related to indigenous Andaman Islanders (Reich et al. 2009). It is presumed that proto-Dravidian language, most likely originated in Elam province of South Western Iran, and later spread eastwards with the movement of people to the Indus Valley and later the subcontinent India (McAlpin et al. 1975; Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1988; Renfrew 1996; Derenko et al. 2013). West Eurasian haplogroups are found across India and harbor many deep-branching lineages of Indian mtDNA pool, and most of the mtDNA lineages of Western Eurasian ancestry must have a recent entry date less than 10 Kya (Kivisild et al. 1999a). The frequency of these lineages is specifically found among the higher caste groups of India (Bamshad et al. 1998, 2001; Basu et al. 2003) and many caste groups are direct descendants of Indo-Aryan immigrants (Cordaux et al. 2004). These waves of various invasions and subsequent migrations resulted in major demographic expansions in the region, which added new languages and cultures to the already colonized populations of India. Although previous genetic studies of the maternal gene pools of Indians had revealed a genetic connection between Iranian populations and the Arabian Peninsula, likely the result of both ancient and recent gene flow (Metspalu et al. 2004; Terreros et al. 2011).
Haplogroup HV14
mtDNA haplogroup HV14 has prominence in North/Western Europe, West Eurasia, Iran, and South Caucasus to Central Asia (Malyarchuk et al. 2008; Schonberg et al. 2011; Derenko et al. 2013; De Fanti et al. 2015). Although Palanichamy identified haplogroup HV14a1 in three Indian samples (Palanichamy et al. 2015), it is restricted to limited unknown distribution. In the present study, by the addition of considerable sequences from the Melakudiya population, a unique novel subclade designated as HV14a1b was found with a high frequency (43%) allowed us to reveal the earliest diverging sequences in the HV14 tree prior to the emergence of HV14a1b in Melakudiya. (…) The coalescence age for haplogroup HV14 in this study is dated ~ 16.1 ± 4.2 kya and the founder age of haplogroup HV14 in Melakudiya tribe, which is represented by a novel clade HV14a1b is ~ 8.5 ± 5.6 kya
Maximum Parsimonious tree of complete mitogenomes constructed using 38 sequences from Melakudiya tribe and 11 previously published sequences belonging to haplogroup HV14 [Supplementary file Table S2] Suffixes @ indicate back mutation, a plus sign (+) an insertion. Control region mutations are underlined, and synonymous transitions are shown in normal font and non-synonymous mutations are shown in bold font. Coalescence ages (Kya) for complete coding region are shown in normal font and synonymous transitions are shown in Italics
Haplogroup U7a3a1a2
The coalescence age of haplogroup U7a3a1a2 dates to ~ 13.3 ± 4.0 kya. (…)
Although, haplogroup U7 has its origin from the Near East and is widespread from Europe to India, the phylogeny of Melakudiya tribe with subclade U7a3a1a2 clusters with populations of India (caste and tribe) and neighboring populations (Irwin et al. 2010; Ranaweera et al. 2014; Sahakyan et al. 2017), hint about the in-situ origin of the subclade in India from Indo-Aryan immigrants.
Mitogenomes show ancient human migrations to and through North-East India not of males exclusively
The Indus Valley Civilisation in genetics – the Harappan Rakhigarhi project
The Aryan migration debate, the Out of India models, and the modern “indigenous Indo-Aryan” sectarianism
Indo-European and Central Asian admixture in Indian population, dependent on ethnolinguistic and geodemographic divisions