Solutrean hypothesis: Native American Clovis Culture & NW Europe: (ydna Q, mtdna X2)

Tabaccus Maximus

Tabaccus Maximus
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Solutrean hypothesis: Native American Clovis Culture & NW Europe: (ydna Q, mtdna X2)

I am posting this here because I couldn't find the original post on mtdna haplogroup X2 and its presence, mostly limited to Western Europe and the Americas. Then I found a discussion on Ydna haplogroup Q titled "How did Y-DNA haplogroup Q enter Scandinavia?" and its presence in the North Atlantic Fringe. So I decided to cut and paste here and make comments on both the paternal and maternal haplogroups together since they seem to be linked...

(An article I read in Science daily rekindled interest in this topic - autosomal similarilites in Euros and Indians - I can't link so find it yourself.)

What I find interesting is that there have been a number of mostly "non-mainstream" theories in various disciplines that link a component of early Native American culture with something specifically coming out of the Middle Upper Paleolithic in Europe.

That's "specifically and directly" from Europe, not a thousad year Siberian trek across the straits of Alaska.
So here's a bunch of dots that seem to reasonable to connect:
1) The Solutrean hypothesis shows a very similar technology at about the same time as Clovis in the Atlantic Fringe. The geographic distribution of Clovis seems to overlay points 2, 3,4 below.

2) X2 is distributed throughout the Americas where its highest frequency overlays the Clovis culture sites. It's negligble spread in South America is probably the result of gene flow assuming X entered the Americas at a later date from the other four Native American mtdna haplogroups. Any form of X shows Eastern Siberia and East Asia were the other other Native American founding haplogroups are located in number and diversity . If it was part of the founding population of America along with A,B,C and D, why is it's distribution and diversity so far west? The Altay people are sometimes used as a relict population in West Siberia due to the presence of all four Haplogroups, but that combination can be explaned in other ways and migrations in the historical period.

3) Frequency of X2 peaks in North America dropping off sharply beyond Central America which suggests to me that it was not part of the originial founding population. Intrestingly, it peaks in areas where Q-242 peaks, and again in geographic areas where the Na-Dene family of languages are spoken, again limited to North America. American Q also has subclades that are too young to have come across the Beringia Crossing which no one seems to have an explanation for. If we open the door by stating that the Indian genome is not the result of a single founding across the bearing strait, then there is not reason to be supremely sure that X or Q at all was there day one as well and didn't migrate in a different way.

4) The most interesting bit is the extinction timeline of the mammoth. You will see that the extinction begins in Europe with (possibly) Solturean technology (or methods) and spreads westwardly through the Americas. Finally, the last mammoths die out in Siberia and a few islands. Is it possible that Q-M242 entered Asia via the Americas and further back from Europe rather than the other way around.
To quote wiki on the decline of the mammoths: "The spread of advanced human hunters through northern Eurasia and the Americas around the time of the extinctions was a new development, and thus might have contributed significantly" (What technology? Large bifacial, fluted spear points?)

5) Again with the distribution of Q, is it not possible that it's presence in Eastern Siberia is the result of a declining mammoth population and hunters tracking Westward, not Eastward following dying herds?

6) Are the Dene languages and Caucasian languages remnants of a race of mammoth hunters?
 
Tabaccus Maximus, I too am a proponent of Solutreans. The distribution and age of X2 in North America really doesn't leave another explanation. Also, Native American meta-myths speak of the land already being populated when they arrived (giants with red hair) and that they slayed the males and kept the females. But when factoring in Clovis and the Atlantic Ice Sheet progressions, wouldn't Solutreans in the Americas be a minimum of 17,000 years old? How does that square with y-haplogroup Q being the "carrier" of X2?
 
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5) Again with the distribution of Q, is it not possible that it's presence in Eastern Siberia is the result of a declining mammoth population and hunters tracking Westward, not Eastward following dying herds?

It makes sense. Hunters following their main food source.

Also this is interesting, but can't find what haplogroups were found.
Based on the genome, the scientists believe there was a distinct, separate migration of peoples from Siberia to North America some 5,500 years ago. They noted that this was independent of earlier migrations whose descendants comprised the historic cultures of Native Americans as well as of the later migration by the Inuit. By 4,500 years ago, descendants of this migration had reached Greenland. The remains used for analysis were found in a Saqqaq culture area.[3]
The scientists reported that the man, dubbed "Inuk", had A+ blood type, genes suggesting he was adapted to cold weather, had brown eyes, brownish skin, dark hair, and would likely bald later in life. This marked the first sequencing of an ancient human's genome and the first sequencing of an ancient human's mitochondrial genome.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Eskimo
 
That is very interesting Lebrok, I hadn't heard of that before. I like the idea of multiple waves, it seems to be a theme modern genetics proves out more and more. The Vikings made it to Newfoundland afterall, and probably further south judging by the butternut remains found in their settlements. But the possible migration 5,500 years ago wouldn't account for Clovis or the ancient meta-myths of the land being already occupied.
 
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I'm personally somewhat sceptical of the Solutrean hypothesis, especially, I'm not quite sure with the evidence that you link together here, Tabaccus. From the genetic perspective, I'm not sure why you bring up the Na-Dene peoples: in terms of Y-Dna, they are predominantly Haplogroup C, and their distribution does not add up with mt-Haplogroup X2. If anything, I would associate X2 with the Algonquian-speaking peoples.


From the linguistic side, I'm also sceptical of the concept of "Dene-Caucasian", since it encompases such a wide range of languages, including Basque, Burushaski, Sino-Tibetan and two of the three language families of the Caucasus. It doesn't take an expert to see that this is fairly speculative. In particular, the Dene-Caucasian model stands in confrontation to the Dene-Yeniseian model, which (in my opinion, in a much more compelling way) argues for a closer relationship of the Na-Dene languages and the Yeniseian languages of Siberia: although both Na-Dene and Yeniseian are also considered to be Dene-Caucasian, neither of them are particularly close within the Dene-Caucasian framework.


But, disregarding the Solutrean model, there is something which is in my opinion not any less fascinating, and can be very much backed up by genetic and linguistic evidence: that there was more than one prehistoric wave of migration into the Americas.
 
I'm an opponent of the Solutrean-Clovis connection.

1) The Solutrean hypothesis shows a very similar technology at about the same time as Clovis in the Atlantic Fringe.

Not exactly. There are some similarities, but also some differences, between the industries in the two cultures. The parts of blades that connected to shafts is totally different, for example. Also, "about the same time" is totally wrong... there is at minimum a 1000 year difference. Is Charlemagne living about the same time as us?

2) X2 is distributed throughout the Americas where its highest frequency overlays the Clovis culture sites. It's negligble spread in South America is probably the result of gene flow assuming X entered the Americas at a later date from the other four Native American mtdna haplogroups. Any form of X shows Eastern Siberia and East Asia were the other other Native American founding haplogroups are located in number and diversity . If it was part of the founding population of America along with A,B,C and D, why is it's distribution and diversity so far west? The Altay people are sometimes used as a relict population in West Siberia due to the presence of all four Haplogroups, but that combination can be explaned in other ways and migrations in the historical period.

We can agree, I'm sure, that the X2 in the Americas is an old and unique branch, so it is difficult to compare with European or Asian X2, and either way it looks like a founder in the Americas + a decline at its source. So our best shot is to try to date it, to see if it corresponds to the others, or if it has a separate date (like the method studies have used to show that the Na Dene came later). But so far American X2 has yielded the same dates as the others, indicating that it came from the same source population.

3) Frequency of X2 peaks in North America dropping off sharply beyond Central America which suggests to me that it was not part of the originial founding population. Intrestingly, it peaks in areas where Q-242 peaks, and again in geographic areas where the Na-Dene family of languages are spoken, again limited to North America. American Q also has subclades that are too young to have come across the Beringia Crossing which no one seems to have an explanation for. If we open the door by stating that the Indian genome is not the result of a single founding across the bearing strait, then there is not reason to be supremely sure that X or Q at all was there day one as well and didn't migrate in a different way.

I didn't know that X2 peaks in areas where Q peaks, and if it does, that goes against your point. Q is usually considered linked to Bering populations, has fairly clear continuity with Asia, and is dominant in South America. (And which subclades of Q are "too young"? What are you talking about?)

From what I've read, the Na Dene have a decent amount of X2a2, but share it with some non-Na Dene, and X2a1 and X2a* tend to be non-Na Dene, meaning that the highest diversity is not with them, nor is the origin likely with them.

4) The most interesting bit is the extinction timeline of the mammoth. You will see that the extinction begins in Europe with (possibly) Solturean technology (or methods) and spreads westwardly through the Americas. Finally, the last mammoths die out in Siberia and a few islands. Is it possible that Q-M242 entered Asia via the Americas and further back from Europe rather than the other way around.
To quote wiki on the decline of the mammoths: "The spread of advanced human hunters through northern Eurasia and the Americas around the time of the extinctions was a new development, and thus might have contributed significantly" (What technology? Large bifacial, fluted spear points?)

No, a much simpler explanation is that climate led to humans expanded at roughly the same time in different parts of the world. Also, you'll need to back up your ideas about Q with some subclade analyses. Don't count on that being easy... unlike with mtDNA X2, YDNA Q subclades are generally easy to link back to Asia.

5) Again with the distribution of Q, is it not possible that it's presence in Eastern Siberia is the result of a declining mammoth population and hunters tracking Westward, not Eastward following dying herds?

Unlikely... wrong diversity pattern.
 
Taranis, if you disregard Solutrean, what model do you attribute the introduction of X2? I doesn't look like X2 took the more well travelled route through Siberia (based on population samples). Another possible, but in my opinion less likely, occurence is that the Native Americans captured a few very productive X2 sisters from earlier Viking expeditions--that would explain the maps. I still do favor Solutreans though.
 
Taranis, if you disregard Solutrean, what model do you attribute the introduction of X2? I doesn't look like X2 took the more well travelled route through Siberia (based on population samples). Another possible, but in my opinion less likely, occurence is that the Native Americans captured a few very productive X2 sisters from earlier Viking expeditions--that would explain the maps. I still do favor Solutreans though.

I'm not sure: as Sparkey said, unlike Y-Haplogroup Q, mt-Haplogroup X2 doesn't fit well at all with the first migration into the Americas from Siberia. We know about the (considerably later) migration of Proto-Na-Dene peoples, which doesn't add up well with X2 either. It could be that there was another migration wave that we actually overlooked.
 
X2 can't be linked specifically to Na-Dene languages or cultures at all, but neither can any dna to any culture.
What you do see, is a rough geographical limitation of both in North America.
And while X2 may comprise a larger component of Northern peoples like the Algonquian, it doesn't necessarily mean that over time Algonquian languages became dominant in the NE North America for other reasons.
And remember, we are only talking about a small component of Native American ancestry, not a tribe of people with a "X2" emblazoned on their shields. (Based on some discussions elsewhere it appears some take that view)

Even with the Dene-Yeniseian model, Vajda notes the exclusive occurance of a Q subclade between Kets and Native Americans so the low frequency among Na-Dene speakers "could be" just a matter of space and time (which I admit looks bizarre).
 
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X2 can't be linked specifically to Na-Dene languages or cultures at all, but neither can any dna to any culture.
What you do see, is a rough geographical limitation of both in North America.

Excellent point Tabaccus, that's why finding and using actual bodies is so important. Nothing can anchor a people in time and place better than physical remains surrounded by other verifiable artifacts. I don't get too bogged down in languages because they are so flexible and changing (especially languages with no written word to accompany them). I'm with you on Solutreans, but I do want to hear more on how Q would have brought X2 over 17,000 years ago. I would think more likely canidates would have been G, proto I1, I-2, or even I-J.
 
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-I don't think Solutrean needs to be a 1:1 relationship to Clovis to be valid. It could be a similar technology with a genetic relationship but not necessarily same time, same place.
-X2 may very well have entered the Americas during a single founding event and I would agree with the notion that there is a limit to how many founding events occurred, and that the population has been well amalgamated.
-With Q, my point was that it's presence in Eastern Siberia could be the result of migration from the Americas rather than left-overs from staybehinds. Also, to mention subclades, Q1a3 is mentioned in a report of the 'genetic genealogist', I can't link to it now, but is interesting. Subclades P89 and NWT regardless of whether it originated .
-ISOGG places origing in Northern Eurasia 17k b.p. not the Far East.
 
I'm not sure: as Sparkey said, unlike Y-Haplogroup Q, mt-Haplogroup X2 doesn't fit well at all with the first migration into the Americas from Siberia. We know about the (considerably later) migration of Proto-Na-Dene peoples, which doesn't add up well with X2 either. It could be that there was another migration wave that we actually overlooked.


I think we tend to think of our planet as a sort of East-West arrangment. Anyone going to or from America from Asia/Europe must go Left or Right across a big body of icy water and endless thousands of miles on lifeless permafrost. Turn the globe on its side and see what it looks like during our non-ice-age. It's a much smaller world and watching Eastern Siberians mush sled dogs across the ice with their mammoth knife hilts and powder horns seems to beacon an earlier time when nomadic big game hunters trekked the ice in all directions.

I just don't buy the wandering band of lost, purposeless beringa people crossing with ice breaking up behind every footstep.
 
I think we tend to think of our planet as a sort of East-West arrangment. Anyone going to or from America from Asia/Europe must go Left or Right across a big body of icy water and endless thousands of miles on lifeless permafrost. Turn the globe on its side and see what it looks like during our non-ice-age. It's a much smaller world and watching Eastern Siberians mush sled dogs across the ice with their mammoth knife hilts and powder horns seems to beacon an earlier time when nomadic big game hunters trekked the ice in all directions.

I just don't buy the wandering band of lost, purposeless beringa people crossing with ice breaking up behind every footstep.

I totally agree with the Left/Right orientation being a limiting perspective on historical human journeys. I've tilted the globe on it's side more than a few times myself. However, the problem with this line of thinking for the period 17,000 years ago is the much colder climate. A brutal ice-age would make this route next to impossible. By using ice platforms further south, the Solutreans travellers could "hop-skip-and-jump" across the Atlantic with kayaks using walrus and seals for food. It's important to remember Neanderthal was on boats well before this period, so the kayak usage is certainly plausible.
 
Okay, this is my understanding of the genetic evidence for the Solutrean Hypothesis so far:

On Wikipedia it says that “Q-M3 is the predominant haplotype in the Americas, at a rate of 83% in South American populations, 50% in the Na-Dené populations, and in North American Eskimo-Aleut populations at about 46%.” On Eupedia.com where it talks about the Y-chromosomes of Native Americans, it also says that Q1a2a1a1 (M3) is "the main subclade of Native Americans", which is found under the branch Q1a2a1a (CTS11969).

And further, for what it says about all the sub-branches of Q1a2a1a (CTS11969), it says:


  • Q1a2a1a1 (M3): the main subclade of Native Americans
  • Q1a2a1a2 (L804): found in Germany, Scandinavia and Britain (possibly Hunnic)
    • Q1a2a1a2a (L807): observed in Britain
In other words, the places in the world where the closest matches to the Y-chromosomes of most Native Americans are found, are "Germany, Scandinavia and Britain". And Q1a2a1a2 (L804) isn't found among Native Americans.

Also, regarding the autosomal dna that was recently extracted from the remains of the 24,000-year-old boy from South-Central Siberia, it was found that he shared genes with both Native Americans and Europeans, but not to East Asians. And further dna analysis deduced that Europeans can be shown to statistically descend from 3 populations, one of which (the ANE) is comprised of this Siberian boy’s dna. And also, that a good percentage (perhaps 40 to 50 percent) of Native Americans’ dna descends from this same population.


Also, they tested the DNA of an 8000-year-old hunter-gatherer from Motala (Southern Sweden). And they found that about 19 percent of his dna was from this ANE component and the rest was from the WHG component. So, this ANE component was present in Sweden about 8000 years ago.

In Europe today, this ANE component appears to peak in Estonia (18.3%) and Scotland (18.2%). I agree with some suggestions made that this ANE component probably also came to Europe in another wave with the Indo-European invasions around 5000 years ago.

On page 28 of the paper, it says that another one of the 8000-year-old men from Motala, Sweden (Motala6) "was L55+ (19413335 G>A), placing it in Y-haplogroup Q1a2a, but L232‑ which contradicts the hypothesis that it belongs to haplogroup Q1. These two observations are phylogenetically inconsistent, and we are unable to assign a haplogroup to this individual." Hopefully it can be tested again. If it is found to be Q1a2a1a, that would be very exciting. The four men from Motala, Sweden that were tested successfully for their Y-chromosomes fell into haplogroup I, as did the Loschbour, Luxembourg guy.

On Eupedia’s graph of the distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroup Q in Europe, the hotspot with the greatest frequency of haplogroup Q occurs in Southern Sweden, right near Motala, where the samples were found. And the next hotspot in Europe where it's found is in East-Central France, right near Solutre, where the Solutrean hypothesis gets its name. The Solutrean Hypothesis contends that ancient hunter-gatherers from the Solutrean culture in France and Spain made their way across the Northern Atlantic in boats about 19,000-or-so years ago to become the first, or among the first, Native Americans.

Regarding mtdna haplogroup X2, according to Family Tree DNA X2b is the phylogenetically closest branch of X2 to the Native American X2a. And judged by its distribution, X2b seems likely to have originated in Europe. (Unlike the X2 that was found in the Altai, that was all or mostly all X2e.) An X2b has been found in Portugal dating to 3,400 BCE, and another X2 has been found in Brittany, France dating to 4,200 BCE.

Also, regarding mtdna C1, the Native American subclades are C1b, C1c and C1d, and C1a is found in East Asia. However, two new subclades, dubbed by some as C1e and C1f, have been found in Northern Europe: C1e in Iceland; and C1f from a 7,500-year-old individual in Western Russia next to Finland.

Given all these findings around Scandinavia and Europe’s West coast, my guess is that mtdna C1 was brought to America by the Solutreans, along with Q-M3 and X2. I also wouldn’t be surprised if some clades of ydna R1 were as well, and possibly even some others, such as mtdna C4.

I also think that the Solutreans were largely from a different stock than the Gravettian and Magdalenian cultures that preceded and succeeded them in SouthWestern Europe. I suspect they originally came from Siberia / Central Asia. I doubt they had light skin like modern Europeans either. Maybe they looked similar to Patrick Stewart with somewhat darker skin. In Stanford and Bradley’s book “Across Atlantic Ice” they note how different their stone tool set was from the Gravettian/Magdalenian ones. In addition to pointing out how similar the Solutrean tools are to the Pre-Clovis and Clovis tools in America, in the book they also indicate by doing cluster analyses that if anything, the Solutrean stone tools are closer to some Beringian tools than to the French Gravettian and French Magdalenian toolsets (which are similar to each other.)


 
A lot has changed since the original post.

With the many new ancient dna results over the past few months, I've cooled a bit on the Solutrean (like) hypothesis.

However, I will say that it does seem likely that at one time there was a Pan-50th parallel hunting culture. I suppose the question is if whether any of them entered from the right side of North America versus the left side.

In order for a Solutrean-like hypothesis to work the crossing from Europe would probably have to predate Mesolithic Europe since typical Mesolithic uniparental dna does not appear to be present within ancient remains of the Americas. One caveat is that one of the Motala individuals had an un-identified haplotype that wasn't Q, but had some characteristic of Q.

Because Mesolithic Europeans had a small portion of ANE (Ancestral North Eurasians), I suppose that could open up the possibility that another, unidentified population (Q*+C*) lived in the Northern Fringes of Europe in the Late Paleolithic or Mesolithic and only in the Mesolithic began intermingling with the brute European mesolithics (hence ANE in them).

In this scenario, the genetic flow would have to be one way.
 
I also think that the Solutreans were largely from a different stock than the Gravettian and Magdalenian cultures that preceded and succeeded them in SouthWestern Europe. I suspect they originally came from Siberia / Central Asia.

I also wonder why Loschbourg and La Brana finds appear not Cro-Magnoid. Loschbour in particular does not even look Caucasoid to me. 10000 year old Cro-Magnid skulls have been found in north Africa, so the genetic composition of Berbers might answer some question. On the other hand it is hard to imagine that WHG should not be related to Cro-Magnon.
 
​I don't think the Solutrean idea holds up, for some of the reasons that sparky mentioned. However, I have another theory, which I know he also disagrees with. To understand it, you have to realize that Y haplotype R1 is the second most common Native American haplotype in North America, but it's largely absent from South American populations. And although R1 is fairly common among Dene, it's the main Y haplotype among some Algonquin speaking tribes and is common among some other tribes that used to live around the Great Lakes area, such as Iroquoan and Siouian speaking people. Geneticists have stated that the R1 in Native Americans is all from modern Europeans as a result of post-Columbian contact, even among tribes like the Ojibwe who are 79 percent R1. And why do the geneticists think that all the R1 among Native Americans is from modern Europeans? Well, it just is, so let's not discuss the issue. But I want to discuss the issue, especially since the mtDNA X2 is clustered almost completely among tribes who have high R1. I think another piece of the puzzle is the fact that, although the first wave of people into the Americas happened about 15,000 years ago, there was a separate wave of people into the Americas about 8.000 years ago. The theory currently accepted by academia is that this wave of settlement was fairly small and was limited to Dene speakers, but I've never seen any solid facts to support that idea. My own theory is that the wave of immigration 8,000 years ago was much larger than has been assumed and that the largest component consisted of Algonquin speakers who migrated east to the Great Lakes area. They are the ones who brought Y-R1 and mtDNA-X2 to North America. As for any Q that is too modern to have been part of either early wave of settlement, as long as its a fairly small component, I think it could be accounted for by small, more recent waves of immigration from Siberia. We know that the Dorset and Thule people arrived in the Americas just a few thousand years ago, and there could have been a few other small groups that headed south and mixed with existing populations.
 
In order for a Solutrean-like hypothesis to work the crossing from Europe would probably have to predate Mesolithic Europe since typical Mesolithic uniparental dna does not appear to be present within ancient remains of the Americas. One caveat is that one of the Motala individuals had an un-identified haplotype that wasn't Q, but had some characteristic of Q.

Mtdna X2a has been found in Windover, Florida dating to about 8,000 years ago. This is mentioned in Bryan Sykes's book "DNA USA" as well as Stanford and Bradley's book. Also, mtdna haplogroups A,B,C,D and M have been found in America dating to before 5,000 years ago. And Q-M3 was also found in a sample dating to 10,300 years ago.

I'm not a geneticist but I wonder how likely it might be that the Motala6 L232- result, indicating it being negative for Q1, might be due to DNA degradation. However, I'm confident more ancient DNA like that will be tested.
 
Has M really been found in the Americas?
 
Has M really been found in the Americas?

I can't post links but apparently yes, according to a paper titled "Ancient DNA Analysis of Mid-Holocene Individuals from the Northwest Coast of North America Reveals Different Evolutionary Paths for Mitogenomes." However, they say this haplogroup has yet to be identified in any extant Native American population.
 

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