Angela
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Here is the link to the paper. It's hot off the presses.
http://www.researchgate.net/publica...rope__The_known_knowns_and_the_known_unknowns
One great thing about it is that it summarizes and provides links to all the data we currently have about aDna.
I only went through it once quickly, but there are also some assertions, or speculations, really, that are extremely interesting, although I have my doubts about some of them. They're also quite interesting if you consider them in light of the fact that Haak is working with Lazaridis on the Corded Ware paper, and so would presumably be aware of their current thinking on the whole subject of Yamnaya and the Indo-Europeans. This is all on the level of reading the tea leaves, so fire away.
My first major surprise was how much time they spent discussing the Anatolian theory of the spread of the Indo-European languages. To hear forum type people talk, I thought it was supposed to be as dead and discredited as last month's poll results. I thought the Pontic Caspian theory, while it was also discussed, almost seemed to get short shrift. I don't see how that could square with David Anthony being a collaborating author on the Samara paper. (Brandt et al also seem to waffle a bit...are they talking about the old Renfrew theory, the new Renfrew theory, or the Gramkelidze and Ivanov slightly later "Armenian" theory?)
There's also an intriguing graphic which includes Yamnaya which shows an arrow going from the south Caucasus into the Pontic Steppe with a question mark where the date should be. Am I reading it correctly?
Then there's the whole issue of R1b/R1a. They come down on the side of R1a coming into Europe proper with Corded Ware, and I think they're saying that came from Yamnaya. When it comes to R1b, they seem to be saying it was the Bell Beaker male lineage, and it along with some forms of mtDna "H", came from Iberia. The question is, how do they come to that conclusion, other than the fact that it's spread all over western Europe? Also, they're silent as to how it got there. It had to come from the east, but when, and what was the precise route? Was it Copper Age, and it spread, as Jean Manco has maintained, after breaking off at the Danube and going overland for a while? Or was it Copper Age and spread by sea to Iberia, bringing metallurgy with it?
Or, as Aberdeen has suggested, did it and some of the H lineages spread along the coast of North Africa, or indeed both coasts of the Mediterranean, and we just haven't found the traces yet?
Which brings me to their discussions of mtDna "H". They do support the idea that it is a Near Eastern/Caucasus lineage, but they give it a Mesolithic era spread into Europe, mainly, I think, because they accept the authenticity of the Iberian finds, but secondarily because of the reports that there is one find in Karelia and that preliminary results from Greece indicate that southeastern Europe also had a varied mitochondrial "package", and one that didn't include haplogroup "U". They also indicate a spread of other forms of "H" up into eastern Europe directly from the Near East.
So, what are we to make of this? I suppose I would say that I'm not sure about those Iberian results. However, the more interesting question to me is what were these Iberian carriers of mtDna H1 and H3 like autosomally? The authors devote quite some time to Iberia. Based on their categorization of "H" as mesolithic, they find more "mesolithic hunter gatherer" ancestry in Iberia. (This also influences all of their graphs about the changes in representation of the three major European groups throughout the applicable periods of pre-history." )
However, does that square with what we know about the modern Iberians autosomally? The far northern Spaniards are 72% EEF, while the rest of them are 83% EEF. In the far northwestern and northeastern areas of Europe, where it has been hypothesized that a lot of hunter gatherers sought refuge, EEF figures are about forty. So, why are the numbers in Iberia so high? A few options occur to me, but I'm sure there are others:
l. The mtDna carriers of "H" who got to Europe perhaps ahead of farming nevertheless were autosomally not all that different from the people who brought farming to Europe. This would tie into the caveat I've always proposed that we don't yet know the genetic composition of the people in Italy, Greece, etc. (and perhaps central and southern Iberia) just before the arrival of farming.
2. Additional EEF was brought to Spain subsequently, either with the Indo-Europeans, or with the Berbers during the long Muslim domination.
There's also some information about the changes which took place in Europe during the Middle Neolithic, (cleaning up the ambiguity from the prior paper) involving the increasing incorporation of female hunter-gatherers, which, of course, would have changed the autosomal picture as well. I have to review this section more carefully ( the whole paper actually) because it's very complicated. I'm not quite sure if they're saying that in central Europe the hunter-gatherers didn't last, but in places like southern Scandinavia, there were fewer, "pioneer" farmers, so there was more acculturation going on than a swamping of the genetics. This more mixed group then moved south into central Europe with climate changes? So, would this explain why, if Yamnaya turns out to be heavily EEF like, the early Bronze Age people have more WHG in them than the math would indicate should be the case? What the paper doesn't satisfactorily indicate is why, if this was driven overwhelmingly by incorporation of female hunter-gatherers into farmer groups and not vice versa, we have so many yDna I2 groups and even "I' in a Neolithic context.
http://www.researchgate.net/publica...rope__The_known_knowns_and_the_known_unknowns
One great thing about it is that it summarizes and provides links to all the data we currently have about aDna.
I only went through it once quickly, but there are also some assertions, or speculations, really, that are extremely interesting, although I have my doubts about some of them. They're also quite interesting if you consider them in light of the fact that Haak is working with Lazaridis on the Corded Ware paper, and so would presumably be aware of their current thinking on the whole subject of Yamnaya and the Indo-Europeans. This is all on the level of reading the tea leaves, so fire away.
My first major surprise was how much time they spent discussing the Anatolian theory of the spread of the Indo-European languages. To hear forum type people talk, I thought it was supposed to be as dead and discredited as last month's poll results. I thought the Pontic Caspian theory, while it was also discussed, almost seemed to get short shrift. I don't see how that could square with David Anthony being a collaborating author on the Samara paper. (Brandt et al also seem to waffle a bit...are they talking about the old Renfrew theory, the new Renfrew theory, or the Gramkelidze and Ivanov slightly later "Armenian" theory?)
There's also an intriguing graphic which includes Yamnaya which shows an arrow going from the south Caucasus into the Pontic Steppe with a question mark where the date should be. Am I reading it correctly?
Then there's the whole issue of R1b/R1a. They come down on the side of R1a coming into Europe proper with Corded Ware, and I think they're saying that came from Yamnaya. When it comes to R1b, they seem to be saying it was the Bell Beaker male lineage, and it along with some forms of mtDna "H", came from Iberia. The question is, how do they come to that conclusion, other than the fact that it's spread all over western Europe? Also, they're silent as to how it got there. It had to come from the east, but when, and what was the precise route? Was it Copper Age, and it spread, as Jean Manco has maintained, after breaking off at the Danube and going overland for a while? Or was it Copper Age and spread by sea to Iberia, bringing metallurgy with it?
Or, as Aberdeen has suggested, did it and some of the H lineages spread along the coast of North Africa, or indeed both coasts of the Mediterranean, and we just haven't found the traces yet?
Which brings me to their discussions of mtDna "H". They do support the idea that it is a Near Eastern/Caucasus lineage, but they give it a Mesolithic era spread into Europe, mainly, I think, because they accept the authenticity of the Iberian finds, but secondarily because of the reports that there is one find in Karelia and that preliminary results from Greece indicate that southeastern Europe also had a varied mitochondrial "package", and one that didn't include haplogroup "U". They also indicate a spread of other forms of "H" up into eastern Europe directly from the Near East.
So, what are we to make of this? I suppose I would say that I'm not sure about those Iberian results. However, the more interesting question to me is what were these Iberian carriers of mtDna H1 and H3 like autosomally? The authors devote quite some time to Iberia. Based on their categorization of "H" as mesolithic, they find more "mesolithic hunter gatherer" ancestry in Iberia. (This also influences all of their graphs about the changes in representation of the three major European groups throughout the applicable periods of pre-history." )
However, does that square with what we know about the modern Iberians autosomally? The far northern Spaniards are 72% EEF, while the rest of them are 83% EEF. In the far northwestern and northeastern areas of Europe, where it has been hypothesized that a lot of hunter gatherers sought refuge, EEF figures are about forty. So, why are the numbers in Iberia so high? A few options occur to me, but I'm sure there are others:
l. The mtDna carriers of "H" who got to Europe perhaps ahead of farming nevertheless were autosomally not all that different from the people who brought farming to Europe. This would tie into the caveat I've always proposed that we don't yet know the genetic composition of the people in Italy, Greece, etc. (and perhaps central and southern Iberia) just before the arrival of farming.
2. Additional EEF was brought to Spain subsequently, either with the Indo-Europeans, or with the Berbers during the long Muslim domination.
There's also some information about the changes which took place in Europe during the Middle Neolithic, (cleaning up the ambiguity from the prior paper) involving the increasing incorporation of female hunter-gatherers, which, of course, would have changed the autosomal picture as well. I have to review this section more carefully ( the whole paper actually) because it's very complicated. I'm not quite sure if they're saying that in central Europe the hunter-gatherers didn't last, but in places like southern Scandinavia, there were fewer, "pioneer" farmers, so there was more acculturation going on than a swamping of the genetics. This more mixed group then moved south into central Europe with climate changes? So, would this explain why, if Yamnaya turns out to be heavily EEF like, the early Bronze Age people have more WHG in them than the math would indicate should be the case? What the paper doesn't satisfactorily indicate is why, if this was driven overwhelmingly by incorporation of female hunter-gatherers into farmer groups and not vice versa, we have so many yDna I2 groups and even "I' in a Neolithic context.