Corded Ware - Real Son or Step Son of Yamna?

There are discussions whether Corded Ware was genetically Indo-European or just Indo-Europeanised culture. So, what is similar and what is different in Corded Ware and Yamna?

Here a text by Russian archeologyst Klein who participated in Yamna excavations, google translate:
"...Origin of Corded Ware - does it come from Central Europe or Yamna? According to article (Allentoft et al, my remark) Bronze Age culture populations arrived from the Steppe, from Yamna population. It deals more with the Corded Ware culture (Central, Northern and Eastern Europe), to a lesser extent - Beaker culture (Western Europe). Meanwhile, I, of course, can not keep track of the genetic relationships between groups, but I can judge about the cultural features that are characteristic for these populations. So, between the cultures of the Corded Ware culture and the Yamna -there is a very big difference.

The whole structure of the Corded Ware ceramics is built on the model (etalon), that is alien to early Yamna culture and similar to Central European culture Funnelbeaker that existed in the north of Central Europe in neighborhood to Yamna: the main forms of vessels - an amphora and a cup is present both in Corded Ware and Funnelbeaker. Culture Funnelbeaker is also similar to the Corded Ware culture by the presence of a rope ornamentation and armament - stone battle axes, hammers. In Yamna culture there were different ceramics and weaponry.

However, similar to the Yamna Corded Ware culture had kurgan burials, while the Funnelbeaker culture megalithic structures..."

Ok, that was old school opinion. What can be seen from genetics so far?
1) Corded Ware is ruled by R1a clans; Yamna by R1b
2) Corded Ware has more farmer derived and more WHG derived ancestry than Yamna. Yamna has more EHG. But Corded also has EHG, which Neolithic cultures in Europe lacked.
3) Haak et al pictured Corded Ware as 75%+ Yamna or Yamna like ancestry + extra portion of EEF/ENF and small extra portion of WHG. Also Haak's paper makes few other statements: Corded was in between Middle Neolithic Europe and Yamna. WHG ancestry revived in Middle Neolithic before Yamna.

So, what is the relation between Yamna and Corded? How much of those 70% ancestry is Yamna and how much "Yamna like"?

Arvistro: 2) Corded Ware has more farmer derived and more WHG derived ancestry than Yamna. Yamna has more EHG. But Corded also has EHG, which Neolithic cultures in Europe lacked.

Click to expand...

Could you please post the data for this?

Also, Haak's formulation was based on certain Corded Ware samples. Are the new Allentoft samples different, and if they are, are they different because they're from a different area of the horizon or from a different time?

It is difficult to compare Haak and Allentoft because they use different definions for farmer.
Yet both Haak defines Corded as having extra portion of farmer and Allentoft claims that Corded had extra farmer. This also fits with hobbyists finds. It seems definition of farmer does not impact the fact that Corded had relatively more of it. Baltic/Estonian Corded had more extra WHG, yet her farmer was still higher than Yamna.

Remember I was confused why Lithuania had more farmer than Yamna. I found out that Corded had even more farmer and apparently mixing with Baltic locals decreased it.

As to EHG it is logical. Modern top % of this thing is ~22% in Baltics/Norway (Haak data). Yamna had 50% according to famous statement. There are no known Corded genes with more or even close ANE/EHG to Yamna.

Will try to find & compare different data later this week.

This for starter:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11vadY5p7JajDxpFbbEOjbIP0IoBdY2mG5YvzXzaG3c0/htmlview?pli=1

Old Haak et al with k8. CW seems as mix of mid Neolithic Germany (~50/50 ENF/WHG) and Yamna (~35 ANE, ~25 ENF, ~35 WHG).

Unfortunately cant find Allentoft with good old k8. Now eurogenes have strange calcs with Euro_HG eating portion of ENF and portion of ANE..

Hard to say yet.

If Corded Ware is the parent of the cultures east of Yamnaya then that would seem to limit the options.

If the Samara samples fully represent Yamnaya then either
- the Yamnaya R1b expanded as tribal migrations east and west and were later over run in the same areas by a later expansion of R1a
- the Yamnaya R1b expanded but in small groups and for some reason acted as a catalyst on the populations along their route which led to those populations expanding

but if the Samara samples just represent a subset of Yamnaya (perhaps specifically connected to the Kargaly copper field) then another as yet unsampled part of Yamnaya might be a clear parent of Corded Ware in which case there's no mystery.

But generally option (c) confused.

Some comparisons of different genomes. Unfortunately we have only one cross-studies comparison. That is done by eurogenes.

So, let's see K8.
Yamnaya Haak (I used average, since all Yamnaya samples were about same):
35% Hindu Kush
63% Euro_HG
2% Amerindian
0% else

Yamnaya Allentoft:
38% Hindu Kush
61% EuroHG
1% Amerind

Corded Ware Estonian, RISE000:
13% Hindu Kush
79% EuroHG
8% Middle Eastern

Unetice RISE 150:
10% Hindu Kush
78% EuroHG
10% Middle Eastern

Unetice RISE 577:
13% Hindu Kush
68% EuroHG
19% Middle Eastern

Sintashta RISE averages:
15% Hindu Kush
78% EuroHG
6% Middle Eastern

Judged by whatever is meant as Hindu Kush, there is no way how Yamna can arithmetically be more than 15/35 (43%) or 10/35 (29%) of Corded Autosomally.

If we look at Estonian Corded Ware, then again arithmetically, if we max Yamna ancestry (believe that all Hindu Kush comes from Yamna) we get this:
37% of Yamna + 63% of someone with 85% EuroHG and 15% Near Eastern.

Also Sintashta averages look just like Estonian Corded Ware.

Pity there is no ANE, EEF, WHG for all this. That would make things more comparable. But like I said, whatever we use Corded Ware has more farmer and WHG and less ANE than Yamna.

I had proposed that maybe Haplogroups K and P have had origins in India. Hindu Kush is next door to Iran. During the Ice Age the Persian Gulf was low land or marshy. Gradually the HG moved eastward by sea (Arabian Sea) and land towards the Hindu Kush valleys. Haplogroups K and P may have been wide spread and very old. The present distribution of Hg R, Q N and O show a focal point from India.. According to Karafet, Haplogroups K2 and P originated in Sundaland (modern day Indonesia). But the trek of Hg P from Indonesia to Siberia seems rather tenuous if not impossible. The rarity of Hg K and P in India could be accounted for if they are older and the Toba eruption 75,000 years ago wiped out the Humans in India east of the Hindu Kush.

Such an autosomal comparison from Davidski's blog:

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2015/06/k8-results-for-selected-allentoft-et-al.html

I've added some descriptions so it is more transparent:

http://oi61.tinypic.com/33bflzn.jpg

Geographically Yamna in this PCA looks located to support Kortlandt's Indo-Uralic theory:
The Dutch linguist Frederik Kortlandt supports a model of Indo-Uralic in which the original Indo-Uralic speakers lived north of the Caspian Sea, and the Proto-Indo-European speakers began as a group that branched off westward from there to come into geographic proximity with the Northwest Caucasian languages, absorbing a Northwest Caucasian lexical blending before moving farther westward to a region north of the Black Sea where their language settled into canonical Proto-Indo-European (2002:1). Allan Bomhard suggests a similar schema in Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis (1996).

Thanks, interesting!

arvistro said:

Geographically Yamna in this PCA looks located to support Kortlandt's Indo-Uralic theory:
The Dutch linguist Frederik Kortlandt supports a model of Indo-Uralic in which the original Indo-Uralic speakers lived north of the Caspian Sea, and the Proto-Indo-European speakers began as a group that branched off westward from there to come into geographic proximity with the Northwest Caucasian languages, absorbing a Northwest Caucasian lexical blending before moving farther westward to a region north of the Black Sea where their language settled into canonical Proto-Indo-European (2002:1). Allan Bomhard suggests a similar schema in Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis (1996).

Click to expand...

Interesting to learn that there is such theory, thanks! I was writing here since years that Indo-European+R1b probably has it's roots further east than Pontic steppe and is influenced by high-cultures more east than the Caucasus. Harappan culture for instance could have played a role. The idea started simply with K12b-Gedrosian four years ago. Well, it is no proof yet, but it's getting stronger and stronger.

arvistro said:

Some comparisons of different genomes. Unfortunately we have only one cross-studies comparison. That is done by eurogenes.

So, let's see K8.
Yamnaya Haak (I used average, since all Yamnaya samples were about same):
35% Hindu Kush
63% Euro_HG
2% Amerindian
0% else

Yamnaya Allentoft:
38% Hindu Kush
61% EuroHG
1% Amerind

Corded Ware Estonian, RISE000:
13% Hindu Kush
79% EuroHG
8% Middle Eastern

Unetice RISE 150:
10% Hindu Kush
78% EuroHG
10% Middle Eastern

Unetice RISE 577:
13% Hindu Kush
68% EuroHG
19% Middle Eastern

Sintashta RISE averages:
15% Hindu Kush
78% EuroHG
6% Middle Eastern

Click to expand...

Arvistro, no offense to you personally, but is this supposed to be taken seriously? Do you even know what "Hindu Kush" means? What happened to the "farmer" that's supposed to be in Corded Ware? What happened to the approximately 50% Armenian that's supposed to be in Yamnaya?

Someone call me when the Reich group or somebody similar makes sense of this.

As for the Uralic theory, it's a total non-starter.

Angela, like I said in these data Corded has Near Eastern that Yamna lacks which corresponds to Allentoft et al.

Previously Haak et al defined Corded as Yamna + extra portion of ENF.

Broader or limited definition of farmer/NE does not impact that Corded has more of it. I hope you have any data or study showing otherwise. You can define ENF/EEF as you feel right, just show me that Yamna has more of it than Corded

About EHG you quoted yourself that Yamna was 50% of it. Modern Euro leaders score ~22%. I doubt you find data with CW higher on EHG than Yamna...

About Kortlandt and Indo-Uralic. This guy is one of leading mainstream linguists and a big name in IE studies. Also maybe you can show a PCA where Yamna plots away from Uralics, for starter. Like between NE Europe and Caucasus? Not between Volga Uralics and Tajiks.
Yamna was 50% EHG, who as we found look Uralic. I think data we have speak for Mr Kourtlandt...

arvistro said:

Angela, like I said in these data Corded has Near Eastern that Yamna lacks which corresponds to Allentoft et al.

Previously Haak et al defined Corded as Yamna + extra portion of ENF.

Broader or limited definition of farmer/NE does not impact that Corded has more of it. I hope you have any data or study showing otherwise. You can define ENF/EEF as you feel right, just show me that Yamna has more of it than Corded

About EHG you quoted yourself that Yamna was 50% of it. Modern Euro leaders score ~22%. I doubt you find data with CW higher on EHG than Yamna...

About Kortlandt and Indo-Uralic. This guy is one of leading mainstream linguists and a big name in IE studies. Also maybe you can show a PCA where Yamna plots away from Uralics, for starter. Like between NE Europe and Caucasus? Not between Volga Uralics and Tajiks.
Yamna was 50% EHG, who as we found look Uralic. I think data we have speak for Mr Kourtlandt...

Click to expand...

Yamna doesn't lack Near Eastern, unless somebody has been able to show that the statistics done in Haak et al are flawed. Is that the case? Whatever happened to their approximately half modern Armenian?

Suddenly Yamnaya are one third "Hindu Kush", a term which you have admitted you don't really understand and can't define. I bet no one else can define it either. What did they do, decide modern Armenians are one third hg and 2/3 "Hindu Kush", so all of a sudden Yamnaya could be two thirds hg?

What about the fact that over 80% of the mtDna of the Yamnaya people is Near Eastern farmer. How does that factor in?

I'm not defining EN or ENF as I see fit. That's what these bloggers and amateurs are doing. Lazaridis et al used an ancient genome of an Early European Farmer to define EEF, and then gave percentages for all major modern European populations based on that. Any amateur analysis can't ignore and has to explain the processes that led to that. Haak et al never defined anybody as part ENF because they're scientists, and academics, and they were using ancient genomes, and they didn't have an early Neolithic farmer from the Near East. EN was still based on Early European farmers.

The only way to know how much admixture there was in Europe between early Neolithic farmers from the NEAR EAST and the hunter gatherers in EUROPE is to use the genome of a farmer from the NEAR EAST whom we can be pretty sure was on the path to Europe, and the genome of a hunter gatherer in Europe and compare those against late Neolithic European populations before the movement of the steppe peoples into Europe. Whether the farmer in the Near East had some Gravettian type WHG is irrelevant. So what? It's just a type of hunter gatherer ancestry. The other ancestry ultimately came from another ancient hunter gatherer. That's not the point of that question. Or is it the point for some people, and if so, why?

We do have a sample of an early Neolithic farmer in Barcin. Why isn't it being used for calculators and for figuring out how much admixture there was in Europe from "European" hunter-gatherers? It must be usable to some degree because the statement was obviously made by someone that it's almost identical to Stuttgart.

I have no quarrel with the statement that Corded Ware has more EEF than Yamnaya. There were MN cultures in the area. Not many EEF genes made it to the Samara region. (We'll have to wait and see what really western steppe people looked like. They may have had more EEF genes from Cucuteni-Tripolye spill overs into the steppe. Kohl believed that carts and mobile pastoralism actually moved from there onto the steppe. We'll see.) At the same time, however, if Corded Ware is two thirds or more "Yamnaya like" then presumably half of that is "modern Armenian like" which by definition is Near Eastern.

As for the genesis of the Yamnaya people, we're only going to figure it out when the ancient genomes in the Caucasus and south of it and in the Stans and maybe indeed in the Hindu Kush are analyzed. Until then, given how wrong some of these calculators have been in the past and the confusion that seems to be reigning, forgive me if I don't bet the farm on the results. If, when we have that data that PCA turns out to be relatively correct, great. It's no skin off my nose, as the saying goes. I fully acknowledge the impact the Indo-Europeans had, and I equally acknowledge the portion of my ancestry which I owe to them, but I don't define myself or my people in terms of them, so I really don't care one way or another who has more or less of it.

Just as an aside, I don't understand why it's false to claim that if people in certain parts of Europe were heavily EHG or WHG or SHG, and Yamnaya was half EHG, the "Yamnaya" component in those countries may be totally "inflated" and not in any real way reflect the actual "migration" of Yamnaya people to those areas, and certainly not reflect their participation in the creation of the "Yamnaya" package, about which we have an entire thread.

Which leads me to the "Uralic" hypothesis. All I can do is direct you to Anthony's book and Mallory's work, and innumerable others.

Good, the main point was about Corded having more farmer and less EHG than Yamna. As to exact proportions I agree that both Allentoft and bloggers tend to decreased them.

Kortlandt's Indo-Uralic fits with Mallory. For example this Kortlandt's quote:
Any proposal which goes beyond the Sredny Stog culture must start from the possible affinities of Indo-European with other language families. It is usually recognized that the
best candidate in this respect is the Uralic language family, while further connections with the Altaic languages and perhaps even Dravidian are possible. The hypothesis that Indo-European is genetically related to a Caucasian language family
or to Afro-Asiatic seems much less probable to me. What we do have to take into account is the typological similarity of Proto-Indo-European to the North-West Caucasian languages. If this similarity can be attributed to areal factors, we may think of Indo-European as a branch of Uralo-Altaic which was transformed under the influence of a Caucasian substratum. It now appears that this view is actually
supported by the archaeological evidence. If it is correct, we may locate the earliest ancestors of the speakers of Proto-Indo-European north of the Caspian Sea in the seventh millennium (cf. Mallory 1989: 192f.).

Angela said:

Just as an aside, I don't understand why it's false to claim that if people in certain parts of Europe were heavily EHG or WHG or SHG, and Yamnaya was half EHG, the "Yamnaya" component in those countries may be totally "inflated" and not in any real way reflect the actual "migration" of Yamnaya people to those areas, and certainly not reflect their participation in the creation of the "Yamnaya" package, about which we have an entire thread.

Click to expand...

I dont have opinion on how much Yamna genes we had in Corded. That is one of reasons for this thread. My theory is not much.
But I do have opinion that Yamna was way more Uralic-ish genetically than Corded

About package. You discuss things of Yamnaya package millenias after PIE. Which is fine for IE but not so for PIE. Bronze weapons and chariots to PIE package is about same as nukes and internet to Christian package.

arvistro said:

I dont have opinion on how much Yamna genes we had in Corded. That is one of reasons for this thread. My theory is not much.
But I do have opinion that Yamna was way more Uralic-ish genetically than Corded

About package. You discuss things of Yamnaya package millenias after PIE. Which is fine for IE but not so for PIE. Bronze weapons and chariots to PIE package is about same as nukes and internet to Christian package.

Click to expand...

So I've been saying for seven to ten years, all the way back to the days of the defunct DNA forums. How nice that people are starting to accept it.

The fact remains that there was a certain "core" package, whatever the source of the original element: pastoralism of domesticated cattle, sheep, goats, etc., some agriculture, the wheel and the use of carts for transport, some forms of early metallurgy. There are also terms for certain specific flora and fauna, and influence not only from Uralic but from Kartvellian. So, it didn't come together in the Uralic zone.

Agree, it did not come together in Uralic zone. Indo-Uralic theory says this:
"..we may think of Indo-European as a branch of Uralo-Altaic which was transformed under the influence of a Caucasian substratum."
Or in more words:
"The Dutch linguist Frederik Kortlandt supports a model of Indo-Uralic in which the original Indo-Uralic speakers lived north of the Caspian Sea, and the Proto-Indo-European speakers began as a group that branched off westward from there to come into geographic proximity with the Northwest Caucasian languages, absorbing a Northwest Caucasian lexical blending before moving farther westward to a region north of the Black Sea where their language settled into canonical Proto-Indo-European (2002:1). Allan Bomhard suggests a similar schema in Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis (1996)"

I'm inclining more to Yamnaya being a catalyst - something to do with copper working - and before IE developed their full military capacity so they couldn't easily expand militarily but instead spread a long way in small groups along the trade routes.

In densely populated farming areas where there they found a source of copper they acted as a political catalyst increasing the power of the local rulers and thus causing certain cultures to rise.

In lower density areas like northern Europe and the Atlantic coast where farming was more marginal they acted as a demographic catalyst by increasing population density in some way connected to cattle.

So Yamnaya as the catalyst and Corded Ware (and the various cultures that spawned from it) as the result.