Ancient steppe dark/light pigmentation, a surprising pattern unlike modern-day clines

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Check this:

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2014/03/dark-pigmentation-of-eneolithic-and.html

http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthr...ze-Age-kurgan-groups-from-eastern-Europe-quot

From Dienekes:

(...) That would of course also imply that people from Central Asia and Siberia (where the Scythians may have come from) were originally lighter than Europeans which does find support from an older study on southern Siberian remains. Ironically, if that is the case, it would mean that the famous light-pigmented mummies of different parts of Inner Asia may not be long-lost European descendants -- as it has sometimes been presumed on the basis of modern-day clines of pigmentation. As usual, ancient DNA continues to surprise. (...)

Indeed recent findings suggest that in the Bronze Age the distribution of pigmentation in the Eurasian steppe was much different than it is today, with Central Asians and Siberians (such as people of Andronovo-Sintashta, Tashtyk, Tagar, Pazyryk, Karasuk cultures, Siberian-Scythians of the Altai region and Xiaohe mummies of the Tarim Basin), being lighter-haired and generally lighter-pigmented than people living to the west of them, such as steppe people of Yamnaya and Catacomb cultures in the eastern European steppe:

Pigmentation deduced so far from aDNA of some ancient steppe remains is as follows:

- Yamnaya culture - dark hair pigmentation; mixed eyes (light and dark colours); darker skin
- Catacomb culture - predominantly dark pigmentation just like in case of Yamnaya culture
- Xiaohe mummies - light brown, dark brown, chestnut, red and black hair colours
- Andronovo-Sintashta - blond, light brown, dark brown hair; mixed eyes (light & dark); fair to medium skin
- Mongolian Altai - dark brown, brown, dark blond, black hair; eyes mainly brown
- Tagar culture - blond and brown hair; mixed eyes (blue, green, brown); skin fair to medium
- Tashtyk culture (samples from Khakassia) - blond, brown hair; blue and green eyes; skin fair to medium
- Pazyryk culture - blond ("Ukok Plateau Princess"), brown, black ("Amazon of Ak-Alach") hair
- Karasuk culture - mixed eyes (light and dark, that is blue, green and brown)
- Mezocsat culture (in Hungary) - one sample - dark blond hair and brown eyes

Moreover, that pattern seems to correlate also with two major haplogroups, R1b and R1a:

1) In the western steppe during the Bronze Age: darker pigmentation, mostly R1b:
2) In the eastern steppe during the Bronze Age: lighter pigmentation, mostly R1a:

Map: http://s30.postimg.org/4sarvtydt/Steppe_R1a_and_R1b.png

Steppe_R1a_and_R1b.png


Surprising - isn't it ??? :unsure:

As for dating of R1a samples - check my thread (later I will start a similar one about R1b):

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...gical-cultures?p=464498&viewfull=1#post464498

R1a_Asia_dates.png
 
Thinks are coming to view these days. We are getting enough samples these days to start putting statistics together. Good job dude!!!

I don't think it was surprising though. Mezolithic R1a was found farther north than R1b so should have carried more blond features, by means of natural selection.
 
the articles and blog comments are dated to 2014. Somewhat outdated.
 
Of course I count also brown hair (except for dark brown) as light / fair hair.

However, when it comes to "pure blondes", the pattern is pretty much the same.

Let's see where does the oldest (to date) evidence of blondness come from.

1) Cases of ancient blondes where hair pigmentation survived:

The oldest discovered so-far example of a blond person from Scandinavia is a Bronze Age Egtved girl (dated to 1390-1370 BC). Egtved girl died in Denmark, but she was born more to the south, in Central Europe, as examination of isotope ratios in her tooth enamel shows.

Two Bronze Age blond mummies from Xiaohe in the Tarim Basin (Xinjiang), are much older than Egtved girl (dated to ca. 1800 BC).

2) And cases where hair pigmentation was deduced from genes:

Old blondes (1800-1400 BC) from the borderland of Russia-Kazakhstan-Mongolia-China include individuals of Andronovo culture, S09 (woman) and S16 (man) described by Keyser 2009, "Ancient DNA provides new insights into the history of south Siberian Kurgan people".

As well as male individual TU34 from Takhilgat Uzuur in Mongolian Altai (ca. 1010 BC), who was dark blond with brown eyes, described in Hollard 2014, "Strong genetic admixture in the Altai at the Middle Bronze Age revealed by uniparental and ancestry informative markers".

Blond-haired people could be present in western China and in the Altai even 500 years before they appeared in Denmark.

Modern ethnic groups such as Kalash, Nuristanis, Tajiks, Uyghurs, Pashtuns, etc. have preserved these features to some extent.
 
Blond-haired people could be present in western China and in the Altai even 500 years before they appeared in Denmark.

Based on DNA, some of the LBK farmers are predicted to have Blonde hair.
 
Maybe in the future a set of SNPs will be found that can predict hair color very accurately. If that does happen, we'll probably see surprising results in Ancient DNA. Who would have predicted Dark skin/Blue eyes in Mesolithic? I wouldn't be surprised if an Upper Palaeolithic Blonde pops up. It certainly existed back then, just maybe wasn't as popular. We already know Red hair was in Mesolithic Sweden. Blonde is much more popular and has similar distribution, why couldn't it had existed back then? We can see the modern-set of traits were there in circa 2500 BC. It doesn't mean no one was similar earlier.
 
RISE 98 in southern Sweden has the earliest known occurrence of R1b-U106. Maybe this is where that branch of R1b acquired most its blond hair from: from mixing with both the Y-dna I hunter gatherers, some samples of which have genes associated with blond hair, and the R1a Battle Axe people there who were a subgroup of Corded Ware: http://forums.familytreedna.com/showthread.php?t=37971

 
Indeed recent findings suggest that in the Bronze Age the distribution of pigmentation in the Eurasian steppe was much different than it is today

It is surprising. There have been East Asian-looking people, European-looking people, and South Asian-looking people who have called it home and lived there as natives for 1,000s of years. Even today it harbors very distinct populations and hybrid populations. Look at Indians and Nepalese! They're of very differnt genetic-backgrounds and look very differnt.
 
Check this:

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2014/03/dark-pigmentation-of-eneolithic-and.html

http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthr...ze-Age-kurgan-groups-from-eastern-Europe-quot

From Dienekes:



Indeed recent findings suggest that in the Bronze Age the distribution of pigmentation in the Eurasian steppe was much different than it is today, with Central Asians and Siberians (such as people of Andronovo-Sintashta, Tashtyk, Tagar, Pazyryk, Karasuk cultures, Siberian-Scythians of the Altai region and Xiaohe mummies of the Tarim Basin), being lighter-haired and generally lighter-pigmented than people living to the west of them, such as steppe people of Yamnaya and Catacomb cultures in the eastern European steppe:

Pigmentation deduced so far from aDNA of some ancient steppe remains is as follows:

- Yamnaya culture - dark hair pigmentation; mixed eyes (light and dark colours); darker skin
- Catacomb culture - predominantly dark pigmentation just like in case of Yamnaya culture
- Xiaohe mummies - light brown, dark brown, chestnut, red and black hair colours
- Andronovo-Sintashta - blond, light brown, dark brown hair; mixed eyes (light & dark); fair to medium skin
- Mongolian Altai - dark brown, brown, dark blond, black hair; eyes mainly brown
- Tagar culture - blond and brown hair; mixed eyes (blue, green, brown); skin fair to medium
- Tashtyk culture (samples from Khakassia) - blond, brown hair; blue and green eyes; skin fair to medium
- Pazyryk culture - blond ("Ukok Plateau Princess"), brown, black ("Amazon of Ak-Alach") hair
- Karasuk culture - mixed eyes (light and dark, that is blue, green and brown)
- Mezocsat culture (in Hungary) - one sample - dark blond hair and brown eyes

Moreover, that pattern seems to correlate also with two major haplogroups, R1b and R1a:

1) In the western steppe during the Bronze Age: darker pigmentation, mostly R1b:
2) In the eastern steppe during the Bronze Age: lighter pigmentation, mostly R1a:

Map: http://s30.postimg.org/4sarvtydt/Steppe_R1a_and_R1b.png

Steppe_R1a_and_R1b.png


Surprising - isn't it ??? :unsure:

As for dating of R1a samples - check my thread (later I will start a similar one about R1b):

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...gical-cultures?p=464498&viewfull=1#post464498

R1a_Asia_dates.png

I don't think the evidence we have so far necessarily supports this pattern of a movement of blonde hair or even of "fair" pigmentation from east to west in the Bronze Age.

We have, for example, a person predicted to be blonde or light brown haired and blue eyed in Neolithic hungary in 5,000 BC.* That's thousands of years before the time of those Bronze Age R1a samples. (All of these people were autosomally EEF)

ncomms6257-f3.jpg


ncomms6257-f2.jpg


Those graphics are from Gamba et al.

If Allentoft et al is correct and Sintashta, for example, represents a movement of Corded Ware people to the east, I think it could be argued that the combination of de-pigmentation traits that created this phenotype moved east with them. There is also the fact that thousands of years passed during which positive selection could have been operating on these people once the combination existed.

(I actually have some questions about that movement, as these people seem even more "western" than Corded Ware. In that regard I think this statement by Dienekes is interesting:

"The third conclusion is that the later steppe cultures of the Sintashta and Andronovo (putative Indo-Iranians according to some), were not a continuation of the Yamnaya-Afanasievo people, but had extra Neolithic farmer ancestry. So, it seems that Neolithic farmers entered the steppe, and the development of steppe cultures did not happen in isolation. Whether this involved migration of Corded Ware people (as the authors prefer), who were already a mixture of Yamnaya and Neolithic farmers, or some other mixture of Neolithic farmers with steppe populations (e.g., Tripolye plus Yamnaya) remains to be seen."

http://www.dienekes.blogspot.com/2015/06/into-out-of-and-across-eurasian-steppe.html

We'll have to see what more samples tell us.)

I do agree that it is surprising that the Yamnaya and Catacomb people were so dark, even the Indo-Europeans who went into Poland, for example, if those initial reports on the Bronze Age Polish warrior turn out to be correct, at least with regard to hair and eye color, for example. (Those 19th century "Aryan" theorists must be spinning in their graves.)

*Ed. 4400 BC
 
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There's no very accurate way to predict hair color with known SNPs IMO.

Looking at preserved hair, I once heard all Bronze age Kurgans in Europe(Russia-Germany) with preserved hair had Black hair. I was able to get data from 10 Tarim mummies(3,000-4,000YBP), 3 Bronze age Danes(3,000YBP), and 2 Iron age Sycthians. 73%(11/15) had Brown/Black, 20%(3/15) had Blonde, 6.7%(1/15) had Brown/Blonde. There was no difference between the groups. It looks like not much has changed since 3,000-4,000YBP.

Those three groups must have had a common ancestor in East Europe before 2000 BC where they got 26.7% Blonde-influenced hair from. It probably wasn't Steppe-derived, so the only one left is EEF/WHG like Neolithic Central Europeans.

Most of our "Neolithic Central European" with pigmentation-data are Early Neolithic and were probably 80%+ Neolithic Anatolian, but still about 40% Light eyed. Later Neolithic Europeans had a lot more WHG and some were maybe more WHG than Neolithic Anatolian. Those ones may have been like 60-80% Light eyed. We don't have much data on their status in rs16891982 either. They may have had a high percentage of the G allele which can help explain the rise that we see in the G allele after 3000 BC.

It's possible some WHG/EEF hyprids in the big chunk of land that separates Ukraine from Germany, were largely Blonde haired. Then after Steppe-groups mixed with them, genes for Blonde hair were spread all over Europe and into Central Asia. It makes sense.
 
There's no very accurate way to predict hair color with known SNPs IMO.

Looking at preserved hair, I once heard all Bronze age Kurgans in Europe(Russia-Germany) with preserved hair had Black hair. I was able to get data from 10 Tarim mummies(3,000-4,000YBP), 3 Bronze age Danes(3,000YBP), and 2 Iron age Sycthians. 73%(11/15) had Brown/Black, 20%(3/15) had Blonde, 6.7%(1/15) had Brown/Blonde. There was no difference between the groups. It looks like not much has changed since 3,000-4,000YBP.

Those three groups must have had a common ancestor in East Europe before 2000 BC where they got 26.7% Blonde-influenced hair from. It probably wasn't Steppe-derived, so the only one left is EEF/WHG like Neolithic Central Europeans.

Most of our "Neolithic Central European" with pigmentation-data are Early Neolithic and were probably 80%+ Neolithic Anatolian, but still about 40% Light eyed. Later Neolithic Europeans had a lot more WHG and some were maybe more WHG than Neolithic Anatolian. Those ones may have been like 60-80% Light eyed. We don't have much data on their status in rs16891982 either. They may have had a high percentage of the G allele which can help explain the rise that we see in the G allele after 3000 BC.

It's possible some WHG/EEF hyprids in the big chunk of land that separates Ukraine from Germany, were largely Blonde haired. Then after Steppe-groups mixed with them, genes for Blonde hair were spread all over Europe and into Central Asia. It makes sense.

I don't want to de-rail this thread, but could you just provide a link to data showing that later Central European farmers were "more WHG than Neolithic Anatolian", keeping in mind that EEF may indeed equal Neolithic Anatolian.

Ed. I do agree that the hair color predictions are rather imprecise.
 
I don't want to de-rail this thread, but could you just provide a link to data showing that later Central European farmers were "more WHG than Neolithic Anatolian", keeping in mind that EEF may indeed equal Neolithic Anatolian.

Ed. I do agree that the hair color predictions are rather imprecise.

The point is they had a lot more WHG. I haven't kept track of people doing tests on Ancient DNA, but I do know by 3000 BC WHG rose a lot. A Bronze age Hungarian of good coverage from Allentoft scored 57% WHG in ANE K8 and Stuttgart scored 28%. The BA_Hung also had 10% ANE, so if it came from the Steppe, there must have been people who would score 60%+ WHG in Hungary earlier.
 
The point is they had a lot more WHG. I haven't kept track of people doing tests on Ancient DNA, but I do know by 3000 BC WHG rose a lot. A Bronze age Hungarian of good coverage from Allentoft scored 57% WHG in ANE K8 and Stuttgart scored 28%. The BA_Hung also had 10% ANE, so if it came from the Steppe, there must have been people who would score 60%+ WHG in Hungary earlier.

The point is that you make statements despite not keeping track on the recent data or giving attention to what other tell you.

I think it was mentioned at least a million times (at least felt like it) here and anywhere else in various threads that Neolithic Anatolian farmers were almost indistinguishable to Central European farmers (even of Late Neolithic period such as Ötzi), that it's kind of hard for me to believe that you hadn't the chance once to "keep track of it".

Not everything what apears like WHG among farmers is really WHG but simply West Eurasian H&G ancestry (also known as UHG) which shares recent ancestry with WHG.

Farmers in the Near East were already the result of a fusion between Basal Eurasian and something UHG-WHG like. Some Farmers in Central Europe had absorbed additional WHG admixure but the total amount of WHG does not equal the amoung of WHG admixture among farmers.

As example let's say a farmer in Central Europe has close to ~50% WHG-UHG like affinity. Only 20% of this is real WHG admixture. The rest is simply ancient DNA what farmers and WHG share.

Trying to pinpoint the WHG admixture among farmers by taking the total frequency of WHG among EEF is like trying to pinpoint the "EHG" admixture in Yamna by simply taking the total frequency of WHG and ANE in them not taking into account that the "teal" farmers quite well had allot of ANE and WHG themselves.
 
@Alan,

I know about the abstracts about Neolithic Anatolians and the low-cover one BARC100. No one has said they were the same as EEF. We'll have to wait for Isoif Lazardis and David Reich's paper to be out, I'm sure they attempted to get Neo_Anatolia percentage for Neolithic Europeans. There's a lot more WHG in the younger the Neolithic sample is.
 
The point is they had a lot more WHG. I haven't kept track of people doing tests on Ancient DNA, but I do know by 3000 BC WHG rose a lot. A Bronze age Hungarian of good coverage from Allentoft scored 57% WHG in ANE K8 and Stuttgart scored 28%. The BA_Hung also had 10% ANE, so if it came from the Steppe, there must have been people who would score 60%+ WHG in Hungary earlier.


Bronze Age is by definition not "Central European farmer", Fire-Haired. You claimed that "later Neolithic farmers" had more WHG than "Anatolian Neolithic ancestry", by which I'm assuming that you mean more ancestry from Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers than from farmers from the Near East via Anatolia. (I don't want to sound pedantic, but I think we have to define our terms.)

I questioned that because I suspect that the WHG ancestry in those calculators might actually include ancestry that had been part of the ancestral mix in the Near East, or at least parts of it, for thousands if not tens of thousands of years. If the one ancient farmer sample we have from Anatolia is representative then that type of ancestry was indeed present in the Anatolian farmers before they ever got to Europe. Lazaridis et al recognized that possibility in their paper when they said that the "new" UHG/WHG might only amount to a few percent.

(I'm aware no academics have opined about this yet; I'm getting that from genome bloggers. )

It's true that the only real way to know how much Mesolithic European hunter gatherer ancestry was incorporated would be to compare one of the Anatolian farmer samples from the upcoming Lazaridis paper (or an average of them) to Stuttgart and to later Neolithic samples in Europe. (The percentages may differ in different parts of Europe.)

Those calculators may turn out to be very misleading indeed.

I wasn't playing gotcha, btw. I thought perhaps the genomes had been published during my hiatus.
 
@Alan,

I know about the abstracts about Neolithic Anatolians and the low-cover one BARC100. No one has said they were the same as EEF. We'll have to wait for Isoif Lazardis and David Reich's paper to be out, I'm sure they attempted to get Neo_Anatolia percentage for Neolithic Europeans. There's a lot more WHG in the younger the Neolithic sample is.

David said, there are dozen of other farmer samples published from various Anatolian places, including Catal Hoyuk in Central Anatolia and they were all very much EEF.
 
I questioned that because I suspect that the WHG ancestry in those calculators might actually include ancestry that had been part of the ancestral mix in the Near East, or at least parts of it, for thousands if not tens of thousands of years. If the one ancient farmer sample we have from Anatolia is representative then that type of ancestry was indeed present in the Anatolian farmers before they ever got to Europe. Lazaridis et al recognized that possibility in their paper when they said that the "new" UHG/WHG might only amount to a few percent.

David wrote in the comment section that other Anatolian samples have been published. And all farmer samples from various sites, such as Catal Hoyuk were pretty much EEF and identical to Barcin according to him, with the only exception of calcolthic "East Anatolian" (more like Transcaucasian and Iranian Plateau ), seemed to have strong ANE admixture and were what we wold call "teal like".

This prety much was the confirmation for my theory all along. I wrote years ago that the ancient northern Near East at least by mid-late Neolithic was "divided" into two groups. One "Western farmers"(Anatolian and northern Levant) with typical EEF DNA and one "Eastern farmers/Herders" with EEF+ANE genetics through ANE admixture they absorbed from the Iranian Plateau and further East.

These "Eastern farmers" would have been very much somthing "teal like", the group which merged with EHG in the Steppes and produced Yamna.
 
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David wrote in the comment section that other Anatolian samples have been published. And all farmer samples from various sites, such as Catal Hoyuk were pretty much EEF and identical to Barcin according to him, with the only exception of calcolthic "East Anatolian" (more like Transcaucasian and Iranian Plateau ), seemed to have strong ANE admixture and where what we wold call "teal like".

This prety much was the confirmation for my theory all along. I wrote years ago that the ancient northern Near East at least by mid-late Neolithic was "divided" into two groups. One "Western farmers"(Anatolian and northern Levant) with typical EEF DNA and one "Eastern farmers/Herders" with EEF+ANE genetics through ANE admixture they absorbed from the Iranian Plateau and further East.

These "Eastern farmers" would have been very much somthing "teal like", the group which merged with EHG in the Steppes and produced Yamna.

Strange. I can't find any paper on ancient Anatolian Neolithic farmer dna other than the Barcin one.
 
Strange. I can't find any paper on ancient Anatolian Neolithic farmer dna other than the Barcin one.

There is no paper yet but it seems just like with Barcin. David got his information from some side. I don't know how he comes to this conclusion but the way he said it, it looked like he has seen some results and that they were EEF.

I think a new Lazaridis paper is coming out. This should have some Catal Hoyuk samples on it.
 

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