Chekunova 2014: N1c and R1a samples of Proto-East-Balts (?)

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As for the original homeland of Proto-East-Balts (I will simply call them East Balts below):

According to Russian studies of linguistics, toponymy (including hydronymy) and archaeology, such as these:

- Трубачев О. Н., Топоров В. Н., Лингвистический анализ гидронимов Верхнего Поднепровья
- Седов В.В., Происхождение и ранная истрия Славян
- Седов В. В., Славяние верхнево Поднепровья и Подвинья
- Бернштейн С. Б., Очерк сравнительной граматики славянских языков
- Третьяков П. Н., Памятники зарубинецкой культуры

The Iron Age homeland of East Balts were forest cultures of North-West Russia characterised by hillforts and long barrows.

That network of hillfort-building cultures of the forest zone, included primarily the following four cultures:

- Stroked-pottery culture
- Dnieper-Dvina culture
- Yukhnov culture
- Upper Oka culture

Areas occupied by those Iron Age cultures, contained archaeological sites (both Iron Age and older) described in these papers:

Dolukhanov et al., "The East European Plain on the Eve of Agriculture":

http://www.mas.ncl.ac.uk/~nas13/AS/2009BAR_Int_Ser1964_Dolukhanov_etal.pdf

Dolbunova et al., "Archaeology of lake settlement (North-West Russia)":

https://www.academia.edu/9452168/Ar...azurkevich_A._Polkovnikova_M._Dolbunova_E._ed

In the latter paper we have results of aDNA research, in Table 3. on p. 294 we have 6 samples:

For these samples mtDNA and Y-DNA haplogroups were established (but only superficially, no details about subclades are given):

1) The oldest of these samples is from the turns of the 5th and 4th millennia BC (I bet that this R1a didn't belong to Indo-European branch M198/M417, but it was some more archaic subclade, similar to Karelian R1a dated 5500-5000 BC, or to modern R1a kit of Mr Szpakowski, an ethnic Pole from Belarus):

Sample A3 - site Serteya VIII - dated to ca. 4000 BC; Y-DNA: R1a1, mtDNA: H

2) Three medium-aged samples belong to Zhizhitskaya culture from the mid-3rd millennium BC. It was under strong cultural influence of Corded Ware and/or Globular Amphora cultures. According to Dolukhanov et al. (page 185), Corded or Globular population penetrated this culture, mixing with the locals:

Sample A6 - site Serteya II - dated to ca. 2500 BC; Y-DNA: N1c, mtDNA: H2
Sample A8 - site Naumovo - dated to ca. 2500 BC; Y-DNA: R1a1, mtDNA: H2
Smple A9 - site Serteya II - dated to ca. 2500 BC; Y-DNA: R1a1, mtDNA: H2

3) Two youngest samples (800-400 BC) are Iron Age, part of the network of hillfort-building cultures of the forest zone. R1a (A4) was inside the hillfort, where warrios and craftsmen lived (Dolukhanov et al., p. 187), while N1c (A5) was in "Devichi gory" burial (long barrow/kurgan?) near the lake:

Sample A4 - Anashkino hillfort - dated to ca. 800-400 BC; Y-DNA: R1a1, mtDNA: H
Sample A5 - "Devichi gory" burial - dated to ca. 800-400 BC, Y-DNA: N1c, mtDNA: H2

There is lack of high-resolution data on subclades, but R1a1 and N1c in proportion 1:1 are also today typical haplogroups of East Balts.

Map showing these sites (I couldn't locate "Devichi gory" burial ground, but it was somewhere near the Zhizhitskoye Lake):

http://postimg.org/image/hsmtvl7xd/

map_of_locations.png


I think, that R1a from Zhizhitskaya culture and Anashkino hillfort was of Satem IE origin, while N1c was from Non-Indo-European (Old European or Finnic?) population. So East Balts were a mix of R1a and N1c already when living in forests of North-West Russia, before settling at the Sea.

Was ethnogenesis of East Baslts about mixing of Satem IEs (Globular Amphora or/and Corded Ware) with people of Zhizhitskaya culture?

Zhizhitskaya culture was a Late Neolithic culture of fishermen and farmers, building pile dwellings near lakes and rivers. It was at least partially descended from earlier indigenous North-East European cultures of the Comb Ceramic horizon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit–Comb_Ware_culture

Population of Iron Age cultures of that area (like those from Anashkino hillfort and "Devichi gory") buried their dead in long barrows (long kurgans).

Here is a map showing the area occupied by Zhizhitskaya culture - area number 7 in this map:

This area (No 7) was being penetrated (areas 2 and 16) by people of the Globular Amphora culture (area 1):

http://postimg.org/image/hsmtvl7xd/

6p3vyx.png


Legend to the map:

fjooig.png


Lake Zhizhitskoye - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Zhizhitskoye

========================================

Samples described above: http://s020.radikal.ru/i704/1502/be/a19103cc4d67.png

a19103cc4d67.png
 
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Does anyone know what these N1c people were like beyond the Y chromosome? Were they in the same group as the R1as? My main curiousity is that it looks to me that people in the Artic circle had a very different appearance before the turn of the century, and nowadays are almost indistinguishable from the main countries (Samis etc). This may be inaccurate and just my small observation of pictures, but perhaps these cultures have always had mixed phenotypes.
 
Does anyone know what these N1c people were like beyond the Y chromosome? Were they in the same group as the R1as? My main curiousity is that it looks to me that people in the Artic circle had a very different appearance before the turn of the century, and nowadays are almost indistinguishable from the main countries (Samis etc). This may be inaccurate and just my small observation of pictures, but perhaps these cultures have always had mixed phenotypes.

The members of this forum who are knowledgeable about genetics, have emphasized that Mtdna is determinant in ones phenotype. If you check the map of N1c published by Maciamo at genetics section it is clear that N1c in Europe its an extension of Mongolic people in Europe. So back in time the should have looked like an Eskimo of Alaska looks today. The N1c populations of Europe are distinguishable from other European populations. If you go to Finland, Estonia or some Hungarians, and many Russians you can see that. Google the picture of Russian ex president Yelcin and you will see that his physical appearance is not quite European. His haplotype could very well be N1c.
 
The members of this forum who are knowledgeable about genetics, have emphasized that Mtdna is determinant in ones phenotype. If you check the map of N1c published by Maciamo at genetics section it is clear that N1c in Europe its an extension of Mongolic people in Europe. So back in time the should have looked like an Eskimo of Alaska looks today. The N1c populations of Europe are distinguishable from other European populations. If you go to Finland, Estonia or some Hungarians, and many Russians you can see that. Google the picture of Russian ex president Yelcin and you will see that his physical appearance is not quite European. His haplotype could very well be N1c.
I don't think it is true. We have no idea how N1c folks looked like 5 kya. Perhaps they had some Mongoloid features, perhaps.
 
mtDNA is unrelated to phenotype. mtDNA is your direct maternal line, passed down from mom to kids. Phenotype is caused by differnt genes.
 
I don't think it is true. We have no idea how N1c folks looked like 5 kya. Perhaps they had some Mongoloid features, perhaps.

The Eskimos, because of their location have not had any significant gene inflow from other groups. According to the recent genetic studies the native population of Americas has genetic kinship with Siberians and Australasia's. Clearly the N1c people of Europe are a branch of Siberian people.
 
The Eskimos, because of their location have not had any significant gene inflow from other groups. According to the recent genetic studies the native population of Americas has genetic kinship with Siberians and Australasia's.
And what Native American or even North East Asians have got to do with N1c? Can you point us to any Mongolian/Asian looking people with any substantial amount of N1c?

http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/mongols.html
I don't see any N1c among Mongols.

Clearly the N1c people of Europe are a branch of Siberian people.
Even if they have started their journey in Siberia 5 thousand years ago, it doesn't mean that they were Mongoloid folks there. Especially when we are talking about West Siberia, because back then central Asia was populated mostly by Caucasoid type people.
 
To be honest numerically there is more Chinese N than non-Chinese N.
 
To be honest numerically there is more Chinese N than non-Chinese N.
Your honesty is misplaced. We are talking about subclade N1c, not the entire N haplogroup.
 
Your honesty is misplaced. We are talking about subclade N1c, not the entire N haplogroup.
OK, for N1c Han Chinese are not majority numerically, they are only 44% of total N1c.
 
Also high ANE folk has/had features that used to be commonly marked as Mongoloid. Although more correct term would be Uralic.
Yamna and steppe migrants to Europe according to Gimbutas had those features too in some amount.
I cant help but see N1c origin in either ANE rich or East Asian rich population or both.
 
OK, for N1c Han Chinese are not majority numerically, they are only 44% of total N1c.
You are right, I didn't remember well.
So what do you think about first N1c look in Syberia? Mongoloid?
 
You are right, I didn't remember well.
So what do you think about first N1c look in Syberia? Mongoloid?
Syberian :)

Only thing I can safely bet is "they had features in old books marked as Mongoloid". But whether first n1c was born to Han looking guy or North Asian looking guy or maybe even someone not far from EHG, I dont know.
 
I lived in Sweden and I have taught English in Hungary. Whilst there is a particular type of eye shape of Finnish people and some Sammi blondes, that is the single thing that has a near "asian" appearance. Asians from region to region also have quite different looks. In reality I think a lot of our perceptions about how asians look come from the conformity communism put on squeezing out character from the individual. I also think some degree of their look is from their child rearing by the way babies and locked into their beds rather than genetic. Native Americans often don't look very Asian and they don't have the same child rearing practices. By the same token, perhaps the originators of N1c didn't look asian. With Finns, Sammis, Inuits and other Siberians looking so different it always makes me curious. The tribe hailed as the oldest tribe on earth has the face types of many different modern races which makes it look like they are actually an admixture themselves. I was really interested if facial reconstructions had been done like on the (controversial) Ice Maiden. I could buy the fact that people coming from the Steppes looked like a combination of the Tocharians and Baskhirs. There probably wasn't a universal phenotype at that point, but I would be surprised if a historical source hadn't mentioned the way people looked being Chinese when Romans etc did know what they looked like.
 
Also I haven't seen a single person in Hungary who looks asian apart from asians. Hungarians to me look a more different than English or Danish people look to each other. There are certain looks that are quite common. The kind of Italian look, the Serbian look, the slavic look and the German style are all rather common, and of course people who have Romani heritage. But I never saw someone look Asian who wasn't just from Asia.
 
@EAB,

I dis agree about there being a lot of variation in (East)Asian facial features. In my experiences East Asians are uniform in facial features. In European pops there's plenty of variation. Two brothers can look completely differnt. In African-Americans there's more variation.

I've been to Korean churches, there are Chinese and Korean exchange students at my school, I've grown up knowing Vietnamese people and they all look very similar to each other.
 
@EAB,

I dis agree about there being a lot of variation in (East)Asian facial features. In my experiences East Asians are uniform in facial features. In European pops there's plenty of variation. Two brothers can look completely differnt. In African-Americans there's more variation.

I've been to Korean churches, there are Chinese and Korean exchange students at my school, I've grown up knowing Vietnamese people and they all look very similar to each other.

Maybe this is because "Mongoloid look" is determined by just one (?) mutation, it seems:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ectodysplasin_A_receptor#East_Asian_characteristics

A point mutation in EDAR, 370A, found in most East Asians but not common in African or European populations, is thought to be responsible for a number of differences between these populations (...) The 370A mutation arose in humans approximately 30,000 years ago, and now is found in 93% of Han Chinese and in the majority of people in nearby Asian populations.

On the other hand, what we see as differences in facial features is mostly an illusion.

Our brains are programmed to see more details in faces than in other objects - usually:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia /ˌprɒsəpæɡˈnoʊʒə/ (Greek: "prosopon" = "face", "agnosia" = "not knowing"), also called face blindness,[1] is a cognitive disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize faces is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing (e.g., object discrimination) and intellectual functioning (e.g., decision making) remain intact.
(...)
The specific brain area usually associated with prosopagnosia is the fusiform gyrus,[3] which activates specifically in response to faces. The functionality of the fusiform gyrus allows most people to recognize faces in more detail than they do similarly complex inanimate objects. For those with prosopagnosia, the new method for recognizing faces depends on the less-sensitive object recognition system.

Maybe East Asians can see just as much variation in their facial features, as Europeans.

==================================

Humans can't distinguish 2 chimpanzees from each other based on faces. But chimpanzees can.
 
Check also:

"East Asian Physical Traits Linked to 35,000-Year-Old Mutation":

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/s...-the-genetic-level.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0

As well as this written by Razib Khan:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/g...outcome-of-the-pleistocene-mind/#.Ve5Hx32DqOW

To make a long story short they infer that there was one mutation on the order of ~30,000 years before the present, and that it swept up in frequency driven by selection coefficients on the order of ~0.10 (10% increase relative fitness, which is incredibly powerful!). This is on the extreme end of selective sweeps
(...)
Let’s review all the awesome things they did in this study. They dug deeply into the evolutionary genomics of the region around the EDAR, concluding that this haplotype was driven up in frequency from on ancestral variant ~30,000 years ago in a hard selective sweep. And a sweep of notable strength in terms of selection coefficient. This may be one of the largest effect targets of natural selection in the genome of non-Africans over the past 50,000 years.
(...)
many salient physical characteristics of the human races seem to be due to strong selection events at a few loci. In addition to EDAR I’m thinking of the pigmentation loci, such as SLC24A5. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something similar for the epicanthic fold. If it is visible, and defines between populations differences, it is generally not genomically trivial. There’s usually a story underneath that difference.

But why was there such a strong positive selection for this mutation? This is harder to explain:

in the broad scale of human natural history the problem that arises for me is that we have traits, we have genes under selection, but we have very weak stories to explain the mechanism and context of natural selection. Here there is a strong contrast with the loci around lactase persistence and malaria resistance. In those situations the causal mechanism for the selection seems relatively clear. Critics of evolutionary psychology are wont to accuse the field of ‘Just So’ storytelling, but the same problem crops up in the more intellectually insulated domain of evolutionary genomics (in part because the field is very new, and also mathematically and computationally abstruse).

The author describes and confronts some possibilities (mostly natural selection vs. sexual selection).

Anyway - that part of N1c which migrated to Europe apparently did not carry that mutation, or lost it in Europe.
 
There doesn't have to be a positive choice of features. Imagine you are considered ugly in a tribe, the only other person who will go with you may also be ugly. What if at one point the features of caucasoids and asians in a single tribe caused them to split. Perhaps they didn't like each other and decided to go their separate ways. Asian people do have a huge variety in their look. Whilst they have a very clear set of Asian features, they do look very different from one place to another. I think this has been lost by the fact they looked more similar than different to the western perception. Asians do have the same problem when coming to Europe recognising people, it isn't a one way phenomenon. Some of this is culture, I met some Chinese girls in Sweden and they at first couldn't understand why white girls wanted to sunbathe all the time. In China they said they went around with parasols when it was sunny to keep whiter, because (like Victorians) they considered a sun tan a sign of low status. In Sweden they went sunbathing for the first time and got their first tans. Their parents were shocked when they saw them next. To put it into perspective, these Chinese people couldn't tell the difference between an Albanian Swede, a Turkish Swede or a Swedish Swede. This was more ignorance than the differences these people had. There are a large amount of head shapes in Asia, just like there was among the Native Americans at the time of Kennewick man and in the present. The eye hood as well is only prevalent in some Asians.
 
EDAR, to my knowledge, has nothing to do with an epicanthic fold in the eye. It codes for " thicker hair, more numerous sweat glands, smaller breasts, and dentition characteristic."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ectodysplasin_A_receptor

Most of those seem to be characteristics that would correlate with physical fitness in certain environments, normal traits upon which good old fashioned natural selection would operate. The thicker hair might lend itself to social selection as well, and I suppose you might say the same thing about smaller breasts if for some reason, unlike among westerners, that was a prized trait.

It's true that researchers found that some of the SHG carried the EDAR gene. I don't recall anything being said about epicanthic folds. I don't know how the presence of such a soft tissue characteristic could be verified.
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2015/03/natural-selection-and-ancient-european.html
http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2015/03/13/016477.full.pdf

@EAB,

Pardon me, but anecdotal evidence is hardly dispositive. Those Chinese people must have been blind to claim to have been unable to tell the difference between a Turkish Swede and a local. Pigmentation alone in the vast majority of cases would tell you that...a comment like that is just plain silly.

If we wanted to go down the anecdotal route, my daughter's Korean friend once told me that she had trouble telling members of one East Asian group from another, and that if their heads were shaved she wouldn't be able to tell males from females either, most of the time. That may be just as wrong as what these Chinese people supposedly said.

The fact remains that with Europeans we at least have differences in hair and eye color on which to "fix", along with some major differences with body type, which isn't true with East Asians.

None of this should be a surprise given the results from genetics. Any two East Asians are as genetically close as cousins are in Europe.
 

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