Steppe Populations Carried the Plague into Europe?

Angela

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Well, we've speculated that something like this might have been a factor, and now a paper seems to find some support for it.

Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago


http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(15)01322-7

"The bacteria Yersinia pestis is the etiological agent of plague and has caused human pandemics with millions of deaths in historic times. How and when it originated remains contentious. Here, we report the oldest direct evidence of Yersinia pestis identified by ancient DNA in human teeth from Asia and Europe dating from 2,800 to 5,000 years ago. By sequencing the genomes, we find that these ancient plague strains are basal to all known Yersinia pestis. We find the origins of the Yersinia pestis lineage to be at least two times older than previous estimates. We also identify a temporal sequence of genetic changes that lead to increased virulence and the emergence of the bubonic plague. Our results show that plague infection was endemic in the human populations of Eurasia at least 3,000 years before any historical recordings of pandemics."

I have to read the whole paper yet, but I wonder if they suffered from it (and perhaps occasionally tried to flee it), or they were like "Typhoid Mary", no symptoms at all, or very minor ones, like Europeans bringing measles etc. to the Amerindians.

Still, in both cases, there had to be elimination and suppression of some males or there wouldn't be such a sex bias in terms of the uniparental markers, yes?

Ed.
"Additionally, we estimated the age of the MRCA of all known Y. pestis to 5,783 years ago."

"However, based on the absence of crucial virulence genes, unlike the later y pestis strains that were responsible for the first to third pandemics, these ancient strains likely did not have the ability to cause bubonic plague, only pneumonic and septicemic plague. These early plagues may have been responsible for the suggested population declines in the late 4th millennium BC and the early 3rd millennium BC."

Other books on the plague posit that the original host was a rodent like creature that lived somewhere in the northern steppe. That's the estimated source for the Black Death outbreak.

These are the seven samples in which it was found...
"RISE00 Estonia Sope Corded Ware 2575–2349
RISE139 Poland Chociwel Unetice 2135–1923
RISE386 Russia Bulanovo Sintashta 2280–2047
RISE397 Armenia Kapan EIA 1048–885
RISE505 Russia Kytmanovo Andronovo 1746–1626
RISE509 Russia Afanasievo Gora Afanasievo 2887–2677
RISE511 Russia Afanasievo Gora Afanasievo 2909–2679"
 
Given that the proposed host has traditionally been seen as the marmot (a type of rodent) which can be found in the steppe lands, (the transmission of the bacterium through the hunting and eating of the marmot) and the Black Death pandemic of the plague was traced to the Crimea, I suppose the presence of the infection in these steppe populations can lead to the inference that they brought it into Europe, but shouldn't they have tested Neolithic farmer populations further west before coming to such a firm conclusion?

Marmots are found in Europe as well, although to be clear I don't know whether all varieties host the bacterium. The last I heard the Eurasian steppe variety was the culprit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot

There's a difference, even if a slight one, between a scenario where the farming populations developed the illness, parts of at least Central Europe were depopulated, and the steppe populations moved into relatively open places, with the accompanying founder effect for certain lineages, versus one closer to the model in North America where the incoming population carried diseases to which they had some type of immunity and in the process of the developing conflict, disease was an unplanned type of biological weapon.

I wonder, upon reflection, whether the Tripolye civilization which was adjacent to the steppe and might have been the first affected by the steppe peoples might have been the population first affected, and whether that might have led to the precipitous collapse of those tells and even the burning of them. This is all rank speculation, of course. :)

There's also the disparity between the survival of the female versus male lineages. I saw a comment on anthrogenica last night that there is something on the Y that affects immunity. That's the first I've heard of it. Usually, the papers I've seen show differences in the "fitness" for certain traits of the various mtDna lineages. Does anyone have detailed information about this connection to immune response on the ychromosome? If that's true that would change many of our speculations about the elimination of y lines in every historical epoch.

Strange, I once got into a debate on the old dna forums about how perhaps something like the Black Death might have changed the genetic make-up of Europe. In his inimitable fashion, one of the members there told me if I properly understood statistics I would know that was impossible. So much for that if this is investigated and shown to have probably happened.

The relative survival of the "G2a" lineage in Italy and particularly certain parts of Italy is interesting in this regard. If the plague was moving from the steppe into Central Europe and only later went south, did the pandemic sort of "burn out" by the time it got to Italy? Did the Alps and the Apennines shield Italy to some extent?
Haplogroup_G2a.gif


On the other hand, the Black Death spread along the Mediterranean from Crimea (via the Black Sea then into the Mediterranean), and Liguria, for example, was very badly hit. Could that explain the lower levels in that area and certain parts of inland northern Italy? They were in the path of the trade routes and did get hit this time? Ydna G2a in mountain populations in southern and central Italy might have survived better because they were isolated?
the-spread-of-the-black-death.png

msBD1.gif

This kind of analysis is complicated, of course, because there are quite a few clusters of G2a in Italy and most regional analyses don't get down to the subclade level, so there's no way of knowing which G2a is really Neolithic versus some that may have arrived in the Bronze or Iron Ages.

I, for one, would be glad if this were the case for at least some of the "replacement" of y lines. I think that's probably the case for many people, especially academics, so I think it's important that the entire picture, in all its complexity be understood, and that there's not some rush to "whitewash" all of human history on these grounds. It's undoubedly true from historical era accounts that murder, mayhem, slavery etc. have been rather a hallmark of all wars and conquests. Still, while it may disappoint some people, speaking personally it would be nice to know that my male line ancestors were not genocidal fiends.
 
@Angela,

G2aP303, the main type of G2a in Europe today, was suggested by Maciamo a few years ago to be of IE-origin but we have confirmation of several P303's from Neolithic Anatolia. I just don't see how the few G2a that exists today aren't from EEF. Also, it's important to remember most EEF didn't have G2a. Some founder effects could be of EEF origin, I1 and E-V13 are the best candidate but also R1b-L151 could be of EEF-origin.

But that still doesn't take away the huge Y DNA change that occurred, mostly because of R1b-L151 and R1a-Z282, coincidentally brothers to what we find in Bronze age Samara. It's crazy, basically 100% of Yamnaya/Poltavka had R1b-Z2103 and 100% of late Poltavka/Srubnaya/Sintashta/Andronovo had R1a-Z93. What was going on? These are mega-founder effects. It has to do with their society. Polygamy, royal families, something caused this.
 
The idea Steppe-folk were supermen who gallantly rode their horses and eradicated all foreigners is impossible. Disease helping their success makes sense. Not many propose but the idea is flirted with. They had success but didn't replace natives, no one today is 60% Steppe except maybe in the "Steppe".
 
@Angela,

G2aP303, the main type of G2a in Europe today, was suggested by Maciamo a few years ago to be of IE-origin but we have confirmation of several P303's from Neolithic Anatolia. I just don't see how the few G2a that exists today aren't from EEF. Also, it's important to remember most EEF didn't have G2a. Some founder effects could be of EEF origin, I1 and E-V13 are the best candidate but also R1b-L151 could be of EEF-origin.

But that still doesn't take away the huge Y DNA change that occurred, mostly because of R1b-L151 and R1a-Z282, coincidentally brothers to what we find in Bronze age Samara. It's crazy, basically 100% of Yamnaya/Poltavka had R1b-Z2103 and 100% of late Poltavka/Srubnaya/Sintashta/Andronovo had R1a-Z93. What was going on? These are mega-founder effects. It has to do with their society. Polygamy, royal families, something caused this.

I agree with everything except the following: "Also, it's important to remember most EEF didn't have G2a. Some founder effects could be of EEF origin, I1 and E-V13 are the best candidate but also R1b-L151 could be of EEF-origin."

I think we have to guard against being careless in our characterizations of genetic data. There was a lot of G2a in the Neolithic, certainly in central Europe, but also in northern Italy, Spain, etc.

We've only found one I1 sample who was EEF. Is there any evidence to the effect that the majority of the I1 carriers in Europe are descended from that line rather than a line that survived as hunter-gatherers until a much later date?

As for E-V13, we have one related sample in the Western Med and two (E-V13 or pre-E-V13) in the mid-to-late Neolithic transition in Lengyel/Sopot, the latter of which may represent a slightly later migration, a group which may not ever have made it much further north into Europe than southern Germany/Austria.

We also don't yet have a single EEF R1b L151, so doesn't that seem like rather unsupported speculation at this point?

As to the different varieties of G2a, there is some downstream G2a in Italy similar to what can be found north of the Alps (predominantly found in northern Italy). I don't know for sure if it ultimately descends from Neolithic farmers, but that's more than possible, I think, even if it then got caught up by the Indo-European groups. It wouldn't be the first or last time a y lineage sort of "changed" its "ethnicity" for lack of a better word.

Regardless, central and southern Italy have a lot of G2a which clusters differently. I think it's a good bet that these clusters may indeed be Neolithic farmer in origin, and somehow they survived. (15% in some areas, and who knows, there may have been E-V13 and J2 farmers there as well) My question was, if these G2a people are the descendants of EEF, did they survive better in part because they were out of the major paths of plague dissemination?
 
@Angela,

G2aP303, the main type of G2a in Europe today, was suggested by Maciamo a few years ago to be of IE-origin but we have confirmation of several P303's from Neolithic Anatolia. I just don't see how the few G2a that exists today aren't from EEF. Also, it's important to remember most EEF didn't have G2a. Some founder effects could be of EEF origin, I1 and E-V13 are the best candidate but also R1b-L151 could be of EEF-origin.

But that still doesn't take away the huge Y DNA change that occurred, mostly because of R1b-L151 and R1a-Z282, coincidentally brothers to what we find in Bronze age Samara. It's crazy, basically 100% of Yamnaya/Poltavka had R1b-Z2103 and 100% of late Poltavka/Srubnaya/Sintashta/Andronovo had R1a-Z93. What was going on? These are mega-founder effects. It has to do with their society. Polygamy, royal families, something caused this.

didn't you read Haak feb. 2015 paper!

4 of the 5 LBK_EN in central Germany where G2a ( the other was T1a ),it was Neolithic period and samples had 100% EEF .............orange coloured in his graph...............4 out of 5 =80% is G2a.
There where 30 graves found
since then another 4 graves have been identified from the same period and another 3 where G2a and another T1a ( code KAR16A )

to conclude, you seem to be so wrapped up in the "teal" of R1's that you have completly forgotten about the "orange"EEF of Neolithic Central Germany
 
@Angela,

In 3000 BC there were no pure Anatolians in Europe. Most were 1/4 WHG. So, WHG paternal lines should included with Anatolian paternal lines. I1 is is pre-IE, no matter if it is from Anatolia or hunter gatherers, and it was very successful. It's possible it was picked up by Corded ware in East Europe and became popular because that.
 

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