MtDna from Mesolithic Sardinia

Angela

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Well here's a surprise:

See:
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep42869\
"Complete mitochondrial sequences from Mesolithic Sardinia", Alessandra Modi et al

"Little is known about the genetic prehistory of Sardinia because of the scarcity of pre-Neolithic human remains. From a genetic perspective, modern Sardinians are known as genetic outliers in Europe, showing unusually high levels of internal diversity and a close relationship to early European Neolithic farmers. However, how far this peculiar genetic structure extends and how it originated was to date impossible to test. Here we present the first and oldest complete mitochondrial sequences from Sardinia, dated back to 10,000 yBP. These two individuals, while confirming a Mesolithic occupation of the island, belong to rare mtDNA lineages, which have never been found before in Mesolithic samples and that are currently present at low frequencies not only in Sardinia, but in the whole Europe. Preliminary Approximate Bayesian Computations, restricted by biased reference samples for Mesolithic Sardinia (the two typed samples) and Neolithic Europe (limited to central and north European sequences), suggest that the first inhabitants of the island have had a small or negligible contribution to the present-day Sardinian population, which mainly derives its genetic diversity from continental migration into the island by Neolithic times."

The two most reliable samples are mtDna I3.

The last bolded comment would indicate that the "WHG" like ancestry that Sardinians carry was almost all from the farming people who settled the island.

One often talked about migration track is from southeastern France and then down to Corsica and then further into Sardinia. The ocean currents would permit that. The other, which I still think is possible, is by sea from southeastern Europe.

The site and the samples;
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep42869/figures/1

" Studies based on complete mitogenomes have previously reported haplogroup I in ancient samples from Iran (individual I674, haplogroup I1c) and Levant (individual I1679, haplogroup I), dated to 5,105 ± 35 yBP and 8,850–8,750 yBP, respectively39. It was also found in two late Neolithic individuals from Germany, both belonging to haplogroup I3a and dated to around 4,000 yBP50 but not in previous periods in Europe. Nowadays, this haplogroup is uncommon; its frequency is about 2% in modern Sardinians, 3% across Europe, and raises at maximum 6% in Northern European countries51."

I think the third sample is too unreliable to take to the bank, but for what it's worth:
"The Mesolithic CAR-H7 sample represents so far the oldest sequence belonging to haplogroup J2b. "

"
The majority of the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene sequences belongs to the U lineage, and form a quite homogeneous cluster at the bottom of the network. The two Mesolithic samples from Sardinia are highly differentiated, departing from the network through long branches, so as to indicate mutations possibly arising along thousand years of geographic (and genetic) isolation. "

I'm wondering if perhaps the I3 was a late dispersal from the east.
 
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I'm wondering if perhaps the I3 was a late dispersal from the east.

maybe
mesolithic Greece doesn't have mtDNA U either, it is K1c
fishermen brougth obsidian to Melos 13 ka
9.5 ka first fishbones arrived in Grotta del'Uzo, Sicily
maybe some of them even made it upto Sardinia
when sealevels were lower distances to cross via Elba to Corsica and henceforth to Sardinia were very small
but it is possible mesolithic people went extinct in Sardinia before arrival of the neolithic
very few mesolithic traces in Sardinia
 
maybe
mesolithic Greece doesn't have mtDNA U either, it is K1c
fishermen brougth obsidian to Melos 13 ka
9.5 ka first fishbones arrived in Grotta del'Uzo, Sicily
maybe some of them even made it upto Sardinia
when sealevels were lower distances to cross via Elba to Corsica and henceforth to Sardinia were very small
but it is possible mesolithic people went extinct in Sardinia before arrival of the neolithic
very few mesolithic traces in Sardinia

I was thinking about the Obsidian trade too, and that very EEF like Greek mesolithic mtDna.

ob_17aafb_carte-de-distribution-des-gisements-d.jpg


This is Neolithic era, but I think the same trade routes were used over and over again, probably because the currents didn't change much.

3.png
 
Those results are really strange. Nowadays haplogroup I3 is found mostly in northwestern Europe. In ancient samples it only showed up in the Unetice culture and in Scythian sample from southern Russia. Mt-haplogroup I is generally associated with Yamna-derived cultures, except I5 which appears to be related to the Kura-Araxes expansion.

MtDNA J2b is found in most of Europe and the Middle East, but some subclades are specifically European. This is the case of J2b1a (NW Europe + Russia like I3), J2b1b (Britain and Ireland), J2b1c (Greece and Russia). Once again, it appears to have a Yamna origin and spread with R1b tribes. Why on Earth would they be found in Mesolithic Sardinia of all places? This reminds me of the equally strange presence of typical Eastern European haplogroups (H2a1, H6a1, U4a2, U4c1) in Mesolithic Northwest Africa. It looks like there might have been a Mesolithic expansion from the Steppe to the West Mediterranean long before the PIE migrations. Perhaps that would explain how Y-haplogroup R1a* (not even the EHG R1a1a-M17, but the older M420 or SRY1532.2) and mtDNA U4 got into Cantabria (Pasiegos) too.
 
It'll be interesting to see how those Sardinian hunters relate to the Mesolithic centers in France and Serbia once samples become available. I would not dismiss them as mere oddballs as the authors seem to do until the sampling of the Mesolithic is less incomplete.

As Angela said, those hunters could have either arrived from the Balkans via Tuscany or thereabouts, or from France via Corsica. This makes Sardinia highly significant when it comes to our understanding of the European Mesolithic.
 
It's worth noting that the Unetice I3a finds are upstream from the Baltic. Combine that with the current distribution of I in Europe, with the exception of the isolate Lemkos cluster, all concentrations are coastal locations which, in the Mesolithic, would have had a lovely flat, arable plain, near some great fishing. A great majority of the Bronze Age finds, too, follow this pattern. The Scythian I3 sites are on a river just upstream from the Sea of Azov/Black Sea. They're also frequently locations associated with pre-pottery cultures. Even the modern concentration of I in Iran is sort of the top of a circular "bullseye" near the south end of the Persian Gulf, which, again, 10,000 years ago was not a gulf but an arable plain.

Is it not feasible that rather than taking the land-based Caucasian/Steppe route into Europe, the I group arrived there, at least primarily, via a coastal route or even some seafaring (given Sardinia, Crete, and Egypt are all locations for ancient I finds and then there's the fairly high current prevelance in Iceland)?

I'm fairly new to the genetics thing but I do have a background in science and a knowledge of data and statistics. I can't find anything that suggests that the Pontic Steppe/Pottery route makes any more sense as a solution to I and in fact this alternate proposal would help to account for the rarity of I, as well. As a member of the Indo-European colonizers, the rarity doesn't seem to make much sense and is just a dangling problem to be solved later. If the I's were already in Europe when the Indo-Europeans got there, they would at that time likely be migrating inland due to the rising sea levels inundating much of the lands where they would have been living in the Mesolithic.

Which, coincidentally, neatly wraps up the lack heretofore of Mesolithic samples. 10,000 years ago, the southwestern portion of Sardinia would, like so many other sites, have featured a big plain which is now under water. This same shelf previously connected Sardinia and Corsica. The Sardinian find was elevated well above this level. Most Mesolithic I's in similar situations would have likely been buried somewhere that is now completely submerged.

So, They get to Europe 10,000 years ago, start working their way around the periphery. Make it to Doggerland, make it to Scandinavia, the Baltic Sea, and by the time the Neolithic rolls around, they're moving inwards as their lands are swallowed up by the seas. They bump into the Indo-Europeans and the rest is, as they say, history.

Please tell me, what pokes holes in this hypothesis? There seems to have been an earlier assumption of I being in Europe before the Indo-European colonization but that idea seems to have gone away with the mere discovery of like four or five samples that fit with an Indo-European narrative if you helpfully ignore so much of the other data. I'd honestly like someone to speak with authority and tell me why the IE hypothesis is right and this hypothesis is wrong, because this Sardinia find comes out but nobody's revising the current viewpoint. So what gives?
 
Those results are really strange. Nowadays haplogroup I3 is found mostly in northwestern Europe. In ancient samples it only showed up in the Unetice culture and in Scythian sample from southern Russia. Mt-haplogroup I is generally associated with Yamna-derived cultures, except I5 which appears to be related to the Kura-Araxes expansion.

MtDNA J2b is found in most of Europe and the Middle East, but some subclades are specifically European. This is the case of J2b1a (NW Europe + Russia like I3), J2b1b (Britain and Ireland), J2b1c (Greece and Russia). Once again, it appears to have a Yamna origin and spread with R1b tribes. Why on Earth would they be found in Mesolithic Sardinia of all places? This reminds me of the equally strange presence of typical Eastern European haplogroups (H2a1, H6a1, U4a2, U4c1) in Mesolithic Northwest Africa. It looks like there might have been a Mesolithic expansion from the Steppe to the West Mediterranean long before the PIE migrations. Perhaps that would explain how Y-haplogroup R1a* (not even the EHG R1a1a-M17, but the older M420 or SRY1532.2) and mtDNA U4 got into Cantabria (Pasiegos) too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwRPIQjF308

So thats settled then, there was a boat civilization in western europe 8000 years ago.
So that could spin the whole indo european theory on its head.
Next question did they settle in the steps after Iberia and western europe ?
As it is there invisible before 9000bc and seem to pop up out of thin air.
 
This paper which has been just published seems to support your theory, O Neill: https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/opar.2017.3.issue-1/opar-2017-0018/opar-2017-0018.xml

"Obsidian sourcing studies have been conducted in the central Mediterranean for more than 50 years. Detailed studies have been done on the geological sources on four Italian islands, and many analytical methods have been used to successfully distinguish between them. The ability to conduct analyses using those minimally (LA-ICP-MS) or totally (XRF, pXRF) non-destructive to artifacts has led to >10,000 analyses just in the last decade. Along with the ability to assign artifacts to specific geological subsources, and an increased number of studies of techno-typology, this has allowed interpretations to be made about source access and territorial control, craft specialization and the chaîne opératoire, as well as the modes, frequency, and directions of movement and how that varied spacially and temporally. Obsidian especially from Lipari and from Monte Arci in Sardinia traveled hundreds of kilometers on a regular basis starting in the Early Neolithic. By the Late Neolithic, in some areas there was selection of specific obsidian sources and subsources, and differences in production methods and tool typology. Obsidian distribution and usage in the central Mediterranean continued over four-and-one-half millennia, in many areas well into the Bronze Age. There is much more still to do integrating these different studies, especially use-wear studies, along with those of lithic and other materials that also played a role in prehistoric transport and trade systems."
 
Those results are really strange. Nowadays haplogroup I3 is found mostly in northwestern Europe. In ancient samples it only showed up in the Unetice culture and in Scythian sample from southern Russia. Mt-haplogroup I is generally associated with Yamna-derived cultures, except I5 which appears to be related to the Kura-Araxes expansion.

MtDNA J2b is found in most of Europe and the Middle East, but some subclades are specifically European. This is the case of J2b1a (NW Europe + Russia like I3), J2b1b (Britain and Ireland), J2b1c (Greece and Russia). Once again, it appears to have a Yamna origin and spread with R1b tribes. Why on Earth would they be found in Mesolithic Sardinia of all places? This reminds me of the equally strange presence of typical Eastern European haplogroups (H2a1, H6a1, U4a2, U4c1) in Mesolithic North Africa. It looks like there might have been a Mesolithic expansion from the Steppe to the West Mediterranean long before the PIE migrations. Perhaps that would explain how Y-haplogroup R1a* (not even the EHG R1a1a-M17, but the older M420 or SRY1532.2) and mtDNA U4 got into Cantabria (Pasiegos) too.

This may be a bit of a stretch, but a Mesolithic expansion from the steppe into the Western Mediterranean *could* explain the high percentage of mtDNA V in Cantabrians, the HV0/V in PWC ANE-shifted Hunter Gatherers, and the V7/V15 Indo-European samples from the Caucasus. (that is, if we posit that HV0 could have a more easterly origin than westerly - there's V samples from Epipaleolithic North Africa, as well).
 
Could there be a link with the "second mesolithic wave" studied by the french Perrin, whose remote origin in unkown but which first seems appearing in Coastal Dalmatia, then Southern Italy Sicily Tunisia (later: until East Algeri) before expand to Iberia (Cantabrica among the most evident regions), Northwestern Italy, to Brittany, and Northwestern Europe, before fading out - this new technology would have preceded genuine Neolithic and flied before it as pushed by it, fading out in its first settlements while it created new centers farther?
The author, without any opinion for the origin, cited the opinions of others who thought the remote origin could have been in Ukraina.
I "used" this wave theory before when I tried to explain Y-E-V13 in Balkans, today I have no opinion.Just an idea.
 
Well,
all I know is that the first 3 samples of the Shulaveri shomu (armenia Aknashen) 6000BC-5000BC are I1, H2+152, and H15a1. ---- Not very Anatolian or Levant conbination.
And I am the crazy dude who says : Shulaveri were all over R1b-M269/L23 and the ones who dispersed downstream clades R1b to steppe and all other places.

Lets see.
 
Nice. It's interesting to see how PC plots cluster them separate from different S.italian ethnicities like Calabria and Sicilians I wondered why that is. Isn't haplogroup T WHG too? What's the percentage of that in S.Italy compared to other regions?
 

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