Mediterranean Europe major source of European Neolithic?

Angela

Elite member
Messages
21,823
Reaction score
12,327
Points
113
Ethnic group
Italian
Reconciling evidence from ancient and contemporary genomes: a major source for the European Neolithic within Mediterranean Europe

B. Pereira et al
See:
https://figshare.com/collections/Su...lithic_within_Mediterranean_Europe_/3703558/1

Marta Costa is also an author.

The use a combination of ancient and modern whole mitogenomes.

Unfortunately, they've posted the supplement before the paper. When the paper comes out I'll post a link here.

Meanwhile, the provocative abstract:
"Important gaps remain in our understanding of the spread of farming into Europe, due partly to apparent contradictions between studies of contemporary genetic variation and ancient DNA. It seems clear that farming was introduced into central, northern and eastern Europe from the south by pioneer colonization. It is often argued that these dispersals originated in the Near East, where the potential source genetic pool resembles that of the early European farmers, but clear ancient DNA evidence from Mediterranean Europe is lacking, and there are suggestions that Mediterranean Europe may have resembled the Near East more than the rest of Europe in the Mesolithic. Here we test this proposal by dating mitogenome founder lineages from the Near East in different regions of Europe. We find that whereas the lineages date mainly to the Neolithic in central Europe and Iberia, they largely date to the Late Glacial period in central/eastern Mediterranean Europe. This supports a scenario in which the genetic pool of Mediterranean Europe was partly a result of Late Glacial expansions from a Near Eastern refuge, and that this formed an important source pool for subsequent Neolithic expansions into the rest of Europe."

You can download the pdf of the supplement here. If someone more familiar with the methodology for dating mtDna reads it, perhaps you can post your opinion here.

https://figshare.com/articles/Metho...Neolithic_within_Mediterranean_Europe/4697617

If it turns out to be correct, some of us did speculate about this here. In particular, we posited that when the farmers from the Near East arrived, they met their cousins.

This could explain a lot of things.

If it turns out to be incorrect, just forget I ever said that. :)
 
one of the advantages of Y-DNA is that there is info available for dating the different branches
for mtDNA, acurate dating info is hard to find
I hope they'll come up with an acurate method soon

I don't understand the methodology used.
I guess they are studying modern DNA distributions and a dated pedigree.
But I wonder how they come up with the source of the migrations. I don't think modern DNA distributions can do that.
The advantage of mtDNA is easy sequencing and abundancy in anciant DNA - at least compared to nuclear DNA.
None of that anciant DNA confirms the results of this study.
 
'We find that whereas the lineages date mainly to the Neolithic in central Europe and Iberia, they largely date to the Late Glacial period in central/eastern Mediterranean Europe.'

Maybe instead during early neolithic there was a mass immigration to
central/eastern Mediterranean Europe while in central Europe and Iberia there was a smallscale immigration of only a few specific mtDNA branches with subsequent local expansion.

But we don't have much anciant
central/eastern Mediterranean Europe DNA though, so it is possible.

What seems impossible are the plots in the supplement re migrations from northern/central Europe.
 
Unfortunately, they've posted the supplement before the paper.
Fine for me. I'm only interested in the data, I rarely read the stuff they are writing.
***
bicicleur said:
for mtDNA, acurate dating info is hard to find
I hope they'll come up with an acurate method soon
I fear that's not going to happen. Recall that the average mutation rate of the whole mitogenome gives you a value of one in roughly 3000 years, while the Y-chromosome donates you a new SNP in the order of approx. one (recognized and catalogued) in 100, 200 years. The time resolution is therefore at least ten times better. There are simply not enough mt-data available to produce good models, if the grid size is already greater than the resolution you want.

Altogether, mtDNA data make it extremely hard to deliver robust results. The time resolution can hardly provide a decent timing of events and the spatial resolution is smeared out by high female mobilitiy thanks to patrilocality in most societies. Keeping this in mind, conclusions about the results of any mtDNA research should be taken with precaution, no matter how accurate and sophisticated the methods are.
 
I have been saying for years that a lot of subclades of haplogroups H, V, J2a1, J1c and T2 could have been present in the Balkans or Italy since the late glacial period, and would have been absorbed by Neolithic farmers as they entered Europe, and diffused by Early farmers, but from Southeast Europe (or in some cases also Anatolia, like J1c and T2), not from the Near East. So far, ancient DNA from the Near East confirms a scarcity of hg H and a complete absence of J2a1 and V.
 
Altogether, mtDNA data make it extremely hard to deliver robust results. The time resolution can hardly provide a decent timing of events and the spatial resolution is smeared out by high female mobilitiy thanks to patrilocality in most societies. Keeping this in mind, conclusions about the results of any mtDNA research should be taken with precaution, no matter how accurate and sophisticated the methods are.

I agree. ..
 
I have been saying for years that a lot of subclades of haplogroups H, V, J2a1, J1c and T2 could have been present in the Balkans or Italy since the late glacial period, and would have been absorbed by Neolithic farmers as they entered Europe, and diffused by Early farmers, but from Southeast Europe (or in some cases also Anatolia, like J1c and T2), not from the Near East. So far, ancient DNA from the Near East confirms a scarcity of hg H and a complete absence of J2a1 and V.

we don't have data from the Balkan, just a little bit from Greece
but in Barcin, we have I2 but not European mtDNA U (U2, U5, U4, U8a, U8c)
so I2 in LBK/Cardial ware could be both European or Anatolian, but European mtDNA U didn't exist in Anatolia and probably neither in Greece
Iberian EN has very little (only 2) European mtDNA U but in Iberian EN it increases
German LBK has some more European mtDNA U than Starcevo/Köros, and French RRBP has even more
with increasing European mtDNA U, also WHG admixture into EEF increases
so Anatolian I2 was probably EEF autosomaly, not WHG
 
The paper has been published but it's behind a paywall. How annoying.

Even the Supplement, to which I linked before, is not very informative.
https://figshare.com/articles/Metho...olithic_within_Medi terranean_Europe/4697617

They're basically looking at J/T. What it also says is that this is all based on HVS I, so the findings are provisional, imo.

I don't understand the hub-bub on the net about this. We already knew we had some "Near Eastern" looking mtDna in Mesolithic Greece. So, maybe, they got swamped by their cousins.

As I mentioned upthread, this is something that has been suggested on this Board many times in the past, i.e. that there was an expansion from the Near East before the Neolithic, and that it probably went at least into Greece, and perhaps also into Italy, and that therefore this genetic "signature" may have been in Europe for a very long time.

This would tie in with the studies which showed population increase in the Middle East tied to the Natufian hunter-gatherers before there was actual domestication of plants and animals. This video I recently posted by John Hawkes explains how the area was blessed with an abundance of food resources, leading to large population increases. He's much less boring than Kagan, btw! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQtzwoOYrkE


One of the only sensible comments I've seen on the study (do some people post and blog when drunk or something?:)) on the internet is that this is different from saying these people necessarily are the ancestors of modern Europeans.
 
As I mentioned upthread, this is something that has been suggested on this Board many times in the past, i.e. that there was an expansion from the Near East before the Neolithic, and that it probably went at least into Greece, and perhaps also into Italy, and that therefore this genetic "signature" may have been in Europe for a very long time.

The Villabruna cluster shows affinity with the ME, but lacks even a trace of Basal Eurasian. That means either Basal Eurasian admixted into levantines after 14.000 or Villabruna is related to someting that admixted into levantines. I have a good candidate for the latter: Levantine Aurignacian, a culture from the levant that shows remarkable cultural affinity to European Aurignacians, dated from 33.000 ya on, quite a bit later than European Aurignacians. The culture appears to have been contemporary to Ahmarian, which seems completely unrelated to Aurignacians.

The fact that the Red Lady of El Miron, who lived at the end of LGM, already has a third Villabruna, has U5b - a tracer for Villabruna complex according to Johannes Krause 2016 - and she has a bit Middle Eastern affinity accdording to Fu et al 2016 makes the case for this, I think.
 
The Villabruna cluster shows affinity with the ME, but lacks even a trace of Basal Eurasian. That means either Basal Eurasian admixted into levantines after 14.000 or Villabruna is related to someting that admixted into levantines. I have a good candidate for the latter: Levantine Aurignacian, a culture from the levant that shows remarkable cultural affinity to European Aurignacians, dated from 33.000 ya on, quite a bit later than European Aurignacians. The culture appears to have been contemporary to Ahmarian, which seems completely unrelated to Aurignacians.

The fact that the Red Lady of El Miron, who lived at the end of LGM, already has a third Villabruna, has U5b - a tracer for Villabruna complex according to Johannes Krause 2016 - and she has a bit Middle Eastern affinity accdording to Fu et al 2016 makes the case for this, I think.

Considering the affinity of Vestonice and Kostenki in Fu et al., it's highly unlikely that there was a backmigration from Europe before the Gravettian - and even in the latter case said backmigration probably didn't extend much further than Anatolia. More importantly, there's no reason to invoke an ill-defined 'Levantine Aurignacian' when there's ample evidence of movement in the opposite direction.
 
Considering the affinity of Vestonice and Kostenki in Fu et al., it's highly unlikely that there was a backmigration from Europe before the Gravettian - and even in the latter case said backmigration probably didn't extend much further than Anatolia. More importantly, there's no reason to invoke an ill-defined 'Levantine Aurignacian' when there's ample evidence of movement in the opposite direction.

All old samples in Lazardis 2016 can be modelled as WHG + Basal. And I would say the very existence of the Levantine Aurignac - not so ill-defined as you say, by the way as its toolkit contains typical Aurignacian retouched points - is evidence for that. But the find that U6 in Muierii is ancestral to U6 in the Middle-East and North Africa is basically proof that at least some back migration took place:
http://dienekes.blogspot.nl/2016/05/35000-year-old-mtdna-haplogroup-u6-from.html

What ample evidence for movement in the opposite direction is there?
 
All old samples in Lazardis 2016 can be modelled as WHG + Basal. And I would say the very existence of the Levantine Aurignac - not so ill-defined as you say, by the way as its toolkit contains typical Aurignacian retouched points - is evidence for that. But the find that U6 in Muierii is ancestral to U6 in the Middle-East and North Africa is basically proof that at least some back migration took place:What ample evidence for movement in the opposite direction is there?
Not sure what you mean by *typical* Aurignacian retouched points, since these lightly retouched bladelets were common in the early Ahmarian as well. The Aurignacoid endscrapers with carination that can be found in the Northern Levant were in use as far as the Altai, so you'll have to explain why their presence is indicates a European backmigration to you. They made but a brief appearance in the Northern Levant however, hence it's quite misleading to speak of a Levantine Aurignacian phase.

Of course, how all of this relates to an unrelated Epigravettian specimen from Italy is a mystery to me.
 
Not sure what you mean by *typical* Aurignacian retouched points, since these lightly retouched bladelets were common in the early Ahmarian as well. The Aurignacoid endscrapers with carination that can be found in the Northern Levant were in use as far as the Altai, so you'll have to explain why their presence is indicates a European backmigration to you. They made but a brief appearance in the Northern Levant however, hence it's quite misleading to speak of a Levantine Aurignacian phase.

Even then a clear Aurignacian toolkit can be found:

Indeed by adhering to the original definitions of the Aurignacian in the Levant we can
more readily observe the fascinating phenomenon of the appearance of a geographically (and
chronologically?) limited cluster of assemblages of the classic Aurignacian variety. These are
so similar to assemblages from southwest France at the other end of the Mediterranean, that
one is tempted to view them literally as well as figuratively having just disembarked from the
boat! They appear, “out-of-the-blue”, in the midst of other, endemic, Upper Paleolithic line
ages (e.g. the Ahmarian) with few, if any, obvious ties to the preceding and succeeding Levan
tine industries.


http://www.patrimoniocultural.gov.pt/media/uploads/trabalhosdearqueologia/45/19.pdf

Of course, how all of this relates to an unrelated Epigravettian specimen from Italy is a mystery to me.

Villabruna cluster - I will use the term WHG for the cluster - showed a Middle-Eastern affinity. If you check Fu et al 2016 you'll notice that El Miron (19.000 yo, during or just after LGM) already shows a Middle-Eastern affinity. She also clearly has a WHG part. Neither has a Basal Eurasian affinity, as can be read in the same paper. However, the paper mentions that, while they use Iraqi Jew as proxy for the Middle East the affinity can be shown with a lot of other samples, which means that whatever it is, it's evenly spread in the Middle East. This affinity can be caused by 3 things:

1) Some groups came from the Middle East and admixted into Euro HG's
2) WHG went to the Middle East and admixted with locals
3) Both WHG and Middle East received admixture from an unknown group.

Option 1 requires one to believe that a Middle Eastern group which would have no Basal Eurasian would migrate to an isolated refuge in Iberia during the later phase of LGM. It also requires one to believe Basal Eurasian admixted into Middle-Easterners after that event.

Option 2 is basically refuted by the fact that the M.E. affinity is evenly spread.

So option 3 is the one to go. But since the affinity can be shown to be rather evenly spread in the Middle East it has to be an old one there. I think a yet unsampled Aurignacian people, different from Goyet116, survived just as Goyet116 did in a LGM refuge and became part of the ancestors of WHG.

The Aurignac was a very diverse era, so I think that is possible.
 
Last edited:
Even then a clear Aurignacian toolkit can be found:


http://www.patrimoniocultural.gov.pt/media/uploads/trabalhosdearqueologia/45/19.pdf

That's not quite accurate - I assume this very imaginative description is based on dated references. In many ways, the Aurignacoid cultures of the Near East and Central Asia have an inverse relationship with the European Aurignacian, while of course being familiar with the same technologies.

Under these conditions, the inclusion oflithic assemblages such as those at Klisouraand Karain B in a scenario of expansion ofthe Aurignacian from an area to another isstill problematic. Similarities anddifferences do not appear to constituterelevant patterns. For example, similarities exist between Klisoura and layer II ofKostenki I (presence of splintered pieces,end-scrapers more common than burins,absence or rarity of carinated burins), butthere are also differences (greater degree ofblade technology at Kostenki, absence ofDufour bladelets at Klisoura). Similarly,Karain B presents similarities withassemblage I at Mitoc-Malu Galben(presence of carinated end-scrapers andburins, bladelet cores), but also differences(presence of retouched blades and bladeletsin Anatolia and not in Romania, whereflake production is less marked).

Along the eastern Mediterranean coast, theLevantine Aurignacian43 derives perhapsfrom the Baradostian44. While there aresimilarities with Karain B (although againthe identification is not total), the breakseems clear with the Aurignacian of EasternEurope: flake production is more importantin the Near East (and in Anatolia). Therealso seems to have been an inversedevelopment of the end-scraper–burin ratio:burins become rarer in time at Mitoc, whilethe inverse is true at Ksar Akil.

http://dergiler.ankara.edu.tr/dergiler/14/719/9098.pdf

Villabruna cluster - I will use the term WHG for the cluster - showed a Middle-Eastern affinity. If you check Fu et al 2016 you'll notice that El Miron (19.000 yo, during or just after LGM) already shows a Middle-Eastern affinity. She also clearly has a WHG part. Neither has a Basal Eurasian affinity, as can be read in the same paper. However, the paper mentions that, while they use Iraqi Jew as proxy for the Middle East the affinity can be shown with a lot of other samples, which means that whatever it is, it's evenly spread in the Middle East. This affinity can be caused by 3 things:

1) Some groups came from the Middle East and admixted into Euro HG's
2) WHG went to the Middle East and admixted with locals
3) Both WHG and Middle East received admixture from an unknown group.

Option 1 requires one to believe that a Middle Eastern group which would have no Basal Eurasian would migrate to an isolated refuge in Iberia during the later phase of LGM. It also requires one to believe Basal Eurasian admixted into Middle-Easterners after that event.

Option 2 is basically refuted by the fact that the M.E. affinity is evenly spread.

So option 3 is the one to go. But since the affinity can be shown to be rather evenly spread in the Middle East it has to be an old one there. I think a yet unsampled Aurignacian people, different from Goyet116, survived just as Goyet116 did in a LGM refuge and became part of the ancestors of WHG.

The Aurignac was a very diverse era, so I think that is possible.

I cannot be bothered to look up the paper right now, because frankly I think your speculation doesn't have much merit, but IIRC Fu et al. specifically single out the Kotias-Satsurbalia (sans Basal Eurasian) as a source of this affinity. Thus, the Near Eastern affinity in Villabrunna would be related to a component seperate from the major West Eurasian branch of the Aurignacian hunters in Fu's model, which should be reason enough to doubt your hypothesis.

They also mention that the Villabruna Epigravettian is the first sample that shows this affinity. The Epigravettian-Mesolithic Villabruna cluster thus appears to diverge from the Magdalenian El Miron cluster in more than just the Near Eastern affinity of the former. Just like the Gravettians were superseded by the Magdalenians, the Mesolithic sees the Magdalenians being replaced by yet another distinctive group of hunter gatherers. That the El Miron woman is closer to the Mesolithic groups doesn't necessarily mean that she already carries said Near Eastern affinity, and I don't believe Fu et al. think she does for that matter.
 
Last edited:
From Fu et. al. Just for a reminder.

El Miron is close to the upper reaches of the Ebro catchment, my hunch is that whatever the 'Near-East' component is in El Miron, at least, it came from down the Ebro valley.
Screenshot 2017-04-04 at 22.37.41.jpg
 
I cannot be bothered to look up the paper right now, because frankly I think your speculation doesn't have much merit

I did though.

but IIRC Fu et al. specifically single out the Kotias-Satsurbalia (sans Basal Eurasian) as a source of this affinity. Thus, the Near Eastern affinity in Villabrunna would be related to a component seperate from the major West Eurasian branch of the Aurignacian hunters in Fu's model, which should be reason enough to doubt your hypothesis.

No, they show that whatever admixted into Villabruna also admixted into Satsurblia:

Fu et al 2016 said:
The Satsurblia Cluster individuals from the Caucasus dating to ~13,000–10,000 years ago2 share more alleles with the Villabruna Cluster individuals than they do with earlier Europeans, indicating that they are related to the population that contributed new alleles to people in the Villabruna Cluster, although they cannot be the direct source of the gene flow. One reason for this is that the Satsurblia Cluster carries large amounts of Basal Eurasian ancestry while Villabruna Cluster individuals do not

They also mention that the Villabruna Epigravettian is the first sample that shows this affinity.

True.

The Epigravettian-Mesolithic Villabruna cluster thus appears to diverge from the Magdalenian El Miron cluster in more than just the Near Eastern affinity of the former. Just like the Gravettians were superseded by the Magdalenians, the Mesolithic sees the Magdalenians being replaced by yet another distinctive group of hunter gatherers. That the El Miron woman is closer to the Mesolithic groups doesn't necessarily mean that she already carries said Near Eastern affinity, and I don't believe Fu et al. think she does for that matter.

But their own D-stats shows a different picture. See figure 4b, that bix posted above:

From Fu et. al. Just for a reminder.

El Miron is close to the upper reaches of the Ebro catchment, my hunch is that whatever the 'Near-East' component is in El Miron, at least, it came from down the Ebro valley.
View attachment 8607
 
That's not quite accurate - I assume this very imaginative description is based on dated references. In many ways, the Aurignacoid cultures of the Near East and Central Asia have an inverse relationship with the European Aurignacian, while of course being familiar with the same technologies.


http://dergiler.ankara.edu.tr/dergiler/14/719/9098.pdf

Such an inverse relationship doesn't, IMHO, necessarily refute what I proposed. Another thing is that the article uses dates that, IIRC, have been adjusted recently. For instance, it dates Kostenki 14 at 32.000 BP, whereas I currently read 38.000 - 36.000 BP.
 
No, they show that whatever admixted into Villabruna also admixted into Satsurblia:

Hence 'sans Basal Eurasian'.



It does seem like the Magdalenian cluster already has a slight Near Eastern affinity, since the Belgian Goyet individualhas it as well. Though it's rather small when compared with the Mesolithic cluster - so gene flow from the Near East (or the Balkans) must have been continuous. Not sure how you want to square that with an Aurignacian backmigration, especially when the Magdalenian populations that are being replaced generally show a more marked Aurignacian affinity than the Villabruna cluster that succeeds them.

Such an inverse relationship doesn't, IMHO, necessarily refute what I proposed. Another thing is that the article uses dates that, IIRC, have been adjusted recently. For instance, it dates Kostenki 14 at 32.000 BP, whereas I currently read 38.000 - 36.000 BP.


It doesn't, but I don't see a reason to believe there was a backmigration either. Aurignacoid technologies must have come to Europe with a migration of hunter gatherers from the east who replaced the Oase populations, likely via Central Asia through the Zagros, which would be the most parsimonious point of origin for the corresponding Levantine cultures.

The paper was published before 2009, so all dates are a bit off.
 

It doesn't, but I don't see a reason to believe there was a backmigration either. Aurignacoid technologies must have come to Europe with a migration of hunter gatherers from the east who replaced the Oase populations, likely via Central Asia through the Zagros, which would be the most parsimonious point of origin for the corresponding Levantine cultures.

The paper was published before 2009, so all dates are a bit off.

what oase population?
IMO he was a loner, not a whole population
his cultural affiliation is unknwon, his DNA doesn't fit with any other DNA
 
what oase population?IMO he was a loner, not a whole populationhis cultural affiliation is unknwon, his DNA doesn't fit with any other DNA
Afaik it was more like a family. Population is the wrong word perhaps, but then again we're talking about H&Gs.
 

This thread has been viewed 28328 times.

Back
Top