Ancient mtDna shows east to west cline from the steppe

Angela

Elite member
Messages
21,823
Reaction score
12,325
Points
113
Ethnic group
Italian
The "cause", of course, is the steppe migrations.

So, people who claimed it was a mostly male mediated migration, and those who said they brought a lot of their own women with them were both mostly correct.

By the time they got to around Germany, it was much more male mediated.

The other take away is that while there was a lot of continuity on the steppe in terms of mtDna, i.e. U5 and U4 clades, as well as U2, quite a bit of that steppe and Corded Ware mtDna also comes from south of the Caucasus, ie. Iran and vicinity.

See:
Anna Jura et al

"[h=1]Mitochondrial genomes reveal an east to west cline of steppe ancestry in Corded Ware populations"[/h]
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-29914-5

"From around 4,000 to 2,000 BC the forest-steppe north-western Pontic region was occupied by people who shared a nomadic lifestyle, pastoral economy and barrow burial rituals. It has been shown that these groups, especially those associated with the Yamnaya culture, played an important role in shaping the gene pool of Bronze Age Europeans, which extends into present-day patterns of genetic variation in Europe. Although the genetic impact of these migrations from the forest-steppe Pontic region into central Europe have previously been addressed in several studies, the contribution of mitochondrial lineages to the people associated with the Corded Ware culture in the eastern part of the North European Plain remains contentious. In this study, we present mitochondrial genomes from 23 Late Eneolithic and Bronze Age individuals, including representatives of the north-western Pontic region and the Corded Ware culture from the eastern part of the North European Plain. We identified, for the first time in ancient populations, the rare mitochondrial haplogroup X4 in two Bronze Age Catacomb culture-associated individuals. Genetic similarity analyses show close maternal genetic affinities between populations associated with both eastern and Baltic Corded Ware culture, and the Yamnaya horizon, in contrast to larger genetic differentiation between populations associated with western Corded Ware culture and the Yamnaya horizon. This indicates that females with steppe ancestry contributed to the formation of populations associated with the eastern Corded Ware culture while more local people, likely of Neolithic farmer ancestry, contributed to the formation of populations associated with western Corded Ware culture."

Individuals associated with the Eneolithic and Yamnaya cultures were assigned to hgs U2e1a1, U5a2b, H2a1 and U5a1i1, U4c1, W3a1, W3a1a, respectively (Table 1 and Supplementary Table S1). Other Bronze Age individuals from the western Pontic region belonged to hg X4 (two individuals associated with Catacomb culture) and J2b1a, J1c2m, H1e (three individuals associated with Babyno culture). Individuals associated with the Corded Ware culture were assigned to hgs H (H6a, H15a1, H2a2, H1e), U4 (U4b1a1a, U4a2f), W5b, U5a1b, I4a and T2e."

It would be interesting to see the autosomal composition of the steppe samples with the mtDna U lineages if those samples have been processed for autosomal data. With that much "local" mtDna it calls into question for me once again if the 40-50% "Caucasus" component could have entered the steppe only with women.

Does it also seem that this shows that Corded Ware was an off shoot of Yamnaya?
 
it seems like eastern or Baltic corded ware was an off shoot of Yamna
and that eastern or Baltic corded ware spread westward while absorbing some neolithic European

there was an early Baltic corded ware sample ware lacking any EEF
later corded ware samples had a mixture of Yamna with EEF, even the later eastern and Baltic corded ware, and even Sintashta
 

This thread has been viewed 10753 times.

Back
Top