Bronze Age Bulgaria

G

Gash

Guest
I don't think this has been posted before, I tried to look around the forum. Credit goes to Tomenable for this first one. Saw he posted it on another forum but can't see it here. Will also post some others that I don't think have been posted.

This sample was found in Dimitrovgrad in Southern Bulgaria, dates back to the Bronze Age,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitrovgrad,_Bulgaria

Ydna: R1a-z93


GEDmatch Genesis kit number - MW2273712

Eurogenes K15 results:

# Population Percent

1 North_Sea 35.52
2 Eastern_Euro 19.23
3 Baltic 13.65
4 Atlantic 13.45
5 West_Asian 12.95
6 South_Asian 3.15
7 Amerindian 2.05




# Population (source) Distance1

1 North_Swedish 13.52
2 Swedish 15.34
3 Finnish 15.54
4 Southwest_Finnish 15.82
5 Norwegian 15.93
6 East_German 17.21
7 North_German 17.24
8 West_Norwegian 17.25
9 Danish 17.71
10 Hungarian 17.94
11 East_Finnish 18.02
12 North_Dutch 18.06
13 West_German 18.34
14 South_Polish 19.7
15 Ukrainian_Lviv 19.72
16 Ukrainian 19.84
17 Estonian 20.15
18 Orcadian 20.35
19 West_Scottish 20.42
20 South_Dutch 20.48







Mixed Mode Population Sharing:


# Primary Population (source) Secondary Population (source) Distance
1 75.5% North_Swedish + 24.5% Tabassaran @ 7.58
2 77.6% North_Swedish + 22.4% Lezgin @ 8.3
3 79% North_Swedish + 21% Chechen @ 8.67
4 73.4% Swedish + 26.6% Tabassaran @ 9.11
5 81.6% North_Swedish + 18.4% Adygei @ 9.45
6 82.1% North_Swedish + 17.9% Ossetian @ 9.52
7 72.7% Norwegian + 27.3% Tabassaran @ 9.53
8 80.9% North_Swedish + 19.1% Kabardin @ 9.57
9 80.3% North_Swedish + 19.7% Afghan_Pashtun @ 9.58
10 82.5% North_Swedish + 17.5% Kalash @ 9.59
11 80.1% North_Swedish + 19.9% Kumyk @ 9.61
12 82.3% North_Swedish + 17.7% North_Ossetian @ 9.62
13 84.8% North_Swedish + 15.2% Abhkasian @ 9.66
14 81.6% North_Swedish + 18.4% Balkar @ 9.72
15 75.6% Swedish + 24.4% Lezgin @ 9.77
16 84.2% North_Swedish + 15.8% Georgian @ 9.81
17 70.5% West_Norwegian + 29.5% Tabassaran @ 9.87
18 83.5% North_Swedish + 16.5% Balochi @ 10.04
19 74.8% Norwegian + 25.2% Lezgin @ 10.11
20 84% North_Swedish + 16% Brahui @ 10.13




Eurogenes K15 PCA:

Abscisse (x-axis): 534 pixel, Ordonnée (y-axis): 144 pixel

FvAghvC.png



Similarity Maps:

Russia & Asia:






pKDbtSS.png



9Ei4KCZ.png
 
There are other Bronze Age Bulgarian that were north like this and carried I2a2 but I can't find them but will post when I find them.

Meanwhile I found autosomal of a Bronze Age sample from Bulgaria that was posted years ago

Bronze Age, Vratitsa Bulgaria1500-1100BC

SLBoAu4.png



Scores 60% North West Europe
 
What is your opinion about I2163? Do you think that he is a Proto-Thracian?
 
What is your opinion about I2163? Do you think that he is a Proto-Thracian?

Yes, I definitely think it is a proto Thracian. All Bronze Age samples I have seen from Bulgaria are genetically north like this. They also carried some I2a2. I'll post them when I find them. So there is no reason to believe they were not Proto Thracians. Most of these Bronze Age samples from East Balkans seem to be very North.

Bronze Age samples from West Balkans were actually more South. A Bronze Age from Montenegro scored like 83% Balkan compared to Bronze Age Bulgaria that gets 60% North West Europe


GbbbCnG.png
 
Yes, I definitely think it is a proto Thracian. All Bronze Age samples I have seen from Bulgaria are genetically north like this. They also carried some I2a2. I'll post them when I find them. So there is no reason to believe they were not Proto Thracians. Most of these Bronze Age samples from East Balkans seem to be very North.

Bronze Age samples from West Balkans were actually more South. A Bronze Age from Montenegro scored like 83% Balkan compared to Bronze Age Bulgaria that gets 60% North West Europe


GbbbCnG.png
Very interesting! If all of them are autosomally so north this proves Proto-Thracians did not mix before arriving in Balkans with Pre-IE populations. This one must be originated from Srubna culture( R1a-Z93). I find strange that some Thracians could be R1a-Z93 because it is rare in Balkans. What do you think?
Actually my haplogroup is a subclade of R1a-Z93 which is uncommon for Greek people. At gedmatch autosomal analysis I have common segments with this sample! Please post the other samples when you find them.
 
I am also interested in your opinion about the iron age Bulgaria sample which plots south of Tuscan. Could we say that this is the result of the mix between Balkan Neolithic populations and Proto-Thracians from the steppes and this woman was a typical Iron Age Thracian?
 
Very interesting! If all of them are autosomally so north this proves Proto-Thracians did not mix before arriving in Balkans with Pre-IE populations. This one must be originated from Srubna culture( R1a-Z93). I find strange that some Thracians could be R1a-Z93 because it is rare in Balkans. What do you think?
Actually my haplogroup is a subclade of R1a-Z93 which is uncommon for Greek people. At gedmatch autosomal analysis I have common segments with this sample! Please post the other samples when you find them.

I think Proto Thracians came directly from the steppes and into the East Balkans, this is why these samples are so North. While for West Balkans, Proto Ilyrians migrated out of Steppes and settled in central Europe where they probably mixed with natives before spreading into Italy and the West Balkans , explains why Bronze Age samples there are more South. However there was an Iron Age from Montenegro that was very identical to this Bronze Age sample from Bulgaria or atleast as North. That Iron Age could of come directly from the Steppes. But people claim it had low SNPS.

R1a z93 is rare but so is I2a2 to some extent , it could be from a bottle neck effect. I2a2 is still found in Northern Greece and in Southern Albania in low percentage.
 
I think Proto Thracians came directly from the steppes and into the East Balkans, this is why these samples are so North. While for West Balkans, Proto Ilyrians migrated out of Steppes and settled in central Europe where they probably mixed with natives before spreading into Italy and the West Balkans , explains why Bronze Age samples there are more South. However there was an Iron Age from Montenegro that was very identical to this Bronze Age sample from Bulgaria or atleast as North.

R1a z93 is rare but so is I2a2 to some extent , it could be from a bottle neck effect. I2a2 is still found in Northern Greece and in Southern Albania in low percentage.
I looked for information about the I2a2 samples and I found out that they moved to Bulgaria at 3000 BCE, much earlier than the Indo-European migration to Balkans. So these samples can't be Proto-Thracians.
 
I looked for information about the I2a2 samples and I found out that they moved to Bulgaria at 3000 BCE, much earlier than the Indo-European migration to Balkans. So these samples can't be Proto-Thracians.

Yeah but I think the sample in the OP fits well with the time frame of Proto Thracians . What do you think ?



As for Iron Age in Bulgaria, I am not sure but didn't those samples date back to like 500 - 800 BC ?
 
As far as I know, samples found in Bulgaria that were I2a2 were Bronze Age , Maybe Early Bronze Age , they are very possible Indo Europeans. Its possible there were different migrations or different waves of Indo Europeans. I would have to check again though.
 
I am also interested in your opinion about the iron age Bulgaria sample which plots south of Tuscan. Could we say that this is the result of the mix between Balkan Neolithic populations and Proto-Thracians from the steppes and this woman was a typical Iron Age Thracian?

Looking at it now, that is actually very possible. There was also an Iron Age Thracian that scored like 99% Balkan.

But there have never been found any Iron Age samples in West Balkans of that time frame AFAIK. Which I would of liked to see also.
 
What I found



Actually, in hindsight, such a population has probably already shown up in the ancient DNA record, via two Early Bronze Age (EBA) individuals from the Balkans in the Mathieson et al. 2017 preprint:

Balkans_BronzeAge I2165: Y-hg I2a2a1b1b mt-hg T2f 3020-2895 calBCE

Yamnaya_Bulgaria Bul4: Y-hg I2a2a1b1b mt-hg ? 3012-2900 calBCE Both samples are from burial sites in present-day South-Central Bulgaria.

Apart from sharing I2a2a1b1b, they each pack a fair bit of Yamnaya-related ancestry and are dated to a very similar time period. Unlike Bul4, I2165 does not make the cut archaeologically as a Yamnaya sample, but he does come from a Tumulus (Kurgan-like) burial, so perhaps he's from a group influenced by Yamnaya? By the way, the I2a2a1b1b lineage is also shared by Yamnaya_Kalmykia RISE552, and as far as I can tell,



the oldest individual sampled to date belonging to this line is Ukraine_Neolithic I1738, dated to 5473-5326 calBCE. So I2a2a1b1b appears to be a Pontic-Caspian steppe marker.The same paper also includes the following individual from present-day Bulgaria dated to the start of the Late Bronze Age (LBA), which is roughly when the Mycenaeans appeared nearby in what is now Greece:Bulgaria_MLBA I2163: Y-hg R1a1a1b2 mt-hg U5a2 1750-1625 calBCEThis guy is the most Yamnaya-like of all of the Balkan samples in Mathieson et al. 2017, and, as far as I can see based on his overall genome-wide results, probably indistinguishable from the contemporaneous Srubnaya people of the Pontic-Caspian steppe. He also belongs to Y-haplogroup R1a-Z93, which is a marker typical of Srubnaya and other closely related steppe groups such as Andronovo, Potapovka and Sintashta. So there's very little doubt that he's either a migrant or a recent descendant of migrants to the Balkans from the Pontic-Caspian steppe.

One of those I2a2 seems to of been an Indo European, the other one is claimed to of been influenced. R1a was an Indo European. They can qualify as Proto Thracians IMO. There is no historical record when Proto Thracians settled, all we know from this is that Indo Europeans came in different waves, Bronze Age and Iron Age.

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/05/steppe-invaders-in-bronze-age-balkans.html



This was before Myceanean papers , but Myceaneans turned out to be different from these samples AFAIK.
 
Some more I found regarding Proto Thracians

The origins of the Thracians remain obscure, in the absence of written historical records. Evidence of proto-Thracians in the prehistoric period depends on artifacts of material culture. Leo Klejn identifies proto-Thracians with the multi-cordoned ware culture that was pushed away from Ukraine by the advancing timber grave culture or Srubnaya. It is generally proposed that a proto-Thracian people developed from a mixture of indigenous peoples and Indo-Europeans from the time of Proto-Indo-European expansion in the Early Bronze Age[7] when the latter, around 1500 BC, mixed with indigenous peoples.[8] During the Iron Age (about 1000 BC) Dacians and Thracians began developing from proto-Thracians.[9]
 
Yes , I2a samples were Indo-Europeans and possibly the IE settlers who came were autosomally identical to them. But the IE arrived more than 1000 years later so these individuals seem to be outliers. In the contrary the Bronze Age Bulgaria lived exactly when the IE settlers arrived. I share common segments with him and the same do other Balkanites so he must have left descndants at the Balkans or at least some of his relatives. I find much more possible that he belonged to Proto-Thracians. The Iron Age Bulgaria sample plots south of Tuscan. It is close to Central Italy populations. It has high ENF and a little Steppe admixture. I think it makes sense since the Bronze Age IE people mixed with Balkan neolithics. The ancient Greeks also plotted more southern than modern Greeks close to South Italy.
It is generally suggested that multi-cordoned ware culture had many interactions with Srubna culture (R1a-Z93) so I suppose that some of Proto-Thracians were originated from Srubna culture. This could explain why this individual was R1a-Z93.
 
So Proto Thracians seem to of been Bronze Age , Early Bronze Age people . Those I2a2 qualify well for Proto Thracians, Also R1a z93. I asume they mixed with natives and the product was those Iron Age samples found. One was scoring 99% Balkan whhich I saw years ago and some others were south of Tuscans as you said.

Some Yugoslav scholars also put Ilyrians as arriving during Bronze Age , that female from Dalmatia despite a Bronze Age was more South than Bronze Age from East Balkans , she was also not too different from a modern day North Albanian. Bronze Age in Montenegro was already 83% Balkan.

So if Bronze Age people mixed with natives to produce those Iron Age in East Balkans I asume the same thing occured in West Balkan. This would mean the whole pre Slavic Balkans was genetically like Albanians and Greeks ?


To demonstrate this we would have to find Late Iron Age samples or post Iron Age from all across the Balkans, including West.


But I really do believe this is how it was. The genetics of modern Balkan people point to this and ancient samples.
 
Balkaners were quite similar to Italians before the Slavs arrive. There was a genetic continuity until early middle-ages. Greeks and Albanians were also affected by the Slavs but much less than the other Balkanic populations. This is why until nowadays Greeks are close to south and central-south Italy and Albanians are close to Tuscan and Greeks and Albanians are very close to each other in genetic terms.
 
I looked for information about the I2a2 samples and I found out that they moved to Bulgaria at 3000 BCE, much earlier than the Indo-European migration to Balkans. So these samples can't be Proto-Thracians.

I saw now another R1a-Z93 Thracian found from Andreevo . So this seems to me some kind of Thracian marker, not as huge as EV-13 but definitely there. I have not seen a single R-Z93 Illyrian sample so far. Nor Ancient Greek so this Y-DNA seems rare and special to me for European populations.
 

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