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Autosomal analysis of the genomes of Iron Age Britons and Anglo-Saxons

ElHorsto said:
If "West European" and "East European" are defined by contemporary people and assuming that both categories are essentially descendants of the same old WHG, then it is impossible that there once was a heavily ancient "West European" population. The older a sample, the more evenenly his WHG will be divided in "West European" and "East European", because WE and EE are the result of recent differentiation due to geographic separation. The iron age sample is closer to Loschbour in terms of time scale and Loschbour is about equally East and West. Therefore I think it is generally impossible to find any ancient sample with such high "West European" percentage like contemporary west Europeans.

EDIT: Maybe the same reasoning can also explain the general tendency towards exotic admixtures in ancient samples (which is incomplete differentiation)!?
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Hello! I'm late but I understand your reasoning even if it is not sure 100% two stocks already were present among the HG's of W-Europe -
 
Dubhthach said:
Indeed, well it was one of reasons I put the question to them, as you can see they only really cosidered clades of R1a and R1b, no doubt there are subclades of I1 that have quite localised scandinavian origin, adding these in would get a better picture.
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If they can decide which subclades of R1b they think are "Viking", they should be able to take the same in-depth approach to I1, considering how much work has been done on tracing the probable origins of various I1 subclades.
 
John Doe said:
Well, I suppose my question is, is it accurate? All 4 of my grandparents were AJs, and here are my results, should they be considered accurate?

Admix Results (sorted):

Population
Caucasian

[TD="align: center"] # [/TD]

[TD="align: right"] Percent [/TD]

[TD="align: center"]1[/TD]

[TD="width: 50, align: right"]37.34[/TD]

[TD="width: 30, align: center"]2[/TD]
[TD="width: 120"]European_Early_Farmers[/TD]
[TD="width: 50, align: right"]22.63[/TD]

[TD="width: 30, align: center"]3[/TD]
[TD="width: 120"]European_Hunters_Gatherers[/TD]
[TD="width: 50, align: right"]13.20[/TD]

[TD="width: 30, align: center"]4[/TD]
[TD="width: 120"]Near_East[/TD]
[TD="width: 50, align: right"]10.51[/TD]

[TD="width: 30, align: center"]5[/TD]
[TD="width: 120"]North_African[/TD]
[TD="width: 50, align: right"]6.86[/TD]

[TD="width: 30, align: center"]6[/TD]
[TD="width: 120"]South_Central_Asian[/TD]
[TD="width: 50, align: right"]6.36[/TD]


Finished reading population data. 620 populations found.
23 components mode.

--------------------------------

Least-squares method.

Using 1 population approximation:
1 Ashkenazi_Jew @ 2.929181
2 Sicilian_East @ 3.546232
3 Sicilian_West @ 3.845939
4 Sicilian_Siracusa @ 3.939226
5 Ashkenazi @ 4.350750
6 Sicilian_Trapani @ 5.250281
7 Sicilian_Agrigento @ 5.379285
8 Romanian_Jew @ 5.465404
9 Maltese @ 6.141469
10 Cretan @ 6.226387
11 Italian_South @ 6.639791
12 Sicilian_Center @ 6.905343
13 French_Jew @ 6.983124
14 Greek_Athens @ 7.279214
15 Greek @ 7.755960
16 Central_Greek @ 8.582447
17 Greek_Phokaia @ 8.734240
18 Greek_Peloponnesos @ 8.993840
19 Italian_Abruzzo @ 9.110687
20 Greek_Smyrna @ 9.649567

Using 2 populations approximation:
1 50% Greek_Thessaloniki +50% Sephardic_Jew @ 2.126260


Using 3 populations approximation:
1 50% French_Jew +25% Gagauz +25% Sicilian_West @ 1.580894


Using 4 populations approximation:
1 Bulgarian + Greek_Smyrna + Moroccan_Jew + Sicilian_Trapani @ 1.525548
2 Bulgarian + Greek_Smyrna + Moroccan_Jew + Sicilian_Agrigento @ 1.550738
3 French_Jew + French_Jew + Gagauz + Sicilian_West @ 1.580894
4 French_Jew + Greek_Smyrna + Montenegrian + Moroccan_Jew @ 1.606388
5 Bulgarian + French_Jew + Sephardic_Jew + Sicilian_East @ 1.619343
6 Kosovar + Kosovar + Moroccan_Jew + Syrian_Jew @ 1.620502
7 Bulgarian + Greek_Smyrna + Maltese + Moroccan_Jew @ 1.645095
8 Bulgarian + Greek_Smyrna + Moroccan_Jew + Sicilian_West @ 1.648538
9 Bulgarian + Greek_Smyrna + Moroccan_Jew + Sicilian_East @ 1.667099
10 Bulgarian + Greek_Smyrna + Libyan_Jew + Sicilian_West @ 1.681815
11 French_Jew + Gagauz + Sephardic_Jew + Sicilian_West @ 1.692104
12 Bulgarian + Greek_Smyrna + Maltese + Sephardic_Jew @ 1.719078
13 Greek_Smyrna + Macedonian + Moroccan_Jew + Sicilian_Agrigento @ 1.749767
14 Bulgarian + Greek_Smyrna + Libyan_Jew + Sicilian_Trapani @ 1.789046
15 French_Jew + Greek_Smyrna + Moroccan_Jew + Serb_Serbia @ 1.797865
16 Cretan + Kosovar + Moroccan_Jew + Sicilian_West @ 1.803889
17 Greek + Sicilian_East + Sicilian_West + Sicilian_West @ 1.804704
18 Bulgarian + French_Jew + French_Jew + French_Jew @ 1.805862
19 French_Jew + French_Jew + Gagauz + Sicilian_Agrigento @ 1.820195
20 Italian_North + Italian_South + Sicilian_East + Syrian_Jew @ 1.824458
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it is not the very center of this thread but yes, I find these results sensible (in Britain DNA Askhenaze are very close to greeks and Southern Italians, Sicilians, a bit more remote from Cyprians and Armenians what can reflect their European admixture ?)
 
MOESAN said:
it is not the very center of this thread but yes, I find these results sensible (in Britain DNA Askhenaze are very close to greeks and Southern Italians, Sicilians, a bit more remote from Cyprians and Armenians
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That makes sense.

MOESAN said:
what can reflect their European admixture ?)
Click to expand...

I'm not certain, I suppose it would mainly be southeastern European, Greek like.
 
It's difficult to know how seriously to take all the various figures that are floating around, but...

I saw this breakdown for Hinxton 4: (It would be nice if people kept the sample numbers so there is no confusion, but I am assuming this is the tentatively attributed Iron Age sample.)

Hinxton 4: 44.8%EEF 39.6%WHG 15.6%ANE

Now for the Scottish and English numbers from the Lazaridis paper:
Scottish: .39EEF/.428WHG/.18ANE
English: .495EEF/.364/WHG/.14ANE

Hinxton 4 Iron Age male seems to be right in between the Scots and the English.

I do realize the sample from the Iron Age was tested using a different calculator than the one used by Lazaridis et al, but I don't have the calculator averages for the two national groups from the program used to analyze Hinxton 4. Still, the general pattern may be correct. I'm sure people are checking it.
 
T101 said:
The Hinxton 4 - ERS389798 sample has been confirmed as positive for R1b-L21 by Felix Chandrakumar (Felix's Thought Logs.)

Other markers as follows: P312+ S424-, L746/S310-, L563-, L679-, Z2961-, Z2534-, S425-, L658-, CTS7030-.
Click to expand...

Now also confirmed as DF21+, Z246+, and DF25+.
 
Last edited:
"Felix" has given his version of the percentages for Hinxton 4 ERS389798 for Dodecad v3, VVK23b and one of the Eurogenes runs.
K23b:
Ancient Altaic 8.50
South Central Asian 6.92
Arctic .91
Caucasus 19.49
EEF 27.86
Hunter Gatherer
SSA .69

Altaic, S.C.Asian, Arctic 16.33
EEF + Caucasus 47.35
Hunter Gatherer 35.64

On the Dodecad v3
E.Euro 10.62
W.Euro 53.13
Med 25.96
W.Asian 6.95
S.Asian 2.19
NWAfrican .29
Paleo, Neo, E.African .86

I never bothered to load this new computer with the Oracle program, but I'm sure people are doing it or have done it. Just eyeballing the v3 Spreadsheet, this sample isn't far from the Argyl one or the Orcadian one. It's just a little more Med and a little less West European. Interestingly enough, CEU looks like an even better fit, which you could describe I suppose as general British Isles with some German?At least I think that's how you could describe the Mormons.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...hkey=COCa89AJ&hl=en_US&authkey=COCa89AJ#gid=0

I would take a shot at the Eurogenes run but I don't have any idea where the national averages are to be found. I'm sure someone is doing it.

Now we'll see what the paper says...
 
Angela said:
I would take a shot at the Eurogenes run but I don't have any idea where the national averages are to be found. I'm sure someone is doing it.

Now we'll see what the paper says...
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Angela, you are in avant garde with these runs. Just patiently explain (as you usually do) what it means to the rest of us otherwise we are lost with these numbers.
 
Both "Genetiker" and "Felix" and perhaps "Eurogenes" have run the ancient genomes in question through various calculators and programs including Oracle to get a handle on the similarity of these genomes to modern populations.

Predictably enough, the percentages differ depending on who did the analysis. Instead of trying to come to some degree of consensus, they just seem to be engaging in a *******contest.

Using the percentages for the K23b and v3 (Dodecad K-12) runs provided by Genetiker (along with the results from the Dodecad K12b run) Maciamo analyzed the data and concluded that ERS389798, Hinxton 4, was more likely to be one of the Iron Age "Celts", and Hinxton 1 was more likely to be from the Anglo-Saxon period.

On the thread started by Fire Haired I took the attribution given in other places, looked at the same percentages that Maciamo had looked at, and concluded that those percentages supported an attribution of Hinxton 4 to the Iron Age Celtic period more so than did the data for Hinxton 1.

I said the following:
"The more northern, more northeastern "tilt" of the "Anglo-Saxon" sample seems pretty clear."

I also said that I would find it surprising that the AngloSaxons would turn out to be the more western and southern shifted group.
This was my reasoning based on those runs:

"The Anglo-Saxon period male has approximately the same amount of "Caucasus" as the Iron Age Celt, and only 2.5 points less Atlantic Med. However, he is 11 points more "North European". He also has 3.63% East Asian, and 1.16% Siberian, none of which show up in the Iron Age Celt.

The Iron Age Celt has 2.63% Northwest African, compared to 1.31%, he has 2.73% East African, compared to .79%, and he has 5.96% Gedrosia and 2.90% South Asian, compared to virtually none for the Anglo-Saxon.

So, once again, of the two, and taking into account the abstract of the paper, the Hinxton 4 sample seemed to be the likelier candidate for an Iron Age Celt.

Who knows, maybe they were both from the Iron Age. The authors will tell us. Maybe Hinxton 1 was of mixed ancestry. I don't know.

That's it...that's what drew the fire storm. Apparently, just using a Dodecad calculator is enough to draw the ire and insults of a certain group of posters, even to the point of calling this site a joke.

As I stated upthread, new percentages have now been provided by "Felix" for Hinxton 4. I don't have the data for Hinxton 1 so I can't do the same kind of comparison. What I can do, and did, is look at the percentages in the v3 spreadsheet. (As I said, I no longer have DIY or the Oracle set up on my computer.) Anyone can do the same by clicking on the link. So far as I can see, the ancient sample is pretty close to the western Scots (Argyle and Orkney), except that it is 2-3% more Med than the modern populations, and 2-3% less West Euro. Considering the documented population movements into those areas since the Iron Age, I don't think that's surprising.

Since then I've seen a post on another site to the effect that the sample is closest to the Irish. That may or may not be an accurate description of the results. I also don't know if that's based on an Oracle run or shared drift analysis. I have no way of knowing. This must be from a Eurogenes analysis, because in the Dodecad runs, the Irish do not seem to be as close to the ancient sample as the Scots, probably because they have less "Eastern European." (3% to 11%, with the sample having 11%) I don't know what the population averages for these modern groups are in the Eurogenes K-13 run which does have Western European and Eastern European clusters.

I also think that I saw a Eurogenes K13 analysis of some of these ancient samples, perhaps on Anthrogenica, but I don't remember precisely where. If I have time I will check to see how much Eastern Euro each one had.

At any rate, what I don't understand is why the abstract implied that the Anglo Saxon period people were more like modern Brits than the Iron Age people. If Hinxton 4 is indeed Iron Age, he looks pretty darn close to modern Brits, at least of the Scots variety.

Ed. Using the K23b percentages provided by "Felix", which are different than the ones provided by "Genetiker", and if you add what he calls EEF and Caucasus together, (Caucasus being, perhaps an eastern drifted from of EEF) you get an EEF/WHG/ANE set of numbers for Hinxton 4 which are only a few points off from the numbers in the Lazaridis et al paper. (For example, you get an EEF approximation of 47% compared to 49.5%) It would be nice if the authors used the Lazaridis algorithm on these samples so we can make a real comparison.
 
Charleston Chiang (@cwkchiang) reports from ASHG 2014 the following:

Schiffels: Older Iron age samples more like present British samples, while younger AS samples left little imprint on modern GBR. #ASHG14
 
T101 said:
Charleston Chiang (@cwkchiang) reports from ASHG 2014 the following:

Schiffels: Older Iron age samples more like present British samples, while younger AS samples left little imprint on modern GBR. #ASHG14
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My dear T101, thank you, but I think we both have to turn off our phones.

I just got this set of re-tweets from Razib Khan:

#ASHG14 Britain Finland diverges 6k BP. iron age clusters with modern Britains anglosaxon different. sounds like little German pop movement

#ASHG14 Cornwall less Finnish. Saxon cline

#ASHG14 modern British more rare variant with Spanish affinity vs Finn. Anglo Saxon more with Finn. Iron Age more affinity Spanish

#ASHG14 modern British more rare variant with Spanish affinity vs Finn. Anglo Saxon more with Finn. Iron Age more affinity Spanish
#ASHG14 old samples cluster sort of with modern British. anglosaxon Finn shifted iron age Spain shiftef


I particularly like the "sort of". :) Of course, we then have the abstract, which says that " We find in particular that while the Anglo-Saxon samples resemble more closely the modern British population than the earlier samples,."It's all about as clear as mud.

Hopefully, the full paper makes everything as clear as the water from a fresh, bubbling stream...:)
 
Angela said:
Since then I've seen a post on another site to the effect that the sample is closest to the Irish. That may or may not be an accurate description of the results. I also don't know if that's based on an Oracle run or shared drift analysis. I have no way of knowing. This must be from a Eurogenes analysis, because in the Dodecad runs, the Irish do not seem to be as close to the ancient sample as the Scots, probably because they have less "Eastern European." (3% to 11%, with the sample having 11%) I don't know what the population averages for these modern groups are in the Eurogenes K-13 run which does have Western European and Eastern European clusters.
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Angela, I believe the data supplied by Kit #F999925 at Gedmatch (loaded by Felix Chandrakumar), and independently by Eurogenes/Davidski on his K=15 calculator point to the closest population being Irish. The tweets are bloody confusing and we need to wait and see what additional information can be provided.
 
Angela said:
My dear T101, thank you, but I think we both have to turn off our phones.
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Haha... You are so right!!

Angela said:
I particularly like the "sort of". :) Of course, we then have the abstract, which says that " We find in particular that while the Anglo-Saxon samples resemble more closely the modern British population than the earlier samples,."It's all about as clear as mud.

Hopefully, the full paper makes everything as clear as the water from a fresh, bubbling stream...:)
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Yeah, I can't believe they would contradict their abstract like that. I haven't seen confusion like this since... I don't know when! Can you remember anything like this? Wow...
 
If there gonna compare them to all of britain then of course the iron age Celt is going to be closer to britain...UK is mostly Celtic countries and england is a celto Germanic country DNA wise.the Anglo Saxon would have more in common with Finland,not the mostly Celtic UK,with celto Germanic england.take care
 
ScienceNews reports:

Britons might not be Anglo-Saxons, a genetic analysis of five ancient skeletons hints.

When archaeological digs revealed ancient graves on the grounds of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, England, researchers there took it as a sign that they should analyze the ancient people’s DNA. Two skeletons were from men who were buried about 2,000 years ago. The other three skeletons were from women who died about 1,300 years ago, not long after the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain.
The researchers were surprised to find that the older Iron Age men were genetically more similar to people living in Britain today than the Anglo-Saxon women were. Stephan Schiffels of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute reported the results October 20 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.

“It doesn’t look like these Anglo-Saxon immigrants left a big impact on the genetic makeup of modern-day Britain,” Schiffels said.

The finding raises an intriguing possibility that indigenous people in Britain may have repelled the Anglo-Saxons but adopted the invaders’ language and culture, says Eimear Kenny, a population geneticist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, who was not involved in the work. More ancient samples from other times and parts of Britain should give a clearer picture of that episode of history, she said.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/anglo-saxons-left-language-maybe-not-genes-modern-britons
 
T101 said:
ScienceNews reports:

...............


The finding raises an intriguing possibility that indigenous people in Britain may have repelled the Anglo-Saxons but adopted the invaders’ language and culture, says Eimear Kenny, a population geneticist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, who was not involved in the work. More ancient samples from other times and parts of Britain should give a clearer picture of that episode of history, she said.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/anglo-saxons-left-language-maybe-not-genes-modern-britons
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Really? "Let's adopt the language and culture of the invaders we successfully repelled." Someone isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. If more research shows that the Anglo-Saxons didn't greatly affect the autosomal structure of British DNA, that simply shows that they were a small conquering elite, just as the Normans were later.
 
tjlowery87 said:
So what does all this mean about the extinct of the Anglo Saxon immigration?
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It's going to go back and forth for a while as different samples from different regions clarify and cloud but in the end i think it'll come down to something like:

English ~ 1/2 German + 1/2 Welsh

i.e. multiple waves (Belgae, Saxons, Danes etc) of similar northern populations coming from a northern/eastern direction via the north sea combined with multiple waves (HGs, Megalith, BB) of more southern populations from a southern/western direction via the Atlantic coast.

nb remote parts of the north Wales mountains have up to 30% E1b
 
Funny how they keep comparing it to all of Britain and not just england,I'm pretty sure the welsh will agree that they are not Saxons.
 
Isn't there an east vs west difference in england when it come to to DNA?
 
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