36,200YBP European genome

[Greying Wanderer]

"I would also not say that our results are necessarily a refutation of the Lazaridis et al model, but I do think they show that it seems to have been already quite complicated in the Upper Paleolithic."

Incoming theory, skip if annoying

If the process is one where a population develops an advantage and expands from a source region and then one segment of that expanded population then develops a further advantage and expands back over the top of the previous layer in a sequence of population layers building up a bit like sedimentary rocks then say for the sake of argument this process could be modeled as:

the previous layer becomes 20% of the combined autosomal

then the sequence would go something like

1st layer A
A 100%

2nd layer B
A 20%
B 80%

3rd layer C
A 4%
B 16%
C 80%

4th layer D
A 0.8%
B 3.2%
C 16%
D 80%

As the layers build up the earliest layers become compressed and also relatively closer to each other compared with the later layers. So I wonder if something like that is effecting basal i.e. it's a collection of similar small signals rather than one signal, so in the example components A and B are two separate components of 0.8% and 3.2% but mostly register as a single layer AB of 4%.

Except in a few places where the A is bigger - say the model is modified to say that in refuge zones 40% of the previous layer is preserved instead of just 20% in which case it goes:

A 100%

A 40%
B 60%

A 16%
B 24%
C 60%

A 6.4%
B 9.6%
C 24%
D 60%

so the A is big enough to notice.

Something like that anyway.

 

[Aberdeen]

I have some concerns that the way this paper is referring to basal Eurasians possibly involves a misunderstanding of what Lazardis et al meant when they referred to basal Eurasians as forming at least 44% of EEF. Based on what the word "basal" means, I can understand why there's an assumption in this paper that basal Eurasians are those Eurasians who existed before the split occurred in the out of Africa population in the Middle East. However, when I look at the paper on the three founding populations of Europe, it seems to refer to a population that split off from the original out of Africa group and evolved into something separate perhaps in Saudia Arabia and perhaps as a result of further gene flow from East Africa, so Lazardis's basal Eurasians who mixed with some other group (perhaps Balkan hunter gatherers) to become EEF were different from the original out of Africa group. Am I misunderstanding the issue? I don't see how the group that Lazardis considers to be Middle Eastern farmers who mixed with other populations as it flowed into Europe could have existed 36,000 years ago.

 

[epoch]

I think you are right. IBD patterns are more fragile, somewhat like haplogroups, while admixtures are more robust by relying on independent SNP's and are thus more continuously distributed. Thus ANE admixture could have been much more widespread than the Mal'ta tribe already back then.

Stretching from Lake Baikal to SHG's perhaps? Motola had 19% ANE and Mal'ta 58% IIRC. I would love to see the IBD map of Motola.

Another thing: Motola was considered part of a population that was replaced according to Skoglund, yet current day Swedes have substantial ANE and WHG. Ust-Ist had a substantial amount of ENA, a small amount of North-Euro, just as current Siberians, and John Hawks consideres him ancestral to no known population and now we have K14, which also shows admixture that can be found in the current population in the same area and yet again everybody considers it ancestral to nobody.

We obviously have more finds (Mal'ta with no East-Asian, WHG with no Basal or ANE) but if these were the only finds we had we would have thought that the case for continuity was made.

Mind you, I don't think anything is proven here. It just struck me as odd that those that show similarity to present day people are considered dead-ends.

 

[epoch]

@Angela

In that ANE post Martin Sikorra mentions Razib states the following:

Recall that the highest fraction of Ancestral North Eurasia (ANE) outside of the New World is among the peoples of the North Caucasus. Their shared drift statistic is depressed in comparison to Europeans because of their high fraction of Basal Eurasians (BEu)

http://www.unz.com/gnxp/ancestral-north-eurasians-about-the-world/

Why do Caucasians (The region, not the American term for whites) have such high Basal Eurasian component?

 

[Angela]

@Angela

In that ANE post Martin Sikorra mentions Razib states the following:



http://www.unz.com/gnxp/ancestral-north-eurasians-about-the-world/

Why do Caucasians (The region, not the American term for whites) have such high Basal Eurasian component?

Going back to Dienekes' exercise where he descirbes the various Dodecad components in terms of one another, in the blog about K12b in terms of World 9, southwest Asian = Caucasus. Caucasus is Atlantic Med plus Gedroisia, plus slices of southwest Asian and Northwest African.

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/08/inter-relationships-of-dodecad-k12b-and.html

When he examines the K7b and K12b components in terms of one another, Caucasus shows up as about 1/3 "Southern" (I wonder if that would get closer to Basal or at least to ancient Near Eastern) a small slice of Atlantic Med, and almost 2/3 going to "West Asian", which in these analyses is just Caucasus with a big slice of Gedrosia.

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/09/inter-relationships-between-dodecad-k7b.html

So, to address your question, don't Caucasians show such a large amount of Basal Eurasian because Caucasians are a mix of mostly farmer (ancient Near Eastern) ancestry with a big dollop of ANE?

If his analysis of the age of these components is pretty accurate, then "Caucasus" as a component is pretty old, certainly older than East African or even Atlantic Baltic.

 

[JS Bach]

Interesting comments. Here are the Eurogenes15, Dodecad12b, and DodecadV3 results for Ust' Ishim, Kostenki14 and Mal'ta:

Eurogenes15	Ust'-Ishim	Kostenki 14	Mal'ta		Dodecad K12b	Ust'-Ishim	Kostenki 14	Mal'ta		Dodecad V3	Ust'-Ishim	Kostenki 14	Mal'ta
North_Sea	-	18.81%	15.91%		Gedrosia	9.58%	12.38%	24.39%		East_European	4.55%	11.89%	20.03%
Atlantic	11.24%	12.39%	-		Siberian	2.70%	3.78%	13.55%		West_European	8.95%	30.62%	37.68%
Baltic	-	6.52%	6.54%		Northwest_African	2.58%	1.65%	-		Mediterranean	4.94%	15.55%	-
Eastern_Euro	3.08%	9.71%	38.02%		Southeast_Asian	13.76%	6.12%	-		Neo_African	3.76%	1.43%	0.38%
West_Med	4.82%	9.77%	-		Atlantic_Med	6.82%	21.46%	-		West_Asian	-	0.63%	-
West_Asian	-	-	-		North_European	7.39%	28.80%	47.46%		South_Asian	30.85%	17.75%	26.04%
East_Med	-	-	-		South_Asian	31.50%	15.70%	14.36%		Northeast_Asian	5.96%	4.58%	15.53%
Red_Sea	3.36%	5.70%	-		East_African	8.24%	3.87%	-		Southeast_Asian	21.76%	6.72%	-
South_Asian	30.76%	17.42%	20.31%		Southwest_Asian	3.36%	4.95%	-		East_African	7.03%	1.92%	-
Southeast_Asian	15.25%	1.33%	-		East_Asian	8.40%	0.15%	-		Southwest_Asian	3.86%	4.61%	-
Siberian	2.02%	0.66%	-		Caucasus	-	-	-		Northwest_African	3.25%	2.07%	-
Amerindian	2.20%	4.74%	18.62%		Sub_Saharan	5.67%	1.15%	0.24%		Palaeo_African	5.10%	2.24%	0.34%
Oceanian	10.96%	5.11%	0.12%
Northeast_African	10.08%	5.19%	-
Sub-Saharan	6.22%	2.66%	0.47%

None of them have the K12b Caucasus component, or the Eurogenes15 West_Asian or East_Med components, and Kostenki14 has just 0.63% of the West_Asian component in Dodecad V3.

My first thought when seeing the Eurogenes15 results for Kostenki14 was that it was contamination, but now seeing how they all lack that Caucasus / Near Eastern component makes me think it is the real deal. Why it's missing that area, and seeing how Kostenki14 is so close to there geographically though is intriguing.

 

[MOESAN]

"“In principle, you just have sex with your neighbor and they have it with their next neighbor—you don’t need to have these armies of people moving around to spread the genes.”

I'm not convinced that's true if you have lots of small, mostly stationary groups. If you imagine two populations split up into lots of clans with a fixed territory then if there's 10% bride swapping between the two opposing clans at the border and also 10% with the adjacent clan of the same population away from the border then for that second clan it becomes 10% of 10%. For the next adjacent clan three steps away from the border the chance is 10% of 10% of 10%. The fourth step away is 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.1 etc.


If there were two populations across north Eurasia with the border at the Urals I doubt there would be many of the eastern population's genes reaching Ireland *if* those two populations were split up into lots of small groups with fixed territories who only bride-swapped with their adjacent clans.


On the other hand if you had a region with *nomadic* HGs roaming around then maybe - so I wouldn't be surprised if the mammoth hunters were a meta population.

I agree for the most - but even nomadic populations could have had a high enough endogamy deportment - it depends on size of clan I suppose, the smallest the less regardant for strangers?

 

[MOESAN]

to EPOCH
the link with Y-N is not evident - these regions were run also by Y-C (the supposed SNP of this man) and later by Y-R* bearers too -
keep in mind Y-N1 is not so old in Finland Estonia (Bronze Age?)

 

[Greying Wanderer]

I agree for the most - but even nomadic populations could have had a high enough endogamy deportment - it depends on size of clan I suppose, the smallest the less regardant for strangers?

Yes, nomadic + too small for endogamy to be a viable option.

 

[Greying Wanderer]

Interesting comments. Here are the Eurogenes15, Dodecad12b, and DodecadV3 results for Ust' Ishim, Kostenki14 and Mal'ta:

Eurogenes15	Ust'-Ishim	Kostenki 14	Mal'ta		Dodecad K12b	Ust'-Ishim	Kostenki 14	Mal'ta		Dodecad V3	Ust'-Ishim	Kostenki 14	Mal'ta
North_Sea	-	18.81%	15.91%		Gedrosia	9.58%	12.38%	24.39%		East_European	4.55%	11.89%	20.03%
Atlantic	11.24%	12.39%	-		Siberian	2.70%	3.78%	13.55%		West_European	8.95%	30.62%	37.68%
Baltic	-	6.52%	6.54%		Northwest_African	2.58%	1.65%	-		Mediterranean	4.94%	15.55%	-
Eastern_Euro	3.08%	9.71%	38.02%		Southeast_Asian	13.76%	6.12%	-		Neo_African	3.76%	1.43%	0.38%
West_Med	4.82%	9.77%	-		Atlantic_Med	6.82%	21.46%	-		West_Asian	-	0.63%	-
West_Asian	-	-	-		North_European	7.39%	28.80%	47.46%		South_Asian	30.85%	17.75%	26.04%
East_Med	-	-	-		South_Asian	31.50%	15.70%	14.36%		Northeast_Asian	5.96%	4.58%	15.53%
Red_Sea	3.36%	5.70%	-		East_African	8.24%	3.87%	-		Southeast_Asian	21.76%	6.72%	-
South_Asian	30.76%	17.42%	20.31%		Southwest_Asian	3.36%	4.95%	-		East_African	7.03%	1.92%	-
Southeast_Asian	15.25%	1.33%	-		East_Asian	8.40%	0.15%	-		Southwest_Asian	3.86%	4.61%	-
Siberian	2.02%	0.66%	-		Caucasus	-	-	-		Northwest_African	3.25%	2.07%	-
Amerindian	2.20%	4.74%	18.62%		Sub_Saharan	5.67%	1.15%	0.24%		Palaeo_African	5.10%	2.24%	0.34%
Oceanian	10.96%	5.11%	0.12%
Northeast_African	10.08%	5.19%	-
Sub-Saharan	6.22%	2.66%	0.47%

None of them have the K12b Caucasus component, or the Eurogenes15 West_Asian or East_Med components, and Kostenki14 has just 0.63% of the West_Asian component in Dodecad V3.

My first thought when seeing the Eurogenes15 results for Kostenki14 was that it was contamination, but now seeing how they all lack that Caucasus / Near Eastern component makes me think it is the real deal. Why it's missing that area, and seeing how Kostenki14 is so close to there geographically though is intriguing.

A later creation maybe?

 

[LeBrok]

Interesting comments. Here are the Eurogenes15, Dodecad12b, and DodecadV3 results for Ust' Ishim, Kostenki14 and Mal'ta:

Eurogenes15	Ust'-Ishim	Kostenki 14	Mal'ta		Dodecad K12b	Ust'-Ishim	Kostenki 14	Mal'ta		Dodecad V3	Ust'-Ishim	Kostenki 14	Mal'ta
North_Sea	-	18.81%	15.91%		Gedrosia	9.58%	12.38%	24.39%		East_European	4.55%	11.89%	20.03%
Atlantic	11.24%	12.39%	-		Siberian	2.70%	3.78%	13.55%		West_European	8.95%	30.62%	37.68%
Baltic	-	6.52%	6.54%		Northwest_African	2.58%	1.65%	-		Mediterranean	4.94%	15.55%	-
Eastern_Euro	3.08%	9.71%	38.02%		Southeast_Asian	13.76%	6.12%	-		Neo_African	3.76%	1.43%	0.38%
West_Med	4.82%	9.77%	-		Atlantic_Med	6.82%	21.46%	-		West_Asian	-	0.63%	-
West_Asian	-	-	-		North_European	7.39%	28.80%	47.46%		South_Asian	30.85%	17.75%	26.04%
East_Med	-	-	-		South_Asian	31.50%	15.70%	14.36%		Northeast_Asian	5.96%	4.58%	15.53%
Red_Sea	3.36%	5.70%	-		East_African	8.24%	3.87%	-		Southeast_Asian	21.76%	6.72%	-
South_Asian	30.76%	17.42%	20.31%		Southwest_Asian	3.36%	4.95%	-		East_African	7.03%	1.92%	-
Southeast_Asian	15.25%	1.33%	-		East_Asian	8.40%	0.15%	-		Southwest_Asian	3.86%	4.61%	-
Siberian	2.02%	0.66%	-		Caucasus	-	-	-		Northwest_African	3.25%	2.07%	-
Amerindian	2.20%	4.74%	18.62%		Sub_Saharan	5.67%	1.15%	0.24%		Palaeo_African	5.10%	2.24%	0.34%
Oceanian	10.96%	5.11%	0.12%
Northeast_African	10.08%	5.19%	-
Sub-Saharan	6.22%	2.66%	0.47%

None of them have the K12b Caucasus component, or the Eurogenes15 West_Asian or East_Med components, and Kostenki14 has just 0.63% of the West_Asian component in Dodecad V3.

My first thought when seeing the Eurogenes15 results for Kostenki14 was that it was contamination, but now seeing how they all lack that Caucasus / Near Eastern component makes me think it is the real deal. Why it's missing that area, and seeing how Kostenki14 is so close to there geographically though is intriguing.

Great observation dude. Whole region West Asia, East Med, and Caucasus is missing, or almost! Interestingly it is the place where agriculture started. We need genome of Near East hunter gatherer, probably very different than central and north Asians that we already have. Another idea is that farmers thanks to their big numbers mutated genome so fast that became incompatible for comparison with these old dudes.

 

[Greying Wanderer]

@Angela

In that ANE post Martin Sikorra mentions Razib states the following:



http://www.unz.com/gnxp/ancestral-north-eurasians-about-the-world/

Why do Caucasians (The region, not the American term for whites) have such high Basal Eurasian component?

My thoughts on that so far are
1) they are largely descended from a mixed farmer/steppe population on the edge of the farmer/steppe zone who moved into the Caucasus as a refuge from PIE (so they get it from the farmer basal)
or
2) "basal" is a collection of 2+ similar signals and one of those signals originated in the Caucasus
or
3) a bit of both i.e. Caucasus has two basal signals, a farmer one and a local one.

 

[Angela]

Lazaridis et al:

" We intersected the set of Near Eastern populations without substantial (<1%) African admixture asinferred by ADMIXTURE K=10 (SI 9) with those whose most significantf3-statistic involved the pairing (Stuttgart, MA1) (Table 1). Five populations met these criteria: Abkhasian, Chechen, Cypriot, Druze, Lezgin. We modified the model of Fig. S12.11 to model these populations as a mixture of a Near Eastern population that also contributed to Stuttgart and an MA1-related ANE population (but no WHG ancestry) (Fig. S12.19). All five populationsfit successfully, and we report their admixture proportions in Table S12.12.


Conversely, we do not currently know whether the signal of admixture observed in the Near East and Caucasus reflects an arrival of MA1-related ancestry from the east, or alternatively dilution of native MA1-related ancestry by an expansion of a Near Eastern population carrying Basal Eurasian admixture, associated perhaps with the expansion of Levantine Mesopotamian early agriculturalists who seem to have influenced the Y-chromosome distribution of the region19. Future studies of ancient Central Eurasians may help resolve such questions of migration timing and directionality."

 

[Angela]

Aberdeen:I have some concerns that the way this paper is referring to basal Eurasians possibly involves a misunderstanding of what Lazardis et al meant when they referred to basal Eurasians as forming at least 44% of EEF. Based on what the word "basal" means, I can understand why there's an assumption in this paper that basal Eurasians are those Eurasians who existed before the split occurred in the out of Africa population in the Middle East. However, when I look at the paper on the three founding populations of Europe, it seems to refer to a population that split off from the original out of Africa group and evolved into something separate perhaps in Saudia Arabia and perhaps as a result of further gene flow from East Africa, so Lazardis's basal Eurasians who mixed with some other group (perhaps Balkan hunter gatherers) to become EEF were different from the original out of Africa group. Am I misunderstanding the issue? I don't see how the group that Lazardis considers to be Middle Eastern farmers who mixed with other populations as it flowed into Europe could have existed 36,000 years ago.:

This is the specific reference from Lazaridis et al. Basal Eurasian is " admixture from a source that branched off before the divergence of West Eurasians and eastern non-Africans.

The Near East was the staging point for the peopling of Eurasia by anatomically modern humans. As a result, it is entirely plausible that it harbored deep Eurasian ancestry which did not initially participate in the northward colonization of Europe, but was later brought into Europe by Near Eastern farmers. More speculatively, some basal Eurasian admixture in the Near East may reflect the early presence of anatomically modern humans7in the Levant, or the populations responsible for the appearance of the Nubian Complex in Arabia8, both of which date much earlier than the widespread dissemination of modern humans across Eurasia. Finally, it could reflect continuing more recent gene flows between the NearEast and nearby Africa after the initial out-of-Africa dispersal, perhaps associated with the spread of Y-chromosome haplogroup E subclades from eastern Africa9, 10 into the Near East, which appeared at least 7,000 years ago into Neolithic Europe11"

The problem for me with this formulation (and perhaps for you) is that the last possibility has nothing to do with a source which branched off before the divergence of West Eurasians and eastern non-Africans, and therefore it confuses the issue. As for his other speculations, I think he's talking about the theories having to do with an OOA event around 100, 000 years ago versus the more accepted, more recent OOA event. Perhaps it would have been better to stick with the more general theory that some AMH's stayed behind in the Near East when other groups went into Europe. Or perhaps it will turn out that Basal is a basically West Eurasian genome with a few percent African from the Red Sea. I don't know.

As to the study under discussion, I also have some doubts about whether the authors of this paper actually found Basal Eurasian in Kostenki 14. (I do think that the author has a point when he writes that they never said that Kostenki's descendants provided genetic material to Europeans. He's at pains to point out that a careful reading of their paper would have shown that in Model 2, they do not show Kostenki genes flowing into Europeans.)

I think, from Martin Sikorra's post, that they themselves have some doubts. What he says is that "K14 does share substantial amount of ancestry with Mesolithic Hunter-gatherers (and therefore modern Europeans by extension), but at the same time appears less close to East Asians than all Western Eurasians...Therefore if you take the Lazaridis et al. model as a backbone, you need some extra gene flow to account for that, be it from Basal Eurasian into K14, or some sort of basal gene flow between East Asia and early West Eurasians, post-K14 but pre-ANE/HG split. While we don’t have the resolution to be sure, our results do suggest that K14 was close to or a already somewhat down the HG branch of the ANE/HG split, which implies that those proposed components would not only have to be already somewhat differentiated by 36 kya, but also already have had mixed to a certain extent".

Dienekes in his commentary also implied, I think, that there is some data that could call this finding into question.

At any rate, even if Kostenki 14 contained some input from Basal Eurasians, I don't know that it poses a big problem for the Lazardis model. It's clear there was no Basal Eurasian in the WHG or the people of central Europe, at least, until after the Neolithic. As for where Kostenki 14 might have picked up his "Basal", if he has it, I think all he (his people) would have had to have done is graze the area where the Basal Eurasian lived, which wouldn't necessarily have had to have been limited to Arabia, especially by this point.

Ed. I think we also have to be prepared for the fact that, as they kept saying in the Lazaridis paper, this model was based on the ancient genomes they had at the time. As more samples are recovered, especially from the Near East, some of the models may indeed change. I don't think, however, that refining the nature of the "Basal Eurasian" component or figuring out the best model for ancient admixtures on one or another side of some apparently very important east/west line is going to change the utility of the Lazardis model for the peopling of Europe. We have a genome for an early European farmer, who is very similar to other European farmers. We have the genomes of western hunter gatherers who were in Europe before the arrival of the Europeans, and we have the genome of a North Eurasian whose genes made a late appearance. Through them, we can learn about the peopling of Europe and about the relationships between the different European ethnicities. I don't think that will change.

 

[Greying Wanderer]

"Through them, we can learn about the peopling of Europe and about the relationships between the different European ethnicities. I don't think that will change."

I think teasing out the basal(s) may provide clues to the earliest layers e.g. ASE/ASI etc, and their sequence across Eurasia as a whole.

 

[Alan]

Btw regrading your subsequent ANE post, I can confirm that those are the Kalash. Interesting also that the correspondingly the Kalash ADMIXTURE component shows up in MA1, but is almost absent in K14 (see our Figure S20).

What does that mean? Are Kalash the best proxy for ANE?

 

[epoch]

to EPOCH
the link with Y-N is not evident - these regions were run also by Y-C (the supposed SNP of this man) and later by Y-R* bearers too -
keep in mind Y-N1 is not so old in Finland Estonia (Bronze Age?)

Ust-Ishim Y-DNA supposedly could have been ancestral to NO, if I understand all well. Perhaps I posted this map in the wrong thread. Sorry for that.

 

[Angela]

I suppose I should have posted Razib Khan's original piece on the Willerslev, Sikorra paper on Kostenki 14 before I posted Martin Sikorra's rebuttal. Here is the link:
http://www.unz.com/gnxp/a-man-30000-years-before-his-time/

It's 2600 words,but there's a lot in it to chew over...

(I know I shouldn't editorialize, but I can't help but comment that the rather silly, in my opinion, comments by Willerslev don't do his paper any good. I'm doubtful about some of the paper's analyses. I'm not at all doubtful that his conclusions, as reported from his interview in Science, are most probably wrong.)

 

[Aberdeen]

This is the specific reference from Lazaridis et al. Basal Eurasian is " admixture from a source that branched off before the divergence of West Eurasians and eastern non-Africans.

The Near East was the staging point for the peopling of Eurasia by anatomically modern humans. As a result, it is entirely plausible that it harbored deep Eurasian ancestry which did not initially participate in the northward colonization of Europe, but was later brought into Europe by Near Eastern farmers. More speculatively, some basal Eurasian admixture in the Near East may reflect the early presence of anatomically modern humans7in the Levant, or the populations responsible for the appearance of the Nubian Complex in Arabia8, both of which date much earlier than the widespread dissemination of modern humans across Eurasia. Finally, it could reflect continuing more recent gene flows between the NearEast and nearby Africa after the initial out-of-Africa dispersal, perhaps associated with the spread of Y-chromosome haplogroup E subclades from eastern Africa9, 10 into the Near East, which appeared at least 7,000 years ago into Neolithic Europe11"

The problem for me with this formulation (and perhaps for you) is that the last possibility has nothing to do with a source which branched off before the divergence of West Eurasians and eastern non-Africans, and therefore it confuses the issue. As for his other speculations, I think he's talking about the theories having to do with an OOA event around 100, 000 years ago versus the more accepted, more recent OOA event. Perhaps it would have been better to stick with the more general theory that some AMH's stayed behind in the Near East when other groups went into Europe. Or perhaps it will turn out that Basal is a basically West Eurasian genome with a few percent African from the Red Sea. I don't know.

As to the study under discussion, I also have some doubts about whether the authors of this paper actually found Basal Eurasian in Kostenki 14. (I do think that the author has a point when he writes that they never said that Kostenki's descendants provided genetic material to Europeans. He's at pains to point out that a careful reading of their paper would have shown that in Model 2, they do not show Kostenki genes flowing into Europeans.)

I think, from Martin Sikorra's post, that they themselves have some doubts. What he says is that "K14 does share substantial amount of ancestry with Mesolithic Hunter-gatherers (and therefore modern Europeans by extension), but at the same time appears less close to East Asians than all Western Eurasians...Therefore if you take the Lazaridis et al. model as a backbone, you need some extra gene flow to account for that, be it from Basal Eurasian into K14, or some sort of basal gene flow between East Asia and early West Eurasians, post-K14 but pre-ANE/HG split. While we don’t have the resolution to be sure, our results do suggest that K14 was close to or a already somewhat down the HG branch of the ANE/HG split, which implies that those proposed components would not only have to be already somewhat differentiated by 36 kya, but also already have had mixed to a certain extent".

Dienekes in his commentary also implied, I think, that there is some data that could call this finding into question.

At any rate, even if Kostenki 14 contained some input from Basal Eurasians, I don't know that it poses a big problem for the Lazardis model. It's clear there was no Basal Eurasian in the WHG or the people of central Europe, at least, until after the Neolithic. As for where Kostenki 14 might have picked up his "Basal", if he has it, I think all he (his people) would have had to have done is graze the area where the Basal Eurasian lived, which wouldn't necessarily have had to have been limited to Arabia, especially by this point.

Ed. I think we also have to be prepared for the fact that, as they kept saying in the Lazaridis paper, this model was based on the ancient genomes they had at the time. As more samples are recovered, especially from the Near East, some of the models may indeed change. I don't think, however, that refining the nature of the "Basal Eurasian" component or figuring out the best model for ancient admixtures on one or another side of some apparently very important east/west line is going to change the utility of the Lazardis model for the peopling of Europe. We have a genome for an early European farmer, who is very similar to other European farmers. We have the genomes of western hunter gatherers who were in Europe before the arrival of the Europeans, and we have the genome of a North Eurasian whose genes made a late appearance. Through them, we can learn about the peopling of Europe and about the relationships between the different European ethnicities. I don't think that will change.

I'm not disagreeing with the Lazardis model for the peopling of Europe. I'm just pointing out that the Middle Eastern early farmers who mixed with some other group (possibly Balkan hunter gatherers) to produce EEF must have evolved away somewhat from any group of basal Eurasians that contributed to the genes of Kostenki 14, as a result of other gene flow and/or genetic drift during the intervening thousands of years between Kostenki 14 and the first Middle Eastern farmers. So perhaps Lazardis should have called his group something else, such as "derived from basal Eurasians".

 

[epoch]

Davidski at eurogenes is mentioning:

http://eurogenes.blogspot.nl/2014/11/treemix-graphs-with-kostenki14-and-ust.html

I'm quite certain now that the so called Basal Eurasian ancestry carried by Stuttgart and Kostenki14 can't be lumped into a single component.

Ok. Then what part of the mediterranean admixture (eef/basal) is from Kostenski14 and what from EEF? K14 keeps scoring low on Middle-East. Genetiker has a page up too, and there you see the same low Near-Eastern scores. Also, check the phenotype list there.

http://genetiker.wordpress.com/2014/11/14/analyses-of-the-kostenki-14-genome/