What Are Slavic countries?

[Tomenable]

But most of modern Germans with R1a haplogrpup have either Z280 and M458 - so typically Slavic and Baltic subclades.

Those subclades "emerged" (YFull tree) around the same time when pre-proto-Balto-Slavic language "emerged" (Chang 2015).

Only around 2% of Germans have R1a subclades which are not typically Slavic and Baltic, including 1% Z284 and 1% other.

Genetically they are very far removed from Germans or Poles

Angela are you writing about modern Indo-Aryan speakers, or about ancient DNA of those Indo-Iranians from the steppe?

Keyser 2009 has some maps which show that some of Iranian haplotypes from the Metal Ages have matches in modern Europe:

http://hamagmongol.narod.ru/library/keyser_2009_e.pdf

But I admit - no Indo-Aryan DNA was included in that study, only DNA of Iranian-speaking tribes, such as Scythians.

 

[Angela]

I dont know why so many people get all worried or upset by the use us "Aryan." Ilike to use it because it is moire accurate than "Indo_Europeans" in describing Europeans. "Indo European" actually sounds ridicupous because there is very little connection between Europeans and Indians through DNA. I am aware that Sanskrit and the Vedas is very similar to Europeans languages and culture. But that does not make Indians similar.

I dont agree with you that Germans have a lot of Slavic DNA. They do have some but certainly no a lot. Germany is a genetic barrier to the Slavs. Why that is I dont know. I wonder what the Germans would think if they read your statement.

Of course Greeks are not Slavs but they have a lot of DNA. You probably know. How much Slavic DNA do Greeks have?

No, it is most emphatically NOT more accurate than using "Indo-Europeans", which at least has the benefit of showing that it covers both European and Indian language speakers, and people in between. "Aryan" was a term ONLY used to describe people in the Near East, before it's meaning was changed.

Also, as has been pointed out to you, modern era central Europeans are not the same genetically as Samara Indo Europeans. How many times must people be encouraged to read Haak et al 2015, and how many times must this graphic be posted?

Haak et al
http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/02/10/013433

Nor would the Samara Indo-Europeans ever have qualified to appear on a Nazi poster as exemplars of "Aryans". They were undoubtedly pretty Near Eastern looking based on their phenotype information.
Sandra Wilde et al
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/13/4832.full

People's interpretations of facts may differ, but you are not entitled to make up facts or deliberately distort them.

 

[Fire Haired14]

You use "Aryan" as only a linguistic construct. I go further because the Aryans no only had a similar language but also religion and culture to other Indo Europeans. Therefore I infer that they looked the same or very similar to Europeans. Long before the Germans and Slavs existed as nations, they were the same people who lived somewhere in southern Russia.

Aryan is only used for some Indo Iranian speakers from the Middle East and West Asia. Why use it as a name for other Indo Europeans? We have a term for all IE speakers: Indo European. If you want a term for the common genetic origins of Slavs, Germans, or whoever else, you should use a differnt term.

The Aryans, as we know, originated somewhere in an area around Southern Russia or Turkmenistan and then migrated south. Therefore they were probably the same as the Skythians and to modern Europeans.

If an ethnic group's ancestors didn't call themselves Aryans, why call their descendants Aryans today? You can use differnt terms for the common origins of Slavs, Germans, etc.

I go further because the Aryans no only had a similar language but also religion and culture to other Indo Europeans. Therefore I infer that they looked the same or very similar to Europeans.........

The language, religion, and culture stuff is just because they're all Indo European. Aryan is a language/ethnic term, not about physical features.

There's a very thin line seperating West Asian-look and European-look, which are mostly differentiated by color. Yamnaya and Andronovo people were the same genetically, but one was the color of West Asians and one was the color of North Europeans.

Looking at Ancient DNA, European fairness came about in the Bronze age. It isn't defined by a type of ancestry, culture, language, etc., it was just an evolutionary event. It doesn't qualify as a way to define an ethnic group name.

 

[Tomenable]

Nor would the Samara Indo-Europeans ever have qualified to appear on a Nazi poster as exemplars of "Aryans". They were undoubtedly pretty Near Eastern looking based on their phenotype information.
Sandra Wilde et al
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/13/4832.full

Yamnaya were rather dark pigmented. They were also R1b, which is not an Indo-Iranian marker. But if you check the pigmentation of Bronze Age and Iron Age steppe populations with R1a haplogroup, then they had quite a lot of light pigmented individuals:

http://s15.postimg.org/nsnzqbnt7/Steppe_DNA_Phenotypes.png

 

[Angela]

Yamnaya were rather dark pigmented. They were also R1b, which is not an Indo-Iranian marker. But if you check the pigmentation of Bronze Age and Iron Age steppe populations with R1a haplogroup, then they had quite a lot of light pigmented individuals:

http://s15.postimg.org/nsnzqbnt7/Steppe_DNA_Phenotypes.png

So? If David Anthony is correct, the distinctive "Indo-European" culture and language and the people who produced it can be found in the Pontic Caspian steppe between 4,000 and 3,000 BC. They weren't Norwegians, or Lithuanians, or any other European group either in total genomic signature or in phenotype. They no longer exist. The people you have listed are at the earliest from periods 1,000 years later, and in some instances 3,000 years later than the original "Indo-Europeans". They are also removed in space. Both admixture with other groups and selection for certain phenotypic traits have changed them. I personally think that the migrations to the East of Indo-European speakers owed perhaps more to people who were originally living in the forest steppe than to people from the Pontic area, but that's a discussion for another thread. Once we get Indo-European speakers from Anatolia, and Iran, and northern India from the same time periods as those you have listed in your chart, people who admixed with different groups and lived for a few thousand years in a totally different kind of climate, let's see what an analysis of their phenotypes will show.

Don't misunderstand me: I am not one of those people who ascribe some sort of sacred status to the "Indo-Europeans". I believe their culture is a derivative one mostly copied from cultures to their south. If I wanted to engage in hyperbole, I could say that the only thing they added was the domestication of the horse, and perhaps some more ferocity. They also got lucky in that they adapted much of this culture and became very mobile at a time of great climate change.

My point is that people who see the "Indo-Europeans" as some sort of exemplar of a people and a culture should be honest and look at who they actually were genetically. As I said, they weren't modern Europeans.

 

[Tomenable]

Angela,

The origin of Proto-Indo-European language can probably be traced back to the Dnieper-Donets culture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnieper–Donets_culture

As for Yamnaya folks - samples from Samara-Orenburg region tested so far were R1b ht35 (eastern branch of R1b). They were probably ancestors of Anatolian, Armenian and Graeco-Phrygian branches of Indo-European languages. The reason why those people had "Armenian-like DNA" is probably because they were ancestors of Armenians (who later migrated south, to Armenia), rather than due to admixture from the area of modern Armenia.

I'm not sure on what basis did they claim a massive migration into Western Europe, though, if nearly all samples were ht35:

This shows that there was a massive migration from Samara steppe into Anatolia, where today ht35 is most common.

There is also no surprise that they were "Near Eastern looking", given that they later migrated to the Near East, and populated it. When you wrote that they were "Near Eastern looking" - I suppose - you meant that they looked like modern Near Easterners? Of course modern Near Easterners are only partially descended from that migration. But it was numerous enough that people with similar phenotypes can still be found there.

 

[Fire Haired14]

Tomenable,

Yamnaya had real Near Eastern ancestry. About 50% of their ancestry came from people similar to Northern West Asians, like Aremnians. This has been confirmed with every method. There may be Yamnaya ancestry in the Near East, but it is probably very small because WHG-affinity there is too low for Yamnaya ancestry to be high. This is why David Patterson thinks PIE may be from Armenia.

The R1b-Z2105 in Yamnaya was a shocker. It's very confusing. R1b-M269 looked like a for sure West Asian haplogroup, but now I have doubts. There isn't much evidence of a high amount of Yamnaya-type ancestry in West Asia, even though they may be the source of Z2105 in West Asia.

Yamnaya had similar pigmentation as modern Near Easterns. That's it. They probably had pretty differnt facial features though.

 

[Tomenable]

About 50% of their ancestry came from people similar to Northern West Asians, like Aremnians.

Proto-Armenians originally lived in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, from which they later migrated south to Armenia.

There they mixed with Non-Indo-European locals who spoke Non-IE Hurro-Urartian languages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurro-Urartian_languages

This is why David Patterson thinks PIE may be from Armenia.

There is no any clear evidence for PIE presence in Armenia, or anywhere in the Middle East.

We actually have records of Non-IE languages spoken originally in that region (see the link posted above, and the map).

Check also this thread: http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...Origins-The-Assault-On-Historical-Linguistics

R1b-M269 looked like a for sure West Asian haplogroup

If it was West Asian, why didn't Neolithic farmers bring any R1b-M269 to Europe? After all, they came from that area.

==================================

By the way, we definitely need more ancient DNA (including Y-DNA) samples from West Asia.

 

[matbir]

To Johannes

After reading thread I thing that you are acting like an expert in field of German ethnogenesis and Polabian Slavic history. But what you have written is not the knowledge but guesses.

After the German tribes migrated west and south during the 5-6th century the Slavs moved in from the Vistula and settled Eastern Germany (up to the Elbe) during the 8th century. But they were later ethnically cleansed by the Germans during the 9-10th centuries. The Sorbs are the remnants of the few Slavs who stayed (most fled to Poland and Czech Republic. Although eastern Germany has more R1a than other parts it is doubtful it came from the Slavs. Therefore Eastern Germany has always been Germanic. The Russian occupation did little to nothing to influence the DNA.

1. Slavs settled in eastern Germany in 6th century with spread of Sukow-Dziedzice culture. Until 7th-8th century they created states that had been known in Europe (Obotrites and Sorbs) from fighting against/with Franks. Slaves assimilated all Germanic tribes in eastern Germany before 830 when Bavarian Geographer made an index of central European tribes east of Elbe. That index did not contain any Germanic tribe.
There were no ethnic cleansing in eastern Germany and especially in 9-10 centuries everything is supported by notification of Slavic names among peasants and burghers in written sources. Sorbs ware subjugated in 10th century precisely in 939-963, while northern Obotrites and Veleti ware subjugated in second half of 12th century after series of crusades.

Although Russians tend to be ultra-nationalistic Slavs they are different from other Slavs. Russians have a lot of Uralic DNA (about 30%). Not to mention the Tatar and Turkish DNA that was introduced during the Turco-Mongol invasions during the Middle Ages. This makes Russians different from Ukrainians, Belarussians, and Poles. Russian language is also different from Ukrainian. Ukrainians and Belarussians are closer genetically and linguistically to Poles than Russians.

2. Prove that Russians have about 30% of Uralic DNA.
As far as I am concerned Russians are closer related to Poles then Ukrainians. The example of that is shown in table 2 and 4 in this article. So Poles from Lublin are closer related to Russians from Orel (distance 590 km) then to Ukrainians from Lviv (distance 120 km).
Only Northern Russians have significant Uralic admixture it’s in this article. Central and southern Russians are closely related to other northern Slavs. Also they didn't experience gene flow from Tatars/Turkic people or Mongols.

As we speak about East German ancestry, there are two areas genetically different. First southern area located south of Berlin and east of Saale River. This area is very homogenous Halle R1a 30%(Immel 2005), Dresden 32.6% (Roding 2007), Leipzig 27.1% (Kayser 2005). Frequency of R1a is very similar to that in Czech Republic and is twice higher than average in Germany and about three times higher than in western Germany. Second is northern part of eastern Germany where frequencies vary much from city to city. Rostock 31.3% (Kayser 2005) 32.4% (Roding 2007), Greifswald 19.2% (Kayser 2005), Berlin 22.3% (Kayser 2005), Magdeburg 21% (Kayser 2005), Mecklenburg 13.7% (Rębała 2012). Rębała stated that in Mecklenburg Slavic admixture is about 20%, I am interested what would he find if he tested Rostock :wink:. Here are links to: Kayser's article and Rębała's article

We need to wait for more studies in this topic. But now I can bet you that in areas where R1a is about 30% we can expect 40% to 50% of Slavic admixture and around average 35% for whole eastern Germany. But this is only ychromosomal admixture while autosomal should be expected to be higher, evenmore then 50%.

Interesting thing is that even German surnames that appears to be of German origin can have Slavic background, e.g. surnames with suffixes ke, ka, ow suggest Slavic affiliation what was proved not only linguistically but also genetically - Immel's article

 

[Tomenable]

Yamnaya autosomal DNA was specific to the Samara region, and it could be mostly female-derived from local females.

Take a look for example at Tocharians (Yuezhi) - 65% of their mtDNA was C4 - presumably local East Asian in origin.

Indo-Europeans spread as groups of warriors, who established "ruling dynasties", and frequently married local females. So their Y-DNA was mostly R1a-M198 and R1b-M269, but their mtDNA lineages were to a large extent local in each case. There was no any "mass migration", there was an invasion of warriors who then took 30 local wives each - one for each day of the month. And this is why they Y-DNA could spread so fast.

 

[Tomenable]

Frequency of R1a is very similar to that in Czech Republic

And the 2nd most common hg among the Czechs is R1b, but a lof of this can be of Non-German (for example Celtic) origin:

 

[Angela]

Angela,

The origin of Proto-Indo-European language can probably be traced back to the Dnieper-Donets culture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnieper–Donets_culture

As for Yamnaya folks - samples from Samara-Orenburg region tested so far were R1b ht35 (eastern branch of R1b). They were probably ancestors of Anatolian, Armenian and Graeco-Phrygian branches of Indo-European languages. The reason why those people had "Armenian-like DNA" is probably because they were ancestors of Armenians (who later migrated south, to Armenia), rather than due to admixture from the area of modern Armenia.

I'm not sure on what basis did they claim a massive migration into Western Europe, though, if nearly all samples were ht35:

This shows that there was a massive migration from Samara steppe into Anatolia, where today ht35 is most common.

There is also no surprise that they were "Near Eastern looking", given that they later migrated to the Near East, and populated it. When you wrote that they were "Near Eastern looking" - I suppose - you meant that they looked like modern Near Easterners? Of course modern Near Easterners are only partially descended from that migration. But it was numerous enough that people with similar phenotypes can still be found there.

Even if all of this component is female mediated, it is not EEF, at least not as far as Samara is concerned. although it may be different to the west. It's not precisely the same component. It is "Armenian like". It's all explained in Haak et al. Therefore, either there were "Armenian like" people on the steppe whose women admixed with EHG like men (we don't know whether the men might have been, perhaps, a J2a minority which survived, and we just haven't found their samples, or they were disposed of) or the EHG like men traded for or raided for women from the Caucasus and south of it. Or, perhaps Maciamo is correct and R1b, which was EEF like in Neolithic Spain, and EHG like earlier on the steppe, was more "Armenian like" (or at least this branch of it was)because of a sojourn in the Caucasus or south, south/east of it, and back migrated onto the steppe.

They are testing ancient dna in the region, and I hope they get some Maykop dna and dna east of the Caspian as well. That may clarify matters.

Regardless, Fire Haired has it right, in my opinion. Whether it was all through maternal inheritance or through back migration of the y line as well, as has been posited by Maciamo, these people, who David Anthony and so many others have claimed were the original "Indo-Europeans" were half Near Eastern when they created their culture.

I'm not quite sure what to make of Patterson's suggestion, as I've said before. We don't even know if he's changed his mind. The presence of the Kartvellian languages there is a problem, although people move, and we don't know what was spoken there at the time. Time and ancient dna will tell.

 

[mihaitzateo]

Tormenable, R1A-Z280 and R1A m458 could also have been carried by Dacians.
I read that in 2nd Daco-Roman war,Dacians were having lots of Germanic and Sarmatians allies.
Later Dacians were allied to Eastern Germanic tribes and later,to Slavic tribes.
So I think is not like what you are saying that "Germans conquered Slavs and took their land" but that rather Proto-Slavs,Dacians,Sarmatians ,Proto-Germans,Balts were living together and were mixing between them .

 

[Tomenable]

I personally think that the migrations to the East of Indo-European speakers owed perhaps more to people who were originally living in the forest steppe

Or even more to the north.

I must correct my previous graph, because the Karelian hunter was indeed not YP1272, but M459*.

M459 is the parent clade to both YP1272 and M198->M417 (of which of course the latter turned out to be much more successful).

The Karelian location of that M459* (as well as the "Ancient North Eurasian" autosomal component) reminds me of:

"The Arctic Home in the Vedas":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arctic_Home_in_the_Vedas

The Arctic Home in the Vedas is a book on the origin of Aryans by Lokmanya Bâl Gangâdhar Tilak, a mathematician turned astronomer, historian, journalist, philosopher and political leader of India during 1880 to 1920. It propounded the theory that the North Pole was the original home of Aryans during pre-glacial period which they had to leave due to the ice deluge around 8000 B.C. and had to migrate to the Northern parts of Europe and Asia in search of lands for new settlements. In support to his theory Tilak has presented certain Vedic hymns, Avestic passages, Vedic chronology and Vedic calendars with interpretations of the contents in detail. The book was written at the end of 1898, but was first published in March 1903 in Pune.

(...)

Evidence in support of the theory:

1) Vedic Evidences

Particulars of Hymns and Verses in ten Mandalas of Rigveda are given. For example Hymn 1, Verse 2, Page 459.
Particulars of Passages in Taittiriya Samhita are given. For example Passage I, 3, 9, 2, Page 91.
Particulars of Hymns in Vajasaneyi Samhita are given.
Particulars of Sama Veda Samhita are given.
Particulars of Atharva Veda Samhita are given.
Particulars of Aitareya Brahmana are given.
Particulars of Kaushitaki Brahmana are given.
Particulars of Taittiriya Brahmana are given.
Particulars of Shatapatha Brahmana are given.
Particulars of Tandya Brahmana are given.
Particulars of Sadvimsha Brahmana are given.
Particulars of Taittiriya Aranyaka are given.
Particulars of Upanishads are given.

2) Avestic Evidences

Particulars of Vendidad passages are given.
Particulars of Yashts passages are given.
Particulars of Yasna passages are given.

Influence:

The Arctic Home in the Vedas has been cited in the works of Julius Evola, Savitri Devi, Rene Guenon, Jean Haudry and John G. Bennett.

Of course the "North Pole" as an exact location must be dismised... but Karelia is reasonably close, and indeed sub-Arctic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subarctic_climate

Map showing areas with sub-Arctic climate (which include Karelia):

Check also:

"The Baltic Origins of Homer's Epic Tales":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baltic_Origins_of_Homer's_Epic_Tales

And the Seima-Turbino phenomenon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seima-Turbino_phenomenon

http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_R1a_Y-DNA.shtml#Greek

PIE homeland near Proto-Uralic homeland:

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124812

The strongest geographic indicator of the location where PIE was spoken is the fact that PIE and Proto-Uralic (PU) appear to have been geographic neighbors. They had core vocabulary items that look suspiciously similar ('name', 'water') and similar-looking pronouns (Ringe 1997; Janhunen 2000, 2001; Koivulehto 2001; Kallio 2001; Salminen 2001; Witzel 2003; Parpola 2012). One kind of relationship between PIE and PU that would account for the apparently shared pronouns, noun endings, and basic vocabulary would be ancestral: The two protolanguages could have shared a very ancient common ancestor, perhaps a broadly related set of intergrading dialects spoken by hunters at the end of the Pleistocene.

R1a connections with PIE (and recently we also learned about R1b connections with PIE):

http://www.astanatimes.com/2015/02/scandinavian-team-searches-indo-european-homeland-kazakhstan-dna/

http://dienekes.blogspot.fi/2015/02/scandinavian-team-looking-for-indo.html

Finally, Nostratic languages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostratic_languages

(...) Nostratic is a macrofamily, or hypothetical large-scale language family, that includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, although its exact composition and structure vary among proponents. In its more restricted, current form, it includes the Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic and Kartvelian languages. (...)

The closest relatives of PIE was Proto-Uralic, followed by Proto-Altaic and Kartvelian (the latter spoken in Caucasus region).

This shows that PIE homeland was most likely somewhere between the Ural Mountains, the Baltic Sea and the Caucasus.

BTW:

We have R1b-L278* (basal to both Chadic V88 and L389->P297->M269 and Bashkir M478) in Mesolithic Russia and in Neolithic Spain.

Both the Samara hunter and the Els Trocs farmer belonged to L278.

So there is ancient DNA evidence that those very basal pre-Indo-European clades - R-M459 and R-L278 - lived in Europe. Of course it does not prove definitely, that they lived only in Europe, and that their downstream haplogroups emerged in Europe.

But there exists a very probable possibility that downstream clades of those basal clades were begotten in Europe.

 

[Tomenable]

One more thing:

The Vedas and the Avesta of course contain founding myths of the Aryans. Those myths were of course much, much older than times when they were written down on paper. Before that, they had been transmitted orally from one generation to another - like in all illiterate cultures. However, we should not a priori ridicule such oral traditions, and we should not consider them as totally unreliable.

There often is a grain of truth in such myths.

For example, Maori founding myths saying that their ancestors "came in 7 great boats" turned out to be - more or less - true:

Whyte also analysed the ‘haplotypes’ (groups of closely linked genes) carried on mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only through the female line. Each population has a unique range of haplotypes. While Europeans have over 100 haplotypes in a particular region of DNA, studies so far have only found four different Maori haplotypes in the same region.

“The reason for this difference is what we call a genetic bottleneck. When people leave an island to go to the next island, obviously not everybody gets on the boat, so some of the genetic diversity is being lost,” she said. “Some of the maternal lineages may not have got on the boat, so they’re not carried on to the next place.”

Whyte has now identified 10 haplotypes in New Zealand Maori. “From that we have worked out that 56 women came to New Zealand to create the diversity of today’s population,” she added.

Whyte said these findings were consistent with Maori legend.

“The story I was told when I was growing up is that there was a fleet of seven great waka (canoes) that came to New Zealand," she said. "Every tribe knows which waka their ancestors arrived in. My ancestors were in a waka called Takitimu.”

“There might have been 20 people travelling in a canoe the size of a waka. Seven waka, that’s about 140 people. And if, as we think, about half or 56 of these people happen to be women, it does seem to tie in.”

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/ancient/AncientRepublish_817069.htm

 

[Fire Haired14]

Yamnaya-type ancestry arrived with Yamnaya-type mtDNA and Y DNA. Families, with old, young and men/women came.

 

[arvistro]

This will be fun:
http://www.isabs.hr/registration201...iew&id_program=16&id_topic=53&id_abstract=417

 

[Angela]

@Tomenable, Uralic could have come into contact with Indo-European around the Volga. Those people much further north were not Indo-Europeans, in my opinion, but Indo-Europeanized peoples.

@Arvistro
Do you think there's much that is new there? Of course, what has been pretty clear for a while, and what people have been willing to accept are two different things, yes?

 

[Tomenable]

Uralic could have come into contact with Indo-European around the Volga.

Uralic and Indo-European did not just come into contact with each other - they descent from a common ancestral language.

BTW - when it comes to Mesolithic hunters, they were small in numbers, but they were highly mobile groups of people. For example Kennewick Man died near Kennewick, but he spent most of his life ca. 400 km to the west, near the Pacific coast, as his diet suggests.

Eastern European hunters such as R1a-M459 and R1b-L278 were probably also very mobile people, just like Kennewick Man.

 

[Johannes]

To Johannes

After reading thread I thing that you are acting like an expert in field of German ethnogenesis and Polabian Slavic history. But what you have written is not the knowledge but guesses.
1. Slavs settled in eastern Germany in 6th century with spread of Sukow-Dziedzice culture. Until 7th-8th century they created states that had been known in Europe (Obotrites and Sorbs) from fighting against/with Franks. Slaves assimilated all Germanic tribes in eastern Germany before 830 when Bavarian Geographer made an index of central European tribes east of Elbe. That index did not contain any Germanic tribe.
There were no ethnic cleansing in eastern Germany and especially in 9-10 centuries everything is supported by notification of Slavic names among peasants and burghers in written sources. Sorbs ware subjugated in 10th century precisely in 939-963, while northern Obotrites and Veleti ware subjugated in second half of 12th century after series of crusades.

2. Prove that Russians have about 30% of Uralic DNA.
As far as I am concerned Russians are closer related to Poles then Ukrainians. The example of that is shown in table 2 and 4 in this article. So Poles from Lublin are closer related to Russians from Orel (distance 590 km) then to Ukrainians from Lviv (distance 120 km).
Only Northern Russians have significant Uralic admixture it’s in this article. Central and southern Russians are closely related to other northern Slavs. Also they didn't experience gene flow from Tatars/Turkic people or Mongols.

As we speak about East German ancestry, there are two areas genetically different. First southern area located south of Berlin and east of Saale River. This area is very homogenous Halle R1a 30%(Immel 2005), Dresden 32.6% (Roding 2007), Leipzig 27.1% (Kayser 2005). Frequency of R1a is very similar to that in Czech Republic and is twice higher than average in Germany and about three times higher than in western Germany. Second is northern part of eastern Germany where frequencies vary much from city to city. Rostock 31.3% (Kayser 2005) 32.4% (Roding 2007), Greifswald 19.2% (Kayser 2005), Berlin 22.3% (Kayser 2005), Magdeburg 21% (Kayser 2005), Mecklenburg 13.7% (Rębała 2012). Rębała stated that in Mecklenburg Slavic admixture is about 20%, I am interested what would he find if he tested Rostock :wink:. Here are links to: Kayser's article and Rębała's article

We need to wait for more studies in this topic. But now I can bet you that in areas where R1a is about 30% we can expect 40% to 50% of Slavic admixture and around average 35% for whole eastern Germany. But this is only ychromosomal admixture while autosomal should be expected to be higher, evenmore then 50%.

Interesting thing is that even German surnames that appears to be of German origin can have Slavic background, e.g. surnames with suffixes ke, ka, ow suggest Slavic affiliation what was proved not only linguistically but also genetically - Immel's article

matbir: its not guesses. Its what I have read in history books. You are a Pole so I am assuming you have different sources as I do (I am American). I am not denying that your data is important but have you ever wondered that the R1a found in Germany might also be from invasions from the east by Indo-Europeans? Germans and Slavs and Celts all probably looked the same or very similar before they diverged into different languages? You state that its a "Slavic marker" but how do you know?