Ancient genomes from Caucasus inc. Maykop

Most of the other Indo-European languages stemmed from the Yamnaya culture (Greek being a possible exception), while the Anatolian IE languages are theorized, by Mallory/Anthony, to have stemmed from the Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog cultures, which may have not carried the same "steppe signature" as the Yamnayas. The Khvalynsk culture started around 4,200 BCE, well before the Yamnayas brought the CHG admixture onto the steppes.

As to R1b having been "far too common in Anatolia to have arrived with a later group such as the Turks", you're ignoring the Phrygians who (with others) overthrew the Hittite Empire around 1,200 BCE. The Dorians who overthrew the Mycenaeans (mostly R1a) around the same time were also apparently primarily R1b.

Why is Greek the possible exception?
 
^^
There's the movement of the Armenian speakers as well, who do have a lot of R1b.

No one knows what ydna the Dorians carried.

How could "Anatolian" ie Early Farmer ancestry not have been on the steppe? We in fact know it was there. We also know there was 40-50% CHG on the steppe, CHG which is also in and related to Iran Neo. And no, I don't believe all the "modelers" can really pull these strands apart yet.

"Modelers" such as the authors of the Damsgaard paper? Or the Caucasus paper?
 
Thank you very much, Angela. I found this study particularly interesting: http://www.academia.edu/354138/2008...of_Sciences_Journal_of_Archaeology_11_4_25-40

Of particular interest were these passages about the social organization of the Old Assyrian colonies in Anatolia, suggestive of some kind of numerous and influential diaspora of foreign people (so there must've some substantial immigration involved, but probably creating a multiethnic urban society with many native people involved, too) that did not directly rule and control the colonies:

Is there anything, however, about how numerous they were in comparison to the locals. The Chinese in southeast Asia became a very numerous group. The Jews of Europe could be seen as a mercantile and financial elite diaspora, but even if they were willing to intermarry, given their numbers I don't see how they could have made much impact. Look even at Holland, a small country.

So, unless there's more in the papers, I'm not convinced.
 
"Modelers" such as the authors of the Damsgaard paper? Or the Caucasus paper?

I'm not so impressed with the Damgard paper, or the other Caucasus paper as well. The quality went down in the Reich Lab paper on South Asia as well. Not all papers are equal, and perhaps due to competition and thus a rushing of the analysis, or the quality of the post docs taking the lead, the general quality of the analysis has gone down in those papers imo: too much of the conclusions not even flowing from the data presented.

If you're asking about eurogenes and his "merry" band of followers, I've had enough of reading "headlines" based on biased interpretations, a fact which becomes clear if you're willing to wade through a disorganized mish mash of opinions, many of them by denizens of Stormfront, it sounds like.

It's a total waste of time imo, time which I don't have in infinite quantities. I do have other interests, unlike the people on there, although on days like today it may not seem like it. :) I'm feeling guilty as I type!
 
Why is Greek the possible exception?

Mycenaeans from the east as a possibility was raised in the paper on the Mycenaeans, yes?

Drews is interesting in this regard.
 
Nakh languages have some similarities with IE. Concerning Chechen, for example.

The ergative of the 1.SG pronoun is /ʔəs/ and we have nominative 'es' / 'as' in many IE languages. (like Lithuanian, Armenian)

The 1.PL pronoun is /vəɪ/, fairly close to how it is reconstructed for IE by Beekes and Sihler *uei / *wei

The genitives of the pronouns have an -n (sən, ʜən, vəɪn, txʰən, ʃun). An -n exists in the reconstruction of the genitive of the IE first person pronoun (*mene, h₁méne) and Uralic first and second pronouns (*mun, *mina 'I'/me, *tun, *tina 'you')

The 3.SG singular personal pronoun is ɪ, ɪzə, which can be related to IE demonstratives or pronouns. For example a Latin/proto-Italic equivalent is *is from an IE pronoun reconstructed as*éy.

The plural is often formed by adding suffixes -ii or -ash which are at least reminiscent of IE suffixes.
k'ant (boy) - k'entii (boys)
ph'āgal (rabbit) - ph'āgalash (rabbits)

Example:
Latin lupus - lupī but for example dux - duces
Attic lukos - lukoi but fore example rhetor - rhetores
Sanskrit vṛka - vṛkas, OCS vlьcŭ- vlьci, Lithuanian vil̃kas - vilkaĩ etc

Although both Nakh and Dagestanian are considered NEC languages, the relationship is considered distant despite the geographical proximity. Either way, I don't claim there is a close relationship with IE or even that I can prove that any relationship exist (or even that I want or plan to do it, I don't have the necessary free time and motivation)

Either way, I believe that might be explained with the following scenario
-pre-proto-Indoeuropean possibly in Catal-Hoyuk (something Diakonoff had considered but it is an assumption with 'no necessary validity' as he had said)
-a movement of a pre-IE / para-IE group to North Caucacus (Maykop), responsible at least for the similarities between IE and North West Caucasian (Adyghe, Abkhaz)
-late Indoeuropean possibly in the Balkans, Hungary, West Ukraine.
-late PIE expansions towards east
1) first wave with Globula Amphora like ancestry
2) second wave with Steppe MLBA like ancestry (Sanskrit speakers could have followed a southern route, though. I don't consider the conclusion of the S. Asian study necessarily valid)
-proto-Uralic languages developed in proximity to two IE languages, a Baltic one spoken in Fatyanovo and an early Indo-Iranian that had influenced Abashevo culture and it expanded mostly the last 4.000 years.

 
Why is Greek the possible exception?

Arnold connects the Mycenaean shaft-graves with the early Western Catacomb culture in southeast Europe. He sees Greek along with Phrygian and Armenian forming an early branch off from PIE, which preceded the later Yamnaya migration (The Horse, The Wheel, and Language, p. 368-369).
 
Mycenaeans from the east as a possibility was raised in the paper on the Mycenaeans, yes?

Drews is interesting in this regard.

Mycenaeans and Hittites arrive on the scene at about the same time (1700-1600 BCE), and their empires also collapse about the same time (1300-1200 BCE). (The Hyksos, a Semitic people, also invaded the Nile Delta around 1650 BCE.) The first was attacked and destroyed by the Dorians and the second by the Phrygians and the "Ahhiyawa" (Achaeans?), part of the overall movement of peoples called "the Sea Peoples". Both periods are denoted by mass migrations, warfare, raiding/piracy, droughts/climate change, famine, plague(?), etc.

Historically the steppes have served as a migration engine. Any drought, I assume, would hit the drier eastern steppes first, impelling people and their herds westward in search of water and greener grass. Wet cycles would cause populations (people and herds) to expand, with thus severe dry cycles putting everybody in motion, like balls on a billiard table. Agricultural civilizations, which used irrigation, dams, dikes, and canals to move water from rivers to fields were better able to withstand drought cycles in place, unless attacked by "barbarians" (in search of surplus grain) and brought down.
 
Does anybody knows when this paper and the one of central / south asia gonna have their final conclusions and rectifications ?
 
Nakh languages have some similarities with IE. Concerning Chechen, for example.

The ergative of the 1.SG pronoun is /ʔəs/ and we have nominative 'es' / 'as' in many IE languages. (like Lithuanian, Armenian)

The 1.PL pronoun is /vəɪ/, fairly close to how it is reconstructed for IE by Beekes and Sihler *uei / *wei

The genitives of the pronouns have an -n (sən, ʜən, vəɪn, txʰən, ʃun). An -n exists in the reconstruction of the genitive of the IE first person pronoun (*mene, h₁méne) and Uralic first and second pronouns (*mun, *mina 'I'/me, *tun, *tina 'you')

The 3.SG singular personal pronoun is ɪ, ɪzə, which can be related to IE demonstratives or pronouns. For example a Latin/proto-Italic equivalent is *is from an IE pronoun reconstructed as*éy.

The plural is often formed by adding suffixes -ii or -ash which are at least reminiscent of IE suffixes.
k'ant (boy) - k'entii (boys)
ph'āgal (rabbit) - ph'āgalash (rabbits)

Example:
Latin lupus - lupī but for example dux - duces
Attic lukos - lukoi but fore example rhetor - rhetores
Sanskrit vṛka - vṛkas, OCS vlьcŭ- vlьci, Lithuanian vil̃kas - vilkaĩ etc

Although both Nakh and Dagestanian are considered NEC languages, the relationship is considered distant despite the geographical proximity. Either way, I don't claim there is a close relationship with IE or even that I can prove that any relationship exist (or even that I want or plan to do it, I don't have the necessary free time and motivation)

Either way, I believe that might be explained with the following scenario
-pre-proto-Indoeuropean possibly in Catal-Hoyuk (something Diakonoff had considered but it is an assumption with 'no necessary validity' as he had said)
-a movement of a pre-IE / para-IE group to North Caucacus (Maykop), responsible at least for the similarities between IE and North West Caucasian (Adyghe, Abkhaz)
-late Indoeuropean possibly in the Balkans, Hungary, West Ukraine.
-late PIE expansions towards east
1) first wave with Globula Amphora like ancestry
2) second wave with Steppe MLBA like ancestry (Sanskrit speakers could have followed a southern route, though. I don't consider the conclusion of the S. Asian study necessarily valid)
-proto-Uralic languages developed in proximity to two IE languages, a Baltic one spoken in Fatyanovo and an early Indo-Iranian that had influenced Abashevo culture and it expanded mostly the last 4.000 years.


I'm sorry and you probably gonna explain to me but, how actually " yeah so there was those R1b guys in Armenia, they roamed from armenia to the caucasus and the pontic steppe, they didn't change the native Caucasus lineage and languages, they were very hurried to go in eastern europe " makes more sense than " yeah so there was those pontic steppe R1b guys and they roamed west and east " ? I mean everybody have failed until now to present a coherent hypothesis for PIE and eventually R1b coming at one point from south of the caucasus. If the final point is " there is CHG but not EHG " well what a waste of money.
 
I'm sorry and you probably gonna explain to me but, how actually " yeah so there was those R1b guys in Armenia, they roamed from armenia to the caucasus and the pontic steppe, they didn't change the native Caucasus lineage and languages, they were very hurried to go in eastern europe " makes more sense than " yeah so there was those pontic steppe R1b guys and they roamed west and east " ? I mean everybody have failed until now to present a coherent hypothesis for PIE and eventually R1b coming at one point from south of the caucasus. If the final point is " there is CHG but not EHG " well what a waste of money.

I am not sure I understand. I don't connect Early IE to R1b, or any haplogroup. If people with R1b subclades had expanded west, east, south, north etc already in the Bronze Age and earlier, they could have reexpanded with other groups, IE or not IE. That is true about any haplogroup.

I have said also though that the fact that, for example, R1b isn't found in Megalithic sites doesn't necessarily mean that it didn't exist around them. For example Bell Beaker people can be more 'native' than it is assumed. They just appear in archaeology when they acquired the technology to do so.
 
Does anybody knows when this paper and the one of central / south asia gonna have their final conclusions and rectifications ?

Yes i also posted about this a while ago, it seems people dont reply to these questions...
For the South Central Asia paper a revised paper was promised to come out, but still nothing.
For the Caucasus study, more samples were promised, but no news about this yet.
As for the Damgaard paper, they didnt even publish the Y-SNP haplogroups of all samples they have. Even the Open Genomes volunteer(?) person did a lot of work to determine the haplogroups of more samples.

I dont get it actually, what is being waited for? Is there some kind of special agenda behind this?
 
I am not sure I understand. I don't connect Early IE to R1b, or any haplogroup. If people with R1b subclades had expanded west, east, south, north etc already in the Bronze Age and earlier, they could have reexpanded with other groups, IE or not IE. That is true about any haplogroup.

I have said also though that the fact that, for example, R1b isn't found in Megalithic sites doesn't necessarily mean that it didn't exist around them. For example Bell Beaker people can be more 'native' than it is assumed. They just appear in archaeology when they acquired the technology to do so.

What do you link with a southern origin for PIE then ?
 
Yes i also posted about this a while ago, it seems people dont reply to these questions...
For the South Central Asia paper a revised paper was promised to come out, but still nothing.
For the Caucasus study, more samples were promised, but no news about this yet.
As for the Damgaard paper, they didnt even publish the Y-SNP haplogroups of all samples they have. Even the Open Genomes volunteer(?) person did a lot of work to determine the haplogroups of more samples.

I dont get it actually, what is being waited for? Is there some kind of special agenda behind this?

I'm not sure about the Caucasus study, but the Willerslev team also work on some Maikop samples i do believe, that might be what you are referencing. As for the agenda, it pretty much doesn't care, at the end of the day. You can't fake Genetic, Anthropology and Linguistic to create a coherent false. Eventually you could manipulate the mass that doesn't know at all about all those studies, but there always gonna be some knowledgeable people that gonna question results. Like just look how some people from western countries feel the right to viciously criticize pioneer eastern anthropologists like Gimbutas or Telegin only because the Pontic Steppe hypothesis doesn't fit their idealized world of love. But sincerely, i dont believe their can be an agenda. Just imagine if Harvard turns into a shitstorm of critics for being bigoted.
 
I'm not so impressed with the Damgard paper, or the other Caucasus paper as well. The quality went down in the Reich Lab paper on South Asia as well. Not all papers are equal, and perhaps due to competition and thus a rushing of the analysis, or the quality of the post docs taking the lead, the general quality of the analysis has gone down in those papers imo: too much of the conclusions not even flowing from the data presented.

Why?

If you're asking about eurogenes and his "merry" band of followers, I've had enough of reading "headlines" based on biased interpretations, a fact which becomes clear if you're willing to wade through a disorganized mish mash of opinions, many of them by denizens of Stormfront, it sounds like.

Maybe you should stop this. You called me a nordicist and an anti-semite. I try to keep the my huge amusement [1] on this to myself in order to keep this a normal discussion but it is getting increasingly difficult to do so. I don't know what David's political opinions are, and I don't care. He doesn't express them. I do know, though, that Nick Patterson every now and then reacts on his blog.

It's a total waste of time imo, time which I don't have in infinite quantities. I do have other interests, unlike the people on there, although on days like today it may not seem like it. :) I'm feeling guilty as I type!

[1] I am really, really tempted to do a Peter Sellers imitation everytime I'm being called a Nazi. With exactly the same speech.
 
Why?



Maybe you should stop this. You called me a nordicist and an anti-semite. I try to keep the my huge amusement [1] on this to myself in order to keep this a normal discussion but it is getting increasingly difficult to do so. I don't know what David's political opinions are, and I don't care. He doesn't express them. I do know, though, that Nick Patterson every now and then reacts on his blog.



[1] I am really, really tempted to do a Peter Sellers imitation everytime I'm being called a Nazi. With exactly the same speech.

Epoch, not everything is about you, although I know we all have the tendency to think that way. Don't take all of this stuff so very personally. Sorry if I got under your skin a while back, but since then, and in this particular case I wasn't thinking of you at all. Fwiw I consider you one of the sane posters on eurogenes, the few times I've actually seen you post there. As I said, I've given up hoping to find anything I think of value there and go there very infrequently. That's my prerogative, surely?

I frankly don't see the point in going through each of my reservations about any of this material with you, as you don't seem to have an open mind about any of it. You seem to me to have a position and then you interpret every single piece of data in a way that will support that position. You've already stated your very unflattering view of what you think are my thought processes. :)

I've said this before, but I'll say this again: I don't have a position on this issue. I don't know how it happened, and, as I've said often, I don't particularly care, other than as a matter of intellectual curiosity. What on earth difference does it make if the earliest forms of the language were spoken in or south or the Caucasus or just north of it on the steppe? On a personal level I have absolutely no emotional attachment to one side of the debate or the other. Also, frankly, I'm beyond bored with it. How many times can people say the same things over and over again. Hopefully, we'll get more ancient dna and it will become clearer. If it doesn't, my life will go on regardless, and happily, I might add. :)

The other and more important factor in all of these cases is that all of my professional training and years of work have led me to examine every issue from all possible sides, probing for every weakness of fact or logic, and not having any emotional stake in either "side" or position. That's part and parcel of not being able to choose your "side". In some cases, indeed, you have to argue vehemently a "side" you don't particularly like or even know to be "unjust". It can be acutely uncomfortable emotionally sometimes, but it's a great intellectual exercise.
 
Most of the other Indo-European languages stemmed from the Yamnaya culture (Greek being a possible exception), while the Anatolian IE languages are theorized, by Mallory/Anthony, to have stemmed from the Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog cultures, which may have not carried the same "steppe signature" as the Yamnayas. The Khvalynsk culture started around 4,200 BCE, well before the Yamnayas brought the CHG admixture onto the steppes.

As to R1b having been "far too common in Anatolia to have arrived with a later group such as the Turks", you're ignoring the Phrygians who (with others) overthrew the Hittite Empire around 1,200 BCE. The Dorians who overthrew the Mycenaeans (mostly R1a) around the same time were also apparently primarily R1b.

CHG wasn't brought onto the steppes by Yamnaya. It was probably present there since the Neolithic. We now know it was already present in significant proportions at least as early as in the Eneolithic steppe circa 4200-4300 BC, when Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk were still in their early stages (this Caucasus study demonstrated that). Besides, Yamnaya doesn't seem to have come from elsewhere (it's rather a continuous development from previous steppe cultures), nor to have had a lot of extra CHG or broadly Caucasian influence in relation to the earlier Late Khvalynsk/Repin or to Sredny Stog II.
 
Epoch, not everything is about you, although I know we all have the tendency to think that way. Don't take all of this stuff so very personally. Sorry if I got under your skin a while back, but since then, and in this particular case I wasn't thinking of you at all. Fwiw I consider you one of the sane posters on eurogenes, the few times I've actually seen you post there. As I said, I've given up hoping to find anything I think of value there and go there very infrequently. That's my prerogative, surely?

I frankly don't see the point in going through each of my reservations about any of this material with you, as you don't seem to have an open mind about any of it. You seem to me to have a position and then you interpret every single piece of data in a way that will support that position.

I am an amateur. But I know the gist of what was proposed by the Linguistic evidence and the substantial minority of archaeologists that supported them. It is called the steppe theory.

What I argue isn't so much as a position. I am far to low in the tree to even consider "taking a position". That is a weakness, but also a strength as it permits me the position of looker on. And all I see is that there is not a shred of evidence that refutes the Pontic Steppe Hypothesis.

You've already stated your very unflattering view of what you think are my thought processes. :)

Are you seriously going to say that you didn't laugh at the Youtube piece?

I've said this before, but I'll say this again: I don't have a position on this issue. I don't know how it happened, and, as I've said often, I don't particularly care, other than as a matter of intellectual curiosity. What on earth difference does it make if the earliest forms of the language were spoken in or south or the Caucasus or just north of it on the steppe? On a personal level I have absolutely no emotional attachment to one side of the debate or the other.

Unlike most others I haven't tested my DNA.

Also, frankly, I'm beyond bored with it.

The interesting and revolutionary part of this is that it reinstates old archaeological and linguistic models to the exclusion of the modern ones. It wipes the "innovating" waves of archaeology off the table. THAT makes this to such an important debate.

How many times can people say the same things over and over again. Hopefully, we'll get more ancient dna and it will become clearer. If it doesn't, my life will go on regardless, and happily, I might add. :)

As obviously does mine.

The other and more important factor in all of these cases is that all of my professional training and years of work have led me to examine every issue from all possible sides, probing for every weakness of fact or logic, and not having any emotional stake in either "side" or position. That's part and parcel of not being able to choose your "side". In some cases, indeed, you have to argue vehemently a "side" you don't particularly like or even know to be "unjust". It can be acutely uncomfortable emotionally sometimes, but it's a great intellectual exercise.
 
Arnold connects the Mycenaean shaft-graves with the early Western Catacomb culture in southeast Europe. He sees Greek along with Phrygian and Armenian forming an early branch off from PIE, which preceded the later Yamnaya migration (The Horse, The Wheel, and Language, p. 368-369).

I don't think I understood this point. The Catacomb culture postdates the Yamnaya and is mostly a derivation of it along with other external influences and internal changes. A split from the Catacomb culture would necessarily be later than the Yamnaya migrations and would probably be, through the Catacomb people, related to the earlier Yamnaya too. What I think was really proposed by some authors in the past was that Greek, probably together with Phrygian, Armenian and Indo-Iranian, left the steppes much later than other IE branches (after the Yamnaya expansion) and probably derived from the dialects of the latest stage of the PIE language that remained in its Pontic-Caspian homeland.
 
I don't think I understood this point. The Catacomb culture postdates the Yamnaya and is mostly a derivation of it along with other external influences and internal changes. A split from the Catacomb culture would necessarily be later than the Yamnaya migrations and would probably be, through the Catacomb people, related to the earlier Yamnaya too. What I think was really proposed by some authors in the past was that Greek, probably together with Phrygian, Armenian and Indo-Iranian, left the steppes much later than other IE branches (after the Yamnaya expansion) and probably derived from the dialects of the latest stage of the PIE language that remained in its Pontic-Caspian homeland.

if I understand well from the Olalde study, the West-European IE languages (Celtic & Italic) started to spread ca 4.5 ka - maybe even a few centuries earlier - from Central Europe or the Carpathian Basin

Yamna culture lasted till 4.6 ka and then lingered on in Catacomb culture
by the time the Sintashta-related (R1a-Z93) Srubnaya arrived in the northern Pontic steppe ca 3.8 ka, most of the Pontic steppe was already desterted due to the 4.2 ka climate change
could it be that those Yamna-related tribes that left the Pontice steppe late (ca 4.2 ka?) were ancestral to Greek, Armenian and Albanian?
and these herding tribes may have left the Pontic steppe through different routes and at different times
 

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