The spread of 'Steppe' DNA and autosomal best-fit analysis

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I ran statistical best-fit analysis on archaeological autosomal data, which yielded the following results:

  1. R1b Bell Beaker and R1a Corded Ware each fit best with a core in the same samples from 5th millennium BC Bulgaria.
  2. These Bulgarian samples in turn each fit best with a 50:50 admixture between 5th millennium BC Khvalynsk (skewed South West) and Neolithic Anatolian.

These results would accordingly support a number of perhaps unorthodox hypotheses, e.g.

  1. R1b pre-Bell Beaker and R1a pre-Corded Ware emerged from within the same community.
  2. Their most recent common root was Bulgaria, rather than the Steppe.
  3. Their root population's almost exact 50:50 best-fit combinations suggest they were the products of first generation admixture, helping us to date the most significant migration of DNA from the Steppe to the dates of the samples (4,500 BC) - somewhat earlier than otherwise thought, but not significantly earlier than this.
  4. Their Steppe DNA derived predominantly from a Khvalynsk-like population, rather than the Yamnayan population that succeeded it.
 
Coudn't that better fit be just the result of R1b BB and R1a CWC being basically Khvalynsk with more CHG and a bit of EEF heavily mixed with extra EEF when they spread out of the Pontic-Caspian steppe? I'd imagine they'd become more similar to early steppe-enriched Balkanic populations merely as a result of a comparable genetic history.
 
Coudn't that better fit be just the result of R1b BB and R1a CWC being basically Khvalynsk with more CHG and a bit of EEF heavily mixed with extra EEF when they spread out of the Pontic-Caspian steppe? I'd imagine they'd become more similar to early steppe-enriched Balkanic populations merely as a result of a comparable genetic history.

Yes, it could be; but, from the archaeological samples available, there were no fits so close as the ones I've identified. The matches with other core Pontic-Caspian samples like Sredny Stog and Yamnaya provide more divergent results; and the matches with EEF further away from the Bosphorus likewise.

The best-fit results actually match up well with what we know about the Steppe-like Suvorovo culture, which appears to have spread from Eastern Bulgaria between 4,300 and 4,000 BC in various directions northwards - to the Danube delta, and then (i) up the Danube into Northern Romania, (ii) up the Dniester into North Western Ukraine and (iii) up the Dnieper into East Central Ukraine.
 
Yes, it could be; but, from the archaeological samples available, there were no fits so close as the ones I've identified. The matches with other core Pontic-Caspian samples like Sredny Stog and Yamnaya provide more divergent results; and the matches with EEF further away from the Bosphorus likewise.

The best-fit results actually match up well with what we know about the Steppe-like Suvorovo culture, which appears to have spread from Eastern Bulgaria between 4,300 and 4,000 BC in various directions northwards - to the Danube delta, and then (i) up the Danube into Northern Romania, (ii) up the Dniester into North Western Ukraine and (iii) up the Dnieper into East Central Ukraine.

Isn't it what Carlos tried to say here? https://indo-european.eu/tag/suvorovo/
 
I doubt Bell Beaker and Corded Ware arose from the same community, there's too many differences between the populations. Whatever the case, neither came from Yamnaya.
 
Never cite that quack Quiles. The crackpot believes that Corded Ware was Uralic; ridiculous. How about Yamnaya being Vasconic/Northwest Caucasian? See, I can come up with crank theories too!
 
Never cite that quack Quiles. The crackpot believes that Corded Ware was Uralic; ridiculous. How about Yamnaya being Vasconic/Northwest Caucasian? See, I can come up with crank theories too!

Does he actually? That is really dumb, how can he believe that given the blatant correlation with Y DNA N1c?
 
I doubt Bell Beaker and Corded Ware arose from the same community, there's too many differences between the populations. Whatever the case, neither came from Yamnaya.

What are the main differences between the Bell Beaker and Corded Ware populations, apart from the paternal lineages that dominated them? By the way, the data analysis doesn't suggest that they arose directly from the same community - merely that their ancestors were within the same community until the late fifth millennium BC.

Both R1a and R1b were represented within Khvalynsk. Perhaps a clear split occurred when Suvorovo branched out at the Danube Delta - with pre-Bell Beaker venturing into Romania and pre-Corded Ware venturing into North West Ukraine. Clearly, they would have been affected by admixture with different populations after that date.
 
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Never cite that quack Quiles. The crackpot believes that Corded Ware was Uralic; ridiculous. How about Yamnaya being Vasconic/Northwest Caucasian? See, I can come up with crank theories too!

His view on the question is not related with his views on Uralic Languages, so why not make the part of it?
 
I doubt Bell Beaker and Corded Ware arose from the same community, there's too many differences between the populations. Whatever the case, neither came from Yamnaya.

The autosomal best-fit for Yamnaya comes out as predominantly Khvalynsk, but the specific variety of it represented by the sample bearing yDNA haplogroup Q. The more North West-skewed DNA primarily represented by Khvalynsk's R1a sample appears to have diminished by the Yamnayan period, and R1b-Z2103 appears to have become the dominant paternal lineage. Other than that, the cultural development from Khvalynsk to Yamnaya appears to have occurred largely in situ without any major external genetic influence.

The division between the Khvalynsk people that look to have migrated (Suvorovo) and those that remained (Yamnaya) is estimated from autosomal best-fit data to have occurred around 4,500 BC. This also approximately matches my most recent estimates for yDNA branching between R1b-Z2103 and R1b-L51 (4,480 BC) and for R1b-Z2103's TMRCA (4,360 BC). My best explanation for this is that all extant L51 and some sections of Z2103 were within the Suvorovo migration, and that other sections of Z2103 at first remained in the Caspian Steppe and only spread westwards into Ukraine some time later.
 
The two 4,500 BC Bulgarian Steppe/Anatolian 50:50 hybrids have these autosomal best-fits:
Varna ANI163 - with a combination of the Khvalynsk R1a and Q samples (female, but an adjacent sample shows R1b)
Smyadovo I2181 - with the Khyvalynsk R1a sample (male, confirmed only as R)

Being within a predominantly EEF community, the Varna sample is suggestive of having an Anatolian-like father and a Khvalynsk-like mother, which is exactly the opposite of the assumption that it was all about Steppe men taking Anatolian women. The average estimated date for it is 4,626 BC, and yet we know that the Bulgarian Steppe-culture Suvorovo people were still present in the Balkans around 4,000 BC. I would suggest that co-existence and inter-breeding with EEF was likely, rather than the Suvorovo being a one-time raiding party that immediately vanished back to the Caspian Steppe or was totally eliminated.

12 Suvorovo sites have been discovered, dotted around different parts of the Balkans (extending as far as Hungary), and 6 more derivative sites have been discovered in South Eastern Ukraine. The tacit assumption is that all the people and lineages at these sites died out, and that all of their admixed Steppe DNA entirely vanished to be replaced by Yamna DNA 1,500 years later - despite the fact that their Khvalynsk-like DNA fits better with both Bell Beaker and Corded Ware DNA than Yamnayan DNA does.

I am only aware of the mtDNA of Suvorovo samples being published (although the two samples above look autosomally like they are of Suvorovo origin), with no Suvorovo yDNA data yet being published. I wonder what it would show.

The Western branches of Suvorovo moved up the Danube into Northern Romania, where they would have encountered Cucuteni people (and Eastern Bell Beaker has a best fit with 50% Cucuteni mtDNA). The Eastern branches of Suvorovo moved up the Eastern side of the Dnieper (not far from the North Ukrainian site where the earliest R1a-M417 Corded Ware-like outlier sample was discovered with an autosomal best-fit containing a large proportion of the Bulgarian DNA above).

On the basis of the data that we have, I would tentatively suggest that Yamnaya is most likely largely a red herring, and that Steppe DNA was principally spread by its Steppe antecedent from a common origin point in the South Eastern Balkans.
 
It would be helpful if you actually posted the data and the results of your analyses.
 
 
The two 4,500 BC Bulgarian Steppe/Anatolian 50:50 hybrids have these autosomal best-fits:
Varna ANI163 - with a combination of the Khvalynsk R1a and Q samples (female, but an adjacent sample shows R1b)
Smyadovo I2181 - with the Khyvalynsk R1a sample (male, confirmed only as R)

Being within a predominantly EEF community, the Varna sample is suggestive of having an Anatolian-like father and a Khvalynsk-like mother, which is exactly the opposite of the assumption that it was all about Steppe men taking Anatolian women. The average estimated date for it is 4,626 BC, and yet we know that the Bulgarian Steppe-culture Suvorovo people were still present in the Balkans around 4,000 BC. I would suggest that co-existence and inter-breeding with EEF was likely, rather than the Suvorovo being a one-time raiding party that immediately vanished back to the Caspian Steppe or was totally eliminated.

12 Suvorovo sites have been discovered, dotted around different parts of the Balkans (extending as far as Hungary), and 6 more derivative sites have been discovered in South Eastern Ukraine. The tacit assumption is that all the people and lineages at these sites died out, and that all of their admixed Steppe DNA entirely vanished to be replaced by Yamna DNA 1,500 years later - despite the fact that their Khvalynsk-like DNA fits better with both Bell Beaker and Corded Ware DNA than Yamnayan DNA does.

I am only aware of the mtDNA of Suvorovo samples being published (although the two samples above look autosomally like they are of Suvorovo origin), with no Suvorovo yDNA data yet being published. I wonder what it would show.

The Western branches of Suvorovo moved up the Danube into Northern Romania, where they would have encountered Cucuteni people (and Eastern Bell Beaker has a best fit with 50% Cucuteni mtDNA). The Eastern branches of Suvorovo moved up the Eastern side of the Dnieper (not far from the North Ukrainian site where the earliest R1a-M417 Corded Ware-like outlier sample was discovered with an autosomal best-fit containing a large proportion of the Bulgarian DNA above).

On the basis of the data that we have, I would tentatively suggest that Yamnaya is most likely largely a red herring, and that Steppe DNA was principally spread by its Steppe antecedent from a common origin point in the South Eastern Balkans.

Can you point me to the mtDNA results of Suvorovo?
 
Can you point me to the mtDNA results of Suvorovo?

These are the only ones of which I'm aware:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4460020/

[FONT=&quot]"Two Eneolithic (Eneol) individuals from Romania have been analyzed, showing the same mitochondrial haplotype (haplogroup K) ([/FONT]Table 2[FONT=&quot]). These haplotypes are unique, not found in any mtDNA database of ancient populations. The network performed with the haplotypes corresponding to haplogroup K ([/FONT]S6 Fig[FONT=&quot]) showed that the two individuals from the Decea Mureşului site shared polymorphisms with the ancient and present-day populations from the Near East. Although the two individuals from Decea Mureşului are associated to the Suvorovo culture from the North-Pontic steppes [[/FONT]29[FONT=&quot]–[/FONT]32[FONT=&quot]], and this has been suggested to represent the first contact between Transylvania and North-Pontic steppes, we have not found genetic evidence in the present study to support this hypothesis."

Two points to note from this narrative -
The mtDNA is noted as Near Eastern, rather than EEF. (My autosomal best-fit analysis gives a similar result in this respect.)
The Suvorovo culture is identified as from the North-Pontic steppes - this is perhaps misleading, in that Suvorovo is in Bulgaria, and most of the culture's sites (including its earliest ones) are West-Pontic (rather than North-Pontic Steppe).

I heard a rumour well over a year ago that y-DNA from this site was going to be published, but since then I have heard nothing further. Does anyone else know?

[/FONT]
 
It would be helpful if you actually posted the data and the results of your analyses.

I'm only really putting this subject up for discussion, rather than trying to demonstrate or prove any points, but I've noted a few of the results below.

The best fit I've found for German R1a Corded Ware is NE Ukraine Chalcolithic R1a* (I6561) 90% + Khvalynsk R1a 5% + Khvalynsk R1b 5% (0% Russian Yamnaya).
*The best fit for NE Ukraine Chalcolithic R1a is Bulgaria Steppe-like Chalcolithic** (I2181/ANI163) 36% + Khvalynsk R1a/Q 47% + Central Asia Minor Neolithic 17%.
** The best fit for Bulgaria Steppe-like Chalcolithic R (I2181) is Khvalynsk R1a 51% + Central Asia Minor Neolithic 49% (0% Ukraine Neolithic).

Following the data to its conclusion would suggest this kind of developmental pattern for extant R1a-M417:
Central Pontic-Caspian Steppe Khvalynsk > Northern Anatolia > Bulgarian Suvorovo> East Dnieper Novodanilovka > Eastern Corded Ware > German Corded Ware.

Neither Yamnaya nor core North Pontic (Sredny Stog) have to come into the genetic equation significantly.
 
These are the only ones of which I'm aware:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4460020/

"Two Eneolithic (Eneol) individuals from Romania have been analyzed, showing the same mitochondrial haplotype (haplogroup K) (Table 2). These haplotypes are unique, not found in any mtDNA database of ancient populations. The network performed with the haplotypes corresponding to haplogroup K (S6 Fig) showed that the two individuals from the Decea Mureşului site shared polymorphisms with the ancient and present-day populations from the Near East. Although the two individuals from Decea Mureşului are associated to the Suvorovo culture from the North-Pontic steppes [2932], and this has been suggested to represent the first contact between Transylvania and North-Pontic steppes, we have not found genetic evidence in the present study to support this hypothesis."

Two points to note from this narrative -
The mtDNA is noted as Near Eastern, rather than EEF. (My autosomal best-fit analysis gives a similar result in this respect.)
The Suvorovo culture is identified as from the North-Pontic steppes - this is perhaps misleading, in that Suvorovo is in Bulgaria, and most of the culture's sites (including its earliest ones) are West-Pontic (rather than North-Pontic Steppe).

I heard a rumour well over a year ago that y-DNA from this site was going to be published, but since then I have heard nothing further. Does anyone else know?


What's the saddest is that of 62 samples, they only got mtdna. It seems to happened a little too much for important contexte... I guess it's just way cheaper to only test for mtdna snp's.
 
Putting this into context, I see the predominant Pontic Chalcolithic lineage as most likely G2a2b, extending from the Dniester in the North West southwards through Anatolia to Ossetia in the South East (i.e. the core population over this whole area was probably relatively closely related).
 

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