Ancient DNA England: Iron age, Roman-Gladiator, and Anglo Saxon

Those people were not soldiers, but gladiators - here is a documentary about them (in total 80, but DNA of 6 was tested):

http://watchdocumentary.org/watch/gladiators-back-from-the-dead-video_13d4008d0.html

Angela is right that millet wasn't totally unknown to the Romans, also user Vettor from Anthrogenica noticed this - quote:

(however, this refers to Republican times, several centuries before the lifetime of those gladiators from York):

vettor said:
the Romans where eating millet mixed with either chestnut flour or with spelt in the republican days of the empire ( BC times ). it was called Pulmentu ( polenta ).
History of Polenta
In Roman times, polenta (or as they knew it, pulmentu) was the staple of the mighty Roman Legions and would eat it in either a porridge or in a hard cake like form, much like today. commonly eaten since Roman times. Before the introduction of corn (maize) from the New World in the 16th century,[2] polenta was made with such starchy ingredients as farro, chestnut flour, millet, spelt, and chickpeas.[3]

Granted, modern Polenta is made by maize imtroduced into Europe in the 16th century from South America.

So unless those gladiators were 300 years old (and they were less than 45 years old), they did not spend childhood in BC times.

Moreover - the fact remains, that in PCA (Figure 1.) one of gladiators clusters autosomally firmly within E.Europe (Ru - Russia?):

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160119/ncomms10326/fig_tab/ncomms10326_F1.html

And in IBS (Figure 2.) the combined sample of gladiators (excluding Near Easterner) shows similarities to Lithuanians and Poles:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160119/ncomms10326/fig_tab/ncomms10326_F2.html
 
This paper says:

http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/28535/

There are no native C4-cultigens in Britain, and although the first finds of millet date from the Roman period, these are so rare that they have been interpreted as ‘exotic’ imports, rather than widely available crops
 
Growing and eating millet was common in the Thracian world also;
FOOD AND NUTRITION (LATE 2nd - 1st MILLENNIUM BC)
Roumyana Georgieva


During the period under consideration, vegetarian food predominated in Thracian cuisine. Leavened and unleavened bread was used, as well as porridge made of barley and wheat groats.Other foods were: milk, cheese, broad beans - mashed and in the form of soup, fresh and dried peas, and lentil. During the warmer months the food was diversified with fresh vegetables (dock, sorrel, cabbage, etc.), mushrooms and fruits (apples, peaches, grapes, etc.). Fresh fish, game and domestic animals were the source of animal proteins. Meat food was consumed rarely, moreover predominantly in the cold months, when it was possible to conserve it. The Thracians usually had two meals per day.
There were foods that attributed a special image to Thracian cuisine: dairy products (yoghurt, butter, cheese, curd), the drinks and dishes made of millet, consumptions of onion and garlic, use of wine undiluted with water.

While Millet made its way from China to the Black Sea region of Europe by 5000 BC.
 
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That's because many fail to see it as an evolutionary process which changes amount of positive mutations in time. I bet that LP and skin whitening process is pretty much ongoing till our times in Northern Europe, therefore their levels are only growing with time, being positive mutations. Aside from physical population movements.

I 've some difficulty to swallow an only evolutionary process in so a short time. Based on what? what drastic climatic difference distinguishes northern and southern Europe or other places at those times? I'm almost sre we are missing something. I have no answer just now but... a linkage with other genetic peculiarities selecting for other traits???
Not I deny natural selection but I don't understand this speed of selection there... Sure we 'll have the explanation someday.
 
It's obvious that modern Britons have nothing to do with ancient ones. Millions of Levantine slaves settled in Britain and turned it in a racially mixed country.

Where and when did you picked all that? Or it's a humor tentavie of yours?
 
IIRC the Hinxton samples were too northern european and required some kind of mixture to match the modern British population and the argument was over whether this mixture came from a pre-existing Welsh-like substrate or some later continental population movement. Seems to me these gladiators / soldiers being close to modern Welsh answers that question.

So to my mind its: "Welsh" substrate with waves of invaders from the north sea over many centuries with some culturally Celtic (Belgae) and some culturally Germanic (A-S) but with similar genetics to confuse everyone.

(Where Welsh = Celtic + Atlantic Megalith?)

(Makes me wonder if the Belgae (or some similar tribe) came all the way from the Baltic i.e. Caesar says they were German looking and crossed the Rhine early but were they living just across the Rhine previously or had they come on a long tribal wandering from much further away?)

I was told (red) sometime Caesar - as good politic as he was good general - trying to put Roman people to believe he had vanquishied Germans had selected the higher statured Belgae he had at hand to have them to ressemble to Germans, so they were maybe not so closed (confirming Coon). Some old scientists thought for Belgae were come late enough (not eARLY iRON° from Bohemia/East Bavaria.
That said it seems that in the Belgae territory there were some Germanics tribes: geographic mixture is not by force ethnic mixture.
Spite I think Y-R1b-U152 was the dominant haplo among Belgae, I don't exclude some Y-R1b-U106 element among them.
The 'germanic' look was more based upon morals and dressing (more archaic) than something else.
 
Those people were not soldiers, but gladiators - here is a documentary about them (in total 80, but DNA of 6 was tested):

http://watchdocumentary.org/watch/gladiators-back-from-the-dead-video_13d4008d0.html

Angela is right that millet wasn't totally unknown to the Romans, also user Vettor from Anthrogenica noticed this - quote:

(however, this refers to Republican times, several centuries before the lifetime of those gladiators from York):



So unless those gladiators were 300 years old (and they were less than 45 years old), they did not spend childhood in BC times.

Moreover - the fact remains, that in PCA (Figure 1.) one of gladiators clusters autosomally firmly within E.Europe (Ru - Russia?):

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160119/ncomms10326/fig_tab/ncomms10326_F1.html

And in IBS (Figure 2.) the combined sample of gladiators (excluding Near Easterner) shows similarities to Lithuanians and Poles:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160119/ncomms10326/fig_tab/ncomms10326_F2.html

The following is from the description of the documentary at the site to which you linked:

"The men were also all buried with some respect and their final resting places included grave goods as well as large joints of meat – making it less likely they were executed criminals.

But the theory they were gladiators is still open to dispute. As yet there has been no evidence of an amphitheatre found in York and there is nothing conclusive about the men’s injuries.

They could have been inflicted in battle and there were no injuries from weapons like the three-pointed trident which were specifically used by certain types of gladiator.

Because of this York Archaeological Trust has set up a website offering the public the chance to have their say. Opinions can be left at at headlessromans.co.uk.

John Walker, York Archaeological Trust’s chief executive, said: “This is a fascinating discovery that gives a real insight into the world of interpreting archaeology.”

“With archaeology, you are very rarely dealing in the definite. There are almost always elements of ‘possibly’ and ‘probably’ and the archaeologist’s job is to weigh up the evidence and make an informed judgment on the most likely explanation.”

Journalists sensationalize; scholars usually don't. I'll add again that the usual method of execution for gladiators was a single sword thrust from behind down through the neck, not hacking repeatedly with dull blades, which is what these remains show. Also, I find it unusual that the remains had grave goods; the run of the mill gladiator wasn't treated with this kind of respect. The puncture wounds could be post-mortem for all we know, from a bear. That would be very likely if these men were auxiliaries who were killed somewhere nearer the wall and left there before being retrieved. On the other hand, if they were auxiliaries one would think there would be some military paraphernalia buried with them, unless their bodies were stripped after their death.This discussion reminds me of the ones that surrounded the discovery of Oetzi; lots of conjecture but little proof.

I'm keeping an open mind.

As to the millet, perhaps you didn't have time to read the paper I posted, Tomenable, or look at the map of where it was grown. It wasn't grown just in Republican times, and the Romans raised a lot of it, as the ancient literature indicates. It's just that they gave it to animals and the poor. The fact that there aren't that many finds is probably due to the fact that it was usually pounded, turned into flour, and then boiled for human consumption. To eat it in bread form was unpopular because the bread was so dense and so hard on the teeth. There are pictures of what the teeth look like after a life time of eating bread made from it.
ET20-mandible-130227.jpg


This is how it was usually eaten by humans in the Roman world.
52556de9697ab06b29000f92._w.540_h.360_s.fit_.jpg



The important fact is that the six Romano-Brits cluster with each other and with the Iron Age British sample and with the modern Welsh most of all. Now, maybe that autosomal signature also existed in France and nearby areas, and maybe there was some variation among them, with one sample having picked up some ancestry, maybe through the Belgae, that had more of an "eastern" leaning, but none of those six, who aren't even the ones who show evidence of having eaten millet, shows evidence of recent ancestry from Russia.

I mean, I understand wanting to identify with ancient people, Tomenable, and for men, perhaps with soldiers or gladiators, but it's as if you want the Slavs to be like Forest Gump, present and crucial at every stage of human history. :) It doesn't work like that for any group.
 
Where and when did you picked all that? Or it's a humor tentavie of yours?

I shouldn't speak for him, but it's sarcasm. That's the meme about Italians on anthrofora. One of the usual suspects is already hinting it's a done deal for Italy, but then he's on record as saying we're, or at least southern and perhaps central Italians, aren't European and should be kicked out of the "club", so for now it's just wishful thinking. :) I always wonder why he reserves this for us and never mentions the Spaniards with their North African and SSA and the Balkanites with their West Asian. Perhaps, since he's not actually European, some Italian kid of the diaspora beat him up and took his lunch money, or stole his girlfriend? :) More likely it's tied to anti-Semitism. Ah well, the workings of unbalanced minds are always a mystery to some extent.

Immaterial to me but it gets under the skin of some Italians. They should know better, in my opinion.

Sorry for the off-topic comment. I apologize.
 
Unless I've totally misread the paper, the reference to millet eating had nothing to do with the Romano Brits whose genetic results were published; it has to do with other remains not analyzed for autosomal or uniparental dna, or, if analyzed, not published.

Therefore, it has no probative value for a possible eastern European origin for the ancestry of the more "eastern" plotting Romano Brit.
 
Unless I've totally misread the paper, the reference to millet eating had nothing to do with the Romano Brits whose genetic results were published; it has to do with other remains not analyzed for autosomal or uniparental dna, or, if analyzed, not published.

Therefore, it has no probative value for a possible eastern European origin for the ancestry of the more "eastern" plotting Romano Brit.

Yes the millet thing is a red herring. It's mentioned in the second paper but when you check the labels of the millet samples they're not the Romano-British samples.

So yes there may have been east Europeans in the grave yard but they weren't these six samples - the two outliers among the romano-british samples (excluding the middle eastern guy) were one had too much Oxygen and one had too much Nitrogen (from fish apparently).
 
@Tomenable

Those people were not soldiers, but gladiators

died as gladiators maybe but what were they when their teeth were growing?

Moreover - the fact remains, that in PCA (Figure 1.) one of gladiators clusters autosomally firmly within E.Europe (Ru - Russia?):

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160119/ncomms10326/fig_tab/ncomms10326_F1.html

And in IBS (Figure 2.) the combined sample of gladiators (excluding Near Easterner) shows similarities to Lithuanians and Poles:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160119/ncomms10326/fig_tab/ncomms10326_F2.html

That is significant but they also cluster with each other and modern Welsh which implies to me they were from a local population who had already mixed with people originally from the Baltic-Poland so maybe some of the Belgae had rolled down the coast from there?

(Another possibility might be Wales and Lithuania both have some rare component which pulls them together. IIRC there was something like that mentioned on a very old Dionekes thread?)
 

I 've some difficulty to swallow an only evolutionary process in so a short time. Based on what? what drastic climatic difference distinguishes northern and southern Europe or other places at those times? I'm almost sre we are missing something. I have no answer just now but... a linkage with other genetic peculiarities selecting for other traits???
Not I deny natural selection but I don't understand this speed of selection there... Sure we 'll have the explanation someday.
I sort of did in one of my posts:
That's good. According to my hypothesis the process was ongoing to end of Little Ice Age around 19 hundreds AD. This is when it has achieved maximum for Northern and Central Europe. Every time crops failed in Northern Europe the number of people with LP rose. I'm expecting that climatic disaster of Dark Ages was a major event in positive selection of LP. There should be a big jump in LP numbers in population between 400 and 800 AD.
European type of LP and whitening of skin started pretty much 10-6 thousand years ago. Is this too short for you to achieve majority of population in Northern Europe? That's something like 400-300 generations. I think it it doable under strong environmental forcing.
 
As to the millet, perhaps you didn't have time to read the paper I posted, Tomenable, or look at the map of where it was grown. It wasn't grown just in Republican times, and the Romans raised a lot of it, as the ancient literature indicates. It's just that they gave it to animals and the poor. The fact that there aren't that many finds is probably due to the fact that it was usually pounded, turned into flour, and then boiled for human consumption. To eat it in bread form was unpopular because the bread was so dense and so hard on the teeth. There are pictures of what the teeth look like after a life time of eating bread made from it.
I noticed that too. Millet was more popular among poor and used as animal feed. I think it grows easily everywhere but it doesn't taste too good. I don't remember eating it, or if I did it didn't make a mark in my memory.

I remember my aunt used millet to feed chickens in Poland.
 
I sort of did in one of my posts:
European type of LP and whitening of skin started pretty much 10-6 thousand years ago. Is this too short for you to achieve majority of population in Northern Europe? That's something like 400-300 generations. I think it it doable under strong environmental forcing.

Quick correction, not being know it all jerk.

The "European skin became white 6,000-10,000 years ago" theory is false and based on rs1426654(AA) which was very popular in EHG/SHG/CHG/EEF 8,000 years ago. That theory was destined to be false because genetics often ignore the Middle East. Middle Easterners have 100% rs1426654(AA), but genetics continued to treat this as a European-specific mutation.

With the markers associated with skin color, it suggests white-skin lightening in Europe happened when Steppe/EEF mixed around 2800 BC. Then after that it continued to be selected all over Europe into the Bronze age. We have no sizable databases of DNA from before 8,000 years ago. EHG, SHG, and EEF 8,000 years ago had decent frequencies of both Light skin-mutations, and I wouldn't be surprised if their ancestors did 10,000 years before.

There's no evidence any process began 10-6k years ago that made things differnt than they were 1,000s of years before. There's just documentation that rs16891982(GG) tripled in frequency between 3000 and 2800 BC. rs16891982(GG) is what was selected for, and no one predicted what we're finding in ancient DNA. That's the only evidence of a skin-lightning process going on. Late Neolithic Europe in 2800 BC is a totally differnt world than Mesolithic/Neolithic Europe in 8000-4000 BC.

The same goes for Lactose-persistence SNPs. The first confirmed existence is in Late Neolithic Europe, but there's also old studies which document it in Neolithic Spain and Sweden. There's other SNPs associated with foods only farming/herding people could create that only appear in EEF or later in EEF/WHG/Steppe.
 
I shouldn't speak for him, but it's sarcasm. That's the meme about Italians on anthrofora. One of the usual suspects is already hinting it's a done deal for Italy, but then he's on record as saying we're, or at least southern and perhaps central Italians, aren't European and should be kicked out of the "club", so for now it's just wishful thinking. :) I always wonder why he reserves this for us and never mentions the Spaniards with their North African and SSA and the Balkanites with their West Asian. Perhaps, since he's not actually European, some Italian kid of the diaspora beat him up and took his lunch money, or stole his girlfriend? :) More likely it's tied to anti-Semitism. Ah well, the workings of unbalanced minds are always a mystery to some extent.

Immaterial to me but it gets under the skin of some Italians. They should know better, in my opinion.

Sorry for the off-topic comment. I apologize.

Drac, I just noticed that you give a negative rating to virtually everything I post. Well, anything that at all hints that Spaniards might not be twins of Scandinavians or the Irish, anyway. :) Maybe when I have a chance I'll add them up and keep a running tally which I'll have posted instead of my quote.

My father always told me that someone's enemies say even more about them than their friends. I'm more than pleased with what mine say about me.
 
Quick correction, not being know it all jerk.

The "European skin became white 6,000-10,000 years ago" theory is false and based on rs1426654(AA) which was very popular in EHG/SHG/CHG/EEF 8,000 years ago. That theory was destined to be false because genetics often ignore the Middle East. Middle Easterners have 100% rs1426654(AA), but genetics continued to treat this as a European-specific mutation.

With the markers associated with skin color, it suggests white-skin lightening in Europe happened when Steppe/EEF mixed around 2800 BC. Then after that it continued to be selected all over Europe into the Bronze age. We have no sizable databases of DNA from before 8,000 years ago. EHG, SHG, and EEF 8,000 years ago had decent frequencies of both Light skin-mutations, and I wouldn't be surprised if their ancestors did 10,000 years before.

There's no evidence any process began 10-6k years ago that made things differnt than they were 1,000s of years before. There's just documentation that rs16891982(GG) tripled in frequency between 3000 and 2800 BC. rs16891982(GG) is what was selected for, and no one predicted what we're finding in ancient DNA. That's the only evidence of a skin-lightning process going on. Late Neolithic Europe in 2800 BC is a totally differnt world than Mesolithic/Neolithic Europe in 8000-4000 BC.

The same goes for Lactose-persistence SNPs. The first confirmed existence is in Late Neolithic Europe, but there's also old studies which document it in Neolithic Spain and Sweden. There's other SNPs associated with foods only farming/herding people could create that only appear in EEF or later in EEF/WHG/Steppe
I meant that the process started 6-10 ky ago. That's what we see from ancient dna, that first alleles related to these processes show up in European genome at about this time. I hope you agree that it was a slow long process in both cases, which lasted till today, and that it was not a sudden revolution?
 
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