Upcoming paper on the Iranian Neolithic

@Angela,

Georgians are are about 50% CHG while Syrians are probably close to 0% or have hard to detect CHG ancestry. Affinity to Neolithic Iranians is highest in Iran but reportedly drops very much West of Iran. These are huge genetic divides between Middle Easterners. CHG and Neolithic Iranians existed 9,000 or more years ago, and some Middle Easrterners trace huge chunks of their ancestry to them while others trace small amounts to them.

You don't see that in Europe. First of all you have Neolithic Anatolians. They colonized basically the entire continent, making all Europeans have lots of common ancestry in the last 9,000 years. Next and most importantly after the Neolithic genes were traded around Europe like crazy. Everyone in Europe, except Sardinians, has 20% or more ancestry straight from the "Steppe". And for all Europeans a huge chunk of their Neolithic Anatolian ancestry is from Central/East Europe and was carried to their homelands with Steppe admixture. It appears every inch of land in Europe, except maybe Sardinia, was mostly repopulated after 3000 BC.

You don't have genetic diversity/geographic genetic divides in Europe that traces back to the Paleolithic or Neolithic age like you do in the Middle East. Genetic diversity in Europe is the result of slightly differnt ancestry percentages from the same Neolithic and Bronze age ancestors. The geography of current European genetic diversity was formed in the Bronze age or later. It's probably more like Europe within subregions of the Middle East and there's definitly been lots gene flow between SW Asia and Caucasus and Iran in the last 9,000 years, but not as much gene flow as there's been between Portugal and Russia in the last 9,000 years.
 
@Angela,

Georgians are are about 50% CHG while Syrians are probably close to 0% or have hard to detect CHG ancestry. Affinity to Neolithic Iranians is highest in Iran but reportedly drops very much West of Iran. These are huge genetic divides between Middle Easterners. CHG and Neolithic Iranians existed 9,000 or more years ago, and some Middle Easrterners trace huge chunks of their ancestry to them while others trace small amounts to them.

You don't see that in Europe. First of all you have Neolithic Anatolians. They colonized basically the entire continent, making all Europeans have lots of common ancestry in the last 9,000 years. Next and most importantly after the Neolithic genes were traded around Europe like crazy. Everyone in Europe, except Sardinians, has 20% or more ancestry straight from the "Steppe". And for all Europeans a huge chunk of their Neolithic Anatolian ancestry is from Central/East Europe and was carried to their homelands with Steppe admixture. It appears every inch of land in Europe, except maybe Sardinia, was mostly repopulated after 3000 BC.

You don't have genetic diversity/geographic genetic divides in Europe that traces back to the Paleolithic or Neolithic age like you do in the Middle East. Genetic diversity in Europe is the result of slightly differnt ancestry percentages from the same Neolithic and Bronze age ancestors. The geography of current European genetic diversity was formed in the Bronze age or later. It's probably more like Europe within subregions of the Middle East and there's definitly been lots gene flow between SW Asia and Caucasus and Iran in the last 9,000 years, but not as much gene flow as there's been between Portugal and Russia in the last 9,000 years.

Absolutely unpersuasive. Stop making pronouncements and prove it.
 
So, all of a sudden the research group who couldn't shoot straight are sharing info with someone who was trying to destroy their careers? How forgiving of them!

I do believe he's expressed some doubt that they will continue to speak with him overmuch at this point. :p
 
Absolutely unpersuasive. Stop making pronouncements and prove it.

Just about every little objection you have to what I say is proven correct eventually. Just wait.
 
so there would be a divide for 10.000 years or more
I would guess there could be a divide between Mesopotamia and the Zagros
as I mentioned earlier, the cereal farmers descending from Natufians were not the same as the hunters and later herders that domesticated the goat in the Zagros and the pig in the Eastern Taurus Tigris river area
there was the divide between Summerians and Elamites, and there is a theory about relation between Elamite and Dravidian language
the Bronze Age Semitic people invaded Mesopotamia but not the Zagros, nor Anatolia
the Persians conquered Mesopotamia, but unlike the Assyrians before them, they didn't displace whole tribes

it is possible, but I think it is best to await the publication of the paper to draw conclusions

furthermore I think that todays people in the Levant and Mesopotamia are more related to the Semitic invaders than to the neolithic people descending from Natufians
it could be that Europeans are more related to Natufians than Middle Easterners
 
Just about every little objection you have to what I say is proven correct eventually. Just wait.

You are obviously not keeping score or you have a very bad memory. I am, and I have an excellent memory. Some people are wrong so often that, as I once stated on this Board, their incorrect pronouncements, and misinterpretations of what is said in papers would fill a city phone directory. "Predictions" based on leaks don't count.

I don't know and I don't give a damn if Europeans are closer to one another than Middle Easterners are to one another. I've never investigated it. The point is that neither have you.

There's a lot of fst analysis of Europeans. I'm sure you can find data comparing Middle Easterners to one another. Look it up. When you have it, let me know. The same applies to Admixture analyses. Line up Iranian results versus Saudi results. Line up Sicilian results and Finnish results. Which are closer to one another?

I'm not going to do the work of proving or disproving every proposition or speculation posted on this Board. I do have other things to do.

@Bicicleur,
I do think it might turn out that some Europeans are closer to Natufians than some Middle Easterners are, but time will tell.

This is total speculation, but I wonder if perhaps the Basal Eurasians were the population that actually started domesticating plants and animals, and that's the common denominator between the various groups in the Near East?

Ed. to Fire-Haired,

I'll tell you one thing, the difference in "Caucasus" between Iranians and Jordanians, for example, is very small.
 
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@Angela,

Georgians are are about 50% CHG while Syrians are probably close to 0% or have hard to detect CHG ancestry. Affinity to Neolithic Iranians is highest in Iran but reportedly drops very much West of Iran. These are huge genetic divides between Middle Easterners. CHG and Neolithic Iranians existed 9,000 or more years ago, and some Middle Easrterners trace huge chunks of their ancestry to them while others trace small amounts to them.
Some time ago, in discussion with Alan, I pinpointed Gedrosia admixture to originate in a region South of Caspian Sea, or maybe South East, IIRC that is. I wish I had Angela's memory. :)
I also talked about all HGs of Europe, Central and West Asia, being trapped in distinct and separate refugia, from LGM to pretty much end of Ice Age. We have to cupture their genome at 12,000 year ago, to have a clear picture of basic and animated yet genetic base signals, the admixtures. Unmixed admixtures, if we can create an oximoron.
 
This is total speculation, but I wonder if perhaps the Basal Eurasians were the population that actually started domesticating plants and animals, and that's the common denominator between the various groups in the Near East?

Ed. to Fire-Haired,

I'll tell you one thing, the difference in "Caucasus" between Iranians and Jordanians, for example, is very small.
Do you mean Natufians (if they were the first farmers), or you suspect other source of Basal Eurasian?
 
@Angela,

Just stop. Next time I'm right I'm really going to rub in your face.
 
Ok I overreacted. You can say I'm jumping the gun too quickly when there isn't a lot of data to look at without being insulting. You don't have to nit pick every little thing I write.
 
Ok I overreacted. You can say I'm jumping the gun too quickly when there isn't a lot of data to look at without being insulting. You don't have to nit pick every little thing I write.

I've been saying that and similar things to you for what seems like years now. How many times does it have to be said? There are people who read this Board who don't spend eons of time on this kind of research, or they're newbies. I'm not going to let you continue to confuse people by making these kinds of unsupported claims over and over again.

If you have no evidence for what you claim, then don't make the claim, or learn how to signal that it's a speculation, a hypothesis, or pose it as a question. These are elementary rules of discourse among civilized people.

You've been given more leeway than any adult would receive, which has cost us a great member, but continue to speak to me like you did above, and there are going to be consequences, do you understand? Not another word...

Instead, why don't you find that fst data; I'm actually interested in the answer, or at least what that particular kind of data will show, and I'm sure other people would be as well.
 
Do you mean Natufians (if they were the first farmers), or you suspect other source of Basal Eurasian?

I don't have enough data to do anything but wildly speculate. If it turns out to be the case that the Iranian farmer sample is more "Basal Eurasian" than the CHG sample or the ANF samples we have at present, it's possible that the Basal Eurasian group moved generally north into those areas from a refugia to the south. I think it's been proposed before that there was such a refugia in the Arabian peninsula. The other possibility would be a refugia somewhere around the Persian Gulf, although traces of it may have been destroyed by rising sea levels. I don't know if there is any indication of a refugia more to the east.

We really need ancient dna from not only the Natufian farmers but also from Mesopotamian farmers. That will tell us a lot. I hope the Reich team has some other, perhaps more eastern hunter-gatherers as well.

As for where agriculture "first" developed, I know some people are still holding onto the idea that even cereal farming arose in the foothills above the Tigris Euphrates, but there are some papers with earlier dates for it in Natufian areas. Of course, as we've discussed before, it all depends how you define "farming". If a group gathers and stores wild grain, and threshes and grinds it for food, is that farming? I would say not really. What about if they gather the seeds and plant them in areas where through trial and error they've discovered they will grow well, but they haven't actually gotten to the point where they are creating domesticated strains of these grains. I would say that's already farming, but that's my subjective judgment. The same analysis could be done for the domestication of animals. We've discussed how some researchers maintain that some of the animals taken in the first expansion to Cyprus were not yet the domestic strains developed later. Or what about dairying? How long did it take to realize you could make cheese or butter or yogurt from it? How long to figure out a way to keep them lactating?

I think there's this impression among some people that oh, there's good weather, a surplus of wild grain, some nice animals, and all of a sudden we have farming. Everything I've ever read about it indicates it didn't happen that way. I'm not saying it could have taken place in the Arctic, you needed certain environmental conditions, but it required thousands of years for the "package" to be complete, and a change not only in the plants and animals, but in humans, with humans domesticating themselves as well as plants and animals, in my opinion. Even if people find that far fetched, it's a completely different mindset and way of looking at the world, even if no genetic changes are involved, and it would have taken a long time to be accepted.

I still maintain, as I think you do as well, that it's possible that the larger populations that could be supported by changing conditions in this part of the world meant that more mutations were present in these populations that might have proved helpful for people trying to develop this technology and selection might have acted upon them. At the very least, I would think that this different technology might put selective pressure on these people, bringing changes that could be traced.

Perhaps it's too much to hope for that someone will come upon a "pure" Basal Eurasian genome. If they do we'll see if the same kind of analysis can be done comparing that genome with that of the other hunter-gatherers with whom they came into contact as has been done for the Neanderthal AMH enounters. Were their genes selected for, or purged?

Anyway, we may not ever be able to figure out in which specific area of the Near East farming "first" developed, but it's pretty clear to me that the genetic tie between the ANFs and the IRFs is "Basial Eurasian".

I must say I retained a bit of skepticism for a long time as to whether "Basal Eurasian" really existed; I thought the Lazaridis paper might have been really out there and they would have to draw it back. Maybe not, however. It will be pretty amazing if they got it right with no ancient genome for it.
 
I don't have enough data to do anything but wildly speculate. If it turns out to be the case that the Iranian farmer sample is more "Basal Eurasian" than the CHG sample or the ANF samples we have at present, it's possible that the Basal Eurasian group moved generally north into those areas from a refugia to the south. I think it's been proposed before that there was such a refugia in the Arabian peninsula. The other possibility would be a refugia somewhere around the Persian Gulf, although traces of it may have been destroyed by rising sea levels. I don't know if there is any indication of a refugia more to the east.
I see, pretty much a ghose ancestor. I'll be happy if we set base admixtures at the end of Ice Age. Before that the samples will be scarce and bad quality and will take ages to figure out how it exactly went around between populations.

We really need ancient dna from not only the Natufian farmers but also from Mesopotamian farmers. That will tell us a lot. I hope the Reich team has some other, perhaps more eastern hunter-gatherers as well.

As for where agriculture "first" developed, I know some people are still holding onto the idea that even cereal farming arose in the foothills above the Tigris Euphrates, but there are some papers with earlier dates for it in Natufian areas. Of course, as we've discussed before, it all depends how you define "farming". If a group gathers and stores wild grain, and threshes and grinds it for food, is that farming? I would say not really. What about if they gather the seeds and plant them in areas where through trial and error they've discovered they will grow well, but they haven't actually gotten to the point where they are creating domesticated strains of these grains. I would say that's already farming, but that's my subjective judgment. The same analysis could be done for the domestication of animals. We've discussed how some researchers maintain that some of the animals taken in the first expansion to Cyprus were not yet the domestic strains developed later. Or what about dairying? How long did it take to realize you could make cheese or butter or yogurt from it? How long to figure out a way to keep them lactating?

I think there's this impression among some people that oh, there's good weather, a surplus of wild grain, some nice animals, and all of a sudden we have farming. Everything I've ever read about it indicates it didn't happen that way. I'm not saying it could have taken place in the Arctic, you needed certain environmental conditions, but it required thousands of years for the "package" to be complete, and a change not only in the plants and animals, but in humans, with humans domesticating themselves as well as plants and animals, in my opinion. Even if people find that far fetched, it's a completely different mindset and way of looking at the world, even if no genetic changes are involved, and it would have taken a long time to be accepted.
Right, becoming a farmer it was a long process, thousands of years, if only reading clues from Natufians and pre Natufians excavated villages. Now if it was thousands of years long process it is pretty much impossible that natural selection didn't enhance "pro farming" genes. Especially taking under consideration how different diet and lifestyle is of farmers versus HGs.
 
NatufianSpread 18.jpg

the first Natufian permanent settlement arose 14.5 ka in the southern Levant
13.5 ka some moved to Abu Hureya, upper Eufrates
during younger dryas all settlements were abandonned except Mureybet, a new Natufian settlement upstream from Abu Hureya
there were no more gazelles to be hunted in Abu Hureya, but they were in Mureybet
Khiam_point.png
people in Mureybet were not just Abu Hureya people, they were a Natufian tribe making 'khiam points', originating from west of lake Tiberias
Mureybet was the first site where rye and cereals were grown, during or right after youngest dryas

Bezoarziege by F. Spangenberg at wikipedia.org.jpg

beozars (ancestral to goats) were selectively hunted (only adult males) near Great Zab river, Zagros Mts, it was the 1st step in domestication of female beozar
the female beozar were not killed, as they always attracted fresh beozar males coming from further away
on the contrary, the hunters protected the female beozars from predators like wolves
during younger dryas this area was abondonned, the tribe split :
- south to Lorestan (where I guess the women's DNA in this study is situated)
- north to upper Tigris, where they also domesticated pig
during younger dryas people from upper Tigris came with beozar herds west to the Göbekli Tepe area, where they build their temple (inspired by the shrines in the upper Tigirs settlements)
the Göbekli Tepe temple is just 80 km east of Mureybet as the bird flies

what I learn from the abstract is that these beozar hunters near Great Zab river would have been CHG
 
so there would be a divide for 10.000 years or more
I would guess there could be a divide between Mesopotamia and the Zagros
as I mentioned earlier, the cereal farmers descending from Natufians were not the same as the hunters and later herders that domesticated the goat in the Zagros and the pig in the Eastern Taurus Tigris river area
there was the divide between Summerians and Elamites, and there is a theory about relation between Elamite and Dravidian language
the Bronze Age Semitic people invaded Mesopotamia but not the Zagros, nor Anatolia
the Persians conquered Mesopotamia, but unlike the Assyrians before them, they didn't displace whole tribes

it is possible, but I think it is best to await the publication of the paper to draw conclusions

furthermore I think that todays people in the Levant and Mesopotamia are more related to the Semitic invaders than to the neolithic people descending from Natufians
it could be that Europeans are more related to Natufians than Middle Easterners

Perhaps Sumerian is a very old union between EEF and "Iranian Neolithic" (Proto-Elamite/Elamo-Dravidian). I've always had a tendency to theorize that Sumerian was an Elamite language just because there's no agreement on the classification, but this doesn't appear to be the case. A lingua franca between two farming groups seems most likely at this point.

But this recent genetic evidence combined with the archaeology and linguistics strongly supports the notion of Elamo-Dravidian.
 
View attachment 7804

the first Natufian permanent settlement arose 14.5 ka in the southern Levant
13.5 ka some moved to Abu Hureya, upper Eufrates
during younger dryas all settlements were abandonned except Mureybet, a new Natufian settlement upstream from Abu Hureya
there were no more gazelles to be hunted in Abu Hureya, but they were in Mureybet
View attachment 7805
people in Mureybet were not just Abu Hureya people, they were a Natufian tribe making 'khiam points', originating from west of lake Tiberias
Mureybet was the first site where rye and cereals were grown, during or right after youngest dryas

View attachment 7806

beozars (ancestral to goats) were selectively hunted (only adult males) near Great Zab river, Zagros Mts, it was the 1st step in domestication of female beozar
the female beozar were not killed, as they always attracted fresh beozar males coming from further away
on the contrary, the hunters protected the female beozars from predators like wolves
during younger dryas this area was abondonned, the tribe split :
- south to Lorestan (where I guess the women's DNA in this study is situated)
- north to upper Tigris, where they also domesticated pig
during younger dryas people from upper Tigris came with beozar herds west to the Göbekli Tepe area, where they build their temple (inspired by the shrines in the upper Tigirs settlements)
the Göbekli Tepe temple is just 80 km east of Mureybet as the bird flies

what I learn from the abstract is that these beozar hunters near Great Zab river would have been CHG

This is very important information. So, if I'm understanding this correctly, you have Natufians who were growing grains moving to the upper Euphrates, and people from the Zagros mountains who were starting the process of the domestication of animals moving to the upper Tigris and then actually into central Anatolia.

Certainly there was a transfer of the "technology" both ways. Now, given that we have both Natufians and Zagros farmers in the foothills of the Tigris/Eurphrates Valley we have to see if the genetics of people like the later Mesopotamian farmers shows that there was any admixture of these two groups. I would be very surprised if there wasn't.

Likewise, the genetics of the people in Central Anatolia are very important. I speculated on prior threads that perhaps some of the increasing CHG that starts to appear in the farmers of northwest Anatolia very early came with people from central Anatolia, as the archaeology seems to indicate that there is a trail from there to the northwest. This might all hang together.
 
Perhaps Sumerian is a very old union between EEF and "Iranian Neolithic" (Proto-Elamite/Elamo-Dravidian). I've always had a tendency to theorize that Sumerian was an Elamite language just because there's no agreement on the classification, but this doesn't appear to be the case. A lingua franca between two farming groups seems most likely at this point.

this is not likely, as the origin of the Ubaid culture is known, it is the Samarra culture in central Mesopotamia

I think there was a 'Natufian language' all the way from the Levant down to south Mesopotamia prior to the Semitic invasion.
 
This is very important information. So, if I'm understanding this correctly, you have Natufians who were growing grains moving to the upper Euphrates, and people from the Zagros mountains who were starting the process of the domestication of animals moving to the upper Tigris and then actually into central Anatolia.

Certainly there was a transfer of the "technology" both ways. Now, given that we have both Natufians and Zagros farmers in the foothills of the Tigris/Eurphrates Valley we have to see if the genetics of people like the later Mesopotamian farmers shows that there was any admixture of these two groups. I would be very surprised if there wasn't.

Likewise, the genetics of the people in Central Anatolia are very important. I speculated on prior threads that perhaps some of the increasing CHG that starts to appear in the farmers of northwest Anatolia very early came with people from central Anatolia, as the archaeology seems to indicate that there is a trail from there to the northwest. This might all hang together.

yes there should have been admixture, but farmers to Europe were still in majority all the same G2a2 Y DNA
and why didn't farmers have domesticated animals during PPNA? during PPNA they were relying on hunting for their meat
 
yes there should have been admixture, but farmers to Europe were still in majority all the same G2a2 Y DNA
and why didn't farmers have domesticated animals during PPNA? during PPNA they were relying on hunting for their meat

We're talking about changes over long periods, as I've been saying repeatedly. I haven't yet checked for the latest papers, but this Wiki article seems rather in line with what I recall reading on the subject.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Pottery_Neolithic_B

"Cultural tendencies of this period differ from that of the earlier Pre-Pottery Neolithic A(PPNA) period in that people living during this period began to depend more heavily upondomesticated animals to supplement their earlier mixed agrarian and hunter-gatherer diet. In addition the flint tool kit of the period is new and quite disparate from that of the earlier period. One of its major elements is the naviform core. "

This is very interesting as well:
"
they found evidence of a fully established PPNB culture at 8700 BC at Aswad, pushing back the period's generally accepted start date by 1,200 years. Similar sites to Tell Aswad in the Damascus Basin of the same age were found at Tell Ramadand Tell Ghoraifé. How a PPNB culture could spring up in this location, practicing domesticated farming from 8700 BC has been the subject of speculation. Whether it created its own culture or imported traditions from the North East or Southern Levant has been considered an important question for a site that poses a problem for the scientific community."

Maybe the question will be settled by genetics. :)

And this:
"T
he PPNB culture developed from the Earlier Natufian but shows evidence of a northerly origin, possibly indicating an influx from the region of north eastern Anatolia. The culture disappeared during the 8.2 kiloyear event, a term that climatologists have adopted for a sudden decrease in global temperatures that occurred approximately 8,200 years before the present, or c. 6200 BCE, and which lasted for the next two to four centuries. In the following Munhatta andYarmukian post-pottery Neolithic cultures that succeeded it, rapid cultural development continues."

The next sequence shows influence from the south.
"
Work at the site of 'Ain Ghazal in Jordan has indicated a later Pre-Pottery Neolithic C period which existed between 8,200 and 7,900 BP. Juris Zarins has proposed that a Circum Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex developed in the period from the climatic crisis of 6200 BCE, partly as a result of an increasing emphasis in PPNB cultures upon animal domesticates, and a fusion with Harifian hunter gatherers in Southern Palestine, with affiliate connections with the cultures of Fayyum and the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Cultures practicing this lifestyle spread down the Red Sea shoreline and moved east from Syria into southern Iraq.[12]"

If archaeologist can learn from geneticists, the opposite is true as well. In analyzing these ancient genomes people should be keeping the archaeology in mind, not just jumping to wild conclusions.

That applies to admixture analyses as well. I'm reminded of the "Red Sea" component that Dienekes was exploring.Another thing I noticed is that the prior house structures were round, in contrast to the rectangular form, which eventually made its way to LBK, which was from the subsequent PPNB period. If I remember correctly, the early northwest Anatolian farmers were still using the round form.
 
this is not likely, as the origin of the Ubaid culture is known, it is the Samarra culture in central Mesopotamia

I think there was a 'Natufian language' all the way from the Levant down to south Mesopotamia prior to the Semitic invasion.

I don't think it's that simple. I don't think Samarra->Ubaid->Uruk was a continuous EEF population speaking a Natufian language. The Ganj Dareh sample is hinting at this.

This would explain both the unclear origins of Sumerian Civilization and the "unclassified" language.
 

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