Ancient genomes from Caucasus inc. Maykop

I think people didn't notice here the R1b found in Maykop might actually be a late Steppe arrival in the culture. Probably coming to Maykop after Steppe Indo European culture was formed.

Imo it went this way Northwest Iran/Leyla Tepe => Steppe=> back to Maykop.
No R1b was found in Maikop, R1b were in Maikop Steppe full western siberian, nothing to do with iran or even eastern europe and North Caucasus without a particular culture and them had some CHG.
 
This is a very very unlikely scenario considering the very little time gap between the proposed dispersal of Steppe Indo Europeans and the age of these Hittite Bronze Age samples. if these Hittites really came from a roughly ~40-50% EHG source. You would need at least a century until the EHG get's deluded down to 6,25% per individual. And this is only possible if you assume the "Hittites" exclusively and rapidly mated only with individuals with zero EHG. That even excludes other EHG mixed Hittites. How often do you see it happen that people of the same folk do not even touch each other over the course of 4 generation? Even in societies with high mixing rate you always see more a pattern like this.

1. gen
same + foreign, same + same, same+ same, same+ same
2. gen
1/2 mixed + same, same+ same, same+ same, same + same, same + foreign

3. 1/4 mixed + same, same+ foreign, same+ same, same+ same, same+ same, same + 1/2 mixed

And this is rather the pattern for a mixing society.
And in this scenario allot of the foreign admixture actually get's washed out.




But for your theory above to work you would need to assume something more like this.

1. gen
same+ foreign, same+ foreign, same+ foreign, same+ same

2. gen
1/2 + mixed, mixed+ 1/2 mixed, mixed+1/2 mixed, mixed+ 1/2 mixed

As if they were always exclusively mating with foreigners and killing of those pure "Steppe kids".


So no I don't agree with this. There must be a different reason why BA Hittite R1b l23 samples lack EHG just like the Calcolthic Hajji Firuz sample a little further east. And both being basically a mix of Iran_Neo/CHG and ANF.

I think the authors are holding back something.
Wait there is BA Hittite R1b-L23 samples ?
 
No R1b was found in Maikop, R1b were in Maikop Steppe full western siberian, nothing to do with iran or even eastern europe and North Caucasus without a particular culture and them had some CHG.

Do you see the contraditicion yourself?

I know the R1b was from Maikop Steppe this is why I wrote it is most likely a late arrival from Steppe cultures. Therefore plays no role for my theory.

Also did you know that there was no R1b found in Hittite samples.

The Hittite samples were G2a and J1 more akine to Maikop than Yamnaya to be fair. Maybe just maybe what the authors try to tell us is,

a culture akine to Maikop is the source of PPIE and Maikop the source for HIttite, and these Yamnaya Steppe nomads got their language and culture/Ideas through contact to these cultures and movement of people, as we see from the Steppe Maikop sample (contact zone?)

This would explains why the Hittite Y and aDNA resembles Maikop.
 
Actually what I find quite hilarious is how we all with the arrival of this paper focused again on R1b and completely missed out the absence of it in those Hittite samples. And no one even noticed or bothered to mentioned that the early Maikop y and aDNA fits well fith those Hittite samples.


Wait there is BA Hittite R1b-L23 samples ?


No my mistake. You see exactly how I explained above. People here are so confident and 100% sure that Hittite must be R1b L23, that I automatically connected it to them.

Of course the Hittite samples had no R1b, but autosomally they were very akine to Hajji Firuz and Maikop.

I am still waiting for Leyla Tepe samples because imo they will be the missing link between the Steppes and Hajji Firuz.

And one of my earlier theories of the PIE network of cultures might turn out correct. I often tried to see the Indo Europeans more like a network of cultures than deriving from one single source.
 
Do you see the contraditicion yourself?

I know the R1b was from Maikop Steppe this is why I wrote it is most likely a late arrival from Steppe cultures. Therefore plays no role for my theory.

Also did you know that there was no R1b found in Hittite samples.

The Hittite samples were G2a and J1 more akine to Maikop than Yamnaya to be fair. Maybe just maybe what the authors try to tell us is,

a culture akine to Maikop is the source of PPIE and Maikop the source for HIttite, and these Yamnaya Steppe nomads got their language and culture/Ideas through contact to these cultures, as we see from the Steppe Maikop sample (contact zone?)

This would explains why the Hittite Y and aDNA resembles Maikop.

what if maikop got its ideas through contact with steppe people? in this case we can't use popgen anymore to search for the PIEs.
 
Do you see the contraditicion yourself?

I know the R1b was from Maikop Steppe this is why I wrote it is most likely a late arrival from Steppe cultures. Therefore plays no role for my theory.

Also did you know that there was no R1b found in Hittite samples.

The Hittite samples were G2a and J1 more akine to Maikop than Yamnaya to be fair. Maybe just maybe what the authors try to tell us is,

a culture akine to Maikop is the source of PPIE and Maikop the source for HIttite, and these Yamnaya Steppe nomads got their language and culture/Ideas through contact to these cultures, as we see from the Steppe Maikop sample (contact zone?)

This would explains why the Hittite Y and aDNA resembles Maikop.

No i wasn't contradicte myself they make a distinction between Maikop Culture and Maikop Steppe, they are certainly not late arrival, more likely Maikop Culture is a new arrival in steppe.

Maikop doesn't have J1, it's Kura-Araxes that have J1, Maikop y-dna is mostly J2a1 and G2a2a and L in late Maikop. Kura Araxes was related to Maikop Culture, therefore if Kura-Araxes was the culture of the Proto-Anatolian, Hittite would be J1 too or are you suggesting that both were related culture with a totally different language, saying Maikop is PIE and Kura-Araxes Proto-Semitic ? at the end of the day, everything gonna go contrary to the PIE hypothesis coming from the south.
 
what if maikop got its ideas through contact with steppe people? in this case we can't use popgen anymore to search for the PIEs.


Maikop predates Yamnaya by some hundred years and as we know from archeology most of the ideas and inventions went from south to north. Maikop had wagons before the Steppes. Bronze was certanly earlier in Maikop than Steppes. Maikop is central to allot of invention. Actually almost every invention crucial to Steppes is found during earlier time further South. The only exception being probably tamed horses.
 
And probably the R1b in Hajji Firuz, is the J1 in Karelia, nobody talks about that J1, nobody thinks he is not an outlier ( in term of male lineage ) in eastern europe, but when its about Hajji Firuz R1b, people are done, that's it ! B.I.A.S
 
Maikop predates Yamnaya by some hundred years and as we know from archeology most of the ideas and inventions went rather the opposite way. Maikop had wagons before the Steppes. Bronze was certanly earlier in Maikop than Steppes.

Yes, you are right for wagons and bronze or metallurgy in general. What all this have to do with PIE ? I even press myself on the topic that Maikop could be the northern bastion of southerners bringing new cultural package in steppe, while steppe give them horses and kurgans. Maikop have probably nothing to do with PIE or IE in general, or you assume that a little factions of J2a1, G2a2a and L metalsmiths bring in less than 1000 years, IE languages to all steppe savages and further north in CWC later... Interesting hypothesis, difficultly applied.
 
And probably the R1b in Hajji Firuz, is the J1 in Karelia, nobody talks about that J1, nobody thinks he is not an outlier ( in term of male lineage ) in eastern europe, but when its about Hajji Firuz R1b, people are done, that's it ! B.I.A.S

I agree with you here.
I actually argued J1 in Karelia might not be an outlier. Actually quite frankly I discussed with people on Eurogenes who are biased as hell for a Steppe homeland that J1 in Karelia might most likely demonstrate that some J lineages could be EHG by source. But they simply ignored me. However the Hittite and Maikop J1 are Iran_Neo/Maikop linked.
 
Yes, you are right for wagons and bronze or metallurgy in general. What all this have to do with PIE ?




I even press myself on the topic that Maikop could be the northern bastion of southerners bringing new cultural package in steppe, while steppe give them horses and kurgans. Maikop have probably nothing to do with PIE or IE in general, or you assume that a little factions of J2a1, G2a2a and L metalsmiths bring in less than 1000 years, IE languages to all steppe savages and further north in CWC later... Interesting hypothesis, difficultly applied.

Wagons are crucial for a mobile nomadic people to move around. Especially for nomadic herders who need to change places for seasonal farming.

Bronze is crucial for conquering other regions. And most importantly stock breeding is essential to survive at some places on the Steppes. All three are importated from South.

Be it from Maikop or Leyla Tepe or some other cultures. But most importantly the importance of these things is not the crucial point. The point is that they were adopted and this shows the flow of ideas and people. We see far more CHGIran_Neo admixture towards the north but rather little EHG towards south. Obviously the Steppes were, at least during the Neolithic to Bronze Age on the receiving end.
 
I agree with you here.
I actually argued J1 in Karelia might not be an outlier. Actually quite frankly I discussed with people on Eurogenes who are biased as hell for a Steppe homeland that J1 in Karelia might most likely demonstrate that some J lineages could be EHG by source. But they simply ignored me. However the Hittite and Maikop J1 are Iran_Neo/Maikop linked.
The most simple explanation is that Maikop is more likely the origin of the Kartvelian side in IE languages. We can't legitimally take any Hittite sample for granted, their elite got burned and their people were mostly native to the place. EHG is partially ANE, so at the end of the day, R1 had to have something to do with EHG if its not Q1a. We should probably also wait for the Willerslev Maikop paper that could have more sample of proper Maikop and surrounding steppes. All that Maikop and Kura-Araxes relation might be however interesting in the case of semitic languages or related hurrian languages and their historical relationship.
 
Wagons are crucial for a mobile nomadic people to move around. Especially for nomadic herders who need to change places for seasonal farming.

Bronze is crucial for conquering other regions. And most importantly stock breeding is essential to survive at some places on the Steppes. All three are importated from South.

Be it from Maikop or Leyla Tepe or some other cultures. But most importantly the importance of these things is not the crucial point. The point is that they were adopted and this shows the flow of ideas and people. We see far more CHGIran_Neo admixture towards the north but rather little EHG towards south. Obviously the Steppes were, at least during the Neolithic to Bronze Age on the receiving end.

Well we are not talking about the Gimbutas IE's here, it was decades ago and a fertile hypothesis. I never actually believed that steppe folks would have developped wagons and wheels by themselves or even invente the concept of pastoralism, pretty sur nobody have ever think of it. Neolithic Europe could have been another source proposal but that's it. But the flow of ideas, are one thing and the change of a language another thing. Thing is, steppe knew metallurgy already in khvalynsk, so maikop is not related to the idea of metallurgy in the steppe and we dont have any lineage poping in steppe that could tell us, those immigrants probably participate to the elaboration of this or that. But southern women are clearly identify in steppe, so we have a physical relationship and certainly a spiritual one, or practical one. Steppe people have borrowed both women and technology from their southern neighbor before creating their own society.
 
This is a very very unlikely scenario considering the very little time gap between the proposed dispersal of Steppe Indo Europeans and the age of these Hittite Bronze Age samples. if these Hittites really came from a roughly ~40-50% EHG source. You would need at least a century until the EHG get's deluded down to 6,25% per individual. And this is only possible if you assume the "Hittites" exclusively and rapidly mated only with individuals with zero EHG. That even excludes other EHG mixed Hittites.

No, Hittite should be an early offshoot, possibly pre-Yamnaya and there is a fairly good candidate that would give enough time for dilution. Suvorovo-NovoDanilovka. A kurgan culture most likely from Sredny Stog, buried in barrows, sometime with zoomorphic scepters just like Khvalynsk. Settled in Mldavia, but also settled in the Danube delta, as direct successor of Varna round 4.400 BC. Remember that Varna outlier?

How often do you see it happen that people of the same folk do not even touch each other over the course of 4 generation?

It's for an invasive culture quite natural to take on local wives.

Even in societies with high mixing rate you always see more a pattern like this.

1. gen
same + foreign, same + same, same+ same, same+ same
2. gen
1/2 mixed + same, same+ same, same+ same, same + same, same + foreign

3. 1/4 mixed + same, same+ foreign, same+ same, same+ same, same+ same, same + 1/2 mixed

And this is rather the pattern for a mixing society.
And in this scenario allot of the foreign admixture actually get's washed out. And the mixing on basis of DNA is much slower. "Steppe" Hittite with 40% EHG mixes with 1/2 mixed "~20% " EHG result is =30% EHG. That 30% EHG mixes with a "full blooded" Hittite result is 35% EHG. This 35% EHG Hittite mixes with a 20-30% EHG Hittite result is 27,5% to 32,5% EHG. Keep in mind and this is the pattern for a strongly mixing society because it is never linear.




But for your theory above to work you would need to assume something more like this.

1. gen
same+ foreign, same+ foreign, same+ foreign, same+ same

2. gen
1/2 + mixed, mixed+ 1/2 mixed, mixed+1/2 mixed, mixed+ 1/2 mixed

As if they were always exclusively mating with foreigners and killing of those pure "Steppe kids".


So no I don't agree with this. There must be a different reason why BA Hittite samples lack EHG just like the Calcolthic Hajji Firuz sample a little further east. And both being basically a mix of Iran_Neo/CHG and ANF.

I think the authors are holding back something.

The next step would be Turkish Europe, where a at least one bronze age Kurgan style burial was found recently. If Luwians expanded from that, and Hittites from Luwians or somewhere around them, you'd see at least four steps. Enough time and enough movement for dilution. And it did leave traces of EHG.

PS: This is David Anthony's explanation.
 
I mean their is a simple response to that, how many EHG were the R1b beakers from central europe in the Olalde paper ? If we know, we can make an estimation to how much bulgarian steppe people should have EHG, because they basically roam through the same europe neolithic.
 
The bulgarian outlier is like 30 % EHG 30 % CHG 25 % ANF and a little bit iran_chalcolithic. If we imagine that ancestors of hittite were of the same ratio in like 3000 BC, in the time of 1600 BC that EHG component is likely away for good.
 
I agree with you here.
I actually argued J1 in Karelia might not be an outlier. Actually quite frankly I discussed with people on Eurogenes who are biased as hell for a Steppe homeland that J1 in Karelia might most likely demonstrate that some J lineages could be EHG by source. But they simply ignored me. However the Hittite and Maikop J1 are Iran_Neo/Maikop linked.

I think that J1 and maybe J2 could have existed in E/SE Europe during the Epigravettian. (Upper Paleolithic)
I don't know what their autosomal profiles would have been, though. They could have been diverse.
 
No, Hittite should be an early offshoot, possibly pre-Yamnaya and there is a fairly good candidate that would give enough time for dilution. Suvorovo-NovoDanilovka. A kurgan culture most likely from Sredny Stog, buried in barrows, sometime with zoomorphic scepters just like Khvalynsk. Settled in Mldavia, but also settled in the Danube delta, as direct successor of Varna round 4.400 BC. Remember that Varna outlier?

How did these people come to Anatolia, as invaders or as immigrants? If they were invaders why were they not elite and being ruled by Semites in North Syria in 2500 BC then?
 
This is a very very unlikely scenario considering the very little time gap between the proposed dispersal of Steppe Indo Europeans and the age of these Hittite Bronze Age samples. if these Hittites really came from a roughly ~40-50% EHG source. You would need at least a century until the EHG get's deluded down to 6,25% per individual. And this is only possible if you assume the "Hittites" exclusively and rapidly mated only with individuals with zero EHG. That even excludes other EHG mixed Hittites. How often do you see it happen that people of the same folk do not even touch each other over the course of 4 generation? Even in societies with high mixing rate you always see more a pattern like this.

1. gen
same + foreign, same + same, same+ same, same+ same
2. gen
1/2 mixed + same, same+ same, same+ same, same + same, same + foreign

3. 1/4 mixed + same, same+ foreign, same+ same, same+ same, same+ same, same + 1/2 mixed

And this is rather the pattern for a mixing society.
And in this scenario allot of the foreign admixture actually get's washed out. And the mixing on basis of DNA is much slower. "Steppe" Hittite with 40% EHG mixes with 1/2 mixed "~20% " EHG result is =30% EHG. That 30% EHG mixes with a "full blooded" Hittite result is 35% EHG. This 35% EHG Hittite mixes with a 20-30% EHG Hittite result is 27,5% to 32,5% EHG. Keep in mind and this is the pattern for a strongly mixing society because it is never linear.




But for your theory above to work you would need to assume something more like this.

1. gen
same+ foreign, same+ foreign, same+ foreign, same+ same

2. gen
1/2 + mixed, mixed+ 1/2 mixed, mixed+1/2 mixed, mixed+ 1/2 mixed

As if they were always exclusively mating with foreigners and killing of those pure "Steppe kids".


So no I don't agree with this. There must be a different reason why BA Hittite samples lack EHG just like the Calcolthic Hajji Firuz sample a little further east. And both being basically a mix of Iran_Neo/CHG and ANF.

I think the authors are holding back something.

Well, I don't there is a "little time gap" between the split of Proto-Anatolian and the first absolutely confirmed Hittite presence in Anatolia around 1700 BC. According to linguistic evidences, Proto-Anatolian may have set apart from the other Indo-European communities as early as circa 4000 BC. Nobody (not linguists and most geneticists, anyway) assumes that the Proto-Anatolian dispersal happened along with the early-mid BA dispersals of other "late PIE" branches from the steppe. Some of the latest estimates still date that split to around 3500 BC, still virtually 90 generations before the first undeniable Hittite prevalence in Central Anatolia. With that very early split, there was enough time for us to assume several plausible different possibilities - and we'll need more data to settle what's really likely or not.

A lot of different processes of Indo-Europeanization, including a complete revolution in a people's autosomal makeup, could happen in ~2300 years, especially if the Hittite society was, as it seems from archaeological and linguistic evidences, mainly a result of a gradual, non-massive infiltration and/or eventual elite conquest. Just look at some Turkic-speaking populations now and how much Northeast Siberian and East Asian they still carry after a mere ~1500 years of immigration, mixing and acculturation.

My scenario for the progressive and profound regression of the EHG does allow for a lot of Hittite-Hittite relations, actually my "hypothesis" allows for a significant, even though minor, autosomal contribution from a EHG/CHG Proto-Anatolian population (which of course means that a large part of the offspring involved relations between two peopel of full or major PIE ancestry).

You're thinking of 3 or 4 generations, but when you consider that there was very probably at least 50-80 generations between the Anatolian vs. Residual PIE divergence and the Hittite kingdom/empire, that possibility becomes much higher. That autosomal transformation can happen in the long term even in the absence of any complete population replacement. It's simple to demonstrate, doing the maths, how that could've easily occurred given the historic conditions for that. In a hypothetical and evidently simplified scenario (the same thing, only with much more ANF than EEF, would happen in a Balkanic route):

1) Pre-Proto-Anatolian PIE-speaking population: 40% EHG. 60% CHG.
2) Proto-Anatolian population (mixing with Caucasians with little EHG, ~5%, but ~70% CHG and ~25% ANF), contributing to an appreciable 30% of the future population >>>> 15.5% EHG, 67% CHG, 17.5% ANF.
3) That Pre-Hittite Anatolian IE population heading to Anatolia, absorbing conquered and allied people (virtually 0% EHG, and assuming some 30% CHG, 70% ANF), and mixing more along the way, contributing to a large 45% of the future population: 7% EHG, 47% CHG, 46% ANF.
4) Early Hittite population in Central Anatolia, infiltrating gradually, slowly gaining prominence, and mixing with the local, presumably very large and advanced population of Hattians and other farmer people (still contributing to a sizeable 20% of the local ancestry of their future empire): 1.4% EHG, 33.4% CHG, 65.2% ANF. - Of course just an average, so if the average were 1.4% a lot of people would have 0% EHG (and we have very few Hittite or "Hittite" samples), but some others, probably a small minority, could have 10% or even more.


I don't really support this scenario more than any other, I'm just trying to think of all the possibilities that are still rightly on the table and haven't been completely debunked at all - and I think people shouldn't believe that those few supposedly Hittite samples settled this once and for all, no geneticist has affirmed that).

I myself believe that it is probable that PIE originally came from the South Caucasus, and those origins are probably showing in the large increase in CHG ancestry that even the Eneolithic Steppe by 4300 BC already had, and the fact the authors of this paper apparently differentiate between the CHG in Caucasus populations and the "CHG-like basal lineage" in the steppes.

However, for me that's an entirely different thing from stating that the PIE expansion came from the South Caucasus. Those are not just two different issues, they also most definitely happened at different times and under different historic contexts, because PIE is simply not that ancient and there was probably a wide time gap between the gradual splits of its IE daughter branches, beginning with Anatolian probably more than 1000 years before, say, Indo-Iranian. If IE came to the steppes with CHG people, but that happened during the early Neolithic, then Proto-Indo-European (the latest stage before the formation of several IE branches) may be just the daughter language of that ancient CHG language, and not the same language (and also not the same people). Since no study seriously doubts that at least several branches of IE are connected to the BA steppe populations, then the real question is: did IE develop in the steppes very early on in a still undivided form, or is the "steppe IE" the very result of the 1st divisions of PIE?

If this study really suggests, as it seems now, that by 4000 BC the steppe population's autosomal, Y-DNA and Mt-DNA makeup were all basically consolidated and not significantly different from what we'd see later with the expansion of the Yamnaya horizon, then the origins of PIE - whether it was originally EHG or CHG (coming from Transcaucasia) - are further back in time, and it was not brought to the steppes at roughly the same time as Proto-Anatolian IE diverged from the rest (that assumption of a two routes dispersal: one forming Anatolian, the other forming the direct ancestor of "the rest" i.e. Late PIE). The origins of PIE in the steppe would be more ancient, and no big Caucasian influx happened in the transition from the Chalcolithic to the Bronze Age (so who would've made the steppes speak PIE? I really doubt people just adopted the language a distant foreign people with whom they have few contacts in times before centralized and civilized states).

As I said, I think there are now many more questions and possibilities than answers. I don't really get why some people are becoming so confident to affirm either this or that hypothesis of their liking.
 

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