I have reorganised a bit the K=20
autosomal admixtures from Lazaridis et al. 2013 and assigned geographical regions for each component.
Here is a few things we can learn from these admixtures.
1)
Neolithic farmers in Europe probably came from the Levant through Anatolia and Greece. For this reason I will call this admixture "East Mediterranean". Their genes are now found throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East until western Iran. The modern population most closely related to East Mediterranean Neolithic farmers are the Sardinians, as we already knew. The Basques are almost exactly half Neolithic farmers and half Mesolithic European in descent. The Saami are the only European completely lacking Neolithic farmer admixture.
2)
Modern Levantines and South Caucasians are essentially a three-way mix of East Mediterranean, Caucaso-Perso-Gedrosian and Southwest Asian admixture. Egyptians also have two additional admixtures: North African and East African, which are only found at trace frequencies among other Semitic speakers in the Middle East.
3) In the Middle East, substantial percentages of
Mesolithic European admixture are only found among the
Turks and the North Caucasians.
4)
Jewish people all share the same basic three-way admixtures as modern Levantines, but with additional admixture from the region from where they have settled historically. Ashkenazi Jews have the highest percentages of European admixture, followed by Turkish and North African Jews, who migrated from southern Europe. Other Jews (Georgian, Iraqi, Iranian, Yemenite, Ethiopian) have no European admixture.
5)
There is hardly any East Mediterranean admixture in South Asia, starting from eastern Iran (Balochistan).
Therefore it is unlikely that agriculture spread from the the Levant to South Asia, but rather developed independently in the Indus Valley. Neolithic farmers most likely belonged to Y-haplogroups G2, E1b1b (V13 and M34) and perhaps also T, and these haplogroups are almost absent from South Asia (apart from G2a3b1 brought by the Indo-Europeans). The presence of Y-haplogroup J1 and J2 in Central Asia and South Asia should be attributed to other migrations than that of Neolithic farmers from the Levant. The most likely hypotheses is that J1 and J2 were brought instead by Neolithic goat and sheep herders from the Caucasus and Zagros. Copper and Bronze Age expansions from the Caucasus and Iran (Kura-Araxes, etc.) would have brought more J1 and J2 to western South Asia.
6) The Neolithic farmer sample from Stuttgart (LBK culture, c. 5000 BCE) had only a small amount of Mesolithic European DNA. This means that
Near Eastern farmers did not intermix much with their hunting-gathering neighbours, at least during their initial advance across Europe. Intermingling might have progressively increased over the centuries, but what brought the two populations closer together was their conquest by the Indo-Europeans during the Bronze Age, some 2500 years after the arrival of Neolithic farmers in Germany.
7) When looking at the non-Mongolid and non-Indian admixture in Central and North Asia, it can be deducted that the
Bronze Age Indo-Europeans possessed approximately 40% of Mesolithic European (light blue), 45% of Caucaso-Perso-Gedrosian (beige) and 10% of Near Eastern farmer (bright pink) admixture. They also had about 5% of "Kalash admixture" (see below). The Near Eastern beige and pink components were in all likelihood absorbed by R1b during the 5000+ years of the Neolithic period around modern Kurdistan and the Caucasus, before moving to the Pontic Steppe, and from absorbing Balkano-Carpathian farmers (G2a3b1, J2b2, T1a) in the steppes. This admixture would have come from such maternal lineages as H2a1, H5a, H7, H8, I, J1, K, T1, T2, W and X2 (=> see
mtDNA haplogroups associated with R1b people).
8) The
Kalash admixture (dark green) is found at trace frequencies in among all regions settled by the Indo-Europeans, or in other words in all populations possessing haplogroups R1a or R1b. Since the Mal'ta boy (Y-DNA R*) possessed the highest level of this dark green admixture after the modern Kalash, this admixture was almost certainly a minor genetic component found in the original carriers of haplogroup R. This admixture is virtually absent from Africa, the Arabian peninsula, Sardinia, the Basques, the Saami, and non-Indo-European tribes of South Asia such as the Kharia and Kusunda. What's interesting is that the Kalash are one of the few people who still possess both Y-DNA R* and R1* (in addition to R1a, L and H) according to
Firasat et al. (2007).
9) Some Bedouins have 100% of
Southwest Asian admixture (khaki green). This admixture is found among all populations with substantial levels of Y-haplogroups
J1 and J2, such as the Arabs, Levantines, Cypriots, Greeks, Sicilians, Maltese, North Africans, and East Africans.
10)
Iberians have a small percentage of North African admixture, linked to the presence of Y-haplogroup E-M81 and mtDNA L. Iberians also have traces of East African and Southwest Asian admixture. All three admixtures could have come with the Moors during the Islamic period, although it is likely that there was already some North African admixture in Iberia (though probably in isolated populations) at least since the Neolithic period.
11) Despite being Uralic speakers, the
Hungarians have only tiny amounts of Siberian admixture, just like their Y-DNA and mtDNA suggested.
12) The very low frequency of the Caucaso-Perso-Gedrosian admixture among the
Basques hints that the autosomal genes of Y-haplogroup R1b got heavily diluted. The dilution could have started already before R1b entered the Basque population. But if a very small number of R1b men came and married Basque women, and their children only married pure Basque women, their autosomal DNA would have become more and more diluted at each generation until hardly any genes from the original R1b patriarchs remained. This would confirm my theory of
how did the Basques became R1b and how they did not become Indo-European speakers. A high level of Caucaso-Perso-Gedrosian admixture would have been problematic to explain why the Basques were not speakers of an IE language.
Analysing Eurasian & African autosomal DNA from Lazaridis et al. 2013
Eupedia Top > Eupedia Forum & Japan Forum
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Maciamo
