Ancient DNA from Hungary-Christine Gamba et al

Most of them are still south of Otzi though, and the Sardinians, so slightly less WHG even after whatever mixing went on. Until we get the precise figures from the new Lazaridis paper and/or the right ancient samples, we won't know how much of the WHG in modern Europeans is from the groups who were in Europe proper when the farmers arrived, and how much might have been picked up by Yamnaya or come down from the far north east, yes?
Good question. I would guess that around 10% from first contact. The rest came from north and east with tribes movement after Copper Age. It means that all the tribes were of agricultural character already but carrying still substantial 50-75% WHG. Before becoming farmers or pastoralists northern tribes were low on numbers and unable to penetrate and invade populous farmers from south. That's why we don't see any change in neolithic demographics of europe till bronze age.


That "C" is definitely a shocker. Before they found it in a WHG sample, other stray sightings were put down to easterners wandering west but it seems some C is "home grown". I don't know why it disappeared, but Aaron 1981 makes a good point...those I2a lineages may either be of the "Sardinian" variety or an extinct variety. Either way, they may have nothing to do with the I2a in the area now. Without more resolution we just won't know.
There is another possibility that C6 was involved in farming from the beginning along G2a folks. C6 were the HGs of south Europe (if sample from Spain and Hungary could indicate it). As such they could also extend into Near East, and came in contact with farmers way back. I2a samples point to different story. KO1 is still pure HG having not much with farming except finding himself in village garbage pit, and NE7 come from almost end of Neolithic. 2k years later after KO1. Ample of time to got mixed finally.

I bet they wish they had known about this new extraction procedure for ancient dna. Which reminds me...the Lazaridis authors are still in the process of doing the y DNA analysis, or so the rumor goes, although we know how well that can turn out! Never again. :) Anyway, that may mean it will be a while till we get it.I definitely have a lot of questions about those Razib Khan tweets about Lazaridis' oral presentation.
In mean time, we might get another surprise from the left field, like with this paper. Vacation is over, I'm really hoping for more. :)
 
Very interesting study. A few thoughts.

1) I wasn't too surprised to find I2a among Neolithic farmers. I2a was already found in Neolithic Seribia (Starcevo) and France (Cardium Pottery) alongside G2a. KO1 (c. 5700 BCE) is clearly an assimilated hunter-gatherer based on the autosomal DNA. The other I2a is NE7, who lived 1300 years later, by which time his autosomal DNA had become typically Neolithic, like that of other samples. It is a further confirmation that some I2a lineages were integrated early among Neolithic farmers, and later spread with them. It also confirms my hypothesis that I2a in Sardinia and the Basque country may not be indigenous but came from central or south-east Europe with Neolithic farmers.

2) A bigger surprise was the presence of haplogroup C6. But if other Mesolithic lineages (I2a, I1 and F) were assimilated by Neolithic farmers, why not C6 too ? This was we have the full Paleolithic/Mesolithic European package present among H-G who adopted agriculture.

3) The autosomal data and mitochondrial haplogroups are completely in line with that of previous studies. The only odd piece of data in my eyes is the Iron Age Pre-Scythian sample (IR1), which has typically Siberia Y-DNA (N) and mtDNA (G2a1), but fits right in the middle of modern Armenians autosomally. It is only moderatly strange, since modern Armenians do have 0.5% of Y-haplogroup N, as well as a few percent's of Siberian mtDNA and autosomes. What it means is that this Siberian gene flow into Armenia is probably older than 1000 BCE, or even 1500 BCE, since it takes at least a few centuries for Siberian genomes to get completely diluted and look completely like modern Armenians. I am not a specialist of Armenian history, but I cannot think of any migration from Russia to Armenia around this period. Even before that there was only incursions from the Steppes into the Caucasus during the Yamna and Catacomb periods.

In this case the sample is from Hungary, so that prompts the question: how did an Armenian-looking genome with Siberian Y-DNA and mtDNA end up in Hungary c. 900 BCE ? Did it actually come directly from the Caucasus region ? Through which migration ? If we had only the Y-DNA and mtDNA we could presume that this was a direct migration from the Ural region to Hungary, which happened many times in practically all periods of prehistory. But since the autosomal DNA is not Siberian at all, nor eastern/central European, but South Caucasian, it's a real mystery how it ended up in Hungary undiluted.

4) The data on pigmentation is also in agreement with earlier data. KO1, who is the only Mesolithic-looking genome, has blue eyes, dark hair and probably dark skin, just like La Braña. The only other sample with blue eyes is the other I2a, even though by then he has become more Sardinian-like autosomally and acquired fair hair (apparently a contradiction since Sardinians have the lowest incidence and fair hair and blue eyes in Europe). Hair and skin colour both seems to get fairer over time from the Late Neolithic onwards, but the transition to modern pigmentation is not nearly complete by the early Iron Age.
 
3) The autosomal data and mitochondrial haplogroups are completely in line with that of previous studies. The only odd piece of data in my eyes is the Iron Age Pre-Scythian sample (IR1), which has typically Siberia Y-DNA (N) and mtDNA (G2a1), but fits right in the middle of modern Armenians autosomally. It is only moderatly strange, since modern Armenians do have 0.5% of Y-haplogroup N, as well as a few percent's of Siberian mtDNA and autosomes. What it means is that this Siberian gene flow into Armenia is probably older than 1000 BCE, or even 1500 BCE, since it takes at least a few centuries for Siberian genomes to get completely diluted and look completely like modern Armenians. I am not a specialist of Armenian history, but I cannot think of any migration from Russia to Armenia around this period. Even before that there was only incursions from the Steppes into the Caucasus during the Yamna and Catacomb periods.

In this case the sample is from Hungary, so that prompts the question: how did an Armenian-looking genome with Siberian Y-DNA and mtDNA end up in Hungary c. 900 BCE ? Did it actually come directly from the Caucasus region ? Through which migration ? If we had only the Y-DNA and mtDNA we could presume that this was a direct migration from the Ural region to Hungary, which happened many times in practically all periods of prehistory. But since the autosomal DNA is not Siberian at all, nor eastern/central European, but South Caucasian, it's a real mystery how it ended up in Hungary undiluted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hungary_before_the_Hungarian_Conquest

see iron age : the cimmerians

they lived on the western part of the Pontic steppe
7-800 BC they were ousted by the Scyths and they split in 2 :
1 part fled west to the Carpathian basin
another part fled south and crossed the Caucasus :
first they assaulted Urartu (Armenia) and after they started wandering all across Anatolia with their horses and steel swords

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimmerians
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hungary_before_the_Hungarian_Conquest

see iron age : the cimmerians

they lived on the western part of the Pontic steppe
7-800 BC they were ousted by the Scyths and they split in 2 :
1 part fled west to the Carpathian basin
another part fled south and crossed the Caucasus :
first they assaulted Urartu (Armenia) and after they started wandering all across Anatolia with their horses and steel swords

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimmerians

Ok, but the Cimmerian invasion of Armenia (Urartu) postdate the IR1 sample by a few centuries. Additionally the Cimmerians came from present-day Ukraine, not from Siberia. Finally, nobody knows what happened of the Cimmerians after their migration to Anatolia and Armenia. But even if they migrated back to central Europe, that would have been many centuries after IR1.
 
we know r1a and r1b were in bronze age Germany, but nowhere else so far! Not even in bronze-age/Iron-Age Hungary, Ucraine, or Bulgaria! It sure looks like they're not the original IE haplogroups after all, which are leading more towards J2a/J2b.

Note that this study did not test any Y-DNA between 4,400 BCE and 1,100 BCE. The Indo-Europeans (mostly R1b branch) would have started invading eastern Romania and Bulgaria from c. 4000 to 3500 BCE, and would have reached Hungary around 3000 to 2500 BCE, which is right in the middle of the period not covered. But we know from Lee et al. (2012) that R1b was in East Germany (Thuringia) c. 2500 BCE.
 
Ok, but the Cimmerian invasion of Armenia (Urartu) postdate the IR1 sample by a few centuries. Additionally the Cimmerians came from present-day Ukraine, not from Siberia. Finally, nobody knows what happened of the Cimmerians after their migration to Anatolia and Armenia. But even if they migrated back to central Europe, that would have been many centuries after IR1.

I have said for many years, one group of cimmerains went to pannonia ( hungaria )

http://books.google.com.au/books?id...Aw#v=onepage&q=cimmerians in pannonia&f=false

there are many papers on this



http://historylib.org/historybooks/...ichernomorya--V-tys--do-n-e----V-vek-n-e--/58
 
Note that this study did not test any Y-DNA between 4,400 BCE and 1,100 BCE. The Indo-Europeans (mostly R1b branch) would have started invading eastern Romania and Bulgaria from c. 4000 to 3500 BCE, and would have reached Hungary around 3000 to 2500 BCE, which is right in the middle of the period not covered. But we know from Lee et al. (2012) that R1b was in East Germany (Thuringia) c. 2500 BCE.

This is Mr. Hammer account that R-U106 began in east Germany
 
N + G2a1 are those Syberian autosomally in Modern samples or were they mostly Syberian before 3000 years already?
 
Ok, but the Cimmerian invasion of Armenia (Urartu) postdate the IR1 sample by a few centuries. Additionally the Cimmerians came from present-day Ukraine, not from Siberia. Finally, nobody knows what happened of the Cimmerians after their migration to Anatolia and Armenia. But even if they migrated back to central Europe, that would have been many centuries after IR1.

that is true, but the IR1 sample comes from Mezőcsát Culture who were Iranian tribes, equestrian nomads with iron tools and believed to be under control of the Cimmerians
Cimmerians are believed to descend from Srubnaya culture and Iranian, so probably R1a,
I guess some tribes from the forest-steppe zone (I2a1b and N1c) mixed with them, which would account for the IR1 sample to be N and also for pre-Slavic presence of I2a1b in the Balkan

 
that is true, but the IR1 sample comes from Mezőcsát Culture who were Iranian tribes, equestrian nomads with iron tools and believed to be under control of the Cimmerians
Cimmerians are believed to descend from Srubnaya culture and Iranian, so probably R1a,
I guess some tribes from the forest-steppe zone (I2a1b and N1c) mixed with them, which would account for the IR1 sample to be N and also for pre-Slavic presence of I2a1b in the Balkan

Then another Iranian tribe. But that still doesn't explain the Armenian autosomal DNA. It would be interesting to run this same in Dodecad and Eurogenes to determine the exact admixtures.
 
Then another Iranian tribe. But that still doesn't explain the Armenian autosomal DNA. It would be interesting to run this same in Dodecad and Eurogenes to determine the exact admixtures.

it is simple, the present-day Armenians didn't get their Armenian-looking genoom from Armenians, but (in part) from Cimmerians, and so did the IR1 sample
 
One interesting thing is that KO2 seems less WHG admixted than the other, later neolithic samples. The Iceman, Sardinians and the NE1 - NE& samples all seem to have similar WHG admixture, whereas GOK4 seem top have even more WHG admixture. Also, pretty much every present day populations show lean more to WHG than their neolithic ancestors. This does mean slow but continuous uptake of WHG genetic material. As Angela keeps telling, hunter-gatherers need a large territory to feed themselves. Furthermore, farmers probably have a larger child survival rate. This means, IMHO, more evidence that parts of Europe's HG survived as (semi-)farmers and fishermen, as continuous gene flow from a community to another doesn't seem feasible if the former isn't thriving, or at least is keeping up.

I think the Körös culture finds are very interesting, in that respect.
 
Then another Iranian tribe. But that still doesn't explain the Armenian autosomal DNA. It would be interesting to run this same in Dodecad and Eurogenes to determine the exact admixtures.

But what armenian dna are you talking about ? I don't see any prove of that. On the PCa he is not even shifting towards them (in the axis from Hungarians) he is pulling towards northern Caucasus, not armenians, also on the position he is, he could as well be a Balkanite with some siberian admix (given his haplogroups), since on the Admixture anylisis he looks quite european, altough the yellow component (North-east Euro) probably is hiding the east-asian-like admix (since no asian samples are present).
 
Very interesting study. A few thoughts.

1) I wasn't too surprised to find I2a among Neolithic farmers. I2a was already found in Neolithic Seribia (Starcevo) and France (Cardium Pottery) alongside G2a. KO1 (c. 5700 BCE) is clearly an assimilated hunter-gatherer based on the autosomal DNA. The other I2a is NE7, who lived 1300 years later, by which time his autosomal DNA had become typically Neolithic, like that of other samples. It is a further confirmation that some I2a lineages were integrated early among Neolithic farmers, and later spread with them. It also confirms my hypothesis that I2a in Sardinia and the Basque country may not be indigenous but came from central or south-east Europe with Neolithic farmers.

2) A bigger surprise was the presence of haplogroup C6. But if other Mesolithic lineages (I2a, I1 and F) were assimilated by Neolithic farmers, why not C6 too ? This was we have the full Paleolithic/Mesolithic European package present among H-G who adopted agriculture.

1) It's a pitty we don't have subclades, as I2a was and is all over Europe, but each subclade of I2a is confined over a specific area of Europe

2/ C6 appears to have been more frequent than it is today. But because it is so rare today, we don't know much about it, and there are not many subclades.
I doubt these 2 C6 have much to do with the mesolithic La Brana sample.
These 2 e.g. may have their origin in neolithic Anatolia, the probably didn't come from Iberia.
The La Brana C6 may well have split from these 2 neolithic C6 before the last ice age, each surviving in their own refuge.
Anyway, much of the C6 is extinct today.
 
The data on pigmentation is also in agreement with earlier data. KO1, who is the only Mesolithic-looking genome, has blue eyes, dark hair and probably dark skin, just like La Braña. The only other sample with blue eyes is the other I2a, even though by then he has become more Sardinian-like autosomally and acquired fair hair (apparently a contradiction since Sardinians have the lowest incidence and fair hair and blue eyes in Europe). Hair and skin colour both seems to get fairer over time from the Late Neolithic onwards, but the transition to modern pigmentation is not nearly complete by the early Iron Age.

The spread of pigmentation / lactase persisistance and probably also other alleles seem very difficult to grasp
Natural selection must have played a bigger role than for SNP spread

R1 is said to be the origin of light pigmentation. That origin would lie in the Pontic steppe, some 6500 years ago. R1 is spread pretty much all over Europe today.
Yet I is also omnipresent in Europe.
I suspect I also played a role in the spread of light pigmentation, which is only confirmed by blue eye colour uptill now.
On the other hand, the 8000 year old La Brana is supposed to be mixed with I neighbours, and he was still darkhaired and darkskinned.
 
Note that this study did not test any Y-DNA between 4,400 BCE and 1,100 BCE. The Indo-Europeans (mostly R1b branch) would have started invading eastern Romania and Bulgaria from c. 4000 to 3500 BCE, and would have reached Hungary around 3000 to 2500 BCE, which is right in the middle of the period not covered. But we know from Lee et al. (2012) that R1b was in East Germany (Thuringia) c. 2500 BCE.

The common belief so far has been that R1b came from Caucasus/Anatolia/Balkans into Western Europe with the Indo-Europeans, since the older/parent clades of West-Euro R1b are in Caucasus/Anatolia/Balkans. The current problem with that theory is that we're not finding any R1b in Bronze-Age/Iron-Age Balkans or Ukraine, which should have been there by that time. So maybe R1b in Balkans came from Germany sometime between 2500-500 BC, and it's the older clades because that is what was around at that time. And since it's a "late" arrival, it never made it past 20-30%, which is currently common in that area. It is >50% in Germany, because it has always been like that since 2500 BC. Just rearanging theories to fit the recent data...
 
The common belief so far has been that R1b came from Caucasus/Anatolia/Balkans into Western Europe with the Indo-Europeans, since the older/parent clades of West-Euro R1b are in Caucasus/Anatolia/Balkans. The current problem with that theory is that we're not finding any R1b in Bronze-Age/Iron-Age Balkans or Ukraine, which should have been there by that time. So maybe R1b in Balkans came from Germany sometime between 2500-500 BC, and it's the older clades because that is what was around at that time. And since it's a "late" arrival, it never made it past 20-30%, which is currently common in that area. It is >50% in Germany, because it has always been like that since 2500 BC. Just rearanging theories to fit the recent data...

just wait for DNA from Unetice culture and maybe also some more Bell Beker DNA
 
So now is the final prove that I was right. The first appearance of J2 in Europe came during Bronze-Iron Age most likely with Indo Europeans. J2 and R1a/B are probably pastoralist Haplogroups and reached Europe with the Indo Europeans.

Also that the Iron Age Hungarians end up somewhere between Europeans and Caucasians is another bullet prove that the "West Asian" like component reached Europe probably with Indo Europeans for the first time.

The proto Indo Europeans were probably something like a cross between modern Europeans and northern West Asians.

Imagine a half Lezgian half Russian or half Georgians half Lithuanians Individual. There you have your proto Indo Europeans.


The two Bronze Age samples are more like modern continental Europeans but not exactly like modern Hungarians. The Iron Age sample is in the no-man's land between Europe and the Caucasus and his "Asian" Y chromosome and mtDNA seems to agree that this is no ordinary European.

http://dienekes.blogspot.de/2014/10/ancient-dna-from-prehistoric.html


First the Thracian individuals which showed a strong Caucasus_Gedrosia signature and now Hungarian Iron Age individuals which appear like a crossing between Europeans and Caucasians.

For at least 5 years have I preached that Indo Europeans must have been something between modern Northern West Asian and Europeans simply out of the logic that most Indo European groups in Western Asia do have significant amount of North European genes while most Indo Europeans in Europe show significant amoung of Caucasus_Gedrosia like genes, while both groups have significant Mediterranean farmer genes. This can only be explained the way that Proto Indo Europeans had both Caucasus-Gedrosia and North European (ANE impact!) like genes in combination with farmer component of course.
 
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On Dianekes they discuss that it could be just mistype error with iron age sample. It could rather be ydna G and mtdna N :)
Which would make some more Caucasian sense.
 
On Dianekes they discuss that it could be just mistype error with iron age sample. It could rather be ydna G and mtdna N :)
Which would make some more Caucasian sense.


Are you readiny my mind I was just about to post that too :LOL:

Yes it looks like they mixed up mt with yDNA. The individual was probably G2a1 yDNA and N mtdna makes much more sense.
 

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