Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe

[Sile]

I wouldn't read too much into the Late Bronze Age J2a1 sample from Hungary (c. 1200 BCE). The Indo-Europeans had been in the region for nearly 2000 years by then, and it could very well have been a foreigner or an assimilated person from a non-IE culture. After all three Unetice samples tested in this new study turned out to be assimilated local I2 lineages, not steppe lineages.

We are talking about one of the most unstable period in European and Near Eastern history here. Most East Mediterranean civilizations collapsed around 1200 BCE due to the mysterious Sea Peoples. Even the Haak el al. paper discussed here mentions that 1200 BCE is the turning point for the domination of Yamna-like admixture in central European graves. As I mentioned above, this also happen to correspond to the sudden adoption of cremation instead of kurgan/tumulus burial in central Europe for only one hundred years (Urnfield culture), before the traditional tumulus burial resumed with the Hallstatt culture.

No one knows precisely what cataclysmic events took place around 1200 BCE, but I would bet that this corresponds to an expansion of J2a people in the Eastern Mediterranean, and that the Sea Peoples were probably predominantly J2a people. After all, all the great ancient seafaring civilizations all presumably had high percentages of J2a, including the Phoenicians who just happen to emerge around 1200 BCE.

One hypothesis of mine is that the Sea Peoples were descended from the Minoan civilization, which had just collapsed c. 1450 BCE. The fall of the Minoan state might have led to Minoan people turning to piracy and raiding the coasts of the East Mediterranean, from Sardinia to the Levant. The Trojans, whose city had been destroyed by the Mycenaeans c. 1200 BCE, may well have been a mixture of R1b-L23 and J2a people, and Trojans who escaped may also have been among the Sea Peoples who sought revenge on Mycenaean Greece and caused its downfall less than 100 years later.

1200 BCE also coincides with the arrival of the Dorians in Greece, the Phrygians in western Anatolia and the Armenians in eastern Anatolia, who I think were all predominantly R1b-L23 tribes from the Balkans, with assimilated Neolithic lineages (E-V13, G2a, I2...). Their departure from the Balkans left place for a northward expansion of Greek lineages, among which J2a.

In such a context, it would be unreasonable to label a Hungarian J2a1 as necessarily Indo-European.

Mycenea also fell when the trojans fell.......they too can be sea peoples , even more so since identical burial mounds have been found in istria which are same as pellopenne mycenea.
As some state....are myceneans really greek or something else, is the Greek we know today only originate from dorians a NW greek people?

yes I believe R1b was hittitie and also hurrians ( NE of hittities ) with J2 and I

 

[Sile]

Sorry it's not bigger. However, I think it's worth giving it a look.

I think that these figures have to be unpacked a bit.

What has to be kept in mind is that the EHG figure includes WHG as well as ANE. That is partly why the WHG in modern Europeans in this paper is lower than the WHG in the prior Lazardis et al paper. For example, in this paper the Southwestern French, two-thirds (?) of the Spaniards, the Tuscans, and the Sicilians have 0% WHG, whereas in the prior paper, the Southwestern French were 20% WHG, the Tuscans were 14%, and the Spaniards were 7% WHG.

So, effectively, the WHG in this chart might be the amount of native WHG left in these areas before some new WHG was brought in by the Yamnaya people.
This would explain why the authors say there was a near 100% wipe out of hunter gatherer lineages by the Neolithic farmers. It would also indicate that there was no "resurgence" in southern Europe of the WHG component, which makes it more likely, in my opinion, that as I had speculated before, the "resurgence" in northern and central Europe is probably the result of hunter gatherers from the peripheral refuges moving south during a climate worsening event or at least of the additional admixture resulting from contacts along that northern border where the farmers had not penetrated.

Of course, the proportion of WHG (and not some UHG from the Near East) in the early neolithic farmers should be added to this new number as well, yes?

The EN figure probably includes, therefore, not just the EEF like people but also the "Near Eastern" portion of the Yamnaya people.

The chart on page 23 is split into modern and ancient ...........only the modern is WHG free for tuscans.

the 69 samples on page 25 deal only with the ancient part of the chart on page 23

 

[Goga]

Don't misunderstand me. I have always said that R1b came from West Asia, and even domesticated cattle there before moving to the Pontic Steppe. But that was R1b-P297 or M269, not Z2103, which appeared in the steppe then migrated back to Anatolia.

Yeah I thought a little bit about it and I do believe you. I think that this theory might be the right and only one! Congratulation you persuaded me on this point and as you know I can be a very stubborn person. It's possible that Z2103 entered with the same people who brought R1a-Z282 and I2a with then. I think I'm not the only person who ignored R1b-Z2103 until now, I didn't even pay attention on this subclade. But it is right now one of the most spoken haplogroups, lol! It was for me hard to realise that there could be actually a back migration of 'R1b' into West Asia. I was thinking that R1b-Z2103 entered Yamnaya and the Balkans at the same time. But if that was the case, there would be also some of it in Greece. Is there some R1b-Z2103 in Greece?

 

[Sile]

whats you opinion then, that in the chart , karlsdorf is second only to corded ware for Yamnya ( and worst for early neolithic ) and yet this T1a ( with his H1 mtdna ) is part of this group

@maciano

I have the same marker as the T1a - PF5604+

PF5604+, PF5607+, PF5608+, PF5609+, PF5610+, PF5612+, PF5613+, PF5657+, PF5659+, PF5660+, PF5661+, PF5664+, PF5666+, PF5673+, PF5674+, PF5678+, PF667+, PF719+, PF725+, PF7460+, PF7463+, PF7464+, PF7465+, PF7466+, PF7480+, PF7481+, PF779+, PF796+, PF803+, PF815+, PF821+, PF840+, PF844+, PF892+, PF937+, PF951+, PF970+, V186+, V189+, V205+, V52+, V9+, L298+,

what would it mean....only same age or maybe same place?

 

[Finalise]

What if L23 split east of Anatolia with 1 branch mostly going north to the steppes, some in Anatolia, and another going through Anatolia to the Balkans, and this latter one eventually turning into L21. That would explain "Anatolian" R1b-Z-whatever being the dominant Y-Dna of Yamna people, and Yamna people having new "Near Eastern" or "Armenian like", not found in hunter gatherers. ANE in Europe was most likely due to spread of R1a people. The percentages across Europe don't matter much, as y-dna is useless when it comes to analysing modern ethnic make up, due to founder effect.One thing is clear though. No matter how R1b spread into Europe, the massive founder effect could only be due to farming, not IE stealing women, or other fairy tales. I1's concentration in the north for example is all down to farming, probably picked up from Hungary, not simply 100% remnants of hunter gatherers.

 

[LeBrok]

I had a quick look at the paper and I am glad to see that a T1a individual was found in the LBK culture, confirming what I had said for years : the Near Eastern Neolithic farmers were predominantly G2a but with J1 and T1a minorities (+ R1b-V88 in North Africa and Iberia).

The biggest surprise so far is that 4 out of 6 Yamna men tested belonged to the Balkano-Anatolian R1b-Z2103 (the other two were P297 and L23). This may simply be because they are all from the Volga-Ural region. They would therefore have been among the last to move to the Balkans. In contrast, western Yamna people from southern Ukraine would have been the first to move out of the steppe, and that should in theory be where the ancestors of modern Western Europeans came from.

Here is a table showing the mtDNA of the six R1b Yamna men.

Sample	Y-haplogroup	Mt-haplogroup	Location
I0370	R1b-Z2103	H13a1a1	Ishkinovka, Orenburg
I0429	R1b-Z2103	T2c1a2	Lopatino, Samara
I0438	R1b-Z2103	U5a1a1	Luzhki, Samara
I0439	R1b-P297	U5a1a1	Lopatino, Samara
I0443	R1b-L23	W3a1a	Lopatino, Samara
I0444	R1b-Z2103	H6a1b	Kutuluk, Samara

Female Yamna samples belonged to H2b, K1b2a, U4a1 and W6c.

I had specifically associated H6, U4a1, U5a1a1, W3 and W6 as being of Indo-European origin.

The U4 is a bit of mystery. It wasn't found in Yamnaya and neither in iron age and medieval Poland. On the other hand it was found in Lombards settlement in Hungary.

 

[Tomenable]

It is disappointing that the Janisławice Culture and the Globular Amphora Culture were not covered by this study.

 

[Greying Wanderer]

No matter how R1b spread into Europe, the massive founder effect could only be due to farming, not IE stealing women, or other fairy tales.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Island,_Killarney

The BB who landed at Ross island in Ireland appear to have been copper miners and smelters.

Maybe they brought women with them.

But what if they didn't?


edit: I agree they were (dairy) farmers.

 

[LeBrok]

These are very strange results. I certainly wasn't expecting the Samara results to be all R1b. And yet they seem to be the wrong subclade to be ancestral to most of the R1b in western Europe. Some very strange conclusions by the authors, I would say.

I thought we will see R1a-Z93 in the far East of Yamnaya, not only R1b. However, I was hoping they can finally localize pre-european R1b somewhere, and finally they were found. I thought they were located on east side of Caspian Sea or more north where the dot on this map is way north of Caspian Sea.

Or on this map close to the right edge north of Caspian.

North of Black Sea where the sort of whole is in frequency of R1b, might be the location of R1a part of Yamnaya. Unfortunately there are no samples from this location.

 

[Fire Haired14]

The U4 is a bit of mystery. It wasn't found in Yamnaya and neither in iron age and medieval Poland. On the other hand it was found in Lombards settlement in Hungary.

U4 is typical in Scandnavian and Russian hunter gatherers, also it was very popular in Catacomb, Andronovo, Corded ware, Bell beaker, and Unetice. In Europe it's probably most an EHG lineage.

 

[sparkey]

Very interesting (to me) is the confirmation that Motala 2, as well as a Unetice sample, is I2c2. That's the subclade that used to be called I2c-B; it's the one with a bizarre modern pattern that includes expansions in the Caucasian nobility, among Eastern European Jews, and among Cretans, along with a widely distributed pattern across Europe. It seems to be confirming my original thought that I2c2 originally developed alongside the rest of I2c somewhere around Germany. Admittedly, I had been hedging my bets, supposing that I2c2 could be a more Southern Europe-centered subclade, but it's looking like my original thought was correct. It's interesting to note that the Unetice sample is apparently older than the TMRCA of modern I2c2, and Motala 2 is barely younger than the estimated split between I2c1 and I2c2, so we could be seeing a picture of I2c2's ancient origins already. Although, these still don't quite explain how its modern distribution became so odd.

 

[Angela]

I thought we will see R1a-Z93 in the far East of Yamnaya, not only R1b. However, I was hoping they can finally localize pre-european R1b somewhere, and finally they were found. I thought they were located on east side of Caspian Sea or more north where the dot on this map is way north of Caspian Sea.

Or on this map close to the right edge north of Caspian.

North of Black Sea where the sort of whole is in frequency of R1b, might be the location of R1a part of Yamnaya. Unfortunately there are no samples from this location.

I think ancient dna tells us that modern frequencies may be of limited probative value. That particular area has seen populations come and go. There could be a hole there in terms of R1b because that's where Slavic speaking populations were settled relatively late in history after some de-population events. Or, going back in time, R1b might have largely moved into western Europe and R1a moved south to fill the "hole".

On the other hand they might have been there in Yamnaya times, or they could have been just north in the forest steppe. Until we have more samples I don't think that there's any way of knowing.

 

[sparkey]

U4 is typical in Scandnavian and Russian hunter gatherers, also it was very popular in Catacomb, Andronovo, Corded ware, Bell beaker, and Unetice. In Europe it's probably most an EHG lineage.

I think it depends on the subclade. U4 isn't as old as U5, but it's still old enough to be associated with multiple autosomal clusters. Looks like the Yamnaya sample from Ekaterinovka carried U4a1, which seems to agree with Maciamo's assessment of it as IE. Meanwhile, other U4 subclades (I think just U4d and U4* so far) have been found in Mesolithic Europe, namely in Sweden and Lithuania.

 

[Finalise]

What if L23 split east of Anatolia with 1 branch mostly going north to the steppes, some in Anatolia, and another going through Anatolia to the Balkans, and this latter one eventually turning into L21. That would explain "Anatolian" R1b-Z-whatever being the dominant Y-Dna of Yamna people, and Yamna people having new "Near Eastern" or "Armenian like", not found in hunter gatherers. ANE in Europe was most likely due to spread of R1a people. The percentages across Europe don't matter much, as y-dna is useless when it comes to analysing modern ethnic make up, due to founder effect.One thing is clear though. No matter how R1b spread into Europe, the massive founder effect could only be due to farming, not IE stealing women, or other fairy tales. I1's concentration in the north for example is all down to farming, probably picked up from Hungary, not simply 100% remnants of hunter gatherers.

Can someone answer this? Maciamo's dates were obviously very wrong.

 

[Goga]

What if L23 split east of Anatolia with 1 branch mostly going north to the steppes, some in Anatolia, and another going through Anatolia to the Balkans, and this latter one eventually turning into L21. That would explain "Anatolian" R1b-Z-whatever being the dominant Y-Dna of Yamna people, and Yamna people having new "Near Eastern" or "Armenian like", not found in hunter gatherers. ANE in Europe was most likely due to spread of R1a people. The percentages across Europe don't matter much, as y-dna is useless when it comes to analysing modern ethnic make up, due to founder effect.One thing is clear though. No matter how R1b spread into Europe, the massive founder effect could only be due to farming, not IE stealing women, or other fairy tales. I1's concentration in the north for example is all down to farming, probably picked up from Hungary, not simply 100% remnants of hunter gatherers.

This is what the latest paper that we're discussing right now is saying about the so called 'Armenian Model' of Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov. They are practically saying that he is right!

" 4. The Armenian plateau hypothesis gains in plausibility by the fact that we have discovered evidence of admixturein the ancestry of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists, including gene flow from apopulation of Near Eastern ancestry for which Armenians today appear to be a reasonable surrogate (SI4, SI7, SI9). However, the question of what languages were spoken by the “Eastern European hunter-gatherers” and the southern, Armenian-like, ancestral population remains open. Examining ancient DNA fromthe Caucasus and Near East may be able to provide further insight about the dynamics of the interaction between these regions and the steppe. Our results show that southern populations diluted the ancestry of populations from the steppe, but also that ancestry related to Ancient North Eurasians forms a major ancestral component of the populations of the present-day Caucasus25. Thus, both south-north and north-south genetic influence across the Caucasus is plausible. "

http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2015/02/10/013433.full.pdf

 

[LeBrok]

I think ancient dna tells us that modern frequencies may be of limited probative value. That particular area has seen populations come and go. There could be a hole there in terms of R1b because that's where Slavic speaking populations were settled relatively late in history after some de-population events. Or, going back in time, R1b might have largely moved into western Europe and R1a moved south to fill the "hole".

On the other hand they might have been there in Yamnaya times, or they could have been just north in the forest steppe. Until we have more samples I don't think that there's any way of knowing.

Sure, I've jumped the gun too soon. It is more that I wanted to find them, and not that we actually found them.

 

[Angela]

The chart on page 23 is split into modern and ancient ...........only the modern is WHG free for tuscans.

the 69 samples on page 25 deal only with the ancient part of the chart on page 23

I don't understand the relevance of this comment. Tuscans are by definition a modern population, not an ancient one. The authors didn't include Etruscan or Villanovan samples, so obviously we don't know what their proportions of these components might have been. My analysis attempts to give some context for why the WHG figures for modern Tuscans, Spaniards, and other Southern Europeans are different in this paper than they were in the prior Lazaridis paper. (There are other factors as well.)

 

[Angela]

This is what the latest paper that we're discussing right now is saying about the so called 'Armenian Model' of Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov. They are practically saying that he is right!

" 4. The Armenian plateau hypothesis gains in plausibility by the fact that we have discovered evidence of admixturein the ancestry of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists, including gene flow from apopulation of Near Eastern ancestry for which Armenians today appear to be a reasonable surrogate (SI4, SI7, SI9). However, the question of what languages were spoken by the “Eastern European hunter-gatherers” and the southern, Armenian-like, ancestral population remains open. Examining ancient DNA fromthe Caucasus and Near East may be able to provide further insight about the dynamics of the interaction between these regions and the steppe. Our results show that southern populations diluted the ancestry of populations from the steppe, but also that ancestry related to Ancient North Eurasians forms a major ancestral component of the populations of the present-day Caucasus25. Thus, both south-north andnorth-south genetic influence across the Caucasus is plausible. "

http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2015/02/10/013433.full.pdf

Has anyone noticed that the authors of Supplementary Section 11, which is where the Indo-European languages question is discussed, and where this quote appears, are:
Iosif Lazaridis, Wolfgang Haak, Nick Patterson, David Anthony and David Reich*.

With all due respect to Dr. Anthony, was he holding his nose or crossing his fingers? :grin: I would love to have been present during their discussions!

Seriously, you're overstating things, Goga. The comments are very cautious. Note that while the Armenian Plateau hypothesis may be gaining in plausibilty, " the question of what languages were spoken by the “Eastern European hunter-gatherers” and the southern, Armenian-like, ancestral population remains open." Also, "both south-north andnorth-south genetic influence across the Caucasus is plausible."

 

[Finalise]

This is what the latest paper that we're discussing right now is saying about the so called 'Armenian Model' of Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov. They are practically saying that he is right! " 4. The Armenian plateau hypothesis gains in plausibility by the fact that we have discovered evidence of admixturein the ancestry of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists, including gene flow from apopulation of Near Eastern ancestry for which Armenians today appear to be a reasonable surrogate (SI4, SI7, SI9). However, the question of what languages were spoken by the “Eastern European hunter-gatherers” and the southern, Armenian-like, ancestral population remains open. Examining ancient DNA fromthe Caucasus and Near East may be able to provide further insight about the dynamics of the interaction between these regions and the steppe. Our results show that southern populations diluted the ancestry of populations from the steppe, but also that ancestry related to Ancient North Eurasians forms a major ancestral component of the populations of the present-day Caucasus25. Thus, both south-north andnorth-south genetic influence across the Caucasus is plausible. "http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2015/02/10/013433.full.pdf

[IMAGE]http://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/R1b-migration-map.jpg[/IMAGE]Maciamo's map would therefore be rendered useless. The "Armenian" component surely is R1b-Z2013 farmers moving up, while L23 downstream moved to the Balkans to form L51.

 

[Tomenable]

I'm confused about this paper - there are contradictory opinions about its credibility, for example here:

http://eng.molgen.org/viewtopic.php?f=85&p=23613#p23613

David Reich and his associates have published a paper containing a lot of new genetic data from prehistoric Europe. These data utterly refute the Kurgan hypothesis, and yet Reich and his associates are so stupid that they actually think the data support the hypothesis.