The least ENF Europeans are Saami

If your idea is that Saamis are originally East Asian or over 20% East Asian, you are with all probability mistaken. Saamis probably have a portion of Motala like admixture and a high Mesolithic Karelian (cf. Oleni Ostrov man) like admixture which explain their high ANE and WHG. Their Siberian portion comes mainly via Arctic contacts and has continued from prehistoric times till historic times. Saamis are a nice example of what Western Eurasians + Arctic with the lowest percentage of Near East look like.

Those people who brought their Uralic type language to Saamis were probably closest to modern Karelians whose East Asian portion may be in 10% range. MtDNA’s V7 and U5b were probably brought by them as both are frequent in Karelians.

As regards Siberian/Native American admixture in Finland, this figure is very interesting: http://www.fi.id.au/2014/11/clovis-anzick-ethnic-makeup-in-ftdna.html

I'm sorry if I seemed to imply that I have any certainty about these percentages. My only point was that if the Sami experience is like that of Amerindians there has probably been continuous inflow of genetic material from surrounding populations of Swedes, Finns, etc. depending on the location. Therefore, the percentages of East Asian/Siberian, depending on the calculator, would probably have been somewhat higher in the past. Without some medieval or even older dna from them I don't see how the amount could be quantified.
 
If your idea is that Saamis are originally East Asian or over 20% East Asian, you are with all probability mistaken. Saamis probably have a portion of Motala like admixture and a high Mesolithic Karelian (cf. Oleni Ostrov man) like admixture which explain their high ANE and WHG. Their Siberian portion comes mainly via Arctic contacts and has continued from prehistoric times till historic times. Saamis are a nice example of what Western Eurasians + Arctic with the lowest percentage of Near East look like.


Just that I would replace "Near Eastern" with "neolithic Near Eastern". We yet don't know where WHG or ANE started. WHG could have very well evolved in the Near East in Paleolithic and reached Europe that early. This is an explanation for why yDNA I (WHG) is related to J(ANE+EEF).

And I personally suspect we will find allot more ANE in the region between modern Iran and South_Central Asia.
 
Saami follow the East European trend. Everyone from Ireland to Lapland has recent connections, via Yamna-types. The similar WHG-ANE-ENF mix we see all over Europe could not have been created independently multiple times. So, Saami IMO are not a unique creation.

I think we will have to agree to disagree. The ethnogenesis of any people is unique in some sense, even if they resemble neighboring populations. In the case of the Sami, they have been tested autosomally and they are anywhere from 6-12% East Asian apparently, and many calculators show them as around 20% or more Siberian, (plus some East Asian?) In terms of genealogy, 12% East Asian is the same amount as an Englishman would have if he had a Chinese great grandmother. (I'm aware that not all Sami would test as 12% East Asian.)

I'm not aware of any other European population with that kind of admixture with East Eurasians.That qualifies as pretty unique to me if it doesn't to you.

Ed. Well, it may be slightly more nuanced than that, yes? There are some Finns, if I remember correctly, who also score around 6% East Asian? Some Sami would therefore seem to score twice that? Still, it is limited to that corner of Europe apparently. It's not to be wondered at, surely, that there should be some overlap at the margins. It's certainly true with low NAfrican percentages in southern Europe.
 
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Looking at these reconstruction it kinda appears to me like neolithic farmers brought the typical more refined facial feature with dolichocephalic head and vertical forheads to Europe.

Here are reconstructions of the neolithic Trypillian culture.

TrpFMm.JPG
 
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The Saami from Finland is a lot differnt from Finnish, especially in having more Siberian ancestry. Maybe they were even more Siberian in the past. I've heard that early Scandinavian writings described Finns as being dark and with East Asian features.

I doubt that Scandinavian texts mention any East Asian features. I would guess that they only use such words as dark or dark-haired, and if I remember correctly also Oleni Ostrov man had brown eyes and dark hair. If anyone of you can quote their words, I would be interested to hear.

The Fennis Tacitus mentioned may have been among the last hunter gatherers in Europe at that time, and their language may be one of many lost languages in Europe although this language should be detectable as a substrate in Finnish and Saami languages.

We do have Saami mtDNA from the 18th century and it is V7a and U5b as today.
 
I doubt that Scandinavian texts mention any East Asian features. I would guess that they only use such words as dark or dark-haired, and if I remember correctly also Oleni Ostrov man had brown eyes and dark hair. If anyone of you can quote their words, I would be interested to hear.

The Fennis Tacitus mentioned may have been among the last hunter gatherers in Europe at that time, and their language may be one of many lost languages in Europe although this language should be detectable as a substrate in Finnish and Saami languages.

We do have Saami mtDNA from the 18th century and it is V7a and U5b as today.

Are those hunter gatherers the people Tacitus called Fenni? Aren't they considered to be Finno-Urgics not apart of an unknown people? I agree those medieval writings about Finland mean nothing. The writers weren't anthropologist, and had their own intentions.
 
'mediteranean' is a bag term, more than n'ordic' is - the "vertical forehead" is not present in every subtypes - the faces are very variated - so...
concerning Saami (ancient Lapps) they mixed a lot with surroundings finnic and germanic population in Scandinavia, and their tirbes were heterogenous for a long time -
If I rely on the descriptions (scholars) of the most typical "pure" ones (the mountainous spine between Norway and Sweden) said they were very very darker than Scandinavians and Finns, and very very smaller, what was not so evident concerning other tribes of Saami -
for I red, they shew some tendancies to light bony skeletons, short legs, weak inferior jaws (something "dwarfy" in some way, perhaps peculiar adaptation to cold plus short endogamy) - their mostly dark hairs had not, for the most, the same texture as the typical 'mongoloid' hairs -
the people I see here on the pictures show an evident mixture, with different trains, some could have been old but I think some are recent enough - some look terribly Swede, other more Finn, few ecovates to me the description I red - I avow I did not study Saami faces because they are not too numerous in sport and I never travelled there - I. Stenmark, skier, was supposed to be a Saami by origin, but he rather looked a Swede with some slight Finnic imput -
 
With reference to ancient DNA, on another blog someone once noted that usually when there is a change of economy there is also a change of yDNA. I think that he is probably correct in that. I do not think that Saamis and Finns have ever been hunter gatherers in Tacitus' meaning. Saamis are reindeer herders, i.e. pastoralists, or fishermen and even farmers in Norway, and Finns are agriculturalists who have their own cow race that was brought from the Volga Ural area. I think that Fennoscandinavian ancient hunter gatherer yDNA is lost (e.g. Oleni Ostrov R1a1) or almost lost as has happened almost everywhere, although autosomal traces still remain. Saamis probably assimilated all remaining northern hunter gatherers in them but it is only a part of they ancestry.

I am not so eager to make generalizations such as true Saamis are dark dwarf like creatures and their other features are borrowings from their surroundings because I think it is not true at all. We really do not know the orign of these smaller dark-haired people (analysis of yDNA from Bol'shoy Oleni Ostrov in Kola peninsula would be informative), but globally thinking the whole world is full of small dark-haired people, although modern people in Fennoscandinavia are among the tallest people in the world. These stereotypes sound just as silly as to say that ”true x” are so bony that they look like horses or ”true y” are so thin that they look like mosquitoes or ”true z” are so hairy that they remind me of monkeys etc.
 
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'mediteranean' is a bag term, more than n'ordic' is - the "vertical forehead" is not present in every subtypes - the faces are very variated - so...
concerning Saami (ancient Lapps) they mixed a lot with surroundings finnic and germanic population in Scandinavia, and their tirbes were heterogenous for a long time -
If I rely on the descriptions (scholars) of the most typical "pure" ones (the mountainous spine between Norway and Sweden) said they were very very darker than Scandinavians and Finns, and very very smaller, what was not so evident concerning other tribes of Saami -
for I red, they shew some tendancies to light bony skeletons, short legs, weak inferior jaws (something "dwarfy" in some way, perhaps peculiar adaptation to cold plus short endogamy) - their mostly dark hairs had not, for the most, the same texture as the typical 'mongoloid' hairs -
the people I see here on the pictures show an evident mixture, with different trains, some could have been old but I think some are recent enough - some look terribly Swede, other more Finn, few ecovates to me the description I red - I avow I did not study Saami faces because they are not too numerous in sport and I never travelled there - I. Stenmark, skier, was supposed to be a Saami by origin, but he rather looked a Swede with some slight Finnic imput -


No one lost a word about Mediterranean or "Nordic" in that matter. All I said is that the more long instead of broad headed type with the oval forheads was brought by the neolithic farmers. Even outdated authors such as Coon and co. aknowledge that. The so called "Nordic" type is not more than depigmented neolithic farmer type. All the mesolithic H&G seem to have been broader/round faced individuals seen on most reconstruction. So I kinda don't understand the issue here.
 
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to Kristina:
I'm not a clown and if I say "true" or "genuine" it means that the central population of the Saami area was of the type described above by myself ( 'dwarf' is nit a contemptuous term in my mouth it was only a comparison, but I know they are/were not medical dwarf, only very small people, as it exists others: "true", I don't know, but "most typical" is a right term - don"t split hairs please! I'm find this statement is logically leading someone to imagine the less "strange" peripheric population is less "strange" because of crossings with surrounding other ethnies; what you can say, politely enough, is that this central "typical" population (by the waydark but very very brachycephalic in the 1930/50, what is not typically "mditerranean") could be a local evolution by drift and endogamy, what I suggered...
concerning Y-DNA, no, an economic change doesn't change it - in ancient times of "Barbarians" and warlike elites, Y-DNA changed by turn over of elites, when a new one took the strong side upon the precedent; and yet, less and less as populations grew - economic changes can follow or cannot, it's not the motor of this chane of Y-DNA, I think

to Alan
I speak of 'mediterranean' because it is the term which comes to thought when speaking of Neolithic people of Europe, or 'sardinianlike' when speaking of aDNA, in the mouth of someones - but I agree, you didn't use this term - that said, 'nordic', if of far 'mediterranean' origin what I can agree, but by more than a trait, cannot be associated to european Neolithic people, and surely formed themselves more Eastern (as almost all the high statured people appeared only at Eneolithic/Bronze Age in Central or Western Europe). concerning Mesolithic, you are wrong concerning the European ones which were all of them of very dolichocephalic to dolicho-mesocephalic types of crania: 72 to 75 CI (I red a lot about this matter and can give you some means and indexes); apart in Alps, only in far East Europe we find people with mesocephalic head to sub-brachycephalic, of peri-Baltic geographical origin, and they descended to Ukraina at Neolithic time (they could be named 'neolithical' then... don't forget face and skull can be different (look at cro-magnon) - these more rounded head seems appearing in North Central Europe only at Eneolithic-Bronze time - the easy way to divide Europe in only 2 previously "homogenous" block before the Metals is simplistic, sorry! it's as simplistic for today Finnic lands that it is for West Europe - do you know the existance of a 'danubian' type, compared to other 'neolithic' people? the EEF groupings is already a "bagterm" masking complexity of previous moves in South and elsewhere -
and COON is not overrated at all even if we can split some hairs with his ghost -

all that said, I don't think Saami, very recently crossed or not, were only Hunters-Gatherers descendants (but the Neolithic people were surely HGs descendants too at some stage!) - I think they have a part of it, more on the Fishers side, and a bigger part from North Eurasia Herders + a bit of SIberians integrated in the same economy - the mix evolved later with some drifts confirmed by mtDNA
 
Gedmatch result of a Sami:

# Population Percent
1 EAST_EURO 33.94
2 SIBERIAN 25.28
3 SOUTH_BALTIC 14.98
4 NORTH-CENTRAL_EURO 12.21
5 ATLANTIC 10.28
6 EAST_ASIAN 1.67
7 WEST_AFRICAN 0.98
8 EAST_AFRICAN 0.66

Single Population Sharing:

# Population (source) Distance
1 Komi 14.28
2 Udmurt 15.12
3 Erzya 23.99
4 East_Finnish 24.74
5 East_Russian 25.09
6 North_Russian 25.22
7 South_Finnish 28.56
8 West_Russian 32.61
9 Ukrainian-Russian 33.01
10 North_Swedish 34.51
11 EE 34.64
12 Northwest_Russian 34.75
13 Belorussian 35.06
14 UA 35.25
15 PL 35.4
16 HU 37.49
17 LIT 37.57
18 KZ 38.09
19 Serbian 38.74
20 AT 39
 
Gedmatch result of a Sami:

# Population Percent
1 EAST_EURO 33.94
2 SIBERIAN 25.28
3 SOUTH_BALTIC 14.98
4 NORTH-CENTRAL_EURO 12.21
5 ATLANTIC 10.28
6 EAST_ASIAN 1.67
7 WEST_AFRICAN 0.98
8 EAST_AFRICAN 0.66

Single Population Sharing:

# Population (source) Distance
1 Komi 14.28
2 Udmurt 15.12
3 Erzya 23.99
4 East_Finnish 24.74
5 East_Russian 25.09
6 North_Russian 25.22
7 South_Finnish 28.56
8 West_Russian 32.61
9 Ukrainian-Russian 33.01
10 North_Swedish 34.51
11 EE 34.64
12 Northwest_Russian 34.75
13 Belorussian 35.06
14 UA 35.25
15 PL 35.4
16 HU 37.49
17 LIT 37.57
18 KZ 38.09
19 Serbian 38.74
20 AT 39
I've noticed that another Saami scores some African admixture but in one chart I've read that also HG from Sweden score some of it. Probably an old remnant. The most closer peoples of Saami seem to be the Uralic tribes even if with a significant distance from them in Oracle (14+).
 

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