
Originally Posted by
Angela
Krefter, I think we have to be careful with the sample locations and most particularly with the DATES.
Kumtepe is 6700 years old, or from around 4700 BC. I think that if it's virtually identical to the early European farmers that tells us that EEF=ENF. (From what I understand there's only a difference of a couple percent?) If the rumors are true, and that is the case for all or most of the genomes from the Neolithic Near East, then that tells us that the early farmers only absorbed a tiny percentage of European specific WHG once they got to Europe. If we then compare the EEF with the MN samples we'll know how many hunter gatherers were absorbed from the Early Neolithic to the Mid Neolithic and Copper Age.
I frankly don't understand the quote that based on the Kumtepe genome, we know that late Neolithic Western Anatolians weren't much different from Copper Age Southern and Central Europeans. I thought the similarity was with the early Neolithic European farmers. It was my understanding that MN and late Neolithic/Copper Age central and southern Europeans had absorbed some WHG over and above the UHG that was already part of the genome of the farmers when they were still in the Near East. Isn't that correct? I thought you were saying in another thread that they had absorbed a lot of it, although I disputed that. So, how can this statement be correct? Are there studies or analyses that show that Kumtepe is the same as Remedello or Central European Copper Age samples?
Over and beyond those questions, how can the Kumtepe sample tell us anything about the genetic signatures in western Anatolia in the late Copper Age, much less the Bronze Age around 2500 BC when Kumtepe dates to 4700 BC? That's a difference of 2000 years! Your original statement was that "everyone from Western Anatolia-Italy was probably basically the same in 3,000-4000 BC." I don't see how you get from the Kumtepe (4700 BC) sample's similarity to early Neolithic farmers to this statement about European farming populations in the Copper Age/Bronze Age transition and western Anatolia samples from around the same time ( 3200 BC )being virtually identical. We don't have a sample from that time period in western Anatolia, unless you're saying that one is included in the upcoming Lazardis paper and it has been shown to be the same as Copper Age European samples. That would indeed be news, but I would want to see it in black and white, with the appropriate stats in the paper before I start speculating like that.
If that were the case, and if it is further the case that the MN and Copper Age European farmers had absorbed some signficant amount of WHG since the Early Neolithic, then where did the western Anatolian farmers get their additional WHG, enough to now make them similar to European Copper Age peoples? From the samples from the Armenian Bronze Age, I think it's unlikely it came from the east, don't you? So, would we be looking at some minor gene flow from the steppe into Copper Age Central Europe, Italy and the Balkans, and also into western Anatolia at the same time? Would that fit the timeline for the first wave? If it does, we're talking about really minimal gene flow from that first wave, aren't we? Could that then be the movement which brought with it the "Anatolian" languages (not Armenian)?
Should this actually be true (that Copper Age central and southern Europeans were very similar to western Anatolians from the same time period), then it would probably mean that the ANE in the Near East today didn't arrive that far west until later.
Anyway, Krefter, this is way too much speculation for me without a paper in front of me with all the relevant samples and stats. Still, I think I have the logic right whatever the paper will show.
I would, however, point out that we already knew there wasn't ANE, or at least significant ANE in Italy even in the Copper Age, because we have the Remedello sample. Of course, we don't have any other Copper Age samples from Italy, so ancient dna may yet surprise. We also already knew that there was a change in Italy during the Bronze Age. Othewise, we wouldn't have U-152 levels of 60% in some regions of northern Italy, and we wouldn't be speaking an Indo-European language.