Ancient DNA England: Iron age, Roman-Gladiator, and Anglo Saxon

[Angela]

Where and when did you picked all that? Or it's a humor tentavie of yours?

I shouldn't speak for him, but it's sarcasm. That's the meme about Italians on anthrofora. One of the usual suspects is already hinting it's a done deal for Italy, but then he's on record as saying we're, or at least southern and perhaps central Italians, aren't European and should be kicked out of the "club", so for now it's just wishful thinking. :) I always wonder why he reserves this for us and never mentions the Spaniards with their North African and SSA and the Balkanites with their West Asian. Perhaps, since he's not actually European, some Italian kid of the diaspora beat him up and took his lunch money, or stole his girlfriend? :) More likely it's tied to anti-Semitism. Ah well, the workings of unbalanced minds are always a mystery to some extent.

Immaterial to me but it gets under the skin of some Italians. They should know better, in my opinion.

Sorry for the off-topic comment. I apologize.

[Angela]

Unless I've totally misread the paper, the reference to millet eating had nothing to do with the Romano Brits whose genetic results were published; it has to do with other remains not analyzed for autosomal or uniparental dna, or, if analyzed, not published.

Therefore, it has no probative value for a possible eastern European origin for the ancestry of the more "eastern" plotting Romano Brit.

[Greying Wanderer]

Unless I've totally misread the paper, the reference to millet eating had nothing to do with the Romano Brits whose genetic results were published; it has to do with other remains not analyzed for autosomal or uniparental dna, or, if analyzed, not published.

Therefore, it has no probative value for a possible eastern European origin for the ancestry of the more "eastern" plotting Romano Brit.

Yes the millet thing is a red herring. It's mentioned in the second paper but when you check the labels of the millet samples they're not the Romano-British samples.

So yes there may have been east Europeans in the grave yard but they weren't these six samples - the two outliers among the romano-british samples (excluding the middle eastern guy) were one had too much Oxygen and one had too much Nitrogen (from fish apparently).

[Greying Wanderer]

@Tomenable

Those people were not soldiers, but gladiators

died as gladiators maybe but what were they when their teeth were growing?

Moreover - the fact remains, that in PCA (Figure 1.) one of gladiators clusters autosomally firmly within E.Europe (Ru - Russia?):

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/16...s10326_F1.html

And in IBS (Figure 2.) the combined sample of gladiators (excluding Near Easterner) shows similarities to Lithuanians and Poles:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/16...s10326_F2.html

That is significant but they also cluster with each other and modern Welsh which implies to me they were from a local population who had already mixed with people originally from the Baltic-Poland so maybe some of the Belgae had rolled down the coast from there?

(Another possibility might be Wales and Lithuania both have some rare component which pulls them together. IIRC there was something like that mentioned on a very old Dionekes thread?)

[LeBrok]

I 've some difficulty to swallow an only evolutionary process in so a short time. Based on what? what drastic climatic difference distinguishes northern and southern Europe or other places at those times? I'm almost sre we are missing something. I have no answer just now but... a linkage with other genetic peculiarities selecting for other traits???
Not I deny natural selection but I don't understand this speed of selection there... Sure we 'll have the explanation someday.

I sort of did in one of my posts:

That's good. According to my hypothesis the process was ongoing to end of Little Ice Age around 19 hundreds AD. This is when it has achieved maximum for Northern and Central Europe. Every time crops failed in Northern Europe the number of people with LP rose. I'm expecting that climatic disaster of Dark Ages was a major event in positive selection of LP. There should be a big jump in LP numbers in population between 400 and 800 AD.

European type of LP and whitening of skin started pretty much 10-6 thousand years ago. Is this too short for you to achieve majority of population in Northern Europe? That's something like 400-300 generations. I think it it doable under strong environmental forcing.

[LeBrok]

As to the millet, perhaps you didn't have time to read the paper I posted, Tomenable, or look at the map of where it was grown. It wasn't grown just in Republican times, and the Romans raised a lot of it, as the ancient literature indicates. It's just that they gave it to animals and the poor. The fact that there aren't that many finds is probably due to the fact that it was usually pounded, turned into flour, and then boiled for human consumption. To eat it in bread form was unpopular because the bread was so dense and so hard on the teeth. There are pictures of what the teeth look like after a life time of eating bread made from it.

I noticed that too. Millet was more popular among poor and used as animal feed. I think it grows easily everywhere but it doesn't taste too good. I don't remember eating it, or if I did it didn't make a mark in my memory.

I remember my aunt used millet to feed chickens in Poland.

[Fire Haired14]

I sort of did in one of my posts:
European type of LP and whitening of skin started pretty much 10-6 thousand years ago. Is this too short for you to achieve majority of population in Northern Europe? That's something like 400-300 generations. I think it it doable under strong environmental forcing.

Quick correction, not being know it all jerk.

The "European skin became white 6,000-10,000 years ago" theory is false and based on rs1426654(AA) which was very popular in EHG/SHG/CHG/EEF 8,000 years ago. That theory was destined to be false because genetics often ignore the Middle East. Middle Easterners have 100% rs1426654(AA), but genetics continued to treat this as a European-specific mutation.

With the markers associated with skin color, it suggests white-skin lightening in Europe happened when Steppe/EEF mixed around 2800 BC. Then after that it continued to be selected all over Europe into the Bronze age. We have no sizable databases of DNA from before 8,000 years ago. EHG, SHG, and EEF 8,000 years ago had decent frequencies of both Light skin-mutations, and I wouldn't be surprised if their ancestors did 10,000 years before.

There's no evidence any process began 10-6k years ago that made things differnt than they were 1,000s of years before. There's just documentation that rs16891982(GG) tripled in frequency between 3000 and 2800 BC. rs16891982(GG) is what was selected for, and no one predicted what we're finding in ancient DNA. That's the only evidence of a skin-lightning process going on. Late Neolithic Europe in 2800 BC is a totally differnt world than Mesolithic/Neolithic Europe in 8000-4000 BC.

The same goes for Lactose-persistence SNPs. The first confirmed existence is in Late Neolithic Europe, but there's also old studies which document it in Neolithic Spain and Sweden. There's other SNPs associated with foods only farming/herding people could create that only appear in EEF or later in EEF/WHG/Steppe.

[Angela]

I shouldn't speak for him, but it's sarcasm. That's the meme about Italians on anthrofora. One of the usual suspects is already hinting it's a done deal for Italy, but then he's on record as saying we're, or at least southern and perhaps central Italians, aren't European and should be kicked out of the "club", so for now it's just wishful thinking. :) I always wonder why he reserves this for us and never mentions the Spaniards with their North African and SSA and the Balkanites with their West Asian. Perhaps, since he's not actually European, some Italian kid of the diaspora beat him up and took his lunch money, or stole his girlfriend? :) More likely it's tied to anti-Semitism. Ah well, the workings of unbalanced minds are always a mystery to some extent.

Immaterial to me but it gets under the skin of some Italians. They should know better, in my opinion.

Sorry for the off-topic comment. I apologize.

Drac, I just noticed that you give a negative rating to virtually everything I post. Well, anything that at all hints that Spaniards might not be twins of Scandinavians or the Irish, anyway. :) Maybe when I have a chance I'll add them up and keep a running tally which I'll have posted instead of my quote.

My father always told me that someone's enemies say even more about them than their friends. I'm more than pleased with what mine say about me.

[LeBrok]

Quick correction, not being know it all jerk.

The "European skin became white 6,000-10,000 years ago" theory is false and based on rs1426654(AA) which was very popular in EHG/SHG/CHG/EEF 8,000 years ago. That theory was destined to be false because genetics often ignore the Middle East. Middle Easterners have 100% rs1426654(AA), but genetics continued to treat this as a European-specific mutation.

With the markers associated with skin color, it suggests white-skin lightening in Europe happened when Steppe/EEF mixed around 2800 BC. Then after that it continued to be selected all over Europe into the Bronze age. We have no sizable databases of DNA from before 8,000 years ago. EHG, SHG, and EEF 8,000 years ago had decent frequencies of both Light skin-mutations, and I wouldn't be surprised if their ancestors did 10,000 years before.

There's no evidence any process began 10-6k years ago that made things differnt than they were 1,000s of years before. There's just documentation that rs16891982(GG) tripled in frequency between 3000 and 2800 BC. rs16891982(GG) is what was selected for, and no one predicted what we're finding in ancient DNA. That's the only evidence of a skin-lightning process going on. Late Neolithic Europe in 2800 BC is a totally differnt world than Mesolithic/Neolithic Europe in 8000-4000 BC.

The same goes for Lactose-persistence SNPs. The first confirmed existence is in Late Neolithic Europe, but there's also old studies which document it in Neolithic Spain and Sweden. There's other SNPs associated with foods only farming/herding people could create that only appear in EEF or later in EEF/WHG/Steppe

I meant that the process started 6-10 ky ago. That's what we see from ancient dna, that first alleles related to these processes show up in European genome at about this time. I hope you agree that it was a slow long process in both cases, which lasted till today, and that it was not a sudden revolution?

[Sile]

deleted by poster

[Greying Wanderer]

I meant that the process started 6-10 ky ago. That's what we see from ancient dna, that first alleles related to these processes show up in European genome at about this time. I hope you agree that it was a slow long process in both cases, which lasted till today, and that it was not a sudden revolution?

I think both processes were likely long but I'm not so sure about slow.

With skin lightening I think it was more likely a sequence of rapid changes with long gaps. So for example I think there was some extra skin lightening in the far north very early - multiple regional versions - and then a lull until people became more mobile and the different groups mixed (edit: and thus picked up multiple ones) and then maybe a second lull until agriculture.

#

On LP although intuitively it makes sense that it would increase slowly over time personally I don't think it did exactly.

I think the gene evolved wherever a long time ago but didn't expand much until it arrived at the atlantic coast because it was necessary there for permanent settlement (cos rainfall -> acid soils -> low wheat yield). Neolithic farmers settled but couldn't sustain their usual population density without the extra calorie boost from LP imo so the first people who arrived who had it expanded dramatically into both Britain and Ireland. I think later invasions from the continent reduced the level of LP in Britain from its Irish peak of 90%+ and then it slowly went up again from there.

One the reasons behind thinking this is it looks to me from Maciamo's maps like the "Irish" R1b was initially more widespread and was pushed back by the continental and north sea streams.

"Irish" http://cache.eupedia.com/images/cont...up-R1b-L21.gif
"Alpine" http://cdn.eupedia.com/images/conten...up-R1b-S28.gif
"North Sea" https://thecampblogbymike.files.word...up-r1b-s21.gif

Obviously that's just a guess without much evidence yet but i think we'll find that Bronze Age samples with the "Irish" clade of R1b will have a substantially higher percentage of LP than the continental clades and the eventual pattern will be
- neolithic farmers: none
- Irish R1b: very high
- continental R1b and A-S: lower
- moderns: high again

#

nb if the conifer line was further south back then the same argument could apply to northern Europe as conifers make the soil acid as well so farmers coming up from the south might have hit a wall when they crossed the conifer line

#

edit

all speculation of course but easily disprovable if early Irish clade samples don't have much higher rates of LP than later mixed clades.

[Fire Haired14]

I meant that the process started 6-10 ky ago. That's what we see from ancient dna, that first alleles related to these processes show up in European genome at about this time. I hope you agree that it was a slow long process in both cases, which lasted till today, and that it was not a sudden revolution?

We don't have any sizable data-sets from before 8,000 years ago, so we don't know if it began 6-10k. We know that SHG/EHG/EEF had a decent amount of both skin-lightening mutations 8,000 years ago, and that nothing dramatic changed till 2800 BC. Of course there's lots of wholes in data. And because of this there's nothing suggesting a process began or didn't 6-10k.

[LeBrok]

I think you are trying to confuse us:

We don't have any sizable data-sets from before 8,000 years ago, so we don't know if it began 6-10k. and that nothing dramatic changed till 2800 BC. Of course there's lots of wholes in data. And because of this there's nothing suggesting a process began or didn't 6-10k.

We know that SHG/EHG/EEF had a decent amount of both skin-lightening mutations 8,000 years ago,

[LeBrok]

I think both processes were likely long but I'm not so sure about slow.

With skin lightening I think it was more likely a sequence of rapid changes with long gaps. So for example I think there was some extra skin lightening in the far north very early - multiple regional versions - and then a lull until people became more mobile and the different groups mixed and then maybe a second lull until agriculture.

Yes, different populations had input into this process. Lightening of skin is a combination multi ethnic genome, many mutations, coming in to the right place, the northern Europe. Once they were in the right place, the natural selection took over, forcing positive mutation to be more popular. The lighter skin more popular.

#

On LP although intuitively it makes sense that it would increase slowly over time personally I don't think it did exactly.

I think the gene evolved wherever a long time ago but didn't expand much until it arrived at the atlantic coast because it was necessary there for permanent settlement (cos rainfall -> acid soils -> low wheat yield). Neolithic farmers settled but couldn't sustain their usual population density without the extra calorie boost from LP imo so the first people who arrived who had it expanded dramatically into both Britain and Ireland. I think later invasions from the continent reduced the level of LP in Britain from its Irish peak of 90%+ and then it slowly went up again from there.

One the reasons behind thinking this is it looks to me from Maciamo's maps like the "Irish" R1b was initially more widespread and was pushed back by the continental and north sea streams.

"Irish" http://cache.eupedia.com/images/cont...up-R1b-L21.gif
"Alpine" http://cdn.eupedia.com/images/conten...up-R1b-S28.gif
"North Sea" https://thecampblogbymike.files.word...up-r1b-s21.gif

Obviously that's just a guess without much evidence yet but i think we'll find that Bronze Age samples with the "Irish" clade of R1b will have a substantially higher percentage of LP than the continental clades and the eventual pattern will be
- neolithic farmers: none
- Irish R1b: very high
- continental R1b and A-S: lower
- moderns: high again

Maybe R1b herders brought the LP mutation to Northern Europe, why not? However once in the right place, this mutation flourished there in Northern Europe. It wasn't a linear evolution though. When the wheat crops were good the mutation wasn't important. But in times of cold weather and failed crops, milk calories became important and LP mutation was selected in greater numbers. That's why I think that during the Little Ice Age and Dark Ages, the LP was selected positively. LP selection wasn't linear but more like jumps to higher level in times of cold climate times.

#

nb if the conifer line was further south back then the same argument could apply to northern Europe as conifers make the soil acid as well so farmers coming up from the south might have hit a wall when they crossed the conifer line

#

I don't see it in terms of "depleted" soil, but more of a factor of cold climatic change.

all speculation of course but easily disprovable if early Irish clade samples don't have much higher rates of LP than later mixed clades.

That's because LP gene is not attached to Y chromosome, and can "infect" every human being. It just needs to be in the right place and right time, the Northern Europe during cold climate.

[Drac II]

Drac, I just noticed that you give a negative rating to virtually everything I post. Well, anything that at all hints that Spaniards might not be twins of Scandinavians or the Irish, anyway. :) Maybe when I have a chance I'll add them up and keep a running tally which I'll have posted instead of my quote.

My father always told me that someone's enemies say even more about them than their friends. I'm more than pleased with what mine say about me.

How strange, you taunting certain forum members again? Why am I not surprised?

You mean like you and your Italian friends around here giving negative ratings to all my posts addressing your little distortions, manipulations and innuendos about Spaniards while at the same time trying to portray Italians as the brothers of Scandinavians and Germans? Shouldn't you actually be doing your real job as an administrator and keeping the likes of real trouble-makers like "Joey" off of these forums? Unlike the very dubious "infractions" you keep giving me any chance you can, he has actually gotten banned a bunch of times and opened other accounts to bypass sanctions for his real infractions, and there is an actual written rule here that says you are not supposed to do that. Funny, somehow I feel that if I did that you would waste no time whatsoever closing down any of my other accounts.

[Drac II]

I shouldn't speak for him, but it's sarcasm. That's the meme about Italians on anthrofora. One of the usual suspects is already hinting it's a done deal for Italy, but then he's on record as saying we're, or at least southern and perhaps central Italians, aren't European and should be kicked out of the "club", so for now it's just wishful thinking. :) I always wonder why he reserves this for us and never mentions the Spaniards with their North African and SSA and the Balkanites with their West Asian. Perhaps, since he's not actually European, some Italian kid of the diaspora beat him up and took his lunch money, or stole his girlfriend? :) More likely it's tied to anti-Semitism. Ah well, the workings of unbalanced minds are always a mystery to some extent.

Immaterial to me but it gets under the skin of some Italians. They should know better, in my opinion.

Sorry for the off-topic comment. I apologize.

Maybe what bothers this person you keep disparaging is the unbalanced minds of certain Italian characters around anthro forums who go around posting nonsense about other Europeans instead of concerning themselves with all the North African, SSA and West Asian of Italians. Very ironic, really.

Sorry for the off-topic digression. I apologize.

[Sile]

deleted by poster

[MOESAN]

I meant that the process started 6-10 ky ago. That's what we see from ancient dna, that first alleles related to these processes show up in European genome at about this time. I hope you agree that it was a slow long process in both cases, which lasted till today, and that it was not a sudden revolution?

I think I've to check the data about the mutated alleles for light pigmentation OF ALL SORTS -
I don't argue about the date of first apparition of mutatons but about their rising to overwhelming majority in relatively few generations (60-80?) WITHOUT EVIDENT NATURAL PRESSURE for light pigmentation. LT is (at first sight) another thing, except could be linked to pigmentation by some process still unkown to me.
maybe I'll have to separate basic exclusive skin mutations from complentary hairs/eyes ones? If natural pressure for pigmentation of hairs and eyes produced always the same results, why other Northern populations (Inuit, Samoyedes and other Siberians...) don't present the same results? The crossings in East-Eurasia/West SIberia were sufficiant to permit to advantageous mutations to rise up if climate and way of life were then only cause...
just my present point. Can change but?

[MOESAN]

Concerning the "Brittons" 3DRIF-16 and 3DRIF-3 having if I red well Y-R1b-U106, they are shift a bit towards N-East Europe, supposedly Poland and Lithiania. Eurogenes Davidsky thinks Sweden population could make well the job too. It recall me the U106 of Bronze Scandinavia, centered arond Norway, as opposed to the Y-R1aZ645 shifted towards Volga region.
concerning the 2 "Brittons" the ground iis still open. THat said, Belgae apart, it recalls me other remnants and archeologic traces in East England at Iron time, evocating something Germanic ( they ware taken as Viking remnants at first time). I'll try to find data.

[Greying Wanderer]

@LeBrok

Maybe R1b herders brought the LP mutation to Northern Europe, why not?

Yes, could be. I am neutral on where it came from originally.

That's because LP gene is not attached to Y chromosome

Yes, I have a bet with myself that older "Irish" R1b clade samples in Britain and Ireland will have a higher frequency of LP than later continental samples. Just a guess, could be wrong.

[Alan]

edited by poster

[Alan]

Turns out the Gladiator of Middle Eastern origin belonged to J2b subclade, which is nowadays rare in Arabia and the Levant as far as I know.

[LeBrok]

Turns out the Gladiator of Middle Eastern origin belonged to J2b subclade, which is nowadays rare in Arabia and the Levant as far as I know.

He could have been Greek living in Near East or maybe Thracian?

[Fire Haired14]

He could have been Greek living in Near East or maybe Thracian?

J2b1 does exist in West Asia. There's 0% chance he was North African, European, Mesoptamian, or Caucasian. He was from the Levant or Arabia.

[Tomenable]

Someone even suggested that he was probably born behind "Limes Arabicus", outside of the Roman Empire - that's because he was like modern Palestinians and Jordanians, and it is unlikely that before Early Medieval Arab immigration to the region, people in Palestine and Jordan were already so similar to modern Palestinians and Jordanians - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limes_Arabicus

He could be an ethnic Nabataean (Northern Arab) - they lived just next to the Roman border:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabataeans

The Nabataeans, also Nabateans (/ˌnæbəˈtiːənz/; Arabic: الأنباط‎ al-ʾAnbāṭ , compare to Ancient Greek: Ναβαταίος, Latin: Nabatæus), were an Arabic[1] people who inhabited northern Arabia and the Southern Levant, and whose settlements, most prominently the assumed capital city of Petra,[1] in AD 37 – c. 100, gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Arabia and Syria, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea.

They could be like modern Palestinians, who are a mixture of Pre-Arab locals with Arabs (including Southern Arabs?).