Cultural rather than demographic Neolithization in Eastern Europe

[Angela]

David at Eurogenes modeled it Half EHG, a third CHG and the remainder something like Anatolia and came up with a pretty good fit. I like it because it would mean admixture by neighbour groups (CHG, Cucutine-Trypolje) that both have been thought of a great influences to either Yamnaya (CT) or Indo-European culture (Caucasian), so it doesn't needs that strange thing that you propose, to wit that the more closeby CHG didn't contribute as much as remote Zagros farmers.

The good part of that post is that Iosif Lazaridis actually courteously posted a reply:



http://eurogenes.blogspot.nl/2016/06/yamnaya-eastern-hunter-gatherers-iran.html

I've never understood one thing about this argument: who says that the CHG still existed as a separate population at the time that this admixture took place?

Just because using an ancient group gets an ok fit in these stats doesn't mean it makes sense. Goodness, look at all the "great fits" for admixtures that were produced which turned out never to have happened.

As for the periodic interventions from the Reich Lab, they strike me as just that: interventions. They pop in when people are running around in circles. Of course, they can't reveal what's going to be in their papers, so they're often very cryptic. I wouldn't take it as a ringing endorsement of the conclusions, far less the unsavory associations of some of the people involved.

As to gene flow from "Old Europe" onto the steppe, I think it did take place, but I've yet to be convinced it reached the eastern part of the Yamnaya horizon from which we have most of our samples.

 

[Olympus Mons]

I've never understood one thing about this argument: who says that the CHG still existed as a separate population at the time that this admixture took place?

Just because using an ancient group gets an ok fit in these stats doesn't mean it makes sense. Goodness, look at all the "great fits" for admixtures that were produced which turned out never to have happened.

.

Angela, Exactly, Exactly.
So What Culture brought CHG to steppe?

 

[Angela]

Originally Posted by MarkoZ
The archeological record alone makes it obvious that farming techniques diffused rather rapidly across the Dniepr-Don and Comb Ceramic horizons. Even some of the northernmost Pit-Comb settlements reveal that farming accounted for up to 50% of the inhabitants' sustenance with no traces of accompanying migrations.

What puzzles me however is how the populations along the Baltic shores developed from Corded Ware moving into a sort of terra nulla. There must have been a significant shift towards a population with increased Basal Eurasian affinity later on. Did this happen with the circum-Baltic spread of the Baltic languages? Do we have samples in this region from, say, the very late Bronze age to Iron age and/or evidence pointing to discontinuities in settlement to test this?

Angela: Do you have some citations you could provide for the highlighted statements? When did agriculture spread to these areas and in what context?

Most of what I've seen written on Pitted Ware is very skeptical that they ever took up farming at all. Some have speculated it's even a different group of people who moved into the area from further east.

See, for example this 2016 book on the spread of domesticated animals in Europe.

https://books.google.com/books?id=K...ge&q=Did Pitted Ware have agriculture&f=false

So, as of now I'm still of the opinion that farming came to the Baltic very late, and with actual farmers.

I'm ready to be persuaded otherwise, however.

 

[MOESAN]

Perhaps it would be best to wait for the paper. This is a more than unusually cryptic abstract.

However, I don't see anything in the abstract stating that agriculture was adopted through acculturation by the presumably WHG or SHG inhabitants of the Baltics. I'm not saying that might not be the case, but there's no proof of that presented in the abstract.

So, if anyone is jumping the gun to generalize from a snippet of information, it would seem to be the OP.

They specifically say that the transition occurred during a period of genetic flux. It's just that the genetic inflow doesn't seem to have been from the farming communities of central Europe.

I agree with the following:




The bolding is mine. Corded Ware did contain EEF to some degree, although I'm sure there was variation in the amount from group to group.

I'd also add that I've been saying since the original big Lazaridis paper, as has LeBroc, that there very probably may have been a large reservoir of WHG, and perhaps EHG, in certain areas, that experienced a transition to farming and metallurgy at the same time. That might inflate the supposed admixture figures for "Indo-European" input.

Without having the ambition to ask you in marriage, I must say your "cooling down" is welcome! Let's read only what is written. We can disagree about what is written (perhaps?), why disgaree about what is not? LOL. Even Balts have EEFlike admixture today, and it has to come from somewhere and CT-C is a good bet for providers through CWC maybe, even if this element is rather low in % in Balts pops. It is surely a bit higher among Slavs spite not overwhelming.

 

[MOESAN]

ancient pops: A, B, C, D
between pops: '1', '2', '3' ...
modern pops &, $, £
if 1 is 50/50 A+B, and say 2 is C
if & is 25 A, 25 B and 50 C, how can we be sure without more accurate testings (IBD) that :
& is admixture of 50 C+25 A+25 B > or < 50 C+50 '1' ??? this a simplistic approach I know but I shows the problem I think (things could be very more complicated with '&' having at diverse periods inherited from C, &, A or/and B ...

 

[Angela]

Without having the ambition to ask you in marriage, I must say your "cooling down" is welcome! Let's read only what is written. We can disagree about what is written (perhaps?), why disgaree about what is not? LOL. Even Balts have EEFlike admixture today, and it has to come from somewhere and CT-C is a good bet for providers through CWC maybe, even if this element is rather low in % in Balts pops. It is surely a bit higher among Slavs spite not overwhelming.

That's ok...mutual collegial respect will more than do. It certainly exists from my end.

I'm rather "off" marriage, anyway, at this stage of my life...been there, done that...never would do it again.

 

[MOESAN]

Angela you broke my heart! The fact is I'm with my second wife and I think I'll stop here my collection. I remind a breton joke where it's question of dead people presented to Sant Petrus (Saint Pierre), and tailing: two men with lives far to have been respectuous of God laws: the first find as excuse he had a wife: S-P opens him the Paradise door. The second, having heard what had been said to the first, said immediately: "I have been married two times"; S-P: "Straigth away to Hell: there is no place in Paradise for stupid persons!" I confess (it's the right term here) I feel a bit unquiet now.

 

[MarkoZ]

Most of what I've seen written on Pitted Ware is very skeptical that they ever took up farming at all. Some have speculated it's even a different group of people who moved into the area from further east.

See, for example this 2016 book on the spread of domesticated animals in Europe.

https://books.google.com/books?id=K...ge&q=Did Pitted Ware have agriculture&f=false

So, as of now I'm still of the opinion that farming came to the Baltic very late, and with actual farmers.

I'm ready to be persuaded otherwise, however.

While I agree with your views regarding the late arrival of farming in Pitted Ware and the ultimate eastern provenience of the HG cultures in the North-East, I was talking about the Dnepr-Don and Comb-Ceramic cultures that lie further east. The earliest arrival of agriculture in the northern Baltic was found in the Estonian Narva complex.

Further south the early traces of agriculture date as far back as Bug-Dniestr in the fifth millennium B.C. according to Dolukhanov. Ivanova holds that the cultures centered around Azov and the Don adopted farming more than 1000 years later, usually to supply their fish-game based diet with grain produce. I am not aware of any signs of concomitant movements of people, but I should probably retract my earlier poorly-worded statement to the effect that there was no population exchange whatsoever. These things are notoriously hard to track in archaeology as we have seen before.

 

[epoch]

I've never understood one thing about this argument: who says that the CHG still existed as a separate population at the time that this admixture took place?

Just because using an ancient group gets an ok fit in these stats doesn't mean it makes sense. Goodness, look at all the "great fits" for admixtures that were produced which turned out never to have happened.

Fair enough, I agree. However, that also happened to fits in papers. Furthermore, in the PCA of the CHG paper Yamnaya pulls toward EEF.

As for the periodic interventions from the Reich Lab, they strike me as just that: interventions. They pop in when people are running around in circles. Of course, they can't reveal what's going to be in their papers, so they're often very cryptic. I wouldn't take it as a ringing endorsement of the conclusions, far less the unsavory associations of some of the people involved.

As to gene flow from "Old Europe" onto the steppe, I think it did take place, but I've yet to be convinced it reached the eastern part of the Yamnaya horizon from which we have most of our samples.

If David were just a blogger I would agree, but his findings often agree with papers: Take for instance traces of ANE in Han.

 

[MOESAN]

I don't know too much what to do with this but:
papers about neolithic mt-DNA and the today pops mt-DNA proximity to it show everytime some constant facts:
- Basques, Gascons and Cantabrians are among the less close to Near-Eastern mt;
- Balts, Estonians: the same statement
- at the contrary a region I place between Bela-Russia and Moscow and maybe a bit around Moscow show always more proximity to first farmers and Near-East concerning the diverse Neolithic mt lignages. I first thought it could be a recent enough effect of Moscow attraction on people of Caucasus and surroundings but it's strange that the most of Ukraina, closer to Caucasus and very important economically (Don region industries) shows nevertheless less proximity to farmers and Near-East. than this W-Moscow region.
&: about subsequent neolithical culture of Hungary/Carpathian Bassin before the Metals: a not too new but detailed paper by Anna Szécsényi-Nagy (I had red only short abstract with graphic); interesting fact: the late Neol BL (Balaton-Lasinga culture) shows reinforcing of mt-T1a after its almost fading out, and global mt-DNA closer to South-Levant, Egypt, and Lybia.
that said, concerning C-T C input in North I recall that whatever their value some admixture poolings show Balts have more 'sardinian', less 'basque' and almost no 'gedrosia' compared to Scandinavians and Northwesterners of Europe. So maybe few farmers females in TODAY Baltic (reduced) lands but the little EEF auDNA (males?) was maybe rather CTC than South-East Caspian farmers.

 

[epoch]

BTW, I know the results for the upcoming Baltic aDNA paper. No one is 100% correct yet. Only clue I'll give is some of the results defy geography.

GoyetQ116-1 admixture?

 

[Arame]

The confusion comes from the different meaning that is put in the term "Neolithic". In ex Soviet countries Neolithic doesn't automatically means farming. It can mean hunter gatherers with pottery. For example the Neolithic R1a in Baikal region was not a farmer he was a hunter gatherer. I suppose in Baltic countries this classification is retained. The Combed ware culture was a HG with pottery but without farming. As far as I know the real farming came there only with CWC which we already know was very different from HGs.

 

[arvistro]

GoyetQ116-1 admixture?

It defies FireHaired geography
Read my Raisa Andrejeva link if you want to know what to expect from East Baltic and (in future) East European pre-CW.

 

[Olympus Mons]

how far?

It defies FireHaired geography
Read my Raisa Andrejeva link if you want to know what to expect from East Baltic and (in future) East European pre-CW.

Arvisto,
What she is saying is what for instance A V Zubova is saying for the last 5 years, right? that those Karelia like people went as far south as poland and the Balkans and that specific non metric dental traits, therefore genetics, is seen as far East as south siberia in the Baraba forest itself in later periods and even in a specific site in South Turkmenistan. So, that EHG baltic people that were the same as the Samara HG.

If someone is looking for "how" the Steppe got Agriculture and Caucasus Admixture, just remember rule number one in humans. They follow Kinship! And surely there were Kin in south Turkmenistan to teach cousins up north and being so close to Iran agriculture there had to be some Admixture between those populations.

Too bad people don't follow non metric Dental traits. A lot of answers are in there aswell.

 

[arvistro]

You will have to read her yourself.
I will quote samples of her text, but only after study results comes out.

 

[LeBrok]

The confusion comes from the different meaning that is put in the term "Neolithic". In ex Soviet countries Neolithic doesn't automatically means farming. It can mean hunter gatherers with pottery. For example the Neolithic R1a in Baikal region was not a farmer he was a farmer. I suppose in Baltic countries this classification retained. They Combed ware culture that HG with pottery but without farming. As far as I know the real farming came there only with CWC which we already was very different from HGs.

Thanks Arame for reminding all of this simple fact.

 

[Arame]

OMG
I made so many errors with phone typing. I corrected them now.

 

[MOESAN]

We don't know if Ertebölla and Swifterband are WHG cultures that ran parallel to LBK. But I am willing to bet a months salary they were as they showed very little, very slow adaptation to agriculture, a very extensive fishing and hunting culture and a habit of keeping (probably herding, masting) pigs. From the Pitted Ware cultures which are extremely similar we know they are HG continuation.

Interestingly enough at the individual level, some Pitted Ware people show LIGHT southern input in their auDNA, showing contacts but number dominance of HGs genes,spite inequal individually. I don't know but I suppose a slight TRBK input among them. Just a nuance.

 

[MOESAN]

Based on the abstract I cannot say but the east and south Baltic neolithisation could have been produced more by CWC than by TRBK, so distinct from Scandinavia neolithisation question. I cannot obtain the full text to judge. When I say CWC I forget the immediate predecessor (if I'm not wrong), GAC: we could suppose also CWC is a spreading westwards and eastwards of people weakly or strongly distinct but influenced by this culture? Could GAC be the link between Tripolye-Cucuteni (EEF = 'anatolian' + something else undifined to date) and future CWC dominantly of Steppes origin : (demicly: heavy EHG, light and diversified CHG: robust CHG of North Caucasus, ancient + less robust CHG of South Caucasus/East Iran, newer, agricultors?); physically Tripolye has not been static: firstly influence of HGs females upon an 'anatolian' component - after; dilution of this HGs influence - later: more HG's?

 

[Rethel]

So the whole Farmer Supremacy agenda claiming that without having "farmer genes" you cannot farm, is falling apart.

It was obvious since ever...