Scythian DNA

[Angela]

that is what I tought
the final look is influenced by a multitude of genes
if I understand correct, you say forensic programs exist based on the total collection of genes
but has such program ever been used for any anciant DNA sample?
if the DNA is incomplete, I guess you'll get skewed results

That's true, but it's still better than just trying to draw some conclusion from individual snps.

From what I remember, Lazaridis almost always used to use those forensic predictors. Maybe it's frowned upon now.

 

[bicicleur 2]

That's true, but it's still better than just trying to draw some conclusion from individual snps.

From what I remember, Lazaridis almost always used to use those forensic predictors. Maybe it's frowned upon now.

ok, but when Latvian and/or Estonian traits in aDNA were discussed on another thread here recently, it was about individual SNP's ?

 

[Alan]

as I pointed out above, Y-DNA and autosomal point out in a different direction in this case, so I don't want to take quick decisions here

maybe this will complicate things even more, still have to read this :

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep43950

Diverse origin of mitochondrial lineages in Iron Age Black Sea Scythians

The Steppes was always like "winner takes all" so yDNA doesn't tell the whole story. You have cultures almost exclusively dominated by one single subbranch of an Haplogroup than you have in later periods suddenly more diversity and just few centuries later it's one homogenous bunch again. The thing is no matter which Indo_Iranian group you take they all prefer Srubna, Iran_CHL, Kura Araxes and even Yamnaya over Sintashta. The best we can do in Sintashta point of view, is that it can be used as one admixture component but never the ultimate origin. Some Indo_Iranic tribes look like a mix of Srubna, Kura Araxe/Iran_CHL and Sintashta/Andronovo.

As I wrote above, Sintashta looks like a dead end at best it can be described as one component among other, but never does it look like even a single modern Indo_Iranic group has it's origin ultimately in Sintashta.

 

[Alan]

I'm sorry, Bicicleur, I just think this kind of stuff confuses without illuminating, except perhaps for the EDAR stuff, which shouldn't be a surprise given the Siberian like/East Asian like admixture, whatever you want to call it.

You can't call a sample or a modern human's pigmentation based on individual derived snps. Pigmentation is a multi-genetic trait. You'd have to run each sample's total collection of them through one of the forensic programs to get a prediction. Has Genetiker done that? Until then, even if one assumes the calls are correct, they're not going to tell us their predicted coloring.

Just one example: he lists TYR rs1393350 as coding for blonde hair, blue eyes. Yes, it's a depigmentation snp in derived status. I carry it, in fact, but I have chestnut hair and brown eyes.

As for OCA2 snps connected to blue eye color, on some I'm ancestral, on some derived, and on some heterogeneous.

See what I mean?

If the eastern ones were closest to Kets, maybe like this:

If the western ones were closest to Lezghins, Azeris, etc., maybe like this:

Not mounted Scandinavians...

The thing is even though West Scythians are closest to Adygei, Lezgians etc they are still slightly more Northern shifted. Like Adygai or Lezgians with 1 Russian grandparent. The same with the Eastern Scythians even the most Eastern once from the Pazyryk culture might cluster "closest" with Kets, that doesn't mean they were carbon copies of them, in fact even the Payzryk culture "Scythians" where allot more West Eurasian shifted than Kets. Their West Eurasian portion was around 50-60% thats what you find today among Kazakhs or Uzbeks. Krygyz for example are only ~25% West Eurasian Altains even less. Also we should have learned from the Yamnaya samples that no one should confuse aDNA admixture. with pigmentation. Lookng at Yamnaya they are genetically inbetween Caucasians and East Europeans BUT pigmentationwise they are like modern Anatolians, Mesopotamians or Iranians!

We know from ancient accounts that Scythians and Alans (Sarmatians) had quite a good chunk of Blonde people but I also said in the past they were definitely not Northeast European or Scandinavian blonde as those "hippie Nazis" as some call them expected them to be. I always said looking at their percentage of genes for light hair and eyes their pigmentation was more on level or something inbetween modern Central Europeans, North Caucasians and Balkanians. Tough even their light haired once would have looked like light haired modern Iranics than Slavs or Scandinavians. Just like a light haired British guy looks most of the time different from a light haired East European guy. So why would someone expect the blonde Steppe Iranics to look like modern British or East European blondes.

I know people don't like it but just as with Yamnaya once again I seem to be proven right.
How I imagine an light haired Scythian to have looked like is this.

light pigmented West Scythian like

light pigmented Sarmatian like

light pigmented East Scythian like

Hepthalite, Sogdian like

pazyryk like

 

[Angela]

ok, but when Latvian and/or Estonian traits in aDNA were discussed on another thread here recently, it was about individual SNP's ?

To the best of my recollection, the question was raised as to where certain depigmentation snps arose, yes, not what these people looked like? Wait, no point in trying to remember it, I'll just look it up.

I believe this was the first mention of it.

Holderlin:Looks like Baltic WHG may have been more depigmented than EHG, on average. This might explain why the Steppe didn't show widespread depigmentation until after admixture with North and Central Europe.

Fire-Haired: I kind of agree. Some hunter gatherers and EEF farmers could have been pretty pale. Natural selection definitely played a part though.

Tomenable: It sounds like population replacement rather than natural selection "in situ" (among previous inhabitants).

In other words: a light-skinned, lactose-tolerant population invaded, replacing Neolithic/Mesolithic groups.

But some mixing with previous inhabitants also took place.

Then it was off to the races, of course.

I don't think I actually expressed an opinion as to what the Baltic samples looked like...you'd have to run them through a program to be sure.

That said, certain derived snps are given more weight in the programs. If someone has derived SLC24A5, SLC42A5, and TYR1 the odds are pretty good they're light skinned. If they have OCA2/HERC2 they're probably blue eyed. The only people who are likely to be blonde, blue-eyed and light skinned would have to have all of those plus more.

By that criteria, even in the Bronze Age people living in the Baltics were most probably not all blonde, blue-eyed and fair-skinned. I know I made the point more than once that it seems that the "sweep" in terms of the major depigmentation snps didn't really happen until at the earliest the end of the Bronze Age.

Of course, as we've said, there might be some deterioration in the samples.

Looking at the calls from Genetiker, these are some of those important snps:
OCA2/HERC2, rs12913832, blue eyes
Sample Region Culture Date BC D/T
I0575 Western Early Sarmatian 500–100 0/1
I0574 Western Early Sarmatian 500–100 0/1
I0577 Eastern Aldy-Bel 700–500 0/4
Ι0562 Eastern Pazyryk 400–200 8/10
I0563 Eastern Pazyryk 400–200 2/4
Ze6 Eastern Zevakino-Chilikta 900–600 4/12

SLC24A5, rs1426654, Caucasoid light skin
Sample Region Culture Date BC D/T
Ι0562 Eastern Pazyryk 400–200 4/4
Ze6 Eastern Zevakino-Chilikta 900–600 25/26

SLC45A2, rs16891982, Caucasoid light skin
Sample Region Culture Date BC D/T
I0575 Western Early Sarmatian 500–100 4/4
I0574 Western Early Sarmatian 500–100 0/1
I0577 Eastern Aldy-Bel 700–500 6/6
I0576 Eastern Aldy-Bel 700–500 0/1
Ι0562 Eastern Pazyryk 400–200 0/25
I0563 Eastern Pazyryk 400–200 0/2
IS2 Eastern Zevakino-Chilikta 900–600 1/1

Quickly scanning it, only one sample matches that criteria. Some of the snps he lists are sort of meaningless. KITLG, for example, is carried by everyone who is not SSA, and even some of them carry it.

I have to disagree with Alan here. Those results, and especially the lack of derived SLC24A5, look a lot like the Yamnaya and Catacomb results to me, not like the Sintashta results. I don't think these people were very fair at all. Of course, that's just guesswork. Like I said, you'd have to run all those snps into the algorithm. Maybe a couple of small effect genes might make up a bit for lack of large effect genes.

I'd like to have a time machine too, but we don't.

 

[holderlin]

I disagree. the genetic signature we have found in real Indo_Iranians so far differ from CW in having little to none EEF.

It looks more like CWC and Indo_Iranians might share one common ancestor in a prior culture.

I dunno, Sarmatian(and probably Alans too) look derived from Srubnaya/Andronovo/Sintashta all of which are closely related to CWC. The only difference is some Siberian, which I guess we're now calling indistinct central Asian. Whatever you want to call.

 

[holderlin]

You can trace all of this back to the Steppe thousands of years before. Before Andronvo, Sintashta, Srubnaya, or CWC even existed.

We're seeing descendants of the Eastern fringes of Yamnaya (Afanesevo?) This is evident without even looking at the Y-lines, which if considered, make it hard to dispute.

We have Iranian genomes from very important sites. We know what they look like.

 

[Alan]

I have to disagree with Alan here. Those results, and especially the lack of derived SLC24A5, look a lot like the Yamnaya and Catacomb results to me, not like the Sintashta results. I don't think these people were very fair at all. Of course, that's just guesswork. Like I said, you'd have to run all those snps into the algorithm. Maybe a couple of small effect genes might make up a bit for lack of large effect genes.

I'd like to have a time machine too, but we don't.

I think there was a little misunderstanding here . I never said Scythians and Sarmatians were almost exclusively light pigmented. What I meant was that even their light pigmented individuals would have looked like light pigmented modern Iranic groups. And yes, in comparison to, mesolithic and neolithic/Bronze Age groups, we do have descriptions of the physical looks of the Sarmatians (Alans) from the Romans and Scythians from the Greels. And they are described as light haired and light eyed. Of course as we know people tend to exxagerate traits that are common among a population in comparison to themselves. And especially Mediterranean/Brunette looking people tend to consider everything from brown to blonde as blonde haired. But we have to take into account that even the fact that light features were mentioned specificly for them means that at least a significant amount of them had this features (it could be from 20-50% for all we know).

 

[bicicleur 2]

That said, certain derived snps are given more weight in the programs. If someone has derived SLC24A5, SLC42A5, and TYR1 the odds are pretty good they're light skinned. If they have OCA2/HERC2 they're probably blue eyed. The only people who are likely to be blonde, blue-eyed and light skinned would have to have all of those plus more.

So these and maybe EDAR are the most reliable indications for phenotypes, but still not more than an indication.
We can at best discuss how and when these SNPs spread.

 

[Angela]

So these and maybe EDAR are the most reliable indications for phenotypes, but still not more than an indication.
We can at best discuss how and when these SNPs spread.

We're largely in agreement.

I would just add that some scholars do indeed run the "phenotype" snps through the forensic calculators. I'm pretty sure the original Lazaridis and Haak papers did so.

Also, given that these are such high impact snps, I think it's reasonable to deduce that populations with derived versions of them would have had lighter pigmentation that people without them.

 

[A. Papadimitriou]

Note a Sarmatian sample turned out with yDNA R1b.

In what culture and when?

I personally think that even the use of the term is a bad practice because its use during ancient times doesn't seem consistent. (It was used even for people in Eastern Poland).


Can someone inform me on the place of those samples?

In a study conducted in 2014 by Gennady Afanasiev et al. on bone fragments from 10 Alanic burials on the Don River, DNA could be extracted from a total of 7. ^{[clarification needed][23][clarification needed]}
In 2015, the Institute of Archaeology in Moscow conducted research on various Sarmato-Alan and Saltovo-Mayaki culture Kurgan burials. In these analyses, the two Alan samples from the 4th to 6th century AD turned out to belong to yDNA haplogroups G2a-P15 and R1a-z94, while two of the three Sarmatian samples from the 2nd to 3rd century AD were found to belong to yDNA haplogroup J1-M267 while one belonged to R1a.^[24] Three Saltovo-Mayaki samples from the 8th to 9th century AD turned out to have yDNA corresponding to haplogroups G, J2a-M410 and R1a-z94.^{[25][clarification needed]}