Ancient genomes from Caucasus inc. Maykop

[Angela]

CHG appears on the steppe long before Maykop. Maykop is too late, imo, for it to be responsible for most of the CHG on the steppe.

 

[IronSide]

Isn't it strange that Caucasus ancestry expanded all over Anatolia, the Levant, and the Steppe at the same time ?

They weren't a single culture, othrwise we would see the same language family all over the place, who were these people ?

 

[epoch]

The Balkan "trail" is 1) steppes (5,000 BCE), Balkans (4,000 BCE), Anatolia (Troy, 3,000 BCE), Hattusa (1,600 BCE). They would have spent a thousand years in the Balkans as an IE "island" surrounded by non-IE speakers, until booted out by the Yamnaya. If from Sredny Stog, they were originally WHG, not EHG, right? Without real royal Hittite DNA, we might never know.

Sredny Stog are the Eneolithic Ukranians from Mathieson. Carrying the first attested CHG in the steppe. Had EHG + WHG.

 

[halfalp]

Both Semitic and Urartu languages, doesn't really sound like Hittite, Hittite sound a lot IE, so it might really be an archaic language.

 

[epoch]

CHG appears on the steppe long before Maykop. Maykop is too late, imo, for it to be responsible for most of the CHG on the steppe.

Well, we *do* have a population that seems almost like unmixed CHG on the north sloped of the Caucasus: Dolmen_BA. They are seriously too late to be responsible for that admixture. But the very fact they exist mean that *some sort of* hardly unadmixted CHG population must have survived there. And two of the three of their mtDNA as per this paper - U2e1 and H6a1a2a - pops up in in some sort in Corded Ware and Yamnaya, even as it is in the H6 case some upstream variant.

I know, very circumstantial evidence. But still.

 

[Ernekar]

Found an article by the Copenhagen group. It's in German, looks like they think Caucasus is the home of Early PIE: https://www.academia.edu/36689289/Invasion_aus_der_Steppe

Does anyone here read german fluently?
I would like to know what the paper says, and why exactly the Danish team places early PIE south of the caucasus.
I can read german, but it would take me half a day to read it all and understand it with my untrained german skills. So if someone here can read it rather fast, im curious as to what it says.

 

[halfalp]

Isn't it strange that Caucasus ancestry expanded all over Anatolia, the Levant, and the Steppe at the same time ?

They weren't a single culture, othrwise we would see the same language family all over the place, who were these people ?

What i'm gonna say might be risky to assign the same in ancient times but, look at modern days. I mean you live in a western european country in 10 years most of the people saying 6/10 look stranger, africans, asiatics, middle-easterners... without talking of race melting pot that is really a modern thing. The automatisation of humanity have create globalization but just imagine the first people that had the chariots, a way to migrate and the technology to survive. We might not be looking at a specific population or even an event, but more in a change of life. The end of the tribe and the security, the beginning of the nuclear family and the social stratification. All those notions probably originate in middle-east and probably that from somewhere, saying mesopotamia the idea expand everywhere, in anatolia, in iran, in the levant and in the caucasus, from each of those point other populations and other languages have taken the torch and migrate somewhere else giving that new cultural material pretty much over all eurasia.

 

[epoch]

Does anyone here read german fluently?
I would like to know what the paper says, and why exactly the Danish team places early PIE south of the caucasus.
I can read german, but it would take me half a day to read it all and understand it with my untrained german skills. So if someone here can read it rather fast, im curious as to what it says.

Arrival in Anatolia

Already round 2400 BC can we trace the to Indo-European belonging Hittite in Anatolia. How it speakers came there remains enigmatic. Scientist suspect they came from the Caucasus, where a people ancestral to Yamnaya could have lived.

EDIT: So the usual innuendo without stating a proper theory or naming an actual culture.

 

[Angela]

Well, we *do* have a population that seems almost like unmixed CHG on the north sloped of the Caucasus: Dolmen_BA. They are seriously too late to be responsible for that admixture. But the very fact they exist mean that *some sort of* hardly unadmixted CHG population must have survived there. And two of the three of their mtDNA as per this paper - U2e1 and H6a1a2a - pops up in in some sort in Corded Ware and Yamnaya, even as it is in the H6 case some upstream variant.

I know, very circumstantial evidence. But still.

It's interesting, indeed, just too late, as we both seem to agree. The authors specifically said, if I recall correctly, that they don't have sufficiently old samples to show this first entrance onto the steppe, so, who knows, maybe we'll never find them, although again, who knows what Reich has in that vault! I don't think there's any love lost between him and Willerslev, so...

There's just no "smoking gun" yet, imo, for either of these two hypotheses.

Not my mtdna, as I'm U2e2, but suggestive that U2e1 and perhaps also U2e2 moved from somewhere around the Caucasus, as I always suspected.

 

[Ernekar]

Arrival in Anatolia

Already round 2400 BC can we trace the to Indo-European belonging Hittite in Anatolia. How it speakers came there remains enigmatic. Scientist suspect they came from the Caucasus, where a people ancestral to Yamnaya could have lived.

EDIT: So the usual innuendo without stating a proper theory or naming an actual culture.

I translated the texts and read the english version, and every time something in the translation didn't make sense, i read the sentence in the german version. So i was able to read it through pretty fast that way.

Its some kind of interview rather than an actual paper. So they will probably bring a theory when they release their maykop paper.

As i understand it Kristiansen seems to suspect that the caucasus was the earliest PIE homeland.
At least that is what i understood from this excerpt which i have taken the liberty of translating:

"(K. Kristiansen"Especially the first chapter of the (Indo-European)story needs to be rewritten." He (K. Kristiansen) suspects that there was a precursor to the Yamna culture, in which a kind of early Proto-Indo-European (Ur-Ur-Indo-Europäisch in German) was spoken. And he (K. Kristiansen) also has a suspicion, where this people could have been: The Caucasus, says Kristiansen, was their home."

 

[epoch]

I translated the texts and read the english version, and every time something in the translation didn't make sense, i read the sentence in the german version. So i was able to read it through pretty fast that way.

Its seems to be an interview rather than an actual paper. So they will probably bring a theory when they release their maykop paper.

As i understand it Kristiansen seems to suspect that the caucasus was the earliest PIE homeland.
At least that is what i understood from this excerpt which i have taken the liberty of translating:

"(K. Kristiansen"Especially the first chapter of the (Indo-European)story needs to be rewritten." He (K. Kristiansen) suspects that there was a precursor to the Yamna culture, in which a kind of early Proto-Indo-European (Ur-Ur-Indo-Europäisch in German) was spoken. And he (K. Kristiansen) also has a suspicion, where this people could have been: The Caucasus, says Kristiansen, was their home."

Yes, it seems the "theory" (It really isn't a theory, as it doesn't name a time frame or points to a culture) seems to become en vogue.

It's still wrong, though.

PS: You kept out one crucial line from his statement:

Das aber sei unausgegoren: »Da klafft noch ein Loch«, gesteht er.

Meaning that still leaves holes.

 

[Ernekar]

Yes, it seems the "theory" (It really isn't a theory, as it doesn't name a time frame or points to a culture) seems to become en vogue.

It's still wrong, though.

Pointing towards specific cultures has pretty much lost its value in processual and post-processual archaeology. Because as you know, we don't know the name of cultures that early on.
So all "cultures" we see in old litterature are constructs. We don't know if they were cultures at all, or if the similar archaeological findings over vast areas are just indications of trade or fashion.
The Bell beakers are a great example. They were not a culture, it was just fashion shared by different groups with different cultures.

So i wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to name a culture, as most of archaeologists today don't believe that material culture equals actual cultures.

 

[Ernekar]

PS: You kept out one crucial line from his statement:



Meaning that still leaves holes.
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He just states that its not perfect, and that there are still holes. Which is expectable for every theory.
So in my opinion that line is not crucial at all regarding the point of my post: Which was to put forward an excerpt which showed that Kristiansen believes that the PIE homeland was in the caucasus.

 

[Ernekar]

@epoch,
but i have read Kristiansens old papers. And i can assure you that he will bring forward a timeframe and more precise geographical location of those Caucasus Proto-Indo-Europeans with one of his next papers. Im sure he is already working hard on it.

 

[epoch]

Pointing towards specific cultures has pretty much lost its value in processual and post-processual archaeology. Because as you know, we don't know the name of cultures that early on.
So all "cultures" we see in old litterature are constructs. We don't know if they were cultures at all, or if the similar archaeological findings over vast areas are just indications of trade or fashion.
The Bell beakers are a great example. They were not a culture, it was just fashion shared by different groups with different cultures.

Exactly those same most of archaeologists today were all part of the "Pots not People" dogma from 5 years ago. Their view has been wiped off the table by modern DNA research. That gives a pretty good indication on how to place such opinions.

So i wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to name a culture, as most of archaeologists today don't believe that material culture equals actual cultures.

See above.

 

[epoch]

@epoch,
but i have read Kristiansens old papers. And i can assure you that he will bring forward a timeframe and more precise geographical location of those Caucasus Proto-Indo-Europeans with one of his next papers. Im sure he is already working hard on it.

So, which culture will it be then?

 

[epoch]

I know German fluently. I will translate it partially.

It is basically a summary of what we all already know. The only oddity is that Kristianson is going for the south hypothesis.

 

[Olympus Mons]

Found an article by the Copenhagen group. It's in German, looks like they think Caucasus is the home of Early PIE: https://www.academia.edu/36689289/Invasion_aus_der_Steppe

Dear friend... and who lived in the exact place of that doted circle?

 

[ROS]

If the Danes on that map are placing the origin in the South Caucasus, and their Anatolian neighbors know that they had Indo-European languages empirically and taking into account the geography, those mountains higher than the Alps, it is not reasonable to think that the IE movement was mainly towards Anatolia, Balkans or Greece directly or both, Balkans north of Italy and south-east of France and south of Germany, in addition to other expansions through the Mediterranean that were the basis of the Argaric culture in the Iberian Peninsula? I do not deny that an important branch crossed the Caucasus mountain range or raced by the Caspian Sea as I have seen on some map and gave rise to the Balto-Slavic language and influenced the Germanic languages partially, since its R1B and being a centum language indicate its proximity to the Anatolian-Greek-Italian-Celtic languages.

 

[Ernekar]

Exactly those same most of archaeologists today were all part of the "Pots not People" dogma from 5 years ago. Their view has been wiped off the table by modern DNA research. That gives a pretty good indication on how to place such opinions.



See above.

No their view hasn't been wiped off any table. The whole meaning of "pots not people" was that material culture doesn't always equal people.
So just because of the fact that ancient DNA can show that sometimes pots are indeed brought by people, it does not invalidate the point that pots are not always brought by people. In fact ancient DNA supports "pots not people" in some cases.
Like in the case that you quite elegantly ignored(my example with the bell beakers). Was the Bell beaker phenomenon brought by people everywhere? No, it wasn't. So "Bell beaker pots, not bell beaker people", in other words "pots not people" still holds, and in the bell beaker case "pots not people" has even been confirmed by genetics.

So all unsampled material complexes are nothing but "pots", until we sample the people behind them.

You can probably not find one single archaeologist (who is still alive) who promotes the idea that a change in material culture always means that there was a migration. Only hobbyists say such things, because they don't have the attention span to read anthropological or archaeological theory.