Ancient genomes from Caucasus inc. Maykop

[Ygorcs]

the Olalde Bell Beaker paper shows the expansion from Central Europe to the British Isles of R1b-L21 4.5 ka
around the same time R1b-U106 seems to have expanded into the Netherlands, northern Germany and south-Scandinavia
later expansions, as Unetice and urnfield also originated in the Carpathian Basin

my view is that R1b-L151 was in the Carpathian Basin, with 4.8 ka
and that from there the Italo-Celtic languages dispersed
https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-L151/

in South-Scandinavia R1b-U106 merged with CWC R1a and I1 with TMRCA 4.6 ka from where later on Nordic Bronze Age and ultimately the Germanic tribes developped

as for Armenian, Greek and Albanian, I'd guess it originates from late Yamna which ended when climate deterioriated on the steppe with 4.2 ka climatic event
they would have been in contact with early Sintashta

I agree with your views, that also pretty much sums up my impressions on the later expansion of IEs in Europe. Thanks for the nice explanation. However, those facts, if they happened as we think, wouldn't have any direct relationship with that supposed (by Olympus Mons) "Balkan PIE", because if I understood him correctly he assumes that variant of PIE would've arrived after the Shulaveri-Shomu expulsion/dispersal, some 6.5-6.9 kya. That would be about a much earlier expansion (of languages and also Y-DNA) still in the Neolithic, not some Bronze Age developments. That's just too early, from a linguistic perspective, to date any of the extant IE branches now spoken in Europe, none of them AFAIK looks like they had diverged more than 2000 years before than the others and actually derive from a "sister language" to the kind of PIE that gave birth to the other branches. That assumption could fit the weird case of Anatolian IE, but not Italo-Celtic or Germanic in comparison with Greek, Balto-Slavic or Indo-Iranian.

 

[Angela]

IF the "origin" of PIE is in or south of the Caucasus, and the stream leading to the Anatolian languages, or rather the people speaking it, never left for the steppe, then even the "Royal Hittites" would of course have no or extremely minimal EHG.

Of course, it could also be that the origin was in the south, but the Anatolian languages spread from the steppe later. Then the question would be did it disperse via the Balkans or south through the Caucasus.

 

[Angela]

IF the "origin" of PIE is in or south of the Caucasus, and the stream leading to the Anatolian languages, or rather the people speaking it, never left for the steppe, then even the "Royal Hittites" would of course have no or extremely minimal EHG.

Of course, it could also be that the origin was in the south, but the Anatolian languages spread from the steppe later. Then the question would be did it disperse via the Balkans or south through the Caucasus.

One of my problems with the hypothesis that the Anatolian languages spread from the steppe via the Balkans is precisely their age. Where were the "Anatolian" speakers all that time that they didn't come into contact with other IE speakers, with the wheel and on and on?

Also, yes, Anthony traces them to the Balkans, but where is the archaeological trail from there to Anatolia. I remember combing through Anthony's book as well as all the papers I could find, and so far as I know there is no specific archaeological trail in that direction. In fact, it goes the other way.

If there was a reflux south through the Caucasus, then we should find SOME EHG somewhere in Anatolia from the proper (and old) time period, it seems to me, or it starts to look like special pleading.

Armenian is, of course, an entirely separate issue.

 

[ROS]

Ask the academic scholars and also the amateurs. What is the relationship between Caucasian iberia and western iberia?

 

[Ygorcs]

what if maikop got its ideas through contact with steppe people? in this case we can't use popgen anymore to search for the PIEs.

I really doubt ancient people - before strong centralized states, high horse-riding mobility, official administrative languages, empires and so on - regularly switched their language for another spoken by a foreign population just because of an influence of "ideas" (cultural/economic influence).

Diffusion happens and, in the distant past, must've happened even more usually without complete acculturation (including language shift), except when some significant (in numbers or in power) immigration took plac. (By the way, in the case of the steppes, doesn't much of the influence seem to have come from the west (EEF Europe), not overwhelmingly from the Caucasus?). If that regularly happened, then it'd really be impossible to assume anything about language and culture from paleogenetics.

Let's just see the oldest examples of the "ancient world" we know, from the Middle East, and how even regions in profound contact and mutual influence between themselves retained not just different languages, but several unrelated language families for a very long time until the later large empires.

 

[MOESAN]

I agree with Ygorcs; this new "religion" of languages accelerated shifts does not hold too much in my mind; shifts occurred and are documented but they took long time with long periods of bilinguism, more or less balanced between the two languages; and even if PIE became a 'lingua franca' for trade (it's true the steppes cultures exchanges seem having been long during and wide and sometimes both ways), it's no more sure the transmission of it took place in the same time in every place; our chronologic perspective is a bit flattened I think - Breton language, supposed imponed upon latin speakers, was surely helped by gaulish relative permanence in far West (not the USA!), and spite the lost of relations with Celtic Britain after the 1000's, spite the light weight of this weak "sub-state" in front of Franks Empire and following french states, Breton was still the natutal language of most of western Bretons until the 1950's... even if the centralized R?publique made its best to eradicate it. What I say about "national" language is true with dialects too.

 

[MOESAN]

Here and elsewhere I see oppositions (interesting in some way) about papers newly published; OK; but I find the sampling a bit scarce, and sometimes someones have doubts about the cultural precise affiliation of some samples (the Hittites too); the number of "borderline" or "outsiders" in the samples of diverse ancient DNA studies shows us these cultures were not locked in, at least concerning females -
the relatively clear existance of mating exchanges between cultures could explain the diminution of traces of EHG in some IE later cultures, but it's true the argument could be used in the other way: low presence of EHG DNA in Transcaucasus or SWCA mediated by females, so without supposed Steppes domination (males) nor language transmission from Steppes (I never believed in the "mother's language transmission" before proof...

 

[Ailchu]

I really doubt ancient people - before strong centralized states, high horse-riding mobility, official administrative languages, empires and so on - regularly switched their language for another spoken by a foreign population just because of an influence of "ideas" (cultural/economic influence).

well yes i doubt it too. but if people look at the possibibilty that maikop influenced the steppe in this way just through contact then we also have to consider the opposite a possibility.

 

[Ygorcs]

well yes i doubt it too. but if people look at the possibibilty that maikop influenced the steppe in this way just through contact then we also have to consider the opposite a possibility.

Yes, you're right. Anyway, I can only say that a very sensible picture is slowly emerging to me for a comparably early (Late Neolithic) origin of PIE, at least in its broadest strokes: before 5th milennium BC (Khvalynsk), mostly EHG; signs of a comparably late arrival of the ANF found in significant % in the contemporary Caucasus, when there was already a lot of CHG; and after ~4000-3500 BC, not much profound changes in the autosomal makeup of the steppe. If PIE came from Transcaucasia to the steppes, then the moment that looks more likely to have occurred is ~5000-4000 BC.

The real missing link which still needs to be found is explained mostly involves the Anatolian IE, whether it in fact split even earlier than mainstream linguists assumed (before the Indo-Europeanization of the steppe, so roughly ~5000 BC), or if came centuries later from somewhere in the steppes and we haven't found good signs of that immigration yet, partly because Hittites and the place they were living in are attested only so much later.

 

[ROS]

At least the Hittite is attested, but from when there is empirical evidence (not hypothesis) of the Indo-European steppe?

 

[Sile]

No i wasn't contradicte myself they make a distinction between Maikop Culture and Maikop Steppe, they are certainly not late arrival, more likely Maikop Culture is a new arrival in steppe.
Maikop doesn't have J1, it's Kura-Araxes that have J1, Maikop y-dna is mostly J2a1 and G2a2a and L in late Maikop. Kura Araxes was related to Maikop Culture, therefore if Kura-Araxes was the culture of the Proto-Anatolian, Hittite would be J1 too or are you suggesting that both were related culture with a totally different language, saying Maikop is PIE and Kura-Araxes Proto-Semitic ? at the end of the day, everything gonna go contrary to the PIE hypothesis coming from the south.

There is no reason to avoid the Herrera 2012 paper on south caucasus when we have these markers........from Neolithic patrilineal signals indicate that the Armenian plateau was repopulated by agriculturalists.

.
and the link below cannot be IE source.
.
This leaves modern armenia and modern Georgia as the only possible site for IE if one was to say "from south caucasus "

.
The bottom turkey map is the area of SAS on the haplogroups above ............clearly we see R1b and is it Hatti/Hittite lands ?

 

[epoch]

IF the "origin" of PIE is in or south of the Caucasus, and the stream leading to the Anatolian languages, or rather the people speaking it, never left for the steppe, then even the "Royal Hittites" would of course have no or extremely minimal EHG.

Of course, it could also be that the origin was in the south, but the Anatolian languages spread from the steppe later. Then the question would be did it disperse via the Balkans or south through the Caucasus.

But then no linguistic, no genetic and no archaeological evidence would need a south of the Caucasus Urheimat. Why then propose one? What problem would it solve that the steppe theory doesn't solve?

 

[halfalp]

I didn't know about that study, thanks.

 

[berun]

the paper states:

the Darkveti-Meshoko Eneolithic culture (analysis label ‘Eneolithic Caucasus’) show
243 mixed ancestry mostly derived from sources related to the Anatolian Neolithic
244 (orange) and CHG/Iran Neolithic (green) in the ADMIXTURE plot (Fig. 2C).

the genetic structure is corresponded with archaeology (from From the Mesolithic to the Chalcolithic in the South Caucasus: New
data from the Bavra Ablari rock shelter):

The first Chalcolithic groups in the North Caucasus are found in the context of the Svobodnoe-
Meshoko-Samok culture, around 4500 BCE.36 Around 4000 BCE, these groups
developed into a new cultural entity, the Majkop culture, whose pottery and metallurgical
production show clear contacts with populations from northern Mesopotamia.37 In the South
Caucasus (Azerbaijan steppes and mid-Kura valley), the same connections with Ubaid
groups are identified in the so-called Leilatepe culture, through similar architecture, funerary
rituals, and ceramic production.

next:

Four individuals from mounds in the grass steppe zone, which are archaeologically
252 associated with the ‘Steppe Maykop’ cultural complex (Supplementary Information
253 1), lack the Anatolian farmer-related component when compared to contemporaneous
254 Maykop individuals from the foothills. Instead

so two options are left: the CHG admixture was done by Mesolithic people or by pionner southern herders with a strong CHG signal.

The Maykop period, represented by twelve individuals from eight Maykop sites
283 (Maykop, n=2; a cultural variant ‘Novosvobodnaya’ from the site Klady, n=4; and
284 Late Maykop, n=6) in the northern foothills appear homogeneous. These individuals
285 closely resemble the preceding Caucasus Eneolithic individuals and present a
286 continuation of the local genetic profile. This ancestry persists in the following
287 centuries at least until ~3100 yBP (1100 calBCE) in the mountains, as revealed by
288 individuals from Kura-Araxes from both the northeast (Velikent, Dagestan) and the
289 South Caucasus (Kaps, Armenia), as well as Middle and Late Bronze Age individuals
290 (e.g. Kudachurt, Marchenkova Gora) from the north. Overall, this Caucasus ancestry
291 profile falls among the ‘Armenian and Iranian Chalcolithic’ individuals and is
292 indistinguishable from other Kura-Araxes individuals (‘Armenian Early Bronze Age’)
293 on the PCA plot (Fig. 2),

without a EHG signal it denies any IE migration to Transcaucasia... no Hittites through the Caucasus then? (other than in a frog leap transit)

4). By modelling Steppe Maykop outliers successfully as a two-way mixture of
370 Steppe Maykop and representatives of the Caucasus cluster (Supplementary Table 3),
371 we can show that these individuals received additional ‘Anatolian and Iranian
372 Neolithic ancestry’, most likely from contemporaneous sources in the south. W

Maykop people was spreading northwards being invaders or being merchants. Both outsiders were male otherwise, being one R1.

Here, we observe an
404 increase in farmer-related ancestry (both Anatolian and Iranian) in our Steppe cluster,
405 ranging from Eneolithic steppe to later groups. In Middle/Late Bronze Age groups
406 especially to the north and east we observe a further increase of Anatolian farmer407
related ancestry consistent with previous studies of the Poltavka, Andronovo,
408 Srubnaya and Sintashta groups23, 27 and reflecting a different process not especially
409 related to events in the Caucasus.

Importantly, our results show a
425 subtle contribution of both Anatolian farmer-related ancestry and WHG-related
426 ancestry (Fig.4; Supplementary Tables 13 and 14), which was likely contributed
427 through Middle and Late Neolithic farming groups from adjacent regions in the West.
428 A direct source of Anatolian farmer-related ancestry can be ruled out (Supplementary
429 Table 15).

this is a game changer, now with EEF WHG EHG and CHG in the play ground to who it's supposed to assign IE to Yamna uh? some people will need to crash their skulls. Additional EEF/WHG ancestry in late steppe cultures must come from Balkans, from Central Europe, no more alternatives, but such Western push is linked to the eastward expansion of BB... (by archaeological dates)

 

[berun]

The Yamnaya 486 individuals from the Caucasus derived the majority of their ancestry from Eneolithic
487 steppe individuals but also received about 16% from Globular Amphora-related
488 farmers

time to crash skulls now; GAC had burial cists and some reused old dolmens/stone kurgans.

 

[epoch]

Maykop people was spreading northwards being invaders or being merchants. Both outsiders were male otherwise, being one R1.

And that is exactly where your theory becomes improbable. R1b is abundant among the Steppe population north of the Caucasus and absent in the Caucasus Maykop.

 

[Olympus Mons]

And that is exactly where your theory becomes improbable. R1b is abundant among the Steppe population north of the Caucasus and absent in the Caucasus Maykop.

And that is exactly where you both get it wrong.
The paper is specifically telling us that maykop was related to chalcolithic south caucasus and not at all with Neolithic transcaucasia (prior to 4900bc) which had a diferent genetic makeup them chalcolithic.
And it should. Even if we don't know the genetic makeup of Shulaveri we pretty much can figure they the only ones in contact with people from the slopes of the great caucasus mountains and georgia plains. Hence the descendentas of kotias klide(CHG).
So pretty much setting the stage for the next paper that will close the loop. The only ones missing in this story are....Shulaveri shomu.

See the hint: shulaveri were mtdna I1, H2a, H15a1a....see where it shows? Mtdna steppe. Got it?

 

[berun]

And that is exactly where your theory becomes improbable. R1b is abundant among the Steppe population north of the Caucasus and absent in the Caucasus Maykop.

In Maykop MAYBE, but un Haji Firuzz and Kura Araxes no.

 

[halfalp]

And that is exactly where you both get it wrong.
The paper is specifically telling us that maykop was related to chalcolithic south caucasus and not at all with Neolithic transcaucasia (prior to 4900bc) which had a diferent genetic makeup them chalcolithic.
And it should. Even if we don't know the genetic makeup of Shulaveri we pretty much can figure they the only ones in contact with people from the slopes of the great caucasus mountains and georgia plains. Hence the descendentas of kotias klide(CHG).
So pretty much setting the stage for the next paper that will close the loop. The only ones missing in this story are....Shulaveri shomu.

See the hint: shulaveri were mtdna I1, H2a, H15a1a....see where it shows? Mtdna steppe. Got it?

Dude we found J2a and J1 in Kura-Araxes and Maikop, the descendants of Kotias Klde and Satsurblia, everything is logic, but in your head what is logic is that R1b should be dominant in neolithic were others lineage are dominant in paleolithic and chalcolithic. I mean just think a little more to your hypothesis... And your mtdna link is away to any response, because how women were spreading in ancient times is pretty obvious by now.

 

[Olympus Mons]

Dude we found J2a and J1 in Kura-Araxes and Maikop, the descendants of Kotias Klde and Satsurblia, everything is logic, but in your head what is logic is that R1b should be dominant in neolithic were others lineage are dominant in paleolithic and chalcolithic. I mean just think a little more to your hypothesis... And your mtdna link is away to any response, because how women were spreading in ancient times is pretty obvious by now.

Your post is too confusing and mix too many mistakes. See ....
https://r1b2westerneurope.blogs.sapo.pt/from-the-ubaid-and-kura-araxes-8426


Secondly,
Understand the *****ed pearl culture (it hides P.r.ick.ed lol ) , prior to arrival of Uruks/Kura-araxes to make Maykop and kick them out is understand the arrival of the Shulaveri to Kuban river running away from the incoming people . But its rare to have a linkage making the connection. this reference is priceless.

see.
https://books.google.pt/books?id=WE...*****ed pearls culture north caucasus&f=false