The spread of 'Steppe' DNA and autosomal best-fit analysis

[Pip]

I completely agree.
Also, in terms of Remedello itself, like Baden, the assumption that they were steppe people came from the fact that their cultures exhibited many of the "hallmarks" of steppe culture. Whether it was a function of the fact that sometimes "pots are indeed just pots", and culture can travel without genes (westward), or a lot of it, like the stelae, might have developed first in the Balkans and then moved east, I don't know.

The core of Remedello DNA looks similar to Balkanic, but from before the Balkans were infused with Caucasian DNA. However, the Stelae look like masculine symbols, and the dominant paternal DNA within Remedello appears to be Megalithic I2. Without taking into account finds elsewhere, this would be suggestive of the Stelae having a Megalithic origin.
We know there were a few odd strands of Steppe cropping up in early southern DNA (El Portalon and Vucedol, which my calculator suggests are related and independent of both Bell Beaker and Yamnaya). Might the Stelae have been picked up by Megalithic people from the very first Steppe adventurers into Southern France/Northern Spain mid 4th millennium BC?
I will calculate some dating estimates for the development of Remedello-like yDNA to see if it mirrors the development of Steppe lineages.

[Pip]

The core of Remedello DNA looks similar to Balkanic, but from before the Balkans were infused with Caucasian DNA. However, the Stelae look like masculine symbols, and the dominant paternal DNA within Remedello appears to be Megalithic I2. Without taking into account finds elsewhere, this would be suggestive of the Stelae having a Megalithic origin.
We know there were a few odd strands of Steppe cropping up in early southern DNA (El Portalon and Vucedol, which my calculator suggests are related and independent of both Bell Beaker and Yamnaya). Might the Stelae have been picked up by Megalithic people from the very first Steppe adventurers into Southern France/Northern Spain mid 4th millennium BC?
I will calculate some dating estimates for the development of Remedello-like yDNA to see if it mirrors the development of Steppe lineages.

My dating estimate for Remedello's yDNA is that it spread down from North Western Europe into Northern/Eastern Spain and Sardinia at roughly the same time that Remedello began early 4th millennium BC (relatively diverse traces of it still exist in both of these locations). Despite its autosomal DNA containing no significant Steppe component, this makes its expansion into South Western Europe roughly contemporary with my estimates of when Steppe-like DNA first moved into Western Europe.

I am wondering whether, despite a lack of substantial admixture, these two sets of people shared cultural traits and perhaps collaborated to any degree.

Are there many cultural features in common between peoples over this yDNA's sphere of influence (early 4th millennium to third millennium BC Northern and Eastern Spain, Po Valley and Sardinia)?

And are any traits clearly shared between these people and early R1b-infused Western/Southern European people such as Bell Beaker, El Portalon and Vucedol?

[halfalp]

Afaik the R1b-rich Iron Gates people were typical Mesolithic 'goddess' worshippers. I don't think there's a link between warriorhood and R1b.

A lot of Sredny Stog sculptures are depicting breasty women that have hands on the pelvis. We shouldn't assume that Pontic Steppe cultures even if related and in relationship, had exactly the same cultural approaches. Even in modern times, some tribes separated from only few miles can have different approaches of life.

[halfalp]

There's actually one in Northern Saudi Arabia of all places (see below), of the same style dated to between 4000 and 3000 BCE(!!!), and supposedly (according to Russian Wikipedia, make of that what you will), the Kemi Oba stelae have links to the Caucasus.



I personally feel that matches well with this speculative map I made, with the origin of this anthropomorphic stelae folk at the point marked by L23:

Problem with your map, it doesn't match any thing that we know. Stelae are not human remains, they are obvious structures. Wich means, if R1b-M269 came to Anatolia from Balkans and that they learn somewhere the Stelae, we would already have some older exemples of stelae in a totally unrelated contexte with the ones from Europe. As we can see in the exemple given by Marko, we have potentially CHG-Steppe population ( Kemi Oba ) and EEF populations ( Remedello, maybe Hamangia ) with the exact same structures. For me it looks like then Stelae might originated somwhere near Eastern Balkans and irradiate to the Pontic Steppe and from there South of the Caucasus. Imo, Eastern Balkans are a very underestimate place for PIE or the " Patriarcal " social stratification, it was directly between the first Balkans Chalcolithic and the Pontic Steppe, it's like been Switzerland between Germany/France and Italy.

Also, how can R1b-Z2103 being both in Eastern Anatolia and Eastern Europe, but dont be the same. If the Yamnaya R1b-Z2103 came from Eastern Anatolia into Eastern Europe, why doesn'it exist anymore in Eastern Anatolia and wasn't found in ancient remains till now?

[Pip]

Also, how can R1b-Z2103 being both in Eastern Anatolia and Eastern Europe, but dont be the same. If the Yamnaya R1b-Z2103 came from Eastern Anatolia into Eastern Europe, why doesn'it exist anymore in Eastern Anatolia and wasn't found in ancient remains till now?

I don't see enough Anatolian in Yamnaya for Z2103 to have developed South West of the Caucasus. It looks to me that some Z2103 was with formative L51 and R1a as it first ventured West and admixed with Balkan people, some became Yamnaya and flourished before being mostly replaced by resurgent R1a, and some re-emerged from bolt-hole bottlenecks in the Caucasus.
When populations flourish from bottlenecks (like L51), it is unlikely we will find them in ancient remains anywhere. The only data we can work from is (I) where they most likely developed first (based on where they are diverse), (2) where similar autosomal DNA and mtDNA existed, and (3) where their closest relatives have been found.

[Pip]

Any information on cultural links between South/West European Chalcolithic I2a1 (North/East Spain, Po valley, Sardinia) and R1b (Bell Beaker, El Portalon, Croatian Vucedol)?

[halfalp]

I don't see enough Anatolian in Yamnaya for Z2103 to have developed South West of the Caucasus. It looks to me that some Z2103 was with formative L51 and R1a as it first ventured West and admixed with Balkan people, some became Yamnaya and flourished before being mostly replaced by resurgent R1a, and some re-emerged from bolt-hole bottlenecks in the Caucasus.
When populations flourish from bottlenecks (like L51), it is unlikely we will find them in ancient remains anywhere. The only data we can work from is (I) where they most likely developed first (based on where they are diverse), (2) where similar autosomal DNA and mtDNA existed, and (3) where their closest relatives have been found.

My point was: You have 2 different R1b-Z2103 populations.

1) Modern Eastern Anatolian Z2103 that shows no ancestry ( or not much ) from Eastern Europe ( or even Steppe ).

2) Prehistoric Eastern European Z2103 that shows no ancestry ( only in peripheric Caucasus ) from Neolithic or Chalcolithic Anatolian.

So why the 1) should count better as an origin for the whole clade? And no gibberish about STR diversity or Basal. I dont believe L23 or Z2103 had a bottleneck in Eastern Anatolia and then propagated to become dominant in Eastern Europe. Such i dont believe L51 had a bottleneck and expand with Eastern Bell Beaker Culture, actually not for the moment. Not until we have Hungarian Yamnaya samples, not until we have Yamnaya samples from the Pripyat River, not until all the challenger cultures or places are samples.

[Elizabeth60]

There's actually one in Northern Saudi Arabia of all places (see below), of the same style dated to between 4000 and 3000 BCE(!!!), and supposedly (according to Russian Wikipedia, make of that what you will), the Kemi Oba stelae have links to the Caucasus.



I personally feel that matches well with this speculative map I made, with the origin of this anthropomorphic stelae folk at the point marked by L23:

If L21 Beakers took that route what happened to their Balkan autosomal dna? They don't have any of it and are very northern genetically i.e. Netherlands and British Beakers. People have to look at autosomal dna.

[Pip]

My point was: You have 2 different R1b-Z2103 populations.

1) Modern Eastern Anatolian Z2103 that shows no ancestry ( or not much ) from Eastern Europe ( or even Steppe ).

2) Prehistoric Eastern European Z2103 that shows no ancestry ( only in peripheric Caucasus ) from Neolithic or Chalcolithic Anatolian.

So why the 1) should count better as an origin for the whole clade? And no gibberish about STR diversity or Basal. I dont believe L23 or Z2103 had a bottleneck in Eastern Anatolia and then propagated to become dominant in Eastern Europe. Such i dont believe L51 had a bottleneck and expand with Eastern Bell Beaker Culture, actually not for the moment. Not until we have Hungarian Yamnaya samples, not until we have Yamnaya samples from the Pripyat River, not until all the challenger cultures or places are samples.

I partly agree, although you actually have many different (not just two) Z2103 populations - unsurprisingly, for a haplogroup that formed rather a long time ago.

Modern East Anatolian Z2103 does indeed show some East European/Steppe - but obviously not a huge amount, as it was most likely subsumed into a majority indigenous Anatolian population several thousand years ago.

Some prehistoric Eastern European Z2103 shows no ancestry from Neolithic West Anatolia, although rather a lot from Neolithic East Anatolia, and some (such as in Vucedol) shows rather a lot of Neolithic West Anatolian.

I would not write off any data (e.g. STR diversity or basal clades) as gibberish; it is all potentially informative.

L52/L151 clearly is a bottleneck. Apart from a solitary individual, all the hundreds of millions of L52 people alive today descend from one single lineage chain that extended (with no extant branching) for 900 years between 3,700BC and 2,800 BC per yfull, and only started developing close to the Bell Beaker period.

Whether we eventually find an L51 sample within Yamnaya is probably irrelevant to today's L51 populations. Unless this sample is also shown to be positive for all of the 12 SNPs in the L52/L151 bottleneck, it will be a dead-end, and not ancestral to anything.

[Pip]

If L21 Beakers took that route what happened to their Balkan autosomal dna? They don't have any of it and are very northern genetically i.e. Netherlands and British Beakers. People have to look at autosomal dna.

I don't have autosomal data for Netherlands or British Beakers, but German Beakers certainly appear to have significant Balkan-derived autosomal DNA; and German and British Beaker yDNA only separated from each other circa 2,500 BC, per yfull's estimates. English L21 Beaker mtDNA also looks similar to North Balkan.

Although if this route for M269 were correct, it would have been pretty circuitous since the Balkans, and could have picked up all sorts of autosomal DNA by the time its L21 subclade reached Britain.

My suggested route for fully-formed L51 to L21 would be Balkans>Moldova>S Poland>SC Germany>N France>Britain (with the L51 bottleneck only really opening up in N France).

[Aaron1981]

I don't have autosomal data for Netherlands or British Beakers, but German Beakers certainly appear to have significant Balkan-derived autosomal DNA; and German and British Beaker yDNA only separated from each other circa 2,500 BC, per yfull's estimates. English L21 Beaker mtDNA also looks similar to North Balkan.

Although if this route for M269 were correct, it would have been pretty circuitous since the Balkans, and could have picked up all sorts of autosomal DNA by the time its L21 subclade reached Britain.

My suggested route for fully-formed L51 to L21 would be Balkans>Moldova>S Poland>SC Germany>N France>Britain (with the L51 bottleneck only really opening up in N France).

The L51+ bottleneck, if you will, could be due to the Yersinia pestis outbreak that caused the downfall of the Neolithic farming communities across Europe (including non agriculturalists like R1b). I don't see why it has anything to do with France, in fact, the data has shown L51+ is well distributed across Europe and isn't linked to any specific region. L11+/P312+/U106+ would all be post-plague and in north-central Europe.

[Pip]

The L51+ bottleneck, if you will, could be due to the Yersinia pestis outbreak that caused the downfall of the Neolithic farming communities across Europe (including non agriculturalists like R1b). I don't see why it has anything to do with France, in fact, the data has shown L51+ is well distributed across Europe and isn't linked to any specific region. L11+/P312+/U106+ would all be post-plague and in north-central Europe.

The bottleneck in extant L52/L151 ended somewhere specific. This might have been in the general vicinity of Northern France or in a location that is ancestral to basal Northern French L51. The reason why I say that the bottleneck really opened up in Northern France is because SNP-specific STR-diversity analysis indicates that nearly every subclade, sub-subclade and sub-sub-subclade of extant L51 coalesces to an estimated origin point there. This would be too much of a coincidence if Northern France were not basal to this process.

In addition to Yersina Pestis, there is probably another reason for this bottleneck, and this is that most of North-Central Europe had become dominated by a single male lineage (R1a-M417), forcing most other populations to re-group outside of the M417 zone.

Of course, the bottleneck opened up fairly rapidly during the mid-3rd millennium BC, with different subclades of L151 distributing themselves across Europe in different directions, including into the M417 zone.

[Ygorcs]

Khvalynsk-like people of mixed yDNA (Suvorovo) arrived in the Western Pontic and admixed with locals to form proto-BB/CW/Vucedol..

What Pontic steppe culture would that "proto-BB/CW/Vucedol" precisely be? And yet unsampled population without a culture much archaeologically distinctive from Sredny Stog, Yamnaya or Cucuteni-Tripolye?

[halfalp]

I partly agree, although you actually have many different (not just two) Z2103 populations - unsurprisingly, for a haplogroup that formed rather a long time ago.

Modern East Anatolian Z2103 does indeed show some East European/Steppe - but obviously not a huge amount, as it was most likely subsumed into a majority indigenous Anatolian population several thousand years ago.

Some prehistoric Eastern European Z2103 shows no ancestry from Neolithic West Anatolia, although rather a lot from Neolithic East Anatolia, and some (such as in Vucedol) shows rather a lot of Neolithic West Anatolian.

I would not write off any data (e.g. STR diversity or basal clades) as gibberish; it is all potentially informative.

L52/L151 clearly is a bottleneck. Apart from a solitary individual, all the hundreds of millions of L52 people alive today descend from one single lineage chain that extended (with no extant branching) for 900 years between 3,700BC and 2,800 BC per yfull, and only started developing close to the Bell Beaker period.

Whether we eventually find an L51 sample within Yamnaya is probably irrelevant to today's L51 populations. Unless this sample is also shown to be positive for all of the 12 SNPs in the L52/L151 bottleneck, it will be a dead-end, and not ancestral to anything.

Imo, most of R1b-L23 and Z2105 from ancient eastern europe are *. So we wouldn't know wich modern reprensentative each one was the ancestor of.

- L584 (including L943) : found mostly in the South Caucasus, Turkey, Iraq and Iran, but also in Poland, Germany and Austria.

- L277.1 : found in Russia, Central Asia, Bulgaria, India and the Middle East (Iraq, Lebanon).

- CTS7822 (including CTS9219) : found in Russia (including Chuvashia), Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, the Balkans, Armenia, Italy, Spain, Britain and Ireland.

- CTS7763 : found in Turkey, Bulgaria and Italy.

- Z2109 : found in Germany and Scotland.

I think Middle-East is too much rooted into the religious and abrahamic, creationist history. " Civilisation " came from there and people want
unconsciously to link it with everything. It's probably one of the most overrated archeological fact, just like China ( when there is Jomon ) and ancient egypt, that is so much rooted into people believes that everything about it, have to be exeptionnal.

[halfalp]

I partly agree, although you actually have many different (not just two) Z2103 populations - unsurprisingly, for a haplogroup that formed rather a long time ago.

Modern East Anatolian Z2103 does indeed show some East European/Steppe - but obviously not a huge amount, as it was most likely subsumed into a majority indigenous Anatolian population several thousand years ago.

Some prehistoric Eastern European Z2103 shows no ancestry from Neolithic West Anatolia, although rather a lot from Neolithic East Anatolia, and some (such as in Vucedol) shows rather a lot of Neolithic West Anatolian.

I would not write off any data (e.g. STR diversity or basal clades) as gibberish; it is all potentially informative.

L52/L151 clearly is a bottleneck. Apart from a solitary individual, all the hundreds of millions of L52 people alive today descend from one single lineage chain that extended (with no extant branching) for 900 years between 3,700BC and 2,800 BC per yfull, and only started developing close to the Bell Beaker period.

Whether we eventually find an L51 sample within Yamnaya is probably irrelevant to today's L51 populations. Unless this sample is also shown to be positive for all of the 12 SNPs in the L52/L151 bottleneck, it will be a dead-end, and not ancestral to anything.

Ok but if this is what you call a bottleneck in that contexte, every subclades is a bottleneck by hitself. Did you ever wondering if R1b-Z2105 existed early in Baltic Neolithic or Balkans Neolithic then had a " bottleneck " in Pontic Steppe?

[Pip]

What Pontic steppe culture would that "proto-BB/CW/Vucedol" precisely be? And yet unsampled population without a culture much archaeologically distinctive from Sredny Stog, Yamnaya or Cucuteni-Tripolye?

I suppose the best identification for the culture would be Suvorovo-Novodanilovka, of which there are many sites. As far as I know, for whatever reason, the only DNA sampling done on them is two mtDNA identifications at one site. I'll leave it for others to distinguish between Suvorovo, Sredny Stog, Yamnaya and Cucuteni cultures. More interesting to me is the implied dating and the genetics.

[Pip]

Imo, most of R1b-L23 and Z2105 from ancient eastern europe are *. So we wouldn't know wich modern reprensentative each one was the ancestor of.

Do you have any specific samples in mind? Most of those I have seen are either of unidentified subclade, or are basal at a point in time when they would already have branched off to a subclade had they been ancestors of modern samples. I suspect that nearly all ancient Steppe samples are dead-end lineages with no known modern representatives.

- L584 (including L943) : found mostly in the South Caucasus, Turkey, Iraq and Iran, but also in Poland, Germany and Austria.

- L277.1 : found in Russia, Central Asia, Bulgaria, India and the Middle East (Iraq, Lebanon).

- CTS7822 (including CTS9219) : found in Russia (including Chuvashia), Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, the Balkans, Armenia, Italy, Spain, Britain and Ireland.

- CTS7763 : found in Turkey, Bulgaria and Italy.

- Z2109 : found in Germany and Scotland.

I think Middle-East is too much rooted into the religious and abrahamic, creationist history. " Civilisation " came from there and people want
unconsciously to link it with everything. It's probably one of the most overrated archeological fact, just like China ( when there is Jomon ) and ancient egypt, that is so much rooted into people believes that everything about it, have to be exeptionnal.

As far as Z2103 goes, I would say the converse is the case. The evidence that much of extant Z2103 coalesces to an origin point in the South Caucasus is based on analysis of modern data, rather than creationist history. You don't need to consciously or unconsciously link this with any preconceptions, but merely to process the data.

I have seen too little data to clearly identify the area in which (the 'bottlenecked') Z2103 formed over what yfull estimates was a 600 year period - my tentative guess is that somewhere around Azov was where its formative process began. But analysis of extant Z2103 suggests its basal branches developed from two main common origin points - East Central Europe and Armenia.

[Pip]

Ok but if this is what you call a bottleneck in that contexte, every subclades is a bottleneck by hitself. Did you ever wondering if R1b-Z2105 existed early in Baltic Neolithic or Balkans Neolithic then had a " bottleneck " in Pontic Steppe?

Indeed, once a SNP forms, it automatically becomes a bottleneck which can broaden out as its various forms emerge. Of course, a 50 year bottleneck is so short that it is misleading to refer to it as such; whereas a 900 year bottleneck in which 12 separate SNPs are ubiquitous to all samples is striking, and suggests a barely-surviving tightly-localised population.

Given the data I have analysed, my best estimate currently is that Z2103 formed in or near the Pontic Steppe and then spread out, with its surviving basal branches only fully forming in East Central Europe and in the Caucasus.

[Pip]

I am still wondering whether similar moves at similar Chalcolithic dates for I2a1 subclades in Spain/Italy/Sardinia and R1b subclades in Spain/France/Croatia are matched by shared cultural traits between their respective communities (El Portalon, East coast Iberian, Remedello, Bell Beaker, Vucedol)?

[markod]

I am still wondering whether similar moves at similar Chalcolithic dates for I2a1 subclades in Spain/Italy/Sardinia and R1b subclades in Spain/France/Croatia are matched by shared cultural traits between their respective communities (El Portalon, East coast Iberian, Remedello, Bell Beaker, Vucedol)?

A likely candidate for this is Atlantic & Nordic Megalithism, initiated most likely by immigrants from the Michelsberg culture (ultimately from the Paris basin).

[Pip]

A likely candidate for this is Atlantic & Nordic Megalithism, initiated most likely by immigrants from the Michelsberg culture (ultimately from the Paris basin).

Yes, Michelsberg does look a likely candidate. Presumably we have no DNA from it? I suspect that fledgling L51 might have had some contact with it mid to late 4th millennium BC, perhaps causing some of its populations to relocate South.

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

Well if they did have Balkan moms and Iberian Megalithic fathers that would be very interesting for sure, and it would provide at least some explanation as to how this very specific tradition spread to Western Europe. As Angela pointed out, many people were convinced that the Remedello guys were steppe immigrants because the stelae are nigh indistinguishable from those on the steppe.

One thing Anthony, Mallory and others didn't take into account is that they appear in Romania before they are adopted in Crimea whence the tradition spreads to the wider steppe region. I believe this to be an unfortunate result of the hyperfocus on the steppe; lots of nuance is lost due to this.

Interesting - do you have a source for a spread of stelae from Romania to the Steppe?

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

My dating estimate for Remedello's yDNA is that it spread down from North Western Europe into Northern/Eastern Spain and Sardinia at roughly the same time that Remedello began early 4th millennium BC (relatively diverse traces of it still exist in both of these locations). Despite its autosomal DNA containing no significant Steppe component, this makes its expansion into South Western Europe roughly contemporary with my estimates of when Steppe-like DNA first moved into Western Europe.

I am wondering whether, despite a lack of substantial admixture, these two sets of people shared cultural traits and perhaps collaborated to any degree.

Are there many cultural features in common between peoples over this yDNA's sphere of influence (early 4th millennium to third millennium BC Northern and Eastern Spain, Po Valley and Sardinia)?

And are any traits clearly shared between these people and early R1b-infused Western/Southern European people such as Bell Beaker, El Portalon and Vucedol?

Two words: metallurgical elite. Check out Los Millares for one example: the society was organised by caste, and was warlike with the earliest Western European metallurgy (which MUST have spread to Los Millares via the Mediterranean as Los Millares is in SOUTHERN Iberia after all). It could easily be the case that the L51 Beaker folk are hiding in Iberia somewhere, and the phylogeny of L51 seems to suggest it.

[markod]

Interesting - do you have a source for a spread of stelae from Romania to the Steppe?

The Hamangia 'goddess' stele is assigned to Cernavoda by Radu Vulpe, which seems to predate Kemi-Oba by a bit.

The latter culture is more interesting however, because the stelae diffuse onto the steppe from Crimea not via the Balkans.

Mallory's map:

[markod]

Yes, Michelsberg does look a likely candidate. Presumably we have no DNA from it? I suspect that fledgling L51 might have had some contact with it mid to late 4th millennium BC, perhaps causing some of its populations to relocate South.

I think we do - 3 male samples from the Blätterhöhle site. According to Genetiker they're 2x R1b-V88 and 1x I2a-L880 (the latter is if amateurs are to be believed specific to Northern France, I'm not sure how true this is though).