Reduction of Yamnaya-like ancestry in North Europe since CWC

Ygorcs

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Reading papers and seeing models of DNA ancestry that some people have made in blogs and stuff, I have noticed this clear trend of steeply decreasing ancestry in most North European populations where CWC once existed compared to the ~75% Yamnaya-like that the CWC had. The highest scores often found are ~50%. I have just tried modeling the ancestry of modern Germans, CWC Germans and MN French just to see if the results of the tests are plausible. The Yamnaya_Samara ancestry appear at ~73% for CWC Germans, 0% for MN French - and ~52% for modern Germans. The EEF (using a German_MN sample) ancestry increased from ~27% to ~48%. What would've caused that big decrease in steppe ancestry? Just the Central European BB influx and eventual preponderance? Or what else? I mean, if the Central European Rhine-ish BB were ~50% EEF and ~50% Yamnaya-like, they would have had to have virtually wiped out the entire CWC population of Germany for that nearly 50% Steppe + 50% EEF result to happen. I think that's most unlikely. Even a very dramatic genetic replacement like 70% BB would still leave the population with ~57-58% of Yamnaya-like ancestry. Is it possible that later Celts, more admixed with other EEF-enriched peoples nearer to Southern Europe, brought some of that ancestry back to the north, or something like that?
 
Reading papers and seeing models of DNA ancestry that some people have made in blogs and stuff, I have noticed this clear trend of steeply decreasing ancestry in most North European populations where CWC once existed compared to the ~75% Yamnaya-like that the CWC had. The highest scores often found are ~50%. I have just tried modeling the ancestry of modern Germans, CWC Germans and MN French just to see if the results of the tests are plausible. The Yamnaya_Samara ancestry appear at ~73% for CWC Germans, 0% for MN French - and ~52% for modern Germans. The EEF (using a German_MN sample) ancestry increased from ~27% to ~48%. What would've caused that big decrease in steppe ancestry? Just the Central European BB influx and eventual preponderance? Or what else? I mean, if the Central European Rhine-ish BB were ~50% EEF and ~50% Yamnaya-like, they would have had to have virtually wiped out the entire CWC population of Germany for that nearly 50% Steppe + 50% EEF result to happen. I think that's most unlikely. Even a very dramatic genetic replacement like 70% BB would still leave the population with ~57-58% of Yamnaya-like ancestry. Is it possible that later Celts, more admixed with other EEF-enriched peoples nearer to Southern Europe, brought some of that ancestry back to the north, or something like that?
Maybe there was just other people in the area too in the bronze age, which has not yet showed up on the ancient DNA record.
The two groups could then have mixed later on.
Another possibility is that EEF admixture had a rise in scandinavia in 1500-2000 AD due to German families from further south taking over most of the nobility. Those german nobles could have had more EEF admixture than the scandinavian commoners. The fact that most scandianvian aristocratic families descend from germans is well known and well documented. Even the Danish and Norwegian royal families descend from a family in northern Germany. The genetic composition of those aristocrats has not yet documented afaik, but knowing that they came from the south it is safe to assume that they had more EEF that the common scandinavians.
 
The gradual south-to-north migrations of Hallstatt, Jastorf and Przeworsk-Zarubinsky cultures could have caused a shift in that direction perhaps. I think Reich mentioned a significant southern shift taking place in Iron Age Britain. If it wasn't the Romans it's got to be Hallstatt.
 
Reading papers and seeing models of DNA ancestry that some people have made in blogs and stuff, I have noticed this clear trend of steeply decreasing ancestry in most North European populations where CWC once existed compared to the ~75% Yamnaya-like that the CWC had. The highest scores often found are ~50%. I have just tried modeling the ancestry of modern Germans, CWC Germans and MN French just to see if the results of the tests are plausible. The Yamnaya_Samara ancestry appear at ~73% for CWC Germans, 0% for MN French - and ~52% for modern Germans. The EEF (using a German_MN sample) ancestry increased from ~27% to ~48%. What would've caused that big decrease in steppe ancestry? Just the Central European BB influx and eventual preponderance? Or what else? I mean, if the Central European Rhine-ish BB were ~50% EEF and ~50% Yamnaya-like, they would have had to have virtually wiped out the entire CWC population of Germany for that nearly 50% Steppe + 50% EEF result to happen. I think that's most unlikely. Even a very dramatic genetic replacement like 70% BB would still leave the population with ~57-58% of Yamnaya-like ancestry. Is it possible that later Celts, more admixed with other EEF-enriched peoples nearer to Southern Europe, brought some of that ancestry back to the north, or something like that?

Nowadays NW Europeans still have about 50% Yamna like ancestry. I guess it’s a matter of blending. When Corded Ware came in they blended (in the end) with for example Funnelbeaker people. These Funnelbeaker people were a ENF/HG mixture.


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which CWC had 75 % Yamna? and is the other 25 % EEF?
the oldest CWC sample in estonia even had 100 % Yamna and no EEF, but all other sapmles, soon after had EEF admixed
what about the Scandinavian CWC? did they also have 75 % Yamna?
CWC reached southern Scandinavia, but what about further north in Scandinavia? wouldn't that have remained EEF to admix with CWC during the Nordic Bronze Age?
CWC was R1a, yet Nordic Bronze Age and Germanic is R1a + R1b-U106 + I1 + I2a-Z161 (the Globular Amphore folks)
 
Nowadays NW Europeans still have about 50% Yamna like ancestry. I guess it’s a matter of blending. When Corded Ware came in they blended (in the end) with for example Funnelbeaker people. These Funnelbeaker people were a ENF/HG mixture.


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Yes, but CWC of Germany had ~75% Yamnaya_Samara and ~25% EEF. That's a far cry from the modern ~50% that you will find basically everywhere in North Europe. I guess that that ~25% EEF in German CWC already accounted for assimilation of former populations of the region, like the Funnelbeaker. I wonder if maybe those ~75% steppe CWC were still lacking admixture with GAC, which seems to have coexisted with CWC for a few centuries without mixing much.
 
which CWC had 75 % Yamna? and is the other 25 % EEF?
the oldest CWC sample in estonia even had 100 % Yamna and no EEF, but all other sapmles, soon after had EEF admixed
what about the Scandinavian CWC? did they also have 75 % Yamna?
CWC reached southern Scandinavia, but what about further north in Scandinavia? wouldn't that have remained EEF to admix with CWC during the Nordic Bronze Age?
CWC was R1a, yet Nordic Bronze Age and Germanic is R1a + R1b-U106 + I1 + I2a-Z161 (the Globular Amphore folks)

The sample I looked was from Germany, but I guess the average CWC is held to have had ~70-80% Yamnaya-like ancestry and almost all of the rest EEF.

Yes, I think it's possible that some EEF "islands" amidst CWC territory possibly got totally absorbed and admixed into the later BA and IA populations. I wonder if those CWC samples with ~25% already had mixed with GAC or not. If not, then the eventual full absorption of GAC people might account for much of that reduction in Yamnaya_Samara ancestry. Besides, BB influx and eventually expansion of Celts from South Germany/Austria/Switzerland might've further increased EEF ancestry.
 
The sample I looked was from Germany, but I guess the average CWC is held to have had ~70-80% Yamnaya-like ancestry and almost all of the rest EEF.

Yes, I think it's possible that some EEF "islands" amidst CWC territory possibly got totally absorbed and admixed into the later BA and IA populations. I wonder if those CWC samples with ~25% already had mixed with GAC or not. If not, then the eventual full absorption of GAC people might account for much of that reduction in Yamnaya_Samara ancestry. Besides, BB influx and eventually expansion of Celts from South Germany/Austria/Switzerland might've further increased EEF ancestry.

BB was most probably a Single Grave derivate (see Eurogenes blog). Of course the blending with(in) the Neolithic pockets (TRB) was not at once, but between LN/EBA and now......


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But if most of Central and Southeastern Europe at the beginning of Bronze Age were shifted towards CHG or Steppe, effectively, where an EEF resurgence could come from? The Alps really sounds like the only plausible hypothesis. I think we already discussed of this a little bit with some people, but, it's possible that Hallstatt and La Tène were a merge of BB like Steppic people and EEF Otzi one. If i recall, one Hallstatt sample from few years ago was y-dna G2a.
 
But if most of Central and Southeastern Europe at the beginning of Bronze Age were shifted towards CHG or Steppe, effectively, where an EEF resurgence could come from? The Alps really sounds like the only plausible hypothesis. I think we already discussed of this a little bit with some people, but, it's possible that Hallstatt and La Tène were a merge of BB like Steppic people and EEF Otzi one. If i recall, one Hallstatt sample from few years ago was y-dna G2a.

Alps and Carpathians essentially. It's where the powerful LBA/IA chiefdoms are concentratee, radiating northwards into Germany and Bohemia. They exploited the extensive mine networks in the mountainous regions, and controlled the amber trade with the Baltic region as well as the east Mediterranean trade. Importantly, they were also the best sword smiths in the world at the time. European Naue II swords are found all over the Aegean and the Near East.
 
But if most of Central and Southeastern Europe at the beginning of Bronze Age were shifted towards CHG or Steppe, effectively, where an EEF resurgence could come from? The Alps really sounds like the only plausible hypothesis. I think we already discussed of this a little bit with some people, but, it's possible that Hallstatt and La Tène were a merge of BB like Steppic people and EEF Otzi one. If i recall, one Hallstatt sample from few years ago was y-dna G2a.

I guess Hallstatt/La Tene didn't had that much genetic influence on the CW territory of Northern Europe.
 
The case of Britain illustrates the survival and expansion of non-GAC farmer ancestry:

U7zZS1M.png
 
The case of Britain illustrates the survival and expansion of non-GAC farmer ancestry:

URL]

Interesting! Indeed. But Hallstatt must have beard some LBK Stuttgart like ancestry doesn't it?
The postion of Iberia CH is unsure is this Anatolian Farmer + WHG and/or some drift?
 
Interesting! Indeed. But Hallstatt must have beard some LBK Stuttgart like ancestry doesn't it?
The postion of Iberia CH is unsure is this Anatolian Farmer + WHG and/or some drift?

It would be interesting to include LBK for sure. But Iberia_CA also colonized the alpine zone as can be seen in Remedello for instance.
 
It would be interesting to know what Neolithic EEF groups/ancestry survived or died out Post-Chalcolithic.
 
It would be interesting to include LBK for sure. But Iberia_CA also colonized the alpine zone as can be seen in Remedello for instance.

Yes and It's complicated, these are 'our' figures with a G25 model (Ph2ter/Anthrogenica) North Dutch. My mother is from a TRB pocket, father is more 'Anglo-Saxon' (the originals ;) influenced.

Norhener


STEPPE-Eneolithic,38.6
FARMERS-Balkans_Neolithic,21
FARMERS-Iberia_Neolithic,19
HUNTERS-WHG,11.8
HUNTERS-SHG,9.6


[1] "distance%=5.0813"


Dad


STEPPE-Eneolithic,41.6
FARMERS-Iberia_Neolithic,23.8
FARMERS-Balkans_Neolithic,18.2
HUNTERS-WHG,12.2
HUNTERS-SHG,4.2


[1] "distance%=4.842"


Mom


STEPPE-Eneolithic,33
FARMERS-Iberia_Neolithic,26.6
HUNTERS-SHG,17.6
FARMERS-Balkans_Neolithic,16.2
HUNTERS-WHG,6.6
 
It would be interesting to know what Neolithic EEF groups/ancestry survived or died out Post-Chalcolithic.

I think there are two groups especially worth looking at: the oft-mentioned Baden-Carpathian groups which probably survived in Unetice, and the in the English literature seldom treated Pfahlbauten groups around the Alps. I believe the latter will be relevant for Western Europe in particular, and they'll probably be related to French and Iberian LN settlers.
 
So, using nMonte and a database of ancient and modern samples, I tried many models of ancestry for Germany CWC people. Unlike what I have previously read as a hypothesis, a mix of basically Balkans_Chalcolithic + Ukraine_N or a mix of Balkans_Chalcolithic + Ukraine_N + Ukraine_GAC both don't work at all (too high distance rate).

Importantly, all the models (no exceptions) with a much lower (<2%) distance need to have Yamnaya to work (not any other earlier or later steppe sample, far less WHG-like or EHG-like sources to its north). Much more interesting is the fact that the best models all involve Ukraine_GAC as the main source of EEF ancestry in CWC, not EEF of Poland (GAC or TRB), Germany (Germany_MN or Alberstedt_LN) or Sweden (TRB). At least for German CWC it's interesting that TRB (from Poland and from Sweden) always yields 0% if you include Ukraine_GAC. If you include it, too, Poland_GAC yields 0% too.

The best combination of ancestral sources (using several Yamnaya sources as possibilities) I could model and test (distance% = 1.2744) was (for German CWC): 63.5% Yamnaya_Kalmykia, 23.7% Ukraine_GAC, 10.8% Yamnaya_Bulgaria, Narva_Lithuania 2.0%

.
Curiously, I tried the same model, using several population references, for Bell Beaker France with lots of steppe ancestry, and its results (also reasonably close - ditance% = 1.1063) are very different from those of German CWC. Would that really be likely if, as Eurogenes thinks, Central European BB were basically a branch of CWC + extra EEF? The results were: Poland_GAC 41%, Yamnaya_Kalmykia 27.5%, Yamnaya_Karagash 15%, Yamnaya_Ukraine 15%, Narva_Lithuania 1.3%, Ukraine_GAC 0.2%. Notice: Poland_GAC instead of Ukraine_GAC as the closest proxy of EEF; and a combination of Yamnaya sources (not including Yamnaya_Bulgaria) instead of almost exclusively Kalmykia+Bulgaria in German CWC.

What do you think those resuls may indicate?

If I'm not making some huge mistake (maybe overfitting?), then it seems like the CWC got almost all their EEF along the way even before mixing with local LN groups like TRB around Germany (if they eventually did, I don't know). And it also seems to have got just a little bit more WHG-shifted than what would derive from a simple Yamnaya + GAC mix, possibly owing to the route it took to spread westward in North Europe.
 
I would say, when warmer times returned (and there were more of it than colder periods) pockets of existing farmer communities recover numbers in population faster than CWC. Also, there might have been movement of farming communities from south to north for the same reason. At times of CWC Northern Europe wasn't populated much. So I guess there was room for peaceful farmer migrations North, without typical conquest migration which would register by "scorched earth".

I've checked the numbers and it seems that EEF was rising steadily from CWC through Unetice LBA/BB to Iron Age. In Iron Age I can see also the Caucasian/Anatolian/Armenian farmer component rising in Eastern and South Europe.
 
So, using nMonte and a database of ancient and modern samples, I tried many models of ancestry for Germany CWC people. Unlike what I have previously read as a hypothesis, a mix of basically Balkans_Chalcolithic + Ukraine_N or a mix of Balkans_Chalcolithic + Ukraine_N + Ukraine_GAC both don't work at all (too high distance rate).

Importantly, all the models (no exceptions) with a much lower (<2%) distance need to have Yamnaya to work (not any other earlier or later steppe sample, far less WHG-like or EHG-like sources to its north). Much more interesting is the fact that the best models all involve Ukraine_GAC as the main source of EEF ancestry in CWC, not EEF of Poland (GAC or TRB), Germany (Germany_MN or Alberstedt_LN) or Sweden (TRB). At least for German CWC it's interesting that TRB (from Poland and from Sweden) always yields 0% if you include Ukraine_GAC. If you include it, too, Poland_GAC yields 0% too.

The best combination of ancestral sources (using several Yamnaya sources as possibilities) I could model and test (distance% = 1.2744) was (for German CWC): 63.5% Yamnaya_Kalmykia, 23.7% Ukraine_GAC, 10.8% Yamnaya_Bulgaria, Narva_Lithuania 2.0%

.
Curiously, I tried the same model, using several population references, for Bell Beaker France with lots of steppe ancestry, and its results (also reasonably close - ditance% = 1.1063) are very different from those of German CWC. Would that really be likely if, as Eurogenes thinks, Central European BB were basically a branch of CWC + extra EEF? The results were: Poland_GAC 41%, Yamnaya_Kalmykia 27.5%, Yamnaya_Karagash 15%, Yamnaya_Ukraine 15%, Narva_Lithuania 1.3%, Ukraine_GAC 0.2%. Notice: Poland_GAC instead of Ukraine_GAC as the closest proxy of EEF; and a combination of Yamnaya sources (not including Yamnaya_Bulgaria) instead of almost exclusively Kalmykia+Bulgaria in German CWC.

What do you think those resuls may indicate?

If I'm not making some huge mistake (maybe overfitting?), then it seems like the CWC got almost all their EEF along the way even before mixing with GAC and TRB groups (if they eventually did, I don't know). And it also seems to have got just a little bit more WHG-shifted than what would derive from a simple Yamnaya + GAC mix, possibly owing to the route it took to spread westward in North Europe.

Of course they mixed with TRB Neolithic the TRB genes didn’t evaporate. CW and BB lived in the same area as the TRB!


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