Who were the basal Eurasians?

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I know populations like EEF, WHG, EHG, ANE, CHG, Natufian, IRN_Ganj_Dareh and hunter gatherers from Anatolia, but I have seen people talking about 'basal Eurasians' and I was more curious to understand if there is a basal population for all other Western Eurasians .


If anyone wants to help, thanks
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_Eurasian

Basal Eurasian is a hypothetical lineage,[1] which exists in greatest amount among ancient Near East individuals.[2] Basal Eurasians may have been present in the Near East, as anatomically modern humans resided in the Levant approximately 100,000 years ago and African-related tools in Arabia were likely developed by modern humans;[3] hence, they may have settled in the Levant or Arabia.[4] The areas of the Near East where Basal Eurasians resided may have been areas where contact with Neanderthals, who were known to have lived in West Eurasia, were not made.[5]
Basal Eurasians are the sibling group that diverged from the main lineage of all other non-African groups[6] (e.g., Australian Aborigines, New Guineans,[7] Europeans, East Asians[8]), prior to their divergence from one another.[6] The admixture of the main lineage of all other non-Africans with Neanderthals likely occurred 50,000-60,000 years ago, after it diverged from Basal Eurasians.[9]
The scenario of a non-Neanderthal-admixed modern human population, which is basal to other Eurasians, and resided in Africa, is plausible.[9] In particular, North Africa is a strong candidate as a location for the emergence of Basal Eurasians as it shares notable connection with Eurasia.[10] Natufians, who share craniometric affinity with North Africans or Sub-Saharan Africans, and were of the Y-chromosomal haplogroup E, which likely originated in Africa, are of Basal Eurasian ancestry.[9] Basal Eurasians had little to possibly no Neanderthal admixture.[9] However, Natufians do not share a greater amount of alleles with Sub-Saharan Africans than other ancient Eurasians, and the Basal Eurasian ancestry in Natufians is consistent with originating from the same population as Neolithic Iranians and Mesolithic Iranians.[9] Mesolithic Iranians (66±13%), Neolithic Iranians (48±6%), and Epipaleolithic Natufians (44±8% or 63%[11]) share Basal Eurasian ancestry.[12] Another estimate given for Holocene-era Near Easterners (e.g., Mesolithic Caucasian Hunter Gatherers, Mesolithic Iranians, Neolithic Iranians, Natufians) is that they possess up to 50% Basal Eurasian ancestry.[10] Additionally, while the Taforalt individuals were considered likely direct descendants of Basal Eurasians, they were shown to not be genetically closer to Basal Eurasians than Holocene-era Iranians.[10]
High levels of Basal Eurasian ancestry were found in ancient Middle Eastern genomes, which negatively correlated with Neanderthal ancestry.[1] Basal Eurasians may have less Neanderthal ancestry than other ancestral Eurasian lineages, and the extent to which Basal Eurasian ancestry is present may explain the extent to which Neanderthal ancestry is present in Middle Eastern genomes.[1] For example, a high level of Basal Eurasian or Sub-Saharan African ancestry could be the underlying reason for the low level of Neanderthal ancestry in Qatari Bedouin in comparison to Europeans or other Middle Eastern populations.[1] The most parsimonious explanations for similar or less Neanderthal introgression in Middle Eastern populations, compared to other Eurasian populations, are the presence of Sub-Saharan African ancestry as well as the presence of Basal Eurasian ancestry, which has little to no signatures of Neanderthal introgression.[1] Bedouin, who have the greatest amount of autochthonous Arab genetic ancestry, may be the direct descendants of Basal Eurasians.[13]
Early European Farmers (EEFs), who had some Western European Hunter-Gatherer-related ancestry and originated in the Near East, also derive approximately 44% of their ancestry from Basal Eurasians.[4]
Ust’-Ishim is an approximately 45,000 year old Eurasian without Basal Eurasian ancestry.[8] The later Villabruna Cluster of Western Hunter Gatherers do not have high levels of Basal Eurasian ancestry.[8]
 
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the earliest Basal Eurasian is found in the Dzudzuana cave genome, 26 ka Georgia, Transcaucasia
they had 72 % WHG admixed with 28 % Basal Eurasian
from there this Dzudzuana genome spread into the Levant and into Central Anatolia
later CHG formed as a mixture of Dzudzuana with ANE or EHG
 
Hopefully not too off topic (and thus still useful), as we leaving the Paleolithic, and move into the Neolithic period, more specific information can be learned about basal populations of western Europe. Though perhaps not as academically precise, such groups, can have great genetic interest, as it can at times connect the discussion to living peoples.

I did a pretty thorough study of Welsh Y-DNA haplogroups. Using older, pre-Norman Welsh surnames, I collected 228 haplogroups from FTDNA Surname Projects, then studied their modern distribution and likely paths into Wales. Within this context, I encountered a light scattering of participants who might qualify as a basal Welsh/Brythonic population. This group is Haplogroup I-FGC15071.

I-M170 > P215 >> L460 > P214 > M223 > CTS616 > FGC15071

This haplogroup appears to be part of the ancient Neolithic peoples of Britain. YFull dates FGC15071 at over 10,000 year ago. As discussed on other parts of this forum and other parts of the web, this haplogroup may have been in Britain by some 8,000 years ago. In studying the Bronze Age "transformation" of northwest Europe, Olalde et al 2018 found sub-FGC15071 branches as old as 4820±34 years ago, with skeletons carbon dated generally in the 4600-4800 years ago range from Gloucestershire and Derbyshire, England and Argyll and Orkney, Scotland.

On his page "Haplogroups of Neolithic Farmers", Maciamo mentions other specific Neolithic Y-DNA and mtDNA groups that might be of interest, though focusing more on central and eastern Europe/western Asia (sorry I can't post links as yet, still being a junior member).
 
latest info on BE
 

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The Basal Eurasians are to archeogenetics what dark energy and and dark matter are to cosmology. If we can't explain something, let's just make up a new force, form of matter or, in this case, a ghost population. The BEs are defined by the lack of Neanderthal admixture, yet no sample of this proposed population has been discovered so far. I would argue that there was a bigger diversity of different hunter-gatherers in the Middle East. Some papers mention a "West-Eurasian Unknown HG population" or "Unknown HGs" (another made-up category) but there is a case for a far greater diversity of genetically distinct groups, at least in the Holocene.

The tree that bicicleur 2 posted is from this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10781627/

I don't claim to be qualified to pass a judgement but it doesn't look like they discovered anything new. But hey, you gotta publish as much as possible to justify your existence.
 
The tree that bicicleur 2 posted is from this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10781627/

I made a thread on this paper : https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...st-glacial-western-eurasia.45006/#post-677973

and there are some threads on related papers as well :


and



I found all 3 papers very interesting.
 
The Basal Eurasians are to archeogenetics what dark energy and and dark matter are to cosmology. If we can't explain something, let's just make up a new force, form of matter or, in this case, a ghost population. The BEs are defined by the lack of Neanderthal admixture, yet no sample of this proposed population has been discovered so far. I would argue that there was a bigger diversity of different hunter-gatherers in the Middle East. Some papers mention a "West-Eurasian Unknown HG population" or "Unknown HGs" (another made-up category) but there is a case for a far greater diversity of genetically distinct groups, at least in the Holocene.

The tree that bicicleur 2 posted is from this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10781627/

I don't claim to be qualified to pass a judgement but it doesn't look like they discovered anything new. But hey, you gotta publish as much as possible to justify your existence.
There is more about Basal Eurasian than only the lack of Neanderthal DNA.
The Basal Eurasian DNA shares all the DNA with the Africans prior to the split with Eurasian DNA, yet it does not have any DNA specific to East Eurasian nor Common West Eurasian.

In other words, it split from the Africans together with the other Eurasians, but after that, it also split from the other Eurasians prior to their admixture with Neanderthals. And yes, it does not exist any more in it's unadmixed form, that branch went extinct.
 
There is more about Basal Eurasian than only the lack of Neanderthal DNA.
The Basal Eurasian DNA shares all the DNA with the Africans prior to the split with Eurasian DNA, yet it does not have any DNA specific to East Eurasian nor Common West Eurasian.

In other words, it split from the Africans together with the other Eurasians, but after that, it also split from the other Eurasians prior to their admixture with Neanderthals. And yes, it does not exist any more in it's unadmixed form, that branch went extinct.

The way I see it, the BEs were just what the designation attributed to them suggests: basal to all Eurasians. And they must have been a reasonably diverse bunch already. Speaking from a Y-DNA side, they would have had remnants of CT and of course its descendants CF, DE and F. The confusion stems from an epistemological problem on the one hand and the non-existence of a BE sample on the other. How can those East Eurasians belonging to haplogroup D, the sister clade of E, not have any BE ancestry? Then you have the claim that the WHGs have no BE admixture when Dzudzuana itself, this alleged core West-Eurasian population, supposedly bears up to 20% BE ancestry, if memory serves. People are playing around with computer models and presenting all kinds of contradictory and confusing results with incredible self-assurance because the "data says so." And there isn't even any data on those hypothetical BEs to distinguish them from other Eurasians. It also may turn out that what people call BEs are just basal West-Eurasians.

Remember how the first farmers in Europe were associated with migrants from Mesopotamia or the Levant? It took only a few years to get a radically different view when it was discovered that the first farmers in Europe descended from a completely different population, the Anatolian Neolithic Farmers from Western Anatolia.

Let's see if any BE samples are ever found but I think we have reason to assume that we're literally chasing ghosts here.
 
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Maybe whgs were just more neanderthal admixed dzudzuana ? Then would there be a need for this whole basal eurasian thing?
 

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