Second Mill. BC Levant

Angela

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See: new results
[h=1]Human mobility at Tell Atchana (Alalakh) during the 2nd millennium BC: integration of isotopic and genomic evidence[/h]
Tara Ingman et al (Krause group)

Well, some people can put this in their collective hats and smoke it! :)

"[FONT=&quot]The Middle and Late Bronze Age Near East, a period roughly spanning the second millennium BC (ca. 2000-1200 BC), is frequently referred to as the first ‘international age’, characterized by intense and far-reaching contacts between different entities from the eastern Mediterranean to the Near East and beyond. In a large-scale tandem study of stable isotopes and ancient DNA of individuals excavated at Tell Atchana (Alalakh), situated in the northern Levant, we explore the role of mobility at the capital of a regional kingdom. We generated strontium isotope data for 53 individuals, oxygen isotope data for 77 individuals, and added ancient DNA data from 9 new individuals to a recently published dataset of 28 individuals. A dataset like this, from a single site in the Near East, is thus far unparalleled in terms of both its breadth and depth, providing the opportunity to simultaneously obtain an in-depth view of individual mobility and also broader demographic insights into the resident population. The DNA data reveals a very homogeneous gene pool, with only one outlier. This picture of an overwhelmingly local ancestry is consistent with the evidence of local upbringing in most of the individuals indicated by the isotopic data, where only five were found to be ‘non-local’. High levels of contact, trade, and exchange of ideas and goods in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, therefore, seem not to have translated into high levels of individual mobility detectable at Tell Atchana."

[/FONT]
 
Razib Khan has opined:

They killed the daughter of the Maryannu:
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2020...aign=they-killed-the-daughter-of-the-maryannu

So much for whatever steppe influence the Levant has coming from the Mitanni and other similar groups.

As usual a bit too much steppe worship for my taste: how "free" would the locals have been if they had arrived in larger numbers?

"The second issue is “the lady in the well”. This is a woman who seems to have been pushed into a well and fallen to her death. She is the major genetic outlier from this site: “Individual ALA019 – the Well Lady – takes up an extreme outlier position in the PCA closest to sampled individuals from Bronze Age Iran/Turkmenistan/Uzbekistan/Afghanistan.”Her positioning is unambiguous. Unless we’re missing something this woman is of “steppe” heritage. Probably Indo-Iranian. But, the best guess from the isotope work is that she was raised in the region. The data they have indicate she lived between 1550-1600 BC. She was almost certainly from an Indo-Iranian group that had settled in the region. In fact, she was almost certainly associated with the Indo-European element in Mitanni. But in this region of the world the Dasa in their walled cities overcame the free people and swallowed them up culturally and demographically."

Also,

"From a DNA perspective two notable things about this preprint. First, it confirms that there was a massive pulse of Iranian/Caucasus ancestry into the western Fertile Crescent between 5000 and 2000 BC. We don’t have any idea what was going on here, but my own suspicion is that the Uruk period, 4000 to 3100 BC, has something to do with this genetic turnover and assimilation. We don’t know what happened during the Uruk period because there’s no real writing of narrative history (there is proto-cuneiform), but this is when city life really expanded in Mesopotamia. Additionally, there were replica copies of Mesopotamian style towns to the west, and even into Anatolia. The Uruk period was arguably the peak of Mesopotamian political power and influence before the rise of Assyria thousands of years later.

The end of the Uruk period was characterized by a massive collapse. Some archaeologists hypothesize that the catastrophe literature of the Sumerians may reflect memories of the end of the Uruk civilization. In some ways, the Akkadians and Sumerians may have lived in the shadows of their forebears."

So, the great flowering of Mesopotamian civilization is down to the Uruk?
 
Very cool paper :cool-v:
Thanks for sharing angela (y)
Here is the place :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alalakh
There is no supplemental here( maybe because it is pre-print)
But
I looked at the pdf of 9 remains that anlaysed for y dna mtdna
4 elite graves:cool-v:
2 of males are j1-mf35937 ( they were relatives) ( there was mistake in the pre-print ) :unsure:
someone in anthrogenica anlayse them and uploaded them to yfull
ALA001 :unsure:

https://www.yfull.com/tree/J-MF35937/

1 female in mtdna j1b3b1
1 female with unknown mtdna haplogroup
The rest results maybe when this
Paper officialy published:unsure:
The 4 elite burials were not different
From the other locals in there total
Autosomal picture
But those 4 were buried with grave goods
 
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We read: "These outlier individuals from Megiddo and Alalakh attest that gene flow from Caucasus/Iran (or genetically similar groups) into the Levant continued throughout the second millennium BC."

In
the 2nd millennium BC, Hittites, Luwians, Indo-Iranians and other IE people migrated to this region.

9fcs_14.jpg
 
Yes, and in such small numbers that they were absorbed and assimilated.

That's the story.

"This picture of an overwhelmingly local ancestry is consistent with the evidence of local upbringing in most of the individuals indicated by the isotopic data, where only five were found to be ‘non-local’. High levels of contact, trade, and exchange of ideas and goods in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, therefore, seem not to have translated into high levels of individual mobility detectable at Tell Atchana."

Far from becoming the elite, the elite are autosomally just like the common people, and the Mitanni woman gets thrown into a well. That's not how the story was told.

The big change in the autosomal make up of the people was during the Uruk people. After that it was tinkering at the edges.
 
The 4 elite buried in plastered tomb
could be just local people ( as there autosomal profile was not different from other local to the area)
Who rise up through the ranks....������������
Not always the elite have to be an invader
Who come from somewhere else
To rule by force....
So the story in this paper is less romantic
But still cool

P.s

it turns out those elite were realy j1 and not e1b
there was a mistake in the pre print

https://www.yfull.com/tree/J-MF35937/
 
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Indo-European migrations happened in different periods, Sumerian gigir "chariot" is from Proto-Indo-European *kʷékʷlos "wheel": https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/kʷékʷlos
In the Uruk period we see the appearance of wheel in Mesopotamia, as you read here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel "The invention of the wheel has been credited to the Elamites".
Wheels and chariots are the most important Indo-European inventions, they had an important role in Indo-European migrations.
Both Anatolians and Indo-Iranians were IE people but they had different IE cultures, there could be other IE people in the Levant and Anatolia before them, but the source of all of them was in the Caucasus/Iran.
 
Thanks for sharing Angela. Mesopotamia is a black box for now. The population turnover we see in the Levante will be much bigger if we have the real source populations. There are many candidates: Halaf-culture, Hassuna-culture, Samarra-culture, Ubaid/Uruk.
 
Razib Khan has opined:

They killed the daughter of the Maryannu:
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2020...aign=they-killed-the-daughter-of-the-maryannu

So much for whatever steppe influence the Levant has coming from the Mitanni and other similar groups.

As usual a bit too much steppe worship for my taste: how "free" would the locals have been if they had arrived in larger numbers?

"The second issue is “the lady in the well”. This is a woman who seems to have been pushed into a well and fallen to her death. She is the major genetic outlier from this site: “Individual ALA019 – the Well Lady – takes up an extreme outlier position in the PCA closest to sampled individuals from Bronze Age Iran/Turkmenistan/Uzbekistan/Afghanistan.”Her positioning is unambiguous. Unless we’re missing something this woman is of “steppe” heritage. Probably Indo-Iranian. But, the best guess from the isotope work is that she was raised in the region. The data they have indicate she lived between 1550-1600 BC. She was almost certainly from an Indo-Iranian group that had settled in the region. In fact, she was almost certainly associated with the Indo-European element in Mitanni. But in this region of the world the Dasa in their walled cities overcame the free people and swallowed them up culturally and demographically."


Steppe worshipper Razib... Can someone tell him that he is genetically more a "Dasa" than an Indo-Iranian...
 
there was a mistake in the pre-print
those elite were realy j1 and not e1b

here someone in anthrogenica posted
there real haplogroup


ALA001

https://www.yfull.com/tree/J-MF35937/


p.s
this is the danger in pre-print they can make mistake
which they did this time :(
i fix my posts in this thread
 
from anthrogenica


Hi Passa, Actually Tell Atchana ALA001 & ALA002 are J1, not E-M123.
This has been confirmed by Eirini Skourtanioti


 

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