The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies

[bicicleur 2]

We may speak of every kind of topic without to suspect everytime a racist/supremacist is hidden in the skin of 50% of the forumers.
I suppose it's a reaction against someones who appears/appeared here. I prefer to give the "benefice of doubt" and to keep cool, even to practise humor when it's possible. This topics are so interesting!

thank you
you always comment like a gentleman

 

[Angela]

The 'east-asian' input is not disputable; my thoughts is that the most of the kind of 'east-asian' ancestry that had WHSG was not an too evolved kind of 'east-asian' on the phenotypes side if we refer to most of modern East-Asians, left aside some marginal pop's.
some features are ancient among Humans and some of them have been transmitted to "daughters" pop's whose global auDNA branched off at a high scale by time; We have Amerindians who show features far enough from the typical 'east-asian' package, compared to others "Asia sons", other Amerindian among these last ones.
This variance in phenotypes in more than an ancient pop stroke me; some dominance of a type appeared here and there, but minor types or specific traits seem having reappeared, as if people were always trying to "taste" uncommon types when these last ones became rather rare; not all cranial features are undergoing strong selection; sure, some features came through new crossings, not by force all of them; it seems to me some were conserved at low level. Just impressions, here I need documentation for WSHG as for Botai.
The two Tarim people I saw here are uneasy to evaluate by lack of angles, and lack of craniae radiographies; heterogenous physically at least; for ancient pop's the cheekbones breadth is not a criterium, it was so common, in Paleo-Meso Europe as well; their position at the antero-posterior level is more decisive, I think.
Nevertheless, some so called 'mongoloid' traits seem to appear, principally on the man, so not really "pure" West-Eurasian of modern times; I would be so happy if I could have more samples!
Just do remark I don't speak of pigmentation!

Well, for not being disputable, Mair and company couldn't see it.

This is the mummy whom I think looks less East Asian admixed.

Profile view:

Another angle:

The man:

This may be the same woman; I'm not sure.

I don't know if this is a different one. Did they practice cranial deformation?

Different filters can give different tones to the hair. I don't know if that accounts for some of the discrepancy in terms of what people remember of pictures of them in terms of their pigmentation, and what this shows. At any rate, I think the process of embalming, whether by nature or craft, can alter pigmentation.

Btw, Mair wasn't an anthropologist of any sort; he was a professor of Chinese language and literature. Shades of Fallermayer.

 

[Ailchu]

I wrote this:




Yet I get a warning for things I never said. SMH

ANE didn't most likely originate in europe. maybe at the very eastern fringe of europe but that is just one possible region next to west and central asia, which is also quite possible given their considerable early east asian ancestry.

 

[Ailchu]

Well, for not being disputable, Mair and company couldn't see it.

This is the mummy whom I think looks less East Asian admixed.

Profile view:

Another angle:

The man:

This may be the same woman; I'm not sure.

I don't know if this is a different one. Did they practice cranial deformation?

Different filters can give different tones to the hair. I don't know if that accounts for some of the discrepancy in terms of what people remember of pictures of them in terms of their pigmentation, and what this shows.

Btw, Mair wasn't an anthropologist of any sort; he was a professor of Chinese language and literature. Shades of Fallermayer.

they definitly have similarity with east eurasians/siberians. but maybe that doesn't have to be necessarily because of the east eurasian in them, could also be that at that time east and west eurasians were phenotypically not that differentiated as they are today.

 

[Angela]

You automatically get hostile and accuse me of things without trying to understand where I'm coming from. In spite of knowing me long enough, you don't even bother to give me the benefit of doubt. Thanks, Angela. By the way, show me where I said that these Uyghurs or the posted mummies look "Northern European"! Anyway, I intentionally showed cherry-picked pics of light-haired Uyghurs to make a point and to demonstrate why this paper is political, not implying that the average Uyghur looks like that. For Chinese these Uyghurs look rather more European than East Asian, it doesn't matter that the bulk of them doesn't look like that. I try to explain the mindset. The same mindset who thinks that the Cheddar man is black because of his skin tone, thus closely related to Africans. Matter of fact, not a few of Uyghurs do have visible Caucasoid affinities. Plus there are to a degree, some varieties of terms of genetics and phenotypes among Uyghurs depending on the region they live in. And nope, with or without light pigmentation, Uyghurs have their own distinct physical appearance and usually look nothing like Han Chinese. You debate with so many folks that you can't distinguish between people who read studies with a critical mind or those who just impose their pet theories. On the contrary, these light-haired Uyghurs are paraded all over the Internet as "regular Chinese" to disprove the validity of physical anthropology. Besides, I don't get why you are upset that ANE people are being classified as Caucasoid, many Ethiopians and Somalis are also classified as Caucasoid. The ANE component is 85% Western Eurasian, thus not fully Western Eurasian but overwhelmingly.

To your bolded sentence: no, you didn't. If you want to know what got my "dander up", re-read the posts by Holderin and our new Italian friend. I wasn't just talking about you in that response to Anfanger.

As for the people I "debate", there really aren't that many; many of them are socks of one another. I'm good at discerning "voice".

If I misunderstood your point in posting the Uighers, fine, I accept that.

As far as "knowing" you and your mindset or biases, if any, I'm sorry, but I don't know you at that well. Sorry, but I don't, other than that usually you seem very reasonable; refreshingly so. That's why I was surprised by your posts on this thread. I responded only to what was written in your posts, and frankly I found it bizarre that you were somehow claiming the ability to intuit the motives of the authors of the paper and saying they deliberately didn't mention that there is ANE in Europeans. Uh, why is that so important to you that they mention it? These people are not privy to the ethnicity "wars" of the hobbyists. Why should they think it was important to list all the peoples who have ANE ancestry?

As I said, I found it bizarre.

As far as ANE is concerned, I don't know where you get the 85% West Eurasian figure for ANE. Sikorra et al, to the best of my recollection, puts the East Eurasian at 22%, almost one quarter, leaving 78% West Eurasian. That's a significant amount of East Eurasian. That's why I said it's too simplistic to say, as another poster claimed, that ANE=West Eurasian. It is not minutia. It would be like saying that North Africans=Caucasians, without explaining they are pulled far away from "other" Caucasians because they are 20-25% SSA.

Plus, the Tarim mummies are even more East Eurasian than that; another 28%. The phenotype snp data bears it out. Their skin lightening snp is the one found in East Asians, and they carry the EDAR snps. They look, as a poster on anthrogenica pointed out, nothing like the "steppe" people north of them.

In addition, if I say so myself, I'm a good judge of "ethnicity" by facial feature, something that came in handy in my profession at times, and the East Asian in some of these mummies is glaringly obvious to me.

As often happens in this "discipline" imo, an amateur like Mair can go off half cocked, some Nordicist "players" join in by perhaps filtering the pictures of the remains we do have, and all over the internet you can find stories about the "European" or "white" remains mummified in the Chinese desert. The reactions of some hobbyists even on this site to these remains or even cherry picked photos of "blonde" people elsewhere in Central Asia is worse than bizarre. One loon said he "cried" on seeing them. Christ, gag me with a spoon. How crazy can some people be.

Goodness knows I stand second to none in my distrust of the Chinese government, and I deplore what they are doing to the Uighers. In fact, I won't even order Disney products because they made a movie right down the road from a Uigher camp and never said a word. However, I get why China's leaders might be upset with stories like those. It also turns out, as I long suspected, that it's a misleading narrative.

Now, it isn't misleading in terms of the Dzungarians, but that's another matter.

In that regard I don't get why you so resist the idea that the Tarim Basin people are indeed "local". What, you think there was a relict "pure" ANE population somewhere on the western steppe which went east to the Tarim Basin and there mingled with East Asians? Why? Based on what evidence? Doesn't the conclusion of the paper make eminent sense? It's in isolated areas, deserts, mountains, islands, that you find relict populations. Hell, you could say all of modern population genetics began because Cavalli-Sforza became obsessed with the isolated population of the Parma and Cedra Valleys of Emilia, home of half of my ancestors. Reading a magazine article about it is why I got into this bizarre hobby in the first place, a decision I have lived to regret a lot of the time.

 

[bicicleur 2]

At any rate, I think the process of embalming, whether by nature or craft, can alter pigmentation.

Btw, Mair wasn't an anthropologist of any sort; he was a professor of Chinese language and literature. Shades of Fallermayer.

the mummies were not embalmed, they were burried in an ox-hide and conserved by nature

 

[jormung]

No offense, just:
- one cannot rely on pigmentation of mummies, at least on a superficial look -
- keep away these "dalo-falish" and some other too precise definitions of old anthropology; some can evok something to people, others are fuzzy and created by "scientists" who could create a type for everybody on this earth; ATW here I saw only two mummies; very few to judge, with only ONE angle.

Thank you for your advices
But I was not the first to speak about "Northern Europeans" look. Another user has introduced this topic, I only answered about it.
Anyway, if someone brings up "northern europeans", it is well to observe that they are not homogeneous by a "physical anthropology" point of view.
I can understand that "dalo-falisdh" (or dalofaelid) makes you shiver...because it stinks of nordicist supremacism, I suppose.
But it was simply the old definition for depigmented cromagnonoid, typical of Dalarna and Westfalia.
So I have an advice for you: please don't give in to "cancel culture"!

 

[jormung]

the truth lies in the paper discussed in this thread
it explains a lot
the results are surprising, but it makes sense

also they state in the conclusion :

'the material culture and genetic profile of the Tarim mummies from around 2100 bc onwards call into question simplistic assumptions about the link between genetics, culture and language'

it is not the first time that anciant DNA proves archeology or linguists wrong
there is much more to discover with DNA

How can you be so sure?
I see several difficulties.

1) ANE is not an exclusively Asian phenomenon; as several users said, Yamna, Andronovo and Afanasevo and also modern europeans own a significant quantity of ANE ancestry.
2) Even assuming that no "political bias" is present in the recent paper(2021), we don't know the quantity of ANE ancestry in tocharians ( well we don't know almost anything about genetics of tocharians, they could be fully ANE people, as far as we know). So the conclusions of paper of 2021 are a logical phallacy for me.
3) Limiting the discussion to Y haplogroup, what happened to R1a1 components which were detected in paper of 2010? IMHO, they are a clear signature of contacts with western peoples. No more R1a1? Have the mummy been changed their genes ?!? But we could discuss about mtDna too...

 

[Anfänger]

Maybe I missed something, but who in this thread claimed that ANE is something particular North European?

In his first posts he was writing that ANE originated in Europe and that the paper omitted the fact that Northern Europe carry 25% ANE. So yes he was implying that it is something Northern European.

did someone in this thread claim the Tarim mummies were Andronovo or Sintashta like?

Here I see Andronovo as a proxy for Nordic skull type because it is so similar to Corded Ware and I find it interesting that they are different to the Tarim mummies. Like I said I am not that familiar with physical anthropology.
Just wanted to show some information for those interested in it.

Also i didn´t like the way real expert "politicized" his arguments and accused the authors of the paper being biased because they are Chinese and may have a problem with the Tarim mummies being to western. I think people should focus on the data and arguments of a paper not the ethnicity of the authors of a paper.

 

[etrusco]

ANE is predominantly west eurasian (78%) and proto ANE ( that is ANE without east eurasian) originated in Europe. Aurignacian dna similar to Goyet and Kostenki is the likely west eurasian kind of dna that mixed in north siberian to form the Yana/ANE/Afontova Gora cluster ( these 3 populations were quite similar and strongly related) ANE being northern european is just modern dna it has nothing to do with origin. Aurignacian sites are mostly ( and originated from ) southern europe and the northern mediterranean: Franco/cantabrian region, Italy and the Balkans plus obviously their extension east in Crimea ( Siuren) and Russia ( Kostenki by the Don river).

 

[jormung]

Also i didn´t like the way real expert "politicized" his arguments and accused the authors of the paper being biased because they are Chinese and may have a problem with the Tarim mummies being to western. I think people should focus on the data and arguments of a paper not the ethnicity of the authors of a paper.

I'm accusing the paper is polithically biased, too.

We have to focus on the data, but we have to focus also on contradictions with previous results of old papers, because such contradictions are very evident.
Therefore, who can guarantee that the data are reliable?
And we can not neglect logical problems if they are present, and IMHO the paper of 2021 suffers also of "non sequitur" phallacy.

 

[bicicleur 2]

In his first posts he was writing that ANE originated in Europe and that the paper omitted the fact that Northern Europe carry 25% ANE. So yes he was implying that it is something Northern European.

Here I see Andronovo as a proxy for Nordic skull type because it is so similar to Corded Ware and I find it interesting that they are different to the Tarim mummies. Like I said I am not that familiar with physical anthropology.
Just wanted to show some information for those interested in it.

Also i didn´t like the way real expert "politicized" his arguments and accused the authors of the paper being biased because they are Chinese and may have a problem with the Tarim mummies being to western. I think people should focus on the data and arguments of a paper not the ethnicity of the authors of a paper.

I don't think he accused the authors. He said it could be politicized.
And in fact, the matter of the Tarim mummies is highly politicized.
I think you are aware of the Uyghur internment camps?

 

[bicicleur 2]

How can you be so sure?
I see several difficulties.

1) ANE is not an exclusively Asian phenomenon; as several users said, Yamna, Andronovo and Afanasevo and also modern europeans own a significant quantity of ANE ancestry.
2) Even assuming that no "political bias" is present in the recent paper(2021), we don't know the quantity of ANE ancestry in tocharians ( well we don't know almost anything about genetics of tocharians, they could be fully ANE people, as far as we know). So the conclusions of paper of 2021 are a logical phallacy for me.
3) Limiting the discussion to Y haplogroup, what happened to R1a1 components which were detected in paper of 2010? IMHO, they are a clear signature of contacts with western peoples. No more R1a1? Have the mummy been changed their genes ?!? But we could discuss about mtDna too...

Yamna, Andronovo and Afanasevo and also modern europeans don't have pure ANE, it is admixed with WHG, EHG, EEF and CHG.
The Tarim mummies are aprox 72 % pure ANE mixed with 28 % EBA Bajkal - like.

By the way, we don't know wether the EBA Tarim population spoke Tocharian.
We only know about ealy medieval, before the invasion of the Turkic Uyghurs.

 

[jormung]

Yamna, Andronovo and Afanasevo and also modern europeans don't have pure ANE, it is admixed with WHG, EHG, EEF and CHG.
The Tarim mummies are aprox 72 % pure ANE mixed with 28 % EBA Bajkal - like.

By the way, we don't know wether the EBA Tarim population spoke Tocharian.
We only know about ealy medieval, before the invasion of the Turkic Uyghurs.

I want to dispute also we can speak about "pure ANE". I do not think we can assimilate Afontova Gora 2,3 with Mal'ta too easy...
ANE itself was a complex phenomenon.
About tocharians, linguistics seem provide the clues that an indoeuropean Kentum language gave several loanwords to bronze age chinese.
The most natural candidate is the tocharian language.

 

[bicicleur 2]

I want to dispute also we can speak about "pure ANE". I do not think we can assimilate Afontova Gora 2,3 with Mal'ta too easy...
ANE itself was a complex phenomenon.
About tocharians, linguistics seem provide the clues that an indoeuropean Kentum language gave several loanwords to bronze age chinese.
The most natural candidate is the tocharian language.

afaik there is large similarity in Mal'ta, Afantova Gora and Yana DNA

as for the loanwords, I'm not a linguist, but that wouldn't surprise me
the Yuezhi, the Wusun and the Ordos culture are all supposed to be Indo-European,
they arrived through the Hexi corridor in contrast with the Mongolian Upper Xiajiadian and Donghu tribes in Manchuria

 

[Doggerland]

I cannot understand why people get so obsessed with such topics. I personally trust the data I have analyzed myself and from that they didn’t look like any living population. They possessed traits of Northern South Asians like Afghans, for example the head shape, the hooked noses, brown skin, but also East Asian features like reduced eyelids, or the teeth and thicker hair (Not all of them) They didn’t have the typical East Asian Eye sockets, but more European like ones. They didn’t have maxillary prognathism typical for East Asians. But that doesn't make them look European in any way.
They had red and dark blonde hair, traits that are also present in many Uralic populations.

The blonde allele deviled from ANE cannot explain the large amount of blondism in Northern Europe, its a combination of 4 different blonde SNPs that where also found in different populations like SHG, LinearPottery, ANE and even Cardial Pottery. Steppe people where not the bringer of all blonde, light skin or lactose tolerance SNPs.
So there is no connection to today's Europe in the Tarim Mummies other then ANE, the blonde in Tarim is of ANE origin.
The Tarim Mummies where not Proto-Indo-European, they where a local population. It seems they where genetically isolated some time, this is also a contraindication to a recent connection to Yamnaya, whichis a genetically diverse population.
They clearly have a connection to Yamnaya in terms of ancestors and Uralic populations, but a long time ago and not recent.

They clearly lack the traits of Native Americans because they never underwent the selection pressure that happened in the Americas. They also did not look like Han Chinese or typical East Asians of today. Just google for tibetan mummies if you cannot believe this.

 

[jormung]

afaik there is large similarity in Mal'ta, Afantova Gora and Yana DNA


as for the loanwords, I'm not a linguist, but that wouldn't surprise me
the Yuezhi, the Wusun and the Ordos culture are all supposed to be Indo-European,
they arrived through the Hexi corridor in contrast with the Mongolian Upper Xiajiadian and Donghu tribes in Manchuria

The problem of loanwords from indoeuropean to old chinese is very old and it is discussed in any good book about lndoeuropean linguistics.
But we can find the discussion in several papers, for example in "Tocharian Loan Words in Old Chinese: Chariots, Chariot Gear, and Town Building", by Alexander Lubolsky, or
"Indo-European Vocabulary in Old Chinese A New Thesis on the Emergence of Chinese Language and Civilization in the Late Neolithic Age" by Tsung-tung Chang
* dog, hound (ie: *kun-k, old ch: *huan(g),*khuen )
* goose (ie: *ghans, old ch:*gans)
* pork (ie: *pork, old ch:* pog)
* horse (ie: *mork, old ch:*mog )
* cow (ie: *gwhou , old ch: *gou )
and several other as milk, chariot, ...


About Yuezhi and Wusun, in reality I think we are not able to make any assertion about an indoeuropean affiliation...
About Wusuns we know NOTHING about language (except for the word "Gunmo", meaning "King")
The physical description of Wusuns reported by Yan Shugu (see wikipedia):
"Among the barbarians in the Western Regions, the look of the Wusun is the most unusual. The present barbarians who have green eyes and red hair, and look like macaque monkeys, are the offspring of this people"
can not be taken as proof of indoeureopean ancestry in this forum. It would be nordicist, right :-D ?
So were Wusun and Yuechi Kentum or Satem?
Were they really Indo-Europeans? or could they be an uralic people? or were they linked with Ket people (so dene-caucasians)?
We have no way to tell.

 

[jormung]

The Tarim Mummies where not Proto-Indo-European, they where a local population. It seems they where genetically isolated some time, this is also a contraindication to a recent connection to Yamnaya, whichis a genetically diverse population.
They clearly have a connection to Yamnaya in terms of ancestors and Uralic populations, but a long time ago and not recent.

How do you explain the obvious contradiction with results from paper:
"Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age" on Bmc Biology" (2010)

?

Anyway, it's not a question of being obsessed.
The question is to establish the truth, even if we don't like it, and not to want to cancel it.

 

[jormung]

And now a provocation: can we exclude that ancient eurasians spoke the proto-indoeuropean language?
Or to put it in another way: can we exclude that the real indoeuropean urheimat was the Ancient North Eurasian areal?

 

[Angela]

I cannot understand why people get so obsessed with such topics. I personally trust the data I have analyzed myself and from that they didn’t look like any living population. They possessed traits of Northern South Asians like Afghans, for example the head shape, the hooked noses, brown skin, but also East Asian features like reduced eyelids, or the teeth and thicker hair (Not all of them) They didn’t have the typical East Asian Eye sockets, but more European like ones. They didn’t have maxillary prognathism typical for East Asians. But that doesn't make them look European in any way.
They had red and dark blonde hair, traits that are also present in many Uralic populations.

The blonde allele deviled from ANE cannot explain the large amount of blondism in Northern Europe, its a combination of 4 different blonde SNPs that where also found in different populations like SHG, LinearPottery, ANE and even Cardial Pottery. Steppe people where not the bringer of all blonde, light skin or lactose tolerance SNPs.
So there is no connection to today's Europe in the Tarim Mummies other then ANE, the blonde in Tarim is of ANE origin.
The Tarim Mummies where not Proto-Indo-European, they where a local population. It seems they where genetically isolated some time, this is also a contraindication to a recent connection to Yamnaya, whichis a genetically diverse population.
They clearly have a connection to Yamnaya in terms of ancestors and Uralic populations, but a long time ago and not recent.

They clearly lack the traits of Native Americans because they never underwent the selection pressure that happened in the Americas. They also did not look like Han Chinese or typical East Asians of today. Just google for tibetan mummies if you cannot believe this.

Well, I'm glad we at least agree they don't look precisely like Northern Europeans, they were local, i.e. not the Tocharians, and they weren't the Proto-Indo Europeans.