Indigeneity of Europeans

Roisin1975

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Here's a curious two-fold question: As far as I'm aware, the EU has classified only one group of Europeans as Indigenous, that being the Sami people of Scandinavia. I'm also aware that there are other groups, especially those in the former Soviet Bloc that classify themselves as Indigenous, such as some of the Tatars and the Setos in Estonia. The first part of my question is, why aren't these groups considered Indigenous, and the second part of my question is, for those groups who migrated within the continent in ancient times, could they still be considered Indigenous Europeans, even if they weren't Indigenous to the particular landbases to which they migrated?
 
It is pure Ideology against the most native people. The Sami are most part not indigenous Europeans. They are for the most part descended from Siberian populations, not European. Scandinavians are more indigenous, because they are more related and similar to Scandinavian Hunter Gatherers then Sami. Why? Because Sami ancestors migrated later in the Bronze Age into Scandinavia. The indigenous part of Sami is more present in non-Sami Northeastern Europeans.
Even the Neolithic Folk is more Indigenous, because they migrated much earlier then the Sami did.

It is all part of that “White People” ideology to devalue and blur our heritage, to sense us as immoral Invaders.
 
The Sammi just look like other Europeans with but with a relatively large amount of Nganasan, and a relatively low amount of Neolithic farmer ancestry.


Retg3c2.jpg
 
But also, does it really matter because as we all know, might makes right.

"right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." -Thucydides

What difference does the argument of indigenous people really mean? This is purely sentimental, and irrelevant imo.

I own my house, because we worked for it, "fought for it", and by law, must be respected as the property of me and my family. The fortune which is yielded from the land rightfully belongs solely to my posterity . It belongs to me, not the people who built it a hundred years ago, or the Indians that lived there 500 years ago.

All in all, might makes right, is the natural order of life. Therefore, people must be willing to be strong enough to acquire and retain their land, or be swept aside as the "weak".
 
The Sammi just look like other Europeans with but with a relatively large amount of Nganasan, and a relatively low amount of Neolithic farmer ancestry.


Retg3c2.jpg

Isn't there close relationship to Berbers?
 
The Sami are most part not indigenous Europeans. They are for the most part descended from Siberian populations, not European.

and the other europeans are for the most part descended from near eastern populations. why should Sami not be indigenous? also europe doesn't end with scandinavia. it goes a lot further northeast.

as for why the other europeans arenßt called indigenous i think it's because indiginous only applies to people who were native to a region and then got conquered by another population but continued to live at least to some extent with their own culture next to the conquerors.
 
this is worldwide phenomenon
people who's territory got conquered and taken by inhabitants of another nation and were on the brink of losing their way of life and identity at some point got more or less protected by getting the label 'indigenous'
Native Americans or the Ainu in Japan are also indigenous, as are many populations in China and other countries all over the world
once they were recognised as indigenous these people got some of their identity and some few claims on the land back
the Sami arrived in Europe only some 2600 years ago, but that is much longer than the existence of the Scandinavian nations
 
the Sami arrived in Europe only some 2600 years ago, but that is much longer than the existence of the Scandinavian nations

is it clear that they arrived 2600 years ago in europe? or do you mean they arrived at that time in scandinavia? they could have existed for much longer in northeastern europe.

and siberian related ancestry most definitly exists in europe for way longer.

"Lamnidis et al. 2018 discovered the earliest recorded introgression of Nganasan related Siberian ancestry and Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup N1c into northeastern Europe. Saami people's Siberian ancestry varies between 20%-25%, while the bronze age individuals from Bolshoy Oleny Island by the Kola peninsula had around 40% of similar ancestry, accompanied with roughly 50% Mesolithic Eastern Hunter-Gatherer ancestry. This admixture event was estimated to have occurred around 2000 BCE by ALDER dating."
 
The Sami are the product of admixture between "local" females and later arriving men from Siberia. They were doubtless given that label for political reasons having to do with their way of life to protect them from the intrusion of non-admixed people. It probably was also done before ancient dna studies showed that they weren't any more "indigenous" than anyone else in Finland and the rest of Scandinavia.

As for which Europeans are indigenous, the question is meaningless. There were no "Europeans" as we know them until the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age. They are the product of the admixture of many ancient groups.

The Amerindians are a bit different. Yes, they came to the Americas from Siberia, but they have at the least a 13,000-year jump on everyone else. That doesn't mean that I think New York City should be handed back to any descendants of the original Indian tribe who lived there. Too much has changed.

I do think they should get more of the right kind of help. When their leaders feed them some pipe dream of taking back the land, as they showed in the series "Yellowstone", it doesn't do them any good. I get that they resent being told in effect that the only way they can stop living in abject poverty is to "stop being Indian", but the reality is that even if they got thousands of acres of land in Montana or Wyoming or Oklahoma or wherever back, they won't be able to go back to living as "Indians" because a) they don't know how anymore, and b) most of them would not want to give up the modern world anyway.
 
Saying today's Europeans are not indigenous in comparison to Sami, is wrong in three points:

First point: The Sami ancestors migrated in the Bronze Age into Europe, while Neolithic Farmers and European HGs migrated much earlier.

Second point: Saying there was no Scandinavian Nation, but Sami Nation, is wrong, because it is very unlikely that the Sami founded any kind of modern Nation before the native Scandinavians did. They lived in tribes, while Europe already had bigger tribal complexes and some kind of nations/large cultural complexes over distant areas.
Who lived in Scandinavia before the arrival of the Sami? Funnel Beaker, Pitted Ware for example, which are both related to modern Scandinavians.

Third point: Saying today's Europeans are not indigenous, because they descended from Bronze Age immigrants is wrong. Those immigrants where not a completely genetic different race/ethnicity, but already a mix of EEF, ANE and HG populations.
Their total genetic impact on today's populations besides Y-Haplogroups is low. Most Europeans still carry the neolithic allele variants for many traits, because they where superior for a modern lifestyle.
Ancestry components that are used today to predict the origin of people, are mostly not trait related SNPs and do not correspond with them.

The occurrence of more and more depigmentation variants is not associated with Bronze Age migration, but with later cultural/environmental changes that favored them. The alleles for blonde hair, light skin and blue eyes where already present in SHG, Anatolia HG and ANE. There is no single ancient population that had a blonde, blue eyed and light skinned man as their main phenotype and conquered all others.

Saying they are no more indigenous, because there was an invasion, is like saying today's Native American tribes are not native anymore, because they often have European haplogroups and admixture, or saying Afro Americans are not Africans anymore.

The Sami are part indigenous, because they lived here for a long long time, but all other Europeans are indigenous too and most are much more indigenous then the Sami.
 
The Sami are a smaller group without a wide reach, so the "non-threatening" nature of this decision likely did it.
Imagine had the Basques been chosen.
The Spanish government would have had a fit.
Had the Celts been chosen, much of the continent would have had a fit.
Random question:
How did 136 Sami wind up in the Ukraine?
 
is it clear that they arrived 2600 years ago in europe? or do you mean they arrived at that time in scandinavia? they could have existed for much longer in northeastern europe.

and siberian related ancestry most definitly exists in europe for way longer.

"Lamnidis et al. 2018 discovered the earliest recorded introgression of Nganasan related Siberian ancestry and Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup N1c into northeastern Europe. Saami people's Siberian ancestry varies between 20%-25%, while the bronze age individuals from Bolshoy Oleny Island by the Kola peninsula had around 40% of similar ancestry, accompanied with roughly 50% Mesolithic Eastern Hunter-Gatherer ancestry. This admixture event was estimated to have occurred around 2000 BCE by ALDER dating."

I don't know, It's a guess.
Around 2600 years ago the climate became colder and the most northern Nordic Bronze Age farmers left middle Scandinavia southbound.
The Nordic Bronze Age actually collapsed around that time.
The void the farmers left was filled by incoming HG. I guess these HG were related to the present Saami.
 
Saying today's Europeans are not indigenous in comparison to Sami, is wrong in three points:

First point: The Sami ancestors migrated in the Bronze Age into Europe, while Neolithic Farmers and European HGs migrated much earlier.

Second point: Saying there was no Scandinavian Nation, but Sami Nation, is wrong, because it is very unlikely that the Sami founded any kind of modern Nation before the native Scandinavians did. They lived in tribes, while Europe already had bigger tribal complexes and some kind of nations/large cultural complexes over distant areas.
Who lived in Scandinavia before the arrival of the Sami? Funnel Beaker, Pitted Ware for example, which are both related to modern Scandinavians.

Third point: Saying today's Europeans are not indigenous, because they descended from Bronze Age immigrants is wrong. Those immigrants where not a completely genetic different race/ethnicity, but already a mix of EEF, ANE and HG populations.
Their total genetic impact on today's populations besides Y-Haplogroups is low. Most Europeans still carry the neolithic allele variants for many traits, because they where superior for a modern lifestyle.
Ancestry components that are used today to predict the origin of people, are mostly not trait related SNPs and do not correspond with them.

The occurrence of more and more depigmentation variants is not associated with Bronze Age migration, but with later cultural/environmental changes that favored them. The alleles for blonde hair, light skin and blue eyes where already present in SHG, Anatolia HG and ANE. There is no single ancient population that had a blonde, blue eyed and light skinned man as their main phenotype and conquered all others.

Saying they are no more indigenous, because there was an invasion, is like saying today's Native American tribes are not native anymore, because they often have European haplogroups and admixture, or saying Afro Americans are not Africans anymore.

The Sami are part indigenous, because they lived here for a long long time, but all other Europeans are indigenous too and most are much more indigenous then the Sami.

as was already said i don't think beeing considered indigenous has only to do with ancestry, but even then your argument doesn't hold. 1) the siberian component might already be present in europe for a very long time, they were found on the kola peninsula in the bronze age but europe goes a lot further east, why should those regions not be considered european anymore? 2) sami do not only descent from siberians they also had a lot of EHG ancestry, a lot more than many europeans, which would make them according to your own argumentation, more indigenous.
 
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sami do not only descent from siberians they also had a lot of EHG ancestry, a lot more than many europeans, which would make them according to your own argumentation, more indigenous.

Alleles of 161 SNPs found in EHG samples that are predicting metabolism + physical traits. Compared to modern populations:

%
Estonian 50,71
Ukrainian 49,07
Swedish 48,53
Northern German 48,28
Burusho 47,37
Papuan 46,68
Khanty 45,59
Aboriginal Australian 44,44
Khomani San 43,54
Sami 42,59
Italian 42,27
French 41,45
Adygei 39,01
Mongolian 38,20
Japanese 37,79
Orcadian 37,49
Berber 37,09
Modern Turkish 36,90
Iberian 36,51
Russian 36,16
Basque 36,12

Sami are a good representation of EHG continuity? I don’t think so.
 
Alleles of 161 SNPs found in EHG samples that are predicting metabolism + physical traits. Compared to modern populations:

%
Estonian 50,71
Ukrainian 49,07
Swedish 48,53
Northern German 48,28
Burusho 47,37
Papuan 46,68
Khanty 45,59
Aboriginal Australian 44,44
Khomani San 43,54
Sami 42,59
Italian 42,27
French 41,45
Adygei 39,01
Mongolian 38,20
Japanese 37,79
Orcadian 37,49
Berber 37,09
Modern Turkish 36,90
Iberian 36,51
Russian 36,16
Basque 36,12

Sami are a good representation of EHG continuity? I don’t think so.

the bronze age individual from the Kola Peninsuala was 40% Siberian related and 50% EHG. if you take modern sami they might have less, but not because they have more Siberian instead they have a lot more yamnaya ancestry.

here you can see that modern Sami still have quite a lot of EHG/WHG ancestry

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&
id=6258758_41467_2018_7483_Fig2_HTML.jpg


this other graphic that was already posted is from the same study
Retg3c2.jpg


if you compare the graphics it doesn't really add up so they are probably not really accurate tbh. somehow EHG disappears in most modern populations, which doesn't really make sense if you compare it to the other graphic. anyways this study dates the arrival of the siberian related ancestry on kola peninsula to 4000 years BP at latest. an earlier date is certainly possible and probable according to the study. and that doesn't include the whole other rest of the european continent to the east that still exists too.

your numbers aren't really usefull. they are inconsisten why for example are Russians so low in the list while Burusho are so high? does that mean the Burusho are good represnatives of EHG continuity? frequencies for alleles are not a good indicator for descent.
 
And that is the whole point what people don’t get about the difference between Ancestry Components and traits.

Ancestry Components are not trait related SNPs. They are very selective, because they can be found in also very low quality samples that are absent of any trait related SNP. They only predict who was the recent ancestor. Not if the genes for traits of any kind like metabolism, psychological traits or appearance still exist or not.
The lesser the sample quality and size, the bigger the wrong results they are producing.
They are a cheap way for academic workers to produce studies and papers, because they can also be found in low quality low / budget samples. Real scientific investigation needs better quality and more expensive sequencing methods.

Ancestry components do not predict trait related SNPs in many cases when it comes to ancient samples. We had examples of this here in the forum many times.
For example Cheddar Man who comes out as Northeastern European in terms of ancestry traits, but has a large percentage of his traits matching with Dravidians. Everybody knows that Cheddar Man had those traits, but they are not reflected in his ancestry component related SNPs to a meaningful percentage.
We had the sample with this guy:https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/SAMEA5608084
which did not show any kind of East Asian ancestry components, but clearly showed East Asian trait related SNPs and the common EDAR variant in East Asians.
Or the light skinned, blue eyed Tripillians that in terms of Ancestry Components are southern Europeans, but have the most physical trait similarity with today's Brits.

Some days ago a friend of mine send me his RAW. He came out as Northern German like me, no great difference in ancestry components in the calculators. But he is a dark brown haired guy, small, lactose intolerant, dark brown eyed and doesn't look northern German at all, although he is I1. He came out as most similar to neolithic Varna and neolithic Denmark in terms of this physical trait related SNPs.

People must understand how those ancestry calculators work and what their limitations are. They are not build to show similarity of traits of people, what we see as Ancestry in out everyday life. They predict the most recent ancestors or traces of very old ancestors. But the traits of the populations that gave them those ancestry related SNPs often did not establish and got lost, because they where only a few conquers. Or evolution selected their traits out, and favored the established native traits, because they where better for survival.

The graph you posted is this kind of selective stuff I personally only take serious with a grain of salt. I wrote about the selectiveness of this kind of analysis in another post before: Sumeriansand Native Americans could be related? - Page 7 (eupedia.com)

And in this graph there are also only those ancestry related SNPs used, which do not show phenotype related stuff. And even more bad: only 5 populations. Like I said in my linked post: You could even use any samples you like and those calculators will give you always a 100% composed of those samples, while a precise trait comparison will know what a zero, a missmatch is.

Please, being descended from someone somewhere in time, does not mean looking like this person or population. What counts is who is looking and acting, thinking the same now, and who not.
And Sami do not have much in common with EHG anymore, while Estonians seem to have. Maybe this is because the Sami and the more eastern Russians and Khanty have much more East Asian like traits, that where not present in EHG.

Why does EHG have much in common with Burushuo? Because they have also much in common with Yamnaya. Yamna + EHG = 49,99% trait allele similarity physical traits + metabolic.
And we have Northern South Asian as a 80% match for looking like Yamnaya in another thread here in the forum. But this analysis was without metabolic traits, this one includes them. Yamnaya, EHG and Burushuo are related in terms of traits.

I hope that in the future WGS will be the norm for samples and that we will have more high quality ancient and modern samples for analysis that are also containing the relevant trait related SNPs. If the Forensic Anthropology will evolve the determination of physical traits via genetic testing, we could have the same diversity of Calculators for those traits as we have now for ancestry components.
 
And that is the whole point what people don’t get about the difference between Ancestry Components and traits.

Ancestry Components are not trait related SNPs. They are very selective, because they can be found in also very low quality samples that are absent of any trait related SNP. They only predict who was the recent ancestor. Not if the genes for traits of any kind like metabolism, psychological traits or appearance still exist or not.
The lesser the sample quality and size, the bigger the wrong results they are producing.
They are a cheap way for academic workers to produce studies and papers, because they can also be found in low quality low / budget samples. Real scientific investigation needs better quality and more expensive sequencing methods.

Ancestry components do not predict trait related SNPs in many cases when it comes to ancient samples. We had examples of this here in the forum many times.
For example Cheddar Man who comes out as Northeastern European in terms of ancestry traits, but has a large percentage of his traits matching with Dravidians. Everybody knows that Cheddar Man had those traits, but they are not reflected in his ancestry component related SNPs to a meaningful percentage.
We had the sample with this guy:https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/SAMEA5608084
which did not show any kind of East Asian ancestry components, but clearly showed East Asian trait related SNPs and the common EDAR variant in East Asians.
Or the light skinned, blue eyed Tripillians that in terms of Ancestry Components are southern Europeans, but have the most physical trait similarity with today's Brits.

Some days ago a friend of mine send me his RAW. He came out as Northern German like me, no great difference in ancestry components in the calculators. But he is a dark brown haired guy, small, lactose intolerant, dark brown eyed and doesn't look northern German at all, although he is I1. He came out as most similar to neolithic Varna and neolithic Denmark in terms of this physical trait related SNPs.

People must understand how those ancestry calculators work and what their limitations are. They are not build to show similarity of traits of people, what we see as Ancestry in out everyday life. They predict the most recent ancestors or traces of very old ancestors. But the traits of the populations that gave them those ancestry related SNPs often did not establish and got lost, because they where only a few conquers. Or evolution selected their traits out, and favored the established native traits, because they where better for survival.

The graph you posted is this kind of selective stuff I personally only take serious with a grain of salt. I wrote about the selectiveness of this kind of analysis in another post before: Sumeriansand Native Americans could be related? - Page 7 (eupedia.com)

And in this graph there are also only those ancestry related SNPs used, which do not show phenotype related stuff. And even more bad: only 5 populations. Like I said in my linked post: You could even use any samples you like and those calculators will give you always a 100% composed of those samples, while a precise trait comparison will know what a zero, a missmatch is.

Please, being descended from someone somewhere in time, does not mean looking like this person or population. What counts is who is looking and acting, thinking the same now, and who not.
And Sami do not have much in common with EHG anymore, while Estonians seem to have. Maybe this is because the Sami and the more eastern Russians and Khanty have much more East Asian like traits, that where not present in EHG.

Why does EHG have much in common with Burushuo? Because they have also much in common with Yamnaya. Yamna + EHG = 49,99% trait allele similarity physical traits + metabolic.
And we have Northern South Asian as a 80% match for looking like Yamnaya in another thread here in the forum. But this analysis was without metabolic traits, this one includes them. Yamnaya, EHG and Burushuo are related in terms of traits.

I hope that in the future WGS will be the norm for samples and that we will have more high quality ancient and modern samples for analysis that are also containing the relevant trait related SNPs. If the Forensic Anthropology will evolve the determination of physical traits via genetic testing, we could have the same diversity of Calculators for those traits as we have now for ancestry components.

why would looking at just a few trait related SNP's be any better if you want to know ancestry? almost every negative point you made about those ancestry related SNPs can be made about just looking at a few allele frequencies, it's even worse. and if the traits are important cool, it just doesn't matter for the question at hand.

most alleles are shared evenly across human populations anyways. a little bit of drift or selection in a few of them can easely result in different trait specific similarity ratings.
 
The difference is that those Ancestry Components are only meaningful for the mathematical calculation to get the results the creators of it want to have, that it looks “logical” in our view, because we have a certain kind we want them to be aligned.

The alleles for traits do really predict who someone is, not this in everyday life meaningless Ancestry Markers.

I would recommend you the read this:https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.11.439381v4

I don’t say they are complete nonsense, but they are highly overrated and do not predict things that we normally associate with ancestry. The same goes for Y-Haplogroups who enjoy the same fetishism in the community. I dont wanna be mean, but sometimes i think some people see ancestry like in this famous meme "My Ancestor"

Sami (212 SNPs related to physical, psychological and metabolic traits)

%
Sintashta 72,54
Afanasievo 70,66
Srubnaya 69,05
DolniVestonice 69,04
Trypillians 68.84
Sunghir 68,80
Starcevo 68,45
Vinca 68,10
Yamnaya 67,25
BattleAxe 66,94
ScythianHungary 66,84
ZlatyKun 66,78
Andronovo 66,65
Potapovka 66,49
AnatoliaHG 65,95
ChinaNeolithic 65,46
CordedWare 65,24
Kostenki 64,99
AnatoliaNeolithic 64,96
Azilian 64,88
YakutNeolithic 63,78
Baden 64,63
NorwayHG 64,62
UkraineMesolithic 64,38
PittedWare 64,13
LinearPottery Alföld 64,12
NeolithicDenmark 63,76
CheddarMan 63,71
BellBeaker Eastern Europe 64,60
BalkanNeolithic 63,53
Loschbour 63,21
Ertebolle 63,11
PaleoEskimo 62,63
GlobularAmphora 62,49
FunnelBeaker 61,84
TarimMummy 61,78
BaikalBronze Age 61,62
ShumLaka 61,25
Maglemose 61,16
Natufian 61,14
TransBaikal Mesolithic 61,05
Aurignacian 60,96
Iberomaurusian 60,14
EHG 60,13
BalticHG 60,18
BaikalNeolithic 60,26
MesolithicFrance 59,00

Most alleles are the same in populations, but what counts is the upper percentage in comparison.
 
I believe it has to do with the vulnerability of a "native" culture to depredation from the majority "national" culture, and the recognition that it has a valuable part of the culture as a whole and, thus, deserving of protection.
 

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