David Reich Southern Arc Paper Abstract

[Jovialis]

If you were to take away the WHG resurgence in the copper age, which has nothing to do with the steppe, they would be shifted further down on the PCA. So I don't see how posting a PCA supports your position.

 

[Pax Augusta]

Aneli et al says otherwise, I have posted the excerpt. You do need extra CHG in both Etruscans and Latins. There's a lot of issues with that paper, including the conclusions that are made. Frankly I do not believe modern Tuscans were formed in the trajectory they proposed. A lot of the stuff they say doesn't really make sense. If anyone wants to see what I am referring to, they can read my posts on the thread here on eupedia.

The origin and legacy of the Etruscans through a 2000-year archeogenomic time transec (eupedia.com)

C'mon, Jovialis, Aneli is a former student of Alberto Piazza and they are not at all credible when it comes to Etruscans (and even Tuscans). What Aneli writes is only due to the logics of the clans that rule Italian universities, the 2014 study she mentions, pretending not to see the many studies that have come out on the Etruscans in recent years, is simply ridiculous. That calculation can be done with all Italians, and it follows the Italian cline. Those who are more southern genetically than Tuscans have even greater Middle Eastern DNA. Do you want me to simulate that calculation? That calculation assumes that the European component is based on today's Northwestern Europeans, they throw in a handful of Spaniards because they have a guilty conscience but that doesn't affect them at all (and the Spaniards gets Middle Eastern DNA as well).

Instrumental readings of the Etruscans, especially those that have fostered the proliferation of pseudoscience about the Etruscans, should be avoided in 2022.

For the modern population there would be so much to say, but my primary interest with respect to these topics remains on ancient history; of the moderns I care much less.

 

[Jovialis]

C'mon, Jovialis, Aneli is a former student of Alberto Piazza and it is not at all credible when it comes to Etruscans (and even Tuscans). What Aneli writes is only due to the logics of the clans that rule Italian universities, the 2014 study she mentions, pretending not to see the many studies that have come out on the Etruscans in recent years, is simply ridiculous. That calculation can be done with all Italians, and it follows the Italian cline. Those who are more southern genetically than Tuscans have even greater Middle Eastern DNA. Do you want me to simulate that calculation? That calculation assumes that the European component is based on today's Northwestern Europeans, they throw in a handful of Spaniards because they have a guilty conscience but that doesn't affect them at all (and the Spaniards get out Middle Eastern DNA).

Instrumental readings of the Etruscans, especially those that have fostered the proliferation of pseudoscience about the Etruscans, should be avoided in 2022.

For the modern population there would be so much to say, but my primary interest with respect to these topics remains on ancient history; of the moderns I care much less.

I don't care about their politics, I am looking at the data. Also, middle eastern DNA? Okay, that's not surprising considering Anatolia_N and CHG are sometimes called "Middle eastern", considering that is where the geographical origins are. These are semantics.

Also, Aneli only conveniently articulates what I have observed over the course of several studies. I have no idea why people have an aversion to the concept that there was a CHG-pulse in the Mediterranean during the bronze age. We see it in Greece, we see it all the way in southern Spain, as well as in between. Why do you think the Etruscans would be insulated from this wide spread phenomenon going on in the region?

 

[Pax Augusta]

I don't care about their politics, I am looking at the data. Also, middle eastern DNA? Okay, that's not surprising considering Anatolia_N and CHG are sometimes called "Middle eastern", considering that is where the geographical origins are. These are semantics.

Also, Aneli only conveniently articulates what I have observed over the course of several studies. I have no idea why people have an aversion to the concept that there was a CHG-pulse in the Mediterranean during the bronze age. We see it in Greece, we see it all the way in southern Spain, as well as in between. Why do you think the Etruscans would be insulated from this wide spread phenomenon going on in the region?

We are talking about different things, Jovialis.

 

[Jovialis]

We are talking about different things, Jovialis.

Oh really, I'm talking about the fact Republican era Romans need a little extra chg to be modeled properly. Which coincidences with the data I presented. What are you talking about?

 

[Pax Augusta]

Oh really, I'm talking about the fact Republican era Romans need a little extra chg to be modeled properly. Which coincidences with the data I presented. What are you talking about?

I was referring to other things, but from now I won't be able to chime in because I'm too messed up with real life.

Republican era Romans doesn't equal Etruscans, if I remenber well they are 11 individuals of various different origins (and not all of Republican age), with three that are not even fully native.

 

[Angela]

I wasn't thinking that Mesopotamians were "higher" in Natufian than Levant Neo, although I've learned never to say something is impossible.

So, they might be higher in it, or similar to Levant Neo, or movement from Levant Neo brought some Natufian with it to Mesopotamia. We've known for a while that in pre-history Iranian ancestry moved south and east and west, and Levant ancestry moved north, so that the three farming groups in West Asia, Anatolian farmers, Iranian farmers, and Levantine farmers were no longer disparate, genetically segregated groups. That may be part of what the Reich paper will discuss. Admixture everywhere, from the time of Neanderthals and before.

All the concrete answers await the samples, of course, and the paper itself.

As to the relationship of Natufians to farming, it had to start somewhere, and I don't think it was just the abundance of flora and fauna and the climate, the combination of which, according to Hawks, created a Garden of Eden of sorts.

I won't go into detail because I don't want to offend people of certain ethnicities or "races", but I see videos all the time of groups farming similar crops to those grown in Europe or Anatolia, and yet their cuisine is incredibly simple. It's as if they found one way to cook something and stopped there; no experimentation with new ways or combinations at all. I think the same is true with different venues as well, like technology. It's easy to copy; it's a much different thing to innovate. It requires a vision, an imagination of a new reality, which seems to come easier to some groups than to others.

There's an old book by James Michener called "The Source". I read it when I was in my 20s. My children were assigned it for summer reading between Junior and Senior Year of High School. It's still not that out of date despite all the archaeological studies since then. I highly recommend it.

To clarify, I don't think the Natufians were "farmers" in the true sense of the word, but the Levant Neo people who carried their ancestry were certainly one of the groups who can be credited with "inventing" farming. If Mesopotamians also carried that ancestry, then we can indeed add irrigation, writing, city states, and empires. Of course, monotheism arose in the Levant.

 

[Jovialis]

I was referring to other things, but from now I won't be able to chime in because I'm too messed up with real life.
Republican era Romans doesn't equal Etruscans, they are 11 individuals of various different origins, with three that are not even fully native.

It is implied, otherwise they would explicitly say latin and Etruscans. It's practically common knowledge now that people consider latins and Etruscans one in the same in terms of genetics. But also the admixture charts, even considering the points you mentioned, still show a bit extra Iran related ancestry than is typical of just steppe admixture. I'm not talking about the outliers.

 

[Pax Augusta]

It is implied, otherwise they would explicitly say latin and Etruscans. It's practically common knowledge now that people consider latins and Etruscans one in the same in terms of genetics. But also the admixture charts, even considering the points you mentioned, still show a bit extra Iran related ancestry than is typical of just steppe admixture. I'm not talking about the outliers.

I remain unconvinced, but we will talk about it in the coming days.

 

[MOESAN]

You are actually right that there were different non-IE languages in the south of Caucasus (Armenia and northwest Iran) from the 3rd millennium BCE but we read in this abstract: "A striking signal of steppe migration into the Southern Arc is evident in Armenia and northwest Iran where admixture with Yamnaya patrilineal descendants occurred, coinciding with their 3rd millennium BCE displacement from the steppe itself." So Yamnaya couldn't be PIE homeland.

diverse languages: a lot all around in South!
If you read well my post, I asked if we knowed exactly when appeared the first Anatolian IE dialects. My aim was to suggest that IE or PIE was not anterior south the Caucasus than north of it; even if Yamna was not PIE it could be early IE (it depends on linguistic theories) and so my reasoning was that we had no proof of a southern origin or PIE. Let's remember I did not affirm anything, I edit only doubts caused by a lack of clues about the age of Anatolian IE languages; archaic forms (not for every trait) are not a certificat of antiquity for languages.

 

[Jovialis]

I remain unconvinced, but we will talk about it in the coming days.

Some old threads on Posth et al 2021 and modeling ancient Italians:

Variation of Ancestry in Posth et al. 2021's Imperial C. Italy cluster (eupedia.com)

Ancient Italy K8 Model (Dodecad K12b) (eupedia.com)

This is why I am convinced:

Etruscans get a big Remedello component, going by this model, it shows the Etruscans were indeed composed of autosomal DNA that was autochthonous. But they also get assigned the Minoan component. Not to be taken literally as Minoan from Crete, but that is indeed indicative of having some proclivity to the BA CHG pulse in the Mediterranean, including Italy.

 

[Jovialis]

Both Etruscans and Latins, who had a very similar genetic profile, are composed of WHG, EEF and Steppe (30 percent according to Antonio 2019, 25 percent according to the 2021 study, so between a third and a quarter of their genome, not exactly little).

I get about the same amount of steppe myself, but I never really considered that as being much.

 

[Pax Augusta]

Some old threads on Posth et al 2021 and modeling ancient Italians:

Variation of Ancestry in Posth et al. 2021's Imperial C. Italy cluster (eupedia.com)

Ancient Italy K8 Model (Dodecad K12b) (eupedia.com)

This is why I am convinced:

Etruscans get a big Remedello component, going by this model, it shows the Etruscans were indeed composed of autosomal DNA that was autochthonous. But they also get assigned the Minoan component. Not to be taken literally as Minoan from Crete, but that is indeed indicative of having some proclivity to the BA CHG pulse in the Mediterranean, including Italy.

An amateur calculator cannot prove much at these levels, especially those created more than 10 years ago before the discovery of ancestral components. You convince yourself of what you want to convince yourself of. Then in those models there are ancestral components and some that are not ancestral components. Academic studies are far from impeccable, including that of Posht 2021, but we have criticized Anthrogenica users or Eurogenes users in this forum, we should avoid behaving like them advancing our own personal theories based on amateur tools. More studies with ancient samples from Iron and Bronze Age Italy are finally due to come out soon, let's see, because so many pieces of the mosaic are still missing, in Italy there were more than a twenty or so populations in the Iron Age, we have samples from 4 only.

As I told you before, I am messed up these hours, so I cannot participate more.

 

[Leopoldo Leone]

1) Calcolithic Italian farmers had a bit of Iran_N/CHG admixture, though it was not much, so insomuch Etruscans derive from them they too must have a bit of Iran_N/CHG admixture
2)It is not clear whether Minoans had Iran_N instead of CHG, and actually it does seem they had CHG instead of direct Iran_N (https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/...0092867420305092?showall=true#secsectitle0070 , Anatolians had experienced a CHG gene flow from the caucasus, and from Anatolia it arrived on the Aegean somewhere around the calcolithic and the bronze age).
3) Modern Italians have excess CHG/Iran_N compared to IA Italians, but the source of it isn't clear as of now; honestly the Posth paper's model makes no sense, and in my humble opinion a balkan and maybe, to a lesser extent, anatolian source is likelier.

 

[Pax Augusta]

1) Calcolithic Italian farmers had a bit of Iran_N/CHG admixture, though it was not much, so insomuch Etruscans derive from them they too must have a bit of Iran_N/CHG admixture
2)It is not clear whether Minoans had Iran_N instead of CHG, and actually it does seem they had CHG instead of direct Iran_N (https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/...0092867420305092?showall=true#secsectitle0070 , Anatolians had experienced a CHG gene flow from the caucasus, and from Anatolia it arrived on the Aegean somewhere around the calcolithic and the bronze age).
3) Modern Italians have excess CHG/Iran_N compared to IA Italians, but the source of it isn't clear as of now; honestly the Posth paper's model makes no sense, and in my humble opinion a balkan and maybe, to a lesser extent, anatolian source is likelier.

Italian Chalcolithic farmers if I'm not mistaken did not come from Etruria but from the Marche region, which has no much archeological connection with the Prehistoric Etruscan world. The only Villanovan settlement (therefore Etruscan) in the Marche, at Fermo, is considered a colonization from Verucchio in northern Italy that occurred between the late Bronze and early Iron Age and was assimilated quite early by the Picenes (I don't remember whether 5th or 4th century BC.). Samples to prove this are lacking. While it is indeed possible that there is some Iran_N signal dating to Chalcolithic/Neolithic also in Etruria, within the discourse on the origins of the Etruscans to argue to the current state of knowledge too nonchalantly that they had Iran_N is no different than to argue for other fringe or superseded theories.

 

[Jovialis]

An amateur calculator cannot prove much at these levels, especially those created more than 10 years ago before the discovery of ancestral components. You convince yourself of what you want to convince yourself of. Then in those models there are ancestral components there and some that are not ancestral components. Academic studies are far from impeccable but we have criticized Anthrogenica users or Eurogenes users in this forum, we should avoid behaving like them advancing our own personal theories based on amateur tools. And as I told you before, I am messed up these hours, so I cannot participate more.

You don't have to participate, but that doesn't mean I am not allowed to post. Just get back to me when you can.

Also, I find this conversation is becoming very rude. Let's scale things back a bit.

 

[Jovialis]

Also, I am not sure what my model is violating, I am using it to make my case for current studies using new tools that imply the same thing. Models are just models, and you have used the same calculator, in this very thread to make a point. All of those components fall within the range of what the calculator can do. It is not attempting to decipher WHG or Neanderthal percentages.

But also, do you honestly think if the calculator was made yesterday it would show us something radically different?

You said they get about 25-30% steppe in the Antonio paper, well that's what the model I posted shows too.

 

[Pax Augusta]

Also, I am not sure what my model is violating, I am using it to make my case for current studies using new tools that imply the same thing. Models are just models, and you have used the same calculator, in this very thread to make a point. All of those components fall within the range of what the calculator can do. It is not attempting to decipher WHG or Neanderthal percentages.

But also, do you honestly think if the calculator was made yesterday it would show us something radically different?

You said they get about 25-30% steppe in the Antonio paper, well that's what the model I posted shows too.

Minoan is not an ancestral component and in my opinion couldn't be used as such. Still in my opinion, Dodecad also shows problems in PCAs with ancient samples used in studies as ancestral components. I spent the hours together with a couple of friends doing tests with Dodecad K12b and nMonte with the usual model based on ancestral components (WHG, EEF, Steppe, Iran_N, CHG, EHG...), and it gave us inaccurate results (it did not recognize WHG, for example). We would have just been very happy to be able to use it with nMonte instead of others calculators.

In PCAs WHG, EHG, SHG, Yamnaya, CHG, Iran_N... in my opinion they remain too close to modern samples (only academic samples in the PCA).

 

[Jovialis]

Minoan is not an ancestral component and in my opinion couldn't be used as such. Still in my opinion, Dodecad also shows problems in PCAs with ancient samples used in studies as ancestral components. I spent the hours together with a couple of friends doing tests with Dodecad K12b and nMonte with the usual model based on ancestral components (WHG, EEF, Steppe, Iran_N, CHG, EHG...), and it gave us inaccurate results (it did not recognize WHG, for example). We would have just been very happy to be able to use it with nMonte instead of others calculators.
In PCAs WHG, EHG, SHG, Yamnaya, CHG, Iran_N... in my opinion they remain too close to modern samples (only academic samples in the PCA).

I'm happy you mentioned that because I have made several posts regarding those limitations. Specifically with WHG. Which is why in my model, I used samples that are admixed with WHG to CHG on a gradient. Because these ancient samples fall within the range of modern samples, there should be no problem in projecting them. I see a lot of new calculators have far worse projections when using the vahaduo pca.

The recent pre-print on the Adriatic transect used Minoan as a proxy for ancestry in the south. Which imo give validation to my use of Minoan as a proxy as well. They are professionals using multiple tools. Which btw, I came up with prior to that pre-print by just using Dodecad. Given that, I have to humbly disagree with your skepticism.

 

[Moja]

"Our comprehensive sampling shows that Anatolia received hardly any genetic input from Europe or the Eurasian steppe from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age."

It is also an important point, no steppe ancestry in Anatolia even in the Iron Age, it is not just about Anatolian peoples, in the late Bronze Age there were also some Indo-Iranian and Hellenic peoples in Anatolia.