David Reich Southern Arc Paper Abstract

[Pax Augusta]

Unfortunately some people here continue to be obsessed with trying to forcefully prove that the ancient Greeks were pale, blond and blue-eyed...
I have a feeling they will be very disappointed with this new research by Reich.
Anyway, just look at the "Nordic" physiognomy of these ancient Greek images (curly dark mediterranean hair):
View attachment 13497View attachment 13498View attachment 13499View attachment 13500View attachment 13501

You're right, the idea that the Greeks were 'Nordic' still persists, despite the lack of evidence. On the contrary, all evidence suggests otherwise. Although I would not be at all surprised if a minority of Greeks had fair hair and blue eyes.

In any case, examples of pottery you've posted prove very little, because there is no realism until the end of the 4th century BC and before that Greek and non-Greek artists follows the artistic-cultural conventions that were strongly influenced by the art of the Eastern Mediterranean. The idea of curly dark Mediterranean hair comes from there. For goodness' sake, there may have been Greeks with curly dark hair but these ceramics cannot be the proof.

The ceramics you posted, if I'm not mistaken, are all Attic red-figure pottery from the 6th and 5th centuries BC.

 

[matadworf]

You're right, the idea that the Greeks were 'Nordic' still persists, despite the lack of evidence. On the contrary, all evidence suggests otherwise. Although I would not be at all surprised if a minority of Greeks had fair hair and blue eyes.

In any case, examples of pottery you've posted prove very little, because there is no realism until the end of the 4th century BC and before that Greek and non-Greek artists follows the artistic-cultural conventions that were strongly influenced by the art of the Eastern Mediterranean. The idea of curly dark Mediterranean hair comes from there. For goodness' sake, there may have been Greeks with curly dark hair but these ceramics cannot be the proof.

The ceramics you posted, if I'm not mistaken, are all Attic red-figure pottery from the 6th and 5th centuries BC.

Classical Greeks' of Attica's physiognomy most likely matched their genetic composition which was primarily EEF, true?And as we know EEF folks had dark hair/eyes and fair skin.

 

[Just_a_Common_Guy]

You're right, the idea that the Greeks were 'Nordic' still persists, despite the lack of evidence. On the contrary, all evidence suggests otherwise. Although I would not be at all surprised if a minority of Greeks had fair hair and blue eyes.

In any case, examples of pottery you've posted prove very little, because there is no realism until the end of the 4th century BC and before that Greek and non-Greek artists follows the artistic-cultural conventions that were strongly influenced by the art of the Eastern Mediterranean. The idea of curly dark Mediterranean hair comes from there. For goodness' sake, there may have been Greeks with curly dark hair but these ceramics cannot be the proof.

The ceramics you posted, if I'm not mistaken, are all Attic red-figure pottery from the 6th and 5th centuries BC.

I never said there weren't ancient Greeks with blond hair, evidently some were. Just that all the evidence pointed out that the overwhelming majority were not, contrary to what some people think here.
Even among the ancient Minoans there were some blondes:

 

[Er Monnezza]

Er Monnezza: Ok, the CHG component is from Georgia, that is South of the Caucuses. The CHG movement into North of the Steppes does not mean it had to have PPNB. So which lands South of the Caucuses have PNNB as you say, all of them. When did that admixture get there. That Russian sample has both CHG/IRAN NEO ancestry, that is a South to North movement. That individual sample RUS_Afanasievo vs. the Caucus Lowland samples could reflect different migrations. PIE could be South of the Caucuses in what is modern Armenia and Northern Iran, peoples that spoke PIE moved North carrying CHG and Iran Neo ancestry and some peoples further in the South Caucus lands received genetic inflow from the Levant which did not get into the Northern most regions of the South Caucus area.

I am not saying that the northward migration must have had PPNB, I am saying that it does if you place PIE in Armenia or Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijani samples are dated from 5688 to 3716 BC, Armenian samples from 4206 to 958 BC. This macro-period covers the period when PIE was spoken (4500 - 2500 BC) and they ALL have Natufian/PPNB-related ancestry, so there is no evidence for the scenario you suggest.

Iran_N-type migration from south of the Caucasus occurred much earlier, probably in the Mesolithic/Early Neolithic, all of which, however, is far too old to have anything to do with PIE, which instead arose in the Steppe.

So do all ancient samples South of the Caucuses have PNNB ancestry? Maybe they all do. If so, then what you are suggesting does not converge to what the Lazaridis et al 2016 paper reported. I posted Figure 4 from that paper in an earlier post so I will post it again in the context of your post #968. It shows those Steppe EMBA an Steppe MLBA samples have some Levantine related admixture. Note the Armenian Bronze Age samples harbor the same type ancestry. Wang et al 2019 also shows heavy CHG ancestry into those Yamanya samples in that paper (some additional samples)

What populations? Sintashta does not have PPNB/Natufian.

Nope, CHG/Iran ancestry in steppe is from south of the Caucasus. Since you like G25 so much, just take a look at the results of Progress and Vonuchka and the outlier from Khvalynsk. All of them have Iran_N, it is highest in Vonuchka, about 10%. Then you have to deduct the EHG ancestry from these Eneolithic samples and you’ll get roughly 1/3 Iran_N in the supposed unadmixed CHG/Iran population. There is no way for a population living north of the Caucasus carrying so much Iran_N.

Not only that, it is the Steppe itself that has some Iran_N admixture as I have already shown in the models.

Those samples do indeed have CHG and Iran_N, but not Natufian/PPNB, which is why I do not support a recent origin of them from the south. It must have been something more ancient in fact, but now "native" to that part of the North Caucasus.

No one is saying that the samples we already have from Iran went into the steppe but from a population that was living between the already published CHGs and those Iran_N samples. My bet is that Mesolithic or Neolithic Armenia, Northern Iran and/or Azerbaijan were the source.

I actually agree with this and it makes sense.

 

[kingdavid]

Last time they were acting the same regarding Thracian samples, and it ended up that they watched a youtube video from Stamov in Bulgarian and missrepresented what they saw/heard.

I dont know what reason do you think
He has to lie about the presence of e1b1b1( x v13) in these papers?
It is likely j man has the paper so he say generally speaking about e1b1b1
He can't say at the moment from which sites
In north mesopotamia, armenia, iran, cyprus
Those e1b1b1( x v13) came from and to which period they belong ( probably bronze age iron age if you ask
Me)

P.s
I believe that if the southern Arc include bulgarian
Samples from iron age e-v13 will show up.

 

[Palermo Trapani]

Er Monnezza: The Sintashta culture likely was derived from the Corded Ware and was further North into the Steppes. Allencroft et al 2015 "Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia" state (p.170):

"The Andronovo culture, which arose in Central Asia during the later Bronze Age (Fig. 1), is genetically closely related to the Sintashta peoples (Extended Data Fig. 2c), and clearly distinct from both Yamnaya and Afanasievo (Fig. 3b and Extended Data Table 1). Therefore, Andronovo represents a temporal and geographical extension of the Sintashta gene pool."

They conclude (p. 171)

"The enigmatic Sintashta culture near the Urals bears genetic resemblance to Corded Ware and was therefore likely to be an eastwardmigration into Asia. As this culture spread towards Altai it evolvedinto the Andronovo culture (Fig. 1), which was then graduallyadmixed and replaced by East Asian peoples that appear in the latercultures (Mezhovskaya and Karasuk). Our analyses support thatmigrations during the Early Bronze Age is a probable scenario forthe spread of Indo-European languages, in line with reconstructionsbased on some archaeological and historical linguistic data1.

Figure 4 from Allencroft et al 2015 clearly shows the The Yamnaya would be the culture closest to the Caucus mountains, not Corded Ware and also not Sintashta which is much futher east near the Ural Mountains. So I don't think the genetics of the Sintashta (which is in Russia) are relevant one way or the other. Figure 2 shows the admixture for bronze age Yamnaya, Sintastha and Armenian bronze age. So there are indeed some association with Yamnaya and Armenian bronze age but they do not form a clade with them like they do with Corded Ware but they do not form one with Sintashta either. So from what I got in this paper, Yamanya and Corded Ware form a clade with each other and Corded Ware with Sintashta but Yamanaya and Sintashta do not so much.

Regarding the Yamnaya, they find " In contrastto recent genetic findings32, however, we only find weak evidence foradmixture in Yamnaya, and only when using Bronze Age Armeniansand the Upper Palaeolithic Mal’ta as potential source populations...This could be due to theabsence of eastern hunter-gatherers as potential source populationfor admixture in our data set."

We know now that the lack of EHG is indeed an issue as the EHG were formed with admixture between WHG populations that had spanned east and became isolated and admixed with incoming ANE from Siberia. Those EHG +plus CHG formed Yamnaya. The CHG were from modern Georgia so a PIE in Armenia is still plausible if one is open to potential hypotheses vs. fixed on one. Modern Georgia borders the Caucus Mountain range separating it from the Steppe. Armenia is to the South of Georgia and Northern Iran is south of Armenia and borders it at the Armenian Southern border. A PIE homeland in Armenia and Northern Iran could still be "potentially explained" if the language diffused North from Armenia/Northern Iran into Georgia and the former CHG in Georgia adopted Farming without major genetic infusion and then adopted PIE from Armenia again without major genetic admixture from Armenia. These CHG populations had interaction from what is modern Georgia to the areas in the Steppe (which Lazaradis et al 2016 already documented) and thus that is what brought PIE into the Yamnaya who spread PIE into Corded Ware and both Yamanya and Corded Ware spread it across Europe in line with the Kurgan Hypothesis. So the question of Levant related admixture could actually be a moot point regarding whether it is in the Bronze Age Steppes.

Let's consider some other examples, I have always focused very closely to any published papers in the Early European Farmers given their significant impact on Italian genetics (all Modern Italians have EEF-Anatolian Neolithic as the major ancestral source population). We know from several papers, Feldman et al 2019, that the Early European Farmers were formed from a Villabruna cluster WHG clade that moved from NE Italy to the Balkans and became isolated there and formed a divergent local Anatolian HG population. With the adoption of Farming in the Neolithic period, there was very little genetic turnover with the Neolithic Antolians harboring 80-90% Anatolian HG (formed from the Villabruna cluster) plus some Levant Neolithic + CHG/Iran Neolithic for the remaining 10-20%. So what we have is the adoption of Farming technology with little genetic turnover. In fact, the abstract by Reich on the Southern Arc speaks of Anatolia still being a genetic barrier to inflow even during the Bronze Age. Yet, PIE language was adopted there as Pre Anatolian IE is thought to be the oldest PIE branch. We also know that for example the Etruscans and Latins were genetically similar, yet one spoke IE and one did not.

So my point is both farming and language were adopted in Anatolia in the Neolithic and bronze age, with little genetic turnover. This could be the same situation with the Southern Arc of PIE. PIE developed in Armenia and or Northern Iran it spread North to what is modern Georgia and CHG type people, who had adopted Farming moved North across the Caucus Mountains and traded with peoples from the Steppe, which they clearly did and they brought PIE to the Steppes.

So we don't know anything yet because we don't know what is in those new 731 samples. Again, I am not saying the Southern Arc is 100% correct but for Reich to strongly point to it suggest to me he has some genetic evidence to make such a statement.

 

[Palermo Trapani]

Well, if I genuinely lack some knowledge about a topic, I definitely would and "have" asked a question precisely because I didn't know the answer. That's how you learn in a situation like this, or in a classroom, for example.

You can't do that in a court room, unless you want to lose. You have to know the answer to every question you ask, no matter what the circumstances.

If you're doing a direct examination of your own witness, again, you have to know the answers to the questions, but the questions have to be completely open ended: What, when, where, why, how. Hopefully the witness has been sufficiently prepared that the necessary points will be made, because you can't ask a "leading question", i.e. one where the answer is implied in the question. You can't help your witness out in that way.

If you're cross-examining a perhaps hostile witness it sometimes seems you're asking nothing but leading questions to which you know or can prove the answer and which you also know will impeach the witness by showing an agenda, bias, propensity to lie, prior inconsistent statement, mistake of fact etc.

That's the difference. Understanding that and how to lay a proper foundation to get evidence admitted and the exceptions to the hearsay rule are what trials rely upon. It's amazing how many practicing attorneys can't get it right. I blame it on the fact that so many cases settled before they ever reach trial.

In this hobby, which is just awash with people analyzing data not "blind", or objectively, but purely from the standpoint of their own agendas, it takes no great skill to know what is behind the questions some people ask.

Off-topic. If you're interested in seeing an attorney who settled too many cases get destroyed because she didn't understand the fundamentals, watch the following. If she weren't such an awful, dishonest person I could almost feel sorry for her.

How NOT to do a direct examination of your witness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Q5nbu6BoQ

How TO do a cross examination:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUtjCcZa4Bs

Angela: Good post.

1) Yes, it is clear where some questions are coming from.

2)Regarding the 2 videos, all I can say is Amber storming out and her attorney getting her questions objected to and sustained every time (22) and Camille Vasquez hugging her colleague , you get the sense they new they had Amber to rights at that point (and so did Amber's attorney).

Thanks for those links, well worth a watch. I think I will subscribe and go back and watch it again for the pure entertainment on one hand and watching the total incompetence of Amber's attorney.

 

[Aaron1981]

Whether we call them a proto-Vasconic people or another people who also migrated to west of Europe from the steppe, the main point is that they were not these people who spread Indo-European culture in Anatolia because Bronze/Iron Age Anatolians had no steppe ancestry.

The genomes of people in Neolithic Spain (Basque territory) are very close to modern day Basque yet they lacked R1b, so I would say language has nothing to do with Y signature at all. (look at I1 in Germanics, yet we know they could not have been IE speaking originally) The people we know as "Basque" may also be IA migrants from southern France, so at the end of the day the story is likely a lot more complex than people realize. Unfortunately people, probably unintentionally have forgotten the role of women in these ancient cultures which was to rear children, and for men to basically raid, find mates, and feed the family. As chauvinistic as this sounds, this was how ancient societies worked for the most part. So it wouldn't surprise me if having a large number of female mates who were not native-IE speakers (ie: mediterranean mtDNA H1, H3 family) this could produce descendants who were not IE speakers.

 

[Moja]

It is interesting that those who said there is absolutely no evidence that Indo-European languages existed in the south of Caucasus and northwest of Iran in the 3rd millennium BC, already say that this region was the source of Anatolian, Armenian, Indo-Iranian, ... languages, because it has been proved that steppe ancestry existed in this region, the only thing which matters for them is the Steppe Theory of Indo-European origins!

 

[Hawk]

I dont know what reason do you think
He has to lie about the presence of e1b1b1( x v13) in these papers?
It is likely j man has the paper so he say generally speaking about e1b1b1
He can't say at the moment from which sites
In north mesopotamia, armenia, iran, cyprus
Those e1b1b1( x v13) came from and to which period they belong ( probably bronze age iron age if you ask
Me)
P.s
I believe that if the southern Arc include bulgarian
Samples from iron age e-v13 will show up.

Let me tell you straightforward, the first paper to be published will be the Bronze Age samples, and there will be no E-V13. And that's something which we all expect. He doesn't know beyond that.

For us, after the Bronze-Iron Age collapse and transition is the period which we are looking at.

 

[kingdavid]

Let me tell you straightforward, the first paper to be published will be the Bronze Age samples, and there will be no E-V13. And that's something which we all expect. He doesn't know beyond that.

For us, after the Bronze-Iron Age collapse and transition is the period which we are looking at.

Interesting
So in the last paper / iron age it must show up

 

[mount123]

Let me tell you straightforward, the first paper to be published will be the Bronze Age samples, and there will be no E-V13. And that's something which we all expect. He doesn't know beyond that.

For us, after the Bronze-Iron Age collapse and transition is the period which we are looking at.

The papers will all supposedly be published at once unless I misunderstood something.

 

[Hawk]

The papers will all supposedly be published at once unless I misunderstood something.

Perhaps, but they should be separated in chronological order, by timeline.

 

[firetown]

According to the scientific articles I've read, the researchers found leg bones from Philip II and they could even determine that he was around 180 cm.

That would have been WAY ABOVE average height at the time.

 

[Moja]

The genomes of people in Neolithic Spain (Basque territory) are very close to modern day Basque yet they lacked R1b, so I would say language has nothing to do with Y signature at all. (look at I1 in Germanics, yet we know they could not have been IE speaking originally) The people we know as "Basque" may also be IA migrants from southern France, so at the end of the day the story is likely a lot more complex than people realize. Unfortunately people, probably unintentionally have forgotten the role of women in these ancient cultures which was to rear children, and for men to basically raid, find mates, and feed the family. As chauvinistic as this sounds, this was how ancient societies worked for the most part. So it wouldn't surprise me if having a large number of female mates who were not native-IE speakers (ie: mediterranean mtDNA H1, H3 family) this could produce descendants who were not IE speakers.

If "language has nothing to do with Y signature at all", so how do you know that those men who invaded West Europe in the 3rd millennium BC were IE-speakers? They lived for a long time in the Central Europe where Rhaetians and other non-IE people lived.

 

[Pax Augusta]

If "language has nothing to do with Y signature at all", so how do you know that those men who invaded West Europe in the 3rd millennium BC were IE-speakers? They lived for a long time in the Central Europe where Rhaetians and other non-IE people lived.

Because languages are likely also transmitted through the maternal line, and also through 'cultural' factors. The other mistake is to call prehistoric populations by the names of Iron Age populations.

 

[firetown]

If "language has nothing to do with Y signature at all", so how do you know that those men who invaded West Europe in the 3rd millennium BC were IE-speakers? They lived for a long time in the Central Europe where Rhaetians and other non-IE people lived.

It depends if the fathers stuck around and for how long. If offspring joined in further conquest, they would have at least picked up some of their paternal languages.

 

[Riverman]

Because languages are likely also transmitted through the maternal line, and also through 'cultural' factors. The other mistake is to call prehistoric populations by the names of Iron Age populations.

Maternal transmission of languages occurs, especially in more primitive societies, but its generally rare and highly unlikely in this case. If that would have been the case, IE would have never spread as it did in Europe and Asia.

 

[firetown]

Being bordered by the ocean, Basques stopped migrating as much as central European populations. War-aged boys didn't join fathers in conquering more territory, but developed their region. In Basque culture, women play a very important role when it comes to managing society. Likely communication with the mothers outweighed communication with the fathers by a longshot.

 

[Riverman]

Being bordered by the ocean, Basques stopped migrating as much as central European populations. War-aged boys didn't join fathers in conquering more territory, but developed their region. In Basque culture, women play a very important role when it comes to managing society. Likely communication with the mothers outweighed communication with the fathers by a longshot.

We really don't know what happened. At this point, Basque is the greatest mystery. Because for Rhaeto-Etruscan I see a G2 transmitted path from the Alpine-North Italian-Pannonian region, for Basques there is not even a minority core element which can be clearly identified. At this point we don't even know whether all Beakers spoke IE to begin with.