Genetic History of Anatolia during Holocene

[real expert]

My main argument was that there is MORE than one gene responsible for blonde hair. The KITLG-gene is just one of them. Some steppe people carried that gene but these individuals didn’t have blonde hair but dark hair because like I already said there are more genes involved for light hair. You just have to look at the frequency of that gene in Europe to see that it is impossible that steppe people brought blonde hair to Europe.
The Hanel&Carlberg study isn’t flawless. IMO, they overestimated the role of the steppe people for hair lighting. It‘s pretty obvious now, that steppe people brought only one of the genes responsible for blonde hair and that they themselves were dark haired.

When going by your evaluation not only Hanel&Carlberg but also Reich, Mathieson and the authors of the very recent paper-Selection Landscape and Genetic Legacy of Ancient Eurasians, also overestimate Steppe folks' contribution of genes for blond hair. Just saying.

 

[eupator]

Avoid throwing the discussion onto a personal level, and lower these arrogant tones. Is that clear to you?

I have read enough books by scholars dealing with Herodotus, which was not even completely Greek, to know that what he writes about ethnicities reflects just the mentality of his time. Reading Herodotus' texts as if they were written today is quite a mistake.

1) You are reading too much into my post.

2) How is Herodotus not being vindicated in what he wrote about the origins of the various Greek city states. And how wasn't he Greek himself, if this was the case, then none of the Ionic/Attic groups could be described as Greek, let alone consist of the absolute trademark signature ancient Greek civilization nowadays (art, philosophy, architercture, etc.).

 

[Silesian]

You're probably talking about the KITLG-gene. Angela is right in saying that the Yamnaya people were dark haired and dark eyed but with relatively light skin. Some of the Yamnaya carried the KITLG-gene BUT that doesn't mean that they had blonde or light hair. If you read the original paper concerning the KITLG you'll see that the frequency of that gene in Europe is low, much lower than actual blonde hair.

See:

View attachment 13634

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4704868/

It doesn't even reach 1/3 in Northern Europe. The truth is that you don't need the KITLG-gene to have actual blonde hair, there are much more genes involved for blonde hair. For example, you can have the KITLG-gene but dark hair in reality. Keep in mind the farmers of Central Europe were blonde and blue eyed while the steppe people were dark haired and dark eyed, so we do know where light features in Northern Europeans come from, it's no mystery anymore. Corded ware had some light haired individuals but corded ware is of course admixed with Central European farmers. Then there is selection in northern europe for light hair, blue eyes and light skin and by the Iron Age most Northern Europeans have a phenotype that is close to the modern phenotype.

A good summary about the KITLG-gene:
https://www.kqed.org/science/18076/...0yfIJA3DQKLYv6d8XfOtqqAdHM6T3MlTmbDsg1qn1cy-Q

The point is the cutting edge paper(this version posted September 23, 2022) on natural selection in Eurasians is, comparing genetic flows with ancient and modern populations. It does not make sense to emotionally cherry pick results - conclusions, just because you don't like them, in the same paragraph with Yamnaya and Anatolian phenotype on hair phenotype, they point out genes relating to mood swings and Alzheimer’s Disease.

THE SELECTION LANDSCAPE AND GENETIC LEGACY OF ANCIENTEURASIANS

THE SELECTION LANDSCAPE AND GENETIC LEGACY OF ANCIENTEURASIANS

...We focused on phenotypes whose polygenic scores weresignificantly over-dispersed in the ancient populations (Supplementary Note 2c), as well as a singlehigh effect variant, ApoE4, known to be a significant risk factor in Alzheimer’s Disease (112,113).We emphasise that this approach makes no reference to ancient phenotypes but describes how theseancestries contributed to the modern genetic landscape. In light of the ancestry gradients within theBritish Isles and Eurasia 11, these results support the hypothesis that ancestry-mediated geographicvariation in disease risks and phenotypes is commonplace. It points to a way forward fordisentangling how ancestry contributed to differences in risk of genetic disease – includingmetabolic and mental health disorders – between present-day populations...Likewise, European hunter gatherers are genetically predicted to have dark skin pigmentation anddark brown hair 9,10,17,18,115–118, and indeed we see that the WHG, EHG and CHG componentscontributed to these phenotypes in present-day individuals whereas the Yamnaya and Anatolianfarmer ancestry contributed to light brown/blonde hair pigmentation (Supplementary Note 2g).Interestingly, loci associated with overdispersed mood-related polygenic phenotypes recordedamong the UK Biobank individuals (like increased anxiety, guilty feelings, and irritability) showedan overrepresentation of the Anatolian farmer ancestry component; and the WHG componentshowed a strikingly high contribution to traits related to diabetes. We also found that the ApoE4effect allele (increased risk for Alzheimer's disease) is preferentially found on a WHG/EHGhaplotypic background, suggesting it likely was brought to western Europe by early huntergatherers (Supplementary Note 2g). This is in line with the present-day European distribution ofthis allele, which is highest in north-eastern Europe, where the proportion of these ancestries arehigher than in other regions of the continent

 

[Jovialis]

@Real expert

They even made Zeus black, it is completely unwatchable.

Someone tried to justify it to me by saying they were fictional characters, so it didn't matter...

I'm waiting for the Mexican, and Asian version of characters in a production of Porgy and Bess to come along.

As for Achilles, a modern eastern Peloponnesian would be sufficient. They're ethnically Greek, and the closest to the Ancients.

 

[eupator]

1) Herodotus on the origins of Athenians:

[8.44.2] 'Now the Athenians, as long as the Pelasgians ruled in the country that is now called Greece, were Pelasgians and were called Cranaus; but at the time when Cecrops reigned in their country they were called Cecropides, and when Erechtheus succeeded him in power, they changed their name to Athenians; and when Ion, the son of Xouthus, became a general of the Athenians, they were called Iones after him.'

2) On Ionics and Dorics:

[1.56] 'When he heard these verses, Croesus was pleased with them above all, for he thought that a mule would never be king of the Medes instead of a man, and therefore that he and his posterity would never lose his empire. Then he sought very carefully to discover who the mightiest of the Greeks were, whom he should make his friends. [2] He found by inquiry that the chief peoples were the Lacedaemonians among those of Doric, and the Athenians among those of Ionic stock. These races, Ionian and Dorian, were the foremost in ancient time, the first a Pelasgian and the second a Hellenic people. The Pelasgian race has never yet left its home; the Hellenic has wandered often and far. [3] For in the days of king Deucalion¹ it inhabited the land of Phthia, then the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus, in the time of Dorus son of Hellen; driven from this Histiaean country by the Cadmeans, it settled about Pindus in the territory called Macedonian; from there again it migrated to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into the Peloponnese, where it took the name of Dorian.'


3) On Pelasgians and their eventually merge with the Hellenics:

[1.57-58]

'What language the Pelasgians spoke I cannot say definitely. But if one may judge by those that still remain of the Pelasgians who live above the Tyrrheni¹ in the city of Creston—who were once neighbors of the people now called Dorians, and at that time inhabited the country which now is called Thessalian— [2] and of the Pelasgians who inhabited Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, who came to live among the Athenians, and by other towns too which were once Pelasgian and afterwards took a different name: if, as I said, one may judge by these, the Pelasgians spoke a language which was not Greek. [3] If, then, all the Pelasgian stock spoke so, then the Attic nation, being of Pelasgian blood, have changed its language too at the time when it became part of the Hellenes. For the people of Creston and Placia have a language of their own in common, which is not the language of their neighbors; and it is plain that they still preserve the manner of speech which they brought with them in their migration into the places where they live.'

'But the Hellenic stock, it seems clear to me, has always had the same language since its beginning; yet being, when separated from the Pelasgians, few in number, they have grown from a small beginning to comprise a multitude of nations, chiefly because the Pelasgians and many other foreign peoples united themselves with them. Before that, I think, the Pelasgic stock nowhere increased much in number while it was of foreign speech.'


How are all these not being vindicated to a tee by recent publications?

Pelasgians = Anatolian (Carian/Luwian?) substratum that merges with the newcomers from the North bringing forth the ancient Greek ethnogenesis.

 

[Anfänger]

When going by your evaluation not only Hanel&Carlberg but also Reich, Mathieson and the authors of the very recent paper-Selection Landscape and Genetic Legacy of Ancient Eurasians, also overestimate Steppe folks' contribution of genes for blond hair. Just saying.

Yes, that might be but there are also numerous papers out that show that light hair is correlated mostly with Anatolian farmers ancestry, for example the Estonian paper, I can't remember its name and yes, Yamnaya probably introduced the KITLG-gene into Europe but you don't need that gene to be blonde. You already mentioned them also, just look at Funnelbeaker and Globular Amphora, mostly blonde without the gene.

The point is the cutting edge paper(this version posted September 23, 2022) on natural selection in Eurasians is, comparing genetic flows with ancient and modern populations. It does not make sense to emotionally cherry pick results - conclusions, just because you don't like them, in the same paragraph with Yamnaya and Anatolian phenotype on hair phenotype, they point out genes relating to mood swings and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Let´s be serious and reread my posts. I'm saying Yamnaya was responsilbe for one of the genes (KITLG) and Anatolian farmers for most of the other genes for natural blonde hair. There is HUGE difference between introducing a gene and having a phenotype that is light haired.

 

[Angela]

Yes, that might be but there are also numerous papers out that show that light hair is correlated mostly with Anatolian farmers ancestry, for example the Estonian paper, I can't remember its name and yes, Yamnaya probably introduced the KITLG-gene into Europe but you don't need that gene to be blonde. You already mentioned them also, just look at Funnelbeaker and Globular Amphora, mostly blonde without the gene.



Let´s be serious and reread my posts. I'm saying Yamnaya was responsilbe for one of the genes (KITLG) and Anatolian farmers for most of the other genes for natural blonde hair. There is HUGE difference between introducing a gene and having a phenotype that is light haired.

Sorry, I'm out of juice. I'll take care of it later.

This is the Estonian paper, produced under the direction of Mait Metspalu:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...tions_to_contemporary_European_complex_traits

Different methodologies equal slightly different results:

"An enriched Yamnaya ancestry in the pigmentation candidate regions is linked to dark eye and hair colors, consistently with what inferredfrom aDNA data from the Baltic region. This ancestry is also linked to a strong build, withhigh stature (in agreement with previous literature) and large hip and waist circumferences, both at genome-wide and region-specific levels, but also high cholesterol concentrations when focusing on candidate regions...An enriched Anatolia N ancestry in the pigmentation candidate regions has implications opposite to Yamnaya,"

There's also the latest Mathiesen et al paper, which found no selection at KITLG. This would tie in with the findings in many of these papers, which I have repeated ad nauseum, which is that certain traits require the action of many alleles in combination.

This is also an interesting paper:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abd6535

It shows the pigmentation for the incoming steppe people and then the pigmentation of the locals in the Iron Age, after admixture. There was a massive increase in the frequency of fair traits in the population in that short period, attributable to both admixture and selection.

The most important point, imo, is your closing comment, which I have bolded. It is amazing to me that this eminently logical statement is so difficult for some northern Europeans obsessed with this topic to understand.

At any rate, all of this is off-topic, and I think it's important to get back to a discussion of the important parts of the paper to which you have drawn our attention.

 

[Angela]

@enter_tain, Silesian, and real expert,

People can start threads about papers dealing with the topic of pigmentation if they wish.

What they emphatically CANNOT do is derail threads by inserting detailed discussions of pigmentation where they don't belong. This isn't the apricity or Stormfront or wherever you people usually indulge your obsession with blonde hair and blue eyes. I mean really, some of you are going to post pictures of Brad Pitt as Achilles, one of the worst casting decisions in movie history? I'd say bizarre, but it's beyond bizarre.

I'm not going to give you people this warning again. STOP IT, or there will be consequences.

 

[bigsnake49]

With the advent of Hellenism, painting style and taste changed. Comparisons with earlier paintings cannot be made, precisely because they were based on different pictorial and artistic conceptions (for centuries before, a tendentially oriental taste had dominated, the influence of which came from the eastern Mediterranean). With Hellenism, new aesthetic canons were established. To read ethnic and anthropological references into these new aesthetic canons is a huge mistake, as it is in the previous ones.

Aren't mosaics primarily a Roman artistic expression? Most Classical Greek mosaics are black and white. Very few mosaics survive from classical and Hellenistic times. Roman on the other hand...

I am sure the mosaic artists probably heard about how Achilles was depicted in Homer and depicted him as such. Some people take Homer as a historian instead of a story teller.

 

[bigsnake49]

1) You are reading too much into my post.

2) How is Herodotus not being vindicated in what he wrote about the origins of the various Greek city states. And how wasn't he Greek himself, if this was the case, then none of the Ionic/Attic groups could be described as Greek, let alone consist of the absolute trademark signature ancient Greek civilization nowadays (art, philosophy, architercture, etc.).

If I am not mistaken he was a Greek from Halicarnassus surrounded by Carians and Lydians. Would not be surprised if he did not have some Carian blood.

 

[Angela]

1) You are reading too much into my post.

2) How is Herodotus not being vindicated in what he wrote about the origins of the various Greek city states. And how wasn't he Greek himself, if this was the case, then none of the Ionic/Attic groups could be described as Greek, let alone consist of the absolute trademark signature ancient Greek civilization nowadays (art, philosophy, architercture, etc.).

If Herodotus was to be trusted, he wouldn't have said Etruscans came from Asia Minor in the first millennium B.C.

Now, get back to the paper if you want to post.

 

[eupator]

If Herodotus was to be trusted, he wouldn't have said Etruscans came from Asia Minor in the first millennium B.C.

Now, get back to the paper if you want to post.

I am talking about the paper, everything I write is in relation to Anatolia?

Also, I keep seeing this comment as some sort of jack-of-all-trade rebuttal in relation to Herodotus, but the Etruscan paper did not prove him wrong necessarily, let me explain.

The Etruscan paper provided the proof that Etruscans carried Iron-Age Steppe R1b-P312 lineages and had significant Steppe autosomal input but did very little to explain why the Etruscan language is not part of the (Italo-Celtic?) IE/CW grouping that those lineages spread in other parts of their expansion.

As a result, If Etruscan is not an IE/CW language but rather has its origin in the neolithic farmer civ substratum that predated that expansion/invasion, then Herodotus wasn't really wrong, it's just the dating details that got lost in the mix. You have to give the historian some credit, Etruscans were too far detached to the Greek world at the time to get all the details right.

 

[Pax Augusta]

As a result, If Etruscan is not an IE/CW language but rather has its origin in the neolithic farmer civ substratum that predated that expansion/invasion, then Herodotus wasn't really wrong, it's just the dating details that got lost in the mix. You have to give the historian some credit, Etruscans were too far detached to the Greek world at the time to get all the details right.

LOL.

Yours is just pseudoscience.

Now you want us to believe that Herodotus, who lived around 400 BC, was aware of Neolithic migrations? And that instead of referring to the Lydians, who spoke an Indo-European language, he was referring to something that took place many thousands of years earlier?

Simply ridiculous.

 

[bigsnake49]

I am talking about the paper, everything I write is in relation to Anatolia?

Also, I keep seeing this comment as some sort of jack-of-all-trade rebuttal in relation to Herodotus, but the Etruscan paper did not prove him wrong necessarily, let me explain.

The Etruscan paper provided the proof that Etruscans carried Iron-Age Steppe R1b-P312 lineages and had significant Steppe autosomal input but did very little to explain why the Etruscan language is not part of the (Italo-Celtic?) IE/CW grouping that those lineages spread in other parts of their expansion.

As a result, If Etruscan is not an IE/CW language but rather has its origin in the neolithic farmer civ substratum that predated that expansion/invasion, then Herodotus wasn't really wrong, it's just the dating details that got lost in the mix. You have to give the historian some credit, Etruscans were too far detached to the Greek world at the time to get all the details right.

Not just Etruscan but Basque could be a case of women mediated language adoption. Even if the EEF men were decimated by the steppe invaders, the women kept the old EEF language. That's why you cannot tie language to DNA and to Y-DNA in particular.

Another example would be the use of the Greek language during the Hellenistic period and the later stages of the Byzantine Empire, the use of the Roman language or the Turkish language during the Ottoman Empire.

 

[eupator]

LOL.

Yours is just pseudoscience.

Now you want us to believe that Herodotus, who lived around 400 BC, was aware of Neolithic migrations? And that instead of referring to the Lydians, who spoke an Indo-European language, he was referring to something that took place many thousands of years earlier?

Simply ridiculous.

I think you're arguing semantics in order to construct some sort of ad hom against me. I didn't say that Herodotus was conscious of the neolithic migrations, but essentially the substratum of the region is Anatolian before the Steppe invasions. If Etruscan is not IE, then where did it come from? From aliens?

 

[Pax Augusta]

Not just Etruscan but Basque could be a case of women mediated language adoption. Even if the EEF men were decimated by the steppe invaders, the women kept the old EEF language. That's why you cannot tie language to DNA and to Y-DNA in particular.

Another example would be the use of the Greek language during the Hellenistic period and the later stages of the Byzantine Empire, the use of the Roman language or the Turkish language during the Ottoman Empire.

There are other examples, not only the Etruscan and Basque, in Italy alone there are at least three other attested languages, the Rhaetian/Rhaetic language and the Camunic language both from the Alps, the Stele di Novilara from northern Marche (maybe even something in Sicily, but I'm going from memory). For the Rhaetian/Rhaetic language, the major consensus is that it is related to Etruscan. Between France and Spain there are other examples besides the Basque language, which is not attested in ancient times.

 

[Pax Augusta]

I think you're arguing semantics in order to construct some sort of ad hom against me. I didn't say that Herodotus was conscious of the neolithic migrations, but essentially the substratum of the region is Anatolian before the Steppe invasions. If Etruscan is not IE, then where did it come from? From aliens?

I think you do very amateur and baseless readings of ancient writers for matters of personal narcissism. It is precisely your approach to these issues that is completely wrong. Do you really have the nerve to ask in 2022 where the Etruscans came from?

 

[eupator]

I think you do very amateur and baseless readings of ancient writers for matters of personal narcissism.

I think ad homs and jabs at my personality, rather than addressing my points, do very little to support your own speculations and narrative.

I am still interested to hear about the potential origins of the first Etruscan speakers.

 

[Pax Augusta]

I think ad homs and jabs at my personality, rather than addressing my points, do very little to support your own speculations and narrative.

I am still interested to hear about the potential origins of the first Etruscan speakers.

Etruscan is a pre-Indo-European and Palaeo-European language spoken at least since the Neolithic period in Europe. Their DNA speaks for themselves. They had nothing to do with the Greek world and even less with the Anatolia of theBronze and Iron Ages. That's it.

 

[eupator]

Their DNA speaks for themselves. They had nothing to do with the Greek world and even less with the Anatolia of the late BronzeAges. That's it.

I don't think you can prove that with what we have available. It's just wishful thinking.

I can run qpAdm models of your liking, with samples you provide as references, to explore this further.