Ancient genomes reveal social and genetic structure of Late Neolithic Switzerland

[Regio X]

The TMRCA of R-L2 is 4300 ybp (CI 95% 4800-4000) according to YFull. The age of RA64, for example, is estimated as 2206-2126 BC. It seems possible R-L2 originated around Switzerland.

The most frequent type of G2a in Switzerland nowadays is G2a2b, and this study found just one, curiously. It looks like clades such G-L497 possibly arrived in that area later than R-U152 did?

 

[MOESAN]

just general remarks about this paper:
As said on Eurogenes blog by somebody, the 'Neolitihic' terminology is a mistaking name:
as other historical cultural labellings, it may not be taken as a pure chronologic term because it did not appear AND end everywhere in the same time + in western Europe, even if genuine Neolithic dured globally longer (or say, metals cultural traits appeared later), these new cultural traits appeared and it would be better to say 'Eneolithic' or 'Chalcolithic' (first copper) since the 3000's BC; and the cultural changes very often came along with people; so what we find in the sepultures of the transition periods has to be precisely defined and accutely studied, bones as well as artefacts, and not stupidly labelled as "Neolithic".
concerning Y-haplo's, it seems to me that that the more clannic and half-nomadic the culture is, the more the Y lineages tend to be as monolithical monopoles. And that in the more sedented cultures, we can find more easily a mix of Y lineages: it deserves a sociology/politic approach. It supposes too that to impose itself, a Y lineages needs to be supported by an already numerous pop, or at least a military powerful group; when it is not the case, the newcomers are assimilated or are obliged to associate themselves with the others. It's why I don't believe first BB creators were Y-R1b, BTW.
I would like to know if there are differences of dates and artefacts in the same places for the different Y-haplo's.

 

[Regio X]

@Moesan
Good post. Thanks for the contribution.

So, there must have been significant differences in this regard between different cultures, yes.

Anyway, the situation in Europe is quite curious. I mean, it's really amazing that half of European population descend in male line from a single Bronze Age king (R-L151 MRCA, from abt. 2800 BCE?). I wonder if this phenomenon may be noticed anywhere else.

It other words it was a caste system, with the males of the "natives" being disadvantaged.
Given all the papers from Krause I also think there was a difference in terms of immunity to plague, and given what we see from Covid 19, that might very well have affected men more than women. Plus, anyone that thinks this happened without violence doesn't know anything about human nature.

See above. Perhaps I'm missing something (please tell me), since most of my little knowledge about it is based on some forum posts, but my perception is that this caste system theory is more plausible. It would not have affected just natives, but possibly Steppe folks themselves before that, as part of their "culture", unless we think they heavily butchered other Steppe folks too, earlier.
Anyway, whatever the causes were, it looks like they victimized different groups those times, hence my perception that plague alone doesn't explain it (not saying you meant this). Perhaps they "weakened" those farmers and helped this "infiltration" by foreigners. Don't know.

Btw, were the two groups that different in terms of technology, as Native Americans and European colonizers were, for example?

 

[Angela]

Good post. Thanks for the contribution.

@Moesan
So, there must have been significant differences in this regard between different cultures, yes.

Anyway, the situation in Europe is quite curious. I mean, it's really amazing that half of European population descend in male line from a single Bronze Age king (R-L151 MRCA, from abt. 2800 BCE?). I wonder if this phenomenon may be noticed anywhere else.

See above. Perhaps I'm missing something (please tell me), since most of my little knowledge about it is based on some forum posts, but my perception is that this caste system theory is more plausible. It would not have affected just natives, but possibly Steppe folks themselves before that, as part of their "culture", unless we think they heavily butchered other Steppe folks too, earlier.
Anyway, whatever the causes were, it looks like they victimized different groups at different times, hence my perception.

I don't see why it's an either/or situation. From everything I have read in terms of history and archaeology and anthropolgy, my take away is that for most important cultural changes or historical events there are always multiple factors involved. That's the case, imo, for example, for the Bronze Age Collapse.

I don't think it's a coincidence that northern Europeans have some higher immunity to the plague, especially in light of what Kristiansen said.

I do think that that there was massive winnowing of the y lines on the steppe. I think all the varieties dwindled down to three. There's a paper on it but I can't remember it offhand. Tomorrow, I'll see if I saved it in my files.

Then there's the very large signs of violence in steppe society, as seen in the state of the skeletons. Yes, there's violence in virtually all human societies, increasing when resources are scarce, but I think the papers see it as particularly prevalent. The Langobards were in the same state in both Szolad and Collegno.

Also, I can't think of any massive folk movement in history where there weren't significant bursts of violence between the "natives" and the "newcomers".

 

[Regio X]

Good post. Thanks for the contribution.


I don't see why it's an either/or situation. From everything I have read in terms of history and archaeology and anthropolgy, my take away is that for most important cultural changes or historical events there are always multiple factors involved. That's the case, imo, for example, for the Bronze Age Collapse.

I don't think it's a coincidence that northern Europeans have some higher immunity to the plague, especially in light of what Kristiansen said.

I do think that that there was massive winnowing of the y lines on the steppe. I think all the varieties dwindled down to three. There's a paper on it but I can't remember it offhand. Tomorrow, I'll see if I saved it in my files.

Then there's the very large signs of violence in steppe society, as seen in the state of the skeletons. Yes, there's violence in virtually all human societies, increasing when resources are scarce, but I think the papers see it as particularly prevalent. The Langobards were in the same state in both Szolad and Collegno.

Also, I can't think of any massive folk movement in history where there weren't significant bursts of violence between the "natives" and the "newcomers".

Thanks for the good response. I completely agree with this idea of complexity/multiple factors.
It's really odd to think in thousands and thousands of people living those times and just few lineages thriving.

Btw, before your answer I edited my post.

 

[Angela]

Regio: Btw, were the two groups that different in terms of technology, as Native Americans and European colonizers were, for example?

My reading of the papers is that there were not. I'm aware of all the myth making or myth re-telling that dominated pop gen sites for years, i.e. the whole horse riding, bronze sword waving knights of the steppe invading Europe, but I said then, and I think an objective reading of the papers shows now that was not true. (David Anthony was, unfortunately, the genesis for some of that.) It was a back projection of cultures like those of the Scythians and Cimmerians of a time much later.

What the papers, which you should be able to find both on here (it was debated endlessly) and through search engines, show, to the best of my recollection, is that when Corded Ware, for example, entered Europe, they probably came with oxen driven carts. There are very few horse burials, and no evidence they were ridden, although they were prized. That all came much later, like the invention of the light, round wheeled chariots, and the fighting while horse riding even later imo.

In terms of weapons, they had no bronze and extremely little copper of any kind, certainly not weapons made of them. There was much more copper in "Old Europe". At that point in time the steppe people had very rudimentary metals technology. That all started later. So it wood have been axes and bows and arrows, and daggers for close in fighting. Even the wrist guards are held by some to have been adopted from the European farmers.

The papers are all there if you look for them.

I said then and I still maintain now that the cultures of "Old Europe" were decimated by bad harvests caused by some climate change issues, perhaps ecological damage, and disease, likely plague brought in through very early sporadic contact with the east, as well as other diseases likely to have spread in crowded agricultural settlements.

In addition to encountering weakened societies, while they themselves had some more immunity to the plague, the steppe people had a more herding centric life style more adapted to the changing situation and a propensity for spread out small groups of people more conducive to reducing the spread of disease. Sound familiar?

While I completely agree that Gimbutas was wrong in her emphasis on the "peacefulness" of the Neolithic settlements, it seems very plausible going by what we know of the rituals of the steppe people, the sending out of young boys and men to forcibly acquire land and wealth, that their culture was probably also more warlike. While women in the Neolithic societies did not have the status Gimbutas claimed, I think a case could be made that they had a more important role, and perhaps they were more equitably treated, if the relative amount of food given to them was much the same as was given to men. That certainly wasn't the case with the steppe groups, and it wasn't the case even much later with the Langobards.

 

[bicicleur 2]

@Moesan
Good post. Thanks for the contribution.
So, there must have been significant differences in this regard between different cultures, yes.
Anyway, the situation in Europe is quite curious. I mean, it's really amazing that half of European population descend in male line from a single Bronze Age king (R-L151 MRCA, from abt. 2800 BCE?). I wonder if this phenomenon may be noticed anywhere else.

check for instance the haplogroup E-M81

and there is the dominance of O in China and SE Asia, a result of multiple waves
the last wave were the Han-Chinese which was very well organised, with an army of several 100.000
they conquered the south, enslaved the tribes, made large infrastructure works and then have the land taken be colonised by loyal farmers from the north

check how the Bantoe tribes colonised the southern half of Africa

what Indo-Europeans did was normal practice worldwide

there is a paper which shows that there was a very large shrinkage in Y DNA-diversity at the onset of the bronze age though
it was a worldwide phenomenon
when I have the time, I'll look up the graph

 

[halfalp]

check for instance the haplogroup E-M81

and there is the dominance of O in China and SE Asia, a result of multiple waves
the last wave were the Han-Chinese which was very well organised, with an army of several 100.000
they conquered the south, enslaved the tribes, made large infrastructure works and then have the land taken be colonised by loyal farmers from the north

check how the Bantoe tribes colonised the southern half of Africa

what Indo-Europeans did was normal practice worldwide

there is a paper which shows that there was a very large shrinkage in Y DNA-diversity at the onset of the bronze age though
it was a worldwide phenomenon
when I have the time, I'll look up the graph

Yes, it's interesting to notice that the Indo-European Expansion and Bantou Expansion are dated pretty much from the same time frame. Between -3000 and -1500. Wad there a worldwide climatic change? Or was it motivated because Herding?

 

[Dagne]

Yes, it is hard to get a clear picture about phenotype because it´s complex. I think skin colour really isn't a big deal it´s adaption to environment and result of farming diet. Coming to 2 traits that are complicated that are light eye colour and hair colour. So we find the mutation for blue eyes in all WHG, one CHG(Satsurblia) and IIRC even in two samples from Neolithic Anatolia(they were even blond?) and later GAC,TRB and CWC have both, blue eyes and light hair in sizable frequency. For reasons I don't know it goes up in Northeastern Europe in farmer and later steppe people. Last week I read a lot of papers about the CWC from Baltic, Poland and Central Europe and I´ve come to conclusion that it is very likely that they got it from GAC. Right from the beginning CWC men mated overwhelmingly with local women and that might be the reason why CWC is lighter pigmented than Yamnaya. These men had the opportunity to choose the women they wanted keep that in mind. Another reason that is usually overlooked is that there are modern populations without steppe ancestry that have some blond and blue eyed individuals, these are Kartvelian speakers from the Caucasus. Laz people,Georgians, Armenian Hemsheni etc. In Turkey there is the stereotype that people from Trabzon are usually the lightest Turks, blond and blue eyed. About the EHG and KITLG gene IIRC KITLG is not even needed for people to have blonde hair because its frequency in Northeuropeans is 20% but there are more blondes in populations from Northern Europe and maybe even GAC and TRB have picked it up from Balkan HG or other HG like Angela wrote. I am not saying that I know it 100% but for me the picture is getting clearer paper after paper. Maybe in future papers we will find groups of Yamnaya that were blonde and blue eyed but we have a lot of samples and this culture is heavily sampled.

I think pigmentation is predisposed by geography and diet - any peoples who stayed for long enough in the Northern Forest zone will develop light skin - foragers in the Baltic (at least some of them) were light skinned and light eyed. I think it must be related to vitamin D, it is not enough of it in river fish and nuts diet, and you don't really get any direct sunlight when living in the forest, besides, sunny days are very few here anyways. People had to develop light skin in order to survive under such conditions. Foragers who hunted seals and sea fish, differently, did not need to develop light skin, as they got enough of D vitamin from food. Somehow, when discussing pigmentation, people tend to forget about hunter gathers, which were not the same everywhere Europe, and who changed together with climate, adapting to new conditions and diets.

It is from a study of 2018 The Genetic Prehistory of the Baltic Sea Region
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02825-9

Similar to other European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, our Baltic foragers carry a high frequency of the derived HERC2 allele which codes for light iris colour, and like SHG and EHG they already possess an increased frequency of the derived alleles for SLC45A2 and SLC24A5, coding for lighter skin colour (Supplementary Table 6).

 

[Silesian]

Do you have more information about the Phylogeny of Yersinia Pestis. When and where do we have samples from with Yersinia Pestis ?

Since Yersinia pestis showed up multiple times in history. It would be interesting to compare different sanitation habits {Yamnaya pastoralists}with later fixed urban type cultures. Rome was more advanced than Medieval Europe in some respects, fine combs for parasite eggs[lice, fleas, bed bugs] , public waste houses, shared communal sponges for cleaning after defecation, human waste on streets[whipworm, roundworm] , re used in farms etc.... I would imagine the smell could have been quite pungent at times.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/01/ancient-roman-toilets-gross/423072/

 

[Regio X]

My reading of the papers is that there were not. I'm aware of all the myth making or myth re-telling that dominated pop gen sites for years, i.e. the whole horse riding, bronze sword waving knights of the steppe invading Europe, but I said then, and I think an objective reading of the papers shows now that was not true. (David Anthony was, unfortunately, the genesis for some of that.) It was a back projection of cultures like those of the Scythians and Cimmerians of a time much later.

What the papers, which you should be able to find both on here (it was debated endlessly) and through search engines, show, to the best of my recollection, is that when Corded Ware, for example, entered Europe, they probably came with oxen driven carts. There are very few horse burials, and no evidence they were ridden, although they were prized. That all came much later, like the invention of the light, round wheeled chariots, and the fighting while horse riding even later imo.

In terms of weapons, they had no bronze and extremely little copper of any kind, certainly not weapons made of them. There was much more copper in "Old Europe". At that point in time the steppe people had very rudimentary metals technology. That all started later. So it wood have been axes and bows and arrows, and daggers for close in fighting. Even the wrist guards are held by some to have been adopted from the European farmers.

The papers are all there if you look for them.

I said then and I still maintain now that the cultures of "Old Europe" were decimated by bad harvests caused by some climate change issues, perhaps ecological damage, and disease, likely plague brought in through very early sporadic contact with the east, as well as other diseases likely to have spread in crowded agricultural settlements.

In addition to encountering weakened societies, while they themselves had some more immunity to the plague, the steppe people had a more herding centric life style more adapted to the changing situation and a propensity for spread out small groups of people more conducive to reducing the spread of disease. Sound familiar?

While I completely agree that Gimbutas was wrong in her emphasis on the "peacefulness" of the Neolithic settlements, it seems very plausible going by what we know of the rituals of the steppe people, the sending out of young boys and men to forcibly acquire land and wealth, that their culture was probably also more warlike. While women in the Neolithic societies did not have the status Gimbutas claimed, I think a case could be made that they had a more important role, and perhaps they were more equitably treated, if the relative amount of food given to them was much the same as was given to men. That certainly wasn't the case with the steppe groups, and it wasn't the case even much later with the Langobards.

Thank you again for your response, Angela. Very clarifying for me.
I hope I can read more about all this stuff in the future, including most of these papers on ancient DNAs.

As for Y marks, high population would be one factor that avoid random extinctions, it seems.
Just for example, imagine if the so-called "barbarians" had the will and the ways to "replace" us. We'd have nowadays much more R-U106 and I1 than we have, and much less R-U152 (which is btw my maternal grandfather's lineage) in North Italy. Or the opposite: Romans in the North before that.
I know, I know... It's a big "if", actually disconnected to these people as we know them.
What I mean is that there's a range of variables/contexts involved in this Y phenomenon. I believe everyone would agree with that.

Fascinating stuff.

check for instance the haplogroup E-M81
and there is the dominance of O in China and SE Asia, a result of multiple waves
the last wave were the Han-Chinese which was very well organised, with an army of several 100.000
they conquered the south, enslaved the tribes, made large infrastructure works and then have the land taken be colonised by loyal farmers from the north
check how the Bantoe tribes colonised the southern half of Africa
what Indo-Europeans did was normal practice worldwide
there is a paper which shows that there was a very large shrinkage in Y DNA-diversity at the onset of the bronze age though
it was a worldwide phenomenon
when I have the time, I'll look up the graph

Hg O is very old. If we're talking on some specific young subclade, then ok.
E-M81 seems a good example, yes, of a recent clade (TMRCA is young - even younger than R-L151's) being very frequent in a populous area (North Africa). Thanks.
Well, perhaps this high population we have nowadays is one reason why I found the phenomenon that impressive. Possibly it'd become a bit less impressive looking to this configuration when it was just settled, many years ago, way before this huge populational growth from recent times.
Btw, as I suggested in another thread, given the fact that certain clades may suffer special relative expansions everytime and everywhere for some casual reasons (including founder effects, but not only, and including somewhat stable societies), the "tendency" is that these reasons link to the most frequent (ancestor) clades in the group involved, which would imply another tendency of an already frequent hg becoming even more frequent along the time. It'd be just one factor, of course, and that's generally speaking. I called this phenomenon "(Y) inertia", and I also compared it to a "wave", but it may stop anytime and "recede", so to speak, for whatever reasons/correlations (as replacements, but then the logic would apply to the newcomers'). It may be a "recursive" process, in a given context.
Well, never mind. That's another story, offtopic and certainly too complex to be detailed here; plus, while it's interesting per se, I'm affraid the writer and the readers would also feel bored.
All that said, we were also talking on replacement. Depending on the situation just before this recent expansion of E-M81, for example, the parallel with IEs would be even "stronger".
Out ot curiosity, Maciamo's hypotheses regarding E-M81:
https://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_E1b1b_Y-DNA.shtml#M81_origins

 

[bicicleur 2]

Thank you again for your response, Angela. Very clarifying for me.
I hope I can read more about all this stuff in the future, including most of these papers on ancient DNAs.
As for Y marks, high population would be one factor that avoid random extinctions, it seems.
Just for example, imagine if the so-called "barbarians" had the will and the ways to "replace" us. We'd have nowadays much more R-U106 and I1 than we have, and much less R-U152 (which is btw my maternal grandfather's lineage) in North Italy. Or the opposite: Romans in the North before that.
I know, I know... It's a big "if", actually disconnected to these people as we know them.
What I mean is that there's a range of variables/contexts involved in this Y phenomenon. I believe everyone would agree with that.
Fascinating stuff.
Hg O is very old. If we're talking on some specific young subclade, then ok.
E-M81 seems a good example, yes, of a recent clade (TMRCA is young - even younger than R-L151's) being very frequent in a populous area (North Africa). Thanks.
Well, perhaps this high population we have nowadays is one reason why I found the phenomenon that impressive. Possibly it'd become a bit less impressive looking to this configuration when it was just settled, many years ago, way before this huge populational growth from recent times.
Btw, as I suggested in another thread, given the fact that certain clades may suffer special relative expansions everytime and everywhere for some casual reasons (including founder effects, but not only, and including somewhat stable societies), the "tendency" is that these reasons link to the most frequent (ancestor) clades in the group involved, which would imply another tendency of an already frequent hg becoming even more frequent along the time. It'd be just one factor, of course, and that's generally speaking. I called this phenomenon "(Y) inertia", and I also compared it to a "wave", but it may stop anytime and "recede", so to speak, for whatever reasons/correlations (as replacements, but then the logic would apply to the newcomers'). Well, never mind. That's another story, offtopic and certainly too complex to be detailed here; plus, while it's interesting per se, I'm affraid the writer and the readers would also feel bored.
All that said, we were also talking on replacement. Depending on the situation just before this recent expansion of E-M81, for example, the parallel with IEs would be even "stronger".
Out ot curiosity, Maciamo's hypotheses regarding E-M81:
https://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_E1b1b_Y-DNA.shtml#M81_origins

here you have the graph

I guess the phenomenon already existed since the paleolithic, it's just human nature
but on the graph you see it was very outspoken ca 5 ka
and Europe certainly wasn't an exception
Africa seems to have been lagging in time a bit, I think it is due to the Bantu expansion 3-2,5 ka
I agree haplo O is very old
and there were several waves of expansion
maybe you should check its subclade M1706
https://www.yfull.com/tree/O-M1706/
it probably originated in early Yangshao culture, the origin of Sino-Tibetan languages

here is another one, the Cushitic clade E-V32
https://www.yfull.com/tree/E-V32/

still very much present in the Horn of Africa
but probably many of its sublcades further inland became extinct due to Nilotic and Arabic expansions which happened later

I guess the same happened to G-PF3239 or G-L166 which seems in this study to be omnipresent in neolithic Switzerland, and to which also ötzi belonged
https://www.yfull.com/tree/G-PF3239/

 

[Regio X]

here you have the graph

I guess the phenomenon already existed since the paleolithic, it's just human nature
but on the graph you see it was very outspoken ca 5 ka
and Europe certainly wasn't an exception
Africa seems to have been lagging in time a bit, I think it is due to the Bantu expansion 3-2,5 ka
I agree haplo O is very old
and there were several waves of expansion
maybe you should check its subclade M1706
https://www.yfull.com/tree/O-M1706/
it probably originated in early Yangshao culture, the origin of Sino-Tibetan languages

Awesome graph, Bicicleur. Very informative.
Yeah, human nature is certainly an important part of it.

I'll check hg O closer, yes.
Thanks!

ED: Regarding Ötzi's clade, it could be a mere founder effect by a very first farmer group in a previous depopulated area, no?
Another G-M201 founder effects would be in Circassia, Ossetia, W. Georgia more broadly, where its diversity is relatively low. Curiously, the SNP diversity in Armenia would be high, whereas the frequency in there is very low; so the opposite to N. Caucasus.

 

[Regio X]

As I said in another thread, G2 and R1b have a similar TMRCA, but based on YFull data, at about 6800 years ago G2 as a whole had more than 40 lineages that survived to our days, despite the huge decline in LN. R1b had about the half, if I checked it right.

Forgot to mention that the Scientific view of YFul tree facilitates it.
https://www.yfull.com/sc/tree/

 

[Angela]

Since Yersinia pestis showed up multiple times in history. It would be interesting to compare different sanitation habits {Yamnaya pastoralists}with later fixed urban type cultures. Rome was more advanced than Medieval Europe in some respects, fine combs for parasite eggs[lice, fleas, bed bugs] , public waste houses, shared communal sponges for cleaning after defecation, human waste on streets[whipworm, roundworm] , re used in farms etc.... I would imagine the smell could have been quite pungent at times.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/01/ancient-roman-toilets-gross/423072/

Far worse in Medieval times, as there were no sewers. They just went to the window, opened it, and threw the contents of the "chamber pots" out the window onto the streets below. I read somewhere that's why gentlemen were supposed to walk on the street side: they'd get hit, not the woman. Probably had something to do with careening horses too.

As for the castles, it just went down the side of the wall outside the defecating room. They don't show that in the movies! I've always been particularly grossed out by the whole rushes on the floor of living quarters thing. Tossed bird legs, dog fleas, dog feces, mouse droppings, goodness knows what else. Most of the time when the smell got too bad they just threw some more hay on it, and some flowers. Give me tile floors anytime. That's why royalty moved from castle to castle, so they could be "freshened".

Victorian England wasn't much better, hence all the typhus.

Oh, the communal sponges went into a pail with some sort of cleaning agent. Still gross.

It's possible if you're defecating in the open air in some designated spot it would be more "healthy", assuming they knew enough not to do it near running water, and especially not upstream of the areas from which they drank and cooked.

All of that would be important for diseases like typhus and cholera, but other diseases have other vectors. Look at the American Indians: most of them died from airborne or flea borne illnesses to which Europeans were more immune, the fleas arriving on trade goods, not from rats.

Actually, the ritual ablutions and food rituals practiced by Medieval Jews are speculated to have exposed them somewhat less to the plague, which was used as a reason to slaughter them, sometimes by burning them alive. Better to have burned their own filthy dwellings and start over.

 

[halfalp]

Any clue how sample [ TU905 (X18) mtdna B4c1b2c2 ] could have ended in Iron Age Europe? Scythians or Cimmerians?

 

[MOESAN]

It seems dense accumulation of sedentary population favours diseases like plagues. These traditions of regular burnings of houses in the big towns of Cucuteni/Tripolje cultures could show it maybe?
At times close enough to Bronze, the big towns of N-Balkans/Hungary tended to be replaced by a net of smaller villages, even if we can put this on the account of newcomers perturbating the ancient ways of life or changes in the trades network, this health aspect could be a cause too? Not only a question of habits or feeding? Just a question.

 

[MOESAN]

Awesome graph, Bicicleur. Very informative.
Yeah, human nature is certainly an important part of it.

I'll check hg O closer, yes.
Thanks!

ED: Regarding Ötzi's clade, it could be a mere founder effect by a very first farmer group in a previous depopulated area, no?
Another G-M201 founder effects would be in Circassia, Ossetia, W. Georgia more broadly, where its diversity is relatively low. Curiously, the SNP diversity in Armenia would be high, whereas the frequency in there is very low; so the opposite to N. Caucasus.

Very good, these graphs posted by Bicycleur - The case in Caucasus is not so surprising, in a world of mountainous valleys, but the cases of Europe, and China, very large and vaste countries, is more amazing to me. Africa too. By the way tehse expansions, if I read well, confirm a link between languages and Y haplos rather than between languages and female lineages.

 

[MOESAN]

Surely more than a cause converged to produce these results.
what I see, and it could deserve some attention, is that the regions where some supposed "barbaric" Y-haplo's dominate strongly are the regions which seems to me a bit at the "tail" in Final-Neolithic beginning of Chalco - in other regions the Y haplo diversity seems greater to me, was it already the case then?

 

[Regio X]

Any clue how sample [ TU905 (X18) mtdna B4c1b2c2 ] could have ended in Iron Age Europe? Scythians or Cimmerians?

What's the dating of the sample and the chronologies of Cimmerian and Scythian migrations? It seems the former arrived before, and the latter must have come in higher numbers, as far as I can see.

Curiously, I have matches with N. Italian ancestry at 23andMe that are Y-DNA Q2a1-M378 (one, from Belluno province) and mtDNA C5b1 (the other; no East Euro neither East Asian/Native American admix).