Copper & Bronze Age Steppe people (PIE) had mixed light and dark pigmentation

[kamani]

anyone can figure out the eye color of Neolithic Europeans right before the Bronze Age?

 

[Wilhelm]

anyone can figure out the eye color of Neolithic Europeans right before the Bronze Age?

Suttgart, Gok and Iceman were more likely brown eyed.

 

[Angela]

Excellent find Angela;
So Ötzi was rs16891982 G/G and rs1426654 A/A where as Stuttgart was rs16891982 C/C and rs1426654 A/A; Was Stuttgart admixed (more) with Hunter-gatherers?

I haven't had time to dig into the supplementary tables again, which are a lot more informative and precise, but just going by the PCA graphic from Lazaridis et al that Dienekes highlighted on his thread about that paper, it seems as if Oetzi is drifting slightly more toward the Hunter -Gatherers than Stuttgart? It's hard to tell because the colors are so small, but that's what it seems like...
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/12/europeans-neolithic-farmers-mesolithic.html

Anyway, there doesn't seem to be very much difference between them in that regard.

Are you thinking that Stuttgart, if she has less HG than Oetzi, should be lighter? And the fact that she isn't implies that the SLC42A5 present in Oetzi came from steppe migrations? That's why I asked if anyone has the latest dates for when the "Indo-Europeans" reached Central Europe. I think I remember reading on Anthrogenica that there's been some waffling on the dates, but I don't remember the most recent date assigned to that event.

I know that the SLC24A5 gene mutation which was present in the Stuttgart woman has been proposed to have occurred somewhere between the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent, but I don't think anyone has yet done the same kind of analysis for SLC42A5. Regardless, SLC24A5 was in the Stuttgart farmer, and SLC42A5 was in Oetzi, and in some of these steppe people as well.

As to the discussion that went on above about selection versus migration, I may be simplifying this too much, but it seemed as if the authors were considering a selection in place as opposed to a migration changing the range of these alleles on the steppe, and came down in favor of selection in place. I think that's how you see it as well, correct? Well, not personally, I mean that's how you read the paper's assertions?

The difficulty with making judgments like this about the steppe is that there's been a documented migration of Slavic peoples in really recent times (early Middle Ages) into the area, yes? So, couldn't the change to the levels seen in modern inhabitants of the Ukraine be explained in that way? Of course, given that there is mtDNA continuity, the DNA of the Slavs had to be pretty similar.

I think it's more than interesting that ideas that were universally held even a few years ago are getting totally overturned. Based on the perceived discontinuity of the mtDNA in central Europe between very early LBK and later eras, all the talk was of complete population replacement with the coming of the steppe peoples. Well, not quite, and not even in terms of mtDNA.

 

[Nobody1]

I haven't had time to dig into the supplementary tables again, which are a lot more informative and precise, but just going by the PCA graphic from Lazaridis et al that Dienekes highlighted on his thread about that paper, it seems as if Oetzi is drifting slightly more toward the Hunter -Gatherers than Stuttgart? It's hard to tell because the colors are so small, but that's what it seems like...
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/12...esolithic.html

Anyway, there doesn't seem to be very much difference between them in that regard.

Are you thinking that Stuttgart, if she has less HG than Oetzi, should be lighter? And the fact that she isn't implies that the SLC42A5 present in Oetzi came from steppe migrations? That's why I asked if anyone has the latest dates for when the "Indo-Europeans" reached Central Europe. I think I remember reading on Anthrogenica that there's been some waffling on the dates, but I don't remember the most recent date assigned to that event.

Yes; It looks that there is not much difference at all; One difference is that Stuttgart is at least 1500 years older than Ötzi; I dont think Ötzi was from the steppes simply just like the other Neolithic folks from Anatolia/Near-East (maybe South Caucasus); Def. a common 'immigrant' origin for the Neolithic farmers and their cultures as thus illustrated by Ötzi/Gök4(TBK)/Stuttgart(LBK) and Bramanti et al 2009 - 'these analyses provide persuasive evidence that the first farmers were not the descendants of local hunter-gatherers but immigrated into central Europe at the onset of the Neolithic'

The Steppe folks had strong contacts to the east Balkan (west Black Sea) area throughout the 5th mil BC with Sredny-Stog and Cucuteni-Tripolye; Also the destruction of Gumelnita-KaronovoVI in the late-5th/early-4th is associated with Indo-European steppe folks;

David W. Anthony - The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (2010) [Princeton Uni.]
Between about 4200 and 3900 BCE more than six hundred tell settlements of the Gumelnita, Karanovo VI and varna cultures were burned and abandoned in the lower danube valley and eastern Bulgaria...."We are faced with the complete replacement of a culture" the foremost expert on Eneolithic metallurgy E. N. Chernykh said. It was "a catastrophe of colossal scope...a complete cultural caesura" according to the Bulgarian archaeologist H. Todorova

In Central Europe the emergence of the hybrid Globular-Amphora (mid 4th mil BC) and the successor Corded-ware (early 3rd mil BC) signalizes the Indo-Europeans from the east (i.e. east to west);

As to the discussion that went on above about selection versus migration, I may be simplifying this too much, but it seemed as if the authors were considering a selection in place as opposed to a migration changing the range of these alleles on the steppe, and came down in favor of selection in place. I think that's how you see it as well, correct? Well, not personally, I mean that's how you read the paper's assertions?

The way i understood it is that the Steppe society was a hybrid of local hunter-gatherers and immigrant farmers; With selection process taking place (within the Steppes) after farming was established;

'A plausible explanation for this is that the prehistoric populations sampled in this study are a product of admixture between in situ hunter–gatherers and immigrant early farmers during the centuries after the arrival of farming'

'Dietary change during the Neolithization process may have reinforced selection pressure favoring depigmented skin. The individuals analyzed in this study lived ∼500–2,000 y after the arrival of farming in the region north of the Black Sea (42, 43)'

I think it's more than interesting that ideas that were universally held even a few years ago are getting totally overturned. Based on the perceived discontinuity of the mtDNA in central Europe between very early LBK and later eras, all the talk was of complete population replacement with the coming of the steppe peoples. Well, not quite, and not even in terms of mtDNA.

Absolutely;
That the Indo-Europeans always intermixed with the pre-existing pops. is already evident from Archaeology and Linguistics; Especially all the non-Indo-European elements in the distinct linguistic branches manifest it; And Genetics has clearly proven it; The view of complete population replacements was always flawed; There seems a much stronger continuation with the female (mtDNA) lineages;

 

[Sile]

I don't see many who used to say otzi was "farmer" are still saying it today. Jean Mano now states he was a herder, but a herder is a farmer to her. Oetzi is classified as a farmer in the context of these studies because the archaeological culture he belonged to mainly relied on farming for subsistence.

Here's an interesting fact, Ötzi the Iceman was actually fair skinned:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...ry-information

He was rs16891982-G/G which is what most modern Europeans are. This same sample dates back to around 5000 years ago (Similar to the study from this thread).

Besides pigmentation and mtDNA, did they do any further testing on these samples? The amount of rs16891982-C/C is quite overwhelming and certainly does not fit in that area.


Exactly, he is the reason that I had put ' ' around farmers when I had mentioned to Jean - There is no evidence that I see that these 'farmers' were incoming. - as it is highly doubtful that he was either incoming or a farmer.

Of course Ötzi wasn't an early Neolithic farmer straight off the boat from the Near East. He lived thousands of years later.

But genetically Ötzi clusters with early European farmers, who most closely resemble modern people from Anatolia.


Mtdna results below .........HG mtdna = 100% U

 

[Sile]

My results are the same as yours, Sile.

HERC2 rs12913832 GG

SLC45A2 rs16891982 GG

TYR rs1042602 AC

I guess this matches my pigmentation quite well: Blue eyes, very light skin, and dark brown hair. There are lots of SNPs to consider though, the ones listed by 23andme regarding hair colour say rather the oppostie for me:

rs1805007 CC (Typical odds of having red hair) - T is the mutation which seems responsible of red hair

rs1667394 TT (Typical odds of having blond hair) - C means decreased odds

Actually they should revise their research and give more info. It is tedious to look for community threads to get a better idea.

hehehe, "twins" we have also the same christian name!

but I have Green eyes and you Blue eyes.............the GG group covers both

 

[Alan]

This is only a very rough analysis, of course. Last time I looked, there were over 120 snps that affected pigmentation, although SLC24A5, and SLC45A2 account for up to 80% of the variation. I don't know if there is a thread here devoted to results for pigmentation snps, but if there isn't and some people are interested in comparisons, someone could probably start one.

True GEDmatch checked dozens of SNP's alone for the Iris coloring.

 

[Maciamo]

Excellent find Angela;
So Ötzi was rs16891982 G/G and rs1426654 A/A where as Stuttgart was rs16891982 C/C and rs1426654 A/A; Was Stuttgart admixed (more) with Hunter-gatherers?

The Stuttgart sample had under 10% of HG admixture, far less than Ötzi, who was 43.1% "Atlantic_Baltic" in the Dodecad K7 calculator.

Another important difference was their age. Stuttgart lived 2200 years before Ötzi. Many things can happen in such a time frame. Migration of new people, natural selection for some traits...

 

[Alan]

I don't see many who used to say otzi was "farmer" are still saying it today. Jean Mano now states he was a herder, but a herder is a farmer to her. Oetzi is classified as a farmer in the context of these studies because the archaeological culture he belonged to mainly relied on farming for subsistence.

Here's an interesting fact, Ötzi the Iceman was actually fair skinned:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...ry-information

He was rs16891982-G/G which is what most modern Europeans are. This same sample dates back to around 5000 years ago (Similar to the study from this thread).

Besides pigmentation and mtDNA, did they do any further testing on these samples? The amount of rs16891982-C/C is quite overwhelming and certainly does not fit in that area.


Exactly, he is the reason that I had put ' ' around farmers when I had mentioned to Jean - There is no evidence that I see that these 'farmers' were incoming. - as it is highly doubtful that he was either incoming or a farmer.

Of course Ötzi wasn't an early Neolithic farmer straight off the boat from the Near East. He lived thousands of years later.

But genetically Ötzi clusters with early European farmers, who most closely resemble modern people from Anatolia.


Mtdna results below .........HG mtdna = 100% U

What Angela and I said, is that animal domestication is a technique which developed through farming and is therefore usually considered as part of the "farmer complex".


Also interesting the high frequency of HV in Bronze Age Kazakhstan (Andronovo), Pitted Ware culture (South Scandinavia) and Rössen Culture

 

[Alan]

The Stuttgart sample had under 10% of HG admixture, far less than Ötzi, who was 43.1% "Atlantic_Baltic" in the Dodecad K7 calculator.

Another important difference was their age. Stuttgart lived 2200 years before Ötzi. Many things can happen in such a time frame. Migration of new people, natural selection for some traits...

Atlantic_Baltic of K7b is not good choice for a H&G signal because it absorbs a significant percentage of proto-farmer genes. A better calculator for farmer and H&G signal would be Lazaridis new paper or Dodecad K10a .

But I got your point and agree that Ötzi was likely more H&G admixed than Stuttgart.

 

[Knovas]

hehehe, "twins" we have also the same christian name!

but I have Green eyes and you Blue eyes.............the GG group covers both

Yes, but there are other SNPs which result (added to the previous GG mutation) gives more chance of having green instead of blue eyes. For instance:

rs12896399 - GG = increased odds of having green. I'm GT (Typical for blue eyes, even if TT is even stronger for that matter)
rs1393350 - GG = ingreased odds of having green. AG for me. Typical again.

I'm surely missing many others, but if you have double GG in both SNPs...that would make sense.

Also interesting the high frequency of HV in Bronze Age Kazakhstan (Andronovo), Pitted Ware culture (South Scandinavia) and Rössen Culture

HV clades seem quite frequent among modern Kurds, right?

 

[Angela]

hehehe, "twins" we have also the same christian name!

but I have Green eyes and you Blue eyes.............the GG group covers both

I tried to be subtle and polite, but subtle and polite doesn't seem to work very well on this site at times...so I will politely but more directly ask if you would please stay on topic. An occasional digression is understandable, and often very interesting on its own, and Alan's request for guidance as to what these snps mean in terms of pigmentation was certainly appropriate, but a protracted discussion of individual results is distracting.

Would you please take your private discussion to a dedicated thread for personal results where it would be more appropriate?

Thank you.

 

[Alan]

HV clades seem quite frequent among modern Kurds, right?

Yes it seems so. I would even go that far to claim, HV is one of the few maternal Haplogroups which has a paleolithic, mesolithic, neolithic as well Bronze/Iron Age (Indo European, Etruscan) origin/distribution.

 

[Angela]

Atlantic_Baltic of K7b is not good choice for a H&G signal because it absorbs a significant percentage of proto-farmer genes. A better calculator for farmer and H&G signal would be Lazaridis new paper or Dodecad K10a .

But I got your point and agree that Ötzi was likely more H&G admixed than Stuttgart.

Why do you think that Dodecad K10a would be any better than any of the other calculators for determining this? Don't they all suffer from the fact that they hide the farmer genes because they are showing post admixture signatures?

Just trying to understand your reasoning.

 

[Alan]

Why do you think that Dodecad K10a would be any better than any of the other calculators for determining this? Don't they all suffer from the fact that they hide the farmer genes because they are showing post admixture signatures?

Just trying to understand your reasoning.

I said better, not perfect. It's because K10a actually takes into account a likely more recent Northeast African gene flow into the Near East (Red Sea). And the "Mediterranean" in this calculator reaches levels of 60% in some parts of the Levant and therefore come closer to the "Proto Farmer" component. But as I said even K10a results are not representative for the Proto_Farmer component because a significant part of it must have been eaten up by "West Asian" and to some lesser extend some other components.

 

[Angela]

I don't see many who used to say otzi was "farmer" are still saying it today. Jean Mano now states he was a herder, but a herder is a farmer to her. Oetzi is classified as a farmer in the context of these studies because the archaeological culture he belonged to mainly relied on farming for subsistence.

Here's an interesting fact, Ötzi the Iceman was actually fair skinned:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...ry-information

He was rs16891982-G/G which is what most modern Europeans are. This same sample dates back to around 5000 years ago (Similar to the study from this thread).

Besides pigmentation and mtDNA, did they do any further testing on these samples? The amount of rs16891982-C/C is quite overwhelming and certainly does not fit in that area.


Exactly, he is the reason that I had put ' ' around farmers when I had mentioned to Jean - There is no evidence that I see that these 'farmers' were incoming. - as it is highly doubtful that he was either incoming or a farmer.

Of course Ötzi wasn't an early Neolithic farmer straight off the boat from the Near East. He lived thousands of years later.

But genetically Ötzi clusters with early European farmers, who most closely resemble modern people from Anatolia.


Mtdna results below .........HG mtdna = 100% U

Well, I guess he read my post...

As to your own statement that: "Jean Manco now states he was a herder, but a herder is a farmer to her." (emphasis mine)

Jean Manco is a respected academic. She has no doubt always known what seems to be news to some people, to wit, that herding is an outgrowth of the Neolithic Revolution.As I've said before, it took hundreds if not thousands of years for animals to be domesticated, and also for breeding and herding techniques to be developed. People take up herding because the land and/or climate aren't suitable to farming, perhaps because most of the good farming land has been taken, or because there never was any in their area in the first place, and/or the climate isn't suitable. Distinctions also have to be made between nomadic pastoral societies, sedentary pastoral societies, and mixed farming/pastoral societies.

Regardless of how herding (pastoralism) originally developed, however, in Oetzi's case, the archaeology and the results from the analyses of his body are clear, and most of it has been known for years, whether or not some people have read the relevant papers. I provided the numerous references in the other thread in which this was discussed.

Most importantly for this discussion, he had domesticated wheat in his stomach, and domesticated wheat is produced in farming communities; one such contemporary neolithic farming community is located in the valley where the results of his autopsy indicate he spent most of his life, and the settlement was on established trade routes. In addition to all of that, his possession of a copper ax, but more importantly, the presence of high levels of arsenic in his body indicate he was most probably a metal worker or at least involved in metal working.

This is why you have papers stating that he was most likely a member of a farming community which practiced transhumant herding...i.e. a member of a community that practiced farming and herding, and in which the herds are moved to highland pastures in the summer. The only reason that we can't put a final imprimatur on him as to the precise Chalcolithic culture to which be belonged is because he inconveniently didn't carry a bit of pottery on him. The style of the ax, however, indicates ties to the metal working societies of the Po Valley, and perhaps also those of the Tyrol.

As beginning medical students are told, if you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras. And as first year law students are told, "Look at the evidence."

The clincher is, as you pointed out, his autosomal make-up. He is closely related to Gok 4 and Stuttgart, who are members of Neolithic farming cultures (and to present day Sardinians), and very far from the European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers so far examined.

 

[Angela]

Nobody1;428116]Yes; It looks that there is not much difference at all; One difference is that Stuttgart is at least 1500 years older than Ötzi; I dont think Ötzi was from the steppes simply just like the other Neolithic folks from Anatolia/Near-East (maybe South Caucasus); Def. a common 'immigrant' origin for the Neolithic farmers and their cultures as thus illustrated by Ötzi/Gök4(TBK)/Stuttgart(LBK) and Bramanti et al 2009 - 'these analyses provide persuasive evidence that the first farmers were not the descendants of local hunter-gatherers but immigrated into central Europe at the onset of the Neolithic'

I would agree with the Bramanti formulation that the LBK farmers were not the descendants of local hunter-gatherers but immigrated into central Europe at the onset of the Neolithc.

However, although all the evidence suggests that these early Neolithic farmers are genetically descended from the ancient peoples of Anatolia and surrounding areas who created the Neolithic Revolution, we have, as yet, no ancient sample for these people, and we also don't have a sample from mesolithic peoples of southeast Europe.

It may be that the mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the Aegean and the southern Balkans, and the mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the Zagros mountains who invented agriculture and animal husbandry were pretty similar autosomally. The Bean project should provide some clarity. If his turns out to be true, the EEF people, while they might be immigrants to Central Europe, and Scandinavia, would not be immigrants to Europe, or at least they're immigrants in the same way as were the hunter-gatherers north of them. We're all immigrants everywhere except in Africa.

David W. Anthony - The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (2010) [Princeton Uni.]
Between about 4200 and 3900 BCE more than six hundred tell settlements of the Gumelnita, Karanovo VI and varna cultures were burned and abandoned in the lower danube valley and eastern Bulgaria...."We are faced with the complete replacement of a culture" the foremost expert on Eneolithic metallurgy E. N. Chernykh said. It was "a catastrophe of colossal scope...a complete cultural caesura" according to the Bulgarian archaeologist H. Todorova

In Central Europe the emergence of the hybrid Globular-Amphora (mid 4th mil BC) and the successor Corded-ware (early 3rd mil BC) signalizes the Indo-Europeans from the east (i.e. east to west);

I have no idea if the Wiki article on the Globular Amphora culture is correct, but the entry says that the general dates for the culture are 3400–2800 BC. Oetzi is 3350 B.C. That's cutting it awfully close in terms of whether it's possible that he got his SLC42A5 from steppe peoples. On balance I would say probably not, although more samples should clarify the issue. (I certainly don't see how he got his metal working technology from them, as Remedello precedes this time period, and the ax is fashioned in Remedello style.)

The way i understood it is that the Steppe society was a hybrid of local hunter-gatherers and immigrant farmers; With selection process taking place (within the Steppes) after farming was established;

'A plausible explanation for this is that the prehistoric populations sampled in this study are a product of admixture between in situ hunter–gatherers and immigrant early farmers during the centuries after the arrival of farming'

That's what I understood them to say as well.

'Dietary change during the Neolithization process may have reinforced selection pressure favoring depigmented skin. The individuals analyzed in this study lived ∼500–2,000 y after the arrival of farming in the region north of the Black Sea (42, 43)'

Yes, that's definitely their position as to the presence of these color draining snps in these steppe peoples, but I don't understand why they dismiss the effects of the Slavic migrations on the percentages for these snps in the modern Ukraine.

This is wild speculation on my part, but perhaps the people involved in this study already have access to, or are in the preliminary stages of testing the yDNA of these groups. These are, after all, academicians...they have a lot of masters and doctors candidates who have to publish. They have to squeeze out as many papers as they can...they can't dump all the data at once. Look at Zink and company and the analysis of Oetzi. Perhaps the yDNA of these steppe Kurgan people was "R1a" or "R1b" already.

 

[MOESAN]

Once again according to me you're misinterpreting some facts. Who's saying that those Bronze Age Steppe people were Proto-Indo-European at the first place and are not just Indo-Europized natives? If original R1b came from the Eastern Anatolia they could have Indo-Europized the natives of the Steppes. If that was the case you can also count on Y-DNA hg. J2a. Once again you're ignoring this haplogroup in your PIE story. According to me the Maykop folks Indo-Europized the Yamna folks and then all other Pontic-Caspian Steppes natives. It has been proven that the Maykop folks came from Northwest Iranian Plateau. So the ORIGINAL Maykop folks were according to me R1b & J2a. So, original PIE that Indo-Europized peoples of the Steppes belonged mostly to R1b & J2a! J2a was a very imporant haplogroup among the Maykop folks, maybe part of their elite!

I dont load my back with all the question here - just concerning Y-HGs: former I-Eans Y-J2(a) and Y-R1b? possible at this stage of knowledge - but the very broad ditch between today Y-R1b / Y-J2 distributions could signify a huge number of Y-R1b were not I-Ean speakers at first OR this Y-HG had a survival very great advantage on Y-J2 in Western Europe? a question!

 

[MOESAN]

Mine...............we only match with your AA lines

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in fact I ask here the all:
could somebody (a patient one) explain me how does all this work? I see on these tables a lot of lines under the same SLC24A5 'hat': how can they produce an unique result resumed like: SLC24A5 pair of alleles ? - and is the right column the phenotypic waited result by dominance? thanks beforehand - I need some solid basis before try to understand - good week-end

 

[Angela]

in fact I ask here the all:
could somebody (a patient one) explain me how does all this work? I see on these tables a lot of lines under the same SLC24A5 'hat': how can they produce an unique result resumed like: SLC24A5 pair of alleles ? - and is the right column the phenotypic waited result by dominance? thanks beforehand - I need some solid basis before try to understand - good week-end

It's my understanding that the rs numbers refer to snps. SLC24A5 is the name of the gene on which this snp is found. They don't provide the info, but the SLC24A5 gene is found on Chromosome 15.

For example,

• SNP rs1426654
• Gene SLC24A5
• Location Chr.15: 48426484

You can have either an "A" or a "G" allele for this snp. "G" is ancestral or "dark" for this snp. "A" is derived or "light". You have two alleles, one from your mother and one from your father.

The last column shows Sile's results for this snp. He is AA, which is saying both his alleles for this snp are derived or "light".

As the authors in this paper discuss, they're not yet sure whether these are co-dominant, dominant, or recessive. (I didn't go back and check this, so this is from memory.)

People in this hobby, including me, are sloppy, and will say SLC24A5, when they should say, for example, rs1426654 on SLC24A5.

The results from the steppe for light pigmentation which we have been discussing include gene SLC45A2 on which is found SNP rs16891982 and the "light" derived allele is "G". Oetzi was GG.

Ed. I know I am sometimes lacking in patience...which is why I never became a teacher, but I hope I have here redeemed myself somewhat.