Genetic ancestry changes in Stone to Bronze Age transition in the East European plain

[Shahmiri]

R1a-M417 is an Indo-Iranian haplogroup, it has been also found far south in the Levant where ancient Mitanni was located, there are several Indo-Iranian words in Finno-Ugric languages, so this culture certainly existed in the north of Eurasia too, we know from Sarmatia in modern Poland to India, different Indo-Iranian people lived in ancient times but most of Scytho-Sarmatians adopted Balto-Slavic languages.

 

[ratchet_fan]

Do

R1a-M417 is an Indo-Iranian haplogroup, it has been also found far south in the Levant where ancient Mitanni was located, there are several Indo-Iranian words in Finno-Ugric languages, so this culture certainly existed in the north of Eurasia too, we know from Sarmatia in modern Poland to India, different Indo-Iranian people lived in ancient times but most of Scytho-Sarmatians adopted Balto-Slavic languages.

R1a-M417 Is not an Indo-Iranian haplogroup. Only one subclade of R1a-M417 is. The other major subclades CTS4385, Z280, Z284 and M458 have very little to nothing to do with Indo-Iranians.

 

[Shahmiri]

R1a-M417 Is not an Indo-Iranian haplogroup. Only one subclass of R1a-M417 is.

Which one? For example what was Sarmatian haplogroup?

 

[real expert]

...... Mesolithic EHG were as dark overall as Sub-Saharan Africans (imagine them looking more Ethiopian or Somalian). Mesolithic Latvians had blue eyes, but they were admixed with WHG (Y-hg I2), while Mesolithic Russians were pure EHG (Y-hg R1a).

I rather imagine the Cheddar man, WHGs or these dark EHGs to look like these people.

Indians:

or like this dark Yemenite man.

In my opinion the researchers made the skin tone of the Cheddar man way too dark.

Anyway the WHGs had a very exotic combination of dark skin and light eyes.

 

[Angela]

EHG were dark haired and dark eyed, but they had lighter skin.

 

[real expert]

EHG were dark haired and dark eyed, but they had lighter skin.

Yes, however my comment was referring to Maciamo's claim that Mesolithic EHG were dark as SSAs and resembling modern Horners.

 

[ratchet_fan]

Which one? For example what was Sarmatian haplogroup?

Sarmatians were long gone by the time of the Holy Roman Empire. This isn't a serious map is it?

 

[Shahmiri]

Sarmatians were long gone by the time of the Holy Roman Empire. This isn't a serious map is it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmatism: Sarmatism (or Sarmatianism) is an ethno-cultural concept with a shade of politics designating the formation of an idea of Poland's origin from Sarmatians, an Iranic people, within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

And this is the map of Sarmatia by the time of ancient Roman Empire:

According to the Cambridge History of Iran, the Lusatian culture (1300 BC – 500 BC) in modern Poland, and part of Germany, Czech Republic and Slovakia, was destroyed by ancient Scythians in 500 BC, page 192:

One of the greatest Scythian treasures has been found in the Province of Brandenburg in Germany, near to Poland border: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vettersfelde_Treasure

R1a haplogroup in the east of Europe, especially Poland and Ukraine, is an Indo-Iranian haplogroup, Hungarian linguist Janos harmatta mentions a large numebr of Iranian loanwords not only in Finno-Ugric but also in Dacian and other early IE languages in the east of Europe, like Proto-Baltic and Proto-Germanic, for example Proto-Baltic *spand: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spožs#Latvian and Proto-Germanic *paþaz: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/paþaz

 

[Ygorcs]

Also interesting is this table of phenotypes across the ages in Northeast Europe. I have laid over colours to visualise the evolution more easily. Fatyanovo R1a-Z93 tribes had an overall pigmentation similar to that of modern upper-caste North Indians. If they weren't nearly as light as modern Northeast Europeans, it isn't surprising that Indo-Aryans also weren't lighter skinned or haired, even without blending with other populations along the way. It's really during the Iron Age that Northeast Europeans started becoming blue-eyed blonds. Mesolithic EHG were as dark overall as Sub-Saharan Africans (imagine them looking more Ethiopian or Somalian). Mesolithic Latvians had blue eyes, but they were admixed with WHG (Y-hg I2), while Mesolithic Russians were pure EHG (Y-hg R1a).

Mesolithic EHG as dark as Sub-Saharan Africans? Wasn't it usually established by all the prior genetic studies about EHG that they had at least some of the skin-lightening gene mutations so they probably had reasonably light skin, contrary to the WHG? Even for the WHG I tend to think they had minor depigmentation mutations just like those that cause modern Sub-Saharan Africans to have a range of distinct skin colors even when they lack any non-negligible West Eurasian ancestry. Not that I think that they were light-skinned, like those denialists that always exist usually for the wrong reasons, and not just because of scientific skepticism. I rather envision the WHG as being basically Khoisan-like or maybe Tigray/Amhara-like in skin color, that is, dark, but certainly less dark than the average Sub-Saharan African. They lived for many millennia in latitudes that are far more temperate and less exposed to strong sun radiation than anything that exists in Africa (even the Cape region), and much (most?) of their ancestry derived from even earlier Gravettians that had lived in Europe also for a very long time. I really doubt that would've caused no skin depigmentation at all since the out of Africa migration.

As for the Fatyanovo R1a-Z93, I had already suspected that was one of the main early Indo-Iranian cultures, but are you sure about their complexion being similar to that of upper caste North Indians? Maybe those North Indians of upper caste who look lighter, but the average of them still looks pretty dark-skinned even compared to Pashtuns and Balochs, let alone to Europeans.

I think we could expect the Indo-Aryans to be at least a bit lighter-skinned than the lighter half of the upper caste Northern Indians, considering the average Yaghnobi Tajiks' (who have as much as ~40% steppe_MLBA ancestry) skin complexion, which is pretty light (though not "Northeastern European" pale skin), and also simple logic: if you mixed mostly Dravidian-like people with just a minority of Upper Caste North Indian-looking people and put them to evolve for more than 3,500 years in tropical and subtropical but not high-latitude areas (so, no strong selective pressure for skin depigmentation), you'd get people who have a darker skin complexion than the modern mixed Upper Caste North Indians have.

But, after all is said and done, I agree with you, and Razib Khan had already argued that months ago: the CWC-derived people were still mostly pretty "swarthy" in comparison with modern North Europeans, and the lightening process accelerated a lot after 4,000 years ago.

 

[Ygorcs]

You are making me doubt. I thought that the table showed the allele frequency, since no population has 100% of blue eyes or blond hair and the table would suggest that Iron Age Ingrians did. That's why I only coloured over the most likely phenotype based on these allele frequencies.

But the table does say phenotype and not genotype. I wonder if that's a mistake. If it's not, then Fatyanovo had people with black, brown and blond hair, but almost all with intermediate to dark skin. Blond hair with dark skin is an extremely unlikely phenotype (unless the hair is discoloured by malnutrition).

Nevertheless blue/grey eyes are relatively common among upper-caste Indians.

I'm really starting to think that scientists should include examples of what range of color they consider to be "light", "dark", "intermediate", since those are so broad, imprecise and subjective terms that are arbitrarily distinguished from each other at this or that particular shades of the spectrum. How dark is "dark", and when it is just defined as "intermediate"? I mean, I've read Northern Europeans describing Middle Easterners as dark, when to me the large majority of them are really far from "dark" and would instead be mostly between light and intermediate.

 

[Ygorcs]

I think light eyes to most people mean grey, blue and green and maybe mixed eyes.
But it is interesting that green eyes are more common than blue and men are more light eyed than women.
Also not much of a difference in green and blue yes between the north and south.

What are "mixed eyes"? Personally I would consider so-called "amber" and "honey" eyes, which are very light brown eyes with goldenish or yellowish, and sometimes even slightly greenish tones under sun exposure, "borderline light eyes", but still light. They're the most beautiful eye colors for me, and pretty rare.

 

[Ygorcs]

R1a-M417 is an Indo-Iranian haplogroup, it has been also found far south in the Levant where ancient Mitanni was located, there are several Indo-Iranian words in Finno-Ugric languages, so this culture certainly existed in the north of Eurasia too, we know from Sarmatia in modern Poland to India, different Indo-Iranian people lived in ancient times but most of Scytho-Sarmatians adopted Balto-Slavic languages.

R1a-M417 and the R1a-majority CWC cultural zone predate Proto-Indo-Iranian people. They are their antecessors. Proto-Indo-Iranian people developed out of a mostly R1a-M417 population and carried particularly its Z93 clade. Don't turn chronology upside down. Finno-Ugric or rather virtually all of Uralic has both Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Iranian loanwords because the Uralic linguistic splits date to around the time of the transition from PIE to early Proto-Indo-Iranian, and Uralic probably expanded to the Baltic area from an eastern homeland north of the Pontic-Caspian steppe and later peopled by CWC people, what may have pushed the originally hunter-gatherers who spoke PU and PFU northward, eastward and northwestward.

No, not everything is about the Iranians and started with the Iranians. I know, shocking, isn't it?

The Sarmatian thing was inveted centuries and centuries ex post factum by the Polish nobility just to distinguish themselves and identify themselves with glorious horse-mounted warriors of the very remote past, unlike all those barefoot and horseless Slavic farmers they ruled. There was in Antiquity no sign of Sarmatian culture (only some Sarmatian influence) and population in Poland, at least not for a long time and in large enough numbers to leave some long-term traces.

 

[Shahmiri]

the biggest surprise in the study is the dating
Fatyanovo existed much earlier than what was accepted till now
also interesting is the 12,7 ka Veretye HG R1a-YP1272
the 8,4 ka Karelia HG was R1a-M459*
could R1a-M459 be born between Lake Onega & the Ural Mts?
https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-M459/

According to "The phylogenetic and geographic structure of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a", by Peter A. Underhill et al.:

Of the 24 R1a-M420*(xSRY10831.2) chromosomes in our data set, 18 were sampled in Iran and 3 were from eastern Turkey. Similarly, five of the six observed R1a1-SRY10831.2*(xM417/Page7) chromosomes were also from Iran, with the sixth occurring in a Kabardin individual from the Caucasus. Owing to the prevalence of basal lineages and the high levels of haplogroup diversities in the region, we find a compelling case for the Middle East, possibly near present-day Iran, as the geographic origin of hg R1a.

 

[Shahmiri]

R1a-M417 and the R1a-majority CWC cultural zone predate Proto-Indo-Iranian people. They are their antecessors. Proto-Indo-Iranian people developed out of a mostly R1a-M417 population and carried particularly its Z93 clade. Don't turn chronology upside down. Finno-Ugric or rather virtually all of Uralic has both Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Iranian loanwords because the Uralic linguistic splits date to around the time of the transition from PIE to early Proto-Indo-Iranian, and Uralic probably expanded to the Baltic area from an eastern homeland north of the Pontic-Caspian steppe and later peopled by CWC people, what may have pushed the originally hunter-gatherers who spoke PU and PFU northward, eastward and northwestward.

No, not everything is about the Iranians and started with the Iranians. I know, shocking, isn't it?

The Sarmatian thing was inveted centuries and centuries ex post factum by the Polish nobility just to distinguish themselves and identify themselves with glorious horse-mounted warriors of the very remote past, unlike all those barefoot and horseless Slavic farmers they ruled. There was in Antiquity no sign of Sarmatian culture (only some Sarmatian influence) and population in Poland, at least not for a long time and in large enough numbers to leave some long-term traces.

I didn't get what you mean, do you mean R1a-M417 is Proto-Indo-European haplogroup? So both Bronze Age Fatyanovo and Levant were Proto-Indo-European cultures in the 3rd-2nd millennium BC?!
The fact is that none of ancient samples from the 3rd-2nd millennium BC in India, Iran, Levant and other regions where Indo-Iranian lived is R1a-Z93, according to "The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia", by Vaghees Narasimhan et al., Steppe ancestry reached South Asia after 1000 BC, about 600 years after the appearance of Indo-Iranian culture in the Levant.

 

[Shahmiri]

What are "mixed eyes"? Personally I would consider so-called "amber" and "honey" eyes, which are very light brown eyes with goldenish or yellowish, and sometimes even slightly greenish tones under sun exposure, "borderline light eyes", but still light. They're the most beautiful eye colors for me, and pretty rare.

They are not rare in Iran but I think Iranians also see them as the most beautiful eye colors, some of the most famous Iranian celebrities have light brown eyes, like this one:

 

[ratchet_fan]

What are "mixed eyes"? Personally I would consider so-called "amber" and "honey" eyes, which are very light brown eyes with goldenish or yellowish, and sometimes even slightly greenish tones under sun exposure, "borderline light eyes", but still light. They're the most beautiful eye colors for me, and pretty rare.

Mixed eyes are eyes which have both blue/green and brown. Its a term old school anthropologists used to use.

 

[ratchet_fan]

According to "The phylogenetic and geographic structure of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a", by Peter A. Underhill et al.:

This paper is outdated. Not only has the structure of R1a been worked out since then but we have a plethora of ancient DNA since this paper was published.It also doesn't matter where basal clades of haplogroups are found today. Ancient DNA tells a different story. We have plenty of ancient DNA from Europe and R1a (as well as R1b) goes back at least 12,000 years in Europe while all the West Asian DNA indicates there was no R1a (or R1b) there before the Bronze Age.

 

[Shahmiri]

This paper is outdated. Not only has the structure of R1a been worked out since then but we have a plethora of ancient DNA since this paper was published.It also doesn't matter where basal clades of haplogroups are found today. Ancient DNA tells a different story. We have plenty of ancient DNA from Europe and R1a (as well as R1b) goes back at least 12,000 years in Europe while all the West Asian DNA indicates there was no R1a (or R1b) there before the Bronze Age.

Of course if you don't study the DNA of ancient skeletons in Tepe Sialk and other ancient sites in Central Iran, you will never find R1a there, but for example we see this haplogroup is found in the Bronze Age Levant and it is believed that it came there from Iran, so it certainly existed in the ancient times where it exists today.

 

[ratchet_fan]

Of course if you don't study the DNA of ancient skeletons in Tepe Sialk and other ancient sites in Central Iran, you will never find R1a there, but for example we see this haplogroup is found in the Bronze Age Levant and it is believed that it came there from Iran, so it certainly existed in the ancient times where it exists today.

You're going to be disappointed. R1a has been found in Europe in multiple sites all without Iran_N admixture. There's nothing to indicate R1a will pop up in Central Iran. And that Bronze Age Levantine came from Central Asian. He can't be modeled without Central Asian admixture or Steppe_MLBA admixture.

Same applies to R1b. Also given how much admixture there was between Anatolia_N, CHG, Iran_N and Levant_N no R1a or R1b in those places either.

 

[Ygorcs]

Of course if you don't study the DNA of ancient skeletons in Tepe Sialk and other ancient sites in Central Iran, you will never find R1a there, but for example we see this haplogroup is found in the Bronze Age Levant and it is believed that it came there from Iran, so it certainly existed in the ancient times where it exists today.

Far too late, though. That R1a in the Levant dates to the MLBA, from a time where there is a known and documented explanation for what that probably means: Indo-Aryan Mitanni ruling elite. The mostly Central Asian outlier female with small steppe admixture from the same time also proves it and clearly demonstrates the route that steppe ancestry and R1a-M417 must've taken to arrive in the Levant: North-Central Asia > South-Central Asia . Totally fits the most probable route shown by ancient DNA samples: Pontic-Caspian Chalcolithic/EBA cultures (Khvalynsk, Repin, Sredny-Stog) >>> CWC >>> Fatyanovo-Balanovo >>> Sintashta/Andronovo >>> Early Indo-Aryans and Iranic like the ruling elite of the mostly Hurrian Mitanni.

R1a is found in Northeastern Europe as far back as the Mesolithic, and R1a-M417 since the 4th-5th millennium B.C. Chronological order matters. There is no doubt some R1a-M417 may have been present in the Iranian Plateau and Transcaucasia as early as the early or mid 3rd millennium B.C., because there is already some Pontic-Caspian (therefore Eastern European EHG-admixed) admixture in EMBA Armenia and Northwestern Iran. That says nothing about the origins of R1a-M417, the TMRCA of which basically coincides (chronologically) with the early Pontic-Caspian steppe cultures assumed to be related to the big steppe expansion of the late 4th-early 3rd millennium B.C., and it is found in Northeastern European aDNA samples only centuries after its TMRCA is estimated to have happened. Nothing today points to an origin and an initial dispersal of R1a from Iran, but especially NOT that of its specific and much more recent clade R1a-M417.