Genetic study Human DNA from the oldest Eneolithic cemetery in Nalchik points the spread of farming from the Caucasus to the Eastern European steppes

[Tautalus]

Summary

The Darkveti-Meshoko culture (c.5000–3500/3300 BCE) is the earliest known farming community in the Northern Caucasus, but its contribution to the genetic profile of the neighbouring steppe herders has remained unclear. We present analysis of human DNA from the Nalchik cemetery— the oldest Eneolithic site in the Northern Caucasus— which shows a link with the LowerVolga’s first herders of the Khvalynsk culture. The Nalchik male genotype combines the genes of the Caucasus hunter-gatherers, the Eastern Hunter-Gatherers and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic farmers of western Asia. Improved comparative analysis suggests that the genetic profile of certain Khvalynsk individuals shares the genetic ancestry of the Unakozovo-Nalchik type population of the Northern Caucasus’ Eneolithic. Therefore, it seems that in the first half of the 5th millennium BCE cultural and mating networks helped agriculture and pastoralism spread from West Asia across the Caucasian, into the steppes between the Don and the Volga in Eastern Europe.
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https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(24)02188-6

PCA

Admixture analysis

 

[Anfänger]

Finally, Nalchik is published and it shows the spread of agriculture from West Asia into Eastern Europe. Have to read the full paper later when I have time.

 

[Anfänger]

Of special note is an observation that steppe populations like Khvalynsk and Lebyazhinka produce significant F3 values with PPN’s. Moreover Lebyazhinka, which is dated 500 years before Khvalynsk and located 300 km northeast of it, shows stronger affinity to Mardin_PPN than Khvalynsk. Presumably, the impulse of PPN’s reached these steppe regions but in the timecourse was diluted by local archaic EHG’s.

Thus, ancient human DNA from the Nalchik cemetery, the oldest Eneolithic cemetery in the North Caucasus, and the Lebyazhinka site suggest that the West Asian PPN genetic heritage reached Eurasian Steppe at least by the early 5th millennium BCE

Contrary to expectations, the Nalchik individual genetically closer to earlier population of Northern Mesopotamia and Zagros (eighth–seventh millennia BCE) which lived far from the Caucasus (PPN/ N) than to the ancestry composition of the neighboring Neolithic population of the Southern Caucuses in the sixth millennium BCE (sites of the Shulavery-Shomutepe-Aratashen type).

 

[Tautalus]

The study The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans had already reached the conclusion that individuals from Unakozovskaya (Darkveti-Meshoko culture) were not a good genetic source for Remontnoye (of the CLV cline), and they were not in that cline.

“What was the proximal source for the southern ancestry of the intermediate populations of the CLV cline (The CLV cline people with Lower Volga ancestry contributed four fifths of the ancestry of the Yamnaya ) ? Aknashen makes a poor choice, as it is both geographically remote from the steppe and earlier by two millennia (5985-5836 BCE) than Remontnoye. Neither is Maikop a good
proximal source; it is geographically closer, but postdates (3932-2934 BCE) Remontnoye. Settlements at Meshoko and Svobodnoe, dated 4466-3810 BCE,42 provide a temporally, geographically, and archaeologically plausible source, as they exhibit exchanges of exotic stone, copper, and stone mace heads with Volga Cline sites, setting the context for the expansion of Aknashen-like ancestry northward and Berezhnovka-like ancestry southward. These settlements are temporally earlier than Maikop and later than two individuals from Eneolithic Unakozovskaya (ref.5 4607-4450 BCE, and this study) in the North Caucasus; however, unlike Aknashen and Maikop, the Unakozovskaya population is not a good genetic source for Remontnoye, as the model BPgroup+Unakozovskaya fails (p<0.001) by overestimating (Z=3.8) shared genetic drift with the CHG. The Unakozovskaya was not exactly the same genetically as the Maikop who succeeded them (p=2e-11) but were genetically similar (Fig. 1) and can be modeled as 95.3±6.3% Maikop and 4.7±6.3% CHG (p=0.46). “​

From Supplementary Material of The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans

“The Unakozovskaya Pre-Maikop individuals from the North Caucasus predate the Maikop. These include three relatives published in ref. 8 of which the higher quality I2056 is used here, together with individual I1717. The Unakozovskaya population is not a clade with Maikop (p=2e-11), because it shares much more genetic drift with CHG, as evidenced by the statistic f4(Maikop, Unakozovskaya; CHG, OldAfrica) which has a Z-score of -6.0. However, it can be modeled as a mixture of Maikop and CHG (p=0.46) with predominantly Maikop-related ancestry (95.36.4%) and conversely Maikop can be modeled as 105.47.1% Unakozovskaya with a negative CHG contribution. Thus, Unakozovskaya (the precursors of Maikop) were similar if not quite like them. The Aknashen+BPgroup model does not fit Unakzovskaya (p=6e-9) as it underestimates CHG shared drift as well (Z=-4.8). Therefore, Unakozovskaya was not quite on the Aknashen-BPgroup (Caucasus-Lower Volga) cline but occupied a position similar to the later Maikop, offset by higher CHG affinity.”

Nalchik belongs also to the Darkveti-Meshoko culture, like the individuals from Unakozovskaya, but Nalchik has a greater steppe component that the individuals from Unakozovskaya, and cluster near Progress 2 individuals (of the CLV cline) in the PCA in this new study.

Does Nalchik change anything? Maybe not, the study about Nalchik, for example, did not detect recent gene flow between Unakozovskaya or Nalchik and Khvalynsk samples, through IBD analysis.

Like the study about Nalchik says “Genetic infiltration of the Caucasus population into the steppe in the first half of the fifth millennium BC was, most likely, not the first and, more importantly, was not the only one. Judging by the combination of the steppe (EHG) and the Caucasus (CHG) components in some Khvalynsk individuals, the latter component could reach the steppe with the groups of the Caucasus Paleolithic and Mesolithic populations much earlier.”

 

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The study The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans had already reached the conclusion that individuals from Unakozovskaya (Darkveti-Meshoko culture) were not a good genetic source for Remontnoye (of the CLV cline), and they were not in that cline.

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It shows again that there were multiple migrations over time across the Caucasus into the Volga-Don steppe and also back migrations. I think Remontnoye was Proto-Indo-European.

 

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It shows again that there were multiple migrations over time across the Caucasus into the Volga-Don steppe and also back migrations. I think Remontnoye was Proto-Indo-European.

Data from die Lazaridis paper hast just been published. In my opinion the CLV cline samples including Remontnoye are PIE. This is what the Remontnoye individuals look like in distal modeling:

They are closest to modern populations from Dagestan.