MOESAN
Elite member
- Messages
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- Location
- Brittany
- Ethnic group
- more celtic
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- R1b - L21/S145*
- mtDNA haplogroup
- H3c
Natufians (end)
I agree (with modesty) to the author conclusions stating the first Natufians sites showed a rather well shared culture but more than one ancestral pop biologically speaking (some of the features could be the result of introgressions from Anatolia horizons (higher skull, lower frontal angle, narrower face, aspect more marked in H and N-O, less in A-M site) -
& but :
Natufians separated first groups were between Maghreb HG’s and Ancient Levant : M-HG’s had low skulls, A-L high skulls – all of them had rather broad faces but as Natufians taken as a mean
A-L had high skulls and low frontal angles, M-HG’s had a high frontal angles -
spite the Natufians mean was rather closer to A-L compared to M-HG’s, they already showed they were not only on the straight way between both -
Recent Levant, whatever the part of lifestyle attached to Neolithicization (which could distord the straight way), show tendancies which cannot be explained by an osmosis between both : their only (relatively) homogenous trait is the narrower faces, but they show great heterogeneity concerning breadth/lenght of skulls, frontal angle and skull height, what is for me the evidence they received other pops inputs after Natufian’s times because I doubt it could be only the result of a drift based upon pure hazard in a rather short time and out of isolation – in some way they show kind of a regression (only at first sight) for some features compared to late Natufian means : I see here a ‘west-asian’ or ‘Zagros’ input, with something recalling the ‘cappadocian med’ type mean, with a bit lower skull and higher frontal angle ; I regreat I cannot compare the shapes ; ATW these last tendencies can have the same remote origin than among the M-HG’s : old traits can be shared for some peculiar details even when pops have diverged since some time and the allover auDNA has strongly drifted meanwhile.
I don’t refute (!) the authors global conclusions about neolithicization and morphology (progressive sedentism) but I find it’s a bit simplistic to input the whole transformation having given us the Recent Levant pop of Palestine to this unique change of culture ; I know we cannot explain every modif by newcomers introgressions, mutations and selection exist - here we have to explain the birth of new long faced or narrow faced types - as for a part among Anatolian farmers - but we had already some Paleo and Meso HG’s of Europe with longer faces than say our beloved ‘croma’. It’s a pity we don’t have in this study a craniologic survey of Jericho Neolithic pop, before recent Levant ; what we have is only a discret traits survey showing Jericho people lacked some of the most common peculiarities of Natufians (founder effect traits absent in other sites? Small sample of Natufians?)