Massive paper on Stone age Europe and Eurasia. New HG ancestry in Steppe herders

[Stefano]

This paper is huge indeed, and more than 300 samples of ancient DNA bring us a lot of new information but at the same time there are some really ridiculous charts in this paper and some statements reek of eugenics. Genetic testing is a powerful tool, but many geneticists are still not up to it. I still have to read it carefully though.

These are indeed really strange charts.
Also why is Uk divided in small areas and france and italy are taken as one? They have far more internal diversity than UK.
And egypt and italy the same steppe admixture? ridiculous. The farmer in north africa is suspiciously high too.
How can geneticist and academics produce such results? unbelievable

 

[enter_tain]

So, what's the consensus? I was excited by reading the abstract, but it seems they were bsing.

 

[Jovialis]

Very much looking forward to those (UP) Caucasian samples!

Maybe someone can finally make an interesting new calculator using the UP Caucasus samples as a component with other contemporaneous samples.

 

[Anfänger]

Razib Khans opinion on this preprint:
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2022/05/05/eurasia-the-stone-age-and-revenge-of-the-danes/

The comments are also interesting.

 

[Anfänger]

So, what's the consensus? I was excited by reading the abstract, but it seems they were bsing.

Guess we have to wait till the samples are published to reach a consensus on these issues. I am particularly interested in the Middle Don HGs and the UP Kotias Klde samples.

 

[torzio]

interesting

Interestingly, two herein reported ~7,300-year-old imputed genomes from the Middle Don River region in the Pontic-Caspian steppe (Golubaya Krinitsa, NEO113 & NEO212) derive ~20-30% of their ancestry from a source cluster of hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus (Caucasus_13000BP_10000BP) (Fig. 3). Additional lower coverage (non-imputed) genomes from the same site project in the same PCA space (Fig. 1D), shifted away from the European hunter-gatherer cline towards Iran and the Caucasus. Our results thus document genetic contact between populations from the Caucasus and the Steppe region as early as 7,300 years ago, providing documentation of continuous admixture prior to the advent of later nomadic Steppe cultures, in contrast to recent hypotheses, and also further to the west than previously reported.

 

[Archetype0ne]

What I do not get...
So to get to the supposed Yamnaya Steppe admix according to this model you would need these Don HGs, who within themselves had CHG, but on top of that you would need 30% more CHG. Meaning that the Don HGs admixed with a CHG heavy population to get to Yamnaya, all these predating steppe pastoralism? I mean its quite straight forward to get, simple really, but what confuses me is when you supplement these autosomal picture to the YDNA of modern Steppe derived populations as well as ancient samples.
For one the female mediated admixture for the CHG makes 0 sense, as it would not increase the CHG post 5-4k BC in any population by 30%... even if these females were pure CHG, an autosomal profile which from what I gather did not exist at the time.

So how do we reconcile the YDNA picture with what now 3(?) different groups of anthrogeneticists paint as far as autosomal early IE history goes?
Can someone enlighten me what was the CHG YDNA?

Edit: Wikipedia to the rescue:

Jones et al. (2015) analyzed genomes from males from western Georgia, in the Caucasus, from the Late Upper Palaeolithic (13,300 years old) and the Mesolithic (9,700 years old). These two males carried Y-DNA haplogroup: J* and J2a, later refined to J1-FT34521, and J2-Y12379*, and mitochondrial haplogroups of K3 and H13c, respectively.^[9]

So it seems J2a and J, I really am curious now if the 9700bp J2b is really a sample, or they just mislabeled the J2a as J2b on this paper.

 

[Archetype0ne]

Also for all the flack Davidski gets when his (quite often as the many deleted posts suggest) contrarian theories go south, credit where its due, if this paper can be relied on from what I gather IE homeland is indeed Europe, and not Iran. But I do think he mischaracterized Anthony's thesis, as from what I gather they are kind of saying the same thing, just interpreting it differently. An analysis I have no care to elaborate on.

 

[Maciamo]

These maps summarise well the evolution of each main regional ancestry in western Eurasia.

 

[Jovialis]

Guess we have to wait till the samples are published to reach a consensus on these issues. I am particularly interested in the Middle Don HGs and the UP Kotias Klde samples.

I would particularly like to see how well they match with Anatolia_N.

 

[Jovialis]

These maps summarise well the evolution of each main regional ancestry in western Eurasia.

Extended Data Fig 6. Spatiotemporal kriging of four major ancestry clusters over the last 12,000 years of human history. LVN = ancestry maximized in Anatolian farmer populations. WHG = ancestry maximized in western European hunter

 

[Anfänger]

I would particularly like to see how well they match with Anatolia_N.

Exactly, that's one of the things I want to test myself.

Models attempting to reconstruct major post-LGM clusters such as European hunter-gatherers and Anatolian farmers without contributions from this Caucasus UP lineage provided poor admixture graph fits or were rejected in qpAdm analyses (Extended Data Fig. 5B,C). These results thus suggest a central role of the descendants related to this Caucasus UP lineage in the formation of later West Eurasian populations, consistent with recent genetic data from the nearby Dzudzuana Cave, also in Georgia.

Looks like UP Caucasus played a major role even in the formation of European HGs.

 

[Archetype0ne]

The thing is Caucasus in general is not the most hospitable place for HGs one would imagine. So possibly the geography rather acted like a refugia that kept particular pops alive to disperse in waves and affect all these other HG populations. At least that could explain it why it exuded so much influence on early European pops.

 

[bicicleur 2]

Exactly, that's one of the things I want to test myself.



Looks like UP Caucasus played a major role even in the formation of European HGs.

Doesn't look like that here.
At least not for WHG.

 

[Angela]

For anyone who has slogged through the whole paper and especially the parts on traits I'll just say that I find the methodology rather dodgy.

Also, read through some of the comments on Khan's content. Irritability, more emotional lability etc. are not mental illnesses. They're personality traits.

What I'm surprised by is that they didn't try to actually find the "real" mental illnesses, like clinical depression and bipolar disorder, which indeed track differently in Europe on a north south or south north cline.

 

[Anfänger]

Doesn't look like that here.
At least not for WHG.

View attachment 13254

Yep, that's right and it's interesting that according to that graph Dzudzuana is 72% West Eurasian + 28% Basal Eurasian, that's very close to the admixture graph modelling for UP Caucasus (Kotias Klde). See here:

Using admixture graph modelling, we find that this Caucasus UP lineage derives from a mixture of predominantly West Eurasian UP hunter-gatherer ancestry (76%) with ~24% contribution from a “basal Eurasian” ghost population, first observed in West Asian Neolithic individuals (Extended Data Fig. 5A).

But it's not my observation, it´s the paper that is contrarian to your graph. The paper implies that European HGs need a contribution from UP Caucasus if I understand it correctly.

See here:

Models attempting to reconstruct major post-LGM clusters such as European hunter-gatherers and Anatolian farmers without contributions from this Caucasus UP lineage provided poor admixture graph fits or were rejected in qpAdm analyses (Extended Data Fig. 5B,C). These results thus suggest a central role of the descendants related to this Caucasus UP lineage in the formation of later West Eurasian populations, consistent with recent genetic data from the nearby Dzudzuana Cave, also in Georgia30.

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The thing is Caucasus in general is not the most hospitable place for HGs one would imagine. So possibly the geography rather acted like a refugia that kept particular pops alive to disperse in waves and affect all these other HG populations. At least that could explain it why it exuded so much influence on early European pops.

I agree, if I recall corretly according to the Lazaridis paper a Dzudzuana-like population was all over the Near East, from Levant (Natufians) over Anatolia and Caucasus to Iran.

 

[bicicleur 2]

Yep, that's right and it's interesting that according to that graph Dzudzuana is 72% West Eurasian + 28% Basal Eurasian, that's very close to the admixture graph modelling for UP Caucasus (Kotias Klde). See here:


But it's not my observation, it´s the paper that is contrarian to your graph. The paper implies that European HGs need a contribution from UP Caucasus if I understand it correctly.

See here:



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I agree, if I recall corretly according to the Lazaridis paper a Dzudzuana-like population was all over the Near East, from Levant (Natufians) over Anatolia and Caucasus to Iran.

Kotias Klde and Dzudzuana are in the same area, and both samples are from the same period, so it's likely they are very similar.

EHG = ANE + WHG

while CHG = Dzudzuana + EHG/ANE and Iranian Neolithic is also Dzudzuana with a little less EHG/ANE
so, I would think, it is the other way around, EHG contributed to the formation of CHG

 

[bicicleur 2]

For anyone who has slogged through the whole paper and especially the parts on traits I'll just say that I find the methodology rather dodgy.

Also, read through some of the comments on Khan's content. Irritability, more emotional lability etc. are not mental illnesses. They're personality traits.

What I'm surprised by is that they didn't try to actually find the "real" mental illnesses, like clinical depression and bipolar disorder, which indeed track differently in Europe on a north south or south north cline.

Aren't those depressions often induced by the dark winters in the north and not by genetics?
I know that DNA can make someone more prone to depression than others, but still there is still an external factor needed to induce it.

 

[Angela]

Aren't those depressions often induced by the dark winters in the north and not by genetics?
I know that DNA can make someone more prone to depression than others, but still there is still an external factor needed to induce it.

Clinical depression is very highly genetically heritable, i.e. about 50% according to Stanford in their website.
.Ed. Sorry, the site isn't letting me post the link to the paper. Just google Major Depressive Disorder-Stanford Medicine.


They're talking about "MAJOR" depressive disorder, not temporary depression following certain life events, for example, or seasonal affective disorder.

This is true for all mental health disorders, especially schizophrenia, which goes up above 80%, although more people fall prey to MDD than to the other types of mental illness.

Alcoholism is another disorder with a strong genetic basis and it affects a LOT of people in certain countries, as does drug abuse. Both of them are often co-dependent disorders which are linked with Major Depressive Disorder.

There are numerous papers on the subject if you're interested in the topic.

I had to explore a lot of these issues for my work, and ultimately it left me feeling that although dangerous people have to be removed from society for the greater good, their actual "responsibility", while not a factor in criminal trials in most cases, is a very nuanced issue.

 

[enter_tain]

I think people are overreaching with this stuff. Not everything is related to HG/EEF ratios. This paper made clear that even steppe-heavy people adopted farming thousands of years ago.

The kind of rapid population expansion of steppe people wouldn't have been possible without thousands of years of agriculture. Pastoralist nomads are low in population.