Mtdna w1c3

[PolyhedralEpiklesis]

I have received more information on my mtdna after doing a full sequence and sharing the info with the W & N2a haplogroup project:


Here is what they had to say:

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• W is defined by the mutations T204C G207A T1243C A3505G G5460A G8251A G8994A A11914G G15884c.
• W1 is defined by C7864T.
• W1+T119C is defined by T119C, but T119C is unstable in W1.
• W1c is defined by A14148G.
• W1c3 is defined by C152T! & C16193T, the first being a backmutation.
• You have the private mutation T1094C which is also found in 5 other kits indicating a new subclade under W1c3.

W1c3 is found in kits with matrilineal ancestry in Greece, Serbia, Slovakia & Bulgaria (some of them confirmed Aromanian). It can also be found in the scientific literature with matrilineal ancestry from Turkey [Fernandes 2012], Serbia [Kovacevic 2014/Davidovic 2020] and Kosovo [Kovacevic 2014]. There exists at least two subbranches, but probably many more since at least half of the known kits have additional private mutations, indicating that the subclade may be more than a thousand years old.

Scientist have identified several ancient skeletons that belong to the W1c branch:

• The oldest W1c sample so far is a a W1c Neolithic individual sk20810 that is about 8.400 years old from Çatalhöyük in Turkey, which is one of the important archeological sites within the early Neolithic [Chylensky et al 2019] . The site has been used to discuss a wide range of aspects associated with the spread of the Neolithic lifestyle and the social organization of Neolithic societies. The settlement was composed of a conglomeration of clustered neighborhoods with clearly defined modular house units . All houses were apparently occupied and used for domestic purposes. Burials were located under the floors of most buildings, especially under elevated platforms in northern and eastern parts of the living rooms. However, some of the buildings, notably the ones with more elaborate art installations, contained more burials (up to almost 70 individuals, more than one would expect from the estimated number of their inhabitants), implying their special status. Those buildings are thought to have been “history houses” that provided or controlled ancestors and rituals for a larger kin or other group. Çatalhöyük was undoubtedly a part of a large, far-reaching exchange network and could have potentially participated in the exchange of both goods and ideas. Elements of Çatalhöyük origin began to emerge in particular in North-western Anatolia in the middle of the 7th millennium BCE. Four adjacent, roughly contemporary buildings from Çatalhöyük South Area, dated to Mellaart Phase VI A (6450–6380 cal. BC), were selected for the study. It was assumed that the selected buildings represented ordinary houses as neither of them was recognized as a “history house” by the researchers of the site, however, an above-average number of art installations were found in building 80, and all of the buildings, with the exception of building 89, contained more than 10 burials. In total, 47 bone samples were acquired from 37 skeletons, including ten individuals from building 96. The individual sk20810 is buried in a pit grave in the central eastern platform of building 96 close to two H/H+73 mtDNA graves. The skeleton was complete but poorly preserved and based on morphological traits it was interpreted as an adult (20+ years). Sex was recorded as probable male based on the characteristics of the cranium and mandible. The individual was interred in very tightly flexed position and was lying on its left side with the head to the west and feet to the east. There is a picture of the skeleton in the supplementary description of the paper.
• POZ483 is a mature W1c female found in grave no.23 at Samborzec in Sandomierz, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship in Poland belonging to the corded ware culture dated to 2886-2582 BC. The female was found at the bottom of a niche grave in a crouched supine positon, with legs on the left side, along the NE-SW axis, with head to the north-east. The equipment included two ceramic vessels and a flint axe. This ancient female belongs to the subclade W1c+C14433T that is also found in a Iron Age La Tene male PEY163 which was found in La Peyrou, Agde, Herault, Occitaine in France dating to 400-200 BC [Brunel 2020] indicating a continuum of this particular subclade over 2000 years in Europe from the Neolithic Corded Ware culture to the Iron Age La Tene culture. The Peyrou site at Agde (Hérault), was an incineration necropolis during the second half of the 7th century BCE (Peyrou 1) and yielded 35 burials which reveal very different funerary practices (Peyrou 2) which span the end of the 5th century to the middle of the 2nd century BCE. Among the subadults, there were 8 perinatals or infants buried in a vase. Adults were buried only with objects relating to the mortuary toilet (perfume vases) or a symbolic tribute with no difference according to the sex of the deceased. These practices are identical to the Greeks’ rituals, very different from those of the surrounding region during the Iron Age. Ancient texts attest to the existence of a trade settlement created by the Greek colonists of Marseilles in this place at this time.
• “Saag et al 2021” describes a Bronze Age W1c boy NIK006 aged 13-16 years old from Nikultsino in Yaroslavl in Russia belonging to the Fatyanovo culture dated to 2590 BC. The antiquities of the Fatyanovo culture are recognized in a wide area of the European part of Russia from the Novgorod oblast to Tatarstan, particularly the Lake Ilmen area to the Vyatka River. The Fatyanovo culture people buried their dead mostly in inhumation cemeteries without visible above ground signs. In a constrained area of the Middle Volga region, they were buried in singular or grouped barrows, located on higher moraine or sandy hills and the shores of watercourses and lakes. The number of graves in a burial ground varies between 2 and 125. The dead are usually buried at a depth of 0.1–2.7 meters and the grave shafts can be relatively large (maximum 3 × 5.6 meters), some with wooden, birch bark or root constructions. The bodies have been laid in the grave mostly on their sides, with elbow, hip and knee joints flexed. In general, the men are laid on their right side and the women on their left. It has been suggested that some of the deceased had been wrapped prior to burial. As an exception, some cremation burials can be found. In some cases, charcoal and ochre have been found in graves. The grave goods usually consist of pottery vessels, battle axes, flint work axes, adzes and knives, as well as metal weapons and jewelry and in special cases, animal bones and shells. Differences between sexes and age groups have been detected in the depth of the graves as well as the grave goods. The stone battle axes are usually found with male burials, rarely with children and women, with the axe often placed near the head. Polished flint work axes and adzes as well as flint knives are usually found in the hip region in male burials and near the feet in female burials. Other items, such as flint arrowheads, scrapers, blades and flakes, bone tools (awls, points, adzes etc.) and ornaments made of animal teeth, bone and amber can also be found. The age-at-death of the deceased is usually between 30–50 years of age, in special cases up to 70 years. Women, however, are rarely older than 40 years. The source of subsistence for the people of the Fatyanovo culture has mostly been thought to be animal husbandry, but also hunting, fishing and gathering, and the possibility of cultivation has not been excluded either. The bones of domestic animals (pig, goat/sheep, sometimes cattle and horse) and items made from the bones have been found from several burial places. Teeth belonging to horses, cattle and goat/sheep have been found from an extensively excavated RANIS settlement site in the Moscow area and the bones of domesticated animals have also been recovered from many settlement sites of the Balanovo area. Both nomadic and sedentary animal husbandry has been assumed. The idea of a nomadic lifestyle has been reasoned from the scarcity of settlement sites while the location of the burial places in the landscape is considered as indirect evidence for agriculture. The deforestation on the shores of the Moscow River during the Fatyanovo culture period, visible on pollen diagrams, is presumed to be related to agriculture. However, direct evidence of cereal crop farming has yet to be found. Hunting as a source of subsistence can be inferred from the bone items found from burial places and animal bones from the settlement sites of the Balanovo group. The bones of elk, roe deer, reindeer, beaver, bear, marten and fox as well as other types of wild animals and fish have been differentiated. The Nikultsino burial site is on a hillock in the Yaroslavl region, including 18 graves, some with double burials. Burial 11 (NIK006) is a 13–16-year-old male, who was placed in the grave on his right side, head directed to southwest. A battle axe, a flint knife, two ceramic vessels, flint flakes and quartz flakes were found. Unfortunately the exact mutations have not yet been released.
• “Narasimhan et al 2019” describes a Medium to Late Bronze Age W1c male I1019 from Kamennyi Ambar 5 in Russia, cemetery 981, kurgan 2, burial 3 belonging to the Sintasha culture dated to 2050-1650 BC. The Kamennyi Ambar 5 cemetery is located 260 km south of the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, and is situated within the steppe zone of the Trans-Urals region.The cemetery consists of four barrows dating to the Bronze Age (Sintashta culture), which are related to the population that inhabited the Kamennyi Ambar fortified settlement on the opposite bank of the Karagaily-Ayat River. Despite the barrows being of relatively small size (30 m in diameter and height of <1 m), some of the burial mounds contained up to 17 grave pits with one or more inhumations. Direct dates of skeletons from the site fall in the range of 2030-1660 BCE. Excavation indicated that the barrow complexes were formed gradually, and all large grave pit features had individual surface structures. Stratigraphically later burials have features of the Early Srubnaya culture type. A total of 23 of 38 pits contained collective burials that included up to eight individuals buried at the same time. The main ritual treatment of the deceased was inhumation. More than half of the graves had been disturbed by subsequent human activities and burrowing animals and therefore many individuals were recovered as incomplete skeletons. The remains of about 130 individuals (predominantly subadults) were discovered. According to the authors of the excavations, the individuals interred within the burial mounds represent only a fraction of the population that would have inhabited the settlement. Grave goods included numerous metals, stone and bone items, as well as pottery. Among the finds are weapons, tools, horse harness components, stone mace heads, jewelry, and utilitarian items. Nearly all burials were accompanied by animal sacrifices that included domestic animals such as sheep, goats, cattle, horses and dogs. I1019 was found in a single grav burial and was probably 45-59 years old male. This male belongs to W1c and has no extra mutations.
• “Juras et al 2020” describes a Medium to Late Bronze Age 7-14 year old W1c boy POZ582 from Dacharzow 1 in Poland belonging to the Trzciniec cultural circle dated to 2021-1773 BC. The Trzciniec Cultural Circle (TCC) was one of the most extensive cultural structures of the Bronze Age, covering in the 2nd millennium BC (1,800-1,100 BC) the zones of primeval forest and forest steppe in the borderland between Central and Eastern Europe. The territories inhabited by the Trzciniec societies spread between Prosna and Warta River Basins in the West and Desna and Seym Rivers in the East, the lower Vistula and Nemen in the North and the middle Dniester in the South. Settlement of the Trzciniec society was characterized by an agglomerated model with microregions that were functioning in the same time horizon. They greatly differed in size, varying from less than 1 square km to several or over a several dozen square km in extreme cases. Microregions comprised of at least one single settlement form but most often there were several (two or three) and in some cases up to over a dozen sites of different sizes (larger and smaller stable settlements, campsites and penetration traces) and sometimes a cemetery as well. A typical unit found in the settlement consisted of a homestead, i.e. a house with a yard, covering from several dozen to approximately 200 square m, standing at a certain distance from each others. In some sites located in the upland zone, more complex settlement planning patterns were observed, involving a regular layout of homesteads (houses), forming larger stable settlements and arranged in the shape of an ellipse. The largest stable settlements in the upland zone are estimated to be inhabited by 80-100 people permanently for even 300-400 years. The food economy of the Trzciniec circle societies, relying on both agriculture and animal husbandry. With the course of time, the role of cereal cultivation grew in importance but was locally supplemented with hunting, fishing and gathering. The main role in the economy of the Trzciniec culture societies, both in the lowland and upland areas, was played by animal husbandry. This is confirmed by grazing markers visible in palynological profiles of various landscape zones: on wet floodplain meadows of river terraces, on dry meadows in deforested parts of higher landscape areas, on the edges of forests and on forest clearings. Ruminants like cattle and sheep/goat dominated in the structure of the herds. Pigs and other domesticates were less important. The role of crops is indicated by the presence of cereal pollen in some palynological profiles and few charred grains found on settlements. Funeral ritual of the Trzciniec circle people was very diversified and sophisticated. Taking into account different formal criteria, one can divide sepulchral sites into barrow and flat cemeteries as well as inhumation, cremation and biritual ones. Sometimes dead bodies were partially burned and dismembered. Individuals were placed individually or collectively, preserving the anatomical order or not. Animals were buried as well – separately or together with dead human bodies. A characteristic form of burial both in lowland and upland areas were collective graves. They graves could be used by several to even dozen of generations. The dead were placed with their heads against the shorter sides of the pit and legs stretched towards its middle. Collective graves contained from two to thirty individuals. The mortality structure in this graves shows that adults, males and females, adolescents and children were found among the dead. Dacharzów, site 1, Sandomierz district, Świętokrzyskie provinceis a cemetery located in the northeast of the Sandomierz Upland, on a loess elevation in the Opatówka River valley. The cemetery centre was occupied by a barrow, covering two centrally-located stone-timber graves in the type of mortuary houses oriented along the northwest-southeast axis. The structures, built of limestone slabs and blocks as well as pebbles, adjoined each other along their longer sides. The larger one held six inhumations furnished with bronze ornaments, pottery and animal bones. Grave 10was located on the east side of the barrow. In an oval pit measuring 90 × 110 × 30 cm, encircled by an incomplete stone cist, the remains of four children lay. The arrangement of two older ones was clear: they were placed on their side, with legs drawn up, the head pointing southwest. Amid the bones of these skeletons, single bones of children were identified. The DNA of two individuals was analyzed: an older boy lying in the eastern side of the grave, inside the stone lining (poz582), and a child who is thought to have died in its first year of life (poz583) The boy POZ582 belongs to W1c and has no extra mutations.
• “Narasimhan et al 2019” describes a Medium to Late Bronze Age W1c female I6716 from Krasnoyarsk Krai near Orak Ulus in Russia dated to 1740-1614 BC. The Orak burial place is located near Orak Ulus village in the Krasnoyarsk region of Russia. Most burials of the site are attributed to the Fedorovo type of the Andronovo complex while some are attributed to the Karasuk culture. The cemetery consisted of several oval kurgans. Square stone enclosures were built on the mounds. The enclosures touching each other formed a complex network. The archaeological context of the skeletons excavated in 1926 is not well recorded, as the numbers of the burials in the publications do not match the documents in the museum catalog of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography where the collection is housed. The artifacts found in the burials include ornamented ceramic vessels, and scattered copper beads in the female burials. There were also fragments of woolen cloth. Andronovo is a complex material culture phenomenon, encompassing a large number of archaeological populations from the vast steppe zone between the Ural Mountains in the West and Minusinsk Basin in the East. The most important local Andronovo cultures are often considered as falling into Fedorovo, which occupied territory from Central Kazakhstan to the Yenisei River in present-day Russia, and Alakul’, which occupied territory in the Southern Urals and Central Kazakhstan. According to archaeological data, both Fedorovo and Alakul sites in Siberia have radiocarbon dates mostly between 1900 to 1400 BCE. Morphological data has been interpreted as suggesting that both Fedorovka and Alakul skeletons are similar to Sintashta groups, which in turn may reflect admixture of Neolithic forest hunter gatherers and steppe pastoralists, descendants of the Catacomb and Poltavka cultures. This female belongs to W1c and has no extra mutations.
• “Narasimhan et al 2019” describes a Medium to Late Bronze Age W1c male I4790 from Oy-Dzhaylau III grave 7a in Kazakhstan dated to 1527-1439 BC. The site of Oy-Dzhaylau (sometimes transliterated as Oi-Dzhailau, Oi-Zhailau) burial ground, is located in southern Kazakhstan, 40 km west of the Otrar railway station, in the Kurday district of the Zhambyl region. The funerary structures are spread on a plateau, which sits at about 1200 m above sea level. The plateau extends approximately 6 to 7 km from east to west and 4 to 5 km from north to south and different clusters of graves have been identified. The burial ground of Oy-Dzhaylau III, located in the western part of the plateau, covers an area of about 1500 square meter, 860 of which were excavated in the late 80s. A total of 51 Bronze Age burials, represented by quadrangular stone fences containing a cist burial with the inhumation of an adult individual, were identified. There were also a few exceptions that contained infant burials, namely pit graves 25, 34 and 35 (without a stone fence). I4790 is genetically detected as a 2nd to 3rd degree relative of I4791, but not on the matrilineal side. I4790 is the first W1c individual we know of that lack the T119C mutation which is unstable under W1 and has backmutated in many lines under W1c.
• “Damgaard et al 2018 (2)” describes an Early Iron Age W1c male DA5 from Grishkin Log 1 near the abandoned Saragash village in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, dated 800 BC belonging to the Tagar culture , which have strong ties to the Scythians since there are obvious similarities between Tagar and Scythian bronze art objects and weapons. The Tagar culture (7th-1st centuries BCE) is possibly the best archaeologically studied Early Iron Age Siberian culture. The areas where Tagar monuments have been found include the whole of Khakassia and some adjacent areas. It has been suggested that Tagarians had a complex economy that included cow, sheep and goat breeding, as well as farming with elements of irrigation. The Grishkin Log-1 burial ground is located near the abandoned Saragash village (Krasnoyarsk province). The site is submerged under the Krasnoyarsk Water Reservoir. At Grishkin Log-1 one to five individuals can be buried within one enclosure. In contrast, in later periods, Tagarians practiced fully collective burials of up to 100 individuals. It has been argued that changing Tagar funeral traditions reflect social evolution of Tagar society. The Tagar culture also used kurgan burials. Unfortunately the exact mutations have not yet been released.
• “Patterson et al 2021” describes an Iron Age W1c female I13687 from Trumpington Meadows in Cambridgeshire in England, dating to 368-173 BC. The Early Iron Age settlement phase at the multi-period site of Trumpington Meadows was dominated by a ‘pit cluster’ settlement, with over a thousand storage pits along with 16 four-post structures and up to ten roundhouses. Twelve burials were recovered in total: two in formal graves and the remaining ten from pits. The tooth, from Skeleton 1419, which was lying slightly prone in the pit, yielded sample I13687. I13687 has the additional mutation A227G which seems to be unstable in W1c/W1c1 and found under several branches.
• “Patterson et al 2021” describes an Iron Age adult W1c female I12906 from Veere in Zeeland in the Netherlands, dating to 375-121 BC. Several excavations were conducted in the municipality of Veere, in the course of redeveloping Rijksweg 57 between Vrouwenpolder and Middelburg. A skeleton was unearthed at Rijksweg 57 at location 8, buried in a grave that was dug into a peat layer but not detectable during excavation. The skeleton, of an individual ca. 22–40 years old, was incomplete, but still somewhat in anatomical position. A long bone from this individual yielded sample I12906. The grave is possibly related to nearby Middle Iron Age settlement activity. This female has the private mutation A13098G not yet found in any present day kits.
• “Damgaard et al 2018 (2)” describes an Iron Age W1c male DA58/Kyr26 from kurgan grave no.3 at the Baskiya 1 burial ground 6 km south of Dzherge-Tal, in the centre of the Dzhany-Talap collective farm of the Naryn district in Kirgizstan, on a flat mountain plateau, dated to 50 BC belonging to the Tian Shan early Saka nomadic culture. The Saka culture of Tian Shan dates from the 8th to the 2nd century BCE, and even up to the turn of these eras. Burial grounds of the early nomads comprised from a few to several dozen kurgans, often placed in rows aligned north to south. Typically, a row of large kurgans would be located at the centre of the burial site where members of the society’s elite (i.e. heads of families and tribes) were buried. These kurgans would be surrounded by smaller kurgans for the ordinary members of society. Burials were made in dug graves aligned west to east, with some deviations. The graves were covered with a layer of wooden logs or large stone plates. Often there would be a niche in the northern wall of the grave for burial paraphernalia. The bones of the buried individuals, mostly representing a single person, were usually lying fully extended on their back, with the head oriented to the west. In graves lacking niches, burial vessels stood at the northern wall of the grave, at the left shoulder of the buried individual. Due to grave plundering committed in ancient times, other burial paraphernalia was usually scarce. The Baskiya-1 (Saka) burial ground is located 6 km south of Dzherge-Tal, in the centre of the Dzhany-Talap collective farm of the Naryn district, on a flat mountain plateau, in an area called Baskiya. The burial ground comprises a large number of kurgans that had been placed at the edge of the plateau. Among them, a row of 13 kurgans is prominent, stretching from north to south along the eastern part of the burial ground. All excavated kurgans possessed earth cairns capped with a small stone. Cairn diameter and height varied from 7 to 13 m and from 0.2 to 0.7 m, respectively. Cross-sections of the cairns of all kurgans revealed arc-shaped shielding stone coverings positioned 10-15 cm below the kurgan surface. Occasionally, large boulders were laid out in circles (i.e. cromlechs) at the base of cairns. The oval or rounded-rectangular grave chambers were located in the centres of these circles. The chambers were unusually narrow and shallow, with their axes aligned west to east. Only single buried individuals were found (except for kurgan No.10 which was a double burial), with the deceased lying stretched out on their backs, with their heads oriented to the west. The burial ritual in Baskiya-1 differed somewhat from all other burial grounds found in Inner Tian Shan. Here, the ceramic vessels were not full-size, but were small, specially-made vessels that were placed on special ledges in the side walls of the grave chambers, either at the bottom or approximately halfway up it. This burial ritual has also been encountered at the Ferghana burial grounds of the Saka period, suggesting that the nomads who constructed the Baskiya-1 burial ground came from other locations. Unfortunately the exact mutations have not yet been released.
• “Wen et al 2015” describes an Iron Age W1c male A80305 from the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania in the Caucasus mountains of Russia dated to 300-400 AD. Unfortunately the exact mutations have not yet been released.
• I14542 is a W1c female from Rookery Hill near Bishopstone in Sussex dating to 500-700 AD. Rookery Hill is located in the region of East Sussex, on the dip slope of the South Downs, a range of chalk hills found in south-eastern England. The site comprised a settlement and associated cemetery both located on a south-facing hillside and surrounded by low lying alluvial land formed by the River Ouse tidal estuary. The excavations revealed a “pagan” Saxon cemetery and the traces of Anglo-Saxon buildings to the northeast of the cemetery. The settlement comprised rectangular structures and sunken huts and the nucleus of the cemetery appeared to have been organised in and around an earlier Bronze Age round barrow. According to the original records, the majority of the 118 burials excavated were graves orientated both north-south and east-west at variable depths and directly into the chalk. Based on contextual and artefactual information the occupation of the cemetery was believed to range from the 5th – 6th centuries AD. I14542 has almost exclusively Western British and Irish (WBI) ancestry and none Continental Northern Europe (CNE) ancestry, basically indicating a pre-Anglo-Saxon immigration ancestry. We have not yet been able to analyse if I14542 has additional private mutations.

More generally, from ancient autosomal DNA as well as the respective ancient mtDNA, we know that haplogroup W spread with at least two population turnovers: The first W lineages are found during the start of the Neolithic farming revolution. We know some of these were W1 with T119C. The oldest known W1+T119C ancient individuals analysed is over 8.000 years old from Barcın and Çatal Höyük in present day Turkey in the outskirts of the fertile crescent. W5 which is almost exclusively European, appears to have arrived to Europe during the Neolithic, probably from Anatolia.
The second population turnover brought the Ancient North Eurasian component into Europe, Middle East and India during the Copper and Bronze Ages. This event seems to have brought a number of W branches - W3 and W6 into Europe, Middle East and India from the Central Asian Steppes. This Ancestral North Eurasian component seems to be associated with the people thought to have brought the Indo-European languages into Europe called Yamnaya. We see a similar flow eastwards towards Iran & India in most of the subgroups of W, and even as far as Thailand & Laos in W3a1b."