I also want to add and stress one more time how important the samples from Viminacium are, for a variety of reasons:
1) They prove that cremation being associated with E-V13 like with no other Carpatho-Balkan haplogroup. In Viminacium we see a transition of the local population to inhumation in the making, under Roman influence. It is absolutely evident, that among those locals which still cremated, a large fraction must have been E-V13, a much larger fraction than among those Romanised people, of which many were recent immigrants to the area.
2) We clearly see a Balkan Iron Age profile being associated with E-V13 in the Danube region. The outliers, similar to the Avar samples outliers, just prove the rule. A largely similar, but not necessarily the same, Balkan Iron Age profile being reported for locals among Scythians, La Tene Celts, Sarmatians and it will pop up among Germanics too.
3) We might see in areas like Viminacium and Timacum minus different strains, different ethnic groups of Daco-Thracians contributing to the total frequency in the Roman era, since people were highly mobile in the Roman Empire and especially between the Carpatho-Balkan Roman provinces.
In Viminacium we can elegantly subtract all the foreign outlier lineages, just like in the Avar Tisza region. Because who's clearly not even remotely close, not from the Carpatho-Balkans, is a clear cut thing. Some E-V13 might have been from other Carpatho-Balkan regions, yes, but they are still Carpatho-Balkan in origin, unlike these foreigners and assocaited with largely local Balkan IA autosomal profiles.
How some "Northern" E-V13 branches under E-S2979 could have ended up as far as Serbia early on:
There are not many objects in the Central Balkan area that could point to the Scythian influences during 6th and 4th century BC. Bronze arrowheads are the most frequent type of objects of Scythian origin in this area, and it seems that they appear at the end of the 7th century BC. Till nowadays, we registered around 100 arrowheads of this type. We have only 3 bronze zoomorphic-formed decorative plates that indicate Pontic origin and eastern provenience, but unlike arows and horse-bits, all of them point to 5th and early 4th century BC. Horse-bits and snaffles appear in the central Balkan region very early, at the end of 7th century BC, and we can connect them with the Szentes-Verkerzug type of horse-bits with zoomorphic ends. After that, horse-bits of the later Szentes-Verkerzug type still appear in this region, during the 6th and 5th century BC. Their appearance could be connected with the middle Danube and Tisza basins. Later horse-bits are connected with the eastern influences and the lower Danube region as well as the Black Sea, and they point to 5th century BC
And how those "Scythians" looked:
FR9CZ6 Ancient DNA samples from Iron Age, Roman Period and Migration Period Transylvania are coming.
Contrasting genetic impacts of eastern migrants on Early Iron Age communities in Hungary and TransylvaniaContent:
Ancient DNA from Iron Age nomads across the Eurasian steppe, including individuals from “Scythian” contexts, has revealed their varied genetic origins and high genetic diversity. However, little is known about their genetic impact and legacy on European communities. By analysing genomes of “Scythian” Age individuals from Transylvania (n=67, unpublished) and Hungary (n=7, previously published), we find ~40% eastern admixture in Transylvania but 0% in Hungary. In contrast to the trans-Eurasian migrations to the Pannonian Basin in the Avar period, the eastern ancestry in Transylvanian “Scythians” largely came from “Scythian” communities in neighbouring Moldova and Ukraine, which admixed into the pre-existing Balkan genetic substratum. In addition to eastern ancestry, we find multiple genetic outlier individuals from central/northern Europe and southern Balkans buried in “Scythian” contexts, implying a dynamic admixture process associated with the formation of these “Scythian” communities. From Transylvania, we reconstruct several families from “Scythian” burial contexts up to three generations deep, most consisting of members with and without eastern ancestry, documenting real-time admixture between locals and eastern migrants. Among these is also a case of siblings buried 11km apart. However, this eastern ancestry did not persist after the “Scythian” period, with subsequent “Celtic” Age associated individuals (n=6) carrying primarily the pre-existing local ancestry with limited evidence of additional central European or eastern gene flow.
The limited gene flow could relate to paternal lineages being Celtic, because they were buried in a Celtic context, but it proves without a doubl the persistence of the local North Thracian/Dacian elements.
So we have clear evidence, from a much larger sample, that the local ancestry in core Gáva/Vekerzug areas was the
"pre-existing Balkan genetic substratum". This has nothing to do with already published samples, because its
a huge sample of 67 (!) unpublished (!) samples from Transylvania! Therefore we have the ancient DNA evidence of:
1) A Balkan Iron Age-type of population in Transylvania before 700 BC
2) This Balkan Iron Age-type of population persisted and survived the Scythians and Celts, re-emerged with the Dacians. Therefore we have evidence for genetic continuity in Transylvania from 3.000 BC to about 1.600 BC (Noua) and again from 700 BC to 100 BC. This leaves a mere gap of 1.600-700 BC, in which we know there was little replacement between Suciu de Sus -> Gáva -> Eastern Vekerzug. And if there was anything important, its all Basarabi-related, which in itself is a continuation of Southern Gáva/Belegis II-Gáva/Vartop from Oltenia in particular.
And that local dominance is already evident in the inhumed "Scythians", what do you guys think the cremating Vekerzug-Sanislau group will look like? They likely have even less admixture and even greater dominance of the pre-existing Balkan genetic substratum.
These genetic results just confirm the archaeological analyses done on the subject, which all point to high levels of local survival from Gáva -> Mezocsat -> Vekerzug -> La Tene -> Dacians - and they stress that the cremation rite is a serious problem for the anthropological/genetic analysis of the local Upper Tisza population:
Title:
Bioarchaeological research of the Iron Age populations of the Carpathian Basin - Past, present, and future
Content:
Due to their burial practice, the Hallstatt groups are considered almost anthropologically unknown. As for the Mezőcsát and Vekerzug cultures, the question arises whether they descended from the local Late Bronze Age inhabitants adapting lifestyle and some characteristic artefacts from the steppe region or did an eastward influx of populations during the EIA and MIA partially or fully assimilated the autochtons. The Celtic migration is also recognizable in the heterogeneous LIA osteological materials, however, according to previous and recent results, the local component remained more dominant.
Just like the Transylvanian paper for the Copper Age continuity in the region, up to Noua, but obviously persisting into Gáva, since Noua didn't take over for long, just like the other invaders, these are all brand new research results with so far unpublished samples!
But we get:
- Transylvania has Copper Age continuity (which means continuity to Bodrogkeresztur/Petresti/Tripolye-Cucuteni-like people, otherwise it wouldn't be a continuity)
- There was a pre-Scythian Balkan-like substratum in the region of Vekerzug
- This local Balkan-like population survived Scythians and Celts, re-emered with Dacians as a unified force which expanded.
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