My answer to rafc at genarchivist is relevant to the topic, because I broke down the trend for Bodrogkeresztur, which is a key piece of evidence:
But let's break it down in detail, because we don't need those samples, we have the most proximate sources for Salcuta, North Western Gumelnita and Tiszapolgar-Bodrogkeresztur at hand. And these three are crucial to understand the pre-Cotofeni local base.
We have a huge sample from Gumelnita (Pietrele) and Karanovo (Tell Yuntsite) which is basically one group of people with a slight decrease of steppe and WHG from North to South. Basically the same we have to expect for Thracians later, just an earlier block with a similar pattern.
There are just two outlier samples with very high WHG (above 20 %), if removing from this huge sample all outliers, this is what we get while ignoring other still significant outliers:
89.8 ANF
4.1 WHG
4.7 Steppe
And we have every indication that late Salcuta was pretty much the same, because they have close parallels to Gumelnita, being closely connected - the whole larger block of Bubanj-Salcuta and Gumelnita-Karanovo was interconnected.
We only have earlier Late Neolithic samples from Salcuta area, no good samples from Salcuta proper. But what we do have is the large sample from Bodrogkeresztur-Tiszapolgar and we know what their average was. They have basically three types of outliers:
1) increased WHG looking like late Tripolye-Cucuteni to already Horodistea-Foltesti rather, some even in the directon of Kisapostag and GAC-HG.
2) increased steppe and a bit Caucasian-Anatolian, presumably from early Cernavoda, type Kartal
3) increased ANF and reduced WHG without additional admixture
It is interesting that 2) and 3) being more often combined than 1) and 2). And this, in my opinion, points strongly towards the main direction of the steppe influence coming to the Tisza-Transylvanian zone: From the South, from late Salcuta and early Cernavoda.
Again we can clearly point our fingers on where the Horodistea-Foltesti type outliers come from, and
we can also see a clear pattern with the Hunyadihalom-Lažňany horizon which was the main influence in Tiszapolgar-Bodrogkeresztur at their height.
Same custom PCA as used before:
First, note how many individual samples are in the farily homogeneous Gumelnita cluster, again, coming from the East Balkan block which was extending from Eastern Romania down to Southern Thrace.
Second, note that the average of the samples labelled as "Early Copper Age" are further removed, on average, in some instances despite WHG outliers from Tripolye-Cucuteni in the later sample groups (!) than the later period samples and the Bodrogkeresztur samples from Romania in general:
So we have a clear pattern of
a) many individuals being pulled into the Gumelnita cluster
b) the average shifting from earlier periods and Hungary-Serbia to later periods and Romania in the direction of the Gumelnita cluster.
And the conclusion can only be, that this is due to the Hunyadihalom-Lažňany/Scheibenhenkel horizon, which came mostly from Salcuta to Bodrogkeresztur.
I already pointed to individuals which are basically a carbon copy of the earlier samples from Southern Romania I provided before. Especially these individuals with decreased HG ancestry from the large Bodrogkeresztur sample are e.g.:
I20809 (has Yamnaya and ancestry and resembles Gumelnita from Pietrele) and I7132.
https://www.exploreyourdna.com/sample/ro...i20809.htm Female with low level steppe admixture, similar to some of the Gumelnita phase Pietrele samples.
https://www.exploreyourdna.com/sample/romania/I7132.htm Unknown sex (fully typical Salcuta, pre-steppe admixture Balkan Copper Age group representative).
https://www.exploreyourdna.com/sample/romania/I7128.htm Unknown sex (probably mixed?)
The most likely interpretation of this comparison is indeed, that Salcuta was in the early period for the most part ANF, and later more like the Pietrele Gumelnita samples, since they received early steppe-Cernavoda-related influences already.
Now since these samples are from SE-Romania, we can’t be sure how the later Salcuta area looked like at this moment, but it seems logical to me it would be following the same evolution to more HG as their neighbours (who were also lacking this in the earlier Neolithic).
How do you explain the shift of Bodrogkeresztur from higher to lower WHG over time (ealry to late) and space (Hungary/Serbia to Romania) and the outliers with higher ANF/lower WHG during the Hunyadihalom-Lažňany/Scheibenhenkel horizon? The most parsimonious explanation is that Salcuta was still like the earlier Neolithic samples from the area, very high ANF, and did disperse in Tiszapolgar-Bodrogkeresztur context.
This is now even more speculative, but I wondered about the E-L618 samples from Tiszapolgar-Bodrogkeresztur and that they are not in the IBD network of the local clans. Probably they came from more Hunyadihalom-Lažňany influenced communities?
So there is no proof at all that the Salcuta-culture was high ANF, there are just some 6th millenium BC samples from the same region that are high ANF, like most Neolithic samples from that era.
The proof is the large Bodrogkeresztur sample, and again, we know the MAIN influence was coming from Salcuta. And to assume the singular Horodistea-Foltesti type outliers are the Salcuta source is nonsense. The Salcuta and Gumelnita influence can be clearly defined.
Then there is the second claim, that this unproven high ANF-population moved to Transylvania where they formed the EBA Cotofeni-culture.
I'm pretty convinced of the Cotofeni source population for quite some time, but now dug deeper into the origins of the Cotofeni culture. This was a long process and there is no 100 % consensus on the issue, but there seem to be mainly three sources:
- Bodrogkeresztur (after it had already received Hunyadihalom-Lažňany admixture!)
- later Salcuta-Gumelnita influences, presumably already with steppe/Cernavoda admixture, probably similar to Gumelnita
- Cernavoda influence, especially form the so called Celei group. These Cernavoda groups are likely to have mixed with Gumelnita and especially late Salcuta (IV) again.
Basically you therefore have three waves of Salcuta/Gumelnita-Salcuta pulse migrations into the mostly Bodrogkeresztur-Petresti local base from the earlier Copper Age. As I have shown before, this is not just my view or a fringe view, this is the more common interpreation of the later Copper Age in the region.
Now apart from the Transylvanian samples I already mentioned above we also have ROM047 (~4300BC) who is 11% BHG, 89% ANF, and GB (~3400BC), which is actually a very high BHG outlier, so it’s understandable why a complicated chain is needed to try and get high-ANF, low-HG ancestry into Transylvania. But I don't see how one can claim high continuity based on the Transylvanian abstract, and at the same time propose a complete turnover from Chalcolithic to EBA.
Well, the abstract didn't write about continuity from the Late Neolithic period, but from the Copper Age onward! And this means, if to be taken literally, primarily continuity from Cotofeni onwards, not necessarily from Bodrogkeresztur onwards.
And keep in mind, that we still have scratched only on the surface of Bodrogkeresztur-Tiszapolgar and Hunyadihalom-Lažňany, because the samples are still fairly Western for the group and we don't have the E-L618 clans yet, since they are IBD outliers on the sampled sites.
Again, we have every indication based on the available samples, and thankfully we have fairly large sample sizes from Tiszapolgar-Bodrogkeresztur and Gumelnita-Karanovo, that Bodrogkeresztur received in its later phase a significant pulse from an ANF-rich source, which can only be associated with the Hunyadihalom-Lažňany/Scheibenhenkel horizon and Salcuta.
The crucial part of the G25 model is, whether a population like Pietrele Gumelnita phase and early Cernavoda from Kartal could create the main ancestral component for the Thracians and the answer is a simple yes. That is all needed, because archaeologically these could/should be the main components for Cotofeni.
As you can see, there is a strong overlap of low WHG and varying degrees of steppe admixture in Bodrogkeresztur and Gumelnita Pietrele:
tt is worth to mention that while there is this strong overlap of Bodrogkeresztur and Gumelnita, presumably due to the Hunyadihalom-Lažňany intrusion, the first Tiszapolgar sample in this row I used comes at 6 percent WHG in this model! So the list would go on and on with Gumelnita and Bodrogkeresztur samples, until it reaches the Tiszapolgar samples we got - given, they are a smaller sample size, but still it is remarkable.
The majority (4 of 5) of the early Tiszapolgar samples are at 10+ % WHG, only one outlier is at 6 - presumably due to admixture from Salcuta/Hunyadihalom-Lažňany.
This is also no North vs. South trend, because the Serbian Tiszapolgar samples are at 10+ % WHG as well!
Nearly all Tiszapolgar samples, early and later, are at 10+ % WHG, with very little to no steppe.
By comparison, in Bodrogkerestur from Romania increases both ANF and steppe, while WHG goes down. This must be the result of the Southern contacts with Salcuta-Gumelnita and early Cernavoda-Salcuta IV in my opinion.
In concrete numbers:
Tiszapolgar (mostly Hungary, but also 2 from Serbia):
86.7 ANF
12.4 WHG
0.5 Steppe
Bodrogkeresztur from Hungary, early period:
85.8 ANF
13.5 WHG
0.4 Steppe
Bodrogkeresztur from Romania, including later samples, obvious outliers, like I14158 (Horodistea-Foltesti?) removed:
88.9 ANF
8.9 WHG
1.8 Steppe
So you can clearly see that going into Romania, into territory of Hunyadihalom-Lažňany/Salcuta-Gumelnita influence and later periods, you have an increase of both ANF and steppe.
And as we have seen above, there is a strong portion of Bodrogkeresztur from Romania, with a solid overlap with the Salcuta-Gumelnita sphere.
This can never be explained by anything remotely close to Horodistea-Foltesti or Kisapostag, this must be from the Salcuta sphere and from a very ANF-rich population which received Cernavoda admixture. The trend is absolutely clear and unambiguous, and the most parsimonious explanation is the Hunyadihalom-Lažňany/Salcuta influence on Bodrogkeresztur in Romania.
Again, that's the map showing the influence in terms of archaeological material:
This explains why even Serbian Tiszapolgar samples and Hungarian Bodrogkeresztur have significantly higher WHG and fewer outliers in the direction of Gumelnita Pietrele/high ANF.
We have whole clusters from Romanian Bodrogkeresztur in which WHG falls below 5 %. So the admixture is not even, the average includes still individuals with Tripolye-Cucuteni/Horodistea-Foltesti/Kisapostag-like admixture. I have not removed those with WHG in my basic model below 20 % (only 3 were removed, which are clearly coming from the Eastern sphere of Horodistea/GAC).
So we see in this Bodrogkeresztur sphere two competing trends: One going in the direction of Tripolye-Cucuteni (weaker), the other in the direction of Salcuta-Gumelnita (stronger). But we know from the following periods that the Salcuta influence became even more dominant, especially in Cotofeni.
These are still fairly early Bodrogkeresztur samples, the latest period is not covered and I think we would see a further shift towards Salcuta-Gumelnita, already in the Bodrogkeresztur period.
OP39.SG__BC_2676__Cov_83.43%
