R1* in North America, South-East Asia and Australia

[Pallantides]

R1b isn't found in pre-Colombian Amerindians as far as is currently known. It is common in modern native Americans because Western European colonists killed a lot of native men in the 16th and 17th centuries and procreated with their women.

Not R1b but R1-M173 is found in Amerindians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Amerindian_genetics

Haplogroup R1 (Y-DNA) is the second most predominate haplotype found among indigenous Amerindians after Q (Y-DNA). The distribution of R1 is believed to be associated with the re-settlement of Eurasia following the last glacial maximum. Its main subgroups are R1a (M420) and R1b (M343). R1 is found predominantly in North American Algonquian groups - Ojibwe (79%), Chipewyan (62%), Seminole (50%), Cherokee (47%), Dogrib (40%) and Papago (38%). This suggests that population isolation began soon after migration into the areas after the Late Glacial Maximum.

 

[LeBrok]

That's hell of an interesting map! I wonder how possible is that Native American Q mutating in something we call M173, independently in America?

 

[Pallantides]

It seems the info on Wiki was wrong though.
http://usmex.ucsd.edu/assets/022/10143.pdf

Gene map interpolations (Fig. 2A–C) indicate that the
frequency of haplogroup Q is highest in Southwestern
North America/Mesoamerica. The frequency of haplogroup
C is highest in Northwestern North America and
the frequency of haplogroup R, the presence of which is
attributed to European admixture, reaches its maximum
in Northeastern North America. In total, 73% percent of
the populations analyzed exhibited haplogroup R, which
ranges in frequency from 4 to 88% (Table 1).

he influence of European admixture is evidenced by
the strong gradient of haplogroup R from Northeastern
to Southwestern North America. This gradient corroborates
findings from previous studies of Y chromosome
variation in Native Northeastern America (Bolnick
et al., 2006; Hammer et al., 2006). The gradient might
result from the earlier occurrence of European contact in
Northeastern North America, which has provided a longer
period of time for admixture to occur. Unlike mtDNA
analysis (Smith et al., 1999), Y chromosome analysis
shows that Native Americans harbor a high frequency of
alleles of European ancestry, likely a result of European
male introgression following the time of European contact.
In addition, it is hypothesized that European contact
altered the population structure of indigenous males
in other ways as well, since historical records document
a high mortality and forced relocations of males beginning
shortly after initial European contact (Spicer,
1962). This study provides evidence of the former, and
places future studies of Y chromosomes from prehistoric
native American populations in a key position to test
these hypotheses.

Next time I need to be more careful and check the sources first.

 

[LeBrok]

Still a great find, no worry. It's amazing how much English and French settlers had mixed with locals. Few notches more than Spaniards and Portuguese. Very interesting.

 

[Maciamo]

That's the first time I hear of R1* (M173) being so widespread among Native Americans and being found among Austronesians and Australian Aborigines. That's very interesting indeed.

I can conceive that R1* reached the Americas during the same migration as Q1a3a. Haplogroups N, O, P, Q, R are supposed to have originated in Central Asia during the Ice Age. Q and R are both descended from P. It is easy to see how nomadic tribes belonging to Q and R1* could have intermingled during their migrations around the Central Asian steppe, and some would eventually travel through Siberia and reach the Americas.

However there are also theories that the Americas was settled in (at least) two successive waves, the earliest dating possibly from as much as 30,000 years ago, and the latest around 10,000 years ago. Archaeology supports this scenario. The oldest skeletons in the Americas look distinctly more Europoid in their traits. Mongoloid features suddenly replaced them from the time of the Clovis culture, starting approximately 13,000 years ago.

But not all Amerindians look the same. Some do look more European than East Asian, particularly tribes of the north-eastern USA and eastern Canada, like the Iroquois and the Hurons. This is where it gets fascinating, because this is justly the region where mtDNA haplogroup X2 is found. And now it appears that Y-DNA R1* matches the same region.

Compare the X2 map with the above R map. The distribution is similar, though the frequency is very different. Where R1* exceeds 60% or even 80% of the paternal lineages, X2 makes at best 4% of the population. There are surely other Europoid mtDNA lineages, but if they are too similar to those found in Europe (e.g. one of the hundreds of subclades of H) it won't be possible to distinguish them from the lineages brought to North America by the Europeans. Chances are that the majority of European-looking mtDNA lineages found among Native Americans from the North-East of North America are of Amerindian origin and not European.

Haplogroup Q1a3a is probably more recent than R1*. In Siberia it is found almost exclusively among Mongoloid people, who carry similar maternal lineages as those found in the Americas (A, B, C, D).



As for R1* in Austronesia and Australia, the most likely route is via India. The Indian subcontinent is close to the region of origin of haplogroup R. R2 is almost exclusive to it. It's easy to imagine an early migration of R2 (or R*) and R1* lineages to the Indian subcontinent. From there, there are plenty of documented migrations of Indians to South-East Asia, who settled notably in Cambodia and Indonesia, where Hinduism was once the mainstream religion. But then other Indian haplogroups should also be found in the region, alongside R1*.

 

[wolfswald]

R1* or R1b

If one closely examines the R-M173 data published by Bolnick et al., they turn out not to be R1*, but R1b. Also, the modal type of Bolnick's R haplotypes is completely identical with the "Atlantic Modal Haplotype" of R1b.

Bolnick's "other" haplotypes, when analyzed by Whit Athey's Haplogroup Predictor, include a larger portion of I1 and an assortment of others. Mostly, the relative frequencies of the haplogroups parallel those in Western Europe, with about 65% R1b and 15% I1.

However, the haplotype diversity of the American R1b is more than double as high as the one for I1, and about halfway between Q1a3a1 and C - i.e., Bolnick's Q-M242* is the most diverse, followed by Q1a3a1 (Q-M3*), R1b, C, and I1. Plotted in the Fluxus network software, R1b shows a nice star structure with a clear center (the center being identical with the AMH and the American modal).

If those R1b were all descendants of European settlers, I would have expected a ... I don't know how to describe that in English. Something like a small number of founding haplotypes in a circle around the modal, with distinct groups of descendants around those founding haplotypes. Which is not the case. ... However, I should mention that I am just a simple historian and no expert for phylogenetic analyses.

Also, the descendancy from the European settlers does not seem to explain why this phenomenon is limited to the region around the Great Lakes, basically an ellipse stretching southeast to northwest, from the Atlantic Coast to somewhere in Canada. Why, then, would for example the regions occupied by the Spanish or the French not show higher portions of R1b?

wolfswald

 

[LeBrok]

Perhaps the R and I is even earlier. Possibly Vikings from round 800s AD. We know that there were Vikings settlements in NE America's coast. We also know that the settlements vanished after some time completely.
It would make sense that if they intermingled with overwhelming numbers of locals in short time, they would lose their way of life, and their European looks.
Now in their descendants autosomal DNA is local/native, but only R and I paternal survieved as European. This might mean that R and I males brought something special to the equation that increased survivability of their offsprings and overpopulating the local ones like Q.

I think the Y DNA is Viking, from 800 hundreds or even earlier. I'm surprised not to see any R1a though.

Welcome to Eupedia wolfswald.

 

[Reinaert]

Hmm?

Didn't anybody on this forum ever read about the latest findings.
During the last ice age, people from Southern Europe (France and Spain) must have lived like the Inuit nowadays, and could travel across the Atlantic very easily. Just hop from icefield to icefield. They mixed with the natives on the Canadian and American East Coast.

You can find it on internet very easy if you search for Clovis culture.
Clovis and Solutrean

The key to the modern research were the arrowheads found in the United States, that were exactly the same as European material in the same period.
Asian arrowhead (or spearheads) were made in a different way.
A bone with small flints stuck into.
These weapons are also found in Southern American native cultures.

Other clues.. Some Canadian natives are nearly 2 meters tall.

So, they have in fact European ancestors from 10.000 years ago.

And another fact. Columbus didn't even discover America.
Only an island.

 

[sparkey]

Hmm?

Didn't anybody on this forum ever read about the latest findings.
During the last ice age, people from Southern Europe (France and Spain) must have lived like the Inuit nowadays, and could travel across the Atlantic very easily. Just hop from icefield to icefield. They mixed with the natives on the Canadian and American East Coast.

You can find it on internet very easy if you search for Clovis culture.

The key to the modern research were the arrowheads found in the United States, that were exactly the same as European material in the same period.
Asian arrowhead (or spearheads) were made in a different way.
A bone with small flints stuck into.
These weapons are also found in Southern American native cultures.

Other clues.. Some Canadian natives are nearly 2 meters tall.

So, they have in fact European ancestors from 10.000 years ago.

And another fact. Columbus didn't even discover America.
Only an island.

I dunno... the last Ice Age ended nearly 12,000 years ago. That's far before the I1 MRCA and also before R1b is likely to have reached Western Europe. In fact, that's pre-Clovis culture IIRC. If we had Ice Age European Y-DNA amongst American natives, we would expect something like I*, I2*, or I2b.

Could you please give an actual source for that? All I'm finding are articles about a newly-found culture that predates Clovis culture.

 

[Reinaert]

One example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean_theory

It was on History Channel.

Hmm.. It seems the Clovis culture is older than American "establishment" scholars want to believe.

And R is typical for France and Spain in that period.

And the ice age ended 10.000 years BC. You're correct.
That's 12000 years ago now.

 

[sparkey]

One example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean_theory

It was on History Channel.

Hmm.. It seems the Clovis culture is older than American "establishment" scholars want to believe.

Thanks for the link, I had actually never heard of this migration model. Sounds like it has more critics than proponents, but I'm sure that you expect that. I suppose that Y-DNA alone can't discount it, although I stand by my objections. If there is Ice Age European DNA in Amerinds, it's not reflected in Y-DNA.

 

[sparkey]

And R is typical for France and Spain in that period.

Ice Age? Nope. R was typical for Asia in the Ice Age. I was typical for Europe in the Ice Age... although it's not clear what subclade was prominent in France and Spain at the time, it could have been a now-extinct I*.

 

[Reinaert]

Huh? Read this again...

Quote:
Haplogroup R1 (Y-DNA) is the second most predominate haplotype found among indigenous Amerindians after Q (Y-DNA). The distribution of R1 is believed to be associated with the re-settlement of Eurasia following the last glacial maximum. Its main subgroups are R1a (M420) and R1b (M343). R1 is found predominantly in North American Algonquian groups - Ojibwe (79%), Chipewyan (62%), Seminole (50%), Cherokee (47%), Dogrib (40%) and Papago (38%). This suggests that population isolation began soon after migration into the areas after the Late Glacial Maximum.

I guess nobody in this thread did read it very well.
It says Eurasia, not Asia!

And another hint..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_(dog)

I had such a dog.
Typical family of a dog from the Pyrenees mountains.
In the wiki it is written that the Newfoundland dog is brought to Canada by Portuguese fishermen, but what if Europeans from the same area 12.000 years ago took those dogs with them.
They were hunters, like the Inuit nowadays. (Inuit=Eskimo)
The Europeans lived and survived on the edge of the cold climate of the ice age.
And that for hundreds of years.
So, consider this before writing a hasty comment.

 

[Regulus]

One example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean_theory

It was on History Channel.

Hmm.. It seems the Clovis culture is older than American "establishment" scholars want to believe.

And R is typical for France and Spain in that period.

And the ice age ended 10.000 years BC. You're correct.
That's 12000 years ago now.

Actually, American academia or the 'establishment' is very open to this possibility. This very topic has been out in the open here for probably close to 20 years.

 

[sparkey]

Huh? Read this again...



I guess nobody in this thread did read it very well.
It says Eurasia, not Asia!

Well... R1a may have been in Eastern Europe before the end of the Ice Age, but that's a bit beside the point. Based on the MRCA of R1b1b2 (younger than the end of the Ice Age) and apparent migrations based on archaeology and modern distributions, it seems that R1b didn't even become dominant in Western Europe until at least the Bronze Age. And recall that wolfswald brings up I1(!). That haplogroup has a very young MRCA and is associated strongly with Germanic peoples.

 

[Eochaidh]

Could you please give an actual source for that? All I'm finding are articles about a newly-found culture that predates Clovis culture.

Here is a PBS link:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3116_stoneage.html

What is new is that there is now a DNA to link the mtDNA of the Ojibwa of North-America to Europe. This is illustrated by Maciamo's graphic in this thread. The Ojibwa are located near the Great Lakes.

NARRATOR: But Stanford argues that crucial evidence is missing, submerged under 300 feet of wateras rising sea levels inundated the Solutrean coastline at the end of the Ice Age.
The debate raged on, with arguments for and against the Solutrean theory. Then came evidence that, again, seemed like it might end the battle: DNA.
It was the latest report from colleagues of Doug Wallace who were investigating early human migrations. They were puzzling over mitochondrial DNA samples from a Native American tribe called the Ojibwa.
DOUGLAS WALLACE: When we studied the mitochondrial DNA of the Ojibwa we found, as we had anticipated, the four primary lineages—A, B, C and D—but there was about a quarter of the mitochondrial DNAs that was not A, B, C and D.
NARRATOR: There was a fifth source of DNA of mysterious origin. They called it X, and unlike A, B, C and D, they couldn't find it anywhere in Siberia or eastern Asia. But it was similar to an uncommon lineage in European populations today. At first, they thought it must be the result of interracial breeding within the last 500 years, sometime after Columbus.
DOUGLAS WALLACE: We naturally assumed that perhaps there had been European recent mixture with the Ojibwa tribe and that some European women had married into the Ojibwa tribe and contributed their mitochondrial DNAs.
NARRATOR: But that assumption proved wrong. When they looked at the amount of variation in the X lineage, it pointed to an origin long before Columbus, in fact, to at least 15,000 years ago. It appeared to be evidence of Ice Age Europeans in America.
DOUGLAS WALLACE: Well, what it says is that a mitochondrial lineage that is predominantly found in Europe somehow got to the Great Lakes region of the Americas 14,000 to 15,000 years ago.
NARRATOR: Could X be genetic evidence of the Solutreans in America? Further investigation raised another possibility. The ancient X lineage may have existed in Siberia, but died out, though not before coming over to America with Ancient migrations.

 

[sparkey]

Here is a PBS link:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3116_stoneage.html

What is new is that there is now a DNA to link the mtDNA of the Ojibwa of North-America to Europe. This is illustrated by Maciamo's graphic in this thread. The Ojibwa are located near the Great Lakes.

Agreed that mtDNA X is the most likely candidate for substantiation of this theory, but it remains ambiguous, wouldn't you say? The distribution of X in North America could also signify an Eastward migration that "crashed" into the sea and then died out along its migration path, like the narrator suggests. It is certainly the most mysterious haplogroup in either Y-DNA or mtDNA.

 

[Reinaert]

Haha...

This is what I meant:

MICHAEL COLLINS: The best way in the world to get beaten up, professionally, is to claim you have a pre-Clovis site.

DENNIS STANFORD: When you dig deeper than Clovis, a lot of people do not report it, because they're worried about the reaction of their colleagues.

MICHAEL COLLINS: I've been accused of planting artifacts. People will reject radiocarbon dates just simply because there's not supposed to be any people here at those times, and it just goes on and on and on.

I wonder why it would be a problem.

 

[wolfswald]

Hi folks,

I am quite impressed. Now let's see.

I am aware of the Clovis/Solutr?en theory. In fact that was how I came across this problem, even though Bradley and Stanford, as far as the DNA is concerned, only talk about mtDNA (the haplogroup X), not about Y-DNA. What I wanted to know was if anybody could think of any alternative models to explain R1b in America. Because, beyond the fact that it is fascinating, it poses some very general problems. More later.

I think that the Vikings are not the source - the frequency of haplogroup I is too low, of R1a far too low (Bolnick shows one haplotype that is predicted as R1a, and two that might be R1a or I1 - whereas the clear I1's are 17 haplotypes). And R1b is too high for Viking origin.

The Clovis/Solutr?en theory, however, sounds extremely fascinating, but so far the evidence does not seem to be convincing (to me, that is).

The key to the modern research were the arrowheads found in the United States, that were exactly the same as European material in the same period.
Asian arrowhead (or spearheads) were made in a different way.

Bradley talks a lot about how these things were made, and so far I haven't understood the differences between overshot flaking and other ways of making flint blades. But if one takes a look at the (beautiful) Clovis points and the (likewise beautiful) Solutr?en points, they don't seem to be really similar.

Next problem is that Clovis is too young for a direct connection to Solutr?en - there is several thousand years in between. The pre-Clovis horizon in the Eastern US might do it, timewise, but the artifacts found so far have even less similarity with the Solutr?en material. At least so it seems to me. I'm not yet sure about the new Buttermilk Creek site in Texas, but that is so far west that they might as well have come from the Northwest.

I dunno... the last Ice Age ended nearly 12,000 years ago. That's far before the I1 MRCA and also before R1b is likely to have reached Western Europe. In fact, that's pre-Clovis culture IIRC. If we had Ice Age European Y-DNA amongst American natives, we would expect something like I*, I2*, or I2b.

That is exactly the point. Because:

If they really went via the ice bridge from Biscay to Newfoundland, which I find a fascinating idea, they must have done so before the end of the Ice Age. In fact I personally am not sure if it would have been possible during the LGM (Last Glacial Maximum) because I am not sure if the ice bridge really went down south that far. There are, however, rather short periods (a few hundred years each) called Heinrich events, in which the sea currents seem to have been very different from LGM/Ice Age conditions AND modern conditions, and in which ice seems to have gone pretty far down south. Those Heinrich events seem to be caused by large amounts of iceberg breakoffs somewhere between Canada and Greenland, and their drifting south changed the salt content of the water and, with that, the currents, not too different from the scenario in "The Day After Tomorrow".

In any case, either way they then would have to have come before about 17000 years before now. Which would, as far as the current scientific opinions about mutation rates are concerned, be far too early for R1b getting over there, even if one takes the slow Zhivotovsky "evolutionary" rate and not the three times higher "genealogical" rate. ... That was why I got interested in this because I was trying to find a solution for the mutation rate problem, and the ice bridge transfer would have been an absolute terminus ante quem for the existence of R1b in Western Europe, and a definite upper limit for the mutation rate.

As far as the mt-haplogroup X (in fact X2a, plus one stray type called X2g) is concerned, I am not really convinced. As far as I've understood, there are no close parallels to this group anywhere. I tried to understand the current mtDNA haplogroup tree, and to me it seemed that the closest "neighbour" of X2a is X2j, which was found in the Egyptian desert. The Eurasian groups are X2b, c, and d. The one found in Siberia is X2e.

Of course, mtDNA would be a much stronger point against the post-Columbian European settlers having brought in the DNA, because one can imagine traders having children with Indian women to a certain extent, but that wouldn't explain female European DNA there.

The next problem is: so far, we are assuming that they were NOT able to cross the ocean by ship/boat. What if they were? Well - of course that would mean that my attempt to nail down the age of R1b and the mutation rate would not work. Pity, but could not be helped.

This is something I came across only very recently. Long ago, Thor Heyerdahl tried to prove that it was possible to sail from, say, Gibraltar, to America, landing somewhere in the Caribbean. He thought that it was not possible to do it the other way round, because of the current and the wind you'd have to cross against. Now a German biologist tried exactly that with a reed boat a few years ago, starting in New York. He had to give up the boat a few hundred miles before the Azores, but he will be trying again with a new boat next year. Some of the arguments he brings for a more or less regular traffic via the Atlantic is tobacco in Egypt, Solutr?en and Magdal?nien cave paintings that show sea animals and possibly boats, and some sort of gourd which can be found on both sides of the pond and is genetically too old/diverse to have been transferred recently. - The Newfoundland Dog might indeed be another argument (anyway, what were Portuguese fishermen doing in Newfoundland in the beginning of the 16th century??).

wolfswald

 

[Reinaert]

Well, it can be explained.
The original R yDNA can have existed very early in Europe, and moved south during the last ice age. The R population adapted the cold climate, and part of them moved across the Atlantic. By sea. Just following the hunt. Eskimo's still do that. Why couldn't Europeans do that? It's easy to camp on ice fields, and move on the next day.
Of course they had small boats, canoe type vessels. They weren't able to sail open ocean, but they could travel through calm waters along the ice.
At least it's a fact that a lot of R yDNA moved from central Europe to the British Isles and Ireland. And it would be only natural if they went beyond that.
Iceland and Greenland were too much covered with ice then, so we don't see them populated. The route is more likely from France and Spain along the Irish coast to Canada.