R1b and Native Americans

[JS Bach]

...
But the European-like admixture in Amerindians like Algonquin is always accompanied by East-Asian admixture (yellow) at K<12, which is otherwise lacking (not really lacking, but subsumed under the "new" Chipewyan component). For K>11 it gets almost subsumed under Chipewyan.
...

Yes, but at lower levels of K below 12, the European component of the Algonquins look to me to remain fairly steady at about 25 percent; it’s the red Chipewyan component that looks to partly go to Siberian at K < 12. I wonder if they tested different algorithms with different parameter settings, and if they produced graphs that looked similar to this one? This proportion of 25 percent European-like ancestry in the autosomal makeup of Algonquin tribes aligns much better with the 25% of mtdna X2 found in them, rather than with the much higher proportions of R1b found in the Y-chromosomes – 79% in one study.


@Aberdeen: R1b has a very wide geographical distribution compared to most other haplogroups; it even went into sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps that was influenced by genes for being individualistic, independent and prone to exploration.


@sparkey: In Stanford and Bradley’s book, Across Atlantic Ice, they do a cluster analysis of some characteristics of stone tools, and they conclude that the Gravettian and Magdalenian are more similar to each other than either are to the Solutrean. So possibly the Solutreans were of a different genotype, such as R1b.

 

[LeBrok]

@Aberdeen: R1b has a very wide geographical distribution compared to most other haplogroups; it even went into sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps that was influenced by genes for being individualistic, independent and prone to exploration.
.

I was thinking along same line. If R1b was very mobile and migrated to Central Africa and Western Europe, why couldn't it migrate to America too, through Siberia and Alaska?

 

[Aberdeen]

I was thinking along same line. If R1b was very mobile and migrated to Central Africa and Western Europe, why couldn't it migrate to America too, through Siberia and Alaska?

IMO, R1b could easily have done that. IMO, R1b could have migrated to the Americas with the Na-Dene, who arrived there 8-10 thousand years ago, if I remember correctly. But there are African, European and Russian branches of R1b and if we look at the European branch, for example, it's divided into different subclades. So there should be a separate American branch, probably consisting of more than one subclade. The research papers apparently didn't look into the haplotypes in enough detail to tell us anything about that but, as sparkey has pointed out, Native people who've had their DNA tested and who have Y haplotype R1b seem to have European subclades.

 

[JS Bach]

IMO, R1b could easily have done that.

Here’s a video of Dr. Dennis Stanford from a speech he gave a couple years ago following the publication of his book on the Solutrean hypothesis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tjoHMMPH90&list=PLFD20D41E19BC03A9



He makes the crossing of the Bering land bridge out to be a difficult task. From about 12:24 to 13:00 he states:


“The Bering land bridge during the last Ice Age was probably the coldest place in the world. And it still is. It’s underwater though. And even if it was a land bridge, it was dark many months out of the year. It was wet in the summer. And the only time we could cross it without a boat, or without big high waders(?), would have been in the winter. But people did do it. But that began to worry me a little bit...”


Regardless, it sounds like it would have taken hardy people to do that - as the Solutreans seemingly also would have been.

 

[LeBrok]

Channel Islands rout is most likely. Coastal fishing groups on small boats.

 

[Aberdeen]

Channel Islands rout is most likely. Coastal fishing groups on small boats.

I agree that a route along the coast of Asia and the Americas is the most likely route for the first peopling of the Americas. And that's why we'll never find evidence of the first people to arrive in the Americas. Their physical remains and artifacts are likely under water, since sea levels are considerably higher than they were during the last glacial maximum. I do think other routes would have become possibilities later, as people improved their ability to travel by sea. Also, it would have become possible to live in the high arctic near the Bering Sea after the ice receded. I've never believed in the idea of some magic ice free corridor in "Beringa" during the last glacial maximum.

 

[Angela]

IMO, R1b could easily have done that. IMO, R1b could have migrated to the Americas with the Na-Dene, who arrived there 8-10 thousand years ago, if I remember correctly. But there are African, European and Russian branches of R1b and if we look at the European branch, for example, it's divided into different subclades. So there should be a separate American branch, probably consisting of more than one subclade. The research papers apparently didn't look into the haplotypes in enough detail to tell us anything about that but, as sparkey has pointed out, Native people who've had their DNA tested and who have Y haplotype R1b seem to have European subclades.

I don't see, however, how the mtDna X2 levels can be explained as recent European admixture unless the samples were poorly selected, or there was one heck of a founder effect from a European woman.

 

[Aberdeen]

I don't see, however, how the mtDna X2 levels can be explained as recent European admixture unless the samples were poorly selected, or there was one heck of a founder effect from a European woman.

It doesn't seem to be a recent thing, if we can judge by a paper published in the American Journal of Human Genetics on October 20, 2003 by Reidla et al entitled "Origin and Diffusion of mtDNA Haplogroup X. They concluded that the X2 found in North America is not closely related to the European X2 or to the mtDNA X found in the Altaic region and probably split of from the main group of mtDNA X when the haplogroup first started to spread about 20,000 years ago.

There seems to be more solid research on mtDNA than on Y DNA when it comes to Indigenous populations in the Americas.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1180497/

If the X2 has been in the Americas that long, it's a bit strange that it's so common among people who speak or spoke an Algonquin type language such as Ojibwe but is rare among other tribes (except for some Na-Dene) and is completely absent in South America.

 

[JS Bach]

In the recent 2014 paper by Stanford, Bradley and Oppenheimer: http://www.academia.edu/9562579/Solutrean_hypothesis_genetics_the_mammoth_in_the_room they give estimates of the ages of the Native American mtdna A, B, C and D branches as being about 14,000 years old:

The five deepest branches (specifically A2, B2, C1a&b & D1) date genetically in America around 14-kya (Soares et al. 2009, Fig. 6), consistent with the dates of the 14-kya coprolites from Oregon which, neatly, feature A2 andB2 aDNA haplotypes (Gilbert et al. 2008).

(I don’t know why they say C1a, and not C1b, C1c, and C1d. I thought C1a was exclusively East Asian)

They then give some estimates of the age of mtdna X2a: one as being 14,000 years old and another as being about 21,000 years old:

So much is common ground, but there is a fifth Palaeolithic American haplogroup: X2a, derived from West Eurasian ‘X’ (Brown et al. 1998; Reidla et al. 2003). This uniquely-American founder lineage ‘X2a’, is a sub-clade of X2-225 (Fernandes et al. 2012), and is of Pleistocene age: 14,080 yr; (10,321 – 17,914) by Maximum Likelihood (ML) and 21,289 yr (11,040 – 32,035) by Rho, on complete mtDNA sequences (Fernandes et al. 2012).

They then give the age results of another study in which they state:

ML estimates for five other American founding lineages with ultimate East Eurasian ancestors (A2: 14.6 ky; B2: 14.6ky; C1a: 13.0 ky; C1b: 14.5 ky; and D1: 13.5 ky). By contrast, the estimates Hooshiar Kashani et al. (2012) make for the age of American X2a (table 2) were older: 18.60 + / – 5.5ky (ML) and 18.4 + / – 5.2 ky (Rho)

My understanding is that these mtdna haplogroup ages are difficult to estimate, not least because there are so few markers in the complete mtdna sequence. Nonetheless, as shown above most of the results in the paper indicate an older age for X2a in America than the other Native American A, B, C and D clades.

That being said, I read Oppenheimer’s book The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story some five years ago, and my impression was that some of it was good, and some of it wasn’t – meaning I’d be sceptical with some of the things he says. For instance, he seemed to be over-confident in some of his results, where just a small number of different STR markers (like, maybe six) were used.

Another thing that’s interesting in the paper is that some mtdna from a member of the extinct Beothuk tribe from Newfoundland (Eastern Canada) has been identified as X2a1. The Beothuks have been reported to be more European-looking than most Native American tribes. And in a sample of Algonquin-speaking Mi-kmaqs from around that general region, 3 out of 6 belonged to X2a (probably X2a1.) And some Mi-kmaqs can pass as looking European.

 

[sparkey]

Oppenheimer's The Origin of the British is pretty much a case study in how some researchers drew wrong, overreaching conclusions from small amounts of data in the early days of population genetics. I was wondering when we would hear from him again. I suppose it's not surprising that he's releasing a paper on the Solutrean Hypothesis based on mtDNA.

 

[Aberdeen]

Some Micmac can pass as looking European because they're mostly European. They live on the east coast and, from what I've seen, they're far more admixed than, for example, the Ojibwe, who some studies say have close to 25% X2. And the Beothuk are long since extinct.

After reading the Origins of the British, I wouldn't put too much stock in any conclusion reached by Oppenheimer, but maybe that's just me.

 

[MOESAN]

It doesn't seem to be a recent thing, if we can judge by a paper published in the American Journal of Human Genetics on October 20, 2003 by Reidla et al entitled "Origin and Diffusion of mtDNA Haplogroup X. They concluded that the X2 found in North America is not closely related to the European X2 or to the mtDNA X found in the Altaic region and probably split of from the main group of mtDNA X when the haplogroup first started to spread about 20,000 years ago.

There seems to be more solid research on mtDNA than on Y DNA when it comes to Indigenous populations in the Americas.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1180497/

If the X2 has been in the Americas that long, it's a bit strange that it's so common among people who speak or spoke an Algonquin type language such as Ojibwe but is rare among other tribes (except for some Na-Dene) and is completely absent in South America.

Don't take my remark too seriously but by hazard I have been looking to "forensic" (sic) reconstitutions of ancient steppic people of West Eurasia in the threads under Anthropology, and now it strikes me that some of them seem showing something not precisely europoid NOR typical east-asiatic (mongoloid), with strong broad cheekbones, ruggish face relief and hyperprominent (hypereuropoid) noses as we could see on the pictures old N-E Ameridians of the Plains -
just a flash - what worth?
good week-end

 

[JS Bach]

Some Micmac can pass as looking European because they're mostly European. They live on the east coast and, from what I've seen, they're far more admixed than, for example, the Ojibwe, who some studies say have close to 25% X2. And the Beothuk are long since extinct.

I once had a co-worker who described himself as Micmac. When I first saw him I thought he was white. He had a French last name. I heard one of the Senior managers ask him: “Are you French?” And he said, no, he was Native Canadian Micmac. He had slightly darker skin than most white people. To me, it looked like he could have passed as either white or Native Canadian. A very nice fellow.


Regarding the admixture graph from the Lazaridis et al 2014 paper I posted earlier in this thread: http://genetics.med.harvard.edu/rei...14_Nature_Lazaridis_EuropeThreeAncestries.pdf it’s notable that the Algonquin, Cree and Ojibwe samples have a good deal of the light blue Mediterranean component as well as the dark blue North European component. It’s true that none of the Ancient European hunter-gatherer samples in the graph have any of the Mediterranean component, and that certainly carries weight, but seeing as how mtdna X is clearly distributed today in both the Middle East and Europe (as R1b-M269 is as well) maybe the population carried both components across the Atlantic, perhaps 18,000 years ago. Or maybe I’ve had too much whiskey.

 

[Melancon]

I once had a co-worker who described himself as Micmac. When I first saw him I thought he was white. He had a French last name. I heard one of the Senior managers ask him: “Are you French?” And he said, no, he was Native Canadian Micmac. He had slightly darker skin than most white people. To me, it looked like he could have passed as either white or Native Canadian. A very nice fellow.


Regarding the admixture graph from the Lazaridis et al 2014 paper I posted earlier in this thread: http://genetics.med.harvard.edu/rei...14_Nature_Lazaridis_EuropeThreeAncestries.pdf it’s notable that the Algonquin, Cree and Ojibwe samples have a good deal of the light blue Mediterranean component as well as the dark blue North European component. It’s true that none of the Ancient European hunter-gatherer samples in the graph have any of the Mediterranean component, and that certainly carries weight, but seeing as how mtdna X is clearly distributed today in both the Middle East and Europe (as R1b-M269 is as well) maybe the population carried both components across the Atlantic, perhaps 18,000 years ago. Or maybe I’ve had too much whiskey.

It could be that he is a Metis calling himself Micmac.

 

[Tomenable]

The oldest sample of R1b in Europe is from the Kromsdorf site, from circa 2600 to 2500 BC, and there hasn't been a single evidence of R1b from the multitude of Neolithic sites.

There is now one Neolithic R1b1 from the Els Trocs site in Spain, from circa 5178 to 5066 BC.

But when it comes to the spread of European clades of R1b in post-Columbian times in America:

I think that immunity to diseases could play a significant role. Children from mixed native-European relationships had better immunity to European diseases, and they had a greater chance to recover from epidemics of smallpox, etc. Bottleneck effects certainly occured during outbreaks of those diseases, and European-admixed individuals were more likely to be among the survivors than not.

 

[Tomenable]

Regarding the discussion about the Ojibwe (other names: Ojibwa; Chippewa) from page 1:

There is some correlation between Y haplotype R1b and mtDNA X2. The most noticeable example is the Ojibwe tribe, a quite numerous group centred around the Great Lakes. Mostly R1b and over 20% X2 according to a couple of studies, although the sample sizes were small. And it can be confusing because the Algonquin, Ojibwe, Chippewa and Saulteaux tribes are closely related and different bands are given different labels by different researchers. Although the Chipewayan are a different group than the Chippewa. Confused yet?

The post-Columbian demographic history of the Ojibwe - maybe some hints explaining their DNA can be found here?:

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4381154;view=1up;seq=523

 

[Tomenable]

Here about the loss of native American haplogroup diversity after 1492:

http://patagoniamonsters.blogspot.com/2014/07/loss-of-amerindian-genetic-diversity.html

For example mtDNA haplogroup M apparently got extinct from America:

http://patagoniamonsters.blogspot.com.ar/2014/02/ancient-migrants-into-america-hg-m.html

 

[Twilight]

There's R1b in many parts of the world, but none to speak of in Siberia. In any case, the R1b among Native Americans doesn't seem to differ from European DNA. If the subclades were markedly different, I think someone would have noticed. The amount of R1b among some Native American groups can be explained by recent admixture, but the amount that seems to be there in some tribes (all out of proportion to evidence for admixture and all out of proportion to other "European" Y haplotypes) just doesn't seem to fit any reasonable explanation, IMO.

You know, 23andme has been having trouble with Native Americans getting less NA DNA then they deserve, perhaps there was some intermingling somewhere is Pre-Columbian or early settlers

 

[Tomenable]

An African slave who died at Saint Martin between 1660-1688 had haplogroup R1b-V88:

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/12/3669.full.pdf

It is known that escaped African slaves mixed with some Amerindian tribes, including Caribs.

I suppose that in North America some of R1b could also be introduced by the Vikings in the 1000s.

Maybe even by the Irish (there are rumours that the Irish people reached America before the Vikings).

 

[Aaron1981]

There was no R1b in North or South America before the white man. The latest studies that have real YDNA and autosomal profiles from Anzick and possibly others (I don't recall all the details as it didn't interest me much) show the profile of the ancient people to be nearly identical to the modern ones when you strip away the European admixture.

It appears there was a bottleneck, likely in the difficult times crossing the strait and they all descend from Q1a3-L54 men. There may be a small bit of diversity here but the likelihood of being something other than Q or C is very low as these were prominent lineages in and around Chuchki peninsula. Bottom line - NO R.