Your physical idea of what Yamnayans look-like.

Haha, they are testing these remains at the moment but I don't know when we'll have the results. Sadly, I think they will test only the mtDNA...
One or two months ago we had the first mtDNA results of 19 individuals from 3000 BC but that's old news already.

Edit - only 7 individuals from 3000 BC and 19 other from the Medieval period.
 
Considering the interest in the subject, I have added a section about What Yamnayans look like physically in the page on the history and genetics of Yamna. Feel free to comment.
 
Considering the interest in the subject, I have added a section about What Yamnayans look like physically in the page on the history and genetics of Yamna. Feel free to comment.

So, while migrating the Yamnaya people had mixed with different populations here and there and brought some foreign traits to Europe and simultaneously took new traits from the Old Europeans. As for the red hair I can't understand if it has been picked up from the Urals by the R1b Yamnaya people or it has been already present throughout Northern Europe since the Paleolithic age. Also in Northern Europe there's ANE predating the Yamnaya and CWC expansions, could it be connected with red hair in the region before the Yamnaya?
 
So, while migrating the Yamnaya people had mixed with different populations here and there and brought some foreign traits to Europe and simultaneously took new traits from the Old Europeans. As for the red hair I can't understand if it has been picked up from the Urals by the R1b Yamnaya people or it has been already present throughout Northern Europe since the Paleolithic age. Also in Northern Europe there's ANE predating the Yamnaya and CWC expansions, could it be connected with red hair in the region before the Yamnaya?

I understand you confusion, because it is a more complex topic than it appears. There isn't one, but many mutations (at least a dozen) in the MC1R gene that can cause rufosity. Some mutations are very specific. For example, rs2228479 is associated with red beard rather than hair.

Mutations arise all the time in all populations, and indeed MC1R mutations have been found in places where no red hair is present like Sub-Saharan Africa or Papua New Guinea. We also know that Neanderthals carried some mutations (but the few samples tested did not have the same mutations as those common in Europe today).

What is important to know too is that red hair mutations have no or little visible effect on black haired people, hence the lack of red heads in Africa, South Asia or New Guinea. Other mutations for fair hairs are indispensable, and these were found in Mesolithic Scandinavians (SHG) and Northeast Europeans (EHG).

Red hair mutations also cause skin depigmentation and increase the risk of melanoma. In northern climes, especially in very cloudy regions with little sunshine all year round like Northwest Europe, there is an advantage in having such mutations as they increase production of vitamin D, and therefore also body growth, bone health and immunity. But in hot regions such mutations are deleterious and can cause cancer even in children if exposed daily to a scorching sun. Natural selection does the rest.

So did red hair mutations arise in Yamnayans? No, they have been present all over the world for tens of thousands of years. Were they selected by natural selection in Northeast Europeans (EHG)? That would make sense. If it came into the Yamna gene pool from their EHG ancestors, it would almost necessarily have spread with PIE migrations of the R1b branch, and would later have been further selected by evolution in Northwest Europe where such mutations are the most beneficial.
 
Considering the interest in the subject, I have added a section about What Yamnayans look like physically in the page on the history and genetics of Yamna. Feel free to comment.

I like your Yamnaya page but there's an obvious mistake...
[FONT=&quot]had predominantly brown eyes, dark hair......This is not unexpected considering that these samples had about 30% of Iranian Plateau admixture, against 0-12% for modern Europeans.[/FONT]

ADMIXTURE based on modern populations can't gather exact regional ancestry from ancients. So far the data suggests natural selection is the reason why Yamnaya was dark. Pale Andronovo scores high on West Asian components in ADMIXTURE based on modern populations aswell, so it doesn't explain Yamnaya's pigmentation.
 
@Maciamo,

I know I was the primary voice who said SHG had red hair alleles but actually it looks like they didn't. DNA damage or whatever is why they had derived calls in red hair MC1R alleles. The oldest examples of red hair alleles come from heavily Steppe admixed Europeans; Late Neolithic Sweden(R1b U106), Sintashta(R1a Z93). The oldest for sure redhead is a Bronze age Urnfield guy from Eastern Germany(R1a Z280). The ancient DNA data base is still too small to be confident of anything.
 

Regarding CHG in yamna, I want to know how Iran neolithic farmer contacted with R1b people.
I mean "by crossing the Caucasus Mt." or "in south central Asia like in BMAC area."
Was the south caucasus area really a crossroad of Europe and middle East in neolithic and Bronze age?

Located at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East, the Armenian Highland served as a transition corridor for major waves of prehistoric and historic migrations. The genetic history of Armenians as an indigenous population of the region attracts keen scientific interest to resolve the puzzle of ancient Middle Eastern populations’ expansion and the spread of Indo-European languages. Here, we review the current state of studies on the genetic structure of both modern and ancient inhabitants of the Armenian Highland and outline further steps to be fulfilled in this regard.

However, steppe people could easily pick up the iran neolithic gene in south central asia during ancient time.

Neolithic -Bronze age (Aryan era):
1. Mediterranids, 2. Protoeuropids, 3. southern elements (Veddoids)
neolitbronz.jpg


==> I know there are 3 ways to eneter Europe from south caucasus area, and middle Eastern things were found in Maycop culture. However, I think there was no route on the Caucasus Mt. at that time. If there was a route, scythian would never cross the Mt. to destroy assyrian.

Conclusions
We conclude that irrespective of the Early UP presence of anatomically modern humans both south and north of the Caucasus (Mellars 2006; Adler et al. 2008; Krause et al. 2010), the combined autosomal and gender-specific genetic variation of the Caucasian populations testifies to their predominantly southern, Near/Middle Eastern descent. Y chromosomal variants under strong founder events, seen in particular among populations inhabiting the northern flank of the High Caucasus Mountain Range, appear to never have expanded to the East European Plain, whereas the nomadic people of the latter, once settled down predominantly on the northern slopes of the Caucasus, have likely preserved, to different extent, some of their earlier genetic heritage. In sum, though the Caucasus may well have served as a corridor for numerous invasive expeditions in the past, this has had only a minor influence on the largely sedentary core populations of the region, characterized by much greater autosomal uniformity than that might be expected from a region of deep linguistic and cultural diversity. This suggests that the core of the autosomal genetic structure of the Caucasian populations may have formed before its present-day linguistic diversity, including the language families autochthonous for the region, arose
 
Nice Page Maciamo ! Thanks. Just about the different admixtures in Yamna like the so called " Gedrosian " isn't really obvious looking at mtdna haplogroups found in Maykop Culture that it comes with women ? Like the " steppe warrior stealing women " theory, is not necessary to explain that. Alliances, with more southern ( caucasus ), eastern ( south siberia ) and western ( neolithic balkans ) can easily feet. I know that R1b-V88 in africa is obviously came from, from middle-east, with cattle, but seems strange that so much people with different haplogroups had to be anatolian, levantin or iranian farmers... This is very Cradle of Civilizationy.
 
People, physical traits has nothing to do with genetic, i mean, by the time, all the genetic coming from far east or siberia has been diluted in the new population, but eyes, noses, craniums... are all pictures of our past. Personnally, i am 100% swiss for a very long time, and people think i'm albanian or turkish... Physical traits dont lie, there is no coincidence by the ressemblance of amerindians ( without evident mongoloid traits ) with modern afghan people, for exemple. When i look scandinavians, i can tell who has european archaic features, or mongoloid features, or middle eastern features. Ibrahimovic is swedish, but since my childhood, i know that he is not swedish in a physical way. By the way, i have create this topic, because i think the academic papers war of this site is very oppressive, but maybe i'm the only one to think it.


Where did you pick these not even funny opinions about physical aspect and genetics???
Evidently the most of the making of physical (phoenotype) aspect is purely genetic - it's not because we cannot put some phoenotypical subdivisions to strickly coincid with auDNA hazardous subdivisions that phoenotype is not genetic! the whole thing is firstable genetic, only we know genes are not evolving in a block, and that ancient pops, surely less diverse than the current ones, when separated were sbmitted to mutations and selections which did not affect always the same part of the genome - sometimes some external aspects were strongly impacted when the whole genome did not change too much, sometimes the external aspect stayed very similar when invisible parts of the genome quickly evolved; we can say only that. but as a whole when aspect changed very much, whole the genome changed in the same way -
 
Of course that physical traits, is about genetic, what i say is, if you see finlande or scandinavia, you clearly see mongoloid physical traits, but geneticaly, they are europeans. If you focus only on genetic, you gonna never know how people looked like. My topic is clearly about physical anthropology, wich is not genetic, yamna or indo-europeans or whatever its not just genetic. So when i say, that i see mongoloide or other horizon physical traits, dont talk about admixture. Im not talking about racial classification or some, wich i dont take in count, i just love human phenotypes !
 
Physical traits dont lie, there is no coincidence by the ressemblance of amerindians ( without evident mongoloid traits ) with modern afghan people, for exemple.

why is the resemblance not coincident? As you know, Afaghan was called to be "Ariana." I think their ancestors were original aryans from central Asia, especially afanasievo-okunevo and andronovo.
 
I think it is impossible for CWC people to move to central asia to give rise to Andronovo. Basically majority of Andronovo people were protoeuropid (so called cromagnon type paleo european) like Afanasievo. V. P Alekseev said that it was impossible to differenciate between afansievo and andronovo. Maybe andronovo R1a-z93 is connected to srubna R1a-z93, mongol bronze R1a-93, karasuk R1a-z93, and scythian.
This R1a-z93 makes me confusing, which is a key to IndoAryan. Andronovo, srubna and west scythian are close to afanasievo, but karasuk, East scythian to okunevo, american Indian. Moreover, mongol bronze is related with chandman, being similar to blackfoot american indian and UP people 20,000bc.

okunevo people have R1a?
Anthropologically afanasievo people is connected to Srubna people who are related with okunevo. Were afanasievo and okunevo same people or not?

new reaserch:
Nonmetric cranial trait variation and the origins of the Scythians Authors Alla A. Movsesian, Varvara Yu. Bakholdina First published: 24 January 2017

The Late Scythian population considered in this study proved to be genetically homogeneous, although some connections with the Sarmatians were found. We also revealed similarities between the Scythian groups and the local Bronze Age population of the Srubnaya culture, as well as, to a lesser extent, a group representative of the Central Asian Bronze Age Okunevo culture.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.23159/full
 
why is the resemblance not coincident? As you know, Afaghan was called to be "Ariana." I think their ancestors were original aryans from central Asia, especially afanasievo-okunevo and andronovo.

Yes, Indo-Iranians and Scythians, later Kushans ( Tocharians ? ) all contributed to Afghan or Pamiro-Himalayan Complexe phenotypes, but you can found people with specific phenotypes, i mean " archaic " phenotypes, wich somehow look very familiar with amerindians ( like brown skin with reddish cheeks ).
 
To me they were probably something like these:

Russian man

20150530-14.jpg



Hungarian man

74675_615552_1000x700.jpg

 
I know that R1b-V88 in africa is obviously came from, from middle-east, with cattle, but seems strange that so much people with different haplogroups had to be anatolian, levantin or iranian farmers... This is very Cradle of Civilizationy.

Did you doubt for a second that the Middle East was the cradle of Western Eurasian civilisations? That's what all history books teach (or should if they don't). There are different definition of the word civilisation. Personally I think civilisation require cities with social stratification and a specialisation of labour, possibly also with some form of writing. The Sumerian might be the oldest civilisation. Its written record starts around 3000 BCE, but the protoliterate Uruk period (from 4000 BCE) could be seen as its real starting point as a civilisation. The oldest in Europe is generally considered to be the Minoans (from 3750 BCE, but literate from 2500 BCE), who almost undoubtedly came from the Near East based on the mtDNA samples retrieved (haplogroups like R0, HV, H5, H7, H13a1a and I5, which are typically Middle Eastern).

By some definitions, civilisation means any agricultural society from the Neolithic onward. Since in Western Eurasia agriculture originated in the Fertile Crescent, by that definition too the Middle East is the cradle of European civilisation. There is just no way around it.
 
Of course that physical traits, is about genetic, what i say is, if you see finlande or scandinavia, you clearly see mongoloid physical traits, but geneticaly, they are europeans. If you focus only on genetic, you gonna never know how people looked like. My topic is clearly about physical anthropology, wich is not genetic, yamna or indo-europeans or whatever its not just genetic. So when i say, that i see mongoloide or other horizon physical traits, dont talk about admixture. Im not talking about racial classification or some, wich i dont take in count, i just love human phenotypes !

OK - but Scandinavians as a whole show very few 'mongoloid' traits, Finns show a bit more even if very light - some popular culture edits funny things about everykind of "fact" without checking - every broad cheekboned man is not 'mongoloid' for that, (the more or less afore position of them is also to be considered) and Finns in auDNA tests surely show some East-Asian or at least Siberian traces, more in East or North Finland than in West Finland, in accord with the physical features.
&: don't forget archaïc features (not only skeleton but every kind of detail) are often interpreted as "mixed" compared to more recent features born here and there which divide more clearly the current pops -
 
the explication for some remote pops showing "archaïc" traits could be it's not only because they would have been less submitted to admixtures but because they were less numerous so knowing less innovating mutations? an hypothesis -
 
To me they were probably something like these:

Russian man

Haak et al. (2015) identified Yamnaya haplogroups as R1b1a or R1b1a2. Haplogroup R1b is very rare among the modern Russian population (5.8%) and the Russians are less likely to be the direct descendants of the Yamnaya steppe herders. But R1b is the predominant haplogroup among some ethnic minority groups in Russia such as the Bashkirs as 34.4% belong to R1b1a2 among the Bashkirs. R1b1a2 is the identical haplogroup carried by the ancient Yamnaya samples and the Bashkirs also fit the description of the Yamnaya steppe herders described as brown-eyed and brown-haired people (Allentoft et al. 2015), based on a low frequency of rs12913832 from the Pontic-Caspian steppe populations (2%-3%).

659d496679101671d173cb0628f1f3f9.jpg


The size of our data set allows us to investigate the temporal dynamics
of 104 genetic variants associated with important phenotypic traits or
putatively undergoing positive selection33 (Supplementary Table 13).
Focusing on four well-studied polymorphisms, we find that two single
nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with light skin pigmentation
in Europeans exhibit a rapid increase in allele frequency
(Fig. 4). For rs1426654, the frequency of the derived allele increases
from very low to fixation within a period of approximately 3,000 years
between the Mesolithic and Bronze Age in Europe. For rs12913832, a
major determinant of blue versus brown eyes in humans, our results
indicate the presence of blue eyes already in Mesolithic hunter-gatherers
as previously described33.Wefind it at intermediate frequency in
Bronze Age Europeans, but it is notably absent from the Pontic-
Caspian steppe populations, suggesting a high prevalence of brown
eyes in these individuals (Fig. 4).
 
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Did you doubt for a second that the Middle East was the cradle of Western Eurasian civilisations? That's what all history books teach (or should if they don't). There are different definition of the word civilisation. Personally I think civilisation require cities with social stratification and a specialisation of labour, possibly also with some form of writing. The Sumerian might be the oldest civilisation. Its written record starts around 3000 BCE, but the protoliterate Uruk period (from 4000 BCE) could be seen as its real starting point as a civilisation. The oldest in Europe is generally considered to be the Minoans (from 3750 BCE, but literate from 2500 BCE), who almost undoubtedly came from the Near East based on the mtDNA samples retrieved (haplogroups like R0, HV, H5, H7, H13a1a and I5, which are typically Middle Eastern).

By some definitions, civilisation means any agricultural society from the Neolithic onward. Since in Western Eurasia agriculture originated in the Fertile Crescent, by that definition too the Middle East is the cradle of European civilisation. There is just no way around it.

My definition of civilization is the same as you, i use the terme Cradle of Civilization in a more symbolic term. My point is, i found bizarre, that middle east, being like a berceau of F,G,H,J,R,T haplogroups . I think, that admixture, especially of some kind of middle east origin, apart of already y-dna haplogroups known ( like G2a neolithic balkans, for exemple ) has to be more look about mtdna haplogroups ! You are the number one referencer of haplogroups, you know, that apart admixture, all this different mtdna haplogroups can not be linked in only 1 or 2 admixtures, its a very complicated labyrinth of population movement, haplogroups, admixture... C.F. Moesan and Maciamo, dont take what i say in first degree, i've sometimes difficult to explain my thoughts in english.
 
OK - but Scandinavians as a whole show very few 'mongoloid' traits, Finns show a bit more even if very light - some popular culture edits funny things about everykind of "fact" without checking - every broad cheekboned man is not 'mongoloid' for that, (the more or less afore position of them is also to be considered) and Finns in auDNA tests surely show some East-Asian or at least Siberian traces, more in East or North Finland than in West Finland, in accord with the physical features.
&: don't forget archaïc features (not only skeleton but every kind of detail) are often interpreted as "mixed" compared to more recent features born here and there which divide more clearly the current pops -

I dont want to classify population with racial terms. But human phenotypes dont really lie, so we can argue that epicanthus in scandinavia means nothing, because khoïsan have somewhat something like epicanthus too some times, but i think this is a indifferent way to raisonning.
 
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