Yamnaya-like Chemurchek links Afanasievo with Iron Age Tocharians

New preprint by the Jena-Reich labs, The Genomic Formation of Human Populations in East Asia, by Wang et al. bioRxiv (2020).

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

Mongolia Neolithic cluster

The three most ancient individuals of the Mongolia ‘East’ cluster are from the Kherlen River region of eastern Mongolia (Tamsag-Bulag culture) and date to 6000-4300 BCE (this places them in the Early Neolithic period, which in Northeast Asia is defined by the use of pottery and not by agriculture). These individuals are genetically similar to previously reported Neolithic individuals from the cis-Baikal region and have minimal evidence of West Eurasian-related admixture

… Read the rest

Fully Steppe-like Proto-Corded Ware Late Trypillians

The genotypes from Human auditory ossicles as an alternative optimal source of ancient DNA, by Sirak et al. Genome Res. (2020), have been finally published by the Reich Lab, so we can get a sneak peek into what’s coming in future papers about the origins of R1a-rich Proto-Corded Ware and R1b-rich Italo-Venetic peoples.

NOTE. To avoid adding potential errors, I have merged the Reich Lab’s Curated Dataset (v. 42.4, March 1 2020) with these new samples before performing the qpAdm analyses. If you find something different with your files, you should probably check out this simple setting first. … Read the rest “Fully Steppe-like Proto-Corded Ware Late Trypillians”

Proto-Anatolians: from the Southern Caucasus or the Balkans?

There has been some renewed interest lately in the origin of Proto-Anatolians, because of the recent lecture by Petra Goedegebuure, associate professor of Hittitology at the University of Chicago: Anatolians on the Move: From Kurgans to Kanesh, given at the Oriental Institute (Feb 5 2020).

I will try to comment on her lecture with a critical view of some of her ideas, keeping in mind reasons for one or the other potential routes, which we can for the moment simplify as Gimbutas’ (1965, 1993) eastern route through the Caucasus vs. Anthony’s (2007, 2015) … Read the rest “Proto-Anatolians: from the Southern Caucasus or the Balkans?”

Italo-Venetic peoples related patrilineally to Terramare elites

Another interesting finding from Human auditory ossicles as an alternative optimal source of ancient DNA, by Sirak et al. (2020):

A sample classified as Italy Middle Bronze Age from Olmo di Nogara (ca. 1400-1200 BC), who is R1b-L51 (xP311, xL52, xL151), CTS6889+ (T->C, 1 read). See YFull’s corresponding R-S1161.

SNP inference for I18130(9309_Oss) / I18131(9309_Co)

This sample probably belongs to individual 309 (35-45 yo), and the female sampled to 323 (30-40 yo), both referenced as from the following study:

Canci A, Contursi D, Fornaciari G. 2005. La necropoli dell’età del bronzo di Olmo di Nogara (Verona): primi risultati

… Read the rest

Earliest R1a-Z93…from Late Trypillia in the Podolian-Volhynian Upland!

Recently, the preprint by Sirak et al. biorXiv (2019), Human auditory ossicles as an alternative optimal source of ancient DNA, was published in Genome Res. (2020), and the corresponding samples were finally uploaded to ENA.

I have been trying to get my hands on sample GLAV_14, a male from the Late Eneolithic site Glăvăneştii Vechi, classified as Romania Bronze Age (ca. 3500-3000 BC), mtDNA T1a1, referenced as investigated first in the study:

Haas N, Maximilian K. 1958. Anthropological study of the human bones from graves with ochre from Glăvăneștii Vechi, Corlăteni and Stoicani Cetățuie. Soviet Anthropology 4,

… Read the rest

Ancient phylogeography: spread of haplogroups R1b, R1a and N

The previous post showed the potential use of TreeToM to visualize ancient DNA samples in maps together with their Y-DNA phylogenetic trees. I have written Newick trees for Y-chromosome haplogroups R1b-L388 (encompassing R-V1636 and R-P297, which in turn split into R-M73 and R-M269), R1a, and N.

I have reviewed some of the BAM files from my previous bulk analyses with YLeaf v.2, to add information that I had not previously included in the All Ancient DNA Dataset, and which might be relevant to the proper depiction of phylogenetic trees; in particular, positive and negative SNPs potentially distinguishing archaic… Read the rest “Ancient phylogeography: spread of haplogroups R1b, R1a and N”

Early Uralic – Indo-European contacts within Europe

One of the most interesting aspects for future linguistic research, boosted by the current knowledge in population genomics, is the influence of Uralic – most likely spread initially with Corded Ware peoples across northern Europe – on early Indo-European dialects.

Whereas studies on the potential Afroasiatic (or Semitic), Vasconic, Etruscan, or non-Indo-European in general abound for ancient and southern IE branches (see e.g. more on the NWIE substrate words), almost exclusively Uralicists have dealt with the long-term mutual influences between Indo-European and Uralic dialects, and often mostly from the Uralic side.… Read the rest “Early Uralic – Indo-European contacts within Europe”

Spread of Indo-European and Uralic speakers in ADMIXTURE

The following are updated files for unsupervised ADMIXTURE of most available ancient Eurasian samples with K=7. For reference, see PCA of ancient and modern Eurasian samples.

NOTE. For a precise interpretation of ancestry evolution, be sure to first check the posts on the expansion of “Steppe ancestry”, on the spread of Yamnaya ancestry with Indo-Europeans, and on the evolution of Corded Ware ancestry typical of modern Uralic populations.

ADMIXTURE timeline

This is a YouTube video similar to the one on Indo-Europeans and Y-DNA evolution:

Some comments

I have tried running supervised ADMIXTURE models by selecting

… Read the rest

Intense but irregular NWIE and Indo-Iranian contacts show Uralic disintegrated in the West

Open access PhD thesis Indo-Iranian borrowings in Uralic: Critical overview of sound substitutions and distribution criterion, by Sampsa Holopainen, University of Helsinki (2019), under the supervision of Forsberg, Saarikivi, and Kallio.

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

The gap between Russian and Western scholarship

Many scholars in the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation also have researched this topic over the last five decades. Notably the eminent Eugene Helimski dealt with this topic in several articles: his 1992 article (republished in Helimski 2000) on the emergence of Uralic consonantal stems used Indo-Iranian and other Indo-European loans as key evidence, and

… Read the rest