On Fatyanovo and the survival of R1a-Z93* among Mari-Permians

The recent preprint on ancient DNA from Veretye, Lyalovo/Volosovo and Fatyanovo from Saag et al. (2020) has been published in Science Advances Vol. 7, no. 4, eabd6535, and with it the BAM files.

Here are the Y-SNP calls from the files, following the FTDNA Haplotree standard, with Fatyanovo individuals in alphabetical order:

Veretye PES001 from Peschanitsa (ca. 10785–10626 calBC), mtDNA U4a1, Y-DNA R1aM459YP1301(pre-YP1272?), with 2 SNPs derived – YP1306 (T-C, 5 reads) and Y12474 (T-A, 6 reads) – and 46 SNPs ancestral at the YP1272 level. A sample with 5× coverage that

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Haplogroup N-L708 & Q-L53 hotspot, around Lake Baikal

New open access paper Human population dynamics and Yersinia pestis in ancient northeast Asia, by Kılınç et al. Science Advances (2021).

Content under CC-BY-NC license. Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

We produced whole-genome sequence data from 40 ancient individuals spanning from the Late Upper Paleolithic to the Medieval era and representing five distinct administrative regions in the Russian Federation encompassing Yakutia, Trans-Baikal, Cis-Baikal, Krasnoyarsk Krai, and Amur Oblast (…) All individuals were accredited to either Y macro-haplogroup Q or N and non-African mitochondrial macrohaplogroups of M, N, and R.

Population dynamics during and after the LGM in northeast Asia

We

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Tug of war between Balto-Slavic and West Uralic (II)

It is firmly established since (at least) the 1980s that Balto-Slavic, Baltic and Slavic show a strong Uralic substrate, even though many details are still the subject of ongoing controversies. Here is how the Baltic linguistic area was described in Thomason’s Language Contact (2001):

Overall, the Baltic area has the same characteristics as the Balkan area: areal linguistic features are distributed differentially among the languages, and the features themselves vary in details of their structure. As for the sources of the Baltic features, some can be traced to Uralic and some to Indo-European, especially Germanic. The Indo-European languages most

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qpAdm best practices and common pitfalls

The recently published preprint Assessing the Performance of qpAdm, by Harney, Patterson, Reich, & Wakeley at bioRxiv (2020) offers some interesting clues about what previous papers using qpAdm might have done right, and – more importantly – what they might have done wrong.

Since it doesn’t make much sense to repeat what this open access paper says within quotes, I will try to use short sentences or rework them to sum it up, illustrating best practices and common pitfalls with what I believe are corresponding examples with Steppe-related populations to date, with an emphasis on Bell Beakers. Most … Read the rest “qpAdm best practices and common pitfalls”

R1b-rich Proto-Indo-Europeans show genetic continuity in Asia

Another preprint came out at the same time as Wang et al. (2020), from the Jena Lab of the Max Planck Society: A dynamic 6,000-year genetic history of Eurasia’s Eastern Steppe, by Jeong, Warinner, et al. bioRxiv (2020).

NOTE. I have now updated the Ancient DNA Dataset, the Prehistory Atlas – with PDF and GIS files including Y-DNA and mtDNA of all newly reported samples (starting with the Neolithic) – as well as the PCA files with those from Wang et al. (2020).

The conclusions are similar, but with some interesting twists. Relevant excerpts (emphasis mine), … Read the rest “R1b-rich Proto-Indo-Europeans show genetic continuity in Asia”

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?”

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,

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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

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