R1b-rich earliest Corded Ware, a Yamnaya-related vector of Indo-European languages

corded-ware-ancestry-eneolithic-bell-beaker

New open source paper, Dynamic changes in genomic and social structures in third millennium BCE central Europe, by Papac et al., Science Advances (2021).

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

We report genomic data from the earliest CW individuals to date [show] that CW was widespread across Bohemia by 2900 BCE. The early radiocarbon dates are also supported by these individuals’ genetic profiles, who occupy the most extreme positions on PC2, as expected under a scenario of the earliest CW being migrants from the east who mixed with locals, resulting in intermediate PC2 positions in later generations.

(…)We found poor statistical

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Ob-Ugric Homeland

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This post is part of a draft on South Siberian language homelands and Sprachbünde.

The following text contains a description of Ob-Ugric languages and their connection within an Ugric Sprachbund. Special emphasis is placed on their evolution among surrounding ethnolinguistic groups before they were first documented, and on their most likely connection with archaeological cultures succeeding the Seima-Turbino phenomenon in the Southern Urals and the Trans-Urals. The archaeological-archaeogenetic discussion is therefore focused on the Middle Bronze Age Cherkaskul and Late Bronze Age Andronovo-like cultures, as well as on the formation of the “Scythian” Sargat … Read the rest “Ob-Ugric Homeland”

The complexities of 3rd millennium Steppe-related migrations

Open access paper Mobility and Social Change: Understanding the European Neolithic Period after the Archaeogenetic Revolution, by Martin Furholt, J. Archaeol. Res. (2021).

Content under CC-BY license. Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine, stylistic changes for clarity):

This detailed picture of Caucasian population history shows that the initial assertion in the 2015 papers, namely of a one-way migration from east to west, was a simplification supported by a variant of admixture analyses that featured Yamnaya as one unified genetic element (e.g., Haak et al. 2015, fig. 3), which led to calculations of Corded Ware individuals showing 75% Yamnaya ancestry. This

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Proto-Uralic Homeland (VII): Kinship & Numerals

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This post is part of a draft on palaeolinguistics and the Proto-Uralic homeland. See below for the color code of protoforms.

12. Kinship Terminology

12.1. Immediate Family

PU? (Saa.?, Fi.?, Md.?, Ma.?, Kh.?, Ms.?, Hu.?, Smy.?) *äććä?/*eć(ć)ä/*ić(ć)ä/*äjćä ‘father’ (UEW Nº 35). PSmy. was was borrowed into Yukaghir ečē ‘father’. Samoyedic form borrowed into Yukaghir ečē ‘father’ (Aikio 2014: 57)

NOTE. Pre-PSmy. *äjćä? could reflect an earlier Pre-PIIr. *eićo- or PIIr. *aića- ‘to control, to own’. An underlying Pre-PFi., Pre-PSaa. (based on PSaa. *e̮ćē from Skolt and Kildin Saami) and PMa. *ićä could reflect PIIr. … Read the rest “Proto-Uralic Homeland (VII): Kinship & Numerals”

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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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”