Tag: yamnaya

“Steppe people seem not to have penetrated South Asia”

indo-iranian-sintashta-uralic-migrations

Open access structured abstract for The first horse herders and the impact of early Bronze Age steppe expansions into Asia from Damgaard et al. Science (2018) 360(6396):eaar7711.

Abstract (emphasis mine):

The Eurasian steppes reach from the Ukraine in Europe to Mongolia and China. Over the past 5000 years, these flat grasslands were thought to be the route for the ebb and flow of migrant humans, their horses, and their languages. de Barros Damgaard et al. probed whole-genome sequences from the remains of 74 individuals found across this region. Although there is evidence for migration into Europe from the steppes, the

… Read the rest ““Steppe people seem not to have penetrated South Asia””

The Yampil Barrow complex and the Yamna connection with forest-steppe cultures

yamna-diet-pca

Researchers involved in the investigation of the Yampil Barrow Complex are taking the opportunity of their latest genetic paper to publish and upload more papers in Academia.edu.

NOTE. These are from the free volume 22 of Baltic-Pontic Studies, Podolia “Barrow Culture” Communities: 4th/3rd-2nd Mill. BC. The Yampil Barrow Complex: Interdisciplinary Studies, whose website gives a warning depending on your browser (because of the lack of secure connection). Here is a link to the whole PDF.

Here are some of them, with interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

1. Kurgan rites in the Eneolithic and Early Bronze age Podolia in … Read the rest “The Yampil Barrow complex and the Yamna connection with forest-steppe cultures”

The importance of fine-scale studies for integrating palaeogenomics and archaeology

eurasian-genomes-published

Short review (behind paywall) The importance of fine-scale studies for integrating paleogenomics and archaeology, by Krishna R. Veeramah, Current Opinion in Genetics & Development (2018) 53:83-89.

Abstract (emphasis mine):

There has been an undercurrent of intellectual tension between geneticists studying human population history and archaeologists for almost 40 years. The rapid development of paleogenomics, with geneticists working on the very material discovered by archaeologists, appears to have recently heightened this tension. The relationship between these two fields thus far has largely been of a multidisciplinary nature, with archaeologists providing the raw materials for sequencing, as well as a scaffold

… Read the rest “The importance of fine-scale studies for integrating palaeogenomics and archaeology”

On the origin of haplogroup R1b-L51 in late Repin / early Yamna settlers

steppe-eneolithic-migrations

A recent comment on the hypothetical Central European origin of PIE helped me remember that, when news appeared that R1b-L51 had been found in Khvalynsk ca. 4250-4000 BC, I began to think about alternative scenarios for the expansion of this haplogroup, with one of them including Central Europe.

Because, if YFull‘s (and Iain McDonald‘s) estimation of the split of R1b-L23 in L51 and Z2103 (ca. 4100 BC, TMRCA ca. 3700 BC) was wrong, by as much as the R1a-Z645 estimates proved wrong, and both subclades were older than expected, then maybe R1b-L51 was not part of … Read the rest “On the origin of haplogroup R1b-L51 in late Repin / early Yamna settlers”

Mitogenomes show likely origin of elevated steppe ancestry in neighbouring Corded Ware groups

west-yamna-corded-ware

Open Access Mitochondrial genomes reveal an east to west cline of steppe ancestry in Corded Ware populations, by Juras et al., Scientific Reports (2018) 8:11603.

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine, references have been deleted for clarity):

Ancient DNA was extracted from the Corded Ware culture individuals excavated in southeastern Poland (N = 12) and Moravia (N = 3). Late Eneolithic (N = 5) and Bronze Age human remains (N = 25) originated from western Ukraine and came from the Yampil barrow cemetery complex located in the north–western region of the Black Sea. Bronze Age individuals were associated with different archaeological

… Read the rest “Mitogenomes show likely origin of elevated steppe ancestry in neighbouring Corded Ware groups”

Yamna female shows decoration of bones after body decomposition

Interesting press release from the Institute of Archaeology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań:

In an open access report last year, Anthropological Description of Skeletal Material from the Dniester Barrow-cemetery Complex, Yampil Region, Vinnitsa Oblast (Ukraine), the team lead by Liudmyla Litvinova – of the Ukrainian Academy of Science – published their findings from the skeletons in different burial mounds along the border with Moldavia, ranging from Eneolithic to Iron Age burials.

In one Yamnaya burial rested a young woman aged 25-30. It was so described in the original paper:

Barrow 3A, feature 10. A very poorly-preserved skeleton

… Read the rest “Yamna female shows decoration of bones after body decomposition”

Sredni Stog, Proto-Corded Ware, and their “steppe admixture”

steppe-eneolithic-migrations

Once the haplogroups of the announced West Yamna and Yamna settlers in Hungary and Khvalynsk from Ekaterinovka appear, it is to be expected that there won’t be much discussion on the Y-DNA bottlenecks that affected Khvalynsk – Yamna migrations.

So let’s cut to the chase and see where Corded Ware peoples (mainly of R1a-Z645 subclades) got their so-called “steppe admixture” different from that of Yamna. Because, as you might have realized by now, Sredni Stog – and consequently Corded Ware – remains nowadays an undefined (archaeological) mess.

Rassamakin explains it quite well, in the chapter Eneolithic of the Black … Read the rest “Sredni Stog, Proto-Corded Ware, and their “steppe admixture””

Climatic conditions in the Cis-Ural Steppe region and the Repin culture

cis-ural-region

New paper (behind paywall) Climate and Vegetation Changes over the Past 7000 Years in the Cis-Ural Steppe, by Khokhlova, Morgunova, Khokhlov, and Gol’eva, Eurasian Soil Sc. (2018) 51: 506.

Abstract (emphasis mine):

A multilayered archaeological site Turganik Settlement in the valley of the Tok River in the Cis- Ural steppe (Orenburg oblast) was examined with the use of paleopedological and microbiomorph methods. Ancient people inhabited this area in the Latest Neolithic (Eneolithic) (5th millennium BC) and Early Bronze (4th millennium BC) ages. It was found that cultural layers dating back to the Atlantic period of the Holocene had been

… Read the rest “Climatic conditions in the Cis-Ural Steppe region and the Repin culture”

Steppe and Caucasus Eneolithic: the new keystones of the EHG-CHG-ANE ancestry in steppe groups

indo-uralic-ehg-chg-ane-ancestry

Some interesting excerpts from Wang et al. (2018):

An interesting observation is that steppe zone individuals directly north of the Caucasus (Eneolithic Samara and Eneolithic steppe) had initially not received any gene flow from Anatolian farmers. Instead, the ancestry profile in Eneolithic steppe individuals shows an even mixture of EHG and CHG ancestry, which argues for an effective cultural and genetic border between the contemporaneous Eneolithic populations in the North Caucasus, notably Steppe and Caucasus. Due to the temporal limitations of our dataset, we currently cannot determine whether this ancestry is stemming from an existing natural genetic

… Read the rest “Steppe and Caucasus Eneolithic: the new keystones of the EHG-CHG-ANE ancestry in steppe groups”