EastPole said…
I was speculating some time ago that Corded Ware didn’t come from Yamnay but from Sredny Stog.
“The expert Dmytro Telegin has divided the chronology of Sredny Stog into two distinct phases. Phase II (ca. 4000–3500 BC) used corded ware pottery which may have originated there, and stone battle-axes of the type later associated with expanding Indo-European cultures to the West. Most notably, it has perhaps the earliest evidence of horse domestication (in phase II), with finds suggestive of cheek-pieces (psalia). “
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sredny_Stog_culture
Now the romantic side of what really happened in Alexandria/Dereivka:
http://musicpleer.audio/#!02e99f568b65098462a9acbe33874ed5
Of course “an angel’s kiss in spring” is a poetic metaphor. Girls used hops (xъmel/haoma/soma) not angel’s kisse.
September 20, 2017 at 1:14 AM
Ric Hern said…
@ EastPole And what about Phase 1 of Sredny Stog ? Can you throw any light on that ?
September 20, 2017 at 1:28 AM
Ric Hern said…
@ EastPole And what about this also from Wikipedia: „…Yuri Rassamakin suggests that the Sredny Stog culture should be considered as an areal term, with at least four distinct cultural elements co-existing inside the same geographical area.” Any thoughts ?
September 20, 2017 at 1:33 AM
EastPole said…
@Ric Hern “And what about Phase 1 of Sredny Stog ?”
It could be related to the division into Dereivka I and Dereivka II. Dereivka I population was made of hunter-gatherers and Dereivka II of pastoralists related to Corded Ware Culture. Because of some local differences Sredny Stog was divided into following cultures: Skelanska, Stogovska, Kvitanska and Dereivka by Rassamakin. Let’s wait for aDNA from those cultures before we speculate about them.
September 20, 2017 at 3:14 AM
EastPole said…
What puzzles me greatly is the position Varna and Balkans_Chalcolithic outliers. Assuming that their position on PCA was due to some early migrations from the steppe we can conclude that at the very early age there existed different steppe populations: NO. 1 is like Sredny Stog, NO. 2 is like Yamnaya and NO. 3 is like Yamnaya outlier with a lot of CHG: https://s26.postimg.org/z4i5e3rbd/screenshot_280.png
September 20, 2017 at 11:20 PM
Rob said…
@ EastPole
It’s probably a gradient that’ll fill out with more individuals tested. I’d also add Kumtepe IV to that list. It means that the migration of these „steppe” people, aka north Caucasus or central Eurasians, had begun by 4500 BC, and they had started to arrive at key sites
September 20, 2017 at 11:29 PM
EastPole said…
@Rob “It means that the migration of these „steppe” people, aka north Caucasus or central Eurasians, had begun by 4500 BC, and they had started to arrive at key sites”
If a population similar to late Sredny Stog Dereivka formed somewhere on the steppe as early as 4500 BC then I would guess they are the best candidates for PIE.
September 21, 2017 at 12:06 AM
Oto kilka ostatnich wpisów z http://eurogenes.blogspot.co.uk/, które omawiają wiele bardzo ciekawych zagadnień, związanych min. z pojawianiem się ludzi R1a min. na Bałkanach, z ich końmi, prosem… i kulturą… Niestety dla niektórych… przybyłych z północy, a nie z południa…
Jeśli ktoś jeszcze nie rozumie, że nie ma żadnych dowodów na tzw. południową drogę R1a, no to niech nadal czeka na jakieś zbawienie, a ja tymczasem puszczam te ciekawostki…
http://eurogenes.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/three-key-late-comers-in-prehistoric.html
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Three key late comers in prehistoric Greece: steppe ancestry, horses and millet
A review paper at Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences posits that millet and horses arrived in what is now Greece together during the Bronze Age (see here). The author suggests that they may have been introduced via contacts with cultures to the north/northeast of Greece or directly by migrants from the Eurasian steppe. Considering the recent discovery via ancient human DNA that steppe ancestry also spread into the southern Balkans and Mycenae during the Bronze Age (see links below), I’d say the latter scenario is much more likely. I’d also add that millet and horses were probably part of an economic and cultural package expanding along with early Indo-European speakers throughout Eurasia at the time (note, for instance, how important horses are to the early Indo-European pantheon). Here’s the review abstract. Emphasis is mine.
Abstract: Archaebotanical evidence for Panicum miliaceum is reviewed for prehistoric Greece including published and unpublished recent finds, providing a basis for exploring the context of the appearance of millet in Greece, the timing of its introduction and cultivation, and its significance in terms of contacts, movement of people, and cultural identity as expressed through culinary practice and food consumption. To this end, the archaeobotanical record is examined together with human isotopic, archaeozoological, and artefactual evidence. Millet is introduced to the northern part of Greece sometime during the end of the 3rd millennium bc and established as a widely used crop during the Late Bronze Age. Isotopic evidence suggests that millet consumption during the Late Bronze Age was not widespread but confined to certain regions, settlements, or individuals. Millet is suggested to reach Greece from the north after its spread westwards from China through Central Asia and the steppes of Eurasia. The timing of the introduction of millet and the horse in northern Greece coincide; the possibility therefore that they are both introduced through contacts with horse breeding cultures cultivating millet in the north and/or northeast is raised. Intensified contact networks during the Bronze Age, linking prehistoric northern Greece to central Europe and the Pontic Steppes, would have opened the way to the introduction of millet, overland via river valleys leading to the Danube, or via maritime routes, linking the Black Sea to the north Aegean. Alternatively, millet could have been introduced by millet-consuming populations, moving southwards from the Eurasian steppes.
Valamoti, S.M., Millet, the late comer: on the tracks of Panicum miliaceum in prehistoric Greece, Archaeol Anthropol Sci (2016) 8: 51. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-013-0152-5
See also…
Steppe invaders in the Bronze Age Balkans
Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but…
Posted by Davidski at 6:19:00 PM 45 comments:
Ric Hern said…
Millet and Horses !!!
September 13, 2017 at 9:04 PM
…..
2.
http://eurogenes.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/two-starkly-different-neolithic.html
Two starkly different Neolithic traditions in the Lower Volga basin
Recent papers in English dealing with the Neolithic transition on the Caspian steppe aren’t easy to find, but I managed to dig one up at Documenta Praehistorica: Initial stages of two Neolithisation models in the Lower Volga basin by Alexander Vybornov.
The author describes two highly contrasting Neolithic traditions in this region; one that is essentially a ceramic Mesolithic culture, no doubt practiced by local foragers, and the other a pastroralist culture, probably brought to the steppe by migrants from the south.
I think it’s possible that these migrants could have been the main source of the, thus far imprecisely characterized, Caucasus-related ancestry in the potentially Proto-Indo-European Khvalynsk and Yamnaya peoples (see here). But it’s hard to argue either way until someone sequences DNA from a few relevant skeletons.
In this paper, two groups of ancient sites located in the Lower Volga River basin are analysed. The first group is linked to the emergence of the oldest pottery in this region, which is one of the most ancient in Europe. The presence of this feature of the ‘Neolithic package’ can be dated to the middle of the 7th millenium BC. A production economy is a particular feature of the second group of sites, which can be dated to the end of the 6th millenium BC. This is one of the earliest pieces of evidence of the existence of domesticated species in Eastern Europe. These two groups of sites show the initial stages of two Neolithisation models in the Lower Volga basin.
…
The Neolithisation process in the southern part of the Low Volga region during 6500–5500 BC did not include a producing economy. From the point of view of European researchers, sites of this period could be attributed only to the ‘ceramic Mesolithic’. In the eastern European scientific world, pottery is regarded as a marker of the beginning of the Neolithic era (Oshibkina 1996), which is why these sites were classified as Neolithic.
…
The origin of Prikaspiiskaya culture is reckoned to be connected with the Lower Don region. Some migration from Western Asia could also have occurred. Thus, the Prikaspiiskaya sites in the Lower Volga region represent the second Neolithisation model proposed for this area. The model is connected with the appearance of a producing economy in the milieu of Prikaspiiskaya culture.
Alexander Vybornov, Initial stages of two Neolithisation models in the Lower Volga basin, Documenta Praehistorica, Vol 43 (2016), DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.43.7
Posted by Davidski at 2:39:00 AM 19 comments:
Ric Hern said…
The dates is very interesting.Domesticated Sheep already appear in the Proto-Khvalynsk if this dates are correct. Much to say about who the CHG people were….
September 13, 2017 at 5:12 AM
Ric Hern said…
@ Davidski Or maybe they were the Haplogroup Q population that we see in Khvalynsk ?
September 13, 2017 at 5:42 AM
Davidski said…
Seems a good bet now that the Q1a/U4 Khvalynsk guy was derived from the Prikaspiiskaya culture in the Volga basin. If so, it’s no wonder his uniparental markers don’t match his CHG-heavy genome-wide ancestry, because his ancestors would have been in the north Caspian for a while, so they could have picked up the Q1a and U4 locally, and still retain a lot of southern admixture.
September 13, 2017 at 5:48 AM
Ric Hern said…
@ Davidski Or maybe they were the Haplogroup Q population that we see in Khvalynsk ?So domesticates arrived in the Lower Don long before the appearance of the Maykop Culture. So either the CHG in Yamnaya are Pre-Maykop or they are connected to the Lower Volga Neolithic population…
September 13, 2017 at 5:51 AM
Rob said…
Good paper. If i understood it correctly, he posits a complex picture, with the earliest ceramic traditions being rooted in a northern, Volga-Kama tradition, which paradoxically finds most anchoring in the southern part of the lower Volga steppe, and a ‚north Caspian’ ({?west Kazakh) one more pertinent in the northern sector of the Volga steppe. Coincidentally, in an earlier paper Vybornov and others (Vasilieva) draw analogies between the Elshanka culture ceramics in of the Volga bend region with the Aral region (Keltaminar).
Now, the appearance of productive economy he links to the so-called Pre-Caspian culture (5500-4800 BC), which precedes the Khvalynsk culture, and is typified by sheep. HE links this to a different direction still – the Lower Don. To me this raises the possibility of some kind of early links with the Caucasus and/or Crimea also.
Hopefully somebody is sampling more late Neolithic – Chalcolithic steppe samples, because it would be more informative than Yamnaya, which shows extreme local flunder effects.
September 13, 2017 at 6:05 AM
Slumbery said…
Rob: „If i understood it correctly, he posits a complex picture, with the earliest ceramic traditions being rooted in a northern, Volga-Kama tradition, ”
It says that these ceramics are the oldest in the entire Volga-Kama basin (according to another referenced article) and the southern sites by the sea are older than the northern (but overall still quite southern) sites. Also states that the relatively northern sites were developed under southern influence. The article says nothing about this tradition being rooted in a northern Volga-Kama tradition, it only mentions Volga-Kama to point out that these ceramics are the oldest in a much wider region. All the sites actually studied or referred are very southern inside that bigger region.
The lower Don source of agriculture is interesting. Makes me wonder if that was actually the usual route for Caucasus influence later too.
September 13, 2017 at 10:16 AM
Rob said…
@ SlumberryI think it says just that „Pottery attributed to the Kairshak type was made from silt naturally tempered with the shells of freshwater molluscs. This ceramic technology is thought to be the most ancient in the Volga and Kama basins” If it is most ancient in the Volga-Kama, then the Caspian sites with similar ceramic technology must be somehow linked to it, no ?
September 13, 2017 at 11:32 AM
Slumbery said…
Rob: My interpretation is that the sites in discussion are themselves in the „Volga and Kama basins”, in the lower Volga basin. The „Volga and Kama basins” are not referred in the article as an outside area, but as the wider region where the discussed sites lie. At second read your interpretation is possible just from what is written in that part.
However the article still explicitly claims that the more southern sites are older that the more northern ones, and, at least in the geographical range actually studied here, the usage of ceramics spread from the south to the north. This makes unlikely that with the „This ceramic technology is thought to be the most ancient in the Volga and Kama basins.” part they meant a far northern root for the local ceramic industry. At least it would be a bit contradictory.
September 13, 2017 at 11:53 AM
jv said…
Thank you for finding this article. Very interested in the Pre-Khvalynsk, Pre-Yamnaya populations as my H6a1 ancestor made it to the PC Steppe possibly during this time.
September 13, 2017 at 3:01 PM
…..
3.
http://eurogenes.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/how-corded-ware-people-indo.html
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
How the Corded Ware people Indo-Europeanized southern Scandinavia
Over at the American Journal of Archaeology at this LINK. Below is the paper abstract. Emphasis is mine.
In this article, we approach the Neolithization of southern Scandinavia from an archaeolinguistic perspective. Farming arrived in Scandinavia with the Funnel Beaker culture by the turn of the fourth millennium B.C.E. It was superseded by the Single Grave culture, which as part of the Corded Ware horizon is a likely vector for the introduction of Indo-European speech. As a result of this introduction, the language spoken by individuals from the Funnel Beaker culture went extinct long before the beginning of the historical record, apparently vanishing without a trace. However, the Indo-European dialect that ultimately developed into Proto-Germanic can be shown to have adopted terminology from a non-Indo-European language, including names for local flora and fauna and important plant domesticates. We argue that the coexistence of the Funnel Beaker culture and the Single Grave culture in the first quarter of the third millennium B.C.E. offers an attractive scenario for the required cultural and linguistic exchange, which we hypothesize took place between incoming speakers of Indo-European and local descendants of Scandinavia’s earliest farmers.
Rune Iversen, Guus Kroonen, Talking Neolithic: Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives on How Indo-European Was Implemented in Southern Scandinavia, American Journal of Archaeology Vol. 121, No. 4 (October 2017), pp. 511–525, DOI: 10.3764/aja.121.4.0511
See also…
The puzzle of the early Corded Ware grave
The genetic history of Northern Europe (or rather the South Baltic)
Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but…
Posted by Davidski at 4:22:00 PM 64 comments:
Derek said…
There aren’t many samples, but Scandinavian Corded Ware seems to have been mostly R1a, just like everywhere else. Most of the ancestry of today’s Scandos can probably traced to the Beaker people who arrived suddenly in Jutland and coastal Norway c. 2400 B.C.
As a complete amateur, it’s very difficult to gauge how closely related Germanic is to other branches of Indo-European. It’s a centum language obviously, but one that apparently has shared vocabulary with Balto-Slavic. Wikipedia is not much help and linguists seem to be losing interest in Proto-Germanic. Who here knows the truth?
September 13, 2017 at 7:00 PM
Samuel Andrews said…
Balto-Slavic definitely has Corded Ware origins, Celtic has Bell Beaker origins, but Germanic is a mystery. Corded Ware-derived R1a (Z284) in Scandinavia might be a non-Germanic substrate.
In my humble opinion proto Germans carried R1b L151 or I1 and therefore didn’t arrive with Corded Ware. Considering the paternal uniformity of Bell Beaker and Corded Ware I won’t be surprised if proto Germans belonged to basically only one paternal lineage (I1 or R1b). I1 looks like the best candidate.
September 13, 2017 at 7:18 PM
Davidski said…
I’d say that the Single Grave Corded Ware dialect contributed substantially to Proto-Germanic, and it was related to the Corded Ware-derived Trzciniec dialect that gave rise to Baltic and Slavic languages. All of these groups were obviously rich in R1a-M417.
But I’m not sure where the rest of the Proto-Germanic package originated and how it got to Scandinavia. Maybe people like Nordic_LN RISE98, who belonged to R1b-U106, were involved in the process. RISE98 basically looks modern Scando. See here…
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/genetic-substructures-among-late.html
September 13, 2017 at 7:39 PM
Samuel Andrews said…
But languages can’t have multiple origins. So either Germanic is a Corded Ware derived language or not.
September 13, 2017 at 8:34 PM
capra internetensis said…
@Sam Though languages are almost always descended, in the strict sense, from only one ancestral language, they certainly can and usually do have influences from other languages. Language contact very often goes along with intermarriage, so there is no reason we can’t look for genetic admixture and language contact together. Besides, at this time depth we could still be talking about mutually intelligible IE dialects.
September 13, 2017 at 8:53 PM
Davidski said…
But languages can’t have multiple origins. WTF?
September 13, 2017 at 10:02 PM
Mark B. said…
@Davidski Regarding: „But languages can’t have multiple origins. WTF?” He’s right, at least in the sense that German couldn’t evolve as a single language in two different places independently. The fact that languages evolve through mixing is true, but it doesn’t change the fact that the same language doesn’t evolve twice, any more than species evolve twice. Two dialects may start evolving away from each other and then merge, but you’re not going to get unique differences evolving twice in the same way. I think that was his point.
September 14, 2017 at 10:19 AM
…..
4.
http://eurogenes.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-genomic-history-of-southeastern.html
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
R1a-M417 from Eneolithic Ukraine!!!11
A new version of Mathieson et al. 2017 has just been posted at BioRxiv [LINK]. It includes more samples. One of these new samples is a male from an Eneolithic Sredny Stog culture site on the Pontic (Ukrainian) steppe who belongs to Y-haplogroup R1a-M417 (ID I6561 from Alexandria in the ADMIXTURE bar graph below). This is huge, obviously with major implications for the peopling of large parts of Eurasia. Why? Because of this. Here’s the new abstract:
Abstract: Farming was first introduced to southeastern Europe in the mid-7th millennium BCE – brought by migrants from Anatolia who settled in the region before spreading throughout Europe. To clarify the dynamics of the interaction between the first farmers and indigenous hunter-gatherers where they first met, we analyze genome-wide ancient DNA data from 223 individuals who lived in southeastern Europe and surrounding regions between 12,000 and 500 BCE. We document previously uncharacterized genetic structure, showing a West-East cline of ancestry in hunter-gatherers, and show that some Aegean farmers had ancestry from a different lineage than the northwestern Anatolian lineage that formed the overwhelming ancestry of other European farmers. We show that the first farmers of northern and western Europe passed through southeastern Europe with limited admixture with local hunter-gatherers, but that some groups mixed extensively, with relatively sex-balanced admixture compared to the male-biased hunter-gatherer admixture that prevailed later in the North and West. Southeastern Europe continued to be a nexus between East and West after farming arrived, with intermittent genetic contact from the Steppe up to 2000 years before the migration that replaced much of northern Europe’s population.
Mathieson et al., The Genomic History Of Southeastern Europe, bioRxiv, Posted September 19, 2017, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/135616
By the way, I don’t want to toot my own horn too much, but looking back, some of my comments in the discussion about the first version of Mathieson et al. 2017 were awesome. See here and here.
Three new Yamnaya, all from Ukraine, but sadly all females.
Expected the Mesolithic/Neolithic R1a/R1b in Ukraine, and it would’ve been good to see some Yamnaya males from there, because some are likely to be R1a-M417.
But it’s nice to see that Bulgarian MLBA R1a/U5a sample. Interesting date for R1a to be in the Balkans: 1750-1625 calBCE (3400±30 BP).
…
It can’t be a coincide that all of their Yamnaya samples from Ukraine are females.
I reckon they’re holding the males back for their South Asian paper.
I’m surprised they let the Bulgarian MLBA R1a out of the bag, because that’s a big clue about what we’ll see in BA Ukraine.
Update 20/09/2017: I put together a spreadsheet with the key details for the samples in this paper (click on the image below to open it). I’m not sure which of the individuals are new, because many of the IDs have been changed. A spreadsheet with the original set of samples is located here.
See also…
Ancient herders from the Pontic-Caspian steppe crashed into India: no ifs or buts
Posted by Davidski at 5:11:00 PM 211 comments:
Arza said…
Sample ID:I6561
Average of 95.4% date range in calBP (defined as 1950 CE):6200
Date: (Format 2) Archaeological context date, e.g. 2500-1700 BCE
5000-3500 BCE
Y chrom.R1a1a1:M417
Autosomally like Corded Ware and almost identical to Z-93 Balkan_BA.
September 19, 2017 at 6:13 PM
Davidski said…
Yep, and check out my map from early last year showing where I thought Poltavka_outlier’s R1a-M417 ancestor came from.
The Poltavka outlier
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/the-poltavka-outlier.html
I was off by a whisker.
September 19, 2017 at 6:21 PM
Samuel Andrews said…
Naysayers can’t say anymore „Well, Eastern Yamnaya didn’t have any R1a M417, therefore, R1a M417 isn’t from the Steppe it could be from the Moon or Tajikistan for all we know.”
Naysayers, a dozen or so genomes from Eastern Yamnaya doesn’t capture all the genetic diversity that existed in the Eneolithic-BA Steppe!! Eastern Yamnaya just represents one Steppe clan, there were obviously many.
Steppe clans were mobile, good at staying isolated from foreign admixture for many generations while migrating, and typically belonged to a single and young paternal lineage. This is why we find R1a M417 carrying people with identical genetic structures living in Sweden, Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, and deep in Siberia.
Also, the time seris of Samara genomes doesn’t capture the formation of „Steppe” ancestry. Remeber Steppe clans were mobile, Eastern Yamnaya may not be the descendants of Samara Eneolithic. Steppe may have originated somewhere else where „Steppe” ancestry (EHG+CHG) had existed since like 5000 BC. A distant common ancestor for Yamanya and Corded Ware can explain how „Steppe” includes many differnt Y DNA haplogroups.
September 19, 2017 at 9:14 PM
Bob Floy said…
It’s known to be a hot spot for R1a *now*, but many folks wanted to argue that R1a wasn’t present in Ukraine as early as Sredni Stog, since it’s presence in the area that early strongly supports the idea that M417 was brought to Asia by steppe migrants. The sample in question basically looks like Yamnaya in terms of aDNA, this guy definitely didn’t get his M417 from south or central Asia. So that’s why it’s significant.
September 19, 2017 at 10:41 PM
Ric Hern said…
@ Davidski I’m a bit confused where and how the R1b in Iron Gates comes from ? Apparently intermediate between EHG and SHG with something additional from somewhere else ? We know that the Majority WHG in Western Europe was Y-DNA I2a ? SHG probably I1 ? EHG probably R1a ? So did R1b came from Anatolia during the Early Mesolithic/Upper Palaeolithic ? Is this the Something Else or is the Something Else mostly Maternal in nature ?
September 19, 2017 at 10:43 PM
Davidski said…
R1b looks like an WHG and EHG lineage to me based on current sampling.
September 19, 2017 at 10:51 PM
Davidski said…
There’s no R1a in any Upper Paleolithic European samples yet, but there is R1a in Neolithic Siberians from sites close to Lake Baikal, and R1b has already been found in a couple of Upper Paleolithic Western Europeans. So R1a and R1b look like they’re both from Siberia, but R1b probably entered Europe earlier.
September 19, 2017 at 11:10 PM
Rob said…
„The Neolithic population has a significant difference in ancestry compared to the Mesolithic
(Figures 1B, Figure 2), with a shift towards WHG shown by the statistic D(Mbuti, WHG,
Ukraine_Mesolithic, Ukraine_Neolithic); Z=8.9 (Supplementary Information Table 2).
Unexpectedly, one Neolithic individual from Dereivka (I3719), which we directly date to
4949-4799 BCE, has entirely NW Anatolian Neolithic-related ancestry.”
Yeah, confirms that simplistic Kurgan scenario is false. Seems like constant contact between northeast Balkans and steppe, with the former going east, and coming back a generation or two later, admixed.
September 19, 2017 at 11:27 PM
Rob said…
„Yeah, confirms that simplistic Kurgan scenario is false. Seems like constant contact between northeast Balkans and steppe, with the former going east, and coming back a generation or two later, admixed.”
Not to mention, the massive swing toward CHG between 4000 & 3000 BC. A lot of happenings on, at least at GW-perspective. Seems like local groups were were becoming integrated into larger spheres, with some individuals (i2a2, R1b-M269, R1a-M417) profiting greatly from it, and expanding.
September 19, 2017 at 11:36 PM
Davidski said…
What is that Yamnaya Ukraine outlier that’s so ‚Armenian’ shifted ? (Green dot with outlier black encirclement ) Probably a female imported from the Caucasus.
September 19, 2017 at 11:37 PM
Davidski said…
@Rob The M417 Sredny Stog sample is indeed mostly Yamnaya-like, and actually plots where most Corded Ware usually plot. Have a look at sample I6561 in the ADMIXTURE bar graph.
September 20, 2017 at 12:14 AM
Ric Hern said…
So Derievka was already influenced by Neolithic Farmers +-4900 bC. which indirectly means that they could have used Domesticated Cattle and other Domesticates from this early like the paper about the lower Don and Volga already suggested…..so it was a spread from West to East….
September 20, 2017 at 12:29 AM
Ric Hern said…
The problem regarding when domesticated cattle occurred in the Steppe could be linked to two papers that shows that Neolithic Farmers crossbred their cattle with local Aurochs as seen in Switzerland and Britain/Ireland maybe to create bigger Animals for ploughing and pulling of wagons… So Steppe cattle could have been more Aurochs Like which could have created the wrong impression regarding domestication….
September 20, 2017 at 12:44 AM
EastPole said…
I was speculating some time ago that Corded Ware didn’t come from Yamnay but from Sredny Stog.
“The expert Dmytro Telegin has divided the chronology of Sredny Stog into two distinct phases. Phase II (ca. 4000–3500 BC) used corded ware pottery which may have originated there, and stone battle-axes of the type later associated with expanding Indo-European cultures to the West. Most notably, it has perhaps the earliest evidence of horse domestication (in phase II), with finds suggestive of cheek-pieces (psalia). “
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sredny_Stog_culture
Now the romantic side of what really happened in Alexandria/Dereivka:
http://musicpleer.audio/#!02e99f568b65098462a9acbe33874ed5
Of course “an angel’s kiss in spring” is a poetic metaphor. Girls used hops (xъmel/haoma/soma) not angel’s kisse.
September 20, 2017 at 1:14 AM
Ric Hern said…
@ EastPole And what about Phase 1 of Sredny Stog ? Can you throw any light on that ?
September 20, 2017 at 1:28 AM
Ric Hern said…
@ EastPole And what about this also from Wikipedia: „…Yuri Rassamakin suggests that the Sredny Stog culture should be considered as an areal term, with at least four distinct cultural elements co-existing inside the same geographical area.” Any thoughts ?
September 20, 2017 at 1:33 AM
EastPole said…
@Ric Hern “And what about Phase 1 of Sredny Stog ?”
It could be related to the division into Dereivka I and Dereivka II. Dereivka I population was made of hunter-gatherers and Dereivka II of pastoralists related to Corded Ware Culture. Because of some local differences Sredny Stog was divided into following cultures: Skelanska, Stogovska, Kvitanska and Dereivka by Rassamakin. Let’s wait for aDNA from those cultures before we speculate about them.
September 20, 2017 at 3:14 AM
EastPole said…
What puzzles me greatly is the position Varna and Balkans_Chalcolithic outliers. Assuming that their position on PCA was due to some early migrations from the steppe we can conclude that at the very early age there existed different steppe populations: NO. 1 is like Sredny Stog, NO. 2 is like Yamnaya and NO. 3 is like Yamnaya outlier with a lot of CHG: https://s26.postimg.org/z4i5e3rbd/screenshot_280.png
September 20, 2017 at 11:20 PM
Rob said…
@ EastPole
It’s probably a gradient that’ll fill out with more individuals tested. I’d also add Kumtepe IV to that list. It means that the migration of these „steppe” people, aka north Caucasus or central Eurasians, had begun by 4500 BC, and they had started to arrive at key sites
September 20, 2017 at 11:29 PM
EastPole said…
@Rob “It means that the migration of these „steppe” people, aka north Caucasus or central Eurasians, had begun by 4500 BC, and they had started to arrive at key sites”
If a population similar to late Sredny Stog Dereivka formed somewhere on the steppe as early as 4500 BC then I would guess they are the best candidates for PIE.
September 21, 2017 at 12:06 AM
Alberto said…
So that new Ukraine Eneolithic sample is quite interesting. Apart from having R1a-M417 at the time of the estimated MRCA of that lineage (which kind of limits other possibilities for the origin of its expansion), I’m more interested in its autosomal structure.
The previous Eneolithic sample from Ukraine didn’t seem to have EHG admixture, but rather SHG-like admixture (which made sense, given that Ukraine Neolithic had SHG-like foragers and no EHG proper). But this other sample looks (unfortunately not much info about it in the stats or qpAdm models) like it’s indeed like CWC samples from Germany: EHG + CHG + Euro Neolithic.
If this is the case (reinforced by its M417 being ancestral to CW samples), then it means that around 4000 BC a population similar to Yamnaya (50:50 EHG/CHG) arrived to Ukraine, replacing the previous Neolithic one. Either from the east or from south-east.
Then this population mixed to some degree with CT people (~25% admixture), and around 3000 BC it was displaced by Yamnaya people coming again from the east (or south-east).
It’s also interesting that this sample is autosomally almost identical to CWC from Germnay from 1000 years later. This again means that very little mixing with local populations was going on (like in the case of BB_Germany to BB_Britain). Hard to tell why (if) these R1 populations sometimes seemed to be very inbred and others very outbred.
September 21, 2017 at 12:20 AM
Rob said…
@ East Pole The old term Sredny Stog is too loose. This R1a-M417 is probably from Kvityana culture, and would date between 4000-3500 BC. This again confirms what I have been saying, & Alberto just did above, some kind of new admixture event was occurring on the east-of -Dnieper steppe and forest steppe at this time, because up until this point the -CHG component is missing in steppe samples, and is probably an extraneous component. (and the curious thing is there is no delay in reaching Varna or Anatolia, at least on an individual level.) West of this , the earlier Suvorovo people and Mikhailovka would be still the older type layer of SHG – Balkan Neolithic mix, as seen by the Ukrainian Neolithics – Eneolithics to date. Now it’s blind guesswork and personal pet-theorism to claim this or that site or sub-region is the PIE. Intsead, it’s very much a interaction thing, with successive waves, with the heavy ANF/SHG being formative for the Balkans, the M417 from middle Dnieper for CWC-related groups, and later the Yamnaya groups, if they’re IE.
September 21, 2017 at 12:52 AM
EastPole said…
@Rob “The old term Sredny Stog is too loose. This R1a-M417 is probably from Kvityana culture, and would date between 4000-3500 BC.”
There is some confusion about localization of this sample:
I6561 with R1a-M417 is from Alexandria :
Alexandria: 48.6633,33.0968
https://www.google.pl/maps/place/48%C2%B039’47.9%22N+33%C2%B005’48.5%22E/@49.1804447,31.1346783,7z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d48.6633!4d33.0968
On the other hand
Alexandria (1 individual)
An Eneolithic cemetery of the Sredny Stog II culture was excavated by D. Telegin in 1955-
1957 near the village of Alexandria, Kupyansk district, Kharkov region on the left bank of the
river Oskol.
Kupyansk: 49.7015398,37.5432339
https://www.google.pl/maps/place/49%C2%B042’05.5%22N+37%C2%B032’35.6%22E/@49.9999272,36.0400472,8.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d49.7015398!4d37.5432339
September 21, 2017 at 2:26 AM
EastPole said…
Actually both Alexandrias are on the territory of Dereivka culture:
September 21, 2017 at 2:42 AM
Rob said…
@ East Pole Yes, its out in east Ukraine Going by the conversion of SSII into sub-periods, that would mean its Kvityana culture area, possibly very early Repin.
September 21, 2017 at 3:28 AM
EastPole said…
@Rob „Yes, its out in east Ukraine”
It is very confusing, because on their map they also show Alexandria West of Dnieper River:
September 21, 2017 at 3:41 AM
EastPole said…
@Rob “The old term Sredny Stog is too loose. This R1a-M417 is probably from Kvityana culture, and would date between 4000-3500 BC.”
According to Rassamakin it is Dereivka culture:
Click to access _Marsha_Levine__Yuri_Rassamakin__Aleksandr_KislenkBookFi.org.pdf
September 21, 2017 at 10:00 AM
EastPole said…
@Rob “Now it’s blind guesswork and personal pet-theorism to claim this or that site or sub-region is the PIE.”
Yes, I am guessing and it is my pet theory but it is not blind. There are reasons to believe that it is a very probable theory. R1a-M417 is a good candidate for PIE marker. Corded Ware Culture is considered to be IE. Here are 12 articles on Corded Ware ornamentation phenomenon in central and eastern Europe:
“Moreover, there are times and places when such ornamentation was extremely frequent. This concerns above all central and eastern Europe from the 5th mill. BC to the 3rd mill. BC. Corded ornamentation in this context even became a type of distinguishing mark, allowing for the creation of a name for one of the important archaeological taxonomic cultures identified in the 3rd mill. BC, the Corded Ware culture (CWC).
BPS-15-1_A_Kośko_M_Szmyt
“Corded ornamentation was observed for the first time in the steppe area between the Dnieper and the Don rivers in the Sredniy Stog culture monuments of the early Eneolithic Age. Artefact ornamentation was represented by imprints of a coiled cord [Kotova 2008]. Classic ‘corded’ ornamentation appeared in the Middle Eneolithic in the monuments of the Dereivka culture and the lower layer of the Mykhailivka settlement.”
Classic ‘corded’ ornamentation was also found in Alexandria/Oleksandriya where we now have R1a-M417:
BPS-15-6_N_S_Kotova
After Dereivka, Tripolye, TRB, Yamnaya and other cultures started to use it too.
Dereivka culture occupied southern part of the forest-steppe region, interacted with Tripolye and is the region where steppe and farmer tradition mixed. I think that PIE were a mixed culture not a pure steppe culture. 4200-3850 BC Alexandria settlement was occupied by Dereivka culture.
Assuming that PIE started to depart after 3500 BC and before that lived on area not exceeding 500000 km2 this is the best candidate for PIE homeland IMO:
September 21, 2017 at 11:10 PM
Rob said…
@ EastPole I don’t think you’re wrong, but that’s my point, it’s seems a tad speculative to argue we can drop pre-expansion PPIE right at the door of Dereivka, or wherever someone else might prefer. Tracing back presumed development of the Corded ware Pot, or an M17 lineage, is a different phenomenon to understanding the intertwining prehistory of sociolinguistics
September 22, 2017 at 1:28 AM
Alberto said…
@EastPole One thing we’ve learned this year thanks to the aDNA from the north pontic region (Ukraine) is that this area was not the homeland of the Yamnaya-like population that some presume to be PIE. That area during the Mesolithic and Neolithic was not the home to either EHG or CHG. The native Neolithic people were SHG-like, and they were replaced by this Yamnaya-like population on their migratory way. So there’s 100% certainty that even if this Yamnaya-like population carrying R1a-M417 and R1b-L23 was PIE, the North Pontic region was not their homeland. They just entered Europe through that region.
The possible origin of such population can be:
– The North Caucasus
– The North Caspian region
– Central Asia?
I always favoured Central Asia, but no aDNA from there make it difficult to guess.
September 22, 2017 at 4:40 AM
Blogger Davidski said…
The possible origin of such population can be:
– The North Caucasus
– The North Caspian region
– Central Asia?
I always favoured Central Asia, but no aDNA from there make it difficult to guess.
Nonsense. The relevant mixture event between EHG and CHG took place on the Pontic-Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe.
September 22, 2017 at 4:49 AM
Plains Wanderer said…
@Alberto
„The possible origin of such population can be:
– The North Caucasus
– The North Caspian region
– Central Asia?”
I think the Khvalynsk samples are a clue. They show that CHG and EHG began forming a Yamna-like population in the region from the lower Volga to the North Caucasus. The formative region of PIE will likely be in this zone, either around the Don River Valley or the North Caucasus (maybe Maykop?).
September 22, 2017 at 10:22 AM
Davidski said…
Much of Eastern Europe and Siberia were part of the same ecosystem back then, and for foragers that’s more important than distance. That’s because foragers can move great distances, usually when following prey, but they have a very hard time moving from one ecosystem, to which they’re adapted, to another, to which they’re not. But I doubt that EHG originated near Lake Baikal. Both WHG and EHG look like a population that formed after the LGM in Europe and maybe Western Siberia from a mixture of European and ANE foragers. The ANE foragers were probably migrants from around Lake Baikal. If ancient DNA shows the presence of EHG around Lake Baikal during the Mesolithic and/or Neolithic, then they will be migrants from the west.
September 22, 2017 at 6:12 PM
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