The Genetic History of the Southern Arc: A Bridge between West Asia & Europe
Below are some excerpts from the notes of a talk which will be delivered by Dr David Reich at an Israeli university in July 2022.
Our comprehensive sampling shows that Anatolia received hardly any genetic input from Europe or the Eurasian steppe from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age; this contrasts with Southeastern Europe and Armenia that were impacted by major gene flow from Yamnaya steppe pastoralists.
The impermeability of Anatolia to exogenous migration contrasts with our finding that the Yamnaya had two distinct gene flows, both from West Asia, suggesting that the Indo-Anatolian language family originated in the eastern wing of the Southern Arc and that the steppe served only as a secondary staging area of Indo-European language dispersal.
Here, Dr Reich confirms what I have already said before - That the Anatolian branch of the IE language family has its origin in Armenia and has nothing to do with Steppes. I believe this is the first time that Harvard will officially debar Steppefrom being a PIE homeland contender.
Read my post - The Armenian Origin of the Anatolian branch of IE language family
There is another curious statement in that abstract
...contrasts with our finding that the Yamnaya had two distinct gene flows, both from West Asia,...
This is in line with what is reported in the Allentoft et al 2022 preprint
We demonstrate that this “steppe” ancestry (Steppe_5000BP_4300BP) can be modelled as a mixture of ~65% ancestry related to herein reported hunter-gatherer genomes from the Middle Don River region (MiddleDon_7500BP) and ~35% ancestry related to hunter-gatherers from Caucasus(Caucasus_13000BP_10000BP) (Extended Data Fig. 4). Thus, Middle Don hunter-gatherers, who already carry ancestry related to Caucasus hunter-gatherers (Fig. 2), serve as a hitherto unknown proximal source for the majority ancestry contribution into Yamnaya genomes.
Interestingly, two herein reported ~7,300-year-old imputed genomes from the Middle Don River region in the Pontic-Caspian steppe (Golubaya Krinitsa, NEO113 & NEO212) derive ~20-30% of their ancestry from a source cluster of hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus (Caucasus_13000BP_10000BP).
So, what is being said is
1. A CHG related admixture into middle don made up ~25% of the MDHG (Middle Don HG) ancestry. These samples should be similar to Khvalynsk samples autosomally, in my opinion.
2. A later CHG related introgression into MDHG makes up the steppe ancestry (65% MDHG, 35% CHG).
My opinion has been clear about point no 2. I do not believe the 2nd wave of ancestry into steppe was of the CHG ancestry, but that of the eastern variant of the IranN ancestry (along with minor ANE ancestry). There is absolutely 0 proof that unadmixed (or high %) CHG ancestry persisted till 5000-4000BCE. CHG persisted in southern Caucasus but in admixed form with AnatoliaN (which is not a good source of steppe).
The only region with CHG/IranN ancestry free of AnatoliaN admixture around 4500BCE is eastern Iran, SC Asia and Indian subcontinent. These regions only can be the source of this 2nd wave of 35% CHG 'like' admixture into the southern steppe.
Will test this rigorously when the Allentoft samples are released for the public. The 4600BCE Monjukli Depe sample from Turkmenistan is a good contender as a representative of the eastern IranN ancestry which is omnipresent in modern Indians.
References:
Allentoft et al 2022, Population Genomics of Stone Age Eurasia. bioRxiv. Published online 2022. doi:10.1101/2022.05.04.490594
"eastern wing of the Southern Arc"
ReplyDeleteWhere is it?
Is it Shulaveri-Shomu culture ( a Late Neolithic/Eneolithic culture that existed on the territory of present-day Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, as well as parts of northern Iran).
What is the ancestry profile of these people?
armenia and around armenia.
ReplyDeleteFrom Reich's book
ReplyDelete"This suggests to me that the most likely location of the population that first spoke an Indo-European language was south of the Caucasus Mountains, perhaps in present-day Iran or Armenia, because ancient DNA from people who lived there matches what we would expect for a source population both for the Yamnaya and for ancient Anatolians."
"Is it Shulaveri-Shomu culture ( a Late Neolithic/Eneolithic culture that existed on the territory of present-day Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, as well as parts of northern Iran)."
ReplyDeleteThe ancestry introgression into Anatolia is from Kura Araxes samples rather than the lone Shulaveri sample that we have. KA ancestry is different in the sense that it has additional ancestry from its east (similar to sarazm_en).
July 2022? Is the lecture yet to be delivered, and the topic has been disclosed with some details?
ReplyDeleteYes. There is an excerpt. Click the link.
ReplyDeleteadded this line to the post
ReplyDelete"The only region with CHG/IranN ancestry free of AnatoliaN admixture around 4500BCE is eastern Iran, SC Asia and Indian subcontinent. These regions only can be the source of this 2nd wave of 35% CHG 'like' admixture into the southern steppe."
IranN AASI admixture dates are 5500-3500bce. Don't we have samples with wide range of AASI mix where some are as low as 10%. So these dates could be off by a big margin for generalized samples?
ReplyDeleteWhich CHGs is nemets referring to?
@vAsiSTha
ReplyDeleteIn my view, the "eastern wing" can not be another region but northwestern Iran, not necessarily Armenia. At least that's what I see David Reich is refering to.
Yea, possible
ReplyDeleteDo these software take into account population dynamics?
ReplyDeleteThere is barely any Greek ancestry among Indians despite their presence in India for 200 years. Is it possible that there was some admixture from scythians Kushanas Huns Prathians but limited to few Individuals only and only their descendants spread it to bigger population. Wouldn't this way most of the East asian ancestry disappear 2000 years later?
Only classes like Traders who had long distance contacts, Philosophers and warrior classes were the ones with higher probability of foreign spouse.
That's possibly why we see the traditional higher classes with more outside ancestry.
Shaka King Rudradaman married his daughter to Vashishtiputra Satakarni of Sātavāhanas.
ReplyDeleteSelecus married his daughter to Chandragupta.
Gupta kings too had matrimonial alliances with neighbouring kings.
Gandhari probably with a swat valley like ancestry married to Kuru King.
BTW I am getting this message when I click your link from tweeter
ReplyDelete"Warning: this link may be unsafe
http://a-genetics.blogspot.com
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Is it bad to say that I am enjoying the ruckus that this has caused and that I am looking forward to more when it's finally published?
ReplyDeleteI, also, still can't believe the pettiness of those who remove your comments, Vas, even though you are being very modest about the fact that your original assumption regarding the "Steppe Homeland" was the correct one.
"BTW I am getting this message when I click your link from tweeter"
ReplyDeleteOk thanks, not sure what i should do to fix it.
"I, also, still can't believe the pettiness of those who remove your comments, Vas, even though you are being very modest about the fact that your original assumption regarding the "Steppe Homeland" was the correct one."
Who removed my comments? Im unaware.
Well if Reich is saying that Into-Anatolian language family is originated in the eastern wing of Southern arc, he is already including Indo-Aryan in it, does this mean that he will be discarding his previous hypothesis of Indo-Aryan migration from Sintashta into India.?
ReplyDeleteHe is not discarding that path of Sintashta 'indo-aryan' ----> India, yet.
ReplyDeleteAnd unless Reich's team sample an unambiguosuly Vaidik site and find no steppe admixture in those samples, they will probably never retract their steppe aryan migration hypothesis. They and their buddies (witzel, anthony et al) are too deeply invested in it being true.
ReplyDeleteWrt Anatolia, they had to do it because they couldn't even find 1% steppe admixture in the samples.
Nothing less than Harappa being Indo-Aryan will put an end to this theory.
DeleteBMAC with Fire-Soma cult can't be Language X. My only issue with placing BMAC as Avestan proper is I am not sure how far this ancestry had spread West(Iran) around 2000bce..
Based on geography of Avesta it seems these people hadn't ventured beyond southern shores of caspien, includes shahr e Sukhteh but not the areas on the coastline like Elam, Sindh and Gujarat.
Djarkutan Fire Temple in Uzbekistan ~2100bce is possibly the Airyanem Vaejah of Avesta.
DeleteWhat I meant is BMAC priesthood as Avestan speaking not the common population.
Delete@Vasistha
ReplyDeleteThen how do they account for the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies lacking steppe ancestry?
"@Vasistha
ReplyDeleteThen how do they account for the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies lacking steppe ancestry?"
By calling them non IE people.
@assu
BMAC was early iranian, cant say Avestan or not.
We have decent support for the Sanauli site being Aryan in nature (Benedetti, Parpola, Manjul papers). The samples there won't have steppe admixture.
ReplyDelete@vashistha
ReplyDeleteAs we know that Afanaseivo had been proposed as Tocharian by the steppe theory, the Afanseivo culture ends by 2500 BCE and the Tarim basim mummies were dated upto 1700 BCE if I am not wrong. How does their hypothesis even work, how do they show the missing hundreds of years between Afanaseivo and when Tocharian is attested. By the way, during the time of Tocharian attestation, did the people in that region had any steppe ancestry?
Andronovo ancestry replaces Afanasievo ancestry late bronze age. This is what I have heard. This impact is much more pronounced than what we see in India.
DeleteTocharian is attested only 250ce and later inside Tarim Basin. The nature of the language makes linguists guess that its an old split from PIE, so the older dates.
ReplyDeleteAfter 1000bce, we see a lot of steppe ancestry in and around Tarim, also other ancestries - east asian, bmac.
@Vasistha, from where did the Greeks come? From Anatolia or elsewhere? Greek seems to have an Anatolian substrate. So, either Anatolians were in the Greek Peninsula before the Greeks or they moved from the east to the west passing through Antolia.
ReplyDelete> @Vasistha, from where did the Greeks come? From Anatolia or elsewhere? Greek seems to have an Anatolian substrate. So, either Anatolians were in the Greek Peninsula before the Greeks or they moved from the east to the west passing through Antolia.
ReplyDeleteFinkelberg 2000 says that Minoans were Anatolians.
Greek isnt clear yet. There's both steppe ancestry and earlier caucasus/iran related ancestry.
ReplyDeleteAny possibility CHG like groups were inhabiting Ganga plains 3000-2000bce which later mixed with incomming Harappans?
ReplyDeleteHey Ashish,
ReplyDeleteI have a question regarding the linguistic impact of India_N on steppe eneolithic cultures. If I understand correct, as per you, PIE vector was this indian_N however, Steppe_EN , yamnaya and succeding cultures have predominantly EHG related haplogroups like R1b and R1a.
Won't this mean that this india_N ancestry in steppe_en sites was mediated by females ? If yes, how are we going to reconcile this women spreading language theme with the patrilineal and patriarchal nature of IE cultures ?
@Piyush
ReplyDeleteGood point, the haplogroup question remains unanswered. I am pretty sure there exists upstream R1b in Turan and Iran which is older than steppe R1bs. Furthermore, Q and G haplogroups are found in some steppe samples. However overall, it looks like R1a is local to eastern europe and was still the predominant haplogroup in IE europe.
" If yes, how are we going to reconcile this women spreading language theme with the patrilineal and patriarchal nature of IE cultures ?"
ReplyDeleteI do not know how this myth started that patriarchal cultures only adopt the language of the men.
Basques got 90% steppe y haplogroups in the bronze age, but kept their mother's language.
There are various examples of migrant mothers passing on their language to the children in a patriarchal culture. Example, Torwali replacing Badeshi. See this
https://twitter.com/TrueShoebill/status/1541536711343280128?s=20&t=BO_7BuCIXauF3PxdTGwktQ
@Vasistha That makes sense. Suppose you are a steppe person warrior/peasant and the only thing your petty king can offer to a Raja is your serfdom labor and his daughter. Also, you will ending up marrying a commoner from the Raja. That means, you get to speak the local language.
ReplyDeleteThe closest branch to Indo Aryan, within Armanian model, is the Greek branch.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if people realise it but 3000bce Iranians and Indians were much more IranN/CHG shifted than Yamnaya.
ReplyDeleteYamnaya carried 50% compared to ~75% average of Indic-Iranic.
Is it possible that Yamnaya didn't move to Afanaseivo.
ReplyDeleteInstead CHG/IranN related people moved to both locations and mixed with EHGs that were present in these regions 5500bce?
Or may be CHG/IranN mixed into enolithic steppe and few millennia later same CHG/IranN source mixed into Afanasievo?
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.30.498315v1
ReplyDeleteTitle: Ancient DNA from Protohistoric Period Cambodia indicates that South Asians admixed with local populations as early as 1st-3rd centuries CE
" In this study, we discovered a substantial level of South Asian admixture (ca. 40% - 50%) in a Protohistoric individual from the Vat Komnou cemetery at the Angkor Borei site in Cambodia."
What do they mean this component is south indian specific?
DeleteWere they high AASI individuals?
"Or may be CHG/IranN mixed into enolithic steppe and few millennia later same CHG/IranN source mixed into Afanasievo?"
ReplyDeleteFar fetched.
"What do they mean this component is south indian specific?"
For SE Asia, IranN related ancestry is also india specific
🙏
DeleteAre Afanasievo samples of exact same proportions as the Yamnaya?
I hope Niraj didn't transfer late bronze age and Sanauli samples to David lol
ReplyDeleteMore or less same.
ReplyDeleteThe lecture happened 2 days ago. Is the link already available?
ReplyDeleteHavent found one. But i havent searched much.
ReplyDeletevAsiSTha Sir, you should write a book about all your findings relating to IndiaN component being better fit for Steppe ancestry than IranN, CHG, etc and the lack of Steppe ancestry in Anatolia before Iron Age, age of Steppe introgression in Roopkund samples and all the data that exists about the Genomic Formation of South Asians.
ReplyDeleteBooks can convey information to a lot of people and you should also publish your aDNA research in research papers.
Too much work lol
ReplyDeleteIf you won't do that, then people will not be made aware, not everyone reads blogs.
DeleteWell that's fine.
ReplyDeleteUpcoming ancient dna from India will make the situation absolutely clear.
vAsiSTha Sir, like in Europe, ancient Dna has been extracted and examined from each and every level going back to Neanderthal times, then Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean and then Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age etc times, it seems to me, the aim of ancient DNA studies have been done only on Rakhigarhi woman, few ancient Swat valley individuals and Roopkund skeletons. Is work on ancient DNA from Paleolithic to Historical times being done in India as well, when will the results be out?
ReplyDeleteSorry, saw this late. Dr Niraj Rai has some samples he is working on, don't know when results will be published. You may watch his talks to see what he has in pipeline.
Delete@Rip Bailey
ReplyDeleteYes, see my 'Source of southern ancestry in steppe' post.