# Population Genetics > Paleogenetics > Paleolithic & Mesolithic >  24,000 year old Mal'ta Siberians (ydna R* and mtdna U*)

## Tabaccus Maximus

The 24,000 year old Mal'ta mammoth hunter encampment is rumored to show individuals to belonging to y-chromosomal haplogroup R* (no additional details) and mtdna haplogroup U*. The Afontova Gora individuals from roughly the same time also appear to have the same profile. Dienekes has posted:

http://dienekes.blogspot.jp/2013/10/...-on-24000.html


It seems my post on R* and Q* (P-M45) Siberian connections was timely, coming just a few days before the PaleoAmerican Conference, here on Eupedia.

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...Mound-Building


There are some especially interesting things about the discovery. One is the apparent lack of any sort of East Asian admixture in the Mal'ta or Afontova individuals, but people who had typical "Mongoloid" features and dark skin.

This raises several questions about the Mal'ta individuals:

1. What kind of R*, or is it even R* and not P-M45 or Q*? Is it R1*, R2*?

2. Are the Mal'taian or Afontova hunters related to hunters in Europe? There are striking similarities, also big differences.

3. Are Native Americans racially a combined mixture of nomadic West Asian mammoth hunters and East Asians?

4. And/or are Europeans a mixture of a Mongoloid R* and Caucusian women (U*, H* and T*)

5. Did R* belong to a completely different race (say R/Q* + X) and mixed with East Asians and Caucasians producing Amerindians and Europeans, respectively?



We will be talking about this for a long time! Big, exciting news.

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## Tabaccus Maximus

The Mal'ta site is essentially in the Yeniseian region, home to the Yeniseian language which has been proposed being akin to the Na-Dene languages of the Americas. This is probably totally irrelavant and coincidental given the fact that the Mal'ta site is 24,000 years old.


More questions for the masses:

1. Does this potentially move the origin of R* further East?

2. Assuming R*/Q* people drove the mammoth into extinction, what impact did dwindling herds have on the migratory movements of these people?

3. Was there a pollenization effect whereby highly migratory hunters were exposed to vastly different cultural traditions and technologies?

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## Alan

I believe this is just another indication that prehistoric Northeast Asians were more Caucasian than modern. There is even an article on Dienekes blog which says Native Americans are a Caucasian/Mongolian hybrid type.

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## dodona

are there any serious sources or only rumours?

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## adamo

Native Americans are siberians that crossed the Bering Straight over into Alaska and then conquering the Americas (this can be reflected by Y-DNA Q, the haplogroup of the Americas)....before that the ancestors of most Native American males were in Central Asia stuck at the P mutation that splits most European males (R) from most Native American males (Q) in the plains of Kazakhstan...The R males for the most part would head westwards, either slightly (R1a) or early on penetrating deep into Western Europe (R1b) other rare branches would spread in/near parts of turkey and the Caucasus (R1b) or even Iran and heavily into Central Asia (Afghanistan,Pakistan,India,Uzbekistan,Turkmenista n) (R1a)

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## Angela

I've been reading about this quite a bit, too. The archaeology of the area, particularly the dating, seems to be a bit of a mess... some people are claiming that the "R" man is from the Middle Paleolithic, and the definitely "Mongoloid" child found nearby? is from the Late Paleolithic, after the LGM...I don't know given the state of the scholarship what the story is...I think we have to wait until the paper comes out to see where exactly they found the R and U combination, and in what exact archaeological context and with as accurate a date as possible...was it at Mal'ta which might be LGM, or the site further north which was abandoned in the LGM, to be inhabited by people from the east later, or both...but he seems to be definitely "R" and "U", and he is "much darker than Oetzi".

I don't know why the latter is a particular surprise. I know of one paper that dated blue eyes, for example, to 6,000 B.C., down around the Black Sea, and attributed it to the Neolithic diet not providing enough Vitamin D, and not getting enough of it from the sun at higher latitudes, which meant that this mutation spread very quickly in those populations. The other paper of which I'm aware gives a broad range for light skin mutations in Europeans of about 19,000 to 11,000 years before present. Even the absolutely most ancient date would be after the time of this hunter gatherer, while the 11,000 year old date, 9000 B.C., fits in very nicely with the Neolithic transformation in and around the northern Near East.

As for how and when the internet got a hold of it, it was leaked by a presenter at the PaleoAmerican conference who spoke to the author of the paper. He later tried to take it down, but it was too late.

I thought this was a very interesting quote from his blog:
ADMIXTURE showed West Eurasian, Amerindian and Southeast Asian (Pacific) components. No East Asians again.

Again, I don't think this is a huge surprise... MtDNA U2 looks like it might have developed somewhere in between Siberia and India,(maybe somewhere east of the Caucasus?) spreading both north and south.
The Kostenki skull, as modeled by the scientists (which admittedly has to be taken with a grain of salt...remember how they created an Oetzi with blue eyes who looked northern European before they got the dna?) looks sort of South Indian to me, or indeed Oceanian...

It's interesting that someone broke protocol and somehow got access to the raw data and ran it through a calculator. Not Kosher...but it gives us a glimpse...it looks like the data was run through the MDLP calculator.

These are the results:
[2,] “33.7% Brahui + 66.3% Udmurd” “21.9804″
[3,] “34.5% Makrani + 65.5% Udmurd” “22.357″
[4,] “34.3% Balochi + 65.7% Udmurd” “22.413″
[5,] “33.3% Sindhi + 66.7% Udmurd” “24.1198″
[6,] “36.5% Burusho + 63.5% Udmurd” “24.211″
[7,] “39.7% Pashtun + 60.3% Udmurd” “24.3389″
[8,] “34.3% Pathan + 65.7% Udmurd” “24.716″
[9,] “32.2% Pakistani + 67.8% Udmurd” “24.753″
[10,] “41.4% Tadjik + 58.6% Udmurd” “24.852

There's the south Asian, maybe ASI heavy component, and then with the Udmurts you have both a more western Eurasian dna and an eastern "Siberian" one?

Just for the heck of it I looked these people up online...

These are the Balochi:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6aFtYVGidv...QA/s1600/3.jpg
This is one of the two peaks of the Gedrosia component.

I couldn't find group pictures of the Brahui with enough resolution.. but you can just google them.

These are the Udmurts...I did not pick a picture from the ones obviously cherry picked for "northern European" looking people and then posted on line...I went with a picture taken quite a while ago by scientists...however, you can see the "Siberian" look in some of the people even in the pictures chosen to highlight the red hair that sometimes appears amongst them...guess they forgot to crop out the pretty girl all the way on the left. :)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...urt_people.jpg
http://russianpickle.files.wordpress...pg?w=300&h=225

So, if we us the modern Udmurts for 66% of the mixture in this R man, it seems to me that Mr. R definitely had some "Siberian" type genes. 

Does anyone have access to the admixture results of the Udmurts? I would think Dienekes has included them in Globe 13 but it must be one of those populations represented by letters...I don't know which one.

Ed. I can provide citations for the two pigmentation studies that give approximate dates if someone wants them.

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## ElHorsto

> I've been reading about this quite a bit, too. The archaeology of the area, particularly the dating, seems to be a bit of a mess... some people are claiming that the "R" man is from the Middle Paleolithic, and the definitely "Mongoloid" child found nearby? is from the Late Paleolithic, after the LGM...I don't know given the state of the scholarship what the story is...I think we have to wait until the paper comes out to see where exactly they found the R and U combination, and in what exact archaeological context and with as accurate a date as possible...was it at Mal'ta which might be LGM, or the site further north which was abandoned in the LGM, to be inhabited by people from the east later, or both...but he seems to be definitely "R" and "U", and he is "much darker than Oetzi".
> 
> I don't know why the latter is a particular surprise. I know of one paper that dated blue eyes, for example, to 6,000 B.C., down around the Black Sea, and attributed it to the Neolithic diet not providing enough Vitamin D, and not getting enough of it from the sun at higher latitudes, which meant that this mutation spread very quickly in those populations. The other paper of which I'm aware gives a broad range for light skin mutations in Europeans of about 19,000 to 11,000 years before present. Even the absolutely most ancient date would be after the time of this hunter gatherer, while the 11,000 year old date, 9000 B.C., fits in very nicely with the Neolithic transformation in and around the northern Near East.
> 
> As for how and when the internet got a hold of it, it was leaked by a presenter at the PaleoAmerican conference who spoke to the author of the paper. He later tried to take it down, but it was too late.
> 
> I thought this was a very interesting quote from his blog:
> ADMIXTURE showed West Eurasian, Amerindian and Southeast Asian (Pacific) components. No East Asians again.
> 
> ...


Here an admixture analysis which includes Udmurts:
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...l=1#post411687 

I interpreted them to be northeast european (aka "saami"+"supposed indo-european" component), but unsure.

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## Alan

> I've been reading about this quite a bit, too. The archaeology of the area, particularly the dating, seems to be a bit of a mess... some people are claiming that the "R" man is from the Middle Paleolithic, and the definitely "Mongoloid" child found nearby? is from the Late Paleolithic, after the LGM...I don't know given the state of the scholarship what the story is...I think we have to wait until the paper comes out to see where exactly they found the R and U combination, and in what exact archaeological context and with as accurate a date as possible...was it at Mal'ta which might be LGM, or the site further north which was abandoned in the LGM, to be inhabited by people from the east later, or both...but he seems to be definitely "R" and "U", and he is "much darker than Oetzi".
> 
> I don't know why the latter is a particular surprise. I know of one paper that dated blue eyes, for example, to 6,000 B.C., down around the Black Sea, and attributed it to the Neolithic diet not providing enough Vitamin D, and not getting enough of it from the sun at higher latitudes, which meant that this mutation spread very quickly in those populations. The other paper of which I'm aware gives a broad range for light skin mutations in Europeans of about 19,000 to 11,000 years before present. Even the absolutely most ancient date would be after the time of this hunter gatherer, while the 11,000 year old date, 9000 B.C., fits in very nicely with the Neolithic transformation in and around the northern Near East.
> 
> As for how and when the internet got a hold of it, it was leaked by a presenter at the PaleoAmerican conference who spoke to the author of the paper. He later tried to take it down, but it was too late.
> 
> I thought this was a very interesting quote from his blog:
> ADMIXTURE showed West Eurasian, Amerindian and Southeast Asian (Pacific) components. No East Asians again.
> 
> ...



The "West Eurasian" is not only through the Udmurts. Tadjiks, Pathan, Baloch, Kalash all are predominantly West Eurasian and "only" 1/5 to 1/3 of their Genetics are South(ASI) or East Asian.

The Gedrosia component might peak in Baloch but the Baloch or even less the Brahui are not representative for this component respectively. Because they have considerable South Asian as well Southwest Asian components. The same is the case for all the other components there is no modern population representative for more ancient components Sardinians might be the closest cousins to Neolithic farmers yet they have some considerable H&G ancestry too. In Baloch (in South and most of Central Asia in general) case it is slightly even more decisive since the ASI component is not even predominantly non West Eurasian while Mediterranean(farmer) and North European (H&G) are relatively close components.

Baloch as a population might not be the best representative for prehistoric people belonging to this Gedrosia component, but this doesn't mean there aren't individual cases of Baloch which might be representative.


Here are some Baloch examples which I think might be representative for "Gedrosia".




Brahui are basically Balochis who have adopted a Dravidian language when some Dravidian Muslims from India settled in Balochistan ad became part of the Baloch.

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## Tabaccus Maximus

> and in what exact archaeological context and with as accurate a date as possible


This is what bothers me the most with dating/archaeological contexts in Europe. It has been shown that in European hunter/gatherer peoples apparently persisted alongside Neolithic peoples for many centuries, without mixing. 
Can we be sure the archaeological context is 24,000 years ago and not 14,000 years ago? That's partly why I am so interested in knowing what kind of R* has been found, because I will feel either more confident about a successful dna extraction and proper dating or I won't.




> I thought this was a very interesting quote from his blog:
> ADMIXTURE showed West Eurasian, Amerindian and Southeast Asian (Pacific) components. No East Asians again


Could it be the other way around? MNOPs is should be ancestral to Polyneasian, Austronesian and other south asian/pacific peoples.
I've wondered if the origin of tatooing could be linked to the ancestral population of MNOPs whose descended peoples who were usually heavily tatooed in pre-history?? [ie. West Asians, Polyneasians, Ameridians, Jomonese, etc.]

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## Fire Haired

> The 24,000 year old Mal'ta mammoth hunter encampment is rumored to show individuals to belonging to y-chromosomal haplogroup R* (no additional details) and mtdna haplogroup U*. The Afontova Gora individuals from roughly the same time also appear to have the same profile. Dienekes has posted:
> 
> 
> 
> It seems my post on R* and Q* (P-M45) Siberian connections was timely, coming just a few days before the PaleoAmerican Conference, here on Eupedia.
> 
> 
> 
> There are some especially interesting things about the discovery. One is the apparent lack of any sort of East Asian admixture in the Mal'ta or Afontova individuals, but people who had typical "Mongoloid" features and dark skin.
> ...


This is not a surprise at all Y DNA R is Mongoliod I would except it actually to be in Siberia 24,000ybp. Also Caucasian subclades of R R1b, R1a, and R2 is proof there was Caucasin-Mongoliod inter marriage and so is the mtDNA U. To me non of this is a surprise it has been what I have been predicting for a while. And I guess Eupedia got this news late I have seen forums talking about this for a few days. 

There is no way Native Americans formed from a mix of east Eurasians(Mongoloids) and west Eurasians(Caucasians). The reason is their Y DNA and mtDNA is all Mongoloid except small minority mtDNA X2. Also their autosomal DNA shows they group very closely with other Mongoloids and also surprisingly Mongoloids group pretty closely with Oceania not at all with Caucasians. It is way to simplistic to say that about Native Americans if this mixing happened while they were in Asia why doesn't it involve other Mongoloids. Honestly it makes experts sound like little kids. 

TB you need to remember how recently y DNA R1 subclades spread across Europe. R1b1a2a1a L11 in west Europe is estimated to be only 6,000-5,000 years old. I have seen this forum before and I miss that Fire Haired guy he had good theory's on its Germanic and Italo Celtic origin. It's ancestral subclades would have come out of the Near east less than 10,000ybp. R1a may have originated in Europe but its "Indo European" subclade R1a1a M17 which almost all modern R1a is under. Would not have spread till 6,000-5,000ybp. So I know it sounds cool and exciting to act as if Y DNA R has a long history in Europe and can tell about Europeans origins BUT IT CAN NOT. You need to understand the history of the subclades that make up such high Y DNA R1 percentages in Europe.

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## Angela

> The "West Eurasian" is not only through the Udmurts. Tadjiks, Pathan, Baloch, Kalash all are predominantly West Eurasian and "only" 1/5 to 1/3 of their Genetics are South(ASI) or East Asian.
> 
> The Gedrosia component might peak in Baloch but the Baloch or even less the Brahui are not representative for this component respectively. Because they have considerable South Asian as well Southwest Asian components. The same is the case for all the other components there is no modern population representative for more ancient components Sardinians might be the closest cousins to Neolithic farmers yet they have some considerable H&G ancestry too. In Baloch (in South and most of Central Asia in general) case it is slightly even more decisive since the ASI component is not even predominantly non West Eurasian while Mediterranean(farmer) and North European (H&G) are relatively close components.
> 
> Baloch as a population might not be the best representative for prehistoric people belonging to this Gedrosia component, but this doesn't mean there aren't individual cases of Baloch which might be representative.
> 
> 
> Here are some Baloch examples which I think might be representative for "Gedrosia".
> 
> ...


I don't get the logic of your argument...the modern Baloch have nothing to tell us about this ancient "R" population because they are "too" South Asian...and yet we're talking about an "R" and "U" population, if the description is accurate (which we don't really know yet) which is a blend of "West Eurasian", "Amerindian" and "SOUTH-EAST" Asian"? Meanwhile, this man was "much darker" than Oetzi? You don't think that's slightly illogical? 

Not to mention that I fail to see how "Baloch as a population might not be the best representative for prehistoric people belonging to this Gedrosia component, but... individual cases of Baloch...might be representative." I don't think either of these modern populations should be seen as representative...this ancient population no longer exists; it was merely meant to be suggestive of the kind of mixture that the authors may be talking about. But if we were to talk about people being representative, shouldn't we look at the group as a whole rather than picking out certain individuals? And just how was your determination made as to which individual Baloch are more representative of the Gedrosia component? What standards did you apply...is it just an accident that the individuals you chose happen to be more "European" looking? Sorry, I find that a little suspect. 
Another thing that I don't understand is why these results are causing such a fuss...fair coloring is a mutation that spread because of UV radiation levels too low to provide enough Vitamin D to people living at high latitudes, and a mainly "cereals" diet just exacerbated the problem...at least that seems to be the latest thinking...regardless, this is a relatively late development in human history...

Btw, I think it will be very interesting if we can get phenotypical snps for European hunter gatherers of, say, the Mesolithic era, or even the Neolithic era...a high fish diet has allowed the Eskimos to keep their darker pigmentation even at very high latitudes...I don't see why that might not be the case for European hunter gatherers as well...all that Baltic seal fishing, and Neolithic era river fishing...I'm not predicting it, but it wouldn't surprise me either, particularly if the studies are correct which tie it to a mainly "cereals" diet.

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## Tabaccus Maximus

The link between depigmentation and a cereal diet is interesting. I have not heard of that before, but it does remind me of another interesting hypothesis about neolithic/post neolithic traits. It postulates that many of the modern orthodonic problems in Europe and the Near East are due to a historical diet of cereals and dairy.

In other words, people descending from populations of the near east may have experienced shrinking jaws that has caused crowding of the lower teeth. The teeth of hunter-gatherers with a similar ancestry to Europeans may help test this theory to a degree.

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## LeBrok

> This is what bothers me the most with dating/archaeological contexts in Europe. It has been shown that in European hunter/gatherer peoples apparently persisted alongside Neolithic peoples for many centuries, without mixing.


Oh, they mixed but slowly, and finely about 4k years ago they've disappeared completely in Europe, except some northern fringes.

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## Maciamo

It's good news to finally have some Palaeolithic Y-DNA. The results are completely what I would have expected. I placed the origin of R* and R1* in Central Asia and southern Siberia. I recently proposed that R* men could have belonged to haplogroup U2 (in addition to U4 and U5) and that the European R1 branch would have evolved alongside the U2d and U2e, while the Central/South Asian R2 branch would have been linked to U2a/b/c/i.

I doubt that this 24,000 year old Mal'ta Siberian belongs to U* for the above reason, because U2 was already found in a Russian sample 6000 years old than this one, and because haplogroup U* is over 50,000 years old and would have branched into its main subclades well before 24,000 years ago. 

The Mongoloid feature and absence of East Asian admixture are also expected since the early Steppe people (Proto-Indo-Europeans) had Mongoloid or Proto-Europoid (meaning mixed Mongoloid and Europoid) features and had essentially European haplogroups.

The only surprising thing is that the Mal'ta Siberian had relatively dark skin, perhaps like Native North Americans. That is odd considering that most R1 populations today have white skin, blue eyes, and R1a populations tend to have a high incidence of blond hair too (even in Central Asia). This would mean that the genes for fair skin, blue eyes and blond hair were acquired in Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus) after R1a and R1b moved into the region, and before they re-expanded to Central Europe and Central Asia during the Bronze Age.

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## ElHorsto

The lack of cereal diet could explain why the meat consuming Saami are much darker than their neighbours. But this then should apply even more for dairy consumenting peoples like Indo-Europeans, which would be surprising.

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## Tabaccus Maximus

> The lack of cereal diet could explain why the meat consuming Saami are much darker than their neighbours. But this then should apply even more for dairy consumenting peoples like Indo-Europeans, which would be surprising.


I also would not expect to see depigmentation in a snowy climate, being one who has had "snow-burns" from UV light reflection. Depigmentation requires a cloudy, low-light, non-snowy environment. Several areas come to mind.

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## Tabaccus Maximus

> This would mean that the genes for fair skin, blue eyes and blond hair were acquired in Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus) after R1a and R1b moved into the region, and before they re-expanded to Central Europe and Central Asia during the Bronze Age.


I'd suggest that depigmentation was the result of the intermingling of the R population with HVO's in the Near East, Black and Caspian Sea areas in the pre-Neolithic. It's possibly the last area where significant Neanderthal-Sapien admixture took place and where beneficial depigmentation genes may have persisted in Sapien populated, low-light areas. (I'm assuming Neanderthals had depigmentation)

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## Alan

> I don't get the logic of your argument...the modern Baloch have nothing to tell us about this ancient "R" population because they are "too" South Asian...and yet we're talking about an "R" and "U" population, if the description is accurate (which we don't really know yet) which is a blend of "West Eurasian", "Amerindian" and "SOUTH-EAST" Asian"? Meanwhile, this man was "much darker" than Oetzi? You don't think that's slightly illogical?





> It's interesting that someone broke protocol and somehow got access to the raw data and ran it through a calculator. Not Kosher...but it gives us a glimpse...it looks like the data was run through the MDLP calculator.
> 
> These are the results:
> [2,] “33.7% *Brahui* + 66.3% Udmurd” “21.9804″
> [3,] “34.5% Makrani + 65.5% Udmurd” “22.357″
> [4,] “34.3% *Balochi* + 65.7% Udmurd” “22.413″
> [5,] “33.3% Sindhi + 66.7% Udmurd” “24.1198″
> [6,] “36.5% Burusho + 63.5% Udmurd” “24.211″
> [7,] “39.7% Pashtun + 60.3% Udmurd” “24.3389″
> ...


You brought up the Gedrosia argument and you did also brought up the autosomal DNA of this Siberian individual which shows Baloch admixture. So how is, me using Baloch and Gedrosia in my answer, illogical? Your complaining about this is actually the only illogical thing.




> Not to mention that I fail to see how "Baloch as a population might not be the best representative for prehistoric people belonging to this Gedrosia component, but... individual cases of Baloch...might be representative."


Look the answer is clear on hand and I even explained why the Baloch as a population is not representative for the Gedrosia component. 
~67% of Baloch/Brahui DNA is Gedrosia but what about the other ~33% of which the majority is South and Southwest Asian? Do you assume that 33% of your genes, roughly 1/3, has no role in your physical appearance? 





> I don't think either of these modern populations should be seen as representative...this ancient population no longer exists;


Good this is exactly what I said, this is actually a repetition of my post.




> it was merely meant to be suggestive of the kind of mixture that the authors may be talking about. But if we were to talk about people being representative, shouldn't we look at the group as a whole rather than picking out certain individuals?


But if the population is not representative and has a very significant foreign admixture, than this population as a whole can't be representative for the component. And if you take a good look at the fst distances of these components you will understand why it is that way.

considering fst distances, the closest to the Gedrosia component are Caucasus and North European. While even Caucasus and Gedrosia are like two pieces of one bigger component (West Asian).
When we now consider that most of the non Gedrosia component among Baloch and Brahui is South Asian and Southwest Asian, which both have some non Caucasian affinities or admixture (South Asian allot more than Southwest Asian), wouldn't it make allot of sense to take selectively Balochi individuals which appear physical more West Asian looking than the average? According to me it does. 




> And just how was your determination made as to which individual Baloch are more representative of the Gedrosia component? What standards did you apply...is it just an accident that the individuals you chose happen to be more "European" looking? Sorry, I find that a little suspect.


The individuals I used were in the range of West Asian phenotypes to which the Gedrosian component belongs considering its fst relation. If the individuals end up looking more "European" this is a logically conclusion than accident. 




> Another thing that I don't understand is why these results are causing such a fuss...fair coloring is a mutation that spread because of UV radiation levels too low to provide enough Vitamin D to people living at high latitudes, and a mainly "cereals" diet just exacerbated the problem...at least that seems to be the latest thinking...regardless, this is a relatively late development in human history...


I think you missed the point, how many of the individuals were "fair" to European standards? The decisive factor for the selection of them was based on their physical appearance as a whole. 




> Btw, I think it will be very interesting if we can get phenotypical snps for European hunter gatherers of, say, the Mesolithic era, or even the Neolithic era...a high fish diet has allowed the Eskimos to keep their darker pigmentation even at very high latitudes...I don't see why that might not be the case for European hunter gatherers as well...all that Baltic seal fishing, and Neolithic era river fishing...I'm not predicting it, but it wouldn't surprise me either, particularly if the studies are correct which tie it to a mainly "cereals" diet.


I know and I agree. Again the individuals were selected by me not based on their skin color as a factor (most of the individual had the average Balochi pigmentation) but on their physical features as a whole which contrary to your posted photos had a more Caucasian appearance

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## Dama de Elche

> I don't get the logic of your argument...the modern Baloch have nothing to tell us about this ancient "R" population because they are "too" South Asian...and yet we're talking about an "R" and "U" population, if the description is accurate (which we don't really know yet) which is a blend of "West Eurasian", "Amerindian" and "SOUTH-EAST" Asian"? Meanwhile, this man was "much darker" than Oetzi? You don't think that's slightly illogical? 
> 
> Not to mention that I fail to see how "Baloch as a population might not be the best representative for prehistoric people belonging to this Gedrosia component, but... individual cases of Baloch...might be representative." I don't think either of these modern populations should be seen as representative...this ancient population no longer exists; it was merely meant to be suggestive of the kind of mixture that the authors may be talking about. But if we were to talk about people being representative, shouldn't we look at the group as a whole rather than picking out certain individuals? And just how was your determination made as to which individual Baloch are more representative of the Gedrosia component? What standards did you apply...is it just an accident that the individuals you chose happen to be more "European" looking? Sorry, I find that a little suspect. 
> Another thing that I don't understand is why these results are causing such a fuss...fair coloring is a mutation that spread because of UV radiation levels too low to provide enough Vitamin D to people living at high latitudes, and a mainly "cereals" diet just exacerbated the problem...at least that seems to be the latest thinking...regardless, this is a relatively late development in human history...
> 
> Btw, I think it will be very interesting if we can get phenotypical snps for European hunter gatherers of, say, the Mesolithic era, or even the Neolithic era...a high fish diet has allowed the Eskimos to keep their darker pigmentation even at very high latitudes...I don't see why that might not be the case for European hunter gatherers as well...all that Baltic seal fishing, and Neolithic era river fishing...I'm not predicting it, but it wouldn't surprise me either, particularly if the studies are correct which tie it to a mainly "cereals" diet.


Hello, I am new here. I think this post is very good and logical and makes sense to me.

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## Tabaccus Maximus

I'll quote from Davidski of Eurogenes:

_Perhaps this is why today different clades of Y-DNA R have such disparate regional hotspots, specifically when the more basal lineages are taken into account: R1a in Eastern Europe, R1b in the Near East and Western Europe, and R2 in South Central Asia? Indeed, perhaps this is also why when the Mal'ta individual is forced into modern genome-wide genetic clusters, he appears West Eurasian, South Central Asian and Amerindian? However, eventually, when enough Mammoth Steppe genomes are sequenced, we're likely to see a new cluster emerge that is modal in these samples._
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/201...-americas.html

I think Davidski kind of provides the most likely answer to the questions posed in the first post of this thread.

Basically, rather than Amerindians, West Asians and South Central Asians all being half of the other, essentially what may ultimately be the case is a distinct and wide-spread population of mammoth hunters whose genes have become significant in modern populations.

In other words, the Mal'ta individuals cluster to with Amerindians, West Asians and Indians because those populations have a significant "mammoth hunter" component in their ancestry, not because the Mal'ta individuals had 3/3 of everybody else..

----------


## Twilight

> The 24,000 year old Mal'ta mammoth hunter encampment is rumored to show individuals to belonging to y-chromosomal haplogroup R* (no additional details) and mtdna haplogroup U*. The Afontova Gora individuals from roughly the same time also appear to have the same profile. Dienekes has posted:
> 
> http://dienekes.blogspot.jp/2013/10/...-on-24000.html
> 
> 
> It seems my post on R* and Q* (P-M45) Siberian connections was timely, coming just a few days before the PaleoAmerican Conference, here on Eupedia.
> 
> http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...Mound-Building
> 
> ...


Wait a minite, isn't Mal'ta in the location where the Ket People (Haplogroup Q predominate) claim to have originated? If this is the case or similar, I am very sure this could be Q P or R1 :)

----------


## Angela

For anyone who hasn't read it...this is Razib's analysis:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gn.../#.Um1nFBAlg8I

First he quotes from the latest paper from the Reich group at Harvard, "Efficient moment-based inference of admixture paramaters and sources of gene flow." (The entire paper can be found at: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1212.2555v2.pdf)

"*Our interpretation is that most if not all modern Europeans are descended from at least one large-scale ancient admixture event involving, in some combination, at least one population of Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers; Neolithic farmers, originally from the Near East; and/or other migrants from northern or Central Asia.* Either the first or second of these could be related to the “ancient western Eurasian” branch in Figure 5, and either the first or third could be related to the “ancient northern Eurasian” branch. Present-day Europeans differ in the amount of drift they have experienced since the admixture and in the proportions of the ancestry components they have inherited, but their overall profiles are similar."


He finishes by giving his own speculations:

"The authors assert that pretty much _all_ Europeans exhibit evidence of massive admixture between very distinct lineages. To me this is highly suggestive of events which have roots prior to the Neolithic Revolution. In other words admixture between west and north Eurasian lineages may have occurred in Europe at the end of the last Ice Age, as the continent was being resettled by hunters from the east and south. Later, Neolithic farmers from the Middle East related to the west Eurasian population in Europe during the Pleistocene added a subsequent layer of west Eurasian ancestry, and to a great extent replaced or absorbed the admixed hunter-gatherers. Finally, it seems now entirely possible that a further wave of migrants from Central Asia, who were also an admixed population, erupted into Europe and replaced or absorbed many of the descendants of the Neolithic farmers."

Thought provoking, isn't it? I'm never going to look at admixture calculators and nice neat bar graphs in the same way again...lol.

----------


## ElHorsto

> For anyone who hasn't read it...this is Razib's analysis:
> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gn.../#.Um1nFBAlg8I
> 
> First he quotes from the latest paper from the Reich group at Harvard, "Efficient moment-based inference of admixture paramaters and sources of gene flow." (The entire paper can be found at: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1212.2555v2.pdf)
> 
> "*Our interpretation is that most if not all modern Europeans are descended from at least one large-scale ancient admixture event involving, in some combination, at least one population of Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers; Neolithic farmers, originally from the Near East; and/or other migrants from northern or Central Asia.* Either the first or second of these could be related to the “ancient western Eurasian” branch in Figure 5, and either the first or third could be related to the “ancient northern Eurasian” branch. Present-day Europeans differ in the amount of drift they have experienced since the admixture and in the proportions of the ancestry components they have inherited, but their overall profiles are similar."
> 
> 
> He finishes by giving his own speculations:
> ...


Actually the calculators (with reasonable parameters) were predicting the writing above quite well, even though they do not calculate ancestral roots (of course they don't. I hope nobody was expecting that).

----------


## Angela

Sorry, I couldn't get the image to post...These are the North Eurasian hunter gatherer admixture proportions from Lipson et al

Adygei 0.254-0.461

Basque 0.160-0.385

French 0.184-0.386

Italian 0.210-0.415 (Bergamo)

Orcadian 0.156-0.350

Russian 0.278-0.486

Sardinian 0.150-0.350

Tuscan O.179-0.431

----------


## Tabaccus Maximus

> "*Our interpretation is that most if not all modern Europeans are descended from at least one large-scale ancient admixture event involving, in some combination, at least one population of Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers; Neolithic farmers, originally from the Near East; and/or other migrants from northern or Central Asia.* Either the first or second of these could be related to the “ancient western Eurasian” branch in Figure 5, and either the first or third could be related to the “ancient northern Eurasian” branch. Present-day Europeans differ in the amount of drift they have experienced since the admixture and in the proportions of the ancestry components they have inherited, but their overall profiles are similar."



Here's how I draw the equation based off his own data:

A mixture occuring in the greater Near East...

(Pre-pottery Neolithic farmers H, HV, V, T, U) + (Eastern Ceramic(?) Hunter-Gatherers R*, R1, R2, mt X, mt U) = (West Asian ((White)) People)
In other words, the NW European "Hunter-Gatherer Component" doesn't maternally come from H, HV, V, T, or K, which it is being mistaken for; it is precisely the large presence of asian R* and its cohorts (U3, X1, X2, Q, etc).

The various Caucausian, Gedrosian, Neolithic farmer components are more likely inherited through the maternal lineage of modern Europeans (H, HV, V, T + K)

I may have read Davidski suggest something like this, although his point wasn't exactly clear.

BUT, 

This scenario could potentially answers several questions:

1. The origin of ceramic culture in the Neolithic in Mehrgarh in Balochistan(?) (sorry) and the Near East
2. The origin of ceramics in the New World associated with the pho-western comoponents seen in Mal'ta
3. Why mtdna haplogroups of the Neolithic advance precede the y-components to which they are later yoked (H, HV, V, T + K)
4. The apparent haplogroup discontinuity in Europe from the Paleolithic to the Modern age.

----------


## bicicleur

> There are some especially interesting things about the discovery. One is the apparent lack of any sort of East Asian admixture in the Mal'ta or Afontova individuals, but people who had typical "Mongoloid" features and dark skin.
> 
> This raises several questions about the Mal'ta individuals:
> 
> 1. What kind of R*, or is it even R* and not P-M45 or Q*? Is it R1*, R2*?
> 
> 2. Are the Mal'taian or Afontova hunters related to hunters in Europe? There are striking similarities, also big differences.
> 
> 3. Are Native Americans racially a combined mixture of nomadic West Asian mammoth hunters and East Asians?
> ...


I believe P Q R NO they all originated in Central Asia.
NO where the first, they headed eastwards through Siberia
Then Q also eastwards through Siberia but a more northern route
R1a went northwest, north of Caspian Sea, and R1b south of Caspian Sea
But what about R*? They may have joined Q.
There is some R among native Indians. 
How did it get there? By the first European colonisers or was it there before?
I'd like to know more about this R among native Indians. 
Is it R1a or R1b or R* ? I don't find an answer anywhere.

----------


## Tabaccus Maximus

Dogs domesticated by Euro-Siberian mammoth hunters??????

http://dienekes.blogspot.jp/2013/11/...ated-dogs.html

Rather than start a new post, I figure this has more relevance in this post regarding the 24,000 R/U samples from Siberia.

What's noteworthy is that there was a possible human cultural/genetic/phenotypical link between the peoples spread across the mammoth tundra from Northern Europe to Eastern Siberia.
Apparently the first domesticated dogs appear in the same regions in Europe and Siberia in the archeological timeframe. This would seem to indicate that people, such as found in the Mal'ta and Afontova sites may be partly credited for the long slow process of domestication.

Perhaps wolves followed hunting parties with the anticipation that after processing of a large beast like a mammoth that their would be left overs. It may have been a beneficial relationship if wolves started to develop a protective mentality of their particular hunting party from other packs of wolves. At some point a wolf pup was taken home to camp and raised. The young wolf, well feed, might protect his 'tribe' and these traits were encouraged in later generations.


What is really tantalizing is if the wolf-dog itself was a hunting dog, an the primary weapon of the mammoth hunt. Dogs are used for all sorts of specialized hunting and stock management.
Maybe wolf-dogs were used by mammoth hunters to control, channel or aggravate herds so they could be ambushed.??

----------


## MOESAN

> I've been reading about this quite a bit, too. The archaeology of the area, particularly the dating, seems to be a bit of a mess... some people are claiming that the "R" man is from the Middle Paleolithic, and the definitely "Mongoloid" child found nearby? is from the Late Paleolithic, after the LGM...I don't know given the state of the scholarship what the story is...I think we have to wait until the paper comes out to see where exactly they found the R and U combination, and in what exact archaeological context and with as accurate a date as possible...was it at Mal'ta which might be LGM, or the site further north which was abandoned in the LGM, to be inhabited by people from the east later, or both...but he seems to be definitely "R" and "U", and he is "much darker than Oetzi".
> 
> I don't know why the latter is a particular surprise. I know of one paper that dated blue eyes, for example, to 6,000 B.C., down around the Black Sea, and attributed it to the Neolithic diet not providing enough Vitamin D, and not getting enough of it from the sun at higher latitudes, which meant that this mutation spread very quickly in those populations. The other paper of which I'm aware gives a broad range for light skin mutations in Europeans of about 19,000 to 11,000 years before present. Even the absolutely most ancient date would be after the time of this hunter gatherer, while the 11,000 year old date, 9000 B.C., fits in very nicely with the Neolithic transformation in and around the northern Near East.
> 
> As for how and when the internet got a hold of it, it was leaked by a presenter at the PaleoAmerican conference who spoke to the author of the paper. He later tried to take it down, but it was too late.
> 
> I thought this was a very interesting quote from his blog:
> ADMIXTURE showed West Eurasian, Amerindian and Southeast Asian (Pacific) components. No East Asians again.
> 
> ...


_interesting post of yours Angela - I have few elements to carry in -
concerning pigmentation, I think light hairs light eyes and lightER skin are subsequant mutations which occurred lately, after a first mutation concerning light skin only - 
you can easily go on Dienekes blog and see an abstract about the rs 1426654 SNP on SLC 24AS allele, producing light skin and share ONLY by 'caucasians' (or 'euro-west-asians') and by south Asians (no surprise for me again) - the mutation studied among 1573 individuals and 54 ethnies, WOULD be occurred between 22000 and 28000 years ago, so not so young! the ligh skin mutation of 'mongoloids' is different (it was said long enough time ago) - the abstract says the mutation was selected by natural pressure (climate?) -
the datation of the mutation does not tell us when this mutation became the dominant feature among the populations: selection requires some time as a rule - and we can believe the propagation + selection was not strong in southern lands... what is interesting in that in south Asia a lot of people (less among Dravidians) show very "european" skeletal features compared to skin colour...
concerning Udmuts, even without "pigmentation hobbyists selection" they show (for me) a mix 'europoid-mongoloid' where 'europoid' seem a bit stronger - an indefinite 'N-E Amerindian' taste is not to be excluded also...
read you again_

----------


## Angela

> _interesting post of yours Angela - I have few elements to carry in -
> concerning pigmentation, I think light hairs light eyes and lightER skin are subsequant mutations which occurred lately, after a first mutation concerning light skin only - 
> you can easily go on Dienekes blog and see an abstract about the rs 1426654 SNP on SLC 24AS allele, producing light skin and share ONLY by 'caucasians' (or 'euro-west-asians') and by south Asians (no surprise for me again) - the mutation studied among 1573 individuals and 54 ethnies, WOULD be occurred between 22000 and 28000 years ago, so not so young! the ligh skin mutation of 'mongoloids' is different (it was said long enough time ago) - the abstract says the mutation was selected by natural pressure (climate?) -
> the datation of the mutation does not tell us when this mutation became the dominant feature among the populations: selection requires some time as a rule - and we can believe the propagation + selection was not strong in southern lands... what is interesting in that in south Asia a lot of people (less among Dravidians) show very "european" skeletal features compared to skin colour...
> concerning Udmuts, even without "pigmentation hobbyists selection" they show (for me) a mix 'europoid-mongoloid' where 'europoid' seem a bit stronger - an indefinite 'N-E Amerindian' taste is not to be excluded also...
> read you again_


I agree about the current paper. (The entire Mallick et al paper can be found here:http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/...esentation=PDF)
It is really talking about the emergence, or perhaps more accurately, the coalescence of this mutation, and not when it expanded. Even then, their confidence intervals for that coalescence are huge. 

"We estimated the coalescence time of the rs1426654 mutation at 28,100 years (95% CI - 4,900 to 58,400 years) using BEAST.Using the same mutation rate, the coalescent age estimated by rho statistics was 21,702 years 6-10,282 years. 

For an understanding of the actual selective sweeps involved, I find this paper more informative. 
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/conten....full.pdf+html
The Timing of Skin Pigmentation Lightening in Europeans, Beleza et al

This is one of their conclusions, based on the KITLG gene.
I find this interesting in light of the fact that the Mal'ta boy is dated to 24, 000 years ago, and so maybe from a period before there was complete divergence between West Eurasian, East Eurasian, and perhaps indeed Southeast Eurasian groups, which would explain his admixture results.

"the initial stages of European skin lightening occurred in a proto Eurasian population, about 30,000 years ago, after the out of Africa migration ~60,000 70,000 years ago and slightly more recently than the earliest archaeological evidences for the dispersal of anatomically modern humans in Europe, around 40,000 years ago Recent estimates based on genome wide patterns of variation have suggested that the European and East Asian divergence might have occurred as late as ~25,000 years ago.

This is where they discuss the timing of the selective sweep.
"Our estimates additionally show that the onset of selective sweeps at SLC24A5, SLC45A2,and TYRP1, the three genes in which the geographic distribution of the polymorphisms is primarily restricted to European populations, were much more recent than at KITLG
, and remarkably compressed within the last 11,000-19,000 years (Table 3)."

Based on these dates, they place the time of the sweeps into Europe during the Magdalenian, and posit that it occurred both because of reduced sunlight during the LGM, leading to high risks of Vitamin D deficiency, and the fact that they see a large increase in population during that period, and that would have made these mutations more available in the population.

I'm not sure I agree with that conclusion from the data. Snow and ice conditions would not necessarily decrease sunlight, or at least that's how I understand it, and these H/G's would still have been consuming a high fish diet, which would presumably have somewhat mediated their situation in terms of access to Vitamin D. I also still lean toward the view that the Neolithic technologies produced the large increase in population, instead of resulting from it...

Also, the dates they provide in Table 3 seem to me to support the Neolithic era as the most likely time for the sweeps to have begun, in particular because of the added Vitamin D deficiency stress caused by a majority cereals diet. The data in Table 3 shows that they 
estimated that the selective sweep at _SLC24A5_ occurred around 11.3 KYA (95% CI, 1–55.8 KYA) and 18.7 KYA (5.8–38.3 KYA) under additive and dominant models, respectively [42]. With those kinds of dates and confidence intervals, it seems more than possible to me that the sweep took place during the Neolithic, funnelling out from the northern Near East and into Europe. 

At any rate, the new Mallick et al paper which Dienekes posted does not necessarily see a contradiction between its own results and these slightly older papers. As they say:


"Our Bayesian coalescent age estimate of the rs1426654-A allele at ~28 KYA (95% HPD, 5–58 KYA), as well as the rho-based estimate at 21.7 (±10.3) KYA, are older in their point estimates than both of the above *selective sweep* *date estimates*, although these age estimates have broad and overlapping error margins. This finding is not surprising because sweeps can also operate on standing variation. "

Therefore, they conclude that:


"It appears that the most plausible scenario is that light skin evolved as an adaptation to local environmental conditions as humans started moving to northerly latitudes, with the initial phase of skin lightening occurring in proto Eurasian populations, while genetic variation in _SLC24A5_ formed the later phase which led to lighter skin in Europeans and South Asians, but not East Asians. This was followed by a European-specific selective sweep, which favored the rapid spread of this mutation in these populations. Our coalescence age estimates of 28 KYA (95% HPD 5–58 KYA) show wide margins, also evident in the earlier sweep date estimates for the gene [42]. This can be due to the fact that the power of our analysis was limited by the need to reduce our sequence range to a subset of sites from a region with sufficiently high LD around the rs1426654-A allele and very low level of sequence variation. Therefore, we speculate that narrowing down the coalescence age estimates and specifying the geographic source of the rs1426654-A allele will depend rather on the success of ancient DNA studies than on more extensive sequencing."

----------


## Nobody1

All i know is that Ötzi had the rs1426654 (light-skin) mutation / Neolithic 3300 BC (Alps) and he prob. originated from the Caucasus/Anatolian area; and is by all standards (Genetical/Anthropological) a Mediterranid (Caucasoid);

_Keller et al 2012 -_ p.4/Table1
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...ncomms1701.pdf

----------


## adamo

Do s anyone have a link stream for Italy vs Germany game???

----------


## Angela

> All i know is that Ötzi had the rs1426654 (light-skin) mutation / Neolithic 3300 BC (Alps) and he prob. originated from the Caucasus/Anatolian area; and is by all standards (Genetical/Anthropological) a Mediterranid (Caucasoid);
> 
> _Keller et al 2012 -_ p.4/Table1
> http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...ncomms1701.pdf


I didn't know that...thanks for the information.
So, it was already in Southern European neolithic farmers 5300 years ago.

Of course, this has now reached near fixation in Europe.
This is a chart from Norton et al that shows the levels in HapMap populations. The last three snps on the right are involved with light pigmentation. 
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/conten...010_msl203.pdf

----------


## Angela

I'm sorry...the site won't let me insert the table...which is a word document...if I can figure out how to do it, I'll edit this post or write a new post.

----------


## Sile

> All i know is that Ötzi had the rs1426654 (light-skin) mutation / Neolithic 3300 BC (Alps) and he prob. originated from the Caucasus/Anatolian area; and is by all standards (Genetical/Anthropological) a Mediterranid (Caucasoid);
> 
> _Keller et al 2012 -_ p.4/Table1
> http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...ncomms1701.pdf


really, I read he was a Pontid

later changing the term to ponto-alpinoid

----------


## Angela

I must be having an off day...I don't see cranial measurements anywhere...just light skin.

----------


## Aberdeen

It's interesting that Q and R now appear to have possibly originated in Siberia. The most common Native North American Y haplotype is Q but the next most common overall is R, and R is the most common haplotype in some tribes. I think the R has been assumed to be from post Columbian intermixing, but I don't know how closely that's been looked at. However, there's no mtDNA U among Native North Americans, as far as I know. It all seems to be A, B, C, D and X, with the X haplotype mostly being associated with Y haplotype R.

----------


## Nobody1

> I didn't know that...thanks for the information.
> So, it was already in Southern European neolithic farmers 5300 years ago.
> 
> Of course, this has now reached near fixation in Europe.
> This is a chart from Norton et al that shows the levels in HapMap populations. The last three snps on the right are involved with light pigmentation. 
> http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/conten...010_msl203.pdf


In the South and all other parts of Neolithic agriculture Europe;
Just thinking about Gök4 and the so-called 'Neolithic centers of renewed migration' - Busby et al 2011

----------


## Angela

Sorry, I still can't get it to work properly...

You can see the table here:
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/conten...010_msl203.pdf

----------


## adamo

Any and all y-DNA R in the Americas is due to white modern colonialism; it is a known fact; y-DNA R NEVER crossed the Bering straight into the Americas. Columbus and his cronies may have brought plentiful R though, along with English and French colonizers to North America in particular; the English having dominated the United States from east to west coast and 90% of canada excluding the Inuit great north or French quebec. Mexico though was colonized by the Spanish, not to mention Cuba and other regions of the Americas such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, chile etc. the Portuguese colonized Brazil of course as we know, and the English colonized many caribean islands; a few are Dutch; the French once owned many portions of Louisiana and eastern United States in general but they were ousted by the English, the French are the most present and main ethnicity of quebec; but there are communities in small portions of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and new-Brunswick as well (Acadians). Surprisingly there are also French communities across Vermont and a few more norther eastern states not too far from the quebec border; they were deported and scattered here by the conquering English, I believe several million were spread out across the U.S. In this manner.

----------


## adamo

But trust me; all R in the America's is 1600-1800's colonial Europeans (as early as 1400's in the case of the Spanish and their caribean conquest.)

----------


## adamo

Some 95%+ of American men (Native American of course, from Alaska all the way down to Chile and on the entire peninsula) are haplogroup Q; I suppose usually Q3 (I may be wrong on the precise subclade). Another 2-5% belong to Y-DNA C; the rest are all Q on the paternal line Amerindians have very low diversity.

----------


## adamo

If you take an Amerindian man (excluding ANY that may be mixed wth Europeans); there is a 95-98% chance he will have the Q mutation. If he DOESN'T; it's because he has C; which really is only present in western Canada's British Columbia region in Na-Dene Amerindian groups at a 20-25% maximum frequency.

----------


## adamo

Amerindian mtdna has of course A, B,C,D and sometimes X; but y-DNA virtually consists solely of Q.

----------


## adamo

A is pretty much only found in the Americas (north and south), B is present in East Asia AND north and South America, C is present only in Siberia and north and south america, D is also present in Siberia and the Americas. X is an extremely rare mtdna group that is sometimes found among middle eastern and north-east European populations and is also found among Algonquin Indian groups in the quebec/Vermont region of north-America.

----------


## Angela

> In the South and all other parts of Neolithic agriculture Europe;
> Just thinking about Gök4 and the so-called 'Neolithic centers of renewed migration' - Busby et al 2011


Very good point...

Just for further information, this frequency table for MATP374F is from the Lucotte et al 2011 study. It incorporates data from numerous studies. The frequency levels for this one are lower. I wish they had typed Oetzi for this one

*.*   Distribution of _374F_ allele frequencies in 32 populations of West Europe and North Africa (N = sample size). 
*Country*
*Region/population*
*Latitude (°)*
*N*
*Frequency of 374f*
*References*

1
Germany
Northrhine-Whestphali
50.9
241
0.965
Yuasa et al. (2006)

2

Munich
48.1
93
0.962
 “

3
France
Rheims
49.2
98
0.893
 “

4
Italy
Genoa
44.5
97
0.85
 “

5
Denmark
Copenhagen
56
51
0.98
Lucotte et al. (2010)

6
England
London
51.5
56
0.955
 “

7
Belgium
Brussels
50.5
53
0.934
 “

8
France
Lille
50.5
64
0.945
 “

9

Rennes
48
52
0.971
 “

10

Marseilles
43.2
312
0.888
 “

11

Perpignan
43
101
0.827
 “

12

Corsica
42
328
0.878
 “









Germany
Mulheim
50
59
0.975
 “

14
Switzerland
Basel
47.2
51
0.961
 “

15
Italy
Roma
41.9
64
0.898
 “

16

Napoli
41
128
0.859
 “

17

Sicily
38
39
0.833
 “

18

Sardinia
40
100
0.805
 “

19
Spain
Barcelona
41
59
0.856
 “

20

Sevilla
37.5
71
0.725
 “

21
Portugal
North
42
79
0.725
 “

22

South
38
59
0.780
 “

23
Morocco
Tangier
35.8
123
0.691
 “

24
Algeria
Algier
36.5
141
0.709
 “

25
Tunisia
Tunis
36.5
73
0.610
 “

26
England
Orcades
59
16
1
Norton et al. (2007)

27
France

46
29
0.91
 “

28

Basque
43
24
0.94
 “

29
Italy
Bergamo
46
14
0.96
 “

30

Tuscan
43
8
0.94
 “

31

Sardinia
40
28
0.68
 “

32
Algeria
Mozabite
32
30
0.40
 “

----------


## Nobody1

> Just for further information, this frequency table for MATP374F is from the Lucotte et al 2011 study. It incorporates data from numerous studies. The frequency levels for this one are lower. I wish they had typed Oetzi for this one


Great compilation of it;
Ötzi (and other known corpses) should def. be featured in those charts - maybe the next studies;

----------


## Aberdeen

> Any and all y-DNA R in the Americas is due to white modern colonialism; it is a known fact; y-DNA R NEVER crossed the Bering straight into the Americas. 
> .................


Why is it a known fact? Please provide data concerning sub-clade analysis etc. or I'll think you're just making an assumption and we don't really know yet. Wikipedia says that Y haplotype R

"is the second most predominant Y haplotype found among indigenous Amerindians after Q (Y-DNA). The distribution of R1 is believed to be associated with the re-settlement of Eurasia following the last glacial maximum. One theory put forth is that it entered the Americas with the initial founding population. A second theory is that it was introduced during European colonization. R1 is very common throughout all of Eurasia except East Asia and Southeast Asia. *R1 (M137)* is found predominantly in North American groups like the Ojibwe (79%), Chipewyan (62%), Seminole (50%), Cherokee (47%), Dogrib (40%) and Papago (38%)." 

So the author of the article thinks it's still unclear where all that R DNA came from. But perhaps you have some data that the author of that article didn't have?

----------


## adamo

Modern intermixing with Europeans that long after arrived to the Americas.

----------


## adamo

I repeat; Y-DNA R is not amerind component; it is the result of modern racial mixing that was propagated by the arrival of Europeans to the Americas in the past 200-400 years.

----------


## adamo

If you don't like what I say; if you don't like my answer; ask someone else for an opinion, I'm sure they'll agree with me regardless.

----------


## Aberdeen

> I repeat; Y-DNA R is not amerind component; it is the result of modern racial mixing that was propagated by the arrival of Europeans to the Americas in the past 200-400 years.


Since you're so certain of this, and it's presumably not just an assumption you're making, I guess you must have detailed information about sub-clade analysis or whatever that proves it in a scientific manner. I'm not saying that you're wrong, just that so far your answer seems to be "just because" and I don't see that as a scientific analysis. 

Some of us are going to wonder about this until we see some data that shows there's actually been research done to find out what's going on. Because Q and P are so close together and because they apparently developed in Siberia before people from Siberia colonized the American continents, I think there's a small chance that the R found in North America is pre-Columbian, especially since I haven't yet read about large amounts of other "European" haplotypes being found among Native North American populations. But if someone were to study some of these tribes with a lot of R and find that all the sub-clades are modern European ones, the possibility would be ruled out. Until someone actually looks at the issue in a scientific way, any conclusion about whether it is or isn't all post-Columbian DNA is just conjecture, IMO.

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## adamo

No. Q originated in Siberia; P originated towards Kazakhstan. I just don't get what you don't understand; the men of R1 never traveled as far out as extreme eastern Siberia: men of the R1 clan simply never crossed the Bering straight into the Americas

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## adamo

Both R and Q are downstream of P; they are the only branches sons of P. The Q men would head from Kazakhstan (Central Asia) towards the north and east in particular; eventually migrating from easternmost Siberia across into North America and all the way down to South America. The R men would move slightly more from their original position towards the west (plains of western Russia/ukraine); I would even argue almost south-central Russia (slightly more towards the west though) from here so e would move across parts of Central Asia and even India and all across Europe of course and rarer clades even to Middle East and Africa.

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## Aberdeen

> No. Q originated in Siberia; P originated towards Kazakhstan. I just don't get what you don't understand; the men of R1 never traveled as far out as eastern Siberia: men of the R1 clan simply never crossed the Bering straight into the Americas


Read the first post in this thread and the comments about this subject on the Eurogenes Blog and perhaps you'll get it. In the first post, there's a reference to some material in Deineke's Blog, but in that blog the only reason given for concluding that the Siberian remains aren't related to Native American populations is the assumption that R doesn't appear among Native Americans, when it is in fact the second most common Y haplotype. So the conclusion was based on an incorrect assumption, not a fact. If it's so important to you to convince people that the R in Native North American populations in all post-Columbian, please provide some proof other than the statement that "it's a known fact". At one time, it was a known fact that the earth was flat, but that turned out to not be the case. You're assumption may well be correct. I'm just saying that you haven't provided any evidence yet.

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## adamo

It's like your trying to tell me some Native American guy who's ancestors have lived in the America's for what seems like forever is a y-DNA I1. I mean, really, what are the chances of that? Pretty much zilch; zero. It just isn't representative of American Indian populations; R1 can't be found at those frequencies you posted; because it never passed from Siberia into Alaska. BUT, if we consider the total number of people of European heritage in north-America today, then he source of all this "mystic" R1 becomes all too evident heh.

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## adamo

I just know it; factually, I don't have any little studies or science experiments proving it, but I guarantee you it's of European source origin, ask anyone else.

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## Aberdeen

> I just know it; factually, I don't have any little studies or science experiments proving it, but I guarantee you it's of European source origin, ask anyone else.


Okay, let's look at the facts. Wikipedia tells me that there are approximately 220,000 Ojibwe in North America, and that 79.3% of them are R, 17.5% are Q and 3.2% are "other", although I don't know what that "other" consists of (these figures appear to be from Bolnick's study). Now, their territories were first infiltrated by the English and French. And the English currently have 67% R1b, 4.5% R1a, .5% Q and 28% other. The French currently have 61% R1B, 2.5% R1a, 0% Q and 36.5% other. So, if all the 174,000 Ojibwe people who have R got it from a recent European ancestor, those are very aggressive little R type sperm. 

The figures just don't add up. I'm not saying that some of the R must have been there pre-Columbus. I'm just saying that I think someone needs to look at the situation in more detail, especially in light of recent finds in Siberia. I don't know why my comments would make anyone angry. Is there something wrong with suggesting that we apply the scientific method to a puzzling anomaly?

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## adamo

Whoever liked that comment is brainless let me tell you. No. R1 is not an ancient substratum among Amerindians; it arrived very recently with Europeans; I'm done with this discussion.

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## adamo

I didn't say that your R figures for those Amerindian groups are wrong; I just said it's not one of their genetic components; it was introduced en masse by Europeans within the last 500 years in the Americas.

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## adamo

Common sense is going to prevail here; I'll make sure of it, wether this brainless forum supports me or not; look at everyone validating aberdeen's comments! XD true clowns

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## MOESAN

> Common sense is going to prevail here; I'll make sure of it, wether this brainless forum supports me or not; look at everyone validating aberdeen's comments! XD true clowns


OK Adamo, we are all of us clowns! but let me say Aberdeen is by far less affirmative than you - just trying to have you to understand something surprising could be true even if conter-intuitive at first sight - the better way in this "tennis form discussion" would be wait for deeper SNPs for this Amerindians...
by the way, even the skeletons features of some north-eastern Amerindians stroke me by the poorly mongoloid aspect they had, and here we are speaking about ancient big chiefs of tribes I don't suspect as being "half-blood" -

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## adamo

Watch the results cluster with Europeans, I will laugh so bad.

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## MOESAN

> I agree about the current paper. (The entire Mallick et al paper can be found here:http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/...esentation=PDF)
> It is really talking about the emergence, or perhaps more accurately, the coalescence of this mutation, and not when it expanded. Even then, their confidence intervals for that coalescence are huge. 
> 
> "We estimated the coalescence time of the rs1426654 mutation at 28,100 years (95% CI - 4,900 to 58,400 years) using BEAST.Using the same mutation rate, the coalescent age estimated by rho statistics was 21,702 years 6-10,282 years. 
> 
> For an understanding of the actual selective sweeps involved, I find this paper more informative. 
> http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/conten....full.pdf+html
> The Timing of Skin Pigmentation Lightening in Europeans, Beleza et al
> 
> ...


_interesting reply - 
I red in this thread interesting things and I agree for following: 1) selection can generalize itself after a long enough time, according to life environment and diet -2) external global phenotype on AN UNIQUE MAN cannot tell us a lot about the links with Y, mt and autosomals DNA - 3) an ancient man considered as an admixture upon today autosomals pooled populations could contain in fact a lot of ancestral autosomals and be closer to the VERY authentic pool before separations of its subsets and process of raciation by new mutations + selection which give the today reference autosomals populations (I confess I did not get precisely how these admixtures poolings are made; what is specific to a "typical" population, what is shared with others, what parts of the genome are more or less exposed to mutations and so which of them are better tests fo past) - 
&: concerning Neolithic, diet and pigmentation, I am a bit doubtful: the people in Eurasia which have the less neolithical heritage, as it seems, are the people who have the lightest skins... but it's true all EuropoIds or almost have light skin compared to Subsaharians; if you date the light skin "baby boom" by selection at the Néolithic ages, you put it at a time human kinds protect their bodies as against sun as against cold or wind and rain, so??? the gain of an ONLY VISAGE exposed to sun to accumulate vitamin D seems to me very tiny even if non neglictible ... maybe am I wrong? but I suppose the depigmentation of skin began before the 8000 NC to produce effects in certain places._ and people of the _Atlantic shores have not only neolithic people as ancestors and they had fish in quantity, why are they so depigmented?_ surely more than a factor played
_concerning Y-R and mt-U this discovering seems confirming some bets but I wait bigger sample - Have we some calculations about the parallele fair skin mutation among mongoloids and the chronology with their proper access to agriculture?
thanks_ - sulwezh mad deoc'h!

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## Aberdeen

> Watch the results cluster with Europeans, I will laugh so bad.




If all of the R clusters with Europeans, we will have a definite answer, which is something we don't have now. If most of the R doesn't cluster with Europeans but instead is clearly Native American, we will also have a answer, which is something that we don't have now. Either way, I'm fine with it, since I don't see this as a subject to get emotional about. I'm simply trying to understand the implications of ancient Q and R in Siberia, and think about whether it has anything to do with the peopling of the Americas. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Since the Siberian results apparently included mtDNA U, and I don't think there's U among Native Americans, it's possible that the R (and the Q) from this discovery doesn't relate to the peopling of the Americas.

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## adamo

Getting emotional lolllll, deffinetly a genetics amature with that paragraph

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## Thulean

> Any and all y-DNA R in the Americas is due to white modern colonialism; it is a known fact; y-DNA R NEVER crossed the Bering straight into the Americas.



Adamo,
maybe you're right saying that Y-Dna didn't cross over to America through the Bering strait - I rather believe it crossed through the Atlantic, already in prehistoric times.

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## bicicleur

> Why is it a known fact? Please provide data concerning sub-clade analysis etc. or I'll think you're just making an assumption and we don't really know yet. Wikipedia says that Y haplotype R
> 
> "is the second most predominant Y haplotype found among indigenous Amerindians after Q (Y-DNA). The distribution of R1 is believed to be associated with the re-settlement of Eurasia following the last glacial maximum. One theory put forth is that it entered the Americas with the initial founding population. A second theory is that it was introduced during European colonization. R1 is very common throughout all of Eurasia except East Asia and Southeast Asia. *R1 (M137)* is found predominantly in North American groups like the Ojibwe (79%), Chipewyan (62%), Seminole (50%), Cherokee (47%), Dogrib (40%) and Papago (38%)." 
> 
> So the author of the article thinks it's still unclear where all that R DNA came from. But perhaps you have some data that the author of that article didn't have?



It's just a theory I think, I don't find any more info either.
It is strange this was never investigated further, they could have checked whether it was R1* or R1a or R1b
I've read once most native Amerindians are opposed to further tests on their DNA
If you look at the mtDNA X distribution and compare it with R1 in America, it looks like both entered America together.
If you compare R1 with Q distribution in the far eastern tip of Siberia, you'll notice some similarities.
I'd say these are hints that R1 realy came to America via Beringia.

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## bicicleur

> The 24,000 year old Mal'ta mammoth hunter encampment is rumored to show individuals to belonging to y-chromosomal haplogroup R* (no additional details) and mtdna haplogroup U*. The Afontova Gora individuals from roughly the same time also appear to have the same profile. Dienekes has posted:
> 
> http://dienekes.blogspot.jp/2013/10/...-on-24000.html


Does anyone know when the full report will be published?

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## Tabaccus Maximus

I think the discussion got a little off track so let me clarify a few things.

1. There is excitment because, apparently, an individual from Mal'ta had Mongoloid features and the same individual lacked an "East Asian" autosomal component. At least that is what I've read in a number of forums. That is unusual and *could* mean Mongoloid features are distinct from an "East Asian" component identified. I other words, two distinct Asian races existed that later fused so that Mongoloid features and East Asian ancestry are always (now) seen together.

2. There really is no implication that R* should be found in the Americas. Not saying it's not possible, but it is unlikely for the reason that all American R*'s are downstream of fairly recent European R's.
Also European R's are fairly recent to Europe itself. Again, we won't know what kind of R* until the paper is published. It could be R2 or something else. 

3. Because Amerindians do have "East Asian" admixture, it means that the non-East Asian component (P-M45>Q-M242) or just Q* can be isolated for the other 60 or so percent.
That is huge because Northern Europeans also seen to have a sort of binary autosomal ancestry consisting of a Near Eastern component(s) and another component (now probably associated with R*).

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## Aberdeen

> I think the discussion got a little off track so let me clarify a few things.
> 
> .................
> 
> 2. There really is no implication that R* should be found in the Americas. Not saying it's not possible, but it is unlikely for the reason that all American R*'s are downstream of fairly recent European R's.
> .........


When you make a statement of fact, it would be helpful if you could provide some proof of your assertion, as some of us aren't as knowledgeable about DNA as you are.

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## adamo

Yeah; we can see that.

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## adamo

And read Tabbacus text; a vivid and appropriate explanation; very thorough.

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## adamo

look at mtdna B; found in the Americas and in east Asia; it can be found in both Mexican and Chinese females....there is minimal but present component shared by Amerindians and East Asians; a much larger piece though is shared by Amerindians and siberians in particular; maybe not the same subclades, but y-DNA Q is found in Siberia and the Americas; mtdna C is found in Siberia and the Americas, etc.

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## Aberdeen

Adamo, in my opinion, your comments don't have much to do with what I said, and are in fact taking the thread off topic. My original question also did, but I was interested in what I thought might be an interesting side issue. And any time someone makes a definite statement of fact, I want to know whether they have data to support it or whether it's a "well known fact", i.e., an assumption (although looking at other posts made by Tabaccus Maximus, I would expect a statement made by TM to be based on data). 

However, if we look at what TM said in his points 1 and 3, I can understand why he wants the emphasis of this thread to be on the questions of whether Mongoliod and East Asian components were once separate. Even though I'm not a geneticist, I can see that if you had Mongoliod DNA without any East Asian component, it might be easier to measure each of those in modern populations that are both Mongoliod and South Asian. And I suppose the people whose remains have been found aren't necessarily ancestral to modern East Asian and Native American people - if Q and P developed elsewhere, this could just be an isolated group that wandered away from their ancestral homeland to hunt reindeer. So I suppose most people who look at this find are more interested in the question of whether Q was once Mongoliod but not East Asian. Certainly these people's descendants didn't people the Americas unless they first merged with East Asians.

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## Angela

> _interesting reply - 
> I red in this thread interesting things and I agree for following: 1) selection can generalize itself after a long enough time, according to life environment and diet -2) external global phenotype on AN UNIQUE MAN cannot tell us a lot about the links with Y, mt and autosomals DNA - 3) an ancient man considered as an admixture upon today autosomals pooled populations could contain in fact a lot of ancestral autosomals and be closer to the VERY authentic pool before separations of its subsets and process of raciation by new mutations + selection which give the today reference autosomals populations (I confess I did not get precisely how these admixtures poolings are made; what is specific to a "typical" population, what is shared with others, what parts of the genome are more or less exposed to mutations and so which of them are better tests fo past) - 
> &: concerning Neolithic, diet and pigmentation, I am a bit doubtful: the people in Eurasia which have the less neolithical heritage, as it seems, are the people who have the lightest skins... but it's true all EuropoIds or almost have light skin compared to Subsaharians; if you date the light skin "baby boom" by selection at the Néolithic ages, you put it at a time human kinds protect their bodies as against sun as against cold or wind and rain, so??? the gain of an ONLY VISAGE exposed to sun to accumulate vitamin D seems to me very tiny even if non neglictible ... maybe am I wrong? but I suppose the depigmentation of skin began before the 8000 NC to produce effects in certain places._ and people of the _Atlantic shores have not only neolithic people as ancestors and they had fish in quantity, why are they so depigmented?_ surely more than a factor played
> _concerning Y-R and mt-U this discovering seems confirming some bets but I wait bigger sample - Have we some calculations about the parallele fair skin mutation among mongoloids and the chronology with their proper access to agriculture?
> thanks_ - sulwezh mad deoc'h!


I doubtless expressed it poorly, but I also see the Mal'ta boy as indicating that perhaps the differentiation into discrete "racial" or continental breeding groups, which, in my opinion, is not even possible today, was even less possible 24,000 years ago. When his genome is run through an admixture program at K=3, and shows a mix of "West Eurasian", "South Central Asian" and "Amerindian", it may be informative in a general way for direction of gene flow into the area in very ancient times, but it may also just show the differentiation that would someday develop as different breeding groups of humans became more isolated from one another.

As to whether people bearing yDNA "R" existed at this time in Europe, I don't know...there are several anaAs for this group in Siberia, I think it's possible that they turned southwest in response to climatic conditions and sought a refugia elsewhere. 

Also, while phenotype may not say anything specific about all yDNA R, or mtDNA U people 24,000 years ago, I think we can say that even after thousands of years in the far north, the pigmentation of these hunter gatherers was still "much darker" than Oetzi's, and, as we know, Oetzi carried the SLC 24A5 "depigmentation" gene. That correlates with the tentative dating of various analyses of pigmentation changes in human populations. (Hopefully, when the paper becomes available, we will also be able to see data on other aspects of his phenotype and genotype.)

More specifically as concerns the development of lighter pigmentation, as I said, the Beleza et al paper makes sense to me...http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/conten....full.pdf+html

As they point out, different mutations occurred and expanded at different times. They date the KIT gene which is present in both West Eurasians and East Asians pretty early, to approximately 30,000 yago.

These are the dates they provide:
KITLG 30,000
TYRP1 14,000
SLC45A2 13,720
SLC24A5 11,368

Of course, as I said, these numbers have huge confidence intervals. However, the data we have for Oetzi, and supposedly have for the Mal'ta boy, are roughly consistent with this. More ancient DNA will give us more data points.

The only place where I think that paper goes wrong is in categorizing SLC24A5 as having a European distribution. It has a West Eurasian distribution; it also reaches fixation or 1 in the Druze, and the number for the Palestinians is .99 and for the Bedouin .97. Given the more recent inflow into that area from SSA and East Africa, I lean toward the idea that it was originally also fixed in them. Razib Khan made the same point on his blog. That, I think, might tie into the idea of a Neolithic spread for this gene.

This is the table, from Norton et al 2007, which I posted up thread as well.
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/conten...010_msl203.pdf

It is SLC45A2 which has not broadly reached fixation even in Europe. The chart can be found in post #45 of this thread. This is a map from the Lucotte et al paper which shows the distribution in Europe...(MAPT374G is SLC45A2).
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gn...3/slc45a21.png

This, even if it originated earlier than SLC45A2, might have had its sweep later. I just don't think there's enough data right now to be sure when or from where it spread...

I'm more comfortable with the idea that the SLC24A5 gene spread out from the Middle East. Whether it was late Mesolithic or early Neolithic and whether it was tied to a cereals diet, I don't know, but I think it merits further investigation.

As to the later East Asian snps which lightened pigmentation, I think even less research has been done on those.

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## adamo

Y-DNA Q is found in 98% of Native American male lineages and is also a substratum among Siberian lineages; it is NOT associated with these mongoloids you speak of.

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## adamo

Nor is it present in south or East Asian samples.

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## Aberdeen

Here's what Science Magazine had to say about the find on October 13, 2013. Maybe the descendants of this boy's cousins did team up with some Q (and C) haplotype folk, intermix with East Asians and eventually cross the Bering Strait. That's the possibility this article seems to be focussed on.

"Where did the first Americans come from? Most researchers agree that Paleoamericans moved across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia sometime before 15,000 years ago, suggesting roots in East Asia. But just where the source populations arose has long been a mystery. Now comes a surprising twist, from the complete nuclear genome of a Siberian boy who died 24,000 years ago—the oldest complete genome of a modern human sequenced to date. His DNA shows close ties to those of today's Native Americans. Yet he apparently descended not from East Asians, but from people who had lived in Europe or western Asia. The finding suggests that about a third of the ancestry of today's Native Americans can be traced to "western Eurasia," with the other two-thirds coming from eastern Asia, according to a talk at a meeting* here by ancient DNA expert Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen. It also implies that traces of European ancestry previously detected in modern Native Americans do not come solely from mixing with European colonists, as most scientists had assumed, but have much deeper roots. The Mal'ta boy was related to people who later migrated across Beringia to the Americas. 

"I'm still processing that Native Americans are one-third European," says geneticist Connie Mulligan of the University of Florida in Gainesville. "It's jaw-dropping." At the very least, says geneticist Dennis O'Rourke of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, "this is going to stimulate a lot of discussion." Researchers have been trying to parse the origins of the first Americans for decades. Most agree that people moved across Beringia, via a vast ice age land bridge, and began spreading through the Americas, reaching Chile by 14,500 years ago. But the origins of the source populations are not clear, and some archaeologists have even suggested that ancient Europeans crossing the Atlantic were part of the mix. Others have contended that early skeletons found in the Americas, such as the 9000-year-old Kennewick Man, show some European features. In his talk, Willerslev argued that the ancient genome "can actually explain a lot of these inconsistencies," by offering glimpses of prehistoric populations before more recent migrations and other demographic events blurred the picture. The genome comes from the right upper arm bone of a boy aged about 4 years, who lived by Siberia's Belaya River. Those who buried him adorned his grave with flint tools, pendants, a bead necklace, and a sprinkling of ochre. In the 1920s, Russian archaeologists discovered the burial and other artifacts near a village called Mal'ta, which gave the celebrated site its name. Willerslev and co-author Kelly Graf of Texas A&M University in College Station, traveled to the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the boy's remains are housed, and took a bone sample. Willerslev reported that the team was able to sequence the boy's genome, and also to radiocarbon date the bone. The team then used a variety of statistical methods to compare the genome with that of living populations. They found that a portion of the boy's genome is shared only by today's Native Americans and no other groups, showing a close relationship. Yet the child's Y chromosome belongs to a genetic group called Y haplogroup R, and its mitochondrial DNA to a haplogroup U. Today, those haplogroups are found almost exclusively in people living in Europe and regions of Asia west of the Altai Mountains, which are near the borders of Russia, China, and Mongolia. One expected relationship was missing from the picture: The boy's genome showed no connection to modern East Asians. DNA studies of living people strongly suggest that East Asians—perhaps Siberians, Chinese, or Japanese—make up the major part of Native American ancestors. 

So how could the boy be related to living Native Americans, but not to East Asians? "This was kind of puzzling at first," Willerslev told the meeting. But there seemed little doubt that the finding was correct, he said, because nearly all Native Americans from North and South America were equally related to the Mal'ta child, indicating that he represented very deep Native American roots. The team proposes a relatively simple scenario: Before 24,000 years ago, the ancestors of Native Americans and the ancestors of today's East Asians split into distinct groups. The Mal'ta child represents a population of Native American ancestors who moved into Siberia, probably from Europe or west Asia. Then, sometime after the Mal'ta boy died, this population mixed with East Asians. The new, admixed population eventually made its way to the Americas. Exactly when and where the admixture happened is not clear, Willerslev said. But the deep roots in Europe or west Asia could help explain features of some Paleoamerican skeletons and of Native American DNA today. 

"The west Eurasian [genetic] signatures that we very often find in today's Native Americans don't all come from postcolonial admixture," Willerslev said in his talk. "Some of them are ancient." The talk sparked lively exchange, and not everyone was ready to buy the team's scenario, at least until they can read the full paper, which is in press at Nature. "This is a lot to hang on one skeleton," Mulligan says. Willerslev said during the discussion that his group is now trying to sequence the genomes of skeletons "further west." The new findings are consistent with a report published in Genetics last year (and almost entirely ignored at the time) that used modern DNA to conclude that Native Americans have significant—and ancient—ties to Europeans. "Our group is very excited to see this," says Alexander Kim, who works with geneticist David Reich at Harvard Medical School in Boston and represented the group at the meeting. Reich's team found that populations they identified as Native American ancestors in Asia apparently also contributed genes to populations in northern Europe. Thus, both studies suggest a source population in Asia whose genes made their way east all the way to the Americas, and west, all the way to Europe. "Mal'ta might be a missing link, a representative of the Asian population that admixed both into Europeans and Native Americans," Reich says. If so, he adds, it shows "the value of ancient DNA in peeling back history and resolving mysteries that are difficult to solve using only present day samples."

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## adamo

I guess because P splits into Q and R whereas most East Asians being y-DNA O, descend from K directly without the P mutation? Although of course Tibetans and Japanese have like 40-50% y-DNA D and I guess you can find C at 5-15%......maybe not! it would be nice to get more opinions on this subject.

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## Tabaccus Maximus

> any time someone makes a definite statement of fact, I want to know whether they have data to support it or whether it's a "well known fact"


I will try to reference assertions better. Often I am travelling or between computers and phones so I am unable to easily reference studies or books.

As far as Amerindian y-dna studies, there are two referenced in Wikipedia that you can link to, there was also one by Hammer et al, free here
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/1/164.short 

In essence, the MRCA of NE American R1's is typical of colonial multi-progenitors or is downstream of P25. That doesn't necessarily preclude Viking or Irish settlement in the pre-Columbian era though, and there could theoretically be a very low frequency of indistinct R that diffused from a modern pre-columbian East Coast settlement that has yet to be detected. Given the North Sea endonym "spillers of semen", I'm sure if Vikings were on American soil for five minutes they did Vikingeske things.

But I doubt any R crossed the Beringa in the 10k years prior to this for the reason that it would probably be incredibily distinct and proliferated R which doesn't appear the case.

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## Tabaccus Maximus

One follow-up though;

The diffusion pattern of mtdna haplogroup X in the Americas is a bit puzzling. It's been suggested it came to North America with Solutreans, which I no longer support. I makes more sense that it originates in the Yenesian Basin on the basis of Mal'ta automsomal results and the Yenesian-Dene connection that has been well recieved. But again the distribution pattern doesn't really fit, for it is absent in South America. [Headscratch]

Perhaps that is because Amerindians of the southern continent were a founder of boat people who travelled down the Western coast??

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1226041/

The plot thickens.

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## Aberdeen

> ...........
> 
> As far as Amerindian y-dna studies, there are two referenced in Wikipedia that you can link to, there was also one by Hammer et al, free here
> http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/1/164.short 
> 
> .............


The Oxford Journal paper said "however, most haplogroup R lineages present in Native Americans most likely came from recent admixture with Europeans." That sounds like an assumption to me. However, I'll look at the two other papers you mentioned, some time in the next day or two - I don't have time right now.

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## adamo

Aberdeen is getting it now : ). I truly doubt any Vikings reproduced with amerinds based on the fact that had they done this "en masse" there would be a higher frequency of I1 lineages among amerinds as well; to me it's just a result of our most modern time's global mixing.

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## Aberdeen

The 2008 paper by Ripon Singh seems to be no longer available. However, in the 2003 paper by Bortolini, I found these comments.

 "Tarazona-Santos and Santos (2002) questioned the idea that M45b constitutes a Native American founder lineage, since haplotype 3 (character- ized by alleles 14-12-24-11-13-13) is common in Euro- pean populations (Weale et al. 2002), and its presence in Native Americans could be the result of recent admixture. However, although we did not ﬁnd this haplotype in Mongolia, closely related lineages (including a one-step neighbor) are present in that region (haplotype 2 in table 4 and ﬁg. 4D). Furthermore, Lell et al. (2002) observed the four-locus equivalent of haplotype 3 (and other closely related haplotypes) in populations from Siberia. The high frequency of haplogroup P-M45* in the Chipewayan (63%; ﬁg. 2) also makes it unlikely that all these chromosomes result from admixture, since such a predominant European ancestry seems inconsistent with the preservation of the cultural identity of this population. A high level of European ancestry in the Chipewayan is also likely to introduce other lineages that are common in Europe (such as DE-YAP* and Y*; ﬁg. 2). However, these were not observed in our sample or in the populations examined by Lell et al. (2002). By comparison, the lineage distribution in South Amerinds is more con- sistent with a low level of admixture: other than P-M45*, haplogroups Y*, DE-YAP*, and E-M2 (common in Europe and Africa) are also observed in some of the populations examined (ﬁg. 2). Thus, although some of the P-M45* chromosomes found in South Amerinds seem to be of nonnative origin, it is doubtful that the same applies for a large fraction of those observed in the Chipewayan. In fact, the prevalence of major Y lineages in the Chipewayan (including an elevated frequency of P-M45*) is typical of some central Siberian populations (such as the Selkup, Yakut, and Kets), as illustrated by the close afﬁnity of these populations ..."

----------


## bicicleur

> I think the discussion got a little off track so let me clarify a few things.
> 
> 
> 2. There really is no implication that R* should be found in the Americas. Not saying it's not possible, but it is unlikely for the reason that all American R*'s are downstream of fairly recent European R's.


I'd like to know where you got this.
I've read this very often myself, but only from people who have this from hear-say.

----------


## bicicleur

> I'd like to know where you got this.
> I've read this very often myself, but only from people who have this from hear-say.


Ok, TM I see that you allready mentioned your sources, but I agree with the remarks that Aberdeen gave on them

----------


## Alan

> Ancient DNA from Upper Paleolithic Lake Baikal (Mal'ta and Afontova Gora) 
> The study I mentioned in a previous post has now been made available in Nature. Two Upper Paleolithic Siberians (24-17kya) have been sequenced at low coverage. The better quality (and older) Mal'ta (MA-1) sample belongs to Y-haplogroup R and mtDNA haplogroup U, and the younger (but poorer quality) Afontova Gora (AG-2) sample appears to be related to it.
> 
> 
> Most interestingly, there is evidence for gene flow between the MA-1 sample and Native Americans, which makes sense as these are Siberians of the period leading up to the initial colonization of the Americas. The interesting thing is that MA-1 does not appear to be East Eurasian, as proven by the test D(Papuan, Han; Sardinian, MA-1) which is non-significant, so MA-1 is not more closely related to Han than to Papuans (which is true for modern native Americans). So, it seems that the gene flow between MA-1 and Native Americans was towards Native Americans from MA-1 and not vice versa.
> 
> It is fascinating that such a sample could be found so far east at so early a time. Both Y-chromosome R and mtDNA haplogroup U are very rare east of Lake Baikal which has been considered a limit of west Eurasian influence into east Eurasia. And, indeed, both these haplogroups are absent in Native Americans, so it is not yet clear how Native Americans (who belong to Y-chromosome haplogroups Q and C and mtDNA haplogroups A, B, C, D, X) are related to these Paleolithic Siberians. The obvious candidate for this relationship is Y-chromosome haplogroup P (the ancestor of Q and R). So, perhaps Q-bearing relatives of the R-bearing Mal'ta population settled the Americas.
> 
> In any case, this is an extremely important sample, as its position in "no man's land" in the PCA plot (left) demonstrates, between Europeans and native Americans but close to no modern population.
> ...


http://dienekes.blogspot.de/

It appears like this ydna R* mummy was a settler who originally came more from West. autosomal he appears to be between West Eurasians and Native Americans. The interesting part here is that actually Native Americans themselves seem to have dual ancestry.

My own conclusion is that this R* individual is a migrant who came from further West, likely from Central Asia.

----------


## Angela

The autosome admixture portion of the paper begins around page 55. 



The first results are the ones from the Admixture Program.


Here are the actual percentages:
South Asian(looks modal in Malayans?) 37
N.Euro 34
Amerindian(Karitiana component) 16
Athabascan(Greenlanders) 10
Papuan 4

This is the interpretation from the authors of the paper:

"At K = 9, MA-1 is composed of five genetic components of which the two major ones make up ca. 70% of the total. The most prominent component is shown in green and is otherwise prevalent in South Asia but does also appear in the Caucasus, Near East or even Europe. The other major genetic component (dark blue) in MA-1 is the one dominant in contemporary European populations, especially among northern and northeastern Europeans. The co-presence of the European-blue and South Asian-green in MA-1 can be interpreted as admixture of the two in MA-1 or, alternatively, MA-1 could represent a proto-western Eurasian prior to the split of Europeans and South Asians. This analysis cannot differentiate between these two scenarios.Most of the remaining nearly one third of the MA-1 genome is comprised of the two genetic components that make up the Native American gene pool (orange and light pink). Importantly, MA-1 completely lacks the genetic components prevalent in extant East Asians and Siberians (shown in dark and light yellow, respectively). Based on this result, it is likely that the current Siberian genetic landscape, dominated by the genetic components depicted in light and dark yellow (Figure SI 6), was formed by secondary wave(s) of immigrants from East Asia


There were concerns about the reliability of the run given the low coverage analysis, so they used another program as well: “Since the MA-1 genome has an average sequencing depth of 1X, most of its genotypes can only be called with very high uncertainty. Therefore, in addition to the ADMIXTURE analysis described above, a new method called NGSadmix for performing admixture analyses was employed.”

\Ancestry Results using NGS admix Page 59


This is my estimate just by eyeballing it:
Chuvash 40
Lezgin 20
Balochi 15
Athabascan 15
Karitiana 8-10

(At K=2, Mal’ta seems to be 75% West Eurasian? and 25% Han.)

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## bicicleur

there must have been multiple entries into America from different ethnic groups
there are 3 Y haplogroups among native Indians and 5 mtDNA haplogroups
all 3 Y haplogroups and X mtDNA still have their own distinct distribution in America which shows they entered America seperately 
Y-R1 probably came together with mt-X , they are the west Eurasian connection
Y-C3 and mt-B are the main East Asian connection
Y-Q1a3 and mt-C are the connection with Altaï-Siberians

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## Maciamo

More information about the Mal'ta boy was published in Nature a few hours ago. It says that "_the Y chromosome of MA-1 is basal to modern-day western Eurasians and near the root of most Native American lineages_". The haplogroup that best matches this definition is P, not R*.

The article continues with:
"_Our findings reveal that western Eurasian genetic signatures in modern-day Native Americans derive not only from post-Columbian admixture, as commonly thought, but also from a mixed ancestry of the First Americans._"

I have read that some people jumped to the conclusion that Amerindians were of mixed European and Siberian blood. In other words, Palaeolithic Europeans migrated east to Siberia and mingled with the local tribes there, just as Bronze/Iron Age Indo-Europeans and modern Russians did much later. While this is possible, *I would find it more plausible that both Europeans and Amerindians descend from a common ancestor in Central/North Asia, who belonged to Y-DNA P and mtDNA U and X (and perhaps also C)*. This root population would have split in two branches: R and Q, the former migrating west to the Pontic-Caspian region and the Middle East, and the latter staying in Siberia and migrating to the Americas. The autosomal admixture that is common to both modern West Eurasians and Native Americans would be the one associated with haplogroups P, Q and R. Since most hg R was limited to Eastern Europe until the Late Chalcolithic to Bronze Age, it is likely that Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and even Neolithic Europeans beyond Eastern Europe had little or no genetic admixture found in the Mal'ta boy. There might have been some element shared matrilineally through mt-hg U, but U is so old (perhaps as much as 60,000 years old) that any similitude would be very distant.

Regarding the Amerindians, their East Asian component is thought to have arrived through a second wave migration (post-Clovis), which would have brought at least Y-DNA C3 and mtDNA A, B, (C) and D. It is unclear whether both migrations brought Y-hg Q1a (perhaps different subclades), or if it was only the second wave. It is actually not impossible that the first people to colonise the American continent belonged to Y-hg R* or R1* and mtDNA X (+ C and U ?), and that these only survive among some North American tribes, especially in the eastern USA and Canada.

*MtDNA C* is an intriguing lineage since it is most common today among Amerindians, East Asians and Siberians, but it was also found at relatively high frequency in Mesolithic Fennoscandia (C* and C5 in the Kola peninsula), in Pre-pottery Neolithic B Syria (C1), in Neolithic Ukraine (C4a2), in Neolithic Hungary (C5) as well as in Chalcolithic to Iron Age Russia. The C4a2 in in the Pontic Steppe is particularly interesting since C4 is also one of the lineages typical of Amerindians (although it is C4c). That is why I believe that C4* could have been one of the maternal lineages linked to Y-DNA P, Q and R. The C1 in early Neolithic Syria is even more interesting, since C1 is the main Amerindian variety of C and R1b-V88 is thought to have arrived in the Levant shortly before the Neolithic. So indirectly this 8000-year-old Levantine C1 could be an indirect proof that R1b was indeed already present in the region at the time. 

The C4a2 samples from Neolithic Ukraine came from the Dnieper-Donets and were dated around 5300 BCE. They were found alongside haplogroups H, T, U1 (?) and U3, all lineages that are much more likely to have come with Near Eastern immigrants rather than to have belonged to Mesolithic Northeast Europeans. This can either represent a Neolithic expansion from Southeast Europe (Y-DNA E-V13, G2a and/or J2b), or the arrival of R1b from Anatolia/Mesopotamia. The presence of C4a2, a typically West/South Siberian lineage, also found in the Altai region, would make me believe that it was an R1b migration.

I have also wondered about the origin of the two *U4 samples from ancient Sumer*, including one sample clearly identified as U4a2b, a subclade found almost exclusively in Central Europe today. U4 is possibly the maternal lineage most strongly correlated with Y-DNA R1a. In has been found among Mesolithic Northeast and Central Europeans and peaks nowadays in the Baltic and Volga-Ural region. What is it doing in pre-Indo-European Sumer ? Was it also one of the U subclades linked with the root of haplogroup R1 ? In that case it could have been brought to Mesopotamia by early R1b tribes. That _could_ mean that R1b was also involved in the development of the Sumerian civilisation. The most recent hypothesis about the origins of the Maykop culture is that it was founded by Uruk settlers from Mesopotamia. This Uruk was a Sumerian city, it all fits.

----------


## Alan

> "At K = 9, MA-1 is composed of five genetic components of which the two major ones make up ca. 70% of the total. The most prominent component is shown in green and is otherwise prevalent in South Asia but does also appear in the Caucasus, Near East or even Europe.



If it's equal common in South Asia, Caucasus and Near East, it might be something like Gedrosia.

But if it is most common in South Asia, it could be ANI.




> This is my estimate just by eyeballing it:
> Chuvash 40
> Lezgin 20
> Balochi 15
> Athabascan 15
> Karitiana 8-10


 As I thought. the Lezgins are the group with the highest percentage of Gedrosia in the Caucasus. And Balochi is where it peaks. Sounds like something similar to Gedrosia to me.

----------


## bicicleur

> The article continues with:
> "_Our findings reveal that western Eurasian genetic signatures in modern-day Native Americans derive not only from post-Columbian admixture, as commonly thought, but also from a mixed ancestry of the First Americans._"


There has been found R1 among native Indians (mainly Algonquin tribes). Uptill now early European colonists were blaimed for this ('post-Columbian admixture') , and the R1 results were excluded from many studies about migrations to America.
Now appearantly, the authors doubt the theory about 'post-Columbian admixture'

----------


## bicicleur

> Regarding the Amerindians, their East Asian component is thought to have arrived through a second wave migration (post-Clovis), which would have brought at least Y-DNA C3 and mtDNA A, B, (C) and D. It is unclear whether both migrations brought Y-hg Q1a (perhaps different subclades), or if it was only the second wave.


I'm very interested, I'd like to know more about that 'post-Clovis migration'.
Clovis migration must have been 13000 years ago and there was a pre-Clovis migration 

http://archaeology.about.com/od/clov...vis_people.htm

Proof for pre-Clovis is 14500 year old findings in Monte Verde, Chile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde

I suspect : 
- pré-Clovis y-Q1a (mostly Q1a3, also found in the Siberian Altaï) + mt C
- Clovis y-R1 + mt X , R1 originating from Mal'ta via Dyuktai cave
check Mal'ta and Dyuktai culture, they had Solutrean-like spearpoints that look like precursors of Clovis spearpoints
- post-Clovis C3 + mt B coming from China after LGM

I'm very interested to learn more about that post-Clovis migration.
Can you tell me more or reveal your sources?

----------


## bicicleur

> I have also wondered about the origin of the two *U4 samples from ancient Sumer*, including one sample clearly identified as U4a2b, a subclade found almost exclusively in Central Europe today. U4 is possibly the maternal lineage most strongly correlated with Y-DNA R1a. In has been found among Mesolithic Northeast and Central Europeans and peaks nowadays in the Baltic and Volga-Ural region. What is it doing in pre-Indo-European Sumer ? Was it also one of the U subclades linked with the root of haplogroup R1 ? In that case it could have been brought to Mesopotamia by early R1b tribes. That _could_ mean that R1b was also involved in the development of the Sumerian civilisation. The most recent hypothesis about the origins of the Maykop culture is that it was founded by Uruk settlers from Mesopotamia. This Uruk was a Sumerian city, it all fits.


West of Mal'ta there was the Afantova-Yenesei culture (22000-14000 YBP).
Could they be related? Did they also have y-R or R1 and mt-U?
Could R1a and/or R1b descend from them?

Re U4 in Summer, why do you associate this with R1b. Do you think R1b could have been in ancient Summer too? It seems such a long way ..

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## Aberdeen

There's an article on the BBC News website that seems to be suggesting that the R type folks may have migrated into North America separately. If that did happen, I would agree with bicicleur's earlier suggestion that mtDNA X2 was also part of that, since the distribution of X2 seems to correlate somewhat with tribes that have a high level of R. However, I'm not convinced that R arrived separately from Q simply if the second wave was consisted of the Dene people, since although high amounts of R do appear in some Dene tribes, it reaches the highest level among a tribe that speaks a language that's a member of the Algonquin tribal group and it's also common among Iroquian and Sioux people, and also the Seminole. On the other hand, elevated levels of R seem to be absent from South America, except for one small group in the Amazon area, which suggests that R wasn't part of the initial founding group.

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## Angela

> More information about the Mal'ta boy was published in Nature a few hours ago. It says that "_the Y chromosome of MA-1 is basal to modern-day western Eurasians and near the root of most Native American lineages_". The haplogroup that best matches this definition is P, not R*.
> 
> The article continues with:
> "_Our findings reveal that western Eurasian genetic signatures in modern-day Native Americans derive not only from post-Columbian admixture, as commonly thought, but also from a mixed ancestry of the First Americans._"
> 
> I have read that some people jumped to the conclusion that Amerindians were of mixed European and Siberian blood. In other words, Palaeolithic Europeans migrated east to Siberia and mingled with the local tribes there, just as Bronze/Iron Age Indo-Europeans and modern Russians did much later. While this is possible, *I would find it more plausible that both Europeans and Amerindians descend from a common ancestor in Central/North Asia, who belonged to Y-DNA P and mtDNA U and X (and perhaps also C)*. This root population would have split in two branches: R and Q, the former migrating west to the Pontic-Caspian region and the Middle East, and the latter staying in Siberia and migrating to the Americas. The autosomal admixture that is common to both modern West Eurasians and Native Americans would be the one associated with haplogroups P, Q and R. Since most hg R was limited to Eastern Europe until the Late Chalcolithic to Bronze Age, it is likely that Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and even Neolithic Europeans beyond Eastern Europe had little or no genetic admixture found in the Mal'ta boy. There might have been some element shared matrilineally through mt-hg U, but U is so old (perhaps as much as 60,000 years old) that any similitude would be very distant.
> 
> Regarding the Amerindians, their East Asian component is thought to have arrived through a second wave migration (post-Clovis), which would have brought at least Y-DNA C3 and mtDNA A, B, (C) and D. It is unclear whether both migrations brought Y-hg Q1a (perhaps different subclades), or if it was only the second wave. It is actually not impossible that the first people to colonise the American continent belonged to Y-hg R* or R1* and mtDNA X (+ C and U ?), and that these only survive among some North American tribes, especially in the eastern USA and Canada.
> 
> ...


The lineage of the Mal'ta boy is apparently basal "R". Unfortunately they weren't able to get a read on the yDNA of the other sample at Afontova Gora, although the paper states that in autosomal terms the two samples were very similar. That in itself is amazing, because about 7,000 years and the LGM intervene. It also raises phenotype questions which this Estonian Bio Center paper seems to discuss only very gingerly, but that's for a separate post.

Anyway, here is the map of "R" distribution from the paper:Attachment 6076



And here is the map of "Q" distribution from the paper:Attachment 6075

I think you could make a case from the maps that R and Q look as if they originated in overlapping areas, with Q slightly to the north. YDNA R then could have headed west (and perhaps some south again), with a small remnant founding population of Q winding up right across from the Bering Strait. 

I'm about to go through the Supplementary Information again, but I'm not totally convinced of the claim made by the authors that the Amerindians split off from the Han. Certainly, some of their analyses support that conclusion, but so much depends on the framing populations used...I found the comments by "Lathrinoor" on Dienekes site interesting, where he takes an opposite view, and speculates that the Mongolian steppes may have largely separated the P and NO people, with the NO people moving up from South Asia through Tibet, spending some time in China and then pulsing out from there. 

If that were true, then the mixture with O could have taken place later in Siberia, or, as you posit, the O could have been later waves from Siberia into the Americas. 

If the mixture, or some of it, took place in Asia, then the "Amerindian" component may actually have formed part of the mixture which created East Asian. 

The conclusions of the paper seem to have some internal contradictions about these issues, unless I'm reading it incorrectly. On the one hand, they seem to say that the Mal'ta boy predates the East Asian/Amerindian split, and yet are adamant there is no East Asian in the Mal'ta boy. At the same time, they provide a graph where at K=2, he does indeed have a "Han" like component. Other bloggers are trumpeting that the paper somehow proves that the East Asian/West Asian split occurred long ago, and yet in the admixture analysis part of the paper, the authors acknowledge that they can't tell if the South Asian/North European? mix they see is the result of admixture or if this is a population that hadn't yet differentiated into South Asian and North Euro. The fact that the North Euro component didn't exist at that time would seem to me to indicated that it is the latter. And if it hadn't yet differentiated into South Asian and North Euro, then why would we assume that an Amerindian component had yet fully formed? 

Maybe I'm just missing something here...

As to what these people were like a couple of thousand years later, I don't know, but they maintained some kind of autosomal unity for 7,000 years, from Mal'ta to Afontova Gora.

----------


## Wilhelm

On the Admixture K=9 in the supplmentary info he is 37% South-Asian, 34% North-European, 26% Native American and 4% Oceanian

----------


## Angela

> If it's equal common in South Asia, Caucasus and Near East, it might be something like Gedrosia.
> 
> But if it is most common in South Asia, it could be ANI.


These are the ancestral populations produced by the ADMIXTURE RUN:

It doesn't seem to be equally common in all those places. It's most common in Malayans...The Brahui and Balochi seem to be about 60% of that South Asian component, and approximately 40% "West Eurasian"-"European".
Attachment 6081


[QUOTE]As I thought. the Lezgins are the group with the highest percentage of Gedrosia in the Caucasus. And Balochi is where it peaks. Sounds like something similar to Gedrosia to me.[QUOTE]


This is the NSGAdmix Run
Attachment 6080

At K=2, the Mal'ta boy shows about 20% of the "Han" component. Even when the Amerindian component shows up at K=3, it's half Han and half Amerindian. Only at higher K does the Han component disappear. At K=8, that original 20% now shows up as a combination of Amerindian (Karitiana) and Athabascan. 

For the French sample, a Balochi component shows up at K-6, which at K=8 still retains some specific Balochi, and a few stray specks of Han, but is majority Lezghin. (I remember all those runs by Dienekes about them.)

Is it possible that in this Mal'ta boy we're looking at an R population that had not yet split between ANI, ASI and "American"? And that this was still the case about 17,000 years ago?


Ed. These are taken from the Supplementary Info, which unlike the paper itself, is not behind a pay wall.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...re12736-s1.pdf

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## haithabu

> I have also wondered about the origin of the two *U4 samples from ancient Sumer*, including one sample clearly identified as U4a2b, a subclade found almost exclusively in Central Europe today. U4 is possibly the maternal lineage most strongly correlated with Y-DNA R1a. In has been found among Mesolithic Northeast and Central Europeans and peaks nowadays in the Baltic and Volga-Ural region. What is it doing in pre-Indo-European Sumer ? Was it also one of the U subclades linked with the root of haplogroup R1 ? In that case it could have been brought to Mesopotamia by early R1b tribes. That _could_ mean that R1b was also involved in the development of the Sumerian civilisation. The most recent hypothesis about the origins of the Maykop culture is that it was founded by Uruk settlers from Mesopotamia. This Uruk was a Sumerian city, it all fits.



Consider this in light of one linguist's suggestion that written Sumerian contains traces of an even earlier Indo-European language:

http://www.science.org.ge/2-3/Gordon%20Whitteker.pdf

----------


## Alan

> Is it possible that in this Mal'ta boy we're looking at an R population that had not yet split between ANI, ASI and "American"? And that this was still the case about 17,000 years ago?
> 
> 
> Ed. These are taken from the Supplementary Info, which unlike the paper itself, is not behind a pay wall.
> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...re12736-s1.pdf



Thats quite a possibility and on Dienekes blogspot I actually argued allot of times that I believe, ANI, West Asian(Gedrosia,Caucasus), North European split somewhere in Iran or Central Asia and this explains the close and ancient relationship between those. It seems we can add, ASI and Amerindian to this list. But yet it appears like ANI-West Asian-North European were the last to split from each other.

In my opinion it must have been something like this. Proto Eurasian split into two new components, Proto ANI-WA-NE and Proto ASI-Amerindian. Than these two components split into 5 new components. Proto ANI-WA-NE into ANI, West Asian and North European. Proto ASI-Amerindian into Amerindian and ASI. Some time later West Asian and North European split into new components. West Asian = Gedrosia, Caucasus and North European to Northwest- and Northeast European.

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## Angela

Has anyone seen this?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1120143631.htm

In the interview, Kelly Graf, one of the authors of the paper, makes the following statement:
"It shows he had close genetic ties to today's Native Americans and some western Eurasians, specifically some groups living in central Asia, South Asia, and Europe. Also, he shared close genetic ties with other Ice-Age western Eurasians living in European Russia, Czech Republic and even Germany. We think these Ice-Age people were quite mobile and capable of maintaining a far-reaching gene pool that extended from central Siberia all the way west to central Europe."

I don't have access to the body of the paper, just the supplementary materials. Does this statement appear in the paper? Is she basing her statement just on shared mtDNA U clades? Or are there other results of which we're not aware?

----------


## adamo

Well all member of R and Q trace to a common P ancestor in central asia (kazakhstan) about 35,000-45,000 years ago. It would explain a hardcore link between amerinds, central asians, europeans and a rare few africans. Note that amerind mtdna can even cluster with east asians. But the P link establishes alot of similarity between the americas, europe, central asia (india,afghanistan,nepal,tajikistan etc.Albeit an ancient one.

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## bicicleur

> Has anyone seen this?
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1120143631.htm
> 
> In the interview, Kelly Graf, one of the authors of the paper, makes the following statement:
> "It shows he had close genetic ties to today's Native Americans and some western Eurasians, specifically some groups living in central Asia, South Asia, and Europe. Also, he shared close genetic ties with other Ice-Age western Eurasians living in European Russia, Czech Republic and even Germany. We think these Ice-Age people were quite mobile and capable of maintaining a far-reaching gene pool that extended from central Siberia all the way west to central Europe."
> 
> I don't have access to the body of the paper, just the supplementary materials. Does this statement appear in the paper? Is she basing her statement just on shared mtDNA U clades? Or are there other results of which we're not aware?


did you get this one ?

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...re12736-s1.pdf

----------


## Angela

> did you get this one ?
> 
> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...re12736-s1.pdf


Thanks, Bicicleur, I did have it, and I can't find a reference anywhere to similar results from samples further west toward Europe. It might have been just conjecture, or it might be in the paper, but that's behind a pay wall and I can't see it. Perhaps there's a paper or study in the works but not yet published.

In looking at all their trees again, I thought it might be interesting to look at the Reich group trees again. Here they are...
http://oi40.tinypic.com/nl54sm.jpg

I hope the genome is public access, and they can run it through their own programs.

----------


## Tabaccus Maximus

I can't reply to any specific comments at the moment since I've been travelling all week, but I did read the nature article and here's a few thoughts...

1) It does seem to confirm that the Ydna belongs to R*, but doesn't seem to offer any details which I hope will come out soon

2) I agree with the authors opinion (and Maciamo's above) that the common autosomal component in Amerindians and West Asians is due P-M45 (Q* for Amerindians) commonality (seems obvious)


The level of content was appropriate for Nature, however _here's some things I still want to know.
_

1) What is the Denisovian admixture of the subjects?  If the boy has Mongoloid features and no East Asian admixture, then what about Denisovian? I am curious if certain Mongoloid features, such as the pronounced zygomatic bone, are in fact Denisovian in the same way that certain Caucasian features may be relicts of Neanderthals. In the case of Caucasians, the account of almost all of the distinct Caucasian skeletal features could be reduced to Neanderthal admixture.
It possible that features associated with the modern Mongoloid taxon are in fact a composite of several races, one of which contributed relict Denisovian traits of sapiens in the Altai.
In other words, Neoteny, for example, may have come from the autosomally distinct 'East Asians', whereas other traits, like the high zygomatic process may have been introduced by another population.

It would be interesting to know since modern sapiens with the most Denisovian ancestry are those within the eastern MNOPS tree. The Mal'ta and Afontova finds are also in the Denisova region where I might expect to find admixture. Since we don't have Denisova skulls to examine, we may be able to further triangulate to imagine their appearance through these finds.

----------


## Aberdeen

> I can't reply to any specific comments at the moment since I've been travelling all week, but I did read the nature article and here's a few thoughts...
> 
> 1) It does seem to confirm that the Ydna belongs to R*, but doesn't seem to offer any details which I hope will come out soon
> 
> 2) I agree with the authors opinion (and Maciamo's above) that the common autosomal component in Amerindians and West Asians is due P-M45 (R* and Q*) commonality (seems obvious)
> 
> 
> The level of content was appropriate for Nature, however _here's some things I still want to know.
> _
> ...


Dienekes's Blog had an interesting article on January 21, 2013 about the Denisovian admixture in a 40,000 year old skeleton from China. I don't really know how this ties in with the 24,000 year old find in Siberia, but the article suggests that the Denisovian percentage in Asians has been constant for a very long time, and that the 40,000 year old is related to Asians and Native Americans but not Europeans.

*"Another new PNAS paper that hasn't yet appeared in the journal website. Still, from this description at ScienceNews this appears to be Very Important, as it pertains to a 40,000-year-old modern human, which, if I'm not mistaken is the oldest modern human tested so far:*
Ancient DNA from cell nuclei and maternally inherited mitochondria indicates that this individual belonged to a population that eventually gave rise to many present-day Asians and Native Americans, says a team led by Qiaomei Fu and Svante Paabo, evolutionary geneticists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.The partial skeleton, unearthed in Tianyuan Cave near Beijing in 2003, carries roughly the same small proportions of Neandertal and Denisovan genes as living Asians do (SN: 8/25/12, p. 22), the scientists report online January 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.The Max Planck press release adds some information:The genetic profile reveals that *this early modern human was related to the ancestors of many present-day Asians and Native Americans but had already diverged genetically from the ancestors of present-day Europeans.*This is an important finding because some published demographic models had Europeans and East Eurasians diverging as recently as ~20 thousand years ago. It now appears that they did so already at around the time of the Upper Paleolithic revolution, when unambiguous evidence of modern humans across Eurasia exists.

*UPDATE I:* While we wait for this paper to appear on the _PNAS_ website, it might be useful to wonder whether the Tianyuan sample might fall on the East Asian/Amerindian group or the more general "Ancestral South Indian" (ASI)/East Eurasian group.

According to current dating, haplogroup M itself is ~50 thousand years old, and most of the subclades therein coalesce to younger than 40ky times. It's possible that the Tianyuan sample dates from a period where ASI/East Asian differentiation had only just begun or was just about to begin.

The press release makes clear that Tianyuan was already "Asian" rather than generalized Eurasian, proving that East/West Eurasian differentiation had begun by ~40kya. It will be interesting to see whether it can be placed on a more specific "East Eurasian" group rather than a generalized "Asian" one."

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