# Population Genetics > Paleogenetics > Paleolithic & Mesolithic >  The genetic history of Ice Age Europe

## bicicleur

http://eurogenes.blogspot.be/2016/05...ge-europe.html

Abstract: Modern humans arrived in Europe ~45,000 years ago, but little is known about their genetic composition before the start of farming ~8,500 years ago. Here we analyse genome-wide data from 51 Eurasians from ~45,000–7,000 years ago. Over this time, the proportion of Neanderthal DNA decreased from 3–6% to around 2%, consistent with natural selection against Neanderthal variants in modern humans. Whereas there is no evidence of the earliest modern humans in Europe contributing to the genetic composition of present-day Europeans, all individuals between ~37,000 and ~14,000 years ago descended from a single founder population which forms part of the ancestry of present-day Europeans. An ~35,000-year-old individual from northwest Europe represents an early branch of this founder population which was then displaced across a broad region, before reappearing in southwest Europe at the height of the last Ice Age ~19,000 years ago. During the major warming period after ~14,000 years ago, a genetic component related to present-day Near Easterners became widespread in Europe. These results document how population turnover and migration have been recurring themes of European prehistory.

abstract : http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture17993.html
figures and tables : http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...e17993_ft.html
supplementary info : http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...re17993-s1.pdf

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## Tomenable

*According to this study, R1b was in Italy 14,000 years ago:
*



> Villabruna (Sovramonte – Belluno, Italy)
> The burial of Riparo Villabruna was discovered in 1988 by A. Broglio in the small
> rockshelter named Riparo Villabruna A in the Veneto Dolomites. It contains a partial
> skeleton with lower limbs severed at the distal femoral shafts associated with burial goods of
> the Epigravettian culture50. The date quoted here comes from the skull51, whereas the genetic
> analysis is of a left femur. This individual bears the earlier known example of treatment of
> dental caries52.
> 
> *• Villabruna at 14,180-13,780 cal BP (KIA-27004: 12,140±7014C)51
> ...





> Nice! *Definitely M343, likely L278.
> And in Italy!!*


*Y Haplogroups:
*​*
* Kostenki 14: C1b 

* Goyet C1a

* Cioclivna 1 "CT"

* Kostenki 12 : CT

* Vestonice 13: CT

* Vestonice 15: BT

* Pavlov 1: I* 

* vestonice 16: C1a2 

* Paglicci 133: *I 

* HohleFels49: I*

* Goyet Q2: I* 

* Burkhardtshohle: I*

* Villabruna: R1b1

* Rochedane: I* 

* Falkenstein: I* 

* CuiryLesChaudardes1: I* 

* Berry Au Bac I**

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## Fire Haired14

List of new Samples. 

All of the Paleo-Europeans form a cluster as opposed to Mal'ta boy. None of them, including the ones from Southern Italy, had Basal Eurasian ancestry. The oldest example of a true WHG appears to be 14,000 years old and from Italy(with Y DNA R1b). Our oldest example of typical WHG mtDNA U5b2 is also from Italy. WHG might be from an Italian, not Iberian, refiguim, but that's just speculation.

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## Tomenable

Link to download the article

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## Fire Haired14

There were distinct populations in Ice age Europe(besides WHG and EHG). Here are the conclusions by the authors based on treemix and admixturegraph.


Conclusion
>Paleo Euros as clade opposed to MA1
>Vestonice is mostly Kostinki with minor Goyet. 
>El Miron is mostly Goyet with minor Villabruna.’
>Loschbour is mostly Villabruna with minor Goyet. 


Vestonice: 30,000 years old Czech Republic(Central Europe).
Kostinki: 36,000 years old Russia(Western egde).
Goyet: 30,000 years old Beligium.
El Miron: 20,000 years old Spain.
Villabruna: 14,000 years old Northern Italy.
Loschbour: 8,000 years old Luxembourg.

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## Goga

After so many years on this site I firstly expected ancient R1b in Europe. But everyone was saying that there is no ancient R1b in Europe. So I let go that idea.

But now after so many here on this site this is HUGE and unexpected!

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## Goga

Some very rare, and strange haplogroups. 

C1 ??
CT ??
BT ??

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## Tomenable

It seems, that:

That Italian with R1b carried no basal Eurasian ancestry:

(quote from Anthrogenica discussion):




> One has to keep in mind the Villabruna cluster has no so called basal. So it is likely a population with no basal contributing to both Villabruna and the Middle/Near East. "the Satsurblia Cluster carries large amounts of Basal Eurasian ancestry while Villabruna Cluster individuals do not"


So how did they conclude, that he came from the Near East?

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## Tomenable

> Some very rare, and strange haplogroups. 
> 
> C1 ??
> CT ??
> BT ??


Yeah, this R1b stands out among such strange lineages.

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## Tomenable

We could expect a very fasct reaction by Genetiker (hehehe):

https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2016...ce-age-europe/

https://genetiker.wordpress.com/y-sn...or-villabruna/

According to him: *"Villabruna was pre-R1b1a1a-P297."*

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## Tomenable

BBC article about this study, with photos of some skulls - including Villabruna's:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36150502_

"This 14,000-year-old individual from Villabruna, Italy, lived at a time when the climate was warming up":_

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## Tomenable

It probably shows that R1b was wide-spread already in Upper Paleolithic - living both in West Asia and South Europe. We really need some aDNA samples from Prehistoric Middle East. Now every location is possible as the original homeland of R1b-M269...

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## bicicleur

> We could expect a very fasct reaction by Genetiker (hehehe):
> 
> https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2016...ce-age-europe/
> 
> https://genetiker.wordpress.com/y-sn...or-villabruna/
> 
> According to him: *"Villabruna was pre-R1b1a1a-P297."*


very pre-P297 : 2 postive SNPs vs 12 negative and this for an individual with age 14 ka while formation age for P297 is 16.8 ka and TMRCA 13.5 ka with subclades M478 and M269
this makes this individual very unlikely to be the ancestor of the split between M478 and M269
how and when did this pre-P297 get there and where were his brothers?
the spread of obsidian from Melos to the Peloponesos suggests people were crossing the Aegean Sea at least 13 ka
or they may have come through the northern part of the Adriatic Sea which was dry land

don't forget Oase-I who was K https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2015...oase-1-genome/
and who was an outlier

the paleolithic men travelled a lot !

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## ElHorsto

> the paleolithic men travelled a lot !


Right. In this case it was not even difficult, because Italy and Balkans were one land mass, which means the Steppe and probably Anatolia and the whole Near-East were directly connected. Having this in mind, it would surprise me not to find various haplogroups scarcely scattered around already much earlier.

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## Tomenable

> They seem to be sure it isn't associated with modern West European R1b though.


They write this in *"... Ice Age Europe"* (footnote 9 leads to Haak 2015 "Massive migration..."):

"(...) We were surprised to find haplogroup R1b in the ~14,000-year-old Villabruna individual from Italy. While the predominance of R1b in western Europe today owes its origin to Bronze Age migrations from the eastern European steppe9 (...)"

However, just a few days ago in *"Punctuated bursts in male demography..."*, we could read:

"(...) in Western Europe, related lineages within R1b-L11 expanded ~4.8–5.9 kya (Supplementary Fig. 14e), most markedly around 4.8 and 5.5 kya. The earlier of these times, 5.5 kya, is associated with the origin of the Bronze Age Yamnaya culture. The Yamnaya have been linked by aDNA evidence to a massive migration from the Eurasian Steppe, which may have replaced much of the previous European population24,25; *however, the six Yamnaya with informative genotypes did not bear lineages descending from or ancestral to R1b-L11, so a Y-chromosome connection has not been established.* The later time, 4.8 kya, coincides with the origins of the Corded Ware (Battle Axe) culture in Eastern Europe and the Bell–Beaker culture in Western Europe26. (...)"

And AFAIK this is correct, since neither R1b-L11 nor its ancestral clade - R1b-L51 - have been found in Yamnaya.

And the westward expansion of Yamnaya into Europe is explained well enough by modern distribution of ht35:

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## Tomenable

> very pre-P297 : 2 postive SNPs vs 12 negative


Yes but he was still closer to P297 than - for example - Samara Eneolithic sample:

*I0122 / SVP35 (grave 12) - R1b1

*According to Genetiker that sample was farther away from P297, only R1b-L278* :

https://genetiker.wordpress.com/y-snp-calls-for-i0122/

M415 is on the same level as L278. He lived thousands of years after Villabruna.




> very pre-P297 : 2 postive SNPs vs 12 negative


But he lived ~1000 or more years before the TMRCA of P297.

So he could not be positive for all SNPs of P297 due to chronology.

It seems that he could actually be ancestral to post-TMRCA P297.

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## bicicleur

> Yes but he was still closer to P297 than - for example - Samara Eneolithic sample:
> 
> *I0122 / SVP35 (grave 12) - R1b1
> 
> *According to Genetiker that sample was farther away from P297, only R1b-L278* :
> 
> https://genetiker.wordpress.com/y-snp-calls-for-i0122/
> 
> M415 is on the same level as L278. He lived thousands of years after Villabruna.
> ...


all I can say : R1b was a wanderer !

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## Aaron1981

> BBC article about this study, with photos of some skulls - including Villabruna's:
> 
> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36150502_
> 
> "This 14,000-year-old individual from Villabruna, Italy, lived at a time when the climate was warming up":_


There we go...now THAT is a western European man's skull!

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## sparkey

Extremely interesting information here. Looks like we're really starting to get some ancient DNA coverage of Stone Age Europe.




> Some very rare, and strange haplogroups. 
> 
> C1 ??
> CT ??
> BT ??


The Supplementary Info pages 29-31 give some indication of what SNPs they tested, and it doesn't seem that these "CT" and "BT" calls are so weird once you look there. Basically, they didn't test beyond BT and CT markers for those, so they could still be something more expected like Haplogroup C or Haplogroup I.

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## Maciamo

Landmark study for European Paleolithic Y-DNA, but nothing unexpected, not even the R1b1*. We already knew that Mesolithic Europeans belonged to haplogroups C1a2, I*, I and I2 + R1a and R1b in eastern Europe. Phylogenetically their ancestors could only have belonged to older subclades of the same haplogroups, which is exactly what we see here. There is also the appearance of even older haplogroups like BT and CT, which eventually went extinct. 

The presence of R1b1* is Italy 14,000 years ago is not that remarkable considering that Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Europe were peopled by highly mobile hunter-gatherers. It is to be expected that some eastern European HG ended up in central or southern Europe now and then, as they follow herds, are expelled by neighbouring tribes, or escape bouts of particularly cold winters in Ice Age Russia or Ukraine. Nothing exceptional here. Besides Villabruna is in Alpine north-east Italy, near Austria, so only a stone throw away from the Pannonian plain which is regarded as the westernmost section of the Eurasian Steppe, that was inhabited by R1a and R1b people since these haplogroups emerged around the LGM.

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## Fire Haired14

> So how did they conclude, that he came from the Near East?


The media authors aren't as familiar with this topic as we are so they are giving miss information. He, and all Europeans after 14,000 years ago, was more related to Near Easterners than earlier Europeans were. This is likely because of WHG-related ancestry in modern Near Eastern people. It's possible WHG has partial Near Eastern origins or Near Easterners have partial European WHG-related origins.

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## Goga

> There we go...now THAT is a western European man's skull!


That R1b fella had even BLUE eyes, although his skin was dark...

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## Tomenable

I doubt that R1b-M269+ were *originally* IE speakers, or that they *originated* in the Russian Steppe.

More likely, they were Non-Indo-Europeans who were responsible for the diffusion of metallurgy.

Some of them *(R1b-Z2103)* became Indo-Europeanized by R1a (who adopted metallurgy from them).

But other M269 - like that "controversial" Copper Age M269 from Spain: ATP3 - *initially remained Non-IE.*

See this map of the diffusion of metallurgy *(ATP3 from Iberia wasn't Neolithic - he was Copper Age!):

Note that* *copper metallurgy came to Southern Iberia early on* (= ancestors of R1b-L11 ???):



*R1b-L11 Bell Beakers* were originally Non-IE (speakers of languages related to Basque), until they came to Central Europe.

In Central Europe (Germany) they came into contact with Corded Ware folks, and gradually adopted IE language from them.

Then Italo-Celtic languages spread as *back-migrations from Central Europe* to the west and to the south.

Also Bell Beakers in Central Europe most likely *married many CWC women*, acquiring their autosomal DNA.

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## Tomenable

The map above shows that Southern Iberia had copper metallurgy early on. *Which haplogroup do you think imported copper metallurgy to Iberia, and later spread it out of Iberia ???* IMO R1b-L11. *Remember, that ATP3 was not an Iberian Neolithic man, but an Iberian Copper Age man.* R1b-M269 should rather be linked with the spread of metallurgy, not of IE languages. OTOH, R1b-Z2103 imported metallurgy to the Steppe, where they became Indo-Europeanized by local folks. R1b-L11 however were likely descended from ATP3-related folks and part of Bell Beaker since the beginning. Therefore, they were initially Non-IE and became *Indo-Europeanized by German CWC*. Later some of them back-migrated west & south, spreading Italo-Celtic languages.

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## Tomenable

Anthropology confirms that in Germany *(= BB-CWC contact zone)* Beakers mixed with Corded folks.

*Carleton S. Coon wrote:*

"(...) In their Rhineland center, the more numerous Bell Beaker people had
constant relationships with the inhabitants of Denmark, who were still
burying in corridor tombs. *Furthermore, the Corded people, one branch
of whom invaded Jutland and introduced the single-grave type of burial,
also migrated to the Rhine Valley, and here amalgamated themselves
with the Bell Beaker people*, who were already in process of mixing with
their Borreby type neighbors. *The result of this triple fusion was a great
expansion, and a population overflow down the Rhine, in the direction
of Britain.*

(8) THE BRONZE AGE IN BRITAIN

The consideration of the Bell Beaker problem leads naturally to that of
the Bronze Age in the British Isles, where the Beaker people found their
most important and most lasting home. Coming down the Rhine and out
into the North Sea, they invaded the whole eastern coast of England and
of Scotland, and also the shore of the Channel.
*The Beaker invasion of Britain was not a simple affair. Not only did the
newcomers land in many places, but they brought with them somewhat
different traditions. Although most of them brought zoned beakers and
battle axes, in consequence of their blending with the Corded people in
the Rhinelands* (...)"

So my hypothesis that Beakers acquired autosomal and mtDNA admixtures from CWC seems correct.

Perhaps also this is how BB acquired a minority of R1a, and CWC a minority of R1b-L11 lineages.

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## bix

Angela, Exactly :Wink:  

As for myself, I looked into my father's y-line mostly to see if an old family legend was true: "We're all related." And in fact, well--sort of... mostly true-ish. 

I like Switzerland too, and more and more I want to go there soon. But they were a contentious lot sometimes it seems. 

My 9 times great grand dad was shown the door, literally arrested for being a Mennonite (only an idea, but it got some people beheaded), put on a barge with other prisoners and shipped down the Rhine and sent off to the new world. It was better than the alternative, which was marching down to Venice and being sold to the Turks as a galley slave. They made him pay his freight with seven years worth of indentured labor. But at least owing to his skin tone he was set free after that seven years and had the privilege of heading to the hills and not looking back. I was always reminded of this.

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## Fire Haired14

> A lot of Iberians seem to be in love with the idea that their R1b comes from the earliest inhabitants of western Europe, so fooey on what they think of as this Indo-European gibberish. I can remember when the Anglo and German and Slavic contingent felt likewise but now most of them seem to be enamored of the idea that they're descended from the big, bad Indo-Europeans. What was that priceless phrase? "Blonde, blue-eyed cowboys of the steppes?" Not quite. :) (What is this mania? I can only think of two good looking blonde blue-eyed cowboys, Gary Cooper and Clint Eastwood, and I'm sure the Yamnaya people looked nothing like them. )


I agree with you there are posters like this but not all are. 




> The usual suspect must spend eighteen hours a day randomly plugging in numbers until he gets something that says that at least the majority of his ancestry has nothing to do with the Middle East.


Not true. David Wesolski is the most popular and one of few who does this so I think you're referring to him. I don't see any bias in him, besides being pro-Polish and pro-R1a. That's normal for Poles AFAIK. He doesn't plug in tests all day till he gets the results he likes. He just goes with what the data says. You don't have to insult people. You do that a lot. I know of other people who produce formal stats and none of them are bias at all. You're fighting straw men. No one fits the description you're giving.

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## epoch

> Yes, I do like the *idea* so I am biased


Why on gods green earth would the out-of Maghreb hypothesis for western R1b seem almost poetic? 




> but I've been biased before and disabused of my silly notions by convincing arguments and evidence, and I surely will again, and my head won't explode, hopefully.
> 
> And also, what I mean by that, is that sometimes our preferred notions turn out not to be true. We can adjust and adapt to a new paradigm, or we can react irrationally. It's only an idea...


One thing that this whole DNA uncovered was not a huge paradigm shift, but basically that the Archaeologists from before the second world war were not nationalistic hideous proto-fascist liers, a notion widely spread since the sixties, but that they were actually right. Read Greg Cochran on this subject:

https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/...e-archaeology/

Especially read what he attributes to Mario Alinei




> ” Surprisingly, although the archaeological research of the last few decennnia has
> provided more and more evidence that no large-scale invasion took place in
> Europe in the Calcholithic, Indoeuropean linguistics has stubbornly held to its
> strong invasionist assumption, and has continued to produce more and more
> variations on the old theme.
> 
> *Clearly, the answer is ideological.* For the invasion model was first advanced in the nineteenth century, *when archaeology and related sciences were dominated by the ideology of colonialism*, as recent historical research has shown. The successive generations of linguists and archaeologists have been strongly *inspired by the racist views that stemmed out of colonialism*. Historians of archaeology (e.g. Daniel 1962, Trigger 1989) have repeatedly shown the importance of ideology in shaping archaeological theories as well as theories of human origins, while, unfortunately, linguistics has not followed the same course, and thus strongly believes in its own innocence.”



See my point? The "_racist views that stemmed out of colonialism_" have been proven right. 

Now I think that in the sixties common sense died and these idiotic ideologically poisoned academics basically _invented_ a racist motive that wasn't there in the nineteenth century.

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## epoch

> I do love these accusations of bias being thrown around. I can count the posters on these kinds of blogs I think aren't biased on the fingers of two hands, maybe one.


The bias I mentioned is extremely important as it haunted archaeology for decades (see previous post for link) and completely destroyed anthropology.

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## bix

OK Epoch, strike the "poetic" comment, I'd done gone rogue. 

Still, what massive immigration event could there have been? At the end of the LGM, how many people were there?

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## Greying Wanderer

Angela




> A lot of Iberians seem to be in love with the idea that their R1b comes from the earliest inhabitants of western Europe, so fooey on what they think of as this Indo-European gibberish. *I can remember when the Anglo and German and Slavic contingent felt likewise but now most of them seem to be enamored of the idea that they're descended from the big, bad Indo-Europeans*.


Continuity seemed a plausible option at the beginning but there was no DNA evidence so most people changed their minds - now there is some new DNA evidence people are re-appraising.

Given the farmer invasion happened and the steppe invasion happened it would need to be a very flukey set of circumstances that led to substantial continuity at the end of it all - although probably not continuity in place but continuity by cousin (i.e. a cycle of replacements that led to the cousins of the first layer eventually replacing the intermediary layers) - so not likely but since the Villabruna find no longer impossible.

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## Greying Wanderer

> Still, what massive immigration event could there have been? At the end of the LGM, how many people were there?


I think this is an interesting point. Even if Villabruna did get their one R1b and the varying ENA from admixture with ex mammoth hunters drifting south, going by the final percentages (so far) it's not a mass replacement just slight admixture.

My *current* guess based on the current data is the ex mammoth hunters from the mammoth steppe drifted south after the mammoth were gone and settled in various places including both Western Europe and around the Black Sea but it was the Black Sea cousins via IE who ended up being the ancestors after all the various replacements (although this might change if future samples from Iberia and Franco-Cantabria show a lot of the right kind of R1b).

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## epoch

> OK Epoch, strike the "poetic" comment, I'd done gone rogue. 
> 
> Still, what massive immigration event could there have been? At the end of the LGM, how many people were there?


Exactly. Especially hunter-gatherers, who were subject to ecology rather than controlling it. [1] They follow herds and expand into empty territory, which maybe is why WHG expanded. But massive migration that replaced these HGs? I doubt it. Magdalenians going north (Ahrensburg culture, Swiderian culture, Kunda culture) because reindeer went north could have created the empty or less populated space for other groups - WHG - to expand in.

[1] That is a thing I recently realized: Yamnaya migrations are possible because they brought their animals with them. LBK migration because they took wheat and livestock with them. But Magdalenians _followed_ existing animal migration routes.

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## bix

And whoever it was that filled that void that Magdalenians left--they were following conditions they knew best, perhaps. 

This was a population adapted to an ecological niche--following herds of reindeer or conditions that supported an environment they were adapted to. The question is where these folks were drawn in from. Someday we'll know.

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## bix

> I think this is an interesting point. Even if Villabruna did get their one R1b and the varying ENA from admixture with ex mammoth hunters drifting south, going by the final percentages (so far) it's not a mass replacement just slight admixture.
> 
> My *current* guess based on the current data is the ex mammoth hunters from the mammoth steppe drifted south after the mammoth were gone and settled in various places including both Western Europe and around the Black Sea but it was the Black Sea cousins via IE who ended up being the ancestors after all the various replacements (although this might change if future samples from Iberia and Franco-Cantabria show a lot of the right kind of R1b).


I had this in mind when I was toying with the "Badegoulian" idea. But there's really no evidence so far as I know, that the phenomenon introduced any new blood into western Europe.

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## Angela

> Why on gods green earth would the out-of Maghreb hypothesis for western R1b seem almost poetic? 
> 
> 
> 
> One thing that this whole DNA uncovered was not a huge paradigm shift, but basically that the Archaeologists from before the second world war were not nationalistic hideous proto-fascist liers, a notion widely spread since the sixties, but that they were actually right. Read Greg Cochran on this subject:
> 
> https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/...e-archaeology/
> 
> Especially read what he attributes to Mario Alinei
> ...


You think the racist views used to justify colonialism were correct, were they? You think that's what Cochran is saying in that article? I don't think that's an accurate reading at all. He's just describing the history of what occurred.

The actual history of what happened is that "Scientific Racism" *was* used to justify colonialism by Europeans and also to justify slavery. That's an incontrovertible fact. To that extent, if in nothing else, Alinei was correct. It's also a fact that the anthropological studies and archaeology of migrations into Europe were eagerly seized upon and used and misused to justify theories of racial and ethnic superiority.

See: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
It's a totally factual account. Anyone can check the references. It got so bad that someone actually wrote the following drivel:

"_“In the United States, scientific racism justified Black African slavery to assuage moral opposition to the Atlantic slave trade__. Alexander Thomas and Samuell Sillen_ _described black men as uniquely fitted for bondage, because of their "primitive psychological organization".__[83]_ _In 1851, in antebellum Louisiana, the physician Samuel A. Cartwright_ _(1793–1863), considered slave escape attempts as "drapetomania__", a treatable mental illness__, that "with proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented".”_


Starting in the 20th century those theories, many of them half baked, and the "Indo-European" saga were used by the Germans to justify the subjugation of the rest of Europe (except, in their scheme, their "Nordic" brothers in Scandinavia), going so far as to justify their extermination of the Jews and the plans to do the same to the Slavs. 

For my part I do indeed think it's* poetic justice* that it turns out that they have a nice healthy dose of EEF derived mostly from the Middle East, and that the approximately half of their ancestry that derives from the Yamnaya people is itself half "Near Eastern", just as it's *poetic justice* that Hitler turned out to have yDna "E". I hope they're all rolling in their graves.

It was in revulsion against this history of the use and misuse of these theories that archaeologists operated, not just in the 60's, but starting as early as right after the war. What Cochran is alluding to in those poorly worded sentences at the end of the piece is that this new generation of archaeologists was also influenced by ideology. It's endemic to human endeavors, and therefore it's the rare writer on any topic who even tries, much less succeeds, in removing personal biases from the examination of data. That doesn't mean this shouldn't be the goal in so far as is humanly possible.

This sort of bias driven analysis continues to this day. Just as I don't think it's correct to use poorly understood anthropological differences and pre-historical movements of people to justify not even just discrimination, but the actual enslavement and extermination of other human beings, I am now disgusted by the twisting and manipulation of modern data to hold onto those pernicious and abhorrent concepts. You think it's a fluke that migration flow is just fine for some people if it comes from northern Eurasia, but it's found to be absolutely implausible that the WHG might also have ancestry from the Near East, and that even in the absence of firm data and with the premier research lab in the country proposing it as an alternative? I guess they had to accept the flow from there in the Neolithic, but I guess it's too much to have it infect the WHG upon whom they base their "Europeaness" and whiteness. *Poetic justice* again that they were dark skinned. The overall stupidity of some of this given that Europe is a sink for gene flow and that even if the WHG were totally Gravettian derived, which the Wu paper discounts, they too probably originally came from the Near East boggles the mind.

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## Greying Wanderer

Angela

You're making the opposite point; there's clearly a desire to prove one set of people in the past wrong and that imo is clouding judgement.

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## Angela

> Angela
> 
> You're making the opposite point; there's clearly a desire to prove one set of people in the past wrong and that imo is clouding judgement.


I agree, Greying Wanderer, and for some people I'm sure that's all it is, that and a desire to proclaim the correctness of their original ideas, sometimes published ideas. There are also some people who just tend to jump on one bandwagon or another and then are dismissive of any new or contradictory evidence. That's not my way of processing material: all my training is to be skeptical not only of the conclusions of others, but of my own, and to look at the weaknesses in all arguments and withhold agreement until I think the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of one position or another. Still, I realize people approach these things differently, and it's fine. There are others who have come late to this topic and are unaware of the history, and I understand that as well. 

The fact remains, however, that for some, for far too many, indeed, it's racism pure and simple, and I have dozens of screen shots to prove it. I'm a great believer in collecting and saving incriminating evidence (blame it on my profession), evidence that reveals in some cases not only acknowledged bias and the desire to skew results, but in other cases actions for which there are legal consequences. So much for trying to scrub places like forumbiodiversity and even worse sites. Too late.

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## Angela

Back to actual data. For the sake of future users of this site, I think these posts should also appear in this thread.

Posted by Bicicleur:

I taught I* was the source of the gravettian, but since discovery of J in Kotias Klde and Satsurblia and since the recent Ice Age Europe study, I now believe IJ* to be the source of Gravettian. I believe these people entered Europe along the east coast of the Black Sea 39 ka.
36 ka people in Mezmayskaya made a very important invention : borers which allowed them to drill the eye in a needle in an efficient way.
These needles were imortant for clothing and tents on the cold European steppe. Gravettian people had far more needles than Aurignacian.
For drilling holes, google 'Sungir man beads'.
Sungir is a place 400 km further north than Kostenki, Aurignacians didn't go that far north.



I'm not sure the term Epigravettian is well defined. It seems to me there are different Epigravettians, like the Eastern Epigravettian (Crimea, Roumenia) and Italian Eprigravettian (Italy, Carpathian Basin)

The human presence in Georgia during UP seems to be intermittent, not continuously.
There seems to be a link between 42 ka Dzudzuana and 39 ka Mezmayskaya.
There is also a link with Europe after LGM, through Epigravettian.
There seems to have been human presence 27-23 ka, but there is a gap 23-19 ka (during LGM)
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...l.pone.0111271
I suspect the 27-23 ka people were the Socotra J*, and the cold climate during LGM with lack of faunal resources drove them further south.

Apart from Kostenki 14 the oldest East-European Y-DNA we have is 7.5 ka Karelian.
They were J and R1a1*.
It looks like J was replaced in Eastern Europe by R1a and R1b.

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## Angela

Posted by Angela:

It hangs together, certainly, for the Gravettian. 

I'm not so sure about the Epigravettian. You're seeing it as moving from the Crimea west and it was just chance that the "I" lines prevailed over the "J" lines? 

Doesn't the chronology show that it's older to the west? 

For the 64 million dollar question, how did R1b1 get into Epigravettian Italy? Where were they hiding? Mal'ta is increasingly looking like a dead end to me. He was the last of his group, as others have pointed out. They must have moved to a refugia. Perhaps it was further southwest, as has also been pointed out. So far it doesn't look as if they were part of the Gravettian "mammoth hunters", but that could change tomorrow, of course. Still, they just seem to have barely hung on for a very long time, yes?

This source for the Epigravettian would, however, explain the relationship to CHG and perhaps the similarity between the WHG and some ancestors of Middle Easterners, but what to make of how different these people are in terms of skeletal structure and other "physical" traits? Could it all come down to the effects of evolution because of natural selection, or was there some admixture with some other early branch of West Eurasians?

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## Angela

Bicicleur:

I don't have a good view on the epigravettian, what was their speical technology or survival technique, nor where was the origin and how it dispersed.
I only understand it spread very rapidly on a very wide area.
If you know a good read on the Epigravettian, let me know.

As for pre-Indo-European dispersal of R1a/R1b branch, the picture is still very misty and complicated.
And the Villabruna R1b1 doesn't make it any simpler.
Jean Manco says they were in Hoti and Belt caves 14 ka.
I also think so, they were in Azerbaijian, NW Iran and SW Turkmenistan, the southern Caspian Sea area.
But I don't see the same itinary from Mal'ta to Hoti and Belt Jean Manco sees.
IMO Q and R were born out of P1 between the Altaï Mts and Lake Bajkal, and I think Q1a1 survived LGM in that area but not R.
I think they fled southwest during LGM to the northern Hindu Kush, the Kupruk area.
Kupruk is northern Afghanistan, I don't think much research will be done over there in the near future, so it's all guesswork.
It seems the Kupruk area was inhabited 30 - 15 ka.
https://www.cemml.colostate.edu/cult...fgh05-009.html
I place there R1a, R1b, R2 and Q1b.
From there R2 moved south and eventually got in the Indus Valley.
R1a and R1b moved west to the southern Caspian Sea area and from there dispersed further.
The main dispersal was northward along the western coast of the Caspian Sea.

the level of the Caspian Sea has fluctuated considerably during and after LGM
the red line shows when it discharged water from the melting ice caps into the Black Sea via the Manych depression ; the spillover point is at +/- 22 meters above todays sea level ;
the Caspian Sea came till the Ural Mts then.
I believe R1a and R1b dispersed along the rivers and lakes of eastern Europe.
David Anthony tells in his famous book in one of his first chapters about the Dnjepr Rapids, 10 ka when 3 tribes with different skhull types and different burial customs were fighting over controll of the area, and finally 1 single tribe was left, one of the 2 dolycephalic tribes.
IMO the 2 dolycephalic tribes were were R1a/R1a, the other tribe, who was there first was I/J.

It doesn't explain the early arrival of R1b1 Villabruna 14 ka.
I guess it was a dead end branch wandering in.

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## Angela

When the paper came out I tried to do a quick refresher course for myself, but the scholarship, such as it is, seems rather a muddle to me. According to some researchers, it spans the whole area from Italy (even neighboring Provence according to some authors) to Ukraine, and south into Anatolia and the Levant. Some authors even see it in North Africa.

Then, one book I found says that the categorization of a site as "Epigravettian" shouldn't necessarily be considered definitive as some researchers have just lumped things together by chronology rather than by cultural (including lithic) differences, and so some supposedly Epigravettian sites are just late Magdalenian and some are late Gravettian, and on and on.

Anyway, here are some citations for your week-end. :)

https://books.google.com/books?id=nX...blages&f=false

"Backed tools" at a 16,000 BP "Epigravettian" site in northern Hungary:
https://www.academia.edu/9099654/Bac...ite_in_Hungary

I sometimes read this blog now that Matilda has abandoned hers. This is the post on the Epigravettian of Liguria. 
http://www.aggsbach.de/2016/01/balzi...epigravettian/

He highlights some of the problems with categorization. For example, "Is the chronological status of shouldered points in Central East Europe really well defined and restricted to post-Pavlovian times? Are Shouldered Points sometimes the by-product of the production of backed implements?"

This one is very interesting:
http://maajournal.com/Issues/2004/Vol-1/Full1.pdf

It mainly discusses the Balkans and Anatolia in the Gravettian to Epigravettian period. The authros seem to conclude that there was a "cultural entitiy" whatever that means, between the Balkans and Anatolia in the Gravettian, if I'm reading it correctly, with some technological markers being earlier in Anatolia than in the Balkans. This is despite the fact that they hunted different game: chamois and horse in the Balkans, and wild goat, sheep and deer in Anatolia. Clearly no mammoth in either place. They maintain that the Kabaran of the Levant was different. 

In the Late Glacial, which they define as 16,000 to 14,000 before present some of the influences went from the Balkans to Anatolia. Interestingly, it is in the Balkans that larger camps appear, camps inhabited for longer periods of time. They also do a lot of wood working.

In what they refer to as the Bolling complex, 14,000 to 12,000 BP they see the development of the microburrin technique. They find them at Klissoura and Fanchthi Cave. In Anatolia there were geometric microliths. "The two phenomena are related to the perfecting of hunting weapons, notably of spear points made up of several inserts, and -probably- with the introduction of arrowpoints equipped with geometrical microliths. The game changes to include increasing quantities of deer, and birds and faunal material start to appear. 

Meanwhile, in the Levant, perhaps because they were further south and the climate was different, the camps become larger and storage facilities appear. Trapezoidal and rectangular forms began to appear. In the next 2,000 years the Natufian appears, and spreads north into Syria.

Now, I don't know if there have been subsequent papers which find fault with these conclusions, but if not, I think these findings are very important for our discussions.

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## Angela

_Bicicleur:

As for pre-Indo-European dispersal of R1a/R1b branch, the picture is still very misty and complicated.
And the Villabruna R1b1 doesn't make it any simpler.
Jean Manco says they were in Hoti and Belt caves 14 ka.
I also think so, they were in Azerbaijian, NW Iran and SW Turkmenistan, the southern Caspian Sea area.
But I don't see the same itinary from Mal'ta to Hoti and Belt Jean Manco sees.
IMO Q and R were born out of P1 between the Altaï Mts and Lake Bajkal, and I think Q1a1 survived LGM in that area but not R.
I think they fled southwest during LGM to the northern Hindu Kush, the Kupruk area.
Kupruk is northern Afghanistan, I don't think much research will be done over there in the near future, so it's all guesswork.
It seems the Kupruk area was inhabited 30 - 15 ka.
https://www.cemml.colostate.edu/cult...fgh05-009.html
I place there R1a, R1b, R2 and Q1b.
From there R2 moved south and eventually got in the Indus Valley.
R1a and R1b moved west to the southern Caspian Sea area and from there dispersed further.
The main dispersal was northward along the western coast of the Caspian Sea.

the level of the Caspian Sea has fluctuated considerably during and after LGM
the red line shows when it discharged water from the melting ice caps into the Black Sea via the Manych depression ; the spillover point is at +/- 22 meters above todays sea level ;
the Caspian Sea came till the Ural Mts then.
I believe R1a and R1b dispersed along the rivers and lakes of eastern Europe.
David Anthony tells in his famous book in one of his first chapters about the Dnjepr Rapids, 10 ka when 3 tribes with different skhull types and different burial customs were fighting over controll of the area, and finally 1 single tribe was left, one of the 2 dolycephalic tribes.
IMO the 2 dolycephalic tribes were were R1a/R1a, the other tribe, who was there first was I/J.
_

Angela: I too think that the north was abandoned and they fled south. This also makes sense of the R2 in India. Your idea about the dispersal into the steppes makes sense too. It's sort of like Jean Manco's old proposal about R1b and R1a and their winter and summer camps. 

I like it.

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## Angela

Posted by Bicicleur:

thx Angela.
I like to read Aggsbach too.
He seems to know what he is talking about and he leaves speculation to you.
You won't read big stories but sometimes I search Aggsbach to try and check some details.

The Epigravettian picture is very confuse.
I imagine a lot of very mobile tribes moving in between each other and of whom finally only a few survived.

The Magdalenians were very mobile too.
It is only when forestation started that more sedentary Villabrunans arrived.
I wonder if that R1b1 visitor brought some knowhow about survival in the forests.
These forest tribes used geometrical microliths and bow and arrow, something that allready existed in 18 ka Kebaran.
The archeologists however claim there was no link between Kebaran and Epigravettian.
I percieve Kebaran as G2, maybe some H2 too, but I don't expect any R1b or I there.
Gravettian was IJ, Magdalenian was I and Villabrunans were I2. And TMRCA for I2 and its major subclades is 21 ka. So those I2 stayed 7000 years in some small corner before expanding. And they were probably some Gravettian tribe.

I don't think the archeologists will be able to shine a bright light on Epigravettian. I expect more from DNA.

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## Angela

Posted by Bicicleur:

I checked Genetiker again for the Ice Age Europe,
https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2016...ce-age-europe/
Villabruna is indeed I2,
but now it appears Vestonice 16 would be C-V86, which is unlike La Brana (see YFull id LB1https://www.yfull.com/tree/C/)
then again, when I watch the Y-SNP calls in detail, C-V86 seems doubtfull, as Vetonice 16 is negative 8 out of 12 C-V20 SNPs and positive for only 3 C-V86 SNPs
https://genetiker.wordpress.com/y-sn...-vestonice-16/
C1a2 has been found in Aurignacian Gouyet and in only 2 paleo/mesolithic sites : La Brana and Vestonice, and then again in neolithic sites 
C1a2 was not present in the Magdalenian samples.
Also today C1a2 is not well represented.
It looks like C1a2 was present in the Gravettian, but only as a minority.:

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## Angela

Maps of the extent of pre-Neolithic lithic groups in Europe, North Africa, and parts of the Near East.

Extent of Pre-Neolithic Cultures in Europe, the Near East and North Africa.jpg

They are taken from this site:

https://shebtiw.wordpress.com/great-...s/real-people/

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## Angela

> Posted by Bicicleur:
> 
> I checked Genetiker again for the Ice Age Europe,
> https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2016...ce-age-europe/
> Villabruna is indeed I2,
> but now it appears Vestonice 16 would be C-V86, which is unlike La Brana (see YFull id LB1https://www.yfull.com/tree/C/)
> then again, when I watch the Y-SNP calls in detail, C-V86 seems doubtfull, as Vetonice 16 is negative 8 out of 12 C-V20 SNPs and positive for only 3 C-V86 SNPs
> https://genetiker.wordpress.com/y-sn...-vestonice-16/
> C1a2 has been found in Aurignacian Gouyet and in only 2 paleo/mesolithic sites : La Brana and Vestonice, and then again in neolithic sites 
> ...


I can't keep up with the changes. In doing my little refresher course on the Epigravettian, his most recent? blog post on pigmentatiion snps came up. Now he maintains that those depigmentation derived snps claimed for groups like SHG are incorrect because in most cases it was one out of five calls and from the end of the sequence where there is always the most damage.

If that's true, I think it would be important, but who knows if he's correct or not?

You mentioned something upthread about archaeologists seeing no link between Kebaran and Epigravettian. So, two cultures in relatively close proximity develop geometric points roughly at the same time, although with the more southern culture developing them first, and in response to the need to develop weapons for smaller game, a need that also moved north as the climate changed, and the developments were totally independent? Color me a bit skeptical on this one.

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## epoch

> You think the racist views used to justify colonialism were correct, were they? You think that's what Cochran is saying in that article? I don't think that's an accurate reading at all. He's just describing the history of what occurred.


Exactly what Grey said.

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## bix

> Maps of the extent of pre-Neolithic lithic groups in Europe, North Africa, and parts of the Near East.
> 
> Extent of Pre-Neolithic Cultures in Europe, the Near East and North Africa.jpg
> 
> They are taken from this site:
> 
> https://shebtiw.wordpress.com/great-...s/real-people/


I like how in map (d) the Epi-Gravettian extends as far as Catalunia. Interesting. 

Angela thank you for keeping the discussion on track.

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## Angela

> I like how in map (d) the Epi-Gravettian extends as far as Catalunia. Interesting. 
> 
> Angela thank you for keeping the discussion on track.


I think that has to do with the linkage between Liguria and Provence during these time periods which Margherita Mussi discusses at some length even going by the chopped up version on google books.

Perhaps the argument could be made that in the Early Epigravettian neither Liguria nor Provence (and down the coast) are actually Epigravettian, and that it arrived only with later lithic assemblages, and at that point didn't extend into present day France, but I may be totally wrong about that. The whole "Arenian" complex and how that fits into the scheme of things is a bit of a mystery to me. 

Unfortunately, it seems to be a bit of a mystery to the experts as well. :)

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## epoch

It is all nice and dandy to look for WHG source in the Middle-East, Iran or the Caspian. But we have WHG admixture _and_ a rising signal of Middle-Eastern in the Red Lady of El Miron. So whatever it was, it clearly started to influence Iberia during LGM. Apart from that WHG has no trace of Basal Eurasian, which is pretty much inexplicable if WHG came from the Middle-East.

It could obviously be the case that Middle-Eastern population entered Anatolia after WHG went north. That would explain for a number of things: WHG admixture in Anatolian EN. But if WHG came from Anatolia before the Middle Easterners arrived there two issues arise: First, it would ruin the Poetic Justice case so it can't be true (Sorry, Angela, for this joke) and secondly: Where is the U5b in Anatolian EN? It does have WHG admixture, but the only UP European mtDNA among it is U8a.

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## bix

> I think that has to do with the linkage between Liguria and Provence during these time periods which Margherita Mussi discusses at some length even going by the chopped up version on google books.
> 
> Perhaps the argument could be made that in the Early Epigravettian neither Liguria nor Provence (and down the coast) are actually Epigravettian, and that it arrived only with later lithic assemblages, and at that point didn't extend into present day France, but I may be totally wrong about that. The whole "Arenian" complex and how that fits into the scheme of things is a bit of a mystery to me. 
> 
> Unfortunately, it seems to be a bit of a mystery to the experts as well. :)


I've come across a confusing information about that area, which does surely lend to its mystery. There was paper I read, that I've got around somewhere that describes the area of the lower Rhone, especially south of the Durance during the LGM and a while after, as kind of a cultural conundrum (Bouverian, Arenian, yada yada yada). And it may've moved back and forth from one side of the Rhone to another for some time, until the Azilian I guess.

I half expect some of those I2 guys to have been hanging out there, right where all the confusion is.

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## epoch

> I've come across a confusing information about that area, which does surely lend to its mystery. There was paper I read, that I've got around somewhere that describes the area of the lower Rhone, especially south of the Durance during the LGM and a while after, as kind of a cultural conundrum (Bouverian, Arenian, yada yada yada). And it may've moved back and forth from one side of the Rhone to another for some time, until the Azilian I guess.
> 
> I half expect some of those I2 guys to have been hanging out there, right where all the confusion is.


That may account for half of the WHG carrying more GoyetQ116 than the other half. It may also account for very early admixture in El Miron.

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## Angela

> I've come across a confusing information about that area, which does surely lend to its mystery. There was paper I read, that I've got around somewhere that describes the area of the lower Rhone, especially south of the Durance during the LGM and a while after, as kind of a cultural conundrum (Bouverian, Arenian, yada yada yada). And it may've moved back and forth from one side of the Rhone to another for some time, until the Azilian I guess.
> 
> I half expect some of those I2 guys to have been hanging out there, right where all the confusion is.


I was going on about the fact that there was an ice free corridor there precisely because it seemed like one way that WHG genes might have reached El Miron. The gene flow could have moved both ways, of course.

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## bix

> I was going on about the fact that there was an ice free corridor there precisely because it seemed like one way that WHG genes might have reached El Miron. The gene flow could have moved both ways, of course.


Which I appreciate because I was on about that too, in my mind at least;) The northern Ligurian coastal area was an interesting place at that time, as it still is to this very day. But it clearly served as a refuge, so it must've had some good stuff on the menu. I don't know, but people who resided there may have had good reason to maintain some connections east and west if they could brave the elements in that narrow corridor. That could have enhanced their survival chances when the climate began to change more rapidly.

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## epoch

> There was paper I read, that I've got around somewhere that describes the area of the lower Rhone, especially south of the Durance during the LGM and a while after, as kind of a cultural conundrum (Bouverian, Arenian, yada yada yada). And it may've moved back and forth from one side of the Rhone to another for some time, until the Azilian I guess.


Do you have a link to that paper?

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## bix

> Do you have a link to that paper?


Yes, it's called:

"What about the Broad Spectrum Revolution? Subsistence strategy of hunter–gatherers in Southeast France between 20 and 8 ka BP"

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...40618214000299

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## Angela

> It is all nice and dandy to look for WHG source in the Middle-East, Iran or the Caspian. But we have WHG admixture _and_ a rising signal of Middle-Eastern in the Red Lady of El Miron. So whatever it was, it clearly started to influence Iberia during LGM. Apart from that WHG has no trace of Basal Eurasian, which is pretty much inexplicable if WHG came from the Middle-East.
> 
> It could obviously be the case that Middle-Eastern population entered Anatolia after WHG went north. That would explain for a number of things: WHG admixture in Anatolian EN. But if WHG came from Anatolia before the Middle Easterners arrived there two issues arise: First, it would ruin the Poetic Justice case so it can't be true (Sorry, Angela, for this joke) and secondly: Where is the U5b in Anatolian EN? It does have WHG admixture, but the only UP European mtDNA among it is U8a.


No need to apologize; I like spirited debate, and I very much like some humor mixed into all of this.

I'm not_ specifically looking_ for the WHG source in the Middle East, the Caucasus, and the Caspian. I don't care on any personal level where it was, although yes, it would be nice if Nordicists and assorted racists were served some more poetic justice. However, I have too high a regard for my own integrity to distort what I see as a clear reading of the data (once and if I reach that point) in order to score points against such people. 

According to Wu et al, the WHG either admixed with, or represent a gene flow of an at least slightly different group from Greece (and perhaps Anatolia before that) , or there was ancient substructure in Europe which existed before then, but even in that case they maintain that the WHG have a different relationship with modern Near Eastern populations than did the other clusters of Pre-Neolithic Europeans, and that relationship may be because of a relationship between the WHG and some ancient ancestors of modern Near Easterners. El Miron would have inherited that trait from them. Are we in agreement at least as to what they claim?

I'm quite aware that some people have raised the possibility that this is because the WHG migrated into Anatolia and contributed genes to the Early Anatolian Farmers. It was the first thing I mentioned when I first posted about this. However, after re-reading the paper carefully I realized that this group of researchrs, surely aware that this might be considered, and of how similar movements have created confusing results in other situations, don't mention the possibility anywhere. 

Did they all suddenly get stupid and we're all so very much smarter? I guess it's possible. 

As I said, I took a little refresher course in the Epigravettian. As part of that, I chanced upon a paper which shows that some researchers of this period think there was a cultural "entity" between Anatolia and the Balkans in the Gravettian and Epigravettian. Furthermore, the Gravettian in those areas is indeed very different from that in the central European plain in terms of the development of certain lithics, the prey hunted, and many other things. You have mentioned how, if hunter-gatherers moved, they were usually following their prey. Well, the new prey moved south to north, and so did the new lithics. That's suggestive to me. Is it proof? No. Am I totally convinced? Absolutely not, but I see even less "proof" for the other proposals.

Just a word about this term "Near Eastern" or "Middle Eastern". I hate to be the word, or definition, police, but... 

It seems pretty clear to me that the Aurignacians came from the Middle East. The Gravettians may very well have originated south of the Caucasus, although not from Anatolia or the Levant. Obviously, that is anathema to some people, and in fact, talking about heads exploding, I can hear them popping as I speak, but it makes sense to me given that the Aurignacians and the Gravettians are part of a single "founding" population autosomally according to Wu et al. We know the EEF trace most of their ancestry to people who lived there, and almost half of the ancestry of the Yamnaya came from south of the Caucasus as well. In terms of those time periods, these people were all "Middle Eastern", or had "Middle Eastern" ancestry. None of them are exactly the same as modern Middle Easterners, not even the EEF. So, I don't know why the inhabitants of the Middle East become "Middle Easterners" only after the hunter gatherers leave. At the risk of again being accused of paranoia, I strongly believe it's because in the minds of some people, present company excepted, of course, it's that tainted Basal Eurasian that they associate with SSA or with Arabs which presents the big problem, hence that unending series of calculators designed to show which Europeans had the least of this despised "component". As to why, therefore, it's such anathema to some people to think that the WHG, who didn't apparently carry that dreaded Basal ancestry, came from the Middle East, you've got me. Nothing about the thought processes of such people makes sense to me. 

All very ironic, in a dark way, to my way of thinking, as it's precisely those people, if they formed part of the ancestry of the Natufians, who participated in one of the largest advances in human history, the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, without which I wouldn't be typing on this computer, and later of metallurgy, and writing, and numerous other advances in human history, including the creation by the Jews of a monotheistic god, although I'm aware some people might not consider that an advancement. I find the whole thing so small minded as to beggar belief, but then I was a history and classics and archaeology person to whom it was made abundantly clear that indeed "ex oriente lux". 

As to how Wu et al reconcile a *possible* flow of genes from Anatolia into the WHG while maintaining that WHG have no Basal Eurasian signal, I don't know. I'm not sure anyone really knows what Basal Eurasian is, including them, unless they're holding out on us, which is certainly possible. The discovery of the CHG vindicated some of the early conclusions of the Reich lab, but I have no idea if they have or will discover one that is "Basal Eurasian". They've corrected their previous papers before, and maybe they will again. Amusingly, we've been informed that the latest, best analysis now shows WHG can be modeled as almost 50% Basal Eurasian, so who the heck knows. If that isn't the case, which wouldn't surprise me, perhaps the "Basal Eurasian" was in the Arabian refugium, as I posited in the mtDna ROa paper. Maybe it moved north to form the Natufian, after the departure of WHG like people and then spread far and wide. Maybe they were hiding somewhere near the Persian Gulf. We'll have to wait and see. 

Or maybe Wu et al's second alternative is correct and it's ancient substructure in Europe. We'll have to wait and see about that as well.

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## Angela

> Which I appreciate because I was on about that too, in my mind at least;) The northern Ligurian coastal area was an interesting place at that time, as it still is to this very day. But it clearly served as a refuge, so it must've had some good stuff on the menu. I don't know, but people who resided there may have had good reason to maintain some connections east and west if they could brave the elements in that narrow corridor. That could have enhanced their survival chances when the climate began to change more rapidly.


Ironically, they may have had more fish then than now. The currents in the modern era have been such that Liguria is very poor in the sort of large fish that are a blessing for the Campanians, the people on the Adriatic coast, and other Europeans. We make do with sardines and anchovies and ugly, bony, if delicious fish types. 

A famous Tuscan saying about Liguria is "Mare senza pesce, montagne senza alberi, uomini senza fede, e donne senza vergogna." A sea without fish, mountains without trees, men without faith and women without shame. The last, at least, is an utter calumny. :) He was imprisoned in Liguria from what I've read in one source, and his lover abandoned him. He probably deserved it!

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## bix

> Are we in agreement at least as to what they claim?


Yes, I do believe so. And I think it probably could even be a combination--ancient substructure, admixture and gene flow, just because it can be that damned complicated. But I imagine it's awfully hard putting that in just a few thousand words, in one paper. I look forward to more.

As for the trash talkin' Tuscan, he's got nothin.

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## bicicleur

The *Kebaran* or *Kebarian culture* was an archaeological culture in the eastern Mediterranean area (c. 18,000 to 12,500 BC), named after its type site, Kebara Cave south of Haifa. The Kebaran were a highly mobile nomadic population, composed of hunters and gatherers in the Levant and Sinai areas who utilized microlithic tools.
The Kebaran is the last Upper Paleolithic phase of the Levant (Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine). The Kebarans were characterized by small, geometric microliths, and were thought to lack the specialized grinders and pounders found in later Near Eastern cultures.
The Kebaran is preceded by the Athlitian phase of the Antelian and followed by the proto-agrarian Natufian culture of theEpipalaeolithic. The appearance of the Kebarian culture, of microlithic type implies a significant rupture in the cultural continuity of Levantine Upper Paleolithic. The Kebaran culture, with its use of microliths, is associated with the use of the bow and arrow and the domestication of the dog[1] The Kebaran is also characterised by the earliest collecting of wild cereals, known due to the uncovering of grain grinding tools. It was the first step towards the Neolithic Revolution. The Kebaran people are believed to have practiced dispersal to upland environments in the summer, and aggregation in caves and rockshelters near lowland lakes in the winter. This diversity of environments may be the reason for the variety of tools found in their toolkits.

IMO the forebears of the Natufian G2 folks

But


The *Sauveterrian* is the name for an archaeological culture of the European Epipaleolithic which flourished around 8500–6500 years BC. The name is derived from the type site of Sauveterre-la-Lémance in the French _département_ of Lot-et-Garonne.
It extended through large parts of western and central Europe. Characteristic artefacts include geometric microliths and backed points on micro-blades. Woodworking tools are notably missing from Sauveterrian assemblages. There is evidence for ritual burial.
It eventually evolved into the Tardenoisian culture of similar characteristics. It is also the source of the first Nordic culture (Maglemosian).[_citation needed_]


These were Villabruna I2 folks.
Where did they get their geometric microliths from, and their bow and arrow?

First bow and arrow discovered in Europe : 12.5 ka 
but it may have been in use earlier than that

Dogs : early Gravettians allready had them, Goyet cave 31.7 ka

Mobile Kebarans became sedentary Natufians 14.5 ka

Mobile Magdalenians and Epigravettians were replaced by Villabrunians 14 ka becoming more and more sedentary as forestation progressed

Belgian_series_from_Clark's_The_Mesolithic_Age_in_Britain_Wellcome_M0015183.jpgBow_n_arrow.jpg

The Natufian had a microlithic industry, based on short blades and bladelets. The microburin technique was used. Geometric microliths include lunates, trapezes and triangles. 
It is at Natufian sites that some of the earliest archaeological evidence for the domestication of the dog is found. At the Natufian site of Ain Mallaha in Israel, dated to 12,000 BCE, the remains of an elderly human and a four-to-five-month-old puppy were found buried together.[20] At another Natufian site at the cave of Hayonim, humans were found buried with two canids

----------


## epoch

> No need to apologize; I like spirited debate, and I very much like some humor mixed into all of this.
> 
> I'm not_ specifically looking_ for the WHG source in the Middle East, the Caucasus, and the Caspian. I don't care on any personal level where it was, although yes, it would be nice if Nordicists and assorted racists were served some more poetic justice. However, I have too high a regard for my own integrity to distort what I see as a clear reading of the data (once and if I reach that point) in order to score points against such people.


Well, there _is_ WHG admixture in Anatolian EN as well as mtDNA U8a and there still _is_ the admixture result of K14 to explain.






> According to Wu et al, the WHG either admixed with, or represent a gene flow of an at least slightly different group from Greece (and perhaps Anatolia before that) , or there was ancient substructure in Europe which existed before then, but even in that case they maintain that the WHG have a different relationship with modern Near Eastern populations than did the other clusters of Pre-Neolithic Europeans, and that relationship may be because of a relationship between the WHG and some ancient ancestors of modern Near Easterners. El Miron would have inherited that trait from them. Are we in agreement at least as to what they claim?


Certainly. 




> I'm quite aware that some people have raised the possibility that this is because the WHG migrated into Anatolia and contributed genes to the Early Anatolian Farmers. It was the first thing I mentioned when I first posted about this. However, after re-reading the paper carefully I realized that this group of researchrs, surely aware that this might be considered, and of how similar movements have created confusing results in other situations, don't mention the possibility anywhere.


They do mention that it would be a problem because of the lack of any Basal Eurasian in WHG.




> Did they all suddenly get stupid and we're all so very much smarter? I guess it's possible.


Publishing a paper requires a "tad" more certainty than bumming around on a forum, wouldn't you say? But then again, maybe somebody hits a good idea. Remember there was this poll on La Brana's Y-DNA? The author of the paper joined the thread. 




> As I said, I took a little refresher course in the Epigravettian. As part of that, I chanced upon a paper which shows that some researchers of this period think there was a cultural "entity" between Anatolia and the Balkans in the Gravettian and Epigravettian. Furthermore, the Gravettian in those areas is indeed very different from that in the central European plain in terms of the development of certain lithics, the prey hunted, and many other things. You have mentioned how, if hunter-gatherers moved, they were usually following their prey. Well, the new prey moved south to north, and so did the new lithics. That's suggestive to me. Is it proof? No. Am I totally convinced? Absolutely not, but I see even less "proof" for the other proposals.


I keep thinking this: Maybe they followed the Rhone up to find a tributary of the Rhine and hit upon the salmons it provided. The Rhine used to be a very salmon rich river. Then we have this: Magdalenians going north, followed by fishermen. The Magdalenian already had art with salmons.






> Just a word about this term "Near Eastern" or "Middle Eastern". I hate to be the word, or definition, police, but... 
> 
> It seems pretty clear to me that the Aurignacians came from the Middle East. The Gravettians may very well have originated south of the Caucasus, although not from Anatolia or the Levant. Obviously, that is anathema to some people, and in fact, talking about heads exploding, I can hear them popping as I speak, but it makes sense to me given that the Aurignacians and the Gravettians are part of a single "founding" population autosomally according to Wu et al. We know the EEF trace most of their ancestry to people who lived there, and almost half of the ancestry of the Yamnaya came from south of the Caucasus as well. In terms of those time periods, these people were all "Middle Eastern", or had "Middle Eastern" ancestry. None of them are exactly the same as modern Middle Easterners, not even the EEF. So, I don't know why the inhabitants of the Middle East become "Middle Easterners" only after the hunter gatherers leave. At the risk of again being accused of paranoia, I strongly believe it's because in the minds of some people, present company excepted, of course, it's that tainted Basal Eurasian that they associate with SSA or with Arabs which presents the big problem, hence that unending series of calculators designed to show which Europeans had the least of this despised "component". As to why, therefore, it's such anathema to some people to think that the WHG, who didn't apparently carry that dreaded Basal ancestry, came from the Middle East, you've got me. Nothing about the thought processes of such people makes sense to me.


First, the term Middle Eastern is used in the paper. Secondly, even those hideous colonialism justifying nineteenth century scientist would argue agricultural civilization started in the Middle East (Or whatever name you may fancy for it: Would Fertile Crescent do?) as the amount of old buildings make clear. It would even be utterly unthinkable for them if it would have started elsewhere as most were Christians and they would place the origin of men in the Garden of Eden, after which civilizations emerged (See tower of Babel).




> All very ironic, in a dark way, to my way of thinking, as it's precisely those people, if they formed part of the ancestry of the Natufians, who participated in one of the largest advances in human history, the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, without which I wouldn't be typing on this computer, and later of metallurgy, and writing, and numerous other advances in human history, including the creation by the Jews of a monotheistic god, although I'm aware some people might not consider that an advancement. I find the whole thing so small minded as to beggar belief, but then I was a history and classics and archaeology person to whom it was made abundantly clear that indeed "ex oriente lux". 
> 
> As to how Wu et al reconcile a *possible* flow of genes from Anatolia into the WHG while maintaining that WHG have no Basal Eurasian signal, I don't know. I'm not sure anyone really knows what Basal Eurasian is, including them, unless they're holding out on us, which is certainly possible. The discovery of the CHG vindicated some of the early conclusions of the Reich lab, but I have no idea if they have or will discover one that is "Basal Eurasian". They've corrected their previous papers before, and maybe they will again. Amusingly, we've been informed that the latest, best analysis now shows WHG can be modeled as almost 50% Basal Eurasian, so who the heck knows. If that isn't the case, which wouldn't surprise me, perhaps the "Basal Eurasian" was in the Arabian refugium, as I posited in the mtDna ROa paper. Maybe it moved north to form the Natufian, after the departure of WHG like people and then spread far and wide. Maybe they were hiding somewhere near the Persian Gulf. We'll have to wait and see. 
> 
> Or maybe Wu et al's second alternative is correct and it's ancient substructure in Europe. We'll have to wait and see about that as well.


There are Natufian samples under research currently. 

http://eurogenes.blogspot.nl/2016/02...ns-in-lab.html

----------


## epoch

http://www.livescience.com/27744-old...ed-europe.html

Reindeer hunters used fish hooks.

----------


## bicicleur

> http://www.livescience.com/27744-old...ed-europe.html
> 
> Reindeer hunters used fish hooks.


these guys are supposed to have been reindeer hunters who converted to seal hunters in the Norwegian Trench and some of them expanded northward into the Norwegian fjords :

The *Fosna/Hensbacka* (ca. 8300 BC - 7300 BC, or 12000 cal.BP - 10500 cal.BP), were two very similar Late Palaeolithic/early Mesolithic cultures inScandinavia, and are often subsumed under the name *Fosna-Hensbacka culture*. This complex includes the Komsa culture that, notwithstanding different types of tools, is also considered to be a part of the Fosna culture group.[1] The main difference is that the Fosna/Komsa culture was distributed along the coast of Northern Norway, whereas the Hensbacka culture had a more eastern distribution along the coast of western Sweden; primarily in central Bohuslänto the north of Göteborg.
Recent investigations indicate that this particular area, i.e. central Bohuslän, may well have had the largest seasonal population in northern Europe during the Late Palaeolithic/early Mesolithic transition. This was due to environmental circumstances brought about by the relationship between the Vänern basin in the east, and topographical features in the North Sea basin to the west.

Site locations indicate that fishing and seal hunting were important for the economy and it is assumed that hide covered wooden framed boats were used 

North_Sea_map-en.jpg
Sea level was still much lower and Doggerland was the dry land in what is now the North Sea, but between Doggerland and Norway there is a 700 meter deep trench, the 'Norwegian Trench'
Once it was no longer covered by the icecap and no longer frozen, seals could be hunted and fish could be catched
These folks may have operated from Doggerland long before they reached the Scandinavian shores on the other side of the Norwegian Trench where they left their first traces 12 ka

----------


## bicicleur

> Yes, it's called:
> 
> "What about the Broad Spectrum Revolution? Subsistence strategy of hunter–gatherers in Southeast France between 20 and 8 ka BP"
> 
> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...40618214000299


interesting ; it is a possibility

we'll never be sure unless we get DNA

----------


## epoch

> These were Villabruna I2 folks.
> Where did they get their geometric microliths from, and their bow and arrow?
> 
> First bow and arrow discovered in Europe : 12.5 ka 
> but it may have been in use earlier than that


In the documentary First Europeans the case for arrows 50.000 years ago is promoted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_LVxZmIxcI From 21 minutes on..

----------


## bicicleur

> In the documentary First Europeans the case for arrows 50.000 years ago is promoted.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_LVxZmIxcI From 21 minutes on..


either this is spectacular news and publications should soon follow

or it is controversial, like what they claim on Chatelperronian from 30 mintes on

they claim Chatelperronian is Neanderthal, but look what Wikipedia says : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2telperronian

Controversy exists as to how far archaeologically it is associated with Neanderthal people.

*Dispute over disruption of the site[edit]*
João Zilhão and colleagues argue that the findings are complicated by disturbance of the site in the 19th century, and conclude that the apparent pattern of Aurignacian/Châtelperronian inter-stratification is an artifact of disturbance.[8] *·* [9] Bordes and Teyssandier (2011) further support this assertion. They claim post-depositional processes are behind the inter-stratification of Chatelperronian and Aurignacian material, a claim they back up by citing numerous open-air Chatelperronian sites without any evidence of Middle-Paleolithic layers below.[10]Paul Mellars and colleagues have criticized Zilhão et al.'s analysis, and argue that the original excavation by Delporte was not affected by disturbance.[11]
Paul Mellars, however, now has concluded on the basis of new radiocarbon dating on the cave of Grotte du Renne [3] "that there was strong possibility—if not probability— that they were stratigraphically intrusive into the Châtelperronian deposits from .. overlying Proto-Aurignacian levels" and that "The central and inescapable implication of the new dating results from the Grotte du Renne is that the single most impressive and hitherto widely cited pillar of evidence for the presence of complex “symbolic” behavior among the late Neanderthal populations in Europe has now effectively collapsed."[4] More recent research led by Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany shows using new new high precision dates that Châtelperronian tools were produced by neanderthals.

to be continued ...

and I would like to add the following from the same wikipedia article :

Large thick flakes/small blocks were used for cores, and were prepared with a crest over a long smooth surface. Using one or two striking points, long thin blades were detached. Direct percussion with a soft hammer was likely used for accuracy. Thicker blades made in this process were often converted into side scrapers, burins were often created in the same manner from debitage as well.
The manner of production is a solid continuation of the Mousterian but the ivory adornments found in association seem to be a more clear connection to Aurignacian peoples,[2]who are often argued to be the earliest introduction of _H. sapiens sapiens_into Europe. The technological refinement of the Châtelperronian and neighbouring Uluzzian in Central-Southern Italy is often argued to be the product of cultural influence from _H. sapiens sapiens_ that lived nearby, but these predate both the Aurignacian and the earliest presence of _H. 

_in other words, they used mousterian technology to prepare cores from which they struck blades, while Aurignacians were 1 step beyond ; they struck blades directly from cilindrical cores, thus bypassing Mousterian technology
the same sequence was observed in the Levant and the Central Asian corridor too, where Neanderthals were replaced by modern humans too around 48 ka

so, IMO chatelperronians replaced the Neanderthals and the Aurignacians replaced the chatelperronians (and Ulluzians)

----------


## Fire Haired14

@Angela,

I like most of what you say against Nordics, but there are some things I dis agree with. Being "Middle Eastern" is being Arab or Assyrian or Turkish. Being a human and living in the Middle East 1,000s and 1,000s of years ago, like WHG might of(remember Middle Easterners are probably part WHG, so WHG>Middle East is very possible), doesn't make you Middle Eastern. Just as because the first humans lived in Africa doesn't mean they were black. Swedes were always mostly descended of the same old and large Middle Eastern family as Persians are(the family I'm referring to is the one CHG and EEF belonged to).

They're still differnt from Persians, the only change is now we know more precisely what that difference is. They're not undercover Middle Easterners. Being European, is being a mixture of all those Mesolithic humans. It isn't being a human who has lived in Europe since the begging of time. It's not as if suddenly European people aren't European anymore. You're sort of making an interpretation of European genetics the same way this article does about Irish genetics. Irish aren't suddenly non-Irish, being mostly descended of migrations from the Black Sea and Turkey in the last 8,000 years has always been what they were. 

That's the only mistake I think you made. Overall I agree with you. Reality doesn't fit Nordicsists fantasies of being a pure, distinct, and superior branch completely differnt from Middle Easterners. 




> We know the EEF trace most of their ancestry to people who lived there, and almost half of the ancestry of the Yamnaya came from south of the Caucasus as well. In terms of those time periods, these people were all "Middle Eastern", or had "Middle Eastern" ancestry. None of them are exactly the same as modern Middle Easterners, not even the EEF. So, I don't know why the inhabitants of the Middle East become "Middle Easterners" only after the hunter gatherers leave. At the risk of again being accused of paranoia, I strongly believe it's because in the minds of some people, present company excepted, of course, it's that tainted Basal Eurasian that they associate with SSA or with Arabs which presents the big problem, hence that unending series of calculators designed to show which Europeans had the least of this despised "component".


You're fighting a straw man. There's no one creating calculators to show who has the least Basal Eurasian.

----------


## Angela

[QUOTE=epoch;480447]Well, there _is_ WHG admixture in Anatolian EN as well as mtDNA U8a and there still _is_ the admixture result of K14 to explain.[QUOTE]

Yes, we've known that ever since the data came out about the Early Anatolian Farmer samples (about 5%, isn't it?), and given what the paper on the Gravettian and Epigravettian in the Balkans and Anatolia shows, it's totally to be expected, yes? The cultural influences seem to have gone back and forth. 

If you can explain how that Kostenki paper fits into all this, I'll have to find some way of giving you a "virtual" prize. :) I don't know; was that mostly a function of using Admixture programs? Wu et al just say, in a very cursory fashion, that now that they have all these samples, the Willerslev conclusions have been shown to be inaccurate. Has he perhaps responded?




> They do mention that it would be a problem because of the lack of any Basal Eurasian in WHG.


The lack of Basal Eurasian in the WHG is a problem in proposing gene flow from Anatolia or the "Middle East" *into* *Europe*, yes. I was referring to the fact that they never say anything about the fact that this genetic "relationship" could be explained by gene flow from the WHG *into the Middle East*. I wasn't clear about that, I guess.




> Publishing a paper requires a "tad" more certainty than bumming around on a forum, wouldn't you say? But then again, maybe somebody hits a good idea. Remember there was this poll on La Brana's Y-DNA? The author of the paper joined the thread.


Absolutely yes to both. I sent an e-mail to the Hellenthal group about their papers on recent admixture concerning some things I thought they didn't sufficiently consider. I'm just saying that in this particular case an obvious explanation for the relationship would be *gene flow from the WHG into the Middle East* but they never mention it. I just find it hard to believe that such an obvious thing didn't occur to them but it occurred to all of us out here.




> I keep thinking this: Maybe they followed the Rhone up to find a tributary of the Rhine and hit upon the salmons it provided. The Rhine used to be a very salmon rich river. Then we have this: Magdalenians going north, followed by fishermen. The Magdalenian already had art with sal


I think that's absolutely correct, but I think the WHG could have been following deer and other smaller game as their range moved from south to north as well, don't you think?




> First, the term Middle Eastern is used in the paper.


They're scientists. Scientists are usually not particularly gifted with words and writing, although there are exceptions; that's why the actual meaning of so many papers is so difficult to discern. They also don't understand the power of words to shape thought. Words are, or were, my business. Ideas and ideologies flow from words and are just as powerful as technology in shaping history. I know it can seem obnoxious to harp on it, particularly as it can lead to famous statements like "It depends on what the definition of 'is' is". :)

Still, I think it does matter. I was just as insistent when there was all this discussion of "farmers" versus hunter-gatherers, as if "farmers" were this totally alien species that dropped out of the sky. Everybody was a hunter-gatherer originally; some of them just invented agriculture. 

In this case, the definition of "Middle Easterner" is time dependent. The "Middle Easterners" of 12,000 years ago are not the "Middle Easterners" of today. The same is true for the definition of "European". 




> There are Natufian samples under research currently.


Hopefully that will answer some questions. Do you know if the Klisoura remains are in a lab somewhere? Are there any "Eprigravettian" samples from the Middle East at all?

----------


## Angela

_ Originally Posted by bicicleur 

These were Villabruna I2 folks.
Where did they get their geometric microliths from, and their bow and arrow?

First bow and arrow discovered in Europe : 12.5 ka 
but it may have been in use earlier than that




_

Epoch: In the documentary First Europeans the case for arrows 50.000 years ago is promoted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_LVxZmIxcI From 21 minutes on..


Angela: Guys, if you go back to the paper on the Gravettian/Epigravettian in the Balkans and Anatolia, I think they're claiming that geometric microliths existed first in the cultures to the south of Anatolia. They also say it's likely they were using them for arrows. 

As to this documentary, who is this archaeologist, and has he published on this at all? Strange that it would appear first in a youtube documentary.

----------


## LeBrok

> I think that's absolutely correct, but I think the WHG could have been following deer and other smaller game as their range moved from south to north as well, don't you think?


(If I may). I agree. HGs don't need to be "mobile" hunters, following migratory animals, to populate and live through a vast territory. The sedentary HGs migrate too, and likewise they follow their prey. It just happens in "slow motion", in scale of centuries. In this case WHG expended North due to warming climate. Following their prey, and whole biological environment, expending North.
Other way to look at it is that, they moved geographically, but they remained sedentary in same climatic and biological zone.




> In this case, the definition of "Middle Easterner" is time dependent. The "Middle Easterners" of 12,000 years ago are not the "Middle Easterners" of today. The same is true for the definition of "European".


Like a dagger in nationalistic heart.

----------


## Greying Wanderer

Angela




> The lack of Basal Eurasian in the WHG is a problem in proposing gene flow from Anatolia or the "Middle East" *into Europe, yes. I was referring to the fact that they never say anything about the fact that this genetic "relationship" could be explained by gene flow from the WHGinto the Middle East. I wasn't clear about that, I guess.*


I may be missing something but

1) if it's mid-east to Europe then the lack of basal in Europe implies basal came to the mid-east afterwards

2) if it's Europe to mid-east the lack of basal in Europe also implies basal came to the mid-east in a separate event afterwards

so either way - unless I'm missing something obvious - the implication is there was a major turnover in the mid-east involving Basal.

I'm easy on either option 1) or 2) but the major implication seems to be being obscured by that debate.

The major points I got from the paper

- some very old continuity at least on the Atlantic coast
- R1b where it wasn't expected by most (including me)
- ENA where it wasn't expected
- some kind of major "Basal" turnover in the mid-east

----------


## epoch

> Originally Posted by epoch
> 
> 
> Well, there _is_ WHG admixture in Anatolian EN as well as mtDNA U8a and there still _is_ the admixture result of K14 to explain.
> 
> 
> Yes, we've known that ever since the data came out about the Early Anatolian Farmer samples (about 5%, isn't it?), and given what the paper on the Gravettian and Epigravettian in the Balkans and Anatolia shows, it's totally to be expected, yes? The cultural influences seem to have gone back and forth. 
> 
> If you can explain how that Kostenki paper fits into all this, I'll have to find some way of giving you a "virtual" prize. :) I don't know; was that mostly a function of using Admixture programs? Wu et al just say, in a very cursory fashion, that now that they have all these samples, the Willerslev conclusions have been shown to be inaccurate. Has he perhaps responded?


Haven't mailed yet. Thinking of what to say.

The Oase1 paper has a D-stat D(Europeans, Stuttgart; Kostenki14, Mbuti) = -0.6. Europeans being two French and two Sardianians. If Kostenki14 only has affinity with WHG that stat should have favoured Europeans, in my opinion. So something else must be there. Mind you, perhaps I don't see this right, but I think the link between K14 and ENF is tigher than later WHG admixture justifies.






> The lack of Basal Eurasian in the WHG is a problem in proposing gene flow from Anatolia or the "Middle East" *into* *Europe*, yes. I was referring to the fact that they never say anything about the fact that this genetic "relationship" could be explained by gene flow from the WHG *into the Middle East*. I wasn't clear about that, I guess.


Or perhaps from K14 sprang Vestonice, Villabruna and something that admixted in Anatolia, the latter preserving a component of K14 that drifted in both others? Just a thought.





> Absolutely yes to both. I sent an e-mail to the Hellenthal group about their papers on recent admixture concerning some things I thought they didn't sufficiently consider. I'm just saying that in this particular case an obvious explanation for the relationship would be *gene flow from the WHG into the Middle East* but they never mention it. I just find it hard to believe that such an obvious thing didn't occur to them but it occurred to all of us out here.


The SI basically says: 




> There are several possible explanations for these findings. One is gene flow between relatives of Near Easterners and pre-Neolithic Europeans after ~14,000 years ago, beginning with the Villabruna Cluster. A second is population substructure in Europe. In this scenario, after post-glacial re-peopling of Europe, the balance of ancestry could have shifted toward populations that were more closely related to Near Easterners.


And furthermore they clearly mention they can't find a good fit for WHG. 

Also:




> Understanding the exact gene flow history responsible for these patterns is difficult with the ancient DNA sample series available here, but is an important question to address in future work.






> I think that's absolutely correct, but I think the WHG could have been following deer and other smaller game as their range moved from south to north as well, don't you think?







> They're scientists. Scientists are usually not particularly gifted with words and writing, although there are exceptions; that's why the actual meaning of so many papers is so difficult to discern. They also don't understand the power of words to shape thought. Words are, or were, my business. Ideas and ideologies flow from words and are just as powerful as technology in shaping history. I know it can seem obnoxious to harp on it, particularly as it can lead to famous statements like "It depends on what the definition of 'is' is". :)
> 
> Still, I think it does matter. I was just as insistent when there was all this discussion of "farmers" versus hunter-gatherers, as if "farmers" were this totally alien species that dropped out of the sky. Everybody was a hunter-gatherer originally; some of them just invented agriculture. 
> 
> In this case, the definition of "Middle Easterner" is time dependent. The "Middle Easterners" of 12,000 years ago are not the "Middle Easterners" of today. The same is true for the definition of "European".






> Hopefully that will answer some questions. Do you know if the Klisoura remains are in a lab somewhere? Are there any "Eprigravettian" samples from the Middle East at all?


What we need is a find from during and just before LGM. Solutreans, also. This paper has a huge gap between 18.800 and 26.800, exactly the period where there was a bottle neck. This likely is due to a lack of finds, I think. But the bottleneck that the LGM was must influence all kinds of results as well.

No idea on Klisoura.

----------


## Angela

> Angela
> 
> 
> 
> I may be missing something but
> 
> 1) if it's mid-east to Europe then the lack of basal in Europe implies basal came to the mid-east afterwards
> 
> 2) if it's Europe to mid-east the lack of basal in Europe also implies basal came to the mid-east in a separate event afterwards
> ...


As to 1), yes, that's what I said. In that case, Basal Eurasian would have to have arrived after the departure not of WHG itself, necessarily, but perhaps of some population which went on to form a significant part of the WHG genome. Of course, that's if what we've been speculating about "Basal Eurasian" is correct. 

This movement from Greece, perhaps ultimately from Anatolia,* if* it took place, occurred, according to them, just around 14,000 ybp, in the Bolling warming period. 

*If* it was existing substructure prior to that, their other alternative, why is there this "relationship" to ancestors of modern Middle Easterners?

I don't understand why number 2 would be the case, so I may be the one missing something obvious here. Why couldn't the back migration of WHG, which led to some stats showing about a 5% input, have taken place after, as just one possibility, Natufian admixed populations had spread in a star burst pattern in every direction?

As to the other four, yes indeed, with the caveat that this "Aurignacian" remnant seems to have contributed a very small portion of the genomes of modern Europeans.

----------


## bicicleur

> _ Originally Posted by bicicleur 
> 
> These were Villabruna I2 folks.
> Where did they get their geometric microliths from, and their bow and arrow?
> 
> First bow and arrow discovered in Europe : 12.5 ka 
> but it may have been in use earlier than that
> 
> 
> ...


Kebaran had geometric microliths.
Geometric microliths are 'obliquely truncated blades'
Microburil_1 cut.jpgMicroburil_2.jpgMicroburil_3.jpgMicroburil_4.jpgMicroburil_5.jpg

The very first geometric microliths were invented in India/Sri Lanka ca 35 ka.
I suspect that just before LGM some people arrived in the Levant coming from the east.
Iran and northern India would have been very arid during LGM.

If I understand correctly the paper says during the period 14-12 ka Okuzini in southern Anatolia got geometric microliths, but the Balkans not.
In the period 12-11 ka both Anatolia and the Balkans had it.
They are supposed to be used as arrowheads.
Furthermore when geometric microliths arrive other mammals are hunted, like deer.
The author stresses several times that the Balkans and Anatolia remain distinct from the Kebaran.
He sees clear links between the Balkans and Anatolia and he sees some connection through depictions with the Italian Epigravettian and with Western Europe (France).

Still as you pointed out earlier, it is quite suspicious, it is not very likely that the Villabrunans would have invented geometric microliths and the bow and arrow seperately.

----------


## Angela

> Epoch: Or perhaps from K14 sprang Vestonice, Villabruna and something that admixted in Anatolia, the latter preserving a component of K14 that drifted in both others? Just a thought.


I can certainly see that. I also initially wondered whether the "Basal Eurasian" in K14 drifted out by the time we get to Vestonice. Perhaps "Basal Eurasian" was initially much more widespread than it was later on, and only survived as a discrete component further south in places like Arabia or around the Persian Gulf.




> "t_here are several possible explanations for these findings. One is gene flow between relatives of Near Easterners and pre-Neolithic Europeans after ~14,000 years ago, beginning with the Villabruna Cluster. A second is population substructure in Europe. In this scenario, after post-glacial re-peopling of Europe, the balance of ancestry could have shifted toward populations that were more closely related to Near Easterners."_


That doesn't read to me as even hinting that it's because a WHG group migrated into the Middle East, but I could very well be wrong about that. It's certainly clear that they don't think any definitive answers can be reached without additional ancient samples.

----------


## bicicleur

> (If I may). I agree. HGs don't need to be "mobile" hunters, following migratory animals, to populate and live through a vast territory. The sedentary HGs migrate too, and likewise they follow their prey. It just happens in "slow motion", in scale of centuries. In this case WHG expended North due to warming climate. Following their prey, and whole biological environment, expending North.
> Other way to look at it is that, they moved geographically, but they remained sedentary in same climatic and biological zone.
> 
> Like a dagger in nationalistic heart.


The Magdalenian reindeer hunters moved around in teepees, they were very mobile.

I guess the Magelmosian were the first Villabrunans arriving in Scandinavia 11 ka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglemosian_culture
They had huts made of bark whiwh indicates they were at least semi-sedentary.

The Maglemosian people lived in forest and wetland environments, using fishing and hunting tools made from wood, bone, and flint microliths. It appears that they had domesticated the dog.[_citation needed_] Some may have lived settled lives, but most were nomadic.[_citation needed_]
Huts made of bark have been preserved, and the tools were made of flint, bone, and horn. A characteristic of the culture are the sharply edgedmicroliths of flintstone, used for spear and arrow heads.[2] Another notable feature is the "leister", a characteristic type of fishing spear, used forgigging.

I wonder wether 11 ka, when they arrived, there were allready forests in southern Scandinavia.

----------


## bicicleur

> I can certainly see that. I also initially wondered whether the "Basal Eurasian" in K14 drifted out by the time we get to Vestonice. Perhaps "Basal Eurasian" was initially much more widespread than it was later on, and only survived as a discrete component further south in places like Arabia or around the Persian Gulf.


remind me, did CHG have Basal Eurasian?

----------


## epoch

> Angela
> 
> 
> 
> I may be missing something but
> 
> 1) if it's mid-east to Europe then the lack of basal in Europe implies basal came to the mid-east afterwards
> 
> 2) if it's Europe to mid-east the lack of basal in Europe also implies basal came to the mid-east in a separate event afterwards


That second option I don't understand. If a tad WHG entered Anatolians carrying basal Eurasian they wouldn't lose basal Eurasian, would they? Or don't I understand what you mean?




> so either way - unless I'm missing something obvious - the implication is there was a major turnover in the mid-east involving Basal.
> 
> I'm easy on either option 1) or 2) but the major implication seems to be being obscured by that debate.
> 
> The major points I got from the paper
> 
> - some very old continuity at least on the Atlantic coast
> - R1b where it wasn't expected by most (including me)
> - ENA where it wasn't expected
> - some kind of major "Basal" turnover in the mid-east

----------


## Angela

> remind me, did CHG have Basal Eurasian?


I see what you're getting at...

From analyses done on the internet, yes, although, as ever with this, the exact percentage keeps changing. I think from things I read on anthrogenica it's ranged from maybe 25% to 50% to higher? 

I don't remember the paper that actually published the sequence mentioning it.

I also entertained the possibility at one time that Basal Eurasian was further north or east and that was the direction from which it reached the Levant, which might point to a source around India, which is right where we find the first geometric microblades as per your post.

----------


## epoch

> remind me, did CHG have Basal Eurasian?


Yes, certainly.

http://eurogenes.blogspot.nl/2016/04...urope-and.html

But the original paper also mentions it:




> The split between CHG and EF is dated at ~20–30 kya *emerging from a common basal Eurasian lineage*1 (Supplementary Fig. 2) and suggesting a possible link with the LGM, although the broad confidence intervals require some caution with this interpretation.

----------


## epoch

> *If* it was existing substructure prior to that, their other alternative, why is there this "relationship" to ancestors of modern Middle Easterners?


But Villabruna fancies Afontova Gora3 (post-LGM) over Malta (pre-LGM). You'd be tempted to think it fancies _everything_ post-LGM over pre-LGM.




> As to the other four, yes indeed, with the caveat that this "Aurignacian" remnant seems to have contributed a very small portion of the genomes of modern Europeans.


I wonder how a component made of a number of (hypothetical, not yet found and/or sequenced) Aurignacians would do. Considering that pre-LGM diversity was far larger than post-LGM the WHG in Magdalenian might be a cover for other Aurignacians that left a print in WHG that are not yet found.

----------


## Angela

As the King said to Anna, "It's a puzzlement"! :)

Good catch on the CHG paper.

----------


## epoch

> Kebaran had geometric microliths.
> Geometric microliths are 'obliquely truncated blades'
> Attachment 7751Attachment 7752Attachment 7753Attachment 7754Attachment 7755
> 
> The very first geometric microliths were invented in India/Sri Lanka ca 35 ka.
> I suspect that just before LGM some people arrived in the Levant coming from the east.
> Iran and northern India would have been very arid during LGM.
> 
> If I understand correctly the paper says during the period 14-12 ka Okuzini in southern Anatolia got geometric microliths, but the Balkans not.
> ...


Mircoliths being _the_ marker of mesolithic HGs.

----------


## bicicleur

> I see what you're getting at...
> 
> From analyses done on the internet, yes, although, as ever with this, the exact percentage keeps changing. I think from things I read on anthrogenica it's ranged from maybe 25% to 50% to higher? 
> 
> I don't remember the paper that actually published the sequence mentioning it.
> 
> I also entertained the possibility at one time that Basal Eurasian was further north or east and that was the direction from which it reached the Levant, which might point to a source around India, which is right where we find the first geometric microblades as per your post.


There is a pecularity with Kostenki 14. He is C1b, not C1a2.
I mentioned earlier, other people had allready arrived at the Kostenki area some 2000 years before the Aurignacians. The culture of Kostenki 14 is unassigned, we don't know whether they were Aurignacians or from the folks that arrived before. Aurignacians arrived at Kostenki +/- 39.5 ka, so you might expect Kostenki 14 at least to be admixed with Aurignacians though.
C1b is spread over SW Asia, South Asia and even SE Asia (Ayta in the Philipines), quite different from the C1a2 distribution.

----------


## bicicleur

> Yes, certainly.
> 
> http://eurogenes.blogspot.nl/2016/04...urope-and.html
> 
> But the original paper also mentions it:


found it in the ice age paper itself too :

The Satsurblia Cluster individuals from the Caucasus dating to~13,000–10,000 years ago2 share more alleles with the VillabrunaCluster individuals than they do with earlier Europeans, indicating thatthey are related to the population that contributed new alleles to peoplein the Villabruna Cluster, although they cannot be the direct source ofthe gene flow. One reason for this is that the Satsurblia Cluster carrieslarge amounts of Basal Eurasian ancestry while Villabruna Cluster individualsdo not2 (Supplementary Information section 12; Extended DataFig. 4).

----------


## bix

> I wonder how a component made of a number of (hypothetical, not yet found and/or sequenced) Aurignacians would do. Considering that pre-LGM diversity was far larger than post-LGM the WHG in Magdalenian might be a cover for other Aurignacians that left a print in WHG that are not yet found.


Say, for example, the Villabruna (WHG) in El Miron? I was wondering myself when this admixture event could have occurred. It could have been very early... eh? Or one of those components of Villabruna.

----------


## Fire Haired14

> I see what you're getting at...
> 
> From analyses done on the internet, yes, although, as ever with this, the exact percentage keeps changing. I think from things I read on anthrogenica it's ranged from maybe 25% to 50% to higher?


Need not dealt on percentages :). Anatolia_Neolithic, CHG, and all modern Middle Easterners have an about as strong Basal Eurasian signal in D-stats. D-stats and Treemix gives an about 40% estimate but many of Treemix's models with Ancient Middle Eastern and European genomes don't include Basal Eurasian but give a more complicated tree. 




> I don't remember the paper that actually published the sequence mentioning it.
> .


They claimed CHG was pure Basal Eurasian!! Crazy. It's because they aren't the same time that did the Fu 2016, laz 2013, Haak 2015 papers.

----------


## Fire Haired14

> Haven't mailed yet. Thinking of what to say.
> 
> The Oase1 paper has a D-stat D(Europeans, Stuttgart; Kostenki14, Mbuti) = -0.6. Europeans being two French and two Sardianians. If Kostenki14 only has affinity with WHG that stat should have favoured Europeans, in my opinion. So something else must be there. Mind you, perhaps I don't see this right, but I think the link between K14 and ENF is tigher than later WHG admixture justifies.


That's wrong. I don't mean to be a jerk, but there's no way that stat is correct. Kostenki14 has the same affinity to Europeans other Paleo-Euros do. He's closer to basically all modern Europeans than to Stuttgart. I've seen plenty of statistics proving this.

----------


## Greying Wanderer

Angela, Epoch




> _me: 2) if it's Europe to mid-east the lack of basal in Europe also implies basal came to the mid-east in a separate event afterwards_





> Angela: I don't understand why number 2 would be the case, so I may be the one missing something obvious here.


Yes I think I may nave been getting CHG and Basal jumbled up.

Leaving CHG aside then option (2) if the mid-east already had Basal then all it would take is some WHG from Europe.

Only if it was option (1) mid-east to Europe, would there need to be a later movement of Basal into the mid-east.




> As to the other four, yes indeed, with the caveat that this "Aurignacian" remnant seems to have contributed a very small portion of the genomes of modern Europeans.


I don't mind that. If moderns had a critical leg up from archaic admixture the amount of DNA involved as a percentage is likely to be tiny imo.

Or alternatively if it only has/had a minor phenotype effect in certain regions that's of interest to me (as I'm particularly into the source of myths and legends e.g. giants).

----------


## epoch

> That's wrong. I don't mean to be a jerk, but there's no way that stat is correct. Kostenki14 has the same affinity to Europeans other Paleo-Euros do. He's closer to basically all modern Europeans than to Stuttgart. I've seen plenty of statistics proving this.


Table S8.1 in the SI of this paper has similar D-stats.

----------


## Tom Milledge

> The Magdalenian reindeer hunters moved around in teepees, they were very mobile.
> 
> I guess the Magelmosian were the first Villabrunans arriving in Scandinavia 11 ka 
> They had huts made of bark whiwh indicates they were at least semi-sedentary.
> 
> The Maglemosian people lived in forest and wetland environments, using fishing and hunting tools made from wood, bone, and flint microliths. *It appears that they had domesticated the dog.*


This dog connection may be especially important. The latest dog genomics studies point to a 15k ybp radiation of domestic dogs out of southern east asia.

Since I am new here, I can't post working links, sorry about that! Google "Out of southern East Asia: the natural history of domestic dogs across the world" and scroll down to Figure 2D.

From their discussion:




> As there is little evidence of westward human migrations from southern East Asia around 15 000 years ago, the initial spread of the domestic dog out of Asia may in part have been a self-initiated dispersal driven by environmental factors (e.g., the retreat of the glacial coverage that started about 19 000 years ago). The specific route domestic dogs used to migrate to the Middle East, Africa and Europe remains to be uncovered.


The conclusion is shaky, to say the least, but maybe the analysis is sound.

----------


## LeBrok

> This dog connection may be especially important. The latest dog genomics studies point to a 15k ybp radiation of domestic dogs out of southern east asia.
> 
> Since I am new here, I can't post working links, sorry about that! Google "Out of southern East Asia: the natural history of domestic dogs across the world" and scroll down to Figure 2D.
> 
> From their discussion:
> 
> 
> 
> The conclusion is shaky, to say the least, but maybe the analysis is sound.


Here is a post with links to article and research.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...987#post419987
Welcome to Eupedia, Tom.

----------


## holderlin

Finally had a minute to read this. I'm on vacation everyone : )

Not much to add. This was a good read though. 

Still looks to me like WHG expansion out of the Italian (or thereabouts) refuge where they hunted and moved around a lot eventually mixing with MA1 like, CHG, and ENF. This coincides well with what is roughly agreed to be epigravettian continuity in Italy, the Balkans, and the SW Steppe. Makes sense to me. 

So this would look something like: WHG is already in Anatolia as ENF expands into the region where they mix. As ENF/EEF continues to churn this WHG signal remains. There would have been mixing with CHG like in the North Caucuses and MA-1 like on the steppe. CHG and WHG share blue eyes, and AG3 has greatly increased WHG admixture compared to MA-1. And there's the lack of Basal Eurasian in WHG. All of this is consistent with WHG expansion. And I don't see anything that's inconsistent with WHG expansion.

----------


## epoch

> Finally had a minute to read this. I'm on vacation everyone : )
> 
> Not much to add. This was a good read though. 
> 
> Still looks to me like WHG expansion out of the Italian (or thereabouts) refuge where they hunted and moved around a lot eventually mixing with MA1 like, CHG, and ENF. This coincides well with what is roughly agreed to be epigravettian continuity in Italy, the Balkans, and the SW Steppe. Makes sense to me. 
> 
> So this would look something like: WHG is already in Anatolia as ENF expands into the region where they mix. As ENF/EEF continues to churn this WHG signal remains. There would have been mixing with CHG like in the North Caucuses and MA-1 like on the steppe. CHG and WHG share blue eyes, and AG3 has greatly increased WHG admixture compared to MA-1. And there's the lack of Basal Eurasian in WHG. All of this is consistent with WHG expansion. *And I don't see anything that's inconsistent with WHG expansion.*



Mesolithic greek mtDNA K1c?

----------


## Angela

I see the tune about the Villabruna results is changing. I wonder if there will be a retraction of all the nasty things said about this paper? 

Oh, the irony. :)

----------


## holderlin

> Mesolithic greek mtDNA K1c?


Missed this.

K1c isn't associated with EEF (yet) and those samples were pre-EEF. I wish they could have sampled them better and gotten a full genome though. These could have answered some questions.

----------


## holderlin

> I see the tune about the Villabruna results is changing. I wonder if there will be a retraction of all the nasty things said about this paper? 
> 
> Oh, the irony. :)


What's changing? Who's changing?

And I thought it was the Anatolian paper that everyone hated.

----------


## Fire Haired14

> Missed this.
> 
> K1c isn't associated with EEF (yet) and those samples were pre-EEF. I wish they could have sampled them better and gotten a full genome though. These could have answered some questions.


Haplogroup K is probably Middle Eastern(common ancestry shared by EEF and CHG). K1c today is relatively popular in Europe, but I'm not sure how frequent it is anyother region. There's a good chance this means Mesolithic Greeks were largely "Middle Eastern"(or this type of ancestry went beyond the boundires of the Middle East) and may very well have been EEF-like.

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## holderlin

> Haplogroup K is probably Middle Eastern(common ancestry shared by EEF and CHG). K1c today is relatively popular in Europe, but I'm not sure how frequent it is anyother region. There's a good chance this means Mesolithic Greeks were largely "Middle Eastern"(or this type of ancestry went beyond the boundires of the Middle East) and may very well have been EEF-like.


Yes, it's widespread. I know that, but we haven't found it in ancient EEF whereas we've found K1a. That's all I'm saying, but I know sample size isn't massive yadda yadda yadda

It would have been nice to have gotten the full genomes of those Mesolithic Greeks so we wouldn't have to be speculating. I can't recall the archaeology at the moment to say things the culture and/or physical type, but for the time being this will offer some strong clues as to how EEF these per-farming Greeks may be. I should review the appendix.

----------


## Garrick

Paper published in journal "Nature", 9 June (Nature 534):

*The Genetic History of Ice Age Europe*

*Fu et al (64 authors)
*
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...93.html#tables

And links for figures and tables and supplementary info are changed in relation to the first post.

Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Figure 1: A decrease in Neanderthal ancestry in the last 45,000 years. (127 KB) 





Extended Data Figure 2: Heat matrix of pairwise _f_3(_X_, _Y; Mbuti_) for selected ancient individuals. (332 KB) 

Extended Data Figure 3: Studying how the relatedness of non-European populations to pairs of European hunter-gatherers changes over time. (525 KB) 

Extended Data Figure 4: Three admixture graph models that fit the data for _Satsurblia_, an Upper Palaeolithic individual from the Caucasus. (127 KB) 

Extended Data Table 1: The 51 ancient modern humans analysed in this study (327 KB) 

Extended Data Table 2: Estimated proportion of Neanderthal ancestry (477 KB) 

Extended Data Table 3: Significant correlation of Neanderthal ancestry estimate with specimen age (205 KB) 

Extended Data Table 4: Sex determination for newly reported individuals (485 KB) 

Extended Data Table 5: Allele counts at SNPs affected by selection in individuals with >1-fold coverage (285 KB) 

Extended Data Table 6: All European hunter-gatherers beginning with _Kostenki14_ share genetic drift with present-day Europeans (623 KB) 


New link for *Supplementary Information*:

www.nature.com/nature/journal/v534/n7606/extref/nature17993-s1.pdf

Archaeological context for 38 newly reported samples 2-14 SI

Ancient DNA processing and quality control 15-20 SI

Evidence for a decrease in Neanderthal ancestry over time 21-27 SI

Sex determination and Y chromosome analyses 28-31 5

Genetic clustering of ancient samples 32-47 SI

Admixture Graph modeling of high coverage ancient genomes 48-53 SI

Admixture Graph based assignment of ancestry 54-58 SI

No evidence of Basal Eurasian ancestry in pre-Neolithic Europeans 59-63 SI

Mal’ta1 is an outgroup to Upper Palaeolithic Europeans after 37,000 years ago 64-65 SI

A genetic link between GoyetQ116-1 and the El Mirón Cluster 66-68 SI

Gene flow linking the Villabruna Cluster and the Near East 69-70 SI

Population affinities of the Satsurblia Cluster 71-73 SI

----------


## LeBrok

Thanks for posting. I'm surprised of low level of Neanderthal DNA in Paleolithic folks. I thought it was much higher.

Hmmm, 15% of drop of Neanderthal DNA from Human genome in 50 thousand years, from 3 to 2.5 percent. I'm having doubts that it was about "fitness" of Neanderthal DNA. Perhaps some of them mutated beyond recognition that they are derived from Neanderthal. Others were replaced by volume of new mutations from people coming from South like WHG and farmers. One is certain, after initial mixing of both races, Neanderthal DNA quickly dropped to 3% (level of essential mutations for living in cold climate?) and lasted almost unchanged for 50 thousand years. If anything, we got the very "fit" part of their genome! The "unfit" part was weeded out very quickly, in just few generations.

When we look at coldest part of Ice Age 45 to 15 kya, the level of Neanderthal DNA is stable around 3% or even spiking higher during LGM, to almost 4% in some cases. The serious drop to 2.5% happens in our warm interglacial period.

Oase1 is quite an evenement. He must have had Neanderthal grand grand parent. Maybe he even knew him personally and talked to him?

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## Promenade

> He must have had Neanderthal grand grand parent. Maybe he even knew him personally and talked to him?


Considering the lifespan of people at the time it is very unlikely, but it is an interesting thought

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## LeBrok

> Considering the lifespan of people at the time it is very unlikely, but it is an interesting thought


Yep, a possibility. Maybe not that unrealistic considering also that women had kids very early at age of 15, possibly even earlier. At age of 30 one can be grandmother, at age of 45 great grandma.

----------


## Greying Wanderer

> Thanks for posting. I'm surprised of low level of Neanderthal DNA in Paleolithic folks. I thought it was much higher.
> 
> Hmmm, 15% of drop of Neanderthal DNA from Human genome in 50 thousand years, from 3 to 2.5 percent. I'm having doubts that it was about "fitness" of Neanderthal DNA. Perhaps some of them mutated beyond recognition that they are derived from Neanderthal. Others were replaced by volume of new mutations from people coming from South like WHG and farmers. *One is certain, after initial mixing of both races, Neanderthal DNA quickly dropped to 3%* (level of essential mutations for living in cold climate?) and lasted almost unchanged for 50 thousand years. If anything, we got the very "fit" part of their genome! The "unfit" part was weeded out very quickly, in just few generations.
> 
> When we look at coldest part of Ice Age 45 to 15 kya, the level of Neanderthal DNA is stable around 3% or even spiking higher during LGM, to almost 4% in some cases. The serious drop to 2.5% happens in our warm interglacial period.
> 
> Oase1 is quite an evenement. He must have had Neanderthal grand grand parent. Maybe he even knew him personally and talked to him?


My bold.

Something that just struck me reading this is what if Neanderthal DNA didn't drop because it sucked (or because of problems related to birth). What if there were just a lot fewer of them to start with?

For example four grand parents
AMH + AMH
AMH + AMH
AMH + Neanderthal
Neanderthal + Neanderthal
= grand child 37% Neanderthal

AMH + AMH
AMH + AMH
AMH + Neanderthal
AMH + Neanderthal
= grand child 25% Neanderthal

AMH + AMH
AMH + AMH
AMH + AMH
AMH + Neanderthal
= grand child 12.5% Neanderthal

eight great grandparents
AMH + AMH
AMH + AMH
AMH + AMH
AMH + AMH
AMH + AMH
AMH + AMH
AMH + AMH
AMH + Neanderthal
= grand child 6% Neanderthal

not sure if that makes sense or not?

----------


## LeBrok

> My bold.
> 
> Something that just struck me reading this is what if Neanderthal DNA didn't drop because it sucked (or because of problems related to birth). What if there were just a lot fewer of them to start with?
> 
> For example four grand parents
> AMH + AMH
> AMH + AMH
> AMH + Neanderthal
> Neanderthal + Neanderthal
> ...


Very likely it was the case, that there were always more humans around than Neanderthals therefore level of their DNA in human genome was always smaller. If there was 3 Neanderthal for every 97 humans we could explain 3% just mathematically. I'm suspecting the steady level of 3% was important and minimum to survive up North, therefore we can say more fit for the climatic zone and local fauna and flora, diseases included. Natural selection in action. Otherwise Neanderthal DNA would drop to 0% overwhelmed by sheer number of humans and their DNA. However, in Europeans, it is stubbornly stuck around "magical" 3% for last 50 thousand years. It means a lot.

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## holderlin

I just wanted to post that we officially know now that the Villabruna allele sharing with the Middle East was in fact from WHG or the like in or near Anatolia and the Caucuses.

----------


## PaleoRevenge

In Paleolithic Europe there was a unique variant which has been coined as the Cro-Magnon man, not all paleolithic skulls belonged to this type. Cro-Magnon exemplars are fascinating for heaving very advanced features, large brains/cranium, high straight foreheads, wide faces but mesocephalic, strong positive chins and very muscular. I wonder to which haplogroup the Cro-Magnons belonged to and their genetic legacy.

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## Fire Haired14

> I wonder to which haplogroup the Cro-Magnons belonged to and their genetic legacy.


Check if the DNA taken from Paleo Europeans in the study discussed in this thread are from archaeological sites with Cro Magnon types. The genomes belonged mostly to Y DNA C1 and I and mtDNA M* and U; U5*, U2*, U*, U8* pre-U2e, U6, others. 

Their closest relatives today are Europeans. Modern Europeans are a mixture of known Mesolithic/Late Paleo populations. To examine their genetic legacy further lets examine their relationship to the Mesolithic/Late Paleo ancestors of Europeans. They share sometype of common ancestry with all of them. They're closest to WHG, the primary Mesolithic/Late Paleo people of Europe. WHG though probably isn't their direct descendant but its ancestors may be unsampled groups of Paleo Europeans. 

Basically Paleo Europeans genetically are what you would expect; extinct but related to the ancestors of many modern people(esp. Europeans). They belonged to extinct mtDNA/Y DNA which was related to modern WHG-descended Y DNA/mtDNA: They had I* instead of I2 or I1, they had U5* instead of U5b or U5a, they had pre-U2e instead of U2e, they had U8* instead of U8a1a, and so on.

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## LeBrok

> In Paleolithic Europe there was a unique variant which has been coined as the Cro-Magnon man, not all paleolithic skulls belonged to this type. Cro-Magnon exemplars are fascinating for heaving very advanced features, large brains/cranium,


 Oh, you are so romantic about them, that it is almost cute. You should know that bigger doesn't mean smarter. We, people with smaller brains, have build the civilization, not them. 
Is cellphone smarter than big supercomputer of 80s?




> high straight foreheads,


Straight? I think you confused them with Early Farmers.




> wide faces but mesocephalic, strong positive chins and very muscular.


Wow, so handsome, to bad they couldn't write or we knew how smart they were.

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## Alpenjager

> In Paleolithic Europe there was a unique variant which has been coined as the Cro-Magnon man, not all paleolithic skulls belonged to this type. Cro-Magnon exemplars are fascinating for heaving very advanced features, large brains/cranium, high straight foreheads, wide faces but mesocephalic, strong positive chins and very muscular. I wonder to which haplogroup the Cro-Magnons belonged to and their genetic legacy.


Minute 1:40 I think this draw is about the now proved to be a false Cromagnon, known as "Cro-Magnon 1" belonging to mtDNA T2. Dated finally of less than 800 years ago. His name could be easily "Jean Pierre" :)

----------


## MOESAN

As a whole Cro-Magnon and descendants hade a rather low and a bit rounded frontal, vertical enough at the basis and curving itself up and back towards the 'bregma' (it I don't confuse the words) ITS the skull top, long and linear until the occiput. the browridges were not too marked; very different from some of the subsequent Upper Paleo Mesolithic people where one type had a very "brutal" forehead, receding without too much curve above very strong browridges.
Later types show for me evidence of crossings between the two kinds, and badly labelled 'cromagnoids' all of them.
(hot) amateur statement.

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## holderlin

> As a whole Cro-Magnon and descendants hade a rather low and a bit rounded frontal, vertical enough at the basis and curving itself up and back towards the 'bregma' (it I don't confuse the words) ITS the skull top, long and linear until the occiput. the browridges were not too marked; very different from some of the subsequent Upper Paleo Mesolithic people where one type had a very "brutal" forehead, receding without too much curve above very strong browridges.
> Later types show for me evidence of crossings between the two kinds, and badly labelled 'cromagnoids' all of them.
> (hot) amateur statement.


I've always wondered about this sort of thing. What's the best book to read?

Do we not have any "pure" cromagnon DNA? I feel like we do. Was it C1 Y HG?

And I've posted many amateur hot takes.

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## MOESAN

these old surveys were using metric means but also individual/typologic classification when today metric anthropology seems using, for the little I have red, only means and artificial "distances" and dendograms without too much genealogic value for I think (some of the today scholars said that too). The old studies were not always relevant and some disagreed with others but they were the best way to try to find components taking parts in crossings (so DNA admixture for a part); what I like in them is the descriptions of shapes we don't find in what I red recently because to catch these shapes we need far more measures; for practical reasons I suppose (lack of parts of crania?) the new studies take only some principal measures, the more often without jaw if I understood well, useful but not sufficient to distinguish between sometimes very different types.
I don't know a summary work about ancient anthropology and I picked up things here and there. In french there is a collection of scholar books (ancient works are not always of high level compared to today science but can help) under the name 'PERSEE' but your are obliged to try all kinds of "googling titles" to find something. My relatively short knowledge is the result of a mass of picking here and there, even sometimes only allusions found in books dedied to other matters as a whole. I've some pictures but I don't manage how share them here.
Coon gave some short descriptions for proto-historical pops and "types" and gave us too some measures means, but it's very tiny. Nevertheless he was the first to speak of shapes which differentiate between 'corded', 'kymric', 'long-barrows','danubian' and 'saxon', even if pseudo mean types they prove the differences of origin (in part) of diverse pops otherwise all described as 'dolichocephalic' what is very short! Coon opened a door rhather than he found solid solutions, that said. I'm sorry I cannot say more.
I can give you some measures for some ancient pops, some of them given by Coon spite not from him everytime, but for Paleo I've almost nothing (only Combe-Capelle, more UP/Mesolithic than true Paleo) -

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