# Population Genetics > Paleogenetics > Paleolithic & Mesolithic >  Pinhasi et al-Ancient dna recovery

## Angela

Thanks to Dienekes for the link:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...l.pone.0129102

"Optimal Ancient DNA Yields from the Inner Ear Part of the Human Petrous Bone"

The technical aspects are beyond me, but basically they can recover dna from remains in hotter and wetter climates.

" *These results suggest that it may be possible to obtain endogenous DNA from part C also for samples with relatively low amounts of endogenous DNA from hot environments, although extreme caution will be necessary in the interpretation of the results obtained from such samples.*"


I hava a feeling very few will exercise extreme caution. :)

Apparently the have a sample from Jordan 10,000 years ago and one from just around the time of the departure to Europe. It should be very interesting.

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## Fire Haired14

Apparently the DNA files are available online and Felix already has plans to analysis them. 

Do ctrl+F "AG037"
http://www.y-str.org/p/ancient-dna.html

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## Maleth

Very interesting and much needed, lets hope the technology keeps on growing at a fast pace. Exciting times

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## Fire Haired14

Updates on analysis are being posted on this ANthrogencia thread. *ADMIXTURE results for Neolithic Near Easterns are being posted already!!

*

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## Fire Haired14

8,400 year old Female from Turkey. Her genome is of low coverage. Her results are consistent with what we heard about other Neolithic Anatolian. 

Dodecade K12b. See the Post



> 12 ancestral populations 166770 total SNPs
> 67 flipped SNPs
> 0 heterozygous SNPs
> 0 no-calls
> 166356 absent SNPs
> * 0.002482 genotype rate*
> mode genomewide
> 
> ----------------------------
> ...


Dodecade K7b. See Post



> 0.00% South_Asian  0.00% West_Asian 
> 0.00% Siberian 
> 0.00% African 
> 51.93% Southern 
> 48.06% Atlantic_Baltic  0.00% East_Asian


MDLP K27. See the Post.



> 0.00% Nilotic-Omotic
> 0.00% Ancestral-South-Indi
> 0.00% North-European-Balti
> 0.00% Uralic
> 0.00% Australo-Melanesian
> 0.00% East-Siberean
> 0.00% Ancestral-Yayoi
> 41.12% Caucasian-Near-Easte
> 0.00% Tibeto-Burman
> ...


MDLP K14. See the Post.



> 0,00 ANE0,00 ANI
> 14,76 ASI
> 33,48 Caucasian
> 0,00 Mesolithic
> 51,75 Neolithic
> 0,00 East-Asian
> 0,00 Subsaharian
> 0,00 Near-East
> 0,00 Pygmy
> ...


Eurogenes AMI K8. See the Post.



> 8 ancestral populations 101647 total SNPs
> 0 flipped SNPs
> 0 heterozygous SNPs
> 0 no-calls
> 101332 absent SNPs
> 0.003099 genotype rate
> mode genomewide
> 
> 0.00% Amerindian 
> ...

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## Fire Haired14

I put her results in a spreadsheet along with Stuttgart's. Davidski got ANE K8 results for her, I also put them in the spreadsheet. 

BAR100(8400YBP Western Antolia) is the Red dot. She's just South of EEF.

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## LeBrok

Thanks, very interesting. So no Gedriosia but some Caucasus in 12b, but not a lot. I had a hunch that Gedrosia was more to the east. 

In K8 it says 18.44% Euro_HG. Does this equals to WHG roughly? It might mean that first contact with WHG was actually in Anatolia, as some of us suspected. Unless this person is from back migration from Balkans to Anatolia.

We need the one 10,000 y old from Syria to confirm. This BAR100 looks so Neolithic Balkan like that it could be a back migration at that point.

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## LeBrok

> I put her results in a spreadsheet along with Stuttgart's. Davidski got ANE K8 results for her, I also put them in the spreadsheet. 
> 
> BAR100(8400YBP Western Antolia) is the Red dot. She's just South of EEF.


Can you point to it with an arrow or a letter. I can't find it with my eyes. Sorry.

Edit: I found her. She looks less WHG than EEF farmers. It might be true than that mixing mixing of ENF and WHG happened in Anatolia. Interesting question is what Y-hg were WHG in Anatolia? C, F or even I2?
I have a feeling that I'm rushing to much into unknown... :)

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## Angela

Thanks for doing this, Fire Haired.

Is this the link? I don't see a PCA.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?pli=1#gid=0

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but I don't think this can be relied upon. The results seem to be all over the place, don't they? I mean, if you go by Dodecad K-7b she's almost identical to Stuttgart...about a four percent difference, which would mean there was almost no admixture in Europe. (Lazardis did say it might only be a few percent difference.) Yet there's a big difference in K-12b results.

So, as far as I'm concerned, this doesn't settle much of anything. 

Does anyone have a map showing where the sample was found?

For comparison, this is the map from Haak et al for the Neolithic spread into Europe (Renfrew used to think that the Indo-European languages moved into Europe with the farmers.). 
Haak et al map of Neolithic and Anatolian IE.jpg

It's basically the same as Paschou et al:
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/25/9211.abstract

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## Fire Haired14

She's of very low coverage. BTW, she's from the Western edge of Turkey, right next to Greece. I haven't been given an exact location though.

Here's a spreadsheets with her and Stuttgarts ADMIXTURE results. According to ANE K8 Stuttgart is around 90% Neolithic Antolian and 10% WHG. But, BAR100 is of very low coverage, and so her results may not be realistic. I'm can't wait for the 10,000YBP Syrian. If it's of good coverage we might see Off the Charts levels of Basal Eurasian.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...Pak/edit#gid=0

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## Fire Haired14

There's also a Late Neolithic Female from Turkmenistan that will be analysed. That'll be very interested, and probably ANE-rich.

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## Angela

> She's of very low coverage. BTW, she's from the Western edge of Turkey, right next to Greece. I haven't been given an exact location though.
> 
> Here's a spreadsheets with her and Stuttgarts ADMIXTURE results. According to ANE K8 Stuttgart is around 90% Neolithic Antolian and 10% WHG. But, BAR100 is of very low coverage, and so her results may not be realistic. I'm can't wait for the 10,000YBP Syrian. If it's of good coverage we might see Off the Charts levels of Basal Eurasian.
> 
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...Pak/edit#gid=0


Well, that's right on the proposed route according to Paschou et al and Haak...from the juncture of southeast Anatolia/Northern Levant all along the coast, some peeling off for Cyprus maybe, others hitting the Greek islands and mainland Greece, and then bifurcating from there.

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## LeBrok

> She's of very low coverage. BTW, she's from the Western edge of Turkey, right next to Greece. I haven't been given an exact location though.


 This might as well be true, screwing the results. However her WHG/Near Eastern from K8 run makes sense. She is closer to epicenter of farmer's homeland, therefore have more Near Eastern than Stuttgart does. K12b makes sense if we imagine that she is from different and later wave of migration than Stuttgart. Her tribe first went south to (Egypt?)picking some N-W African hunter-gatherer admixture and later migrated north to Anatolia. At time when most of Caucasus admixture left Anatolia for some reason. Or part of her genome containing more Caucasus is missing.

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## Fire Haired14

Davidski keeps updating his post. In "Identity by Decent" he was able to use more SNPs than in ADMIXTURE. The results are consistent with ADMIXTURE. She's closest to South Europeans: Tuscan, Sardinian, Basque, and Spanish_Murcia. This and ADMIXTURE confirm to me she's ancestral to EEF. Most South Europeans today are probably 50%+ Neolithic Anatolian, and all other Europeans should be just under 30% at the least. 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1507216515

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## LeBrok

> Davidski keeps updating his post. In "Identity by Decent" he was able to use more SNPs than in ADMIXTURE. The results are consistent with ADMIXTURE. She's closest to South Europeans: Tuscan, Sardinian, Basque, and Spanish_Murcia. This and ADMIXTURE confirm to me *she's ancestral to EEF*. Most South Europeans today are probably 50%+ Neolithic Anatolian, and all other Europeans should be just under 30% at the least. 
> 
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1507216515


Probably not ancestral, but containing the same or most ancestry (ancestral genes) as EEF folks.

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## Maciamo

This is almost as interesting as the 101 genomes from Allentoft et al. study. The Dodecad K12b is the one that particularly got my attention.

If the data is reliable, then it would appear that Near Eastern Neolithic farmers brought most of the *Atlantic_Med admixture* to Europe. This is important because it means that this admixture, which peaks in the Basques and Sardinians (70-75%), is therefore _not_ native to Europe. 

In the same way, those Neolithic farmers carried 21% of *Northwest_African admixture*. Modern Maghrebans have 35-45% of Northwest_African and 20-25% of Atlantic_Med admixture, and all of it could ultimately have been inherited from Anatolian or Levantine Neolithic farmers (some of it via the Phoenicians and Arabs).

Genetic drift could explain why some genes, which now make up the Atlantic_Med admixture, ended up being present at higher frequencies in Southwest Europe, while another set of genes from Neolithic farmers survived at much higher frequencies in Northwest Africa. From a modern standpoint it could look like the two have different origins, but it may just be one big family whose genes got divided early between two continents then evolved separately for thousands of years.

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## arvistro

I hope one day they standartize those things. I have a feeling what is EEF and ENF and what not changes from study to study...
Making it difficult to compare.

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## bicicleur

I agree, we need some standard here.
And a simple number telling what coverage there is.

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## Maleth

> I hope one day they standartize those things. I have a feeling what is EEF and ENF and what not changes from study to study...
> Making it difficult to compare.


Totally agree with you. Samples are far too small to be able to have a good idea and population set ups and densities to be able to claim if someone was a farmer or a hunter gatherer, besides we still need to decipher other ancient dna from North Africa, middle east and southern Europe to be able to come close to any kind of accuracy and get the big picture..

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## Fire Haired14

> This is almost as interesting as the 101 genomes from Allentoft et al. study. The Dodecad K12b is the one that particularly got my attention.
> 
> If the data is reliable, then it would appear that Near Eastern Neolithic farmers brought most of the *Atlantic_Med admixture* to Europe. This is important because it means that this admixture, which peaks in the Basques and Sardinians (70-75%), is therefore _not_ native to Europe. 
> 
> In the same way, those Neolithic farmers carried 21% of *Northwest_African admixture*. Modern Maghrebans have 35-45% of Northwest_African and 20-25% of Atlantic_Med admixture, and all of it could ultimately have been inherited from Anatolian or Levantine Neolithic farmers (some of it via the Phoenicians and Arabs).
> 
> Genetic drift could explain why some genes, which now make up the Atlantic_Med admixture, ended up being present at higher frequencies in Southwest Europe, while another set of genes from Neolithic farmers survived at much higher frequencies in Northwest Africa. From a modern standpoint it could look like the two have different origins, but it may just be one big family whose genes got divided early between two continents then evolved separately for thousands of years.


I think the NorthWest African score was noise. This Neolithic Anatolian is of very low coverage. All her results make sense except the NorthWest African score. It could be real, I don't know. In all the other tests she doesn't score any African. So, it could be like you said she didn't have NW African ancestry, NW Africans have decent from her people and African ancestry.

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## bicicleur

the coverage is low, noise will be imporatant
but it is dangerous to speculate which part is noise and which not

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## Alan

so the Neolithic sample looks basically EEF. So as many people (including me) have suspected the WHG type ancestry was already found in the earliest farmers in Western Asia.

And it really points more and more to the fact that EEF was slowly being replaced by an Afro_Asiatic shifted version of EEF. I remember saying the first time under Dienekes comment section that an East African shift probably happened.

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## Alan

> 8,400 year old Female from Turkey. Her genome is of low coverage. Her results are consistent with what we heard about other Neolithic Anatolian. 
> 
> Dodecade K12b. See the Post
> 
> 
> Dodecade K7b. See Post
> 
> 
> MDLP K27. See the Post.
> ...



And also so much to "European character" was brought to BaArmenia by Yamna. It was good that I never accepted the theory of some other.


Another thing. The sample with allot of NW African could be one of those late Neolithic samples who were already receiving Afro_Asiatic influx as by the paper (it was replaced by a very Middle Eastern and North African type ancestry).

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## LeBrok

> Another thing. The sample with allot of NW African could be one of those late Neolithic samples who were already receiving Afro_Asiatic influx as by the paper (it was replaced by a very Middle Eastern and North African type ancestry).


Do you know what would make some sense? If this girl with NW African admixture would have turned to be from E1b1b, J or T group who obviously entered Europe much later than G2a people. G2a coming from Northern part of Fertile Crescent which bordered with Caucasus admixture people. E1b1b coming from South part of this fertile crescent, closer to Africa.

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## Alan

> Do you know what would make some sense? If this girl with NW African admixture would have turned to be from E1b1b, J or T group who obviously entered Europe much later than G2a people. G2a coming from Northern part of Fertile Crescent which bordered with Caucasus admixture people. E1b1b coming from South part of this fertile crescent, closer to Africa.


As a girl she couldn't turn out with ydna but I got your point. :)

E1b for her father would, J or T however not. Since J obviously chop through the rest of Western Asia during the Bronze and Iron Age. I am pretty convinced J2 started off from the Iranian Plateau.

the only T we found so far on the other hand was late Neolithic and a very Yamna like signature to it with no NW African admixture.

But than as Maciamo pointed out this "NW African admixture" could simply mean that the NW African component received genes from her relatives.

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## Angela

I think that for quite some time, at least as far as the European Neolithic is concerned, we may have been getting hung up on making distinctions that don't much matter, in my opinion. The question that has engaged archaeologists and anthropologists and population geneticists for so long has been, first, did the Neolithic spread through cultural diffusion or population movement? The resoundingly clear answer is that it came from population movement from the Near East. Then the question is how much of the ancestry of modern Europeans is attributable to that population movement?

We have an LBK farmer, Stuttgart, who stands for EEF, and so we know how related modern Europeans are to her. 

Now, the question is whether Stuttgart is basically the same as the farmers who came from the Near East into Europe. The genome of this farmer isn't as high quality as we would like, and maybe things will look different if we get a better quality genome from further down the coast where, if Paschou et al are correct, and no one has proven that they aren't, the farmers started peeling off by boat for Greece. 

With that caveat in mind, I think we can draw some preliminary conclusions if we look at some of the lower K runs (I think that's a better bet given the fact this is such a poor quality specimen.) From those runs it looks to me as if Stuttgart is largely just a transplanted ancient Near Eastern farmer. I mean, in K-7b she's about 4 points different, and in the Eurogenes K8 about 10 points different, yes? 

@Fire Haired
Given all of this, shouldn't we be lowering the EEF figure by 10 at the most to get ancient Near Eastern farmer or ancient Anatolian farmer if you want to put it that way, input _if_ we use this genome? Given that, southern Europeans would be_ at least_ 60% ancient Near Eastern farmer, the English and Central Europeans 40-45% and so on?

Here's the chart:
Lazaridis et al 3 population figures.jpg


@ Maleth @ Arvistro,

I totally agree. I think we're getting lost in the weeds here. I mean, how would ENF even be defined geographically and temporally? Is there even any agreement about that? The Natufians weren't yet farmers, so I don't think they fit the bill. There are other choices, however., assuming we can settle on a time. Is it the farmers on the hillsides in the interior of Anatolia, the farmers in the Jordan valley, the farmers along the coast between Syria and southeastern Anatolia, or is it the ones further up the coast toward Greece? If they all turn out to be about the same, great, but what if they're all slightly different? How do you choose? Does it ultimately even matter? I'm sure there were probably successive waves, but they all came from the same part of the world.

The upcoming sample from Jordan will be interesting, especially if it's high coverage, but would those people necessarily be exactly the same as those who went to Europe? Maybe we'd be better off with a sample from a group that was already on its way, so to speak?

There are large implications, obviously, for the population genetics of the Near East, including Anatolia, in all of this. Just off the cuff, if Stuttgart (EEF) or this sample are representative of the population that was all over the Near East at this period, then there have indeed been a lot of changes, perhaps coming from the south as well as the east. If there was a lot of regional substructure, then the analysis will be more complicated and different as to how much population replacement has taken place. I think we have to consider, however, that the difference all over the Near East might owe a lot to the migration of different y lines and also to drift, which people are tending to forget in recent years. Other than the minority portion of U4 and U5, most of the mtDna of Europeans is very much like that from the Near East. 

Anyway, the role of the "WHG" in all of this really has to be examined as well. If it runs from North Africa, throughout Europe and into the Near East, is it really a EuroHG, as has been proposed? I suppose it partly depends how far down into the Levant and how far east it goes in Anatolia. I know it's in western North Africa. Does it peter out right when you get to Egypt? Might that be because of constant gene flow up the Nile? Or are we looking at this the wrong way around? Are the WHG the Gravettians who came into Europe from the Near East in the first place? Depending on how far down it goes, the question then becomes, were the people who invented farming a fusion of these "ancestral" Gravettians and a people like the Natufians? At any rate, the WHG in this sample, if we take the Eurogenes run at face value is 20%, so the vast majority of the hunter gatherers who went into the genesis of these Anatolian Neolithic people were not WHG like...

@Maciamo,
I agree with much of this. As far as the Mediterranean is concerned, the Neolithic was like a bifurcated stream that followed along both the northern and southern littoral, bringing both the technology and the people who invented it. It also went down south east to India and up through Iran. 

In this fascination and emphasis on migration, which was no doubt necessary in order to overcome the mindset of years where virtually Paleolithic Continuity was contemplated everywhere, some people have tended to overlook the function of drift in many of these populations.

@Alan,
As I said above, I wouldn't go with a K12 for something as poor quality as this. I think all those results show, as Maciamo pointed out, is the big portion of Neolithic era genes in North Africans.

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## Sile

> so the Neolithic sample looks basically EEF. So as many people (including me) have suspected the WHG type ancestry was already found in the earliest farmers in Western Asia.
> 
> And it really points more and more to the fact that EEF was slowly being replaced by an Afro_Asiatic shifted version of EEF. I remember saying the first time under Dienekes comment section that an East African shift probably happened.


so where does Haak ( paper) samples of LBK_EN with their 100% of EEF sit with these samples?

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## Fire Haired14

> so where does Haak ( paper) samples of LBK_EN with their 100% of EEF sit with these samples?


Haak's Neolithic samples from the time of Stuttgart are basically the same as Stuttgart. I think Stuttgart has the most or 2nd most ENF.

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## Greying Wanderer

> This is almost as interesting as the 101 genomes from Allentoft et al. study. The Dodecad K12b is the one that particularly got my attention.
> 
> If the data is reliable, then it would appear that Near Eastern Neolithic farmers brought most of the *Atlantic_Med admixture* to Europe. This is important because it means that this admixture, which peaks in the Basques and Sardinians (70-75%), is therefore _not_ native to Europe. 
> 
> In the same way, those Neolithic farmers carried 21% of *Northwest_African admixture*. Modern Maghrebans have 35-45% of Northwest_African and 20-25% of Atlantic_Med admixture, and all of it could ultimately have been inherited from Anatolian or Levantine Neolithic farmers (some of it via the Phoenicians and Arabs).
> 
> Genetic drift could explain why some genes, which now make up the Atlantic_Med admixture, ended up being present at higher frequencies in Southwest Europe, while another set of genes from Neolithic farmers survived at much higher frequencies in Northwest Africa. From a modern standpoint it could look like the two have different origins, but it may just be one big family whose genes got divided early between two continents then evolved separately for thousands of years.



West Med. and Northwest Africa?

If you didn't know it was supposed to be from neolithic Turkey you'd guess it was from the Atlantic Megalith culture.

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## Alan

> so where does Haak ( paper) samples of LBK_EN with their 100% of EEF sit with these samples?


The Haak proto_EEF sample (Stuttgart) is just slightly more Western(~5%) shifted. So it is almost identical to this Neolithic Anatolian lady.

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## Fire Haired14

> @Fire Haired
> Given all of this, shouldn't we be lowering the EEF figure by 10 at the most to get ancient Near Eastern farmer or ancient Anatolian farmer if you want to put it that way, input _if_ we use this genome? Given that, southern Europeans would be_ at least_ 60% ancient Near Eastern farmer, the English and Central Europeans 40-45% and so on?
> 
> Here's the chart:
> Lazaridis et al 3 population figures.jpg


I'm not super confident in percentages, just trends.

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## Alan

So now after the Anatolian farmer has been "confirmed" to be almost identical to Stuttgart(EEF). The first individuals with dubious agendas have come out and always need to mention, "This is a West Anatolian and not Near Eastern sample".  :Laughing: 

Just a few month ago Anatolia was to every of those Eurocentrics a hardcore part of the Near Eastern and in historic context also never anything else. But suddenly it is good enough to be considered as "not really Near Eastern" but "extra European". 

here is one of those comments



> No. She has WHG, altough not same level as other EEFs. She is *not near-eastern but Western Anatolian* close to the european border.


Yep since we all know Western Anatolia is not the Near East, just like Sevilla and Crete are not Europe right?  :Grin: 

So according to this logic it is save to assume that Barcin(who is from the Asian part Turkey)would have been genetically indistinguishable from their neighbors on the other side of the Bosphorus (Europe) but was probably very distinct from the Neolithic farmers nearby in the East?

People who have no problems in labeling Yamna samples from as far in Asia as Samara(on the border to Kazakhstan!), "East European" have a big issue in calling Western Anatolia simply what it is, Western Asia.  :Laughing: 
I see some people$/blogger speculating that the individual might have absorbed WHG from backmigration of Balkanians(there is a chance that WHG was a pre Neolithic backmigration yet it doesn't change the fact that this EEF type farmers were born in the fertile crescent and Anatolia), but don't see the same concerns when it's about the Caucasus_Gedrosia genes in Yamna and claim it might be native to the Steppes.  :Rolleyes: 

But than they didn't even think about the significant WHG in the Levant and North Africa which can be now very well explained with the Neolithic expansion. They also seem to forget that roughly 3500 years later in BaArmenia individuals had still as much as 20% WHG with 30% "Atlantic_Med" and 20% "North European" type ancestry. I think their issues with "Near Eastern" ancestry hinders them in seeing the greater picture.

A possible source for WHG in Western Asia is I2 or J* (If J is not ANE/EEF than it is possibly WHG like I).

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## Fire Haired14

@Alan,

I agree about Yamnaya. People want to call them East European. But they don't fit anywhere today. I'd call EEF the main Europeans of that day(3000 BC). Russia was always differnt from the rest Europe till the Bronze age because of immigration from Europeans who lived further west into Russia. 

I also agree about BAR100.

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## Angela

@Alan,

For years I've seen speculation, and academic speculation at that, to the effect that the "WHG" are, for the most part, the result of the Gravettian migration into Europe, a migration that started from, you guessed it, the Near East. So, if that is all true, whether all the Gravettians left for Europe and then some back migrated to the Near East, or some portion of it, or some stayed behind while the rest went to Europe, to call these people "EuroHGs" makes no sense, in my opinion. (Let's not forget that there are respectable numbers in North Africa as well.) It's as illogical, or maybe even more illogical than calling some ancient North Eurasian group that wandered back and forth across that line, that construct, that in modern times we have used to divide Europe from Asia, somehow "European". European, Middle Eastern, all these terms are modern constructs which don't apply to ancient population groups. These modern groups didn't form until about 2,000 BC and maybe even later. 

As I said above, the focus of much of this research was supposed to be to figure out whether the Neolithic spread by cultural diffusion or with people, and if with people, how many people, and how much they contributed to the modern "European" gene pool. Even using the Eurogenes K8, there is only a 7 point difference between Barcin and Stuttgart, so Europeans, except perhaps in the Baltic, have a _lot_ of ancestry from these people. The charts in Lazaridis provide the figures...just lower by 7 for a general idea.

As you say, a week ago Anatolians were Near Easterners. Now, if I understand you, they're suddenly not. Someone should send the Turks a memo that their chances of joining the EU might go up. :) 

If it makes certain people feel better to slice and dice the numbers to call as much of the genome of these farmers from the NEAR EAST, WHG and therefore somehow "European", fine, go for it, but it doesn't make any logical sense to me. It particularly doesn't make any sense to be talking about UHG again. ALL these people in the Near East were hunter gatherers, whether you want to call them Basal Eurasian hunter gatherers (if the Reich Lab is even going to go in that direction again), or western hunter gatherers, or eastern Anatolian hunter gatherers, before they invented farming. 

People have forgotten, I think, that Lazaridis et al got into some of these speculations because we _didn't have_ a Near Eastern Neolithic farmer sample. Well, now we do, and we'll probably get more. It's time to move on from old and not particularly helpful models. 

I really don't get it. These people invented agriculture, and animal husbandry, and then later invented metalllurgy, without which things there would be no modern world. What is there to be ashamed of? Obviously, many of these hobbyists didn't take a lot of archaeology, or ancient history and civilizations courses. I was taught that Ex oriente lux, in terms of civilization in general, not just wisdom and spirituality. That might be over the top, but the general sense is correct. 

I also find it amazing that some people are suddenly so sure that the Neolithic people of Syria, and Lebanon, for example, which were in the Levant last time I checked, were not part of the flow into Europe, in contradiction of a lot of papers that say otherwise, or even if that were true, that the people of those areas were necessarily so different from the ones right over the border in southern Anatolia. Unless they've already analyzed that Jordanian sample?

If there was genetic substructure in the "Near East", I would think it would more likely be an "East/West" division, with the populations in eastern Anatolia and the south Caucasus and Iran being different, not that there would be this huge difference between coastal communities in Syria versus Anatolia. 

Anyway, I don't know what more and better quality genomes will show, and whether the farmers along the Levant coast were different and so the percentages will change, but we should all try to have some logical consistency and some intellectual honesty when discussing these things. 

@FireHaired,
Don't get me started on the Yamnaya thing. They were a unique blend of both genes and culture, and they no longer exist anywhere. I even wonder if the Reich Lab is going to regret being led into claiming a "massive" flow of "Indo-European" genes into Europe from the steppe. It's certainly not true for anywhere in southern Europe, and I even have my doubts about Corded Ware. Were they Indo-European, or were they a collection of often pretty different groups, some of whom were just an Indo-Europeanized EHG population? Time will tell, but it's pretty clear to me that a lot of the scenarios floated over the years were much too simplistic.

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## Alan

> If there was genetic substructure in the "Near East", I would think it would more likely be an "East/West" division, with the populations in eastern Anatolia and the south Caucasus and Iran being different, not that there would be this huge difference between coastal communities in Syria versus Anatolia.


I said this years ago. That Mesopotamia, East Anatolia and Transcaucasus is the region where EEF type farmers met Caucasus_Gedrosia type herders. 

I imagine the early Levantine farmers to be slightly more Southern (Basal Eurasian?) and slightly less Atlantic_Baltic (UHG?) or whatever we call it. But not so drastically. Maybe 10% at max. already during Middle Neolithic I see first Afro_Asiatic type EEF reaching the region and deluding the "UHG" even slightly more.

In The East from the Iranian Plateau I see a group of ANE guys expanding and mixing with the local EEF in the region of the Zagror/Albroz mountains. Those people probably the proto "Gedrosia" guys who might have belonged to J,R and some LT lineages.

Now those herders met with the EEF farmers in East Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Transcaucasus and people similar to the BaArmenian sample were born.

I assume the Neolithic sample from Turkmenistan will turn out most with Gedrosia(+Caucasus) and Atlantic_Med and probably allot of North European scores too. Basically the sample from Turkemnistan will have significanlty more ANE.




> Anyway, I don't know what more and better quality genomes will show, and whether the farmers along the Levant coast were different and so the percentages will change, but we should all try to have some logical consistency and some intellectual honesty when discussing these things.



Even if the Neolithic farmers in the Levant were allot different that doesn't change the point that EEF has started off from Anatolia and last time I checked Anatolia is West Asia aka Near East. It is even one of the historically "most Near Eastern" parts of Western Asia. Some people (People who never saw Anatolia as anything else than Near East) have started to sound like Anatolia is something else, completely different case from the Near East.

----------


## bicicleur

Angela, there is doubt as from where the Gravettians entered Europe, many still think it was via Anatolia and the Balkans
as I mentioned in another thread it was via the Caucasus, where in the Mezmaiskaya cave borers were found to drill holes in the eyes of needles, which gave better clothing to the Gravettians and gave them an advantage over the Aurignacians on the European cold steppes, the Gravettians were never in Anatolia
IMO IJ was in Trancaucasia where it split in the Gravettian I which crossed the Caucasus and Imereti J who stayed south of the Caucasus 
during LGM J1, J2a and J2b looked for refuge south in the southern Levant (J2a) and the Persian Gulf (probably both J2b and J1)
J2a became the Natufians, and later the first cereal farmer (as opposed to HG collectors of wild pulses and pig farmers in southeast Anatolia who came from the Zagors mountains and built Göbekli Tepe temple)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
G2 also looked for refuge in the southern Levant, where it split in G2a and G2b
G2a came to Cilicia where it split in fishermen and HG in Capadocia
http://www.archatlas.org/ObsidianRou...dianRoutes.php
In Capadocia they collected obsidian from the extinct volcanos which they traded since 16 ka with the Natufians
10.8 ka they founded their first neolithic settlement, Asikli Hoyuk near Mt Hassan where they collected the obsidian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C5%9...%C3%B6y%C3%BCk
so G2a started to grow cereals too
in the mean time the G2a fishermen had allready reached Cyprus, Melos and the Peleponesos ; 9,5 ka they reached Grotto del Uzzo in Sicily
in another thread I've allready mentioned that skull measurments indicated that the first farmers in Europe where not the same as the cereal farmers in the Levant or in southeast Anatolia :
https://mathildasanthropologyblog.wo...mic-diffusion/

this is my - very tentative story

----------


## Angela

> Angela, there is doubt as from where the Gravettians entered Europe, many still think it was via Anatolia and the Balkans
> as I mentioned in another thread it was via the Caucasus, where in the Mezmaiskaya cave borers were found to drill holes in the eyes of needles, which gave better clothing to the Gravettians and gave them an advantage over the Aurignacians on the European cold steppes, the Gravettians were never in Anatolia
> IMO IJ was in Trancaucasia where it split in the Gravettian I which crossed the Caucasus and Imereti J who stayed south of the Caucasus 
> during LGM J1, J2a and J2b looked for refuge south in the southern Levant (J2a) and the Persian Gulf (probably both J2b and J1)
> J2a became the Natufians, and later the first cereal farmer (as opposed to HG collectors of wild pulses and pig farmers in southeast Anatolia who came from the Zagors mountains and built Göbekli Tepe temple)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
> G2 also looked for refuge in the southern Levant, where it split in G2a and G2b
> G2a came to Cilicia where it split in fishermen and HG in Capadocia
> http://www.archatlas.org/ObsidianRou...dianRoutes.php
> ...


One issue I do see with your hypothesis is that it seems a little counter-intuitive that there was "J2" in the Natufian, but none of it mingled with G2a to make its way into Europe in the Neolithic. 

We may soon see if you're right. The floodgates are open, to use a cliche, and there's a torrent of results on its way. Our speculations about pre-history are going to have a much more solid basis.

My larger point remains, I think.

----------


## bicicleur

> One issue I do see with your hypothesis is that it seems a little counter-intuitive that there was "J2" in the Natufian, but none of it mingled with G2a to make its way into Europe in the Neolithic. 
> 
> We may soon see if you're right. The floodgates are open, to use a cliche, and there's a torrent of results on its way. Our speculations about pre-history are going to have a much more solid basis.
> 
> My larger point remains, I think.


that's right
if my hypothesis proves correct, it would be amazing to find out there was no spillover between J2a and G2a
like the founding of Asikli Hoyuk, you'd suppose both tribes were involved
it is people from Asikli Hoyuk that later founded Catal Hoyuk and other neolithic settlements in southwerstern Anatolia
Asikli Hoyuk and Catal Hoyuk were built in exactly the same style, only Asikli Hoyuk was on a much smaller scale
the same Catal Hoyuk Mother Godess is found back in Old Europe

on the other hand cereal cultivation spread also eastward to the Indus Valley via Mehrgahr 9 ka
some subclades of J2a (and also J2b) match exactly that TMRCA and are exclusively south Asian, a feature G2a does not have

we'll see what future data will say
i like to have my own theories and sometimes it's disapointing to be proven wrong
but in such cases i doublecheck and simply change my mind

----------


## Garrick

> Angela, there is doubt as from where the Gravettians entered Europe, many still think it was via Anatolia and the Balkans
> as I mentioned in another thread it was via the Caucasus, where in the Mezmaiskaya cave borers were found to drill holes in the eyes of needles, which gave better clothing to the Gravettians and gave them an advantage over the Aurignacians on the European cold steppes, the Gravettians were never in Anatolia
> IMO IJ was in Trancaucasia where it split in the Gravettian I which crossed the Caucasus and Imereti J who stayed south of the Caucasus 
> during LGM J1, J2a and J2b looked for refuge south in the southern Levant (J2a) and the Persian Gulf (probably both J2b and J1)
> J2a became the Natufians, and later the first cereal farmer (as opposed to HG collectors of wild pulses and pig farmers in southeast Anatolia who came from the Zagors mountains and built Göbekli Tepe temple)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
> G2 also looked for refuge in the southern Levant, where it split in G2a and G2b
> G2a came to Cilicia where it split in fishermen and HG in Capadocia
> http://www.archatlas.org/ObsidianRou...dianRoutes.php
> ...


I always preferred route via the Caucasus, in different epochs. Because this path is natural. Between Anatolia and Balkans is sea and most people didn't want cross the sea.

This is interesting site about first boats:

The oldest recovered boat in the world is the 3 meter long *Pesse canoe* constructed around 8,000 BCE [ Wikipedia ]; but more elaborate craft existed even earlier.

http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~vaucher...istoric_Craft/

----------


## Sile

> So now after the Anatolian farmer has been "confirmed" to be almost identical to Stuttgart(EEF). The first individuals with dubious agendas have come out and always need to mention, "This is a West Anatolian and not Near Eastern sample". 
> 
> Just a few month ago Anatolia was to every of those Eurocentrics a hardcore part of the Near Eastern and in historic context also never anything else. But suddenly it is good enough to be considered as "not really Near Eastern" but "extra European". 
> 
> here is one of those comments
> 
> 
> Yep since we all know Western Anatolia is not the Near East, just like Sevilla and Crete are not Europe right? 
> 
> ...


It is also confirmed that CW and Yamnya people are further apart that what was thought before. much further apart. Some say CW came from EEF.

The split of I and J could have been the the pontic Trabzon area of eastern anatolia

----------


## Angela

I see no reason why the Gravettians could not have crossed from Anatolia directly into the Balkans, as many scholars maintain. At the time period in question, there was no Hellespont between Anatolia and the Balkans. It was all land. Much easier than traversing the Caucasus mountains.


I think it was the Augignacians, probably carrying yDna "C" who went into Europe from north of the Caucasus.


Neolithic people very much liked boats.

They were in Cyprus and Crete long before they were near the Hellespont:


If people are so interested in the precise difference between Stuttgart like people and their ancestors in the Near East, I would think a Neolithic genome either from the coastal Levant, Cyprus, or Crete might be a good idea.

This might be the way it moved...Druse like people (northern Levant), Cappadocia (southwestern Turkey), Dodecanese (Greek islands near Turkey), East Rumelia, Crete, Sicily and the Peleponnese, up the Balkans, by sea along the Mediterranean littorals, and on and on. 
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/25/9211.full


I'm not saying that the Near Eastern farmers were identical to these modern people, but I think we can trace the route through them.

Given that E-V13 has shown up all the way in Armenia, and we have one that traveled with Cardial, I still think they're a good bet for one of the founding y lines.

@Garrick,
By the time of the Bronze Age Indo-Europeans, crossing the Hellespont from the Balkans into Anatolia would have been child's play.

----------


## bicicleur

> I see no reason why the Gravettians could not have crossed from Anatolia directly into the Balkans, as many scholars maintain. At the time period in question, there was no Hellespont between Anatolia and the Balkans. It was all land. Much easier than traversing the Caucasus mountains.
> 
> 
> I think it was the Augignacians, probably carrying yDna "C" who went into Europe from north of the Caucasus.


this map is not correct
proto aurignacian entered Europe 45 ka, only in Mediterranean Europe
European aurignacian proper was an expansion upstream along the Danube into northern Europe 43.5 ka
then they spread east quickly +/- 39 ka till Kostenki area and even till northwestern Caucuasus
that is when Neanderthals went extinct in Europe

gravettian entered europe 33 ka and spread over central & east europe very quickly but came west to France & Italy only 28 ka
quite significant is the 'Sungir man' who was burried far more north than Aurignacians ever went : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sungir

----------


## bicicleur

> Neolithic people very much liked boats.
> 
> They were in Cyprus and Crete long before they were near the Hellespont:


we know Balkan neolithic & LBK & Cardium people were G2a
we don't know about neolithic Crete or Cyprus
Cyprus was discovered +/- 12.5 ka by HG and abandonned again before farmers settled there +/- 10.8 ka
date of first farmers in Crete is very unclear : 8 or 9 ka?

----------


## bicicleur

> If people are so interested in the precise difference between Stuttgart like people and their ancestors in the Near East, I would think a Neolithic genome either from the coastal Levant, Cyprus, or Crete might be a good idea.
> 
> This might be the way it moved...Druse like people (northern Levant), Cappadocia (southwestern Turkey), Dodecanese (Greek islands near Turkey), East Rumelia, Crete, Sicily and the Peleponnese, up the Balkans, by sea along the Mediterranean littorals, and on and on. 
> http://www.pnas.org/content/111/25/9211.full
> 
> 
> I'm not saying that the Near Eastern farmers were identical to these modern people, but I think we can trace the route through them.
> 
> Given that E-V13 has shown up all the way in Armenia, and we have one that traveled with Cardial, I still think they're a good bet for one of the founding y lines.
> ...


I don't know what to think of this PCA chart because I cannot date it : 

e.g. : how old are Druse or Bedouin people ? probably post-neolithic

As far as bronze age Armenian E1b1b, according to Genetiker it was E-M123, not E-V13

About Cardial E-V13 in Avelaner Cave, Catalunia 7 ka, this is uncertain too : SNPs were not checked, it was on base of STR-analyses : Lacan says they were 'related to present day Balkan E-V13'

There was even R1b1 in Els Trocs, all sorts of people went along with G2a (both Cardial and LBK).

E-V13 is still a big mystery, TRMCA estimated 4400 year, so bronze age expansion?

----------


## MOESAN

> This is almost as interesting as the 101 genomes from Allentoft et al. study. The Dodecad K12b is the one that particularly got my attention.
> 
> If the data is reliable, then it would appear that Near Eastern Neolithic farmers brought most of the *Atlantic_Med admixture* to Europe. This is important because it means that this admixture, which peaks in the Basques and Sardinians (70-75%), is therefore _not_ native to Europe. 
> 
> In the same way, those Neolithic farmers carried 21% of *Northwest_African admixture*. Modern Maghrebans have 35-45% of Northwest_African and 20-25% of Atlantic_Med admixture, and all of it could ultimately have been inherited from Anatolian or Levantine Neolithic farmers (some of it via the Phoenicians and Arabs).
> 
> Genetic drift could explain why some genes, which now make up the Atlantic_Med admixture, ended up being present at higher frequencies in Southwest Europe, while another set of genes from Neolithic farmers survived at much higher frequencies in Northwest Africa. From a modern standpoint it could look like the two have different origins, but it may just be one big family whose genes got divided early between two continents then evolved separately for thousands of years.


I partially agree - but 'atlantic-MED' is not 'atlantic' of other poolings - the most of 'atlantic' is old - but I agree 'atlantic-MED' is for the most a first East mediterrnaea influx of Neolithic people, maybe even before Neolithic revlution, becoming later the 'west-mediteranean' , when more 'southwest-asian' or 'red-sea' bearers influenced Mediterranea.

----------


## Sile

> I see no reason why the Gravettians could not have crossed from Anatolia directly into the Balkans, as many scholars maintain. At the time period in question, there was no Hellespont between Anatolia and the Balkans. It was all land. Much easier than traversing the Caucasus mountains.
> 
> 
> I think it was the Augignacians, probably carrying yDna "C" who went into Europe from north of the Caucasus.
> 
> 
> Neolithic people very much liked boats.
> 
> They were in Cyprus and Crete long before they were near the Hellespont:
> ...


people would also transverse via the caucasus, there is a part along the drinkable black sea which was land and now underwater..............why do you think they would not go north?

----------


## Angela

> Sile: people would also transverse via the caucasus, there is a part along the drinkable black sea which was land and now underwater..............why do you think they would not go north?


I thought by saying "if" the Gravettians" came into Europe via the Near East, I made it clear it was a hypothetical. Maybe from now on I should write,* IF* "X" happened then "Y". 

I don't know which route they took. There are academics who seem to think that there are links with the eastern Mediterranean.
http://paleo.revues.org/607

Perhaps there are more recent papers, but I'm not aware of them. I gather this is a rather specialized field of research. 

Since I'm not a practicing archaeologist/anthropologist specializing in the Aurignacian and/or the Gravettian, all I can do is read the experts and make an amateur's judgment based on what is the latest evidence. I really don't have a strong opinion either way.

As to your other question, the point wasnot whether they _could_ have gone north along that coastal strip, the point was that contrary to an assertion made by another poster at the time in question there was no water separating Anatolia from the Balkans. So, if there are indeed ties to cultures in the eastern Med, the most logical as well as the _easiest_ route might have been into the Balkans.

----------


## Angela

> we know Balkan neolithic & LBK & Cardium people were G2a
> we don't know about neolithic Crete or Cyprus
> Cyprus was discovered +/- 12.5 ka by HG and abandonned again before farmers settled there +/- 10.8 ka
> date of first farmers in Crete is very unclear : 8 or 9 ka?


These are the dates I have for Neolithic settlements. They come with a caveat...depending on the date of the study and the methods used, the dates are more or less reliable. With that said...

Cyprus: 8,000-7800 BCE
Crete: 7,000-6800 BCE
Sesklo in Thessaly: 6800 BCE
Barcin: 6500-6200 BCE (This comes from the site linked below.
Starcevo: Latest dating paper says 5500-4500 BCE, but older papers had it older.

This is the Barcin site:
http://opencontext.org/projects/7474...0-5AA75703E08E

Some more of what they have discovered:
http://www.nit-istanbul.org/projects...uk-excavations
"Although its location suggests easy access to the Balkans from Anatolia, Neolithic archaeological assemblages on either side of the Marmara region do not demonstrate the expected similarity that can result from intensive social interactions."

Maybe this suggests the gene flow and earliest technology went to both the Balkans and northwest Anatolia from the same source, but it didn't go from northwest Anatolia into the Balkans? 

Just so we have an idea where it is geographically:


For the Near Eastern Neolithic, this is the latest data I have in my files.It's pretty recent. I don't know if it's been contradicted in the last few years. By this account, the Cypriot Neolithic is even older than the figure I posted above.
Attachment 7326

It comes from this paper:
http://anthropology.si.edu/archaeobi...er_ca_2011.pdf

We do indeed not know the ydna of the earliest Neolithic settlers in Crete or Cyprus. I'm always prepared to be surprised.

Ed. So, to correct myself, the farmers _didn't_ arrive in Crete _long_ before they arrived around the Sea of Marmara, but unless the dates are all wrong, they _did_ get to Cyprus long before, and Crete _some time_ _before_ they got to Marmara.

Of course that doesn't _prove_ that each group was identical. We need more and better coverage samples.

----------


## Angela

> I don't know what to think of this PCA chart because I cannot date it : 
> 
> e.g. : how old are Druse or Bedouin people ? probably post-neolithic
> 
> As far as bronze age Armenian E1b1b, according to Genetiker it was E-M123, not E-V13
> 
> About Cardial E-V13 in Avelaner Cave, Catalunia 7 ka, this is uncertain too : SNPs were not checked, it was on base of STR-analyses : Lacan says they were 'related to present day Balkan E-V13'
> 
> There was even R1b1 in Els Trocs, all sorts of people went along with G2a (both Cardial and LBK).
> ...


From the paper:
"To obtain insights on the question of migrations to Europe, we analyzed genome-wide autosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from a dataset of 32 populations. This dataset includes population samples from the islands of Crete and Dodecanese, one from Cappadocia in Central Anatolia, three subpopulations from different regions of mainland Greece, 14 other populations from Southern and Northern Europe, five populations from the Near East, and seven from North Africa. In addition to established methods for genetics analysis, we use a population genetics network approach that can define pathways of gene flow between populations. Our data are compatible with the hypothesis that a maritime route connecting Anatolia and Southern Europe through Dodecanese and Crete was the main route used by the Neolithic migrants to reach Europe."

The PCA is based on that pathway of gene flow. You can read about the specific method in the paper.

Am I totally persuaded that it went specifically from Anatolia/northern Levant to Cyprus, then Crete, then other places? No, I'm not, but I think the general parameters fit not only the archaeology but the genetics. 

OK, I stand corrected. In Armenia, it's E-M123, and the Cardial "E" is "related" to E-V13. To me that is very suggestive that E-M123 and E-V13 were part of the early Neolithic populations. When E-V13 had its mass expansion is a different matter. I think that happened in the Bronze Age.

----------


## LeBrok

> I always preferred route via the Caucasus, in different epochs. Because this path is natural. Between Anatolia and Balkans is sea and most people didn't want cross the sea.
> 
> This is interesting site about first boats:
> 
> The oldest recovered boat in the world is the 3 meter long *Pesse canoe* constructed around 8,000 BCE [ Wikipedia ]; but more elaborate craft existed even earlier.
> 
> http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~vaucher...istoric_Craft/


Does someone knows if it is easy to walk from south to north of Black and Caspian Sea through the beaches? I imagine there might be sections where mountains come straight to the seas creating natural barrier.

----------


## Garrick

> Does someone knows if it is easy to walk from south to north of Black and Caspian Sea through the beaches? I imagine there might be sections where mountains come straight to the seas creating natural barrier.


It is not so hard. There were two passes through which peoples moved: Darial pass and Derbent pass.

Darial (Dariel) pass (gorge, gate):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darial_Gorge







Another pass, Derbent, is gateway between Caspian sea and Caucasus.

----------


## Yetos

Crete and Cyprus where inhabited from what time?

----------


## bicicleur

> Does someone knows if it is easy to walk from south to north of Black and Caspian Sea through the beaches? I imagine there might be sections where mountains come straight to the seas creating natural barrier.


yes 2 easy passes through the Caucasus in historical times and today as Garrick pointed out
with lower sea levels along the eastern shore of the Black Sea was probably possible too

along the seashore was allways depending on the sea level, which for Caspian Sea fluctuated very much because it is actually a lake
Black Sea was a lake too several times

the sea levels are stable now since 8000 years, before they changed much more
expected sea level rise is peanuts compared to what happened in anciant times

the eastern shores of Caspian was impossible to walk as it is a desert without freshwater
but maybe with a horse and a capacity to carry a small amount of water it was possible

----------


## Alan

> It is also confirmed that CW and Yamnya people are further apart that what was thought before. much further apart. Some say CW came from EEF.
> 
> The split of I and J could have been the the pontic Trabzon area of eastern anatolia



My tendency is rather towards the Iranian plateau, since IJ was found there and the diversity of J is higher there than the Pontic Trabzon.

----------


## Garrick

> yes 2 easy passes through the Caucasus in historical times and today as Garrick pointed out
> with lower sea levels along the eastern shore of the Black Sea was probably possible too
> 
> along the seashore was allways depending on the sea level, which for Caspian Sea fluctuated very much because it is actually a lake
> Black Sea was a lake too several times
> 
> the sea levels are stable now since 8000 years, before they changed much more
> expected sea level rise is peanuts compared to what happened in anciant times
> 
> ...


Near East, including Mesopotamia, Anatolia and surrounding areas, were home many tribes who moved to mountains Caucasus and further over these two passes to steppes and European lands.



It is interesting, if we read the Bible from Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, descendants of Japheth migrated in Europe and parts of Central Asia.

http://freepages.folklore.rootsweb.a...%20Mankind.htm

Japhetic families of nations include:

1) Gomer (Celts, Germans, etc., mostly Western Europeans)
2) Magog (Slavs, Ugrofinns, etc., mostly Eastern Europeans)
3) Madai (Persians, Pathans, etc., mostly Iranian and Indian people)
4) Javan (Greeks, Italians, etc., mostly South Europeans)
5) Tubal (Georgians, Albanians, etc., mostly Caucasus people)
6) Meschech (Latvians, Romanians, mostly Eastern Europeans)
7) Tiras (Swedes, Danes, etc. mostly North Europeans)

(Of course someone can says Bible is not science but if he or she thinks that there is no value in this can simply skip.)

Caucasian passes were gateway of different tribes and people through the mountains Caucasus range into Europe in ancient times.

----------


## arvistro

Why Latvians are Mescech? If Slavs and Finns are Magog? :)

----------


## Angela

Are we seriously going to have posts like this on a genetics and archaeology site? Documents written during the Babylonian Captivity by Hebrew scribes in the 7th century BC are going to be relied on to tell us about ancient population gene flows? You do realize that there were no fully formed west Europeans or northern Europeans living in the Near East at that time, don't you?

Indeed, I'm sure this is just as reliable as what the OT tells us about geology and astronomy and evolution. So, yeah, I'll pass.

----------


## Garrick

> Are we seriously going to have posts like this on a genetics and archaeology site? Documents written during the Babylonian Captivity by Hebrew scribes in the 7th century BC are going to be relied on to tell us about ancient population gene flows? You do realize that there were no fully formed west Europeans or northern Europeans living in the Near East at that time, don't you?
> 
> Indeed, I'm sure this is just as reliable as what the OT tells us about geology and astronomy and evolution. So, yeah, I'll pass.


Angela, it is clear that this story I gave as illustration that "Dariel Pass" is known to those who study Bible and "the lost" tribes of Israel.

Who likes he or she can reads more about it, but of course you're right about scientific foundation:

http://www.israelite.info/research/s...riel-pass.html

----------


## Angela

If we go by this recent Zeder paper, the old view that cereals developed in the southern Levant, then the newer view that cereals developed in the hilly flanks of the Euphrates, along with the proposed long delay between cereal domestication and animal domestication, have all been proved to be incorrect:

Attachment 7327

http://anthropology.si.edu/archaeobi...er_ca_2011.pdf


Given this kind of intense cultural exchange over thousands of years it would seem odd that there would have been a large amount of substructure in the actual "fertile crescent" area, although perhaps far northern Anatolia and far eastern Anatolia leading to the Caucasus were different. As I said, the ancient dna will be the most important piece of evidence.

I also thought this was interesting in terms of Cyprus:


Attachment 7328

The "more" domesticated animals doubtless came later by way of the same established sea routes, as did pottery. Were they accompanied by some slightly different genes as well? 

The paper points out that they didn't just take domesticated plants and "managed" animals with them. They even took things like foxes. It's as if they were transporting their entire home environment with them. Those boats were like miniature Noah's Arks! I'd love to know the entire motivation. It's 160 kilometers by sea to Cyprus from the mainland, as the author pointed out. It must have taken tremendous courage given the state of shipping and navigation at that time. The question for me is why? Was it just to get new land? Wasn't there enough suitable land in the Levant and Anatolia? They couldn't have depleted it all, because newer settlements continued to be built. That's still a mystery.


Well, maybe I answered my own question...this is a map of the most fertile land:


Oh, and I think Maciamo's diffusion of agriculture map still holds up very well as to relative chronology:

----------


## Alan

> 3) Madai (Persians, Pathans, etc., mostly Iranian and Indian people)
> 4)



Madai= Medes and their descend the Parthians. Medes are the most mentioned group in the Bible.

----------


## Greying Wanderer

I think the ease or difficulty of traveling through mountain passes also depends on whether there are lots of dudes throwing spears at you from the cliffs.

A mountain pass might be easy for small groups of traders to pass if they give the local chief some shiny metal to be allowed to pass and easy for a large strong army to force their way through but maybe not so easy for a smaller, weaker army.

So for example it might have been difficult for an early neolithic tribe to force the passes but easy for an organised army once they had bronze weapons and armor.

#

Interesting on Garrick's map that the silk road route avoided crossing Anatolia by land but headed for the closest bit of sea instead.

#

Also on Angela's map of farming spread it seems to spread directly west (i.e. along the same line of latitude as where it developed) faster than it spread north and south of the source - which is what you'd expect as the farming package would initially only be ideal for that climate. I think this speaks to the age of the Atlantic Megalith culture centered in Portugal. They were around early and for a long time.

----------


## LeBrok

> Why Latvians are Mescech? If Slavs and Finns are Magog? :)


Lol, let's not waste any logic on this.

----------


## Greying Wanderer

> I see no reason why the Gravettians could not have crossed from Anatolia directly into the Balkans, as many scholars maintain. At the time period in question, there was no Hellespont between Anatolia and the Balkans. It was all land. Much easier than traversing the Caucasus mountains.
> 
> 
> ...
> (snip)


The thing I wonder about those maps is with the sea level lower and all that land exposed what type of land was it?

It seems to me it would most likely be marsh / wetlands and marsh / wetlands are good habitats for HGs.

So if the Hellespont was actually a big marsh full of scary HGs crossing it might not be as easy as it looks on the map today and more like the film "Southern Comfort".

Hence why I think farmers more likely sailed around.

----------


## Angela

> The thing I wonder about those maps is with the sea level lower and all that land exposed what type of land was it?
> 
> It seems to me it would most likely be marsh / wetlands and marsh / wetlands are good habitats for HGs.
> 
> So if the Hellespont was actually a big marsh full of scary HGs crossing it might not be as easy as it looks on the map today and more like the film "Southern Comfort".
> 
> Hence why I think farmers more likely sailed around.


This map represents the land masses as they were about 22,000 years ago. It was posted to show that if Gravettian hunter gatherers moved into Europe from the Near East, they would have had no problem just walking straight into the Balkans, since at that time there was no water separating the two areas.

By the time of the Neolithic, the land masses resembled the current ones. However, you can see across the Hellespont, and we know that the first farmers went 160 kilometers into the Mediterranean to reach Cyprus, so it's puzzling that there is no evidence of intensive contact between Barcin and the Neolithic cultures in the Balkans according to preliminary reports from the archaeologists doing the excavations there. I know something about the favorable currents that would aid a sea voyage to Cyprus. Was it a different story around the Hellespont? Was there something difficult about crossing it given the state of navigation at the time?




> GreyHaired: Also on Angela's map of farming spread it seems to spread directly west (i.e. along the same line of latitude as where it developed) faster than it spread north and south of the source - which is what you'd expect as the farming package would initially only be ideal for that climate. I think this speaks to the age of the Atlantic Megalith culture centered in Portugal. They were around early and for a long time.


As I said, all the new dating doesn't really change the "relative" chronology of Maciamo's map. That's the "general" order in which the colonizations took place. I do think they were looking for a very similar environment. Not to be silly about it, but if we were going to go into space and colonize, what would we look for? I think we'd be looking for planets as close as possible to our own. 

The latest research seems to show that it took thousands of years of patient effort to create their "package" of crops and animals, and I think they were looking for fertile land and the kind of climate that would support their crops. I think that helps to explain why they seem to have moved along the coast of Anatolia and out to Cyprus before striking out into the interior of Anatolia. (There were, of course, farmers all along the Fertile Crescent all the way to the Persian Gulf, because that's where the land was, well, "fertile". :)

This is a map describing a later time, and it's wrong in that it doesn't show Cyprus as part of the earliest Neolithic, and includes Egypt, which was a little later, I think, but it clearly shows that the initial area was sort of bounded by the Taurus and Zagros mountains. They probably stuck to the coastal areas for quite some time before striking out into the interior.

Ed. I checked the Zeder dating chart again. The southern Levant was definitely first, then the eastern Fertile Crescent. After that there's a bit of overlap between the northern Levant, the central Fertile Crescent, and Cyprus. Central Anatolia does seem to come in a bit later.

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/attachm...achmentid=7326

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## Greying Wanderer

> This map represents the land masses as they were about 22,000 years ago.


Sure but the sea levels have been rising since then and the earliest part of your farmer spread map goes back c. 11,000 years i.e. pretty much halfway.

My point is *if* the sea levels were lower at the time (if less so than in the LGM map) then what kind of land would it be?

*If* it was marsh / wetlands then it might be full of scary HGs which might explain




> they would have had no problem just walking straight into the Balkans, since at that time there was no water separating the two areas.





> so it's puzzling that there is no evidence of intensive contact between Barcin and the Neolithic cultures in the Balkans according to preliminary reports from the archaeologists doing the excavations there.


One possibility at least.

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## Garrick

> Why Latcians are Mescech? If Slavs and Finns are Magog? :)


If we have intention to decipher this we will enter in very complex field and of course for new thread.

Issue is related with Bible, science and interpretation of Bible, the practice of interpretation is hermeneutics.

First question is, before interpretation, if someone is Christian or no. Who is not Christian he or she can completely be uninterested for Bible, or may be intolerant, or interpret Bible as folklore, etc.

Therefore, although we are all tolerant, it is not irrelevant for further discussion is someone is Christian or no. Because for Christians Bible is literally the Word of God.

If you are Christian you have a lot of good text about interpretation of Bible and hermeneutics. In this regard I especially appreciate American Protestant authors.

Here's an article:

Science and Hermeneutics

http://www.frame-poythress.org/ebook...-hermeneutics/

About your question someone must have a lot of knowledge to give you adequate response. And some nations can be in two categories. You will come to the best answer for you if you read further about this theme different sources, think about that and interpret.

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## Angela

> Garrick: We have:
> 
> NG21-10 Vinca sample from Serbia
> K8 NG21-10
> ANE 0
> South_Eurasian 0
> ENF 41.1
> East_Eurasian 0
> WHG 58.9
> ...


Isn't this the calculator which supposedly "removes" the WHG/UHG from EEF to get the "ENF" or early Near Eastern farmer score? If that's the case, then this "ENF" number is misleading. As I suspected would happen, EEF or Stuttgart is virtually the same as ENF. If the methodology for this calculator is as I stated, then some part, probably a good part of the WHG/UHG in this result should be removed and added to the "ENF" in order to get the actual number for the people who arrived from the Near East. 

Anyone who doesn't know that is going to be totally misled. The only way to get a handle on this would be to compare the results from this calculator for Stuttgart to the above results for Vinca. Only then can you get a rough estimate of how much WHG might have been picked up in Europe. Or, the Stuttgart sample should be compared to Vinca directly, or the Vinca sample should be compared to Barcin.

As I said on another thread, all these analyses should be redone using a highly quality Near Eastern farmer genome as soon as we get one that is high coverage enough. Nobody should be relying on this calculator in trying to figure out how much admixture took place between the arriving farmers and the hunter-gatherers. 





> Garrick:If this means that indigenous or old Europeans (I haplogroup) could produce own systems without Near Easterners? We will see newer findings."


Pardon? First of all, how do you know there weren't G2a among them? At the very least, these were admixed people. Second of all, what do you mean by "could produce own systems _without_ Near Easterners"? You think the "I2a" people who lived around the Danube before the arrival of the "Near Easterners" had already independently invented agriculture and animal husbandry? Permanent settlements? Pottery? The people before the arrival of the "Near Easterners" were hunter gatherers. 

In terms of culture, populations take or borrow from other groups, sometimes with gene flow, sometimes without, and hopefully add their own improvements. That's how it's always worked. 

We've been discussing "biases" on another thread. I think this is taking it a little far. It's also a bit nihilistic in ethnic terms, don't you think, given how much "Near Eastern farmer" ancestry is in Serbians?

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## Garrick

> As I said on another thread, all these analyses should be redone using a highly quality Near Eastern farmer genome as soon as we get one that is high coverage enough. Nobody should be relying on this calculator in trying to figure out how much admixture took place between the arriving farmers and the hunter-gatherers.


Yes, (and I wrote about it, more time).




> Pardon? First of all, how do you know there weren't G2a among them? At the very least, these were admixed people.


Yes, it is possible, and possible not only G2a.

I only highlighted haplogroup I, and with reason. Because there is opinion that hunter gatherers were not able to adapt. I think this opinion is wrong.




> Second of all, what do you mean by "could produce own systems _without_ Near Easterners"?


Sorry, I was not well expressed. But you explained in next paragraph.




> In terms of culture, populations take or borrow from other groups, sometimes with gene flow, sometimes without, and hopefully add their own improvements. That's how it's always worked.


...

Personally I very appreciate Near East. Most of world civilization originated from Near East. Almost no any important population about which we discuss in the forum that does not originate from the Near East and near. I don't know my Y-DNA and admixtures but I would be happy if my ancestor is from Near East. I will put in my data when I do test.

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