Is there excess EHG ancestry in those samples though? As I understand it, the imputation of steppe ancestry in those Portuguese samples is based on increased similarity to present day Orcadians, Chuvash and Lezgins. This could be caused by any number of things. Is there something in the supp. material that I've missed?
About languages I don't know. The samples are too early to be Celtic, hence they could be either Lusitanian IE or non-IE Paleohispanic. I think the samples come from southern Portugal close to historic Turdetanian-Tartessian territory.
I couldn't find a supplement. That's part of my problem with the conclusions: I want to see more of the stats.
As to what they see happening in the Bronze Age, the Admixture run you posted shows a slight increase in "H/G".
This is what they say in the body of the paper:
"In the transition to the Portuguese Bronze Age, a second shift can be seen in relative hunter-gatherer ancestry with
some increase in relative haplotype donation from KO1, which is seen more prominently in the majority of post-Neolithic Eurasian samples, hinting at some difference between the Portuguese Neolithic and Bronze Age."
However, when discussing "steppe" intrusion they say:"Consistent with this, when comparing Portuguese Neolithic to Bronze Age samples, the former presented an excess of haplotype donation to Sardinian and Spanish (p=0.017).
Northern/eastern ancestry is evident in the Bronze Age, with significantly increased
enrichment in Chuvash, Orcadian (p=0.017), Lezgin and Irish (p=0.033)." All of those populations share EHG. However, Orcadians, Lezgin,and Irish also share CHG, don't they? What about Chuvash?
Then they say the following:
"A recurring feature of ADMIXTURE analyses of ancient northern Europeans is the appearance and subsequent dissemination within the Bronze Age of a component (teal) that is earliest identified in our dataset in HGs from the Caucasus (CHG).
Unlike contemporaries elsewhere (but similarly to earlier Hungarian BA), Portuguese BA individuals show no signal of this component, a
lthough a slight but discernible increase in European HG ancestry (red component) is apparent. D-Statistic tests would suggest this increase is associated not with Western HG ancestry, but instead reveal significant introgression from several steppe populations into the Portuguese BA relative to the preceding LNCA (S4 Text, S6 Table). Interestingly, the CHG component in ADMIXTURE is present in modern-day Spaniards and to a lesser extent in the Basque population."
They couldn't have worded this more confusingly, but I took this to mean that they believe that d-stats show that the slight increase in HG in the Iberian Bronze Age is not from western hunter-gatherers, but from steppe populations, which would imply EHG, yes? Yet, didn't they say above at least part of it came from Koros?