November 28, 2013

Iberian Neolithic farmer DNA

A currently not available preprint that has important implications about the Neolithic of Europe.

A late Neolithic Iberian farmer exhibits genetic affinity to Neolithic Scandinavian farmers and a Bronze Age central European farmer

Sverrisdóttir, Oddný Ósk et al.

The spread of farming, the neolithisation process, swept over Europe after the advent of the farming lifestyle in the near east approximately 11,000 years ago. However the mode of transmission and its impact on the demographic patterns of Europe remains largely unknown. In this study we obtained : 66,476,944 bp of genomic DNA from the remains of a 4000 year old Neolithic farmer from the site of El Portalón, 15 km east of Burgos, Spain. We compared the genomic signature of this individual to modern-day populations as well as the few Neolithic individuals that has produced large-scale autosomal data. The Neolithic Portalón individual is genetically most similar to southern Europeans, similar to a Scandinavian Neolithic farmer and the Tyrolean Iceman. In contrast, the Neolithic Portalón individual displays little affinity to two Mesolithic samples from the near-by area, La Brana, demonstrating a distinct change in population history between 7,000 and 4,000 years ago for the northern Iberian Peninsula.

Link

54 comments:

Kurti said...

Another farmer who is predominantly Mediterranean/Southern. It will not take long till most scientists realize that Mediterranean is the farmer marker. The genetic landscape of Europe rapidly changed around Bronze or even more likely during the iron age.

Krefter said...

finally Autosomal DNA from farmer in Iberia from the Neolithic age. I have been waiting for this. To prove the close genetic relationship between the farmers that spread to Iberia from around Greece through the Meditreaen sea and the farmers that spread from around Greece to central Europe then Scandinavia.

There is already y DNA G2a from early Neolithic LBK in Germany and Epicardiel in Spain. They share a lot of mtDNA together they do not share with hunter gatherers. I think there was a farmer race in Europe. Ancient mtDNA and now autosomal DNA has shown they were very distinct are rarely inter married with hunter gatherers. Sardinia are kind of the last pure ones left.

The Near eastern farmers who spread and dominated Europe. genetically were not similar to modern Near easterns. Their mtDNA was pretty different and most importantly their autosomal DNA was very different. They were dominated by the Meditreaen type ancestry. With little traces of west Asian and southwest Asian. I don't understand why people try to explain why modern Near easterns dot match Neolithic near eastern farmers. It is just a fact they do not and we will have to try to explain it.

If this 4,000 year old Iberian has the same differences with modern Iberians as Otzi and Gok4 do with modern Iberians. That probably means there was a major migration into Iberia in the bronze age. I think Y DNA R1b1a2a1a2 P312. This migration I think raised north European aka hunter gatherer like ancestry and also brought Gedorsian from K7b.

1Marcelo said...

A single sample does not demonstrate anything, does it?

Onur Dincer said...

Barak,

Gok4 (the Swedish Neolithic farmer) and Oetzi are too high in the "Atlantic Baltic" component of the K7b, the "Atlantic Med" component of the K12b, the "Atlantic Baltic" component of the world9, and the "Northwestern" and "Southwestern" components of the euro7 ADMIXTURE analyses to be relatively unmixed descendants of West Asian Neolithic farmers. So they, just like Sardinians, have significant levels of European hunter-gatherer ancestry. Gok4, in line with her geographical location, has more European hunter-gatherer ancestry than Oetzi, but Oetzi's level of European hunter-gatherer ancestry is no less important, especially considering his geographical location.

Fanty said...

@1Marcelo:
"A single sample does not demonstrate anything, does it?"

Why a SINGLE sample?
We have several samples from Neolithic farmers now.

Its a single sample from Spain, right. But its like all the other farmer samples from other places. Its unlikely that we found the one single farmer in Spain that matched all the other farmers in Europe and missed all the other Spanish farmers that dont.

It just once more agrees to what was already known/guessed:

ALL farmers, all over Europe (including Spain) show a Southwestern like autosomal DNA and ALL the Hunter/Gatherers in all over Europe (including Spain) show a Northeastern like autosomal DNA.

Krefter said...

Onur,

I don't think Otzi and Gok4 were completely pure farmers. I know they had significant hunter gatherer ancestry. If you go by globe13, K7, and K12b. They probably had less though than any modern Europeans.

I do think that in the Neolithic age from Germany-Iberia-Ireland- southern Sweden-Italy was dominated by Otzi and Gok4 like farmers. I am not sure if there is any archeological evidence of hunter gatherers living in most of those areas as recent as 6,000ybp(besides Gotland).

The 100's of mtDNA samples from central Europe during Neolithic there is under 5% hunter gatherer U5, U2e, and U4(I know they probably had other haplogroups). Actually there are no U4 and U2e samples till the copper age with Bell Beaker and Corded ware culture. Proving in my opinion very little inter marriage with hunter gatherers and Neolithic farmers.

Why aren't all modern people in those areas like Gok4 and Otzi. In central Europe there is pretty different mtDNA gene pool too. I think migrations around 5,000 years ago with Indo European languages raised hunter gatherer ancestry in a lot of Europe. Modern eastern, central, and British Europeans may mainly descend from those migrations. It is pretty obvious looking there was a major genetic shift in Europe with the spread of farming in Neolithic. And another major genetic shift during copper and bronze age.

Krefter said...

"A single sample does not demonstrate anything, does it?"

It depends since this is autosomal DNA I think it does. Because one sample can be a pretty good representation of an entire ancient ethnic group.

Lathdrinor said...

The bigger issue in my mind is how the hunter-gatherers made a comeback around Bronze Age times. Was it them taking up farming? Was it them transitioning into a military caste and getting rich off of taxes levied from the farmers? Was it a one sided recovery involving the farmers fancying their women? What about interactions with new incoming groups - did that cause the hunter-gatherer recovery?

The idea that the first farmers from the Near East coexisted with the local hunter-gatherers, and that both groups kept to themselves, is not illogical. People aren't so keen on abandoning their life-styles, even when those life-styles are less efficient. Indeed, the European colonization of the New World is a great example of the way cultural conservatism perseveres. The native Americans didn't convert to the European life-style en masse despite its greater efficiency, and despite the fact that they were being overrun.

I imagine the hunter-gatherers of Europe were not so different. The farmers were gradually taking over their lands, but they held onto their ways outside the range of farming communities, trading with the farmers but not taking up farming en masse. Eventually, though, hunter-gathering did disappear from Europe while hunter-gatherer genes did not, so they had to have made a transition. The issue is what form this transition took.

1Marcelo said...

@Fanty:

The authors mention similarities to only one Neolithic Scandinavian farmer and to the Tyrolean Iceman. I don't discuss the general conclusion as a likely possibility but the statements in this abstract are hugely overstated, considering the limited results.

@Barackobama

If I understand correctly, what is under discussion is precisely how homogeneous the farmers and hunters were, if they mixed, and how much. In this context a single sample that seems to be "most similar" to one other sample and has "little affinity" to others does not seem to me to be enough to make strong statements like: "demonstrating a distinct change in population history".

Davidski said...

Kurti,

You're late to the party.

"These [Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age genetic] shifts are also visible in the genetic distance maps and Procrustes-projected PCAs, where the Near Eastern affinity of the LBK and its subsequent regional derivatives switches to a clear European affinity in the later Neolithic/EBA cultures, with distinct geographic orientations."

"Notably, the CEM (modern Central European Metapopulation) clusters with the Late Neolithic cultures and individuals of the BBC (Bell Beaker Culture) in particular, suggesting that the Western European mtDNA variability had a stronger influence than the contemporaneous eastern CWC/EBA (Corded Ware/Early Bronze Age) complex, implying yet another shift after the EBA."

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6155/257.abstract

Onur Dincer said...

Barak,

The Balkan area has not been sampled for pre-Neolithic ancient DNA yet. We need pre-Neolithic samples from the Balkans in order to see whether mtDNA hg U dominated there too or not during the pre-Neolithic times. Also, we do not have any pre-Neolithic Y-DNA hg result from any part of Europe. Moreover, like the Balkans, West Asia has not been sampled for pre-Neolithic ancient DNA yet. In short, there are still many unknowns for the pre-Neolithic haplogroup landscape of West Eurasia. Therefore, comparing the autosomal DNA analysis results of the existing Neolithic and pre-Neolithic samples from Europe with each other and with the autosomal DNA analysis results of modern populations is currently the best way to make inferences (however roughly) about the degree of genetic changes in Europe during the Neolithic transition. Autosomal DNA analysis results suggest a high degree of genetic change in Europe in general during the Neolithic transition, but not as high as you seem to assume, as I clarified in my previous post.

Fanty said...

"The authors mention similarities to only one Neolithic Scandinavian farmer and to the Tyrolean Iceman. I don't discuss the general conclusion as a likely possibility but the statements in this abstract are hugely overstated, considering the limited results."

Well see it like this:

We know the DNA from 3 farmers.
One living in Sweden, one in Austria and one in Spain.

They are all similiar in DNA.

Its 3 out of 3 farmers (100% of all tested so far)

And they even live in Sweden, Spain and Austria.

Then there are 4 hunter gatherers. 2 in Sweden and 2 in Spain. And all 4 are similiar to each others in DNA.

Its very unlikely that this is not the TYPICAL pattern even through only like 3 farmers and 4 HGs DNA is avaible.

Fanty said...

Technically we cant really check out how much DNA the neolithic farmers transported around since similiar humans moved around later on.

BEll Bakers for example are no "neolithic farmers" but their DNA is related. On the other side, Corded Ware DNA is related to hunter/gatherer DNA.

Later, Germanic and Slavic migrations transporterd "Hunter Gatherer" like DNA to southern Europe.

So, if we measure the modern distribution of these 2 signals, we dont see what bases on the neolithic revolution" and what bases on later movements.

Natufian said...

@Lathdrinor

Interesting thoughts.

You have probably answered it yourself in the end. Since farmers were expanding and hunter gathering communities shrinking, the only way to survive and and multiply was by adopting farming. Nothing else is economically sustainable for them to significantly rise in numbers.
Taxing sounds like a few millennium to soon, and a movie like - vengeance comeback scenario. Moreover it is contraposed to mathematical model of sustainability, for this period of human history. You can not have a larger population living on surplus than the population working for you (this will require modern farming knowledge and industrial age capabilities).

Its more likely an addition to new kind of complex societies with more of a productive farming and a new set of human relations. I doubt old age populations would easily abandon farming for ones own needs for the sake of others. It would require more than just brute force to make such a sudden leap in behavioral and sociological sense in this point of time. Older populations, as you said, were more reluctant on giving up old ways and styles.
Moreover, Gs as farmers almost died out (or were killed). So either not quite a successful farmer story, or some sort of bronze age replacement (maybe some Asian disease played a role too).

All successful societies, and large in numbers that is, were farmers. Chinese spread more by farming than war, in contrast to Mongols who are today just a fraction of Chinese in numbers. Russians, Indians, Romans, American pilgrims...
Warriors are more likely to die out while farmers almost uninterruptedly populate the world, just as I can recall, seven samurai/magnificent seven, suggest.
So every population that we see today in great numbers is a farmers population, which is able to sustain and multiply themselves almost without interruption, even in case of brute taxing.

Romantic ideas of warriors of one race exploiting farmers of some other, while multiplying more than them is a socio-pyramid upturned. Even in case of multiple wife's theory where bronze age men took many women and reproduced significantly, the offspring that is not close to the throne had to became farmers to sustain their numbers.
This is actually a story of replacement of more successful farmers over lousy ones, or at least more lucky ones (again, Gs were either killed, died of disease or both).

Relatively new farmers were of the same stock, with addition of former hunter fisherman gatherers.They are actually incorporated into farmer society protecting it from other communities while mixing and coexisting to a point where some future warriors can be drafted from farmers themselves (except for India).

eurologist said...

The Near eastern farmers who spread and dominated Europe. genetically were not similar to modern Near easterns

Barak,

I have so far seen no convincing evidence that the European farmers actually came from the Mideast. As I have pointed out several times, the E Mediterranean (Epigravettian; most of Italy, the-then dry part of the Adriatic, much of the Balkans and Greece, and an extended region to the Black Sea and beyond) was after LGM culturally very different from the Magdalenian of the remainder of Europe. There was also no geographic boarder to NW Anatolia, so it is reasonable to assume that all these people were autosomally somewhat related, surely with some gradients N and E, and were the ones who started/ brought agriculture in/ into Europe (the plants and animals indeed came from the warmer regions of W Anatolia, but there was a lot of connection and trade with the islands of the adjacent Aegean; the people were evidently excellent seafarers, later also enabling Cardium). The beginning of agriculture in E/C Greece is practically contemporaneous with that in Anatolia.

There is still room for different male and female haplogroups, though. For example, the Aegean fishermen turned agriculturalists might have had predominantly different y-DNA (G2a?) then the HGs farther NE (R1a, R1b?).

Onur Dincer said...

Forgot to mention. Oetzi and especially Gok4, just like Sardinians, are too high in the "North European" and "Mediterranean" components of the globe13 ADMIXTURE analysis to be relatively unmixed descendants of West Asian Neolithic farmers.

Fanty said...

@MArcello:

Here is image proof of something Barack said (a single person is usualy a good enough proxy for the whole population)

These are 15 modern Spanish people:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JhuI7Z91JcY/Tgi1b8YzOfI/AAAAAAAAAjk/RpNdaQBvtFw/s1600/ADMIXTURE%2BSpanish_D_12.png

Yeah I know these are only 15 people. they all might be migrants, the real Spanish may be totaly different, we need more.

These are 18 Lezgins:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RjOv45D9WKw/TbHp3TNrQxI/AAAAAAAADio/DoZSHabIBTE/s1600/ADMIXTURE%2BLezgins_11.png

7 (SEVEN) Iranians:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hQWFbS0LvmM/TbHt25uQzSI/AAAAAAAADjI/NEexDOuguG4/s1600/ADMIXTURE%2BIranian_D_7.png

1Marcelo said...

@ Fanty,

Of course a single sample can be representative of a whole population but ONLY if the population is homogeneous. If you only have 3 samples, you have absolutely no idea whether your population of hundreds of thousands is homogeneous or not. It is simple statistics. The rest is speculation, not science.

1Marcelo said...

@ Fanty,

By the way, most of the studies on modern populations like the ones you cited use highly selected samples. For example, some require four grandparents from the same birthplace. You can't assume this is the case for archaeological samples.

Davidski said...

The Mediterranean cluster, which is modal in Sardinians, is very similar to the Arabian cluster, which peaks in some Bedouins and Saudis.

Just take out the North Euro-like influence from the Mediterranean cluster, and the East African influence from the Arabian cluster, and you've got the same ancestral clade.

Krefter said...

"These [Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age genetic] shifts are also visible in the genetic distance maps and Procrustes-projected PCAs, where the Near Eastern affinity of the LBK and its subsequent regional derivatives switches to a clear European affinity in the later Neolithic/EBA cultures, with distinct geographic orientations."

"Notably, the CEM (modern Central European Metapopulation) clusters with the Late Neolithic cultures and individuals of the BBC (Bell Beaker Culture) in particular, suggesting that the Western European mtDNA variability had a stronger influence than the contemporaneous eastern CWC/EBA (Corded Ware/Early Bronze Age) complex, implying yet another shift after the EBA."

Davidski do have any idea why they say LBK mtDNA is similar to modern near easterns? Their subclades of T(T2b), J(J1c), and N(N1a) were totally unlike Near easterns and totally like Europeans. They lack any L which varies from about 5-15% in the Near east. I can give many examples of how their mtDNA was not obviously Near eastern. Sure their overall haplogroup percentages might be more similar to Near easterns but it is about the subclades and younger lineages than big and old haplogroup's like H.

I know I have already made the point. That I think LBK, Cardiel and other people that spread farming into Europe. Came from the Near east but were majority Meditreaen type in autosomal DNA not west Asian or southwest Asian. Their people in the near east may have been absorbed into the main ancestors of modern Near easterns. The T2b's(main T2 subclade of Europeans not Near easterns today) in pre pottery early Neolithic Syria, LBK, and Cardiel I think is evidence of this.

What we think of as very European mtDNA is really probably mainly descended from Near eastern farmers. I don't think the rise of H is going to be connected with the rise of hunter gatherer like ancestry in Europe probably around 5,000-3,000 years ago. The only autosomal DNA we have from hunter gatherers comes from U5 and U4 dominated ones.

Krefter said...

"I have so far seen no convincing evidence that the European farmers actually came from the Mideast. As I have pointed out several times, the E Mediterranean (Epigravettian; most of Italy, the-then dry part of the Adriatic, much of the Balkans and Greece, and an extended region to the Black Sea and beyond) was after LGM culturally very different from the Magdalenian of the remainder of Europe. There was also no geographic boarder to NW Anatolia, so it is reasonable to assume that all these people were autosomally somewhat related, surely with some gradients N and E, and were the ones who started/ brought agriculture in/ into Europe (the plants and animals indeed came from the warmer regions of W Anatolia, but there was a lot of connection and trade with the islands of the adjacent Aegean; the people were evidently excellent seafarers, later also enabling Cardium). The beginning of agriculture in E/C Greece is practically contemporaneous with that in Anatolia.

There is still room for different male and female haplogroups, though. For example, the Aegean fishermen turned agriculturalists might have had predominantly different y-DNA (G2a?) then the HGs farther NE (R1a, R1b?)."

I have not actually seriously studied the origin of farming and its spread. All the experts though say everything points to farming spreading from the Near east to Europe. From the Levant to Anatolia to Greece(nearby), through the Meditreaen with Cardiel culture, and also deep into central Europe with LBK. Ancient mtDNA shows a brand new people arrived into Europe with these cultures.

Their mtDNA haplogroup subclades of Neolithic Europeans fit with subclades of those haplogroups in modern Europeans not Near easterns. But it has many close relatives in the Near east and not in native European hunter gatherer samples. At some point the European farmers ancestry came from the Near east actually same with European hunter gatherers but like 30,000 years ago.

I like that you are not just obeying what they experts say and considering other possibilities. Because we cant just assume history is not simple at all.

I don't think there is any evidence R1b existed in Europe before the Neolithic age. There was a article hear that said most(about 50%) of western European men direct male lines is from one to three men who lived 5,000 years ago. All evidence points to western European R1b1a2a1a L11(my haplogroup) to spreading extremely rapidly in west Europe from about 5,000-3,000 years ago. I think with Indo European's Germans, Celts, and Italians. R1a1a1b1 Z283 in east and central Europe and Scandinavia is straight from Indo European Corded ware culture. It is possibly there was R1a and R1b in pre Neolithic Europe but that is not were Polish or Irish R1 descends from. I am pretty sure a 11,000-17,000 years old(I might be alittle wrong on the date) R1a1a1 M417 was just found in deep in Siberia. In a autosomal very west Eurasian person very unrelated to modern Siberians. Just like the Mal'ta a 24,000 year old Siberian in the exact same area who had Y DNA R and west Eurasian mtDNA U. The story of Y DNA R is probably extremely complicated.

Krefter said...

"The Balkan area has not been sampled for pre-Neolithic ancient DNA yet. We need pre-Neolithic samples from the Balkans in order to see whether mtDNA hg U dominated there too or not during the pre-Neolithic times. Also, we do not have any pre-Neolithic Y-DNA hg result from any part of Europe. Moreover, like the Balkans, West Asia has not been sampled for pre-Neolithic ancient DNA yet. In short, there are still many unknowns for the pre-Neolithic haplogroup landscape of West Eurasia. Therefore, comparing the autosomal DNA analysis results of the existing Neolithic and pre-Neolithic samples from Europe with each other and with the autosomal DNA analysis results of modern populations is currently the best way to make inferences (however roughly) about the degree of genetic changes in Europe during the Neolithic transition. Autosomal DNA analysis results suggest a high degree of genetic change in Europe in general during the Neolithic transition, but not as high as you seem to assume, as I clarified in my previous post. "

I know there is no mtDNA from the Balkans from before the Neolithic. But there is U5 from the eastern border of Europe by Kazakhstan, England, Germany, Iberia, Karlie, Italy. All dating before the Neolithic it is pretty obvious there was common maternal ancestry in many of Europe's hunter gatherers. Autosomal DNA has shown they are probably the source. Of what Davidski calls North European component in autosomal DNA which is very unique to Europeans today. It is kind of what makes them distinct from other west Eurasians. The mainly U5, U4, and U2e, Autosomally north European hunter gatherers. Traced probably a pure line in Europe going back nearly 30,000 years(there are two pre U5's dating 31,155ybp in Europe). It would be hard to believe that in the Balkans a very different people existed but it is not impossible.

Krefter said...

"Forgot to mention. Oetzi and especially Gok4, just like Sardinians, are too high in the "North European" and "Mediterranean" components of the globe13 ADMIXTURE analysis to be relatively unmixed descendants of West Asian Neolithic farmers."

They are to high in North European not Meditreaen which in Europe is probably from farmers. People thinking like Eurologist will probably find the answer. They may be from the Balkans or European side of the Black sea there are many possibilities. Where ever their non European hunter gatherer ancestry came from it was connected to the Near east somehow.

Krefter said...

Davidski since you have studied raw data of ancient and modern autosomal DNA. Is it for sure that there is a lot of hunter gatherer ancestry left in Europe. I know northeast Europeans are most related but do they for sure have mainly hunter gatherer ancestry. Do you have a test that can accurately tell how much hunter gatherer ancestry a person has. It still doesn't make sense to me because of the very non hunter gatherer mtDNA in Europe.

I know that the North European component you and other's have found. Is very unique to Europe and dominate in ancient hunter gatherer samples. Do you think it descends from some of the earliest humans in Europe.

The dominate mtDNA haplogroup of the hunter gatherer's is U5. There are two 31,155 year old pre U5's in Czech republic. Also I have read studies that say it most likely originated in Europe around 30,000ybp and after migrations of U that occurred close to 40,000 years ago. I don't know what the origin of U2e and U4 may be but I am sure very ancient in Europe.

So there is a west Eurasian family in autosomal DNA right? Which includes all the different components dominate in middle east, north Africa, and Europe. Even though mtDNA, Y DNA, and ancient culturally exchange. Show that Europeans and Near easterns have been very connected since the Neolithic age. But Europeans definitely seem distinct from near Easterns. I think paler pigmentation(skin, hair, and eye color), North European component, mtDNA U5, U4, U2e(maybe other's), Y DNA I(maybe others). Are related to what is in the Near east but distinct to Europe and they all have their origin in Europe during the Palaeolithic age.

That sounds to simple to me and I want to know what you think about it. I am definitely still considering the idea or a related idea. That the European hunter gatherers were kind of replaced by near eastern farmers who are Europeans main ancestors based on mtDNA and a lot of Y DNA. But autosomal DNA and pale pigmentation really is not constant with that idea.

I really don't understand why there is no talk about y DNA I and pre Neolithic Europeans. It is obvious it existed in Europe before the Neolithic probably before the LGM. Later Y DNA haplogroups mainly coming from the Near east during the Neolithic or after( all R1b, all J, all G2a, all E1b1b) are now seen as very European and I don't understand why.

Simon_W said...

If he's 4000 years old it's a Bell Beaker farmer or post-Bell Beaker. It's important not to throw all the "neolithic farmers" into one pot. It's a huge temporal and cultural difference to the early farmers who encountered the mesolithic hunter-gatherers.

Also it's odd to call Ötzi a bronze age farmer when he actually was chalcolithic.

But of course, a highly interesting and important work that's going to be released.

Like with all the ancient autosomal samples, it isn't a huge problem that it's only from one individual, as the autosomal ancestry gets mixed in the process of procreation - quite in contrast to the uniparental markers. Individuals of a single population don't vary hugely between each other, as long as we're not dealing with a recent immigrant.

Grey said...

Lathrindor

"The bigger issue in my mind is how the hunter-gatherers made a comeback around Bronze Age times. Was it them taking up farming?"

Cattle imo.

eurologist said...

do have any idea why they say LBK mtDNA is similar to modern near easterns?... I can give many examples of how their mtDNA was not obviously Near eastern.

Barak,

That was my criticism of the original Haak paper, it was basically a circular argument: by definition a large fraction of LBK haplogroups were called Near Eastern from the get-go, and then the analysis confirmed this compared to extant NE populations. But only by calling a couple of today's NE haplogroups NE even though everyone else would call them Eastern European HGs, and by dismissing one haplogroup altogether. I also completely disagree with the ridiculous assumption that everything changed multiple times in Central Europe, while the NE remained the same in 9,000 years.

The reality is that we do not have sufficient coverage over space and time even just in Europe. Europe wasn't homogenous, there were many different cultural groups, and a local famine here and a slight shift there might make it look like huge mass changes in all of Europe, if you mostly just collect data from the Elbe-Saale region.

Also, Northern Europe does not equal Europe. For example, I am pretty sure that mtDNA H was paleolithic/ Mesolithic in the Mediterranean region. R1a and R1b are most likely Paleolithic in E Europe (having arrived with the Gravettian, R/Q being pan-Siberian; remember that Europe reaches all the way to the Caspian Sea and includes part of Kazakhstan). So, some of these changes are intra-European changes, surely triggered by the Neolithic and Bronze and Iron Ages, but also by climate changes and epidemics. The genetic diversity of the original crops and animals was low, and they came from a much warmer climate with dry summers/ falls and no snow cover. What could go wrong?

In the end we need to be patient and wait for more data.

Kurti said...

If the genetic landscape changed so dramatically within a few thousand years how can we expect that the same didn't happened in the Near East? All farmer samples, even the once closest to the Near East (Bulgaria) show a predominance of the Mediterranean component.

And as Davidski mentioned, if you take out the East African shift from Southwest Asian component, and the H&G admixture from (Atlantic)med. There you have one and the same component.

Unknown said...

Yes I do believe R1a and R1b are most likely Paleolithic in Europe

andrew said...

@Simon W

"If he's 4000 years old it's a Bell Beaker farmer or post-Bell Beaker. It's important not to throw all the "neolithic farmers" into one pot. It's a huge temporal and cultural difference to the early farmers who encountered the mesolithic hunter-gatherers."

Agreed. My working model of European genetics assumes that there was at least one Mesolithic genetic population (possible a second in Southern Europe exemplified by the Iberian Mesolithic), a first wave Neolithic wave population (LBK and Cardial Pottery which modest differences between the these source populations but more introgression of Mesolithic people in the Cardial Pottery population), a second Neolithic wave population initially in the West (probably associated with Bell Beaker in the West), and a roughly contemporaneous second Neolithic wave population initially in the East (Indo-European associated with Corded Ware) which is more similar to the Western Second Wave than the First Wave. (In addition, there were separate Eastern Mediterranean and Western Mediterranean migration populations from Africa that introgressed pre-Bronze Age collapse via the Levant and Gibraltar respectively exemplified by Y-DNA E).

There are modern populations extant in places like Basque Country, Sardinia and Gascony that particularly favor first or second wave Neolithic peoples.

"Also it's odd to call Ötzi a bronze age farmer when he actually was chalcolithic."

I think that the distinction is somewhat pedantic and that the Chalcolithic-Bronze Age line is quite a bit fuzzier and gradual than the Bronze Age-Iron Age line that is marked by a geographically widespread roughly contemporaneous series of Bronze Age collapse events.

"Like with all the ancient autosomal samples, it isn't a huge problem that it's only from one individual, as the autosomal ancestry gets mixed in the process of procreation - quite in contrast to the uniparental markers. Individuals of a single population don't vary hugely between each other, as long as we're not dealing with a recent immigrant."

More precisely, a small number of autosomal DNA samples is a good measure of traits that have reached fixation in the studies population, but is not a good measure of traits that were undergoing rapid shifts in frequency due to founder effects and ethnogenesis or due to selective pressures (either due to a new mutation that is expanding, or due to an event like a plague that gives new fitness enhancing value to old mutations).

Unknown said...

I am having trouble understanding the fuss with this paper. Its interesting, but it is not saying what people seem to be assuming it is saying.

This guy is genetically a Southern European type in Spain, a quintessential Southern European country in a major population centre of that area. Yes the range of the Northern Europeans probably stretched to Northern Spain in mesolithic times, but it is unlikely it was a Berlin Wall type arrangement, and who knows where the "border" was anyway? Also this is exactly the time that you would expect the expansion of the Southern European population north with the improving climate.

This paper makes NO recent connection to the near East that I can see. There is nothing to suggest that this guy just got off the boat from Turkey. I expect this southern/Mediterranean population had been in the area for many thousands of years. Even Neanderthals had a North/South population split somewhere in northern Spain. This seems to be just a typical guy of the type who had probably lived in the area since the paleolithic.

This guy is a farmer. His great great grandparents were probably hunter gatherers living in the next valley over. Their ancestors had probably been bobbing around the Mediterranean since they left Africa.

Kurti said...

@Annie Mouse

What you still seem to not understand, is that There wasn't a "South European" native population which was Mediterranean like. This component was not common until the neolithic Even the article itself indicates this.

"In contrast, the Neolithic Portalón individual displays little affinity to two Mesolithic samples from the near-by area, La Brana, demonstrating a distinct change in population history between 7,000 and 4,000 years ago for the northern Iberian Peninsula."

So how can the farmers be a "South European " source population if the near by mesolithic samples differ?

And yes it is not like there was a Berlin wall in Europe but this is exactly the point, it is not like one side of the wall appeared more North European like while the other side South European BUT it is that we have all farmers, no matter from which part of Europe (even in Bulgaria), are "Mediterranean" while all the H&G are North European like.

This is not only in Spain the case, were we could argue it to be the "geographic" border between both components. But it is the case in Sweden, Germany and many more places. So your argument is invalid.

andrew said...

"This guy is a farmer. His great great grandparents were probably hunter gatherers living in the next valley over. Their ancestors had probably been bobbing around the Mediterranean since they left Africa."

This is surely not the case. If he were, he would have a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer DNA profile and he does not.

Thus, this data point is added to so many others that support a "pots are people" hypothesis that farming was conducted by a population that migrated to Europe without much admixture with native populations rather than by cultural diffusion of farming technology to pre-existing residents.

Moreover, this study shows that Copper Age-Bronze Age Neolithic farmers in vastly different parts of Europe had similar DNA suggesting a common source for all of them.

The folk migration model of the appearance of farming in Central Europe has been widely accepted for several years based on ancient DNA evidence, but there have been strong arguments in the past that the folk migration model wasn't as good of a fit to the advent of farming in Southern Europe (and in particular to Southwestern Europe) as it was to the advent of farming in Central Europe. This data point from Spain tends to disfavor that argument and to favor an argument that by the time that by 5,000-4,000 years ago, farmers all across Europe were predominantly derived from similar or identical source populations with only minimal local variation attributable to the Mesolithic peoples who had previously resided there.

It also reinforces the historically documented context that farming was adopted relatively late in Northern Europe which retained its hunting and gathering practices longer than other parts of Europe and hence have modern populations that are close to those Mesolithic peoples.

Unknown said...

IMO these ARE the mesolithic locals (southern variety).

All the neolithic folk we have found in Southern Europe (except La Brana) have a particular southern autosomal type component. Therefore it obvious must come from somewhere else! How does this make sense? It does not make sense. And it has not been shown convincingly by the science.

All we have are these cyclical arguments. We know farmers came from the Near East therefore this must be a Near Eastern component. Oh wow we see this near eastern component all over therefore there must have been huge population replacement of farmers from the Near East. It is a self fulfilling prophecy. Similar stuff has ocurred with allocating samples to "hunter-gatherer" or "farmer".

We know folk were living around the Mediterranean from very early on. The archaeology says this. What happened to them? Even neanderthals had a north/south population split. These farmers don't match the Near East populations we know about. They do not have similar haplogroup distributions to the near East, and there was already weak evidence that the mesolithic southern european haplogroups (Italy, Spain, Portugal) were different from the northern mesolithic haplogroups. Occams Razor. The simplest explanation is that they are the missing southern European mesolithic locals. Mediterranean people.

Kurti said...

@andrew

agreed. Also the point that these neolithic individuals belonged predominantly to the yDNA G (with some individuals belonging to E1b and I) makes a direct migration out of Africa almost impossible.

But somehow this fact is overseen be some people.

eurologist said...

Kurt and Andrew,

Iberia is not the Mediterranean.

From the perspective of Mesolithic cultural and population continuity, the main question is whether the first farmers are actually different from the Mesolithic population of Italy, Greece, the Balkans, and beyond - for which I have so far seen zero evidence.

Davidski said...

How's this for Occams Razor?

The Neolithic farming package comes from the Fertile Crescent in the Near East.

All Neolithic farmer DNA tested to date doesn't have much in common with European hunter-gatherer DNA. Rather, it derives from the same clade as modern Bedouin DNA, minus the African admixture.

So where did these farmers come from? Obviously the Fertile Crescent.

Why didn't they come from the Balkans or Iberia? Because two distinct Eurasian clades of hunter-gatherers didn't live in Europe side by side for thousands of years.

Kurti said...

@Davidski

you seem to be right with your assumption.

The original farmer component appears like

Southwest Asian without East African admixture

and Mediterranean without H&G admixture.

As we see on this graph. http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2810/hhx4.png

The "Middle Eastern" component is very likely the original farmer component.

@Eurologist
yes there isn't any Mesolithic data from Bulgaria or Italy which could be used as evidence but than there isn't any evidence speaking for a Mesolithic-Neolithic continuity. But allot of evidences speaking against it.

Grey said...

"there isn't any evidence speaking for a Mesolithic-Neolithic continuity. But allot of evidences speaking against it."

There isn't? I thought the pattern so far pointed at an initial farmer expansion followed by a rebound from the locals so a lot of continuity but with a large blip in the middle?

Krefter said...

I think the Meditreaen clusters or whatever they are In autosomal DNA. Most likely came from the Near eastern farmers that spread and conquered(I think) most of Europe. I think most had very similar ancestry. There is a lot of evidence of common ancestry with Neolithic farmers in Ancient DNA.

I really doubt there were completely different hunter gatherers in different areas of Europe. The specifically European clusters in autosomal DNA which are dominate in hunter gatherer samples there is so far. I think descends from a early migration of early Caucasians from the Near east into Europe probably over 30,000 years ago. Probably also connected with mtDNA U5, U4, U2e(maybe others) and Y DNA I(maybe others). These hunter gatherers in Europe probably stayed pretty unmixed for 10,000's of years.

This sounds way to simple to me. Why would the hunter gatherers be so unmixed, Why couldn't there have been migrations from Asia into Europe that made major effects. Why would everyone within Europe be basically the same genetically. European hunter gatherers would have mixed with east Asian hunter gatherers which is proven with Ancient DNA. But I think Europe was really their center. It is pretty similar with native Americans. The Cherokee have the same ancient ancestry as the Inca. Native Americans stayed unmixed from the arrival over 20,000 years ago until European colonization began in the 1500's.


It is kind of the same today in Europe. Even though Europe is apart of Asia everyone within Europe has similar ancestry which is the hunter gatherer ancestry. ancestry.

I do think it is probably a little more complicated than I said. The hunter gatherers of Europe were not pure U(U5, U4, and U2e) like some assume. There is some for sure non U from Palaeolithic and Mesolithic European samples. There are possibly RO's, HV's, and H's. If you go by the original report's H is the most popular haplogroup so far from Iberian hunter gatherer's. I definitely think mtDNA history in pre Neolithic Europe is a lot more complicated than U5, U2e, and U4.

La Brana's people may have been a mix of migrating hunter gatherers from central Europe and mixed with some farmer's travelling through the Meditreaen sea.

eurologist said...

Why didn't they come from the Balkans or Iberia? Because two distinct Eurasian clades of hunter-gatherers didn't live in Europe side by side for thousands of years.

Davidski,

What is your hypothesis based on? Archaeology tells us exactly the opposite (excluding Iberia, of course) for the period between LGM and the Neolithic.

As we see on this graph. http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2810/hhx4.png

Kurti,

In that image, the light blue component encompasses everything from "Gedrosia", W Asia, SW Asia, and the northern Mediterranean. That's not usefully split up due to the inclusion of all the irrelevant eastern groups, at that level of K. It also tells me that the French are most closely related to Uralic people. All it really says is that West Eurasians in this calculation first split into a northern and a southern group. That people mostly align with latitude, especially if they can easily get there, we have known for decades. It doesn't tell us much about ancestral components. What if that vast light blue is a remnant of the Aurignacian population wave and ubiquitous contact since, while the dark blue is a remnant of the Gravettian wave and ubiquitous similar-latitude contact since? Where does a special Neolithic component even enter in this?

It's beyond me why anyone would think that just pre-Neolithic the population in, say, Thrace would be completely different from that in NW Anatolia, when they are just a few days walking distance away but not separated by geography nor climate. And the Aegean and W Anatolia shared the same fishing culture. But no, their autosomal DNA was as different as that of Uralic or Orcadian folks and those in the Levant, many thousands of kilometers and ten climate zones separated...

Unknown said...

" Rather, it derives from the same clade as modern Bedouin DNA, minus the African admixture."

So... That would be the Bedouin people who are mostly in North Africa? The Southern Mediterranean. Just the other side of the water from Gibralter? Or perhaps a skip across the water from Southern Italy?

"So where did these farmers come from? Obviously the Fertile Crescent."

Huh? They come just the other side of the Mediterranean therefore they must have travelled inland via the Fertile Crescent? Without leaving a genetic trail? This is a simpler explanation?

"Why didn't they come from the Balkans or Iberia? Because two distinct Eurasian clades of hunter-gatherers didn't live in Europe side by side for thousands of years."

You know this how? Certainly there is evidence that the predecessors, the Neanderthals were split into a Northern Group and a Southern group who lived beside each other for many thousands of years. I suspect a geographic influence of some kind. Maybe different kinds of game.

Davidski said...

Eurologist,

I don't know what you think you're seeing on that bar graph, but what I'm seeing is that Sardinians derive most of their ancestry from the same Near Eastern light blue clade as the (southern?) Bedouins.

This light blue clade is the clade of the Sardinian-like Gok4 and Oetzi, and probably also the Portalon individual. It entered Europe from the Mediterranean during the Neolithic, and its source was probably the western part of the Fertile Crescent.

Simon_W said...

Andrew, you're right, at least the production of arsenical bronze started quite early in SE-Europe. But Ötzi wasn't from SE-Europe. I think that's often a problem of geneticists who are not very familiar with archeological concepts: They mistake the relative chronological divisions for absolute ones. But Ötzi lived more than a millennium earlier than that Iberian farmer. If he was "bronze age" by absolute standards then the Iberian was even more so. In reality neither of them was.

Simon_W said...

The ancestral components in the admixture analyses are based on whole complexes of alleles, not on single traits, some of which may happen to be absent in a given individual. And thus at least for admixture analyses a sample size of 5 is already quite reasonable. At least this was the minimum size in the Dodecad Ancestry project. And upon inspection of the individual variation within the samples it became evident that they don't vary wildly. Whereas in studies of the y-chromosome or mt-DNA even a sample size of 50 isn't quite satisfying.

Simon_W said...

If the population changes due to evolution, then after a while it's going to have a different composition in terms of its ancestral components. I've been playing with the idea, too, that part of the North-Europeanisation of the Sardinian-like early farmers in more northerly parts of Europe may be due to selective pressures.

Btw I'm still waiting for that iron age Bulgarian to be published. He has been announced almost a year ago now, and I've never seen any details.^^

Grey said...

"Certainly there is evidence that the predecessors, the Neanderthals were split into a Northern Group and a Southern group who lived beside each other for many thousands of years. I suspect a geographic influence of some kind. Maybe different kinds of game."

I don't have an opinion on whether there were multiple populations but if there were then it seems likely to me that the split would follow the boundaries of different ecozones e.g.
- atlantic coastal
- mediterranean coastal
- central inland
- northern inland

Another thought is an original common population separated into different drifting pockets by the ice and then re-expanding after the ice retreated.

eurologist said...

I suspect a geographic influence of some kind.

The Alps and the Carpathians. During the ice age, even outside LGM, the narrow passage south of the Alps by Nice/ San Remo would have been unattractive and very difficult to pass. The closeness to the massive ice sheets (~20km) would have meant night time temperatures close to freezing throughout the summer - thus an isolated pocket of tundra climate with few plants and even fewer animals and probably no fish in the melt-water streams. Not a place many people would have voluntarily tried to cross, with a much more pleasant climate further away to both sides.

Likewise, the gap between the Alps and the Carpathians is somewhat narrow, and there is no indication of settlement around LGM in the vicinity, except a small pocket in Bohemia/ Moravia. At any rate, the Balkans had a relatively mild and stable periglacial climate, and expansion after LGM evidently was from there moving northeast (Epi-Gravettian), while the Magdalenian spread from Franco-Cantabria north and east. Two different populations, and when counted from the start of the Gravettian, separated by 20,000 years (with another 10,000 years of partial isolation before then).

Davidski said...

Yes, aha, close cousins of Bedouins and Saudi Arabians were hunter-gatherers in Southern Europe, and over the hill there lived another population of hunter-gatherers, closely related to modern Lithuanians.

Highly unlikely. But I guess it takes a while for things to sink it for some people.

eurologist said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
eurologist said...

Davidski,

I have laid out a clear and clean archaeological consensus review, bolstered by attested climatic and geographical data. All you have is polemics.

Anders Pålsen said...

Davidski. You are mistaken. Ajv70 is no way near Lithuanians. Ajv52 neither but shows admixture that appears to be Baltic like. Ire8 doesnt look like the Lithuanians either.

Davidski said...

Anders, you seem to be confused, as usual.