January 01, 2015

Western Eurasian mtDNA in modern Siberians

The eastern European mtDNA discussed in this article might be a remnant of the population of Proto-Europeoids that occupied Siberia even in Upper Paleolithic times (as the genome of the Mal'ta Upper Paleolithic Siberian has shown). However, the authors write:
Overall, the phylogeographic analysis strongly implies that the western Eurasian founders, giving rise to Siberian specific subclades, trace their ancestry only to the early and mid-Holocene, though some of genetic lineages may trace their ancestry back to the end of LGM. Importantly, we have not found the modern northern Asians to have western Eurasian genetic components of sufficient antiquity to indicate traces of pre-LGM expansions, that originated from the Upper Paleolithic industries present both in the southern Siberia and Siberian Arctic, and that date back to ~30 kya, well before the LGM [43]–[45].
If this is true, then probably the mysterious Mal'ta-like population did not have a lasting impact in Siberia.

The western Asia/Caucasus migration can't be attributed to farming expansions (because Siberia didn't have those), so it may very well be a genetic signature of the Bronze Age expansion of Indo-European languages (assuming it did not go there with occasional trade and intermarriage with later Eastern Europeans and Central Asians).

BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014, 14:217 doi:10.1186/s12862-014-0217-9

Western Eurasian ancestry in modern Siberians based on mitogenomic data

Miroslava Derenko et al.

Abstract

Background

Although the genetic heritage of aboriginal Siberians is mostly of eastern Asian ancestry, a substantial western Eurasian component is observed in the majority of northern Asian populations. Traces of at least two migrations into southern Siberia, one from eastern Europe and the other from western Asia/the Caucasus have been detected previously in mitochondrial gene pools of modern Siberians.

Results

We report here 166 new complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences that allow us to expand and re-analyze the available data sets of western Eurasian lineages found in northern Asian populations, define the phylogenetic status of Siberian-specific subclades and search for links between mtDNA haplotypes/subclades and events of human migrations. From a survey of 158 western Eurasian mtDNA genomes found in Siberia we estimate that nearly 40% of them most likely have western Asian and another 29% European ancestry. It is striking that 65 of northern Asian mitogenomes, i.e. ~41%, fall into 19 branches and subclades which can be considered as Siberian-specific being found so far only in Siberian populations. From the coalescence analysis it is evident that the sequence divergence of Siberian-specific subclades was relatively small, corresponding to only 0.6-9.5 kya (using the complete mtDNA rate) and 1–6 kya (coding region rate).

Conclusions

The phylogeographic analysis implies that the western Eurasian founders, giving rise to Siberian specific subclades, may trace their ancestry only to the early and mid-Holocene, though some of genetic lineages may trace their ancestry back to the end of Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). We have not found the modern northern Asians to have western Eurasian genetic components of sufficient antiquity to indicate traces of pre-LGM expansions.

Link

12 comments:

  1. "probably the mysterious Mal'ta-like population did not have a lasting impact in Siberia".

    That certainly seems the case for the Y-DNA at least.

    "From the coalescence analysis it is evident that the sequence divergence of Siberian-specific subclades was relatively small, corresponding to only 0.6-9.5 kya (using the complete mtDNA rate) and 1–6 kya (coding region rate)".

    As well as the MA-1 result we also know that at least two earlier lines that reached Siberia have also become extinct. The Ust'-Ishim K2a branch (probably from the east) is extinct, as is the Kostenki C1b line (probably from Iran). It seems obvious that although humans have been present in parts of Siberia for a very long time habitation has not been permanent. People have entered the region and have periodically either been forced back out or have become extinct there.

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  2. As I mentioned in a reply to a similar post by Kristiina a while ago, although the Siberian population according to archaeological evidence was continuous and almost contiguous during the Ice Age, populations were likely small and easily overwhelmed by newcomers once climate improved. And, uniparental DNA is not the complete story.

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  3. The archaelogical record does support cultural contact between Eastern Europe and Siberia: the pottery of the Bug-Dneister Culture (6200 BCE) was based on styles originating in the Lake Baikal region.

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    1. I almost have found zero details about it. Do you know where can i read more about it?

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  4. We have to count in the paleo-sciences when it comes to ice-time.

    120.000 years ago all of Northern Eurasia - from Spain to Siberia - came out of a long but stable cold-period. Then started a warm period of 10-15.000 years, with a better climate than we have today. Pale-geologists call this the "Eem-interglacial".

    From this peculiar period we have a number of traces from various habitats along this entire area. Today we even have some dna from them - revealing mt-dna U/T/V and y-dna from the CF-group.

    It's obvious that the west-coast of the Eurasian continent kept the relatively best (warmest) climate during most if not all periods of ice-time, thanks to the steady influence of the Gulfstream. Thus we have a specific continuum between periods of the later period - called "Weichsel-stadial", a colder period, between 100.000 and 12.000 years BP. During this period the populations would slowly start to vain, first in the east then in the west.

    Over the later years we have found out that the 'Weichsel-stadial' varied a whole lot - thus it is now divided in three separate periods, whith warmer inter-stadials. Following the climate-curves from the last 5 million years its clear that the climate started fluctuating worse than ever towards the very end of ice-time. In terms of "all time high" we have the Eem-interglacial, in terms of "all time lows" we have the 'long cold' called LGM (23-18.000 yrs BP) and the two short but very deep cold-periods called Dryas I and II (15-14.000 yrs BP and 13-12.000 yrs BP). The last was the very worst.

    As the Weichsel proceeded the last glaciers of the Pyreenees, the Central Massif, and the Alps - as well as the Brittish, Fenno-Scandian, Russian, Caucasian and Tocharian ice-sheets collapsed and sent enormous loads of icelobes and meltwater - that made some extraordinary cold-chills into all the oceans and the atmosphere surrounding the northern areas of Eurasia and America.

    Duely the continental parts of northern Asia and northern Europa got into the coldest time of all ice-time - with the consequence that the entire northern continent was de-forested, de-animated and de-populated.

    As mid-Weichsel turned into late-Weichsel some enormous glaciers collapsed into waves of melt-water that hit the North Atlantic as well as the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Mediteranean Sea.

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  5. Some of the most advanced from these small societies - the Solutreans of western France and England - may have been making it across the N Atlantic and found Virginnia - south of the North-American ice-sheet, in the very beginning of the LGM (see "Solutrean hypothesis").

    In its coldestmost phase the LGM obivously became 'unbearable' across the board. As the glaciers of Balkan, southern Alps and the Appenines all emptied into the Meds we had arctic climate-conditions even here. Around 25.000 years ago the ring-seal and the European pingvins (now extinct) trived in the Adriatic Sea - as the Venetian bay were mostly frozen. First by 17.000 years ago they disappeared, as the Meds became semi-arctic...

    Meanwhile the northern continent turned into taiga and tundra - as the biotopy of the entire northern continent vained and forced all KNOWN paleolithic populations to disappear - as of 20.000 BP.

    After LGM we saw some short but promising warm-periods - today called "Billeroed" and "Alleroed interstadials" -

    During these period we know that some people DID indeed exist - which means they did indeed survive the LGM - around the german shores of the Atlantic Facade.

    During Alleroed they were - once again - living around the invaluable flint-mines at "The Atlantic Facade". Two of them have been named - as the 'Hamburg-culture' and the 'Cresswell-culture' respectively.

    During the last and wors two cold-attacks - called the "Older Dryas" and the "Younger Dryas" also these populations went extinct - along with the very last mommoths, cave-bears and grand deers. The last of these animals are found between the North Sea and the western Baltics, where the Gulfstream used to reach. Duely the last effective refugia of the arctic human beings seem to have existed somewhere around these premisses.

    The last traces we have of the ice-time Eurasins are connected the Brittish channel, the North Sea and the Western Baltics.
    These people had survived the LGM and now they were able to survive the Dryas-periods as well.

    Thus we may deduct that all of these ice-age Euraisans were one and the same, highly adapted tribe of people - that had populated the arctic world during the entire end of nice-time. When a small part of them were able to survive it was only possible as the result of their bilogical, economical and cultural heritage from the older days, 15-45.000 yrs ago.

    Consequently they had a small chance to survive the mamoths, cave-bears and deers - as they were able to re-adapt, organize and move - to find the last possible climate-spots and neccesary hide-outs to survive the Dryas-periods.

    Today we know they succeeded. Thus we also know they had to be extermely well adapted, physcially as well as mentally, socially and technically. One of the adaptions neccesary for such a success is the loss of pigmentation in skin, hair and eyes - which has to do with the nigthmare of a northern refugia - where the sun hardly shines during winter.

    What came out of the refugia were a few of these people. Where they survived is still up for discussion - but the clearest chronology points to the coastal communities that appeared during the Billeroed adn Alleroed in NW Germany, Denmark and Southern Sweden.

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  6. The last date from the paleolithic sites at Ahrensburg i NW Germany is 12.800 yrs, at the beginning of the Younger Dryas. At Bromme in Denmark the last date is ca. 12.700. A chisel for flint-napping (made of reindeer-antler)from Hasselberga in Sweden is dated to 12.500 - just in the middle of the worst cold.

    At about 12.200 the climate starst to improve and the very first populations at Bromme (Lyngby) and Ahrensburg reappear. Some century later the settlement at Stellmoor appears, concluding the beginning of the "Epi-paleolithic" and the "Mesolithic Stone Age" in Eurasia. 700 years later they are all over the place - from Biscaya and the Meds to North Cape(!) and the White Sea - with a "continental" branch that spread from the eastern Baltics to the White Sea and the Black Sea - as well as the Caspian Sea and the Altai.

    Revealing the genetics of paleolithic Eurasia we already know that Ursula and her daugthers where around during Mid-Weichsel, as of 45.000 years ago. As their Grandfather Christmas we find someone with hg CF or F. Which remains to be seen.

    The spread of ligth colored skin, eyes and hair seems to start some 10.000 years ago - as the small arctic population started to grow - and co-relate with the all the other tribes that had survived ice-time SOUTH of the Mediterranean Sea, the Caucasian mountains and the Himalayas.

    Thus we have a "multi-origin" to speak about - as a result of the partial and complete isolations that occured during ice-time, when the first and original human kind was separated on different continents - where the 'racial' aspect developed as we lived under higly different conditions.

    The caucasian palefaces that came out of ice-time became widely known and renown, as they obviously succeeded to marry into the 'nobility' of many tropical races and establish lines of cultural inter-change and trade.

    Meanwhile they were populating the northern hemisphere - opening routes of social, cultural and economic inter-action along rivers and valleys - from Biscaya and the Atlantic Facade to Bajkal and the Pacific rim.

    The genetic bottle-neck that came out of ice-age Eurasia can still be seen in the genetic charts of Eurasia. The last discoveries from Malt'a and Ust-Ishim seem to conclude these simple facts.

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  7. Add that the most common form of re-production in earlier days were the so-called "tribal form" - where some men do the re-production, in paternal sucession, as the y-dna can identify and signify a "family-line". That means that the highest chief ('king') would produce all regional chiefs - who within their repective region will 'carry the royal seed' to every comunity in the region - to create the local chieftain that would have the obligation to make the new farmers (familyheads) within the community. Than each peasant would carry the old kings y-dna to the fifth and last level of the old society - making all the children within the comming generation on their respective farm.

    Thus we had patrilineality along an agnatic system, where the practice of polygamy seem to have been common. These traditions seem to stem from the mesolithic and continue to the end of bronze age and the Trojan Wars in the Meds - and to the Perisan and Roman intrusions into northern Eurasia.

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  8. Excluding extinct lineages, U4 and U5a should be among the oldest western Eurasian mtdna’s in Siberia. U4 and U5 were both found in Karelia (c. 5000 BC) and U5 in the Baikal area (c. Lokomotiv, 5000 BC). Also the Western Siberian Ust Tartas (Sopka) culture (c. 4000-3000 BC) is interesting in this respect. This culture’s mtDNA’s are divided between East and West Eurasian haplogroups: D4, C1, A, Z and U2e, U5a1, U4. According to Kozintsev’s cranial analysis, Siberian Okunev and Sopka people were intermediate between Siberian Caucasoids and Amerindians.

    However, haplogroups C and D seem to be older in Siberia than U4 and U5a. According to Derenko, 2010, D4 has the age of 23–42 kya, while the C4 branch shows a coalescence time of 20–22 kya, implying that it began to expand before the LGM. Certain subclades of C4 and C5 were more prevalent in the southern Siberian populations being found mainly in Altai-Sayan and Baikal region populations, whereas others were found only in Arctic populations of Chukchi, Koryaks, Nganasans, and Yukaghirs. Interestingly, some subclusters of C4a and C7a1a encompass predominantly Indian mtDNA genomes, and show evolutionary ages within time frames of 8–20.5 kya.

    Further, citing the Derenko paper, the results show that C and D were involved in migrations, from eastern Asia and southern Siberia to eastern and northeastern Europe, likely during the middle Holocene. These include (i) the Paleolithic colonization of Siberia that is associated with the development of macroblade industries (40–30 kya), (ii) further recolonization and possible replacement of early Siberians by microblade-making human populations from the Lake Baikal, Yenisei River, and Lena River basin regions (20 kya).

    I think that during the LGM, C and D survived in several pockets somewere in southern Siberia and expanded as soon as the climatic conditions permitted their expansion. U4 and U5a probably orginated in Eastern Europe and spread eastward after the Ice Age. It is interesting that there may also have been Native American like people who after the Ice Age backmigrated from Beringia to Siberia (C1, A, Z?).

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  9. "I think that during the LGM, C and D survived in several pockets somewere in southern Siberia and expanded as soon as the climatic conditions permitted their expansion. U4 and U5a probably orginated in Eastern Europe and spread eastward after the Ice Age".

    That certainly fits with your comment:

    "Certain subclades of C4 and C5 were more prevalent in the southern Siberian populations being found mainly in Altai-Sayan and Baikal region populations, whereas others were found only in Arctic populations of Chukchi, Koryaks, Nganasans, and Yukaghirs".

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  10. Here's a link to a paper about the dispersal of ceramic technology among Northern Eurasian hunter-gatherers.

    https://www.academia.edu/3754905/Gibbs_K_and_P._Jordan._2013._Bridging_the_Boreal_Forest_Siberian_Archaeology_and_the_Emergence_of_Pottery_among_Prehistoric_Hunter-Gatherers_of_Northern_Eurasia._Sibirica_12_1_Spring_2013_1_38

    Kristiiana wrote:

    "It is interesting that there may also have been Native American like people who after the Ice Age backmigrated from Beringia to Siberia (C1, A, Z?)."

    Edward Vajda thinks that much of eastern Siberia were once inhabited by populations with an affinity to modern Native Americans, but were displaced by more recent incursions of Turkic and Tungusic speaking reindeer herders. I think that there probably was a backmigration from the Americas, and this population spoke a language related to modern Iroquoian, Siouan, and Caddoan languages which ultimately gave rise to the Indo-European language family. Take for instance, the word for 'dog/horse'in selected IE ans Siouan languages:

    Crow: biška
    Hidatsa: wašúka
    Dakota: šų́nka
    Ioway: šų́ñe
    Osage: šǫ́ke
    Biloxi: čhǫ́ki
    Ofo: ačhų́ki
    Tutelo: čhų́ki
    Saponi: “chunkete”

    (Note: Crow bi- and Hidatsa wa- are noun prefixes.)

    Equivalents in Indo-European are:

    Russian: сука (súka) ('female dog’, ‘bitch')
    Polish: suka
    Sanskrit: ś(u)vā́ (śúnaḥ)
    Avestan spā (acc. spānǝm, pl. gen. sū̆nam), Middle Persian sak, Kurdish sah, Wakhi šač “dog"
    Old Church Slavic: suka "bitch (female dog)”
    Old Prussian: sunnis “dog"
    Lithuanian: šuo “dog"
    Armenian: շուն • (šun)

    I have yet to find close matches in any other Eurasian language families, which tends to discount the possibility that the resemblance in the forms in the two language families are the result of borrowing or are wonderworts.

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  11. In the article one conclusion is "There are several minor lineages within haplogroup H (H15a1*, H15a1a1a, H15b, H20a, H35*, and H97), which again nest with western Asian lineages, and further minor lineages belonging to H27a, H7b and H34, which appear to have arisen in Europe or even in eastern Europe."

    The conslusion concerning H35 and its nest in Western Asia is based on just one article and one sample from Siberia (Tuva): Ingman M., Gyllensten U.: Rate variation between mitochondrial domains and adaptive evolution in humans, Hum Mol Genet. 2007 Oct 1;16(19):2281-7. Epub 2007 Jul 6. (GenBank mtDNA sequence EU007865.

    There are several other H35 samples mentioned in scientific publications and available in the NIH GenBank. All other samples are clearly outside Siberia. http://www.ianlogan.co.uk/sequences_by_group/h35_genbank_sequences.htm

    Here are some other H35 samples, several of them are from Finland.
    https://www.familytreedna.com/public/h35_mtDNA?iframe=mtresults
    There are quite possible historic reasons why e.g. Finns could have been transported to Mongolia regions (Greater Wrath, 10 000 Finnish women and kids taken to slavery etc, or Medieval luxus slavery, Volga Germans etc).

    Conclusion: 1) Not wise to draw a scientific mtDNA conclusion based on just ONE sample without checking e.g. NIH GenBank and other sources like Family Tree DNA projects. Family Tree NA mtDNA samples are tested in the CLIA-accredited lab of Gene by Gene which is also used by hospitals, research organizations etc - and its tests are acceptable to the NIH GenBank. In this case there are several H35 cases outside Siberia (I know appr. 20 test results), just one in Tuva.

    So, it's not scientifically validated that H35 has its nest in Siberia.

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