October 17, 2010

ADMIXTURE across Eurasia: from Anatolia to Siberia

(Last Update: Oct 17)

Here is a result of an ADMIXTURE run of a few populations from Eurasia (left to right: Turks, Armenians, Georgians, followed by a mix of Uygur, Mongolians, Yakut, Hezhen in no order), combining the HGDP dataset with that of Behar et al. (2010).

It's more of a test, rather than a final result, as I've just finished integrating the two datasets, but it's a nice comparison of a wide assortment of linguistic families.

Notice Turks and Armenians being quite similar to each other, (green+blue), although Turks are differentiated by the presence of an east Eurasian component (5.5%). On the basis of uniparental markers, five years ago, I estimated this component as 6.2% which seems to be right on the money. In the combined Armenian/Georgian sample this admixture is only 0.14% and as can be seen is limited to a handful of Georgian individuals.

It is interesting that Georgians belong semi-uniquely to the green cluster. Turks' non-Mongoloid ancestors were Indo-European speaking like the Armenians still are. It would be tempting to see in the blue-green contrast an Indo-European/Caucasian one, especially as the Caucasoid component further east seems to be mainly blue, in agreement with the idea that it was Indo-Europeans (in particular mainly Iranic speakers) who brought Caucasoid genes to the heartland of Asia.

UPDATE I (Oct 17):

Moving to the north, we see (left-to-right) Han (red), Hungarian/Belorussian (blue), Chuvash (first red "step"), Uzbek (second red "step"). Unlike the Turks, the Hungarians, who also speak a language that came from the east, seem to lack a noticeable east Eurasian component.

Their linguistic conversion was one of elite dominance, where a handful of Mongoloid and quasi-Mongoloid upper echelons left their language but not their genes:
According to his observations, the “overlords” were characterized by Turanid, Uralian and Pamir race elements and also by certain long-headed components. The “middle layer” or “warriors’ layer”, however, showed an anthropological profile distinctly different from that of the overlords. It was essentially constituted by Mediterraneans, Nordoids (who might also have been tall robust Mediterraneans) and Pamir component while the absence of Turanid and Uralian race characteristics was remarkable. As regards the third layer, the so-called “common folk”, they were dominated, just as the middle layer was, by Mediterranean and Nordoid elements but, in addition, the Cromagnoid ones were also significant.
The Chuvash are Turkic and live in Europe, while the Uzbeks, closer to the Altaic homeland in Asia are also Turkic, and have a predictable higher percentage of east Eurasian genes.

33 comments:

Onur Dincer said...

It would be much better if you also included the Han Chinese and/or the Japanese to test for Mongoloidness, as judging by the previous analysis results it isn't clear how much the red cluster represents Mongoloidness (e.g., there are full red Uyghurs here whereas none of Uyghurs show up full Mongoloid in previous results). Also a typical West European population (e.g., the British, the French) could be used for more clarity about Caucasoidness.

Dienekes said...

I'm a bit suspicious of the ordering of the second part of the figure, due to the way the individuals were assembled in this run. The first three populations are in order, the latter ones are interspersed. I'll insert a caveat in the post.

Onur Dincer said...

Sorry, forgot to mention. It would also be better if you also showed the Fst values and other K results like K=2, K=4 and K=5.

Spy said...

I think I know where Onur is going with this. The 5.5% represents early Central Asianness, which would itself be only partly Mongoloid.

I'd like to see mainland Greeks added to the first graph--even broken out by region to the degree feasible. It seems to me that the Linear A folks spoke a Caucasic language and that a large part of the painting would be green, representing the prehellenic substratum--as well as an infusion of later Anatolian genes.

Dienekes said...

I think I know where Onur is going with this. The 5.5% represents early Central Asianness, which would itself be only partly Mongoloid.

What I call "East Eurasian" is invariably at an Fst of 0.11 or so in every run I've made; it is not something "in-between" Caucasoids and Mongoloids, as it corresponds precisely to the distance between the two major Eurasian races.

Onur Dincer said...

I'd like to see mainland Greeks added to the first graph

Also Anatolian Greeks preferably (as there are Turks and Armenians in this analysis).

What I call "East Eurasian" is invariably at an Fst of 0.11 or so in every run I've made; it is not something "in-between" Caucasoids and Mongoloids, as it corresponds precisely to the distance between the two major Eurasian races.

It would be better if you included a more proper Mongoloid population like the Han Chinese and/or the Japanese (they are both purer Mongoloids than the Hezhen) in the first analysis to test for Mongoloidness better and also a typical West European population to test for Caucasoidness better... and also the Fst values and other K results. And lastly, I would be grateful if you put the second part of the first analysis in order that we can understand which individual belongs to which population. Thanks in advance.

Anonymous said...

<< I'd like to see mainland Greeks added to the first graph--even broken out by region to the degree feasible. >>

That could be more interesting as the Greeks are the closest neighbours of the Turks and they were part of the same empire for 1000+ years under the Byzantines and the Ottomans.

How about it Dienekes?

Marnie said...

That Szathmary paper is quite something.

Some quotes:

p. 96
"The work of Tibor Tóth extended the range of investigations
(Tóth 1958, 1965, 1973). In his opinion the conquering
Hungarians came to a relatively similar morphological
environment in the central Danubian Basin. Later on their
Mongolid character faded. Their ethnogenesis had already
taken place in the North-Caspian region. In 1992, he reworded
his earlier observations. As opposed to former opinions, he
thought that the elements of the Mongolid great-race had
been as completely insignificant in the ethnic composition
of the conquering Hungarians as in that of the Avar Khaganat,
and also in other, “historic populations of the 2nd millennium
AD”. He interpreted the Hungarian conquest as the last
migration wave of the Europid Pontic race proceeding from
the North Caspian region into the Central Danubian region."

p. 97
"The results of Kinga Éry’s series clusterings showed that
the original inhabitants in the Carpathian Basin might
primarily have been characterized as Europids and, by far the
greatest number, marked by narrow and long skulls."

Bedros said...

As an administrator of the Armenian DNA Project at FTDNA, I am not surprised by the similarities between Turks and Armenians. The East Eurasian admixture percentages shown correspond to what we are seeing in Turks and Armenians through the Ancestry Painting prism at 23andMe.

I am at a loss to explain the difference between Armenians and Georgians. Language is NOT the explanation as far as I am concerned. Look at the Armenian Y-DNA haplogroup branches on our FTDNA website. Less than 8% of them can be identified with people from ancient Indo-European speaking populations. To me, about 85% of the Armenian Y-lineages belong to ancient and native people who spoke either Caucasian languages or now extinct Anatolian languages (from could have arisen both Linear A in Crete and, perhaps, Etruscan).

A case in point is the genetic similarity between Armenian and Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs. We speak an Indo-European language while they speak Aramaic, a Semitic language, and yet our Y-DNA haplogroup distributions are practically identical. It looks like we came from a similar local ancestral population which probably spoke neither of these two languages.

I think the linguistic conversion of the myriad of autochthonous people who later became known as the Armenians was also one of elite dominance. Unlike the Magyar speaking Hungarians, these Indo-European speakers did leave a small genetic trace.

This still doesn't explain the difference between Armenians and Georgians. I think we won't be able to find an explanation until other people from the region are included in this analysis: Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs, Kurds, North Caucasians from Circassia to Daghestan, Laz, Svan, Mingrelians, Abkhaz, Udi, etc...

Dienekes said...

That could be more interesting as the Greeks are the closest neighbours of the Turks and they were part of the same empire for 1000+ years under the Byzantines and the Ottomans.

How about it Dienekes?


Find me the samples, and you can bet that I'll add them.

Look at the Armenian Y-DNA haplogroup branches on our FTDNA website. Less than 8% of them can be identified with people from ancient Indo-European speaking populations.

You have a preconceived notion of what haplogroups ancient Indo-European speakers had.

I think the linguistic conversion of the myriad of autochthonous people who later became known as the Armenians was also one of elite dominance.

We don't have enough data on the subject. If Herodotus is to be trusted then the "elite" you refer to was composed of Phrygian colonists, ultimately of Balkan origin. This would also agree with the relatively close relationship between Greek, Phrygian, and Armenian within the IE language family.

Present-day Armenians seem to differ from Balkan populations (e.g., I believe they have little E-V13). However, if I'm right about E-V13 expanding in the Balkans in the Bronze Age, then the Phrygians who moved to Asia Minor in the latter part of the 2nd millennium BC would not have possessed it in any great quantity if at all.

So, I'd say the notion of an elite is not clearcut in Armenians. With Hungarians and Turks we can take a really good guess on what their Uralic/Altaic ancestors' gene pools looked, because they came from a long way in the east.

Bedros said...

You have a preconceived notion of what haplogroups ancient Indo-European speakers had.

I do indeed. Perhaps this is wrong. The most likely candidates for me are E-V13 (3/235), R1a1 (4/235), I2a (1/235) and perhaps I2* (9/235) although I'm really not sure about this last one which has a very puzzling distribution.

I think the linguistic conversion of the myriad of autochthonous people who later became known as the Armenians was also one of elite dominance.

We know the Indo-European speaking "Armens" federated autochthonous populations in multiple waves over a number of centuries as their power expanded. We just have no idea what their relative weight in the gene pool was / is.

Onur Dincer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ashraf said...

"It is interesting that Georgians belong semi-uniquely to the green cluster. Turks' non-Mongoloid ancestors were Indo-European speaking like the Armenians still are"

1/More correctly a small part (in space, time and duration) of the ancestors were Indo-European speakers since there was also khattic (first attested language), hurric, aramean, moshki speakers as well as other pre indo-european languages and other non attested non indo-european languages...

2/I was expecting that Armenians would have also a (less but still as significant as the mongoloid input amongst anatolian turks) Mongoloid input than the Anatolian Turks as the Behar's study showed.

Andrew Lancaster said...

Dienekes, I think you are over-simplifying by noting that the Hungarian language came from the east, like Turkic.

Yes, it came from the east, but from the extreme east of Europe, perhaps on the edge of Asia.

Other Finno-Ugric peoples are not typically Mongoloid either I think, except maybe in areas where there is significant inter-mingling with Turkic groups.

Best Regards
Andrew

Dienekes said...

I do indeed. Perhaps this is wrong. The most likely candidates for me are E-V13 (3/235), R1a1 (4/235), I2a (1/235) and perhaps I2* (9/235) although I'm really not sure about this last one which has a very puzzling distribution.

Inasmuch as the PIE gene pool can be reconstructed from modern populations, candidate Proto-Indo-European haplogroups should have a non-zero presence in a great number of IE populations. This immediately exclude haplogroup I and haplogroup E. The only two candidates in my book are R1a1 and J2, which correspond, intriguingly to the two most widely accepted homeland solutions. My own preference is for the latter solution, although I wouldn't say the question can be decided at present on the basis of genetic data alone.


Dienekes, I think you are over-simplifying by noting that the Hungarian language came from the east, like Turkic.

Yes, it came from the east, but from the extreme east of Europe, perhaps on the edge of Asia.


The anthropological evidence is conclusive about the presence of Mongoloid elements in early Magyars. Also, the extreme east of Europe is not populated by Caucasoids (except the expanded Russians), but by Uralics with their own genetic peculiarites.

Bedros said...

Inasmuch as the PIE gene pool can be reconstructed from modern populations, candidate Proto-Indo-European haplogroups should have a non-zero presence in a great number of IE populations. This immediately exclude haplogroup I and haplogroup E. The only two candidates in my book are R1a1 and J2, which correspond, intriguingly to the two most widely accepted homeland solutions. My own preference is for the latter solution, although I wouldn't say the question can be decided at present on the basis of genetic data alone.

Hmmm... Which branch of J2? Does this mean you favour Colin Renfrew's Anatolian Hypothesis?

Onur Dincer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Onur Dincer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Onur Dincer said...

More correctly a small part (in space, time and duration) of the ancestors were Indo-European speakers since there was also khattic (first attested language), hurric, aramean, moshki speakers as well as other pre indo-european languages and other non attested non indo-european languages...

It isn't clear whether they are pre-Indo-European or not in Asia Minor except Aramaic (which is a later branching of the NW Semitic languages), as it isn't clear when Indo-European-speakers first arrived Asia Minor or even whether they came there from somewhere else or were already there when they first formed (Dieneke's and Renfrew's thesis). Also it isn't clear what language Moskhi spoke, they may have been Indo-European-speakers or not. So you'd better simply called those populations non-Indo-European instead of pre-Indo-European.

ashraf said...

"Other Finno-Ugric peoples are not typically Mongoloid either I think, except maybe in areas where there is significant inter-mingling with Turkic groups."

Uralic languages (which are connected to the paleosiberian languages of the far east Siberian) are linked with the Mongoloid race and did migrate from eastern Siberia to Europe (and gained more and more "caucasoidness" during their odyssey)where they heavily diluted in the European gene and phenotype pool, except some isolated Saami groups who retained some Mongoloid features.
Also during that odyssey (and from the start since there was attestation of Caucasoid migrations to Siberia) they borrowed a huge amount of words and even grammatical features from the languages of those Caucasoid peoples.
MOST PROBABLY

Onur Dincer said...

Bedros, what is your answer to my long question about 23andMe?

Andrew Lancaster said...

@Dienekes

The anthropological evidence is conclusive about the presence of Mongoloid elements in early Magyars.

Yes sure, but I think it is conventional to consider these as Turkic/Hunnic introductions, which indeed helped trigger the mixing and moving of peoples that led the Magyar language to be where it is today, and that the original Uralic language community did not have this Mongoloid component?

Also, the extreme east of Europe is not populated by Caucasoids (except the expanded Russians), but by Uralics with their own genetic peculiarites.

Not sure what you mean by that. Are you saying Uralic speaking populations such as ethnic Finns are less "Caucasoid" than ethnic Russians? If so, then are you saying they are Mongoloid or are you defining a new -oid such as "Uraloid"?

Best Regards
Andrew

Bedros said...

Bedros, what is your answer to my long question about 23andMe?

Onur, I wouldn't know about all the other groups you mention. I generally share with Armenians, Turks, Assyrians, Greeks and Italians from Calabria / Sicily. The East Asian admixture in Armenians and Assyrians is generally in the order of the 0.14% indicated by Dienekes. I don't pay much attention to admixture results to be perfectly honest. Prefer to concentrate on deep analysis of Y-DNA haplogroups and complete sequencing of mitochondrial DNA.

Besides Dienekes, someone is using 23andMe and FTDNA data to do the kind of analysis you're asking about. It's called the Eurogenes 500,000 SNP BGA Project if I'm not mistaken.

Dienekes said...

that the original Uralic language community did not have this Mongoloid component?

You can perhaps explain the Mongoloid component in Magyars by Turkic admixture, as Turkic people were already mobile that late in the game, but it's difficult to explain it away in the Finnic speakers of Europe.

Are you saying Uralic speaking populations such as ethnic Finns are less "Caucasoid" than ethnic Russians?

The original Finns vs. the original Russians, absolutely. Currently, Finns have admixed with Scandinavians and Russians with Finno-Ugrian speakers, with non-uniform distributions of admixture, meaning that you can find Finns that are less east Eurasian-influenced than Russians and vice versa.

Onur Dincer said...

The East Asian admixture in Armenians and Assyrians is generally in the order of the 0.14% indicated by Dienekes.

What about Turks? As I said, a Turk who was tested at 23andMe told me that the East Eurasian admixture average of Turks (as I said, ethnic Turks) tested at 23andMe is 2%, a proportion of Turks having no East Eurasian admixture. How true is that claim?

Onur Dincer said...

Bedros, also what about Greeks, Georgians, Azeris, Kurds, Persians, Bulgarians and other Balkan Slavs, Lazes, Cypriots (Turks and Greeks separately), northern Arabs, Romanians, Albanians, the Adygei and other northern Caucasians (irrespective of language family), Crimean Tatars, Turkmens (of Turkmenistan) and Uzbeks?

Answer only what you know and skip what you don't know. Thanks in advance.

dok101 said...

Hello onur,

East Asian 23andMe percentages for a few of the populations you mention:

Albanian
1.0%

Bulgarian
1.0%
2.0%
3.<1%
4.1%
5.<1%
6.0%

Greek
1.0%
2.0%
3.0%
4.<1%
5.0%
6.0%
7.0%
8.<1%
9.0%
10.0%
11.0%
12.0%
13.0%
14.0%
15.<1%
16.0%

There are others available for viewing here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AhnZkF3SRZ_JdEUwTE1MMUpjcGgtbEh2Y0trV3ZjZ3c&hl=en#gid=0

A few of the groups you refer to are not represented in the database. If they are represented, they are generally very few. And some are not open to sharing publicly.

Andrew Lancaster said...

@DienekesYou can perhaps explain the Mongoloid component in Magyars by Turkic admixture, as Turkic people were already mobile that late in the game, but it's difficult to explain it away in the Finnic speakers of Europe.

OK, now I understand. But how "mongoloid" are Finnic speakers and are those mongoloid influences not mainly of types which are specifically more easy to relate to northern Eurasian peoples?

I am possibly thinking too much in terms of Y DNA.

Best Regards
Andrew

Dienekes said...

But how "mongoloid" are Finnic speakers

" The westernmost populations from Europe, both Uralic- and Indo-European speakers, are similar in their pattern of ancestry components and show low levels (less than 10%) of the eastern component. Conversely, the eastern ancestry component is dominant (60-70%) in the gene pool of the Siberian Uralic-speakers."

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2010/09/ashg-2010-abstracts.html

Andrew Lancaster said...

@Dienekes
Re. how "mongoloid" are Finnic speakers

Your ref is to an eastern component apparently being a component most associated with Siberian populations?

I am not sure this should simply be equated to "Mongoloid". I guess I am not into -oids to begin with, and this is an example of why.

That Uralic speakers are part of a Borealic continuum which includes "Mongoloids" is not to be doubted. Siberia has obviously got genetic links to both Europe and East Asia, as well being a large area with its own genetic history.

But just in the interests of clarity, if we start calling Uralic speakers as having a Mongoloid mixture then I think that Siberian is not the first thing that comes to mind?

Best Regards
Andrew

Dienekes said...

if we start calling Uralic speakers as having a Mongoloid mixture then I think that Siberian is not the first thing that comes to mind?

I don't know what comes to your mind when you speak of "Mongoloid", as you are not into "oids" to begin with. To my mind comes one of the major races of mankind with its distinctive morphology, whose presence in Siberia dates to the Paleolithic.

http://dienekes.ifreepages.com/blog/archives/000399.html

Andrew Lancaster said...

Dienekes, I understand you now so thanks. Whatever the terminology issues and tastes, communication is possible.

We probably should keep in mind that my original comment was questioning your remark which apparently equated the "Eastern component" amongst Hungarians and Turks as not only having a similar source, but also as having a similar source which is also seen amongst Finns and was therefore Uralic in origin for the Magyars, not Turkic. I am still thinking that the Finns have a different Eastern component than the Turks, even if the two are related also?

Regards
Andrew

nandor said...

The blogger said that "Hungarians also came from the East." This is a myth. Only the tribes that conquered the Carpathian Basin at the end of the 9th century came from the East; the ancestors of Hungarians had settled there centuries earlier. And they probably came originally from the middle Volga Basin. The conquerors of the late 9th century were so few that they left virtually no genetic imprint. This is why Asian genes (SNPs) are rare among Hungarians. Trigintius