Genetic studies marching onwards

slowburner

Recent genetic studies have revealed some interesting possibilities.
For example:
New thought on Viking and Norman arrival and distribution in Ireland
and of course,
Cheddar Man

Channel 4 will be screening a documentary on the 18th of February - First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000 Year Old Man

Wibbs

slowburner wrote: »

Channel 4 will be screening a documentary on the 18th of February - First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000 Year Old Man

Very interesting stuff, though personally I have a few issues with such reconstructions, especially from that team of artists(and they are incredible artists to be sure). There is some science to it, but it's mostly art and as such depending on the artist involved the resulting reconstructions of even the same skull can look quite different. That he may have had darker skin not such a shock. Other European traits like blond hair and blue eyes are relatively recent changes(post last ice age IIRC). Indeed on the reconstruction front a few Neandertal reconstructions show them with blonde hair and light eyes, which would have been highly unlikely(though there was a variant that could lead to red hair).

Ipso

Here is an interesting discussion. The Norwegian similarity may not necessarily be from Vikings.
https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?5079-Irish-DNA-Atlas-Preliminary-Results/page129

dubhthach

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/18/267443
PDF: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2018/02/18/267443.full.pdf

Abstract
The roles of migration, admixture and acculturation in the European transition to farming have been debated for over 100 years. Genome-wide ancient DNA studies indicate predominantly Anatolian ancestry for continental Neolithic farmers, but also variable admixture with local Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Neolithic cultures first appear in Britain c. 6000 years ago (kBP), a millennium after they appear in adjacent areas of northwestern continental Europe. However, the pattern and process of the British Neolithic transition remains unclear. We assembled genome-wide data from six Mesolithic and 67 Neolithic individuals found in Britain, dating from 10.5-4.5 kBP, a dataset that includes 22 newly reported individuals and the first genomic data from British Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Our analyses reveals persistent genetic affinities between Mesolithic British and Western European hunter-gatherers over a period spanning Britain's separation from continental Europe. We find overwhelming support for agriculture being introduced by incoming continental farmers, with small and geographically structured levels of additional hunter-gatherer introgression. We find genetic affinity between British and Iberian Neolithic populations indicating that British Neolithic people derived much of their ancestry from Anatolian farmers who originally followed the Mediterranean route of dispersal and likely entered Britain from northwestern mainland Europe.

Basically Neolithic British samples can be modelled as 75% ANF (Anatolian Neolithic Farmer) / 25% WHG (Western Hunter Gather)

To investigate the proportions of Anatolian farmer-related ancestry in the British samples we
modeled them as mixtures of ANFs and European WHGs (Figure 3, Supplementary Figure
S8). All British Mesolithic samples could be explained entirely by WHG ancestry within the
error bounds of the test. The majority (~75%) of ancestry in all British Neolithic individuals
could be attributed to ANFs, indicating a substantial demographic shift with the transition to
farming. These proportions of British Neolithic ANF/WHG ancestry are similar to Early
Neolithic Iberian and Middle Neolithic Central European samples. We inferred some
geographic structure in WHG admixture proportions among the British Early Neolithic
samples; individuals from Wales retain the lowest levels of WHG admixture, followed by
those from South-West and Central England. South East England and Scotland show the
highest WHG admixture proportions. These proportions remain stable for over a millennium,
from the Early into the Middle/Late Neolithic.

slowburner

Really interesting stuff Dubhthach. Thanks.

dubhthach

slowburner wrote: »

Really interesting stuff Dubhthach. Thanks.

From an Irish point of view this agree's with what we seen with Ballynahatty Neolithic woman from County Down. Bradley in TCD confirmed late last year that a Mesolithic Irish genome was in the work (which fits pattern of other mesolithic genomes). I heard recently enough that TCD are working on something like 30 Irish Neolithic genomes.

What's obviously of course is both the Mesolithic and the Neolithic populations were not only distinctly different from each other (though as Neolithic went on, admixture increased) but two are distinctly different form modern populations in NW Europe, with the transition to Copper/Bronze age resulting in another mass population turnover.

slowburner

dubhthach wrote: »

From an Irish point of view...

What's obviously of course is both the Mesolithic and the Neolithic populations were not only distinctly different from each other (though as Neolithic went on, admixture increased) but two are distinctly different form modern populations in NW Europe, with the transition to Copper/Bronze age resulting in another mass population turnover.

These transitional periods raise some of the most interesting questions in general thought about Irish archaeology.

For example: were the transitions rapid or gradual. Were they peaceful or warlike? Was one population aggressive and the other passive? Was there resistance to the new populations, or were they welcomed - admired even? The trendy cool newcomers perhaps!

How quickly did the new technologies spread across, or up, or down the island? How long did the old technologies coexist with the newcomers?

What new social order came with the new technologies? What new societies were formed, and how were they organised?

What ethnographic parallels can we use to think about these transitions, and what might we learn? Can we even apply ethnographic parallels to these momentous 'events'?

The big one for me is the Neolithic/Bronze Age transition. It must have been astonishing for people reliant for thousands of years on a lithic technology to see metal drawn out of stone (sounds familiar!) - although somehow I doubt that very many people got to see the actual process.

It must have been a challenge for Mesolithic populations to adapt to the whole concept of land ownership. I wonder what belief systems were challenged in that transition.

Wibbs

slowburner wrote: »

It must have been a challenge for Mesolithic populations to adapt to the whole concept of land ownership. I wonder what belief systems were challenged in that transition.

Maybe not SB. Or at least it might have been an easier transition than may be immediately apparent.

If you look at cultures that are in many ways "Palaeolithic" in nature, while they don't claim ownership and certainly not on an individual level, they do feel that "their" land is connected to them, in essence owns them. I would suspect this is a notion with a deep history and one originally based on a territorial idea among human groups, inc pre modern humans. In much the same way a wolf pack wouldn't have the concept of ownership of their territory, but they do have a defined territory and one that they will mark the boundaries of and defend. They essentially fence off "their" land.

I would suspect individual ownership, or specific family/clan ownership came along in full force with the innovation of writing, or similarly individually distinctive markings. And excess of food locally required. That requires a means of storage(which gives us pottery on a large scale) and a means of marking whose stuff is being stored. If we look at the very earliest examples of clear writing it's pretty much all "my Name is X and this sh1t's mine". In a way it's the equivalent of a Wolf cocking their leg on a tree on their boundary, once removed.

dubhthach

slowburner wrote: »

These transitional periods raise some of the most interesting questions in general thought about Irish archaeology.

For example: were the transitions rapid or gradual. Were they peaceful or warlike? Was one population aggressive and the other passive? Was there resistance to the new populations, or were they welcomed - admired even? The trendy cool newcomers perhaps!

How quickly did the new technologies spread across, or up, or down the island? How long did the old technologies coexist with the newcomers?

What new social order came with the new technologies? What new societies were formed, and how were they organised?

What ethnographic parallels can we use to think about these transitions, and what might we learn? Can we even apply ethnographic parallels to these momentous 'events'?

The big one for me is the Neolithic/Bronze Age transition. It must have been astonishing for people reliant for thousands of years on a lithic technology to see metal drawn out of stone (sounds familiar!) - although somehow I doubt that very many people got to see the actual process.

It must have been a challenge for Mesolithic populations to adapt to the whole concept of land ownership. I wonder what belief systems were challenged in that transition.

It would seem that mesolithic hunter gathers contuined on for up to 500 years before gradually melting into the wider population. Part of issue of course is that the Neolithic farming population quickly overtook the mesolithic population in size due to the fact that it allowed for much higher population density per square km.

The hunter-gatherers basically ended up on the peripheral land. Of course eventually you ended up with hybrid population as the two merged but by than the level of HG ancestry basically was fairly low. there is also possibility of new pathogens coming in at time having an affect.

A modern comparison would be to look at some modern Latin American populations which have on order of 10-20% Amerindian admixture. Puerto Rico is a good example.

dubhthach

Anyways yesterday the massive Bell Beaker paper which was in pre-print finally dropped.

Altmetric: 262More detail
Article

The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe
Iñigo Olalde, Selina Brace[…]David Reich
Nature
doi:10.1038/nature25738
Download Citation
GenomicsPopulation genetics
Received:
08 May 2017
Accepted:
04 January 2018
Published online:
21 February 2018
Abstract
From around 2750 to 2500 BC, Bell Beaker pottery became widespread across western and central Europe, before it disappeared between 2200 and 1800 BC. The forces that propelled its expansion are a matter of long-standing debate, and there is support for both cultural diffusion and migration having a role in this process. Here we present genome-wide data from 400 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 226 individuals associated with Beaker-complex artefacts. We detected limited genetic affinity between Beaker-complex-associated individuals from Iberia and central Europe, and thus exclude migration as an important mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, migration had a key role in the further dissemination of the Beaker complex. We document this phenomenon most clearly in Britain, where the spread of the Beaker complex introduced high levels of steppe-related ancestry and was associated with the replacement of approximately 90% of Britain’s gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the east-to-west expansion that had brought steppe-related ancestry into central and northern Europe over the previous centuries.

Can be read here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25738.epdf?author_access_token=6O06zgcZvj0G_9i7HqfndNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MvCgRpafo1l7XRALArFgCO72dZ0aR2A79TDV1UBbnsnb7lH58k3HS202aOE5sgvLIL5n2D-7M0GfBq0hmKQSEw

Ipso

So how is the idea of Bell beakers being a form of pre/proto celts looking now?

slowburner

I have yet to read the original paper, but my understanding is that the Beaker people in Britain share a common ancestry with a Central European genotype.
The Iberian genotype however, is distinct from the Central European.
Very interesting.
The inference from material culture has always argued that bronze and its technology was brought into Ireland from Iberia.

These are interesting times for archaeology. Genetic studies are (so far) supporting many of the things we already know through studies of material culture. But we should be cautious: Cheddar man has been used recently to weaken certain politico-social arguments. That may be fashionable and satisfying, but it is not archaeology.
We have moved on from culture-historic archaeology, or so we should hope.

That said; it would be really interesting to see a comparison between early Bronze Age Irish and British dna.

dubhthach

slowburner wrote: »

I have yet to read the original paper, but my understanding is that the Beaker people in Britain share a common ancestry with a Central European genotype.
The Iberian genotype however, is distinct from the Central European.
Very interesting.
The inference from material culture has always argued that bronze and its technology was brought into Ireland from Iberia.

These are interesting times for archaeology. Genetic studies are (so far) supporting many of the things we already know through studies of material culture. But we should be cautious: Cheddar man has been used recently to weaken certain politico-social arguments. That may be fashionable and satisfying, but it is not archaeology.
We have moved on from culture-historic archaeology, or so we should hope.

That said; it would be really interesting to see a comparison between early Bronze Age Irish and British dna.

Indeed it would seem that there might be a model along the lines of:
1. Beaker material package arose in Iberia
2. Moved form Iberia to Central Europe, where 'material package' is 'approriated' by Steppe shifted population
3. This Yamnaya derived population is responsible for spread of Bell Beaker into Britain and Ireland
4. Subsequent a later Steppe shifted small-scale migration/movement is seen into Central Iberia (the predecessors for Celtiberian and Lusitanian)

If there is basis to this model it would imply cultural exchange in central Europe and than diffusion into NW Europe via population turnover.

Obviously we already have the tree Early Bronze age genomes from Rathlin island which are heavily Steppe shifted compared to the Ballynahatty Neolithic woman. Bradley in TCD supposedly has another 20+ Irish neolithic genomes to publish (or so I hear).

One of potential implications form aDNA is the spread of western dialects of Proto-Indo-European which has been linked to the 'steppe component'

tac foley

dubhthach wrote: »

I find it interesting to see that the island of Ireland appears to be entirely blank.

tac

dubhthach

tac foley wrote: »

I find it interesting to see that the island of Ireland appears to be entirely blank.

tac

Well that paper didn't include any samples from Ireland so far we have a total of only 4 aDNA (ancient DNA) full genomes from Ireland, two of which are of reasonably high quality (10x eg. every position was read at least 10 times in sample). These are:

1 x Neolithic woman from Ballynahatty County Down
3 x Copper/Bronze age men from Rathlin island.

Ballynahatty (Neolithic) and 'Rathlin 1' were both sequenced to about 10x. Basically they fit pattern seen in this study eg. Neolithic sequence looks more like modern Western Mediterranean populations (Sardinia / eastern Iberia)

'Rathlin 1' shows his highest affinity to modern insular Celtic speaking populations (or populations that spoke Insular Celtic languages in last 500-800 years)

Ipso

Was one of the Rathlin samples similar to a German Bell Beaker sample?

tac foley

'Rathlin 1' shows his highest affinity to modern insular Celtic speaking populations (or populations that spoke Insular Celtic languages in last 500-800 years)'

Thanks for your response, but it is my untutored opinion [and therefore worth less than zilch] that that 'affinity' is far too recent to be have any kind of meaningful relevance.

tac

dubhthach

tac foley wrote: »

'Rathlin 1' shows his highest affinity to modern insular Celtic speaking populations (or populations that spoke Insular Celtic languages in last 500-800 years)'

Thanks for your response, but it is my untutored opinion [and therefore worth less than zilch] that that 'affinity' is far too recent to be have any kind of meaningful relevance.

tac

Well it implies at a minimum that modern insular genome was basically formed in population turnover from Neolithic to Copper/Bronze ages.

ergo any movements post the Bronze age were from already closely related populations, if we think in terms of linguistics this make sense. After all both Germanic (English in our local example) and Celtic (Irish again as local example) are branches of Proto-Indo-European.

What the recent papers have been proposing is that the input of 'Steppe like' genetic ancestry into Northern Europeans is a result of migration of speakers of Proto-Indo-European. This raises the prospect that some form of Indo-European has been spoken in Ireland since at least the start of the Bronze age. Any subsequent language shifts are either due to additional movement (of already closely related peoples) or language shift due to elites coming from a neighbouring related group (whose 'dialect' of Indo-European had shifted a certain way).

Comparison of Irish and Central European ancient genomes for haplotype-based affinity to modern populations. Interpolated heatmaps comparing relative haplotype donations by two Irish (Ballynahatty, Rathlin1) and two Hungarian (NE1, BR2) ancient genomes.

The most striking feature of the haplotype sharing by the Irish Bronze Age genome is its high median donation levels to Irish, Scottish, and Welsh populations (Fig. 3). In regression with results from the other ancient genomes, these insular Celtic populations, and to a lesser degree the English, show an excess of sharing with Rathlin1, suggesting some level of local continuity at the edge of Europe persisting over 4,000 y. The Hungarian Bronze Age genome shows more affinity with central European populations. Interestingly, for both Bronze Age genomes, the modern Basque population displays outlying low-affinity scores compared with neighboring western European samples, supporting recent findings that suggest a continuity between the Basques and Iberian Chalcolithic groups

tac foley

Thanks for the response. However, I'm still puzzled at the constant reference to the English, as if they were somehow a separate race to the rest of Europeans. They are, without getting technical, an extremely 'connected' bunch, with a current UK advertisement advising us that they are 60% European by shared genetics, and not a different race of critters at all.

The incoming genetic material from the 350-year long Roman invasion [with occupation troops from all over the Roman empire], the later Scandinavians [Danes, Norwegians et al] and Lowlands of current-day Holland and lower Germany in the form of the Saxons and Jutes and Angles , and then the so-called Northmen/Normans have all ensured that the English are nothing more or less than any other almost homegeneous mix-up bunch of population stuck on a small island at the end of Europe, a little like Ireland.

The difference is really that while historically everybody wanted to go to England for one reason or other, hardly anybody wanted to go to Ireland, so, apart from the Scandinavian incursions [Waterford, Wexford, Dublin], you were left alone with your unique language until the Normans arrived.

tac

cfuserkildare

There is no such thing now as a "true" English person,
England has been invaded/occupied so many times in the last 2000 years.
Closest to original occupants would be Scotland,Ireland Wales and Cornwall.
But even those were "Immigrants" that displaced the previous populace.

slowburner

This thread is not about not political identity.
Thanks.

tac foley

?

tac

cfuserkildare

slowburner wrote: »

This thread is not about not political identity.
Thanks.

Absolutely No Politics involved on my statement SlowBurner!
Historical fact, plain and simple!!

A skeleton found in 1000 years time in Birmingham for example, would have a 40% chance of being of Afro-Caribean decent, Or the same in most of North London might very well be of Indian or Arab descent.
So where does Politics come into my statement?
Please explain?

markesmith

Late to the thread but this is fascinating stuff, especially what seems to be mounting evidence that some Indo-European language was in situ by the Bronze Age.

How do you guys think this tallies with the 'Celtic from the West' hypothesis? To me this seems different from that theory. I think elements of the Beaker culture, originating in Iberia, swept up the Atlantic Coast towards western France, and the Steppe people surging to the coasts (and on to Britain and Ireland) assimilated elements of the cultural package.

Of course I could be seriously wide of the mark!

Ipso

That seems to be a possibility. Here are interesting threads that looks at various ideas about Bell beakers and how they fit into the recent evidence.
https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?11766-Poll-Bell-Beaker-Models
https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?10565-The-Beaker-Phenomenon-And-The-Genomic-Transformation-Of-Northwest-Europe-Olalde

slowburner

Fascinating stuff.

dubhthach

'Celtic from the West' from what I recall ties in with the Late Bronze age eg. 'The Atlantic Bronze age'



What seems to be the case is that Proto-Indo-European languages were spoken in most of this zone from at least the early Bronze age onwards. With non-Indo-European surviving in Iberia (namely Proto-Basque and Iberian).

Schrijver proposed that Proto-Celtic arose from Indo-Europeans who were in close contact with populations which lacked the /P/ phoneme. Thence the deletion of Proto-IE /p/ in Proto-Celtic

Compare: Piscis, Iasc and Fish

in Irisih (Iasc) the word initial P has been deleted, this is trademark of Proto-Celtic derived languages, in comparison in Germanic languages a sound change saw /p/ -> /f/. Latin as an Italic language in comparison doesn't have either sound change

Here's a map showing major isoglosses within the known Celtic language branches.

dubhthach

#ZeeJLF2017: Celts from the West

First 20 minutes he's setting out the pre-existing context of ideas from 17th century onwards.