Monday, June 27, 2022

Ancient v. Modern Y-DNA R1b-V88

 

From here.

The ancient DNA "X" in the image in very close geographically to the site of the Bug-Dneister culture.

This is relevant previous discussions of Y-DNA R1b-V88 at this blog on May 6, 2022 and on September 27, 2017, in which I argue that Y-DNA R1b-V88 bearing Chadic people are derived from migrants who originated in the Bug-Dneister culture of Ukraine departing between 5400 BCE and 5200 BCE. 

See also earlier analysis at this blog not reaching the full conclusion, including a detailed paleo-climate analysis on March 2, 2014, a wet Sahara post on November 11, 2012, and a post on March 14, 2012 citing:

8 comments:

Ryan said...

Bug-Dneister is way too young to be a candidate. R1b-V88 seems to be present in descendants of the Cardial Pottery Culture and that culture is older than Bug-Dneister.

Ryan said...

Also there are Iron Gates V88 samples that are ~2000 years older.

andrew said...

@Ryan

There is no logical problem with R1b-V88 being present before a migration from Southeast Europe to Africa. Just because it exists doesn't mean that they had to migrate immediately. People continued to have that Y-DNA for a long time afterwards in the same region.

You need herders with Y-DNA R1b-V88 (in some place before other Y-DNA R1b haplogroups became predominant) that existed long enough prior to 5200 BCE to make it from where they were at the time of their departure, to the mouth of the Nile, and then to work their way with their herds south along the Nile, to admix with Cushitic women (probably connected with the culture that produced the earliest Sabu Jaddi rock art https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20200607-sabu-jaddi-the-site-revealing-the-saharas-verdant-past), and then to follow the now dried up Yellow Nile to its source, and hop the "continental divide" a short distance to the Lake Chad basin where they arrive right at 5200 BCE, and it has to happen fast enough to not leave much of a trace along the way.

Also, they need to have few if any significant subsequent waves of reinforcement after the initial wave of migration.

There was no Y-DNA R1b-V88 in the Levant, so that is ruled out.

Cushitic admixture makes migration from Iberia or Sardinia with herds of cattle is wildly less likely given the caliber of maritime technology in Southern Europe in this time frame. The geography just doesn't support that route.

Bell Beaker Blogger has also pointed out a potential pottery style connection that points east and not to Iberia or Sardinia.

Most of the other candidate cultures were settled farmers, migrating at too slow a pace, rather than mobile pastoralists. The Southern route CP Neolithic was made up of farmers migrating as families, not as bands of pastoralist men who were extended family of each other.

I'm not aware of other pastoralist cultures, in or near places where Y-DNA R1b-V88 has been found in Southeast Europe, prior to 5200 BCE, but not too far prior to that date.

Ryan said...

@Andrew - I don't believe Chadic cattle show any evidence of being genetically derived from European (rather than West Asian) cattle, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this.

There was no Y-DNA R1b-V88 in the Levant, so that is ruled out.

What?

First of all, if there's no R1b-V88 ever in the Levant that's an argument against your theory, since these Bug-Dniester herders would have had to passed through the Levant with their herds, no? And would have had to mix a great deal with the locals in order to lose their overwhelmingly WHG aDNA.

But it's also faulty logic because we don't have a lot of y-DNA from the early Neolithic in the Levant, and just because a haplogroup is rare today doesn't mean it was rare in the past. There's been huge population turnover throughout West Eurasia and Africa in the last 7,000 years.

We have by my count 13 samples from Cardial Pottery or Epicardial sites (more if I loosen my search term but let's take these as an example). 3 are R1b-V88 - 2 in Spain and 1 in France. 23% is pretty high, but today V88 is below 1% in those same areas.

If we looked at Neolithic y-DNA for Europe as representative of today, we'd expect a lot of G2a and some C1 too.

There was Villabruna-derived aDNA in ancient Anatolia around the time of the dawn of the Neolithic. This is a plausible vector for R1b-V88 to arrive there.

I'm also not aware of any aDNA studies showing Chadic peoples are even partly derived from Bug-Dniester or neighbouring peoples, but again happy to be proving wrong.

If R1b-V88 was present in SE Europe during the Mesolithic, I don't think it's a stretch to suggest it was probably also present in Anatolia and maybe even the Levant since around the same time. And that's far closer to the source of cattle domestication than Romania.

If you look at Chadic mtDNA you'll see haplogroup L3f expanded around the same time. Rather than suggesting parallel migrations of men from Romania and women from Sudan, I'd suggest to you a simpler explanation would be they both arrived together from East Africa.

You need herders with Y-DNA R1b-V88 (in some place before other Y-DNA R1b haplogroups became predominant) that existed long enough prior to 5200 BCE to make it from where they were at the time of their departure, to the mouth of the Nile, and then to work their way with their herds south along the Nile, to admix with Cushitic women (probably connected with the culture that produced the earliest Sabu Jaddi rock art https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20200607-sabu-jaddi-the-site-revealing-the-saharas-verdant-past), and then to follow the now dried up Yellow Nile to its source, and hop the "continental divide" a short distance to the Lake Chad basin where they arrive right at 5200 BCE, and it has to happen fast enough to not leave much of a trace along the way.

There's plenty of R1b in Sudan though and the Nile, so hardly "without a trace."


My suggestion is this:

1. Whatever expansion brought R1b to Europe with Villabruna also brought it to Anatolia. Ancient DNA supports a flow from Villabruna-like populations into Anatolia.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6425003/

2. This R1b got absorbed at some point into the southern/western branch of the expansion of the Neolithic package. This is directly attested in the Cardial Pottery remains in France and Spain that are R1b-V88 and that are contemporaries of the Bug-Dniester culture. For your explanation to work the Cardial Pottery culture has to be somehow derived from Bug-Dniester too, but Cardial Pottery is the older culture.

Note that this does not mean that the Cardial Pottery Culture has to be the sole vector of R1b-V88 spread - just that the vectors had a common origin.

3. The southern branch of this expansion eventually reached Sudan. This is where R1b-V88 became dominant, likely due to a founder effect.

4. These herders in Sudan spread west across the Green Sahara, bringing with them also East-African mtDNA.

andrew said...

"For your explanation to work the Cardial Pottery culture has to be somehow derived from Bug-Dniester too, but Cardial Pottery is the older culture."

This just doesn't make any sense at all.

"We have by my count 13 samples from Cardial Pottery or Epicardial sites (more if I loosen my search term but let's take these as an example). 3 are R1b-V88 - 2 in Spain and 1 in France. 23% is pretty high, but today V88 is below 1% in those same areas."

I certainly don't disagree that R1b-V88 didn't thrive in Europe.

"First of all, if there's no R1b-V88 ever in the Levant that's an argument against your theory, since these Bug-Dniester herders would have had to passed through the Levant with their herds, no? And would have had to mix a great deal with the locals in order to lose their overwhelmingly WHG aDNA."

I'm envisioning a more or less continuous and rapid migration from Moldova to Sudan, via the Levant coast and the Nile, with no significant sojourn until they reach Sudan, over maybe 2-10 years.

"Rather than suggesting parallel migrations of men from Romania and women from Sudan, I'd suggest to you a simpler explanation would be they both arrived together from East Africa."

The model is that the men go to Sudan, settled down a bit, and then go as an admixed community up the Yellow Nile.

"would have had to mix a great deal with the locals in order to lose their overwhelmingly WHG aDNA."

There is some European aDNA (wouldn't need to be WHG with the B-D source). But, yet, there would be lots of local admixture and no recurring supply of European admixture. For comparison, my ancestors on one side are Swede-Finns, a community in Finland started by Swedish males who took local wives sometime after the 1600s. By, my ancestors on that side have almost no Swedish aDNA.

"I don't believe Chadic cattle show any evidence of being genetically derived from European (rather than West Asian) cattle," the last time I looked at Cattle domestication and DNA was a long time ago and it deserves a refresher. I'm more focused on the pastoralist lifestyle than on the actual cattle, which might have been traded out en route. But I don't know one way or the other with confidence. It's a good point to explore.

Ryan said...

"This just doesn't make any sense at all."

Could you elaborate?

"I certainly don't disagree that R1b-V88 didn't thrive in Europe."

Do you agree that R1b-V88 was one of the major lineages associated with the Mediterranean Neolithic, and particularly Cardial Impressed Pottery?

"The model is that the men go to Sudan, settled down a bit, and then go as an admixed community up the Yellow Nile."

Do you have any evidence of this rapid migration though? A reason for it?

"There is some European aDNA (wouldn't need to be WHG with the B-D source). But, yet, there would be lots of local admixture and no recurring supply of European admixture. For comparison, my ancestors on one side are Swede-Finns, a community in Finland started by Swedish males who took local wives sometime after the 1600s. By, my ancestors on that side have almost no Swedish aDNA."

And yet Swedish-Finns are still 20% Swedish....

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1783413/#:~:text=The%20results%20based%20on%20a,high%20and%20geographically%20homogeneous%20degree.

And if Bug-Dneister isn't WHG derived, who were they?

andrew said...

@Ryan

"Could you elaborate?"

The sequence is wrong. Old R1b-V88 does not preclude it being around later too.

"Do you agree that R1b-V88 was one of the major lineages associated with the Mediterranean Neolithic, and particularly Cardial Impressed Pottery?"

No. It was one of the minor trace lineages associated with it.

"Do you have any evidence of this rapid migration though? A reason for it?"

1. Long range migrations pretty fast are known for nomadic pastoralist herders. Compare, e.g., the pace of several waves of migration along the general vicinity of the Silk Road and the pace of the post-Roman Germanic migrations in the "migration period" in Europe.

2. There isn't a footprint in intervening places, nor is there a genetic trace in Chadic people that would have been picked up along the way which would have been pretty easy to pick up. If you move slow, you, at a minimum pick up mtDNA along the way.

3. The available window of time is pretty small.

"And yet Swedish-Finns are still 20% Swedish...."

Perhaps as a total community, but as I say, I am familiar with lots of Swede-Finns with virtually no Swedish genetic ancestry. I suspect that the higher Swedish percentage is heavily concentrated in the largest historic Swede-Finn communities where obtaining local wives with Swedish ancestry was easier.

"And if Bug-Dneister isn't WHG derived, who were they?"

Western Anatolian first farmer plus other European HG components, such as Eastern HG or the newly announced steppe HG.

Ryan said...

If they're Anatolian-derived then your model just seems more convoluted than a direct-from-Anatolia migration. WHG - and likely R1b - was in Anatolia in the Holocene.