What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2

[Husky]

Post 2/2



The fact that study 3 was indeed conducted independent of Neanderthal considerations is also apparent from another article found linked off the Rajeev2004 blog, in a comment this time. It has more to say:



rajeev2004.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/ns-rajaram-on-aryan-debate.html

non-carborundum said...

[...]

Recently I read that the first blue eyed human may have been as recent as 7,000 years old.



independent.co.uk/news/science/revealed-first-ol-blue-eyes-is-7000-years-old-and-lived-in-a-cave-9086310.html

[...]

Don't know how Non-carbo managed to leave out the most interesting bits in the article:



independent.co.uk/news/science/revealed-first-ol-blue-eyes-is-7000-years-old-and-lived-in-a-cave-9086310.html

Revealed: First Ol’ Blue Eyes is 7,000 years old and was a caveman living in Spain



DNA analysis of the man’s tooth has also disclosed that he had the dark-skinned genes of an African



A Stone Age man who lived about 7,000 years ago and whose buried bones were discovered in 2006 has turned out to be the earliest known person with blue eyes, a physical trait that evolved relatively recently in human history, a study has found.



A DNA analysis of the man’s tooth has also revealed that although he was more closely related to modern-day Scandinavians that to any other European group, he had the dark-skinned genes of an African, though scientists do not know his precise skin tone.

(Everything about that statement is fascinating. Read and read and read again.)



The man, who was about 1.7m (5ft 7in) tall and aged 30-35, was a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer rather than a farmer. He did not have the “lactose-tolerance” genes that allowed him to digest milk as an adult – a key sign that he had little or no contact with domesticated livestock.

(Come by me again? Another fascinating statement, when read with the previous one. Does that mean he's not one of the "pastoralist nomads" [yet]? And no sign of this man being part of the IE dispersal of neolithic farming from Anatolia outward - as per the Anatolian PIE hypothesis of Renfrew? Intriguing.)



His well-preserved skeleton was one of two discovered in 2006 in a deep cave system called La Braña-Arintero near León in north-west Spain, which is 1,500m above sea level and cold enough to limit the bacterial decay of DNA.



Dating has placed the skeletons in the middle of the Mesolithic period, which lasted between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago and represents the interlude between the older Palaeolithic and the more recent Neolithic, when agriculture and livestock farming spread from the Middle East and became widespread across Europe



Artist's impression of the 7,000 year-old man (independent.co.uk/news/science/artists-impression-of-the-7000-yearold-man-9086359.html)



The study, published in the journal Nature, sequenced fragments of DNA extracted from the man’s tooth, revealing that he carried an unusual combination of genes for blue eyes and dark skin – as well as for slightly curly, dark-brown hair and lactose intolerance.



“The biggest surprise was to discover that this individual possessed African versions of the genes that determine the light pigmentation of the current Europeans, which indicates that he had dark skin,” said Carles Lalueza-Fox of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona.



“Even more surprising was to find that he possessed the genetic variations that produce blue eyes in current Europeans, resulting in a unique phenotype [physical type] in a genome that is otherwise clearly northern European,” Dr Lalueza-Fox said.



“Blue eyes in modern humans are related to the same mutation in a gene called HERC2. If you have this mutation in both copies of the chromosome, you will have blue eyes for sure. This was the case with this man, who is so far the oldest known individual with blue eyes,” he said.



Previous research published in 2008 found that the earliest mutations in the eye-colour genes that led to the evolution of blue eyes probably occurred about 10,000 years ago in individuals living in around the Black Sea.



This study suggested that everyone with blue eyes today can trace their ancestry back to the same family in which this mutation first arose – and that the gene had travelled across Europe before the shift from hunting to farming, which is known to have spread from the east to the west.



It is not clear why blue eyes spread among ancient Europeans. One theory is that the gene could have helped to prevent eye disorders due to low light levels found in European winters, or that the trait spread because it was deemed sexually attractive.

So, to revise the interesting points made in this, the more interesting news article (i.e. assuming internal consistency):

1. "A DNA analysis of the man’s tooth has also revealed that although he was more closely related to modern-day Scandinavians that to any other European group, he had the dark-skinned genes of an African, though scientists do not know his precise skin tone."



2. "he possessed the genetic variations that produce blue eyes in current Europeans, resulting in a unique phenotype [physical type] in a genome that is otherwise clearly northern European."



3. "this individual possessed African versions of the genes that determine the light pigmentation of the current Europeans, which indicates that he had dark skin,”



4. "If you have this mutation in both copies of the chromosome, you will have blue eyes for sure. This was the case with this man, who is so far the oldest known individual with blue eyes,”



5. "Previous research published in 2008 found that the earliest mutations in the eye-colour genes that led to the evolution of blue eyes probably occurred about 10,000 years ago in individuals living in around the Black Sea. This [2008] study suggested that everyone with blue eyes today can trace their ancestry back to the same family in which this mutation first arose – and that the gene had travelled across Europe before the shift from hunting to farming, which is known to have spread from the east to the west."



6. "The man, who was about 1.7m (5ft 7in) tall and aged 30-35, was a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer rather than a farmer."



7. "He did not have the “lactose-tolerance” genes that allowed him to digest milk as an adult – a key sign that he had little or no contact with domesticated livestock."

Things one can conclude or infer from the above statements:



- From point 5, we know the origin of the blue eyes of the Stone Ager in Spain of 7000 yrs ago traces to the gene pool of his blue-eyed ancestors in the Black Sea of 10,000 yrs ago.



- His African genes for skin colour would have similarly come from the ancestral population in the Black Sea that he derived his eye colour from (as opposed to having an injection of fresh African genetic input sometime between his lineage travelling from the Black Sea to Spain): since he has blue eyes, and blue eyes are supposedly super-recessive, so both sides of his parentage (all his ancestors) need to be carrying the blue eye alleles: i.e. both sides should trace back to that unique Black Sea ancestral gene pool of blue eyes. It's either that, or the contention that all blue eyes trace to that Black Sea population from 10,000 years ago is wrong. [Unless blue eyes are suddenly super dominant for this exceptional case? Let's stick with the rule instead.]

So as a result, can conclude that it's highly likely he got his African genes for skin colour from the Black Sea population too. Which means they had dark people among them also:



- Note, the article says about the 7000 year old Stone Ager in Spain: "he had the dark-skinned genes of an African, though scientists do not know his precise skin tone" but it also quotes Carles Lalueza-Fox of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona (one of the people who did the study and wrote the paper on it) as saying the Stone Age man's genes indicated that "he had dark skin". Dark is a relative word, what do they mean? Let's hypothesise: dark with respect to a European. (And possibly as dark as his African genes for skin colour would imply, since they keep mentioning that he had "African genes" for skin pigmentation.) In any case, his ancestral gene pool in the Black Sea was not uniformly "white" yet at the time his ancestors left in the direction of Spain: i.e. the Black Sea population had darker individuals (and perhaps they were all dark, considering he was so still - and for some 3000 years after leaving them behind: have they sequenced more Stone Agers of this period and place to know if any were yet "white" at this point in time?) In any case, we know the Black Sea population 10,000 years ago - the ancestral gene pool/home of blue eyes - were not all white then.



- Point 6 states that the Stone Age European's lactose intolerance* - not having the genes to comfortably ingest milk as an adult - is "a key sign" that he had no contact with domesticated livestock. It seems to me to be a fair indication that he may be of a community that also had not yet domesticated livestock. And indeed, that seems to be what they imply with the statement "Mesolithic hunter-gatherer rather than a farmer" - that his whole community was not familiar with farming (he was still foraging etc). Yet at the same time, the Scandinavian genome is 'fixed' already: being sufficiently distinct to distinguish him as particularly Scandinavian otherwise: since the man from 7000 years ago is specifically stated as being more related genetically to Scandinavians than to other Europeans.

[Note the article does not specifically allude to Finnish or Saami people but "Scandinavians" and "northern Europeans". The IE Scandinavians seem to be more populous and the Finno-Ugric Scandinavians more scarce: Finland appears to have 1/5th the total population of Scandinavia. (Some Norwegians and perhaps Swedes are Saami, but some Finnish people are Swedes - so I'm hoping these last 2 cancel out.) What proto-language group do they suppose the Stone Ager was? This is relevant since his genome is "otherwise" - i.e. despite his African genes for skin colour - quite part of the "Scandinavian/northern European" genome.]





* On lactose intolerance and what it means/doesn't mean in genetics:



- evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/070401_lactose

- sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050602012109.htm

- npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/12/27/168144785/an-evolutionary-whodunit-how-did-humans-develop-lactose-tolerance

which further mentions a relevant instance:

An Evolutionary Whodunit: How Did Humans Develop Lactose Tolerance?

by Helen Thompson, December 28, 2012 9:56 AM

[...]

It's hard to tell how prevalent lactose tolerance has been over time. But so far scientists have found evidence of adult lactase persistence in ancient skeletons in Northern Europe, Scandinavia, southern France and elsewhere. Thomas and his colleague Oddný Sverrisdóttir of Uppsala University in Sweden recently discovered lactase persistence in Spanish remains from about 5,000 years ago and hope to publish their research next year.

So, 2000 years after the Stone Age genomically-Scandinavian Spanyard that we've already met - the one with the blue eyes but dark skin and lactose intolerance - there's remains of another man in Spain with lactase persistence -> domesticated livestock -> (presumably) neolithic farming.

("Have we found PIE in the interrim?" [Since IIRC neolithic farming in Europe is associated with the spread of IE])



- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance

Lactose intolerance

Lactose intolerance, also called lactase deficiency and hypolactasia, is the inability to digest lactose, a sugar found in milk and to a lesser extent milk-derived dairy products. It is not a disorder as such, but a genetically-determined characteristic.

[...]

Most mammals normally cease to produce lactase, becoming lactose intolerant, after weaning,[4] but some human populations have developed lactase persistence, in which lactase production continues into adulthood. It is estimated that 75% of adults worldwide show some decrease in lactase activity during adulthood.[5] The frequency of decreased lactase activity ranges from 5% in northern Europe through 71% for Sicily to more than 90% in some African and Asian countries.[6] This distribution is now thought to have been caused by recent natural selection favoring lactase-persistent individuals in cultures in which dairy products are available as a food source.[7] While it was first thought that this would mean that populations in Europe, India, Arabia and Africa had high frequencies of lactase persistence because of a particular mutation, it was later shown that lactase persistence is caused by several independently occurring mutations.[8]

[...]

Lactase persistence

Lactase persistence is the phenotype associated with various autosomal dominant alleles prolonging the activity of lactase beyond infancy; conversely, lactase non-persistence is the phenotype associated with primary lactase deficiency (see above). Among mammals, lactase persistence is unique to humans — it evolved relatively recently (in the last 10,000 years) among some populations, and the majority of people worldwide remain lactase non-persistent.[11] For this reason lactase persistence is of some interest to the fields of anthropology and human genetics, which typically use the genetically derived persistence/non-persistence terminology.



Genetic analysis shows that lactase persistence has developed multiple times in different places independently in an example of convergent evolution.[52]

Anyway.



So there existed a dark European some 7000 years ago, with blue eyes, who was distinctly closest to modern Scandinavian in terms of his genome and found living in Spain (far off the course of a C-Asian urheimat) - whereto his ancestors had wandered from the Black Sea - who was Lactose Intolerant <-> "a key sign he had little to no contact with domesticated livestock" AND who was not a farmer but a hunter-gatherer?



(Doesn't seem to fit Renfrew's Anatolian Hypothesis for PIE, or its timeframe ... unless I misunderstood as usual.)



[color="#0000FF"]- So is this European - with dark skin and Scandinavian genome - supposed to be a pre-PIE, post-PIE, or PIE European (in that last case: is Spain the urheimat then)? [Note that each of the 3 considerations has implications and specific constraints associated with their theorising.]

- Or is he maybe non-IE? Like the Norwegians with Basque-like, non-IE, Iberian input as per that old article on Stephen Oppenheimer's findings concerning Britain's Basque-like non-IE ancestry: [/color]



spiegel.de/international/british-irish-brotherhood-a-united-kingdom-maybe-a-470186.html

In Dr. Oppenheimer’s reconstruction of events, the principal ancestors of today’s British and Irish populations arrived from Spain about 16,000 years ago, speaking a language related to Basque.



The British Isles were unpopulated then, wiped clean of people by glaciers that had smothered northern Europe for about 4,000 years and forced the former inhabitants into southern refuges in Spain and Italy. When the climate warmed and the glaciers retreated, people moved back north. The new arrivals in the British Isles would have found an empty territory, which they could have reached just by walking along the Atlantic coastline, since the English Channel and the Irish Sea were still land.



This new population, who lived by hunting and gathering, survived a sharp cold spell called the Younger Dryas that lasted from 12,300 to 11,000 years ago. Much later, some 6,000 years ago, agriculture finally reached the British Isles from its birthplace in the Near East. Agriculture may have been introduced by people speaking Celtic, in Dr. Oppenheimer’s view. Although the Celtic immigrants may have been few in number, they spread their farming techniques and their language throughout Ireland and the western coast of Britain. Later immigrants arrived from northern Europe had more influence on the eastern and southern coasts. They too spread their language, a branch of German, but these invaders’ numbers were also small compared with the local population.



In all, about three-quarters of the ancestors of today’s British and Irish populations arrived between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, when rising sea levels split Britain and Ireland from the Continent and from each other, Dr. Oppenheimer calculates in a new book, “The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story” (Carroll & Graf, 2006).



[...]

A different view of the Anglo-Saxon invasions has been developed by Mark Thomas of University College, London. Dr. Thomas and colleagues say the invaders wiped out substantial numbers of the indigenous population, replacing 50 percent to 100 percent of those in central England. Their argument is that the Y chromosomes of English men seem identical to those of people in Norway and the Friesland area of the Netherlands, two regions from which the invaders may have originated.



Dr. Oppenheimer disputes this, saying the similarity between the English and northern European Y chromosomes arises because both regions were repopulated by people from the Iberian refuges after the glaciers retreated.

And again the question: what do these things have to say - if anything - about an all-white PIE urheimat? (Or even how intrinsically related the Scandinavian genome is to the IE language of its speakers.) And what is the upper time limit then for an all-white PIE urheimat?

And what did the people of the "definitely IE" Kurgan culture of the 5th millennia BCE* of Southern Russia - that's around 7000 years ago too - look like? Just asking.



Have they re-sequenced more European bodies from a timeframe of around 7000 years before present, such as say those of the Kurgans etc? Wonder what they look like?





Hmmm, PIE (and consequently the urheimat) is apparently postulated to have existed between 4500-2500 years BCE:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolian_hypothesis

Most estimates from Indo-Europeanists date PIE between 4500 and 2500 BC, with the most probable date falling right around 3700 BC. It is unlikely that late PIE (even after the separation of the Anatolian branch) post-dates 2500 BC, since Proto-Indo-Iranian is usually dated to just before 2000 BC. On the other hand, it is not very likely that early PIE predates 4500 BC, because the reconstructed vocabulary strongly suggests a culture of the terminal phase of the Neolithic bordering on the early Bronze Age.

So now I have another stupid question:



If the dark-skinned Stone Age European with the blue eyes from about 7000 years ago has a genome generally distinguishable as specifically "Scandinavian/northern European", how come (if the Scandinavian genome is not non-IE) his type went into the alleged PIE urheimat ("PIE homeland") as a distinct Scandinavian genome 6500 years ago (4500 BCE) and re-emerged from it as a still-recognisable Scandinavian genome when this linguistic branch of IE (Nordic/Germanic ancestor) formed in time from the shared PIE language? That is, 7000 yrs ago, the genome he had is largely recognisable as "Scandinavian/northern European" and not other European. Yet, PIE is estimated at earliest to 6500 years ago (though 3700 BCE is preferred which then is 5700 years ago). The story was always that PIE is a divergence (split) from common origins and not a convergence/meeting place of different populations/communities that took to a common language. So if PIE split in time into various proto IE subgroups which eventually split into Scandinavian speaking group + other IE language subgroups, how come the Scandinavian population's genome is recognisably the same after as before PIE? Did they not mix with PIE speakers in the ur-heimat, that afterward their genome is still peculiarly related to/identifiable with their blue-eyed dark-skinned ancestral relative from pre-PIE, 7000 years ago? To repeat: Did they not mix with PIE speakers in the ur-heimat - then where's the common genetic ancestral relation between IE Europeans, since that's what's always at least implied by IE Studies people who as a consequence start speaking of "our [shared]oryan ancestors" for PIE/urheimat and of "our cousins" for other IE speaking populations?



That is, *before* PIE, the genome of 7000 yr old Stone Ager is already identifiable as Scandinavian and not 'other European' - i.e. his genome is identifiably related to *modern*, post-PIE Scandinavians.... <- There's a "uniquely Scandinavian genomic continuity"/ a unique segregation of the Scandinavian genome from other (IE and non-IE) Europeans both before and after PIE.



Frustrating: I can't formulate the question properly.





Of course the Anatolian and Kurgan hypotheses are just two of the PIE hypotheses. A less popular one (not generally accepted) is the Paleolithic Continuity Theory, something about stone age man in Europe already being IE. Essentially something about deeper time frames: that IE developed shortly after humans left from Africa and invaded - I mean - migrated into Asia and Europa.



- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan_hypothesis

- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolian_hypothesis

- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_Urheimat_hypotheses

Check the locus of PIE homeland=urheimat and the timeframes for each theory in the last.

- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_Continuity_Theory



(Interesting that none of them mentions India and barely mentions Iran - everything is Euro-centric onlee: about where their [European] ancestors came from, how their ancestors are interrelated, the historical geographic movement [mainly within Europe] of their ancestors.)



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_Continuity_Theory

The PCT posits that the advent of Indo-European languages should be linked to the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe and Asia from Africa in the Upper Paleolithic.[2] Employing "lexical periodization", Alinei arrives at a timeline deeper than even that of Colin Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis.[3]

(PCT page gives no information on what PIE is supposed to be.)



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Paleolithic

dates to between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity and before the advent of agriculture.

But:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_Urheimat_hypotheses

The Paleolithic Continuity Theory, with an origin before the 10th millennium BCE.

Uh, I'm afraid pushing things further back is going to result in still larger numbers of (IE / PIE / non-IE) Europeans being dark .... White supremacists won't be happy. :uh-oh: Too bad.



I really want to know now what all the Europeans looked like - especially at the variously postulated "urheimat" sites - at 10,000, 7,000, 5,000 and every date ever claimed for PIE. Should be fun.

I think this neanderthal theory could be very important for Europe to bolster its uniqueness again. Sad (for them) that the E Asians and other non-Africans are equally unique in just this matter, also having neanderthal DNA.



But since, you know, Neanderthals were "uniquely" found in Europe - as per the so-far discovered fossil record - maybe that will allow a specifically-European input for all of Eurasia / non-Africa. Where specifically-European will be defined as Neanderthal and not Homo Sapiens.

This is turning into a bad comedy.