Late 2014 (after analysing the data behind the Haak & Mathieson 2015 papers) the Harvard team's computational brain Patterson said
"Patterson said that linguistic evidence has tracked the ancestral language, called ââ¬Ålate proto-Indo-Europeanââ¬Â to about 3,500 years ago in the Caucasus, among a people who had wheeled vehicles at a time when they were just being put into use.
Genetic evidence ruled out one likely related group in the region, the Yamnaya, because their DNA showed the group had hunter-gatherer ancestry, which is inconsistent with the fact that two Indo-European groups, Armenians and Indians, donââ¬â¢t share it, Patterson said. That made Patterson look south, to the Maikop civilization, which likely had significant contact with the Yamnaya, as a plausible culture where Indo-European languages originated. Samples have been obtained from Maikop burial sites, but the DNA work to test that proposal is pending, Patterson said."
Now - and without additional published steppe aDNA and with no drastic/revelatory information from any additional modern Indian genomes they may have newly obtained - Harvard models ALL modern Indians with massive amounts of "steppe" admixture (decreasing cline from NW to SE).
The difference lies in the direction their storytelling has been forced to take.
ALL their papers and that of their (in)direct associates have always focused on Indians, Indians, Indians. As seen above, Indians (and Armenians and C Asians) were the reason that Patterson was willing to shift the PIE urheimat into the Caucasus in late 2014.
*Indians* were the reason CHG was scrapped as a source component in Yamna, and replaced with Iran Neolithic.
It would be something if half their focus was bent on the Iranians, but the Iranians are clearly not on their minds and certainly not on their lips.
1. Mathieson 2015 concluded Bronze Age steppe culture of the Yamnaya =~ 50% EHG + 50% modern Armenian-like. [EHG = "East European Hunter Gatherers". Itself not a source component.]
- Further, Mathieson's supplementary information preserves the initial conclusion they wanted to draw with regards to the novel features of the later steppe cultures: sudden switch to R1a dominance and farmer admixture not seen in previous steppe cultures (modelled in Mathieson 2015 as Anatolian Neolithic farmer admixture).
Mathieson 2015 wanted to support Allentoft 2015's earlier supposition that backmigration from the C-European IE Corded Ware Culture (CWC) was the source of the R1a etc that marked the differentiation of the later steppe cultures from the earlier ones. The entire paragraph (the rest more relevant to Indians) however did not make it into the final version, as in the final version, Mathieson 2015 were forced to withdraw their support for the Corded Ware backmigration, as the data did not support it. They ended up positing a more eastern source for the novel admixture. They defensively pointed to their single R1a sample in Poltavka (the R1aZ94 outlier) as proof that the earlier steppe cultures already had R1a and that this did not mean migrations of R1a individuals. The defensiveness was interesting, especially considering their earlier statements preserved as a relic in the Supplementary Information.
2. The Jones late 2015 paper (Jones was a co-author on Mathieson 2015) then appeared and took up the thread that Patterson had indicated. They sequenced 2 upper palaeolithic Caucasus Hunter Gatherer (CHG) Genomes and constructed the CHG component. They declared that between 25kya and 10kya, the Caucasus genomes had been in "apparent genetic isolation" and that after that - since 10kya/about the neolithic - the Caucasus started admixing with others. Jones 2015 said that since Indians show a lot of CHG (the so-called "Caucasus-Gedrosia" that has for decades been known to spike in the Indian subcontinent), that therefore Indians MUST be derived from the Caucasus and that future work should prove this.
3. Around May 2016, Harvard was repeatedly stated by people in the know to be working on an IE paper based on the Afghan and Indic ("SC+S Asian") aDNA and more steppe aDNA. This was going to be Harvard's next paper after the Fu 2016 paper. They were going to conclude Andronovo -> BMAC AIT -> India AIT.
4. Early June 2016, the Llorente 2016 abstract appeared. Jones was a co-author. Their work had sequenced a single (conveniently female) Iranian neolithic genome and found it to be quite "CHG like". Their abstract only revealed that they ruled out any direct Iranian Neolithic influence on Europeans. But one could have predicted that the paper would be more about the IE question - hence particularly about Indians (that's the central focus of all these papers) - than anything else.
5. Mid June 2016, at a student conference, a geneticist team from some British University came out with the Lopez mid 2016 abstract. They'd also sequenced an Iranian neolithic genome. And what the Lopez 2016 abstract revealed (p.23) - something Harvard never intended to bring up - forced Harvard to do a massive course-correction:
6. With the above info of significant Iran Neolithic affinity in modern Iranian Zoroastrians and in ethnic-Indians being out in the open, Harvard was forced into damage control mode.
Within a couple of days or so, Harvard came out with their pre-print of the Lazaridis 2016 paper, revealing they had been sitting on Iranian aDNA and had already analysed it in advance. And already knew that it was not an affinity with CHG in modern Indians - contrary to Harvard's earlier deliberately "gradually delivered" storytelling on the matter - but rather an affinity with ancient Iranian genomes.
Harvard's paper worked to quickly take control once more of the storytelling, by subsuming the Iranian-Neolithic component into the very early steppes so that Indians - who had significant affinity with it - could still be declared derived from the steppes.
And the paper focused a great deal on Indians indeed, not on Iranians (but note how Harvard's IE storytelling never focused on Iranians: the course corrections they've been forced to make have all been due to Indians alone; due to their need to claim Indian genomes for the steppes - perhaps before the inverse can be claimed? - alone).
Despite carefully laying the groundwork for the storytelling with CHG, Yamna was no longer declared to be 50% CHG and 50% EHG. Now Yamna was suddenly found to be 43% ancient Iranian + EHG. A change Harvard never intended to make to their Yamna model (though they clearly knew the Iranian data, even though they were supposed to be working on an Afghanistan and "S Asia" paper instead) except that the Lopez abstract forced Harvard's hand.
The Harvard paper did lots of formal statistics tests to insist that Reich's long-term plan of the carefully constructed "ANI" component and its late admixture with "ASI" to produce modern Indians could ONLY have been produced by admixture between steppes and Iran Neolithic.
That is, they insist that ANI has a steppe component, meaning they insist that ANI derived from the steppes and nowhere else.
(This is after Patterson had earlier denied that Indics could be derived from the steppes at all.)
7. The Llorente 2016 paper of point 4 above (featuring Jones and some authors on the Harvard Lazaridis 2016 paper) finally came out within days after Harvard's Lazaridis paper, showing clear traces of how Harvard had intended on spinning the tale had not the Lopez 2016 abstract derailed them from their original plan.
Llorente 2016 declared that Indians showed less affinity to the "CHG like" Iranian neolithic component than to the real CHG from the Caucasus. Their aim was to push through on Harvard's Plan A of forcing Indians to be derived with clear Caucasus input, and concluded that therefore Indians must be derived from the steppes. Because of the Lopez abstract - point 5 above - Harvard, using their MANY Iranian genomes to hand which they suddenly revealed, had been cornered into remodelling Yamna to rather have ancient Iranic than Caucasus (CHG) input, thus rendering Llorente 2016's no doubt equally-contrived "CHG in Indics" conclusions void.
Harvard shot down its OWN Plan A in order to resort to Plan B because Plan A was compromised. Yamna's modelling was tweaked ALL so that Indians - and Indians alone - could still be derived from the steppes.
Harvard's Lazaridis 2016 paper went one step further: they no longer kept up the facade that CHG was "apparently genetically isolated", as they now openly modelled CHG itself as a product of admixture, even involving input from a LATER component (Iran Neolithic input into Caucasus Upper Palaeolithic). That is, CHG was no longer a source component, but a product of other source components.
This too they would not have admitted had not the Lopez paper come out, as the apparent genetic isolation until the neolithic was meant to be a bottleneck necessitating Indian derivation with Caucasus inpt. Now the bottleneck's been unnaturally shifted to further Iranian input via the steppes: all ANI has been essentially equated to Indo-Aryans and Harvard's formal stats has once again made a move to pre-emptvely corner Indians thereby.
On that subject: before Harvard came out with the Lazaridis 2016 paper, Harvard had already analysed the aDNA from SC Asia and the Indian subcontinent (BMAC etc). A paper on "SC/S Asia" paper was the one they were carefully working on/setting up. Harvard already knows what's in that area therefore. That means their supposedly "predictive" formal stats in their hurriedly brought out Lazaridis paper - predicting/constraining that ANI *must* be from the steppes as it "definitely" has admixture with the so-called "steppe" component - was not a prediction as they pretended it was, but was to pre-emptively close off other interpretations of the upcoming aDNA from "SC/S Asia" and to pre-emptively subsume any pre-existing "ANI" as steppe.
And they can do it now, because (I suspect/predict) Harvard was forced to make another concession. This time not because of the Lopez abstract but because of the aDNA data from SC/S Asia: the large number of formal stats tests in the Lazaridis 2016 paper modelled ANI in Indians as having definite steppe admixture. Not just any steppe admixture, however. But very early steppe admixture: from the eneolithic else early Bronze Age. That is, they've deliberately stepped back from pretending IE invasions in the late Bronze Age/Iron Age but have been forced to retreat to a position of earlier "Yamna" or pre-Yamna steppe input.
And the ONLY reason they'd do that is because they found something in the SC/S Asian data that required them to concede that much ground. And hence they pretend in advance that their formal stats predicts this and will declare "just as we modelled" in their next paper. This last is a prediction, but Harvard is quite unreliable and has a massive agenda regarding Hindus and Hinduism. The IE question is a major trump card for them on this subject. And you know they're obsessed with Indians because every bloody IE-related aDNA paper they come out with has to invoke Indians in some way or other; and any paper on modern Indian DNA they come with has to drag in IE one way or another.
The real question to ask is: Would Harvard lie? Well, they've always lied where Hindus are concerned and where IEism is concerned (remember the serial forger David Anthony?). And the current series of events also blatantly shows Harvard shuffling things about all so that they/Europeans still come out on top and Indians are still made steppe-derived (and they make no bones about this last meaning Euro-derived, btw).
Some other interesting things:
- despite R1aZ93 having been bandied about as the "Indo-Iranian" marker, Iranians don't have much of it. And they don't have anywhere as much so-called "steppe" affinity as Indians do. (E.g. noticeably the endogamous Zoroastrians.)
So if Indians and Iranians derive from the steppes, it's interesting that one group should show more affinity, and particularly the less "W-Eurasian"/"European"-like population: Indians. (It leaves open something else: that one of these populations rather than both more formatively affected the steppes at some stage. Though in the later/Iron Age stages it was almost entirely Iranian influence on the steppes and thence Europe, e.g. through the undeniably Iran-originated Sarmatians.)
- like CHG, EHG (which makes up about half the input to Yamna) is not a source component either, but is formed from admixture. This was known, but what was hidden away is its constituent parts. Harvard's recent Lazaridis 2016 paper (Supplementary Info) reveals several interesting details.
First, the uninteresting bit: EHG (East European Hunter Gatherers) =~ 25% WHG (West-European Hunter Gatherers who actually have a N Eastern origin, though Fu 2016 avoided stressing this) + 75% ANE (Ancient North Eurasian). ANE is a component constructed from the aDNA of the Mal'ta-1 individual from Siberian by the Raghavan (2013?) paper. ["ANE" is frequently said to be very high in Indics. It seems it was the WHG part that was ruled out in Indics by the likes of Patterson, rather than all the constituent components of EHG.]
Again: EHG =~ 25% WHG + 75% ANE. (1)
The same pre-print to the Lazaridis 2016 paper (specifically the Supplementary Information, p.146) also shows EHG = WHG + something on the Onge->Han cline. (2)
The "some [ghost] population on the Onge->Han cline" was dubbed ANE, BTW. And this is also clear from equations (1) and (2).
So: EHG = WHG + something on the Onge->Han cline = 25% WHG + 75% something on the Onge->Han cline. [By substituting (1) into (2)]
Now the use of Onge is interesting as Onge (an Andamanese community) are used as proxy for the constructed "ASI" component. Something on the Onge->Han cline either essentially has whatever % of "ASI" ancestry. But it's not negligible since 75% of EHG = ANE, i.e. something on the Onge->Han cline.
On a related topic, amateur modellers keep finding that Iran Neolithic already showed signs of ASI too.
So Yamna = 43% ancient Iranic + 57% EHG had ASI from both ends.
That's why EHG and Iran Neolithic are projected as source components: to hide away their own derived nature and make it look like "ANI" can only be produced by admixture involving "ASI" outside the subcontinent. Which is quite interesting as it seems rather a necessitated tack for Harvard.
Haak Feb 2015 pre-print stated the following about Yamna
Admixture of ancient populations by modern ones is of course unlikely, but it indicates something.
The Caucasus portion has been replaced with an ancient Iranian component. So then it is what in the Mathieson paper is described as the "EHG" part that takes the place (masks?) the "S Asian" affinity described above. [I mean, the earlier Maykop culture of the Caucasus influenced Yamna - perhaps even genetically, data yet to be revealed. And Maykop is admitted to be closer to PIE than Yamna: Yamna was not PIE. And Indian-specific mtDNA M52 was already found in Maykop culture.**]
Others have now started substituting ANI as the "South Asian" input to Yamna. Yet we know that Yamna is ~50% EHG, and EHG itself has 75% ANE i.e. 75% of admixture into EHG comes from the ASI->Han cline.
All in all, that means Yamna already had both ANI + ASI. In combination. Isn't it strange that the two components may exist only in unison in Yamna? But that in India they must be produced by post steppist invasion admixture of suddenly "distinct" ANI with suddenly distinct ASI?
** Another interesting thing is the Y-Hg L-M27 near the Araxes river in the Caucasus in the Chalcolithic leading up to the Kura-Araxes culture, which culture had already arrived in the region in 4200 BCE but rose to prominence around 3700 BCE - both periods fall in the time bracket of the L-M27 samples found at the Araxes River area, BTW). The Lazaridis 2016 paper wanted to dismiss the 3 samples of L-M27 found in this region as a founder effect, despite the range of time separating them (whereas the R1b or R1a in the steppes are of course a steppe "signature" Hg). Oh, and L-M27 is the most common Indic L1a. Even Lazaridis 2016 indirectly admits - among their bad apologetics for the very Indic L-M27's presence in south Caucasus - that L-M27 itself is not found in modern Armenians:
The common modern Armenian subclade of L1a is descended from an "uncle" (in terms of tree structure) of L-M27, not L-M27 itself. Indians however have L-M27. It was declared an exclusive marker of Indian "Dravidian speakers".
Some IEists imagine a Caucasus homeland for IEism/their IE oryan ancestors, while looking down their noses on L-M27 as "native Indoo".
Yet the M52 mtDNA in pre-Yamna Maykop is native Indoo and Y haplogroup L-M27 - as per their own elitism - is Indoo too. And *these 2 haplogroups* - not R1a or R1b - were found in the north and south Caucasus respectively, in times before Yamna/steppe "IE" cultures. For all I know, R1a and R1b may have been present in the Caucasus too (doubly so if these turn out to not really be steppe markers after all). Admittedly, an R1b was found in the later (Kura-Araxes proper) period in Armenia around 2700 BCE, but this R1b instance has been quickly hijacked by steppists as being a migrant from the steppes, since no R1b was found in earlier Caucasus aDNA. [Hijacking this R1b for steppism was also necessary because the Kura-Araxes culture has sometimes been claimed as IE and even as an ancient IE culture. Again, interesting to see alleged "steppe marker" R1b co-existing with "Dravidian marker" L-M27 in the Araxes area in a temporal continuum and possibly cultural continuum with the "IE" Kura Araxes culture. Whoever was NOT in the Caucasus as per recovered aDNA so far are R1a-bearers. "Sorry" to those "R1a=IE marker" supremacists dreaming of a PIE homeland in the Caucasus. R1b is not even allowed to be native to the Caucasus by hardcore steppists. Anyway, R1a-supremacist IEists who imagine a Caucasus PIE homeland will have to share that too with the bearers of the "Dravidian marker" L-M27.]
Just to make it clear: L-M27 far older than 4200 BCE. There's no evidence at all that it originated in the Caucasus or even Iran or is remotely W-Eurasian in origin. (It's presence in Germany and Italy can be explained as another leftover from the Sarmatians, as Iran also has L-M27.) Every invasionist has only ever insisted that L-M27 is Indian and specifically "Dravidian". Now of course they'll try something different and dismiss it or project it as "W Eurasian" *because* it was found a measly 6200 years ago of its much longer existence in the Caucasus. (As it is, Lazaridis 2016 noticeably carefully avoided focusing on its rather damning presence in a crucial region to PIEism altogether.) But the L-M27 in Chalcolithic Armenia is a migrant to the Caucasus and has become associated with cultures migrant to that region. In any case, it's not a steppe marker. IEists can't even try that route as L-M27 does not occur among the steppes.
Funny how just in the "PIE" heartland of the Caucasus - from the Araxes river region to Maykop in N Caucasus - distinctly Indian haplogroups were found. And both in the PIE period and before Yamna/any "IE" steppe cultures.
Summary/point of this post:
Since Harvard already knows the "SC/S Asian" data, I predict that Harvard's formal stats regarding Indians in their Lazaridis 2016 paper (wherein they concluded ANI was a product of admixture between early steppes and ancient Iranic genomes) is only in order to lay the groundwork for claiming SC Asia or even "S Asia" was "already steppe" since the early Bronze Age (that is, Harvard will typically move the goalpost as it has always done). E.g. they may claim that BMAC was "already steppe" throughout. So BMAC will be stolen as a European product. Then, having made it European in "origin"/claimed it for themselves, they may even declare BMAC as Proto-Indo-Iranian urheimat and start admitting this was the "eastern source" of novel input into the later R1a(Z93) heavy steppe cultures like Sintashta/Srubna. (They may even admit the BMAC/SSVC region in general was the origin and source for Z93 lineages.)
Harvard has worked very hard on their little aDNA pet project especially to cement the IE steppism story. So they've moved away from R1a as the steppe marker to using "steppe" components for comparison.
So you know beforehand that if SSVC data already shows "ANI", the scheming anti-Hindu cabal that makes up Harvard - and their Indian parrots, who apparently can't think for themselves but will regurgitate [badly] Harvard's genetics dept (forgetting its aims are No Different than its "Hinduism studies" and "Indology" depts) - will conclude that any ANI in SSVC "proves steppe input into SSVC". That way the SSVC will be stolen as a European product too. (Already Plan A of the Anatolie PIE theory claimed SSVC was European/W-Eurasian as a product of IE migrants from Anatolia. Similarly, Sarianidi's preference for the Near East PIE theory claimed BMAC was a product of IEism.)
But steppism - the steppe PIE theory - Never before claimed BMAC let alone SSVC was theirs, only that BMAC and then SSVC were invaded by IEs. So Harvard will resort to more Europeanising storytelling to aggrandise their steppist narratives if SC/S Asian data already shows ANI. THAT is the direct consequence from the formal stats modelling ANI in Indians as an inevitable steppe product.
Finally, if my prediction is true - and I do not base it on aDNA but on Harvard's pattern of storytelling and appropriation (notice how they come to Indian data last, while they kept foreshadowing AIT throughout all their papers and affiliated papers, by having laid the groundwork via aDNA papers on the steppes through to Iran just for this*) -
again: if my prediction of what Harvard is going to conclude regarding "SC/S Asian" data is true, then it further proves that Harvard schemed the entire thing regarding India in advance and that there was no honest research at all, but that they're entirely working according to agenda. Since I predicted their conclusions not based on aDNA but on their clear pattern of scheming. (Then again, their whole u-turn on CHG showed their fraud already too.)
* Their focus on Indians in their IE related aDNA papers is quite telling in its own right.
HindOOs need to be forewarned, need to check the data for themselves, keep track of the IEist storytelling, and watch all IEists (not just the European kind), evaluating the latter's pronouncements in the context of said IEists' ideologies/pet projects/personal fantasies.
ADDED:
Some interesting features of the Iranian Neolithic genome found by Llorente 2016: dark hair, dark eyes, had at least one allele for SLC24A5 (the skin lightening variant that Indians have, and which was fixed in Yamna while they were busy gaining SLC45A2 from Levant Neolithic. BTW: if Iranian neolithic genomes already possessed SLC24A5 and if Indian must have "derived" it from outside rather than it being Indian and going from India -> Iran, then Indians could have got it from Iran directly rather than from the steppes. Obviously.)
One geneticist who is notorious for seeing "white people everywhere" found the Iranian Chalcolithic samples (which were around 5000 BCE and earlier) to be "Caucasoid", often with fair hair and blue eyes. I'm not saying he's right (even if someone had 2 copies of SLC24A5 doesn't make them necessarily fair: many very dark Indians have 2 copies), but if he is right, it's kind of ironic when 2000 BCE Poles were dark and the earliest steppe "IE" culture - Yamna, which started 3500 BCE - despite being millennia later than the Iran Chalcolithic samples were far darker and less European looking than Iranian Chalcolithic (though Iranian Chalcolithic are modelled as a source population to Yamnaya)...
The same guy also found red hair, skin lightening variants + lack of freckling, light eyes in Levant Neolithic and Armenian Chalcolithic samples.
Ironic if it turns out that there's nothing "European" about the "European" phenotype.
Correction: R1b in Caucasus not ~3700 BCE but closer to ~2700 BCE.
ADDED 2:
Yet another thing of note.
The 4 components that Harvard has settled on to model all "source" components that make of "West-Eurasians" are WHG, EHG, Levant Neolithic and Iran Neolithic. That is, Anatolian Neolithic - just like CHG - are no longer considered source components but are now modelled as an admixture of >=2 of these 4 components. Still, EHG is not a source component either. Neither does Iran Neolithic appear to be. (E.g. this too is argued to show indication of "already containing ASI".)
Anyway, the Lazaridis paper's putatively Iran-Mesolithic sample from the Hotu Caves consisted of both the Iran Neolithic component and some EHG (Lazaridis 2016, Fig 4b) - i.e. something EHG or EHG like was already in the southern region back in the Mesolithic. Who knows how widespread these "source components" were in Asia. (And since EHG already is made up of 25% WHG, the Iran 'Mesolithic' sample already had WHG too...)
Yamna is modelled as EHG + 43% (of a population related to) Iran-Chalcolithic. Iran Chalcolithic has been modelled as composed of Iran Neolithic, Levant Neolithic, a bit more of EHG than the single 'Mesolithic' Iranian sample had, and a wee bit of WHG. WHG is from the region too: it is "Near Eastern" or at least entered Europe via the Near East whatever its non-European origin (and Harvard's Fu 2016 paper was forced to leave the possibility of a Near Eastern entry point into Europe in, however other papers had already argued this on the basis of mtDNA etc).
Of the 4 source components Harvard has selected, there's nothing peculiarly steppe about EHG despite its name: it consists of the Near Eastern WHG and something on the Onge=ASI -> Han cline; while WHG, Iran Neolithic and Levant Neolithic are not steppe at all in origin and lie in a more horizontal line to Bharatam (the way 4th millennium BCE and later Sumer lies in horizontal line to Bharatam). And who knows what the origin of Iran Neolithic or the extent of ANE was.
"Patterson said that linguistic evidence has tracked the ancestral language, called ââ¬Ålate proto-Indo-Europeanââ¬Â to about 3,500 years ago in the Caucasus, among a people who had wheeled vehicles at a time when they were just being put into use.
Genetic evidence ruled out one likely related group in the region, the Yamnaya, because their DNA showed the group had hunter-gatherer ancestry, which is inconsistent with the fact that two Indo-European groups, Armenians and Indians, donââ¬â¢t share it, Patterson said. That made Patterson look south, to the Maikop civilization, which likely had significant contact with the Yamnaya, as a plausible culture where Indo-European languages originated. Samples have been obtained from Maikop burial sites, but the DNA work to test that proposal is pending, Patterson said."
Now - and without additional published steppe aDNA and with no drastic/revelatory information from any additional modern Indian genomes they may have newly obtained - Harvard models ALL modern Indians with massive amounts of "steppe" admixture (decreasing cline from NW to SE).
The difference lies in the direction their storytelling has been forced to take.
ALL their papers and that of their (in)direct associates have always focused on Indians, Indians, Indians. As seen above, Indians (and Armenians and C Asians) were the reason that Patterson was willing to shift the PIE urheimat into the Caucasus in late 2014.
*Indians* were the reason CHG was scrapped as a source component in Yamna, and replaced with Iran Neolithic.
It would be something if half their focus was bent on the Iranians, but the Iranians are clearly not on their minds and certainly not on their lips.
1. Mathieson 2015 concluded Bronze Age steppe culture of the Yamnaya =~ 50% EHG + 50% modern Armenian-like. [EHG = "East European Hunter Gatherers". Itself not a source component.]
- Further, Mathieson's supplementary information preserves the initial conclusion they wanted to draw with regards to the novel features of the later steppe cultures: sudden switch to R1a dominance and farmer admixture not seen in previous steppe cultures (modelled in Mathieson 2015 as Anatolian Neolithic farmer admixture).
Mathieson 2015 wanted to support Allentoft 2015's earlier supposition that backmigration from the C-European IE Corded Ware Culture (CWC) was the source of the R1a etc that marked the differentiation of the later steppe cultures from the earlier ones. The entire paragraph (the rest more relevant to Indians) however did not make it into the final version, as in the final version, Mathieson 2015 were forced to withdraw their support for the Corded Ware backmigration, as the data did not support it. They ended up positing a more eastern source for the novel admixture. They defensively pointed to their single R1a sample in Poltavka (the R1aZ94 outlier) as proof that the earlier steppe cultures already had R1a and that this did not mean migrations of R1a individuals. The defensiveness was interesting, especially considering their earlier statements preserved as a relic in the Supplementary Information.
2. The Jones late 2015 paper (Jones was a co-author on Mathieson 2015) then appeared and took up the thread that Patterson had indicated. They sequenced 2 upper palaeolithic Caucasus Hunter Gatherer (CHG) Genomes and constructed the CHG component. They declared that between 25kya and 10kya, the Caucasus genomes had been in "apparent genetic isolation" and that after that - since 10kya/about the neolithic - the Caucasus started admixing with others. Jones 2015 said that since Indians show a lot of CHG (the so-called "Caucasus-Gedrosia" that has for decades been known to spike in the Indian subcontinent), that therefore Indians MUST be derived from the Caucasus and that future work should prove this.
3. Around May 2016, Harvard was repeatedly stated by people in the know to be working on an IE paper based on the Afghan and Indic ("SC+S Asian") aDNA and more steppe aDNA. This was going to be Harvard's next paper after the Fu 2016 paper. They were going to conclude Andronovo -> BMAC AIT -> India AIT.
4. Early June 2016, the Llorente 2016 abstract appeared. Jones was a co-author. Their work had sequenced a single (conveniently female) Iranian neolithic genome and found it to be quite "CHG like". Their abstract only revealed that they ruled out any direct Iranian Neolithic influence on Europeans. But one could have predicted that the paper would be more about the IE question - hence particularly about Indians (that's the central focus of all these papers) - than anything else.
5. Mid June 2016, at a student conference, a geneticist team from some British University came out with the Lopez mid 2016 abstract. They'd also sequenced an Iranian neolithic genome. And what the Lopez 2016 abstract revealed (p.23) - something Harvard never intended to bring up - forced Harvard to do a massive course-correction:
Quote:The genetic landscape of Iran and the legacy of Zoroastrianism: Comparing haplotype sharing patterns among ancient and modern-day samples using a mixture model.
Iran is considered a pivotal region in the Fertile Crescent, occupying a central space between Africa and Eurasia, and has thus been extensively studied to infer the development of the earliest human civilizations and farming settlements. From a historical and cultural perspective, this region is also of great interest as the cradle of Zoroastrianism. With reported roots dating back to the second millennium BC in Iran, Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest religions in the world and is now mainly concentrated in India, Iran, and Southern Pakistan. In this work we present novel genotype data from present-day Zoroastrians from Iran and India, along with a high coverage (10x) early Neolithic sample from Iran (7,455-7,082 BC), comparing these samples to publicly available genome-wide genotypes from >200 modern and ancient groups worldwide to elucidate patterns of shared ancestry. We apply a novel Bayesian mixture model to represent the DNA from modern and ancient groups or individuals as mixtures of that from other sampled groups or individuals, using a haplotype-based approach that is more powerful than commonly-used algorithms. Our mixture model identifies which sampled groups are most related to one another genetically, reflecting shared common ancestry relative to other groups due to e.g. admixture (i.e. intermixing of genetically distinct groups) or other historical processes. Interestingly, analysis of ancestry patterns revealed strong affinities of the Neolithic Iranian sample to modern-day Pakistani and Indian populations, and particularly to Iranian Zoroastrians, in stark contrast to Neolithic samples from Europe. We also identify, describe and date recent admixture events in modern-day Iranian groups that have altered their current genetic make-up relative to these ancient origins.
6. With the above info of significant Iran Neolithic affinity in modern Iranian Zoroastrians and in ethnic-Indians being out in the open, Harvard was forced into damage control mode.
Within a couple of days or so, Harvard came out with their pre-print of the Lazaridis 2016 paper, revealing they had been sitting on Iranian aDNA and had already analysed it in advance. And already knew that it was not an affinity with CHG in modern Indians - contrary to Harvard's earlier deliberately "gradually delivered" storytelling on the matter - but rather an affinity with ancient Iranian genomes.
Harvard's paper worked to quickly take control once more of the storytelling, by subsuming the Iranian-Neolithic component into the very early steppes so that Indians - who had significant affinity with it - could still be declared derived from the steppes.
And the paper focused a great deal on Indians indeed, not on Iranians (but note how Harvard's IE storytelling never focused on Iranians: the course corrections they've been forced to make have all been due to Indians alone; due to their need to claim Indian genomes for the steppes - perhaps before the inverse can be claimed? - alone).
Despite carefully laying the groundwork for the storytelling with CHG, Yamna was no longer declared to be 50% CHG and 50% EHG. Now Yamna was suddenly found to be 43% ancient Iranian + EHG. A change Harvard never intended to make to their Yamna model (though they clearly knew the Iranian data, even though they were supposed to be working on an Afghanistan and "S Asia" paper instead) except that the Lopez abstract forced Harvard's hand.
The Harvard paper did lots of formal statistics tests to insist that Reich's long-term plan of the carefully constructed "ANI" component and its late admixture with "ASI" to produce modern Indians could ONLY have been produced by admixture between steppes and Iran Neolithic.
That is, they insist that ANI has a steppe component, meaning they insist that ANI derived from the steppes and nowhere else.
(This is after Patterson had earlier denied that Indics could be derived from the steppes at all.)
7. The Llorente 2016 paper of point 4 above (featuring Jones and some authors on the Harvard Lazaridis 2016 paper) finally came out within days after Harvard's Lazaridis paper, showing clear traces of how Harvard had intended on spinning the tale had not the Lopez 2016 abstract derailed them from their original plan.
Llorente 2016 declared that Indians showed less affinity to the "CHG like" Iranian neolithic component than to the real CHG from the Caucasus. Their aim was to push through on Harvard's Plan A of forcing Indians to be derived with clear Caucasus input, and concluded that therefore Indians must be derived from the steppes. Because of the Lopez abstract - point 5 above - Harvard, using their MANY Iranian genomes to hand which they suddenly revealed, had been cornered into remodelling Yamna to rather have ancient Iranic than Caucasus (CHG) input, thus rendering Llorente 2016's no doubt equally-contrived "CHG in Indics" conclusions void.
Harvard shot down its OWN Plan A in order to resort to Plan B because Plan A was compromised. Yamna's modelling was tweaked ALL so that Indians - and Indians alone - could still be derived from the steppes.
Harvard's Lazaridis 2016 paper went one step further: they no longer kept up the facade that CHG was "apparently genetically isolated", as they now openly modelled CHG itself as a product of admixture, even involving input from a LATER component (Iran Neolithic input into Caucasus Upper Palaeolithic). That is, CHG was no longer a source component, but a product of other source components.
This too they would not have admitted had not the Lopez paper come out, as the apparent genetic isolation until the neolithic was meant to be a bottleneck necessitating Indian derivation with Caucasus inpt. Now the bottleneck's been unnaturally shifted to further Iranian input via the steppes: all ANI has been essentially equated to Indo-Aryans and Harvard's formal stats has once again made a move to pre-emptvely corner Indians thereby.
On that subject: before Harvard came out with the Lazaridis 2016 paper, Harvard had already analysed the aDNA from SC Asia and the Indian subcontinent (BMAC etc). A paper on "SC/S Asia" paper was the one they were carefully working on/setting up. Harvard already knows what's in that area therefore. That means their supposedly "predictive" formal stats in their hurriedly brought out Lazaridis paper - predicting/constraining that ANI *must* be from the steppes as it "definitely" has admixture with the so-called "steppe" component - was not a prediction as they pretended it was, but was to pre-emptively close off other interpretations of the upcoming aDNA from "SC/S Asia" and to pre-emptively subsume any pre-existing "ANI" as steppe.
And they can do it now, because (I suspect/predict) Harvard was forced to make another concession. This time not because of the Lopez abstract but because of the aDNA data from SC/S Asia: the large number of formal stats tests in the Lazaridis 2016 paper modelled ANI in Indians as having definite steppe admixture. Not just any steppe admixture, however. But very early steppe admixture: from the eneolithic else early Bronze Age. That is, they've deliberately stepped back from pretending IE invasions in the late Bronze Age/Iron Age but have been forced to retreat to a position of earlier "Yamna" or pre-Yamna steppe input.
And the ONLY reason they'd do that is because they found something in the SC/S Asian data that required them to concede that much ground. And hence they pretend in advance that their formal stats predicts this and will declare "just as we modelled" in their next paper. This last is a prediction, but Harvard is quite unreliable and has a massive agenda regarding Hindus and Hinduism. The IE question is a major trump card for them on this subject. And you know they're obsessed with Indians because every bloody IE-related aDNA paper they come out with has to invoke Indians in some way or other; and any paper on modern Indian DNA they come with has to drag in IE one way or another.
The real question to ask is: Would Harvard lie? Well, they've always lied where Hindus are concerned and where IEism is concerned (remember the serial forger David Anthony?). And the current series of events also blatantly shows Harvard shuffling things about all so that they/Europeans still come out on top and Indians are still made steppe-derived (and they make no bones about this last meaning Euro-derived, btw).
Some other interesting things:
- despite R1aZ93 having been bandied about as the "Indo-Iranian" marker, Iranians don't have much of it. And they don't have anywhere as much so-called "steppe" affinity as Indians do. (E.g. noticeably the endogamous Zoroastrians.)
So if Indians and Iranians derive from the steppes, it's interesting that one group should show more affinity, and particularly the less "W-Eurasian"/"European"-like population: Indians. (It leaves open something else: that one of these populations rather than both more formatively affected the steppes at some stage. Though in the later/Iron Age stages it was almost entirely Iranian influence on the steppes and thence Europe, e.g. through the undeniably Iran-originated Sarmatians.)
- like CHG, EHG (which makes up about half the input to Yamna) is not a source component either, but is formed from admixture. This was known, but what was hidden away is its constituent parts. Harvard's recent Lazaridis 2016 paper (Supplementary Info) reveals several interesting details.
First, the uninteresting bit: EHG (East European Hunter Gatherers) =~ 25% WHG (West-European Hunter Gatherers who actually have a N Eastern origin, though Fu 2016 avoided stressing this) + 75% ANE (Ancient North Eurasian). ANE is a component constructed from the aDNA of the Mal'ta-1 individual from Siberian by the Raghavan (2013?) paper. ["ANE" is frequently said to be very high in Indics. It seems it was the WHG part that was ruled out in Indics by the likes of Patterson, rather than all the constituent components of EHG.]
Again: EHG =~ 25% WHG + 75% ANE. (1)
The same pre-print to the Lazaridis 2016 paper (specifically the Supplementary Information, p.146) also shows EHG = WHG + something on the Onge->Han cline. (2)
The "some [ghost] population on the Onge->Han cline" was dubbed ANE, BTW. And this is also clear from equations (1) and (2).
So: EHG = WHG + something on the Onge->Han cline = 25% WHG + 75% something on the Onge->Han cline. [By substituting (1) into (2)]
Now the use of Onge is interesting as Onge (an Andamanese community) are used as proxy for the constructed "ASI" component. Something on the Onge->Han cline either essentially has whatever % of "ASI" ancestry. But it's not negligible since 75% of EHG = ANE, i.e. something on the Onge->Han cline.
On a related topic, amateur modellers keep finding that Iran Neolithic already showed signs of ASI too.
So Yamna = 43% ancient Iranic + 57% EHG had ASI from both ends.
That's why EHG and Iran Neolithic are projected as source components: to hide away their own derived nature and make it look like "ANI" can only be produced by admixture involving "ASI" outside the subcontinent. Which is quite interesting as it seems rather a necessitated tack for Harvard.
Haak Feb 2015 pre-print stated the following about Yamna
Quote:This pattern is also seen in ADMIXTURE analysis (Fig. 2b, SI6), which implies that the Yamnaya have ancestry from populations related to the Caucasus and South Asia that is largely absent in 38 Early or Middle Neolithic farmers but present in all 25 Late Neolithic or Bronze Age individuals. This ancestry appears in Central Europe for the first time in our series with the Corded Ware around 2,500 BCE (SI6, Fig. 2b, Extended Data Fig. 1).
Admixture of ancient populations by modern ones is of course unlikely, but it indicates something.
The Caucasus portion has been replaced with an ancient Iranian component. So then it is what in the Mathieson paper is described as the "EHG" part that takes the place (masks?) the "S Asian" affinity described above. [I mean, the earlier Maykop culture of the Caucasus influenced Yamna - perhaps even genetically, data yet to be revealed. And Maykop is admitted to be closer to PIE than Yamna: Yamna was not PIE. And Indian-specific mtDNA M52 was already found in Maykop culture.**]
Others have now started substituting ANI as the "South Asian" input to Yamna. Yet we know that Yamna is ~50% EHG, and EHG itself has 75% ANE i.e. 75% of admixture into EHG comes from the ASI->Han cline.
All in all, that means Yamna already had both ANI + ASI. In combination. Isn't it strange that the two components may exist only in unison in Yamna? But that in India they must be produced by post steppist invasion admixture of suddenly "distinct" ANI with suddenly distinct ASI?
** Another interesting thing is the Y-Hg L-M27 near the Araxes river in the Caucasus in the Chalcolithic leading up to the Kura-Araxes culture, which culture had already arrived in the region in 4200 BCE but rose to prominence around 3700 BCE - both periods fall in the time bracket of the L-M27 samples found at the Araxes River area, BTW). The Lazaridis 2016 paper wanted to dismiss the 3 samples of L-M27 found in this region as a founder effect, despite the range of time separating them (whereas the R1b or R1a in the steppes are of course a steppe "signature" Hg). Oh, and L-M27 is the most common Indic L1a. Even Lazaridis 2016 indirectly admits - among their bad apologetics for the very Indic L-M27's presence in south Caucasus - that L-M27 itself is not found in modern Armenians:
Quote:Armenia_ChL (Chalcolithic Armenia) All three males from this population belong to Y-chromosome haplogroup L1a-M27/P329. The M27 mutation is common in South Asian haplogroup L Y-chromosomes1,2, but was absent in a survey of Y-chromosomes from Anatolia3. Haplogroup L occurs at a very low ~2% frequency in present-day Armenians4. Our results indicate that it was present in Chalcolithic Armenia, but the fact that all three Chalcolithic Armenians belonged to it should not be necessarily interpreted as evidence that it was common there, as our samples are from a single location (Areni-1 cave) and may represent a local founder population.
The common modern Armenian subclade of L1a is descended from an "uncle" (in terms of tree structure) of L-M27, not L-M27 itself. Indians however have L-M27. It was declared an exclusive marker of Indian "Dravidian speakers".
Some IEists imagine a Caucasus homeland for IEism/their IE oryan ancestors, while looking down their noses on L-M27 as "native Indoo".
Yet the M52 mtDNA in pre-Yamna Maykop is native Indoo and Y haplogroup L-M27 - as per their own elitism - is Indoo too. And *these 2 haplogroups* - not R1a or R1b - were found in the north and south Caucasus respectively, in times before Yamna/steppe "IE" cultures. For all I know, R1a and R1b may have been present in the Caucasus too (doubly so if these turn out to not really be steppe markers after all). Admittedly, an R1b was found in the later (Kura-Araxes proper) period in Armenia around 2700 BCE, but this R1b instance has been quickly hijacked by steppists as being a migrant from the steppes, since no R1b was found in earlier Caucasus aDNA. [Hijacking this R1b for steppism was also necessary because the Kura-Araxes culture has sometimes been claimed as IE and even as an ancient IE culture. Again, interesting to see alleged "steppe marker" R1b co-existing with "Dravidian marker" L-M27 in the Araxes area in a temporal continuum and possibly cultural continuum with the "IE" Kura Araxes culture. Whoever was NOT in the Caucasus as per recovered aDNA so far are R1a-bearers. "Sorry" to those "R1a=IE marker" supremacists dreaming of a PIE homeland in the Caucasus. R1b is not even allowed to be native to the Caucasus by hardcore steppists. Anyway, R1a-supremacist IEists who imagine a Caucasus PIE homeland will have to share that too with the bearers of the "Dravidian marker" L-M27.]
Just to make it clear: L-M27 far older than 4200 BCE. There's no evidence at all that it originated in the Caucasus or even Iran or is remotely W-Eurasian in origin. (It's presence in Germany and Italy can be explained as another leftover from the Sarmatians, as Iran also has L-M27.) Every invasionist has only ever insisted that L-M27 is Indian and specifically "Dravidian". Now of course they'll try something different and dismiss it or project it as "W Eurasian" *because* it was found a measly 6200 years ago of its much longer existence in the Caucasus. (As it is, Lazaridis 2016 noticeably carefully avoided focusing on its rather damning presence in a crucial region to PIEism altogether.) But the L-M27 in Chalcolithic Armenia is a migrant to the Caucasus and has become associated with cultures migrant to that region. In any case, it's not a steppe marker. IEists can't even try that route as L-M27 does not occur among the steppes.
Funny how just in the "PIE" heartland of the Caucasus - from the Araxes river region to Maykop in N Caucasus - distinctly Indian haplogroups were found. And both in the PIE period and before Yamna/any "IE" steppe cultures.
Summary/point of this post:
Since Harvard already knows the "SC/S Asian" data, I predict that Harvard's formal stats regarding Indians in their Lazaridis 2016 paper (wherein they concluded ANI was a product of admixture between early steppes and ancient Iranic genomes) is only in order to lay the groundwork for claiming SC Asia or even "S Asia" was "already steppe" since the early Bronze Age (that is, Harvard will typically move the goalpost as it has always done). E.g. they may claim that BMAC was "already steppe" throughout. So BMAC will be stolen as a European product. Then, having made it European in "origin"/claimed it for themselves, they may even declare BMAC as Proto-Indo-Iranian urheimat and start admitting this was the "eastern source" of novel input into the later R1a(Z93) heavy steppe cultures like Sintashta/Srubna. (They may even admit the BMAC/SSVC region in general was the origin and source for Z93 lineages.)
Harvard has worked very hard on their little aDNA pet project especially to cement the IE steppism story. So they've moved away from R1a as the steppe marker to using "steppe" components for comparison.
So you know beforehand that if SSVC data already shows "ANI", the scheming anti-Hindu cabal that makes up Harvard - and their Indian parrots, who apparently can't think for themselves but will regurgitate [badly] Harvard's genetics dept (forgetting its aims are No Different than its "Hinduism studies" and "Indology" depts) - will conclude that any ANI in SSVC "proves steppe input into SSVC". That way the SSVC will be stolen as a European product too. (Already Plan A of the Anatolie PIE theory claimed SSVC was European/W-Eurasian as a product of IE migrants from Anatolia. Similarly, Sarianidi's preference for the Near East PIE theory claimed BMAC was a product of IEism.)
But steppism - the steppe PIE theory - Never before claimed BMAC let alone SSVC was theirs, only that BMAC and then SSVC were invaded by IEs. So Harvard will resort to more Europeanising storytelling to aggrandise their steppist narratives if SC/S Asian data already shows ANI. THAT is the direct consequence from the formal stats modelling ANI in Indians as an inevitable steppe product.
Finally, if my prediction is true - and I do not base it on aDNA but on Harvard's pattern of storytelling and appropriation (notice how they come to Indian data last, while they kept foreshadowing AIT throughout all their papers and affiliated papers, by having laid the groundwork via aDNA papers on the steppes through to Iran just for this*) -
again: if my prediction of what Harvard is going to conclude regarding "SC/S Asian" data is true, then it further proves that Harvard schemed the entire thing regarding India in advance and that there was no honest research at all, but that they're entirely working according to agenda. Since I predicted their conclusions not based on aDNA but on their clear pattern of scheming. (Then again, their whole u-turn on CHG showed their fraud already too.)
* Their focus on Indians in their IE related aDNA papers is quite telling in its own right.
HindOOs need to be forewarned, need to check the data for themselves, keep track of the IEist storytelling, and watch all IEists (not just the European kind), evaluating the latter's pronouncements in the context of said IEists' ideologies/pet projects/personal fantasies.
ADDED:
Some interesting features of the Iranian Neolithic genome found by Llorente 2016: dark hair, dark eyes, had at least one allele for SLC24A5 (the skin lightening variant that Indians have, and which was fixed in Yamna while they were busy gaining SLC45A2 from Levant Neolithic. BTW: if Iranian neolithic genomes already possessed SLC24A5 and if Indian must have "derived" it from outside rather than it being Indian and going from India -> Iran, then Indians could have got it from Iran directly rather than from the steppes. Obviously.)
One geneticist who is notorious for seeing "white people everywhere" found the Iranian Chalcolithic samples (which were around 5000 BCE and earlier) to be "Caucasoid", often with fair hair and blue eyes. I'm not saying he's right (even if someone had 2 copies of SLC24A5 doesn't make them necessarily fair: many very dark Indians have 2 copies), but if he is right, it's kind of ironic when 2000 BCE Poles were dark and the earliest steppe "IE" culture - Yamna, which started 3500 BCE - despite being millennia later than the Iran Chalcolithic samples were far darker and less European looking than Iranian Chalcolithic (though Iranian Chalcolithic are modelled as a source population to Yamnaya)...
The same guy also found red hair, skin lightening variants + lack of freckling, light eyes in Levant Neolithic and Armenian Chalcolithic samples.
Ironic if it turns out that there's nothing "European" about the "European" phenotype.
Correction: R1b in Caucasus not ~3700 BCE but closer to ~2700 BCE.
ADDED 2:
Yet another thing of note.
The 4 components that Harvard has settled on to model all "source" components that make of "West-Eurasians" are WHG, EHG, Levant Neolithic and Iran Neolithic. That is, Anatolian Neolithic - just like CHG - are no longer considered source components but are now modelled as an admixture of >=2 of these 4 components. Still, EHG is not a source component either. Neither does Iran Neolithic appear to be. (E.g. this too is argued to show indication of "already containing ASI".)
Anyway, the Lazaridis paper's putatively Iran-Mesolithic sample from the Hotu Caves consisted of both the Iran Neolithic component and some EHG (Lazaridis 2016, Fig 4b) - i.e. something EHG or EHG like was already in the southern region back in the Mesolithic. Who knows how widespread these "source components" were in Asia. (And since EHG already is made up of 25% WHG, the Iran 'Mesolithic' sample already had WHG too...)
Yamna is modelled as EHG + 43% (of a population related to) Iran-Chalcolithic. Iran Chalcolithic has been modelled as composed of Iran Neolithic, Levant Neolithic, a bit more of EHG than the single 'Mesolithic' Iranian sample had, and a wee bit of WHG. WHG is from the region too: it is "Near Eastern" or at least entered Europe via the Near East whatever its non-European origin (and Harvard's Fu 2016 paper was forced to leave the possibility of a Near Eastern entry point into Europe in, however other papers had already argued this on the basis of mtDNA etc).
Of the 4 source components Harvard has selected, there's nothing peculiarly steppe about EHG despite its name: it consists of the Near Eastern WHG and something on the Onge=ASI -> Han cline; while WHG, Iran Neolithic and Levant Neolithic are not steppe at all in origin and lie in a more horizontal line to Bharatam (the way 4th millennium BCE and later Sumer lies in horizontal line to Bharatam). And who knows what the origin of Iran Neolithic or the extent of ANE was.