DNA Sequencing Megathread! Neanderthals, Denisovans and other ancient DNA!

[Caliga]

To my knowledge I have no 'actual' Scandinavian ancestry, but my mother's Ancestry test indicated she is over 50% Scandinavian.  A huge percentage of her ancestors came from Yorkshire.

[Caliga]

East Anglia IIRC has the highest concentration of "Germanic" DNA markers so something to the idea of high levels of Angle migration.  It's a patrilineal lineage though.  It doesn't seem to have been a full-scale population movement.

Isn't East Anglia where most of the Danes settled under the Danelaw as well?

[dps]

East Anglia IIRC has the highest concentration of "Germanic" DNA markers so something to the idea of high levels of Angle migration.  It's a patrilineal lineage though.  It doesn't seem to have been a full-scale population movement.

Isn't East Anglia where most of the Danes settled under the Danelaw as well?

I thought it was Northumbria.  But I could easily be mistaken.

[jimmy olsen]

Lots of huge migrations occured within the neolithic and early bronze age. For example the native hunter gatherers of Great Britain were almost complete replaced in the Neolithic by agricultural people from the mainland. The same thing happened in the rest of Europe as well.

However by the late bronze age this became rarer because of the increased population sizes due to the agricultural revolution.

[Ed Anger]

Spellus got Anatoilan Deluge when was ridden by a Turk bareback.

Totally wasted on you rubes. Assholes.

[Valmy]

East Anglia IIRC has the highest concentration of "Germanic" DNA markers so something to the idea of high levels of Angle migration.  It's a patrilineal lineage though.  It doesn't seem to have been a full-scale population movement.

Isn't East Anglia where most of the Danes settled under the Danelaw as well?

Pretty much the entire east coast was at some point.

[Valmy]

East Anglia IIRC has the highest concentration of "Germanic" DNA markers so something to the idea of high levels of Angle migration.  It's a patrilineal lineage though.  It doesn't seem to have been a full-scale population movement.

Isn't East Anglia where most of the Danes settled under the Danelaw as well?

I thought it was Northumbria.  But I could easily be mistaken.

Depends on when we are talking about. I mean London was included at some point I think.

[The Minsky Moment]

Lots of huge migrations occured within the neolithic and early bronze age. For example the native hunter gatherers of Great Britain were almost complete replaced in the Neolithic by agricultural people from the mainland. The same thing happened in the rest of Europe as well

See this is what I mean
The H-G population was small and diffuse.  The Neolithic  migrants came to Britain over thousands of years.  This is not a "huge" migration.  A steady trickle over a long period of time does the trick along with natural increase using more reliable food gathering techniques.

[jimmy olsen]

Spellus got Anatoilan Deluge when was ridden by a Turk bareback.

Totally wasted on you rubes. Assholes.

I laughed and enjoyed it.

[jimmy olsen]

Lots of huge migrations occured within the neolithic and early bronze age. For example the native hunter gatherers of Great Britain were almost complete replaced in the Neolithic by agricultural people from the mainland. The same thing happened in the rest of Europe as well

See this is what I mean
The H-G population was small and diffuse.  The Neolithic  migrants came to Britain over thousands of years.  This is not a "huge" migration.  A steady trickle over a long period of time does the trick along with natural increase using more reliable food gathering techniques.

Incorrect

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/09/135962

...
In contrast to the Corded Ware Complex, which has previously been identified as arriving in central Europe following migration from the east, we observe limited genetic affinity between Iberian and central European Beaker Complex-associated individuals, and thus exclude migration as a significant mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, human migration did have an important role in the further dissemination of the Beaker Complex, which we document most clearly in Britain using data from 80 newly reported individuals dating to 3900-1200 BCE. British Neolithic farmers were genetically similar to contemporary populations in continental Europe and in particular to Neolithic Iberians, suggesting that a portion of the farmer ancestry in Britain came from the Mediterranean rather than the Danubian route of farming expansion.

Beginning with the Beaker period, and continuing through the Bronze Age, all British individuals harboured high proportions of Steppe ancestry and were genetically closely related to Beaker-associated individuals from the Lower Rhine area. We use these observations to show that the spread of the Beaker Complex to Britain was mediated by migration from the continent that replaced >90% of Britain's Neolithic gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the process that brought Steppe ancestry into central and northern Europe 400 years earlier.
...

http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-genome-study-finds-bronze-age-beaker-culture-invaded-britain-1.21996

Nature
Ancient-genome study finds Bronze Age 'Beaker culture' invaded Britain
Famous bell-shaped pots associated with group of immigrants who may have displaced Neolithic farmers.

• Ewen Callaway
  

17 May 2017


Bell-shaped pottery from Segovia, Spain, that is characteristic of the Bronze Age 'Bell Beaker' culture.

Around 4,500 years ago, a mysterious craze for bell-shaped pottery swept across prehistoric Europe. Archaeologists have debated the significance of the pots — artefacts that define the 'Bell Beaker' culture — for more than a century. Some argue that they were the Bronze Age's hottest fashion, shared across different groups of people. But others see them as evidence for an immense migration of 'Beaker folk' across the continent.

Now, one of the biggest ever ancient-genome studies suggests both ideas are true. The study, posted on bioRxiv on 9 May1, analysed the genomes of 170 ancient Europeans and compared them to hundreds of other ancient and modern genomes. In Iberia and central Europe, skeletons found near Bell Beaker artefacts share few genetic ties — suggesting that they were not one migrating population. But in Britain, individuals connected to Beaker pots seem to be a distinct, genetically related group that almost wholly replaced the island's earlier inhabitants (see 'Bell Beaker fashion').

If true, this suggests that Britain's Neolithic farmers (who left behind massive rock relics, including Stonehenge) were elbowed out by Beaker invaders. "To me, that's definitely surprising," says Pontus Skoglund, a population geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the research. "The people who built Stonehenge probably didn't contribute any ancestry to later people, or if they did, it was very little."

Some archaeologists say that the study does not prove the scale of the British Beaker invasion, but agree that it is a major work that typifies how huge ancient-DNA studies are disrupting archaeology. It's "groundbreaking", says Benjamin Roberts, an archaeologist at Durham University, UK.

The Bell Beaker phenomenon
The variety of Beaker artefacts makes it hard to define them as emerging from one distinctive culture: many researchers prefer to call their spread the 'Bell Beaker phenomenon', says Marc Vander Linden, an archaeologist at University College London. The distinctive pots, possibly used as drinking vessels, are nearly ubiquitous; flint arrowheads, copper daggers and stone wrist guards are common, too. But there are regional differences in ceramics and burial style. And the immense, yet discontinuous, geographical range of Beaker sites — from Scandinavia to Morocco, and Ireland to Hungary — has sown more confusion. After a few hundred years, the pots vanish from the record.2. Past ancient-DNA studies have also hinted at a huge migration, linking Beaker-associated individuals in central Europe to an influx of 'Steppe' peoples from what is now Russia and Ukraine3.

The latest work, led by geneticists Iñigo Olalde and David Reich at Harvard Medical School, involved 103 researchers at dozens of institutions, including Bronze Age archaeologists. Reich's team analysed more than 1 million DNA variants across the genomes of individuals who lived in Europe between 4700 and 1200 bc. The team declined to comment because the paper has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The analysis seems to dispel the idea of one 'Beaker people' arising from a specific source. Individuals in Iberia (which has been proposed as the wellspring for the culture) shared little ancestry with those in central Europe. Even Beaker-associated people in the same region came from different genetic stock. That pattern contrasts with earlier upheavals in Europe driven by mass migrations, says Skoglund. Bell Beaker "is the best example of something that is pots and not people" that are spreading, he says.

But in Britain, the arrival of Bell Beaker pots coincided with a shift in the island's genetics. Reich's team analysed the genomes of 19 Beaker individuals across Britain and found that they shared little similarity with those of 35 Neolithic farmers there. The pot-makers were more closely related to 14 individuals from the Netherlands, and had lighter-coloured skin and eyes than the people they replaced. By 2000 bc, signals of Neolithic ancestry disappear from ancient genomes in Britain, Reich's team find — largely replaced by Beaker-associated DNA. Such turnover is "pretty striking", says Garrett Hellenthal, a statistical geneticist at University College London who has studied the peopling of the island through the genomes of living Brits. More data could reveal surprises, but the team makes a good case that Beaker folk replaced the region's early farmers, he says.

Reich's team calculates that Britain saw a  greater than 90% shift in its genetic make-up. But Roberts says he doesn't see evidence for such a huge shift in the archaeological record. The rise of cremation in Bronze Age Britain could have biased the finding, he cautions, because it might have eliminated bones that could have been sampled for DNA. Although archaeologists are excited to see ancient DNA yield breakthroughs in problems that have vexed their field for decades, says Linden, he expects some push back against the latest study's conclusions. "It's not at all the end of the story."

[The Brain]

I've always been curious about what we would know about the spread of pre-historic cultures if textiles and wood had been preserved as well as pottery. Complete overlap? Significant differences?

[Josquius]

British genetic history is either a complete replacement every few hundred years or a unchanged mass for Eternity.
Or anything in between.
Depends on your political bias which studies you believe.

[The Brain]

I believe a people of pureblood Dolphs once bestrode the Isles like colossi.

[The Minsky Moment]

Incorrect

It's hard to evaluate that study because the data is shunted off into supplements.
But it appears to make two key arguments:
1) Bell beaker material culture is shared by people of totally different ethnic backgrounds and hence the presence of the pots does not in itself imply pop movement
2) A population invasion is hypothesized in Britain from 2500 BCE - 2000 BCE of "steppe migrants".  The hypothesis is based on identifying the R1b haplogroup with "steppe migrants" arriving in Western Europe around 4500 years ago (presumably this is R1b1a though not specified).

The identifying of R1b in Europe with a large-scale steppe migration 4500 years ago is based on a prior paper by Haak et al.  (See fn 2).  The question is - is that correct?  My understanding is that is a disputed point and some postulate the presence in Europe haplotype at much earlier dates.  If the Haak theory is mistaken or even incomplete, the whole argument collapses.  I.e. all you have is a pre-existing group of R1bs that adopts the bell beaker material culture not a new migration.

But for the sake of argument, let's say the paper is right and "steppe migrants" substantially replaced the prior population over 500 years.

If you assume a Neolithic population of Britain of <= 50,000, that would require movement of a couple hundred people a year.  Is that a "mass migration"?  Depends how you define it I guess.

[The Minsky Moment]

BTW the Haak paper had a problem sample - there was an R1b1 haplotype in Spain about 5300BCE -- i.e. around the time it is hypothesized Iberians may have been migrating to Britain and bringing Neolithic material culture with them, but almost 3000 years before the Timmay paper says R1b first came to Britain.  Keep in mind that the entire sample size of the Haak paper was only 69, spread across the entire continent of Europe.