Friday, April 1, 2022

Discussion thread: New ancient DNA from Xinjiang (2022)

Bronze and Iron Age population movements underlie Xinjiang population history

Vikas Kumar, Wenjung Wang , Jie Zhang, Yongqiang Wang, Qiurong Ruan, Jianjun Yuxiao, Hong Wu, Xingjun Huxin, Hua Wu, Qiaomei Fu +17 authors Authors Info & Affiliations

SCIENCE • 31 Mar 2022 • Vol 376, Issue 6588 • pp. 62-69 • DOI: 10.1126/science.abk1534


Abstract:

5000 years of Xinjiang genetics

The Xinjiang region of China is bordered by mountains and represents an important historical region. Sampling ancient genomes, Kumar et al. investigated the changes in populations of this region over time from the Bronze Age, ~5000 to 3000 years before the present (BP), covering the Iron Age, ~3000 to 2000 years BP, and into the Historical Era, ~2000 years BP. This analysis identified that older individuals represented ancestries from Steppe cultures, and that a later inflow of East and Central Asian ancestry entered the region around the end of the Bronze Age toward the beginning of the Iron Age. During the Historical Era, mixing continued but retained a core Steppe component such that populations form a genetic continuum. This retention of genetic continuity in a central population is surprising because it represents patterns more typically observed in isolated populations. Furthermore, these genetic links identify a previously unknown lineage that could potentially explain the spread of the Indo-European languages.

My prayers have been answered, Dyeus bless! This will undoubtedly be one of my favourite articles to have come out this year. A big shoutout to the collaborative efforts of all the authors involved, and thank you for providing this data to us.


I was currently working on a rather extensive blog entry about the western tarim basin during the bronze and iron ages, and what I think the most likely origin for the khotanese language would be’. Many of the samples in this article actually come from sites I was discussing in that blog entry such as suodonbuluke sites, jirzankal and Sampula. The entry was what I would say 95% finished and sits at 45 pages and 10000 words, but I will have to postpone it a little bit in order to properly cover the data coming by way of genetics, because it was first only done on an archaeological basis. So far from what I’ve seen, what I wrote aligns perfectly with the results presented here.


They did address the topic of the Khotanese language in the article, this quote sums it up:

Further, although the spread of languages is not always congruent with population histories (32), the presence of Saka ancestry in Xinj_IA populations supports an IA introduction of the Indo-Iranian Khotanese language, which was spoken by the Saka and later attested to in this region (19).

This is something I would disagree with. I think that these findings of the article would actually be more relevant to the Khotanese language:

The IA also shows an increase in the frequency of BMAC ancestry in the f4-statistics comparisons (figs. S19 and S20) (21). Seven IA populations were found to contain BMAC ancestry (30 to 47%), and we observed four IA populations that could also be modeled using Indus periphery ancestry sources SPGT and two with Gonur_2BA (18 to 37%) (Fig. 3A and tables S9 and S10). The increase in the appearance of BMAC ancestry suggests a substantial movement of people from either BMAC- or Indus periphery–derived populations into the Xinjiang region during the IA (Fig. 3A), most likely through the IAMC route over the Pamir and Tianshan Mountains.

But I’ll explain my position in due time. In the meantime you could read the article Tocharian B etswe ‘mule’ and Eastern East Iranian by M. Peyrot, because the section on the origin of Khotanese allings quite closely with my view on the matter. 


Back to the article, here you can see the layout of the sampling locations:

Fig. 1. Xinjiang sampling locations along with their groupings used in this study. (A) Map showing the geographic sampling locations of the archaeological sites included in this study. (B) BA, IA, and HE time periods are depicted on a timeline in years before the present (BP). The number of individuals from each site and time period is given in parentheses. Abbreviations are defined in table S1 and the supplementary materials.


As well their principal component analysis (PCA) and charts containing ADMIXTURE and Qpadm Analyses: 


Fig. 2. PCA and ADMIXTURE analyses of Xinjiang populations. (A) Ancient Xinjiang and other ancient populations are shown as different colors and shapes.Present-day populations are shown as gray circles, and only major groups are included. Most of the ancient Xinjiang populations lie on the cline extending from European and Siberian to East Asian populations. The published populations of Dzungaria_EBA, Tarim_EMBA, and Shirenzigou_IA are depicted in various black shapes. IA north (IA_N), south (IA_S), west (IA_W), and east (IA_E) are the geographical locations of the IA individuals. (B) ADMIXTURE analysis of all the newly reported ancient individuals at K = 7. The four major components are maximized in the following populations: ANE (green), Iranian farmer (red), Anatolian farmer (violet), and East Asian hunter gatherer (yellow). The other three are maximized in Han (orange), Mixe (cyan), and Papuan (dark blue). Supplementary figures of PCA and ADMIXTURE show all the present-day and ancient populations (21).


Fig. 3. Inferred qpAdm models and summary of ancient Xinjiang with population movements. (A) The proximal qpAdm admixture proportions for all Xinjiang populations. Each bar represents admixture proportion of the listed subgroups for BA, LBA, IA, and HE populations. Subgroup details are provided in table S1 and the supplementary text, and qpAdm modeling results are provided in detail in tables S5 to S13 (21). The Swat Valley Protohistoric Grave Type IA populations are in the SPGT group, and the Yellow River basin Middle Neolithic population is in the YR_MN group. (B) Inferred scenarios of admixtures in BA, LBA, IA, and HE Xinjiang with possible population movements shown as arrows. Xinjiang BA populations can be mostly characterized with Steppe_EMBA and Xinj_BA1_TMBA1 (Tarim Basin EMBA) ancestries with additional ancestries of Central Asia (BMAC)—as observed in Chemurcheck culture (Steppe_EMA)—and Northeast Asia (Shamanka). MLBA Xinjiang populations contain additional Andronovo Steppe, Central Asian (BMAC), and East Asian ancestries, whereas the IA and HE populations show the major Xinjiang and Steppe MLBA ancestries with additional components from BMAC and East Asian (EA) sources, shown as a pie chart summarizing the qpAdm modeling of IA and HE populations using the Xinj_LBA population (table S13 and fig. S28) (21). Where possible, coloring corresponds to ancestry in (A).


As a self-admitted Scythian nerd I am incredibly happy as we have a whole bunch of antiquity period nomadic samples from the Ili valley region, something I wasn’t expecting soon. The Suodonbuluke culture sites is a Saka material culture closely linked to the Saka around the Tian Shan mountains.  Here is a little paragraph from the section about the Saka period in the Ili valley from my upcoming and currently postponed blog entry:

The iron age burials in the upper Ili valley constitute a material culture dubbed the Suodunbulake culture (or Tiemulike culture) , and this material culture covers the entirety of the first millennium before the common era. These archaeologists argued that the culture can be divided in three stages, each represented by the type sites of Qiongkeke, Suodonbulake and Yeshenkelieke. The first stage represents the arrival of the nomads, the second stage the prime of the culture, and the final stage represents the decline and arrival of new nomadic entities such as the Yuezhi and Wusun.


Here are some artefacts from the Saka period of the upper Ili Valley:



There are also several samples that are labelled as “Scythian, Yuezhi and Wusun related”. It might be a small detail but I really appreciate it that they didn’t just label these as Yuezhi or Wusun in similar fashion to other articles, because it is known from historical records that all three populations were present in the region during the period of Wusun rule. It is even described as such in Volume 96 of the Hanshu. There are also samples from Pazyryk-related sites of the southern Altai.


Unfortunately samples from the eastern half of the Tarim Basin, a region associated with Tocharian speakers, were not that prevalent in this article. Perhaps the two samples from the Xianshuiquangucheng (XSQG) and the two from Baiyanghe (BYH) could be linked to the Tocharians. On the map Xikakandasayi (XKKD) is shown in the same location as XSQC but according to the supplementary the site is on the southern rim of the Tarim Basin and proximate to Tibet, but the site would fall within the assumed distribution of “Tocharian C” on the southern rim of the Tarim Basin.


Map showcasing the proposed distribution of the Tocharian languages. Source: Wikimedia


However these are only a handful of genomes, and these regions were on the silk road. The Tocharian speaking cities were frequented by many foreigners, and in earlier times city states such as Loulan were allied with the Xiongnu empire. Thus it is not certain that these samples would have been Tocharian speakers or be genetically representative of Tocharian peoples. It may also be that some of the samples from different areas actually were Tocharians buried.


The Swordbearers of Kizil, likely representing Tocharian noblemen.


What is fascinating however is that we have samples from the Zaghunluq cemetery, an iron age cemetery in the southern Tarim Basin that contains several hundred tombs. You might be familiar with some of the people buried here, because one of the most famous Tarim mummies, the Cherchen man, was from the Zaghunluq cemetery.


The Cherchen Man in all his glory


This burial site is one of the reasons why I developed such a fascination for the peoples and societies of the Taklamakan desert, and will always remain special to me.This article provided no less than seventeen sequenced genomes from this cemetery, which is amazing. Unfortunately it isn’t clear which individuals these samples were taken from, and if any belonged to the famous mummies of Cherchen. Here are some images of the mummies from Zaghunluq:








The samples date to 2491-1889 BP, which to my understanding would be a bit younger than the proposed dates for the burial of Cherchen Man, which is generally placed somewhere in between 1000 and 600 BC.  Eleven out of the sixteen samples were males, C3654 had Y-chromosome haplogroup O1a, C3674 and C837 had Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b1a and C840 had no further assignment beyond R1. The vast majority (7) of the individuals from Zaghunluq carried Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b2 or R-PH155. This haplogroup is a rather interesting one that has been seen in samples coming from Shirenzigou, The Xiongnu period, the Hunnic periods of Central Asia and Europe respectively. Last year we received genetic data on the earliest Tarim mummies, derived from a relict population of predominant Ancient North Eurasian origin, and all of their male paternal lineages were R1b-PH155. If you want to read more check out this older entry of mine.

Now given that Zaghunluq likely was a cemetery used by a local community over a period of centuries, it is likely that many of the people buried here shared patrilineal kinship with one another. Thus the high amount of R-PH155 at this site might not have been reflective of the rates of R-PH200 of their society as a whole. The idea that there is more than a thousand years of paternal continuity between some of the bronze age and some of the iron age mummies, despite all the population influxes that happened in between is rather amazing though.


C3674 Is listed as having R1b1a1b1a1a1c2b2b1a2 which I think translates to R-S21728, which I doubt is correct. The other call is just R1 so I think something is going on here. The other with R1b1a was C837 but there was no further designation beyond that clade. I’d say it would be more likely that if they both had R1b1a, it would have been under R-Z2103.


Although we don’t know the Y-DNA haplogroup of Cherchen man, I think R1b would be nearly certain. But which one? R-PH155 shows up in the highest frequency amongst these samples, making it likely that Cherchen man also would've belonged to this lineage. But it is also possible he was of the minority R1b1a or O1a lineages present here, or that he had a paternal origin unrelated to the other individuals at Cherchen, being perhaps R1a or Q.


Another debate surrounding Zaghunluq would be the ethnolinguistic identity of the people there. It is still rather unsolved if they would have been Khotanes speaking, Tocharian speaking, or speakers of a different language, whether Indo-European or not. Some of the materials at the site connect it to the peoples of the west, but the location of the burial would match up closer with “Tocharian C” speaking people than Khotanese speaking people. I think the autosomal ancestry of these samples could help out immensely here.


However we have far more samples to discuss than the Zaghunluq samples of course. I’m interested to have a closer look at the samples from Jirzankal, an iron age archaeological site near modern day Tashkurgan that may have been an ancient Zororastrian religious site based on the fire altars and burials that have been interpreted as exposure burials. Many of the individuals at the site weren’t local to the area, and may have been religious pilgrims. Jirzankal also is one of the oldest sites to have cannabis with elevated THC contents, suggesting selection for psychoactive purposes according to this article. 



What a place to spark one up eh? Here is one of the fire altars from the site:


There are also the northern samples dated to the Afanasievo and Chemurchek periods to check out, the Andronovo samples of the later bronze age, the many iron age samples across Xinjiang, and the samples from the antiquity and medieval periods.


I guess I will treat this thread as my spot to dump data and speculate about the samples and I would like to invite my fellow readers to partake. So definitely return to this thread and check out the comment section every now and then, because the real fun stuff hasn’t even started yet!

33 comments:

  1. OK, so which population with unambiguous Afanasievo ancestry is the closest one to the Tarim Basin?

    And is there any sort of steppe ancestry in the samples from the eastern/southern Tarim Basin?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In the article they modeled several of the samples using predominant steppe_EMBA/Afanasievo sources over steppe_mlba, one being C837/ZGLK_IA5_oIA1 which was modeled as predominantly Xinj_BA3 derived, a label given to the Chemurchek samples and one Afanasivo sample. That is the Zaghunluq male sample with R1b1a btw. But if you recall the Shirenzigou debacle, I'm a bit wary of Steppe_EMBA over Steppe_MLBA results without being able to double check it myself. The way the admixture proportions are organised with all these split labels is a bit confusing at times as well, but manageable.

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  2. Here is what I have been able to cook up playing around with various populations in Global25:

    C818:
    Target: Zaghunluq_IA:C818
    Distance: 3.2625% / 0.03262520
    38.2 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    26.8 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    15.6 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    14.2 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    5.2 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1

    Target: Zaghunluq_IA:C818
    Distance: 3.2991% / 0.03299057
    32.0 MNG_Slab_Grave_EIA_1
    27.0 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    21.4 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    14.8 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    4.8 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1

    C3671:
    Target: Zaghunluq_IA:C3671
    Distance: 1.7213% / 0.01721320
    32.2 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    29.0 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    14.0 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    12.6 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    12.2 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1

    Target: Zaghunluq_IA:C3671
    Distance: 2.6362% / 0.02636170
    51.0 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2
    15.2 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    14.6 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    10.4 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    8.8 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1

    Target: Zaghunluq_IA:C3671
    Distance: 2.1186% / 0.02118592
    42.6 TKM_IA
    21.4 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
    14.0 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    11.4 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2
    10.6 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN

    C830:
    Target: Zaghunluq_IA1:C830
    Distance: 2.1251% / 0.02125068
    34.2 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    27.8 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    12.0 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    11.2 MNG_Munkhkhairkhan_MBA_1
    10.6 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
    4.2 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2

    Target: Zaghunluq_IA1:C830
    Distance: 2.0239% / 0.02023875
    53.2 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2
    13.2 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    13.2 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    12.6 MNG_Munkhkhairkhan_MBA_1
    6.6 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
    1.2 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2

    C833:
    Target: Zaghunluq_IA1:C833
    Distance: 2.3430% / 0.02343007
    31.6 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    26.6 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    21.0 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    14.6 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
    6.2 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2

    Target: Zaghunluq_IA1:C833
    Distance: 1.9813% / 0.01981300
    52.6 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2
    21.8 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    11.2 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
    9.8 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    4.6 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2

    C836:
    Target: Zaghunluq_IA2:C836
    Distance: 2.5649% / 0.02564930
    30.2 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    22.8 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    19.8 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    15.6 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    11.6 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1

    Target: Zaghunluq_IA2:C836
    Distance: 2.2498% / 0.02249815
    45.6 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2
    20.4 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    14.4 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    11.0 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    8.6 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1

    C3666:
    Target: Zaghunluq_IA2:C3666
    Distance: 2.3387% / 0.02338747
    32.4 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    25.2 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    23.6 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    13.6 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    5.2 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1

    Target: Zaghunluq_IA2:C3666
    Distance: 2.5293% / 0.02529255
    47.0 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2
    22.2 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    14.6 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    14.4 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    1.8 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1

    C812:
    Target: Zaghunluq_IA3:C812
    Distance: 1.8459% / 0.01845889
    33.4 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    24.6 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    24.6 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    9.6 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    7.8 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1

    Target: Zaghunluq_IA3:C812
    Distance: 1.8191% / 0.01819124
    25.8 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    25.0 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    23.8 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    18.6 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2
    6.8 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1

    C837:
    Target: Zaghunluq_IA5:C837
    Distance: 2.1761% / 0.02176103
    43.0 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    30.2 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    12.8 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
    8.4 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    5.6 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN

    Target: Zaghunluq_IA5:C837
    Distance: 2.6140% / 0.02614031
    55.8 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2
    22.2 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    8.8 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
    6.6 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    6.6 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2


    C3652:
    Target: Zaghunluq_IA2:C3652
    Distance: 1.9519% / 0.01951928
    29.4 RUS_Afanasievo
    19.8 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    16.2 RUS_Okunevo_BA
    12.2 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    12.0 UZB_Bustan_BA
    10.4 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA

    Target: Zaghunluq_IA2:C3652
    Distance: 2.0930% / 0.02092986
    31.4 TKM_IA
    27.0 CHN_Dzungaria_EBA1
    22.6 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    10.0 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    9.0 RUS_Okunevo_BA

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thoughts:

    C837 was modeled primarily using Xinj_BA3 in the article, yet on G25 seems to not want any Afanasievo ancestry when Sintashta is involved. This was one of the samples with R1b1a. The only sample which seems to prefer steppe_emba over steppe_mlba on Global25 is C3652.

    Interestingly Okunev worked well as a reference for that one, and there was a lower affinity towards Tarim_EMBA and the TKM_Gonur1_BA_o1 populations. In the last model Kyzlbulak_MLBA2 and Tarim_EMBA came out at 0%.

    From what I can gather, most of the Zaghunluq samples to me seem a mix between bronze age Indo-Iranians which mixed with populations along the Inner Asian mountain corridor before entering the Tarim Basin. I used Sintashta_MLBA as a reference for early Indo-Iranian ancestry and TKM_Gonur1_BA_o as a reference for the central Asian ancestry, because its profile is conveniently split between the southern central asian agriculturalist populations and an ANE-rich population from Central Asia. Kyzlbulak_2 is a bronze age sample from southeastern Kazakhstan which effectively looks like a two-way mixture between such populations.

    East Asian ancestries represented by Upper_Yellow_River_LN and Ulaanzuukh LBA could represent admixture from populations to their south and northeast respectively. I also included MNG_Munkhkhairkhan_MBA_1 as a proxy for the Siberian ancestry typical of Scytho-Siberian populations but this wasn’t a necessary proxy for these samples.

    While the results seem to make sense for the most part, I am a bit puzzled about C3652 and C837 due to their Y-chromosome haplogroups. C3652 had Y-dna R1b2 according to the article like most of the Zaghunluq samples, yet seems to differ a bit in terms of ancestry or preferred sources. C837 on the other hand had Y-dna haplogroup R1b1a2, yet didn’t seem to want any Afanasievo/Dzungaria_EBA ancestry on G25.

    Using the other Zaghunluq samples as a composite, C3652 turns out like this:

    Target: Zaghunluq_IA2:C3652
    Distance: 1.8640% / 0.01863975
    35.4 Zaghunluq_IA
    21.8 TKM_IA
    19.0 CHN_Dzungaria_EBA1
    12.8 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    6.2 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    4.8 RUS_Okunevo_BA

    It could be that the excess steppe_EMBA ancestry of C3652 came from his maternal side. Or it could simply be that these R1b2 and R1b1a carrying populations had already been mixing with one another centuries ago, and then there you could easily have a scenario where there isn’t much correlation between Y-dna origins and the current autosomal profile.

    That being said, I would definitely like to see what these samples would look like using software such as qpadm. While the results are most often very similar, there sometimes can be small differences in the results between Global25 and qpadm. And since we are dealing with many ancestry components that have genetic overlap to a degree, small differences could lead to stark differences in the results.

    So after having taken a look at these samples, my best guess is that the Zaghunluq people were of Indo-Iranian rather than Tocharian origin, despite their location being within the boundaries of the Tocharian C linguistic distribution. I think they were descendants of late bronze age Andronovo pastoralists who entered the Tarim Basin and mixed with the native inhabitants of the Taklamakan desert as they settled in it. Although it isn’t a huge part of their autosomal makeup, the majority of the paternal haplogroups of these Zaghunluq genomes were in probability derived from them.

    Although it is quite likely these people were Indo-Iranian peoples, I am not sure if they would have been Khotanese speakers. But as is argued in the article of M. Peyrot that I linked in the blog entry,Tocharian does have a substrate from an unknown, archaic Iranian language, from which Tocharian acquired a loanword for mule. Perhaps a similar language was spoken by the people of the Zaghunluq cemetery? Although, it is also possible that these people did not speak an Indo-European language at all.

    Let me know what you think!

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  4. I took a look at the Soudonbulake culture (Saka) samples from the Wutulan site. I've at my own liberty renamed the label of these samples as Wutulan_Suodunbulake_IA for convenience sake, because there are two other iron age samples from Wutulan that were not ascribed to the Soudunbulake culture despite being contemporary to the others. Perhaps something to do with the burial context of the samples?

    Here they are:

    C1634
    Target: Wutulan_Suodunbulake_IA:C1634
    Distance: 2.4754% / 0.02475393
    42.0 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    24.8 TKM_Gonur1_BA
    22.8 MNG_Khovsgol_BA
    10.4 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o

    Target: Wutulan_Suodunbulake_IA:C1634
    Distance: 2.9715% / 0.02971514
    46.0 TKM_IA
    44.0 KAZ_Tasmola_IA
    10.0 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2
    0.0 Wutulan_LBA2

    Y-DNA: -
    Mtdna: A26
    Age: 2353-2183 BP

    C1646
    Target: Wutulan_Suodunbulake_IA:C1646
    Distance: 2.5654% / 0.02565357
    37.6 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    31.6 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    25.4 MNG_Khovsgol_BA
    5.4 TKM_Gonur1_BA

    Target: Wutulan_Suodunbulake_IA:C1646
    Distance: 2.9188% / 0.02918822
    50.4 KAZ_Tasmola_IA
    26.2 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2
    23.4 TKM_IA
    0.0 Wutulan_LBA2

    Y-DNA: -
    Mtdna: T2c1a
    Age: 2353-2007* BP

    C1647
    Target: Wutulan_Suodunbulake_IA:C1647
    Distance: 2.2813% / 0.02281348
    42.4 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    29.4 MNG_Khovsgol_BA
    16.8 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    11.4 TKM_Gonur1_BA

    Target: Wutulan_Suodunbulake_IA:C1647
    Distance: 1.9962% / 0.01996167
    56.8 KAZ_Tasmola_IA
    23.4 TKM_IA
    19.8 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2
    0.0 Wutulan_LBA2

    Y-DNA: R1a1
    Mtdna: A14
    Age: 2353-2007* BP

    C1649
    Target: Wutulan_Suodunbulake_IA:C1649
    Distance: 2.4806% / 0.02480621
    40.8 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    29.2 MNG_Khovsgol_BA
    15.4 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    14.6 TKM_Gonur1_BA

    Target: Wutulan_Suodunbulake_IA:C1649
    Distance: 2.2053% / 0.02205297
    56.2 KAZ_Tasmola_IA
    26.8 TKM_IA
    17.0 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2
    0.0 Wutulan_LBA2

    Y-DNA: Q2a1c1
    Mtdna: U5a1b
    Age: 2353-2007* BP

    These certainly look like Saka to me, and were very similar to the previously uncovered Saka samples from the Tian Shan region. Here are the other two samples:

    C1636
    Target: Wutulan_IA:C1636
    Distance: 3.5560% / 0.03556033
    53.0 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    28.6 MNG_Khovsgol_BA
    9.6 TKM_Gonur1_BA
    8.8 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o

    Target: Wutulan_IA:C1636
    Distance: 3.3978% / 0.03397844
    56.0 KAZ_Tasmola_IA
    21.2 TKM_IA
    15.0 Wutulan_LBA2
    7.8 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2

    Y-DNA: -
    Mtdna: C1e
    Age: 2353-2007* BP

    C1637
    Target: Wutulan_IA:C1637
    Distance: 3.8968% / 0.03896803
    55.4 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    28.2 MNG_Khovsgol_BA
    12.6 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    3.8 TKM_Gonur1_BA

    Target: Wutulan_IA:C1637
    Distance: 3.6695% / 0.03669516
    54.6 KAZ_Tasmola_IA
    21.8 Wutulan_LBA2
    18.4 KAZ_Kyzlbulak_MLBA2
    5.2 TKM_IA

    Y-DNA: N~/no call
    Mtdna: C4
    Age: 2299-2007 BP

    These two samples were quite similar in terms of autosomal ancestry, the main difference being that they had a higher amount of steppe_mlba ancestry and less southern Central Asian ancestry.

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  5. Thanks, I'm trying to get my head around all of this now.

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  6. How does R1b-M73 fit into the picture if at all?

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    Replies
    1. I'm not sure if it does, I haven't seen it amongst any of the samples here. As far as I know the R-M73 clade of Botai and later samples were downstream of R1b lineages found amongst European foragers: https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-Y13200/

      These clades are a less basal split than R1b-PH155, and probably can be linked to the EHG ancestry in neolithic West-Siberians.

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    2. So M73 is EHG and not a WSHG lineage then originally? What would the original WSHG lineage have been then?

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    3. A boatload of Q lineages and some east eurasian derived ones as well probably, Botai had a diverged N clade but its hard to tell if that's linked to the east eurasian ancestry inherent to WSHGs or if it is linked to the excess East Eurasian ancestry the Botai samples have.

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    4. Yea that makes sense. Also it is weird how Q missed out on expanding from the PC steppe.

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    5. Sorry for my late reply here. There probably were Q lineages such as https://www.yfull.com/tree/Q-FT380500/ that were part of the Proto-Indo-European paternal package as this has popped up amongst regular Afanasievo peoples as well as a Corded Ware sample from Bohemia. But there does seem to be a bit of a 'great divide' in terms of R vs Q on both sides of the Urals. Perhaps the temporary flooding of the Caspian delta played a role in that because for a few thousand years both sides would've been a little separated.

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    6. True but it seems Q wasn't common in WSHG or Tarim_EMBA people and somehow become far eastern which can't be explained by the Caspian delta flooding.

      Also what type of clothes are those Tocharian noblemen wearing? Is that an open faced type robe?

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    7. "True but it seems Q wasn't common in WSHG or Tarim_EMBA people and somehow become far eastern"

      Steppe Maykop and Kumsay both carried Q, as did Okunevo which arose from a migration of foragers coming out of western Siberia. The appareance of Q in samples further east, such as those from the Cis-Baikal or northwestern Mongolia are in probability related to that same wave. We have a few neolithic/eneolithic genomes from West-Siberia and northern Central Asia, so I don't think there is enough to make claims about how common Q was amongst such populations. The only really far eastern clade is Q-M120, which is something I would associate with the earlier assimilation of ANE-rich populations in Northeast Asia by East Asians.

      "Also what type of clothes are those Tocharian noblemen wearing? Is that an open faced type robe?" Seems like the generic central asian caftans to be honest, they look just like the robes worn by Sogdians and other Central Asian peoples would've wore.

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    8. Thanks for the info on Q. Do you know if this Central Asian robe style has links to east or west asia?

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  7. I took a look at the Saka/Yuezhi/Wusun period samples from the article. Most of them look pretty identical to the Soudonbulake/Tian Shan Saka samples. The only one that stands out is this one:

    Target: Gongnaisi_IA2:C3337
    Distance: 2.6543% / 0.02654349
    49.4 MNG_Sagly_EIA_4
    46.8 Wutulan_Suodunbulake_IA
    3.8 RUS_Late_Xiongnu
    0.0 MNG_Xiongnu_Central_Asian

    Although if other samples had equal contribution from Eastern Scythians and southern central Asian Iranians then they could've had a similar genetic profile despite different origins. Like this for example:

    Target: Tangbalesayi_IA1:C628
    Distance: 2.9925% / 0.02992520
    53.2 MNG_Sagly_EIA_4
    37.4 TKM_IA
    7.6 MNG_Xiongnu_Central_Asian
    1.8 RUS_Late_Xiongnu
    0.0 Wutulan_Suodunbulake_IA

    That said I find that a bit less likely than these just being comprised of the same stock which lived there before.

    I don't think this Sagly/Pazyryk-like ancestry would be a sign of (original) Yuezhi or Wusun ancestry because their origins would be from from eastern Xinjiang and western Gansu. I'd expect ancestry streams carried by the samples from Shirenzigou or the Central Asian Xiongnu samples from Damgaard 2018 to also show up in that case but they did not. It could be related to the Hujie though, which lived in the southern Altai.

    C4276 dates to 2492-2347 BP which is centuries before the Yuezhi (165 BC) or the Wusun (132 BC) migrated to the Ili region. Most of the other samples have upper boundaries that would predate these migrations and lower boundaries that would postdate them, the only one securely within this migration period would be C3325.

    I think I'm going to play a game of "Find a Tocharian" next, wish me luck lol.

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    Replies
    1. Was Gansu also inhabited by Tarim_EMBA and Afanasievo type people?

      What about the Ordos culture?

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    2. Don't think so no. In the bronze age you had the Siba/Huoshaogou culture in western Gansu, and the Tianshanbeilu even a bit further to the west. The material culture there is quite eastern, although there definitely were contacts with the western neighbours.

      The Ordos culture is quite young, from the 4th century BC. It is quite obvious a quite Pazyryk-like material culture and scholars such as A. Kovalev think that the Pazyryk people migrated there and at the very least established an elite there, he also links them to the Loufan peoples menioned in Chinese history.

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    3. I am guessing the Gansu cultures were East Eurasian related and the Ordos people would have been a minority within their region?

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    4. Yeah they might've been similar to the people of the Qijia culture, so Upper_Yellow_river_LN related. Can't say for sure though without genetic samples but it would make sense, one of the samples from Bayanghe has an O clade that points to that direct but it also could've come from the tibetan plateau perhaps. As for the Ordos culture, I can't say for sure because there isn't sufficient information available.

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  8. The two iron age samples from Baiyanghe could be the closest thing we have to Tocharians at the moment. These samples were found roughly 100 km north of Turpan and 130 km east of Urumqi, which would match up with the Jushi kingdom, or specifically the Posterior Jushi. Right, place, right time, right ancestry?

    C3616
    Target: Baiyanghe_IA2:C3616
    Distance: 1.3100% / 0.01310002
    28.4 MNG_Afanasievo_1
    27.4 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    16.4 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    13.6 KGZ_Aigyrzhal_BA
    7.2 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
    7.0 UZB_Bustan_BA

    Y-DNA: -
    MTDNA: T2d1
    Age: 2107-1943 BP

    C3617
    Target: Baiyanghe_IA1:C3617
    Distance: 2.4107% / 0.02410718
    25.8 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    18.2 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
    15.8 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    14.4 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN
    13.0 UZB_Bustan_BA
    12.8 RUS_Afanasievo

    Target: Baiyanghe_IA1:C3617
    Distance: 1.7220% / 0.01721990
    53.4 CHN_Zaghunluq_IA5
    25.0 CHN_Shirenzigou_IA_F004
    16.0 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    5.6 CHN_Upper_Yellow_River_LN

    Y-DNA: O2a2b1a1a1
    MTDNA: R1b1
    Age: 2337-2150 BP

    I am a bit less sure about C3617 as depending on the references I used I could get wildly varying results. However a combination of Zaghunluq_IA and the Shirenzigou sample F004 worked quite decently, getting a distance under 2%. F004 had been on my Tocharian radar for a while as it was the only Shirenzigou sample to prefer Steppe_emba over Steppe_mlba sources.

    This sample from Abusanteer in the Yili region looks quite similar to C3616.

    C4127
    Target: Abusanteer_IA:C4127
    Distance: 2.4396% / 0.02439606
    36.2 MNG_Afanasievo_1
    15.4 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    14.8 KGZ_Aigyrzhal_BA
    14.2 MNG_Ulaanzukh_LBA_2
    13.8 UZB_Bustan_BA
    5.6 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1

    Y-dna:-
    Mtdna:C4
    Age:2340-2152 BP

    As far as iron age and historic samples go, these are the only ones together with C3652 that prefer steppe_emba sources such as Afanasievo over steppe_mlba sources such as Sintashta, supporting the notion that they could have been speakers of Tocharian languages. Before screaming of the rooftops that we finally have found the Tocharians I'm going to seek out some second opinions though...

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    Replies
    1. Were Tocharians R1b or R1a in your opinion?

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    2. I think Tocharian came from Afanasievo > Chemurchek.

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  9. C3617 definitely wants nothing to do with Afanasievo. Running qpAdm with the same populations as your model in the left, the high tail value is for a lower ranked model with 4 streams of ancestry and Afanasievo being dropped.


    left pops:
    C3617
    Mongolia_Chalcolithic_Afanasievo_1
    Mongolia_LBA_Ulaanzukh_2
    Russia_MLBA_Sintashta
    Tarim_EMBA1
    Kyrgyzstan_Aigyrzhal_BA

    fixed pat wt dof chisq tail prob
    00000 0 13 16.536 0.221411 0.063 0.406 0.295 0.157 0.078
    00001 1 14 20.777 0.107495 0.084 0.410 0.327 0.179 0.000
    00010 1 14 41.780 0.000133949 0.262 0.429 0.054 0.000 0.254
    10000 1 14 15.455 0.34775 0.000 0.408 0.319 0.155 0.119

    Same thing with C3652

    0.248823 0.000 0.311 0.282 0.095 0.312


    qpAdm output for other samples

    https://pastebin.com/yES80P8h

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    1. Great work brother, much appreciated!

      So from four down to two (C3616 and C4127), and those two unfortunately can't give us any Y-DNA information. Its kind of unfortunate they took so many samples from the Ili region but offered next to nothing from the Turfan oasis or the northern rim of the Tarim Basin. The samples from XSQC and C2032 dont want any Tocharian business on G25. Might be worthwhile to see if that pattern holds up qadm, but I doubt it wouldnt.

      Also there is quite the discrepancy between C4127's results on G25 and qpadm, particularly in reference to Aigyrzhal_BA. Granted I did include an extra bustan_ba reference but if you add that up there is still a difference. On G25 the Afanasievo ancestry is about 10% higher for both samples. Perhaps one of the Chemurchek samples could work as a proximate reference but they all seem to have different rates of non-steppe admixtures thus it's a bit hard to work out which would be a fitting reference. I guess my prediction about Tocharians being a very complicated genetic mess that will be hard to sort out due to the same substrate populations also being present in proximate Indo-Iranian populations turned out to be true.

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  10. Also what type of clothes are those Tocharian noblemen wearing? Is that an open faced type robe?

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  11. One final thing to mention is this 8th century BC sample from Liushui, it's a real odd one:

    Target: Liushui_IA1:C1235
    Distance: 2.5202% / 0.02520242
    44.6 KGZ_Aigyrzhal_BA
    43.2 MNG_Khovsgol_BA
    11.8 KAZ_Dali_EBA
    0.4 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA

    The archaeology of the site certainly drew a lot of connections, and I expected the people to be in part derived from Siberian Indo-Iranian peoples, but this is something completely different. It might be the case that around the same time the Scytho-Siberian cultures formed and these people spread over the steppes, so did their contemporary neighbours on a smaller scale. However trying to draw out a convincing migration pattern is a bit of a hassle as Luishui is on the southern end of the Tarim Basin.

    The other sample at Liushui looked like this:

    Target: Liushui_IA2:C1246
    Distance: 2.4106% / 0.02410576
    34.8 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    29.8 TKM_Gonur1_BA
    13.0 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o
    11.8 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
    10.6 MNG_Khovsgol_BA

    Both of these samples had a Q1b y-dna haplogroup. Courtesy of Altvred, C1235 had Y-DNA Q-L330, which is typical of Siberian populations such as those from Khovsgol and the ones ancestral to Scytho-Siberians. C1246 on the other hand had Q-Y6826, which depending on its subclade could have come from his western steppe or central asian forebearers.

    The interesting thing is that a lot of the Jirzankal samples had quite a high Siberian ancestry wheras their steppe ancestry is quite low, and I think said Siberian ancestry would've come from populations similar to Liushui.


    Target: CHN_Jirzankal_IA1
    Distance: 1.5052% / 0.01505186
    30.4 TKM_Gonur1_BA
    24.0 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    20.4 MNG_Khovsgol_BA
    16.4 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
    8.8 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o


    Target: CHN_Jirzankal_IA2
    Distance: 1.9005% / 0.01900473
    26.4 MNG_Khovsgol_BA
    22.8 TKM_Gonur1_BA
    19.6 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
    16.2 CHN_Tarim_EMBA1
    15.0 TKM_Gonur1_BA_o

    One of the samples, C1221, had Y-DNA Q-YP4000, which has shown up in Scytho-Siberian derived populations, as well as a Selkup on yfull. Undoubtedly this lineage is closely linked to same populations that brought Q-L330 to the southern Tarim.

    I'm looking at the new Avar data at the moment, and I will do a little thing on that. I have taken a look at the samples from the Khotan region, but I'm saving that for another day.

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  13. W.r.t the earlier paper on the Tarim bronze age, I dont find the 'ANE relict' theory very convincing.
    https://archaeogeneticsblog.com/2022/04/16/the-tarim-basin-bronze-age-horizon-isolated-paleo-siberians-or-recent-colonists-from-the-west/

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    Replies
    1. I didn't know you have your own site, nice.

      Could you replicate your test to show a presence of EHG/WHG or even EHG/CHG in the Tarim_EMBA samples? This seems to be the main divider between them and all the eneolithic Siberian/Central Asian samples we have and if the Xiaohe peoples were derived from them, from an genetic perspective such ancestry would also be present. Then you also have other points such as the high rates of homozygosity these samples have, which unlikely seems to be from recent events unless they practised first-degree incest on the regular.

      From an archaeological perspective a recent entry of West-Siberians also seems a bit unlikely in my eyes. While you can find lots of similarities in the figurines and ritual masks and such, there is a bit of a discrepancy when it comes to things such as metallurgy, or even pottery (which seemingly wasn't present in the Tarim Basin at that time).

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    2. I can certainly have a look, although i wouldn't expect WHG because there was no direct gene flow. High ROH points to population bottlenecking *at some point* in time, & it could be during the journeys through the early period of IAMC or Dzhungar, rather than being a vestige of the Paleolithic, for ex.
      Pottery isn't a great marker of cultural continuity, especially when it becomes utalitarian & pragmatic.
      IMO the ultimate pointer will be finding early provenance of PH155. I doubt that if other lineages of R1b were found west of the Urals, whilst PH155 was chilling all the way in Yakutia or Turan. It can be easy to over-estimate the divergence of PH155 when in reality it split at virtually the same time as other lineages of R1b. The easternmost geography for any sensible scenario for this is West Siberia

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    3. “ I didn't know you have your own site,”

      More like very occasional topic views. Too little time for it , as I’m busy with primary projects, some of which you’d be interested, given your topics.

      Delete
  14. ..or a similarly longitude region in the steppe (circum-Aral). But im not aware of Mesolithic sites in the steppe before Kelteminar

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