Across the sea of grass: how Northern Europeans got to be ~10% Northeast Asian

[littlestar]

The Pith: You’re Asian. Yes, you!

A conclusion to an important paper, Nick Patterson, Priya Moorjani, Yontao Luo, Swapan Mallick, Nadin Rohland, Yiping Zhan, Teri Genschoreck, Teresa Webster, and David Reich:

In particular, we have presented evidence suggesting that the genetic history of Europe from around 5000 B.C. includes:

1. The arrival of Neolithic farmers probably from the Middle East.

2. Nearly complete replacement of the indigenous Mesolithic southern European populations by Neolithic migrants, and admixture between the Neolithic farmers and the indigenous Europeans in the north.

3. Substantial population movement into Spain occurring around the same time as the archaeologically attested Bell-Beaker phenomenon (HARRISON, 1980).

4. Subsequent mating between peoples of neighboring regions, resulting in isolation-by-distance (LAO et al., 2008; NOVEMBRE et al., 2008). This tended to smooth out population structure that existed 4,000 years ago.

Further, the populations of Sardinia and the Basque country today have been substantially less influenced by these events.

-http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/09/across-the-sea-of-grass-how-northern-europeans-got-to-be-10-northeast-asian/

How many of you agree with this view?

[Scholarios]

I do not know enough to comment as extensively as that blogger, but it is a theme that comes up from time to time on the asiatic component of northern europeans in the eternal "north-south war" in these types of forums. It seems he gets a lot of hate in the comments- where people are quick to point out that historical genetics is in its infancy (which is technically true)... yet the same subjects are often eager to adopt similar theories when they work in favor of their romantic theories.

On the other hand, the steppe sea was permeable and populations moved both ways.

[Prince Carlo]

No way North Euros are 10% North Asian. Only SOME Finns and Russians get close to that.

[Graham]

No way North Euros are 10% North Asian. Only SOME Finns and Russians get close to that.

You have to think back thousands of year. Before the Ice age

[Vesuvian Sky]

That East Asian pull that various genetic bloggers keep referencing (which seems to vary in frequency BTW depending who's talking) is probably best explained by a prehistoric movement of hunter gatherers from Siberia just after the Last Glacial Maximum and during the Mesolithic. I really don't see how any of those other listed events would have anything to do with the spread of East Asian genes, that is if the list is actually suggesting that.

[Smeagol]

Only Finns, and North Russians can sometimes be 10% Northeast Asian, but North European as a whole? No.

[Vesuvian Sky]

To expand on this but also the subjectivity that goes into creating reference populations for genetic testing, here is an example of a calc that assigns East Eurasian components to a North European category.

Now here's one looking at the same aDNA samples but from a different perspective:

It essentially assigned more of the Paleo-Eur. attributes that would have gone to the North European category per Dodecad's results shown to the Paleo-Med. category. It separated the East Eurasian which would have typically gone to Dodecad's North European category and made it its own component. West Eurasian represents the rest of the North European component I assume since its the Northern Hunter gatherers samples seem to have highest frequencies of it. This is quite clear since the La Brana hunter gatherer (from Iberia) goes from having a reduced Med. component to more of one and the North European/West Eurasian losing some of its alleles to the East Eurasian component as well.

Here's the same data yet again though from a Harappa world perspective:

Same raw data, three different results.