Late Neolithic Iberian farmer similar to modern Italians and more

[Argang]

Previous neolithic farmers have clustered with Sardinians or Basques, but this new sequence of late Neolithic or early Copper Age Iberian remains from Portalon clusters like southern Tuscans. Maybe there were successive farmer waves with later ones showing more shift towards modern Caucasus and Levantine peoples?

http://oi57.tinypic.com/2zp2mo1.jpg

As seen from this principal component analysis, there is a great divide between another Iberian - the mesolithic La Braña man, who is outside main European cline but clusters with Finns on PC1 which contains most variation and between Orcadians and Russians on PC2 containing second most variation - and the Portalon individual who as said before clusters with southern Tuscans on both PC1 and PC2. This is in line with differences seen in hunter-gatherers and farmers previously. Unfortunately there is no Y-DNA from Portalon, it would be interesting to see if he represents a lineage common in modern Iberians like R1b.

From the same paper, there is an interesting bit showcasing studies of genetics trumping studies of physical metrics, in this case the issue was about the remains of Swedish sailors. According to historical records most of the crew of the 17th-century warship Kronan was recruited from Sweden, but...


However, an osteological study of morphometrics, performed by Sholts et al assigned a number of individuals from the shipwreck to non-European origins. The study indicated area of origin, such as Patagonia, China and Egypt. The putative presence of non-Scandinavian crew members, and especially from outside of Europe, raised questions concerning the crew composition. Is it possible that the Swedish navy recruited personnel from parts of the world other than Europe during the 17th century?

Turns out that genetics suggest the answer is "No, 17th century Swedish navy did not recruit native americans":laugh:


Thirteen out of the selected 15 crew members could be sequenced successfully and all, including the putative non-Swedish crewmembers, could be confidently inferred to be males of European ancestry.

For the crewmembers with the greatest amount of sequence data, K1 and K11, we could further investigate the genetic affinities among European reference groups. Both were consistent with Northern European ancestry, falling close to the Russian, Orcadian, and Finnish samples (the other comparison groups being French, Italian, Sardinian, Adygei and Palestinian).

We could verify the European origins of all samples, including K17 and K18 that had been indicated as non-European (K17 – S America and K18 – E Asia) – see Figure 12. For two samples, the ones with the highest sequencing coverage – K1 and K11, the genetic data points to a Northern European ancestry.

Increasing the amount of sequence data may increase the resolution, allowing for example assigning the ancestry of these individuals to a particular part of Europe or maybe even a particular part of Sweden.

PCA's for the crewmen:
http://oi57.tinypic.com/211ujjk.jpg

source:
Archaeological Genetics -
Approaching Human History
through DNA Analysis
EVANGELIA DASKALAKI
Uppsala University (http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:667495/FULLTEXT01.pdf)

[Argang]

I'll add that they did test for mtDNA, this farmer had haplogroup U5b1b which now has subclades all over Europe.

[Fire Haired]

Portalon probably has some ANE ancestry. The placements in that PCA are very similar to Davidski's and Lazaridis's PCAs, because WHG, near eastern, and ANE are obviously the three main ancestral components that shift populations a certain direction. Portalon shifts much farther to the right in PC2 than Basque, Sardinians, and Neolithic European farmers. His placement is close to where modern Spanish and Portuguese would probably fit(based on Davidski's PCAs (http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2014/02/pca-of-five-ancient-genomes.html)).

Davidski though dis agrees with me and thinks Portalon is something differnt from modern Iberians.

Here is his response.

Iberians cluster between Basques and North Italians, so it's unlikely that this Portalon farmer was a good fit for a modern Iberian.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to figure out what his ancestry was precisely from that PCA, because the same result, more or less, can be produced in at least four ways. For example:

1) Almost 100% Tuscan-like

2) 70% Sardinian, 30% North Caucasian (Adygei-like but more northern)

3) 60% Basque, 40% Levantine

4) 50% Balkan, 50% Sardinian

So take your pick for now. In any case, I won't be one bit surprised if higher resolution tests of remains from the Portalon site uncover several sequences belonging to R1b.

All of the possibilities Davidski listed suggest a significant amount of modern south-west Asian like ancestry in Portalon(Balkaners and Tuscans have a pretty decent amount), unlike modern Iberians.

[Fire Haired]

I'll add that they did test for mtDNA, this farmer had haplogroup U5b1b which now has subclades all over Europe.

His maternal lineage was probably descended of Mesolithic central-west Europeans, like mine.

[Damião de Góis]

I thought Neolithic farmers were one and the same who moved to Europe from the fertile crescent. But there seems to be at least 3 different types of Neolithic farmers, very different from each other. Also, La Braña clusters way off, away from everyone (from modern populations). I would guess his people became extinct.

[Argang]

I thought Neolithic farmers were one and the same who moved to Europe from the fertile crescent. But there seems to be at least 3 different types of Neolithic farmers, very different from each other. Also, La Braña clusters way off, away from everyone (from modern populations). I would guess his people became extinct.

La Braña and other mesolithic hunter-gatherer types were more likely absorbed into modern european populations than vanished. By now studies have shown pretty clearly an increasing degree of hunter-gatherer similarity in modern europeans going from south to north, peaking in the northeast.

[Fire Haired]

I thought Neolithic farmers were one and the same who moved to Europe from the fertile crescent. But there seems to be at least 3 different types of Neolithic farmers, very different from each other. Also, La Braña clusters way off, away from everyone (from modern populations). I would guess his people became extinct.

La Brana-1 was no differnt from other Mesolithic Europeans, besides having specific west European Mesolithic ancestry and a small amount of farmer ancestry. His people(Mesolithic Europeans aka WHG)'s decendants one way or another became farmers and have contributed a significant amount of ancestry to most modern Europeans. Most of your Mesolithic ancestors were probably from Iberia or near by and closely related to La Brana-1.

Ancient Genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present day Europeans. (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theapricity.com%2Fforum%2Fsho wthread.php%3F121668-Revised-Lazaridis-Ancient-Genomes-suggest-three-ancestral-populations-for-present-day-Europeans&ei=n0FYU_b5PI-jyATUx4KIAQ&usg=AFQjCNFAJg9P_HG-_mB12cgkCfqXR84O6w&sig2=T42mNvV4ClTPNq1F8d2EyQ&bvm=bv.65397613,d.aWw)

[Black Wolf]

My mtDNA haplogroup is very similar to that of La Brana man with us both being part of U5b2c. He is U5b2c1 and I am U5b2c2 and most likely my own direct maternal lineage comes from the same population of indigenous West European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers as his did. I am a modern day direct maternal line survivor of these ancient people. At some point my maternal line ancestors were assimilated into the Neolithic farmer societies or I would not be here as I am today.

[cally]

Thank you. It all makes sense now :) So we have to distinguish between early (Sardinian-like) and late Neolithic farmers. The latter were more East Med/ Caucasus-shifted.