Which European component do you find most interesting?

[Peterski]

Probably Steppe.

[cosmoo]

Mutations peculiar to them being, blue eyes, dark hair, swarthy light brownish skin tone (WHG), light skin, eyes and blonde hair (SHG and EHG), etc.)

-Blue eyes are a Mesolithic/Epipalaeolithic novelty among them, and even then by no means were they the sole color, and even the "purest WHG" such as Loschbour have predicted probabilities of having blue eyes barely over 50%.
-Pigmentation of their skin is far from certain, given that the genes for light skin among modern Europeans are of Neolithic/IE inspiration, it is very well possible that the natives had altogether different set for it of which we currently don't know. Even if it was somewhat darker, it'd be safer to assume that it would be something akin to deep red hue of Native Americans of Great Plains rather than the "swarthy brownish" one.
-Light hair was never their characteristic. "EHG" have barely anything to do with European natives, and "SHG", even being admixed, were still overwhelmingly dark-haired.

Modern populations with the most preserved HG ancestry being Baltic populations such as Lithuanians, etc.

As I've explained elsewhere, populations which are not contemporary by at least a few proximal millennia are autosomally incomparable. Balts, given their direct lineages and visage, definitely do not have "most preserved" ancestry of theirs.

Phenotypical strains being possibly more Cro-Magnon/CM oriented such as these:

With an abundance of skeletal materials from various periods and regions, there is no place for even the slighest relativism, they indeed were of "Cro-Magnon" spectrum. The pictorial examples you've provided are abysmally poor.

[Token]

Steppe. They managed to rekt every single population that they encountered on their way, that is interesting.

Just to correct your post, the steppe component is not responsible for light pigmentation at all. These traits only became dominant after intense mixing with GAC during the Yamnaya expansion to the west as exemplified by the later eastern Beakers. GAC were predominantly Neolithic farmers but had very high incidences of rs16891982 and rs1805008, responsible for pale skin and light hair in modern-day Europeans. These snps were entirely absent in Yamnaya and Afanasevo, the pure representatives of the 'steppe' component. Today, light pigmentation is directly proportional to steppe ancestry, which can confuse uninformed people, but it's also directly proportional to GAC ancestry.

Anyway, despite the dark pigmentation, early Indo-Europeans were far from being 'Mediterraneans': they had broad faces and were metrically far closer to European Hunter-Gatherers.

[Mortimer]

Neolithic from those. And Italian/Greek/East-Med/Southeast Europe from the modern day ones. Its my main component anyways.

[Lauχum]

Mix between hunter gatherers and steppe. neolithics were farmcucks from the levant

Anatolian Farmers actually weren't recent migrants from the Levant. Look at the discontinuity of uniparental markers (e.g. Tonnes of E1b1b and CT popping up in Natufians and PPN but barely any in the Anatolian Farmers and European Farmers).

This was confirmed with the release of an abstract by the SMBE, there was a 90% genetic continuity between the Anatolian epipalaeolithic and neolithic:

The first Epipaleolithic Genome from Anatolia suggests a limited role of demic diffusion in the Advent of Farming in Anatolia

Feldman et al.

Anatolia was home to some of the earliest farming communities, which in the following millennia expanded into Europe and largely replaced local hunter-gatherers. The lack of genetic data from pre-farming Anatolians has so far limited demographic investigations of the Anatolian Neolithisation process. In particular, it has been unclear whether farming was adopted by indigenous hunter-gatherers in Central Anatolia or imported by settlers from earlier farming centers. Here we present the first genome-wide data from an Anatolian Epipaleolithic hunter-gatherer who lived ~15,000 years ago, as well as from Early Neolithic individuals from Anatolia and the Levant. By using a comparative dataset of modern and ancient genomes, we estimate that the earliest Anatolian farmers derive over 90 percent of their ancestry from the local Epipaleolithic population, indicating a high degree of genetic continuity throughout the Neolithic transition. In addition, we detect two distinct waves of gene flow during the Neolithic transition: an earlier one related to Iranian/Caucasus ancestry and a later one linked to the Levant. Finally, we observe a genetic link between Epipaleolithic Near-Easterners and post-glacial European hunter-gatherers that suggests a bidirectional genetic exchange between Europe and the Near East predating 15,000 years ago. Our results suggest that the Neolithisation model in Central Anatolia was demographically similar to the one previously observed in the southern Levant and in the southern Caucasus-Iran highlands, further supporting the limited role of demic diffusion during the early spread of agriculture in the Near East, in contrast to the later Neolithisation of Europe.

[Lauχum]

IDK where people get this idea from... either they take the Eurogenes ANE K7 calculator too literally or they think Survive the Jive is a reliable source of information on population genetics.

[Lauχum]

But to answer OP's question. I'd probably say steppe not just because of their migrations but because of the languages and religious beliefs they brought with them which are extremely interesting fields of study. Though I also do find Neolithic Farmers very interesting especially for their often advanced levels of social organisation (Trypillia) and the vast number of structures they built across Europe (Newgrange, Barnenez, etc.).

[Dick]

Balts, given their direct lineages and visage, definitely do not have "most preserved" ancestry of theirs.

Good post regarding both lineages and visage. yes, Balts supposedly have the most Hunter Gatherer dna but are predominately R1 and N. Meanwhile, The Europeans that have the most "Loschbour" I-M170 Ydna are Southwest Slavs and Nordics and are also the tallest in Europe according to this study from last year.




http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.o...ent/4/4/161054







Just for laughs, This is my Ancient K7 populations from Yourdnaportal.com and I'm not even a Balt.

[Mortimer]

which calculator is best to find out hunter gatherer steppe and farmer ancestry?

[Mortimer]

yourdnaportal k8

Population Percentage
Amerindian 0.54%
Siberian 0.00%
Euro Hunter-Gatherer 31.83%
Oceanian 2.01%
Sub-Saharan 0.19%
Southeast Asian 5.95%
Linearbandkeramik 33.54%
South-Central Asian 25.95%

k7

Population Percentage
Sub Saharan 0.25%
Oceanian 3.05%
Amerindian 1.91%
Euro Hunter Gatherer 38.98%
Siberian 0.37%
South East Asian 6.61%
Near Eastern 48.91%

ancient near east
Population Percentage
Southeast Asian 1.08%
Anatolia Neolithic 14.77%
CHG-EEF 27.19%
Polar 0.00%
EHG 8.80%
Sub-Saharan 0.70%
Iran-Neolithic 16.65%
Karitiana 1.05%
Ancestral-Indian 12.36%
Natufian 6.95%
Siberian 0.00%
Papuan 0.90%
SHG-WHG 9.55%