Thoughts on "POPULATION GENOMICS OF STONE AGE EURASIA" the Allentoft Paper Taking the Internet by Storm

 A delightful new paper came out recently by Morten Allentoft et al., entitled, "POPULATION GENOMICS OF STONE AGE EURASIA". 

Before we start on the main discussion, we note that the study conclusively refuted many of the ridiculous theories by the "R1a Steppe conquerors" (those annoying guys posting from their mom's basements, ever present on Eurogenes, Anthrogenica, Eupedia, Apricity etc. forums), by noting three things:

1. The steppe people, who the fantastists envision to be conquerors, were themselves often REPLACED by other prehistoric cultures, in places like Scandinavia, and were DRIVEN OUT of other places, to places like Ireland and other parts of the Celtic Fringe.

2. The genes for lactase persistence (milk digestion) started to spread BEFORE the Steppe genes.

3. The genes for white skin were NOT sexually selected.  They simply correlate with latitude.

This proves the point, made here for years, that each European population group might be thought of as a snapshot of different blends in time, as opposed to some being conquered and some being conquerors.  Everyone was each, at some point.  

ANYWAY, let's now talk about the main findings.

The POPULATION GENOMICS OF STONE AGE EURASIA paper focused on 5 ancestral populations:

1. Farming ancestry

2. Steppe Ancestry

3. The original hunter gatherers who populated Western Europe (WHG)

4. Eastern Hunter Gatherers (EHG)

5. Caucasian Hunter Gatherers (CHG).

The paper detailed which European populations have the most such ancestry (never a majority; always a plurality) and which populations have the least.

Here are the findings and my notes:

For Farming ancestry, the Mediterranean cultures have the most: Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece.  Finland and Estonia have the least.

This is a surprise, since previous papers indicated a clear peak in EASTERN Mediterranean cultures, and this paper seemed to infer that Spain had the most farming ancestry. Could farming also have been simply selected by latitude?

For Steppe ancestry, the paper conflicted with previous finding that the peak was in Scotland and NW Europe generally, finding the highest proportion of Steppe Ancestry in Ireland.  It was hard to tell the lowest, likely Italy.

If you're keeping track at home, this surprising finding means that the people furthest away from the Steppe, and separate by seas, have the most Steppe Ancestry!  Think about that.  Because we know the history of the Celtic Fringe, and how the people there got there, we thus know that those populations represent European populations that saw the steppe influx and then were themselves pushed out of other regions, before they could be further admixed.  

This mirrors Cavalli-Sforza's findings from decades ago too.

It also shows that certain populations stood their ground against steppe refugees, notably Italy, which makes sense given the state of advanced cultures there around the time of the steppe transition.

Finally, we note that this distribution reflects better Cavalli Sforza's notion of a (later) Celtic impansion, more than an (earlier) steppe expansion.

As for WHG ancestry, as has been reported in previous papers, this paper confirmed that the highest ancestry is in Estonia and Lithuania and the lowest is in Italy.

Again, this is counterintuitive.  The groups that populated Western Europe originally were very dark-skinned, yet the highest frequencies are in the fringes of NE Europe, amidst the fair Lithuanians.  

One may again think of this as simply the Baltic lands, isolated for long stretches, simply served as a reservoir of the alleles.  

And also: Italy, with its many population movements, serves as a sort of pan-European blend, with NO numbers being able to reach a high frequency, because there are so many source inputs.

As for EHG ancestry, it showed a pole in Europe where Finland was highest and apparently Spain was the lowest.

Again, Cavalli Sforza picked up on this DECADES ago, proposing a Finland to Spain pole for a certain Principle Component analysis.

Interesting here is that the paper found huge EHG ancestry in Mongolia.

I wonder if Allentoft et al considered that this so-called EHG component reflects almost exactly the movement of Y Chromosome Haplogroup N, and the spread of Ural Altaic and/or Finno Ugric languages.  It is striking.

Finally, CHG ancestry peaked in Europe in Turkey and Greece, and everywhere else had minor levels.  The highest levels were found in Pakistan however.  

Again, Allentoft would be wise to notice that this distribution mirrors the distribution of Dravidian languages.

A fascinating paper.  Perhaps what's old is new again.  These new "components" of Eurasian ancestry (WHG, EHG, ANE, EEN, EEF, whatever) represent the older notions of expansions and impansions, and linguistic-correlated population movements.