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.

Serena Aneli, Matteo Caldon, Luca Pagani, et al. Put Out Another Hairsplitting, Borderline Racist Paper on Italy: "Human Presence in Southern Europe, the Italian Case Study"

We and others have noticed and posted about a recurring phenomenon in academic papers.  Authors, often Northern Italians, issue quibbling, hairsplitting papers about the "differences" in Italy.  In each, they pretend to break new ground.  As if Italy hasn't been studied enough.  As if such themes had not been explored ad nauseam.  

Nevermind that over a generation ago, legendary geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, himself a (cough) proud Northern Italian, showed that there is more genetic distance and variation in any one village in Africa than there is in the entire continent of Europe -- We have yet another paper aiming to measure that Northern Italians and Southern Italians are different.

These papers wouldn't be so god-awful if they weren't by and large ignorant of history.  They wouldn't be so god-awful if they didn't cherry pick which academic papers they cite.  But because of both traits (a lack of historical knowledge, selective citation), they come across, as, well, having an agenda.  When you realize that much of the research is NOT coming out of Southern Italy, you understand that any perspective that doesn't seek to "other" Southern Italians can get at best lost and at worst covered up.

Why do we say such papers are borderline racist.  Two reasons.  First of all, the world is a big place, and there are thousands of areas much less poorly studied than Italy.  Instead of writing the fiftieth paper trying to point out differences among Italians, go study another part of the world.  Secondly, Northern Italians often have a desire to explain why their Southern brethren are a little darker, a little less educated, etc.  They don't do a deep dive into it (isolation, poor government).  They don't grasp that for long periods in history, it was reversed: the South was where the smart people and commerce were.  No, they just desire to show the world that Northern Italians are good Caucasians, and damn the southerners.  Genetic hairsplitting is just the latest tool.

From this paper, "Through 40,000 years of human presence in Southern Europe: the Italian case study" comes some real gems of this theme. 

Again, we and others have posted before two principles:

-For a millennia, Rome was an exporter of people.  It sent colonies all around the Mediterranean, especially to places like Greece.  Many of the genetic similarities are due to enormous Roman population growth and genetic outflow -- not the other way around.

-Recent studies have shown that Southern Italians are genetically more similar to the Romans than Northern Italians.  Why?  Well, the barbarian (Germanic) invasions were land-based.  Unlike previous mass movements, they came by land.  They came from continental Europe and moved south, instead of by sea, moving north.  When the sea ceased to be the only superhighway, the south became a backwater.  Thus, you may think of Northern Italians as Southern Italians, with a little bit of German blood.

Oh but despite these concrete principles, we get "studies" like this one, which rather than just relaying the DNA data, they delve into ahistorical speculation:

-Southern Italians appear "more Mediterranean," according to the paper.  Hmm.  DUH!  Yes, the peninsula juts into the Mediterranean, while places like Milan, don't.  But the authors say "this is probably" because of Greek influence.  No!  Southerners just don't have as much German influence.

-Then we get, drumroll please, a long tirade featuring the same tired cliches as every other stinking paper like this.  "We don't know where the Etruscans came from."  No, that has been solved.  They were indigenous.  "The Roman empire was cosmopolitan, in particular with emigrants from the Near East."  No, there is absolutely nothing in history to back up the latter half of that statement.  There is nothing in genetics to show that Roman slaves had offspring.  And there is nothing to show that free immigrants from say, Egypt, were more numerous than free immigrants from Gaul or Britain. 

-But the biggest stinker -- the biggest ahistorical statement of some time -- is the paper's notion that any serious genetic contribution can be attributed to the "Byzantines."  Byzantium (The Eastern Roman Empire) could barely post garrisons in Southern Italy.  Barely fight off the Lombards in Calabria.  Barely hold any land, from all the different military countervailing forces, including Franks, Saracens, Normans, etc.  The idea that there was mass population movement from east to west during a time of depopulation, plague, stagnation, and crisis, is something that no serious historian would ever assert.

What an awful piece of drivel.  

Perhaps scientists like this would be best to take their own maxims:

-Don't discuss things you're not an expert on

-Try to DISprove a hypothesis.  Don't just accept something as true.

-Be different. Don't conform. Put out something that truly breaks new ground.

This paper ain't it folks.