South Siberian mtDNA from Neolithic and Bronze Age Ukraine

A student from the Grand Valley State University has just tested 17 remains from Neolithic and Bronze Age Ukraine for his Masters thesis, and found that six of the individuals carried East Eurasian-specific mtDNA C. This looks like a very important finding, because it backs up what I've been arguing for years on my blogs and elsewhere. Basically, it seems East Eurasian mtDNA lineages were fairly common in pre-Indo-European Ukraine. However, such markers were not found in Bronze Age Corded Ware remains from eastern Germany (see here), with supposed origins on the Eastern Europe steppe, nor are they commonly found in present-day Ukraine. What this suggests is that the Eastern European steppe was not the source of any large-scale migrations into Central Europe. Rather, it's more likely that the European steppe populations were replaced by successive waves of migrants from East Central or even Central Europe. These population movements started after the last Ice Age (LGM), and continued until historic times.

Here's the thesis abstract:

Studies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) polymorphism have provided valuable insights for understanding patterns of human migration and interaction. The ability to recover ancient mtDNA sequence data from post-mortem bone and tissue samples allows us to view snapshots of historic gene pools firsthand, provided that great care is taken to prevent sample contamination. In this study, we analyzed the DNA sequence of the first hypervariable segment (HVSI) of the mtDNA control region, as well as a portion of the coding region, in 14 individuals from three collective burials from the Neolithic Dnieper-Donetz culture and three individuals from Bronze Age Kurgan burials, all located in modern-day Ukraine on the northern shores of the Black Sea (the North Pontic Region, or NPR). While most of our samples possessed mtDNA haplotypes that can be linked to European and Near Eastern populations, three Neolithic and all three Bronze Age individuals belonged to mtDNA haplogroup C, which is common in East Eurasian, particularly South Siberian, populations but exceedingly rare in Europe. Phylogeographic network analysis revealed that our samples are located at or near the ancestral node for haplogroup C and that derived lineages branching from the Neolithic samples were present in Bronze Age Kurgans. In light of the numerous examples of mtDNA admixture that can be found in both Europe and Siberia, it appears that the NPR and South Siberia are located at opposite ends of a genetic continuum established at some point prior to the Neolithic. This migration corridor may have been established during the Last Glacial Maximum due to extensive glaciation in northern Eurasia and a consequent aridization of western Asia. This implies the demographic history for the European gene pool is more complex than previously considered and also has significant implications regarding the origin of Kurgan populations.

Newton, Jeremy R., "Ancient Mitochondrial DNA From Pre-historic Southeastern Europe: The Presence of East Eurasian Haplogroups Provides Evidence of Interactions with South Siberians Across the Central Asian Steppe Belt" (2011). Masters Theses. Paper 5.

Over the next few years, if not earlier, it should be possible to completely debunk the still widespread cliche that Europe was in large-part overran by steppe populations after the Neolithic. This theory seems to appeal to a great many people, both amateur and professional historians, genetic genealogists and geneticists. I never understood why, but I do know they take it very personally when someone attempts to challenge their misguided notions.

For those interested in the facts, here are a couple more quotes from papers that help to complete the puzzle of the peopling of Eastern Europe, and how the main population movements headed from west to east, and not the other way around.

Genetic data obtained in this study allows the suggestion that during the LGM period, central European territories probably represented the area of intermingling between human flow from refugial zones in the Balkans, the Mediterranean coastline and the Pyrenees, as U5a and U5b gene flows occurred from there. Based on dating analysis of the U5 subclusters, it seems very likely that, despite the archaeological evidence testifying to the presence of humans in eastern Europe during the Ice Age, this part of Eurasia might have only been re-populated by modern humans at the end of the LGM, i.e. later than central Europe. In addition, U5b gene flow from central to eastern Europe become much more intense after the LGM.

...

Subcluster U5a1d has been detected in eastern Europe (in Russians, Belorussians and Tatars) and southern Siberia (in Buryats) (Figure 1, Figure S1). The presence of such old U5a1 lineages in eastern part of Europe may be indicative of eastern European origin of the whole U5a1 subcluster, however ancestral haplotype for U5a1 has been found in central Europe in Czechs (Figure 1).

...

A recent ancient DNA study of Stone Age hunter-gatherers from central and eastern Europe has shown that most of the samples studied (.80%) shared mtDNA haplotypes belonging to haplogroups U5 and U4, haplogroups that notably are relatively rare in central Europe today [7]. Among them, sample 5830a from Hohlenstein-Stadel (Germany), defined as U5a2a, based on the HVS I sequence 16114A 16192-16256-16294-16311, was detected. Its closest HVS I relatives in modern populations can be found among eastern Europeans (in Latvians, Russians, Tatars and Mordvins).

Malyarchuk B, Derenko M, Grzybowski T, Perkova M, Rogalla U, et al. (2010) The Peopling of Europe from the Mitochondrial Haplogroup U5 Perspective. PLoS ONE 5(4): e10285. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010285

In addition, it is more likely that the corded ware drifted out from Europe into the steppe, not from the steppe into Europe. It is certainly true that while archaeologically recovered evidence does support some population mixing, as well as cultural interaction, having occurred among eastern-European and European-steppe peoples from the 5th–4th millennia BC and on, and certainly drift and exchange of material cultural artifacts occurred between western/northern-European, eastern-European, and European-steppe cultures during and after the same period, this simply cannot be extended to propose that a massive violent invasion from the steppe transformed and repopulated Europe during the 5th through 3rd millennia BC. In fact, a fresh look at both older and more recently uncovered archaeological evidence from cultures of southeastern Europe and the Pontic Caspian steppe shows both an active cultural exchange in exotica and a clear movement of cultural influence during the 5th–3rd millennia from the Cucuteni-Tripolye cultural complex of the Balkans-Carpathians out into the PC steppe and to Asia beyond, not the other way around as Gimbutas argued.

Second, Gimbutas’ speculation that in Europe an invading patriarchal and violent horsemounted PIE/IE-speaking steppe people destroyed and displaced a heretofore matriarchal, peaceloving, Mother Goddess-worshipping civilization is just that, speculation, based in the first place on the misplacement of horse-mounted cavalries backward from the 1st to the 5th–4th millennia BC. Otherwise her theory follows from her tendentious interpretation of an increase in late-Neolithic and Bronze European fortification of settlements to be a certain sign of invasion of mounted nomadic steppe warriors. However, this change can be explained more sensibly as an autochtonous consequence of the accumulation of wealth by surplus-producing agriculture practicing economies: as centers of wealth developed so did the tendency for local outsiders to raid them, and thus the settlements erected defensive fortifications to repel attacks. Invasions would have come from groups or tribes residing in the immediate surroundings of the fortified settlements that did not participate in the wealth-producing agricultural economy. Such groups might have included representatives of other nearby settlements or neighboring forest-based bands or tribes and need not have and surely did not travel thousands of miles from outside of Europe itself to confiscate the wealth of these settlements. The accumulation of wealth explains not only changes in such inter-settlement (or urban-rural) relations but also transformations in the social orientation and structure of European Neolithic and Bronze societies: as a consequence of and in tandem with the development of the need for defense evolved an increasing reliance on the leadership role of the male and thus a male-dominated and patriarchal society.

John C. Didier, In and Outside the Square: The Sky and the Power of Belief in Ancient China and the World, c. 4500 BC – AD 200, Volume I: The Ancient Eurasian World and the Celestial Pivot, Sino-Platonic Papers, Number 192, September, 2009