Tarim Basin Mummies R1b-BY14355

[rmstevens2]

Interestingly they plot very close to the Botai who are on another obscure R1b branch

The proximity of Botai to Tarim in that graph is a bit coincidental. Relative to Tarim, they have some EHG, pulling them left, and some extra NE-Asian, pulling them right (and down to a lesser extent)

RUS_Tyumen_NHG
Tarim_EMBA1    0.716944 0.0240431 29.8191
RUS_Karelia_HG 0.283056 0.0240431 11.7728
Tail: 0.32

Botai 
RUS_Tyumen_NHG                0.874453 0.0148817 58.7601
RUS_Irkutsk_AngaraRiver_LN.SG 0.125547 0.0148817  8.43631
Tail: 0.38

right = c('Congo_Mbuti.DG', 'Anatolia_Barcin_N.SG', 'Iran_Wezmeh_N.SG', 'CHG.SG', 'Taforalt', 'Italy_GrottaContinenza_HG.SG', 'RUS_Vologda_Minino_HG', 'MA1.SG', 'Andaman_100BP.SG', 'RUS_Primorsky_DevilsCave_N.SG', 'RUS_Irkutsk_Shamanka_EN.SG', 'Peru_RioUncallane_1800BP.SG')
allsnps=TRUE

I guess if they had ANA (Ancient Northeast Asian) on that PCA graphic, it would be straight north of "East Asia" and maybe a little to the west. We see the Tarim mummies very close to ANE but pulled a little to the northeast, thanks to their 28% ANA.

Actually they do have Northeast Asia & Siberia in an inset of that PCA in Figure 2 of Zhang et al, which shows the Tarim mummies pulled slightly in that direction from ANE.

[jdean]

They are tolerated and given a platform at a certain well known blog, even though the author of that blog pretty obviously disagrees. It's amazing that he tolerates that stuff. Those clowns have been banned everywhere else. 

He's apparently extremely easy going, but then they never direct their garbage at his Y-DNA haplogroup. Wonder what would happen if they did.

I don't know if I'd describe David as 'easy going' he seems quite highly strung to me : )

[Kale]

By measuring how much a sample prefers MA1 to Yana, and dividing that by how much AG3 prefers MA1 over Yana (so using AG3 as a '100% ANE' baseline) gives the following ANE levels.
Tarim_EMBA1 - 83.7%
Tutkaul_N - 74.6%
RUS_Tyumen_NHG - 74.3%
Botai.SG - 66.2%
Botai - 62.4%
Karelia_HG - 55.1%
Karelia_HG.SG - 52.3%
Baikal_EBA ~20%

[rmstevens2]

By measuring how much a sample prefers MA1 to Yana, and dividing that by how much AG3 prefers MA1 over Yana (so using AG3 as a '100% ANE' baseline) gives the following ANE levels.
Tarim_EMBA1 - 83.7%
Tutkaul_N - 74.6%
RUS_Tyumen_NHG - 74.3%
Botai.SG - 66.2%
Botai - 62.4%
Karelia_HG - 55.1%
Karelia_HG.SG - 52.3%
Baikal_EBA ~20%

Interesting! At the risk of me sounding like a dummy, can you provide an interpretation of the significance of that for us?

I'm not trying to be argumentative. I don't know enough re what you posted to do that. I am just really wanting to know.

[Kale]

Nothing hugely significant I suppose, we were just talking about populations with very high ANE levels and thought I'd bring something quantitive in hopes it would be interesting.

[rmstevens2]

Nothing hugely significant I suppose, we were just talking about populations with very high ANE levels and thought I'd bring something quantitive in hopes it would be interesting.

Okay, thanks. I know you're pretty sharp on the autosomal front. If I can stir your interest in old BY14355, I consider that a victory.

[ArdaHan]

So it looks like a presumed strong cultural and probable language continuity but the Afanasievo DNA disappeared or was swallowed ?

According to the Zhang et al paper, those Tarim mummies did not come from Afanasievo but were from an isolated native Central Asian people who were 72% ANE and 28% ANA (Ancient Northeast Asian). The older remains in the Dzungarian Basin came from Afanasievo and may have been Tocharians.

I'm pretty much a duffer at the linguistic stuff, but it looks to me like the R1b-BY14355 branch under R1b-M343 may have had a hand in the Turkic language family very early on, although, obviously, I could be wrong. I can't see any connection between them and Indo-European. Indo-European is an R1b-L389 thing. 

[Makes me wonder whether or not there might be a few nuggets of wisdom in some of what Dr. Anatole Klyosov wrote a few years back (not that it's all correct) at his Turkic World site. Did he anticipate the BY14355 branch of R1b?]

BY14355 is something I'm just learning about and trying to puzzle out. It's really interesting to me. Too bad we didn't know about it years ago, but I'm guessing it's a fairly recently discovered SNP, hence the "BY" (Big Y) prefix.

Probably proto turkic language spoke in slab grave culture and probably turkic language is related to ANA but Tarim Mummies are majority ANE so tarim mummies speak ANE related language. We dont know what language the tarim mummies spoke. Probably Xiognu spoke turkic language. R1b Ph155 joined Xiognu in early Xiognu period.

[rmstevens2]

So it looks like a presumed strong cultural and probable language continuity but the Afanasievo DNA disappeared or was swallowed ?

According to the Zhang et al paper, those Tarim mummies did not come from Afanasievo but were from an isolated native Central Asian people who were 72% ANE and 28% ANA (Ancient Northeast Asian). The older remains in the Dzungarian Basin came from Afanasievo and may have been Tocharians.

I'm pretty much a duffer at the linguistic stuff, but it looks to me like the R1b-BY14355 branch under R1b-M343 may have had a hand in the Turkic language family very early on, although, obviously, I could be wrong. I can't see any connection between them and Indo-European. Indo-European is an R1b-L389 thing. 

[Makes me wonder whether or not there might be a few nuggets of wisdom in some of what Dr. Anatole Klyosov wrote a few years back (not that it's all correct) at his Turkic World site. Did he anticipate the BY14355 branch of R1b?]

BY14355 is something I'm just learning about and trying to puzzle out. It's really interesting to me. Too bad we didn't know about it years ago, but I'm guessing it's a fairly recently discovered SNP, hence the "BY" (Big Y) prefix.

Probably proto turkic language spoke in slab grave culture and probably turkic language is related to ANA but Tarim Mummies are majority ANE so tarim mummies speak ANE related language. We dont know what language the tarim mummies spoke. Probably Xiognu spoke turkic language. R1b Ph155 joined Xiognu in early Xiognu period.

Thanks for coming over and posting! Welcome! It's good to get an actual R1b-BY14355 guy participating in the forum.

[rmstevens2]

Hope I haven't already mentioned this before, but there are a number of R1b-BY14355 Zhagunluke (Zaghunluq) samples dated to the early, middle, and late Iron Age. The Zaghunluq tombs are in Xinjiang, China.

[parasar]

Looks like a slightly different version of events here ?

Bronze and Iron Age population movements underlie Xinjiang population history

The Xinjiang region in northwest China is a historically important geographical passage between East and West Eurasia. By sequencing 201 ancient genomes from 39 archaeological sites, we clarify the complex demographic history of this region. Bronze Age Xinjiang populations are characterized by four major ancestries related to Early Bronze Age cultures from the central and eastern Steppe, Central Asian, and Tarim Basin regions. Admixtures between Middle and Late Bronze Age Steppe cultures continued during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, along with an inflow of East and Central Asian ancestry. Historical era populations show similar admixed and diverse ancestries as those of present-day Xinjiang populations. These results document the influence that East and West Eurasian populations have had over time in the different regions of Xinjiang.

Kumar et al didn't test any of the Xiaohe mummies (at least none that are mentioned in its spreadsheet), and Zhang et al tested 13 of the oldest Xiaohe mummies, 3 males and 10 females, all of whom lacked Afanasievo DNA and had that unique combination of 72% ANE and 28% ANA.

There are some cool samples from Kumar et al in FTDNA's Ancient Connections and Time Tree though, many of them BY14355, like the Iron Age Zhagunluke (Zhagunluq) samples. There are Tarim mummies from Zhagunluke, but Iron Age ones would not be the oldest and would reflect later admixture.

A thing about the Tarim Basin Mummies, according to Copper Axe, is they are more an accident than anything else

The Tarim mummies were not a people or a tradition, but a natural phenomenon

Interesting article, but I disagree with the title. Pretty obviously the Xiaohe mummies from Zhang et al were a unique people. How they were preserved so well is a natural phenomenon that benefits us, but they were a people; they just weren't derived from Afanasievo or other Western Steppe Herders.

That article also refers to the Zhang et al Xiaohe males as "PH155". That is an error which I think comes from YFull, which does not have BY14355 in its tree but lists PH155 instead. Actually, the Xiaohe males were all R1b-FTC300, which is under FTB1, a brother clade to PH155 under BY14355.

FTB1 - there is one modern sample from India that is FTB14.
https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/R-FTB1/story
N93357, Joshi India, R-FTB14

[parasar]

A couple of questions that come up for me from all this are 1) whether or not these findings are kind of a clue to the connection between R1b and Ancient North Eurasian, and 2) why the old 2010 Li et al paper, "Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age", found that seven of the Xiaohe mummies were R1a-M198, yet Zhang et al found no R1a-M198. 

Regarding that first question, I realize a lot of time elapsed between Mal'ta Boy, Afontova Gora and the Tarim mummies. So maybe that question is impossible to answer until we get a really seriously old R1b-M343* sample from Asia. But it makes me wonder, and I tend to think that ANE early on tracked with the R and Q clades, including R1b.

Regarding the second question, the mummies tested by Li et al were somewhat younger than those tested by Zhang et al. The Li et al paper is old (2010) and was using the old PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) testing, whereas the much more recent (2021) Zhang et al paper used NGS (Next Generation Sequencing) testing. Could the Li results have been mistaken? 

I don't know, but Davidski suggested that possibility at his Eurogenes Blog on 27 October 2021:

Davidski said...


It's no longer certain if any of the mummies belonged to R1a(xZ93), because those results were based on old PCR tests.

My bet is that there will be late mummies with R1a in the Tarim Basin, but all or almost all will be Z93, and derived from the Andronovo population.

October 27, 2021 at 11:59 PM

I could not find any R1a Tarim mummies in FTDNA Discover's Ancient Connections or in its Time Tree.

Davisdki may be correct, but we can't be sure since there is no overlap netween the Zhang and Li male sample as I recall.
There was overlap, I believe - will check, on the female samples and the mtDNAs matched.