Stolarek et al: Genetic history of East-Central Europe...

[Riverman]

It definitely does not look as an admix from Germanics.
To me it looks as an southern admix from Hungary and Carpathians.

M458 are underlined on this PCA. Definitely they are not the result of admix with Wielbark.

Yeah, most of the Germanic admixture in early Slavs would have come from genetically mixed groups in more southern areas, rather than from Polish Wielbark Goths with a Scandinavian profile.

Central-Eastern Europe (modern day Hungary, Romania, Ukraine and surrounds) was a volatile area during the Roman/Late Antique period and we've already seen all the mixed profiles of people that culturally were Scythian, Sarmatian, Gothic, Avar, etc but carried significant local ancestry. IMO this fits the bill for the southern ancestry that Slavs need, as shown in ph2ter's PCA. There is also some presumably proto-Slavic Y DNA that fit this model as well, such as certain branches under E-V13, J-L283 and R-Z2103.

Of course our ancient data is biased towards Hungary because we have a ton of samples from there and almost nothing from Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, etc, so it doesn't mean these processes must have happened specifically in Hungary. I hope Flegontov and his team take this bias into account for their paper.

E.g. Chernoles had Lusatian and Dacian (Channelled-Stamped Pottery, Thracian Hallstatt) influences in its sedentary population. Apparently, just like in other areas, the Central Asian Scytho-Sarmatian nomads lived their lifes apart, from the more sedentary agro-pastoralists. On the long run, they mixed a bit with those, but were largely outbred or even expulsed and annihilated on the long run.

Therefore this Lusatian-Dacian agro-pastoralist population in the proximity of the Forest steppe is a likely source of admixture for very early Slavs which must have been their direct neiighbours.

Chernoles was at the crossroad of all these influences:



Since the Baltoslavic element was the dominant, the paternal contribution of these Lusatian-Dacian elements might have been significantly lower than the total autosomal contribution. Looking at ph2ters PCA, it looks that way.

And yes, there is no reason to have picked this Dacian-shift up in Hungary, since the Thracian groups and mixed Thracian groups lived in South Eastern Poland-Western Ukraine themselves. Most notably clearly Dacian groups like Lipitsa.