Preliminary genetic results about Sarmatians from the Carpathian Basin

[FR9CZ6]

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[rafc]

Thanks, looks very interesting. Those Sarmatian era Romanians on figure 2 are made up of two groups, about 2/3d are "real" Sarmatians, and that remaining third has no East-Asian ancestry, but high EEF. That last thing is not so unexpected based on earlier leaks on the Chernyakhov culture, but some people were saying it would not be the case.

[Parastais]

Sorry, not familiar with I2 tree.
Those I2 are by any chance “Slavic”?

[Riverman]

Thanks, looks very interesting. Those Sarmatian era Romanians on figure 2 are made up of two groups, about 2/3d are reel Sarmatians, and that remaining third has no East-Asian ancestry, but high EEF. That last thing is not so unexpected based on earlier leaks on the Chernyakhov culture, but some people were saying it would not be the case.

Crucial is the ratio of E-V13 within the non-Scytho-Sarmatians, then E-V13 is dominant, together with R-L2 from Tumulus culture Celts.
That's the North Thracian-Dacian heritage.

In the real Dacians E-V13 would be totally dominant. And the subclades might turn out to be more widespread than those from the Iron Age Balkans.

[RCO]

One Sarmatian_HU J1a-Z2215, usually they are from ancient branches.

[jamtastic]

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Thanks for sharing this! So, this is the poster from a talk at the recent ISBA? Are you aware of any further, more detailed information being available anywhere?

[corrigendum]

Thanks, looks very interesting. Those Sarmatian era Romanians on figure 2 are made up of two groups, about 2/3d are "real" Sarmatians, and that remaining third has no East-Asian ancestry, but high EEF. That last thing is not so unexpected based on earlier leaks on the Chernyakhov culture, but some people were saying it would not be the case.

Chernyakhov culture is Roman era/post-Roman, so I don't know why that would be a problem or why someone would object to such a find. The Maslomecz samples date from the same era, so we already have evidence of individuals from the Balkans moving northwards in this era.

The important result here has to do with Y-DNA which again confirms the fact that Balkan haplogroups (like E-V13) weren't statistically significant in these areas.

[okshtunas]

Will Y-DNA/STRs be released for the samples?

I am curious what the non-Z93 R1a will be. Maybe basal Z283, Z280 etc. Would be cool if they picked up some M458/L1029.

[Riverman]

Thanks, looks very interesting. Those Sarmatian era Romanians on figure 2 are made up of two groups, about 2/3d are "real" Sarmatians, and that remaining third has no East-Asian ancestry, but high EEF. That last thing is not so unexpected based on earlier leaks on the Chernyakhov culture, but some people were saying it would not be the case.

Chernyakhov culture is Roman era/post-Roman, so I don't know why that would be a problem or why someone would object to such a find. The Maslomecz samples date from the same era, so we already have evidence of individuals from the Balkans moving northwards in this era.

The important result here has to do with Y-DNA which again confirms the fact that Balkan haplogroups (like E-V13) weren't statistically significant in these areas.

The idea of a late Roman arrival is dead by now. Just like expected, the local population is R-L2 from the Celts and E-V13 from the Daco-Thracians.
All other haplogroups are either new arrivals or are insignificant.

The main block in between the two sampled areas creates a gap which was filled by cremating Dacians for the most part. And those would be packed with E-V13.

The fact that this area and the cremation burials being left out is the only reason why E-V13 is not totally dominant.

Chernyakhov being more Dacian than Roman influenced.

[corrigendum]

The idea of a late Roman arrival is dead by now. Just like expected, the local population is R-L2 from the Celts and E-V13 from the Daco-Thracians.
All other haplogroups are either new arrivals or are insignificant.

The data don't show anything about any E-V13 which made up the "local" population which descends from IA groups. The data we have show that in fact most E-V13 carriers north of the Balkans came from the Balkans in a very late era.

We have found 1 E-L618 in 11 samples and in the same era which is within the Roman period there are 1 E-V13 & 1 J-L283 north of this region in Maslomecz. And again, this E-V13 individual came from a very southern area. His ancestry is not from anywhere near the Carpathians:



That's not a "Daco-Thracian local" of the Carpathians. So, if a theory is "dead", it's the theory that somehow individuals who had Balkan/East Med-admixture are "Carpathian locals".

There are samples which have not just IA, but BA continuity in this area and they might be represented in the Sarmatian dataset from Romania by the I2a-L460 individual as almost all samples the BA Monteoru culture of eastern Romania belong to I2a clades. Alternatively, he could even be an early Slav.

[corrigendum]

Crucial is the ratio of E-V13 within the non-Scytho-Sarmatians, then E-V13 is dominant, together with R-L2 from Tumulus culture Celts.
That's the North Thracian-Dacian heritage.

There is 1/11 E-L618 in Sarmatian period samples from Romania and there are 3/39 E-V13/EL618 in Gnecchi-Ruscone (2022), but only one actually comes from the Sarmatian era in Hungary. This not a demographically significant ratio for any of these areas beyond the Roman border. The other two are from the Avar period and one of them has this profile:

Target: Hungary_Transtisza_Maros_EAvar:I16750
Distance: 2.5506% / 0.02550612
73.6 TUR_Barcin_N
21.6 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
3.4 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
1.4 GEO_CHG



That's not "North Dacian heritage", but it is part of the Roman heritage of Hungary. There's a lot to learn about such contacts and Roman heritage is one of the components of medieval Hungary, but it has to be treated as such. It can't be confused with IA groups which neither had any actual influence in Hungary, nor are they related to such profiles and populations.

[Riverman]

If individuals from actual Roman cities, like Viminacium, are more Northern than South Thracians, you nnow there must be a more Northern E-V13 population.
The Vekerzug and Himera samples prove that as well.

[PopGenist82]

I think it does suggest that “ Dacians” were rich in E-V13 but it also shows they’re recent arrivals from Iron Age Bulgaria, as outlined by Auriel Rustiou

[Riverman]

I think it does suggest that “ Dacians” were rich in E-V13 but it also shows they’re recent arrivals from Iron Age Bulgaria, as outlined by Auriel Rustiou

Well, that's possible, but to dig deeper into that, we should first define what Dacians were. Because I would distinguish between the Dacian kingdom and Dacians in the sense of the Northern Thracian tribes (basically Basarabi and everything North of the Danube, extending up to the Northern Transcarpathian zone and the forest steppe.

Because we do know that a certain "warrior elite" package spread before the historical Thracians from around the Lower Danube. Not Bulgaria exclusively, but the Lower Danube zone with a hotspot in Southern Romania, the so called "Padea–Panagjurski kolonii group" according to Rustoiu.  

What I'm suggesting is that its possible that essentially one Daco-Thracian E-V13 elite replaced another in the process. But the both geographically and genetically more Northern (still Southern and more EEF shifted in comparison to Kyjatice, Füzesabony, Noua-Sabatinovka etc.) groups like Vekerzug Sanislau group and Kustanovice were also Daco-Thracians with E-V13 dominance.

Another factor is the proximity and influence of the Celts. While the core zone remained much less influenced and altered by Celts, kept thier own customs, unlike the mixed groups in the La Tene zone, they got still a bit influenced and it shows in the Dacian package. Therefore I think the Dacian core, its source, can't be too far from the Celtic settlement zone.

This author summarised some of the Dacians remains and the available evidence. Unfortunately, like pointed out not often enough, practically all burials were cremations, just like in all North Thracian-Dacian groups and contrary to the earlier Mezocsat and Basarabi period, also contrary to the South Thracians, where inhumation while not the rule was used more often.

It is, quite clearly, a defining marker of the North Thracian-Dacian tribes, that they regularly and fairly strictly burnt their dead, just like Channelled Ware people before.

There are however human remains from "non-funerary contexts", like described by the author on page 64:

Sirbu lists threse last finds amongs 196 exmaples of uncremated remians in a "non-funerary" contexts, of which 77 (39 %) were complete skeletons.

Despite these examples, the principal characteristic of this period is the lack of burials.

That was typical for Suciu de Sus and Gáva - even Nyirseg in the EBA - the lack of burials but eivdence for a big population. This suggests the remains were burnt and scattered or deposed in another way which left little behind.

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/11...0Dacia.pdf

One of the complete skeletons had practically all his bones broken, therefore it might have been a brutal execution if it was happening ante mortem, which is not for sure.

These might be all kind of people and its not as good as getting the elite male with his three sacrificed horses, but if sampling more than a dozen or so males from those contexts, locals should be included eventually, if not majority wise.

Typically many of the body burials being mass graves in pits, similar to the situation in post-Psenichevo Bulgaria, from where we got the South Thracian E-V13, similar to Babadag, to Gáva and to Belegis II-Gáva and Kalakacza sites, of which one between those two groups and Basarabi might be sampled soon and hopefully. Or even two sites if we're lucky.

But from later, actual Dacians in their core zone, we don't have a lot, but these inhumations could be used.

Since you mentioned Rustoiu, he also wrote about the Celtic hybridisation in Transylvania and the mobility of the warrior class:

Other strontium isotope analyses carried out in the la Tène cemeteries from Nebringen, on the Rhine, Monte Bibele, in northern Italy, Radovesice and kutna Hora, in Bohemia, showed that inside certain communities the individual mobility was low, most of the deceased being locals. Also, the individual mobility was more prevalent amongst men than women. Finally, it was noted that in the cemeteries from Bohemia the funerary inventories of the dead coming from other areas contained weapons, a fact that illustrates up to a certain point the mobility of the warriors (Scheeres et al. 2013; 2014).

This explains the appearance of the E-V13 minority throughout the Celtic zone in the Later Iron Age. Some Sardinian branches which split from Central Europeans in that period have a TMRCA of around 250 BC, which means they must have been at least in the vicinity of Northern Italy by 300 BC.

On Daco-Thracian survival between the Celtic settlements:

Nevertheless, it has to be emphasized that not all of the regions from inside the mountain range were occupied by the celts. Fortiied or rural settlements have been discovered in the Maramureş Depression and the depressions from eastern Transylvania, as well as cemeteries belonging to the local populations, which continued to evolve according to the older, Early Iron Age traditions. These people were more likely connected to cultural models from the eastern carpathians and the lower Danube regions (Rustoiu 2008, 80–86; Rustoiu 2014a, 153–156).

That's a clear reference to Basarabi and the connections between the Daco-Thracian provinces, well-established since hte Channelled Ware expansion (Eastern Slovakia, Transcarpathian Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, much of Serbia, Bulgaria, European Turkey basically).

The Celtic invasion resulted in a hybrid culture in the West, in which presumably R-L2 and E-V13 dominated, with Celts being dominant, but strong local elements persisting. Sometimes in a mixed context, sometimes side by side. This Celtic period ended however and quite clearly so:

The fate of the communities belonging to the ‘celtic horizon’ in Transylvania can be archaeologically traced until the end of the lT c1 (beginning of the second century Bc), when a sudden disappearance of the cemeteries can be noted both in Transylvania and the Great Hungarian Plain and across wider central European areas. The phenomenon was considered to be a consequence of major changes in the local beliefs and funerary practices. In the lT c2–D1 period (second–irst centuries Bc), the bodies of the dead were disposed of in a manner that left no archaeologically visible traces. Some researchers suggested the use of cremation, followed by scattering of the burned remains in places that cannot be investigated today (lakes, rivers, groves etc.), or of corpse exposing/decomposing (Sîrbu 1993, 37–38; about the social and ritual changes that led to the emergence of this phenomenon, and also about the ritual and social treatment of the deceased, see Egri 2012, 507–509). New cultic places, in which human or animal sacriices were performed, appeared in the same period (Petres 1972).

There was however some general continuity of the mixed habitation, but not in the later clearly Dacian zone:

The situation is entirely diferent in Transylvania. The celtic horizon, with typical la Tène cemeteries and settlement inventories, abruptly ceased to exist at the end of the lT c1. Other types of habitation and burials appeared almost instantly in the next period. This kind of cremation graves in a simple pit or the tumulus ones, sometimes organized in small ‘familial’ cemeteries, were mostly discovered in south-western Transylvania, for instance at cugir and călan (tumulus graves), or at Blandiana, Tărtăria, Teleac, Hunedoara, Piatra craivii etc. (cremation graves in a pit). Recent inds allowed the identiication of such burials towards north, for instance in the surroundings of the Malaja kopanja fortress, on the right bank of the upper Tisza River, in Trans-carpathian ukraine (Fig. 27).

That clearly reads like migration. Channelled Ware traditions re-appear, but this time they come from the South:

Finally, weapons and harness ittings speciic to this horizon were recently discovered at Bulbuc, Alba county (Fig. 28) (Borangic 2014). The funerary inventories comprise weaponry which deines the characteristic panoply: long swords of the la Tène type, spears, curved daggers, sometimes having the blade decorated with geometric or zoomorphic symbols, shields and sometimes chain-mails and helmets. They are associated with harness ittings among which the so-called ‘Thracian’ horse bits are the most typical ones. With regard to the pottery, the vessels placed in graves (complete or fragmentary) no longer resemble the forms of the previous horizon, but evolved from shapes that are characteristic for the northern Balkans region. Amongst them can be listed the jar-like vessels with knobs, the so-called ‘fruit-bowls’ (bowls with a tall foot, the larger ones being probably used in convivial practices), one handle beakers (usually handmade and sometimes used as funerary urns), large bi-truncated vessels with two handles etc. (Rustoiu 2008, 142–163).

The warrior complex:

comparable funerary assemblages containing panoplies of weapons that are typologically and functionally homogenous were found on a relatively extended area in the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula and on both banks of the Danube, downstream from the Iron Gates (Fig. 27). The entire phenomenon was designated by the archaeologists as the Padea–Panagjurski kolonii group, on the basis of two cemeteries discovered on the territories of Romania and Bulgaria respectively (Woźniak 1974, 74–138; Woźniak 1976, 388–394).
Regardless of the unitary aspect of the weaponry, elements of the funerary rite and ritual difered from one region to another, which leads to the hypothesis of their belonging to warrior elites who shared the same symbolic means of expressing the identity, but with diferent ethnic origins. The ancient authors mention diferent populations in the regions in question, of which the lesser Scordisci, the Triballi and the Dacians are better known.

Therefore this new, kind of royal warrior class, which later formed the Dacian kingdom, had different tribal affinities united under its banner, according to the Rustoiu.

In conclusion, the funerary contexts from Transylvania which chronologically follow the cemeteries and settlements of the celtic horizon suggest a migration from the south of the warrior elite coming from the northern Balkans or the lower Danube regions, which ended the celtic domination on the area, imposing new organisational structures.

Basically Dacians-North Thracians from outside of the Celtic zone of dominance pushed Celts back, which were however mixed with related tribes which lived to the North long before. It is kind of funny that even in the later Dacian period, the "fruit bowls" still show elements introduced by Channelled Ware, most notably in Lapus I to Lapus II-Gáva, in the Upper Tisza zone.

The military elite, who arrived in Transylvania from the northern Balkans and ended the celtic way of life, later generated a coherent political and social class. The outcome of this process was the appearance of the Dacian kingdom, which in the time of Burebista, who was caesar’s contemporary, expanded greatly, from the Middle Danube to the Black Sea.

https://www.academia.edu/15801154/Aurel_...015_p_9_29

The idea that a people which dominated more than 1/3 and at their peak as much as 1/2 of the whole Carpatho-Balkan zone for thousands of years left no typical haplogroup signal behind, especially since we know that thousands and tens of thousands of Dacians were resettled within the Roman Empire, is blatantly absurd.

One has to ask the question, if the Daco-Thracians were not E-V13, what else is their signal? The correlation is nearly 100 %.

Since we know that there were multiple forth and back migrations in the Daco-Thracian sphere, I just expect different tribes having different ratios of EEF : WHG : Steppe and different frequencies of non-E-V13.

E.g.: the Western Transylvanian-Eastern Hungarian mixed hybrid groups are supposed to have more R1b, mostly R-L2. And voila, that's what we get in Hungary from the Sarmatian to the Hungarian period. The locals being dominated by R-L2 and E-V13.

[corrigendum]

This explains the appearance of the E-V13 minority throughout the Celtic zone in the Later Iron Age. Some Sardinian branches which split from Central Europeans in that period have a TMRCA of around 250 BC, which means they must have been at least in the vicinity of Northern Italy by 300 BC.

The Celtic invasion resulted in a hybrid culture in the West, in which presumably R-L2 and E-V13 dominated, with Celts being dominant, but strong local elements persisting. Sometimes in a mixed context, sometimes side by side.
One has to ask the question, if the Daco-Thracians were not E-V13, what else is their signal? The correlation is nearly 100 %.

Since we know that there were multiple forth and back migrations in the Daco-Thracian sphere, I just expect different tribes having different ratios of EEF : WHG : Steppe and different frequencies of non-E-V13.

E.g.: the Western Transylvanian-Eastern Hungarian mixed hybrid groups are supposed to have more R1b, mostly R-L2. And voila, that's what we get in Hungary from the Sarmatian to the Hungarian period. The locals being dominated by R-L2 and E-V13.

There are 2 E-V13 samples from La Tene Hungary (1 is a very recent migrant from the Balkans) and 1 in La Tene Czechia, 1 E-V13 outlier in Vekerzug (although Vekerzug is not Celtic per se) and there are 0 E-V13 among Celts in Slovenia. E-V13 is just one of the haplogroups with very low percentages in these areas and its distribution is what would be expected from a Paleo-Balkan haplogroup north of the Balkans during the IA.

E-V13 is not a "minority throughout the Celtic zone in the Later Iron Age". This just doesn't exist in the data. 2 samples in La Tene Hungary don't make E-V13 a "minority throughout the Celtic zone in the LIA". There are many haplogroups which appear in just 1-2 samples in various La Tene areas.

Since we know that there were multiple forth and back migrations in the Daco-Thracian sphere, I just expect different tribes having different ratios of EEF : WHG : Steppe and different frequencies of non-E-V13.

E.g.: the Western Transylvanian-Eastern Hungarian mixed hybrid groups are supposed to have more R1b, mostly R-L2. And voila, that's what we get in Hungary from the Sarmatian to the Hungarian period. The locals being dominated by R-L2 and E-V13.

This is an inaccurate statement. There is 1/11 E-L618 in Sarmatian era Romania samples, and these are the samples from Sarmatian era Hungary:




In addition to the above 6 samples from Scythian era sites in Hungary, there are also 3 more samples from Marciniak et al. (2022):

I11670; 400 BC-100 AD; Kesznyéten-Szérűskert, Hungary; Iron Age_Scythian; I2-L596>Y14158>S6635>S6724>pre-PF3885

I11674; 400 BC-100 AD; Kesznyéten-Szérűskert, Hungary; Iron Age_Scythian; R1b-U152>L2>Z49>BY96884* (xBY55682)

I11676; 400 BC-100 AD; Kesznyéten-Szérűskert, Hungary; Iron Age_Scythian; R1b-L51>L52>FT123498>BY44535* (xY289225)
E-V13 remains very low throughout this period and it is only in the Avar  early medieval era that E-V13 increases, but this increase has to do with the annexation of the Roman frontier by the Avars which means that Roman populations which were stationed there passed under their control. This is what increased E-V13 in early medieval Hungary and it's unrelated to IA Dacians or any IA population.

The relevant study can't make it any clearer for its readers what these individuals (including E-V13 carriers) represent:

These cemeteries must have belonged to the immigrant Avar population, while the local population seems to have separated, as many Avar period cemeteries show no sign of Asian ancestry. Latter include Mélykút-Sándordűlő (MS), Szeged-Fehértó A (SZF), Szeged-Kundomb (SZK), Szeged-Makkoserdő (SZM), Kiskundorozsma-Kettőshatár I (KK1), KiskundorozsmaDaruhalom (KDA), Orosháza-Bónum Téglagyár (OBT), Székkutas-Kápolnadűlő (SZKT), Homokmégy-Halom (HH), Alattyán-Tulát (ALT), Kiskőrös-Pohibuj Mackó dűlő (KPM), and Sükösd-Ságod (SSD), in which Asian lineages barely occur. In the SZK, ALT, KK1, OBT, SZKT, HH and SZM cemeteries most males belonged to the E1b1b1a1b1 (E-V13) Hg, which is most prevalent in the Balkan, and accordingly many of the samples from these cemeteries fell in EU_Core1, or its vicinity, with typical Southern European genomes.

EU_Core1: This group is located at the southernmost part of the EU-cline, and their PC2 position overlaps with modern Greeks, Albanians, Italians and European Neolithic-Chalcolithic samples. This group is best represented by samples; ALT-224, KK1-251, KK1-252, SZK-83, SZK-180 and SZOD376 (Extended Data Fig.1b), all of them from the Avar period, except for the 11th century commoner SZOD-376. On PC50 clustering EU_Core1 clusters together with Langobards from Hungary11, Iron Age, Imperial and Medieval individuals from Italy12, as well as with Minoans and Mycenaeans from Greece13 (Table S3), indicating an ancient southern European genetic affinity of this group.