Genetic Genealogy & Ancient DNA (DISCUSSION ONLY)

[Pylsteen]

In this thread, papers can be discussed.

Titles/abstracts thread can be found here:  Genetic Genealogy & Ancient DNA (TITLES/ABSTRACTS)

[Qrts]

The Iraqi DNA project has confirmed there's a "good amount" of samples from ancient Nimrud/Kalkhu dated to the Neo-Assyrian period being tested by labs. (https://www.facebook.com/IraqDNAproject)

This is the second confirmed batch of samples from Iraq, the first being Hellenistic period samples from a site to the east of Baghdad.

[Orentil]

Google translation:
VARUS BATTLE in the Osnabrücker Land - Museum and Park Kalkriese –

Are DNA analyzes possible on our bones? So far the chances haven't been great, but now we're starting a new attempt together with the Leipzig Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
The investigations are part of a European research project led by Dr. Stephan Schiffels. The aim is to create a genetic map of the Iron Age population. The revolutionary genetic research in human history began with Neanderthal discoveries, and has now worked its way through the Stone Age to the Iron Age. Dr. Angela Mötsch, from the Archaeogenetics Department, picked up bones from us together with her husband.
New methods are intended to detect very rare mutations, allowing a more detailed picture to be drawn than was previously possible. This provides new insights into the composition of the
European population and their family trees are expected. The tests are carried out using samples from the temporal bone, which is the hardest bone in the skull. We sent in 15 samples to incorporate our findings into this research. Now we have to see how the dead from the Kalkriese battlefield compare.

@Max-Planck-Gesellschaft


VARUSSCHLACHT im Osnabrücker Land - Museum und Park Kalkriese –

Sind DNA-Analysen an unseren Knochen möglich? Bislang waren die Chancen nicht gerade groß, aber nun starten wir gemeinsam mit dem Leipziger Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie einen neuen Versuch.
Die Untersuchungen sind Teil eines europäischen Forschungsprojekts unter Leitung von Dr. Stephan Schiffels. Ziel ist es, eine genetische Landkarte der Bevölkerung zur Eisenzeit zu erstellen. Am Anfang der revolutionären genetischen Erforschung der Menschheitsgeschichte standen Neandertaler-Funde, inzwischen hat man sich durch die Steinzeiten bis in die Eisenzeit vorgearbeitet. Dr. Angela Mötsch, Abteilung Archäogenetik , hat gemeinsam mit ihrem Mann Knochen bei uns abgeholt.
Mit neuen Methoden sollen sehr seltene Mutationen erfasst werden, die ein detaillierteres Bild als bisher möglich nachzeichnen lassen. Hierdurch werden neue Einsichten zur Zusammensetzung der
europäischen Bevölkerung und deren Stammbäume erwartet. Die Untersuchungen werden durch Proben aus dem zum Schläfenbein gehörenden Felsenbein durchgeführt, dem härtesten Knochen des Schädels. Wir haben 15 Proben eingeschickt, um unsere Funde mit in diese Forschungen einzubringen. Jetzt muss sich zeigen, wie sich die Toten vom Kalkrieser Schlachtfeld im Vergleich darstellen.
@Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

[Tomenable]

Does anyone have PLINK version (bed/bim/fam files) of the data from this study?:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...7422014684

[Radko]

ASHG 2023 abstracts...

Genetic identification of Slavs in Migration Period Europe using an IBD sharing graph

Author Block:  P. Flegontov1,2, L. Viazov1, O. Flegontova1, H. Ringbauer2, D. Reich3; 1Univ. of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic, 2Dept. of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA, 3Harvard Univ., Boston, MA

Popular methods of genetic analysis relying on allele frequencies such as PCA, ADMIXTURE and qpAdm are not suitable for distinguishing many populations that were important historical actors in the Migration Period Europe. For instance, differentiating Slavic, Germanic, and Celtic people is very difficult relying on these methods, but very helpful for archaeologists given a large proportion of graves with no inventory and frequent adoption of a different culture. To overcome these problems and to test if archaeological cultural groups in Early Medieval Central/Eastern Europe correspond to populations isolated to some degree, we applied a method based on autosomal haplotypes. Imputation of missing genotypes, phasing and IBD inference were performed for ancient Eurasians using the ancIBD method (Ringbauer et al. 2023, bioRxiv). IBD links for subsets of these individuals are represented as graphs, visualized with a force-directed layout algorithm, and most clusters of distant relatives that were inferred in these graphs with the Leiden algorithm are in remarkable agreement with archaeological evidence. One of these clusters includes nearly all individuals in the dataset annotated archaeologically as 'Slavic'. Most individuals in this cluster were not buried in the Slavic cultural context, but all of them come from times and places where Slavic presence is likely according to written sources and/or archaeological evidence. These results illustrate the power of the IBD graph approach since we were able to reveal a community of distantly related individuals from very diverse archaeological contexts who could not be identified using the standard archaeogenetic toolkit. Considering also results of other analyses based on allele frequencies (PCA, ADMIXTURE), a hypothesis for the origin of this population can be proposed: it was formed by admixture of a group related to Baltic speakers with East Germanic people and Sarmatians or Scythians, and underwent a major bottleneck. We suppose that the starting point of these demographic processes in Central and Eastern Europe were migrations of Sarmatian populations, pushed out from Volhynia by Goths in the late 2nd century CE.


Finnish Y chromosome sequencing data suggests dual paths of haplogroup N1a1 into Finland

Author Block:  A. Preussner1, J. Leinonen1, J. Riikonen1, M. Pirinen1,2,3, T. Tukiainen1; 1Inst. for Molecular Med. Finland (FIMM), Helsinki, Finland, 2Dept. of Publ. Hlth., Faculty of Med., Univ. of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, 3Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics, Univ. of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Y chromosome (chrY) haplogroups differ geographically within Finland, with N1a1-TAT enriched in the northeast and I1-M253 in the southwest, suggested to reflect two separate founding populations. However, to date, the distribution of finer-scale chrY variation beyond these major haplogroups has not been characterized in the population. To better understand the Y-chromosomal landscape in Finland, we studied whole genome sequencing data for the Y chromosome in 1831 Finnish men (born between 1923-1979), with precise geographical origins from the FINRISK project. We assessed the geographical distribution of common chrY haplogroups (freq ≥ 1%) within 19 regions across Finland, determined by paternal birth places (6-392 samples per region), and further examined the relationship between chrY haplogroups and autosomal genetic variation. In addition to detecting the four previously described chrY haplogroups in Finland, N1a1-TAT (69%), I1-M253 (20%), R1a-M420 (5%) and R1b-M343 (4%), we increase the resolution by observing in total 56 common haplogroups in our data, with 27 displaying geographical differences within the country (chisq p<0.05). We show that haplogroup N1a1-TAT, traditionally associated with eastern Finnish ancestry, splits into two unique lineages: N1a1a1a1a2a1-CTS2733 (53%) enriched in the northeast, and N1a1a1a1a1a-VL29 (16%) more frequent in the southwestern coast, specifically in Southwest Finland (64% of N1a1, chisq p=5e-11). Carriers of these two N1a1-TAT lineages displayed differences in their autosomal genome (PC1) in Southwest Finland (wilcoxon p<2e-16) but not elsewhere in Finland, with the VL29 carriers resembling closely southwestern Finns, suggesting its arrival to the southwestern coast may occurred more likely via the Baltic Sea rather than through the mainland. Overall, our results suggest two separate routes of haplogroup N1a1-TAT into Finland, N1a1a1a1a2a1-CTS2733 from the east and N1a1a1a1a1a-VL29 from the southwest. Within other haplogroups, such as I1-M253, we did not observe a similar degree of heterogeneity, although we detected some regional enrichments in its sublineages. In summary, we have characterized detailed chrY variation and its distribution regionally within Finland, providing novel insights into the population history of Finns, particularly within haplogroup N1a1-TAT. Our research further elaborates on the relationship between autosomal genetic structure and chrY haplogroups, providing valuable insights for future studies in population health. Overall, this study highlights the value of reassessing population-level chrY variation with detailed geographical and sequencing data.


An ancient DNA time-transect of the Western Steppe from 1000 BCE to 1000 CE disproves the Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi Jewish origins.

Author Block:  A. Shaus1,2, I. Shingiray3, C. Lalueza-Fox4, R. Pinhasi5, D. Reich1,6,7,8; 1Harvard Med. Sch., Boston, MA, 2Tel Aviv Univ., Tel Aviv, Israel, 3Univ. of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, 4Inst. of Evolutionary Biology of UPF and CSIC, Barcelona, Spain, 5Univ. of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, 6Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA, 7Broad Inst. of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, 8Howard Hughes Med. Inst., Boston, MA

Unlike many literate civilizations of the past, most of the cultures of the Western Steppe during the millennia before and after the turn of the common era left little, if any, written evidence. Hence, the only historical knowledge of these cultures is provided by the writing of often unfriendly neighbors, which is at best fragmentary and certainly tendentious. Additionally, in many cases, the archaeological record of these societies is restricted to isolated burials, which are difficult to characterize and analyze based on frequently limited and fragmentary funerary material culture, and is further complicated by the common presence of intrusive graves from later periods. We report genome-wide data from 105 Steppe individuals from Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Kazakhstan, 83 of which were radiocarbon dated. We trace the intricate effects of centuries-long patterns of migrations, admixtures and population displacements for populations likely to correspond to the historically described Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Khazars, and Bulgars. We detect a major population shift beginning with the second half of the 4th century CE, which can be associated with the consequences of the so-called “Hunnic mayhem”, postulated by some historians. By analyzing multiple genomes from the core area of the Khazar Khaganate, we set to rest the “Khazar hypothesis” of Jewish Ashkenazi origins, which postulates that Khazars, converted to Judaism in the 8th and 9th centuries CE, were a major contributing source to present-day Ashkenazi Jews. Instead, we find that Khazar burials have a typical Western Turkic genetic profile, with no evidence at all for recent shared ancestry with present-day or medieval Jews.

[Riverman]

Genetic identification of Slavs in Migration Period Europe using an IBD sharing graph

Author Block:  P. Flegontov1,2, L. Viazov1, O. Flegontova1, H. Ringbauer2, D. Reich3; 1Univ. of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic, 2Dept. of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA, 3Harvard Univ., Boston, MA

Popular methods of genetic analysis relying on allele frequencies such as PCA, ADMIXTURE and qpAdm are not suitable for distinguishing many populations that were important historical actors in the Migration Period Europe. For instance, differentiating Slavic, Germanic, and Celtic people is very difficult relying on these methods, but very helpful for archaeologists given a large proportion of graves with no inventory and frequent adoption of a different culture. To overcome these problems and to test if archaeological cultural groups in Early Medieval Central/Eastern Europe correspond to populations isolated to some degree, we applied a method based on autosomal haplotypes. Imputation of missing genotypes, phasing and IBD inference were performed for ancient Eurasians using the ancIBD method (Ringbauer et al. 2023, bioRxiv). IBD links for subsets of these individuals are represented as graphs, visualized with a force-directed layout algorithm, and most clusters of distant relatives that were inferred in these graphs with the Leiden algorithm are in remarkable agreement with archaeological evidence. One of these clusters includes nearly all individuals in the dataset annotated archaeologically as 'Slavic'. Most individuals in this cluster were not buried in the Slavic cultural context, but all of them come from times and places where Slavic presence is likely according to written sources and/or archaeological evidence. These results illustrate the power of the IBD graph approach since we were able to reveal a community of distantly related individuals from very diverse archaeological contexts who could not be identified using the standard archaeogenetic toolkit. Considering also results of other analyses based on allele frequencies (PCA, ADMIXTURE), a hypothesis for the origin of this population can be proposed: it was formed by admixture of a group related to Baltic speakers with East Germanic people and Sarmatians or Scythians, and underwent a major bottleneck. We suppose that the starting point of these demographic processes in Central and Eastern Europe were migrations of Sarmatian populations, pushed out from Volhynia by Goths in the late 2nd century CE.

Both uniparentals and autosomal results rather suggest a Dacian-like or Celtic-like input in my opinion, not genuinely Scytho-Sarmatian. We know that the Scythians and Sarmatians around the Carpathians got a lot of local admixture, so this might be it, but still I highly doubt its actuaul (genuine, original) Scytho-Sarmatian ancestry, at least not a lot of it.
The Lusatians, Eastern Celts and Northern Dacian tribes are more likely to be the primary source. To begin with, the core Scytho-Sarmatians had a Central-East Asian admixture and uniparentals which are not that present among the core Slavic population. The shift is rather in a Carpatho-Balkan direction compared to Balts.

[leonardo]

Genetic identification of Slavs in Migration Period Europe using an IBD sharing graph

Author Block:  P. Flegontov1,2, L. Viazov1, O. Flegontova1, H. Ringbauer2, D. Reich3; 1Univ. of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic, 2Dept. of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA, 3Harvard Univ., Boston, MA

Popular methods of genetic analysis relying on allele frequencies such as PCA, ADMIXTURE and qpAdm are not suitable for distinguishing many populations that were important historical actors in the Migration Period Europe. For instance, differentiating Slavic, Germanic, and Celtic people is very difficult relying on these methods, but very helpful for archaeologists given a large proportion of graves with no inventory and frequent adoption of a different culture. To overcome these problems and to test if archaeological cultural groups in Early Medieval Central/Eastern Europe correspond to populations isolated to some degree, we applied a method based on autosomal haplotypes. Imputation of missing genotypes, phasing and IBD inference were performed for ancient Eurasians using the ancIBD method (Ringbauer et al. 2023, bioRxiv). IBD links for subsets of these individuals are represented as graphs, visualized with a force-directed layout algorithm, and most clusters of distant relatives that were inferred in these graphs with the Leiden algorithm are in remarkable agreement with archaeological evidence. One of these clusters includes nearly all individuals in the dataset annotated archaeologically as 'Slavic'. Most individuals in this cluster were not buried in the Slavic cultural context, but all of them come from times and places where Slavic presence is likely according to written sources and/or archaeological evidence. These results illustrate the power of the IBD graph approach since we were able to reveal a community of distantly related individuals from very diverse archaeological contexts who could not be identified using the standard archaeogenetic toolkit. Considering also results of other analyses based on allele frequencies (PCA, ADMIXTURE), a hypothesis for the origin of this population can be proposed: it was formed by admixture of a group related to Baltic speakers with East Germanic people and Sarmatians or Scythians, and underwent a major bottleneck. We suppose that the starting point of these demographic processes in Central and Eastern Europe were migrations of Sarmatian populations, pushed out from Volhynia by Goths in the late 2nd century CE.

Both uniparentals and autosomal results rather suggest a Dacian-like or Celtic-like input in my opinion, not genuinely Scytho-Sarmatian. We know that the Scythians and Sarmatians around the Carpathians got a lot of local admixture, so this might be it, but still I highly doubt its actuaul (genuine, original) Scytho-Sarmatian ancestry, at least not a lot of it.
The Lusatians, Eastern Celts and Northern Dacian tribes are more likely to be the primary source. To begin with, the core Scytho-Sarmatians had a Central-East Asian admixture and uniparentals which are not that present among the core Slavic population. The shift is rather in a Carpatho-Balkan direction compared to Balts.

Sure seems that way for the M458 and its branch samples. Everything so far indicates that its origin, and for most of its time - especially for the branches that survived and contributed to the Slavic ethnogenesis - came from central Europe, just north of the Carpathians. Not sure, but the same may be true for I2a.

[Riverman]

Some more from ASHG:

Evolutionary patterns in historical genomes from Britain

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Author Block:  K. Anastasiadou, T. Booth, S. Johnston, M. Kelly, J. McCabe, M. Silva, L. Speidel, P. Swali, F. Tait, M. Williams, P. Skoglund; The Francis Crick Inst., London, United Kingdom

Ancient DNA provides a direct way to detect selection and adaptation throughout human history by tracking the trajectories of allelic frequencies over time and identifying changes in genetic variation that can be associated with changes in environmental conditions. A prime example of that is positive selection on lactase persistence in Europe that has been associated with the rise of dairying practices and seems to be driven by a single nucleotide variant, rs4988235. However, the detection of selection on polygenic traits is not as straightforward, as it requires robust genomic data and methods to be able to detect small changes on the whole genome level. In this study, we investigate signals of polygenic evolution with ancient DNA by combining whole genome sequencing, imputation and different approaches with dense sampling and rich phenotypic data, focusing at an initial stage on whole genomes sequenced from more than 200 individuals from Late Medieval (1000-1500 CE) and Post Medieval (1500-1800 CE) Britain, a population with close shared ancestry to the UK Biobank. We estimate polygenic risk scores (PRS) for a number of physiological and anthropometric traits and investigate whether shifts in the distribution of trait values on the population level can be attributed to documented cultural and environmental transitions. We test different methods of PRS calculation and set out a methodological approach of testing for statistically significant shifts in PRS variance over time. Meanwhile, we analyse the PRS in combination with osteological data and explore the use of discordance in genetic and realised value of a trait as an indication for the general health condition of the individual under study. Overall, we expect this study to set the foundations for large-scale studies of polygenic evolution using ancient DNA, providing a new dimension to the interactions between genotype, environment and phenotype over time.

not that new, but:

Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century.

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Author Block:  S. Waldman1, K. Sczech2, S. Carmi3, D. Reich4,5,6; 1Harvard Univ., Newton, MA, 2City of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany, 3The Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel, 4Harvard Univ., Boston, MA, 5Harvard Med. Sch., Boston, MA, 6Broad Inst. of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA

We report genome-wide data from 33 Ashkenazi Jews (AJ), dated to the 14th century, obtained following a salvage excavation at the medieval Jewish cemetery of Erfurt, Germany. The Erfurt individuals are genetically similar to modern AJ, but they show more variability in Eastern European-related ancestry than modern AJ. A third of the Erfurt individuals carried a mitochondrial lineage common in modern AJ and eight carried pathogenic variants known to affect AJ today. These observations, together with high levels of runs of homozygosity, suggest that the Erfurt community had already experienced the major reduction in size that affected modern AJ. The Erfurt bottleneck was more severe, implying substructure in medieval AJ. Overall, our results suggest that the AJ founder event and the acquisition of the main sources of ancestry pre-dated the 14th century and highlight late medieval genetic heterogeneity no longer present in modern AJ.
Our main emphasis here will be on the methodology used to analyze the history of the AJ population in this study. Additionally, I will discuss new data that has been collected since the publication of this study.

Another dubious (uniparentals!) conclusion:

Genomic history of Armenian population.

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Author Block:  A. Hovhannisyan1, A. Manica2; 1Trinity Coll. Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, 2Univ. of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Armenians have remained underrepresented in modern population genomic studies, despite inhabiting an important region between Western and Eastern Eurasia. Using the first full genomes on Armenians, we studied their origins, population structure, and demographic history. We demonstrated that the Armenian populations from western, central, and eastern parts of the highlands are relatively homogeneous. The Sasun, a population in the south that had been argued to receive the major genetic contribution from Assyrians, was instead shown to have derived its slightly divergent genetic profile from a bottleneck occurred in the recent past. We investigated the debated question on the genetic origin of Armenians and failed to find any significant support for historical suggestions by Herodotus of their Balkan-related ancestry. We also checked the degree of continuity of the population and found that Armenians have remained unadmixed through the Neolithic and at least until the first part of the Bronze Age. However, by incorporating temporally spaced ancient genomes from Armenia, we detected a genetic input from a source linked to Levantine Early Farmers during, or just after the Late Bronze Age, indicating that this period has been marked by large-scale migrations in the whole region.

plus

Reconstructing the genetic history of Ancestral South Indians and Ancestral Austro-Asiatics

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Author Block:  A. Dey1,2, A. Basu1, D. Nandi1; 1Natl. Inst. of BioMed. Genomics, Kalyani, India, 2Univ. of Calcutta, Kolkata, India

South Asia has a complex population history. Using previously published genomic data of present-day and ancient individuals from South Asia and its neighboring regions, we identified an ancestral component that is ubiquitous in the genomes of many present-day South Asian tribal populations, henceforth Tribal South Asian (TSA) ancestry. TSA was also present in South Asian ancient individuals, but almost absent in the ancient individuals from the neighboring regions. Most importantly, it is the only ancestry that is found in all present-day individuals from mainland South Asia. Hence, it is likely to represent one of the oldest ancestries of this region. TSA is highly correlated with Ancestral South Indian (ASI) and Ancestral Austro-Asiatic (AAA) ancestries (r=0.98 and 0.88 respectively), which can only be inferred exclusively from present-day South Asian individuals, and hence they provide better resolution. Due to their centrality in the peopling of South Asia, we aim to understand the formation of AAA and ASI using the genomes of present-day Austro-Asiatic and Dravidian-speaking tribal populations, which have AAA and ASI as their major ancestries respectively. These tribal populations are mostly isolated and they have a scattered distribution in Central and South India. We have analyzed GenomeAsia 100K-generated whole genome sequencing data of 497 unrelated South Asian individuals, that included 141 unrelated individuals from 11 Dravidian tribal populations and 4 Austro-Asiatic tribal populations. Despite being mostly isolated, these tribal populations showed high genetic similarity relative to other South Asian populations in Principal Component Analysis and ADMIXTURE analysis. We constructed a phylogenetic tree and performed D-statistics and IBD-based analyses which suggested that the Dravidian tribes from Central India are genetically closer to the Austro-Asiatic tribes, than they are to the Dravidian tribes from South India. We have used site frequency spectrum-based analysis to distinguish among various plausible demographic models in order to understand the population history of Austro-Asiatic and Dravidian tribes and estimate the separation time between ASI and AAA. This study elucidates the interplay between ASI and AAA ancestries and their role in the peopling of South Asia.

https://eppro01.ativ.me/src/EventPilot/p...?id=ASHG23

[Radko]

[dumuzi]

An ancient DNA time-transect of the Western Steppe from 1000 BCE to 1000 CE disproves the Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi Jewish origins.

Author Block:  A. Shaus1,2, I. Shingiray3, C. Lalueza-Fox4, R. Pinhasi5, D. Reich1,6,7,8; 1Harvard Med. Sch., Boston, MA, 2Tel Aviv Univ., Tel Aviv, Israel, 3Univ. of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, 4Inst. of Evolutionary Biology of UPF and CSIC, Barcelona, Spain, 5Univ. of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, 6Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA, 7Broad Inst. of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, 8Howard Hughes Med. Inst., Boston, MA

Unlike many literate civilizations of the past, most of the cultures of the Western Steppe during the millennia before and after the turn of the common era left little, if any, written evidence. Hence, the only historical knowledge of these cultures is provided by the writing of often unfriendly neighbors, which is at best fragmentary and certainly tendentious. Additionally, in many cases, the archaeological record of these societies is restricted to isolated burials, which are difficult to characterize and analyze based on frequently limited and fragmentary funerary material culture, and is further complicated by the common presence of intrusive graves from later periods. We report genome-wide data from 105 Steppe individuals from Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Kazakhstan, 83 of which were radiocarbon dated. We trace the intricate effects of centuries-long patterns of migrations, admixtures and population displacements for populations likely to correspond to the historically described Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Khazars, and Bulgars. We detect a major population shift beginning with the second half of the 4th century CE, which can be associated with the consequences of the so-called “Hunnic mayhem”, postulated by some historians. By analyzing multiple genomes from the core area of the Khazar Khaganate, we set to rest the “Khazar hypothesis” of Jewish Ashkenazi origins, which postulates that Khazars, converted to Judaism in the 8th and 9th centuries CE, were a major contributing source to present-day Ashkenazi Jews. Instead, we find that Khazar burials have a typical Western Turkic genetic profile, with no evidence at all for recent shared ancestry with present-day or medieval Jews.



Anyone knows when this study will be published? Is anyone attending this session? If yes, could you please ask about the publication date and the unipaternal results?

[FR9CZ6]

ASHG 2023 abstracts...

Genetic identification of Slavs in Migration Period Europe using an IBD sharing graph

Author Block:  P. Flegontov1,2, L. Viazov1, O. Flegontova1, H. Ringbauer2, D. Reich3; 1Univ. of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic, 2Dept. of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA, 3Harvard Univ., Boston, MA

Popular methods of genetic analysis relying on allele frequencies such as PCA, ADMIXTURE and qpAdm are not suitable for distinguishing many populations that were important historical actors in the Migration Period Europe. For instance, differentiating Slavic, Germanic, and Celtic people is very difficult relying on these methods, but very helpful for archaeologists given a large proportion of graves with no inventory and frequent adoption of a different culture. To overcome these problems and to test if archaeological cultural groups in Early Medieval Central/Eastern Europe correspond to populations isolated to some degree, we applied a method based on autosomal haplotypes. Imputation of missing genotypes, phasing and IBD inference were performed for ancient Eurasians using the ancIBD method (Ringbauer et al. 2023, bioRxiv). IBD links for subsets of these individuals are represented as graphs, visualized with a force-directed layout algorithm, and most clusters of distant relatives that were inferred in these graphs with the Leiden algorithm are in remarkable agreement with archaeological evidence. One of these clusters includes nearly all individuals in the dataset annotated archaeologically as 'Slavic'. Most individuals in this cluster were not buried in the Slavic cultural context, but all of them come from times and places where Slavic presence is likely according to written sources and/or archaeological evidence. These results illustrate the power of the IBD graph approach since we were able to reveal a community of distantly related individuals from very diverse archaeological contexts who could not be identified using the standard archaeogenetic toolkit. Considering also results of other analyses based on allele frequencies (PCA, ADMIXTURE), a hypothesis for the origin of this population can be proposed: it was formed by admixture of a group related to Baltic speakers with East Germanic people and Sarmatians or Scythians, and underwent a major bottleneck. We suppose that the starting point of these demographic processes in Central and Eastern Europe were migrations of Sarmatian populations, pushed out from Volhynia by Goths in the late 2nd century CE.

I think this scenario really fits the history of the Zarubinets and Kiev archaeological cultures. Zarubinets was strongly related to the Pomeranian culture, but it was also influenced by the southwestern Poienesti-Lukasevka culture from Moldova, La Téne celts, the earlier Milograd group in the north and by the "scythians" who might have been just acculturated locals in the forest-steppe zone. In the late Zarubinets-Kiev phase we can also deal with the Gothic and Sarmatian presence. 



Also, the red dots here show the pre-Vth century samples which share long IBD segments with the samples from the later "slavic cluster". If I have to guess those samples in the east are from the Middle-Volga variant of the Kiev culture/Imenkovo culture (or they show the influence of the population from these groups) and Tanais at the Azov Sea. The earliest are two samples from Viminacium dated to around the 2nd century AD. The results are quite puzzling, I'm really looking forward to finally read the whole publication and hopefully if there are some new samples (I really can't identify the eastern european ones on this map) the determined haplogroups and the WGS results will be included.

[J Man]

Nice to be here!....Looks like a lot more interesting upcoming ancient DNA papers will be released within the next few years.

[FR9CZ6]

Does anyone have the G25 cords for the new Rurikid sample? 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yOyGjdQ...p=drivesdk

Sequencing data for the NEV2 sample.3 are available for download via the link
http://russiangenome.ru/NEV2_3.bam

[DNA archi]

There is most likely some kind of mistake, the fact is that Dmitry Alexandrovich was the second most senior son of Grand Duke Vladimir Yaroslavich Nevsky and his wife Alexandra, daughter of Vitebsk and Polotsk Prince Br'acheslav Vasilkovich of Polotsk, in Belarus. But this sample has an East Asian mitohaplogroup F1b1, has a large East Asian autosomal component, and was a dark-haired brown-eyed and halfdark-skinned. The wife of Alexander Yaroslavich of East Asian origin is unknown and is not mentioned naturally anywhere, in general, all his children come from Alexandra Br'acheslavna, it turns out that he should have the second wife of East Asian origin, but there was no information about such in chronicles, and he could not He has her since this son is average in his family, that is, he could not be born either before his marriage on Alexandra Br'acheslavna, neither after it. It must be recalled that that it was the son of Alexander Yaroslavich was decided only in 2020.

[Gordius]

 but there was no information about such in chronicles, and he could not 

Do you trust every word of the medieval chronicles, especially those that have been rewritten more than once in later times?