Most interesting video-conference on Luwians, Troy and the Sea Peoples

All archaeogenetics and no archaeology makes people go mad. So let's spice this a bit with this absolutely enticing video of a conference by Dr. Eberhard Zangger, which I have watched thrice already, twice tonight alone.

I love the general outline of the exposition even if I know some details, like the outline of Lower Troy are controversial. 

I also did pose the following questions as commentary to the video:

1. How can the professor be so sure that all ancient Western Anatolian nations were Luwian and not from other diverse ethnicities? How that they were the only ones in the last Sea Peoples' wave? Just the same we see some non-Greeks in the Greek side of the Trojan war, I would expect some non-Luwians in the Trojan side as well, assuming the Trojans were Luwians and not Tyrsenians or something else. 
2. What about the Phrygians who show up in Anatolia, West and East (Armenians) after the Bronze Age collapse, out of nothing (they seem to originate in an obscure Paeonian tribe, the Bryges)? Not a single mention of them: I guess they would blurr the nice "Luwian" homogeneity. 
3. What about the Greeks (Danaoi, Denesh) and their Pelasgian (Peleset, Philistine) neighbors and often allies (Achilles himself and his Myrmidons were that)? They seem also involved in that late Sea Peoples wave and there is coincidence of cultural Hellenization (and not Luwianization) of Cyprus precisely in that period of the late Sea Peoples' attacks against Syria, Egypt and whatever else. Let's not forget that the Egyptians speak of the foreign peoples making a COALITION in their "islands", and I would say that this coalition involved peoples from all the Aegean, and not just the Asian side of it (although very good point about Evans' racism and his horrible influence on Aegean studies). 

But please don't let my nit-pickiness wrong what I think is a great conference dealing with a topic that has been way too neglected and even purposely ignored. There is a lot of good stuff in the video.

By the way, this is the Wikipedia map of Luwian inscriptions (unsure of what exactly the German legend says, "early" and "late" maybe?, but it's definitely about Luwian inscriptions):

Credit: Hendrik Tammen (CC-license)

Ancient DNA from the Balkans

This study has been for several months around but I have not discussed until now and is well worth a mention.

Ian Mathieson et al., The Genomic History Of Southeastern Europe. BioRXiv (pre-pub) 2017. doi:10.1101/135616

There is a lot of ancient autosomal DNA from the region but it basically says one thing: everything was almost exactly as expected from archaeology. The Karanovo-Gumelnita people, famed for inventing the Bronze Age a whole millenium earlier than anyone else, and nearby related cultures, were within the mainstream (Vasconic) Neolithic genetic grouping. This changed however with the kurgan invasion expressed primarily in the Ezero culture, which I've been told should be considered direct precursors of Thracians. But the change is not something radical: more genetic affinity with the steppe is visible than before and more generalized through all samples. 

Fig. 1-D - Supervised ADMIXTURE plot, modeling each ancient individual (one per row), as a mixture of
populations represented by clusters containing Anatolian Neolithic (grey), Yamnaya from Samara (yellow), EHG (pink) and WHG (green).  (click to expand)

Well, it is not exactly everything what is as expected, if we consider Polish Globular Amphorae culture, which I would have expected to be at least somewhat steppary, Indoeuropean, already but were not. Thus it seems I have to concede on this culture and its precursors being still part of the Vasconic Neolithic. This makes Indoeuropean penetration into Central-North Europe a much more sudden episode and one directly tied to Corded Ware culture and nothing else. It must have been perceived by its victims like a massive catastrophe, because it was a huge area which they conquered and to a large extent colonized in a very short span of time.

Lots of R1b in Epipaleolithic Balkans

Most interesting anyhow is the huge hoard of ancient Y-DNA R1b in the Iron Gates region (Lepenski Vir) before the Neolithic. This not only demonstrates, again, that this haplogroup is Paleoeuropean, at least in part, but, quite intriguingly makes earlier findings on modern data suggesting a possible origin or R1b-M269 in or near modern Serbia (Morelli 2010 and Myres 2010) at least somewhat plausible. However none of the Iron Gates R1b is described as R1b-M269 and in some cases it is excluded that it could be this sublineage. 

Thus the issue of the ultimate origins of this key lineage remains open, but let me underline that these Iron Gate individuals belonged to the WHG grouping, as did Villabruna (so far the oldest R1b carrier kown) and that they breach this way the assumed haplogroup homogeneity I2 conceived on merely Central and Northern European samples. Just as happened with mtDNA U haplogroup homogeneity when mtDNA H was detected by several independent studies of Iberian ancient DNA. It is normal to expect more diversity towards the south for several reasons but maybe the most critical of them is just average temperature, which makes the southern lands naturally more fertile (notably so for crops domesticated in the Middle East) and easier to inhabit. 

This trend was only broken in the Middle Ages when the heavy plough allowed the improved exploitation of deep Oceanic soils, being useless in the Mediterranean region of shallow soils however. It was only then when the center of European development moved from south to north, to Belgium specifically, where it remains till present day. So let's take Southern Europe a bit seriously, please.

Ancient genomes of SE Asia

Just a quick mention because I have such a long queue of stuff from Europe that I really have no time to look but very shallowly onto this study, which looks extremely interesting. Credit for the reference to Kristiina.

Hugh McColl, Fernando Racimo, Lasse Vinner, Fabrice Demeter et al., Ancient Genomics Reveals Four Prehistoric Migration Waves into Southeast Asia, BioRXiv (pre-pub) 2018. doi:10.1101/278374

Abstract

Two distinct population models have been put forward to explain present-day human diversity in Southeast Asia. The first model proposes long-term continuity (Regional Continuity model) while the other suggests two waves of dispersal (Two Layer model). Here, we use whole-genome capture in combination with shotgun sequencing to generate 25 ancient human genome sequences from mainland and island Southeast Asia, and directly test the two competing hypotheses. We find that early genomes from Hoabinhian hunter-gatherer contexts in Laos and Malaysia have genetic affinities with the Onge hunter-gatherers from the Andaman Islands, while Southeast Asian Neolithic farmers have a distinct East Asian genomic ancestry related to present-day Austroasiatic-speaking populations. We also identify two further migratory events, consistent with the expansion of speakers of Austronesian languages into Island Southeast Asia ca. 4 kya, and the expansion by East Asians into northern Vietnam ca. 2 kya. These findings support the Two Layer model for the early peopling of Southeast Asia and highlight the complexities of dispersal patterns from East Asia.

Two big issues with Olalde 2018 (Indoeuropean Bell Beaker speculation)

"Just for being published in Nature it does not mean it is necessarily wrong" (popular saying).

Iñigo Olalde et al., The Beaker Phenomenon And The Genomic Transformation Of Northwest Europe. doi:10.1101/135962 (pre-pub version, no way I'm spending 1/3 of my monthly income on this, in case you're willing to waste your money, it's been recently published in Nature)

Issue 1: All comparisons are made between Anatolia Neolithic or other Early Neolithic in some cases and Yamna or Corded Ware.  Late Neolithic is not used nor, critically, is Hunter-Gatherer populations or anything related. 

This means that everything will be much more Yamna-like than it should, just because Yamna are 50% HG, while Early Neolithic are very low in this component. 

This is very apparent in the PCA:

It's junk-in: junk-out.

Issue 2: there is a huge sampling gap precisely where ancient mtDNA (and modern Y-DNA) tells us that the origin of the modern West-Central European genetics should be: in France and nearby areas like the Basque Country, West Germany. Sure: they sample some Eastern French sites but see "issue 1" above.

Nuff said.

Caribbean Taino ancient DNA still alive in admixed populations

Taino Native Americans also had a very high genetic diversity, comparable to other continental large native populations such as Andeans or Amazonians, what speaks of high mobility in the Caribbean islands before European colonization.

The mitochondrial lineage B2 was sequenced, although it is today rare in the region.

Hannes Schroeder et al., Origins and genetic legacies of the Caribbean Taino. PNAS 2018. DOI:10.1073/pnas.1716839115

The Caribbean was one of the last parts of the Americas to be settled by humans, but how and when the islands were first occupied remains a matter of debate. Ancient DNA can help answering these questions, but the work has been hampered by poor DNA preservation. We report the genome sequence of a 1,000-year-old Lucayan Taino individual recovered from the site of Preacher’s Cave in the Bahamas. We sequenced her genome to 12.4-fold coverage and show that she is genetically most closely related to present-day Arawakan speakers from northern South America, suggesting that the ancestors of the Lucayans originated there. Further, we find no evidence for recent inbreeding or isolation in the ancient genome, suggesting that the Lucayans had a relatively large effective population size. Finally, we show that the native American components in some present-day Caribbean genomes are closely related to the ancient Taino, demonstrating an element of continuity between precontact populations and present-day Latino populations in the Caribbean.

Fig. 2.

Taino demography. Total estimated length of genomic ROH for the Taino and the Clovis genome (13) and selected Native American and Siberian genomes (15, 31, 32) in a series of length categories. ROH distributions for modern individuals have been condensed into population-level silhouettes (SI Appendix, section 14).

Ironworks the Iron Age style: the true thing done again by Burkinabe elders for the sake of historical document

This is a truly fascinating film, made by the people of Burkina Faso documenting their own, now vanishing tradition of iron smelting and forging, done again for the sake of historical documentation by the elders who used to do it decades ago (and some youngsters helping too) reproducing all the steps: from charcoal making and iron ore mining and selection, to the construction of the furnaces, the smelting of ore and finally tool-making itself. I cannot recommend it more wholeheartedly:

Obsidian exchange in Neolithic Sicily and Sardinia (video)

Thanks to Theasparagus for noticing this quite interesting video-lesson on quite obviously seagoing peoples of the Central Mediterranean and their journeys to distant volcanic islands to obtain the valuable obsidian (sharper than a scalpel) and also to the mainland to trade it for whatever goods.