February 28, 2013

Northern Marianas was first colonized from Philippines

Lapita pot from Tonga (source)
The first known colonists of Tinian (Northern Marianas) were people coming from Luzon and using a kind of red painted pottery which is also found in Northern Luzon, Philippines, similar to  Lapita (Island Melanesia, Polynesia).

However these people seem to have arrived to the Marianas a century or two before the Lapita carriers (precursors of Oceanic languages) reached Melanesia, according to Peter Bellwood.

Source and more details: Islands Business (interview with Bellwood), via Pileta.


See also:

66 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting this.

    "the same kind of red painted pottery known as Lapita, which is also found in Northern Luzon, Philippines".

    Technically the pottery in neither Tinian nor Northern Luzon is 'Lapita'. The article says:

    "the Micronesian pottery from Tinian is very similar to pottery in, in northern Luzon, in the Philippines, in particular. It's also very similar to pottery found in the western Pacific, south of the equator, in islands east of New Guinea, that pottery is called Lapita and it is thought to be part of the ancestry of the island Melanesian and Polynesian peoples much further to the south".

    So the research confirms the Philippines as the origin of the expansion into the wider Pacific, and the source of the Austronesians.

    "the sites being excavated in the Marianas Islands are a little bit older than those in the south of the equator, in the Lapita region of Melanesia. They appear to be 100 or 200 years older. So this now looks like the first movement of these people from the Philippines, reaching the Marianas Islands across a very large area of sea".

    So we can date the expansion of mt-DNA B4 and Y-DNA O1a into the Pacific, and also the expansion of the EDAR mutation.

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    1. "Technically the pottery in neither Tinian nor Northern Luzon is 'Lapita'".

      Alright, thanks. I take notice and I'll correct the text.

      Delete
  2. I've just realised something very interesting. The expansion from the Philippines into the Pacific dates from around 3500 years ago. The arrival from Taiwan presumably pre-dates that somewhat. But we can be sure both expansions post-date the Chinese Neolithic. The Taosi site dates from somewhere around the same period, between 4500 and 3000 years ago. The Y-DNA O1a sites are a little older at 5500 to 4000 years ago. As a result we have some idea of the situation an the mainland immediately before the expansion to Melanesia and Tinian. O1a was well-established around the mouth of the Yangtze. Surely it seems reasonable to assume O1a2 was the first mainland haplogroup to cross the water to Taiwan and then the Philippines.

    A haplogroup related to the Taosi O3a2c1 (a clade of O3a2c) took part in the expansion into the Pacific as well. It reached Polynesia.

    Doesn't that suggest that the two haplogroups must have expanded over a substrate of other haplogroups? Both reached SE Asia but SE Asia is at the margin of each haplogroup's expansion, not at their source.

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    1. I disagree: O1a basal diversity is much greater in Indonesia than in Taiwan, what makes me suspect that O1a first expanded from South to North and only much later did some comeback within the Austronesian cultural-ethnical (but much less dramatically so demic) expansion.

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  3. "O1a basal diversity is much greater in Indonesia than in Taiwan"

    Of course it is. That is the reult of the arrival of the two separate O1a haplogroups in Indonesia, presumably via separate routes (O1a1 and O1a2), but only O1a2 being present in Taiwan. So O1a originated in neither region.

    "what makes me suspect that O1a first expanded from South to North and only much later did some comeback within the Austronesian cultural-ethnical"

    Doesn't make sense. All the archeological evidence shows a movement from mainland South China to Taiwan, then an expansion into the Philippines and so out into the Pacific. That fits the haplogroup evidence if we are prepared to accept a north to south movement. It is impossible to provide evidence for any O1 northward movement. In fact the Liu paper provides evidence that O1a was particularly common on the Chinese mainland around the Yangtze during the Late neolithic, immediately before the movement to taiwan and the Philippines. It made up nearly three quarters of the Y-DNA there. The two O1a haplogroups tend to be closely associated with particular language families, which may be related to each other and diversified not too long ago. O1a1 with Tai-Kadai and O1a2 with Austronesian. Both these languages surely have their origin on the Chinese mainland, not in SE Asia.

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    1. Critically, per Karafet 2010, Indonesians also have O1a* in important frequencies:

      Southern Han: 0.6%
      Taiwan Abor.: zero
      China minorities: zero
      Philippines: zero
      Malaysia: 3.1%
      Bali: 11.0%
      Java: 3.3%
      Sumatra: 10.5%
      Borneo: 1.2%
      Nias: missing (typical Austronesian-TA colony)
      Mentawai: 56.8%
      Flores: 3.1%
      Sulawesi: 13.0%
      Sumba: 5.4%
      Lembata: 2.2%
      Alor: zero
      Timor: zero
      Malukku: zero
      Oceania: 2.2% (only found in Micronesia, Tonga, Vanuatu)

      For O1a-M119 as a whole, STR-variance is also highest in West Indonesia (0.528), followed by East Indonesia (0.465) and only then mainland East Asia (Malaysia included - 0.329).

      The matter does ask for some more detailed research but, with the available data, it'd seem that the origin of O1a as a whole is in West Indonesia (~ Ice Age's Sundaland), possibly Sumatra (although Bali is also outstanding). I have mentioned in some occasion that Balinese are not seafarers, fearing apparently the rage of the god of the sea and leaving fishing and trading to other (nowadays Muslim) peoples notably from Lombok. This may be a cultural remnant of people who settled essentially when Bali was still part of the continent, i.e. in the Pleistocene.

      "All the archeological evidence shows a movement from mainland South China to Taiwan"...

      What evidence? It could well be or it could just be cultural influences without major demic colonization. I would need first to know what exactly you are talking about in order to evaluate.

      "That fits the haplogroup evidence if we are prepared to accept a north to south movement".

      Actually it does not. Only Nias or maybe some groups of Sulawesi fit the Taiwan Aboriginal origin signature with the data we have. The TA signature is (essentially) 7:2 O1a1:O1a2 with zero O1a* and almost nothing else. Similarly we have a major dilution of mtDNA B4a in the Malay (West Austronesian) population, what implies serious dilution in Philippines and Borneo and much more complex demic dynamics than what you are willing to imagine, repeatedly incorporating peoples from the areas of arrival to the refreshed Austronesian gene pool, even massively so.

      "That fits the haplogroup evidence if we are prepared to accept a north to south movement".

      I have just given you (Karafet 2010 in fact) such genetic evidence for O1a-M119. It is I believe the third or fourth time I explain this to you. It is your responsibility to learn and take note and save me some annoyingly repetitive tasks. Please do NOW for the future: take good notice and study the data in Karafet 2010 carefully so we do not need to go over this again and again. Thanks in advance for what I suspect you will not do.

      ... "the Liu paper provides evidence that O1a was particularly common on the Chinese mainland around the Yangtze during the Late neolithic"...

      We don't know what sublineages or what kind of diversity it had. Judging from Karafet's (Southern) Han it should all be O1a1-P203 with at most minor O1a*-M119 (most likely this last arrived from Indonesia in historical times: it is a most rare rare clade in the large Han sample, an erratic). So it looks like your Lower Yangtze O1a peoples were only a subset of the Taiwanese diversity, which in turn is a subset of West Indonesian diversity, what corresponds well with a S→N movement.

      Delete
  4. "what implies serious dilution in Philippines and Borneo and much more complex demic dynamics than what you are willing to imagine"

    On the contrary Maju, I have repeatedly tried to tell you that the development of the Austronesians was much more complicated than you are willing to imagine. Although I see you are beginning to see:

    "repeatedly incorporating peoples from the areas of arrival to the refreshed Austronesian gene pool, even massively so".

    So why do you have a problem with this:

    "Similarly we have a major dilution of mtDNA B4a in the Malay (West Austronesian) population, what implies serious dilution in Philippines and Borneo"

    The Austronesian languages are largely intrusive in Borneo and Malaya. It overlay the earlier Austro-Asiatic languages. So the haplogroups would very likely be different from the region of Austronesian origin.

    "Only Nias or maybe some groups of Sulawesi fit the Taiwan Aboriginal origin signature with the data we have".

    Which suggests Nias was almost if not completely uninhabited when the Austronesians from Taiwan arrived.

    "I have just given you (Karafet 2010 in fact) such genetic evidence for O1a-M119. It is I believe the third or fourth time I explain this to you".

    I know. But I tried to point out when you first blogged that paper where it has gone wrong. I have seen nothing that would change my opinion since.

    "Please do NOW for the future: take good notice and study the data in Karafet 2010 carefully so we do not need to go over this again and again".

    It would be more profitable for us both if you went back and checked the comments I made at the time.

    "So it looks like your Lower Yangtze O1a peoples were only a subset of the Taiwanese diversity, which in turn is a subset of West Indonesian diversity, what corresponds well with a S→N movement".

    You have absolutely no evidence for that statement. Just a series of suppositions on your part. Surely it is extremely unlikely that a haplogroup so dominant around the Lower Yangtze could consist of just one clade of O1a yet members of the basal O1a clade should make up just 2 or3% these days in the region you claim it originated. Talk about genocide. However we do know that O1a has been greatly reduced (to 0.6%) on the mainland since the neolithic so it is hardly surprising that the basal clade has vanished.

    "settled by people coming from Luzon and using a kind of red painted pottery which is also found in Northern Luzon, Philippines, similar to Lapita (Island Melanesia, Polynesia)".

    Not so long ago you were insisting there was no connection between the Philippines and Lapita in the Andamans. I can't find the comment at present but I didn't pull you up on it at the time because I couldn't find any convincing links. All the information I had was in books. My, how quickly things can change. I refer you back to this post:

    http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com.es/2012/10/the-genetic-and-phenotype-complexity-of.html

    In response to my comment, 'early Eastern Austronesians had a significant proportion of East Asian aDNA as well':

    "There's no reason to think that, if by early Eastern Austronesians you mean Early Lapita peoples. They were surely dark skinned and with low to no B4a mtDNA. The light skinned high B4a1a population and its most marked founder effects also in the Y-DNA side, the Polynesian founders, only seem to show up since late Lapita".

    And:

    "It seems to me that B4a is strongly linked to Late Lapita only, while Early Lapita would have carried many different (usually Melanesian-specific) mtDNA lineages instead".

    Do you still stand by that comment, or have you come to realise at last that it is incorrect? As with this comment:

    "So it's easy to conclude that B4a and the derived Polynesian motif spread only with Late Lapita, which is also the phase most directly related to Polynesian ethno-linguistic formation".

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  5. "You have absolutely no evidence for that statement".

    I have all the evidence, I have just explained it in length. You are just in perpetual denial. Leave me alone, please, I am not here to serve your boundless and stubborn ego.

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  6. "I have all the evidence, I have just explained it in length".

    Rubbish. Athough you started off with a factual statement 'We don't know what sublineages or what kind of diversity it had', you then made up every last bit of it with, 'it should all be', then 'most likely', and so were able to come up with:

    "So it looks like your Lower Yangtze O1a peoples were only a subset of the Taiwanese diversity, which in turn is a subset of West Indonesian diversity, what corresponds well with a S→N movement".

    If we're actually prepared to look at ALL the evidence it's impossible to make a case for a south to north movement:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_O-MSY2.2_(Y-DNA)

    "Although Haplogroup O-MSY2.2 occurs only at an average frequency of approximately 4% among Han populations of northern China and peoples of southwestern China and Southeast Asia who speak Tibeto-Burman languages, the frequency of this haplogroup among the Han populations of southern China nearly quadruples to about 15-23%.[citation needed] The frequency of Haplogroup O-MSY2.2 among the Southern Han has been found to be slightly greater than the arithmetic mean of the frequencies of Haplogroup O-MSY2.2 among the Northern Han and a pooled sample of Austronesian populations".

    And you claim it is hardly present in South China.

    "Taiwan aborigines and Indonesians were likely to have been derived from the Tai–Kadai-speaking populations based on their paternal lineages, and thereafter evolved independently of each other"

    So O1a is associated with Tai-Kadai speakers. And most likely Austronesians as well, because the Austronesian and the Tai-Kadai languages may be related:

    "The strongest positive correlation between Haplogroup O-MSY2.2 and ethno-linguistic affiliation is that which is observed between this haplogroup and the Austronesians. The peak frequency of Haplogroup O-MSY2.2 is found among the aborigines of Taiwan, precisely the region from which linguists have hypothesized that the Austronesian language family originated".

    Now, assuming you accept this (which I'm sure you will not, as it conflicts with what you desperately want to believe), you surely must accept the haplogroup must have moved with those languages. If the languages overlay an earlier haplogroup distribution we would see no connection. Further:

    "The distribution of Tai–Kadai languages in Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia outside of China has long been believed, for reasons of traditional linguistic geography, to reflect a recent invasion of Southeast Asia by Tai–Kadai-speaking populations originating from southeastern China, and the somewhat elevated frequency of Haplogroup O-MSY2.2 among the Tai–Kadai populations, coupled with a high frequency of Haplogroup O-M95, which is a genetic characteristic of the Austroasiatic-speaking peoples of Southeast Asia, suggests that the genetic signature of the Tai–Kadai peoples' affinity with populations of southeastern China has been weakened due to extensive assimilation of the earlier Austroasiatic residents of the lands which the Tai–Kadai peoples invaded".

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    1. "Rubbish".

      Another aggressive-offensive comment. You get your nth warning. I'm going to have to migrate to Wordpress only to ban you individually.

      O1a* (M119), based on Karafet 2010, it looks like most rare among Southern Han, while O1a2 is totally absent. All that O1 should be, unless there is something I do not know, O1a1 (P203), which is the most common one in Taiwan. However in Taiwan as in ISEA there are also notable frequencies of O1a2 (M110).

      You should know that but you have me here as if I was your slave parsing once and again the same facts. Read and learn, damn stubborn ass!

      Frequency is trivial, haplogroup diversity is what matters.

      Also you could use some kind of pointer when you quote different people. Your comments are a total mess, and almost invariably also a total waste.

      Delete
  7. And this link:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai%E2%80%93Kadai_languages

    "The diversity of the Tai–Kadai languages in southeastern China, especially in Guizhou and Hainan, suggests that this is close to their homeland. The Tai branch moved south into Southeast Asia only about a thousand years ago, founding the nations that later became Thailand and Laos in what had been Austroasiatic territory".

    So the languages came south from southeastern China. The languages, and therefore the haplogroup, did not originate in SE Asia in spite of earlier declarations in the first link. So that explains the presence of O1a through southern China and SE Asia. But where did the common language originate?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Tai_languages

    "the likely homeland of proto-Tai–Kadai was coastal Fujian or Guangdong as part of the neolithic Longshan culture[citation needed]. The spread of the Tai–Kadai peoples may have been aided by agriculture, but any who remained near the coast were eventually absorbed by the Chinese".

    Ahh. Longshan,although the article does present contrary arguments. So we're back with the Taosi. But to me it is much more likely the langauges are associated with the Lower Yangtze Late Neolithic culture. They share the O1a haplogroup. And Fujian is the province immediately south of that region. And then:

    "Sagart (2005b) suggests that Austronesian (including Tai-Kadai) is ultimately related to the Sino-Tibetan languages, forming a Sino-Austronesian family. The Proto-Sino-Austronesian speakers would have originated from the Neolithic communities of the coastal regions of prehistoric North China or East China"

    Sino-Tibetan super-family? So we move to the most common clades of Y-DNA O3:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_O-M122_(Y-DNA)

    "Haplogroup O3a1c-JST002611 was first identified in 3.8% (10/263) of a sample of Japanese (Nonaka et al. 2007). Subsequently, this haplogroup has been found with higher frequency in some samples taken in and around China, including 12/58 = 20.7% Miao (China), 10/70 = 14.3% Vietnam, 18/165 = 10.9% Han (China & Taiwan), 4/49 = 8.2% Tujia (China) (Karafet 2010)".

    And:

    "O3a2-JST021354/P201 is a subclade of O3a that includes the most common types of O3-M122 Y-DNA. This clade includes the major subclades O3a2c1-M134 and O3a2b-M7, which exhibit expansive distributions centered on China, as well as an assortment of Y-chromosomes that have not yet been assigned to any subclade".

    Note: China, not SE ASia. The next comments there about SE Asian O3a2 are now known to concern the downstream O3a2c-P164 clade.

    "The subgroup O3a2c1-M134 is particularly closely associated with Sino-Tibetan populations, and it is generally not found outside of areas where a Sino-Tibetan language is currently spoken or that are historically supposed to have undergone Chinese colonization or immigration, such as Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia".

    And Sino-Tibetan is definitely not an SE Asian language group.

    "Haplogroup O3a2b-M7 Y-DNA has been detected with high frequency in some samples of populations who speak Hmong-Mien languages, Katuic languages, or Bahnaric languages, scattered through some mostly mountainous areas of southern China, Laos, and Vietnam (Cai 2010)".

    As for the Hmong-Mien:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong%E2%80%93Mien_languages

    "The family is believed to have had its origins in central-southern China. The current area of greatest agreement is that the languages appeared in the region between the Yangtze and Mekong rivers, but there is reason to believe that speakers migrated there from further north with the expansion of the Han Chinese".

    So we're left with just O2a as a possible SE Asian haplogroup. But even here we have trouble because O2b is most definitely not an SE Asian haplogroup. So where is your evidence for south to north movement of any O haplogroup?

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    1. @terryt: "Ahh. Longshan,although the article does present contrary arguments. So we're back with the Taosi. But to me it is much more likely the langauges are associated with the Lower Yangtze Late Neolithic culture."

      Wiki is, as is so often the case, internally inconsistent. Taosi is considerably north of the Yellow River, on which the Longshan culture was centered, and hundreds of kilometers north of the Yangtze. According to Wiki, the last Neolithic culture on the lower Yangtze, dating from about 3400 BCE, was Liangzhu. They seem to have been relatively advanced and highly influential, from a cultural standpoint. They may have been the first to manufacture jade bi discs, for instance, a rather ubiquitous object in later eras.

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    2. And I do not care about a theory that is built on very much debated linguistics. You begin building by the roof and end up with a ruin. A solid building begins with the foundations (archaeology), continues at the pillars (population genetics) and then, and only then, you round up, if possible, with the ceiling of languages and other cultural materials.

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    3. "A solid building begins with the foundations (archaeology), continues at the pillars (population genetics) and then, and only then, you round up, if possible, with the ceiling of languages and other cultural materials."

      But you don't hold yourself to such high standards. Anyone familiar with your writing knows that the Kurgan hypothesis determines your view of the ancient world. Just recently you claimed that a proto-Tocharian-speaking Afanasevo derived from Khvalynsk, when there is no archaeological evidence whatsoever to support such a thing. You specifically argued that what mattered were expressions of culture and that what archeology reveals about the Afanasevo and their material relationships to other localities tells us nothing about their origin.

      You once argued that there must have been an Indo-Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent because you looked at the Pashtun and you, personally, could easily imagine it happening. Setting aside the shameless bigotry of such a statement, the fact that you hadn't a shred of archaeological evidence to support your claim didn't even slow you down.

      A moment's self-awareness would be fatal to you.

      Delete
    4. The Kurgan theory (much more than just a "hypothesis") is based primarily and very solidly on archaeology. That most people who discuss it have almost no idea of what is about is another matter but the foundations are strongly archaeological.

      "You once argued that there must have been an Indo-Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent because you looked at the Pashtun and you, personally, could easily imagine it happening".

      Well, when I say Kurgan model and when I discuss this matter, I think in terms of Europe (Central Asia, parts of West Asia also) and Chalcolithic first of all. Then come Bronze and Iron and also in a peripheral place South Asia and Iran (which were indoeuropeanized quite late). But nobody discusses this beginning with South Asia (except those who want to challenge everything and instead of facing the core do that by charging against a less well understood late epiphenomenon).

      Still the Swat culture and such seem to justify the Indo-Aryan branch of the overall Kurgan model.

      "Just recently you claimed that a proto-Tocharian-speaking Afanasevo derived from Khvalynsk, when there is no archaeological evidence whatsoever to support such a thing".

      As far as I know there is and both cultures seem quite related. If you wish to discuss the details, I'll be glad to oblige.

      By the moment I'll mention Wikipedia: "The culture is mainly known from its inhumations, with the deceased buried in conic or rectangular enclosures, often in a supine position, reminiscent of burials of the Yamna culture" (Yamna is derived from Khvalinsk and a better known early Kurgan culture but it's too late to be at the origin of Afanasevo or even the Kurgan phenomenon in general). Of course the Afanesevo genesis (or even Khvalynsk one) may have been hybrid with other ill-known Central Asian cultures (Botai?) but that's something we do not know enough about yet.

      Delete
    5. "The Kurgan theory (much more than just a "hypothesis") is based primarily and very solidly on archaeology."

      No, it isn't. Gimbutas misrepresented the archaeological record to support a politically-motivated thesis. Her followers have attempted to restate her claims more credibly but they have so far convinced no one that did not already want to believe -- like you, for instance!

      Kurgan culture is not coextensive with the language and cultural traits for which it was supposedly responsible. There is no trace of kurgans or the Kurgan culture south of the Oxus, for instance, and it is not possible to connect Afanasevo to cultures across the Eurasian steppe without ignoring both common sense and the archaeological record.

      "...I think in terms of Europe (Central Asia, parts of West Asia also) and Chalcolithic first of all."

      Europe is probably all that you know, Maju. You don't seem to know much anything about Central Asia, not in any meaningful detail, and your knowledge of the Chalcolithic and the spread of metallurgy is woefully inadequate.

      "Still the Swat culture and such seem to justify the Indo-Aryan branch of the overall Kurgan model."

      They "seem to justify" it because you are hilariously ignorant of both the relevant archaeological record and the details of the argument suggesting that Swat was an intrusive, Indo-Aryan culture.

      "If you wish to discuss the details, I'll be glad to oblige."

      That is a lie. We did discuss it, over the course of several days, and in the end you told me to, "Go discuss with some expert as you know so much (it seems)".

      "By the moment I'll mention Wikipedia"

      Of course you will! All that you know of the subject you learned from Wikipedia and you are unwilling to look more deeply into the matter. The only people that imagine a connection between Afanasevo and Yamna are, like yourself, deeply and personally invested in the Kurgan hypothesis. Confirmation bias is an amazing thing.

      "Of course the Afanesevo genesis (or even Khvalynsk one) may have been hybrid with other ill-known Central Asian cultures (Botai?) but that's something we do not know enough about yet."

      There is not one shred of archaeological evidence linking Afanasevo to Botai, not one, but you just cannot help yourself, can you? The Kurgan hypothesis dictates that the Afanasevo had horses, archeology be damned, so in your addled brain they must have been related to Botai. We just haven't found the evidence that you already know to be there.

      On your broader point, I agree, and the Afanasevo were likely a hybrid culture.

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    6. I don't think that Marija Gimbutas misrepresented anything but anyhow my understanding is based on much more general on the late Prehistory of Europe. You can really see easily how the Kurgan peoples moved (in terms of culture) into Ukraine (Seredny-Stog II, a mixed complex) and then into the Eastern Balcans (extremely rich Kurgan burials and later a total revulsion of archaeological cultures) and also Eastern Germany: Baalberge culture - why they "jumped" so far to the West is a bit of a mystery but they did, which shows expansive tendencies (Poland, Moravia, East Germany itself), followed by division, some contraction and late Danubian influences (but also influencing parts of West Germany), then followed by very dramatic expansion as Corded Ware.

      "Kurgan culture is not coextensive with the language and cultural traits for which it was supposedly responsible".

      That's debatable but there is no alternate model that can explain it all the IE expansion, as the Kurgan model does.

      "You don't seem to know much anything about Central Asia"...

      I admit I'm no expert in Central Asia but it wouldn't seem to matter so much. After all, barring Afanasevo and the related Tocharians, there's no major Kurgan penetration into the region until a late period (Andronovo).

      In any case, if I do not know, you could easily illustrate me. But instead all you do is miserable personal attacks, what is no way to have any healthy discussion.

      I cannot constructively discuss with someone whose arguments are just rabid negation. You have denied everything in terms very aggressive but offered not a single piece of evidence.

      I was hoping for a serious debate but seems not. Pity.

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    7. You refuse to participate in serious debate, Maju, so save your pity for yourself.

      "I don't think that Marija Gimbutas misrepresented anything..."

      What you think has no impact on objective reality. Either you want to engage in serious debate or you don't.

      "I admit I'm no expert in Central Asia..."

      Then why would you attempt to "think in terms of...Central Asia"? Just to further confuse the issue?

      "...barring Afanasevo and the related Tocharians, there's no major Kurgan penetration into the region until a late period..."

      Afanasevo were not a Kurgan people. We've been through this. You had no compelling evidence and you still have nothing. And the only thing associating Tocharian with kurgans is the Kurgan hypothesis itself! There are certainly no kurgans in the Tarim Basin and no sign of the Kurgan culture, either. We've been over this as well, for all the good it did.

      Repeating the same specious claim, over and over, with no more evidence to support it now than the first time you said it, will not make it true. It is indeed a pity that you are incapable of engaging in serious debate.

      "But instead all you do is miserable personal attacks, what is no way to have any healthy discussion."

      You started it, Maju, and that is just one incident, one I stumbled upon recently while in search of something else. If you had any interest in a "healthy discussion", you wouldn't act like such a condescending jerk.

      "I cannot constructively discuss with someone whose arguments are just rabid negation."

      That's because you have no positive evidence to support your claims and what is asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence.

      This is precisely the point: you have abandoned empiricism and any semblance of sane methodology in pursuit of telling stories that make you feel good. When someone comes along and questions a story that makes you feel good, you feel bad and attack. This isn't science or even a rational discussion of science.

      Delete
    8. "Either you want to engage in serious debate or you don't".

      That I would like to know about you precisely: because I don't see you debating anything with data and facts, just confronting for the sake of it.

      "You started it"...

      I don't see any comment by you in that link, nor any comments by me about you either. Do you love Terry? Marry him and be happy. I do not need this crap, really!

      "Afanasevo were not a Kurgan people. We've been through this".

      No we have not. All you did was dismiss the only source provided on the matter. You have not presented a single piece of evidence against it.

      ""I cannot constructively discuss with someone whose arguments are just rabid negation."

      That's because you have no positive evidence"...

      No it is because if you present no counter-evidence, and worse: you erode your own respectability with this kind of nasty polemic, I remain on the side of the only half-reliable source that has been shown in all this pseudo-debate.

      Seriously: if you want debate, bring forward evidence. If you want a mid fight, go elsewhere to find it. Your aggressive attitude of disrespect is clearly repeated breach of the norms of behavior here. It seems that your only interest is to force me to moderate comments. If so, I beg you to quit the blog altogether and come back only when you have calmed down. Don't insist in this false discussion which is just a provocation on your side unless you bring evidence. I will not hesitate in banning you and dedicating too much of my time to send every single future comment you make to the spam folder if you keep in this attitude of provocation.

      You want to debate with facts and data? You are welcome. You want to make personal attacks and pointless polemic? You will be banned no matter what the cost to me is.

      Delete
    9. Typo: "mud fight" not "mid fight".

      Delete
  8. " Taosi is considerably north of the Yellow River, on which the Longshan culture was centered"

    I did notice that. However regarding the Longshan itself Wiki has:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longshan_culture

    "The Longshan culture was noted for its highly polished black pottery (or egg-shell pottery). This type of thin-walled and polished black pottery has also been discovered in the Yangzi River valley and as far as today's southeastern coast of China.[1] It is a clear indication that neolithic agricultural sub-groups of the greater Longshan Culture had spread out across ancient boundaries of China".

    However I would accept that this expansion was cultural rather than genetic. The Tai-Austronesian haplogroups are the Neolithic region on the lower Yangtze. But, as an interesting observation, the O3 haplogroup that entered SE Asia and out to Polynesia, was not the Daxi/Hmong-Mien one. It was a branch of O3a2c-P164. That haplogroup was not found in any of the Neolithic regions studied but the northernmost, Taosi.

    "According to Wiki, the last Neolithic culture on the lower Yangtze, dating from about 3400 BCE, was Liangzhu. They seem to have been relatively advanced and highly influential, from a cultural standpoint".

    The Liangzhu are exactly those people amoung whom the only O haplogroup was O1a. To me that is the clinching evidence that both O1a and the Tai-Austronesian language spread from the lower Yangtze.

    "I do not care about a theory that is built on very much debated linguistics".

    'Much debated'? You're making things up again. Many of the basic connections have become widely accepted. The disagreements are simply over the details. And the O haplogroup is particularly interesting because it is one of the very few where individual haplogroups can be reasonably closely connected to linguistic expansions. Surely you must accept that if the language expansions had been purely cultural we would discern no connection at all between language and haplogroup distribution.

    "A solid building begins with the foundations (archaeology), continues at the pillars (population genetics) and then, and only then, you round up, if possible, with the ceiling of languages and other cultural materials".

    And that is exactly what has been completed over the last few weeks. The archeology has long been accepted as showing a north to south cultural and genetic movement. Razib's diagram at his blog has now, via population genetics using the EDAR variant, now tells us where elements of that genetic spread began. You use a specious argument to deny the significance of the paper. I am sure the reason for your disregarding of the paper is that accepting it would require you to change your basic viewpoint on our expansion and evolution. So finally we can use the linguistic and haplogroup evidence to fill out many of the details of East Asian prehistory.

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    1. Yes "much debated": the relationship between Tai-Kradai and Austronesian remains at the level of hypothesis. It's almost as if you said "Nostratic" (only that this one seems clearly junk to me and I'm still willing to allow the Austro-Tai hypothesis some hope).

      "The archeology has long been accepted as showing a north to south cultural and genetic movement".

      Not really. At least not the way you manipulate it. Archaeology shows for example the cradle of Neolithic in the region to be at the Yangtze and you insist in placing the origin of your highly unlikely migrations in the Yellow River instead.

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    2. @terryt: "However I would accept that this [Longshan] expansion was cultural rather than genetic."

      I agree. Given the relatively advanced nature of the Longshan and Liangzhu cultures, it would not surprise me at all to find some degree of trade between the two. It would take more than a stray pot to convince me of a significant demic expansion, though.

      "But, as an interesting observation, the O3 haplogroup that entered SE Asia and out to Polynesia, was not the Daxi/Hmong-Mien one. It was a branch of O3a2c-P164. That haplogroup was not found in any of the Neolithic regions studied but the northernmost, Taosi."

      I have no explanation for that. Sampling bias, perhaps?

      "The Liangzhu are exactly those people amoung whom the only O haplogroup was O1a. To me that is the clinching evidence that both O1a and the Tai-Austronesian language spread from the lower Yangtze."

      That is certainly what the evidence suggests.

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    3. @Maju: "Archaeology shows for example the cradle of Neolithic in the region to be at the Yangtze..."

      Not according to your usual go-to source, it isn't. The earliest Neolithic culture they list on the Yangtze is Pengtoushan.

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  9. Nanzhuangtou is not Neolithic: no farming nor herding whatsoever. It is however the oldest culture with pottery proper AFAIK. Calling this culture "Neolithic" is like calling the Gravettian "Neolithic" because they crafted terracotta dolls. No farming/herding: no Neolithic, sorry.

    The first (known) Neolithic culture of all East Asia is indeed Pengtoushan, which existed essentially in Hunan, at the Middle Yangtze.

    Furthermore. The only reachable source in that stub on Nanzhuangtou mentions another possible case of earliest Neolithic before Pengthoushan but Xianrendong is also in the South (Jiangxi, just East of Hunan). And, wow, even the pottery of Xianrendong is much older than that of Nanzhuangtou!

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    1. PS- Another candidate mentioned is Hemudu culture, from Zheijang, south of Shanghai but also in the Yangtze region.

      So, unless future discoveries disturb this scheme. It seems most likely that the preliminary development of farming happened South of the Yangtze, in Jiangxi, extending then up and downstream to Hunan and Zheijang first of all.

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    2. So, you're seriously claiming that millet was domesticated in southern China and spread to the north?

      Really?

      Where's your evidence, Mr Serious Debater?

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    3. I did not mention millet. Just agriculture (and AFAIK it is rice).

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    4. Maju, you should have mentioned millet. It is common knowledge that the Neolithic of northern China begins, not with rice, but with foxtail millet. These new dates establish that domesticated millet was cultivated on the North China Plain more than a thousand years before rice reached the lower course of the Huanghe. It was still the dominant northern food crop in Shang times, even after the introduction of wheat from southern Central Asia.

      Also, in light of this latest finding your doubts about Nanzhuangtou representing a Neolithic culture may be set aside. If these people were already in the process of domesticating foxtail millet, then at the very least they practiced an incipient agriculture, one that developed into a fully-fledged agriculture within this same region. The cultivation of millet was not something introduced from outside and the domestication of rice is irrelevant.

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    5. That's absolutely new stuff, which I did not yet have time for reading, so I could not mention it weeks ago unless I'd have godlike powers of some kind, which, sadly, I don't have. I will read and then discuss it when I have some time.

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    6. "...unless I'd have godlike powers of some kind, which, sadly, I don't have."

      You don't need god-like powers, just a passing familiarity with Chinese prehistory, ancient history, geography, and culture. Or failing that, give someone else the benefit of the doubt and rely on their god-like powers. Rice was of little if any consequence in the north, compared to millet.

      I was personally surprised that these dates were so early. I had little difficulty accepting your point about grindstones being part of a Mesolithic cultural assemblage, so was a bit shocked to find a stronger suggestion of agriculture at Nanzhuangtou.

      The broader point is that China is not a sphere, with a uniform distribution of homogeneous culture and history. It is regional and multicultural. The suggestion that agriculture might have developed more-or-less independently in the two regions should not surprise us.

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    7. 1. I do need godlike powers to be able to see into the future. This paper was not yet published when I said what you dare to criticize.

      2. I never said that rice was an important crop in North China, but it was indeed central in the South (which is what I said and meant, of course).

      3. We still have a claim of "Cultivation artifacts indicate domestication of rice between 9,200 B.C and 7,550 B.C." in Xienrendong and Wangdong. I'm not privy to the details but it is older than this domestication of millet in the North, which can only be established, judging on the starch grains and strictly following this paper, for c. 7500 BCE (= 9.5 Ka calBP):

      The millet starch grains from these two sites allow us to formulate a hypothesis that, during the period of 11–9.5 cal kyBP, foxtail millet was still undergoing domestication, or perhaps interbreeding with nearby wild grasses, because the starch grains with wild traits do not disappear during this time.

      Only after this date, there is clear millet farming in the Nagzhuangtou culture. The previous period should be considered transitional Mesolithic.

      Of course you can cast doubt on the claim of earliest Oriental farming at the above sites from Jiangxi and, in that case, the earliest farming of the South would be at Pengtoushan (Hunan) at a time frame similar to that of this newly discovered early millet Neolithic of the North.

      Whatever the case, as someone said earlier: all early Neolithic cultures of China seem of roughly a similar time-frame. This is consistent with the ancient genetic data also mentioned before that suggest that their genetic pools were all pre-modern in composition (although not totally unrelated to modern locals), and pretty much unrelated to each other genetically as well: different peoples in loose contact evolving economically in parallel towards the Neolithic.

      "The suggestion that agriculture might have developed more-or-less independently in the two regions should not surprise us".

      It should surprise those who claim mass migrations and population replacements associated to the spread of Neolithic. That's not me and has never been.

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    8. "This is consistent with the ancient genetic data also mentioned before that suggest that their genetic pools were all pre-modern in composition (although not totally unrelated to modern locals), and pretty much unrelated to each other genetically as well: different peoples in loose contact evolving economically in parallel towards the Neolithic".

      You are basically playing with the facts here. Although I agree that each region was 'pretty much unrelated to each other genetically' the haplogroup distribution through the region during the Neolithic fits very well with what we know about their present distribution in East Asia. Your claim that 'their genetic pools were all pre-modern in composition' is presumably based on the fact that O1a forms by far the majority of Neolithic Y-DNA at the mouth of the Yangtze while it is virtually absent there now. But O1a can hardly be called 'pre-modern', and the mouth of the Yangtze is precisely the region from which a people who became sea-adapted would have spread south towards the islands of Taiwan and Indonesia. Or overland to carry the Daic language south.

      You may also be basing your claim on the scarcity of O3a2b in China today. But again this is hardly a pre-modern haplogroup. And it is concentrated today in the Daxi/Hmong-Mien who are claimed as having originated precisely in the region where they were common during the Neolithic.

      And in the Taosi haplogroups O3* and O3a2c1 are certainly not pre-modern. The most prevalent haplogroup in China today is some form of O3 and O3a2c alone makes up 20-30% of Chinese Y-DNA. The fact that it is far from common elsewhere during the Neolithic is a powerful argument in favour of its expansion having been quite recent.

      "It should surprise those who claim mass migrations and population replacements associated to the spread of Neolithic. That's not me and has never been".

      You deny 'claim mass migrations and population replacements associated to the spread of Neolithic'? So how do you explain the virtual absence of O1a and O3a2b in modern Chinese populations? And the huge post-Neolithic presence of O3a2c1? Magic?

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    9. ... "the haplogroup distribution through the region during the Neolithic fits very well with what we know about their present distribution in East Asia".

      How come? No "O3d" (sic) except in an isolated individual, when now it is about 1/4 to 1/3 of the populations of the areas sampled... and many other issues that I don't wish to go through one by one because we have already discussed them earlier.

      ... "[O1a] is virtually absent there now".

      Not "absent" at all but it does not, as do not any of the other haplogroups sampled have any correspondence in apportion to modern genetic pools. There have been some clear changes but these happened after the Neolithic (probably in the Iron Age as the Chinese state expanded). Anyhow that's not my only point: none of the five or six samples correspond even remotely in haplogroup frequency to what modern inhabitants display.

      But what is most important is that each of the Neolithic populations is pretty much different from the others, so there were no apparent migrations that we can discern associated to the spread of Neolithic in China.

      "And in the Taosi haplogroups O3* and O3a2c1"...

      Are in total disconnection to what modern populations display. I don't say that the haplogroups are not found at all in modern populations but that the whole genetic pools are almost totally different from modern ones. You must not cherry-pick haplogroups but look at the whole pie chart.

      "... O3a2c alone makes up 20-30% of Chinese Y-DNA".

      Exactly my point. In the Neolithic it is instead a rare find.

      "You deny 'claim mass migrations and population replacements associated to the spread of Neolithic'?"

      I do (finally you got something I said right). At least I see no evidence whatsoever of them.

      "So how do you explain the virtual absence of O1a and O3a2b in modern Chinese populations?"

      AFTER the Neolithic: most probably in the Iron Age (maybe beginning already in the late Bronze) with the expansion of the Chinese Empire.

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    10. PS - Anyhow "virtual absence" does not correspond with the reality either: they are just noticeably less common.

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    11. @Maju: "I do need godlike powers to be able to see into the future."

      You don't need god-like powers to know that the northern Neolithic had nothing to do with rice. You don't need god-like powers to know that China is not a sphere, with a uniform distribution of homogenous culture and history.

      Even a moment's honest reflection, asking yourself, "Now, why would he mention millet?", would have got you far.

      "Only after this date, there is clear millet farming in the Nagzhuangtou culture."

      Yes, only after 9,000 BCE or so. But even if the domestication of rice was earlier, it still wouldn't matter, since it could have made little difference in the north.

      "...different peoples in loose contact evolving economically in parallel towards the Neolithic."

      That is likely a fair characterization, though I should very much like to see your evidence for "loose contact". There is evidence of trade in the Neolithic, as one might reasonably expect. I'm unaware of anything definite before then.

      "It should surprise those who claim mass migrations and population replacements associated to the spread of Neolithic."

      What does this have to do with me? Your emotional investment in nativism is none of my concern.

      In general, I think it depends on what you mean by "mass migrations".

      There is no question that, at least in some regions of the world, Neolithic peoples expanded into sparsely populated areas suitable for whatever agriculture that sustained them. It is difficult to call that "mass migration", to my mind, yet obviously such a population, once established, might genetically overwhelm any previous population. If you want to call that a "population replacement", then I suppose that's technically true.

      "AFTER the Neolithic: most probably in the Iron Age (maybe beginning already in the late Bronze) with the expansion of the Chinese Empire."

      Actually, I think this is at least plausible. There is a material break between the Neolithic Liangzhu culture and the intrusive Maqiao culture that overlays it on some sites. Wiki gives a date of 1800 BCE for the break. You would probably call that "Bronze Age" but it isn't worth fighting about.

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    12. "... even if the domestication of rice was earlier, it still wouldn't matter, since it could have made little difference in the north".

      So?

      "... though I should very much like to see your evidence for "loose contact"".

      It's a reasonable supposition: all developing agriculture (also pottery, etc.) at the same time by mere chance within close distance? Some flow of information must have existed, at least I find it very likely.

      "What does this have to do with me?"

      It has to do with a lot of polemists. You must be an exception. But, if you are an exception, then why are you arguing so heatedly, when we do agree?

      "There is no question that, at least in some regions of the world, Neolithic peoples expanded into sparsely populated areas suitable for whatever agriculture that sustained them".

      In Central Europe at least I'd agree with the notion of mass replacement (although the story of mass migrations does not seem to end with Neolithic over there: while Basque Neolithics look modern Basques, Central Europeans do not). Central Europe was not quite "sparsely populated" before Neolithic as far as I can tell but still demic replacement happened somehow.

      But in East Asia that seems much less apparent.

      Delete
  10. Va_Highlander: "it is not possible to connect Afanasevo to cultures across the Eurasian steppe without ignoring both common sense and the archaeological record."

    I can't believe I'm reading this.
    That's the exact opposite. EVERYTHING links Afanasevo to the Kurgan cultures from the west (archeological fidings, culture, chronology, genetics (even cattle genetics apparently), it also seem to fit well with linguistics and the Kurgan theory model, even though I'm sure some would disagree).

    In front of such incredible claims I can only reply this: Read some darn books on the matter (and some common sense would be useful too) - and add some genetic study with it (there are plenty of it, starting with Keyzer et al. 2009). It actually can't be clearer than that.

    (Now fading back in the background in "lurking mode")

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    1. Read a modern paper, dude, preferably something that doesn't lean so heavily on interpretation. I suggest beginning with Frachetti's latest.

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    2. I know about Fracchetti's paper. I wasn't impressed. Want to know why?
      So far, the gathered data contradict it.

      It can't be another way.
      The type of culture of Afanasevo, the type of sepulture, the cultual objects, the similarity of their pottery with similar east Yamnaya ones, their europoid morphological type (the same as the ones from the Volga and Pontic steppes (named proto-europoid by east European archeologists)), the use of pastoralism (obviously coming from the west, especially as we find European cattle genes in Siberia (and beyond)), the time of apparition of Afanasevo, the use of copper and _silver_ (rare at that time but found in southern Russia at that time if I'm not mistaken), their haplogroups both male and female (with matches deep in Europe), the clear presence of a north European autosomal component in all these Asian regions (and beyond) - Confirmed to be linked to Afanasevo by the recent Der Sarkissian study (not that we really needed it to know, as it was the only logical explanation...)…

      These Europoid R1a1a, mtDNA U5, H, T, I4 (and so on) and their ways and technology, couldn’t come from elsewhere in this time, especially in this place. And especially carrying such a north European autosomal component (and with basically the same morphology than Pontic populations (incidently, Han Kangxin from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences of Beijing said after studying 302 Tarim skulls that the closest matches among the ancient populations were the Afanasevo and Andronovo skulls (Han Kangxin 1994, 1998)) - also with a non-negligible percentage of people with light hair and light eyes according to Bouakaze et al, 2008 and Kayzer et al, 2009, which only seem to confirm the rest).

      As for the link between Afanasevo and the Tarim it's less obvious I guess, but there are still pretty strong hints (probably not strong enough to exclude other possibilities but still...).
      For starters, Chunxiang Li et al, 2010 showed that the (or some of the) oldest Tarim mummies - about 2,000 BCE ago - were all R1a1a, with mostly east Eurasian female lineages, but also a few west Erasian lineages (the mtDNA H lineage had modern matches as far as the UK and Iceland!: That's as west as it can be). Nevertheless, the east Asian lineages are as interesting as the west ones in this case as it was a mtDNA C4 hg that led the Chinese team to see them coming from south Siberia, as this haplogroup is found there in non negligible numbers even today(especially near the Altai IIRC).
      In other words the geographical origin of these early Tarim settlers don't leave much doubts.
      Incidently one of the south Siberian haplogroups of Kayzer et al 2009 had a match in a Yuansha (a Tarim site) mummy from 125 BCE (not a definitive proof in itself but still interesting).

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    3. Also, if I'm not mistaken, this early non-east Asian population (Apparently an east-west admixed people) appears (before 2,100 BCE) not in the west of the Tarim but in the east Tarim and north-west Gansu, which makes their arrival from the north more likely than through the high mountains and desert in the west.

      Besides the proto-altaic-like loanwords (proto-Turkic, proto-Tungusic and other roots; hinted in "Turkic and Chinese loan words in Tocharian" by Starostin and Lubotsky) in Tocharian languages you can find some other type of striking loanwords (e.g. Tocharian A and B verbs kalak and kälk (= to go) and Finnish kulkea (= to go)) that would rather point to an origin in Afanasevo, I think.
      Besides, it's actually 2 (maybe at least 3 in fact) Tocharian _languages_, i.e. divergent enough to be called different languages. This implies a long time diverging in this region, so it rather fits with the presence of the oldest Tarim mummies I'd say and not some subsequent acculturation, or new mysterious migrations or whatever.

      What was the source of the Tocharian language for you anyway? Asia minor, west Asia, central Asia or south Asia? How comes we can't find any loanwords from the major antique languages from the powerful influential cultures of these (I put aside the ones already known in PIE) areas that would have been their neighbours probably for millenia (whatever time you think proto-IE appeared), before the proto-tocharian departed their ancestral homeland?

      And when would the proto-Tocharian-speaking people have travelled on such huge distances? During the time when warlike Iranic riders ruled central Asia? And without any Iranic visible loanwords? (there are a few Indo-iranian loanwords in Tocharian but AFAIK they're late, they're due to the spread of Buddhism in the Xinjiang region)

      Delete
  11. "Given the relatively advanced nature of the Longshan and Liangzhu cultures, it would not surprise me at all to find some degree of trade between the two".

    Yet according to the Li paper on Neolithic haplogroups:

    http://comonca.org.cn/lh/doc/A37.pdf

    "There were several different archaeological culture (C.) regions in East Asia in the Neolithic Age from around 9,000–3,000 years before present (Su 1999). The cultural differences among the regions lasted throughout the whole
    Neolithic Age and into the Bronze Age. There were two series of Neolithic cultures quite distinct from each other in the drainage area of Yangtze River".

    At face value that suggests limited contact until the Late Neolithic, specifically until the Longshan.

    "I have no explanation for that. Sampling bias, perhaps?"

    The Austronesian expansion into the Pacific didn't occur until some time after O3 had expanded widely. O3a2b had already become established amoung the Daxi and Hmong-Mien. It is therefore quite possible that Polynesian O3a2c's deeper origin is exactly what it appears to be with the phylogeny: with the Sino-Tibetan speakers in the Upper Yangtze.

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    1. At face value, from your quote, there was limited contact or at least not any noticeable migration until after the Bronze Age, what means already Chinese state. Some contact there must have been however because of the spread of several concepts, from pottery to agriculture and pastoralism, but I guess I can agree that they remained distinct in the essentials.

      This seems to very much exclude mass migrations at least in the Neolithic in what would become China. It's probable, I guess that there were migrations as the Chinese empire expanded but the consolidation of its power in Southern China would not happen until the Qin and Han dynasties, (221 BCE to 220 CE), although some very localized expansion up to the Yangtze River can existed since the Shang dynasty (late Bronze), at least following this Atlas of Chinese History.

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  12. "Yes 'much debated': the relationship between Tai-Kradai and Austronesian remains at the level of hypothesis. It's almost as if you said 'Nostratic' (only that this one seems clearly junk to me and I'm still willing to allow the Austro-Tai hypothesis some hope)".

    You're talking rubbish again Maju. From the Li paper once more:

    "The genetic relationship among populations of different archaeological cultures, as well as between ancient and modern populations, is of great interest to archaeologists in East Asia (Su 1999). The highly ethnic-related Y chromosome diversity is one of the best materials to describe the relationships (Su et al. 1999; Shi et al. 2005). The Y chromosome haplogroup patterns are quite different among different ethnic groups. For instance, O1 is primarily in Austronesian and Daic populations (Zhang et al. 2007)".

    And from the reference mentioned at the end of that extract:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2435565/

    "According to historical records, the TB populations were derived from the ancient Di-Qiang tribes in Northwest China. About 2600 BP, the TB populations embarked on a large-scale southward migration by the Tibetan–Burman Corridor (Wang 1994). This is consistent with genetic evidence based on Y chromosome markers that almost all the TB populations share a high frequency of M122-C and M134-deletion (Su et al. 2000a,b)".

    And many accept a connection between O2a and Austro-Asiatic.

    "Archaeology shows for example the cradle of Neolithic in the region to be at the Yangtze and you insist in placing the origin of your highly unlikely migrations in the Yellow River instead".

    Excuse me. Follow your reasoning here:

    "Another candidate mentioned is Hemudu culture, from Zheijang, south of Shanghai but also in the Yangtze region. So, unless future discoveries disturb this scheme. It seems most likely that the preliminary development of farming happened South of the Yangtze, in Jiangxi, extending then up and downstream to Hunan and Zheijang first of all".

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemudu_culture

    The dates don't fit that scenario. From the link:

    "The Hemudu culture (河姆渡文化) (5000 BC to 4500 BC[1]) ... ...The Hemudu culture was one of the earliest cultures to cultivate rice"

    Note: 'rice', not farming. According to the Li paper on Neolithic haplogroups:

    "In the Three Gorges region in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the culture catena (CSACH 1998) consisted of Nanmuyuan C.(6000–5000 BC), ... Around the mouth of the Yangtze River, the catena (ZIA 1999) consisted of
    Kuahuqiao C. (6000 BC»),... In the region between the two previous regions, there was another desultory culture catena (Peng 2005): Xianrendong C. (8000 BC»),... The most important was the catena of Peiligang C. (7000–5000 BC)"

    From that it seems the Hemudu was more recent than any of the above. And, of course, it is quite near the Liangzhu, where O1a dominates anyway.

    "The first (known) Neolithic culture of all East Asia is indeed Pengtoushan, which existed essentially in Hunan, at the Middle Yangtze".

    You may be getting close here at around 7000 BC. But it is roughly contemporary with Peiligang culture. Between the two they fill the gap between the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers where they come closest to each other. And the central point from which the EDAR variant expanded.

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    1. Let's get facts clear on O1 frequencies:

      1. The most notable ones are Austronesians, although the frequency varies.
      2. The first non-Austronesian people are the Li/Hlia/Cun of Hainan island who have 27-58%. These are indeed Tai-Kradai but they seem quite exceptional and coastal enough to be otherwise related to Austronesians, regardless of language family.
      3. The second non-Austronesion pop. are the Tujia (20%), who speak a Sino-Tibetan language and live far inland in the Yangtze basin.
      4. Another people from that area who speak Tai-Kradai instead are the Sui (18%). Another Tai-Kradai people with 18% O1 are the Zhuang from Guangxi-Zhuang (but another sample shows only 10%).
      5. Then comes the first Han Chinese (Southern) sample at 17%. Sino-Tibetan.
      6. Then come several Sino-Tibetan populations at 15%: Qiang, She and two different Han samples.

      When one considers major Tai-Kradai populations like the Thai, we see that they only have 12% (Northern Thailand), while Hmong-Mien peoples are very close to Daic values. In general I would dismiss your claim as most likely a ghost, especially as the haplogroup is found at c. 5% frequencies as far North as Mongolia or Korea.

      Neither O1 has simply vanished from the landscape of China nor it can be simplistically associated to any single language group, even if you adopt Austro-Tai as pet-theory for that. It seems a feature most common of (1) Taiwan, (2) Malay Archipelago (rather than generically Austronesians), where it is most diverse and (3) Southern China (less diverse) but not strictly linked to any language group.

      We know that Daic and Burmese invaded parts of Indochina in historical times, displacing the pre-existing Austroasiatic languages. And they surely carried some of their genetic pool with them, but that does not imply any mass replacement (assimilation seems very likely to a great extent) nor justifies your Austro-Tai hypothesis in any obvious way.

      "The dates don't fit that scenario" [Hemudu culture]

      Whatever is correct. One source says one thing, another a different one.

      ""The first (known) Neolithic culture of all East Asia is indeed Pengtoushan, which existed essentially in Hunan, at the Middle Yangtze".

      You may be getting close here at around 7000 BC. But it is roughly contemporary with Peiligang culture".

      Some five centuries earlier. Notice that I'm not proposing any migration, just rejecting your Neolithic migration scenarios, so the relative isolation and relative contemporaneousness of the various cultures fits well with my model. Not with your mass-migrationist one however.

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  13. "Whatever is correct. One source says one thing, another a different one".

    No they don't. They basically say the same thing. Chinese agriculture grew up in the region at the eastern end of the Qinling Mountains between the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. The direct distance between the two rivers is about 400 km. in the region. And Chengchou on the Yangtze is 468 km. from Wuhan on the Yellow River.

    "Notice that I'm not proposing any migration, just rejecting your Neolithic migration scenarios"

    On what grounds are you rejecting it? Maju, ALL the evidence points to Neolithic migrations. The distinct haplogroups sets present in each separate region of the Neolithic, the later wide distribution of several Y-DNA haplogroups, the relatively recent language expansions associated with specific haplogroup sets. You are clinging to a belief that is dead.

    "the relative isolation and relative contemporaneousness of the various cultures fits well with my model".

    How on earth do you reach that conclusion? Bind faith alone. Many of the cultures are sequential, not contemporaneous for a start. And most are isolated from each other for much of the period of their developement, as we see from the Neolithic haplogroup paper.

    "This seems to very much exclude mass migrations at least in the Neolithic in what would become China".

    On the contrary Maju. Until the Later Neolithic each separate culture has a distinct set of haplogroups. It is only after the Neolithic that the distinctiveness dissappears and we see the expansion of several haplogroups right across China. The main expansion of haplogroups is Neolithic.

    "I guess that there were migrations as the Chinese empire expanded but the consolidation of its power in Southern China would not happen until the Qin and Han dynasties, (221 BCE to 220 CE)"

    But surely it is obvious, even to you, that haplogroups O2 and O1 did not expand as recently as that. The Han expansion is simply one more separate expansion from the central Chinese region. It is not the first one.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. If Wikipedia says 5000 BCE and this link says 7000 BCE for Hemudu culture, they do not say the same at all. Argh!

      "ALL the evidence points to Neolithic migrations".

      You just acknowledged that there is a quasi-contemporaneousness of the various Neolithic cultures (but the primacy goes to the South no matter what) and that they seem to have limited contact among them. How does this point to "Neolithic migrations"?!

      "Until the Later Neolithic each separate culture has a distinct set of haplogroups. It is only after the Neolithic that the distinctiveness dissappears"

      More like the Iron Age. Some of the remains of the Li paper are from less than 4000 years ago! And they were still "distinct" from each other and from present. That is totally contrary to "Neolithic migrations" shaping the genetic landscape.

      "But surely it is obvious, even to you, that haplogroups O2 and O1 did not expand as recently as that".

      Nor O3 either. The Han expansion is the only one that the aDNA data seems to allow for. Previously of course that there were migrations and expansions but most of them belong to the Paleolithic, probably deep in it.

      Delete
  14. "Let's get facts clear on O1 frequencies:"

    Yes, let's. We'll go back a few days to where you wrote:

    "O1a* (M119), based on Karafet 2010, it looks like most rare among Southern Han, while O1a2 is totally absent. All that O1 should be, unless there is something I do not know, O1a1 (P203), which is the most common one in Taiwan. However in Taiwan as in ISEA there are also notable frequencies of O1a2 (M110)".

    I agree that O1a2-M110 may have coalesced in Taiwan, but obviously from an O1a-M119 individual. Whenever that was. We can be fairly sure that O1a2 was involved with the Austronesian expansion into the Philippines and beyond, a mere 3 or4 thousand years ago. O1a2's coalescence may have been just before that time. As for the rest of your claim, check this out (again. You don't seem to have understood it):

    http://comonca.org.cn/lh/doc/A72.pdf

    The phylogeny actually shows O1a2 on the mainland, peaking at 3% south of the Qinling Mountains (the paper uses the much more sensible boundary of those mountains rather than the rather silly use of the Yangtze River Valley). Note too that O1a(xO1a1,O1a2) is spread at more than 1% right through China.

    "Neither O1 has simply vanished from the landscape of China nor it can be simplistically associated to any single language group, even if you adopt Austro-Tai as pet-theory for that".

    Maju, any language family is far too recent to have been associated with the first appearance of any O haplogroups. It is the derived haplogroups in the form of O1a1 and O1a2 that are likely associated with the separate languages.

    "It seems a feature most common of (1) Taiwan, (2) Malay Archipelago (rather than generically Austronesians), where it is most diverse and (3) Southern China (less diverse) but not strictly linked to any language group".

    You appear to be the only person in the universe who claims that the haplogroups are not linked to any language group. You're just making things up as you go. Incredibly you can say this:

    "We know that Daic and Burmese invaded parts of Indochina in historical times, displacing the pre-existing Austroasiatic languages".

    Yes.

    "And they surely carried some of their genetic pool with them, but that does not imply any mass replacement (assimilation seems very likely to a great extent)"

    Yes, just 14% haplogroup addition in the Thai. Surely that is the logical explanation for the problem you claimed to see earlier:

    "When one considers major Tai-Kradai populations like the Thai, we see that they only have 12% (Northern Thailand), while Hmong-Mien peoples are very close to Daic values. In general I would dismiss your claim as most likely a ghost, especially as the haplogroup is found at c. 5% frequencies as far North as Mongolia or Korea".

    So O1 could have coalesced as far north as Korea? Just a few days ago you were claiming that any Y-DNA O on the mainland had to be O1a1, not O1a(xO1a1,O1a2). What has changed your mind? And you argument doesn't stand scrutiny. Everyone (except you?) accepts that previous populations adopted the Daic languages. The survival of substantial proportions of other haplogroups is of no surprise to anyone but you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "I agree that O1a2-M110 may have coalesced in Taiwan"....

      I don't. I didn't say nor mean that. Taiwan just retains more diversity than mainland China but both are low compared with Indonesia. O2a overall must have coalesced in Indonesia with all likelihood.

      "You appear to be the only person in the universe who claims that the haplogroups are not linked to any language group".

      I'm not the only one believe me. If they are and when they are, that must be proven for each case. Usually is not such a high level category as O1a or R1b but something much more downstream (and often with exceptions). Languages don't have the long lifespan of haplogroups, as you do acknowledge but way too shyly.

      For example, Jamaicans and Nebraskans speak English but with the occasional exception maybe their lineages are very different overall.

      "So O1 could have coalesced as far north as Korea?"

      No. Presence alone does not allow you or anyone to speculate wildly that way. You need basal diversity first and foremost.

      Delete
  15. "O2a overall must have coalesced in Indonesia with all likelihood".

    How do you leap from O1a to O2a? They are different haplogroups.

    "Languages don't have the long lifespan of haplogroups, as you do acknowledge but way too shyly".

    You're making things up again. I acknowledged fully that languages are younger than haplogroups. But we see clearly that O1a2 carried the Austronesian language from Taiwan southeast to the Admiralty Islands. Consequently we can conclude that it carried the language through a wider region that just that. And actual examination of the data (rather than trying to fit the data to preconceptions) shows that Daic languages are reasonably closely associated with the presence of O1a. The conclusion: both langauges, probably related to each other, were spread by O1a. The languages are intrusive into Indonesia, from southern China. So both the haplogroup and language expansion started from there. But basal O1 is obviously older than the language and, not surprisingly, some sort of O1a makes up the only O haplogroup found in Neolithic settlements around the nouth of the Yangtze. Put all the data together. What emotional reason do you have for clinging so desperately to a SE Asian origin for the O haplogroups?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I meant O1a (typo).

      "But we see clearly that O1a2 carried the Austronesian language from Taiwan southeast to the Admiralty Islands".

      You should better say that Austronesian language arrived to Admiralty Is. associated with O1a2, which arrived from Philippines. There's zero evidence of any direct migration from Taiwan to any Malayo-Polynesian destination, with the possible exception of Nias. Philippines (and in some cases Borneo) seems to be the pivot and direct origin of all those migrations (generally at levels relatively low in frequency anyhow, with some exceptions, of course).

      We cannot determine at the current level of knowledge if O1a2 specifically is most diverse in Taiwan or in Indonesia (or elsewhere). But we know (Karafet 2010) that O1a as a whole is most diverse in Indonesia (both at haplotype diversity and basal haplogroup diversity levels), so O1a in general probably arose there and migrated northwards long before the Austronesian wave did the journey in opposite direction.

      Delete
  16. Sorry, I missed this comment:

    "If Wikipedia says 5000 BCE and this link says 7000 BCE for Hemudu culture, they do not say the same at all. Argh!"

    You're making things up yet again. Why are you talking about Hemudu when my comment was obviously in relation to the earliest Chinese Neolithic:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pengtoushan_culture

    The Pengtoushan 'dating 7500–6100 BCE' (nine thousand five hundred years ago, just to make sure) ' centered primarily around the central Yangtze River' 'was roughly contemporaneous with its northern neighbor, the Peiligang culture'.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peiligang_culture

    The Peiligang 'existed from 7000 BC to 5000 BC'. Again, just to make sure, nine thousand years ago, just 500 years later than the dates given for the Pengtoushan. The Peiligang is 'a group of Neolithic communities in the Yi-Luo river basin".

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luo_River_(Henan)

    "The Luo River (Chinese: 洛河; Pinyin: Luò Hé) is a tributary of the Yellow River in China"

    And:

    "Although not a major river by most standards, it flows through an area of great archaeological significance in the early history of China. Principal cities or prefectures located on the river include Lushi, Luoning, Yiyang, Luoyang, Yanshi, and Gongyi".

    "but the primacy goes to the South no matter what'

    Rubbish. The primacy goes to the region between the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers at the eastern end of the Qinling Mountains.

    "You just acknowledged that there is a quasi-contemporaneousness of the various Neolithic cultures (but the primacy goes to the South no matter what) and that they seem to have limited contact among them. How does this point to "Neolithic migrations"?!"

    Once more you're making things up. You failed to read what I said, 'At face value that suggests limited contact until the Late Neolithic, specifically until the Longshan'. I reached that conclusion from combining the information in the papers I linked to. Between them said the Neolithic cultures were isolated until the expansion of the Longshan, the region in which Taosi developed. The region withn a majority of haplogroup O3 (including O3a2c1), between them now the most prominent haplogroups in China:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longshan_culture

    "The Longshan culture (simplified Chinese: 龙山文化; traditional Chinese: 龍山文化; pinyin: Lóngshān wénhuà; Wade–Giles: Lung-shan wen hua, meaning "Dragon Mountain") was a late Neolithic culture in China, centered on the central and lower Yellow River and dated from about 3000 BC to 2000 BC".

    That is, to simplify things again, four to five thousand years ago. That is presumably the date for the beginning of O3's great expansion.

    "The Han expansion is the only one that the aDNA data seems to allow for. Previously of course that there were migrations and expansions but most of them belong to the Paleolithic, probably deep in it".

    Again I see you are clinging to some pre-conceived idea for some emotional reason. You seem to believe everyone reached the region God had decreed and then remained there until the horrid invention of iron.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Why are you talking about Hemudu when my comment was obviously in relation to the earliest Chinese Neolithic"

      I was talking of Hemudu and you were too. Otherwise there's no contradiction. You just lost the thread (again).

      "The primacy goes to the region between the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers at the eastern end of the Qinling Mountains".

      Not true. The oldest Neolithic cultures are from south of the Yangtze. It may be for just 500 years or a thousand but that is it. Face the FACTS, don't be a coward! There's nothing wrong with admitting to be wrong when you are. It takes guts and self-criticism, of course but if you want to discuss science you need both. Otherwise you drift to ideologically-motivated pseudoscience in which the conclusion determines which facts are accepted and which are arbitrarily rejected or ignored. Don't be a pseudoscientific chicken and admit when you are wrong, c'mon!

      "You failed to read what I said, 'At face value that suggests limited contact until the Late Neolithic, specifically until the Longshan'"

      I did read that and I added, following the source: until after or late in the Bronze Age, it seems. Your admission did not go far enough: you manipulated the source to your caprice and I corrected you in this extreme. Longshan had no influence in the South.

      Your own quote reads:

      "The cultural differences among the regions lasted throughout the whole Neolithic Age and into the Bronze Age".

      Stick to the facts, please.

      The beginning of N→S flows seems to correspond (still very limitedly) to the Shang Dynasty. Earlier there is no evidence whatsoever of any such flows, at least not that you or I know for a fact.

      Delete
  17. "Face the FACTS, don't be a coward!"

    It is way past time that you started facing facts. For example here you are:

    "so O1a in general probably arose there and migrated northwards long before the Austronesian wave did the journey in opposite direction".

    Zero evidence. Avoiding the facts. You're going about things in a thoroughly unscientific manner. You've decided in advance what you want the evidence to show, and you're prepared just to make up anything you like in an attempt to make the evidence fit that belief. To claim even the downstream clade O1a2 originated in the Philippines, let alone O1a, is completely barmy.

    "There's zero evidence of any direct migration from Taiwan to any Malayo-Polynesian destination"

    'Zero evidence'? My foot. It is extremely difficult to deny that the Austronesian language began its spread from Taiwan. So you're talking complete rubbish yet again when you write:

    "Austronesian language arrived to Admiralty Is. associated with O1a2, which arrived from Philippines".

    And it had earlier arrived (and probably not long before) in the Philippines from Taiwan. You're making things up once more. Simply to avoid facing the facts.

    "But we know (Karafet 2010)"

    You cling to an old paper that uses an outdated phylogeny for no other reason than that it can be used to support your belief. If anyone else did that you'd be on them instantly.

    "The oldest Neolithic cultures are from south of the Yangtze. It may be for just 500 years or a thousand "

    Five hundred, Maju. Near enough to the same time for dating purposes. And, as I've pointed out, in the region where those two earliest cultures appear the distance between the rivers is a mere 500 km.

    "The beginning of N→S flows seems to correspond (still very limitedly) to the Shang Dynasty. Earlier there is no evidence whatsoever of any such flows, at least not that you or I know for a fact".

    There is certainly no evidence of south to north flows.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. The evidence is and you know it well in the supp. materials of Karafet 2010. O1a is most diverse in Indonesia, both in haplotype diversity and top tier haplogroup one.

      That is the fact.

      Against that you can only claim: extreme and most unlikely coincidence or paranoid conspiracy.

      Or maybe, as you often do in your cowardice, avoid the matter for what it is: oops maybe Maju is right and actually O1a is most diverse in Indonesia but I'll do as I haven't read that a zillion times already and, if nothing else, I'll manage to deceive myself. Poor fool!

      Or maybe, as you often do in your delirium, claim that 2+2=5, just like in '1984': manipulate the "facts" to make a farcical "truth". "Truth is slavery. Ignorance is strength".

      Go and face it: and don't discuss anything else until you've learned it well, kid (yeah, I know you're old but I'm trying to be motivating).

      I know someone will say: Maju is again freaking out. But it is only because it is at least the third time this week I open the supp. materials of Karafet 2010 to confirm I'm right, while Terry just denies everything without any evidence, like the polemicist preacher he is. How many times did you, little arrogant prick from the antipodes? If only one!

      You are all the time abusing this blog and my patience. Write less and read more, not so much the texts but the tables primarily.

      ....

      Delete
    2. FACTS about 01a diversity (from Karafet 2010):

      O1a-M119 (general):
      → most diverse: West Indonesia 0.528 (n=281/960)
      → then: East Indonesia 0.465 (n=98/957)
      → third: Mainland/SE Asia (incl. S. China, Taiwan and Philippines) 0.329 (n=80/581)
      → too rare to measure: Oceania (n=8/182)

      O1a*-M119:
      → most diverse: East Indonesia 0.525 (n=30)
      → then: West Indonesia: 0.256 (n=106)
      → too rare to measure: Mainland/SEA (n=2), Oceania (n=0)

      O1a1-P203:
      → most diverse: West Indonesia 0.317 (n=155)
      → then: Mainland/SEA 0.304 (n=65)
      → third: East Indonesia 0.181 (n=41)
      → too rare: Oceania (n=0)

      O1a2-M110:
      → most diverse: Mainland/SEA 0.326 (n=14 - barely enough to measure)
      → then: West Indonesia 0.177 (n=20)
      → third: East Indonesia 0.059 (n=27)
      → too rare: Oceania (n=0)

      This should be interpreted most parsimoniously as follows, assuming that the data for O1a2 is acceptable (too low figures to be sure):

      · Origin of O1a: West Indonesia
      → Origin of O1a1: West Indonesia
      → Origin of O1a2: "Mainland/SEA" (?) - but in this catch-all region it is only found among Taiwan Aborigines (n=9/48) and in Philippines (n=4/48), careful!

      Now, Terry: print this and nail it in well visible behind your computer. FACTS!!!

      And send in a donation for another 30 mins of wasted time of mine (if at least I got paid for this...)

      Delete
    3. "'Zero evidence'? My foot".

      No, sorry, your foot is not any evidence.

      "It is extremely difficult to deny that the Austronesian language began its spread from Taiwan".

      Languages are not genes. Peoples change language for many purely pragmatical reasons. It may require theorization about how, with only minor genetic impact, the original Austronesians from Taiwan managed to become so influential (elites, trade, religion...) but that I leave it to others.

      "And [O1a2] had earlier arrived (and probably not long before) in the Philippines from Taiwan".

      Plausible. But that can only be said of O1a2, which is a minor lineage (in numbers) within O1a.

      "You cling to an old paper that uses an outdated phylogeny"...

      Karafet 2010 is not "old" (barely three years now) and its phylogeny corresponds very precisely with what we can find at ISOGG. AFAIK it is the best material on the matter. If you know something even better, let me know (instead of defaming an excellent work by a great geneticist).

      Those are the FACTS and you are in stubborn denial. Because you are coward who does not dare to accept the truth.

      "There is certainly no evidence of south to north flows".

      Nobody claimed there was, not in the Neolithic - much earlier instead.

      Delete
  18. "FACTS about 01a diversity (from Karafet 2010)"

    Here you go again. Your obsession with diversity is not justified. I have tried to tell you many times that all sorts of factors lead to diversity. Origin is sometimes one of those factors but is just as often not the reason for it. As for Karafet's 'Oceania: too rare to measure' enough said. Didn't look very hard. O1a is reasonably common on the Admiralty Islands.

    "Now, Terry: print this and nail it in well visible behind your computer. FACTS!!!"

    And a total waste of time.

    "It may require theorization about how, with only minor genetic impact, the original Austronesians from Taiwan managed to become so influential (elites, trade, religion...) but that I leave it to others".

    So you are left with what you can only claim: extreme and most unlikely coincidence or paranoid conspiracy. Or maybe, as you often do in your cowardice, avoid the matter for what it is: oops maybe Terry is right. O1a reached the Andaman Islands. It must have done so as a vector for the expansion of the Austronesian languages. So here we are once more with your indulging in extreme contortions trying to make the evidence fit your belief or simply dismissing the evidence when your contortions are unable to produce the desired result.

    "Those are the FACTS and you are in stubborn denial. Because you are coward who does not dare to accept the truth".

    I would have thought you were too old to be talking to yourself like that. You are certainly committed to your beliefs.

    ReplyDelete
  19. My "obsession" with basal/structural diversity is perfectily justified: otherwise I could end up thinking like you without points of reference other than my preconceptions, just like a creationist preacher denying pate tectonics in the middle of an earthquake.

    FACTS!

    "And a total waste of time".

    The only waste of time is me allowing you to comment here. You are totally persuading me to finally move to WP, where I can moderate comments by individual users. And you'd be permanently moderated, for concision and meaningfulness.

    Seriously: write your damn blog and stop torturing me with your irrationality!

    ReplyDelete
  20. "just like a creationist preacher denying pate tectonics in the middle of an earthquake".

    That describes your reasoning perfectly. Take this comment:

    "This should be interpreted most parsimoniously as follows, assuming that the data for O1a2 is acceptable (too low figures to be sure):
    · Origin of O1a: West Indonesia
    → Origin of O1a1: West Indonesia
    → Origin of O1a2: 'Mainland/SEA' (?) - but in this catch-all region it is only found among Taiwan Aborigines (n=9/48) and in Philippines (n=4/48), careful!"

    I presume the 'Karafet paper' you are referring to is this one:

    http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/8/1833.full

    Now, Karafet most definitely DOES NOT claim an Indonesian origin for any O Y-DNA. This is what she writes:

    "In the first stage, a Late Pleistocene arrival of the first anatomically modern settlers introduces basal C and K lineages to the entire region (which eventually give rise to haplogroups C-M38, M-P256, and S-M230 in eastern Indonesia/Melanesia)".

    So that's the first arrivals. Then:

    "After 19 ka ago, the sea level began to rise again, with Southeast Asia reaching its present coastline by around 8 ka ago (Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999). These climatic changes may have spurred a second round of expansion of hunter-gatherers into Sundaland from further north on the mainland"

    I agree completely with these two statements. Then:

    "The third stage of colonization corresponds to the Austronesian expansions. This maritime dispersal of rice agriculturists from southern China/Taiwan, beginning between 5.5 and 4.0 ka ago, resulted in the expansion of Austronesian languages throughout the region (Bellwood 2007). We posit that it also led to the migration of haplogroups O-P201 and possibly O-M110 and O-P203 to both sides of Wallace’s line as it penetrated the Indonesian region from the north by sea"

    So that takes care of Indonesia, east and west. O-P201 is now O3a2, and almost certainly O3a2c in this context. O-M110 is now O1a2, a 'Taiwanese' haplogroup which is included within O-P203, now O1a1. Your belief that O1a of any sort originated in Indonesia is totally without foundation. As to any postulated earlier arrivals of Y-DNA O karafet has this to say:

    "We posit that dispersals of hunter-gatherers radiating over an extended period of time (e.g., 8–35 ka ago) introduced several major subclades of haplogroup O to Indonesia (e.g., O-M119, O-M95, O-P203, and O-M122) (fig. 5B). However, the current data do not inform us about the age of the sharp Y chromosome boundary between western and eastern Indonesia".

    So the arrival of any of these haplogroups could be as recent as 8 thousand years ago. The earliest is probably O-M95, now called O2a1, probably associated with the late Hoabinhian in some way:

    "Indeed, the spread of the Southeast Asian Hoabinhian culture into Sumatra may be one tangible marker of these movements (Bellwood 2007)".

    And we've already had a comprehensive discussion regarding this paper:

    http://leherensuge.blogspot.co.nz/2010/03/indonesian-y-dna-is-mostly-paleolithic.html

    I suggest you to read the comments there once more.

    "You are totally persuading me to finally move to WP, where I can moderate comments by individual users".

    I mentioned at another blog that you were the sort of person who tips the board over as your opponent is about to say 'check-mate'. Here we go again.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Maju, why are you so absolutely determined to be so deliberately obtuse. Example:

    "No 'O3d' (sic) except in an isolated individual, when now it is about 1/4 to 1/3 of the populations of the areas sampled..."

    'O3d' is of course 'O3a2b'. The only reason it is not completely obvious to you as to why it is present at a different frequency today compared to what it was in the Neolithic is because you refuse to accept any level of 'migrations and population replacements associated to the spread of Neolithic'. Your belief doesn't stand the slightest examination. The haplogroup was found in the region where the Daxi lived at the time, and is still found in the people descended from that Neolithic population.

    "Not 'absent' at all but it does not, as do not any of the other haplogroups sampled have any correspondence in apportion to modern genetic pools".

    Of course there's not. Because of 'migrations and population replacements associated to the spread of Neolithic'.

    "Are in total disconnection to what modern populations display [the Taosi haplogroups O3* and O3a2c1]"

    How on earth do you come to that conclusion? O3 is the most widely distributed Y-DNA in China today, most of which is O3a2c1. The obvious conclusion we can draw from the Neolithic haplogroup distributions is that O3 expanded mainly from the region of Taosi.

    "Anyhow that's not my only point: none of the five or six samples correspond even remotely in haplogroup frequency to what modern inhabitants display".

    Why should it be the same frequency anyway? Peole shift around over time. Yet the haplogroups are all still present in the regions where they were during the Neolithic. What is your problem? Why are you unable to accept the obvious? Some deep-seated religious problem? Ahh. VA_Highlander has seen the problem: an emotional investment in nativism.

    "But what is most important is that each of the Neolithic populations is pretty much different from the others, so there were no apparent migrations that we can discern associated to the spread of Neolithic in China".

    Getting back to the subject of the post: the samples are from around 6-5000 years ago. Before the expansion of Austronesian-speaking people to the Marianas or into the wider Pacific. The conclusion we can therefore draw from ALL THE DATA is that the big Y-DNA haplogroup expansions in China were even later than what I had come to accept.

    "AFTER the Neolithic: most probably in the Iron Age (maybe beginning already in the late Bronze) with the expansion of the Chinese Empire".

    So you are now prepared to accept that Y-DNA O did not expand until after the Neolithic?

    ReplyDelete
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    1. They do not correspond: O3* is minor among Sino-Tibetans today (dominant in Taosi Neolithic) and "O3d" is much stronger than it was in Taosi. How do you explain that change? How do you explain that from a single individual in Taosi "O3b" has expanded to 30% among modern Chinese? And we have not even considered the Yangtze here.

      Obviously we are missing some info (more sites in North China for example) but we do know that this change happened AFTER the Neolithic and most or all the Bronze Age, as the relevant paper emphasizes.

      "Peole shift around over time".

      Maybe but the effect of such egalitarian micro-migrations is only dilution, not expansion of rare haplogroups such as was "O3b" in the (Northern) Chinese Neolithic. Expansion of a rare haplogroup (in Neolithic or post-Neolithic conditions at least) needs an underlying process of population expansion, and the reduction of locally majoritary haplogroups requires equally a process of immigration from other lands (otherwise drift plays in favor of numerically dominant haplogroups).

      Delete
    2. "Getting back to the subject of the post: the samples are from around 6-5000 years ago".

      "Samples"? If you mean the archaeological discoveries in Tinian, these are from c. 3500 BP.

      "So you are now prepared to accept that Y-DNA O did not expand until after the Neolithic?"

      What?! Don't we have lots of O all around already in the Neolithic? don't the usually ultra-conservative academic-scholastic MC estimates set minimal ages of the order of 30 Ka?

      IMO, NO, O, O3 and O2 (no data for O1) expanded some 40-50 Ka ago, together (at least initially) with mtDNA R (B and F primarily).

      Delete
  22. "There is a material break between the Neolithic Liangzhu culture and the intrusive Maqiao culture that overlays it on some sites. Wiki gives a date of 1800 BCE for the break. You would probably call that "Bronze Age" but it isn't worth fighting about".

    A useful and relevant piece of information. Thanks VA.

    "I do (finally you got something I said right). At least I see no evidence whatsoever of them ['mass migrations and population replacements associated to the spread of Neolithic]".

    You really do have an absolutely closed mind. Data is of no relevance to your belief. You are totally prepared to completely ignore any evidence that might force you to reconsider your belief.

    "the whole genetic pools are almost totally different from modern ones. You must not cherry-pick haplogroups but look at the whole pie chart".

    Maju, it is you who is cherry-picking the data. As you always do.

    "In Central Europe at least I'd agree with the notion of mass replacement"

    But Chinese are somehow inferior? and replacement could not have happened there?

    "You don't need god-like powers to know that the northern Neolithic had nothing to do with rice".

    Maju has decided it has everything to do with the northern Neolithic and no amount of evidence is going to persuade him otherwise.

    "But in East Asia that seems much less apparent".

    'Less apparent' only because you refuse to look.

    ReplyDelete
  23. "But Chinese are somehow inferior? and replacement could not have happened there?"

    Trying to manipulate and distort my words again, accusing me or racism on absolutely. You are banned FOREVER, Terry. I'm fucked up of your idiocy. Find someone else who listens to you. Since today every single comment you post will be sent to spam.

    ReplyDelete

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