The story isn’t finished, but it sure is interesting. Where did the Europeans come from? We know that modern humans replaced the Neanderthals, with a little admixture – not a lot, but enough to transmit genes of interest. We know that the last hunter-gatherers were genetically quite different from modern Europeans – their common mtDNA haplotypes are about ten times rarer in modern Europeans, while the most common haplotypes today don’t seem to have existed at all back then. Except among the Lapps, who may be close to the old hunter-gather population. Then we find signs of a colonizing agricultural population (linked to the Cardial and LBK cultures), probably from the Levant, that accounts for a big chunk of modern European ancestry, especially in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean islands, mostly purely in Sardinia. But that population, too, was supplanted to a large extent, especially in northern Europe. Germany may have been very Sardinian-like 5000 years ago, but it’s not now. In admixture analysis, several people have seen a component that looks West Asian, widely distributed but strongest in northern Europe – but not found in Basques. Could be a trace of the Indo-Europeans.
The latest wrinkle is an Amerindian-like component in northern Europeans, accounting for roughly 10% of their ancestry. The French (and the Germans, and the Dutch and Irish) are closer to pure-blooded South American Indians than Italians are. Sardinians are the least close among Europeans – they may have none of this component.
Presumably pure-blooded Amerindians in North America would show the same affiliations, but we – the land of the free and the home of the brave – are too crazy to let Reich and Patterson have any samples.
This Amerindian-like population must have split off from the group that settled the Americas a long time ago – 20,000 years? More? Amerindians have the East Asian skin color genes, along with some of their own – as far as I know, you don’t see these at all in Europeans. As far as I know, there is zero overlap between Amerindian mtDNA haplotypes and those found in ye olde hunter-gatherers in Europe. There _is_ a weak mtDNA link between Amerindians and modern Europeans (haplogroup X). There are signs that populations related to or influenced by Amerindians once covered much more of northern Eurasia than they do now: for example, most linguists now agree that Ket (and groups with related languages that lived along the Yenisei River in central Siberia) is related to the Na-Dene languages, such as Navaho. Along the same lines, Greenberg thought that there were deep, old relationships between Indo-European and several language groups in north Eurasia – and with Amerind.
You see lots of European-type Y chromosomes among tribal Indians in the eastern United States. The usual assumption is that it’s all recent European admixture, and likely that’s so, but it wouldn’t hurt to look real close.
Were the olde European hunters part-Injun? We know that the first farmers in Belgium build log stockades. Sometimes they lost: we’ve found one where the settlers are all dead, full of arrows. Has the wheel made a full turn? If we get a decent quality autosomal DNA sample from some Mesolithic hunters, we’ll know. That should happen soon. Or maybe the Indo-Europeans were a mixed people. Their mythology hints at this: they appeared to have had three castes – warriors, priests, and farmers, and there are signs that the first two castes somehow conquered and incorporated the third. This theme recurs repeatedly in myth and legend – for example, the war between the Aesir and the Vanir. Or maybe there was yet another prehistoric invasion of Europe.
Or maybe the real story involves Hyborians, Picts, and Cimmerians. Stay tuned.
West Hunter 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean_hypothesis ?
“Their mythology hints at this: they appeared to have had three castes – warriors, priests, and farmers, and there are signs that the first two castes somehow conquered and incorporated the third.”
Do you think Dumezil is worth reading? I’m always wondering if I should pick up one of his books.
Worth reading? One of the greatest I.E. scholars of all time. Read the fragments of Mythe et épopée which exist in English.
Don’t forget the story of the Eskimo in his kayak who turned up off Aberdeen. 2nd photo in:
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/museums/connecting_collections/Arctic_connections.shtml
One thing I’ve wondered about is how some northern Europeans, especially those in the British Isles, are very fair and can’t tan at all but burn immediately with sun exposure. Whereas some northern Europeans in Scandinavia and on the Continent have fair hair and eye coloring yet appear to able to tan very well into a golden, bronze coloring.
Too much pheomelanine. They are red.
I like the whole Hyborian Age much more colorful and exotic.
Robert E. Howard had the Picts more or less be stand-ins for the Native Americans. You never know,
Howard’s Picts were a degenerate race that had once been a great race. Bran Mak Morn, their leader, was the only non-degenerate Pict left in Howard’s world.
You’re right. Bran Mak Morn was very indian-like with long, straight, raven-black hair.
Nah–The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa).
As Sellar and Yateman pointed out all those years ago.
I recall that a few years ago, a not un-common complaint among Jewish customers of hobbyist genome services was that they’d be reported to be a few percent American Indian, when they had perfectly reliable records showing all four grandparents were born in, say, Vilnius. Perhaps Jews just tended to complain about this finding more, while gentiles tended to say, “Cool, I’m a little bit American Indian!”
So, how do we distinguish between:
– Eurasians went both west to Europe and East to the Americas.
– American Indians went to Europe.
– Prehistoric Europeans went to the Americans.
Is there a fourth possibility?
As it turns out, this odd Amerindian-like component isn’t found at any significant amount among the Ashkenazim.
We will know the answer when we get decent nuclear DNA from some European mesolithic hunters, which should be soon. Probably.
If tribes won’t allow members to give blood find people who just fail the tribe’s criteria, sometimes those have nothing to do with blood. For some tribes you can be 1/2 native but if you’re not born in the county you’re out. They should work as well as most modern tribal members. What would work best would be some old bones but publically they’d rather eat their own foot as allow that. Privately they’re quick to say, ‘shut up and keep digging’ if money or their interests are involved.
Can someone explain to me how the tribes can prevent their members from giving blood? Why not just find a couple of dissident tribe members somewhere?
Could someone explain to me how the tribes can prevent their members from giving blood?
They can’t, but researchers who rely upon government funding (i.e. all of them) can’t afford to do anything that practical. Same with Australian Aborigines: I could get plenty of samples by mopping blood off the floor of the right tavern, but that’s agin the rules.
Steve,
For general background.
This component is found by a new admixture test that doesn’t really use the principal components analysis / STRUCTURE / admixture approach that found the components you are talking about. (Or a general shift in FST statistics).
Those methods still don’t find an Amerind-like element in Europeans or Middle Eastern populations (other than those like Russians and Finns, known to be recently affected by Siberians) when they use a good sample size.
It’s found by a statistic that compares a population C with two other populations A and B (in this case, Sardinians and Karitiana) that gives a statistic that says whether C is a mix of A and B (if the statistic is negative they are).
Then another statistic is run that says, assuming C IS just a mix of populations A and B and that another population, D IS just a total outgroup, how can we best explain C as a mix of A and B? And this is what gives the 10% Amerindian-like component in Europeans.
The first statistic I’ve mentioned doesn’t seem to have too much north-south structure in Europe. Ashkenazis are at the low end of this statistic.
The second statistic is what shows the north-south structure in Europe and near east and what shows Ashkenazis to lack the “component”. Populations in this are affected by whether the chosen “outgroup” has actually mixed with the source populations, and the outgroup chosen is African, so this statistic may be affected by whether populations (e.g. Ashkenazis) have historical or pre-historical African mixture.
Matt, thanks.
“Or maybe the Indo-Europeans were a mixed people. Their mythology hints at this: they appeared to have had three castes – warriors, priests, and farmers, ”
The ‘Amerindian’ component isn’t surprising to anyone who’s seen high cheekbones and Chinese-like eyes among Nords, most prevalent among Estonians and Finns, from what I have observed. The Lapps aren’t far away.
it’s absurd to call it ‘Amerindian’, of course. The Amerindians ought rather to be said to exhibit a Eurasian component.
As for the mythology: tripartite ideology, as Dumézil had it, arose from contact with settled peoples, probably first to account for the inhabitants of towns on the west-bank of the Dnieper (Tripolye culture).
I’ve read that the east asian eye folds are common among scandivanivan babies.
Babies generally often have epicanthic folds. I believe all fetuses have them. It’s just that East Asians/Amerinds don’t grow out of them.
“20,000 years? More?”
Between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the Sons of Aryas.
“The ‘Amerindian’ component isn’t surprising to anyone who’s seen high cheekbones and Chinese-like eyes among Nords”: you get an extra point for the elegance of your allusion to the Law Squaw.
Lapps ?
I think that the notion of 10% Amerindian admixture in modern Europeans is not correct!
Rather it should be 10% Aboriginal European (Amerindian) + 90% admixture with Ancestral West Asian (Sardinian) + Ancestral North Indian (Baluchistan) mixed individuals.
In other words the Basques are a mixture of Aboriginal European + Ancestral West Asian.
The Sardinians are mostly Ancestral West Asian.
Modern Northern Europeans and Middle Easterners are mostly a 2-way mix of Ancestral West Asian (Sardinian) + Ancestral North Indian (Baluchistan) – their only difference is that North Europeans have some Aboriginal European, and Middle Easterners have some Sub-Saharan ancestry.
I’d imagine the Amerindian like admixture or Aboriginal European is more like modern North or Central Siberian or Cro-Magnon – who IMO came from the East to Europe.
Didn’t Himmler and other Nazis believe the Indo-Europeans originated in Tibet or some other place further east like that?
Doesn’t the Cavalli-Sforza pre-European contact map show a color bleed across the Atlantic similar to but smaller than that on the Pacific side? It looks to me like there was some contact from the Atlantic as well as the Pacific.
Wouldn’t this be support for the Solutrean Hypothesis? The Indians may have invaded and genocided the Whites (Solutreans) who were the original inhabitants of the Americas and native to it way before the Indians invaded.
Nice Fairytale, you have a great imagination. But no, it means that Native Americans were in Europe and America first, and Europeans genocided them both times, and then contaminated the survivors bloodlines.
tall blond horse riding warrioers, men and women alike a repeatedly dug up from kurgans as far east and north as the Altai mountains and the Gobi desert- before Turk-peoples like the huns, the mongols etc moved into the great steppe regions that cover a belt of eurasia reaching from hungary and the ukraine to the chinese wall, it seems to have been inhabited by blonde and blue eyed population, called skythians, sarmtas or pazyryk. the mutation causing blue eyes seems to have happened 6-10000 years ago in the steppe region close to the black sea 8 prof.eiberg, university of copenhagen)- same as the ability to digest lactose as an adult- so shangri-la is the sea of grass, that was made livable by the ability to drink milk and the domestication of the horse, and contact to pretty girls ( or brave men)of siberian ancestry was easy . north of the steppe lies the taiga, a sea of trees…..reaching from norway to beringia- i remember well traveling to foreign countries as young men should and admixture with local girls
was definitly part of the agenda!
‘The timing of pigmentation lightening in Europeans.’ says “…selective sweeps for the European-specific alleles at TYRP1, SLC24A5, and SLC45A2 started much later, within the last 11,000-19,000 years”. Too late for simple maximizing of vitamin D synthesis in high latitudes, too early for shortage of vitamin D in the diet of early agriculturists . Only Peter Frost’s explaination of where Europeans came from is left standing..
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See: Kennewick man. European peoples already settled North America before Asians did until they were genocided out of existence, lol. Injun Europeans? Nope. Other way ’round. If I recall correctly Native Americans speak of tall “giants” with red-hair that were already there before them. Clearly Celtic.
I think you referred to Beothuk people who were very tall (they have recorded Beothuk man was 6 ft 7 inch) and called Red Indian in Newfoundland. Algonquian have Beothuk Y dna haplogroup Q and mtdna haplogroup X and C
Wrong! If anything, Native Americans are way older than the European race. And most likely colonized both continents of the Americas and Europe even before the indo Europeans left their ancestral homeland of Asia and the Middle East. Way before the India immigrated to Europe and genocided again the Macrohaplogroup M people’s who were the Ancient ancestors of the Ancestors of the Native Americans that stayed in Europe. The Late Bronze Age ancestors of modern Europeans are relative late comers to both the America’s and Europe. So you are wrong. Also Kenniwick Man was a Native American ancestor as was genetically proven so much for your solutrian hypothesis. Anzick 1 was also directly related to all Native Americans and was buried with hundred of Clovis spear points. Pre-Clovis points/ Clovis points all were made by the ancestors of all NAs. And are not 2 separate races.
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