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They killed the daughter of the maryannu!


Human mobility at Tell Atchana (Alalakh) during the 2nd millennium BC: integration of isotopic and genomic evidence:

The Middle and Late Bronze Age Near East, a period roughly spanning the second millennium BC (ca. 2000-1200 BC), is frequently referred to as the first ‘international age’, characterized by intense and far-reaching contacts between different entities from the eastern Mediterranean to the Near East and beyond. In a large-scale tandem study of stable isotopes and ancient DNA of individuals excavated at Tell Atchana (Alalakh), situated in the northern Levant, we explore the role of mobility at the capital of a regional kingdom. We generated strontium isotope data for 53 individuals, oxygen isotope data for 77 individuals, and added ancient DNA data from 9 new individuals to a recently published dataset of 28 individuals. A dataset like this, from a single site in the Near East, is thus far unparalleled in terms of both its breadth and depth, providing the opportunity to simultaneously obtain an in-depth view of individual mobility and also broader demographic insights into the resident population. The DNA data reveals a very homogeneous gene pool, with only one outlier. This picture of an overwhelmingly local ancestry is consistent with the evidence of local upbringing in most of the individuals indicated by the isotopic data, where only five were found to be ‘non-local’. High levels of contact, trade, and exchange of ideas and goods in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, therefore, seem not to have translated into high levels of individual mobility detectable at Tell Atchana.

From a DNA perspective two notable things about this preprint. First, it confirms that there was a massive pulse of Iranian/Caucasus ancestry into the western Fertile Crescent between 5000 and 2000 BC. We don’t have any idea what was going on here, but my own suspicion is that the Uruk period, 4000 to 3100 BC, has something to do with this genetic turnover and assimilation. We don’t know what happened during the Uruk period because there’s no real writing of narrative history (there is proto-cuneiform), but this is when city life really expanded in Mesopotamia. Additionally, there were replica copies of Mesopotamian style towns to the west, and even into Anatolia. The Uruk period was arguably the peak of Mesopotamian political power and influence before the rise of Assyria thousands of years later.

The end of the Uruk period was characterized by a massive collapse. Some archaeologists hypothesize that the catastrophe literature of the Sumerians may reflect memories of the end of the Uruk civilization. In some ways, the Akkadians and Sumerians may have lived in the shadows of their forebears.

The second issue is “the lady in the well”. This is a woman who seems to have been pushed into a well and fallen to her death. She is the major genetic outlier from this site: “Individual ALA019 – the Well Lady – takes up an extreme outlier position in the PCA closest to sampled individuals from Bronze Age Iran/Turkmenistan/Uzbekistan/Afghanistan.”

Her positioning is unambiguous. Unless we’re missing something this woman is of “steppe” heritage. Probably Indo-Iranian. But, the best guess from the isotope work is that she was raised in the region. The data they have indicate she lived between 1550-1600 BC. She was almost certainly from an Indo-Iranian group that had settled in the region. In fact, she was almost certainly associated with the Indo-European element in Mitanni.  But in this region of the world the Dasa in their walled cities overcame the free people and swallowed them up culturally and demographically.

The major lacunae in this paper, and all such papers, is Iraq. There is ancient DNA from Turkey, the Levant, but what about Iraq? I’m sure people are working on it, but this is a region that would give us a better sense of “donor” populations.

8 thoughts on “They killed the daughter of the maryannu!

  1. Can the Indo-European part of the Well Lady not be confirmed genetically ? Like % of Iran_N, % of Steppe_MLBA, etc ? I’m just a lay person, so I haven’t been able to parse the original paper itself. Thanks

  2. The Maryannu was part of the Iranian Y-DNA J1 invasion of Mesopotamia, the Levant, Arabia, just like the previous preprint “The Genomic History of the Middle East” showed.

  3. Oh no, I think I know who “Professor” is. For the last time, J1 is ultimately associated with Iran Neolithic-Chalcolithic types, *not* with Indo-Iranians/Indo-Aryans. What is it about the term “Iran” that melts people’s brains?

    J1 in the core Near East precedes the those maryannu by at least 2,000 years. As an E-M34 survivor of their onslaught, I should know ;). Indo-Iranians/Indo-Aryans mostly brought varieties of R1a-Z93, as well as perhaps Q1b-L245 and R1b-L584.

  4. “frequently referred to as the first ‘international age’, characterized by intense and far-reaching contacts between different entities”

    Considered with special color as the Jaynes “Origin of Consciousness” cultural-evolution moment–because ya can’t keep an intriguing unprovable (thus far) hypothesis down…

  5. @vsds

    Using Eurogenes’ G25 PCA datasets with Adam-Thorough
    https://yk.github.io/ancestry/

    Distance: 1.6805143005601153%

    Central_Asia_En: 76.8%
    Central_Steppe_MLBA: 19.3%
    AHG: 4.0%

    Central_Asia_En drowns out Iran_N; with only Steppe, Iran_N, & AHG, we get:

    Distance: 3.0123216793028993%

    Iran_N: 72.2%
    Central_Steppe_MLBA: 23.4%
    AHG: 4.4%

    Of course, far smarter people with far better tools out there.

  6. @of two minds

    So the end of the stronghold of bicamerality. But when do you think it was born in the first place?

  7. Da Thang, whoops you got turned around and are sprinting toward the wrong end zone. You should buy the book and read it, which is fun and painless; the reason the hypothesis is still discussed is because Jayne writes in flowing prose, while remaining closely- and credibly-enough argued that spirited credentialed neuro-scholars of every generation still muse over the implications.

    I’m writing this from phone, so can’t see whether Razib has the book linked. If he does, please buy it via that link, to help pay Razib a few very well deserved shekels.

  8. Scroll down or find in page for the list if you are using chrome.
    I have glanced a bit and it says something about names starting in the mesolithic with a diversification of occupied habitats. But wouldn’t those kinds of things also have happened in places like Vestonice and Kostenki?

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