The above figure is from The Beaker Phenomenon and the Genomic Transformation of Northwest Europe. At the time I noted it because the Bell Beaker people who arrived ~2500 BC seem to have been darker than modern Britons. In particular, you can see that their frequencies are much lower at the blue/brown eye locus (HERC2/OCA2), and SLC45A2, where Europeans are 90% derived today and non-Europeans far less (less than 50% in the Middle East). In modern European populations, the Sardinians have the lowest fraction of the derived SLC45A2 SNP that I’ve seen, around 60%, with mainland Spaniards being at 80%, the rest of Southern Europe at 90%, and 95% in Northern Europe. The Bell Beakers look to be in the low 60% range.
These numbers came back to me when I was looking at some supplementary excel sheets from Genetic ancestry changes in Stone to Bronze Age transition in the East European plain. Here are the figures at these two SNPs for the Fatyanovo Culture of European Russia ~2500 BC:
OCA2/HER2 – 50%
SLC45A2 – 62%
For the Sintashta culture from Russia/Urals ~2000 BC:
OCA2/HER2 – 42%
SLC45A2 – 92%
For comparison, modern Estonians are 92% and 99% at these markers for the derived variant.
This reiterates something I’ve noticed in the data, Bronze Age Europeans were not as “fair” as modern Europeans. This is pretty evident in Northern Europe in particular since these populations are so fair contemporaneously. And, Bell Beakers and Fantyanovo looked basically the same in terms of pigmentation despite between on opposite ends of the post/para-Corded Ware horizon. Curiously, the Sintashta, who descend in a straight line from Fatyanovo seems to exhibit some selection on SLC45A2 (the sample size is pretty large).
It is worth noting that Scandinavia and northern Russia were vastly more lightly populated (i.e. 1-10% of modern populations in most cases) until surprising recently (e.g. the late 1700s) because technology is more important to surviving in extreme arctic and subarctic environments.
So factors like introgression events and selective fitness driving events that in absolute numbers would have been scarce enough (and far enough away from urbanized literate societies that would record them) to largely escape archaeological or historical notice, could still have a big impact.
The migration, marriage choices and morality experiences of just a few large and successful extended families would leave a big impact on the demographics of the society as a whole a few centuries later.
Do your percents of derived include heterozygous or just homozygous? And what’s the effect of being heterozygous on SLC45A2?
These figures make a lot of sense and can partially explain why there aren’t more people in South Asia or Iran with blonde hair or blue eyes.
I suspect the corded ware and sintashta people looked like Nuristani’s or Pamiri Tajiks – i.e. somewhat fair skinned but mostly brown-eyed and dark-haired, with some outliers that have blue eyes and blonde hair.
We’re south Indians btw and my son has red hair. And before any jokes, we know for a fact he is my son. The doctors don’t think its any health issue so the only explanation I’m left with is that it must be either sintashta or melanesian genes popping through.
These figures make a lot of sense and can partially explain why there aren’t more people in South Asia or Iran with blonde hair or blue eyes.
my curiousity on this topic goes back to a conversation with nick patterson in 2009. the idea of a european donor population (like europeans) into s asians didn’t make sense to me pigmentation wise.
we know now as nick suggested these loci are too sensitive to selection.
Yep, Fatyanovo pretty close to Sintashta main cluster per the Global 25 – https://imgur.com/a/xMg3x27
Outliers included in above for demonstration.
On a tangent, Fatyanovo seems to have an unusual outlier, VOD001, who is on a cline towards EEF, but maybe lower a variety of EEF with lower WHG ancestry than Globular Amphora. The paper places this outlier at only modestly lower Steppe ancestry than her fellows 54% vs 66% which seems OK but it seems like their modelling didn’t detect her unusual tilt away from Globular Amphora towards low EEF farmers (so most likely from a chain reaching into the Balkans or Hungary), because they’ve modelled only in a GAC+Yamnaya frame. She seems quite high coverage so it doesn’t seem a mistake.
On a tangent, ran some formal qpAdm models last week and Sintashta seem pretty rock solid at having about 62% ancestry from Yamnaya. I think that’s pretty close to this paper’s estimate that the Fatyanovo have around 66% ancestry from a very Yamnaya like people, allowing for some continual female exogamous type migration from EEF richer CWC cultures. (There seems to be some variation in different CWC cultures EEF fraction, partially structured by region as the EEF richest one seems to be the variant called as Swiss Corded Ware by the relevant paper, with only about 45% Yamnaya like ancestry, and I guess not coincidentally the I2 y-dna, and also radiocarbon dated late to the degree the Reich lab dataset calls them Early Bronze Age. While the richest are the samples in Baltic region, and to some extent the first German ones who were published, even though they’re not really very early in the date sequence at around 2300 BCE).
Sintashta ancestry from the earliest wave we can detect from the Eneolithic of a broadly Steppe like genotype, the people who probably precede Yamnaya, and didn’t have the low level of EEF/WHG ancestry the Yamnaya have, seems in turn to me to be about 53%.
That seems to be really exactly the same in qpAdm in some of the Kazakhstan Steppe MLBA populations, but there are a few among them who may have a bit of ancestry from earlier steppe populations of the kind that show up as outliers in above (almost pure WSHG and these earlier blends of early Steppe and WSHG ancestry like “Steppe_Maykop”), so I’d guess that beats down Sintashta ancestry by a few percent but not very much, maybe 5-10% at most (if we follow Narasimhan’s model).
I guess if then go by Narasimhan’s model that Central_Steppe_MLBA peaks in Kalash at around 30% and guess that the Indian mean is about half that at 15%, then it seems like Indian folks today would have on average about 8% ancestry from the earliest Eneolithic Steppe population (which is about 50:50 EHG:CHG, so you could think of it as 4% EHG and 4% CHG), 4.5% ancestry from Anatolian farmers and 2.5% ancestry from WHG.
Back on topic of SLC45A2, I guess this having a relatively high frequency in Sintashta, but not quite as high as Europeans today, seems consistent with Yelman’s paper finding likely negative selection on SLC45A2 after these Steppe populations introduced it, rather than the variant simply being absent or lower frequency.
Asking as a novice – what is the practical significance of SLC45A2 ? What does it mean that the Sintashta have 92% but the Fatyanovo had only 62% ? That Sintashta were fairer than Fatyanovo ?
@vsds, yes.
So Sintashta were more fair skinned than Corded Ware individuals ? And this selection happened in about 500 years ? Wow. But I remember Razib mentioned in another blog on Brown Pundits I think that the Sintashta are “swarthy”. Don’t these numbers go against that ?
So Sintashta had a derived SLC45A2 frequency somewhere between modern southern and northern Europeans, though definitely looking higher than that found in Spaniards. Though they weren’t as light eyed as Fatyanovo precursors. What about derived SLC24A5 in the ancients? All close to 100?
slc24a5 is pretty high in yamnaya and neolithics. not necessarily as high as in modern europeans (i mean, it’s 99.9%), but not that far off
When you travel in such places as the tribal highland zone of Afghanistan and far northwestern Pakistan, one phenomenon that readily attracts observation and curiosity goes like so:
One day you’ll be in a village where the vast majority of the people broadly resemble these individuals:
https://live.staticflickr.com/6001/5883724889_d5a748731f.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/a3/10/1b/a3101bd90f65b4529d0dc85f66d10535.jpg
https://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/110413-malikzarin-vsmall-350a.social_share_1024x768_scale.jpg
But then, on another day in a nearby village among people who are (undoubtedly) genetically identical to the swarthy people mentioned above, and closely-tied in genealogical terms to the aforementioned people on a rather shallow time scale (like a mere 150-200 years of tribal/clan divergence), a solid 40% of the population looks like this:
https://i2.wp.com/www.burqasandbeer.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/afghanman_arte.jpg
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9c3b9785f6f3ec306d35a316f54a61bf
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-f6ea33517e4ba5b48c1185d6bf05cd16
And I’m not exaggerating; villages where 4 out of 10 adult men look like this, vs other villages where blond hair is virtually unknown (or wholly restricted to children).
^ Naturally, you’ll also find villages where the population has a more “balanced” look (both in terms of proportions, and in terms of the sort of pigmentation).
That is, half of the adult male population isn’t stereotypically Irish-like in hair and skin… but the whole adult male population isn’t uniformly a very deep hue of tan. Rather, most of the men you see are more on the pale/”brunet white” spectrum (as in naturally very pale skin, but they easily tan, and then easily lose their tan), and both the very swarthy and the very fair are minorities.
I think these ancient populations would’ve been in a similar position. In terms of pigmentation, some Sintashta “tribal” sections might’ve been nearly like modern Northern Europeans (or at least fairer than modern southern Europeans), while others might’ve been more like swarthier modern Near Easterners/South Central Asians, with some groups being in-between*
* Note: This is all referring to those Sintashta groups which evinced considerable genetic similarity among themselves.
As Matt noted, there are other Sintashta samples with rather more interesting sorts of affinities: samples with lots of ANE/WSHG-related affinity, or BMAC/West Asian admixture, or even that fascinating combination of both streams…. not to mention the presence of East Asian/Siberian-admixed individuals.
^ Again, those are not the Sintashta samples whom I have in mind; just to reiterate, I’m completely restricting myself to those that conform to the general “Steppe_MLBA” mould (the whole “Yamnaya-related + EEF/MN”, 60-75ish% genomic ancestry for the former stream vs 40-25ish% genomic ancestry for the latter stream). I’m saying that the classic “Steppe_MLBA” might have been quite varied in pigmentation (depending on “tribe” or “clan”), despite autosomal homogeneity (as is still observable in places like tribal eastern Afghanistan).
Just an idea, based on personal observation.
Let’s put Razib on the spot. He does not need to answer if he does not have sufficient data.
Were Yamnaya nomads white people or Vinca Neolithic women made their descendants white (or contributed to be whiter).
Can we assert that white race originated in Vinca?