Uralic homeland and genetics and their implications for PIE

[CopperAxe]

The big question now is the extent they themselves took part in the Seima-Turbino phenomenon, or something like Samus-Kizhirovo. Basically, is there any visible mechanism behind the expansion?

I have doubts about the Samus culture not having a strong relation to their geographic neighbours based on material culture and so far haven't come across something substantial about their anthropological data. I do know that bronze and iron age samples (described as Samoyeds by Soviet archaeologists) just south of the area basically have no Kra001 ancestry. I think an adoption of Samus style metallurgy by Taiga populations spreading westwards makes sense however.

Yeah, the Northern Angara was probably THE main migration route from the Lena basin. In your perception, wouldn't the WSHG ancestry in the Bronze Age be problematic for a Proto-Samoyedic homeland in the region?

The cultural attributions of the Northern Angara in the Bronze Age are quite ambiguous.
https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/po...rinadlezhnosti

I'm not sure if the northern Angara would be where Proto-Samoyedic would have been spoken to be honest, and I also have no idea who would be living north of the Angara river during the bronze age before/after/contemporary to Kra001 populations. I think the lack of shared WSHG makes the generally proposed urheimat of Proto-Samoyedic completely untenable from a genetic perspective, and I don't understand how general location works given the suggested linguistic contacts generally ascribed to Samoyedic.

[Huck Finn]

I think the lack of shared WSHG makes the generally proposed urheimat of Proto-Samoyedic completely untenable from a genetic perspective, and I don't understand how general location works given the suggested linguistic contacts generally ascribed to Samoyedic.

This applies to the whole founding Proto Uralic group, which seems to combine very eastern and western traits however nothing pointing towards Neolithic West Siberia.

[Ryukendo]

The Ket live much further to the west than the Angara, at a significantly higher latitude and they were also recent migrants to the northern regions? I don't see how that is really relevant for bronze age population east of the Yenisei. I dont think it makes sense to suggest that the Kansk river would be home to Kra001 populations while northern Angara 200km north of Kansk would be Baikal_BA territory, because you'd essentially have a Kra001 island with WSHG-ESHG cline populations around them in all directions, while these then did not mix with one another.

 

All I'm gonna say is dont be surprised if future samples from the northern Angara territory show Kra001-rich ancestry.

The big question now is the extent they themselves took part in the Seima-Turbino phenomenon, or something like Samus-Kizhirovo. Basically, is there any visible mechanism behind the expansion?



Yeah, the Northern Angara was probably THE main migration route from the Lena basin. In your perception, wouldn't the WSHG ancestry in the Bronze Age be problematic for a Proto-Samoyedic homeland in the region?

The cultural attributions of the Northern Angara in the Bronze Age are quite ambiguous.
https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/po...rinadlezhnosti

The issue is that the Glazkovo culture, which we know for sure is Baikal_BA, extended to the Middle Angara area (where it bends towards the Yenisei) already by the Bronze Age. Later on in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age the Tsepanskaya culture of the Angara and Yenisei also show connections with the Baikal, not Yakutia. Kra001 ancestry will be there but it will most likely be in highly admixed form with Baikal_BA (if not in every sample from that area it will be in lots of samples) and so it is not a staging point for later Uralic expansions.

Here is what Zelto's article itself says about the situation:

The results of the study of archaeological heritage sites containing burials of
the Bronze Age on the territory of the Northern Angara region are presented. The total
burials, which have a certain similarity with the materials of the Baikal region, are analyzed.

About the situation with how a population so far East got so far West, you can get a clue as to the demographic correlates of such a process already using G25. You can notice that Kra001 drifts in a quite different direction from the rest of the Kra001-like samples (e.g. all the Ymyakhtakh samples) even though they date to around the same period, and all non-Samoyedic Uralics strongly favor Kra001 (even Samoyeds do as well, except for Nganasan where its 50-50 Kra001 ancestry and Yakutian Iron Age ancestry). There was some sort of process that created a lot of drift in the Kra001 population that gave rise to all later Uralics in a very short period of time.

[Ryukendo]

Some quotes from the article regarding the Middle Angara/Northern Angara:

The information presented in this article was compared by the researchers
with the materials of the Glazkovskaya burial tradition in the Baikal region. As
a matter of fact, this was the easiest way of cultural-historical attribution of the
newly discovered complexes and determination of their chronological position
within the periodization scheme of the Baikal region.”


In the monuments of the Glazkovo funerary tradition, the
tomb structure often played an important role. As A.P. Okladnikov noted, the
masonry of the graves was in some cases boat-shaped [Okladnikov, 1955, p.
307]. Often the structures had an elongated oval shape… In the Severo Angara
burials, as well as in the Baikal ones, the grave pit has the shape of an
elongated oval… The orientation of the grave depends on a number of reasons - whether it
is the location relative to the cardinal points or some natural object. In this
regard, the burials of the Northern Angara (with rare exceptions) are oriented
along the river head downstream, which also corresponds to the burials of the
Bronze Age in the territory of the Baikal
region. The position of the remains of the buried in the grave at all times
played a very significant role, and sometimes was the reason for the allocation
of separate groups of burials in the chronological and cultural aspect. This
happened with the burials of the Bronze Age in the Baikal region. Based, among
other things, on the position of the backbone, within the same cultural and
historical community, the Shumilikha, Glazkovskaya, Shiverskaya, Mukhorskaya
and other groups of burials were identified [Okladnikov, 1955; Goryunova,
2002; Turkin, Kharinskiy, 2004; Emelyanova, 2012]…

In characterizing the votive
inventory, it must be said that it has common features with the materials from
the Baikal region….

It should be noted that all the burials
attributed to the Bronze Age were distinguished mainly by analogy with the Baikal
materials. V. I. Privalikhin in his article “Study of the burials of the Early Bronze
Age at the Sergushkin-2 site and burial ground in the Northern Angara
Region” gives a preliminary division of the Bronze Age of the territory into two
chronological stages: the early (developed) and late Bronze Age within the
framework of one archaeological culture related to Glazkov culture of the Baikal
region...

Analyzing the materials of the burial complexes of the Northern Angara region,
it can be concluded that these burials correlate with the materials of the Early Bronze
Age of the Baikal region and can be dated to the chronological period of 4.5–3.5
thousand years ago. Thus, a chronological gap of 600 years (3.4–2.8 thousand years
ago) is created between this group of burials and the Tsepan culture, which marks the
upper boundary between the early Iron Age and the late Bronze Age. However, it
should be assumed that population groups related to the Baikalians could exist in this
territory up to the turn of the 2nd–1st millennium BC. e. The sufficient remoteness of
the Northern Angara region from the main migration routes of the ancient inhabitants
of the steppes, which had a strong influence on the culture of the Late Bronze Age of
the Baikal region, as well as more severe natural conditions, allow us to lean towards
this hypothesis....


Previously, the question of the cultural affiliation of the Severo-Angara burials
did not generally cause controversy. Even A.P. Okladnikov pointed out the proximity
and affinity of the Bronze Age graves of the Lower Angara to the Glazkovsky monuments. He also suggested that a local variant of this
culture was identified [Okladnikov, 1955, p. 12]. In preliminary publications of
materials from 1970–1980. 20th century this idea was supported by the
authors of the
excavations. In our opinion, at the moment the genesis of the North
Angara tribes of the Bronze Age remains unclear. Two ways of their formation
can be distinguished: local, based on the gradual evolution of Neolithic
cultures, and through migrations of part of the population from the Baikal
region, the Krasnoyarsk forest-steppe, Yakutia, and the Kansko-Rybinsk basin.
In this regard, we cannot confidently speak about the cultural identity of the
Northern Angara and Baikal tribes in the Bronze Age.

On the whole, the investigated burial complexes have many features in
common with the materials of the Early Bronze Age of Baikal Siberia. However,
as already noted, the accompanying inventory of burials is poorer both in terms
of nomenclature and quantity. It also has a hunting rather than a fishing
character, in contrast to the synchronous burials of the Baikal region.

While the authors hedge their conclusions in the conclusion section, by far the most significant archaeological connection is with cultures and populations of the Baikal region, as the authors repeatedly emphasize.

[CopperAxe]

The issue is that the Glazkovo culture, which we know for sure is Baikal_BA, extended to the Middle Angara area (where it bends towards the Yenisei) already by the Bronze Age. Later on in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age the Tsepanskaya culture of the Angara and Yenisei also show connections with the Baikal, not Yakutia. Kra001 ancestry will be there but it will most likely be in highly admixed form with Baikal_BA (if not in every sample from that area it will be in lots of samples) and so it is not a staging point for later Uralic expansions.

Here is what Zelto's article itself says about the situation:



About the situation with how a population so far East got so far West, you can get a clue as to the demographic correlates of such a process already using G25. You can notice that Kra001 drifts in a quite different direction from the rest of the Kra001-like samples (e.g. all the Ymyakhtakh samples) even though they date to around the same period, and all non-Samoyedic Uralics strongly favor Kra001 (even Samoyeds do as well, except for Nganasan where its 50-50 Kra001 ancestry and Yakutian Iron Age ancestry). There was some sort of process that created a lot of drift in the Kra001 population that gave rise to all later Uralics in a very short period of time.

Using this logic, you can pretty much disregard the whole Krasnoyarsk-Kansk region of having played a role in Uralic expansion since it was inhabited by populations with West-Siberian and Baikal-Upper Angara traditions with the region shifting to West and South Siberian influences. Later on the area had a Karasuk-related material presence. In such an area the population would undoubtedly get mixed up and influenced by the Siberian populations there and thus it cannot be where the Uralic predecessors were. Yet when we looked at one of those Karasuk-related sites we found an earlier sample, and that sample was kra001, within 200km distance from samples like RISE553 and RISE554. Zelto is probably right that you won't find a clear archaeological pattern of the distribution of the kra001 component in earlier times and this likely has to do with the timespan of expansion coupled with the population sizes involved. By later periods the material culture could have completely shifted via a kulturkugel model and thus not recognizable as an east Siberian population migration. The population involved had a close genetic relation to populations in the Lena basin, and to reach West-Siberia from there you either travel towards lake Baikal and expand across the Sayan, you tributary-hop to the Angara and then into the Yenisei, or you go more northernly along rivers such as the Tunguska.

[Ryukendo]

Using this logic, you can pretty much disregard the whole Krasnoyarsk-Kansk region of having played a role in Uralic expansion since it was inhabited by populations with West-Siberian and Baikal-Upper Angara traditions with the region shifting to West and South Siberian influences. Later on the area had a Karasuk-related material presence. In such an area the population would undoubtedly get mixed up and influenced by the Siberian populations there and thus it cannot be where the Uralic predecessors were. Yet when we looked at one of those Karasuk-related sites we found an earlier sample, and that sample was kra001, within 200km distance from samples like RISE553 and RISE554. Zelto is probably right that you won't find a clear archaeological pattern of the distribution of the kra001 component in earlier times and this likely has to do with the timespan of expansion coupled with the population sizes involved. And the population involved had some clear genetic relation to populations in the Lena basin, and to reach West-Siberia from there you either travel towards lake Baikal and expand across the Sayan, you tributary-hop to the Angara and then into the Yenisei, or you go more northernly along rivers such as the Tunguska.

Even if Kra001 transversed the Angara area (and its not clear which route the Kra001 peoples took to move west from Yakutia to the Krasnoyarsk-Kansk area), it was not really a well-defined "route" of cultural and archaeological significance so much as an extremely quick and ephemeral translocation that left little of the local admixture among the westward moving Kra001 type peoples. The Angara route is far more significant for cultures and populations carrying Baikal_BA type ancestry--I think its virtually certain that all ancient samples from the Angara valley linking the Baikal to the Yenisei from the Bronze and Iron Ages will be extremely rich in Baikal_BA, baring some outliers. The list of cultures there--Glazkov, Shiverskaya, Tsepan and so on have repeatedly been linked to Yeniseians, especially the Tsepan. If the Kra001 population moved through the area in a very major, non-ephemeral manner they would have picked this Baikal ancestry up.

Its very likely that in the Bronze Age and later, there were two types of Kra001 ancestry, separated by the Yenisei-Angara region where you have a wedge of Baikal_BA ancestry. West of that you have Kra001 proper found among all Uralic people including Samoyeds, and east of that you have Yakutia-IA-type ancestry reaching a peak of 50% in Nganasans, even higher in Yukagir, Yakut, Dolgan and Tungusics etc. (high as in Yakutia_IA:Kra001 ratio), but not found among Finno-Ugrics. The western group were probably what got rolled into the Seima-Turbino phenomenon and responsible for the "unifying" Uralic-like ancestry in all present-day Uralics.

At some point, some site should emerge among the ST or Samus-Kizhirovo related circle of cultures that is extremely rich in 100% "western" Kra001-ancestry. Despite the fact that none of the cultures involved in ST or Samus-Kizhirovo appear very distinct from any other, the fact of the matter is that one of them must end up getting taken over by Kra001 type populations because the main conduit of eastern archaeological influence in LBA European Russian cultures is ST and especially Samus-Kizhirovo influences and not Yakutia or even boreal influences. We should wait and see.

[Ryukendo]

N.B: Once could always point out that the eastern influence I'm talking about here is in the metallurgy and ask if that is significant with respect to population affinities, but the other major sign of this eastern influence in LBA European Russia is ceramic influences too, from what used to be West Siberian ceramic traditions formerly associated with the circle of cultures under the ST and Samus-Kizhirovo circle. So the main influence is from those groups. At some point some Kra001 population, perhaps quite a small one, must have taken over a locality perhaps in a very significant way, to explain this.

[Zelto]

I have doubts about the Samus culture not having a strong relation to their geographic neighbours based on material culture and so far haven't come across something substantial about their anthropological data. I do know that bronze and iron age samples (described as Samoyeds by Soviet archaeologists) just south of the area basically have no Kra001 ancestry. I think an adoption of Samus style metallurgy by Taiga populations spreading westwards makes sense however.

We have had this discussion (two years ago already), but the Samus culture on the Mid-Ob is in a pretty direct path from kra001 to the West. Although, I concede that it appears to be related to Krotovo, Elunin, Okunevo, etc., which isn't conducive for a correlation with kra001-like ancestry. There is a seemingly unavoidable fact though- a demographic shift did occur in the Taiga zone from the Volga-Yenisei (beginning by ~1800 BC), without a major discontinuation in material culture.

As far as I'm aware, Samus-Kizhirovo materials don't have a special connection to the Samus culture. The Samus IV site was one of the earliest discovered and has some of the most SK materials, but the SK tradition did not emanate from there. Analogous to the Seima and Turbino sites giving their name to ST, but the ST tradition ultimately not originating in the Volga-Kama. In other words, SK is a transcultural phenomenon and the Samus culture is just one of many where these materials were eventually produced.

In all likelihood, the spread of SK was a 'multiethnic' process like ST, but I am suggesting that kra001-like groups might have played a much larger role. Although, I hesitate to say "like ST" because our understanding of the population/genetic dynamics is limited to a few samples from a single site.

[Ryukendo]

We have had this discussion (two years ago already), but the Samus culture on the Mid-Ob is in a pretty direct path from kra001 to the West. Although, I concede that it appears to be related to Krotovo, Elunin, Okunevo, etc., which isn't conducive for a correlation with kra001-like ancestry. There is a seemingly unavoidable fact though- a demographic shift did occur in the Taiga zone from the Volga-Yenisei (beginning by ~1800 BC), without a major discontinuation in material culture.

As far as I'm aware, Samus-Kizhirovo materials don't have a special connection to the Samus culture. The Samus IV site was one of the earliest discovered and has some of the most SK materials, but the SK tradition did not emanate from there. Analogous to the Seima and Turbino sites giving their name to ST, but the ST tradition ultimately not originating in the Volga-Kama. In other words, SK is a transcultural phenomenon and the Samus culture is just one of many where these materials were eventually produced.

In all likelihood, the spread of SK was a 'multiethnic' process like ST, but I am suggesting that kra001-like groups might have played a much larger role. Although, I hesitate to say "like ST" because our understanding of the population/genetic dynamics is limited to a few samples from a single site.

Have you come across an explicit claim that the SK tradition must have emanated from the Mid Trans-Urals? Could you provide a reference to it? From what I know the Shaitanskoe Ozero II site is described as being transitional from ST to SK like you said but I haven't seen the broader, explicit claim that the SK originated from a slightly more western location (e.g. Trans-Urals) when compared to ST (e.g. Altai foothills).

[Jaska]

The issue is that the Glazkovo culture, which we know for sure is Baikal_BA, extended to the Middle Angara area (where it bends towards the Yenisei) already by the Bronze Age. Later on in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age the Tsepanskaya culture of the Angara and Yenisei also show connections with the Baikal, not Yakutia. Kra001 ancestry will be there but it will most likely be in highly admixed form with Baikal_BA (if not in every sample from that area it will be in lots of samples) and so it is not a staging point for later Uralic expansions.

You should not even use the label ”Uralic”, when you do not take the linguistic results as the starting point but instead totally ignore them. You will never be able to see the language from the DNA, because language is not inherited in the DNA: it is learned from the people among whom a child is raised, irrespective of their biological relatedness. A child of Chinese parents does not learn Chinese, if he is raised by German speakers. This should be obvious to everybody.

Your ”Uralic” has nothing to do with the language, but it is only some pseudo-linguistic phenomenon inherited in the DNA, unlike languages in the real world. You should rather use some other label, which does not denote any language.

There was some sort of process that created a lot of drift in the Kra001 population that gave rise to all later Uralics in a very short period of time.

Really? Based on what evidence is Kra001 the parental population for all the very diverse and different Uralic populations? And why do you ignore all the other possible parental populations, like the European HG ancestry or the Corded Ware -related ancestry, which spread from the Volga Region to Siberia during the 3rd millennium BC or even later? (See Tambets et al. 2018.)

You cannot just decide (or throw a dice) that one genetic component is connected to the Uralic language and another is not. You have to take the linguistic results and see, which genetic component is a better match for them. That is the only scientific method.