To take a break from the nonstop analysis of Eneolithic/BA Steppe DNA (or lack thereof) and theories, I thought I'd open this thread up to attack it from a different angle.
My understanding of the experts' consensus is that PIE likely had very early contacts with Uralic. Not only Indo-Iranian, but even PIE, given the apparent morphological influence in Anatolian. The next most significant language family in terms of contact/exchange w/PIE appears to be one or multiple of the Caucasian languages, although this is obscure and the Caucasian language families appear more difficult to reconstruct.
Therefore by giving more attention to the evidence around the proto-Uralic homeland, we might gain some insight into PIE and its formation. I am open to theories and evidence that may be illumating.
However, I will start by pointing out one thing I noticed myself from playing around w/Vahaduo and the G25. The following table has all the Uralic speakers I could round up, excepting only a) Hungarian (too diluted), and b) Nganassan.
The reason Nganassan were left out is I'm using them as a proxy for the other Uralic speakers. The nearly 100% East Eurasian Nganassan have a very unique form of East Asian ancestry that has not been adequately captured yet in the ancients. You can try Kolyma_Meso, Tyumen_HG, Boisman/DevilsGate, Baikal_N, etc-- you can't get even below 0.20 on the distance for Nganassan using these ancients. It's obvious they harbor ancestry from some HG group that must've been indigenous to the Upper Ural area, way off the trade routes, and we don't have the samples yet. Some of the Slab Grave Mongolians have up to 30% Nganassan-related ancestry. But none of the ancients have enough to come close to modeling Uralics: bottom line is the fits plummet without Nganassan.
Some striking observations:
- Sredny_Stog_o4 is strongly preferred over Yamnaya_RUS_Samara for steppe ancestry (3.8% aggregate avg fit vs 4.2%). For Udmurts, swapping Yamnaya for Sredny worsens the fit an entire point (from 3.26% to 4.33%)
- ALL Uralic speakers have Nganassan-related ancestry ("Uralic HG"?)
- ALL Samoyeds & Ugrics have substantial (>20%) Botai-related ancestry, while all Finno-Permics besides Udmurts have <7% and most have 0% (NOTE: Botai = 85% WSHG + 15% East Asian)
- Finno-Permic speakers all have 19-63% Baltic_EST_BA ancestry, while Samoyeds and Ugrics have none (again, Udmurts are "in between"). These Baltic_EST_BA samples have not gotten enough attention btw...they do seem to be a mix of some steppe group + HGs, but the steppe group isn't Sredny or Yamnaya and surprisingly the HG component isn't quite like the earlier Baltic HGs... will elaborate later.
- Mostly Finno-Permic speakers have the best fits, followed by Ugrics & Samoyedics -- as I stated earlier it's b/c we don't have the right "Uralic HG" proxy and have to use Nganassan instead. But Mari (Permic) have by far the worst fit. Why? I've tried everything (Iranian, Turkic, Mongolic, etc sources) and can't put a dent in that 10%
Anyway, below is what seems to be the dominant hypothesized phylogeny for Uralic (although certainly not the only proposal), I'm aware some of these names seem archaic (it seems Ostyak = Khanty, Vogul = Mansi) but its the only one I could find with some hypothetical split times:
What do you guys make of this? I have some theories but I'd like to hear some feedback first....
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