Persistence of male neolithic lineages in ancient Orkney

[CopperAxe]

Just saw this shared on Eurogenes by Arza, I think it deserves its own thread.

Project: PRJEB46830
Ancient DNA at the edge of the world: Continental immigration and the persistence of Neolithic male lineages in Bronze Age Orkney

Orkney was a major cultural center during the Neolithic, 3800–2500 BC. Farming flourished, permanent stone settlements and chambered tombs were constructed, and long-range contacts were sustained. From ~3200 BC, the number, density and extravagance of settlements increased and new ceremonial monuments and ceramic styles, possibly originating in Orkney, spread across Britain and Ireland. By ~2800 BC this phenomenon was waning, although Neolithic traditions persisted to at least 2500 BC. Unlike elsewhere in Britain, there is little material evidence to suggest a Beaker presence, suggesting that Orkney may have developed along an insular trajectory during the second millennium BC. We tested this by comparing new genomic evidence from 22 Bronze Age and three Iron Age burials in northwest Orkney with Neolithic burials from across the archipelago. We identified signals of inward migration on a scale unsuspected from the archaeological record: as elsewhere in Bronze Age Britain, much of the population displayed significant genome-wide ancestry deriving ultimately from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. However, uniquely in northern and central Europe, most of the male lineages were inherited from the local Neolithic. This suggests that some male descendants of Neolithic Orkney may have remained distinct well into the Bronze Age, although there are signs that this had dwindled by the Iron Age. Furthermore, although the majority of mtDNA lineages evidently arrived afresh with the Bronze Age, we also find the first evidence for continuity in the female line of descent from Mesolithic Britain into the Bronze Age, and even to the present day.

Absolutely fascinating and hopefully we can see these samples soon!

[ffoucart]

I am not sure about their conclusions. How can they prove continuity? Same haplogroups don’t mean continuity, so what is their methodology?

[J1 DYS388=13]

Do you have a link to the Eurogenes web page?

[nureb]

This suggests that some male descendants of Neolithic Orkney may have remained distinct well into the Bronze Age, although there are signs that this had dwindled by the Iron Age.

So, if BA whas dominated by I2a but IA displays other haplos, it could be done by simple drift, ok, but as it is about the same time that Britain suffers a population turnover related to the expansion of Celtic languages, it is more likely that such turnover reached the extreme north, easing the classification of Pictish as Celtic.

[altvred]

Are there Medieval samples as well? Because one of them, KD001, is downstream of U106. Pretty unusual for both BA and IA Britain...

Sample_name	Hg	Hg_marker	Total_reads	Valid_markers	QC-score	QC-1	QC-2	QC-3
KD001	R1b1a1b1a1a1c1a2b1	R-S25234*(xS11477)	3911947	9282	0.951	0.994	1.0	0.957

I couldn't find even a preprint associated with the ENA project.

[alan]

very interesting though taking brionzr snd iron age samples from ‘NW Orkney’ sounds hyper localised and it’s an extremely remote area (only shetland is even more remote). I knew about the lack of beaker in orkney and in general it was v marginal to the bronze age networks. Though despite that I suspect this might be a hyper local thing and other parts of Orkney may well have had more typical bronze age yDNA. I can’t conceive of a flow of beaker derived woman into orkney if it was not part of the beaker and bronze age networks or what Orkney offered in return for this flow of women.

[alan]

Seems some parts of orkney were well connected with the mainland and even the Wessex culture http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/kno...tty/index.html

[alan]

refreshing my memory on orkney archaeology, it is clear that major change did occur with the arrival of the bronze age. A move from collective megalithic burial to single or small group burials in cists under earthen barrows and a move to more dispersed round house settlement. That is in line with shifts seen across Britain. The small amount of bronze artefacts and high statue stuff do point to networks stretching to scotland. wessex and ireland too. The rarity of beakers, food vessels and urns could delete to them importing carved urns made out of the soft stone steatite which they suspect (due to lack of carving debris on orkney) were imported ready made from Shetland. So I am far from convinced that there wasn’t an influx of typical L21 bronze age people to parts of orkney who in turn might have been in a marriage network that might have included some other parts of Orkney where Neolthic yDNA survived. It might be a complex picture of both beaker derived groups and pre beaker groups surving in parallel.

[alan]

Looking at the archaeology of BA orkney, a case can be made that influence of beaker type people type ireally only commenced significantly around 2100-2000BC as the actual beaker phase passed into the post beaker early bronze age. However, I think thereafter there was a marked cultural transformation in burial, settlement etc. The lack of early bronze age burial pottery is v misleading. They simply made carved soft stone versions of early to mid bronze age food vessels and urns. Why wouldn’t you want an unbreakable stone version was if you had access to that material? However, again it is telling that there seem to be no stone versions of bell beakers. It’s all post-2100BC pottery it is modelled on. So it seems that Orkney only really connected with the post Neolithic mainland just as beaker as a culture ceased. Nevertheless the new connections were clearly established with beaker derived early bronze age cultures. Influences teaching orkney ar this time seem to have used both the Atlantic and North Sea routes. I’d be fairly sure that typical british/Irish EBA people settled orkney c . 2100BC onwards but perhaps in a remoter archipelago like this it was patchy

[J1 DYS388=13]

Are the mtDNA results in those files?