As far as the wider implications (you mentioned ANF), these revelations (e.g. the piecemeal spread of skin pigmentation genes, the surprisingly late appearance of CHG that is in modern Egypt, today) are welcome because they're the genetic correlates of the physical change we see in the Mediterranean skeletal data (Brace et al 2005), and we've not had that, so far.
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Ötzi the Iceman has been 'reincarnated' by palaeontological artists Alfons and Adrie Kennis using forensic findings as well as artistic inspiration. Credit: SOUTH TYROL MUS. OF ARCHAEOLOGY/H. ENGLE-21LUX
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As far as the wider implications (you mentioned ANF), these revelations (e.g. the piecemeal spread of skin pigmentation genes, the surprisingly late appearance of CHG that is in modern Egypt, today) are welcome because they're the genetic correlates of the physical change we see in the Mediterranean skeletal data (Brace et al 2005), and we've not had that, so far.
I'm looking at the Brace 2005 study again, and I see what you're talking about. It is interesting to me that, craniofacially speaking, his ancient Canary Island samples resemble modern Europeans more than they do Neolithic Algerians or modern Mediterranean populations (the latter including modern North African nationals) according to Fig. 4.
What kind of population migrations do you think might account for the changes that Brace observed as well as the increase in derived SLC45A2's frequency? My gut went for an increase in steppe ancestry for Europeans at least, but Yamnaya doesn't have that much derived SLC45A2 either.
quote: 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.
It is hard to say what skin tone Bronze age people had, but findings in Danish barrows show that some of them were blonde, since their hair is preserved.
I have actually seen such hair with my own eyes.
But that is somewhat OT regarding the Iceman
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As far as the wider implications (you mentioned ANF), these revelations (e.g. the piecemeal spread of skin pigmentation genes, the surprisingly late appearance of CHG that is in modern Egypt, today) are welcome because they're the genetic correlates of the physical change we see in the Mediterranean skeletal data (Brace et al 2005), and we've not had that, so far.
I'm looking at the Brace 2005 study again, and I see what you're talking about. It is interesting to me that, craniofacially speaking, his ancient Canary Island samples resemble modern Europeans more than they do Neolithic Algerians or modern Mediterranean populations (the latter including modern North African nationals) according to Fig. 4.
What kind of population migrations do you think might account for the changes that Brace observed as well as the increase in derived SLC45A2's frequency? My gut went for an increase in steppe ancestry for Europeans at least, but Yamnaya doesn't have that much derived SLC45A2 either.
Lazaridis et al 2015 talk about the homogenization of West Eurasia:
The genetically disparate groups from the pre-Neolithic era could be largely unsampled, and they could still have been around. Mathieson et al 2015's comment about a paradoxical resurgence of WHG in the Middle Neolithic shows, to me, that you could easily have other (unsampled) groups getting assimilated, as well, with groups like Iceman preserving the EEF genepool and darker skin.
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As far as the wider implications (you mentioned ANF), these revelations (e.g. the piecemeal spread of skin pigmentation genes, the surprisingly late appearance of CHG that is in modern Egypt, today) are welcome because they're the genetic correlates of the physical change we see in the Mediterranean skeletal data (Brace et al 2005), and we've not had that, so far.
Might be interesting for some that lactose intolerance is possibly another example of this for ancient Egypt, as ancient documents reveal milk was important in the AE diet, while modern Egyptians largely can't digest milk, and to the extent that they can, they're seemingly not on the African hapotypes, but possibly on non-African ones (compare the discrepancy in the frequency of known LP alleles with the frequency of digestors in five samples from modern Egypt).
Though I'm waiting for more info on African LP before I make up my mind on this, it's still curious that modern Egyptians show a dip in the frequency of this trait ( compared to nearby Afroasiatic groups, like the Beja), given the lower Nile (Egypt, Nubia)'s involvement in the spread of African-style pastoralism, which in that region involved the use of domesticates for milk more than for meat, among other African-specific uses of cattle.
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posted
About Tom Björklund. Here he has painted a rather cute picture of early Scandinavians and how some of them may have looked like. Scandinavia was populated after the ice by Western Hunter gatherers and soon after by Eastern hunter gaatherers. The WHG is considered, from their DNA to have been somewhat dark skinned, and the EHG more light skinned. The two groups gradually merged to Scandinavian hunter gatherers. Later with the advent of farming other groups would enter Scandinavia but that is another story. On Tom Björklunds picture we see children of WHG and EHG happily associate.
Somewhere there is of course also a political dimension in a picture like this. It corroborates with modern debates and modern Scandinavian discussions about immigration and integration, themes which are rather high on the agenda in several European countries.
Here is Tom Björklunds own take on the picture
quote: Mesolithic mix
When the last Ice Age ended, Fennoscandia really was a Terra nullius, an uninhabited barren landscape, empty and lifeless – except for some Norway lemmings (the only endemic vertebrates in the region) which had survived on nunataks along the Norwegian coast.
But soon, following the retreating ice, came the first humans from two directions representing populations quite distinctive from each other, the old European hunter-gatherers from the south and others from the north-east, the process resulting in a rather interesting cocktail of cultural and genetic heritage.
The illustration may be a bit exaggerated in order to emphasize the point, I don't know exactly how dark or light people were in respective groups and if there were individuals with blond hair at all at this point or if it is a post Mesolithic trait. Anyway, we don't have much left in us of those ancient ancestors, two additional waves of migrations washed away most of it.
But this was of course long time before the iceman.
The before mentioned Lola (the girl whose DNA was found in a chewing gum) seems to have belonged to a late group with WHG ancestry. In a presentation on a museum site they talk about inspite being dark skinned the WHG had a skeletal morphology typical of Europeans.
quote: Lola has only her skin colour in common with the past and present inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa. Even though archaeologists have not found any of her bones, not even her skull, many other Mesolithic skulls have been found in Denmark over the years. Physical anthropologists, scientists who study prehistoric skeletons, all agree that Mesolithic people in Denmark had European features, albeit with very robust muscular attachments and a broader jaw than we have today. So, they were very similar to us, apart from their skin pigment, hair colour and a broader jaw.
As far as the wider implications (you mentioned ANF), these revelations (e.g. the piecemeal spread of skin pigmentation genes, the surprisingly late appearance of CHG that is in modern Egypt, today) are welcome because they're the genetic correlates of the physical change we see in the Mediterranean skeletal data (Brace et al 2005), and we've not had that, so far.
Might be interesting for some that lactose intolerance is possibly another example of this for ancient Egypt, as ancient documents reveal milk was important in the AE diet, while modern Egyptians largely can't digest milk, and to the extent that they can, they're seemingly not on the African hapotypes, but possibly on non-African ones (compare the discrepancy in the frequency of known LP alleles with the frequency of digestors in five samples from modern Egypt).
Though I'm waiting for more info on African LP before I make up my mind on this, it's still curious that modern Egyptians show a dip in the frequency of this trait ( compared to nearby Afroasiatic groups, like the Beja), given the lower Nile (Egypt, Nubia)'s involvement in the spread of African-style pastoralism, which in that region involved the use of domesticates for milk more than for meat, among other African-specific uses of cattle.
As stated above, a special category of genetic evidence is now emerging slowly, that is unique in that it quantifies much more precisely the change that happened in Egypt. The usual genetic stuff, like the default generic ancestry components (e.g. "West African", "European", "Middle Eastern") and genetic distance ("x population is closer to Y"), have a number of weaknesses.
They are abstract outputs by machines that differ depending on the study,
They can be manipulated by naming and by the blogger withholding or not pursuing clues about their affinities ("we couldn't test for African ancestry in Natufians" ), and
They are prone to giving underestimations about the change that happened (homogenization of Eurasia caused Bronze Age backmigrants to repeatedly bring back ancestry that was already in dynastic Egypt, which, since the ancestry was already present, such repeated migrations will be more likely to go unnoticed until researchers pursue followup analyses, which as I've just stated, is sometimes delayed by what seems like deliberate neglect).
In contrast, the data I'm thinking of:
is either dated, or there is some degree of certainty that a genetic trait was present or absent (e.g. ancient Egyptian texts that indicate milk was a part of their diet, would qualify as it establishes with some degree of confidence that ancient Egyptians had LP on par with some nearby groups with similar genetics, like the Beja).
includes specific polymorphisms in diverse subsystems of genetics (e.g. HLA genes, LP genes, HbS genes, pigmentation genes) rather than over relying on abstract and to some extent nebulous bulk ancestry component like "West African" or "European", that are still "under construction" or "work in progress" in the sense that they are undergoing further refinement and quantification regarding their boundaries and subcomponents.
Lastly, the data has a before and after aspect. So under these rules the Natufian component, though somewhat refined and quantified, is too old to show a before and after for North Africa as we don't have samples at the same site at different time depths. Although for Egypt specifically, we do get some of this, as the upcoming papers speak of an increase of CHG and farmer, at the expense of Natufian-like.
With that explained, let's sum up what we had so far.
*CHG *LP alleles *skin pigmentation genes
If it's really true that dynastic Egyptians are a better match with northern Haratin, than with modern Egyptians, as Osirion claims, we can add the data below to the list. Not to say that Egyptians were closer to Haratin, but to have another biological system to quantify change in between ancient and modern Egyptians.
quote:Originally posted by osirion: Can anyone eXplain why the Haratins would have the closest blood type to the royal Dynastic Egyptians? I realiZe blood typing isn't always accurate but these are people of the same general region. Shouldn't modern day Egyptians have the closest blood type? Logically modern day Egyptians should be the closest in blood type to the ancients so why would indigenous Black Africans be closer? The best eXplaination that is simplest to understand is that the Haratins resemble the Ancient Egyptians better than the modern because they are not as miXed with non-African influence as much.
===============================================
G. Paoli, in "ABO Typing of Ancient Egyptians" IN _Population biology of ancient Egyptians_, edited by D.R. Brothwell and B.A. Chiarelli, London, New York, 1973, showed that the Dynastic Egyptians were most closely matched with the Haratin of the northern Sahara. Paoli mentions the theory of Cabot-Briggs (Cabot-Briggs, L. (1958), _The Living Races of the Sahara Desert, Massachussets) that this resemblance might indicate the origin of the Haratin. Here are the figures given for the two groups from Paoli (p. 464):
Modern Northern Haratin and Dynastic Egyptian ------------------------------------------------------------------------ No. O A B AB p q r ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Egyptians 160 34 64 34 28 34.35 21.45 44.20 (Paoli) Haratin 202 40 80 57 25 30.99 23.14 48.87 (Mourant) -------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Haratin are considered a mixture of the "aboriginal black population" of North Africa and freed slaves mostly from the South. Of particular interest in the chart above is the very high frequency of the q gene. In most European population, the gene frequency is below 10% (See Montagu, A. _Introduction to Physical Anthropology_ 1960, p. 334). [/QB]
BTW, wiki denies that the northern Haratin are closest to the Egyptian sample. It claims that modern Egyptians are closer. So this latest entry will have to be confirmed before it can be added in the way that Osirion presented it. But even if modern Egyptians samples are closer, it will still be usable to document the degree of change (which is what this list is really about, not to argue dynastic Egyptians were Haratin).
Blood typing on ancient Egyptian mummies is scant. A study published in 1982 found that blood typing of dynastic mummies found ABO frequencies to be most similar to primarily modern Egyptians, and some also to Northern Haratin populations.[119] ABO blood group distribution shows that the Egyptians form a sister group to North African populations including Berbers, Nubians and Canary Islanders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_EgyptPosts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: In contrast, the data I'm thinking of:
is either dated, or there is some degree of certainty that a genetic trait was present or absent (e.g. ancient Egyptian texts that indicate milk was a part of their diet, would qualify as it establishes with some degree of confidence that ancient Egyptians had LP on par with some nearby groups with similar genetics, like the Beja).
includes specific polymorphisms in diverse subsystems of genetics (e.g. HLA genes, LP genes, HbS genes, pigmentation genes) rather than over relying on abstract and to some extent nebulous bulk ancestry component like "West African" or "European", that are still "under construction" or "work in progress" in the sense that they are undergoing further refinement and quantification regarding their boundaries and subcomponents.
Lastly, the data has a before and after aspect. So under these rules the Natufian component, though somewhat refined and quantified, is too old to show a before and after for North Africa as we don't have samples at the same site at different time depths. Although for Egypt specifically, we do get some of this, as the upcoming papers speak of an increase of CHG and farmer, at the expense of Natufian-like.
With that explained, let's sum up what we had so far.
*CHG *LP alleles *skin pigmentation genes
Had this in paper in my palaeolithic research folder for a while. It's not genetic so I hesitated to post it as part of what I listed here. But I guess it fits the 3 principles I'm looking for, pretty neatly.
Certain it is that, all too commonly, what are regarded as " negro " skulls are, as often as not, the skulls of Bantu, masked by an infusion of Bushman blood. In what relation the Bushman stands to the negro is a matter calling for investigation, but it would seem that they should be regarded as divergent branches of a common stem, a relationship expressed in the accompanying " Phylogenetic Tree" (Fig. 12). If this surmise be correct, the suggested " negroid " characters are sufficiently explained. The importance of the part the Bushman has played as a modifying factor in the physical features of the various races of Africa, living and extinct, is by no means generally realized. That in remote times he ranged as far north as Egypt there is scarcely room for doubt. Any large series of skulls of ancient Egyptians will contain a number which bear indubitable evidence of an infusion of Bushman blood. In the Anthropological collection of the British Museum of Natural History is a mandible, embedded in tufa, taken from " the tomb of Cleopatra," which is an undoubted Bushman jaw. And quite recently a cave containing characteristic Bushman paintings was discovered by Mr. F. J. Bagshawe at Kisana, Tanganyika Territory, the work of the Kangeju Bushmen. The evidence of this Bushman element, in skulls of Ancient Egyptians-but not apparently present in Predynastic skulls-is foumd in the conspicuous parietal " bosses," the well-marked median furrow in the parietal above the lambda, and often in the face-features which are to be seen also in the Guanches. On the Calvaria Found at Boskop, Transvaal, in 1913, and Its Relationship to Cromagnard and Negroid Skulls https://ia600704.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/24/items/wikipedia-scholarly-sources-corpus/10.2307%252F280635.zip&file=10.2307%252F2843700.pdfPosts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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A jaw with Bushman-like morphology being excavated from the "tomb of Cleopatra"? I don't think her tomb has been discovered yet, but considering all the brouhaha over the Netflix documentary earlier this year, it would be humorously ironic if it was really her jaw.
posted
I thought the same, but I didn't pursue it because he already has 'tomb of Cleopatra' in quotes. (Could be he knew the designation was just some more Egyptomania, like the hype surrounding Tut's tomb in the 20th century). Could still be worthwhile to look into more modern research on the actual owner of that tomb, one day.
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Baalberith
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: I thought the same, but I didn't pursue it because he already has 'tomb of Cleopatra' in quotes. (Could be he knew the designation was just some more Egyptomania, like the hype surrounding Tut's tomb in the 20th century). Could still be worthwhile to look into more modern research on the actual owner of that tomb, one day.
What is your explanation for this morphological trend?
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