Eastern Hunter-Gatherer
In archaeogenetics, the term Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG), sometimes East European Hunter-Gatherer, or Eastern European Hunter-Gatherer is the name given to a distinct ancestral component that represents Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of Eastern Europe.[3]
The Eastern Hunter Gatherer genetic profile is mainly derived from Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) ancestry, which was introduced from Siberia,[4] with a secondary and smaller admixture of European Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG).[5][6] Still, the relationship between the ANE and EHG ancestral components is not yet well understood due to lack of samples that could bridge the spatiotemporal gap.[5]
During the Mesolithic, the EHGs inhabited an area stretching from the
During the
Research
Haak et al. (2015) identified the Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (EHG) as a distinct genetic cluster in two males only. The EHG male of
Researchers have proposed various admixture proportion models for EHGs from WHGs and ANEs.
The formation of the EHG ancestral component is estimated to have happened 13,000–15,000 years BP.
EHGs may have mixed with "an Armenian-like Near Eastern source", which formed the Yamnaya culture, as early as the
The people of the Mesolithic
The people of the
Günther et al. (2018) analyzed 13 SHGs and found all of them to be of EHG ancestry. Generally, SHGs from western and northern Scandinavia had more EHG ancestry (ca 49%) than individuals from eastern Scandinavia (ca. 38%). The authors suggested that the SHGs were a mix of WHGs who had migrated into Scandinavia from the south, and EHGs who had later migrated into Scandinavia from the northeast along the
Members of the Kunda culture and Narva culture were also found to be more closely related with WHG, while the Pit–Comb Ware culture was more closely related to EHG. Northern and eastern areas of the eastern Baltic were found to be more closely related to EHG than southern areas. The study noted that EHGs, like SHGs and Baltic hunter-gatherers, carried high frequencies of the derived
Mathieson et al. (2018) analyzed the genetics of a large number of skeletons of prehistoric Eastern Europe. Thirty-seven samples were from Mesolithic and Neolithic Ukraine (9500-6000 BC). These were classified as intermediate between EHG and SHG. The males belonged exclusively to
A large number of individuals from the
Forty individuals from three sites of the
People of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture were found to harbor about 20% hunter-gatherer ancestry, which was intermediate between EHG and WHG.[19]
Narasimshan et al. (2019) coined a new ancestral component, West Siberian Hunter-Gatherer (WSHG). WSHGs contained about 20% EHG ancestry, 73% ANE ancestry, and 6% East Asian ancestry.[25]
Possible association with Early Indo-European
The EHG have been argued by some to represent a possible source for the
Others have suggested that the Indo-European language family may have originated not in Eastern Europe, but among CHG-rich West Asian populations South of the Caucasus which later absorbed EHG-rich groups North of the Caucasus. It was noted that haplogroups may not correlate with autosomal ancestry components and historical language dispersals.[28]
Physical appearance
The EHGs are suggested to have had mostly
The rs12821256 allele of the KITLG gene that controls melanocyte development and melanin synthesis,[34] which is associated with blond hair and first found in an individual from Siberia dated to around 17,000 BP, is found in three Eastern Hunter-Gatherers from Samara, Motala and Ukraine c. 10,000 BP, suggesting that this allele originated in the Ancient North Eurasian population, before spreading to western Eurasia.[35]
Many remains of East Hunter-Gatherers dated to circa 8,100 BP (6,100 BCE) have also been excavated at Yuzhny Oleny island in Lake Onega.[36] The Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) ancestry is by far the main component of the Yuzhny Oleny group, and is among the highest within the rest of the Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (EHG).[4]
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Reconstruction of burial No. 132 of the Oleneostrovsky burial ground (Yuzhni Oleny island, Lake Onega). Exhibit of the National Museum of the Republic of Karelia.[37]
-
Artifacts and reconstruction of Eastern Hunter-Gatherers from Yuzhny Oleny island by Gerasimov.[37]
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Karelian Petroglyph depicting 5 skiers and a reindeer. These petroglyphs date to 7,000~6,000 years BP.
Material culture
As hunter-gatherers, the EHGs initially relied on stone tools and artifacts derived from ivory, horns or antlers. From circa 5,900 BC, they started to adopt pottery in the area of the northern
See also
- Dnieper-Donets culture
- Comb Ceramic culture
- Sredny Stog culture
- Deriivka
- Samara culture
- Khvalynsk culture
Notes
References
- ^ National Museum of Karelia exhibit
- ^ PMID 36859578.
- ^ Haak, Wolfgang; Lazaridis, Iosif; Patterson, Nick; Rohland, Nadin; Mallick, Swapan; Llamas, Bastien; Brandt, Guido; Nordenfelt, Susanne; Harney, Eadaoin; Stewardson, Kristin; Fu, Qiaomei (June 1, 2015). "Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe". Nature. 522 (7555): 207–211. doi:10.1038/nature14317. ISSN 1476-4687. PMC 5048219. PMID 25731166.
- ^ .
ANE makes up the principal share of the EHG (Eastern Hunter-Gatherer) autosomal component, whose content is especially high in the genomes of Mesolithic and Early Neolithic inhabitants of northeastern Europe buried at Yuzhny Oleny Ostrov, Popovo, Sidelkino, Lebyazhinka IV, etc. (Haak et al., 2015; Damgaard et al., 2018). They passed EHG on to the Yamnaya people, from whom it was inherited by several filial populations, including Afanasyevans. As early as the Mesolithic, EHG was introduced from northern Russia to Scandinavia, as evidenced by genomes of the Motala people in southern Sweden. Their ancestors had migrated there from the east along the coast of Norway, because the share of EHG in more southern populations, such as the earlier Kunda people of the eastern Baltic, is lower (Haak et al., 2015; Mittnik et al., 2018).
- ^ S2CID 237348859.
- PMID 36576953.
- ^ Anthony 2019b, p. 27.
- ^ Kashuba 2019: "Earlier aDNA studies suggest the presence of three genetic groups in early postglacial Europe: Western hunter–gatherers (WHG), Eastern hunter–gatherers (EHG), and Scandinavian hunter–gatherers (SHG)4. The SHG have been modelled as a mixture of WHG and EHG."
- ^ Anthony 2019b, p. 28.
- PMID 25731166.
- S2CID 251843620.
- ^ Lazaridis 2016.
- ^ a b Haak 2015.
- S2CID 19158377.
- PMID 25731166.
Haak et al. (2015): 38–40% ANE (MA-1), 60–62% WHG (Fig S8.6). (Alternative topologies where EHG and ANE are unadmixed sister lineages, with WHG being admixed, are not rejected)
- ^ PMID 38200295.
- PMID 36859553.
Currently, the strongest affinity to Tianyuan in Holocene European HGs was reported for Eastern European HGs (EHG). This is because the ancestry found in Mal'ta and Afontova Gora individuals (Ancient North Eurasian ancestry) received ancestry from UP East Asian/Southeast Asian populations54, who then contributed substantially to EHG55.
- S2CID 263672903.
- ^ a b c d e Mathieson et al. 2018.
- ^ Jones 2017.
- ^ Saag 2017.
- ^ a b Günther 2018.
- PMID 34707286.
- ^ Mittnik 2018.
- ^ Narasimhan 2019.
- ^ Anthony 2019a, p. 14.
- ^ Anthony 2019a, pp. 7, 14.
- PMID 36007055.
- S2CID 220335539.
- S2CID 220335539. "Interestingly, eastern and Scandinavian hunter-gatherers had light skin,[48] in contrast to Baltic hunter-gatherers who kept their dark skin only until 3800 years ago when farming was introduced in this region by the Bronze Age expansion of people of Russian steppe origin.[56, 57]"
- ^
- ^ Günther 2018, p. 4/28: From Supplementary document S8: "The Karelian individual presents high probabilities of being brown-eyed (0.99), and having a dark hair (0.96). Without speculating about the genetic architecture of skin pigmentation, we suggest an intermediate skin-pigmentation phenotype for the Karelia individual, as it carried the ancestral allele at rs16891982 and the derived allele at rs1426654 (S1 Table). The presence of the rs1426654 light-skin allele, in addition to five additional C11-associated alleles at haplotype defining SNPs (S1 Table) suggests that the Karelian individual carried the C11 light-skin haplotype."
- ^ Günther 2018, p. 4/28: From Supplementary document S8: "The Samaran individual exhibits high probabilities of being blue-eyed (0.88), light hair shade (0.99); most likely being blond (0.75)."
- S2CID 19313549.
- ^ Mathieson et al. 2018 "Supplementary Information page 52: "The derived allele of the KITLG SNP rs12821256 that is associated with – and likely causal for blond hair in Europeans is present in one hunter-gatherer from each of Samara, Motala and Ukraine (I0124, I0014 and I1763), as well as several later individuals with Steppe ancestry. Since the allele is found in populations with EHG but not WHG ancestry, it suggests that its origin is in the Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) population. Consistent with this, we observe that the earliest known individual with the derived allele (supported by two reads) is the ANE individual Afontova Gora 3, which is directly dated to 16130-15749 cal BCE (14710±60 BP, MAMS-27186: a previously unpublished date that we newly report here). We cannot determine the status of rs12821256 in Afontova Gora 2 and MA-1 due to lack of sequence coverage at this SNP."
- PMID 29382937.
- ^ .
ANE makes up the principal share of the EHG (Eastern Hunter-Gatherer) autosomal component, whose content is especially high in the genomes of Mesolithic and Early Neolithic inhabitants of northeastern Europe buried at Yuzhny Oleny Ostrov, Popovo, Sidelkino, Lebyazhinka IV, etc. (Haak et al., 2015; Damgaard et al., 2018).", "Mesolithic, northern Russian Plain, Yuzhny Oleny Ostrov (Alekseyev, Gokhman, 1984)
- PMID 36550220.
- PMID 36550220.
Although demic diffusion may have a role, on the basis of its speed we argue that pottery production was rapidly disseminated through knowledge transfer across established networks between dispersed hunter-gatherer communities
Bibliography
- Anthony, David (Spring–Summer 2019a). "Archaeology, Genetics, and Language in the Steppes: A Comment on Bomhard". Journal of Indo-European Studies. 47 (1–2). Retrieved January 9, 2020.
- ISBN 978-9004416192.
- Günther, Thorsten (January 1, 2018). "Population genomics of Mesolithic Scandinavia: Investigating early postglacial migration routes and high-latitude adaptation". PMID 29315301.
- Haak, Wolfgang (June 11, 2015). "Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe". PMID 25731166.
- Jones, Eppie R. (February 20, 2017). "The Neolithic Transition in the Baltic Was Not Driven by Admixture with Early European Farmers". PMID 28162894.
- Kashuba, Natalija (May 15, 2019). "Ancient DNA from mastics solidifies connection between material culture and genetics of mesolithic hunter–gatherers in Scandinavia". Communications Biology. 2 (105). PMID 31123709.
- Lazaridis, Iosif (July 25, 2016). "Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near East". PMID 27459054.
- Mathieson, Iain (November 23, 2015). "Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians". PMID 26595274.
- Mathieson, Iain; Alpaslan-Roodenberg, Songül; Posth, Cosimo; Szécsényi-Nagy, Anna; et al. (March 2018). "The genomic history of southeastern Europe". PMID 29466330.
- Mittnik, Alisa (January 30, 2018). "The genetic prehistory of the Baltic Sea region". PMID 29382937.
- Narasimhan, Vagheesh M. (September 6, 2019). "The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia". PMID 31488661.
- Saag, Lehti (July 24, 2017). "Extensive Farming in Estonia Started through a Sex-Biased Migration from the Steppe". PMID 28712569.
- Wang, Chuan-Chao (February 4, 2019). "Ancient human genome-wide data from a 3000-year interval in the Caucasus corresponds with eco-geographic regions Eurasia". PMID 30713341.
Further reading
- Anthony, David (Spring–Summer 2019). "Archaeology, Genetics, and Language in the Steppes: A Comment on Bomhard". Journal of Indo-European Studies. 47 (1–2). Retrieved January 9, 2020.
- ISBN 978-9004416192.
- Allentoft, Morten E.; Sikora, Martin; Sjögren, Karl-Göran; Rasmussen, Simon; Rasmussen, Morten; Stenderup, Jesper; Damgaard, Peter B.; Schroeder, Hannes; Ahlström, Torbjörn; Vinner, Lasse; Malaspinas, Anna-Sapfo (2015). "Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia". Nature. 522 (7555): 167–172. S2CID 4399103.
- Lazaridis, Iosif (December 2018). "The evolutionary history of human populations in Europe". S2CID 19158377. Retrieved July 15, 2020.