The West_Asian component has a pan-European distribution: it must have been involved in a pan-European process rather than a more localized historical phenomenon.

distribution: it must have been involved in a pan-European process rather than a more localized historical phenomenon. Its absence from prehistoric individuals down to ~5ky ago suggests that it may have been added to the European population at a later date, although it may already have been present in currently unsampled areas (e.g., the Balkans) prior to 5kya.

suggests that it may have been added to the European population at a later date, although it may already have been present in currently unsampled areas (e.g., the Balkans) prior to 5kya. It reaches its lowest occurrence in areas where non-Indo-European languages have been spoken (Basques and Iberia in general, Sardinia, and Finland)





Perhaps, through a combination of better technology and social organization, the Indo-European speaking nucleus,

were able to transmit their language, culture, and ideology to much larger populations, by alternatively subjugating or incorporating them. We can thus view the Indo-European bearers as "creative destructors", upsetting the balance of established societies and re-creating them in their own image.

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the position of La Braña individuals in the 1000 Genomes Project data and the 1KGPomnichip PCAs suggests that the uniform Mesolithic substrate could be related to modern Northern European populations but may represent a gene pool that is no longer present in contemporary Southern European populations.

I will simply say that the recent results of Bramanti et al. for a U-dominated older mtDNA stratum in Central/North-eastern Europe can be reasonably extended to cover both North-western Europe and northern Eurasia up to Lake Baikal, the prehistoric limit between Caucasoids and Mongoloids.

Last summer, I was eagerly awaiting the publication of the genome of the Tyrolean Iceman. It is quite remarkable that only a year later, there is now autosomal DNA from half a dozen prehistoric Europeans. By comparing their DNA to that of modern populations, we are beginning to understand how the current mosaic of European peoples was formed.The ancient samples vary greatly in the number of SNPs tested, and we cannot be sure how well they map to the restricted range of modern populations. Nonetheless, a crystal clear general pattern seems to emerge, at least in its broadest outlines (Sources: Oetzi the Iceman Mesolithic Iberians ):We can plainly see that Europeanbest map to the modernpopulation component. This is well represented in the remotest areas of Europe, the ones most distant from the Near Eastern womb of nations . It can be reasonably supposed that the modern Atlantic_Baltic component partially captures alleles present in the ancient European hunter-gatherers, the mtDNA haplogroup U population that seems to stretch from Iberia to Siberia . (However, note, that this does not mean that the Atlantic_Baltic component represents hunter-gatherer ancestryConversely, ancient Europeanalso possess a large chunk of thecomponent which is absent in the hunter-gatherers. This occurs at high frequencies today around the Mediterranean and reaches its maximum in the Near East. It is clear that there is direct evidence that, just as archaeology and physical anthropology had always indicated -- until the rather modern distaste for migration set in.But there is another component present in modern Europe, thewhich is conspicuous in its absence in all the ancient samples so far. This component reaches its highest occurrence, from Anatolia and the Caucasus all the way to the Indian subcontinent. It is well represented in modern Europeans, reaching its minima in the Iberian peninsula, Sardinia, and Finland. A sampling of populations, including those closest geographically to the ancient samples:There are several observations we can make:Theis also conventionally accepted by linguists forIn that respect, it is important to note the correspondence between the West_Asian autosomal component and the k5 component of Metspalu et al. (2011): the latter is the major West Eurasian element in the Indian subcontinent. If a, and keeping in mind uncertainties about dating, it may very well be that this corresponds, at least in part, to the eastern manifestation of the same phenomenon.The Bronze Age is an important transitional phase in European archaeology: distinctive archaeological cultures with distinctive physical types make their appearance across the continent. There appears to be substantial innovation in metallurgy, weapons and transportation, increase in raiding, abandonment of settlements, and formation of broad-range confederacies with distinctive archaeological markers.I propose that aoccurred during this period. Remarkably, after ~4,000YBP , there are no longer farmers and hunter-gatherers as distinct cultures anywhere in Europe, and their mtDNA gene pools begin to expand in synch with each other. It may very well be that climatic upheavals framing this period may have triggered population movements, both Indo-European and Semitic Both theamong present-day Indo-European speakers, and theirtestify to the fact that the original IE nucleus did not maintain itself apart --at least not for long!-- from the populations they encountered; in this they appear different from the earlier farmers who apparently kept their Mediterranean affinity even in the northernmost edge of their expansion, thousands of years after their entry into Europe.Nonetheless, someof the legacy of the earliest Indo-European speakersappear to persist down to the present day in the genomes of their linguistic descendants, andOn the right are the K12b results for the ancient individuals, which further suggest that the Mesolithic Europeans possessed a Northern European affinity that is lacking in the farmer individuals. Conversely, farmer individuals have an excess of the Atlantic_Med component, and also a presence of the Southwest_Asian one.These results are compatible with the above discussion, as well as the observation by Sánchez-Quinto et al. (2012) that:I wrote a small survey a couple years ago, in which I argued that:The extension of U dominance to Iberia, as well as the detection of the North European autosomal signal in both Iberia as well as, presumably , Siberia, seems to make the case for the existence of this postulated zone pretty clear.One could very well call this boreal population(ANWEA) and parallelize it with the(ASI). These Paleolithic substrata frame the Eurasian landmass on opposite latitudinal ends, and were the receptacles of the great chain of migrations which began in the Neolithic womb of nations . One of the final episodes of this process was the dispersal of the Indo-European languages during the Copper and Bronze Ages.