Above image by Emmanuel Benner the Younger [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
The new K11 Ancients Common and Rarer Alleles tests are being run by Dilawer Khan, creator of the Gedrosia stable of admixture calculators available on GEDMatch.com, and of the EurasianDNA.com website. This new test uses a new set of principles, based on using ADMIXTURE to produce more reliable ancient results. I commissioned him to run my own 23andMe file through the tests, to produce the following results and PCA's/
PCA for Common Alleles (my position "Norfolk"):
PCA for Rarer Alleles (my position "Norfolk"):
The K11 Ancients common Alleles results should reflect the older ancestry most accurately. In summary, that gave me:
- 48.6% Neolithic Farmer
- 26.5% Copper Age Steppe Pastoralist
- 24.9% Western Hunter-Gatherer
Thank you Dilawer.
How have other tests seen similar admixture?
I previously commissioned David Wesolowski (Eurogenes stable on GEDMatch and of Eurogenes Blog) to run my raw file through his K7 Basal-rich test. He produced the following results:
- 57.1% Villabruna-related
- 28.8% Basal-rich
- 14% Ancient North Eurasian.
These are two very different tests, of admixture between different sets of population, of different time periods. What I do find interesting is the 14% percentage of ANE (Ancient north Eurasian) relates quite favourably to what I understand it's admixture percentage is to Yamna or Steppe pastoralist. Dilawer gives me 26.5% Steppe. I have previously heard that the Yamna were circa 50% ANE, and the remainder of mixture of other Western Eurasian Hunter-Gatherer groups, including Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers.
The K11 Ancients test does suggest that I have a surprisingly high amount of ancestry from the Neolithic Farmers, that were in Europe previous to the arrival of the Steppe migrants around 4,900 years ago. This is actually consistent with my other Ancient admixture test results. The K7 Basal-rich test for example, had given me 28.8% Basal. The Basal Eurasians are a hypo-theoretical "ghost" population that was among the founding admixture of the Neolithic Farmers, in a similar way that the ANE were among the founding admixture of the Steppe Pastoralists. Again then, the two tests do tally reasonably well in determining where my personal percentages of ancient DNA originate.
Why do I have so high percentages of Neolithic Farmer and Basal Eurasian I do not know. My DNA flavour is a slight extreme, and atypical even for an English person, and more so for a Briton. My recorded genealogy is all SE English, mainly East Anglian. I would love to see the results of other East Anglians, as I suspect to them, that I am not such an extreme. However, even if this was the case, it doesn't explain why modern East Anglians would have lower Steppe, and more Neolithic than either West British, Scandinavians, or even ancient DNA from Anglo-Saxons. Higher percentages of Neolithic ancestry today are usually found to the South, peaking in Sardinia, then Iberia. A favoured explanation is that the SE English could have had a lot of input from the South, via the French during Norman and Medieval periods. I'm not totally convinced - yet.
A third new ancient admixture test that I might use here in the MDLP Project Modern K11. On GEDMatch Oracle, it proposes a number of genetic distances to ancient DNA samples:
1 British_Celtic @ 6.9484322 Bell_Beaker_Germany @ 8.143357
3 Alberstedt_LN @ 8.426399
4 British_IronAge @ 9.027687
5 Halberstadt_LBA @ 10.273615
6 Bell_Beaker_Czech @ 12.190828
7 Hungary_BA @ 12.297826
8 Nordic_MN_B @ 12.959966
9 British_AngloSaxon @ 12.993559
1 Bell_Beaker_Germany + Bell_Beaker_Germany + Corded_Ware_Germany + Hungary_CA @ 1.085814
2 BenzigerodeHeimburg_LN + BenzigerodeHeimburg_LN + Corded_Ware_Estonia + Hungary_CA @ 1.089547
3 Alberstedt_LN + Bell_Beaker_Germany + Corded_Ware_Germany + Hungary_CA @ 1.117882
4 Bell_Beaker_Germany + BenzigerodeHeimburg_LN + Hungary_CA + Srubnaya_LBA @ 1.149613
5 Bell_Beaker_Germany + British_IronAge + Hungary_CA + Karsdorf_LN @ 1.185312
6 Alberstedt_LN + BenzigerodeHeimburg_LN + Hungary_CA + Sintashta_MBA @ 1.226794
7 Nordic_BattleAxe + Hungary_BA + Hungary_CA + Karsdorf_LN @ 1.234930
8 Nordic_BattleAxe + BenzigerodeHeimburg_LN + Hungary_CA + Unetice_EBA @ 1.238376
9 Alberstedt_LN + Hungary_BA + Hungary_CA + Yamnaya_Samara_EBA @ 1.247371