Ice Age Genealogy

The MDLP K11 Modern and K13 Modern calculators were released on Gedmatch.com today.  I thought that I'd celebrate by taking the opportunity to post more on ancient origins, as suggested by personal DNA calculators.

The below calculators do sometimes conflict.  Perhaps they are a long, long way from perfect.  However, one issue is that they tend to be built to look at different populations, and a different times.  Nonetheless, I feel that they are starting to tell us something.

A major revelation to myself, is that go back, say towards the end of the last Ice Age, 13,000 years ago, and the ancestors of this present day Englishman were scattered in the most unexpected places, over a wide area.

My Y ancestor at the time was most likely an ibex hunter in the area of Iran and Iraq, possibly in the Zagros mountains.  My mitochondrial ancestor, was most likely a woman in a band of hunter-gatherers in Central or Western Asia.

I most likely at that time, had mammoth hunting ancestors in Siberia (Ancient North Eurasian).  I had hunter-forager ancestors in the Middle East or Arabia (Basal Eurasian).  I may have had ancestors in the Caucasus themselves.  I may have even had some hunter-gatherer ancestors in Southern Europe.

My Ancient Ancestors 13,000 years ago, were most likely, scattered in small hunter-gatherer bands, from Southern Europe, across to Central Asia, and from Siberia, down to Arabia.  That's the Late Ice Age ancestry of this Englishman.  I'm a Eurasian.  The idea that my Upper Palaeolithic ancestors were cave men in the British Isles, or even in North-West Europe, is an illusion.

The other factor is that, perhaps in slightly different percentages - all Western Eurasians today share the very same Ice Age ancestors - English, Iranian, French, German, Pakistani, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, or Norwegian.  We are all pretty closely related cousins in one post Ice Age family, that has literally exploded with agriculture, then industrialisation.

Neanderthal Ancestry

23andMe V4 chip

Neanderthal ancestry 2.9% DNA (82nd percentile)  23andMe average European tester is 2.7%

WeGene analysis of above 23andMe raw data

3.325% Neanderthal proportion of more than 81.94% of the users WeGene (Chinese based DNA service).

Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherer ancestry

My Y line as we have seen, was most likely in the area of modern day Iran or Iraq, perhaps in the Euphrates and Tigris valleys, or perhaps in the Zagros Mountains, hunting animals such as the Ibex.  My mt-DNA line was most likely in a hunter-gatherer band somewhere in Asia.  Perhaps Central Asia.  What about my other Ice Age ancestors?

David Wesolowski's K7 Basal-rich test

Villabruna-related

The Villabruna cluster represents the DNA found in 13 individuals in Europe from after 14,000 years ago.  They were Late Ice Age hunter-gatherers.  They appear to have links with the Near East.  The current thought is that they replaced earlier groups of hunter-gatherers in Europe.  The DNA of people in the Middle East and Europe pulled together at this time, and they may represent an expansion from the South-East.  Much of the Aegean Sea would have been dry, with low sea levels (glaciation), so the migration may have been easy.  It is believed that they had dark skin, and blue eyes.  They were possibly, the last hunter-gatherers of Europe and the Middle East.  They may have contributed to our DNA both through or either, later Asian or European admixtures.

David gives the English average as 56.7%.  My result is 57.1%

Basal-rich

The Basal Eurasians are a hypothetical "ghost" population derived from DNA studies.  It is suggested that they splintered from other modern humans 45,000 years ago, presumably outside of Africa, somewhere around the Middle East.  They significantly contributed DNA to the Early Neolithic Farmers of the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia, and consequently, on to all of us modern West Eurasians.  

 David gives the English average as 26.5%.  My result is 28.8%

Ancient North Eurasian

Another Ice Age hunter-gatherer "Ghost" population, but this one has been associated with human remains and an Upper Palaeolithic culture (Mal'ta-Buret') at Lake Baikal, Siberia.  We know that it significantly contributes to modern West Eurasians, through earlier admixture on the Eurasian Steppes.  Copper Age pastoralists then carried it westwards into Europe with their later expansion.

David gives the English average as 16.6%.  My result is 14.0%

Neolithic and Bronze Age mix ancestry

My Y line at this time as we have seen, may well been Early Neolithic Farmers in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia.  My mtDNA line would have most likely have been women of the Yamnaya culture on the Eurasian Steppes, in Copper Age pastoralist tribes.

Global 10 Test

The recent Global 10 test, run by my friend Helgenes50 of the Anthrogenica board, resulted in:

• 55% Baalberge_MN (European Middle Neolithic)
• 38% Yamna_Samara (Eurasian Steppe Pastoralist)
• 7% Loschbour:Loschbour (Late Eurasian hunter-gatherer)

That is 55% European Neolithic Farmer, 38% Yamnaya Steppe Pastoralist, and 7% European hunter-gatherer.

Alternatively, the FT-DNA test, although many in the population genetics community feel that it is unreliable:

FT-DNA My Ancient Origins

• 9% Metal Age Invader
• 47% Farmer
• 44% Hunter-Gatherer
• 0% Non European

GEDMatch Ancient Calculators

• 31% Neolithic (modeled on genomes of first neolithic farmers of Anatolia)
• 25% Northeast European (ancestry in North-Eastern Europe based on older type of ancestry (WHG, west European Hunter-Gatherer)
• 22% Steppe (sourced from ancient genome of European Bronze Age pastoralists)
• 22% Caucasian (derived from genomes of mesolithic Caucasian Hunter-gatherers)

My Eurasia K9 ASI Oracle:

• 39% Western Hunter-Gatherer
• 27% Early Neolithic Farmer
• 15% Eastern Hunter-Gatherer
• 12% Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer
• 7% SW Asian
• 1% Siberian East Asian

My MDLP Modern K11 Oracle:

Admix Results (sorted):