DNA Analysis Just Made The Eerie Mystery of Himalayan 'Skeleton Lake' Even Stranger

[RevolverRob]

I am curious which Greeks those were.

It seems to be around the time of the height of the Minoan Civilization, wouldn't it? The first major Greek tribes (Ionians, Aeolians and Achaeans) hadn't really formed their own civilizations yet, I think (I'm going from memory here).

It would make sense that Greeks that in some manner were part of the Minoan civilization would follow the trade routes but it may not be. Is there a way to find out?

Minoan society would have been around then. But calling the individuals bearing these alleles “Greek” is premature. The data merely suggest that alleles found at Skeleton Lake are more closely aligned with those known from ancient and modern Greek peoples. Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) can reveal fine scale patterns, but short of a distinct signal being known from each tribe, it would be impossible to determine if any of them are more closely related to the Skeleton Lake people.

Besides, the way war and history played out in that region, it only takes a few external males to mess up a signal. It’s possible, that the reason the Skeletal Lake individuals have “Greek” genotypes is because their group brought them to Greece as opposed to the Greeks bringing them to the Himalayas. Migration works both ways.

Short answer, the best evidence to determine which, if any, known tribes these individuals derived from would be material evidence. Coins, weapons, artifacts that more or less scream, “We were Minoan!”

Also bear in mind those “Greek” alleles are spread all over the eastern Med. Could have been people from Crete, Troy, Turkey, etc. The common genotypes in those areas today are due to the influx and spread of Islam. More recent signal will always swamp older signal. Given enough generations (not that many, actually) old signal will disappear.

ETA: after some more thought. I suppose you could get at this with ancient DNA. But what you would need is a more or less continuous geographic distribution that had time-scale resolution of say a few hundred years. With those data you could look to see if any geographic pattern is revealed. You may discover Greek alleles were spread far and wide until the emergence of the Persian Empire or you may not.

To be sure what is interesting about Skeleton Lake is the expectation was the individuals were all closely related (not true, in fact no siblings, offspring, or even 1st or 2nd cousins were found), that they were likely related to the native people’s of the region (looking increasingly unlikely), and that they were put in the lake in a short period of time (not true based on carbon dating). That’s pretty awesome that something that was once considered a “odd cultural phenomena” now requires substantially more effort to contextualize and study. I love when “simple” things turn out complex.

[RevolverRob]

Not weak. Just not a slam dunk. The bulk of the genotypes for the earlier arriving group are Greek-origin, but they also contain a substantial amount of non-Greek alleles.

I miswrote this earlier.

It should have said, "The bulk of the genotypes for the earlier arriving group appear to be of Greek-origin, but they also contain a substantial amount of non-Greek alleles.

As I noted in my follow up post (above), it is possible these alleles aren't of Greek "origin". What is clear is today the alleles found in ancient populations occur most commonly in people classified as "Greek-type". I.e., those alleles are most frequently found in people who have substantial Greek/Cretian/Eastern Med. ancestry.

[EMC]

I miswrote this earlier.

It should have said, "The bulk of the genotypes for the earlier arriving group appear to be of Greek-origin, but they also contain a substantial amount of non-Greek alleles.

As I noted in my follow up post (above), it is possible these alleles aren't of Greek "origin". What is clear is today the alleles found in ancient populations occur most commonly in people classified as "Greek-type". I.e., those alleles are most frequently found in people who have substantial Greek/Cretian/Eastern Med. ancestry.

Rob what is your familiarity with using SNP markers on Y-dna to group people to ancient surname clans? My understanding is that SNPs are more reliable than STRs since they are a mutation that occurs once in time and remain, whereas STR markers can flip back and forth over generations. Happy take this conversation to PM and add more context.

[RevolverRob]

Rob what is your familiarity with using SNP markers on Y-dna to group people to ancient surname clans? My understanding is that SNPs are more reliable than STRs since they are a mutation that occurs once in time and remain, whereas STR markers can flip back and forth over generations. Happy take this conversation to PM and add more context.

Just the basics of SNP analysis.

Y chromosomes pass from father to son without recombination. So any specific SNPs that haven't mutated and/or are fixed should recover deep history.

It is possible for a SNP to reverse and for that reversal to be passed on, the last part of SNP is "polymorphism" which dictates that multiple states can occur, the single nucleotide part indicates it's a base-pair mutation. While it's possible for a single SNP to change or even a few - the general idea behind using SNP analysis is that you generate A LOT of SNPs and analyze those. Bearing in mind the average human has some 19-20,000 coding genes and ~3 BILLION base pairs. A SNP is a single base pair, so there are 3 billion to draw from, the average SNP analysis uses ~13-20k SNPs, longer ones may use a couple of hundred thousand SNPs.

That's a lot of data and it's unlikely that recent splits like surname clans would be erased across 13,000 base pairs in the short times we're discussing. A few million years? Maybe. But a few hundred or even couple of thousand? Unlikely.

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BY THE WAY it appears I got it wrong earlier and mixed up CE and BCE AND flipped the populations. Which completely flips the interpretations of what was going on. I also managed to flip who showed up first. The Indian-derived group was first, the Greeks later. The later Greeks are definitely Greek/Eastern Med. Dating to about the 19th or 20th century .

I dunno how the fuck that happened, but I just stared at the figures again and it's plain as day that what I initially interpreted was absolutely backwards. I could blame stress, lack of caffeine, undiagnosed dyslexia, and finally a lack of sleep, but regardless that was way way wrong. So just label this as "Rob is an idiot." and accept my apologies.