Monday, November 4, 2024

I2a2b-Y16419 a possible Ukraine hunter gatherer lineage in Yamnaya/Catacomb?

Lazaridis et al. 2024 had discovered that Yamnaya has some Ukraine Neolithic hunter gatherer ancestry. UNHG. This term can be confusing but it's a result of different naming convention in ex-Sovietic countries, when a hunter-gatherer community gets the Neolithic label if they had a pottery.

Ghalichi et al. 2024 confirmed the presence of some 15% of UNHG in Yamnaya. The I2-L699 regularly found in steppe was derived from UNHG for example.
The presence of I2 in Yamnaya related cultures is an important subject for the Armenian ethnogenesis given the presence of I2a2b in Trialeti-Vanadzor culture.
Till now we didn't have any extra information about this haplotype. The closest European sample to it was found in Eneolithic Croatia with a common ancestor reported to live at 8200BC by the FTDNA. This age is amply sufficient for this lineage to be present both in European farmers and in UNHG.
Ghalichi et al. 2024 had a new sample which probably can help to understand how I2a2b could end up in early Yamnaya communities as a rare lineage. The paper reported a single female sample from near Azov and Black Sea joining region labeled as "Steppe Eneolithic outlier west". KHB dated at 4000BC near Taman peninsula. This sample has large amount of UNHG ancestry (43%). In most likelihood it infiltrated there from Ukraine.
If this outlier represents a regular population living in that region, then this raises the possibility that the I2a2b-Y16419 was also living, there since the Eneolithic and with the formation of Yamnaya/Catacomb became part of those cultures as a rare lineage. Later it moved to south and had a great luck to expand with Trialeti-Vanadzor culture.
For verifying this theory more ancient DNA is needed from the aforementioned region in particular and from south Ukraine in general.



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