Ötzi the G2a4 Iceman

[rms2]

By now, most of us realize Ötzi, the Italian "Iceman", belonged to y-haplogroup G2a4. Recently, information on his entire genome was released:

Ötzi's Genome

More on Ötzi's Genome

According to Dienekes, in terms of autosomal dna, Ötzi clusters most closely with modern Sardinians.

[Maliclavelli]

The matter has been discussed on many forums and this I wrote on 23andMe:

“Dienekes writes: “I see no particular reason to assign the entirety of the Atlantic_Med component to the Mesolithic substratum. Its divergence with the Caucasus component has been estimated by me as 9.9ky
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/02/timeline-of-human-prehistory.html
So, I consider it as a Neolithic component mixed with a Palaeolithic substratum, in an unknown proportion, depending on how divergent the Palaeolithic substratum was originally; if we are to go by Fst estimates of early Neolithic LBK vs. Mesolithic Europeans, pre-Neolithic Europeans were quite divergence from incoming Neolithic peoples, hence, the 9.9ky divergence estimate corresponds to a mainly Neolithic population that has absorbed a minority  of Palaeolithic Europeans. Thursday, March 08, 2012 11:43:00 PM

My response:
10,000YBP? Not so far from my theory of the Italian Refugium during the Younger Dryas. Anyway no recent incoming from East, and that G2a4 (G2a2a) is in Italy from that time, given its presence in peripheral zones of Italy (Corsica and Sardinia) and pretty nowhere, is out of any doubt.
Re: lactose intolerance, Italy gets it at 80%: me, my son, my relatives are all R1b1a2-something and all “lactose intolerant”.
Mar 8, 2012 (2 days ago)


And this is the answer of a compatriot of mine who is living in the USA:

@all
Dienekes has been on record for a long time for the proposition that most of the modern populations anywhere in the world are genetically "Neolithic" in origin, with only a minority remnant Paleolithic substratum.
From his perspective, that would be as true for the "North Euro" component, no matter where you locate the coalescence zone or the expansion zone, as it is for Otzi. I'm not sure about that. I think we need a lot more data, but I would tend to agree that it would be a mistake to assign a big chunk of the Atlantic/Mediterranean to the Mesolithic people.
What does seem clear though is that as far as Italy is concerned, and Iberia, and maybe by implication the LBK areas of central Europe, and the Balkans, the "indigenous" populations of those areas around 3300 B.C. were a lot like Otzi.
I also think it's time to lay to rest the idea that the majority of the West Asian and the South West Asian, or even the Northwest African, and in the case of the south, the East African, is the product of Greek colonization, or of all those supposed slaves from the south east in Roman era Italy, or all the Muslims of the early Middle Ages, or even the Jews.(Thanks, Tanaquill)
Those components were already there in 3300 B.C. The north's percentages of West Asian, South West Asian, and North West African, are virtually unchanged from 5,000 years ago.
There has been some increase in southern Italians in some of these figures. For example, Otzi's Caucasus number is 22.8, while the SouthItalian/Sicilians have 32.8. Otzi's South West Asian was 7.6, and the SouthItalian/Sicilian number is 13. Obviously, some additional input arrived from the south and east in southern Italy, but the changes are not huge. At the same time, they gained 11 percentage points of North Euro, and their Northwest African went down by 3 percentage points. So, it's much more complicated than the scenarios that used to be proposed.
The ties between the Balkans and Italy seem to me to be in large measure prior to Otzi, although the gene flow back and forth never really stopped. The effects of the Slavic invasions on their genome are obvious.
Oh, and the Tuscans. I don't see any evidence in these admixture results for a huge increase in the "Middle Eastern" or "Anatolian" component in the Tuscans post Otzi. Their "Caucasus" component is 26.7, compared to Otzi's 22.3, and their South West Asian component is 8.9, compared to Otzi's 7.6. The big changes are in the North Euro (18.4 versus 0), and in the Gedrosian (8.1 versus 0). And, of course, the resulting change in the figures for Atlantic Med.
Now, if we're wrong, and the Gedrosian element came to Europe separate from the "North Euro" one, an argument might be made that the "Etruscans" originally came from somewhere near the Caucasus and made an impact on the gene pool. Otherwise, the most that I can see is maybe some minor influence from an elite group.

@Tanaquill,
The whole Indo-European language families thing, and particularly the arguments about the origin and expansion points, gives me a major headache. LOL I think Renfrew's arguments make sense too, but a big majority of the hobbyists seem to back the Anthony, horsemen of the steppe, scenario. I really don't know.
What I can say though, is that some of the major proponents of that idea have said that the language had to come along with a major population movement, if not a population replacement, if it took place in a time before people were literate. Well, so far, that whole "Kurgan" thing seems to peter out around Hungary. Good luck trying to get a lot of horse herds through the miles and miles of Virgin forest covering a lot of Europe at that time.
Also, if the dates and direction of spread for Indo European are as these people propose, then it would be too young for the Otzi era. That means they would have come with the "North Euro's"? That component is about 22% of the northern Italian genome today, after successive waves from the north. Even if you add the Gedrosian, it's 28%, less than a third, and the number would have been perhaps substantially smaller in the Bronze Age. So, it looks like elite dominance, or adoption of a trade language to me, not population replacement.
Mar 9, 2012 (1 day ago)

[rms2]

Gioiello -

No offense, and with all due respect, but your post reflects what I regard as your usual arguments for the Italian Refugium, which seem to be mostly anecdotal. You cite yourself and a few of your relatives, who are R1b1a2 and lactose intolerant, apparently as evidence that R1b1a2 is mostly lactose intolerant and therefore was somehow living in Italy during the Younger Dryas. Does that make sense, when populations in which R1b1a2 is much more frequent than it is in Italy have a very high rate of lactase persistence? These are stats that come from actual population studies rather than isolated anecdotes about individuals.

You have used similar arguments in other posts, citing individuals, by name, who are R-L23* or R-L150* or what-have-you as evidence that Italy has the oldest R1b1a2 anywhere. Those are anecdotes, Gioiello, not population studies. We know, for example, that Italy's R1b1a2 haplotype variance is not among the oldest in the world. The occasional presence of an interesting, out of the ordinary (ordinary, for Italy, would be R-U152 of some kind) R1b specimen in Italy probably reflects Italy's ancient history as the cosmopolitan center of the Roman Empire more than anything else.

The general trend, evident in more than a mere handful of anecdotal examples, is of divergent R1b types being more frequent in the East and decreasing as one moves west and north through Europe.

Of course, I started this thread really to talk about Ötzi and G2a4, and not about R1b.

I think it is possible that, prior to the Neolithic Period, G2a was the predominant European y haplogroup. That would be interesting to discuss.

[rms2]

I want to add that I respect Gioiello very much. He could, of course, be right in his theory of the Italian Refugium. If that is the case, and it is proven, I will publicly applaud his foresight and perspicacity.

For now, however, I respectfully disagree. I don't think R1b1a2 was in most of Europe prior to the Neolithic Period and may not have even got there until the Bronze Age.

G2a, however, I think was probably the default y-dna haplogroup of most of Europe before the Neolithic Period, probably along with various kinds of y haplogroup I and maybe E1b1b in the South.

[Maliclavelli]

Rich, I think not having given only anecdotal or individual examples. Science needs also this: theories are theories, but we all are individuals with our individual history. You can see that others have done huge mistakes with their “theories”: LoPiccolo has been put amongst the R-L584, because he confirmed the theory that Sicilians are of Jewish descent, and, if he was a Sicilian/R-L584+, was confirmed that this mutation was “Jewish”, having that also Sean Silver, then this mutation comes from the “ten tribes lost”, then all the R-L584 in Middle East descend from them, etc. etc.
1)   About the G2a4 of Oetzi I have written many letters on many forums. You certainly remember that hg. G was conceived of Caucasian origin, then Oetzi was a Caucasian recently migrated to Italy etc. etc. Now we are seeing that this haplogroup (G2a4 or G2a2a) is present mostly in Corsica and Northern Sardinia and nowhere. Then probably this haplogroup is Italian from many thousands of years, like I have said, and not only for this G subclade. I have written also about G2a5, G-L497+ etc.
2)   Of course my theory of the Italian Refugium is a theory which needs an aDNA proof, like I have always said. But I have given many “proofs”: the path of R1b1* to R-L51+. Isn’t for you meaningful that R-L51+ is 4% in Central-Northern Italy and 0,3% out of it, Eastwards and Westwards, except to North of the Alps, where I suppose the first migration out of the Italian Refugium happened?
3)   And what about the age of the haplogroups? I have written a post about the R1a, I posted here, I have posted again in this R1a thread, it was published by Dienekes on his blog. I am waiting for serious critics, above all by whom thinks himself a master of the probabilities of the mutations, like Anatole Klyosov.

Then mine are theories which expect a verification, but they aren’t built on nothing.

[Maliclavelli]

Rich Stevens writes: “Gioiello - No offence”.

I haven’t felt myself ever offended, and less by you. When someone offended me, I replied, mostly with irony or at least sarcasm, never by offences. Were the others to write to the moderator asking my banishment, and the banishment always arrived.
I have my theories, and others have other ones. I perfectly know that will be the proofs to decide which theory was right and which was wrong.

[volkswage]

You have used similar arguments in other posts, citing individuals, by name, who are R-L23* or R-L150* or what-have-you as evidence that Italy has the oldest R1b1a2 anywhere.