A new Finnish Master's Thesis sheds light on Late Iron Age burials in Southwestern Finland

 The name on thesis is "THE GENETIC MAKEUP AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION IN EARLY MEDIEVAL COASTAL SOUTHWEST FINLAND", the author Nelli-Johanna Saari.  It is available from the library of the University of Helsinki.  I do not quote it because it is limited by copyright laws, but you can order it by email, the Openness Act gives you right to get it.

The main discourse of the thesis is related with archaeological finds. It is good work as far as I can understand, keeping in mind that I have not got acquainted with archaeology more than reading some books published for laymen.  The text was interesting.

Coming to the part dealing genetics I can say more.  This section is rather brief, but earns to be noticed because this is the first one giving something of the thema  i.e. Late Iron Age Finnish genetics (in Finland the Iron Age ended 1200AD!  and historic time from that onwards).

The thesis includes two PCA plots.  These plots prove only that already 1000 years ago the Finns were Finns.  Only addition that can be said is that they might have carried less Saami or Siberian admixture than Finns today, but too few Saami samples on the plot didn't reveal the possibility of Saami admixture in Iron Age samples.  It is also possible that some samples represent Iron Age outliers, samples seen outliers from the present-day perspective.

The admixture analysis shows same tendencies than PCA plots.

The f3-analysis uses homozygous western hunter-gatheters as an ancestral source, which can lead to erroneous conclusions, because thousands years old ancestry comes through a complex history from different eras and directions.

Downloads missed

 Some downloads in my old posts are not available any more, because my telecom provider ended the home page service.  I have backups, but the work would be enormous to update all links in old post.

Finnish I-clade, the origin and age

All this text is copy-pasted from my publications in other medias.

I try to collect data of the Finnish clade and the tree associating with it. I made interesting observations and add more pictures on following days. The first one shows the root from CTS2208. The clade age is 3900 years.

Some points. A 1000 years old ancient sample is from Novgorod Russia. It is likely Swedish or Finnish. Surprising Turkish group has TMRCA 500 years and two samples are from Antalya.

German samples are from Lower Saxony.

The next downstream level is CTS7676, formed 2800 years ago and recent TMRCA 2300 years. It has two branches, the first one, I-Y142754, fully Swedish, but not old. Oldest samples have TMRCA 950 years, most samples only 550 years. Actually this is a tiny local group in Dalecarlia, which is a bit like Swedish backwoods. Hold your breath, tomorrow I show how the oldest branch of CTS7676 continues 

Next clades are of Finnish origin. There are in Yfull around 200 Finnish samples and among them 20 Swedish, Russian and Norwegian samples, all except the higlighted sample in areas where the Finns have migrated during the Swedish era. It is not rational to make screenshots of them all, because alll are publicly available in Yfull.

The top level clade is L287, clade age 2300 years. Below it is two clades, a small By594 (1950 years) and L258 (1950 years). By594 includes two samples, a Finnish one and Norwegian in Troms. Troms is in Northern Norway where Karelians and legendary Kwens (or Kvens, mentioned in several old texts like Egils saga) used to make raids in the Middle Age.

The main Finnish clade is L258 (1950 years). Its origin is in Southwest Finland. The Finnish archealogist Unto Salo, owning the best education in the southwestern prehistory, have shown the demographic continuum from the first centuries AD in the geographic region where the density of present-day Finnish I1 is highest.

Sorry for a long text. The clade age are calculated using available samples, but they don't cover throughout the history, because in all possible scenarios we have lost ydna lines due to lines dying out. This had biggest effect in small ancient populations, although it happens all the time. We can only say that geographical male lines were born latest in the calculated clade age, meaning that the first Finnish I1 man was born beween years 2800-2300 ybp. If so it means that the population that brought I1 to Finland was in Finland 800 years before the estimated arrival of the Finnic language and was likely here also before people who brought the Saami language. Genes challenges the old history writing and it takes time to linguists and historians to change the course, still keeping them respected. Sad but true.

Holy Grail of the Uralic languages, the origin in Siberia

 It has gone a couple of years since a new Siberian-like Bronze Age sample was found from Central Siberian Krasnoyarsk.  Almost every blogger being interested in population genetics started soon to speculate if this Bronze Age man belonged to the first speakers of Uralic languages and the reason was, actually two reasons, Siberian origin and that the man belonged to the male haplogroup N.  In my opinion this conclusion was debatable.  Definitely he belonged to purest North Siberians, among many other Siberian people.  Definitely the yDna haplogoup N is common among modern Uralic speakers, but N is common also in other language groups.  Genes don't have language, languages don't have genes.  This poor Bronze Age man will never reveal his language.  Only thing common with his genes and the origin of Uralic languages is Siberia. Can we say that only one language was spoken in an area extending thousands kilometers to every direction, that this man and his kinship kept connection by  yoiking over hundreds kilometers?  Languages need common society and culture to strenghten enough to make further expansions.  One man has one male haplogroup, but he needs society and common culture within a larger social context to be able to advance something.  In the other hand even his genes were not unique in Siberia.

To have something real in my hands I made tests, a PCA-plot and a series of qp3Pop analyses.  On the PCA there was nothing particular to mention; the Krasnoyarsk man was on two first dimensions pretty much like many other pure Siberians.  Making Eurogenes G25-style multifimensional analysis would be great, maybe Eurogenes want to do it.  But then the f3-analysis revealed something.  I made two analyses comparing almost all populations I found in the North Siberia-Europe  cline to Nganasans and to the Krasnoyarsk man.  Finally I divided the Krasnoyarsk result by the Nganasan result to get the ratio of all population in the cline.  The ratio revealed that despite of  small Siberian admixture some populations had a high Krasnoyarsk ratio, including Finns.  May this mean that those with high ratio formed at least partially the westward migration of Uralic speakers?

 

2 - North Siberia - Europe cline

3 - North Siberians
 

 

Green color - high Krasnoyarsk_BA ratio.

A new study sheds light on Scandinavian Iron Age ancestry

Rodríguez-Varela et al. makes an effort to find out eastern and western influences in Iron Age Scandinavia.  Results support ideas of western migrations during the Swedish Vendel Era, especially from England.  Migration Period and the  following so called Vendel Era in Sweden are known about common artefacts with Anglo-Saxon England, which supports the outcome of the study of migrations from the British Isles, at least what comes to the Anglo-Saxon genetic influence. 

 Another observation in the study covers the eastern influence in Uppland and in more northern areas.  The study speaks about Uralic influence, which is somewhat troublesome, because genetic information doesn't include information about spoken languages.  On the other hand it mentions Finnish influence, so we can make a conclusion that the study actually means Finnish (but not Estonian)  influence, as a special case of Uralic speakers, without proving straight connection to the Ural region (where Uralic language speakers are only a minority).  On the other hand the study speaks about Eastern Baltic influence, which also leaves me uncertain of the actual meaning. Also, the study tells that the north-south cline in Scandinavia proves about the migration route of Uralic speakers, but is it similarly possible that this cline proves about SOUTHERN migration DILUTING the original population in Scandinavia - whatever language they spoke?  From history books we know that in Scandinavia, and also in Finland and Russia, the migration direction was from south to north rather than conversely.  Isn't this even more credible, not only based on known history, but also based on earlier conclusions of this study?

 The biggest shortage is that the study focuses mainly on middle and late Iron Age samples and the data doesn't include early Iron Age (Pre Roman Iron Age) and late Bronze Age samples.  This shortage leaves us without view of how the Scandinavian genetic  profile looked before the Anglo-Saxon impact and it doesn't take into account possibility of  earlier eastern and western influences.  In my opinion people in Sweden were before the Migration Period significally  more eastern than later, but then is it right to call that time Uralic or Eastern Baltic?  What would be Western Baltic then?  And why the study doesn't check the Western Baltic influence if it exists? It was interesting to read the study, despite many unclear definitions.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867422014684#mmc1

Baltic Finns as a construction of Bronze and Iron Age admixtures IV

 Peltola et al.  g25-samples are now available.  I reran previous tests after adding those new samples.  It looks like Volga-Oka Iron Age samples have some effect on results, but not anyway predominating.  Southeast, North, Central and East Finland get some meaningful portion. 

BOL - Volga Oka IA, representing people before the Slavic eastern migration.

For sample details please look at the study. Link: 

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)01826-7

Target: Mauri1million_scaled
Distance: 0.4878% / 0.00487819
25.2    England_MIA
23.0    Baltic_EST_BA
10.8    RUS_Ingria_IA
10.4    England_MIA_LIA
7.6    UKR_Shestovitsa_VA
4.4    RUS_Krasnoyarsk_MLBA
4.2    Baltic_EST_MA
4.2    England_Saxon
4.0    FIN_Levanluhta_IA
3.0    SHK002
2.4    SHK001
0.6    RUS_Krasnoyarsk_BA
0.2    BOL005

Target: Estonian
Distance: 0.4453% / 0.00445321
29.8    Baltic_EST_BA
20.4    England_MIA
13.6    Baltic_EST_MA
11.6    KED001
8.6    KRS001
8.6    RUS_Ingria_IA
2.8    BOL004
2.2    KED002
2.0    UKR_Shestovitsa_VA
0.2    FIN_Levanluhta_IA
0.2    RUS_Krasnoyarsk_BA

Target: Finnish_Southwest
Distance: 0.7118% / 0.00711846
26.2    England_MIA
17.6    Baltic_EST_BA
15.4    RUS_Ingria_IA
14.4    FIN_Levanluhta_IA
13.8    England_MIA_LIA
6.2    UKR_Shestovitsa_VA
3.8    KED001
1.4    RUS_Krasnoyarsk_MLBA_o
1.2    RUS_Krasnoyarsk_BA

Target: Finnish_Southeast
Distance: 0.6699% / 0.00669896
28.4    Baltic_EST_MA
23.8    England_MIA
11.4    BOL005
10.0    Baltic_EST_IA
10.0    England_LIA
8.0    FIN_Levanluhta_IA
6.4    Baltic_EST_BA
1.2    RUS_Krasnoyarsk_BA
0.8    KRS001

Target: Finnish_North
Distance: 0.9945% / 0.00994463
23.0    FIN_Levanluhta_IA
21.8    England_MIA
19.0    RUS_Ingria_IA
14.6    Baltic_EST_BA
11.4    BOL004
8.4    England_MIA_LIA
1.6    UKR_Shestovitsa_VA
0.2    Baltic_EST_MA

Target: Finnish_East
Distance: 0.7742% / 0.00774249
21.8    Baltic_EST_MA
21.0    Baltic_EST_IA
13.6    BOL005
13.2    FIN_Levanluhta_IA
8.2    England_MIA
6.4    England_MIA_LIA
5.4    Baltic_EST_BA
5.2    BOL009
4.0    England_Saxon
0.8    England_IA
0.4    RUS_Krasnoyarsk_BA

Target: Finnish_Central
Distance: 0.6841% / 0.00684063
19.2    Baltic_EST_BA
19.0    England_MIA
14.0    Baltic_EST_MA
12.8    FIN_Levanluhta_IA
10.4    BOL004
7.0    England_IA_EarlyMedieval
4.2    RUS_Ingria_IA
4.0    England_Saxon
3.8    England_MIA_LIA
3.6    KED002
1.6    RUS_Krasnoyarsk_BA
0.4    Baltic_EST_IA

Reducing population number erases IA-samples.

Target: Mauri1million_scaled
Distance: 2.0489% / 0.02048857 | ADC: 2x RC
41.6    KBL002
40.8    UKR_Shestovitsa_VA
15.0    KED002
2.6    GOS002

Target: Estonian
Distance: 1.7521% / 0.01752108 | ADC: 2x RC
30.6    Baltic_EST_MA
27.4    Baltic_EST_IA
27.0    KED001
15.0    KED002

Target: Finnish_Southwest
Distance: 2.1900% / 0.02190021 | ADC: 2x RC
53.6    KED001
46.4    UKR_Shestovitsa_VA

Target: Finnish_Southeast
Distance: 2.5633% / 0.02563278 | ADC: 2x RC
32.8    KRS001
31.0    Baltic_EST_IA
21.2    GOR001
15.0    KED002

Target: Finnish_North
Distance: 3.7546% / 0.03754556 | ADC: 2x RC
100.0    GOR001

Target: Finnish_East
Distance: 3.0876% / 0.03087553 | ADC: 2x RC
100.0    GOR001

Target: Finnish_Central
Distance: 3.4461% / 0.03446146 | ADC: 2x RC
100.0    GOR001

Baltic Finns as a construction of Bronze and Iron Age admixtures III

 To be on the safe side regarding selected eastern Krasnoyarsk samples I made a g25-test using ALL available ancient samples to figure out Southwest and Eastwest Finns.   The reason for selecting Krasnoyarsk samples was the fact that they look on drift tests promising sources for Baltic Finns.  Yet I want to see new Volga Oka samples and want to search suitable western pairs for them.  Hopefully Eurogenes author can offer them in the near future.

Target: Finnish_Southeast
Distance: 0.7026% / 0.00702565 | ADC: 0.25x RC
24.8    NOR_North_VA_o2:VK519
14.0    ISL_Viking_Age_Pre_Christian:NNM-A-1
13.0    Baltic_EST_IA:s19_V10_2
12.6    SWE_Viking_Age_Sigtuna:vik_KAL006
9.0    NOR_Mid_MA:VK124
8.0    SRB_Viminacium:R9673
6.8    EST_Saaremaa_EVA:VK554
6.0    DNK_Sealand_VA:VK215
3.6    Baltic_EST_IA:s19_VII4_1
1.2    RUS_Ladoga_VA:VK21
1.0    DNK_Funen_VA:VK371

Target: Finnish_Southwest
Distance: 0.5735% / 0.00573538 | ADC: 0.25x RC
24.6    DNK_Langeland_VA:VK367
17.4    DNK_Sealand_EVA:VK297
13.4    SWE_Gotland_VA:VK462
11.6    FIN_Levanluhta_IA:JK1968
8.8    SWE_Gotland_VA:VK472
8.0    SWE_Gotland_VA:VK51
5.2    FIN_Levanluhta_IA:DA234
3.8    RUS_Ladoga_VA:VK408
3.6    DEU_Tollense_BA:WEZ40
2.4    SWE_Viking_Age_Sigtuna:vik_84005
1.2    UKR_Shestovitsa_VA:VK539

This would be nice, but only if we forget eastern origins of Baltic Finns, with exception of Levanluhta and Norwegian Saami.  Negative side is that our history should be written newly, because we would be descendants of Vikings.  We are not. Dilemma we have with our history ought to be seen.