Genetic evidences about Uralic connections between Hungary and Fennoscandinavian Circumpolar region

A new Nature article bundles the history of Hungarians with northern Circumpolar areas.  Indisputable evidences bundle the y-chromosomal group N-L392 and male lineages of these regions together at age around 4800-6400 years ago (clade age 6400 YBP and TMRCA 4800 YBP).  In the light of all available datings and downstream mutations the common origin would have existed not later than around 4000 years ago somewhere between Ural mountains and Ob river in Northern Siberia.   Again, the Hungarian data reveals the same total losing of Siberian autosomal origin that we already have seen in the Baltic region, especially among Balts.  It is still present in Finland and strongest in Northern Fennoscandiavia, diminishing to the south.    Genetic lineages of Hungarians and people in the Baltic Sea region seem to have met in Khanty population (whoever their ancestors were 4000 years ago), read the previously linked Nature article and look at my previous post including an elucidating PCA plot (Uralic path Khanty-Bolshoi).

edit 26.5.2019 11:20

Some typos corrected.  It came into my mind also that the Hungarian N dilemma is not yet proven.  So many times people, like also researchers are, see what they want to see. To prove the Hungarian-Fennoscandinavian uniparental connection we should have wider comparative data available covering frequencies of N in Europe.  It is fascinating to find something like this, but I am afraid that geneticists are too much prone to follow linguistic postulates.  Especially when speaking about the prehistory of Finno-Ugric languages we have had sad history.   So even in the case I like to agree this Hungarian connection, I don't buy it yet, not because I don't believe or I don't like, but I still consider the case doubtful.    

The origin of Fennoscandinavian and Baltic N in Kola Peninsula? Part II update 2

Additional data:

After so many studies handling Baltic and Finnic people, I would like to see new Scandinavian research.  We have very few of them.

A few words about methods

Most studies use Nganasans as a Siberian reference despite of the European population being tested.  So, if we consider Nganasans to be closest to Finno-Ugric people, we can mistake with other Europeans, because the relationship between Finns and Nganasans makes them a special case. We may have done a wrong premise in a European wide analysis. Especially, if we assume that N1c1 came to Finland via Norhteastern route, through Kola Peninsula, we should not consider Nganasans as Siberian in general, because it is in that case a special case and cannot represent Siberians in general.  Maybe Ukrainians had some other Siberian connections, we don't know if we use only Siberian references suggested being close only FU-people, in other words Nganasans. Likely Ukrainians have not that admixture, but the method we use has to be neutral.  Do we want to use some edge reference instead of mainline references?  Edge references fit best with population next to the edge.  Another relevant outcome is that the more distant reference groups are from the tested one, the smaller the difference between relative reference groups is when compared to the population under test.  This means that valid Siberian references in same test should give same amount admixture for all tested populations without known Siberian admixture (European references).  If not they are not valid references.  But then, it is totally another issue if we use qpAdm, which tries to use non-relative method, but it is another story.  Let's look it in practice.

I ran a supervised admixture model assigning 10 Siberian groups to 3 West European groups.  The result shows that a genetic connection between Nganasans and West Europeans is possible, despite of the Nganasan tendency to be least admixed Siberians in unsupervised models. Nearest for Nganasans of those three are Germans, followed by Spaniards and English Cornwall is least Nganasan.  The fact is that Admixture is a relative method, which cannot get negative admixture values (qpAdm can).

The origin of Fennoscandinavian and Baltic N in Kola Peninsula? Part II update

Here is a standard admixture analysis using unsupervised admixture method.  Some new samples are removed due to poor quality.  Please note that standard admixture doesn't imply 100% ancestry coverage, rather the best result permitted by given K-value.

Update 18.4.2019 10:40

Another sort order

The origin of Fennoscandinavian and Baltic N in Kola Peninsula? Part II

Soon after my previous post a new study dealt with the same question and published also new data, the study name and link here: The Arrival of Siberian Ancestry Connecting the Eastern Baltic to Uralic Speakers further East.  The study continued on the same theme as so many previous studies connecting the male haplogroup N1c1 with a putative southeastern Baltic Finnic home land, apparently thought to have been in Volga region.  I feel myself somehow embarrassed with this, because I have to be back with this issue so soon.  However, we have no evidences about such linguistic and genetic connection, because we don't know any Volgaic Bronze Age or Early Iron Age populations carrying N1c1, instead of it we know ancient Volgaic samples belonging to male haplogroups R1b, R1a and I2.   But we do have ancient N1c1 samples from the Kola Peninsula and present day N1c1 from the Ural mountain region.  On the contrary to the Volga idea my view is that the N1c1 came to Fennoscandiavia and Baltic regions via Northeastern route.  Without problems it can be demonstrated by using old and new samples from several studies.

The new data was downloaded from Estonian Biocentre.  I found some problems with samples names;  names in the study and data don't match and I was not able to identify all data samples, including two Tatar-like samples, but those samples are less important in this matter.

So the Saami-Finnish path shows an y-axis deviation which I consider as an unknown Fennoscandinavian hunter-gatherer ancestry.

Corresponding admixture analysis is under work and will be published soon. 

The origin of Fennoscandinavian and Baltic N in Kola Peninsula?

I made several attempts to find downstream mutations of ancient Kola Peninsula samples BOO002 and BOO004.  Only those two belong to male remains and are tested L392, in my tests L392 is also the terminal mutation.  Both belong to the same terminal mutation and have no downstream mutations.  Yfull gives age estimates for L392:  formed 6400 ybp, TMRCA 4800 ybp.  Those two male samples were published by Lamnidis et al. 2018 and the age estimate was 3473 ± 87 calBP.  So there have to be 4800-around 3500=1300 years difference between estimates of the whole clade (by TMRCA) and Kola Peninsula sample ages, indicating migrations and/or  founder effects. Considering this we can say that Kola samples are not so far from the TMRCA estimate of all L392 samples, including all downstreams. But because Kola samples have not downstream mutations, we have to consider them as belonging to the forefather clade of all living people carrying mutation L392.  I made a migration model based on this assumption.   


N-L1026/L392 formed 6400 ybp, TMRCA 4800 ybp
-  N-VL29 formed 4100 ybp, TMRCA 3600 ybp
--   N-BY33087 formed 1750 ybp, TMRCA 950 ybp 
        id:YF11696FIN [FI-ES]
---     N-BY33088 formed 950 ybp, TMRCA 950 ybp 
           id:YF14404RUS [RU-NGR]
           id:YF11830FIN [FI-IS]

We see that VL29, which is one of main European branches of N, is only 1200 years younger than the upstream branch in Kola Peninsula.   You can click the branch name to see more details on Yfull pages.  We also see that there has obviously been a founder effect in Russia and Finland.  Nevertheless, 1200-1300 years is the same time gap than we saw between the estimate of the L392 and pure L392's in Kola Peninsula.  It is only a short leap from  L392 to VL29, where ever it happened, but why not from the arctic zone to the boreal forest. 

Another downstrean branch of L392:


N-Z1936 formed 4800 ybp, TMRCA 4300 ybp

This obviously can be considered as a straightforward downstream of L392, particularly because Z1936 mostly exists in the neighborhood of Kola Peninsula. 

--   N-Z1934 formed 4300 ybp, TMRCA 4300 ybp
         id:YF15740RUS [RU-MOW]

---    N-Z1928 formed 4300 ybp, TMRCA 3300 ybp


----    N-Z1925 formed 3300 ybp, TMRCA 3000 ybp

-----      N-Y29767 formed 3000 ybp, TMRCA 600 ybp
             id:YF08170SWE [SE-BD]
             id:YF04765SWE [SE-BD]
-----      N-Y62904 formed 3000 ybp, TMRCA 1200 ybp
             id:YF12523FIN [FI-LS] 
             id:YF06892FIN [FI-OL]

The more we go down the branch Z1936, the more it becomes purely Finnish and shows clade ages below 2000 years, meaning an obvious local founder effect.

It is also possible that another pure L392 lived southward and was the origin of the East European migration, but we have no evidence so far.   Considering the question of how the Siberian admixture of the L392 branch disappeared in some North European regions, we have several explanations.  The first explanation is due to getting more mixed.  This is supported by the fact that even recently the Siberian admixture becomes stronger in the north and disappears in the south.  Another explanation is that the original L392 was not Siberian at all, but then we have to search evidences how the Siberian admixture reached Fennoscandinavia and even the westernmost Scandinavia in the north, if not by arctic migrations via Kola Peninsula (including L392 and other northeast migrants).  So if we are not happy with one L392 and one Siberian and we still try to find alternatives we could have two distinct L392 migrations, one via Kola and another from east to the Baltic Sea, then we could have three distinct migrations of L392, one to Kola, second to Estonia to explain Baltic Finns and third to explain Balts.  Sound like a slippery slope. 

If the Kola postulate is right, then we obviously had two southward migrations:  one from Kola to Scandinavia and Western Finland through the Baltic Sea, ending up to the shores of Baltic region, another from Kola to White Sea Region, Karelia and Eastern Finland.  


You can browse the data by clicking the branch id's above or going to the Yfull straight here.