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  I do not quote it because it is limited by copyright laws, but you can order it by email, the Openness Act gives you right to get it.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.