Preprint Allentoft et al. 2024

The preprint of the study estimates the age of the I1 male population of Southern Scandinavia to be around 4000 years and defines the direction of their arrival as northeast. The time period coincides with the late Scandinavian Neolithic (Scandinavian Dagger Period) and the early Scandinavian Bronze Age. The newcomers are connected to the stone cist burial, a new type of burial common in southern Scandinavia. The burial method in question was common in Gotland as well, and the oldest graves in this area in Estonia are associated with western influences and migration from the west (interestingly, the Gotland saga, Gutasaga, mentions a migration to an island in Estonia, probably to Saaremaa and also to Poland.  Then the Danish prehistorical tradition tells about elite groups who migrated from the north, warred against jutes and beat them.  They formed the root of Danes). Later, the Scandinavian influence decreased in Estonia and a new burial method, the Tarand burial, took its place.

Today's oldest I1 clades based on living human samples are 4600 years old. The oldest I1 samples based on ancient DNA are 7000-7500 years old and were found in Gotland (Stora Förvar 11) and Hungary (BAB5). The Hungarian sample exclusively represents the early European Neolithic population, while the Gotland sample represents mainly local hunter-gatherers, but with a piquant European Neolithic addition. As a side note, Sweden's most common clade, L22, is 3900 years old according to the Yfull website, the main group of Finnish I1 men is 2300 years old and its upstream group is 2800 years old.  Regarding to the Estonian I1 we know only the size of proportion, because so far the research has shed light only on clades of Estonian haplotypes N1 and R1a.  The proportion of Estonian I1 is 15% according to earlier studies.

Stone cist graves in Gotland

Stone cist graves in Estonia

Estonian Tarand graves, usually connected to the Baltic Finnic migration from the east.  Tarand graves followed the stone cist period.  

In Finland, Bronze Age graves are common, there are thousands of discovered Bronze Age graves and stone cairns assumed to be graves, but I could not find maps specific to the grave type. After reading several archaeological studies related to stone cist burials, I am still unsure of their origin and historical chronology. One of the reasons for this may be that archaeologists did basic research in both Finland and Sweden before the digital revolution, and these studies are not available online.

Finnish ydna samples on the autosomal map

In his own abstract, A. Pruessner presents the geographical distribution of the autosomal inheritance of Finnish ydna. I have been waiting for academic research on this topic for a long time. What is being said now about the division of the N haplogroup into eastern and southwestern groups has been known for more than 10 years based on Ftdna's project data, so the presentation does not bring much new information to those interested in the matter. Pruessner's abstract does not say much about the geography of other haplogroups. Of course, for example I1 forms geographical clusters, but mainly from a common Finnish root. On the other hand, the origin of the N1 clusters refers to different angles of entry into the Finnish area. Inspired by Pruessner's presentation, I decided to do a PCA analysis using Finnish samples from the 1000genones project as data. The data includes 38 male samples out of a total of 99 samples. Due to the brevity of the ydna data in the material, I cut the definition to two characters (N1, I1, R1, one I2 removed), even if a more precise result would have been possible in some of the samples. I also did the same test with the narrower Eurogenes data. As a final conclusion, excluding ouliers in R1 and N1, two in both, it can be stated that the autosomal distribution of all yDna groups seems to be more or less similar in the entire Finnish population, although the narrower Eurogenes data points I1 towards Scandinavia and R1 towards Eastern Europe.

Figures:

1 Pruessner's abstract

2 PCA based on Eurogenes global data

3 PCA based on 1000genomes, West Eurasian view