Bronze Age steppe warrior affinity test

Reich Lab et al. are now targeting more than 1.2 million sites in the ancient samples that they genotype, including over one million from the Illumina genotype array. This is great because it means that I can now run analyses with these ancients on the present-day populations in my Illumina array-based dataset using as many as 500K SNPs, which makes things more accurate and interesting. Below are a few sets of D-statistics of the form D(Outgroup,X)(Population1,Population2), featuring several ancient populations from the recent Allentoft et al., Haak et al. and Mathieson et al. papers. I’m basically testing how much closer X is to either Population1 or Population2. The results look very solid considering the spatio-temporal and archaeological origins of the samples. However, the outcomes for the smaller Northern European nations perhaps look slightly inflated. This is probably due to their peculiar demographic histories and resulting relative genetic homogeneity. At this stage, I don’t know how to test this and limit its effects, if indeed it is a problem.

Afanasievo Poltavka 0.4678

Yamnaya_Kalmykia 0.4667

Yamnaya_Samara 0.4659

Srubnaya 0.4583

Corded_Ware_Germany 0.4554 Full output here Andronovo Sintashta 0.4584

Poltavka 0.4571

Srubnaya 0.4566

Yamnaya_Samara 0.4556

Afanasievo 0.455 Full output here Khvalynsk Poltavka 0.4617

Yamnaya_Samara 0.4594

Afanasievo 0.4556

Yamnaya_Kalmykia 0.454

Srubnaya 0.4522 Full output here Poltavka Yamnaya_Samara 0.4658

Afanasievo 0.4616

Yamnaya_Kalmykia 0.4602

Corded_Ware_Germany 0.4555

Srubnaya 0.4551 Full output here Poltavka_outlier Srubnaya 0.4572

Poltavka 0.4568

Sintashta 0.4534

Yamnaya_Samara 0.4518

Corded_Ware_Germany 0.4514 Full output here Potapovka Poltavka 0.4555

Srubnaya 0.454

Andronovo 0.4537

Yamnaya_Samara 0.4536

Corded_Ware_Germany 0.4523 Full output here Sintashta Andronovo 0.4567

Srubnaya 0.4553

Poltavka 0.4526

Yamnaya_Kalmykia 0.4507

Unetice_EBA 0.4506 Full output here Srubnaya Poltavka 0.4571

Yamnaya_Samara 0.4565

Afanasievo 0.454

Corded_Ware_Germany 0.4538

Unetice_EBA 0.4528 Full output here Yamnaya_Kalmykia Afanasievo 0.4644

Poltavka 0.464

Yamnaya_Samara 0.463

Srubnaya 0.4523

Andronovo 0.4513 Full output here Yamnaya_Samara Poltavka 0.4669

Yamnaya_Kalmykia 0.4615

Afanasievo 0.4612

Srubnaya 0.4554

Corded_Ware_Germany 0.4542 Full output here

See also… qpAdm tour of the Eneolithic/Bronze Age steppe At least three genetically distinct Indo-European migrations into South Asia Source Polish and European population genetics and modern physical anthropology.