First real foray into Migration Period Europe: the Gepid, Roman, Ostrogoth and...

This is going to be our first meaningful look at the all important Migration Period, thanks to the recently published Veeramah et al. 2018 paper and accompanying dataset (see here). The Migration Period is generally regarded to have been the time when present-day Europe first began to take shape, in a rather sudden and violent way, with, you guessed it, a lot of migrations taking place.
Here’s where most of the ancients from Veeramah et al. 2018 cluster in my Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of ancient West Eurasian genetic variation. Those East Germanics (the Gepid and Ostrogoth) are certainly very eastern, and indeed more exotic than I would’ve ever expected them to be. But I do love surprises like this. The relevant datasheet is available here.

Obviously, as per the paper, the ACD in about half of the labels stands for Artificial Cranial Deformation. I’ve also updated my Global25 datasheets with many of the same ancients. You can use these datasheets to plot them on 2D or 3D “genetic maps”, and model their ancestry proportions. Feel free to share your findings in the comments below.

Global 25 datasheet
Global 25 datasheet (scaled)
Global 25 pop averages
Global 25 pop averages (scaled)

Here are a few of my own models for some of the more interesting of these individuals, using nMonte3 and based mainly on Iron Age (IA) reference samples. I used the same data file for all of the models; it includes scaled coordinates and is available for download here.

[1] distance%=3.7819
Germany_Roman:FN_2
Balkans_IA,50.6
England_IA,37.6
Nordic_IA,11.8
…
[1] distance%=3.6339
Germany_Medieval_outlier:STR_300
Balkans_IA,94
Iran_IA,6
…
[1] distance%=2.5535
Gepid_Serbia_ACD:VIM_2
Balkans_IA,35.2
Nordic_IA,28.6
Scythian_ZevakinoChilikta,26.4
Han,6
Nganassan,3.8
…
[1] distance%=2.9444
Ostrogothic_Crimea_ACD:KER_1
Armenia_MLBA,56.6
Balkans_IA,41
Nganassan,1.8
Han,0.6

The Gepid and Ostrogoth show significant Scythian- and Armenian-related ancestry proportions, respectively. Should that be taken literally? Or do we have to wait for, say, Avar and Hunnic genomes to expect more realistic models?
Update 15/03/2018: This is where many of the Medieval German samples cluster in my PCA of modern-day Northern European genetic variation (see here). Obviously, I could only run the individuals with wholly or overwhelmingly North European genomes, and most of these turned out to be the males without any signs of ACD. They look very West Germanic. The relevant datasheet is available here.

See also…
Modeling genetic ancestry with Davidski: step by step

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