A closer look at a couple of ancients from Hellenistic Anatolia

Not sure if anyone’s mentioned or noticed this already, but the two currently available genomes from Hellenistic Anatolia (samples MA2197 and MA2198 from Damgaard et al. 2018) pack an impressive amount of steppe ancestry. Moreover, one of these individuals also shows obvious admixture from Central Asia.
This isn’t particularly surprising, considering the well attested presence of Galatian Celts from deep in Europe and Cimmerians from the Eurasian steppe in Iron Age Anatolia. But it’s worthy of note, because it’s yet another example of ancient DNA correlating very strongly with archaeological data and historical records. Below are a couple qpAdm models for each of the two aforementioned Anatolians:

Anatolia_IA_MA2197
Anatolia_MLBA 0.429±0.073
Beaker_Hungary 0.571±0.073
chisq: 4.073
tail prob: 0.967727
Full output
Anatolia_IA_MA2197
Anatolia_MLBA 0.431±0.085
Hallstatt_Bylany 0.569±0.085
chisq: 4.056
tail prob: 0.968241
Full output
…
Anatolia_IA_MA2198
Anatolia_MLBA 0.469±0.037
Kangju 0.531±0.037
chisq: 12.091
tail prob: 0.356839
Full output
Anatolia_IA_MA2198
Anatolia_IA_MA2197 0.588±0.165
Cimmerian_Moldova 0.412±0.165
chisq: 11.657
tail prob: 0.390007
Full output

Hence, MA2197 can be modeled very successfully with more than 50% ancestry from a source closely related to the Bell Beakers from the Carpathian Basin and the presumably Celtic-speaking Hallstatt population of what is now Czechia. This almost certainly proves to me that MA2197 is largely of Galatian Celtic stock. The models for MA2198 aren’t quite as statistically sound, but they still work, and indeed suggest that this individual might be in large part of Cimmerian origin.
See also…
Focus on Hittite Anatolia
Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians came from…
Central Asian admixture in Hallstatt Celts

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