"Ancient DNA reveals the origins of the Albanians" paper

[PaleoRevenge]

He is hesitating, because they have no IBD trail to Illyrians and he already committed to an Illyrian theory, so now in his own words, banking on a Dardanian path, a secondary Illyrian path. Always self-serving theories, none based on data.

 

[Riverman]

The big issue we deal with, still, is that while there are now Northern-Central branches South of the Danube - somewhere - in the 1800-1600 BP SE transect from Akbari, that these samples have no significant IBD or haplogroup overlap with the Albanians. So we have an instance of a sex biased, male dominated migration, whatever it was (resettlement, soldiers etc.), but they are not exact the group the Albanians came from. They come, however, from a very large population which was completely dominated by E-V13, again, whereever it had its source.

In the end, its all about uniparental and IBD matching, that's the premium level support for identifying an ancestral group. And that was not achieved for the E-V13 contribution to the Albanians yet. So people can speculate on...

Dardanians as a population and even more so Dardania as a region is no bad bet I'd say. The new Akbari set of Northern branches carriers looks to decisively Daco-Thracian. A mixed population, Illyro-Thracian or the like, can't be the source. We don't know if the other groups with those branches (like CTS9320, FGC11451, Y3183, L241 etc.) which are brought up main E-V13 Albanian lineages, looked the same elsewhere, but I doubt a mixed regional group was the source. Rather they came more directly from the source group, just like these new Akbari set samples.
And this doesn't exclude Dardania as "the breeding ground", but it implies a bulk migration of Dacians from another region being a more likely scenario - in my opinion. They could have met other branches, e.g. R-Z2109, in the Danubian provinces-Dardania. Like it did happen, exactly, in this new set of samples. They met with and mixed with a R-Z2109 group also, beside other branches, including a couple of J-L283 and R-L51 etc. The R-Z2109 were either oriented towards the Carpathian basin or in the "Imperial Roman" mixed zone.

 

[PaleoRevenge]

The paper makes an insane claim of west Balkan profile E-V13s, we see from IBDs this is fantasy. All Daco-Thracian plot similar to South Thracians and some members shift with more steppe mixture, which the Daco-Thracians were exposed to repeatedly. It's clear as day there is a steppe pull, not Illyrian pull, the cline is clear, the IBDs prove it.

The core thesis of "adopted/Illyrianized" E-V13s relies on lowest standard of technical examination, the paper's main evidence is literally elementary PCA plotting. The QDAM models are set up intentionally with weak right functions which naturally devolves output into a PCA function, and does not reflect admixture. Any high level testing is ignored, IBDs are ignored. IBD groups are carved by arbitrary line on a map and not by actual IBD patterns. It's a paper with political inspiration wearing a mask of pretesne, showboating as detective science.

There is no quest to find out anything, one can see opinions are pre-determined and models are adjusted to arrive there. Even the alleged 500 AD number is taken as gospel, there is no gurantee Albanian E-V13s and J2bs were one people on 500 AD. R-BY611 is still MIA from any ancient samples. Lots of unfounded assumptions to favor Illyrian decent.

 

[Riverman]

There is more admixture with Kyjatice, Encrusted Pottery related groups and Celts also. Illyrian admixture in ancient E-V13 is generally not more common than this type of Central European admixture which pulls the affected individuals in the West Balkan direction.
Even some of the North Thracians which plot right with Illyrians are there because of this and not actual predominantly Illyrian ancestry.
That's why IBD is so important, to be sure how a profile and position came up.

 

[PaleoRevenge]

This paper had no novel samples other than three samples from Gepid Romania. I13839 only had big IBD segments with two siblings or cousins from an Avar site in Hungary. KD-29 and OBH-52, 14-14.2 CMs single strand. But the Avar samples had no IBD network to ancient Balkan samples, until Akhbari database came out.

Only KD-29 is included in the akhabri database. His network reveals kinship to E-V13s samples and Slavic, notice the sample even has IBD with Estonia BA, and naturally plots like a modern Serb.

 

[Riverman]

The interesting part about the Hacs samples with Southern European autosomal profiles is that they have remarkably low levels of non-Thracian admixture at first glance.

A second E-V13 is also downstream of E-Z5018, under E-L17! Another branch which is very rare in the ancient DNA record and absent from the Pre-Roman time periods which Hacs_22 being the oldest available sample.

And one of these individuals which looks still pretty Daco-Thracian has a very interesting haplogroup as well:

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Hacs_5 - Ancient DNA Sample - Genetic Ancestry Analysis

Ancient DNA sample Hacs_5 from Hungary. Hungary_Gothic_EMA

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This branch is super rare and goes back to Maros/Mokrin!

The site Hacs is pretty Western and close to the later Keszthely groups territory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hács

I think we deal with a still Daco-Thracian ethnic group which was resettled. The three males are practically pure/core level, more typical than e.g. the South Thracian outliers overall. The E-L241 has a tiny bit, the female more possibly East Asian admixture (still trace levels, rather).

A pretty tight cluster being formed by the E-L241 samples which are Balkan-like, I added the other Hacs samples too:

I-FTB71610 or better I-Y13335 may be considered a very good candidate, similar to some C-V86 branches, probably even more so going by its pattern, for a minority (North) Thracian haplogroup. The timing (LBA-EIA branching events), distribution (North - South, strong presence among Slavs) and context (together with E-L241 and E-L17) make a North Thracian origin/survival pretty likely.

It is also interesting that we see the rather North Thracian pattern for I-Y3335 also, which would imply it joined early and probably was part of a Channelled Ware group. Being assimilated by groups of Belegis or Pre-Gáva from Maros would make perfect sense, obviously.

What this also suggests is that at least by around 500 AD we had multiple Daco-Thracian domianted kingroups in Central and South Eastern Europe. That's what the data suggests. That's a fairly long persistence when other areas and groups were already highly mixed and/or Romanised.