A Potential Bronze Age Anatolian V1636 Sample (I41584)

Among the Akbari et al. dataset, there is a previously unreported individual (Sample IID: I41584/I41584_preQC) potentially from Bronze Age Anatolia. His terminal Y-DNA subclade is Y148982/Y106006 (TMRCA ~3100 BCE according to FTDNA), a lineage that also includes most modern West Asian and Near Eastern V1636 samples. It is distinct from the V1636 lineage found at Bronze Age Kalavan (V1274). His maternal haplogroup is HV29d1, also according to FTDNA.

Genotype PCA of I41584 relative to ancient Anatolian, Aegean, and neighbouring populations, showing proximity to Bronze Age Ovaören and Aegean individuals.

The genotype PCA makes it look as if the closest ancient groups to this sample are Bronze Age Aegean groups, however, the same is the case for one of the Old Hittite samples from Kaman. Against all the coloured ancient samples of this PCA across all generated PCs make this unreleased sample closest to an Ovaören individual, though, still notably distant followed by Aegean samples.

Since a genotype PCA is not very useful for assessing genetic affinity and ancestry modelling, I also did an f4-based compatibility ranking. In this analysis, the sample shows a distinctly Bronze Age Anatolian affinity:

f4-based compatibility ranking of I41584 against 11 ancient reference populations using 57,886 shared SNPs, with the strongest affinity to Karum-period Kaman, Bronze Age Ovaören, and Old Hittite Kaman.

The sample was tested against 11 ancient diverse and relevant reference populations using the 57,886 SNPs shared across all comparison groups. The sample was tested against 11 diverse and relevant ancient reference populations using the 57,886 SNPs shared across all comparison groups. Within this framework, the closest match is Karum-period Kaman, followed by Bronze Age Ovaören and then Old Hittite Kaman.

Three-source qpAdm model of I41584 using Old Hittite Kaman, Progress-2 Eneolithic Steppe, and Iron Gates Mesolithic ancestry proxies.

With qpAdm, the sample can be successfully modelled 87.0 ± 3.4% Old Hittite Kaman, 7.8 ± 3.8% Progress-2 Eneolithic Steppe, and 5.2 ± 1.6% Iron Gates Mesolithic. Dropping Progress-2 within this set-up makes the model still pass with a p-value of 0.34 (chisq 10.13). However, this is notably worse than with the Progress-2 group.

Replacing the Kaman Old Hittite-period main source with the Karum-period group still produces a passing model, but with slightly worse fit metrics, which is why I chose the Old Hittite group for this model. Replacing the Bronze Age Anatolian core source with Aegean proxies, makes the model fail within the same set-up.

Should this individual indeed be from Bronze Age Anatolia, it would provide another direct link between Bronze Age Anatolian groups and the Eneolithic Steppe.