Talk:Early European Farmers

Grammar and sentence structure

"A groundbreaking genetic study published in Nature in June 2015 found that ...?1 amount of WHG ancestry among EEFs had ...?2 significantly during the Neolithic,"

I think in (1) has to go "the" and in (2) has to go maybe "shrunken"? I don't know the source material, but that sentence sounds incomplete.

Bell Beaker People

Puduḫepa (talk · contribs) could you please explain why you removed diff the sentence about the association with Bell Beaker culture which was referenced to a paper published in Nature? I don't see how it is undue when this associates a migration detected in population genetics with a cultral migration elsewhere. Indeed, it is one of the few claims on this page that probably has a secondary source (I think Reich has mentioned it). -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:23, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

I have already explained the reason of the revert on my edsum. You added an UNDUE content to the LEDE claiming EEFs are associated with the spread of the Bell Beakers, while on the main page there are copious references re Bell Beaker - steppe/Indo-European connection. The content you added can be mentioned, with attribution, under a relevant section, though- i would not object this. Puduḫepa 09:48, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

No. I added it to the main section first, with reference and in this edit you also removed the material from the main.[1] I am asking you to explain why the referenced material in the main has been deleted. Questions for whether it is due for the lead will wait until after you explain that removal. Thanks. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:04, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

I have already explained above. The material which was added to the main had no attribution and for an UNDUE content like this, the attribution is crucial to avoid WP:WIKIVOICE. Feel free to restore the content with attribution. Puduḫepa 10:22, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Content restored. I referred to the paper in revised prose. I don't wholly agree about the wikivoice, but as this page is problematic for relying on primary sources, in this case I think it is warranted. I also don't (and didn't) expect this addition to remain unaltered. There is more to say on this issue and a wikipedia page is a work in progress, but I think editing is preferable to reversion. Thanks for restoring the template I placed on this page. Regarding the lead, I felt that it deserves a mention there because the Bell Beaker Culture is well established and well known. As it stands the lead is abstracted from wider context (and too technical in places). Mention of the Bell Beaker Culture anchors the EEF to other pages, so in my view inclusion of a mention there is WP:DUE. Thanks again for the discussion. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:35, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree that the Bell Beaker culture is well established and well known, but I don't see how this has to do with the WP:UNDUE problem we have been discussing here. I suggest we agree to disagree:) I am pinging @Joshua Jonathan, Florian Blaschke, and Skllagyook:, frequent and long-term contributors to articles on PIE archaeology, as the Bell Beaker culture is generally linked to PIE migrations. Thank you too for the WP:CIV discussion. Puduḫepa 11:46, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

This edit added (bold) the following: {{talkquote|A genetic study published in Nature in 2018 found that the EEFs had initially spread agriculture throughout Europe largely without admixture with local WHGs. It was noted that this process had occurred through "a massive movement of people". During the Middle Neolithic however, there was a resurgence of WHG ancestry in Central Europe and Iberia, which was primarily male driven. (Note: "We provide the first evidence for sex-biased admixture between hunter-gatherers and farmers in Europe, showing that the Middle Neolithic “resurgence” of hunter-gatherer-related ancestry in central Europe and Iberia was driven more by males than by females.") This migration is associated and coextensive with the spread of the Bell Beaker Culture into Europe at the same time.

References

The addition was confusing; "this migration" seems to refer to the EEF-migrations, which of course was not the Bell Beaker culture, which happened a couple of millennia later. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joshua Jonathan (talk • contribs) 12:48, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

I have withdrawn this edit for now. I agree that what I added is confused in that paragraph, as it does not flow from the preceding. Also my summary of the paper is not good enough. The paper actually speaks of a Steppe replacement in Britain whilst excluding migration elsewhere, so really it needs a better summary in a secondary source to make this anything usable in this article. I will have to think some more on that. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 14:46, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

is this a misprint?

The Cardials appeared to have acquired a significant amount of hunter-gatherer ancestry during this process. Among modern populations, Sardinians and Basque people were found to harbor the largest amount of EEF ancestry, which they probably acquired through descent from the Cardials.[10]

Do not you mean WHG? 90.167.243.10 (talk) 15:03, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Dzudzuana Cave Study

An editor attempted to insert this material [2] into the article. The study may have some relevance but not presented in this manner so I have opened this section under WP:BRD so we can discuss how best to summarise information to make sense within the article. I note that I have some serious issues with information presented in this article already. The studies are just presented as a list, and although they are good studies, we are not drawing any clear conclusions for the reader in wikivoice. We need to consider what a reader gets from this page, and some rewriting is called for.

With that in mind, I note that the latest insertion does not fit the order of stuidies (and uses the wrong referencing style for this page) but more seriously, it is talking about the results for remains in one study but is very unclear on relevance to understanding of EFF. Figures quoted are not in the cited source, and it is primary sourced. Perhaps the editor attempting insertion would like to describe what they want a reader to learn from this material and we can go from there.

And ack, as I went to post this I saw I have already been reverted without discussion. Please take a look at WP:BRD and I ask you to self revert the inclusion until we reach editor consensus. Thanks. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 13:46, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for not warning me, i didn't know.

I think the paper is relevant because it shows how EEF/ANF is related to other ancient populations of that time relatively since autosomal population genetics are all about how related populations are relative to each other. I made another edit later and i linked the picture i posted. It was this picture (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2018/09/20/423079/F2.large.jpg?width=800&height=600&carousel=1) but i edited the picture with the EEF model from the same paper and i highlighted it with colors so readers can see the different branches.

Would it be good if i took the models from the paper and converted them into a more readable form? For example the models of EEF/ANF, Levant Neolithic Farmers, Natufians, Caucasus Hunter Gatherers, Iranian Neolithic Farmers etc. so people can see how related or unrelated EEF is to other mesolothic/neolithic populations. Perhaps tree graph with a combination of such models would be a good for viewers so they can have context of what Dzudzuana actually is? Itisme3248 (talk) 14:04, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi there, and good to see you here. User:Hunan201p raised another issue with the material you inserted in that it seems to be a pre-print. So what would be great is if we could move information on this page beyond a list of primary sources and into something with curated information from secondary sources. It is already over-reliant on primary sources, and doesn't tell the reader very much. A tree graph would be visually great and very helpful, but before we start on anything like that, we need sources to base any such graph on. We can't just do it ourselves as that would be WP:OR. Everything in Wikipedia has to be sourced to something else because Wikipedia is a tertiary source. The primary sources won't work, but if someone has already ordered the information in some way, that is just the kind of research we need to be citing here. Are you aware of any such secondary sources? Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 14:25, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

The graph is from the same paper but I've just highlighted it with color and added the EEF model from the same paper on the tree. I didn't add any information that are not included in the paper. Also i know it's a pre-print. The Dzudzuana samples are not published and Reich's Lab is the only valid source when it comes to Dzudzuana ancestry. Other papers have used other very low coverage Dzudzuana samples and the authors were not even knowledgeable on Paleolithic West Asian genetics neither were they focused on them which caused very big errors in their models.

The paper will probably stay as a pre-print for many years and it's a shame not to include such important information on wikipedia. The only autosomal information about Natufians on wiki for example were based on an outdated paper of Lazaridis but the 2018 pre-print aka update by Lazaridis fixed very important mistakes. I don't know why it's still in pre-print but i suspect that its because they acquired new DNA samples and they were focused on the 3 papers published days ago. Itisme3248 (talk) 14:49, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Another problem with the pre-print is that there are not many qualified peer reviewers because of how new these stuff are. The paper is from Reich's lab. https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/. Many archaeogenetic papers pass peer reviewing despite being completely wrong because of that problem. Most researchers now use a tool made by Reich's lab by professors from Harvard. Itisme3248 (talk) 15:11, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Most autosomal archaeogenetic researchers use ADMIXTOOLS Itisme3248 (talk) 15:15, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

There is also a paper on qpAdm which is a tool of admixtools. https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/217/4/iyaa045/6070149

The creators of Admixtools are also the creators of the pre-print i wanted to add. Itisme3248 (talk) 15:16, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

You say that many archaeogenetic papers pass peer reviewing despite being completely wrong. Obviously, the solution to this can't be to lower the bar to include non-peer-reviewed material, but rather to raise the bar not to include everything (especially from primary sources) just because it is peer-reviewed. As it stands, the article is an indiscriminate collection of research results, and this is what urgently needs to fixed, and not the premature addition of material that has not yet passed peer review. If it is important material that is worthy for inclusion here, we can be sure that the Reich team will have it published in a high-quality journal in the near future. If it won't happen, it might be an indication that this piece of research is a just footnote in this rapidly evolving field, a footnote that we don't have to bother with. –Austronesier (talk) 15:43, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

"a footnote that we don't have to bother with."

The paper is actually the foundation of West Eurasian archaeogenetics. It will most likely be updated and published but it will take a lot of years since new ancient DNA samples keep coming out and i guess they want that paper to be as complete as possible when its published. It's truly a shame not to include it. For example when the pre-print was made they didn't have Anatolian Hunter Gatherer DNA but 1-2 years later they did. Using that paper as a source is not lowering the bar but instead is increasing it.

Lazaridis considers his old papers as outdated and wrong but a lot of wikipedia pages use them just because they are peer reviewed. The pre-print is supposed to fix many of those old mistakes. It's really a shame not to include it. Itisme3248 (talk) 16:07, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Your enthusiasm for the paper is creditable, but you might want to have a read about the Wikipedia philosophy here on sourcing: WP:WITS. Preprints just can't be the basis of changing an article (although I agree with you and with User:Austronesier that this article badly needs some changing! :) Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 16:13, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There you go: the foundation of West Eurasian archaeogenetics. In this case, it will not stay in the preprint cocoon forever. What is the haste all about? –Austronesier (talk) 16:15, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Add: the preprint has been cited 27 times. If the information is relevant, we might extract it from one of the citing sources (with full consideration of WP:due weight and the nature of the citing source). Btw, my take on this is that genuinely fundamental research (and not just fundamental in the eye of a single beholder) gets more cites. –Austronesier (talk) 16:29, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

I will look for the citing sources. Thanks for your help. Itisme3248 (talk) 16:30, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

It will not stay as a pre-print forever but until then another 100 people will mention me that incorrect and outdated information and think they are valid. You might as well remove a lot of the information from wiki on Natufians and EEF since the authors themselves consider them as outdated and wrong. Why keep peer reviewed paper information if the leading scientist of the same papers considers them as outdated? Itisme3248 (talk) 16:27, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

You might as well remove a lot of the information from wiki on Natufians and EEF Absolutely. So much stuff here is in a rotten state, not just because it is incorrect, but also because it is a total indiscriminate mess with massive misreadings of the sources. It deserves a WP:TNT-approach. –Austronesier (talk) 16:30, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Very tempted to agree regarding WP:TNT. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 16:41, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't have much to add to this discussion that hasn't already been said, but I will comment on what Itisme3248 said here: The paper will probably stay as a pre-print for many years and it's a shame not to include such important information on wikipedia.

The paper was uploaded to bioRxiv in 2018, so it's already been a pre-print for 4 years. That's actually quite long, and to my mind casts strong doubt that the paper will ever be published. This also diminishes the value of the 27 citations, because that's really not much impact over a 4 year period from a well-known author(s).

And how "important" can the data really be? It's data about some human bones, found in a cave, dated to thousands of years ago. This article is about Early European Farmers, and it's already got plenty of information available about them, so it's not like Lazaridis' work on these cave bones is a crucial missing piece to an EEF puzzle, especially if his paper was never even published, and if other researchers aren't apparently participating in this scope of research, as Itisme3248 says.

And as Sirfurboy said, Wikipedia is just a tertiary source. It's supposed to give a general overview of a topic, rather than report the latest research on microscopic "points" of interest. So far I'd say we have too many papers on the topic of EEF. To add this pre-print would just be tossing more weight on to the unsightly, incomprehensible pile that has already been allowed to form. The article should provide a concise, easily digestible, general overview of the research in to this population. Not a massive heap of shady technical info.

If Lazaridis said his earlier research from 8 years ago is wrong, probably this 2018 research could be wrong as well. Primary research is frequently contradictory. - Hunan201p (talk) 16:48, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

"And how "important" can the data really be? It's data about some human bones, found in a cave, dated to thousands of years ago. This article is about Early European Farmers"

The bones are irrelevant, what's relevant is the DNA they extracted from those bones.

It's important because it's the only DNA data that actually show the common ancestors of Anatolian Neolithic/Early European Farmers, Natufians, Caucasus Hunter Gatherers, Iran/Levant Neolithic Farmers etc. It is one of the most important the missing pieces. They show who the ancestors of the EEF were in comparison to other populations. Without that data you basically go blind and have no idea why they are closer genetically to some populations and others not. Dzudzuana is a core ancestral component in West Eurasians just like Ancient North Eurasian and Western Hunter Gatherers are. Modern European's basic components are Dzudzuana + Ancient North Eurasian + Western Hunter Gatherer. The same thing applies for many middle eastern populations but they lack the Western Hunter Gatherer part.. Itisme3248 (talk) 17:08, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

"If Lazaridis said his earlier research from 8 years ago is wrong, probably this 2018 research could be wrong as well."

Yes but we should include what is considered to be the most "updated" and latest. Itisme3248 (talk) 17:10, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

AsHunan201p said, 27 cites isn't really much in four years. So it's not a shame that we won't use it, but rather a pity that Laziridis et al. obviously have shelved it for whatever reasons. The Dzudzuana Cane genome is not much highlighted in subsequent research.

But you might be delighted to hear that another Upper Palaeolithic specimen from the Caucacus is discussed in this paper with a similar result. Yup, this is also a preprint and won't qualify for inclusion either, but my hunch is that this one will not fall through the cracks, so let's just wait for it to come out (and to get cited before we cite it!). –Austronesier (talk) 19:13, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

I know that paper and its completely wrong. They modeled ANF/EEF with 40% Iran but its wrong, it overshifted because they didn't use a Natufian proxy. Lazaridis actually used older components ancestral to both ANF and Iran N to model ANF but it does not score stuff that are in Iran N. The reason why Iran N overshifted is because it was compensating for the the African ancestry of Natufian. ANF has 14% Natufian admix and Natufian has 12% African admix. Since Iran N also scores 8-10% African its forced to be used as the source for the African ancestry.

It's possible that one of the reasons why the papers are not released is because there are peer reviewers from both groups and they simply disagree with the other's paper with allentoft obviously being wrong because they didn't use components ancestral to both ANF and Iran N Itisme3248 (talk) 00:17, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Allentoft cites Lazaridis caucasus paper though and it makes no sense that they would not let each other pass peer reviewing. But his results are completely different. Itisme3248 (talk) 00:21, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Do you guys think its possible that they are actually "blocking" each other's papers since they are contradicting each other? I don't know if both teams have peer reviewers. That would be funny. Itisme3248 (talk) 00:26, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Anyway i think the prep-print must be included on this page because it is reputable. Peer reviewed papers are not the only thing that is accepted on wikipedia right? So why not include something more reputable from Harvard? Itisme3248 (talk) 05:51, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

A better way

Just a thought. It is not how a Wikipedia article would look, but:

[3] Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 20:14, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Why is this page ignoring ANF ancestry in North Africa and West Asia?

ANF related ancestry is also high in North Africa and West Asia. It ranges from 30-45% in the Levant to 30% in Mesopotamia, 30% In Iran. 25-45% in North Africa. It reaches as far as to India.

There are also inconsistencies on this page for example:

"EEF ancestry remains widespread throughout Europe, ranging from about 60% near the Mediterranean Sea (with a peak of 65% in the island of Sardinia) and diminishing northwards to about 30% around the Baltic Sea."

vs

"EEF ancestry in modern Europe ranged from 30% in the Baltic States to 90% near the Mediterranean Sea."

---

"About 44% of EEF ancestry was determined to come from a "Basal Eurasian" population that split prior to the diversification of other non-African lineages"

This is also outdated. They have around 28% Basal Eurasian ancestry. We might as well use papers from 1940 that are peer reviewed and not actual relevant highly reputable modern data from Harvard just because they are not peer reviewed. This makes no sense.

Itisme3248 (talk) 06:35, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, this is the problem with the approach the page currently takes of just listing a load of primary research. It gets out of date; it reflects the range of reading of the editor and will have gaps; and most importantly, it is not very informative. In our above discussion we mooted the possibility of blowing the whole thing up an starting again. Before actually attempting anything like that, I would like to give it a few days to see if any editors object. Not everyone checks their watchlist every day.

While thus far we all agree that this page needs some serious work, understanding what a new page would look like is harder. My temptation, which some editors might object to, would be to ditch all the primary sources for now, and write a much higher level overview of the current understanding of EEF using secondary sources like that Scientific American article. Then, when that is done, and later in the article (and certainly not in the lead) we could have something on latest research.

Personally I think any article that has the word "haplogroup" in the lead is not going to be a very good encylopaedia article. Well, with possible exception of Haplogroup of course! Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:43, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

There is also a new paper by Lazaridis about Neolithic Anatolia https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq0762.

I think the new page should start with an introduction about where the Anatolian Neolithic Farmers lived, where they migrated to, their lifestyle and the ANF ancestry in many modern populations (Not just Europeans).

Of course after that there will be more sections about more archeological and genetic details.

On the section about genetics it should show the Paleolithic autosomal ancestry of the Neolithic Anatolians relatively to other populations of that time so people can understand how related or unrelated it is to other Neolithic populations. Haplogroups should be on the bottom of the genetic section since autosomal DNA is more important. Itisme3248 (talk) 08:09, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

New Lead

Although there is a lot more to be done to this page than messing with the lead, I have gone ahead and boldly written a new lead. I am not entirely happy with my use of the term "group", so please do amend as you see fit if there is a better word (but please remember the lead is for a general audience).

There are no citations in the lead and I would like to keep it that way. I moved the old lead into an Overview section and this should not be deleted yet, because that is where the detail goes, with citations, that the lead will rely on (as well as information elsewhere in the article). Per MOS:CITELEAD we don't need citations in the lead where we are summarising the main. If there is information I put in the lead that is not mentioned in the main (and I think there probably is, sorry!) then we need to put the information in the main too and cite it there.

I don't expect my new lead is anywhere near perfect, so please do discuss or make bold edits. I do think it is a huge improvement on what we had before. I hope you agree. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:52, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Also, I wrote in the lead the migration was through the Balkans, per the information on the page. This was not necessarily the only route. If we update the page then we can update the lead on that and other debatable points. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:56, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

The shape of the lead really depends on what we want this article to be about. We can strictly keep it as a page about the ancestral component, although I am not sure whether we need pages about individual ancestral components (NB not for the reasons by the lost spirit of St. Louis that once haunted these talk pages); ancestries are somewhat artificial reference points which presuppose a stable equilibrium in space and time which rarely exists in the real world expect in cases of extreme isolation. Note that genetic studies rarely take a single ancestry as the only topic for discussion.

Or we can turn it into a broader overview of the demic aspects of the spread of the European Neolithic, but then, do we need an extra page forked-out form the latter? –Austronesier (talk) 19:32, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

I hope the lost spirit of St. Louis that once haunted these talk pages returns some day! 😂 I think as long as reliable primary, secondary, and even tertiary sources continue to use these, what you quite correctly call somewhat artificial reference points, in their models and articles, then we should probably have articles about them, so I'm kind of leaning towards keeping this as an 'ancestral component' sort of article rather than a 'Genetic history of Neolithic Europe' article, but maybe I could change my mind...  Tewdar  20:09, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

I hope the lost spirit of St. Louis that once haunted these talk pages returns some day! Shhh! You know it is only a matter of when, not if! Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 20:22, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

@Tewdar: Undoubtedly, reliable primary, secondary, and tertiary sources talk about these populations/ancestries, and some are very robust (e.g. WHG) and not only artifacts of the model that is chosen in a specific study. Still, they are rarely treated as a main subject or topic in the lit. It is difficult to present Early European Farmers, Western Hunter-Gatherers etc. individually (in a genomic sense) in a cohesive and encyclopedic way when there are few (or no?) examples in the existing literature that we could follow.

Having these articles is a bit of a glossary thing, maybe WP has room for that in some format that I'm not aware of yet. –Austronesier (talk) 10:39, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

True... we kind of end up producing our own review of the models used in umpteen primary studies for most of this series of articles, so there was a smidgen of truth in the ramblings of the Haunting Spirit. I'm just a little unclear about what broadening our purview might mean, exactly. I think articles along the lines of, "hey, archaeologists found these skeletons distributed across Western Tewdaria, c. 9000 cal BCE, and when geneticists ground up their bones and extracted DNA, they found that they cluster on a PCA, so they gave them an arbitrary name, which may or may not reflect the reality of 9th millennium BCE Tewdaria, which probably had quite a lot of stuff going on at this time" may well be a lot more honest, accurate, and encyclopaedic. Most of these articles are deathly boring to read (and write), and a lot of the time it's not really clear if we're talking about abstract components or actual ancient human populations.  Tewdar  11:18, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

I definitely vote for renaming the continent ‘Tewdaria’. :) Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 11:25, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

It's not a continent, we are an independent despotic microstate. 😁👍  Tewdar  11:32, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Well yes, that would be a good question to be clear on. :)

So EEF, WHG etc. are all terms used to describe findings related to ancestral components, and as I said, "groups" is not really a word I am happy with, because reality is just fuzzier around the margins, and variation is clinal. Once EEF began to interbreed with WHG a natural desire for easy classifications becomes problematic (and thats just where the problems start). But still, it is not altogether impossible to speak of EEF as an archeogenetically identified group. So, if we need EEF and WHG pages at all (and I think the WHG page has similar issues to this one), then we need them to express something about ancestral components and archeogenetics. The Neolithic Europe page begins with the territory and describes the Neolithic within it. And to be honest, the genetics section on that page is currently more informative than this page or the WHG page. We could crib some of that.

This page focuses on a population migration into Europe that would have been associated with culture and language(s) but most particularly the spread of an ancestral genetic component into Europe. But having chosen to start with the group, and describe their effect on territory and peoples, it is necessary to speak about how the group is now known through ancient DNA.

Having said all this, I am not strongly wedded to the idea of this fork from European Neolithic. I think we both recall how that came about. Everything here could be used to expand a section on that page. We could propose a merge. Yet I suspect that EEF are probably notable enough now for an article about them, and would likely become more notable in the future.

Fast forward to the Bronze Age, and there is also a question whether we need both Yamnaya culture and Western Steppe Herders - but arguably we do, with the latter being about ancestry and archeogenetics, and the two pages linking back and forth. On the other hand, having the two pages does seem to focus too strongly on the history of the identification of the groups, and if you had a Yamnaya page (don't worry - we don't! its a redirect at present), it would easily contain both aspects. The page would be quite big then, so perhaps the two page structure works. That division could be similar to one where we have Neolithic Europe against EEF/WHG.

But... the lead: that still has to introduce the subject for a general audiences o they can understand what we are talking about. If they don't know who the EEF are and where they came from or why they are important, then it really does not matter if they were shorter or taller than WHG.

Anyway, in my rambly way, I think I would summarise as:

1. We probably need this page to be about EEF as a population migration largely co-extensive with a cultural migration identified through ancestral components. This is a bit broader than what we have right now (because the page doesn't say very much!);
2. I don't think forking that out of European Neolithic is necessarily wrong; but
3. If you want to propose a merge, I would very seriously consider the proposal.

Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 20:18, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Filling in citation needed tags in the article

"During the Middle Neolithic there was a largely male-driven resurgence of WHG ancestry among many EEF-derived communities, leading to increasing frequencies of the hunter-gatherer paternal haplogroups among them.[citation needed]".

The citation needed for this entry is Mathieson, et al (2018).[4] Their observation was based on Z-score and haplogroups.

Extended content

"We provide the first evidence for sex-biased admixture between hunter-gatherers and farmers in Europe, showing that the Middle Neolithic “resurgence” of hunter-gatherer-related ancestry7,42 in central Europe and Iberia was driven more by males than by females" "To document this we used qpAdm to compute ancestry proportions on the autosomes and the X chromosome; since males always inherit a maternal X chromosome, differences imply sex-biased mixture." "Consistent with this, hunter-gatherer mitochondrial haplogroups (haplogroup U) are rare and within the intervals of genome-wide ancestry proportions, but hunter-gatherer-associated Y chromosomes (haplogroups I2, R1 and C1)17 are more common."

Hunan201p (talk) 21:48, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Maternals

Anyone else feel like the overview focuses way too much on paternals, and not enough on maternals? This is often the case in genetics articles on Wikipedia.

EEF mtDNA was brought to new corners of Eurasia.[citation needed]

Not sure which study says this, but it seems kind of like something that is original research. There was also penetrance of maternal haplogroups in to EEF and the core of Europe, both before and during the Steppe migrations, some from far-away populations and some from Steppe populations. And if I remember correclty, the eastward migrants out of Europe actually had less EEF-related mtDNA, and it became less and less over time. - Hunan201p (talk) 22:27, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

EEF mtDNA

Tobby72 recently added the following content:

EEF mtDNA however remained frequent, suggesting admixture between WSH males and EEF females.[7][8][9]

As you can see at the diff[5] they also placed a "clarify" tag on content that included an inline quotation from Pam Crabtree.

But the citations they have provided for this content do not support their edits. None of these studies say that EEF mtDNA remained common in Europe after the Steppe migrations, and one of them says little about mtDNA at all.

Where these papers do talk about mtDNA, they support the notion that steppe mtDNA lineages largely replaced non-Steppe mtDNA in Europe, with some admixture in distal geographic regions associated with Western Corded Ware cultures later in the Bronze Age (something also consistent with Crabtree), not the proximal core od Europe.

These sources are also primary studies. One of them was criticized by researchers who failed to replicate the results.

So what I'm suggesting is that this is WP:SYNTH using primary studies that fail to verify.

I'll go over the sources in three sub-sections below.

Ancient X chromosomes reveal contrasting sex bias in Neolithic and Bronze Age Eurasian migrations, Goldberg, et al (2017)

Ancient X chromosomes reveal contrasting sex bias in Neolithic and Bronze Age Eurasian migrations, Goldberg et al. (2017):

There is nothing in this study that says EEF mtDNA remained frequent in Europe. In fact it says nothing about EEF mtDNA in relation to the Steppe migrations. What it does propose is that steppe migrations had a male sex bias, based on X chromosomal ancestry relative to autosomal ancestry.

However, the authors also cautioned in their conclusion:

The mean X-chromosomal ancestry of BA males is roughly half the mean X-chromosomal ancestry of BA females, although the difference is not statistically significant with only four individuals. Although consistent with inferences from mean ancestry components, strong conclusions cannot be drawn from the variance or differences in male and female ancestry, given the current sample sizes

Note, also, that a parallel study failed to replicate Goldberg, et al (2017):

From Failure to replicate a genetic signal for sex bias in the steppe migration into central Europe., Lazaridis and Reich (2017)

"Goldberg et al. (1) used genome-wide ancient DNA data (2) from central European Bronze Age (BA) populations and their three ancestral sources of steppe pastoralists (SP), Anatolian farmers (AF), and European hunter-gatherers (HG) to investigate whether the SP migration into central Europe after 5,000 years ago (3, 4) was sex-biased." [...] "For the BA population, we estimate 61.4 ± 2.9% SP, 31.0 ± 1.2% AF, and 7.6 ± 2.9% HG ancestry using all autosomal SNPs and 67.5 ± 17% SP, 26.5 ± 6.9% AF, and 6.0 ± 16.4% HG using all X-chromosome SNPs; thus, we do not find less SP ancestry on the X chromosome" [...] "These results show that bias in the estimation of admixture proportions, rather than sex bias in the steppe migration, drives the findings of ref. 1."

The genomic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 8000 years, Olalde et al (2019)

Nowhere does this paper say that EEF mtDNA lineages remained common in Europe after the steppe migrations. In fact, it says nothing about EEF mtDNA at all. Like the previous study it uses X chromosomal ancestry to infer sex-biased migration in to Iberia, a remote, distal region of Europe, and not during the Chalcolithic or Early Bronze Ages, but from a period spanning ~2200 to 900. BCE. That is, a very long time after the Steppe migrations in to central Europe in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age.

From The genomic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 8000 years, Olalde et al (2019):

Extended content

From the Bronze Age (~2200–900 BCE) we increase the available dataset (6, 7, 17) from 7 to 60 individuals and show how ancestry from the Pontic-Caspian steppe (“Steppe ancestry”) appeared throughout Iberia in this period (Fig. 1C-D), albeit with less impact in the south (table S13). The earliest evidence is in 14 individuals dated to ~2500–2000 BCE who co-existed with local people without Steppe ancestry (Fig. 2B). These groups lived in close proximity and admixed to form the Bronze Age population after 2000 BCE with ~40% ancestry from incoming groups (Fig. 2B and fig. S6). Y-chromosome turnover was even more dramatic (Fig. 2B), as the lineages common in Copper Age Iberia (I2, G2, H) were nearly completely replaced by one lineage, R1b-M269. These patterns point to a higher contribution of incoming males than females, also supported by a lower proportion of non-local ancestry on the X-chromosome (table S14 and fig. S7), a paradigm that can be exemplified by a Bronze Age tomb from Castillejo del Bonete containing a male with Steppe ancestry and a female with ancestry similar to Copper Age Iberians. While ancient DNA can document that sex-biased admixture occurred, archaeological and anthropological research will be needed to understand the processes that generated it.

Mitochondrial genomes reveal an east to west cline of steppe ancestry in Corded Ware populations, Juras et al (2018)

Mitochondrial genomes reveal an east to west cline of steppe ancestry in Corded Ware populations, Juras et al. (2018):

Genetic similarity analyses show close maternal genetic affinities between populations associated with both eastern and Baltic Corded Ware culture, and the Yamnaya horizon, in contrast to larger genetic differentiation between populations associated with western Corded Ware culture and the Yamnaya horizon. This indicates that females with steppe ancestry contributed to the formation of populations associated with the eastern Corded Ware culture while more local people, likely of Neolithic farmer ancestry, contributed to the formation of populations associated with western Corded Ware culture.

Ok, so read very carefully here. The mitochondrial lineages in the eastern Corded Ware samples are similar to those from the Pontic Steppe, consistent with what Crabtree wrote, that the Steppe migrants inckuded both men and women, and that Steppe mtDNA replaced local mtDNA lineages in Eastern Europe. This is emphasized again in Juras, et al (2018):

Extended content

By analyzing ancient mitochondrial genomes, we show that people from the eastern and western Corded Ware culture were genetically differentiated. Individuals associated with the eastern Corded Ware culture (from present day Poland and the Czech Republic) shared close maternal genetic affinity with individuals associated with the Yamnaya horizon while the genetic differentiation between individuals associated with the western Corded Ware culture (from present-day Germany) and the Yamnaya horizon was more extensive. This decreasing cline of steppe related ancestry from east to west likely reflect the direction of the steppe migration. It also indicates that more people with steppe-related ancestry, likely both females and males, contributed to the formation of the population associated with the eastern Corded Ware culture. Similarly, closer genetic affinity to populations associated with Yamnaya horizon can be observed in Baltic Corded Ware groups, which confirms earlier indications of a direct migrations from the steppe not only to the west but also to the north, into the eastern Baltic region18,19,55. The mitochondrial data further suggests that with increased distance from the source populations of the steppe, the contribution of local people increase, which is seen as an increase of maternal lineages of Neolithic farmer ancestry in individuals associated with the western Corded Ware culture.

This again emphasizes that this paper only found that non-Steppe lineages increased with distance from the Steppe, in Western Corded Ware samples in locations like Germany. And it is still not saying anywhere that EEF lineages remained frequent in Europe.

As if it needs repeating, I'll put the concluding remarks in another collapsing packet:

Extended content

Ancient mitochondrial genome data from the western Pontic region and, for the first time, from the south-eastern part of present day Poland, show close genetic affinities between populations associated with the eastern Corded Ware culture and the Yamnaya horizon. This indicates that females had also participated in the migration from the steppe. Furthermore, greater mtDNA differentiation between populations associated with the western Corded Ware culture and the Yamnaya horizon points to an increased contribution of individuals with a maternal Neolithic farmer ancestry with increasing geographic distance from the steppe region, forming the population associated with the western Corded Ware culture.

Of all the papers here, this is the only one that talks about mtDNA lineages. It isn't saying that EEF DNA remained frequent in Europe, but that there were more non-Steppe lineages in Western Corded Ware than there were in Yamnaya or Eastern Corded Ware, a fact that is hardly surprising. This paper is acfually consistent with the findings in Crabtree's book.

What this is, is a synthesis of three studies, all primary sources, to assert facts that none of them support. One has been criticized by Lazaridis and Reich, and none cast any doubt on Crabtree's book, which is a secondary source that summarized Haak and Allentoft. The clarification tag on Crabtree was unjustified. - Hunan201p (talk) 15:42, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Bell beaker r1b <> steppe r1b

According to Papac et al 2021 the R1b found in most of europe today is not found in neither Yamnaya r1b nor Corded ware r1a peoples. To state that "R1b is WSH related" without any clarification is misleading. 2A02:85F:F8EA:FD0:1196:6628:81BC:7999 (talk) 19:25, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Article should be split into ANF and EEF

Early European Farmers are not the same as their Anatolian ancestors. They have significantly more WHG DNA and their Y haplogroups were overwhelmingly WHG in origin. This strongly implies those EEFs in Western Northern and Central Europe were ANFs conquered by WHGs and were culturally and genetically different to the more unadmixed Anatolian Farmers in Southern and Eastern Europe, who also had different Y haplogroups. So why are the two conflated together in a single article as if they are the same thing? Ganggangcockatoo (talk) 19:11, 12 June 2023 (UTC)