Talk:Yamnaya culture

The dark Yamnaya hoax (again)

For the details, see this archived talk page discussion.

Wikipedia has been the victim of an enduring hoax, which is that the Yamnaya were "overwhelmingly" dark skinned and dark haired. This hoax has been debunked time and time again on multiple talk pages, and yet there are still people like 213.162.73.204 who are trying to keep it alive.

The fact of the matter is that the Yamnaya were not dark skinned or dark haired, and there is not a single scientific study ever published that says that, anywhere. As revealed in the archived talk page discussion above, this insidious idea has absolutely no support whatsoever from the cited research.

What the cited research does make clear, however, is:

they are fair skinned but have dark eye colors

- Kossina's smile, V. Heyd.

Interestingly, ancient North Eurasian derived populations, such as eastern hunter-gatherers and Yamnayas, carried the blond hair allele rs12821256 of the KITLG gene to Europe.[66] Its first evidence was described in an 18 000 years old ancient North Eurasian west of Lake Baikal (Figure 2, right). It is important to note that the four major founding populations of Eurasians, which were farmers of the Fertile Crescent (including western Anatolia), farmers of Iran, hunter-gatherers of central and western Europe as well as of eastern Europe (Figure 2, right), genetically differed from each other probably as much as today’s Europeans to East Asians.[77] Thus, the classic light phenotype of Europeans became frequent only within the past 5000 years[3, 56, 70] and owes its origin to migrants from Near East and western Asia.[48]

Differences in the relative admixture of ancient hunter-gatherers, Anatolian farmers, Yamnaya pastoralists and Siberians explain the variations in skin and hair pigmentation, eye colour, body stature and many other traits of present Europeans.[60, 74, 78, 79] The rapid increase in population size due to the Neolithic revolution,[64, 80] such as the use of milk products as food source for adults and the rise of agriculture,[81] as well as the massive spread of Yamnaya pastoralists likely caused the rapid selective sweep in European populations towards light skin and hair.

- Skin color and vitamin D: an update, A. Hanel, C. Carlberg

So, to continue perpetuating the Yamnaya hosx with statements like "The peoples of the Yamnaya culture were predominantly dark-eyed (brown), dark-haired and had a skin colour that was moderately light, though somewhat darker than that of the average modern European," should be considered vandalism. There is nothing in Heyd or Hanel that supports this blatant falsehood. Hunan201p (talk) 12:28, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The biggest hoax, however, is the idea that scholarship even aims to make blanket statements about the physical appearance of the people of the Yamnaya culture. The idea that archeological "cultures" represent homogeneous populations equivalent to ethnic groups is long abandoned in mainstream archeology. The principle ancestry components of Yamnaya samples are well-understood from aDNA research, and it is this very research that shows that societies associated with the Yamnaya culture were diverse and permeable, just as the peoples of the steppe in later millenia. The Neolithic steppe was not a place of ice-age isolation and population bottlenecks which produced the epipaleolithic ancestry components. This whole emphasis on physical appearance in an article about an archeological topic is essentialy a projection of long-discarded ideologies of "racial purity" and "racially" homogenous populations to paleohistory. I suggest (and will boldly do so) to throw out the entire subsection "Physical characteristics" as long as it only consists of simplistic cherry-picked platitudes. –Austronesier (talk) 14:26, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. We shouldn't have a whole section based just on passing mentions in primary aDNA studies. The one secondary source that straightforwardly states what Yamnaya people looked like (so not requiring any synthesis on our part]]) is the Heyd paper, and reading that in context it's clear that he's critiquing, even mocking, such blanket statements. – Joe (talk) 14:53, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Heyd's paper displays an interesting mix of fascination with the powerful methods of archeogenetics and this eerie feeling "haven't we seen this all before?". Heyd (2017) was thought-provoking, but often gets misunderstood. –Austronesier (talk) 15:09, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Heyd does, however, make direct and unambiguous statements about the Yamnaya allele frequencies affecting height, skin pigmentation, eye-colour and lactase persistence. I would assert that the pigmentation content of the Mathieson (2015) and Allentoft (2015) and a number of other papers has huge socio-political importance. They collectively give the lie to Nazi racial theory - blue eyes are essentially a 'primitive' pan-European feature - blondism is at least partly a development within Baltic area Mesolithic peoples and the bringers of superior technology, horse domestication and possibly the Indo-European languages were neither particularly blond nor blue-eyed. Urselius (talk) 15:48, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure we knew that Nazi racial theory was garbage some time before Haak et al. 2015. – Joe (talk) 15:58, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Agree. And I want to add that it is highly problematic when this Nazi-age garbage is "refuted" with narratives that revive the same outdated paradigms, just with opposite content. –Austronesier (talk) 16:19, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

There is nothing in Haak, Mathieson or Wilde that supports any of Urselius's statements. All three papers are primary research. Heyd (2017) states clearly that the Corded Ware bringers of "superior technology, horse domestication and possibly Indo-European languages" were more likely to be blue eyed. Hunan201p (talk) 15:52, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Heyd absolutely does not. You are just making things up. In the paper he makes only one reference to pigmentation, when he says that the Yamnaya had light coloured skin and dark eye colours, he does not mention hair colour once. Do you read what is on the page, or just whatever construct is in your head? Urselius (talk) 19:24, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

More to the above, from Frieman & Hoffman (2019):

This is particularly ironic because geneticists suggest that the subsequent Corded Ware period was characterised by a population of tall, light-skinned and often blue-eyed people (Allentoft et al. 2015; Reich 2018, 20, 110–21). In other words, these eastern migrants were masculine and violent, while western Europe was productive, technologically advanced, stable, and feminine (cf. Whitaker 2019). Therefore, this model of violent invasion from the east on the one hand plays on fears about cultural extinction fomented by demagogic and right-wing reporting about contemporary migration, while on the other also promotes a narrative of (biological and social) domination by pale, blue-eyed men.

Urselius's every idea seems to be completely contradicted by secondary research, so this "man on a mission" to right Nazi wrongs by writing his own reviews, using primary research that doesn't even say what he wants it to say, ought to be treated with skepticism. Hunan201p (talk) 16:01, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The objective of Wikipedia is to mirror current mainstream scholarship with WP:due weight. How many RS from archeologists about the Yamnaya culture actually deal with the question of skin color of Yamnaya samples? It is telling that Anthony – who has been at the spearhead of the migration-over-diffusion revival – explicitly discusses how little value there is in putting too much weight into outward physical characteristics:

• Skin color is a powerful element in the cultural construct of race, but the genes for skin color are a minor part of the 3.2 billion base pairs comprising the whole human genome. Our acute attention to skin color and its entanglement with modern concepts of race makes it easy for us to assume that any study that includes skin-color genes must be about them, but in fact these genes have almost no effect on how individuals are combined into mating networks, lineages, and other kinds of groups in genetic ancestry studies. – Anthony, D. (2020), "Ancient DNA, Mating Networks, and the Anatolian Split" in M. Serangeli and T. Olander (eds.), Dispersals and Diversification Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives on the Early Stages of Indo-European, Leiden: Brill, 21–53.

Another example: Furholt (2021) talks a lot about the Yamnaya culture in his latest paper "Mobility and Social Change: Understanding the European Neolithic Period after the Archaeogenetic Revolution", but there is nil about skin complexion and eye color. The historical distribution of these may be covered in articles like Genetic history of Europe, but is WP:UNDUE here. –Austronesier (talk) 16:51, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The aDNA of the Yamnaya samples seems to reveal a genetically quite homogeneous population who probably had predominant phenotypes of dark hair and eyes and light skin. Why is this suggestion apparently so offensive? Tewdar (talk) 05:36, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

What really is offensive, however, is this statement by Hunan201p:

So, to continue perpetuating the Yamnaya hosx with statements like "The peoples of the Yamnaya culture were predominantly dark-eyed (brown), dark-haired and had a skin colour that was moderately light, though somewhat darker than that of the average modern European," should be considered vandalism.

Tewdar (talk) 05:43, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

So now there is a very small summary of what people of the Yamnaya culture might have looked like supported by two high quality secondary (Science, Heyd) and one primary (Mathieson) source. Tewdar (talk) 06:28, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Also, you do understand that very few Yamnaya people had the rs12821256 SNP, right? Right? Tewdar (talk) 06:54, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

And that statements about the physical appearance of Corded Ware peoples don't necessarily apply to Yamnaya peoples, right? Right? Tewdar (talk) 06:55, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier & @Joe: Please take a look at the changes I have made at your convenience. Tewdar (talk) 11:19, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

@Tedwar: Looks good, thanks for your great contributions. The statement about physical appearance is more balanced and less sexed-up, but something more up-to-date than Gibbons (2015) would be good. The Science report came in the middle of the hype around Haak et al. (2015), and some insights have become more differentiated since then.

About the pros and cons regarding the "Yamnaya > Corded Ware"-debate: I'll add some more information from Furholt (2021) later, who gives a nice overview about it (inspite of two little blunders which have been fixed in an update).

And even if it's gets ad nauseam, we should keep three lessons from Heyd (2017) in mind (disclaimer, I'm not an archeologists):

• 1) Archeogeneticists tend to co-opt archeological paradigms (e.g. cultural historicism) which best explain their data, or provide the easiest match with their data.
• 2) Archeologists must play an active role in the historical interpretation of aDNA data.
• 3) Things have just begun. Haak et al. was a trailblazer, but in Heyd's words: "These are indeed great results, assembled within a short span of time, and they will certainly not be the last of their kind".

Points 1) and 2) are important, since there is a widespread bias towards the idea that archeogenetics is the primary key to our understanding of the past, and that researchers of that field should set the tone. But hey, it's a tool. AFAIK, Willard Libby was more modest in this respect. He taught us how to date, but left it to others to draw wide-ranging conclusions from it. –Austronesier (talk) 14:10, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

"A widespread bias towards the idea that archeogenetics is the primary key to our understanding of the past"?! Not amongst archaeologists, surely? ;-) Tewdar (talk) 14:47, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Well, among the latter there is a correlation between their willingness to hand over the steer, and the degree of confirmation that comes from aDNA for their theories which they had developed before the emergence of aDNA research. ;) –Austronesier (talk) 15:14, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

@Tewdar: "Also, you do understand that very few Yamnaya people had the rs12821256 SNP, right? Right?" You do understand you haven't provided a single reliable source that says that, right?

The Corded Ware quote was provided in response to Urselius who erroneously claimed that the Steppe invaders of Europe were not light skinned or blue eyed. They were. If you were offended by anything I have said here, there's something off with your sensibilities. Hunan201p (talk) 15:04, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

"Steppe invaders" != Corded Ware people != Yamnaya people. Tewdar (talk) 16:14, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

The Corded Ware culture was a North-Central European culture, not a steppe culture. Corded Ware is not found on the steppes at all, it is found principally on the North European Plain, which is definitely not a steppe. Corded Ware seems to be a product of Yamnaya (a bona fide steppe culture) interaction with northern European cultures and people. The Yamnaya have been shown to have not been of 'Nordic' colouration, whatever their mixed descendants may have been. You seem to have an unhealthy fixation on blondism. Urselius (talk) 06:53, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Gibbons

@Hunan201p: Do you even have access to Gibbons (2015)? It's there on p. 366: "The results, published in February, showed that the Yamnaya were the source of a massive migration of herders who swept into the heartland of Europe on horseback about 5000 years ago ... Anthony got some of his questions answered: The Yamnaya had brown eyes, brown hair, and light skin." Verbatim. –Austronesier (talk) 15:48, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Yamnaya height selection

Quoting from the archaeogenetics section:

A study in 2015 found that Yamnaya had the highest ever calculated genetic selection for height of any of the ancient populations tested.[41][42]

Is there actually a reliable source out there that suggests this?

Reference [42] is Eight thousand years of natural selection in Europe - Mathieson (2015). Its citation is a preprint. I have not searched through this pre-print because it isn't even admissable as a reference here. The actual published study is Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians. Neither it nor the supplementary document appear to contain any statements to the genetic selection of the Yamnaya as compared with other ancient populations tested. In the "Evidence of selection on height" section of the paper, it does state that steppe populations in general appear to have increased selection for height. But none of 30 references to the keyword "Yamnaya" relate to their height, specifically.

The question remains, where in Heyd (2017) does he state that Yamnaya were genetically selected for height more so than "any" other ancient populations -- including other steppe populations? I only have access to the pre-print and it's too difficult to verify by searching, because it's a crappy PDF file. Hunan201p (talk) 16:48, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Heyd 2017 - "Yamnaya peoples have the highest ever calculated genetic selection for stature (Mathieson et al. 2015)" Tewdar (talk) 17:08, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Fixed erroneous preprint reference. Tewdar (talk) 17:15, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for that quote and also for the pre-print fix, but @Joe Roe: has suggested that Heyd is critiquing rather than endorsing such an idea. Hunan201p (talk) 17:33, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Heyd is reporting and summarising what the Mathieson paper says. Has a reliable secondary source endorsed @Joe Roe:'s supposed interpretation of what Heyd is supposedly really saying about what the Mathieson paper says? If not, we should probably just report what Heyd writes. Tewdar (talk) 17:42, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree with you, but will be waiting for our friend Joe to comment (if he pleases). Hunan201p (talk) 17:48, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Are you as inclined to accept that in the same paragraph Heyd says that the Yamnya had dark eye colouration? It is from the same paragraph in the same publication, it must carry the same scholarly weight. Urselius (talk) 06:59, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Yamnaya - tall, brown hair, brown eyes, relatively pale skin. This has high quality and reliable sources that are cited in the article. Anyone disputing this now needs to provide a source of equal quality that clearly says otherwise, NOT dodgy original research based upon false personal interpretation of genetics data that is not properly understood (=Hunan201p). Tewdar (talk) 08:03, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

@Tewdar: Please stop insulting my intelligence. The only person who is misunderstanding anything here is you. You have one source (Gibbons) that describes Yamnaya as brown haired, while Heyd (2017) makes no mention of Yamnaya having brown hair. it was already demonstrated, with Urselius's concession, that neither Mathieson, Haak, or Wilde say anything about Yamnaya hair color. Meanwhile, several other references say nothing about Yamnaya having brown hair, while others mention that they were responsible for turning other populations blond.

Here, this is just a sample:

Vitamin D and Evolution: Pharmacological Implications - Andrea Hanel

Yamnaya had high body stature, brown eyes and lighter skin due to a SLC45A2 SNP in addition to the SLC24A5 variant.

Dawn of a continent - Colin Barras

In appearance, the Yamnaya might not have been too different from the early farmers – light-skinned and probably with dark eyes, although there is evidence to suggest they may have been taller [...]

Kossina's smile - Viktor Heyd

Yamnaya peoples have the highest ever calculated genetic selection for stature; [...] (8) they are fair-skinned but have dark eye colours; blue eyes can be seen more often in the CWC

So what we see here are three sources of equal or superior quality to your singular, inaccurate source (Science Magazine - Ann Gibbons) which says Yamnaya were brown haired. My sources make no mention of brown hair, and we already demonstrated in the archived talk page from 2020 that none of the primary research says Yamnaya were brown haired.

What this means is that we have a conflict of sources - my three sources vs your singular source. But that's not all:

Skin color and vitamin D: An update (Hanel and Carlberg) makes no mention at all of Yamnaya having brown hair, despite being a lengthy review article specifically concerning pigmentation. On the contrary, they say this:

The Anatolian farmers had rather short body stature and predominantly brown eyes, which explains the key anthropomorphic traits of today’s southern Europeans, in contrast to Yamnayas, who had a high body stature and settled preferentially in northern Europe.[3, 74] Moreover, these steppe pastoralists brought the horse, the wheel and Indo-European languages.[66, 74-76] Interestingly, ancient North Eurasian derived populations, such as eastern hunter-gatherers and Yamnayas, carried the blond hair allele rs12821256 of the KITLG gene to Europe.[66]

And also:

The rapid increase in population size due to the Neolithic revolution,[64, 80] such as the use of milk products as food source for adults and the rise of agriculture,[81] as well as the massive spread of Yamnaya pastoralists likely caused the rapid selective sweep in European populations towards light skin and hair

Again, there is no mention of Yamnaya brown hair in this article.

So if you're going to come clean with the community, stop saying you have multiple sources that suggest Yamnaya were brown haired, and provide them. If you can't do that, you're wasting your time. Hunan201p (talk) 14:47, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Hanel & Carlberg say that "ANE-derived populations, such as eastern hunter-gatherers and Yamnayas, carried the blond hair allele...to Europe". An earlier version of Hunan201p's text went: "the Yamnaya migrations were probably the root source of the light skin and blond hair of modern Europeans". I hope we won't see this phrasing again.

If you go to Figure 2 in Hanel & Carlberg (2020), you will see that Yamnayans are described as a mix of CHG and EHG, but not stereotyped for appearance as other "groups". For CHG, there is an accompanying text that goes "origin of blue eyes, light skin", for EHG, it reads "light/intermediate skin, variable eye color, some with blonde hair". So Hanel & Carlberg don't commit to say Yamnayans looked like this or that (except for them being tall). The only source that is bold enough to make a clear statement about hair color is the Science report by Gibbons. –Austronesier (talk) 15:19, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

But unfortunately, there is an accuracy dispute with Gibbons, as three other sources (one contemporaneous, two newer) do not mention hair color, nor does the primary research (Haak, Mathieson, Wilde, Allentoft) they cite. Since the subject matter is not of great importance, and the conflicting sources are numerous, this means the reference to brown hair should be removed. The mentioning of Yamnaya being likely responsible for the transmission of blond hair genetics is of no different reasoning than the content about selection for tallness. Hunan201p (talk) 15:26, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Why then mention the "Yamnaya being likely responsible for the transmission of blond hair genetics" while omitting other groups (EHG)? –Austronesier (talk) 15:30, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Hanel and Carlberg state that that the "rapid" selective sweep that affected Europe as a whole was generated by Yamnaya. That's what they're referring to. While yes, there were much less profound events earlier in European prehistory, like the EHG donation to Western Hunter Gatherers, creating blond SHG, these were much less impactful than the later steppe migrations. These populations also appear to have been genetic dead-ends. What is relevant here is the rapid, huge Yamnaya sweep that is suggested to have lent blond hair to the modern Europeans. David Reich said something similar. Hunan201p (talk) 15:40, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

For alleles giving rise to light skin colour, you need to look at Fig 3 in Mathieson et al. 2015. In the graph for rs16891982 in the gene SLC45A2 within this figure, it shows frequencies in ancient people 'of steppe descent' fall short of the frequencies found in all the various modern European populations. Anyone can look at a simple graph and deduce what it means, scientist use graphs to concisely convey information. Also, in the text, it is stated, "The second strongest signal in our analysis is at the derived allele of rs16891982 in SLC45A2, which contributes to light skin pigmentation and is almost fixed in present-day Europeans but occurred at much lower frequency in ancient populations". I would assert that "ancient populations" most definitely includes the Yamnaya. Urselius (talk) 16:52, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

The article used to say something like "with moderately light skin pigmentation (but darker than modern western Europeans)", but some people kept finding reasons to remove that, so now it just quotes the secondary source, almost verbatim. Tewdar (talk) 18:16, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia is dysfunctional in regard to reporting primary scientific papers, as you might be intruding your own interpretation. However, direct quotations may be a way to circumvent this difficulty. This raises another difficulty, scientists often use graphs or tables to efficiently convey data, but it is impossible to quote a graph. Urselius (talk) 18:52, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I changed Yamnaya's pigmentation again. They'll probably be dark skinned, purple eyed and red haired tomorrow. Tewdar (talk) 19:12, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

No mention of South Caucauses/Iranian influence

Interestingly, there is no mention of the Iranian/South Caucauses influence on Yamnaya, even though most researchers (Reich, Wang, and Max Plank Institute) have repeatedly noted the clear influence from Iranian and the South Caucauses. Most of the "CHG" component conflated, is actually Iranian in origin. In other words, transitively, the Yamnaya were Iranian/S. Caucasian, according to a lot of recent studies in the field.

Read carefully. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:06, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Parpola (2015): Late Tripolye → Yamnaya

We cite Parpola (2015) for the hypothesis that the Yamnaya culture is the result of an expansion of the Late Tripolye culture in to the steppe and subsequent fusion with local pastoralist cultures. I've seen now in Mallory (1989) on p. 243 that he attributes a pretty similar narrative (which he rejects) to Colin Renfrew (Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins, 1987). Two questions here: 1) Is anyone of you sufficiently familiar with Renfrew's book so we could mention him here too? 2) What is the critical reception of Parpola's more recent proposal? His argument is of course somewhat peripheral to the main topic of his book, but I'm sure this must have elicited some response from peers. –Austronesier (talk) 16:35, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm unacquanited with Renfrew; Parpola's proposal seems unlikely, as far as I can see, but I've forgotten why. And it's my conclusiin; I don't know of any review of this particular idea, except that it doesn't seem to have gained any traction. How exactly Yamnaya and CW are related is still a mystery. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 17:54, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

It's unlikely because Trypillia and Yamnaya material culture have practically nothing in common (quite remarkable, given that they were next door neighbours). Parpola's hypothesis, if he hasn't expanded on it in another publication, is also just a paragraph of speculation with no corroborating archaeological or genetic evidence. Unless others have picked up on it, I don't think it's due weight to include it here. – Joe (talk) 21:31, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

The only other publication by Parpola I have found about it is this paper presented at WeCIEC, which has only 22 citations on Google Scholar[1], and most of these focus on the wheel part of his hypothesis. Searching for "Parpola"+"Tripolye"+"Yamnaya" (plus "Trypillia" + "Yamna" in all possible permutations) gives even less results. Per @Joe, I agree to remove this as a peripheral low-impact pet theory of an otherwise notable and eminent scholar. –Austronesier (talk) 14:33, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Does this fall under MEDRS?

A 2022 study by Marnetto et al. found that high levels of Yamnaya ancestry in modern populations is associated with a strong physique, larger hips and waist, increased height, black hairs, and high cholesterol concentrations.

Any comments... yes, you at the back, no not you Hunan201p... 😁  Tewdar  11:24, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Yo Tewdar, I basically agree with Hunan201p not to cite Marnetto et al. here, although probably for different (and less "legally" defined) reasons. It's a new, still uncited research paper, which I generally discourage to use, and its main content is about physical features of present-day populations—a potential minefield and prone to abuse by the wandering circus of identity ideologists and other chauvinists from all corners of Europe (and wider Eurasia).

I don't want to cite WP:MEDRS here, but just WP:UNDUE. The (in)famous RfC at RSN says: However, primary sources describing genetic or genomic research into human ancestry, ancient populations, ethnicity, race, and the like, should not be used to generate content about those subjects, which are controversial. High quality secondary sources as described above should be used instead. Genetic studies of human anatomy or phenotypes like intelligence should be sourced per WP:MEDRS". @Hunan201p: it says should, not must. The world isn't always as it should be, and there often good reasons for it. We all know that there are few review-type secondary sources in the field (because the most prolific cutting-edge researchers don't have time for it), and those which exist aren't necessarily "high quality", but rather perfunctory and defective. And even if there's a good secondary review article (like this one), it won't keep incompetent LTAs from citing the very parts of the study which contain novel terminology or categories instead of the actual summary of previous research. We can cite high quality primary sources if they are much-cited and well-supported by subsequent research. Narasimhan et al. is a prime example for due inclusion in relevant WP articles. –Austronesier (talk) 14:11, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, zero citations is stretching things a bit too far I think. 😂  Tewdar  16:37, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Marnetto, et al. actually did run a GWAS analysis on Yamnaya, and found that in contrast to the Estonian results, Yamnaya were more likely to have light eyes and light hair than dark hair or light eyes. They also predicted atypical phenotypical results for Western Hunter Gatherers (see the WHG GW plot indicating blond hair odds), in conflict with virtually every other study conducted prior. See graph 3, figure B. So if we include Marnetto we should definitely mention that their predictions for the Yamnaya themselves were light hair + light eyes, rather than the Estonian experiment which the authors suggest are not reflective of Yamnaya. -- Hunan201p (talk) 03:54, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Nevertheless I am against adding for reasons Austronesier mentioned + WP:MEDRS, since the paper does include risk factors. The standards exist for a reason. - Hunan201p (talk) 03:50, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

@Hunan201p: - Yamnaya were more likely to have light eyes and light hair than dark hair or light eyes. - if we were to include this article, we should probably go with the authors' stated conclusions, though, rather than trying to interpret the candidate region or whole-genome results ourselves and coming up with (incorrect) WP:OR like this.  Tewdar  09:02, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm also assuming you meant to say "... than dark hair or dark eyes" above.  Tewdar  09:17, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

@Tewdar: Please demonstrate where I was incorrect in my statement aside from the typo. The pigmentation GWAS results are in figure B, and clearly show that Yamnaya are shifted toward light eyes and light hair. As stated by the authors:

An enriched Yamnaya ancestry in the pigmentation candidate regions, in contrast with the genome wide analysis, is linked to dark eye and hair colors, consistently with what inferred from aDNA data from the Baltic region6.

- Hunan201p (talk) 09:24, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Is that from the pre-print? That sentence did not make it through peer review. Why do you consider the whole genome data to be the most "important" part of the study?  Tewdar  09:35, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Just because the exact sentence is not in the Cell Biology paper doesn't mean it isn't there. I know it is, but can't retrieve it now. The GWAS data from Yamnaya aDNA is the most relevant to this article, because the article is about Yamnaya. To quote Austronesier, this study is mainly ...about physical features of present-day populations, and what you're adding is exactly that. The only thing relevant to Yamnaya in this paper is the actual GWAS study using their DNA samples. The paper actually acknowledges that the ancestry-trait associations are not reflective of the ancient population's phenotypes, so to add the paper's suggestion that Yamnaya ancestry is linked to hip size, or cholesterol, or whatever, in Estonians, is not really appropriate. Especially since it's a primary source. - Hunan201p (talk) 09:43, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Verbatim: An enriched Yamnaya ancestry is linked to a strong build, with tall stature (in agreement with previous studies6,8) and increased hip and waist circumferences, both at genome-wide and region-specific levels, but also to black hairs and high-cholesterol concentrations when focusing on candidate regions.The associations of Yamnaya and WHG ancestries to respectively higher and lower cholesterol levels, together with the observed signatures of selection at loci connected to cholesterol and BMI, add a new component to our understanding of post-neolithic dietary adaptation with potential implications to disease risk and outcomes in present-day populations.  Tewdar  09:57, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

The paper actually acknowledges that the ancestry-trait associations are not reflective of the ancient population's phenotypes - well, here's what they say in the published paper: Importantly, our inferences are applicable to contemporary individuals of European ancestry, where the phenotypes were collected. Conversely, using them to extrapolate features of ancient populations, although tempting, should be done with caution due to the interaction of their genetic legacy with a radically different lifestyle and environment. Furthermore, when seeking a biological interpretation of our results, it should be kept in mind that certain narrowly defined, contemporary phenotypes such as caffeine consumption may point to broader biological pathways.  Tewdar  10:06, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Ok, so the Yamnaya ancestry-trait relation does corroborate ancient DNA results for hip size, height and build, but not for black hair or cholesterol levels, as shown by the GWAS data. But selectively quoting that passage doesn't change the fact the authors clearly said that "...the researchers stressed that the links between a trait and a given ancestry was not an indication that it was predominant in a particular ancient population or absent in all other groups. Environment and other evolutionary forces have to be considered too, they said". - Hunan201p (talk) 10:07, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Importantly, our inferences are applicable to contemporary individuals of European ancestry, where the phenotypes were collected... but not ancient individuals of Yamnaya ancestry. - Hunan201p (talk) 10:11, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

but not ancient individuals of Yamnaya ancestry. - no, this is not what they say. This is your own original interpretation of text which I literally just gave you. They say that Conversely, using them to extrapolate features of ancient populations, although tempting, should be done with caution  Tewdar  10:24, 2 May 2022 (UTC)