Talk:Ancient East Eurasians

Misspelling, against prior consensus

@Wikiuser1314: If not used as a modifier (like in "East-Eurasian people"), "East Eurasian" should be spelled without hyphen. Since there already was a discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2019_July_1#Eastern_Eurasian, and since "East Eurasian" has the same meaning, you should first try to get consensus before creating a new article. Also: This article would need secondary (sic) sources to support the claim that "East Eurasian" really is a term used for a grouping. Rsk6400 (talk) 13:22, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

OMG...Wikiuser1314 (talk) 13:53, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

@पाटलिपुत्र: Please respect consensus. I'd also like to see a good secondary source to support the claim. Rsk6400 (talk) 14:17, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Really, nothing is against concensus. This is a whole different topic. It has nothing to do with the geographic region of Eurasia, nor with any fringe historical race concepts, but refers to a specific population genomic lineage, associated with the Initial Upper-Paleolithic dispersal wave, as opposed to the earlier wave associated with Zlaty Kun, and the later Upper-Paleolithic wave associated with so called "West-Eurasians"...Wikiuser1314 (talk) 14:20, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Many references here. Not anything like a stub with no referencing. Nothing to do with "Eurasia" as a geographical subject. Quite well-known topic in genomics. पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 14:22, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Yep, I could imagine to rename as "East-Eurasian ancestry" or "Genetic history of East-Eurasians", but that is IMO nonsensical.Wikiuser1314 (talk) 14:24, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

If understood as an ancestry lineage, "East Eurasian" is very much a thing and found in dozens of primary studies and a handful of top-quality secondary sources. And this is how this article presents it. @Rsk6400: Like you, I would be very unhappy if someone did an article about present-day "East Eurasian people", since population genetics is not about taxonomy (or bluntly speaking, racism through the backdoor, as LTA @Vamlos has been trying to push all over the place). But this is not the case here.

So basically it's a good topic that just needs to be spelled properly. BUT: this is a fast-evolving field. It's ok to present temporary working models as long they are supported by secondary sources, but we shouldn't set them in stone by producing an article for every sub-cluster in the present working model (like ANEA, ANA and what not). Putting all into a broad overview is more practical and easier to maintain.

Just my 2 cents. –Austronesier (talk) 14:25, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

The recent paper on the Villabruna Oberkassel cluster (wait, is that right?) is a good example of why this is probably a good idea.  Tewdar  14:42, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

The article is fine and well sourced. We could maybe lose the hyphen...  Tewdar  14:26, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

@Tewdar: What's your take on having finegrained hierarchical articles about Ancient Northeast Asian and Ancient Northern East Asian etc.? I don't think that our knowledge has reached a stable equilibrium yet. –Austronesier (talk) 14:29, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

They're popping up like St. George's mushrooms! I'm starting to favour the "Genetic history of..." approach...  Tewdar  14:36, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Wait... there are two articles that are the same?  Tewdar  14:31, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps we could merge the ANA into the ANEA (as own section), to prevent redundancy. Another question: Should we keep the article "East-Eurasian ancestry" or this article (just "East-Eurasian")? As I simultaneously created another one to prevent confsion with Eurasia (lol)...Wikiuser1314 (talk) 14:33, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Just redirected to East-Eurasian.Wikiuser1314 (talk) 14:36, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

How about "Ancient East Eurasians"?  Tewdar  14:37, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Yep, would also make sense.Wikiuser1314 (talk) 14:41, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

For a broad topic, East Eurasian would be enough, IMO. But "Ancient" would help to bar to include too much about modern populations here. After all, the Kostenki and Tianyuan individuals are still closer too each other (drift-wise) than each is to modern populations that mostly harbour West Eurasian and East Eurasian ancestry, respectively. (Most people forget this when they think of Kostenki and Tianyuan as "European" and "Asian" with all the baggage of phenotypical stereotypes.) –Austronesier (talk) 14:57, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

I expect 'Initial Upper Paleolithic Ancestry' will get more popular soon...  Tewdar  15:00, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Austronesier, thanks for clarifying. Wikiuser1314, sorry that I was a bit rash. I'd support renaming to "Ancient East Eurasians". Rsk6400 (talk) 06:01, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

On a related note - 'Phylogenetic structure of Eastern Eurasians' image file

There are two primary issues with this image

• It is not a reproduction of an image from the two referenced sources but is user generated, created based on personal analysis of the two sources. In other words, it should not be used since it contravenes WP:NOR.
• Yang et al (as well as the research it refers (Narasimhan et al)), talks about a trifurcation model, that is the AASI is one of the three main branches, the other two being Australasian (AA) lineage, and East and Southeast Asian (ESEA). But in the image, the "AASI" is included within the larger 'ESEA part' of the tree, which per sources should form a third branch. Andamanese Onge, having a deep divergence with the AASI, is closer to Australasians per Narasimhan [1]. The excerpts from Yang et al source:

The branches predominantly associated with present-day Asian populations include the Ancient Ancestral South Indian (AASI) lineage, Australasian (AA) lineage, and East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) lineage"

Lineages found in Asia and Australasia that contributed to ancestries that would shape present-day Asians and Australasians

Ancient Ancestral South Indian (AASI) lineage—this lineage refers to an ancestral population that primarily contributed to humans living in South Asia, particularly southern India. Partially represented in 5,000–1,500-year-old individuals from in or near the Indus Periphery and present-day Indians [59,60].

Australasian (AA) lineage—this lineage refers to the ancestral population that primarily contributed to human populations in Australasia, or the region consisting of Australia, New Zealand, and neighboring islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Represented primarily by present-day Australasians, e.g. Papuans and Aboriginal Australians.

East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) lineage—this lineage refers to an ancestral population that primarily contributed to humans living in mainland East and Southeast Asia. Represented primarily by present-day East and Southeast Asians, e.g. Han and Kinh.

Pinging @Austronesier, Tewdar, and पाटलिपुत्र: - 117.201.119.86 (talk) 16:03, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

I have also questioned this (and another thing) in Commons:File talk:Phylogenetic structure of Eastern Eurasians.png. –Austronesier (talk) 16:20, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Already overworking, I had the graph from Tianyi Wang et al. 2020 in my head. I Will base it on Yangs trifurication model (probably the least controversial).Wikiuser1314 (talk) 16:25, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Treemix phylogenies are always problematic for our purposes. People will read more into it than intended by the authors. The same holds for PCAs and qpGraph diagrams. Secondary sources rarely go into such a level of detail. An interesting exception for our purposes is Figure 1 in Zhang & Fu (2020)[2]. –Austronesier (talk) 16:43, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

I have adjusted the phylogenetic graph according to Yang 2022 (see also description), and additionally uploaded their graphic representation of "major Asian ancestries", which may be used here or elsewhere.Wikiuser1314 (talk) 17:57, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

A lot of that makes its way into our prose, so we end up with primary source says "we got this admixture graph to give us a reasonable fit, so we could model population C as 50% population A and 50% population B" > wikivoice "Population C are literally 50/50 actual descendents of population A and population B"  Tewdar  18:55, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it is a big problem that statistical best fits too often are taken at face value, including less robust ones that haven't been corroborated in other studies. It's lovely to see that people are interested in these things and enthusiastically want to share here all the stuff that they have read about, but it requires some "literacy" in order to produce articles that are genuinely beneficial to our readers. –Austronesier (talk) 21:25, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

On a positive note, I think Wikiuser1314 has made a good start on the new East-Eurasian article, just need to get rid of a few hyphens. 😁  Tewdar  21:43, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Inclusion of Ancient Tibetan lineage with other lineages

@Wikiuser1314 I was wondering if we should move the text about the Ancient Tibetan lineage into the section where it discusses the AA, AASI and ESEA lineages, what do you think? (Saouirse (talk) 14:14, 16 May 2023 (UTC))

It's a bit problematic as long as we take Yang (2022) as base for the broad outline, since it is the main source for the three bullet points. Adding the Philippine Negritos is fine, since they are explicitly mentioned in that source, but the deeply divered Tibetan ghost lineage is only mentioned in passing and as a tentative possibility ("Thus, the currently sampled Tibetan populations fall within the genetic diversity observed in northern East Asians, although sampling of ancient individuals is needed to determine if Tibetans possess deeply diverging ancestry local to the plateau, as has been suggested previously"). Maybe too weak for a bullet point of its own. –Austronesier (talk) 15:57, 16 May 2023 (UTC)