UKR035AB in high quality 23andme format

The Slavs are one of the most mysterious ethnic groups. Historians and population geneticists find it hard to pinpoint their origin, and it seems that Slavs sort of spawned in Europe out of nowhere in the early medieval period. In this video, I will share the DNA results of an unmistakably Slavic sample from the 7th century BCE. This person lived near Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine in the Iron age.

This sample is very peculiar. It is an example of a case where archeology clearly contrasts with genetics. According to archeological findings from Ukraine, there shouldn’t be any Slavs there at this time, instead it should be populated by Scythians. And yet this sample is clearly Slavic genetically.

This sample is around half steppe in origin, with the rest of its ancestry being split between anatolian farmer and western hunter gatherer. This is a typical breakdown for Ukrainians, southern Poles, and Slovaks. Going further back in time, roughly half of his ancestry goes back to the globular amphora culture, while the rest of his ancestry can be attributed to the steppe. Contrary to popular belief, Iranian neolithic farmer ancestry was present in early Steppe people and Europeans do score Zagros on qpAdm.

This sample is the earliest clearly Slavic sample we have. It is interesting that he’s got a significant contribution from the Balkans. It seems that the Balkan substrate was present in Slavs from the very beginning.

According to G25, this sample is closest to modern Slovaks and southwest ukrainians.

According to Fst analysis computed with admixtools2, this sample is most similar to ukrainians, belarusians, russians, and other europeans. It is quite distant from the Finns.

He carried a very Slavic Y lineage, R1a-Z282, which is common in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland.

Now let’s look at his Trait Predictor results.