Interesting tidbit from David Reich’s talk, referring to the earliest ANI/ASI work: “We now know in unpublished work from our laboratory that Europeans are anciently mixed just like South Asians”.

From:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/10/ichg-2011-webcast.html

I meant that in the context of European population history, a single data point doesn’t give you all that much information. Of course, if the autosomal DNA turns out to be very close to some current northern Italians, then you have some indication of continuity. But if it is a surprise and quite removed, then you really don’t know at all what is going on until you have more data points.

As I pointed out in another post, it is quite intriguing that when you take “a left” going upstream from the Danube at any of the larger rivers, you always end up in South Tyrol. So, I am in particular curious if there is a connection to the northern Balkans; Ötzi’s y-DNA G2 already suggests such a link. Of course, so much has changed there in historic times alone, one might need to go into a village, say, at the border between Albania and Montenegro to establish a connection.

As to mare’s milk, yes, that is well known: steppe people fermented it to be able to drink it.

“During fermentation, the lactose in mare’s milk is converted into lactic acid, ethanol and carbon dioxide, and the milk becomes an accessible source of nutrition for people who are lactose intolerant.[10]

Before fermentation, mare’s milk has almost 40% more lactose than cow’s milk.[11] According to one modern source, “unfermented mare’s milk is generally not drunk”, because it is a strong laxative.[1] Varro’s On Agriculture, from the 1st century BC, also mentions this: “as a laxative the best is mare’s milk, then donkey’s milk, cow’s milk, and finally goat’s milk…”;[12] drinking six ounces (190 ml) a day would be enough to give a lactose-intolerant person severe intestinal symptoms.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumis

depends on what you mean to say. as you have to one know one individual’s genome can be highly informative of all sorts of things.

In today’s European autosomal DNA I see no evidence of much turnover since the Chalcolithic, perhaps a slight increase of Western Asian and “Red Sea” composition, mostly in southern Europe. Ultimately of course the holy grail is autosomal DNA from before the arrival of agriculture, for comparison.

After the first population of humans moved in even if they rampantly hybridized with the next wave
when the next wave after them came along most of their genes would get selected out and I’m thinking this process has been repeated with various degrees of completeness some huge number of times.

Of course I’ll change my opinions to match whatever the genes show actually happened but for now that’s my theory and I’m sticking with it.