alan
07-17-2013, 01:41 PM
Sometimes the relatively modest showing of M269 and L23 in the western steppe is seen as evidence of a non-steppe origin. However, it must always be recalled that while M73 is old enough to have taken part (but didnt), M269 had only just come into existence when the first steppe waves moved into the Balkans c. 4000BC. So, its modest showing in the steppe should not be a surprise (and Ukraine steppe population replacement in modern times was extreme too). Indeed it is inevitable if the variance dating is correct. In fact, you could argue that M269* coming into existence may be a marker of new expansion opportunities it just didnt have in its long pre-M269 P297* phase 9000-4000BC. It suddenly came from nowhere.
It is interesting that M269* peaks in west Balkans groups with a likely history further east nearer the Black Sea end of the Balkans. Is this is a remanant of a particularly early wave when M269 was a very new player and L23 either was yet to come or a newbee with few numbers? Its a pity that there is a lot of mystery about the origin of the M269 and L23-rich IE speakers of the south and west Balkans and likely Bronze Age displacements from other areas to the north and east. It would be nice to try and tease this out a bit more.
I suspect that groups with expansion dates c. 4000BC relate to the new opportunities gained when they nibbled into the farming world and prior to that may have remained at a barely-surviving level. The other driver may have been the wheel and adaption to mobile pastoralism opening up the steppe areas between the rivers - that is of course more crucial in a steppe environment and usually dated slighly later c. 3500BC. Maybe the M269* group that expanded mostly in the eastern edge of Old Europe were one of the pre-wheel element whose expansion was essentially down to the new lands the steppe peoples aquired around 4000BC there. The dates fit very well and I think the M269* pattern can be explained in that way.
Could the much larger and more widespread L23* group relate to a few M269* people who stayed behind and didnt get the opportunity to expand in that the first M269* wave west had? I think its entirely possible. They, like their P297* predecessors may have remained in an area where they were essentially only just maintaining population and so only a very limited amount of M269* survived behind in numbers that would leave a permanent mark.
Eventually L23* appears c. 3500BC and I think this is significant. The appearance, survival and takeoff of this line may mark a significant change in opportunities and fortune. At that sort of date further steppe waves headed west into the farming zone and again maybe that was the trigger for the expansion of the L23 clade. While we rightly can question ballpark absolute central dates for clades, there is no doubt that an M269* clade expanding could by definition happen before an L23XL51 one and areas where M269* expanded are suggestive of a date where there was no or less competition from L23XL51.
I would suggest that the best archaeological fit for L23XL51 is being part of the expansion west a little later than the M269* group at a time when that lineage had grown and M269* had diminished and certainly lost the no-competion advantage it had in pre-L23 times. That time difference is usually suggested to be c. 500 years in variance terms. A date around 3500BC give or take a century or so would make a lot of sense.
A clear distinction between L23XL51 and M269* can be seen in numbers, distribution and age of coming into existence. That is undeniable. M269* is older by definition (even if its surviving lineages are not), it had a lesser impact and its remnants above noise level have a different and more limited distribution. I think this all fits well as a kind of package which mutually supports itself. M269* today has an odd pattern and has been noted only in reasonable numbers among Kosovar Albanians and Armenians and also to a lesser degree among Anatolians and Poles if I remember correctly. The frequencies of L23XL51 and M269* do not seem well correlated. I have heard that with the exception of Kosovars and Poles elevated frequencies are not correlated. I think this is probably further evidence that they were two separate waves that only partially overlapped.
Again it is a pity that the backstory of the Albanians is poorly understood. I understand they have been put in a Balkans group with Armenians, Greeks and even Anatolians by some. However, they were also, unlike the Greeks, Satemised. Furthemore the Albanian language has borrowed all its maritime terms for other languages suggesting their Adriatic location only came about in later times. In general a position further east and an ancestral land-orientated herding economy is implied in their language. This could be taken as evidence of M269* having had a more easterly location at one time. Its presence among Armenians and to a lesser degree Anatolians could be due to a common earlier ancestry in the eastern part of the Balkans. Certainly an east Balkans expansion of the M269* lineage would probably best explain its overall distribution today.
The Albanians also share in common with much of the Balkans and the wider circumpontic area a higher rate of L23XL51. Given the stronger evidence of movement into the Balkans (and then Anatolia) in the period 4000BC to after 3000BC and the very weak to absent evidence of a movement FROM Anatolia to the Balkans or from the Balkans into the steppe in this period it seems very likely to me that L23 moved from (or via) the steppes into the Balkans. Its impact was overlapping with and far more extensive than that of M269*. It looks like a bigger, slightly later wave that was far more extensive. L23XL51 gets dated often to c. 3500BC. That would place it among the post-Suvorovo sort of intrusions from the steppes. It also matches the fact that the waves into the Balkans after 3500BC were far more extensive and large than the geographically and numberically limited Suvorovo waves.
Whatever the archaeological explanation for L23XL51 (even if we see Armenians and Anatolians as overspill from the Bakans - which I do) it has to explain an impact across the whole of the Balkans and east-central Europe as well as a presence in the steppes, Urals and northern Caucasus foreland. Now, short of involking back migrations into the steppes from the farming world (which is not well attested -the big west-east wave of that sort in this period was across the forrest steppes) that distribution is an indicator that L23XL51 had remained behind and expanded from a position fairly far east in the steppe or the north Caucasus. It seems most likely to me it was incorportated into the big waves west from the eastern end of the western steppe and north Caucasus after 3500BC. The age of L23XL51 c. 3500BC suggests to me a link with the arrival of the wheel and mobility which would have obviously aided a wider expansion than would have been available in 4000BC (the time when M269 came into being). In addition the CMP network expanded across the steppes at this time from its older Maykop base, something that is almost certainly also related to gaining wheels.
We also should note as an aside that M73 never made it to the Balkans. This and its modern distribution would make a position fairly east in the western steppe or the Caucasus steppe foreland pretty likely.
It is interesting that M269* peaks in west Balkans groups with a likely history further east nearer the Black Sea end of the Balkans. Is this is a remanant of a particularly early wave when M269 was a very new player and L23 either was yet to come or a newbee with few numbers? Its a pity that there is a lot of mystery about the origin of the M269 and L23-rich IE speakers of the south and west Balkans and likely Bronze Age displacements from other areas to the north and east. It would be nice to try and tease this out a bit more.
I suspect that groups with expansion dates c. 4000BC relate to the new opportunities gained when they nibbled into the farming world and prior to that may have remained at a barely-surviving level. The other driver may have been the wheel and adaption to mobile pastoralism opening up the steppe areas between the rivers - that is of course more crucial in a steppe environment and usually dated slighly later c. 3500BC. Maybe the M269* group that expanded mostly in the eastern edge of Old Europe were one of the pre-wheel element whose expansion was essentially down to the new lands the steppe peoples aquired around 4000BC there. The dates fit very well and I think the M269* pattern can be explained in that way.
Could the much larger and more widespread L23* group relate to a few M269* people who stayed behind and didnt get the opportunity to expand in that the first M269* wave west had? I think its entirely possible. They, like their P297* predecessors may have remained in an area where they were essentially only just maintaining population and so only a very limited amount of M269* survived behind in numbers that would leave a permanent mark.
Eventually L23* appears c. 3500BC and I think this is significant. The appearance, survival and takeoff of this line may mark a significant change in opportunities and fortune. At that sort of date further steppe waves headed west into the farming zone and again maybe that was the trigger for the expansion of the L23 clade. While we rightly can question ballpark absolute central dates for clades, there is no doubt that an M269* clade expanding could by definition happen before an L23XL51 one and areas where M269* expanded are suggestive of a date where there was no or less competition from L23XL51.
I would suggest that the best archaeological fit for L23XL51 is being part of the expansion west a little later than the M269* group at a time when that lineage had grown and M269* had diminished and certainly lost the no-competion advantage it had in pre-L23 times. That time difference is usually suggested to be c. 500 years in variance terms. A date around 3500BC give or take a century or so would make a lot of sense.
A clear distinction between L23XL51 and M269* can be seen in numbers, distribution and age of coming into existence. That is undeniable. M269* is older by definition (even if its surviving lineages are not), it had a lesser impact and its remnants above noise level have a different and more limited distribution. I think this all fits well as a kind of package which mutually supports itself. M269* today has an odd pattern and has been noted only in reasonable numbers among Kosovar Albanians and Armenians and also to a lesser degree among Anatolians and Poles if I remember correctly. The frequencies of L23XL51 and M269* do not seem well correlated. I have heard that with the exception of Kosovars and Poles elevated frequencies are not correlated. I think this is probably further evidence that they were two separate waves that only partially overlapped.
Again it is a pity that the backstory of the Albanians is poorly understood. I understand they have been put in a Balkans group with Armenians, Greeks and even Anatolians by some. However, they were also, unlike the Greeks, Satemised. Furthemore the Albanian language has borrowed all its maritime terms for other languages suggesting their Adriatic location only came about in later times. In general a position further east and an ancestral land-orientated herding economy is implied in their language. This could be taken as evidence of M269* having had a more easterly location at one time. Its presence among Armenians and to a lesser degree Anatolians could be due to a common earlier ancestry in the eastern part of the Balkans. Certainly an east Balkans expansion of the M269* lineage would probably best explain its overall distribution today.
The Albanians also share in common with much of the Balkans and the wider circumpontic area a higher rate of L23XL51. Given the stronger evidence of movement into the Balkans (and then Anatolia) in the period 4000BC to after 3000BC and the very weak to absent evidence of a movement FROM Anatolia to the Balkans or from the Balkans into the steppe in this period it seems very likely to me that L23 moved from (or via) the steppes into the Balkans. Its impact was overlapping with and far more extensive than that of M269*. It looks like a bigger, slightly later wave that was far more extensive. L23XL51 gets dated often to c. 3500BC. That would place it among the post-Suvorovo sort of intrusions from the steppes. It also matches the fact that the waves into the Balkans after 3500BC were far more extensive and large than the geographically and numberically limited Suvorovo waves.
Whatever the archaeological explanation for L23XL51 (even if we see Armenians and Anatolians as overspill from the Bakans - which I do) it has to explain an impact across the whole of the Balkans and east-central Europe as well as a presence in the steppes, Urals and northern Caucasus foreland. Now, short of involking back migrations into the steppes from the farming world (which is not well attested -the big west-east wave of that sort in this period was across the forrest steppes) that distribution is an indicator that L23XL51 had remained behind and expanded from a position fairly far east in the steppe or the north Caucasus. It seems most likely to me it was incorportated into the big waves west from the eastern end of the western steppe and north Caucasus after 3500BC. The age of L23XL51 c. 3500BC suggests to me a link with the arrival of the wheel and mobility which would have obviously aided a wider expansion than would have been available in 4000BC (the time when M269 came into being). In addition the CMP network expanded across the steppes at this time from its older Maykop base, something that is almost certainly also related to gaining wheels.
We also should note as an aside that M73 never made it to the Balkans. This and its modern distribution would make a position fairly east in the western steppe or the Caucasus steppe foreland pretty likely.