Bell Beakers, Gimbutas and R1b

[parasar]

I would say the very fact that Celtic and Italic are close branches means that it is pretty well impossible for Italic to have entered from anywhere other than central Europe - presumably from either the area north of the Alps or perhaps the NW Balkans. It wouldnt make sense to have an entry into Italy from further south.

There is no real mystery when IE speakers dont carry a lot of R1 - it just happens. Look at the Greeks for example. Most of their yDNA is not R1 but they speak a (centum) IE language. My guess is that where IEs entered much more sophisticated pre-IE societies they had to change their modus operandi somewhat.

The Greek speakers were probably a relatively late entry to Greece c. 2000BC and their society and genetics may have significantly changed in the 900 years between the Yamnaya period and entering Greece - both within the steppes and in some intermediate location en-route from the steppes to Greece. By that time the IEs may have developed somewhat from mobile people with an interest in running the metal trade etc to a people used to the farming world who had perhaps changed into a settled military elite who could have just sat there and taxed the locals and taken over the institutions rather like the Visigoths did in Spain.

alan,

Don't you think 2000bc is cutting it too close in light of what Jean M reported on another thread?
http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?5264-Lost-Palace-of-Sparta&p=105114&viewfull=1#post105114

Also, Greece has a good amount of Y-R1:
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v17/n6/fig_tab/ejhg2008249f2.html#figure-title
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v17/n6/images/ejhg2008249f2.jpg

[Moderator]

[MOD]


Given the user has been banned ye won't get a response, not to be cheeky and all but was a banning really necessary? Having a difference of opinion (though expressed civilally) is surely a good thing, if we just have "group-think" we ain't gonna advance very far (put's thin-foil hat on *hides*)

Dear Dubhthach,

Not cheeky at all - The openness is appreciated.

We have never banned any members exclusively due to their ideas (as protected by section 3.1 of our Terms of Service). Other factors (typically uncivil behavior or breeching other sections) are at play in every case and infractions are deliberated upon by the collective team. Here, please note we "cleaned up" this thread of some inappropriate content (all uncivil), so the offending comments/evidence is no longer public to our regular members for the sake of preventing unwanted tangents.

As per section 6.1, we will happily disclose details to you privately regarding this case if you or other members would like more information. Feel free to "thank" this post if you're otherwise satisfied. :)

[Agamemnon]

Just noticed the user was banned, but I think I should post this anyway:


1. The concept of "Italo Celtic" is not accepted among all indoeuropeanists. Like any language families too far back in time, it can be postulated but will not and cannot be proven. There are many IE language experts who postulate a link with Italic and Germanic.

The concept of Balto-Slavic isn't accepted among all "indoeuropeanists" either, heck the same counts for Proto-Baltic as well... Are you suggesting we postpone all discussion of this "concept" because it isn't accepted by all the linguists specialised in IE studies? Again, this is another logical fallacy, historical linguistics isn't supposed to be democratic, if we were basing our approach on majority views we'd still be living in a world where "Hamitic" is a valid phylum.



2. The neat concepts outlined are over simplistic. Italy had several IE languages of scant evidence and zero agreement on classification. The best guesses is that there was Italic, Celtic, but also Illyrian, Messapic, North Picene, Venetic, and Ligurian. Most linguists agree that most of the smaller ones were IE but neither Celtic nor Italic. Yet these people inhabited the same lands with high R1b concentrations where the Italoceltic claim is made. So it doesn't all neatly fit in the Beaker Italo Celtic theory.

Actually, I've already addressed this issue several times by the past, admittedly we are dumbing it down here so as to avoid an unnecessary amount of complexity... But since you're asking for it, I'll repeat what I've said numerous times by the past, namely that these IE languages which are "neither Celtic nor Italic" seem to be remnants of earlier para-Italo-Celtic dialects which preceded Italic and Celtic in much of Western Europe. The best examples IMO are Ligurian and Lusitanian, since it's pretty clear they're related to Italo-Celtic (as they've often been classified as para-Italic or para-Celtic), the affiliation of other IE "isolates" such as Venetic, Liburnian, Messapic and Illyrian remains more controversial considering the general paucity of data, though some are eager to lump them in an "Old European" node (which is something I take issue with). I've invoked a language-leveling process to explain the spread of Celtic, this process was made possible by the structure of the communities which adopted Celtic speech and by the sheer proximity of the para-Italo-Celtic dialects to Common Celtic. The break up and spread of common Italic, however, is more straightforward, I'm not exactly fond of the "diversity = homeland" equation especially when applied to large macro-families, but considering the fact that Italic has its highest diversity in northern part of its range it's pretty obvious that Italic was introduced from the north southwards. BB neatly fits with the evidence relating to para-Italo-Celtic and Italo-Celtic proper, by extension this counts for R1b-P312, there's really no way around this.


3. IE Tribes made forays into Italy from several directions. From the NE, NW, and yes from the sea, in the NW and particularly the east. Further complication these neat theories.

Now you have a point, nevertheless it's clear that the southern parts of the Italian peninsula have absorbed huge chunks non-IE ancestry - which is why South Italians & Sicilians are extremely similar to Jews from an autosomal standpoint - and there's much to bet that some of these "IE tribes" already were mostly non-IE from a genetic standpoint (the Greeks in particular, who colonised Southern Italy so extensively that the area was known as "Magna Græcia").
But even then, I'd be surprised if some of the R1b-Z2103 variants found in Southern Italy had nothing to do with IE speakers.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Who exactly insisted that the Etruscans were certainly from Anatolia? Why assume that the only possible alternatives are Anatolian origin vs sprung from the soil of Italy? Modern thinking on the topic has got past the idea that that we have to choose between those views. This was repeatedly stated on the acrimonious Etruscan thread. A probable origin "somewhere in the North Aegean" does not equal "certainly from Anatolia."

Id be very curious to see how Etruscans look genome wide and Y -wise. Especially of they have any less R1b ..

[alan]

But not with anything that is even remotely persuasive.

I cant respect someone like that who just claims what they want to believe based on no evidence and against all the evidence we have. Its pretty preposterously counterintuitive/borderline impossible given the ancient DNA evidence to date. Its really sad when someone's personal preference or ideology makes them take positions utterly opposite to the hard evidence and to fight years of rearguard action arguing in deeper and deeper denial. You gotta go with the evidence a it comes out or you end up sounding like a fruitcake or monster ego who cannot accept they didnt get everything right.

[vettor]

alan,

Don't you think 2000bc is cutting it too close in light of what Jean M reported on another thread?
http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?5264-Lost-Palace-of-Sparta&p=105114&viewfull=1#post105114

Also, Greece has a good amount of Y-R1:
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v17/n6/fig_tab/ejhg2008249f2.html#figure-title
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v17/n6/images/ejhg2008249f2.jpg

The balkarians from the chart have always interested me............they are north caucasus people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkars

They sit exactly in the middle in the mountains between the black and caspian sea with majority of J2 and G2

[TigerMW]

I'm a little slow so I may have missed it, but if not, let's stay on topic. I believe it is "Bell Beakers, Gimbutas and R1b".

[[[EDIT: one more thing begats one more thing so I setup another thread. http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?5279-Misc-I1-and-I2-stuff-from-R1b-threads
Sorry for the hard core line, but it is a courtesy to everyone to stay on topic.]]]

[[[2nd EDIT/Note: Tometable, on this thread you requested "Posts #751, #752, #758 and #759 from that thread, should also be moved to this one" and then you went ahead and added more off-topic in the remainder of the post. This is a warning, no more off-topic and/or personal attack posts on this thread. I don't have time for the housekeeping (moving or deleting posts) so suspensions are a good way to stop that. Just mentioning a word from the thread title is not enough. Posts should focus on the the thread topic.]]]

[rms2]

From Anna Szécsényi-Nagy's dissertation, Molecular genetic investigation of the Neolithic population history in the western Carpathian Basin (http://ubm.opus.hbz-nrw.de/volltexte/2015/4075/pdf/doc.pdf), p. 142:


The theory that R1b reached Central Europe (and possibly the Carpathian Basin as well) with the Bell Beaker migration, starting from southwestern Europe (Brandt et al., 2014) seems to be collapsing, as R1b (M269) has recently been found in Yamnaya (3,300-2,700 cal BC) population on the Russian steppe as well (Haak et al., 2015).

I think that is an important statement, even though some no doubt will object that no R1b-L51 has yet been found in Yamnaya remains. I would answer that R1b-L51 and R1b-Z2103 are brother clades under L23, that YFull gives Z2103's TMRCA as about 4200 BC and L51's TMRCA as about 3800 BC, and that both dates are within the period of Archaic Proto-Indo-European. YFull lists L23's TMRCA as about the same as Z2103's, so it seems likely that all the immediate offspring of L23 were born on the steppe in a PIE-speaking milieu.

Recall too that Szécsényi-Nagy's dissertation reports on an R1b Vučedol period skeleton dated to ~2,870-2,580 BC. That, I think is very significant, since that "Vučedol period" skeleton likely belonged to the Vučedol culture, and Gimbutas attributed the early evolution of Beaker to Vučedol and its immediate successors.

What I'm saying is what I have said before. I am betting very early Iberian Beaker will not be R1b, that R1b got into Beaker in central or eastern Europe, and it's Beaker from the East, not Beaker from the West, that spread R1b to western Europe.

I acknowledge that I could be wrong. I'm only human after all, but this is what I think. Time and more ancient y-dna will tell. Yamnaya kurgans on Yamnaya's western route will yield R1b-L51 and probably even R1b-P312, and R1b got into Beaker that way.

[MJost]

From Anna Szécsényi-Nagy's dissertation, Molecular genetic investigation of the Neolithic population history in the western Carpathian Basin (http://ubm.opus.hbz-nrw.de/volltexte/2015/4075/pdf/doc.pdf), p. 142:



I think that is an important statement, even though some no doubt will object that no R1b-L51 has yet been found in Yamnaya remains. I would answer that R1b-L51 and R1b-Z2103 are brother clades under L23, that YFull gives Z2103's TMRCA as about 4200 BC and L51's TMRCA as about 3800 BC, and that both dates are within the period of Archaic Proto-Indo-European. YFull lists L23's TMRCA as about the same as Z2103's, so it seems likely that all the immediate offspring of L23 were born on the steppe in a PIE-speaking milieu.

Recall too that Szécsényi-Nagy's dissertation reports on an R1b Vučedol period skeleton dated to ~2,870-2,580 BC. That, I think is very significant, since that "Vučedol period" skeleton likely belonged to the Vučedol culture, and Gimbutas attributed the early evolution of Beaker to Vučedol and its immediate successors.

What I'm saying is what I have said before. I am betting very early Iberian Beaker will not be R1b, that R1b got into Beaker in central or eastern Europe, and it's Beaker from the East, not Beaker from the West, that spread R1b to western Europe.

I acknowledge that I could be wrong. I'm only human after all, but this is what I think. Time and more ancient y-dna will tell. Yamnaya kurgans on Yamnaya's western route will yield R1b-L51 and probably even R1b-P312, and R1b got into Beaker that way.

After the L51 split, with its block of four SNPs, then L11 block of eight SNPs. That is 12 SNPs that were wondering around in Western Steppes/Eastern Europe Before P312 had a massive expansion of a few major subclades after its climb up the Danube. I just pray any Euro new remains are tested for every SNP below L23 to be able to show its branch. I still like my age numbers down to DF13 using the highest average count of DF13 and below SNPs added to those back to K(xLT) less
Ust-Ishim's 11 SNPs.

What was L11 lineage block doing during this time frame and most logical route?




R-L23-L23/S141/PF6534
2 SNPs
7,172
= 5,222 BC


R-L51-L51/M412/S167/PF6536
4 SNPs
6,976
= 5,026 BC



R-L11-L11/S127/PF6539
12 SNPs
6,486

= 4,536 BC


R-P312-P312/S116/PF6547
2 SNPs
5,310

= 3,360 BC


R-L21-L21/M529/S145
6 SNPs
5,114

= 3,164 BC


R-DF13-DF13/S521/CTS241
2 SNPs
4,526
= 2,576 BC






MJost

[alan]

From Anna Szécsényi-Nagy's dissertation, Molecular genetic investigation of the Neolithic population history in the western Carpathian Basin (http://ubm.opus.hbz-nrw.de/volltexte/2015/4075/pdf/doc.pdf), p. 142:



I think that is an important statement, even though some no doubt will object that no R1b-L51 has yet been found in Yamnaya remains. I would answer that R1b-L51 and R1b-Z2103 are brother clades under L23, that YFull gives Z2103's TMRCA as about 4200 BC and L51's TMRCA as about 3800 BC, and that both dates are within the period of Archaic Proto-Indo-European. YFull lists L23's TMRCA as about the same as Z2103's, so it seems likely that all the immediate offspring of L23 were born on the steppe in a PIE-speaking milieu.

Recall too that Szécsényi-Nagy's dissertation reports on an R1b Vučedol period skeleton dated to ~2,870-2,580 BC. That, I think is very significant, since that "Vučedol period" skeleton likely belonged to the Vučedol culture, and Gimbutas attributed the early evolution of Beaker to Vučedol and its immediate successors.

What I'm saying is what I have said before. I am betting very early Iberian Beaker will not be R1b, that R1b got into Beaker in central or eastern Europe, and it's Beaker from the East, not Beaker from the West, that spread R1b to western Europe.

I acknowledge that I could be wrong. I'm only human after all, but this is what I think. Time and more ancient y-dna will tell. Yamnaya kurgans on Yamnaya's western route will yield R1b-L51 and probably even R1b-P312, and R1b got into Beaker that way.

If I strip it down to what we know for sure then IMO there is no evidence of a central European movement into Iberia either in the early beaker period or just before. However chewing over this recently has made me realise how poorly the dating of the various beaker components in Iberia is. The only believable early dates are for the use of the pots on settlements. Pots are just pots. We know for example that pottery influences from corded ware groups were being felt among local groups down the Rhône by the 2700s. So it doesn't take a big leap for pottery influences and ideas to have reached eastern Iberia around this time either even if it was It's really not a great distance from the Rhône to eastern spain, maybe 125 miles which is a couple of days on a horse or a two days sail. So I would not be happy seeing beaker pot alone as indicative of a migration. A guy in a boat bringing a lot or a central European woman marrying an Iberian would potentially be enough. So I am holding fire until dates for bigger changes like burial practice's are looked at in the full !ight of modern analysis of isotopes etc. I can certainly see Iberian regions where beaker pot is far older than anything else indicative of change with the pot known by 2700BC but changes in burial not happening for centuries. The pot isn't enough on its own to indicate intrusion and copper working predates beaker by a century of two.

When you look closely at the Iberian beaker dates it just seems to me that only the pot is dated and so much further work is required it seems like guessing to try and decide on present knowledge whether early beaker relates to p312 and an intrusion. I see no compelling reason to conclude it was.

[alan]

Another thing is I don't see any real evidence of central European contacts in Iberia in the pre beaker era. Geography would seem to suggest copper in Iberia is the end of the spread west of copper working and mining through Italy and southern France. However while early copper age groups in southern France have clear pottery links with north Italy, I haven't seen similar claims of French or Italian links for pre beaker copper age Iberia. So if its hard to see an intrusion into Iberia at the start of beaker, its in good company because its hard to work out where copper working in iberia had come from 200 years earlier other than guessing by geographical probability

[Isidro]

You're right that we are more closely related than what's commonly thought, and that's a good thing. However, in light of overwhelming ancient/extant DNA evidence, the notion that R1b (especially L21) in the British Isles is a descendant of Iberian R1b is willful blindness.
Why do you say that. Since when your quasi point of view is the majority view in academia?To break the rules that apply for the study of archaeology, language and genetics, first they have to be understood.
I also do not appreciate you saying that my point of view is willful blindness, that is insulting.

[alan]

After the L51 split, with its block of four SNPs, then L11 block of eight SNPs. That is 12 SNPs that were wondering around in Western Steppes/Eastern Europe Before P312 had a massive expansion of a few major subclades after its climb up the Danube. I just pray any Euro new remains are tested for every SNP below L23 to be able to show its branch. I still like my age numbers down to DF13 using the highest average count of DF13 and below SNPs added to those back to K(xLT) less
Ust-Ishim's 11 SNPs.

What was L11 lineage block doing during this time frame and most logical route?




R-L23-L23/S141/PF6534
2 SNPs
7,172
= 5,222 BC


R-L51-L51/M412/S167/PF6536
4 SNPs
6,976
= 5,026 BC



R-L11-L11/S127/PF6539
12 SNPs
6,486

= 4,536 BC


R-P312-P312/S116/PF6547
2 SNPs
5,310

= 3,360 BC


R-L21-L21/M529/S145
6 SNPs
5,114

= 3,164 BC


R-DF13-DF13/S521/CTS241
2 SNPs
4,526
= 2,576 BC






MJost

My hunch is where lineages explode we may have a hierachy with superbreeders at the top breeding away well into middle age and therefore the average age of a child's father when it was born could increase ergo more mutations. I think in less hierarchical societies the average age of a father at a childs birth could be significantly lower ergo less mutations. Another possible increased in mutations could be working with metals, especially the copper with arsenic. My feeling therefore is when trees explode into bushy branches , there may also be an increase in mutation rate. I suspect the barely surviving straight lines on the trees relate to a more normal less hierarchical less superbreeder dominated periods.

A good example of this is medieval Ireland where in the period between the Vikings and Normans the really powerful kings were often middle aged or older and on their their 4th serial wife.

[TigerMW]

Another thing is I don't see any real evidence of central European contacts in Iberia in the pre beaker era. Geography would seem to suggest copper in Iberia is the end of the spread west of copper working and mining through Italy and southern France. However while early copper age groups in southern France have clear pottery links with north Italy, I haven't seen similar claims of French or Italian links for pre beaker copper age Iberia. So if its hard to see an intrusion into Iberia at the start of beaker, its in good company because its hard to work out where copper working in iberia had come from 200 years earlier other than guessing by geographical probability
I guess I have read too many of the metal working papers, but I'm still struck that the metal working in the mid to later Beaker phases in Iberia were not the same as the early phases. Rio Tinto is an example of the new type that was considered advanced even to the times of the Romans appearance there.

[alan]

I guess I have read too many of the metal working papers, but I'm still struck that the metal working in the mid to later Beaker phases in Iberia were not the same as the early phases. Rio Tinto is an example of the new type that was considered advanced even to the times of the Romans appearance there.

I read a paper about beaker in central Spain and the burial practices in early and late beaker were totally different. In the early phase c. 2700BC there was nothing remotely central European looking about the burials but by the the late phase around 2200BC they were far more in the beaker mainstream.

Deep down I think there is a strong possibility that the original beaker users in Iberia were essentially Med. farmers who received some extra similar genes from early Med. copper users when they arrived in Iberia c. 3000BC. They seem to me to be the Iberian equivalent of Remedello in Italy or the Trielles people in southern France.

I suspect that P312 is more likely to relate to a reflux west of composed of beakerised central Europeans than to the original western pot makers. If so, my prediction is that the combining of beaker and P312 happened c. 2550BC in central Europe and that this extended north-west to the isles c. 2400BC. However places like Iberia, southern France and perhaps Italy may have received western beaker settlers of the original type before P312 and beaker combined. It is only fairly late in the beaker sequence do beaker people of a more clearly central European origin start to appear.

[MJost]

My hunch is where lineages explode we may have a hierachy with superbreeders at the top breeding away well into middle age and therefore the average age of a child's father when it was born could increase ergo more mutations. I think in less hierarchical societies the average age of a father at a childs birth could be significantly lower ergo less mutations. Another possible increased in mutations could be working with metals, especially the copper with arsenic. My feeling therefore is when trees explode into bushy branches , there may also be an increase in mutation rate. I suspect the barely surviving straight lines on the trees relate to a more normal less hierarchical less superbreeder dominated periods.

A good example of this is medieval Ireland where in the period between the Vikings and Normans the really powerful kings were often middle aged or older and on their their 4th serial wife.

So it appears that the P312 elite practiced polygamy in order to “guarantee” paternity. Aegean Bronze Age started around that time and most likely pushed P312 into a new trade opportunity over the next couple of hundred years, tin; and systematically planned to establish a far-ranging trade network with his many sons.

These sons, DF27 and U152, spread and traded right from the beginning of the European Bronze Age which was extensive and evidence suggests the UK had trade connections into the Mediterranean for exporting metals was then dominated by R1b. We know that Erzgebirge had tin mining, dated to 2500 BC. Were the Kromsdorf men, 2,600–2,500 cal BC (2 SD) and how about the later Quedlinburg 2300-2200bc men looking for tin? Did these P312>L21 men bring BB into central Europe 2500 bc and hunting for silver, copper and tin mines nearby Quedlinburg and marrying into the BB MtDNA H women?

Google map of both

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Kromsdorf,+Germany/Quedlinburg,+Germany/@51.3982513,10.6629495,9z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x47a41ba0533457fd:0x420 8ec174357940!2m2!1d11.3773173!2d51.007415!1m5!1m1! 1s0x47a5a2d492193369:0x4236659f8058c70!2m2!1d11.14 1448!2d51.7920562!3e2



MJost

[Gray Fox]

Why do you say that. Since when your quasi point of view is the majority view in academia?To break the rules that apply for the study of archaeology, language and genetics, first they have to be understood.
I also do not appreciate you saying that my point of view is willful blindness, that is insulting.

(Mod)

To both users. (Isidro and Kopfjäger)

Gentlemen, this thread has had enough off-topic distractions as it is. Let's refrain from any further personal attacks and keep the focus on the discussion at hand.

[rms2]

I read a paper about beaker in central Spain and the burial practices in early and late beaker were totally different. In the early phase c. 2700BC there was nothing remotely central European looking about the burials but by the the late phase around 2200BC they were far more in the beaker mainstream.

Deep down I think there is a strong possibility that the original beaker users in Iberia were essentially Med. farmers who received some extra similar genes from early Med. copper users when they arrived in Iberia c. 3000BC. They seem to me to be the Iberian equivalent of Remedello in Italy or the Trielles people in southern France.

I suspect that P312 is more likely to relate to a reflux west of composed of beakerised central Europeans than to the original western pot makers. If so, my prediction is that the combining of beaker and P312 happened c. 2550BC in central Europe and that this extended north-west to the isles c. 2400BC. However places like Iberia, southern France and perhaps Italy may have received western beaker settlers of the original type before P312 and beaker combined. It is only fairly late in the beaker sequence do beaker people of a more clearly central European origin start to appear.

That is basically what I think. Very early Beaker was neither "kurgan" nor R1b but became both in central or eastern Europe. It was that kurganized Beaker that spread R1b, especially R1b-P312, to western Europe. When it spread back west, not only had its y-dna profile changed, but so had its language and the basic physiognomy of its people.

This would explain the differences not only between early Iberian Beaker burials and later Beaker burials, but also the differences in anthropometrics between early and later Beaker people. Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I have read that early Iberian Beaker people were relatively short in stature and had long heads (dolichocephaly) and gracile skeletons. Later Beaker people, those coming from the east, were taller and heavier boned. (I know I have mentioned these differences before, but I am trying to list the reasons why I suspect very early Iberian Beaker lacked R1b, which is essentially a y haplogroup of eastern European or western Asian origin.)

To bring R1b on a west-to-east migration out of Iberia with Beaker, one has to first bring R1b on a kind of end run to Iberia from eastern Europe or western Asia sufficiently early to be in on the formation of Beaker. I guess that is possible, but it just seems simpler to me to see R1b-L51 (and/or its offspring) enter Europe west of Russia and Ukraine with Yamnaya or perhaps an earlier steppe incursion, get into one or more of the cultures that were created or altered as a consequence, like Vučedol and its spin-offs, and subsequently become part of the eastern transformation and re-emergence of Beaker.

I think that Vučedol period R1b is a clue that this is what happened, since it is dated circa 2870 BC. It wouldn't surprise me if he turned out to be R1b-P312. I guess Reich is testing that one, so we should know one way or the other sometime soon.

[George]

That is basically what I think. Very early Beaker was neither "kurgan" nor R1b but became both in central or eastern Europe. It was that kurganized Beaker that spread R1b, especially R1b-P312, to western Europe. When it spread back west, not only had its y-dna profile changed, but so had its language and the basic physiognomy of its people.



Out of curiosity. So the true all-round "Beakers" were of steppe origin, and simply adopted and adapted the "Beaker" from these earlier folk, and then were on their way west? Or did they adopt other stuff?

[MJost]

In this paper they show some interesting images.

https://www.academia.edu/393479/Contacts_along_the_Danube_a_boat_model_from_the_Ea rly_Bronze_Age

MJost

[R.Rocca]

I read a paper about beaker in central Spain and the burial practices in early and late beaker were totally different. In the early phase c. 2700BC there was nothing remotely central European looking about the burials but by the the late phase around 2200BC they were far more in the beaker mainstream.

Deep down I think there is a strong possibility that the original beaker users in Iberia were essentially Med. farmers who received some extra similar genes from early Med. copper users when they arrived in Iberia c. 3000BC. They seem to me to be the Iberian equivalent of Remedello in Italy or the Trielles people in southern France.

I suspect that P312 is more likely to relate to a reflux west of composed of beakerised central Europeans than to the original western pot makers. If so, my prediction is that the combining of beaker and P312 happened c. 2550BC in central Europe and that this extended north-west to the isles c. 2400BC. However places like Iberia, southern France and perhaps Italy may have received western beaker settlers of the original type before P312 and beaker combined. It is only fairly late in the beaker sequence do beaker people of a more clearly central European origin start to appear.

The German Bell Beakers were as autosomally diverse as modern Iberians are to modern Russians, but one thing is consistent...they were all R1b+. So, whatever anthropological differences existed between Western and Eastern Bell Beaker can be better explained by distance and R1b+ men picking up local traditions as they traveled west than a non-R1b presence in Iberia. A non-R1b Bell Beaker presence in Iberia produces more problems than it solves.

[razyn]

I think it's more like a non-R1b pottery maker in Iberia, and if they were all female that's pretty much a given.

[R.Rocca]

I think it's more like a non-R1b pottery maker in Iberia, and if they were all female that's pretty much a given.

So female pottery makers from Iberia started making pottery that looked very much like Corded Ware pottery at the same time that Corded Ware makes its appearance in Central Europe for no rhyme or reason? That seems like too much of a coincidence to me. Then, the Iberian female daughters of non-R1b men, would have migrated by their lonesome into Central Europe and would have forced a R1b+ patrilineal group of men, which must've been hiding in another culture (Corded Ware?) while at the same time remaining wholly R1b+, into abandoning their prestigious battle axes for archery equipment? This scenario fails on many levels IMO. Also, DF27's presence in Iberia can only be explained by Iberian Bell Beaker and not the Eastern Bell Beaker inspired version.

[rms2]

Very early Iberian Beaker was DF27? Why the physical differences and the differences in burial rite? And how are the early Iberian Beaker pots like Corded Ware pots? Don't they lack the cord impressions?

When did DF27 go to Iberia?

I get the impression that early Iberian Beaker is very different from later Beaker.

[rms2]

I don't think the R1b in Beaker got there via Corded Ware. I think it got in in the Carpathian basin as Gimbutas said, via Vucedol and its successors like Zok Mako.

[R.Rocca]

Very early Iberian Beaker was DF27?
Sure, why not?...especially if Alan is on to something and there is something "fish" (reservoir effect) with the earlier Iberian dates.


Why the physical differences and the differences in burial rite?
Like I said, some German Bell Beaker samples map with Iberians and some with Russians, but yet they are all R1b+. So why couldn't there be physical differences if they were that drastically different autosomally?


And how are the early Iberian Beaker pots like Corded Ware pots? Don't they lack the cord impressions?
Both are unlike prior Copper Age pots in their respective areas, and there are early "All Over Corded" Bell Beakers in Iberia as well.


When did DF27 go to Iberia?
At the same time P312 started to expand.


I get the impression that early Iberian Beaker is very different from later Beaker.
Iberian Bell Beaker has more in common with Eastern Bell Beaker than either of them have with Corded Ware or Vucedol.

[alan]

That is basically what I think. Very early Beaker was neither "kurgan" nor R1b but became both in central or eastern Europe. It was that kurganized Beaker that spread R1b, especially R1b-P312, to western Europe. When it spread back west, not only had its y-dna profile changed, but so had its language and the basic physiognomy of its people.

This would explain the differences not only between early Iberian Beaker burials and later Beaker burials, but also the differences in anthropometrics between early and later Beaker people. Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I have read that early Iberian Beaker people were relatively short in stature and had long heads (dolichocephaly) and gracile skeletons. Later Beaker people, those coming from the east, were taller and heavier boned. (I know I have mentioned these differences before, but I am trying to list the reasons why I suspect very early Iberian Beaker lacked R1b, which is essentially a y haplogroup of eastern European or western Asian origin.)

To bring R1b on a west-to-east migration out of Iberia with Beaker, one has to first bring R1b on a kind of end run to Iberia from eastern Europe or western Asia sufficiently early to be in on the formation of Beaker. I guess that is possible, but it just seems simpler to me to see R1b-L51 (and/or its offspring) enter Europe west of Russia and Ukraine with Yamnaya or perhaps an earlier steppe incursion, get into one or more of the cultures that were created or altered as a consequence, like Vučedol and its spin-offs, and subsequently become part of the eastern transformation and re-emergence of Beaker.

I think that Vučedol period R1b is a clue that this is what happened, since it is dated circa 2870 BC. It wouldn't surprise me if he turned out to be R1b-P312. I guess Reich is testing that one, so we should know one way or the other sometime soon.

The non-R1b initial genetic identity of early western beaker is certainly possible. I cannot see a single piece of evidence to categorically refute it. However my surprise when I dug into it a bit is how, despite the large amount of beaker sites, so many aspects are not dated closely or open to major doubts. The absolute key to me is what are the real dates for a clear changed in the burial tradition from what went before. They key change is the treatment of bodies as individuals with personal grave goods clearly linked with the individual. There are clearly bodies, even the ones inserted into old megaliths, that do look like the body is treated in a similar way to central Europe. However, I am not convinced this is dated and IMO it needs to be treated as a separate item from dating beaker pottery. I have also identified the key issue that the possibility of marine or freshwater reservoir effect needs to be checked for and the dates adjusted if this is present. There is every indication that Iberia was a fairly fishy place in terms of diet and that is very different from beaker people in the isles who appear to have been fish-phobic. So, the reason I am sitting on the fence is simply 'insufficient data.

However here is my best stab at a scenario where early beaker is not R1b:

1. The early copper age people of Iberia who are essentially a Med. farmer group using copper rather like the Remedellans, Otzi and Trielles people. It is possible that the arrival of copper working in Iberia c. 3000BC was the final stage of copper using farmers ultimately from the Balkans who had slowly passed along the Alps, Italy, S. France.

2. Around 2800BC Beaker pot emerges (possibly copying more eastern types of pre-beaker pots with similar characteristics but this is debated) among the same people. The key to early beaker probably lies in its especial association (it is mostly a tiny minority in non-beaker pottery) with copper working areas within the Iberian copper age settlements. Almost like it is a guild kind of thing.

3. Some of these western beaker users cross into SE France c. 2600-2550BC.

4. Something I was reading in the Beaker Transformation in Europe was of interest. In SE France the local pre-beaker early copper age groups were already in steady contact with Remedello groups in Italy as seen in pottery. Remedello zone essentially links right across the north of Italy and at its eastern end the NW corner of the Adriatic was close. So, Po route linking SE France to the Adriatic was open in pre-beaker times.So, when beaker users from the west arrived in SE France they may have been able to use this route to get directly into the heart of central Europe bypassing the corded ware groups who by then were already settled in north Alpine areas.

5. These western beaker groups combine with P312 when a population in central Europe are 'beakerised'. These people have the distinctive beaker skulls. The combining of P312 and beaker had to have happened by 2550BC as Kromsdorf dates to then.

6. This beakerised P312 group is much more mobile and use horses and quickly spread across Europe. This spread in the late beaker era spreads back into Spain.

[corner]

Any plans afoot to test ancient remains buried with Bell Beaker pots in Iberia?

[razyn]

Also, DF27's presence in Iberia can only be explained by Iberian Bell Beaker and not the Eastern Bell Beaker inspired version.
As if you knew. It can be explained many, many ways, most of which we have yet to discover or imagine. aDNA may be able to sort it for us a little better, one of these days -- possibly even fairly soon. But stats from 15-marker tests, ten years ago, on living populations, will not.

[alan]

Sure, why not?...especially if Alan is on to something and there is something "fish" (reservoir effect) with the earlier Iberian dates.


Like I said, some German Bell Beaker samples map with Iberians and some with Russians, but yet they are all R1b+. So why couldn't there be physical differences if they were that drastically different autosomally?


Both are unlike prior Copper Age pots in their respective areas, and there are early "All Over Corded" Bell Beakers in Iberia as well.


At the same time P312 started to expand.


Iberian Bell Beaker has more in common with Eastern Bell Beaker than either of them have with Corded Ware or Vucedol.

Its the into Iberia by bit that is the problem. The only way I would come back around to the idea of an intrusion that actually corresponds with the the appearance of beaker is if it is also proven that the switch in burial form also starts around then. It could - I just dont think its been proven. Even if it is proven then what is the source? CW blocked north of the Alps and Remedello south of the Alps. Another issue is does anything in the earliest beaker remains in Iberia other than the pot actually look like it came from central Europe? I cant see it personally. The main potential indicator of a change of some depth would be burial rites but the dating of this needs looked at as its not clear to me if the changes in burial rite coincides with the arrival of the pot.

[R.Rocca]

As if you knew. It can be explained many, many ways, most of which we have yet to discover or imagine. aDNA may be able to sort it for us a little better, one of these days -- possibly even fairly soon. But stats from 15-marker tests, ten years ago, on living populations, will not.

Likewise, as if you knew. My opinion is not based on 15 maker tests from 15 years ago.

[alan]

Sure, why not?...especially if Alan is on to something and there is something "fish" (reservoir effect) with the earlier Iberian dates.


Like I said, some German Bell Beaker samples map with Iberians and some with Russians, but yet they are all R1b+. So why couldn't there be physical differences if they were that drastically different autosomally?


Both are unlike prior Copper Age pots in their respective areas, and there are early "All Over Corded" Bell Beakers in Iberia as well.


At the same time P312 started to expand.


Iberian Bell Beaker has more in common with Eastern Bell Beaker than either of them have with Corded Ware or Vucedol.

I would agree in so far as if you look at anything on Vucedol culture it really doesnt look like beaker. Maybe a shared element upstream in a cultural sense but central European beaker doesnt look like it derives from Vucedol. In very broad terms beaker looks like it belongs to the same family of cultures as CW/battle axe. In blurry focus and looking generally rather than at details it does have a similar 'vibe' and yet its distinct too.

I think the key is beaker is one of those transformatory cultures where you can see a vibe but you cannot exactly pinpoint its origins. For a parallel look at CW. Its been suspected for a very long time to reflect broadly steppic influences on a farming substrate and its roots somewhere at least near the steppe seem clear now with ancient DNA. However, noone can just look at CW and say aha - I can ID exactly its cultural root near the steppes. We cant because its too transformed. Even with ancient DNA its still not apparent which steppe or near-steppe culture it derives from.

[razyn]

Likewise, as if you knew. My opinion is not based on 15 marker tests from 15 years ago.

My impression of your opinion may be colored a bit by a map you created some 2 1/2 years ago, purporting to be a proxy for DF27, and based on studies no more recent than Busby et al (and several that were earlier -- maybe not quite ten years ago, but closer to that [what I said] than to 15 [what you misquoted]. Studies that were, in fact, based on STR tests at ten, twelve or fifteen markers, by people who thought at the time that was enough to exclude L21 and U152; so what was left must be P312*, or for mapping shorthand DF27 -- although you had not yet discovered DF27, per se.

And your opinion may have mellowed, since Alex discovered that the earliest yet found, central European exemplars of U152 and DF27 share a parent (ZZ11) that L21 lacks. Or, it may not have mellowed, my U152 brother. Be that as it may, this thread has mostly been about archaeology; and that discipline doesn't tell us anything at all (so far) about DF27 in early Iberian Beaker. None has been found there, in an Early Beaker horizon, and tested positive for that. All we really know is that some present Iberian regional populations have impressively high percentages of some subclades of DF27. The rest is differential speculation. And that's OK. But it's not Gospel or anything.

[TigerMW]

My impression of your opinion may be colored a bit by a map you created some 2 1/2 years ago, purporting to be a proxy for DF27, and based on studies no more recent than Busby et al (and several that were earlier -- maybe not quite ten years ago, but closer to that [what I said] than to 15 [what you misquoted]. Studies that were, in fact, based on STR tests at ten, twelve or fifteen markers, by people who thought at the time that was enough to exclude L21 and U152; so what was left must be P312*, or for mapping shorthand DF27 -- although you had not yet discovered DF27, per se.

And your opinion may have mellowed, since Alex discovered that the earliest yet found, central European exemplars of U152 and DF27 share a parent (ZZ11) that L21 lacks. Or, it may not have mellowed, my U152 brother. Be that as it may, this thread has mostly been about archaeology; and that discipline doesn't tell us anything at all (so far) about DF27 in early Iberian Beaker. None has been found there, in an Early Beaker horizon, and tested positive for that. All we really know is that some present Iberian regional populations have impressively high percentages of some subclades of DF27. The rest is differential speculation. And that's OK. But it's not Gospel or anything.
The background of my thinking is colored by the bigger picture or larger nature of the wave for M269 and P311 types from a general east to west direction. I'm saying that sets my inclinations or weighting on the probabilities were these subclades came from. Once I got over the out of Iberia LGM thing a good 6-7 years ago (yikes! it's been a while) the east to west orientation, haplotype and early branching distribution to boot with the timing of and direction of PIE seemed to make sense.

Given that, the ZZ11 branch is just one more piece of data supporting general direction. The U152 and DF27 MRCAs were on pretty much the same sub-wave. When you add the configuration of U152 it's hard to place this origination west or southwest of the Rhone Valley and it could easily have been anywhere along the Alps even back over towards Austria.

The archaeology supports the "east meets west" Beaker thing. This would have in the area of Switzerland. Would DF27 folks be meeting U152 and P312x (pre L21 or may some L21 too) there? There is not much time for all of these folks to parachute in to their locations in Iberia and along the Alps, then build the populations (or maybe literally the armies) for the east meets west conflict. When we try to dissect atoms, we look at the remnants for super conducting collider experiments. The remnants ultimately resulted in the eastern originating IE languages and other things, such as the CMP metallurgy practices, all over Western Europe. I think the east won. That's definitely speculation.

I guess a key question is the location DF27's diversity and early branching... and of course aDNA if we get it.

umm.. I think I have a bottle of Cotes Du Rhône that needs to be opened.;)

[Tomenable]

R1b in Bell Beaker culture were immigrants from the east, who introduced bronze working and horses to Western Europe.

Those people, due to their "magical know-how and magical animals", became chieftains and leaders of clan communities.

In polygynous and clan-based societies, chieftains of clans typically have the largest number of women and of children.

So the frequency of Y-DNA markers introduced by those people was gradually increasing over a dozen or so generations.

In Bell Beaker culture, knowledge of bronze smelting was limited to chieftains, and bronze smelting was a magical ritual:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmHXBXG7Loo#t=383

"(...) This process was so important, the smiths had the richest graves. They were probably clan chiefs. At the beginning of the Bronze Age, you can imagine that much of the metalworking was actually undertaken by the chiefs themselves. And we now see this as a rather sort of a banal task that should be undertaken by workmen or craftsmen, by a sort of lower status people. But if you think of it as the magical transformation of one thing into another, then it's another way of showing off and demonstrating your power and your status, of securing your role in society. And so it's therefore very characteristic, that you find the moulds in rich graves, in the graves of the chiefs. So the people who were in charge of society, were in charge of the transformation of metal ores into slashing daggers and weapons. (...)"

[razyn]

R1b in Bell Beaker culture were immigrants from the east, who introduced bronze working and horses to Western Europe.

Those people, due to their "magical know-how and magical animals", became chieftains and leaders of clan communities.


I think the status was more that of shaman than chieftain; somebody else including women (potters? weavers?) may well have been in charge of other aspects of the society that didn't include the same magical transformations, or control of elements (fire, wind, steam, metals, etc.). Combination of holy and scary. Some of them also knew how to transform grapes, honey and other sweet things into joy juice for the beakers. And powerful people, usually of either sex, got all the mates they could find time for. Also, special burial rites.

[rms2]

Sure, why not? ...


Iberian Bell Beaker has more in common with Eastern Bell Beaker than either of them have with Corded Ware or Vucedol.

So, Rich, how do you see things when it comes to Beaker? R1b-P312 emerges in eastern Europe among Yamnaya, DF27 arises shortly thereafter, makes a kind of end run around Europe and heads for Iberia, where it creates or is in on the creation of early Iberian Beaker, which it spreads east? Then does the largely R1b-DF27 Iberian Beaker bump into the other P312 clades that are headed west? These are honest questions.

I probably need to buy that new book on Beaker that Alan and Jean have been discussing, but it's a little pricey. From what I have read, however, the very earliest Iberian Beaker isn't steppe or kurgan-like much at all, and neither are its bodies, which are little, short, gracile, longheaded Mediterraneans, kind of like those one sees reported on among Neolithic farming peoples (Anthony, among others, mentions them in his book). Early very simple, plain Beaker pots show up in megalithic long barrows in Britain and elsewhere, with no report of heavier boned, taller Beaker people accompanying them or of any other change in burial practice. Where are the Beaker people and their characteristic kit, other than a pot or two, in those burials? When does the full-fledged, single grave, tumulus burial with the characteristic kit arrive in Iberia? Isn't it later, which is one of the reasons Sangmeister came up with the reflux theory?

Gimbutas thought Beaker evolved in the East from Vucedol and Zok Mako and spread east to west. She must have had reasons. Wish I knew what they were in more detail.

When you say "Iberian Bell Beaker has more in common with Eastern Bell Beaker than either of them have with Corded Ware or Vucedol", are you including very early Iberian Bell Beaker in that? It doesn't seem to me it has more in common with Eastern Bell Beaker than the latter has with Corded Ware and Vucedol.

What about the Begleitkeramik that accompanied Eastern Beaker and was clearly of Carpathian Basin origin? What of the fully developed single grave tumulus burial and kit? Does the very earliest Iberian Beaker have those things in common with Eastern Beaker?

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[Heber]

As if you knew. It can be explained many, many ways, most of which we have yet to discover or imagine. aDNA may be able to sort it for us a little better, one of these days -- possibly even fairly soon. But stats from 15-marker tests, ten years ago, on living populations, will not.

I understand that the groundbreaking 2012 paper by Rocca et al used 1000 Genomes samples and clearly showed the expansion of DF27.
"The majority of the DF27 derived samples (71%) were from Latin American/Iberian populations (CLM, IBS, MXL, PUR). This variant is therefore likely to account for the majority of previously unclassified S116(xU152,L21) reported in Iberia and some areas of France."
[
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0041634
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All of the studies whether recent Patterson et al using NGS, Hallast et Al, Valverde, or older (5 years) Myres, Busby, or datasets FTDNA projects, YFull, Genographic Asturias project tell a similar story and point to Iberia and SW France and some make the link to Bell Beaker.
https://www.pinterest.com/gerardcorcoran/r1b-df27/
If we get significant aDNA samples which tell a different story them we can adjust our interpretation. However I believe DF27 expanded in SW Europe, L21 in NW Europe and U152 in Alpine Europe.

Here is a global map which attempts to show pre colonial population migrations.
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[R.Rocca]

My impression of your opinion may be colored a bit by a map you created some 2 1/2 years ago, purporting to be a proxy for DF27, and based on studies no more recent than Busby et al (and several that were earlier -- maybe not quite ten years ago, but closer to that [what I said] than to 15 [what you misquoted]. Studies that were, in fact, based on STR tests at ten, twelve or fifteen markers, by people who thought at the time that was enough to exclude L21 and U152; so what was left must be P312*, or for mapping shorthand DF27 -- although you had not yet discovered DF27, per se.

And your opinion may have mellowed, since Alex discovered that the earliest yet found, central European exemplars of U152 and DF27 share a parent (ZZ11) that L21 lacks. Or, it may not have mellowed, my U152 brother. Be that as it may, this thread has mostly been about archaeology; and that discipline doesn't tell us anything at all (so far) about DF27 in early Iberian Beaker. None has been found there, in an Early Beaker horizon, and tested positive for that. All we really know is that some present Iberian regional populations have impressively high percentages of some subclades of DF27. The rest is differential speculation. And that's OK. But it's not Gospel or anything.

Since I created that map, the distribution of DF27 looks even more like a fit for the Iberian Bell Beaker province, especially given the importance of groups like DF19 in places like the Low Countries that would further reduce the possible DF27 there. And for accuracy, Busby was 4 years ago and their P312(xU152,L21) was based off of SNPs, not STRs, so no need to bring up STRs. Either way, the two very things you are brushing off (frequency and archaeology) are the two very things that have made bright minds on DNAForums posit a link between L23 and Yamnaya and P312 and Bell Beaker. So, let's not be too quick to rule out that the Y-DNA makeup of Late Copper Age/Early Bronze Age Europe had something to do with the shaping of P312's modern distribution in Western Europe.

The tying of U152 and DF27 to the often ignored ZZ11 actually reinforces my conviction that the earliest DF27 and U152 both crossed from the Danube and into the Rhone earlier rather than later. This is further accentuated by the fact that two massive subclades of each (ZZ12 for DF27 and L2 for U152) seem to burst out in all different directions in a very short period of time. On the flip side, I don't think that it is a coincidence that Bell Beaker expands into Britain and Ireland last, and that L21 just happens to be younger (shares subclade with 6 SNPs) than both U152 and DF27.

http://r1b.org/imgs/BB_Dates_map_based_on_Muller_and_van_Willigen_2001 _small.jpg

[alan]

Since I created that map, the distribution of DF27 looks even more like a fit for the Iberian Bell Beaker province, especially given the importance of groups like DF19 in places like the Low Countries that would further reduce the possible DF27 there. And for accuracy, Busby was 4 years ago and their P312(xU152,L21) was based off of SNPs, not STRs, so no need to bring up STR. Either way, the two very things you are brushing off (frequency and archaeology) are the two very things that have made bright minds on DNAForums posit a link between L23 and Yamnaya and P312 and Bell beaker. So, let's not be too quick to rule out that the Y-DNA makeup of Late Copper Age/Early Bronze Age Europe had something to do with the shaping of P312's modern distribution in Western Europe.

The tying of U152 and DF27 to the often ignored ZZ11 actually reinforces my conviction that the earliest DF27 and U152 both crossed from the Danube and into the Rhone earlier rather than later. This is further accentuated by the fact that two massive subclades of each (ZZ12 for DF27 and L2 for U152) seem to burst out in all different directions in a very short period of time. On the flip side, I don't think that it is a coincidence that Bell Beaker expands into Britain and Ireland last, and that L21 just happens to be younger (shares subclade with 6 SNPs) than both U152 and DF27.

http://r1b.org/imgs/BB_Dates_map_based_on_Muller_and_van_Willigen_2001 _small.jpg

However the U152 zone now seems dated in most recent papers no earlier than 2550-2500BC while Iberia now stands out by some distance with earliest dates c. 2800-2750BC. As its not all on human bone this seems likely to be real for the pot at least and its not just Portugal which is getting dates well before central Europe - its across Iberia. I would also certainly seem from reading recent papers that prominent beaker experts in each country seem to have thrown out the early dates for Csepel, southern France and Italy which makes Iberia appear to stand alone in beaker pot terms for at least 200-300 years.

I dont see any absolute reason why P312 and beaker have to be linked from the inception or why P312 could not have come into places like Spain, southern France and Italy in some of the later beaker phases. For example barbed wire beakers in SE France and Italy and Ciempozuelos in Spain where in both cases it seems individual burial became more clearly established.

[glentane]

In Bell Beaker culture, knowledge of bronze smelting was limited to chieftains, and bronze smelting was a magical ritual:


Intriguing. How did you find this out?
Come to that, how did you find out they had chieftains? Just because Andrew Sherratt thought they ought to?

[TigerMW]

However the U152 zone now seems dated in most recent papers no earlier than 2550-2500BC while Iberia now stands out by some distance with earliest dates c. 2800-2750BC. As its not all on human bone this seems likely to be real for the pot at least and its not just Portugal which is getting dates well before central Europe - its across Iberia. I would also certainly seem from reading recent papers that prominent beaker experts in each country seem to have thrown out the early dates for Csepel, southern France and Italy which makes Iberia appear to stand alone in beaker pot terms for at least 200-300 years.

I dont see any absolute reason why P312 and beaker have to be linked from the inception or why P312 could not have come into places like Spain, southern France and Italy in some of the later beaker phases. For example barbed wire beakers in SE France and Italy and Ciempozuelos in Spain where in both cases it seems individual burial became more clearly established.
I emboldened Alan's statement to follow with this possibility.

Here is a 5-6 chart summary I did a couple of years ago.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17907527/Copper-CMP_and_Furnace_Smelting_Maps.pptx

The Circumpontic Metallurgy Province (CMP) got off the ground in Phase I with the Maykops and the Caucasus region being the core area, whether or not it was the actual origin point. It included the more productive furnace smelting process.

CMP Phase II, at least towards the north, was essentially the Yamna. R1b-L23 types were among them, we know that, right?

From 3000-2000 BC, as the western Bell Beakers were pervasive in France and Iberia, the metalworking practices were different and not as productive. By the latter half the 3rd millenium, furnace smelting was starting to creep in to the west.

By the 2nd millenium BC, the picture has changed dramatically. Furnace smelting aligns with the river networks of western Europe and has hit Iberia pretty hard by now. The timing is right for the P311 family. The western carriers of the remnants of the CMP II could have been primarily P311 folks.

For an L21 guy, it's awfully hard not to notice the Tin trails from the Isles and particularly the one along Pyrenees. Right times, right places.


This is speculative alignment partially based on Amazallag's research. I've never seen why it doesn't make sense, just criticism that he is crackpot or something. That doesn't deter me though. I don't understand why it couldn't be true when the alignment with P311 (early branching not frequency) is so nice.

There is no saying this was all one wave. We could have later peoples like the Urnfielders and Halstatt folks that spilled in multiple directions.. all with remnants of the Yamna on the male side and many of their cultural practices.

[lgmayka]

I understand that the groundbreaking 2012 paper by Rocca et al used 1000 Genomes samples and clearly showed the expansion of DF27.
The 1000 Genomes project refused to recognize the presence of modern humans anywhere between the Netherlands and China--no Germans or Austrians, no Slavs, no Balts, no Central Asians, no Balkaners, no Middle Easterners. Thus, any geographical conclusion based on 1K Genomes data is utterly invalid.

All of the studies whether recent Patterson et al using NGS, Hallast et Al, Valverde, or older (5 years) Myres, Busby, or datasets FTDNA projects, YFull, Genographic Asturias project tell a similar story and point to Iberia and SW France and some make the link to Bell Beaker.
No, they don't. Look again at YFull's tree and FTDNA projects. DF27 is not uncommon in Poland, and has been found as far east as Kyiv (Kiev). Progress is, of course, limited by lack of funding.

[R.Rocca]

However the U152 zone now seems dated in most recent papers no earlier than 2550-2500BC while Iberia now stands out by some distance with earliest dates c. 2800-2750BC. As its not all on human bone this seems likely to be real for the pot at least and its not just Portugal which is getting dates well before central Europe - its across Iberia. I would also certainly seem from reading recent papers that prominent beaker experts in each country seem to have thrown out the early dates for Csepel, southern France and Italy which makes Iberia appear to stand alone in beaker pot terms for at least 200-300 years.

Since you are saying that from 2900-2550 BC, Bell Beaker pottery only existed in non-R1b Iberia, these are the critical questions that need to be answered...
1. Who were the male counterparts to the female Iberian Bell Beaker makers from 2900-2550 BC?
2. What culture(s) did P312 men belong to and what was the furthest extent of their expansion from 2900 BC?
3. What buffer culture(s) separated Iberian non-R1b and P312 wherever it was?
4. How/when/where did archery equipment make its way into P312?
5. If there was a massive invasion of P312 into Iberia afterwards, why didn't the single grave burial ritual expand into Iberia like it did elsewhere?


I dont see any absolute reason why P312 and beaker have to be linked from the inception or why P312 could not have come into places like Spain, southern France and Italy in some of the later beaker phases. For example barbed wire beakers in SE France and Italy and Ciempozuelos in Spain where in both cases it seems individual burial became more clearly established.

I don't see any reason why P312 and Bell Beaker wouldn't be linked from the start. If you go back further, then you need to include U106, and I know you are not saying that.

[alan]

Another angle on this is an out of Iberia stream doesnt tally very easily with the total dominance of DF27 there and the dominance of U152 in central Europe. No impossible as there is a lot of wriggle room for founder effects etc but it doesnt sit easily. The similar age of U152 and DF27's expansion also doesnt sit well with Iberia being 250 years older in beaker pot terms. Italy for example seems linked mostly with central Europe and U152 but the early beaker in Italy is more western than central European linked while there is a better case for the later beaker being northern linked. A similar story applies in SE France.

Another thing that has long struck me is DF27 is stronger in east and central Spain rather than in Portugal

http://www.eupedia.com/images/content/Haplogroup-R1b-DF27.gif
.

[kinman]

I don't see any reason why P312 and Bell Beaker wouldn't be linked from the start. If you go back further, then you need to include U106, and I know you are not saying that.

-------------------------------------------------------
Hi Richard,
I think that I can suggest one possible reason. As I stated in my posting today in the "horse domestication" thread, I believe that P312 originated about 5200 years ago in the vicinity of Hungary. And even if I modified that to 5000 years ago, it seems too early for Bell Beaker to have reached as far as Hungary when P312 arose. However, I do believe that U152 not only originated further up the Danube, but several centuries later, so I can certainly see U152 becoming part of the Bell Beaker Culture. But maybe my estimates are too early (or P312 originated further upstream)? Not sure we have enough information yet to know for sure.
------------------Ken

[Heber]

Another thing that has long struck me is DF27 is stronger in east and central Spain rather than in Portugal

http://www.eupedia.com/images/content/Haplogroup-R1b-DF27.gif
.

I dont have a recent study from Portugal. However the Genographic project for Asturial found very high levels of DF27 in much the same way as they found very high levels of L21 in Mayo. Although the final paper is not yet published I requested summary results from Genographic

"And for Asturias (~100 individuals):

mtDNA
A= 1%
H= 38%
HV= 11%
J= 13%
K= 8%
L= 8%
M= 1%
N= 1%
T= 7%
U= 8%
V= 2%
X=1%

Y-chromosome
E= 3
G= 1
I= 2
J= 6
R= 37
T= 2

The majority of R were DF27 with some P311."

[Heber]

The 1000 Genomes project refused to recognize the presence of modern humans anywhere between the Netherlands and China--no Germans or Austrians, no Slavs, no Balts, no Central Asians, no Balkaners, no Middle Easterners. Thus, any geographical conclusion based on 1K Genomes data is utterly invalid.

No, they don't. Look again at YFull's tree and FTDNA projects. DF27 is not uncommon in Poland, and has been found as far east as Kyiv (Kiev). Progress is, of course, limited by lack of funding.

The expansion of P312 and DF27 is clearly shown by Rocca, Hallast (including input from POBI, IDA and reference datasets), FTDNA, YFull based on NGS and SNPs not 15 STRS In 10 year old studies as previously stated. The geographic distribution is shown by Myres, Busby, Hallast etc which had a broad range of East and West sampling.
The expansion of DF27 is mainly in the SW regardless of a handful of outliers (eg Kiev) which can be due to back migrations.

https://www.pinterest.com/gerardcorcoran/r1b-df27/

[alan]

I think thought we can surely all agree that there is no a priori reason P312 HAS to have been with beaker from the inception in south-west Europe. There is a great deal of evidence of later beaker and in some cases post-beaker movements into those areas. Its not as though we dont see significant changes and new influences within the beaker period coming into south-west Europe, Italy etc. There are a range of options.

My personal feeling is that the burial rite is more important than the pot and that the funerary rites in west and central Med. become more similar to that in central Europe in the later beaker period. I would rather put weight on something more solid like that than on the pot itself which experts cannot even remotely agree on in terms of its inspiration - even in recent papers. Regarding pottery the new book on The Beaker Transition in Europe has an interesting chapter that showed that in pre-beaker times the local pre-beaker early copper age cultures in SE France were drawing influences from both north Italy and CW groups in and around Switzerland in their pottery. I suppose a flow of wives could have been responsible for this. If this kind of thing was happening in southern France in the pre-beaker period then its not a huge leap to think the Iberian peninsular could have felt similar influences in the genesis of the beaker pot.

[R.Rocca]

Another angle on this is an out of Iberia stream doesnt tally very easily with the total dominance of DF27 there and the dominance of U152 in central Europe. No impossible as there is a lot of wriggle room for founder effects etc but it doesnt sit easily. The similar age of U152 and DF27's expansion also doesnt sit well with Iberia being 250 years older in beaker pot terms. Italy for example seems linked mostly with central Europe and U152 but the early beaker in Italy is more western than central European linked while there is a better case for the later beaker being northern linked. A similar story applies in SE France.

Aside from a possible re-expansion of DF27, why would we need an out-of-Iberia stream? The problem is that you are throwing out all the old dates from from Southern France, Northern Italy and Hungary....

http://www.r1b.org/imgs/Csepel_Island_Chronology.jpg

[R.Rocca]

Another thing that has long struck me is DF27 is stronger in east and central Spain rather than in Portugal.

Which is pretty much in line with Bell Beaker concentrations in Iberia, stronger on the east coast and in central Spain...

http://www.r1b.org/imgs/BellBeakerIberia2.png

[alan]

Aside from a possible re-expansion of DF27, why would we need an out-of-Iberia stream? The problem is that you are throwing out all the old dates from from Southern France, Northern Italy and Hungary....

http://www.r1b.org/imgs/Csepel_Island_Chronology.jpg

I havent done that personally and certainly have no wish to make the beaker problem even more complex. Its just the way the recent papers and books are reading i.e. noone is putting beaker pre-2550BC anywhere other than Iberia. Since M and W a huge amount of excavation results have been processed in southern France so they must have looked at the pattern of the RC dates - its never safe to use one or two outlier dates to date a culture anyway. It is a pity though that I am not aware of actual rebuttal aimed at the earlier dates.

[alan]

Aside from a possible re-expansion of DF27, why would we need an out-of-Iberia stream? The problem is that you are throwing out all the old dates from from Southern France, Northern Italy and Hungary....

http://www.r1b.org/imgs/Csepel_Island_Chronology.jpg

I suppose if there is no out of Iberia stream for any other P312 subclades it is as good as saying P312 distributed in pre-beaker times in central Europe because even if DF27 coincided with an intrusion into Iberia then the rest of the P312 had to be in non-beaker cultures for 200 years or so because it is distributed in areas where beaker is later than Iberia. So it still leaves the question mark as to where P312 lay in pre-beaker times, how some of it got to Iberia very early, and what non-beaker cultures there rest of P312 which didnt go into Iberia remained in during the period c. 2800-2550BC.

Of course, all models ultimately require a P312 origin in central Europe and penetration of all the corners of western Europe at some point. So, it is progress that we are really just arguing whether P312 went west 2800BC or so and created the beaker culture or whether the penetration of the south and west was a feature of the late beaker era. I suppose I slightly veer to he latter because the south-west/central Med. looks more connected and in line with central Europe in the later beaker phase than in the early phase. The origin of the pot produces too many contradictory opinions among experts to help. So, I think when looking beyond the pot itself, for central European P312 people spreading into south-west Europe I just dont think there is much that indicates such an intrusion in very early beaker. That said, a large part of this may simply be down to a lack of proper analysis of the RC dates of beaker burials in the SW.

[Jean M]

I suppose if there is no out of Iberia stream for any other P312 subclades it is as good as saying P312 distributed in pre-beaker times

Exactly. That is what I have been saying for years. It seems a logical deduction that P312 moved up the Danube with Yamnaya. I am not proposing, and never have proposed that all the people in that stream took off for Iberia. The group who ended up in Iberia were just one trickle from this stream.

5784

[R.Rocca]

I havent done that personally and certainly have no wish to make the beaker problem even more complex. Its just the way the recent papers and books are reading i.e. noone is putting beaker pre-2550BC anywhere other than Iberia. Since M and W a huge amount of excavation results have been processed in southern France so they must have looked at the pattern of the RC dates - its never safe to use one or two outlier dates to date a culture anyway. It is a pity though that I am not aware of actual rebuttal aimed at the earlier dates.

The problem is, that we are talking about a very few men that existed over a period of several hundred years, so if archaeologists have thrown out the outliers just to get a general range of when Bell Beaker started to become important in a region, then they are also likely throwing out the earliest possible movements of R1b.

[Heber]

Finally we have a full genome ancient DNA sample from the Neolithic Mediterranean route into Iberia despite the difficulty in extracting this DNA in southern warmer climatic conditions. With 50-100 samples to come from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages including Bronze Age, this new technique should help clarify the Bell Beaker migrations. This supports the idea of several routes to and from Iberia including Mediterranean, Alpine route and Danube route.
"So far, only genomic data of various individuals belonging to the inland route found in Hungary and Germany were available, but the complete genomes of the Mediterranean route were lacked. This is partly due to the climatic conditions in Southern Europe, which hinder the conservation of genetic material....
"Thanks to this new genome, researchers have been able to determine that farmers from the Mediterranean route and the inland route are very homogeneous and clearly derive from a common ancestral population that, most likely, is that of the first farmers who entered Europe through Anatolia...."
"For Carles Lalueza-Fox, "this study is only the first step of a major project done in collaboration with David Reich at the Broad Institute that aims to create an Iberian paleogenomic transect, from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages. So far, we have genomic data from fifty individuals and we want to reach more than one hundred. Being at the westernmost edge of Europe, the Iberian Peninsula is crucial to understand the final impact of population movements such as the Neolithic or the later steppe migrations that entered Europe from the East".

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/snrc-fag090215.php

[kinman]

Hi Jean,
I really like your map overall. However, I think only the "Italic" members of P312 would have gone south of the Alps to Italy, and the Celts of U152 would have taken the same path as the Celts of L21 (north of the Alps, mostly along the Danube).
-------------Ken


Exactly. That is what I have been saying for years. It seems a logical deduction that P312 moved up the Danube with Yamnaya. I am not proposing, and never have proposed that all the people in that stream took off for Iberia. The group who ended up in Iberia were just one trickle from this stream.

5784

[TigerMW]

Which is pretty much in line with Bell Beaker concentrations in Iberia, stronger on the east coast and in central Spain...

http://www.r1b.org/imgs/BellBeakerIberia2.png
Zambujal seems a little out of place with the DF27 configuration. Both it and and Los Millares were early Beaker sites with the old metallurgy, in contrast to Rio Tinto.

The Urnfielder intrusion into Iberia is not a bad fit for for Eastern Iberia and spillover along the Pyrenees, all coming from the the north side of the Alps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urnfield_culture

[Jean M]

Hi Jean,
I really like your map overall. However, I think only the "Italic" members of P312 would have gone south of the Alps to Italy, and the Celts of U152 would have taken the same path as the Celts of L21 (north of the Alps, mostly along the Danube).
-------------Ken

Ken - In my model, the stream up the Danube is presumed to be initially PIE, shading into a dialect that eventually became Proto-Italo-Celtic or Proto-Celto-Italic, if you prefer, or Something-a-bit-closer-to-Italic-than-PIE. Italic and Ligurian developed, I presume, after people speaking that dialect settled in Italy. Celtic developed, I presume, after people speaking that dialect settled north of the Alps. So U152 could end up associated with Celtic, Ligurian and Italic speakers, which would help to explain its distribution. Please excuse the lack of detail on the map, which is crude in the extreme. We do have U152 in German Bell Beaker. I thought about adding an extra arrow to signal that, but there is not a lot of space. I could try again.

[Added - done. Not well, but it's in there.]

5788

[alan]

Zambujal seems a little out of place with the DF27 configuration. Both it and and Los Millares were early Beaker sites with the old metallurgy, in contrast to Rio Tinto.

The Urnfielder intrusion into Iberia is not a bad fit for for Eastern Iberia and spillover along the Pyrenees, all coming from the the north side of the Alps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urnfield_culture

interesting linear pattern of beaker in central Spain although there can be many reasons for a pattern of finds like that, both ancient and modern.

[alan]

Exactly. That is what I have been saying for years. It seems a logical deduction that P312 moved up the Danube with Yamnaya. I am not proposing, and never have proposed that all the people in that stream took off for Iberia. The group who ended up in Iberia were just one trickle from this stream.

5784

I realise that you have never suggested such a thing. There are a few people out there who think P312 evolved in Iberia and all came from there in beaker period but it is very very unlikely. OK as an exercise, lets say P312 existed in late Yamnaya in central Europe in say 2900BC and lets go along with the concept of a very quick movement of (some of) DF27 to Iberia c. 2800-2750BC. So that would leave behind, presumably in central Europe, U152 and L21 or its immediate ancestor. If beaker doesnt arrive in central Europe to c. 2550BC then the remainder of P312 that didnt enter Iberia had a period of separation from the subset that went to Iberia of c. 250 years. So it should have a non-beaker cultural identity for the remainder of P312 c. 2800-2550BC. The big question is where and what culture(s)? And of course the same question would apply even if we didnt believe in an early move to Iberia anyway.

[kinman]

Thanks Jean,
As a U152 descendant, I very much appreciate that addition.
---------Ken


Ken - In my model, the stream up the Danube is presumed to be initially PIE, shading into a dialect that eventually became Proto-Italo-Celtic or Proto-Celto-Italic, if you prefer, or Something-a-bit-closer-to-Italic-than-PIE. Italic and Ligurian developed, I presume, after people speaking that dialect settled in Italy. Celtic developed, I presume, after people speaking that dialect settled north of the Alps. So U152 could end up associated with Celtic, Ligurian and Italic speakers, which would help to explain its distribution. Please excuse the lack of detail on the map, which is crude in the extreme. We do have U152 in German Bell Beaker. I thought about adding an extra arrow to signal that, but there is not a lot of space. I could try again.

[Added - done. Not well, but it's in there.]

5788

[alan]

I realise that you have never suggested such a thing. There are a few people out there who think P312 evolved in Iberia and all came from there in beaker period but it is very very unlikely. OK as an exercise, lets say P312 existed in late Yamnaya in central Europe in say 2900BC and lets go along with the concept of a very quick movement of (some of) DF27 to Iberia c. 2800-2750BC. So that would leave behind, presumably in central Europe, U152 and L21 or its immediate ancestor. If beaker doesnt arrive in central Europe to c. 2550BC then the remainder of P312 that didnt enter Iberia had a period of separation from the subset that went to Iberia of c. 250 years. So it should have a non-beaker cultural identity for the remainder of P312 c. 2800-2550BC. The big question is where and what culture(s)? And of course the same question would apply even if we didnt believe in an early move to Iberia anyway.

So one way or another, if we accept that all P312 has not expanded from Iberia, there must be a culture harbouring the remainder of P312 in 2800BC-2550BC in central Europe. Now that is a narrow band of time and with a target zone of somewhere between the middle Danube and the Rhine, it really should be doable to identify it/them.

[alan]

Was just thinking there. There is one thing that beaker has that echos Yamnaya in east-central Europe - a tendency for remains to concentrate in nodal areas of high density of finds with large areas with little in between. That is different from the CW groups who tend to look like waves of advance.

[kinman]

Hi Alan,
Well, for what it's worth, my present hypothesis is that U152 originated about 4900 years ago in or near northern Austria, and that it gave rise to L2 about 4700 years ago in southern Germany. So my inclination would be to start in southeastern Germany (between Passau and Regensburg). But I don't know just how heavily developed this area might now be (with potential evidence destroyed or paved over?). Otherwise, maybe a bit down river from Passau (in Austria) or a bit up river from Regensburg. Of course, any evidence too close to the Danube River itself would have been vulnerable to any major flooding in the last 4700 years.
-----------Ken


So one way or another, if we accept that all P312 has not expanded from Iberia, there must be a culture harbouring the remainder of P312 in 2800BC-2550BC in central Europe. Now that is a narrow band of time and with a target zone of somewhere between the middle Danube and the Rhine, it really should be doable to identify it/them.

[vettor]

Hi Alan,
Well, for what it's worth, my present hypothesis is that U152 originated about 4900 years ago in or near northern Austria, and that it gave rise to L2 about 4700 years ago in southern Germany. So my inclination would be to start in southeastern Germany (between Passau and Regensburg). But I don't know just how heavily developed this area might now be (with potential evidence destroyed or paved over?). Otherwise, maybe a bit down river from Passau (in Austria) or a bit up river from Regensburg. Of course, any evidence too close to the Danube River itself would have been vulnerable to any major flooding in the last 4700 years.
-----------Ken

my opinion is slightly different , U152 in the southern border of France and Germany and L2 in the border of the Italian and Austrian alps

[Jean M]

OK as an exercise, lets say P312 existed in late Yamnaya in central Europe in say 2900BC and lets go along with the concept of a very quick movement of (some of) DF27 to Iberia c. 2800-2750BC. So that would leave behind, presumably in central Europe, U152 and L21 or its immediate ancestor. If beaker doesn't arrive in central Europe to c. 2550BC then the remainder of P312 that didn't enter Iberia had a period of separation from the subset that went to Iberia of c. 250 years. So it should have a non-beaker cultural identity for the remainder of P312 c. 2800-2550BC. The big question is where and what culture(s)?

Why ask me? You might get an answer. That wouldn't be anything like as much fun as researching for yourself. ;)

[alan]

Why ask me? You might get an answer. That wouldn't be anything like as much fun as researching for yourself. ;)

If Yamnaya did end c. 2800BC then that leaves a 250 years period between its end and the rise of central European beaker. So, in a concept where most of P312 doesnt head west (only a section goes to Iberia to form beaker) then that does leave a gap between the end of Yamnaya in Hungary and the start of beaker. So the rest of P312 had to have an intermediary culture to fill this gap. What is your understanding of the end date of Yamnaya in Hungary?

However, I notice the recent review of radiocarbon dating Repin and Yamnaya https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/view/16087/pdf

put the main Yamnaya phase per se in the 3300-2600BC zone. So that is a fairly late date but what I am less sure about is if that late date applies as far west as Hungary. Previously I understood (think it was from Anthony) that 2800BC? to be roughly the end of Yamnaya in Hungary. If the 2600BC end date for Yamnaya applied to Hungary as well then that would be very interesting given beaker appears c. 2550BC in central Europe according to the latest opinions. That brings them within touching distance of each other.

Another thing is a recent review of Hungarian kurgans (below) made it clear that the RC dating was incredibly sparse and kind of hopeless. How they could draw any conclusion about the dating of the end of Yamnaya in Hungary without a decent set of RC dates is beyond me.

http://www.academia.edu/5994694/J%C3%A1nos_Dani_Research_of_Pit-grave_culture_kurgans_in_Hungary_in_the_last_three _decades

[alan]

Why ask me? You might get an answer. That wouldn't be anything like as much fun as researching for yourself. ;)

We are going to be bereft when the answers are all there. It will be like Boxing Day. Will need a new hobby. May take up pigeon fancying :0)

[alan]

Hi Alan,
Well, for what it's worth, my present hypothesis is that U152 originated about 4900 years ago in or near northern Austria, and that it gave rise to L2 about 4700 years ago in southern Germany. So my inclination would be to start in southeastern Germany (between Passau and Regensburg). But I don't know just how heavily developed this area might now be (with potential evidence destroyed or paved over?). Otherwise, maybe a bit down river from Passau (in Austria) or a bit up river from Regensburg. Of course, any evidence too close to the Danube River itself would have been vulnerable to any major flooding in the last 4700 years.
-----------Ken

A few weeks ago I looked at the routes using the upper Danube a bit closer than I have before and the problem with Bavaria is that the CW people settled there in the path of the Danubian route. So unless someone preceded CW on the journey west then CW was in the way. However, it is also a fact that beaker people dont seem to have moved about in a solid wave like the early farmers or the CW people. Instead they had a habit of cutting out areas and heading straight to nodal points. It is suggestive to me of movement on horses - something the beaker people have long been credited with introducing to some parts of Europe. So, it may be that a group like CW in the way wouldnt have been an obstacle and could simply be bypassed in a few days riding.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Looking at Kristiansen's chapter in http://https://books.google.com.au/books?id=RuakBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA1098&lpg=PA1098&dq=bell+beaker.expansion+central+europe&source=bl&ots=Tchza1fhrY&sig=iiW8SvXPGRdlVR8AyQYoCz4JdEw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAmoVChMIgKavjLHdxwIVInmmCh1N-g39#v=onepage&q=bell%20beaker.expansion%20central%20europe&f=false (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=RuakBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA1098&lpg=PA1098&dq=bell+beaker.expansion+central+europe&source=bl&ots=Tchza1fhrY&sig=iiW8SvXPGRdlVR8AyQYoCz4JdEw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAmoVChMIgKavjLHdxwIVInmmCh1N-g39#v=onepage&q=bell%20beaker.expansion%20central%20europe&f=false) , he highlights the demographic strength of pre-Beaker, early Copper age Iberia. It is a most interesting question, then, as to how R1b-M269 groups became so dominant, even if they were indeed great archers & horseman who had strong social bonds.

Whatever the Archaeogenetic data might suggest, the expansion of west to east- into CWC and former Yamnaya territories is notable. This corresponds to an arid phase in the steppe; and contraction of Yamnaya-like groups (viz. it's Catacomb successor) to the north Pontic region. Indeed, the presence of Yamnaya kurgans in East Central and southeastern Europe was a brief period, starting 3000, and ending 2500 BC.

[kinman]

I guess it depends on how far down the Danube the CW people had settled in this time frame. If they were all the way down to Passau, then U152 might well have leap frogged (nodal point to nodal point) up that part of the Danube in Bavaria in short steps. Or alternatively, perhaps two larger jumps, first to the Isar River, and from there back to the Danube further upstream. If so, the Isar River might be an interesting area to look for evidence of U152 during this period of time.
As for the culture being practiced by U152 in this area, it could very well be the very last remnants of Yamna Culture. But once they bumped up against the Bell Beaker advancing from the southwest of them, U152 could have quickly adopted Bell Beaker (or perhaps a period of a mixture of the two). Perhaps L2 men (and/or other U152 men) took Bell Beaker wives, and those wives convinced them to switch from Yamnaya to a more Bell Beaker type of culture.
--------------Ken


A few weeks ago I looked at the routes using the upper Danube a bit closer than I have before and the problem with Bavaria is that the CW people settled there in the path of the Danubian route. So unless someone preceded CW on the journey west then CW was in the way. However, it is also a fact that beaker people dont seem to have moved about in a solid wave like the early farmers or the CW people. Instead they had a habit of cutting out areas and heading straight to nodal points. It is suggestive to me of movement on horses - something the beaker people have long been credited with introducing to some parts of Europe. So, it may be that a group like CW in the way wouldnt have been an obstacle and could simply be bypassed in a few days riding.

[Heber]

Finally we have a full genome ancient DNA sample from the Neolithic Mediterranean route into Iberia despite the difficulty in extracting this DNA in southern warmer climatic conditions. With 50-100 samples to come from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages including Bronze Age, this new technique should help clarify the Bell Beaker migrations. This supports the idea of several routes to and from Iberia including Mediterranean, Alpine route and Danube route.
"So far, only genomic data of various individuals belonging to the inland route found in Hungary and Germany were available, but the complete genomes of the Mediterranean route were lacked. This is partly due to the climatic conditions in Southern Europe, which hinder the conservation of genetic material....
"Thanks to this new genome, researchers have been able to determine that farmers from the Mediterranean route and the inland route are very homogeneous and clearly derive from a common ancestral population that, most likely, is that of the first farmers who entered Europe through Anatolia...."
"For Carles Lalueza-Fox, "this study is only the first step of a major project done in collaboration with David Reich at the Broad Institute that aims to create an Iberian paleogenomic transect, from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages. So far, we have genomic data from fifty individuals and we want to reach more than one hundred. Being at the westernmost edge of Europe, the Iberian Peninsula is crucial to understand the final impact of population movements such as the Neolithic or the later steppe migrations that entered Europe from the East".

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/snrc-fag090215.php

Here is the full paper. We are lucky to have a series of high quality papers in quick succession. Half of these samples are mtDNA H and Brandt identified the Bell Beaker expansion from Iberia via H in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age..

Conclusions

"The Mediterranean region is crucial for understanding local cultural horizons such as
the Cardial, but also for unravelling potential trans-Mediterranean maritime routes and
island colonisation processes. Although the DNA in our samples was poorly preserved
because of the warm Mediterranean climate, our results demonstrate that recovery of
complete ancient genomes from areas with a similar climate (including in the Near East
and North Africa) may also be possible. Cave sites in these regions clearly offer some
advantages in terms of preservation.
Our analyses indicate that both the LBK and Cardial peoples originated from a common
ancient meta-population that diverged along two different migration routes, one
following the Danube River (LBK) and the other one following the northern
Mediterranean coastline (Impressa and Cardial). Furthermore, we detect a discernible
hunter-gatherer component in the Cardial genome, which seems to derive from a
population more closely related to Eastern European hunter-gatherers than to the
neighbouring Iberian La Braña 1 sample.
From the current genetic evidence, it seems clear that all early European farmers
represent a fairly homogeneous group at both the genetic and phenotypic levels.
Subsequent population movements from the Chalcolithic onwards considerably altered
8
this scenario, and contributed to the shaping of present-day European genetic diversity
(Gamba et al. 2014; Allentoft et al. 2015; Haak et al. 2015)."

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/09/02/molbev.msv181.full.pdf+html

Neolithic Cardial Ware Migrations
5793

mtDNA Analysis
5794

Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age Bell Beaker (Brandt et al)

5795

[Romilius]

Looking at Kristiansen's chapter in http://https://books.google.com.au/books?id=RuakBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA1098&lpg=PA1098&dq=bell+beaker.expansion+central+europe&source=bl&ots=Tchza1fhrY&sig=iiW8SvXPGRdlVR8AyQYoCz4JdEw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAmoVChMIgKavjLHdxwIVInmmCh1N-g39#v=onepage&q=bell%20beaker.expansion%20central%20europe&f=false (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=RuakBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA1098&lpg=PA1098&dq=bell+beaker.expansion+central+europe&source=bl&ots=Tchza1fhrY&sig=iiW8SvXPGRdlVR8AyQYoCz4JdEw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAmoVChMIgKavjLHdxwIVInmmCh1N-g39#v=onepage&q=bell%20beaker.expansion%20central%20europe&f=false) , he highlights the demographic strength of pre-Beaker, early Copper age Iberia. It is a most interesting question, then, as to how R1b-M269 groups became so dominant, even if they were indeed great archers & horseman who had strong social bonds.

Whatever the Archaeogenetic data might suggest, the expansion of west to east- into CWC and former Yamnaya territories is notable. This corresponds to an arid phase in the steppe; and contraction of Yamnaya-like groups (viz. it's Catacomb successor) to the north Pontic region. Indeed, the presence of Yamnaya kurgans in East Central and southeastern Europe was a brief period, starting 3000, and ending 2500 BC.

I read the chapter and I didn't understand how Kristiansen could say that tooth researches by Desideri are evidence of the "out of Iberia" theory. I read the Desideri paper and I understood the opposite. Perhaps, I become even more stupid with age...


All this discussion makes me think about only a thing: to know as soon as possible the Y-Dna of Iberian Bell Beaker skeletons.

[rms2]

Here are some questions.

Is there any reason why the early Beaker men who moved east out of Iberia could not have been I2a or G2a?

When and where did the classic Beaker burial rite first appear (i.e., single grave; usually under a tumulus; body on one side in a flexed position; buttons with a V-shaped boring; flint and copper daggers; arrowheads; and flat perforated pieces of schist thought to be bowman's wristguards)?

When and where did the classic Beaker bodies first appear (i.e., quoting Hubert, "tall, with round heads of a fairly constant shape, the brow receding, the supraciliary ridge prominent, the cheek-bones highly developed, and the jaws massive and projecting so as to present a dip at the base of the nose")?

When and where does the first evidence of horse riding and pastoralism appear among the Beaker people?

If the very early Iberian Beaker people did not have the full Beaker burial package, differed physically from the classic later Beaker people, and do not appear to have been mounted pastoralists, why should we expect them to have the same y-dna profile?

[alan]

I guess it depends on how far down the Danube the CW people had settled in this time frame. If they were all the way down to Passau, then U152 might well have leap frogged (nodal point to nodal point) up that part of the Danube in Bavaria in short steps. Or alternatively, perhaps two larger jumps, first to the Isar River, and from there back to the Danube further upstream. If so, the Isar River might be an interesting area to look for evidence of U152 during this period of time.
As for the culture being practiced by U152 in this area, it could very well be the very last remnants of Yamna Culture. But once they bumped up against the Bell Beaker advancing from the southwest of them, U152 could have quickly adopted Bell Beaker (or perhaps a period of a mixture of the two). Perhaps L2 men (and/or other U152 men) took Bell Beaker wives, and those wives convinced them to switch from Yamnaya to a more Bell Beaker type of culture.
--------------Ken

An alternative route from central to south-west Europe is the head of the Adriatic, along the Po and though the Aosda to Grenoble pass to the Rhone. L51xL11 gives the impression of having used this route and perhaps the Tyrol-Bolzano etc route to the Po too.

[vettor]

An alternative route from central to south-west Europe is the head of the Adriatic, along the Po and though the Aosda to Grenoble pass to the Rhone. L51xL11 gives the impression of having used this route and perhaps the Tyrol-Bolzano etc route to the Po too.

or the
Innsbruck through Belluno to the PO route ..............its less of a mountainous route

[kinman]

I won't dispute L51xL11 taking a route south of the Alps (and along the Po River), but I just don't see any evidence that U106 or P312 would have gone south of the Alps. However, if CW somehow prevented them from making it up the Danube as far as its junction with the Isar River, L11, P312 and U106 could have left the Danube at Passau (at the Inn River) or even back at Linz. Either way, they could go west from lake to lake until they got to Lake Constance, and then migrate down the Rhine River (U106 perhaps all the way to Netherlands, but at least some U152 turning west near the Black Forest and across northern France.
However, until I see evidence that CW somehow blocked their way, I still prefer the more northerly route, all the way up the Danube to its headwaters (at the eastern edge of the Black Forest). Some P312 could then cross the Rhine into northern France, while U106 went down the Rhine. They seem to have reached the Rhine River one way or another, and going north of the Alps makes more sense to me than going south of the Alps.
-----------Ken


An alternative route from central to south-west Europe is the head of the Adriatic, along the Po and though the Aosda to Grenoble pass to the Rhone. L51xL11 gives the impression of having used this route and perhaps the Tyrol-Bolzano etc route to the Po too.

[Heber]

Here is the full paper. We are lucky to have a series of high quality papers in quick succession. Half of these samples are mtDNA H and Brandt identified the Bell Beaker expansion from Iberia via H in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age..

Conclusions

"The Mediterranean region is crucial for understanding local cultural horizons such as
the Cardial, but also for unravelling potential trans-Mediterranean maritime routes and
island colonisation processes. Although the DNA in our samples was poorly preserved
because of the warm Mediterranean climate, our results demonstrate that recovery of
complete ancient genomes from areas with a similar climate (including in the Near East
and North Africa) may also be possible. Cave sites in these regions clearly offer some
advantages in terms of preservation.
Our analyses indicate that both the LBK and Cardial peoples originated from a common
ancient meta-population that diverged along two different migration routes, one
following the Danube River (LBK) and the other one following the northern
Mediterranean coastline (Impressa and Cardial). Furthermore, we detect a discernible
hunter-gatherer component in the Cardial genome, which seems to derive from a
population more closely related to Eastern European hunter-gatherers than to the
neighbouring Iberian La Braña 1 sample.
From the current genetic evidence, it seems clear that all early European farmers
represent a fairly homogeneous group at both the genetic and phenotypic levels.
Subsequent population movements from the Chalcolithic onwards considerably altered
8
this scenario, and contributed to the shaping of present-day European genetic diversity
(Gamba et al. 2014; Allentoft et al. 2015; Haak et al. 2015)."

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/09/02/molbev.msv181.full.pdf+html

Neolithic Cardial Ware Migrations
5793

mtDNA Analysis
5794

Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age Bell Beaker (Brandt et al)

5795

It is interesting that Olalde et al identified the Early Neolithic expansion of farming into Iberia along the Mediterranean associated with mtDNA H and Brandt et al identified the Late Neolithic Early Bronze Age expansion of Bell Beaker out of Iberia associated also with mtDNA H. The highest frequencies of H are found in the the Bell Beaker territory, west of the Rhine with very high frequencies on the Atlantic Facade (Mayo 43%, Asturias 38%). This mirrors the findings of
Hallast et al for the Y tree where P312 bursts into life in the Atlantic zone. So P312 and H appear to be Bell Beaker brother and sister (or husband and wife).

https://www.pinterest.com/gerardcorcoran/r1b-p312/
https://www.pinterest.com/gerardcorcoran/mtdna-h1c1/
https://www.pinterest.com/gerardcorcoran/bell-beaker-migrations/

5807

5808

Reading the chapter on Ireland on the latest "Bell Beaker Transition in Europe", we find increasing emphasis of these Bell Beaker Atlantic connections:
Ross Island, earliest known mine in NW Europe (2400 BC)
The pottery from Ross Island is Beaker.
Links between Irish gold and Evora in Portugal via Cornwall and Brittany.
Similarity between megalithic "wedge tombs" in W Ireland and NW France.
Reuse of megalithic tombs by Bell Beaker groups along the Atlantic from Portugal to Brittany.
While Bell Beaker certainly did migrate up the Danube and Rhine, there was also significant connections on the Atlantic Facade.
Fitzpatrick summarizes that "in Ireland copper mining started in Ross Island in the 24th century BC and it appears to have been introduced directly from continental Europe by Bell Beaker groups...
The Bell Beaker Set may have been introduced to the Isles from more than one region of continental Europe in a time of rapid change that involved the wide an rapid movement of people and ideas, and materials and objects."

5811

5810

[Gravetto-Danubian]

I read the chapter and I didn't understand how Kristiansen could say that tooth researches by Desideri are evidence of the "out of Iberia" theory. I read the Desideri paper and I understood the opposite. Perhaps, I become even more stupid with age...


All this discussion makes me think about only a thing: to know as soon as possible the Y-Dna of Iberian Bell Beaker skeletons.


My main point wasn;t about the dental evidence, which might be shunned (though not wholly) in today's world of direct aDNA evidence.

My point was the thriving demography in Iberia in the immediate pre-BB period. So if these various Neolithic-descended groups (presumably I2, G2a, and smaller amounts of F* and E-V13) were replaced by central European R1b, it begs explanation. Iberia had nothing (AFAIK) of the sort of Late Neolithic/ Copper Age 'collapse' that seen in southeastern Europe, or some central European LBK groups.


RMS2:

Is there any reason why the early Beaker men who moved east out of Iberia could not have been I2a or G2a?

When and where did the classic Beaker burial rite first appear (i.e., single grave; usually under a tumulus; body on one side in a flexed position; buttons with a V-shaped boring; flint and copper daggers; arrowheads; and flat perforated pieces of schist thought to be bowman's wristguards)?

When and where did the classic Beaker bodies first appear (i.e., quoting Hubert, "tall, with round heads of a fairly constant shape, the brow receding, the supraciliary ridge prominent, the cheek-bones highly developed, and the jaws massive and projecting so as to present a dip at the base of the nose")?

When and where does the first evidence of horse riding and pastoralism appear among the Beaker people?

If the very early Iberian Beaker people did not have the full Beaker burial package, differed physically from the classic later Beaker people, and do not appear to have been mounted pastoralists, why should we expect them to have the same y-dna profile?

Im personally not sure. But c. 2500 BC must be a watershed. It is here when true BB sets emerge. Such sets, and the contacts through which they were mediated, were used to quell local competitors. But I can't imagine that it was a 'global' conflict of BB groups vs the rest. Id imagine BB groups might have been mutually antagonistic, if required.


In the southern Meseta at least, non BB groups (e.g. collective graves, non-BB set individual graves) continue into M3. It would be interesting to genetically sample these groups.

THe other aspect of BB phenomenon which I had not realized was its relative short duration - in most areas this was only two centuries. One might suppose it was a (relatively speaking) rapid period of transformation, and the BB set and the symbolism it endowed were ceased after their need ended. However, again in some regions like the southern Meseta, BB sets continued into the MBA.

[razyn]

So P312 and H appear to be Bell Beaker brother and sister (or husband and wife).

That conclusion does not follow, from sampling and mapping these exclusively maternal and exclusively paternal haplogroups by the loci of their highest frequencies in a region's populace today. P312 and H appear to have had high breeding success, respectively (and without regard to when, where or whence each arrived into the territory being mapped, today), in western and central European areas peppered with variable concentrations of Bell Beaker remains, dating variously over about a thousand years. These respective mtDNA and YDNA lineages have had the most recent four or five millennia to achieve their respective successes -- resulting, in our vastly more dense populations, in a contemporary pattern that may now look as if they did these things in each other's company, from some starting point.

But to suppose that genetic Adam was personally acquainted with genetic Eve -- whether one is talking about those founding roles in Africa, Iberia, Cornwall, or any other place that has been populated for thousands of years -- is still just speculation, at this point in our learning process. The recent aDNA evidence suggests to me that Ms. H was on the scene a few thousand years before young Mr. P312 and his boys met a bevy of her 30+ generation removed granddaughters. Those happy matches were made, among other places, in the Atlantic Front area that many still propose as the Bell Beaker cultural (and P312 or DF27 genetic) nursery. Or at the very least, its Pottery Barn. Love was in the air, so to speak -- and the rest is prehistory. We hope that will continue to untangle over the next few months and years.

[kinman]

Hi again,
I should clarify that some P312 clearly did eventually cross the Alps from the north, apparently speaking a proto-Italic language. However, this supposedly happened about 3200 years ago, which would have been long after members of P312 probably reached the Rhine River (4200-4400 years ago?). Therefore, this more significant migration into Italy would have been from the north or northwest, not from the northeast or east (the direction L51xL11 would have taken at an earlier time, presumably speaking an Italo-Celtic language a thousand years older than proto-Italic).
----------------Ken


I won't dispute L51xL11 taking a route south of the Alps (and along the Po River), but I just don't see any evidence that U106 or P312 would have gone south of the Alps. However, if CW somehow prevented them from making it up the Danube as far as its junction with the Isar River, L11, P312 and U106 could have left the Danube at Passau (at the Inn River) or even back at Linz. Either way, they could go west from lake to lake until they got to Lake Constance, and then migrate down the Rhine River (U106 perhaps all the way to Netherlands, but at least some U152 turning west near the Black Forest and across northern France.
However, until I see evidence that CW somehow blocked their way, I still prefer the more northerly route, all the way up the Danube to its headwaters (at the eastern edge of the Black Forest). Some P312 could then cross the Rhine into northern France, while U106 went down the Rhine. They seem to have reached the Rhine River one way or another, and going north of the Alps makes more sense to me than going south of the Alps.
-----------Ken

[Heber]

But to suppose that genetic Adam was personally acquainted with genetic Eve

No one is suggesting that P312 and H were literally husband and wife or that they were born in the same period as should be obvious from their different roles in the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Reminder to myself to post a :) after tongue in cheek comments. However it would be interesting to do an analysis of the relative frequency of the combination of Y P312 and mtDNA H in traditional Celtic countries. I suspect that combination would be higher than other combinations in both modern and ancient DNA data sets.

Several years ago for fun I did an analysis of the relative weight of my Y and mtDNA matches on 23andme.

Y Analysis weighted
5812

mtDNA Analysis weighted
5813

Y and mtDNA Frequency
5814

The results overwhelmingly clustered around P312 (subclades L21) and H which is not surprising as most of my relatives originated from Ireland.
I will attempt a similar analysis using the combination of P312 and H on larger population data sets.

[rms2]

When I first got into genetic genealogy, the big error concerning R1b was the idea that during the Paleolithic Period it made an end run around most of Europe to land in Iberia in time to spend the most recent Ice Age there and then advance east and north after the ice began to recede.

It seems to me some folks are making the same error now but have just put R1b's end run off until the Late Neolithic. Some are restricting it to P312 or DF27, however.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Sangmeister came up with his Rückstrom (literally, backstream) or Reflux idea for a reason, i.e., that the early Beaker Folk who went east out of Iberia were very different from those who came west later.

[Webb]

This is going to come across as very simplistic, but would it be out of the realm of possibility that the people we call beaker originally had no beakers until they migrated to Iberia? Once they reached Iberia they acquired the beakers and then the pots themselves were traded back east along the migration route that the actual people took. If they were a hot commodity, then other crafts people started to make their own versions of them so by the time they reach the Hungary area the pots have changed somewhat due to people making spin offs, so to speak. So in other words, people migrate west, reach Iberia, trade with locals for beaker pots, these pots start traveling in the reverse migration route, heading back east.

[rms2]

This is going to come across as very simplistic, but would it be out of the realm of possibility that the people we call beaker originally had no beakers until they migrated to Iberia? Once they reached Iberia they acquired the beakers and then the pots themselves were traded back east along the migration route that the actual people took. If they were a hot commodity, then other crafts people started to make their own versions of them so by the time they reach the Hungary area the pots have changed somewhat due to people making spin offs, so to speak. So in other words, people migrate west, reach Iberia, trade with locals for beaker pots, these pots start traveling in the reverse migration route, heading back east.

It seems more likely to me that those with the early pots had no R1b-P312 until they migrated out of Iberia. I could be wrong, of course, but I think the pots went east with some non-R1b people and became part of the revamped, kurganized Beaker culture that came back west (the Rückstrom). This is just my opinion, but that's how I think R1b-DF27 got to Iberia, as part of the Beaker Rückstrom from the east. In the Iberian peninsula it pooled up and expanded because there was no farther west its bearers could go without first acquiring some sophisticated seafaring skills.

[alan]

There was a drier phase about 2500BC give or take so it could have been a factor in both the push from south-west Europe and from east-central Europe which both are generally more arid than north-west and west-central Europe. The main thing about the bell beaker phenomenon is that eastern and western aspects suddenly mix c. 2550BC after little evidence so two overlapping counter flows from east and south-west makes sense. Two counterflows have to have a mixing point and that is likely west-central Europe.

[Heber]

Timeline
Cardial Ware in Neolithic migrated from Balkens to Iberia carrying mtDNA H using maritime skills (Olalde et al)
Bell Beaker in Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age expanded from Iberia carrying mtDNA H (Brandt et al)
Bell Beaker in Bronze Age returned to Iberia and hit Atlantic Europe cliffs and promptly forgot all maritime skills (the Lemmings model):) (please note smiley, I do not support this model)
5816
I do not think our ancestors were Lemmings.
This despite the fact that Bronze Age Atlantic Maritime Trading Networks and metal rich mining were noted for their maritime skills and the fact that a trip from East to West and back again could be accomplished in one season by a highly mobile Bell Beaker culture. It does not make sense.
Europe between the Oceans, Atlantic Europe in the Age of Metals, Bell Beaker Transition in Europe.
5817

[alan]

Timeline
Cardial Ware in Neolithic migrated from Balkens to Iberia carrying mtDNA H using maritime skills (Olalde et al)
Bell Beaker in Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age expanded from Iberia carrying mtDNA H (Brandt et al)
Bell Beaker returned to Iberia and hit Atlantic Europe cliffs and promptly forgot all maritime skills (the Lemmings model):)
5816
I do not think our ancestors were Lemmings.
This despite the fact that Bronze Age Atlantic Maritime Trading Networks and metal rich mining were noted for their maritime skills and the fact that a trip from East to West and back again could be accomplished in one season by a highly mobile Bell Beaker culture. It does not make sense.
Europe between the Oceans, Atlantic Europe in the Age of Metals, Bell Beaker Transition in Europe.
5817

I dont think anyone is saying there is not an Atlantic aspect to bell beaker - far from it. Its just that there was an increasingly central European aspect 2550-2200BC across the beaker world including the south-west. The beaker transformation in Europe book for instance shows that before reaching Ireland relatively late c. 2400BC the Atlantic and central European aspects had mixed. For example beaker in Ireland central European derived aspects has a lot of polypod pots and hollow based arrowheads (far less western barbed and tanged) and indeed Rhenish type pots. On the other hand it had a predominance of two hole bracers and goldwork which looks more Atlantic derived. This is not surprising because before reaching Ireland Atlantic and central European had had the whole period 2550-2400BC to mix in Europe and perhaps briefly in Britain too.

It is only the pre-2550BC beaker phase that looks predominantly Iberian. Probably southern France and north Italy was initially a pretty well totally Iberian derived beaker thing and in southern France and Iberia it was only late in the beaker phase that central European influence comes. In the Rhine and northern France the mixing or Atlantic and central European beaker attributes probably had been under way for a lot longer.

[rms2]

I don't know how entering a peninsula and experiencing a population increase there is anything like the behavior of lemmings, but the Atlantic Bronze Age trading system (1300-700 BC) developed long after Beaker. No one is saying R1b-DF27 got to Iberia and ran off the edge to perish in the Atlantic. Usually snarky characterizations bear some reasonable relationship to the idea being denigrated.

Has anyone anywhere connected the Beaker Folk to advanced seafaring? That is not something they were noted for, is it?

One still has to wonder, if early Beaker was already largely R1b-P312 and simply advanced eastward and northward out of Iberia, why it was so different from the later Beaker that came back west.

[alan]

I don't know how entering a peninsula and experiencing a population increase there is anything like the behavior of lemmings, but the Atlantic Bronze Age trading system (1300-700 BC) developed long after Beaker. No one is saying R1b-DF27 got to Iberia and ran off the edge to perish in the Atlantic. Usually snarky characterizations bear some reasonable relationship to the idea being denigrated.

Has anyone anywhere connected the Beaker Folk to advanced seafaring? That is not something they were noted for, is it?

One still has to wonder, if early Beaker was already largely R1b-P312 and simply advanced eastward and northward out of Iberia, why it was so different from the later Beaker that came back west.

I read recently some doubt being thrown on the maritime skills of bell beaker in terms of the link between Galician and Armorica. It doubted the open sea ability to do that albeit it is safer to sail direct than coast hug the Bay of Biscay which has terribly dangerous currents. Worth bearing in mind boats likely didnt have sails probably until approaching 1000BC in Atlantic Europe so we are talking about rowing. There is also no evidence of wooden boats until just after the beaker phase. So at best we are talking about rowed skin boats. This makes short journeys in little hops likely IMO. The shortest possible hops across open sea would be made where it was unavoidable. In the case of Ireland the shortest crossing by far is from Scotland but because the Ross Island mine is in the south-west and was redistributed to Britain, it seems likely that something like SW Wales to Wexford kind of route was important- basically today's Fishguard to Rosslare (near Wexford) ferry route. Other routes to Ireland are also probably reflected in modern ferrys like Holyhead in NW Wales to Dun Laogaire near Dublin, Stranraer in SW Scotland to Larne in Antrim and also NW England to the isles of Man to Ireland. The distribution of Ross Island copper in the beaker period outside Ireland shows that the main link was to Britain.

Here is a modern ferry map of Atlantic Europe
http://flightlesstravel.com/images/NWEurope%20Ferries.jpg

[alan]

I don't know how entering a peninsula and experiencing a population increase there is anything like the behavior of lemmings, but the Atlantic Bronze Age trading system (1300-700 BC) developed long after Beaker. No one is saying R1b-DF27 got to Iberia and ran off the edge to perish in the Atlantic. Usually snarky characterizations bear some reasonable relationship to the idea being denigrated.

Has anyone anywhere connected the Beaker Folk to advanced seafaring? That is not something they were noted for, is it?

One still has to wonder, if early Beaker was already largely R1b-P312 and simply advanced eastward and northward out of Iberia, why it was so different from the later Beaker that came back west.

people with Atlantic theories of the rise of Celtic tend to overlook the lack of contact between the north Atlantic and Iberia c. 2300-1300BC. That would have seen a major linguistic divergence between the NW and SW European Atlantic zone. In generally throughout the period 2300-1300BC the isles and NW France were orientated towards the Rhine and central Europe. It was only relatively briefly in the 1300-1000BC period that Iberia connected up tradewise with NW France and the isles but this seems to be a north to south thing with the isles and NW France acting as an intermediary sending central European derived ideas to Iberia.

[alan]

I suppose that for the alternative model that early beaker was non-R1b Iberian derived that the changeover can be seen at Sion of the switch from Iberian derived beaker to central European. Whether early Iberian was non-R1b or even if it was DF27 then the point still stands that U152 and pre-L21 lines were to some degree 'beakerised' or hybrided with western beaker influences in central Europe. That stands regardless if you see early beaker as non-R1b or DF27. So, somewhere in central Europe as later as just before 2550BC at least a large chunk of P312 had to have existed in a non-beaker culture and must have done so for several centuries c. 2800-2550BC at least.

Another thought is that L51xL11 looks like it was unusual in that it took the Inn valley route into north Italy and into southern France. Now, I dont think there is any good arguement that all P312 took that route. So, I would tend to look at point east of the Inn Valley where both L51xL11 and P312 could have had a choice of that route or heading north of the Alps.

[razyn]

Worth bearing in mind boats likely didnt have sails probably until approaching 1000BC in Atlantic Europe so we are talking about rowing. There is also no evidence of wooden boats until just after the beaker phase. So at best we are talking about rowed skin boats.

Wet wood tends not to last well for archaeologists. But the odd boat has been preserved, here and there -- under water that was too cold for shipworms, or maybe poisonous to bug and archaeologist alike. The biggest old wooden boat from the Bell Beaker period was preserved in sand, an odd environment for it, but then these guys weren't typical in a lot of ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khufu_ship

If they could bury that in 2500 BC, I don't much doubt that the technology for building it had already been known for some time previously.

[alan]

I don't know how entering a peninsula and experiencing a population increase there is anything like the behavior of lemmings, but the Atlantic Bronze Age trading system (1300-700 BC) developed long after Beaker. No one is saying R1b-DF27 got to Iberia and ran off the edge to perish in the Atlantic. Usually snarky characterizations bear some reasonable relationship to the idea being denigrated.

Has anyone anywhere connected the Beaker Folk to advanced seafaring? That is not something they were noted for, is it?

One still has to wonder, if early Beaker was already largely R1b-P312 and simply advanced eastward and northward out of Iberia, why it was so different from the later Beaker that came back west.

The only possibility I can think is that a section of DF27 broke of in such small numbers that the influence of the native Iberians was great and the ancestral DF27 impact fairly minor in material culture. Its not impossible but pretty well the only arguement for it is the pot itself. That is unless the change to individual treatement of bodies in burial is shown to date right back to the appearance of beaker pot in Iberia. That remains to be shown. If it was shown that a change in burial form in Iberia does date back to the start of beaker then the possibility that it was a DF27 derivative would become more convincing. It might transpire that influences from the east in Iberia were gradual and complex in Iberia with an initial contact period say c. 2750BC represented by the beaker pot idea then some male flow c. 2600BC then a strong male flow much later c. 2300BC. It simply hasnt been subject to detailed enough dating analysis taking into account all the potential distorting factors.

[alan]

Wet wood tends not to last well for archaeologists. But the odd boat has been preserved, here and there -- under water that was too cold for shipworms, or maybe poisonous to bug and archaeologist alike. The biggest old wooden boat from the Bell Beaker period was preserved in sand, an odd environment for it, but then these guys weren't typical in a lot of ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khufu_ship

If they could bury that in 2500 BC, I don't much doubt that the technology for building it had already been known for some time previously.

Maybe but there is a distinct appearance of the sewn plank technology around 2000BC. It looks like a post-beaker channel innovation. Personally I think skin boats were probably more seaworthy. However its pretty certain that the sail wasnt introduced until the concept crept up the Atlantic coast form the Phoneticians c. 1000BC or just before. In fact I suspect the sail may be behind the sudden connection of Iberia with the north Atlantic in the centuries around 1000BC.

The sail is an Atlantic thing in northern Europe with references to the sail being used long before archaeological evidence shows it spread to Germanic Europe.

[Romilius]

I think that if early Iberian Beakers turned out to be R1b, it would be very difficult then to link R1b with PIE again.

I was reading Bell Beaker blogger and I saw that some of the most ancient Bell Beaker sites are in Morocco. I don't know how archeologists linked those sites to Bell Beaker culture. And then, I would say that Bell Beaker culture could not be always linked to a Bell Beaker folk.

I'm interested to know where is the max variance of R-P312 in Europe... perhaps in Eastern Europe?

[MJost]

I am interested as to why the DF27 sons, across its subclades, have their kits identified as Spain origin? See the NGS tree with kit info at the bottom. Could theDF27 root most likely xZ195, xZZ12 arrived into Spain acquiring BB and bringing it back to their originating ZZ11 home area, spreading down the Rhine and heading northeast from the central Rhine along the Amber route to the North sea? Aren't we now seeing considerable DF27 in Cornwall? MJost

http://www.ytree.net/DisplayTree.php?blockID=29




R-P312-P312/S116/PF6547 (U106)
= 3,360 BC


R-P312-Z1904/CTS12684/PF6548
= 3,262 BC



R-L21-L21/M529/S145 (P312>ZZ11)
= 3,164 BC


R-L21-Z260 (ZZ11>U152; ZZ11>DF27)
= 3,066 BC


R-L21-Z290/S461 (U152>first tier; DF27>ZZ12)

= 2,968 BC


R-L21-FGC3218/Y2598/S552 (U152>2nd tier; DF27>Z195; ZZ12-2nd tier)
= 2,870 BC


R-L21-Z245/S245 (U152>3rd tier; DF27>Z195>Z196-3rd tier)
= 2,772 BC


R-L21-L459 (U152>4th tier; DF27>4th tier)
= 2,674 BC


R-DF13-DF13/S521/CTS241 (U152>5th tier; DF27>5th tier)
= 2,576 BC


R-DF13-CTS8221/Z2542 (U152>6th tier; DF27>6th tier)
= 2,478 BC


#3 DF13>First Tier (U152>7th tier; DF27>7th tier)
= 2,380 BC

[razyn]

Could theDF27 root most likely xZ195, xZZ12 arrived into Spain acquiring BB and bringing it back to their originating ZZ11 home area, spreading down the Rhine and heading northeast from the central Rhine along the Amber route to the North sea? Aren't we now seeing considerable DF27 in Cornwall?
Maybe. Or something else, somewhere else (much farther east). As far as I know Alex is either ambivalent, or leaning toward the other possibility: that ZZ12_1 actually is the original state for all of DF27. The Z195+ branch, subsequently, includes deletion (or "loss") of it -- as well as Z195 and the equivalent mutation Z196, that doesn't seem to create the same nervousness as does ZZ12. His current expression of this is:
This SNP could in fact belong as a DF27 equivalent mutation. The Z195 block would then need to carry an equivalent back mutation as well. http://www.ytree.net/BlockInfo.php

I just mention it because that would rearrange the chronology you show in the rest of this post.

[MJost]

ZZ12 & ZZ11 appear to be stable, as in there is zero NGS' that make an end run around these two mutations by reversing the occurrence. Is there a different mutation rate for P5's ZZ12 or 125b repeat's ZZ11? Both still would in the averages for SNP counts. I say they both are good enough for SNP counting purposes but obviously this could be a long shot probability of a equivalent mutation or close generational occurrence appearing like a equivalent mutation.

Couldn't the ZZ12 be Sanger Sequenced?

MJost

[TigerMW]

ZZ12 & ZZ11 appear to be stable, as in there is zero NGS' that make an end run around these two mutations by reversing the occurrence. Is there a different mutation rate for P5's ZZ12 or 125b repeat's ZZ11? Both still would in the averages for SNP counts. I say they both are good enough for SNP counting purposes but obviously this could be a long shot probability of a equivalent mutation or close generational occurrence appearing like a equivalent mutation.

Couldn't the ZZ12 be Sanger Sequenced?

MJost
I think ZZ11_1 sits in that 125bp region that is problematic. I don't where the location of ZZ11_2 is.

[TigerMW]

The only possibility I can think is that a section of DF27 broke of in such small numbers that the influence of the native Iberians was great and the ancestral DF27 impact fairly minor in material culture. Its not impossible but pretty well the only arguement for it is the pot itself. That is unless the change to individual treatement of bodies in burial is shown to date right back to the appearance of beaker pot in Iberia. That remains to be shown. If it was shown that a change in burial form in Iberia does date back to the start of beaker then the possibility that it was a DF27 derivative would become more convincing. It might transpire that influences from the east in Iberia were gradual and complex in Iberia with an initial contact period say c. 2750BC represented by the beaker pot idea then some male flow c. 2600BC then a strong male flow much later c. 2300BC. It simply hasnt been subject to detailed enough dating analysis taking into account all the potential distorting factors.
Perhaps the upstream SNPs from Z220 and Z209 as well as Z198 back up to Z195 might be important. If Z195* is Iberian, then we have support for an Iberian origin of DF27, in the form of Z195 moving east as Western Bell Beakers meeting up with the Eastern Bell Beakers. The Eastern Bell Beakers smashed through and continued on but not so much to Iberia, while the Western Bell Beaker remnants (Z195*) were dispersed across the continent to form things like the Nordic L165 folks or the the Z209 North-South Cluster. In this scenario, this would be outcome of the Desideri's reflux.

[R.Rocca]

We have a German Bell Beaker R1b+ male that plots with modern Iberians autosomally, we have isotope studies that tell us that there was high immigration into Germany by Bell Beaker people, but by both males and females in just about equal percentages. And now, we have mtDNA H4a1a, unknown in Germany previous to the Bell Beaker period, showing up in NE Iberian Cardial Neolithic samples.

[Romilius]

We have a German Bell Beaker R1b+ male that plots with modern Iberians autosomally, we have isotope studies that tell us that there was high immigration into Germany by Bell Beaker people, but by both males and females in just about equal percentages. And now, we have mtDNA H4a1a, unknown in Germany previous to the Bell Beaker period, showing up in NE Iberian Cardial Neolithic samples.

I see on http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/ancientdna.shtml that the most ancient mtDNA H4a1a we have in Central Europe is in a Corded Ware site in Quedlingburg. Perhaps, it was in Germany before the arrive of Bell Beaker culture.

[Heber]

Regarding maritime capabilities of the Bell Beakers here are a few sources I collated over the weekend.
I have also included Cardial (because of mtDNA H), Bell Beaker and relevant later Celtic

Europe Between the Oceans, Professor Barry Cunliffe
Chapter 5 Assimilation of the Maritime Regions 6,000 – 3,800 BC
Fig 5.1 Showing the Meditteranean and Atlantic route taken by Cardial Ware (bearing mtDNA H).
Chapter 7 Taking to the Sea – Crossing the Peninsula 2800 – 1300 BC
Fig 7.2 Europe in the period 2800-1300. The ocean interfaces now support very distinct cultural zones bound together by maritime exchange networks. Shows the Metal rich West including Bell Beaker sites such as Ross Island, Morbihan, Tagus, Galecia, Asturias.
Fig. 7.22 The Third Millenium trading networks of Atlantic Europe. Their extent is best exemplified by the distribution of a distinctive pottery type – The Maritime Bell Beaker.. The crucial nodes in this network were the Tagus Valley and the Morbihan but major hinterland routes existed along the major rivers.

Celtic from the West I
Celtic from the West II
Atlantic Europe in the Metal Ages
Indo European from the East, Celtic from the West
The above papers provide a good transition from Neolithic, Bronze, Iron Ages, Cardial to Bell Beaker to Celtic
Celtic from the West, Professor Barry Cunliffe, Professor John Koch
Celtization from the West, the contribution of architecture. Barry Cunliffe.
Fig 1.1 Relative density of ancient ‘Celtic looking’ place names. Hot spots on the atlantic Façade.
Fig 1.4 A cognitive geography of the Atlantic Zone as it might have been viewed by an Atlantic mariner.
Fig 1.5 Enclave colonization. Europe in the period c 5500 - 4100 showing the two principal routes by which the Neolithic way of life spread through Europe from the southern Balkens, the overland spread via the Danube and North European Plain and the Meditterranean route by sea ultimately to the Atlantic coast of Iberia.
Fig 1.6 The distribution of megalithic tombs shows them to be essentially an Atlantic phenomenon. The earlist tombs - passage graves dating c 4,500 - 3,500 BC - have a maritime distribution, suggesting that the beliefs and the technologies behind the construction was along the Atlantic seaways. Reuse of megalithic graves by Bell Beaker on Atlantic façade.
Fig 1.7 The distribution of jadeite axes from their source in the Western Alps across Europe. The distribution vividly displays the exchange networks then in operation.
Fig 1.8 The distribution of Maritime Bell Beaker in Atlantic Europe during the 3rd Millenium, the crucial nodes in this network were the Tagus estuary and the Morbihan, while major hinterland routes followed the navigable rivers. The map indicates the initial movements were maritime. Trade routes with Ireland and Southern Britain for copper and tin.
Fig 1.9 The extent of the Bell Beaker complex 2700-2200 BC. Major corridors of communication by sea and river. Meditteranean, Atlantic, Danube, Rhine,

Newly discovered inscriptions from the south-west of the Iberian peninsula. Tartessian. Amilcar Guerra.
An analysis of about 50 newly discovered stela fromTartessian. Several photographs and sketches.

Fig. 4.6 shows a Gaulish expansion leading to Iberia, Western France and the Isles.
Fig 4.7 shows a rough Highland and Lowland divide of the Isles with the south east more La Tene Gaulish and the West including Ireland representing a more pan Celtic profile.
Irish Genetics and the Celts. Brian McEvoy and Daniel Bradley.
Fig 5.1 Genetic contour map of Europe showing contours from Anatolia (SE) to the Isles (NW).
Fig 5.2 Genetic map of the Isles calculated from 300,000 SNPs spread across the autosomal genomeshowing Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England.
Fig 5.3 Contour map showing the geographic frequency distribution of the Irish Modal Haplogroup (IMH) and closely related Y-chromosones showing the NW Ireland hot spots.
Fig 6.1 Map of Europe with frequency of ancient place names which were Celtic with hotspots in NW France, Iberia and the Isles.
Fig 6.2 Frequency distribution of genetic Haplogroup R1b. The densest gene flow follows the Atlantic façade, thus favouring Ireland which was then part of the continent.
Fig 6.6 Principal Componants Ananysis of Y Chromosones in Western Europe using R1b and R1a1 and I1b2 and I1a showing a gradiant from Ireland via the Isles,

Fig 9.1 The Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in the south-western Iberian Peninsula: ‘warrior’ stelae, Phoenician colonies, and Tartessian inscriptions. Shows Keltoi Tartessos region.
Fig 9.3 The Ancient Celtic Languages. Shows Halstatt, Early La Tene, Urnfiels and Atlantic Bronze Age with sharp division of Goidelic, Brittonic and gaulish.
Tartessian Inscriptions: There follows over 70 detailed photographs and transcriptions of stelae many of them with depictions of warriors and their their epitaphs.

The Bell Beaker Transition in Europe
Chapter 5 The earliest Bell Beakers: Migrations to Britain and Ireland
Fig 5.1 Location of sites mentioned including, Ross Island, Lough Gur, Newgrange, Deehommed, Boscombe, Amesbury.
Ross Island was the earliest mine in NW Europe, 24th century BC.
Atlantic Trading Networks with Tagus, Cornwall, Brittany.
Increasing emphasis on Atlantic connections, both specifically in metallurgy and more generally.
Reuse of megalithic “wedge tombs” by Bell Beaker
Bell Beaker introduced to Isles from more than one region of Europe.

Chapter 11 Long Distance Contacts: north west Iberia during the 3rd Millenium BC.
The Atlantic Connection: sea contacts between Galecia and other parts of the European Atlantic coast.

The evidence of the presence of flint blade from the south of the Iberian Peninsula in the Galecian territory allows to prove clearly the existence of long-distance contacts between these two areas during late prehistory.

Maritime Bell Beaker Atlantic Trading Networks
5820

Atlantic Bronze Age showing Metal Working
5824

Metal Rich Atlantic Trading Networks
5822

[rms2]

We have a German Bell Beaker R1b+ male that plots with modern Iberians autosomally . . .

If you say so, but I must have missed that. I thought all of the Beaker samples clustered with modern Germans and modern Irish. Even so, modern Iberians are the products of a lot of genetic input very early Iberian Beaker Folk would have been lacking. For one thing, modern Iberia is overwhelmingly R1b-P312, especially R1b-DF27. The question is whether that was true of Late Neolithic Iberians, as well.

[rms2]

I think that if early Iberian Beakers turned out to be R1b, it would be very difficult then to link R1b with PIE again.

No, not really. Those who are equating the very earliest Iberian Beaker with R1b-P312 or R1b-DF27 are bringing Indo-Europeans to Iberia in a kind of end run around the rest of Europe or in a rapid trip across it. Jean M sees the stone stelae found across Europe from the steppe to Iberia as marking their trail. I like that idea, but the stelae I have seen don't seem to resemble each other enough to have one cultural source. What troubles me is how dissimilar the very early Iberian Beaker Folk seem to be to the later, eastern-influenced Beaker Folk. They seem like two different sets of people.

I'm guessing they were two different sets of people, at least where y-dna is concerned, although I could be wrong and wind up very embarrassed in the end, if and when the very earliest (circa 2900 or 2800 BC) Iberian Beaker bodies are tested for y-dna (and if those early dates are legitimate).

I think Gimbutas was probably right and the Beaker Folk most of us regard as Beaker Folk were of eastern European origin and stem from Yamnaya by way of Vučedol, Zok Mako, Somogyvar, etc. I think that early R1b from eastern Hungary and the Vučedol period (c. 2870 BC) is an indicator of things to come. If he turns out to be R1b-P312, that will be a really positive sign that Gimbutas was right.

I think when and if we get ancient y-dna from one of the earliest bodies in Iberia that is accompanied by a Beaker pot (c. 2900 BC), it will turn out to be I2a or G2a. Just my opinion and what I am betting on. Like I said, I fully realize I could be wrong and that very intelligent people whom I respect disagree with me.



I was reading Bell Beaker blogger and I saw that some of the most ancient Bell Beaker sites are in Morocco. I don't know how archeologists linked those sites to Bell Beaker culture. And then, I would say that Bell Beaker culture could not be always linked to a Bell Beaker folk.

The Moroccan Beaker pots look weird to me, but I guess experts see them as true Beaker.



I'm interested to know where is the max variance of R-P312 in Europe... perhaps in Eastern Europe?

I think that is the case, or perhaps Central Europe. Mikewww or MJost would know.

[George]

I have a technical question for your very active R1b groups (since it also affects all other haplgrs.) Perhaps the answer is obvious and if so I apologize for wasting your expert time, while thanking in advance any answer to this beginner. I am wondering why Yfull in its estimates of the time start for any particular clade, does not give preference to the analyzed age of the older results, but searches for a median. Take your L-23 for instance. I see that the proposed Yfull age for its TMCRA is offered as "6400 bp". I also see that individual times vary very widely. YFO3714 for instance has an analyzed age of 9046 bp. Considerably more than the official TMRCA of Yfull. And others have an age time which is considerably less. The main difference I notice is in the "average n. of SNP's" analyzed. They are almost always much more numerous for the older times allotted... But the actual emergence of the originating L 23 should be uniquely timed should it not? So why give equal preference to all results and "medianize" rather than accept the older results based on a greater number of SNP's?

[bicicleur]

Ken - In my model, the stream up the Danube is presumed to be initially PIE, shading into a dialect that eventually became Proto-Italo-Celtic or Proto-Celto-Italic, if you prefer, or Something-a-bit-closer-to-Italic-than-PIE. Italic and Ligurian developed, I presume, after people speaking that dialect settled in Italy. Celtic developed, I presume, after people speaking that dialect settled north of the Alps. So U152 could end up associated with Celtic, Ligurian and Italic speakers, which would help to explain its distribution. Please excuse the lack of detail on the map, which is crude in the extreme. We do have U152 in German Bell Beaker. I thought about adding an extra arrow to signal that, but there is not a lot of space. I could try again.

[Added - done. Not well, but it's in there.]

5788

while you're editing the map - I don't think it is likely R1b-V88 split from the HG in the Samara area, went to Anatolia, picked up cattle herding there and then continued into Africa
I think a split between R1b-V88 and R1b-P297 is more likely to have happened south of the Caucasus before or during the time cattle was being domesticated

[Jean M]

while you're editing the map - I don't think it is likely R1b-V88 split from the HG in the Samara area, went to Anatolia, picked up cattle herding there and then continued into Africa. I think a split between R1b-V88 and R1b-P297 is more likely to have happened south of the Caucasus before or during the time cattle was being domesticated

Did you not see my label on the map in yellow, saying "Neolithic"? It is pretty clear that R1b-V88 had arrived in the heartlands of domestication of animals and plants in time to be involved in the spread of the Neolithic into parts of Europe and Africa. The exact route and date of its arrival in the Neolithic heartland is unknown, but crossing the Caspian was not only possible in the Mesolithic, but boats are actually recorded in rock art at Gobustan, Azerbaijan. That is why my yellow arrow points to Gobustan, and then another arrow takes us south across the mountains to the likely region of further migrations. I have no evidence of the exact route taken. If you have such evidence, by all means let us know. Ideally we would like radiocarbon-dated ancient DNA.

[A_Skeptic]

Did you not see my label on the map in yellow, saying "Neolithic"? It is pretty clear that R1b-V88 had arrived in the heartlands of domestication of animals and plants in time to be involved in the spread of the Neolithic into parts of Europe and Africa. The exact route and date of its arrival in the Neolithic heartland is unknown, but crossing the Caspian was not only possible in the Mesolithic, but boats are actually recorded in rock art at Gobustan, Azerbaijan. That is why my yellow arrow points to Gobustan, and then another arrow takes us south across the mountains to the likely region of further migrations. I have no evidence of the exact route taken. If you have such evidence, by all means let us know. Ideally we would like radiocarbon-dated ancient DNA.

Jean, there is an increasing amount of evidence in archaeology that fishing-hunter-gatherers were using boats in the Mediterranean during the Upper Paleolithic. There are many papers in the literature that indicate this.

Additionally, there is evidence that some hunter-gatherers specialized on hunting caprines during the late paleolithic in Iberia, Italy, the Balkans and Asia Minor. Moreover, recent evidence indicates that these caprine specialists made the transition to farming.

The Els Trocs DNA indicates that Pre-V88 was established in the Pyrenees already during the early Neolithic.

So, if you're willing to consider that the emergence of R1b V88 occurred before the Neolithic, then you would also have to admit that R1b was already established across the Caspian, Black Sea and Mediterranean before the Neolithic. That's what Els Trocs is telling us. The aDNA says the same thing (in spite of a vigorous campaign by certain users of this forum to tell you otherwise.)

[vettor]

Did you not see my label on the map in yellow, saying "Neolithic"? It is pretty clear that R1b-V88 had arrived in the heartlands of domestication of animals and plants in time to be involved in the spread of the Neolithic into parts of Europe and Africa. The exact route and date of its arrival in the Neolithic heartland is unknown, but crossing the Caspian was not only possible in the Mesolithic, but boats are actually recorded in rock art at Gobustan, Azerbaijan. That is why my yellow arrow points to Gobustan, and then another arrow takes us south across the mountains to the likely region of further migrations. I have no evidence of the exact route taken. If you have such evidence, by all means let us know. Ideally we would like radiocarbon-dated ancient DNA.

This is the only paper making any sense of r1-v88 in the levant and into North-east africa

http://www.academia.edu/3642572/Unraveling_the_Prehistoric_Ancestry_of_the_present-day_Inhabitants_of_Northeast_Africa._An_Archaeogen etic_Approach_to_Neolithisation


The cows were brought by NRY haplogroup R1b1c-V88 males who arrived from the Levant with lactase persistence H98.

[Jean M]

there is evidence that some hunter-gatherers specialized on hunting caprines during the late paleolithic in Iberia, Italy, the Balkans and Asia Minor. Moreover, recent evidence indicates that these caprine specialists made the transition to farming.

People in the Late Palaeolithic did not make the transition to farming. The Palaeolithic is the period before the Last Glacial Maximum. Farming began as the climate improved in the Mesolithic, after the LGM. Hunter-gatherers in Europe did not make this transition. The domestication of cattle, pigs, goats and sheep happened in the foothills of the junctions of the Taurus and Zagros Mountains, as has been firmly established in recent years, particularly by one massive study of animal bones, plus a number of papers on ancient animal DNA. If you wish to argue against this on the basis of the old anti-migrationist "continuity" paradigm that guided so much archaeology until very recently, perhaps you could start another thread, as this one is about the relationship of R1b to Copper Age migrations.


So, if you're willing to consider that the emergence of R1b V88 occurred before the Neolithic, then you would also have to admit that R1b was already established across the Caspian, Black Sea and Mediterranean before the Neolithic. That's what Els Trocs is telling us. The aDNA says the same thing.

The ancient DNA is telling us very clearly that farming was brought to Europe by people from the Near East. If you cannot accept that, perhaps you would like to start another thread on the topic, as this one is about the relationship of R1b to Copper Age migrations.

[Jean M]

This is the only paper making any sense of r1-v88 in the levant and into North-east africa

Thanks, but it is not the only paper. Fulvio Cruciani et al., Human Y chromosome haplogroup R-V88: a paternal genetic record of early mid Holocene trans-Saharan connections and the spread of Chadic languages, European Journal of Human Genetics (2010), was pretty convincing in my view.

[A_Skeptic]

This is the only paper making any sense of r1-v88 in the levant and into North-east africa

http://www.academia.edu/3642572/Unraveling_the_Prehistoric_Ancestry_of_the_present-day_Inhabitants_of_Northeast_Africa._An_Archaeogen etic_Approach_to_Neolithisation


The cows were brought by NRY haplogroup R1b1c-V88 males who arrived from the Levant with lactase persistence H98.

This paper is a little out of date and contains no ancient DNA.

From the conclusion section of the paper:

"The genetic data suggest that cows were notdomesticated in Northeast Africa, and propose ahypothesis of the entry of domesticated mtDNAT1’2’3 single cows into Northeast Africa between 12 and 9 kya and the subsequent local development.The cows were brought by NRY haplogroup R1b1c-V88 males who arrived from the Levant with lactase persistence H98. Indigenous NRYhaplogroup E-V22 males may have received singlecows from these migrants. This hypothesis iscontradicted by the slightly more recent MRCAof R1b1c, but NRY-dating is known to err on therecent side."

Problems with this thesis:

No ancient DNA to support the notion that R1b1c-V88 arrives specifically and only from the Levant.

Genetic studies that show that African cattle may have been in a state of quasi domestication between 12 and 9 kya. Even today, African cattle are partially genetically different from European cattle and show greater affinity to N'Dama cattle and cattle of Lake Chad.

Domestication of cattle in Anatolia occurs after 9kya, according to Zeder.

[alan]

while you're editing the map - I don't think it is likely R1b-V88 split from the HG in the Samara area, went to Anatolia, picked up cattle herding there and then continued into Africa
I think a split between R1b-V88 and R1b-P297 is more likely to have happened south of the Caucasus before or during the time cattle was being domesticated

I doubt that because one of the major divisions of P297, M73, is very rare in the south today and the small amount in the south is associated with Turkic speakers. Also the Samara hunter c. 5000BC was P297 and this is at a time before farming influences reached an area like Samara. So it is grossly unlikely that he was linked to SW Asia. His autosomal DNA was of the Eastern Hunter Gatherer type characteristic of eastern Europe before farming arrived. If the Samara hunter had any links with the south the archaeology of Samara at the time the hunter lived (aspects of the Elshanka pot and some arrow types) suggest they would have been with the hunters of the east Caspian (Aral Sea etc) area not with farmers of SW Asia.

[A_Skeptic]

Thanks, Jean. Based on your comments, you don't seem to be reading the current literature.

See, for instance, this paper:

http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/pdf38/38_23.pdf

"The ancient DNA is telling us very clearly that farming was brought to Europe by people from the Near East."

No, that is not what the ancient DNA is necessarily telling us.

There are no ancient DNA samples from pre-Neolithic Europe in any parts of Southern Europe, none from Eastern Iberia, none from Italy, none from the Balkans. The fact that K02 and the other early Neolithic samples look so similar does not necessarily mean that people from the "Near East" replaced Mesolithic Farmers in the Mediterranean.

There is a lot of archaeological evidence to indicate that there were trading networks across the Mediterranean during the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic. Furthermore, there is a lot of evidence to show that the Neolithic emerged from a pan Aegean culture both in the Southern Balkans and Anatolia.

[nuadha]

I think Gimbutas was probably right and the Beaker Folk most of us regard as Beaker Folk were of eastern European origin and stem from Yamnaya by way of Vučedol, Zok Mako, Somogyvar, etc. I think that early R1b from eastern Hungary and the Vučedol period (c. 2870 BC) is an indicator of things to come. If he turns out to be R1b-P312, that will be a really positive sign that Gimbutas was right.


Gimbutas was wrong about the timing and the method of steppe migrations into central europe. All she is right about is that beaker is (genetically) primarily from the east.

[nuadha]

Thanks, Jean. Based on your comments, you don't seem to be reading the current literature.

See, for instance, this paper:

http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/pdf38/38_23.pdf

"The ancient DNA is telling us very clearly that farming was brought to Europe by people from the Near East."

No, that is not what the ancient DNA is necessarily telling us.

There are no ancient DNA samples from pre-Neolithic Europe in any parts of Southern Europe, none from Eastern Iberia, none from Italy, none from the Balkans. The fact that K02 and the other early Neolithic samples look so similar does not necessarily mean that people from the "Near East" replaced Mesolithic Farmers in the Mediterranean.

There is a lot of archaeological evidence to indicate that there were trading networks across the Mediterranean during the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic. Furthermore, there is a lot of evidence to show that the Neolithic emerged from a pan Aegean culture both in the Southern Balkans and Anatolia.

Im really interested in the angle you are taking. Can you send me the evidence of a locally developed pan Aegean network absent. The real question is if they had the population to support the neolithic explosion in Europe that would ensue.

Do you also suspect that EEF was already in Italy before farming?

[Jean M]

Continuing my coverage of Prieto Martinez and Salanova (eds.), The Bell Beaker Transition in Europe: Mobility and local evolution during the 3rd millennium BC (2015.)

Chapter 9: Jessie Cauliez, The Bell Beaker Complex: A vector of transformations? Stability and changes of the indigenous cultures in South-East France at the end of the Neolithic period is an important paper. It detects new influences from Italy (Rinaldone, Remedello) before Bell Beaker, and the later integration of BB into some local cultures, but not others. Like the important paper in 2007 from Harrison and Heyd, it shows that BB is not the start of important social and economic changes along the Mediterranean in what became the southern/early BB sphere, but a development within this period of change.

[A_Skeptic]

"Gimbutas was wrong about the timing and the method of steppe migrations into central europe. All she is right about is that beaker is (genetically) primarily from the east."

Too simple, nuadha.

The Tumulus cultures that Gimbutas spent so much time on do seem to be related to the Beaker culture, but, as the Olalde paper indicates, Beaker also emerged from Cardial and LBK cultures that were already well established in Western Europe in the Early Neolithic.

[A_Skeptic]

Clive Bonsall and Maria Gurova have argued that much of the Balkans were depopulated during the Mesolithic based on the fact that below 700 m the area became forested, and also based on the fact that they say there are no lakes and glaciers in the Balkans.

However, there are lakes and glaciers along the Dinaric Alps and Pindos. The Pespa Lakes, Lake Kastoria, Vikos, Aoos, Axios, and Aliacmon waterway system extends from Macedonia, to Thessaly, and this is exactly where there are many Late Mesolithic - very early Neolithic finds of flint in association with early Neolithic pottery and caprines.

Moreover, these areas are above 1000m, which would mean that during the Mesolithic to Neolithic transition, the areas would not have become forested.

There is also Klithi in the Vikos, which is associated with late Mesolithic caprine specialized hunting.

Taking this idea a little further, Nellie Phoca-Cosmetatou argues convincingly that Epigravettian hunter-gatherers diversified in hunting many types of caprines during the Mesolithic:

https://www.academia.edu/1138036/Subsistence_changes_during_the_Late_Glacial_The_ex ample_of_ibex_exploitation_in_Southern_Europe

So, at least in the Southern Balkans, based on the appearance of the earliest Neolithic in Europe in Thessaly, and the distribution of Epigravettian sites associated with flint and caprine hunting, it's very likely that Southern Balkan hunters survived and emerged as "sheep farmers", at least in part.

As well, early Neolithic sites in Bulgaria appear to be associated with caprines and cattle, rather than grain farming.

These sites do appear to have some associations with Western Anatolia, but not exclusively.

It's quite a complex picture.

Regarding your question, "Do I suspect that EEF was in Italy before Farming":

I do not know, but I think we should be open to the idea and should try to find some Mesolithic DNA in Italy and Sardinia to test the idea. Particularly, since the Els Trocs R1b DNA was found in the Pyrenees, I think we should look for Mesolithic DNA in areas associated with caprines.

[Jean M]

Thanks, Jean. Based on your comments, you don't seem to be reading the current literature.

:biggrin1: I'm not only reading it, I'm writing it. If you read the (just released this week) updated Ancestral Journeys, you will find

p. 60: under Chapter 4: Mesolithic hunters and fishermen


There was no geographical barrier to prevent venturesome coastal foragers reaching Europe from Asia Minor or even the Levant, which may explain why some Mesolithic sites in Greece seem more Near Eastern than European.

p. 62: under Prehistoric transport 2: Floating along


Those early peoples with a diet heavy in fish, including open water species, must have mastered the art of boat-building.

p. 78 - under Prehistoric transport 3: out to sea


It was also a puzzle to find that some Mesolithic hunter-gatherers used tools made of obsidian from the island of Melos. The possibility that these were actually Neolithic artefacts which had intruded into lower layers has now been ruled out by direct dating. The sea route to obtain this volcanic glass would have included crossings of about 15-20 km (9-12 miles) between islands.

If you want to argue about the book's conclusions, there is a thread for Ancestral Journeys. This thread is not about the Neolithic. Let's not hijack it. It is a courtesy to other users of the forum to stick to the thread topic. It helps people to find the discussions of interest to them.

[A_Skeptic]

Jean,

You made the comment that R1b-V88 "came from" the Caspian Sea during the Neolithic.
I pointed out that there is some evidence from ancient DNA to suggest that this is not correct.

You took offence to this and proceeded to tell me that "farmers" from the Near East entirely replaced Mesolithic Europeans.

I pointed out to you that there is no data to support this and also listed a number of recent very well constructed studies by professional archaeologists.

Now you respond by telling me that I need to read your book, which from your description, appears to be a summary of recent papers I have already read.

You're also suggesting that I am off topic (which I am not). This is quite relevant to Gimbutas, in fact (which, again you would know if you were acquainted with currently literature.)

Now you are suggesting that I am hijacking the thread.

I'm sorry, but your behavior is really over-the-top and quite rude.

No doubt, you'll go crying to the moderators and have yet another person axed from a salient discussion on these topics.

[alan]

Continuing my coverage of Prieto Martinez and Salanova (eds.), The Bell Beaker Transition in Europe: Mobility and local evolution during the 3rd millennium BC (2015.)

Chapter 9: Jessie Cauliez, The Bell Beaker Complex: A vector of transformations? Stability and changes of the indigenous cultures in South-East France at the end of the Neolithic period is an important paper. It detects new influences from Italy (Rinaldone, Remedello) before Bell Beaker, and the later integration of BB into some local cultures, but not others. Like the important paper in 2007 from Harrison and Heyd, it shows that BB is not the start of important social and economic changes along the Mediterranean in what became the southern/early BB sphere, but a development within this period of change.

It was good to see the pre-beaker influences on SE France from Remedello/Rinaldone demonstrated in pottery influences though it has long been suggested anyway of course. In pre-beaker times those Italian cultures seem pretty impressive.

However the pre-beaker DNA results from Remedello, Ice Man and Languedoc just dont seem to indicate much more than moving about of metal using farmers along the Med. Also, it has always struck me that there are credible indicators of links between north Italy and southern France. I am less aware of such clear external indicators of links to other Med./south Alpine pre-beaker copper age groups in terms of Iberia. Unless there is new info, archaeologists still seemed very vague or in disagreement about the origins of the pre-beaker copper age cultures in Iberia.

[Jean M]

Jean, You made the comment that R1b-V88 "came from" the Caspian Sea during the Neolithic.

Not me. For a start I don't believe that we will ever know the exact point on the planet that any haplogroup arose.

I put up a speculative map of the spread of R1b, which is intended to illustrate in very rough outline the possibilities under discussion. That map has been revised a number of times since I first created it, and normally if I post it, I leap up and down and shout that it is speculative, and not to be over-interpreted. I threaten to take it down if people start treating it as fact, and want to know which side of some modern border my arrow falls. :biggrin1: This time I assumed that all the old hands have heard my rant before, but of course new arrivals such as yourself have not.

So I am to blame for not issuing the rant as per usual. Let me say now that I do not know the exact point of origin of Y-DNA R1b-V88, and am simply deducing a very, very, very rough, general region for the split away of this haplogroup.


You took offence to this

No. I just like things nice and tidy. If you want a big argument over the Neolithic, this isn't the best thread for it.

[alan]

So A Sketpic, what was your previous registration name?

[R.Rocca]

If you say so, but I must have missed that. I thought all of the Beaker samples clustered with modern Germans and modern Irish. Even so, modern Iberians are the products of a lot of genetic input very early Iberian Beaker Folk would have been lacking. For one thing, modern Iberia is overwhelmingly R1b-P312, especially R1b-DF27. The question is whether that was true of Late Neolithic Iberians, as well.

RISE564, which is an R-L51+ German Bell Beaker sample, plots with modern day Spanish and French Basques. Even so, your point goes both ways..."very early" Iberian Bell Beaker folks may have had even more ANE than modern Iberians.

It is very clear that Eastern Bell Beaker had very little impact on Iberia, and that the very area where the Eastern Bell Beaker single grave tradition ends is exactly where modern day DF27 is dominant...

http://r1b.org/imgs/Bell_Beaker_Single_Grave_Extent.JPG

[Heber]

Continuing my coverage of Prieto Martinez and Salanova (eds.), The Bell Beaker Transition in Europe: Mobility and local evolution during the 3rd millennium BC (2015.)

Chapter 9: Jessie Cauliez, The Bell Beaker Complex: A vector of transformations? Stability and changes of the indigenous cultures in South-East France at the end of the Neolithic period is an important paper. It detects new influences from Italy (Rinaldone, Remedello) before Bell Beaker, and the later integration of BB into some local cultures, but not others. Like the important paper in 2007 from Harrison and Heyd, it shows that BB is not the start of important social and economic changes along the Mediterranean in what became the southern/early BB sphere, but a development within this period of change.

Interesting paper.
I noted the following.
Four stages of development.
Initial stage Late Neolithic at about 2550 BC which initially exclusively consisted of Maritime Beakers.
Stage 1 from 3400 to 2900 - 2850 BC
South - North directed influences stemming from Lanquedoc oriented towards Saone-Rhone
Stage 2 from 2900-2850 to 2600-2550 BC
South - North directed influences stemming from Langedoc oriented towards the Saone-Rhone axis
North - South directed influence from Saone Rhone axis oriented towards Provence
Italian influence in Provence
Stage 3 from 2600-2500 too 2400-2350 BC
South - North directed influences stemming from Provence oriented towards the Saone-Rhone axis
North - South directed influence from Saone Rhone axis oriented towards Provence
Italian influence in Provence (Remedello group)
Stage 4 from 2400-2350 to 1950 BC
Process of regionalisation of Rhone-Provence group
Italian expansion
Diffusion and integration of the Bell Beakers according to a process of cohabitation and not of competition
Overall trend West to East, South to North.
The Iberian Peninsula may be the best candidate for the origin of the phenomenon.
Stability, integartion and reciprocal acculturation rather than replacement.

[A_Skeptic]

Well, Richard, I'd love to comment on that, especially since initial results for my family appear to be DF27. However, it seems that any comment that doesn't support the absolute status quo is treated as a "big argument".

It's real conversation starter.

:)

[A_Skeptic]

"No. I just like things nice and tidy. If you want a big argument over the Neolithic, this isn't the best thread for it."

Jean, you're not an archaeologist. You're not in a position to decide what is and isn't on topic regarding a discussion about Gimbutas. I suggest you get off your high horse.

[[[EDIT from Moderator/Mikewww: A couple of your posts are more about the nature of the argument and the posters presenting rather than the topic of the thread. We don't have time for that. Please add value to the topic with every post within reason.
Ad hominen arguments directed at other posters are not useful and are by their very nature, off-topic.]]]]

[TigerMW]

RISE564, which is an R-L51+ German Bell Beaker sample, plots with modern day Spanish and French Basques. Even so, your point goes both ways..."very early" Iberian Bell Beaker folks may have had even more ANE than modern Iberians.

It is very clear that Eastern Bell Beaker had very little impact on Iberia, and that the very area where the Eastern Bell Beaker single grave tradition ends is exactly where modern day DF27 is dominant...

http://r1b.org/imgs/Bell_Beaker_Single_Grave_Extent.JPG
Basques speak non-IndoEuropean languages.

Are you saying that the early Eastern Bell Bell Beakers were not IndoEuropean speaking but that somehow later, Iberia became IndoEuropean speakers, i.e. Celto-Iberians? That's fine and reasonable but I'm just trying to figure out the mechanisms that cause IndoEuropean languages to take over parts of Iberia, even before the Romans.

Can you explain a little more in detail what you mean by "It is very clear that Eastern Bell Beaker had very little impact on Iberia"?

Is it not possible that remnants/descendants of the Eastern Bell Beakers had significant impact on Iberia?

I don't really know, but I'm just quite uncertain about the influences in Iberia and what originated there versus came in later, or even much later via the Urnfielders, Gauls, etc.

[A_Skeptic]

Basques speak non-IndoEuropean languages.

Are you saying that the early Eastern Bell Bell Beakers were not IndoEuropean speaking but that somehow later, Iberia became IndoEuropean speakers, i.e. Celto-Iberians? That's fine and reasonable but I'm just trying to figure out the mechanisms that cause IndoEuropean languages to take over parts of Iberia, even before the Romans.

Can you explain a little more in detail what you mean by "It is very clear that Eastern Bell Beaker had very little impact on Iberia"?

Is it not possible that remnants/descendants of the Eastern Bell Beakers had significant impact on Iberia?

I don't really know, but I'm just quite uncertain about the influences in Iberia and what originated there versus came in later, or even much later via the Urnfielders, Gauls, etc.


Some people think that the Basque language is an Indo European language:

https://www.academia.edu/3801960/Evidence_for_Basque_as_an_Indo-European_Language_EXCERPT_

I think the Eastern Bell Beakers were also Indo-European speakers, but their version of Indo-European was closer to Italo-Celtic and Slavic.

A not unrelated point is that many aspects of Spanish appear to be closely related to Greek. How this plays out, I am not sure.

[A_Skeptic]

A good paper which discusses the possible source of the "Eastern" Bell Beakers:

https://www.academia.edu/15209155/Pietrele_A_Lakeside_Settlement_5200_4250_BC

[R.Rocca]

I see on http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/ancientdna.shtml that the most ancient mtDNA H4a1a we have in Central Europe is in a Corded Ware site in Quedlingburg. Perhaps, it was in Germany before the arrive of Bell Beaker culture.

Could be, but that sample was from 2300-2130 BC, which is at the very tail end of Corded Ware.

[A_Skeptic]

Could be, but that sample was from 2300-2130 BC, which is at the very tail end of Corded Ware.

I've had a look at the Haak autosomal data. It's very unlikely that the Beaker Culture emerges out of Corded Ware directly. I think CW is a parallel culture to early Beaker.

Based on archaeological data, Eastern Beaker emerges from the Danube:

https://www.academia.edu/15209155/Pi...t_5200_4250_BC

which, according to recent papers, likely emerges out of the Pre-Sesklo–Starčevo–Karanovo I–Koros–Criş culture. (See Maria Gurova, for example)

The similarity of autosomal results in the Allentoft paper between Beaker and Montenegro ancient DNA also give support to Eastern Bell Beaker emerging from the Pre-Sesklo–Starčevo–Karanovo I–Koros–Criş culture.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v522/n7555/full/nature14507.html

[R.Rocca]

Basques speak non-IndoEuropean languages.

Are you saying that the early Eastern Bell Bell Beakers were not IndoEuropean speaking but that somehow later, Iberia became IndoEuropean speakers, i.e. Celto-Iberians? That's fine and reasonable but I'm just trying to figure out the mechanisms that cause IndoEuropean languages to take over parts of Iberia, even before the Romans.


Whoa there Mike, I am not saying that at all. Not sure how you extrapolated that. R1b & PIE are linked together about as well as any haplogroup can be associated to a language group.



Can you explain a little more in detail what you mean by "It is very clear that Eastern Bell Beaker had very little impact on Iberia"?


Single-grave versus collective graves, four holed wrist guards versus two holed wrist guards, no palmela points in graves versus palmela points in graves etc.



Is it not possible that remnants/descendants of the Eastern Bell Beakers had significant impact on Iberia?

I don't really know, but I'm just quite uncertain about the influences in Iberia and what originated there versus came in later, or even much later via the Urnfielders, Gauls, etc.

It's possible, but when you have a pretty solid geographical match between DF27 and Iberian Bell Beakers, all of those others are not really necessary. DF27 looks as early in Iberia as it does anywhere else.

[ADW_1981]

So A Sketpic, what was your previous registration name?

Christina. Someone could probably invalidate that pretty quickly otherwise.

[Moderator]

I'm sorry, but your behavior is really over-the-top and quite rude.

No doubt, you'll go crying to the moderators and have yet another person axed from a salient discussion on these topics.

If you are not civil in your discourse, your time here will not be long. Consider this a warning.

[ADW_1981]

Jean, there is an increasing amount of evidence in archaeology that fishing-hunter-gatherers were using boats in the Mediterranean during the Upper Paleolithic. There are many papers in the literature that indicate this.

Additionally, there is evidence that some hunter-gatherers specialized on hunting caprines during the late paleolithic in Iberia, Italy, the Balkans and Asia Minor. Moreover, recent evidence indicates that these caprine specialists made the transition to farming.

The Els Trocs DNA indicates that Pre-V88 was established in the Pyrenees already during the early Neolithic.

So, if you're willing to consider that the emergence of R1b V88 occurred before the Neolithic, then you would also have to admit that R1b was already established across the Caspian, Black Sea and Mediterranean before the Neolithic. That's what Els Trocs is telling us. The aDNA says the same thing (in spite of a vigorous campaign by certain users of this forum to tell you otherwise.)

We also know from aDNA the emergence of new Y lineages and new admixture components that did not exist in Europe previously. This would indicate these people were newcomers. Pre-V88 or V88 could have easily been part of this wave especially when it turns up in Sardinia and the Levant but rarely elsewhere.

The Mesolithic European Y lineages discovered from aDNA tend to be rare or nearly extinct today. You'd need a fairly good explanation why some mesolithic lineage (I'm assuming you are implying R1b-M269 here) in the Pyrenees was successful while the others were not. It sounds like you have a clear agenda here, and for what reason I don't know.

[TigerMW]

Whoa there Mike, I am not saying that at all. Not sure how you extrapolated that. R1b & PIE are linked together about as well as any haplogroup can be associated to a language group.
I'm not, but if DF27 is IE related then I take it that means that when the DF27 folks arrived in Iberia or derived from P312 in Iberia, you think they were IE speaking types, right?

Maybe I'm reading too much David Anthony, but the timing is not right for Western/Iberia Bell Beakers to be IE speaking folks. Maybe the timing of Western/Iberia Bell Beaker is not really so early and I'm not grasping that.


It's possible, but when you have a pretty solid geographical match between DF27 and Iberian Bell Beakers, all of those others are not really necessary. DF27 looks as early in Iberia as it does anywhere else. However, the geographical matches appears to not be Iberian peninsula in general, but Pyrenees oriented (which is along the Tin Trail up to Ireland and Western Britain) or eastern Iberia which could be Urnfielders. Catalonian speaking people also came about in the Pyrenees area and may be closely associated with the large DF27 subclade of SRY2627. Catalonian seems to be a take off of much more recent IE languages. SRY2627 may be more associated with Latin-like or Gaulish. That, to me, is evidence of a non-Iberian origin.

Okay, so Eastern Bell Beaker did not have much impact on Iberian Bell Beaker. I think this is crux of the matter - understanding the various phases and regions of Beaker development.

Single-grave versus collective graves, four holed wrist guards versus two holed wrist guards, no palmela points in graves versus palmela points in graves etc.... Timing-wise, are you saying that these unique qualities of Western Bell Beakers were present in Iberia in the first half of the 3rd milleninum BC (3000-2500 BC) and were also present in the 2nd half (2500-2000 BC)? If so, that's good evidence of continuity beyond the pots themselves.

However, the more important question is not whether unique qualities of Western Bell Beakers were retained through out all of Iberia, but whether some Eastern Bell Beaker influences appeared along the Pyrenees and Eastern Iberia (where DF27 predominiates) in the late 3rd millenium BC? We don't need a population take over, just a Y DNA paternal influence from the east (in order to tie into David Anthony's timing of IE and Yamna moving west).

I'm just speculating, but could not the metalworking in Iberia have changed by 2000 BC to more of a Circumpontic Metallurgy Province type? .. something descendants of Yamna men would have carried?

[[[EDIT: I apologize for taking so long to get my west and east straightened around.]]]

[alan]

Interesting paper.
I noted the following.
Four stages of development.
Initial stage Late Neolithic at about 2550 BC which initially exclusively consisted of Maritime Beakers.
Stage 1 from 3400 to 2900 - 2850 BC
South - North directed influences stemming from Lanquedoc oriented towards Saone-Rhone
Stage 2 from 2900-2850 to 2600-2550 BC
South - North directed influences stemming from Langedoc oriented towards the Saone-Rhone axis
North - South directed influence from Saone Rhone axis oriented towards Provence
Italian influence in Provence
Stage 3 from 2600-2500 too 2400-2350 BC
South - North directed influences stemming from Provence oriented towards the Saone-Rhone axis
North - South directed influence from Saone Rhone axis oriented towards Provence
Italian influence in Provence (Remedello group)
Stage 4 from 2400-2350 to 1950 BC
Process of regionalisation of Rhone-Provence group
Italian expansion
Diffusion and integration of the Bell Beakers according to a process of cohabitation and not of competition
Overall trend West to East, South to North.
The Iberian Peninsula may be the best candidate for the origin of the phenomenon.
Stability, integartion and reciprocal acculturation rather than replacement.

What it didnt indicate (and I have always found this striking and a problem with into-Iberia movements ) nor have I read elsewhere is the next chain west in pre-beaker times linking Iberia with the rest of the Med. Copper is the only clear hint. Other aspects of the pre-beaker copper age of Iberia seem rather mysterious in origin. So, the work on the pottery links centred on southern France are interesting but just kind of confirm and clarify what was already generally being suggested - including the interesting Italian links. However in pre-beaker copper age times we neither see any clear pottery links with Iberia in southern France or Italy or any links from southern France and Italy in Iberia. Nor were any exotic links from eastern Europe noted in southern France until some relatively late CW links are made - however this was place c. 2600BC onwards - 200 years after the earliest dates for beaker in Iberia.

We also know that every single pre-beaker copper age southern European - Trielles, Ice Man, the Remedello samples etc - seem to have nothing to do with P312, L11 or L51 (despite the fact the L51xL11 clade does look to me to have followed that North Italy/Alps/southern France route).

So, if I was to take it all at face value I would tend to look at beaker as arising in Iberia among the early copper age people, perhaps as some sort of guild type symbol, among a wider population who were basically copper using Med. farmers genetically. I would then think its easiest to interpret the first movement of beaker as moving out of Iberia into SE France and perhaps north Italy c. 2600-2500BC before some sort of cultural mixing led to beaker using P312 people in central Europe.

The beaker pot itself and theories about its template do not help as totally contradictory takes on its origin persist even in recent work. What I would say is that there is a problem with the idea that beaker pot has a central European prototype when dates as early as 2800BC (on animal bone which should be safe to use) exist for Iberian beaker. Ask yourself how close to Iberia were any steppic derived groups in 2800BC? The Yamnaya people were little if at all west of Hungary. The CW expansion west was only just starting and they had not yet reached their westernmost lands. Few would place any steppe or part-steppe derived groups west of the Balkans in this period. So geographically it doesnt look plausible. So that is a hell of a distance. I dont buy the stelae as a steppic link. ASAIK they were already around in Remdello I, the metalwork is local and the Iberian ones do not convince me anyway.

So I probably agree with you in so much as at face value the expansion of some of the early aspects of beaker from Iberia looks like a west to east thing along the Med. with no compelling east to west or north to south-west aspect. However, where I differ is I dont see how Iberia got its P312 (a copper age intrusion from eastern Europe) in pre-beaker times and if it wasnt there in pre-beaker times there is no archaeological indication it would be in early beaker in Iberia. A maritime Balkans/Anatolian origin in a boat bypassing much of Europe is extremely unlikely as that is not really in the main L11 zone. An origin across the north of Italy is not indicated by either the pottery links with southern France or the ancient DNA from Remedello/Ice Man, Trielles. So it really looks more likely a Danubian route was used for P312.

If I look at it at face value I would conclude early beaker in non-IE, non-L11 linked and basically initially a west to east thing. I would then tend to think the beaker pot P312 link took place in central Europe and that Iberia and perhaps Italy received their respective DF27 and U152 later in the beaker period by a counterflow. A counterflow like that probably primarily would have aimed at taking over the existing network step by step back to source.

I would say the onus is on Iberian archaeologists to provide evidence that P312 was associated with the earliest beakers. AFAIK they have yet to come up with evidence of an eastern intrusion into Iberia at or just before the appearance of beaker pottery in Iberia c. 2800BC. Spanish archaeologists have recently claimed that the beaker burial form even there is a change to what went before and even when inserted into collective monuments they are essentially individual burials where they remain intact enough to show this. That is a cultural rupture of some importance - far more so than pots. What I would like to see is some dating analysis for this change in burials treating them as a separate issue from the beakers which accompany them. The question is whether the pot and the changes in burial form appeared at the same time or staggered by centuries. In some regional studies in Iberia it seems that the pot long preceded the burial changes. However, the issue still seems hazy and a date on human bone cannot be accepted unless isotope analysis is carried out to check for marine or riverine diet aspects making the dates older than reality. I hold fire on a final conclusion about earliest beaker until this is done.

[Agamemnon]

Some people think that the Basque language is an Indo European language

Some people also think Sumerian is a Turkic language... So, what exactly are you trying to say?

[razyn]

Can you explain a little more in detail what you mean by "It is very clear that Eastern Bell Beaker had very little impact on Iberia"?


Single-grave versus collective graves, four holed wrist guards versus two holed wrist guards, no palmela points in graves versus palmela points in graves etc.

Doesn't a sword of this type cut both ways? Meaning, Iberia likewise had very little impact on Eastern Bell Beaker? Even I don't entirely believe that; and I've thought associating Bell Beaker with "Celtic from the West" was largely moonshine for several years.

[R.Rocca]

I'm not, but if DF27 is IE related then I take it that means that when the DF27 folks arrived in Iberia or derived from P312 in Iberia, you think they were IE speaking types, right?

Maybe I'm reading too much David Anthony, but the timing is not right for Eastern Bell Beakers to be IE speaking folks. Maybe the timing of Eastern Bell Beaker is not really so early and I'm not grasping that.


I don't know how Eastern Bell Beaker can be interpreted as anything but Indo-European.


However, the geographical matches appears to not be Iberian peninsula in general, but Pyrenees oriented (which is along the Tin Trail up to Ireland and Western Britain) or eastern Iberia which could be Urnfielders. Catalonian speaking people also came about in the the Pyrenees area and may be closely associated with the large DF27 subclade of SRY2627. Catalonian seems to be a take off of much more recent IE languages. SRY2627 may be more associated with Latin-like or Gaulish. That, to me, is evidence of a non-Iberian origin.

Iberian Bell Beaker is not Iberia. The Iberian Bell Beaker "Province" includes all of SW France.

[alan]

I'm not, but if DF27 is IE related then I take it that means that when the DF27 folks arrived in Iberia or derived from P312 in Iberia, you think they were IE speaking types, right?

Maybe I'm reading too much David Anthony, but the timing is not right for Western Bell Beakers to be IE speaking folks. Maybe the timing of Western Bell Beaker is not really so early and I'm not grasping that.

However, the geographical matches appears to not be Iberian peninsula in general, but Pyrenees oriented (which is along the Tin Trail up to Ireland and Western Britain on) or eastern Iberia which could be Urnfielders. Catalonian speaking people also came about in the the Pyrenees area and may be closely associated with the large DF27 subclade of SRY2627. Catalonian seems to be a take off of much more recent IE languages. SRY2627 may be more associated with Latin-like or Gaulish. That, to me, is evidence of a non-Iberian origin.

Another thing to consider is EVEN IF the very first beaker pots c. 2800BC in Iberia were inspired by some invisible group of DF27 then the current interpretation of dates would imply it was an isolate in Iberia for quarter of a millennium and probably small groups in an already well population pre-beaker copper age population. There was no indication of any contact back to hypothetical central European homeland from Iberia until 2550BC, not even in nearby areas like southern France. That is a long time for small groups to be isolated in Iberia from their hypothetical P312 compatriots who stayed in central Europe. So, there is every chance that any such DF27 group in Iberia isolated from other IEs for 250 years could simply have lost their language. After all there is nothing really obvious that beaker people offered to the pre-beaker Iberians who were already an pretty impressive copper working, mining, trading people. This could perhaps go some way to explaining the apparent lack of association of the DF27 peak areas and IE languages at the start of history. There are other explanations like later overlay by Argaric etc but I think this point needs borne in mind.

[Moderator]

If you are not civil in your discourse, your time here will not be long. Consider this a warning.

For the record, A_Skeptic was a permanently banned member who had returned under a different alias. They have been banned again from the forum.

[R.Rocca]

Doesn't a sword of this type cut both ways? Meaning, Iberia likewise had very little impact on Eastern Bell Beaker? Even I don't entirely believe that; and I've thought associating Bell Beaker with "Celtic from the West" was largely moonshine for several years.

Not really sure what Celtic from the West has to do with any of this.

[TigerMW]

... Iberian Bell Beaker is not Iberia. The Iberian Bell Beaker "Province" includes all of SW France.
I hadn't heard the term "province" tied to regional Bell Beaker groups. I just always thought of this particular group as "Western" or "Western Early" Bell Beakers. Bell Beakers didn't really hit the Isles and NW Europe, I don't think, before the 2nd half of the 3rd millenium BC. In NW Europe, the Wessex folks had links to Central Europe and the Unetice folks.

I'm just puzzled how to reconcile the IE getting over to the west coast of Europe in time for the development of the Western Bell Beakers (or Iberian Beaker Province if you will.)

Essentially, I'm looking for evidence of Eastern Beaker influence along the western facade of Europe in the 2nd half of the 3rd millenium BC. I'm not looking because I care one way or another, it's just that fits David Anthony's timing. I find his book compelling in terms of the archaeological evidence and the correlation to linguistic work. Maybe he's wrong but I just want to test it out.

I think there is evidence that is male profession related in terms of the metallurgy which comes from the Circumponic regions.

[alan]

One remaining mystery is the pre-beaker copper age culture of Iberia. Its one of those cultures where native or exotic explanations have alternated - as was also the case with Argaric. Having a lot of experience of the see-sawing of fashions in archaeology combined with the lack of an clear external origin, I cannot help but wonder if there wont be further twists.The quoted date of commencement various from 3100-2900BC depending on what you are reading. The latter end of the range is only about 100 years before the earliest for beaker. So, it would be rather amazing if Iberia saw two different inputs in the space of 100 years or so, neither of which has an obvious origin. Again I have some doubts about the exact radiocarbon dating of the arrival of the copper age proper in southern France and Iberia. I would be curious to know if the southern French copper age is older than the Iberian or not. Italy is clearly older but I am unclear which of southern France or Iberia is older.

[Heber]

After all there is nothing really obvious that beaker people offered to the pre-beaker Iberians who were already an pretty impressive copper working, mining, trading people.

Radiocarbon dating seems to support that the earliest "Maritime" Bell Beaker design style is encountered in Iberia, specifically in the vibrant copper-using communities of the Tagus estuary in Portugal around 2800-2700 BC and spread from there to many parts of western Europe. An overview of all available sources from southern Germany concluded that Bell Beaker was a new and independent culture in that area, contemporary with the Corded Ware culture.

[alan]

I hadn't heard the term "province" tied to regional Bell Beaker groups. I just always thought of this particular group as "Western" or "Western Early" Bell Beakers. Bell Beakers didn't really hit the Isles and NW Europe, I don't think, before the 2nd half of the 3rd millenium BC. In NW Euroope, the Wessex folks had links to Central Europe and the Unetice folks.

I'm just puzzled how to reconcile the IE getting over to the west coast of Europe in time for the development of the Western Bell Beakers (or Iberian Beaker Province if you will.)

Essentially, I'm looking for evidence of Eastern Beaker influence along the western facade of Europe in the 2nd half of the 3rd millenium BC. I'm not looking because I care one way or another, it's just that fits David Anthony's timing. I find his book compelling in terms of the archaeological evidence and the correlation to linguistic work. Maybe he's wrong but I just want to test it out.

I think there is evidence that is male profession related in terms of the metallurgy which comes from the Circumponic regions.

There are a number of different models for beaker provinces. They dont totally work IMO other than the very simple south-west and central European (beaker east) groups which were a fact around 2550BC. The north-west of Europe is far more complex mix and relatively late. For example the chapter in the beaker transition book about Ireland makes it clear that Atlantic (aspects of metalworks, perhaps the use of new megaliths) and central European traits (predominance of hollow based arrows over barbed and tanged, polypod pots, Rhenish type beakers) were already blended before they arrived in Ireland c. 2400BC. That is of course not surprising and it seems likely that a blending of traits happened from the Lower Rhine to NW France c. 2500-2400BC.

[alan]

Radiocarbon dating seems to support that the earliest "Maritime" Bell Beaker design style is encountered in Iberia, specifically in the vibrant copper-using communities of the Tagus estuary in Portugal around 2800-2700 BC and spread from there to many parts of western Europe. An overview of all available sources from southern Germany concluded that Bell Beaker was a new and independent culture in that area, contemporary with the Corded Ware culture.

I think while few doubt the early maritime group, the early dates are now spread throughout Iberia. I would tend to agree though that beaker pot probably spread out of Iberia. However, I dont see an into-Iberia movement old enough to explain how P312 could have got there to be early enough to be connected to the start of the copper age or the early beaker pot there. It is disconcerting that the flourishing early copper age in Iberia with its strangely advanced looking forts with archer bastions etc still isnt satisfactorily explained with a vaguely indigenous explanation apparently being most popular at present (even indigenous parallel invention of copper working has been proposed - though this seems very unlikely to me). I do not however believe P312 got to Iberia with Cardial. That just seems incredibly unlikely in terms of ancient DNA, the age of P312, the other L23 in Yamnaya etc.

[bicicleur]

Did you not see my label on the map in yellow, saying "Neolithic"? It is pretty clear that R1b-V88 had arrived in the heartlands of domestication of animals and plants in time to be involved in the spread of the Neolithic into parts of Europe and Africa. The exact route and date of its arrival in the Neolithic heartland is unknown, but crossing the Caspian was not only possible in the Mesolithic, but boats are actually recorded in rock art at Gobustan, Azerbaijan. That is why my yellow arrow points to Gobustan, and then another arrow takes us south across the mountains to the likely region of further migrations. I have no evidence of the exact route taken. If you have such evidence, by all means let us know. Ideally we would like radiocarbon-dated ancient DNA.

I don't, it is what I think is more likely.
There is 1 element though : according to YFull the split between R1b-V88 and R1b-P297 happened 16700 years ago, long before the R1b HG in the Samara area.
It was also before the domestication of aurochs which is supposed to have happened in southeast Anatolia.


http://www.yfull.com/tree/R1b/

As for the boats depicted in Gobustan, are they dated? Have they been found elsewhere near the Caspian Sea shores?

[Jean M]

There is 1 element though : according to YFull the split between R1b-V88 and R1b-P297 happened 16700 years ago, long before the R1b HG in the Samara area.

Yes that is true and it is a good point. It is perfectly possible that R1b-V88 never went anywhere near Samara and instead moved from the Asian steppe southwards to enter western Asia south of the Caspian, perhaps carrying the technology for the creation of stone blades by indirect pressure. See map of the spread of this technology below:

5834

[Jean M]

As for the boats depicted in Gobustan, are they dated? Have they been found elsewhere near the Caspian Sea shores?

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1076


Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape covers three areas of a plateau of rocky boulders rising out of the semi-desert of central Azerbaijan, with an outstanding collection of more than 6,000 rock engravings bearing testimony to 40,000 years of rock art. The site also features the remains of inhabited caves, settlements and burials, all reflecting an intensive human use by the inhabitants of the area during the wet period that followed the last Ice Age, from the Upper Paleolithic to the Middle Ages. The site, which covers an area of 537 ha, is part of the larger protected Gobustan Reservation.

Some of the petroglyphs of boats can be dated from 12,000-8,000 BC, the earliest in the world showing boats, as far as I am aware. I wouldn't worry about it though. It would be really lovely to return this thread to discussion of Bell Beakers, Gimbutas and R1b.

[rms2]

. . . Even so, your point goes both ways..."very early" Iberian Bell Beaker folks may have had even more ANE than modern Iberians.

Could be, but does it seem likely that people with Mediterranean skeletons, buried in Neolithic farmer type collective tombs, had even more ANE than the more robust, taller, heavier boned, later eastern Beaker Folk? I feel a bit like I am groping in the dark, because Beaker chronology seems to me to be woefully uncharted, but from what I have read the early Iberian Beaker Folk were little short Mediterranean types, with long heads, narrow faces, and gracile skeletons: the same physical type as the Neolithic farmers of Old Europe, like Cucuteni-Tripolye people.

That is one of the things that makes me think we are talking about two different kinds of people, with two different y-dna profiles.



RISE564, which is an R-L51+ German Bell Beaker sample, plots with modern day Spanish and French Basques . . .

It is very clear that Eastern Bell Beaker had very little impact on Iberia, and that the very area where the Eastern Bell Beaker single grave tradition ends is exactly where modern day DF27 is dominant...

http://r1b.org/imgs/Bell_Beaker_Single_Grave_Extent.JPG

Do you have a pca plot or something similar that shows how RISE564 plots with modern Iberians and French Basques? Honestly, I had not heard that or seen it. What I have seen shows Beaker people clustering with northern Europeans.

If the single grave tradition actually ends where the region of DF27 dominance begins - meaning it is just completely absent - and the very earliest Iberian Beaker involves collective burials and Mediterranean skeletons, which are two of the things about it that trouble me, that is weird. It seems to me I have seen photos of excavated full-fledged single grave Beaker burials in Iberia; they just weren't the very earliest Beaker burials. Am I wrong about that?

Isn't the single grave burial (which often was not actually completely "single" but did not involve large Neolithic farmer-style collections of remains) a key archaeological marker of Indo-Europeans? Collective burials are a Neolithic farmer trait, which is likewise what little, gracile, Mediterranean skeletons are.

[bicicleur]

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1076



Some of the petroglyphs of boats can be dated from 12,000-8,000 BC, the earliest in the world showing boats, as far as I am aware. I wouldn't worry about it though. It would be really lovely to return this thread to discussion of Bell Beakers, Gimbutas and R1b.

yes, sorry for the small detour made

[alan]

I don't, it is what I think is more likely.
There is 1 element though : according to YFull the split between R1b-V88 and R1b-P297 happened 16700 years ago, long before the R1b HG in the Samara area.
It was also before the domestication of aurochs which is supposed to have happened in southeast Anatolia.


http://www.yfull.com/tree/R1b/

As for the boats depicted in Gobustan, are they dated? Have they been found elsewhere near the Caspian Sea shores?

Yes but the Samara Mesolithic has no connections with SW Asia. Perhaps with the east Caspian hunters but not with SW Asia per se.

[alan]

I don't, it is what I think is more likely.
There is 1 element though : according to YFull the split between R1b-V88 and R1b-P297 happened 16700 years ago, long before the R1b HG in the Samara area.
It was also before the domestication of aurochs which is supposed to have happened in southeast Anatolia.


http://www.yfull.com/tree/R1b/

As for the boats depicted in Gobustan, are they dated? Have they been found elsewhere near the Caspian Sea shores?

Basically thee V88-P297 split is so long ago that it simply emphasises how irrelevant V88 distribution is to P297. Trying to triangulate between those two clades to infer anything is only slightly better than doing the same with R1a and b. Its pointless. The key is that a P297 hunter with no SW Asia DNA lived in pre-farming Samara and the line he was closest to M73 doesnt appear in south-west Asia (except a few in Turkic groups who were historic period arrivals) and also barely appears in Europe. So it seems pretty clear that M73 an important division of P297 was located somewhere like Samara or the east Caspian and never made it into SW Asia or Europe west of the steppes in any numbers. The two most recent papers I have seen link the early Elshanka pottery with pottery using hunters in the east Caspian/Aral area, later Elshanka pot with the Lower Volga/north Caspian. There are no links with SW Asia claimed.

[alan]

Could be, but does it seem likely that people with Mediterranean skeletons, buried in Neolithic farmer type collective tombs, had even more ANE than the more robust, taller, heavier boned, later eastern Beaker Folk? I feel a bit like I am groping in the dark, because Beaker chronology seems to me to be woefully uncharted, but from what I have read the early Iberian Beaker Folk were little short Mediterranean types, with long heads, narrow faces, and gracile skeletons: the same physical type as the Neolithic farmers of Old Europe, like Cucuteni-Tripolye people.

That is one of the things that makes me think we are talking about two different kinds of people, with two different y-dna profiles.



Do you have a pca plot or something similar that shows how RISE564 plots with modern Iberians and French Basques? Honestly, I had not heard that or seen it. What I have seen shows Beaker people clustering with northern Europeans.

If the single grave tradition actually ends where the region of DF27 dominance begins - meaning it is just completely absent - and the very earliest Iberian Beaker involves collective burials and Mediterranean skeletons, which are two of the things about it that trouble me, that is weird. It seems to me I have seen photos of excavated full-fledged single grave Beaker burials in Iberia; they just weren't the very earliest Beaker burials. Am I wrong about that?

Isn't the single grave burial (which often was not actually completely "single" but did not involve large Neolithic farmer-style collections of remains) a key archaeological marker of Indo-Europeans? Collective burials are a Neolithic farmer trait, which is likewise what little, gracile, Mediterranean skeletons are.

Is there not a simple fact that beaker incorporates ANE which is unknown west of the Baltic-Dnieper line in pre-copper age times? So part of beaker (at least in central Europe and by implication also seen in modern DNA in NW Europe) has to have come from the east in the copper age. AFAIK we dont yet know if ANE was in earliest Iberian beaker do we? The pattern of ANE today looks like one of gradual dilution of impact as we head from east to south-west. There is far more ANE in the Celtic fringe of north-west Europe (which cannot be put down to Germanics) than Iberia. So Iberia does not look like the source of the copper age genetic change in the isles - something we already could guess from yDNA anyway. In fact NW Celtic fringe Europe looks like a continuation of Germanic northern Europe genetically. If you looked at the modern autosomal DNA the Celtic fringe is actually more northern or ANE rich than England.

If you looked at the ancient DNA changes in Europe and at modern autosomal DNA with no historical or historical background you would probably conclude that in the isles there was a singicant copper/Bronze Age intrusion from the north European plain. An Atlantic derived intrusion doesnt seem supported at all by the ANE levels in particular. SW Europe looks like it received a diluted (shrinking with distance from source) intrusion of the same groups who settled NW Europe far more strongly.

I think its also fair to observe that a movement from SW Europe to northern Europe, including the isles. would on the basis of modern DNA have reduced the level of WHG significantly which is the opposite of the general pattern seen in the ancient DNA across temperate Europe after the Neolithic.

Modern DNA and the patchy ancient DNA seems best intepreted as Iberia being at the end of a significant wave of eastern geneflow and not a fundamental secondary node in genetic flow. That does not rule out an early Iberian beaker flow into Europe. I think there is a case for that, almost like counterflows. However it tends to suggest to me that this flow ultimately was not the important one in terms of genetic impact in temperate Europe. As beaker is pretty well the only option for spreading ANE into places like the present Celtic fringe of the isles in post-Neolithic times, it seems to me pretty clear that the bulk of the beaker genetics that made it to the isles owe more to northern Europe and its prior absorbing of eastern genes.

[Romilius]

Could be, but does it seem likely that people with Mediterranean skeletons, buried in Neolithic farmer type collective tombs, had even more ANE than the more robust, taller, heavier boned, later eastern Beaker Folk? I feel a bit like I am groping in the dark, because Beaker chronology seems to me to be woefully uncharted, but from what I have read the early Iberian Beaker Folk were little short Mediterranean types, with long heads, narrow faces, and gracile skeletons: the same physical type as the Neolithic farmers of Old Europe, like Cucuteni-Tripolye people.

That is one of the things that makes me think we are talking about two different kinds of people, with two different y-dna profiles.



Do you have a pca plot or something similar that shows how RISE564 plots with modern Iberians and French Basques? Honestly, I had not heard that or seen it. What I have seen shows Beaker people clustering with northern Europeans.

If the single grave tradition actually ends where the region of DF27 dominance begins - meaning it is just completely absent - and the very earliest Iberian Beaker involves collective burials and Mediterranean skeletons, which are two of the things about it that trouble me, that is weird. It seems to me I have seen photos of excavated full-fledged single grave Beaker burials in Iberia; they just weren't the very earliest Beaker burials. Am I wrong about that?

Isn't the single grave burial (which often was not actually completely "single" but did not involve large Neolithic farmer-style collections of remains) a key archaeological marker of Indo-Europeans? Collective burials are a Neolithic farmer trait, which is likewise what little, gracile, Mediterranean skeletons are.

Just my point: two different beaker folks. Perhaps, the 2011 paper by Desideri suggests this thing: only in Northern Spain and in Czech Republic we have continuity between pre-beaker population and beaker folk, so Spanish beaker was founded by a different population than Czech and Central European beaker. And, also, we know that U152 highest variance/diversity is between East Germany and Slovakia (cfr. http://dienekes.blogspot.it/2010/08/r1b-founder-effect-in-central-and.html and http://dienekes.blogspot.it/2013/05/genetic-structure-and-different.html ). Then, I would suggest a U152 surely coming from steppe-derived father line and founder of an IE culture parallel to Corded Ware. The shape of pottery could be developed autonomously by Iberian and by Czech beakers.

Another thing I would like to repeat is that Iberian beaker is too similar to Early Neolithic cultures... if R1b is tied with Iberian Bell Beaker, so it must be a Neolithic marker, that could be found in other pre-beaker Neolithic sites.

[alan]

Just my point: two different beaker folks. Perhaps, the 2011 paper by Desideri suggests this thing: only in Northern Spain and in Czech Republic we have continuity between pre-beaker population and beaker folk, so Spanish beaker was founded by a different population than Czech and Central European beaker. And, also, we know that U152 highest variance/diversity is between East Germany and Slovakia (cfr. http://dienekes.blogspot.it/2010/08/r1b-founder-effect-in-central-and.html and http://dienekes.blogspot.it/2013/05/genetic-structure-and-different.html ). Then, I would suggest a U152 surely coming from steppe-derived father line and founder of an IE culture parallel to Corded Ware. The shape of pottery could be developed autonomously by Iberian and by Czech beakers.

Another thing I would like to repeat is that Iberian beaker is too similar to Early Neolithic cultures... if R1b is tied with Iberian Bell Beaker, so it must be a Neolithic marker, that could be found in other pre-beaker Neolithic sites.

I basically agree with that. Until Iberian archaeologists show conclusively that anything new and potentially externally introduced other than the beaker pot itself dates to the early Iberia-only beaker phase c. 2800-2550BC then the ball is in their court and the onus is on them to provide the evidence. Right now the evidence doesnt exist and the earliest beaker phenomenon could be interpreted as some sort of copper workers guild coming out of the local copper age which was already established somewhere in the range c. 3100-2900BC.

If the pot itself is the only evidence for intrusion put forward then its a very weak case because noone agrees on the inspiration of beaker, some saying local, some saying external. Beaker pot on sites is usually a tiny percentage within an otherwise local pottery collection. In some cases it looks concentrated in areas relating to metalwork and in very rare cases there are pure beaker pot sites, apparently also linked to copper working. I think some sort of link to copper working seems sound but as to whether it has an origin in eastern or central Europe I just cannot see that on present evidence. Ancient DNA seems to confirm the archaeological impression that the spread of copper working west seems to be a process carried out by copper using farmer elements after the fall of Old Europe from the Balkans, along the Alps, into Italy, southern France then Iberia. It in general feels like a non-steppe linked east to west spread among southern farmers groups.

That all said, the lack of a coherent believable explanation for the origin of the pre-beaker copper age in Iberia stands out like a sort thumb in this story. It doesnt look derived from the Danubian axis of Europe which in 3000BC was basically occupied by late farmers from a line between Hungary and the Baltic to the far west Atlantic fringes. I also dont believe they just so happened to spontaneously take up copper at the same time it happened in southern France.Regardless I cannot see a central or eastern European link to this. Perhaps the simplest solution is small amounts of people from the copper using farmers of southern France passed the knowledge to Iberia.

[bicicleur]

Just my point: two different beaker folks. Perhaps, the 2011 paper by Desideri suggests this thing: only in Northern Spain and in Czech Republic we have continuity between pre-beaker population and beaker folk, so Spanish beaker was founded by a different population than Czech and Central European beaker. And, also, we know that U152 highest variance/diversity is between East Germany and Slovakia (cfr. http://dienekes.blogspot.it/2010/08/r1b-founder-effect-in-central-and.html and http://dienekes.blogspot.it/2013/05/genetic-structure-and-different.html ). Then, I would suggest a U152 surely coming from steppe-derived father line and founder of an IE culture parallel to Corded Ware. The shape of pottery could be developed autonomously by Iberian and by Czech beakers.

Another thing I would like to repeat is that Iberian beaker is too similar to Early Neolithic cultures... if R1b is tied with Iberian Bell Beaker, so it must be a Neolithic marker, that could be found in other pre-beaker Neolithic sites.

so you see 2 different Bell Beaker populations
could P312 be a common ancestor for both?
and what about Vucedol? would that be a 3rd population? and were Vatya and Wieslburg descendents?
there could have been many R1b populations, and maybe even some of them got extinct

[bicicleur]

I basically agree with that. Until Iberian archaeologists show conclusively that anything new and potentially externally introduced other than the beaker pot itself dates to the early Iberia-only beaker phase c. 2800-2550BC then the ball is in their court and the onus is on them to provide the evidence. Right now the evidence doesnt exist and the earliest beaker phenomenon could be interpreted as some sort of copper workers guild coming out of the local copper age which was already established somewhere in the range c. 3100-2900BC.

If the pot itself is the only evidence for intrusion put forward then its a very weak case because noone agrees on the inspiration of beaker, some saying local, some saying external. Beaker pot on sites is usually a tiny percentage within an otherwise local pottery collection. In some cases it looks concentrated in areas relating to metalwork and in very rare cases there are pure beaker pot sites, apparently also linked to copper working. I think some sort of link to copper working seems sound but as to whether it has an origin in eastern or central Europe I just cannot see that on present evidence. Ancient DNA seems to confirm the archaeological impression that the spread of copper working west seems to be a process carried out by copper using farmer elements after the fall of Old Europe from the Balkans, along the Alps, into Italy, southern France then Iberia. It in general feels like a non-steppe linked east to west spread among southern farmers groups.

That all said, the lack of a coherent believable explanation for the origin of the pre-beaker copper age in Iberia stands out like a sort thumb in this story. It doesnt look derived from the Danubian axis of Europe which in 3000BC was basically occupied by late farmers from a line between Hungary and the Baltic to the far west Atlantic fringes. I also dont believe they just so happened to spontaneously take up copper at the same time it happened in southern France.Regardless I cannot see a central or eastern European link to this. Perhaps the simplest solution is small amounts of people from the copper using farmers of southern France passed the knowledge to Iberia.

I don't see a pre-Beaker population in Iberia
IMO they started as a small minority as mobile traders and craftsmen who arrived among rulers in fortified places like Los Millares and the castro of Zambujal and peasants in the country
only later they grew to become a majority in certain areas (their artefacts spread faster than the people themselves)

[alan]

I cannot help thinking that beakers could be symbolic copper crucibles. They have that general sort of shape (even modern versions do). I wonder if the gradual passing of the use of copper smelting crucibles to smelting furnace pits meant that a crucible shaped pot became a symbolic remembrance or guild kind of symbol once the use of crucible pots died out. Amzallag had much of his detail rebutted fairly convincingly but that doesnt change the overall picture that there was a gradual shift from use of melting/smelting crucibles to furnace pits even if it wasnt quite the way Amzallag saw it. There seems little clarity in terms of time and space and perhaps overlap of both methods but it broadly seems to point to the late 4th millennium to the mid 3rd millennium as a time of overlap and change. http://www.academia.edu/8164398/Chalcolithic_copper_smelting

[R.Rocca]

Could be, but does it seem likely that people with Mediterranean skeletons, buried in Neolithic farmer type collective tombs, had even more ANE than the more robust, taller, heavier boned, later eastern Beaker Folk? I feel a bit like I am groping in the dark, because Beaker chronology seems to me to be woefully uncharted, but from what I have read the early Iberian Beaker Folk were little short Mediterranean types, with long heads, narrow faces, and gracile skeletons: the same physical type as the Neolithic farmers of Old Europe, like Cucuteni-Tripolye people.

That is one of the things that makes me think we are talking about two different kinds of people, with two different y-dna profiles.

Do you have a pca plot or something similar that shows how RISE564 plots with modern Iberians and French Basques? Honestly, I had not heard that or seen it. What I have seen shows Beaker people clustering with northern Europeans.

If the single grave tradition actually ends where the region of DF27 dominance begins - meaning it is just completely absent - and the very earliest Iberian Beaker involves collective burials and Mediterranean skeletons, which are two of the things about it that trouble me, that is weird. It seems to me I have seen photos of excavated full-fledged single grave Beaker burials in Iberia; they just weren't the very earliest Beaker burials. Am I wrong about that?

Isn't the single grave burial (which often was not actually completely "single" but did not involve large Neolithic farmer-style collections of remains) a key archaeological marker of Indo-Europeans? Collective burials are a Neolithic farmer trait, which is likewise what little, gracile, Mediterranean skeletons are.

Allentoft only plotted the collective baBb (Bronze Age Bell Beaker) group, so David plotted them individually. The RISE564 sample shows up here as Bell_Beaker surrounded by all Iberians: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9o3EYTdM8lQbmdQY0lsdmJYMXc/view

All of the answers to your question are "yes/maybe", but again, there is no genetic support to these being non-R1b men. If we were going to give all of the importance to single-grave burials with heavy boned flat occipital brachycephalics, we would have to say that then Bell Beaker are derived from the Italian Copper Age Gaudo group. And saying that females drove a drastic cultural shift in a patrilieal group of men, especially given the ancient Y-DNA trend, is out of the question for me. I will try looking at some of the earlier Iberian Bell Beaker papers, not summary data generalizing this or that and post my findings in the next couple of weeks. Perhaps you and/or Alan are on to something.

[Romilius]

so you see 2 different Bell Beaker populations
could P312 be a common ancestor for both?
and what about Vucedol? would that be a 3rd population? and were Vatya and Wieslburg descendents?
there could have been many R1b populations, and maybe even some of them got extinct

Who knows?

In my opinion, western Bell Beaker was founded by Neolithic populations, so G2a2, I2a, E-V13 and R-V88 peoples. Eastern Bell Beaker, well, could be the product of R-P312 fathers, perhaps - as Gimbutas suggested - from Vucedol.

[Romilius]

Allentoft only plotted the collective baBb (Bronze Age Bell Beaker) group, so David plotted them individually. The RISE564 sample shows up here as Bell_Beaker surrounded by all Iberians: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9o3EYTdM8lQbmdQY0lsdmJYMXc/view

All of the answers to your question are "yes/maybe", but again, there is no genetic support to these being non-R1b men. If we were going to give all of the importance to single-grave burials with heavy boned flat occipital brachycephalics, we would have to say that then Bell Beaker are derived from the Italian Copper Age Gaudo group. And saying that females drove a drastic cultural shift in a patrilieal group of men, especially given the ancient Y-DNA trend, is out of the question for me. I will try looking at some of the earlier Iberian Bell Beaker papers, not summary data generalizing this or that and post my findings in the next couple of weeks. Perhaps you and/or Alan are on to something.

But also if we were going to give all of the importance to an Out-of-Iberia Beaker theory, we would say a lot of things that are recently doubtful for archeological world. Perhaps, truth sits between the two visions: burials are important because they represent a whole system of values (in a word: culture) and it's very difficult to abandon an intimate cultural trait like that, but also pots represent a kind of material culture.

As I said before, the only thing I don't understand is the chronological succession: if R1b is from Iberian Bell Beaker, then we must find it in its route between East Europe and Iberia in cultures that were - because of the age - Neolithic. So, R1b=Neolithic marker not linked with IE expansion. So, do you think that R1b carriers brought a culture that is Proto-Vasconic, as Maju thinks?

[R.Rocca]

But also if we were going to give all of the importance to an Out-of-Iberia Beaker theory, we would say a lot of things that are recently doubtful for archeological world. Perhaps, truth sits between the two visions: burials are important because they represent a whole system of values (in a word: culture) and it's very difficult to abandon an intimate cultural trait like that, but also pots represent a kind of material culture.

Again, whoa....I didn't say anything about Out-of-Iberia for R1b. I said it is still possible that P312 in the form of DF27 got into Iberia just as early as Bell Beaker everywhere else. A re-expansion in the form of DF27 out of Iberia still seems logical to me.


As I said before, the only thing I don't understand is the chronological succession: if R1b is from Iberian Bell Beaker, then we must find it in its route between East Europe and Iberia in cultures that were - because of the age - Neolithic. So, R1b=Neolithic marker not linked with IE expansion. So, do you think that R1b carriers brought a culture that is Proto-Vasconic, as Maju thinks?

And as I've said before...if R1b+Z2103+ men started to expand on the steppe at roughly the same time that R1b-L51+ men started to expand from Iberia, then it would probably be the most coincidental event in the history of human expansion. The likelihood of that scenario was close to zero pre-ancient DNA, and now zero after it.

[Romilius]

Again, whoa....I didn't say anything about Out-of-Iberia for R1b. I said it is still possible that P312 in the form of DF27 got into Iberia just as early as Bell Beaker everywhere else. A re-expansion in the form of DF27 out of Iberia still seems logical to me.



And as I've said before...if R1b+Z2103+ men started to expand on the steppe at roughly the same time that R1b-L51+ men started to expand from Iberia, then it would probably be the most coincidental even in the history of human expansion. The likelihood of that scenario was close to zero pre-ancient DNA, and now zero after it.

Now your view is clear. I didn't understood the first point: a quick migration of DF27 people in Iberia. So, do you think about an integration of DF27 in Neolithic cultures as an élite (so that, it could be explained the presence of Neolithic traits in early Iberian Bell Beaker)?

[alan]

I still cannot look at the DF27 map and not feel it is a very poor correlation with beaker in Iberia and France. Almost bordering on an inverse correlation but not quite as bad as that.

http://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/Haplogroup-R1b-DF27.gif

http://gallaic.com/BellBeakerNodes.jpg

[razyn]

Well, that's Maciamo's map of DF27. Don't base your next book on it. Some of the concentrations are probably real; but the inky tones of the higher ones contrast a little too sharply with the complete lack of pink in other places we know have some DF27 strength. I'm fairly sure his own country (Belgium) could shade a little darker than 5%. And everything from Poland east might as well have a caption such as "Here be dragons," or "Desolation of Smaug." There are places in Armenia with respectably high percentages of DF27.

[alan]

Well, that's Maciamo's map of DF27. Don't base your next book on it. Some of the concentrations are probably real; but the inky tones of the higher ones contrast a little too sharply with the complete lack of pink in other places we know have some DF27 strength. I'm fairly sure his own country (Belgium) could shade a little darker than 5%. And everything from Poland east might as well have a caption such as "Here be dragons," or "Desolation of Smaug." There are places in Armenia with respectably high percentages of DF27.

true - all the maps are questionable in detail. The other things is displacement since the copper age. There probably has been a significant amount, even in the far west of Europe. I tend to think displacement would be towards the nearest natural refuge areas like mountains etc. We can of course see displacement in languages with reduced survival zones very different to that in earliest history so this is probably true to some extent for genes too.

I still think we need to guard against beaker being seen as a one-period maker of the distribution of P312 in Europe. That is probably a gross error. It probably established pockets across Europe from which the later spreads of P312 originated but we cannot airbrush out the 2-3000 years between beaker and historical records in many areas as if nothing happened in between. This is especially true in the busier regions like central Europe but it is also true of the west.

Even in what by European standards are very remote areas like Ireland its plain to see that a huge amount of the DNA pattern within L21 relates to historical times or certainly late prehistoric times. Some huge clades like M222 may have not even entered Ireland until the AD era.

In Iberia we see major phases within the beaker period itself, see post-beaker stuff like Argaric and Urnfield in eastern Iberia, north Atlantic contacts down the west c. 1300-1000BC etc, the emergence of the Celt-Iberian culture, things that are likely to have upset whatever the genetic pattern was before and caused displacement of some groups and loss of original linguistic identities. A classic case of course in the Basques who seem to have absorbed male lineages that are elsewhere associated with Celto-Italics. I presume this is down to displacement. Some Basques at least are probably displaced Aquitani from SW France Biscay area who fled to the Pyrenees. The Pyrenees might have been a real hotchpotch of displaced lineages from various peoples. I personally suspect the L21 element in the Basques was originally incorporated in Gallia Aquitania, perhaps from the many Celtic tribes who lived in the the northern half of that Roman Provence.

[alan]

Staring at this map gives me all sorts of thoughts on beaker.

http://gallaic.com/BellBeakerNodes.jpg

As few are saying that all P312 poured out of Iberia, it follows that the various clades existed in pre-beaker Europe somewhere. One way of looking at this map is that international beaker hotspots could be taken as marking spots where the beaker idea could be taken up by whoever lived at those locations before beaker arrived. When you break it down like that a few things become apparent. The 4 international beaker hotspots in central Europe look like they represent beaker coming to areas where the local substrate was probably IE at the time (c. 2550BC) - in three cases corded ware plus whatever was at Csepel. It very tempting to look at that upper Rhone/NW Alps fringe group he one that brought the beaker idea into both Danubian and Rhenish Europe. This position seems the perfect one to infiltrate both rivers which together account for all 4 central European maritime beaker hotspots. The simplest thing is then to see U152 as present in Danubian central Europe and L21 as present in the two Rhine groups.

As for DF27 this is much more tricky to know. IMO if U152 and L21 come from Danube and Rhine based groups who took up the use of beaker then DF27 should also have met beaker in a culture that is in some way shared not to distant ancestry with the other two P312 divisions. Now it is possible to look at the Rhenish and Danubian areas and see how they could have shared ancestry. If we apply this logic and extend it to DF27 then logic would dictate it and beaker came together in a culture of simialr ancestry as the Danube and Rhine ones for which I have suggested links to U152 and L21 respectively. This tends to make me want to place the coming together of beaker and DF27 somewhere like the upper Rhone so it has a tolerably similar substrate to the other P312 clades. Obviously this means that I take the substrates in the other parts of the beaker world in western France and especially Iberia as having no connection to those substrates linked with beaker further east and possibly therefore not being P312 linked.

[Gray Fox]

I still cannot look at the DF27 map and not feel it is a very poor correlation with beaker in Iberia and France. Almost bordering on an inverse correlation but not quite as bad as that.

http://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/Haplogroup-R1b-DF27.gif

http://gallaic.com/BellBeakerNodes.jpg

Most of what you're seeing in France is SRY2627. The Basque area is a mix up of M153 and SRY2627. The rest of the darker zones are SRY2627, mostly the sub-pyrenean area. Again, this map isn't an overall representation of DF27 and is quite dated as there have been other, major groups left out of it and some that weren't even known of when the map was produced. It only represents two of the farther downstream variants of DF27 (SRY2627&M153).

[bicicleur]

I still cannot look at the DF27 map and not feel it is a very poor correlation with beaker in Iberia and France. Almost bordering on an inverse correlation but not quite as bad as that.

http://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/Haplogroup-R1b-DF27.gif

http://gallaic.com/BellBeakerNodes.jpg

first map is present day map
2nd map is a situation 4-5000 years old
you can't expect them to look the same

2nd map isn't complete either
there was Bell Beaker in N-Denmark/S-Sweden

[bicicleur]

true - all the maps are questionable in detail. The other things is displacement since the copper age. There probably has been a significant amount, even in the far west of Europe. I tend to think displacement would be towards the nearest natural refuge areas like mountains etc. We can of course see displacement in languages with reduced survival zones very different to that in earliest history so this is probably true to some extent for genes too.

I still think we need to guard against beaker being seen as a one-period maker of the distribution of P312 in Europe. That is probably a gross error. It probably established pockets across Europe from which the later spreads of P312 originated but we cannot airbrush out the 2-3000 years between beaker and historical records in many areas as if nothing happened in between. This is especially true in the busier regions like central Europe but it is also true of the west.

Even in what by European standards are very remote areas like Ireland its plain to see that a huge amount of the DNA pattern within L21 relates to historical times or certainly late prehistoric times. Some huge clades like M222 may have not even entered Ireland until the AD era.

In Iberia we see major phases within the beaker period itself, see post-beaker stuff like Argaric and Urnfield in eastern Iberia, north Atlantic contacts down the west c. 1300-1000BC etc, the emergence of the Celt-Iberian culture, things that are likely to have upset whatever the genetic pattern was before and caused displacement of some groups and loss of original linguistic identities. A classic case of course in the Basques who seem to have absorbed male lineages that are elsewhere associated with Celto-Italics. I presume this is down to displacement. Some Basques at least are probably displaced Aquitani from SW France Biscay area who fled to the Pyrenees. The Pyrenees might have been a real hotchpotch of displaced lineages from various peoples. I personally suspect the L21 element in the Basques was originally incorporated in Gallia Aquitania, perhaps from the many Celtic tribes who lived in the the northern half of that Roman Provence.

indeed many things happened after Bell Beaker
yet earliest Bell Beakers in Iberia are 4900 years old
YFull has 17 subclades for DF27 with TMRCA estimated 4600 years
that is not very far off
Iberian Bell Beaker expansion may be DF27 expansion

[bicicleur]

what puzzles me most is language
you'd expect DF27 to be Indo-European
moreover much of Iberia today is R1b-M269, whether DF27 or not, and so expected to be Indo European
Yet Basque is not Indo-European, nor was the whole eastern coastal area of Iberia at the time first Greek colonisers arrived there
And it is/was not Phoenician language either
Who's language were they speaking?

[Heber]

what puzzles me most is language
you'd expect DF27 to be Indo-European
moreover much of Iberia today is R1b-M269, whether DF27 or not, and so expected to be Indo European
Yet Basque is not Indo-European, nor was the whole eastern coastal area of Iberia at the time first Greek colonisers arrived there
And it is/was not Phoenician language either
Who's language were they speaking?

Tartessian influenced by Yamnaya, Kemi Oba Stelae, Celtic and later Phoenician.
See final slides. Conclusions.

https://www.academia.edu/8299894/Indo-European_from_the_east_and_Celtic_from_the_west_re conciling_models_for_languages_in_later_prehistory

[lgmayka]

However it would be interesting to do an analysis of the relative frequency of the combination of Y P312 and mtDNA H in traditional Celtic countries.
It would be far more interesting to analyze their relative frequency in Baltic countries.

Over 46% of Lithuanians have mtDNA H (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1529-8817.2003.00119.x/epdf). Any attempt to tie mtDNA H closely to R-P312 must explain how H acquired a high plurality, nearing majority, in a nation that has very little R-P312 at all.

[Heber]

It would be far more interesting to analyze their relative frequency in Baltic countries.

Over 46% of Lithuanians have mtDNA H (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1529-8817.2003.00119.x/epdf). Any attempt to tie mtDNA H closely to R-P312 must explain how H acquired a high plurality, nearing majority, in a nation that has very little R-P312 at all.

I am particularly interested in Celtic countries And the connection with P312.
43% in Mayo and 49% in Asturias had H. Possibly higher in other celtic areas. Interesting figure for Lithuania.

[Jean M]

Yet Basque is not Indo-European

The Basques are a tiny part of the history of Iberia. They were present in the Pyrenees in Roman times (i.e. Navarre), but mainly lived (under the name Aquitani) in Gascony (which is named after them). Even if we allowed the loyalist Basque claims that they were present in Roman times in what is now the Spanish Basque Country, despite all evidence to the contrary, that is still a small part of Iberia. Because the Basques were for so long thought to be a Palaeolithic relic population, it was imagined that they represented the hunter-gatherers of the whole of Iberia. They don't. Present-day Basques appear to be a population relatively recently expanded from a very small core and subject to genetic drift by isolation. Among their founding population was at least one woman with a local hunter-gatherer mtDNA haplogroup, Y-DNA suggestive of the Cardial Ware culture, and Y-DNA suggestive of mixing with IE-speaking neighbours from the Copper Age onwards.

[Jean M]

Yet Basque is not Indo-European, nor was the whole eastern coastal area of Iberia at the time first Greek colonisers arrived there
And it is/was not Phoenician language either. Who's language were they speaking?

The Iberes spread over coastal territory previously IE speaking (Ligurian). The language of the Iberes probably arrived from the Eastern Mediterranean with the builders of La Bastida: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/uadb-lb092712.php

[Gravetto-Danubian]

It would be far more interesting to analyze their relative frequency in Baltic countries.

Over 46% of Lithuanians have mtDNA H (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1529-8817.2003.00119.x/epdf). Any attempt to tie mtDNA H closely to R-P312 must explain how H acquired a high plurality, nearing majority, in a nation that has very little R-P312 at all.

MtDNA H groups have been found in the Mesolithic north Russian samples

[alan]

It would be far more interesting to analyze their relative frequency in Baltic countries.

Over 46% of Lithuanians have mtDNA H (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1529-8817.2003.00119.x/epdf). Any attempt to tie mtDNA H closely to R-P312 must explain how H acquired a high plurality, nearing majority, in a nation that has very little R-P312 at all.

Yeah I am not convinced that the rise in H is to be literally tied to bell beaker. Bell beaker could however be one aspect of it. They clearly formed a massive networking chain and generally that is usually sealed by marriages and women moving in a patriarchal society. One thing we can probably guess from the strange retention of distinctive skulls across a chunk of the beaker world for centuries, despite having neighbours with different skull types, is that beaker folk married widely BUT this was among themselves i.e. they married widely but largely did so to other people on the beaker network rather than locals. That sort of system could easily lead to female lineages being passed about the length of Europe. Obviously once a beaker chief marries someones beaker daughter from 100 miles away her daughters will carry her mt DNA and that will then be passed on when her daughters marry some other beaker dude in the next generation. Also worth considering that beaker pot is undoubtedly a female craft and therefore a far better tracker of mtDNA than y DNA.

My guess is some of those international bell beaker hotspots from which local beaker groups grew (Lower Rhine, Middle Rhine, Hungary, north Alps, Armorica, Wessex, NW Italy are places where Atlantic derived women making this pottery passed through a chain of contacts and marriages. The motive for such a thing may well be setting up a new trade network, mainly for metals but probably a range of stuff.

Notice too that this did not happen instantly and so it may have been in a chain or chains over a few generations that these international beaker hotspots appeared. For example, the hotspots in central Europe were probably set up around 2550BC but the one in Wessex was probably c. 2400BC. The retention of similar skulls all over central and north-west Europe among beaker folk is suggestive of a chain where there might have originally only been a couple of beaker hotspots which then through fission set up other nodes some distance away. So there only needs to have been 2 or 3 places where P312 people took up beaker - they could have then set up the other hotspots.

As for the male lines, I tend to be in agreement with those who do not believe that all P312 poured out of the longstanding beaker users of Iberia c. 2550BC. It seems far more likely on several counts that P312 was already present in central Europe before the beaker pot started to appear there. That IMO applies whether or not we believe the earliest bell beaker in Iberia was DF27. I think autosomal DNA shows that beaker people varied significantly. The simplest interpretation is that beaker met U152, L21 (and perhaps DF27 but lets set that aside for now) in central European pre-beaker populations that were already there. The location of the meeting is probably indicated by the nodal hotspots of international beaker.

All that remains in such a scenario is to identify what culture (and it has to be one that is plausible for an L23 derived steppe linked lineage to be dwelling in) was already located at each international bell beaker hotspot when the beakers arrived. In the case of U152 it could be the hotspot at Csepel or the north-west Alpine one. In the case of L21 it seems very likely that it was the a Rhine one. In both of the latter option the existing base was single grave/CW while Csepel is different but could also have steppe linked substrate.

As for DF27 that is harder as it depends on whether one believes a P312 lineage could have made it silently to Iberia by 2800BC. If one doesnt then a link with the Rhone seems plausible - that was certainly the route which beaker took from Iberia initially. If it effectively bumped into DF27 then somewhere on the Rhone seems plausible.

In fact depending on how we dice this, all three of the big branches of P312 could have combined with beaker initially c. 2550BC in a fairly confined area where the headwaters of the Rhone, Rhine, Danube and some other French rivers converge on the north and west sides of the western Alps before offshoots used the rivers to set up further nodal points as allies and perhaps later as competitors.

[Jean M]

Yeah I am not convinced that the rise in H is to be literally tied to bell beaker.

Seconded. I suspect that the gradual rise in H from Neolithic to modern may be due to natural selection. Mitochondrial function being critical to the human body, mutations to it may have physiological effects. It seems that mtDNA haplogroup H confers an advantage in recovery after sepsis.

I think we really need to drop the idea that H spread from Iberia. That was an early idea, exploded by García 2011.

[alan]

The Iberes spread over coastal territory previously IE speaking (Ligurian). The language of the Iberes probably arrived from the Eastern Mediterranean with the builders of La Bastida: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/uadb-lb092712.php

Was just thinking, it may be possible to distinguish the Cardial and Bronze Age east to west Med. movements some day because the source area because it seems that back at the source area at the east end of the Med. the genetics change over time. I presume the later waves from the east Med. had more inland south-west Asian (probably making them a step nearer to modern Levantines) than the first farmers. What might be confusing though is that both the Cardial farmers and the Bronze Age east Med. intrusions may have spoken languages from the same family in very broad terms.

[alan]

Seconded. I suspect that the gradual rise in H from Neolithic to modern may be due to natural selection. Mitochondrial function being critical to the human body, mutations to it may have physiological effects. It seems that mtDNA haplogroup H confers an advantage in recovery after sepsis.

I think we really need to drop the idea that H spread from Iberia. That was an early idea, now exploded.

daft thought I have just had but here goes...could an advantage in sepsis recovery not have become more important once women were having to give birth to large round headed beaker people. Sounds daft but I have read that in areas where skulls are largerm women's pelvises also tend to be larger live some sort of selective process for enhancing chances of surviving child birth has taken place. So there do seem to be selective factors associated with giving birth to kids with larger skulls. The beaker folk were of course also overall larger bodies than the farmers so again that would increase the risk of childbirth.

[Jean M]

Over 46% of Lithuanians have mtDNA H. Any attempt to tie mtDNA H closely to R-P312 must explain how H acquired a high plurality, nearing majority, in a nation that has very little R-P312 at all.

So true. In western Europe, where R1b-P312 is dominant, we will see a large proportion of men carrying a subclade of that Y-DNA haplogroup together with mtDNA H of some variety, simply because H is the most common haplogroup all over Europe.

[Jean M]

daft thought I have just had but here goes...could an advantage in sepsis recovery not have become more important once women were having to give birth to large round headed beaker people.

I'm not sure that BB skulls were actually larger overall. In any case see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontanelle

[alan]

So true. In western Europe, where R1b-P312 is dominant, we will see a large proportion of men carrying a subclade of that Y-DNA haplogroup together with mtDNA H of some variety, simply because H is the most common haplogroup all over Europe.

Also the beaker people of Europe may have been performing a strange form of long distance international inbreeding. You could say a close parallel would be Jewish diaspora (no offense intended to anyone). That could mean by chance there could be a striking growth and movement of any female line at the right place and right time in the beaker network.

[bicicleur]

The Iberes spread over coastal territory previously IE speaking (Ligurian). The language of the Iberes probably arrived from the Eastern Mediterranean with the builders of La Bastida: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/uadb-lb092712.php

I have considered this option before.
The architecture of La Bastida hints toward an origin from Mesopotamia or Anatolia.
Afaik La Bastidans are proto-El Argar who were the first bronze workers in Iberia.
And South-West Iberian bronze would be loose identities that copied El Argar and competed with them.

Do you think there is more to it and that all those identities were subject to El Argar so that El Argar also imposed its language all over the east coast area?
Or were all these lose identities directly influenced by La Bastida itself?

[alan]

I'm not sure that BB skulls were actually larger overall. In any case see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontanelle

I had read that the long headed sort of skull is the default shape because it is the best for giving birth to. Then again I am not sure if they were reliable sources.

[Jean M]

The architecture of La Bastida hints toward an origin from Mesopoatamia or Anatolia.
Afaik La Bastidans are proto-El Argar who were the first bronze workers in Iberia.
And South-West Iberian bronze would be loose identities that copied El Argar and competed with them.

Do you think there is more to it and that all those identities were subject to El Argar so that El Argar also imposed its language all over the east coast area?
Or were all these lose identities directly influenced by La Bastida itself?

Those expert in the Iberian language say that the form it takes in surviving inscriptions is remarkably uniform, which suggests that it did not spread widely as early as the Bronze Age (which would have given time for local dialects to form), but most likely spread not long before the date of the inscriptions c. 400 BC. It could have spread as the language of a literate elite or merchant class. From Ancestral Journeys 2nd edn., p. 182:


The Iberes rose on the tide of trade. In the territory known to the ancients as Contestania, between the Júcar and Segura rivers, local leaders grew rich through control of contacts with Phoenicians and, later, Greeks. Wealth elevated an élite, who created fortified power centres which could control the countryside around. Within the walls of such towns merchants and craftsmen could safely trade. Among the crafts was wheel-thrown pottery. The much-travelled Hecataeus of Miletus encountered the Iberes c. 500 BC in Contestania.

By 420 BC the Iberes were reported along the whole Mediterranean coast of what is now Spain and had spread into southern France, mingling with Ligurians as far as the Rhone. The Iberes became so prominent in contacts with the Greeks that by the 2nd century BC Greek geographers were calling the whole peninsula Iberia. So inscriptions which have been found along the broad coastal strip from Almeria in southeast Spain to the Hérault river in Southern France are attributed to the Iberes.


Another little detour! ;)

[alan]

I have considered this option before.
The architecture of La Bastida hints toward an origin from Mesopotamia or Anatolia.
Afaik La Bastidans are proto-El Argar who were the first bronze workers in Iberia.
And South-West Iberian bronze would be loose identities that copied El Argar and competed with them.

Do you think there is more to it and that all those identities were subject to El Argar so that El Argar also imposed its language all over the east coast area?
Or were all these lose identities directly influenced by La Bastida itself?

After a waxing and waning of fashions in explaining the origins of the Argaric including a long indigenist school of thought this appeared to nail this. It makes me wonder about the similar oscillation in thought on the pre-beaker copper age in Iberia where indiginism seems to hold sway despite the novel architecture of the Zambujal type fortifications and the improbability of the Iberians just so happening to develop copper working and mining as it was spreading into the west Med. I feel it in my corns that some sort of similar change re-evaluation of the pre-beaker copper age will point to some sort of earlier Med. intrusion such as that now argued for La Bastida-proto-El Argar. The indiginist model for the pre-beaker copper age just doesnt feel right and I think you are best trusting your instincts when you are suspicious of a current model.

[alan]

Those expert in the Iberian language say that the form it takes in surviving inscriptions is remarkably uniform, which suggests that it did not spread widely as early as the Bronze Age (which would have given time for local dialects to form), but most likely spread not long before the date of the inscriptions c. 400 BC. It could have spread as the language of a literate elite or merchant class. From Ancestral Journeys 2nd edn:



Another little detour! ;)

true but incredible uniformity and collective evolution can be maintained over long periods if the system supports that.

[Jean M]

true but incredible uniformity and collective evolution can be maintained over long periods if the system supports that.

In this case we have evidence from place-names of IE speakers along the coast prior to Iberes. The earliest Greek travellers encountered Ligurians along the coastal strip of Iberia. The Greek geographer Eratosthenes (c. 276-195 BC) evidently linked Ligurians to Iberia, for he called the Iberian peninsula the Ligurian. He had access to to earlier travel writing, so this did not necessarily reflect the position in his own day. The Periplous of Pseudo-Skylax (338-337 BC) describes the Ligyes along the coast of the Mediterranean sea from Emporion (in present-day Catalonia, Spain) to Antion (Antibes in SE France), but this seems to reflect the encroachment eastwards of the Iberes, who took their name from the River Iber (now the Ebro).

We are drifting again from the thread topic. :biggrin1:

[Jean M]

The indiginist model for the pre-beaker copper age just doesnt feel right and I think you are best trusting your instincts when you are suspicious of a current model.

I'm not sure how many Spanish and Portuguese archaeologists are still clinging to the idea of a separate development of copper-working in Iberia. António Valera has just started a project on mobility financed by the Portuguese Science Foundation, related to the Perdigões enclosure that he has been working on for years. http://portugueseenclosures.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/0308-new-project-on-perdigoes-enclosure.html

I see that he has been doing some background reading on Movement, Mobility and Migration. (I have that volume too!)

[TigerMW]

... If the single grave tradition actually ends where the region of DF27 dominance begins - meaning it is just completely absent - and the very earliest Iberian Beaker involves collective burials and Mediterranean skeletons, which are two of the things about it that trouble me, that is weird. It seems to me I have seen photos of excavated full-fledged single grave Beaker burials in Iberia; they just weren't the very earliest Beaker burials. Am I wrong about that? ....
I don't know but this is exactly what I'm trying to get at. Were early, mid and latter phases of Beakers in Southern Gaul and Iberia the same? Were there significant differences between phases, particular of things that might be related to male professions and activities? If there were, were these new things of eastern influence?

We should expect some continuity in most locations. We don't need to see a complete population or cultural turn-over of Beakers in the west during the mid and latter phases. It's just that if there are Eastern influences present, particularly if they are male related, then we have reason to consider the Eastern Beaker male lineages made impacts in the west. The IE languages themselves somehow made it to the Atlantic.

This is why I say Beakers are not Beakers are not Beakers. There were different phases in time as well as different geographies. We don't know if there is any particular alignment with R1b-P311 lineages, but the timing is right.

[alan]

Found this a thought provoking article that wasnt entirely indigenistic in approach http://www.academia.edu/7363284/The_Chalcolithic_Fortified_Site_of_Leceia_Oeiras_P ortugal_

[alan]

In this case we have evidence from place-names of IE speakers along the coast prior to Iberes. The earliest Greek travellers encountered Ligurians along the coastal strip of Iberia. The Greek geographer Eratosthenes (c. 276-195 BC) evidently linked Ligurians to Iberia, for he called the Iberian peninsula the Ligurian. He had access to to earlier travel writing, so this did not necessarily reflect the position in his own day. The Periplous of Pseudo-Skylax (338-337 BC) describes the Ligyes along the coast of the Mediterranean sea from Emporion (in present-day Catalonia, Spain) to Antion (Antibes in SE France), but this seems to reflect the encroachment eastwards of the Iberes, who took their name from the River Iber (now the Ebro).

We are drifting again from the thread topic. :biggrin1:

I prefer the term freeform lateral thinking to drifting :0)

[bicicleur]

Another little detour! ;)

well, thanks for shining your light on this topic anyway

[Heber]

I think we really need to drop the idea that H spread from Iberia. That was an early idea, exploded by García 2011.

Not quiet.
Regarding Cardial and Bell Beaker, it is clear from the most recent studies that H came into Iberia with Cardial and expanded out of Iberia with Bell Beaker.

Brotherton et al (2013)
Neolithic mitochondrial haplogroup H genomes and the genetic origins of Europeans

"Our results reveal that the current diversity and distribution of haplogroup H were largely established by the Mid Neolithic (~4000 BC), but with substantial genetic contributions from subsequent pan-European cultures such as the Bell Beakers expanding out of Iberia in the Late Neolithic (~2800 BC). Dated haplogroup H genomes allow us to reconstruct the recent evolutionary history of haplogroup H and reveal a mutation rate 45% higher than current estimates for human mitochondria."

5844

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23612305

Gomez Sanchez et al (2014)
Mitochondrial DNA from El Mirador Cave (Atapuerca, Spain) Reveals the Heterogeneity of Chalcolithic Populations

Previous mitochondrial DNA analyses on ancient European remains have suggested that the current distribution of haplogroup H was modeled by the expansion of the Bell Beaker culture (ca 4,500–4,050 years BP) out of Iberia during the Chalcolithic period

Brandt, Haak et al (2013)
Ancient DNA Reveals Key Stages in the Formation of Central European Mitochondrial Genetic Diversity

"However, genetic links between the BBC and modern Iberian populations were supported by genetic distance maps accounting for H sub-haplogroups (Fig. S7H) and ancient mitochondrial H genomes (12). These suggest the BBC was associated with a genetic influx from Southwest Europe (Movie S1), which is consistent with the oldest archaeological signs of this culture being found in Portugal ~2,800 cal BC (2–3)."

5843

Oalade et al (2015)
A common genetic origin for early farmers from Mediterranean Cardial and
Central European LBK cultures

"A later aspect of this culture, named Cardial for the use of the serrated edge of cockle shells in pottery
decoration, reached the Iberian Peninsula no later than 5,500 years BCE."

5845

[Heber]

Are we about to find our first R1b-M269 anciant DNA sample in Iberia?

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/09/02/1509851112.abstract

Ancient genomes link early farmers from Atapuerca in Spain to modern-day Basques

"Furthermore, all modern-day Iberian groups except the Basques display distinct admixture with Caucasus/Central Asian and North African groups, possibly related to historical migration events."

Abstract
The consequences of the Neolithic transition in Europe—one of the most important cultural changes in human prehistory—is a subject of great interest. However, its effect on prehistoric and modern-day people in Iberia, the westernmost frontier of the European continent, remains unresolved. We present, to our knowledge, the first genome-wide sequence data from eight human remains, dated to between 5,500 and 3,500 years before present, excavated in the El Portalón cave at Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain. We show that these individuals emerged from the same ancestral gene pool as early farmers in other parts of Europe, suggesting that migration was the dominant mode of transferring farming practices throughout western Eurasia. In contrast to central and northern early European farmers, the Chalcolithic El Portalón individuals additionally mixed with local southwestern hunter–gatherers. The proportion of hunter–gatherer-related admixture into early farmers also increased over the course of two millennia. The Chalcolithic El Portalón individuals showed greatest genetic affinity to modern-day Basques, who have long been considered linguistic and genetic isolates linked to the Mesolithic whereas all other European early farmers show greater genetic similarity to modern-day Sardinians. These genetic links suggest that Basques and their language may be linked with the spread of agriculture during the Neolithic. Furthermore, all modern-day Iberian groups except the Basques display distinct admixture with Caucasus/Central Asian and North African groups, possibly related to historical migration events. The El Portalón genomes uncover important pieces of the demographic history of Iberia and Europe and reveal how prehistoric groups relate to modern-day people.

[ArmandoR1b]

Are we about to find our first R1b-M269 anciant DNA sample in Iberia?

Nope.

5847

[TigerMW]

Gunther, et. al. wrote, "The Chalcolithic El Portalón individuals showed greatest genetic affinity to modern-day Basques, who have long been considered linguistic and genetic isolates linked to the Mesolithic whereas all other European early farmers show greater genetic similarity to modern-day Sardinians. These genetic links suggest that Basques and their language may be linked with the spread of agriculture during the Neolithic."

Nope.

5847

I see that I2 Y DNA is present again and "H2". I'm not familiar with "H2".

Is there any real reason to think Euskara came from an ancient language used in the Caucasus? As Alan said, some of these forts and things in Chalcolithic Iberia do indicate some input from somewhere.

Too bad these guys didn't write anything down (on stone or something permanent).

[Heber]

Nope.

5847

I know you disagree but this is the only 3rd party analysis i am aware of to date. Lets wait and see.

ATP3 Pre-Beaker Copper Age 3516–3362 BC R1b1a2-M269 calls

https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/y-snp-calls-from-copper-and-bronze-age-spain/

[alan]

Its a very disappointing report from a yDNA point of view. One (H2) guy falls into the earlier beaker period although I am not clear if he is a beaker person. No other males of the beaker era were even tested.

he only mtDNA we have from this study which falls within the beaker period of Iberia is the beaker male (guy with H2 yDNA) who is mtDNA U5b3 and a female who is U5a1c. However the female is very late in the beaker phase so its possible she is not beaker. Anyone know anything about those mtDNA lines?

[alan]

where is the actual paper?

[Heber]

where is the actual paper?

Abstract

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/09/02/1509851112.abstract

This article contains supporting information online

http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2015/09/02/1509851112.DCSupplemental

[ArmandoR1b]

I know you disagree but this is the only 3rd party analysis i am aware of to date. Lets wait and see.

ATP3 Pre-Beaker Copper Age 3516–3362 BC R1b1a2-M269 calls

https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/y-snp-calls-from-copper-and-bronze-age-spain/

I am sure there are a ton of no-calls in that and PF6518 is a recurrent SNP found in many other haplogroups. The coverage is way too low for it to be reliable.

[alan]

well it clearly wasnt a paper aimed at showing a simple before, during and after the beaker pot genetic history. It certainly didnt target anywhere near enough Iberian beaker era people to achieve any knowledge of them. Indeed the Basque country would be a terrible choice of an area to study Iberian beaker from anyway as its largely bypassed by the beaker phenomenon.

[GoldenHind]

I have been thinking about Rich R's comments that Eastern Beaker had very little impact on Iberia. There are three P312 subclades which appear to have little if any presence in Iberia, or for that matter, anywhere along or even near the Atlantic coast. These are DF19, DF99 and L238. A possible explanation could be that all three were concentrated in the northern and eastern ranges of the Beaker settlements.

All three of these subclades appear to be considerably less numerous than DF27, U152 and L21. The question is whether this is a mere coincidence, or whether there is a causal connection. In the west, the Beaker package may well have conferred significant advantages which allowed them to rapidly expand. However in the northern and eastern Beaker areas, they are likely to have come into competition with Corded Ware, over whom they did not possess any significant advantages. This might well have hindered their ability to expand in the same manner as their western counterparts.

[avalon]

I am particularly interested in Celtic countries And the connection with P312.
43% in Mayo and 49% in Asturias had H. Possibly higher in other celtic areas. Interesting figure for Lithuania.

I don't know how reliable his data is but Eupedia states 59% mtDNA H for Wales.

[rms2]

I know you disagree but this is the only 3rd party analysis i am aware of to date. Lets wait and see.

ATP3 Pre-Beaker Copper Age 3516–3362 BC R1b1a2-M269 calls

https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/y-snp-calls-from-copper-and-bronze-age-spain/

That seems very premature at best.

[ADW_1981]

That seems very premature at best.

The paper didn't report that find, at least not as a reliable one, and the ones that were reliable were consistent with other Neolithic YDNA to date. I think we can confidently put these predictions aside, or at least be very dubious of them.

[rms2]

Allentoft only plotted the collective baBb (Bronze Age Bell Beaker) group, so David plotted them individually. The RISE564 sample shows up here as Bell_Beaker surrounded by all Iberians: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9o3EYTdM8lQbmdQY0lsdmJYMXc/view

For some reason I can't make that big enough on my work computer to see the labels on the little colored plot markers.

I'll try at home later. Thanks.



All of the answers to your question are "yes/maybe", but again, there is no genetic support to these being non-R1b men. If we were going to give all of the importance to single-grave burials with heavy boned flat occipital brachycephalics, we would have to say that then Bell Beaker are derived from the Italian Copper Age Gaudo group. And saying that females drove a drastic cultural shift in a patrilieal group of men, especially given the ancient Y-DNA trend, is out of the question for me. I will try looking at some of the earlier Iberian Bell Beaker papers, not summary data generalizing this or that and post my findings in the next couple of weeks. Perhaps you and/or Alan are on to something.

I don't think females would have had to drive anything to start with, except maybe pot making. The pottery could have begun in a non-kurgan culture in Iberia that was largely I2a and G2a. It could have run into and melded with something like Vucedol, Zok Mako, and Somogyvar in eastern Europe and acquired a different y-dna profile. It comes back west on horseback with new sheriffs in the saddle (not that they really used saddles).

What makes me think this is a possibility are all the differences between early Iberian Beaker, which seems like just another Neolithic pottery trend started by Mediterranean Old European types who buried their dead in collective tombs, and later, eastern influenced Beaker, which was practicing pastoralism on horseback and burying its dead in single graves, under a tumulus, with all the other traits we know about and its famous kit.

[jeanL]

Here is a zoomed-in version of the PCA plot for RISE564 who is said to be R1b-L51, while he does appear to be a recent arrival from Iberia, or mixed with something that places him in Iberia, it does appear that he is East of Basques and Sardinians, thus he does have more ANE/Yamnaya than Basques/Sardinians.

5848

[Heber]

I have asked YFull to have a look at ATP3.
We had the same issue with Allentoft and Haak not reporting SNPs and 3rd party analysis filling the gaps.

[ArmandoR1b]

I have asked YFull to have a look at ATP3.
We had the same issue with Allentoft and Haak not reporting SNPs and 3rd party analysis filling the gaps.

And if you remember some of them were of too low quality for YFull to analyze.

[R.Rocca]

Here is a zoomed-in version of the PCA plot for RISE564 who is said to be R1b-L51, while he does appear to be a recent arrival from Iberia, or mixed with something that places him in Iberia, it does appear that he is East of Basques and Sardinians, thus he does have more ANE/Yamnaya than Basques/Sardinians.

5848

For full disclosure... he could also be a very recent mix with a German MN person. Remember that the U152+ sample RISE563 plots with modern Russians from Kargopol and Mordovia.

[TigerMW]

And if you remember some of them were of too low quality for YFull to analyze.
If this is breakthrough, that's good, very good in fact.
https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/y-snp-calls-from-copper-and-bronze-age-spain/

Is this information correct? or probably correct? I know nothing is perfect but if the odds are very high we have to take that into account.

[ArmandoR1b]

If this is breakthrough, that's good, very good in fact.
https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/y-snp-calls-from-copper-and-bronze-age-spain/

Is this information correct? or probably correct? I know nothing is perfect but if the odds are very high we have to take that into account.
Mike, you should be one of the people that understand that low coverage of the Y-DNA isn't sufficient enough to provide a haplogroup and much less a subclade. Take a look at all of the calls from other haplogroups. There aren't enough calls to determine which haplogroup and subclade he actually belongs to. If we did he would probably turn out to be I2.

[Heber]

If this is breakthrough, that's good, very good in fact.
https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/y-snp-calls-from-copper-and-bronze-age-spain/

Is this information correct? or probably correct? I know nothing is perfect but if the odds are very high we have to take that into account.

Estimated age 3516–3362 BC
If as reported he is negative for I, I2, J, G, T. Positive for K that eliminates possible alternatives and strengthens the case for R1b-M269.
ATP3 Pre-Beaker Copper Age 3516–3362 BC R1b1a2-M269 calls

[ArmandoR1b]

Estimated age 3516–3362 BC
If as reported he is negative for I, I2, J, G, T. Positive for K that eliminates possible alternatives and strengthens the case for R1b-M269.
ATP3 Pre-Beaker Copper Age 3516–3362 BC R1b1a2-M269 calls
Are you sure the specimen is negative for all of those and they aren't no-calls?

[jeanL]

Mike, you should be one of the people that understand that low coverage of the Y-DNA isn't sufficient enough to provide a haplogroup and much less a subclade. Take a look at all of the calls from other haplogroups and even subclades that are from different branches of M269. There aren't enough calls to determine which haplogroup and subclade he actually belongs to. If we did he would probably turn out to be I2. The specimen is positive for 34 SNPs downstream from M223. https://genetiker.wordpress.com/y-snp-calls-for-atp3/

Indeed but what are the odds that a person who has a single call for:

I2-L460-M436-M223-Y4450-CTS616-CTS10057-Z161-L801-CTS6433-SK1258-Y16441-Y16447

And no ancestral calls for I2 or I, at the same time we have a single call for

J2-M410-PF4610-Z6046-SK2198/S18476

But then look at the progression of false positives that one would have to have in order for it to be I2 and non-R1b-M269:

K-CTS9278/PF5501/M2693
R1-M748/YSC0000207
R1b1-L389-P297-FGC46/Y97
R1b1-L389-P297-M269-PF6518

That's 4 SNPs placing it in R1b-M269. I know that there are many other calls, but isn't that to be expected on ancient degraded DNA. Now, this needs to be independently verified by a different person, no doubt!

[Heber]

Are you sure the specimen is negative for all of those and they aren't no-calls?

Reported by Krefter and he is generally a good source.
"Yeah, but he's negative for I, I2, J, G, T. He's even positive for K. Everything is in line for R1b1a2."

[ArmandoR1b]

Indeed but what are the odds that a person who has a single call for:

I2-L460-M436-M223-Y4450-CTS616-CTS10057-Z161-L801-CTS6433-SK1258-Y16441-Y16447

And no ancestral calls for I2 or I, at the same time we have a single call for

J2-M410-PF4610-Z6046-SK2198/S18476

But then look at the progression of false positives that one would have to have in order for it to be I2 and non-R1b-M269:

K-CTS9278/PF5501/M2693
R1-M748/YSC0000207
R1b1-L389-P297-FGC46/Y97
R1b1-L389-P297-M269-PF6518

That's 4 SNPs placing it in R1b-M269. I know that there are many other calls, but isn't that to be expected on ancient degraded DNA. Now, this needs to be independently verified by a different person, no doubt!

The one I still have a problem with is PF6518 since it is found in many other haplogroups.

[TigerMW]

Gunther, et. al. wrote, "The Chalcolithic El Portalón individuals showed greatest genetic affinity to modern-day Basques, who have long been considered linguistic and genetic isolates linked to the Mesolithic whereas all other European early farmers show greater genetic similarity to modern-day Sardinians. These genetic links suggest that Basques and their language may be linked with the spread of agriculture during the Neolithic."
... Is there any real reason to think Euskara came from an ancient language used in the Caucasus? As Alan said, some of these forts and things in Chalcolithic Iberia do indicate some input from somewhere... .

Here is another hypothesis. Can it be struck down? It kind of follows Klyosov's train of thinking.

What if P311 was born in the Southern Pontic Steppes or even the Caucasus during a period of great change. One branch included P312* and moved along a southerly route with some sailing expertise to reach Iberia and/or the mouth of the Rhone. DF27 appeared in route.

Another branch or two of P312* moved more along the Danube and or even north along the Carpathians with P311* or pre-U106 types. U152 was on one of these branches.

The turbulent events in and on the north of the Caucasus involved multiple cultures, some were IE speaking and someone were not. The sea and land routes west would have occurred very quickly. The seafarers might have been faster.

Eventually, DF27 circled back towards Central Europe and the East met the West. The East won and the West was disbursed somewhat on the continent - i.e. the North-South cluster & SRY2627.

[ArmandoR1b]

Reported by Krefter and he is generally a good source.
"Yeah, but he's negative for I, I2, J, G, T. He's even positive for K. Everything is in line for R1b1a2."

He's relying on what Genetiker posted. We'll see if YFull analyzes the file. The one that really is definitely not for sure is PF6518 because it is found in many other haplogroups so the region it is found in seems to mutate a lot.

[alan]

Estimated age 3516–3362 BC
If as reported he is negative for I, I2, J, G, T. Positive for K that eliminates possible alternatives and strengthens the case for R1b-M269.
ATP3 Pre-Beaker Copper Age 3516–3362 BC R1b1a2-M269 calls

That is too early for most archaeologists definition of the copper age in Iberia. Its basically Neolithic - the copper age not starting until 400 years after the central date and not even falling within the range. That makes it even more doubtful it could be M269 as nothing exists that provides a common ancestral thread to Yamnaya in south Russia and the Ukraine on one end of Europe and Iberian late Neolithic farmers in Iberia c. 3400BC. It would have been surprising but not utterly impossible if it was 3100-2800BC, the early copper age period of Iberia, but this is too early even to link it to early copper in pre-beaker times. So, it doesnt make any sense which makes me think its not M269. Its especially unlike in the Basque Country which was kind of off of the pulse. Seems very improbably in archaeological terms.

[Megalophias]

...nothing exists that provides a common ancestral thread to Yamnaya in south Russia and the Ukraine on one end of Europe and Iberian late Neolithic farmers in Iberia c. 3400BC.
Cardial Ware (there is a bit in Ukraine). :D

[alan]

Another reason to doubt there could be any lines ancestral to the larger modern groups in both the steppes and Iberia c . 3500BC is that we are talking not just about a shared M269 node but a shared L23 one. L23 is not old enough to have been shared by both Yamnaya in the Volga-Don area and some later Neolithic farmer in Spain c. 3500BC. Cardial pot Farmers arrived in Iberia and indeed the whole central and west Med. c. 5500BC, apparently an offshoot from the first Cardial settlements on the Adriatic c. 6300BC, itself an offshoot from Levant. This makes the Cardial move west older than L23 itself. So the farming wave was not capable of somehow leaving L23 behind in or near the steppes and also in Iberia. Any connection surely has to be post-Neolithic.

[alan]

Cardial Ware (there is a bit in Ukraine). :D

Really? You dont mean the single 'maybe' sherd found near the Black Sea? Its dubious. All other Cardial in Europe is from the Adriatic Balkan shore westwards. Also as I posted, to bring something ancestral to L51 and downstream to the far west and leave Z2103 in the steppes means they had to split after L23. Very few would make L23 old enough to have existed when Cardial started heading west c. 6300BC on the Adriatic then 5500BC in the centre to west Med. At very best any M269 individual who blundered their way onto the Cardial trail in the Adriatic is likely to have been a dead end pre-L23 line. Of course the non-EHG input in Yamnaya appears to be from a different source (Caucasus or east Caspian) rather than European farmers.

[Romilius]

Really? You dont mean the single 'maybe' sherd found near the Black Sea? Its dubious. All other Cardial in Europe is from the Adriatic Balkan shore westwards. Also as I posted, to bring something ancestral to L51 and downstream to the far west and leave Z2103 in the steppes means they had to split after L23. Very few would make L23 old enough to have existed when Cardial started heading west c. 6300BC on the Adriatic then 5500BC in the centre to west Med. At very best any M269 individual who blundered their way onto the Cardial trail in the Adriatic is likely to have been a dead end pre-L23 line. Of course the non-EHG input in Yamnaya appears to be from a different source (Caucasus or east Caspian) rather than European farmers.

The fire lighted by Genetiker is so confusing: we have parallel lines of R-M269 in two places with miles of distance!

[Romilius]

Another idea: if that ATP3 sample turned out to be R-M269... well, could it be, perhaps, realted with those Canarian islanders quoted by Tomenable?

[Heber]

With YFull TMRCA as follows
M269 6400
L23 6200
L51 5800
L11 4900
P312 4600

ATP3 5526-5372

My guess would be that it is L11.
It is too old for P312.

If I remember correctly Genographic found some L11 in Asturias along with very high levels of R1b-DF27.

[rms2]

Indeed but what are the odds that a person who has a single call for:

I2-L460-M436-M223-Y4450-CTS616-CTS10057-Z161-L801-CTS6433-SK1258-Y16441-Y16447

And no ancestral calls for I2 or I, at the same time we have a single call for

J2-M410-PF4610-Z6046-SK2198/S18476

But then look at the progression of false positives that one would have to have in order for it to be I2 and non-R1b-M269:

K-CTS9278/PF5501/M2693
R1-M748/YSC0000207
R1b1-L389-P297-FGC46/Y97
R1b1-L389-P297-M269-PF6518

That's 4 SNPs placing it in R1b-M269. I know that there are many other calls, but isn't that to be expected on ancient degraded DNA. Now, this needs to be independently verified by a different person, no doubt!

Unfortunately I have been busy with work and unable to follow all the El Portalon news, but aren't all those calls for different y haplogroups indicative of a problem with this sample? Aren't you even a little bit suspicious?

I understand the coverage is low, but what is there also seems really flaky.

I know you and a number of others (like genetiker) really want a very early Iberian M269, and, conversely, I do not, but from what I gather there isn't much in this thing that either of us can take to the bank.

It looks like a mess. Frankly, I really doubt it is M269 or that you'll be happy with it when all the dust clears.

[rms2]

For full disclosure... he could also be a very recent mix with a German MN person. Remember that the U152+ sample RISE563 plots with modern Russians from Kargopol and Mordovia.

That seems more likely to me than any kind of R1b (including DF27) out-of-Iberia scenario.

[alan]

With YFull TMRCA as follows
M269 6400
L23 6200
L51 5800
L11 4900
P312 4600

ATP3 5526-5372

My guess would be that it is L11.
It is too old for P312.

If I remember correctly Genographic found some L11 in Asturias along with very high levels of R1b-DF27.

Yep but you have to consider how an M269 guy got there. It had to have been as part of a movement from points way to the east whether that be eastern Europe, the Balkans or SW Asia. The last such movement that is undisputed that occurred before this guy lived was the Cardial wave which also almost certainly brought the V88 guy. The Cardial wave may have started in the Levant, was in the Adriatic Balkans c. 6200BC and all through the central and west Med by 5500BC. So the last possible date of commonality that would put this Spanish dude and the steppe people anywhere near each other would be back to c. 5500BC. So, short of a theory of journeying west much later on c. 5500-3500BC without any clear cultural echo (which would seem improbable to pick up in such a small sample) the only rational way of getting M269 BOTH around the steppes and in Iberia is if some of it hitched a ride west with Cardial c. 5500BC. If it did then we have to be talking M269xL23 as nobody is placing L23 that old but M269 could be as old as 12000BC (originating in hunters in north central Asia/Siberia IMO). M269xL23 has a strange patchy but largely west Balkans, urals, Caspian, Iran sort of distribution today but its eastern distribution is clear and its not hugely dissimilar to the Z2103 distribution although more patchy.

Having said all that I really doubt this guy is actually M269. He lived too early before copper working really reached Iberia and seems more a late Neolithic guy. So it would be hard to account for him. Had the sample been 500 years later then it might have been tempting to see him as something to do with the pre-beaker copper working - perhaps someone with roots back in the Balkans c. 4000BC -but he is too early for this unless he is some stray from somewhere like Italy where copper had arrived by his lifetime. Also the Basque country is a backwater in terms of copper age Iberia both before and during the beaker era.

[alan]

Unfortunately I have been busy with work and unable to follow all the El Portalon news, but aren't all those calls for different y haplogroups indicative of a problem with this sample? Aren't you even a little bit suspicious?

I understand the coverage is low, but what is there also seems really flaky.

I know you and a number of others (like genetiker) really want a very early Iberian M269, and, conversely, I do not, but from what I gather there isn't much in this thing that either of us can take to the bank.

It looks like a mess. Frankly, I really doubt it is M269 or that you'll be happy with it when all the dust clears.

It would take a lot to persuade me when the authors wouldnt even put him in a very general halogroup of any letter. I tend to believe the authors are normally correct when they say something is too unclear to call. If they could have grabbed a headline like M269 in Neolithic Iberia they surely would have.

[jeanL]

Unfortunately I have been busy with work and unable to follow all the El Portalon news, but aren't all those calls for different y haplogroups indicative of a problem with this sample? Aren't you even a little bit suspicious?

I understand the coverage is low, but what is there also seems really flaky.

I know you and a number of others (like genetiker) really want a very early Iberian M269, and, conversely, I do not, but from what I gather there isn't much in this thing that either of us can take to the bank.

It looks like a mess. Frankly, I really doubt it is M269 or that you'll be happy with it when all the dust clears.

I'll repeat what I said before:

I know that there are many other calls, but isn't that to be expected on ancient degraded DNA. Now, this needs to be independently verified by a different person, no doubt! So if you want to know my position about it, I'm agnostic about it, until it is confirmed independently by other sources, though given the choice of SNPs, the most likely fit would indeed be R1b-M269, does it mean the sample is R1b-M269? No, I'm just going by the data we have at hand.

[jeanL]

Also the Basque country is a backwater in terms of copper age Iberia both before and during the beaker era.

Alan you are aware that these individuals are not from any of the regions that are considered part of the modern day Basque region? They are from a close location but not from the Basque Country.

[ADW_1981]

Yep but you have to consider how an M269 guy got there. It had to have been as part of a movement from points way to the east whether that be eastern Europe, the Balkans or SW Asia. The last such movement that is undisputed that occurred before this guy lived was the Cardial wave which also almost certainly brought the V88 guy. The Cardial wave may have started in the Levant, was in the Adriatic Balkans c. 6200BC and all through the central and west Med by 5500BC. So the last possible date of commonality that would put this Spanish dude and the steppe people anywhere near each other would be back to c. 5500BC. So, short of a theory of journeying west much later on c. 5500-3500BC without any clear cultural echo (which would seem improbable to pick up in such a small sample) the only rational way of getting M269 BOTH around the steppes and in Iberia is if some of it hitched a ride west with Cardial c. 5500BC. If it did then we have to be talking M269xL23 as nobody is placing L23 that old but M269 could be as old as 12000BC (originating in hunters in north central Asia/Siberia IMO). M269xL23 has a strange patchy but largely west Balkans, urals, Caspian, Iran sort of distribution today but its eastern distribution is clear and its not hugely dissimilar to the Z2103 distribution although more patchy.

Having said all that I really doubt this guy is actually M269. He lived too early before copper working really reached Iberia and seems more a late Neolithic guy. So it would be hard to account for him. Had the sample been 500 years later then it might have been tempting to see him as something to do with the pre-beaker copper working - perhaps someone with roots back in the Balkans c. 4000BC -but he is too early for this unless he is some stray from somewhere like Italy where copper had arrived by his lifetime. Also the Basque country is a backwater in terms of copper age Iberia both before and during the beaker era.

There might have been M269 (xL23) in Western Asia at the time. I still think this is ultimately a dead branch, just like H2 in Europe. Unlikely to have spawned anything today of real significance on the male side. The real continuity is the mtDNA.

[Heber]

Lets hope we do not have to wait too long for the next genomes. This is a fascinating journey.

"For Carles Lalueza-Fox, "this study is only the first step of a major project done in collaboration with David Reich at the Broad Institute that aims to create an Iberian paleogenomic transect, from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages. So far, we have genomic data from fifty individuals and we want to reach more than one hundred. Being at the westernmost edge of Europe, the Iberian Peninsula is crucial to understand the final impact of population movements such as the Neolithic or the later steppe migrations that entered Europe from the East"

[Kwheaton]

Is anyone discussing the Accurate Time Clock Article in te context of Bell-beakers etc?

http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/09/08/026286.full-text.pdf+html

[Jean M]

Is anyone discussing the Accurate Time Clock Article in te context of Bell-beakers etc?

http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/09/08/026286.full-text.pdf+html

Abstract:

Our method for “Time to most recent common ancestor” TMRCA of genetic trees for the first time deals with natural selection by apriori mathematics and not as a random factor. Bioprocesses such as “kin selection” generate a few overrepresented “singular lineages” while almost all other lineages terminate. This non-uniform branching gives greatly exaggerated TMRCA with current methods. Thus we introduce an inhomogenous stochastic process which will detect singular lineages by asymmetries, whose “reduction” then gives true TMRCA. This gives a new phylogenetic method for computing mutation rates, with results similar to “pedigree” (meiosis) data. Despite these low rates, reduction implies younger TMRCA, with smaller errors. We establish accuracy by a comparison across a wide range of time, indeed this is only y-clock giving consistent results for 500-15,000 ybp. In particular we show that the dominant European Y-haplotypes R1a1a & R1b1a2, expand from c4000BC, not reaching Anatolia before c3800BC. This contradicts previous clocks dating R1b1a2 to either the Neolithic Near East or Paleo-Europe. However our dates match R1a1a & R1b1a2 found in Yamnaya cemetaries of c3300BC by Nielsen et al (2015), Pääbo et al (2015), together proving R1a1a & R1b1a2 originates in the Russian Steppes.


In his bibliography:

Nielsen, R. et al (2015), Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia Nature 522:167-172, which in fact was Allentoft et al. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v522/n7555/full/nature14507.html
Pääbo, S. et al (2014), Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans, Nature, 513, pp 409-413, which in fact was Lazarides et al.

[rms2]

I'll repeat what I said before:

I know that there are many other calls, but isn't that to be expected on ancient degraded DNA. Now, this needs to be independently verified by a different person, no doubt! So if you want to know my position about it, I'm agnostic about it, until it is confirmed independently by other sources, though given the choice of SNPs, the most likely fit would indeed be R1b-M269, does it mean the sample is R1b-M269? No, I'm just going by the data we have at hand.

I appreciate the even-handedness of your response, but the part of your post I put in bold is the point, I think. This ATP3 sample is such a mess, with calls for a number of y haplogroups, that it is not safe to pick any of them, which is apparently why the paper's authors would not assign it any y haplogroup.

It could be M269, but I doubt that it really is. That ancient man was probably I2a, honestly, but I would not go so far as to claim that is what he was.

[bicicleur]

I appreciate the even-handedness of your response, but the part of your post I put in bold is the point, I think. This ATP3 sample is such a mess, with calls for a number of y haplogroups, that it is not safe to pick any of them, which is apparently why the paper's authors would not assign it any y haplogroup.

It could be M269, but I doubt that it really is. That ancient man was probably I2a, honestly, but I would not go so far as to claim that is what he was.

the sample is low coverage indeed, but having false positives and false negatives are common in reading of anciant DNA
so you are right to reserve some doubts
but watching these Y-calls, M269 remains the most likely outcome