Bell Beakers, Gimbutas and R1b

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Finally, the evidence of Anthony must be addressed

Aside from the misplaced analogy of Plain Indians taking quickly to pre-domesticated horses, is the following

: First was Anthony’s grand thesis from Dereivka… Radiocarbon dates catually found that it was 3000 years younger than originally thought. Ie. From ~ 500 BC. (kinda embarrassing? )

: Then there was his mentor, Telegin’s “evidence’ of bone “Cheek pieces”. These were deer antlers with central perforations (six of them from the Chalcolithic steppe). Their character was general, that their use as cheek pieces was summarily dismissed. Indeed, perforated deer antlers and bones have been found, both in contemporary sites from western Europe to the Orient, and since the Palaeolithic, and neither of which had nothing to do with horse riding.

: Thirdly, the cited evidence of ‘bit ware’ from the lower premolar (P2) – Anthony/ Brown’s grand thesis - has been deemed equivocal at best. Levine’s analysis suggested that it could be due to abnormal occlusion of the horse. Unlike Levine’s exhaustive analysis from Iron Ages which were ridden, Anthony provided no post-cranial analysis (eg of the vertebrae), nor does he analyse the remaining teeth (such as the upper premolar).( Botai and the Origins of Horse Domestication. Marsha A. Levine)

: fourthly, there is an absence of any corresponding “light cavalry” weapons. The weapon collection analysed from late Yamnaya contexts suggest wholly infantry warfare (The Warfare of the northern Pontic steppe.. Klochko & Pustavolov)

"All in all : the conclusion that these horses were ridden would be premature: they may have supplied a “secondary product” by serving as pack animals or even draft animals, pulling sledges or primitive wheeled vehicles” (R Drews. Early Riders..)

We might accept they were beginning to be ridden clumsily. Indeed, at best, they could have been begun to be used for herding, helping adaptation to the steppe and better herd management as I think someone suggested above. But the quest for proof of revolutionary warfare has been evidently farcical. Not surprising that Bronze Age and Pastoralis specialists repeatedly and unanimously (Khazanov, Chernyk, Kohl, Frachetti, Kuzmina, Bokovenko, .......) point out that any serious claims of horse warfare can only begin at a significantly later period than M4.

Have a lovely weekend y’all.

[rms2]

Of course, this entire horse debate might be peripheral. h
How certain are we as to where L23 came from ?

Since we were discussing the use of horses by Indo-Europeans, the fact that R1b-L23 has turned up in Yamnaya and Bell Beaker is really what matters.

If YFull is right, then L23 formed about 4400 BC and its TMRCA is dated to about 4200 BC. Given those dates, it doesn't seem likely it arose too far from the steppe.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

How is that quote "[t]he weight of scholarly opinion"? Plus it just doesn't make sense. "[S]uccessful riding was not yet possible . . . [i]n the fourth and earlier third millennium"? Really? You believe that, even after all the evidence David Mc has presented about bareback riding and in the face of Anthony's bit wear research?

I rode horses bareback when I was a teenager. I did have the advantage of a modern halter and bit, but it was still bareback: no saddle, no stirrups. It wasn't that difficult, not with a good horse.

And no one said anything about "shooting arrows at each other from horseback". We specifically mentioned mounted infantry, i.e., the use of horses to travel to and from the scene of a raid or a conflict.

Scholarly opinion has to make some sense to carry any weight, otherwise citing it is merely an appeal to orthodox authority. If we were all in constant awe of scholarly opinion, then anti-migrationism would be set in stone, and we would all still be talking about R1b in the Iberian Ice Age Refuge.

Non sequitur. You can;t use the erroneous (and possibly biased) early conclusions from geneticists to argue against a long-established discipline like archaeology and radio-dating.
Absurd

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Since we were discussing the use of horses by Indo-Europeans, the fact that R1b-L23 has turned up in Yamnaya and Bell Beaker is really what matters.

If YFull is right, then L23 formed about 4400 BC and its TMRCA is dated to about 4200 BC. Given those dates, it doesn't seem likely it arose too far from the steppe.

Yes indeed. Those YFull guys are pretty darn bright. But lets not forget C/Is, and let see where L51 expanded from specifically.

Have a nice weekend chaps, Im spent!

[rms2]

Non sequitur. You can;t use the erroneous (and possibly biased) early conclusions from geneticists to argue against a long-established discipline like archaeology and radio-dating.
Absurd

What are you talking about? Who said anything about the opinions of geneticists with regard to horseback riding? Appeals to authority are appeals to authority, regardless of what field that authority is in.

You honestly believe that Indo-Europeans had horses for over a thousand years before finally managing to ride them? And it took half a millennium or so to go from clumsy first attempts to actual successful bareback riding?

BTW, in his book, Anthony addresses and answers some of the objections to his bit wear research.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

What are you talking about? Who said anything about the opinions of geneticists with regard to horseback riding? Appeals to authority are appeals to authority, regardless of what field that authority is in.

You honestly believe that Indo-Europeans had horses for over a thousand years before finally managing to ride them? And it took half a millennium or so to go from clumsy first attempts to actual successful bareback riding?

BTW, in his book, Anthony addresses and answers some of the objections to his bit wear research.

Ok. But at the moment, the balance seems to be the scholars I cited, plus more ; vs D Anthony and certain esteemed members of the Anthrogenica crew .

Appealing to the notion that previous orthodoxy has been wrong on otherwise unrelated matters sounds rather desperate.
And, yes knowledge and skill is a staged process and can take a long time to acquire. To summarily dismiss the duly studied opinion of dozens of specialists seems a little arrogant.

But when proper and accepted evidnece does come, I'll happily greet it.

[rms2]

In this case I don't think appeals to authority are convincing. The IEs had horses for a thousand years or more before figuring out how to ride them? It took 500 years from the first clumsy attempts at riding until some modicum of success at it was achieved?

Authority alone is not enough when the arguments themselves are weak.

[R.Rocca]

Haplogroups R1a and R1b expanded due to dumb luck, it's pretty obvious that they had no advantage whatsoever technologically, militarily or physically. I see that pretty clearly now thanks to the posts on this forum from the past week. Geez, how could I have been so blind? I'm going to start a poll and ask R1a/b men vs. non-R1a/b men if they've ever won the lottery. No doubt that the R1a/b men will be many times more likely to have won the lottery, given how lucky they are.

I'm off to the 7-11 to buy some lottery tickets... by the way, the store owner, whom I have know for years, is R1a. I'm sure his family is full of lucky people.

[Kwheaton]

Haplogroups R1a and R1b expanded due to dumb luck, it's pretty obvious that they had no advantage whatsoever technologically, militarily or physically. I see that pretty clearly now thanks to the posts on this forum from the past week. Geez, how could I have been so blind? I'm going to start a poll and ask R1a/b men vs. non-R1a/b men if they've ever won the lottery. No doubt that the R1a/b men will be many times more likely to have won the lottery, given how lucky they are.

I'm off to the 7-11 to buy some lottery tickets... by the way, the store owner, whom I have know for years, is R1a. I'm sure his family is full of lucky people.

Rich, And where does it lead us women who have been breeding with R1b men? Just damned lucky I guess....and for good or bad the line carries on with two more grandsons.....they started riding bikes as early as they could walk and then added kayaks---no horseback riding but I'll have to get them going on that or perhpas fencing...:fencing:

[kinman]

Speaking of grandsons, that's another advantage the R1b lines had spreading across Europe---the genetic tendency to produce more sons than daughters (and I believe R1a is a close second in that regard). Not that females can't be warriors (like the Celtic Queen Boudica), but males have always dominated in the warrior role. Good horses, lots of sons, and a bit of luck (the big drought of 3200 B.C.), they had a lot of advantages going for them.
--------------Ken


Rich, And where does it lead us women who have been breeding with R1b men? Just damned lucky I guess....and for good or bad the line carries on with two more grandsons.....they started riding bikes as early as they could walk and then added kayaks---no horseback riding but I'll have to get them going on that or perhpas fencing...:fencing:

[David Mc]

Yes skylarking, tricks and speed is what the earliest horse riding would have involved. This is a different matter to proficient use in a dedicated military setting, as already spelt out.
You believe that this is what's been spelled out?

I've already provided example after example from military history. Fighting from horseback isn’t difficult if one is a skilled rider. We’ve also pointed out that most early (and many later) cultures didn't use stirrups or even bridles and bits etc. This means that scholars, who depend on archaeology for things like this, aren't going to find evidence of horseback riding unless they are willing to include observations of tooth-wear in horses, which is what Anthony has done.

So what do we know about the people under discussion? We know they had already domesticated the horse. We can observe from other societies that the timespan between horse domestication and riding tends to be extremely small. We also know that horseback riding would make everything easier, from hunting to herding, to traveling, to fighting. The idea that ancient people would use the horse for leisure (and with proficiency) but never apply that to important things like staying alive just seems ludicrous to me.

Next question, what do we have to work with? Well, we have historical examples, military wisdom, archaeological ambiguity, and common sense to work with.
The archaeological ambiguity means we can’t say for certain, but everything else leans very strongly in favor of the arguments already given.

And quoting the opinions of one author who is involved in what has been a contentious debate amongst scholars doesn't equal the weight of scholarly opinion.

[R.Rocca]

Rich, And where does it lead us women who have been breeding with R1b men? Just damned lucky I guess....and for good or bad the line carries on with two more grandsons.....they started riding bikes as early as they could walk and then added kayaks---no horseback riding but I'll have to get them going on that or perhpas fencing...:fencing:

I'll remind my wife how lucky she is and hope she doesn't throw something at me ;)

[razyn]

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 didn't 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.


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.

Just refreshing these comments in the light of the October Smithsonian magazine that arrived within the past week, but I just looked at last night. There's an interesting (though none too deep) article about several recent discoveries related to the Great Pyramid, including a highly developed seaport on the Red Sea that apparently had a fairly short life around 2600 BC, carrying copper (for stonecutters' chisels, e.g.), turquoise and other materials needed for Khufu's building projects, from relatively nearby mines in the Sinai -- across that sea from where they were needed. So they hauled chandlery materials by donkey train across what looks like about 150 miles of desert from the Nile at Memphis to this site, Wadi al-Jarf. There they assembled the cedar plank ships, which had linen sails. The sailing season was apparently just a few months long, and for the rest of the year the large boats were stored in thirty limestone drydocks -- that have been under excavation within the past three years. These artificial caves have also preserved the oldest papyri yet found, including a daybook kept by one Merer, supervisor of a crew of 200 logistical support workers on the pyramid project during the final year of Khufu's rule.

Anyway, a program about all this, advertised as "Secrets: Great Pyramid," will air on the Smithsonian Channel Oct. 17th. I don't have any scholarly literature to cite. The lead archaeologist for Wadi al-Jarf is Pierre Tallet; maybe he has something in print or in the works. I expect the boats and related finds may get fairly short shrift in the TV program; but they are significant additions to a pretty thin record, from that early. Pre-bronze age Sinai was in contact with the Levant, and with the Nile. Ancient Egyptians were in contact with ancient Hittites. People who drank wine were in contact with the Caucasus -- some of us still are. I'm just sayin'...

Would-be long distance mariners who had trees -- or could import lumber, e.g. from Lebanon -- built wooden boats, and carried big loads with them, really long ago. And given a choice, I seriously doubt that they had a preference for skin (as in coracles), or bundled reeds, or other materials with a tendency to sink when wet.

[Kwheaton]

I'll remind my wife how lucky she is and hope she doesn't throw something at me
Hmmmm perhaps we (woman) do have a wee bit of the warrior in us too. Thanks for reminding me, next time I feel like hurling something my husband's way---I will explain its in my genes--

TRUE story (apologies in advance for being slightly off topic)
When I was in the delivery room having my son. The doctor asked, "Do you know how to tell a boy chromosome from a girl chromosome?" None of us had an answer (not that I was speaking at that point). Answer: "Pull down the jeans." I guess I was destined to get into this line of inquiry after that....;)

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Haplogroups R1a and R1b expanded due to dumb luck, it's pretty obvious that they had no advantage whatsoever technologically, militarily or physically. I see that pretty clearly now thanks to the posts on this forum from the past week. Geez, how could I have been so blind? I'm going to start a poll and ask R1a/b men vs. non-R1a/b men if they've ever won the lottery. No doubt that the R1a/b men will be many times more likely to have won the lottery, given how lucky they are.

I'm off to the 7-11 to buy some lottery tickets... by the way, the store owner, whom I have know for years, is R1a. I'm sure his family is full of lucky people.

Ha ha
You're making straw man arguements; again, and seem incapable of grasping simple facts.

No one is claiming that R1b men weren't 'special'; indeed the predominance of R1b in central -Western Europe speaks for itself. I'm arguing that at their spread wasn't primarily due to the horse- because the evidence is weak to absent for the early most stages). Rather, other factors which facilitated and imparted relative advantages. These included :

- their pastoral & dispersed lifestyle suiting the ecological conditions of post-Neolithic Europe
- adaptable social strategy
- the vast spaces of land available in Central Europe (!)
- copper technology learned from the Carpathian-Balkan centres
- Natural selection, reproductivity and other inherent genetic factors linked to the Y chromosome, including low Ne
- yes, some element of sheer ruggedness :)

That's my point .
And keep in mind that R1b might have only become dominant in WE considerably after the copper age; through other more circumscribed and locally distinct phenomena .

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Hmmmm perhaps we (woman) do have a wee bit of the warrior in us too. Thanks for reminding me, next time I feel like hurling something my husband's way---I will explain its in my genes--

TRUE story (apologies in advance for being slightly off topic)
When I was in the delivery room having my son. The doctor asked, "Do you know how to tell a boy chromosome from a girl chromosome?" None of us had an answer (not that I was speaking at that point). Answer: "Pull down the jeans." I guess I was destined to get into this line of inquiry after that....;)

I'm sure you do !
I think any groups which survive the harsh and often precarious nature of European prehistory must have something

[rms2]

. . .

I'm arguing that at their spread wasn't primarily due to the horse . . .

Well, pretty obviously some of us strongly disagree with you. I'm not sure the horse was the primary cause of the success of the early Indo-Europeans (and I would not leave R1a out of that), but it certainly was an important factor, and I think the evidence strongly indicates the early Indo-Europeans were riding horses, not merely using them for food and to haul wagons.

Aside from Anthony's bit wear evidence, there is the prominent role played by horses in Indo-European cult and symbolism. It also just defies logic that a people could be keeping horses for over a thousand years without learning to ride them, or that it took half a millennium for riding skills to advance from clumsy first attempts to adept.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Well, pretty obviously some of us strongly disagree with you. I'm not sure the horse was the primary cause of the success of the early Indo-Europeans (and I would not leave R1a out of that), but it certainly was an important factor, and I think the evidence strongly indicates the early Indo-Europeans were riding horses, not merely using them for food and to haul wagons.

Aside from Anthony's bit wear evidence, there is the prominent role played by horses in Indo-European cult and symbolism. It also just defies logic that a people could be keeping horses for over a thousand years without learning to ride them, or that it took half a millennium for riding skills to advance from clumsy first attempts to adept.

Fair enough. And as I said, you're entitied to your opinion(s), as is everyone.
.
And actually, the worshiping of the horse is equally attributable to its role in secondary products. In fact, the horse is equally represented as other animals, like cattle, not markedly more.

Indeed, I accept the horse began to play some in managing herds and possibly in local skirmishes.

Again, thanks for the debates ! It's good to get other perspectives .

[Gray Fox]

Ha ha
You're making straw man arguements; again, and seem incapable of grasping simple facts.

No one is claiming that R1b men weren't 'special'; indeed the predominance of R1b in central -Western Europe speaks for itself. I'm arguing that at their spread wasn't primarily due to the horse- because the evidence is weak to absent for the early most stages). Rather, other factors which facilitated and imparted relative advantages. These included :

- their pastoral & dispersed lifestyle suiting the ecological conditions of post-Neolithic Europe
- adaptable social strategy
- the vast spaces of land available in Central Europe (!)
- copper technology learned from the Carpathian-Balkan centres
- Natural selection, reproductivity and other inherent genetic factors linked to the Y chromosome, including low Ne
- yes, some element of sheer ruggedness :)

That's my point .
And keep in mind that R1b might have only become dominant in WE considerably after the copper age; through other more circumscribed and locally distinct phenomena .

{Moderator}

I've asked nicely. I've given multiple warnings (one being an official warning) and have had to re-edit several of your posts.. If you're unable to make your point without insulting someones intelligence, then you will receive yet another infraction point. If this keeps up you're going to get the thread shut down and run the risk of receiving a harsher punishment. I don't want to see that happen. For the last time.. PERSONAL ATTACKS WILL NOT BE TOLERATED

[kinman]

Yes, I agree that we shouldn't definitely say that horse domestication was THE primary cause of their success. But it certainly was a MAJOR cause. And if horse domestication happened in western Kazakhstan (near the Ural River) or at least nearby (near the Volga River), it certainly would have helped them reach the Black Sea area in time to take advantage of the great drought (starting in 3200 B.C.). And horse domestication would have also spread east to the Botai Culture (in central Kazakhstan) and beyond (along with early Indo-European languages?). Therefore, it was more likely a series of somewhat fortuitous events than any one event in particular. We can agree on some of it and disagree on some of it. It's usually never as simple as one particular factor anyway. Sometimes it can be just semantics getting in the way, debates than produce more heat than light.
For example, should "horse domestication" strictly mean horse breeding, or was there an initial period of taming horses before they were actually bred by humans? Female horses (especially when pregnant) would be a lot easier to capture and tame than a stallion. So milking captured female horses may have started it all (as well as a source of meat in a harsh winter). And if a captured female horse had a male offspring, it would be easier to eventually breed with captured females than having to capture a wild stallion. Using them for hauling or riding came somewhat later. It's usually a series of such events, sometimes over a long period of time, that slowly lead to more successes. If so, bare-back riding holding onto their manes, and perhaps later a rope around the neck, would have preceded bridles (with or without bits that left a trace for us to find). That is why I believe that horse domestication probably happened 6500 years ago if not earlier. It was just a series of steps which left little or no physical trace (although genetics could provide clues as to when and where actual breeding began).
------------Ken
P.S. And we still have a great deal to learn from the genetics of the Bashkir people (and their relatives) as well as their horses. And that's another reason I tend to favor western Kazakhstan (or nearby areas) as the probable area where horses were first domesticated.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Well, pretty obviously some of us strongly disagree with you. I'm not sure the horse was the primary cause of the success of the early Indo-Europeans (and I would not leave R1a out of that), but it certainly was an important factor, and I think the evidence strongly indicates the early Indo-Europeans were riding horses, not merely using them for food and to haul wagons.

Aside from Anthony's bit wear evidence, there is the prominent role played by horses in Indo-European cult and symbolism. It also just defies logic that a people could be keeping horses for over a thousand years without learning to ride them, or that it took half a millennium for riding skills to advance from clumsy first attempts to adept.

[Administrator]

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[alan]

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I suspected so. Who was it? - I know the admin cannot comment but someone else can hint :0)

[Administrator]

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[alan]

I would argue that they likely were riding horses, and that if they were, they were also likely adept. The leap from possessing a horse to riding it is a small one. Clearly, I do see this as giving a significant military advantage, but that doesn't need to have been the primary reason for their success. The horse would allow them to manage larger herds, which would sustain a larger population. Horses would give them greater mobility. This, in turn, would open up new trade routes and provide them with greater access to new lands along with a significant degree of economic pull. It could be any or all of these.

I believe this is the most likely scenario, but I'm open to opposing views.

Certainly the big change in the beaker period in many areas is not copper technology as it was already widespread. The big change is the sudden appearance of a huge wide network which to some extent is discontinuous rather than wave-like looking. I cannot help thinking that horse riding was part of it. Sure the block wheeled cattle driven cart existed from c. 3500BC but outside the smooth very gently rolling dry steppe grasslands they would have been of limited use and could only be used on trackways. There is also no sign of the pastoralists living in wagons thing spreading far west anyway. Its also a very slow method of travel - not much better than marching. Its only real advantage in non-steppe-like parts of Europe was probably fairly localised transportation of heavy goods. Trade in things like copper didnt need heavy slow wagons. Once processed a packhorse or two would be plenty to transport dozens/hundreds of precious ingots or finished objects which were generally very or fairly light and small in the beaker era - little copper daggers, palmela points, small axe heads, sheet gold etc.

To sustain a wider clientship pyramid, clearly horses are vastly superior to carts or walking for rapid long distance one or two day movements to protect or retaliate on behalf of a client. Without horses such networks would be far smaller IMO. Evidence will always be scarce for near bareback riding but it seems to me that it would make great sense if the beaker period, particularly its sudden huge expansion c. 2500BC is linked to the adoption of horse transport in Europe beyond the easternmost areas. I would also wonder if mining made use of pack ponies as indeed was the practice in more modern times.

[alan]

I'll remind my wife how lucky she is and hope she doesn't throw something at me ;)

To be fair, they didnt have awesome military advantages and they had numerical disadvantage. Their advantage was probably down to status which derived from controlling copper and a different social structure. Most areas already had copper though so it wasnt the copper per se but probably something about their mobility and networking skills. There could be a link with horses. Certainly their key difference was that they were very mobile and could penetrate into any society. Distance didnt seem to matter to them.

I still firmly believe that the farmers invited in a Trojan horse when many of them let little beaker groups and pockets settle among them and put them on a pedestal. One much of Europe was seeded with little pockets of beaker folk, each one probably grew in situ due to their status and specialist role and eventually by the Bronze Age started morphing into an elite.

Initially even their wares were mostly about status and most practical stuff continued to be made of flint and stone for centuries. However, by 1800BC their power must have become awesome because around that sort of date flint craft was dying out for use in tools and weapons and whoever controlled the metals had everyone over a barrel.

Interestingly, around this time, that great leveler of a weapon - the bow and arrow, was also dying out in many areas of Europe around the same time flint skills were dying. It is noticeable that as skilled flint craft died out, the metal producers in many areas didnt produce arrowheads in metal as a replacement or certainly they were very rare and exclusive. That would have been a smart move for a metal controlling elite because archery was probably the main threat to their hegemony. it kind of reminds me of the Medieval French dislike of archery (unlike the English) because the nobles saw it as a threat to them from their own peasants.

The irony is archery was probably crucial for self defense in their pioneer phase but once established and once flint alternatives were dying out, archery became their biggest threat so they actively phased it out.

[alan]

if there was a single material advantage that the beaker people may have had, IMO it would have been the horse. Mainly because its use had the capability of vastly expanding networking and making possibly a 4 or 5 times wider clientship network than would have previously been possible. You would only need a beaker enclave every 100 miles to make some sort of clientship network function. I cannot help feel that horse stations where fresh horses could be obtained and the old steed left behind to rest (and be picked up on the return journey) would make a huge amount of sense if a wide networking operation. That could greatly extend an individuals capability in terms of numbers of days of travelling flat out on horseback if needed. Beaker tends to cluster in nodal areas with gaps in between. So such a system would seem to be sensible to me. If later mythology and literature are any indicator, the Celts were obsessed with horses, divine horse type figures etc.

[rms2]

Here, once again, is a little snippet of what Gimbutas had to say about Beaker and horses (from her book, The Kurgan Culture and the Indo-Europeanization of Europe).



In western Hungary and northwestern Yugoslavia, the Vucedol complex was followed by the Samogyvar-Vinkovci complex, the predecessor of the Bell Beaker people. Furthermore, the exodus of the horse-riding Bell Beaker people in the middle of the 3rd millennium, or soon thereafter, from the territories of the Vucedol complex, may not be unconnected with the constant threat from the east. They carried to the west Kurgan traditions in armament, social structure, and religion. The fact of paramount importance of Bell Beaker mobility is the presence of the horse. Seven Bell Beaker sites at Budapest in Hungary have shown that the horse was the foremost species of the domestic fauna (pp. 258-259).

I know this is not much in the way of "evidence", but some years ago I used to frequent one of those comic book/gamer shops, where a bunch of us gathered at some large tables in the back to play a history-based wargame called De Bellis Antiquitatis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bellis_Antiquitatis). My most successful little army was a set of Romans with a unit of barbarian light cavalry, which I used to great advantage. Guys who were running ancient armies composed entirely of infantry were just outclassed and ultimately humiliated. I could harass and wear them away all day long with my light horse, finally bringing up my Roman infantry to administer the deathblow. The rules of the game simulate the superior speed and mobility of horse-borne warriors. It was a beautiful thing to behold.

[George]

"the exodus of the horse-riding Bell Beaker people in the middle of the 3rd millennium, or soon thereafter, from the territories of the Vucedol complex, may not be unconnected with the constant threat from the east." (Gimbutas cited by rms2)

The easterners had better horses? :beerchug:

[rms2]

"the exodus of the horse-riding Bell Beaker people in the middle of the 3rd millennium, or soon thereafter, from the territories of the Vucedol complex, may not be unconnected with the constant threat from the east." (Gimbutas cited by rms2)

The easterners had better horses? :beerchug:

Apparently they were slower than the ones the Beaker people were riding, because the Beaker people got away. ;)

That threat from the east was oft-repeated: Cimmerians, Scythians, Huns, Slavs, Magyars, etc. (I'm sure I left some off the list, like the Avars, but posting an exhaustive list was not my purpose.)

[George]

Apparently they were slower than the ones the Beaker people were riding, because the Beaker people got away. ;)

That threat from the east was oft-repeated: Cimmerians, Scythians, Huns, Slavs, Magyars, etc. (I'm sure I left some off the list, like the Avars, but posting an exhaustive list was not my purpose.)

The Beakers on this Gimbutas quote (not really necessary for your basic point) sound like "successful Avars". P.S. The Slavs of the big invasions were not noted for their horse power. Maybe the Byzantine horses had degenerated (:=)) They didn't do too well against the Arab camels either. Anyway, ride on and away. All the best.

[Romilius]

To be fair, they didnt have awesome military advantages and they had numerical disadvantage. Their advantage was probably down to status which derived from controlling copper and a different social structure. Most areas already had copper though so it wasnt the copper per se but probably something about their mobility and networking skills. There could be a link with horses. Certainly their key difference was that they were very mobile and could penetrate into any society. Distance didnt seem to matter to them.

I still firmly believe that the farmers invited in a Trojan horse when many of them let little beaker groups and pockets settle among them and put them on a pedestal. One much of Europe was seeded with little pockets of beaker folk, each one probably grew in situ due to their status and specialist role and eventually by the Bronze Age started morphing into an elite.

Initially even their wares were mostly about status and most practical stuff continued to be made of flint and stone for centuries. However, by 1800BC their power must have become awesome because around that sort of date flint craft was dying out for use in tools and weapons and whoever controlled the metals had everyone over a barrel.

Interestingly, around this time, that great leveler of a weapon - the bow and arrow, was also dying out in many areas of Europe around the same time flint skills were dying. It is noticeable that as skilled flint craft died out, the metal producers in many areas didnt produce arrowheads in metal as a replacement or certainly they were very rare and exclusive. That would have been a smart move for a metal controlling elite because archery was probably the main threat to their hegemony. it kind of reminds me of the Medieval French dislike of archery (unlike the English) because the nobles saw it as a threat to them from their own peasants.

The irony is archery was probably crucial for self defense in their pioneer phase but once established and once flint alternatives were dying out, archery became their biggest threat so they actively phased it out.

I agree with you.

I would suggest to seek a discussion in Bell Beaker Blogger that now I can't find: it deals with the possibility of Beaker folk to have composite bows. I think that is very important, because it would suggest the selection of a type of bow useful on horseback.

[rms2]

Re Gimbutas' view that Beaker was derived from Vucedol, I understand Reich et al now have that Vucedol Period R1b sample from Szécsényi-Nagy's dissertation and are giving it the full genomic treatment. I hope it turns out to be R1b-L51 at least. That would tend to vindicate Gimbutas anyway and would provide some insight into how R1b-L51 moved west. It might also put to rest or at least dampen some of the arguments against a steppe origin for L51, although I guess we could start hearing about how Vucedol migrated from Portugal to the Carpathian Basin.

[Romilius]

Re Gimbutas' view that Beaker was derived from Vucedol, I understand Reich et al now have that Vucedol Period R1b sample from Szécsényi-Nagy's dissertation and are giving it the full genomic treatment. I hope it turns out to be R1b-L51 at least. That would tend to vindicate Gimbutas anyway and would provide some insight into how R1b-L51 moved west. It might also put to rest or at least dampen some of the arguments against a steppe origin for L51, although I guess we could start hearing about how Vucedol migrated from Portugal to the Carpathian Basin.

I hope the results will come soon. These Y-DNA researches are like a murder party: I can't wait for murder's identity.

[rms2]

Got my copy of Gimbutas' The Civilization of the Goddess just a few minutes ago (really). Our local postal carrier lady (who is super nice, btw) brought it to the door. Looks like Chapter 10 will be the really interesting part, since it is entitled, The End of Old Europe: The Intrusion of Steppe Pastoralists from South Russia and the Transformation of Europe. Looks good, with nice photos, maps, and illustrations, and more info on Beaker than I am used to seeing in a single book. Of course, I have not had time to really begin reading it yet.

It's a used book but in really good shape. Came from the public library in Brookline, Massachusetts. Still has the nice library dust cover on it and the little pocket in the back that held the card with the due date on it (no card though). It is marked as follows:

Public Library of Brookline
Coolidge Corner Branch
31 Pleasant Street
Brookline, Mass. 02146
IMPORTANT
Leave cards in pocket. B)

EDIT: Out of curiosity, I took a look at where the book came from: Coolidge Corner Branch, Brookline Public Library (http://tinyurl.com/o5cxuke)

[rms2]

I can see already in the little reading of The Civilization of the Goddess that I have done that Gimbutas' views on some things have been misrepresented in some posts here at Anthrogenica by some who either thought she said some things she actually didn't say or were misremembering what she wrote. For example, I remember reading a post in which it was claimed that Gimbutas thought Baden was a kurgan culture. That is not what she wrote at all; not even close, really.

Instead, Gimbutas wrote that the Baden complex was "composed of indigenous and alien elements . . ." (p. 372), and that "[t]he physical type was predominantly Mediterranean, as to be expected from the Vinča substratum" (p. 375). Gimbutas concluded that "The Baden complex represents the process of amalgamation of two culture systems with contrasting economies, ideologies, racial types, and modes of living" (p.376).

So, her view was not that "Baden was a kurgan culture" but that Baden was primarily a Neolithic farmer culture of Old Europe with steppe elements and influences superimposed on top in certain places.

Anyway, when I am done reading the book, maybe I'll start a thread to discuss it. One thing I can say right away is that Gimbutas was an engaging, talented writer. I am enjoying her book.

[razyn]

I don't have any scholarly literature to cite. The lead archaeologist for Wadi al-Jarf is Pierre Tallet; maybe he has something in print or in the works. I expect the boats and related finds may get fairly short shrift in the TV program; but they are significant additions to a pretty thin record, from that early.

It was not hard to find this 2014 paper by Pierre Tallet, available for free download if one bothers to join Academia dot edu. It has good information; different photos from those in the Smithsonian magazine; and a bibliography including other works about the site by its excavators, with additional references from other relevant fields.

http://www.academia.edu/6248978/THE_HARBOR_OF_KHUFU_on_the_Red_Sea_Coast_at_Wadi_a l-Jarf_Egypt_NEA_77_1_

Whether this has any bearing on the transport possibilities for Bell Beaker people, at about the same time, is a matter of opinion. But that sewn plank boats are much more suitable -- for the transport of metals and their ores -- than skins and reeds seems beyond doubt. (The sewn plank Durham Boat, putatively used for heavy transport in the English Channel, is less securely dated, but not dramatically younger.) The Egyptian examples are known to have been crossing about 30 miles of open water (Gulf of Suez) at that location; pottery made on-site (they found the kilns) is to be seen also on the Sinai side, directly opposite. Whether voyages on the greater Red Sea to the southeast were being undertaken from the same early port is speculative. It has in fact been speculated (by the paper's author) that the land of Punt was a possible destination. That would be more like 1,000 miles.

[Chad Rohlfsen]

I agree with you.

I would suggest to seek a discussion in Bell Beaker Blogger that now I can't find: it deals with the possibility of Beaker folk to have composite bows. I think that is very important, because it would suggest the selection of a type of bow useful on horseback.

The composite bow of the nomads didn't exist at that time. Beaker bows are flat bows, usually more of a holmegaard style.

[Romilius]

The composite bow of the nomads didn't exist at that time. Beaker bows are flat bows, usually more of a holmegaard style.

That's what I used to think... but that discussion was interesting.

[rncambron]

Well, pretty obviously some of us strongly disagree with you. I'm not sure the horse was the primary cause of the success of the early Indo-Europeans (and I would not leave R1a out of that), but it certainly was an important factor, and I think the evidence strongly indicates the early Indo-Europeans were riding horses, not merely using them for food and to haul wagons.

Aside from Anthony's bit wear evidence, there is the prominent role played by horses in Indo-European cult and symbolism. It also just defies logic that a people could be keeping horses for over a thousand years without learning to ride them, or that it took half a millennium for riding skills to advance from clumsy first attempts to adept.

Suggest you listen to part 3 of the following:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06d2btq

Pity those that matter here banned the only guy who was talking sense about the use of horses and the Steppe/Europe relationship

[Heber]

Suggest you listen to part 3 of the following:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06d2btq

Pity those that matter here banned the only guy who was talking sense about the use of horses and the Steppe/Europe relationship

I enjoyed part two from 21:00 and 38:00 approx.
also
By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia 1st Edition
by Sir Barry Cunliffe (Author)

We live in a globalized world, but mobility is nothing new. Barry Cunliffe tells the story of how humans first started building the globalized world we know today. Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, it covers over 10,000 years, from the origins of farming around 9000 BC to the expansion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century AD.

An unashamedly "big history" based on the latest archaeological evidence, By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean charts nothing less than the growth of European, Near Eastern, and Chinese civilizations. It is the story of the "connective tissue" through which people, trade, and ideas flowed between these civilizations over the course of ten millennia - the Indian Ocean, the Silk Roads, and the great steppe corridor. Along the way, it is also the chronicle of the rise and fall of empires, the development of maritime trade, and the shattering impact of predatory nomads on their urban neighbors.

Above all, as this immense historical panorama unfolds, we begin to see in clearer focus those basic underlying factors - the acquisitive nature of humanity, the differing environments in which people live, and the dislocating effect of even slight climatic variation - that have driven change throughout the ages and help us better understand our world today.

http://www.amazon.com/Steppe-Desert-Ocean-Birth-Eurasia-ebook/dp/B0105JLCSO/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Yes, I agree that we shouldn't definitely say that horse domestication was THE primary cause of their success. But it certainly was a MAJOR cause. And if horse domestication happened in western Kazakhstan (near the Ural River) or at least nearby (near the Volga River), it certainly would have helped them reach the Black Sea area in time to take advantage of the great drought (starting in 3200 B.C.). And horse domestication would have also spread east to the Botai Culture (in central Kazakhstan) and beyond (along with early Indo-European languages?). Therefore, it was more likely a series of somewhat fortuitous events than any one event in particular. We can agree on some of it and disagree on some of it. It's usually never as simple as one particular factor anyway. Sometimes it can be just semantics getting in the way, debates than produce more heat than light.
For example, should "horse domestication" strictly mean horse breeding, or was there an initial period of taming horses before they were actually bred by humans? Female horses (especially when pregnant) would be a lot easier to capture and tame than a stallion. So milking captured female horses may have started it all (as well as a source of meat in a harsh winter). And if a captured female horse had a male offspring, it would be easier to eventually breed with captured females than having to capture a wild stallion. Using them for hauling or riding came somewhat later. It's usually a series of such events, sometimes over a long period of time, that slowly lead to more successes. If so, bare-back riding holding onto their manes, and perhaps later a rope around the neck, would have preceded bridles (with or without bits that left a trace for us to find). That is why I believe that horse domestication probably happened 6500 years ago if not earlier. It was just a series of steps which left little or no physical trace (although genetics could provide clues as to when and where actual breeding began).
------------Ken
P.S. And we still have a great deal to learn from the genetics of the Bashkir people (and their relatives) as well as their horses. And that's another reason I tend to favor western Kazakhstan (or nearby areas) as the probable area where horses were first domesticated.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Not to flog a dead horse :), but I remembered an article I read a little while ago. It is an independent review of evidence from Botai by another group of scholars. They conclude that there is evidence for horse domestication, albeit mixed with wild ones still. And there is evidence for “use of bridles to control working animals” in 5 out of 15 studied samples. So again, like other scholars, they view the horse as a draught animal, and food, and not a war machine. “Finally, evidence for extensive horse carcass product processing in pottery vessels provides direct evidence for their explotation as a dietary staple”. (The Earliest Horse Harnessing and Milking. Outram, et al).

But that’s Botai- Kazakhstan (?Z2103 territory)

It should not be lumped with more westerly groups (ie yamnaya proper), which had distinct cultural and economic conditions. This has been clarified in recent years through palaeo-archaeology, zoo-archaeology, etc. In yamnaya sites, even north of the Caspian, and certainly north of the Black Sea, the cultural –economic conditions were different to Botai. "I argue that Eurasian steppe pastoralism developed along distinct local trajectories in the western, central, and (south)eastern steppe, sparking the development of regional networks of interaction in the late fourth and third millennia BC" - Michael Frachetti (Multiregional Emergence of Mobile Pastoralism and Nonuniform Institutional Complexity across Eurasia).

In Yamnaya propper, all we have between 4500 - 3000 BC are a few horse bones scattered here and there, and previously quoted frequencies of 80% horse bone rates (eg at Dereivka) are not born out by re-analysis of the evidence at hand. The main economy changed with time, from fisher-foraging, to shepherding, to intensive cattle-keeping, to extensive cattle-keeping (based on: The main Directions for Development of Early Pastoral Societies of North Pontic Zone. Y Rassamakin; The East European Plain on the Even of Agriculture- Dolukhanov et al]:

1) 6000 – 4500 BC:‘ considered “Neolithic” in Russian scholarship on the basis of pottery, was essentially still largely exploiting aquatic resources (eg Dnieper-Donets culture), whilst toward the Caspian greater emphasis on hunting bigger ungulates, mostly Asian wild ass, antelope, and a few horses. Ie. these people were still Mesolithic

2) Eneolithic :

- early 4500 – 3800 BC: Skelenska, Dereivka and Stagovska cultures, linked to balkano-danubian prestige exchange. Mostly settled sheep-herding economy (derived from Balkans), but evidence of hunted wild horse bones eg at Khvalynsk. Climactically, relative optimum

- middle: 3800-3000 BC: Kvitanska & Nehnemikhailovkka cultures. Settlements still limited to around the Dnieper river, as it had been earlier. These people were essentially sedentary. Clear signals of Majkop and Cucuteni influences, if not migrations onto steppe groups.

-later: 3300 - 3000 BC; (Repin, Zhivotil-Volchan cultures). Increasing aridization.

3) C. 3000 – 2500 BC This is the classic Yamnaya period (proto-Bronze Age): shift to extensive, ie mobile, cattle herding during peak aridity. Pauperization of material culture, relative uniformity, Yamnaya did not spread from one, but occurred 'due to systemic transformation from previous period" linked to aridization, evolution of mobile cattle-pastoral economy. Paradoxically, despite the aridity, the number of sites in the steppe peak. Groups were mobile, albeit a tethered mobility anchored to big rivers (Dnieper, Dniester, Don) (but not nomadic). Maximal extent of steppe-like cultures, extending to Tizsa, lower Danube, and even a small cluster on the Danube in eastern Austria. Even at this juncture, 90% of animal bones from yamnaya sites are sheet, goat and cattle. A greater degree of horses arrive from latter 3rd millenium, probably from the Kazakh steppe, diffusing widely and in all directions.

So how is this relevant to BB groups ? If indeed the BB - L51 came from somewhere at the western -most extent of Yamnaya (as is indeed likely), then they were extensive, mobile cattle herders.
I'm not sure how things evolved a little later, in the BB culture and central -western Europe, but it dovetails with what is know from Britain- a 'Neolithic collapse' and marked shift to pastoralism & low population densities from 3000 - 1500 BC (Did Neolithic farming fail? The case for a Bronze Age agricultural revolution in the British Isles. Dorian Fuller, Chris Stevens)
Understanding these developments takes us closer to the real story of L51.

[rms2]

Suggest you listen to part 3 of the following:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06d2btq

Pity those that matter here banned the only guy who was talking sense about the use of horses and the Steppe/Europe relationship

Which part of his posts made the most sense to you, the ad hominems or the idea that the Indo-Europeans had domesticated horses for over a thousand years before beginning to ride them?

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Which part of his posts made the most sense to you, the ad hominems or the idea that the Indo-Europeans had domesticated horses for over a thousand years before beginning to ride them?

Hhmm. Its not my idea, but the conclusions of scholars who are tangibly familiar with the evidence first hand.

Additionally, I never stated that some horses weren't beginning to be ridden, quite the contrary. But the received opinion is that this was not yet a revolutionary military technique, and the role of the horse in the M4 and M3 was primarily for food and secondarily for labour, and whatever riding would have been tentative. And the focus of all this, moreover, was in the Kazakh steppe and thus probably far away from anything to do with L51.

As I said all I hope to do was bring state-of -the art material & scholarship on the matter. Instead of gratitude I have received resentment, perhaps because the notion of swashbuckling warriors on horses is more appealing than cattle farmers. It really doesn't affect me one way or another. After all, these events are about an accurate reconstruction of European prehistory, not drummed up visions of personal genealogy based on half-facts.

[rms2]

Suggest you listen to part 3 of the following:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06d2btq

. . .

In that program, Cunliffe says people on the steppe began riding about 4,000 BC. So, if he is right about the date, then the advantages of horseback riding began to accrue to steppe pastoralists at that time. That supports what David Mc, kinman, I and others have posted.

I think people on the steppe began riding horses earlier than that, but I doubt Cunliffe meant 4000 BC as anything more than an approximation anyway.

[rms2]

. . .

Instead of gratitude I have received resentment, perhaps because the notion of swashbuckling warriors on horses is more appealing than cattle farmers . . .

There you go once again, psycho-analyzing those who disagree with you and imputing to them motives rooted in fantasy, while maintaining that your own opinions are the product of nothing but disinterested scholarship and the highest standards of objectivity.

The part about gratitude was just too funny.

[George]

"Understanding these developments takes us closer to the real story of L51. "

One of the interesting side effects of these hugely changing economic (hence social) situations from ca. 3300 BCE is the indubitable rise of what we might call "individual choice". Farmers choosing to become steppe dwellers for instance (that's what Zhivotilovka-Vovchansk was all about, and earlier Serezliivka also). And very small groups seeking their fortunes independently here and there. That's what possibly makes the saga of L 51 into BB both arguable and difficult to detect.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

There you go once again, psycho-analyzing those who disagree with you and imputing to them motives rooted in fantasy, while maintaining that your own opinions are the product of nothing but disinterested scholarship and the highest standards of objectivity.

The part about gratitude was just too funny.

My arguments (not "opinions") rest on scores of up-to-date & primary references from scholars in the field, which have been quoted in detail and context; rather than random photos, personal view points and the reference to one "holy bible".

I've several times stated I hear your opinion and youre well entitled to it. There is no need to be afronted by the probably different reality.

[rncambron]

Which part of his posts made the most sense to you, the ad hominems or the idea that the Indo-Europeans had domesticated horses for over a thousand years before beginning to ride them?
I'll assume your question is rhetorical otherwise you are falling in to the behavioural mode you criticise in others.

In the Broadcast Cunliffe details the stages of horse exploitation:
Herding
Domesticating
Riding(4000BC)
Vehicular transport
He then mentions climatic change (I assume that is the 3000BC event?)
Mobile Cohorts
He is therefore indeed suggesting a long gap between riding and use in war

[rms2]

"Understanding these developments takes us closer to the real story of L51. "

One of the interesting side effects of these hugely changing economic (hence social) situations from ca. 3300 BCE is the indubitable rise of what we might call "individual choice". Farmers choosing to become steppe dwellers for instance (that's what Zhivotilovka-Vovchansk was all about, and earlier Serezliivka also). And very small groups seeking their fortunes independently here and there. That's what possibly makes the saga of L 51 into BB both arguable and difficult to detect.

Well, not too difficult to detect: L51 has already been found in a number of ancient Beaker remains.

IMHO, R1b-L51 will turn up in Yamnaya remains on its route west, if any are ever tested. I also suspect that Vucedol period R1b circa 2800 BC may turn out to be L51+.

Here's a snippet from Gimbutas' The Civilization of the Goddess, p. 390:



In my view, the Bell Beaker cultural elements derive from Vucedol and Kurgan (Late Yamna) traditions. The specific correspondence between the Yamna, Late Vucedol, and Bell Beaker complex is visible in burial rites which include grave pits under round barrows, the coexistence of cremation and inhumation rites, and the construction of mortuary houses. In armaments we see tanged or riveted daggers made of arsenic copper, spear points of arsenic copper and flint, concave-based or tanged triangular arrowheads of flint and arrow straighteners. In ornaments there are necklaces of canine teeth, copper tubes, or bird bones; boar tusks; and crescent-shaped pendants resembling breast plates. In solar symbolism we find sun or star motifs excised and white encrusted on the inside of braziers, or incised on bone or amber button-shaped beads.

There's a lot more, but that's enough for now.

[Gray Fox]

{Moderator}


To all members.. This is an official warning. Due to the constant bickering and off-topic diversions, this thread is being highly monitored. If this continues and devolves into a personal attack exchange, the thread will be temporarily closed and disciplinary actions will follow.

[rms2]

. . .
In the Broadcast Cunliffe details the stages of horse exploitation:
Herding
Domesticating
Riding(4000BC)
Vehicular transport
He then mentions climatic change (I assume that is the 3000BC event?)
Mobile Cohorts
He is therefore indeed suggesting a long gap between riding and use in war

I did not hear him suggest anything of the kind. He said steppe people began riding about 4000 BC.

Once one learns how to ride, he tends to ride horses from one place to another. Some of those destinations could have been, and very well probably were, scenes of conflict. Getting there and getting back on horseback is faster than getting there and back on foot, and one can travel farther in a lot less time on horseback than on foot, as well. None of us claimed that the Indo-Europeans leapt on horses and - voila! - advanced cavalry tactics were immediately born. We said the early Indo-Europeans probably merely used horses as transport and were a kind of mounted infantry. In other words, they rode horses to the scene of a raid or other conflict, dismounted, raided or otherwise fought on foot, and then remounted to ride away. It was that simple, and it was a tremendous tactical advantage.

[George]

"Well, not too difficult to detect: L51 has already been found in a number of ancient Beaker remains." (rms2)

What's difficult to detect is the road from A to B, not the known presence in B.

[rms2]

"Well, not too difficult to detect: L51 has already been found in a number of ancient Beaker remains." (rms2)

What's difficult to detect is the road from A to B, not the known presence in B.

IMHO only because they haven't really tried yet. None of the remains on Yamnaya's western route has been tested yet. Reich et al are in the process of testing that Vucedol period R1b. He could be L51+. Hopefully, we'll find out soon.

[Heber]

THE GREAT TREE OF MANKIND

On a huge layout, we have shown how 573 Y chromosome sub-types
descend from Adam and relate to each other, and work is ongoing with new
findings to double that number in the autumn of 2015.....

But then the Great Tree abruptly changes. About 4,500 years ago, many new branches suddenly appear over a very short period. This is noticeable across the whole Tree but particularly clear under the very British and European Y chromosome haplogroup, R1b S145, where a staggering 25 new branches are found. What this means is something simple yet hugely significant – many more children are being born and surviving to adulthood. The men born at this time created new sub-types in the Y chromosome Tree which then created more in a huge lateral expansion. It may be the first moment in history when grandfathers were not a rarity.

This happened because of the greatest revolution in our history, the coming of farming and the increasing sophistication of its techniques. It had come to Britain before c2,500BC but new peoples clearly changed its practice in some way around that time. It may be that they better understood how to grow grain.

However, there is no corresponding expansion of mitochondrial DNA, what only women pass on to all their children. It may be that what the Great Tree shows are the traces of an invasion, of small groups of men in small boats arriving on the shores of Britain and Ireland over a relatively short period, some time around 2,500BC. These men became very successful in prehistoric society.

Often referred to as The Beaker People because of a fine pottery found in burials of high status individuals, they were also metal workers and closely linked withthe paraphenalia of archery. Perhaps the most famous burial yet found is that of The Amesbury Archer, discovered near Stonehenge. Buried with him were not only a wristguard and arrowheads but also gold and copper objects, beakers and a cushion stone, a primitive last on which metal could be worked. The Archer’s ancestral DNA is not known but other tests showed that he came from Central Europe

The success of the Beaker People might be attributed to their use of archery, and perhaps some skill at horse riding, as well as an ability to make sharp weapons out of metal, as opposed to flint. What seems more certain is that they were an elite whose prestige and power allowed them access to many different native women so that they could spread their Y chromosome widely – as The Great Tree shows. Scientists coyly call this social selection and its effects can be seen throughout history, and especially in Wales and Scotland.

https://www.britainsdna.com/files/press-release/Press%20Release:%20The%20Great%20Tree%20of%20Manki nd%20[BritainsDNA%2007-08-2015].pdf

[rms2]

Here is a little bit more from Gimbutas' book, The Civilization of the Goddess (p. 391).



It is very likely that the Bell Beaker complex is an amalgam of Vucedol and Yamna traditions formed after the incursion of the Yamna people into the milieu of the Vucedol culture, i.e., in the course of the 300 to 400 years after 3000-2900 B.C.
. . .

Horse bones in a series of sites provide a clue to the mobility of the Bell Beaker people. Analysis of animal bones from the sites at Budapest (Csepel Hollandiut and Csepel-Haros) have shown that the horse was the foremost species of the domestic fauna, constituting more than 60 percent of the total animal bones. This suggests a large-scale domestication of the horse in the Carpathian basin. Bell Beaker migrations were carried out on horseback from central Europe as far as Spain (where horse bones have also been found in Bell Beaker contexts). The horse also played a significant role in religion, as can be seen from the remains of the horse sacrifice where skulls are found in cremation graves . . .

The striking similarity of burial practices ties the Bell Beaker complex to the Kurgan (Late Yamna) tradition.

[rms2]

(Post by rncambron deleted)

I listened to it, so I heard what he said, and I read your post. Like I said, nothing Cunliffe said indicated that he believes there was "a long gap between riding and use in war", especially since what I and others have been suggesting as the tactical advantage of horseback riding would not require a great deal of sophistication or advanced equipment. All it involves is the use of the horse to ride someplace and then using it to get away.

[rncambron]

You and I beg to differ.Perhaps Barry will confirm what he said and then for once you can say @I'm [email protected]

[rms2]

I can't resist posting more from Gimbutas' The Civilization of the Goddess, since I skipped ahead and read Chapter 10 at the end of the book (now I am going back and reading the chapters about the Neolithic hippies of Old Europe). Anyway, there is an excellent summary of Gimbutas' take on the arrival of the Indo-Europeans in Europe west of Russia and Ukraine on page 401 of the book. I am just going to post some of what it says about the Bell Beaker people here.



4. The warlike and horse-riding Bell Beaker people of the middle and second half of the third millennium B.C., who diffused over western Europe, are likely to have originated from an amalgam of remnants of the Vucedol people with the Yamna colonists (after Wave No. 3) in Yugoslavia and Hungary. Their parent culture is called Vinkovci-Samogyvar. This was the largest and last outmigration, from east-central Europe into western Europe, up to the west Mediterranean and the British Isles, before the onset of a more stable period, and the formation of Bronze Age cultural units.

Honestly, I suspect Gimbutas was right, which would explain the prevalence of both R1b-L23 and Indo-European languages in western Europe. It would also explain the fact that R1b-L51 has been found in ancient Beaker already and that a Vucedol period man was R1b (and perhaps even R1b-L51). Time and more ancient y-dna in the right places and cultures will tell the tale.

[rms2]

You and I beg to differ.Perhaps Barry will confirm what he said and then for once you can say @I'm [email protected]

Well, I am not wrong about what Cunliffe said in that radio piece, because he clearly did not express the opinion that, concerning the horse, there was "a long gap between riding and use in war". He may hold that opinion (I doubt it), but he did not express it in that piece.

Once again, the "use in war" some of us were talking about merely involves riding a horse to the scene of the raid or conflict and then using a horse to ride away from it. The actual raiding or fighting was probably done on foot. That is all. We were not discussing advanced cavalry tactics, doing much if any fighting from horseback, and certainly no "Parthian shots" from horseback with recurved, composite bows. That all came later.

[rms2]

Anyway, this doesn't have much to do with Beaker, but it does have to do with Gimbutas. Here is something interesting she wrote about evidence of early kurgan-type burials as far west as Britain and Ireland in the mid-4th millennium B.C.



1. Around 4300 B.C., horse-riding pastoralists from south Russia (Wave No. 1) created the first shock wave and population shifts in the Danube basin . . . In the west, signs of Kurgan elements (single burials under round mounds) appeared in England and in eastern Ireland before 3500 B.C.

That quote is from p. 401 of Gimbutas' book, The Civilization of the Goddess.

[alan]

Well my tuppence worth is that we have quite a few pre-beaker copper age people (by the meagre sample size standards of ancient DNA) and there is still no clear evidence of either steppe genes or R1a or b (except the Neolithic V88 guy) so taking the evidence at face value I would feel it is pointing to no L51 derivatives taking the southern route until some point in the beaker era. I thought there was a chance with Remedello in particular but nope. When Remedello didnt come up trumps then that was for me the most likely southern culture to have early Kurgan influences biting the dust.

So, I think at face value the evidence is currently supporting the entry of L51 derivatives into wider Europe only in the beaker period and after. I would feel all the triangulation on what we know is pointing to eastern or at least east-central Europe as where L51 was lurking in say 3000BC and no real evidence of it anywhere in the south or west of Europe even as later as 2800BC. It seems to me that L51 derivatives were is a confined area pre-3000BC and the moribund nature of L51 prior to L11 would again seem to indicate a small, confined group undergoing almost no expansion from 5000-3000BC - something that will surely make L51xL11 very hard to find in ancient DNA.

Probably we should follow the impression given in the phylogeny that we should only really see expansion after L11 and that beaker-specific expansion probably is indeed liked to P312. IMO if we can find definitive proof of L11 (be it L11* or U106) in a culture in what are locally pre-beaker times then the origin of P312 would not be far away. Unfortunately the battle axe U106 wasnt quite old enough to be certain that that has been proven and that has allowed special pleading. However, if U106 was found in pre-beaker times in east-central or north-east Europe this would all but prove that L11 expanded from eastern Europe

[rms2]

I think L51 was in the western steppe. We haven't seen it in Yamnaya only because western Yamnaya hasn't been tested yet. By then it may already have been mostly limited to L11, but I suspect the branch of L11 that led to U106 was over on the north side of the Carpathians with Corded Ware (and maybe before that with Globular Amphorae). It was the branch that led to P312 that was with western Yamnaya south and west of the Carpathians.

I really suspect Gimbutas will be proven right, that Bell Beaker sprang from Vinkovci-Samogyvar, which was an amalgam of Vucedol and Yamnaya. If that Vucedol period R1b turns out to be some kind of L51, that will really convince me.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Well, I am not wrong about what Cunliffe said in that radio piece, because he clearly did not express the opinion that, concerning the horse, there was "a long gap between riding and use in war". He may hold that opinion (I doubt it), but he did not express it in that piece.

Once again, the "use in war" some of us were talking about merely involves riding a horse to the scene of the raid or conflict and then using a horse to ride away from it. The actual raiding or fighting was probably done on foot. That is all. We were not discussing advanced cavalry tactics, doing much if any fighting from horseback, and certainly no "Parthian shots" from horseback with recurved, composite bows. That all came later.

Certainly possible, again I never disagreed with this. The arrival on horse to battles, had their been any to fight, would indeed have been an advantage; albeit as yet still a tentative proposal. Moreover, I'm not sure if war was an integral part, as suggested by Gimbutas outdated perspectives. They appear to have occupied certain niches of steppe-like land, only. Most Conflict can be imagined to have been amongst the steppe groups for prime pasture and access to trade routes ?

Looking at the big picture, the overall reason for expansion of Yamnaya groups west of the Black Sea - based on available evidence- was the distinct mix of paleoecological and economic factors I alluded to. Now let's see how they further spread beyond the Carpathian basin, and how R1b reached its present frequency- if indeed from west Yamnaya.

[rms2]

Certainly possible, again I never disagreed with this. The arrival on horse to battles, had their been any to fight, would indeed have been an advantage; albeit as yet still a tentative proposal. Moreover, I'm not sure if war was an integral part, as suggested by Gimbutas outdated perspectives. They appear to have occupied certain niches of steppe-like land, only. Most Conflict can be imagined to have been amongst the steppe groups for prime pasture and access to trade routes ?

Looking at the big picture, the overall reason for expansion of Yamnaya groups west of the Black Sea - based on available evidence- was the distinct mix of paleoecological and economic factors I alluded to. Now let's see how they further spread beyond the Carpathian basin, and how R1b reached its present frequency- if indeed from west Yamnaya.

There's not much in that post I can find fault with (although I'm not so sure Gimbutas' perspectives are all that outdated). I simply believe horseback riding was a tremendous advantage enjoyed by the early Indo-Europeans and part of the reason for their success.

[alan]

I think L51 was in the western steppe. We haven't seen it in Yamnaya only because western Yamnaya hasn't been tested yet. By then it may already have been mostly limited to L11, but I suspect the branch of L11 that led to U106 was over on the north side of the Carpathians with Corded Ware (and maybe before that with Globular Amphorae). It was the branch that led to P312 that was with western Yamnaya south and west of the Carpathians.

I really suspect Gimbutas will be proven right, that Bell Beaker sprang from Vinkovci-Samogyvar, which was an amalgam of Vucedol and Yamnaya. If that Vucedol period R1b turns out to be some kind of L51, that will really convince me.

If only there was agreement on the age of L11 then that would narrow down the possibilities hugely. The interesting thing to me is L51 is an old SNP but it does nothing till L11 when it goes bananas. That is almost certainly a huge clue to where it was in the L51-L11 SNP period. I think we cant totally rule out the early farmers and we can totally rule out Cuc-Trip too as it had Balkans origins an period of strong growth from not long after 5000BC which is not reflected in L51 phylogeny/branching prior to L11.

The key clincher will be if U106 is found in central or northern Europe prior to 2550BC. That will prove L11 and therefore the ancestor of P312 originated in eastern Europe because there is no west to east movement in that period. I think U106 will be found in pre-beaker corded ware and so L11 may have headed north using the Dnieper or Dniester. That would place the likely origin of L11 in Ukraine or adjacent. Ukraine (or the steppes west of the Don) is an ancient DNA blankspot

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Ok .
About Vucedol-R1b. I know reich lab is re-sequencing it.
But we would need more samples still
I've heard rumours this might be on the cards for 2017.

[rms2]

Well my tuppence worth is that we have quite a few pre-beaker copper age people (by the meagre sample size standards of ancient DNA) and there is still no clear evidence of either steppe genes or R1a or b (except the Neolithic V88 guy) so taking the evidence at face value I would feel it is pointing to no L51 derivatives taking the southern route until some point in the beaker era. I thought there was a chance with Remedello in particular but nope. When Remedello didnt come up trumps then that was for me the most likely southern culture to have early Kurgan influences biting the dust . . .

As much as I hate to bring up the lousy ATP3 set of remains from El Portalon, imagine for a minute that he really was some kind of R1b-M269 or at least R1b-PF6518. As Rich Rocca mentioned over on the thread-that-would-not-die, ATP3 was actually recovered from inside a tumulus (http://www.diariodeatapuerca.net/PortalonCuevaMayor.pdf) inside the cave. There was a copper awl and archer's wristguards found in that same layer. http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?1646-Genome-of-a-late-Neolithic-Iberian-farmer&p=108254&viewfull=1#post108254

We'll probably never know what ATP3's y haplogroup really was, or if he had any steppe autosomal dna, but he very well could have been the product of Gimbutas' Kurgan Wave 1, which began about 4300 B.C. He could have been the descendant of a man from that wave.

[rms2]

Ok .
About Vucedol-R1b. I know reich lab is re-sequencing it.
But we would need more samples still
I've heard rumours this might be on the cards for 2017.

We definitely do need more samples, but if that Vucedol period R1b turns out to be some kind of R1b-L51, that will certainly be significant. For me, it will make me even more impressed with Gimbutas than I am already, and I think she was pretty sharp. Not always 100% right maybe, but pretty sharp just the same.

[R.Rocca]

As much as I hate to bring up the lousy ATP3 set of remains from El Portalon, imagine for a minute that he really was some kind of R1b-M269 or at least R1b-PF6518. As Rich Rocca mentioned over on the thread-that-would-not-die, ATP3 was actually recovered from inside a tumulus (http://www.diariodeatapuerca.net/PortalonCuevaMayor.pdf) inside the cave. There was a copper awl and archer's wristguards found in that same layer. http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?1646-Genome-of-a-late-Neolithic-Iberian-farmer&p=108254&viewfull=1#post108254

We'll probably never know what ATP3's y haplogroup really was, or if he had any steppe autosomal dna, but he very well could have been the product of Gimbutas' Kurgan Wave 1, which began about 4300 B.C. He could have been the descendant of a man from that wave.

Since ATP3 was found in level 7/8, I assumed it was also in the tumulus. However, in reading Table S1, samples ATP2 and ATP3 were found in a "clandestine pit" instead of the tumulus in level 7/8. Samples found in the tumulus were ATP7, ATP16, ATP17, ATP20 and ATP21.

[rms2]

Oh, well, so much for that.

[TigerMW]

... The key clincher will be if U106 is found in central or northern Europe prior to 2550BC. That will prove L11 and therefore the ancestor of P312 originated in eastern Europe because there is no west to east movement in that period. I think U106 will be found in pre-beaker corded ware and so L11 may have headed north using the Dnieper or Dniester. That would place the likely origin of L11 in Ukraine or adjacent. Ukraine (or the steppes west of the Don) is an ancient DNA blankspot

That has always been a key for me - the facts that U106 is closely related to P312, more northerly oriented, and imbedded with Germanic speakers.

U106 is not small and when you add U106 to P312 you have far away the most prevalent subclade of Western Europe. It's the L11 subclade although P311 might be the Most Recent Common Ancestor so it might better termed the P311 subclade.

We all abbreviate, but modern Europe was not built by R1b (M343 subclade), R1b1a2 (M269 subclade) but by the P311,L11 subclade - R1b1a2a1a according to ISOGG. Of course, other subclades were involved too (to keep myself out of hot water - cowboy or not.) :)

I think we can fence in the timing of the P311 Most Recent Common Ancestor. There's just not much space below him to his extant descendants. The expansion was in place from there on out until today.

However, I'm not saying that U106 or P311 went north around the Carpathians. That would fit nicely with David Anthony's pre-Germanic model, though. It could have been very easy for U106 to slip north on the west side of the Carpathians from the Hungarian Plains. Is there is much archaeological support for movements north/northwest from Hungary? This may be hard to align with U106. Remember, U106 expanded within and along with a much more balanced mix group of paternal lineages, including R1a and I1.

[kinman]

I certainly agree with you. However, is there still much disagreement on the age of L11? I still estimate the date for the birth of L11 at about 6000 years ago, and Yfull says 5800 years ago (plus or minus several hundred years).
As for the place of origin, I agree with Ukraine, probably southern Ukraine. I'm just unclear on whether it would have been west or east of the Dnieper River. I suspect that L51 had not yet crossed the Dnieper River by 6000 years ago, so I would guess L11 was more likely born in southeastern Ukraine (rather than south central Ukraine).
I still have L11 giving rise to U106 and P312 about 5200 years ago in Romania. So I would not be surprised at all if it happened near the border between Romania and Moldova, and then U106 went up the Dniester River (as you suggested).
--------------Ken
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


If only there was agreement on the age of L11 then that would narrow down the possibilities hugely. The interesting thing to me is L51 is an old SNP but it does nothing till L11 when it goes bananas. That is almost certainly a huge clue to where it was in the L51-L11 SNP period. I think we cant totally rule out the early farmers and we can totally rule out Cuc-Trip too as it had Balkans origins an period of strong growth from not long after 5000BC which is not reflected in L51 phylogeny/branching prior to L11.

The key clincher will be if U106 is found in central or northern Europe prior to 2550BC. That will prove L11 and therefore the ancestor of P312 originated in eastern Europe because there is no west to east movement in that period. I think U106 will be found in pre-beaker corded ware and so L11 may have headed north using the Dnieper or Dniester. That would place the likely origin of L11 in Ukraine or adjacent. Ukraine (or the steppes west of the Don) is an ancient DNA blankspot

[rms2]

. . .
However, I'm not saying that U106 or P311 went north around the Carpathians. That would fit nicely with David Anthony's pre-Germanic model, though. It could have been very easy for U106 to slip north on the west side of the Carpathians from the Hungarian Plains . . .

It seems more likely to me that U106 was part of that move around the east and north side of the Carpathians, although I guess, as you say, it could have just headed due north from the Carpathian basin instead of following the Danube valley north and west. I think it's pretty clear that Danube valley route was the path of P312.

I predict that if U106 is found in Corded Ware or Yamnaya before P312 is, the R1b haters will claim that the IE part of L11 is limited to U106 and that P312 came from Iberia, just as they do with Z2103 versus L51 now.

[TigerMW]

... I predict that if U106 is found in Corded Ware or Yamnaya before P312 is, the R1b haters will claim that the IE part of L11 is limited to U106 and that P312 came from Iberia, just as they do with Z2103 versus L51 now.
I think the P311,L11 subclade (R1b1a2a1a) or its ancestor was on the train when it left the PIE train station or jumped on immediately as it headed west. I've said that before but I think Andrew Lancaster says it nicely here,

"I think R1b had to be on the IE train before (maybe just before) it started rolling over Europe. I can not see how Basques or some older non IE culture, no matter how widespread they once were, could have provided the massively expanding IE language population of the whole of Europe with its main male lines. Maybe they contributed a lot to maternal and autosomal lines, but the genetics show us that the male lines were changing dramatically and quickly.

It is not just that it is hard to imagine that a people spreading a language family so successfully and quickly would come to be quickly dominated by the male lines associated with the older languages being replaced. I do accept that immigrating populations can pick up a lot of local DNA. But it is much more than that, because of the explosion of R1b the DNA evidence shows us. Your scenario actually requires that the male lines of whoever those peoples whose languages are being replaced were had their great day just at this moment and spread. Your scenario does not just require the survival of Basque or other pre-IE Y lines. It requires them to expand rapidly over all of Europe just at the time when this older culture was being over-run."
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2010-12/1291542557

He posted that in 2012. Now we have information that other L23 types, i.e. Z2103, were in Yamna far to the east.

I think it is hard to make a Desideri reflux model work for the P311 lineages other than the eastern aspect was heavy with P311 male lineages that infiltrated a western Beaker reflux back to the west. At this point they would have been fully Yamna-ized Beakers.

I'll probably get blown up for such an analogy, but here goes. If P312/DF27 was in the early western Beakers the reflux would have been akin to French and Indian War, which the French lost, but in the reflux Beaker case they still would have dominated western North America.

On a side note, I find it interesting that that the French and the Native Americans didn't fight each other but allied against the British, yet still (history written by the victors) it is not the French/Indian and British War. Similarly there were the Punic Wars and Gallic Wars. :)

[rms2]

Of course, the British had their Iroquois allies, and the French had their Algonquin allies, so it was really the French/Indian and British/Indian War.

Regarding Beaker, I suspect Gimbutas was right and Beaker evolved from Vinkovci-Samogyvar, which was the product of the amalgam of Vucedol and Yamnaya. I'm not sure how early Iberian Beaker fits in, if it really is the earliest Beaker; I suspect it's kind of a distraction and may not have been R1b at all (I've already said several times why I think that).

For me the fact that western Europe is both predominantly R1b-L23 and Indo-European speaking is a BIG clue, since R1b-L23 has been found eastern Yamnaya. The big hang-up is that the version of R1b-L23 found in eastern Yamnaya thus far is mostly Z2103 instead of the R1b-L51 found in the west. But it's only a matter of time, in my opinion, until R1b-L51 is found in western Yamnaya and perhaps in Vucedol and Vinkovci-Samogyvar, since it has been found in Beaker.

If Gimbutas is right, that's what we should reasonably expect.

[alan]

That has always been a key for me - the facts that U106 is closely related to P312, more northerly oriented, and imbedded with Germanic speakers.

U106 is not small and when you add U106 to P312 you have far away the most prevalent subclade of Western Europe. It's the L11 subclade although P311 might be the Most Recent Common Ancestor so it might better termed the P311 subclade.

We all abbreviate, but modern Europe was not built by R1b (M343 subclade), R1b1a2 (M269 subclade) but by the P311,L11 subclade - R1b1a2a1a according to ISOGG. Of course, other subclades were involved too (to keep myself out of hot water - cowboy or not.) :)

I think we can fence in the timing of the P311 Most Recent Common Ancestor. There's just not much space below him to his extant descendants. The expansion was in place from there on out until today.

However, I'm not saying that U106 or P311 went north around the Carpathians. That would fit nicely with David Anthony's pre-Germanic model, though. It could have been very easy for U106 to slip north on the west side of the Carpathians from the Hungarian Plains. Is there is much archaeological support for movements north/northwest from Hungary? This may be hard to align with U106. Remember, U106 expanded within and along with a much more balanced mix group of paternal lineages, including R1a and I1.

how much younger than L11 is the P311 SNP/how many SNPs down from L11 is P311? It would be nice to refine the splitting point of the ancestors of P312 and U106 a bit more. If yFull is putting L11 at c. 3600BC then how much younger is P311?

[MJost]

YFull shows that there are 12 SNPs in this unordered block.

L11/S127/PF6539
PF6416
L151/PF6542
PF6538
P311/S128/PF6545
L52/PF6541
P310/S129/PF6546
CTS7650/PF6544/S1164
YSC0000191/PF6543/S1159
Z8159/FGC796/Y101
PF5856
YSC0001249/CTS10353/S1175

Isogg 2015 shows L151 as only four SNPs in an unordered block.

MJost

[alan]

well I suppose we can fall back to the yfull estimate of the ages of P312 and U106 around 2900-3000BC as they are the big lines. If that was totally solid it would certainly mean we could narrow down interpretation options. It would still be very useful to have as accurate as possible a date for the split between the two lines.

If U106 was in CW in pre-beaker times then this would be a big discovery because we have some idea of where and when CW originated. Not as accurate as would be ideal but certainly a far better understanding than there is of bell beaker.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

In my two cents, I see P 312 and U106 splitting within central Europe. P3102 then diversified expanded from west of the Rhine and U106 spread up the Elbe..

[rms2]

My own view is that the branch of L11 that led to U106 went around the east and north sides of the Carpathians and into Corded Ware. The branch of L11 that led to P312 went with the Yamnaya people who went around the south side of the Carpathians, up the Danube and thus into Vucedol to form the Vinkovci-Samogyvar amalgam that became Beaker.

6116

[kinman]

I definitely agree. And I've now moved my split of U106 and P312 from Romania into Moldova (closer to the Dniester). Furthermore, I've been thinking for a while about moving the time of their origin to about 5400 years ago (instead of 5200), because I just think Yfull's 4900 is 500 years low on its estimate (and confidence interval).
That would give P312 at least 500 years to multiply and some descendants to get to Iberia (presumably on horseback) and introduce Bell Beaker there about 4900 years ago. I've decided that Iberia introducing Bell Beaker into central Europe doesn't make much sense. Gimbutas was pretty sharp in her day, and if she had today's technology, she would probably put an even quicker end to most of these "out of Iberia" proposals.
---------------Ken
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


My own view is that the branch of L11 that led to U106 went around the east and north sides of the Carpathians and into Corded Ware. The branch of L11 that led to P312 went with the Yamnaya people who went around the south side of the Carpathians, up the Danube and thus into Vucedol to form the Vinkovci-Samogyvar amalgam that became Beaker.

6116

[rms2]

I definitely agree. And I've now moved my split of U106 and P312 from Romania into Moldova (closer to the Dniester). Furthermore, I've been thinking for a while about moving the time of their origin to about 5400 years ago (instead of 5200), because I just think Yfull's 4900 is 500 years low on its estimate (and confidence interval).
That would give P312 at least 500 years to multiply and some descendants to get to Iberia (presumably on horseback) and introduce Bell Beaker there about 4900 years ago. I've decided that Iberia introducing Bell Beaker into central Europe doesn't make much sense. Gimbutas was pretty sharp in her day, and if she had today's technology, she would probably put an even quicker end to most of these "out of Iberia" proposals.
---------------Ken


That is something that puzzles me: the idea that Beaker arose in Iberia. I understand that is based largely on a couple of early radiocarbon dates from Portugal but also stems from an erroneous archaeological tradition that derived Beaker pottery from that of the Cultura de las Cuevas (which itself turned out to stem from the Cardial Culture). Otherwise, Beaker appears to have come out of the east and is a better fit for Gimbutas' hypothetical scenario than for an Iberian origin.

Christian Jeunesse's The Dogma of the Iberian Origin of the Bell Beaker: Attempting Its Deconstruction (https://www.academia.edu/11325848/The_dogma_of_the_Iberian_origin_of_the_Bell_Beaker _attempting_its_deconstruction) makes a lot of sense to me.

[Kwheaton]

That is something that puzzles me: the idea that Beaker arose in Iberia. I understand that is based largely on a couple of early radiocarbon dates from Portugal but also stems from an erroneous archaeological tradition that derived Beaker pottery from that of the Cultura de las Cuevas (which itself turned out to stem from the Cardial Culture). Otherwise, Beaker appears to have come out of the east and is a better fit for Gimbutas' hypothetical scenario than for an Iberian origin.

Christian Jeunesse's The Dogma of the Iberian Origin of the Bell Beaker: Attempting Its Deconstruction (https://www.academia.edu/11325848/The_dogma_of_the_Iberian_origin_of_the_Bell_Beaker _attempting_its_deconstruction) makes a lot of sense to me.

Thanks for sharing that article. It makes sense to me as well. Time and time again we see people with "agendas" fitting the "science?" to meet their expectations. I enjoy the hunt wherever it leads and only wish to discover what happend and why, not that group A, B, or C is responsible.

And since we talk of Haplogroup or SNP origins.....I cannot help but suggest that we are unlikely to ever know true origins as in the first man bearing this SNP lived or was born here. ( Although we may be able to settle the out if Iberia argument) My husband and I grew up 3,000 miles apart. We spent our first couple of married years in one location and then moved to the other where our son was born and may have had a new SNP x. So which location should we ascribe to the x's foundation? If he was conceived at one pole and born in the other? Obviously this little thought exercise just points out that we can determine migration patterns but not necessarily origins. We can make assumptions based on numbers of pots, ancient bones or current prevalance of DNA in a given location or population but these are just working hypothesis based on what we know. Certainly does not stop us from trying. I can imagine a scenario where x is ascribed to one place and then 5 graves that test positive for x shift the location to the NW or what not.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

What was the situation in Europe c. 3300 BC ? ie just prior to movement west of Yamnaya and formation of CWC
Here is what I've pieced together based on some reading..
Tomorrow I;ll do c. 2700 BC (ie after movement of Yamnaya west, and arrival of CWC)..

6137

[alan]

I definitely agree. And I've now moved my split of U106 and P312 from Romania into Moldova (closer to the Dniester). Furthermore, I've been thinking for a while about moving the time of their origin to about 5400 years ago (instead of 5200), because I just think Yfull's 4900 is 500 years low on its estimate (and confidence interval).
That would give P312 at least 500 years to multiply and some descendants to get to Iberia (presumably on horseback) and introduce Bell Beaker there about 4900 years ago. I've decided that Iberia introducing Bell Beaker into central Europe doesn't make much sense. Gimbutas was pretty sharp in her day, and if she had today's technology, she would probably put an even quicker end to most of these "out of Iberia" proposals.
---------------Ken
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Certainly if one L11 group went north of the Carpathians with CW and another followed the Danube and somehow feeding into the beaker complex at some stage there are no rational starting point west of Moldova for L11. That is of course if it happened this way. The lack of trail in modern DNA doesnt surprise me. Z2103 has also left a very modest trail in terms of the modern steppes and Ukraine but clearly made it into the Balkans and Lower Danube area where it is reasonably represented given the passing of 5000 years and much upheaval. South Ukraine may be a really extreme case of replacement of populations and indeed even the historical period shows epic upheavals in that area.

What seems less likely to me is L11 took a southern route. Its not well represented in the Balkans etc where ancient languages like Greek and Albanian that have surely been in the Balkans for at least 4000 years do survive. I dont think it ever had much of a presence in the ancient Balkans other than via late west/north to south/east movements etc. It seems obvious to me that L11 essentially bypassed the Balkans rapidly. IMO if it had ever been big in the Balkans then it would have been preserved in mountain peoples etc but it appears not to have.

Indeed an alternative is it entirely passed north of the Carpathians, only reaching the Danube from the north on the west side of those mountains around the Czech/Austria sort of area.

[alan]

What was the situation in Europe c. 3300 BC ? ie just prior to movement west of Yamnaya and formation of CWC
Here is what I've pieced together based on some reading..
Tomorrow I;ll do c. 2700 BC (ie after movement of Yamnaya west, and arrival of CWC)..

6137

THought Usatovo only started around the time Yamnaya was expanding? My general impression is their is uncertainty about the dating of a lot of steppe cultures and there is a state of flux as new studies are being made. It appears until a few years ago it was a complete mess.

[alan]

Thanks for sharing that article. It makes sense to me as well. Time and time again we see people with "agendas" fitting the "science?" to meet their expectations. I enjoy the hunt wherever it leads and only wish to discover what happend and why, not that group A, B, or C is responsible.

And since we talk of Haplogroup or SNP origins.....I cannot help but suggest that we are unlikely to ever know true origins as in the first man bearing this SNP lived or was born here. ( Although we may be able to settle the out if Iberia argument) My husband and I grew up 3,000 miles apart. We spent our first couple of married years in one location and then moved to the other where our son was born and may have had a new SNP x. So which location should we ascribe to the x's foundation? If he was conceived at one pole and born in the other? Obviously this little thought exercise just points out that we can determine migration patterns but not necessarily origins. We can make assumptions based on numbers of pots, ancient bones or current prevalance of DNA in a given location or population but these are just working hypothesis based on what we know. Certainly does not stop us from trying. I can imagine a scenario where x is ascribed to one place and then 5 graves that test positive for x shift the location to the NW or what not.

It is curious that some very high P312 areas like the isles cluster in autosomal DNA with the highest U106 areas like Holland etc. It may just be chance but its interesting. The autosomal genetic impact of an L11 derived influx is likely to have been greatest in northern Europe where the population was lower and had been struggling through a long wet weather era of many centuries duration which by chance ended around the period the beakers arrived.

[rms2]

Certainly if one L11 group went north of the Carpathians with CW and another followed the Danube and somehow feeding into the beaker complex at some stage there are no rational starting point west of Moldova for L11. That is of course if it happened this way. The lack of trail in modern DNA doesnt surprise me. Z2103 has also left a very modest trail in terms of the modern steppes and Ukraine but clearly made it into the Balkans and Lower Danube area where it is reasonably represented given the passing of 5000 years and much upheaval. South Ukraine may be a really extreme case of replacement of populations and indeed even the historical period shows epic upheavals in that area.

What seems less likely to me is L11 took a southern route. Its not well represented in the Balkans etc where ancient languages like Greek and Albanian that have surely been in the Balkans for at least 4000 years do survive. I dont think it ever had much of a presence in the ancient Balkans other than via late west/north to south/east movements etc. It seems obvious to me that L11 essentially bypassed the Balkans rapidly. IMO if it had ever been big in the Balkans then it would have been preserved in mountain peoples etc but it appears not to have.

Indeed an alternative is it entirely passed north of the Carpathians, only reaching the Danube from the north on the west side of those mountains around the Czech/Austria sort of area.

What do you mean? Are you looking for some sort of L11*, i.e., early branching of L11 in the Balkans? Otherwise, R1b-L11 (in the form of its subclades) is present in the Balkans.

Maybe I am too enamored with Gimbutas, and I realize she wasn't right about everything, but it seems to me her notion that Beaker arose out of Vinkovci-Samogyvar, and that Vinkovci-Samogyvar (or Somogyvar, as it is sometimes spelled) was an amalgam of Vucedol and Yamnaya, explains what we see now pretty well: R1b-L11 (by which I mean mainly P312) in Beaker spreading west and bringing with it western IE, mainly Italo-Celtic.

If the western variety of R1b-L23 was brought to Europe west of Russia and Ukraine by Yamnaya, and if Gimbutas is right about the origin of Beaker, then we should see both R1b-L23 and Indo-European languages spread over western Europe.

And is that not what we see?

[George]

THought Usatovo only started around the time Yamnaya was expanding? My general impression is their is uncertainty about the dating of a lot of steppe cultures and there is a state of flux as new studies are being made. It appears until a few years ago it was a complete mess.

There are now some 12 new C14 calibrations for the early Usatovo Maiaky cemetery. The median date is ca. 3250 BCE This coordinates well with the Proto-Yamna stage (but only through archaeological analysis i.e. prior to Zhyvotylivka/Serezliivka: no new C14 datings yet)

[alan]

What do you mean? Are you looking for some sort of L11*, i.e., early branching of L11 in the Balkans? Otherwise, R1b-L11 (in the form of its subclades) is present in the Balkans.

Maybe I am too enamored with Gimbutas, and I realize she wasn't right about everything, but it seems to me her notion that Beaker arose out of Vinkovci-Samogyvar, and that Vinkovci-Samogyvar (or Somogyvar, as it is sometimes spelled) was an amalgam of Vucedol and Yamnaya, explains what we see now pretty well: R1b-L11 (by which I mean mainly P312) in Beaker spreading west and bringing with it western IE, mainly Italo-Celtic.

If the western variety of R1b-L23 was brought to Europe west of Russia and Ukraine by Yamnaya, and if Gimbutas is right about the origin of Beaker, then we should see both R1b-L23 and Indo-European languages spread over western Europe.

And is that not what we see?

That location is fine because it is fairly far west in terms of the Danube. I do think through that the split in L11 into two branches must have taken place way to the east if the U106 branch headed north into CW. So the P312 line or its ancestor had travelled a long way west if it was in Vucedol.

[rms2]

That location is fine because it is fairly far west in terms of the Danube. I do think through that the split in L11 into two branches must have taken place way to the east if the U106 branch headed north into CW. So the P312 line or its ancestor had travelled a long way west if it was in Vucedol.

I agree about the split in L11. I think the branch that led to P312 was in western Yamnaya and went around the south side of the Carpathians and then up the Danube Valley. That's how it got into Vucedol, at least according to Gimbutas. I think the branch of L11 that led to U106 went around the north side of the Carpathians and somehow became part of Corded Ware. I could be wrong, of course, but to me that would explain the distinctly different distributions and ethno-linguistic associations of P312 and U106, the former with Beaker and Italo-Celtic, and the latter with Germanic and, to a lesser extent, Balto-Slavic.

Gimbutas' hypothesis explains the path of R1b-L23 from the steppe to the Carpathian basin to the Vucedol/Yamnaya hybrid Vinkovci-Samogyvar to Beaker and thus all the way to the Atlantic. It may turn out to be wrong but it sure makes a lot of sense.

[kinman]

Alan and rms2,
That was an interesting possibility, P312 going north of the Carpathians along with U106 and then turning south to the Austrian Danube, especially since I recently narrowed my origin of U152 to northeastern Austria (in the area of Venice or Bratislava). However, after thinking it over, I still favor P312 going south of the Carpathians. That would certainly give more time for Proto-Italo-Celtic and Proto-Germanic to diverge.
The Vucedol connection is also a good reason to favor the southern route, but I am beginning to think that Bell Beaker actually began earlier in Romania with the C-T (Cucuteni). There is a very interesting "bell beaker" pot in Romania that is about 6000 years old (about the time L11 was born in southern Ukraine).
It is pictured in Blood of the Celts (page 93), and it has spiral decorations that look rather "Celtic" looking to me. If R-L11 and relatives adopted bell beaker pottery shape (as well as spiral decoration) from Cucuteni between 6000-5400 years ago, then Vucedol could be just a spin-off as P312 later spread up the Danube. And of course, this would have been long before bell beaker pottery reached Iberia (4800-4900 years ago).
---------------Ken
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I agree about the split in L11. I think the branch that led to P312 was in western Yamnaya and went around the south side of the Carpathians and then up the Danube Valley. That's how it got into Vucedol, at least according to Gimbutas. I think the branch of L11 that led to U106 went around the north side of the Carpathians and somehow became part of Corded Ware. I could be wrong, of course, but to me that would explain the distinctly different distributions and ethno-linguistic associations of P312 and U106, the former with Beaker and Italo-Celtic, and the latter with Germanic and, to a lesser extent, Balto-Slavic.

Gimbutas' hypothesis explains the path of R1b-L23 from the steppe to the Carpathian basin to the Vucedol/Yamnaya hybrid Vinkovci-Samogyvar to Beaker and thus all the way to the Atlantic. It may turn out to be wrong but it sure makes a lot of sense.

[rms2]

It isn't likely Beaker came from Cucutenians. CT was a Neolithic Old European farmer culture without the single grave-under-a-tumulus tradition of Beaker or evidence of horse riding, etc. CT likely had a y-dna profile dominated by G2a and I2a. As I understand it, the skeletons associated with it were gracile and Mediterranean and far off Beaker skeletons. Beaker pottery was also more like shell-tempered steppe pottery and not nearly as sophisticated as CT pottery.

Besides, CT was apparently preceded by and derived from the Starčevo-Körös-Criș and Vinča cultures of the 6th to 5th millennia BC. Starčevo has already yielded up ancient y-dna from haplogroups G2a, I2a, F, and H2, but no R1b.

We know Yamnaya went around the south side of the Carpathians and up the Danube at least as far as eastern Hungary. That seems the natural route, i.e., up a broad river valley. If, as Gimbutas believed, Yamnaya mixed with Vucedol to form Vinkovci-Samogyvar, and Vinkovci-Samogyvar eventually became Beaker, then that seems to be the likely path of P312, or the branch of L11 that gave rise to P312 anyway.

[rms2]

Here is an interesting aside from Aleksandar Durman's article, Radiocarbon Dating of the Vucedol Culture Complex (https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/view/1232/1237):



The late phase of the Vucedol culture, particularly its Mako type, is closely related to the Bell Beaker culture, from which it is sometimes difficult to distinguish.

That gives me pause. If it really is difficult to distinguish Beaker from late Vucedol, what's the difference, and perhaps Beaker really is oldest in the Carpathian basin.

[R.Rocca]

Here is an interesting aside from Aleksandar Durman's article, Radiocarbon Dating of the Vucedol Culture Complex (https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/view/1232/1237):



That gives me pause. If it really is difficult to distinguish Beaker from late Vucedol, what's the difference, and perhaps Beaker really is oldest in the Carpathian basin.

The key word is "Late" Vucedol is difficult to distinguish from Beaker, and Late Vucedol is 2470 BC and younger. This wording is about a period too young to tell us anything about the origin of Bell Beaker.

[kinman]

Oh, I am only saying that L11 and relatives adopted the "bell beaker" design from the Cucutenians. The "Bell Beaker" (with capital "B"s) Culture was indeed mainly Yamnaya (kurgan burials, horses, herding, R1b haplogroup, Indo-European language, etc.), but just borrowed the "bell beaker" shaped pottery from C-T (and perhaps the spiral designs as well). It would probably be more accurate to call them "Late Yamnaya" people, but I think we are stuck with the "Bell Beaker" people label (once they entered central and western Europe).
-------------------Ken
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


It isn't likely Beaker came from Cucutenians. CT was a Neolithic Old European farmer culture without the single grave-under-a-tumulus tradition of Beaker or evidence of horse riding, etc. CT likely had a y-dna profile dominated by G2a and I2a. As I understand it, the skeletons associated with it were gracile and Mediterranean and far off Beaker skeletons. Beaker pottery was also more like shell-tempered steppe pottery and not nearly as sophisticated as CT pottery.

Besides, CT was apparently preceded by and derived from the Starčevo-Körös-Criș and Vinča cultures of the 6th to 5th millennia BC. Starčevo has already yielded up ancient y-dna from haplogroups G2a, I2a, F, and H2, but no R1b.

We know Yamnaya went around the south side of the Carpathians and up the Danube at least as far as eastern Hungary. That seems the natural route, i.e., up a broad river valley. If, as Gimbutas believed, Yamnaya mixed with Vucedol to form Vinkovci-Samogyvar, and Vinkovci-Samogyvar eventually became Beaker, then that seems to be the likely path of P312, or the branch of L11 that gave rise to P312 anyway.

[rms2]

The key word is "Late" Vucedol is difficult to distinguish from Beaker, and Late Vucedol is 2470 BC and younger. This wording is about a period too young to tell us anything about the origin of Bell Beaker.

It isn't so much the age as the difficulty in telling them apart that makes it appear that Gimbutas was right and Beaker arose from the combination of Vucedol and Yamnaya there in the Carpathian basin. The fly in the ointment is the supposed Beaker radiocarbon dates from Portugal. How firm are they?

[R.Rocca]

It isn't so much the age as the difficulty in telling them apart that makes it appear that Gimbutas was right and Beaker arose from the combination of Vucedol and Yamnaya there in the Carpathian basin. The fly in the ointment is the supposed Beaker radiocarbon dates from Portugal. How firm are they?

There are many radiocarbon dates hundreds of years older than 2470 BC regardless of Portugal, so the statement regarding Late Vucedol is not really of significance.

[rms2]

There are many radiocarbon dates hundreds of years older than 2470 BC regardless of Portugal, so the statement regarding Late Vucedol is not really of significance.

I think you are missing the point, which is the fact that late Vucedol and Beaker are difficult to tell apart. Is that because Vucedol became Beakerized, or Beaker became Vucedolized, or because the two shared a common origin? Now we have a Vucedol period R1b, subclades of R1b-L23 in Beaker, and R1b-L23 in Yamnaya.

An R1b-L23 entrepot in eastern Europe just seems a lot cleaner and easier to believe than an end run around most of Europe to Iberia followed by a movement east and then a Rückstrom back again.

[rms2]

Returning to Gimbutas, she remarked on the similarity of Vucedol-Vinkovci-Samogyvar and Beaker (on page 391 of The Civilization of the Goddess):



So far, archaeologists have not linked the Vinkovci-Samogyvar culture with the Bell Beaker, in spite of the identity of burial rites, settlement type, and ceramics. There is hardly any reason to treat these groups as separate cultures. The repertoire of ceramic forms is inherited from the preceding late Vucedol-Mako culture of Yugoslavia and Hungary.

[kinman]

Now that I think about it, that 6000-year-old "bell beaker" pot might not have been made by the Cucutenians. If I am right that L11 was born about 6000 years ago in southern Ukraine, perhaps it was the Kurgan R1b people who made it and traded it to their Cucutenian neighbors in Romania.
In any case, I really am beginning to think "bell beaker" pottery was perhaps being made in Romania and Ukraine even earlier, perhaps 6200 years ago (during Kurgan Wave 1). On the other hand, the Vucedol Culture didn't start for another 1000 years, so they would have just adopted it once the Kurgan Culture was living near them up the Danube (or alternately the Vucedol Culture was partially R1b men who stayed put in that area while other R1b men continued up the Danube). Do we yet know the haplogroups living in the Vucedol Culture? Either way, even the earliest Vucedol seems to be too late to have been where Bell Beaker originated. Of course, Gimbutas wouldn't have known this if the evidence wasn't then available.
----------------Ken

[rms2]

Vucedol began about 3000 BC, so it is older than Beaker. Szécsényi-Nagy's dissertation reports on a Vucedol period R1b from the Lánycsók Csata-alja burial site in eastern Hungary dated to before 2800 BC. Reich et al are supposed to be trying to do further testing on it to extract as much of its genome as possible. Hopefully we'll know more soon. I'm hoping it is some kind of R1b-L51 at least and not another Z2103.

Honestly, you can count me among those few who have big doubts about an Iberian origin for Beaker.

[R.Rocca]

I think you are missing the point, which is the fact that late Vucedol and Beaker are difficult to tell apart. Is that because Vucedol became Beakerized, or Beaker became Vucedolized, or because the two shared a common origin? Now we have a Vucedol period R1b, subclades of R1b-L23 in Beaker, and R1b-L23 in Yamnaya.

I got the point quite well. A common origin for both is likeliest IMO. Again, the quote you highlighted does not support or refute any of those three scenarios as Late Vucedol is for a lack of a better phrase..."too late".


An R1b-L23 entrepot in eastern Europe just seems a lot cleaner and easier to believe than an end run around most of Europe to Iberia followed by a movement east and then a Rückstrom back again.

From an L23 perspective, of course it's cleaner, and at this point in time, the only logical scenario. From a P312 perspective, the odds are still 50/50 that it was not in part or in whole born somewhere like Southern France and not in Eastern Europe.

[rms2]

I got the point quite well. A common origin for both is likeliest IMO. Again, the quote you highlighted does not support or refute any of those three scenarios as Late Vucedol is for a lack of a better phrase..."too late".

Well, we'll just have to disagree on it being too late. I think it is circumstantial evidence of a common origin. That Vucedol period R1b may turn out to be an even more important piece of circumstantial evidence.




From an L23 perspective, of course it's cleaner, and at this point in time, the only logical scenario. From a P312 perspective, the odds are still 50/50 that it was not in part or in whole born somewhere like Southern France and not in Eastern Europe.

That's a possibility, but I was talking about the entry of R1b-L23 (L51>L11 actually) into Beaker, which I suspect happened in eastern Europe. P312 may not have come along until Beaker had made it to southern France, although I suspect it too has an eastern European origin.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Well if anyone can solve the steppe -BB link; it'll be volker heyd

"From Yamnaya to Bell Beakers: Mechanisms of Transmission in an Interconnected Europe, 3500–2000 BC"

http://www.shh.mpg.de/105713/LAG2015_MPISHH_Programme_draft4.pdf

[rms2]

Well if anyone can solve the steppe -BB link; it'll be volker heyd

"From Yamnaya to Bell Beakers: Mechanisms of Transmission in an Interconnected Europe, 3500–2000 BC"

http://www.shh.mpg.de/105713/LAG2015_MPISHH_Programme_draft4.pdf

I'd like to hear that lecture! The first part of the title is intriguing.

[R.Rocca]

Well, we'll just have to disagree on it being too late. I think it is circumstantial evidence of a common origin. That Vucedol period R1b may turn out to be an even more important piece of circumstantial evidence.

That's a possibility, but I was talking about the entry of R1b-L23 (L51>L11 actually) into Beaker, which I suspect happened in eastern Europe. P312 may not have come along until Beaker had made it to southern France, although I suspect it too has an eastern European origin.

The R1b+ Bell Beaker sample was 2600 BC, Late Vucedol is at it's earliest 2500 BC, so like I said, Late Vucedol is not a catalyst for R1b and Bell Beaker. Now, if you want to say that Bell Beaker may have been derived from Early Vucedol, then you would get no argument from me.

[kinman]

But we now have that "bell beaker" pot in Romania that is 4000 B.C., and Kurgan Wave 1 was in the Ukraine at the time. Surely the two could have gotten together to form the earliest Bell Beaker Culture before Vucedol began a 1000 years later.
Anyway, I wouldn't be at all surprised if your hopes are realized, and that they find L51 in Vucedol (hopefully sooner rather than later). By the way, why do you think that only a few of us have big doubts about an Iberian origin for Beaker? I think there are more and more of us everyday.
-------------Ken
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Vucedol began about 3000 BC, so it is older than Beaker. Szécsényi-Nagy's dissertation reports on a Vucedol period R1b from the Lánycsók Csata-alja burial site in eastern Hungary dated to before 2800 BC. Reich et al are supposed to be trying to do further testing on it to extract as much of its genome as possible. Hopefully we'll know more soon. I'm hoping it is some kind of R1b-L51 at least and not another Z2103.

Honestly, you can count me among those few who have big doubts about an Iberian origin for Beaker.

[rms2]

The R1b+ Bell Beaker sample was 2600 BC, Late Vucedol is at it's earliest 2500 BC, so like I said, Late Vucedol is not a catalyst for R1b and Bell Beaker. Now, if you want to say that Bell Beaker may have been derived from Early Vucedol, then you would get no argument from me.

Well, that is what I am saying, and we apparently misunderstood one another.

The fact that late Vucedol and Beaker are nearly indistinguishable I take as circumstantial evidence of a common origin, not as absolute proof, and certainly not as proof of something chronologically impossible, i.e., that late Vucedol gave rise to Beaker or even to the R1b in Beaker.

Honestly, I think Gimbutas was on to something when she said that Beaker arose out of the mix of Vucedol and Yamnaya.

[rms2]

But we now have that "bell beaker" pot in Romania that is 4000 B.C., and Kurgan Wave 1 was in the Ukraine at the time. Surely the two could have gotten together to form the earliest Bell Beaker Culture before Vucedol began a 1000 years later.
Anyway, I wouldn't be at all surprised if your hopes are realized, and that they find L51 in Vucedol (hopefully sooner rather than later). By the way, why do you think that only a few of us have big doubts about an Iberian origin for Beaker? I think there are more and more of us everyday.
-------------Ken
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have not seen the pot you're talking about. Honestly, I have seen quite a few pots that I think look like Beaker pots; to me Corded Ware pots resemble Beaker pots pretty strongly, but the experts can tell the difference I suppose.

Right now an Iberian origin for Beaker seems to be the prevailing orthodoxy. Just Google Beaker and see how many of the results report that it came out of SW Europe and moved east. I guess there are good reasons for believing that, but I think there are plenty of good reasons for doubting it.

[alan]

But we now have that "bell beaker" pot in Romania that is 4000 B.C., and Kurgan Wave 1 was in the Ukraine at the time. Surely the two could have gotten together to form the earliest Bell Beaker Culture before Vucedol began a 1000 years later.
Anyway, I wouldn't be at all surprised if your hopes are realized, and that they find L51 in Vucedol (hopefully sooner rather than later). By the way, why do you think that only a few of us have big doubts about an Iberian origin for Beaker? I think there are more and more of us everyday.
-------------Ken
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beaker pot in Romania 4000BC? Where do you get that from?

[kinman]

I just looked again and it says "before 4000 B.C.". My source: Blood of the Celts, page 93 (figure 41). Her source is Anthony, 2007, so I assume it was also pictured in that book.
------------Ken


Beaker pot in Romania 4000BC? Where do you get that from?

[razyn]

I have not seen the pot you're talking about.

I just snapped a photo of it (with Jean's caption) and zapped it to you, and the other Rich. Don't believe it would be "fair use" to post it, the ink is barely dry on that book.

[Kwheaton]

Source of the illustration in question is listed in the back of the book. Muzeul National de Istorie a Romaniei, Bucharist. The text on the page "Inverted bell shaped pots were made before 4000 BC north of the Black sea." The source notation is indeed Anthony "Among the Cucenteni and Svobodnoe types" 2007 figs 11.4, 12.6, 12.9

[rms2]

I saw it, thanks to razyn. I don't think there is anything about that pot that just screams that it was the prototype for Beaker.

[kinman]

Well, it didn't "scream" out to me either at first. But the shape strongly resembles pictures of Bell Beakers I have seen. And Jean Manco's comment suggests that she also thinks it does. The decoration almost screams "proto-Celtic" to me. It's not a formal triple spiral that would appear later in Celtic art, but it's the kind of simple spiral I would expect on a prototype. Anyway, it seems to be in the right place and the right time to be a prototype of a Bell Beaker.
-----Ken


I saw it, thanks to razyn. I don't think there is anything about that pot that just screams that it was the prototype for Beaker.

[rms2]

The shape is similar, but it's common to a lot of old pots, and Cucuteni potters knew how to fire their pots at extremely high temps that Beaker potters did not. I don't think there is any reason at all to connect Cucutenians to Beaker. It's more likely that CT pots influenced Corded Ware than BB.

[kinman]

Well, the early Bell Beaker potters in the Ukraine could probably only try to copy the C-T (Cucuteni) pots as best they could. The Cucuteni potters certainly wouldn't want to share their production techniques and lose potential customers of their wares. Those would have been "trade secrets" to be jealously guarded.
As for influences, I think Corded Ware would have been more influenced by Funnelbeaker (which it replaced about 4800 years ago). C-T (Cucutenians) were a weakened and scattered culture by the time Corded Ware began 4900 years ago. However, C-T could have greatly influenced an early Bell Beaker pottery between 5400-6200 years ago when Cucuteni culture was still stable and strong. But athen between 5400 and 4900 years ago, C-T declined due to climactic changes which gradually ruined their farming-based economy. It was like our "Dirty Thirties", but it lasted for hundreds of years.
In fact, now that I think about it, Bell Beaker would have made it to the middle Danube (southern Germany) about the time Corded Ware really got going. So it would have been Bell Beaker that would have been in a position to influence Corded Ware far more than C-T (who were weak and scattered "has-beens" as a culture by that time).
Anyway, all of this is more evidence that Iberia merely received "Bell Beaker" about 4800 years ago (up to a thousand years after Bell Beaker originated far to their east). The Iberians may have started the later "Maritime Bell Beaker" movement, but this was just "johnny-come-latelies" marketing to new consumers by sea (not something that they invented themselves). This is great news for the opponents of another "out-of-Iberia" proposal that should not have been proposed to begin with (much less revived again more recently). That "orthodoxy" is crumbling fast in my opinion.
----------------Ken
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The shape is similar, but it's common to a lot of old pots, and Cucuteni potters knew how to fire their pots at extremely high temps that Beaker potters did not. I don't think there is any reason at all to connect Cucutenians to Beaker. It's more likely that CT pots influenced Corded Ware than BB.

[rms2]

Corded Ware is older than Beaker, although the two were roughly contemporary. Neither was around 5400-6200 years ago. I don't know how Cucuteni could have influenced the development of Beaker, but I am guessing any such influences would have been transmitted by intermediaries a couple of times removed from CT itself. CT pottery probably had a general influence on pottery making in the western steppe, and that could have been carried by Yamnaya into the mix that became Beaker.

[R.Rocca]

I saw it, thanks to razyn. I don't think there is anything about that pot that just screams that it was the prototype for Beaker.

I agree...they are as different as two pots types could possibly be.

[kinman]

Jean Manco 2015 (page 93) says "key ingredients of the Bell Beaker design have precise predecessors on the stelae route from Ukraine to the Carpathian Basin. Inverted bell-shaped pots were made before 4000 BC north of the Black Sea." She notes that the decorations on this old pot are very different from decorations on Bell Beaker. However, I think the shape is definitely Bell Beaker, and the decorations are just a distraction of lesser importance. So I don't think we should take it lightly when Jean Manco uses a phrase like "precise predecessors".
I don't have Anthony's 2007 book, so I don't know whether this Romanian pot is in Figure 11.4, 12.6, or 12.9. But I would be interested to know what (if anything) Anthony might have said about this pot in the text.
----------------Ken
-------------------------------------------------------------


Source of the illustration in question is listed in the back of the book. Muzeul National de Istorie a Romaniei, Bucharist. The text on the page "Inverted bell shaped pots were made before 4000 BC north of the Black sea." The source notation is indeed Anthony "Among the Cucenteni and Svobodnoe types" 2007 figs 11.4, 12.6, 12.9

[rms2]

Jean Manco 2015 (page 93) says "key ingredients of the Bell Beaker design have precise predecessors on the stelae route from Ukraine to the Carpathian Basin. Inverted bell-shaped pots were made before 4000 BC north of the Black Sea." She notes that the decorations on this old pot are very different from decorations on Bell Beaker. However, I think the shape is definitely Bell Beaker, and the decorations are just a distraction of lesser importance. So I don't think we should take it lightly when Jean Manco uses a phrase like "precise predecessors".
I don't have Anthony's 2007 book, so I don't know whether this Romanian pot is in Figure 11.4, 12.6, or 12.9. But I would be interested to know what (if anything) Anthony might have said about this pot in the text.
----------------Ken
-------------------------------------------------------------

Well, the Cucutenians did not use stelae, so I don't think Jean was saying those "precise predecessors" came from them.

Figure 11.4 is on page 233 of Anthony's The Horse The Wheel and Language. It shows some CT pots, but none of them really looks like a Beaker pot, although #2 in the picture has a kind of general bell shape. Figure 12.6 is on page 278. Of the five pots pictured there, three are reconstructions from fragments. One of those has a kind of bell shape, but, honestly, it doesn't look like a Beaker pot to me, although someone else might see it differently. Figure 12.9 is on page 286 and shows several Svobodnoe pots. Some of them are kind of bell shaped but have pointed bottoms. Maybe Jean was talking about this general trend toward the bell shape. If she sees these posts, maybe she'll fill us in.

To me this Corded Ware pot on the left is kind of beakerish looking, although it obviously differs somewhat from the true Beaker pot on the right in the next photo.

6169 6170

But I think there is no denying the relationships of the pottery in the drawing below.

6171

[kinman]

To me your second pot (on the right) is what I think of as typical Bell Beaker. The one in the third figure (with very wide mouth and on a pedestal) doesn't look like typical Bell Beaker to me. The following webpage has some more pictures of Hungarian Bell Beakers that I see as typical of Bell Beaker (similar in shape to the really old pot we are talking about, in Jean's figure 41):
http://www.btm.hu/old/varmuzeum/allando/oskor/imgkobr/aharanged.html


Well, the Cucutenians did not use stelae, so I don't think Jean was saying those "precise predecessors" came from them.

Figure 11.4 is on page 233 of Anthony's The Horse The Wheel and Language. It shows some CT pots, but none of them really looks like a Beaker pot, although #2 in the picture has a kind of general bell shape. Figure 12.6 is on page 278. Of the five pots pictured there, three are reconstructions from fragments. One of those has a kind of bell shape, but, honestly, it doesn't look like a Beaker pot to me, although someone else might see it differently. Figure 12.9 is on page 286 and shows several Svobodnoe pots. Some of them are kind of bell shaped but have pointed bottoms. Maybe Jean was talking about this general trend toward the bell shape. If she sees these posts, maybe she'll fill us in.

To me this Corded Ware pot on the left is kind of beakerish looking, although it obviously differs somewhat from the true Beaker pot on the right in the next photo.

6169 6170

But I think there is no denying the relationships of the pottery in the drawing below.

6171

[alan]

Well, the Cucutenians did not use stelae, so I don't think Jean was saying those "precise predecessors" came from them.

Figure 11.4 is on page 233 of Anthony's The Horse The Wheel and Language. It shows some CT pots, but none of them really looks like a Beaker pot, although #2 in the picture has a kind of general bell shape. Figure 12.6 is on page 278. Of the five pots pictured there, three are reconstructions from fragments. One of those has a kind of bell shape, but, honestly, it doesn't look like a Beaker pot to me, although someone else might see it differently. Figure 12.9 is on page 286 and shows several Svobodnoe pots. Some of them are kind of bell shaped but have pointed bottoms. Maybe Jean was talking about this general trend toward the bell shape. If she sees these posts, maybe she'll fill us in.

To me this Corded Ware pot on the left is kind of beakerish looking, although it obviously differs somewhat from the true Beaker pot on the right in the next photo.

6169 6170

But I think there is no denying the relationships of the pottery in the drawing below.

6171

the devil is in the dating detail though. IF at least the minority of dates for beaker pot that appear safe (on animal, not human bone) dating to 2800BC on, then CW derivation becomes a problem as it doesnt seem to arrive even at the Rhine until 2750BC and indeed it seems there is a push on to redate all CW as no older than 2800BC. So, CW and beaker on present dates appear c. 2800BC in Poland and Iberia respectively. Who knows of course if there will yet be further days on dating but at present it seems very unlikely the earliest CW and beaker could have been in contact - certainly there is no evidence. So it appears that independently similar pot types appeared at two ends of Europe.

I actually think the pottery may be a distraction. The idea of a pot with a slightly tucked in waist is not the sort of thing that is impossible to be independently invented by pure chance. Hey- here a really whacky take I just thought of. Maybe CW c. 2800BC in Poland is derived from beaker c. 2800BC in Iberia. It no more geographically weird than the reverse. Another thing to consider is studies of CW in well preserved conditions in coastal Holland indicate they were used for cooking and food not drinking.

[kinman]

My hypothesis:
A more parsimonious scenario would be:
(1) a single "beakerish" pottery arising in Ukraine and/or Moldova about 3400 BC (or earlier).
(2) About 3200 B.C., R-U106 takes it north and west around the Carpathians founding Corded Ware Culture (with some input from R1a relatives) and they begin speaking proto-Germanic (but the earliest of their Corded Ware so far found is 2800 BC in Poland).
(3) meanwhile brother clade R-P312 starts going up the Danube about 3200 BC, and it spins off the Vucedol Culture about 3100 BC. But some of their relatives stayed behind in Romania where their domesticated horses have been found (age 3000 B.C.) and began crossing over into northern Bulgaria about that time (and eventually into western Turkey), as is explained in the "Horse Domestication" thread which I started a while back.
(4) R-P312 reached Austria by about 3000 B.C., where R-U152 is born.
(5) they continue up the Danube to the Black Forest where they find the Rhine River on the other side.
(6) some of them go south on the Rhine, expanding south into Italy and Spain (and the Maritime version of Bell Beaker takes off about 2800 B.C.).

It would be various variations of "Bell Beaker" all the way from Ukraine to Spain in about 600 years (not to mention the associated Kurgan burial practices, etc). And perhaps it had been in the Ukraine area for up to 600 years prior to that (4000-3400 BC; due to Kurgan Wave 1). Whether Cucuteni started the "beakerish" pottery and the Kurgan people adopted it, or vice versa, is uncertain. In any case, after 3400 BC (and the decline of Cucutenian culture due to the drought), it became a demic spread of R1b men up the Danube taking their Bell Beaker Culture and Italo-Celtic language with them. And while some had gone south on the Rhine River, others had gone north, and yet others west across France. Of course with R1b men spreading every which way, things got a bit more complicated after 2800 B.C., especially once the maritime spread from Spain began.
-------------Ken
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


the devil is in the dating detail though. IF at least the minority of dates for beaker pot that appear safe (on animal, not human bone) dating to 2800BC on, then CW derivation becomes a problem as it doesnt seem to arrive even at the Rhine until 2750BC and indeed it seems there is a push on to redate all CW as no older than 2800BC. So, CW and beaker on present dates appear c. 2800BC in Poland and Iberia respectively. Who knows of course if there will yet be further days on dating but at present it seems very unlikely the earliest CW and beaker could have been in contact - certainly there is no evidence. So it appears that independently similar pot types appeared at two ends of Europe.

I actually think the pottery may be a distraction. The idea of a pot with a slightly tucked in waist is not the sort of thing that is impossible to be independently invented by pure chance. Hey- here a really whacky take I just thought of. Maybe CW c. 2800BC in Poland is derived from beaker c. 2800BC in Iberia. It no more geographically weird than the reverse. Another thing to consider is studies of CW in well preserved conditions in coastal Holland indicate they were used for cooking and food not drinking.

[rms2]

To me your second pot (on the right) is what I think of as typical Bell Beaker. The one in the third figure (with very wide mouth and on a pedestal) doesn't look like typical Bell Beaker to me . . .

That's because the Beaker Folk did not make only one kind of pot. They also made pedestalled and cross footed bowls, as shown in the illustration from the Kulcsar and Szeverenyi paper on the Carpathian basin in the 3rd millennium BC.

[rms2]

the devil is in the dating detail though. IF at least the minority of dates for beaker pot that appear safe (on animal, not human bone) dating to 2800BC on, then CW derivation becomes a problem as it doesnt seem to arrive even at the Rhine until 2750BC and indeed it seems there is a push on to redate all CW as no older than 2800BC. So, CW and beaker on present dates appear c. 2800BC in Poland and Iberia respectively. Who knows of course if there will yet be further days on dating but at present it seems very unlikely the earliest CW and beaker could have been in contact - certainly there is no evidence. So it appears that independently similar pot types appeared at two ends of Europe.

I actually think the pottery may be a distraction. The idea of a pot with a slightly tucked in waist is not the sort of thing that is impossible to be independently invented by pure chance. Hey- here a really whacky take I just thought of. Maybe CW c. 2800BC in Poland is derived from beaker c. 2800BC in Iberia. It no more geographically weird than the reverse. Another thing to consider is studies of CW in well preserved conditions in coastal Holland indicate they were used for cooking and food not drinking.

I think you misunderstood me. I said that Corded Ware pot looked beakerish to me, not that Beaker pots were derived from Corded Ware.

I would like to know more about those early RC dates from Iberian Beaker. An origin in Iberia just doesn't make sense to me.

[Kwheaton]

Ken,

I actually like your hypothesis even if it turns out to be wrong. Why...it makes sense.
I am slowly coming up to speed in large part do to Anthony and now Jean's Blood of the Celt.

Two things always strike me. With humans its complicated--we are mobile-- and we travel repeatedly in waves back and forth and then add the trading layer....well. And second we migrate for reasons: resources, hunger, power, alliances, marriages etc. When a theory incorporates these two things it is to me reasonable...having taken ceramics classes many times...there is likely to be an orthodoxy of pot construction and decoration in a given culture. But there are always going to be the outliers who decide to try something new. If the shape of the Bell Beaker pot proved "useful" as well as decorative it has a hugher chance of being retained or even being influential.

What never makes sense is people doing ridculous things so as to fit into someone's pet theory which usually includes some sort of cultural bias. Being an American mutt has its advantages in that I don't care whether BB originated here or there--- I just want to know the truth. I note that in these various threads it is the folks that hold an intractable positions usually tied to a cultural identity that get into the most troubles. I am all for holding strong views....passion is good....but it needs to make sense.

Which is my long winded way of saying I really like your hypothesis. Not because I am knowledable about such things but sometines that can be an advantage ;-)

[kinman]

Here's my hypothesis about what probably happened before 5400 years ago; before 3400 B.C.):
We already know that the gene for Lactase Persistence (the opposite of Lactose Intolerance) is most frequent in R1b (and second most frequent in R1a). But what surprised me is that horse milk is quite a bit higher in Vitamin C than milk from cows and goats, etc. This would have been a great health advantage for the R1b once they began taming (and then domesticating) horses on the eastern steppes around western Kazakhstan. As I have already suggested, milking capture mares may have begun the whole process of taming and domestication of horses in western Kazakhstan (or nearby), not to mention a supply of meat during harsh winters.
The lack of Vitamin C on the steppes (leading to moderate or even severe, and thus deadly, cases of scurvy) may have been at least one reason R1b populations were so very low between 14,000 and 7,000 years ago (no known living side branches between M269 and L23). A late population of R-M269 in Kazakhstan could have accidentally begun the process of reducing the scurvy threat when they began capturing mares for milk. If this began about 7,000 years ago, it may have contributed to the future success of their most important son (the original R-L23 man) who I estimate was born about 6800 years ago. And taming may have lead to actual breeding of horses about that same time.
The health of the R1b population in western Kazakhstan (and adjacent areas) could have improved so much that their population began to climb rapidly, and their healthier children became taller, stronger, and also more energetic and adventurous than their ancestors. That would have set the stage for their spread west to Ukraine (Kurgan Wave 1 about 6200 years ago). The domestication of the horse not only made them more mobile, but more energetic and healthy. As lactose intolerance dropped dramatically, health and life span (as well as mobility) increased, and most importantly, populations to the west did NOT have these advantages.
Couple that with the increasing genetic tendency to produce more sons than daughters, R1b had advantages of several kinds that would almost assure their successful expansion over the coming centuries. And with the great drought in Europe starting around 5300 years ago, R1b (and to a lesser extent R1a) had even more advantages (since they were not dependent on farming). AND ALMOST ALL of these advantages are mainly due to their taming and domestication of the horse. By 5200 years ago, a drought starved and scattered European population would have been very vulnerable to the Kurgan expansion up the Danube (as well as U106 going north and west of the Carpathian mountains and helping to found Corded Ware and the proto-Germanic language).
-------------Ken
P.S. Anyway, the often criticized hypotheses about calcium and Vitamin D being mainly involved may be somewhat valid. It seems more likely to me that Vitamin C was probably even more of a factor.

[rms2]

I'm not at home, so I don't have my stuff with me, but I don't think lactase persistence was common enough early enough to have been an advantage for the PIEs. There was a study done on lacto-betaglobulin on ancient teeth awhile back. LBG is considered to be evidence of direct milk drinking as opposed to the mere use of dairy products like cheese or yogurt. There was some found on some ancient Pontic steppe teeth, but it was a relatively small percentage of the teeth, so it doesn't look like LP, if it existed on the steppe, was anything even close to a majority trait.

I'm also not sure that we can attribute the original spread of LP to R1b. Maybe, but we don't know that for sure. Among the Lichtenstein Cave remains the one R1b guy was negative for 13910 T, while a number of the I2 folks and the two R1as were positive for it.

[rms2]

I think the beaker-R1b link is looking most likely on archaeological evidence to have formed in c. 2550BC in central Europe when a non-R1b (or lets say non L11) group of copper age SW Europeans producing the first beaker pottery and an L11 derived central European group of either Yamnaya (via an intermediary culture) or CW (perhaps an atypical or specialist subset thereof) descent mixed after arriving from coming from opposite directions. This blended early SW beaker traits with central European ones and formed a new entity and wider network and the fully developed beaker package expanded with this new group. What did the two groups bring? The SW Europeans brought advanced gold working and other exotica while I strongly suspect the central Europeans key contribution was the horse and great mobility.

Why do I say this? Because when the first beaker pots were made in Iberia c. 2800BC there was no steppe groups west of Hungary or CW Groups west of Poland and adjacent. We also have no convincing evidence of an intrusion into Iberia by a southern route after 3000BC (copper) and no ancient DNA evidence that any pre-beaker south Europeans carried L11 derivatives or steppe genes. So I am just following my interpretation of what I see and coming up with the simplest answer I can see.

So it follows then that I see P312 as a later beaker thing in south-west Europe and of course later waves too. What little ancient evidence their is seems to date the influx between 2800 and 2000BC - I would suggest post-2500BC.

It then follows from my own reasoning that P312 had a prior existence in a pre-beaker culture. I suspect from triangulating between an apparent flow of U106 or its immediate ancestor up rivers heading to north Germanic Europe and P312 apparently going more through central Europe that there was a split in L11 with the U106 branch entering CW culture as a minority and P312 heading west. Due to the mass of the Carpathians I would see that as indicating a split no further west than Moldova. I think I am leaning towards the idea of P312 being in Yamnaya in Hungary c. 3000BC which would make sense if horse riding later became P312's major contribution

I used to think that the fastest and most logical route for SW early beaker folk to meet up with R1b non-beaker central Europeans to mix and form the developed beaker package may have been up the Rhone to the Rhine and Danube but I recently am wondering if they used the long established passes from southern France into north Italy along the Po and the head of the Adriatic - a move which c. 2550BC give or take would have allowed them to bypass CW groups into the Slovenia/north Croatia/south Austria/west Hungary area where they would have been close to but just south of CW groups. Perhaps it was there that the cultural hybriding took place that gave rise to the R1b-beaker link and perhaps the horse riding skills of people in this area explain the simply incredible expansion and mobility of beaker after 2500BC.

I am quoting alan's post from here (http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?97-Genetic-Genealogy-and-Ancient-DNA-in-the-News&p=112893&viewfull=1#post112893), since we can't really discuss things in that thread.

Anyway, I think that is a good post with sound reasoning. I would add that I think Gimbutas was right to attribute Beaker, at least the Beaker that accounts for the spread of R1b-P312, to the amalgam of Vucedol and Yamnaya.

There are other good reasons to doubt that early Iberian Beaker was R1b (if in fact Beaker is earliest in Iberia, which I doubt). Those early Iberian Beaker skeletons were small in stature, gracile, long headed and Mediterranean, while the later Beaker Folk were taller, more robust, and tended to be brachycephalic. Someone please correct me if that is not accurate. In addition, alleged early Iberian Beaker pots are found in old collective Neolithic tombs absent the warrior kit and the single burial under a tumulus that characterize later Beaker burials, i.e., the ones we think of as classic Bell Beaker burials.

[ADW_1981]

Maybe, but we don't know that for sure. Among the Lichtenstein Cave remains the one R1b guy was negative for 13910 T, while a number of the I2 folks and the two R1as were positive for it.

We also know that variation of I2 is exceedingly rare in Europe today, I believe the old nomenclature was I2b2. It's difficult to draw conclusions based on limited samples of people who may have for the most part died out when a particular trait is at near maximum frequency.

[Jean M]

Well, the Cucutenians did not use stelae, so I don't think Jean was saying those "precise predecessors" came from them.

Figure 11.4 is on page 233 of Anthony's The Horse The Wheel and Language. It shows some CT pots, but none of them really looks like a Beaker pot, although #2 in the picture has a kind of general bell shape. Figure 12.6 is on page 278. Of the five pots pictured there, three are reconstructions from fragments. One of those has a kind of bell shape, but, honestly, it doesn't look like a Beaker pot to me, although someone else might see it differently. Figure 12.9 is on page 286 and shows several Svobodnoe pots. Some of them are kind of bell shaped but have pointed bottoms. Maybe Jean was talking about this general trend toward the bell shape. If she sees these posts, maybe she'll fill us in.

I'm sorry that I've been too busy to catch up here. Let me be as clear as I can. I am not saying that there was Bell Beaker pottery before Bell Beaker pottery i. e. that there was already pottery exactly like BB on the steppe or along the Danube to the Carpathian Basin. That would be absurd. It would have been recognised as Bell Beaker.

I was trying to say that the separate elements which are found combined to make the characteristic bell-shaped pot and its decoration, can be separately found on the steppe and up the Danube. I give as an example


A Cucuteni pot of inverted bell shape, but with decoration nothing like BB
The decoration with twisted cord into wet clay, which was inherited from the first pottery to arrive in Europe i.e. the type from the Asian steppe
The paste made of crushed bone which was rubbed into the incised decoration on BB pots, which was inherited from pottery in the Danube area

[Jean M]

Another conference: BELL BEAKER INTERACTION. 22nd October 2015. Room D411, Humanisten, Gothenburg University

14:00-14:30 Karin M. Frei: High resolution mobility tracing: the case of the Bronze Age Egtved Girl
14:30-15:00 Coffee break
15:00-16:30 Mike Parker Pearson: British Beaker People: mobility, health and diet in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age

23rd October 2015
Room D411, Humanisten, Gothenburg University
10:00-10:45 M.P. Prieto, C. Liesau, C. Blasco, P. Ríos, E. Doce,G. Delibes & M. Kunst: Bell-beaker contexts in Central Iberian Peninsula
10:45-11:30 Laure Salanova: Past populations and archaeological remains: 4th-2nd millennia in France
11:30-12:00 Karl-Göran Sjögren & T Douglas Price: Diet and mobility in the German Corded Ware Culture

12:00-13:15 LUNCH

13:15-14:00 Volker Heyd: Mediterranean Bell Beakers from West to East
14:00-14:45 Janet Montgomery: The Beaker People Project - multi-isotope results from across Britain
14:45-15:05 Coffee break
15:05-15.35 Morten Allentoft: Ancient DNA of Bell Beakers - what do we know
15:35-16:15 Concluding remarks by Kristian Kristiansen and discussion


Register attendance by mailing Sophie Bergerbrant
no later than the 19th of October.
Mail: [email protected]

[rms2]

We also know that variation of I2 is exceedingly rare in Europe today, I believe the old nomenclature was I2b2. It's difficult to draw conclusions based on limited samples of people who may have for the most part died out when a particular trait is at near maximum frequency.

It's also possible the trait was passed on by their daughters and that many of the y lines simply daughtered out (as opposed to being exterminated).

Besides, I was not trying to attribute LP to y haplogroup I2 either. I was simply providing an example of a set of ancient remains in which the only R1b guy was among those who were 13910 T negative.

[kinman]

As I recall, only about 1/4 of the Lichtenstein Cave samples had the lactase gene, so I would suspect that the sample just happened to have one R1b that didn't have the gene. On the other hand, R1b-V88 in Africa has a fairly good frequency of the European lactase gene, and it split off the main R1b line very early. Anyway, it wouldn't have had to have been a majority trait on the steppe to be advantageous. I believe that it is less than 40% in R1b-V88, not a majority, but still regarded as advantageous.
------------Ken
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I'm not at home, so I don't have my stuff with me, but I don't think lactase persistence was common enough early enough to have been an advantage for the PIEs. There was a study done on lacto-betaglobulin on ancient teeth awhile back. LBG is considered to be evidence of direct milk drinking as opposed to the mere use of dairy products like cheese or yogurt. There was some found on some ancient Pontic steppe teeth, but it was a relatively small percentage of the teeth, so it doesn't look like LP, if it existed on the steppe, was anything even close to a majority trait.

I'm also not sure that we can attribute the original spread of LP to R1b. Maybe, but we don't know that for sure. Among the Lichtenstein Cave remains the one R1b guy was negative for 13910 T, while a number of the I2 folks and the two R1as were positive for it.

[Jean M]

As I recall, only about 1/4 of the Lichtenstein Cave samples had the lactase gene, so I would suspect that the sample just happened to have one R1b that didn't have the gene.-

LP is not exclusive to any particular Y-DNA haplogroup. It is passed on separately. It can be passed on by women. See http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/autosomaladna.shtml

[alan]

Just moving a post from wrong thread to here

I think the beaker-R1b link is looking most likely on archaeological evidence to have formed in c. 2550BC in central Europe when a non-R1b (or lets say non L11) group of copper age SW Europeans producing the first beaker pottery and an L11 derived central European group of either Yamnaya (via an intermediary culture) or CW (perhaps an atypical or specialist subset thereof) descent mixed after arriving from coming from opposite directions. This blended early SW beaker traits with central European ones and formed a new entity and wider network and the fully developed beaker package expanded with this new group. What did the two groups bring? The SW Europeans brought advanced gold working and other exotica while I strongly suspect the central Europeans key contribution was the horse and great mobility.

Why do I say this? Because when the first beaker pots were made in Iberia c. 2800BC there was no steppe groups west of Hungary or CW Groups west of Poland and adjacent. We also have no convincing evidence of an intrusion into Iberia by a southern route after 3000BC (copper) and no ancient DNA evidence that any pre-beaker south Europeans carried L11 derivatives or steppe genes. So I am just following my interpretation of what I see and coming up with the simplest answer I can see.

So it follows then that I see P312 as a later beaker thing in south-west Europe and of course later waves too. What little ancient evidence their is seems to date the influx between 2800 and 2000BC - I would suggest post-2500BC.

It then follows from my own reasoning that P312 had a prior existence in a pre-beaker culture. I suspect from triangulating between an apparent flow of U106 or its immediate ancestor up rivers heading to north Germanic Europe and P312 apparently going more through central Europe that there was a split in L11 with the U106 branch entering CW culture as a minority and P312 heading west. Due to the mass of the Carpathians I would see that as indicating a split no further west than Moldova. I think I am leaning towards the idea of P312 being in Yamnaya in Hungary c. 3000BC which would make sense if horse riding later became P312's major contribution

I used to think that the fastest and most logical route for SW early beaker folk to meet up with R1b non-beaker central Europeans to mix and form the developed beaker package may have been up the Rhone to the Rhine and Danube but I recently am wondering if they used the long established passes from southern France into north Italy along the Po and the head of the Adriatic - a move which c. 2550BC give or take would have allowed them to bypass CW groups into the Slovenia/north Croatia/south Austria/west Hungary area where they would have been close to but just south of CW groups. Perhaps it was there that the cultural hybriding took place that gave rise to the R1b-beaker link and perhaps the horse riding skills of people in this area explain the simply incredible expansion and mobility of beaker after 2500BC.

[alan]

I am quoting alan's post from here (http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?97-Genetic-Genealogy-and-Ancient-DNA-in-the-News&p=112893&viewfull=1#post112893), since we can't really discuss things in that thread.

Anyway, I think that is a good post with sound reasoning. I would add that I think Gimbutas was right to attribute Beaker, at least the Beaker that accounts for the spread of R1b-P312, to the amalgam of Vucedol and Yamnaya.

There are other good reasons to doubt that early Iberian Beaker was R1b (if in fact Beaker is earliest in Iberia, which I doubt). Those early Iberian Beaker skeletons were small in stature, gracile, long headed and Mediterranean, while the later Beaker Folk were taller, more robust, and tended to be brachycephalic. Someone please correct me if that is not accurate. In addition, alleged early Iberian Beaker pots are found in old collective Neolithic tombs absent the warrior kit and the single burial under a tumulus that characterize later Beaker burials, i.e., the ones we think of as classic Bell Beaker burials.

My post is basically following the ancient DNA evidence as it stands (unsatisfactory though the small sample is) and letting it lead my conclusion. Plus throwing in a very well established pre-beaker route from through north Italy to SE France that could have been used by SW European elements as the shortest route to the area of central Europe east of the Adriatic to and from the west Med.

Personally I believe that this route was originally used from say 3200-2600BC in a mainly east to west way spreading copper and other traits mentioned in a recent paper from east to west. However my own view based on the ancient DNA is that these were not R1b-L11 derived people but basically farmers with knowledge of copper derived from the Balkans probing eastwards and perhaps continuing contacts and linkages through ongoing use of this route right up until the arrival of beaker. Pottery seems to indicate that in the pre-beaker copper age the flow was north Italy to France i.e. east to west and I suppose Remedello symbolism in the western Alps as far as SE France too.

What seems to have happened c. 2600-2550BC is the flow reversed and beaker people settled in south France (and very probably of Iberian origin) used this route in reverse to enter central Europe (although they could also have used several Alpine passes into west central Europe too). If CW was R1a dominated with just localised U106 inputs then the Po route to the NW Adriatic, Austria, Hungary etc would allow SW Europeans to come into contact with east-central Europeans but avoid CW initially.

My feeling is after a period of influence and contact with SW Europeans (non-L11 IMO) the flow returned again east to west and R1b central Europeans with some beaker traits taken from SW European contacts added to their 'native' traits undergoing a great expansion west and north c. 2500BC. It is very interesting that there was a major change in climate to a continental drier sort of weather with sunny dry summers and cold dry winters c. 2500BC. That could be somehow behind the sudden movement of what seem to be two counterflows into each other and then a major expansion of this P312 developed beaker people. The main change that such weather patterns have is they make north-west Europe much more attractive while at the same time causing problems due to aridity and very cold winters in areas like eastern Europe and perhaps arid areas of southern Europe too.

[kinman]

Hi Jean,
Thanks for that list of ancient humans tested for the European lactase gene. There seems to be a lack of the derived form of the gene in Europe until 3000 B.C., when 5 out of 19 samples in Spain tested positive for the derived form. But I wonder how much of confidence interval is associated with the 3000 B.C. date (hundreds of years either way?).
Anyway, if the lactase gene originated many thousands of years before that, wouldn't that perhaps indicate it was long present further east (such as Anatolia or the steppe somewhere between Kazakhstan and Ukraine)? And if it was localised for thousands of years in a certain area (Kazakhstan for instance), that might indicate it was largely confined to one ydna haplogroup for a long period of time. Until we sample ancient remains in such areas, seems like it's a possibility that can't be ruled out. That might explain why the samples in Europe between 6220 and 3000 B.C. all tested negative.
--------------Ken
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


LP is not exclusive to any particular Y-DNA haplogroup. It is passed on separately. It can be passed on by women. See http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/autosomaladna.shtml

[rms2]

As I recall, only about 1/4 of the Lichtenstein Cave samples had the lactase gene, so I would suspect that the sample just happened to have one R1b that didn't have the gene. On the other hand, R1b-V88 in Africa has a fairly good frequency of the European lactase gene, and it split off the main R1b line very early. Anyway, it wouldn't have had to have been a majority trait on the steppe to be advantageous. I believe that it is less than 40% in R1b-V88, not a majority, but still regarded as advantageous.
------------Ken
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Where's the data on R1b-V88 and LP? If you are talking about this report (http://www.malariajournal.com/content/10/1/9), in which 13910 T was found at about 37% in the Fulani of Mali, we do not know what the y haplogroups of those LP persons were, or how many were male and how many female. R1b-V88 is found among the Fulani, but we cannot just assume that the LP persons in that report were all or even mostly R1b-V88.

As Jean pointed out, LP is an autosomal trait and can be handed on by both males and females.

At any rate, LP couldn't be much of an advantage if only a small minority of people possessed it.

[rms2]

My post is basically following the ancient DNA evidence as it stands (unsatisfactory though the small sample is) and letting it lead my conclusion. Plus throwing in a very well established pre-beaker route from through north Italy to SE France that could have been used by SW European elements as the shortest route to the area of central Europe east of the Adriatic to and from the west Med.

Personally I believe that this route was originally used from say 3200-2600BC in a mainly east to west way spreading copper and other traits mentioned in a recent paper from east to west. However my own view based on the ancient DNA is that these were not R1b-L11 derived people but basically farmers with knowledge of copper derived from the Balkans probing eastwards and perhaps continuing contacts and linkages through ongoing use of this route right up until the arrival of beaker. Pottery seems to indicate that in the pre-beaker copper age the flow was north Italy to France i.e. east to west and I suppose Remedello symbolism in the western Alps as far as SE France too.

What seems to have happened c. 2600-2550BC is the flow reversed and beaker people settled in south France (and very probably of Iberian origin) used this route in reverse to enter central Europe (although they could also have used several Alpine passes into west central Europe too). If CW was R1a dominated with just localised U106 inputs then the Po route to the NW Adriatic, Austria, Hungary etc would allow SW Europeans to come into contact with east-central Europeans but avoid CW initially.

My feeling is after a period of influence and contact with SW Europeans (non-L11 IMO) the flow returned again east to west and R1b central Europeans with some beaker traits taken from SW European contacts added to their 'native' traits undergoing a great expansion west and north c. 2500BC. It is very interesting that there was a major change in climate to a continental drier sort of weather with sunny dry summers and cold dry winters c. 2500BC. That could be somehow behind the sudden movement of what seem to be two counterflows into each other and then a major expansion of this P312 developed beaker people. The main change that such weather patterns have is they make north-west Europe much more attractive while at the same time causing problems due to aridity and very cold winters in areas like eastern Europe and perhaps arid areas of southern Europe too.

I would feel better about Beaker if I felt I had access to all the info about it in a convenient, unified source rather than piecemeal, in this paper and that, in this mention in a book and that mention in another. Anyway, my feeling is that the whole Iberia thing is weird and, as Christian Jeunesse said, the product of a kind oddball orthodoxy dating back to the early 20th century and some radiocarbon dates that might not be all that solid. An origin in the east followed by a steady progress west makes more sense.

Gimbutas, who apparently was not beholden to the Iberian orthodoxy, saw Beaker as the product of Yamnaya and Vucedol, which certainly makes a lot more sense in terms of y-dna, physical anthropology, and the cultural package than an origin in Iberia. I suspect she was right.

[kinman]

Ah yes, that is why I only recalled "less than 40%". But still, even if it was only 15-20% instead of 37%, I would bet it is advantageous to be in that minority. Would you want to be?
And yes, I am quite aware that lactase persistence is autosomal. However, if the derived "European" gene was restricted geographically in the first few thousands years, then it could easily have been restricted in those early stages to just R1b and their R1a neighbors.
How many female (mitochondrial) haplogroups might have been involved isn't as important if most of the migration (and spread of the lactase persistence gene) was by mostly young and adventurous males. It would still have been mostly an R1b/R1a phenomenon, especially in the early stages. If daughters with this gene married non-R1b or R1a men, then the percentages of lactase persistence gene in those other male haplogroups would start at 0% and slowly rise. But they would tend to only produce heterozygous offspring early on, and if R1b and R1a had all the other expansive advantages that I believe they had, they would thus maintain their higher percentages of lactase persistence until the present day.
This all makes me think that the R1b and R1a populations in the lactase "homeland" (perhaps Kazakhstan) had perhaps become over 90% (by 6500 years ago) if one includes both homozygous and heterozygous males. That percentage would then be slowly reduced by intermarriage of their children with wives or husbands with no lactase persistence genes. But that reduction in percentage would be partially offset by natural selection when times were tough (droughts, etc.). I do not think it is wise to casually dismiss such scenarios or to minimize the advantages of having even a minority with such a gene. Otherwise one might be missing an opportunity to narrow one's focus on where to look for evidence.
------------------Ken
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Where's the data on R1b-V88 and LP? If you are talking about this report (http://www.malariajournal.com/content/10/1/9), in which 13910 T was found at about 37% in the Fulani of Mali, we do not know what the y haplogroups of those LP persons were, or how many were male and how many female. R1b-V88 is found among the Fulani, but we cannot just assume that the LP persons in that report were all or even mostly R1b-V88.

As Jean pointed out, LP is an autosomal trait and can be handed on by both males and females.

At any rate, LP couldn't be much of an advantage if only a small minority of people possessed it.

[kinman]

Although we disagree on how old Bell Beaker Culture might be, we certainly are in agreement the the whole "Iberia thing is weird". Our only difference is how far east the origin might have been.
-----------Ken
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


I would feel better about Beaker if I felt I had access to all the info about it in a convenient, unified source rather than piecemeal, in this paper and that, in this mention in a book and that mention in another. Anyway, my feeling is that the whole Iberia thing is weird and, as Christian Jeunesse said, the product of a kind oddball orthodoxy dating back to the early 20th century and some radiocarbon dates that might not be all that solid. An origin in the east followed by a steady progress west makes more sense.

Gimbutas, who apparently was not beholden to the Iberian orthodoxy, saw Beaker as the product of Yamnaya and Vucedol, which certainly makes a lot more sense in terms of y-dna, physical anthropology, and the cultural package than an origin in Iberia. I suspect she was right.

[alan]

I would feel better about Beaker if I felt I had access to all the info about it in a convenient, unified source rather than piecemeal, in this paper and that, in this mention in a book and that mention in another. Anyway, my feeling is that the whole Iberia thing is weird and, as Christian Jeunesse said, the product of a kind oddball orthodoxy dating back to the early 20th century and some radiocarbon dates that might not be all that solid. An origin in the east followed by a steady progress west makes more sense.

Gimbutas, who apparently was not beholden to the Iberian orthodoxy, saw Beaker as the product of Yamnaya and Vucedol, which certainly makes a lot more sense in terms of y-dna, physical anthropology, and the cultural package than an origin in Iberia. I suspect she was right.

I suppose the big question to ask is even if Iberia has the earliest beaker pot (a female craft), what else in the developed beaker package has to have come from west to east? IMO not much. Maybe gold working.

[Kwheaton]

i am slowly reading Anthony's book. And I have to agree with rms2 about having everything being compared in one place. i just finished reading the bit about the different dates for the various ages....which has confused me for years. Then there's the different methods of carbon dating, and different accuracies so it could be at the end of the day we are comparing apples and oranges. These things may be obvious to the well heeled in lingustics and archaeology but I was not expecting to have to deal with a different set of meanings for each area of inquiry--- a sure way to insure inaccuracies creeping in.

[rms2]

I suppose the big question to ask is even if Iberia has the earliest beaker pot (a female craft), what else in the developed beaker package has to have come from west to east? IMO not much. Maybe gold working.

I know some here regard Gimbutas as outdated, but certainly she knew of the Iberian orthodoxy concerning Beaker, yet she wrote the following (in The Civilization of the Goddess, pages 390-391):



The Bell Beaker culture of western Europe which diffused between 2500 and 2100 B.C. between central Europe, the British Isles, and the Iberian Peninsula, could not have arisen in a vacuum. The mobile horse-riding and warrior people who buried their dead in Yamna type kurgans certainly could not have developed out of any west European culture. We must ask what sort of ecology and ideology created these people, and where are the roots of the specific Bell Beaker equipment and their burial rites. In my view, the Bell Beaker cultural elements derive from Vucedol and Kurgan (Late Yamna) traditions.

The specific correspondence between the Yamna, Late Vucedol, and Bell Beaker complexes is visible in burial rites which include grave pits under round barrows, the coexistence of cremation and inhumation rites, and the construction of mortuary houses. (FIGURE 10-38) In armaments we see tanged or riveted triangular daggers made of arsenic copper, spear points of arsenic copper and flint, concave-based or tanged triangular arrowheads of flint, and arrow straighteners. In ornaments there are necklaces of canine teeth, copper tubes, or bird bones; boar tusks; and crescent-shaped pendants resembling breast plates. In solar symbolism we find sun or star motifs excised and white encrusted on the inside of braziers, or incised on bone or amber button-shaped beads. Techniques of ceramic decoration include stamping or gouging in zoned metopes, encrustation with white paste of delicate geometric motifs, zigzags, dashes, nets, lozenges, and dots or circles (a Baden-Kostolac-Vucedol tradition). Certain ceramic forms placed in graves, such as braziers and beakers, are from the Kurgan tradition. The Bell Beaker people, wherever they spread, continued the traditional ceramic art connected with their faith. Only the ritual importance of their uniquely beautiful stereotyped beakers could have motivated their production for hundreds of years in lands far from the homeland. The correspondences linking the Bell Beaker and Yamna with the Vucedol - in armament, costume, funeral rites, beliefs in life after death, and in symbolism - are precisely the most significant and revealing. It is very likely that the Bell Beaker complex is an amalgam of Vucedol and Yamna traditions formed after the incursion of the Yamna people into the milieu of the Vucedol culture, i.e., in the course of 300 to 400 years after 3000-2900 B.C.

BTW, concerning pottery, there are steppe pots (called Kurgan I or "early Yamna" by Gimbutas) pictured in Figure 10-5 on page 357 of The Civilization of the Goddess dated to the mid-5th millennium BC that look more like prototypes of Beaker pots than anything else I have seen. They were recovered from kurgans in the Lower Volga region.

[razyn]

I know some here regard Gimbutas as outdated, but certainly she knew of the Iberian orthodoxy concerning Beaker, yet she wrote the following (in The Civilization of the Goddess, pages 390-391):

... In armaments we see tanged or riveted triangular daggers made of arsenic copper, spear points of arsenic copper and flint, concave-based or tanged triangular arrowheads of flint, and arrow straighteners. In ornaments there are necklaces of canine teeth, copper tubes, or bird bones; boar tusks; and crescent-shaped pendants resembling breast plates.


The arsenical copper references (among other details) in the last Gimbutas quotation remind me that a couple of years ago, Alan and others were interested in -- if not necessarily persuaded by -- some of the new (2009 and since) ideas about furnace smelting and so on, stirred up by Nissim Amzallag. I was rereading his 2009 AJA paper -- had printed out a copy -- and I think he has some very good points from anthropology, regardless of whether one can accept his interpretation of Canaanite slag, and what that may prove about a uniquely Levantine origin of smelter metallurgy. For the paper itself, try http://www.ajaonline.org/sites/default/files/AJA1134Amzallag_0.pdf

Those good points are pretty much on pp. 512-13. Sometimes it can be very helpful to climb up out of the dig and look at the rest of the culture whose potsherds one is attempting to reassemble. Or, you know, crucible sherds -- whatever is still recognizable, after 5 K years. Amzallag has a substantial library of papers one may read (right up to 2015), on his Academia site. Many, if not most, of them stray into nominally religious areas that we aren't supposed to talk about here (along with politics and football teams). I suppose as long as he's talking about Prometheus or Hephaistos, it's OK -- even if in other papers, the same author is saying more or less the same things about a pre-Israelite, Levantine YHWH cult. Anthropologically speaking, the drift is that metallurgists have for a few thousand years been spooky, high-status guys from out of town, who came in from the hills with their magic and transformed the culture forever. (And they probably also have a lot of patrilineal descendants -- which makes this at least somewhat relevant to Gimbutas, Bell Beakers and R1b. Others here have been looking for some Yamnaya/Maykop interface.)

This is of more than idle interest to me, having two sons and several grandsons; my wife's father and her maternal grandfather were metallurgists.

If anyone would like to revisit, or repent for, what they already said on this general topic in 2013, here is one place to look: http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?948-Links-between-Mesopotamia-Maykop-etc
Buried in that fairly active thread one may find (among other things) links to the published rebuttal of Amzallag by Thornton et al, and his response.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

The arsenical copper references (among other details) in the last Gimbutas quotation remind me that a couple of years ago, Alan and others were interested in -- if not necessarily persuaded by -- some of the new (2009 and since) ideas about furnace smelting and so on, stirred up by Nissim Amzallag. I was rereading his 2009 AJA paper -- had printed out a copy -- and I think he has some very good points from anthropology, regardless of whether one can accept his interpretation of Canaanite slag, and what that may prove about a uniquely Levantine origin of smelter metallurgy. For the paper itself, try http://www.ajaonline.org/sites/default/files/AJA1134Amzallag_0.pdf

Those good points are pretty much on pp. 512-13. Sometimes it can be very helpful to climb up out of the dig and look at the rest of the culture whose potsherds one is attempting to reassemble. Or, you know, crucible sherds -- whatever is still recognizable, after 5 K years. Amzallag has a substantial library of papers one may read (right up to 2015), on his Academia site. Many, if not most, of them stray into nominally religious areas that we aren't supposed to talk about here (along with politics and football teams). I suppose as long as he's talking about Prometheus or Hephaistos, it's OK -- even if in other papers, the same author is saying more or less the same things about a pre-Israelite, Levantine YHWH cult. Anthropologically speaking, the drift is that metallurgists have for a few thousand years been spooky, high-status guys from out of town, who came in from the hills with their magic and transformed the culture forever. (And they probably also have a lot of patrilineal descendants -- which makes this at least somewhat relevant to Gimbutas, Bell Beakers and R1b. Others here have been looking for some Yamnaya/Maykop interface.)

This is of more than idle interest to me, having two sons and several grandsons; my wife's father and her maternal grandfather were metallurgists.

If anyone would like to revisit, or repent for, what they already said on this general topic in 2013, here is one place to look: http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?948-Links-between-Mesopotamia-Maykop-etc
Buried in that fairly active thread one may find (among other things) links to the published rebuttal of Amzallag by Thornton et al, and his response.

I wasn;t on this forum 2 years ago, but did read the paper independently. It was very interesting but I do recall it received quite a bit of critique from other archaeologists for its apparently simplistic diffusionist ideas. But it might certainly explain the Iberian copper industry.

I saw that new BBC show on the Celts last night, and was impressed by the anthropological assessment of the "Halstattians". Yes these guys were wealthy and prestigious, but they were labourers, not "kings'. Ie they were self-made men & women. My point is that Bronze and early Iron Age society was heterarchical. There were various social casts who used access to resources to try and consolidate their positions - whether this was from salt, metallurgy, controlling trade nodes, or cattle herds.
How they were all inter-related and how they identified viz-a-viz each other would have undoubtedly been complex.

[kinman]

That's interesting. Lower Volga would be near the western border of Kazakhstan. I'm still debating whether the horse was domesticated further up the Volga or a little closer to the Ural River. I guess we may never know for sure, but I am convinced the Botai Culture and others further east adopted horse domestication from the Volga-Ural area. Their language was probably proto-Tocharian.
Anyway, assuming that R1b people were the main element spreading Bell Beaker into central and western Europe, I guess it is just semantics where one draws the line that marks the beginning of Bell Beaker Culture (both the time and the place). Perhaps we should call the early Yamnaya on the steppe "proto-Bell Beaker", and then call it "Bell Beaker" in the Danube River corridor and beyond. Does that sound like a good compromise? And the later spread from Iberia should be called "Maritime Bell Beaker" (starting about 2900 BC). I think that could reflect the Gimbutas viewpoint quite well.
-----------Ken



BTW, concerning pottery, there are steppe pots (called Kurgan I or "early Yamna" by Gimbutas) pictured in Figure 10-5 on page 357 of The Civilization of the Goddess dated to the mid-5th millennium BC that look more like prototypes of Beaker pots than anything else I have seen. They were recovered from kurgans in the Lower Volga region.

[rms2]

I kind of like Jeunesse's suggestion that Maritime Beaker is not actually the earliest form of Bell Beaker but is actually a later Beaker form from the Atlantic margins of the culture.

[R.Rocca]

Lazaridis' Neolithic Anatolians have mtDNA that is similar to EEF and from a Y-DNA perspective are mostly G2a2 with some minor J2, H, C1 and I at low frequency. While we spend a lot of time discussing positive R1b results, the negative results are just as important. In this case, the absence of R1b/R1a is as big a blow to the PIE Anatolian Hypothesis if there ever was one.

[rms2]

Lazaridis' Neolithic Anatolians have mtDNA that is similar to EEF and from a Y-DNA perspective are mostly G2a2 with some minor J2, H, C1 and I at low frequency. While we spend a lot of time discussing positive R1b results, the negative results are just as important. In this case, the absence of R1b/R1a is as big a blow to the PIE Anatolian Hypothesis if there ever was one.

Very true.

I'm kind of interested in the physical anthropology, as well. I wish the papers that report on ancient dna would also report on the physical characteristics of the skeletons from which it is extracted, but I guess physical anthropology has fallen out of favor. Anyway, I'm putting together a table of physical types from ancient European cultures. Page number references are from The Civilization of the Goddess, except where otherwise noted. Y haplogroups found come from Jean M's Ancient Eurasian DNA web site.

6247

[Romilius]

Lazaridis' Neolithic Anatolians have mtDNA that is similar to EEF and from a Y-DNA perspective are mostly G2a2 with some minor J2, H, C1 and I at low frequency. While we spend a lot of time discussing positive R1b results, the negative results are just as important. In this case, the absence of R1b/R1a is as big a blow to the PIE Anatolian Hypothesis if there ever was one.

Thanks for informations.

I would say that those results were somewhat expected. C1 is the most interesting: perhaps it was very very widespread in Eurasia.

Also, I read on Eurogenes that there are some discussions about the absence of haplogroup E: someone suggests that it could be mesolithic in Europe.

As for R1b, well, Lazaridis' results came with the discovery of a R1a in the Yamna area: he suggested a replacement of Yamna male lines - for what I understood - in the Bronze Age. It is useless to say that there are some people that cried loudly the non-PIE linguistic connection of Yamna culture in the light of that result. On Dispatches from Turtle Island I read a Kartvelian-Vasconic connection.

Alberto, instead, is trying to put on the table an interesting question: where is the Georgian-like admixture in Yamna from. He added that if we were in possession of mtDNA result from the area of that R1a, we would have the answer to this.

[Romilius]

Very True.

I'm kind of interested in the physical anthropology, as well. I wish the papers that report on ancient dna would also report on the physical characteristics of the skeletons from which it is extracted, but I guess physical anthropology has fallen out of favor. Anyway, I'm putting together a table of physical types from ancient European cultures. Page number references are from The Civilization of the Goddess, except where otherwise noted. Y haplogroups found come from Jean M's Ancient Eurasian DNA web site.

6247

I also suspect the presence of blondism at low percentage in Anatolian Neolithic samples.

[R.Rocca]

Also, I read on Eurogenes that there are some discussions about the absence of haplogroup E: someone suggests that it could be mesolithic in Europe.

That would be difficult to justify in light of the fact that a 4500 year old NE African belonging to haplogroup E has been found to completely lack any Eurasian ancestry in just the past week.


As for R1b, well, Lazaridis' results came with the discovery of a R1a in the Yamna area: he suggested a replacement of Yamna male lines - for what I understood - in the Bronze Age. It is useless to say that there are some people that cried loudly the non-PIE linguistic connection of Yamna culture in the light of that result. On Dispatches from Turtle Island I read a Kartvelian-Vasconic connection.

At some point there was a wedge driven into L23 and that seems to have been the result of R1a, and still Z2103 has remained very high in the eastern steppe. Later Slavic movements likely intensified that wedge, not only in the Don, but also the Balkans. We are likely talking about different PIE speaking tribes early and IE speaking hoards late. Either way, all ancient DNA findings to date reinforce the Steppe hypothesis and make the Anatolian hypothesis completely illogical.


Alberto, instead, is trying to put on the table an interesting question: where is the Georgian-like admixture in Yamna from. He added that if we were in possession of mtDNA result from the area of that R1a, we would have the answer to this.

The key will be Maykop. It could be that Yamnaya (R1b) and Maykop (G2a) men may have been jockeying for position before Yamnaya finally won out in some areas of the Caucasus (Bronze Age Armenians) and not making much of a dent in others (Georgians/Kura-Araxes?).

[Kwheaton]

My Mom was a college re-entry student at UC Berkeley and she majored in Physical Anthropology. I know she would have loved all the research of the past few years. Her classes were held in Kroeber Hall named for Alfred Kroeber. His wife wrote Ishi. I found out just by happenstance that my neighbor worked for them as her first job (she is in her 90's). Small world.....never underestimate the power of connections and interests....

[rms2]

It is also apparent that much of Yamnaya simply pulled up stakes and went west. There are thousands of Yamnaya kurgans in the Carpathian basin. Not everybody got a kurgan built for him at death, and no doubt many more kurgans once existed but were lost to farming and other types of building activity in later ages.

This is key for us, since it was the western portion of Yamnaya that was involved, and somehow Europe became both IE speaking and heavily R1b-L23.

Of course, one sees all sorts of desperate arguments to somehow separate R1b from Yamnaya, Yamnaya from IE, or R1b from IE, etc., etc. Since it is impossible to separate Z2103 from Yamnaya, some have turned to merely trying to separate L51 from Yamnaya, to make it wholly western European and non-IE. The anti-R1b mania is baffling, but it seems to stem more from sour grapes (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sour%20grapes) than anything else.

[George]

"This is key for us, since it was the western portion of Yamnaya that was involved"

How do you know that? P.S. Unless you mean something else than I would for "western". Nothing has yet been tested west of the Don.

[alan]

the tweets seem to imply Poltavka was still R1b and it was Srubna when there was a change to R1a in Samara.

[Romilius]

The key will be Maykop. It could be that Yamnaya (R1b) and Maykop (G2a) men may have been jockeying for position before Yamnaya finally won out in some areas of the Caucasus (Bronze Age Armenians) and not making much of a dent in others (Georgians/Kura-Araxes?).


Maykop G2a? When, why, where?

[Megalophias]

the tweets seem to imply Poltavka was still R1b and it was Srubna when there was a change to R1a in Samara.
Yes. It also mentioned that they found a "South Asian" type of R1a (I guess L657 most likely). I wonder if the replacement came from the east or the west.

Was there any mention of Sredny Stog, Kemi Oba, or Catacombnaya aDNA? That region may be too inaccessible at present I guess.

[ADW_1981]

the tweets seem to imply Poltavka was still R1b and it was Srubna when there was a change to R1a in Samara.

I wonder if Srubna was all R1a, or if it was a transitional 1/3 R1b and 2/3 R1a which made them arrive at that conclusion.

[alan]

Lazaridis' Neolithic Anatolians have mtDNA that is similar to EEF and from a Y-DNA perspective are mostly G2a2 with some minor J2, H, C1 and I at low frequency. While we spend a lot of time discussing positive R1b results, the negative results are just as important. In this case, the absence of R1b/R1a is as big a blow to the PIE Anatolian Hypothesis if there ever was one.

I was thinking the same thing. The west Anatolian Neolithic spread there from the central Anatolia area so I would rule out the latter as having R1b (particularly M269) either. No doubt the fall back position for those who see an Anatolia-R1b-IE Neolithic origin will be east Anatolia or north Iran where testing hasnt happened yet. However anyone who still believe M269 spread into Europe with the first farmers now is a fool deeply in denial.

[alan]

I would say R1a likely entered Samara from the north from that arc of CW descended groups north of R1b Yamnaya/Poltavka

http://bsecher.pagesperso-orange.fr/genetique/ForestSteppeCultures.jpg

[alan]

I would say R1a likely entered Samara from the north from that arc of CW descended groups north of R1b Yamnaya/Poltavka

http://bsecher.pagesperso-orange.fr/genetique/ForestSteppeCultures.jpg

Looking at that map Abashevo looks a likely source to me but I am no expert in the genesis of Srubna/Timber grave.

[alan]

Again IE linked R1a again links to the chain of cultures with the CW-Middle Dnieper-Fatyanovo-Abashevo-Sintashta sort of linkage. I guess Srubna/Timber Grave can be added to this.

There is no doubt that CW's expanded from the westernmost end of the steppe - probably the forest steppe of west Ukraine near the Dnieper. However we also know that CW was genetically very like Yamnaya albeit with a little less teal and a little more ENF (which supports an expansion position from somewhere like the middle Dniester IMO).

What still remains rather unclear archaeologically speaking in term of specifics rather than behavoural traits is what culture did these predominant Yamnaya like genes come from that went into the formation of CW? Some people say Middle Dneiper, other see it as a derivative of CW but regardless I have not seen any good explanation for the origins of this in terms of prior cultures. I would tend to look to prior cultures of the middle Dneiper valley or perhaps just to the east. Perhaps Yamnaya is partly a horizon that absorbed more than one pre-Yamnaya steppe culture. Rassamkin - who I usually suspect is a little biased - could be correct in that view.

[alan]

I would say R1a likely entered Samara from the north from that arc of CW descended groups north of R1b Yamnaya/Poltavka

http://bsecher.pagesperso-orange.fr/genetique/ForestSteppeCultures.jpg

I think that map pretty succinctly presents the range of options for the origin of Srubna-Timber Grave R1a people who replaced Yamnaya-Poltavka people to the south and it pretty well points to a northern origin at the east end of Abashevo.

[R.Rocca]

Maykop G2a? When, why, where?

Deductive reasoning/speculating on my part as we don't (yet) have ancient DNA (obviously).

[alan]

The thing about R1a now is that you can see clearly its linked to that forest steppe movement CW-Middle Dnieper-Fatyanovo-Abashevo-Sintashta-Srubna as well as Andronovo and it fits beautifully into linguistic deductions based on modern populations years ago. I think even with parts of that chain untested we can be very sure of the R1a connections of that whole group of cultures. What we dont know is which culture this branch of R1a existed into prior to 2800BC/prior to CW. That is the big missing link in the story of copper age R1a. However this group of cultures was part of a west to east chain albeit commencing at the NW boundary of the European steppe around north-west Ukraine so it is to this point of commencement we should be looking for the pre-CW location of that lineage and the work back from there.

One point I would make is that if the recent paper indicating that Yamnaya is just the mature part of Repin with the latter going back to 4000BC then it is worth remembering that the Don was also the eastern boundary of Sredny Stog settlement and therefore Repin emerged at the easternmost boundary of the prior Sredny Stog territory. So if Stedny Stog was archaic proto-IE or Anatolian like as Anthony argued then Repin emerged on its easternmost edge and the vast bulk of archaic PIEs lived west of Repin between the Don and Dnieper.

[alan]

I am as usual displaying terrible thread discipline. If there is another thread on this I will start to post there.

[razyn]

My Mom was a college re-entry student at UC Berkeley and she majored in Physical Anthropology. I know she would have loved all the research of the past few years. Her classes were held in Kroeber Hall named for Alfred Kroeber. His wife wrote Ishi.

And btw their daughter wrote the Earthsea trilogy, and a lot of other much admired fiction in the fantasy-SF vein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin

[Kwheaton]

And btw their daughter wrote the Earthsea trilogy, and a lot of other much admired fiction in the fantasy-SF vein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin

Yes and my neighbor did not know that or how important the parents work was in Anthropology. I have Alfred's Handbook of CA Indians as well as both Ishi books. My neighbor does however remember Ursula as a young girl, whe was only a few years older herself. When she mentioned the name Kroeber a couple of years ago, I about fell off my chair. I think it is important to remember all these weird overlaps even when we are trying to sort out Bell Beaker pots.

The Kroebers lived in Berkeley, CA but summered in the Napa Valley. How many ancient people may have done the same, even thousands of years ago? How many marriages resulted in the migration of not only a person, but their DNA and perhaps their skill and style in building pots.....if its about humans....its going to be complicated....

[rms2]

"This is key for us, since it was the western portion of Yamnaya that was involved"

How do you know that? P.S. Unless you mean something else than I would for "western". Nothing has yet been tested west of the Don.

The portion of Yamnaya in the western part of its range was the western part of Yamnaya (obviously). Those Yamnaya people who ended up in the Carpathian basin ended up west of where they began.

At any rate, western Europe became predominantly R1b-L23 and Indo-European speaking somehow. Both of those things have been connected to the Yamnaya people. It really is not that hard to figure out what happened.

You are right that no testing of western Yamnaya has yet taken place, which is why I think no R1b-L51 has yet turned up in ancient Yamnaya remains.

[George]

The portion of Yamnaya in the western part of its range was the western part of Yamnaya (obviously). Those Yamnaya people who ended up in the Carpathian basin ended up west of where they began.

At any rate, western Europe became predominantly R1b-L23 and Indo-European speaking somehow. Both of those things have been connected to the Yamnaya people. It really is not that hard to figure out what happened.

You are right that no testing of western Yamnaya has yet taken place, which is why I think no R1b-L51 has yet turned up in ancient Yamnaya remains.

I obviously misunderstood you. I thought you were writing about Yamna BEFORE it moved south of the Danube. But further testing will be able to better answer this of course.

[rms2]

I obviously misunderstood you. I thought you were writing about Yamna BEFORE it moved south of the Danube. But further testing will be able to better answer this of course.

Well, even before they moved south of the Danube and up into the Carpathian basin, the Yamnaya living farthest west were still the westernmost Yamnaya people. I think they were probably a bit different from eastern Yamnaya. Besides probably having R1b-L51 among them, I think they probably had some EEF from living farther west and coming into contact and mixing with Old European peoples like Cucuteni, etc. I think they will plot closer to Beaker than the eastern Yamnaya have thus far.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Again IE linked R1a again links to the chain of cultures with the CW-Middle Dnieper-Fatyanovo-Abashevo-Sintashta sort of linkage. I guess Srubna/Timber Grave can be added to this.

There is no doubt that CW's expanded from the westernmost end of the steppe - probably the forest steppe of west Ukraine near the Dnieper. However we also know that CW was genetically very like Yamnaya albeit with a little less teal and a little more ENF (which supports an expansion position from somewhere like the middle Dniester IMO).

What still remains rather unclear archaeologically speaking in term of specifics rather than behavoural traits is what culture did these predominant Yamnaya like genes come from that went into the formation of CW? Some people say Middle Dneiper, other see it as a derivative of CW but regardless I have not seen any good explanation for the origins of this in terms of prior cultures. I would tend to look to prior cultures of the middle Dneiper valley or perhaps just to the east. Perhaps Yamnaya is partly a horizon that absorbed more than one pre-Yamnaya steppe culture. Rassamkin - who I usually suspect is a little biased - could be correct in that view.

There is little linking CWC to Yamnaya in terms of specific artefact assemblages, apart from similar ideological message highlighting the role of males.
Specifically, the raising of mounds are rather generic funerary features used to display the status of the deceased, the battle axes are seen as derived from preceding TRB ones, and the earliest Cord Ornamented pottery appears in Cucuteni-Tripolye culture. So its a syncretic but original combination of symbols used to create a new identity in a network possibly oppositional to Yamnaya.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Maykop G2a? When, why, where?

I wouldn't be surprised if Majkop is R1b-M269 (i naddition to some others haplogroups like G2a), and preceding (pre-4000 BC) samples on the steppe are all M73 (or pre-M73) and/or R1a.

[George]

There is little linking CWC to Yamnaya in terms of specific artefact assemblages, apart from similar ideological message highlighting the role of males.
Specifically, the raising of mounds are rather generic funerary features used to display the status of the deceased, the battle axes are seen as derived from preceding TRB ones, and the earliest Cord Ornamented pottery appears in Cucuteni-Tripolye culture. So its a syncretic but original combination of symbols used to create a new identity in a network possibly oppositional to Yamnaya.

In his recent article (Estonian Journal of Archaeology 2014) studying Finnish CW in the context of a very large number of recent finds, Piritta Hakala suggests that CW be considered a "phenomenon" with as he puts it "abundant local variation" rather than a "culture". And the Dutch scholar Sandra Beckerman has just defended a Ph.D. dissertation on CW in her country (with many comparative comments re CW elsewhere) emphasising that a proper understanding of it should see it as both supra regional similarities and regional variations. With the complication that there are a number of such "supra regional" networks, and their places of origin are difficult to determine, as is the problem of the initial CW set up. She writes about "exchange networks of goods, ideas, and possibly people". RC 14 dates are "too problematic" to solve this start point.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

In his recent article (Estonian Journal of Archaeology 2014) studying Finnish CW in the context of a very large number of recent finds, Piritta Hakala suggests that CW be considered a "phenomenon" with as he puts it "abundant local variation" rather than a "culture". And the Dutch scholar Sandra Beckerman has just defended a Ph.D. dissertation on CW in her country (with many comparative comments re CW elsewhere) emphasising that a proper understanding of it should see it as both supra regional similarities and regional variations. With the complication that there are a number of such "supra regional" networks, and their places of origin are difficult to determine, as is the problem of the initial CW set up. She writes about "exchange networks of goods, ideas, and possibly people". RC 14 dates are "too problematic" to solve this start point.

Well, exactly the same has been argued for BB (extensively) by archaeologists. Mitigating against this is the apparent homogeneity Y DNA markers suggesting a genuine genetic link. So it'll be curious to see what further sampling does to amend/ confirm this pattern

[R.Rocca]

From today's Mathieson paper...of the eight El Mirador, Atapuerca, Burgos samples (2880-2630 BCE), six were haplogroup I or I2a and two were G2a. This puts to the rest the likelihood that the poor quality ATP3 sample was some form of R1b.

[R.Rocca]

Also from the paper, and a further blow to the Iberian R1b refugium theory...


The Iberian Chalcolithic population lacks steppe ancestry, but Late Neolithic central and
northern Europeans have substantial such ancestry (Extended Data Fig. 3E) suggesting that
the spread of ANE/steppe ancestry did not occur simultaneously across Europe. All presentday
Europeans have less steppe ancestry than the Corded Ware, suggesting that this ancestry
was diluted as the earliest descendants of the steppe migrants admixed with local populations.
However, the statistic f4(Basque, Iberia_Chalcolithic; Yamnaya_Samara,Chimp)=0.00168 is
significantly positive (Z=8.1), as is the statistic f4(Spanish, Iberia_Chalcolithic;
Yamnaya_Samara, Chimp)= 0.00092 (Z=4.6). This indicates that steppe ancestry occurs in
present-day southwestern European populations, and that even the Basques cannot be
considered as mixtures of early farmers and hunter-gatherers without it.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Also from the paper, and a further blow to the Iberian R1b refugium theory...

Certainly appears that way, Rich
It seems that Iberia experienced constant gene flow from Central Europe (as well as the Mediterranean secondarily).
Id be happy to put my foot in it and even suggest that Iberia y haplogroup flux went :
- UP/ Mesolithic : I2a1 and C groups
- EN: G2 heavy EEF (almost complete replacement)
- MN/ copper: survival of EN plus moderate arrival of I2a2 -heavy groups ? from Balkans.
- sometime after 2000 BC: R1 arrival and near wholescale replacement

Now we just need to see the exact time and tempo of the R1b replacement (gradual vs sudden).
Archaeologically; I wonder how this demonstrates as there doesn't appear to be any "population collapse", at least in Iberia

[rms2]

I mentioned this over on the thread about the new Mathieson et al paper, but it's worth noting again that these folks seem stuck testing Yamnaya samples from too far east for our purpose, which is tracing the progress of R1b-L51 and its subclades into and across Europe west of Russia and Ukraine.

I'm waiting for that Vucedol period R1b that Reich et al are supposed to be testing and for some y-dna from western Yamnaya.

My money is on Gimbutas where Beaker is concerned.

[razyn]

I'm waiting for that Vucedol period R1b that Reich et al are supposed to be testing and for some y-dna from western Yamnaya.


Some of the stuff we have been awaiting may be revealed at the Jena L-A-G conference that commences today. For example, Reich has one solo presentation, and is co-author on another that I believe is billed as Lazaridis et al. I was looking around for someone who might be tweeting from that conference, and Lazaridis appears to be one possibility. Also, abstracts of most of the conference papers are now available -- I think that's new -- anyway the PDF carries the date of Oct. 9th in its url: http://www.shh.mpg.de/106100/Abstractbook_Oct_9th.pdf

[alan]

The tree indicates that between L51 and L11 SNP there was either very poor growth or perhaps a major extinction event that drastically pruned the tree down to just L11 and a very few residual L51xL11. The key as to the story of the ancestors of P312 and U106 outside the steppes is the period between 3000 and 2550BC. I have major doubts about L51 leaving the steppes in the earliest Kurgan wave because this is most likely linked to Anatolian type branch which really must have been a non-L51, probably mostly Z2103 type branch - perhaps because they were most effected by the aridity and driven out in the centuries around 4000BC. If L51xL11 had been in that wave we would surely see it in the former Anatolian speaking areas today. As for Gimbutas' 2nd wave, the main issue with that is it seems most archaeologists since dont see such a wave at all.

Then there is the Afansievo-Tocharian link which seems probable (albeit I am not convinced the Tarim mummies are certs to be linked to this) and this probably does not much pre-date 3200BC. This branch is earlier than Celto-Italic or pre-Germanic which are usually considered the next branches. Pre-Germanic is sometimes put just before Celto-Italic in the branching sequence and it looks odds on to have been put in place by an early branch that headed north-west and that probably didnt exist until 2800BC.

U106 seems to be a minority incorporation within the western part of the CW family of cultures. So, it may be evidence L11 derivatives were lurking close to the westernmost part of R1a dominated CW c. 2800BC. IMO it was probably incorporated into only the western branch of CW from some neighbouring culture.

All this leads me to believe L11 probably arose in the lower reaches of the Dnieper and perhaps the Dniester with the CW-R1a group or its immediate ancestor a little upstream to the north. Contact between the two may have led to some L11/U106 getting into CW somewhere at the Yamnaya-CW interface in west Ukraine and adjacent. The apparent fact U106 got into some north-western CW and not some of its derivatives that went east suggests to me that U106 got into CW somewhere like the Dniester in the area called 'contact zone' on this map where late Yamnaya and the forming CW culture met c. 2800BC

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ab...wZHQ7EMeK2M%3A

The upshot of that deduction would be that U106 would be present in late Yamnaya between the Dnieper and Dniester c. 2800BC and was able to bleed into corded ware in northern Europe by following the Dniester river towards the Vistula to reach the Baltic area with CW.

Another upshot is that brother P312 probably did not follow this route as it is so far unknown in any CW or CW related cultures. This suggests to me that P312 by 2800BC had moved at least slightly further west that those rivers that provided a link between the west end of the steppes and the Baltic. In other words by 2800BC I suspect that P312 was south or west of the Carpathians not north as U106 must surely have been. This suggests to me that U106 and P312 got separated during the Yamnaya expansion period 3000-2800BC with P312 pushing on west enough into the Danube to mean the Carpathians mean they could not push north like U106.

There is no evidence of P312 in either CW to the north or the Mediteranian/south Alpine cultures in pre-beaker times and for reasons cited above I think P312 had already gone into the Danube valley by 2800BC. Nor does it look likely to have been involved in the area of the Balkans much south of the Lower Danube which seems to fall south-east of the great Z2103-L51 divide in Europe which is still striking despite 5000 years passing since. So that seriously helpfully squeezes the likely location of pre-beaker P312 c. 2800BC into a narrow zone.

It seems to me that P312 likely was located c. 2800BC around the area where the middle and upper Danube meet - the stretch of the Danube valley between Brno, Belgrade, Budapest and Bratislava. A position like that and some centuries bordering R1a dominated CW c. 2800-2550BC around where the Danube narrows near Bratislava might explain the strange similar but oppositional relationship of central European beaker and CW but very different yDNA lines.

Its also a fact that for any south-western influences coming in to the making of bell beaker, the first area of central Europe that they would reach are also in the same sort of area. They either would have come up the Rhone and along the Danube's south bank avoiding CW and entering eastern Europe around the Hungary/Slovak sort of area OR they could have cut through the French Italian passes then across the north of Italy and to the head of the Adriatic. Either way they tend to converge in the same broad zone in the parts of several countries where the middle and upper Danube converge.

[kinman]

I followed and generally agreed with your reasoning in most of your post. But I'm not so sure about the last three paragraphs (quoted below).
I would rather call P312 Early Beaker (rather than "pre-beaker"). And I have P312 reaching Bratislava about 200 years earlier (3000 B.C.), giving rise to U152 about that time in that area. That would have given them 100-200 years to spread themselves (and their Bell Beaker Culture) west and south into Iberia.
---------------Ken
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




There is no evidence of P312 in either CW to the north or the Mediteranian/south Alpine cultures in pre-beaker times and for reasons cited above I think P312 had already gone into the Danube valley by 2800BC. Nor does it look likely to have been involved in the area of the Balkans much south of the Lower Danube which seems to fall south-east of the great Z2103-L51 divide in Europe which is still striking despite 5000 years passing since. So that seriously helpfully squeezes the likely location of pre-beaker P312 c. 2800BC into a narrow zone.

It seems to me that P312 likely was located c. 2800BC around the area where the middle and upper Danube meet - the stretch of the Danube valley between Brno, Belgrade, Budapest and Bratislava. A position like that and some centuries bordering R1a dominated CW c. 2800-2550BC around where the Danube narrows near Bratislava might explain the strange similar but oppositional relationship of central European beaker and CW but very different yDNA lines.

Its also a fact that for any south-western influences coming in to the making of bell beaker, the first area of central Europe that they would reach are also in the same sort of area. They either would have come up the Rhone and along the Danube's south bank avoiding CW and entering eastern Europe around the Hungary/Slovak sort of area OR they could have cut through the French Italian passes then across the north of Italy and to the head of the Adriatic. Either way they tend to converge in the same broad zone in the parts of several countries where the middle and upper Danube converge.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Correcting myself :

Archaeologically; I wonder how this demonstrates as there doesn't appear to be any "population collapse", at least in Iberia

Actually from 2200 BC the BB network begins to collapse with significant changes in Iberia and start of Bronze Age cultures.
From the present evidence, seems that R1b in Iberia is a post-Beaker phenomenon .
Same with Italy; likely post 2000 BC. The Bronze Age saw population nadir, more pastoralist, ephemeral settlement structures etc.

[R.Rocca]

Correcting myself :


Actually from 2200 BC the BB network begins to collapse with significant changes in Iberia and start of Bronze Age cultures.
From the present evidence, seems that R1b in Iberia is a post-Beaker phenomenon .
Same with Italy; likely post 2000 BC. The Bronze Age saw population nadir, more pastoralist, ephemeral settlement structures etc.

Not a chance.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Not a chance.

Maybe I missed something :
Care to elaborate ?

Oh I see what you're attempting to insist: R1b came to Italy before 2000 BC. Certainly possible .
But we know it was after the Remedello samples from Allebtoft dated 3000-2500, and this culture otherwise shows continuity until 22/2100; so my comments not far off

But let's see what more aDNA shows ...

[R.Rocca]

Maybe I missed something :
Care to elaborate ?

Oh I see what you're attempting to insist: R1b came to Italy before 2000 BC. Certainly possible .
But we know it was after the Remedello samples from Allebtoft dated 3000-2500, and this culture otherwise shows continuity until 22/2100; so my comments not far off

But let's see what more aDNA shows ...

There is a very healthy appearance of Central European Bell Beaker all over Northern and Central Italy starting in 2500 BC, so you are off by 500 years.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

There is a very healthy appearance of Central European Bell Beaker all over Northern and Central Italy starting in 2500, so you are off by 500 years.

Oh I forgot
Thanks
But let's wait for the aDNA just the same :)

[Gravetto-Danubian]

I' was interested to see what Volker Heyd has to say about Yamnaya and BB in the recent Conference at Max Planck

Here is his abstract"


From Yamnaya to Bell Beakers: Mechanisms of Transmission in an Interconnected
Europe, 3500–2000 BC

Volker Heyd, Universtiy Bristol, Bistol and University of Helsinki, Helsinki

Yamnaya Peoples in the East and Bell Beakers Users in the West are rightly seen as
the apogees in a long-term process of individualisation, gender differentiation, warrior
display and internationalisation/unification that fundamentally change the face
of the European Continent from the mid fourth and throughout the third millennium
BC. We can only approach the reasons why prehistoric peoples and cultures from
regions across Europe, which were no more than marginally in touch before, join in
the same emblematic pottery, new drinking habits, similar burial customs, anthropomorphic
stelae, ostentatious display of weapons and other paraphernalia, and
thus common values. However rather than seeing this development as an internal
European progress I want to point to the importance of the Pontic-Caspian steppes,
and a 2000 years lasting interaction scenario of infiltrating Suvorovo-Novodanilovka,
Nizhnemikhailovka-Kvityana and Yamnaya peoples and populations
with their more sedentary contemporaries in southeast Europe, the Carpathian basin
and northeast of the Carpathian bow. A crucial part of this interaction –besides
migrations and the exchange of genes and goods as recently highlighted in several
publications not only in Nature and Science– is the forwarding of innovations in the
sphere of subsistence economy. We see this archaeologically in a further importance
of animal husbandry, with larger herds, specialised breeding and new forms of herding management in particular for cattle. This obviously sets in motion a substantial
shift in general mobility patterns and of communication networks.
It is easily conceivable that this interaction must also have had a profound impact
on the whole settlement organisation and people’s way-of-life, in consequence
probably fundamentally affecting the basics of societies and thus challenging the
whole system of ideas, imaginations, morale, symbols and terms – a new world-view
and ultimately the base for a new language.

Nothing short of what we'd expect from Volker.

http://www.shh.mpg.de/106100/Abstractbook_Oct_9th.pdf

[razyn]

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 Phoenicians 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.

In my ongoing pattern of flogging this tired old horse (though it's still unclear to me whether he be dead or alive), I just ran across this: http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/fall-2015/article/petroglyph-in-spain-marks-when-atlantic-and-mediterranean-cultures-met

[George]

I' was interested to see what Volker Heyd has to say about Yamnaya and BB in the recent Conference at Max Planck

Here is his abstract"

.

Nothing short of what we'd expect from Volker.

http://www.shh.mpg.de/106100/Abstractbook_Oct_9th.pdf

He also likes to ignore or at least strongly downplay Corded Ware (which kinda "stopped" the new "Aryans" a little bit) He also has little to say about "the farmer teachers of Yamna". But never mind. No one is perfect ;)

[rms2]

Since this thread is about Beaker, R1b, and Gimbutas' ideas about Beaker, I want to post the following bar graphs from Mathieson et al to make an observation or two about that.

6282

Notice Beaker's combination of blue for Anatolia_Neolithic, orange for WHG, and yellow for Yamnaya_Samara. Isn't that about what one would expect if Gimbutas is right and Beaker represents the fusion of Vucedol and Yamnaya? According to her, Vucedol was a culture that was the product of Old European farmers who had been kurganized by one of the earlier waves of steppe pastoralists. So, before Yamnaya got to them, they were probably fairly heavy on the EEF or blue Anatolia_Neolithic component. Then came the early third millennium BC fusion with Yamnaya that led to Beaker and something like the proportions we see in the bar graph from Mathieson et al.

In addition, it is likely western Yamnaya (as opposed to Yamnaya_Samara) was already carrying some Anatolia_Neolithic/EEF from centuries of living cheek-by-jowl with Cucuteni-Tripolye, so Vucedol may not be responsible for that whole blue element of the Beaker profile.

[razyn]

In my ongoing pattern of flogging this tired old horse (though it's still unclear to me whether he be dead or alive), I just ran across this:

Since the compressed url obscures the full caption, it rather looks as if I was calling Alan a tired old horse. I meant for the dead-or-alive horse metaphor to refer to Copper Age sewn-plank boats for long-distance transport of goods and people. (That's what I've been flogging, here.) The article is about a petroglyph on the Atlantic coast of Spain showing a Mediterranean-looking sailboat, circa 2000 BC. Still not quite contemporary with the earliest Atlantic Beaker, maybe. But Khufu (2589–2566 BC) had some that were; and his dynasty's extant boats of cedar planks from Lebanon (sewn construction, both rowed and sailed) were not unexposed to the Mediterranean maritime trade network -- of Phoenicians, or anybody else.

[razyn]

Re:
Copper Age sewn-plank boats for long-distance transport of goods and people.

That topic will be included in a Smithsonian Channel program scheduled to air Saturday night (10 PM EST) and thereafter. I've mentioned it before:
Anyway, a program about all this, advertised as "Secrets: Great Pyramid," will air on the Smithsonian Channel Oct. 17th.
A newly posted clip from the upcoming show illustrates the copper work associated with Khufu's building projects:
http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/videos/why-copper-was-vital-to-gizas-great-pyramid/36317

[rms2]

Okay, I'm trying again. This should be a little bit bigger, better version of those admixture bar graphs from Mathieson et al that I think tend to bolster Gimbutas' belief that Beaker was the product of the fusion of Vucedol and Yamnaya.

6290

[Gravetto-Danubian]

He also likes to ignore or at least strongly downplay Corded Ware (which kinda "stopped" the new "Aryans" a little bit) He also has little to say about "the farmer teachers of Yamna". But never mind. No one is perfect ;)

Yes maybe CWC isn't his forte ?
And Yamnaya didn't need "teachers" (scoffs)
)

[George]

Yes maybe CWC isn't his forte ?
And Yamnaya didn't need "teachers" (scoffs)
)

They may not have needed them but they certainly got them ;) I'm not in agreement with the radical Manzura thesis or with the early Rassamakin (who was then collaborating with the Renfrew crowd) but some of their points are very valid. CWC not his forte? My impression is that CWC is his nothing at all.

[rms2]

They may not have needed them but they certainly got them ;) I'm not in agreement with the radical Manzura thesis or with the early Rassamakin (who was then collaborating with the Renfrew crowd) but some of their points are very valid. CWC not his forte? My impression is that CWC is his nothing at all.

Since Corded Ware preceded Beaker, it looks like Beaker may have stopped Corded Ware's progress westward. If Gimbutas was right, Beaker was the fusion of Vucedol and Yamnaya.

I don't think it makes sense to talk of one culture "teaching" the other. CW looks like it was the successor of Globular Amphora, which had a similar geographic distribution, while Yamnaya was farther south and moved up the Danube, as opposed to straight across the North European Plain.

[George]

Since Corded Ware preceded Beaker, it looks like Beaker may have stopped Corded Ware's progress westward. If Gimbutas was right, Beaker was the fusion of Vucedol and Yamnaya.

I don't think it makes sense to talk of one culture "teaching" the other. CW looks like it was the successor of Globular Amphora, which had a similar geographic distribution, while Yamnaya was farther south and moved up the Danube, as opposed to straight across the North European Plain.

I quite agree with your first point. On the other hand BB's counter thrust was also stopped in Eastern Poland. Interestingly, Yamna was the loser on both fronts. CW BTW wasn't exactly the "successor" of GAC. Except in the sense of mostly eating it up.

[jdean]

Talking about Globular Amphora, does anybody know what was said at the 21° Congress ?

[alan]

It is curious that CW had reached the Rhine/north Switerland by 2750BC (good dendro dates) but didnt expand through France. I can understand why it didnt expand south through the passes into Italy, southern France and even Iberia - they had some pretty strong looking copper age cultures there already. However, this doesnt seem to be the case for the rest of France. Some areas may simply have not been attractive - the Massive Central for example. However there is no obvious similar reason why the northern half of France was not settled. There is a 250 year long period c. 2750-2500BC when CW just stopped expanding west through the northern half of Europe but beaker had not yet appeared. Its a bit of a mystery IMO.

[George]

This might have absolutely nothing to do with it, but have a looksee, time allowing:

https://www.academia.edu/14849833/ANTHROPOLOGICAL_STRUCTURE_OF_GLOBULAR_AMPHORAE_CUL TURE_POPULATION_ON_THE_TERRITORY_OF_UKRAINE

Scroll down to the double PCA figures. The left represents the males in the various cultures analyzed: GAC, CW, Yamna etc.. The right represents the females. The CW males all cluster together on the upper left, with what appears to be a basically Westward bent. But they are still discernably distinct. But the CW females seem something else altogether. All the females in all the CW groups are anthropologically the same, and compared to the females of other cultural groups they are extremely shifted West and North... Could the CW have had some sort of "deal" with the people of the area you mention? "wives for peace" :) Or maybe this is just silly...

[Megalophias]

It is curious that CW had reached the Rhine/north Switerland by 2750BC (good dendro dates) but didnt expand through France. I can understand why it didnt expand south through the passes into Italy, southern France and even Iberia - they had some pretty strong looking copper age cultures there already. However, this doesnt seem to be the case for the rest of France. Some areas may simply have not been attractive - the Massive Central for example. However there is no obvious similar reason why the northern half of France was not settled. There is a 250 year long period c. 2750-2500BC when CW just stopped expanding west through the northern half of Europe but beaker had not yet appeared. Its a bit of a mystery IMO.

It seems that the post-Megalithic cultures of France (Seine-Oise-Marne in the north, Artenac in the south) were able to resist more effectively than those to the east - the Artenac culture persisted for many centuries before eventually Beakerizing. But why? Perhaps they were more unified among themselves, or quicker to adapt the new weapons and tactics?

[rms2]

I quite agree with your first point. On the other hand BB's counter thrust was also stopped in Eastern Poland. Interestingly, Yamna was the loser on both fronts. CW BTW wasn't exactly the "successor" of GAC. Except in the sense of mostly eating it up.

I don't see how you can say that Yamnaya was "the loser on both fronts". Apparently Beaker was Yamnaya 2.0 after the fusion with Vucedol, if Gimbutas was right.

It seems likely to me that CW was in fact the successor of Globular Amphora, which does not mean there were no changes or new developments involved. If there were no changes, then Globular Amphora would have simply remained Globular Amphora.

[rms2]

By the way, did anyone notice this from Mathieson et al concerning the R1b-M269 Beaker man QLB26?



A notable observation from the physical anthropological examination is traits at the acetabulum and the femur head suggesting that the individual frequently rode horses.


The Bell Beaker Blogger (with whom I seldom agree) posted about that here (http://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.com/2015/10/beaker-horseman-and-two-women-genetics.html).

[jdean]

This might have absolutely nothing to do with it, but have a looksee, time allowing:

https://www.academia.edu/14849833/ANTHROPOLOGICAL_STRUCTURE_OF_GLOBULAR_AMPHORAE_CUL TURE_POPULATION_ON_THE_TERRITORY_OF_UKRAINE

Scroll down to the double PCA figures. The left represents the males in the various cultures analyzed: GAC, CW, Yamna etc.. The right represents the females. The CW males all cluster together on the upper left, with what appears to be a basically Westward bent. But they are still discernably distinct. But the CW females seem something else altogether. All the females in all the CW groups are anthropologically the same, and compared to the females of other cultural groups they are extremely shifted West and North... Could the CW have had some sort of "deal" with the people of the area you mention? "wives for peace" :) Or maybe this is just silly...

Thanks for posting this, certainly interesting but as you said not related to the study being talked about at the conference which concerned Polish samples which have been analysed using NGS. This one appears to be about skull shapes of Ukrainian samples, AFAIKT using Goggle translate : )

http://www.bioanthropologybologna.eu/fileGallery/12/files/AAI_Abstract_Book5.pdf

[alan]

It seems that the post-Megalithic cultures of France (Seine-Oise-Marne in the north, Artenac in the south) were able to resist more effectively than those to the east - the Artenac culture persisted for many centuries before eventually Beakerizing. But why? Perhaps they were more unified among themselves, or quicker to adapt the new weapons and tactics?

It could be partly to do with climate. The period 3000-2500BC was apparently pretty wet in places like the isles and the northern Europe so the farmer cultures may have been struggling anyway which may have made a spread of people and new ways of living across the Baltic and North Sea areas of the continent relatively easy for CW. CW culture largely seems to have especially benefited from the collapse/openness to change of one Neolithic culture - the Funnel beaker culture.
http://www.geocities.ws/reginheim/funnelbeakerculture.gif

However France, even the north, has and had a climate that was somewhat more forgiving so perhaps its farmers were not anywhere near as easy to replace/mix with/influence there.

Funny thing is the big beaker expansion rode the opposite wave - a period commencing around 2500BC of sunny dry summers and cold drier winters which is optimal weather in northern Europe but bad news in eastern Europe and other arid areas.

[George]

Thanks for posting this, certainly interesting but as you said not related to the study being talked about at the conference which concerned Polish samples which have been analysed using NGS. This one appears to be about skull shapes of Ukrainian samples, AFAIKT using Goggle translate : )

http://www.bioanthropologybologna.eu/fileGallery/12/files/AAI_Abstract_Book5.pdf

You're absolutely right. My mistake. Sorry. Strange though that the author would put all the CWC males in distinct categories but only focus on the CWC Ukr female contingent. I should have noticed that. Mustn't hurry in these things.

[alan]

By the way, did anyone notice this from Mathieson et al concerning the R1b-M269 Beaker man QLB26?



The Bell Beaker Blogger (with whom I seldom agree) posted about that here (http://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.com/2015/10/beaker-horseman-and-two-women-genetics.html).

Its definitely been dawning on me that the horse is surely at least one of the most major ingredients in the great mobility and vast networking of bell beaker people. It may also have allowed somewhat different marriage patterns. I suspect the marrying of the horse to other beaker traits is the key to the sudden expansion of beaker c. 2500BC and the isotopic evidence of great mobility. Probably people have been overly focused on the idea of boats when there is actually no evidence of a leap forward in boat technology until after the beaker phase.

Its a shame the study of evidence of primitive horse riding is so tricky and hotly debated. The question of the spread of horse riding (which must be treated separately from oxen drawn block wheeled wagons) beyond the steppes is a hot topic with a lot of disagreement but I think few dispute it spread from the steppes in the copper age. I would also say the majority see its spread deeper into Europe as linked to steppe people heading west. The question is when do we see steppe people moving west. Right now there is no genetic evidence of steppe genes west of the Adriatic to the until 2800BC although archaeology probably can be taken to show that that line was reached a century or two before that. So, IMO it would only be when beaker met people from an open steppe tradition that horse riding spread through the beaker network. RC dating would indicate beaker pot only overlapped the area where steppe people lived from c. 2550BC. So somehow the meeting of a western network with an area where (at least partly) steppe derived people skilled at horse riding led to a huge change in the beaker network.

As I posted too a couple of times recently, it has been somewhat overlooked that 2500BC saw the start of a dry period in Europe which was great for the rainy north but put people in steppe and steppe-like environments in east central Europe and of course arid areas in the south under stress. These arid phases are well known population movement drivers because generally the desirable zone to live in simply moved north and west from east and south. Environments would change and people might move as their preferred environment did. I wonder if a seriously arid phase made some areas turn more steppe like and opened up new areas to people who were adapted to that. The actual steppes back in eastern Europe would have become a nightmare of aridity in c. 2500BC.

It has made me wonder recently if there could have been another wave of late Yamnaya people into central Europe from the steppes around 2500BC and if there could be some connection to beaker. Catacomb culture seems to have intruded into the steppes around this time. So where did the existing (probably R1b) people go? Central European beaker burials do have a number of things in common with later Yamnaya (as opposed to early) including bodies flexed on side (instead of the earlier dominant on the back with the knees raised) , interest in the face orientated eastwards (as opposed to the earlier east-west orientation of the body).

One might ask if a late Yamnaya link to central European bell beaker would break the branching model considering beaker is usually linked to Celto-Italic. Well IMO not really. Tocharian still branches with Afansievo c. 3300BC, pre-Germanic with north-western CW c. 2800-2700BC, Celto-Italic with beaker c. 2550BC.

[rms2]

I think it might be well to consider the very real possibility that the idea that Beaker originated in the west is an error. I know I keep harping on what Gimbutas said (which is, of course, really appropriate given the title of this thread), but, honestly, what she said makes a lot more sense than the idea that Beaker represents 1) an end run of steppe people around Europe to Iberia; 2) an initial expansion out of Iberia; 3) picking up kurgan cultural, genetic, and physical traits in central Europe, and then, finally, 4) a back flow to the west.

Gimbutas' equation of Vucedol + Yamnaya = Bell Beaker, which then moves west, makes a lot more sense. It's certainly simpler. Right now it's the rc dating of some Iberian sites and the idea that Maritime Beaker is the original pot that is keeping the Iberian orthodoxy in place.

[rms2]

By the way, did anyone notice this from Mathieson et al concerning the R1b-M269 Beaker man QLB26?



A notable observation from the physical anthropological examination is traits at the acetabulum and the femur head suggesting that the individual frequently rode horses.


The Bell Beaker Blogger (with whom I seldom agree) posted about that here (http://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.com/2015/10/beaker-horseman-and-two-women-genetics.html).

Can someone tell me where I can find this info in the Mathieson et al paper? I can't find it in the pdf here (http://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/10/10/016477.abstract?%3Fcollection=). Is there some fuller version of the report?

[Wonder_Wall]

I think the horse bit makes sense (pun intended.) What it also striking about BB is the use of apparent megalithic waterways and sea routes. BB is distinguished by mobility of every kind - boats had to be part of that.

Any thoughts?

It is hard to imagine that a culture so steeped in the steppe would adapt to the sea. I do image that the Med and Black Seas were good backgrounds but overall, I think of early BB as more of a stockbreeding/pastoralist oriented culture... I just do not know...

[rms2]

I found the passage on page 9 of the Supplementary Information:



I0805/QLB26

Feature 19614. This 35-45 year-old individual is osteologically and genetically male. The body was buried in NO-SW orientation with the head in the north facing east. Grave goods are scarce and include three silex arrowheads, a few potsherds, and animal bones. A notable observation from the physical anthropological examination is traits at the acetabulum and the femur head suggesting that the individual frequently rode horses.

[George]

You're absolutely right. My mistake. Sorry. Strange though that the author would put all the CWC males in distinct categories but only focus on the CWC Ukr female contingent. I should have noticed that. Mustn't hurry in these things.

Just one more thing in parting. With respect to the "continuity" some assume between the GAC and CWC. The conclusion in the article referred to is this: ""The fundamental grouping of the carriers of the Corded Ware Culture, which PCA clusters fairly compactly to each other ([[these groupings are: German, Czech, Polish, Prussian, Ukrainian]] G.) is anthropologically maximally distant from the carriers of the Globular Amphorae Culture, and is characterized by a diametrically different series of traits. This multiplicity of differences in the facial proportions cannot be explained by chronological factors." == So it wasn't simply GAC changing its ideology. It was population replacement (at the very least at the top). We'll see if genetic analysis confirms this.

[rms2]

Just one more thing in parting. With respect to the "continuity" some assume between the GAC and CWC. The conclusion in the article referred to is this: ""The fundamental grouping of the carriers of the Corded Ware Culture, which PCA clusters fairly compactly to each other ([[these groupings are: German, Czech, Polish, Prussian, Ukrainian]] G.) is anthropologically maximally distant from the carriers of the Globular Amphorae Culture, and is characterized by a diametrically different series of traits. This multiplicity of differences in the facial proportions cannot be explained by chronological factors." == So it wasn't simply GAC changing its ideology. It was population replacement (at the very least at the top). We'll see if genetic analysis confirms this.

Well, something changed, but autosomal differences of profound consequence can be accomplished in one or two generations.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Since Corded Ware preceded Beaker, it looks like Beaker may have stopped Corded Ware's progress westward. If Gimbutas was right, Beaker was the fusion of Vucedol and Yamnaya.

Yes I'm very curious about the possibility. Having revised my understanding of the grater Carpathian basin region c. 3500-2500 BC, I am struck by one thing (which ive partly mentioned before):

-the distinct position of Yamnaya Kurgans (in steppe like areas of Tizsa plain, north Bulgaria, etc)
- the austerity of the grave accompaniments

By contrast, it is the local/ "native" groups (Vucedol, early Mako) that are rich; with status symbols like socketed Copper Axes imported directly from the Caucasus.

We might thus conclude that the mobile Yamnaya groups were pastoralists and traders, and were contained within the own niches, and as if they were then just "scurried along" further west (like later Byzantines would do to barbarians).

Of course I'm sure some mixing took place ; so would be very curious to see more Bronze Age samples from the Carpathian / north Balkan region. Also I know that BB have a lot more Neolithic admixure than CWC; I wonder if Davidski can look to see whether this MNE admixture in BB derives at least in part from Balkan sources c.f. German MNE (?)

[rms2]

BTW, did anyone notice that Mathieson et al class Esperstedt reference site 4 as Corded Ware? ESP14 tested R1b1a2. That's the second R1b CW, right, after RISE1?



Corded Ware in Germany: Esperstedt (n=9) The site of Esperstedt forms part of large-scale excavations initiated in 2005 in the context of major infrastructural roadworks in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany to build motorway A38. Individuals from Esperstedt reference site 4 could be unambiguously assigned to the Corded Ware culture, both by accompanying pottery and by characteristic orientation of the burials18. Males were usually buried in a right-hand side flexed position with head to the west and facing south, while females were buried on their left-hand side with their head to the east. We added nine new individuals from this site . . .

• I1534 / ESP14 Feature 6141. This is genetically male. (Supplementary Information, page 8)




I1534 ESP14 Tooth - Y Y Central_LNBA SA CLB New 1240k data - 1 2500-2050 BCE 4815 4065 Esperstedt Germany 51.42 11.68 0.158 167,366 M Yes 2,113,805 K1a1b2a R1b1a2 CTS11468 0.054

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Just one more thing in parting. With respect to the "continuity" some assume between the GAC and CWC. The conclusion in the article referred to is this: ""The fundamental grouping of the carriers of the Corded Ware Culture, which PCA clusters fairly compactly to each other ([[these groupings are: German, Czech, Polish, Prussian, Ukrainian]] G.) is anthropologically maximally distant from the carriers of the Globular Amphorae Culture, and is characterized by a diametrically different series of traits. This multiplicity of differences in the facial proportions cannot be explained by chronological factors." == So it wasn't simply GAC changing its ideology. It was population replacement (at the very least at the top). We'll see if genetic analysis confirms this.

I had forgotten one study of a GAC man http://http://polishgenes.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/the-globular-amphora-man-from-late.html?m=1

He looks like a slight little Mediterranean man with mtDNA K2a.

[George]

I had forgotten one study of a GAC man http://http://polishgenes.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/the-globular-amphora-man-from-late.html?m=1

He looks like a slight little Mediterranean man with mtDNA K2a.

The link doesn't seem to work. But I remember this study (roughly). Isn't that the one which characterizes the sample as "Fertile Crescent"-like?

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Sorry it's here
http://polishgenes.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/the-globular-amphora-man-from-late.html?m=1

Not sure if exact details

[razyn]

I was looking around for someone who might be tweeting from that conference, and Lazaridis appears to be one possibility.

This photo of some of our current academic pathfinders was tweeted this evening by Lazaridis. The caption is "Haak, Allentoft, Lazaridis @ Jena LAG" (that stands for the conference title: Linguistics, Archaeology & Genetics).

6321

Now, will somebody please tell us what these guys have been saying? Many of the abstracts looked quite promising.

[alan]

As far as I can see, even on the steppe, Yamnaya traits did shift through time and space from the old lying on back with knees up and an east-west orientation towards flexed on the side more towards north-south facing east. So the classic bell beaker position is more like the later Yamnaya than the earlier. Interesting there are also some battle axe groups in Sweden and north Poland who do have orientations that are not dissimilar to bell beaker. There is a wide family of cultures echoing different aspects of different phases of Yamnaya is a slightly baffling way.

[alan]

Yes I'm very curious about the possibility. Having revised my understanding of the grater Carpathian basin region c. 3500-2500 BC, I am struck by one thing (which ive partly mentioned before):

-the distinct position of Yamnaya Kurgans (in steppe like areas of Tizsa plain, north Bulgaria, etc)
- the austerity of the grave accompaniments

By contrast, it is the local/ "native" groups (Vucedol, early Mako) that are rich; with status symbols like socketed Copper Axes imported directly from the Caucasus.

We might thus conclude that the mobile Yamnaya groups were pastoralists and traders, and were contained within the own niches, and as if they were then just "scurried along" further west (like later Byzantines would do to barbarians).

Of course I'm sure some mixing took place ; so would be very curious to see more Bronze Age samples from the Carpathian / north Balkan region. Also I know that BB have a lot more Neolithic admixure than CWC; I wonder if Davidski can look to see whether this MNE admixture in BB derives at least in part from Balkan sources c.f. German MNE (?)

however central European bell beaker starts at 250 years later than CW. That is 10 extra generations to mix.

[rms2]

As far as I can see, even on the steppe, Yamnaya traits did shift through time and space from the old lying on back with knees up and an east-west orientation towards flexed on the side more towards north-south facing east. So the classic bell beaker position is more like the later Yamnaya than the earlier. Interesting there are also some battle axe groups in Sweden and north Poland who do have orientations that are not dissimilar to bell beaker. There is a wide family of cultures echoing different aspects of different phases of Yamnaya is a slightly baffling way.

And we're starting to see R1b pop up in most of them, along with R1a in some of them. We have R1b-P297 in Yamnaya, Poltavka, Corded Ware, and Beaker, and a likely R1b-P297 in Vucedol, as well.

[rms2]

I found the passage on page 9 of the Supplementary Information:



I0805/QLB26

Feature 19614. This 35-45 year-old individual is osteologically and genetically male. The body was buried in NO-SW orientation with the head in the north facing east. Grave goods are scarce and include three silex arrowheads, a few potsherds, and animal bones. A notable observation from the physical anthropological examination is traits at the acetabulum and the femur head suggesting that the individual frequently rode horses.


Given the apparent osteological evidence that Beaker man QLB26 frequently rode horses, it seems appropriate to bring up some of what Gimbutas had to say about Beaker and horseback riding.



The Bell Beaker culture of western Europe which diffused between 2500 and 2100 B.C. between central Europe, the British Isles, and the Iberian Peninsula, could not have arisen in a vacuum. The mobile horse-riding and warrior people who buried their dead in Yamna type kurgans certainly could not have developed out of any west European culture. We must ask what sort of ecology and ideology created these people, and where are the roots of the specific Bell Beaker equipment and their burial rites. In my view, the Bell Beaker cultural elements derive from Vucedol and Kurgan (Late Yamna) traditions (The Civilization of the Goddess, p. 390).



Horse bones in a series of sites provide a clue to the mobility of the Bell Beaker people. Analysis of animal bones from the sites at Budapest (Csepel Hollandiut and Csepel-Haros) have shown that the horse was the foremost species of the domestic fauna, constituting more than 60 percent of the total animal bones. This suggests a large-scale domestication of the horse in the Carpathian basin. Bell Beaker migrations were carried out on horseback from central Europe as far as Spain (where horse bones have also been found in Bell Beaker contexts). The horse also played a significant role in religion, as can be seen from the remains of the horse sacrifice where skulls are found in cremation graves . . .

The striking similarity of burial practices ties the Bell Beaker complex to the Kurgan (Late Yamna) tradition. (Ibid, p. 391)



4. The warlike and horse-riding Bell Beaker people of the middle and second half of the third millennium B.C., who diffused over western Europe, are likely to have originated from an amalgam of remnants of the Vucedol people with the Yamna colonists (after Wave No. 3) in Yugoslavia and Hungary. Their parent culture is called Vinkovci-Samogyvar. This was the largest and last outmigration, from east-central Europe into western Europe, up to the west Mediterranean and the British Isles, before the onset of a more stable period, and the formation of Bronze Age cultural units. (Ibid, p. 401)

[Arch]

Seems like a forced assertion with no actual evidence to support his hypotheses. We have no idea what language Bell Beakers have spoken, none whatsoever; all mere speculation. No evidence or any proof that IE arose out the steppes either, it is just more speculation. We can't even get the geographic origins of R1b correct with all the data obtained so far - inconclusive. Better off subscribing to Clyde Winters' theories with just as much of lacking irrefutable data as recent scientific efforts. The dispersion points of IE in the recent journal maps are laughable, I guess languages or the people who speak them have no ability to disperse in multiple directions except in the ones wanted by the researchers.

Arch

[rms2]

Seems like a forced assertion with no actual evidence to support his hypotheses. We have no idea what language Bell Beakers have spoken, none whatsoever; all mere speculation. No evidence or any proof that IE arose out the steppes either, it is just more speculation. We can't even get the geographic origins of R1b correct with all the data obtained so far - inconclusive. Better off subscribing to Clyde Winters' theories with just as much of lacking irrefutable data as recent scientific efforts. The dispersion points of IE in the recent journal maps are laughable, I guess languages or the people who speak them have no ability to disperse in multiple directions except in the ones wanted by the researchers.

Arch

Gimbutas was a woman. Have you actually read any of her books, Mallory's books, or Anthony's book?

Really, to repeat all the actual evidence for you would be a tremendous job. You need to read it for yourself.

[Arch]

What a crock about the horse riding mythology of the Bell Beakers. They were more likely to eat horses than ride them.

Arch

[rms2]

What a crock about the horse riding mythology of the Bell Beakers. They were more likely to eat horses than ride them.

Arch

Well, some of the evidence from Mathieson et al says otherwise. QLB26 was a Beaker man whose remains were recovered from the site at Quedlinburg, Germany.



I0805/QLB26

Feature 19614. This 35-45 year-old individual is osteologically and genetically male. The body was buried in NO-SW orientation with the head in the north facing east. Grave goods are scarce and include three silex arrowheads, a few potsherds, and animal bones. A notable observation from the physical anthropological examination is traits at the acetabulum and the femur head suggesting that the individual frequently rode horses. (Supplementary Information, p. 9)

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Seems like a forced assertion with no actual evidence to support his hypotheses. We have no idea what language Bell Beakers have spoken, none whatsoever; all mere speculation. No evidence or any proof that IE arose out the steppes either, it is just more speculation. We can't even get the geographic origins of R1b correct with all the data obtained so far - inconclusive. Better off subscribing to Clyde Winters' theories with just as much of lacking irrefutable data as recent scientific efforts. The dispersion points of IE in the recent journal maps are laughable, I guess languages or the people who speak them have no ability to disperse in multiple directions except in the ones wanted by the researchers.

Arch

Yes some of Gumbutas' assertions lacked empirical evidence; but at least the 3rd wave (or whatever) appeats true .
And it's true that we don't actually know what language Yamnaya spoke; but one has to ask when else could PIE arrived ?

One could argue (as I have) that PIE itself needn't have necessarily been from the open steppe (but could have arrived from a little further east; or was adapted by the steppe nomads from groups little further west as a Lingua Franca). One could argue as to how frequently the horse was ridden and for what primary purpose :). Further, one can argue that not all groups came right from the middle of the Dnieper but a greater ponto- caspian area. We can even argue that PIE wasn't the only language dispersing during this watershed era of Eurasian history; and that other languages were also spoken in the BB network; but the overall picture (which ultimately matters) is that it was a copper age ponto-caspian phenomenon.

What was your theory ?

[alan]

This is a brilliant paper for explaining the latest chronologies what went on in Hungary and thereabouts in the period between Yamnaya and beaker http://www.researchgate.net/publication/259623833_Multidisciplinary_Contributions_to_the_S tudy_of_Pit_Grave_Culture_Kurgans_of_the_Great_Hun garian_Plain

I dont know of any good evidence for bell beaker in the area before 2500/2550BC so the table on page 170 for 2600-2500BC should provide lists of who was living there when the bell beaker pot arrived

It lists for 2600-2500BC

TRANSDANUBIA (western third of Hungary)

Baden (2600–2500 BC) Early Makó? Late Vučedol? (2600–2500 BC) Somogyvár-Vinkovci (2750–2580 cal BC

EAST OF THE DANUBE (the eastern two thirds of Hungary)

Baden (2600–2500 BC) Early Makó (2600–2500 BC) Pit Grave (2600–2500 BC)

Map of hungary subdivisions
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/RegionsHungary.png
So the latest dating evidence makes even Late Vudedol pre-beaker (ending at the time of beaker arrival) in this area. The other cultures that were still around were Baden, early Mako and late Yamanaya. Somogyvár-Vinkovci is listed but seems to die out a little before beaker.

Beaker arrived in a pocket around Budapest which is the interface between Transdanubia and the rest of Hungary so we cannot rule out beaker pot users c. 2500BC running into any of the cultures listed above. Certainly of those in western Hungary Late Vudedol is the most steppe vibe culture while Mako, Badan and perhaps Somogyvár-Vinkovci seem rather more farmer derived as cultures.

If I had to guess what culture could have made contact between beaker pot makers and R1b carrying steppe derived groups in Hungary I would tend to look at either the late Yamnaya in central to eastern Hungary or the late Vucedol groups in western Hungary. Maybe Gimbutas has a point.

[alan]

This is a brilliant paper for explaining the latest chronologies what went on in Hungary and thereabouts in the period between Yamnaya and beaker http://www.researchgate.net/publication/259623833_Multidisciplinary_Contributions_to_the_S tudy_of_Pit_Grave_Culture_Kurgans_of_the_Great_Hun garian_Plain

I dont know of any good evidence for bell beaker in the area before 2500/2550BC so the table on page 170 for 2600-2500BC should provide lists of who was living there when the bell beaker pot arrived

It lists for 2600-2500BC

TRANSDANUBIA

Baden (2600–2500 BC) Early Makó? Late Vučedol? (2600–2500 BC) Somogyvár-Vinkovci (2750–2580 cal BC

EAST OF THE DANUBE

Baden (2600–2500 BC) Early Makó (2600–2500 BC) Pit Grave (2600–2500 BC)

So the latest dating evidence makes even Late Vudedol pre-beaker (ending at the time of beaker arrival) in this area. The other cultures that were still around were Baden, early Mako and late Yamanaya. Somogyvár-Vinkovci is listed but seems to die out a little before beaker.

One interesting aspect of this chronological paper examining the RC dating in detail is that pit grave (yamanaya) survives as late as 2500BC, a date which they also place on the arrival of beaker pot in the area. So, at least in theory this indicates Yamnaya was still present just as beaker arrived and disappeared very soon after. There are of course other cultures in the list I just posted above that were also present in the region at the time beaker arrived.

[alan]

This is a brilliant paper for explaining the latest chronologies what went on in Hungary and thereabouts in the period between Yamnaya and beaker http://www.researchgate.net/publication/259623833_Multidisciplinary_Contributions_to_the_S tudy_of_Pit_Grave_Culture_Kurgans_of_the_Great_Hun garian_Plain

I dont know of any good evidence for bell beaker in the area before 2500/2550BC so the table on page 170 for 2600-2500BC should provide lists of who was living there when the bell beaker pot arrived

It lists for 2600-2500BC

TRANSDANUBIA (western third of Hungary)

Baden (2600–2500 BC) Early Makó? Late Vučedol? (2600–2500 BC) Somogyvár-Vinkovci (2750–2580 cal BC

EAST OF THE DANUBE (the eastern two thirds of Hungary)

Baden (2600–2500 BC) Early Makó (2600–2500 BC) Pit Grave (2600–2500 BC)

Map of hungary subdivisions
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/RegionsHungary.png
So the latest dating evidence makes even Late Vudedol pre-beaker (ending at the time of beaker arrival) in this area. The other cultures that were still around were Baden, early Mako and late Yamanaya. Somogyvár-Vinkovci is listed but seems to die out a little before beaker.

Beaker arrived in a pocket around Budapest which is the interface between Transdanubia and the rest of Hungary so we cannot rule out beaker pot users c. 2500BC running into any of the cultures listed above. Certainly of those in western Hungary Late Vudedol is the most steppe vibe culture while Mako, Badan and perhaps Somogyvár-Vinkovci seem rather more farmer derived as cultures.

If I had to guess what culture could have made contact between beaker pot makers and R1b carrying steppe derived groups in Hungary I would tend to look at either the late Yamnaya in central to eastern Hungary or the late Vucedol groups in western Hungary. Maybe Gimbutas has a point.

This bit is interesting:

Period IV – Late Pit Grave with strong Catacomb influences, 2900/2800–2500/2400 cal BC The Early Bronze Age in the Eurasian steppes, which is the Late Pit Grave horizon, and simultaneous with the Catacomb entity, can be dated between 2800/2700–2100/2000 cal BC. On the Great Hungarian Plain the latest, third construction phase of the kurgans, and, this is the time frame when rich metal depositions and Early Bronze Age ceramic sets appear in kurgan burials. It is contemporary with the Period I of the Early Bronze Age, and includes the surviving Baden, Vučedol, Makó-Kosihy-Čaka, early Somogyvár-Vinkovci, Glina-Schneckenbeg A, Coţofeni IIIc-Livezile cultures, and can be dated to 2900/2800–2500/2400 cal BC, according to the radiocarbon dates of Nezsider/Neusiedl am See, Velika Gruda, and the second building phase of the Sárrétudvari kurgan. In contrast to former theories, we assume that the Catacomb culture – one of the later waves from the Eurasian steppes – did not exist as a discrete tribe on the territory of the Carpathian Basin.


Although the late Pit Grave horizon shows similarities with the graves of the Polish Corded Ware culture that are found under mounds as well, it cannot be classified as Catacomb culture.3 The affluent arsenic bronze and gold grave goods, the secondary burials in the kurgans, and the arrangement along the outer circle can be a Catacomb influence; however, all these features are represented in the late Pit Grave culture as well. Besides, the contemporaneity as well as the combination of the two cultures has earlier been proved in the northwest Pontic area. Because of this phenomenon we might denominate this fourth phase as Late Pit Grave horizon with strong Catacomb influence.

[alan]

The paper states of the origins of the steppe waves in Hungary from 3000BC onwards:

The settling steppe communities in Period II and III can be identified with mixed cultural entities of the Pit Grave culture, and the strongly Tripolye C2-Usatovo stimulated Pre-Pit Grave Kvityana and Lower Mikhailovka groups, arriving from the Pontic area to the territory of the Great Hungarian Plain. The direction of the migration led from Moldova,6 through the passes of the Carpathian Mountains and along the main waterways such as the valleys of the Berettyó, Maros/Mureş, and stopped at the line of the Tisza River.7

In Period IV(/V) intercultural connections with local cultures inside the Carpathian Basin strengthened and extended in a way that the original cultural identity of the Catacomb-influenced Late Pit Grave groups diluted, thus it is even more problematic to reconstruct their route than in the earlier periods. The direct route, which this even more far-away group followed when it arrived to Central Europe, has probably changed as compared to the previous periods: another road along the Danube seems to be a dominating one for the whole Carpathian Basin; with the use of the wheel and the wagon (Plačidol) and a developed metal production based on arsenic-bronze raw materials.

Most probably the main reason for this large-scale migration was the drastic change in the ecological circumstances caused by a drier climate and the over-grazing of the meadows (golyeva 2000; sHisHlina [ed.] 2000).8

David W. Anthony (2007, 362–364) recommended that the steppe populations arriving to the Great Hungarian Plain got there east from the Usatovo settlement area, from the South-Bug-Ingul-Dnieper region: the earliest Pit Grave kurgans are situated there (for example Bal’ki, with a deposited wagon, and one wooden plough-tooth: rassamakin 1999, Fig 3. 58).

The steppe along the Lower Dniester were occupied by the Usatovo culture between 3400/3300–2800 BC, but the majority of the Pit Grave kurgans there (from 2800–2400 BC) are dated later than the migration to the Great Hungarian Plain. Thus, D. W. Anthony supposed that the Dniester variant is a sign of a return migration from the Danube valley and the Great Hungarian Plain to that region. Although this is a very pleasant theory, it cannot be verified in the study area: without much more excavation results and radiocarbon dates, and moreover, the overall revision of the Usatovo culture, this debate cannot be resolved (for this see also rassamakin – nikolova 2008, 13).

The migrating route sketched by Richard Harrison and Volker Heyd (2007, 194, Fig. 43) cannot be accepted for the whole period. This would lead from the mouth of the Dnieper River, around the Carpathian Mountains and reach the Great Hungarian Plain not just from the southern direction (through the Lower Danube), but through the passes of the northeastern and eastern Carpathians. The radiocarbon dates of some kurgans in Serbia, and Bulgaria are later or can be correlated with Period IV/V (e.g. in case of the kurgan at Jabuka in Serbia, an individual layer of soil formation was documented after a Kostolac stratum, upon which the kurgan was built; in Bulgaria in Kurgan 1 at Trnava, Coţofeni and Pit Grave ceramics with corded decoration were excavated: antHony 2007, 363, Fig. 14. 6).

The hypothesis regarding the so called “Pit Grave package” is similarly not entirely applicable to this problem (Harrison – HeyD 2007, 196–197). In accordance with the literature of Russian scholars (saPosnikova et al. 1988; levine et al. 1999; sHisHlina [ed.] 2000; tsutHkin – sHisHlina [eds] 2001; morgunova et al. 2003; morgunova 2004; rassamakin 2004; merPert et al. 2006), the third (social status and sex is markedly expressed),9 and eighth characteristics (the importance of the horse) are not confirmed. At the same time we should be clarifying the fourth component (“The creation of a special status for craftsman...” in Harrison – HeyD 2007, 196): the metalworkers had formed a specialized group or layer in the Early Bronze Age society; but this doesn't mean necessarily their highest social status.

Irrespectively of this, the complex influence of the Eurasian steppe populations in the investigated period in the geographical area under examination cannot be neglected. At last, it is anticipated that the excavation results and the series of new 14C dates d


There could be a chronological and cultural case for the wave IV group to be the one who took up beaker pottery and influences to form a new beaker culture.

[alan]

So in short the main three waves from the steppe into Hungary are

1. A small ochre grave one c. 4300BC

2. A Yamnaya one c. 3200-2800BC

3. A late Yamnaya one with influences from Catacomb c. 2800-2500BC

Now it is only in the later phase that a lot of the vaguely beaker like traits like putting metalworkers on a pedestal take off.

[George]

So in short the main three waves from the steppe into Hungary are

1. A small ochre grave one c. 4300BC

2. A Yamnaya one c. 3200-2800BC

3. A late Yamnaya one with influences from Catacomb c. 2800-2500BC

Now it is only in the later phase that a lot of the vaguely beaker like traits like putting metalworkers on a pedestal take off.

The second wave is actually a sort of "combined" pre-Yamna and Early Yamna, involving some of the "postStog" (Kvityana, Usatovo etc..)groups as well as the newly forming Yamna ones. Indicating the strong dynamics of the change processes on the steppes and nearby.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

The paper states of the origins of the steppe waves in Hungary from 3000BC onwards:

The settling steppe communities in Period II and III can be identified with mixed cultural entities of the Pit Grave culture, and the strongly Tripolye C2-Usatovo stimulated Pre-Pit Grave Kvityana and Lower Mikhailovka groups, arriving from the Pontic area to the territory of the Great Hungarian Plain. The direction of the migration led from Moldova,6 through the passes of the Carpathian Mountains and along the main waterways such as the valleys of the Berettyó, Maros/Mureş, and stopped at the line of the Tisza River.7

In Period IV(/V) intercultural connections with local cultures inside the Carpathian Basin strengthened and extended in a way that the original cultural identity of the Catacomb-influenced Late Pit Grave groups diluted, thus it is even more problematic to reconstruct their route than in the earlier periods. The direct route, which this even more far-away group followed when it arrived to Central Europe, has probably changed as compared to the previous periods: another road along the Danube seems to be a dominating one for the whole Carpathian Basin; with the use of the wheel and the wagon (Plačidol) and a developed metal production based on arsenic-bronze raw materials.

Most probably the main reason for this large-scale migration was the drastic change in the ecological circumstances caused by a drier climate and the over-grazing of the meadows (golyeva 2000; sHisHlina [ed.] 2000).8

David W. Anthony (2007, 362–364) recommended that the steppe populations arriving to the Great Hungarian Plain got there east from the Usatovo settlement area, from the South-Bug-Ingul-Dnieper region: the earliest Pit Grave kurgans are situated there (for example Bal’ki, with a deposited wagon, and one wooden plough-tooth: rassamakin 1999, Fig 3. 58).

The steppe along the Lower Dniester were occupied by the Usatovo culture between 3400/3300–2800 BC, but the majority of the Pit Grave kurgans there (from 2800–2400 BC) are dated later than the migration to the Great Hungarian Plain. Thus, D. W. Anthony supposed that the Dniester variant is a sign of a return migration from the Danube valley and the Great Hungarian Plain to that region. Although this is a very pleasant theory, it cannot be verified in the study area: without much more excavation results and radiocarbon dates, and moreover, the overall revision of the Usatovo culture, this debate cannot be resolved (for this see also rassamakin – nikolova 2008, 13).

The migrating route sketched by Richard Harrison and Volker Heyd (2007, 194, Fig. 43) cannot be accepted for the whole period. This would lead from the mouth of the Dnieper River, around the Carpathian Mountains and reach the Great Hungarian Plain not just from the southern direction (through the Lower Danube), but through the passes of the northeastern and eastern Carpathians. The radiocarbon dates of some kurgans in Serbia, and Bulgaria are later or can be correlated with Period IV/V (e.g. in case of the kurgan at Jabuka in Serbia, an individual layer of soil formation was documented after a Kostolac stratum, upon which the kurgan was built; in Bulgaria in Kurgan 1 at Trnava, Coţofeni and Pit Grave ceramics with corded decoration were excavated: antHony 2007, 363, Fig. 14. 6).

The hypothesis regarding the so called “Pit Grave package” is similarly not entirely applicable to this problem (Harrison – HeyD 2007, 196–197). In accordance with the literature of Russian scholars (saPosnikova et al. 1988; levine et al. 1999; sHisHlina [ed.] 2000; tsutHkin – sHisHlina [eds] 2001; morgunova et al. 2003; morgunova 2004; rassamakin 2004; merPert et al. 2006), the third (social status and sex is markedly expressed),9 and eighth characteristics (the importance of the horse) are not confirmed. At the same time we should be clarifying the fourth component (“The creation of a special status for craftsman...” in Harrison – HeyD 2007, 196): the metalworkers had formed a specialized group or layer in the Early Bronze Age society; but this doesn't mean necessarily their highest social status.

Irrespectively of this, the complex influence of the Eurasian steppe populations in the investigated period in the geographical area under examination cannot be neglected. At last, it is anticipated that the excavation results and the series of new 14C dates d


There could be a chronological and cultural case for the wave IV group to be the one who took up beaker pottery and influences to form a new beaker culture.

Thanks for highlighting that paper .
It'll be interesting to get aDNA from Usatavo because people often attribute it to a late Cucuteni group rather than a. Pre-"Yamnaya" one. Although the two groups might not be so genetically dissimilar; and did not exist in a state of "persistent cultural frontier" as Anthony suggests

[rms2]

Sounds like you suspect R1b-L51 might turn up in Usatovo and so are laying the groundwork for a claim that it really is Cucutenian and not of steppe pastoralist Indo-European origin.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Sounds like you suspect R1b-L51 might turn up in Usatovo and so are laying the groundwork for a claim that it really is Cucutenian and not of steppe pastoralist Indo-European origin.

Nope, that's not my point.

As ive stated, I don;t subscribe to the simplistic labelling / equating of steppe = R1 = "indo-European' like most others do. I separate those aforementioned entities as they represent different dimensions, and see "PIE" as a greater linguistic region, not a sharply bounded entity whose origins can be traced linearly back to Sredni Stog, or Khvalynsk, etc.

But my point is that, on the one hand, Usatavo is usually considered a late CT group. On the other, I'd be very surprised if CT and steppe groups to the east had not genetic exchange before 3000 BC, although I agree with general hypotheses that CT will be G2a and clades of I2 (maybe I1 also)

Whatever the case, the eastern origins of R1 on the whole is clear to (virtually) all.

Also, Im not sure where this ideation (R1b not being IE) is coming from (a case transference ?) ? Certainly that is not my intention. As I said, i see language expansion and cultural phenomena like burial mounds, warrior ethos, mobility, etc to be complex events whose mediation goes beyond Y lineages, but I very much do think that R1b groups were central in transmitting PIE (but leave open the possibility- probability?- that they might also have spoken other languages). My knit-picking of certain details and questionable assumptions doesn;t change this fact.

So for the record "I love R1b" :)

[rms2]

Good for you. Pardon my skepticism.

Usatovo is actually usually considered a kurgan (to use Gimbutas' convenient term) hybrid of steppe elements and old Europeans. I've never seen it referred to as a purely Cucuteni group.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Good for you. Pardon my skepticism.

Usatovo is actually usually considered a kurgan (to use Gimbutas' convenient term) hybrid of steppe elements and old Europeans. I've never seen it referred to as a purely Cucuteni group.

Yes, Gimbutas and Anthony see it as mixed. Ivanova, Rassaakin, Mazura etc see it as the late, mobile phase of CT. Who knows who's correct, but given my feeling that exchange had already been occurring, it could be both. So aDNA is again vital

[Krefter]

Whatever the case, the eastern origins of R1 on the whole is clear to (virtually) all.

I dis agree. There's unexplained R1b1a2*, R1b1*(xR1b1c, R1b1a), R1*, R1a1a* in West Asia. R1a1a1-M417 and R1b1a2a-L23 might originate in West Asia. EHG/Eneolithic R1a1 and R1b1 look like dead ends.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

I dis agree. There's unexplained R1b1a2*, R1b1*(xR1b1c, R1b1a), R1*, R1a1a* in West Asia. R1a1a1-M417 and R1b1a2a-L23 might originate in West Asia. EHG/Eneolithic R1a1 and R1b1 look like dead ends.

My mind is open krefter.
By "east" I meant the entire area east of Central Europe; whether the steppe, highland west Asia or even the Baltic :) (as I've previously mentioned)

[khanabadoshi]

I dis agree. There's unexplained R1b1a2*, R1b1*(xR1b1c, R1b1a), R1*, R1a1a* in West Asia. R1a1a1-M417 and R1b1a2a-L23 might originate in West Asia. EHG/Eneolithic R1a1 and R1b1 look like dead ends.


My mind is open krefter.
By "east" I meant the entire area east of Central Europe; whether the steppe, highland west Asia or even the Baltic :) (as I've previously mentioned)

Unexplained Me:
R-Y17491 (http://yfull.com/tree/R-Y17491/), a subclade of R-Z282, is now on YFull's official haplotree. :)

[Romilius]

I dis agree. There's unexplained R1b1a2*, R1b1*(xR1b1c, R1b1a), R1*, R1a1a* in West Asia. R1a1a1-M417 and R1b1a2a-L23 might originate in West Asia. EHG/Eneolithic R1a1 and R1b1 look like dead ends.

I noticed that, after that crazy ATP3 sample, you underwent a sort of conversion on the road that leads to Damaschus: before that discovery you were a supporter of steppe origin of W.E. R1b, now you support the Neolithic origin of W.E. R1b. Why that change?

[Krefter]

I noticed that, after that crazy ATP3 sample, you underwent a sort of conversion on the road that leads to Damaschus: before that discovery you were a supporter of steppe origin of W.E. R1b, now you support the Neolithic origin of W.E. R1b. Why that change?

I support a Steppe origin. The Neolithic theory is basically dead because of Copper age Spanish Y DNA. I think it is very possible R1b-L23 and R1a-M417 came to the Steppe from West Asia, because of basal forms of R1 in Iran(see here (http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?5633-Basal-clades-of-hg-R)). But that doesn't really matter because the expansion happened much later in the Steppe.