Bell Beakers, Gimbutas and R1b

[George]

"nothing east of the Don " (G-D means "west" actually)

[northkerry]

http://ucd-archsoc.blogspot.ie/

"Dr. Fitzpatrick stressed that bell-beaker cultures could not have thrived as they did without interacting peacefully with local cultures. They probably wouldn't have had the access to metals and other materials without help and guidance from indigenous communities. So any ideas of bell-beaker isolation are unreliable except in terms of the culture of the people themselves.
Questions of how people travelled at this time are still unanswered and may never be answered. Could they have known were they were going? Did families travel in groups? Did they intend to return? It is difficult to speculate. What we do know is that there does not seem to be one single homeland for the bell-beaker people.

In conclusion, Dr. Fitzpatrick demonstrated that the discovery of the Amesbury Archer has a much wider significance than just relating to Stonehenge, England and Britain. Whilst we still don't know how he reacted with indigenous communities or how he came to Wessex, what we do know can shed a light on bell-beaker people and their spread in Europe and inform us further of the culture's rich material heritage. "

[rms2]

Bell Beaker people may have interacted peacefully with local cultures, I don't know, but, as I mentioned before, Jean M reports that, at the recent GGI conference in Dublin, Dan Bradley said there was "massive population replacement", at least in Ireland. Of course, we don't know the details yet.

I remember reading that at Durrington Walls near Stonehenge there was a burnt layer that featured non-Beaker pottery. The next layer above it, unburnt, featured Beaker pottery.

[R.Rocca]

Bell Beaker people may have interacted peacefully with local cultures, I don't know, but, as I mentioned before, Jean M reports that, at the recent GGI conference in Dublin, Dan Bradley said there was "massive population replacement", at least in Ireland. Of course, we don't know the details yet.

I remember reading that at Durrington Walls near Stonehenge there was a burnt layer that featured non-Beaker pottery. The next layer above it, unburnt, featured Beaker pottery.

Like all of these scenarios, BB likely interacted peacefully with some local cultures and violently with others. Also, we know there was violence among pre-BB Neolithic groups, so in some areas, local Neolithics may have seen BB as a threat and taken the fight to them. And finally, in some areas, there may have been population collapses due to weather and/or plague that may have allowed BB supremacy to be uncontested.

[Romilius]

Like all of these scenarios, BB likely interacted peacefully with some local cultures and violently with others. Also, we know there was violence among pre-BB Neolithic groups, so in some areas, local Neolithics may have seen BB as a threat and taken the fight to them. And finally, in some areas, there may have been population collapses due to weather and/or plague that may have allowed BB supremacy to be uncontested.

I think so: it is exaggerated to say that they were in peace with all indigenous communities, but it is also exaggerated to say that they were at war with all them.

[Dubhthach]

Bell Beaker people may have interacted peacefully with local cultures, I don't know, but, as I mentioned before, Jean M reports that, at the recent GGI conference in Dublin, Dan Bradley said there was "massive population replacement", at least in Ireland. Of course, we don't know the details yet.

I remember reading that at Durrington Walls near Stonehenge there was a burnt layer that featured non-Beaker pottery. The next layer above it, unburnt, featured Beaker pottery.

From what I heard online they mentioned that Bradley stated that they had 20 samples from Neolithic, Bronze age and Iron age periods in Ireland, given that the boyo's in UCD (University College Dublin) are heavily involved in the development of method of extracting aDNA from Petrous bone here's hoping we'll get a whole set of full genomes from those periods.

[rms2]

From what I heard online they mentioned that Bradley stated that they had 20 samples from Neolithic, Bronze age and Iron age periods in Ireland, given that the boyo's in UCD (University College Dublin) are heavily involved in the development of method of extracting aDNA from Petrous bone here's hoping we'll get a whole set of full genomes from those periods.

That is what Jean M said is coming, and that Bradley said "Yes" in answer to a question about whether or not there was "massive population replacement". Unfortunately, he did not reveal any details, but I suspect his answer means that R1b, mostly R1b-L21, brought by the Beaker Folk, replaced whatever Neolithic y haplogroup(s) preceded it in Ireland (probably G2a, judging from continental results).

[Dubhthach]

That is what Jean M said is coming, and that Bradley said "Yes" in answer to a question about whether or not there was "massive population replacement". Unfortunately, he did not reveal any details, but I suspect his answer means that R1b, mostly R1b-L21, brought by the Beaker Folk, replaced whatever Neolithic y haplogroup(s) preceded it in Ireland (probably G2a, judging from continental results).

Well even leaving aside Y-Chromosome, if they have full genomes than they can model them based on Reich paper (eg. percentages of WHG/EEF/ANE etc.) if for example there is suddent change in relevant percentages (such as the arrival of ANE) in turnover between periods (say Neolithic to Bronze) than it should be fairly clear in their results. Here's hoping we won't have to wait 2 years for a paper!

[R.Rocca]

That is what Jean M said is coming, and that Bradley said "Yes" in answer to a question about whether or not there was "massive population replacement". Unfortunately, he did not reveal any details, but I suspect his answer means that R1b, mostly R1b-L21, brought by the Beaker Folk, replaced whatever Neolithic y haplogroup(s) preceded it in Ireland (probably G2a, judging from continental results).

I'd suspect that the same decline of G2a in favor of I2a that occurred on the continent during the Neolithic also occurred in the Isles, but we'll have to wait and see.

[alan]

I would warn though that prehistoric graves, even the Neolithic ones, are not a normal demographic sample and there are strong hints that there is some form of exclusivity. This will also be true of Bronze Age burials. So in both periods we are probably looking at the most recoverable burials being of a select few. So an apparent all population sudden change may initially have actually been a replacement of the more privileged element by a new privileged class not a swift general population replacement. This would make a change look far more sudden and complete than it was in whole population terms.

[Krefter]

I'm thinking Neolithic Irish Y DNA will be I2a1b1, I2a2a, or I2a1a2a1.

[alan]

I'd suspect that the same decline of G2a in favor of I2a that occurred on the continent during the Neolithic also occurred in the Isles, but we'll have to wait and see.

That is a fascinating process. IMO it may have occurred surprisingly soon in the Neolithic. Not at the very start but within a couple of centuries. I say that because the archaeological evidence for hunter gatherers surviving in parallel with farmers is very poor to absent in much of Europe except the NE fringes. For example in Ireland the Neolithic arrives around 3800BC but already within a couple of centuries aspects of the package were abandoned -a move to more pastoralism, the end of the classic Neolithic rectangular houses and a move to round less impressive houses (interestingly the Mesolithic huts in Ireland seem to have had this plan). I suspect that after a handful of generations of aloofness that the remaining Mesolithic population was absorbed. The lack of a parallel survival of a separate Mesolithic material culture suggests to me that the hunter-gatherers also had quickly adopted a lot of the material culture and economic aspects of the farmers making them very hard to distinguise. There seems to be no other way of explaining the re-emergence of the hunter-gatherer genes after an initial phase of separateness.

[alan]

I'm thinking Neolithic Irish Y DNA will be I2a1b1, I2a2a, or I2a1a2a1.

The chronology is important. Very detailed analysis of Irish Neolithic radiocarbon has nailed down the arrival of the farmers to around 3800-3750BC while older dates are closer to 4000BC are now known in southern England. This has created a different picture to the one 10 years ago and before when Irish dates seemed at least as old as British ones. Irish Neolithic material culture is extremely similar to Britain and its absolutely clear that the main input of farmers into Ireland came from western Britain not direct from the continent. So, basically the Irish farmers ancestors spend 200 years in Britain first. Whatever happened in that 200 year phase in Britain before movement to Ireland will have a bearing on the genetics of Irish Neolithic farmers. There could have been absorbing of hunter genes in Britain prior to the spread to Ireland but this might also not have happened. Its unclear. Of course the same process might have happened in northern France before the farmers reached Britain. Farming has its first big phase of stalling at the end of the LBK and only resumed expansion north after a long delay. Northern Europe including the isles is very different from Cardial for example where there was a sudden leap from the Adriatic as far as Portugal. In the north the farmers halted at a frontier running along north-central Europe for many centuries before expanding north very late c. 4000BC. Farming the north only had a brief window of attractiveness from c. 4000BC for a few centuries when a drier climate prevailed. After a few centuries the climate went wet again and returned ot the sort of weather which had put them off moving north for many centuries.

[alan]

I'm thinking Neolithic Irish Y DNA will be I2a1b1, I2a2a, or I2a1a2a1.

You might well be right. The curious thing is it seems to be the male lines of the original farmers that didnt survive. The only way I can explain that is if there was a period when small groups of actual G farmers brought new ideas on a wave of peak climate in northern Europe c. 4000BC but in parallel the I hunters took up and copied many aspects of their culture and lifestyle. At some point the more rigid subsistence and societal model of the actual G farmers became an Albatross, probably when the climate went damp again in northern Europe and the more pragmatic I people who had adopted a lot of Neolithic culture but kept a few extra strings to their bow and a pragmatic attitude came to survive better than the actual immigrant farmer lines.

[Krefter]

You might well be right. The curious thing is it seems to be the male lines of the original farmers that didnt survive. The only way I can explain that is if there was a period when small groups of actual G farmers brought new ideas on a wave of peak climate in northern Europe c. 4000BC but in parallel the I hunters took up and copied many aspects of their culture and lifestyle. At some point the more rigid subsistence and societal model of the actual G farmers became an Albatross, probably when the climate went damp again in northern Europe and the more pragmatic I people who had adopted a lot of Neolithic culture but kept a few extra strings to their bow and a pragmatic attitude came to survive better than the actual immigrant farmer lines.

hg I also dominates in Y DNA in Spain and Italy from the 4th millennium BC.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

hg I also dominates in Y DNA in Spain and Italy from the 4th millennium BC.

I wouldn't say it "dominates". Still a lot of H2 and G. The curious thing is that it is specifically I2a2 which appears in the Copper Age Iberia, and is found in Bronze age Hungary (4 out of 7 samples) and 1 even in eastern Yamnaya. Id bet the native pre-Neolithic Y pool of Iberia was C and I2a1-M26 types.

[rms2]

I'd suspect that the same decline of G2a in favor of I2a that occurred on the continent during the Neolithic also occurred in the Isles, but we'll have to wait and see.

Could be, but I'm pretty sure that is not what Bradley meant by "massive population replacement", because it would leave yet another massive population replacement to take place to get to the current situation.

I know you didn't mean to imply that a change from G2a to I2a was the massive population replacement Bradley was talking about; you were just commenting on the likelihood that it took place, as well, and I agree.

[rms2]

What is interesting in terms of the decline of G2a during the Neolithic in favor of I2a is that, from what I have read, the bodies from the Neolithic communal long barrows were of the Mediterranean type associated with Near Eastern-derived Neolithic farmers. So, if Neolithicized Mesolithic hunter-gatherer y haplogroup I made a comeback, what happened to the physical type associated with it, i.e., the tall, robust Cro-Magnon?

I'm not disputing the comeback in I2a; I'm just wondering what happened to the physical type that went with it.

[Krefter]

What is interesting in terms of the decline of G2a during the Neolithic in favor of I2a is that, from what I have read, the bodies from the Neolithic communal long barrows were of the Mediterranean type associated with Near Eastern-derived Neolithic farmers. So, if Neolithicized Mesolithic hunter-gatherer y haplogroup I made a comeback, what happened to the physical type associated with it, i.e., the tall, robust Cro-Magnon?

I'm not disputing the comeback in I2a; I'm just wondering what happened to the physical type that went with it.

It has to be an autosomal comback. In 3000-4000 BC Neolithic genomes are roughly 25% WHG and 75% Early Neolithic. So, not enough to be mostly Cro Magnon in features.

[ADW_1981]

The Irish and British projects are massive at FTDNA and difficult to untangle, and I haven't seen recent stats on non-R1b levels with any granularity. Aren't I2 and G2 levels relatively similar in both Britain and Ireland? This would be the expectation for the British Neolithic in my view.

[R.Rocca]

What is interesting in terms of the decline of G2a during the Neolithic in favor of I2a is that, from what I have read, the bodies from the Neolithic communal long barrows were of the Mediterranean type associated with Near Eastern-derived Neolithic farmers. So, if Neolithicized Mesolithic hunter-gatherer y haplogroup I made a comeback, what happened to the physical type associated with it, i.e., the tall, robust Cro-Magnon?

I'm not disputing the comeback in I2a; I'm just wondering what happened to the physical type that went with it.

The I2a in Late Neolithic Spain and Italy were autosomally EEF (which itself includes HG ancestry).... so, the simple answer is that "admixture" happened and perhaps those physical descriptions are just generalizations.

[rms2]

The I2a in Late Neolithic Spain and Italy were autosomally EEF (which itself includes HG ancestry).... so, the simple answer is that "admixture" happened and perhaps those physical descriptions are just generalizations.

Evidently the Mediterranean type predominated somehow, at least based on the remains from the long barrows.

[R.Rocca]

Evidently the Mediterranean type predominated somehow, at least based on the remains from the long barrows.

BTW... it will be interesting to see if G2a even made it into the Isles during the Neolithic as haplogroup G's frequency is very low there...

Wales: 2.5%
England: 1.5%
Scotland: 0.5%
Ireland: 1%

The Neolithic started in Britain during the continent's Middle Neolithic (I think). If so, it could be that by this time, I2 had already staged a comeback in the form of admixed EEF with extra WHG. Interesting stuff, but really just speculation at this point. :D

[alan]

BTW... it will be interesting to see if G2a even made it into the Isles during the Neolithic as haplogroup G's frequency is very low there...

Wales: 2.5%
England: 1.5%
Scotland: 0.5%
Ireland: 1%

The Neolithic started in Britain during the continent's Middle Neolithic (I think). If so, it could be that by this time, I2 had already staged a comeback in the form of admixed EEF with extra WHG. Interesting stuff, but really just speculation at this point. :D

Yes the late settling of Britain c. 4000BC and Ireland c. 3800BC certainly would seem to increase the chances that Mesolithic lineages would have grown among the farmers before they even reached Britain and Ireland. It could have been a constant snowball rolling type effect picking up a little more hunter genes ever century so that by the time the final north-west shores were reached they were very different from the first farmers in Europe having had an extra 2000 years to mix. However probably more likely it wasnt a contant thing and various crisis periods like LBK after 5000BC might have provided chances for hunter genes to increase. In Ireland the farmers arrive about 3800BC but bu 3600-3500BC the dry period was giving way to damp, pastoralism was increasing, classic rectangular Neolithic houses were being abandoned for more flimsy huts, megaliths were bring constructed etc.

One interesting fact is that Ireland is unusual in having a large cremation element in the Neolithic in the megalithic tombs. This is not at all typical of farmers but it was apparently the preferred (if only very rarely recovered) method of burial in the Mesolithic.

[rms2]

It is odd, though, that the tall, robust Cro-Magnon type seems to disappear in the west during the Neolithic, replaced by the shorter, more slightly built, longheaded Mediterranean.

I guess diet could also be a contributing factor. Switching from the high protein hunter-gatherer diet to the high carbohydrate Neolithic farmer diet probably contributed to making successive generations shorter in stature and slighter in build.

[kinman]

Diet (especially lack of fruit?)
Yes, diet at a young age can make a big difference in just one generation. A lot of people who were children during the "Dust Bowl" of the 1930s were shorter than their parents, but they themselves had children in the 1950s that were taller than them. If malnourishment goes on for many generations, I suppose it would get even worse.
I would think that vitamin deficiencies may have been a problem in parts of Europe. Scurvy was probably a big problem, at least before the apple was domesticated in Kazakhstan and then spread westward (probably with the Kurgan people?).
---------------------Ken
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


It is odd, though, that the tall, robust Cro-Magnon type seems to disappear in the west during the Neolithic, replaced by the shorter, more slightly built, longheaded Mediterranean.

I guess diet could also be a contributing factor. Switching from the high protein hunter-gatherer diet to the high carbohydrate Neolithic farmer diet probably contributed to making successive generations shorter in stature and slighter in build.

[Krefter]

It is odd, though, that the tall, robust Cro-Magnon type seems to disappear in the west during the Neolithic, replaced by the shorter, more slightly built, longheaded Mediterranean.

I guess diet could also be a contributing factor. Switching from the high protein hunter-gatherer diet to the high carbohydrate Neolithic farmer diet probably contributed to making successive generations shorter in stature and slighter in build.

It's simple. Neolithic Europeans were 70%+ Anatolian. The Cro Magnon types were displaced.

[Megalophias]

Diet (especially lack of fruit?) I would think that vitamin deficiencies may have been a problem in parts of Europe. Scurvy was probably a big problem, at least before the apple was domesticated in Kazakhstan and then spread westward (probably with the Kurgan people?).
Fresh food has lots of vitamin C, mostly all you need to do is eat some vegetables (or weeds). It's when you are living on dried or boiled food, like on long sea voyages or army campaigns, that there is a problem. Or poor people living on nothing but grain all winter with no fresh meat sometimes got it, especially in places like Russia with long winters.

Apples aren't particularly high in vitamin C, you could just as well eat berries. Cabbage is a good source, or wild mustard or watercress, if you don't have domestic vegetables.

[kinman]

Yes, I covered much of that in my new thread about "Vitamin C". Although apples aren't the highest source for Vitamin C, they certainly were important in surviving many sea voyages to the New World, as well as during North American westward expansion. They can be stored for long periods and also made into cider (which was often a lot healthier than polluted water supplies). It's no wonder Johnny Appleseed became a legend in his own time. Life on the steppe 6000-6500 years ago certainly prepared the proto-Indo-Europeans for their expansion across Europe and into the New World. Domesticating horses, domesticating apples, acquiring immunity to plague, and the genetic tendency to produce more sons than daughters. And the Celts were supposedly the first to domesticate cabbage and kale, rich vegetable sources of Vitamin C.
---------------Ken
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Fresh food has lots of vitamin C, mostly all you need to do is eat some vegetables (or weeds). It's when you are living on dried or boiled food, like on long sea voyages or army campaigns, that there is a problem. Or poor people living on nothing but grain all winter with no fresh meat sometimes got it, especially in places like Russia with long winters.

Apples aren't particularly high in vitamin C, you could just as well eat berries. Cabbage is a good source, or wild mustard or watercress, if you don't have domestic vegetables.

[rms2]

It's simple. Neolithic Europeans were 70%+ Anatolian. The Cro Magnon types were displaced.

It doesn't seem that simple. Obviously y haplogroup I, which was present in Mesolithic Europeans, survived in a big way, as did mtDNA haplogroup U5, also present in Mesolithic Europeans.

It does seem that the big, robust Cro-Magnon physical type was replaced by the smaller, more slightly built Mediterranean type, however.

[alan]

diet could have a huge effect on physical type though - as we have even seen in the last century or so. Seen it in my own male line over 4 generations.

[rms2]

diet could have a huge effect on physical type though - as we have even seen in the last century or so. Seen it in my own male line over 4 generations.

I definitely think that was part of it.

Hunter-gatherers had a diet that was high in protein (at least, when things were going well) derived from fish, shellfish and wild game. Neolithic farmers would have had a diet much lower in protein and higher in carbohydrates derived from cereals.

[kinman]

I agree, it's more complicated. And Haplogroup I did indeed do fairly well despite the rapid increase in Haplogroup R populations. Thus far, my own mixed European ancestry has R1b in first place, then I-M253, and R1a in third place (plus very few in Haplogroups E, G, J, and Q). I can only guess, but I suspect my Haplogroup R ancestors were on average a bit larger than my Haplogroup I ancestors.
-----------------Ken
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


It doesn't seem that simple. Obviously y haplogroup I, which was present in Mesolithic Europeans, survived in a big way, as did mtDNA haplogroup U5, also present in Mesolithic Europeans.

It does seem that the big, robust Cro-Magnon physical type was replaced by the smaller, more slightly built Mediterranean type, however.

[alan]

BTW... it will be interesting to see if G2a even made it into the Isles during the Neolithic as haplogroup G's frequency is very low there...

Wales: 2.5%
England: 1.5%
Scotland: 0.5%
Ireland: 1%

The Neolithic started in Britain during the continent's Middle Neolithic (I think). If so, it could be that by this time, I2 had already staged a comeback in the form of admixed EEF with extra WHG. Interesting stuff, but really just speculation at this point. :D

I recall Coon saying that the isles Neolithic people were quite different from the Danubian despite the fact that it is derivatives of the Danubian that settled northern Europe. He had some dated intepretations but I would say the absorbing of some hunter DNA sounds the most plausible explanation since they were the only two populations in the area.

http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/chapter-IV10.htm

[alan]

this old book is interesting for those fascinated by antiquarian anthropology of generations ago https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sEzuAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA401&lpg=PA401&dq=neolithic+britons+average+stature&source=bl&ots=X0dv8KjV7V&sig=rlhiDCFY_1LSdT1fq5__PUdh10U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDUQ6AEwBWoVChMIlKn_pOT_yAIVwVUUCh2qbgpp#v=on epage&q=neolithic%20britons%20average%20stature&f=false

[Gravetto-Danubian]

This new Caucasus study by Pinhasi et al might impact how we understand BB. Here is what one commenter ("Matt") said on Eurogenes

""Particularly, I think it's possible that Bronze Age Hungary, Bell Beaker, and Northwest Europe is relatively rich in CHG and WHG, relative to EHG, compared to what a Yamnaya based model would predict, while Corded Ware may be both a little richer in EHG and Anatolia_EN and less rich in CHG than a Yamnaya based model would predict. It seems possible to me that a slightly more CHG version of Yamnaya entered Hungary in the Bronze Age and precipitated the existence of the Bronze Age Hungarian population and from there maybe populations like Bell Beaker, through interactions with others?""

[rms2]

I think it likely that whatever CHG Bell Beaker had is attributable to Yamnaya.

According to Jones et al, the Kotias male was y-dna J2a and mtDNA H13c. No J2a has yet been found in Beaker, but H13 has been found in Beaker and Yamnaya.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

I think it likely that whatever CHG Bell Beaker had is attributable to Yamnaya.

According to Jones et al, the Kotias male was y-dna J2a and mtDNA H13c. No J2a has yet been found in Beaker, but H13 has been found in Beaker and Yamnaya.

Oh yes, I meant in terms of finer resolution of autosomal components, not Y lines

[Romilius]

I think it likely that whatever CHG Bell Beaker had is attributable to Yamnaya.

According to Jones et al, the Kotias male was y-dna J2a and mtDNA H13c. No J2a has yet been found in Beaker, but H13 has been found in Beaker and Yamnaya.

Interesting... is that H13c ancestral to H13 in Bell Beaker and Yamna?

P.s.: on Dispatches from Turtle island appeared a new dissertation by the blogger on the connection between Irish R1b, Basque R1b, Yamna, Beaker culture and Vasconic languages. The only thing I don't understand from his dissertation is why he states that is someway impossible that Basques underwent a language shift... well, if only he argumented more...

[R.Rocca]

This new Caucasus study by Pinhasi et al might impact how we understand BB. Here is what one commenter ("Matt") said on Eurogenes

""Particularly, I think it's possible that Bronze Age Hungary, Bell Beaker, and Northwest Europe is relatively rich in CHG and WHG, relative to EHG, compared to what a Yamnaya based model would predict, while Corded Ware may be both a little richer in EHG and Anatolia_EN and less rich in CHG than a Yamnaya based model would predict. It seems possible to me that a slightly more CHG version of Yamnaya entered Hungary in the Bronze Age and precipitated the existence of the Bronze Age Hungarian population and from there maybe populations like Bell Beaker, through interactions with others?""

That could very well be one of the scenarios that occurred, but we also have to take into account that the populations the Yamnaya interacted with on their way west were likely different as well. For example, a pretty uniform Yamnaya branch could have gone through the Forest Steppe into Poland and another into the Danube. The pre-Yamnaya Danube population may already have had some CHG, thus creating slightly different mixes of EHG/CHG within Corded Ware and Bell Beaker. Let's also not forget that there are some Bell Beaker samples that plot quite well with Corded Ware.

[rms2]

Interesting... is that H13c ancestral to H13 in Bell Beaker and Yamna?

Honestly, I don't know, except to say that the Kotias H13c was a male, so he did not pass on his particular branch of H13c. But perhaps he had sisters who did.



P.s.: on Dispatches from Turtle island appeared a new dissertation by the blogger on the connection between Irish R1b, Basque R1b, Yamna, Beaker culture and Vasconic languages. The only thing I don't understand from his dissertation is why he states that is someway impossible that Basques underwent a language shift... well, if only he argumented more...

I am not familiar with that blog, but the emphasis placed on the Basques over the years has always amazed me, even though I think I know what it stems from: the 19th century idea that the Basques were some sort of Paleolithic relic population. Even though we are mostly over that now, there are still people who drag out the Basques now and then to cast doubt on any association between R1b and Indo-European languages, despite the actual smoking gun ancient y-dna evidence. But I haven't read the Turtle Island article, so I don't know what the blogger does with the Basques in that case.

[vettor]

I think it likely that whatever CHG Bell Beaker had is attributable to Yamnaya.

According to Jones et al, the Kotias male was y-dna J2a and mtDNA H13c. No J2a has yet been found in Beaker, but H13 has been found in Beaker and Yamnaya.

H13 in beaker ?...I am unsure ..........the 2013 brotherton mtdna paper for "beaker Neolithic area " does not have it

here is link to Ian Logan for all the Brotherton mtdna ..........which they are now finding Ydna for
http://www.ianlogan.co.uk/lists/brotherton.htm

# 7 and 9 have ydna of T1a-M70

Can you link this H13c for beaker ..................I have it for Yamnaya

Maju mention H13 as Caucasus though..........again I am unsure
https://forwhattheywereweare.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/brotherton-2013-cherry-picking-the-evidence-for-mtdna-h/comment-page-2/

[R.Rocca]

H13 in beaker ?...I am unsure ..........the 2013 brotherton mtdna paper for "beaker Neolithic area " does not have it

here is link to Ian Logan for all the Brotherton mtdna ..........which they are now finding Ydna for
http://www.ianlogan.co.uk/lists/brotherton.htm

# 7 and 9 have ydna of T1a-M70

Can you link this H13c for beaker ..................I have it for Yamnaya

Maju mention H13 as Caucasus though..........again I am unsure
https://forwhattheywereweare.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/brotherton-2013-cherry-picking-the-evidence-for-mtdna-h/comment-page-2/

Bell Beaker sample Quedlinburg XIII was H13a1a2 as per Haak 2015.

[Jean M]

David W. has put together a useful PCA plot: http://eurogenes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/first-look-at-caucasus-hunter-gatherer.html

Given that I had to enlarge it offline and ferret around trying to find things, I added some lettering for the elderly and poor-sighted (me).

6651

[Jean M]

Volker Heyd has uploaded an interesting paper to Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/19425417/_2015_F._Bertemes_and_V._Heyd_2200_BC_Innovation_o r_Evolution_Genesis_of_the_Danubian_EBA._In_2200_B C_A_climatic_breakdown_as_a_cause_for_the_collapse _of_the_old_world_7th_Arch._Conference_Central_Ger many_Oct._23_26_2014._Tagungen_Landesmus._Vorgesch ._12_Halle_561-578



The area encompassed by the Danubian Early Bronze Age comprises the regions north of the Alps, mostly along the upper and middle Danube corridor, from Switzerland in the west to western Hungary in the east, plus a kind of regional exclave near the point where the modern countries of Hun-gary, Romania, and Serbia meet. ... Its beginnings are conventionally dated to 2200 cal BC. However....the conventional beginning of the Danubian Early Bronze Age (Reinecke A1 period) has to be shifted somewhat forward in time, i. e., closer to 2150 cal BC, if not even a further generation beyond that...

Both burial customs and the pottery inventory now demonstrate an unambiguous continuity from the later Begleitkeramik) phases of the Bell-Beaker East group and it may be supposed that this continuity also applies to the great majority of the population of the time. But there is another aspect of discontinuity that is not yet fully understood in terms of its importance for the transformations taking place at the transition to the Early Bronze Age: not a single burial ground of the late Bell Beaker phases appears to continue into the initial Danubian Early Bronze Age. All the cemeteries, including those of the Early Maros Culture, are newly founded and are then sometimes used continuously for several centuries, as in the cases of Franzhausen and Gemeinlebarn in Austria. The same situation is interestingly observable in the case of the Unětice Culture, in the north of the Danube River, and of the epi-Corded Ware Mierzanowice/Nitra groups in Poland and Slovakia. Might this speak in favour of a more substantial change, or even a partial system collapse, around 2200–2150 cal BC north of the Alps?

As concluded in our previous publications, the Danubian EBA draws a huge part of its innovations from the Carpathian Basin and the Balkans. This statement is still valid when looking at e. g. pottery, weapons, jewellery, dress fit-tings, or the new dress code as a whole (Heyd 2013a). Thanks to research activities of recent decades, however, another probably no less important area of influence has become apparent: northern Italy. Showing generally strong similarities and a comparable development clear links to areas south of the Alps are visible..

[Hando]

Volker Heyd has uploaded an interesting paper to Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/19425417/_2015_F._Bertemes_and_V._Heyd_2200_BC_Innovation_o r_Evolution_Genesis_of_the_Danubian_EBA._In_2200_B C_A_climatic_breakdown_as_a_cause_for_the_collapse _of_the_old_world_7th_Arch._Conference_Central_Ger many_Oct._23_26_2014._Tagungen_Landesmus._Vorgesch ._12_Halle_561-578
So is this paper assuming that the Bell Beaker people in the upper-middle Dunube were replaced by people from the Italian peninsula at the onset of the Danubian EBA?

[Gravetto-Danubian]

So is this paper assuming that the Bell Beaker people in the upper-middle Dunube were replaced by people from the Italian peninsula at the onset of the Danubian EBA?

Quite the contrary, it suggests that the "Danubian EBA group" (defined as between the Alps and the Danube) shows major continuity with the preceding Copper Age (Bell Beaker East groups), with only some economic "evolution". This differs with other areas - like Unetice (north of the Danube) and in Hungary, which show marked cultural shifts.

Heyd suggests the reason for this was because the danubian EBA group was simply already successful, so there was no incentive for them to re-invent themselves; or as we say in Australia "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

On a larger scale, however, what had occurred was the collapse of the large Copper Age horizons (like CWC and B.B.), and fragmentation into smaller regional units (?confederations of chiefdoms). Some areas responded by innovation, some by conservatism.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

David W. has put together a useful PCA plot: http://eurogenes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/first-look-at-caucasus-hunter-gatherer.html

Given that I had to enlarge it offline and ferret around trying to find things, I added some lettering for the elderly and poor-sighted (me).

6651


6803


The figures Davidski got for BB are interesting. I;ve transcribed them here, rounded off to d.p.
It's interesting there is some variation from group to group, and within individuals.
The Czech BBs at least look almost like an equal blend of WHG, CHG, EHG, EEF. The Germans ones are more EEF heavy, on the whole

The co-occurrence of CHG and EHG as new components in the Copper Age again confirms that R1b arrived from the east.

Also noteworthy, later and modern samples from central Europe are even more CHG shifted, and less EHG; suggesting differentially greater contacts/ admixtures with southern Europe (Balkans, Italy) rather than eastern Europe in later periods.

[alan]

6803


The figures Davidski got for BB are interesting. I;ve transcribed them here, rounded off to d.p.
It's interesting there is some variation from group to group, and within individuals.
The Czech BBs at least look almost like an equal blend of WHG, CHG, EHG, EEF. The Germans ones are more EEF heavy, on the whole

The co-occurrence of CHG and EHG as new components in the Copper Age again confirms that R1b arrived from the east.

Also noteworthy, later and modern samples from central Europe are even more CHG shifted, and less EHG; suggesting differentially greater contacts/ admixtures with southern Europe (Balkans, Italy) rather than eastern Europe in later periods.

very interesting table. Can anyone see difference between adult males and females in terms of their autosomal DNA?

[alan]

has David any observations on CHG pre-3000BC outside the steppe?

[Generalissimo]

has David any observations on CHG pre-3000BC outside the steppe?

He's looking into it. :P

[Gravetto-Danubian]

has David any observations on CHG pre-3000BC outside the steppe?

Ha I know David is looking into it

But my preliminary conclusion is that there was a bidirectional mimovement of CHG : 1 into the steppe; mixing with EHG to form Yamnaya; the other into the Balkans - mixing with the Balkan type EEF. Steppe-like impact on Southern Europe (ie Mycenean Greece) was minimal .

Hungary BA was the "frontier zone" . It appears - if modern populations can be used (with all due cautions and caveats); that Italy received by and large the non-steppe admixed form of CHG

Of course, we need aDNA from the Balkan late copper / EBA to confirm this; and to clarify exactly where this CHG came from. Obviously it was also new to Anatolia, but it certainly did exist in the South Caucasus, and perhaps beyond

[R.Rocca]

Things I find interesting about David's latest run (found here) (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_uKagAzyBnSzfI1rIEclIx6kfIE-NYpiWY5Bs0XqyAg/edit?usp=sharing):

1. All Europeans west of the Volga have more Caucasus_HG than Eastern_HG.
2. Anatolia_Neolithic has survived better in modern day Sardinians, Basques, Southern French, Northern Italians, Tuscans and most Balkans than it has in Turkey itself.
3. It is difficult to explain how Sardinians have zero Eastern_HG. They had a healthy dose of Bell Beaker archaeology and some 20% R1b, even though it is the lowest in all of Western Europe.

[rms2]

Things I find interesting about David's latest run (found here) (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_uKagAzyBnSzfI1rIEclIx6kfIE-NYpiWY5Bs0XqyAg/edit?usp=sharing):

1. All Europeans west of the Volga have more Caucasus_HG than Eastern_HG.
2. Anatolia_Neolithic has survived better in modern day Sardinians, Basques, Southern French, Northern Italians, Tuscans and most Balkans than it has in Turkey itself.
3. It is difficult to explain how Sardinians have zero Eastern_HG. They had a healthy dose of Bell Beaker archaeology and some 20% R1b, even though it is the lowest in all of Western Europe.

Don't the Sardinians also have their very own R1a subclade? Pardon me if that's an error on my part.

If the R1b that reached Sardinia already had EHG (coming by way of ANE, I suppose) that was much diluted after traversing areas that were very high in EEF, then it wouldn't take a whole lot of time being immersed in the Sardinian genetic environment to reduce it to nothing or nearly nothing. Besides, isn't some of the R1b in Sardinia V88?

[Romilius]

Don't the Sardinians also have their very own R1a subclade? Pardon me if that's an error on my part.

If the R1b that reached Sardinia already had EHG (coming by way of ANE, I suppose) that was much diluted after traversing areas that were very high in EEF, then it wouldn't take a whole lot of time being immersed in the Sardinian genetic environment to reduce it to nothing or nearly nothing. Besides, isn't some of the R1b in Sardinia V88?

I thought R-V88 men were the majority among Sardinian R1b...

[lgmayka]

Don't the Sardinians also have their very own R1a subclade?
They have their own 4500-year-old subclade of R-M458, called R-PF6188 (http://yfull.com/tree/R-PF7521/).

[Romilius]

They have their own 4500-year-old subclade of R-M458, called R-PF6188 (http://yfull.com/tree/R-PF7521/).

Interesting... the million dollar question is how that rare R came in Sardinia without paying too much attention to the obsolete Italian refugium theory.

[rms2]

I thought R-V88 men were the majority among Sardinian R1b...

Could be; I'm not sure. I think they have some U152, as well.

I know the highest frequency of I-M26 anywhere occurs in Sardinia.

[Megalophias]

I thought R-V88 men were the majority among Sardinian R1b...

No, they have total 15.4% R1b-M269, 2.4% R1b-V88.

Of the R1b-M269, 69% is U152, 18% is other P312, 3% is other L11 (mostly if not all U106), 5% is L23* (probably Z2103), and 5% is PF7558 (M269*).

[lgmayka]

Interesting... the million dollar question is how that rare R came in Sardinia without paying too much attention to the obsolete Italian refugium theory.
The rare R-M458 clade is only 4500 years old. It could have tagged along with R-U152. Both might have migrated from Central & Eastern Bell Beaker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaker_culture#/media/File:Beaker_culture_diffusion.svg).

[Agamemnon]

The rare R-M458 clade is only 4500 years old. It could have tagged along with R-U152. Both might have migrated from Central & Eastern Bell Beaker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaker_culture#/media/File:Beaker_culture_diffusion.svg).

I think you might be right.

[R.Rocca]

No, they have total 15.4% R1b-M269, 2.4% R1b-V88.

Of the R1b-M269, 69% is U152, 18% is other P312, 3% is other L11 (mostly if not all U106), 5% is L23* (probably Z2103), and 5% is PF7558 (M269*).

Yes...so 13.4% R1b (not counting V88) is still very low for Western Europe. Some places within Sardinia have even lower levels. It is easy to see how they retained so much Neolithic ancestry, even on the male side, as the "big two" Early and Middle Neolithic Y-DNA markers alone have very high frequency there...

OlbiaTempio/Nuoro: I2a1-M26 (48.6%) + G2a-P15 (14.3%) = 62.9% Minimum Neolithic Lineages
Oristano: I2a1-M26 (35.7%) + G2a-P15 (17.1%) = 52.8% Minimum Neolithic Lineages

These are minimums as in Oristano, there is even some R1b1a-M18 and F-M89 (xM201,M170/P38,M304,M9), not to mention J, E and T.

[rms2]

Yes...so 13.4% R1b (not counting V88) is still very low for Western Europe. Some places within Sardinia have even lower levels. It is easy to see how they retained so much Neolithic ancestry . . .

I was thinking about that last night. Is there another such region in western Europe with R1b frequencies so low? I cannot think of one. It strikes me as kind of backhanded further evidence of the connection between R1b and steppe ancestry: very low R1b frequency in western Europe = very low to non-existent steppe autosomal ancestry.

[alan]

Things I find interesting about David's latest run (found here) (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_uKagAzyBnSzfI1rIEclIx6kfIE-NYpiWY5Bs0XqyAg/edit?usp=sharing):

1. All Europeans west of the Volga have more Caucasus_HG than Eastern_HG.
2. Anatolia_Neolithic has survived better in modern day Sardinians, Basques, Southern French, Northern Italians, Tuscans and most Balkans than it has in Turkey itself.
3. It is difficult to explain how Sardinians have zero Eastern_HG. They had a healthy dose of Bell Beaker archaeology and some 20% R1b, even though it is the lowest in all of Western Europe.

A lot of the beaker is of SW origin though is it not? It all depends then where and when you think P312 and beaker came together. If the two things were not initially linked - say this only happened in central Europe c. 2550BC and took a while to spread - then there could be a phase of beaker spread from Iberia into the rest of the west Med. (usually seen as the earliest appearance of beaker outside Iberia) that didnt involve P312 at all and perhaps may have not involved steppe-like genes at all.

It is hard though not to suspect that the spread of CHG has some link to the two great Caucasus powehouses of Maykop and/or later Kura Araxes. If i recall correctly the latter managed to settle not only from Iran to the Levant but also made it onto Cyprus. If they could make it to Cyprus then they did have access to decent boats and in theory anyway could have spread further west.

[Megalophias]

It is hard though not to suspect that the spread of CHG has some link to the two great Caucasus powehouses of Maykop and/or later Kura Araxes. If i recall correctly the latter managed to settle not only from Iran to the Levant but also made it onto Cyprus. If they could make it to Cyprus then they did have access to decent boats and in theory anyway could have spread further west.

Kura-Araxes is certainly a prime suspect, but there is also that unpublished paper reporting a Caucasian ancestral component turning up in remains from Late Neolithic Kumtepe, in Northwestern Anatolia c. 4500 BC. If this is confirmed then CHG-like gene flow westward considerably predated Kura-Araxes and could have reached the Balkans as early as the Varna period.

[alan]

Kura-Araxes is certainly a prime suspect, but there is also that unpublished paper reporting a Caucasian ancestral component turning up in remains from Late Neolithic Kumtepe, in Northwestern Anatolia c. 4500 BC. If this is confirmed then CHG-like gene flow westward considerably predated Kura-Araxes and could have reached the Balkans as early as the Varna period.

If that was proven then the CHG element could go all the way back to the first copper use. There are early dates in the Balkans and Iran so some have placed the origin in east Anatolia. I dont think anyone knows for certain but an origin somewhere between Iran and the Balkans seems very likely and of course the CHG genes could either come from the origin point or picked up in the 2nd, 3rd etc generations of spreading copper workers.

I have always felt that copper spread across western Eurasia in a kind of jerky east to west cline by people and not by independent invention or emulation. The only question in my mind has been if its genetic effect was tiny and easily diluted beyond detection or significant. The first wave of copper beyond SE Europe and across southern Europe seems to have been on an east to west chronological cline across the period 4000-3000BC. We do have people from the early copper age in Italy (Ice man), the Remdedello samples and those Iberian pre-beaker copper age samples. It would be interesting to know if any of them have CHG - even if it is in modest quantities. This may have been posted already but I have been a bit time stretched and not following very closely recently.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

If that was proven then the CHG element could go all the way back to the first copper use. There are early dates in the Balkans and Iran so some have placed the origin in east Anatolia. I dont think anyone knows for certain but an origin somewhere between Iran and the Balkans seems very likely and of course the CHG genes could either come from the origin point or picked up in the 2nd, 3rd etc generations of spreading copper workers.

I have always felt that copper spread across western Eurasia in a kind of jerky east to west cline by people and not by independent invention or emulation. The only question in my mind has been if its genetic effect was tiny and easily diluted beyond detection or significant. The first wave of copper beyond SE Europe and across southern Europe seems to have been on an east to west chronological cline across the period 4000-3000BC. We do have people from the early copper age in Italy (Ice man), the Remdedello samples and those Iberian pre-beaker copper age samples. It would be interesting to know if any of them have CHG - even if it is in modest quantities. This may have been posted already but I have been a bit time stretched and not following very closely recently.

Some people have been plugging Remedello into calculators, but Davidski indicated that it had little above 5% CHG. We also know that Copper Age (Baden) from Hungary had little if any. * but the figures are still being fine tuned ; and it might turn out that EEF had up to > 10% CHG already**

The Late Neolithic Kumtepe (4700 BC) abstract certainly was a teaser, but I recall there was a bit of confusion as to what the abstract was really trying to say. But it might have that CHG.

We also know there was significant change in the Balkans during the final Copper Age (c. 4200-3500 BC) from good old archaeology.

Putting 2 & 2 together, one is left with the impression that there was a movement of CHG into SEE 4200-3500 BC, and this happens to match the eearlist evidence of 'Teal' in the steppe (Khvalynsk : which is now dated to 4200 - 3000 BC). Coincidence ? I remarked the same a few posts back (http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?3474-Bell-Beakers-Gimbutas-and-R1b&p=124689#post124689)

But it gets more complex. There might have been more than one types "CHG". The early patterns the boys are seeing is that the CHG type seen in Yamnaya and modern northeast Euros is close to Kotias. That seen in southern Europe is more to a type matching modern south Asians. Northwest Europe appears to be somewhat in between.

Naturally, the advance of J2 lineages has something to do with this. But I wonder if some of the Balkan varieties of R1b also did ?

[Jean M]

Volker Heyd has just uploaded a paper which might be of interest. I haven't had time to read it yet.

A. Frînculeasa, B. Preda & V. Heyd, Pit-Graves, Yamnaya and Kurgans at the Lower Danube: Disentangling late 4th and early 3rd Millennium BC Burial Customs, Equipment and Chronology. Praehistorische Zeitschrift 90/1-2, 2015, 45-113.
https://www.academia.edu/12729828/_2015_A._Fr%C3%AEnculeasa_B._Preda_and_V._Heyd_Pit-Graves_Yamnaya_and_Kurgans_at_the_Lower_Danube_Dis entangling_late_4th_and_early_3rd_Millennium_BC_Bu rial_Customs_Equipment_and_Chronology._Praehistori sche_Zeitschrift_90_1-2_2015_45-113

Abstract:

The Pit-Graves under burial mounds (Kurgans) of the Lower Danube region are being assessed in terms of their burial customs, funeral equipment, stratigraphy and radiocarbon dates. The latter comprise 17 recently performed AMS dates from Northern Muntenia, most of them yet unpublished. Two distinct burial groups can be separated: A first consists of graves with more oval than rectangular grave-pits, predominantly side-crouched body positions of the deceased, few ochre, and rare but seemingly local pots. Graves of this group are mostly the primary graves in their mounds. By using some already published and the newly obtained 14C dates from the graves 3B and 5B of Ariceşti IV (and partly grave 2/3 of Păuleşti II), all Prahova District, we demonstrate this group to date to before c. 3050/3000 cal BC, probably covering the whole last third of the IVth millennium BC.

The second group presents all characteristics of the classical ’Yamnaya’, i.e. primary and secondary graves, predominantly rectangular grave-pits covered by wooden beams, and supine body positions with flexed legs, ochre patches and/or lumps, and sparse equipment of those occasional precious-metal hair rings stand out. Pottery is again rare; but when vessels are given they often represent cord-decorated beakers, resembling very much the typical Corded Ware beakers of Central and Northern Europe. Graves of this group have normally 14C dates after c. 3050/3000 cal BC with a tentative possibility to further divide them along the flat and steep parts of the calibration curve, i.e. firstly from c. 3050/3000 to 2880 cal BC and then from c. 2880 to 2580 cal BC. This perhaps opens the possibility to eventually define an earlier and later ’Yamnaya’.

Overall, and after examining more than 500 radiocarbon and/or dendrochronological dates from the Ural to the Tisza river, the pit-grave cultural phenomenon ranges from c. 3500 to 2400 cal BC. By including the preceding Suvorovo-Novodanilovka graves (Vth mill. BC) and some Kurgan/ steppe burials attributed to Cernavoda I and its relatives (1st half of IVth mill. BC), a 2,000 years lasting continuum of exchange between the northeast, north and west-Pontic regions becomes evident. While we assume the ‘Yamnaya’ being mostly covered by an intense wave of migrant people from the east, in a novel socio-economic-ideological atmosphere, it remains to be seen whether the first Pit-Graves under Kurgans at the Lower Danube from c. 3300 cal BC are also carried by steppe people related to those using the north-Pontic Nizhne-Mikhailovka and Kvityana burial traditions, or by local populations integrating new ‘eastern’ burial customs into their own rituals. Perhaps a combination of both is the most likely scenario.

[Added] Bernard has just given this paper its own thread. http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?5960-Pit-Graves-Yamnaya-and-Kurgans-along-the-Lower-Danube

[Romilius]

I was thinking about that last night. Is there another such region in western Europe with R1b frequencies so low? I cannot think of one. It strikes me as kind of backhanded further evidence of the connection between R1b and steppe ancestry: very low R1b frequency in western Europe = very low to non-existent steppe autosomal ancestry.

It seems so...

So, genetic ideas make your nights sleepless...

[rms2]

It seems so...

So, genetic ideas make your nights sleepless...

No, I actually sleep pretty well. I was thinking about that before going to bed. :)

[kinman]

I just noticed that YFull has updated its haplotree to version 3.18.
-----------Ken

[rms2]

I have mentioned this before, but I suspect the very earliest Iberian Beaker people were a different people from the later Beaker people who had the fully developed Beaker package. Here is something I stumbled on from Coon's The Races of Europe, page 150, that mentions the anthropological differences between the two.



Where Bell Beaker burials are found in central Europe, the skeletons are almost always of the same tall brachycephalic
type which we have already studied in the eastern Mediterranean and Italy. In Spain, however, they are frequently of the Megalithic race.


Elsewhere Coon makes clear that by "Megalithic race" he means long-headed, gracile, short-statured Mediterraneans, like the bodies from the long barrows of the British Isles.

I wonder if those two I-M26 (predicted from STRs) men from the Dolmen of La Pierre Fritte near Paris were of what Coon would have called the "Megalithic race". Those are the only ancient y-dna results I know of from a megalithic burial.

[rms2]

I have mentioned this before, but I suspect the very earliest Iberian Beaker people were a different people from the later Beaker people who had the fully developed Beaker package. Here is something I stumbled on from Coon's The Races of Europe, page 150, that mentions the anthropological differences between the two.



Elsewhere Coon makes clear that by "Megalithic race" he means long-headed, gracile, short-statured Mediterraneans, like the bodies from the long barrows of the British Isles.

I wonder if those two I-M26 (predicted from STRs) men from the Dolmen of La Pierre Fritte near Paris were of what Coon would have called the "Megalithic race". Those are the only ancient y-dna results I know of from a megalithic burial.

I guess I need to correct myself. Apparently the La Mina burial site in Spain is also considered megalithic. The y-dna from there was I-M223 and H2. It would be nice to know whether they fit Coon's description of the Megalithic race.

[rms2]

So maybe early Bell Beaker was a copper-working group out of the Balkans who were mostly I2a. Their pots went back east and became part of a Vucedol/Yamnaya combo that was tall, round-headed, big-boned, and mostly R1b-P312. The rest is prehistory.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it, unless the ancient y-dna says otherwise.

[samueld]

Your last idea seems really likely, it is not necessary for beakers to originate in Bell Beaker heartland to be adopted and become a core part of the culture. I think there is a Portugese beaker expert at my old alma mater, the Unversity of Alberta, I'll try to talk to him when I go back there in the spring.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

So maybe early Bell Beaker was a copper-working group out of the Balkans who were mostly I2a. Their pots went back east and became part of a Vucedol/Yamnaya combo that was tall, round-headed, big-boned, and mostly R1b-P312. The rest is prehistory.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it, unless the ancient y-dna says otherwise.

That might make sense.
I have noted that there is an increase in specifically I2a2 lineages after the mid Neolithic; and found from Iberia to as far as that Yamnaya sample.
This might be some branch of an out -of-Balkans migration, but was then superceded by the later yet steppe-Vucedol mixed R1b group

[rms2]

Your last idea seems really likely, it is not necessary for beakers to originate in Bell Beaker heartland to be adopted and become a core part of the culture. I think there is a Portugese beaker expert at my old alma mater, the Unversity of Alberta, I'll try to talk to him when I go back there in the spring.

I have mentioned this several times on this thread already, but here is what is making me suspect that the very earliest Iberian Bell Beaker people were a different people from the Bell Beaker people who were a horse riding, pastoralist, single grave, etc. group.

1. The earliest Iberian Bell Beaker bodies were small-statured, long-headed (dolichocephalic), and gracile, a type called "Mediterranean" by some anthropologists, which seems to be the default type among Near Eastern-derived Neolithic farmers.

2. The most common type of body among later Beaker people, especially the males, was tall for the period, robust, and round-headed (brachycephalic).

3. The earliest Bell Beaker burials often occurred in collective Neolithic tombs and did not include the distinctive warrior kit of later Beaker.

4. By about 2600 BC or so, Bell Beaker people buried their important dead, especially males, in single graves in pits (yama - from which the word Yamnaya is derived) beneath round burial mounds, often accompanied by a warrior's kit of weapons, the famous Beaker pots, and sometimes by animal bones, including horse bones.

5. The earliest Bell Beaker burials in Iberia seem to occur in or near what look like pretty permanent settlements.

6. The later Bell Beaker people appear to have been horse riding pastoralists whose settlements are much less substantial looking and are harder to find.

If I have left anything out or am wrong in anything I listed above, please let me know, but those are some of the things that make me think we are talking about at least two different sets of people linked by a pottery style and not much else.

[razyn]

...those are some of the things that make me think we are talking about at least two different sets of people linked by a pottery style and not much else.

Sort of a reality-check footnote (following the asterisk) to the commonplace, Pots are not people.* More people say that than really believe it. Jean M at least distinguishes between the culture and its tableware, usually with some humor. (Or, I guess hers is humour.) But the yearning for some early tableware of Portugal to mark for us the birthplace of this steppe culture runs very deep.

[Romilius]

That might make sense.
I have noted that there is an increase in specifically I2a2 lineages after the mid Neolithic; and found from Iberia to as far as that Yamnaya sample.
This might be some branch of an out -of-Balkans migration, but was then superceded by the later yet steppe-Vucedol mixed R1b group

Perhaps, those I2a2 people were the original Vasconic speakers? It would be interesting to know, also because it will be a solution to the problem of Basque origins. If Sardinian nuragic people and Iberian one were related, probably they were in they I2a identity. Just my not-so-valuable-copper-made two cents.

[kinman]

Well,
The same evidence fits an alternative hypothesis. Namely, that early Bell Beaker culture was brought to Spain about 3000 BC by small bands of R1b men (very early "Conquistadors", if you will). They could have subjugated what men they didn't kill, and also had children by native concubines. In the early phases, the vast majority who were buried in the area would have been the native gracile Mediterranean people (and perhaps some "half-breeds"). The R1b men were smaller in numbers, so their graves could have been overlooked (especially if they were simple mounds that were not very big), or perhaps more likely, they died away from home (at sea, battles elsewhere, or some returning to where they came from).

Just as with the Conquistadors in the New World, their numbers started low, and discovering any graves might be a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. And they likely wouldn't have wanted to be buried in the same large cemetery with all the servants and concubines. But as more R1b men followed between 3000-2500 BC, one would expect more R1b burials, including bigger burial mounds.
--------------Ken
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I have mentioned this several times on this thread already, but here is what is making me suspect that the very earliest Iberian Bell Beaker people were a different people from the Bell Beaker people who were a horse riding, pastoralist, single grave, etc. group.

1. The earliest Iberian Bell Beaker bodies were small-statured, long-headed (dolichocephalic), and gracile, a type called "Mediterranean" by some anthropologists, which seems to be the default type among Near Eastern-derived Neolithic farmers.

2. The most common type of body among later Beaker people, especially the males, was tall for the period, robust, and round-headed (brachycephalic).

3. The earliest Bell Beaker burials often occurred in collective Neolithic tombs and did not include the distinctive warrior kit of later Beaker.

4. By about 2600 BC or so, Bell Beaker people buried their important dead, especially males, in single graves in pits (yama - from which the word Yamnaya is derived) beneath round burial mounds, often accompanied by a warrior's kit of weapons, the famous Beaker pots, and sometimes by animal bones, including horse bones.

5. The earliest Bell Beaker burials in Iberia seem to occur in or near what look like pretty permanent settlements.

6. The later Bell Beaker people appear to have been horse riding pastoralists whose settlements are much less substantial looking and are harder to find.

If I have left anything out or am wrong in anything I listed above, please let me know, but those are some of the things that make me think we are talking about at least two different sets of people linked by a pottery style and not much else.

[rms2]

Sorry, but that sounds pretty far fetched to me. A virtually invisible R1b elite? We're missing them because all the early Bell Beaker burials we've found thus far were natives and we've overlooked the elite burials (the ones most likely to be large and ostentatious, by the way)?

I think it more likely that the Beaker pots went east and were adopted by an east-central European people who were predominantly R1b-P312 and came to be called Bell Beaker people because of the pots.

Early Iberian Bell Beaker doesn't show any signs that I know of of having a steppe pastoralist-type culture. Later Bell Beaker is distinctly steppe pastoralist but has Bell Beaker pottery (as well as Vucedol/Zok-Mako pottery).

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Well,
The same evidence fits an alternative hypothesis. Namely, that early Bell Beaker culture was brought to Spain about 3000 BC by small bands of R1b men (very early "Conquistadors", if you will). They could have subjugated what men they didn't kill, and also had children by native concubines. In the early phases, the vast majority who were buried in the area would have been the native gracile Mediterranean people (and perhaps some "half-breeds"). The R1b men were smaller in numbers, so their graves could have been overlooked (especially if they were simple mounds that were not very big), or perhaps more likely, they died away from home (at sea, battles elsewhere, or some returning to where they came from).

Just as with the Conquistadors in the New World, their numbers started low, and discovering any graves might be a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. And they likely wouldn't have wanted to be buried in the same large cemetery with all the servants and concubines. But as more R1b men followed between 3000-2500 BC, one would expect more R1b burials, including bigger burial mounds.
--------------Ken
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I agree with RMS2.
We don't need to appeal to "missing data"/ invisible proofs.

And unlike the conquistadors of the new world, any advantage of new eastern BBs would have initially been relative/ marginal and hard fought (as the evidence points to); not like the situation in America where a handful of Europeans with guns and ships could virtually take on a whole continent of natives still in a Stone Age.

[rms2]

I've been keeping an Excel spreadsheet on Bell Beaker dna for awhile, but I decided to create a table in Word because it is easier to post the graphic here. Here is the table of the ancient Bell Beaker results thus far:

7033

I thought it might be convenient to occasionally keep track of the results thus far in this thread.

Note: The location listed as Rothschirmbach should read Rothenschirmbach. I have corrected it on the original table but can't go back and alter the picture posted above.

[rms2]

Well, I inadvertently left one entry out (hope I didn't miss any others), so here's the revised table.

7039

[rms2]

The appearance of Cassidy et al (2015) (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/12/22/1518445113) certainly seems to support the idea that R1b-L21 and steppe autosomal dna arrived in Ireland with the Bell Beaker people. I think it is reasonable to infer that some form of Indo-European speech arrived with them, as well, perhaps Proto-Celtic or Italo-Celtic.

I don't always agree with the Bell Beaker blogger, but I found this remark of his interesting:



For all intents and purposes, a 'Bronze Age Food Vessel burial' on either side of the Irish Sea is essentially a Beaker burial*.


http://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.com/

Certainly Food Vessel burials appear to be the next evolutionary step in the Irish Bell Beaker story.

[TigerMW]

7039

Do we know if RISE566 in the Czech Rep. is P312- U106- ? If so, there is not much in the way of generations between he and the first P312 and U106 folks and they all could have been peers.

[rms2]

Do we know if RISE566 in the Czech Rep. is P312- U106- ? If so, there is not much in the way of generations between he and the first P312 and U106 folks and they all could have been peers.

I believe P310/PF6546/S129+ were the only reads they got. No such informative negatives. My guess is that RISE566 was probably P312+ of some kind.

[TigerMW]

I believe P310/PF6546/S129+ were the only reads they got. No such informative negatives. My guess is that RISE566 was probably P312+ of some kind.
With the association of these ancient DNA R1b people to Yamnaya ancestry, one can't help but entertain the origin of the P310/P311 family, including nearly immediate descendants P312 and U106, with an origin east of Western Europe and maybe east of Central Europe.

What's the estimated archeological age of RISE566?

[rms2]

With the association of these ancient DNA R1b people to Yamnaya ancestry, one can't help but entertain the origin of the P310/P311 family, including nearly immediate descendants P312 and U106, with an origin east of Western Europe and maybe east of Central Europe.

What's the estimated archeological age of RISE566?

No age estimate was given for RISE566, unfortunately.

As you know, my own opinion is that U106 or the P310 line that led to it took a different route from P312 and went around the east side of the Carpathians and onto the North European Plain, thence into Scandinavia with Corded Ware and its offshoots.

I think P312 or the P310 line that led to it was with the branch of Yamnaya that went south of the Carpathians and up the Danube and thus was there to be the dominant y-haplogroup in the Yamnaya/Vucedol mix that became Bell Beaker.

Maybe it's too simplistic, but such a scenario would explain the different distributions of U106 and P312 and the association of the former with Germanic speakers (and to a limited extent with Baltic and Slavic speakers) and the latter with Italo-Celtic speakers.

[TigerMW]

No age estimate was given for RISE566, unfortunately.

As you know, my own opinion is that U106 or the P310 line that led to it took a different route from P312 and went around the east side of the Carpathians and onto the North European Plain, thence into Scandinavia with Corded Ware and its offshoots.

I think P312 or the P310 line that led to it was with the branch of Yamnaya that went south of the Carpathians and up the Danube and thus was there to be the dominant y-haplogroup in the Yamnaya/Vucedol mix that became Bell Beaker.

Maybe it's too simplistic, but such a scenario would explain the different distributions of U106 and P312 and the association of the former with Germanic speakers (and to a limited extent with Baltic and Slavic speakers) and the latter with Italo-Celtic speakers.
There have been faint genetic clues in the past and David Anthony's hypothosis of pre-Germanic Yamnaya expansions that could lead to this. I'm still of the opinion that U106's diversity is higher eastward but that's pretty speculative. Anthony has a lot of credibility and his arguments for pre-Germanic dialects coming along the north side of the Carpathian Mountains are more compelling and his statements on the mixing and turmoil on the way could result in the mix of R1a and finally I1 in Germanic speakers that we see today to go with the U106.

BTW, Happy New Year and thank you RMS2 as well Rick Arnold for you original hypothesis associating Y DNA hg R with PIE expansion.

[rms2]

There has been faint genetic clues in the past and David Anthony's hypothosis of pre-Germanic Yamnaya expansions that could lead to this. I'm still of the opinion that U106's diversity is higher eastward but that's pretty speculative. Anthony has a lot of credibility and his arguments for pre-Germanic dialects coming along the north side of the Carpathian Mountains are more compelling and his statements on the mixing and turmoil on the way could result in the mix of R1a and finally I1 in Germanic speakers that we see today to go with the U106.

BTW, Happy New Year and thank you RMS2 as well Rick Arnold for you original hypothesis associating Y DNA hg R with PIE expansion.

IMHO, Corded Ware was a non-Yamnaya but similar and related steppe people that was mostly R1a. U106 or the P310 line leading to it was part of the Yamnaya group that went around the east and north sides of the Carpathians and onto the North European Plain and probably got mixed up with Corded Ware or shoved to the northern or western vanguard by Corded Ware.

Meanwhile, as I said, P312 or the P310 line leading to it went south around the Carpathians and up the Danube.

This is why I think Bell Beaker was almost exclusively P312 (and subclades), while U106 was in on the Battle Axe cultures derived from Corded Ware and took part in the evolution of Germanic from its inception.

Of course, I could be way off. Maybe U106 was just the northern and eastern fringe of Bell Beaker and got cut off from its P312 Italo-Celtic kinfolk and Germanized. That seems less likely to me; the distinction between P312 and U106 just seems too complete to me for that to be the case.

[alan]

IMHO, Corded Ware was a non-Yamnaya but similar and related steppe people that was mostly R1a. U106 or the P310 line leading to it was part of the Yamnaya group that went around the east and north sides of the Carpathians and onto the North European Plain and probably got mixed up with Corded Ware or shoved to the northern or western vanguard by Corded Ware.

Meanwhile, as I said, P312 or the P310 line leading to it went south around the Carpathians and up the Danube.

This is why I think Bell Beaker was almost exclusively P312 (and subclades), while U106 was in on the Battle Axe cultures derived from Corded Ware and took part in the evolution of Germanic from its inception.

Of course, I could be way off. Maybe U106 was just the northern and eastern fringe of Bell Beaker and got cut off from its P312 Italo-Celtic kinfolk and Germanized. That seems less likely to me; the distinction between P312 and U106 just seems too complete to me for that to be the case.

It is curious that U106 has not turned up in either CW or BB as yet. If that remains then it would seem whatever culture or cultures U106 was located in, it would appear that it was a small clade that then expanded at some point in northern Europe. Judging by the Northern Bronze Age U106, it seems most simple to imagine it was a small clade incorporated into mostly non-R1b CW (none so far in Germany) that was very rare in central Europe but then had some sort of founder affect in northern Europe. Probably in the genesis of CW somewhere around the western border of Ukraine a very small amount of L11 got incorporated from a neighbouring L11 rich culture and got carried north. If that was true then perhaps it is tangential evidence that the rest of L11 was in a culture not too far from the genesis area of CW c. 2900BC.

Regarding CW, it is interesting how recent papers have shown that some Yamnaya in the Lower Danube sort of area has almost identical pottery to CW and other traits. There was clearly a close link and contact if not a common origin.

[alan]

The mystery remains though. P312 is clearly linked to central European Bell Beaker and is also linked to some steppe input. However bell beaker in central Europe is not currently thought to pre-date 2550BC. P312 appears to be older than that date. So must have a pre-beaker 'home'. That is probably essentially the same as the L11 home.

I think its fair to say before L11, L51 was doing very little which is remarkable given L51's far greater age. Then again it could be said that L23 in general was doing little until Z2103 and L11 expanded when you consider the tiny amount of L23 that is neither L11 or Z2103 derived. So, what is the latest SNP counting dating thoughts on the L11 and Z2103 SNPs?

[Gravetto-Danubian]

(also written on thread on Irish aDNA paper)


It appears the direct "Yamnaya input" was very much a phenomenon of northern Europe -where it spread so rapidly (relatively) from the steppe to Ireland in less than 1000 years, but was slow to penetrae the Carpathian basin, Iberia and the Balkans (although essentially unsampled as far as Bronze Age goes). In the latter region, affairs must have been different and more complex.

Of course, the present conclusion is that BB (and their Irish offshoots) are ultimately from Yamnaya which admixed somewhere in the Carpathian region with some north Balkan -type EEFs.

But the situation could be more complex. The genesis of BB phenomenon in the east (ie central Europe) is still poorly defined, although there is no shortage of hypotheses. Moreover, the "EHG" link via CWC also has to be considered, as well as the substrate input of northern European late Neolithic groups like GAC - which appear to be the earliest manifestation of solitary burials and cattle herding north of the Carpathians and west of Pontic steppe (from c. 3300 BC, possibly mediated via Baden culture in Hungary). They permeated north, to stimulate the Single Grave culture, and reached south toward Rivnac (Bohemia) and Cham (bavaria) - exactly where BB later apears.

This unsampled swathe could be what we're really looking for ?

Moreover, that GAC was later overlain by R1a-dominated GAC could represent a reason for their westward migration.

Who knows...

[rms2]

Here is some of what Gimbutas had to say about GAC.

From The Civilization of the Goddess, p. 381:



There is similarity between the burial rites of the Globular Amphora people and those of the Kurgans of the Maikop culture in the North Pontic region. Both used mortuary houses built of stone slabs and practiced the ritual burial of horses, cattle, and dogs, as well as human sacrifice in connection with funeral rites honoring high-ranking males.


From The Civilization of the Goddess, p. 383:



The religious and social traditions of the Globular Amphora culture demonstrate that the grave structure was unrelated to that of the TRB culture.


From The Civilization of the Goddess, p. 384:



The physical type of this population [GAC] is not yet satisfactorily known. In Romania only seven skeletons have been examined which were characterized by Olga Necrasov as "attenuated Proto-Europid with some brachylization". The broad-headed skulls from the stone-cist graves in western Ukraine are very similar to those from Romanian Moldavia, and the skulls from Poland are also broad-headed. Multivariate comparisons made between seventeen male skulls from central Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland by Ilse Schwidetzky has shown affinities with the substratum TRB population. Although the number of individuals examined is still very small, it is interesting to note that Schwidetzky sees a certain gradation within the Globular Amphora population in which breadth measurements decrease from east to west. The eastern groups are very similar to the Kurgan type, while the western resemble the central German TRB people. We have yet to discover the amount of population influx and how much crossing took place between the various types.

Nevertheless, it is apparent that the emergence of the Globular Amphora culture in the north European plain is crucial to an understanding of the Indo-Europeanization of this part of Europe. We must bear in mind that the fundamental social, religious and economic components of the Globular Amphora culture link it to the North Pontic area.

[Romilius]

There is a thing that intrigues me when some people try to associate Bell Beaker culture to Vasconic speakers and the origin of Vasconic speech in the steppe (someone also ties it to Yamna culture, see Dispatches from Turtle island and entertain): when it comes to BB, I see a lot of correlation between those supposed Vasconic speakers and the idea we have of Indoeuropeans, and a lot more when we have the new results from Ireland. A warrior kit (I'm reading a book by an Italian scholar who teaches Greek Literature in the University Tor Vergata in Rome: L'arciere nell'antichità greca e romana - I translate: The archer in the ancient Greece and Rome - where he says, thanks to Greek sources from all eras, that the bow was considered THE barbarian weapon and, specifically, the oriental and nomadic weapon), a single male population (sign of patrilinearity and patrilocal society?), lactose tolerance, nomadism, etc... Even the dogmatic IE-Corded Ware culture so on isn't so uniformly dominated by a single Y-DNA haplogroup...

So, given that, I would say that the real Indoeuropeans are modern Basques.;)

[rms2]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

I have always - or at least for a long time now - thought the Basques are hugely over-emphasized and their importance tremendously exaggerated, and that is due to the old erroneous 19th century idea that they represent some sort of Paleolithic relic population. They don't.

IMHO they are a non-IE people who became predominantly R1b over time via admixture with their IE-speaking neighbors in much the same way the IE-speaking Ossetians became predominantly G2a over time via admixture with their Kartvelian-speaking neighbors.

[Romilius]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

I have always - or at least for a long time now - thought the Basques are hugely over-emphasized and their importance tremendously exaggerated, and that is due to the old erroneous 19th century idea that they represent some sort of Paleolithic relic population. They don't.

IMHO they are a non-IE people who became predominantly R1b over time via admixture with their IE-speaking neighbors in much the same way the IE-speaking Ossetians became predominantly G2a over time via admixture with their Kartvelian-speaking neighbors.

Obviously they are: my point is that, i.e. all things happen to be in Europe must be Vasconic for the Iberianists.
Mine is only a sort of joke based on real feelings: many Iberianists do link - unknowingly - IE features to Vasconic speakers.

[northkerry]

There is a thing that intrigues me when some people try to associate Bell Beaker culture to Vasconic speakers and the origin of Vasconic speech in the steppe (someone also ties it to Yamna culture, see Dispatches from Turtle island and entertain): when it comes to BB, I see a lot of correlation between those supposed Vasconic speakers and the idea we have of Indoeuropeans, and a lot more when we have the new results from Ireland. A warrior kit (I'm reading a book by an Italian scholar who teaches Greek Literature in the University Tor Vergata in Rome: L'arciere nell'antichità greca e romana - I translate: The archer in the ancient Greece and Rome - where he says, thanks to Greek sources from all eras, that the bow was considered THE barbarian weapon and, specifically, the oriental and nomadic weapon), a single male population (sign of patrilinearity and patrilocal society?), lactose tolerance, nomadism, etc... Even the dogmatic IE-Corded Ware culture so on isn't so uniformly dominated by a single Y-DNA haplogroup...

So, given that, I would say that the real Indoeuropeans are modern Basques.;)

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/basiclangstruct.html

A second way of classifying languages is based on the word order they use:

SOV (subject-object-verb) is preferred by the greatest number of languages. Included are the Indoeuropean languages of India, such as Hindi and Bengali, the Dravidian languages of southern India, Armenian, Hungarian, Turkish and its relatives, Korean, Japanese, Burmese, Basque, and most Australian aboriginal languages.

Almost all SOV languages use postpositions ("therein lies a tale"), with a notable exception in Farsi (Persian). Most have the adjective preceding the noun. Exceptions include Burmese, Basque and the Australian aboriginal languages, which have the adjective follow the noun.

SVO (subject-verb-object) is the second largest group, but has the largest number of speakers. They are split between languages that use prepositions ("I go to school") and ones that use postpositions ("therein lies a tale").

Among the prepositional languages are the Romance languages, Albanian, Greek, the Bantu languages, languages of southeast Asia, including Khmer, Vietnamese, Thai, and Malay, and the Germanic languages. Most of these have the adjective following the noun ("un enfant terrible)", except for the Germanic languages, which put the adjective before the noun ("ein schreckliches Kind").

The second group use postpositions. These include Chinese, Finnish and Estonian, many non-Bantu languages of Africa such as Mandingo, and the South American indian language, Guarani. The first three have adjectives before the noun, the others have adjectives after the noun. Some linguists believe that Chinese is moving towards becoming an SOV language.

Next, we have the VSO (verb-subject-object) languages. In Irish, they say Cheannaich mi blobhsa -- “Bought I blouse” -- for I bought a blouse.

These always use prepositions. Although a relatively small group, it does include most Semitic languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, Celtic languages such as Gaelic and Welsh, the Polynesian languages, and a number of American indian languages such as Kwakiutl (British Columbia) and Nahuatl (Aztec). Most have the adjective after the noun. Kwakiutl and Nahuatl have the adjective before the noun.

Only a handful of languages put the subject after the object. Several northwest US and Canadian indian languages use VOS, including Coeur d’Alene, Siuslaw, and Coos. But the first uses prepositions and adjectives after noun, while the other two use postpositions and adjective before the noun!

There are also languages that use more than one of the standard systems. Notable of these is Tagalog and English. Strongly inflexional languages, such as Russian and Latin, often permit varied word order as well.

[Agamemnon]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

I have always - or at least for a long time now - thought the Basques are hugely over-emphasized and their importance tremendously exaggerated, and that is due to the old erroneous 19th century idea that they represent some sort of Paleolithic relic population. They don't.

IMHO they are a non-IE people who became predominantly R1b over time via admixture with their IE-speaking neighbors in much the same way the IE-speaking Ossetians became predominantly G2a over time via admixture with their Kartvelian-speaking neighbors.

While I agree with you, it's far more likely that the Ossetians originally were NW Caucasian speakers (they probably spoke something close to proto-Kabardian) who adopted a Scythian (Alanic) language via elite dominance.


http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/basiclangstruct.html

A second way of classifying languages is based on the word order they use:

SOV (subject-object-verb) is preferred by the greatest number of languages. Included are the Indoeuropean languages of India, such as Hindi and Bengali, the Dravidian languages of southern India, Armenian, Hungarian, Turkish and its relatives, Korean, Japanese, Burmese, Basque, and most Australian aboriginal languages.

Almost all SOV languages use postpositions ("therein lies a tale"), with a notable exception in Farsi (Persian). Most have the adjective preceding the noun. Exceptions include Burmese, Basque and the Australian aboriginal languages, which have the adjective follow the noun.

SVO (subject-verb-object) is the second largest group, but has the largest number of speakers. They are split between languages that use prepositions ("I go to school") and ones that use postpositions ("therein lies a tale").

Among the prepositional languages are the Romance languages, Albanian, Greek, the Bantu languages, languages of southeast Asia, including Khmer, Vietnamese, Thai, and Malay, and the Germanic languages. Most of these have the adjective following the noun ("un enfant terrible)", except for the Germanic languages, which put the adjective before the noun ("ein schreckliches Kind").

The second group use postpositions. These include Chinese, Finnish and Estonian, many non-Bantu languages of Africa such as Mandingo, and the South American indian language, Guarani. The first three have adjectives before the noun, the others have adjectives after the noun. Some linguists believe that Chinese is moving towards becoming an SOV language.

Next, we have the VSO (verb-subject-object) languages. In Irish, they say Cheannaich mi blobhsa -- “Bought I blouse” -- for I bought a blouse.

These always use prepositions. Although a relatively small group, it does include most Semitic languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, Celtic languages such as Gaelic and Welsh, the Polynesian languages, and a number of American indian languages such as Kwakiutl (British Columbia) and Nahuatl (Aztec). Most have the adjective after the noun. Kwakiutl and Nahuatl have the adjective before the noun.

Only a handful of languages put the subject after the object. Several northwest US and Canadian indian languages use VOS, including Coeur d’Alene, Siuslaw, and Coos. But the first uses prepositions and adjectives after noun, while the other two use postpositions and adjective before the noun!

There are also languages that use more than one of the standard systems. Notable of these is Tagalog and English. Strongly inflexional languages, such as Russian and Latin, often permit varied word order as well.

^^ Typology is largely irrelevant to language classification, this opposite view is either 1. a common misconception due to lack of familiarity with comparative linguistics or 2. a convenient method to support crackpot theories (the two often go hand in hand).

[rms2]

While I agree with you, it's far more likely that the Ossetians originally were NW Caucasian speakers (they probably spoke something close to proto-Kabardian) who adopted a Scythian (Alanic) language via elite dominance. . .

That's a good point, but the effect is the same. It's also possible that something similar happened in the case of the Basques, although I think gradual admixture and drift are more likely in their case.

[Agamemnon]

That's a good point, but the effect is the same. It's also possible that something similar happened in the case of the Basques, although I think gradual admixture and drift are more likely in their case.

Indeed, elite dominance isn't a valid model if we are to explain Basque's emergence, gradual admixture with neighbouring IEs followed by a founder effect sounds like the most parsimonious model if we are to picture how R1b-P312 became so prominent in the Basque.

[rms2]

Indeed, elite dominance isn't a valid model if we are to explain Basque's emergence, gradual admixture with neighbouring IEs followed by a founder effect sounds like the most parsimonious model if we are to picture how R1b-P312 became so prominent in the Basque.

I agree, but elite dominance is still a possibility with the Basques, since they could represent an Aquitanian expansion into early Celtic or other early Indo-European territory.

[TigerMW]

I agree, but elite dominance is still a possibility with the Basques, since they could represent an Aquitanian expansion into early Celtic or other early Indo-European territory.
I think it is possible that Aquitanian society origins did not really get started, or restarted until some group of Bell Beakers or early Celts arrived. The Basques are a matrilineal society. We don't know how or when this started.

This is probably politically incorrect, but we should not think of all of our ancestors as just nice folks. We have stories, some fairly vicious, of Viking raids. Perhaps a great atrocity occurred that extinguished the indigineous male lineages to near extinction in a locality, but it was more of an event and not a colonization attempt by the incoming Bell Beaker or post Bell Beaker types. Just a thought. Is this alternative possible? If the incoming males were transient and the locality somewhat isolated this could account for a matrilineal society as a consequence, as well as non-acceptance of an IE languages.

[R.Rocca]

I think it is possible that Aquitanian society origins did not really get started, or restarted until some group of Bell Beakers or early Celts arrived. The Basques are a matrilineal society. We don't know how or when this started.

This is probably politically incorrect, but we should not think of all of our ancestors as just nice folks. We have stories, some fairly vicious, of Viking raids. Perhaps a great atrocity occurred that extinguished the indigineous male lineages almost extinct in a locality, but it was more of an event and not a colonization attempt by the incoming Bell Beaker or post Bell Beaker types. Just a thought. Is this alternative possible? If the incoming males were transient and the locality somewhat isolate this could account for a matrilineal society as a consequence, as well as non-acceptance of an IE languages.

We don't have to go that far back to point out examples of ethnic cleansing or genocide in Europe, not to mention in other parts of the world. To answer your question though, Bell Beaker people were human, so there is no reason to think that they were any more or less willing to perform barbaric acts than anyone else before or since. If Bell Beaker was a hop or two removed from Yamnaya, one need look no further than what the R1b did to one of their own:


Yamnaya individual I0438 was an adult male 25-35 years old was found in a cemetery with no obvious kurgan, surrounded by the graves of 5 children. He was buried face down with his hands behind his back. He was crippled by a blow with a heavy blunt instrument to his right hip that crushed his femur just below the trochanter, with no healing evident, and his skull was gouged pre-mortem in six places with a serrated tool. His wounds and burial position suggest that he was tortured and executed.

Care to imagine what Bronze Age people did to others that weren't of their same cultural/linguistic/genetic stock???

[bix]

And there's this.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/6000-year-old-skeletons-french-pit-came-victims-violence

[alan]

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/basiclangstruct.html

A second way of classifying languages is based on the word order they use:

SOV (subject-object-verb) is preferred by the greatest number of languages. Included are the Indoeuropean languages of India, such as Hindi and Bengali, the Dravidian languages of southern India, Armenian, Hungarian, Turkish and its relatives, Korean, Japanese, Burmese, Basque, and most Australian aboriginal languages.

Almost all SOV languages use postpositions ("therein lies a tale"), with a notable exception in Farsi (Persian). Most have the adjective preceding the noun. Exceptions include Burmese, Basque and the Australian aboriginal languages, which have the adjective follow the noun.

SVO (subject-verb-object) is the second largest group, but has the largest number of speakers. They are split between languages that use prepositions ("I go to school") and ones that use postpositions ("therein lies a tale").

Among the prepositional languages are the Romance languages, Albanian, Greek, the Bantu languages, languages of southeast Asia, including Khmer, Vietnamese, Thai, and Malay, and the Germanic languages. Most of these have the adjective following the noun ("un enfant terrible)", except for the Germanic languages, which put the adjective before the noun ("ein schreckliches Kind").

The second group use postpositions. These include Chinese, Finnish and Estonian, many non-Bantu languages of Africa such as Mandingo, and the South American indian language, Guarani. The first three have adjectives before the noun, the others have adjectives after the noun. Some linguists believe that Chinese is moving towards becoming an SOV language.

Next, we have the VSO (verb-subject-object) languages. In Irish, they say Cheannaich mi blobhsa -- “Bought I blouse” -- for I bought a blouse.

These always use prepositions. Although a relatively small group, it does include most Semitic languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, Celtic languages such as Gaelic and Welsh, the Polynesian languages, and a number of American indian languages such as Kwakiutl (British Columbia) and Nahuatl (Aztec). Most have the adjective after the noun. Kwakiutl and Nahuatl have the adjective before the noun.

Only a handful of languages put the subject after the object. Several northwest US and Canadian indian languages use VOS, including Coeur d’Alene, Siuslaw, and Coos. But the first uses prepositions and adjectives after noun, while the other two use postpositions and adjective before the noun!

There are also languages that use more than one of the standard systems. Notable of these is Tagalog and English. Strongly inflexional languages, such as Russian and Latin, often permit varied word order as well.

Its only insular Celtic that had VSO order so odds are that it was caused by a substrate effect in the isles. Alternatively it relates to something about the L21 lineage - something in that lineages history - and it got preserved in the isles because that is where most L21 survived. As there is no rational reason to see any of the major P312 branches as originally having anything other than an identical language, that seems to point to the females. Perhaps the key is that L21 grew most in an area where, unlike in central Europe, the substrate was not already IE. U152 for example dominates in an area that already had a CW substrate. So, if these lineages married with local woman at some point then U152 would have been mixing with other IE women while L21 was largely in an area with no pre-beaker cultures. In other words at some point L21 men did more mixing with non-IE late Neolithic farmer women.

As an interesting aside, the presumably DF27 associated Celts of Iberia did not apparently have VSO despite Iberia being in another area with no pre-beaker IE substrate like CW. That could perhaps be taken as a hint that DF27 first expanded in central Europe not Iberia.

[alan]

We don't have to go that far back to point out examples of ethnic cleansing or genocide in Europe, not to mention in other parts of the world. To answer your question though, Bell Beaker people were human, so there is no reason to think that they were any more or less willing to perform barbaric acts than anyone else before or since. If Bell Beaker was a hop or two removed from Yamnaya, one need look no further than what the R1b did to one of their own:



Care to imagine what Bronze Age people did to others that weren't of their same cultural/linguistic/genetic stock???

Personally I think where your numbers arent huge and you have no major technological advantage a fast genocide is unlikely. Its far better for an incoming elite to just bump off the existing elite or any challengers and then make clients of the rest. If you kill all the local men you end up having to farm the land yourself. If you topple the local elite and make the rest of the locals clients then you can live parasitically off their tribute and have 8 wives. Why have a dog and bark yourself? I think the closest parallel in historical times for the likely Bronze Age situation is the pre-Viking Irish pattern of many small territories and lineages arranged in hierachies of clientship and tribute with the lucky guys going around on his horses with his retinue eating his way around tribute feats of his base client farmers and acting as a cattle loan shark to them too. At a higher level he would get tribute in exchange for gifts from nobles and kings subject to the higher level free clientship.

The net result of that system did mean the fortunate few did produce vastly more surviving descendants. The advantage of this model for the Bronze Age is Ireland provides a very detailed record of how such a society worked in early historic times so its not just a theoretical concept.

[R.Rocca]

Personally I think where your numbers arent huge and you have no major technological advantage a fast genocide is unlikely. Its far better for an incoming elite to just bump off the existing elite or any challengers and then make clients of the rest. If you kill all the local men you end up having to farm the land yourself. If you topple the local elite and make the rest of the locals clients then you can live parasitically off their tribute and have 8 wives. Why have a dog and bark yourself? I think the closest parallel in historical times for the likely Bronze Age situation is the pre-Viking Irish pattern of many small territories and lineages arranged in hierachies of clientship and tribute with the lucky guys going around on his horses with his retinue eating his way around tribute feats of his base client farmers and acting as a cattle loan shark to them too. At a higher level he would get tribute in exchange for gifts from nobles and kings subject to the higher level free clientship.

The net result of that system did mean the fortunate few did produce vastly more surviving descendants. The advantage of this model for the Bronze Age is Ireland provides a very detailed record of how such a society worked in early historic times so its not just a theoretical concept.

There was a Neolithic population implosion and the steppe derived males had horses, so neither of those conditions were a barrier.

[rms2]

I think it is possible that Aquitanian society origins did not really get started, or restarted until some group of Bell Beakers or early Celts arrived. The Basques are a matrilineal society. We don't know how or when this started . . .

From what I have read, and I cannot cite any sources, the Basques had a matrilocal marriage tradition; that is, the groom went to live with the family of the bride, which was the opposite of the Indo-European tradition, which was patrilocal.

A matrilocal tradition, it seems to me, is tailor-made for the introduction of outsider y-dna while at the same time preserving the language of the bride, since the children would be raised not around the father's family but around the mother's.

[TigerMW]

Personally I think where your numbers arent huge and you have no major technological advantage a fast genocide is unlikely. Its far better for an incoming elite to just bump off the existing elite or any challengers and then make clients of the rest. If you kill all the local men you end up having to farm the land yourself. If you topple the local elite and make the rest of the locals clients then you can live parasitically off their tribute and have 8 wives. Why have a dog and bark yourself? I think the closest parallel in historical times for the likely Bronze Age situation is the pre-Viking Irish pattern of many small territories and lineages arranged in hierachies of clientship and tribute with the lucky guys going around on his horses with his retinue eating his way around tribute feats of his base client farmers and acting as a cattle loan shark to them too. At a higher level he would get tribute in exchange for gifts from nobles and kings subject to the higher level free clientship.

The net result of that system did mean the fortunate few did produce vastly more surviving descendants. The advantage of this model for the Bronze Age is Ireland provides a very detailed record of how such a society worked in early historic times so its not just a theoretical concept.
This is why I referred to the possible genocide as an event and not really an attempt at colonization. This is why I referred to the Vikings raiding example. I'm sure some Scandinavian raiders may have also colonized and settled. That's evident, but this does not mean all raid type events or phases were colonization efforts where raiders were concerned with holding the land or farming it. Remember, the language didn't change to an IE type and the society evolved or stayed as a matrilineal society. The men have been transient. Who said they were good fathers in any modern sense?

I don't think we can say the Bell Beakers did not have some huge advantage, be it technical or merely organizational and military skills. They certainly had their way across Europe for some reason.

I'll push the envelope a little further. It is a speculative supposition. The Basque/Aquitanian society may have become matrilineal because of a transient Bell Beaker or early Celt raiding situation of some kind, extinguishing the indigenous male lineages. The women may have had to become very self-sufficient.

I'm not trying to assert this was the model for all of Europe, but it could have happened in a locality or two and this could result in what we see as far as the Basque genes. I think some founder effect/drift could have also contributed.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

With regard to Basque and R1b:

I think all the above mentioned scenarios are possible, but I have to say that one of the major shortbacks of all prevailing models (no matter which language we are speaking of, and where we might wish to locate a homeland) is that they are confounded by the doctrines of 19th century Romantic nationalism (when linguistics and archaeology were themselves emerging, and intertwined with it). This framework predicated stable, ineffable, and more or less linguistically exclusive ‘homelands’. This abounds in academic literature dealing with the IE hypothesis, as well as (even more so) amongst genealogy circles, deriving at conclusions such as Yamnaya = R1b = centum IE.

This might very well be correct, but such models risk anachronistic back-projections which do not capture prehistoric reality. Rather it might be worth considering that the notion of linguistic purism is a product of modern ‘Western’, nation-state ideologies, whilst multilinguality was more common amongst our prehistoric ancestors. Now, I’m not advocating that every average cattle herder, farmer or metal tinkerer had professorial command of several languages. Rather, I’d apply the idea of a multi-lingual area.

In our specific example, a proper assessment of Yamnaya archaeology clearly shows that Yamnaya society consisted of individual family units, and the numerous (and rather austere) kurgans and settlements (isolated house steads) were not those of kings or paramount chiefs (like in Majkop culture), but those of household heads (the patriarch). In turn, there is no convincing evidence that any one household unit held sway over another, hence all European scholars pointing to the fact that they were internally egalitarian but sharing several elements of a shared material culture and ideology. With such relatively small scale organization, it is easy to envisage why there might not be an overridingly dominant language (at least in the 3500 – 2000 BC phase) – with each household or clan speaking their own specific idiom - but some languages might indeed have been more common than others - and served as a koine. But collectively over the Yamnaya territory, there must have been several spoken forms – some probably not IE.

Obviously, western IE was dominant – or came to be so – amongst the ancestor of P312* groups, but maybe not all P312* groups, and maybe only in central Europe ?
Who knows. If so, this more flexible approach might explain why several M297 –derived groups today are not / might not have been IE-speaking. Here I not only refer to Basques, but also several other clades such as Z2013, PF7558, M73. This might lead us to more grounded approaches which negates the need to 'explain away' linguistic inconsistencies. So who knows - maybe Basque wasn't a Palaeolithic or even Neolithic 'relic' language - but yet another (more minor, and less "successful") one which also expanded in the Copper Age

[Krefter]

I think all the above mentioned scenarios are possible, but I have to say that one of the major shortbacks of all prevailing models (no matter which language we are speaking of, and where we might wish to locate a homeland) is that they are confounded by the doctrines of 19th century Romantic nationalism (when linguistics and archaeology were themselves emerging, and intertwined with it). This framework predicated stable, ineffable, and more or less linguistically exclusive ‘homelands’.

It has nothing to do with 19th century nationalism. That's just how people think. It make sense a language has a homeland. Listen to what people uninterested in genetics or people in the past say about human origins. People accept theories that a single man founded nations and simplistic origin stories. It makes our ideas of the expansion of IE sound like calculus.


This might very well be correct, but such models risk anachronistic back-projections which do not capture prehistoric reality. Rather it might be worth considering that the notion of linguistic purism is a product of modern ‘Western’, nation-state ideologies, whilst multilinguality was more common amongst our prehistoric ancestors.

People have always lived in groups. Whether they be countries, tribes, families, etc. A Pygmy would think "PIE must have originated in a single tribe/nation".


In our specific example, a proper assessment of Yamnaya archaeology clearly shows that Yamnaya society consisted of individual family units, and the numerous (and rather austere) kurgans and settlements (isolated house steads) were not those of kings or paramount chiefs (like in Majkop culture), but those of household heads (the patriarch). In turn, there is no convincing evidence that any one household unit held sway over another, hence all European scholars pointing to the fact that they were internally egalitarian but sharing several elements of a shared material culture and ideology. With such relatively small scale organization, it is easy to envisage why there might not be an overridingly dominant language (at least in the 3500 – 2000 BC phase) – with each household or clan speaking their own specific idiom - but some languages might indeed have been more common than others - and served as a koine. But collectively over the Yamnaya territory, there must have been several spoken forms – some probably not IE.

That general region/culture would be where PIE is from. It doesn't go against homeland theories.


Obviously, western IE was dominant – or came to be so – amongst the ancestor of P312* groups, but maybe not all P312* groups, and maybe only in central Europe ?
Who knows. If so, this more flexible approach might explain why several M297 –derived groups today are not / might not have been IE-speaking. Here I not only refer to Basques, but also several other clades such as Z2013, PF7558, M73. This might lead us to more grounded approaches than others which need to 'explain away' linguistic inconsistencies (with some of the offered explanations not really being supported by any solid evidence). So who knows - maybe Basque wasn't a Palaeolithic or even Neolithic 'relic' language - but yet another (more minor, and less "successful") one which also expanded in the Copper Age

That makes sense.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

It has nothing to do with 19th century nationalism. That's just how people think. It make sense a language has a homeland. Listen to what people uninterested in genetics or people in the past say about human origins. People accept theories that a single man founded nations and simplistic origin stories. It makes our ideas of the expansion of IE sound like calculus.

Yes it does - Read the ample literature on the topic .
The comparative method is true and correct, but it's application has been certainly been influenced by 19th /20th century ideologies - which remain dominant to this day. So Alls that's required is a slightly amended approach.



People have always lived in groups. Whether they be countries, tribes, families, etc. A Pygmy would think "PIE must have originated in a single tribe/nation".

Er, yes. I never said humans don't live in groups




That general region/culture would be where PIE is from. It doesn't go against homeland theories.


Of course it came from the circum-Pontic region. You misunderstood my point- of course all languages come from a hypothetical "homeland", but I question if they were linguistically homogenous

[rms2]

With regard to Basque and R1b:

I think all the above mentioned scenarios are possible, but I have to say that one of the major shortbacks of all prevailing models (no matter which language we are speaking of, and where we might wish to locate a homeland) is that they are confounded by the doctrines of 19th century Romantic nationalism (when linguistics and archaeology were themselves emerging, and intertwined with it). This framework predicated stable, ineffable, and more or less linguistically exclusive ‘homelands’. This abounds in academic literature dealing with the IE hypothesis, as well as (even more so) amongst genealogy circles, deriving at conclusions such as Yamnaya = R1b = centum IE.

This might very well be correct, but such models risk anachronistic back-projections which do not capture prehistoric reality. Rather it might be worth considering that the notion of linguistic purism is a product of modern ‘Western’, nation-state ideologies, whilst multilinguality was more common amongst our prehistoric ancestors. Now, I’m not advocating that every average cattle herder, farmer or metal tinkerer had professorial command of several languages. Rather, I’d apply the idea of a multi-lingual area.

In our specific example, a proper assessment of Yamnaya archaeology clearly shows that Yamnaya society consisted of individual family units, and the numerous (and rather austere) kurgans and settlements (isolated house steads) were not those of kings or paramount chiefs (like in Majkop culture), but those of household heads (the patriarch). In turn, there is no convincing evidence that any one household unit held sway over another, hence all European scholars pointing to the fact that they were internally egalitarian but sharing several elements of a shared material culture and ideology. With such relatively small scale organization, it is easy to envisage why there might not be an overridingly dominant language (at least in the 3500 – 2000 BC phase) – with each household or clan speaking their own specific idiom - but some languages might indeed have been more common than others - and served as a koine. But collectively over the Yamnaya territory, there must have been several spoken forms – some probably not IE.

Obviously, western IE was dominant – or came to be so – amongst the ancestor of P312* groups, but maybe not all P312* groups, and maybe only in central Europe ?
Who knows. If so, this more flexible approach might explain why several M297 –derived groups today are not / might not have been IE-speaking. Here I not only refer to Basques, but also several other clades such as Z2013, PF7558, M73. This might lead us to more grounded approaches which negates the need to 'explain away' linguistic inconsistencies. So who knows - maybe Basque wasn't a Palaeolithic or even Neolithic 'relic' language - but yet another (more minor, and less "successful") one which also expanded in the Copper Age

I think it's a possibility that the Basques were a group that just happened to be predominantly R1b-P312 but who somehow came to be non-IE speaking. Anything is possible.

On the other hand, I think it more likely that the Basques were once predominantly I-M26, like ancient Sardinians, but became R1b-P312 over time via admixture. They managed to preserve their language because they had a matrilocal marriage tradition.

A number of scholars have seen a connection between Euskara and Paleo-Sardinian (Nuragic). Sardinia has the world maximum frequency of I-M26, at about 40%. The Basques also have I-M26 at about 9%, which could represent the vestige of what was once the dominant y haplogroup among them.

[R.Rocca]

With regard to Basque and R1b:

I think all the above mentioned scenarios are possible, but I have to say that one of the major shortbacks of all prevailing models (no matter which language we are speaking of, and where we might wish to locate a homeland) is that they are confounded by the doctrines of 19th century Romantic nationalism (when linguistics and archaeology were themselves emerging, and intertwined with it). This framework predicated stable, ineffable, and more or less linguistically exclusive ‘homelands’. This abounds in academic literature dealing with the IE hypothesis, as well as (even more so) amongst genealogy circles, deriving at conclusions such as Yamnaya = R1b = centum IE.

This might very well be correct, but such models risk anachronistic back-projections which do not capture prehistoric reality. Rather it might be worth considering that the notion of linguistic purism is a product of modern ‘Western’, nation-state ideologies, whilst multilinguality was more common amongst our prehistoric ancestors. Now, I’m not advocating that every average cattle herder, farmer or metal tinkerer had professorial command of several languages. Rather, I’d apply the idea of a multi-lingual area.

In our specific example, a proper assessment of Yamnaya archaeology clearly shows that Yamnaya society consisted of individual family units, and the numerous (and rather austere) kurgans and settlements (isolated house steads) were not those of kings or paramount chiefs (like in Majkop culture), but those of household heads (the patriarch). In turn, there is no convincing evidence that any one household unit held sway over another, hence all European scholars pointing to the fact that they were internally egalitarian but sharing several elements of a shared material culture and ideology. With such relatively small scale organization, it is easy to envisage why there might not be an overridingly dominant language (at least in the 3500 – 2000 BC phase) – with each household or clan speaking their own specific idiom - but some languages might indeed have been more common than others - and served as a koine. But collectively over the Yamnaya territory, there must have been several spoken forms – some probably not IE.

Obviously, western IE was dominant – or came to be so – amongst the ancestor of P312* groups, but maybe not all P312* groups, and maybe only in central Europe ?
Who knows. If so, this more flexible approach might explain why several M297 –derived groups today are not / might not have been IE-speaking. Here I not only refer to Basques, but also several other clades such as Z2013, PF7558, M73. This might lead us to more grounded approaches which negates the need to 'explain away' linguistic inconsistencies. So who knows - maybe Basque wasn't a Palaeolithic or even Neolithic 'relic' language - but yet another (more minor, and less "successful") one which also expanded in the Copper Age

If we are talking about an expanded time period, then of course this happens. However, when talking about the P312 clan, who's STR signature is the same across all basal branches and off-modal on just one STR with cousin U106, the logic does not hold. There was not enough time in its initial dispersal to posit anything multilingual.

[Krefter]

Basque are not on their own. Their R1b is mostly Df27, like the rest of Iberia and SW France. So, if you're talking about R1b in Basque, you have to include Iberia/SW France.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

If we are talking about an expanded time period, then of course this happens. However, when talking about the P312 clan, who's STR signature is the same across all basal branches and off-modal on just one STR with cousin U106, the logic does not hold. There was not enough time in its initial dispersal to posit anything multilingual.

Yes, fair point. But it would be interesting to gauge just how rapid the dispersal of P312 and derived groups was with more direct aDNA samples (fully aware of the YFull calculations).
I also appreciate that if P312* was multilingual, then it should show up later "proto-historic' expansions . But rather, all later expansions like 'late' Celtic / Gallic and Germanic all appear to be IE.


I think it's a possibility that the Basques were a group that just happened to be predominantly R1b-P312 but who somehow came to be non-IE speaking. Anything is possible.

On the other hand, I think it more likely that the Basques were once predominantly I-M26, like ancient Sardinians, but became R1b-P312 over time via admixture. They managed to preserve their language because they had a matrilocal marriage tradition.

A number of scholars have seen a connection between Euskara and Paleo-Sardinian (Nuragic). Sardinia has the world maximum frequency of I-M26, at about 40%. The Basques also have I-M26 at about 9%, which could represent the vestige of what was once the dominant y haplogroup among them.

I agree, although we perhaps should not assume that they always have been matrilocal.
Also, I'd think that I-M26 was a Mesolithic/ postglacial marker in SW Europe. So if Basque was Neolithic, then it probably came with other groups - like G2a or I2a2.

[Krefter]

Of course it came from the circum-Pontic region. You misunderstood my point- of course all languages come from a hypothetical "homeland", but I question if they were linguistically homogenous

That makes perfect sense. It's hard to believe the entire Pontic-Caspien region or whatever spoke the same language.

[R.Rocca]

That makes perfect sense. It's hard to believe the entire Pontic-Caspien region or whatever spoke the same language.

That doesn't mean that they weren't all off-shoots of PIE.

[ADW_1981]

I think it's a possibility that the Basques were a group that just happened to be predominantly R1b-P312 but who somehow came to be non-IE speaking. Anything is possible.

On the other hand, I think it more likely that the Basques were once predominantly I-M26, like ancient Sardinians, but became R1b-P312 over time via admixture. They managed to preserve their language because they had a matrilocal marriage tradition.

A number of scholars have seen a connection between Euskara and Paleo-Sardinian (Nuragic). Sardinia has the world maximum frequency of I-M26, at about 40%. The Basques also have I-M26 at about 9%, which could represent the vestige of what was once the dominant y haplogroup among them.

http://dienekes.blogspot.ca/2015/09/recent-admixture-in-contemporary-west.html

Basque have a NW European admixture event (UK? Norway? Germany?) between the 500-1500 AD period. This could be male related if we can demonstrate mtDNA shows continuity in the modern Basque population to the Neolithic one.

[Isidro]

Have you ever read " La Chanson de Roland?.Get real.


http://dienekes.blogspot.ca/2015/09/recent-admixture-in-contemporary-west.html

Basque have a NW European admixture event (UK? Norway? Germany?) between the 500-1500 AD period. This could be male related if we can demonstrate mtDNA shows continuity in the modern Basque population to the Neolithic one.

[TigerMW]

... Of course it came from the circum-Pontic region. You misunderstood my point- of course all languages come from a hypothetical "homeland", but I question if they were linguistically homogenous

That doesn't mean that they weren't all off-shoots of PIE.
I'll add a modification to Richard R's point. Whether or not all peoples in the PIE homeland were PIE speaking, it may have been primarily the PIE speaking folks who expanded both west and east. The language is one aspect of the cultural horizon and part of the cultural characteristics may have been an inclination towards migration as well as use of various technology and agricultural practices.

[rms2]

http://dienekes.blogspot.ca/2015/09/recent-admixture-in-contemporary-west.html

Basque have a NW European admixture event (UK? Norway? Germany?) between the 500-1500 AD period. This could be male related if we can demonstrate mtDNA shows continuity in the modern Basque population to the Neolithic one.

I think we are talking about prehistoric admixture, which would be undocumented (which of course is what prehistoric means). Over time the Basque y-dna profile came to resemble that of their IE-speaking neighbors.

We know or are reasonably sure from the Aldaieta cemetery that there was R1b among the Basques by the early medieval period (6th or maybe even 5th century, as I recall).

[Romilius]

I think we are talking about prehistoric admixture, which would be undocumented (which of course is what prehistoric means). Over time the Basque y-dna profile came to resemble that of their IE-speaking neighbors.

We know or are reasonably sure from the Aldaieta cemetery that there was R1b among the Basques by the early medieval period (6th or maybe even 5th century, as I recall).

Sure, it can be checked on Ancestral Journeys site, section Medieval and later aDNA: they are samples from 500 to 700 A.D. Not sure they were Basque.

[rms2]

Sure, it can be checked on Ancestral Journeys site, section Medieval and later aDNA: they are samples from 500 to 700 A.D. Not sure they were Basque.

No, we're not absolutely sure, but 6th to 8th century AD is pretty late. It's medieval y-dna, not ancient.

[R.Rocca]

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

I'd seen this earlier in the week but was busy and couldn't post much about it....

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-poltavka-outlier.html

In short, David shows that Poltavka I0432, dated to 2925-2536 calBCE plots westerly in comparison to other steppe samples. Of note, this sample shows a mixture edge of 33% from the base of the branch leading to Iberian_MN. We also know from the latest Cassidy study that when compared to Neolithics, Rathlin2 (dated as old as Rathlin1) shares it's highest affinity with Iberian Cardial_EN and Rathlin3 shares it with Spanish_MN. While I don't believe for a minute that Iberia harbored L23 during the Middle Neolithic, I don't think there is anything we've seen to date that has ruled out a swift expansion of L23 into Iberia with Early Bell Beaker followed in quick succession by a backflow into Central Europe and beyond, followed by a re-expansion from Central Europe around 2500 BC. If the scenario did play out like that for L23, then all of these parameters must've been in play:

1. A network so wide must have involved horse riding.
2. A common language or languages all derived from PIE and all its cultural associations
3. Male dominated involving almost entirely L51+ and R1a+.
4. An entirely L51+ male Bell Beaker presence in Iberia from the earliest of Bell Beaker times, at minimum it was DF27, at most it was P312. From what we've seen from ancient DNA, from Yamnaya L23+Z2103 starting ~3300 BC to Bell Beaker L23+L51+ ending ~2000 BC we have a closed male dominated society that likely was hostile to all non-IE groups. So I don't there was an open Iberian mail-order bride service where females were just waiting to be sold off by their (I2a?) fathers to Central European Bell Beaker males.

[rms2]

The problem I have with the very earliest Iberian Bell Beaker is that, from what I have read about it, it has nothing to link it to the steppe. Its beakers are found in Neolithic collective tombs with no warrior's kit of weapons and accompanied by the bodies of little, short-statured, gracile, long-skulled Mediterraneans (in other words, people who look like and bury their dead just like Near Eastern-derived Neolithic farmers). It also appears to be connected to pretty well established permanent settlements like Zambujal, whereas elsewhere Bell Beaker settlements are much more ephemeral and difficult to find.

I have no problem with the idea of a steppe people shooting out to Iberia early in the third millennium BC, founding Bell Beaker there, and expanding back east, but I would expect them to look and act like steppe people. Unless I am mistaken, the earliest Iberian Bell Beaker people did not.

Did these early Iberian Bell Beaker people ride Iberian horses eastward, or did they bring their own horses with them from the steppe? I thought Iberian horses of that time were quite a bit smaller than steppe horses and not really suitable for riding.

[Kwheaton]

Rich,
Thanks for this. The plot thickens. I think it is wise to interject that marine commerce/trade probably played a part in addition to horses. I think we, recent humans, constantly underestimate the complexity of our predecessors. Everthing from their migration patterns to their social structures and scientific acheivements was much more advanced than we have been prone to imagine. For me personally, this is a bit of vindication. For as long as I can remember the idea of "savages" and "brutes" being representative of early peoples just hasn't made sense. So thank you for sharing this.

[rms2]

I think one has to keep in mind that Bell Beaker, like Yamnaya, was a cultural horizon with a number of local variants. Maybe not all of them had the same y-dna profile. I could be wrong, obviously, but to me the very earliest Iberian Bell Beaker looks and quacks like a Near Eastern-derived Neolithic farmer's duck.

Carleton S. Coon, The Races of Europe, p. 150:



Where Bell Beaker burials are found in central Europe, the skeletons are almost always of the same tall brachycephalic type which we have already studied in the eastern Mediterranean and Italy. In Spain, however, they are frequently of the Megalithic race.


Henri Hubert, The History of the Celtic People, pp. 171-173:



The old Neolithic inhabitants (among whom I include those of all the beginning of the Bronze Age) were long-heads of Mediterranean type, who built for their dead, or, at least, for the more distinguished of them, tumuli with a funeral chamber known as the "long barrows", in which one sometimes finds those curious bell-shaped beakers adorned at regular intervals with bands of incised or stamped decoration, of a very simple and austere type. The newcomers were of quite a different type, and had other funeral practices.

They buried their dead under round tumuli, known as "round barrows", in graves in which the body was placed in a crouching position on one side and enclosed in stone flags or woodwork. Later they burned them. In their graves there were zoned beakers (Fig. 33), but of a late type in which the neck is distinguished from the belly, or vases derived from these beakers . . . The grave goods comprised buttons with a V-shaped boring, flint and copper daggers, arrow-heads, and flat perforated pieces of schist which are "bracers", or bowman's wristguards. The skeletons were of a new type: tall, with round heads of a fairly constant shape, the brow receding, the supraciliary ridge prominent, the cheek-bones highly developed, and the jaws massive and projecting so as to present a dip at the base of the nose. I have already described them as one of the types represented in Celtic burials.

The association of the physical type of this people with the beaker has led British anthropologists to call it the Beaker Folk . . . In Scotland they were accompanied by other brachycephals, with a higher index and of Alpine type. In general they advanced from south to north and from east to west, and their progress lasted long enough for there to be a very marked difference in furniture between their oldest and latest tombs.
. . . Their progress was a conquest. It is evident that they subdued and assimilated the previous occupants of the country.

[rms2]

It's obviously going to take more ancient dna to solve the problem of Bell Beaker origins. I hope they get some from the very very earliest rc-dated Bell Beaker burials in SW Europe, as well as ancient dna from Bell Beakers everywhere else. I certainly do not know all the answers.

What about Jean M's Stelae People idea? Are there stelae associated with the earliest Bell Beaker burials and sites in Iberia? Or do they show up a little later?

[Heber]

It's obviously going to take more ancient dna to solve the problem of Bell Beaker origins. I hope they get some from the very very earliest rc-dated Bell Beaker burials in SW Europe, as well as ancient dna from Bell Beakers everywhere else. I certainly do not know all the answers.

What about Jean M's Stelae People idea? Are there stelae associated with the earliest Bell Beaker burials and sites in Iberia? Or do they show up a little later?

Here are the Stelae from SW Iberia:

7359

Used in similar way to Ukraine and Kemi Oba Stelae and later Tartessian Stelae

7360

7361

Sion, Petit Chasseur could be a mid point on the Stelae Trail

7362

All within the Bell Beaker zone

7363

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

https://www.pinterest.com/gerardcorcoran/the-stelae-people/

https://www.pinterest.com/gerardcorcoran/bell-beaker-migrations/

https://www.pinterest.com/gerardcorcoran/kemi-oba/

If I had the choice I would test
Zambujal
Heulva, Tartessos
Sion, Petit Chasseur
Kemi Oba

[rms2]

Here are the Stelae from SW Iberia:

7359

Used in similar way to Ukraine and Kemi Oba Stelae and later Tartessian Stelae

7360

7361

Sion, Petit Chasseur could be a mid point on the Stelae Trail

7362

All within the Bell Beaker zone

7363

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

https://www.pinterest.com/gerardcorcoran/the-stelae-people/

https://www.pinterest.com/gerardcorcoran/bell-beaker-migrations/

https://www.pinterest.com/gerardcorcoran/kemi-oba/

If I had the choice I would test
Zambujal
Heulva, Tartessos
Sion, Petit Chasseur
Kemi Oba

Those Iberian stelae dates look too late for the very earliest Bell Beaker.

Sion, Petit Chasseur and Kemi Oba don't do much about solving the early Iberian Beaker dilemma, especially if there are no stelae associated with the very earliest Iberian Bell Beaker.

[Heber]

Those Iberian stelae dates look too late for the very earliest Bell Beaker.
.

That would be Zambujal and Vila Nova de Sao Pedro (VNSP) which are Pre Beaker / Early Bell Beaker and have Statue Menhir Stelae.

7364

https://www.academia.edu/4421461/Pre-Bell_Beaker_ware_from_Estremadura_Portugal_and_its _likely_influence_on_the_appearance_of_Maritime_Be ll_Beaker_ware

https://www.academia.edu/15773478/Les_statues-menhir_de_M%C3%A9diterran%C3%A9e_occidentale

http://eprints.ucm.es/11070/1/T32200.pdf

[R.Rocca]

The problem I have with the very earliest Iberian Bell Beaker is that, from what I have read about it, it has nothing to link it to the steppe. Its beakers are found in Neolithic collective tombs with no warrior's kit of weapons and accompanied by the bodies of little, short-statured, gracile, long-skulled Mediterraneans (in other words, people who look like and bury their dead just like Near Eastern-derived Neolithic farmers). It also appears to be connected to pretty well established permanent settlements like Zambujal, whereas elsewhere Bell Beaker settlements are much more ephemeral and difficult to find.

I have no problem with the idea of a steppe people shooting out to Iberia early in the third millennium BC, founding Bell Beaker there, and expanding back east, but I would expect them to look and act like steppe people. Unless I am mistaken, the earliest Iberian Bell Beaker people did not.

Did these early Iberian Bell Beaker people ride Iberian horses eastward, or did they bring their own horses with them from the steppe? I thought Iberian horses of that time were quite a bit smaller than steppe horses and not really suitable for riding.

If we expected all R1b to look and act exactly like steppe people, then Yamnaya would stretch all the way to the Atlantic, and yet it does not. If who "is" or who "is not" R1b is based purely on steppe criteria, then all of Corded Ware would be R1b, and clearly it is not. Finally, we now have short lived bone radiocarbon tested Bell Beaker samples from NE Iberia and they look as old as any from Portugal, and Spanish Bell Beaker skulls plot with Czech and German Bell Beakers...

http://www.r1b.org/imgs/Menk_1979_Skulls.png

[Gravetto-Danubian]

I'd seen this earlier in the week but was busy and couldn't post much about it....
I don't think there is anything we've seen to date that has ruled out a swift expansion of L23 into Iberia with Early Bell Beaker followed in quick succession by a backflow into Central Europe and beyond, followed by a re-expansion from Central Europe around 2500 BC. If the scenario did play out like that for L23, then all of these parameters must've been in play:
... An entirely L51+ male Bell Beaker presence in Iberia from the earliest of Bell Beaker times, at minimum it was DF27, at most it was P312. From what we've seen from ancient DNA, from Yamnaya L23+Z2103 starting ~3300 BC to Bell Beaker L23+L51+ ending ~2000 BC we have a closed male dominated society that likely was hostile to all non-IE groups. So I don't there was an open Iberian mail-order bride service where females were just waiting to be sold off by their (I2a?) fathers to Central European Bell Beaker males.

BB is a bit of a head scratcher for me. Granted, the earliest BB dates from 2800 BC need to be excluded for reservoir effects, and given that early Iberian sites don’t have the full ‘Beaker package’ (eg single burials, wrist guards) – let’s call it proto-Beaker (e.g. as Vander Linden suggests).

On the other side of Europe, apart from a handful of Yamnaya-like kurgans in Hungary dating from c. 3300 BC (literally a handful), the overwhelming majority are considerably later (2900 – 2500, mean 2700 BC). Thus, for BB to have been L51 from the outset would require a mad dash westward, for which little evidence exists at such an early juncture, AFAIK.

The other possibility one has to consider is that L51 groups were already present in central Europe in the Late Neolithic – a minor lineage which then grew to dominate much of the BB network. So where would this point to ? Perhaps in the complex array of middle Danubian cultures where later eastern BB emerged (Rivnac-Cham, classical Baden, GAC).

[R.Rocca]

BB is a bit of a head scratcher for me. Granted, the earliest BB dates from 2800 BC need to be excluded for reservoir effects, and given that early Iberian sites don’t have the full ‘Beaker package’ (eg single burials, wrist guards) – let’s call it proto-Beaker (e.g. as Vander Linden suggests).

On the other side of Europe, apart from a handful of Yamnaya-like kurgans in Hungary dating from c. 3300 BC (literally a handful), the overwhelming majority are considerably later (2900 – 2500, mean 2700 BC). Thus, for BB to have been L51 from the outset would require a mad dash westward, for which little evidence exists at such an early juncture, AFAIK.

The other possibility one has to consider is that L51 groups were already present in central Europe in the Late Neolithic – a minor lineage which then grew to dominate much of the BB network. So where would this point to ? Perhaps in the complex array of middle Danubian cultures where later eastern BB emerged (Rivnac-Cham, classical Baden, GAC).

People in the early 1900s weren't buried with airplanes, and yet we know they were being used then. Besides, "if" autosomal components show up in Iberian Bell Beaker samples, then that itself would be direct evidence of a mad dash.

[alan]

I'd seen this earlier in the week but was busy and couldn't post much about it....

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-poltavka-outlier.html

In short, David shows that Poltavka I0432, dated to 2925-2536 calBCE plots westerly in comparison to other steppe samples. Of note, this sample shows a mixture edge of 33% from the base of the branch leading to Iberian_MN. We also know from the latest Cassidy study that when compared to Neolithics, Rathlin2 (dated as old as Rathlin1) shares it's highest affinity with Iberian Cardial_EN and Rathlin3 shares it with Spanish_MN. While I don't believe for a minute that Iberia harbored L23 during the Middle Neolithic, I don't think there is anything we've seen to date that has ruled out a swift expansion of L23 into Iberia with Early Bell Beaker followed in quick succession by a backflow into Central Europe and beyond, followed by a re-expansion from Central Europe around 2500 BC. If the scenario did play out like that for L23, then all of these parameters must've been in play:

1. A network so wide must have involved horse riding.
2. A common language or languages all derived from PIE and all its cultural associations
3. Male dominated involving almost entirely L51+ and R1a+.
4. An entirely L51+ male Bell Beaker presence in Iberia from the earliest of Bell Beaker times, at minimum it was DF27, at most it was P312. From what we've seen from ancient DNA, from Yamnaya L23+Z2103 starting ~3300 BC to Bell Beaker L23+L51+ ending ~2000 BC we have a closed male dominated society that likely was hostile to all non-IE groups. So I don't there was an open Iberian mail-order bride service where females were just waiting to be sold off by their (I2a?) fathers to Central European Bell Beaker males.

Its not absolutely impossible but the lack of any widely agreed clearcut archaeological indicators of anything like a steppe intrusion that makes me doubt that. Someone clearly did arrive from the east c. 3000BC to bring copper knowledge but it looks far more likely to have come along the Med. from a non-steppe source to me. The whole vibe of the pre-beaker Iberian copper age just puts me in mind of other later cultures that came along the Med. and didnt have roots further north. There is something missing from the jigsaw though because those distinctive forts of the pre-beaker Iberian copper age just come out of nowhere.

[rms2]

If we expected all R1b to look and act exactly like steppe people, then Yamnaya would stretch all the way to the Atlantic, and yet it does not. If who "is" or who "is not" R1b is based purely on steppe criteria, then all of Corded Ware would be R1b, and clearly it is not.

If they came from the steppe, they should at least look and act something like people from the steppe rather than looking like and burying their dead like Near Eastern-derived Neolithic farmers. The very earliest Iberian Bell Beaker people, from what I have read, are very different from the later, kurgan-type Bell Beaker people and were more like Neolithic farmers.

The kurgan-type Bell Beaker is not exactly like Yamnaya - some changes are to be expected over the centuries, after all - but early Iberian Bell Beaker appears to be nothing like Yamnaya.



Finally, we now have short lived bone radiocarbon tested Bell Beaker samples from NE Iberia and they look as old as any from Portugal, and Spanish Bell Beaker skulls plot with Czech and German Bell Beakers...

http://www.r1b.org/imgs/Menk_1979_Skulls.png

What are the dates on those Spanish Beaker skulls? Are we talking about the very earliest Bell Beaker people or later incomers?

I understand there are Spanish Bell Beaker burials from later (post 2500 BC) that are classic, single grave Beaker burials. But what about those very early collective Iberian BB burials upon which Iberian Beaker priority is based? Those are the ones that do not fit and contain the little Mediterranean skeletons.

[rms2]

That would be Zambujal and Vila Nova de Sao Pedro (VNSP) which are Pre Beaker / Early Bell Beaker and have Statue Menhir Stelae.

7364

https://www.academia.edu/4421461/Pre-Bell_Beaker_ware_from_Estremadura_Portugal_and_its _likely_influence_on_the_appearance_of_Maritime_Be ll_Beaker_ware

https://www.academia.edu/15773478/Les_statues-menhir_de_M%C3%A9diterran%C3%A9e_occidentale

http://eprints.ucm.es/11070/1/T32200.pdf

My problem with the stelae argument, which I like otherwise, is that I don't see a lot of similarities between the funeral stelae of the steppe and those in western Europe. I'm not a stelae expert, obviously, but they just don't look that much alike to me. Maybe someone could show me some side-by-side comparisons of steppe stelae and western stelae that show the similarities, but I have yet to really see it.

I think the answers will come if and when we get some dna from the very earliest Iberian Bell Beaker. If it turns out to be R1b-L51 and has the steppe autosomal component, then we'll know the answer and we can all celebrate and congratulate one another. Believe me, I'll be happy to admit that my suspicions about the earliest Iberian Bell Beaker were wrong.

Until then, I have the sneaking suspicion that the very earliest Iberian Bell Beaker - the kind found in collective Neolithic-type tombs with small-statured, long-skulled, gracile, Mediterranean skeletons - will be I2a and G2a and lack much of the steppe autosomal component. I could be wrong, but that is my suspicion.

[R.Rocca]

Its not absolutely impossible but the lack of any widely agreed clearcut archaeological indicators of anything like a steppe intrusion that makes me doubt that. Someone clearly did arrive from the east c. 3000BC to bring copper knowledge but it looks far more likely to have come along the Med. from a non-steppe source to me. The whole vibe of the pre-beaker Iberian copper age just puts me in mind of other later cultures that came along the Med. and didnt have roots further north. There is something missing from the jigsaw though because those distinctive forts of the pre-beaker Iberian copper age just come out of nowhere.

Based on the Copper Age Iberians looking exactly like Middle Neolithic Iberians and Irish, the appearance of copper working did nothing to change the genetics of Western Europe. Unlike the Early Neolithic, the Copper Age looks like it was due to cultural rather than demic diffusion.

[R.Rocca]

If they came from the steppe, they should at least look and act something like people from the steppe rather than looking like and burying their dead like Near Eastern-derived Neolithic farmers. The very earliest Iberian Bell Beaker people, from what I have read, are very different from the later, kurgan-type Bell Beaker people and were more like Neolithic farmers.

The kurgan-type Bell Beaker is not exactly like Yamnaya - some changes are to be expected over the centuries, after all - but early Iberian Bell Beaker appears to be nothing like Yamnaya.

What are the dates on those Spanish Beaker skulls? Are we talking about the very earliest Bell Beaker people or later incomers?

I understand there are Spanish Bell Beaker burials from later (post 2500 BC) that are classic, single grave Beaker burials. But what about those very early collective Iberian BB burials upon which Iberian Beaker priority is based? Those are the ones that do not fit and contain the little Mediterranean skeletons.

Perhaps riding a horse and drinking out of a cup who's closest resemblance is Corded Ware is enough steppe for a population so distant from the steppe. Besides, nothing you nor Alan have written here is different than what you've written in the past years and in no way explains why Central Europeans (and now a far flung Eastern European) would show Iberian Middle Neolithic autosomal DNA nor in the case of Central Europrean Bell Beakers, why they show Iberian mtDNA. And again, isotope studies have shown that migrations into Central European Bell Beaker were proportionally equal for men and women, so the Iberian mail-order bride service is out of the question.

[rms2]

Perhaps riding a horse and drinking out of a cup who's closest resemblance is Corded Ware is enough steppe for a population so distant from the steppe.

Were those very earliest Bell Beaker people actually riding horses? Are there any signs that they were?

I think we have to make sure we're not conflating Bell Beaker from all periods in Iberia. I was talking about those very earliest ones, the ones who give Iberian Bell Beaker its claim to priority. They are the ones who don't appear to have any steppe qualities. Later Iberian Bell Beaker is like central European Bell Beaker.

I realize I could be wrong, but those early Bell Beaker people and their burials are just not very steppe-looking to me.



Besides, nothing you nor Alan have written here is different than what you've written in the past years and in no way explains why Central Europeans (and now a far flung Eastern European) would show Iberian Middle Neolithic autosomal DNA nor in the case of Central Europrean Bell Beakers, why they show Iberian mtDNA. And again, isotope studies have shown that migrations into Central European Bell Beaker were proportionally equal for men and women, so the Iberian mail-order bride service is out of the question.

I don't know the answer to that. Is it Iberian MN autosomal dna, or Iberian MN-like autosomal dna? I thought Bell Beaker had a variety of mtDNA haplogroups. Which of them is specifically and solely attributable to Iberia?

I'm just trying to make sense of how Bell Beaker acquired its R1b, its steppe autosomal dna, and its kurgan cultural characteristics despite the claim that it originated in Iberia at a time when there wasn't anything very steppe-like going on there.

[razyn]

Maybe there is a later arrival for the culturally more important Bowlegged Beakers.

[rms2]

Maybe there is a later arrival for the culturally more important Bowlegged Beakers.

As I understand it, that is the case, i.e., that horse riding is something that came with east-central European Bell Beaker from the east and, while it may be found in Iberian Bell Beaker after 2500 BC or so, does not show up in those very earliest rc-dated Iberian Bell Beaker burials, the ones from ~ 2800 BC.

If I am wrong on that, someone let me know, but I haven't heard of any horse sacrifices or horse bones connected with Beaker in Iberia that early. I have heard of it with Iberian Bell Beaker later, when it came to resemble central European Bell Beaker.

[Webb]

Maybe there is a later arrival for the culturally more important Bowlegged Beakers.

Quite witty.

[R.Rocca]

Since this was discussed in a post about the Ice Age dut did not really belong there, I thought I'd post it here for traceability. Yamnaya Culture sample I0443 Is L23+Y410+ (see attached). He was also previously known to be L51- and CTS10373-

9479

[rms2]

Since this was discussed in a post about the Ice Age dut did not really belong there, I thought I'd post it here for traceability. Yamnaya Culture sample I0443 Is L23+Y410+ (see attached). He was also previously known to be L51- and CTS10373-

9479

Here is an adaptation I made of smal's tree that I hope makes things clear. It strikes me as pretty significant that we have an eastern Yamnaya man who was on the branch that led to L51.

9482

[angscoire]

http://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-beaker-people-project-mp-pearson-et.html

What do you make of this rms ? Interesting paper , although limited without genomic data , plus the isotope analysis appears largely unspecific regarding origins of the 29% migrant Beaker samples. Somebody test the DNA of these particular samples please !

[Heber]

Very interesting paper. Hope we get some aDNA testing soon.

"From where?

Part of what's bizarre about Beakers in the island of Britain, is that immigrants seem to be coming from every direction. From Holland, Amorica, the Alps, Ireland, somewhere near Iberia, Central Europe, everywhere.

This is also true in Wessex (a county in Southern Britain) where some of the most famous sites are found. The really flummoxing idea is that Bell Beakers in this area have such diverse backgrounds (or personal histories):
"The wide range of δ18O values (16.9‰–19.3‰) amongst this group makes it unlikely that they derive from a single place of origin."
Some conclusions:

Despite the uncertainties of isotopic provenancing, we consider that most lifetime movement during the Chalcolithic–Early Bronze Age was within Britain rather than from Europe into Britain."

9483

9484

9485

[rms2]

http://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-beaker-people-project-mp-pearson-et.html

What do you make of this rms ? Interesting paper , although limited without genomic data , plus the isotope analysis appears largely unspecific regarding origins of the 29% migrant Beaker samples. Somebody test the DNA of these particular samples please !

Lots of potential, but without any ancient dna rather disappointing.

[Jean M]

Were those very earliest Bell Beaker people actually riding horses? Are there any signs that they were?.

As I said in Blood of the Celts, horse-riding arrived in Iberia with copper-mining and production of an already mature type related to Yamnaya. Once again I quote:


The earliest dates of copper-working there (c. 3100 BC) are for mining-metallurgical complexes in South-western Iberia, such as Cabezo Juré. It is revealing that this site was colonised by a community already specialised in copper production. These incomers lived within a fortified centre, dining well and importing luxuries, while in a village outside lived the lower-status workers. The well-protected elite controlled access to horses, used probably in the transport of copper ore.

That was before the bell-shaped pots were produced. The bell-shaped pots were made later by the same copper-working people at the same sites in which they settled at e.g. Zambujal and Leceia. These pots are not in graves. They are found where people were living. I quote:


The fort at Leceia was built around 2900-2800 BC. Like Zambujal, pottery of different styles was in use there at different periods, ending with Bell Beaker.... At Zambujal there is a clear continuity from the earliest copper-workers to the beginnings of Bell Beaker.... At Leceia in Portugal we see new arrivals expanding the settlement. Nestling just outside the fortifications were two huts with radiocarbon dates centring in the 2700s BC in which the pottery was exclusively Bell Beaker, while within the walls earlier local pottery gradually mixed with Maritime Bell Beaker material, after the new styles were introduced.

Anthropomorphic stelae spread to Sion and Aosta with copper working people before the bell-shaped pots were produced. At those very same sites Bell Beaker pottery is later found and its motifs used on later stelae. At Sion:


Around 2700 BC a necropolis was laid out on a solar orientation. Two communal burial chambers were built on this axis. The first anthropomorphic stelae stood before them in a line facing south-east, creating a parade of sun-blessed ancestors. At both Sion and Aosta, stelae with Bell Beaker motifs were added to the parade, indicating continuity in these communities from the first arrivals through to Bell Beaker.

In short the bell-shaped pottery is not the start of a new culture. It appears within a culture of Yamnaya origin which had spread from the Carpathian basin into Northern Italy and along the coast to the Atlantic.

[R.Rocca]

Since this was discussed in a post about the Ice Age dut did not really belong there, I thought I'd post it here for traceability. Yamnaya Culture sample I0443 Is L23+Y410+ (see attached). He was also previously known to be L51- and CTS10373-

9479

False alarm... I checked this SNP and it is not reliable (anything but). Here is my analysis... http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?7057-The-genetic-history-of-Ice-Age-Europe&p=160096&viewfull=1#post160096

[rms2]

False alarm... I checked this SNP and it is not reliable (anything but). Here is my analysis... http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?7057-The-genetic-history-of-Ice-Age-Europe&p=160096&viewfull=1#post160096

Disappointing, but the truth is always best.

[rms2]

As I said in Blood of the Celts, horse-riding arrived in Iberia with copper-mining and production of an already mature type related to Yamnaya. Once again I quote:



That was before the bell-shaped pots were produced. The bell-shaped pots were made later by the same copper-working people at the same sites in which they settled at e.g. Zambujal and Leceia. These pots are not in graves. They are found where people were living. I quote:



Anthropomorphic stelae spread to Sion and Aosta with copper working people before the bell-shaped pots were produced. At those very same sites Bell Beaker pottery is later found and its motifs used on later stelae. At Sion:



In short the bell-shaped pottery is not the start of a new culture. It appears within a culture of Yamnaya origin which had spread from the Carpathian basin into Northern Italy and along the coast to the Atlantic.

As I have said before, what troubles me about the very earliest Iberian Bell Beaker, if what I have read is correct, is its differences with the later, fully developed, kurgan-type Bell Beaker. No need to go over those differences in detail again. I have already listed them in numerous posts.

If your hypothesis is correct, then we should see steppe autosomal dna in early Iberian Bell Beaker, as well as y-dna R1b.

[Jean M]

If your hypothesis is correct, then we should see steppe autosomal dna in early Iberian Bell Beaker, as well as y-dna R1b.

We might well do, though by the time BB pottery was made, the earliest Copper Age incomers (small groups of prospectors, I imagine) would have had multiple generations (several thousand years) in which to mix with local people of Neolithic origin. So the percentage of steppe DNA could be significantly lower than that found in German BB samples (which I take to be the result of Csepel BB mixing with steppe-origin cultures of the Carpathian Basin).

My hypothesis includes the concept of continuing migration along the route to and from the Carpathian basin, so that the actual bell-shaped pottery influences could arrive with women (probably) who had knowledge of techniques found in the Danube area such as bone paste for encrustation. So we could see a continuous flow of steppe-type autosomal DNA boosting that already there (I assume) in copper workers. Even so my guess is that sampling would need to be specific to core early sites such as Zambujal to pick up the steppe autosomal DNA. Later generations of mixing and mingling across Iberia would even it out to present levels, I suppose.

[Jean M]

Later generations of mixing and mingling across Iberia would even it out to present levels, I suppose.

I should add that other hypothesized inputs could have contributed to the present levels of ANE in Iberia: the back-wash of eastern Bell Beaker that I envisage carried the ancestor to Celtiberian, the possible Bronze Age influx I envisage south along the Atlantic to Galicia, and Late Bronze Age input I envisage carrying the ancestor to Ligurian and Lusitanian. To me the picture of IE in Iberia looks a lot more complex than in the British Isles.

At least in the British Isles copper-working arrived with Bell Beaker pottery so archaeologists are dealing with a package that they understand to be a package, and always have done. And the idea that it was brought by immigrants is not a new one. And we now have that supported by aDNA. Comparatively straightforward.

[rms2]

False alarm... I checked this SNP and it is not reliable (anything but). Here is my analysis... http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?7057-The-genetic-history-of-Ice-Age-Europe&p=160096&viewfull=1#post160096

It is still well to remember that I0443 was negative for Z2103 SNPs, as well, so his Y410+ result might actually be meaningful (although apparently we have no way of knowing that). Anyway, he is still at the L23 node.

We will get some R1b-L51 in Yamnaya, then it will be party time. :beerchug:

[Gravetto-Danubian]

I should add that other hypothesized inputs could have contributed to the present levels of ANE in Iberia: the back-wash of eastern Bell Beaker that I envisage carried the ancestor to Celtiberian, the possible Bronze Age influx I envisage south along the Atlantic to Galicia, and Late Bronze Age input I envisage carrying the ancestor to Ligurian and Lusitanian. To me the picture of IE in Iberia looks a lot more complex than in the British Isles.

At least in the British Isles copper-working arrived with Bell Beaker pottery so archaeologists are dealing with a package that they understand to be a package, and always have done. And the idea that it was brought by immigrants is not a new one. And we now have that supported by aDNA. Comparatively straightforward.

Jean,

Sorry to repeat yourself but would you mind clarifying the evidence for a Copper Age arrival into Iberia ?

From what I have read, the development of Copper Metallurgy in western Europe, incl. Iberia, was not a sudden nor revolutionary phenomenon, and specifically for Iberia "new forms are simply added to the existing repertoire without any discernable change in the underlying technology' (Metallurgical Networks and Technological Choice: understanding early metal in Western Europe, Ben Roberts)

Moreover in this recent paper (https://www.academia.edu/23462994/Transition_and_conflict_at_the_end_of_the_3rd_mill ennium_BC_in_south_Iberia), the author suggests that the earliest evidence for a maritime colonization comes from c. 2200 BC, specifical to El Agar ? from the Aegean; and this time is considerably after the BB phenomenon had already begun. Certainly, many doubt the specific significance of sites like Cabezo Juré, as evidence for furnacing, ingots, trade and metal deposition are rare in Iberia until the LBA/ EIA. I.e copper production was still a local household affair. 1 (https://www.academia.edu/6283886/Contribution_of_the_analytical_work_to_the_knowled ge_of_the_early_metallurgy_in_the_Iberian_Peninsul a)

To me it seems, Copper Age Iberia is by and large in continuity with its Neolithic background, and the earliest evidence of maritime colonization was in the southeast (expectedly), well after the onset of BB. Arrival of "steppic" admixture, appears later still (after 2000 BC)

The 'appearance of Copper' appears not to have been a universal package, but local groups experimenting and beginning to understand Copper itself. Indeed, although BB metallurgical studies are in their infancy, there appears to have been no homogeneous "BB metal" (Bell Beaker Metallurgy and the Emergence of Fahlore-copper Use in Central Europe).

We are left looking for signs of eastern Intrusions into BB. If some of the daggers and flint networks, and "Maritime" type beakers are western European, then from the east came pots derivative of Zlota culture, Corded Ware and Glina-Schnekenberg/ mako derivation, which reached southern France by 2300 BC ((Chronology & Bell Beaker Common Ware; Piguet, Besse)

[R.Rocca]

It is still well to remember that I0443 was negative for Z2103 SNPs, as well, so his Y410+ result might actually be meaningful (although apparently we have no way of knowing that). Anyway, he is still at the L23 node.

We will get some R1b-L51 in Yamnaya, then it will be party time. :beerchug:

Y410 is a junk SNP as is not meaningful in an sample. I0443 being L51- and Z2105- is still relevant however.

[Jean M]

Jean,

Sorry to repeat yourself but would you mind clarifying the evidence for a Copper Age arrival into Iberia ?

From what I have read, the development of Copper Metallurgy in western Europe, incl. Iberia, was not a sudden nor revolutionary phenomenon, and specifically for Iberia "new forms are simply added to the existing repertoire without any discernable change in the underlying technology' (Metallurgical Networks and Technological Choice: understanding early metal in Western Europe, Ben Roberts)

If you read it again, you will see that Ben Roberts is saying that Bell Beaker in Iberia simply added to an existing repertoire with no change in the underlying technology. This is exactly what I have tried to explain in a previous post. Copper-working in Iberia arrived before Bell Beaker pottery. The Bell Beaker pottery was later made within sites founded by the earlier copper workers. This is different from the British Isles, where Bell Beaker pottery makers brought copper-working with them.

Ben Roberts is in fact one of the keenest exponents of the return to V. Gordon Childe's concept of a single centre of the development of copper working in the Near East from which it spread. He is absolutely convinced that there was no independent discovery of copper-working in Iberia (contrary to Colin Renfrew 1967), and dismisses the claimed evidence for it, both in the article you cite and several others. See my online page for the context, as seen by Roberts: http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/metal.shtml I recommend the papers by him from 2009 onwards. Just hover over the footnote number to see the sources.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

If you read it again, you will see that Ben Roberts is saying that Bell Beaker in Iberia simply added to an existing repertoire with no change in the underlying technology. This is exactly what I have tried to explain in a previous post. Copper-working in Iberia arrived before Bell Beaker pottery. The Bell Beaker pottery was later made within sites founded by the earlier copper workers. This is different from the British Isles, where Bell Beaker pottery makers brought copper-working with them

Yes Jean, that is exactly what I quoted


Ben Roberts is in fact one of the keenest exponents of the return to V. Gordon Childe's concept of a single centre of the development of copper working in the Near East from which it spread. He is absolutely convinced that there was no independent discovery of copper-working in Iberia (contrary to Colin Renfrew 1967), and dismisses the claimed evidence for it, both in the article you cite and several others. See my online page for the context, as seen by Roberts: http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/metal.shtml I recommend the papers by him from 2009 onwards. Just hover over the footnote number to see the sources.

shall do Jean
But I wasn't for a second suggesting that copper develope independently in Iberia . Rather it seems it's development was a haphazard, somewhat ineffible affair from within its Neolithic base, although not present in the early Neolithic

In your previous post you suggested

"The earliest dates of copper-working there (c. 3100 BC) are for mining-metallurgical complexes in South-western Iberia, such as Cabezo Juré. It is revealing that this site was colonised by a community already specialised in copper production. These incomers lived within a fortified centre, dining well and importing luxuries, while in a village outside lived the lower-status workers. The well-protected elite controlled access to horses, used probably in the transport of copper ore."

I question this idea, because the papers I cited argue that the significance of the CJ sight, eg, has been overinflated
It's enclosures are similar to those seen throughout central-western European mid-to late Neolithic; and the metal production is far from "specialised", but rather "within the household" context. There appears to be no overarching trade, deposition or storage. So whilst I am open to the possibility of a "second Neolithic wave ", there at present is no compelling evidence for copper age (pre-Beaker) migrants to Iberia, from the steppe or elsewhere

Quite the contrary, the earliest arguably convincing evidence for a "colonization" come much later, 2200BC, and this appears to have been from Southern Europe to El Agar.

[Jean M]

But I wasn't for a second suggesting that copper develope independently in Iberia . Rather it seems it's development was a haphazard, somewhat ineffible affair from within its Neolithic base, although not present in the early Neolithic .

You really can't have this both ways. :) If metallurgy developed within an Iberian Neolithic context, then that would be an independent discovery. There is no evidence of such an independent discovery. There is no evidence of experimentation. The technology arrived fully developed, complete with use of arsenic-copper for items that needed to be harder.

The discovery/development of copper metallurgy in the Near East was small-scale. It was probably passed on within families. We could therefore see it as "domestic", but it was spread by people who understood the technology. The culture in which they operated did not cease to grow crops or herd animals. People need food! The same extended family that made metal objects could also keep a flock of goats or whatever. Or on the other hand we could vizualise a travelling smith, who would set up shop where needed and then move on. However the first metallurgists in Iberia were presumably prospectors. First find your metal!

So as the Neolithic shades into the Chalcolithic, the defining feature is not the end of farming. Nor is it the instant creation of factories and cities. Nor is it merely the circulation of metal objects (which could come from trade), but actual metallurgy. That is what we see from c. 3100 BC in Iberia. It is not all over Iberia at that stage. It is at first in a very few places. The choice of these places is far from haphazard. They reflect the location of ore inland or riverine sites from which gold could be panned, together with access to the sea, as at Zambujal and Los Millares.

[Jean M]

Quite the contrary, the earliest arguably convincing evidence for a "colonization" come much later, 2200BC, and this appears to have been from Southern Europe to El Agar.

I'm not sure that it came from Southern Europe specifically, but somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean no doubt. There has been a strong tradition within Iberian archaeology of looking for signs of "orientalization" and they certainly have them at La Bastida. I would associate this arrival with the Iberes, speaking a non-IE language, which seems to have been inserted into a coastal strip previously IE speaking, specifically Ligurian.

The arrival of copper-working much earlier is not associated with Near Eastern features. The fact that it is associated with Yamnaya features has gone unrecognised by Iberian archaeologists (as far as I am aware) until I pointed it out in Ancestral Journeys 2013. The Iberian stelae expert in the "Celtic from the West" group is now looking into it, I think. John Koch has taken up the idea with some enthusiasm. But I don't imagine that you will find the idea in anything much earlier than my stuff, despite the Harrison and Heyd 2007 paper for the north Italian sites of Sion and Aosta.

[R.Rocca]

Correct, the spread of metallurgy from N. Italy > S. France > NE Iberia has been estabished by Strahm & later Merkl/Steiniger/Strahm. As far as colonization, scenarios from much further east may not be needed, as I think I recall the Val Camonica rock art of N.Italy depicting fortified villages with circular end structures???

9495

[Heber]

The arrival of copper-working much earlier is not associated with Near Eastern features. The fact that it is associated with Yamnaya features has gone unrecognised by Iberian archaeologists (as far as I am aware) until I pointed it out in Ancestral Journeys 2013. The Iberian stelae expert in the "Celtic from the West" group is now looking in to it, I think. John Koch has taken up the idea with some enthusiasm. But I don't imagine that you will find the idea in anything much earlier than my stuff, despite the Harrison and Heyd 2007 paper for the north Italian sites of Sion and Aosta.

John Koch model is described in the paper "Indoeuropean from the East, Celtic from the West", which is part of the Celtic from the West series.

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

9496

It references Harrison & Heyd (2007) model for the continent wide social transformation of Europe in the third millennium BC and three interacting cultural packages.
Middle Eastern Urban Package
Yamnaya Kurgan Package
Iberian Bell Beaker Package

9497

And specifically the stelae of Le Petite Chasseur, Sion in the context of Bell Beaker and a possible missing link between the Steppes and Iberia.

9498

He singles out the Stelae of Kemi Oba and Yamnaya region as described by Anthony and Mallory.

9499

And compares them to the warrior Stelae of Alentejo and Tartessos of South West Iberia.

9500

http://pin.it/luMScQr

http://pin.it/2I30mVC

[Gravetto-Danubian]

You really can't have this both ways. :) If metallurgy developed within an Iberian Neolithic context, then that would be an independent discovery. There is no evidence of such an independent discovery. There is no evidence of experimentation. The technology arrived fully developed, complete with use of arsenic-copper for items that needed to be harder.

The discovery/development of copper metallurgy in the Near East was small-scale. It was probably passed on within families. We could therefore see it as "domestic", but it was spread by people who understood the technology. The culture in which they operated did not cease to grow crops or herd animals. People need food! The same extended family that made metal objects could also keep a flock of goats or whatever. Or on the other hand we could vizualise a travelling smith, who would set up shop where needed and then move on. However the first metallurgists in Iberia were presumably prospectors. First find your metal!

So as the Neolithic shades into the Chalcolithic, the defining feature is not the end of farming. Nor is it the instant creation of factories and cities. Nor is it merely the circulation of metal objects (which could come from trade), but actual metallurgy. That is what we see from c. 3100 BC in Iberia. It is not all over Iberia at that stage. It is at first in a very few places. The choice of these places is far from haphazard. They reflect the location of ore inland or riverine sites from which gold could be panned, together with access to the sea, as at Zambujal and Los Millares.

Thanks for the discussion, I'd always found the subject a little hazy, when coming to Iberia, so it was good to clarify a few things. I do not want to delve too much more deeply into it for now, Rovira (https://www.academia.edu/6279240/Iberia_Technological_development_of_Prehistoric_me tallurgy) has rather good arguments for a local Copper working tradition in Iberia :


"The character of early copper as a replacement mate-rial should be emphasized. Copper was not a new material that, in principle, gave rise to new applications even in the full Chalcolithic period and much later. Basically, it joined the group of materials that covered the needs that the respective society had already solved in other ways. This explains, on the one hand, the utilitarian significance that would always accompany metal in the Old World (in America things turned out radically different), and on the other hand, the slow pace from introduction of copper to substitution of other materi-als such as bone and stone, whose employment led over many years to the development of technologically highly refined solutions, and whose functionality was initially not seen to be superseded by copper.

Contrary to common belief, obtaining copper from oxide minerals (cuprite, malachite, azurite) is a relatively simple process" and Towards the end of the 4th millennium cal BC we find the complete chaîne opératoire.

He thinks the process began haphazardly with the 5th Mill BC farmers arrival, and admits that whilst scant, evidence for experimentation does exist, esp in southern Iberia (citing a recent review of the evidence)
I think its fair to say he has a good grasp of metallurgy, as he is an archaeometallurgist, who has studied sites including Kargaly - Urals and the Near East.

Alberto Fraile (https://www.academia.edu/11770022/Copper_Metallurgy_and_Social_Complexity_in_the_Lat e_Prehistory_of_Central_Iberia) argues similarly However, it can be strongly argued that metallurgy was not a cause but a consequence of the emergence of social differentiation, since elites did not reach their privileged position on the basis of their control over metallurgy. Indeed, attempts to mark individual status had started much earlier in the Northern Plateau, by the end of the Neolithic. Moreover, the volume of production was not high enough as to have generated social changes. Therefore, emerging elites symbolized and legitimated the previously gained power through control over the production and circulation of luxury and wealth items. In that sense, metallurgy would be a vehicle for symbolizing elite power rather than the basis of that power. Accordingly, the development o copper metalworking in Iberia can be interpreted as “a consequence of the need of dominant groups to underline their social differentiation"




I'm not sure that it came from Southern Europe specifically, but somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean no doubt. There has been a strong tradition within Iberian archaeology of looking for signs of "orientalization" and they certainly have them at La Bastida. I would associate this arrival with the Iberes, speaking a non-IE language, which seems to have been inserted into a coastal strip previously IE speaking, specifically Ligurian

Certainly agree there. These groups were probably ancestral to Nuragic, Argaric, Minoan, etc


The arrival of copper-working much earlier is not associated with Near Eastern features. The fact that it is associated with Yamnaya features has gone unrecognised by Iberian archaeologists (as far as I am aware) until I pointed it out in Ancestral Journeys 2013. The Iberian stelae expert in the "Celtic from the West" group is now looking into it, I think. John Koch has taken up the idea with some enthusiasm. But I don't imagine that you will find the idea in anything much earlier than my stuff, despite the Harrison and Heyd 2007 paper for the north Italian sites of Sion and Aosta.

Your idea that it arrived with early steppe migrants is intriguing - all the more because no archaeologist has yet found any evidence for steppic colonists in Iberia, as you mentioned. So it'll be very interesting to see what a more expansive aDNA dataset from Iberia shows. I remember your 'Stelae people' map, so I imagine it required some seafaring in the final stages westward ?

We should further note that the Iberian copper working tradition remained rather small scale until the LBA, & nothing links it to the Circum Pontic metallurgical province, as one might expect if were introduced from the steppe. Indeed, arsenic alloying was already present in Alpine areas (Cham culture, Altheim, etc, c 3800 BC), and might in these cases have existed as unintentional alloys.

Copper aside, at present i cannot but fall to the position that there were no eastern arrivals to Iberia in 3100 BC, perhaps not even as late as 2100 BC - if we are to summarize the current admittedly small aDNA corpus from Iberia, and parallels from Italy (Remedello III, c. 2100 BC, with no steppe components).

If anything, new mid Neolithic - pre-Beaker arrivals in Iberia probably came from Alpine Europe and north Italy, corroborated by the rise of haplogroup I2a2 after the early neolithic, which might fit in with that schematic R Rocca posted (# 1915.)

NB I also note that Koch's theory looks like he's clutching at straws

[Jean M]

I do not want to delve too much more deeply into it for now,

In that case, why the long post requiring half a book from me in response? It really would save time for you to read Ancestral Journeys. The arguments are there re the metallurgy and the evidence of anthropomorphic stelae with features similar to those in southern France, which it turm can be connected with those on the steppe and in the Carpathian Basin. The evidence of specific metal objects derived from steppe types is there, such axe types and spiral hair-binders.

Archaeologists prior to Harrison and Heyd 2007 may not have noticed that the chain of metallurgy westwards was connected to Yamnaya features and the latter to Bell Beaker, but that does not mean that "archaeologists have not found steppe features". They just were not looking for them. They were not considering the possibility. It never crossed their minds. Hence the attempts to present metallurgy in Iberia as home-grown. Hence the supposition that horse-riding developed independently in Iberia, etc, etc. All the Yamnaya features were just not recognised as such.

[Jean M]

I also note that Koch's theory looks like he's clutching at straws

I'm afraid so. He really doesn't want to give up on his theory of "Celtic from the West". He and Cunliffe have invited speakers to their conferences who have argued against it time after time. But he bubbles with optimism all the same. I do feel that the process of exploration of the idea has been useful though. It has certainly generated papers useful to me.

However my "Stelae People" concept does not support "Celtic from the West". It simply explains the arrival in Iberia of the early form of IE that has left its mark in place-names. It does not mean that Celtic had to arise in Iberia from that early IE, which was planted all along the two main routes from the Carpathian Basin. The linguistic evidence is against Celtic arising in Iberia.

Barry Cunliffe and John Koch are aware of the importance of ancient DNA in this debate, and are involved in a project with Prof. Martin Richards to clarify the matter, as I understand it. Though I suspect that we shall learn more from other projects in the pipeline.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

In that case, why the long post requiring half a book from me in response? It really would save time for you to read Ancestral Journeys. The arguments are there re the metallurgy and the evidence of anthropomorphic stelae with features similar to those in southern France, which it turm can be connected with those on the steppe and in the Carpathian Basin. The evidence of specific metal objects derived from steppe types is there, such axe types and spiral hair-binders.

Archaeologists prior to Harrison and Heyd 2007 may not have noticed that the chain of metallurgy westwards was connected to Yamnaya features and the latter to Bell Beaker, but that does not mean that "archaeologists have not found steppe features". They just were not looking for them. They were not considering the possibility. It never crossed their minds. Hence the attempts to present metallurgy in Iberia as home-grown. Hence the supposition that horse-riding developed independently in Iberia, etc, etc. All the Yamnaya features were just not recognised as such.

Ok, it is important then, if it's a major tenet of the evidence ;)
I'd imagine we'd need metallurgical provenance studies, spectrography, etc to fully convince ?
I know the papers I cited did so, but don't believe they made formal comparison to Yamnaya metal. Indeed it would be hard because the study of Yannaya metal techniques themselves aren't uniform in its distribution

Here (http://dienekes.blogspot.com.au/?m=1) is a 2013 pilot study of Beaker metal from France; they argue it is of Iberian provenance. If you are correct that it originally arrived to Iberia from the steppe, then it would imply that BB from the outset was steppic and R1b?

On the stelae, i believe these were also found in north Italy, but here there is no steppe admixture until 2000 BC. How do we reconcile that ?

[rms2]

It seems to me the chief problem of Bell Beaker studies is the notion that, despite its pretty obvious steppe or kurgan affinities, Bell Beaker is supposed to have originated in the Iberian peninsula. Jean M's Stelae People hypothesis, if correct, solves that problem, which is captured very well in the following from Marija Gimbutas' book, The Civilization of the Goddess, page 390:



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.

So, we have a culture said to have emerged in Iberia that "certainly could not have developed out of any west European culture", and thus far the ancient dna seems to support Gimbutas.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

It seems to me the chief problem of Bell Beaker studies is the notion that, despite its pretty obvious steppe or kurgan affinities, Bell Beaker is supposed to have originated in the Iberian peninsula. Jean M's Stelae People hypothesis, if correct, solves that problem, which is captured very well in the following from Marija Gimbutas' book, The Civilization of the Goddess, page 390:

So, we have a culture said to have emerged in Iberia that "certainly could not have developed out of any west European culture", and thus far the ancient dna seems to support Gimbutas.

Gimbutas was certain astute, but few if any archaeologists support her contentions these days - with regard to BB. Perhaps unwisely !

Nevertheless, one would agree with regards to the BB East group & Britain, but what about early Iberian Beaker, which often has collective burials and different anthropological type ?
I agree that aDNA from Iberian beaker, if showing steppe admixture, would certainly confirm Jeans theory which would kill several birds with one stone

[Jean M]

On the stelae, i believe these were also found in north Italy, but here there is no steppe admixture until 2000 BC. How do we reconcile that ?

At this moment, I have no idea. I see the trail of Yamnaya features archaeologically. I see how that fits the language evidence. I see that we end up (today) with steppe admixture all over Europe where IE languages are spoken. The exceptionally low steppe admixture in Sardinia fits the fact that a non IE language was apparently spoken there until Roman times. But the genetic details are likely to be complicated for southern Europe, where:


farming peoples of Neolithic origin survived more strongly than in Northern Europe.
metallurgy was first developed in the Balkans.


I attempted to track the dispersal of Balkan farmers and metallurgists as the Balkan towns collapsed c. 4000 BC. I suspect that some went to Sardinia and others up the Danube to create the TRB. Thus the earliest Sardinian metallurgy c. 4000 BC would not be Yamnaya, but Balkan. Italy therefore stands at the crossroads where metallurgy could arrive from more than one direction. The search for copper had spread to northern Italy by c. 3,500 B.C., where the earliest known copper mines in Western Europe were found at Monte Loreto (Castiglione Chiavarese, Liguria). That is pre-Yamnaya and so it seems was Rinaldone. Remedello is more tricky, as it was certainly connected to the stelae. But the earliest travelling Yamaya-type metallurgists and prospectors would have been entering territory foreign to them and populated by people of Neolithic origin, like Otzi, who had a Remedello-type axe, but was genetically Neolithic.

Let's wait and see, shall we?

[rms2]

Gimbutas was certain astute, but few if any archaeologists support her contentions these days

Has anyone actually asked them what they think of Gimbutas' idea of Yamnaya + Vucedol = Bell Beaker? The answers could be interesting.

Honestly, I also don't think that what people think "these days" is always relevant. We went through a long period when immobilism was what most archaeologists believed. That was what was current "those days", so what is current is not always what is right.



Nevertheless, one would agree with regards to the BB East group & Britain, but what about early Iberian Beaker, which often has collective burials and different anthropological type ?
I agree that aDNA from Iberian beaker, if showing steppe admixture, would certainly confirm Jeans theory

As you know from my posts, that is something I have wondered aloud about for quite some time. The very earliest Iberian Bell Beaker people look like and bury their dead like Near Eastern-derived Neolithic farmers. It is the somewhat later Bell Beaker people, especially of central Europe and the Isles, who are, as Gimbutas would say, "kurgans".

As Carelton Coon said in his The Races of Europe, p. 150:




Where Bell Beaker burials are found in central Europe, the skeletons are almost always of the same tall brachycephalic
type which we have already studied in the eastern Mediterranean and Italy. In Spain, however, they are frequently of the Megalithic race.

[rms2]

I find this succession of bowls (a brazier in the first example) with pedestals and internal solar designs from the steppe and the Carpathian basin intriguing. The first is from Mikhailovka I north of the Black Sea c. 3500 BC. The others are from the Carpathian basin in the third millennium BC.

9515 9516

[Gravetto-Danubian]

I find this succession of bowls (a brazier in the first example) with pedestals and internal solar designs from the steppe and the Carpathian basin intriguing. The first is from Mikhailovka I north of the Black Sea c. 3500 BC. The others are from the Carpathian basin in the third millennium BC.

9515 9516

If you're interesting at looking at ceramic analogies of E -> W, check this paper out

"CHRONOLOGY AND BELL BEAKER COMMON WARE" Martine Piguet • Marie Besse

[Jean M]

"CHRONOLOGY AND BELL BEAKER COMMON WARE" Martine Piguet • Marie Besse

That paper is cited by me and has been available to rms2 for some time in my online library. It came out in 2009. Here is what I say in Blood of the Celts:


The Bell Beaker culture took on a different configuration in the eastern Beaker sphere. Boar's tusks were worn as pendants or garment fasteners, a fashion which can be traced back to the steppe.1 This suggests that the incomers mixed with distant relatives who had remained in the Carpathian Basin. Begleitkeramik (accompanying pottery) is typical of the eastern Bell Beaker group. It reflects local pottery styles. The handled pitcher and pedestalled and polypod (multi-footed) cups or bowls appear in pre-Beaker groups in Hungary and Slovakia, were absorbed into eastern Bell Beaker and then spread out of the Carpathian Basin with it. This helps us to track the influence of the eastern Beaker tradition west into northern Italy and southern France, south to Sardinia, and north down the Rhine.2 Around the mouth of the Rhine, the Rhenish style of Bell Beaker decoration developed, which spread into Britain.3 Lastly islands of Bell Beaker appear across a northern sphere including Jutland, northern Germany and Poland.4

1. Anthony 2007, 183, 250: fig. 11.10, 256, 298; Ruzickova 2009.
2. Piguet and Besse 2009; Kulcsár and Szeverényi 2013.
3. Sheridan 2008.
4. Heyd 2007.

[rms2]

If you're interesting at looking at ceramic analogies of E -> W, check this paper out

"CHRONOLOGY AND BELL BEAKER COMMON WARE" Martine Piguet • Marie Besse

Interesting paper. They don't seem to have known about polypod braziers with internal solar designs on the steppe in the 4th millennium BC.

[Jean M]

Here is what I say in Blood of the Celts:

Boar's tusks were worn as pendants or garment fasteners, a fashion which can be traced back to the steppe

Mind you, I've had second thoughts since I wrote that. António Carlos Valera 2010 argues the development of gold lunulae in Iberia from boar's tusk pendants, which he found in Perdigões (South Portugal) in a Copper Age context, partly re-used with Bell Beaker material. That makes a nonsense of the idea that boar's tusk pendants were a feature only of eastern BB. That's on my list for any second edition of BB, or 3rd edn of AJ. Must say I wish I'd thought of it. :biggrin1: It is one of those things that seems obvious once it is pointed out.

[razyn]

It seems to me the chief problem of Bell Beaker studies is the notion that, despite its pretty obvious steppe or kurgan affinities, Bell Beaker is supposed to have originated in the Iberian peninsula. Jean M's Stelae People hypothesis, if correct, solves that problem, which is captured very well in the following from Marija Gimbutas' book...
Another thing that would tend to solve the problem (and one that you have cited a couple of times previously) would be if Jeunesse was right. Then maritime beaker might be seen as a model devolved from more complex forms, earlier and farther east -- rather than the ur-form, from which and after which the central and eastern European, more highly decorated forms (with their stylistic, cultural and genetic next of kin found, inexplicably, on the steppe) gradually evolved. http://www.academia.edu/11325848/The_dogma_of_the_Iberian_origin_of_the_Bell_Beaker _attempting_its_deconstruction

[rms2]

Another thing that would tend to solve the problem (and one that you have cited a couple of times previously) would be if Jeunesse was right. Then maritime beaker might be seen as a model devolved from more complex forms, earlier and farther east -- rather than the ur-form, from which and after which the central and eastern European, more highly decorated forms (with their stylistic, cultural and genetic next of kin found, inexplicably, on the steppe) gradually evolved. http://www.academia.edu/11325848/The_dogma_of_the_Iberian_origin_of_the_Bell_Beaker _attempting_its_deconstruction

I am glad you reminded us all of that paper and posted a link to it. I mentioned it to Gravetto-Danubian a few days ago and promised to post a link to it myself but then forgot about it.

[Isidro]

Interesting discussion with old and new ideas posted about Bell Beaker and the 3rd Millennium BC.

Upon reading from a vast array of studies in this publication http://archaeopress.com/ArchaeopressShop/Public/displayProductDetail.asp?id={44910EE6-2E5C-495E-BF06-5F5C40E2452D}

about BB I came across this notion that perhaps salt was even more precious that metalwork or ceramic styles.

here is a couple of quotes; thought provoking:

Salt and Beakers in the Third Millennium

Page 99 and 100:

Copy rights...need to delete photocopies. Please refer to pages 99 and 100.

It is open access just copy-paste the link above and download.

[Jean M]

Upon reading from a vast array of studies in this publication about BB I came across this notion that perhaps salt was even more precious that metalwork or ceramic styles.

Yes I saw that. That book is in my library too.

[alan]

There seems to be an east meets west aspect to beaker culture. I think many would agree with that. What is more a matter of debate is when and where this happened. We dont fully have the DNA evidence to solve this yet. It clearly happened at some point 3000-2500BC somewhere between the Atlantic and east-central Europe. I dont think radiocarbon really helps other than showing some form of beaker was present early in Iberia c. 2800-2750BC. For the rest of Europe I find the cline in date a lot less clear. Suggestions have been made in some papers but i am not convinced the idea of a cline from Iberia along the west Med. before a later expansion into central Europe is strongly supported in work in the period since it was suggested by Muller and Willigen. The general impression in recent papers I get is that a form of beaker type pot was present in Iberia and nowhere else in western Europe for 200-300 years then c. 2500BC beaker is suddenly all over Europe except the northernmost fringe where it was maybe closer to 2400BC.

My personal take on this on what evidence is that at face value there after 2-300 years a sudden and unexpected expansion of some early beaker ideas and people from Iberia into southern France and central Europe only a short time before 2500BC. My personal feeling is that the earliest groups were Iberian and non-IE people - essentially descendants of pre-beaker copper users of Mediterranean Neolithic farmer stock. The is the group we see in the first level at Sion and the only full beaker period group at Aosda.

The Sion evidence is suggestive of the usurping of the site by a central European beakerised population who had been in contact with older Med.-originated beaker people. RC dates suggest to me that this population was probably 'beakerised' through contact with these western beaker users through the Alps in the generation leading up to 2500BC. I have pondered the archaeology, ancient DNA and geography of these contacts and I have come to favour the idea that the crucial contact happened via the Po valley. This was the most direct route for a west Med. beaker group to contact R1b carrying groups in east-central Europe and the NW corner of the Balkans. There is evidence for the importance of this route in pre-beaker times. A more western contact route towards Switzerland would have brought them into contact with the R1a dominated Corded Ware groups who had settled there already by 2750BC.

The Po valley contact route between the western beaker users and east-central Europe and the NW Balkans would bring beaker material culture traits into a very interest zone c. 2550BC. My feeling is groups in this area 'beakerised' by a flow of beaker women from the west cementing friendly elite relations with the east-central Europeans. IMO many of the material culture aspects of the earliest beaker users in the west were female orientated - beaker pottery, fancy textiles, awls, gold jewelry. These could have been adopted by east-central Europeans without hugely impacting on the male aspects such as specific dagger types, single burial tradition, horse riding? So it seems likely to me that somewhere in east-central Europe c. 2500BC or a generation or two before (Kromsdorf is dated to 2550BC) P312 males in a pre-beaker culture married western women and gave rise to a new beaker culture linked to P312.

I suspect the a clue to this melding and to the P312 central European group who adopted some western beaker traits is the sudden ability to vastly expand the beaker culture across central Europe c. 2550-2500BC. The most obvious explanation for this is the use of horse riding which can massively extend the size of a viable network. At this stage I doubt boat technology was important as the big expansion c. 2550-2450BC was landlocked areas - the final expansion into the maritime northern fringe of Europe wasnt till c. 2400BC. We have direct osteological evidence for the effect of horse riding on a beaker body (I cant recall which site now for some reason).

IMO the expansion of the beakerised central European P312 population not only explored many new areas in central and ultimately northern Europe but they also slowly usurped the old western beakers routes, following them in reverse. There is an apparent example of this usurping at Sion. I suspect that late in the beaker era this beakrised group had usurped most of these routes and penetrated into Iberia itself.

[Jean M]

My personal feeling is that the earliest groups were Iberian and non-IE people - essentially descendants of pre-beaker copper users of Mediterranean Neolithic farmer stock.

So you have said countless times Alan. What you have not explained is how arsenic-copper metallurgy (i.e. the Yamnaya type, not the Balkan type) arrived in Iberia with Yamnaya anthropomorphic stele and Yamnaya tool types and Yamnaya gold spiral hair binders, etc etc without any involvement of actual people with any Yamnaya connection. I'm certainly willing to suppose a whole lot of complex scenarios, including a mixture of Balkan and Yamnaya metal-workers somewhere along the line adopting the Yamnaya package, or admixture of incomers and local people. I strongly suspect that there were other schools of metallurgy that reached Iberia fairly early. But they didn't morph into Bell Beaker. It is the sites that did which are of interest here.

I have generally ignored this debate, as I just don't have time to keep repeating myself. But just to let you know I'm still alive. ;)

[alan]

So you have said countless times Alan. What you have not explained is how arsenic-copper metallurgy (i.e. the Yamnaya type, not the Balkan type) arrived in Iberia with Yamnaya anthropomorphic stele and Yamnaya tool types and Yamnaya gold spiral hair binders, etc etc without any involvement of actual people with any Yamnaya connection. I'm certainly willing to suppose a whole lot of complex scenarios, including a mixture of Balkan and Yamnaya metal-workers somewhere along the line adopting the Yamnaya package, or admixture of incomers and local people. I strongly suspect that there were other schools of metallurgy that reached Iberia fairly early. But they didn't morph into Bell Beaker. It is the sites that did which are of interest here.

I have generally ignored this debate, as I just don't have time to keep repeating myself. But just to let you know I'm still alive. ;)


One metalurgical groups with Caucasus type arsenical copper traditions that I think tends to not get enough attention is Kura-Araxes. Their expansion not only included Anatolia, part of Iran, Levant etc but it appears Cyprus was settled too. That obvioiusly represents a moment in times when Caucasus derived metallurgists had gone maritime. Now this clearly post-dates the first waves of copper working into the central Med and south Alps but it is still interesting that a group of Caucasus origin had developed the connections to make it to Cyprus. I wonder too about this walled Kura-Araxes site described as having defensive towers in the wall. Could there be a connection with stuff in the west Med from c. 3000BC including Zambujal type sites
http://arvestagir.am/en/shengavith-bnakateghii-hnaguyn-mshakuytheh/

[Jean M]

I wonder too about this walled Kura-Araxes site described as having defensive towers in the wall. Could there be a connection with stuff in the west Med from c. 3000BC including Zambujal type sites
http://arvestagir.am/en/shengavith-bnakateghii-hnaguyn-mshakuytheh/

This seems vaguely familiar. Is it an idea I had in 2009 or 2010 or thereabouts? Or was I trying to connect the Halaf culture to the Southern Caucasus in one direction and Iberia in the other? I think that was it. Or something like that. My problem is that I revise and move on and don't keep copies of my old stuff, even in my head. Anyway I chucked it. As Gravetto-Danubian has pointed out, the "orientalising" influences that Iberian archaeologists have been so keen to track down don't appear until El Argar. Eastern Med is out.

[Isidro]

This seems vaguely familiar. Is it an idea I had in 2009 or 2010 or thereabouts? Or was I trying to connect the Halaf culture to the Southern Caucasus in one direction and Iberia in the other? I think that was it. Or something like that. My problem is that I revise and move on and don't keep copies of my old stuff, even in my head. Anyway I chucked it. As Gravetto-Danubian has pointed out, the "orientalising" influences that Iberian archaeologists have been so keen to track down don't appear until El Argar. Eastern Med is out.

Roberto Risch from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona -UAB- , in one of the recent video conferences tantalized with the idea that El Argar's "Orient Lux" could have been related to the arrival of IE to Iberia.
Exciting preposition for 2,200 BC in this part of the world with so very little coherent information we have, the further back we go on time... well; the less sure of certainty making assertions would be wise which is not the same as exposing hypothesis.

[Jean M]

Roberto Risch from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona -UAB- , in one of the recent video conferences tantalized with the idea that El Argar's "Orient Lux" could have been related to the arrival of IE to Iberia.

I can imagine that is a tempting hypothesis for Iberian achaeologists who have resisted the idea of earlier migration as the vector for the earliest metallurgy. But there are reasons to doubt it. There are two main problems:


Linguistic/chronological. In terms of fortification structure, La Bastida has been compared to Troy II, in which an IE language was most probably spoken, but it is the wrong IE language i.e. Luwian. What we need are a series of cultures that could bring to Iberia the IE "linguistic layer cake" that place-name specialists perceive in Iberia, starting with a form of IE not much different from PIE. That has to be early. Then we have Ligurian/Lusitanian and Celtic. None of these came from Anatolia c. 2200 BC. I think that is pretty clear just with the data we have now. The aDNA has confirmed the view accepted by most linguists that the PIE homeland was the steppe. The home of Ligurian appears to be northern Italy. Celtic developed in contact with pre-Germanic.
Spatial. The El Argar culture was fairly confined. There are no widespread descendant cultures which could explain IE across Iberia. The most likely (I think) descendant culture is that of the Iberes, who spoke a non-IE language, which seems to intrude into and overlay a band of coastal Ligurian.


However, to clarify all of these issues, I await aDNA. I understand that there will be some attempt to test El Argar remains for aDNA, as part of a current project. That may not be easy, as I understand cremation was common. But I live in hope.

[Isidro]

I can imagine that is a tempting hypothesis for Iberian achaeologists who have resisted the idea of earlier migration as the vector for the earliest metallurgy. But there are reasons to doubt it. There are two main problems:


Linguistic/chronological. In terms of fortification structure, La Bastida has been compared to Troy II, in which an IE language was most probably spoken, but it is the wrong IE language i.e. Luwian. What we need are a series of cultures that could bring to Iberia the IE "linguistic layer cake" that place-name specialists perceive in Iberia, starting with a form of IE not much different from PIE. That has to be early. Then we have Ligurian/Lusitanian and Celtic. None of these came from Anatolia c. 2200 BC. I think that is pretty clear just with the data we have now. The aDNA has confirmed the view accepted by most linguists that the PIE homeland was the steppe. The home of Ligurian appears to be northern Italy. Celtic developed in contact with pre-Germanic.
Spatial. The El Argar culture was fairly confined. There are no widespread descendant cultures which could explain IE across Iberia. The most likely (I think) descendant culture is that of the Iberes, who spoke a non-IE language, which seems to intrude into and overlay a band of coastal Ligurian.


However, to clarify all of these issues, I await aDNA. I understand that there will be some attempt to test El Argar remains for aDNA, as part of a current project. That may not be easy, as I understand cremation was common. But I live in hope.

There is still much debate among Iberian archaeologists even today between autochthonous versus orientalists when it comes to Phoenician and Greek influences an even Romanization of the Iberian territory beyond the obvious and visible legacy left behind.
El Argar culture is not so much a dilemma for them since it is incipient and distant enough not to be too politicized. Everyone agrees that metallurgy in Iberia is prior to El Argar, no apparent vector there unless we talk about Bronze Age, city states and territorial domination, very much par with Troy II like you mention.

Iberian I would say is related to IE and Italic and Celtic in Iberia if anything else by proximity and not too well defined linguistically since all used the same alphabet, very much like Lineal A and B from Crete interaction with Mycenean, all of these of course a much later layer cakes than BB and the language that they might have spoken.

PIE is a work in progress and very limited in scope IMO, it's almost a static concept not designed to be challenged with the addition that it actually has a well defined homeland.

I believe that there is El Argar buried skeletons and Iberian samples found in natural disasters without being cremated, aDNA will try to solve some riddles, especially if there is a trail from the Steppes through time and space across the European landmass that makes Iberia and the Pontic Caspian Steppes sisters ~ 3000 BC.

[Jean M]

Iberian I would say is related to IE and Italic and Celtic in Iberia if anything else by proximity and not too well defined linguistically.

As far as I am aware no linguist thinks that Iberian is an IE language. Some relationship with Basque has been postulated, but I don't think even that is totally uncontroversial. Some similarity of Iberian and Basque through contact is the cautious conclusion these days. See The Languages and Linguistics of Europe: A Comprehensive Guide (2011), p. 395.

Using the same alphabet does not mean writing the same language. We are using the adapted Roman alphabet right now to communicate in English. Iberian is a poorly understood language, but that does not mean that we can safely assume that it is IE. :)

I await a linguist to comment.

[Isidro]

As far as I am aware no linguist thinks that Iberian is an IE language. Some relationship with Basque has been postulated, but I don't think even that is totally uncontroversial. Some similarity of Iberian and Basque through contact is the cautious conclusion these days. See The Languages and Linguistics of Europe: A Comprehensive Guide (2011), p. 395.

Using the same alphabet does not mean writing the same language. We are using the adapted Roman alphabet right now to communicate in English. Iberian is a poorly understood language, but that does not mean that we can safely assume that it is IE. :)

I await a linguist to comment.

You are correct, practically all the world uses the same numerals and there are quite a large amount of unrelated languages, no mystery there.

Iberian is not poorly understood...is not understood at all, albeit their symbols can be read and some names deciphered. So how can it be said that it is or it is not IE?.

There are attempts of using Minoan Lineal B and some forms of old Greek to translate it. It would make sense from the cultural point of view, too many to mention here and out of subject. For now though, like many hypothesis out there limited to few are considered fringe connections, but who knows, maybe time will vindicate some.

[rms2]

There seems to be an east meets west aspect to beaker culture . . .

My feeling is groups in this area 'beakerised' by a flow of beaker women from the west cementing friendly elite relations with the east-central Europeans. IMO many of the material culture aspects of the earliest beaker users in the west were female orientated - beaker pottery, fancy textiles, awls, gold jewelry. These could have been adopted by east-central Europeans without hugely impacting on the male aspects such as specific dagger types, single burial tradition, horse riding? So it seems likely to me that somewhere in east-central Europe c. 2500BC or a generation or two before (Kromsdorf is dated to 2550BC) P312 males in a pre-beaker culture married western women and gave rise to a new beaker culture linked to P312.

I suspect the a clue to this melding and to the P312 central European group who adopted some western beaker traits is the sudden ability to vastly expand the beaker culture across central Europe c. 2550-2500BC. The most obvious explanation for this is the use of horse riding which can massively extend the size of a viable network. At this stage I doubt boat technology was important as the big expansion c. 2550-2450BC was landlocked areas - the final expansion into the maritime northern fringe of Europe wasnt till c. 2400BC. We have direct osteological evidence for the effect of horse riding on a beaker body (I cant recall which site now for some reason).

IMO the expansion of the beakerised central European P312 population not only explored many new areas in central and ultimately northern Europe but they also slowly usurped the old western beakers routes, following them in reverse. There is an apparent example of this usurping at Sion. I suspect that late in the beaker era this beakrised group had usurped most of these routes and penetrated into Iberia itself.

I tend to agree, although Jean makes a good case, as well. If she is right, it seems to me, the early Yamnaya pioneers to Iberia must have been few in number, because the earliest Bell Beaker people there didn't bury their dead like steppe people or look like steppe people. They buried their dead like and looked like Near Eastern-derived Neolithic farmers. Bell Beaker has to be learned piecemeal, since there seems to be no current all-encompassing Bell Beaker monograph. But if I understand things aright, kurgan-like Bell Beaker shows up in Iberia in the mid third millennium BC, and by then the Bell Beaker people even there looked like central European Bell Beaker people and buried their dead like central European Bell Beaker people. Then the early Iberian type of Bell Beaker folk disappear.

Isn't a really comprehensive study of ancient Bell Beaker dna in the offing for this year? And where is the rest of Dan Bradley's ancient Irish stuff? At some conference or other he hinted that there was a massive change in Irish y-dna from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. I would like to find out what he meant, although I guess the stuff from Rathlin Island must be an indicator.

[alan]

This seems vaguely familiar. Is it an idea I had in 2009 or 2010 or thereabouts? Or was I trying to connect the Halaf culture to the Southern Caucasus in one direction and Iberia in the other? I think that was it. Or something like that. My problem is that I revise and move on and don't keep copies of my old stuff, even in my head. Anyway I chucked it. As Gravetto-Danubian has pointed out, the "orientalising" influences that Iberian archaeologists have been so keen to track down don't appear until El Argar. Eastern Med is out.

mind you many archaeologists had long been pretty vehemently against the old orientalising ideas about El Argar until very recently when they did a U-turn due to La Bastida.

[Jean M]

mind you many archaeologists had long been pretty vehemently against the old orientalising ideas about El Argar until very recently when they did a U-turn due to La Bastida.

Yes I was quite surprised by the sudden enthusiasm. ;) Tunes are changing all over the place.

[TigerMW]

...
about BB I came across this notion that perhaps salt was even more precious that metalwork or ceramic styles.

here is a couple of quotes; thought provoking:

[B]Salt and Beakers in the Third Millennium

....
Salt would be a good thing for livestock herders to preserve meat with. I believe salt was the commodity of notoriety for the Hallstatt people.

[TigerMW]

... But if I understand things aright, kurgan-like Bell Beaker shows up in Iberia in the mid third millennium BC, and by then the Bell Beaker people even there looked like central European Bell Beaker people and buried their dead like central European Bell Beaker people. Then the early Iberian type of Bell Beaker folk disappear.

...
The mid to late third milennium BC could relate to the fusion/fission (aka reflux) of Central Europe. To me this would make sense to be the carrier or driver for early Celtic speakers to reach Iberia as well as the CPM metallurgy province that made it all the way to Rio Tinto, superseding the early Southern Beaker metallurgy.

[Heber]

Metallurgy was active in Copper Age Iberia much earlier as was Bell Beaker in sites such as Zambujal, VNSP, Perdigoes, Los Millares etc.

The question in my mind is, did the Caucasus - Steppes component reach Iberia earlier. It will take additional aDNA from Iberia and the Caucasus to resolve this.

http://pin.it/fFYVvdd

http://pin.it/8Dwnmwg

[Jean M]

The mid to late third milennium BC could relate to the fusion/fission (aka reflux) of Central Europe. To me this would make sense to be the carrier or driver for early Celtic speakers to reach Iberia as well as the CPM metallurgy province that made it all the way to Rio Tinto, superseding the early Southern Beaker metallurgy.

I agree with you on the first part, but what makes you think that the reflux brought a new type of metallurgy?

[Gravetto-Danubian]

I agree with you on the first part, but what makes you think that the reflux brought a new type of metallurgy?



Perhap they didn't ;)
Copper metallurgy already existed in Iberia , and beaker metal was neither a unified phenomenon nor too different or revolutionary
I think where people have some differences of opinion (due to no fault of our own mind you, but the difficulty of the question itself!) is who brought the copper Tech to Iberia in the pre-Beaker period. I think this is yet another problem for aDNA

But Jean : what's your take on the advent of Tin- Bronze in the Atlantic facade ? I've heard suggestions that the Isles were central in this respect ?

[sweuro]

Bell Beaker iberians are probably not going to be much different than LN/Chalcolithic iberians, which is basically neolithic with an increased amount of WHG.

[rms2]

Bell Beaker iberians are probably not going to be much different than LN/Chalcolithic iberians, which is basically neolithic with an increased amount of WHG.

That is what I am thinking, since they differ so much from later Bell Beaker people. Perhaps Jean's Stelae People from the steppe were an elite so few in number in the earliest days in Iberia that they made little impact on the burial customs and physical characteristics of the common people.

That is the Bell Beaker mystery (or problem): they are supposed to have come out of Iberia, but they don't look or act like people who came out of Iberia.

[Jean M]

But Jean : what's your take on the advent of Tin- Bronze in the Atlantic facade ? I've heard suggestions that the Isles were central in this respect ?

Partly I follow the thinking that has been standard since Pare 2000, and then I make a shockingly original deduction which had Heber choking over his cornflakes. Here are the relevant sections of Blood of the Celts:


From around 2200 BC Bell Beaker interest in Britain intensified as Cornwall was discovered to be a prime source for tin, the rare and precious component of true bronze. It has recently been realized that Ireland too had tin in the Mourne Mountains.1 These resources gave the British Isles a head start in western Europe in making bronze.2

Tin was also available in western Iberia and the Erzgebirge Mountains in central Europe. The abundant tin and copper of Tartessos (p. 43) might lead you to expect the earliest Iberian bronze in southwestern Spain. Instead it appears in the northwest of the peninsula, which was linked into a trade network that included the British Isles. At one site the whole process of metal-working is laid bare. High in the mountains of the District of Bragança in Portugal, the detritus of bronze-working has been found on the hilltop of Fraga dos Corvos. Here a small rural community tended their flocks, hunted deer, and made their own pottery and bronze axes around 1750-1500 BC. The pottery includes Epi-Bell-Beaker, a final, crude representative of the type. So in Iberia too we see Bell Beaker at the beginning of bronze-making.3 This interesting site has inspired a novel titled The First Alchemist.4


Warner, Moles and Chapman 2010.
Pare 2000.
Senna-Martínez 2011.
Sofia Martinez, O Primeiro Alquimista: A Idade do Bronze em Portugal (2012).



Then came the Atlantic Bronze Age (c. 1300 to 700 BC), which saw prestigious items exchanged via the Atlantic seaways. The major centres were southern England and Ireland, northwestern France and northwestern Iberia.1 This was precisely the period in which northwestern Europe suffered an increasingly wet and cold climate.2 Relocation to the sunnier south would offer attractions. This might help to account for the Celtification of northwest Iberia.


Kristiansen 1998, 144; Henderson 2007, chapter 3; Cunliffe 2008, 254-8.
Tinsley 1981; Turner 1981.

[Heber]

[QUOTE=Jean M;161129]Partly I follow the thinking that has been standard since Pare 2000, and then I make a shockingly original deduction which had Heber choking over his cornflakes. Here are the relevant sections of [I]Blood of the Celts[/

What disturbed the tranquility of my morning meal, while reading the first page of "Blood of the Celts" was the following:

"The Celtic language of Britain was taken to Brittany by British settlers. Another British settlement in northwest Spain did not long retain its Celtic tongue."

This give the impression that the Celtic language did not exist in Brittany or Iberia prior to the relatively minor migrations from Britain.

Celtic scholars would agree that contact between the Isles and Brittany and Iberia existed during the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Megalithic, Copper, Bronze, Iron Ages and Historic period and that the Celtic language probably emerged from the Atlantic Zone. In addition the Bell Beakers who I believe we're the ancestors of the Celts probably expanded from there mixed with Caucasus and Steppes and the rest is history.

"The Celts in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula
Social and commercial relations between the peoples of the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula and those of Brittany and the British Islands date back to very remote times. Trade in tin between Ireland and Galicia was already established during the late Neolithic (MacCalister 1921:16), and the similarities in thousands of stone tombs found all along the coasts of Atlantic Europe could indicate that those contacts existed during the period of megalith construction as well (Eogan 1982). These ancient connections continued during the Bronze Age, when a well- defined socio-cultural and commercial zone called the Atlantic Façade, Area, or Province included Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scotland, Wales, the Cornish Peninsula, Armorica (Brittany) and Galicia in Spain, and lasted for at least three millennia (Cunliffe 1997:148). Cunliffe affords northwestern Iberia particular importance within the zone, noting how the complex influence of western seaways converged "around the isolated yet reassuring stepping-stone of Galicia" (Cunliffe 2001:60). Koch has discussed the social basis of early celticization, presenting a model in which he argues that the consolidation of a proto-Celtic language took place during the Late Bronze Age (c.1300-600 BC) in the Atlantic Zone (1991:18-19). According to a number of authors, Celtic language(s) became the lingua franca for the whole area at the time (Alonso Romero 1976; Cunliffe 1997:148-56; Meijide 1994; Ruiz-Gálvez 1984: passim). Thus, enough evidence exists to indicate that several centuries before the Christian Era, the northwest of the Iberian peninsula was already integrated into the Atlantic world (Tranoy 1981:103), and that the contacts between Galicia and the Celtic Atlantic regions continued until the middle of the first millennium AD (Cunliffe 1997: 145-49)."

https://www4.uwm.edu/celtic/ekeltoi/volumes/vol6/6_20/alberro_6_20.pdf

http://pin.it/-0asEmp

[Jean M]

What disturbed the tranquility of my morning meal, while reading the first page of "Blood of the Celts" was the following:

"The Celtic language of Britain was taken to Brittany by British settlers. Another British settlement in northwest Spain did not long retain its Celtic tongue."

This give the impression that the Celtic language did not exist in Brittany or Iberia prior to the relatively minor migrations from Britain.

No, no. Those post-Roman migrations returned a form of Celtic to regions which had long spoken a Celtic tongue, but were Romanised and so lost it to Latin. I make it clear at several points in the text, including the one I cite above post #1953 that I suggest the Atlantic route contributed to the Celtification of northwest Iberia. What travelled in the Post-Roman migrations was specifically Brittonic. Breton is descended from Brittonic.

[alan]

double post

[alan]

Partly I follow the thinking that has been standard since Pare 2000, and then I make a shockingly original deduction which had Heber choking over his cornflakes. Here are the relevant sections of Blood of the Celts:




Warner, Moles and Chapman 2010.
Pare 2000.
Senna-Martínez 2011.
Sofia Martinez, O Primeiro Alquimista: A Idade do Bronze em Portugal (2012).





Kristiansen 1998, 144; Henderson 2007, chapter 3; Cunliffe 2008, 254-8.
Tinsley 1981; Turner 1981.


I agree. I think the north to south idea for Celticisation of NW Iberia is very likely. When I looked at the fact the material often appears to have gone north to south and the relative lateness of Iberia joining the so called late Bronze Age Atlantic Bronze Age phenomenon the logical conclusion seems to be that there was movement south not north. Generally speaking the innovation and object transfers seem to go central Europe to the isles and NW France and then from there down to Iberia. Again not many people seem to realise that Atlantic Iberia joined the Atlantic Bronze Age network relatively late compared to the isles and France and relatively briefly.

Lovely place though Galicia. I have a photo somewhere of me at the tacky statue of King Breogon from Irish legend in A Coruna near the Tower of Hercules Roman lighthouse there. The lighthouse in Roman but am sure it represents a route that was established when the NW Iberia joined the Atlantic Bronze Age Network c. 1000BC (or thereabouts - cant remember exactly now). It position clearly indicates it was built for trade coming from NW France or the isles not along Biscay or from the south.

I personally strongly suspect the sudden extension of the Atlantic trade network is not unconnected with the arrival of sail technology with the Phoenicians in SW Iberia and the spread of the sail (not so much the Phoenicians) up the Atlantic coast. The timing just seems to much of a coincidence to not be connected to me. An innovation like that could have expanded the viable size of maritime networking significantly. We dont have good evidence for the pace of the spread of the sail after the idea arrived but sails definitely were known in the Iron Age among all the Atlantic Celts long before the north Germanics adopted the sail. So it a dead cert it came up the Atlantic from the Med. I believe it arrived around 1000BC personally.

[alan]

That is what I am thinking, since they differ so much from later Bell Beaker people. Perhaps Jean's Stelae People from the steppe were an elite so few in number in the earliest days in Iberia that they made little impact on the burial customs and physical characteristics of the common people.

That is the Bell Beaker mystery (or problem): they are supposed to have come out of Iberia, but they don't look or act like people who came out of Iberia.

that is what I think and although hardly a fantastic sample, there are now a number of pre-beaker copper age ancient DNA samples from Iberia, southern France and north Italy which show no steppe genetics. So I am following the evidence on this.

I personally think the early Iberian bell beakers were just a specialist metallurgy/trade guild or group that arose out of the pre-beaker copper age Iberians. More of a class than an ethnicity. They certainly seem little different from pre-beaker copper age people - am in agreement with Jean on that. My own opinion is that the first users of beaker pots in Iberia are descendants of the pre-beaker copper age people who arrived and mixed in c. 3000BC give or take a century.

I would be curious to see the most refined dates possible for the pre-beaker copper age in Iberia. I generally read dates quoted ranging from 2900BC to 3000BC. However there seem to be dates for early beaker pot in Iberia that may go back to 2800BC. It is possible therefore that the earliest beaker pot dates may not be only 3 generations younger than the arrival of the copper age proper in Iberia. I would like to read a review of the dates of the Zambujal type pre-beaker culture in Iberia. If it was as late as say 2900BC and we have beaker pots as early as 2800BC then the gap between them is closing.

I think it is likely that the earliest beaker pot users were a specialist group within the Iberian copper age rather than a different ethnic group and this group may have developed some distinctive material badges of their role within a few generations of the commencement of the copper age proper in Iberia.This would explain why sometimes the beaker users had specific areas within settlements and associations with metal working.

Although the use of beaker pots and the Iberian copper industry seems to have been a large Iberia-only phenomenon 2800-2550BC, it still stands to reason that distribution of metal at its various stages from mining to finished objects was part of the role. AFAIK the Zambujal type forts have a certain distribution and dont cover Iberia whereas the beaker pot now does seem to have an early presence throughout the peninsula. So, an extended trade range within the peninsula could be argued to be an innovation of the beaker era although I wouldnt push that point too hard due to lack of evidence.

A dry place like Iberia almost demands that rivers and coasts are used (and its common sense). The importance of the Tagus could be that its navigable by boats east to west from at least Toledo (where the river is still wide) and near Madrid to the Atlantic. So, not just an important port at its mouth but a vital artery of communication east-west and west-east. In the east to west direction it appears you could let the current take a boat from Toledo and near Madrid to the Atlantic. I imagine the reverse direction was done beyond the tidal stretch of the river by land following the river valley. Horse riding? Dont know.

[rms2]

The new Bell Beaker study reported on here (http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?3978-When-are-we-to-expect-the-next-round-of-ancient-y-dna-results&p=161418&viewfull=1#post161418) should help, if we can get it in English and if enough of the archaeology and anthropology are included to provide context for the dna results. Let's hope rc dates are provided and they are good, too.


Summary : The press release announced positive aDNA results from 11 samples from excavation of a Bell Beaker site on Paris Street (or Road) (Barcelona). Two of those samples from near Barcelona were females, 1st degree relatives, one with brown eyes, the other lactose intolerant. This site is part of a larger project to explore that culture. It is an international project in which participating institutions include Harvard Broad Institute and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-UPF). The main objective of the project is to find out if this culture corresponds to a movement of people or ideas. It includes 67 samples from Portugal, England, France, Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany and Spain.

[Jean M]

The new Bell Beaker study reported on here should help, if we can get it in English and if enough of the archaeology and anthropology are included to provide context for the dna results.

I have no doubt that it will be published in English, since it is international. If David Reich is involved, as it sounds like he is, we can expect good coverage of archaeological context as well.

[R.Rocca]

One of the R1b proposals sometimes seen in these forums is one which posits the Neolithic Balkans as the source for modern R1b, with a subsequent expansion from there during the Copper/Bronze Age into Central and then Western Europe. By the look of the Greek Neolithic samples posted (HERE (http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?5887-Ancient-DNA-from-Neolithic-Greece&p=162348&viewfull=1#post162348)), that seems as unlikely as ever. They plot exactly with all other European (and Anatolian) Neolithics. And of no surprise to most, the male samples belong to haplogroup G2a. So, we can now draw a line from Greece (or Hungary) to Spain of Neolithics, and they all like the same population (when you include Otzi and Remedello as Copper Age descendants).

[TigerMW]

One of the R1b proposals sometimes seen in these forums is one which posits the Neolithic Balkans as the source for modern R1b, with a subsequent expansion from there during the Copper/Bronze Age into Central and then Western Europe. By the look of the Greek Neolithic samples posted (HERE (http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?5887-Ancient-DNA-from-Neolithic-Greece&p=162348&viewfull=1#post162348)), that seems as unlikely as ever. They plot exactly with all other European (and Anatolian) Neolithics. And of no surprise to most, the male samples belong to haplogroup G2a. So, we can now draw a line from Greece (or Hungary) to Spain of Neolithics, and they all like the same population (when you include Otzi and Remedello as Copper Age descendants).
Would this include Vucedol?

[R.Rocca]

Would this include Vucedol?

Vucedol was a Copper Age culture but has not been full genome tested yet.

[rms2]

According to Gimbutas, Vucedol was the product of settlers from an earlier, pre-Yamnaya kurgan wave, perhaps her Kurgan Wave 2, mixing with Baden farmers.

[TigerMW]

According to Gimbutas, Vucedol was the product of settlers from an earlier, pre-Yamnaya kurgan wave, perhaps her Kurgan Wave 2, mixing with Baden farmers.
Right, but I'm just trying to figure if this new line in the sand includes or excludes Vucedol, possibly making it primarily G2 but it looks like it is still an extrapolation to consider it as an early Neolithic Near Eastern haplogroup on the male side.

The Copper Age introduction overlapped with the late Neolithic in some parts of Europe so is Vucedol still not in between these appearances of G2?

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Right, but I'm just trying to figure if this new line in the sand includes or excludes Vucedol, possibly making it primarily G2 but it looks like it is still an extrapolation to consider it as an early Neolithic Near Eastern haplogroup on the male side.

The Copper Age introduction overlapped with the late Neolithic in some parts of Europe so is Vucedol still not in between these appearances of G2?

We still don't have much data from the Balkan region (incl areas like Vucedol & Baden), but It's becoming apparent that things were pretty complex.

The first wave farmers were the classic "EEF" predominantly G2 & H2 people whose Y lineages at least didn't survive too long apart from in Italy and Greece.
It appears there was a '2nd Neolithic wave' - but still poorly defined, after 5000 BC, with evidence of CHG in it.

Vucedol is considerably after both events, dating from 3400 - 2600 BC; thus is defined as "Late Copper Age" by SEE definition.

Acknowledging the axiom of "anything is possible", it would be hard to imagine that Vucedol will be radically different to its neighbour & contemporary : the Baden C01 sample from the Tisza region (2800 BC); analysed in 2014. It looked "central European middle Neolithic", without steppe admixture. But given that the Vucedol sample is R1b-something, he might show steppe admixture that Baden people did not

The few haplogroups we have from the Late Copper - early Bronze Age of Hungary / Croatia are: 3 or 4 I2a, 1 R1b and a J.

[R.Rocca]

We still don't have much data from the Balkan region (incl areas like Vucedol & Baden), but It's becoming apparent that things were pretty complex.

The first wave farmers were the classic "EEF" predominantly G2 & H2 people whose Y lineages at least didn't survive too long apart from in Italy and Greece.
It appears there was a '2nd Neolithic wave' - but still poorly defined, after 5000 BC, with evidence of CHG in it.

Vucedol is considerably after both events, dating from 3400 - 2600 BC; thus is defined as "Late Copper Age" by SEE definition.

Acknowledging the axiom of "anything is possible", it would be hard to imagine that Vucedol will be radically different to its neighbour & contemporary : the Baden C01 sample from the Tisza region (2800 BC); analysed in 2014. It looked "central European middle Neolithic", without steppe admixture. But given that the Vucedol sample is R1b-something, he might show steppe admixture that Baden people did not

The few haplogroups we have from the Late Copper - early Bronze Age of Hungary / Croatia are: 3 or 4 I2a, 1 R1b and a J.

Indeed, G2a seems to have lost its dominance by the Late Neolithic/Early Copper Age. However, the increase in I2a and WHG seems to point to intra-European drivers (Megalithism etc.). In the end, these Late Neolithics still remained within the overall genetic variation of the Earlier Neolithics. The uptick in CHG is still unclear... from a male perspective, I think the link with haplogroup J is a pretty good fit, but mtDNA may have been even more important. Obviously results from Danubian Yamnaya and other steppe-derived cultures (e.g. Cotofeni) will be critical to our knowledge of R1b.

The resurgence of I2a in Unetice is also quite interesting.

[rms2]

Right, but I'm just trying to figure if this new line in the sand includes or excludes Vucedol, possibly making it primarily G2 but it looks like it is still an extrapolation to consider it as an early Neolithic Near Eastern haplogroup on the male side.

The Copper Age introduction overlapped with the late Neolithic in some parts of Europe so is Vucedol still not in between these appearances of G2?

So far we have those two Vucedol period skeletons from the Lánycsók – Csata-Alja site in Hungary, c. 2800 BC, from Anna Szécsényi-Nagy's dissertation. One was R1b-M343 and the other I2a-M223.

Of course, Szécsényi-Nagy wouldn't go as far as to say definitively that they actually belonged to the Vucedol culture, only that they belonged to the "Vucedol period" (and they were in the right place).

[TigerMW]

So far we have those two Vucedol period skeletons from the Lánycsók – Csata-Alja site in Hungary, c. 2800 BC, from Anna Szécsényi-Nagy's dissertation. One was R1b-M343 and the other I2a-M223.

Of course, Szécsényi-Nagy wouldn't go as far as to say definitively that they actually belonged to the Vucedol culture, only that they belonged to the "Vucedol period" (and they were in the right place).
2800 BC would have been about the time that the Yamnaya were arriving according to David Anthony.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Indeed, G2a seems to have lost its dominance by the Late Neolithic/Early Copper Age. However, the increase in I2a and WHG seems to point to intra-European drivers (Megalithism etc.). In the end, these Late Neolithics still remained within the overall genetic variation of the Earlier Neolithics. The uptick in CHG is still unclear... from a male perspective, I think the link with haplogroup J is a pretty good fit, but mtDNA may have been even more important. Obviously results from Danubian Yamnaya and other steppe-derived cultures (e.g. Cotofeni) will be critical to our knowledge of R1b.

The resurgence of I2a in Unetice is also quite interesting.

Totally.
I think these groups like Usatavo - Cotofeni & Vucedol are very hard to predict genetically. Theoretically they could be WHG - rich reservoir, or the east-central European equivalent of middle Neolithic western Europeans (ie EEF with WHG) but instead with EHG admixture. They could even be already CHG rich; and quite possibly - very BB -like (ie a near-even split of all 4 major components (ANF, EHG, WHG, CHG).

Any takers on hypothetical make-up of Cotofeni -Usatavo groups , for fun ?

[Gravetto-Danubian]

2800 BC would have been about the time that the Yamnaya were arriving according to David Anthony.

The earliest Yamnaya kurgans appear in Hungary c. 3300 BC acc. to the latest (http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwiQoaWJypnNAhWGnqYKHcQ0CIcQFggbMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.academia.edu%2F1249528%2F_201 1_V._Heyd_Yamnaya_Groups_and_Tumuli_west_of_the_Bl ack_Sea._In_Ancestral_Landscapes._Ed._by_E._Borgna _and_S._M%25C3%25BCller_Celka._TMO_58_Lyon_p._536-555&usg=AFQjCNFuEhCuOcTD5Qo_KUTQWBmoheLe5w&sig2=0iGgKmM_bjQSj_uzAqL5Ug&bvm=bv.124088155,d.dGY) summary of RC dates.

[rms2]

Also from Szécsényi-Nagy's dissertation, there was an R1b-M269 from the Gáta/Wieslburg culture (~1,950-1,760 BC). I understand Gáta/Wieslburg was a spin-off of Bell Beaker there in western Hungary and Austria.

[Heber]

I just became a Digital Digger for this crowd funded archeological dig in Galecia.
I would be happy to help organise ancient DNA testing (if suitable samples found) for any Bell Beaker of Bronze Age finds.

http://www.digventures.com/projects/costa-dos-castros-2016/#comment-36606

[Jean M]

I just became a Digital Digger for this crowd funded archeological dig in Galecia.
I would be happy to help organise ancient DNA testing (if suitable samples found) for any Bell Beaker of Bronze Age finds.

That's great. Did you tell the organisers that?

[Heber]

That's great. Did you tell the organisers that?

I have suggested that they integrate ancient DNA testing into their program which has the potential to raise funds for projects which otherwise might not happen. A bit like Time Team for citizen scientists.

[Heber]

duplicate

[Heber]

At one of the oldest Bell Beaker settlements in Europe, an experiment yesterday confirms the alignment of the site to the Summer Solstice.

The solstice at Perdigões: new observations
Last May we put a large post in the NE entrance of the outside enclosures of Perdigões, the one that we have been saying that was orientated to the summer solstice. The goal was to confirm that with present direct observation and establish the possible relation with the semi-circular hut in the center of the enclosures.
Here are the results from today’s morning observation at sun rising (the solstice is from today until Tuesday).

Observed from the center of the enclosure, the sun appeared precisely over the post that was in the NE gate, confirming its orientation.

It is also quite probable that this same central post is also aligned with the SE gate to the Winter solstice at sunrise. We will be checking that next December (if the weather allows it). If that is confirmed, then this central hut of semi-circular plan that replicates de visibility of the natural theatre over the landscape to East, will show a central post that combines the axes of orientation with both gates to both solstices at sunrise.

http://portugueseenclosures.blogspot.co.uk/

http://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-alamos-at-center-of-beaker-world.html

9886

http://pin.it/M4AYGZu

[alan]

One interesting thing is how the Solstices and Equinoxes which were clearly so important in the Neolithic world were ditched by the time the festivals and cardinal points of the year of the island Celts in noted. They seem to have instead had a pastoral calendar divided into 4 - 1st May Beltaine, 1st August Lugnasad, 1st November Samhain, 1st February - Imbolc. The Solstices and Equinoxes whose importance is so clear in Neolithic monuments just disappears. I personally think this took place by the Early Bronze Age in the isles where suddenly you get a lot of monuments with a south-west orientation previously not favoured.

[Heber]

Is this the smoking gun that supports Bell Beaker expansion from Iberia.

German Bell Beakers in the context of the prehistoric Near East

Fascinating stuff, and basically in line with the generally accepted archaeological model of Bell Beaker origins in Iberia.

Of course, these TreeMix results don't necessarily mean that German Beakers are a straight two-way mixture between Yamnaya pastoralists and Chalcolithic Iberians; they simply suggest that the ancestors of German Beakers experienced a significant pulse of admixture from an Chalcolithic Iberian-like population.

http://eurogenes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/german-bell-beakers-in-context-of.html

[razyn]

Is this the smoking gun that supports Bell Beaker expansion from Iberia.

No, it's not. And it's on a forum I rarely look at, but since you ask, that alleged smoking gun is not about R1b (or YDNA at all), and this thread is.

To the extent that it is about one of the three things mentioned in the topic of this thread -- Bell Beakers -- it's also kind of myopic. Only a couple of the people posting to the Eurogenes discussion so far seem to have noticed that, Karl K. and Colin Welling, of whom the latter is more blunt and (therefore?) makes more sense. I particularly liked his observation that it's not 2012.

But, whatever; these forums are for sharing our ideas, not just the ones that are right.

[Isidro]

Although I respect your opinion, for what is worth.To be precised,this thread is about Bell Beakers,Gimbutas and R1b.To try to keep those two factors (xGimbutas)out of Iberia is ... hmm I hope ludicrous is not a strong word. After all Gimbutas is the only opinion out of the three issues at hand. Unless Gimbutas is the main issue of the thread and that for certain has reached it's intellectual limits, posted at nauseum already.


No, it's not. And it's on a forum I rarely look at, but since you ask, that alleged smoking gun is not about R1b (or YDNA at all), and this thread is.

To the extent that it is about one of the three things mentioned in the topic of this thread -- Bell Beakers -- it's also kind of myopic. Only a couple of the people posting to the Eurogenes discussion so far seem to have noticed that, Karl K. and Colin Welling, of whom the latter is more blunt and (therefore?) makes more sense. I particularly liked his observation that it's not 2012.

But, whatever; these forums are for sharing our ideas, not just the ones that are right.

[razyn]

Okay already, this forum (like YDNA) has an hierarchical set of topics, a tree if you will, that grew like this:

Human Population Genetics
Y-Chromosome (Y-DNA) Haplogroups
R
R1b General
Bell Beakers, Gimbutas and R1b

And the paper with the suggested "smoking gun" is about autosomal DNA. So, not the Y Chromosome, R, R1b General, or Bell Beaker anything. It is, pretty clearly, about human genetics.

[Jean M]

Folks - there is already a thread to discuss the autosomal calculations made by Ryukendo. In fact Ryukendo started it with the said calculations: http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?7623-Evidence-for-African-and-Middle-Eastern-ancestry-in-Bell-Beaker-and-implications

These were picked up by Davidski in the post that Heber linked to on Eurogenes.

[rms2]

I think that ultimately Gimbutas will be proven right about the genesis of Bell Beaker, at least the fully kurgan, R1b Bell Beaker, which could not have arisen solely in Iberia and emerged from there.

Right now we are just waiting for some results that are directly related to this topic. Uniparental dna like that of the y chromosome is a lot more straightforward than the crazy recombinant quilt of autosomal dna. I think pretty soon we will see some results that are pretty clear cut. There are already some indications of how it's going to go, like that R1b-M343 Vucedol period skeleton from Hungary c. 2800 BC.

[kinman]

The earliest kurgans appearing in Hungary ca. 3300 B.C. sound exactly right to me, and they would have been constructed by R-P312 (and whatever subordinates they ruled there) I still have R-P312 arising about 3500 B.C. in the area of Moldova, and then giving rise to R-U152 about 3100 B.C. in northeastern Austria.
Therefore, R-P312 being in Hungary (geographically in between) in 3300 B.C. (also chronologically in between) makes perfect sense. The severe drought that began about 3400 B.C. would have favored the movement of R-P312 up the Danube at that time. However, if brother clade R-U106 split away and went north from Moldova (east of the Carpathians), one would not expect to find them advancing up the Danube with R-P312 during this period. Evidence from Hungary will hopefully show this to be true.
----------Ken Kinman
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The earliest Yamnaya kurgans appear in Hungary c. 3300 BC acc. to the latest (http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwiQoaWJypnNAhWGnqYKHcQ0CIcQFggbMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.academia.edu%2F1249528%2F_201 1_V._Heyd_Yamnaya_Groups_and_Tumuli_west_of_the_Bl ack_Sea._In_Ancestral_Landscapes._Ed._by_E._Borgna _and_S._M%25C3%25BCller_Celka._TMO_58_Lyon_p._536-555&usg=AFQjCNFuEhCuOcTD5Qo_KUTQWBmoheLe5w&sig2=0iGgKmM_bjQSj_uzAqL5Ug&bvm=bv.124088155,d.dGY) summary of RC dates.

[Heber]

Great documentary on the Bell Beakers and early copper mining in Ross Island and tin mining in Cornwall

Prehistoric Britain, Part 4 (Neil Oliver)
http://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.ie/2016/06/part-4-of-4-of-documentary-by-neil.html

Part 4 of 4 of a documentary by Neil Oliver on Prehistoric Britain. Hat tip Mandy Chamerblain

This is the story of the arrival of metal workers in Britain. Around 10.40ish or so is where the Beaker story begins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1172&v=pnowp48yWIc

All of the videos are good viewing, about 50 minutes each, posted on the Beaker TV tab

[Jean M]

As reported here http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?97-Genetic-Genealogy-and-Ancient-DNA-in-the-News&p=176791&viewfull=1#post176791

Marc Vander Linden, expert in Bell Beaker, has been reading ancient DNA papers up to and including Cassidy 2016. He seems pretty stunned, but I give him credit for a thorough job. He only made one error in his coverage (buying into the idea that mtDNA H was common in Mesolithic Iberia) and that was excusable, since he is just following those geneticists who have done the same. The abstract:


Several recent high-profile aDNA studies have claimed to have identified major migrations during the third millennium BC in Europe. This contribution offers a brief review of these studies, and especially their role in understanding the genetic make-up of modern European populations. Although the technical sophistication of aDNA studies is beyond doubt, the underlying archaeological assumptions prove relatively naive and the findings at odd [sic] with more ‘traditional’ archaeological data. Although the existence of past migrations needs to be acknowledged and fully considered by archaeologists, it does not offer either a robust explanatory factor or an enduring platform for interdisciplinary dialogue between archaeology and genetics. Alternative hypotheses are briefly explored.

His main conclusions:


Neolithic. "The introduction of early farming in Europe cannot be disentangled from the migration of farmers whose origins are to be sought in the Near East." [With caveats].
Copper Age. "The sudden appearance of this ‘Yamnaya ancestry’ demonstrates the westwards movement of people, the scale and structure of which can be assessed by other facets of the genetic evidence... The case for an influx of people originating from Russia in central Europe is compelling."
Migration. "aDNA is an innovative and impressive field which has profoundly altered our understanding of the past. As one of its results, archaeologists can no longer deny the existence of migrations during Later European Prehistory."
Linguistics. He doesn't like the link. "While the congruent identification of this ‘Yamnaya ancestry’ in numerous locations across Late Neolithic and Bronze Age Eurasia by distinct aDNA research groups is an extraordinary discovery which requires the full attention of archaeologists, another more disturbing aspect links these studies together as the researchers seek to identify the spread of Indo-European languages."
Corded Ware and Bell Beaker. Both are widespread and varied complexes. Sampling from just one part of the range should not be generalized across larger regions.
Where does archaeology go from here. "Although archaeologists have been wrong in denying any role for human mobility in European prehistory, it remains however obvious that mass migration does not suffice to account for the entire complexity documented by archaeology."

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Thanks Jean
He hasn't yet uploaded it to academia.edu (presumably an "embargo period"). From previous works, he's cautious about making an explicit link of PIE with Yamnaya

[A.D.]

A little off subject, but close, not new but a good watch,

http://vodlocker.com/8an771tfh8sa

it shows a lot of good stuff from late Bronze Age Britain and continental connections.

[Jean M]

He hasn't yet uploaded it to academia.edu

Because the paper is behind a paywall, I thought I would give the main points here. Obviously I can't put the paper in the Vault.


From previous works, he's cautious about making an explicit link of PIE with Yamnaya

I can't recall him discussing the topic at all in previous works, but no matter.

This paper for me is mainly a marker for how far academia has come in achieving a multi-disciplinary view of the past that really gels. Prof. Cunliffe drops linguistics altogether in his most recent magnificent book, By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia. That was wise. He got his fingers burnt by following Renfrew re the IE homeland. He is also very sparing in his coverage of genetics in this book and sticks to a few aDNA papers. That is a huge improvement on the days when he was citing Sykes and Oppenheimer. Paradoxically, the backing away from previous attempts at inter-disciplinary synthesis is actually a move forward that will, I hope, make possible a synthesis in the future on more solid, scientific ground.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

This paper for me is mainly a marker for how far academia has come in achieving a multi-disciplinary view of the past that really gels. Prof. Cunliffe drops linguistics altogether in his most recent magnificent book, By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia. That was wise. He got his fingers burnt by following Renfrew re the IE homeland. He is also very sparing in his coverage of genetics in this book and sticks to a few aDNA papers. That is a huge improvement on the days when he was citing Skyes and Oppenheimer. Paradoxically, the backing away from previous attempts at inter-disciplinary synthesis is actually a move forward that will, I hope, make possible a synthesis in the future on more solid, scientific ground.

Yes some archaeologists are keeping up to play, whilst others have made no attempt. I think increasingly it'll become common knowledge as the aDNA Profs are holding conferences with other disciplines, and archaeologists are part of publications.


can't recall him discussing the topic at all in previous works, but no matter.

Yes, he's done a couple


* The Roots of the Indo-European Diaspora: NewPerspectives on the North Pontic Hypothesis

* An impossible dialogue. On the interface between archaeology, historical linguistics, and comparative philology.

[Jean M]

I think increasingly it'll become common knowledge as the aDNA Profs are holding conferences with other disciplines, and archaeologists are part of publications.

Yes I heard on the grapevine about David Reich's excellent intelligence-gathering at Harvard. I think the sequence started with one for the IE crowd, followed by one in March 2015 for the Bell Beaker specialists, at which Olivier Lemercier managed to speak in English. There was an IE related workshop at Jena in October 2015, at which Vander Linden spoke. The paper by him just out may be a working up from that.

Plus I hear more vaguely of other collaborations or just see the names on the papers. The outcome will depend on how wisely collaborators are selected. It can be difficult to tell from outside of a discipline who wrote a book on the subject 50 years ago (and would have to be wheeled out of the nursing home and brushed down for cobwebs) and who is the whizz-kid on said subject in the here and now, who hasn't got time to write books, but whose name is all over Google Scholar. :)

[Jean M]

A little off subject, but close, not new but a good watch,

http://vodlocker.com/8an771tfh8sa

it shows a lot of good stuff from late Bronze Age Britain and continental connections.

There is a thread for this documentary. I posted your link there. http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?8152-Britain-s-Pompeii-Documentary

[Jean M]

The Roots of the Indo-European Diaspora: NewPerspectives on the North Pontic Hypothesis

Now read it. Have to say that he seems out of his depth.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Now read it. Have to say that he seems out of his depth.

I think he's first (older) article is actually good and on the mark, insofar as describing the various tides of cultural influences.

His second one brings forth good points also about the over-simplistic tree approach to PIE. Although he is correct in highlighting that Gimbutas was ideologically motivated (the bad, destroyers come from the East), he might underplay the significance of migrations.

What did you think he really misses ?

[Generalissimo]

As reported here http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?97-Genetic-Genealogy-and-Ancient-DNA-in-the-News&p=176791&viewfull=1#post176791

Marc Vander Linden, expert in Bell Beaker, has been reading ancient DNA papers up to and including Cassidy 2016. He seems pretty stunned, but I give him credit for a thorough job. He only made one error in his coverage (buying into the idea that mtDNA H was common in Mesolithic Iberia) and that was excusable, since he is just following those geneticists who have done the same. The abstract:



His main conclusions:


Neolithic. "The introduction of early farming in Europe cannot be disentangled from the migration of farmers whose origins are to be sought in the Near East." [With caveats].
Copper Age. "The sudden appearance of this ‘Yamnaya ancestry’ demonstrates the westwards movement of people, the scale and structure of which can be assessed by other facets of the genetic evidence... The case for an influx of people originating from Russia in central Europe is compelling."
Migration. "aDNA is an innovative and impressive field which has profoundly altered our understanding of the past. As one of its results, archaeologists can no longer deny the existence of migrations during Later European Prehistory."
Linguistics. He doesn't like the link. "While the congruent identification of this ‘Yamnaya ancestry’ in numerous locations across Late Neolithic and Bronze Age Eurasia by distinct aDNA research groups is an extraordinary discovery which requires the full attention of archaeologists, another more disturbing aspect links these studies together as the researchers seek to identify the spread of Indo-European languages."
Corded Ware and Bell Beaker. Both are widespread and varied complexes. Sampling from just one part of the range should not be generalized across larger regions.
Where does archaeology go from here. "Although archaeologists have been wrong in denying any role for human mobility in European prehistory, it remains however obvious that mass migration does not suffice to account for the entire complexity documented by archaeology."


Just had a skim.

His three alternative theories to a massive population movement from the steppe are ridiculous.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

His point about being cautious about blanket-labelling 'archaeological cultures' can be well taken, but it doesn't detract the genetic patterns seen. That is why the teams abandoned the labels "CWC" in place of "LN/ EBA Germany" in later publications.

I think his point 3 is quite valid, in that it's helpful to consider migration within the context of regional demographic fluxes

Overall, he appears quite positive toward palaeogenomics, understood major issues well, and only makes the usual cautions about linguistic implications (? perhaps out of presumed necessity).

[Jean M]

I think he's first (older) article is actually good and on the mark, insofar as describing the various tides of cultural influences.

What did you think he really misses ?

Just about everything of importance in his attempt to marry linguistics and archaeology. He starts by accepting the Nostratic hypothesis, regardless of its controversial nature. He evidently imagines Nostratic to be a sort of base language spread all over everywhere, from which local developments would generate the various proto-languages. This is the appeal of the theory for him, as he imagines that, in that case, we should be able to see these local developments in material remains as "the formation of the somewhat unified series of elements that would later be subject to diffusion".

He is not aware that the process by which a language splits into daughter languages generally involves migration. While people remain in a regularly communicating group, then they continue to speak the same language, which will gradually change over time. (The basic rule of language is that it is always changing.) If some people from the group move so far away from the parent group that they can no longer communicate regularly, the parent and offshoot languages start to change in separate ways. Gradually they become different languages.

So if we (for the sake of argument) accept Nostratic as the parent of the Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic and Kartvelian language families, then that parent language would most probably have been spoken in an LGM refuge in the Altai. It would have broken up as people began to move out of that refuge as the climate warmed. Pre-PIE would arrive on the European steppe with hunter-gatherers as a language already differentiated from Nostratic, just as Pre-Uralic would arrive in the forest steppe near the Urals already differentiated from Nostratic. (That is supposing that they did actually have a common parent, which most linguists would dispute.)

Vander Linden does not distinguish those connections between IE and Uralic that appear so old that they have inclined some linguists to argue either for a common parent or for early areal influences (which we can imagine taking place in the Altai) from those IE-Uralic contacts which took place between the formed PIE (and PII) and Proto-Uralic (which we can imagine taking place in the forest-steppe interface around the Urals).

If we picture Pre-PIE arriving on the Middle Volga with hunter-gatherers, then it would come in contact with other languages and cultures on the steppe. There are links with Semitic that apparently arrived in PIE filtered via Kartvelian. (Proto-Semitic appears to be a language of the Copper Age Levant, so the contacts with it never did support a PIE homeland in Neolithic Anatolia. Vander Linden does not know this.) The nature of loan-words and the direction of loan can tell us something about the peoples concerned. For example, if a people arrives in a territory new to them and encounters species unknown to them, they may borrow the necessary words for these new things from people already there. Or a people previously without a particular technology can borrow the words for it along with the technology from a people who have it.

PIE is a language of pastoralists with wheeled vehicles and other elements of the Secondary Products Revolution. That alone rules out a Neolithic origin. The lexicon tells us a huge amount about the people who spoke it. Vander Linden misses all this completely.

[Gravetto-Danubian]

Just about everything of importance in his attempt to marry linguistics and archaeology. He starts by accepting the Nostratic hypothesis, regardless of its controversial nature. He evidently imagines Nostratic to be a sort of base language spread all over everywhere, from which local developments would generate the various proto-languages. This is the appeal of the theory for him, as he imagines that, in that case, we should be able to see these local developments in material remains as "the formation of the somewhat unified series of elements that would later be subject to diffusion".

He is not aware that the process by which a language splits into daughter languages generally involves migration. While people remain in a regularly communicating group, then they continue to speak the same language, which will gradually change over time. (The basic rule of language is that it is always changing.) If some people from the group move so far away from the parent group that they can no longer communicate regularly, the parent and offshoot languages start to change in separate ways. Gradually they become different languages.

So if we (for the sake of argument) accept Nostratic as the parent of the Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic and Kartvelian language families, then that parent language would most probably have been spoken in an LGM refuge in the Altai. It would have broken up as people began to move out of that refuge as the climate warmed. Pre-PIE would arrive on the European steppe with hunter-gatherers as a language already differentiated from Nostratic, just as Pre-Uralic would arrive in the forest steppe near the Urals already differentiated from Nostratic. (That is supposing that they did actually have a common parent, which most linguists would dispute.)

Vander Linden does not distinguish those connections between IE and Uralic that appear so old that they have inclined some linguists to argue either for a common parent or for early areal influences (which we can imagine taking place in the Altai) from those IE-Uralic contacts which took place between the formed PIE (and PII) and Proto-Uralic (which we can imagine taking place in the forest-steppe interface around the Urals).

If we picture Pre-PIE arriving on the Middle Volga with hunter-gatherers, then it would come in contact with other languages and cultures on the steppe. There are links with Semitic that apparently arrived in PIE filtered via Kartvelian. (Proto-Semitic appears to be a language of the Copper Age Levant, so the contacts with it never did support a PIE homeland in Neolithic Anatolia. Vander Linden does not know this.) The nature of loan-words and the direction of loan can tell us something about the peoples concerned. For example, if a people arrives in a territory new to them and encounters species unknown to them, they may borrow the necessary words for these new things from people already there. Or a people previously without a particular technology can borrow the words for it along with the technology from a people who have it.

PIE is a language of pastoralists with wheeled vehicles and other elements of the Secondary Products Revolution. That alone rules out a Neolithic origin. The lexicon tells us a huge amount about the people who spoke it. Vander Linden misses all this completely.

Oh yes. I forgot about him accepting Nostratic. Big mistake-ah

[Jean M]

Oh yes. I forgot about him accepting Nostratic. Big mistake-ah

Frankly very few archaeologists understand enough about linguistics to be capable of adding usefully to the existing debate re the PIE homeland. And vice versa - few linguists are sufficiently versed in the archaeology to be able to judge the evidence for migration, especially given that archaeologists themselves have been muddying the waters on same for decades. This is a pretty muddy pool for anybody to wade in. But people just can't seem to resist the siren song. ;)