N1c in the Balts

[Huck Finn]

Not in the modern sense, but PWC admixture should be a telltale sign of ancient ancestry from Scandinavia.

Sure, easy to agree on that one.

[Zelto]

After Standardized Ape questioned Valter Lang about the SW passage, I wanted to hear his thoughts on the results of Mittnik et al., specifically the Kivutkalns aDNA. I finally got around to emailing him.

Paraphrasing his reply:
There are no burials/human remains associated with the material waves from the east, prior to the early-Tarands (I believe he means the bone pins, SW Tapiola ware, KAM axes and open/later fortified settlements). The cemetery at Kivutkalns was likely of local Bronze Age origin and predated the arrival of the fortified settlement on top. The cemetery is not representative of the people who lived in the fortified settlement. With that being said, physical anthropologists (Denisova et al. 1985) identified Kivutkalns as newcomers to the Daugava region, but could not place where they came from. Finally, R1a was widespread before and after the Bronze Age, N3a must have been a minority even after the early-Tarands arrived.

In my mind this explanation makes the SW-passage more viable, however I think some issues still stand:

How likely is it that the fortified settlement population lived next to the Kivutkalns locals for centuries, without having a genetic impact on them? Same goes for the Stone-cist graves people, although they did coexist with early-Tarands for a period. Baltic_EST_BA:s19_X10_1 (1220–1020 BC) may pick up a small amount of kra001/BOO in G25, which is not present in other Baltic_BA samples. Someone else should probably check though.

The TMRCA of N-L1025 is only 2600ybp and the eastern materials (excluding the early-Tarands) arrived between 1100/1000BC-800BC. TMRCA dates can be pushed back, however the early-tarands were N-CTS6967* (OLS10), N-Y4706 (VII4) and N-L550*, none of which are common among modern Balts. Not to mention, some of these eastern materials spread throughout the Brushed pottery/Striated ware and Dnieper-Dvina cultures.

The way I see it right now, the Y-hgs of the early-Tarands are either not representative of the Daugava fortified settlement population, or the Daugava fortified settlement population did not contribute to the Y-hg profile of modern Balts.

[Huck Finn]

How likely is it that the fortified settlement population lived next to the Kivutkalns locals for centuries, without having a genetic impact on them?

This may be old information but makes me wonder: "There are several characteristics indicating that the hillfort was built directly on top of the cemetery and burial did not continue after construction of the fortifications and residential structures of the hillfort."

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...enter/download

[Zelto]

This may be old information but makes me wonder: "There are several characteristics indicating that the hillfort was built directly on top of the cemetery and burial did not continue after construction of the fortifications and residential structures of the hillfort."

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...enter/download

That's really interesting! So there is a discrepancy recognized between the radiocarbon dates and archeological data.

Firstly, the burials were arranged very close together, and such an arrangement would not have been possible had burial been undertaken within the densely built-up hillfort. Secondly, after removal of the charcoal-rich cultural layer of the hillfort, with a thickness of 1.6–3 m, the gray upper horizon of a paleo soil was uncovered throughout the area, revealing the elongated outlines of the graves. The grave fills consisted of yellow sand, mixed with inclusions from the gray soil layer. Had burial taken place during the time of habitation of the hillfort, remains from the cultural layer would inevitably have found their way into the grave fills, but these were absent. Thirdly, in several cases where the burials were located in the area of the hillfort defenses, they were cut by the post-holes of the fortification system, indicating that the graves predate the defenses.

Five human bone collagen 14C dates are surprisingly young and suggest overlapping periods for usage of the cemetery and the hillfort. This contradiction to the archaeological knowledge can be explained neither by a possible reservoir age correction nor by analysis options. However, the still limited amount of data, overlapping periods, and possibility of an old-wood effect leaves the contradiction still unanswered.

[Huck Finn]

That's really interesting! So there is a discrepancy recognized between the radiocarbon dates and archeological data.

In Finland we have fex christian graveyards on top of pagan burials and manors on top of pagan burials (I'm aware of one of those, at least). It almost looks like Kivutkalns is a hillfort on top of a burial field and the two don't have to be anyhow connected, as Lang says, except for the location. But just wondering, as said.

[Zelto]

I found a more recent article.
https://www.researchgate.net/publica..._OF_14_C_DATES

The Ķivutkalns site, with a flat cemetery and a hillfort directly over it, has been a complicated and widely debated topic for the last seven years (Oinonen et al. 2013; Vasks and Zarin¸a2014).According to some early 14C dates and archaeological dating, it was previously suggested that the hillfort was in use during the 1st millennium BC, meaning that the cemetery should be older than that. In recent years a number of new 14C dates of burials sparked a controversy, as the cemetery and hillfort dates completely overlap, although this is in strong contradiction with the site’s stratigraphy. It has been suggested that two main reasons could have caused the 14Cdate overlap: old wood effect with regard to the oldest charcoal samples from the hillfort, and the fact that all the dates fall within the range ~800–400 BC, i.e. the dates correspond to the Hallstatt Plateau (Oinonen et al. 2013). However, the stratigraphy clearly demonstrated the cemetery to be older than the hillfort, and therefore excluded possibility of a period of overlap. This provides us with additional information that can decrease the uncertainty with regard to the 14C dates and permits the conclusion that the burials should be from ~800 to 680 BC, while the start of hillfort should be ~650 BC (Vasks and Zarin¸a2014). If the two oldest hillfort dates are disregarded on the basis of possible old wood effect, and a contiguous parameter is applied, statistical analysis by OxCal demonstrates that this is possible. Even so, convergence analysis shows poor agreement with such model (Figure 2:Ķivutkalns sequence).

If the Kivutalns fortified settlement was constructed ~650BC it would not only explain its relationship to the cemetery, but alleviate some of the issues regarding N-L1025 I mentioned earlier. Some of the early-Tarands could even predate (or be at least synchronous with) the construction of the fortified settlement.

Unfortunately it is never so simple, ~650BC conflicts with the dates I have seen given by Lang. SW-Tapiola ware apparently appears at the end of the second millennium BC and fortified settlements between 1000-800BC (earlier in Belarus?). Radiocarbon dating seem to be lacking in this area though, so perhaps these dates could change.

This was linked by Hokkanto a while ago, but I don't have any easy way of translating it. If anyone can read Estonia, does it say anything about C14 dating the fortified settlements?
https://www.etis.ee/Portal/Publicati...5c253?lang=ENG

[Huck Finn]

This was linked by Hokkanto a while ago, but I don't have any easy way of translating it. If anyone can read Estonia, does it say anything about C14 dating the fortified settlements?
https://www.etis.ee/Portal/Publicati...5c253?lang=ENG

Google translate, tried to correct the biggest translating errors (and possibly made some new ones):

“In the Eastern European forest zone, the Volga-Oka region, the first at the turn of the II and I millenium or in the first centuries of the first millenium (Folomeev 1993). At first it was limited to ditches, then the edges of the plateau were sharpened, piling up material there to lift the slopes. Walls were erected from about 600 BC. although there are some earlier dates (9th-7th centuries BC). During the last centuries BC, in some places also at the beginning of our era, many hill forts were built more powerful (Syrovatko 2009). It should be mentioned that southwestern Finland, Estonia, New fortifications have also been discovered in the hills of Latvia and Pskov during the middle or the other half of the Pre Roman Iron Age..

...Regarding the date, it should be noted that the oldest fortified settlements in Lithuania and in northwestern Belarus were built as early as in the last quarte of the II millenieum and they remained used until the Older Roman Iron Ager (Grigalavičienė 1995, 22 et seq .; Egoreičenko 2006, 54 et seq.). In Latvia, such settlements have generally started to be built a little later, at the turn of II and I millenium BC, and there they are still thought to have been used in the first centuries of our time. (Graudonis 1967, 10 et seq.). Estonian fortified settlements were built on the 9th. century or early 8th century BC, but were abandoned relatively soon, in the middle of the first millenium BC. As the respective settlements in Finland and Sweden developed either at the same time or further later (Ambrosiani 1959; Luoto 1984), the type of settlement in question can be seen here chronological distribution from south (southeast) to north (northwest).”

[parastais]

Just a visual representation of what is happening below L550 in terms of Baltic N.
Baltic N clades.PNG

Old L550 are just FennoScandian (with Scandian part mainly Sweden, likely around Malaren)
It seems L1025 split into 3 parts
1) first one stayed in Fennoscandia
2) second one somehow got into around Kursk/Ukraine/Voronezh
3) third one became Baltic

Interestingly son of L1025 (Z16980) also had similar 3 parts:
1) stayed in Fennoscandia
2) second went into Ukraine and likely hijacked some to-be-West-Slavic train West
3) third one became Baltic (this is mine )

Not sure where L1025 split from its Fennoscandian dad (Baltic clades seem centered around Lithuania), but Z16980 seems to radiate from Estonia. Its Baltic clades from Latvia.

[parastais]

Now, I am quite confident we are talking Malar axes traders, when speaking of beginnings of N-L1025 clan:
https://www.academia.edu/11736375/La...axes_revisited
"The KAM axes occur in two clusters far apart – one radiating from Mälardalen in central Sweden, the other from Tatarstan in Russia. The year-long controversy over these axes covers most aspects – their age, origin, typological consistency and their context of production. Increasingly, however, interpretations seem to go in favor of one central producer in the Volga-Kama area. In this paper, the assumed coherency of production and exchange is critically addressed on the basis of typology and composition patterns. It is argued that a sub type of the KAM axes evolved in Norway in the beginning of the Nordic Late Bronze Age, in a context of production that was inherently Nordic, but also strongly influenced by the Eurasian metallurgical tradition and perhaps transmitted to central Scandinavia via the Fennoscandian region. Preliminary results of a provenance study of axes uncovered in Norway indicate that the copper derived from similar ore sources as the Swedish axes analysed by Ling and co-authors (2014), and that these were possibly located in the Mediterranean region. The results are not consistent with the previously so popular theory of bulk importation from one central producer in Russia."

[parastais]

N-VL29
-CTS9976
----Novgorod/ Finland/ Karelia
----L1022 (Finland/Sweden/Estonia/Russian North)
-Z4908
----Moscow
----L550

This if we go higher up the N tree.

Looks like L1022 left their trace around Leningrad, Novgorod, Karelia (earliest branching), so this looks more like a NW passage.
However L550 seem to not have left any traces around these lands, so, perhaps SW passage. However there are no L550+, L1025- around Daugava river either. One sample from Moscow branching just above L550. And then L550 branching off in Sweden/Finland/Baltic Sea.

Those two have different stories to tell.