A theory about the origin of E-V13

[Riverman]

The Balkans are one of the most undertested regions in terms of BA.

Romania, Eastern Slovakia and Western Ukraine is much worse tested, both in ancients and moderns, as you know.

What we really lack is local MBA and LBA samples because these would be relevant for V13 history and we don't have many if at all.
What we need is a wide scale study with at least a hundred samples alike the one expected for Pannonia study.

Agreed, that would be great in any case.

And it's not like there isn't any diversity in the Balkans. Literally BY3880 is filled with Balkan samples from the top to the bottom.

The Balkan populations have enough diversity indeed, but that doesn't change the fact that its like an even split of brotherly groups, instead of a parent -> child relationship, because to the West and North, even East of the Balkans, we have a similar degree of diversity and little overlap after the Early Iron Age, practically none after the Middle Iron Age. The latest we get is La Tene, usually. Most is in the Transitional Period, still a lot in the Early Iron Age Basarabi-Hallstatt, very little for La Tene and almost nothing afterwards. So whatever happened, the current Balkan branches split from the Northern and Western ones fairly early, latest in the developed Iron Age.

As for its EBA origin, I believe it was either in the Balkans or just north of the Lower Danube, somewhere around the south Carpathians.

EBA is very difficult to say, because I would never exclude forth and back migrations, but MBA definitely in the Eastern Carpathian basin. We got samples from along the Danube and from the South Carpathians (Mokrin, Monteoru, Serbian BA) down to Bulgaria (EBA samples, no settlement continuity in the MBA, Southern and North Eastern influx before the Carpathian expansion). That wasn't it.

Eastern Otomani, Suciu de Sus and Wietenberg-Noua, that's where we should look to, with a focus on Suciu de Sus into Lapus I, Lapus II-Gáva, which shows great parallels with the Eastern Channelled Ware groups and Bulgarian Fluted Ware into Psenichevo in particular. And we know they did leave their home base, migrated out, from the settlement history of the region, as we know that they grew rapidly from the MBA into the LBA.

[Riverman]

My answer in another thread should be of interest here, because it connects some dots:

Furthermore actual Cimmerians didn't even go that far west, those were the Agathyrsi or another unattested nomadic faction. Cimmerians migrated south of the Caucasus and after their epoch there they ended up as a non-factor, defeated and what was left assimilated into the Scythian populations. By the time of these samples Cimmerians only appear as inspirations for topo/hydronyms.

The Agathyrsi appear to be a later formation under renewed Scythian influence on top of the Thraco-Cimmerian Mezocsat group. Even if the individual was mixed, as you state, he had a clearly Cimmerian profile, completely foreign to the Carpathian basin, he sticks out in this group of rather Late Gáva locals, and clearly in the direction of "typical Cimmerians". So we can say he was of actual Cimmerian descend.
While the bulk of the Cimmerians didn't move into Central Europe, some Cimmerian splinters definitely did, we see them in the record and they destroyed the Gáva fortress belt in the central region - they couldn't destroy the Northern one, which allowed Late Gáva to survive especially in Transcarpathia, from which later some Dacian groups might have emerged.

But we see the actual destruction caused by the incoming Cimmerians and the individual in question proves their biological presence, as small or big as it might have been. Both Gáva and Lusatians did suffer under the Cimmerian raids, this is absolutely evident in the archaeological record.

At a turning-point of the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age mass items of eastern
origin appeared in the area of central Europe. There were jewellery, elements of horse
harness and military items. Presence of these objects was observed in the area of Poland,
Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Italy as well as eastern France.
To the earliest forms, characteristic for the classical phase of the Cimmerian culture,
belong arrowheads. Relatively small number of these arrowheads found in central Europe is
difficult to interpret. They are connected with the Chernogorovka and the Novocherkassk
complex1
dated from 1007 to 815 BC and from 997 to 805 BC2
. Their presence in the
Carpathian Basin can be a result of the infiltration of Cimmerian groups in Period Hallstatt B2,
dislodged by the Scythian societies from the origin steppes3
. Herodotus in his ethnographic
treatise wrote: It is that the wandering Scythians once dwelt in Asia, and there warred with the
Massaget’, but with ill success; they therefore quitted their homes, crossed the Araxes (Volga),
and entered the land of Cimmeria. For the land which is now inhabited by the Scyths was
formerly the country of the Cimmerians4
.
The distribution of the early types of so-called Cimmerian objects can be related to the
first stage of the nomadic influences. In the Middle Danube Urnfield culture these influences
are visible in the new east European grave form, underlining social status through so-called
princes’ graves. In the northern part of the Great Hungarian Plain the impact of the nomadic
people can be seen in a new type of inhumation grave, containing arms and elements of horsegear. Probably these contacts took form of commercial and symbolic trade, partially
accompanied by limited military raids penetrating to the north, as far as the centre of the
Lusatian Urnfield culture.

Second stage of the Cimmerians influences was in Period Hallstatt B3. In the
archaeological record this event is represented by the collapse of the Gáva-Holihrady complex5
and the development of the Mezöcsát culture which was a result of integration of the local
population with small groups of newcomers6
. Through the Mezöcsát culture, the Cimmerian
systems began to influence other regions of central Europe, mainly through commercial trade
mixed with elements of the prestige-goods exchange, probably by rare military raids, too.
Result of these penetrations may be the presence Cimmerian type objects in the northern part
of central Europe but also occurrence of the idea to build fortified settlements.

The Scythian influence came only later, we have a pretty precise data for it:

In the Period Hallstatt C, the contact of the Cimmerian groups with other regions had
been cultural character. Their influences can be found in the East-Hallstatt cultural groups,
which were located between the rapidly developing Etruscan culture and the Greek colonies in
the south, and the rich resources of the barbarian Europe to the north. At this time, societies of
the East-Hallstatt zone began to play a major role in the exchange and interregional contact in
central Europe. The nomadic influences on Early Iron Age cultures can be seen in the
increasing role of horse, horse riding and wagons7.

The appearance of the Scythian type arrowheads in this time is explained mainly as an
invasion of the Scythian groups on the central European territory8
. Herodotus wrote that9
…The enemy no sooner heard, than they quickly joined all their troops in one, and both
portions of the Scythian army – alike that which consisted of a single division, and that made
up of two accompanied by all their allies, the Sauromatae, the Budini, and the Geloni, set off
in pursuit, and made straight for the Ister... Based on this unclear fragment, some scholars10
interpreted these arrowheads like a proofs of the Scythian groups’ raids in Carpathian Basin.
This situation could be a place exactly about 513-512 BC, after unsuccessful Darius’ expedition
on Saka people11
.

So the Scythians pressed on to the West, where still Mezocsat/Thraco-Cimmerian people lived, shortly before the finds from Himera. This opens up all kind of possibilities were the mercenaries might have coming from, including remains or even fleeing Thraco-Cimmerians.

It doesn't change the principle whether they were Cimmerians or Scythians, because both had a base of Thracians among them, as the regional substrate:

The position of the middlemen in contacts between the Scythians and communities
from central Europe was held by local populations of the so-called Thracian Hallstatt, from the
area between the Pruth and the Dnestr Rivers. The two cultural groups from Transylvania and
Alföld related strongly to the Scythian traditions. In the area of these groups graves of the
Scythian tradition were identified. All pottery from the sites belonging to this cultural group
was made in the local tradition deriving from the late phase of the Gáva culture13, bronze and
iron products, from the basin of the Mureş River, provide clear evidence of intensive contacts
between local populations and the Scythian culture14.

The scale and character of these contacts
were different from those between the Scythian culture and the forest-steppe area of Moldavia.
The local populations of Moldavia had more regular and longer-lasting contacts with the nomadic world, but the effects of these contacts were never as significant as they were in the
area of the Carpathian Basin. Many central and east European scholars15 interpreted this
phenomenon in the terms of changes in population and tried to correlate the cultural changes in
Transylvania with the ethnic expansion of the Scythians tribe called the Agathyrsae16. There is,
however, not enough evidence to support this interpretation, but interpretations of the ancient
written sources correctly located the Agathyrsae in Transylvania. Harmatta17 joined cultural
groups in the Great Hungarian Plain from the VIth-Vth centuries BC, with historical tribes called
the Sigynnae18
.
In the two centuries preceding the period of the Scythian influences, the area of the
Carpathian Basin experienced a period of significant cultural change. The old Urnfield
traditions and intensive contacts with the Cimmerian tribes helped to develop the East
Hallstatt culture, which formed an important economic and cultural component in central
Europe. The Mezöcsát culture, which appeared in the Carpathian Basin as a result of the early
nomadic influences in the VIIIth-VIIth century BC, established close contacts with the East
Hallstatt culture. These horizons are represented by rich groups of findings that represent the
mixture of the Cimmerian, Scythian, and Hallstatt traditions. Early Scythian influences led not
only to the development of the Vekerzug culture, but also to the occurrence in north-eastern
Slovakia and western Ukraine of the Kuštanovice group19
.

Kuštanovice = being considered Proto-Dacians by many scholars.

If the barrows discovered in the area of the Vekerzug culture suggest close contacts
between the local population and the nomadic tribes from eastern Europe, then the dominance
of cremation in cemeteries in the north-eastern region of the Vekerzug culture20 and in the
Kuštanovice group21 indicates the possibility of strong cultural and economic relations
between these groups and local versions of the Scythian culture in the forest-steppe zone22
.
Direct contacts through the Carpathian Mountains have probably developed as a northern axis
of the long distance system of exchange which linked central Europe with the east European
steppes (Map 1).
At the same time, in the Little Hungarian Plain and in south-western Slovakia were
incorporated into the systems of exchange and intercultural contact. In the archaeological
record, this process is expressed through the emergence of cemeteries characteristic for the
southern region of the Vekerzug culture. The largest and the most important of them are those
discovered in Chotín (I-A and I-23. The Scythian type material found in the graves, in both
of the cemeteries at Chotín, include bronze arrowheads, horse bits and another items of
Vekerzug type.

From Chotin we have an E-V13 with a more Carpatho-Balkan-like profile too!

https://www.academia.edu/6176834/The..._millennium_BC

On the Agathyrsi from the historical perspective:

After being expelled westwards from the steppe, the Agathyrsi settled in the territories of present-day Moldavia, Transylvania, and possibly Oltenia, where they mingled with the indigenous population who were largely Thracians.[2][7] In the 5th century BC, Herodotus mentioned the presence of the Agathyrsi in the area of present-day Moldavia, to the north of the Danube and the east of the Carpathian Mountains, by which time they had become acculturated to the local Getic populations[7] and they practised the same customs as the Thracians, although the names of their kings, such as Agathyrsus and Spargapeithes, were Iranian.[2][3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agathyrsi

I have no doubt that even the Northern Dacian groups, which being largely derived from Gáva directly, will have, even after all the mixture with the Iranians and Celts, a solid portion of E-V13 carriers if being ever sampled correctly, in sufficient numbers.

[Granary]

And what about R-Z2103?

Looking at the tree can you say with certainty that it's diversity among the modern people points to an origin in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe?
I can't.
Looking at the tree I would say it's very diverse in the Middle East, even more so than Western Europe.
And yet, the Indo-European languages are in Europe, not in the Middle East except a few.

The question is rather did those basal R-Z2103 lineages reach the Middle East through the actual Indo-Europeans or did it spread before the main proto-Indo-European expansion? To me that's the analogy here, does the presence of basal E-V13 lineages indicate pre Roman Era or pre-Hellenistic spread of E-V13 to the Celtic world and beyond or did those lineages expand in the Roman period and it just so happens they survived outside of the Balkans?

[xz1333]

Dalmatian Latin is believed to of come from Romanized Illyrians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalmatian_language , i see even similarities with Albanian. Interesting Aromanian also has 'sh'. Makes no sense to me that this Y-DNA was spread by East Med or Thracians only. One plausible theory would be that it was a minor clade among Illyrians and expanded.

[Riverman]

The question is rather did those basal R-Z2103 lineages reach the Middle East through the actual Indo-Europeans or did it spread before the main proto-Indo-European expansion? To me that's the analogy here, does the presence of basal E-V13 lineages indicate pre Roman Era or pre-Hellenistic spread of E-V13 to the Celtic world and beyond or did those lineages expand in the Roman period and it just so happens they survived outside of the Balkans?

I think the question could be further dissected, because if talking about the Celtic sphere, we deal with different stages as well.
Like very early Celtic was primarily Western Urnfield and Hallstatt. Was E-V13 present or even numerous in Western Urnfield? Probably not. Western Hallstatt? Already less clear, and in Eastern Hallstatt an E-V13 presence is a near certainty. Even if E-V13 would have been completely centered on the Balkans, which is highly doubtful, we know that individuals and small groups from as far as Bulgaria and Serbia moved as far as Austria and Southern Germany. So it could have been low, but it couldn't have been absent.

In the La Tene period the Celts moved into the Carpathian basin and the Balkans, but kept ties with their Western kin, so there was definitively backflow from the their Eastern expansion zone (including Daco-Thracian and Pannonian-Illyrian areas) to the West. Again, there is no doubt that at least some E-V13 made it to the West through the Celtic networks themselves, even if it would have been very Balkan centered.

The other aspect is a statistical probability. If you have one deep, diverse subclade in the West with no recent Balkan overlap, fine, it means nothing. But we have dozens and dozens of such subclades, the great majority of the Western E-V13 branches. Even the Italian ones have very, very little overlap with the Balkans, with some notable exceptions of known historical migrations.

Therefore if all these ancestral Western subclades of E-V13 would have lived in the Balkans, they would have lived side by side with the modern Balkan lineages, but there was nearly zero exchange, but a total isolation. How likely is that? Not at all.

It rather looks like that:
a) The Western branches expanded already in the Late Bronze and Iron Age to the West
b) They were staying in the Carpathian basin, while the bulk of the Balkan lineages moved South

Even if assuming a central E-V13 group, from which both the Western-Northern and the Balkan groups departed, there should be more overlap. The overlap is however so old and narrow, that even that looks unlikely, which makes an early Western block, nearly completely separated from the Balkans, the most likely scenario. And this should mean it started already with some Urnfield movements or latest with Hallstatt.
The Western block can't be much younger than Hallstatt, its nearly impossible based on the modern data.

That doesn't have to mean the lineages must have lived in e.g. Britain and France, they might have, but they don't have to. But they were to the West and isolated from the ancestral Balkan block after the EIA. This is the key takeaway. The existing numbers are just too high and clear for any alternative.

Even the Sardinian and North Italian diversity is so clearly separated from the Balkans after the EIA, that whether they lived in Italy or not, they were not in one population with the bulk of the ancestral Balkan group.

[Bane]

Dalmatian Latin is believed to of come from Romanized Illyrians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalmatian_language , i see even similarities with Albanian. Interesting Aromanian also has 'sh'. Makes no sense to me that this Y-DNA was spread by East Med or Thracians only. One plausible theory would be that it was a minor clade among Illyrians and expanded.

Makes sense. And Alps (Albs) got its name after E-V13 Albanians reached Central Europe.

[Granary]

I think the question could be further dissected, because if talking about the Celtic sphere, we deal with different stages as well.
Like very early Celtic was primarily Western Urnfield and Hallstatt. Was E-V13 present or even numerous in Western Urnfield? Probably not. Western Hallstatt? Already less clear, and in Eastern Hallstatt an E-V13 presence is a near certainty. Even if E-V13 would have been completely centered on the Balkans, which is highly doubtful, we know that individuals and small groups from as far as Bulgaria and Serbia moved as far as Austria and Southern Germany. So it could have been low, but it couldn't have been absent.

In the La Tene period the Celts moved into the Carpathian basin and the Balkans, but kept ties with their Western kin, so there was definitively backflow from the their Eastern expansion zone (including Daco-Thracian and Pannonian-Illyrian areas) to the West. Again, there is no doubt that at least some E-V13 made it to the West through the Celtic networks themselves, even if it would have been very Balkan centered.

The other aspect is a statistical probability. If you have one deep, diverse subclade in the West with no recent Balkan overlap, fine, it means nothing. But we have dozens and dozens of such subclades, the great majority of the Western E-V13 branches. Even the Italian ones have very, very little overlap with the Balkans, with some notable exceptions of known historical migrations.

Therefore if all these ancestral Western subclades of E-V13 would have lived in the Balkans, they would have lived side by side with the modern Balkan lineages, but there was nearly zero exchange, but a total isolation. How likely is that? Not at all.

It rather looks like that:
a) The Western branches expanded already in the Late Bronze and Iron Age to the West
b) They were staying in the Carpathian basin, while the bulk of the Balkan lineages moved South

Even if assuming a central E-V13 group, from which both the Western-Northern and the Balkan groups departed, there should be more overlap. The overlap is however so old and narrow, that even that looks unlikely, which makes an early Western block, nearly completely separated from the Balkans, the most likely scenario. And this should mean it started already with some Urnfield movements or latest with Hallstatt.
The Western block can't be much younger than Hallstatt, its nearly impossible based on the modern data.

That doesn't have to mean the lineages must have lived in e.g. Britain and France, they might have, but they don't have to. But they were to the West and isolated from the ancestral Balkan block after the EIA. This is the key takeaway. The existing numbers are just too high and clear for any alternative.

Even the Sardinian and North Italian diversity is so clearly separated from the Balkans after the EIA, that whether they lived in Italy or not, they were not in one population with the bulk of the ancestral Balkan group.

Would you say that the majority of surviving E-V13 lineages(in raw numbers) in the West(Germany, Italy and anything west of it) with TMRCAs around 500 BCE-400 CE are part of branches that are NOT found in the Balkans today?

[Riverman]

Would you say that the majority of surviving E-V13 lineages(in raw numbers) in the West(Germany, Italy and anything west of it) with TMRCAs around 500 BCE-400 CE are part of branches that are NOT found in the Balkans today?

Let's put it that way: I found no evidence for their presence in the Balkans as of yet. Any sort of overlap which dates to later than La Tene is absolutely exceptional. Yet within the respective spheres, such overlaps do occur. So its the same data, the same data points, within the Western block, within the Balkan block, within the Eastern European block, they do overlap more frequently, between the blocks, they do not.
Such a pattern is best explained by these blocks being separated latest by the Middle-Late Iron Age, nearly completely, from each other.

Before that, that's a completely different question. And we also find intermediaries. Like I described it, one step is common, like from Bulgaria to Romania and Albania, that's common. Even from say Albania to Serbia to Hungary, this appears. But from Albania to England, that's extremely rare, and these are the best sampled groups we got. Same for Bulgaria and France or even Serbia and Germany.
And if such connections appear, they are as often North -> South oriented than vice versa, which points to them moving into the Balkans, and not out of it.

But any overlap is so rare, that the main conclusion is like you write. The latest borderline is La Tene (so let's say 300-200 BC) and many of those look like they were going into the Balkans, rather than out of it. Later than that, any overlap is absolutely rare. And the great majority has no overlap after 500-400 BC indeed. The upstream branches are usually shared, especially if going back to the LBA-EIA (1.300-900 BC). But that's Channelled Ware period, even predates the Stamped Pottery.

[rafc]

Some months ago I created images of V13/J2b spread. I thought it was interesting to update it now after the Southern Arc papers. Green dots are J2b, red V13, blue others. This is the 1000-0BCE period (no V13 published that is older). The recent Sicily study has not yet been added, but those were mercenaries anyway.



Apart from that do we have an idea what is coming for the Iron age? I think the Lalueza-Fox study should have V13 from Viminacium (and maybe other locations in Serbia) based on what I gathered. Anything else in the pipeline that people know of?

[Riverman]

Some months ago I created images of V13/J2b spread. I thought it was interesting to update it now after the Southern Arc papers. Green dots are J2b, red V13, blue others. This is the 1000-0BCE period (no V13 published that is older). The recent Sicily study has not yet been added, but those were mercenaries anyway.



Apart from that do we have an idea what is coming for the Iron age? I think the Lalueza-Fox study should have V13 from Viminacium (and maybe other locations in Serbia) based on what I gathered. Anything else in the pipeline that people know of?

Well, we know an E1b1b will be coming from the vicinity of Pannonia from the Pannonian research group, one E-V13 likely form an Early Iron Age context (predating most current samples at least) and we will get samples from Romania, a whole bunch of it, but of course not from the central cremating groups. Still, since its the whole neighbourhood, it should be interesting for the autosomal evaluation, like is Wietenberg even more WHG-rich or more EEF-shifted for example, and we will see how many males are included in the upcoming paper. Among these are Cotofeni-Livezile, Eastern Otomani-Füzesabony, Wietenberg, Pre-Gáva context.

At the moment the biggest unknown both from ancient and modern DNA samples is definitely Western Romania, and these samples while probably not sufficient, will give us the first insights we get. Right now we have truly nothing. If looking at the current distribution in your map (great job!), it is very clear where the central group for E-V13 is likely to have been: In Western Romania. The spread in all directions is pretty even and if having more samples from South Eastern Poland and Western Ukraine, E-V13 would pop up there as well. But like so often, no cremation groups in the samples (South Eastern Lusatians and Northern Gáva).

What is very clear on your map and if talking about Gáva/Channelled Ware and the Basarabi complex-Hallstatt, is, that E-V13 and its associated cultural formations moved along the Danube, Tisza and Prut-Dniester. The samples to the West are really like pearls on a string. It makes of course zero sense that E-V13 was significant on both ends of the Danube, but not in between and at the Tisza. This is just the lack of sampling and the cremation issue.