Heterogeneous Hunter-Gatherer and Steppe-Related Ancestries in France

[razyn]

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to argue with archaeological specimens. Only with the easy assumption that the "Iberian influence" implied here is genetic, and on the Y chromosome. Because we've all seen those Eupedia heat maps, and have read papers by Calafell et al, and have witnessed the forum effusions of Blas/Gaska (and others in that camp). I've argued with those for years, and feel no need to desist.

Obviously, residents of Narbonne might own products that came from nearby Iberian ports, mines, and cultural horizons. But there's no reason to assume that, therefore, a person buried locally in 2400 BCE, with clear evidence of autosomal steppe (or Yamnaya-leaning) ancestry, got his DF27>Z195 haplogroup from Iberia.

[rms2]

There is a genetic implication in the label "Iberian Influence Bell Beaker".

The presence of V-perforated buttons in the cave does not justify that label at all.

[alan]

Interesting that they calculated a date for the steppe admixture in the CW era. That suggests the admixture took place not in France but to the east I don’t think steppe DNA has been found west of the Rhine-north Swiss area before 2500BC. Though I wouldn’t be shocked if extremely limited gene flow took place on the Lower Rhine to Grand Pressigny route in CW times I don’t think it would be very relevant. Certainly the only steppe culture anywhere near France in pre beaker times was the CW on the Rhine and Switzerland. I am not sure if Auvernier is considered a CW culture or just influenced a little but that’s still Switzerland. Seems likely to me the mixing happened near the Rhine in CW and only arrived in France in beaker

[razyn]

Interesting that they calculated a date for the steppe admixture in the CW era. That suggests the admixture took place not in France but to the east

I agree, though I'm not sure that the authors of the paper would be on board with us. Their approach to dating the admixture actually was pretty creative, IMO, though I'm no expert in that branch of voodoo. The exercise they went through compared two "Bronze Age" and one "Bell Beaker" sample (the latter being our DF27>Z195 guy, GBVPK) who group closely with each other but with nobody else, in the PCA chart, Fig. 3A. That chart tells a lot of stories, one being that your data can speak loudly as if through a megaphone, if you select the samples carefully enough. In their case the "Yamnaya" ancestry, toward which these three genetically similar corpses are drawn, is from the Caspian end of the Pontic-Caspian steppe, namely Samara. (And that's not what most of the verbiage about Yamnaya, here, is talking about.)

I strongly suspect that sample selection from the gray area of PCA samples that lie between these three new Frenchmen and Samara would indicate some geographical areas and routes familiar to us from recent discussions of SGC, AOC (not the congresswoman, the pottery), migratory routes north of the Carpathians, etc. And those, in turn, were triggered by some fairly similar voodoo, practiced upon some aDNA samples selected by the artist known as Generalissimo. In that regard, I've been checking the zoo at his blog since this paper broke, but haven't seen his take on it. A couple of comments by East Pole, and one by Rob, indicate that some who visit there are onto it. They appear Jan. 12 and thereafter, on this (largely unrelated) thread: https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/...ploration.html

Anyway, the other key ingredient is the bottom half of Fig. 4E, visually representing the data from which they arrive at 9 or 10 generations back of the late GBVPK, ergo 2650 BCE, for the admixture that led to him and his near kin. As Alan has pointed out, there's no reason to suppose that happened in, or anywhere near, Narbonne. OTOH there's also no suggestion that it happened near Samara. Just at a wild guess, how about Pinsk? Or, you know, out that way somewhere. I'm not a Belarusian nationalist; really I'm from Tennessee and not any kind of nationalist.

[Silesian]

Samara Hunter Gatherer pottery was more pointy on the bottom? Not flat bottom.