Why a large portion of E-V13 in the Iron Age might have been Dacian

[Riverman]

I wrote much about how E-V13 is likely to have evolved and grown in very Eastern, Transtisza Hungary, Eastern Slovakia, Western Ukraine and Western Romania. From which cultures which regularly used cremation burials, including collective cremation burials with scattered ashes, like they being later described and archaeologically attested for Dacians.
The most basic prehistorical development of E-V13 goes - going after the currently available data as of May 2022 - in my opinion from the wider Cotofeni related groups to Makó-related, then -> Nyírség -> Otomani I -> Suciu de Sus/Berkesz-Demecser -> Gáva/Channelled Ware (Fluted Ware horizon)

You can see the basic cultures which played a decisive role for the formation of Gáva/Channelled Ware on this map, in the color purple, from a nice map Carlos made:


https://indo-european.eu/wp-content/...age-middle.jpg

Note the related groups, mostly in what is now Romania, Berkesz (-Demecser), Suciu de Sus (Lăpuș I), Cehăluț, Igriţa and Western Wietenberg/Wietenberg-Noua mix. Piliny is the ancestral group for Kyjatice with stronger Tumulus culture influences and closer ties to Lusatians at the same time, in comparison to the other groups which can be considered Pre-Gáva in the wider sense.

Obviously we have no samples from those time frame and regions, those cultural formations. And they mostly cremated.

I also used YFull to gather some data as to when the major haplogroups had phases of expansion vs contraction, based on the numbers of new lineages per TMRCA dates. I made a thread about this here:
https://anthrogenica.com/showthread....d-out-of-YFull

Going after all of that, and assuming my interpretations are basically right, one big question remained which is, where was the bulk of the E-V13 in the Iron Age and into the Roman period. Now going by the smoothed version of how E-V13 developed, there is something very, very noticeable, and that is that it was in free fall during the Roman conquest and colonisation period. There was zero E-V13 growth in that time frame between about 0-200 AD and even more, the later first small, then larger uptick, seem to be associated with tribals, especially Germanic migrations and Slavs. The largest uptick after the Roman era is in synchrony with the Eastern-Southern I-CTS10936 and R-Z280 expansion of the early Slavs.

This means there was practically zero growth in the Roman era - in the Roman occupied territories. Just nothing.

This is all the more noticeable, because J-L283 has downfall 200-300 years earlier, during the Illyrian conqest and rebellions period, but did recover and even steadily grow in the Roman period. But E-V13 did absolutely and categorically not, it just suffered in the most extreme way in that period. We have to assume there was very little growth, and many male lineages died out in that period from the Roman conquest to the end of the Roman era.

The most likely explanation is in my opinion that a very large portion of E-V13 was primarily widespread among the Dacians. Now what happened in the wider Dacian sphere of things in that time frame:

In 105, Trajan crossed the Danube river and besieged Decebalus' capital, Sarmizegetusa, but the siege failed because of Decebalus' allied tribes. However, Trajan was an optimist. He returned with a newly constituted army and took Sarmizegetusa by treachery. Decebalus fled into the mountains, but was cornered by pursuing Roman cavalry. Decebalus committed suicide rather than being captured by the Romans and be paraded as a slave, then be killed. The Roman captain took his head and right hand to Trajan, who had them displayed in the Forums. Trajan's Column in Rome was constructed to celebrate the conquest of Dacia.

Only about half part of Dacia then became a Roman province,[192] with a newly built capital at Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa, 40 km away from the site of Old Sarmisegetuza Regia, which was razed to the ground. The name of the Dacians' homeland, Dacia, became the name of a Roman province, and the name Dacians was used to designate the people in the region.[193] Roman Dacia, also Dacia Traiana or Dacia Felix, was a province of the Roman Empire from 106 to 271 or 275 AD.[194][unreliable source?][195][196] Its territory consisted of eastern and southeastern Transylvania, and the regions of Banat and Oltenia (located in modern Romania).[194] Dacia was organised from the beginning as an imperial province, and remained so throughout the Roman occupation.

The tribes Daci Magni (Great Dacians), Costoboci (generally considered a Dacian subtribe), and Carpi remained outside the Roman empire, in what the Romans called Dacia Libera (Free Dacia).[193] By the early third century the "Free Dacians" were a significantly troublesome group, by now identified as the Carpi.[200] Bichir argues that the Carpi were the most powerful of the Dacian tribes who had become the principal enemy of the Romans in the region.[202] In 214 AD, Caracalla campaigned against the Free Dacians.[203] There were also campaigns against the Dacians recorded in 236 AD

The Goths, a confederation of east German peoples, arrived in the southern Ukraine no later than 230.[165] During the next decade, a large section of them moved down the Black Sea coast and occupied much of the territory north of the lower Danube.[165] The Goths' advance towards the area north of the Black Sea involved competing with the indigenous population of Dacian-speaking Carpi, as well as indigenous Iranian-speaking Sarmatians and Roman garrison forces.[166] The Carpi, often called "Free Dacians", continued to dominate the anti-Roman coalition made up of themselves, Taifali, Astringi, Vandals, Peucini, and Goths until 248, when the Goths assumed the hegemony of the loose coalition.[167] The first lands taken over by the Thervingi Goths were in Moldavia, and only during the fourth century did they move in strength down into the Danubian plain.[168] The Carpi found themselves squeezed between the advancing Goths and the Roman province of Dacia.[165] In 275 AD, Aurelian surrendered the Dacian territory[clarification needed] to the Carpi and the Goths.[169] Over time, Gothic power in the region grew, at the Carpi's expense. The Germanic-speaking Goths replaced native Dacian-speakers as the dominant force around the Carpathian mountains.[170] Large numbers of Carpi, but not all of them, were admitted into the Roman empire in the twenty-five years or so after 290 AD.[171] Despite this evacuation of the Carpi around 300 AD, considerable groups of the natives (non-Romanized Dacians, Sarmatians and others) remained in place under Gothic domination.

In 336 AD, Constantine took the title Dacicus Maximus 'great victor in Dacia', implying at least partial reconquest of Trajan Dacia.[173] In an inscription of 337, Constantine was commemorated officially as Germanicus Maximus, Sarmaticus, Gothicus Maximus, and Dacicus Maximus, meaning he had defeated the Germans, Sarmatians, Goths, and Dacians

Dobrogea was not abandoned at all, but continued as part of the Roman Empire for over 350 years.[205] As late as AD 300, the tetrarchic emperors had resettled tens of thousands of Dacian Carpi inside the empire, dispersing them in communities the length of the Danube, from Austria to the Black Sea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacian...ermanic_tribes

To sum it up, the time between about 0-400 AD were one series of catastrophies for the Dacian people. They suffered greatly under the pressure coming from the North (Germanics), East (Sarmatians) and especially the destruction caused by the Roman conquest and campaigns.

Now let's look at the smoothed graph from the YFull data I made:



Going by that, I think its quite likely that up to about half of all E-V13 lived around 0 AD in Dacian lands and with mixed Dacian-Sarmatian people. E-V13 clearly went down with the Illyrian and Macedonian wars, the Illyrian and Thracian uprisings, the defeat and conquest of the Celts. No doubt about that, its clearly visible, but the other half of E-V13 lineages counted did still well, just about the time of the Dacian wars. I don't think that's a mere coincidence or meaningless chance result of the data.

Especially by looking at where E-V13 was found so far, in larger numbers: Viminacium, Timacum minus, Kapitan Andreevo. But primarily Viminacium, as the closest larger scale sample of people close to the Dacian sphere.

I really do expect that large numbers of E-V13 carriers were still in the wider Dacian sphere in Roman period and largely moved South and being dispersed by subsequent population movements. The question is just which proportion of E-V13 was related to the Dacian sphere, but that a large fraction was, and be it just one quarter, is quite likely in my humble opinion.

[Aspar]

I wrote much about how E-V13 is likely to have evolved and grown in very Eastern, Transtisza Hungary, Eastern Slovakia, Western Ukraine and Western Romania. From which cultures which regularly used cremation burials, including collective cremation burials with scattered ashes, like they being later described and archaeologically attested for Dacians.
The most basic prehistorical development of E-V13 goes - going after the currently available data as of May 2022 - in my opinion from the wider Cotofeni related groups to Makó-related, then -> Nyírség -> Otomani I -> Suciu de Sus/Berkesz-Demecser -> Gáva/Channelled Ware (Fluted Ware horizon)

You can see the basic cultures which played a decisive role for the formation of Gáva/Channelled Ware on this map, in the color purple, from a nice map Carlos made:



Note the related groups, mostly in what is now Romania, Berkesz (-Demecser), Suciu de Sus (Lăpuș I), Cehăluț, Igriţa and Western Wietenberg/Wietenberg-Noua mix. Piliny is the ancestral group for Kyjatice with stronger Tumulus culture influences and closer ties to Lusatians at the same time, in comparison to the other groups which can be considered Pre-Gáva in the wider sense.

Obviously we have no samples from those time frame and regions, those cultural formations. And they mostly cremated.

I also used YFull to gather some data as to when the major haplogroups had phases of expansion vs contraction, based on the numbers of new lineages per TMRCA dates. I made a thread about this here:
https://anthrogenica.com/showthread....d-out-of-YFull

Going after all of that, and assuming my interpretations are basically right, one big question remained which is, where was the bulk of the E-V13 in the Iron Age and into the Roman period. Now going by the smoothed version of how E-V13 developed, there is something very, very noticeable, and that is that it was in free fall during the Roman conquest and colonisation period. There was zero E-V13 growth in that time frame between about 0-200 AD and even more, the later first small, then larger uptick, seem to be associated with tribals, especially Germanic migrations and Slavs. The largest uptick after the Roman era is in synchrony with the Eastern-Southern I-CTS10936 and R-Z280 expansion of the early Slavs.

This means there was practically zero growth in the Roman era - in the Roman occupied territories. Just nothing.

This is all the more noticeable, because J-L283 has downfall 200-300 years earlier, during the Illyrian conqest and rebellions period, but did recover and even steadily grow in the Roman period. But E-V13 did absolutely and categorically not, it just suffered in the most extreme way in that period. We have to assume there was very little growth, and many male lineages died out in that period from the Roman conquest to the end of the Roman era.

The most likely explanation is in my opinion that a very large portion of E-V13 was primarily widespread among the Dacians. Now what happened in the wider Dacian sphere of things in that time frame:













https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacian...ermanic_tribes

To sum it up, the time between about 0-400 AD were one series of catastrophies for the Dacian people. They suffered greatly under the pressure coming from the North (Germanics), East (Sarmatians) and especially the destruction caused by the Roman conquest and campaigns.

Now let's look at the smoothed graph from the YFull data I made:



Going by that, I think its quite likely that up to about half of all E-V13 lived around 0 AD in Dacian lands and with mixed Dacian-Sarmatian people. E-V13 clearly went down with the Illyrian and Macedonian wars, the Illyrian and Thracian uprisings, the defeat and conquest of the Celts. No doubt about that, its clearly visible, but the other half of E-V13 lineages counted did still well, just about the time of the Dacian wars. I don't think that's a mere coincidence or meaningless chance result of the data.

Especially by looking at where E-V13 was found so far, in larger numbers: Viminacium, Timacum minus, Kapitan Andreevo. But primarily Viminacium, as the closest larger scale sample of people close to the Dacian sphere.

I really do expect that large numbers of E-V13 carriers were still in the wider Dacian sphere in Roman period and largely moved South and being dispersed by subsequent population movements. The question is just which proportion of E-V13 was related to the Dacian sphere, but that a large fraction was, and be it just one quarter, is quite likely in my humble opinion.

Looking at your YFULL graph it seems the most stable period of growth for E-V13 is the Iron Age period with two significant depressions around 2600 ybp, caused by the Scythian arrival west of the Black Sea and the second one around 2400 ybp and most likely caused by the Celtic migrations and invasions of Pannonia, Dacia and Mysia.

The IA is the period when you find that many West and East Europeans still had MRCA under E-V13 so that speaks volumes about your conclusion that the vast majority of E-V13s were concentrated among the Dacian people. I for example belong to a very isolated branch that didn't experience growth during the EMA period but still got a match from Cuba with most likely Spanish origin and TMRCA that lived in IA period.
I assume that many E-V13s were somehow dragged and assimilated by the Celts during their backflow from the Balkans to West Europe and that's how they ended up in Iberia and Western Europe.

It seems to me that the ancient regions of Pannonia, Mysia, Dacia, Thrace were packed with E-V13 and once results from these regions start rolling out it will be very very obvious. Pity that the researchers don't seem too interested for the aforementioned regions that much as they are for the West Balkans.

[Riverman]

It seems to me that the ancient regions of Pannonia, Mysia, Dacia, Thrace were packed with E-V13 and once results from this regions start rolling out it will be very very obvious. Pity that the researchers don't seem too interested for the aforementioned regions that much as they are for the West Balkans.

As you know, the cremation horizon causes huge problems and it was just a pity that the Mezocsat/Prescythian/Thraco-Cimmerian samples being just from females. At least in a larger sample there should be E-V13 among them as well.

I for example belong to a very isolated branch that didn't experience growth during the EMA period but still got a match from Cuba with most likely Spanish origin and TMRCA that lived in IA period.

If I'm right, the Dacian wars and catastrophies not only caused a stop of growing, but many lineages got exterminated. This means we have now gaps and misses, which didn't exist before these Roman conquests. I agree with you that a large portion of E-V13 must have spread with Celtic backflow, no doubt about that - we already got La Tene samples of E-V13 (Czechia, France), so this is not even a theory, its a fact. And its also a fact, that Celts in Gaul, Britain, Southern Germany etc. suffered to a similar extent and in a more similar time frame as well.

The most interesting part about the YFull data is that Albanians and English being overrepresented. So if the YFull data suggests zero growth, we see something which affected both the (future) British and (future) Albanian lineages with certainty. For them its much more of a proven case than for some others, for which we still might lack some data and new data might change the impression somewhat.
I did make the comparison with J-L283, so E-V13 clearly being much more negatively affected in comparison, which is very telling, possibly, for the Albanian case. Because if one haplogroup of a wider sphere goes up, the other is in free fall, this is very signficant.

Obviously I would need to do more for the British and French lineages (other than E-V13 and later Germanics, so basically assumed local Celtic), to see whether they rather contracted or nearly collapsed as well. The fact that the Celtic and Dacians suffered probably the most in that period means we can't differentiate very well between them. The differentiation between the more Southern and Western Balkan areas, which were largely pacified by then, is much more solid. Because the time frame is different (200-300 years earlier) and the haplogroups go in diametrically different directions (E-V13 <-> J-L283).

[Bruzmi]

I agree with you that a large portion of E-V13 must have spread with Celtic backflow, no doubt about that - we already got La Tene samples of E-V13 (Czechia, France), so this is not even a theory, its a fact.

There is plenty of evidence which shows that this isn't even remotely plausible. We have hundreds of Celtic samples and none of them are E-V13. E-V13 was not "reintroduced" anywhere in the Balkans with "backflow" from Celts because there is no Celtic E-V13. There is one E-V13 sample in a La Tene site in the Czech Republic.

The sample from La Tene France (400-300 BCE) isn't E-V13, it's E-M215 and there has been found no E-V13 in Gauls.

[Bruzmi]

The argumentation starts with the premise that this hypothesis is correct and then everything is reworked in reverse to fit thehypothesis. The data don't match it at all and we are starting to get the results which show why they don't match it. Riverman has opened many threads about the same subject and they all promote the same theory, so maybe mods should just group them all together.

Why a large portion of E-V13 in the Iron Age couldn't have been Dacian in any way shape or form:

As of yfull 10.03, with new samples added from aDNA studies and many samples overall, E-V13 diversity with the Balkans is clearly placed within the central/western Balkans, but not in the eastern Balkans (Dacia,Thrace).



This clear difference isn't the result of some regions testing more than others. There are 21 samples marked as coming from Bosnia-Herzegovina and 22 samples marked as coming from Bulgaria, but the difference is more than obvious between the two regions.

[Aahmes]

The method of using TMRCAs of all the subclades to create the graph. Is it reliable? Does it work with other haplogroups?
I feel like since each tmrca on yfull has a really really high uncertainty, this method would be almost useless. I think it's a very good idea but we need better data for TMRCAs before we can apply it succesfully. I may be wrong though.

[rafc]

The method of using TMRCAs of all the subclades to create the graph. Is it reliable? Does it work with other haplogroups?
I feel like since each tmrca on yfull has a really really high uncertainty, this method would be almost useless. I think it's a very good idea but we need better data for TMRCAs before we can apply it succesfully. I may be wrong though.

My 2 cents: I think this type of graph is broadly correct, but not so precise you can label a small uptick "Free Dacian recovery". The first peak in the EBA, followed by a bottleneck in MBA and another big Expansion in LBA is real for sure. So that bottleneck somewhere around AD must mean something, but I think it can be explained in multiple ways.
The data of Riverman's graph is pretty straightforward, but the data from Bruzmi's graph is dependent on the area included, the sensitivity selected, and the level shown, and is very sensitive to certain biases on Yfull. As a result it does not show what Bruzmi claims it shows.

So I would say, take both with a grain of salt.

[Riverman]

My 2 cents: I think this type of graph is broadly correct, but not so precise you can label a small uptick "Free Dacian recovery"

Honestly, I contemplated about it, but then I still included this small uptick with this designation, even if its by far one of the most speculative ones I ever used. But I found it to be so completely unrelated to anything else happening at that time, and the Carpi and Costobocci gained importance and strength right in that time period. If that would be the cause, just if, the downturn which followed would be easy to explain, because they were really crashed by the Roman campaigns and Germanic dominance. Not like the Dacians by the Romans, but they lost their dominant position in the region and this is usually the best indicator for a tribal people to have lineage growth: If they are dominant in a region and control resources, expand at the expanse of other clans and tribes.

In any case we have enough data to state for sure:
- the Roman conquest and colonisation was the most destructive period for E-V13 by far. They surely lost a lot of lineages and had zero growth. Any idea of a Roman dispersal of E-V13 can only mean a redistribution of surviving lineages. Like as soldiers, slaves, resettled tribals, like it happened to the North Dacians. This was no growth, but it could have been partial redistribution within the Empire. The growth, the basis for the population was laid much earlier, in the Bronze and pre-Roman Iron Age. The Roman era just crippled the E-V13 lineages
- there is very little to no correlation with J-L283 and other Balkan lineages, hence we can assume they lived kind of "separated lives" in different regions, ethnicities, or at least tribes and clans. If they would have been evenly mixed and experience the same conditions, there is no way the results could look like that.

The synchrony of many J-L283 and E-V13 lineages starts pretty late, between the late Roman era into Medieval times. Before the common era, I see no sign for a synchrony like its observable with Germanics and Slavs.

The method is crude and I wondered about its effectiveness myself, but so far it resulted in solid patterns for all haplogroups which have enough data, like R-U106, R-Z280, R-Z2103, I-M253, I2a-din and so on. So there is no reason to assume its any different for E-V13, which shows an absolutely clear and perfectly correlated pattern - perfectly correlated with archaeological and historical events.

[rafc]

In any case we have enough data to state for sure:
- the Roman conquest and colonisation was the most destructive period for E-V13 by far. They surely lost a lot of lineages and had zero growth. Any idea of a Roman dispersal of E-V13 can only mean a redistribution of surviving lineages. Like as soldiers, slaves, resettled tribals, like it happened to the North Dacians. This was no growth, but it could have been partial redistribution within the Empire. The growth, the basis for the population was laid much earlier, in the Bronze and pre-Roman Iron Age. The Roman era just crippled the E-V13 lineages
- there is very little to no correlation with J-L283 and other Balkan lineages, hence we can assume they lived kind of "separated lives" in different regions, ethnicities, or at least tribes and clans. If they would have been evenly mixed and experience the same conditions, there is no way the results could look like that.

I agree there was a real bottleneck in Roman times, but this can have multiple explanations as stated above. for example, in the Imperial era the Roman empire suffered several pandemics creating large population loss. Another explanation could be the widespread devastation of the Balkans in late antiquity. I'm not saying it was not the Dacian wars, just that the gap could also be explained in different ways. You are right however that most of these would probably show a similar gap in other haplogroups.
I would also say that by Roman imperial times L283 was already far spread outside the Balkans (more so than V13 it seems), which might explain some of the divergence visible on such graphs (as would noise).

I hope we will get the remaining Balkans samples from that recent paper soon, because it could give us some idea of the spread of V13 (and it subclades) in Roman imperial times. It would also be good to get coordinates for more samples. One thing I noticed is that the only Croatian sample which looked like a local (a V13) fitted perfectly in the "Illyrian" group of Croatian/Slovenian samples. That once again shows that neither the "Balkan-Scythian" group nor the EEF-rich group around BGR_IA were migrants from the Northwestern Balkans. However, it is possible that people from more southern or central Balkans regions that have no samples could have a profile more like one of those groups. In that respect the oldest Montenegrin sample could be quite informative.

In any case, in Roman times we have V13 with that typical "Illyrian" profile, shortly after in the EEF rich group, and shortly before in the "Balkan-Scythian" group. I think the Viminacium paper will also have V13 in all three of those groups. So by then it was present in different groups (the contrary would be surprising), and a single explanation like Dacian wars cannot explain trends on all of V13.

[Riverman]

I agree there was a real bottleneck in Roman times, but this can have multiple explanations as stated above. for example, in the Imperial era the Roman empire suffered several pandemics creating large population loss. Another explanation could be the widespread devastation of the Balkans in late antiquity. I'm not saying it was not the Dacian wars, just that the gap could also be explained in different ways. You are right however that most of these would probably show a similar gap in other haplogroups.
I would also say that by Roman imperial times L283 was already far spread outside the Balkans (more so than V13 it seems), which might explain some of the divergence visible on such graphs (as would noise).

I hope we will get the remaining Balkans samples from that recent paper soon, because it could give us some idea of the spread of V13 (and it subclades) in Roman imperial times. It would also be good to get coordinates for more samples. One thing I noticed is that the only Croatian sample which looked like a local (a V13) fitted perfectly in the "Illyrian" group of Croatian/Slovenian samples. That once again shows that neither the "Balkan-Scythian" group nor the EEF-rich group around BGR_IA were migrants from the Northwestern Balkans. However, it is possible that people from more southern or central Balkans regions that have no samples could have a profile more like one of those groups. In that respect the oldest Montenegrin sample could be quite informative.

In any case, in Roman times we have V13 with that typical "Illyrian" profile, shortly after in the EEF rich group, and shortly before in the "Balkan-Scythian" group. I think the Viminacium paper will also have V13 in all three of those groups. So by then it was present in different groups (the contrary would be surprising), and a single explanation like Dacian wars cannot explain trends on all of V13.

As for the Roman era, E-V13 was going down when Rome was at its height and up when it was in crisis and even more up when it crumbled. J-L283 did only go down in the initial conquest, but so drastically still most lineages likely being affected, but then it had a stable growth up to the collapse, exactly when E-V13 goes up with Slavic R-Z280 and I2a-din.

That's really peculiar.

As for the Dacians, its very notable that they had distinct social classes, in an almost caste-like system, and foreign admixture from Celts and Iranians in varying degrees.
So an interesting question is how diverse they were within one tribe and between different tribes.

The other aspect is the potential up with North Dacians and the down when they suffered, plus the fairly early potential alignment with early Slavic groups. So early, that it suggests a North Carpathian contact zone, even a limited association with I2a-din.

The problem is we don't see any of this, most of the time, whether it happened or not, because the cremating groups being largely invisible from the ancient DNA record.
It would make the lineages just suddenly appear, one the population shifted to inhumation.
For some areas that's no earlier than Christianisation!

Viminacium is exceptional as its inhabitants began to transition to inhumation. But a large portion still cremated, which probably would increase the E-V13 numbers.

The irregular burials and those groups which switched to inhumation are the best chance for proving anything early.

But any foreign rite can also mean foreign people, just like we can see in the non-Germanic samples from Hassleben. The typical early Germanics just cremated, same for Slavs and Dacians.