The genetic history of Scandinavia from the Roman Iron Age to the present

[anglesqueville]

Thanks people. Do you think my 'Irish missionary' theory holds any water? Or could this have been a more indigenous individual? The authors clearly label the sample as 'British/Irish', and the fact that it's medieval and church-based to me screams medieval Christian missionary activity, which was still streaming out of Ireland especially...

It could be. In any case this individual (whom I had completely forgotten about, having renamed him "DK_IA_outl" on my working files), is distinctly distant from all the others on the Plink2-PCA I calculated at the time. Here is a capture (genomes imputed with Beagle5).
Capture.JPG

[Jon]

It could be. In any case this individual (whom I had completely forgotten about, having renamed him "DK_IA_outl" on my working files), is distinctly distant from all the others on the Plink2-PCA I calculated at the time. Here is a capture (genomes imputed with Beagle5).
Capture.JPG

Thanks. So you reckon this individual, whenever he arrived, was more likely descended from Irish/Scots etc. than the Swedish?

[anglesqueville]

Thanks. So you reckon this individual, whenever he arrived, was more likely descended from Irish/Scots etc. than the Swedish?

Judging by his position on the PCA I see him rather native to the South of the British Isles, but the PCA is worth what the PCAs are worth (moreover VK213 has been imputed). That said qpAdm gives him a model with such an affinity rate for England_Roman that I have a hard time imagining him native to Scotland. In any case, he was certainly not a Scandinavian.

[Jon]

Judging by his position on the PCA I see him rather native to the South of the British Isles, but the PCA is worth what the PCAs are worth (moreover VK213 has been imputed). That said qpAdm gives him a model with such an affinity rate for England_Roman that I have a hard time imagining him native to Scotland. In any case, he was certainly not a Scandinavian.

Thanks again, very interesting.

This seems to be only the second aDNA sample for S5668 found. The other was reported in Patterson et al (2021), found right on the Kent coast in southern England (IA) (l13730). However, in personal correspondence, Dr. Patterson told me he still suspected that S5668 was born somewhere in Scotland, giving the overwhelming Scottish frequency and branching in modern testers. We discussed IA trading routes, which would have included Pictish traders from the north as well. Interestingly, all aDNA L513 found so far is strikingly coastal in distribution. Whoever they were, they seem to have been plying the sea routes. Another L513 guy (VK263) was found in the Dorset Viking Age burial remains (2020), as part of a raiding party (again, possibly a Scottish/Irish/British crew member?).

So it's interesting to hear your comments on southern England. This would chime in with the IA find, but still seems paradoxical given the massive Scottish focus for S5668 generally?

[uintah106]

Well, let's forget Germanic for an instant. Give me one only example of a "multipolar" (to use your words) proto-language. That is to say, a known case where the phonological shift(s) defining a proto-language would have appeared independently in several disjoint zones. Or at least cite a study that would point in this direction. My request is actually purely formal. Of course, you won't be able to answer this query, because such a thing is simply impossible in the context of the tree model. I am not talking about an arborescent model in the strict neogrammarian sense, but of a modern arborescent model, which takes into account as much as possible "lateral" interferences. As soon as you speak of proto-language, you implicitly follow the principles of the tree structure, because the notion of a proto-language is consubstantial with it. So simply proclaim that you refuse these models, that is to say, in short, that you refuse historical linguistics as a whole, and stop talking about proto-Germanic. And also stop talking about a Germanic linguistic family, because it's the same thing. Others have tried it before you (others who nevertheless knew a little more linguistics than you). I am thinking in particular of the Italian linguist Angela Marcantonio, who claimed to prove in a famous book (famous but not in the good sense of the term) the non-existence of the Indo-European family, then that of the Uralic family. This poor woman claimed to dream of "another linguistics". We are still waiting for it.

Classic sophist argument,You build the structure and decide the results.

[anglesqueville]

Classic sophist argument,You build the structure and decide the results.

I am only obeying the principles of historical linguistics, I mean real historical linguistics, as it has gradually been constituted since Saussure, with its victories and concerns. De Smit and Laakso, targeting the few protesters who claim to dream of an "other linguistics" (Marcantonio is an example), speak of "the small and vociferous group of the so-called "rebels" or "revolutionaries". This small group has so far offered nothing to replace real linguistics but vague, hazy general speeches. If you have better, I'd be happy to find it out.

[Finn]

I am only obeying the principles of historical linguistics, I mean real historical linguistics, as it has gradually been constituted since Saussure, with its victories and concerns. De Smit and Laakso, targeting the few protesters who claim to dream of an "other linguistics" (Marcantonio is an example), speak of "the small and vociferous group of the so-called "rebels" or "revolutionaries". This small group has so far offered nothing to replace real linguistics but vague, hazy general speeches. If you have better, I'd be happy to find it out.

Classic sophist argument,You build the structure and decide the results.

What uintah points out is exactly where the shoe pinches. As soon as you make statements about a linguist Urheimat, you make statements about time and place (in relation to language). This goes beyond linguistics as such.

Time and place is purely historical. Then you need sources, such as inscriptions and the like. That is irrefutable. A pre-historic language - the name says it all - has no sources otherwise it is a 'historical language'. Pinpointing proto-Germanic exactly and with absolution to exactly one place, in this case Central Sweden, is a mission impossible Angles.

Sometimes we run up against the limits of (absolute) knowing.

[anglesqueville]

^^Here we are really in the reign of bad faith. Would you make these comments if I defended a theory "à la Udolph"? You're going to answer "yes", but everyone here knows that it won't be true. Incidentally, you are also defending a "palaeolinguistic" theory (let's say a kind or a vague idea of a theory) when you speak of "multipolar" proto-Germanic. So let's sum up: when you invent something against all the principles of actual linguistics, it's okay; when I try to follow with discipline the injunctions of this same real linguistics, I am doing sophistry. The readers will be the judges. Well, all this is as it was since the beginning: absolutely boring. All your posts reflect one only thing: your total ignorance and your refusal to learn.

[Finn]

^^Here we are really in the reign of bad faith. Would you make these comments if I defended a theory "à la Udolph"? You're going to answer "yes", but everyone here knows that it won't be true. Incidentally, you are also defending a "palaeolinguistic" theory (let's say a kind or a vague idea of a theory) when you speak of "multipolar" proto-Germanic. So let's sum up: when you invent something against all the principles of actual linguistics, it's okay; when I try to follow with discipline the injunctions of this same real linguistics, I am doing sophistry. The readers will be the judges. Well, all this is as it was since the beginning: absolutely boring. All your posts reflect one only thing: your total ignorance and your refusal to learn.

Angles, you don't have to fill it in for me. I'm not an Udolph epigone. I see that you operate like a mathematician in the field of history, then you run into walls. If you are interested, I'm more or less belong to the 'narrativistic history' like my old teacher Frank Ankersmit and Hayden White. Has nothing to do with Udolph c.s.

https://philpapers.org/rec/ANKANR

[Ambiorix]

Finn:




I guess due to this 'dogmatic one track minded opinion' of Angles:



Only the descendants of the middle Swedish IA population are unique (proto) Germanic.

The descendants of Norway IA, Denmark IA, Southern Scania IA, Northern Germany (along the Elbe) IA didn't speak a PGmc language??? But yeah what, Swahili Angles?

It's incredible to me to detach these area's from the development of PGmc culture and specific language.

The Nordic Bronze Age and its successor cultures were, first and foremost, networking systems including a bunch of highly individuated, regional cultures within their borders (VERY important to the question of Proto-Germanic), so these represent a broad and continuous archaeological horizon; in my opinion it is a non sequitur that Proto-Germanic developing in one area of the Nordic Bronze Age necessarily detaches other regions because it was interregional interactions that helped to spread innovations in material culture, social organization, religion, and language within this horizon (genes too?). In the case of the Elp and Hoogkarspel cultures and the question of their Harpstedt-Nienburg > Frankish descendants, these groups were in direct contact with the whole of Scandinavia, and this rather complex system of contact and convergence is clear when considering the wholesale abandonment of tumuli burials in favour of Germanic cinerary urns by the Early Iron Age, the convergence of farming methods in the form of three-aisled farmhouses, and the use of waterways for navigation (in the case of the northern Dutch Bronze Age groups and their Scandinavian contacts, especially via the Rhine and Weser rivers). So this was not simply a couple odd correspondences, but shared ideas about religion and social organisation that could very reasonably be connected to gene flow from Scandinavia into the northern Netherlands (especially because of prolonged contact); it is something I have started to warm up to a bit (but am not strongly invested in), especially because if I am not mistaken some of the Netherlands_BA and IA samples end up in a position on the PCA proximate to where Norwegians and Orcadians plot, so in a mixed British/Scandinavian-like mode. As a genetic base, IIRC the Veluwe Bell Beaker population (ancestral to the Dutch Bronze Age cultures) was directly related to the Bell Beaker groups which migrated to Britain, so it would not be crazy to think that a British-like population could have shifted toward that Norwegian/Orcadian-like profile because of admixture with other Nordic Bronze/Early Iron Age groups (especially via female exogamy), but this could have happened over time and then a few sound shifts could have shifted the language of these Dutch groups into something we can clearly call “Germanic”, especially if they wanted to imitate the speech patterns of a more prestigious group that they had some sort of relationship with. The regions outside of Central Sweden are in fact not disconnected from the history of Germanic identity, culture, language, etc. in this framework, but represent patches of Para-Germanic (and perhaps some unique Nordwestblock) dialects that were well connected to the wealthy areas further north and which actively facilitated the ethnogenesis and spread of Germanic culture by continuing to participate within this network. I do not want to repeat myself ad nauseam with Harpstedt-Nienburg and its formation + spread so I will leave it at that for now.

I would also like to point out that I remember a time when people insisted that Anglo-Saxons had at most a 10-30% impact on the genetic structure of England (some going as far as to say that there was no genetic impact whatsoever when I was doing my undergrad), which never made much sense to me anyway based on what I had researched; our knowledge is always something that can be improved upon with more aDNA, especially as it concerns a potential Scandinavian/Swedish introgression into different pre-Germanic populations of the Nordic Bronze Age subgroups.